Valentine’s next meditation session is beyond awkward but Morgan takes pity on him, doesn’t so much as mention the journal. He also, mercifully, doesn’t even call him out for being twitchy as hell and utterly unable to concentrate. He just lets Valentine be and gently suggests some texts to read on alternative meditation methods.

Valentine can’t tell if the perpetual cloud of shame he’s living under is due to his being an absolute failure at developing a core or how all the worst bits of the journal feel like they’re constantly scrolling across a 50 foot marquee at the back of his brain.

He really is trying, harder than he ever has before to reach out. To touch the currents of magic that are literally right in front of his face according to Morgan who says that magic is everywhere, especially concentrated around living beings. But he just can’t focus.

He can’t shake the looming sense of impending failure. He’s felt the pressure of having a hard deadline for months now and he’s had the odd late night/early morning panic attack over it, heart racing and gasping for breath.

He feels so desperately alone.

He wants to tell Gee about it, he needs to tell Gee. Valentine’s scared that he’s not going to make it. He’s broken and he’s trying to fix himself but there’s just not enough time.

But knowing what he does now it’s hard to even be around Gee. He’s got secrets that feel too big for his skin and that damned journal… He’s hyperaware now every time they touch and it feels like sparks lighting up his insides and he wonders if maybe that’s the magic being channeled through Gee’s pseudo cores or is it just his stupid brain remembering the worst most embarrassing parts of that journal.

He knows that they’re not like Lu and Sasha, they’re just good friends, best friends even. Gee is kind and patient where Lu was prickly and brusque and Valentine sure as hell isn’t anything like Sasha. Sasha was so clingy and starry eyed and his whole world revolved around Lu. Valentine is very much his own person and sure his future plans include Gee but in a ‘friends make adventures more fun’ kind of way.

But his stupid, stupid brain can’t help but wonder. What would it be like. Not just being able to feel magic but to share it, share everything down to his innermost being with another person. To be that close.

Gee notices that he’s being weird and says as much but Valentine can’t explain. How could he. Gee’s just as tactile as he always is but now Valentine’s an aroused and confused mess from all the casual touching and he just can’t cope. He wishes his brain would just shut the fuck up sometimes.

Instead it goes to all the wrong places and he finds himself angrily jerking off, hating everything. He wishes he’d never come across that damned journal. Why did Morgan have to let him read it? Why can’t he talk to Gee about cores and about magic? He can’t help but think if he could just talk to Gee, really talk about all the things that matter maybe Gee would know just the thing to say, what to do. He’d know how to fix Valentine and his stupid broken brain.

***

They’re back on talismans in his afternoon class and Valentine’s struggling to stay awake because at this point he could write and activate them in his sleep. He doesn’t understand why his classmates are having such a hard time. They’re all hopelessly slow.

He falls asleep on his desk and is prodded awake an indeterminate amount of time later. The instructor tells him if he’s got time to nap then he’s got time to get off his ass and help his classmates. He does so, reluctantly. He can feel the resentment pouring off them in waves, their growing irritation at his showing them all up.

He's not even sure how it comes up later but he mentions the incident to Morgan who just stares at him.

“What?” Valentine takes a quick glance down, wondering if he’s wearing some of his lunch again. It’s not so much that he’s a messy eater as a distracted one but he doesn’t appear to have had any mishaps today.

“You’re working on barrier talismans?” Morgan’s got this weird look on his face.

“Yeah.”

“Testing them?”

“Yes,” Valentine drawls, stretching the word out. Had Morgan not been listening to him again?

“And you activated yours, no problem while the rest of your classmates struggled?”

“Okay you’re doing that thing again where you think I’m being an idiot and you’re trying to rub my face in it,” Valentine grumbles. Morgan can get downright bitchy when he thinks Valentine’s missing something that should be obvious.

Morgan huffs and shakes his head, disbelieving.

“What!?”

“I thought you said you couldn’t detect magic.”

“I can’t,” Valentine confirms testily. He gets it, he’s fucked up somewhere, Morgan can stop trying to make him feel like shit about it any time now.

“Your classmates are having problems because their pseudo cores haven’t been activated yet. Magic use isn’t impossible without a core but it’s difficult. Talismans are a good place to start because they don’t need much power to activate.”

“Okay,” Valentine says, not getting it at all.

Morgan sighs explosively and buries his face in his hands. “You’ve been using magic. You know, the thing you’ve been saying you can’t feel for literal months now.”

Oh. He’s been using magic. Fuck.

He can’t believe he didn’t notice. Granted, the way the program is designed his teachers use a lot of fancy wordplay and talking around the fact that magic is even a thing - spiritualists instead of magicians, ghosts are spirits, monsters are paranormal beings, spoken word talismans instead of incantations, spiritual energy reservoirs instead of objects of power or magical artifacts and so on. They try to make it sound all scientific and measurable and reasonable and nothing at all like something straight out of a fantasy novel.

Morgan throws first a pad of sticky notes and then a ballpoint pen at him. Valentine catches them, confused.

“Barrier talisman, let’s go,” Morgan gestures impatiently at him.

“These aren’t the right paper,” Valentine says, faintly scandalized. His teachers have repeatedly stressed the importance of using the correct paper and inks and writing utensils, and what he’s currently got in his hands most certainly isn’t it.

“Haven’t you learned anything from reading all those journals? Vengeful spirits trying to rip you apart aren’t going to just stand to one side and wait while you get out the good paper and a dip pen.”

He’s…not wrong but Valentine can’t help inwardly cringing as he sketches out the forms for a barrier talisman with a cheap scratchy pen on a fluorescent pink square.

He peels the sheet off the rest of the stack and it sticks to his fingers. It feels like sacrilege as he activates the talisman. The barrier flares to life in a hazy shimmer.

Morgan nods once, slowly, then stands, pushing his chair out from behind his desk. He makes his way over to where Valentine’s seated at his usual spot on the worn out sofa pushed up against the far wall of the office. He pokes gingerly at the barrier with a pointed finger, testing it. The barrier holds.

“Nice work,” he says. “Solid.”

Valentine suppresses the urge to grin. Compliments from Morgan are rare, and it is a damn good barrier if he does say so himself. He carefully tears the talisman in two, dissolving the barrier.

“So that’s it,” Morgan says. “What you’re looking for when you meditate, you want to reach for what it feels like when you activated that talisman.”

But it didn’t feel like anything. It’s like telling him to concentrate on breathing, or blinking. It’s a thing that happens when he thinks about it but it’s not a sensation he can really pin down, it just is.

He feels like the worst kind of failure. He was so proud just a minute ago but that feeling is pushed further and further away as he realizes that he can’t wrap his brain around this simple thing. “I-” To his utter humiliation his face grows hot and his eyes fill with unshed tears. “I can’t.”

Morgan’s usually stern face softens as he lets out a thoughtful hum. He goes to rummage around in the filing cabinets behind his desk and Valentine takes the opportunity to quickly scrub at his eyes.

Gee had constantly teased him about his tendency to cry at the drop of the hat until Valentine had finally had enough and told him that it wasn’t funny and he was being cruel. Gee had apologized over and over, gathered him up in one of those overwhelming, smothering hugs of his. He’d said it just meant that the place hadn’t got to Valentine yet, that it meant he was still able to feel something instead of being dead inside like the rest of them.

Valentine had laughed as he cried and said tearily into the warm expanse of Gee’s chest that he wished he could feel less. Gee just squeezed him even tighter, saying “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Morgan finds what he was looking for after making a complete mess, papers and journals and magical artifacts carelessly tossed aside into haphazard piles. He waves Valentine over, holds the object out for him to take. It’s a small golden sphere, maybe three inches in diameter, perfectly smooth with no visible markings or seams.

It fits perfectly into the palm of Valentine’s hand, cool to the touch. He doesn’t know what to make of it and looks up at Morgan inquiringly.

“It’s barely more than a toy, but it’ll work for our purposes,” Morgan explains. “It lights up. Go on, give it a try.”

How, Valentine wants to ask. Then, oh. Right. Magic. He takes a deep breath, concentrates on the sphere.

Nothing happens.

Nothing continues to happen and Valentine’s ears grow hot with embarrassment. Goddamn it.

The air conditioning cuts on with a hum, gently stirring the papers piled on top of Morgan’s desk and the leaves of the mostly dead potted palm shoved into a poorly lit corner.

“You’ve got to get out of your own head kid,” Morgan gently chides him. “Stop trying to force it.”

Valentine wants to scream.

The sphere flares brightly, blinding. He squeezes his eyes shut to block it out but it’s still so bright through his eyelids, like blinking against the sun.