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[ninefox]

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[ninefox]

Jedao swallows.

"I...don't know what's appropriate. But I can understand the feeling."

[magician_king]

"He has, and you seem to share, this ability to just. Exist with this tremendous density. Gravitationally. Magnetic. Like of course it's all proper and good that we slide into your orbit."

And, clearing his throat, trying to control his blush.

"It's nice to hear that he values me too."

[ninefox]

"Have I?" he asks softly, a wistful thought given breath. It's funny to imagine. His world is so small, now. And the rest, with his swarm, always felt like walking around in his big brother's jacket.

He focuses.

"If he hasn't said he loves you, it's entirely because he knows or figured out the bad history thing, and he doesn't want to hurt or pressure you."

[magician_king]

"Do you think he knows I love him too?"

He asks. It's written all over his face, but;

"I never remember to say it."

[ninefox]

"It's - honestly really hard to tell." Jedao only talks to Quentin so much on the comm instead of in person, and Jedao himself has never been confident in love, so he doesn't know how it makes them think, makes them speak. Jedao writes about Fives and Quentin very differently, but that could just be them.

[magician_king]

"I'll make sure."

He promises, smiling, wide and rare and special.

"Thanks for telling me."

[ninefox]

Jedao ducks his head, pleased and self-conscious, awkward with it.

"Well, you asked. And I don't feel particularly beholden to his secrets, especially when he has terrible security on purpose."

Jedao sips his own tea, scowls, dumps about four tablespoons of lemon juice in it, and then keeps drinking without seeming to appreciably enjoy it any more than previously.

[magician_king]

He watches this, then looks up at him, blinking at the odd behaviour.

Doesn't matter.

"So David Sedaris. Do you want me to- can I read you the first story?"

[ninefox]

"That sounds nice," he agrees.

[magician_king]

Quentin settles in, sipping his tea and reading him story. He's gotten better at reading out loud lately, with all the practice, slow and patient.

He doesn't normally love non-scifi, but he does love David Sedaris.

[ninefox]

He pillows his head in his arms on the table, gazing back at the fish again as he listens. He barely has any reference for it: Mikodez and his execrable candy, Kujen and his jewels. He's never met anyone who wasn't physically healthy in his entire short life. Unless you count the way Mikodez's eyes are sometimes too quick, or too bright. It seems - inexplicably, bewilderingly sad, that anyone could die of anything other than violence. To succeed at a peaceful existence, and still whither.

"I think I might be too young for this book," he says softly, not sure himself if he's joking or not.

[magician_king]

"Why?"

Asks Quentin, looking up tenderly at him, deeply involved in the story.

[ninefox]

"I've never really had any vices." Unless you count men. (One man. He's finished.) Or murder.

"I didn't know sickness could be like that. Or parents."

[magician_king]

"I'll read you a nicer one."

He promises, thumbing through to another page.

"This one's about love. Er- ish."

[ninefox]

"I don't not like it," he says, which is true. He likes the rhythm of it, the strangeness and the mood. It's not entirely off from how he felt when he talked Hemiola into writing an original composition, instead of always matching its music to remixed human dramas.

"I just don't think I'm responding to it properly?"

[magician_king]

"You don't respond to fiction properly in my world. It's anarchy too."

He promises, smiling as he searches for a good spot to begin.

[ninefox]

Jedao feels a little dubious about that, but decides, for now, to accept it.

"If you say so, Quentin-ye."

[magician_king]

He toes his shoes off, and tucks his feet out under him, getting comfortable, pushing his glasses up his nose and starting, companionably, to read.

He's read this a half dozen times, and loves every word.

[ninefox]

It's that the writer really is an adult, he realizes slowly, and an adult in the weird world of Earth individualism. Or maybe it's just that he's free: he could go, no matter how absurd he decides, eventually, that it would be. Rearrange his whole life. Until today, all of his choices have been so carefully circumscribed: obey Kujen or betray him, but no escaping his ship, his snares, his sphere of influence. Linger or die, but always in the careful confines of the Citadel of Eyes and all its watchers.

Now, he has at least three people swearing blind to steal him, to send him anywhere, to let him do anything. He doesn't really know how to begin to think about it. What would he do without his schedule, his therapist-guards, his monitored slate library, his curricular approval forms. (Without Shuos-zho, and Zehun's cold eyes, and the station moth's silence?) Or perhaps he's looking at it all wrong, despite Quentin's promises. He already gave up eternal life with the person who wanted him, after all.

He tries not to react at all to you can't order someone to find you attractive. He laughs once, soft and surprised, at He honestly does like it here.

[magician_king]

"I know you all think monogamy is weird, but I think it's kind of romantic."

Admits Quentin, a little breathlessly.

"When you feel low grade- panic, often, at things that you probably shouldn't find daunting, it's very seductive, the idea of just letting someone else do it."

[ninefox]

"I'm not sure what those things have to do with each other," Jedao admits. "But I don't know anything about romance, really."

[magician_king]

"There's this seductive- codependant, hallucinogenic idea that someone will always be there for you?"

Admits Quentin, quietly.

"That you're theirs and they're yours and everything is going to be okay because they've got you. For calling repairman, for figuring out finances- and you've got them, for whatever you can do."

tw past emotional abuse, character being sort of triggered about it?

[ninefox]

He thinks he's going to throw up.

He pushes to his feet, and only Jedao's natural grace saves him from overturning the chair with an unbearable clatter. He holds, for a moment, completely still, refusing to tremble, stranded in indecision, breath soft and shallow. I need air, he thinks, or I can't talk about this, but he can't even make his mouth move. How awful, how utterly exposed, like unarmored white bellies of the rolling bugs he sometimes finds in his onion's potted soil, sometimes spoils with cookie crumbs.

(He doesn't want it. He does. He always did. Only I will ever love you. That searing, tender, sick, endless attention, forever. Jedao killed him and now he can never have it.)

He breaks for the sink and doesn't throw up, although he swallows convulsively, turns on a hush of cold water and sticks his head underneath.

[magician_king]

Quentin startles as Jedao bolts, and hesitates, not sure what this is, if it's about him, if it's bigger.

From the doorway, he asks;

"Do you need me to go?"

[ninefox]

He pulls his head out of the sink but doesn't turn off the water, stands there staring and dripping and shivering, although the water isn't that cold.

"I don't know," he says hoarsely. Quentin could make it worse, or better. He could try to calm down, alone. Watch the fish and empty out and empty out and empty out, maybe not move until Fives comes back. He wonders about his odds of hurting himself. If it doesn't work, or works too well. He slides down to the floor, back against the cabinets, and wraps his hands around his ankles.

"Please don't."