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Martin stared around the hotel room in growing frustration. He hated misplacing things. He didn't have that many possessions to start with and he was always so careful with what he had. Losing something always made him flustered and he knew that when he got flustered he tended to get fussy, and when he fussed Douglas got tetchy and then teased him with that nasty edge to his voice which always made Martin feel sick inside and then the whole thing spiralled down into disaster.
This wasn't the first time either, which made it worse, because each time it'd happened, he'd ended up having to ask Douglas, and Douglas of course, of course, knew the answer, and how did he always do that?
"Douglas, I don't suppose you've seen my hat, have you?"
"Your glorious tower of braid? Why captain, how careless of you. But I do believe I spy it twinkling away in this corner."
And yet again Douglas pulled his hat out of a corner where Martin could swear he'd looked five minutes previously, and the hat had an oddly dusty look to it, and something was off, but he couldn't quite work out what. He glared resentfully at where Douglas was lounged on his hotel bed, smirking down at his shiny new ipad. "Found something funny, have you?" he said, hating the way his voice sounded envious and snide at the same time, but sometimes Douglas made him feel so small, apparently just be existing.
"Just some comments from my daughter's friends on her tumblr," said Douglas casually.
"What? Your daughter has tumblers on the web? How does that work? Isn't she a little young to be tippling with whiskey?"
"Tumblr, Martin. Oh you wouldn't understand. Best stick to your papyrus and quill. Suffice it to say, she had a quite delightful lemon collection. Now, shouldn't we be on our way?" Douglas smirked at Martin as he rolled off the bed, slipped his ipad into his flight bag and somehow had gone from horizontal to ready to leave in two minutes flat, the way he always did. Martin grabbed his things in an awkward flurry, ran after him, realised he'd left his hat on the bed, hurried back, and began yet another day a flustered wreck in the wake of Douglas bloody Richardson.
Something was off about the whole thing and he was going to find out what it was.
It took him over an hour that night on his computer to work out how to spell tumblr - what was it that youngsters these days had against vowels? Then he had to work out what it was and then wade through all the entries that had to do with lemons, but when he found the posts of sky_goddess he knew he was close, and when he saw the photos - well, he was going to have some things to say to one Mr Richardson in the morning.
* * *
"Douglas. A word. If you please. Outside." They were on standby for an important businessman who was likely to turn up at no notice sometime during the morning, so even Douglas had had to deign to put in an appearance.
"Gosh, captain, so very formal. And what can I do for you on this fine morning?" Douglas strolled out of the portacabin door and leaned casually against the outside wall.
Martin opened his mouth and paused. He knew he was going to sound as if he was whining and he already hated himself for it. But dammit, somethings were just too much to put up with. "Look Douglas, I know you despise me, okay? I know you haven't the smallest speck of respect for my dignity. You make that perfectly clear. But don't you think sharing that sentiment with the entire internet is taking things a bit far?"
"I fear you've lost me, oh sir. Which of the many ills of the internet am I to blame for?"
"That tumblr thingie. All those photos of my captain's hat, with a lemon perched on top of it, in stupid locations all over the world." Martin took a deep breath, he could hear his voice wobbling, he knew it gave away how horribly he was hurt by this and all that did was given Douglas ever more leverage over him, but it was too late to stop now. "It's not enough to laugh at me to my face, now you had to get your daughter in on that act, and then share it with the entire world wide bloody web?"
"Ah, yes, that." To Martin's surprise Douglas did actually look rather uncomfortable. "Look Martin, it's not about you, alright?"
"Not about me?" Martin's voice rose into an incredulous squeak. "It's my captain's hat. It's you still after me about that awful flight in the Arctic. I apologised, I begged, I grovelled. Isn't that enough for you?"
"Just listen to me," Douglas snapped. "It's about my daughter, Jessica. The daughter who barely speaks to me. Who's got a step-dad younger than me, and richer, who actually lives with her. Oh yes, I've got visitation rights, but I miss half of them because I'm always off on last minutes flights for Carolyn, which I have to take so I have the money to pay the child support. And when I am free, once in a blue moon, Jessica's already got other plans, with friends or with her family - the family that doesn't include me."
Douglas was now pacing back and forth in front of the portacabin, talking rapidly and angrily down at the ground, with Martin awkwardly watching. "I phone her but it's never a good time for her to talk. I email her every few days, but I'm lucky to get two lines in reply. Until we went to that stupid Qiki place and I told her the story of the travelling lemon and your hat. She wrote back! She thought it was funny and she wanted a photo."
Douglas turned on Martin, half angry, half pleading. "So I borrowed your hat and set up a photo, plus a few extras. We were in Paris that week and I found all these quaint locations. And she loved them, she set up a tumblr for them and her friends loved them. And suddenly her dad was cool again, he was someone she was proud of. We had something we could do together. I know it won't last. She'll lose interest in a couple of months and I'll be out in the cold once more."
The anger was gone and Douglas was simply begging now. "Please Martin. Let me have this, just for now. I know I'm not a good father to her but I don't know what else to do."
Martin stood twisting his hat awkwardly in his hands, torn between his discomfort at the unusual sight of a dejected Douglas and his desire to protect the dignity of his hat. "I guess some of the locations were quite ingenious," he conceded at last.
Douglas snorted. "I nearly got myself arrested on two occasions. It was worth it, though."
"Well, as your captain I really shouldn't approve--" Martin stared down at the hat in his hands, and wondered what it would have been like to have a dad that had tried as hard as Douglas seemed to be trying. "It might be easier if you had someone to help you?"
"Martin? You're offering to help?" Douglas sounded incredulous.
"I'd be a help," protested Martin defensively. "I bet I can get to places you can't fit into, and at the very least you'd be less likely to end up in jail."
And suddenly Douglas was smiling at him, mouth quirked with that wicked grin that meant he and Martin were on the same side of the joke, rather than Martin being the butt of it, the grin that made Martin melt just a little inside and consider that he wasn't fooling himself when he thought of Douglas as his friend. "I like the way you think, Martin. I have had some ideas I couldn't quite pull off alone."
Martin just knew he was getting himself into a world of trouble agreeing to this, but it was worth it to see Douglas's eyes alight with mischief rather than dull with self-hatred. "Even if she does lose interest, we could take it over. I mean, how hard can it be? We fly planes for a living. We've got to be able to work out how to run a tumblr thingie."
Douglas grinned at him. "Well, while we're waiting for the client, do you want to see if we can sneak past Carl and get a hat-and-lemon photo on top of the control tower?"