Finn didn't have to wait for Rey when he arrived.

He was actually a little late; it had taken him longer to get to the platform than he'd thought. But when he got there, she was waiting, and that gave him a little boost. She stood at the extreme end of the cavernous Circle Line platform in a ruffled back trenchcoat. A brown leather handbag was suspended from one wrist. When she saw him she smiled, and started walking Finn's way.

It was the strangest thing, walking toward Rey. There were no trains in the tunnel nearby which made it eerily quiet. He could hear her heels clipping on the polished concrete floors as she grew steadily closer. A few people lined the walls, waiting for the next train, oblivious to the reunion just about to take place in front of them. This was their only, jointly contrived meeting. All the others had been accidents and surprises. The first deliberate encounter was unfolding faster with every step they took. It would've been enough under any other circumstance to make Finn nervous; but with her, everything just felt right.

They stopped when they were a few feet from one another.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello," Finn replied. He looked down the tracks. The wind was picking up; a train was coming in. "Are we going somewhere?"

"Yes and no," Rey answered, turning her body toward the oncoming train. The wind whipped up her hair and the hem of her coat. She had tights on underneath, dark coloured tights. "You can go round in circles on the Circle Line for hours if you want."

"Is that what we're doing? We could've met somewhere nice for a drink, you know."

Rey flashed him a grin and spoke over the train brakes. "But I live on a train, remember!"

As he followed her into the carriage he realised what she meant.

She'd heard him.

She'd heard what he'd said before he had met her in the studio.

My dream girl lives on a train.

Thank god he'd never finished that sentence.

He sat beside Rey in the centre, choosing the seats which ran along the sides of the train, facing inward. Their hips and thighs pressed against one another. The train was not so crowded. They could've sat further apart if they had wanted to.

The Circle Line was unique in London. It was the bright yellow line on the tube maps which adorned panels along the curved ceiling of the trains, and it looped around the centre of London. In the north, it mirrored Hammersmith & City and the Metropolitan Lines; in the South, it clung to the District Line. But unlike all of these it did not spread itself out east to west or north to south. It didn't run in an exact circle; the full route was more of a spiral, but where Rey had written they should meet could easily bring them around in a full circle if they changed at Edgware Road. Finn knew somebody who'd gone round and round - he said it was a bit over an hour out of your life.

The doors sealed.

Please, mind the gap between the train and the platform.

Rey's body rocked gently into his.

There was all manner of small talk he could make. But this was Rey's idea, he thought she should have the opportunity to set the tone of conversation. She did, but it took her awhile. They went through Great Portland Street, Euston Square and Farringdon stations. They were not long out of Barbican when she spoke.

"When I need to clear my head I come down here and go round for as long as I need to. I like the motion, watching people as they go on with their lives that you'll never know anything about. It may sound lonely but strangely enough, among these strangers that feeling doesn't seem to happen."

Rey paused.

Finn did not attempt to fill the silence. She seemed to be working herself up to something and he didn't want to interrupt.

"How many times did you see me on the train?"

Finn took a breath. "Three. First time was in August. You were wearing a beige dress."

"I've seen you loads more times than that. I've lost count."

He looked at her for the first time, puzzled. What was she trying to tell him with that confession? He frowned, waiting for her to elaborate. He had the distinct impression his questions wouldn't be welcome.

"You always get on the Central Line at Tottenham," she said, eyes on the empty seat opposite, "and you get off at Lancaster Gate."

"Have you been spying on me?" He didn't find this particular piece of information endearing, actually. In fact, it bothered him that she had apparently seen so much of him for god knew how long, when he had looked so often and never seen her at all.

"No. But I like people watching," she said, lifting her eyes to the tube map spread on the curved space between wall and ceiling. It detailed the Circle Line's route. They were coming into Barbican. "I look. Other people, they don't look. Do you know how many people ride the Central Line on the average weekday?"

"No idea."

"Over 580,000. 580,000. That's just one line, one city. Can you even imagine what 580,000 people look like? I can't."

"It would look ... chaotic."

"Yeah," she agreed, with feeling. "But 580,000 of them are on those trains every day. Being very orderly in chaos, being very British! Even I can't see them all. I remember a lot of people. Made up names for them in my head. Sometimes weeks or months go by and I don't see them. Too many trains, too many carriages. Too many people. But I don't forget."

Rey glanced at him, very briefly, as if to assure herself he was still listening. She continued. "I see you once every one or two weeks. I look but ... you don't see me. You don't see anything."

Was she insulting him, now? It was difficult to tell. This girl was very far removed from the one he had played Paper Scissors Rock with. This was the girl from the studio, the one he had seen down the lens, with the sad eyes. Sad, perceptive eyes, it seemed.

"Why didn't you ever say anything to me?"

Rey smiled a little at the map. "I like being a stranger. I ..." she looked at him squarely this time. There was something steely, something powerful, in her eyes. "You can be anybody when you're a stranger. No one has to know what language you speak. Where you're from. It's very easy ... being friends with strangers."

"...and all these faces you remember are ... people you collect ... stranger friends?"

She bit her lip and laughed. The strange spell she was weaving with words fractured. "You think I'm weird."

"Yes, I think you're very weird," Finn said seriously, and he was pretty fucking annoyed. He had spent months thinking about her, looking for her, wondering and imagining, and when he finally spoke to her properly she spun some ridiculous bullshit about being a mysterious train girl who had imaginary friendships with strangers. "Why are you even telling me all of this?"

"We met on the 'outside'," she said, still smiling. "And ... I've never played Paper Scissors Rock with a stranger before."

He looked up at the map and shook his head. He looked back at her. "You are the strangest girl I have ever met."

"I'm not what you expected."

"No."

"You're disappointed."

"I didn't say that," Finn argued, and gave her a long, assessing look. "No. I'm not disappointed. Okay... I am disappointed."

He sighed. "I thought... I thought there was something there. You say I don't see anything but I have looked every day for you since I first saw you in August. There was something... Something happened that first time I saw you and you... You just want to be strangers."

He could feel his mood turning sour as the train sped closer to Liverpool Street. "You must have been dead fucking disappointed when you saw who your photographer was."

"I waited for you at the station. But you never came and I had to go."

"No, I waited for you, for like ten minutes, and you never came. You didn't wait half that long. You were in the studio by the time I got there, coat off and comfortable. What about when we saw each other months ago, and the train doors closed? I stood at the station waiting for you to come back then, too, and you knew where I was and you didn't come back."

"What do you want?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"I'm talking to you now."

"Bullshit you're talking to me now. You're giving me some mystical crap about the romance of being strangers. I bet you spent hours thinking up that shit about how many people travel the line, chaos in numbers. You're a writer, aren't you? That's what you do."

A very uneasy silence fell between them. But when the doors opened at Liverpool Street, neither made a move to disembark. The doors hissed shut and the train pressed on for Tower Hill.

"Okay," Rey said after a few minutes. "Congratulations. You've seen right through me."

"What I don't get," Finn said, not yet out of steam, "is why you bothered asking me here."

"I was hoping," she said, just loud enough to be heard over the train, "that I could scare you off me."

"...what?"

"The first time I saw you was in August, too," Rey admitted, "I haven't been able to write since then."

"But you just had the book -"

She rolled her eyes. "No idiot, that's not how it works. I finished that months ago."

She'd called him an idiot, but Finn was relieved. She was finally talking how she had when they were in the studio. She was being Rey, not whoever she wanted to appear to be. "You haven't been able to write since you saw me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"How should I know?! But I was working on something new and then ... nothing. I can't write anything."

"So you were trying to scare me off so you could write again. Is that it."

"No!" Rey cried. Her calm was shattered, the words no longer coming so easily now that she had detoured from the script. "It's not like that! It's - I had a moment too, okay? When we first saw each other. You were right, it wasn't just you. I felt it too. And since then ..." she dropped her hands in her lap and gave a helpless sigh. "I don't know."

That confession had the anger shift inside Finn and begin to dissipate. It gave him hope, and when he looked at her again, it was with gentler eyes. "I don't understand then, if you kept seeing me why you wouldn't say something..."

Rey held up her hand between them, ring on finger. "I'm engaged."

"I don't -"

"But I care! Lead you on? Lie to my fiancée? I just ... thought it would be better if it went away."

"It hasn't gone away though, has it."

Rey sighed and dropped her hand. "No."

The train stopped at Tower Hill. People were getting off and on, but neither of them were paying attention. He was looking at Rey's knees, and her eyes were on the map. They didn't speak again until the train was well and truly on the way to Monument. They were right underneath old, historical, central London.

"This has never happened to me before, all right?" She said. "I know I was talking a lot of rubbish before... But it wasn't... It wasn't nonsense. I... yeah, okay. What you said - 'the romance of being strangers'. I liked that. It was safe. And... what I was trying to say, and not saying very well, about all the 580,000 people on that line every day was just... What are the odds that I would see you so often? What are the odds of that?"

"I thought the same thing," Finn said. He was relieved she was finally speaking plainly, even if it was paining her to do so. "It just doesn't happen. And then for you to be in the studio, I mean god..."

"I know," she laughed. Rey was looking at him again. Perhaps laughter made her braver. "Your face was amazing."

"Your face!"

"What are the odds," Rey repeated, softer.

Determined to keep the conversation going and not deteriorate into something melancholy, Finn said the first thing that came to mind. "I read your first two books."

"What did you think?"

"I liked them! You've got one hell of an imagination, I'll give you that."

"How did you know about the signing?"

"I," he coughed a little self-consciously, "Googled you."

Rey laughed again. "What is your full name, anyway?"

"Finn Calrissian."

"Finn Calrissian," she repeated. They were quiet the rest of the way to Monument, but the silence was comfortable this time. Companionable. Perhaps they both knew what direction the conversation had to go down next, and were enjoying a friendly, uncomplicated moment while it could last.

After Monument, the track bent them toward Cannon Street.

"It's never happened to me either," Finn offered, leaning sideways toward her. "This... Whatever this is. You wouldn't believe the photographs I started taking after I shot you. Poe said they're the best I've taken in years."

"Oh really? That's good. That's good for you."

"I don't want to keep taking portraits. I just got stuck in a rut."

"What kind of photos do you want to take instead?"

"I dunno. But I finally feel like I could figure that out. You know? You inspired me, I guess. That seems kind of cruel, doesn't it. I finally got my mojo back and you've got writers block. Balance in the universe?"

"Oh shut up," she laughed.

"This is for you," Finn reached inside his coat and pulled a slightly bent and battered yellow envelope from the inside pocket. He passed it to Rey. She opened it carefully and slowly pulled the photograph inside three quarters of the way out. It was the last photograph he had taken of her, the one Poe had said was best, but not what Rey had asked for. "Do you like it?"

She took a deep breath, held it, slowly released it in a long sigh. "I do. It's... It looks like me. You know what I mean." Rey eyed it for a few seconds longer and then gently slid it back into the envelope. She opened the catch on her handbag and very carefully placed the envelope inside. Her long, slender fingers closed the clasp again.

"I'm not leaving my fiancée."

Finn sighed. Yeah. They were at that point in the conversation. He slouched down in the seat, legs spread and feet braced on the floor. He ran his fingers through his buzz cut hair.

Who is he?"

"I think... We should leave him out of it."

"Do you love him?"

"Why would I marry someone I don't love?"

"Why does a girl who has imaginary stranger friends do anything?"

Rey gave a soft, humourless laugh. "Okay, that's fair. Maybe... We could be friends?"

"Friends." Finn raked his fingers through his hair again and dropped them to his sides. "You know it's not possible for a man and a woman to be friends unless they're fucking, have fucked, or intend to fuck, don't you?"

She fiddled with the strap of her handbag and mumbled, "...yeah. Yeah I know that. I just ... I'm not being fair."

"You're faithful to him."

Rey nodded. "Yeah."

"I actually like that about you. I am such a fucking wanker." He heard her laugh softly. "Fine. Whatever you want. Let's be friends and pretend that's all it is."

It was better than not seeing her at all. They passed Cannon Street and Mansion House, the train powering ahead to Blackfriars.

"I think you're supposed to believe in my life," Rey said.

"Last time, you scoffed when I suggested fate."

"I still don't believe in it. But I believe in amazing coincidences."

Finn snorted. Then, on a far more serious note, he added, "this is going to be hard. You know that, right?"

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"Trying to."

Finn sighed. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Nothing."

"I'm going to head out ... I don't even know where yet, but just take some photographs. I was in Trafalgar Square last week and for the first time in... in ever, probably... I really looked around. You were right, earlier. You said I don't see anything. Or you were half right - I didn't see anything, but I'm changing that. There was this statue with these men dying and crawling over one another and underneath it said, 'England expects every man to do his duty.'"

"Yeah, I know that one. It's grim, isn't it?"

"Fuck yeah, it is. It just ... I don't know. Opened my eyes. I wanna just wander around and see the city, properly, take pictures. Do you wanna come with me?"

"Okay," Rey agreed, quicker than he'd thought. "Yeah, that'd be good."

The train chewed up the tracks. While they were stopped at Blackfriars, the doors hanging open to the station platform, Rey spoke again.

"Where do you connect from? When you get on at Tottenham."

"Northern Line," Finn answered as the doors hissed shut. He could hear the mind the gap announcement through the doors at the train accelerated into the narrow tunnel, leaving the station lights behind.

Rey slid down in the seat beside Finn. She moved into a slouch similar to his, and it didn't look comfortable, but he said nothing because her head was now resting against his shoulder. After a few seconds, he rested his hand on her knee, over those dark coloured tights. His head rested beside hers. They were in a period of transition. Before they had gotten on the train they been separate with their curiosities and misunderstandings. When they disembarked they would have to take a new path, two parallel paths that never quite crossed; friends. But for now there was the slow spiral of the Circle Line, a safe and neutral place, and Finn thought he understood why Rey came down here to clear her head.

They passed several stations in silence. Temple. Embankment. Westminster. At St James's Park he said, "I can't believe I fancy a white girl," and they giggled most of the way to Victoria.

"An English white girl," Rey added, and that tided them over with more giggles the rest of the way. Neither of them were particularly funny, but it alleviated the tension that had almost thickened between them.

After Victoria, he asked her for her phone number, fishing his mobile out of his pocket. After she put in her number he called her just to be certain she had really given him her right numbers, which earned him a sharp jab in the ribs. He laughed his way through the pain and took the opening to put his arm around her shoulders, gently stroking her hair.

"Finn..."

"It's fine. This is enough," he lied. She didn't protest again and by the way she relaxed, he knew she liked it.

At Sloane Square a little boy got on the train with his father. He sat on dad's knee in a knitted cap stitched to look like a dog, long brown ears hanging down the side of his head. Finn estimated he was no more than two. The boy watched them constantly, curiously, his face open with wonder where all adults shut down. Finn found himself smiling at the boy, who never once smiled back. And as the train slowed at South Kensington, dad got ready to disembark. The boy's placid expression suddenly shattered. Betrayal rocked his features and a few seconds later he was howling. It was only when the train had stopped and they were gone that Finn realised Rey was shaking. And laughing.

"What did you do?" Finn murmured the accusation into her hair. "You did something."

"He kept staring at us!"

"What did you do?"

"May have... may have made faces at him."

"What face?"

So Rey tipped her head back and showed him a truly grotesque face. He laughed so hard that he barely made a sound, and his body shook so much that Rey was not able to lean against him again until Gloucester Road.

"Does the last book have a happy ending?"

"Don't you want to read it yourself?" Rey asked.

"Yeah but ... tell me."

"No and... yes. It's happy for some. I won't tell you more. Read it and tell me if you think it's a happy ending."

He was sure he felt her smile against his shoulder. He felt powerfully in tune with her, though she was still practically just a weird stranger. "You fancy me," Finn said.

She slapped his knee and what he could see of her face was turning pink.

"You hadn't said so. In so many words."

"Well. I do. But I can't so... "

Finn's fingers dropped to her shoulder and squeezed. He didn't have words for that, or at least not any that were appropriate. They went quietly through High Street Kensington and Notting Hill Gate, where they overlapped the Central Line, and continued to Bayswater. Edgware Road would be the last stop on the line, and they could change there to resume the loop ... start again, if they wanted, but Finn thought that probably unwise.

"I wish we could stay on here all night," Rey said.

"Yeah. Yeah. Me too."

"But I'll see you tomorrow," Rey added, trying to sound more cheerful, though they both knew it would not be like this tomorrow. "Where do you want to meet?"

Finn thought that over. Trafalgar Square was an obvious place. "Covent Garden. There's a pub there, called The Pazaak. You know it?"

"Is that in Chandos Place?"

"Yeah."

"I know it. I can meet you there at like ... what, tennish?"

"Tennish it is then."

Rey nodded against his shoulder. There wasn't much time remaining for their journey. Sitting there quietly together seemed to be enough for both of them. There were not words to make any of this easier. This was peaceful, the beautiful rocking of the train, propelling them beneath London bustling above.

The train terminated at Edgware Road. Finn and Ret rose when the doors opened and without even thinking about it, their hands came together and fingers entwined. The station was open-air rather than subterranean, and they shivered as they walked for the transfer to Baker Street. A train was waiting for them, warm air enveloping their bodies once they stepped inside, seconds before chimes sounded and doors shut. This time, they didn't bother sitting down. They stood together with the nearest pole between them. Finn's arm gathered around Rey's waist and they stood close, so close as the train accelerated, the pole pressing against Finn's shoulder. Their legs were braced to keep their balance, each holding the pole and one another.

"I have to change at Baker Street," she explained.

"All right," Finn nodded, unable to break eye contact. He already knew he would be staying on the train until Kings Cross St Pancras.

The proximity was not a good idea, not when they had agreed to be just friends. But they were still in transition, and everything would change once they left the underground. There was something undeniable and real between them that could never become anything on the surface. Yet it was here, alive now, for just a few more minutes.

Finn kissed her around the pole. The train shuddered and pushed Rey into him, something he took immediate advantage of by holding her tighter. The taste of her was yet so new to him, intoxicating and exciting, thrilling his heart into faster beats. He kissed her harder, searchingly, this would be the last time.

Rey's head tipped back and her fingers clutched at his shoulder, giving herself completely to him for just a few precious, fleeting minutes.

The train was slowing into Baker Street. They broke, standing with their foreheads touching, rocking in time with the train.

"Rey," he said.

The Baker Street tunnel expanded around the train, bright and unwelcome. The brakes screeched offensively. The doors opened. He had to let her go, and his arm fell from her as Rey stepped back.

"See you tomorrow," she said, and got off the train.

Finn didn't ask her to stay, and Rey didn't look back.