Someone had put a blanket over them both, which he discovered as he moved just enough to disturb it, leaving a cool draft to tease his side and rouse him enough to finally open his eyes. He peered past the splay of green hair that filled half of his vision, out into the grey of the room illuminated by a single splinter of daylight sneaking past the edge of one of the curtains. He realised that they were still in the cinema room, although not on the same sofa he was sure they'd been on before. Instead, they'd been moved further back, to a different pair of couches that had been turned to face each other and pushed together in the approximation of a bed. Whoever had done that had also taken the care to clean the mess from his crotch, as well as gathered up the clothes that he and Aoife had discarded, folding them into two neat piles nearby. Ethan began to sit, but a soft exhalation from alongside him sounded enough like a sigh to make him stop.
There was just enough light for him to see Aoife, although her face was half veiled by her hair, and he gently brushed it aside to look at her properly. Enough time had obviously passed that she'd stopped saying imprinting, but she didn't move - although he could convince himself that the corner of her mouth quirked at the touch. He'd never seen her look this content, catching her without any of the frustrated energy he was so used to her carrying, and as he watched he realised how relaxed the knots under his own skin suddenly felt. The cliche would have been for things to not feel real, but he wasn't sure if anything had felt more real in his life than the sense of her body against his and, after a few moments, it was more than Ethan could manage not to lean in and ease a kiss on her forehead.
What sort of idiot would have risked losing this?
He rested there with her a while longer, until the sounds of activity outside the window began to creep across his awareness and joined the questions he had; about how he'd seemed to have lost several hours and just who had found and tended to them? Even then he had to fight his reluctance to move for several stretched out minutes before leaning in and mumbling an explanation to the Scottish girl, just in case she could hear it.
"I'm going to find out what happened. Try not to get into too much trouble while I'm gone this time, ok?"
Aoife didn't move as he carefully lifted her off himself, but Ethan still did his best to slip from the blanket and scramble free of the pushed together sofas without disturbing her. As he did so, he felt a throbbing pain in his left forearm that he was sure hadn't been there before he slept. More familiar was the aching stiffness in his knee, that he still got any time he slept in an odd position or over taxed his body, the consequence of an old ACL injury playing football at university. He frowned as he considered the implications there, but quickly became distracted, more focused on the woman sleeping in front of him than how it felt to put weight on his bad leg.
He had to stop himself from standing and watching her, heading instead for where his clothes were waited nearby, newly aware that whoever had been here had seen (and left) them both nude. Pulling on his sweatpants after his boxers, he felt the telltale shape of his phone sitting in one pocket, and instinctively reached to check it, only to immediately curse himself for doing so.
The clock said it was late afternoon, which meant he'd lost more than twelve hours since he'd paired with Aoife, and the volume of notifications and emails waiting for him was ample proof of just how little the world cared to slow down and notice. He swore to himself and rubbed a hand across his face as the constant background flicker of stress returned. Rhys had attended the meeting with the foreign broadcasters in his place, and a secure link to a server's worth of footage from the Germans did its best to jump out at him; something that was now Ethan's responsibility to start wading through, along with the rest of his back-logged schedule. At some point, he realised, he was going to actually need to focus on his job again. There were enough other questions lingering, however, that the first thing he did was to open his group chat, looking to follow the trail of messages left there in the direction of wherever the others had ended up.
Stepping back out into the corridor, the sun was low enough through the windows to leave him blinking, and he traced his way back through Taymont, feeling like the building itself was watching him with a sort of detached indifference as he surfaced. At some point, he pushed past the unmarked boundary between the quieter parts of the hotel no-one seemed to visit and the spaces used for production, emerging into the familiar background pattering of noise and occasional mask clad runners moving from office to studio. He made a brief stop at his room to grab a jacket and a pair of half-worn slacks from his laundry pile; however, he ultimately made his way to the side of the building, heading out through the exit reserved for transmission cables and onto the terrace beyond.
The smell of smoke from the grounds staff burning leaves lingered in the air as Ethan stepped outside, quickly noting that the Special Branch presence seemed to have dwindled to a single marked police car near the front of the building. It wasn't hard to find at least three of his team members where their group chat had suggested they'd be. Days earlier, he had made a request to Pallisade's site manager that they might be able to return some of the outdoor heaters and cushions that had been taken from the patio during the enhanced restrictions, looking for small things he could push through that would make a difference to the newly forming Teams. He hadn't actually expected it to go anywhere, but then the sudden, uncommented appearance of several tall heaters that captured the near-new furnishings in a pocket of red-tinged warmth was particularly on brand for site management's sense of priorities. Jess and Alex sat together on a two seat sofa, the sisters inclined familiarly towards each other, with the sense that the only thing stopping the pair from leaning against each other was the presence of Moxie having curled herself up in the small space between them. The dog's head rested against Jess's leg, half-regarding the screen of one of the laptops the two redheads were using, with work on the project seemingly already insistent enough to be a feature of their downtime.
Farah occupied an identical seat across from them, casually striking in a black leather jacket that Ethan was sure he'd previously seen Alex wearing, which might have begged more questions were it not for the fact that Sarah, the camerawoman from Team Kaminski, was there with her. The pair's body language was similarly close, but with none of the familiarity of the McNamara sisters, instead replaced by a flirtatious intensity as Farah leaned forward towards the glasses-wearing brunette, propped up against the back of the seat with one arm that was practically wrapped around the other woman.
The four of them weren't entirely alone, with a small group made up of researchers, editors and a make-up artist from both Teams Barclay and Kaminski having claimed the space beneath another heater a short distance away, giving the whole scene an odd sense of normality that hadn't felt present for weeks. That alone was enough to briefly unbalance Ethan as he approached however, almost like he'd been stepped sideways as he slept, finding himself somewhere parallel where everything had been moved a couple of inches in different directions.
Moxie was the first to notice him, with a curious prick of the jack russell's ears followed a second later by a short bark. Quickly, several sets of eyes were on him, though Ethan was grateful that the members of the other two teams did their best to keep things to an idle glance in his direction before returning to something a couple of them were watching on a phone. Sarah shifted away from Farah with a subtle embarrassment that went unnoticed by the other woman, with the presenter instead giving Ethan a broad smile. Meanwhile there was an unexpected, self-conscious fluster from Jess and the hint of a blush as the younger of the two sisters glanced away.
Something tugged at the back of Ethan's mind in response to the gesture - a compulsive little note that stirred, semi-erect, through the constant background hum of his libido and caused his attention to catch on her. He watched her bite her lip, and felt the unusually strong urge to go and kiss her, enough that even briefly he felt his questions and thoughts about Aoife slip. She hadn't been dosed by him in several days and logically, he knew the serum would be making her feel the need, but, for an instant, it felt as if there was something in his mind alongside him driving him to feel it too. Telling him how hot and sore that need was.
Pressing.
Urgent.
Insistent.
...but it only lasted for as long as it took Alex to be the one to speak.
"So, what time do you call this?"
The older McNamara's words were filled with an increasingly familiar sarcasm, but he still had to blink the foreign sensation away before he could be sure who's voice he'd heard. And it took him just a little too long to grasp at a response.
"Oh you know how it is. You hit snooze on your alarm a few times and suddenly it's the middle of the afternoon."
Evidently the quip was still hesitant enough for Sarah to feel like she was in the way, and the camera woman awkwardly began mumbling her own excuses as she pulled herself from whatever was going on with Farah. She waved away the polite protests that she could stay if she wanted and made to leave, although not before Farah pulled her in close and whispered something in her ear. Whatever was said had earned Ethan's partner a playful shove to the shoulder, leaving Farah grinning as the other woman edged away. Again, Ethan's mind slipped as it tried to find solid ground, and again, it was Alex that pulled him back.
"Are you ok?" Her voice had a genuine concern this time, and he realised how carefully she was watching him.
Ethan took a second to find an answer, but a grin came with it as he did. "Yeah...I think I'm good. Just..."
