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magalidragon · 3 years

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Okay drabble #2 for @lalacristina18 ‘s ask! Hope you like this one! It’s a little silly and kind of Fixer Upper Fanfiction ( @nlights37 is that a thing? I’m doing it) meets my drabble “wet paint.”

Enjoy!

haunted house | 30. “You better watch yourself”

It was the dumbest thing she had ever done.

Except she felt like she had to do it.

How else was she going to get the cute handyman to ask her out?

"Just ask him out!" her best friend shouted, as she took a crowbar to the siding on her house, prying up the nails. Missandei was used to most of her antics, but she knew this was going too far. She watched, amazed, slightly terrified, and in awe, muttering, "You have gone mental Daenerys."

Maybe she had gone mental, but she was also put off by how attractive the handyman was. He was incredibly sweet. A little goofy; he apologized one day when he showed up in thick black glasses, saying he'd forgotten to put his contacts in before he left the house. She had wondered why someone would apologize for that, but she soon learned that Jon Snow, Handyman Extraordinaire, apologized for quite a few things that were in no way his fault or under his control.

Like when he couldn't get a part in time to fix her hot water tank, because it was a weekend and the store was closed. "No problem, guess I'll see you Monday," she had simply said with a smile and a cheerful glee, because she knew they were closed on the weekend and he'd have to come back Monday.

Or when she had purposefully yanked out some sort of fuse in her car so it wouldn't start and he had apologized that it had gone missing. "Not your fault at all!" Because it's totally my fault and then she'd pretended to find the fuse on the ground. "Will this fix it?"

He frowned at the tiny piece of place and wire. "Um, aye, that's so weird..."

Today she was going to claim there was something wrong with her siding and it needed to be replaced. She dropped the crowbar, wiping sweat off her forehead, and placed her hands on her hips, glancing at Missandei, who was shaking her head side-to-side. "What?"

"Just bloody ask him out! I'll do it for you. You're destroying your house just to get him to come over." She smirked. "He has to know what you're doing. He's just taking your money and knowing you're using him which is wrong, or he's really bloody stupid and that's not great either."

"You haven't met him yet."

"What guy could be so attractive and cute and sweet and all that for you to resort to this!?" Missandei waved her hands at the splintered wood at her feet. She sighed, closing her eyes. "Dany, love, you are my best friend but..."

"Good morning!"

Dany threw the crowbar into the bushes, spinning on her heels and beaming at the man who had poked his head around the open fence to her back garden. She waved. "Hello Jon! Good morning to you!" She rounded on Missandei, who stared at him and smirked knowingly. "You're a little early."

He turned pink, coming around the corner holding onto his toolbox. "Aye, sorry about that, I thought I might get you a coffee..." he trailed off and politely smiled at Missandei. "Oh I am sorry, I would have gotten another....here, you can have mine if you want."

To her best friend's stunned silence, he removed one of the two takeout coffee cups from the tray in his other hand and passed it to her. Missandei swallowed hard, clearing her throat. "Thank you, that's...so nice of you."

He smiled again in his shy, half-smile way that Dany absolutely bloody adored, and turned his face to her. "You called last night and said that your bathroom pipes were leaking again? I don't know what is going on, I mean..." He scratched his hair, brow furrowing, and gazed up at the old-as-shit house she had purchased with intent to completely renovate. "I swear I just fixed those..."

"Oh you did, I'm sure this place is cursed."

"By a Valyrian dragon," Missandei mumbled under her breath.

Dany stepped on her foot and crossed her arms, grinning. "And would you look at this? This siding is rotten, I think we'll need to replace it."

"Um, yes of course." He knelt and picked up some of the wood, shaking his head. "You must have an angry ghost Dany, this looks like someone took a crowbar to it." He was immediately concerned, jumping to his feet. "You should file a police report, someone could be vandalizing your property!"

Missandei sipped her free coffee and mumbled again, not so quietly, "Hmm, someone with silver hair I think."

"What?" Jon asked.

"Ignore her, she's mad." She forced another smile. "It's fine. I...thank you Jon, perhaps look at those pipes first and then we can look at the siding."

"I have wood," he blurted out.

Missandei choked. Dany flushed bright red. "Oh?"

"Hmm, in the truck. Be right back." He turned on his heel and walked away. Dany elbowed her best friend, who stared now at his retreating back.

"Oh my."

"It's beautiful. I just like to look at it."

Missandei patted her arm. "Daenerys you are my best friend, but if you don't ask him out by the end of the day, I'm going to tell him everything you've been doing and only because I'm scared you might set your house on fire just to watch him come running in with the fire hose."

Dany hummed. The idea was appealing, but arson was certainly not an option.

Yet.

---

It was the end of the day; she'd tried her damndest to get him to ask her out. Missandei had left, becaus she claimed she couldn't watch it any longer, proclaiming them both "stupid idiots" and Dany had to agree. She was a stupid idiot, trying to get him to look at her as something other than the crazy lady in the haunted house. She'd worn her bikini top while gardening, she'd broken her siding, and stuffed leaves in her gutters.

And Jon Snow still didn't bloody get it.

Maybe he was stupid, she thought, and watched him bent over some exposed pipes in the hallway leading to the master bedroom. A himbo or something. Except she knew he wasn't, because she'd seen that he had a stack of books in his truck to return to the library, one of which happened to be her brother's boring ass tome on Targaryen History, and he'd eagerly chatted with her about it.

"So why are you a contractor?" she asked. She kept referring to him as a handyman, but reminded herself he was more than that. He ran his own business and lumber yard up in Winterfell. "Do you just like fixing things?"

He shrugged, reaching his arm down into the pipes. "I do like fixing things, but when I got out of the military, nothing really appealed to me. Didn't want a boss again and I like building things. Working on my own terms."

"I like that too." It was why she moved up North, a freelance journalist, and needing a safe quiet space to recharge and focus between assignments. She got up and cleared her throat. "I'll be downstairs if you need me." She was halfway down the stairs when she heard a strange sound. It was a yowl.

It sounded like Drogon, she thought, turning towards the wall. "Drogon?" she called.

He meowed again, pitiful. She moved closer towards the wall and knocked. Her voice trembled, calling once more. "Drogon?"

A light scratching and more yowling.

She screamed, realizing with horror that Drogon was inside the bloody wall. "DROGON!" She banged on the wall, running up the stairs, crying out. "Jon! Drogon's in the wall!"

"What?"

"I think he must have crawled in when we were talking and not looking, oh my gods, Drogon!"

Jon frowned at her, still not moving. He narrowed his eyes. "Drogon's in the wall, huh?"

"I think so."

He cocked his head and got to his feet, sighing hard. "Dany, I...I think I know what's going on and..." He turned bright pink. "I really have to confess something..." He shifted on his feet and blurted out, really fast, his Northern burr thick. "I...I know that not everything here is breaking and...and I'm fixing it and stuff, but...well...the store was open and I didn't get hte part because I wanted to come see you and...and I may not have cleaned the gutters all the way so I could come back and...oh gods, I haven't charged you at all because I'm just...I like you!"

Her eyes widened, too terrified for her cat to process what he'd just admitted to her. "But...I...I'm sorry, but he's really in the wall! Listen!"

They both were quiet and after a second, heard the pathetic howling of a trapped cat.

Jon moaned, mortified, shoving his face into his palms. "Oh my gods! I'm so sorry! I thought...oh fuck, forget what I said!"

"No I can't forget it because I like you too!" They could have this conversation after they saved her damn cat.

It took awhile, of her trying to coax the damn cat out from the opening in the floor, to Jon carefully searching and finding a space in the wall to knock through with a sledgehammer so he wouldn't hit Drogon or anything unsafe. Bits of drywall and debris scattered, "You better watch yourself," she warned him, when Drogon began to hiss and pant, terrified as they drew closer to him. "He might attack!"

"He's just scared, he'll be alright."

A couple hours later, her entire hallway and stairwell covered in broken bits of drywall, plaster, wood, and insulation, her very dirty and ashy cat enveloped in a blanket in her arms, Dany finally looked up at JOn. He hadn't said a word to her about his confession of not really fixing anything because he liked her and wanted ot keep seeing her.

She ducked her head, whispering, "I know it was wrong of me too, to keep breaking things...I just really liked you too."

"I'm not good with women," he admitted.

"Clearly, I was walking around in my bikini and you didnt say a word."

"I was trying to be professional!"

She giggled. Drogon whined in her arms. She scowled. "Hey! You didn't think I was serious that my cat got stuck in the wall!"

"I thought it was another thing like when you called me to say that your pipes were clogged at ten at night." He arched his brows. "Come on Dany."

"Alright, that was a ruse...but he really did get stuck!" She let go of Drogon, who raced into her bedroom to hide under the bed and lick his wounds-- more like his pride at having to be rescued by humans of all things. She looked up at Jon, sitting on the step just above her and grinned. "Can we agree to just...kind of start over?"

he nodded and licked his lips; she shivered. "Start over at dinner tonight?"

"Yes, dinner is perfect."

"And I'll be the first thing in the morning to start working on..." he gazed around at the chaos surrounding them, sighing. "This."

"Sounds good."

Turned out he didn't have to show up early at all the next morning, because he was already there, fast asleep in her bed, both of them exhausted. Dinner had been merely an afterthought.

#jonerys #jonerys au #my fics #my moodboards #jonerys fanfic #stupid silly shit here #dorkssss

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ieattaperecorders · 3 years

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Notes on Causality - Chapter 2: Georgie and Elias

An addendum to Something's Different About You Lately. Small scenes of Jon attempting to change the future that I didn't want to put in the larger fanfic.

The events of this chapter take place around the end of Chapter 8, Stranger.

(Incidentally, the main fic will be updated very soon. I'm mainly just holding off till the finale drops, in case whatever happens makes me want to tweak anything mood-wise in what I have planned.)

Read on Ao3

- - -

One ring. Another. Then another. Maybe she wouldn't pick up, Jon thought, drumming his fingers on the desk. Maybe it would go to voicemail . . . he could hang up, try again later. Take a little time to mentally rehearse what he would say.

A click, and her voice asked, "hello?"

"Georgie . . . it's Jon Sims, from Oxford?"

"Jon? Hey, been a while! How've you been?"

"Ah – good? I've been good," he lied. "Yourself?"

"Oh, not bad. Got a new roommate since you last saw me . . . he lays around the apartment all day and won't share the rent, but he's cute so I let it slide."

"Good to hear that your landlord is cat-friendly."

"You should hear him, he has the loudest little meow. Hang on, I'll if he'll say hello . . . ."

For a moment and he heard some vague coaxing noises, distant as if she was holding her phone away from herself. They were followed by a close-up, disinterested sniff, then Georgie's voice returned.

"Ah, never mind. Not in the mood, I guess."

"I've heard the Admiral's color commentary before," he smiled. "He's in all your mailbag episodes."

"Didn't know you were a listener."

"Well, I need something for the commute . . . it might as well be the UK's most onomatopoeic source of paranormal research."

"Ha. Knew you'd hate the sound effects."

"I don't hate them. Anyway, they're . . . distinctive," he leaned back in his office chair, the nerves he'd built up slowly dissipating as they fell into the rhythm of conversation. "They're very you."

"Classic Barker." There was movement in the background, and a few soft thuds. Likely the Admiral jumping to the floor. "Well from what I hear, we're in the same field. Aren't you working for the Magnus Institute now? You must hear plenty of ghost stories there."

"That's actually sort of why I called. I think we might have a mutual colleague . . . Melanie King?"

"Yeah, she's the one who told me you were there," she said knowingly. "Sounded like you left a hell of an impression on her."

". . . Not a good one, I imagine."

Georgie made a non-committal sound, being decent enough not to rub it in by overtly agreeing with him.

"I was trying to be helpful, but I think I just came off as dismissive. Ended up arguing with her over nothing," he sighed. ". . . Classic Sims."

"Accept no substitutes," Georgie said fondly. "So, what's the call about? If you want me to try smoothing things over with her –"

"It isn't that. Did she tell you about her experience?"

"Not really. Asked a lot about Sarah – she's a sound tech I recommended to her? Got the impression she'd been unreliable. She was nice about it, Melanie that is, but really evasive. I just assumed she's caught onto something interesting and wants to be the first to report on it. The risks of being friends with competition, I suppose."

"Ah. . . ."

"Not that she has anything to worry about. Climbing fences and squatting in abandoned churches is her thing. I'm all about doing research from my computer desk with a cup of tea, personally," she paused, and he heard a distant clink of ceramic. "Hey, are we even allowed to talk about this? Isn't there some sort of confidentially thing?"

"As it turns out, privacy isn't really something this place values," he muttered, "I don't suppose she's talked to you recently?"

"No . . . not for a couple of months."

"I'm concerned. Her experience left a powerful impact on her. Now she's chasing after anything that might bring her closer to what she encountered, and I'm afraid she doesn't care about the cost. She's going into some dangerous territory. And, well . . . it's not my place to judge her emotional state. But I am worried."

"Yeah . . . I saw the memes," he heard a frown enter Georgie's voice.

"I've tried to talk to her about it, a bit. But she and I always seem to push each other's buttons somehow. I'd be grateful if you looked in on her. I think that she could use a friend right now, and –" he smirked. "I happen to know you're good with obsessive types too stubborn for their own well-being."

"Ha. You trying to set me up or something?"

"Wh–" he started, taken aback. "I mean, well, that's really your business, not mine."

". . . Wait. I was joking, but are you really?" There was utter incredulity in her voice. "Jonathan Sims, did you call me out of the blue to set me up with someone I knew before you did?"

"Of – Georgie I don't even know if you're single, don't be ridiculous," he sputtered, feeling blood rise to his face. She laughed, and the uncomfortable heat spread.

"Okay, okay," she said. "I'm just giving you a hard time."

"I just . . . " he spoke slowly, trying to be precise. "I think that Melanie needs someone else around her right now. Someone grounding. If you're not looking to take that on, I understand, of course. But for whatever it might be worth, I would be grateful if you checked in."

"I'll give her a ring," something in Georgie's voice was familiar, and profoundly comforting. "See if she wants to get coffee and talk spooky-shop."

"I think that might do her a world of good," he said with relief

"Also? We should get coffee sometime too, catch up! I want to hear all the creepy stories you're apparently so free to talk about."

"Really, it's mostly drug experiences and conspiracy theories . . . ."

"Even better, I'll get to hear you complain. Then I'll be entitled gripe to you about all the weird emails I get. It'll be perfect."

Jon wanted to say yes. He really, really did. The thought of sitting down for a few hours with Georgie and talking about nothing particularly dire was a nice one. But he could only bring trouble to her door.

"I'd . . . like that," he said, "But I don't have much time to myself right now . . . maybe after everything calms down."

". . . Sure," she sounded a little disappointed. Georgie could always tell when he was brushing her off. "Some other time. Hope you can get some rest, then."

"I'll do my best."

"And thanks for the heads-up about Melanie. Really," the smile in her voice was back. "Don't be a stranger, huh?"

"Right," he smiled back, hoping she could hear it. "Ah. Goodbye, then."

"Bye."

He stared at the screen of his phone, not sure what to name the feeling in his chest. In his mind's eye, he saw her form vanishing down a long white corridor, and he knew she would have made this choice herself, eventually. He was just respecting that. Speeding things along.

"Trying to set her up . . . honestly," he muttered.

What he'd said about Melanie needing someone to talk to had been true. He was hoping Georgie's influence could nudge her away from the path she was on, one that had its natural end in blood and pain and the drumming of war. It was hardly his fault if he knew that particular matchmaking arrangement had already worked out once.

The call had barely ended for a minute before his phone vibrated with an email notification. He opened it, frowning when he saw who it was from.

Jon,

See me in my office at your earliest convenience.

Also, in the future please remember not to make personal calls during work hours.

- Elias

It was the most direct contact he'd had with Elias in months. Aside from a few institute-wide emails, there had been nothing since their conversation about the recordings. Jon hadn't even run into him in the hall. At least on the surface, he'd stuck to his promise to involve himself less directly. Not that Jon imagined Elias was truly keeping his distance, but he had begun to get comfortable with not having to see or talk to him. He dreaded the idea of going up there and actually breaking the silence.

That comment about personal calls irked him, too. He was taunting him. Going right up to the edge of admitting he'd been watching while giving himself just a little deniability.

He could ignore it, of course. Why should he do anything Elias asked him to, however small? Why should he make any part of his life easier? But that wasn't a smart attitude, he knew. Elias was keeping his distance for now, but if he saw Jon as too troublesome things would escalate. It would be foolish to bring that moment any closer by antagonizing him over nothing.

Jon still remembered the comment he'd made when they last spoke – I'm sure one of your assistants would be up to the task. If it came down to it, Elias knew exactly whose throats to hold the knife against.

With a distinct lack of pleasure, he climbed the stairs out of the archive.

Despite his mood he smiled at Rosie, tried to seem friendly as he greeted her. The words insecure and aggressive had a tendency to turn over in his mind when he saw her lately. He was earnestly hoping to be easier to talk to, but fairly sure he just came off as awkward. At least she was friendly with him. But then, she'd always been.

She said he was expected and should go right inside.

Elias was at his desk, writing on something hidden inside a folder. He glanced up and nodded as he entered.

"Ah, Jon. Sit down, I'll just be a moment."

As he took a seat and waited, Jon couldn't quite banish the idea that the folder was just a prop. A way to make whoever he'd called in wait, to make it absolutely clear how much more valuable his time was than theirs. Or perhaps to give them time to stew, to sit in anxiety and worry. Then again, maybe Elias really did have paperwork that needed doing, and the fact that it was absolutely, positively maddening to sit there in silence and watch him was only a bonus to it all. Eventually, he finished.

"It's been a while since we've checked in, hasn't it?" he paused just long enough for Jon to wonder if he was supposed to respond, then continued. "I'd like to hear your version of how the last few months have gone. What sort of progress you feel you've made, etcetera."

Oh, God. Was he actually expecting Jon to keep up the pretense of doing actual archival work? He hadn't been prepared for that at all, and felt preemptively exhausted at the thought of coming up with some nonsense progress report.

"Well. . . as you know, Gertrude left the archives in a state of serious disorganization, so progress has been hindered by that," he tried to remember what projects he'd put the others on to keep them all going with a token show of work. "I've set aside a section for discredited statements, which has been steadily growing. I imagine . . . it will make things more efficient for researchers in the future? And, uh . . . ."

"Let me stop you there," Elias said, holding up a hand.

Please do, Jon thought, relieved he wouldn't be subjecting them both to several minutes of this. Elias leaned forward and looked at him seriously.

"Have I done something to offend you, Jon?"

The question took him by surprise, to the point where he had to bite back a sarcastic laugh. What hadn't he done? "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Really. Because it seems to me that I've be extremely generous to you," that familiar tone of disapproval, of bland impatience. "I've given you a unique opportunity, allowed you free reign in setting your own priorities, and you still seem determined to resent me."

Fleetingly, Jon wondered if the elaborately decorated letter opener on the desk between them was sturdy enough to sink into Elias's chest without snapping. Not worth it, either way. Not with what it would cost.

"I . . . apologize if I've created that impression," he said evenly. "I've been told that I can be standoffish in my manner."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Elias smirked. "Though ‘standoffish' is a great deal more polite than the words people actually favor. Isn't it?"

Jon tried not to look away, tried and failed to meet Elias's eyes. Perhaps his inability to maintain eye contact with a conduit of the Beholding spoke well for his remaining humanity, but it still twisted in him. Made him feel weak.

"Are we done here?" he asked, voice tight.

Elias sighed, as if all of this was such a burden to him, as if he wasn't basking in the anxiety that Jon knew must be radiating off of him like heat.

"What was it you said to Martin . . . about discarding the facade once it stopped being useful?" That startled Jon enough to look back, to see the condescending smile on Elias's face as he continued. "Maybe you ought to do the same."

He stared, suddenly voiceless, heart pounding. This was it . . . should he be relieved or terrified?

"I've been where you are now, Jon." Elias continued. His voice was stern, with only the barest concession to false sympathy. "Trapped in a world that no longer makes sense, surrounded by malevolent forces, seeing enemies everywhere. And I can tell you that the only way to survive in this world is to recognize what resources you have."

". . . Resources."

"Yes, if you could just get past this irrational distrust you seem to have of me. I can't hold your hand through everything. But if you have questions . . . I might be able to give you some answers."

Answers? That would make a change from before, Jon thought bitterly. The Elias he remembered used misdirection, contempt and sometimes flat refusal to avoid giving Jon any information he could hope to use. Unfortunately there was only one question Jon really had for him anymore, and it was one he couldn't ask: how much do you know?

. . . Did Elias have that same question for him? It would explain why he was directly inviting him to ask about his situation.

Jon paused. He had to be smart about this. If Elias had sat him down like this before, he'd have wanted to know everything. If he didn't seem curious, it might point to how much he already knew, and that would be disastrous. But he also couldn't look too naive . . . he'd made his suspicion clear, already warned the others, he couldn't pretend to know nothing about the Institute's nature.

He tried to think back to when he was only just getting a sense of the way things truly were. What would he have most wanted to understand then?

". . . What happens to me," he asked quietly. "When I read statements? The real ones. You know what I mean. I can feel something happening, I know it's not just reading."

"The answer to that is rather complicated . . . ."

"Are you going to give it to me?"

"It would help if I understood what you already knew. How much did Gertrude tell you about the nature of this place? The Institute?"

"Enough to know I can't trust it," he glared across the desk. "And maybe the reason I don't trust you is because you're constantly peering over my shoulder."

"You must have some sense by now of the dangers the Institute attracts," Elias raised his eyebrows. "Can you really blame me for wanting to keep tabs on everything?"

"Because you ‘keeping tabs' was so helpful when I was pulled into those hallways for weeks."

"You opened the door of your own free will. I do what I can but I can hardly be expected to protect you from yourself."

"You're the reason I'm here in the first place! You've been--"

Jon cut himself off, he could feel himself beginning to shout, losing control of himself and it was stupid, so stupid. What was the point in arguing with him? Jonah Magnus knew exactly what he was doing, he wasn't going to be shamed about it.

"It doesn't matter," he said, trying to gather himself back to a neutral tone. "Can't change the past."

". . . For what it's worth, Jon, I do sympathize," Elias said, folding his hands. "Someone has to be the Archivist. You were just the best option available."

Why had he thought he could play along with this? As if he'd really be able to sit there, feign ignorance and draw information out of a man who'd been doing that exact thing to others for centuries. He wasn't going to beat him at his own game . . . far more likely he'd let something slip out of anger that would get somebody killed.

He pushed his chair back and stood, turning towards the door.

"I'll find my own answers," he said.

* * *

The door slammed shut, loud enough to echo. Jonah supposed he was going to have to get used to outbursts like these.

"I expect that you will," he muttered to the closed door.

Blind spots. He didn't like blind spots. Sometimes they were unavoidable, but having one so near to him was profoundly irritating. It was like knowing he'd forgotten something important, but being unable to dredge up any details.

He could watch Jon as easily as anyone else. Though there were moments his gaze would unfocus, and he suspected Gertrude might have taught him a few of her tricks, overall it wasn't hard to keep an eye on him. But lately, that was all he could do. No matter how he tried, he couldn't Know anything deeper than what appeared on the surface. He might as well have been following the Archivist around with a camera crew rather than channeling the overwhelming power of an Eternal and Unblinking Gaze From Which No Secrets Can Be Kept, for all the good it was doing him.

It was as if the knowledge was all there, but had been shifted somehow. Nudged just outside his field of vision.

A part of him was tempted to start over with another Archivist, one he could See more clearly. But the Web mark was hard to find, and he couldn't even be sure this anomaly was unique to Jon – that it would go away with his death instead of attaching itself to his successor. Despite its frustrating obscurity, something about it that felt like an aspect of the Beholding, though he couldn't say why.

So he'd tolerate the blind spot for now. At least Jon was easy enough to read without the Eye's assistance – the man wore his heart on his sleeve, was helpless in that way. Jonah liked that about him.

What he needed was encouragement. Something to get him out of his comfort zone – four marks was progress, but not fast enough, not with the Unknowing looming closer every day. Jonah wrote a quick note on a post-it and stuck it to the folder in front of him, then pressed a button on his intercom.

"Rosie?" he said, "I need you to run something down to the archive for me. Just drop it on Tim's desk, he'll know what it's for."

#tma fanfic #tma time travel au #sdayl

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hecticcheer · 3 years

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Hyponatremia (unfinished T/M/A fic)

Fiveish months ago I tried to write a fic based on this scenario post I made. I’m super definitely never gonna finish it, and, it just kinda trails off at the end? Also it’s very rough. Features some American measurements in brackets that I’m too lazy to convert, if that gives you an idea. But I figured I’d post it anyway on one-slice-of-cake>no-cake principle.

As for the plot... uh. Jon has a headache; Martin tries to help, but makes it worse. For *checks notes* ~4200 words. If it has one saving grace, it’s that you can mmmmostly understand it without prior knowledge of T/M/A? Long as you know Martin’s living in the Archives to hide from an evil worm monster, you should be good.

As usual, Jon was the first person to join Martin down in the Archives that morning, sometime between seven and eight. And, no more unusually, Martin had twelve-plus hours of nervous energy to work off, and nobody to shed it on but his boss. “Morning. Sleep well? Tim said you still had some work to do when we left for the pub, but I didn’t see you when I got back so you can’t have made too late a night of it.” (Jon shook his head.) “Shame you couldn’t join us, by the way. Elena and Clarisse and them destroyed us on geography, and Sasha says you’re pretty good on maps and that. Maybe you could’ve saved us.”

“Doubt it,” said Jon. Martin waited for him to add more to that thought, but instead he just sort of stood there. Pinched one nostril shut and inhaled experimentally through the other. Trying to figure out which one was clogged, maybe? Tim said Jon’d said he had a headache; maybe it was a sinus thing. Not that this was exactly reliable intel. On pub-quiz Wednesday Tim always regaled him and Sasha with Jon’s latest excuses not to join them. They were always bad, but some were so bad Martin suspected they weren’t so much Jon’s lies as Tim’s lies about Jon’s lies. Probably not a great idea to mention this one, then. He’d stick to the first excuse Jon had allegedly given:

“Did you finish what you were working on?”

Jon closed his eyes, for a bit longer than the average blink, but not long enough to count as a proper wince. “Not even close.”

“Oh. What… was it?”

“Cabinet of statements from 2003. Or at least, nominally from 2003, though by my count less than a third of them actually date from that year.”

“Yikes. Need any help? Extra pair of hands, or.”

“Not right now.”

“2003,” Martin mused—“are you still looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement?”

A short, but hearty sigh. Enunciated, practically. He didn’t open his mouth until afterward, but Martin could see his nostrils flare around it. “No. Three days ago, when I started to look through the cabinets marked 2003, I was looking for Mr. McKenzie’s statement. Now I just want to find out which statements in there I can’t send straight to the discredited section.”

Jon stood in the open doorway to his office by this point, hand on the knob as if to remind Martin of his eagerness to close it behind him. Even so Martin tried to peer past him into the office, looking for a discard pile of statements he might offer to shuttle away himself. This was pretty hard to do surreptitiously, though. He’d hoped his eyes would land at once on the tallest pile, at which time he could point to it and say, Are those the discredited ones, then? But from his vantage point all the piles on Jon’s desk seemed taller than usual.

“Right,” Martin said instead; “good luck.” He smiled weakly and returned his gaze to Jon, meaning to restore eye contact before he remembered how seldom Jon looked at people’s faces anyway. At this moment both his eyes were covered by the hand not on the doorknob. It would’ve been weird, he figured, to just duck out now while Jon couldn’t even see him, so Martin told himself to wait until he opened his eyes and only then back off.

But then Jon just stayed like that, for ages, with his fingers on one temple and his thumb on the other, blocking all possibility of sight. Eventually Martin felt like he had no choice but to say, “Are you alright?—or, I mean, how’s your head, by the way? Tim said….”

“It’s fine.”

“Ssssso it—doesn’t still hurt, then?”

“I’m fine, Martin. Thank you,” Jon said, but in one of the least thankful-sounding tones of voice he had. And then he closed the door, without even waiting for Martin to back up.

—

“Thought you might like coffee this morning instead of tea. It’s got more caffeine, and, that’s supposed to help, right? Plus I remembered what you said on your birthday about tea having tannins just like wine does. Of course, for all I know coffee might too—”

“It does.”

“Oh. Well… maybe the caffeine’ll cancel it out and you’ll break even? Or, I don’t know, maybe if you already have a headache they can’t trigger one.”

Jon’s answering Hm sounded pessimistic. Sure enough, as soon as Martin had finished his sentence he said, “I’m not that lucky.”

“Probably not,” Martin agreed with a laugh. “Still, least it’s hydration. Though caffeine’s a diuretic, so if I recall correctly you only get about half, volume-wise. That mug’s about… [twelve ounces,] I’d say? So it probably counts as about [six toward your sixty-four].”

“Yes, yes,” replied Jon, picking up his bottle of water and shaking it. When he set it down again, one look confirmed what Martin had suspected from the sound it made—it was nearly empty.

“Oh hey, look at that! Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job even without…” he trailed off, realizing too late that the most logical end to that sentence was my help, and that that was a pretty pompous way to refer to a coffee he was pretty sure Jon didn’t even want. So instead he said, “I’ll go refill that for you.” And before Jon could look up Martin scurried off to the break room with it.

The water dispenser should’ve been changed yesterday. When the water got this low it took ages to fill even a mug, much less a tall bottle like this one. It startled as a trickle, and by about halfway up the bottle slowed to a glorified drip. In his mind he pleaded with the water spout not to make so much noise; promised it he’d put in a new one as soon as he’d returned Jon’s water to him, mouthed encouragements to it. Not much farther, just to the top of the M, come on, you can do it. (The bottle was an Institute freebie, with Magnus Institute inscribed on it in black-bordered green letters. Martin had one just like it somewhere in his flat. Worm bait now, he supposed.)

By the time he brought it back Jon’s eyes were on the statement in his hands. Skimming, by the looks of it, rather than either actually reading or pretending to.

Martin endeavored to set down his refilled water audibly, but not painfully loudly. But Jon’s answering “Thank you” took him so much by surprise that at the last moment his wrist jerked and the bottle fell over.

“Ah! Sorry, sorry.” It had a lid, so, not an actual disaster? Jon did snarl at him though, or at least at the noise. His hands flew up as if to cover his ears, but he seemed to reject that idea halfway through. Just closed his fists around thin air, then leant his temple on one of them and sighed through his nose. “Sorry,” Martin said again. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jon’s emphatic blink seemed to stand in for a nod.

“Anyway, here’s a further [sixteen ounces] for you, looks like, or thereabouts,” ventured Martin, patting the side of the water bottle with one hand while holding it down with the other so it definitely wouldn’t topple again. “I’ll just leave you to it then.”

“Mm.”

“Good luck.”

—

After his stunt with the water bottle Martin had too much distrusted himself to risk making another big noise with the door, so he’d left it with its tongue sticking out rather than latching it. This meant he made almost no sound when he entered again. The first thing he noticed was that the water in Jon’s bottle still reached the top of the M. It still sat in the same place, too—not out of Jon’s reach but far enough away (Martin had told himself at the time) not to seem an imposition on his space. Almost definitely not where one would set it if one intended to pick it up again soon. His coffee seemed to have fared a bit better though. Half empty, one might say. Optimistically.

The second thing he noticed was Jon himself, who sat with his elbows on the desk, his chin on the heels of his palms, and his fingers arranged around his eyes like fence posts. Like a child peeking out at something they’re too scared to look at directly—except that his eyes were closed.

Martin snuck back to the other side of the door and knocked on it, gently. “Hey, uh, Jon?”

He didn’t look up, and opened his eyes for only a second before shutting them again. But he did drop his hands, threaded his fingers together and set them on the table, and bit his lip. “What, Martin.”

“Er—well, I know you said you’d given up looking for Marcus McKenzie’s statement, but I just realized I never asked if you’d thought to look in the discredited section. I mean, from what he said on the phone it didn’t sound like he took his dad’s statement all that seriously, so, maybe Gertrude put it in there, as, like, corroborating evidence that it wasn’t paranormal, and McKenzie senior’s statement just got misfiled?”

“Martin, I invented the discredited section.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else you wanted to say?”

“Oh, uh, nothing important. Just wondered if you’d like me to take that mug away.”

Instead of responding verbally, Jon picked up the mug and made what seemed a valiant effort to drink a little more of the coffee inside it. From what Martin could tell, he barely managed not to grimace in disgust.

“Do you like coffee? I’m not a big fan of it either, to be honest. Oh, well. If you can’t force that down you’ve still got plenty of water there, I see. Besides, it’ll wash out the taste.” (With an actual heh heh, which came out more like a small dog panting than like human laughter.)

Dramatic, snarly sigh from Jon. “Think I’ll pass. It seems to make it worse, if anything.”

“Oh. Sorry about that; must be those pesky tannins. I’ll just take your cup now then.”

But Jon only tightened his grip on it. “Water, I meant. The coffee’s fine. Not exactly my favorite beverage in the world, but, you were right. It’s a good idea.”

“Oh. Thanks, I’m glad you.” Martin smiled, then frowned. “Wait, water makes it worse?”

“Seems to.”

“Really? Are you sure it wasn’t just—too cold, or something.”

His laugh sounded bitter, hollow—theatrically so, in fact. A perfect Ha ha ha, except he didn’t say those words, didn’t enunciate them like Sasha sometimes did when Tim made a bad joke. He just made the exact sounds they were invented to transcribe. “No, Martin. I haven’t just been giving myself a brain freeze every time I.”

“…Right, of course not. Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” For a few silent seconds Martin picked at a notch in his thumbnail, carved there earlier this morning by a stubborn paperclip. Part of him wanted to tear the nail off and have done, but he knew it would bleed if he did. Nothing to clip it with in the Archives, obviously. “Are you sure you won’t try again? This water’s quite tepid, actually, since I got it literally from the bottom of the barrel—”

“Martin—”

“Sorry, sorry. Just thought it was worth—”

“Don’t you have something better to do.”

“Er… no, actually. Pretty much finished with everything, at the momen…t. Though if you’d like to give me another assignment I’d be happy to—yeah. Do that, for you. Or I mean, for the sake of the Archives; I don’t mean it’d just be, like, busy work. Not accusing you of that or anything.”

“Are you comfortable leaving the Archives?”

For half a second Martin heard this as a hint—an offer? a threat?—that Jon meant to have him transferred to another department. Then he wondered if Jon was hinting it was time Martin found somewhere else to live. “What, like, permanently?”

“No—just as long as it takes to track down and interview Georgie Barker about her role in the statement Ms. King gave us.”

“Oh. Yeah, I think so, uh. Thank you for asking? I mean, Prentiss said she was done with me, right. At least, me personally. And she already knows I’m here, so it’s not like.”

Jon replied shortly, “Yes.”

“I’d like to listen to Ms. King’s statement first, though, if that’s alright. What’d you say it was about? The Cambridge Military Hospital?”

Another short, emphatic, nose-directed sigh. Couldn’t be too stuffed-up then, Martin guessed. “Technically, yes, though Ms. King insists the building itself had nothing to do with it.”

“Huh. What was it about, then?”

“She alleges that a woman she hired to help film one of her ghost stories peeled the skin off her arm.”

“Oh my god! I mean, did you—was she okay? Did she show you her arm? Did it seem to have—you know—skin?”

“Her own arm, not Ms. King’s.”

“Oh.” Martin sighed for himself now, though with relief rather than exasperation. Managed a tiny laugh, as well. “Okay, well, that’s. Creepy as hell, but, not nearly as bad as.”

“Mm. Nor nearly as verifiable as your version.”

“T…rue, no, I guess not. Anyway do you have the tape? I’d like to listen myself, if that’s.”

Jon pointed to a small stack of tapes on the bookshelf to Martin’s right. Sure enough, the top one had M. King, 0161704 sharpied across the label on its side. “Ah! Found it. Thanks.” He had a tape player squirreled away already; on another day he might’ve pretended otherwise, but for the moment he was too relieved not to have to make a pest of himself by asking to borrow one to worry whether the absence of that request might make Jon suspicious.

Besides, Jon seemed pretty… absorbed in himself, this morning. By the time Martin turned to face him again one of Jon’s hands had crept back up to his face, where its fingers now seemed to comb the hairs of his left eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Jon do that before, plus doubted the hairs in question needed his help to lie flat. Jon’s eyebrows had always struck him as quite neat. Plus Martin had tried that with his own eyebrows plenty of times before the mirror in his youth, and knew it didn’t work very well even if you licked your finger—which Martin assumed Jon hadn’t. So he figured he should file this behavior in the same box as the earlier fist-clenching-to-avoid-covering-ears thing. As, like, headache-soothing for people who don’t want to look weak. Or unprofessional, or something to that effect.

This gave him a sense of foreboding when he thought too hard about it. But Martin needed so badly to keep this job, now that his flat wasn’t safe anymore. It seemed wiser not to look directly at abstract threats like that. If he could make Jon feel better then it wouldn’t matter, right? Or at least could be put off til next time.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Don’t recall saying I was,” Jon muttered.

Martin winced. He had said he was alright—Martin was certain. When he’d first come in that morning, he’d said he was fine when Martin asked, and then he’d closed the door. Didn’t seem worth correcting him over it, though. So Martin just said, “Try to drink something while I’m gone, yeah? Kool-Aid, for all I care, just. You really don’t look like you’re feeling all that well. And any kind of drink other than alcohol should—oh.”

He looked up, hearing Jon swallow what sounded like a lot more than the tiny sip of coffee he’d managed before.

“Well. Great. Thank you for obliging me.”

Jon continued to gulp down water, while staring right at Martin. He paused in swallowing to breathe, but even then did not remove the mouth of the bottle from his own mouth. When he tried to resume drinking it made him cough instead, and even then he didn’t set it down.

“O-okay, well, I’m sure that’s plenty, don’t—?” Hurt yourself, Martin wanted to say, but feared that would sound patronizing. The bottle was more than half empty now. Jon paused for air again. “For god’s sake, Jon, stop—that looks like it hurts—you don’t have to—?”

At last he slammed the empty bottle on his desk—more loudly than could possibly be comfortable for a man with a headache. Leant his elbow on the table, and between pants huffed a laugh and said, “Care to refill it for me?”

On a sort of autopilot Martin chirped, “Uh—sure! No problem I’ll just,” and rushed off with it to the break room. This refill took much less time, since he’d remembered to change out the thingy. But it still took long enough that by the time he got back he worried, “You’re not going to chug this one too, are you?”

“No,” said Jon, eyes and hands both busy now with a statement hitherto hidden by his elbow. He did not reach out a hand to take the bottle from Martin.

“Okay, I’ll just. Leave this here then. See you after the, uh. Yeah.”

—

And lo, it was as he had feared. Chugging [sixteen ounces] of water did indeed make his headache worse. By ten it seemed to count turning the page of a statement as an exertion worth pounding over. True, by lunch time it seemed to have backed off a bit—until he sat back down at his desk with his fork and plate. On his way to the microwave he’d thought he must be on the mend: his head throbbed a little harder than when he’d been seated, but not so much he’d have noticed the difference had he not set out to pay attention to it. Some food, maybe an ibuprofen or two and he’d be fixed, he’d told himself.

Once he got to the break room, though, he noticed something else odd. His limbs were weak. His knees seemed made of jelly, and wobbled beneath him every time he shifted his weight; his arms were steady enough, but when he set down the pizza box on the counter after retrieving it from the fridge he felt a surge of relief, which he hardly understood until he’d transferred a slice from the no-onion half onto a plate and picked up the latter to put it in the microwave. Even these tiny movements made his arms, neck and chest ache like they do when you hold your breath too long. He leant his elbows against the counter and gulped down air until his mouth felt so dry he couldn’t bear to keep it open. Wondered if he should sit down; he felt a bit dizzy. But he had less than 30 seconds left to wait for the microwave, which he figured couldn’t hurt him.

It didn’t, but the walk back to his office did a bit. Moving his legs’ sluggish muscles made his whole body ache—again like it does when you run too long and have to stop for breath. He figured it must be in a similar spirit that his head waited til he’d sat down to unleash its onslaught. Before leaving his desk he’d grown used to thinking of his heart beat’s faint buzzy shocks like the second hand on a clock, criticizing him under its breath from where it watched behind his eyes. This was… a great deal worse than that. He tried to time the beats against the ticking of his wrist watch, but couldn’t seem to focus on that and breathe at the same time. They were fast, though, at least at first. His heart rate did seem to calm down fairly quickly, but he could swear it never got all the way back down to its earlier rate—at least not before his attention shifted from the speed to just. How much it hurt.

Was that what made his slice of pizza so tasteless? When he cut his first bite, on its way to his mouth he thought he caught a whiff of the red onions with which its tip must have shared space, and only his horror of Tim asking What was wrong with that part, then? when he brought the otherwise-empty plate back to the sink stopped him from scraping that bite off his fork and trying again higher up the slice. But when he finally forced himself to eat it? Nothing. No onion taste, thank god, but everything else too seemed… muted. Hardly worth how the exertion of chewing made his head hammer after each swallow. Jon knew the taste of food was hardly the point of eating it, but? In the absence of everything he normally liked about cheese and meat and bread and vegetables, the fact the cheese squelched in his mouth made him wish he’d never left his bed. The way leaves of soggy spinach flapped over the sides of even his neatly-cut rectangles. His stomach tightened in revulsion, so that in his throat he could feel each swallowed lump shifting from foot to foot, waiting to be let in. Not to mention how the effort of cutting it shook the whole damn table.

He told himself he could skip the crust. If Tim asked about it, Jon’d just tell him it’d gone stale. Just get through the… other part, the crumb, the filling. Between throbs the ache in his tired jaw merged with the one behind his eyes. Why didn’t it always hurt to chew? Did the pleasure of tasting food give you enough endorphins to cancel it out? Would everyone have this problem all the time if we had to live on, say, dry toast?

Right, okay, close enough. Ibuprofen now. No, you idiot—other drawer. In the fantasy versions he’d rehearsed of this moment he clapped four of them from his palm into his mouth at once, and swallowed them dry. But his blister pack turned out to have only three left. Which was fine! Just fine. Better, probably, after so little lunch.

Also, dry-swallowing was kind of a misnomer? He’d never really thought about it before, but. Turned out it would only work if your so-called “dry” mouth had spit in it. As it was the pills stuck to his tongue, leaving streaks of spicy burnt-orange when he tried to claw them back toward his throat with his teeth. When they got far back enough on his tongue he had to concentrate not to gag, and they still stuck—even when he turned his nose to face the ceiling and thumped on his chin with his hand (which, ouch)—at that point he gave up and unscrewed his water. Allowed as little of it in his mouth as would let him swallow these damn things, and wash their stains off his tongue. And it still made his head throb harder.

Jon imagined shooting whoever next told him to stay hydrated. He derived little joy from the fantasy, though; couldn’t not think of the loud, sharp noise it would make.

Returning the plate could wait, he decided; not like it would attract worms in the thirty minutes it’d take for the pills to kick in. Meanwhile he’d just… keep sorting. He took a statement off the top of the pile in front of him and blinked at it over and over, until his vision resolved into a shape he told himself hurt marginally less than the others. 9720406, Nathaniel Thorp. Christ, 1972? “Misfiled” was practically an understatement for that one. And here he’d thought Gertrude had kept that part of the century in relative good order. Still, he stuck it on the all other years pile and reached for another. 0130111, David Laylow. Nope—still not 2003. 0002610, Jennifer Wong. 0910203, Lisa Jones. 0081711, Donald Gately. 0100912, Lawrence Mortimer. 0152101, Uzma Rashid. Ha!—0030707, Seymour… Backsides. Wait a minute. Hadn’t he seen a prank statement with that name before lunch? He grabbed a stack off the 2003 pile and found… Rashid, Mortimer, Gately. Had he switched the—? Look in the unsorted pile again, he told himself. Under where he’d found Mr. Backsides’ tale he uncovered statements 0031212, 0032504, 0031809, and so on. Great. After Seymour he must’ve got mixed up. There was no more unsorted pile—not on his desk, anyway. He’d have to pull some more out of the… open filing cabinet which stood across the room with its tongue stuck out at him. Yeah, well, that could wait too. For now he’d just. Check his email.

#a shifty tract #to be clear hyponatremia is uh. too little sodium in blood. it is the 'eat more salt' ailment #it's very common w/ dehydration so any diuretic (i.e. med that makes you pee more) can cause it?#my plan here was to have martin complain to tim and sasha that he Broke Jon and when he mentions jon said water made it worse ('god why #('didn't i just believe him?') tim as the only Sports Guy in the archives recognizes ah-ha! electrolytes!#and either get him himself or tell martin to get him some trail mix and sports drink #and have jon drag his feet since every other suggestion his coworkers have given him over the last few days of headache &c. has been Garbage #but eventually cave out of pure frustration--enjoy the taste of salty raisin and stale pretzel so much he grins til his face hurts--#and figure out it must be 'cause he switched adhd meds recently #(...tho apparently it's rare for them to have this effect BUT THEY CAN! i have two data points)#nonsearchable tma tag

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haberdashing · 4 years

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No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down (4/?)

The Magnus Archives fanfic. An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.

on AO3

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7

The time between leaving the Magnus Institute behind and getting on the open road felt like a blur.

They’d stopped at Martin’s flat briefly, and the flat was cozy and comfortable and might have been nice to linger in under different circumstances, but as it was all that happened there was a mad dash to pack things away and Jon feeling his own heartbeat race every time he heard a police siren in the background. (Apparently, though he’d seemed to have a decent enough time there in Elias’ body, and certainly hadn’t found it especially difficult to leave, Jonah Magnus was no more eager to land himself in jail now than Jon himself was.)

Then the two of them--the three of them?--got in Martin’s beat-up blue sedan, and Martin began to drive.

If he were himself, Jon might have volunteered to drive. It had been a long day for him, but Martin certainly could say the same, and it might have been a nice gesture, taking that small necessity away from Martin, letting him sit back and relax as Jon got them where they needed to be. (Which was, they had decided, an old safehouse of Daisy’s in Scotland, far from here, far from the police, far from just about anyone who might want to follow their scent.)

As it was, Jonah didn’t volunteer to drive, and John was grateful for it, because he didn’t trust Jonah Magnus not to drive the car into a fence post or something if he decided that was what best fit his master plan, whatever that was. (Also, did he even know how to drive? John couldn’t remember Elias ever driving, and Jonah Magnus was from the 1800s, after all...)

They listened to the radio for a long while, even once they got far enough away from London that the familiar stations started to dissolve into nothingness and static, Martin occasionally humming along to whatever song happened to be playing or tapping the steering wheel in beat with the rhythm as Jon remained quiet and still both inside and out. The city slowly turned into the suburbs which slowly turned into the countryside, vast and practically empty, rolling green hills and quaint cottages dominating the landscape as far as the eye could see.

It felt like a breath being held, like the pause between heartbeats, like a space between what had been and what might be.

Eventually, they were far enough from the city that no pattern could be heard in the static coming from the radio, and one of them turned it off--Jon honestly wasn’t sure if it was Martin’s hand or his own that pushed the dial in, only knowing that one second there had been cacophonous static ringing through the car and the next second there was only a strange, distant silence.

Martin was the one who finally broke the silence.

“This reminds me of some of the field trips I went on back in school... have you ever been to Stonehenge, by any chance?”

Jon shook his head and muttered “No.”

(Jon wasn’t sure if Jonah Magnus Knew that Jon hadn’t been to Stonehenge, or whether it was simply a lucky guess, but it was true just the same. Jon hadn’t gone there during his school days, and he wasn’t really one for taking vacations--real vacations, that is, not being kidnapped or hiding out from a murder charge or trying to stop the end of the world--and on the rare occasion he’d left town of his own accord, he’d always found other destinations more appealing than Stonehenge, much as he appreciated the history behind its construction.)

Martin let out a soft laugh as he replied, “Would not recommend it.”

Jon didn’t know what exactly about that statement was worthy of laughter-

-until, suddenly, he did.

Jon saw it all, clear as day. The packed school bus, where songs turned to screams intermittently and pencils and erasers got flung about on multiple occasions as a young Martin inched close to the window and tried desperately to focus on the cheap fantasy novel he’d brought along in his backpack. The children groaning and shuffling their feet as adults tried to explain why a bunch of rocks were exciting enough to be worth riding a bus for hours, only actually growing excited when one of their number sneaked under the rope separating the artifact from its visitors and tried to touch one of the rocks in question, getting a stern talking-to from the supervising teacher for his troubles. The bus being even louder and more chaotic on the way back, somehow, and young Martin giving up on the fantasy novel and turning to a polka-dot notebook, doing his best to channel his frustration with his current situation into pretty words to set down on paper...

He hadn’t meant to Know it, of course, but that had never stopped him before, either. But it was good to know that- that he could still Know things, that that at least hadn’t been taken from him, not that knowledge alone could do him much good, as a mind without a body-

Jon was jolted out of his thoughts and back into the present situation by the sound of Martin’s voice.

“Just because we’re out of range of the radio doesn’t mean it has to be silent in here, you know. We just need to provide our own music, that’s all. And you know, one of those old school songs just got stuck in my head again...”

Jon waited, curious to know which one of the dozen or so--fourteen, okay, thank you Eye powers--songs that had been sung on the school bus that day was once again coming to mind for Martin. None of them seemed particularly apt in Jon’s mind, but perhaps Martin saw things differently, was making connections that Jon hadn’t made, unobservant and cerebral as he could be-

“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves...”

Internally, Jon cracked up.

Externally, Jonah in Jon’s body groaned slightly and grabbed his temple with one hand.

“Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves...”

The best part about it was that Martin was singing the song with every bit of certainty and passion that he’d used when occasionally singing along to snippets on the radio, if not more so. Martin’s singing voice was--well, he probably couldn’t make a career out of it or anything, but it was nice in its own way, surprisingly soothing even, given the current source material...

Jon’s body groaned exaggeratedly and curled into himself until his head was nearly touching his lap.

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop. But at least we’ve both got it stuck in our heads now, right?” Jon didn’t exactly have the best perspective with which to view Martin’s face at the moment, so he heard more than saw the wry smile as Martin continued, “Better than facing it alone, at least.”

Jon felt himself mumble, while still awkwardly curled up, “’s still not nice.”

“I’ll promise you a lot of things, Jon, but I’m not sure I can promise nice.”

As the car lapsed into silence once more, aside from a bit of humming on Martin’s part, Jon got an idea.

Hey Jonah? Or Elias, or some maniac, or whatever the hell it is you want me to-

What?

The annoyance and frustration in Jonah’s voice were palpable.

Jon took a second to savor the moment before he began.

I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves...

Don’t.

Or what? What are you going to do to me? Turn me into a murderous monster? Stop me from controlling my own body?

I didn’t make you kill Lukas, if that’s what you’re referring to there, and your... monstrosity, as you put it, is the result of a series of choices you’ve made over the years, decisions that I did not force upon you-

The question still stands. So much has been taken from me already. What else could you possibly do?

Jonah didn’t respond for a moment, and Jon took the opportunity to return to the song that Martin had so helpfully brought to his attention.

Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s-

...you’ll see.

What?

Jon asked not because he didn’t hear Jonah--if “hear” was even the right word for their current means of communication--or because he didn’t understand what Jonah Magnus was getting at, but because he wasn’t going to let Jonah get away with giving a vague statement like that and not elaborating further.

I said, you’ll see what else I have in store for you soon enough, Jon. In the mean time, I suggest you not test me, lest you end up regretting it.

In the silence that followed, Jon really, really wished he knew whether Jonah Magnus was bluffing.

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing

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oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch · 5 years

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“Widows” Movie Review

Widows is the latest entry in an increasingly impressive catalogue from both director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave) and writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects). The film stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki as a group of three women who become widowed when their husbands are killed after an attempted heist goes horribly wrong. Now left to face the consequences of their husbands’ criminal world, the widows are backed into a corner when the man their husbands stole from comes to collect. Using a notebook and a set of blueprints left by her husband Harry (played by Liam Neeson), Veronica (Davis) and the other widows must pull off their own heist in order to pay off a debt with a time bomb attached to it. With an all-star cast that also includes Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, Brian Tyree Henry, Robert Duvall, Jacki Weaver, and Jon Bernthal, Widows sets out to answer the question: can Steve McQueen pull off a mainstream hit?

The answer? Resoundingly so, and better than most. Widows is not just one of the best movies of the year, it’s one of the greatest heist movies ever committed to film. There’s so much to unpack about this movie that I hadn’t even thought about when I was watching it because I was just so blown away by the quality of the art on screen. This film includes some of the best show-don’t-tell commentary on police brutality, racism, sexism, trauma, domestic violence, political corruption, and gentrification that I’ve ever seen, and it’s all just under the surface, waiting to be discovered the more one considers the layering of Steve McQueen’s thriller. That might get lost on some viewers (including me until this morning) who get so wrapped up in the plot machinations of the entire proceeding, how artfully crafted those machinations are, and how quickly the pacing moves that you don’t even have time to unpack it all, but it eventually seeps its way into your head like a seed that just needed to sit for a few hours before deciding to spring up from the ground.

And that’s the thing about making this a Steve McQueen picture: this man takes a premise that sounds just kind of okay to sit through under a less experienced eye, and turns B movie entertainment into a canvas on which to paint grade A art. The cinematography (here brought beautifully to screen by Sean Bobbitt) alone would land this film an Oscar nomination, and yet McQueen never settles for just a pretty looking film. Every shot has a point, every frame an idea, and only a director like this can pull off a film like that. He drops you right into the middle of the action, but not before reminding you what the point of this movie really is. The film opens on a shot of Liam Neeson and Viola Davis sharing a kiss in bed together, reminding us all that this film is not just a heist picture, it’s a picture of grief, confusion, ticking clocks, trauma, and the ultra-complex world of dealing with loss in a criminal enterprise. And it reminds you of how dangerous that world is by the next shot which features one of the most impressive action sequences in heist film history: the back of a van racing across the streets of Chicago, trying to escape police. Ultimately, it’s a movie about the ripple effect of consequences faced when someone close to you leads this kind of life.

Steve McQueen has layered this film with so much to ponder that it’s hard to know if one will even have time to consider it all by the time one goes in for a repeat viewing. In fact, a repeat viewing may be required in order to spend enough time with just the first layer that one feels comfortable moving on to the second. Widows establishes him as not just an arthouse voice for the Academy to love, but a bona fide expert in the craft who’s ready to swing for the larger fences and hit his mark every single time. He’s now right up there with Alfonso Cuarón and Denis Villeneuve as one of the most exciting directors working today.

I could praise Steve McQueen’s direction of this film until the end of time, but I also want to give due credit to writer Gillian Flynn for crafting yet another incredible script for McQueen to work from. Flynn is a master at tension and twists, and no less than twice does she pull off some of the best twists in heist storytelling I’ve seen on screen. Between Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, and now Widows, Flynn is quickly becoming not just one of screen’s greatest writers, but one of the most thrilling writers to watch in any medium. She is a master craftsman, especially when it comes to characterization through action, and her pacing is as frenetic as being on any actual heist.

Perhaps this goes without saying given the pedigree involved by just having this talented of a cast, but every performance in this film is top notch. Everyone fits exactly where they’re supposed to go, and the chemistry between them works out perfectly. One doesn’t often hear chemistry between actors mentioned without a romantic or comedic context (often both), likely because people just assume you don’t need it to be as strong outside of those contexts, but it is nonetheless vital to the survival of any film, especially in the heist subgenre, and all these performers pull it off spectacularly. Viola Davis, the commander-in-chief of any film she’s in, once again pulls off here an astounding power only an actress of the highest caliber can conjure, and is perfectly paralleled by Liam Neeson, proving that even with minimal screen-time, he can out-act almost anyone (just not Viola Davis – it’s a pretty evenly matched performance). Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Jacki Weaver, Jon Bernthal, Brian Tyree Henry, and (hey, look who’s back) Robert Duvall are all fantastic in however large or small a part they play in the film as well, but if we talked about all of them at length, this review would be 10 pages long, and even I don’t want that.

Michelle Rodriguez does play the same character she plays in most things, so I wouldn’t say it’s too much of a stretch for her, but because the writing of her character is so good due to Gillian Flynn’s expert abilities, she fits perfectly in with the rest of the ensemble and is quite entertaining to watch. But the true standouts in this film are supporting actress and actor Elizabeth Debicki and Daniel Kaluuya. Debicki is often cast as just “one of the pretty people,” in things like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but here gets to show off that not only does she have real acting chops most American audiences haven’t seen yet, those chops are some of the best they’ll see in 2018, and it’s a shame that because it’s not necessarily a showier role, she likely won’t get that Oscar nomination her performance is absolutely deserving of.

There is an actor in this movie, however, who’s familiar with the Academy Awards, former nominee Daniel Kaluuya. Kaluuya has burst onto the scene with brilliant performances in Get Out (for which he was nominated for Best Actor) and the largest smash hit of the year, Black Panther, but now he’s been allowed to fully explore his villainous side, and it is terrifying. Kaluuya plays a sort of enforcer and though I won’t spoil for who or for what purposes, the way he sets out to accomplish what he needs to do in order to achieve his goals is some of the most harrowing villainy in all of 2018. He is truly a fear-inducing presence – just seeing the screencaps of him in this movie make my skin continue to crawl. It’s a master performance from one of the singular most talented new actors on scene today, and if any performance in this movie (aside from Viola Davis) were to get Oscar recognition, it would be this one.

I haven’t even talked at length about how beautiful this movie looks, but I won’t here now; you really should just see it for yourself. Widows was everything I wanted it to be and more – a thrilling heist movie, a gorgeous chorus of brilliant cinematography and performances, a masterclass in direction and screenwriting, a layered exploration of crime and consequence, and a resounding testament to the talents of one of the most exciting directors to burst onto the scene within the decade. It’s an incredibly kinetic ride with some of the best pacing, action, and exploration of narrative themes in heist film history, and to boot, one of the best movies of the year.

I’m giving “Widows” a 9.6/10

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timmyrx2000 · 7 years

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Dipper Steps Up: Chapter 3

Chapter Index: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

Chapter 3

Dipper made two discoveries when Monday arrived: First, high-school freshmen were so determined not to be impressed by anything that, though some of them had seen Mabel's photo of him, the general reaction in home room was "Meh. I've seen funnier." The second discovery was that some of his teammates did give him strange looks.

One of them, sharing a table with Dipper during lunch period—Jayden Dufresne (or J.D.; he was the one guy on the team who didn't seem to think Dipper's real first name was odd)—said, "Dude, I saw the picture your sister posted online. Cut way down on the eyeblack, 'kay?"

"She put that on my face," Dipper confessed, his cheeks feeling hot. "It's kind of hard to tell Mabel not to do something. Well, and have it stick, anyway."

At that point Mabel, tray in hand, joined them at the table, sliding onto the seat next to Dipper. She was wearing a brand-new sweater, a Navy blue one embroidered with a baseball bat and ball. She nudged Dipper. "Hey, Broseph!" Then she blinked at J.D. "Ooh, you made the team too! I recognize you from tryouts. Dip, introduce us!"

So Dipper did, and Mabel, in between shoveling food in as though she were stoking a steam engine with coal, said, "J.D., huh? What position didja get?" Crumbs flew when she pronounced "position."

"Left field," J.D. said, watching her eat with a fascinated gaze. "I was kinda lucky to get it 'cause I'm just a fresh—"

Mabel stretched her arm across in front of Dipper. "Hey, J.D., you gonna eat that apple? No? I claim it!" She snatched it off his tray. "Freshman, huh? Do you know anything about Chuck Taylor, other than he's dreamy?"

J.D. blinked. "Drea—uh no, no I don't, I just met him for the first time at tryouts and practice. He, uh, well, I know that everybody likes him."

"No wonder, am I right?" Mabel said, crunching into the apple for emphasis. "Hey, Dip, it's OK for me to come and watch you practice tomorrow, isn't it?"

"No," Dipper said. "Practice is top-secret, because, uh, Coach doesn't want anybody stealing our plays."

"What?" J.D. asked, sounding surprised. "That's not true!"

"Ah-hah!" Mabel laughed, dribbling a little chewed-up apple as she did. "My brother is such a kidder!" She gave Dipper's shoulder a shove, making him swallow some milk the wrong way. He coughed it out through his nose, mostly. "And a sloppy eater! Don't worry, Dipper, I'll be there, cheering you on. Hey—is there a baseball cheerleading squad?"

"Uh, no," J.D. said. "Never has been."

"There will be from now on!" Mabel vowed. "Uh-oh! Gotta run. I hate these short lunch periods! See you on the bus, Brobro. And I will see you on the baseball field tomorrow, J.D. TDLFN!" She swept up her cleaned lunch tray—she hadn't even left an apple core-and swooped off to return it.

"Wow," J.D. said. "Your sister is . . . I mean, she's . . . Mabel is . . . "

"I know, right?" Dipper said.

"Yeah." Then J.D. added, "Uh—what did she say? TD something?"

"T-D-L-F-N. Short for Too-Dle-Loo For Now," Dipper explained. "It's one of her ways of saying 'see you later.'"

"She left early, though. We still have, like, nearly ten minutes left for lunch," J.D. said.

"Not on Mabel time," Dipper told him. "She probably wants to get to her next class early to talk to some of her friends. It's hard to explain Mabel. My sister is sort of intense."

"Yeah," J.D. said. Then, sounding faintly surprised, he added, "I like her."

Huh. Well, you couldn't explain things like that. Heck, Wendy had once liked Robbie Valentino, too, despite his obvious limitations as a human being.

Then again, no one claimed that Gravity Falls had a patent on human mysteries. People liking Mabel was like the Bottomless Pit. You had to admit it existed, but you couldn't explain it rationally.

The following afternoon Mabel did show up to watch practice. In fact, when Chuck blasted a home run over the left-field fence, she went running to retrieve the ball and after a short three-step run-up made a power throw all the way back to X-Man, the first-string second baseman.

On the bench, Coach Waylund asked Dipper, "Did your sister consider trying out?"

"Uh, no. I guess she's more artistic than sports-minded," Dipper told him.

Coach shook his head. "Too bad. Heck of an arm on the girl!"

Then Dipper had to step up to the plate to do his usual weak batting performance, popping out to Chuck on the third pitch.

All through the practice Mabel ran back and forth on the sidelines. She was the only spectator, and she continually gave out encouraging cheers and urged the team on—especially, Dipper noticed, whenever Chuck was on the mound or at bat.

Some of the other guys found her a little distracting—Bobby Adamsky, catching, got beaned by a pitch when he heard her yell, "Hey, catcher, that crouch really shows off your cute butt!"

Fortunately, Bobby's catcher's mask saved him from injury, though he looked a little upset. Coach Waylund kept chuckling, though, and he told the team, "Don't get rattled by a little thing like that, men. This is good practice for when you'll be playing and the spectators for the other team might razz you to try to shake you up. Keep your mind on the game and your eye on the ball!"

Wily Casen—the tallest player, known as "Big W"—muttered, "I'm more worried about where she's keepin' her eyes!"

However, when practice was nearly over and Dipper was sharing the bench with Jon Jacobs ("Jon J"), the first-string first baseman, Jon said to him, "Man, I saw that picture Mabel posted of you and I was kinda mad at first, 'cause I thought you were sort of making fun of the idea of playing baseball with those crazy stripes and all, you know? But it was all her, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Dipper admitted.

Jon clapped him on the shoulder. "I got an older sister man. I feel you."

Jon went on to tell Dipper a little story about when he was six, and his sister, who was then ten, talked him into climbing into a shiny new galvanized-steel garbage can, just to see if he would fit.

"I did fit," Jon said. "And next thing I knew, she clamped the lid on, kicked the can over, and rolled me down a long hill. Thought I was gonna die, man! She told me she wanted to show me what an astronaut feels like when a spaceship comes in for a rough landing."

"How did you feel?" Dipper asked.

"Mad!"

At least, Dipper thought, as annoying as she could sometimes be, Mabel had never done anything quite that bad to him! Though prancing around outside the fence and yelling until she was hoarse came pretty close.

Thursday's practice was about the same, except that afterward Mabel brought a couple of cold sodas onto the field, one for Dipper, one for Chuck. Chuck looked at the can. "Pitt Cola?" he asked. "I've never heard of it!"

"It's real common in Oregon!" Mabel told him. "I brought back a whole case! Did Dipper tell you we like to go spend summers in Gravity Falls?"

"Uh—never heard of that, either," Chuck said, popping the soda.

"It's not on any map that I've seen," Dipper told him. "Before you drink that—"

"But it's the site of the world-famous Mystery Shack!" Mabel said.

"Oh. Uh. OK," Chuck said. "Uh, what is the Mystery Shack?"

Mabel punched his arm. "Now you get it! Bumper sticker! Bomp!"

"Uh," Dipper said, "Chuck, you ought to know that every can—"

Too late. Chuck shrugged and took a big swig of Pitt's and started coughing, nearly choking on the pit. He was a guy with guts, though. He spat out the pit and actually finished the soda without complaining.

But he politely told Mabel that since Pitt Cola was so rare in California, she should keep the rest of her case and not share it with him.

Soon baseball practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays just became a part of school routine for the Mystery Twins. The team progressed through September, October, and November, coming together, developing camaraderie, and improving their play. Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Coach Waylund told the guys, "You men are shaping up. Everybody still has work to do, but that's what we expect. Taylor, you want to explain the upcoming schedule?"

Chuck stood up. More and more, the coach was giving him responsibilities, and one was to organize practices and decide on what playing strategies and skills they needed to work on.

Another was to do things like, well, what he was doing: "We don't practice in December, guys—that's so we can concentrate on academics and finals. Everybody carrying at least a B average? Good! Keep it up so you'll qualify to play. Drop below a B, you'll be cut."

He waited out the inevitable moans and groans and then continued, "So, our first game will come up on February 15, home game against the Pico Padres. To get ready, we'll resume practice as soon as we get back from break in January, and we'll pick up the frequency—Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We're also gonna take a look at some game videos from last year to see what we're up against."

"They're wussies, man!" Big W hooted.

But Chuck disagreed: "I hear that the Padres have like a half-and-half team, sophomores and freshmen, so they have an edge on us in experience, but we're getting pretty good. Next few days, I'm gonna talk to each of you one-on-one to suggest where you need improvement, things to work on in practice starting in January, but so far, guys—good work!"

Mabel, who was never far from the team, cheered while doing a triple cartwheel off to the side. Everybody grinned. They'd got used to having her around, and sometimes they called her the team mascot. She'd even brought a few other spectators around to watch them practice—now ten or fifteen people usually showed up, more than they'd ever had watch practice, according to Coach, though Dipper suspected they came mainly to witness Mabel's antics, not the team's efforts.

The only thing, the one dark cloud on the horizon—as far as Mabel was concerned anyway—was that Chuck so far had not asked her out or complimented her attractiveness or tried to smooch her or anything, really, except to be polite and to laugh when she made a joke and to chat with her now and then.

"I'm not discouraged, though," she assured Dipper that afternoon after practice while they waited for their mom to pick them up. "My spies tell me that Chuck still doesn't have a girlfriend. The field is clear! Next February I'm planning the big move! Wait'll that first game—Chuck Taylor won't even know what hit him!"

And knowing his sister, Dipper was inclined to agree. Chuck, he thought, should be afraid. Very afraid. . . .

To Be Continued

Note from the Authors: This was just an idea I had but the one who really worked his magic and wrote almost all of this is none other than BillEase. He’s an amazing author who usually hangs out at fanfiction.net. Don’t pass up on a chance to check out his stuff. This guy is AMAZING. He wrote the story, I just gave the plot.

#gravity falls #baseball #au #gf #dipper pines #mabel pines #mabel and dipper #dipper and mabel #pines twins #fanfic #dipper steps up #Chapter 3

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