S01E13 - Stay

"Stay" is the thirteenth episode of Season 1 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It takes place two weeks after the Precinct 99 heist, with the last of the Lynxley network's paid fixers being taken into custody. Against that progress, the first love Pawbert named but never described after the Mosaic case has begun returning to him at night, and Luther asks for the rest of the story.

Synopsis

Two weeks after the Precinct 99 heist, Pawbert Lynxley cannot sleep. A memory ten years old keeps returning: at fourteen he confesses his feelings to Soren, a lynx he has been seeing in secret for three months, and his father Milton finds them. Luther reports that ZSI has taken Brushfire, the fixer who burned Perry Stackwell's office, at a ferry terminal, putting all three fixers named by the courier Ferrick in custody. Pawbert says the right things and feels none of it. In Milton's study, his father calls the relationship an aberration and tells Pawbert to fix himself or be fixed. At three in the morning Pawbert finds Luther on watch and tells him everything: the books Soren brought him, the calls that stopped, the whispers of an accident, and the family approval code Milton gave when asked about him. Pawbert says he wants to be loved without conditions, and wants someone to stay. Luther tells him he is staying and holds him until dawn. Nick and Judy find them at breakfast; Judy asks whether everything is all right and neither pushes. Pawbert tells Luther he has stopped drowning, and begins to think the next addition to his collection might be a mammal rather than an object.

Plot

Two weeks after the heist at Precinct 99, Pawbert lies awake in his room at Site Two. Judy has the watch, and the safehouse is quiet. The corkboard hangs above the nightstand with the collection he has been assembling since Nick bought it for him, and the heist trophy sits on the nightstand below. On most nights the collection is enough. Tonight a ten-year-old memory has come back, and it plays start to finish however many times he tries to take it apart.

Ten years earlier, in the library at Lynxley Manor, fourteen-year-old Pawbert stands at the poetry shelves with Soren, a lynx a year older whose family are minor gentry. They have been meeting in secret for three months. Soren runs his fingertips along the spines and says the room is beautiful; Pawbert tells him that he is, and hears it land before he can take it back. Soren asks him to say it again, then steps close enough that their foreheads nearly touch. Footsteps cross the hallway and the door opens. Milton is standing in it, his face giving nothing away, which his son has been trained to read as the worst possible sign.

Morning finds Pawbert at the kitchen table with coffee that stopped steaming a while ago. Judy asks if he is all right and he says he is fine; Nick, coming in behind her, tells him that particular deflection no longer works and asks whether it was a nightmare. Pawbert allows that it was something like that. Luther returns from a perimeter check, says nothing, and looks at him twice while slicing bread. Later the four of them work the case on the main floor, where the target board has been stripped nearly clean. Two of the three fixers Ferrick named at Precinct 99 are already in custody: Coldsnap, identified from the color-coded client records seized with Sterling Pebbleworth, and Undertow, traced through Reserve disbursements to the holding companies that paid him. Luther's phone brings the third. ZSI has arrested Brushfire at a ferry terminal as he boarded under a false name, after forensics matched the accelerant used on Perry Stackwell's office to earlier jobs and the Reserve ledger produced a name against the invoice. Pawbert says the right thing at the right moment and feels none of it. Nick and Judy trade a look across the papers and go back to work without discussing it.

That evening Luther finds him at the hallway window and asks him to talk. Pawbert says he can't, then agrees that it is also that he won't. He points out that he already told Luther about Soren after the Mosaic case; Luther answers that what he gave were facts, not what it felt like, and that knowing what happened is not the same as understanding what it did to him. It does not have to be tonight, Luther says, but it has to be eventually. Pawbert goes back to bed, and the memory runs from the start again.

Ten years earlier, in Milton's study, Milton asks what the boy in the library is to his son. Pawbert says a friend. Milton refuses the lie, presses until Pawbert admits the three months, and then names the relationship an aberration and declares it ended. Pawbert is not to see Soren, speak to him, or think about him. Milton tells him he is broken, that this is not who Lynxleys are, and gives him a choice between fixing himself and being fixed. Pawbert, trained out of crying in that room years earlier, says nothing. In the present he sits up in the dark with the word still looping, and decides he cannot stay in the room.

At three in the morning he finds Luther on watch under the single lamp, a military history book open on his lap that he has not been reading. Luther says he has been waiting all day. Pawbert sits down and leaves a gap between them, and Luther leaves the gap alone. Then Pawbert tells the rest of it. Soren was kind, genuinely kind, the first mammal who made him feel he was not broken. They met at one of Milton's club functions, where Soren's family were connected enough to be invited and not powerful enough to matter. Three months of secret meetings, the library and the garden, poetry and philosophy books Soren brought him that Milton would have called useless, and someone telling him he was beautiful and meaning it.

Then the end of it. Two days after the study, Soren stopped answering calls. A week later the household staff began whispering about an accident. Within a month his name had stopped being spoken in any house the Lynxleys visited. When Pawbert finally asked his father what had happened, Milton answered with the Lynxley approval code, the same phrase that closed out the family's leverage operations in board meetings. Pawbert tells Luther he does not know whether Soren died or ran, that he never will, and that he cannot mourn properly without knowing whether there is anything to mourn.

Luther tells him his father was wrong, about Soren and about everything else, and that a parent's cruelty is not evidence of anything true about the child. He asks whether that is why Pawbert has been holding back with him. Pawbert answers that wanting anything at all still feels to him like proof he is defective. Luther, whose own parents never made him feel that way, tells him the mammals who taught him otherwise were wrong, and that beginning to believe it is enough for now. Asked how to stop hearing his father's voice, Luther says he won't, not right away, and that the work is learning to talk back until the answer holds. Then Luther asks what Pawbert actually wants, and refuses the first answer. Pawbert says he wants love with no conditions attached and no daily fee, and no waiting for it to be withdrawn. He wants someone to stay. Luther says he is staying. Pawbert breaks apart, and Luther asks before touching him, then holds him.

Neither of them has moved by dawn. Luther's arms have gone stiff and he does not mention it. Pawbert thanks him for staying, for listening, and for not calling him dramatic, and Luther tells him that two decades of damage does not get worked through in one night without difficulty. Luther brings up what Jake said before they left Precinct 99, and Pawbert turns the word over: he has never belonged to anything that stayed. Luther tells him he does now. Nick comes down to the kitchen soon after, registers how tired the two of them look and how something between them has changed, and decides to leave it alone. He pours four cups. Judy asks whether everything is all right, Pawbert says it was a long night, and neither officer pushes.

On the porch in the early sun, Pawbert tells Luther he has never told anyone the whole story, because saying it aloud made it real, and once it was real he could not pretend to be fine. Luther asks whether he is fine now. Pawbert says no, but that he is not drowning either, and leans over until his shoulder rests against Luther's. Back in his room that morning, he looks at the nightstand and the corkboard: his mother's photograph, the cards, the trophy. He adds nothing. For the first time he lets himself think that the next thing he collects may not be a keepsake but a mammal, the one who sat with him through the worst of the night and had not gone anywhere by morning.

Key Moments

• Pawbert's insomnia returns; a memory ten years old surfaces and will not let him sleep
• The library flashback: at fourteen, Pawbert tells Soren he is beautiful, and Milton finds them
• All three fixers named by Ferrick are now in custody, Brushfire taken last on the accelerant signature and a Reserve invoice
• Pawbert registers the win correctly and feels nothing
• Luther presses him in the hallway, drawing the line between the facts he gave and what they cost him
• Milton's study flashback: the relationship named an aberration, with an ultimatum that Pawbert correct himself or be corrected
• The full Soren backstory is told for the first time, from the club function to the disappearance
• Milton answers Pawbert's question about Soren's fate with the family approval code
• Pawbert names what he wants and Luther promises to stay
• Physical closeness begins with holding and comfort, consent asked and given
• Luther holds Pawbert through the night and into dawn
• The pack is acknowledged between Luther and Pawbert
• Nick and Judy find them at breakfast and ask nothing

Key Lines

Locations

• Site Two - Pawbert's room, kitchen, main floor, hallway, porch
• Lynxley Manor - the library and Milton's study, ten years earlier

Items

• The Corkboard - Hanging above the nightstand in Pawbert's room, holding the cards and mementos he has collected
• Heist Trophy - On the nightstand beneath the corkboard
• Mother's photograph - On the nightstand with the trophy

End Credit Song

"Not While I'm Around" (From 'Sweeney Todd'), Ken Jennings & Angela Lansbury

In Sweeney Todd, the song is a boy's vow of protection to the woman who took him in: nothing will get at her while he is there, sung in complete ignorance of what that house is doing. Luther makes a promise of the same kind here, and everything before that moment explains what accepting one costs Pawbert. He hands Luther the rest of the Soren story — three months of meeting him in secret, a father who called it an aberration, a lynx who stopped answering his calls and was signed off with the phrase the family used to close its leverage operations. So when Pawbert finally names what he wants and Luther answers that he is staying, it is a promise nobody has kept for him and one Luther cannot guarantee. He stays until dawn anyway.