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

[lamiaceae]

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! ]

Comments

[lamiaceae]

"I suppose I am," he agrees, voice a rumble under Iggy's hand. Nothing is holding Iggy's hand against his neck, exactly. Gansey's hand rests over Iggy's hand, tan fingers draped over pale ones. His breathing is slow and even, his pulse is rabbit-fast.

"It's a bit like strangeness and I played cat and mouse for years, and then one morning I woke up and realized that strangeness had moved in, stolen my favorite sweater and rearranged my bookshelves." Gansey smiles, bright and fond. Metaphors sometimes get away from him. The second hand on his watch is moving again. "The most interesting people in the world seem to be the ones who've been touched by strangeness."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy makes a soft, thoughtful noise. Then he blinks hard and smiles, withdrawing his hand. He stays close, though.

"Are you saying you find me interesting?" he asks coquettishly.

[lamiaceae]

"I thought that was obvious." When their eyes meet, Gansey's are green-gold, almost glowing. He's squinting just a little, as though Iggy is a very bright thing to look upon. "Like I said, sunshine: you're a marvel."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy shakes his head. His curls bounce a little. His own eyes betray no supernatural ability, no wild talents. But they are warm with amusement and affection.

"Careful - you keep talking like that and I'll never stop flirting with you."

[lamiaceae]

The truth is, Gansey knows that the supernatural and impossible things he seeks out are best when they remain things. When they can think, when they're sentient beings trying to interact with the wider world, they're too big to fit into a person-sized space and end up getting their Otherness all over the carpet. It's not bad, but it's also not easy.

Warm, affectionate eyes that are seeing Gansey? As miraculous a find as anything else Gansey's stumbled over.

"Oh, I thought my opinion on that was obvious too." The fingers that had just held Iggy's palm pressed to Gansey's pulse reach up and tuck an errant curl behind Iggy's ear.

[dead_tongue]

"You like the attention, then?" Flirtatious on top, genuinely curious underneath.

People are so fascinating, he thinks. And Gansey more than most, with his multiple deaths and his summer smile.

[lamiaceae]

"Doesn't everyone?" The flippant answer comes with a shrug and a hand gesture of sweeping oversimplification. "But no, that's not why."

Why has some sort of relationship with the way Gansey's fingers chase another wild ringlet and then utterly fail to tame it. There's an overabundance of unvoiced why between fiery curls, tanned fingers and the pale shell of an ear. "You interest me."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy drops his gaze for a moment, lips still curved in a smile.

"You interest me, too."

[lamiaceae]

"Then I suppose that makes us a pair of interesting people." Gansey can't sit still any more. His nerves are strung with so much potential that the energy converts itself kinetic in self-defense.

Many moments feel timeless to Gansey, stretched and syrupy from being lived over and over. It's especially frequent in places of routine. For example, a university. On an autumn day students constantly are-were-will be sitting in classroom seats, professors will be-were-are at the blackboard lecturing them. Someone is always making coffee. Deja vu is less an odd sensation and more his life experience. This moment feels like fledgling so brand new its wings are still wet, or maybe like the point of a needle. Either way, it's not a moment to sit idly through; he's never been in it before. Gansey stands, an uncoiling of limbs, and offers a hand to pull Iggy up as well.

"Walk with me? There has been an overabundance of Gansey in this conversation. You've been terribly patient. I would love to hear about you."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy takes the hand up, pleased to discover once they're standing that they are about the same height. He's grown used to being taller than most people.

He falls into step beside Gansey easily, content to walk wherever he's led.

"There's not much to tell," Iggy says, and he really believes that's true.

"I think you pretty much heard it all. Art student. Weird family. Canadian."

[lamiaceae]

They're aimed in the vague direction of the lake, ignoring any obvious pathways in favor of meandering through the grass. There's no real destination in mind, it's just a path that's familiar enough to his feet that it doesn't require navigation.

"That was a recitation of facts," he teases. "Each of them has a story. Like your grandmother founding the place you grew up, or why you decided to become an art student when producing art on a deadline seems like a path of great suffering. There's generations of tales hiding beneath the words weird family."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy has to concede that Gansey is right, but it's difficult to think of anything beyond bite-sized bits of information. He is used to talking to fill silences, but the subject is rarely himself - usually he turns the focus back on others.

"I like art," he says with a shrug. "I always have. My grandma had tarot cards and I loved them when I was little. I got older and found out they were all painted by a woman named Lady Frieda Harris. My dad had books on Austin Osman Spare, and William Blake. I would look at their paintings over and over, and I thought... this is the purest way I know to show people what I see. What I feel. So. I decided to go to art school to learn how."

[lamiaceae]

Gansey knows almost nothing about tarot other than that the women of Fox Way used it frequently and almost never in his presence. He makes mental note of the artist names for later.

"Can you read cards? I can see how they'd inspire you. Have you learned how to show people what you see and feel?" Managing to communicate those things in any medium seems like one of the greater secrets of the universe.

[dead_tongue]

Iggy laughs silently, hand pressed to his mouth. "Me? Gosh, no! I just like the pictures."

He himself as he considers the question fairly. "I think so," he says. "Hard to say for sure, since art is so subjective, you know?"

[lamiaceae]

"Hey, you never know. I've only really got the Fox Way ladies to go by, and it all seems tied together for them." Ghosts, cards, scrying in mirrors and bowls of blood-dark cran-grape juice (wine is for drinking, jesus mary!), the whole nine yards.

"Hmm." Gansey ponders the nature of art and artists. "I think," he says after a moment, "that if you're content with what you've made, there will be people who see the right thing, even if it's not exactly what you see."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy can't get over the Fox Way ladies because it's just so uncomfortably closed to Fox sisters. It makes him think of his great-great-grandma, and he doesn't particularly want to do that.

"I have to hope so," he replies. His smile breaks forth once more. "I think at the end of the day, we all just want to be understood."

[lamiaceae]

The Fox Way women are mostly not sisters, but there are mothers and daughters and undisclosed levels of cousin. They also make the supernatural seem as inevitable and everyday as doing laundry. Nearly everything about Fox Way is the polar opposite of the Fox Sisters, thank goodness.

"I think so, at least in glimpses." There's no power in the world that can keep Gansey's face from mirroring that smile. "Art creates a legacy. With art, you could be known by people whose parents' parents haven't even been born yet."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy laughs silently again, shaking his head. "More like I'll fade into obscurity, but thank you."

He's content to walk in silence a little while. It's strange to have met someone he can be so open with, although he's still expecting to mess it up somehow.

"So... I guess we're gonna be seeing a lot of one another, if we're all stuck on campus. Not complaining. Maybe like... you can check out my room sometime, once I get it set up."

[lamiaceae]

"Well, not everyone is going to be Van Gogh or da Vinci, but we have the internet." Even plenty of things that should have faded into obscurity will live forever.

Walking beside Iggy, Gansey is thinking the exact same thing. Good job, boys.

"That'd be nice. I'm in Carroll room 42, if you ever want to stop by. Not sure anyone else lives in the building." He chose the Hall for the quiet and the furiously blooming climbing roses. "It's still looking a bit bare, but not too bad." There's another pause, Gansey scuffing his docksiders along the ground a few times. "I'm a terrible insomniac, so if you're ever up in the middle of the night you can stop by."

[dead_tongue]

"I'm in Abilene! Number sixty-nine." A grin because he absolutely chose that on purpose.

"Yeah, I need to decorate. I think I'm gonna paint the walls." He has no idea if that's allowed, and cares even less.

Iggy glances over, grin turning coy. "Yeah? I just might."

[lamiaceae]

"Oh, you must've gotten there early to get that room." Gansey picked room 42 as a joke, too fussy to have done anything like claiming room 69 as his own.

"What color?" Gansey doesn't particularly care if it's allowed either. There's no money on campus, they can't be fined. "Oh, I wonder if that will stay. Shame to have to repaint once a month."

Iggy's coy expression makes Gansey's ears go pink. "I need to find myself an insomnia hobby here. In high school it was a scale model of the town we lived in." At uni, someone had made a joke about his surname and knitting, and Gansey promptly undertook the task of learning to make the fishermans' sweaters whose name he shares. Out of everything they've talked about thus far, he's reluctant to mention the knitting. "Company's almost always welcome."

[dead_tongue]

"Right? Or I'm just the least mature person there."

Iggy blinks. "Oh yeeeeeeeeeah. Gosh. Guess we'll find out." The idea of such impermanence is a little bit overwhelming. "But, uhm, I was thinking... greens and blues? Maybe a mural, I dunno."

Oh, the pinkness! So adorable. "You could do that here! Or like... cross-stitch? That's fun and portable." Iggy naturally has zero hangups about 'girly' crafts. "I'll make sure to knock before entering. Just in case."

[lamiaceae]

"Somehow I doubt that." Gansey waves an elegantly dismissive hand. A willingness to be silly is not immaturity.

Only after it comes out of his mouth does it occur to Gansey how really disconcerting the idea is. There's an increasingly large pile of don't think about it in one corner of his mind, and he tosses this into the pile. "Oh, a mural would be nice. May as well make it your own, right?"

He shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. "Maybe. It takes up more floor space than a dorm has on offer, but recreating the campus from cereal box cardboard would be a serious challenge." What a nerd.

[dead_tongue]

Iggy nods. "Exactly! And if it sucks, I'll paint over it." It wouldn't be the first time Iggy's had a home decor project go awry.

"I mean, I'd be impressed." His tone implies Gansey could do anything and Iggy would find it impressive.

[lamiaceae]

"That's the spirit," he agrees, and then laughs about Iggy's willingness to be impressed, the seeming ease of it.

"It's something to keep my hands busy when my brain won't let me sleep." His tone is a verbal shrug; when Gansey looks at the products of his insomnia he mostly just sees the time he would have preferred to be sleeping. Maybe taking up knitting again would be better. He could at least wear or gift all those hours. "But the model Henrietta was certainly a conversation piece. I wonder what the people who bought Monmouth thought when they found it glued to the floor."