Monthly Bonus Content #3 — Illuminating Moments… (Mason Spring Scenario Special)

Gone Midnight. Inside the Lighthouse…

-

A loud huff sounds from behind me, and if I didn’t already know for certain that it was Mason who expelled it so sharply, then I would have known for sure just from the hundreds of times I’ve heard it before.

From my crouched position, I angle out of the maintenance hatch and stare at him. “What?”

“Is this going to take long? Do you even know how to do this?” he asks with a brow raised, arms folded.

My gaze sharpens. “Do you?”

He returns my gaze for a while before shrugging.

“Pass me the wrench,” I order, leaning back into the hole illuminated by a hanging flashlight. The electrical boards look like something from a technical manual from the 1800s, but I sigh through it and do my best with the coiled, frayed wires.

The wrench is placed into my awaiting, outstretched hand, and I use it to adjust a couple of bolts that are getting in my way.

“How long until the Ve’lichoa get here?” I ask, stretching out to reach the back wires.

Another snort. “I don’t think the assholes keep to a schedule.”

I roll my eyes to myself. “Just tell me.”

“…An hour or so.”

Great. I just have to rewire the entirety of the lighthouse’s system and integrate some magically-enhanced tech into it in an hour to blast out an ultraviolet light instead of its usual bright beam and hope the whole town doesn’t notice.

Sure.

No problem.

I grit my teeth at the thoughts and continue on.

As missions go, this isn’t exactly in my usual purview, but it actually should be simple enough if I can just get the right places inside this cramped, rusting maintenance hatch.

-

After another forty minutes of not only trying not to shock myself but work within a space apparently designed to only be big enough for woodland critters, Mason releases another breath.

“Are you nearly done?”

“What do you think?”

He pauses. “Do you need anything?”

“A more supportive attitude from you would be a start.”

“You mean be positive?” Another pause. “I think that’d bring me out in hives, sweetheart/handsome.”

Against my better judgement, I smile at that. Then with a last twist of my pliers, the lighthouse makes a thudding clunk loud enough to jolt my teeth together, the beam sputters before restarting, and I hope beyond hope that it worked.

Mason helps me stand, and we both stare out through the windows at the spreading light as it skims across the still, obsidian waters.

“Is it going to work?” he asks, his arm still around me.

I shrug, rubbing at my forehead. “Can your super amazing eyesight not see if anything is different? Humans aren’t exactly made for seeing ultraviolet.”

“It does seem…brighter,” he replies, tilting his head slightly as he examines the shaft of light which makes its steady rotation around the top of the lighthouse.

“Well, either it worked and the incoming Batshees will run away screaming, or I gave the normal light a really good spring cleaning,” I joke, though a tension catches my voice at the idea of what could happen if the latter is the case.

He meets my eyes and gives me a slight squeeze. “It’ll work.”

My brows jump up. “You didn’t sound so confident in my abilities an hour ago.”

“Is that what you think?” He turns so as our chests press together, my heart thumping a little faster at the sudden electric charge which zings between us and crackles over my skin.

I allow his arms to encase me tighter to him. “It’s what it sounded like to me.”

He smirks—the all too familiar expression still sending a thrill to kick through me right to my toes. “I was eager for you to finish, sweetheart/handsome, so that we could finally get out of this place, and I could have you all to myself again.”

I blink a few times as I process that. “Oh…I see.”

His tongue swipes across his lips in a way that has me forgetting we’re even on a mission at all. “You still don’t get how much of what I do revolves around getting to be with you, do you?”

“You didn’t say.”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

It’s difficult to hear if he says anything more over the thundering of my pulse as it rushes between my ears.

How he can say things like that so casually but that wallop me in the chest every time is still not something I’m used to.

I’m not sure I ever will be.

I reach up and cup his cheek. He tenses slightly at the motion before relaxing into it.

“Mason, I—”

The shrillest shriek rips through the lighthouse and shatters the windows. With a yelp, Mason and I leap away from the oncoming storm of glass shards.

“Guess we’re about to find out if this beam works!” Mason yells as another scream echoes across the lake.

But, even considering the situation, my thoughts are far from the oncoming threat and entirely focused on the way Mason keeps a grip of my hand, unwilling to let me go.

… Against my better judgement, I smile at that.