Sunday morning began with Magnus waking up sore in the best way possible. For a few blissful seconds, he lay there without moving, enjoying the warmth pressed against his side.
Alex had somehow wrapped herself around him during the night with the proprietary grip he'd come to recognize as her default sleeping position when things were good between them. One of her arms was draped across his chest, one leg tangled with his, and her face was buried against his shoulder as though she had no intention of letting him escape.
Naomi was gone. She had excused herself sometime during the night and returned to her own dorm. Magnus had offered to walk her back, but she'd refused immediately, saying something about not wanting to intrude on the couple's time together. Then she'd muttered something else about not being emotionally prepared for that much happiness in a single day. Honestly, Magnus hadn't known how to respond to either statement.
Now, watching Alex sleep peacefully against him, he felt fond… and a little tired if he was being entirely honest. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Which lasted for approximately five seconds before reality reasserted itself in the form of his alarm.
Jordan's training waited for no man, not even those who had survived finals week and a threesome in the same forty-eight hours. So, with resigned acceptance, Magnus carefully disentangled himself from Alex's grip and got ready for another day of training.
Jordan's training was just as brutal as usual. Maybe worse. He wasn't sure anymore — his standards for these things weren't what they used to be, and he still couldn't decide how he felt about that.
By the time Jordan finally decided he had suffered enough for one morning, Magnus was lying on the ground questioning several life choices.
Then she handed him a sheet of paper.
"Your training schedule for Spring Break."
"My what?" He handled it about as well as someone handling a recent cancer diagnosis.
Jordan scoffed. "What? Did you think you were getting two weeks off?"
"Maybe?"
"Well, that was stupid." She crossed her arms. "A day off here and there is fine. Two whole weeks is not gonna fly with me, Chane."
He stared down at the schedule.
Jordan wasn't finished.
"And don't even think about skipping."
"If you're thinking I can't possibly know if you skip a day or two," she added after a moment, as if reading his thoughts, "you'd be right."
He blinked at her in surprise as hope briefly flickered to life.
Then Jordan continued. "But skipping a day or two makes it easier to skip the rest. And if you skip the whole two weeks? That's gonna show once we meet again in Spring Term."
Hope was murdered in cold blood.
Jordan pointed at him.
"So, think of it this way," she said with a smile, "your suffering will just be exponentially worse in two weeks if you don't follow this schedule every day."
She left him on that cheerful note before walking away.
After a quick breakfast came the second portion of his suffering: observation training.
Magnus honestly thought he was slowly improving, but Tony disagreed.
"Observation takes time, mostly because you suck," the raccoon declared. "Many moons. Much staring. We cannot place all our eggs in one dumpster."
"…That's not the saying."
"The point remains. We shall begin your other trainings as well."
Magnus briefly considered pointing out that he was leaving for Spring Break tomorrow. Then he remembered Jordan's training schedule and decided to stay silent about it instead. He couldn't escape Jordan, but maybe he could escape Tony for two weeks.
By the time he finally dragged himself back to Alex's room, he was exhausted. Alex, meanwhile, seemed to be in a better mood than usual. Though, to be fair, their standards for "usual" these days weren't a high bar considering finals week and everything else in their lives.
As soon as Magnus knocked on the door, it opened and he was dragged by the front of his shirt into a passionate kiss.
The door banged shut behind them as clothes hit the floor. A few minutes later, they were making out on her bed, because Alex had apparently decided that the one time they had sex during the threesome with Naomi last night was nowhere near enough.
Between kisses, Magnus had a vague sense of déjà vu, but couldn't quite place it. His brain was too occupied to examine it further.
Then, just as he propped himself over her and things shifted from making out into something more, the door banged open.
"I'm back!" Sofia announced. "You two ready to—"
Magnus froze in place.
Sofia's gaze drifted from one of them to the other as she took the sight in.
His brain finally caught up as Sofia recited the words from his memories — or rather, his premonition of this exact moment:
"Seriously? Again?!" she said. "Back to having the self-restraint of caffeinated rabbits, I see."
***
Five minutes later, everyone was properly dressed and seated. Mostly because they actually had plans with Sofia this time: Spring Break planning, to be exact.
Given the Monthly Quest that had triggered recently required Magnus to build trust with Sofia, the girls had decided they should all spend Spring Break together. That unfortunately meant last-minute planning, though.
"So," Alex cleared her throat and began, shifting into business mode, "aside from his second monthly quest, which requires you two to spend time together, there's one other thing I want to focus on."
"Already got you covered," Sofia said. "His weekly targets? I was thinking we invite some of the old gang."
Alex groaned. "Do we have to?"
"You know as well as I do, they're the safest bets. We don't have to explain everything to them. Most of them are open to experimentation anyway. And even if it comes to it, they could probably be trusted with the secret."
Alex considered it and sighed. "I hate that you're making sense."
"Nah, you love me!" Sofia replied. "So, my beach house then?"
"Yeah, probably best."
"Wait, hang on!" Magnus said. "You have a beach house?"
"Well, technically, my family owns it," Sofia answered. "But no one is using it right now, so we can use it."
"Okay, next stop: booze," Sofia said after a moment. "Who do we know who can legally buy them?"
"None of our old crew is old enough," Alex replied immediately. "Not even Jordan, though she'll turn twenty-one soon. Not that I think we should invite her."
Magnus raised a hand. "I'm actually old enough."
Both girls turned toward him.
"What?" Sofia asked. "Since when?"
"How come you never told me?" Alex demanded.
Magnus rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well, for one thing, I didn't remember it myself until I saw the text my mom sent wishing me happy birthday." He hesitated. "For another, it was March first."
A short pause.
"You know," he added weakly, "when we were… uh, fighting."
Alex stared at him. Then she immediately grabbed her phone and checked the date. The realization hit all at once.
"Oh my god!" she groaned. "I'm so sorry!"
Magnus averted his gaze.
"I mean, bathing a raccoon was certainly not how I expected to celebrate turning twenty-one," he admitted. "But technically speaking, we did spend my birthday together."
Sofia slowly turned toward Alex. "So let me get this straight."
Alex already looked wary.
"You not only missed his twenty-first birthday," Sofia said, "but also spent it fighting with him?"
"Apparently!"
Sofia nodded thoughtfully. "Wow. Can't wait to tell the girls about this."
"SOFIA!"
"This is a historical moment they'd want—no, need to know about."
"It is not!"
"It absolutely is."
Magnus quietly wondered if maybe he should have kept quiet about his birthday.
After a bit more teasing, the girls moved on to planning a System-related experiment: something about figuring out how quest targets were selected. Magnus sat back in his chair and let his thoughts drift.
He could faintly hear a rustling near the window that came and went with the breeze. Probably a bird? There was another sound: a faucet dripping somewhere outside the room. Someone must not have closed the tap properly.
Drip… Drip… Drip…
Then the world blurred in the familiar nauseating sensation.
Suddenly, Magnus was both there in the room with Alex and Sofia and in the Student Health Center. According to the calendar on the wall, it was sometime next month.
In front of him, Alex sat on one of the infirmary beds. She was looking at him with a strange expression, one he didn't recognize at all. Then her voice vibrated in his head:
"Look, you're a great guy. But I don't think we should see each other anymore. Whatever happened between us—"
The vision cut off, and he was fully back in the present. Alex and Sofia were still happily talking over Spring Break plans.
Alex happened to glance over and saw him paling.
"Hey," she turned to him, concern creeping into her voice. "What's wrong?"
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths before finally answering:
"I just had a vision of you breaking up with me."
She stared at him. "Okay, how far did you see into the future this time? Ten years?"
"Please," Sofia teased. "I doubt you two would break up even then."
"Next month," he snapped without meaning to, already spiraling.
Alex immediately moved over and took his hands.
"Hey, look at me," she said. "I know how I feel about you. And I can assure you: nothing is going to make me break up with you in a month. You're probably misinterpreting the premonition. They've never been very clear to begin with."
He pressed his lips together. The vision still sat heavily in his chest, but he chose to trust Alex over a fragment of contextless future. After a long moment, he finally said:
"Alright. I'm okay now. I think."
"Good, because I think we have a plan to test your System's target selection criteria. Or at least limit the potential targets it could select during Spring Break, so we could actually have a relaxing time together."
The plan didn't include anything he hadn't already heard, just presented in a more coherent manner: they would go to Sofia's beach house with friends of Sofia and Alex. People who were trustworthy, open-minded, and unlikely to make things complicated afterward. So, if the System were to select conquest targets, they wouldn't have to worry about him dying. And hopefully, they could learn something about how it picked targets.
In other words, the plan was safe, low-stakes, controlled, organized, and reasonable. Like all plans Alex and Sofia made together. Which meant Magnus already hated it.
His experiences with things Alex described as safe, low-stakes, and controlled had been an adventure in the best-case scenario and downright disasters in less fortunate ones. And with his earlier vision still fresh in his mind, he couldn't shake the feeling something was going to go horribly wrong somehow.
Or maybe something already had, and they just weren't aware of it yet.