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[Icarus Argabright]

6 April, 1974
Hotel Illume, room 440

Icarus Argabright needed no timepiece to know that it was 10:14:05:38 a.m, local time, when he finally decided to turn himself toward the window. Waking up to the noise of the city, the shades of its millions, was so innately familiar to who he’d always been, yet unsettling in its freshness to who he was now. In the fair gray light of the mid-morning, at 10:15:36:01, after so many years abroad (he’d like to say he’d stopped counting, but never would), it was strange to think that no other moment of his life had been like this.

It all felt slow.

He’d been lying awake for approximately two hours and twenty-four minutes now, which he could only estimate due to the nature of consciousness. This wasn’t unusual for his schedule. The time was 06:15:39:22 a.m. where he reported for duty these days, and Icarus had always been an early riser with plenty to do before arriving first to work. If anything, he was behind schedule. And staying in bed for any part of his morning was different from what he’d grown used to.

Once, there was a time when he could have hid in bed all day long. And there were those that he did, and hated it. Dorm sheets, hospital sheets, oppressive places he’d rather not have been. Vacations with Fallon were different— she led them, after all, and woke up later— but, even anxious, Icarus was always happy to be taken by the hand across the world and into the great unknown. There was no time in his past when he lay in plush, white comfort, unsure of himself. Unsure of his feelings. Unsure of anything but the time.

—and that, perhaps, he was not ready to be.

He reached, not far, across the king-sized bed to nudge Fallon’s shoulder in the precious quiet.

“You awake yet?” he whispered, and hoped their daughter on her own small bed nearby was not the one who answered.

[Fallon Tate]

Fallon hovered in the space between being asleep and being awake. She was awake enough to tell she wasn’t in her own bed— it all felt different. The sheets, the mattress, the pillows. Her brain was still moving slowly, taking just a moment to remember she was in London. It wasn’t entirely unusual for her to wake up somewhere that wasn’t her own bed, but now bound by school schedules, she hasn’t been traveling as frequently as she once did. Now, she fills her time by writing more than she ever has.

The light nudge to her shoulder was all it took to bring her fully into consciousness. Finally opening her eyes, still heavy from sleep, she stretched before turning to look at Icarus.

“Yeah,” she whispered in return as she shifted over, close to him. She could tell he’d been awake for some time. He always got up before her. “You could have woken me up sooner, you know.”

It was strange— but nice, being back in London. The nostalgia was welcomed as it was the first place she considered ‘home’. Though, it’s always been Icarus that made it feel that way. London was just where he happened to be. So, it did not feel the same as it had when they had lived here. Familiar, yes, but simultaneously entirely different.

She rubbed her eyes to get rid of the weight of sleep. Their portkey was quite late into the night, but she had slept enough.

Fallon lifted her head just enough to check on Ariadne. She was still asleep and unaware she had traveled across the ocean, but she was sure to wake soon enough, especially now that both Fallon and Icarus were awake.

“Should we get her up or wait?”

[Icarus Argabright]

She brightened like a second sunrise when she finally stirred, casting the warmth of her sherbet presence throughout the bones of his cheeks. Now she was awake. He, too, pulled further away from his melancholy and reverie at the sound of her voice.

Icarus had the choice to wake her up sooner every weekend, every trip, every governmental holiday— and never had. A small, cryptic smile said only that he did as he meant to. Early mornings were never right for explaining oneself, least of all over the complexities of emotion and the mind and how they tasted in an empath’s eardrum.

As Fallon checked on the baby (who had not in fact been a baby for several years), he shifted, bringing his arm under his ear for a better look at both of them in the natural oddity of the arrangement.

“Ought not to, I think,” he said honestly. “It is 6:17 for her. On a Saturday morning at the sstart of eleven days’ vacation, I think we deserve her asleep for a bit yet.”

Icarus would selfishly say that he did. The late travel hadn’t come as a result of bureaucratic scheduling on the portkey side of things, after all, and this felt like his first break in the scramble of work all year. And Fallon didn’t have it much easier.

“Weird to be here with her, isn’t it?”

[Fallon Tate]

Moments for just them were a rarity these days. The times when Baby was off at school, Icarus was working. When he was home, so was Baby. There was never time for just the pair of them. Fallon had no complaints about her life, but she did wish she had more of these moments.

She closed her eyes to savor the feeling. But she only allowed herself just a few seconds for this. Who knew how long they had before Baby finally stirred?

"You're right. Some people might think you're a genius, even," she teased, her voice still a touch husky from sleep. She turned to her side so she was facing Icarus.

Also, the consequences of a sleep-deprived child were not something Fallon wanted to chance on the first day of their vacation.

"Weird to be here with her, isn’t it?"

"Weird? Definitely. But it feels good, I think. It's part of her, too. Even if she hasn't grown up here. I wonder what she'll think of it all."

They've taken her on vacation, of course, especially considering the nature of Fallon's career. Baby has been all over, but not here. A place to which both Fallon and Icarus were so deeply connected. It was sure to be much different than any of the other vacations they'd taken. Technically, in a legal sense, Baby was just as much of a Brit as she was American, but how much has she picked up on through Icarus?

"Feels nice to visit again, though."

[Icarus Argabright]

But for a soft snort, he ignored her genius remark. In part, because that had nothing to do with the common sense of it. The rest was a bit of his own exhaustion, because some people, in fact, did. Hearing it at the Agency like a playful derision among the American muggle agents, who— although they were not wrong— did credit him with a certain brand of erudition he did not actually possess by the effect of his accent alone, which never sat well with him. He had to bullshit familiarity with quite a lot of literature and philosophy he’d never heard of, which worked out fine, because the Americans were bullshitting golden snowballs about Schopenhauer and Ginsberg themselves. Icarus was smarter than they’d ever guess in ways they’d never know.

For as little interest as he had in the Monday meeting at Mysteries, he would admit that he was looking forward to speaking his own language again, in its untempered native form.

And he wondered— weird and all— what Baby would think of this, too. Long ago, one fateful and shit-filled 1st September, Icarus had heard his own father slip into a sort of dialect, unfamiliar to himself, (each unfamiliar with each,) his own first time in muggle London.

“So do I. At the very least, it’s worth the experience.”

He worried she’d hate it, like he did his first time here. But she got to go home at the end— and he’d made his own here, eventually. Until her.

“‘Nice,’ I’ll consider once we’re out and about, and depending who we run into,” Icarus insisted gently, a light tease along a warning about speaking too soon. “Anyone we want to see?”

[Fallon Tate]

"Take her to a good English tearoom, and I think she'd love it here. Maybe a little too much," she joked.

Fallon had long since lost count of the number of tea parties Baby had thrown for them (and, of course, the cats). It might not actually be enough to make her love London overall, but it would certainly be something she'd love. Fallon hoped they wouldn't have to try to win her over if she didn't like it here, but they'd have to just wait and see.

"Anyone we want to see?"

At this, Fallon shrugged. She hadn't gotten too close to anyone in her years in London outside of Icarus. Friendships fizzled when she never opened up for anything more than surface-level conversation. The final nail in the coffin was Fallon never reaching out to her few friends after moving (sometimes not even telling them she was leaving). It happened every time. At least she wasn't so lonely anymore.

As for those she met in her time in the United Kingdom, there were plenty that she liked, many who she wouldn't mind seeing. However, she'd also not been in regular contact with any of them, so who knew if they were even still around. If she ran into any, however, that would be fine. There were quite a few, though, she'd like to avoid if at all possible.

"I've got a list of people I'd rather not see. But I don't have anyone I feel like I need to see while I'm here. You?"

He'd spent his whole life here before they settled in America. All of the important people in his life were still here, probably.