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Georgie doesn’t like Melanie King.

This is the conclusion that she comes to maybe halfway through the Friday night drinks she wasn’t supposed to be attending. She’s come out on Andy’s impassioned behest, because he’s a good friend who still helps her out on tips for What the Ghost episodes, and she owes him one: enough to come out and make friendly with the new team that’s got him so excited, anyway. Even if she was halfway through post for a bonus episode, and she’s got patrons to provide for.

Antonia and Peter turned out to be a pleasant surprise, at least: Georgie had met both of them at least once before in passing, and Antonia even remembered her well enough to ask after the Admiral, which sent her rocketing up several notches in Georgie’s estimation immediately.

But Melanie is a new face. And one that Georgie, for some reason, doesn’t really feel like she’s clicking with. She was friendly enough to say hello to, all sweet smiles and amicable greetings – and complimentary about What the Ghost, which is a fairly tried and true way into Georgie’s good books. But there’s just something about the way that she talks that rubs Georgie up the wrong way. She can’t quite put her finger on what, but she’s been sitting here for the last twenty minutes, absently listening to Peter talk about his current DnD campaign, trying to figure it out.

She watches Melanie laugh at something Antonia says, throw back her head and take a drink. She frowns.

It’s the confidence, she thinks, when it eventually hits her. It’s not that she thinks confidence is a negative trait in general, it’s just a specific kind of confidence. Oxford was full of the kind of people she thinks Melanie resembles: charming, funny, but underneath it all there’s something brittle. And she’s not sure what it is, exactly – maybe it’s self-interest, or self-consciousness- but it’s usually the kind of thing that, when it shatters, it has a blast radius. One that Georgie’s not interested in finding out the range of.

Not that it matters, she reasons. It’s just one drinks session. She can play nice for a few hours, take her leave, go home and forget about all of this.

So when Melanie looks over and smiles at her, Georgie’s relaxed enough about it – confident that in three hours, tops, she can banish Melanie King from her mind entirely – that she smiles back easily.

Except, of course, that the paranormal media circles she runs in are too small for that to ever really happen. And because Georgie knows everybody, and it seems like nowadays everybody knows Melanie, there she is: every Friday night, she’s at the table with Andy and their friends, and she’s there at the occasional games night he throws and every now and then she’ll be at a party or a coffee with a mutual friend.

It’s not like it really gets in the way, beyond a mild inconvenience. And it’s not like they’re actively hostile to each other: they will chat sometimes, but it’s never for long and never about anything of consequence.

Georgie feels bad about it sometimes, whenever she bothers to think about it. Melanie’s never been actively nasty or spiteful, or really done anything concretely wrong. It’s just, Georgie thinks, that you don’t always click with everyone. And Melanie seems to feel the same way, too: Georgie’s not the only one who lets their conversations tail off into silence, or just gives a little smile of greeting instead of actually engaging.

This is all to say that when Georgie shows up to their local one Friday night and it’s just her, Peter and Melanie, something inside Georgie has already written the evening off before it’s actually begun. It’s been a long day already – a bad Stitcher review, and a collision cascade of audio problems that meant she’d had to push bonus content release by a few hours – and she’s standing in the doorway, debating whether or not she should just turn around and leave, when Peter spots her.

“Hey!” he says, standing up and waving energetically. Too late, Georgie thinks dryly to herself, so she drums up a smile and wanders over.

It doesn’t turn out to be so bad, in the end. Talk about work is always Georgie’s fallback in these kind of get togethers, because in her line of work everyone has one specific ghost or place that they’re passionate about. She’d discovered a few months back that one of Peter’s hot-button topics is Borley Rectory, so she drops that casually and lets him go from here.

It’s at least partially Melanie’s too, if the force with which she’s arguing with him about the SPR report is anything to go by. Which means Georgie can mostly just sit back, drink a few ciders and let herself be entertained by the sheer force with which they’re bickering.

When she gets up to sneak off to the loo, they’re engrossed enough she doesn’t think either of them notice. Peter’s actually a pounding a fist on the table as she leaves. So she’s laughing at them a little, distracted, and that’s why when the man appears from the left and steps into her path, she’s taken off guard.

When she steps to the side to let him past, he steps with her. He smiles, a little lopsided with drink.

Georgie already knows how this is going to play out, and it says something about her day so far that she skips right past irritated. She’s just tired, and ready for it to be over.

“Oh, sweetheart,” the man slurs. Behind him, the group of men he emerged from are collecting coats and bags, a few of them watching him with interest. “Where are you going so fast?”

“None of your business,” Georgie says. There isn’t an ounce of politeness in her tone.

He grimaces, and makes a clumsy grab for her wrist. His skin is sweaty and hot from the alcohol, disgusting in a way that makes Georgie’s hair stand on end, but his grip is weak enough that she knows she’s not in any real danger.

“Piss off,” spits Georgie, and rips her arm from his grasp.

Melanie turns in an instant at the snap of her voice, as do the group of men he’d emerged from. But the man is still speaking, rubbing his hand and frowning.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, slurring all three of them together. “Watch the mouth. You’re not pretty enough to be – such a bitch.”

It’s an ugly word at the best of times, but here it comes out of his mouth like a belch. The next second there’s a touch at her shoulder, and Georgie turns slightly to see Melanie standing right next to her, her face like thunder and her body taut with rage. Georgie didn’t even hear her move.

Oh, shit, thinks Georgie, and shakes her head at Melanie, as subtly but as firmly as she can.

To her surprise, she watches Melanie’s shoulders drop after a second, loosening her fists like it’s a physical effort. She still mostly looks like she’s ready to pop at any second, but Georgie has other, more pressing matters to attend to.

She purposefully turns back, leans in really close to the guy and waits for him to start looking just a little bit nervous.

“I don’t give a shit what you think about me,” she says, quietly but firmly. “I couldn’t care less. I’m not attracted to you, I’m not scared of you, you’re not anything to me. You’re getting nothing here. So move – along.”

For a moment she thinks he’s going to be more trouble, and then from behind them one of his friends lifts a hand and yells something incomprehensible that’s probably his name. The man sniffs, and adjusts his belt.

“Bitch,” he says once more, but there’s much less bite to it.

Georgie makes a little sharp move, and he flinches. It is more satisfying than Georgie would really care to admit to out loud, and she doesn’t make any effort to keep that sentiment from showing on her face as he turns and walks away.

The whole time the guy is heading for the door, she keeps an eye on Melanie. There’s still a set of tension around her jaw and her eyebrows, and she’s watching the guy like a hawk as he goes, but he makes it out with his face and all his limbs intact. Which is absolutely more than Georgie was expecting, from the way that Melanie was looking at him.

“Thank you,” says Georgie, once the whole group of them have made it outside. She’s trying to keep the note of surprise from her voice: she’s hoping it’s drowned out in the genuine flood of gratitude she’s feeling. “I, uh, appreciate you not stepping in.”

Melanie shrugs, still looking towards the door.

“Your creep, your call,” she says. “I wasn’t gonna step in and make things more uncomfortable for you just because I wanted to punch his lights out, you know. As much as I wanted to. That’s not fair on you. And honestly,” she says, and she looks back towards Georgie, a degree of comfortable respect in her gaze that Georgie would never have thought to see from her, “it seemed like you had it handled.”

Georgie has never really wondered how long it takes to completely reassess one’s idea of a person before: it turns out the answer is apparently less than five minutes. That simple moment of watching Melanie settle back and let Georgie take the lead is something Georgie’s ashamed to admit that she never would have expected from Melanie, from the way she’d built Melanie up in her head.

She smiles, and Melanie smiles back: a small smile at first and then bigger, just a little more self-conscious. Then Melanie’s eyes flicker down to the wrist the man had grabbed, and all at once the weight of the day starts to push down on Georgie.

 “Okay. Alright,” she says, as lightly as she can. “So on that note, I think I’m done for the day. Friday, you have won. Sorry to leave you and Peter so short, but I think I’m just gonna cut my losses and head home.”

Melanie’s watching her, her eyes dark and unreadable. She tilts her head to the side just a fraction.

“Well, I’d be happy to call you a cab,” she says, slowly, “if that’s what you really want. But I’ve also seen you eyeing that karaoke machine over there since we first started coming to this place. And I don’t want the end of your evening to be dealing with that wanker, and then just going home upset by yourself. But it’s up to you.”

There are a lot of things Georgie wants to say to this – you care that much? You noticed that? You noticed me? – but what comes out, in a tone that’s probably offensively surprised, is, “Wait – you would do karaoke with me?”

Melanie wrinkles her nose; with a kind of dawning horror, Georgie is disgusted to find it provoking a little fond feeling in her chest.

“Once,” Melanie warns her, wagging a finger. “I would do karaoke with you once. This occasion and this occasion only, after several more drinks. And definitely only when Pete has left, because I don’t trust him not to record it and upload it to the channel.”

“Oh,” says Georgie, deadpan. “Because you have a reputation to maintain, of course. Ghost Hunt UK is a professional outfit that doesn’t undertake any such trivial activities as karaoke.”

For a split second Melanie looks surprised; and then she flashes Georgie a big, blinding grin.

“I’m pleased you understand, Miss Barker,” she says. “Unless, of course, you are planning on coercing me into doing ABBA, in which case the deal is off and I’m pulling up Uber for you right now. So, choose wisely. What’s it gonna be?”

Georgie purses her lips and pretends to think. That little fond feeling in her chest has grown into something warm and delighted feeling at Melanie’s unexpectedly playful tone, the kind she sometimes gets when she hits on a fresh piece of promising research, or takes the first bite of a delicious meal, or starts the first page of a very good book. That kind of comfortable, confident anticipation: like she’s unfolding the very start of something that she knows is going to be amazing, about to settle in.

“So, then… what’s your opinion on the Spice Girls?” she says lightly, and watches, laughing, as Melanie’s eyebrows ascend.

It’s completely natural after that, in a way that is a constantly evolving surprise to Georgie. Because Melanie King isn't the person that Georgie thought she was at all, and the more Georgie learns about her, the more she realises how much she's been missing out.

Melanie, it turns out, is unlike anyone else Georgie has ever met before – whip smart, with a biting sense of humour and little time for fools, but also capable of moments of unexpected sweetness that are all the nicer for being relatively rare. She’s not afraid to call Georgie out whenever she thinks Georgie’s wrong, but she doesn’t attach any hubris to it, and Georgie’s seen her apologise more honestly and authentically than she thinks most people are capable of.

And she’s fun, fun enough that just thinking about her brings a smile to Georgie’s face. She finds out very early on that Melanie loves the same trashy reality television that Georgie does, so they spend whole weekends on Melanie’s sofa watching Say Yes to the Dress and yelling at all the bitchy mums before, eventually, they both get tired of it and Melanie starts complaining. And then on a hunch, Georgie asks her if she’d ever wanted to go rock climbing, and Melanie’s eyes light up.

After Oxford – after the protest – Georgie had spent a number of months trying out different extreme sports, just to test the boundaries of her new capabilities. Rock climbing, caving, parachute jumping, whatever she could afford on her graduate salary and her limited weekends. None of them lasted particularly long that Georgie can remember, because with a few exceptions, she figured out fairly quickly that the draw behind most thrill sports was in the fear. Without that, it’s just crawling in the dark, or falling through the air.

And she doesn’t exactly know why she thinks trying these things again will make a difference. In some respects, it doesn’t: it’s not like going out and trying these things with Melanie brings back any of the capability she’s lost. Not that she misses it, exactly, although sometimes leaning out over the hatch in a plane, the absence of that instinctual feeling feels something like a ghost limb. But in the end, it’s more that looking at Melanie as they do these things together – watching her scale a cliff face, checking her ropes at the top of a cave drop, just looking at her face when they’re waiting to reach jump height – it brings back the excitement of that adrenaline rush she used to know, all the best parts of fear that she’s been missing.

Because Melanie’s also fearless, in a way that Georgie's a little addicted to seeing her be. And not it's not in the same way that Georgie is, just incidentally incapable, but in a better, truer way – she feels it, and it informs the things she does, but she never lets it stop her. Georgie doesn’t understand or even really remember fear as a feeling anymore, but she can see on Melanie’s face that Melanie knows it and loves it. And Georgie loves being the cause of seeing Melanie come alive in that way, almost as much as she loves just seeing it. While she’s sure that eventually they’ll get bored of this, too, and move onto something else, she finds that that doesn’t matter to her, as long as Melanie’s with her.

And over the weeks and months, Melanie’s with her almost more than she isn’t. They start doing research work together, which leads to Melanie guesting on Georgie’s podcast for her fiftieth episode, and Georgie has to edit maybe forty straight minutes of irrelevant, joyful chat to make it even vaguely appropriate for broadcast. Georgie tags along for a shoot in a ruined monastery because she’d been with Melanie when Melanie picked the spot, and Andy has to tell them about five times to shut the fuck up or they’re not going to get any usable footage.

Georgie gets used to Peter and Andy and Antonia saying their names that way, all slurred together – Georgie and Melanie, MelanieandGeorgie – in a way that she can’t believe she would have once cringed at.

And all of it, every moment, even the ones that should be boring – it feels like some breathless rollercoaster that she can’t get off. Exciting in the way that she’s forgotten how to feel, in a way that maybe she doesn’t realise she’s been missing until now. Because it’s not just the things they do together, it’s the way Melanie is, how mercurial she is. How every time Georgie thinks she’s got Melanie figured out, she changes all over again – like a constantly shifting puzzle that Georgie doesn’t want to stop solving.

Once, when they’re very, very drunk, she finally confesses to Melanie that she’d mistaken Melanie’s confidence for bitchiness when they’d first met, and Melanie throws her head back and laughs for a long, long time.

Georgie pulls her drink back against her chest, and watches her, just smiling.

“Oh, I get it,” Melanie says to her. “It all makes sense now! You know, for the record, I was completely wrong about you, too. Like, I thought you didn’t have a sense of humour: I could never get you to laugh, no matter what I did. You were just absolutely uncharmable.”

“Hey!” says Georgie, offended, and hits her clumsily across the arm, “Don’t be rude! I make you laugh all the time.”

“You do,” says Melanie, and she sounds absolutely buzzed and completely fond in a way that sets Georgie’s stomach rolling.

Georgie’s not a stupid woman. She’s also uniquely well-equipped for the kind of brutal self-examination that most people can be too nervous to undertake. So she’s well aware that at some point along the way, her feelings about Melanie King slip from friendly admiration into being head over fucking heels for her, strong enough that it’s difficult to remember a time when she wasn’t breathlessly, hopelessly in love.

The only issue sometimes with the way that she is post-Oxford, she thinks, is that in certain situations it can make her too cautious. The kind of things that people usually think take bravery – free-climbing a cliff, or hang-gliding off a mountain - are actually a pretty simple set of decisions that you either choose to do or not to do, in Georgie’s opinion. So it’s easy for her to make the decision to jump out of a plane, especially when she’s got the same emotional attachment to the movement as she does to stepping out of the shower.

People – friendship, love, romance – these things are different, Georgie’s found. Because relationships with people are a series of never-ending actions and decisions that aren’t often to do with bravery or fear. And there’s nothing about her particular affinity that makes her any better at dealing with people, other than her god-given social skills and maybe a heightened ability to contest people’s bullshit. So while she knows she’s in love with Melanie – and she’s reminded, every time she watches Melanie crack a joke or down a shot or turn and smile at her or argue with Andy about episode ideas, any time Melanie does fucking anything these days – she’s hesitant about making any moves about it. Or, more specifically, any assumptions. Especially with her lack of fear-driven instincts to keep her on a steady track.

Part of the problem is that for all that Melanie is bright, and emotional, and effusive, she’s also a pretty closed book when it comes to the stuff that really matters. They’ve touched on some things, hesitantly – from a few off-hand comments, Georgie’s aware that Melanie’s parents have both passed away, and Melanie knows that Georgie went through something at university that changed her – but it’s only really enough that Georgie knows there are some things that Melanie keeps back sometimes.

So when it comes to the question of Melanie and what her feelings for Georgie are – Georgie doesn’t know, and she doesn’t really know how to go about finding out. She’s never been particularly good at being friends before dating – Jon, specifically, was a blind date organised by friends, which went surprisingly well until eventually it didn’t – so this isn’t an area that she has a lot of expertise in. And the timing of it all is an irritating paradox – by the time she realises the strength and nature of her feelings, she and Melanie are close enough that the potential of losing her as a friend is something Georgie doesn’t know if she can tolerate.

She’ll wait, she decides. Melanie has never struck her as someone afraid of going after what she wants, and Georgie’s pretty sure she unintentionally passed the point of being subtle about her feelings a long way back. If Melanie feels any type of way other than friendship towards Georgie then eventually, she’s sure, it will come up.

Once, just once, Georgie thinks, it does.

It’s an evening like any other, to start with. Georgie usually gets drinks with Melanie along with everyone else on Fridays, but their Tuesday evenings are theirs and theirs alone – it’s usually posting day for Ghost Hunt UK episodes, and Melanie likes to unwind with a few drinks at their local bar once she’s finished her part of it, and start batting ideas for future episodes back and forth with Georgie. And it goes the same way as it usually does – Melanie makes fun of Georgie for drinking cider while at the same time sipping the fruitiest, most disgusting cocktail that the bar sells, they discuss this week’s Ghost Hunt episode, and then they get into an two-hour long discussion about the hot ghost topic of the week, which this week is Plas Teg and whether or not Melanie’s ever actually seen any ghosts in Wales.

So it’s all completely normal, until they’re standing outside Georgie’s door, Georgie viciously mocking Melanie’s brutally English pronunciation of Llanelli while trying to get the key into the lock, and then Georgie realises. They’re both standing outside her door. Her, and Melanie. Not just her.

Melanie seems to come to the same realisation at the same time. She stops halfway through what was probably going to be a very impassioned argument, and frowns.

It’s not like Melanie’s never stayed over before – Georgie’s thrown a few parties that ended too late for the Tube, and sometimes when Melanie’s over for a movie marathon they’ll plan ahead and make up a bed for her on the couch. But they’ve never really been here, before – Melanie standing on Georgie’s doorstep, looking at her in a way that Georgie’s never seen before. A simple curiosity, like she’s just waiting to see what Georgie’s going to do next.

Georgie’s heart starts thumping. She focuses a little more carefully on unlocking the door.

When they get inside, Georgie goes straight for the kitchen to get them both glasses of water, if only so she has something to do with her hands. By the time she gets back, Melanie’s curled up on the sofa, looking peaceful. Just the sight of her there in Georgie’s living room – relaxed, the throw already pulled up over her – looks and feels so right it makes Georgie’s heart start doing backflips.

When Georgie sits down next to her, Melanie doesn’t wait a second before climbing over, removing the drinks from her hands and settling onto her lap. She tucks her head under Georgie’s chin and sighs. It would almost, almost be convincing, if there wasn’t a tiny, audible shake to it.

Georgie herself feels electrified, from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers. She leans back into the sofa and Melanie leans back with her, settling one hand on her leg and another over her sternum. Georgie can’t imagine what Melanie must be feeling: how hard her heart must be going, its hummingbird beat under her skin.

When she wraps both her arms around Melanie, Melanie tilts her head back and presses a kiss to the underside of Georgie’s jaw. Then she rests her head against Georgie’s sternum, and lets out another quiet, soft sigh.

They stay like that for maybe twenty minutes, until Georgie’s leg has gone dead enough under Melanie’s weight that she thinks it’s possible it no longer exists.

When she shifts slightly to wake it, Melanie stretches out, and in one smooth movement pulls her down to lying. Georgie finds that she is content to just let herself be moved as Melanie spreads the throw over both of them, and folds her arms around Georgie from behind. When Melanie presses a quick, soft kiss to the back of Georgie’s neck, she feels it down to her toes. She smiles.

What strikes Georgie about all of it, about every movement Melanie makes, is how natural it all feels, how inevitable: like she’s standing outside of herself, watching the two of them embrace like it’s a film she already knows the ends of. And it’s strange, Georgie thinks, that for all that Melanie’s so tiny, here and now – Melanie’s arms around her chest, Melanie’s breath on the back of her neck, her knee pressing into the back of Georgie’s thigh – Georgie’s never felt so encompassed, so swallowed up by the sheer fact of anyone before.

“Melanie?” Georgie says quietly, and Melanie makes a muted, nervous question sound. She loosens her arms around Georgie just a little.

Georgie reconsiders. They don’t have to talk about it, she thinks. They can just do this. Be this. Whatever Melanie wants this to be. It's worked so far.

“Nothing,” she says, and draws Melanie’s arms tight around her again.

When she wakes the next morning, her head is pounding, a chunk of Melanie’s hair is in her mouth and Melanie is snoring into her shoulder as loud as a fucking chainsaw. Georgie doesn’t know if she’s ever been happier.

When she stretches, Melanie moves against her and tightens her arms across Georgie’s chest just a little more.

“Georgie?” she says, sleepily. She doesn’t open her eyes. “Please go back to sleep or I will murder you.”

“Oh, you could try,” Georgie scoffs, but she’s already pushing her face back into Melanie’s hair. She closes her eyes.

The next time she wakes up, she’s alone on the sofa, but she can hear noises coming from her kitchen. Yawning, she opens the door to find Melanie standing next to the toaster, fiddling with a jar of coffee.

She looks up when Georgie enters, and there isn’t a hint of hesitation or embarrassment in the way she looks at Georgie: it’s all gentle fondness and the same trademark Melanie confidence. Caught, Georgie just looks at her: aware that what she’s feeling must be showing all over her face but not really caring enough to try and conceal it. Melanie gives her a little smirk that’s not quite enough to cover up, finally, some traces of self-consciousness. She’s blushing. Georgie grins wider.

Then Melanie gets a bright, wicked gleam in her eye that Georgie knows all too well, and slams the jar down on the countertop with a deafening bang.

“Feeling okay this morning?” she says.

Georgie is disgusted by how much she loves this woman.

“Ow,” she says, and Melanie points and laughs.

And then Melanie pours them the coffee and Georgie puts on some toast and eggs and they sit down together to eat, and Georgie is struck by how badly she wants to do this every day: coffee, breakfast, chatting shit with Melanie about what’s on at work, Melanie nudging her ankle gently under the table.

“I don’t reckon there’s gonna be much worse than the asbestos, but it’s for the views. CMH is a hell of a draw,” Melanie says, and Georgie rolls her eyes, smiling. “I mean, according to Pete, that’s scary enough.”

“You’ve still got Sarah’s address?” Georgie says, and Melanie nods, mouth full of toast.

“I know you don’t have the permits for this,” Georgie says to her, wagging a finger. “If you get caught by the police, I am not bailing you out.”

Melanie swallows.

“Liar,” she says warmly, and flashes Georgie a smile.

Georgie thinks about that evening a lot over the next year.

Not for any particular reason, to start with - just because it's thrilling to think about, falling asleep next to Melanie and waking up next to Melanie and seeing Melanie standing in her kitchen, blushing in a way that Georgie never thought she'd see from her. But as the weeks and months pass and Melanie starts slowly but undeniably pulling away, there's a little bit of Georgie that wonders whether it had anything to do with that evening.

It hurts. And if Georgie's being honest, it’s not just that nothing else ever really develops between them – Georgie was never one hundred percent expecting something, so the absence of anything isn’t a shock as much as it’s just something Georgie knows she has to learn how to live with. It’s more that the things that they’re already doing together – which at this point is almost everything – start to be things that Melanie prefers to do separately, without her even ever really saying as much. Weekly drop-day drinks become fortnightly, and then once every three or four weeks if Georgie’s lucky, and they never last half as long. Georgie’s weekends start freeing up again and she has to figure out what the fuck she ever did before Melanie barrelled into her life and started taking up all her free time.

And it’s – it’s fine, Georgie thinks, as much as it hurts. Melanie is her own person, she can do whatever she wants. She doesn’t have to work with Georgie, get drinks with Georgie. Spend time with Georgie. But when it seems like it’s not just her that Melanie’s pulling away from – Andy says he doesn’t see her much either these days, and she’s working by herself a lot more than she ever used to – it’s just worrying.

It’s not like she doesn’t bring it up occasionally. But Melanie refuses to talk about it to the extent that she won’t even admit that she’s doing anything different, even when Georgie points out – as tactfully as she can – how little the others see her these days, little enough that Georgie isn’t even sure if their production company is still going.

And without Melanie talking about it, then it’s just Georgie and Georgie’s worries and Georgie’s interpretations of these things, muddied by Georgie’s own feelings enough that she can’t entirely tell what Melanie’s doing.

So it’s not until the scrapyard video surfaces that she’s completely sure.

It takes a few days between Melanie taking that trip – one that she never told Georgie about, which doesn’t really surprise Georgie these days – and the video picking up enough speed to go viral. And in all that time, Georgie has no contact with Melanie, not a coffee or a call or a text. But it’s the state of things between them that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence, and by this point Georgie’s made her peace with that. Melanie has her own life, and they can both be guilty of being caught up in their own projects now they’re not actively working together so much.

So she sends her usual texts – stories about her day, little questions she has about whatever springs to mind, anything she sees on the internet that she thinks might make Melanie laugh – and she doesn’t pay too much attention to what Melanie’s texting back. Or, what she isn’t.

Then as soon as the scrapyard video loads on her Youtube suggestions, she’s scrambling to call Melanie’s number. And again, and again, and again, when Melanie doesn’t pick up the first five times. Then she grabs her keys and coat and makes for the Tube, and half an hour later she’s banging on Melanie’s door.

When Melanie opens it, she looks like absolute hell. Georgie isn’t surprised by that, but what does surprise her is how Melanie’s scowl grows deeper when she sees who’s standing on the doorstep. It hurts more for being so unexpected, and that’s maybe why the cautiously constructed platitude that she’s been rehearsing all the way here gets lost on its way out of her mouth.

“What happened?” she says instead, and she finds she doesn’t just mean the video, she means all of it: the brush-offs, distance, the silence of the past twelve months.

Melanie scowls, if possible, even more deeply.

“Oh, come to get the full story, have you?” she bites, and the unexpected violence in her voice makes Georgie flinch. “Wanna get the tale of the ghost nutter from her own mouth?”

“Jesus – no,” Georgie says, horrified. “Of course not, why the fuck would you – god, Melanie, are you okay?”

Melanie goes ashen, and then flushes again. Her knuckles are pale where they’re clutched into the sleeves of her jumper. Brittle, a voice in Georgie’s head is saying, brittle, brittle, you always knew this was coming, but there isn’t anything but grief and sorrow underneath it.

Melanie leans in close; Georgie holds her breath.

“Leave me alone,” Melanie hisses, and slams the door.

Georgie waits until she gets home before she begins to cry.

Georgie knows Melanie. This is what she tells herself: she knows Melanie, knows the floods and tides of her quicksilver anger and how fast they can come and go. So it’ll be fine in the end, she reasons, once she’s calmed down. She’s done as much as she can – as much as is fair for her to do, really. So the ball’s in Melanie’s court.

And once Melanie’s had some time, she can call Georgie back and Georgie will be almost completely sympathetic and will absolutely wait until she’s really feeling better until she asks for some grovelling and apologies. Melanie will probably even apologise to her without any prompting: she’s like that, a lot of the time, capable of surprising humility. It will be fine.

Around the five day mark, she breaks and sends a text, and then a week later, another. She doesn’t get a reply. She doesn’t know what she was expecting. She’s still disappointed.

One month in, she’s concerned enough that she goes around to knock on the door, but nobody answers and the windows are dark. And that’s worrying enough that she spends the week after that reaching out to all the mutual acquaintances she knows, but none of them completely know what’s happened to her, although some have heard stories – or they just don’t care. None of Melanie’s social media accounts are updating, and Ghost Hunt UK has been silent for months. She sends another text. She gets nothing.

Scrolling through pages and pages of dead feed and looking at the small "read" ticks on the text messages she sent, that’s when Georgie has to accept it. Regardless of whether it has anything to do with Georgie – and it probably doesn’t, and Georgie doesn’t know whether that makes it hurt more or less – Melanie’s clearly done, with all of it, and done with her.

It feels like a breakup. And worse than any breakup she’s ever had before, because the terrible, stupid thing about them never having fucking said or done anything about it is that it leaves Georgie completely untethered. There’s no singular event she can hang her hat on to see, “Here, that’s where we kissed or fucked or said I love you.” She’s got a few small touches over a year ago, and a million memories that could just be coloured by her own useless feelings, no matter how sure she was in the moment.

She gets very, very drunk one night and tells Andy all about it, and he holds her while she cries and consoles her and tells her all about his own, stupid breakup stories. And she’s grateful and it helps -but not enough that she can stop thinking about it, as much as it hurts.

When Jon crash lands on her doorstep, for a while she’s really too busy trying to figure out what’s happening with her to keep moping after Melanie. It’s helpful to have something else to focus on, and Jon is so clearly the verge of toppling into something that trying to keep him on an even keel is an incredibly effective distraction.

Quite apart from that, it’s just genuinely good to see him again. He’s a good man with a sharp mind and a blistering sense of humour, and she thinks she’d forgotten, in the wake of the blazing rows that ended their relationship, that they ever used to have fun together.

But after a few weeks of cautious flat-sharing, Georgie can’t deny any more that he has the same problem he’s always had – obsessions and self-obsessions, a complete disregard for consequences, throwing into things that aren’t healthy for him – only this time it’s exacerbated by circumstances to the point where it’s no longer just risky, but actively life-threatening. And again, just like it was when they dated, it’s never just Jon who’s affected by the things he does and the choices that he makes, as much as he tells himself it is. It’s her too. And she deserves better.

When the police get involved, Georgie stops being just worried and starts being seriously concerned. When someone breaks into her flat, Georgie draws the line.

To be honest, at this point she thinks she’s just tired. She’s doing as much as she can – the same as she did for Melanie, she thinks, and hates herself for always thinking of Melanie, always always, hovering always on the edge of her mind. And she would like, just once, for someone to actively reach back and take the hand she’s trying to offer, instead of insisting they can do it all by themselves.

Then Jon leaves, and just like Melanie, he’s not her problem at more. And Georgie thinks that would like, just once, to have these kinds of problems – to have the people she cares about – solve themselves a different way.

When Melanie resurfaces and Georgie hears where she’s working now – not from Melanie herself, of course, but through Andy, who knows a guy who knew a guy who went to give a statement – it hurts as much as she thinks it fucking figures.

The quiet, cushioned way he tells her makes her suspect that everyone knows about the Archives now – that it’s no longer just a joke to everyone, that they all know there’s something fucked up and wrong happening there. And for a brief minute, she hates them all a little bit for not even trying to do anything about it – until she remembers she’s not going to do anything about it, either.

They made their choices, Georgie thinks. And she hates them too a little bit, for making her watch them make those choices, for them knowing she cares and doing it anyway. Like the fact that she cares about them is nothing but incidental to the things they’re chasing.

Jon blowing himself up is, of course, a prime fucking example of that.

The worst part of it – apart from everything else about it, really – is that Jon never bothered to remove her as his emergency contact. She doesn’t know when he did it in the first place – when they were still dating, maybe, or maybe when he was staying with her for those months. And god, Georgie thinks, doesn’t it just say everything that the best person Jon can think to contact in case of an emergency is his estranged ex-girlfriend. It’s depressing because he deserves more as much as it is depressing because she does.

So she gets the call before anyone else, and has to explain to the staff that she’s just a friend, and no, he doesn’t have any family they can call, and saying that out loud kind of makes her want to cry even before she gets in to see Jon.

And then she does get in to see Jon, and she does cry.

She thinks the rest of his friends don’t handle it much better, when they eventually show up – the freckled white man who she thinks must be Martin looks like he’s on the verge of passing out the entire time, and despite the aura of undisturbed competence that the woman who introduces herself as Basira is trying to project, she’s drawn and ashen enough Georgie doesn’t think she’s too far away from that either.

Georgie waits a long time for Melanie to come through the door behind them. She doesn’t ask Jon’s friends where she is. Melanie doesn’t come.

In the end, it takes maybe eight weeks for her hospital visits to coincide with Melanie’s, and Georgie’s half-dreading it the whole time. Not that the others are much better – Martin and Basira are both closed off in two entirely different ways, neither of them really willing to speak to her at all and both of them, she thinks, wondering what she’s even doing there. She wonders that herself sometimes. Eventually, she comes to the conclusion that even if he's already turned down her help once, she still owes it to him to give him the choice, if he wakes up. When he wakes up. If he wants to change his mind, after this. And a little bit, of course, is waiting to run into Melanie.

Anticipating it doesn’t make it any easier when it happens. Just looking at her in the doorway of Jon’s hospital room, Georgie’s conflicting feelings of love and anger are feel like twin punches to her chest. She feels breathless, all the wind knocked out of her, and then she looks closer at Melanie and feels worse.

Melanie’s thinner than Georgie’s ever seen her before, and wired enough that Georgie wouldn’t be surprised if she started vibrating off the floor. Even before she notices Georgie, Georgie can tell that something is seriously, seriously wrong with her, in a way that makes Georgie want to cry: and then Melanie sees her and it all really goes to shit.

For a brief second Melanie just looks heartbroken, and then she looks embarrassed, and then it segues very quickly into furious.

“What are you doing here?” she hisses, and Georgie stands up from the bedside chair where she was reading to Jon, and she squares her jaw.

“Seeing my friend,” she says, refusing to back down. She plants herself more solidly between Melanie and Jon. “What are you doing here?”

“Seeing my friend,” says Melanie. “If you wouldn’t mind letting me by?”

Georgie doesn’t really have a choice, or any reason to say no. So they sit on opposite sides of Jon’s hospital bed and say absolutely nothing for maybe half an hour, until the simmering tension between them is thick and terrible enough that eventually Georgie just bites the bullet and leaves.

Georgie never sees her at the hospital again, although she herself keeps coming as often as she can over the next few months. She’s not sure whether Melanie’s just not coming whenever she’s around, or if she’s not visiting at all. Not that it really matters.

And then Jon wakes up and leaves the hospital, and in a horrible, stomach-churning way, Georgie feels it like an ending. The closure that Georgie’s been waiting for. She’s seen Melanie, and who’s made it very clear that she doesn’t feel any different than she did all that time ago when Georgie knocked on her door, and now there’s no chance at all they’re going to run into each other.

That’s it, Georgie thinks, trying to find some measure of peace in it. Time to move on.

So when Melanie shows up on her doorstep a few months later, Georgie really isn't expecting it at all. And she’s not proud of it, but Georgie’s first, nasty inclination is to close the door again. It’s too soon after Jon, really, and she’s still stuck on the last time she saw Melanie. And there’s a tiny, mean part of her that thinks: how would it feel, for Melanie to be on the other side of that closing door?

But Melanie looks worse, if possible, than the last time Georgie saw her. She’s listing slightly to the left in a way that makes Georgie think that she’s hurt her leg. Brittle, Georgie thought of her when they’d first met, and again the last few times that Georgie saw her, but now she really looks it. Like if Georgie reached out and touched her, she’d shatter.

“Georgie,” Melanie says, simply. There’s none of the anger that Georgie’s expecting at all in it. She just sounds tired.

And honestly, it’s kind of crazy how fast all of Georgie’s anger falls away, and immediately she’s there again: on that sofa with a woman she loves more than breathing, the unspoken fragility of her feelings hanging like spun sugar in the air between them.

“I’m sorry,” Melanie says, quietly. She rests a hand against the doorframe. There’s an ocean of feeling under that that Georgie doesn’t know how to read. “I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to.”

Georgie opens the door, and lets her in.

Georgie gets her settled with a cup of tea, and waits for Melanie to start talking. Which she does, after a minute of curling around the cup in a way that makes Georgie think it's maybe been a long time since someone did even that for her. Georgie's trying not to feel any way about that, until she understands what Melanie's doing and why she's here.

“I know I owe you an explanation,” Melanie starts, pulling the cup into her chest. “I, um. I think I blamed you. That's why I - uh, pulled away. Why I pushed you away. I mean – it all started going to shit after we went to the CMH, and you were the one who put me in touch with Sarah Baldwin in the first place. But I know that was stupid - so stupid, and I'm  - sorry.”

“Melanie, I didn’t –“ says Georgie, heatedly, and Melanie holds up a hand.

“I know, I know,” she says, and underneath the tiredness she does sound like she’s laughing at herself a little. “I figured out pretty quickly that you weren’t behind some torturous plot to drive me out of the ghost hunt community by setting me up with some eldritch sound tech. But it felt – good, I suppose, to have someone else to blame. And if it helps, you weren’t the only one. Pretty much everyone I know got the rough end of the stick from me for – well, for a while. I mean, some of them deserved it. But you – you didn’t. So I’m sorry.”

The apology seems to come out slightly easier this time.

“I… appreciate that,” says Georgie, which is the best she can do at the moment.

Melanie grimaces.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she says, and Georgie's heartbroken to see that she's crying, silently. “I mean, it got complicated for a while, supernaturally speaking, the whole blame and anger thing. But I want to be done with it, Georgie, I really do. I want to leave that - place, and I wanna be better and do better. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. And I know you have no reason to help me – God knows you have no reason to help me – but you were the only person I could think to come to.”

She grimaces again, and then takes a deep breath and looks Georgie straight in the eye.

“No,” she says, a little more firmly. “You were the only person I wanted to come to.”

This is what fear feels like, Georgie thinks, it must be: grief and love and anger and sadness, all wrapped up together in Georgie’s chest, reaching up into her throat, so strong she might drown. She hasn’t missed it.

“So, I love you,” Georgie says to her, and wonders absently how she’d be feeling about admitting that if she was still capable of being scared. “I have done for a long time – I still do. I think you probably knew. Sorry, I know this is terrible timing. And I’m not saying it because I expect anything, Melanie – I’m not asking you for anything. But if we’re laying it all out, here, I – love you. So whatever you need – if you’re serious about getting better – whatever you need, I’ll help you.”

Melanie looks at her for a long, long time. Her face is open, vulnerable in a way that Georgie almost didn’t think she’d ever get to see again, cycling from guilt to heartbreak to happiness and landing on a kind of fragile, wistful hope that hurts Georgie to look at. Then she reaches over and takes Georgie’s hand.

“Georgie, I – I’m sorry,” she says. “Okay. I’m not going to drag you into this now. That wouldn’t be fair on you or me. But if - when I’m better, God. Georgie. Believe me, I would love to have a good, long conversation about that. I think you know that too.”

“I appreciate that,” Georgie says, and squeezes her eyes shut for a second, like it’ll hurt less if she can’t see Melanie’s reaction to what’s coming. “But I need you to understand something, and I’m sorry. But I’ve just been through this with Jon, and I’ve already been through this with you once. So if I’m going to help you, I need you to choose to get better. I know you’ve been through a lot, but I cannot burn myself out trying to keep you warm. That’s not useful to me or to you. So I need you to understand that I will help you to the best of my abilities – as long as you’re willing to try and help yourself.”

She looks back at Melanie, who for a brief second just looks gutted: bitter and angry. And then, with what seems like a real effort, Georgie watches her push it away. She takes a deep breath and lets out a small, brittle laugh.

“You know, that’s fair,” she says. “You’re right. I mean, I can’t promise I’m gonna get better right away. But I promise that I’m gonna try. Is that enough for you?”

Georgie grips her hand, relieved.

“That’ll do, yeah,” she says.

Georgie’s always known Melanie is the type of person to throw herself into something without hesitation. It turns out that this dedication extends to recovery, in the kind of relentless, dogged way that makes Georgie feel a million different things enough that it's difficult to separate them all - love, sorrow, respect and heartbreak, all the way down to her bones.

And it’s not, Georgie knows, like it’s easy for her. Melanie tells her the whole story in bits and pieces over the next few weeks, and she’s not shy about explaining how much of it happened before she ever got stabbed or shot or infected; how much of it really was just her. But the way she sets about dismantling all of it kind of makes Georgie want to cry every fucking time she looks at her: how brave Melanie is, how hard she works. How difficult it must be to let go of something that’s been colouring everything you think and feel for years.

It’s not an exact science. They're shy about each other to start with: it takes a while for Georgie to really know what do say, and she thinks Melanie feels the same way too. And it doesn't help that Melanie has constant, unceasing trouble falling on the right side of angry. Georgie gets used to watching Melanie restrain herself whenever she’s sparked off something in the wrong way, her muscles tensing and relaxing in a way Georgie knows means she’s forcing herself to let it go. But sometimes she’ll go too far in the other direction: she’ll be mousy and quiet in response to Georgie’s gentle jabs, in a way that feels intrinsically wrong to Georgie, and it takes time and practise to find a happy middle.

There’s an hour-long argument when Georgie finds her getting up for work the first day before Melanie convinces her she still needs to go in, and when she comes back every day she’s a little more wired, a little more drained in a way that Georgie fucking hates to see. But she insists it’s better, in a way that doesn’t make sense until Melanie tells her that she used to be living there, and that makes Georgie want to break something almost as much as it makes her want to kidnap Jonathan Sims and his whole stupid crowd of friends.

But he’s made her choice, and it’s not the same one Melanie did, and she knows that all she can do now is be there for Melanie in whatever capacity she’s capable of. And what that boils down to, really, is the two of them trying to make a life for Melanie outside of what’s happening to her that’s enough for Melanie to cling on to, and Georgie works as hard as she can do make that happen. Listening to Melanie talk about it all, chatting about her own stupid problems to make Melanie laugh, trying to get Melanie to pick up some new hobbies so she’s got something else to think about in the hours she’s at the Institute. Taking Melanie to therapy every week - and most weeks she’ll talk even about it with Georgie without Georgie ever asking.

She sets up weekly drinks for them like they used to do together, and once she brings Melanie back along to Friday night at the pub with everyone, and looks daggers at anyone who seems like they might open their mouth to say something stupid. Andy gently draws her into a long conversation about the shitty TV she’s missed, in a natural, offhand way Georgie could fucking kiss him for. And that helps more than anything, Georgie thinks, watching how calm and bright and chatty she is on the way back to Georgie’s flat: remembering there’s a whole world out there, outside of ghosts and gods and the fucking Archives that’s unstoppably, endlessly still happening.

In small steps, Georgie can see the change: she stops having to restrain those moments of anger quite so much, and she’s more confident about ripping into Georgie at the right moments, in the old, combative kind of humour that Georgie’s missed like crazy. It's not like she goes back to the same person she was: she’s undeniably different now, a little calmer and a little sadder, far less impulsive.

But Georgie isn’t the same person either, and she thinks the two of them fit together just as well as they used to. Or better. Or they will do, in the end, Georgie thinks, and that's what counts.

When Melanie tells her that she’s found a way to leave the Archives, Georgie cries more than she does.

“It has to go that far?” says Georgie. They’re sitting on Georgie’s sofa, knee to knee, because Melanie had wanted to tell her in person. Which Georgie is, admittedly, grateful for. “God, Melanie – God.”

Melanie’s hands are folded tightly in her lap, her skin pale over her knuckles.

“I know,” she says. “But Jon’s sure it worked for a previous assistant, and he says the other guy tried almost everything else. It’s worth it, Georgie, you know, I – it’s a price I don’t mind paying. I’m tired of being stuck there. I want to move on. God knows I don’t want to leave the others, but it’s their choice too, I guess.”

Georgie leans over and covers Melanie’s hands with one of her own.

“Okay,” she says. “Have you – uh, have you thought about when? And how?”

“Give it a few days, maybe a week?” Melanie muses. “Enough time that I can really research it, make sure that I know what I’m getting into. Buy the Admiral a little bell so I don’t end up kicking him - which is my highest priority, you get it. And you can clean up your pigsty of a flat, so I’m not tripping over dirty jumpers I can’t see every time I get off the sofa.”

“You’re the worst,” Georgie informs her, seriously, and Melanie knocks her elbow. And then she looks right at Georgie, grimaces, and takes a very deep breath.

“Are you s-?” she starts quietly.

Georgie knows what she’s about to say and she absolutely will not stand for it.

“It’s not a question,” she says, cutting across her immediately. “Don’t be stupid. Yes, Melanie. This doesn't change anything.”

They call her from the hospital a few days later. Georgie finds that knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it any easier.

When they finally let her in, Georgie sits next to her bed, and tries very hard not to think about the last time she did this, how interminably long it was before Jon moved or breathed or woke up, and how he made the same fucking choices all over again when he did so. But she can see Melanie’s chest rising and falling steadily in the bed next to her, and she’d promised Georgie she was going to be fine.

It's not going to be like Jon, Georgie thinks. It already isn't. It's going to be better.

Between Melanie's therapy records and the obviously self-inflicted nature of her wounds, they take her into psychiatric observation for a few days and don’t let anyone see her at all. Neither Georgie nor Melanie had planned for this, and she thinks that the doctor who tells her must see that on her face, because he’s very calm and reassuring when he explains the situation to her. It’s a just-in-case thing, he says – she’s lucid and she’s co-operating, so she’s not sectioned, and if she keeps responding well to treatment then she should be fine to go home within a few weeks, maybe earlier. And she should be allowed visitors in just a few days. Georgie has to be content with that.

She takes a week off What the Ghost, citing personal issues, and calls Andy to let him know – not all of it, just enough to keep him in the loop. The gratefulness and sorrow in his voice as he thanks her for calling is something she thinks she’s going to have to tell Melanie about, to remind her that there are other people out there who care about her.

Another doctor calls her up a few days later, from the wing where Melanie’s staying.

“We couldn’t save her vision,” he says, quietly, and Georgie doesn’t really know how to pretend she’s not grateful for that. “But she’s doing well – very well, in fact, so you’re welcome to come in and spend some time with her if you’d like.”

Georgie doesn’t really remember the drive. It feels a little like she hung up the phone, and then the next moment she had her hand on the door of the hospital’s visiting room, and inside there Melanie is.

She’s sitting quietly at a table, one hand resting gently on top while the other fiddles with the white cane that she’s leaned up next to her. But of course, what Georgie’s really looking at is those bandages. Bright white, stark against her dark hair. Unmissable. Georgie spends a few seconds just looking at them.

But apart from she looks well, all things considered, when Georgie can drag her eyes away – her face is calm, and her back is straight, and straightens even further when she hears Georgie close the door with a quiet click. And Georgie had promised her that she wasn’t going to make a fuss about things. It’s fine for her to cry, though, Georgie reasons. As long as she doesn’t make a sound. Melanie won’t know.

“Georgie?” Melanie says, and she sounds peaceful in a way Georgie hasn’t heard from her in years. Georgie, despite herself, lets out a quiet sob.

“Sorry,” she says, putting a hand over her mouth. “Yeah. Sorry, I’m not sad, I promise, it’s just – you did it. God, Melanie.”

She walks over, and when she stops just next to Melanie, Melanie leans into her and lets Georgie put a hand against the side of her face.

Melanie smiles.

“I think I’m ready to have that conversation now, if you are,” she says, quietly, and reaches up to cover Georgie’s hand.

Melanie’s only in the hospital for few days after that, and Georgie visits every day. The doctor is obviously worried about letting her leave so soon, but Georgie leans heavily on her work-from-home job and how safe her flat is and how she’s around all the time, and he relents. He furnishes them with a packed schedule of nurse visits and occupational therapists and gives Georgie a truly stunning pile of literature.

And then finally they’re walking across the parking lot, Melanie small and solid inside the circle of her arm, Georgie feeling every emotion under the sun, and for some reason Melanie’s quietly laughing.

“What is it?” Georgie says to her. “You’re laughing? Are you alright?”

“I just-“ Melanie says, “I did it, you know. It’s over, I’m out of it. Employment ended at the Magnus Institute. Hell of an exit interview, right? Probably still not the worst way I’ve ever left a job. Did I ever tell you what working at McDonalds was like?”

“Oh my god,” says Georgie, in disbelief. She stops walking, and Melanie stops too. She’s crying, and laughing, and at the genuine, light tone of Melanie’s voice, for the first time she really lets herself believe that Melanie is going to be okay. “Oh my god, Melanie, you cannot be making jokes about this. Are you serious? I hate you.”

“Liar,” says Melanie, a little choked, and tucks herself in a bit tighter to Georgie’s side.

Melanie spends most of the next few weeks just sleeping, and Georgie spends a truly mindblowing amount of it curled up next to her with the Admiral, just watching her sleep. She works when she has to, sometimes from the same room when Melanie’s awake because Melanie likes to listen – “I like hearing you talk,” she says, pressing a kiss to the palm of Georgie’s hand, “It grounds me,” – but mostly it’s just her and Melanie, resting up together.

That is, when Melanie’s not partaking in the endless parade of nurse appointments. Georgie can tell how much she dislikes talking to the community psychiatric nurses – not that she really has any hope of honestly explaining her actions, but Georgie can tell it grates on her to know the kind of assumptions that the home nurses are making about her – but the occupational therapy ones are different.

Georgie knows how independent Melanie is as a person and as much as she cares about Georgie, how much it must have taken for Melanie to have even come to her for help in the first place. So everything that Melanie relearns how to do, either through the OT appointments or just through her own stubborn-minded experimentation – to cook and clean and traverse a space – is just a little bit more confidence that Melanie regains in herself, in a way that Georgie is unbelievably happy to see. A lot of it’s small adaptations and tricks that Georgie would never really have thought of, and Melanie absorbs it all equally, with the same patience and determination that she’s shown towards every other part of her recovery.

When the OT nurse suggests a deeper, more intensive course to teach her cane and Braille skills, Melanie’s excited when she first tells Georgie about it, and then she gets quieter and quieter over the course of their conversation in a way that Georgie definitely knows something about it is bothering her.

“Did you wanna talk about it?” Georgie says, when Melanie’s been silent for a while. They're curled up together on the sofa: Melanie settles back against her chest.

“I don’t know,” she says, quietly. “I guess. It’s the – it’s the after, I think. I feel like I’ve been trying to cope with all this for so long that I don’t really know what I’m gonna do outside it. I don’t really want to go back to Ghost Hunt, now that I know what’s out there – I think I’ve had enough, you know? But I don’t really know what else I would do.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Georgie asks.

“No,” Melanie admits quietly. “Not yet, at least.”

“We’ve got time,” Georgie tells her, and kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll figure it out.”

Melanie turns to kiss her.

“Yeah,” she says. “We’ve got time. I like that.”

When the world ends, Melanie’s sleeping, so Georgie watches it happen alone.

It’s mid-afternoon when it happens, which is part of the reason why she doesn’t really compute it for the first few seconds. The world can’t end during the afternoon, she thinks, staring dazedly through the kitchen window at what used to be the sky. That’s not how it works. It’s the kind of thing that happens at midnight, or during an evening thunderstorm. And it’s London. And it’s cloudy, and it’s October.

She keeps staring at the sky. The sky stares back. Georgie decides very quickly that she needs to find her phone.

She calls Jon, who doesn’t pick up, and she calls the Archives, which don’t pick up, and then she calls Basira, who sounds like she’s been awake for approximately sixty days and has given up any hope of ever getting some rest.

Paradoxically, the sheer tiredness in her voice makes Georgie feel a little better about it all – like if there’s just one other person out there who isn’t driven to panic by what is probably, the more she thinks about it, probably the end of the world, at least as she knows it, then maybe she’s going to be able to cope too.

“Don’t leave your place,” Basira says to her. “Lock your door. Don’t answer it to anyone but me, but don’t answer it to me until I call you from outside to let you know it’s really me. I don’t know what’s happening, but clearly it’s not good. But I’m coming, Georgie, and we will figure things out from there.”

She hangs out without saying goodbye.

In the meantime, Georgie goes to wake Melanie. When she switches on the bedside lamp, the noise of it is enough to startle her awake.

“Georgie?” she says quietly, and stretches out. “Everything okay?”

Georgie just looks at her, for one moment: the slope of her nose and the sweep of her hair, dim in the dull light of her bedside lamp. She just wants to take a moment, she thinks: just one more moment of normalcy that she can remember later, when it was just the two of them, in love, safe inside Georgie’s flat.

“Georgie?” Melanie prompts.

“I’ve got some bad news,” Georgie says, and then stops. How do you tell the woman you love the world is probably ending? Especially when she knew there was a chance this was coming?

Melanie props herself up on her elbows, waiting.

“Something’s happened,” Georgie says. “Things have gone… wrong. Basira’s on her way now, and we’re gonna try and figure it out together.”

“What do you mean, wrong?” Melanie asks, slowly. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Georgie says. “But the sky outside… Melanie, I think something really bad’s happening. Whatever Jon was trying to stop, whatever you guys were helping him to prevent, I – I don’t think it worked.”

“Oh,” says Melanie, very quietly. She raises one hand to touch her eyelids. Her fingers are shaking where they press against her skin.

“Hey. Hmm,” she says. “Okay. So. That means the end of the world, as far as I understand it. God. Couldn’t have waited a few weeks, could I? Seems a bit stupid now.”

“I’m sorry,” says Georgie, and she’s trying very hard to keep her voice from breaking. “I know.”

“So, we need to figure out what we’re gonna do now, right?” says Melanie, very evenly, and Georgie climbs onto the bed next to her.

“Basira’s coming over,” she says, taking Melanie’s hand. “We can sit tight until then. And then we’ll put together everything that we know, figure it all out from there.”

“Okay,” says Melanie, still in that worryingly even voice. Georgie flips onto her side, and touches two fingers to Melanie’s cheek.

“You’re gonna be okay?” she says.  

Melanie leans into her. She lets out a long, shaky breath.

“Do you remember when we used to do all that crazy stuff together?” she starts, and Georgie can hear that she’s crying already. “You know I was so scared, all the time, right? Like literally every time we got into a plane or strapped on a helmet or whatever, I’d think why the fuck are we doing this? But every time I did it, you’d take my hand or I’d look at your face and I’d know you weren’t scared at all. And then I could do it. You just told me the world was probably ending. So no, god, Georgie, I’m not okay right now. But I love you and I trust you. So all I need for you is to tell me you’re not scared, and I’ll be fine.”

Georgie leans in close, rests her forehead against Melanie’s.

“I’m not scared,” she says. This is it, she thinks, if there's any reason why she is the way she is, the reason why she lost her fear all those years ago. This must be it. So that she could be here, now, for Melanie, while all this is happening. So they can make it through together.

Melanie takes a deep breath, and then reaches up to rest her fingers over Georgie’s mouth. She smiles.

“Okay,” she says. "Me neither."