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[ninefox]

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[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."

[magician_king]

"Do you find it comforting to be touched, or is it easier if I stay over here?"

He asks, as he settles down onto his knees with him.

[ninefox]

He turns one hand out, palm up, reaching for Quentin, but also keeping the invitation for contact to a single, controllable point.

It's been so long since Dhanneth, since he crumbled so terribly for it. And while he loves Hemiola draping itself around his neck to watch dramas, it doesn't feel the same as a body.

[magician_king]

He shifts forward, and rests a delicate hand on Jedao's, eyes closing.

"Sorry. Sorry, love, sorry- nothing should ever hurt you."

[ninefox]

Jedao squeezes his hand tight, breathes, relents a little.

"You know Jedao would already do several things you'd disapprove of to take care of you. Don't you?" he asks quietly. His voice comes out very steady and far away. It's easier to think it not about him.

[magician_king]

"Like what?"

He asks, thumb running over Jedao's wrist, frowning in soft confusion.

"Like get violent?"

[ninefox]

"A lot," Jedao says, with a broken huff of a half-laugh.

[magician_king]

"Well, I won't let him. One person has died for me already, and that was a huge mistake."

He reasons, quietly.

"I'll just have to be okay and generally not get hurt or killed."

[ninefox]

He wants to keen, wants to scream low, old grief like an animal. He lets himself tip sideways, his sodden hair dripping into Quentin's shirt as Jedao rests his head on his shoulder.

"It's just. It's not. Good. With some people. To bear all of their regard."

[magician_king]

"And it kind of fucks you up for anything else."

He agrees, and rests his cheek on top of Jedao's head.

"I don't really believe in it."

gore fantasy idek

[ninefox]

He wants to confess everything to Quentin, wants to say I got someone killed just for an hour's rest from loneliness and I would have let him do anything he wanted with me, if it weren't for everyone else. He wants Quentin's pale, gentle hands to pull his black oozing heart out and say, well, this is heavy in his quiet voice, and rinse it off in the sink until it runs red and and sane, tuck it back in.

(Only I will never judge you.)

He can't bear the possibility of sadness, confusion, disgust. Not from Quentin, who said he was beautiful. Who said he could fly, if he wanted to.

"I'm sorry I -" lost it, when Quentin was just - "I'm sorry that I do." In so many ways, he is sorry for that.

[magician_king]

"You do?"

Asks Quentin, breath catching a little- he hadn't even known he was lying, but now here this is.

"It's not naive?"

[ninefox]

He laughs, and it's an awful, wretched little noise.

"You don't think he needed to make me look right just for the war, did you?"

[magician_king]

"Oh. This is that guy."

Says Quentin, frowning.

"I don't know his name, exactly, but sometimes I feel the shape of him in the dark, the hollow in the stories, the- threat, implicit. Is- he the one you killed, right?"