Chapter Text
To call the Ogg-Weatherwax residence “messy” would be a gross injustice. Ryan accepts the definition for his own home, partly because the aesthetic works for his business, but mostly because he has better things to do than build and install the fourteen shelving units required for organizing all the crystals and herbs and books and teas he’s amassed over the years, never mind what he inherited. He knows approximately where each item is in the clusterfuck comprising his front room, and that’s good enough.
In comparison with his adoptive mothers, Ryan keeps an immaculate house. Not that their home is dirty; Esme cleans compulsively, likely to deal with the sheer volume of Gytha’s knick knacks and souvenirs, not to mention the cat hair.
The only way Ryan’s ever been able to accurately describe Esme and Gytha’s house to others is to ask them to imagine the lovechild of chain-restaurant decor and a hospital gift shop within the confines of a yurt.
“Oh, it isn’t all that bad, is it?” Gytha asks, passing Ryan the sugar bowl. Her grin is infectious, albeit missing teeth. Ryan never fails to feel better when graced with Nanny Ogg’s smile. “It’s cozy in here, Esmerelda, right?”
Esme squints, then blinks, still squinting, like even her eyes are offended by the question. “That,” she says, tipping her head toward an unassuming wooden box on the mantle, “is cozy.”
“We can’t all be minimalists, dear.”
“And you’ve certainly compensated.”
Ryan returns the spoon to the bowl, then pulls his own out of his robes. As much as he enjoyed dressing down to visit his new neighbor, there’s a certain comfort in being cloaked in his own magic. “Do you have a collection, Granny?”
“Letters.” She frowns, tapping the silver sugar bowl over a few centimeters to its apparent rightful place on the tray. “A few photographs. My first spell candle. Important things.”
He nods, stirring his tea with the handle of his spoon, careful not to scratch the teacup with the quartz. “So like a—a witchy scrapbook.”
Esme glares at the crystal-ended spoon. “Wazzat?”
“It’s, um. My wand spoon?”
“Hand it here.” Ryan does, and she turns it over in her hand before pulling out a hat pin and clipping it to the brim of her hat. “I’ll give it back before you go.”
“Esme.” Gytha reaches for the spoon only to have her hand swatted away. “We’ve talked about this.”
“It’s unnecessary,” she says. “All a bunch of New-Agey nonsense.”
“It’s his practice.”
“And it’s unnecessary.”
“It’s okay!” says Ryan, because if they start arguing, they won’t stop, and then he’ll never actually get his spoon back.
Esme never means to insult him; she only wants him to have a stronger belief in his own magic, to learn he doesn’t need the accoutrements. He can’t get it through her hat that the crystals only boost his intent, that he augments his ancestors’ craft because he likes it, because Ryan enjoys trying new ideas and creating his own eclectic style. But old witches rarely learn new spells; if Esme refuses to budge, then Ryan chooses to accept her stubbornness.
“Really,” he adds, trying to fill the uneasy silence. “It’s fine.”
Gytha takes her turn to stare at Ryan over the tea. “You need more backbone.”
“That’s the long and short of all my problems.” Ryan’s shoulders slump. “Mostly the long of it.”
“Tall pretty fella down the street giving you trouble, dear?”
Ryan turns his teacup back and forth in his hands. “He’s not that pretty.”
Esme snorts. “He’s pretty tall.”
“I heard he’s from New Edef,” says Gytha in her patented gossip voice. “Skeptic through-and-through, the poor man. Well, rich man, I suppose. He apparently lived in the towers at the University.”
“Then why’s he bloody here?”
“Something about wanting the quiet,” she tells Esme.
A pause. “Then why’s he bloody here?”
Gytha jabs Esme’s arm, sloshing her tea. “Greebo’s not a mindreader. Go head-logic him, yourself.”
Esme grumbles something about socializing and having to make nice, shaking the tea off her hand before picking her cup back up.
“So...the University?” asks Ryan. “Seriously? A Skeptic staying with a bunch of upper-crust Believers?”
“Posh living. Lots of space, and wizards don’t really Practice, you know.” Gytha picks up the sugar bowl and dumps a quarter of it into her empty cup. “They’re more science-like nowadays. Very Skeptic-friendly, all amoeba-watching and circuit-building and things-programming.”
“Weird, chatty buggers,” says Esme, “the whole lot of ‘em.” She turns her eyes to Ryan again—it’s akin to being caught in headlights, attracting Granny’s attention. “You got a weird, chatty, buggery neighbor?”
The back of Ryan’s neck heats up. “Weird, absolutely. Chatty, likely. Uh, buggery...well, I mean,” and he stops, because thinking about Shane in any remotely sexual way scares him. “He’s a dick, that’s all.” Ryan glances at his reflection in the silver teapot as Gytha pours more tea; the man looking back seems flustered, or else has his feathers ruffled, which is absurd. He isn’t even wearing feathers today.
“You talked with him, then?” Gytha asks.
Ryan huffs, then takes a gulp of his tea. “For given values of talking, yeah.” She pats Ryan’s knee, and he almost hates how easily Nanny can pull information from him. In many ways, she’s a stronger witch than Granny, “You know, to welcome him to town,” he continues, “to be friendly, that kind of thing. Just because he’s a Skeptic doesn’t mean he should feel like an—an outcast or something.”
“But?”
“He made fun of me, and Chad, and—”
Gytha nods slowly, her eyes growing wide. “I’d forgotten you had the old Eastwick house for Spring Cleansing. Oh dear.”
“—and I’ve never felt so uncomfortable. It was humiliating. The first Skeptic I’ve ever met, and he made me ashamed of myself.”
Esme grumbles again, far more quietly, like a curse layered beneath breath.
“Don’t,” whispers Ryan, holding Esme’s eyes without fear.
“Death owes me a favor,” she says. “Haven’t done more than play with folks’ heads in a while.”
“You can’t just run around killing people!”
“Who said I’d kill him?” The corner of Esme’s mouth twitches up. “That’s no fun, at all. Can’t be learned right if you’re dead.”
“Not easily, leastways.” Gytha gives Ryan’s knee a parting tap. “One of my boys finally learned maths after he drowned.”
Ryan smiles at her, weak as the tea.
Shane infuriates him for a number of reasons, but mostly because he exists across the street, a stupidly attractive barrier to Ryan’s work. He hates feeling uneasy when he walks around his property with a burning stick of palo santo, wondering if Shane stares at him judgmentally through Chad’s window—it isn’t Shane’s house, not really. Ryan jumps every time his ward bell rings, concerned the boundaries have been broken, but it’s always just a bird.
Worst of all, Ryan sees Shane every day, whether he wants to or not, because his unwelcome neighbor seems determined to fix up the Eastwick house, Chad’s wishes be damned. Ryan wouldn’t care if Shane could manage to keep his goddamn shirt on.
He never fails to turn and wave at Ryan, face wide with a cheeky grin, and Ryan wishes he could figure out when Shane knows he’s looking. But Ryan can’t get a read on him. His aura never changes color, always the same bright swirling tangerine and lemon—all citrus, but not sour. Fuzzy around the edges, like when they met, yet constant. No one should be that happy and relaxed all the time.
Ryan tries reading Tinsley’s Hot Daga again to see if the damn thing offers any insight into Shane’s actual character. It only pisses him off even more, realizing how anti-Practice the strip is; before, Hot Daga had been a traditional parody, a caricature of the “evil” witch, portrayed in an unbelievable light, because the public assumed the writer was a Believer. One of those gross generalizations, Ryan’s realized: the assumption of Belief when faced with a generic example, rather than being open-minded to all possibilities. Which makes him madder.
Children read C.C. Tinsley’s books, for God’s sake. What kind of message does that send?
And what kind of message does this send? Lainey asks him. How is this any better than subverting the minds of the innocent?
Ryan scowls up at her from where he’s knelt next to the hedge. “I’m just checking on him.”
You mean peeping, Lainey tells him. Spying. You're casing his casa.
“I am not.” He pops the telescoping lens off of his glasses. “I'm not going to break in!” Ryan hesitates. “Not if it can be helped.”
So you're eyeing his ass.
“Elaine—”
Oh, full first name! Lainey throws her hands in front of her chest, mocking him like the bratty teenager she was. We’re gettin’ serious now. You don’t even have a reason to be out here except for drooling over the new guy.
“The plants need a good conversation,” he says, scowling. “Abuelo’s tomatoes are probably grumpy. They always are.”
And you’re probably full of shit, as you always are.
A cat meows from the depths of the lavender.
“Don’t start, Brent.” Ryan digs around in the dirt pointedly, as petulant as Lainey, looking for the green aventurine he buried last month. “You’re not around enough to have opinions, anyway.”
Brent hisses; a ball of dead mouse comes rolling out of his hiding spot.
Ryan glances at it, shaking his head. “I guess that’s one way to bring me bones.”
More hissing. Ryan often considers if his eldest familiar is only a wasp’s nest covered in red-brown fur.
“Of course. Thank you. I think.”
The lavender shakes with the force of Brent’s answering purr.
“Fucking weirdest familiar,” mumbles Ryan. “At least Zack shows a passing interest in my Practice.”
Oh, Brent’s not so bad.
Ryan stares at the sky, looking for help he knows can’t be found. “You aren’t allowed to have opinions, either.”
Lainey crouches down, transparent hand diving into the lavender. No eres un gatito malo , she coos as Brent hisses and attacks, claws clacking against each other as they pass through Lainey’s arm. Ryan’s just mad because you out-cranky him.
“I’m not cranky!” He snaps his head so hard, he loses his balance, landing on his ass in the wet soil. “Okay,” says Ryan, “I might be a little cranky now.”
Want me to go slam Holly’s cupboards around and get her over for tea?
“No, that’s…” Ryan throws the quartz off in a random direction. It can recharge itself for all he cares. “Yeah,” he tells her, defeated. “Yeah, I could use some jolly Holly time.”
Pastries: yea or nay?
“Yea. Very, very yea.”
With a pun like Holland Hayes for a name, Ryan supposes she couldn’t be anything but jovial, though she does insist on being called Holly, the only outward sign of her possible discomfort. A kitchen witch, Holly smiles brightest when she’s baking, and talks most when she’s sharing food. If Esme and Gytha are Ryan’s mothers, then Holly serves as his over-doting aunt. All he needs to complete his found family is a sickly sweet grandpa.
“Or a boyfriend,” says Holly, putting a second sticky bun on Ryan’s plate. “Or a girlfriend. Or a—a person-friend, I suppose. Whatever, you just need someone to love and squeeze on you.”
Ryan groans, the side of his head on the table. He hasn’t changed out of his gardening clothes; his cuticles are still black with dirt that wouldn’t scrub out, no matter how many times he washed his hands. “I have more than enough complications in my life already.”
“Mhmm. ‘Course you do.”
“Coordinating my schedule with someone else’s is basically impossible.”
Holly keeps nodding, the chain for her purple glasses rattling against their plastic frame, and Ryan’s plate grows a slice of banana bread, heavy on the walnuts. “You do stay busy.”
He swats Zack’s paw away from his bread. “Besides,” Ryans says, scritching behind one of Zack’s ears, “it’s not like anyone’s interested in me.”
“‘Course.”
“And I’m not interested in anyone.”
“Mhmm.”
Frowning, Ryan asks, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Not a goddamn word.” She smiles, then reaches across the table to bop his nose. “There’s that handsome fella across the street, for instance.”
“Oh, no.”
Holly chuckles like Ryan imagines Mrs. Claus would, should she exist. “How’d he like those empanadas we made?”
He feels his neck heat up, prays it won’t climb up to his face. “He ate three of them. I left the plate, so maybe more.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Shane.” Ryan breaks a piece off of his banana bread, sideways, lifting his head off the table so he can eat. “He’s also—”
And Ryan stops, realizing Shane has two names, too: his true name, and his nom de plume. He gave both to Ryan within minutes of meeting. Ryan can’t decide how to interpret such immediate trust. Telling Shane his name was Ricky seems more disingenuous than it already did, and his stomach turns.
“—A Skeptic,” he finishes, trying to ignore the creeping guilt and focus on the overwhelming frustration. “And he was an asshole, and also marginally confusing, because it was like—like he was as genuinely curious as he was dismissive?”
“Mhmm.” Holly shuttles a scone beside Ryan’s teacup.
“I mean, he genuinely pissed me off,” continues Ryan, sitting up all the way, jamming another crumbling chunk of banana bread into his mouth, ignoring the walnut stuck between his back teeth. “He fucking laughed at me when I brought up Spring Cleansing.”
“Oh goodness.” She picks up his sousobo’s teapot, the only person Ryan will let touch it—except, that’s not true, either, not anymore. Shane inspected it, and Ryan hadn’t even considered telling him not to. “So you’re angry with him,” Holly says, refilling his cup.
“Of course I’m angry!”
“Did you give him a fair shake?”
Ryan stares at the surface of his tea. “How do you mean?”
“I mean,” she begins, “did you go to meet him with a clear head, or did you take a bunch of beliefs about Skeptics with you in your little basket?”
“I guess…” He turns his wand over in his hand, again and again, unable to decide whether or not to bother with it. “I didn’t really think about it.”
Holly hums, and the table creaks under the weight of her elbows. “I figured as much.”
“He’d have been a jackass either way.”
“Really, now.”
“Stop—stop doing that.”
“What, making you challenge yourself?” Her cheeks are as rosy as her housecoat. “Ryan, honey, it’s a natural thing, to have prejudice. Nobody’s immune. No potion’s gonna magic a lifetime of social instruction away, y’know? And you’ve only ever lived here. You’re bound to have some preconceived notions rattling around in that pretty little head of yours.”
Ryan’s uncomfortable considering about it. “I don’t know,” he murmurs, trying not to feel ashamed. “He seems like a natural-born...well.”
“A bad hat?”
“No!” He pokes a hole into the sticky bun with his finger. “Just stubborn and outspoken and irritating.”
“I see.”
“Broke one of my teacups over there, too.”
“Oh, no.”
“He just waves at me all the time like nothing happened!”
She breaks a scone in half, then dunks a piece into her tea. “Maybe he’s trying to be nice,” says Holly. “Maybe he feels bad about it and doesn’t know how to approach you.” Hiding her scone-full mouth behind her hand, she adds, “Not like he has a dark aura. Can’t have acres of rose pink hanging around your head and be a bad guy.”
Ryan stares into his own eyes, reflected in the thick lenses of Holly’s glasses. “You see pink?”
“That I do.” Tea drips off of her scone and into her open hand. “Why, what do you see?”
“Is it pink like a grapefruit?”
“A little bit!” More scone disappears into Holly’s mouth. “Or cantaloupe? My eyes aren’t all that they used to be.”
Ryan wonders if his own are any better.