A gust of hot summer wind swam across the room, folding around Jareth’s face as it moved. Seconds later, the fans inside the inner wall sucked up the air before going silent once again. The sensation sent a shiver down his spine. Goosebumps popped up on both his arms, a sensation he still hadn’t gotten used to in all of his 27 years alive. Sure, there was science behind everything, even him, rubbing the back of his neck after 115 degrees touched his skin.

That didn’t mean he liked it.

“Jare!”

His thumb hit the pause button on the aging voice recorder before he ripped his eyes off the notebooks in front of him to find the owner of the voice — Vance Hohen, pale yellow hair, blue eyes, and the worst attitude in the lab. Frankly, obnoxious was the best word to describe the man with no preamble necessary.

“Vance.” Jareth made eye contact to acknowledge the man’s arrival and then returned his gaze to his work. He looked over the single paragraph he had gotten translated so far that day. His mind had been phasing in and out of the thick, low-laying clouds for hours.

It would bite him in the ass sooner than later, he was sure.

Vance Hohen undressed behind Jareth.

Jareth hoped it was behind the thick privacy curtains in the corner, but he held fast in keeping his eyes on his own business. There was no reason to look and no reason to ask. He only knew that he heard something smack into the floor — he guessed it was the suit by the sound of it. Shortly after that, several of the cupboards opened and then slammed shut again.

“It’s that time of year again,” Vance said — his voice filled the entire space when none of the machines were running.

“The time of year where we request the workstations be moved further from the airlock?”

The other man laughed at the old joke. “No. I admit that I kind of like the company.”

Jareth grimaced.

“The water is cool enough to actually touch.”

That time, Jareth froze, forgetting even to breathe for a moment. “You touched the water? With your skin?”

Silence greeted him.

“Of course. When it won’t cook me, anyway. You don’t?”

“The ocean water? I try not to.” Jareth shook his head. “I’ve read the history books.”

“Those were written a hundred years ago, Jare. They’re also used as scare tactics. How do you live in the city and not know that? It doesn’t last for long, though. So you should try when you’re up again!”

“Hmm.” Jareth nodded his head as he grunted vaguely. Of course, the odds were low that he would be stripping off his suit and thrusting a foot or hand into the water - either at the base of the lab or after being dropped off in the deep, but the conversation was just too odd overall to continue.

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Maybe he was just disconnected. Maybe he really did spend too much time in the lab.

“Oh, are you on dictation duty?”

“Well—”

“Awesome,” Vance spat out before he could be corrected. There was a shuffling noise, and then he threw a tape onto the table. “Thanks.”

Apparently, that was the end of the conversation, as Vance threw a wink in Jareth’s direction and then left the lab. The doors that led through the rest of the building made a similar noise to the ones attached to the airlock. Just… Quieter. Smaller.

It was a little air-pocketed whoosh instead of a consuming gust.

Jareth’s mind felt quiet, too. Quiet, and small, and incapable of transcribing other people’s careless field notes. He wanted his number to come up already so he could go out again. He wanted to be in the water, rummaging through parts of the earth instead of scrubbing it away.

He generally made a point not to reveal his motivations to his cavalier or stern co-workers, but he recently felt a pull in his gut. It had been too long since he’d swam in the sea. He knew that someday if they didn’t achieve their goals, the waters would rise again - forcing humanity to clamber upwards once more. If he had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t be in his lifetime, but even deeper down, there was a spark that wondered how interesting it would be to witness.

His thumb pushed down on the play button now that the room was silent again. Instead of Vance’s booming voice filling the room, an excited yet tired voice filled his ears. There was work to do then and there — transcribing notes to take to help the lab run.

And pays the bills, I guess, he thought between sentences.

Something has to pay the bills

Refocused on work, the afternoon passed by almost invisibly. Vance hadn’t returned from the field until well after lunch, and no one else had wandered into that section of the building.

Jareth didn’t notice how fast time had moved until his watch vibrated around his wrist — startling him in the middle of a sentence. Before he could center himself, his hand had jerked and pulled the pen with it, drawing a dark line over a third of the page. After silencing the alert, Jareth stared at the paper. He would have to work around it… somehow.

He didn’t have the energy at that moment to re-write the three paragraphs at the top of the page, nor did he want to spend the time at that moment when he was cleared to go home for the day. It had been a long time since he’d fudged the notepad like that. He let out a heavy sigh before setting the pen down on top of the paper.

He’d write around it or something. It could wait. He was ahead of schedule with the transcriptions, anyway.

At least he was pretty sure he was. He had been before he lost focus that afternoon.

“Whatever,” he mumbled to himself.

Then he stood up, gathered his materials into a pile, and walked away from the table. The stuff went into his locked in the corner of the room, and then Jareth went through the door with the quiet whoosh. He moved through the long hallway, eyes forward and thoughts remaining distracted, until he reached a t-junction, hooked right, and walked into a small room filled with more lockers. He pulled his keys, phone, and briefcase out of the one with his full legal name on it, and then he walked another few minutes on the white linoleum until he hit the doors for the train platform.

These were the three doors Jareth Asket had daily access to in the lab building. One of the biggest non-residential buildings in the capital state, and he was allowed to see three of its rooms without an explicit invitation.

Some days he was simply curious about the rest of the stations and work being done. He wanted to look at the samples and see the machines that duplicated the old resources.

Not *that* day. Not the day where his mind was filled with Vance touching the water, with notes and history lessons and hot air. But some of the other ones, the thought was there.

He shook his head, clearing out the jumble of noise, and walked onto the platform. The bus would take him across the city and into the residential zone so he could go home.

Home sweet tiny, thin-walled home.