"Research is going to be annoyed we keep changing our minds about it."

“...Yeah. This will probably be the last time, though, at least?”

"Unless I come up with some clever idea about how to avoid giving people nightmares, yes. --We should maybe talk to Artefact Storage and see if there's a safe artefact we can use to demonstrate the paranormal so that people will believe us when we say the paranormal exists."

“Most of them probably will anyway, right? I mean—sure, there are skeptics, like, that guy whose girlfriend’s roommate was a cultist didn’t really believe what he’d experienced was real, but you’d think that the people who genuinely experienced this stuff wouldn’t be that doubtful.”

"Still, better to be on the safe side, if a person thinks that the nightmares warning is just us being superstitious and gives us a statement and gets nonconsensual nightmares..."

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I’ll ask Sasha. ...And then, um, double-check with some other Artefact Storage employees.”

"Good plan. --We should go on a vacation sometime. To Disneyland or something."

“That’s a... really nice idea, actually. It’ll be nice to take a break from... all of this.”

"I don't know that I've ever actually had a real vacation. Asher kept wanting to visit his parents."

“Really, never? I guess that’s one problem you’re dodging by dating me. No vacations to visit family.”

"Well, his parents are American, and he hardly ever got to see them, and it was hard to coordinate time off for both of us, and it made sense but his parents are-- uh, I don't suppose you'd have any idea what it meant if I said that their seder featured the Four Children of Racial Justice--"

“Not exactly buuuuut I think I get the picture, yeah.”

"Asher went to a private school in New York that taught the kids all about social justice and cost more than my family's yearly income, it's-- they're very nice people. But going on vacation with them was not at all relaxing."

“I can imagine! We can do a real vacation, then. Wherever you like.”

Kisses. "What if I want to go somewhere you want to go?"

“Well then we’d be stuck in a loop, and we can’t have that.” Mmmm kisses. Lev is being insufficiently snuggled; Martin fixes this situation immediately. “I have no idea where I would want to go, honestly.”

"We can think about it."

Mmm snuggles what if they are late to work

They will not be! After a bit Martin will say “Okay, time to get up.” 

Martin's work ethic is TERRIBLE and Lev HATES it.

When he gets to work, he finds Melanie's phone number and calls her. 

"Hello? This is Dr. Aarons from the Magnus Institute. You gave us a statement recently."

“Hi? They didn’t mention there would be any... follow-up calls. —I’m, uh, Melanie. I guess you already know that.”

"My guess is that-- probably last night but definitely in the past few weeks-- you had a dream where you were in an abandoned building and your skin was, uh, pulled off and stapled on over and over, with me watching you creepily. Uh. Sorry about that."

“...That was you? I, uh, assume you have fewer eyes in real life. —Also, I want a photo of you, I’m sorry but I’m not believing everyone who calls me and claims to be in my dreams.”

"You can probably google me? Not a very common name and I had pictures on, like, faculty websites. --I, uh, have the conventional number of eyes. So far at least."

“Riiiight. Your name is Dr. Aarons? Sounds pretty common to me, unless you have a weird first name you just haven’t told me.”