newcomb | mingle log | the quad and elsewhere | we were young and drinking (coffee) in the park

Entry tags:

mingle log | the quad and elsewhere | we were young and drinking (coffee) in the park

Characters: Gansey and whoever shows up
What: Interpersonal interaction! Meet each other face-to-face while nothing is on fire
Where: the quad, unless elsewhere seems cool to you
When: loop 1, day 10 (6/10 irl)
Content Warnings: nothing yet. please use and check thread subjects

It's a pleasant day outside. There's a nice breeze and the sun is doing its best. At very least, it's not raining and warmer than it was yesterday. This is, statistically, likely to bring college denizens out of their dorms and offices since rain seems to often be on Newcomb's horizon. Fall in not-at-all-New England is lovely that way.

Gansey, for his part, can be found throughout the day in several places! He likes hanging out near the clocktower to study, since he's found time works best there (at least for him). It's nice to have a watch that's doing something vaguely akin to timekeeping for once.

But he's an explorer at heart, so he can probably also be found in the library, the computer lab, and wandering the grounds. Gansey isn't sure he's interacted with anyone outside a classroom or on Fermii since the train crash, so he's more likely than usual to strike up conversation instead of waiting for it to come to him.

The real question is this: where's everyone else hanging out today?

[ i'll be throwing gansey at anyone who doesn't note that their tag is closed. please mingle! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'm differently repressed." Gansey laughs at the ridiculous face Iggy's making. "I like facts, even when they don't make sense. Efficiency. Logic. Magic. And live in a world that's much messier than that." It certainly sounds better than anxiety disorder and PTSD and an inexplicable thing lives rent-free in my mind. "But I don't mind being eye candy. What kind of world do you live in, sunshine?"

"Magic?" Iggy asks, fascinated. He's already met at least one person who seems like some kind of actual wizard. Besides that, he's not used to having anyone put 'logic' next to magic.

"You're eye candy whether you like it or not," he says.

"Me? I'm starting to think the most boring one! I'm from the year 2024. We've got climate change and TikTok and no wizards or themed villains or superpowers or anything like that."

"Well, the supernatural more broadly, but yes, magic. I spent years looking for one very specific thing and found a bunch of less specific ones along the way. Then I found the specific thing and a whole lot else besides. It's all a part of me now, or I'm a part of it. Both, probably."

"2024 is a few years ahead of me. We haven't hit the twenties yet. Global warming's a thing and Tiktok exists but we're still in mourning for Vine." Something about Gansey looks slightly wild, all bright eyes and scuffed polish. "It's all just hiding from everyone who doesn't look. Have you looked?" There's a something in his expression, maybe a barely directed wanting, maybe just a waiting for a verdict when the jury's perpetually out.

"Sweetie, that's all gonna require a full storytime, I think, because it doesn't make any sense to me."

That wildness in Gansey is electrifying and Iggy can't help but respond to it. In many ways he's a mirror for others, reflecting back their own energy and desires, but in this case he feels it.

"...I don't know," he says carefully. "I know of things. Dead English guys with pyramid hats, spirit guides, that sort of things."

He pauses, unsure what to admit.

"I know ghosts."

"It's the kind of story that goes with alcohol, definitely. A nighttime story." Because there are bright autumn afternoon stories and then there are middle-of-the-night stories, the ones that can only be told in murmured voices when the world is soft and quiet. "It's about Dreamers, psychics, Magicians, a ghost, a King, a Demon, and me."

I know ghosts. Nothing obvious changes, but Gansey may as well be a live wire with good manners. "As friends or dangers? Or something else?"

Iggy looks at Gansey. His eyes, usually disguised with sparkling cheer, are piercing. He's trying to suss out if he's supposed to be frightened, or impressed, or what. He doesn't know what to make of such a collection of words.

"As people," Iggy replies with some surprise.

Iggy's not supposed to be anything other than what he is. It's a ridiculous jumble of words and also the most serious, true thing in Gansey's life. His expression still doesn't change, but his eyes are warm, almost playful. There's no wrong answer here.

"Even better," he says, "since they're people." Then: "I'm being intense, aren't I? Terribly uncouth." As he speaks all that energy coils back in like someone clicked the lock off an extended tape measure. "Sorry. I won't push." Gansey's put himself back on a leash that's only obvious from the moments where he'd slipped it, someone who knows that they're too much and keeps it throttled for special occasions. Ganesy never had the kind of power that Blue's mirroring amplified, but some part of his mind wonders if maybe Iggy is the kind of mirror that amplifies Gansey. If this is what they all felt like, a lot of things make more sense in retrospect.

Or maybe he has a crush. There's not a supernatural explanation for everything.

Iggy watches this transformation raptly. It's so rare to find someone so open, so enthusiastic... and someone so able to disguise it.

He reaches over without thinking, putting a hand over one of Gansey's.

"No, no," he says. "Be uncouth. I love it. I'm just not used to people who understand strangeness."

He squeezes Gansey's hand.

"I'm a fifth generation medium." It feels so bizarre to say out loud, and yet so freeing. "I've seen ghosts my whole life. I thought it was normal until I was a teenager, and then I found out it wasn't. So I don't talk about it anymore."

His heart is somewhere in his throat as he admits it.

"Please. Be uncouth with me. Tell me about your magic, and your king, and your whatever the fuck, because I've spent my whole life without knowing anyone my own age who could possibly understand."

"Oh, sunshine," Gansey murmurs, and turns his hand over to cradle Iggy's like it's a baby bird. His palm is warm like summer as he squeezes Iggy's hand in return.

While he explains, Gansey listens to like a scholar committing everything to memory. "You can talk about it. I want to hear about it. You. Both of those." The promise of something more is a gong between his ribs. Exspiravit vox! Cabeswater rustles approvingly in Gansey's left ear.

He chuckles, warm as his hands. "That's practically an engraved invitation to talk your ear off. I'd be a fool to turn it down."

It's ridiculous to be so warm and open with someone he's just met, but Iggy's frame of reference for appropriateness is skewed so he doesn't find it particularly odd. He smiles at Gansey, a flash of sun on water.

"I love hearing people talk," he says. "It's partly why I'm so good at my job. And you... you're so different."

The people who have played more than a walk-on role in Gansey's life are all ones he befriended almost instantly, so this is about on par for that. He's never found himself being quite so sincere, but the people who can cope with the full brunt of his sincerity are even more rare than friends.

"I'm as different as you are," he says, lightly teasing. "I like the word 'eccentric', it rolls off the tongue better than 'that weird Gansey kid'. I come from a long line of eccentrics."

"Do you? Me too. Like I said - fifth generation. My great-great grandma founded our church and everything."

He squeezes Gansey's hands one more time.

"You eccentric beauty. Tell me more."

"Okay, there's a really good story in an ancestor who founded a church, and I want to hear it. My family's brand of eccentricity is mostly the type of thing people can politely laugh at during luncheons." He rolls his eyes. "My mother literally ran for Congress on a whim and won, there's a genetic predisposition of some sort going on."

"What do you mean?" Iggy asks, eyes wide.

"Do you mean she like... power of positive thinking-ed her way into congress?"

"More likely that she power-lunched her way into Congress, but close enough." Gansey laughs. "I missed a lot of it due to senior year of high school, a prophesy about my death, and finding Glendower."

Iggy blinks, then leans in.

"What?! I don't know what that means! You can't just drop that stuff on a boy and not explain."

"I guess it's only fair to begin at the beginning." He settles in a bit, fishing for the water bottle hiding in his bag to take a few sips before offering to share.

"Owain Glyndŵr, or Owen Glendower for people who don't want to bend their mouth around Welsh, was a rebel and then the last King of Wales, and he led a revolution against the English. The popular stories make him into something of a King Arthur/Robin Hood hybrid. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor, fighting against the English bastards trying to take Welsh lands, et cetera. He was a scholar and a knight and possibly a bit of a magician. They called him the Raven King because he could supposedly speak to them."

There's something wistful about Gansey when he speaks about Glendower. This was his hero, his idol, and his holy grail all wrapped up into the legend of one man. He was everything Gansey wished to be: wise and brave, sure of his path, touched by the supernatural, respected by all, survived by his legacy. Other than 'touched by the supernatural', which at this point is beyond question, Gansey doesn't feel like any of those things.

"Anyway, his revolution was successful for a time, but he lost in the end. By the mid 1400's, Glendower just...disappeared. No confirmed death or burial site, just up and vanished." He grins and squeezes Iggy's hand; this is the good part. "I started researching Glendower when I was ten and actively searching around thirteen or so. Toward the end of my senior year of high school, we found his tomb."

Iggy takes a sip of water and then just sits there, listening raptly. He's always loved stories - he grew up with fairy tales and books on mythology. So while he doesn't know specifics, he call feel the echo of a hundred tales in this one.

"How did you do that? Wait, where? In Wales?"

It's a well-worn tale in Gansey's mouth, one he's told so many times that it has a comfortable rhythm to it.

"I searched in Wales back at the beginning, but we found him in Virginia, on the ley line not too far from Henrietta. There's an enormous system of interconnected caves that runs along the line, and we found everything down there." That's part of the nighttime story, but it's all right to sketch the vague shape of it in the day.

"The legend was that whoever found and woke the sleeping king would be granted a favor. Reality wasn't anything that fantastical, he was just dead. But that was fine, even if it didn't feel very fine at the time--finding him was enough." Enough sounds like sacred, it sounds like anticlimactic, it sounds like a burden I was ready to put down. "It was a bit overshadowed by everything else going on at the time."

"Virginia?!" He's hung up on that. "How does a dead Welsh king wind up in Virginia? And Gansey, sweetie, you shouldn't go in caves! There are things in caves, everybody knows that!"

Everybody most certainly does not know that. Iggy has half formed thoughts of goblins that might be aliens that might be interdimensional guides; of Indrid Cold and spirit boxes and stories that don't go anywhere.

"What else was going on that could possibly overshadow that?"

"I assume there was a boat involved. They followed the corpse road--the ley line--across the ocean, and went inland until they hit a crossroads." His face goes wry.

"I only know this bit because of Noah--my friend who was also a ghost. The best way to help a spirit stay in the world if they want to be seems to involve keeping their remains on a line. When we found his body and he was removed from the line temporarily, Noah...faded. When we brought him back he improved for awhile." Talking about Noah draws shadows into Gansey's voice. This is another part of the nighttime story.

"Trust me, Iggy, I now know far too much about the things one can find in caves." He gives a theatrical shudder that's only half theatre. Gansey hadn't minded caves much before he really understood what kind of things could be in the dark.

"Well." His smile goes pinched. "Do you know anything about St. Mark's Eve?"

Edited 2024-06-17 06:31 (UTC)

"Corpse road," Iggy mutters. It's a terribly evocative phrase.

Iggy's eyes widen a little. "I wouldn't know about that. Maybe for them to be strong enough for non-sensitives to see."

His brows knit together. "Okay... and no, no I've never heard of that."

"They have lots of names. Fairy roads, spirit paths, song lines, dragon lines, dream paths, the old tracks, corpse roads. Ley line is the least evocative name possible for a place you can tap into a magical powerline. It's like walking around with lightning singing under your feet."

Gansey tilts his head to cede to Iggy's greater experience in the realm of spirits. "Noah was tied to Cabeswater from the beginning, so that might have made a difference. The psychic ladies of Fox Way--Blue's family--were very tight-lipped about what's normal in a manifesting spirit." Noah was not a normally manifesting spirit, judging by the pull of Gansey's mouth.

"All right. Saint Mark's Eve." He straightens his shoulders, takes a breath and holds it a moment before letting it out. "It's a...well, holiday is deeply overstating it. It's a tradition that began at a few of the oldest churches in Britain. On the night of April 24th, the spirits of those who are going to die before the next Saint Mark's day walk to the church. It's tradition for someone to keep watch, sometimes to collect the names of those who appear." He runs a hand through his hair. "I spent an overnight outside a church with a digital recorder to see if I could hear anything. Miles away, Blue and her aunt were at another church, writing down the names of whoever passed through. "

He fidgets with his watch, adjusting the face of it to sit properly against the bone of his wrist. The hands are completely still, the second hand ticking in place. Gansey makes a face at the watch as though it is making a joke in poor taste.

"We hadn't met yet, Blue and I. The first time she saw me was when a spirit gave her my name. The first time I heard her voice was the next morning, there with mine on that digital recorder."

Iggy's eyebrows lift. "Fox Way? ...cute."

He listens, frowning lightly in concern. Then he studies Gansey again with his frank, piercing gaze

"Are you dead?" he asks simply. He doesn't think Gansey is dead, but then who knows? They don't know this world's rules.

The smile Gansey offers up is an odd one. It's brittle and a little bitter, but also very glad. "Twice over," he murmurs. Careful fingers take Iggy's hand and place it against the side of his throat. His pulse throbs like a trapped bird beneath sun-warm skin, quick and vital. "But I'm very much alive."

Edited (wasn't florid enough :)) 2024-06-18 04:46 (UTC)

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