junedingo
fly? yes. land? no.
Character Exploration Drabble for Benny the Mage Detective (modern fantasy AU)
There's a beat to the city. A flow. You can feel it walking along the street, the paved motorways acting as capillaries, the cars flowing through them, delivering people to whatever vital organ they needed to attend to. To someone who isn't familiar, it might seem messy, a raucous and inconsiderate stop motion set. To one mage though, its the same as a body, from head to toe a mystery in how a single heart, a single brain, can bring all of that chaos into a useful structure.
While most people are sensible, waking with the sun and sleeping with the moon, this mage has gotten his world turned around. The noon sunlight makes him sleepy, fills his bones with lethargy and tugs down at his limbs, makes his eyelids heavy and his thoughts dulled. Its become that the muggy nights are when he thinks clearly, or, at least clear enough to try and make reason of his current life.
A mage and a cop. That was already about as turned around as a human preferring night to day. Diurnal they were supposed to be, humans. But the city's heartbeat resonated most with his own at night, and he supposed, so did the naturally contradictory occupation. Mages didn't become cops, at least, not willingly. And even if they did, well, it wasn't because they were up to any good. Benicio wasn't entirely sure that he was actually up to good, but he liked to try to be good anyway. As he mused over what had become of his life, he thought maybe it was just that he was supposed to be mixed up from the beginning, what with a name Benicio and a face like his, blonde hair and hazel eyes, yet first understanding his words in Spanish before he knew English. He'd always thrown people off, even as a child, just living up to expectations and all that.
He stopped on a street corner, waiting for the light as traffic rushed past, the muggy summer evening heated further by the cars' exhaust, their passing pushing it against his face, making his hair dance lazily. He brought one hand up to his face, fingers brushing against his lip as he thought about the corner store just across from him. Thought about the cigarettes he was sure he could make out, lit there, just behind the counter.
The light changed then, and with it, he was able to avert his gaze. Even as he walked past, his fingertips itching for something to hold, he didn't flow like a moth to the promise of the florescent lights. He was able to walk on, not exactly ignoring the desire for a smoke, but letting it go unanswered for the moment. As it was, Benicio was usually buzzing with some kind of craving. Most mages blamed it on the magic that flowed from them, a detrimental excess of energy that ate at them whether they used the fuel or not. Every mage that Benicio knew answered to that demand, that prickling tingling skin unsettling static that made rational thought difficult. People joked about werewolves, about their hormonal animalistic ancestral ties, but surely those jokers didn't have a clue what it felt like with magic in your veins. Some nights, Benicio swore it was pulsating just there, under his fingernails like a bruise you couldn't stop pressing at, a scab on your lip you couldn't kip from licking just to taste the salt and iron. Mages he thought, they were the ones truly beholden to their instincts. Though, no, instincts wasn't the right word, it was something less neutral than that, something a little bit less good.
Following no path, he continued his walk, passing closed store fronts, busy lines of brightly dressed people heading into clubs, and dimly lit 24 hour restaurants. He was off the next two days, and that made it all the more difficult to head to his apartment to sleep. He wouldn't even be allowed back in the office if he tried to sneak in, would get turned right around and sent on his way. He was supposed to be taking the time to relax, but the short attempt he'd had of that, well, it had ended the same way it did every time. He felt more restless, more on edge. Benicio could have stayed home alone, drunk himself into a dreamless sleep, only to wake up to a torrential hangover and a sickly buzzing under his skin the next morning. He'd done that enough before to have figured out that even with practice, it wouldn't change the outcome. So, a walk around the city instead it was.
There's a beat to the city. A flow. You can feel it walking along the street, the paved motorways acting as capillaries, the cars flowing through them, delivering people to whatever vital organ they needed to attend to. To someone who isn't familiar, it might seem messy, a raucous and inconsiderate stop motion set. To one mage though, its the same as a body, from head to toe a mystery in how a single heart, a single brain, can bring all of that chaos into a useful structure.
While most people are sensible, waking with the sun and sleeping with the moon, this mage has gotten his world turned around. The noon sunlight makes him sleepy, fills his bones with lethargy and tugs down at his limbs, makes his eyelids heavy and his thoughts dulled. Its become that the muggy nights are when he thinks clearly, or, at least clear enough to try and make reason of his current life.
A mage and a cop. That was already about as turned around as a human preferring night to day. Diurnal they were supposed to be, humans. But the city's heartbeat resonated most with his own at night, and he supposed, so did the naturally contradictory occupation. Mages didn't become cops, at least, not willingly. And even if they did, well, it wasn't because they were up to any good. Benicio wasn't entirely sure that he was actually up to good, but he liked to try to be good anyway. As he mused over what had become of his life, he thought maybe it was just that he was supposed to be mixed up from the beginning, what with a name Benicio and a face like his, blonde hair and hazel eyes, yet first understanding his words in Spanish before he knew English. He'd always thrown people off, even as a child, just living up to expectations and all that.
He stopped on a street corner, waiting for the light as traffic rushed past, the muggy summer evening heated further by the cars' exhaust, their passing pushing it against his face, making his hair dance lazily. He brought one hand up to his face, fingers brushing against his lip as he thought about the corner store just across from him. Thought about the cigarettes he was sure he could make out, lit there, just behind the counter.
The light changed then, and with it, he was able to avert his gaze. Even as he walked past, his fingertips itching for something to hold, he didn't flow like a moth to the promise of the florescent lights. He was able to walk on, not exactly ignoring the desire for a smoke, but letting it go unanswered for the moment. As it was, Benicio was usually buzzing with some kind of craving. Most mages blamed it on the magic that flowed from them, a detrimental excess of energy that ate at them whether they used the fuel or not. Every mage that Benicio knew answered to that demand, that prickling tingling skin unsettling static that made rational thought difficult. People joked about werewolves, about their hormonal animalistic ancestral ties, but surely those jokers didn't have a clue what it felt like with magic in your veins. Some nights, Benicio swore it was pulsating just there, under his fingernails like a bruise you couldn't stop pressing at, a scab on your lip you couldn't kip from licking just to taste the salt and iron. Mages he thought, they were the ones truly beholden to their instincts. Though, no, instincts wasn't the right word, it was something less neutral than that, something a little bit less good.
Following no path, he continued his walk, passing closed store fronts, busy lines of brightly dressed people heading into clubs, and dimly lit 24 hour restaurants. He was off the next two days, and that made it all the more difficult to head to his apartment to sleep. He wouldn't even be allowed back in the office if he tried to sneak in, would get turned right around and sent on his way. He was supposed to be taking the time to relax, but the short attempt he'd had of that, well, it had ended the same way it did every time. He felt more restless, more on edge. Benicio could have stayed home alone, drunk himself into a dreamless sleep, only to wake up to a torrential hangover and a sickly buzzing under his skin the next morning. He'd done that enough before to have figured out that even with practice, it wouldn't change the outcome. So, a walk around the city instead it was.
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