A/N: First contribution to the Magnus Chase fandom! Hope everyone enjoys this little fierrochase piece, because there's more where that came from! Reviews, favorites and subscriptions are appreciated!
Magnus sleeps without dreaming for the first time in ages. "Morning." He says through a yawn, wandering back into Floor 19's common room. T.J, Mallory and Halfborn sit around a table, chattering away like finches, but they bid him good morning when he approaches.
He helps himself to a plate of soft rolls and a cup of hot chocolate, breaking off small pieces and dipping them into his cup. Halfborn has loaded his plate with eggs, sausages, bacon and about half a loaf of bread. Mallory nibbles at a strawberry muffin, and T.J pours himself a cup full of the blackest, nastiest coffee known to mankind.
"Where's Alex?" Magnus asks, in between bites of soggy roll.
"Pottery for Experts," Mallory shrugs, and glances over at Magnus with a smirk. "I think she wants to make you another vase or something, since you kept gushing over the last one that she made for you."
Said vase now bears pride of place on Magnus' bedside table. Alex had fashioned it to resemble the unfurling of flower petals in sunlight, painting the tips of the petals a pale shade of pink. He'd found it on his bed, wrapped clumsily up in brown paper and string, but it had been all too easy to identify its maker. Magnus also may or may not have stared at his gift for all of ten minutes, his face flushing crimson beneath his tan, opening and closing his mouth like a koi.
He stops chewing to gape at Mallory. "I was not gushing!"
In a surprisingly accurate imitation of Magnus' voice, T.J says, "Hey, guys, did you see the vase Alex made for me the other day? She's such a good artist, and all her works are so great! I would totally buy every single one of the pots she makes!"
As his companions laugh, Magnus almost feels the table rattling.
He hunches over his food and shovels a piece of roll into his mouth. "Alright, alright, I get it."
"Whoever loved that loved not at first sight," Halfborn intones sagely, with a sigh and a wink in Magnus' direction.
"Um . . ."
Thankfully, Mallory provides a translation, though the exasperated roll of her eyes does not go unnoticed. "Some Shakespeare thing. Halfborn has a PhD in Literature."
"What's on the agenda for today?" T.J takes a swig of his coffee. "Combat practice isn't till later in the afternoon."
And just like that, the conversation has shifted from the rather sticky topic of 'Magnus'-non-existent-love-life' to 'what-should-we-do-before-we-die-in-a-burst-of-glory'. Magnus is so relieved that he could have skipped around the room.
"I've got knitting at 10 - we're using a round loom today," Halfborn grins.
"What other classes are there?" Magnus asks.
Mallory snorts. "Thinking of making something for your girlfriend?"
Magnus ignores the part about Alex being his girlfriend. "Actually, yeah. To say 'thank you' for the pot."
"You could just kiss her," Mallory mutters. "Pretty sure she'd enjoy that more than a drawing."
Magnus pointedly ignores that too.
"Here's a schedule," And from within the depths of his tough canvas jacket, embellished with gold epaulettes and buttons, T.J. withdraws a crumpled piece of paper. "I personally like the reenactments."
The square of paper rests on the polished pine table. They all peer at it. Magnus pushes his plate and cup aside in favour of scanning through the paper that lists the classes available at Hotel Valhalla. There's some of everything – pottery, natural drawing, flower arranging, cooking, French, Feng shui, guitar . . . Magnus almost steps back from the mental overload.
"There's 'Crocheting to the Death'." Halfborn suggests helpfully.
"Uh . . . No."
"Knitting to the Death?"
"Again, no."
"Beading to the death?"
"Is there anything that doesn't involve getting hacked to pieces?" Magnus asks at last, after about a minute or so of shooting down various suggestions.
He knew there was a reason why he preferred staying in his room with his PlayStation and the fastest Wifi in the Nine Worlds.
"How about Origami for Beginners?" T.J interjects, pointing out the perfectly innocent activity. "No maiming or hacking involved."
Halfborn grunts; the brutish sound echoes through the room. "That was the most boring class I've ever been in. What kind of class doesn't have blood and guts?"
Baffled, Magnus asks, "Origami as in . . . Paper folding?"
"No, origami as in 'I'm going to smack you if you don't leave now'," Mallory tosses out sarcastically, making a shooing motion with her hand. "Go, make that origami and give it to your girlfriend. And grow a pear and kiss her too, while you're at it!"
The sound of their laughter follows Magnus out the door.
Fifteen minutes and a lot of walking later, he bursts through the doors of the Arendal room, getting a lot of annoyed looks from bearded Vikings with bulging muscles finishing up yoga in the dance studio across the registration desk.
Magnus can't believe he's doing this. He scans the class board, though there's no need; he already knows which class he's planning on going for. He forces himself to breathe – what if she doesn't like it what if she thinks I'm a huge dork what if – and hands his room card over to the lady at the desk.
"Which class, sweetheart?" The old woman asks, her hand shaking a bit as if the rune is incredibly heavy.
"Origami for Beginners."
The old woman looks at him, a bit surprised, and then swipes Magnus' card through the machine.
The Vikings vacate the studio after lots of bowing to their instructor, and a few other people push in folding tables and chairs. They all take a seat. A woman with silvery brown hair waves him and the six other people taking origami towards her.
"New faces today," She says softly, her voice steady and calm. She passes around pieces of brightly coloured paper, perfectly square and flawlessly smooth.
Magnus spends the next hour making a rose, a frog, a star. He anticipates that it will be stupid and boring, but instead . . . Something fills him. It's not necessarily a love for origami, but rather, the amazing sensation of being normal.
He listens to the teacher gently talking – fold here, flip there – the paper sliding beneath his fingers for no reason than the fact that he wants it to be so. It feels as if he's become something more than he was before he'd walked into the class, more than just a mean, killing machine with a sparkling sword that has a penchant for belting out the top 40 hits on the radio. He's doing something silly and pointless and wonderful, doing something that isn't his responsibility, but rather just his simple desire. Somehow he gets lost in the creases and folds, the glide of paper over his hands, each creation he makes chipping away some of the hardness that years of living on the street have amassed, until he feels new and light.
It takes him a while to muster up enough courage to rap timidly on her door, but he does. Eventually. When Alex doesn't open the door after he knocks, Magnus pokes his head into her room. His eyes fall on Alex's form, huddled in blankets and sleeping soundly, the lines and tension disappearing from her face as she sleeps, making her look younger than her age of sixteen. Despite himself, Magnus smiles, placing the origami on her beside table and slinks out just as quickly as he'd entered.
The next day, Magnus finds another package outside his room. This time, it's a mug, made to resemble rose petals and leaves. The message rings clear and simple: You're welcome.
And he smiles.
"Alex?" Mallory knocks on the door before waltzing into the girl's room. "Time to play 'let's kill everyone'."
Alex is flipping through a thick tome when Mallory enters. Her entrance is acknowledged with an absent nod. Mallory is about to leave when something wedged in between the yellowed pages catches her eye. Something pale and pink and out of place. "What's that?" Mallory asks, and sweeps the slip of paper from the book. It's a paper rose, not entirely symmetrical and with rounded creases that can only mean it's the work of an amateur.
Alex's only reply is to grace Mallory with an angry scowl that would have sent a lesser woman running for cover. Alex whips the paper out from the redhead's fingers and places it back in her book. Mallory notices how reverently Alex handles the rose, almost as if she can't believe that something so delicate and pretty belongs to her.
Mallory grins, and waggles her eyebrows like a villain from a vaudeville. "Is that from Magnus?"
"It was from a friend," Alex snaps, grabbing her garrotte and stalking out the door.
"Magnus loved your pot, too!"
"Shut up!"