be gay do crime

she lets marina cause that thin strand of pressure-caused pain and for a second, a lightbulb goes on. something perfect. something that makes total and complete sense. she takes a look at the rings on her other hand and kind of roves over them with her eyes lazily. today’s accessories are pretty harmless, but she has one thumb ring that curves to a sharp point in the shape of some geometric figure. and julia brings more and more thoughts into it.

how does the timing work? what should she do? which of these possibilities may discern a successful path? she’s never been a planner, not really, but making plans on the fly is how she’s survived most of her life. she sits back a little more.

so what if the power isn’t in the device? what if the power is in the person sitting in front of it, and it’s not about the trick at all, but a worthiness to be opened. what if— god, and how exciting would it be?— what if the box chooses to open out of personal proof rather than effort?

so what if, julia thinks, she jump-started the car. (she’s the car.) what if she combines the two things magic is known for— the left hand path and the right hand path— what essentially boils down to both pleasure and pain. what if she spurs a reaction out of herself so splendiforous that the box says she’s allowed.

it’s semi-sentient. julia can feel it in her fingertips. it’s listening to them. it’s probably judging them. it’s probably judging her, but she won’t be beat by a rubik’s cube on acid. no matter what she has to do.

left hand. right hand. one ironically held by marina— the left one, the one that’s given to the power she needs. one waiting patiently for her own self, the other half of it, the power she can create by herself. it’s like cooperative magic but she’ll feed herself with it.

it’s easy. it’s easier than she ever imagined, to slice a familiar line right through the center of her palm with that thumb ring and then? and then the part that gives her the left hand capability.

she kisses marina, and she kisses her the way she might be looking for oxygen. she kisses her like the absolute— zip of energy through her body is a normal thing, and it is, and julia’s hands tingle and she bends and bends her fingers, the julia way to say ‘i only half know what to do with this’. the way that’s been wanting to do this for such awhile and she means it.

the box clicks loudly.

It’s not surprising that it takes Julia just a moment of truly thinking to figure it out -- Julia is powerful. Smart. Julia faces problems head on by herself and the whole exercise was there to remind her that they’re cut from the same cloth. Kindred spirits. Marina places the flat of her palm over Julia’s and guides her in the right direction, but the longer she spends her nose in books and outside of what’s around them, the longer it’ll take for her to master it. (That’s where they differ to Brakebills -- that’s where they spend days burrowing into thick, leather-bound spines waiting for the magic to jump out at them, methodical, calculated, wilting in a fucking library like there’s nothing better to do, but they live it. Hedge magic is more than what you sift through for a cryptozoology class.)

This was never something Marina was angling for -- there are multiple ways of opening the box, and only a few of them left her without a pinky or an index. But Julia takes her by surprise as their lips meet (she says meet like there was anything calm about it. It’s feverish and hard and Marina’s mouth opens when she feels it.)

Her free hand lifts to the back of Julia’s head, tangling her fingers in her hair, and there’s a deep breath exhaled out against her lips. (There’s an energy between them -- Marina feels it and she knows Julia is as attuned to it as she is at this point. Julia can touch down the side of her arm and Marina won’t bite. Pete can look at her the wrong way and she snarls like a feral fucking cat. But with Julia, they are one and the same, and her fingers are prickling with a fucking lightning bolt of energy or whatever the fuck that is -- thanks, Rubik’s cube on acid.)

that’s the most marina thing she’s ever heard. she’s like the epitome of attaching a number of knives to roomba. she’s like the literal manifestation of a knife-ridden roomba. if julia wasn’t so amazed by it she’d probably be angrier. or even angry. but she’s not that at all.

“so it’s the risk like running potential energy to a shitload of kinetic. what you put in to try to break it it gives back out. an absorption and then a repel.” that’s what she’s starting to get.

to be honest, it’s terrifying but so, so exhilarating.

“no bullshit, marina,” her eyes flick to that touch and she’s still reacting— the little hairs on her arm stand up, on her neck, and she relaxes her body to remind herself that it’s marina, but the sight of marina is indistinguishable. she always finds center focus in those blue eyes. it’s like peter pan’s first star to the left and on until morning.

“what do we do— now?” asks julia, and it just sounds like another i trust you.

               “No bullshit. You don’t fuck it up, you leave with all your fingers intact, ‘kay?”   Marina talks as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world -- and for her, it is. It might be a gift -- weird, obscure, totally fucking magically-crazy, with roots in arcane and punishing witchcraft from way-back-when, but she never said it would be easy. That’s why she sat and watched the way Julia struggled with it until she saw enough sense to talk to her. Good.

Marina’s fingers are looped over the top of Julia’s -- they’re slow, and her eyes catches hers and they mull in the silence. A second passes, then another, and the pad of Marina’s thumb strokes over the back of Julia’s hand again. (There’s a fucking energy between the two of them that’s been electric from the start -- Marina acts, Julia reacts. That constant push-pull magnetism keeps them this close, and Marina can smell the vanilla in her perfume and the half-lidded eyes that keep her gaze right here.)

            “The only thing that matters is this. So, Julia. Are you going to trick the box?”

The bit drags on, the waiting, the watching, the wondering when something’s going to fucking happen, but Marina presses down hard against Julia’s fingers.

A leg crosses over another as she takes a drag of the recently-lit cigarette. One beat. Two beat. She glances over at the company the other side of the desk in the bodega. (She thinks it must be Pete being Pete -- pretty girl, vague-magic-talent and here we are. Test one.)

       She lets the smoke plume out in front of her face and her arms cross over her chest. Okay. Test one it is.

She’s never looked as cool smoking as Marina does. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out it’s because Alice’s smoking is performative– she’s long past needing Marina to think she’s cool but she’s clearly not above it as an excuse for proximity. From the way Marina’s arm comes to rest over the back of the bench, neither is she. She has to stop herself from leaning into it. 

“What do you think?” With Brakebills at her disposal, Marina wasn’t the only one focused on bigger, better magic. And as a welters coach Alice hasn’t exactly been sitting around letting those skills get dusty either. If the pitch wasn’t busy she’d challenge Marina now, for old times sake. And so she could find out what new magic Marina was toting. Another reason to wish the world’s longest match would end. 

There’s a self-satisfied and brief flash of a smile, barely there before it’s gone again as she claims a victory. In truth she doesn’t think Marina would be a bad teacher– Brakebills just wasn’t the right fit for her. Between Fogg and the structural rigidity… Well, she’d hated all of that enough as a student. Marina worked better outside of constraints, even if she tended to ignore them.

“But you’re not here for an intern, so now it just feels like you’re stalling.” 

If Marina knows Alice in any way, shape, or form, she knows that she hasn’t exactly been sitting on her thumbs over the past year. Sure, everyone gets busy -- they’ve spent the past year and a half apart in two separate directions, but all roads lead back to Brakebills, as much as Marina would wish they didn’t. She has her reasons for dipping in and out -- the library’s one thing, the welters tournament she just yawned through is another. Alice blips on and off the radar the way she’s been thinking about her over the past year. (I wonder what she’s doing. I wonder if she knows this charm. I wonder what she thinks of hedge magic. I wonder what would happen if we saw each other again.)

           “I think you’ve probably been busy. New students, new spells. New headaches, more than anything, but hey. You always loved the incompetent pricks.”    Surely to be rebutted with that’s why I hung out with you so much, but Marina doesn’t care. She takes a drag of the cigarette and stares out toward the maze. Ever-fucking-changing, huh.

“Would I do that to you, Alice?”   Would she stall? Maybe would she steal? is the more pertinent question, but for now, while the first years brush off their knees and take the soot and char away from their shitty earth-fire charms that went slightly awry on the welters court, it’s just them. Old times and all.

         “--- Or-- I’m sorry. Would you prefer professor?”    Alice Quinn, famed professor, totally fit-the-mould reading, researching, and reliable prof. Two ends of a spectrum.

“everything she confessed to was under duress. torture.”

Julia’s whispered words softly leave hot breath over the cigarette smoke and whiskey-laden lips of one marina andrieski, who has gotten so close to her face, and who is now pushing down on her hands in a way that hurts distinctly. but magic comes from pain, doesn’t it?

she’s trying to think out the situation. and she’s looking down at their hands. the box. thought. her brow knits hard in response to what this means.

“yeah. an arcane item built from the anger and suffering of another would mean that it has— that it has elements to it that mean stress is— involved? or torture?”

julia’s brow furrows harder. harder. like she’s trying to make some kind of sense out of this. but marina’s so close and the pit of her stomach has dropped. that stroke of a finger brings out another shudder but this time she can’t hide it with marina’s hands on hers.

and much to anyone’s surprise, after suggesting possible torture toward her own self, julia can only say quietly while holding marina’s gaze, “i trust you.” it sounds like handing over the most precious possession julia wicker could ever own.

               “Well, more like the box is a trick.”   Witch trials have plagued their people for centuries, and if you have any sense, you read up on the most gruesome shit and pick it apart until you figure out what’s real and what’s demonisation. Walpurga Hausmännin is shrouded in that kind of shit -- what’s real, what’s not? Power comes from pain. Eating dead babies and fucking a demon is textbook Christian zealot propaganda -- sixteenth century Germany was a bitch sometimes.

            “Drives a few idiots mad every time. Every touch makes it hurt. The deeper it gets, the more it fights back.”   Julia reacts with every touch. Marina’s finger taps over the back of hers, and draws the pad of her index over the back of her knuckle in one smooth movement, before relaxing the surface of her palm against the back of Julia’s hand.

‘good girl’. it makes julia stare like a deer in the headlights for half a moment and listen, she’s lived a life of some kind of bisexuality, but there is bisexuality and then there is marina. marina is not a person to be quantified and broken down to something easy like that. it’d be insulting to her. but fuck if she doesn’t— shiver. shudder. shake. for like a second.

she gets it under control as swiftly as she did that low comment from before. or. like. almost as.

marina leans in and julia’s a trapped mongoose by a sudden serpent and somehow not afraid at once. she winces when pressure’s applied and then her too-fast beating heart can’t look anyplace except marina. her too-fast thrumming veins can barely hold their blood.

“like that box is trying to argue with me?” physically? how does she feel? “i feel— i don’t know. physically i feel…. like i ate a bagel two hours ago?”

she breathes out. slow. (does marina know her touch is this grounding? she does. julia’s sure.)

“physically i feel like i feel. like me?”

Marina’s fingers push down on Julia’s -- her index first, then thumb, then ring finger, then pinky. This could hurt, but it might work. Find a box this old and wade through a whole fucking barrage of anti-theft charms and red herrings. Luckily, Marina knows her way around anti-theft charms, and whether that’s through breaking them or making them, it’s anyone’s guess.

               “Trust me?”   Why would you ever trust anyone? Since when was Marina anyone? There’s a glint in her eyes that flickers at the thought. She’s not anyone. She’s not Pete, or AJ, or any other hedge that they find, test, and invite in accordingly. She does the same with her other fingers, and shifts close so she can smell the whiskey and cigarette on the cusp of Julia’s lips. She smells like her too -- and Marina’s grown used to it, grown to wait for it with an extra coffee cup in the morning. 

             “As I was saying. Hausmännin Box. It’s arcane magic -- everything she confessed to was under duress. Torture.”   Her left index finger strokes down the back of Julia’s, slowly, carefully, with her eyes flickering from Julia’s, to their fingers, then back up.

“bring me back a taco.”

Julia’s hands open and close a second. they hurt, and that’s enough, but she’s drinking the rest of that whiskey and looking into marina’s stupid baby blues and the frustration, god it’s building. she’s just so goddamn aggravated because she should be able to get this.

(it has been maybe twenty minutes, julia, but that’s twenty too long for her. she’s rifling through knowledge about how it works but she doesn’t have enough information and she’s not going to go read a book now.)

she can hear it clicking like it’s trying to talk to her. maybe not a blood sacrifice, but a fucking awareness? she’s looking at it like it can’t be explained, but what else is magic? as much as julia hates it— she can’t help but smile at the fact that she’s even doing this. she sucks in a deep breath.

“can you help me.” julia sucks in another breath. “—please.”

She’d leave to call her bluff just because that’s a particularly Marina thing to do, but Julia looks almost completely stumped, and for once, something magic seems to be stumping her. (They had a conversation when this all started -- no safety net, get rid of the comfortable boyfriend, and the Ivy League back-up. Strip it all away until magic is the only thing left and see what it leaves you with. It feels good, and strange, and totally fucking mystifying at the same time. Fear, adrenaline, contentment.)

Marina leans back in, silently, insistently, and covers Julia’s bloodied hands with her own. She’ll fix that, too, because she knows how much it fucking stings to slice open your palms.

            “Good girl.”   It’s paired with a sickly sweet smile -- Julia needs to learn that sometimes, a please and thank you go a long way. Not in a manners type of way, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that sometimes you need help, and sometimes, Marina’s there to do that. Not always. Most of the time there’s a catch. But it’s her birthday, and even she can stop being an asshole for five minutes.

julia takes the whiskey and looks at it sideways with a curious glance. it’s the same color as her eyes are, as it’s a very faint, gentle amber and she always seemed to have the same gaze as a lion’s coat. it’s there on marina‘s startling blue gaze, now.

without flinching, once more, she pours a very even handful of whiskey into her lightly bloodied palm, snaps a finger all the way down her arm like striking a match, and then watches as the center of her hand burns in a sudden burst of blue and orange fire. that hand clutches the box suddenly and it engulfs— but the flame sizzles out and the blood seems to seep into it. seriously. what… kind of—

she blows on the center of her palm where it’s roughened pink and bloody and raises her eyebrows, “don’t all magical items love blood sacrifices?” it’s a little sarcastic. a little marina. she’s trying, here.

snaps her fingers on both hands to give back to concentration, in spite of the sting. she’s going to do this. make no goddamn mistake.

“i know. but if you want to give me your tinder profile and bio, you can go ahead and tell me more things i know about you.”

can you be mad at that smile?

                 “Or I could leave you here to figure it out, go get a burrito, and come back when you call me practically begging for my help.”     Because, after all, Julia’s pouring expensive whiskey all over her hand and pretending that sip didn’t cost a holy fuckton. Smart idea, but wrong. If it was that easy, Marina wouldn’t have put something flammable on the desk. Blood, fire, magic... it’s all entwined, but not quite right. (She’s got further than anyone else would’ve in this time -- the box is clicking somewhat, which is more than what other people would be able to get. Pete would still be staring at it like a total fucking asshole, if he’d been faced with it.)

Julia jokes about what she knows about Marina, but what she knows about Marina is only enough to fill a couple of A4 pages. (That’s a couple of A4 pages more than other people, and Marina is extremely aware of that. Still, she offers a smug little smirk when Julia’s brightest plan does nothing except leave her scalded, and she stretches out an arm behind her back).

“flirting.” julia does nothing but echo the word like marina calling her brat isn’t still echoing in her brain. (it is. she can’t stop thinking about it and she seriously doesn’t know exactly why (except that she does)).

there’s a dribble of blood on the table between them from julia’s palm like an offering. she takes the moment to breathe in and feels and feels, keeps feeling, keeps touching. julia’s still messing with it, but she says to marina, “could you pour me another? is that the macallan forty?” if it is, marina’s on the good shit. and that must mean something.

that drag of the cigarette is so relieving it makes her feel a little better, and she does murmur a thanks.

“i was talking to myself. i wasn’t asking for a hint,” it’s pointed, like how dare marina accuse her of breaking her own rules.

brat.

“—please.” she asked politely.

What’s a glass of whisky amongst friends? No, really -- an acquisition that was as easy to come by as tinkering with Henry Fogg’s drinks cabinet... she spots anything shiny and expensive and squirrels it away like a magpie. This one’s a little more fun than Fogg and his bullshit, but there’s nothing more satisfying than leaving a Rich Asshole with a Rich Asshole’s finest drink and his book of tricks that otherwise would take a raven, a demon, and a necromancer to summon between the three of them.

She silently pours her another glass, tops up her own, and steals a puff of her cigarette. Julia doesn’t ask for a hint, because Julia doesn’t need anything from anyone else except alcohol, cigarettes, and a morsel of recognition to spur her into the next week. She’s predictable, sometimes. And sometimes, she throws Marina so far off base, it’s... impressive.

a relieved breath in. nobody ever figured nicotine would be this relieving. or she didn’t. okay, so she knows it’s a bad habit (but isn’t marina too?) but it helps her focus. and relieves stress. and was the only way, to some extent, she kept a 4.0 up along with her hours awake and her… impossible need to push on.

quentin would tell her it was dangerous to try to climb the trees in Central Park, but she did that, too. and julia’s no stranger to harm before relief.

finger snap. unconscious smile from julia. signature marina.

“flirting?” julia asks, and keeps the cigarette in her mouth as she talks around it, “i’m not flirting. you’d know if i was.” you would. julia isn’t subtle, and it’s only because of her eyes. her face. it all gives her away. she’s all— golden when it comes to liking someone.

(isn’t that her now?)

the box makes a click. and then a strange, hollow noise and julia just says, “what kind of house of leaves—“

“Flirting.”

Isn’t the arguing just elaborate foreplay? The teasing, and the little jabs here and there that don’t mean anything more than the confidence she has that Julia can do all of this with her eyes shut (pun intended) and her hands tied behind her back. (Not quite, but maybe it’ll make her think a little harder.) 

Julia doesn’t admit her faults. And by that, Marina means she doesn’t admit when she doesn’t know the answer like this -- she just buckles down and tries again until she gets it right. She knows that, because Marina does the same. For now, she takes a drag of the cigarette and places it back between Julia’s lips and swallows a swig of whiskey.

she knows better than to get angry. she does. and she’s not quick to anger anyway, too practical for it. julia’s anger presents itself in moments of righteousness but overall? she tries to keep her cool.

(but that’s spurs her further and quicker. marina prods at her and julia tries harder. and harder. and harder.)

she tries again and something snaps, and now it properly cuts the inside of her palm where the scrape was before, and even if julia feels it, who knows? she’s in a mental wonderland where all that exists is marina’s voice and the goal. marina’s voice and the goal. the only two things that are important in this room, sometimes outside of it.

“you don’t keep anything around that doesn’t interest you longer than ten minutes,” julia’s not stupid, “—except pete, but he’s wallpaper, so that’s different.

she tilts her head up again. that motion, lips pursed, ignoring the ache in her palm. cigarette, please.

                 “Don’t I?”   She’s playing with her now, head tilting and her lower lip jutting out to pout. Julia’s right. You have approximately seven minutes to prove yourself to Marina, and if she doesn’t like what you have to give, you’re out of there. In Julia’s case, it was an hour in a meat locker, and then how she reacted when she figured out what was going on. How can I trust you? Why would you trust anyone?

“Maybe if you stopped flirting and focused on the box...”   Maybe you wouldn’t cut yourself, she means to add, but implies it silently. Flirting, goading, rebutting... they’re all the same language between the two of them. Marina jabs, Julia parries, and the two of them are locked in a verbal fencing match until one of them gives up, or Marina gets cranky. But Julia doesn’t want any hints, and Marina’s not one to give anything out for free.

“bullshitter.” julia says it without flinching. she’s still going. and now it’s with her own motions— unfamiliar flickers of movements that seem to be spells spliced on other spells. the thing seems to bite back when an edge jams into julia’s palm, leaves a fresh scrape with just a spot of beading blood. she still doesn’t look.

“you know because you snooped. for some reason,” she keeps going, no matter what the odds. it would be marvelously fascinating if it wasn’t the truth that julia ogden (don’t you ever, ever bring that up to her, ever) wicker would niffin herself out well and good just trying to do the simplest thing. there’s no half measures here. marina once said magic without a safety net, and as a child julia jumped off a high dresser and broke her collarbone because she thought she could be wonder woman.

rejects training wheels on a bike. doesn’t care about the furniture instructions (not that she’s ever pieced together furniture). will go into the dark basement alone.

she tries one thing. takes her hands and presses them, even that stinging palm, hard into the box, like she’s trying to crush it. her shoulders go up. her breath and her chest go down. her fingers fan out and then clutch again. there’s the slightest twitch in her eyebrow.

and now it’s like she’s trying to get this thing to communicate with her, thinking.

                    “What makes you think you’re interesting enough for me to snoop on, Julia? I mean... you can’t even open a box.”    She figures they’ve known each other long enough to talk to each other like this. Mostly because Marina’s going to talk to someone however she wants, no matter what they think about it, but also because she knows exactly how to get under Julia’s skin. Turns out, it’s incredibly easy to do so: plant a seed so she thinks the whole thing was her plan to begin with, goad her a little to amp her up and get the best out of whatever she decides to put forward as a solution, offer the occasional compliment when Marina’s actually a little bit impressed with the magic she comes out with.

There’s a bead of blood that Marina spots on the inside of Julia’s palm, but she doesn’t stop her. Julia can handle a box with a little bit of a bite, otherwise they wouldn’t still be here. Potential is just that -- mould it, shape it, pour it into something that works, or watch it fizzle out and die like water on a candle wick.

“i know the history. i’ve just never held one.”

it’s a julia answer if ever there was one. the way she it almost sounds like stop talking to me like that because you damn well know i’m not an idiot. only julia gets away with sassing marina most of the time, and largely it’s because marina appreciates her— marina trusts her and lets her in on things.

(if she’d go to a fucking therapist julia would realize it’s the insatiable need for knowledge combined with the cavernous desire to be loved but— more than that— approves of. proud of.)

julia’s fingers slip and a knuckle cracks hard because some movements are just difficult on their own and breaking your fingers is a hedge witch/magician specialty. this doesn’t at all deter her. her eyes stay shut, and how much calmer she gets shows how frustrated she is.

“how did you even find out it was my birthday?” she’s never mentioned it. she means it when she says she doesn’t care.

(maybe she cares.)

                 “Don’t say I never give you anything, sweetheart.”   Never held one? Here you go. Now solve it before it cuts your fingers off, and hey presto. Everything to do with magic is spliced with some kind of danger -- fingers falling off, malicious curses... there’s no such thing as good magic and bad magic. She hears the crunch of a knuckle when Julia’s fingers twist a little too hard for the positioning, and, even though she can’t see it, Marina’s eyebrows raise with the expectant sound of the crack. Julia doesn’t listen when it suits her. I know the history, but if it takes her a little longer to prise it open, then so be it. Don’t bite the hand that feeds and all.

She remembers her birthday, because she’s crafty, and because Pete is a fucking idiot. They collate knowledge and hoard it like a fucking dragon -- spells, books, artefacts she’d acquired through one means or another, which now are warded in her penthouse and locked behind a couple heavy-artillery charms. She’s curious by nature, and she’s spent the last year trying to figure Julia out in the first place.

the tiny, itty bitty shiver that’s somewhere up julia’s spine makes a little presence known and it’s the way marina says brat that makes julia thankful she’s usually tan enough a flush of color won’t show up. too obviously.

she takes the drag of the cigarette while she keeps going. she thinks she feels something with an edge prick her but she’s not wholly sure and it doesn’t matter to her. by now, this box could shred her to bits and she’d let it and find a way to reanimate and then walk around with awesome but horrifying knowledge of what it could do. that’s just how she is. there’s no such thing as: defeat, failure, or death.

“you’re not?” julia says it with her own quiet softness, but there’s this unmistakable way you see her eyelids flinch like she wants to open them but she refuses. if she does she’ll lose what she’s gained. she’ll lose ground on feeling it out instead of thinking it out. and sometimes julia’s just a natural. (or all the time.) “marina,” she says sweetly, sticky saccharine, clearly kidding, “you give me the gift of your personality every single day.”

that dimpled smile still means julia’s kidding, but in reality she’s straddling a line between solving this box and her hands twitching at the need to touch marina. which is just a need— a closeness or something, she guesses. they’re always sharing things and casually touching and hearing her voice makes julia want to reach out and complete that usual little ritual. but she can’t move her hands from this puzzle. (and she’s so close she can feel marina’s body heat. which is, again, not different for them but julia’s still regaining her footing from brat.)

                   “Oh, I’m sorry, would you rather find a Reddit post on the... demystification of levitation charms, or shut the fuck up and deal with it?”    It’s a mimicry of her voice -- the same sweet tone entwined in some stupid bullshit. There’s nothing useful on the internet, and if your first port of call is fucking Reddit, then you don’t deserve to learn anything else. Not that Julia would be that stupid. Maybe. Desperate people get... really fucking stupid sometimes.

“In German, gift translates to poison.”    And, to be incredibly pointed, she takes the cigarette from between Julia’s lips and presses it back between her own. Julia keeps her eyes closed to feel her way through the puzzle, like it’s a shroud of darkness and thumbing your way across a room without looking is the easiest way to find the exit door. She stubs the cigarette out against the tray in the middle of the table, and takes a swig of whiskey as she keeps her eyes on her.