greywash

Title: "keep a bower quiet for us"
Fandom: The Magicians (TV)
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater and Julia Wicker, Background Pairings
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Length: ~1,600 words  

Content notes: Warnings for disturbing content and consent issues. I keep my warning policy in my AO3 profile and am always willing to answer private DW messages or emails asking for elaboration or clarification on my warnings for a particular story. Spoilers through The Magicians 4x06, "A Timeline and Place."

Author notes: For both the "Restraint" challenge and the "Solitary" square on my bingo card. Title—inappropriately—from Keats, "Endymion." [ETA 2019.03.21: this story is now also posted to AO3.]

Summary:

Sitting next to Quentin in the closet, Julia asks, "Anything you want to tell me?"; and he makes a high, ragged noise, and shakes his head.

keep a bower quiet for us

"You okay?" she asks; and he nods.

"Yeah," he says. "You?"

"Yeah," she agrees, "I'm okay," so—

—so.

That night when she hears him moving around, three AM, she gets up and goes—in her pajama shorts and one of Marina's abandoned sweaters—to sit, head tipped back against the door of the room he's been using, whenever the Monster deigns to let him sleep. It's the room just next to hers: behind the door she can hear Quentin shuffling around, the high, desperate too-fast syncopation of his breathing. She pulls her hands into her sleeves, wanting—

"Can I come in?" she asks, finally, without raising her voice.

Quentin's voice catches, rough and desperate: and Julia closes her eyes.

After a second, he comes and opens the door. Goes back to—Jesus, he's not even sleeping in the bed, is he? There's a nest of blankets and a pillow down on the bottom of the closet: she looks at him, and he rubs at his face.

"Would you believe me if I told you it was better for my back," he says, voice thick with tiredness; and she asks, "Is it true?"; and he pushes his hair back, and then waves a hand. Saying nothing.

Julia shifts. "Is there something you want to tell me, Q?" she asks, very quietly; and Quentin—

—takes a breath.

Sighs.

"No," he says, deeply weary. "No, it's—whatever you're thinking, it's not—."

He stops. Breathing hard.

"I—Brian slept," he explains. "Brian—had to sleep, and—and Eliot's body still needs to sleep, so I—I wake up with him sometimes," Quentin says, "whatever"; and then he rubs at his forehead.

She swallows, and touches his elbow: "Q," she says—

"No, no, it's not—." He laughs, a little. "I'm pretty sure he—doesn't know anything about—that, and I—am really hoping he doesn't figure it out, it's just—it's like waking up with an extremely large, very poorly groomed German shepherd that's been trained by a psychopath to protect you, he's—"

He waves his hand around again.

"Uninvited and terrifying?" Julia asks, quiet; "Probably harmless," Quentin says, "to me"; and then his voice cracks, and he—terrifyingly—starts struggling to breathe.

"Okay," Julia says, heart pounding, as she helps him over to the edge of the bed, "I—okay. Quentin. Let's just. Have a seat."

The Monster rolls in around four. He doesn't look noticeably bloodier but he still obviously hasn't taken a shower; he looks at Julia, still sitting next to Quentin on the bed, with a deeply suspicious expression, but she just puts a finger over her lips, and beckons him out into the hall.

"Quentin needs to sleep," she says, "but you and I could play, for a while."

They play canasta. The Monster wins, best of seven, but they keep playing.

"You care that Quentin needs to sleep," he says.

"Of course I do," she agrees. "He's my friend."

He gives her a look.

"I sleep with Quentin, sometimes," he says; and against the wave of sickwrongno that washes over her—

She takes a breath. Lets it out. "Do you not like your bed?"

"Hmm." He tilts his head, thoughtful. The Monster's bed is actually a sofa. It seats about five people and is upholstered in green velvet, and seems to be more or less the only sensual pleasure that the Monster doesn't get tired of. "No, I like my bed," he decides. "But sleeping is less boring, with Quentin."

She lays down a meld. "Why's it less boring with Quentin?" she asks.

"Mm, warmer," he says, "I'm bored, let's play Go Fish," so they play two hands of Go Fish and then the Monster staggers up to his feet, swaying slightly. "Quentin needs to sleep," he says, more than halfway to asking, so—

"Yeah," Julia agrees; and the Monster sighs, but goes back to his sofa, and collapses on his face like someone hit his power button; and then Julia goes to bed.

Then Quentin's dad dies and the Monster goes to Mesopotamia and comes back and when he leaves he's Eliot again, to Quentin at least; and Julia wakes up for no reason at four in the morning, in silence, and goes, without asking, into Quentin's room.

Quentin is sitting up on the floor of the closet, his blankets pooled around him, shaking all over, with his head in his hands: elbows braced against his bent-up knees as he gasps and gasps for breath. Fuck it: Julia comes and sits next him on his blankets, not quite touching, while Quentin calms down.

"Anything you want to tell me?" she asks; and he makes a high, ragged noise, and shakes his head.

She sighs, and drops her head back against the wall, catching—dresses, coats; she doesn't know. Half of it's Marina's. It doesn't matter. When Quentin lifts his head up, finally, Julia slides an arm around him, scooting closer, and he rests his head on her shoulder.

And then.

Then.

The thing about fear that Julia has learned and is relearning is that it doesn't—go away predictably. It surges up while flowing away like a riptide; you get bored of it, and frustrated with it, and resent it, and all the while you can still be afraid and not afraid at the same time. Sometime around when she'd lost Quentin to Brakebills Julia'd told herself she wasn't afraid anymore, of finding him—bleeding, unconscious, not breathing, cold, dead, lost to her forever: but she was. She is. She never stopped being afraid for him. And knowing he's ride-or-die for the Monster's favorite car service doesn't exactly make her feel better about it: not watching him standing there with the Monster's hands on his throat, and not after, when the Monster's fucked off to wherever he goes, when he's not actively psychologically terrorizing her best friend. She takes Quentin out for Chinese food and then brings him home and watches him brush his teeth and then pulls him into his bedroom: bed, she's thinking, his actual—

—but the Monster is passed out on top of his duvet, and Quentin's expression: God. God.

Julia swallows. "We could—my room," she whispers; but he rubs at his face and drops her hand and just stumbles forward, dropping down face-first right next to the Monster, who is lying asleep on his back in that filthy fucking coat and Nigel's long shoes; and then Quentin pulls the quarter of the duvet that the Monster's not lying on top of up over his jeans, and closes his eyes.

"He's pretty fucking unconscious, when he actually goes to sleep," Quentin says, voice thick. He's not even trying to speak particularly quietly. "I'm not going to wake him up."

Julia crosses her arms over her middle. Squeezing—squeezing: "Q—," she starts, but then—stops, when the Monster shifts up onto his side—not waking, Q was right about that—and then tips his head: to press his face, just for an instant, against the nape of Quentin's bowed neck; and Quentin—

—shivers all over. His shoulders.

Going loose.

Julia swallows, stepping back. After a minute, she goes back to her own room.

She lies awake for a long, long time. Next to hers, Quentin's room is quiet: the sort of heavy, muted not-quite-stillness of bodies, asleep: finally, around three, she gets up and goes to enchant her makeup mirror, realizes she can't, and then has to figure out how to get into the security system with her phone, instead: just—just in case. She's restless, all night, but the motion sensor doesn't activate the camera until just after noon, when the Monster wakes up, and she's—up, alert, already hours-since showered and dressed and ready for action: just in time to watch the Monster look down at Quentin, still passed out next to him, and then—

—and then pull the duvet up, to Quentin's shoulders, before blipping out of the apartment again.

Julia didn't realize she was holding her breath. She presses her hands to her forehead, her hair, and then goes into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich.

When Quentin comes out, a half-hour later, still damp from the shower with a piece of toilet paper stuck to a shaving cut on his jaw, she passes him a cup of coffee. Doesn't say anything, even though she—

"Thanks." He takes a sip, and then a breath. "How'd you sleep?"

"Not great," she says, and he nods, ducking his head.

"Sorry," he says, very quietly.

She drinks her coffee. "You look better," she says.

He doesn't look up. "Yeah," he says, and then clears his throat.

Julia shifts. She's—ready to go. They could—portal to Brakebills, work on research; travel to Fillory, if Penny came back—

"Anything you want to tell me?" Julia asks; and Quentin sighs.

"It's—I can't, right now," he says, and then swallows, throat bobbing: "I can't—fuck it, Jules, this isn't—what I want to tell you, I can't—not now, not like this, I can't"; and then he looks at her: and God, that face.

"Yeah," she says; and then, against the edge of her cup, "Sleep any better, at least?"; and Quentin starts laughing.

"What," he asks. His voice cracks when he says, "Than I do in the closet?"; and Julia sets her cup down, and slides her arm around his waist.