Quentin Coldwater (lostinbetween) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-06-05 20:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, julia wicker, quentin coldwater |
Who: Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker
What: Quentin has his first dream and it's not much with the fun
When: 2nd June
Where: Their shared apartment
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 / Some mentions of Quentin's canon depression and its consequences
Status: Complete
To say Quentin Coldwater was having a crappy night's sleep was a vast understatement. He'd fallen asleep late because he never went to bed at a normal person hour even when he should and by the time four am ticked around he'd found himself caught up in a very vivid very unwanted dream that involved: mental illness, suicide attempts, a stint in a psychiatric hospital, a huge crush on Julia, the discovery of a dead body, the inexplicable and sudden revelation that actually magic was real, meeting Eliot and Margo in his dreams, giving up anti-depressants in exchange for learning about magic, meeting a woman called Alice, the not so fun encounters with a guy called Penny and then at the very end some sort of 'Beast' freezing time, plucking out the Dean's eyeballs and getting a little too close to comfort.
He'd woken in a cold sweat, feverish quick breaths escaping his very tight chest, the same chest he reached for with his fingers until the tips of his blunted nails dug in so deep that he finally remembered how to breathe. It wasn't real, right? Just a dream? Quentin swallowed hard, hand pushing his hair back before his gaze latched onto what looked like marks on his wrists and he let out a quiet, "shit," when he ran the pad of his thumb over the clear marks of a suicide attempt before he hurriedly tugged his sleeves down like that would somehow banish it and make it not so real.
Julia, was she- Was she okay? He could also vividly remember how in the dream their friendship had been tested and broken when he'd been accepted into Brakebills and she hadn't.
Without a second thought Quentin was on his feet and moving through their shared apartment, rapping his knuckles against Julia's bedroom door.
Julia took a moment to respond, the sound of knocking penetrating the edges of her dream and she blinked herself awake, rubbing at her eye and lifting her face out of the pillow. Her hair was in utter disarray and she squinted at the door before she called "come in?" because if that was Q on the other side of the door, he never knocked.
She sat up a little in bed, the covers pooling at her waist and the strap of her tank top slipping off her shoulder as she waited for Quentin to come in.
Quentin waited for the invitation before he pushed open the door and peered around it, look uncertain and smile hesitant. "Hey, sorry, I uh-" He breathed in and shrugged, hand moving to rub idly through his hair. "It sounds really stupid but I had a really messed up dream and it totally freaked me out so um, you mind if I stay in here tonight?"
Julia just flipped the edge of the sheets down and patted the bed, sleep-fogged confusion causing her to be a little slower to respond than usual.
"It's not stupid," she managed around another yawn, lying back and wriggling down and patting the bed again, her arm outstretched invitingly. "What happened?" Her voice was softer, now, trying to reassure him as best she could.
Quentin let out a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding, some sort of weird paranoia that somehow his crappy behaviour in the dream had leaked out into his current reality and Julia was annoyed at him. Rationally he knew how insane that sounded but it was difficult to be rational right now especially after all of that.
He covered the distance and slipped into the bed beside Julia. "I think calling it is a dream is a stretch, it was more like a nightmare and I uh-" Quentin swallowed hard before he allowed Julia a look at one of his wrists. "This turned up."
Julia was about to tell him that nightmares were common enough but then he pulled his sleeve up and showed her the healed scar on the inside of his wrist and an alarm tugged at her which had her reaching out for him, pulling him closer so she could run her thumb along the raised ridge, her heart in her throat.
She knew Quentin had never hurt himself, that he'd never felt even close to it, but it reminded her of a dream that had jolted her awake a few nights ago where she'd dreamed that she'd had a call that he'd tried to kill himself. Of course, she'd rationalised it as a nightmare and paid it no mind. She felt a little sick.
Reaching out for his other wrist, she turned it over, thumb slipping underneath the skin and feeling a mirrored ridge there, too.
"Q," she started, having no idea how to even begin processing that. "What- what did you dream about?"
Quentin swallowed hard as Julia explored both those now healed scars which hadn't been there before and he worried his lower lip for a moment as he tried to work out the best way to explain what exactly he'd dreamt about.
"I dreamt that I uh... well, that I was in a psychiatric hospital because of... well, I tried to kill myself. Apparently I was super depressed in my dream and I felt-" He exhaled a shaky breath. "I mean I know it was just a dream but fuck, Julia, it felt so real. Frightening so." He lifted his gaze and searched her expression. "And you were there so were Eliot and Margo and a couple other people but I didn't meet them until... well, magic got involved."
The mention of Eliot and magic was filed away for later reference; she could always reach out to him on the network to tell her what that nonsense meant. She didn't know who Margo was. But she had dreamed that she'd gotten the call that Quentin had tried to kill himself. She'd woken up sobbing, walked to his room and checked he was asleep before she ate half a pint of ice-cream and went back to bed. Told herself it was just a dream.
She reached out, hands sliding up his arms and then she tugged him into a tight hug, her fingers curled in his hair as she held him close.
"It's okay, Q," she murmured, "It- I'm here and you're here and you're okay, and that's what matters."
Quentin went with the hug easily enough and wrapped his arms around her, fingers curling and fisting in the material of her top as he just pushed out a shaky breath. She was right and he knew she was but he just felt... wrong in so many ways that he couldn't even begin to describe.
"Yeah," he said with a small nod of his head. "You're right."
He focused on breathing because as long as he kept breathing then everything would be okay.
The hand that wasn't buried in Quentin's hair rubbed in long, soothing circles over his back. She kissed the shell of his ear before going back into the hug and holding him tightly. She didn't want to tell him that she'd had a similar dream; he was freaked out enough as it was and she wasn't about to add anything else onto him right now.
"You-" she leaned back, catching his jaw so he was looking at her, their faces lit up by the yellow light of her alarm clock. "I know you're not- But if you- you'd talk to me, right?"
Quentin lifted his gaze to rest on Julia and it was a lot less wide and frazzled than it had been when he'd first woken from the dream. "Wha-" And then it dawned on him what she was saying without really saying it and he hurriedly nodded his head. "Yeah, of course. Not that I am, you know."
And he wasn't, he never had been, but that dream- Jesus, it had felt so fucking real.
"Okay, good, 'cause I don't-" Julia swallowed, fingers tracing the edge of Quentin's cheekbone and she leaned up, kissing his forehead.
She just nodded, drawing away onto to tug him down onto the bed with her, hugging him close still and keeping him in her arms as best she could.
"Okay," she repeated quietly. "You know I love you, Q."
Quentin's eyes closed at the kiss to his forehead and he went with her easily, more than happy to sink into her arms and soak up the comfort that he was really in need of this evening, morning, what-the-fuck-ever time it was.
"I know," he assured her softly. "I love you too, Julia."
So much.
Julia hummed, squeezing him gently before she relaxed into the pillow. "Okay, do you think you can go back to sleep? 'Cause it's really fucking early and I have work in the morning."
Quentin snorted quietly before giving a nod of his head. "Yeah, I think I can do that." He closed his eyes and let himself relax safe in the knowledge that Julia was with him and the dream would be something for a more awake Quentin to deal with.