writing

Weimar station looks to him as if an overenthusiastic architecture student had tried to emulate what he had seen of classic structures, and thoroughly failed at the execution. Now, in the darkness, he can barely make out the neoclassic features, but he’s been here often enough to remember.

Thomas Nightingale stands leaning against the facade, a half-smoked cigarette between his lips, trying his best not to smile at the approaching figure of David Mellenby, barely illuminated by the street lights, yet still unmistakably him. Thomas could recognise David everywhere.

London, 1941

He spends his first day back in England in months on a train down to Devon, to visit the grave of Mama and Daisy, and the evening on his Aunt Fanny's old, faded sofa, listening to the news of his siblings and cousins, while Fanny promises solemnly to not tell his father about the visit. The journey back to London drags on and on, people on the tracks apparently, but once he reaches Kings Cross it’s a short walk to the Folly, where he trudges right up the steps to the lab they’ve given David for the duration of the war – however long that might be – crossing the room until he reaches one corner, where he can slide down to the ground between a metal cabinet and wooden workbench that had been pushed up against the wall, weighed down with copious amounts of notebooks and notes, some kept in boxes, some stacked precariously high, David’s thoughts spilled out over the paper. He hasn’t even taken the time to take off his coat and scarf, far too warm for the sweltering heat in the lab.

David himself only looks up from his experiment once he’s done, though Thomas has no way of telling what exactly he has finished.

“Are you quite alright, Thomas?” he asks and takes off his glasses to clean the round lenses with the sleeve of a dark blue jumper peeking out from under a lab coat that had once been white.

“Splendid,” Thomas grunts, and runs a hand through his hair, already messy from the wind outside.

David, who has had enough time to map out his responses over the years, slips out of his lab coat and approaches him, heaves a box from the end of the bench so he can sit next to Thomas, who rests his head against his leg. Almost immediately there are fingers combing through his hair, brushing a curl out of his face.

“Would you like to tell me?”

“Not particularly”

“I think you ought to"

“Later. Maybe"

“Your sister called,” David tells him instead, “she wants to see you. Stephen as well. They’re your siblings, you can’t avoid them forever”

“I know. I just – Just not right now. Can you tell Drina I'm still on the continent the next time she calls?”

“Somehow I don’t think she'll believe me. Especially considering Henry was on the continent with you and came yesterday. Victoria knows your on home leave”

“Curse the day your nephew decided to marry my niece"

“They’re children. Can you truly begrudge them some happiness"

Thomas sighs, rubs his cheek against the coarse wool of David’s trousers, closes his eyes. “No. That doesn’t mean I have to like it"

“I know. But still, please talk to her. I have a feeling every time we talk she likes me even less, and if she doesn’t hear from you soon she'll show up at Folly and castrate me for hiding you from her"

Thomas nearly laughs “We can’t have that, of course"

“Are you sure she doesn’t know?”

“Without a doubt. She’d be much worse if she knew about the sodomy. To both of us"

“Would you like to help me with some experiments?" David asks in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood, "I have some test tubes that need to be blown up"

“You know I'll gladly blow anything for you, Davey"

David laughs and pulls him upright, presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “I’m glad you're back home"

Thomas says nothing and lets David lead him towards the table he’d been working on when Thomas had arrived. The set up looks complicated, but most things David does in his lab are so far beyond Thomas’s comprehension that he no longer even bothers to ask.

Once more dressed in his lab coat David lines up two dozen tubes, “I think we’ll start with a simple werelight,” he says, “and go on from there”

He isn’t sure how much time they spent in the lab, Thomas performing various spells at David’s request, but when David sets down his pen, apparently satisfied with the results at last it’s already dark outside.

“You should go to bed, Tom,” David says and Thomas lets his werelight blink away, plunging the room into sudden darkness. Either there’s another power outage or David’s simply forgotten to turn on the lights again.

“I don’t even know where that is" He is a CO now and therefore, by Folly mechanisms, entitled to one of the rooms on the second floor, which he'll still share, but with only one other man. He'd rather crawl into bed with David, but, of course, that won’t be poss-

“In that case I have some good news for you. We're sharing until you leave again"

“Honestly?”

“Yes. Apparently most find me to be an insufferable roommate”

“Because you are, David”

“I beg to differ”

*

The room is bleak and unpersonal, except for an old photograph on the edge of the desk that also serves as David’s nightstand, now that another bed has been shoved inside and every unnecessary piece of furniture put up in the attic, of David and his brother, dead now for over two decades, killed in some trench in France, and a small stack of books he faintly recognises as some of David’s favourites. Waugh, Collins, Wells and the like.

None of it feels quite tangible and it might very well have been a dream, if it weren’t for the weight of David’s arm wrapped around him. No matter how lonely, how unhappy, he is, when he imagines David’s embrace it never feels real

“What are you thinking about, pumpkin?” David, already half asleep, asks.

If I die will you put up a picture of me as well? A neat little collection of the people you've lost, trod under England's heel?

“Nothing. Go to sleep"

David’s never been one who had trouble falling asleep, and after a few minutes he can hear him snoring, firm against his back, breath ghosting over Thomas’s neck. If he’d ever been such a sleeper he certainly is no longer, considering the things haunting his dreams, despite the sense of secruity and comfort David’s presence gives him.

The journey back to London drags on and on, people on the tracks apparently, but once he reaches Kings Cross it’s a short walk to the Folly, where he trudges right up the steps to the lab they’ve given David for the duration of the war – however long that might be – crossing the room until he reaches one corner, where he can slide down to the ground between a metal cabinet and wooden workbench that had been pushed up against the wall, weighed down with copious amounts of notebooks and notes, some kept in boxes, some stacked precariously high, David’s thoughts spilled out over the paper. He hasn’t even taken the time to take off his coat and scarf, far too warm for the sweltering heat in the lab.

David himself only looks up from his experiment once he’s done, though Thomas has no way of telling what exactly he has finished.

“Are you quite alright, Thomas?” he asks and takes off his glasses to clean the round lenses with the sleeve of a dark blue jumper peeking out from under a lab coat that had once been white.

“Splendid,” Thomas grunts, and runs a hand through his hair, already messy from the wind outside.

David, who has had enough time to map out his responses over the years, slips out of his lab coat and approaches him, heaves a box from the end of the bench so he can sit next to Thomas, who rests his head against his leg. Almost immediately there are fingers combing through his hair, brushing a curl out of his face. “Would you like to tell me?”

“Not particularly”

“I think you ought to"

“What does it feel like?” she asked. “Losing a sibling”

“That I won’t be telling you, Abigail,” Nightingale said.

“Because I’m too young?”

“No. If Peter asked what it felt like losing a parent I wouldn’t be telling him either”

“He'd never ask you that, Peter is as emotionally constipated as you are”

“Abigail," Nightingale chided.

“Sorry”

Walid squinted as he examined the werelight floating between them, and Thomas was afraid he might ruin his eyes. "Does it have any physical effects on you?" he asked.

"Very much, if done irresponsibly"

"How so?"

"I've been told that it damages the brain in some way. It can lead to a stroke"

Walid looked up at that. "Fascinating. I'd love to examine a brain like that"

“You grew up here?”

“Did you expect something else?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure what I was expecting. Something smaller, I think”

“In comparison to what some of my friends grew up in this really is quite quaint,” David’s home, the one time he had been allowed to visit, had seemed like a sprawling mansion to him, with gardens that never seemed to end and it’s own stable and pond. “We children even had to share rooms”

“Are you sure it's safe to stay here?” Peter asked doubtfully.

“Of course. It’s habitable if perhaps somewhat uncomfortable. I don’t think the house has been renovated since the thirties, and even then it was just the kitchen. We should probably eat elsewhere while we’re here, unless you fancy your chances against an aga that hasn’t been used in fourty years"

“I think takeout is good. But I was talking about it being haunted”

i know it’s monday leave me alone i'm just happy to be writing again

"I'm still suspended," Peter told Thomas during one of his visits to Beverley's house in late November.

"This," - Thomas shifted uncomfortably in his chair, something he hadn’t done since he was a child - "is not police business," he admitted, "but more of a, ah, personal favour" When he had approached Peter on the matter of a haunted house he had naturally assumed that Thomas was talking about a police case, even though that couldn’t be farther from the truth. "The building is family property," he continued, "I don’t own it, my nephews do, but they both aren’t equipped to deal with the situation at hand, since they're not wizards"

"What is that situation, exactly?" Peter asked.

“I don’t know, babe, has Nightingale ever shared any personal details with you?” Beverley asked, when I brought it up, “Or you with him, for that matter?” It was a Saturday evening and for once the twins were actually asleep, so Bev had stretched out on the sofa, a golden face mask on and her hair already in the silk bonnett she slept in.

“I told him –“

“Completely obvious things or stuff that impacts your work don’t count”

In that case… “Not really”

“Maybe you should? Might make him more comfortable sharing things with you” she said and went back to the magazine she’d been reading.

“We’re not really there, yet, me and Nightingale”

Bev looked up, exasperated. “And is that because of him or because of you?”

“He’s still my boss”

Retirement, he’d been told, required an adjustment period, before one truly realised that one would never be returning to work and the life one had arranged around it. Thomas had expected, and feared, this to resemble the months after he had returned from the hospital after the war, plummeting into a dark, deep hole he couldn’t find his way out of. Instead there was something freeing about retirement, Thomas thought. Granted, he was working up to teach several apprentices at one, something that had already been a challenge when it had been Peter and Lesley, who had been at different points in their apprenticeships, and it would only magnified when the Constables chosen by the Met and Peter arrived, so he had work waiting for him, but all in all he thought this to be the best decision he had made in years.

For the first time in decades he had no qualms about leaving London for more than a few days at a stretch, returning to his family's home to clear out the memories that had been catching dust there ever since his father had died, found old letters and photographs in his childhood bedroom he had no memory of receiving.

Peter had, surprisingly, offered to accompany him, even though Devon was farther from London than he normally went willingly, but this had been something Thomas had to do on his own.

"Got shot," Thomas rasped out.

Abdul nodded. "I know," he said, "And I just want you to know that I am quite cross with you. Getting yourself shot was not what I had in mind when I told you to get out of the house more"

"Would you mind terribly if we reschedule?" David asked. Peter had begun referring to their weekly night out as date night, and while Thomas hated the moniker he was relieved that Peter seemed so casual about his relationship with David. "An acquaintance from the demimonde has gotten in contact about an urgent matter"

They attempted their prank during chapel that Sunday, and pulled it off beautifully. Thomas could see David stifling his laughter two rows in front of him, while he did his damnedest not to look like he was doing magic.

They did, however, find themselves in the headmaster’s office a day later, side by side, facing another one of his lectures.

When Thomas’s uncle Stanley had been a pupil at Casterbrook the headmaster had already been a master at the school, and with Stanley’s proclivity for breaking the rules he suspected that he wasn’t the first Nightingale in recent memory to be standing in this office after stirring up trouble.

The headmaster, for his part, looked as if he was regretting seating David and Thomas next to each other in his class.

Professional opinions are devided on how long you should wait until calling someone after the first date. Most will tell you to wait no longer than three days at most, but I once went out with someone who didn’t text me for a month afterwards, ans I still went on a second date with him, so it seems that this information is either wrong or my standards are a lot lower than those of the average person.

I called Bev as soon as we got back to the Folly, sprinting upstairs to the Tech Cave, while Nightingale returned to the Folly proper.

"Did you get abducted again?" she asked.

"Yes, and I'm in desperate need of saving"