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Will woke to the clang of a pot and a string of Lyra's curses. He sat up immediately, but didn't bother to get out of bed when he saw that Pan was nosing in calm fascination around Will's disaster of a desk. Whatever Lyra was frustrated with, it wasn't life- or even happiness-threatening, so Will let himself lay back down and tried to wake the rest of his mind from the fog of contented sleep.
It was not an easy task. Kirjava spoke for most of him when she blinked sleepily and then curled right back up, tightly, putting a paw over ear and nose in a symbolic rejection of the world. Will turned over on his side to stroke down her back and scruffle lightly behind her ears.
Lyra was in his condo. His Lyra. Was here. Said she'd found a way to go back and forth, and was in his kitchen, and angry at it for some reason or other, while Pan snooped in all of Will's affairs. It was perfect. It was also December the 24th, actually. Will had never cared much for Christmas or any other holiday before now, except for the religiously observed Midsummer meeting. Now he might have to make an exception.
And he was torn between throwing clothes on and chivvying her into hers and dragging her out to see his mother at the home right now, and never wanting to leave, or blink, in case the entire day and night evaporated into a dream.
Kirjava pointedly curled ever-more tightly into her ball and made certain that she was the very picture of a deeply sleeping cat, by way of making her opinion known.
Lyra came in, then, bearing two mugs before her with the expression of someone who has just attained victory in a most difficult battle. "I made tea," she announced, as she folded one leg under her to get back on the bed. "In a pot. Because the stove is the only thing in your kitchen that could be managed without waking you up," she finished, holding him accountable for all of the difficulties the technology of his world was causing her. He was going to get it, if he did walk through to her Geneva. He genuinely wouldn't put it past her to abandon him abruptly in the midst of some city's worst and most raucous gathering and see how he fended for himself. And with the sensible corner of his mind, which was quite distant and not particularly loud at the moment, pointed out that he probably shouldn't be quite so sure of what Lyra would and wouldn't do, being as he hadn't seen her for over a decade and a half, but he ignored it.
It was Lyra, after all.
"What were you swearing at?" he asked, when he took the mug.
"Never you mind," she replied. "Nothing's broken." After a moment she relented and said, "I was trying to figure out what your tea was. You don't have any proper tea."
"It's easier if I can just throw in a tea-bag in the morning," Will replied. She'd made very strong tea, almost stronger than he made it, every morning. "Tea-leaves are fussy, and some of us don't live in a world with servants who do things for us."
"The more fool you," Lyra retorted. She sat cross-legged on the bed, and, he realized belatedly, wearing his shirt. That was such a cliche. Such a wonderful, wonderful cliche.
Her look softened, from her haughtiness, and she said, "Everything turned out well for you, then? I was worried. Your world is so stupidly complicated, and Mary said you were both going to have trouble."
"Mary hired some kind of whiz lawyer the moment we got back," Will said. "She knew him from some other time - anyway. It was complicated, but we got it sorted."
Lyra's mouth curled. "And you became a doctor. I can't half believe that. You, putting up with sick people all day long - "
"Well we did say we were supposed to be learning to be cheerful in the face of provocation," Will shot back. "What do you do, anyway?"
Pan hopped up onto the bed and settled into the hollow bowl her crossed legs made. She had her head tilted light to the side. "Can tell you've been living here a while," she said, sounding amused, "you're starting to pick up bits of their accent. I," she went on before he could answer, "bully governments into taking care of poor children, and bully them out of letting the Church do it, because buggered if we can trust them to. Then I teach silly middle-aged women not to be shocked that a girl who grew up at the docks knows how brothels work and a boy of twelve from the same area's been in them on and off for a year."
The image of Lyra as a social worker was at least as amusing to him as the image of him as a doctor apparently was to her. Kirjava got tired of his petting and sat up, stretching. "Whose idea was that?" he asked.
"Mine, of course," Lyra retorted, pretending to bridle under his pretended incredulity; then she relented and said, "Well. There might have been some help. But it's working quite well, and what the Hell are you smiling about now?"
"Everything," Will said, honestly. And Kirjava finished her stretching and padded across to Lyra to offer her ears in a demand to have them scratched, and for a second Will just closed his eyes, and gloried in everything's being perfect.
Then his sense asserted itself, distressingly, and he sat up. "We ought to talk about the door. And call Mary."
"And see your mother," Lyra said, pulling her hand away from Kir's fur and resting it on Pan's instead.
Will sat up and looked at her. "Would you like to?" he asked, oddly hesitant. The door was the door, and of course Mary had to be seen - of course. But somehow, Lyra's meeting his mother -
Somehow that made everything more real.
Lyra took another drink of her tea. "Yeah," she said, very definitely: his Lyra, agreeing to something whether it was a good idea or not. "I would."