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staysaneathome · 2 years

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Faking Dating For Dummies (And Other Avatars of the Stranger)

The being currently known as Sasha James cards her fingers through her hair as she waits at her table.

It’s an odd habit, one that’s more likely to get her stares rather than let her blend in with the lunchtime crowd, but she can’t quite help it. It feels so good to be able to straighten her hair again, luxuriating in the gentle heat and methodical styling, the weight of the straightener like an old friend even in her new hands. If she’s careful enough with her touch, she can pretend the warmth of her fingers is actually some residual heat left over from this morning.

It’s an indulgence, certainly, like when she’d bought that yellow cake for her “birthday” and eaten every slice while riding the nearest ferris wheel she could find, or slipping several tins of the nice Marks & Spencer shortbread into the break room cupboards at the Magnus Institute alongside the worn packets of rich tea biscuits, hobnobs, and jammy dodgers.

But she’s been stuck in that table for so long, unable to even struggle or scream against those awful, choking threads of the Web, with only the taste of dust and table polish for company. Even now, she can feel the most of her still held there, pinned like an insect on a corkboard under the glare of that hideous Eye.

Nikola may not entirely approve, but she’s not the one risking her skin to monitor the Eye, now is she? Sasha James is.

(Or, well. Was.)

So all in all, the being going by Sasha James feels she’s entitled to some little idiosyncrasies, just for herself.

The Stranger doesn’t let her have too many of those.

But still, she has work to do, and they can’t go attracting the Eye’s attention just yet. So she’s meeting up with someone outside of Madame Tussaud’s and the Trophy Room to be on the safe side.

She won’t know them, but that’s never been an issue for the Stranger. In fact, some would argue it’s the entire point.

Nevertheless, when a slightly-too-pretty person with a smile that couldn’t be more camera copied slides into the seat across from her, Sasha can’t shake the feeling of…recognition that suddenly strikes her.

“Here we are again.” The person says, voice a lower tenor that suggests masculinity.

“Here we are again.” Sasha returns the password blithely. She peers closer. “…Have I seen you perform?”

The way this person startles is lovely, all fluid starts and sharp stops, like a dancer following the line. “Oh. Uh?”

“Petrograd, 1916? Nikola was going through her ballet phase?” She hazards, lighting up when the backing dancer nods hesitantly. “I thought so! You were wonderful, I always thought it was a shame the audience wasn’t fleeing in terror sooner…Ilona?”

“It’s, it’s Tom now, actually.” The very pretty ex-dancer says, rubbing the back of his (?) head bashfully. “Nikola let me choose this one, as a promotion of sorts.”

“It’s about time. You always were too good to just be backup.” Sasha smiles, trying to ignore the way blood is circulating to her cheeks.

That makes him(?) laugh, which has the oddest aftereffect of making her palms go gently clammy.

“Well enough about me.” His (?) eyelashes are long and soft looking as he (?) flutters them at her. “We’re here to talk about you. How is it going at work?”

She groans, burying her face in her hands.

“…Is that a good sound?” Tom asks, hesitantly.

“They’re just—” She waves her hands around. “How can they be so. Weird?? I mean, I know they’re Eye avatars, but come on.”

And then she’s off, ranting about Tim Stoker and his constant jokes about invading people’s privacy and seducing civil servants for their public and personal secrets, about the person whose life she’s living who apparently thought everyone’s private lives and social media were merely another puzzle she was entitled to solve and get the answers to, about Martin Blackwood and how he looks soft and scare-able but he seems to have committed a new crime almost every time she enters the office and he somehow got ashes of the Hive to please the Archivist when she hadn’t, to Sasha’s knowledge, ever been burned??

And that’s not even getting Archivist and his paranoid little breakdowns, constantly muttering about how since Gertrude was murdered, of course it must mean that he’s going to be murdered too, when he’s not even half the strength she used to be?? Like wow, Jonathan, maybe the murder’s not about you, did you ever consider that? Like she might murder him, but that’s besides the point. And he keeps trying to break into these tunnels under the archives, with just his skinny little noodle arms three times this past week alone, and recently she saw him going through the rubbish?? To find Martin’s poems and record himself verbally tear them apart, as if that will hide the blatantly obvious crush the two of them are nursing on each other?? Honestly—

And through it all, Tom is an avid listener, gasping at the appropriate points, sputtering with helpless laughter at others, particularly when she describes Martin’s growing grudge against this policewoman investigating the Archivist for Gertrude Robinson’s murder, seemingly for spending too much time talking to him.

She finds she particularly likes his (?) laugh, a throaty chuckle that grows louder and makes people at the tables around them look over and then quickly look away.

This is the most fun she’s had since she was released from the table for this assignment, and she feels herself relaxing, leaning in closer, able to ignore the lingering itch of being Watched for just a moment.

So of course, it can’t last.

“Sasha.”

She nearly jumps at the sound of her new name, looks up to see the Archivist glaring down at her.

She plasters on a fake smile. “Oh, hi Jon. It’s not already the end of lunch break already, is it?”

“It’s close enough.” He lies, poorly. She can see on the face of his battered watch that she still has half an hour left. His eyes are fixed unsettlingly on her, as if he’s trying to peel the layers of her apart with his gaze alone. She’s not sure whether he’s blinked at any point during this exchange.

Sasha has been alive for a long time, can very faintly recall pale masks and groups singing from her earliest memories, so she doesn’t flinch under the Eye’s gaze. Instead, she begins picking up the wrapper for the sandwich and hula hoops she was eating before Tom got here, starting to stand. “I’m so sorry, I lost track of time. I’ll get back to the Archives now—”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend here? You’ve certainly been talking to him long enough.” The Archivist’s tone is a solid weight, curling around her like chains, like nets, like webs. “Who is he?”

Sasha doesn’t thrash, doesn’t shriek like she so dearly wants to, even as her tongue fights the rest of her to obey the Archivist’s demand, to tell all if it will just make that awful scrutiny stop.

“This is Tom.” She grits out through an increasingly plastic smile. The Archivist might be flush and clumsy with the Eye’s power, but he’s still untrained enough that even if he can make her answer, she can avoid giving any more than the bare minimum. “Tom, this is my boss at the Magnus Institute, Jonathan Sims.”

This clearly doesn’t satisfy the paranoid little weasel of a man, because he opens his mouth again. “And what—”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

Sasha takes a moment to goggle at Tom.

He’s standing up from the table, chest out and trying to meet the Archivist’s gaze head-on, as if his tentative connection with his new skin doesn’t make him the more vulnerable of the two of them.

She feels an odd protectiveness as the Archivist’s head cocks, studying Tom. “Since when?”

“Since we met in the group therapy that Elias recommended I go to after Prentiss.” She lies, praying the Pupil still considers her infiltration diverting enough to support this. “This was before any of us came back from leave, and when Tom and I met we just…hit it off. We’ve only been going out for a few weeks now.”

The Archivist doesn’t look as placated as she’d hoped he’d be, clearly gearing up for another interrogation—

Something warm and plush covers her hand. Part of her wants to compare the sensation to the softest linens, the smoothest mahogany.

Tom is frowning at the Archivist, the very picture of a concerned partner. “Excuse me for saying so, but do you usually get so involved in your subordinates’ love lives? Only, I don’t mean to pry, but Sasha mentioned something about you and a coworker, Martin—”

Jonathan Sims splutters. “Wh—! N—why, what, what are you even talking about?! What about me and Martin?! There’s nothing about, I don’t—no. No. Martin is just—! And it is none, none of your business, anyway! I do not have, have any interest in what my assistants do that doesn’t concern the Archives. None.”

“My mistake.” Tom says, sitting back down. He hasn’t removed his hand from where it’s curled over hers. “Well. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Sims.”

“A shame I can’t say likewise.” The Archivist mutters, turning his attention back to her. “I’ll see you back in the office, Sasha. Soon.”

“Soon.” Sasha replies, watching as he turns and speedwalks away. A few small, green leaves flit down in his wake—was. Was he hiding in the bushes across the road, watching them?

She and Tom seem to deflate at the same moment once the Archivist is out of sight.

“Now do you see what I mean about them being weird?” She asks wryly, gratified when that startles another throaty laugh out of him (?).

“And here I thought you were exaggerating.” Tom grins at her and Sasha grins back, heart pumping hard from residual adrenaline.

But then the expression falters, Tom’s eyebrows drawing together. “Was. Was that okay? The, uh, boyfriend thing. It’s just, he was right there and I didn’t want him doing—doing that thing again, and it was the first—”

“Hey, hey.” She places her hand atop Tom’s this time, “That was excellent thinking on your part, and you acted the role brilliantly. We needed a cover story in case any of the others noticed us meeting up, and a boyfriend is better than just an out-of-work friend or a family member. More reasons to contact each other regularly, if you know what I mean.”

Tom nods, even if he (?) clearly doesn’t. His gaze is fixed on their hands, and Sasha realizes with embarrassment that she’s just been absentmindedly stroking his knuckles with her thumb.

She removes her hand and places it under the table, clearing her throat. “So, um. Is boyfriend, alright with you? Not, not the idea of being, being my romantic partner, but, being, well. He/him.”

“Hm? Oh, oh yes, I like those.” Tom has pulled his hand back towards himself, gently rubbing it with his other hand. “But I’ve never been a, a boyfriend before. And we need to really sell this role, otherwise the Archivist will Know, right? For the good of the assignment.”

Sasha nods tentatively, “The good of the assignment. Right.”

Tom continues. “So who should I ask about it? About how to be a good boyfriend? Would Nikola know?”

Sasha can’t help the face she pulls at that. Nikola’s never going to let her live this down once she hears about it, is she.

“I’d ask Breekon and Hope, myself.”

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donutdisturblivball · 2 years

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ship dynamics/tropes/aus i love! (pt 2!)

it’s 3AM and i have THOUGHTS. x why the fuck did i get 71 messages from you at 3:52AM

idk whether to call this a trope or a ship dynamic bc i think it’s kinda both but we’re gonna stick with ship dynamic

i find this so funny, i don’t think u understand how funny i think this is.

i think a part of it is that it sort of ties into that “at this point i don’t know why we’re together (affectionate) x you know you love me” dynamic too

there’s really something to be said that maybe it’s 3AM and you just want to share how you feel and what’s going on with your partner

like you’re not afraid that you’re annoying them and not in a “man who could ever get annoyed of me” sort of mindset, but more so a “you’ve seen me at my worst and you’ve stuck around for me and i trust you”

and maybe they just have a lot of things to say and they can’t help but say it and now they finally have someone to talk to about those things

maybe they were seen as annoying by a lot of people because they talked too much and now they’ve found someone who won’t push them away for having thoughts and now they’re finally opening up and allowing themselves to just talk bc they don’t have to be scared of being pushed away anymore

maybe every night they send all these messages and their s/o and the next day neither of them talk about it but when their s/o wakes up they always read all the messages and they start every morning with a reminder of the person they love

maybe it’s not even just at night. maybe throughout the day they’ll be getting texts like “LOOK AT THIS CAT I SAW!!” or “my backpack is so fucking heavy” or “statistics is so boring i miss you”

and it’s just this person wanting to share their mind and their life with someone they love and i think having someone like that is something precious

can u imagine the drunk texts

either they text SO MUCH more but it’s just a lot of “i love you i love you i love you” or it’s absolute silence. there’s no in between.

i rest my case.

#fanfic stuff that i’d die for #ship dynamics #tag ur otp #wangxian #chili #tartali #zhongchi #for the love of god why r there so many ship names for that pairing #iwaoi #klapollo #i have like five more ships that i could go off about but i think i’m sticking to four images per post

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