There was just enough of a bitterness to the night air to remind anybody who was unfortunate enough to find themselves out and about once the sun had dipped below the horizon that autumn was well and truly on its way over. That said, it was not altogether unwelcome as the trailing summer had proven to be a particularly warm and sticky sort so any reprise the bite of the wind could offer was, frankly, much needed. It was, all in all, the precise sort of weather that one R. F. Jackaby seemed to be perpetually dressed in preparation for.
But even he was not entirely the most fond of the idea of wandering about in the growing chill, especially if the heavy clouds that were taking it upon themselves to blot out the moon every now and again decided they ought to make good on their promise of rain. Though clouds were notoriously unreliable when it came to keeping their promises, there was something about these in particular that left them looking rather reliable indeed. So there was a bit of haste to his strides as he returned home, having been called out to try and make some sense in a fellow's ramblings about brain-cylinders - the discussion the two shared was private, so much so that the Seer had urged the man who had summoned him away so he could discuss matters so private they are not to be detailed in the written word beyond the confirmation that what the man knew was quite true - which had kept him out a little longer than he had planned for. Not that he really made any concrete plans around it, people could be just as unreliable and unpredictable as clouds were at times and so had chosen to act on an assumption that things might change at the drop of a hat, or drop of a brain-cylinder if one was so unlucky.
It was to no real surprise that the detective's brain - his own, not any that were not at present presumed to be in a cylinder or some other contraption - was thoroughly abuzz by the time he all but threw himself in the front door. Admittedly the house was never the most uniform, even in the darkness. A sample of a bioluminescent moss that he had been poking around with previously greeted him upon his return, and it was far from the only thing thereabouts that glowed in one way or another, including one or two things that he was not entirely sure was supposed to be glowing at that moment but were and so that was just sort of happening now. Making the safe, statistically likely assumption that at least someone was asleep, he did the barest minimum of keeping quiet as he scooted about with the intention of transferring the contents of his coat, as well as an almost improbable amount of things that didn't fit in his coat pockets or had better uses in other locations upon his form.
This was the intention, at least, but he had barely gotten by the moss and into the lounge room before it was made very apparent that was not going to be happening anytime soon.
For a room that was almost perfectly quiet, it was certainly one of the busiest rooms that he had been in that day. On the couch, the lightly scorched old thing that someone had definitely just been trying to get rid of when they gave it to them, Abigail Rook lay curled up nice and cosy. Alongside her lay a very large hound that was taking up the majority of the couch, Charlie Cane - slash Baker slash Caine - seemed almost excessively comfortable. These two were common sights, as one would assume since one lived there and one had technically combined their houses. It was the occupants if a handful of the other chairs that had surprised him. Taking up the majority of the crushed plum velvet chair, and only from a great amount of limb-draping was Hank Hudson, snoring at such a force that he shook just a little. Occupying the chair that had been so thoroughly swamped in a patchwork quilt that it was impossible to see it as a chair was a curled up Lydia Lee, who was the greatest surprise of the group. Watching over the little slumbering group from her perch upon the windowsill, shimmering with a faint silver, Jenny Cavanaugh brought a finger to her mouth to remind Jackaby that he really ought to be quiet.
To be fair, the resident ghost's concern was appropriately preemptive. He was not always the most quiet man in the world, apart from the times that he very much was in the sort of way that was alarming to turn around only discover him standing there just out of the corner of one's vision. But this was not the case in that moment for the Seer had fallen still in such a way that it was a marvel that he breathing at all.
Walking in, his mind was so busy he could barely place one idea over another, but in a flash his mind stilled so totally it threw him a little.
How odd it was that he could walk into his house - no dingy one-roomed flats, no hoping that he could find somewhere that could keep a roof over his head for the nights when the weather was unkind - to find it full of those he considered his friends and, more importantly, considered him to be a friend in return. There had certainly been times he had presumed it to be the sort of life that existed for the sort of person that was, well, not him. He knew that his life was hardly the most compatible for settling down and living the sort of normal life that most sort would consider the ideal. This, he had come to accept, was for the best as he understood that his life brought with it a unique sort of danger and so it really was better for everyone that he kept his distance.
Looking out at the little gathering of slumbering people - which did include Charlie, regardless of his presently hound-like state, as hounds did not get given governmental jobs while that was very much a people sort of thing to get saddles with - he could not help but wonder how on earth he thought things would have been better for him without them.
He wasn't sure when it was that his stubborn want to push everyone away for what he was sure was their own good had lost its insistence. When the walls he had built around him took on a form that seemed a lot closer to a window than he fully dared to admit, even to himself. Perhaps it had been when the trapper had gotten himself hurt to protect him before they had even had the chance to meet, and then proceeded to butt his way into his life with a stubbornness that rivalled the Seer's own. Hank certainly boasted that he had managed to win Jackaby's friendship when he was still prickly and ornery and determined to try and convince himself he could do it alone. It had certainly started there, though it took off like a snowball down a hill then on. Seeing his own determination and wonder at the world reflected in Abigail. The moment he and a dead woman had fallen into a comfortable routine with each other even when she wasn't always capable of holding to herself. The realisation that he had been included in the new family that Charlie had made for himself when his own was so far away. He had even noticed that Lydia no longer only came by because she felt some sort of obligation to after he helped her, but instead just because she wanted to.
That was not to discredit the fondness he held for those he considered friends that had not decided they wanted to be in his house for one reason or another that night. A nurse who found him to be particularly exasperating but had begrudgingly accepted that she might just happen to consider him a friend all the same. A woman who walked a world of her own and yet still had it in her to care about him enough to share a glimpse of it with him. A witch who had built her life within the safety of the trees that served as the kingdom she shared with her daughter. A king of goblins who was just as grateful he had the opportunity to consider him a friend as he did as both felt it would be unfortunate to consider each other an enemy.
The fact this was a list that was far from exhausted honestly surprised him and was far from how he though his life would lead at all.
He realised he had been just sort of standing there for a little bit too long, having managed to get well and truly caught up in the first thought that had managed to form in that moment. At least he had been quiet and so didn't disturb any of the sleepers, but then again it was incredibly lucky that nobody did wake up on their own accord as it would alarm anyone, no matter how fond they were of him, to find the detective just standing there watching them sleep. A fact that was not lost to Jenny, who was squirming in the sort of way a person might while considering interfering when something a little annoying was happening around them.
There was still the odd little impulse that he ought to leave the room, to leave them in peace because they would surely not want him to be there, but he had gotten very good at pushing that aside as of late - he thought he was at least - and so he did not abscond to the library when he realised he was lurking. He was definitely lurking though, and was starting to feel a bit weird about it.
He had rather swiftly decided that he was not going to be dealing with the contents of his coat for a while at least. That would involve just far too much rummaging and opening and closing things, and while he had not slept well enough to properly judge the nuances of sleeping, he had been told on good, and occasionally volatile authority that sleeping people were not the most fond of people going about making annoying noises while they tried to snooze. Which seemed appropriate, but then that left him with only two options. He could either continue his lurking and feeling weird about that, or he could join them, and the first option was hardly working for him in that moment.
There was one chair left - well, there was an impractical amount of chairs in the house, but the other ones he would have had to go off to get and he did not want to do that - in the little sitting space, and Jackaby would have liked to think that they had left the slightly lumpy blue-grey chair that he had patched up thrice now for him to claim when he joined them. So, on silent footfalls, he strode over, settling into the chair as he tucked his legs beneath him to make himself cosy.
It felt a little strange, and so he cast a glance towards where Jenny had been silently watching his awkwardness, noting the genuine softness in her smile before offering a clumsy, sincere one of his own.
He knew he was not going to sleep, but it was nice to be there, and so he found himself falling into the same sort of silent vigil the ghost had, watching over their friends as they slept, content to be able to spend time in the company of friends that were won despite all odds.
And it was nice. To be there. To have friends. How nice it was that he had managed to live so long that he was able to appreciate quiet moments and good company.