"I don't have to be ashamed of weaknesses to prefer not exposing them," Jedao says softly. Even if some of them he is.
"You - well. It feels like watching someone from a different world." Which, obviously, it is. "Sometimes it feels...comforting isn't quite the word. Nor is safe. Nor reassuring, when it isn't re anything. Sheltered, maybe - like you've brought a piece of your world with you and I could...take risks, under that gradient, that I wouldn't normally."
He smiles, the slant of it matching his shoulders.
"Mostly it just makes me feel protective. Even though I know you don't need it really."
"I do and I don't. I can count on my hands the number of people who've ever felt protective of me, before I came here. Minus a teacher or two when I was a really little kid."
He reminds him, with a small smile.
"But you be careful, Mister Fox. Of the five of them, two resented me for it for a very long time. Don't you let me gradient be something that makes you compromise yourself."
"Yeah, but I'd be a liar if I didn't tell you that it costs sometimes."
He says, with a tiny little shrug, leaning into the bed a little more, arms draping over it, cheek resting against them, regarding Jedao from his sideways sprawl.
"You know the real difference between me and Fives? It's that I remember a time when I hadn't yet learned to live like that."
He doesn't swallow, doesn't look away, doesn't think about how he feels about children. But if he were less well trained, he would have.
"I don't want to have to live like that for the rest of my life. I don't want to raise my millions of clone kids to be that way. I don't want to always be a hypocrite when I tell Fives he's allowed to be hurt. And I'm pretty fucking sure it's something I need to deal with to graduate anyway. You aren't making me, Quentin. You're...making something easier."
"Intellectually I know that, but I still kind of worry for you."
He admits. He worries for Fives too, though it feels inappropriate to say it- but he looks up at him now, checking in on him with a single glance, before looking back at Jedao.
"I spent a lot of years trying to be more like you two. I got pretty good at it, at one point. And it hurt to come back from."
He agrees, and moves forward, lifting their chessboard very carefully aside so he can come over, adjusting his pillow, falling onto his side and draping into Jedao's lap, rather than over the bed.
"Ugh, life is weird. Anyways, we'll figure it out eventually."
"Curious about how you're going to finish that sentence?"
He asks, and rolls onto his back so he can look up at him while Jedao pets them. He tucks his pillow under his knees, taking some of the pressure off his lower back, which is crummy this week.
"Are you staying, after all?" he asks quietly, not meeting Quentin's eyes. There's soft dread in his chest and he couldn't even say what it's for, that he'll be rebuked for his presumption - gently of course - Quentin laughing and saying no, of course not, he can't, and what gave Jedao that idea? Or Quentin saying yes. Quentin having his own cause for resentment.
"I - need you to think about it," Jedao says, feeling slightly panicked himself, heart rabbiting at the temerity of the demand, although he doesn't show it except in the careful exactness of his breathing. "Or to think about what you need to get in order to think about it without being paralyzed. And maybe that isn't fair either, but. I need it."
He keeps stroking his fingers steadily through Quentin's hair.
"It's just - there's this thing I need to do. And I'm pretty sure it's going to wreck me for awhile. And I put it off, because - well, no reason to ruin the beautiful goodbye. And because I wanted to put it off, if I'm honest. So if you're going to go, then I'll keep holding off. I can't do it until Fives is feeling steadier anyway, so you've got a window. I can kiss you, and miss you, and do it. Or if you're going to stay, I can do it, and trust you to help me through. But I can't do it and then lose you when I'm - whatever it makes of me. When I'm not the person I want you to remember me as. I don't want that and I don't want to know that I - wasted my last days with you. But I can't put it off indefinitely. I can feel it eating at me, in quiet moments."
"I'd let you. I'd twist in the wind and pant at your fingertips if I wasn't going a little bit freshly fucking insane wondering what memories he stole from me," he murmurs. His hand shifts, fingertips tracing the outline of Quentin's face.
"If a breach came along and wrecked you, I'd hate to think of you running home in that state, and being alone without any of your friends or anyone who even understands what the fuck about the barge," he points out. "They come monthly now. Could you promise me three weeks? I can fake functional for two weeks if I have a week to psych myself up, no matter how broken I am. And we could just - we could love each other wrecked, darling, we could say goodbye not quite as ruined as we were."
And that's a kind of beautiful goodbye; beautiful in a way that Jedao, from his cracked-clock world, finds sweetly romantic in its own way. That Jedao thinks he could tolerate, even ripped open.
"Promise me three weeks' notice, and I promise not to ask for more?"
Says Quentin, who has so many things to say about all of that, who's looking up at him properly now piecing everything together that he knows.
"Okay, wait."
He almost sits up, but instead just reaches, touching Jedao's knee with his fingertips, touching base with him.
"First of all- of fucking course I'm going to stay if you're in trouble and need me. Time whatever you're doing for right after our next big one, and then we should have lots of time for everything to level out together, but even if I was gruesomely murdered or murdered all the people I don't think there's a trauma in the world that could rip me away from you while you were hurting. So all of this is interesting and moot because yes- but let's keep talking. About it. Because I'd like to- I'd like to stay for longer than three weeks, and I feel like I need someone to tell me that's okay."
I don't need you to be a martyr for me, he could say, pedantic and callous, because Quentin is right that Jedao has a support system, albeit - winnowed and shaky, of late. But there's a difference between not having Quentin while he's struggling and losing him then and there. A significant difference.
"Oh," he says. He somehow feels stupid for not knowing that and still confused by it at the same time. He isn't sure what to say about it at all. "Well."
He swallows. Okay.
"I think you need Fives to tell you it's okay," Jedao points out. "At least. And...I don't think he can say that right now. But I think we've very much just hit 'worst' in 'it has to get worse before it gets better.' Like you said, we'll get there."
"I don't know that I'm necessarily better at it. But I need to learn to be. And I think he might - be miserable and awkward about it, but more able to show his doubts to me?"
Jedao breathes.
"Sometimes - he's so - ready to believe that he's a burden. It kills me that I don't have words to tell him how badly I need him, how - grateful I am for him, even when he's struggling. I say it and it just...slides off, like rain on a duck."
"I'll probably stealthily try to bribe you into coming home with us once every few months," Jedao says wryly. His tone is tongue-in-cheek...but really though.
"But - yes, more or less? Unless you want something different."
"And you really don't think it's arrogant? Trying to do this thing again that I fucked up so badly last time? I literally got people killed."
Returning to this old anxiety.
"Project 'moral mondays' has been a shitshow, I don't know what to do with myself here, other than curl up with you and rescrew lightbulbs with Credence, which is a little like- how many powerful sorcerers does it take?"
"You realize I've got to be the worst possible person to answer that question?" Jedao points out. He can't quite keep from smiling. "I'm arrogant enough to keep trying forever."
To say absolutely nothing of literally killing people.
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"You should have seen me the other night, putting tiger stripes all up my forearms with smoke streaks."
Quentin knows him too well.
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He wonders, looking at him shyly.
"I hope I don't make you uncomfortable. Or scornful."
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"You - well. It feels like watching someone from a different world." Which, obviously, it is. "Sometimes it feels...comforting isn't quite the word. Nor is safe. Nor reassuring, when it isn't re anything. Sheltered, maybe - like you've brought a piece of your world with you and I could...take risks, under that gradient, that I wouldn't normally."
He smiles, the slant of it matching his shoulders.
"Mostly it just makes me feel protective. Even though I know you don't need it really."
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He reminds him, with a small smile.
"But you be careful, Mister Fox. Of the five of them, two resented me for it for a very long time. Don't you let me gradient be something that makes you compromise yourself."
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"Aren't you supposed to be the one arguing that it's healthy not to feel like a moment's weakness will definitely kill me?"
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He says, with a tiny little shrug, leaning into the bed a little more, arms draping over it, cheek resting against them, regarding Jedao from his sideways sprawl.
"Worth it, but not simple."
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He doesn't swallow, doesn't look away, doesn't think about how he feels about children. But if he were less well trained, he would have.
"I don't want to have to live like that for the rest of my life. I don't want to raise my millions of clone kids to be that way. I don't want to always be a hypocrite when I tell Fives he's allowed to be hurt. And I'm pretty fucking sure it's something I need to deal with to graduate anyway. You aren't making me, Quentin. You're...making something easier."
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He admits. He worries for Fives too, though it feels inappropriate to say it- but he looks up at him now, checking in on him with a single glance, before looking back at Jedao.
"I spent a lot of years trying to be more like you two. I got pretty good at it, at one point. And it hurt to come back from."
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He can admit that much.
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He agrees, and moves forward, lifting their chessboard very carefully aside so he can come over, adjusting his pillow, falling onto his side and draping into Jedao's lap, rather than over the bed.
"Ugh, life is weird. Anyways, we'll figure it out eventually."
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"So we will," Jedao agrees. Never surrender before you've lost.
"Are you -" he starts, and then cuts himself off.
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He asks, and rolls onto his back so he can look up at him while Jedao pets them. He tucks his pillow under his knees, taking some of the pressure off his lower back, which is crummy this week.
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He says, face getting really, immediately hot.
"Which is unfair to you. But staying is kind of unfair to Fives- we started this up because I told him it'd be our beautiful goodbye."
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He keeps stroking his fingers steadily through Quentin's hair.
"It's just - there's this thing I need to do. And I'm pretty sure it's going to wreck me for awhile. And I put it off, because - well, no reason to ruin the beautiful goodbye. And because I wanted to put it off, if I'm honest. So if you're going to go, then I'll keep holding off. I can't do it until Fives is feeling steadier anyway, so you've got a window. I can kiss you, and miss you, and do it. Or if you're going to stay, I can do it, and trust you to help me through. But I can't do it and then lose you when I'm - whatever it makes of me. When I'm not the person I want you to remember me as. I don't want that and I don't want to know that I - wasted my last days with you. But I can't put it off indefinitely. I can feel it eating at me, in quiet moments."
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He folds his hands together over his stomach, fingers lacing.
"I guess my big fear is that I'll commit to staying, and then a breach'll come along that just ends me, and I have to break my promise."
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"If a breach came along and wrecked you, I'd hate to think of you running home in that state, and being alone without any of your friends or anyone who even understands what the fuck about the barge," he points out. "They come monthly now. Could you promise me three weeks? I can fake functional for two weeks if I have a week to psych myself up, no matter how broken I am. And we could just - we could love each other wrecked, darling, we could say goodbye not quite as ruined as we were."
And that's a kind of beautiful goodbye; beautiful in a way that Jedao, from his cracked-clock world, finds sweetly romantic in its own way. That Jedao thinks he could tolerate, even ripped open.
"Promise me three weeks' notice, and I promise not to ask for more?"
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Says Quentin, who has so many things to say about all of that, who's looking up at him properly now piecing everything together that he knows.
"Okay, wait."
He almost sits up, but instead just reaches, touching Jedao's knee with his fingertips, touching base with him.
"First of all- of fucking course I'm going to stay if you're in trouble and need me. Time whatever you're doing for right after our next big one, and then we should have lots of time for everything to level out together, but even if I was gruesomely murdered or murdered all the people I don't think there's a trauma in the world that could rip me away from you while you were hurting. So all of this is interesting and moot because yes- but let's keep talking. About it. Because I'd like to- I'd like to stay for longer than three weeks, and I feel like I need someone to tell me that's okay."
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"Oh," he says. He somehow feels stupid for not knowing that and still confused by it at the same time. He isn't sure what to say about it at all. "Well."
He swallows. Okay.
"I think you need Fives to tell you it's okay," Jedao points out. "At least. And...I don't think he can say that right now. But I think we've very much just hit 'worst' in 'it has to get worse before it gets better.' Like you said, we'll get there."
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But that's significantly different from getting at how he really feels.
"But I guess I've gotta wait till he's feeling a little better and then just rip the bandaid."
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Jedao breathes.
"Sometimes - he's so - ready to believe that he's a burden. It kills me that I don't have words to tell him how badly I need him, how - grateful I am for him, even when he's struggling. I say it and it just...slides off, like rain on a duck."
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Says Quentin, and rubs a circle with his thumb on Jedao's knee.
"So what would life be like? When I stay. We'll keep doing things just like this, except we'll know there isn't an immediate expiration date?"
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"But - yes, more or less? Unless you want something different."
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Returning to this old anxiety.
"Project 'moral mondays' has been a shitshow, I don't know what to do with myself here, other than curl up with you and rescrew lightbulbs with Credence, which is a little like- how many powerful sorcerers does it take?"
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To say absolutely nothing of literally killing people.
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