As soon as he and Janine burst through the doors, Louis knew that the room didn't have the usual kind of quiet, still feeling it always did when he was there at night. No matter how empty it was, it had the same sort of atmosphere as a crowded subway station with everyone pushing and shoving and rushing. The phone was ringing, and somehow managing to give off the unmistakable impression that it had been doing so for a long time and was impatient to be answered. Louis was starting to feel as if that sort of energy was settling over everything in the city, like it was all becoming restless and agitated.
'Something's coming. Something's coming.'
The thought ran through his head over and over, and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it out.
"I'll go see what they want." Janine stated as she nodded in the direction of the phone. "You start looking through the stuff upstairs, okay?"
"Okay." He nodded, and gave her hand one final squeeze before rushing off.
'Something's coming. Something's coming.'
He remembered having a similar feeling once before, one saying that even the idea of the world as he knew it was at risk of being yanked away. But he also remembered pushing that feeling aside and managing to drown it out in a roomful of music and guests and salmon from Nova Scotia. That feeling had been easy to brush aside when he was too busy being thrilled to have somebody, anybody around. But then it had turned out he had every reason to be frightened.
'Something's coming. Something's coming.'
Not now. Just try to focus.
Janine had been hoping that the phone would just be ringing with some worried civilian demanding to know what was going on. Then she could have just told them to wait for the Ghostbusters to do their job and hung up. But the person calling had some position that seemed official enough that she really should deal with them, no matter how much it seemed like a waste of precious time. Even if it was nearly impossible to be patient with someone trying to question everything about how they were doing their job.
"Look, whatever they're doing down there, I'm sure it's all standard procedure."
She was past the point of being surprised by most things, but after listening for a moment, she sent an almost bewildered glance at the receiver.
"They're driving what through the harbor?"
The person on the other end began shouting, which caused the look to narrow into a short-tempered glare.
"Well I don't care what your boss says, I can assure you we have everything completely under control here."
At that moment, a frantic shriek rang out from a room upstairs.
"The toaster's trying to kill me! The toaster's trying to kill me!"
"I'm gonna have to call you back."
It wasn't much later that Janine had calmly rescued a very panicked Louis and locked the suddenly bloodthirsty toaster in a filing cabinet, all while ranting under her breath about working for a bunch of guys with the IQ of geniuses and the common sense of frat boys. Louis had mostly calmed down again, but still wasn't quite ready to climb down from the pool table.
"The world's going crazy." He muttered as he examined the surprisingly bite-mark-like tears all over his clothes. He wouldn't have thought a household appliance had that kind of fight in it. "I think it's that slime. Everything it touches starts acting nuts."
"Well according to this, it's all over the city." Janine said with her nose buried in one of the many files scattered throughout the room. "Must be why everything seems more insane than usual."
Louis turned to the stack of papers sitting next to him and began searching as well. There had to be something saying how to help fix things. The problem was that most of it was a bunch of equations and formulas and scientific words that might as well have been a different language. For all he knew, he could have the answer staring him right in the face, but he could just as easily be reading the formula they'd been working on for how to get ectoplasm out of the sofa.
A lawyer. He'd just had to be a lawyer. Why couldn't he have decided that he was passionate about chemistry? Sure, he could handle a tax code like nobody's business, but right now he would settle for just being able to figure out what P.K.E. stood for.
"You finding anything?"
They were both too busy reading as fast as they could to look up, but he shook his head out of habit.
"Nothing. You?"
"Nope."
That restless feeling was becoming thicker and thicker in the air of the room as the minutes ticked on. Louis tried to push himself to work faster, and found that it wasn't especially difficult. Reading could go pretty fast if you were just skimming things you didn't understand anyway.
He jumped a little at a sudden noise, and looked up to see that Janine had slammed one of the folders down on the table.
"Alright, I give up. There's nothing we can use here."
"There has to be…" Louis started to say before his voice wavered. "… doesn't there?"
She shook her head, and he felt his heart sink. She'd become the one he always turned to when he needed to know what to do next. And if she felt like it was time to give up, then…
She seemed to realize she was making him more worried, and made the effort to smile. "The guys are still out there. We'll just have to trust them."
It wasn't a thought she found especially reassuring, but she had some feeling Louis would. The corner of his mouth twitched, but didn't quite make it into a smile. It was a worrisome thing for her, too. He'd become the one she turned to for a reason to feel optimistic.
"Some night we're having." She remarked as she leaned against the pool table. "Not exactly romance and candlelight, huh?"
At that, he finally brightened again. "Oh, well I can fix that."
Grateful to have something to do, he carefully made his way back down to the floor and crossed the room towards one of the tall cabinets. He'd just run through inventory for insurance purposes not long ago, and after a few moments of stretching up on his toes to rummage around on a shelf, he pulled out one of their pieces of lab equipment.
It took him several minutes of tinkering to figure out exactly how to set up a Bunsen burner, but he finally found the right valve to use. A jet of hot blue fire shot up, and he hurriedly fumbled with the various moving parts until it settled into a more manageable-sized flame of a warm, friendly color.
He immediately looked over at Janine, positively beaming with the thought that he'd done something right for her. She couldn't help but smile in spite of herself. Slowly, never quite taking her eyes off the new source of light, she made her way over to him. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around one of his and rested her head against his shoulder. Her head felt a little clearer, as if just being near him helped to alleviate the thick dread hovering in the air. Here was that cheerfulness she'd desperately needed on a night like tonight.
"Everything's gonna be okay." Louis said in a voice full of certainty.
"You can't know that."
"No, I can't." He was forced to admit. He looked over as she held his arm a little tighter. "But I still think so."
"Why? I don't see how you can possibly still be feeling hopeful."
"Because…" He found it hard to put into words. All he knew was that he still had that nagging feeling that something bad was coming, but being there with her gave him a very different feeling, one that seemed even stronger. "Because tonight doesn't feel like an end. It feels like a beginning." He wasn't sure if he'd explained it very well, but it seemed enough for her, and he felt some of the tension leave her arms.
She moved a little farther away, just enough that she could look him in the face.
"You really never give up, do you Sunshine?"
He cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
"It's just… trust me, you're not the only everyday person we've rescued after they get caught up in this supernatural stuff. But once the job's over, they always just want to know that we've fixed it and they won't have to deal with it ever again. You're the only one who's ever wanted to come back for more."
He'd never really thought about it like that before, but Janine was looking at him like it was something she admired. And slowly, that look shifted into something else. The sort of look someone got when they had an idea. Unknowingly, her fingers tightened around his arm as something seemed to connect in her mind.
"Louis, you know all that talk the guys have been doing about positive energy and how it affects the slime?"
"Yeah, why?"
She sent a glance out the window, where they could just barely make out the city's usual background noises of yelling and snapping and impatience, all of it tinged with a layer of worry that night.
"I think we need to start getting some hope out there."
He might have asked how they could do that, but from the look in her eyes, he could tell she already had something in mind. "You've got a plan?"
She nodded, and seemed like she couldn't help but grin. "You're gonna like it."