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Tom Riddle rarely has time to pop round Milliways anymore. There's simply too much to keep him busy at home, what with London Below politics being the same chaos as ever and Portico toddling about (and opening things he never guessed could be opened).

But he's here briefly tonight with a scotch in hand. The scotch is, as ever, absolutely brilliant.

OOC: This is the same Tom Riddle as

young_tmriddle! It's just... Tom's in his mid-thirties now, and his old journal name doesn't work so well any longer. I wanted to preserve the old icons, though, so la!

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"Tom!" He's getting a wave from further down the bar, where Andrew's sitting with a slim handwritten book, a notepad, and a mug of spiked cocoa.

"Andrew, old man," he says, picking up his glass and walking over to the seat next to Andrew.

"How the bloody hell are you?"

"I'm good!" He reaches to clap the other man on the shoulder. "How long's it been for you?"

"I've no clue. Months? Years? No, only months. You saw Portico's baby picture last time. He's not quite a year. I think."

"... oh yeah. That was right before the megapocalypse, right?"

"I can't recall. I

think

it was after. I stayed away quite some time after that. No matter. It's good to see you."

Keeping track of time is no longer Tom's strong suit.

"Good to see you too, man. It's been close on a year, my time."

He scoots his books over to give Tom room to put down his drink.

"Busy with research, I suppose?"

He nods towards the books.

"Not so much research as documentation? I'm recopying and translating some old Watchers' Diaries."

The thing he's taking notes on proves on second glance to be a tablet computer, inside a case made to look like a spiral-bound notebook.

"We did that with all of Door's father's journals. Once we located all of the missing pages."

Tom maintains they were missing pages. Door insists they were all exactly in the spots they were supposed to be.

Tom sometimes thinks Door is barking mad, but he doesn't dare touch her organizational system.

"Her father's journals? Good idea."

Andrew does not know of any of the missing-pages business, but would not be remotely surprised if he did.

"We figured it would be smart to have a backup of the original and a good English translation. With footnotes."

"How many languages are you translating?"

"Right now, or altogether?" He points to the book with his stylus. "That one's German. 17th-century German, so, slightly different from modern but still pretty readable."

"Ah, yes, I've dabbled a bit with German. Medieval French is one of my favorites. Aside from Latin and Greek, of course."

"Got a couple of those," he says, "although it's quasi-bastardized Watcher Latin, since they had to make up some vocabulary..."

"Even more exciting."

It sounds like lots of fun to Tom. Seriously.

"I yearn for more time in my study. Truly. The bliss of hours of magical research is no longer afforded to me."

"Really?" His brow furrows. "How come?"

"I've a toddler who also happens to be an opener. He got quite lost the other day; we found him in an old stable we didn't even know was part of the House."

Tom can laugh about it now!

"Oh." Andrew's eyes widen. "Oh man. How are you guys managing?"

Tom just laughs and takes a drink of scotch.

"It's not that horrific. There's not much free time left in the day once you fit in all the rest, but it's a new adventure."

"Parenting. Wow." He looks a little distant.

"We were prepared. Somewhat."

He shrugs and chuckles.

"We weren't prepared at all."

"But ... it's good? I mean, you're enjoying it?"

"Oh, yes."

He smiles.

"Portico takes after us both in the best ways. He's the most brilliant thing that's ever happened to me."

And wasn't Andrew himself using almost exactly those words to someone, just the other day? ... no, he can't quite remember.

"Think I could meet him sometime?"

"You can come anytime. You can come now, for that matter. He ought to be awake. Lord knows he's awake often enough."

"... really?" He brightens. "Give me two minutes to put this away --"

"I need to get back anyway. Bringing guests is much more preferable than staying here for long periods."

He should do this more often!

"Excellent." He's beaming, as he closes the heavier book and reaches for his backpack, on the floor beside the stool.

"Let's go through then, shall we?"

He walks toward the painting and waits for Andrew. Together, they step through as the dogs playing poker pause in their cheating.

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