GerryAgnes AU problems: The TMA universe gets way less scary. The entities get mentioned offhand like they’re nothing, entity-based jokes abound, having a patron is like having a poorly-trained pet that sometimes wees on the carpet. Even murder isn’t really horrifying most of the time, because there’s always been a worse and more disgusting murder.
At first I thought it was me defanging the horror far more than I’d ever intend to, but nope. It turns out that’s just sort of what happens when you’re looking at everything through the eyes of two people for whom the horror is normal. For whom all the terror that comes with the entities is just... part of how the world works.
This is true for Agnes especially. She's been dangerous avatar her whole life on account of having been born tethered to a dread power. She spent decades living off the remains of people her cult tortured to death. She was supposed to destroy the world. Basically nothing that shocks Jon in canon is going to shock her.
For both of them, the most horrifying things about their own lives are things that can also be found in the mundane world. Abuse, religious control, isolation and dehumanisation.
It’s definitely interesting, and I’m kind of enjoying it. It’s just going to be hard to convey the perspective without making the powers sound like they’re actually Not That Bad.
“Somehow, it’s much more satisfying when you do it,” Gerry muses, watching as the book erupts into flames with just a touch of her fingertips to its cracked leather. He raises his cigarette to his lips, jumping when it ignites without the familiar click-hiss of a lighter as Agnes gives him a wicked smile.
“We might steal you away from Gertrude yet, Keay.”
"I ALMOST LOST YOU" KISS WITH JONMARTIN OR SHY KISS WITH GERRYAGNES THANK YOU SO MUCH
(in the no-powers flower shop/tattoo parlor au for the sake of not burning gerry's face off)
Gerry's never been one for old-fashioned dating, really. It seems like a waste of time and energy, all that dancing around and spending too much money and being on your best behavior to get someone to like you so they'll spend enough time with you to see you not on your best behavior when they'll inevitably be disappointed. Most of his relationships haven't involved dates at all, more group hangouts that slowly got more private. He'd rather date friends, he's always said, it's so much easier.
But Agnes seems like the type who likes nice dates, and Gerry thinks she deserves to have everything she wants, so one day when he's bringing her the flowers that he's stopped trying to pretend are the day's cast-offs (it's red and orange and yellow carnations, simple but vibrant, and when he lets his eyes unfocus the blurred bouquet is the same color as her hair) he asks if she wants to go out for coffee sometime. Jude snorts loudly from the back of the shop but Agnes just smiles at him and says that would be lovely.
It isn't terrible, or awkward, or a waste of time. Gerry doesn't feel like he's on his best behavior, and he doesn't think Agnes is, either. Sure, the way she flicks her hair over her shoulder with a twist of one pale, elegant wrist is devastatingly gorgeous, but he's pretty sure it's an unconscious gesture. They talk about their families, too heavy a conversation for a first date really, but it's easy to talk to her. She gets it.
Coffee stretches out long enough that the baristas are giving them dirty looks so Agnes suggests the park. Gerry hasn't been to a public park since he was buying weed as a teenager but he agrees because - because he doesn't want to stop talking to her, because he doesn't want to go back to his empty flat, because he wants to see what her smile looks like in dappled shade. He's well on his way to besotted and there are Cure lyrics running through his head and he's too happy to care.
They wind up sitting on a low stone ledge that's been made to look natural but isn't doing a very good job of it. Her smile looks wonderful in dappled shade, it turns out, even more mysterious than usual. Gerry does his best not to stare but she keeps looking up at him under the fall of her hair and goddammit he's almost thirty years old, he's not a teenager with a crush, he shouldn't be like this. But Agnes takes his hand, twining their fingers together, and she leans up shyly toward him in an unmistakable way so he turns his face to her like a flower turning toward the sun (terrible cliché, asshole, he thinks, but it doesn't matter) and lets her kiss him. She's soft and sweet and smells like ink and disinfectant and Gerry's head swims with it like it's an expensive perfume.
"Was that all right?" she asks when she pulls away, too soon. "Sorry, I should have asked."
"It's fine," Gerry tells her, "Great, actually," and he leans in to kiss her again.
I think if Gerry and Agnes had met when they were still alive they would've gotten along like a house on fire /crowd boos/ /runs from the rotten tomatoes being hurled at me/
what i enjoy about younger gerry (ie when he was alive) and agnes meeting and becoming friends is because it's exactly a fox and the hound situation. gerry knows he will eventually have to go after her; not just "people like her" or "her people" but specifically agnes herself, and agnes knows this too. they'll both regret it when the time comes, but for now it's nice to bask in this friendship where neither of them are anything resembling "normal" people but their relationship somehow is
