Anyway, if you're the sort that needs things to have a point, well, there is that bit at the end about moving to Tomodachi, which, as we know, the Griffins eventually did. --G.

Thursday, August 23, 2407
755 Malden Avenue, No. 17
New Avalon, Zeta Cygni

Don Griffin didn't actually need to sleep all that much. In a pinch, he could get by with little more than six or eight hours a week, and in sustained crisis situations (for example, his entire post-secondary education) he had done just that. Under normal circumstances, though, he enjoyed sleeping like a regular person. It was something like a hobby.

As he slept, something drilled into his consciousness. Something shrill. Something repetitive. Something... tremendously annoying.

His twilit consciousness considered the nature of this abstract thing with a detached sort of bemusement.

the hell is that? sounds like... some kind of bell. phone? no. turned phone off. TARDIS doesn't make that noise. some kind of...

Next to him, Kitty stirred and made a blurry, disgruntled noise. "... 're you gonna get th'door?" she wondered.

"oh," Don replied, coming to something like wakefulness. "doorbell. course."

Before he could reassemble any more of his scattered consciousness, to say nothing of mustering the strength of will it would take to remove his arm from around Kitty's middle and extract himself from the warm cocoon of the covers, he heard the apartment door open. That took him aback for a moment, until he remembered that they had a houseguest who would naturally, the guest room being closest to the door, take it upon herself to answer the summons.

Whoever it was obviously had the wrong house. Who would be visiting at - he glanced at the bedside clock - 3:08 in the morning?

He had just settled back and closed his eyes again when the bedroom light clicked on.

"Hngh?!" was Don's incisive comment as he rolled instinctively onto his back and sat partway up, blinking into the sudden brightness. Kitty, whose reflexes were better-trained, was up in a half-kneel next to him, her sword in its scabbard across the bed in front of her, before she reached consciousness.

"Oh, no," said the person who had just invaded their bedroom. "Dear me, don't get up."

Don closed his eyes, waited for one full second, and opened them again, but it was no use. Emma Frost was still there.

Kitty found her voice first.

"Emma, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Emma looked shocked. "I just stopped by to say hello!" she protested. "I never dreamed you'd be in bed so early, young people like yourselves."

Don wiped a hand down his face and glanced past Emma into the hall. Paige Guthrie gave him a stricken, apologetic look and a shrug. Don sighed, waving her unspoken apology away, and said to the intruder, "Emma, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Of course," Emma replied with a smile. "The Cobalt Club closes at three o'clock, and it can't have taken me more than 10 minutes to get here from there." She winked one pale-blue eye and smirked slightly. "Cab drivers are easily motivated," she added.

Kitty relaxed her grip on her sword's scabbard and settled back to sit in a kind of seiza next to Don, making sure her oversized T-shirt's hem was tucked under her knees.

"Well, you've said hello," she said in the voice of a woman who is very carefully controlling herself. "Now try goodbye."

Emma pouted. "Oh, come now," she said. "Won't you at least have a drink with me? I'm celebrating!" She held up a dark green glass bottle and a pair of flute glasses. "Think of it as breakfast in bed," she added with a wicked grin.

"Where I come from," Don pointed out patiently, "champagne is not considered a breakfast food."

"Oh, pooh," said Emma. "It's good for you. It'll put hair on your chest."

Don gave her a skeptical look and replied dryly, "That's not something I need help with."

Emma smiled lasciviously. "Mm, now that I've said it, I see that," she said.

"OK, that's it," said Kitty, pointing to the door. "Get out."

The blonde sighed expansively. "Whatever for? We're all friends here, aren't we?" When Kitty reached significantly for her sword, however, Emma relented with a hurt look. "All right, very well. If you simply must kowtow to the Puritan baggage of your upbringing, I'll wait in the kitchen while you get dressed."

And she turned and swept from the room.

Paige watched her go, gave the Griffins the most apologetic look she could muster, and then went after her so that they could dress in peace.

"So," said Don as he buttoned his shirt. "What do you suppose she wants?"

"Do I care?" Kitty asked rhetorically. "Maybe she's founding a new Hellfire Club in New Avalon and wants you to be the Black King."

"She's only been here for three days," Don observed. "Even Emma doesn't work that fast."

"I don't know how you can say that. She practically had your pants off right there in the control room," said Kitty sourly.

"Now, now," said Don mildly. "I'm not so easily swayed as that."

Kitty stared at her, then turned silently away and opened the cabinet next to the coffee maker. Don, who didn't like coffee, switched on the electric kettle instead and busied himself for a few moments spooning mint tea leaves into the strainer basket of his favorite small white teapot.

"Congratulations," he said dryly. "Seventy-two hours in the city's finest hotel must have been difficult to bear."

"It doesn't suit me to be a rootless drifter," Emma replied blithely. "Anyway, I wanted to share the good news with you two first, because we're going to be neighbors!"

Don raised an eyebrow. "Oh really."

"Absolutely," Emma replied. "Why didn't you tell me number 18 was available? I move in tomorrow. I'll be right across the hall! Isn't that wonderful?"

Don considered the situation for a few moments, then said calmly, "Emma, if you keep doing things like this - and I speak here as a man who does not want his beloved wife to go to prison - Kitty's going to kill you."

"I'm a ninja," Kitty remarked grumpily from somewhere in the cabinet. "The cops will never pin it on me."

"Oh, Katherine, darling, don't be that way. We're living in a whole new context these days, you know, and I can tell we're all going to be great friends." Emma put the glasses down on the table and gestured with the bottle. "Sure you won't have some champagne?"

"Despite your best efforts, you haven't quite driven me to drink yet," Kitty replied, priming Mr. Coffee.

"Well," said Emma philosophically, "we have plenty of time." She sighed and gathered up her glassware. "Fine then. If no one here is going to have a drink with me, I'll just have to go and find someone who will. You two simply must come to my housewarming party next Friday, though, I shan't take no for an answer. Ta, darlings!"

Paige waited until she was gone, then emerged from her room and put her head into the kitchen.

"I'm really, really sorry about that," she said. "I had no idea - "

"Eh, don't worry about it," said Don. "It could've been worse. I'm not mopping blood off the floor."

"The line about not wanting me to go to jail was nice," Kitty remarked, sliding into the seat next to him. "God! I think I liked the old Emma better. Somehow she was easier to take when she was trying to kill us."

Paige sat down across from her and looked glum. "She's really not a bad person," she said. "It's just that... well, her personality hasn't caught up with her outlook."

"Ha! I like that," said Kitty, pouring coffee. "Coffee?"

"No thank you. Mama always said it'd stunt my growth."

"Yeah," Kitty replied archly, elbowing Don. "We can see where you'd have to worry about that, huh Don?"

"What!" Don replied, throwing up his hands. "Why is it not okay for Emma to mack on me but okay for you to insinuate - "

"I didn't insinuate anything!" Kitty replied, looking pious while Paige's face went red. "Anyway, I refuse to be held responsible for anything I say on three hours' sleep."

"You're not going to get back to sleep if you drink that," Don observed, gesturing toward her coffee.

"I'm not going to get back to sleep anyway, after this," said Kitty. "Just lie awake thinking about living with that next door. That doctorate program on Tomodachi is looking more attractive all the time."

"What would stop her from following us out there?" Don asked rhetorically.

"We'd have to get a house," Kitty replied. "A big one. With a big yard. And high windows. So no one could approach within say 100 yards without being spotted by the snipers. Did I mention we'd need snipers?"

"You're starting to remind me of Logan. And since I sleep with you, that's more than a little unnerving. Stop it."

Paige snorted. "I think I'll go back to bed before I learn something I didn't want to know. Good night, you two. I promise I'll look before I open the door next time."

"'Night, Paige. Don't worry about it. This stuff happens." Don watched her go, then took the kettle off the boil and poured hot water into his teapot. "You seriously want to move to Tomodachi?"

Kitty sipped her coffee. "Hell, I don't know. I mean, the doctorate program at NIT does look really good. And it was nice over there. And Hank's there." She sighed. "Have to finish my rxnfrgt masters first, either way. Good thing fall term at NAIS starts next week. Mind you, studying's going to be fun with the Hellfire Club moving in next door. I can already see myself living in the library."

"Before you go, can you get your picture taken someplace? I don't want to forget what you looked like while you're gone." Don looked thoughtful. "Would letting that happen constitute playing into Emma's hands on your part? Ow!"

"Hello, Neighbors" - a Lost & Found addendum by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2009 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

I was about to say something about the timing, then I realised I had a misconception. I was thinking this was part of the Rachel story, not Don flying around collecting the second batch of DDP's. In that context, yes it makes sense as sort of being amoungst the last (but surplufulous) scenes of L&F, and clearly before Requiem, at which point we see the Hellfire club firmly established.

Eesh, poor Don. Man's in a no-win situation there.

Polychrome

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington