IC INBOX for The Last Voyages

[magician_king]

You know what to do.

Comments

[magician_king]

"Okay."

He says, again, and swallows hard.

"Text me when you next can. But I'd better let you go for now. I love you."

And, on instinct, he cuts the feed before Jedao can be forced to muster the emotional energy to say it back.

text

[ninefox]

open your door really gently

this is not a weird metaphor

[magician_king]

Jedao?

[He doesn't open the feed on him, but isn't self-disciplined enough to keep from running to his bedroom door, hoping to catch a glimpse of him retreating.

He does manage to open it gently, remembering his warning at the very last second.]

[ninefox]

[In the hallway, in one of Jedao's ubiquitous DS9 branded freight crates, half-filled with a bed of mulch and weeds taken from the garden, is a hedgehog eating a grape. It appears perfectly ordinary except that it is wearing a tiny top hat, without any visible means by which the hat would stay on.]

They had the hat when I found them. If they're sentient then I am VERY SORRY but I did ask if they talked and they didn't say anything or try to bite me when I picked them up, so, kind of their own fault if they really didn't want to be abducted.

[magician_king]

[Quentin checks this, with a few careful spells and some cautious squeaking communication to make sure they have either a non-sentient or a sentient-and-consenting hedgehog. He takes the top hat away, because it reminds him way too forcibly of Fillory, but provides his new friend with a tiny little hatstand for it, so he'll know it's safe.

He can tell this is the beginning of something new and not necessarily the end of something bad, so he doesn't keep replying. Just sends him a picture a couple of hours later of himself in the mirror, chin down, in the blue cardigan- his new friend peeking out of one of the big square pockets.]

[ninefox]

[It hurts to look at, in a weird twisted way. Jedao draws fingertips over his chest, remembering the fine silver silk. He still looks so - the hair, the edge of his shoulder - but Kujen would never have tucked a living creature close to his heart like that. Or worn something so simple and homey in the first place. He wants to ask if Quentin is okay, but feels, obscurely, like it isn't his place. And he's well enough for this.]

I want to send people to hug you.

[magician_king]

Jesus don't.

I'm in touch w Credence & Harry

[ninefox]

harry saw me kissing 5s and tried to defend your honor

it was very sweet

[magician_king]

he's a good friend and earth is v monogamous

You ok?

[ninefox]

he is. he was so nervous about hurting anyone. i hoped he was might want advice on asking you out. we laughed a lot after.



no. but im

stable

[magician_king]

[He wants to scream at him. Wants to tell him this is not fair, that he can't do this and expect Quentin to just-

But he loves him.]

So I'm reading a book you might like

And do you think he was actually thinking of asking me out/are you just optimistic on my behalf?

[ninefox]

i don't think he's thought of a thing for himself since got here, and i should have known better. but i still think you'd be gentle with each other. i think that'd be nice



im not giving up

[Not trying to pass Quentin off, even if that might be the right thing to do, instead of stringing him along with the leftover barbed wire from between his ribs.]

i just

i still want nice things for you

[magician_king]

the book is a detective story about a wealthy american who learns of an inheritance abroad who goes overseas to find that the property and his family name have been cursed

he hires a brilliant detective who sends his most loyal friend to chaperone the young heir out to his country home to watch over him and not let him be consumed by the haunting, or rather by his own imagination because our detective is logical and sensible and does not believe in ghosts

[ninefox]

[Ghosts laugh at people like that, Jedao thinks. But that's probably not the point.]

is it terrible for you if i ask you to read it to me?

[magician_king]

[He just loses it here, puts down and turns off the communicator, pausing only to call Credence to ask him to come now.]

[ninefox]

[There are other messages, later, a scattered straggling string.]

sorry


your voice is only you and i still



sorry im sorry i hate this



i love you all wrong and im poison andi cant trust myself and you deserve everything
poisoned
poison
it's the same thing if you use enough ti was so long so there's biomagnification to worry about


ill stop
sorry
ill read the book if you leave it for me and i wont call you until im less
this
if you don't first
okay

[At which point he drops his communicator in the fish tank and drinks until he falls asleep.]

[magician_king]

[He waits through all of this, until 'if you don't first' which isn't a lot, but is leeway, is a toe in the door. He stays up late recording the audiofile in batches, one scratchy, hoarse hour at a time. The sorry sounds sadder than it probably should, of course. It still isn't a happy one exactly, but it's a little closer than before.]

[ninefox]

[Jedao listens to it while he's hungover, the lights as low as he can stand, the communicator tucked against his chest while he lies on the floor, eyes unfocused gazing at the gentle blue of his fish tank. Jedao listens to it wedged in a suit locker on the Roci, close as a coffin. Jedao listens to it while turning the communicator over and over and over in his hands, making Quentin's voice waver in soft sine curve, when he doesn't trust himself to touch his gun. When his teeth hurt with how badly he wants to taste it.

It's stupid, Kujen is dead and he is - neither free nor alive, but farther away than he could have imagined. Kujen is dead and Jedao imagines he can feel a beautiful long-fingered hand squeeze gently with every pump of his heart. Some wretched part of Jedao wishes the feeling were clearer.

Jedao wants to crawl to Quentin and - beg him, beg him for anything, and he doesn't know if he wants to be cradled in those hands or kicked away. He hates himself for not being able to pull them perfectly apart in his mind, and wonders how much trouble it would be to steal enough vinegar from the kitchen to bury his head in a bucket of it - a lot more trouble, now that he's quit. Fives would notice if he took cleaning supplies. He wants to feel scoured, wants to drip his own scathing acid contempt on himself and then wash it away, but he also can't be bothered to finish the orange Fives brought him, or put his boots on or move for hours at a time, so he doesn't. It's pathetic and it's absurd, hisses the part of him that knows how utterly, radically different they are. But none of the bitter chorus are trustworthy.

For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me, that's what Clark's play said. Does he love Quentin for his wonders, for his perfect gentleness - or for all of them together, with the part of himself that asked Quentin to hurt him until he couldn't think, that invited Quentin to ask whatever his scientific endeavors prompted him to ask, that always wants to curl up like -

The story runs out, and Jedao has only the vaguest idea of the ending, but he starts it again, and makes himself tea. He thinks of New Year's Dances. His vision swims a little and he almost throws up again, but his hands don't shake. His hands never shake. Ginger tea for nausea. It's easier than breathing, after the week's practice he got with Nico.]

thank you

[magician_king]

Fives was really worried about you this port. Have you been able to help him know you're back and it's okay?

okay-ish?

[ninefox]

he did find me. he put my heart back in

[And I guess I forgive him, thinks some sore and petty of him. But really he hadn't needed to.]

he makes me eat, and stuff. did you have breakfast today

[magician_king]

I've gotta go. I'll send you another book later.

[ninefox]

okay

[Which Jedao realizes he is starting to use for, I love you, but I'm confused and cowardly and I hate myself to much to say it properly.]

[magician_king]

[He reads to him all that sleepless night, another Holmes story, this one by Neil Gaiman and called A Study in Emerald. Cthulhu features. Quentin can never stay normal for long.]

[ninefox]

i like that one

[magician_king]

[He doesn't answer. He just reads him a couple of old Arthurian legends about the quest for the holy grail, in their old and prickly authentic language- and then Chivalry, the real story, the one he wanted him to have context for.]