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Martin Blackwood has recently discovered that he is magic.
This isn't exactly true, but it is certainly what he tells himself—what would you call the ability to manipulate water?
Well. Not all water. But still a pretty big portion of it! Just... the water in the sky.
Clouds. He can manipulate clouds. And by manipulate he means make little shapes with them.
It's cooler than it sounds.
He doesn't know why or how it started happening—maybe he could always do it but never tried? But two weeks ago, after a... talk? meeting? with Peter Lukas, he was feeling bummed. So he made tea. For maybe the third time that day? Morning. The third time that morning. Maybe it's a problem, but there are bigger ones to fret over than tea intake.
Chamomile in hand, he stepped outside and looked up. It was a bit of a dreary day, but they had all been dreary recently. But, when looking at the clouds, he had never been able to part them—that is to say, he did, that morning. He looked up and where his eyes settled in the sky, the clouds split in a near perfect circle, revealing the sun in the center. A sun-ray rested upon Martin and a small mouse sitting by a lamppost. It would nearly have been poetic, if not for the way Martin went absolutely slack-jawed. The mouse must have found it quite comical.
So, in the coming days, he tried again. And again, and again, and again. It worked every time. So he tried to ramp it up, make it more complex. Instead of simply splitting the clouds, he began shaping them. But, what really set his powers in stone in his mind was when he raised his hand to the sky, squinted an eye, and drew a heart with his fingertip.
Meanwhile, during this time of experimentation, he noticed Jon in his office some days. Every day. Multiple times per day. Give him a break! Jon just looked so... down. Martin couldn't decide whether to bring him more tea than usual or leave him be. It ended up being a strange mix of both, surely confusing to both Martin and Jon.
What was Martin meant to do, honestly? Let this go on for weeks? Even longer? He wouldn't stand for it. So, naturally, when he saw Jon take a step outside in the middle of the day, clearly upset enough to not notice Martin sitting thirty feet away at a café, Martin thought to leave him a message. He tried to make it subtle, he really did, but he hasn't quite figured out the blurring and shading of the clouds yet... He wrote Jon's name with a huge smiley face and a heart. In the sky.
Maybe it wasn't his best plan ever, but he would swear he was trying to help.
Jon sat on the steps of the Institute and looked up with a calm, melancholy look in his eyes, which promptly shifted to a sharp and intense glare as his eyebrows drew together. As he wrapped his mind around it, he nearly fell back in a panic, before looking around the street frantically, back up at the sky, and so on.
Martin, certainly mortified, shielded his eyes and drew up his hoodie. By the time he looked back, he just barely caught a glimpse of Jon's foot falling inside the Institute as the door shut behind him.
Shocked and dismayed, Martin lay his head on the table.
After what could have been a half hour of sulking in shame, Martin tipped his waiter and edged back towards the Institute. He opened the door... walked across the foyer... down the stairs to the basement... it really was an ordeal just to put one foot in front of another.
It was just as bad as he had imagined.
Maybe worse.
"...promise you, I am being stalked by the Lonely, Melanie—where the fuck is Peter Lukas?" Jon spit Peter's name with acid and malice. Martin rounded the corner to find Jon leaning on Melanie's desk, waving his arms around animatedly.
"I don't know, Jon, Jesus fucking Christ. Have you ever considered that paranormal things just happen to us? All the time? Typically without explanation or cause?"
Jon was steaming from the ears. Neither of the two had noticed Martin standing at the hallway entrance.
"Of course I have, Melanie, but it wrote my name. My name! How would you explain that? What the fuck would you assume if you found 'Melanie' on a wall in blood?"
"IT WAS ME."
Silence.
Heads turning.
Martin turned red. "...It was me. I wrote your name in the sky." Jon's eye was twitching. "I'm sorry," Martin squeaked.
"...What."
Martin opens his mouth for a few seconds and no sound comes out. "I... I can... move clouds? Kind of? When I'm bored, I draw things in the sky on cloudy days. I don't know why I can do it, but I— I saw you upset, outside, and I wanted to cheer you up, you know, I thought I could help... uplift you, or some shit, I didn't really think it through, and I saw you were scared and I felt so bad that I stared at the ground for thirty minutes before coming back and then you were yelling at Melanie and she didn't deserve that and—" Jon hadn't moved. "I'm still sorry?"
"Oh. My. God." At that moment, Melanie did the unthinkable: she started laughing. "Oh, my God, Martin, what the FUCK."
"It's... not that funny," Martin said sheepishly.
"Oh, no, it is, I promise." She stands to leave, wiping her cheeks. "I'm gonna go tell Rosie." She saunters up the stairs and Martin and Jon watch her.
Slowly turning his head, Martin looks back at Jon.
Jon is smiling.
"Jon?"
Jon giggles a little and sits in Melanie's chair. "It was... a little funny. In hindsight."
Martin takes a moment. He laughs a little bit, too.
"I think I needed that, Martin. Thank you... for trying." He looks up at Martin, standing in front of him, with a small, fond smile.
Martin smiles back.