querulus | Etraya

[What does he want from her?

A lot. But simultaneously? Nothing at all.

Quentin rubs his forehead wearily and moves to the armchair, irritably tossing away the DVD she left there so he can dump his sorry ass into it.]

Nothing. I guess. I don't know.

[He... knows he's hurt her. He got her killed, so of course she'd be a little salty about that. He remembers, even though the haze of reforming himself from the astral plane, the guilt he felt when he realized she'd paid the price for his stupid riot. And yeah, maybe "I'll bring you back to life if you date me" is.... cringe, to say the least, but come on! He was an idiot kid, he was grieving, had the world's worst brain fog, and oh yeah, the goddamn Phoenix was demanding he prove his love was strong enough to be worthy of her power. Spoilers: it wasn't. And Phoebe? Phoebe was never a replacement for Sophie. She was just the one who said hi. The one who made him feel good. A little less lonely. And yes, he does recognize the irony of all of that at this moment, thanks very much. He's very aware how fucking pathetic he is. Hypocrisy, thy name is Quentin Quire. That's nothing new.

And that's the other thing, isn't it? She thinks he's hiding the best of himself somewhere deep down and that there's some secret, extra-charming, perfect Quentin Quire buried under all the cynicism and irony and compulsive urges to systematically ruin everything good in his life. As if he would be keeping that fucker under lock and key if he had the option of parading him around. It'd sure as hell make it easier to do this whole "trying to be better" bullshit he's attempting. But unfortunately for everyone, including and especially Quentin himself, this miserable asshole is all there is.

... Phoebe never understood that, either.]

You're in my head. You tell me.

(And that's the grievance that she tried to explain to him on that yelling match, but of course, she suffers from telepath communication skill issue, like he does. She paid the price for the idiot kid shit he pulled — how could he have believed Esme, for fuck's sake? Seriously, bitch made out with the world's ugliest alien and got bamboozled by it, she really has very room to give anyone in this world or the next romantic advice.

Wait, not fair. This is not about Esme. Different show, different genre, she's getting a little worked up here.

What she is picking up is about another sister, and that's a whole different can of worms, because she remembers exactly how Quentin looked in Krakoa, and that's when it hits her. Phoebe played a bit of Build-A-Man, didn't she? Of course she did. That's never what Sophie would want, not what she was going with this.

It's more about that, up until very recently, until those eggs at late night when she was depressed, upset, and alone... There hadn't been anything from Quentin Quire to Sophie Cuckoo that was genuine in a way that appeases her. Something he did for her because she needed him, and she asked. Something that made her honestly happy. She had never seen anything good out of him with her pair of eyes.

She can deal with his shit, has dealt with his shit, is dealing with his shit. It's a different vibe.)

Holy shit, Phoebe really fucked you up.

["Build-A-Man" hits him like a ton of telepathic bricks. It's not... wrong, per say, even if it's not exactly correct. He started making edits long before Phoebe, uh. Well, okay, no sense in euphemisms—Phoebe fucked him. He assumes it was probably good, considering she came back later, but apparently he died at some point afterward soooo those memories are gone for good. Not on a mission. In some stupid way that nobody noticed until the next Cerebro update didn't pick him up. They never wasted X-Factor resources on investigating Quentin's non-mission-related deaths. When he disappeared, whether or not there was a body, they just assumed he was dead. They were never wrong. Eh. Sucks to suck.

The edits, though? They helped. Sort of. In a fucked up way. He doesn't know if they're why Phoebe got with him, though he can make a few educated guesses considering she didn't so much as look in his direction until Krakoa, and she never made any suggestions or anything. Hell, he's not sure she knew about his custom requests outside of the obvious ones.

Aaaand now Sophie knows there were more than the most obvious ones, so. Love that for him.

But hey, at least he made her eggs one time. Or whatever. Ugh. Quentin leans forward, resting his elbows against his knees, and pushes his glasses up to shove the heels of his hands into his eyes.]

I miss her.

[Fuck.]

(Sophie's been fighting her self-preservation instincts this entire conversation so she doesn't automatically close the free flow connection whenever it threatens her with sharing her own vulnerability. Sophie is on team 'I do not want to end up like you' when it comes to Emma Frost, but the diamond was cut out from somewhere, and the lengths she'd go to protect herself are, well. Oof. Ruthless pragmatism.

This? This is a conversation she wasn't remotely ready to have, so she's trying so hard not to shut down with it. He's making an effort, she has to do the same, but this bothers her much more than the resurrection subject, or even her death — it wasn't entirely on him, after all. It just... Aches, from all sides.

For all he believes she wants to hurt him, well, she doesn't, and participating in this thought swap is only going to do that when it comes to Phoebe. She's not closing up, as much as she is avoiding the thoughts, paying attention to his, and it's... Complicated, surely, because what isn't? She just doesn't know how to deal with this part of their baggage.

Fuck.)

... I don't know what to say.

[Quentin has to... well, not block her—the connection between their minds is still open, even if he can feel her struggling with the desire to flee, and sis? Hard same—but the anxiety in her head forces him to turn his focus away. Center himself. Calm his mind.

For a long moment he just sits. And breathes. And feels the world out there in the physical plane. The minds of the mutants in the mansion, the other people in Etraya, the animals, birds, the tiniest sparks of insects out there. Not touching them or listening to them, just... sensing them. It's so, so much quieter than the barrage of sensory input he's used to, but it'll do. At least this little chunk of the world feels alive, and that'll have to be sufficient for him to ground himself.

He focuses, and he breathes, and he slumps in this stupid fucking chair in Sophie's Cuckoo's weird empty liminal space of a mindscape, while she sits over on her couch like a really sexy bump on a log. And then, head still in his hands, he finally speaks, huffing an utterly exhausted, breathy chuckle.]

You're really bad at this.

[It's... a little bit of a joke. Like maybe 15% joke.]

(To each, whatever they need to do. For Sophie, that's connection, linking, synchrony, because under normal circumstances, she wouldn't be one. He busies himself with his scan, she moves her focus to his hypothalamus — breathing, synched, heart rate, synched, and her focus is on how it all flows. That's her grounding, her eyes closed as she just listens to it and lets it calm her nerves for a second.

She's not perfect. This is hard, and she crosses a leg on top of the other to really pay attention... Until he speaks and disturbs it. Not mad at all, actually, instead, it pulls an extraordinarily genuine laugh out of her, before her nose wrinkles in embarrassment and her eyes shut close as she tries to fight the...

Blush?)

I know... I've never done this shit before, it's all very new, okay? Fucking is less intimate than this, leave me alone.

Edited 2025-05-18 02:36 (UTC)

[He can hear her laugh, feel her cheeks heat up—much to her chagrin—and it's all so idiotic that the side of his mouth quirks up into a crooked smile entirely outside of his control. His hands drop from his eyes, but he stays slumped forward, resting his forearms against his thighs with his hands hanging between his knees.]

That's because you only fuck himbos.

[Look. No shade to Nate. Or Cable, he supposes. Quentin never really knew the kid, but he seemed nice enough. Himbos are totally valid and respected, we stan, blah blah blah.

But they're both so totally himbos. And Sophie knows it.]

(Where's her pillow, so she can hide her red face in for a hot moment. God, it burns, make it stop, she hates it, she doesn't blush, what the FUCK kill it with a thousand fires she hates it

With her face buried on the fabric, one finger and a black nail stand as she goes through this torture of going through an out of this, even through people she had a fleeting thing with. She wouldn't call them himbos, thank you very much, they're just... Hot, okay. Cable, well. Dork. Pretty hot, though. Proudstar, well, that was a weird time. Nate's just a bit clueless, not on him, though. Julian... It's the jock energy, okay.

She doesn't know what tarnishedmoodring looks like. He doesn't sound like himbo material, he's... Something else, but she doesn't know, does she? Snarky dumbass that won't stay down in Summoner's — ugh, she misses him. If Quentin wondered why she won't leave her phone alone even if it has no service, well, this is why.

Shit.)

...

Okay, so first of all. Himbo's a strong word.

[Great, yeah, a list of every himbo Sophie's ever thought was hot. Including a few Quentin didn't know about until now! Love that for him.

Oh well, at least he gets to watch her absolutely crash out over the fact that she somehow never realized she has a type. And that her type is himbo. Which it obviously is. Quentin lifts his head slightly, looking at her over the frames of his glasses with a raised eyebrow.]

Nobody said fucking himbos is bad. [He shrugs loosely.] I'm just saying, not exactly a wellspring of profundity.

(Hope he's enjoying talking to the golden strands of hair because she's not giving him the satisfaction of being the first person who managed to make her blush, even if she knows he knows her face is degrees hotter than it should.

She's not even looking at him, thank you, and fuck you.)

... You think I only care about looks.

[Oh, he knows, alright. He knows exactly how flushed her face feels right now, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't entertained. Quentin's quite certain any of the Cuckoos getting flustered like this is rare, and her mind readily confirms that hypothesis. He never saw this from Phoebe, either. It's... kinda fun, actually. In like a mild schadenfreude kind of way. He looks down at his hands again and raises one to adjust his glasses.]

Eh.

[That's a yes. And then, an intrusive thought. That he absolutely should not say because it is not even remotely the time or place.

And yet.]

I know how you can prove me wrong.

(You absolute gremlin.

Of course he's enjoying this, and if the roles were swapped, she'd be having a damn blast right back. God, karma is a bitch, and she just wants to talk to Her for one moment, maybe to show Sophie some mercy.

But it's the intrusive thought that he chooses to turn into an outside thought that proves to her that karma does not give shit about her feelings.

Un. Beliveable. She's dead again, pretty sure.

Any other time, any other place, this is a normal Tuesday. Right now, with her face already in pins and needles with the fluster she feels, all the rollercoaster of emotions they decided to ride, this only makes her skin reach the limit of how red it can go. The pillow is thrown at him with no care, her eyes squinting immediately in her indignation.)

What exactly in the last months, including the last hour, tells you that us is a good idea?

[The irony is if she threw a pillow at him in the outside world? All but guaranteed it'd smack him in the face, and she would be rewarded with some kind of squawk or otherwise ungraceful noise and fumbling and such. Unfortunately, Sophie chose to throw something at an Omega level telepath while in someone's mind. Doesn't matter if it's her own mindscape. Brains? That's his bread and butter. He catches the pillow easily and gestures vaguely with it in a shrug, not nearly as expressive or casual as his usual body language, but recognizable as a version of it.]

You're the one who said fucking was less intimate.

[He sticks the pillow between his back and the chair and leans against it. Now you don't have a pillow to hide your blushing into, Sophie. So nyeh.]

By your logic it'd be an improvement on this dumpster fire.

(Bitch. She's gonna have to throw a pillow at him out of her brain at some point. There's no mentally fighting Quentin for her, especially when she's just one, but out of here, she's going to kick him. She's very determined, because not only did he catch it with ease, but he also takes it.

Hope he enjoys a pink-colored Sophie, contrasting with the ocean blueness of her glaring eyes.

Don't bring logic into her brain.)

Logic aside from the very reasonable statement due to the fact you're literally hearing my every unfiltered thought and so am I for you, we already argue like a bitter divorced couple who can't decide on the terms and we've never even had a thing. If that weren't the case, sure, whatever, but it is, so nope.

Edited 2025-05-18 06:31 (UTC)

Okay, first, you said fucking, not dating.

[There's a difference. He's assuming she knows that, based on the way they got into this topic. And the latter? Out of the question. They can't communicate for shit even when literally crawling in each other's heads, and that's even if he had any interest in a sequel to The Phoebe Debacle. The former? Well, it's never really appealed to Quentin before but... hm. Whatever. He holds his hands up in surrender.]

Look, I'm not arguing. Like I said, us? Dumpster fire. No matter how you slice it. No reason to think there'd be any exceptions.

[... That said, her face is still very, very pink. And he kinda wants to know if it can get pinker. You know. For science. Or something. He looks up, watching her intently, the slightest hint of a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth.]

... Or, you know. You're just scared you'd like it.

(Listen, they are neither fucking nor dating and it's already bad. The joke is hardly a joke, they jumped over literally every stage and landed on DIVORCE. The bombastic side-eye intensifies at the mental comparison, because excuse her, she is not Phoebe, in case he hasn't noticed. Phoebe is Esme light, and Sophie is exactly on the opposite end of that scale. Sophie doesn't care about power — not a bone in her gives a fuck about Quentin's nor Nate's Omega-level bullshit, Phoenix capabilities, titles, or any of that shit. If anything, the fact she genuinely likes a man she met through a dumb videogame so much to the point shit goes down and she doesn't look up from her phone — personality and texting only.

Phoebe... Well. He said it himself. The funniest part of all this to her is that she truly prefers Quentin like this, over Krakoa. She actually had honest-to-God fun with him on that dance floor, their date-not-date, and at that arcade. The thing is that reaching that is pure hell, like she has to go through a nation-wide landmine of eggshells. Okay, fine, she does that to him too, she GUESSES. This is why they suck. God, they suck so much.

At least he sees it too. Dumpster fire and all that.

Thing is, Quentin, she is very well aware that she would probably enjoy it. She has heard more than he would want to know that she has. Her face has already reached the limit on how red it can go, and it is slowly creeping towards it again because... This is idiotic.

It's stupid. It's a very nice break from how much she wants to ghost, but listen.

It's dumb.

She hates she's considering it. Maybe fucking gives them something else to focus rather than whatever the FUCK they are.)

I'm not scared of shit, thank you very much. If anything, I'm concerned it's gonna make you even more insufferable after.

(Defense mechanism, blablablabla.)

If. If we do this. I'm not saying we are. I'm saying if. That's all it is, and we agree it can't make this shit worse.

[Quentin both watches and feels the cogs turning in her head and realizes with mild surprise that she is genuinely considering it.

Oh.

Well.

Okay, sure. Why not. He can roll with that, considering he's discovered this new interesting thing where he can make her squirm in a decidedly un-Cuckoo-like way, and that's very fun. Sure, he'll have to grapple with the Phoebe in the room at some point considering the whole clone, "they have the same face/body" thing, but that's a problem for later. For now he just focuses on how this is the first goddamn time any of this has felt like it's not being dragged down with too many years of stupid baggage. He lets the smirk pull at the side of his mouth more and leans forward, resting his elbows on his legs and steepling his fingers in front of his face.]

Well, I will absolutely be more insufferable. Buuut it kinda seems like you might be into that, otherwise you would've shoved me out of your head a while ago. As for "this shit," [he does the air quotes, because of course he does] it's already a disaster of Biblical proportions, so how much worse could it get?

[Okay, that's a bad question. Experience has shown that with Sophie Cuckoo and Quentin Quire, there is always further down to go. He gives her a quick look like "yeah, I know" and rolls his eyes.]

Look. You like attention, right? I like showing off. We're both telepaths. Surely not even we can fuck that combo up. If we do this, we go with that. It's just, you know. For fun. That's all.

(They, they will have, because honestly, she also doesn't love that part of it all, but listen. It was not the pitch of fucking non-himbos that does it for her, because she does not agree with his assessment for like, half of the people she has interest in. It was more the fact that... Hey. If they are already in the Quentin Quire vs Sophie Cuckoo showdown like they're exes fighting for their lives without ever having talked properly, might as well get something out of it. At best, they'll solve it and it's something better, at worst, at least they'll have something tangible to be pissed about.

Although, probably, it's going to be halfway pending towards the latter. She knows them.)

Oh, shut up, I'm not into it. I'm taking a well-deserved break.

(Ugh. She hates it when Quentin Quire is right. They have been trying, and peace lasts at most 48 hours, but at the comment, she gets ready to tell him 'tremendously', before he confirms he knows it.

She has doubts that they can't screw this up. She's pretty sure they can. But, alas. At least this mistake, they're both on board with. That's a fucking first.)

Fine. You know what, fine. Let's do it.

[This? This is a very weird day. Not the weirdest he's ever had, not by a long shot. But it's up there. In the top, say, 25 or so. Probably.

The weirdest thing is that it's not bad weird, honestly. This is... so entirely different than the start of any other relationship he's ever had—he highly, highly doubts this is how he and Phoebe got together—and this isn't even a relationship. Well. Technically speaking it is. By definition. But it's not a relationship relationship. That's the point. It's different and weird and somehow that feels... good. He's negotiating the terms and conditions of fucking Sophie Cuckoo, and somehow his head feels clearer than it did when she asked him to dance. Or go to the arcade. Or when he made her some goddamn eggs.

Huh.]

Great. Also you are so into it. Just sayin'.

[Cool. Good talk.]

Soooo, time? Place? What're we thinking? Logistics-wise.

(She does like it a LITTLE BIT. A smidge. A speck. Only because Quentin is cynical and bitchy, and guess who too is? Mindlessly bickering with him is fun, and as soon as she thinks it, she regrets it, because that stupid idea of keeping their mind free-flowing to each other is still on, she realizes while he too realizes this isn't going bad.

She's realizing that, too, and her eyes roll almost too dramatically.)

2 minutes, your room?

Hmm, okay, but if you're more than 15 minutes late I'm legally allowed to leave.

[Alright, not his best work in the reference humor department, but whatever. They can't all be winners, and as previously mentioned, this is a very surreal kind of day. He's allowed to have a couple of one-liners that aren't bangers. Whatever.]

Don't keep me waiting.

[Quentin gives her a little salute and vanishes. He'll just be in his room, sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard and wearing his PJs.]

Seriously?

(With rolling eyes, she clicks her tongue at the joke, although it lacks a characteristic bite from her, her nose wrinkling ever so slightly. Once he's gone from her brain, so is she — physical body only, and she sighs in a bit of relief because holy shit, what is her life lately. With the free flow cut, she has a moment to recenter, check herself in the mirror, and well. She's not going to change, looking cute and feeling cute makes her so incredibly happy, so the white lacy extra loungewear she is already wearing seems more than fine.

She's not late, probably perfectly in time once she opens his door, not bothering to knock because it's not like he doesn't know she's coming over... And God, it's pink, it's extra, it's so extra that it pulls a laugh out of her as she makes her way to sit on the bed next to him, eyes busy looking around at the explosion of pink.)

Not exactly, but also exactly what I was expecting out of your room, how do you sleep here?

(So much stimuli, but look, she came, her shoulder gently bumping on his, playful.)

Hey.

Hey yourself.

[Quentin gives her an appreciative once-over when she enters and again when she sits next to him since, you know, different angle. He promised her attention, and that's what she's going to get.]

I'm used to a few billion minds in my head. This is basically my "sad millennial beige."

[He looks around the room, opening his mind up to her so she can feel that the loud and bright and the extra does in fact calm him. It's like white noise, a constant cacophony that evens out to a pleasant hum.

Quentin also notably doesn't bump his shoulder back into hers, and that's because of the next topic. Might as well get it out of the way early. He leans his head back against the headboard and looks at the ceiling for a moment, then rolls his neck to the side to meet her eyes.]

Right, yeah, probably goes without saying, but I'm not doing shit that reminds me of Phoebe. I assume you don't have a problem with that.

(Very interesting to look at it through his eyes (literally). To her, well, she prefers more of a soft pink, gentle pastels, golden details, expensive crystals over the modern lightning and the harsher tones, but with how his brain reacts to it... She can get it, and besides, what about Quentin Quire isn't obnoxiously loud, anyway?

She was a bit distracted, admittedly, listening to hum in his mind like a quiet background noise until he starts talking again. Dark blue irises move to meet his, eyebrows raised for a second because...

Doy.)

None from me, I don't want to remind you or me of Phoebe, so I'm more than fine leaving that far, far from us.

(Mad, remember?)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject