IC INBOX for The Last Voyages

[magician_king]

You know what to do.

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[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec gives him a strange look, but for the sake of their current conversation, lets it slide for the time being.

"Extreme compartmentalization," he offers. "And curtailing the subconscious's processing."

[magician_king]

"I do the mailbox thing."

He admits, and tries to remember the phrase.

"Visualization. Taking problems and dropping them through the slot into a lockbox to deal with later. Later tends not to come, but it helps get through the nights."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"And that's fine when it's missing the place you grew up or someone you know there," Alec allows, though he doubts his own context for this is the same as most.

"But when it's - oh, say, years worth of a volatile romance that never happened?"

[magician_king]

"Yeah."

He says, and feels himself blush, cheeks and ears, because it's a bit startling to remember, all of a sudden.

"How are you doing with all that?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

And then abruptly, the reason Alec is a difficult friend to have:

"I thought you didn't want me to therapy at you?" It's not, exactly, cool. It's not, exactly, not.

[magician_king]

"What?"

He asks, blindsided, and not conversationally adept enough to not just admit it. Quentin can be difficult to spar with verbally, because he so often just won't, doesn't.

"Sorry- what do you mean?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

And Alec, meanwhile, might as well have a degree in it when he's circling something he doesn't want someone else to have. He waves a hand.

"It's fine." M o v i n g o n. "I've come to think of my method as doors. Close it - or sometimes, slam it - lock it, keep everything behind it."

[magician_king]

"No, but-" backtracking them, inexpertly, "-when I said therapy at you I meant me. Feeling dumb sitting in the back of the PTSD group."

Since they're not as much on the same page as he thought.

[kissthatgoodbye]

"Everyone feels dumb sitting at PTSD group," Alec points out, reasonably.

"No one is good at emotions, especially their own."

[magician_king]

"So what was-"

Still in a bit of a tailspin from that last thing. He tries to shake it off, draws in a breath and looks at him, and decides if they're moving past it, they're moving past it.

"So. Would you do like, a pamphlet?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

Alec isn't anywhere close to tailspinning out of having evaded that particular bullet, but he does feel inexplicably guilty, except that it's not inexplicable at all. He distracts himself by focusing on the question, and only then realizes they've done it again.

He puts his fork down, and shakes his head. "Pamphlet? For what?"

[magician_king]

"For your 'coping mechanisms for wardens.'"

He says, and puts his fork down, reaching for his coffee cup, cradling it.

"Or is it going to be a class? I bet if when people came on board you could just tell them it's mandatory and they'd believe you."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"I -" Actually. "I've actually done that before. As an experiment, with the PTSD group. No one challenged it."

But that aside: "I was just talking. I don't know what to do with this information and it's nowhere near complete. It's just something I've noticed and been thinking about."

[magician_king]

"I could help. I've been trying to come up with something useful to do lately."

He says, perking up a little, as he realizes that this might actually be something he'd thought about too.

"I am so far from an expert on mental health it isn't funny. Is it the blind leading the blind if I ask to be involved?"

[kissthatgoodbye]

"No. Not for this, since you've been on the Barge long enough to know what we're looking for," he admits.

"But we have to figure out how to have the same conversation at the same time first."

[magician_king]

"If you think that's something I'm going to be able to accomplish then you're an optimist. I think I'm only ever one fourth of the way in any conversations at any given moment."

He says, with a sigh into his coffee cup.

[kissthatgoodbye]

"I'm not an optimist." He says the word like it might be vulgar in some circles.

"I just know that anything geared towards unifying or making the Barge more stable is met with enough resistance out of hand that something as simple and straightforward as the people trying to pull it together being unable to communicate means we're done before we even get going."

[magician_king]

"For example, I thought you were talking about you and me, just there, in the context of collaborating on something like this."

He says, with a snort at himself.

"Okay. But I think the thing is actually going to be to go in the other direction. Like- a vaguely helpful inkblot test, where it's non-specific enough that people can take from it what they need."

[kissthatgoodbye]

"I - was..." Alec tips his head, eyes narrowing on Quentin ever so slightly.

"For starters, I wasn't thinking about it as a project at all. This whole pattern was just an observation I've made."

[magician_king]

"I don't really think of us as emblematic of the need to unify the barge."

Doesn't matter, whatever;

"Do you want it to be a project? Or does that feel like a bad idea."

[credere]

I told Shiro I loved her.

I mean - I sang it first. But then I said it.

I - I don't know why I did that?

[someone are panicking]

[magician_king]

Where are you? I'll come over.

[credere]

[Thank you for correctly identifying this as a crisis, buddy]

I'm in my room.

[magician_king]

He's there a minute later, knocking, then trying the handle.

"Hey, C. You okay? That sounded- a lot."

[credere]

The door's unlocked. He's sitting cross-legged on his bed with a mug of hot chocolate: also a good indication of his level of concern.

"I don't know. It was a lot. We kissed."

There's still a part of him that's irrationally afraid his dead mother will pop out of nowhere and punish him for - well, basically everything.