If Alex Came Back We'd DEFINITELY Be The Local Power Couple [open post]

[summerdude]

Magnus has come to realize that nobody else in this entire place is presently in a relationship that has lasted nearly as long as his and Alex's. Shen Yuan's concept of "communication" "with" "Luo Binghe" is continuing to horrify him every time he thinks about it. What if there are other people who could use the advice of a sixteen-year-old twenty-five-year-old virgin who has been in a committed relationship for nearly seven years with someone to who he is probably widely known to have never verbally declared the undying depths of his love? (Gods, he hopes Alex figures out a way to do another little visit for their rapidly-approaching anniversary)

To that end, he posts an announcement sign over the welcome table, in the café, and on the door to the kitchen. It reads:

NEED RELATIONSHIP ADVICE OR FEEDBACK? Local Long-Term Relationship Expert Magnus Chase Offers His Aid.

He even lists office hours — an inoffensive parlor (meaning he can tolerate hanging out in it, and the door can close if people want privacy for their conversations) every other day for an hour, immediately following his Drosera hand-off to Galahad.

Comments

[tallyyoungblood]

"I'm definitely not," Tally says. "I'm just going to climb more tall stuff instead."

[summerdude]

"Unless, of course, you did like her. In which case it might be worth asking her to kiss."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally looks at him, her face red. "I guess it would," she says finally. The thought is nerve-jarring enough to help her remember David. He'd been ugly, too, but like Gideon, he'd paid attention to her and made her feel important. He'd had amazing survival skills like Gideon's, even in the face of... Tally. What she'd done.

Tally sits down heavily. "Love is bogus," she sighs.

[summerdude]

"Uh, chyeah, if by 'bogus' you mean kickass," Magnus says, even though it is bogus that Alex is worlds away from him. "Wanna tell me about it?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Her memories of David are bubbly in a totally not-fun way, but bubbly is bubbly.

"I dated this guy, and then everything went wrong," she says. "I basically stole him from my friend Shay, and then I accidentally got his town destroyed, and now he's gone and didn't rescue me from New Pretty Town." Tally's eyes well with tears. "It's all my fault and I can never make up for what I did to him. Maybe it's too dangerous for me to date anyone."

[summerdude]

Okay! That is a lot! Also, something about Tally on the verge of tears makes Magnus want to reach out and take care of her, even though he still doesn't really like her, which is weird. Okay, time to focus on her eyebrow again! Aiming for a thoroughly non-judgemental and neutral tone, he says, "Okay, so can you break that down for me a little further? How did you steal him from Shay? How did you 'accidentally' get his town destroyed?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Shay totally had her eye on David before I came to the Smoke," Tally says. "But he asked me out instead. He gave me these gloves..." Tally realizes she's totally blubbering. "I'm sorry. I'm so sense-missing. Um... I kind of ran away from home before I got my operation to try and go find my friend Shay, and I found her, but the reason I went is because the authorities back home made me do it or they wouldn't turn me pretty, and they put a tracker on me. I got to the Smoke--the place people go when they run away--and I ended up actually liking it there. I tried to destroy the tracker, but I set it off instead." The memory is painful. "The Smoke was destroyed because of me. David's home."

[summerdude]

Magnus looks around for a minute, and then pulls a spare t-shirt out of his backpack. "Here," he says, offering it to her. "So you can blow your nose. Did you know she liked him? Did he know she liked him?" He wants to know just how badly Tally violated bro code.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Thanks," Tally sniffles, taking the shirt. It kind of smells like the wild, which only makes things worse. "He knew she liked him, but I didn't until Shay saw me with these gloves David gave me. In the Smoke, you can't just get new things out of the hole in the wall. Everything's handmade. The gloves were really valuable. Shay and I had the same size hands, and David gave them to me and not her." Everything is coming back in the telling: the way David had called her ugly face beautiful, how he'd kissed her, how he'd said she was more serious than Shay. "She confronted me and I stopped wearing them, but then David introduced me to his parents..." A sob catches in Tally's throat thinking about Az.

[summerdude]

"Oh, so you didn't know she liked him?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Not when he first started being interested in me," Tally says. "I don't know, he was like... this mythical figure? He showed up at the Rusty ruins outside town to try to recruit tricky uglies to the Smoke. I never met him like that, but Shay did, and she always talked about him like some kind of, like, bubbly cryptid. I didn't think she really liked him. But then again... I should have known. She talked about him all the time."

[summerdude]

Magnus gives Tally an assessing sort of look. "Are you a mind-reader?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"What? No. I don't have magic or anything in my dimension." Where's he going with this?

[summerdude]

"Then why should you have known something Shay didn't tell you?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Oh!" Tally laughs a little. "That was kind of clever. I guess... yeah, I couldn't have known for sure." Tally still feels pretty sure a lot of it is her fault, but Magnus does make a good point. "It doesn't change how terribly it ended, though."

[summerdude]

"You mean how the cops used you to further their own objectives?" At least that sounds like what Tally had described.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah. And I didn't stop them." Cops is a funny archaic word, but it's definitely appropriate.

[summerdude]

"Because they lied about how the tracker worked, you mean?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Yeah... but I threw it into a fire. It seems sort of obvious in retrospect that might set it off."

[summerdude]

"You wanna hear a proverb of my time?" Magnus asks, and doesn't wait for Tally to confirm. "'Hindsight is 20-20.'"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally laughs again and wipes away her last few tears. "Okay, I get your point. You're pretty bubbly, Magnus."

[summerdude]

"Anyway, my point is, just because you had one, uh... kind of wild experience doesn't mean all love sucks," Magnus says. "So if you do have a crush on someone that you want to make out with, that's okay. Um, unless it's me or Tress. Even though neither of us is dating someone here we're both spoken for. Separately, obviously. But also neither of us is a butch lesbian, so... probably not, right?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Definitely not," Tally says. "But I like both of you a lot as people. As for my... um... I guess I'll think about it." Maybe Magnus has a point, maybe he doesn't. "If I were to ask someone to date, how do you, like, do that? I've never been the asker."

[summerdude]

"Well, how have you been asked out before? And what worked for you?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Well, Zane--I went on, like, one date with him before I woke up here--just kind of asked me to breakfast and kissed me, and that was bubbly because I already thought he was the best," Tally remembers. "David... he asked me to do a bunch of stuff with him and then he called me beautiful, even though I was ugly at the time."