( office hours & overflow )

[sorserer]

❥ stephen strange has office hours. these are hours during which people can come by his house in the up, the abattoir a magically expanded but still very cramped closet-now-office in the triple m apothecary for a nice cup of tea and some advice or direct support on magical endeavors. come thru
❥ this is an informal, word-of-mouth service. stephen appreciates some manner of compensation but will neither mention nor require it
❥ oocly, this is a mechanism for random non-phone threads. you don’t actually have to have a magic question. you can just come by and annoy the shit out of him
❥ just like the ic inbox i reserve the right to cram random shit in here

Comments

[skulked]

[ it's easier to talk like this, draped casually over the chair and making casual observations in kind. laura isn't one especially prone to self-reflection, by choice, because there's usually nothing but unpleasantness to reflect on. she's had her periods of growth, her day to days don't need to be ruined too. she's quiet now though, reflective, a dozen different sentences caught on her tongue. ]

I know more people this time. [ she offers after a pause, tapping her pen against paper idly, gaze focused somewhere on the smoke unfurling from the incense across the room. ] I think I've...tried harder to keep them at arm's length.

[ she thinks, she knows, but the non-committal framing is a little easier too, like the casual tone and the casual posture, all softening by holding it all a little further away. ]

[sorserer]

[ it’s difficult to tell how much of a confession it is. on one hand, laura’s prone to directness; on the other, directness is something you can apply to observations about the weather but often gets complicated when it comes to self-reflection.

still, he’s a prudent man, and he knows when to handle something with care even when he can’t quite pin down its shape or form. he taps the image on the tablet a few times, which develops new angles, lines. it’s just a typical photo edit. ]

Why is that, do you think?

[skulked]

Oh, I know exactly why.

[ said with a wry kind of amusement, like there's a funny joke there somewhere. she's given up on looking like she's working now, just idly sketching out cubes in the corner of the paper instead, slowly expanding down the margins. she doesn't talk about them anymore, is the thing, and that's because it's easier but it's also a damn shame, too.

laura loved those stupid boys, and look what she has to show for it. she's only even said their names out loud once since arriving back in the city. ]

I was in a...relationship, last time. People from home, I thought...I don't know. I never stopped to consider that if we went back, none of us would remember. [ she shrugs, glancing over in stephen's direction. ] I came back, they didn't. Josh and Julian.

[sorserer]

[ he finally pauses in the midst of some minute other alteration to his magical schematics, his eyes on his hand hovering over the screen. he’s been like this long enough that in moments of stillness he no longer registers the tremor.

laura is--guarded, to say the least. to elicit small smiles or smirks from her has always felt a little like being handed something of immeasurable value, something stephen has instinctively known not to take for granted; he’s not the most emotionally adept person, but even he can tell when someone imposes distance for good reasons. for the most part he’d assumed those reasons had to do with the kind of wariness you develop naturally in the face of violence: she’s had a hard life, from what sparse detail he’s picked up over lunch and tea and morning light. but he wouldn’t have discounted out of hand the possibility that she’d been hurt in more ordinary ways too.

he sits back, eyes inattentive on the graphic. ]

What were they like?

[ he’s gentle, but there’s no equivocating on his own directness. stephen isn’t half so considerate, and anyway she won’t answer if she doesn’t want to. ]

[skulked]

[ time probably has made it easier, as much as that thought is unpleasant in and of itself. part of her doesn't want to get over it, doesn't want to get over them, and it's probably the same part that keeps thumbing over their absence like a bruise, to keep it fresh. but it's easier to say their names now than it was four months ago.

when she smiles it's fond, a little sad, and laura sets down the pen into her lap, giving up the pretence of distraction for a moment. ]

Very different. I fought with Julian all the time, he never took my shit, but he'd sit with me for hours down in the gym, when I was having a bad day. Josh used to cook for me, it was always awful. He asked me out on a real date, insisted on picking me up even though we lived together. He used to leave his socks everywhere, Julian hated it.

[ it's a very rosy picture of a relationship that definitely wasn't always, but anyway isn't that what reminiscing is all about? she just wants to think about the moments that make her smile right now, the parts that should be shared. they deserve to be remembered here, even if it's only by laura. ]

I don't think anyone knows me, like they did. I don't let anyone now. I thought it would be easier, you know?

[sorserer]

[ he watches her levelly for a long moment. in the low yellow lamplight of his office, sandalwood scents ambling their way through the room and the city’s unusual moon phases shimmering on a stained glass hanging behind him, she looks almost comfortable enough that the slow unveiling of her melancholy doesn’t seem so--well, strange. he’s stricken with the odd urge to touch the upturned corner of her mouth, to do more to say you’re not alone.

it’s not always his area of expertise. for now, at least, he stays seated. ]

... the logic is sound.

[ stephen, too, pushes people away when he doesn’t know what to do with them. when the safest distances seem to be at arm’s length. ]

It’s hard to come back from. Loving anyone like that.