Tag: taz

ipremagnus:

whyisthebureauinshambles:

the bureau is in shambles because no one can remember what happened at the New Years party. However, there are a number of clues:

• Merle’s bed is full of potted plants. 
• Taako is sprawled across Kravitz, who is laying on top of the kitchen island, both of them are still soundly asleep. Taako has a party hat on. 
• Carey and Killian are in the rafters of the bureau auditorium, covered in glitter. 
• Lup and Barry woke up in their bed, which is a good start, but the bed is inside the bureau elevator. 
• Magnus isn’t wearing a shirt – typical – and is laying in a pile of hundreds of empty champagne flutes, the majority of them are pristine and unused. He’s covered in grass. 
• The bottom of Lucretia’s dress is torn, and the strip of fabric is tied around her head. When she wakes up and rubs her eyes, she feels herself smudge black eyeliner decorating her cheeks like warpaint.
• Davenport is nowhere to be found. Seriously, where is Davenport?

There’s a story here that needs to be uncovered, but for now, everyone’s just blaming Avi and sleeping in.

New Year’s was somewhat of an uneasy affair at the Bureau since the IPRE regained their memories. The end of the year for the crew more often than not meant the end of the world, and though they’d spent more than a decade on Faerun, a century of running for your life is a hard habit to break. So, when he notices that Agnus is having a hard time staying awake for midnight, Magnus proposes a game to keep them all occupied:

Hide and Seek.

The first couple of rounds go pretty quickly, with everyone agreeing to stay close to the THB’s rooms; the third round only lasts a couple of minutes with Angus as the seeker. So, with midnight still an hour and a half away, they decide to make it more difficult. They expand the hiding grounds to the entire moon base and make Lucretia the seeker.

(If she gets a little competitive and borrows Lup’s eyeliner to show she means business, well, they’ll chalk it up to the Cheer Wine and whatever Avi’s been passing out in tiny bottles. It’s not like everyone else is sober anyway.)

Taako is the first one found. He’d pulled Kravitz into the still-closed Fantasy Costco, which was being used as storage until the Bureau could tempt Garfield to come back (without the demanded exchange of blood). At first he’s determined to win and stacks boxes in front of the glass sliding windows so no one can see inside – or, more accurately, he wheedles at Kravitz until his boyfriend does it for him. But when one of the boxes topples over and reveals leftover costumes from the MidSummer Harvest Festival, he can’t help but launch and impromptu fashion show.

Lucretia finds them about fifteen minutes later by following the sounds of their giddy laughter, walking into the abandoned store to find them falling over each other, consumed by giggles. When the couple admits defeat and stumbles back to their rooms, Kravitz is wrapped in a feather boa and Taako is still wearing a party hat.

Lucretia targets Lup and Barry next, expecting them to also be too distracted by each other to focus on the game. She nearly catches them several times, exclaiming once that they can run, but they can’t hide.

That gives Lup an idea.

She and Barry retreat to their room and, after a little trial and error, manage to enchant their bed to that it will teleport to a new location every three minutes. All they have to do is lie back and let the magic do the work. (They’ve already fallen asleep by the time the bed gets stuck in the elevator.)

Merle’s approach is a little more crude, but no less effective. He nabs as many plants he can from around the base, piling them around his bed to form a screen. When he hears Lucretia approaching, he makes kissy sounds against the leaves and laughs when she quickly slams the door shut.

Carey helps Killian climb into the auditorium rafters, insisting that no one ever thinks to look up. It would have worked too, except Lucretia makes it her business to know each of her employees, how they think and how they act, and she knew Carey would be drawn to the highest spot on the moon base.

They ignore her demands to come down. She has no proof she found them so long as they stay up there, right? Lucretia considers summoning a gust of wind to knock them down, but dismisses the thought on the slim, slim chance either of them would get hurt. She instead shoots glitter from the tip of her wand, throughly marking them as found, and exits to the sound of their sputtering amusement.

Magnus ditches his shirt during the game’s first round after knocking back two mini bottles Avi had shoved into his hands, complaining he’s too hot. He throws Agnus over his shoulder as soon as the real game begins and declares that they’re going to be partners for this one. 

He stumbles out into the quad and puts Angus down when he almost drops him after tripping over his own feet. He takes Angus’s hand and lets the junior detective–who Magnus would always argue is the smarter of the two of them–lead him to the best hiding spot. When Lucretia passes by the window of a building just in front of them, they throw themselves into the grass and try to blend into the shadows. Magnus keeps shushing Angus with a finger to his lips even though she’d never be able to hear them inside.

(And if Magnus doesn’t brush the grass off his chest when they finally stand because Angus giggles every time he looks at him, no one has to know.)

They end up at the Fantasy Costco and peer at the costume pieces scattered around the floor. Magnus knocks over a box seconds after they enter and hundreds of plastic champagne flutes spill out. Neither of them are awake enough to put them back and instead build a box fort around the pile, huddling inside their horribly obvious hiding spot, satisfied and content. 

When midnight comes, all of the IPRE are in different parts of the base. They hear the clock chime twelve, heralding in the new year, and each of the seven birds has to bite down on a wash of anxiety. But they look around at the home, at the family they’ve built, and the feeling ebbs. They have no way of anticipating what the future holds, but each new year to come feels as secure as this moment, it can’t be so bad.

(One thing they do know for sure, when they wake: Davenport definitely won.)

bramblepatch:

Davenport’s shitty elf son, showing up in his cabin in the middle of the night on their first night at sea: I think I have scurvy.

Taako’s grumpy gnome dad, in the full knowledge that you can’t get scurvy in less than a day and also the full knowledge that there’s no way that Taako “from TV” Taaco has any kind of dietary deficiency: What are your symptoms?