"Maybe this one will be in an audiologist's office?" She suggested, flipping pages in the file, and feeling hopeless.
Pete shrugged in the drivers' seat. "Could be, Mykes, but maybe not. The eye doctor said he got the sculpture at an auction, liked it because of it's name. This one could be somewhere else." He looked ahead as they drove across the French countryside, and he took in the beauty of the land around him.
Myka, on the other hand, was buried deep in the case file, ignoring the scenery, and trying to hide her disappointment that they wouldn't be home today. "Of course, they can't make it easy on us." She muttered under her breath, but Pete's glance in her direction let her know that he had heard her.
"It's not that bad. Calm down." He answered. If anything, that made Myka fume a bit more. If there was anything she hated, it was anyone telling her to calm down when she felt like everything was spiraling out of control.
They had been sent to France on a very unusual ping. Something was making people blind, and there was no discernable medical reasoning for it. So early that morning, Pete and Myka had left their daughter in the care of Claudia, kissed her goodbye, and flown to France.
Originally, Claudia was supposed to accompany Pete on this ping, but he had begged Artie to let Myka go instead, just because of her fluency in the language, and the fact that it was faster and more precise than Claudia's translate app. Myka had acted annoyed, but truth be told, she was glad to go. She hadn't been that far away on pings since Ginny was born, let alone out of the country. And she was very happy to rework that language, as she felt she was getting rusty. Plus, a little bit of time for both her and Pete away from their daughter was always nice.
She shuffled through the file again, looking up other sculptures on her phone, desperately trying to locate the answers that she sought. "Do you think there are others? For the other senses?" she asked, her eyes not leaving the picture of the sculpture in front of her. It was named 'Sight', fitting, as that was the sense it took from anyone who touched it, and was what had drawn the optometrist to buy it for his office. Myka memorized the details, so that the one for hearing that they were now after would be easily recognized.
Pete looked at her sympathetically. "I'm not sure." He was silent for a bit, watching the setting sun in front of them. "How weird do you think it would be to lose your sense of touch?" he asked, changing the subject, and flashing her a brilliant grin.
Myka snorted. "I'd be okay not feeling Ginny's squishy wet diapers." They laughed together. "And if I never had to smell her poop again, I would be one happy mama." She added, and they laughed some more.
Pete waited for the laughter to die down before he spoke. "I don't think I'd like running my fingers through your curls unless I could feel it, you know?" Pete added, flashing her a grin that made her feel like the sun was coming back up.
She smiled back at him before huffing, looking back at the file in front of her, even though she knew it cover to cover. "I just hope that Artie doesn't want us to find all five. I want to go home, Pete." She threw her head back against the headrest, feeling the bump from her ponytail in the back of her head.
Pete reached his hand out to grab hers and squeezed it hard. "When we find this one, the hearing one, hopefully we can track them both back and find a point where they were together." He pulled his hand away and placed it back on the steering wheel. "Hopefully the other three were there too, and we can track them from there." He grinned at her again. "Relax, Mykes, we've got this."
She smiled to herself. Relaxing wasn't something that came to her easily. "Alright." She answered him, closing the file and putting it in the glove compartment in front of her. She pulled out her phone, pressing the button and laughing at the picture of her toothy two-year-old.
Ginny is more like Myka than Myka would care to admit. Obviously bright, with a strong grasp on language, slightly stubborn, and a mop of brown curls on top of her head. But she had Pete's energy, sense of humor, brown eyes and the famous Lattimer grin. She opened her phone to the texts she had received from Claudia, images of the girl coloring, playing on the slide with Artie, and a video of her singing along with Anna in Frozen as she asked her sister to build a snowman.
Pete saw her out of the corner of his eye, and knew what she was doing before she was fully aware of it. "Don't call." Was all he said as her thumb hovered over the phone app.
She snapped her head to him, a stray curl falling out of the hair tie and onto the left side of her face. "Do you think Claude is still sticking to the schedule?" She asked. His brown eyes met hers briefly. She continued. "It's easier for her if she sticks to the schedule." Ginny was awful to get to sleep. They had a very specific routine for her that Myka followed rigorously. "And what if we have to stay another day, maybe two? I didn't plan on sticking Ginny with Claudia for all that time." Her voice was higher in pitch than it was when she started, and she spoke quickly, panicking slightly at the thought.
Pete grabbed her hand again. "Myka, relax." He commanded. She took a breath and closed her eyes. He spoke quietly again. "Chances are, her routine it's off anyway because of the fact that it's Claudia there and not us. No routine is going to fix that, no matter how rigidly Claudia followed it." He bounced her hand on her leg softly while her eyes remained closed. "Just take all your worries, and let them go, Mykes. Let it all go."
She didn't have to open her eyes to see the smirk she knew was plastered on his face. "Pete, don't even st-"
But he interrupted her, removing his hand from hers and waiting at widely in the air as he sang. "Let it go, let it go! Can't hold it back anymore!"
Myka snapped her eyes open and brought her hands up to cover her ears while he continued to sing with feeling. "Pete, stop." She laughed.
"Let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway." He sang loud and proud, waving his hand towards himself, inviting Myka to join in.
"So not true, you hate the cold!" She quipped as he sang out the brief interlude. She could no longer hide her smile though, and he had successfully gotten her mind off their daughter.
"It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through!" He was getting louder, if that was possible, and more obnoxious, but it was endearing in a weird way, and Myka had to laugh.
"No right no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free!" He was so off key as he held the note it was almost painful, but she couldn't stop laughing as he waved his hand in the air like they were snowflakes.
She threw her hands up in the air. "You don't follow the rules anyway!" She tried to yell over him, but he had launched into the chorus anyway, looking over at her and once again waving his hand toward himself, inviting her to join.
He paused for a moment in his song to speak. "Myka, I won't stop until you join me." He stated, raising his eyebrows at her as he powered through. "My soul is spiraling in frozen hmmhmmhmm round." She laughed harder at his flubbed line, and shook her head, looking down and trying her best to ignore him. "I'm never going back, the past is in the past!" He pretended to throw the crown out the open window. He was so out of key it was insane, but she finally looked up and grinned at him, shaking her head, annoyed that she would be a part of this, but having way too much fun.
"Let it go, let it go! And I'll rise like the break of dawn." He practically shouted it out the window to all the people they passed. But Myka didn't care anymore.
She had pulled the hair tie out of her hair, and shook her curls out, letting them be wild and free. "Let it go, let it go! That perfect girl is gone!" She shouted, her heart lifting as she sang the words.
Pete threw one of his arms out the window, and Myka threw both of hers out, almost smacking Pete in the chest. "Here I stand in the light of day! Let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway." They were both out of key, and anyone that they passed probably thought they were crazy, but she didn't care anymore.
She tucked some of her curls behind her ears, and looked at Pete, a smile stretched across her lips, as she watched her husband grinning from ear to ear. "Pete." She said to him.
He glanced at her briefly. "What is it?"
She laughed. "We need to watch other movies."
He laughed at her, grabbing her hand again and bringing it up to his lips, placing a kiss on the back of it. "As you wish, my Ophelia."
A/N: The prompt I found was the following:
important otp question: who won't stop singing let it go really loudly and obnoxiously to annoy the other person?
Because isn't that seriously something that Pete would do?