Resurfaced // for Harry

[loficharm]

September 17th, 2019


It'll be nice to see Harry again, apart from the novelty of spending time with someone outside The Archive. Things are moving along well enough, and he's... well, it feels a bit weird and in some ways quite awful to say it, but he feels happy. He and John have made good progress, both in terms of their own survival here and with their relationship, such as it is. And Martin's started making friends again.

Or, well, he's trying. He wasn't good at it before he fell in with the Lonely, and now, well, he's rather out of practice. He sees Eliot and Kat just about every day, and there've been a few others with whom he's having some regular contact, but it's still piecemeal. At least it's getting markedly easier to feel like it's something he deserves, something he ought to be doing. Having people in his life again. It is better than not.

As embarrassed as he is by how long it took him to follow up with Harry after their initial meeting, he's far more embarrassed about the botch he made of his overtures. Harry is, at least, terribly gracious, and agrees to lunch, so he must not have made too big a mess.

He's sitting at an inoffensive little place about an equal walk from Candlewood and Ocean View, a blandly pleasant sort of gastropub, if he had to describe it. He got there much too early, of course, and is now sitting a bit nervously with a beer that's steadily dripping condensation onto the table. There is no reason to be nervous, absurd texts notwithstanding; and yet, he is. It takes him a moment to parcel out that most of his anxiety stems from the fact that he's just... looking forward to this. Sitting down with someone and just having a chat, like all's normal. It feels like cheating. Like he shouldn't be allowed. But he is.

He smiles to himself and runs his thumb up the side of his glass, clearing a little line in the condensation, entreating himself to relax. This will be nice, and it's allowed. That's all.

Comments

[naturalmisery]

If Martin feels as if he ought to have reached out sooner, Harry is feeling the same, though lately he's found himself a little more distracted than he would like to admit. When asked, he blames his new workload, and it isn't entirely untrue, because as it turns out, the first year nursing program is awfully strenuous, but Harry had trained as a surgeon back in London and that had been its own sort of difficult. So it isn't the classes that have taken up so much of his energy, but the recurring nightmares that have returned with something of a vengeance. He's not sure what's prompted them this time, not when he'd been adjusting rather well, all things considered, but there they are, nearly every night. Hickey and Silence and the Tuunbaq.

And all that death.

He supposes he isn't entirely surprised. Darrow might be a second chance, but that doesn't mean he gets to escape what he's done. And there's something else, too, familiar faces mixed in with the terror he remembers from the Arctic. People he's come to care for mixed in with Hickey and Crozier, people like Zoe and Edgar and Mary, but other people, too. The man John, he thinks, but unlike the others, John is only ever there watching. Just watching.

Still, he smiles when he sees Martin in the pub, then crosses the room to join him, setting his bag down at his side.

"Hullo," he says. "I'm not late, am I? I've been caught up with school and I tend to lose track of time whenever I get into my reading."