Love is a Grudge • •

[callen ronan sedgwick]

Callen hated the city. He hated the busy streets, the sound of honking car horns and construction workers. He loathed the bright lights and 24/7 nature of the modern New Yorker’s life. He would rather be anywhere else on the planet. However, his work came out of New York and when he was between jobs he was pretty much stuck there. He was financially comfortable, but he didn’t have the savings or motivation to move somewhere else. He knew he would always be pulled back for conferences and speeches that he hated to be a part of. Callen hadn’t always been so bitter about New York. Once upon a time he had loved watching the seasons change in Central Park and commuting to the museum some mornings. But then his brother had stolen his hard work and slapped his own name on it. Proving it wasn’t his had been a difficult and unwanted battle; they were both C Sedgwick after all, and Callen had frequently shared updates with Camden when he had been doing research and drafting his academic papers. All he had now was a small minority in the anthropology community who knew the difference between the skill sets of the two brothers. Those few who had worked with both of them understood that Callen was further ahead in the field than Camden. Alas, there was still no way of pulling his work back. He had been forced to start from scratch and it infuriated him whenever he sat down in his box room office and was confronted by a blank document that should have never been needed.

After barely resisting the impulse to throw his leather desk chair out of the small window, Callen decided it was time for a walk. He needed coffee (only because it was too early for bourbon) and fresh air. There were six weeks before he was flying out to Northern Europe to work on a site there. The job details were always sort of vague before he got there, but it was believed to be a Viking site with foundations discovered for old buildings. Callen wasn’t an archaeologist and he couldn’t date their finds, but he documented what was there, how life would have been for them, and used the discoveries of others to help paint a picture of the time there, how it developed and perhaps how it eventually crumbled. What results they had already and what they were waiting on were kept from Callen until he arrived. There was always the fear of something being leaked from sites, furthering someone else’s work before they team could present their own findings. Thankfully a lot of discoveries only made sense after a number of experts had spent time with them. Callen had his own little niche skillset in that he could easily translate archaic languages, such as Old Norse and Aramaic. It meant work rarely dried up for him and that his time spent in New York would always be short.

His walk took him down to the harbour, where he contemplated catching the next ferry to Coney Island. He wasn’t fond of the attractions there – at least not since he was a teenager – but the noise and the smells were likely enough to help him block out the rage he hadn’t been able to shake since he woke up in the hospital to the worst news he could imagine, and then the most infuriating news he had never imagined. Callen, as anti-social as he had become, actually enjoyed being around people so long as they weren’t paying him any attention. The next ferry wasn’t due for twenty minutes, so he had time to think about if the chilled harbour air was enough, or if he needed the distraction for all of his senses. Coney Island was like white noise to him. It offered him the chance to just be, and not have his emotions ruin him. While he thought, and waited, he leaned against the railing, eyes on the water rather than on the excited families and tourists already queuing for the boat to come in.

• • •

TAGGED! Alkmay Annette Belwood
WORDS! 685!
LYRICS! Long Distance Runne - - - Matt Nathanson
NOTES!