Liam coughed.

Not a small one.

The kind that came from somewhere deep and brought everything with it, his whole body contracting around it, his hand going to his chest instinctively.

He pressed his palm flat against his sternum and coughed again and the sound of it was wrong in a room this quiet and this expensive.

He looked up at Stiles.

Stiles was watching him with the same expression he had worn for most of the evening. Mild. Unhurried. His hands still flat on the table, his green suit still sitting perfectly on his shoulders.

"Make your choice," Stiles said. "Before it goes further."

Liam straightened up as much as he could and looked around the room.

The couple by the window.

The woman had her head down now, her forehead resting on one hand, the other pressed flat on the table.

The man was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. Neither of them was moving much.

The man who had been reading was on the floor beside his chair. Just sitting there on the floor with his back against the table leg, his book still closed on the table above him.

A group of four.

Two of them had their heads down.

One was holding the edge of the table with both hands like it was the only thing keeping her upright. The last one was looking at the ceiling and blinking slowly.

Liam looked back at Stiles.

"These people have nothing to do with this," he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. "You’re watching them die just to get to me."

Stiles looked at him. "Yes."

"You don’t care."

"No," Stiles said simply. "I don’t."

Liam looked at him. "You’re a devil."

Something moved across Stiles’s face. Not offense. Something closer to amusement, but quieter than that. "That name is outdated," he said. "That’s what they called me when I was twelve."

Liam looked at him sitting there in his green suit with his two toned hair and his precisely aligned cutlery and his hands flat on the white linen, completely composed in the middle of a room where people were sliding off their chairs around him.

He tried to think.

’Okay,’ he thought. ’What do I have. What can I use.’ He ran through it quickly. His body wasn’t responding the way it should. Standing up had already shown him that. ’Activating anything physical is out. I can’t fight. I can barely sit straight.’ He looked at his hands on the table. ’Pulse Tease.’ He turned it over. ’It doesn’t require movement. It works through contact. If I can just—’

His vision went.

Not all at once. The edges first, going soft and dark, the room narrowing toward the center. The candle between him and Stiles became the brightest thing in his field of view and then that started softening too. He blinked. It didn’t help.

"You’re having a hard time seeing," Stiles said. His voice arrived clearly despite everything else going wrong. "That’s the second stage."

’I’m done,’ Liam thought. The thought arrived plainly, without drama. ’I actually can’t do anything right now. I can’t see. I can’t stand. I can’t activate anything useful. I’m just sitting here.’ He pressed his hands flat on the table and tried to feel where he was in the room. ’I’m actually done.’

---

The restaurant had gone very quiet.

From the entrance, the maître d’ had been standing frozen at his station for the last several minutes, one hand on the reservation book, his eyes moving across the room with the slow confused expression of someone whose body had stopped taking instructions but whose mind was still trying to send them.

The kitchen had gone quiet too. Two of the line cooks were sitting on the floor of the pass. A third was leaning against the counter with his eyes closed.

At the center table Stiles sat with his hands flat and his expression unchanged, watching Liam across the candle. The dark suit stood behind Liam’s chair. The red suit stood to the side. Neither of them had moved.

Liam was bent forward slightly, his forearms on the table, his head down. His breathing was audible from across the table. Slow and effortful.

Stiles watched him.

He was about to speak again when a voice came from the entrance.

"Enough."

---

Liam heard it.

Female. Clear. The kind of voice that didn’t need volume because it already knew it was going to land.

He turned his head toward where it had come from.

He couldn’t see her. The room was light and shapes and nothing specific. He could make out movement near the entrance, a figure crossing the floor, the click of heels on hardwood coming closer and then stopping.

"Hello, Elena," Stiles said.

A pause.

"Put some respect in your voice," the woman said. "Or I’ll call your father and have him ground you."

Stiles laughed. Short and genuine, the same laugh that had come out of him earlier in the evening when Liam had said something he found actually funny. "I’ve always liked you," he said.

"What are you doing here?"

"I’m here for him," Elena said.

Stiles raised one eyebrow. He looked at Liam, then back at her. "I got to him first," he said. "That’s the rule."

"That would work," Elena said, "if it were true. But it isn’t." A pause. "He’s always been mine. Which you would know if you’d done your homework properly."

Stiles was quiet for a moment. "This is the first I’m hearing about that. I’ve never seen him with you."

"That isn’t your business," Elena said. "I’m here for him. That’s all you need to know."

"He offended my family," Stiles said. The mild quality in his voice had shifted slightly. Not anger. Something more deliberate than that. "That’s not something I can just set aside because you walked in."

"He’s my person," Elena said. "Which makes him an extension of my family. And he defended himself from your people, which makes it self defense, which makes the whole thing a non-issue." A pause. "So we’re done here."

Stiles looked at her for a moment. Then he turned his head slightly toward the dark suit standing behind Liam’s chair. A small motion. Almost nothing.

The dark suit nodded once.

A breath. Slow and deliberate, like something being released back to where it came from.

"Done," Stiles said.

Elena’s voice. "How do I know that."

"Is he still coughing?" Stiles said.

Silence.

Liam realized he wasn’t.

The coughing had stopped.

He hadn’t noticed when.

The pressure in his chest had eased, the thing that had been sitting behind his sternum pulling back degree by degree.

He was still on the floor of his own vision, the room still a blur of light and shape, but the coughing was gone.

He heard footsteps crossing toward him. Heels on hardwood, close now, stopping right beside his chair.

"Hey." Her voice was close and lower than it had been when she was speaking to Stiles. "I need you to stand up."

Liam put his hand on the edge of the table.

"Elena," he said. His voice came out rough.

"I’m here," she said. "I’ve got you. Come on."

He felt her hand close around his arm, her grip firm and steady, and she was already pulling him gently upright.

He pushed with his legs, found the floor under him, got to something close to standing and then her shoulder was under his arm and his hand was around the back of her neck and she had her arm around his waist and was taking most of the weight without making it feel like she was.

"There you go, are you okay," she said quietly. Just for him.

"I’m okay, I just can’t see anything yet."

She looked up at Stiles.

Stiles rolled one shoulder in a small unhurried shrug. "That happens," he said. "It only lasts an hour."

She held his gaze for a moment, then looked back at Liam.

"You’re not," she said. "But you will be. Walk with me."

He walked with her.

He couldn’t see the room.

He could feel the direction they were moving, the slight shifts as she navigated between the tables, guiding him without making it obvious that she was guiding him. He could hear the room around them.

Still quiet. Still wrong.

The sound of the restaurant without any of its usual noise.

Then behind them, from somewhere near the center of the room, Stiles’s voice.

"I can’t believe it." He sounded genuinely entertained. "I actually get to see Miss Elena’s kryptonite in person."

Elena stopped.

Liam felt it. The step that didn’t happen. The slight change in the arm around his waist, the tension that moved through her without making it to her grip on him.

She held it for a second.

Then she kept walking.

She didn’t respond. She didn’t turn around. She just kept moving, her pace exactly what it had been, and brought Liam with her through the restaurant and out through the entrance and into the night air.

---

The car was at the curb.

Liam could feel the change in temperature and the sound of the street, the ambient noise of the city replacing the strange deadened quiet of the restaurant.

He breathed the outside air and it felt cleaner than anything had felt in the last hour.

He heard a car door open. Then footsteps coming toward them.

"Ma’am."

The driver. Liam recognized the voice from somewhere but couldn’t place it precisely in the state he was in.

He felt the transfer of weight, Elena’s arm coming away and another set of hands taking him, steadier and more deliberate, guiding him toward the car.

"Watch your head," the driver said quietly.

Liam folded himself into the back seat.

He felt the leather under him and let his head fall back against the headrest and looked up at what his eyes told him was the roof of the car, though it was still mostly light and blur.

The door closed beside him.

He heard Elena’s door open and close on the other side.

A moment passed.

"Drive," Elena said.

"Yes ma’am."

The car pulled away from the curb. Smooth and quiet, the city moving past outside.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Liam lay back against the seat with his eyes on the roof and listened to the sound of the car and the city and his own breathing, which was easier now than it had been twenty minutes ago.

Then he said it.

"Thank you."

Elena didn’t answer right away. He heard her shift slightly in her seat.

"You don’t have to thank me," she said.

"I do."

"You don’t." A pause. "I’m just glad I got there on time."

Liam turned his head toward her voice. He still couldn’t see her properly. Just the shape of her in the low light of the car interior.

"I put you in a bad position," he said. "Using your family like that. After you said you didn’t want to bring them into it."

She was quiet for a moment.

"I know," she said.

"I’m sorry."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"I love my family," she said. Her voice had changed slightly. Something had come into it that hadn’t been there before. "But I love you too." A pause. "I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t made it there in time."

The last few words arrived differently from the ones before them. Smaller. The surface of something much larger underneath.

Liam heard it.

He reached toward her in the dark of the car, found her hand, and closed his around it.

"I love you too," he said.

She didn’t say anything.

He felt her move. Closer. And then she was leaning into him and he had his arm around her and he could feel her breathing against his shoulder, unsteady in the specific way breathing gets when someone is trying not to let something out and not quite winning.

He held her.

The car moved through the city. The driver kept his eyes on the road and said nothing. The streets moved past the windows in long quiet stretches.

After a while Elena lifted her head.

Liam still couldn’t see her face properly. Just the shape of it, close to his.

She kissed him.

He kissed her back.

They stayed like that for a moment. Then they stopped and she rested her forehead against the side of his head and neither of them said anything.

The car kept moving.

Outside the city went on doing what it always did, completely unaware.