Chapter Text
“It’s ok, Angus. It’s my fault for asking you to demonstrate in the house.” Lup said gently. He felt her helping him up from the floor all the way up to his feet. “I’m sure my brother won’t mind.”
“You really think so?” he sniffled, peeking out from under his hands. He was being guided upstairs, following the trail of the fox that bolted towards Taako’s room.
“ Well, probably not, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Come on. We’ll just-- oh Raven Queen herself how’d your familiar learn how to lock doors.” As the boy gives a noise of distress, Lup’s face unscrunched itself from her expression of distaste. “It’s fine! I think it’s amazing that you could train it to be so smart since you’re like, what, 9?”
“Age doesn’t determine skill, and-- and I’m 11 and a half, ma’am.” Angus plants a hand on his hip and cocks his head to the side. “That being said, I didn’t tell it how to do that. It’s just supposed to help me investigate things by getting to places too small for my flesh boy body.”
“Oof. That’s an unfortunate way of wording it. I’ll just cast--” Angus waves his hands in a gesture of distress as Lup reaches for her repaired umbrella.
“Oh there’s no need to expend another spell slot, ma’am. I have proficiency with lock picking kits!”
Lup steps to the side as the boy detective sticks his tongue out in concentration and fumbles with the lock. It takes a bit, but a victorious click eventually resounds through the hallway. “After you!” he says with pride.
The room was in utter chaos. A haphazard entanglement of sheets was knotted up on the mattress, shoved next to the only window in the room. It’s still had books, mugs, and various knick knacks useful for what seems to be fishing. A clutter of pens spilled on the floor of what he assumes to be Taako’s work desk. A desk which had several other mugs either upright or on their side, half of which bear Taakos name and a quarter of which had his face. Under most of the mugs were unaligned stacks of paper that seemed to nearly topple over, not to mention the stacks that seemed to have done so already. Picking one a paper from the floor under a discarded sweater, Angus reads crossed out names for various products--most likely for the lifestyle brand.
“Better put that back now, Taakos going to see something’s off.”
“But, ma’am--”
“Trust me, Angus, there’s a simple 4 step process on how to never have to confront Taako about this. You just have to go find what your fox friend went and curled up in, fix up what it moved, touch nothing else, and then we can forget this ever happened. Now concentrate, where do you feel it?”
Find his fox friend. Fix up what it moved. Touch nothing else. Forget this ever happened. Angus screws his eyes so tight he sees a red tint shining through his eyelids. Beyond that, he sees an ocean of blue static and islands bordered with bright multicolored light swimming in his vision. He tries hard, really hard. He can feel his gut flip from the thought of Taako getting mad at him, for moving his stuff and letting an animal loose in his room. The pick up of his heart rate causes his concentration to waver and sweat to bead on his forehead. Oh god can’t he just cast detect magic? No the room would light up like a Candlenights tree. Dismiss him? That’s even worse, they’ll never find what’s off. Ok. Ok, concentrate.
Find his fox friend. It’s a small space, quite dark but this only heightens the the textures of papers brushing past his limbs.
Find his fox friend. A leg twitches, a sound of something knocking on the wood is heard from the desk.
Find his fox friend. Another movement, this time a shift in weight that pushes the drawer slightly ajar.
“Great work, kiddo!” Lup smiles down at him, proud.
Fix up what it moved. He moves closer to the desk, cracking an eye open and reaching for the handle.
Fix up what it moved. He dismisses it safely, and takes a wild guess as to how these stacks of paper were supposed to look like.
Fix up what it moved. He takes them out to stack them, leaving behind envelopes presumably ripped open to free the letters. The glint of gold wax catches his eye.
“Lulu! Can you open the door for me?” Comes muffled from downstairs.
“Hold your horses, Taako! I’ll be down in a minute!-- Angus just hurry up with the fixing I’ll stall as much as I can.” Lup finishes talking halfway out the bedroom door, throwing a quick thumbs up before disappearing below the stairs.
Touch nothing else. Angus has had to distinguish between many insignias in his line of work, and he doesn’t need to see the body of the letter to see that it’s definitely his.
Touch nothing else. He looks up-- a letter opener is shoved at the right-hand side of the table.
He shoves the letters back in and reaches for the drawer directly below it, he does not see his own handwriting on these.
Touch nothing else. He can’t bear to look at them. He can’t bear to put them down. He compromises by shoving them in his messenger bag and turning away from the desk, away from the bedroom and the stairs, and towards thoughts of his former teacher, Taako.
“What’s up, Agnes?” The man himself pulls the boy out of his thoughts as his feet rest on the last step. He had a sparkling get up and smudged makeup that probably looked neater this morning. The tiredness in his eyes made it look as if the camera flashes had stolen their light. “You look like you just heard my “peed your loincloth” monologue again.”
Forget this ever happened. “It’s nothing I’ll be--I’ll be fine.”
Forget this ever happened. “Hmph, if you say so.”
Forget this ever happened.