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Chapter Text

What the Fuck is Gadling’s Deal, Anyway?
(Assorted Theories)
(see Theo for the betting pool)

1. Raised in a cult
2. Former hitman in witness protection or something maybe he’s just on the run idk
3. Prophet/psychic/any and all ‘has visions’ answers go under this one, guys
4. Conman
5. Vampire
6. Actually a super famous actor doing research for a role
7. Minor god
8. Major god
9. The human equivalent of a failed service dog
10. Time Traveler’s Wife Scenario (he’s the wife)
11. Theater people are just Like That
12. Ghost????

It isn't a coincidence that three of the four longest-serving members of Shakespeare club are all in Professor Gadling's 100-level theater history seminar: Gadling has been the club's faculty advisor for three years now, after they bribed him into the position by promising to take his oft-under enrolled Elizabethan Theater class, and they have a certain loyalty to him at this point. And beyond that, Celia wants the easy senior year A, Rhea needs one more arts credit to graduate, and Theo’s ‘genuinely interested in theater history’ or something.

The three of them have staked out a table at the back of the lecture hall, and are quietly comparing summer job horror stories, when a flicker of black at the corner of Celia’s eye gets her attention.

She turns her head.

There's a shape hovering in the doorway to the lecture hall, a formless void, something adjacent to human but icy dark sharp terribly terribly cold terribly alone the nothing at the end of the universe

She blinks.

The shape resolves itself into a tiny, gangly kid in a black hoodie and tight black jeans. He hasn’t got a backpack or even a notebook, he looks incredibly lost, and he’s wearing way too much eyeliner.

In other words, the smell of ‘poor lost freshman’ is radiating from him.

“Hey,” Celia says, catching his eye, “This is Theater History 100. You need a seat?”

“I’m looking for Professor Gadling?” the kid says. His voice is deeper than Celia expected, which makes the uncertainty in his tone, tripping over the name like he’s never had to call someone ‘professor’ before, stick out all the more.

“Yeah, this is his class,” Celia says, with her best encouraging smile. “He’s great, you’ll love him.”

“Are you new here?”  Theo asks, leaning over Celia’s shoulder. The kid visibly startles.

“In a sense, yes,” he says reluctantly.

“You’re so lucky. I didn’t get into one of Gadling’s classes until my junior year,” Theo says. “Seriously, he’s one of the best professors on campus.”

“He definitely has the best absence policy on campus,” Rhea adds, jumping on to the ‘calming down a scared freshman’ train. “He trusts you when you say you're too sick to come to class, it's awesome.”

“Here, sit down.” Celia moves her backpack off the chair next to hers. “One of us can loan you a notebook or a pen or something, but he’s probably just going to go over the syllabus and let us leave.”

Wordlessly, the kid slides into the vacated chair, accepts the pen that Celia passes over. She’s trying to tear a couple sheets of paper for him from her spiral notebook when he asks, “What’s that?” in such a sharp, alarmed tone that she checks to make sure she hadn’t somehow accidentally been using a butcher knife as a bookmark.

He’s looking at the faded sheet of paper sticking out of the front pocket of the notebook, where Celia’s handwriting, in glittery purple gel pen, loudly proclaims What the Fuck is Gadling’s Deal, Anyway?

With the slightly smaller subheading, in pink: (Assorted Theories)

And then below that, in blue: (see Theo for the betting pool)

“Oh,” she says. “Uh, nothi-”

“That,” Theo cuts over her, “Is the most important thing you’ll learn in this class.”

“Theo!” she hisses at them, but they’re undeterred.

“This is crucial for us to pass on to future generations,” they tell her, and then add, to the kid, “Gadling’s probably a serial killer.”

“What,” the kid says, his tone icy, his features going stiff like a deer caught in headlights.

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great professor,” Theo says, while Celia frantically gestures at them to please please not, “But he’s definitely killed people.”

“I genuinely don’t know how you think that’s perfectly plausible but I’m crazy for saying he was kidnapped by something eldritch,” Rhea tells them, apparently accepting that the damage is done.

“He was what?” the kid says, looking even more unnerved, but before Celia can explain, Gadling’s started talking, and she has to make do with shoving a notebook over to him with a scrawled promise to explain after class.

Gadling does let them go early, but somehow he still has the time to run through the entire syllabus, give a mini-lecture on the Importance of History, and go off on a personal tangent that starts with “If you’re interested in the subject, I teach a 300-level class on costume history,” and ends up being about how difficult it is to handmake clothes. He also gets in three personal insults directed towards William Shakespeare, which Celia only notices because Rhea is tallying them.

When the class is dismissed and everyone is packing up, Celia turns to the kid, who’s staring starry-eyed at the podium where Gadling is talking to a group of other freshmen.

And yeah, Celia can see how he’d have that effect on people. Were she new to this school and anxious as hell, and the first professor she interacted with was as chill and smiley as Gadling is, she’d also be a bit starry-eyed.

She doesn’t want to ramp up the poor kid’s anxiety again, so when he finally drags his eyes away from Gadling, she starts with, “The list is nothing, really. Gadling’s just- kind of a weird guy. And he’s our advisor for the Shakespeare club,” she nods her head at Rhea and Theo, who are squabbling over where to get lunch, “So we started up a list of explanations for the weirdness at rehearsal one day. That’s all.”

The kid nods at her once, sharply, clearly itching to get out of this conversation, so Celia decides to let him go.

“Anyway,” she says, picking up her backpack, “I’ll see you Wednesday- ?”

The pause hangs in the air a beat too long, and then the kid mumbles, “Murphy,” before taking off out the door.

Chapter Text

On Wednesday, Murphy is already sitting at the back table when Celia gets to the lecture hall. He still doesn't have a notebook, and he's looking from door to door like a soldier on patrol, waiting to be attacked.

“So,” he says, before she’s had a chance to put down her bag, “What are these theories?”

Celia blinks at him- it is too stupid early to be interrogated about anything, let alone a conversation she had with a stranger two days ago- and he adds, “About Professor Gadling’s. Weirdness.”

Murphy says the word ‘weirdness’ like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, and Celia accordingly updates her estimation of him from ‘anxious lost freshman’ to 'pretentious anxious lost freshman’. But she’s dug this hole, she may as well lie in it, and frankly the explanation she gives will probably make her look better than whatever he’s come up with on her own, so she digs the piece of notebook paper out of the desk and slides it over to him.

“’Raised in a cult’ is mine,” she says, after he’s had a chance to read it over.

“You think he was raised in a cult?” Murphy asks, and Celia nods, probably too earnestly. “Why?”

His tone remains casually questioning, but all the same feels like an implacable demand, and the scene conjures itself in her mind, more vividly than any memory she’s had before-

It had started Celia’s freshman year, after they'd badgered Gadling into being their faculty advisor. Having a faculty advisor made them Legitimate Funded Campus Club, for the first time in their history, and they'd decided to use that power to put on Richard III of all things. Apparently it was their director’s favorite play, for some godforsaken reason, and Aiden was graduating that year, and he’d spent his entire university career campaigning for Shakespeare Club Funding, and everyone had decided he deserved it.

This had been a mistake. Nobody on campus cared about Richard III as much as Aiden, except possibly Gadling, who cared about it in the inverse, “Are you actively trying to torture me, I hate Richard III” sort of way. Everyone in the cast was slowly being overwhelmed by the feeling that they’d wasted their funding on a play no one actually wanted to see- like seriously, nobody likes the histories- the second thoughts about play choices were putting a serious damper on rehearsals, and at the same time Aiden was getting a little too invested in directing.

As mercenary as the initial plot to get Gadling as their advisor had been, Celia had been desperately grateful for him over those few weeks. He provided a bright spot in rehearsals whenever he dropped by to make sure they weren't burning down the auditorium, especially when he stuck around for twenty minutes afterwards to talk about how X scene would have been performed in Shakespeare’s day.

Celia was beginning to suspect that he actually agreed to faculty advis-ing in order to have a captive audience to talk about historically accurate Shakespeare with, but she wasn't complaining.

At any rate, it was a very ordinary rehearsal, in that the rehearsal of Act I Scene II ran long, and Celia, Rhea, and Theo, who'd all made the mistake of arriving on time, were stuck sitting and watching the trio onstage stumble through the same passage a third time.

“Next year we’re doing a chemistry read,” Theo says, not looking up from the play they’re reading for class, or possibly for fun. “I don’t care if it’s ‘just one scene,’ I am not sitting through another round of this.”

Onstage, Ivy tells Levi he’s unfit for any place but hell, in the stiff, award tone of someone talking to a relative they don’t have much in common with.

“You’re right,” Celia says, sinking lower in her seat as Levi replies that there is another place he's fit for, sounding actively strangled with guilt at the implication.

Theo's reading their play, Rhea's texting her girlfriend, and Celia’s wishing she'd thought to bring something to do.

“What’s the best Disney movie, according to your eight-year-old self?” she finally asks, partially to Theo and partially to the room at large.

“Don't you dare start this again,” Rhea says, without looking up from her phone.

“Should I ask?” Theo sounds more apprehensive than Celia thinks is really fair.

“Our third roommate still isn't speaking to her,” Rhea says. "It got. Heated. Last time she brought this up."

“Of course it did! She's completely incorrect!” Celia says.

Before she can elaborate, the door behind them creaks open and Gadling says, “Can you let Aiden know I need to talk to him when he gets a chance?”

“What's your favorite Disney movie?” Celia returns, spinning around in her seat.

Rhea groans. Theo assures Gadling they'll pass on the message.

“Thanks,” Gadling says. “And uh. The Rapunzel one?” he adds, with all the conviction of a worm.

“No, like your childhood favorite. The one that will always be special because little five-year-old you watched it until the DVD broke.”

For some reason, Gadling looks more thrown by this question than he was by their plea for him to Faculty Advise, which had involved Ivy demonstrating a variety of Pleading Shakespeare Monologues, set to Star Wars music.

In hindsight, yes, Celia is also surprised it worked.

“I didn’t watch movies as a kid,” Gadling says, avoiding her eyes.

Which. If he was going to lie to her, he could’ve tried a little harder, couldn’t he?

“At least back me up that it’s The Lion King, then?” Celia says, unwilling to let the closest thing to an interesting conversation she’s had for the past two hours go.

“Isn’t that… one of the new ones?” Gadling says. And while Celia wouldn't put it past him to be messing with her as a rule, the look on his face is genuinely lost, like a puppy after you fake throw the ball one too many times.

“Oh god you really didn’t watch movies as a kid,” she says, horrified.

“‘Books’ were a fancy new technology back in my day,” Gadling replies, immediately demonstrating why in any other circumstances she'd have accused him of messing with her.

“What the hell did you do for fun, then?” Celia asks. It's a different conversation than she expected to be having, but it's still interesting, and dear GOD she is bored.

Gadling gives her another look, like the question has thrown him entirely off-balance, but sinks into a seat at the end of the row. “Played with my siblings,” he says, with the sort of warm nostalgia she’s normally associate with someone twice his age, “Or annoyed them, really. I was the youngest of seven and- Absolutely not, guys, what the hell.”

The last statement is directed at the group onstage, who, in the time Celia has been distracted, have acquired several prop swords and have them pointed at each other. Or at least, Celia assumes they're props. “If you want a swordfight in this scene, you’re going to have to find an actual fight choreographer,” Gadling continues, getting up from his seat with a wince and striding toward the stage, “I thought I made that clear.”

The trio onstage look more intimidated by the continued scolding than an outsider might understand. It is nowhere near enough of a scolding to deserve the sheepish expressions on their faces. But at the same time- it’s Gadling. Once-told-a-class-they-could-skip-the-final-if-they-wanted Gadling suddenly talking like a disappointed father.

Almost exactly like a disappointed father, actually.

Theo looks firmly absorbed in their play, so Celia turns to Rhea and quietly asks, “Do you think he’s got secret kids? To go along with the six siblings he just randomly mentioned?” When Rhea doesn’t respond, she nods at the stage and adds, “I mean I’m half expecting him to threaten to turn this car around.”

Rhea doesn’t laugh. “It’s weird,” she says, even quieter than Celia had been speaking, “I’ve never heard him talk about his family before.”

“So?” Celia asks. She'd had a professor the previous semester who opened every class by talking about some argument with his parents or his children in gory detail, and frankly, that one was weirder than anything Gadling has or hasn't said.

“I don’t know, he doesn’t say anything. Like not even about a wife, or-” she shrugs. “I’m probably overreacting. It’s just. Odd.”

Celia, lying, agrees that it is odd. When Gadling returns, he immediately starts talking about some of the horrible injuries he’d witnessed in poorly choreographed fight scenes instead of picking up their previous conversation, but even then she doesn't make much of it. He'd clearly been distracted, after all.

It’s not until months later, when she’s been in a class with Gadling, that she starts to notice. He brings up personal anecdotes fairly often- a story from a friend's wedding, or a holiday with a different friend, or the things he accomplished instead of grading their papers over the long weekend.

She’s never once heard him mention blood relatives.

And there are other things, too. His utter confusion regarding any media created between 1989 and 2001 (even though he’s well-versed in recent popular culture and, for some reason, all of Celia’s grandmother’s favorite movies). His casual, “I don’t know what they’re teaching in schools these days, it’s not like I ever went,” when asked why he pairs most of his lectures with a brief history lesson. (She would’ve dismissed that one as a joke, had she not overheard him tell one of her classmates, “there’s no timeline on this. You literally wouldn’t believe me if I told you how old I was on my first day of formal education.”) The fact that he answers any questions about his religion with a variation on ‘that's not something I have anymore,’ each response equally grim. (And yet, the day he'd aggravated an old knee injury while showing the club around the flies, she'd learned his go-to genuinely-in-pain swear is ‘Christ on the fucking cross’.)

-and a veil lifts, suddenly, and Celia realizes she’s been explaining all this aloud as it played behind her eyes like a movie. Murphy is staring at her intently, as though he'd been watching the movie as well, but Gadling hasn't started class yet, so she can’t have been talking for more than a few minutes. “Anyway,” she says, shaking her head a few times to clear it. “Right around then I watched this documentary about people leaving cults and it just fit, you know?”

Murphy gives her a long, slow, stare, like some sort of big cat evaluating its prey-

-and she’s back there again, watching the documentary on a truly shit-awful date, with absolutely nothing to distract her from the racing thought it fits, though. He’s estranged from his family he clearly didn’t have a normal childhood and then there’s the religion thing- was he as tightly controlled as a child as I think? Is he ok? I mean clearly he’s out now but is he-

-the vision shivers and fades again. Murphy is not looking at her like any sort of predator, except possibly a baby seal, all wide-eyed and vulnerable. “Thank you,” he says, adorably serious, “I think I understand now.”

She definitely needs to get more sleep, she thinks, as Gadling starts the class and Murphy immediately locks his attention to him, hanging on to his every word as though "How did that first reading go, everybody?" is the secret to passing THE 100, if this guy is coming off as intimidating.

Chapter Text

Celia’s a little more braced for Murphy’s questioning the next week. When he slides into the chair next to her, already looking at her expectantly, she yanks on Theo’s elbow until they look up from the history notes they’ve been pouring over. “The next theory is Theo’s,” she tells Murphy, standing up and manhandling Theo into her chair, “So I will let them explain,” she says, and mentally adds because they are a traitor who talked about the Gadling List with non-Shakespeare club members.

The smile she offers Theo is polite.

It is not kind.

Theo does not notice.

“Alright,” they say, turning to Murphy enthusiastically, “this is the most important thing you’ll learn here.” Celia sits down, half-listening, and starts unpacking her bag. Rhea’s not here- Rhea may be skipping class, actually- and Celia fights to keep her disappointment at bay.

“So we did Romeo and Juliet the year after we did Richard, and Gadling directed,” Theo continues. A brief, pleased smile flits across Murphy’s face. Maybe Celia could convince him to join Shakespeare club, that would solve the problem.

“That was when Cee brought up the cult thing to the rest of us. And that was when we started the bet,” Theo continues, in the same tone they use when they’re leading study groups. “Because I’m pretty sure he’s not a former cult member, he’s a former hitman.”

“…Why. Exactly,” Murphy asks, sounding extremely nervous.

Theo does not notice this either. “Well at the start, it was just some of the offhand things he’s said. Like ‘you’d be surprised how quickly someone can bleed out’ and ‘that was after I had my kneecap smashed in, though.’ And you know. Smashed kneecaps, that’s a thing hitmen do.”

A few other examples flit through Celia’s head, ones Theo’s provided before while trying to make their argument. An authoritative If you were actually trying to kill anyone with that you’d aim lower dropped into a conversation on blocking, a grim I’ve seen death. It’s stupid. with so much less context than Celia had wanted for that one. A fight choreographer’s job is to make the scene look realistic without actually killing anyone. I’m not good at that, in a move that decisively ended the ‘do we need a fight choreographer’ argument and raised many more questions than it answered.

She’d been trying to mind her own business- because really, this particular theory was so not her problem- but when she glances up at Murphy he looks distinctly upset, like-

Well. Not to put to fine a point on it, but like he’s just been told his professor goes around stabbing people and having his kneecaps smashed in.

“For two things,” Theo says, still in their groove, and their obliviousness is generally endearing but in this specific situation Celia is desperately wishing they were a bit more in tune with the world, “He definitely knows how to use a gun.”

“A prop gun,” Celia cuts in, figuring she had better do some damage control before they manage to drive poor Murphy into an anxiety attack.

“Fine, yes, a prop gun,” Theo adds. “But I stand by what I said- his stagecraft course has a couple classes on weapons safety, and you can just tell he knows what he’s doing. It’s like- second nature.”

“Because he’s the teacher of the course, maybe?” Celia points out.

“Or because he’s transferring skills from his hitman days! And besides, have you ever seen him shirtless?”

Murphy chokes. Snaps his gaze to the table. Mutters “Have you?” in a carefully flat tone while Celia whacks Theo in the shoulder and mouths, Oh my god he’s a first-year could you be normal for five seconds? He’s not used to being casual around professors. Also that’s a weird thing to say without context.

“He uses the pool during open swim sometimes,” Theo says, giving Celia a pointedly uncomprehending look. “He’s got like. A fuckton of scars.”

“Oh,” Murphy says, in a small voice.

Great. Now you scared him, Celia mouths.

Theo apparently understands this one, because they scowl at her and reply, also without sound, You started it.

“I don’t understand why that makes you think he’s a hitman, though,” Murphy says. He’s looked up, and he's managed to scrape together the cool, sarcastic air he seems to be trying to cultivate, but he still seems- jittery. It's nothing he's specifically doing, or even a facial expression, but he's giving off an aura of nervous jitters nonetheless.

“Well there’s the fact that he once punched a student,” Theo says, dragging the conversation firmly back into ‘scaring the poor freshman’ territory before Celia can figure out how to redirect it.

Murphy no longer looks scared, though. That same intense, almost predatory look Celia had half-glimpsed last time they’d talked descends onto his face, and he says, “He what,” in a tone that knows it will be answered.

“Well it’s. Mostly a rumor,” Theo says, thrown off-balance for the first time this conversation, and there’s a strange pull at the back of Celia’s thoughts, a fishing line caught in her mind, as she flicks through memories like tv channels, trying to find the source of that rumor because she knows she knows it-

Several fuzzy scenes pass through her head:

Gadling, terrifyingly calm in the face of one of his students threatening him.

Gadling asking another professor why the fuck would you say that, words wound through with tightly-controlled rage, a look on his face like the only thing stopping him from slitting the other man’s throat is that it would be a shame to get his hands dirty.

Gadling, in a dingy pub, getting between a man and the bartender, calm and friendly, hey, he’s just doing his job, mate, leave him alone- and then moving, inhumanly fast, when the man lunges for him instead, and suddenly the man is on the floor clutching his nose and Gadling is wincing and shaking out his hand-

She hadn’t witnessed. Any of those things. But she must have heard about them, and now her imagination is filling in the gaps.

At any rate, she can’t think of a single situation that can be accurately described as ‘Gadling punched a student.’

Theo’s still talking, clearly back in their groove- “or maybe it was a professor? He punched somebody. At some point. For sure.”

Apparently Murphy finds their uncertainty calming; when Celia manages to catch his eyes, he looks genuinely amused. She enjoys the moment of teasingly exasperated eye contact before drawling, “That’s extremely convincing, my friend.”

“I hate you,” Theo says, without any heat. “I didn’t try to debunk your theory, Cee, what did I do to deserve this?”

“Tried to scare our poor freshman by telling him that serial killers teach here,” Celia says.

She- maybe shouldn’t have, Murphy looks deeply annoyed by the designation ‘our poor freshman’. It’s quite possible that the only thing stopping him from getting up and storming to another seat is Theo, who half-flings themself across the table with a “Wait I didn’t mean it like that.”

Murphy turns the full force of his Deeply Weird Glare on Theo, who continues, somewhat nervously, “He stuck up for me to another professor, once. He really didn’t have to, I-”

Celia’s heard this story before, in as much detail as Theo had been willing to tell, and once again she can feel a shadowy, half-detailed version play out in her mind:

Gadling, pleasant and polite and searingly angry, saying “This is really the hill you’re going to die on? How does it hurt you if they take the incomplete?”

He looks, in her mind, a bit like an avenging angel, eight feet tall and glowing with holy fire on behalf of stressed and hurt students everywhere. She’s assuming she’s got some wires crossed due to the sheer reverence with which Theo normally tells this story.

“My point is, he’s definitely a former hitman. At first I thought so because of the other stuff, but he's got this presence- he's absolutely terrifying when he's angry. And he used that to save me from failing out when I... really, really needed the help. I’d trust him with my life,” Theo says, their voice gone slightly hoarse.

And just like that, the discordant aura of nerves that had surrounded Murphy like a cloak vanishes. “I see,” he says to Theo, although Celia’s fairly certain the overpowering admiration in his eyes isn’t directed at them. “You make him sound. Heroic.”

“Exactly!” Theo says. They then proceed to prove why, despite several serial-killer related slips of the tongue, they’re generally trusted with first-year orientation, providing Murphy a list of the best places to eat and study spaces on campus, complete with hand-drawn campus map. Murphy looks- confused, by the conversation, but nods along until Gadling starts the class.

Celia darts cautious looks over at Murphy throughout most of the lecture, and she can tell Theo’s doing the same. She thinks- hopes- that whatever’s going on with him is just typical first-year nerves, exacerbated by some ill-timed hitman-related comments, but he seems so unused to- conversation? People being friendly to him?

She’s mostly joking about him being ‘her freshman’, but if she meets anyone who went to school with him before this, she’s going to give them a very serious questioning.

Chapter Text

“What about this one?” Murphy asks, two days later, tapping the bottom of the paper where the word ‘Ghost????????’, is just barely legible under several layers of glitter-pen scribbling. He seems more relaxed today, sinking as comfortably as one possibly can into a plastic desk chair instead of perching there like he expects to need to run at any moment. Even the question is asked with idle curiosity rather than the burning Need to Know he's been harboring the past few classes.

It's a shame, really, that this more relaxed version of Murphy has also decided to stop going through the list in order. And in doing so landed on one of the list items that Celia would really, deeply, vehemently rather not talk about.

When she can form a coherent thought, beyond the rush of utter mortification at having that one brought up again, Celia curses herself for not scribbling it out harder. Or just ripping off the bottom of the page.

“Oh. That one’s stupid,” she finally says, awkwardly. Before Murphy has the chance to do more than dart a skeptical look in her direction- he doesn’t say anything, but she can see the words and ‘hitman’ isn’t? written across his face, she adds, “Look, I’ll tell you. But- you have to understand that this one got added in the middle of finals week, and I hadn’t slept in a week and it turns out the guy who came up with it was running a deadly fever. And just. Don’t judge us.”

Murphy looks at her strangely. “You’ve spent the past two weeks telling me about his supposed criminal past,” he says, nodding subtly at Gadling.

Celia thinks it’s really cruel of Gadling to have worn the world’s coziest-looking yellow jumper today, as though to specifically spite her.

She also thinks it’s cruel of Theo and Rhea to be pretending they’re absorbed in comparing homework answers, so they won’t have to deal with this one.

“Do you want me to tell you the story or not?” she asks, but begins-

It’s tech week for Romeo and Juliet and Celia’s sitting in one of the auditorium seats, trying to keep her eyes open while Gadling goes through some last-minute blocking changes, when Levi slides into a seat next to her, wild-eyed. “I think I figured it out,” he mumbles, staring fixedly at the back of Gadling’s head. Celia glances up at Gadling as well, but nothing about him strikes her as particularly deserving of the stare Levi’s giving him, like he’s a wolf who wandered into the auditorium. He’s a little more subdued than usual, sure, but Celia doesn’t fault him for tech week doing a number on him.

“Figured what out?” she asks, turning her attention back to her laptop. She’s got an essay due tomorrow and an exam the next day, but she desperately wants to go out tonight, and if she writes just one more page she can maybe get away with finishing the essay in the morning-

“The list,” Levi says, barely moving his lips, “I know what Gadling’s deal is.”

It’s both annoying and intriguing. On the one hand, Celia sort of wishes that everyone would just admit she’s right about the cult thing. On the other, Levi does not freak out. Levi approaches all of life’s emergencies, from finals week to that time Aiden fell offstage and broke his arm, with an even-keeled ease of which Celia is intensely jealous. Nothing about his current behavior is normal.

“Alright,” Celia says, digging into her bag for the notebook. “What are we adding, and how much money do you want to put on it?”

“Not here,” Levi hisses. His attention’s still locked on their professor, who’s very ominously and threateningly telling Theo to slow down and breathe, they can run the scene again from the top.

Intriguing. Definitely intriguing.

Celia grabs Levi by the elbow and tugs him out into the hall, hoping they can get whatever this is done before she needs to be onstage. The lighting out there is dim- no one bothers to turn all the lights up in this section of the building unless a show is actually taking place- and the air smells musty and stale, in a way that’s probably explained by the age of the building but Celia still finds out of place.

“Alright,” she says, turning to him, hands on her hips. “What’s your entry?”

“He’s a ghost,” Levi says.

Celia laughs. Levi doesn’t. It still takes her a moment to realize he’s serious.

“Levi, honey-” she says, fully prepared to give him the I know it’s almost finals but are you getting enough sleep speech.

“No, just- listen,” Levi says, scrambling to pull out his phone. “I found this on a ‘Most Convincing Paranormal Footage’ list and-”

He shoves the phone at her. She presses play on what turns out to be a grainy video of the inside of a pub. There’s an inch of dust on the bar, the ceiling in the corner is starting to cave in: clearly no one’s been in the building for a long time. And yet, it looks recently-abandoned. The table still have chairs pulled up to them, there are full bottles of liquor still on the shelves behind the bar. The camera pans around slowly, whoever’s holding it whispering “This was one of the oldest pubs in London, until it shut down in the late nineties. Today it sits abandoned-”

The cameraman stops talking abruptly.

Celia slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

There’s a man sitting at one of the corner tables, head in his hands, one final patron who didn’t get the memo and sat there as the place closed around him. A half-empty bottle sits on the table in front of him.

He must hear- or sense? The other person in the room, because he slowly turns his face to the camera.

“I’m sorry,” he says, blearily, the vowels running together until it barely sounds like English, “I’m waiting for a friend.”

“What the shit-” the cameraman says. The camera jostles a bit, but not enough to lose focus.

The man is gone. Just- gone, vanished, like he hadn’t been there in the first place.

Celia barely sees the rest of the video, the cameraman picking his way across the room to the table, still covered in dust, picking up the abandoned bottle, also clearly untouched since the bar closed.

That. Was definitely Gadling in the video.

“The pub he’s talking about?” Levi says, quietly. “It’s nearby. Like a block over from the New Inn, where all the grad students go.”

“So isn’t that a reason to think it’s just- mundane? He was in on making the video?” Celia says, trying to convince herself.

“This was posted a decade ago,” Levi says, pulling up the video description so she can see the exact date: June 17^th, 2009. “And- and please don’t say the thing I think you’re going to say- Aiden dragged me out there a few weeks ago. To the New Inn, not an abandoned pub,” he adds.

“Aiden took you on a date and you didn’t tell me?” Celia- squeals, she’ll admit, she can hear her own voice and she is definitely squealing. “Forget ghosts, tell me everything immediately.”

“I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing to say and I knew you’d make out like there was. We caught up for a bit. It wasn’t a date.” Clearly seeing from Celia’s expression that she is not about to accept that for an answer, he quickly adds, “My point is, Gadling was there. And it was the- the same thing.”

“He drank half a bottle of whiskey and passed out on the table?” Celia asks. She will acknowledge how quickly she was distracted from Levi’s definitely-a-date, but in her defense, that was an alarming statement.

“No, he- he got a table with two chairs, and if someone tried to take the other he told them he was waiting for a friend. Same sentence. Same cadence. Every time.”

His voice trails off, in fitting ghost story fashion.

The light above them flickers.

Celia’s chilled, even though the heat in the building is running full-blast despite it being late May and far too warm for the season, but she still says, “So maybe he got stood up?”

“Seriously, Cee, I think he’s trapped. Like in a loop, he died while waiting for this friend and he’s stuck here now and he can’t move on and he can bend the loop but not break it, or something, I don’t know. And like. Maybe that comment last year about bleeding out was from personal experience? The way he said it-”

In the cold light of the next morning when Celia’s had some actual sleep, she’ll look back at the list and wonder why, exactly, she’d frantically scribbled down Ghost???? before hustling Levi back into the rehearsal.

At the moment, it had seemed like the best way to calm him down, and besides, between his uncharacteristic agitation and the way the light was still flickering, she wasn’t about to take any chances.

“That’s all?” Murphy asks. Celia can’t tell if he sounds relieved, or disappointed.

 “Well, no,” Celia admits. “I only ever heard the rest of it secondhand, from Levi, but-”

-but now, it plays out before her eyes-

The rehearsal had passed slowly. Despite Celia’s best efforts, Levi hadn’t given up any information about his definitely just a meeting with a friend, who took some time out of his busy grad student schedule to see him, that means absolutely nothing lay off, choosing instead to watch Gadling for any signs of ghostliness. Now that he’s realized it, they’re easy to spot: Gadling’s quiet and withdrawn, setting himself apart from the rest of the room, a mournful air hanging over him like a shroud.

The part of Levi that does not want to believe in ghosts, actually, notes that this isn’t typical behavior for Gadling, but the rest of him points out that while yes, Gadling’s normally more cheerful than this, he’s always had an air of loneliness about him.

When rehearsal finishes, Levi collects his belongings as slowly as possible, waiting to see if Gadling will leave the room, or vanish entirely- has he ever seen Gadling leave a room before? But even though he turns each page of his script individually before putting it into his backpack, Gadling still shows no sign of leaving when he finally runs out of things to put away. In fact, he’s hoisted himself up onto the stage, and is sitting on the edge staring out into the middle distance.

“Do you need help getting the lights?” Levi asks, more hesitant than he normally would be with Gadling. It’s not even the ghost thing, it’s the look on his face, entirely dead-eyed-

“Oh no, it’s alright,” Gadling says, distractedly. “I’m. I’m waiting for someone.”

And maybe it’s the way he’s said it, like it’s a line from a script he’s recited a thousand times before, to the point that the words have stopped having a meaning. Maybe it’s the foggy look in his eyes as he stares out over the auditorium seats.

Maybe Levi, running on an hour of sleep and no small amount of terror, would have said something anyway.

But for whatever reason, Levi blurts out, “Do you need to move on?”

The blankness vanishes from Gadling’s face like it had never been there. “Move on from- what, exactly?” he asks, wryly.

“I know,” Levi says, “That you’re stuck here.”

“I’m waiting for Marie to get here so she can take a look at that trapdoor before we open,” Gadling says. There’s a note of- something, in his voice, just barely there. It sounds like a warning. “I’m only ‘stuck’ until her review session gets out.”

Levi’s brain sticks for a second on ‘Marie’, skips ahead enough to remember that’s the first name of one of the other theater professors, and then stalls again. There’s something- something about the wary way Gadling’s watching him- that lets him know he’s hit on something important. “No,” he manages, forcing his stalled thoughts into something resembling coherent sentences, “after that. I know. There’s someone else you’re waiting for.”

“What.” In the span of a second, Gadling’s shoulders tense, and his eyes fog over again, something stormy appearing in brief blinks behind the clouds. Theo’s admiring voice saying, Gadling’s super scary when he’s angry flashes through Levi’s head, but he can’t stop the words that are tumbling out of his mouth at this point.

“And I know you died.”

“What,” Gadling says again, now with an undercurrent of fear.

“And now you’re stuck here, so if there’s something I can do to help you-”

“Wait, wait, wait. Levi. Hang on. What makes you think I died?” Gadling asks. And whatever tension-anger-fear had been in his voice is gone, now, so surely Levi wonders if he’d imagined it. He sounds like he’s asking Levi to explain his interpretation of Romeo’s mindset in Act IV.

“Well, you’re a ghost,” Levi replies. Best to get that out in the open.

There’s a long silence, then Gadling lets out an equally long breath. Which, Levi supposes, he wouldn’t be able to do if he were a ghost, unless he’s making noises that he remembers making in life. “Can you sit down?” Gadling’s voice says, very gently, “And maybe. Text a roommate, or something?”

“I don’t have a roommate,” Levi says, feeling a bit like he’s lost control of this conversation.

“A friend, then?”

And then the room spins, and Gadling says, “Fuck.”

And Levi wakes up twelve hours later in the hospital, and is informed that he’d been severely dehydrated, and also that he had walking pneumonia.

He had not been in Romeo that year, which was insult to injury on top of the seething embarrassment he’d been feeling ever since his fever went down. In the harsh light of day, the video is definitely fake, and the man in it doesn’t look that much like Gadling. An older, thinner, more exhausted version of him, maybe, and even then sometimes people look like other people, and that’s a more reasonable explanation than ‘ghosts.’

“So. Yeah. Fever ate his brain, he convinced himself our professor was a ghost, I’ll be ashamed I didn’t notice what was wrong until my dying day,” Celia says, pasting on a flippant tone in the hopes that Murphy won’t notice how genuine that shame is- she’d eaten herself alive with guilt for weeks afterwards for not noticing that Levi suddenly believing in ghosts might be a sign of deeper issues. “The one good thing that came out of it was that Aiden panicked when he heard Levi was in the hospital, and actually told him he liked him. With words. They’ve been together for a year and a half now.”

“So you think it was just… the fever talking?” Murphy says thoughtfully, pausing before the last few words like he’s not used to colloquialisms, even old-fashioned ones.

“Don’t you go getting your brain eaten by fever-ghosts.” Celia elbows him. Murphy looks startled, then gingerly elbows her back. He has the boniest fucking elbows of anyone she’s ever met. “But yeah, I do. I mean the thing he said, about Gadling seeming lonely sometimes- that’s true, but like. That’s the only part of the whole thing that was true. And being lonely does not necessarily make you a ghost.”

“You think he’s lonely…” Murphy’s voice trails off into a whisper. He turns his attention to Gadling, looking- devastated. As though Celia had just told him a close friend of his was dead and it was his fault.

“Murphy,” she says, gently. Murphy scowls at her. There are tears brimming on his waterline, which absolutely ruins the effect. “It’s nothing, really,” she says. “He gets- quiet, at the end of May, right around when classes end. I always assumed it was- a shitty anniversary, or something.”

Murphy nods, seriously. He’s still got a look on his face, like the fact that Gadling has experienced shitty things to have anniversaries of is the world’s greatest injustice, and also entirely his fault.

“I probably wouldn’t notice if he weren’t like this, normally,” Celia says, nodding at Gadling, who’s practically bouncing in place while talking with a student at the front of the room.

“Or not like this,” she adds to Murphy a few minutes later, after Gadling’s started class with even more verve than usual, beamed his way through a review of their readings, and opened the lesson proper with the phrase, We’re going to be talking about twelfth-century theater today, isn’t life wonderful?

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy,” she adds. “But you get my point.”

Oddly, Murphy does, or seems to, anyway. He gives her a reassured nod and turns his attention back to the projector screen- like most freshmen, his eyes are more or less magnetized there while Gadling’s speaking.

Gadling turns his blinding smile on their row midway through class, and miracle of miracles, Murphy smiles in return- an actual grin, not the shy half-smiles she’s managed to coax out of him.

She’s so glad to see him happy- alright, fine, maybe she has decided to adopt this kid a little- she doesn’t have the heart to warn him against crushing on his professor.

Chapter Text

Of course, after the ghost thing, Murphy vanishes. Celia can’t tell if he’s decided he’s better off not sitting with them, or he’s dropped the class entirely. She thinks she’s caught sight of him around the fine arts building, but it’s not like scrawny, gangly goths are in short supply on university campuses.

The lingering fear he’s going to tell someone about The List would probably have driven Celia up a wall, were it not for the distraction Ivy helpfully provides the week of Murphy’s disappearance.

“Can I change my answer?” she asks, sliding into a desk at the semester’s first official Shakespeare Club meeting.

“Absolutely not we already decided we’re doing Much Ado,” Celia says, without looking up from her calendar.

“No, my What the Fuck is Gadling’s Deal answer,” Ivy says, and everything in the room grinds to a halt. The groups that had been talking quietly all turn to look at her. Rhea, who’d been handling the all-important business of setting up the Cast Group Chat, drops her phone.

No one tries to change their answer. The whole point of the list is doggedly sticking by your theory and arguing for it at every given opportunity.

“Why?” Rhea asks, as horrified as if Ivy had admitted to selling a kidney for fun.

“I have encountered new evidence,” Ivy says, like she’s the detective on a shitty daytime TV show.

She is immediately flooded with questions, Rhea insistent, Theo shouting, several younger members asking if they finally get to add things to the list now. Celia glances down at her calendar again, and despairs of being able to get a schedule straightened out in the span of this meeting.

Ivy holds up a hand for quiet, and the room falls silent, aside from the sound of ten people breathing and Celia drumming her fingers on the table.

“I picked up an extra shift at the coffeeshop the other day,” Ivy says, into the hush, “And he came in with a man.”

There is an audible ripple of disappointment through the room.

“Scandalous,” Celia says. “I’m sure this is out of the ordinary for him.”

“Oh, no, before this day he has never been allowed in the company of men,” Theo says, in tones of exaggerated shock.

“Would you two shut up I’m trying to agree with you,” Ivy says, and that’s actually compelling enough to draw Celia’s attention from her poor half-finished schedule. “Or maybe Rhea, I’m not sure.”

She has the room’s attention back, and going by the smug smile on her face, she knows it. “So I’ve never seen this guy before,” Ivy says, standing and shrugging out of her jacket. “He’s taller than Gadling, looks like somebody brought a marble statue to life. Acts like somebody brought a marble statue to life. But the statue of a king, or a god, or something. They got coffee and just. Stayed there talking. For my whole shift.”

Ivy rolls back her sleeves as she speaks, pacing to the front of the room, where she climbs up on the long table that is theoretically there for professors to use. “Friends, castmates, countrymen,” she says, with all the dignity typically applied to the proper version of that quote, “Lend me your ears. At first, I thought the noble Celia-” she waves her arm dramatically in Celia’s general direction- “Might be correct, because they spoke of how long it had been since they’d seen each other, as though this man had also escaped imprisonment. And then I surmised that Theo-” another dramatic wave of her arm- “might be correct, for they spoke of a bargain they’d made in the past, of terms which have finally come to an end.

“And then,” she adds, dropping the air of importance, “they noticed me cleaning the same table for the fifth time in ten minutes and the guy glared at me, which was extremely scary, so I stopped listening.”

She shrugs, and hops off the table. “Put me down as agreeing with Rhea. It covers everything. And explains why Gadling spent the next three hours giving the guy a lecture on twentieth-century history, from what I could tell.”

So Celia strikes a neat line through “Conman”- it deserves more dignity in its death than “Ghost????????”- and adds a little checkmark next to “The human equivalent of a failed service dog,” and thankfully, everyone lets her get around to scheduling after that.

The next month and change passes without incident. The Gadling’s Deal List is almost entirely forgotten in favor of the new and improved “Is Tall, Dark, and Handsome Gadling’s Boyfriend, or Just a Close Friend?” betting pool, with additional options including “not his boyfriend but he wants to be,” “not his boyfriend but Gadling wants him to be,” “they both want each other and are being stupid about it,” and “whatever’s going on between them defies our petty human understanding of relationships.”

Only a few members of the club have actually seen The Boyfriend, confirming Ivy’s marble statue description and adding important details such as “his wardrobe must cost more than my tuition and he spent half that money on black dye.”

Ivy’s the one who has information, though. Apparently Gadling and The Boyfriend have a standing date at the coffeeshop she works at- and god only knows why, if The Boyfriend is as wealthy as everyone who’s seen him seems to think he is. In the minutes of rehearsal when Gadling’s absent or distracted, and sometimes when he’s less distracted than is wise, she’ll pass along the news that The Boyfriend grabbed Gadling’s coffee for him when his knee was visibly bothering him, or that Gadling alternately refers to The Boyfriend as ‘dream’ or ‘duck’ or ‘sweetheart’ (the last leaving him so flustered he’d spilled half a cup of scalding coffee on himself and not even reacted), or that the two of them had spent so long saying their goodbyes that Ivy actively had to kick them out. And then they’d spent at least another fifteen minutes talking outside the building, because they were still there when she finished cleaning.

When Ivy arrives at rehearsal and doesn’t provide an update, choosing instead to sink into a chair and give the floor at her feet a thousand-yard stare, Celia doesn’t recognize this as the herald of the End Times she clearly should. She doesn’t even think to ask, “Everything good?” until midway through, when Ivy’s still staring at the tile as though it contains the mysteries of the universe.

Celia’s not even sure she was called for today, actually.

“You know I was mostly kidding,” Ivy says, conversationally, “When I said I was changing my bet. But Rhea’s right. He’s Like That because he got kidnapped by The Fae,” she finishes, looking up from the tile to stare dead into Celia’s soul with a seriousness that should be reserved for situations of mortal peril.

Celia swallows her first response (You know I don’t think even Rhea believes her answer so you probably shouldn’t either), and her second (the next time one of you has a breakdown and decides to believe in the supernatural could you please not come to me about it), and manages to ask, “Why?” in a tone that’s barely even strained.

“They were doing their ‘no you hang up’ thing as I was closing,” Ivy says, with less annoyance than she normally refers to that routine, “And The Boyfriend- he asked Gadling to run away with him. To his Realm.”

“Well that’s… weird,” Celia says, and does not voice her private thought that that could just as easily be a cult thing. It would be petty, even if she’d like someone to reassure her that her poor professor isn’t currently being seduced back into a cult.

“Yeah,” Ivy says, thoughtfully. “His eyes were all glowy, I think he meant it. And then Gadling said, ‘maybe when the semester’s over, dove,’ and kissed him, so. There’s that news too.”

“Holy shit???” Celia says, and scrambles for her notebook to figure out who won the bet.

The next day, Murphy slides into the seat next to Celia at the beginning of THE 100, holding himself with all the cautious poise he’d had the day they met. “I'd like to see the list again,” he says tightly.

Celia passes it over without comment. The sudden return of Stressed Murphy makes his month-long disappearance all the more worrying, and she watches him closely as he scans The List, looking for any sign that he’d been- kidnapped or tortured or dragged to hell or something.

Murphy, who’d been staring at The List like he wanted to torture it for information, finally taps on the crossed-out 'Conman.' “What’s this one’s story,” he says, flat enough that it barely sounds like a question.

Celia has the distinct sense that if she could take a single step outside of her brain, she’d be able to see exactly what’s wrong here, why Murphy’s so upset and what it has to do with a mostly-joking bet about Gadling, but as it stands she’s left staring at a pile of dots that would definitely connect if she could just figure out how to see the picture from this angle.

The only blessing here is that Murphy picked an easy one this time, so she can always keep an eye on him as she explains, and hopefully come up with a better plan in the process.

“You’ll start to notice if you take a couple classes with him,” she says cautiously, “But the little stories Gadling tells about his life just- don’t add up? He’s like- in his forties, we think, and he’d have to be at least two decades older to have done everything he’s said he has.”

There’s a shift in the air. Nothing’s changed in the room, no one’s moved in a threatening way, but Celia suddenly feels like she’s huddling next to a slowly dying campfire, watched by something in the shadows that’s going to make its move as soon as the light gets dim enough.

“Like, he’s got his degree,” she says, slowly. The air feels thick and dead, the sound of her words not carrying as far as it should. “But he’s also talked about working in publishing, and flying planes, and he was definitely in the military, and it just. Doesn’t add up. So Ivy suggested-”

The overpowering feeling of dread spikes. But Celia’s adrenaline spikes with it, enough to slam her brain back online, and she realizes how tightly Murphy’s coiled in on himself, tense to the point that it must be physically painful.

And she suddenly recognizes what she’s feeling: that anxiety-by-proxy she normally gets when it’s finals or tech week and everybody’s feeding on everybody else’s fear and stress and tension in an unending ouroboros of dread. She’s never been this badly affected by just one person before, though, which says worrying things about the level of anxiety that Murphy is currently experiencing.

This poor kid. Worked up about… something, something obviously terrible, and coming to her for dumb stories about his professor as a distraction.

When she figures out what’s doing this to him, she’s going to punch it, but for the time being, she makes her tone purposefully light, and continues, “Ivy suggested he’s just lying.”

It works. A minute amount of tension immediately leaves Murphy’s shoulders, and when he asks, “Lying about his past?” his tone is much less dire.

“No,” Celia says, and the giggle she has to stifle isn’t even fake, because this may be her second-favorite theory but it still sounds deeply silly spoken aloud, “Not the thing that would make sense. She thinks he’s lying about his credentials. Like he’s had all these jobs because he ran away as a teenager and has been faking expertise to do an interesting job for a couple months before he bounces. She’s pretty sure he’s younger than he looks and he’s just-”

She stops trying to explain, there, because Murphy’s started laughing. It sounds like a horse made of chainsaws being brutally murdered. Theo jumps out of their chair, and Rhea reaches for the emergency defibrillator at the back of the room, before they both recognize the source of and reason for the sound.

“Yeah, she said she was giving up on this one the other day,” Celia hurries to explain, before Murphy can be embarrassed by the noise he just made, “Which is great, because this is the one Gadling knows about.”

Murphy freezes. “What?”

-and Celia’s thrown back into that day, the argument that had started before rehearsal, after Ivy pulled together a list of every single career or life event that Gadling had ever mentioned, drawing on any member of Shakespeare club willing to contribute. Some of them had been trying to make the list add up naturally, most had been allowing for concessions like “he’s exaggerating” or “he got caught in a time loop,” and a few of them had been refusing to get involved.

“No, guys, guys, I’ve got it,” Celia says, reaching out and grabbing the paper from Ivy. “If he was in the Navy that explains the boat stuff and the stint with the military. ‘Bouncer’ and ‘journalist’ could’ve been while he was in school,” she continues, suppressing a smile as the group goes quiet around her. “Assume he was only with the startup for a couple months, and frankly ‘publishing’ was probably while he was teaching-”

“It was before, actually,” a mild voice behind her says, and Celia freezes, utterly sick with dread, having fallen into an inescapable nightmare. “And you’re missing ‘blacksmith’,” Gadling adds.

Before she can fumble out the words for an apology, or even an explanation, Gadling ambles away. He doesn’t even start rehearsal immediately, instead pulling aside one of the students who’d been avoiding the speculation for a quiet conversation, giving Celia ample time to stew in her misery.

He never brings it up again, except to answer Ivy, who has the sheer guts to press him for details.

He spent four years as a blacksmith, apparently.

Celia trails off.

Murphy looks- entirely horrified, but less anxious than he had before, so Celia’s counting it as a win. “Yeah,” she says, “So that was awful. If he didn’t find it funny I think I would’ve dropped out,” she adds.

It’s not a terribly good joke, but it makes Murphy look substantially less horrified, so you know what? Two wins.

Chapter Text

Murphy doesn’t sit with them every class, after that, but he doesn’t disappear again, even if he doesn’t agree to Celia’s suggestion that he join Shakespeare club, either. Or to any of her offers to meet outside of class to study.

And honestly she doesn’t know if she’d ever seen him take notes. Taking notes might require him to stop looking at Gadling for a fraction of a second.

The thing is- Well, the thing is, Murphy definitely has a crush on Gadling. He’s mostly given up on asking her about the list- all the items left on it are the more jokey ones, anyway- ‘vampire’ and ‘minor god’ and ‘theatre people are just Like That, guys, give it a rest’. But she does think, in hindsight, that was half the reason he’d been bugging her about it in the first place.

And it’s not to say that crushing on Gadling is unusual; roughly half the theater department and a quarter of the history department has fallen head over heels for the man at some point. But Celia glances over at him during Gadling’s lecture on Marlowe’s Faustus, staring down at their professor as though the question, “What do you all remember about the first conversation between Faust and Mephistopheles?” is the most romantic thing he’s ever heard, and thinks, oh, you've got it bad.

The four of them are leaving class together, because if Celia can’t convince this poor boy to socialize she will at least make him walk with her, even if he’s probably going to split off from them at the first possible hallway. “What did he say right at the end of class, there?”  Theo asks. They’re finishing up their notes as they walk, notebook braced on one arm. “Everybody got too loud, I missed it.” They’re met with resounding shrugs. “Am I the only one who pays attention in this class?” they ask, with a sigh.

“Yes,” Rhea says, “Cee and I have checked out for the semester and Murphy's too busy planning his wedding to Professor Gadling to concentrate. You're on your own.”

And Celia would scold her for that particular low blow- how dare she pick on their adoptive freshman-

But when she glances over at Murphy, there's a daydreamy little smile on his face, and if he wasn't working on wedding plans before he certainly is now.

She should probably tell him Gadling’s taken. As a courtesy. To head him off before he gets to truly embarrassing ‘crush on a professor’ heights. If nothing else because this kid bristles at anything resembling a comment on himself, down to the time Celia mentioned he looked well-rested, so he really should’ve reacted more strongly to Rhea’s much more barbed teasing.

And besides, he’s her adoptive freshman.

“Rhea,” she says, and she can tell she sounds less subtle than she wants to but fuck it, she’s committed now, “Did you ever tell Murphy about your theory?”

Rhea looks startled. “You hate my theory.”

“I don’t hate your theory, I just wish that you all would admit that I’m right. Yours is the last semi-decent one we haven’t told him,” Celia says, raising her eyebrows.

And Rhea, who is wonderful and beautiful and perfect in every regard, gets it.

“Cool,” she says, “Murphy, you have a minute?”

Murphy considers the question with dignity, then says, “I believe I do.”

Rhea leads him over to one of the benches set up by the doors to the quad.  Theo keeps walking; they need to get lunch exactly now or they won’t have time to eat until after their three afternoon classes. Celia should probably follow them, but she sits down on the bench instead, on Murphy’s opposite side from Rhea. She trusts Rhea to tell this story, but Rhea’s a great storyteller, so it would be nice to listen. And then maybe they can catch up with Theo, and that way she’ll make sure she and Rhea have lunch together -

“It started when I lost my keychain,” Rhea says, giving the small, battered plastic dog hanging off of one of the zipper pulls on her backpack a little pat.

Rhea’s a spectacular storyteller, is the thing, and Celia’s immediately drawn into her words-

Rhea had been in Gadling’s stagecraft class when she’d noticed Keys was missing from her backpack, and now she’s pacing back and forth between the rows of desks, berating herself. She’d gotten Keys back when Keys seemed like a perfectly good name for a keychain dog, how could she have lost him now?

“When did you last see it?” Gadling, who’d stayed after class to help her look, asks.

“I thought he was on my bag when I sat down,” she says, sweeping the back row a second time, “But I’m not sure. And I took the bus to campus today-” to her horror, her voice cracks.

“He’ll turn up,” Gadling says, with a confidence that is absurd given that Keys is probably lost forever on a bus somewhere. “You’ve checked the floors?”

They check the floors again. The seats of all the desks. The shelves at the back of the lecturer’s podium. Rhea turns out the pockets of her jacket, just in case.

Keys does not appear.

They go over the floor a third time. Gadling moves all his papers and his coat outside the door. They go over the desks again.

Rhea can feel herself starting to panic, tears welling up in her eyes, and she tamps it down furiously. She will not let her professor see her crying over a keychain, even a keychain that she’s had for thirteen years, that survived moves between backpacks and houses and terrible friendship breakups and terrible breakup breakups and family members deciding they couldn’t love her if she was herself-

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Gadling says. He’d left the room to pull on his coat while Rhea was getting her shit together, and now he sticks his head in the door to check in. It’s comforting- strangely comforting, another absurdity of the day- how easily Gadling took to calling a plastic keychain a ‘him.’ “And Professor Simmons has a class here later today, I’ll ask if her students turn anything up.”

It's a better chance of finding Keys again than she might otherwise have, and Rhea’s going to have to accept that. She walks over to the door, turning one last time to glance over the room-

And there’s Keys, sitting in the direct center of her desk.

She runs back immediately, half-afraid he’ll disappear if she takes too long, and scoops him up. Looks him over- there are no new scuffs in his plastic, and he actually looks a bit cleaner than he’d been when she’d lost him, as though someone has been over him with a wet wipe.

There’s no possible way he could’ve been sitting in the middle of her desk without her noticing. There’s nothing he could’ve been stuck under or dropped from- she scans the space just to be sure, clutching Keys carefully in both hands the whole time.

“Did you-” she asks Gadling, who’s standing in the doorway, a smile on his face strangely reminiscent of a proud father. But no, he couldn’t have found Keys and placed him there, he’d walked out before her. “Did someone else-” No, there are no other doors in the room. And she’d have noticed if a whole other person had walked into the room, she hadn’t been that distracted. “How did we miss- How?” Gadling shrugs, entirely unperturbed by the Mysteriously Appearing Keys. “Wait, did you put him there?” she asks. “Are you a magician or something?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Gadling says.

“Then why are you-” she’s aware of how panicky she sounds, distantly, but she’s decided she no longer cares. “He wasn’t there when we left, was he?”

“Oh,” Gadling says, in the tones of someone who’s just figured out they’re having a conversation about ‘murder’ as in a crime, not a group of crows, “No. He wasn’t.”

Rhea gapes at him, wondering, not for the first time, what goes on in this man’s head. “My keychain mysteriously appeared on my desk when we turned our backs. You agree that’s what happened.”

“Yes,” Gadling says, sounding equally bemused.

“Then how are you so calm about this??”

“Well, sometimes that sort of thing happens, doesn’t it?” Gadling says. It wouldn’t be an answer, except for how sincere it sounds. He genuinely believes what he's saying, and Rhea finds she can trust him even if she doesn't quite believe his answer.

“So that was nothing, on its own,” Rhea says. She’s coping with the intensity of Murphy’s undivided attention better than Theo or Celia had- in fact, she seems to be thriving on it, throwing herself wholeheartedly into explaining the story, complete with gestures and a half-decent impression of Gadling's voice. “But then-”

The problem with working at a place near your university, Rhea reflects, is that sometimes you end up waiting tables at your professor's birthday party.

It's hideously awkward. Half the guests are professors Rhea knows, or at least vaguely recognizes. They're all drunk and enjoying themselves and trying to pretend like they aren't whenever she gets close to the table. Not to mention the fact that no one can figure out which birthday Gadling’s supposed to be celebrating. The argument grows genuinely heated at one point, and Gadling is no help, insisting that the correct answer is six hundred sixty-three.

It also means she's clearing dessert off the table when Professor Rubin goes to their car and comes back with a large package, which they put in front of Gadling, who's embarrassedly telling them they shouldn't have, really.

Rhea starts stacking plates slower, hoping for an excuse to hang around long enough to see what's under the colorful wrapping paper.

Gadling finally acquiesces, tearing a strip of paper off the box, and goes suddenly quiet, staring at whatever’s under the paper like it's a key to the Library of Alexandria. “Oh,” he says, quietly, “Thank you.”

He's tearing up a little, Rhea’s pretty sure. She scoots around the table to see what the fuck a man who’s unphased by magically appearing lost belongings thinks is a miracle.

It's a portable space heater. It looks like a fancy one, to be fair, but it is, simply, a portable space heater.

Gadling’s looking at it like he's been given a wish-granting genie and also the Mona Lisa.

“This is- thank you,” he repeats. The rest of the table is smiling smugly at each other over his head, clearly proud of their gift-giving abilities. Rhea gets called away at that point, which is probably a good thing, otherwise she doesn’t know if she could stop herself from asking what the fuck’s so exciting about a space heater.

Someone must have, though, because when she returns to the table with the check, Gadling’s talking to a woman Rhea doesn’t recognize, extolling the virtues of portable space heaters, how utterly miraculous it is that you turn one on and then you’re warm.

Rhea assumes he’s only this excited about a space heater because he’s drunk, even if he isn’t especially so, no more than the rest of the table.

It takes exactly a week for that explanation to be put to rest. She, and about half of her class, are trailing Gadling to his office after class so he can give back the essays he’d forgotten to bring to the lecture hall. She’s at the back of the group, but still close enough to hear him say, in a tone that would be reverent if it weren’t so excited, “The department got me a space heater for my birthday this year, let me just plug it in…”

“Clearly,” Rhea concludes, “This man has a very skewed idea of the ordinary. So when Cee and Theo started up their whole bet I pointed out to them that they should add ‘kidnapped by the The Fae.’”

“I didn’t see that on there,” Murphy says, although it’s more a question than almost anything else Celia’s heard him say.

“I think I phrased it as ‘a failed service dog, but for fae creatures,’ or something,” Rhea says. “After all, he thinks magic things are normal and normal things are magic, it just makes sense,” she finishes, in an overly sincere tone.

“That has nothing to do with service dogs,” Murphy says flatly.

“Well, technically,” Rhea says, “My theory is that he was kidnapped by the Fae to be a chosen one in their Fae battles. That’s why he knows how to use a sword-”

“He does, ask anyone in fencing club,” Celia cuts in.

“And why he’s great at making inspiring speeches,” Rhea continues, picking up the thread of the story perfectly. “And why he has all this weird knowledge of flower meanings and field surgery and mythology and old languages. And his accent.”

“He’s got this very slight accent,” Celia says, because that last statement should probably be clarified. “It’s much more noticeable when you’ve seen him mid-tech week.”

“And sure, that could just be an American accent,” Rhea says, back to her wide-eyed false sincerity, “Or any of the other, many countries that exist on this planet. But it’s hard to place, and that makes me think it’s an accent from some strange otherland. He picked it up when The Fae brought him there to fight their battles, and he was there for so many years that he didn’t grow up with normal, modern technology. But then The Fae decided they didn’t want him anymore, and released him back here, only he still has all the skills and knowledge he got in the otherworld. Like a dog that knows how to open cabinets.”

“You’re comparing your professor to a dog?” Murphy asks, with distaste.

“We’re also dogs in this metaphor, it’s fine. He’s the dog that was smart enough to be picked to go on a quest.”

“But you don’t think he succeeded?” Murphy’s all bristly again, genuinely annoyed at the idea that Rhea thinks their professor wouldn’t succeed in this theoretical quest.

Rhea is unphased. “If he had, wouldn’t he have gotten dragged back to where he started? Instead of being let loose on the world to do whatever he wanted? That’s how those stories normally end.”

“And,” Celia continues, “Apparently he’s got a weird eldritch boyfriend, or something. So you may be right.”

She aims the statement at Rhea, planning to taunt her with the idea of her joke suggestion being accurate and give Murphy some time to process the ‘boyfriend’ part, but Murphy looks-

Pleased.

Not just pleased, satisfied, like Gadling having a boyfriend is the greatest triumph of his life.

She can’t think of an explanation- unless he’s just that happy to have proof that Gadling likes men, which if that’s the case oh. Honey.

Before Celia can begin to think about how to react to that, Murphy stands, smoothing out his hoodie, says, “Excuse me. I’m late for a meeting,” and walks away.

She isn’t planning on following, but Rhea catches her by the arm anyway. “Let him go,” she says, “Give him a second to process. Let’s get lunch.”

Chapter Text

A few conspicuously Murphy-less weeks later, Celia drops by Gadling’s office hours to talk over Shakespeare club budget. She’s a little late for office hours, actually, but he’s been known to stay late when students need him, so she’s hoping she can get away with it.

She feels even better about her chances when she hears two voices in Gadling’s office.

One of those voices, she realizes as she reaches the half-open office door, is definitely Murphy’s. They seem to be talking about Faustus, even though their class finished that section months ago- which, shit, means it’s going to be on the exam next week, doesn’t it.

Not sure if she’s saving Murphy from the undivided attention of his hopeless crush, saving Gadling from the undivided attention of a student with a crush on him, or saving herself from being unprepared for that dumb exam, Celia sticks her head around the door.

Gadling has his coat on and his bag packed, even though his office hours only ended a few minutes ago. He and Murphy are standing a few feet from the door, Gadling very much in Murphy’s space, head titled just slightly up to look Murphy in the eyes. Murphy’s staring down at him in awe, like a man watching the first-ever sunrise, lips slightly parted.

Several extraneous questions float through Celia’s mind, including Murphy’s taller than I thought and where’d he get that nice coat, before this can’t be what it looks like, can it finally makes its way to the forefront and immediately causes her whole brain to bluescreen.

“…give me my soul again,” Gadling whispers, reaching up to cup Murphy’s cheek in one hand, tracing his thumb across his cheekbone. “Here will I dwell,” he continues, staring into Murphy’s eyes like that’s the ‘here’ he means, “For heaven be in these lips.”

And he draws Murphy down into a kiss.

Murphy goes, enthusiastically. Which isn't the problem, really, the problem is that Gadling's kissing a student and holy fuck, Gadling's kissing a student.

"What the fuck," Celia hears herself say, voice entirely flat.

“Jesus Christ,” Gadling says, deeply startled but not at all angry. He’d jumped, when she’d spoken, but if he’d been trying to jump away from Murphy it didn’t work; Murphy’s arm is curled intractably around his waist. “Fuck, sorry, Celia you startled me,” he adds, in perfectly normal, apologetic tones. He shifts so that he’s facing Celia, making no other effort to extricate himself, or even move Murphy’s arm. Murphy does the opposite, pulling Gadling closer and burying his face in the crook of Gadling’s neck. “Were you here for office hours?”

Celia gapes at him, still so furious she’s incapable of thought, even though a tiny part of her wants to be impressed he’s so willing to brazen through this.

Murphy grumbles something directly into Gadling’s shoulder. Gadling sighs, fondly. “If you've got a longer question, would you be able to email it to me? I promised my husband I'd leave campus on time today.”

“Husband?” Celia asks, a thousand new errors and warning bells throwing themselves up in her mind.

“Oh, right,” Gadling says, “Celia, this is my husband, Morpheus. Morpheus, this is Celia, she’s in charge of the Shakespeare club this year.”

Of all the questions Celia should probably be asking right now- such as isn’t that against campus policy and when did you get married, dear god- the one that finds its way out of her mouth is, “Your name’s Morpheus??”

“You know each other?” Gadling asks. His tone is only mildly confused, but he angles his shoulders so that he's more fully blocking Murphy from her view, one arm held out like he wants to herd him away from her.

Before Celia can answer that, yes, she knows Murphy, he’s in her class and she’s fully aware of what’s going on here, Murphy lifts his head and says, “She’s the student I’ve been speaking to, when I sat in on your class.”

“Oh, neat,” Gadling says. “That makes this easier. Celia, I’ve been thinking of having him lecture for the club sometime, can I give him your email?”

“Lecture…?” Celia says faintly. It's catching up to her that neither of their reactions are making sense, not just Gadling's, and she once again has the overpowering sensation that there's one single vital piece of information she needs to understand this whole thing, and it's locked in a box she'll never be able to reach.

“He’s a Shakespeare expert,” Gadling says, which only makes it worse.

“Expert? Must you?” Murphy- Morpheus?- replies, in a put-upon tone.

“I must, love. You stood me up on our third date for Shakespeare, you are now a Shakespeare expert. That’s how this works,” Gadling says, teasingly.

“That’s not…” something says with Celia’s voice. That’s not how that works. That isn’t how anything works. What universe has she fallen into.

“Oh, no, he really is an expert. Knows more about Shakespeare than anyone alive,” Gadling says. “He works as a director, not a scholar, but I think you’d all love to hear his perspective. And you-” the next part is clearly directed at Murphy, the teasing-scolding tone of longterm spouses everywhere, so Celia sort of tunes it out- “Would have a great time. At least think about it.”

And Celia… reevaluates some things.

Specifically, that Murphy had never actually said he was a student, or taken notes, or shown up for a single exam, or mentioned a single other class or university activity. And that, standing at his full height and dressed in a fitted black coat instead of a ratty hoodie, he looks much closer to Gadling’s age than eighteen. In fact he might match the description 'like a marble statue of a king come to life.'

“You don’t actually go to school here,” Celia says, testing the waters.

“No,” Morpheus says simply.

“God, no, he knows more than me about- ” Gadling says, and then makes a face like the realization of why Celia had reacted the way she did just hit him over the head like a rock.

“You’re-”

“His husband,” Morpheus says, like it’s an honor beyond measure to have that title. “Although we have been friends for much longer.”

Gadling smiles when Morpheus refers to them as friends, soft and pleased and so utterly sappy Celia thinks she’s going to get a sugar crash just from being in the room with him. She continues on her quest to figure out why the world’s turned upside down, despite that. “Then why were you-”

“I was at his class to see him,” Morpheus says, “I asked you about your list because I wanted to know what you were saying about my husband.”

There are. Teeth, on those last two words. Bared, but not biting. Which Celia barely notices because the realization that if Gadling’s husband knows about The List, surely Gadling must also know about The List, is hitting her in full, violent technicolor.

“Love,” Gadling says, gently. “It’s alright.” He turns to Celia apologetically. “I'm so sorry about this, but we really do need to get going, we're meeting his sister for dinner, I-”

"No. Cool. Yeah," Celia rasps. "I'll email you." If I don't go straight to the registrar's office and drop out, anyway. She steps into the hall, where she leans against the wall by Gadling’s door. She’ll go. Somewhere. Maybe to the registrar's. She just needs a minute.

Unfortunately, Gadling and Morpheus follow her out, and the three of them stand in awkward silence as Gadling locks his office door and reaches for Morpheus’ hand. Morpheus takes it, twining their fingers together and pressing a kiss to the back of Gadling’s hand in his, so smoothly that Celia is almost positive he does it every time the hold hands.

“You’ve all got it wrong, by the way,” Gadling calls over his shoulder, as he and Morpheus walk down the hall, “Your guesses about me.” It takes a moment for what he's said to catch up with Celia's floundering brain, but when it does, her knees nearly go weak from gratitude.

“Yeah?” she calls back, voice slightly shaky but determined to prove she's willing to joke about this too, “What’s the right answer, then?”

“I’m immortal,” Gadling says, with a triumphant grin.

It’s the punchline of a joke she never heard the setup to, she’s sure, because Morpheus says, “You’re insufferable,” with aching fondness, and Gadling immediately and obviously forgets that Celia exists.

“And all is dross that is not Morpheus,” Gadling says, like that’s an actual counterargument.

Given the fact that Morpheus immediately leans down to kiss him, stopping the both of them in the dead center of the hall, maybe it was.

Celia leans back against the wall, in relief this time, as the sound of Gadling and his husband- bickering through romantic poetry, it seems- fades down the hall.

It’s going to be delightful having to tell everyone else they’ve been caught, of course, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.