Magdalene Grace Garcia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
talesuntold) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
triangularity2015-10-08 04:36 pm
talesuntold) wrote in triangularity2015-10-08 04:36 pm
for Stefan
Maggie spends the first part of the evening on her laptop, liveblogging in one chat window and using the other half of the screen to monitor threads on her section of the After the End Times forum. Maggie's good with people. She never minds a turn on forum duty, and as a beta on the site, she pays her dues just like everyone else who isn't a department head. It's a refreshing change, actually, to have an entirely merit-based system where her last name doesn't mean a thing.
As the first movie winds down, Maggie sets aside the computer, standing up and stretching. She did look around enough to take stock of the room. Almost everyone here is a regular. She knows all of their food and drink preferences, and she fully expects a couple to stay for half the week.
So of course it's the newcomer who caught her attention. He seemed amused by the movie, and she agreed with him on this one. Funny how a horror movies aren't scary at all when the world has turned into one.
Whoever invited him probably pointed her out to Stefan. Maggie got his name from the security scans at the door, but she isn't especially worried about strangers in her house either way. She tosses the remote to another Fictional, letting him take over and set up the next movie.
Stefan's the only one who needs to tell her what he wants, which makes him the logical choice for help fetching it. Maggie makes her way across the room, leans over one arm of the couch, and and introduces herself, probably unnecessarily. "I'm Maggie. Help me carry snacks from the kitchen?"
As the first movie winds down, Maggie sets aside the computer, standing up and stretching. She did look around enough to take stock of the room. Almost everyone here is a regular. She knows all of their food and drink preferences, and she fully expects a couple to stay for half the week.
So of course it's the newcomer who caught her attention. He seemed amused by the movie, and she agreed with him on this one. Funny how a horror movies aren't scary at all when the world has turned into one.
Whoever invited him probably pointed her out to Stefan. Maggie got his name from the security scans at the door, but she isn't especially worried about strangers in her house either way. She tosses the remote to another Fictional, letting him take over and set up the next movie.
Stefan's the only one who needs to tell her what he wants, which makes him the logical choice for help fetching it. Maggie makes her way across the room, leans over one arm of the couch, and and introduces herself, probably unnecessarily. "I'm Maggie. Help me carry snacks from the kitchen?"
no subject
Just because it always ends up the same, no matter how many times he tells people - so he turns the stove off and motions for her to sit on some empty counterspace next to him.
"I uh..." He draws a breath. Where should he begin? "Truth is, I'm immune to the virus. I mean, like. Total no-sell, couldn't infect me even if it tried, kind of deal."
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Maggie perches on the countertop as directed, hands braced on the edge. Her grip on the counter tightens, knuckles pale. "That isn't possible, is it? The entire world is infected. No one's figured out our immune responses yet. I would have heard."
Because her parents don't keep that kind of secret, and neither do her Newsies.
She's running quickly through a mental list of exactly what projects of her family's she can name offhand, and cataloging whether any of them pertain directly to KA-related immune response.
no subject
Stefan holds out his wrist, just for visual proof: he lightly grazes his nails against the top, and just as his skin begins to bleed - the blood hardens and clots up, and his skin starts repairing itself. As if he'd never attempted to injure himself.
"And the reason you haven't heard is that people like me know what would happen if your parents or the Newsies found out."
no subject
Maggie's breath catches, and despite a lifetime of conditioning that warns against ever coming into contact with someone else's blood, she reaches for his hand and holds Stefan's wrist up for inspection, carefully avoiding anywhere that could be contaminated.
It takes a moment, but she finally raises her gaze back to his face and asks, "If you aren't human, what's the alternative?"
She doesn't sound convinced yet.
no subject
It's better to rip the band-aid off and say what he is, with no holds barred whatsoever. He trusts Maggie: after all, she went back on the conditioning and societal norm he had seen with her generation. That fear of blood, that overall fear of contamination - it hadn't been as present.
"You know, like..." He coughs, his cheeks suddenly turning a little red. "Like the ones my grandpa wrote about."
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"Funny, I've never noticed any fangs." Having kissed him, she ought to be in a position to know. Maggie's mind is still racing, grasping for a scientific explanation rather than a supernatural one. Despite all of her family's medical expertise, and despite her surface level understanding of most of their work, she comes up blank.
At the same time, she's considering the supernatural ramifications. Maggie is clever and analytical, plus creative and imaginative enough to make leaps that wouldn't occur to anyone who doesn't spend so much time writing fiction. "Next, you're going to tell me that your grandfather never wrote those in the first place, and you're immortal and unaging."
She may have posited that, but Maggie certainly doesn't sound like she believes it. Not yet.
gif warning
That certainly was the truth: he had written those classics, and he had stolen his pen name from the two most important people in his life. It was as if he were immortalizing Lexi Branson and Elena Gilbert, in a way. At the same time, if she were telling him this, he wouldn't believe her either.
So he draws a breath, "Let me show you something you can believe," and he allows his true face to appear, with his black eyes and fangs that are most definitely protruding from his teeth, and veins that rise under his eyes. His entire body stiffens as he waits for the inevitable, and part of him hopes he won't have to wipe her memory clean. He doesn't want to lose her - not here, and definitely not now.
Re: gif warning
Maggie goes very still, not so much as breathing, at the sight of Stefan's face. She stays that way until her lungs protest, then gasps a couple of quick breaths.
She doesn't know what to say, so she raises her hands to Stefan's cheeks. She runs her thumbs along his cheekbones, brushing the edges of the veins below his eyes. And then she stops, gaze dropping to his fangs. The moment and her trust are both infinitely fragile, but she isn't running or screaming.
As initial reactions go, it could have been worse.
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"It's okay," he murmurs, his voice solemn and serious. "I won't bite."
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Maggie does laugh at that, and if there's a slight edge of nervousness in it, that's probably understandable. "Under other circumstances, I'd say I don't mind a little biting, but given the topic at hand..."
She shakes her head. A little more faintly than she'd like, she continues, "Vampires are real. ...Is magic also real, or does what you are have as scientific an explanation as the Rising did?"
no subject
In this deliberate contemplation, his face briefly shifts back to his normal one -
"I'm not sure," he settles on saying. "If there is a scientific explanation, it's one beyond my current understanding."