#GUESS I CAN’T EVEN LISTEN TO TMA TONIGHT HA

[xnoctua]

My group bailed on me so now I’m writing a Carmen Sandiego fanfic for my Spanish class. Anyway, how’s y’all’s Thursday going?

[moth-song-archives]

The Insatiable Flow of Time (1/8)

I remembered that I can make posts here too huh! Anyways, I wrote a post-MAG200 fic <3

I’ll reblog it again with the link to ao3 if you’d prefer reading it there :D

Rating: Teens and Up Archive Warnings: Choose Not To Use Categories: F/F Relationships: Georgie/Melanie, Georgie & Jon, Jonmartin (mentioned) Characters: Georgie Barker, Melanie King, Jonathan Sims, the Admiral, Basira Hussain (mentioned), Rosie Zampano (mentioned), Martin Blackwood (mentioned)

Additional tags: Diary/Journal × post mag200 × Post-Canon × Canon Compliant × Rated for swearing and me doing my best to write a fitting epilogue for my most fave story of all time × Bittersweet × Hurt/Comfort × Grief/Mourning × Gentle-Sad-Soft × Fluff × Non-Sexual Intimacy × Tenderness × Generally Hopeful Ending × Ambiguous/Open Ending × Catharsis × You know how TMA is a tragedy? ... yeah × Hope Punk × dealing with the fallout of surviving a literal apocalypse × Moving on and letting go × Trans Georgie Barker × Nonbinary Melanie King × Melanie uses any pronouns but needs to (re)discover this first × and is then mainly referred to with they/them pronouns for diary-simplicity × Melanie is ace in my heart ♡ × Jon is also enby but it only gets referred to in passing × Georgie has a Type™ × Character Study × i love them all so much × Nonbinary aspec author × it's very hope punk and somft BUT ALSO VERY SAD × in like a cathartic way × because i like causing pain :') × pre-written and updates every 2-3 days

I think I might use it to… rediscover myself. That’s what I liked about journaling in the first place, I think. Getting to think about things outside of my own head, putting it out there so I could move on? Maybe it’s time to return to old coping mechanisms and try again. Even if I haven’t really changed. Even if I should’ve changed. Right?

As the world tries to piece itself back together, Georgie grapples with her past, her present, and her future by keeping a diary. She also keeps having this strange, recurring dream that involves Jon. Post MAG200.

Finished at ~12k, will upload over the next couple of days <3

Day 3 - Evening

Melanie is sleeping. Basira is also sleeping, on the sofa in the living-room. She doesn’t really know what to do with herself, these days, so for now she’s staying with us.

I am not sleeping. I’m so far beyond tired that I can’t sleep anymore. It’s been... how long? More than a day, certainly. I’m at the kitchen table and the night outside is darker than any I’ve ever seen. There are no street lights and a million more stars than I could’ve ever imagined. I wish Melanie could see them too :(

Back before everything in my life went wrong, I used to be really good at this. I think I got my first diary when I was... seven, maybe eight? I used to be obsessed with it. I guess I stopped writing in college, after the incident, because it felt... wrong? Like I was lying to myself, trying to fabricate emotions that just weren’t there, keeping up with things that no longer seemed important or note-worthy. Mainly, I couldn’t make myself care about anyone or anything anymore.

I think I want to find that person again, now that it’s over. Try and… move on? And Melanie encouraged me :) I guess that’s the main reason. I found this notebook in one of the domains when we were rescuing people. I don’t know what I originally wanted to do with it, but I did end up forgetting about it until I went through my bag again today. It smells like fire and is a bit singed in places, but I kind of like that? I think I might use it to… rediscover myself. ...that sounds very pretentious, but this is just for me, so...

And I like that it’s just cheap paper scribbled on with a shitty biro. Maybe I’ll just burn it when all the thoughts are on the paper instead of in my head. When I can sleep again. And the prize for the most dramatic way of closure goes to Georgie Barker! But yeah. That’s what I liked about journaling in the first place, I think. Getting to think about things outside of my own head, putting it out there so I could move on? Maybe it’s time to return to old coping mechanisms and try again. Even if I haven’t really changed. Even if I should’ve changed. Right?

But I don’t feel any different. Shouldn’t I feel different, now that they’re gone? The entities, I mean, though Jon and Martin seem to be gone, too.

I keep remembering Martin’s expression when he told us to go early, how upset he was.

Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised. As long as I’ve known Jon, he’s always done what he thought best. It used to drive me up the walls, but I also admired it, I think? I never would’ve told him that, but… Well. He’s gone now.

It’s over, all of it.

And I still can’t sleep.

And Melanie is still blind, and I still feel empty, and my fear still hasn’t come back. Everyone who died is still dead, and the trauma is still there. There were angry mobs in the streets, and people got killed.

I can’t quite believe that Jon and Martin went with them. I can’t believe they left us behind to explain the entire mess.

 We’re back in our old flat. It’s so weird to be back home. Everything looks the same, as though no time passed at all. Nobody knows what date it is. How long were we caught in there?

Outside, it feels like spring. There are birds everywhere, singing their hearts out. Sounds like more birds than there used to be, too. The trees are leafless and dead-looking, but Basira pointed out that they’re getting there... and it feels like spring.

I haven’t slept properly in 3 days because the questions keep me awake. It’s not that I’m worrying, really, just… thinking? I think I could sleep better if the worry had come back, but it hasn’t.

As far as we can tell, all modern devices are broken, too. Computers and phones and such, digital cameras, generators... we don’t even know what the rest of the world looks like. I hadn’t realised how much gets controlled by computers these days, we don’t even have central heating or water access in our flat. Rumours and news are spreading person-to-person, like in the Olden Days. We only have emergency systems that were installed in case of nation-wide blackout. I guess I’m glad we don’t actually have a blackout, we just need to get the computers back to work. (If I understood it correctly.)

Melanie thinks it’ll all come back to life in a few more days. I certainly hope so. I also hope I’ll stop feeling like this. Or rather, not feeling like anything. It’s so strange. Like in the first days after the incident, when I just felt numb?

They’re gone! I want to feel like a person again! What if I never get myself back?

 They’re actually gone.

 What will we do with our lives now? Basira isn’t the only one who feels uprooted. I think the whole world feels like that right now.

I hope my computer comes back soon. I miss music, and making things. My photos, all those memories.

I don’t want to lose all of that. I want to start fresh, but not without records of the past.

…I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, specifically. Records, and futures.

What the Ghost is done, right? There’s no fun in creepy ghost stories if you’ve been through an actual, living nightmare.

I think I want to start new with that, too. When everything works again, that is.

New world, new future, new podcast. I like that. I think. Make a record of what happened through eyewitness accounts? Or is that too similar to the Statements… then again, it’ll be more like interviews. And I think we shouldn’t forget.

We owe them that much.

I’ll have to talk it over with Melanie tomorrow. Maybe.

We’ll see.

God, I think maybe… maybe I can actually try and sleep tonight. Writing does seem to help.

 Note to self: thank Laverne for suggesting it. (Also for being there for Melanie. And listening to us. And stopping with that culty nonsense. She’s the only one we found so far, but she actually listened to us. Strange to think that in this world, I have to be grateful for someone not worshipping me for some dumb reason?!)

   Day 4 - Morning

So. Three things.

1) I did manage to fall asleep after all! I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac, especially after the incident, so actually getting some proper rest felt really good.

2) I somehow woke up right as the sun went up! I think I’ve never seen a dawn this beautiful? I watched it from the bedroom window and I’ll definitely describe it to her in detail when she wakes up! The Admiral was sleeping on our pillow, right next to her head, snuggled up against the back of her neck and shoulder... it was so cute. I can’t believe my phone and camera still don’t work! Melanie has that old polaroid camera somewhere but we haven’t found it yet, and I wish my art skills were any better. I did draw a sketch of the two of them though. I’ll cherish it forever, no matter how shitty it is :’)

After everything that happened, the Admiral is still a bit weird around us. He started out really aggressive, calmed down a bit, and now… now he’s weirdly skittish? Meows a lot. Keeps walking around the flat. The only thing that even remotely returns him to how he used to be is tuna. It’s weird.

But seeing him like that, with Melanie? I love him so much.

I think he’ll be okay.

But before I forget, and why I actually got out the diary at this ungodly hour instead of trying to go back to sleep now that the sun is up…

3) I had a really nice dream. And... I don’t even know. I think I want to try and hold onto the feeling? I don’t think I’ve felt that… deeply… in a long while. Maybe the last time was before all this, when we decided to move in together. Before all of this happened.

For a moment, I felt like I was whole again :’)

It didn’t even have Melanie in it, which is very rude tbh. I think Jon was there? The Admiral, too. We were just chilling on the sofa, watching netflix I think... It felt so... mundane??? Casual, somehow??? Like it was normal to feel like that and I just... I want THAT. I want to feel like that again, instead of this weird… blank nothingness? I want that all the time, not just when I’m riding a high or feeling so terrible that it pierces through.

I don’t know if that makes sense but this is just for me anyway so I suppose it doesn’t have to.

 I think I should feel bad about Jon being gone, but I still don’t even feel relief at it being over. Just this vague numbness.

I hate it so much, except I don’t, actually, I just know that I should?

Melanie keeps saying that I need a therapist but if we’re being honest here, I guess I need one the least? The whole goddamn world needs therapy right now. Including the therapists. And I’ve been dealing with this for a long time now.

I guess I keep hoping it’ll just go away somehow.

 Anyways. Enough introspection, I’m going back to bed. I hope I don’t wake them! :)

  Day 4 - Evening

 It’s night now, the sun went down hours ago. We have a bunch of candles, but I’m trying to use them sparingly, so I just have one lit. I put a glass of water next to the candle so now the light gets magnified a bit more. It’s a weird atmosphere, but I kinda like it? Feels… cozy! :)

I’m still not over how everything looks the same, but nothing works like it did before, and there’s this… burden? This collective trauma everyone went through. It feels so surreal. So many things are still broken… it’s like we woke from a collective nightmare, but pieces of it still remain, floating around.

And we just sent it away with the tapes. I really hope those other worlds are doing better than us, but what else could we have done? I… try not to think about it. I know I should, but I still can’t really bring myself to care, or even feel overly guilty for that? …

 Melanie fell asleep with her head in my lap half an hour ago. I was reading to her. She says she loves the sound of my voice, so I’ve started doing that in the evenings. (I still love that we had separate crushes from a distance on each other for ages because of youtube and WTG. We’ve been talking about that a lot, too.)

She still has nightmares, but apparently she’s also been having good dreams, and she looks so peaceful right now. The last few days have been a lot, but in comparison to before, and even before then…

It’s over. We made it out. We get to have a future together. I still can’t quite believe it. :)

 I guess I’m writing again (despite already having done so in the morning) because it somehow helped yesterday and I’m hoping to replicate that. And I have a lot to think about. It’s been a long day.

Basira is still out there, helping out where she can. I think she feels guilty. Melanie says she doesn’t because there was no other choice, but I know her, and I know that she’s lying.

There’s always another choice. We just say that to make it easier to bear.

I hope she knows she can come talk to me when she feels ready to tackle it.

I hope I ever feel able to tackle it myself. No. I will talk to her when I’m ready.

We did talk a bit about things, of course. Melanie doesn’t really remember her dreams, most of the time, but apparently she’s been alternating between horrifying nightmares and a really nice, recurring one that sometimes happens after the nightmares. She doesn’t really remember much of it, but she mentioned it after I told her about the Jon dream. Not what it was about, just… in general.

From the way she talked about it, I think her dad might have been in it? I’m actually not sure, but the way she smiled…

She has that little smile on her lips again, even now, dreaming. The soft one she gets when she talks about good things. About him.

About me.

(I still can’t believe she chose me. How impossibly lucky? How did I ever deserve her? But then, it’s not about that, is it? She is mine, and I am hers, and… life will be good. I know it will be.)

 She’s been smiling a lot more, these past few days.

[squeeneyart]

Breathe in the Salt - Chapter 10

AO3

Beta reader is @thesnadger who is also writing a TMA AU fic that i love

It's halfway to the weekend.

Martin and Jon sit in the attic.

“Please… put that down.” Martin stared at the seal skin in Jon’s arms, early dawn light bringing out the pattern of dark spots scattered across it. His voice came out strangled, and Jon’s furious expression would’ve stopped it completely if Martin could look straight at him. “You don’t-”

“No. No, you don’t get to tell me to do anything, not until you explain yourself. Until you explain this.” Jon gestured towards the skin, still keeping his voice low.

Slowly rising from his position on the floor, Martin said, “You don’t understand. It’s-”

“I think I understand perfectly.” Jon stood to his full height as well. Martin reeled at the vitriol dripping from his voice. Where was this all coming from? Jon took a slow step to the side, his eyes trained warily on Martin. “But a confession would be appreciated.”

Martin took in a laborious breath, never looking away from his mother’s skin. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, but it still had a sheen where the light hit it. He could almost feel the sting of the wind, the pricking of tears in the corner of his eyes. Had it been sitting here this whole time, just out of sight? It looked so unexpectedly fragile on its own, and Jon’s grip was so tight around it.

Measuring out his voice, Martin said, “You know this was a fishing town years ago, and that skin is very old and delicate. Just set it down, and-”

“Don’t lie to me!” Jon snapped. “And don’t you dare lecture me on its proper care.”

Martin flinched, praying Jon hadn’t been loud enough. “Please be quiet! My mum-”

“It’s hers, isn’t it?” It wasn’t a question. Again, Jon moved a bit to the side, eyeing the trapdoor. “You said it yourself. ‘She can’t get up the stairs on her own’.”

“What are you implying?” Martin’s mouth went dry. A terrible heat crept up his neck. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then enlighten me.” Jon hissed, “before I do something drastic.”

Martin felt his resolve begin to crumble, but he clung to the remains. “Put it down. Please.”

“Not until you admit it. What this is. After everything this week, after everything tonight, you owe me the truth.”

“I...okay. Okay, just-” Pressure welled behind Martin’s eyes, the beginning of a headache. “What do you think it is?”

“A selkie skin. Or a silkie skin, or a seal folk skin, whatever you may call them here.” Jon’s voice, still shaky, took a weirdly proper tone for the circumstance. “Used by their owners to shift into seals. But you knew that, didn’t you? You’ve been hiding it, haven’t you? Keeping it up here, where she can’t reach it. You-”

“I didn’t even know it was up here!” Martin yelled, then slapped a hand over his mouth. He and Jon froze for a moment, listening for signs of a disturbance downstairs.

When there was no sign they’d been heard, Martin let himself drop to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. His voice shrank to barely above a whisper. “I haven’t seen it since I was a kid."

Jon lowered his shoulders, his dark eyes still cautious. “And you expect me to believe that?”

Martin scoffed, running a hand over his hair. “...Yes? I’m not imprisoning her, she’s my Mum! That’s a thing weird guys do to marry them or whatever. If the skin was up here, it’s because she put it here, probably when my dad left because I haven’t seen her change since then. There, is that believable enough?”

Jon opened and closed his mouth a few times. A small burst of satisfaction quickly faded as Jon failed to respond. Great, Martin thought. In a pinch, he could strike someone silent by oversharing. Why had he even brought that last part up?

Desperate to pivot as far from this line of conversation as possible, Martin glanced at Jon with a miserable expression. “How did you know what it was, anyway? It just looks like seal skin.”

Jon’s face fell, and any indignation was replaced with something unreadable. He looked at Martin as if searching for something.

Martin’s patience had run thin. “Look, you’re the one who demanded honesty, so if you don’t-”

“Fine! Fine.” Jon sighed, loosening his grip. Without looking at Martin, Jon lowered himself to the floor, the skin bunching in his arms. He smoothed out some of the ridges with a gentle hand. “I...I study them. The research I was working on before all of this, it’s focused on selkies. And beings like them, of course.”

Martin squinted at him. “You’re not planning to take the skin, are you? For your ‘research’?” He was too drained of energy to ask with any real conviction.

The shock on Jon’s face was answer enough. “That’s not- I have no intention-”

“Good. Please set it down then.” Martin watched as Jon, still looking uncertain, gently placed the skin next to himself. “Thank you. Now neither of us are touching my mother’s skin. And… to me it was always ‘sea folk’, not ‘seal folk’, so. Put that in your notes or whatever.”

Jon raised his eyebrows. He coughed, pulling at the sleeves of his jacket. “You can’t blame me for being alarmed at the implications of all this. Not with what you seem to know.”

Silence fell. The distance of the floorboard between them felt like a mile, and Martin’s stomach churned from the unexpected stress. The skin lay still on the floor like a bomb ready to detonate, and all Martin could do was stare at it.

“...You call them ‘sea folk’?”

Martin jumped. “What?”

“‘Sea folk’. I hadn’t heard that specific name for them. ‘Selkie’ is the most common in my experience, and the most preferred.”

“...Yeah. It’s what Mum would say, though I suppose she said ‘selkie’ as well.” Where was Jon going with this? “How… how did you know it wasn’t mine? Or, how do you know I’m not one?”

Tapping the floor beside him, Jon said, “I suspected it to be yours at first, but it’s not large enough. Even with its supernatural properties, a selkie skin still follows some basic rules regarding how big it has to be compared to the selkie themselves. A skin of this size would not be able to cover your full height, therefore it would not be yours. As for the latter, I, um.” He looked away, avoiding Martin’s eyes. “I took an educated guess, based on your characteristics and the situation I’d observed.”

“Seriously? That’s all you had?”

“You-” It was Jon’s turn to squint. “Are you one?”

Martin rubbed his eyes. “That’s not really your business, but no, I’m not. In fact, the sea hates me.”

Jon looked puzzled by this. “I don’t believe that’s how it works. It’s a body of water. Yes, it can call out to selkies, but it’s not-”

“Who cares! It’s weird magic shit and sea salt hurts my eyes!” Martin kept a tight hold on his knees and clamped his mouth shut.

For a minute, they sat in complete stillness. Eventually, Jon squirmed in discomfort and attempted to rearrange his legs into a more comfortable position. “I have to say, this isn’t what I expected to find in your attic.” He scratched his face, then lifted his hand and didn’t seem to know what to do with it. It landed in his lap. “I, um. I apologize for jumping to conclusions. Seems I’ve formed a habit of doing so.”

“It’s… it’s okay? I guess? It makes sense, if you’ve mainly heard the stories.” Didn’t mean he had to freak out about it. Martin clicked his tongue. “Have you collected a lot of them? Selkie stories.”

Jon brightened, and it got Martin’s stupid heart going. “Yes! I mean-” Jon cleared his throat, adopting a more professional demeanor. “I’ve tried my best to find accurate accounts, but as I explained earlier, tracking down authentic cases is difficult. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to collect several that I’ve found to be believable.”

“Like what?”

“Um.” Jon stared for a moment, then collected himself. “Well, it depends on where you look.”

Martin rested his chin on his knees and listened to Jon explain some of the things he’d found in his research. Regional differences, preferences toward salt- or freshwater, even some social rituals Martin had never heard of. He was struck by the sheer volume of concepts he didn’t know that he didn’t know.

Slipping between some of Jon’s many thoughts, Martin asked, “Would most selkies know these things?”

“What?” Jon blinked and refocused on Martin, shaken from his ramblings.

“It’s just, Mum never really talked about any of this? All she’d ever mentioned was vague things about the sea and how it ‘feels’ about things.”

“I...I suppose my research wouldn’t necessarily be of interest to all selkies. Many humans don’t care all that much about interesting human facts.”

“Fair point.” Martin picked at his fingernails. “Does that sound like something you’ve come across, though? How the sea ‘feels’? You said that’s not how it works, but you also said something about a ‘call’.”

Jon furrowed his brows and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “It’s… difficult to explain. Descriptions of it are always highly subjective and rely on everyone involved in the conversation having the experience themselves.” Jon must’ve read something in Martin’s face, as he quickly continued, “I can tell you what I’ve heard, though. Just know that it may be a bit… esoteric. Whatever I say is a small part of maybe half the picture.”

When Martin nodded, Jon took in a breath. “While the sea doesn’t seem to ‘feel’ anything like we would, it does have a way of bringing selkies back to it, giving the impression that it wants them. It isn’t something that appears while in the water, but after some time out of it, no matter how far inland, selkies experience what some describe as a voice, or a tug, or some other inexplicable sensation. Through this, a selkie can be… not compelled, but intensely drawn back to the sea.”

“When that happens, the emotional intensity can be enough for some to abandon everything they might’ve built for themselves, at least for a while. It’s not a permanent state as far as I can tell, and for those who regularly return to the water it rarely becomes more than a background noise, if it happens at all.”

“What if they don’t return?”

“I… I don’t know.” Jon glanced toward the window, though nothing was visible save for the slowly lightening sky. “It’s unclear why it happens, or what causes it, or if there are consequences beyond the strange pull not going away. I’ve considered it being a sort of genetic homesickness, but that’s as much of a guess as the sea being sentient.”

Martin sighed. “That’s… yeah, that doesn’t clarify much. I guess I was hoping there was a more solid answer than ‘sometimes the sea calls to them and we don’t know why’.”

Jon smiled sheepishly. “I understand the feeling. If I ever find the answer, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Martin smiled back. Most likely an empty promise, but it was a nice thought all the same.

Jon straightened his back. “In the meantime, if you have other questions, I’d be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.”

“Sure, yeah. Um… any idea how the skin works? It doesn’t exactly have a zipper.”

As Jon dove back into his explanations, he was incredibly animated, as if the strained beginning was now far from his mind. It only took small prompting, a question or comment, to get him going whenever he started to lose momentum. With his head still swimming, Martin let his brain go on autopilot. He was listening, but half his enjoyment was watching how much Jon seemed to be enjoying himself.

Midway through a tangent, Jon scooted closer so as to speak in more hushed tones. “-but instead of removing clothing and other items, the skin simply encases everything on their person. Within reason, of course. They can’t swim with luggage or another person tucked in their pocket.” Jon paused as if waiting for something, though Martin couldn’t imagine what.

When nothing seemed to happen, he continued his thought with expressive hand gestures. “There’s a small lack of physical reality to them, even if they’re about as corporeal as they come, and it makes them better suited to their natural, dual lifestyle. It differentiates them from some other similar beings who, as I’ve mentioned, would have to constantly hide.”

Martin yawned, titling his head onto his upper arm. “Is that why you picked them to study?”

Jon thought for a moment. Seeming to choose his words carefully, he said, “I mean, yes, and as far as I could tell, no one else was seriously looking. Their relationship to humanity is... complicated. I wanted to explore that. And as I said, I like things that feel more real, rather than ‘mind bendy’ as you’d put it. For example, while something like the mystery surrounding your workplace is intriguing, it’s not an area I like to be heavily involved in.”

“Why?”

“Most of the time, it turns out to be… unknowable. Forces that can’t be understood, that just are.” Jon frowned at him apologetically. “Whatever we find, you should brace yourself for a job search.”

Groaning, Martin dropped his head down into his arms. “I don’t want to think about it.” Raising his head, he checked his phone. “Speaking of, I need to get ready for work. It’s already five.” He pushed himself off the ground.

“Really?” Jon checked his as well, his face fully illuminated by the phone screen. He grimaced at something.

“What is it?”

“What? Oh, nothing. Something Tim sent me after he’d finally confirmed that Sasha hadn’t been arrested.” He put the phone away and stood, scooping up the skin and holding it out in front of him. It absolutely swamped his thin arms, and without the backdrop of intense conflict, his attempt to carefully lift it was ridiculously endearing. Blinking, Martin took it and held it to his chest. It smelled of brine and was much tougher than he'd expected.

Jon fidgeted, lacing and unlacing his fingers. “You should give it back to her. Whether or not she can use it, being without it is… It’s an important part of her that she should have. Being trapped without it is one of the worst things a selkie can go through, and it is being trapped, even if the place is somewhere they want to be.”

With his thumb, Martin wiped away some accumulated dust from the skin, and watched as it shimmered in the dull light that crept through the window. He could see it now, how someone like Jon could recognize its unusual nature. It’s the same way he would’ve known his mother from any ordinary seal as she dipped easily between the waves, like she belonged with them. Like she was happy with them.

He squeezed it tighter to himself and nodded. “Okay. I’ll give it to her tonight. I promise.”

“Good,” Jon said with a relieved smile, making Martin’s heart jump. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”

--

“You know, you really should go sleep at your hotel. It’s not like you have to be there at six,” Martin said as they reached the edge of town. The sky grew brighter as they walked, which would have been lovely if he wasn’t fighting his eyes to stay open.

“Our window of opportunity may be limited. Sleep can wait,” Jon explained. Martin didn’t have the energy to argue, though it sounded like a sign of another bad habit.

It was a much easier walk with someone to talk to. The time he would’ve spent purposefully not looking at the lighthouse was taken up with idle chatter and occasional complaints from Jon about the weather. It felt like even the vertigo was more bearable, but perhaps he was just busy looking elsewhere.

Following another poorly-hidden shiver of Jon’s, Martin said, “You know, you could just wear a better jacket. They have them in stores and everything.”

Jon scowled. “Don’t you start. My coat is entirely serviceable, no matter what Tim or Sasha say. Besides, I have a hat.”

“That I gave you!”

“And I have it, don’t I?” Jon adjusted the hat to fit better over his ears. “Thank you, by the way. Though, remind us to give them back before we leave.”

Martin nodded, reigning in a frown. “Have you heard anything about that, yet? Whether you’re all leaving on Friday?”

“No, not yet. Elias may be waiting to hear what we’ve found before he settles on a proper extension, but he hasn’t reached out to me.” He tucked his hands further under his arms. “The original timeline was loose, so I’m expecting we’ll be here at least another week, especially with the information we’ve been able to find so far.”

Another week. It was more than Martin had dared hope for. “Oh. Good! Good, that’s good to know. Less stressful than having to figure it all out in the next two days.”

“Yes, and if we leave on Friday, there’s no doubt that Elias will be wanting more follow up on this place. It may even end up being a longer project, but-” Jon scratched the back of his neck. “If it does, I can’t guarantee the three of us will be involved. Everyone has their specialties, and you know mine.”

“Right. Of course.” He could hear the disappointment slide into his voice. Perhaps, if Martin looked up, the lighthouse would be nice enough to send him flying into the sea. “If that ends up being the case, it was nice working with you all. It’s been a lot less quiet.”

“Can’t imagine it helped with your actual work, but we’re happy to help.” Jon looked down at the ground and opened his mouth to say something else, but instead let out a surprised grunt. Martin felt an elbow around his neck that nearly dragged him off balance.

“Morning, all!” Tim said mid-yawn, his arms looped around Martin and Jon’s shoulders. “Hope everyone had a decent night’s sleep, uninterrupted by chicanery.”

Sasha leaned around Jon’s side to look at the three of them. “Good morning, you two. Hope everyone is ready for a busy day!” As far as Martin could tell, she’d managed to shirk off the exhaustion that Martin felt in his bones.

“Could we start with a power nap?” Tim asked. “Look at these two! Bet they didn’t sleep a wink from how concerned they were for us.” He ruffled Jon’s hair. Jon managed to wriggle free and stand on Sasha’s opposite side.

“As I told Martin, we have a potentially small window of opportunity,” Jon said, smoothing down the sections of hair that Tim had disturbed. “Now that we’re all together, it’s best we go over what we’ve found and cross-reference our library records.”

Sasha nodded. “Then, when it’s not six in the morning, I believe we have a phone call to make.”