I Have GOT To Pick Better Habits [semi-closed post]

[summerdude]

The zombies are gone, the bodies are healed, the Magnus is exhausted. He's had an extremely strange few days. First, everyone else seems to start unloading their entire hearts at him -- unexpected! But pretty cool! -- and then he wakes up to zombies.

It really gets him thinking, is the thing. He's been practicing swordplay daily since arriving, sparring with people or against Jack, trying to keep a hand in and not let his mediocre skills atrophy. He's also been exercising in new-to-him invigorating ways, learning new stuff, meeting new people...

He likes it here. He really, really likes it here. He misses his friends back home more than words can possibly express, but if he went back to Valhalla right now, he'd miss the people here, too, some of them even equally as bad. And he doesn't want to subject these people all to Valhalla -- it's really not for everyone -- but he also can't figure out how to bring all his people here. Jack still can't rip through the barriers between worlds here like he can anywhere else in the Nine.

He likes it here... and it's becoming abundantly clear to him that he doesn't want to fight all the time anymore. The zombies have made it really, stunningly clear how much he doesn't miss Battle Practice or dying all the time. The rest has clued him into how much he likes learning new things, and talking to different kinds of people, and figuring out who he is when he's not constantly in crisis all the time, zombies aside.

But liking it here so much feels kind of like a betrayal? Especially after all the specific, deliberate choices he's made to stay in Valhalla with his people. And this sobers him, a little, blunting the rough edge of the adrenaline that's still coursing through his body.

His thoughts are distracting and, thusly preoccupied as he walks through the halls in the vague direction of his room, a shower, and a nap, he absently reaches out and returns Jack to pendant form...

And immediately passes out.

[Post intended for anyone who will be particularly upset by Magnus passing out xoxo]]

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

"Sleep," Lan Wangji says again, a little more firmly this time. "You are safe." He doesn't care to make promises he cannot be sure of keeping, but this one he believes he can.

[summerdude]

"Okay, Hanguang-jun," Magnus says. He encourages himself to relax further. He doesn't put much stock in other people telling him he's safe, generally, so that particular statement doesn't ping, specifically, for him. But Lan Wangji is safe, in a way that adult-shaped adults who feel like adults rarely are, and so Magnus feels it, deeper than the words he's saying. Magnus can sleep here, held like this. It'll be good. Restorative. He wants to. He--

--nods off.

[lightbearinglord]

Magnus sleeps, and Lan Wangji rests. He doesn't sleep himself, because he said that Magnus was safe and because he intends to see that through. He keeps his eyes open and he breathes, holding Magnus. He has been, until this night, on the precipice of something irreversible. Now he has jumped willingly over that edge, and it's as Lan Wangji said himself, compelled to speak the truth: I have also never known how to take back my love once it is given away.

For a shichen or more, he sits, unmoving aside from each deliberate breath. Magnus breathes, too.

With time, Lan Wangji must reluctantly admit that a bed will serve as a better place for a teenager to rest after a long battle hard-fought, and that he has a husband who is expecting him and who is feeling fragile himself. Careful to jostle Magnus as little as possible, he stands, cradling Magnus in his arms. He is observant. He knows where most of the residents' quarters are, provided the mansion does not indulge in excessive mischief.

A subtle gesture of two fingers opens Magnus' door, but then Lan Wangji pauses. It is too cold in here -- too cold for anyone, but especially too cold for Magnus. There is broken glass on the floor. Remaining careful to move only the fingers of one hand, to leave Magnus undisturbed, he uses his qi to gather up the glass and send it flying far out the window where it will shatter harmlessly into infinitesimal pieces across the grounds. The window itself will need repairing later, however.

For tonight, Lan Wangji will find another bed. There is an unoccupied room across the hall: nondescript, but undamaged and warm. He pulls the covers of its bed back and arranges Magnus beneath them, removing his shoes gently for him as well. He will get dirt and grime on the bedding, but that is irrelevant. Finally, Lan Wangji pauses and looks at the sleeping boy before him. Magnus needs to know he has not been abandoned afresh. Lan Wangji removes the jade token from his waist and sets it next to Magnus' head on the pillow.

[summerdude]

Magnus wakes up in a dark, unfamiliar room, alone. The comforting memory of Lan Wangji holding him for hours stays the swelling disorientation and fear, so while he sits bolt upright, breathing heavily, the breath doesn't catch in his throat.

That's when the heavy jade token slides from the pillow and knocks into his hand. He picks it up, gripping it, willing himself to calm down. This room is dark, which is good, and close, which is not. He stands up, finds his shoes, and slips into the hallway.

Someone has cleaned the glass from his own room, but the window yawns open, its jagged edges scented with the faintest tinge of blood from some cut he must have healed before he even realized it happened at all. The room feels... bad. He clutches the jade token more tightly, giving himself the space of a few minutes to take everything in and think through his options.

Then Magnus is leaping into action. He takes a long, hot shower, scouring the dust and grime from his skin and his hair. He waters his plants, and then scrawls a quick note to slap on the door -- a request for others to check in on them over the next few days. He dresses, simply, in a green t-shirt and jeans. Then, finally, he grabs the go-bag from under his bed -- a habit from his time in Valhalla, back when Loki had just escaped.

He can't stay in this room right now. The cool, slick surface of Lan Wangji's jade token feels good in his hand. It feels like a hug; like being loved; like the way his mom would sling her arm around Magnus's shoulders when they came to their favorite clearing in the Blue Hills and point silently at a baby deer nosing through the underbrush, or the smile Hearthstone would get in that first year Magnus was homeless, whenever he found a new source of food, or the expression in Blitzen's eyes the first time Magnus picked out an outfit at his store to wear when taking Alex on their first real date.

Even that comfort can't drown out the sense of danger Magnus is getting from this room, now. This room where he first saw the zombies; this room where he leapt from the closest exit like an einherji marching to Ragnarok.

He shoulders his go-bag, and tacks the 'please help my plants!' note to his door, and leaves it ajar.

Standing in the hallway, barefoot, wet hair soaking into the thin fabric of his t-shirt, Magnus hesitates for a moment. Jack is sleeping, currently, on his chain; he can feel the vibration. He doesn't want to wake Jack up, and even though Hanguang-jun told him he could find another path, it's probably not smart to strike out without any form of protection. He leaves Jack in pendant form, but he does unlatch the necklace so he can slip Lan Wangji's jade token onto it, too. When he puts the necklace on again, it's much heavier. The token rests, warm, against Magnus's chest, close to his heart. It stays there, comfortable and impossible to ignore, as Magnus slips out of the Mansion and into the woods.