James glanced down at his phone, the text somewhat warped through its cracked surface. He did have a lab to teach, Research Methods in Anthropology, in fact, but if Noah wanted to see him he supposed it wouldn't hurt to be a little late. The undergrads he was in charge of were pretty well adjusted to the formula he used in the labs. Come to the front and collect the packet, read through the case study with your lab partners, and discuss what research method best suits that particular case.
>>I do but I can come home for a second if you want
Noah replied immediately.
>>No, it's fine! I just thought I should know your schedule in case you wanted to hang out!
>>Since it's more fixed than mine
James scoffed. Noah's reply was entirely sensible which James supposed was part of his charm. He stuffed the rest of his scone into his mouth and finished off his coffee before responding.
>>Okay
>>I have the Mon and Wed lab at 6
>>Other than that I'm free after 2 on most days
Another immediate reply.
>>Okay!! Thx :)
James smiled at the message, then frowned when he realized he was smiling. Slow, he reminded himself. He wanted to take his time with this relationship. Noah wasn't just a fling, after all, he was also James' flat mate. If this didn't work out, then the remaining eight months of their lease were bound to be awkward, if not frigid. James got up from his table at the coffee shop on Tottenham Court Road and tossed his empty coffee cup into the bin by the door. It was as grey as any other day in London, even the buildings which weren't sad greige monstrosities appeared duller than usual. James didn't think much of it, taking stock of his appearance in the coffee shops window.
He was wearing what he always wore when he had to teach labs, a respectable pair of brown chinos and a grey sweater to match London's grey, overcast sky. He went on his way to the building which hosted after hour lectures and labs, perhaps a little more unsettled than he had been when he got up that morning. Something about the atmosphere just felt wrong. It was the feeling some people got in their joints when the air was charged with static energy before a storm. James awkwardly thumbed through his apps until he pulled up todays forecast.
There were no storm warnings and it looked like the rest of the day would just be overcast. Supposedly they would be seeing the sun tomorrow. James frowned at his phone. He couldn't place the strangeness similarly to how he couldn't place the strangeness of Noah. James pushed the thought down. Along with getting into an actual relationship with Noah, he had also committed to not thinking that there was something off about him. Noah was Noah and he was normal like everyone else. There was nothing otherworldly or supernatural about him other than the fact that he was ridiculously good looking and somehow managed to make even the little black apron he wore to work cute.
James made it to his lab and handed out the packets that the professor had instructed him to administer to the students. This was an introductory class to research methods, so most of the students were fresh out of their secondary education or making up for lost time in their third semester of university. The groups of students he got were relatively well behaved. There were a few that tried to get their tables off task but James found that hovering nearby usually remedied their lackluster productivity levels. The lab technically ended at eight but James never kept the students after they finished their case study, so he'd typically lock the room up around seven thirty at the latest.
That was the case tonight. Around seven twenty seven pm, James locked the door to the lab and went to return the room key to the deans office. On his way down the hall, the lights seemed to dim suddenly before becoming blindingly light. James stopped in the middle, turning to look back the way he came. The hallway had no windows, just doors leading to classrooms. The lights burst above him and James covered his head with his bag as glass and plastic rained onto the floor. Only the emergency lights at the end of the hall were on, casting the linoleum floors in a sickening shade of neon red.
Everything was wrong.
Like the hallway had been turned inside out and upside down and shaken around before being set right again. It was impossibly dark after being impossibly light and James took a second too long to adjust to the change. He heard the sound of something smacking onto the floor behind him. Felt the atmosphere pull itself thin like taffy before going slack. That was the worst possible feeling James could get, not the sudden release of energy like the lights blowing out, but the rung out feeling of something else in the room with him.
James heard it gurgling behind him. Something heavy and wet smacking agianst the floor. There was no time to think, only time to act, so James turned around and felt the magic string itself along the tips of his fingers before exploding like firecrackers into the sack of flesh that might have once been a rat.
It was definitely a rat, James thought, watching it's long, worm like tail smack hard into the wall and it's long snout crinkle in pain and rage. The thing squealed and it sounded more like a pig than a rat, and more like a human than a pig, but James didn't have time to unpack that. The monster gurgled again, a second head sprouting from the neck and eyes bulging from its skull like cysts about to burst. The thing smelled as bad as it looked, and James only realized after it moved and leaked all over the floor that what this wasn't just some rat from the sewers.
This was a rat from the laboratory. The smell was that of formaldehyde. James gagged at the realization, taking a closer look at the wetness of the creatures fur, but also of how bloated it looked. Like a thing that had been gutted and blown up like a balloon. The rat monster took a second and reoriented itself, all puss filled eyes frantically jerking before focusing on James. The thing squealed and launched itself forward, it's paws looked like sticks beneath its fat body.
James dived out of the way and the monster lost its balance, colliding into the display case at the end of the hallway. Glass shattered and the beast groaned, all plugged up with awards and trophies. The shrapnel dug into its skin and black sludge dripped from its wounds and onto the floor. The monster squealed in a mix of rage and agony and James knew that the thing was in pain. Not just because it was hurt but because it was dead and now being puppetted around by volatile magic.
It's eyes refocused on him and James reached again for the magic that threaded through the air around him. He had once known this magic like breathing, like riding a bike or remembering his first phone number or the street address of his secondary school dorm. It wasn't so easy anymore, James was well out of practice and the magic didn't want to yield to the people who knew it was there but ignored it anyway. James persisted and the threads eventually gave, they burned at his fingertips when he snapped them together.
The monster shrieked and the hallway was lit up with electric blue before fading into emergency light red. James knew that the linoleum would be stained from the magic flashback but he couldn't bring himself to care. Instead, he took out his phone and turned on the flashlight, scanning around the shrapnel for the body that had once hosted the monster. He found it near the display case, a deflated rat corpse that was still wet with preservation fluid. James' nose scrunched when he picked it up by the tail and turned it around in the beam of his flashlight.
Magic wasn't something that happened by coincidence. There was always an action that triggered a magical reaction. Usually the action was something performed by a magician. Pulling at the wrong threads might cause an unwanted reaction. Untrained magicians were especially prone to pulling at the wrong threads, and James chalked this instance up to just that.
In London there was likely no shortage of humans who had the capacity to do magic. Just because they had the capacity to do it, however, didn't mean that they believed in it enough to realize that that was what they were doing. James could picture it now. Some bored kid in his or her biology 101 class, cutting up their preserved rat and looking for its uterus or liver or bladder, and thinking "wouldn't it be weird if this thing moved?"
Sometimes you didn't even need to believe in magic to make something magical happened.
James found a hazardous waste bin in one of the labs and discarded the rat, thoroughly washing his hands after the fact. He checked his phone and realized that it was now well passed eight pm. He had a text from Noah asking if he wanted him to record the ongoing cricket match to which James said yes. He realized that if he returned the key to the deans office now, he might have to also explain the mess in the hallway. He decided to take the key with him and return it in the morning, an excuse already forming in the back of his mind.
I was tired, the lab was harder than we expected.
No, he'd say, I didn't hear anything going on down the hall.
†††
Noah was waiting for him when he got back, nose scrunching up when he hugged him at the landing of the staircase.
"You smell like sulfur." He said warily.
"It's the formaldehyde." James said blandly, "There was a rat in one of the bio bins. Stunk the whole room up. I'm going to take a shower."
Even after his shower, though, James still felt that the air was still unusually charged. He and Noah lounged on the sofa together watching re-runs of adult cartoons while talking about their days. Noah was a first year grad student studying translation, most of his coursework consisted of decoding texts that were either ancient or written before the modern version of the language emerged. His classes today were more of the same. When they first started living together, James would sometimes caught him mumbling indistinctly over a notebook or while washing his hands. At the time, James just considered it to be part of Noah's strangeness. Noah didn't seem so strange now that James had taken the time to learn more about him. Other than an awkward game of 21 questions a few nights after they started hooking up, their relationship was going rather smoothly. Or as smoothly as James thought it could go after a slew of one night stands. Noah had even gotten into the habit of sleeping in his bed, which James appreciated after a night like tonight.
Sleep felt like a far away thing when they finally laid down, at least, it was a far away thing for James. Noah passed out as soon as his head was snuggled comfortably enough to James' chest, and James took a minute to appreciate his sleeping form. James pulled his fingers through Noah's satiny hair, lost in thought. He was stuck the image of the dead rat in the biobin of the labority, it's puss filled eyes and wet flesh suit as it trapezed through the hall. Most monsters were only capable of manifesting through living things, feeding off the energy of their souls like some parasytic demonic possession. James supposed that all possessions were parasytic in nature.
That night, he dreamed of the past.
†††
They had both been sent to a private catholic boarding school as soon as they were old enough to be enrolled after spending most of their teenage years at the convent. James was deteremined to turn over a new leaf, and so took his vocation far more seriously than the rest of the student body. He even stayed after hours on Wednesday to help the nuns with catachism for the public school students. He was well liked by everyone, but especially the teachers, who marvelled at his ability to speak German, English, French, and even Latin.
The only one who seemed to dislike him was the other orphan from the convent. German was not their native language and they were often teased by the other students at the boarding school for their weaker grasp of the language. Despite how they struggled in conversation, they excelled in everything else. Sometimes, they even surpassed James, much to his chagrin. James knew that he didn't have much to worry about, though. The other orphan rarely participated in extracurricular activities, and because they didn't understand the German language well or didn't care to try, it was difficult for them to be any teachers favorite.
Yet still.
The other students at the boarding school loved to tease.
"∎∎∎ can't even talk right," James had overheard someone say while sitting on the toilet in the boys restroom, "I thought they were supposed to be smart. What a load of crap."
"At least ∎∎∎'s good looking. Hell, even if ∎∎∎ can't talk, that's technically a bonus, right? It'll be easier to tune them out if you don't understand what their saying."
At the convent, James was often scolded for his temper. He would have horrible outbursts that were only ever soothed by being made to clean the horse stables or by washing the stained glass windows. James thought he left his temper at the convent. He didn't know why the other boy's locker room talk had tripped the fight wire in his brain.
He had come out of that bathroom stall swinging.
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