#i have fallen HARD into a musical rabbithole and | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

missabigailhobbs · 7 years ago

Text

i once was lost (but now i’m found)

A Qulia commission fic for @qulia-quest! Romantic, sexy, enemies-to-lovers. 5k words.

Do you want your own custom fic? Send me an ask, and I will write you your very own fic, with whatever you want! Enjoy :)

The music was thumping in Julia’s ears, and she was drunk enough where that was pleasant. Fuck magic. Fuck Brakebills, fuck the whole damn thing. Someone had been breaking into her apartment and leaving her book on magic, as if she wanted that. Brakebills had rejected her, why would she want a painful reminder of that? She already had an ugly scar down the inside of her arm, and that had been fun to explain to everyone. Long sleeves really were a blessing.

She was talking a little bit with some people online, other people like her who believed magic was real. Sometimes she thought this was all one mass hallucination, but there were things about it she couldn’t reconcile with the world that she understood to be real. Like her scar, and the books.

They kept piling up, but she refused to read them. Curiosity killed the cat and all. She’d sworn off magic; it had only hurt her before. Fucking Quentin, telling her that she should lay off, that magic wasn’t for everyone, whatever. Fuck him. No good had come of chasing fucking fairytales and she goddamn refused to go down that rabbithole again.

So that was why she was at this party. To get drunk. To forget, and try to move on. Maybe go back to school, although that life seemed a million years ago. Maybe she’d get a psychology degree, try to psychoanalyze why she’d fallen so deep into fucking fairy tales, why she and her former best friend had had a shared hallucination that he was still somehow engrossed in. Something about those fucking Fillory books she and Q had read as a kid, but it all seemed so hazy now, through the blur of four or so drinks and a small handful of Xanax.

She collapsed in a beanbag in the corner of the room, her head spinning. The music thudded and people brushed past her legs, and she had to tuck her legs under her to avoid an accidental broken ankle. Someone flopped down beside her and she squinted at him.

Her heart stopped in her chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked, voice dripping with acid.

Quentin put up his hands. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said, trying to defend himself in case she started swinging at him or something. “I guess we just have a…. A mutual friend or something.”

She leaned back in the beanbag chair, eyes narrowing at him. “You better leave, Quentin. Get the hell out. I’m done with you, with magic, with all of that shit.”

He gave her that hurt puppy expression, and it just made her want to punch him even more. “I was just trying to help, Julia…”

“Get out!” she growled, and he got the fucking hint this time. When she woke up, she was back in her bed at home, and she cursed him. Fucking magic.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bleary eyed and hungover, she made coffee and leaned against her kitchen counter. She poked listlessly through her fridge, finding nothing of even moderate interest. She’d been losing weight, but it was hard to find the energy to go grocery shopping when you had lost interest in nearly everything.

Scanning her kitchen, her eyes fell on the stack of books. In a fit of maybe-still-drunk bad decision making and a bit of leftover anger at Quentin, she opened the one on top.

Six hours later, she found herself on the floor, surrounded by books and notes and sketches. Where had the time gone? She was starving; it was like she had entered a fugue state, drawn into the enticing world that magic offered. She wavered, realizing she was on the edge of a dangerous precipice. To dive back into the world of magic now would likely mean never seeing the other side again. How could you go back, knowing that magic was real, that you could do it, that it was literally at your fingertips?

Julia thought it over while she made herself another pot of coffee. Checking the computer, she saw she had over 200 messages on the forum for other people like her, experimenting with the idea of magic, asking themselves if this insane thing could possibly be real. If magic, real magic, could really exist, and if so, could they really do it?

She flipped through one of the books and found one that didn’t require any special ingredients, just a series of hand movements. It was supposed to do something with temperature, make it a few degrees cooler or something like that. She tried it a few times, and almost gave up with frustration.

But then her vision narrowed. This was a comfortable, familiar feeling. When Julia really set her mind to something, there was absolutely nothing that could deter her from it. She practiced it again, and again, until her hands ached, and then -

She saw her breath in the suddenly chilly air. Holy fuck. This shit really worked.

She went over to the computer and typed a simple message: “Magic is real and I can prove it”.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the course of the next week, a half dozen or so collection of misfits showed up at her apartment. They didn’t explain themselves, nor did they have to. Julia let them in without a word. Some came bearing gifts, of pizza or booze or coffee, and some came with nothing but backpacks full of notes and hopefully a spare change of clothes. They worked for days on end, trying the spells in the books Julia had amassed through her mysterious donor.

“We missed you,” one of the women said to Julia quietly. “We thought you’d given up on us.”

“I had,” Julia replied without looking up from her notes. “But now I’m back. So let’s work.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had been three days of solid work and Julia was fairly sure she hadn’t slept much, if any. Maybe some quick catnaps between work sessions, but nothing of substance. She was running on cigarette smoke and caffeine, and some kind of amphetamine pill someone had brought. It really kept her awake, but it made her a little jumpy too, which was why the quiet snick of the window and the subsequent slide had her up faster than she could blink, a big knife from the kitchen in hand.

Julia jumped into the spare room, where she’d heard the noise, knife pointed straight ahead of her, and was greeted by a very unmanly scream. “Quentin?” she asked, astonished to see him here. “What the fuck?”

He dropped the book he’d been clutching and tried to back out the window in one motion, mostly succeeding in just banging his head on the window frame. “Ow! Fuck! I was just bringing you a book, don’t stab me!”

Julia sighed and picked up the book. It was new, something about transfiguring objects. She narrowed her eyes. “Have you been bringing me all the books?” she asked, giving him a hard stare. “After you told me to give up magic? Why?”

He wavered, still seeming to be on the cusp of deciding to just bolt out the window and attempt to take flight or something. Maybe he could fly, who knew anymore.

“Quentin, get the fuck in here. You’re letting my AC out and you look ridiculous,” she snapped after a few moments of him being completely frozen in the window.

Sheepishly, he crawled inside. “So, um… you didn’t know, who was bringing you the books?” he asked, rubbing the back of his head. She used to find that habit somewhat endearing, him looking like a six year old like that, but she was finding it harder to feel anything much these days.

Julia paused. She supposed she should have figured that out - it’s not like books could just appear out of nowhere. But she’d almost figured it was someone fucking with her, trying to lure her back into magic. It had worked, eventually, but she wasn’t thinking about that too much right now. “Why?” she asked, after a long moment.

“Well, I mean… I was trying to help,” he said, hesitant, turning to close the window. “You couldn’t get into Brakebills so… I mean, I couldn’t teach you or anything, but I just wanted to help. Cause you were right, you know, about magic being real and stuff… so I was just trying to help,” he finished lamely.

Julia stared at him for a long moment. “Well come help. We have lots of company.” She left him alone then. He would either follow or not.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With Quentin’s help, they progressed through the spells much faster. Turns out that stupid pretentious magic school was actually useful. Eventually, Julia had been awake for something going on a week and she collapsed on the sofa, notes falling from her slack fingers.

When she awoke, there was a heavy weight on her lap. She blinked, squinting down. She rolled her eyes - fucking Quentin. “Get off of me,” she grunted, pushing him off. He tumbled nearly all the way to the floor, missing cracking his head on the coffee table by an inch.

He winced, sitting up slowly. “Good morning to you too, Julia,” he said dryly, getting up carefully, touching his head to make sure that he hadn’t actually injured himself. She stayed sitting, watching him. The warmth in her lap… it felt nice. She hadn’t really had anyone… close to her in a long time. She rubbed her palms on her thighs and got up, wandering around.

Most of the others had left by now, having gotten what they needed from Julia’s books. Back to their own research or maybe they’d decided that magic just wasn’t for them, that this wonderland was more than they could handle and they wanted out. She didn’t blame them. There were a few stragglers, mostly those who had come later to the party, who were still taking notes and writing their sketches on her kitchen table.

“You guys need to get out tomorrow,” she said, going to her coffee maker. “I need my apartment back.” I need to be alone with Q, is what she didn’t say. She’d had so many complicated feelings about that boy of late. It was like the five stages of grief in reverse or something. She’d felt betrayal, anger, acceptance, and now… maybe something like forgiveness, or even a semblance of their former friendship.

The others couldn’t really complain. It was her apartment, after all. “And you need to tell the others not to come back. At least not for a while. I’ll post about it if I have something new,” she promised, when they started to protest a little.

“Where did you get all this stuff anyway, Julia? This is… like some high-level shit right here,” one of the young men said, a geeky type with huge glasses and bad skin.

She shrugged. “A friend.”

Quentin was hovering near the living room threshold, not wanting to intrude on Julia and her… friends? But he heard her refer to him as a friend, and that was certainly an upgrade from ‘Fuck you Quentin, I never want to see you again’. He smiled, and went back to sleep on the sofa. The magic they were doing was pretty basic for a Brakebills student, but to see Julia’s smile when she mastered Popper #50 made him too happy to even consider bursting her bubble.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, Julia bid a firm farewell to her new guests. With a minimum of complaining, they packed up their notes and took cups of coffee for the road, and she was finally alone. Well, alone with Quentin, who could presumably pop off to his magical Hogwarts any time he liked. She had absolutely nothing to do with his comings and goings, and that suited her just fine.

He was asleep on the couch again when she found him, and she poked his arm. “Quentin. Get up.”

He startled awake, clutching his chest like a damsel on the cover of a bodice ripper. She snorted. “Good morning, sunshine. It’s 2 pm, would you like to join us now?”

He looked around, bewildered, like he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to his current location. After a moment, he relaxed. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Gone,” she replied shortly. “I kicked them all out this morning.”

Quentin’s eyes widened a little, and he looked slightly uncomfortable with the prospect of being alone with Julia. Their relationship felt a bit like walking on eggshells these days; he knew he shouldn’t have told her off like that before, that magic wasn’t real, and yeah, breaking into her apartment was kind of creepy, but he’d just been trying to help.

“So, um… find anything useful in the books?” he asked, brushing his hair out of his eyes and standing up to stretch.

“Yes,” she said, looking at him evenly. “Lots. Thank you. Still looking for some of the more esoteric ingredients, but we’re getting there. And I have friends in a lot of strange places, turns out.”

“Um… yeah,” he said, nodding awkwardly. “I’m glad that it… it helped. Listen, I’m starving, do you want to go get some food?”

She considered it. “Are you buying?”

Quentin cracked a smile. “Yeah, my treat. Let’s go to that noodle place we used to go to all the time.”

She nodded. “Okay. Let me shower and then we’ll go.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before she had decided to reinvest in magic, she had been feeling so empty. Her life felt purposeless, boring, utterly mundane. Now she had an invigorated sense of herself, of a mission in life, and… surprisingly, she had Quentin to thank. When he’d left, she’d more or less written him off. They had been extremely close friends, to be sure, but with the complete lack of communication and his dismissal when she’d tried to plead with him for help with her burgeoning powers, she’d decided she was better off on her own, and later just forgetting about magic altogether.

But now they were walking side by side, talking, chatting as if no time had passed at all, to a noodle place they used to haunt regularly when they needed a break from studying. They sat at a small table in the corner, knees nearly brushing, and Julia felt… some small spark of something she hadn’t thought about or felt in a long time. Something that made her care, made her want to make irrational decisions because she could and nothing in the world could stop her.

Quentin was talking about something - he was always talking about something, honestly, always running his mouth about whatever topic had interested him today - and she cut him off. “Do something,” she murmured, low enough not to be heard over the chatter of the other diners and the staff. “Do some magic. Right here, right now.”

His eyes got big. “Now, Jules? What if someone sees us?”

“I don’t care. Just do something, come on,” she urged him, grinning.

He hesitated, but then did a complex series of movements with his fingers and all the tableware rose six inches off the laminated surface, the forks and chopsticks floating next to the hot sauce and salt. She grinned, and he gave her a hesitant smile in return. She was looking a little manic, but he’d take this version of Jules over the dead-eyed woman who had tried to stab him with a kitchen knife.

They talked for hours over noodles and soft drinks, and then a bottle of wine, until they were both pleasantly buzzed and laughing, like nothing had ever changed.

Quentin told her stories about Brakebills, about Eliot and Margo and the challenges they’d faced even getting into their cottage, and Julia told him about the other hedges, about how there was a thriving magical society in New York, people learning from each other and scrabbling for any bit of information they could get their hands on. It made her sad, that they had to fight over scraps while people like him had the keys to the kingdom, but they’d just have to figure it out.

They stumbled home arm in arm, laughing as they tripped over the curb, holding each other up. Julia managed to get the key into her apartment door, with Quentin doing some kind of spell to help guide it into place.

They tumbled into Julia’s apartment, Quentin falling on top of her. They both hit the floor ungracefully, and laughed. Julia suddenly stopped laughing, looking up at Quentin. In certain lights… in this light, maybe, he was… really beautiful. Maybe even something more than that. Definitely more than a friend. Was it the magic that made him look so… ethereal? Or was it just something about him she’d never noticed before?

She reached up, tangled her fingers in his hair, and kissed him. He made a surprised noise and braced his hands next to her head.

“Jules…” he tried to warn her, but she shook her head.

“Q. Shut up. Just kiss me.”

You had to give it to him, Q at least knew how to follow instructions. He pressed her down against the floor, her hair tangling under her shoulders, and kissed her until they were both utterly breathless. They broke apart, laughing.

“Want to go to my bed?”

“Jules, fuck, I’ve been dreaming about you saying that since we were kids,” he admitted with a laugh, cheeks flushed from kisses and wine.

“Time to make your dreams come true then, isn’t it?”

They tugged on each other’s clothes as they made their way down the hall, stopping every few feet to kiss and laugh as they stumbled over each other and the clutter of a half-dozen manic houseguests in Julia’s apartment. Their coats dropped together into a pile on the floor, and Julia’s hands were nimble getting Q’s sweater up and over his head.

“Whoa, should we...slow down?” Quentin asked, although his hands were making quick work of Julia’s shirt.

“No,” she nearly growled, pushing him more forcefully towards her bed. He fell into his back on the mattress, looking up at her with those big eyes. Fuck, she wanted to just devour him.

She held his wrists down, and he didn’t protest. In fact, he whined and pressed up against her. Julia grinned, feral and wild. “You like that, huh?” she purred, leaning down to nip and bite at his neck.

He gasped and rocked his hips against hers. “Yeah, I… I think I do,” he said, sounding startled.

“What, do they not have sex at magic school?” Julia taunted him, dragging her teeth down his neck.

“No, they do!” Quentin squeaked, squirming underneath her, flexing his hands under her grasp and finding he was held fast. “It’s just… um, I don’t. Very often. And rarely sober.”

“Well we’re not sober now,” she pointed out with a smirk, unbuttoning his shirt with her teeth. It was a little messy, sure, but he didn’t mind. In fact he rather seemed to enjoy the extra brushes of her lips against his skin as she worked his shirt open. “Keep your hands where they are.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not - he’d always had a submissive streak - he kept his hands up over his head while she got his pants open and slid her jeans off. “You just lay there, okay?” she panted, fishing in her nightstand for a condom. She didn’t know what kind of abomination magical abortions might be, and she really didn’t want to find out. She might be drunk enough to have sex with Q right now, but she definitely wasn’t here for the baby thing.

After that, it was a series of familiar movements - her tossing her head back, him grabbing tightly to her hips, both of them panting, sweating, moving. At one point he even flipped her over to be on top, which surprised her, but she wasn’t complaining. The new angle felt even better, and she didn’t have to do any work.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of shouts, spots of pleasure and pain. It was more than a little awkward at times - he accidentally yanked her hair, she kneed him in the stomach - but both of them were still buzzed enough to laugh it off. They enjoyed each other, and the night, and collapsed into a tangle of sweaty limbs once they were utterly spent.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They woke up together the next morning in Julia’s bed, her head on his chest. Julia blinked, taking several long moments to remember what had happened. Within the space of a few breaths she’d pieced it together and she squeezed her eyes together tight. What the hell had she been thinking? But she turned her head to look at Quentin and… she couldn’t feel regret. He was beautiful, and she felt amazing, if a little sore. He might be a geek but… he wasn’t exactly small.

She turned over onto her stomach, looking at his sleeping face as the morning sun made his hair shine, making him look peaceful for once. When he was awake, he always had that little frown between his eyebrows, some dissatisfaction that made him look stressed out. But now… he looked utterly at peace, calm and relaxed. She smiled and rested her head on his chin until he startled awake.

“Good morning, Q,” she said dryly. He looked at her, naked, and then down at himself.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked, gasping. “Am I in the Twilight Zone?” She laughed. “Not dreaming, Q. We slept together, glad to see I made such an impression,” Julia said with a smirk.

“No, you did, it’s just… um, I never thought this would be… actually real?” he said, blinking and sitting up slightly.

She snorted and sat up, ignoring it as he got an eyeful. “Well, believe it, Q. Relatively wine-drunk, we slept together last night.” She got out of bed and wrapped a robe around her body, throwing an old t-shirt at Quentin. It would probably fit him, it was left over from one of the guys who’d raided her apartment for magic, giving her what pitiful spells they had in return.

She went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, letting Quentin follow in his own time. He was probably having an existential crisis in there, and she would let him have that in peace. True enough, almost exactly seven minutes later he came out in the borrowed t-shirt and his boxers, looking like he’d maybe been pacing around, taking lots of deep breaths to steady himself.

She pushed a cup of coffee into his hand and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. “So. Last night was a thing, and we’re gonna have to reconcile with that at some point. The fact that…” Julia paused, choosing her words very carefully. “That I like you, and I’m pretty sure that you also like me, and probably have for a while.”

Quentin rubbed the back of his head, hesitant. “I… um, yeah. I’ve been sort of in love with you since we were like… twelve?” he admitted. And there was Alice, yes, but she was always cold and distant and… honestly, so far out of his league. Jules was home, she always had been. And she loved magic, the same way he did, he’d seen that spark in her eyes when they were practicing the spells from the books he’d brought her. Sure, it wasn’t like he could provide a Brakebills education all by himself, but wouldn’t it be amazing to do magic together? Who knows what they could do!

“Q.” Julia’s voice cut off his grand fantasizing. “You’ve gone quiet. Not really something you do after admitting you’ve been in love with someone.”

“Ah… right. Well, yeah, I mean I have been and still am in love with you, and I can’t take you to Brakebills but I can come back, like, all the time and teach you as much as I can? Leave you my notes and stuff? Your, um, your friends and stuff, they can’t see it, they can’t know it’s me or I’ll get kicked out and I hear they erase your memory? So then I won’t be able to do magic and that would really suck - “

Julia interrupted his rambling with a simple raise of her hand. “Q. It’s fine. I don’t need you to be… to be magic. I like you. I just like you, okay? And it’s fantastic that we can do magic together, that’s… that’s amazing, I love it. And please do keep bringing me books if you can, that would be great, I… I need to keep practicing what we’ve got, of course, but… you know if you need any help with anything…”

She sighed and tried again. These words weren’t coming out right, but what did you say when you accidentally fucked your best childhood friend? “Okay. So… we had sex. That is established. We may, at some point, in the future, have sex again. How do you feel about that? Magic aside.”

Quentin choked on his coffee. “How do I feel about that? I feel great about that, Jules, I’ve been completely in love with you for ages and you’re… you’re fucking beautiful and you’re powerful and amazing and… holy fuck, yes!”

She smirked at his enthusiasm. “Okay then. Maybe we will, if… if it works out. What about the magic? How much can you teach me?”

He hesitated. He hadn’t read the contract too closely, but he was fairly sure there was a clause about not teaching people who didn’t go to Brakebills magic just because you were in love with and/or fucking them. “I will teach you… as much as I can,” he said, hedging his bets a little. “I have to check how much is allowed, I don’t want to get either of us in trouble.”

Julia ran her fingers along the spine of one of the books Quentin had brought, one of the very first ones, a primer on how to move one’s fingers to achieve certain spells. “That’s fair,” she decided after a long moment of deliberation. “How soon do you have to get back to school?”

He glanced around for a clock, then out the window to see what season it was. The time difference between the real world and Brakebills - although the line between “real” and “unreal” was blurring to a dramatic degree these days - was always disorienting. “Um… soon. Probably sooner rather than later. The time in Brakebills, it’s… it’s weird? Like, it’s summer here, so it’s fall or winter there. It’s like four months off, something about the wards… oh, right, wards! We should set up wards, on your place, before I go. Because you’ve got all these books and people know about it now… yeah.”

She nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.” She set down her cup of coffee, standing resolute, even if she was only in a bathrobe and he was half-dressed. “Where do we start?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They got dressed and then spent the next three hours casting wards around Julia’s apartment - or more accurately, setting up the wards only took an hour, and the other two hours were spent with Quentin showing Julia how to put them up and take them down, and then her practicing until they were both satisfied she wouldn’t accidentally blow herself up. Magic was way too dangerous to be played with frivolously.

They then spent an hour playing frivolously with magic, casting minor charms that did silly things like cause books to float, or make the other’s hair temporarily turn white. They laughed, and if they touched perhaps a little too freely for friends, well...that boundary had already been crossed.

They were lying together on Julia’s floor, looking up at the ceiling, drawing lines in the dust motes and making them dance as they twisted their fingers, creating little ballerinas in the sun rays.

“I really have to get going,” Quentin said softly, although he was loathe to leave the warmth and comfort of Julia’s side. This was everything he’d dreamed of, and he was an idiot for leaving it, and they both knew it.

“I know,” she said quietly, reaching down for a moment to hold his hand. She gave it a light squeeze, sighing. “Go learn all your magic so you can bring it back to me, okay?” She gave him a small smile.

He gave her a huge grin in return. They stood, and embraced, and Julia held him for a moment too long before pressing a lingering kiss to his lips.

“See you soon,” she said, giving him a bigger smile. He nodded, unable to stop grinning.

“I’ll be back soon. I promise,” he told her, pressing a kiss to her head, and then to her lips. “Get Popper 56 down and we can do that levitation spell you liked, okay?”

She nodded, smirking. “Can we have sex while floating in midair?”

He almost choked, laughing. “Yeah, of course we can. We can have sex however you want, Jules.”

“How about at Brakebills?” she shot back, raising an eyebrow.

He just rolled his eyes. “We’ll see. Take your wards down?”

She concentrated, brows knitted together, and in a few moments the apartment was unlocked, both in the mundane and the magical sense. “I’ll see you soon, Q.”

Quentin reached into his pocket, pulling out his student key that would allow him access back into Brakebills. “See you soon, Jules.”

He gave her one final kiss, just for luck, and in barely the blink of an eye, he was gone.

#qulia #the magicians #quentin coldwater #julia wicker #fanfic #fanfiction #custom fic #commission fic #my fic

3 notes · View notes