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.
He traces his fingers over the long, lean lines of Quentin's biceps and triceps. "Well, really it makes me want to ride you in a throne room with most of your clothes still on, but that's negotiable," he answers, grinning.
"And I still think you're being hard on yourself. The whole point of the barge is to leave us at loose ends tangled in a deeply uncomfortable safety net so that we can thrash and fuck up profoundly until we learn something. Nobody knows what to do with themselves. If there were anything that actually needed us doing it efficiently to get done, we'd all be dead in a few weeks. We care for each other, we react to mayhem, we try to grow. That's all, really."
"I love you too," Jedao says, feeling - giddy at the truth of it, and a little unbalanced.
"You should pick me out some more books." Even if he still doesn't respond to much fiction like Quentin does, he's going to have a lot of quiet evenings in soon.
He absolutely did hate it, and he knows Quentin well enough to hear the tenderness under the question; he drags a hand over his face, half in rueful resignation, half to stall, half to hide.
Jedao tries valiantly to think of a gentle way to say you don't really want the whole list.
"Don't - it wasn't - I'm not capable of judging it fairly. It was very...elegant. And intimate. And my best friend committed suicide our first year in Academy, at the culmination of a sequence of events for which I was mostly responsible."
He says, and sits up, shifting in so he can hook his chin over Jedao's shoulder, hugging him without putting his arms around him, letting out a soft breath.
"I'm sorry. You've talked about that a little, but-"
He doesn't really want to talk about Ruo, feels the vertiginous swoop of a misplaced move to have mentioned him at all when it was as much as he could bear to, and he opens his mouth to cut Quentin off, to say something else, to say anything else. Another amateur error, compounding them the moment he slips into the reactionary. Jedao should know better by now than to talk mid-retreat; his mouth is always still fighting.
"I hated the obsession with beauty. Beauty exists in the service of evil, and their world didn't even have evil like that and they rolled around in it and worshipped it and turned it poisonous anyway. I hated - we took our actual games more seriously than the tragedies they made into games. Madness isn't glamour, it isn't a party, it's doing your job when your head's full of broken glass and your job is shooting children. I hated being in the head of somebody ashamed of his hick town because I think that's maybe the only part of my whole life I was never ashamed of."
It comes out too rushed to be properly savage, tripping over himself, vomiting up the words, because it hurt because of Ruo but he hated it because -
He leans into Quentin, teeth grinding under his jaw, sucking in a breath of air. None of it, properly, is criticism of the book as a book. It could be an obscure and terrible compliment, that he was so drawn in, was so sharply effected. That he cannot be detached about the experience. But ultimately - he can't.
"I could tell, when you read it," he says softly, like the ebb of a wave after the outpouring of salty bitter foam. "That it felt familiar in a way that was - poignant. But to me it was just unfamiliar enough to make the familiar feel like - parody."
He agrees, and doesn't mind. All the self-consciousness doesn't matter one bit when Jedao sounds like this.
"I like that about it. Reading it always feels like submitting to a psychological violence. And one I kind of deserved for having been a lot like that when I was a kid. But I'll try to give you books that aren't so- evil."
"It was - pointless. I might not have been happy for the rest of my life and three lifetimes besides but at least I learned something. At least I tried to do things with it. And so did you," he points out.
"Instead of just..." Ruin and inertia on all sides. Cruelty Jedao can handle. And if he bridles at the - submission, in Quentin's word - the passive reception demanded by media other than games, he can certainly understand welcoming certain kinds of cruelty. But the nihilism of inertia offends him, somewhere deep and raw. He turns in toward Quentin a little more.
"Of being able to be that decadently bad at their stupid little intrigues?"
He wonders, arm tucking around his waist, mouth pressing against the top of his shoulder in a thoughtful kiss.
"I thought about it with you because of the bit with the frozen building. I feel like you scooped me up and out of there and dealt with my dumb stubborn pneumonia."
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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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He says, lifting his arms up over his head, letting his fingertips brush the ground on the other side of Jedao's legs.
"When I do get arrogant, which I can, is it a stupid look on me, or do you still want to tear my clothes off?"
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He asks, eyebrows lifting.
"Why haven't I ever shown you my crown?"
Quentin; literal king, lest they forget.
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It's his only real theory. But Jedao remembered.
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Putting a pin in his mental calendar. After Fives is up, before Jedao is down.
"We'll put a sock on the enclosure doorknob."
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"And I still think you're being hard on yourself. The whole point of the barge is to leave us at loose ends tangled in a deeply uncomfortable safety net so that we can thrash and fuck up profoundly until we learn something. Nobody knows what to do with themselves. If there were anything that actually needed us doing it efficiently to get done, we'd all be dead in a few weeks. We care for each other, we react to mayhem, we try to grow. That's all, really."
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He says, completely sincerely and without a hint of irony.
"And I love you very much."
Maybe, provisionally, things are going to be okay.
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"You should pick me out some more books." Even if he still doesn't respond to much fiction like Quentin does, he's going to have a lot of quiet evenings in soon.
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A secretly very vulnerable little ask. It's one of his favourites, he hopes he doesn't hate it.
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He says, face getting a little hot.
"Sorry. Is it- because what?"
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"Don't - it wasn't - I'm not capable of judging it fairly. It was very...elegant. And intimate. And my best friend committed suicide our first year in Academy, at the culmination of a sequence of events for which I was mostly responsible."
His voice goes - taut. He swallows. "So."
His impressions only deteriorated from there.
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He says, and sits up, shifting in so he can hook his chin over Jedao's shoulder, hugging him without putting his arms around him, letting out a soft breath.
"I'm sorry. You've talked about that a little, but-"
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"I hated the obsession with beauty. Beauty exists in the service of evil, and their world didn't even have evil like that and they rolled around in it and worshipped it and turned it poisonous anyway. I hated - we took our actual games more seriously than the tragedies they made into games. Madness isn't glamour, it isn't a party, it's doing your job when your head's full of broken glass and your job is shooting children. I hated being in the head of somebody ashamed of his hick town because I think that's maybe the only part of my whole life I was never ashamed of."
It comes out too rushed to be properly savage, tripping over himself, vomiting up the words, because it hurt because of Ruo but he hated it because -
He leans into Quentin, teeth grinding under his jaw, sucking in a breath of air. None of it, properly, is criticism of the book as a book. It could be an obscure and terrible compliment, that he was so drawn in, was so sharply effected. That he cannot be detached about the experience. But ultimately - he can't.
"I could tell, when you read it," he says softly, like the ebb of a wave after the outpouring of salty bitter foam. "That it felt familiar in a way that was - poignant. But to me it was just unfamiliar enough to make the familiar feel like - parody."
And contemptuous parody at that.
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He agrees, and doesn't mind. All the self-consciousness doesn't matter one bit when Jedao sounds like this.
"I like that about it. Reading it always feels like submitting to a psychological violence. And one I kind of deserved for having been a lot like that when I was a kid. But I'll try to give you books that aren't so- evil."
He sincerely promises.
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"Instead of just..." Ruin and inertia on all sides. Cruelty Jedao can handle. And if he bridles at the - submission, in Quentin's word - the passive reception demanded by media other than games, he can certainly understand welcoming certain kinds of cruelty. But the nihilism of inertia offends him, somewhere deep and raw. He turns in toward Quentin a little more.
"Partly I suppose I'm just jealous."
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He wonders, arm tucking around his waist, mouth pressing against the top of his shoulder in a thoughtful kiss.
"I thought about it with you because of the bit with the frozen building. I feel like you scooped me up and out of there and dealt with my dumb stubborn pneumonia."
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