Fic: To The Edge of Night

[noxnoctisanima]

Title: To The Edge of Night

Author: Noxnoctisanima

Pairing/Characters: Megan Reeves/Larry Fleinhardt

Rating/Category: PG-13/Het

Summary: They lived in the in-between times, in the eternal twilight, that is where they existed.

Notes/Warnings: This is AU from 4.02 because I’m Australian and haven’t seen any further then that.

This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff . After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty [or schmoopy] the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff . Thank you!

Between light and dark. Between the day and the night is where they existed. It was their time. 

The twilight. 

After the day when so much held them apart. 

The shattered nerves and shadows of cases, frenetic and constant that held Megan for so many hours. 

Classes and students, all noise and bright, bright energy, that twirled Larry up in their embrace and held him close. 

Her darkness to his light. 

Before the night where people died, bloody and tired, calling to her, night was the time for death calls. 

Larry was lost to the lights in the night, the tiny pinpricks of stars, the great swirl of the galaxies, they hypnotized him, stealing him away. 

They lived in the in-between times, in the eternal twilight, that is where they existed. 



Their first date was at twilight, the last shards of light were being swallowed by the yellow tinged flicker of the streetlights as they lit one by one in a march down the street. 

Larry was quietly vibrating under one of the lamps, fingers tugging at the sleeves of his shirt nervously. 

Megan saw him first, smiling as she walked up the pavement. She was right next to him before he looked her way and there was a warm flush in her chest as he smiled, lines crinkling at his eyes as he saw her. 

His hand brushed down his sleeve as he greeted her and Megan noticed his hand trembled a little. 

“Megan you look wonderful.” He offered her his arm without the slightest trace of jest and she took it, a slight blush on her cheeks. 

His body was warm against her side as he led her into the restaurant, she inhaled a slight spiciness in the air as he open the door ahead of her. 

The music was percussion, all drums and low voices, but quiet enough for conversation. 

He pulled out her chair for her and sat down across from her and that is where it all began.

The first time they had sex was both exactly what she expected and nothing like it at all. 

As the last of the light of the day shone through the glass Larry held his hand against her cheek and kissed her, softly, without demands, even a little hesitantly. 

She smiled into the kiss, it was so Larry, always slightly hesitant, pausing slightly before he gave himself to something. He always paused before starting an argument, a lecture, even a conversation, as if he was considering its importance before beginning. 

She felt that hesitancy as she slid her arms up, her hands cupping his shoulders, squeezing lightly. 

Larry’s hands twitched at his sides before one slid up into her hair, the other gripping lightly at her the curve of her waist. 

Megan pressed herself into Larry as they kissed, heat flushing her body and in that moment everything changed. 

Larry opened and it was like falling into eternity. It was heat and light and beauty and Megan couldn’t breathe. 

All the hesitancy had fallen away and for an instant Megan could see the universe as Larry could, perfect and yet terrifying in its expanse. 

Larry curled around her, hands scorching her skin as they skimmed over her arms and back. He was pure passion unleased and he was everywhere and everything. 

And this was Larry, even more then the hesitancy was the heat and fire beneath just waiting for permission. 



It took Larry weeks to realise he had moved in with Megan. She’d been sneaky about it, inviting him for dinner more, letting him forget things there, offering to store his possessions until in all but name her house had become theirs. 

She’d approached it with the kind of precision usually relegated to complex operations. 

It was small things at first, letting him forget his sweater or novel or the research he and Charlie spread around themselves like debris in the living room when the sheer amount of research in the Eppes’s garage forced them to find alternative workspace. 

Small things, but things he had to come back for, things he had to come home to get. 

When the lease on his storage space expired she offered her attic space, easier for him to get to and it was free. He had resisted, not wanting to intrude but she had just smiled amusedly at him and press ganged David and Colby into being helpful for once. If books and pictures found their way out of the boxes and never found their way back in, well she was a very busy woman. 

She added his clothes to her own wash and folded the clean ones into the bedroom drawers and cupboards until he was as used as she was to the intricacies of opening the top drawer of the bureau without making a horrible noise and having it stick half way out. 

When she suddenly found herself debating whether butter sauce was yellow or white and how many ways there were to prepare potatoes she decided enough was enough. 

Larry had been coming home to Megan for two weeks when she gave up subtle for deliberate. 

Larry knocked on the door but by the time Megan reached it he had become entranced by the refraction of light through the bubble warped glass ornament hanging beside the door. The orb spun in a metal spiral as Larry nudged it so the last fading sunlight hit it through its clearest parts. 

She leaned against the doorframe for a while, watching his interest in the light until the last of the sun fell below the horizon and Larry let the glass go to settle at the end of its string. 

He turned towards the door and looked surprised to see her there, then he looked contrite and frowned at himself. 

“I did knock didn’t I?” She nodded at him. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting but the shape of the light as it passes thought he glass reminds me remarkably of the Andromeda galaxy when turned the right way.” 

Megan smiled and kissed him hello in the doorway before she started fishing in her pocket. She drew out a small model of the globe with a single newly cut silver key dangling from the chain. She pressed it into his palm and closed his hand around it as he stared at her. 

“Next time you can let yourself in. You shouldn’t have to knock to come into your own home.” 

He opened his mouth to protest but she interrupted him. 

“You sold your house, you’ve outgrown the monastery, you’re not going back to the steam pipes and I want you here.” She finished it with a kiss and smiled triumphantly as she felt him slip the key into his pocket and relax against her. 



Megan had never thought she could get pregnant. A fertility test in her late twenties after the miscarriage of an accidental pregnancy had convinced her that it was not possible for her to conceive again. Now as she was fast approaching middle age and Larry was even older she had given up using the contraceptives as the pill had always made her fight to stay healthy and she and Larry had both tested clean. 

Larry had been living with her for two years when it happened. It took her weeks to notice, she was working a long stressful case and barely had time to sleep let alone be worried about what her body was doing. Many of the CalSci students had a stomach bug and when she started vomiting she had just put it down to the time she was spending with Larry and Charlie on campus. 

She was nearly four months pregnant when work calmed down enough that she could think about other things again and she started putting the continuing nausea, period absence and the beginning of weight gain together and retreated into the bathroom with a home pregnancy test. 

The sky was blue-black outside the window as she paced the cold tiles and waited for her timer to ring.

Her hands shook a little as she turned the stick over and stared at the pink cross. 

It shouldn’t have been possible but it had happened anyway. She was over a third of the way through her term and even with the stress from the case had kept the baby. 

She spread her hand across her stomach feeling the firmness of the bump within her. She sat down against the bath, one hand smoothing across her belly the other clutching the test and that is where Larry found her when he came home. 

The house was dark, but Megan often worked late and he didn’t think much of it until he saw the light spilling out into the hallway from the bathroom. 

He rushed into the room when he heard Megan sob and dropped down onto the tiles beside her. One hand was on her stomach and she was clutching something in her other one. Larry laid his arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her until she could tell him what was wrong. 

He was so surprised when she looked up to meet his eyes and she was smiling through the tears. 

Her hand opened like a flower in her lap and she turned the test up the right way to show the positive sigh. It felt like his heart stopped for a moment and he reached out to pick up the test, staring at it. 

“I thought the doctors said it couldn’t happen.” 

Her smile was just a little hesitant. 

“They were wrong.” 

There was a long pause and Megan started to get a little worried. Then his arms came tightly around her and she tensed on instinct but Larry just squeezed her tight and dragged her to her feet, spinning her around the room until she was dizzy and nauseous but elated. 

“A wormhole! My beautiful sun! Never has there been a greater gift!” And then he laughed and she joined him as he waltzed them around the room, laughing as the first stars appeared in the sky.