Chapter Text
Luke groaned, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyebrows. He had a massive headache. But hey, he figured, spending the entire day with eyes glued to a mini-laptop screen would do that to a guy. Not to mention that the only thing he’d consumed that day was a double shot of (overpriced, burnt) espresso from the campus coffee shop. Bright side, he was done with data analysis for now. The last few readouts from the spectrometer had been...fucky, to say the least. That meant characterization of his products was on hold until he got in touch with the NMR tech to figure out what was wrong.
Sighing, he leaned back in his desk chair and tried to will his headache away. He flipped his phone over, checking for new notifications, and—was it five already? Jeez. Time to go home and maybe eat something so he didn’t feel so dizzy. He briefly considered the food options on campus.
“Is it worth twelve dollars to not crash my car on the drive home?” he muttered. He was the only one in the office, so he answered his own question with a shrug. “Nah.”
He slid his laptop into its padded cover—patterned with ducks, his current favorite animal—and zipped it securely closed. That went into the free backpack he’d claimed at the conference where he’d presented his first poster—good times, those were, when his results were making sense. He hummed a few notes as he swung his bag onto his shoulder and checked to make sure everything was in the right place. ID? In his wallet. Wallet? In his back pocket. Keys? In his backpack. Lab coat? Hung up on its hook. He did a quick walkthrough of the lab to make sure the hood sashes were all closed and nothing was on when it shouldn’t be. That done, he let the door close behind him with a loud ca-chunk.
Oh, he loved his old shitbox car. It was almost as old as he was and had just as many issues. It didn’t have Bluetooth capability or an aux port, so his musical options were radio or CDs.
And with the price of CDs? In this economy? He’d stick to the radio, thanks.
The dial turned with a satisfying click and the radio crackled to life.
“And welcome to our listeners just beginning their commutes home from work. As always, I am your host Alastor, and this is Johnny Cash singing ‘Rock Island Line.’”
Luke chuckled to himself. This guy, always with the oldies. He liked it, though. So different from the music he listened to while he was in lab. It was a nice way to separate the two parts of his day. He ran his hands through his recently-bleached hair and made one last, futile effort to banish his headache, then said a little prayer that his car would start. The ignition switch was clinging to life by its fingernails and it usually took a couple of tries to get the engine going. At least that was more time to listen to Alastor’s rather esoteric music.
It took until the end of the song for Luke’s car to finally agree to come to life, at which point Alastor’s smooth voice rolled back on to the waves.
“Dear listeners, I have for you the weather forecast for this evening and for your drive to work tomorrow. It’s looking like skies will be clear. Unfortunately, I’m also seeing that there will be some strong winds, and temperatures will remain cold for now.”
Luke sighed, wishing the winter would end. It was so much easier to spend all day in the lab when that didn’t mean missing all of the day’s sunlight.
“But take heart, listeners,” Alastor continued. “Warmer weather is on its way. And while I don’t trust a weatherman any farther than I can throw him—and I’m no athlete, ha-ha—February is nearly through. Soon we will have survived another winter and the flowers will be blooming again. On that note, for your listening pleasure, ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ by Perez Prado.”
Luke raised his eyebrows as he passed through the gate to campus. Sometimes Alastor managed to voice exactly what he was thinking, to the point that it was a little creepy. The jazz rolled out of his car’s crappy sound system and washed over him and he was able to ignore his headache a little better. The dizziness didn’t leave him, though, and he drove cautiously to his apartment building.
Once he had parked, he rested his head against the steering wheel and tried to make himself turn off the radio and step out into the cold world outside of his nice, warm car. Alastor would keep talking and playing music for the rest of the evening, and sitting and listening to him sounded nice. But gas wasn’t cheap, and Luke was still viciously hungry.
“And now that we’ve enjoyed the masterpiece that is Frank Sinatra’s ‘All or Nothing at All,’ I have an announcement to make.”
Luke picked his head up off the wheel and looked at the radio with interest.
“Now, dear listeners, this may not be as exciting for you as it is for me, but I am pleased to let you know that I will be teaching a short course on the history of radio and bringing in my antique radio collection as a teaching aid. I will be demonstrating their construction and operation, and discussing each model’s role in a major historical event.”
Luke held his breath.
“There will be three hour-long sessions, the first of which will be next Thursday—that’s the fourth of March. The following two will be on the subsequent Thursdays. We will begin at three p.m. sharp—don’t be late.”
A mildly threatening note entered Alastor’s voice as he made it to the end of the sentence. Luke felt his interest in the man grow at that, and resolutely decided not to examine why. He was so busy pushing that thought away that he almost missed the location of the class—had Alastor said the name of his university library? No chance, he thought, turning the volume up a touch.
“...and more information can be found on the radio station’s website. Thank you for your patience with my announcement, listeners. And now we return with another of my favorite jazz tracks…”
For the first time, Luke tuned Alastor’s music out in favor of pulling his phone out of his pocket. He quickly typed in the name of the radio station and found their website. Alastor’s class was advertised proudly on the home page and right there in the description: yep. The name of Luke’s university library. He laughed incredulously.
And pressed the “Register” button.