This is what the world is for, making electricity [Serena, backdate July/August]

[incognoscibilis]

If only for a little while, their world seemed at peace. Ronan was awake and Aurora Lynch was there to dote upon her son and all his friends. It shouldn't have made Adam nervous; Niall Lynch had dreamed her to be an uncomplicated thing, a woman who loved and adored. But Adam still sometimes had a hard time believing he was anything to love. 

And he'd made a promise. 

It was what had him sitting cross-legged on the cottage porch, writing clear, tidy labels to affix to the inside of the fuse box he'd helped install. "Don't turn anything on yet," he said absently to Serena, uncertain of what side of him she was on, if she was standing there at all. "I still need to test all the voltage and the wiring." And he was no electrician, so Adam planned to double and triple check. 

Comments

[intheruins]

"I think we can handle the darkness a little longer," Serena says, glancing over at George who's napping in his bouncer just inside the doorway. Her arms stay crossed despite her humor as she watches Adam works, resisting the urge to comment or command. This isn't the timber camp and she isn't his employer. He's a kind not-quite-stranger that's doing her a favor. "There's no need to rush anything."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam turned his head when she spoke, making sure the noise passed through his good ear, and he nodded. "I'm going to make sure it's done right, not fast," he said. He wasn't a professional electrician, just a guy who knew cars and mechanics and had done his fair share of factory jobs. It wasn't the same as a certification, even if he'd acquired many of the skills.

"Are you going to install a window fan or anything?" he asked, nodding towards the baby boy. "It gets hot out here, even into fall."

[intheruins]

"I've suffered plenty of summers without any fans," Serena says. People tended to associate the mountains with snow but in Colorado and then North Carolina she'd weathered plenty of stinking hot weather. But when Adam nods towards George she pauses to think. Her concern for his health will always come before her own. "I wouldn't want him to suffer, though."

That had been the point, she'd thought, in having children: creating a life for them that was so much greater than one's own. She'd once said that any son of hers could stand a little jostling but he's had enough jostling for one life, right from the start.

[incognoscibilis]

"Probably get one for his room then," Adam said, half to himself. He pressed the tip of the vault gauge into the newly installed contact, satisfied when the reading came up normal. He turned his attention, then, to screwing the plate over it.

Looking back up, he considered the baby again. Having only negative associations with the idea of 'fatherhood,' Adam didn't think of himself as particularly paternal, but he knew Serena cared a hell of a lot for her son. "I'll get plastic caps for the outlets," he said. "That way he can't stick his fingers in."

[intheruins]

"I wouldn't have thought of that," Serena says, also almost half to herself, feeling a surge of guilt that the risk hadn't occurred to her. Of course, electricity hadn't been the biggest risk in a timber camp where most of the men were deprived of electricity in their homes, but Serena knows better than most how easily the lives of children can be taken. She's carried the weight of that knowledge ever since she was a twelve year old girl, wandering through the ashes. "I – thank you, for all of you suggestions."

[incognoscibilis]

"Thanks for the work," Adam said. It was the kind of thing he'd said more than once to an employer, the kind of 'correct' parting language that kept someone from being fired. This time, he said it sincerely, still relieved to have something to do with his hands as he aligned wires and solved the reassuring small puzzles of making things work. Now and then, he relied on Cabeswater but mostly, he had simple knowledge to help.

"I like making sure I've done things right."

[intheruins]

"We make a good team, then," Serena says. She's never been one for a job half done. When it had come to the timber camp, she'd quickly gotten to work putting to work the men in the areas that had simply been ignored. Once they knew that she knew what she was talking about, they seemed to work at least twice as hard. "I'm not quite just to standing aside and letting someone else do it all, but I suppose I have a lot more here than I did before."

[incognoscibilis]

"It'll be easy enough to figure out," Adam said, screwing on a faceplate over the last outlet. The cottage was small and the wiring he'd done was the most straightforward he knew, both for Serena's benefit and for his own skill level. He wasn't a professional electrician but he knew he'd done everything right because he had been, in all things, methodical and careful. And because he was tied into a ley line. He understood energy.

"I think it's about done."

[intheruins]

"I appreciate simplicity," Serena says. She's not stupid by any means but the trades she'd been trained in didn't extend to electricity – because it wasn't needed. Instead she'd learned to fell trees, to read and write and ride. To train eagles. To win over men. "I'll get your money from inside. Would you like something to drink? I have water, coffee, Scotch..."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam shook his head at the last one and then tried to pass it off with a smile. It was, as ever, an imperfect copy of Gansey's inborn charm but Adam had had a lot of practice. "Water'd be fine but you don't have to," he said. Water or coffee, but never scotch.