Who: Kent Brightstar and Thorne Proudfoot What: Trapped in a Closet, or Clearly the Universe Hates Us When: 23 April 2019 | Evening (and then forever) Where: Reserve Library Warnings: SO MUCH Language, probably
It was criminal how very little time Kent spent in the library these days. Just another sign of the changing times; for the most part, he'd traded the still-somehow-musty smell of books (musty despite spells that kept them preserved) for the advent of the internet and the convenience of having knowledge right at his fingertips. Yet sometimes, like now, even the instant information goddesses failed him, and he had to retreat to his original stomping grounds.
He'd spent so much of his childhood in this library, sponge-like in his fathomless quest for more more more. Maybe he should have gone out more, but books always made better company. He knew where he stood with the leather and the paper and the glue. Anything else was unreasonable and messy and never worth his time.
So he was there now, a mass of teetering towers of books all around him, at least ten of them arrayed and open in front of him as he sat hunched over a desk. He would lean up over them from time to time, pausing from scribbling in his notebook as he fell down the research rabbit hole. He really was a man obsessed, but he couldn't let it go.
Kent wasn’t the only one who found solace in the library. From an early age, Thorne had found comfort among the books. Because while his body frequently concluded against him, books placed no such limitation on his mind. But he could only wish that he was there to soothe information-hungry beast, no there was another network disruption and for once he was actually qualified to investigate, diagnose, and hopefully resolve. He had spent plenty of time in the wing of the administration building that made up the library and knew all the crooks and crannies.
Thorne dropped his bag on his usual table, back in the section about ghosts and poltergeists, which weren't all that popular in a location all about creatures and therefore usually deserted. Taking out his wand and his phone to read the memo the librarian had sent to Security, Thorne began in the northwestern corner to check on the runes and spellwork, continuing counterclockwise. He would start with what he was familiar with before checking the network proper.
The sudden need for another book had Kent venturing forth from his fortress of tomes and into the library proper. A little stiff, he stretched his hands over his head and yawned in total silence. Even if he hadn't seen another soul since he got there, he still obeyed the unspoken rules of quiet. He turned a corner right as he was dropping his arms and collided into something solid. Someone solid. He bounced back a step and walked solidly into one of the heavy shelves. It wobbled ominously, despite its weight, and for one heart stopping moment he thought he was about to meet his end right then and there. Fortunately, the books stayed put and he was able to breathe again. He glared at Thorne, eyes narrowed and accusing. "What the hell, Proudfoot?"
Thorne adjusted his glasses and glared at the healer. After all, the older man had been the one to walk into him and he had the audacity to act like he was the injured party? If it wasn't for the fact that it was Kent Fucking Brightstar he would have been a little impressed. "Security matter," he said matter of factly, putting his wand away just in case the healer thought it might construe some sort of threat and claim an act of self-defense.
Okay. Maybe that was being a little paranoid, but maybe he should start to question things more.
"We've had some reports of network instability here as well," he told the man, not really sure why he had to justify his being in the library in the first place. It was open to all staff members, and the public as long as they registered ahead of time. Even if he didn't work for the Reserve he would have been well within his right to be here. "Have you been experiencing any issues?"
The way Kent rolled his eyes when Thorne quickly stowed his wand was practically audible in the stillness of the space. It was like he was expecting Kent to react violently, when his family wasn't the one with the fucking precedence. But seeing as how the other wizard was here on official sounding business, Kent decided that he could go that route as well. They may have hated each other, but at least they could be professional. "Not that I've noticed, no, but I've had my head completely in the books. I'm afraid I can't help you there. What sort of network instability was reported?"
Thorne let out a heavy sigh, more because the network instability seemed to have no discernible pattern other than jumping from Reserve location to Reserve location. The warding wasn't as heavy in the library as it was in some place like Medical or some of the greenhouses. Thorne went on to explain as much, highlighting the interplay between the warding on the building and the security warding on the computer network, not even pausing to think that Brightstar, genius or no, might not be able to keep up. It wasn't his fault if the magizoological healer didn't understand. Honestly, Throne didn't always understand either, but his specialty was in charms,arithmancy, and wards. He was learning when it came to coding side.
"Overall the books are pretty well behaved here." Thorne gestured to the stacks, including the shelf that Brightstar nearly knocked over, "Not like some of the other libraries and Research archives I've worked in, but you can only imagine what would happen if the leyline was not treated appropriately." He was grasping at straws here, assuming that it was the leylines that were responsible for the library, but that was something he understood and understood well. If he could figure out the library he could then maybe help figure out the other locations.
"Has there been any unusual activity here?" Maybe he was too pointed in his questioning about the network, because the wards could very well influence access to the server and internet access.
There were a couple of the technical aspects that Kent didn't quite grasp, but he made a mental note to go back into it when he'd moved on from this project. Maybe he'd mention it to Cate. Thorne's question sparked a memory from a couple of hours earlier, however. "One of the interns was complaining about the wifi when I came in. I didn't hear much else, given that he and his friends ran off as soon as they saw me."
Yeah, he was a little proud of that.
But he had no time to indulge in the feeling. Kent narrowed his eyes, suspicious and wondering. "All these disturbances, this uptick in--"
He was never able to elaborate on his suspicions, because the room suddenly went dark. "Wh--" The entire space was bathed in red light as runes carved into the shelves and walls all around them suddenly activated. Blue light cascaded around the perimeter, encasing the entire library. Something had triggered the warning system, effectively trapping them in a makeshift quarantine. "fuck."
Whirling around, Thorne’s eyes widened in alarm as he took in the flashing runes and the sequence in which they lit up. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity. Fuck. Fuck.” While most of the staff might know about the warning systems and emergency protocols, there were actually two different quarantine systems: one defensive and one offensive. And with his luck they were about to be labeled as a threat.
“How fast do you think you can get to the law section?” Because while there wasn’t a way to deactivate the wards from the inside, someone did think of the possibility that innocents might get trapped with a potential threat.
The cursing wasn't helping Kent's current anxiety levels at all. A countdown had started in his head, and apparently he and Thorne were on the same page. He started shoving books and papers into his cavernous bag, even though he knew it was costing himself precious time.
"If I could Apparate, I'd already fucking be there," he grumbled mostly to himself. The runes were speeding up. Once they went a steady red, they were well and truly fucked. That's when the fun really started. He shouldered his bag and glanced at Thorne, already headed down an aisle that would take him to the right section. "Fifteen seconds, if we haul ass right the fuck now."
Which was the point that Kent started sprinting.
It was a testament to the fact that Thorne probably valued research as much as Kent that he didn't snap at the healer to leave it all. For the most part the security measures weren't meant to harm the books, but there was always that chance. Pulling out his wand, Thorne cast a bubble-head charm on them both. It wouldn't be a permanent solution, but he would take the extra twenty seconds it could buy them. He wasn't about to explain to Cate and Tony how he maybe accidentally allowed their boyfriend to die a likely painful death.
He hadn't quite gotten to that section of the security measures.
The door to the safe room had already materialized as he skidded around the corner to Law and Regulations. "Touch your wand to the handle and get the fuck in there. I'll be right behind." He needed to see how the runes behaved as long as he could. There was just something that wasn't adding up and the more data he could gather, the better.
His wand was against the handle before Thorne got the last of his directive out, and he was already halfway inside the now-open door when the rest of what he'd said registered. He spun, flinging the bag aside. "What!? Fuck. No! Thorne--"
A low tone filled the space, and Kent's hand lashed out toward the collar of the other man's shirt, intent on yanking him back into the room if need be.
Thorne's eyes swept over the library, trying to commit as much as he could to his memory. They had a pensieve back in the security office to go over every little detail, but it would be useless if he couldn't see it first. Being jerked back by the collar and the door closing after him had Thorne whipping his head around, almost inhumanly fast, as his eyes flashed and he let out a hiss. "Do. Not. Touch. Me."
It was too late to go back out now. He touched his wand to the inside door handle, there was a flash of gold and the hum faded, leaving them both in silence save for their breathing. The safe room wasn't large, maybe six feet by eight feet, but there was a shelf of shrunken items, including a few chairs and a table. "I didn't get a chance to grab my bag. Please tell me you have a spare bit of paper with you and a pen."
A tiny thread of fear had shivered up Kent's spine, and he'd pulled his hand back as soon as he'd seen those eyes. It was instinctual, animal terror--there and gone again, and leaving him with vague sense of irritation. He put that part on full display, narrowing his eyes at the other man as if to say 'have you met me?' "I don't know what good you think this is going to do," he said as he fished out both and handed them over. "It's not like we can get word out now. I saw a comms blackout rune flash just as the door was closing."
He chewed his lip for a second, and then pushed out a sigh. "Look, sorry. For grabbing you. I just wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to explain to your influential family how the library fucking killed you. And on my watch. I'm pretty sure they all think we're going to murder each other anyway."
"Don't you think I know that?" Thorne rolled his eyes and held out his hand. "I would like to document everything that I saw, smelled, heard, and felt as soon as possible. Pensieves can only recreate so much." With that, he grabbed the shrunken table from it's spot on the shelf and cast Engorgio to bring it back to it's true size so he could start scrawling everything down. From the moment he stepped into the library until door to the safe room slammed behind him.
After covering two sheets of paper, front and back, Thorne put the borrowed pen down with a sigh. He read over what he wrote and determined that there was nothing else he could add without taking a look back over his memories in a controlled environment. "For the record," he looked up at Brightstar and pointed, "your last name might be all over this place, but you are not responsible for me. I was doing my job as a member of the security team here and you are not to interfere with that, understood?"
Given the way that Thorne continued to snap at him, Kent leaned against the wall and watched him scribble out his notes without commentary, utterly disinclined to help in any way. They were about to be trapped in here for hours--overnight, really--and there was no 'making the best of it' as far as he was concerned.
Sudden, white-hot anger spiked through his head, and Kent saw red. There was a pounding between his temples and a roar in his ears. "First of all, fuck you. Secondly, I'm sorry if my instincts to do no fucking harm got in the way of your goddamn job. And, thirdly, it's cute that you think my name has any kind of power around here, when clearly your family runs the damn place."
He crossed over and grabbed the paper off the desk, read it over, then leaned down to add some notes and runes of his own, along with a couple that Thorne evidently misremembered. He shoved the pages back at him. "Oh, and also, for the record, I'm a legilimens, and this is about as controlled as an environment is going to fucking get."
Thorne pressed himself backwards until his back thumped against the cinderblock wall, as if that would prevent Brightstar from rooting around his head without his permission. "It's Constantine who ultimately signs the checks," he pointed out, though that might actually be a falsehood considering Miko's position as CFO, but regardless it wasn't a Proudfoot sitting at the head of the table. "She's the face of the Reserve. So if you have a problem with how it's run, then maybe take it up with her."
Deep down Thorne knew he didn't belong at Brightstar. He played it off like he didn't care, that this was only a temporary stopgap until he could return east once more, but to have others confirm this fact aloud wasn't something he was looking forward to hearing.
Kent stared, wide-eyed, at Thorne's bizarre reaction, right up until the point when he got it. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" He threw up his hands and stalked away, to the other side of the narrow room. "I'm not gonna go rooting around in your head without your permission. I may be a dick, but I'm not a m--" He cut himself off with an uncomfortable scowl. "I wouldn't do that. Ever. Falls back into the whole 'do no harm' thing."
He slid down the wall until his ass was resting against the cold concrete. "I didn't even grab any snacks," he grumbled to himself, and checked his watch. "T-minus six hours. Fuck everything."
"You can say it, you know." Thorne stood with a roll of his eyes and went back to the shelf to find the cache of non-perishable food items. Standard operating procedure since the seventies and there was an incident involving a safe room located in one of the Ice buildings and a lockdown that lasted more than 36 hours. "Monster." He dropped the MRE into Brightstar's lap. "It's not the worst epithet I've heard in my life."
With the silent way that Thorne moved, Kent was genuinely startled by the appearance of the emergency ration. He glanced from the dubiously labeled "Chicken with Rice, Menu No. 8"--and also stamped with 1975--up to the other man. "Thanks," he muttered, and then his face went hard. There was inarguable certainty in his voice; he wasn't going to be swayed from his belief. "You're not a monster, Thorne." And suddenly he smirked. "You're far too human."
He shrugged and tore open the package. "I like monsters, and I don't like you, ergo, you're not a monster."
If he thought that Thorne was going to take the bait, the other man was sorely mistaken. "Alright then." He took the next few minutes to prowl and catalogue what else was in the safe room above and beyond the basic requirements. But it looked like nobody had thought to leave a puzzle book or cheap thriller behind. He did find a pack of cards however, which…. Wasn't terrible.
"Fancy a game of cards?"
A couple of taps of his wand had the space smelling of what could charitably be called lightly peppered goop as the supposed 'chicken and rice' began to reconstitute itself. At least it came with salted crackers, so maybe he could undercut some of the bland grossness with that. He hadn't thought he was all that desperate for food, but it was all gone by the time Thorne had finished his micro-reconnaissance mission, save for the helpfully labeled Chocolate Bar. Kent tried not to, but he glanced up at Thorne suspiciously for half a second before schooling his face into something more neutral. He was being the paranoid one now, but the other man had a history of not backing down, so this whole 180 was throwing him off.
He nodded slightly, and cleared his MRE waste with another flick of his wand. In its place, he conjured a small table, no bigger than the average TV tray. "For the record, I'm vetoing strip poker on general principle."
Looking over the rim of his glasses, Thorne stared at the creature healer, incredulously. Because honestly? "Really?" Objectively he knew the man was good-looking, but that didn't mean he wanted to see him naked. That was Cate's thing, not that Thorne wanted to linger on that particular image for long.
"I was thinking Rummy. Is that eighty-year-old grandmother enough for you?"
"Sorry to break your heart." Kent smirked at him; he'd read the other man's expression well enough, even given the fact that he was kind of the worst when it came to things like normal reactions to everyday events. In this instance, however, he was just playing his part up for effect.
The next remark earned a flat look and a raised brow. "I'm only three years older than you, asshole. If anyone's old here, it's you for knowing what Rummy is at the ripe old age of twenty-two." He flashed Thorne another smirk, and then nodded his chin. "Just deal the damned cards."
You tended to learn a lot of sedentary diversions when you spend a fair amount of time in the hospital. That included learning card games from octogenarians, but playing the sick card felt like a cheap trick. A cheap trick he would save until later, of course. He sneered at Brightstar and began to shuffle the deck. "If you're going to be a dick about things, I could play solitaire, you know."
Leaning back against the cool wall, Kent lifted a shoulder indolently. "That's like asking me not to breathe." He pushed out a sigh and sat up straight again. "But fine. I'll be good. You might wanna tell me what topics are off the table, however. That way maybe we can stay in neutral territory. I'll be perfectly honest, there are things I've been dying to know from first hand experience, but Cate and Tony keep dropping hints that it's not cool to 'be a dick about things' all the time."
That was probably the longest series of words he'd ever said to Thorne that didn't involve Reserve-talk or yelling. Good for him!
Thorne debated just dealing out the cards so he could play Pyramid or Spider, that would probably give him satisfaction for a good ten seconds, maybe even up to thirty seconds, but there was no telling how long they were going to be stuck here. Killing the resident genius creature healer probably wouldn't be looked kindly upon. Plus, somehow both Tony and Cate liked him and Thorne didn't have that many friends to begin with. No need alienate more people than necessary.
"Books are usually a safe bet. Or shows. Music on good day. Maybe." He eyed Brightstar and dealt the cards. "If you ask your questions, I can't promise that I'll answer them, but I won't hex you, either."
Picking up his cards, Kent arranged them just so. "I couldn't tell you the last time I read a non-fiction book. Probably undergrad, so when I was...fourteen? Yeah, for English Lit. Sense and Sensibility. That's the one. I'd read Austen's oeuvre already, so it was fun to revisit it." He glanced up at Thorne, and then down again. It was casual, how he was dropping all of this personal stuff. Like he was actually trying. "I don't really get music, though. I mean, I get it. I like a few things, but it doesn't get to me the way it does with most people. I get too bogged down in the construction, the composition." A pause, and another look as he began to play. "What kind of shows are you into?"
"Music is just mathematics at the end of the day." Which is why he liked classical or other instrumentals compositions over anything. Everything else was just noise in Thorne's opinions. "So once you figure it out you're good to go." He liked the repetition and rhythms, solving the puzzle as he tried to drown out the buzzing in his brain. "I like non-fiction and documentaries mostly. Cosmos, from a few years ago, is an old favorite."
And favorite was putting it lightly, but Brightstar didn't need to know exactly how deep that obsession went. Most people didn't need to know that, thank you very much. Or his dislike of thunderstorms or having his food touching.
Kent made a rather emphatic gesture with his free hand. "You'd think it was that easy! But, no--" he drew the word out, almost making it a little song itself--"'music without heart is just noise.' I tried to take a composition class for my Fine Arts elective, but had to drop after a week. The teacher--if you can call him that--was insufferable. I took Physics instead. That semester, I mean. So much easier. I nearly went that route--quantum theory was fascinating--but I knew what I really wanted to do. It was a fun diversion, at least."
He opened up the chocolate bar and systematically split it in two, right down the middle. After conjuring a napkin, he slid it Thorne's direction. "I caught that when it aired. Good stuff. Made me wonder 'what-if' for a little while, y'know?" Kent looked from the chocolate to Thorne, but this time he was assessing. His head tilted a little to one side. "Are you good? I'm estimating another five hours and twenty minutes until the wards drop."
Thorne never went to university and did not regret his choice for one moment. He disliked the idea of anyone telling him what to learn and how to research. It had been bad enough in Galveston, but tolerable. And he really didn't have the discipline, if he wanted to be honest with himself. The correspondence course he was enrolled in was languishing, but nobody needed to know that. "The rules of physics are just guidelines anyway."
"I'm fine." Thorne didn't look at the chocolate and tried not to glare at the man and his assessing looks. He was sick and tired of people assuming they knew his body better than he did. The man in front of him was not his healer. He was not his family member. He was not anything except maybe an annoying coworker. "And stop looking at me like I'm a puzzle that needs figuring out."
Kent felt his smirk deepen into something more amused than antagonizing. "Rules should be bent, and laws were made to be broken. Everything we do shouldn't be possible, and yet…"
One of the cards from the discard pile stood up on its end with a little prompting from Kent's wand. It floated lazily between them, moving in slow arabesques. He watched it a moment, but his gaze cut sharply to Thorne and it dropped back onto the others. There went any shred of his good will. He waved at it as it sputtered out, and a hard look locked into place. "We're trapped here for the next few hours. Forgive me if I'm trying to do my damned job in whatever limited capacity I have in here to try to make sure you're gonna be okay. As you've so helpfully pointed out before, it's not like I have access to your history or records."
"Did I ask you to?" Thorne bit out, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "I am not your patient as I am not a creature and therefore none of your concern." He let out a sharp breath of air, frustrated about far more than being stuck in a small room with someone he disliked intensely. "And I can accept the bullshit reason of people thinking they know my body better than I do from my dad and even my ex, gods only know I've blown him enough times for him to get a free pass, but you do not fall into either of those two categories."
He itched to pace, but it wasn't like there was a whole lot of room to do so. Still, he stood up from the table before he did something monumentally stupid. Thorne levelled a finger in Kent's direction. "Let me tell you something that you're little whiz-kid mind probably doesn't understand and that's okay because most people don't get either. Yes, I'm frequently sick and yes it fucking sucks, but I'm also an adult and do not need to be infantilized by full-lineage know-it-all."
He ran a hand through his hair and slipped his glasses off to clean them with the hem of his shirt, just to do something with his hands. Popping them back on, he raised an eyebrow in Kent's direction, daring him to rebut the truth.
For a long moment, Kent simply looked at Thorne with narrowed eyes. He had to wonder how much of this was actually directed at him, so he made a conscious choice not to be offended. He didn't even let himself react to the mention of the other man's sexual escapades. It was far more information than he needed, but that didn't mean he didn't tuck it away for further contemplation. "You're right," he said flatly. "I don't know. And not knowing is usually what gets me hurt. Possibly even killed. So, yes, I don't know you. I don't know what it's like. But I've never, never treated you any differently because of who you are or what's inside you. But I don't know, and I want to. I want to know because what if I could help? Maybe not you, but possibly someone like you. You fascinate me, Thorne. You make me crazy, but you fascinate me."
Thorne threw his head back and laughed. The situation wasn't even that funny, but what else was there to do? He had never asked to be fascinating or some case study for baby healers. "Then you fucking ask, you dim twit." Which was rich, coming from him, the one famous for not being able to use his words correctly. Or being too direct and blunt to ever be expected to handle a delicate conversation.
"But don't you dare fucking assume that you can simply study me because I did not fucking consent to that."
Don't react. Don't react. Don't react. "Goddammit, Thorne!" Kent exploded-oops. "What the fuck do you think I've been trying to do here?"
The answer was simple. Brief. Blunt. "Looking at me like I'm going to be the subject of your next research paper." Because he'd seen that look before and there was a reason why he pretty much only trusted MacMillan (and sometimes Strand, in a pinch) when it came to people poking and prodding him.
His hands went white knuckled against his thighs. Kent was still sitting cross legged on the floor, and now he was just focusing on breathing. He was emotionally exhausted, and they just kept getting under each other's skin. There was nothing he could do about the ache in his jaw, with the way he'd been clenching it almost the entire time they'd been there. "That's just the way I look at someone when they interest me," he ground out. "You're not special."
Might have been a trick of the dim light, but was there a slight flush in his face?
One moment he was fascinating and the next he wasn't special. Thorne was getting some sort of whiplash here and it wasn't the fun sort either. He was about say as much, when he noticed the way the other man sat, the position of his hands, the clench of his jaw. Never let it be said that he couldn't be observant from time to time. "Dude, are you okay?"
The opposite wall was suddenly the most intriguing thing in the known universe. He couldn't even deny the heat in his face to himself. It was mortifying. "Fan-fu-... I'm... fine."
"Yeah, and I'm about win employee of the month." Thorne snorted. "You can't bullshit and bullshit artist. So what is it? Claustrophobia?" He had plenty of twitchy little quirks and fears; he wasn't about to judge someone else for having their own. "Shit sucks man. Did you want me to knock you out until the wards drop?"
Kent drew back sharply enough that he cracked his own head on the concrete wall. The pain shot stars across his field of vision, and he swore low to himself. "fuck." With a hand on the back of his head, he glared at the general shape of Thorne that he could just make out. "And no fucking thank you."
Although now that the other man had mentioned it, the walls did feel impossibly close. He grimaced in pain and embarrassment, reddening even further. "Also, you can eat my entire ass for putting that thought in my head."
"No thank you." Thorne plopped himself into one of the chairs and picked up the discarded cards. Something told him they wouldn't be getting back to their game anytime soon. Shuffling the cards, he began to deal out the set up for spider. "I don't know where it's been. Also, you need to buy me dinner. Or at least a cannoli."
The look Kent gave him really should have been able to blast a hole through the wards so they could just get the hell out of there. Alas, it did not. Instead, he opted for a truly heartfelt declaration: "The words haven't been invented yet to describe how much I hate you. This is gonna be the longest fucking night."