#aww i care them
The good thing about having his own house, away from the other crew members, is that Magnus could sing as loud as he wanted, burn as much food as he possibly could, or even walk around naked, and no one would scold or laugh at him. The bad part about living in his own house is that it was really damn lonely. Suffocatingly lonely, to the point that Magnus sometimes forgot he was actually a person and not just a ghost living in this house. The dogs helped a lot, but the feeling persisted.
This is why he crossed the street at seven this morning and knocked on the door to Barry and Lup’s house, inviting himself inside when neither of them answered. They had an incomplete puzzle on their coffee table that Magnus started to work out. When Lup came downstairs around an hour later, she stopped to stare at Magnus, blinking a few times as if he was a trick of the light, and then kept on her way to the kitchen. A few minutes later, she brought him a cup of coffee and then, presumably, went back to the kitchen to start on breakfast.
Barry stumbled down the stairs a while later, hair still wet from a shower. Magnus snorted when he stopped in the exact spot that Lup had, taking off his glasses to clean them, and then squinting at him as if Magnus had just been a smudge on the lens.
“Uhm,” Barry said. “What'cha doing here, bud?”
“Bored,” Magnus said, shrugging. “This puzzle is fucked.”
“I think you’re just bad at puzzles, Mags,” Barry said. He came over to the couch, sitting himself down next to Magnus and bending over to look at what was done so far. Maybe Magnus being bad at puzzles was a fair assessment, because he had only got some of the edge pieces put together, and the wizard hat of whoever was in the middle.
They sat there, mulling over the puzzle for a while. Barry started connecting pieces that Magnus didn’t even know were in front of him. By the time Lup came out with food and more coffee, Magnus had resigned himself to watching Barry do the puzzle, instead.
“Eggs,” Lup said enticingly, shoving a plate into Magnus’s arms. She set two mugs down on the coffee table and Barry picked one up without looking away from the puzzle. He took a sip and then grimaced and put it back down, picking up the other one.
“Sorry,” Barry said. “Thought that one was mine.”
“It’s in my mug, babe.”
The mug was a deep red with the words “don’t talk to me until I’ve killed you with this mug”. Very Lup-esque.
“I’m doing a puzzle,” Barry said. “I didn’t look!”
“We’redoing a puzzle,” Magnus said.
“No, I think Barry’s doing it,” Lup said. “Take a break to eat, babe.”
Barry glanced up- Magnus was already eating part of his plate. Ham and eggs and toast, all very good. Lup slid his plate towards him and Barry sighed, sitting back and reaching for the forks she had brought out too. There was silence for a while as they ate. It was a much nicer silence than sitting in his house, alone, eating mediocre eggs and ham. Lup was the first to finish, setting the plate aside on the coffee table and leaning down to look at the puzzle. Magnus was finished too, but he didn’t know where to put his plate so he just sort of held onto it.
“Where did we get a puzzle that was literally just a picture of Taako?” Lup asked after a few more minutes of Magnus watching them put it together. Sure enough, under the wizard hat Magnus had put together by himself was Taako.
“I think he gave it to me for my birthday,” Barry said, snapping another piece in place.
“Sounds about right,” Lup said.
Another silence. Barry and Lup were putting together the puzzle much faster now. Magnus took a sip of his coffee. As they put Taako’s apron into place, Magnus cleared his throat and said,
“How’s it feel being like, a lich?”
Barry’s hand stilled over one of the pieces. Lup hummed.
“Lich-y,” she said. Magnus huffed out a little laugh. “I don’t know how to describe it, Mags. Wanna share why you wanna know? ‘Cause I’m ninety percent sure my ass willget fired literally and metaphorically if I help you become a lich.”
“I don’t wanna be a lich,” Magnus said. “I’ve had enough of living forever, thanks. I just kinda like… I don’t know. Like when you got your body back after so long, did it feel weird? Like too fleshy?”
“Yeah,” Lup said. Barry nodded in agreement.
“Lonely?” Magnus asked.
“I… wouldn’t use the word lonely,” Barry said. “Not exactly, anyhow. But it is sorta weird going from like… not being contained within anything directly into a breathing body again. Kinda like-” he snapped his fingers, screwing his face up for a second as he thought. “Like, uh, Wonderland? When you were dead, and then you were only kinda dead inside the mannequin? It’s like… so much, all at once. But also not enough, y'know?”
“No, I get it,” Magnus said. “It was very- very disorienting. I didn’t like it very much. I just? I don’t know. Usually, when I die, I just die. But then I was dead but not dead? More than when we were on the Starblaster. But I wasn’t alive, I just wasn’t dead. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“I got'cha. Sounds rough, Mags,” Lup said. Magnus nodded, not sure what else to say to make himself make sense. “D'you wanna talk about it or d'you just wanna watch us do this puzzle. Or both, I guess.”
“Kinda wanna talk about it,” Magnus said. “Never really had to chance to, I think.”
“Go for it,” Barry said, taking a sip of his coffee. He snapped another piece of the puzzle in. “We’re here to listen, bud.”
