InsaneJournal

Who: Quentin Coldwater & Alex Manes
What: Talking dreams, boy troubles, magic and other such things over alcoholic ice-cream
When: After these texts
Where: Random ice-cream shop
Rating/Warnings: G | None
Status: Log | Complete

Alcoholic ice-cream was in fact Quentin and Alex's thing which probably wasn't as cool as going to a bar or a nightclub but honestly Quentin didn't mind, he was honestly just stoked that he and Alex had a thing which was indicative of the fact their friendship had grown.

He hadn't been lying when he'd said that working for Ozma was good, great even. She was kind of chaotic and a little frantic at times but then she made up for it in how she was as a person which was really cool and Quentin liked her.

The end of the day had rolled around, thankfully, and Quentin had made his way across town to the place he and Alex tended to get their alcoholic ice-cream on. He secured them a booth and offered the woman behind the counter a smile.

"Your friend not with you, honey?"

"Oh, he is, I'm just waiting."

The woman nodded. "Alright, glad to hear it."

Quentin rubbed at his hair before he just sat forward, rummaging out the pack of cards he'd taken to carrying around with him and shuffled them absently.

Alex had intended on being on time; he was never late. It had been drilled into him for his entire life that to be early was to be on time, to be on time was to be late and to be late was unacceptable but today- well, Biscuit had taken the shoe off the prosthetic leg Alex had stashed under his bed and had decided to play an elaborate game of chase with him, her tail wagging as she trotted around the garden, barking in delight around the item in her mouth, body bent in a play bow.

He'd needed to get the shoe back and lock up the house - making sure she was settled with a chew - before heading out in the Uber that was, blessedly considering the circumstances, also running late.

Of course this meant that by the time he hit the ice-cream bar he was just over eleven minutes late and though he was a grown man, free from the thumb of his father and meeting Quentin - one of the nicest people he'd ever met - that pit of anxiety at being late was still gnawing at him.

"Hey," he said as he slid into the booth opposite Quentin, "sorry I'm late I- yeah, it's been a day."

Quentin looked up at Alex joined him in what was clearly a flustered state and offered him a smile. “Don’t worry about it, it happens.” He gathered up the cards he’d been playing with and laid them down on the table so he wasn’t fiddling with them now that Alex was here.

“I didn’t order because I didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for or what sort of alcohol you might need.”

Alex snorted, settling down and resting his hands on the table. "Are they the ones you woke up with?" he asked, gesturing to the cards. He'd watched Quentin their last few lunches playing with them; he was far more dextrous than he gave himself credit for considering how easily he handled them.

He glanced at the counter, then up at the menu board and gave the woman behind it a wave as she smiled in his direction. "Do you think it's a bad thing that we come here often enough that we're 'regulars'?" he asked with a small smile, nudging Quentin's foot under the table.

"Limoncello for me, I think. I'll buy; what do you want?"

“Uh, yeah,” Quentin said with a nod of his head. “Seem to end up carrying them with me everywhere.”

He chuckled when he spotted the woman behind the counter giving Alex a smile. “Probably?” He said with a smirk. “But you know there are worst places to be regulars.”

“White Russian for me, please.”

"Nothing wrong with that. Shuffling cards has been proven to be a good way of keeping yourself grounded." Alex shrugged. "Not too dissimilar from someone running a coin over their knuckles or over their fingers... however they do it." He couldn't do either of those things, but he was yet to meet a firewall he couldn't bypass.

He got to his feet and tapped two fingers on the table. "That's true. Be right back."

He offered Quentin a small smile and went up to grab their ice-cream from the counter, and a couple of drinks to wash it down. This place was bad for his waistline. He'd definitely have to get back into running of some sort or another.

After a brief exchange with the woman behind the counter who gave Alex a knowing look when he ordered for both of them that he was a little confused by and chose to ignore, he was walking back to the table with the tray.

"We keep up our habit of this and I'm gonna need to start running again," he teased. "She gave us extra today."

“I can actually do that as well,” Quentin shared with a small smirk though did sit back to watch the interaction between Alex and the woman behind the counter. He caught the exchange of looks and arched his eyebrow. “What was that about?”

Of course then Alex mentioned extra and he gave her an appreciative smile. “Guess I’m lucky that Ozma keeps me busy by getting me to go to places around the city so I get exercise that way.”

Quentin grabbed a spoon and tucked into his ice cream. “So spill,” he said as he looked up at Alex. “What’s going on with you?”

"I have no idea what she was hinting at," Alex said honestly as he helped himself to a spoonful of ice-cream. "She just said it was good to see the two of us back. I'm beginning to think we keep her in business."

He chuckled, "You are lucky, I gotta make sure to get out more. I get Biscuit out twice a day to help Kyle out, since I moved in he doesn't need to hire a dog sitter anymore to watch her while he's on shift. She keeps me on my toes, at least."

Eating ice-cream in stubborn silence for a few minutes, Alex just shrugged. "Told you, the usual. Boy troubles. Dream stuff. The normal crap for Orange County."

“That’s not any sort of explanation.” Quentin waved a spoon in Alex’s direction. “Firstly, what boy and what kind of trouble? Secondly, what’s going on in your dreams?”

They were friends and once you were friends with Quentin that was it. Didn’t matter what the fuck was going on with him he was going to be there and check in even if you were stubborn and obstinate.

"Well, my sort-of dream girlfriend doesn't hate me, so I've got that going for me." Alex teased with a little grin, though he did look concerned a moment later. "That's still pretty rough. Mine- it's a bit too much of dreams mimicking reality again for my liking, just with bonus guilt."

He stabbed his spoon into his ice-cream. "And I'm annoyed 'cause I can't work out what the dreams are, if they're some kind of alternate reality or mass hallucination, it's just a bit too much uncertainty for my liking, you know?"

"Yeah, well, that'll happen when you trap her brother in a box after it turns out he's entirely made of magic and actually kind of crazy and dangerous." Quentin just lifted his eyebrows before he took a huge spoonful of his ice-cream. "But you didn't answer my first question, about the boy?"

Quentin was as sharp as a tack, no getting things past him.

"Well if it's a mass hallucination then how has it affected everybody? Generally speaking there has been some common denominator, right, for that sort of thing to happen? Can't imagine everybody drinks the tap water so that's out and we all breathe the same air sure but something would have been reported if they were dosing the oxygen we breathe." He stirred his spoon around in his ice-cream thoughtfully. "It has to be an alternate reality especially as people here are also in our dreams."

Alex blinked at Quentin. "Come again?" he asked, "A person made of magic, rather than just being able to use magic?" That was a new one for him.

He wet his lower lip and ignored the boy question for now, instead focusing on the mass hallucination conversation. "It's possible, that's what mass hallucinations are, after all, just loads of people randomly experiencing the same delusion. Though I guess since everyone's are different that might not work." He rubbed his hand over his face and had another mouthful of ice-cream. "God knows, but if you look at the network it's been going on for years. If someone in power knows about it they're being very quiet, so it's obviously not being reported anywhere."

"Wow," Quentin muttered with a blink of his eyes. "You really don't want to tell me who the boy is and why you're having trouble, do you?"

He ate another spoonful of his ice-cream. "So, not a mass hallucination then, which only leaves the alternate universe theory. It's like that movie, sliding doors. You know one different decision and the entirety of your life is completely different."

"We're talking about other stuff right now," Alex pointed out with a grumble, stabbing his spoon into the ice-cream. "We can go back to boy troubles; they're not going anywhere."

He hummed thoughtfully, "Maybe? But as far as I'm aware there's no magic in this world? So it might be less Sliding Doors and more multiverse, maybe? I have no idea, honestly. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt." He shook his head, "Give me a complicated firewall any day."

"And we will," Quentin promised with a distinctly pointed look. Oh, he had your number, Mister Alex Manes.

He hummed in agreement as he took a sip of his drink and stirred at his ice-cream absently. "Probably better you don't think about it too hard. I'm trying to go with the flow which admittedly is difficult." Especially given what the dreams were throwing at him. "Multiverse sounds more plausible."

"Going with the flow is probably the better way of doing things," Alex agreed with a nod of his head, "hard not to think about it too deeply though when my job for the last six years has been to try and uncover things people wanted to keep hidden." He smiled a little.

After a moment of silence, he stuck the spoon into the ice-cream again and reached for his drink. "Kyle," he offered after few long seconds, not looking at Quentin. "Specifically Kyle and Seth."

Quentin's hand totally didn't still around the spoon which was at this point in his mouth when Alex finally admitted who the boy was and what sort of trouble he was talking about. "Seth's the tall brunette with all the piercings and tattoos, right? The one you found half naked in Kyle's kitchen?"

He respected Alex's decision not to look at him and instead busied himself with his ice-cream. “Has he been around again?”

"Yeah, probably more times than I've seen him but we had another underpants rendezvous in the kitchen." Alex sighed, "Found out that he and Kyle have been doing this thing on and off since college."

He swirled his ice-cream again. "It shouldn't bother me but it does. Makes me a crappy friend, I know."

"That's a long time," Quentin admitted after a few before he looked over at Alex. "Especially if he wasn't you know out in high school." Quentin knew on good authority that Kyle had also slept with Julia so that meant he wasn't gay but rather bisexual which was something Quentin could understand.

He took another spoonful of ice-cream.

"Any idea why it bothers you?"

Quentin had a thought but he wasn't about to share it.

"Yeah," Alex replied in response to both Quentin's 'long time' comment and his question of why it bothered him. "But it's stupid. I just gotta get over myself."

Quentin knocked his foot against Alex's leg under the table. "Why's it stupid? No judgment, promise."

"A part of me had always hoped if Kyle was gonna be into guys..." Alex trailed off, "Teenage me would be devastated."

Quentin could definitely understand that and relate. Not necessarily because of how he felt about Julia in this world but how dream!Quentin had felt (still felt?) about her. "I get that," he assured Alex with a soft reassuring smile. "How is adult you coping with it?"

"Adult me is ignoring it as much as possible," Alex admitted with a little grin. "But mostly I'm confused, I think?"

Ignoring it? Seemed fair. That was something Quentin could get behind. "Confused?" He ate a further spoonful. "About the fact he's into guys now or why he didn't share that information?"

Alex shrugged. "The latter, probably, but then we didn't talk much over the last ten years; the middle east's got pretty shitty signal and worse internet on the bases."

Twirling his spoon in his mouth, Alex wrinkled his nose. "I know it's not easy to just randomly bring up or whatever, I'll get over it."

"I will definitely take your word on that." Quentin gave Alex a smile before he eyed the wrinkled nose. "Yeah, I mean it is a hard subject to broach but maybe you should if it's bothering you? Don't get me wrong I am all for ignoring shit that bothers you because unhealthy coping mechanisms for the win over here, but do you want to continue the trend of not talking?"

He poked at his ice-cream and stirred it slightly.

"Well, we're talking," Alex said as a correction, "when I say we didn't talk much I literally mean I didn't really speak to anyone back home while I was out on deployment."

He twirled his spoon in the ice-cream and took a sip of his drink. "I don't know, maybe I'll just... wait and see what happens."

Tilting his head, he fixed Quentin with his dark gaze, "So, your dream girlfriend's brother... entirely made of magic?"

We're not together," Quentin pointed out. "And yeah, her brother was called Charlie and he uh, well, he tried to help this girl he liked after she messed up a spell to change her appearance and in doing so he combined multiple different spells but it was too much for him. The magic ultimately overwhelmed and consumed him, burning him from the inside out."

Quentin pushed his ice-cream aside as suddenly he didn't really have an appetite. "He became what's called a Niffin, powerful beings made of magic, but as they lack a Shade-" He paused as he realised that Alex wouldn't know what one of those was, wasn't like he lived in Quentin's dreams after all. "It's like your soul, it's the part that allows you to process complex emotions and connect to people. Niffins don't have this which means they're completely devoid of morality and run off impulse alone, which means them really dangerous."

He fiddled with his hair. "In my dreams I helped Alice locate her brother's spirit and as a result he attacked other students and when Alice summoned him she wasn't really thinking straight and didn't see how much danger she was in. He was going to kill her so I uh, stopped him, sealed him into a Niffin box, but now Alice hates me and is leaving Brakebills."

Alex blinked a few times; that was a lot of information to take in. The idea that in Quentin's dreams, people had literal souls - something he didn't really think he believed in at all - was interesting. Frightening as it sounded to be confronted with all of that, he couldn't help but feel a little bit cheated by his dreams; his were very normal. Michael, Isobel and Max possibly being aliens aside.

His eyebrows lifted. "Well," he started after a moment, "you want another cup of ice-cream?"