(no subject)

[11calls]

Alex Reagan is fairly certain that this just happens to be the smallest elevator in existence. She’s been a lot of places in the world, but the one at the Usher Foundation that leads to the archive is the smallest modern one for sure. It’s barely big enough for three people honestly and that normally doesn’t bother her in the slightest. While Alex has a fair amount of fear for the things that she’d discovered over the last few months (the hunt for example is the one that sticks out the most considering it’s why she’s here) but the Buried wasn’t one of them. Alex was the sort of person who turned her bed into swaddling nests and burrowed into them. Honestly that buried blanket nest is where she felt the safest.

No. The elevator itself wasn’t the issue here. Alex Reagan has ridden it more than a few times since she’d started working in the archives a month or so ago. While she would rather be out there being a reporter, Alex had blown out all of the credibility that she’d ever had when she’d told people that the things that went bump in the night were real. In the end Tannis Braun was right about how her skills would be valuable here investigating the validity of the statements. In some ways it was almost freeing—when she was working for Usher, Alex didn’t need to worry about pesky things like journalism ethics. Instead she could lie and make someone believe whatever they wanted in order to get their story from them.

In a way it was all kind of freeing.

So if it wasn’t the elevator itself, and it wasn’t the confined space that bothered her what didn’t bother her exactly was the man who she was currently sharing the elevator with. His size in it, with the foot of height that he had on her, the more bulk that he’d had on his frame (not that Alex was calling him fat by any means) instead it was just the way that he loomed over her and seemed far larger in the space than he actually was. And the fact that he was attractive and god was he attractive. Alex has said hello when she’d gotten into the elevator with him, and saw that he’d already pushed the floor for the sub basement level archives.

But the problem was that somewhere between the archives and the first floor, the elevator had just decided to stop. Not just stopping which would be bad enough, but stopping and losing all power. Normally the dark wouldn’t have been a thing, because Alex would have just pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight app or call someone even if her phone didn’t have great service here. That was part of the reason it was still plugged in at her desk. Artifact storage was only three elevator stops away, and Alex was delivering some information she’d had on a statement. But now here they were in the small and dark with the extremely attractive man she doesn’t know.

This is fine. This is all fine.

But Alex just gives a grin that she knows that he wouldn’t be able to see in the pitch blackness so deep that it feels like she could hold it in her hands like dirt. “Well, I guess this is one way to avoid that meeting with my boss.” There isn’t fear in her, just the bad joking tone that Alex makes to lighten a situation. The meeting with Tannis was supposed to be in half an hour and she was supposed to be meeting someone important to the Foundation.

The fact that it could be the person in the elevator never even crosses Alex’s mind. After all, that man had been described to her as being ‘Old Man Strand’ and this man definitely wasn’t old in the slightest.

Comments

[imarealistnotacynic]

Richard Strand was bored.

Not strictly - bored in the traditional sense. He had plenty he could do. His job was all about finding things, about preparing things for Tanis and for the great and glorious plans of his host. His mind was constantly working.

No, he was bored with people. Occasionally these sorts of things happened. Human beings were boring. They had been ever since he was seven -

("Richie! Richie let me out! Richie I-" She coughed. The air smelled likes and and dirt, "Richie Please! I'm sorry!")

Perhaps it was that memory - the thrill of discovery digging beneath the sand and wondering if there might be anything or anyone there that made him stop and think. Made him truly address how bored he was. That had been his focus when he stepped onto the elevator.

It was interesting. People found him oppressive. Rooms within him were stuffy - so when one of Tanis's archival assistants got on with him an eyebrow was raised...

But then she wasn't panicking. And even when the elevator stopped with a flick of his hand in the hopes of provoking a reaction she was...pleased. Hmn.

"Who's your boss?"

His voice is deep, rich and throaty as he folds his hands, "I'm sure the elevator will be fixed soon."

[11calls]

"Tannis Braun. I just started working as an archival assistant six weeks ago I think?" Alex pauses and she considers; sometimes when you end up spending so much time working in the basement days can all seem to run together especially if you're a workaholic like Alex Reagan always is. Even if this isn't the profession that she'd wanted to be in since she was a kid, it was still fascinating in its own right and that was enough to mean that she lost herself inside of her work.

"Yeah," Alex says more definitively, "it was six weeks ago when I signed the contract. Nic kind of just threw me into working just as soon as I had signed on the dotted line, actually. And threw me into the deep end, so to speak--I don't think that Tanis was expecting any new assistants." Which was a bit of an understatement considering how he'd stared at her when she got down to the archives before Nic had remembered to call, and how she'd needed to unearth the spare desk from a mountain of documents and cassette tapes.

The cassette tapes were a shock because Alex hadn't seen anyone use them for anything in more than a decade. As someone who worked in radio, she knew that there was the smallest bit of digital in those old sort of tapes, but she was used to things being more modern. In the end, for the first two days that Alex had been set the task of recording statements (Tanis said that her voice was far more suited to it than his was) Alex had used her trusted recorder. Of course, she only found out it didn't work after Tanis ranted at her for forty-five minutes about how unprepared she was for doing this job but at least he didn't fire her.

Alex Reagan still doesn't know when you end up taking a job at the Usher Foundation, you're stuck there for life.

"What about you?" And the curiosity is evident in the cool, Canadian tones of her voice. But it's more than that, Alex is genuinely interested in who he is and why the man is here. "I don't think I've seen you here before." Because Alex definitely would have remembered, if only for the voice alone.

[imarealistnotacynic]

I haven't seen you here before. How long had he been in his realm recently? He had been doing some renovating. If people were going to become buried he was going to get creative damn it. Nothing so archaic as what his father had crafted.

(Richie please...

Oh Richard. Now this is the side I wanted to see of you.)

The girl however made him stick his hands in his pockets, "I'm Doctor Richard Strand." I'm paying your salary seemed trite, and I'm one of the founders seemed pointless. New hire, new hire...

Come to think of it hadn't there been a reporter? With the smell of hunt about her? Hadn't something happened and she'd been drawn in and signed and now...

Did she know? Did she know why she was here?

He appeared to become more animated, keeping the world around them static and compressed. This strange woman who wasn't uncomfortable in his presence.

"...If you're new I should have introduced myself properly. I end up burying myself in my work too often for it to be healthy."

Somewhere his dead sister screamed, his ex-wife chuckled, his daughter growled to herself, eyes blinked and animals howled and beings in other realms rolled their eyes at the terrible pun.

Richard, for his part, extended a hand - warm and calloused - despite his appearance.

"It's very nice to meet you Miss.."

[11calls]

Alex doesn’t want to say it, but the words drop from her lips because without having her recorder (and all too often even then!) the filter between Alex’s brain and mouth is never what it should be. There’s no denying the shock in her tone, because she can’t imagine how anyone would... What were people thinking?! “You’re ‘Old Man Strand’?! But—“ whatever was going to be the word following the but was swallowed by the sense of embarrassment in her. And maybe the smallest sense of common sense even though her mother and her old boss believed that Alex didn’t have one.

“Oh my god!” The words are added quickly, replacing the but there and her tone is quickly filled with apology. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Strand. I didn’t expect that. I mean. I’m uh. Supposed to be meeting you actually.”

There’s a light laugh and Alex tucks a piece of hair behind her ear before she extends her other hand out to take his own in the darkness. Honestly even with the increased pressure of the atmosphere around her, her sense of being mortified with herself is far stronger than her fear. And even then her fear is only that of being fired. So, another joke. “Assuming that I still have a job after all of this, I mean.” Which is a big if, and Alex is self aware enough to know that.

“But I’m Alex. Alex Reagan. Just Alex works fine for me, Dr. Strand. And I really am sorry.”

She means it and she doesn’t flinch away from his hand.

[imarealistnotacynic]

Her grip is light and warm and he smiles a thin smile despite everything - grateful. It's amusing. It's the first time he's smiled in - what? Weeks? Months? It's a shame it could be read as contemptuous but at the same time.

He squeezes her hand back and folds his hands in front of him studying her. This is the "reporter" he was approving.

"Old Man Strand. Was it Nic who came up with that?"

[11calls]

"I wouldn't know. I mean, I'm new so I've just kind of... heard it around, I guess? People seemed worried about me meeting you. I don't know why, honestly." Which is more of that lack of filter thing. Maybe those journalism ethics had actually been good for something after all, honestly because she at least would have been more careful about her personal feelings and reassuring him.

Probably. Or at the very least possibly anyway.

But she just gives him another smile, because Alex is really hoping that he's not going to turn around and end up using what her blunder was in order to do something really unreasonable like fire everyone else here. Alex knows that she can be a fuck up, but she doesn't want to fuck up everyone else's life just because she didn't have the sense to keep her mouth shut about it.

Alex tucks one hand into the pocket of her trousers and just shrugs for a second. "It's kind of no harm, no foul, I think. I mean, it's one of those things that normally happens when people are scared of their bosses, especially if they're strict or intimidating or whatever." It's clear from Alex's voice that Dr. Strand isn't intimidating her right now, even if he is her boss. There's something a bit freeing in that whole probably going to lose your job and need to move back home to Vancouver with your parents thing.

[imarealistnotacynic]

He blinks at that. She's so calm.

He can sense fear. It comes with the job and the territory. It's intoxicating. He never thought he'd miss it. There's something about the lack of that pull however that makes him curious. It's a different sort of pull to this woman staring up at him with interest - or at least a devil-may-care attitude.

For someone so tied to the hunt that devil may care attitude is a surprise.

"Rest assured, if you make any sort of statement I find offensive it's forgiven that we're stuck in an unusual situation." for the moment. And he wasn't in the mood to deny her at the moment.

He could deny her nothing.

"Are you scared of me?"

The Second Meeting.

[11calls]

Honestly, Alex is pretty sure that she's spending more time down here than she is at her desk. Tannis rarely has her deal with research on statements anymore; it's only if one is so tricky that no one else is able to figure it out that it ends up on her desk. But she's separated more and more from her colleagues, and Alex can't wonder if she's bothered by it or not. This place isn't really like the studio, and if Tannis and Nic want her here rather than figuring out what may or may not be supernatural, then she doesn't really have a problem with it.

She's deep underground in the Archive today, in that weird place where it met Artifact storage in a way that definitely seemed more focused on the buried than anything else. Most of these things had been a mess of dust (which was probably something it wanted them to be), extremely disorganized (which they probably didn't want) and badly needed to be sifted to in order to find things that were supposed to be here versus what actually was.

Alex had already found a few things that she couldn't find any listing for, and had set them aside for the next time Doctor Strand came down.

After spending the first two days destroying the business clothing that she had, Alex always brought along a t-shirt and leggings for those deep dives into the depths. Today, that's what she's wearing, and her hair is twisted into a loose braid as she moves some boxes around. There's a stain of dust on her knees, and a smudge of it on her chin and more on her cheek, but that's just what happens down here. Sometimes, Alex Reagan would swear that working here is like being a dust magnet.

This is one of the deeper parts of the archive, and Alex feels like she's both miles underground and also miles away from the elevator. Despite being pretty certain that there should be an exit sign and staircase somewhere, Alex really has never seen one.

It's almost enough to make someone fell lost in a cave.

Well, at least she had those work lights, and she had her iphone softly playing music as Alex moved carefully around the box that she'd just pulled out and opened. There was no compulsion for her to go into it, but she does carefully touch the corpse that had been buried in peat and mummified in Ireland. The man was holding some sort of spade, and Alex snapped a picture of it with the camera and softly said aloud (because she's so used to it given that she'd worked in radio and because there was so rarely anyone else down here) "Dr. Strand is really going to be excited to see you, I think."

[imarealistnotacynic]

He knew she was there.

He knew everything about these tunnels. They were his sanctuary and he was disturbed to find himself thinking that Alex appearing in them was macabre. Like a Christine being led to the phantom's lair. Like Hades leading Persephone into the underworld.

Ordinarily he would not care. Ordinarily he would allow her to get smug and then lock her down there.

But he knows she's there long before he himself arrives to stand behind her. She's so delicate, her movements so practiced, and she just seems so excited.

He smiles, "What will I be excited to see?"

[11calls]

He shocks her.

There's no other way to describe it, he shocks her by appearing at her side like that from the shadows. Honestly, Alex hadn't been listening for footprints, but she's pretty sure that even if she had been she wouldn't have heard him. Alex doesn't scream (she screams so very rarely in the real world, it's only in dreams of the hunt that Alex does) but she does gasp to see him. Her dark eyes go wide behind her glasses, and her hand is so tight around the camera that all of the color has bled from them.

"Dr. Strand!" Alex's voice is surprised, as she tries to get her racing heart back under control. Pressing one hand to her chest, she lets out a breathless little laugh. "You scared the hell out of me. I mean obviously."

When Alex is more herself, she bumps him with her shoulder. "You know, I'm pretty sure you scared the hell out of me on purpose, Dr. Strand. But anyway." Stepping back, she gestures.

"I think I found another piece of the Buried avatar ceremony from earlier than Pompeii even. I was doing some research and bones had been found in the area that this one was found in, but this one is the only one that was preserved. Unfortunately, the bones from the rest all seem to be in museums but look." Alex just gestures with the light to the body's feet. "It looks like they were connected like the other ones."

[imarealistnotacynic]

He liked Pompeii out of personal habit but yes. There is something that draws him to the bones. How did I miss this? He needs to spend more time down here. Forego a night of deep dreamless sleep to dig. The only artifact storage bigger than this one is in China-

(That's how it works. Magnus has the most statements, China has the most artifacts, and America...

America has bodies. And Artifacts. To be an American is to be a magpie. Always looking for shiny objects, collecting things that didn't belong to you without the permission of others.)

He snaps on a dark purple glove with the air of an expert before pulling a penlight from his pocket and passing it to her.

"Hold this. I want a closer look at the ankles." the moment she does he'll lean. There's something here, something against the bone, the most minute scrapings...

"And the spade. Spade next." Bored with the feet he moves upward, "It's incredible."

[11calls]

When he gives her the penlight, Alex takes it and she looks over the feet, seeing more of what she had seen before. Five bodies. The Sixth getting out and becoming an avatar. It made sense in a lot of ways. Alex is interested and she doesn’t mind the lean as they’re shoulder to shoulder.

Instead Alex is grinning. It’s been a while for this particular grin. It’s the sort of grin that used to come when Alex knew she was well on the path to a story and she could see the end of it in sight. Pompeii had been a single event. This was a second. They were damned near at a pattern and soon they would be able to figure out how buried avatars were made and stop them.

Or so Alex thought anyway.

She moves up and onto the other side of the box so that the light shines on the spade more clearly. “It looks like bronze,” Alex just says softly, meeting his eyes over the body. They linger for a second before she realizes that Strand is in a suit and she is most definitely not looking professional at all. “Aren’t you worried about wrecking your suit?” The question falls out without Alex even meaning it too; she wouldn’t be Alex if she didn’t ask the question though.

Biting her lip with a bit of embarrassment, Alex just looks to the spade and tilts her head. “I think it’s got writing on it. Some kind of engraving anyway. See?” Leaning over even further, Alex traces her fingers above and around where she could see it from her angle.

[imarealistnotacynic]

"Sacrifices must be made." That was a fear. unkempt, disheveled, terrible looking and denied for it. Denied life, denied love. He gave it to the patron and resolved to torment others later to rebuild himself.

An engraving.

Yes. It's old but he can sense the energy from it but also-

"...That's interesting. For tilling the soil."

[11calls]

Richard had been in London for what seemed like a long time. Granted, time felt quite a bit like an illusion considering that she was spending her time down in sub sub sub basement office that he’d given to Alex, firmly taking her out of the archives and from under Tannis’s thumb. There was no windows and no natural light, and considering how much reading statements was taking out of her, Alex was honestly practically sleeping in her office on her desk far more than she was in her own bed.

Thankfully, perhaps Alex had gone home and showered and the like last night before she’d come back into work and read another statement into the old fashioned tape recorder Richard had given to her. At the moment, she’s asleep in the small room with her head tucked on top of her hands on the desk. A blanket brought from home is wrapped around her, and the entire space is coated in a fine layer of dust. Honestly, she doesn’t know where all of the dust is coming from considering how she had cleaned it three times already, but the fine gray grains always seemed to settle into it as soon as she turned her back. It was almost like the dust from the artifacts was jealous of her divided time and had come to visit her if Alex isn’t going down to it. It’s a silly thought, a fanciful one but somehow she always seems to wake up with dust on her like she’d sleep for a hundred years rather than the few hours that her exhausted body demanded after a statement.

But at least the period was getting shorter Alex was finished reading them. The first time she’d barely ended the recording before she’d passed out for twelve hours here at her desk. Honestly she doesn’t know if she’s getting used to it or what. What she does know is that it’s definitely getting easier.

[imarealistnotacynic]

Richard is still thinking about Elias. About the deal he arranged for Alex. What he wanted for her, how he wanted her safe in the face of the ritual that was coming.

Alex was a good person. Alex reminded him that he was human - or he had been once. It was so long ago that he didn't remember. His chest burns thinking about it.

She had to see.

She had to know.

I want this Elias. He swallows, I am with you with every fiber of mine and my entity's being.

Opening the door he has to suppress a smile.

"...Do you need something to eat?"

[11calls]

When the door opens, Alex wakes up with a low sort of groan. The sound of the door opening to her office is something honestly that hasn't happened without her being the one to do it since he'd been gone, so of course the creaky sound is going to be one that draws her into a bolt upwards of frightened surprised. The fear slips away immediately at the familiar sound of a voice that Alex is quite convinced that she'd dreamed about since he'd been gone and instantly, her face relaxes into a broad grin.

Letting out a little laugh, Alex just fixes the glasses that sleeping on her hands had set askew, and she rises to her feet. The blanket falls back into the chair, and there's dust that's settled onto her cheek like a fingerprint. At least this time it's not all over her like it had been the last time they'd seen one another and this time Alex is dressed more like herself: jeans, a button down and a cardigan over it.

More than a little bit of her wants to get up and kiss him. Given the last time that they'd seen one another they'd had sex so it's not really all that surprising that she wants to. Alex Reagan isn't someone who normally does a thing with one night stands, especially when the person involved just happens to be her boss. For Alex, attraction is always about something more than just physical, and absence hadn't made that any less true or real.

"I could eat." It's easy enough to say, and Alex does step closer to the open door, even if she doesn't touch him. Still, the smile is an invitation, of course. "You scared the hell out of me, Richard!" The words are light and teasing--Alex doesn't blame him for it really--and coupled with a question: "when did you get back?"

[imarealistnotacynic]

"About 10 hours ago." He doesn't need to sleep if he doesn't want to. He doesn't need to eat or do anything normal humans do if he so desires.

Reaching out to brush her hair aside, cupping her cheek. His movement isn't tentative as he pulls her closer, one hand on her waist.

"Have you been up all night reading?"

[11calls]

Well that definitely answered her questions about what was allowed didn’t it? Alex just gives him a broad grin as she reaches out and rests her arms around the back of his neck, holding onto him loosely as she gives her head a shake.

“No. Well I guess it makes more sense to say not really. I read a statement earlier. Jesus I had no idea that they take so much out of you honestly.” Or the way that the feeling of being watched only intensified to a sharper and more focused feeling when she does it. Honestly, Alex guesses the fact that Richard had given her a large chunk of them that had to do with the Eye makes sense for that to be the case, even if she doesn’t know that the Foundation was a place of power for the Beholding.

“How was your trip?”

[imarealistnotacynic]

"About the usual." He shrugs his shoulders, before pulling her closer and stroking her hair, "You know how London can be." He shrugs nonchalant, "Let's go out tonight and I can tell you all about it."

He leans against her, "Are you hungry?"

That same warmth is still in his chest holding her. It's intoxicating. He wants to feed off of it.

"

[11calls]

She made him happy, he'd told her that and Alex knows that Richard makes her happy too. Contented and boneless, she lays naked partially on her desk and partially on the granite of his chest, running her fingers across it in lazy and nonsensical sort of gestures. The sex between them had been interesting, as Richard had been more dominate of her (she doesn't know that the reasoning behind it had to do more with what Elias had done to him that with anything that Alex herself had done) and Alex had obviously liked it. More than that was the way that Alex Reagan obviously liked Richard Strand.

Alex's like of Strand shone out of her dark eyes when she lifted her head to look up into his face, her palm resting below her chin so the bony pieces of her didn't dig into him. But the smile on her face is lazily bright, sort of like a cat who's laying in a patch of sunlight that's coming through a window. Dropping a kiss against his skin, she just stretches out a bit again, curling her toes and then tensing and relaxing her leg muscles to make sure that they're in working order.

"Did you still want to do dinner, Richard? I know that the jetlag coming back this way can be a real pain in the ass, and everything. I don't mind a raincheck if you'd rather wait and put it off for a few days. Or," Alex just kisses his chest again, before her eyes refocus against his own with an interested smile. "I mean, you can come back to my apartment if you want to actually try this having sex thing in a real bed. Just, you know, for novelty." It's teasing and light, like her smile, like the shine in her eyes. "At some point." Considering there's been a fair amount of desks, both Richard's and now her own.

[imarealistnotacynic]

"Nothing wrong with getting in touch with the earth. Or just exploring the shapes of the world."

His chuckle is soft as he kisses her head, "...Actually. I had a thought. If you want to talk about beds...we could take a trip together. I go to London regularly to discuss work with other institutes."

[11calls]

"You just got back though, are you going away again so soon?" Alex doesn't sound upset about the offer of the trip with him, but she is confused about the way that he traveled. Before Alex had been isolated a bit by ending up down here in the archives of the building with the office that he'd set her up in, she had been trying to form relationships with people, even if it didn't work particularly well among the archival assistants. Amalia had told her that they didn't often see 'Old Man Strand' but Alex had assumed that was because of the fact that he didn't seem entirely too fond of a lot of people, or even most of the people here in the Foundation.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, Richard I would love to travel with you, and London is one of my favorite cities in the world and everything that I've read about the Magnus Archives has been interesting..." The trip actually sounds quite good honestly and Alex is considering it. "When would you want to go?"

[imarealistnotacynic]

"I leave in a week."

He rolls over, toying with her breast, "...We leave in a week. You can meet my boss Mr. Bouchard." There's an edge to his voice, a reverence.

"If you think there's riches to be discovered within our archive, the Magnus Archives are going to blow your mind."

[11calls]

“Huh.” Alex just moves into the movement against her nipple, letting out a low sort of breathless sounding purr as she watches Richard. Honestly Alex hadn’t thought that Magnus and Usher were so interconnected considering everything so it does surprise her quite a bit to hear him both use such reverence when talking about Elias Bouchard and also calling him his boss. Which Alex supposed makes him sort of double her boss.

“How long should I plan on staying? I mean if I’m going to end up spending some time there?” Alex is already making mental plans, planning on a week of like sleeping in a bed with Richard and spending her days at the Institute.

[imarealistnotacynic]

"Pack for two weeks."

He rolled over to stroke her cheek - but there was something distant in his eyes. Something buried, some secret as he leaned against her, "Just in case. Whatever else I can provide."

To drag her down, to bury her or give her to the eye? He'd pay millions just to make sure she survived. To make sure she was okay.

To make sure she lived.