"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."
"Yes," he admits. "Or...we were terrible at it first year. The fucking surveillance squirrels -" But that's too close to a bit of happiness that burns to touch. "But not decadent." And they couldn't stay bad. Not that Jedao had a 'them' after first year. Grenades shouldn't have friends.
"I suppose able is really the operative word."
Jedao skates his fingers through Quentin's hair.
"I don't think you were dumb. You were just...lonely. And shining. So I grabbed you like a magpie when no one else was looking."
"I spend my whole stupid life putting myself into trouble, playing chicken with the idea that someone's going to notice enough to heave me out by the scruff."
He says, with a rueful sigh tickling against his ear.
"Infatuated with brilliant boys, fantasizing about tying myself to railroad tracks just in their earshot. If you ever want to make me smile, pretend-rescue me. It doesn't even have to be from anything, just come up to me and say you're rescuing me and pull me away from what I'm doing by the wrist, and I'll be-"
Yours for life, he almost says, except he won't quite, will he?
"I was infatuated with a wild, brilliant boy, and failed to save him," Jedao murmurs, which is easier than the name. Easier than the full shape of the story.
He kisses Quentin's neck gently, just because it's there.
"You know I've been trying to save people ever since." Even if it meant sacrificing everyone else he loved, in a perverse kind of punishment. "Just let me, darling. Just give me a whisper of a chance."
He's trying to save Fives now and is terrified he won't be enough when he lets himself stop to think; he's holding Quentin too tightly.
"And maybe a book where someone gets rescued after all."
"Oh, well, grab the sequels. This Book is Full of Spiders, Seriously Dude Don't Touch It, and then What the Hell Did I Just Read?"
That'll pass some time.
"Third one's really, really romantic. Uh, kind of. Depending on how you interpret- it's just. It leans pretty hard into the unreliable narrator thing."
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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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"I suppose able is really the operative word."
Jedao skates his fingers through Quentin's hair.
"I don't think you were dumb. You were just...lonely. And shining. So I grabbed you like a magpie when no one else was looking."
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He says, with a rueful sigh tickling against his ear.
"Infatuated with brilliant boys, fantasizing about tying myself to railroad tracks just in their earshot. If you ever want to make me smile, pretend-rescue me. It doesn't even have to be from anything, just come up to me and say you're rescuing me and pull me away from what I'm doing by the wrist, and I'll be-"
Yours for life, he almost says, except he won't quite, will he?
"-the happiest I've ever been."
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He kisses Quentin's neck gently, just because it's there.
"You know I've been trying to save people ever since." Even if it meant sacrificing everyone else he loved, in a perverse kind of punishment. "Just let me, darling. Just give me a whisper of a chance."
He's trying to save Fives now and is terrified he won't be enough when he lets himself stop to think; he's holding Quentin too tightly.
"And maybe a book where someone gets rescued after all."
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Quentin has never read such a book in his life, but he will find one for Jedao, he swears he will.
It may also involve a dragon, but he can cross that bridge when he comes to it.
"I don't know why I didn't just give you Earthsea. I make everyone read Earthsea."
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"And I rushed you. Earthsea, then."
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That'll pass some time.
"Third one's really, really romantic. Uh, kind of. Depending on how you interpret- it's just. It leans pretty hard into the unreliable narrator thing."