Work Text:
blacknight: CODE RED
blacknight: I REPEAT THIS IS A CODE RED
blacknight: THIS IS NOT A DRILL
destieltilidie: helen.
destieltilidie: what is a code red.
destieltilidie: because i’m *pretty* sure you’re making that up.
blacknight: so uh
blacknight: you remember last night
dehumidifierdepot: somehow i’m guessing you don’t
blacknight: oh no i remember
blacknight: i just have
blacknight: regrets
queenbiro: didn’t you have something due last night
blacknight: well remembered, pen, yes i absolutely did
blacknight: and *i* did not remember until i got back to my room
blacknight: at which point i sent the professor my paper
blacknight: or at least i thought i did
destieltilidie: … helen.
destieltilidie: tell me this is not going where i think it’s going.
destieltilidie: tell me this is not going the only place that would warrant a nonexistent code red.
blacknight: well
blacknight: do you want me to tell you that
blacknight: or do you want me to tell you the truth
blacknight: pick one, you’re not getting both
To say that Hob hadn’t thought anything of it when he first saw the file would be a lie; seeing something named password is GADLING2022DG all lowercase.doc was definitely a shock, and he can hardly pretend otherwise. Still, he tried to open it, just to be sure, and then when it turned out it did need a password he just sent poor Helen a reply telling her it looked like she’d attached the wrong file by mistake. Hardly the first time he’s dealt with that particular issue.
The thing is that he knows he shouldn’t look. He opened it, it was password-protected and therefore not the paper he’d assigned, he closed it. End of story.
Should be end of story, anyway. Normally it is, but this time his interest has absolutely been piqued; for one thing, he doesn’t think he’s ever been accidentally sent a password-protected file before, and for another, the password is his name. It feels deeply surreal and also like he might go mad with curiosity if he doesn’t actually look.
A glance at the clock says it’s 8:12 in the morning. His next class is in a little under five hours, and between kisses this morning Morpheus had mentioned he probably wouldn’t be able to come back until maybe tomorrow or even the next day, which means: plenty of time.
He sighs, once, and then opens the file again. This time he enters the password, gadling2022dg, and the document unlocks, and he starts to read.
THE RULES
number 1) do not talk about this file in public.
number 2) DO NOT TALK ABOUT THIS FILE IN PUBLIC.
number 3) evidence against is still evidence. or: if something potentially proves he’s just an ordinary human like the rest of us, write it down anyway.
number 4) name or initials after every entry (feel free to use a pseudonym, just for the love of whatever you do or don’t find holy be consistent). there are too many potential editors here; we want it to be clear who wrote what. (exception: current possibilities and the rules, which at this precise moment have been decided upon by a group of five. any rules added after the originals must also be agreed upon by all of the current keepers of the file.)
number 5) somewhat pursuant to the above: plausible deniability. no full names. no surnames. it might not do us any good if this falls into the professor’s hands, because whatever he actually is the list does not include “stupid”, but for the sake of other people.
number 6) no deletions. if something is disproved, or the majority of the group agrees that it was eminently stupid to begin with, just turn it into strikethrough text and then add a note after it.
What the hell?
This document is, somehow, 86 pages long.
What the hell?
Hob is both desperately curious and incredibly impatient, so he starts scrolling. He passes CURRENT POSSIBILITIES, LISTS OF RANTS with subheadings anti-slavery and anti-shakespeare, and then, on the seventh page, EVIDENCE, CHRONOLOGICAL BY DATE. That’s the last heading he can find, which means that the last 80 pages are “evidence”.
Okay. Time to scroll back up.
CURRENT POSSIBILITIES
a) immortal (means to be determined)
b) fairy fairie faery faerie CAN WE PLEASE JUST CALL THEM THE FAIR FOLK for my gran’s sake if nothing else
c) alien
d) has a portrait in his attic somewhere
e) glitch in the matrix (we know the matrix is fictional, right? … right? – ji) (oh, the matrix being fictional you have a problem with but not has a portrait in his attic somewhere? was the picture of dorian gray nonfiction all along? – zz) (look let’s all just take it as read that some of these may be fictional and just move on, all right? we also have alien on the list. and the fair folk. come on. – ht)
f) clones (okay i’m not taking issue with whether or not clones are plausible, but if he’s a series of clones how does he potentially have memories that stretch so far back? – ji) (maybe he just keeps cloning himself and then uploading his consciousness into the next clone once the one he’s on wears out. – pg) (so basically his immortality functions exactly like the asgard in stargate goddamn sg1? no, and also fuck you, jesus christ – hh) (see above, re: matrix. i don’t know why you always have such a problem with stargate all the time. – pg)
g) another species that looks a lot like humans but with a significantly longer lifespan
h) he’s an absolutely normal human being who just likes to fuck with us (are any of us really normal human beings? – zz) (i swear to god, the next time i see you i am going to scream directly into your ear for ninety-seven seconds. you know exactly what the fuck this means, you absolute shit. – ht)
Well, shit.
There’s no reason to panic, despite the fact that a thousand warning bells and klaxons have started going off in his brain. The wild conspiracy theories – or what would look like wild conspiracy theories to an outsider, anyway; at least he really hopes so – of some undergraduates with more imagination than sense do not mean that his cover’s been blown, nor do they mean he’s going to have to pull up stakes and fake his own death again.
Hob consciously and carefully takes a few slow, deep breaths. Then when that doesn’t work he gets up from the kitchen table, heads back into the bedroom, and grabs the pillow Morpheus has been using for the past week and buries his face in it, combining a few more slow, deep breaths with a scent he knows makes him feel safe.
Then he screams into the pillow for a few seconds and repeats the slow, deep breaths until he can feel his heart rate dropping.
Oh, but he likes this job. He complains about it sometimes, but he genuinely likes it. And oh, coming up with a new identity was a bitch and a half last time he did it, before so many of the new safeguards against identity theft.
No. Don’t borrow trouble.
He screams again, this time for a little bit longer, and then takes a few more slow, deep breaths.
Oh, fuck it, he thinks, and crawls back into bed. He’s got time, he can go back to sleep for another two hours. He closes his eyes, pulling the pillow to his chest, and tries to clear his mind.
“Hob,” he hears, and then abruptly he’s awake again. Awake and panting. He blinks and feels tears running down his cheeks.
“Buh?” he says, trying to make sense of what’s going on. The clock on the bedside table says it’s 8:57, sun trying to stream through the curtains, so it hasn’t even been an hour, but Morpheus is sitting on the edge of the bed next to him, hand still on his shoulder. “Thought you were gonna be back tomorrow.”
“I returned early.”
“Can see that,” Hob mumbles, reaching up to scrub at his cheeks with his hands. “More asking why.”
For a few seconds Morpheus just looks at him; then he’s removing the hand from Hob’s shoulder and softly running a thumb over Hob’s cheekbone. Something about that makes Hob want to tear up again, which is ridiculous. “You were having a dream of a memory,” he says, eventually. “It was not a pleasant memory.”
Hob closes his eyes and tries to think, but it’s gone – possibly Morpheus’ doing, possibly just his general inability to remember his dreams. Although … darkness, and pressure, and cold …
“Hob!” he hears again, and jerks his eyes back open; it probably wouldn’t be obvious to someone else, but Morpheus looks worried.
“Dreaming of being drowned, wasn’t I,” he says, and the nod Morpheus gives him is slow. “Shit. Still –”
“I felt your misery, your hopelessness,” Morpheus says. “I did not wish your suffering to continue.”
“Fuck. Well. Thanks.” Then, after a pause, “they don’t even drown witches anymore, no reason to worry,” he says, mostly to himself, although he can see Morpheus looks supremely unimpressed.
Instead of commenting on that, though, Morpheus simply moves his hand back to his shoulder and squeezes once. “Have you been called witch recently?”
“Actually, no,” he says, blinking. “One of the few things not on the list.” Not that that’s going to make any sense, is it. He makes a decision, abruptly, and reaches up to lift Morpheus’ hand off his shoulder, kissing the knuckles before he sits up. “Come on, I have to show you something.”
Should he be showing anyone else the file? Oh, absolutely not, but he’s pretty sure they’re well and truly past that at this point. So he just heads back to the kitchen table and wakes his computer up while Morpheus pulls a chair over, and then he moves the screen so it’s halfway between them, scrolls back up to THE RULES, and makes a vague have at it gesture.
“Hm,” says Morpheus, a bit later. Hob scrolls down to CURRENT POSSIBILITIES, points to the file name on the screen with the cursor, and leans back to let Morpheus continue to read.
“Hm,” says Morpheus, again.
“Yeah,” Hob says, not really sure what else to say, and scoots so he can prop his chin on Morpheus’ shoulder. “Agreed.”
“Your distress makes sense, now.” A pause. “Have you inspected any of this alleged evidence?”
“What, all eighty pages of it? Didn’t quite get that far, I have to admit,” Hob says, sighing. “Although if there’s anywhere near as much infighting and editorializing on that as there is on the possibilities list, that eighty pages is probably closer to sixty. Maybe forty.”
“Hm,” says Morpheus, for a third time, and grabs the mouse from Hob to scroll down past the LISTS OF RANTS and down into the most recent EVIDENCE, CHRONOLOGICAL BY DATE.
– forgets that he can google things sometimes (jel) (for the record, so do my parents, and so do i half the time; that’s indicative of almost nothing – jel)
– seems weirdly convinced that shakespeare was bisexual but has serious difficulty citing his sources (jel)
– talks in middle english in his sleep (ey) (i am pointing out, on another’s behalf, that that might only mean he’s familiar with the language, which we already knew anyway – ey)
– talked about how amazing the moon landing was – “to see humans landing on the surface of another world” – like he was there (ey)
– hypothesis: he has a type and it’s emo twinks (ey) (note: i am adding this under duress – ey)
– hypothesis confirmed: his type is 100% emo twinks, or at least he likes one specific emo twink because he is absolutely hooking up with one (ey) (more than hooking up, although i suuuuuper don’t dispute the hooking up – hh)
“In my defense,” Hob says, “the moon landing was fucking brilliant.”
blacknight: oh my fucking god
blacknight: i think i broke him
spacenarwhal: define “broke him”.
spacenarwhal: because there’s a lot of options.
blacknight: he was so fucking bummed today
blacknight: like somebody’d killed his cat or something
dehumidifierdepot: why is that the first place your mind goes
blacknight: but he also NEVER MADE EYE CONTACT WITH ME
blacknight: it was SO GODDAMN WEIRD
queenbiro: okay, fair, he does like his eye contact
queenbiro: although if you tell him you don’t like it he’ll respect that, which is lovely
queenbiro: none at all?
blacknight: THE ENTIRE LECTURE
blacknight: I EVEN RAISED MY HAND AT ONE POINT
blacknight: HE JUST SKIPPED RIGHT PAST ME
spacenarwhal: okay, but how many other people had their hands raised?
blacknight: …
blacknight: like four or five
destieltilidie: look, maybe he didn’t even look and he just thinks it’s awkward you sent him the wrong file by mistake.
destieltilidie: wait, no, i take that back. i’ve done that and he’s really gracious about it. let me clarify.
destieltilidie: he thinks it’s awkward you sent him a file that has HIS NAME.
destieltilidie: AS THE PASSWORD.
destieltilidie: IN THE FILE NAME.
destieltilidie: yes i am still annoyed.
blacknight: you’ve mentioned that
xenonprince: to be fair to her, that was fucking stupid
xenonprince: god knows i love you, helen, but come the fuck on
No sense in borrowing trouble. He keeps reminding himself. He’s had … varying degrees of success.
“Shall I ask your students whether they intend you harm?” Morpheus asks, for about the fifth time.
It’s been a week. He left professorial ethics in the dust long ago. “Will they remember?” he says, after another few seconds of weighing his options. “I only remember my dreams when you’re in them.”
Morpheus shakes his head once, reaching over to pull Hob’s back flush against his front and dropping a kiss onto Hob’s neck from behind. “You remember because you wish to. I cannot say,” he says. “But consider: if they already think you an alien, or a clone, or perhaps one of the fair folk, would it be any more peculiar to encounter one they have seen you with while they dream? There are but few who attach any significance to their dreams when they wake.”
“Watch them be some of the few,” Hob mutters. He also reaches down to grab the duvet, pulls it up to their shoulders and then interlaces his fingers through the hand Morpheus has on his stomach. “Yes, yes, go ahead and ask, just don’t scare them too much.”
“No promises,” he hears, and then he’s asleep.
When he wakes the next morning, he’s on his back, Morpheus draped across the front of him the way he particularly enjoys some days, their legs tangled together, black hair in his face. He can feel pressure in the same place on his neck Morpheus had kissed the night before, then a sharp bite, and oh, today’s going to be a high-collar day, isn’t it. “You’re a menace,” he says, delighted, and when Morpheus pulls back, looking vaguely affronted, he flips them entirely so that Morpheus is on his back beneath him. “My favorite menace,” he says, grinning, helpless not to, and leans down to kiss his favorite menace good morning.
Some time later, after they’ve stilled again, Hob remembers what he asked, the night before. He’s pretty sure he knows Morpheus well enough to know that if any of them truly meant him harm, he would already know. Still, he has to ask: “How did it go? Last night,” as though there was any doubt. “Guessing pretty well?”
“Indeed,” says Morpheus, slowly combing his fingers through Hob’s hair. For all that he’d made an affronted face earlier, they’re back in the same positions now, more or less, Morpheus on his back and Hob draped over him, head on his shoulder. Hob definitely settled them like this because he knows how much Morpheus likes to play with his hair. “As you suspected, there were more than those three.”
Helen had been obvious, but past that he’d had to do some thinking. He was pretty sure he’d seen her eating lunch with Penelope the engineering student once or twice, and in that case the Amy he’d had last term was also probably involved, based on the day last term where the two of them had done nothing but poke each other for an hour and a half. Past that he hadn’t been quite sure. “How many, then?”
“Six, currently, although they all told of this file being passed to them from previous students, who were passed it by previous students.”
“Oh for …” he says, trailing off. Not as much of a surprise as it could have been. He’d gone into the EVIDENCE section again and started reading it from the beginning a few days ago and remembered some of the things listed as happening ten or eleven years ago. Still. “Six?”
“Six,” Morpheus repeats. “They were unanimously horrified when I suggested they might mean you harm in some way. I believe they were being truthful.”
“Then what … No, well, I guess my question is why?, then.”
The hand in his hair stops for a moment, then starts back up again. “I asked them each that question as well. Their answers were near uniform: curiosity.”
“Curiosity.”
“That is the essence of their answers, yes.”
Somehow Hob can imagine the paragraphs upon paragraphs Morpheus is distilling into one single word, especially if they were all dreaming. “Well that’s how I got myself into this mess, isn’t it. Only fitting.”
“Helen. The student who inadvertently revealed this to you. She fears you’re angry with her.”
“Oh, hell, of course she’s worried.” Hob can’t really say sorry, the file you emailed me by accident almost scared me into faking my own death, again, because I’m terrified of being imprisoned and studied because you were right, I am immortal, but he can probably figure out something else to say to put her mind at ease.
blacknight: OKAY
blacknight: so
blacknight: i just had the WEIRDEST goddamn conversation with the professor
destieltilidie: elaborate.
blacknight: well he asked me to stay after class
blacknight: and i thought
blacknight: this is it, this is how i die, i’m going to expire on the SPOT
blacknight: my body physically cannot handle this much mortification
spacenarwhal: i didn’t think you were capable of feeling mortification.
blacknight: look
blacknight: wouldn’t you
xenonprince: helen are you seriously comparing your capacity to handle serious embarrassment with jelly’s
spacenarwhal: do you *really* want to be using me as your baseline?
dehumidifierdepot: i feel like this conversation has veered in a weird direction
dehumidifierdepot: can we discuss helen’s theoretical lack of shame after she’s told us about the conversation
blacknight: THANK YOU
destieltilidie: hardly theoretical, at this point. one of us has streaked through campus and it sure as hell wasn’t me.
destieltilidie: pretty sure her name starts with an H?
blacknight: SO ANYWAY
blacknight: there i am
blacknight: standing there awkwardly
blacknight: waiting for everyone else to leave
blacknight: and then when the room’s finally empty he just like
blacknight: kind of half-smiles at me
blacknight: and says “two things”
blacknight: “first, i have it on good authority that there aren’t really many of the fair folk left in this realm anymore”
spacenarwhal: WHAT.
queenbiro: those were the actual words he used
queenbiro: “i have it on good authority”
queenbiro: you’re sure
blacknight: this conversation has been BURNED INTO MY BRAIN
blacknight: yes those were the actual words he used
destieltilidie: okay i am aware of the irony of saying this, here.
destieltilidie: but i am *absolutely* adding that to the list of evidence, what the fuck.
blacknight: and then
blacknight: AND THEN
blacknight: “second, he’s not an emo twink, he’s a goth twink”
blacknight: “there’s a difference”
spacenarwhal: okay now *i* might be expiring on the spot.
spacenarwhal: he actually said the word twink?
blacknight: TWICE
dehumidifierdepot: so
dehumidifierdepot: what
dehumidifierdepot: he doesn’t mind that we think he might be an alien or a clone or a glitch in the matrix
dehumidifierdepot: but god forbid we assign his boyfriend to the wrong subculture
destieltilidie: i actually had a dream last night where the apparently-goth twink showed up in the dream i was having about bake-off.
destieltilidie: it was actually a relief at first. paul hollywood did *not* like the swiss roll i made.
destieltilidie: possibly because i made it out of origami paper and glitter glue.
queenbiro: WAIT WHAT
queenbiro: i had the exact same dream
blacknight: what
blacknight: paul hollywood and everything
queenbiro: okay not the same one
queenbiro: shut up
queenbiro: no i was in a submarine with a bunch of cheetahs looking for life on europa
queenbiro: and there was the professor’s boyfriend all of a sudden
queenbiro: at one of the imaging stations
destieltilidie: holy shit.
destieltilidie: did he ask you if you meant the professor any harm with your speculations?
queenbiro: YES
queenbiro: also i think he might have said something about witchcraft
spacenarwhal: wait wait wait.
spacenarwhal: hang on a sec.
spacenarwhal: i think i had a dream like that too.
dehumidifierdepot: WHAT
spacenarwhal: also, incidentally, pen.
spacenarwhal: it has not approached helen-levels of anger yet.
spacenarwhal: but i am officially having dreams where i’m working in cheyenne mountain.
spacenarwhal: *i.*
spacenarwhal: *hate.*
spacenarwhal: *you.*
queenbiro: eyyyyyyy
queenbiro: working like what
blacknight: SHE CAN TELL YOU HER STUPID STARGATE DREAM LATER
blacknight: I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE EMO TWINK THAT CAN DREAMWALK
spacenarwhal: goth twink.
blacknight: jelly you are KILLING ME
blacknight: I AM DYING
spacenarwhal: i don’t know! it was weird! he came through the gate with a bunch of the people i went to secondary school with.
spacenarwhal: all of whom had apparently turned into tok’ra.
spacenarwhal: and then all of a sudden he was up in the observation room where i was sitting and asking me about whether or not i meant the professor any harm!
spacenarwhal: i told him absolutely not, the professor is great and i’d never want him to be locked up and experimented on or anything.
queenbiro: and then he asked you why we were compiling everything if that was the case???
destieltilidie: YES.
destieltilidie: i squirted glitter glue in paul hollywood’s direction and told the professor’s boyfriend we were just curious.
destieltilidie: and that nothing ever *happens* around here so it was fun going along with it.
queenbiro: i said the same thing
queenbiro: more or less
spacenarwhal: yeah.
spacenarwhal: it was super-weird because for those few minutes i was aware of how bizarre it was to be under cheyenne mountain.
spacenarwhal: like i knew that where i belonged was here, in this time zone, going to university and wishing something exciting would happen.
spacenarwhal: and then he gave me this nod and then walked back through the gate and then we were worrying about the tok’ra summit again.
destieltilidie: okay, two things added today.
destieltilidie: one, knows someone who can tell him “on good authority” that there aren’t any of the fair folk left “in this realm”.
destieltilidie: two, his boyfriend can …
destieltilidie: i don’t even know.
destieltilidie: walk through dreams?
destieltilidie: what can even do that?
blacknight: the professor’s emo twink apparently
blacknight: yeah yeah
blacknight: the professor’s GOTH twink apparently
xenonprince: i can’t believe he had an issue with the emo bit and not the twink bit
blacknight: come on
blacknight: like we’ve said all along
blacknight: whatever else he is he’s not stupid
blacknight: he is absolutely aware he’s dating a twink
dehumidifierdepot: let me register my shock here that you’re not saying something about obliterating twinks here
dehumidifierdepot: i’ve been bracing for it
blacknight: so does the professor’s twink boyfriend
blacknight: right before he gets obliterated
blacknight: thank you for setting me up so well