Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Quentin got dragged out of the house in the middle of the night, he'd at least still been up, so he still had his binder on and that was fine. Margo roofie-ing him had also happened while he was awake and fully dressed, and when he woke up in the woods, or wherever he'd really been, his clothes didn't appear to have been touched or messed with at all, so that was fine too.

But there was no avoiding it this time. He knew, they all knew, what 'bare yourself' meant, and he was in a blind fucking panic.

It was a testament to what a fucking disaster this was that even Eliot saying the words 'bare yourself' in that low, smoky voice had not at all turned him on and was absolutely, like, genuinely not going into the spank bank because the memory was always going to be soaked in sickening adrenaline and cortisol. He'd choked on the stupid fucking sandwich he'd been eating, forcing Penny to roll his eyes as he reached across and pounded Quentin on the back.

"It, it, it, it's gotta be some sort of scheme, right?" Quentin asked, jittery and terrified. Kady and Penny were obviously giving him a wide berth and Alice was looking worried about him, it was clear they could see the fear on him, but that was necessarily low on his list of priorities right now. "Like to record us, like, playing, naked truth or dare and blackmail us, or something?" Quentin was desperate for any way out.

"Unfortunately, Margo wasn't lying," Alice said, looking at him with so much concern and sympathy Quentin felt like his brain was going to explode. "It's arcane and a bit unorthodox, but, secrets magic is a real thing."

Quentin dizzily reflected that he'd never actually felt the walls closing in on him before as Alice continued. "Basically, there's no trick or cheat to this. It's kind of the exact opposite." She looked away from him, apprehensive. Quentin put his head between his knees.

"Dude, you are being seriously dramatic about this," Kady said, obviously fed up. "No one else gives nearly this much of a shit about seeing your dick."

"Kady," Penny said, nothing like, obviously suppressive in his tone, but clearly meant to redirect her attention. "Come on, let's grab a rope and leave the nerds to it."

Kady was right. Right? She had to be. No one was like, actually going to...do anything to hurt him, and like, yeah okay there were ways to hurt him that weren't physical but hadn't he been through worse? Hadn't he considered doing worse to himself? In a kind of distant, disconnected way, he noted that he surely wasn't suicidal if anything was capable of scaring him this much. He could only get this scared if he cared about living, right? That was nice to know.

He flinched as a cool, bony hand rested on his back. "It's okay, Q," Alice said, in the closest approximation of gentle she could manage. "I don't...really know what it is that's rattling you so bad about this, but, whatever your secret is, I won't reveal it. I don't know if you like, killed someone, or...or raped someone--"

"No!" Quentin exclaimed, sitting up fast enough to make himself dizzy. "God, Alice, no, that's not..."

Alice looked relieved. "Oh. Okay. I was really hoping that wasn't it."

Quentin did a breathing exercise. Four counts in, five counts hold, seven counts out. "No," he said, shaking his head. "That's not...I mean, I'm not even sure what my secret is, but that's not...the part that's a problem."

He did the count again, then glanced at the clock. "Um, if we're gonna do this I need it to be somewhere...secluded. It's seven o'clock now, so we have five hours."

Alice nodded, seeming to get it. "How about the roof of the building we're in? I'll show you the way up and we'll meet at nine. Give you a couple of hours to...calm down."

Quentin nodded weakly. "Yeah, um, sounds good."

Like that was gonna happen.

~

By the time nine rolled around, Quentin mostly felt like his body had just squeezed out all the adrenaline it had, and it was working on producing more, but the wells were dry, so the panic had ebbed to kind of a low, ignorable simmer. He'd spent most of that two hours buried in his bed, trying to rest and relax. He even tried some of the meditation techniques he'd learned in therapy -- body sinking through the bed, imagine a beach, all the classics. They'd distracted him long enough that he wasn't now totally exhausted from panic, but he didn't really feel that much better, either.

He just had to do it, was the thing. Now that his brain was only dampened with stress hormones instead of completely soaked through, he understood that there was only one real path forward. Losing magic was the worst case scenario. Anything that led to that was unacceptable. So he couldn't fail this test, and that meant he was going to have to get naked in front of Alice Quinn -- god, Alice Quinn, with her lips and her glasses and her, her ass in those skirts and her fucking sweaters -- and telling her his deepest secret.

That meant Alice finding out he was trans.

He arrived at the roof to find Alice already there, and he nearly fled. She looked up and spotted him, giving him a tentative little smile, and he wanted to bolt. But he didn't, letting his legs carry him forward, instead of back. He only turned back to do a tut at the door, locking and warding it firmly.

"It's not part of the spell," she said as she approached, picking up a bottle. "But I think it could make things easier." She extended it to Quentin as he got to her, and he took it gratefully. Yes, this could only help him right now.

"You know, I always thought when I partook in a nude magic ritual I'd be sort of in a...mystical trance," he said, and drank. "So then it wouldn't even matter who was naked or what they looked like or...um, I'm transgender."

He drank more.

"I...I lost my virginity with all my clothes on."

He drank more.

"So um I'm not exactly...nudity is...Quentin..."

"Yeah, so, uh, when my shirt comes off you're gonna see something that looks kind of like a sports bra, but, it's a binder. It squishes my...chest down enough so it just looks like pecs." Alice took the bottle from him without asking and drank, nodding at him with the most pained version of an 'I'm listening' face he'd ever seen. "So, um, and also when I take my pants off..."

God damn it, even the little cough she gave from the burn was cute. "I get it, Q. You're transgendered." He thought about correcting her, but didn't. "When were you, um...were you going to tell me, if not for, this?"

"Well, that depends on some things, Alice," he said, starting to kick off his shoes. Alice put a hand on his shoulder for balance, and did the same. "If what's in my pants was ever going to be relevant to you then yes, I was going to tell you. Not to presume but I figured it was going to happen sometime before the end of the semester."

"What would you have told me?" she asked. "What were you going to say?"

"That also depends," he said. He'd finally broken through the other side of fear, it was just mechanical, as he undid his jeans, and she reached up under her skirt for her tights. "I'd have tested the waters a little by now. Mentioned being bisexual, casually asked if you were straight. Not that you being bisexual would like, make you less likely to freak out, but it would help me know how to approach it."

He discarded his pants as she discarded her skirt. She turned her back, pointing vaguely to her neck and then pulling her hair aside, to reveal the button. "I'm a Kinsey 2," she said. "If you were still wondering. Maybe like, one and a half."

Of course Alice would identify her sexuality on the fucking Kinsey scale. With a fraction.

"So the first time we kissed I wouldn't let it go past kissing," Quentin said, undoing the button for her. "And then either after or in the morning, depending on like, how that went, I'd ask you to sit down with me and talk, somewhere away from people. This would have been a good spot," he said, glancing out over the grounds. It doubled as a check, seeing that there was definitely no one close enough to see anything going on up here. "Or somewhere like it. I'd say 'I have a medical condition you should know about' and then see how you reacted."

"Concern, probably," Alice said, pulling her shirt off over her head and shivering. "Even if I didn't show it very well."

Quentin's eyes flicked down to her breasts, and he swallowed hard. This was it, the last moment he could pretend to be cis. He took a breath, then stripped off his t-shirt. The binder under it was black and stopped at his ribs, with a line of hooks down the front. He watched Alice look down at it, then look back up at his face. For some reason, he wanted to cry.

"I'd preface it a lot, probably. I never really mean to, but I end up doing it. You never have to do anything with me you're not comfortable with, if it makes you happy to pretend I'm totally typical, it makes me happy too. We can have...I'd trip over talking about sex but I'd try to say we can have the exact same sex you're used to with other guys. Then I'd say I was born with...the wrong parts."

Alice nodded, reaching behind her back for the hooks of her bra. "I'd get what you meant, from context. I might clarify, though. You're transgendered?"

He didn't correct her, again. He just nodded.

Undoing the hooks of his binder was an excuse not to look at her. He peeled it off without looking up, then pushed his boxers down. "I'm honestly not sure what I'd say to that," Alice said. Quentin caught her panties dropping to the concrete roof from the corner of his eye. "I'm not sure what to say now."

She stepped into his line of vision with the little box of grease paint, or whatever it was, and offered it out to him. He looked up at her face. She'd taken her glasses off, and he wondered how well she could see him as she gave him another tentative little smile.

No one wears glasses all the time unless they're blind as hell, Quentin told himself firmly. You don't look any different than she expects right now, not to what she can actually see.

Quentin knew it was something he was completely making up in his head, but clinging to that thought was what got him through it as he drew his thumbs down her cheeks and over her collarbones, then let her do the same to him. She's doing this by feel, he told himself as she tied his hands, and then he did the same to her.

Alice gave him another little smile and a nod. "It's okay," she whispered.

God, her eyes. It wasn't like he'd never noticed before, but the glasses changed her face so much. Her wide eyes looking at him like this, with this look of...of fear, of...hope? Of love?

Not love. Not that. But something that could be that, someday, if watered and given lots of sunlight. A seed, not a tree, still as likely to grow as to die. Possibility. Potential.

"I've been institutionalized," he said, without looking away from those eyes. "Not for being trans, just for being...fucked up in the head."

Nothing happened.

"I've been institutionalized more than once," he tried again.

Suddenly, a thought struck. He was starting to feel the buzz of alcohol. "Maybe we shouldn't drink," he said, a little alarmed that they were going to have to waste half of their three hours sobering up.

"Maybe we should drink more," Alice countered, and turned to pick up the bottle. She lifted it to her mouth with her tied hands, a little frantic, then handed it to him.

"Yeah." That sounded much more right, and he took a couple more shots.

~

What ensued were the shittiest three hours of Quentin's life. He spat random nonsense facts about himself, and Alice did the same, until Quentin, drunk, ended up on a rant about how stupid it was that the ropes had successfully gone on at all, because she knew his Highest Internal Circumstance whatever the fuck that was and it was that he was born without the dick that he was so clearly entitled to and another thing where the fuck did some people get off making fun of small dicks, didn't they know how lucky they were to have dicks at all?

Wisely, Alice let him spin himself out until he sat down with a plop and put his elbows on his knees. Despite being able to see his breath now, he was sweating a little. Whether from the whiskey or emotion or anxiety, he wasn't sure.

"I don't think the spell requires that we stay naked," Alice said suddenly, standing up. "I mean, I don't know the specific spell we're supposed to be casting, but from what I know about secrets magic we just have to see it, we don't have to stay it. Here, watch."

She lifted her arms up over her head and spun a couple of times, making sure Quentin saw every inch of her that was possible without, like, giving her a gynecology exam. He watched as she wrestled a hand out from the ropes -- fair, he hadn't tied them very tight, they were just symbolic -- then picked up his overshirt and pulled it over her shoulders, doing a button in front of her chest. She had him hold her ropes in place so she could get her hand back in, then bent to pick up his binder and held it out.

Quentin had to admit he'd feel better covered up. So he pushed his ropes off and grabbed his boxers first, slipping them on and then taking his binder. He arranged himself a little when the hooks were half done, and he was dimly, drunkenly aware of Alice watching with something akin to professional curiosity, just wanting to see how it was done. Then he did up the rest of the hooks and let her re-tie his ropes, since he'd made a mess of them.

They stood at the edge, looking out over the campus and counting down together. Right on schedule, the bell in the clock tower chimed midnight. Quentin was sure he'd lost magic, that he'd done the thing and he was flunking out anyway, that this all had been for nothing, but some half-aware rambles later Alice's ropes were gone and so were Quentin's and they were flying, nothing mattered but the sky and the magnetic, gravitational sureness of where they were going.

The next time Quentin was himself, he was in a cubicle like a public restroom. Except...shorter, and no door. Like a cubicle in a prison restroom. It was hard to remember what a prison was except that clearly, this was one, because it was keeping him from the sky.

It only took seconds, though, to realize he was naked. That was bad, for some reason, he hadn't remembered why yet but it was very very bad and he turned, facing the wall. There was a hole near the top, big enough for his real body, no, not his, the goose's body, big enough for the goose's body to hop into from the outside. A few flakes of snow swirled at it. Was he cold? He had to be, right? No feathers. Naked. Bad.

Over the course of the next minute or so, he realized why naked was bad, and looked quickly to both sides. To his left, an empty cubicle. To his right, Alice. He didn't know who else was in the room, who was behind him, but that was okay. From behind it was fine, Quentin just looked like any other guy -- ass maybe a little rounder than average, waist a little more nipped in, but well within the range of typical, normal, cisgender men.

Alice was shivering and pulling on a bra, facing the wall like him. Quentin looked down. Oh, yes. There was a bench with clothing on it. That was good. Binder first.

On top was a pair of boxers, and under it was a thermal undershirt. Under that, soft knitted leggings. Then a turtleneck, then a sweater, then...a jacket.

He checked under that, then shook out every item individually. Nothing. He was starting to shiver too, and he sat down hard on the floor, curling up into a ball. He had exhausted his human problem solving skills, still too much goose-brained, and just needed to sit.

Goose brain faded, gradually, but his problem solving skills weren't improving. He couldn't leave without a binder. He didn't have a binder. He couldn't leave. So maybe like, his problem solving skills were fine, and some situations were just going to cause an infinite loop.

A hand touched his shoulder and Quentin jumped, but he looked up to see Alice, looking concerned. It seemed she didn't have glasses, either, which was like, not comforting, because what the fuck kind of assholes left a trans man without his binder and a nearsighted person without her glasses? (He assumed she was nearsighted. He guessed he didn't actually know.)

"That happened, right?" Quentin asked. "We...we flew, here, to Antarctica?"

Alice looked around, checking the other cubicles. Only a few had anyone left in them, people who were taking their time adjusting to being people again. She nodded and knelt down, picking up Quentin's boxers. She started picking up his feet and putting them through the legs. "The sky," she said. "It was..."

"Like you could feel it," Quentin finished. Human language was woefully inadequate to communicate this experience. "I don't wanna lose how it...felt." He tried to turn his thoughts away from the goose and managed to get to his feet, letting Alice help him get the boxers up. He saw her eyes flick down to his chest again, and she turned, feeling through the messy, unfolded stack of clothes. He watched her have the same realization he'd had, arms crossed protectively over his chest. He really was cold, shivering now.

Alice looked up at him, then looked around again. She left the cubicle, then came back with someone's undershirt.

"Won't they need...?"

"You need it," Alice insisted, and glancing around furtively again, she had Quentin raise his arms. He checked too to see that no one was looking at them, not trusting her vision, but some people were taking the transition really roughly, it looked like it would be hours before they figured their shit out. He lifted his arms and let her wrap the garment sideways over his chest, pulling it tight enough to squeeze and busily tying the arms and hem together behind his back. He could hear spells going on, the quiet rip of fabric being cut and parts of the shirt dropping to the floor by his feet, then pressure where the knot was that faded slowly. Quentin adjusted himself quickly before the spell faded entirely, not knowing if he was going to be able to get under it.

"It's not perfect, but it'll hold until we get into the dorms," Alice said, picking up Quentin's own thermal and handing it to him. "Maybe there's a binder there. Or something better we can use, tape or something."

Quentin stuck his arms through the sleeves and pulled it over his head, feeling a little safer once the hem was pulled down. There were always strict prohibitions against binding with tape or an Ace bandage, or anything else that wrapped around the ribcage without being specifically intended for chest compression. But Quentin didn't really have a choice right now, the sweater was baggy on Alice, but he could see that it wouldn't be enough to hide the contours of his chest. Plus, he didn't think he'd gone a single full day without compression since early college outside of massive depression spirals when he never got out of bed.

Once he was dressed he took a couple of deep breaths, testing the compression, and Alice put her hands on his shoulders, looking at him with concern. Quentin nodded, a silent reassurance, and took another breath. "Okay. Come on. Let's go."

~

Sitting through some obviously-high-on-his-own-farts professor's speechifying was annoying. Having his voice taken away was kind of alarming, but a little bit less so once he realized everyone else had them taken too. Getting to his room and closing the door to dig through his provided clothing was panic-inducing.

Quentin was supposed to be working, driving nails into boards, and he sat down to try for a bit, but almost immediately he had to get up and look through the dresser again, just...making sure. He paced back and forth. The spell Alice had cast to make this makeshift binder work was slipping, he could feel it, and while it was still freezing this part of the building was warmer, and he couldn't keep enough layers on to conceal his chest and be able to focus on magic. He'd gotten here, he'd worked so fucking hard to not fail the trials, and now he was just going to flunk out of South because he couldn't handle his shit without a goddamn binder. Quentin wanted to scream, but he couldn't.

There was a soft knock on his door, and he tried to ask who it was before remembering. For a moment, he hoped desperately for Julia (he'd wanted her for a secrets partner, but she'd been snatched up by another Knowledge student and he had to admit that she knew so many of his secrets it probably would never have worked and he really would have flunked out). Instead, the door opened a crack and Alice peeked around it, tentative, like a little mouse.

She glanced him over, then seemed to decide she was needed and stepped inside the room, closing the door behind her. She held out her hands to him in a calming gesture, which was like, probably the most useless thing possible, but Quentin nodded anyway. Then the brain cell fired up and he looked sharply at her. Did she have another idea?

Alice nodded and stepped toward him. She was down to this ridiculous little sweater dress that made him want to lift and get under it and her leggings. She reached for the hem of Quentin's sweater, paused to let him pull away if he wanted, then helped strip it off him. She took the hem of the turtleneck and looked up at him for permission. He nodded, and she pulled it up just to be bunched above his chest. As she revealed it, it was already evident that the compression was slacking, and Quentin's breathing picked up.

Quentin glanced up at Alice desperately, who put a hand on his cheek. They couldn't speak, but the look she was giving him was...firm. Determined. She always kind of had that edge of rabbity anxiety, something girlish even in her most determined look, but Quentin, who needed any port in a storm right now, nodded a little and did a breathing exercise. He was willing to believe that she had a plan.

Alice pointed to Quentin's eyes, then to herself. Watch me. He nodded. She put her foot up on the edge of the bed, made sure he was looking, then did a series of tuts. She shook it out just before completion and did them again, making sure Quentin kept up. It wasn't much more complicated than anything else they were doing: Popper 20, into a modified Popper 38, into Popper 2 with the right hand and Popper 8 with the left. Simple enough, and nothing too unique or complicated. At the end of the sequence, Alice leaned down and drew her finger along the side of her calf.

Quentin watched as the muscle dipped in, the ends of the line she'd drawn acting kind of as the fulcrum points. Quentin blinked in surprise and looked up at Alice's face. It was, quite simply, a magical Ace bandage.

She demonstrated a Popper 12, then drew two fingers back up in the same spot, like unzipping a zipper. The muscle rebounded. Quentin was already starting Popper 20, but Alice stepped forward quickly and stilled his fingers with hers.

A spark of heat ran through him at the touch, and he briefly forgot what he'd been doing, looking up at her. She quickly stepped back. She seemed to think about it for a minute, glancing nervously around, and then she mimed squeezing something hard, gritting her teeth and lifting her shoulders. She did the Popper 2/8 combo, pulling her right hand back and pushing her left forward a few times. Then she mimed relaxing, starting with the squeeze position and then letting out a breath as her hands flattened and her shoulders lowered. The combo, this time pulling the left hand back.

Quentin got the message and nodded. Knowing how to make it tighter or looser was going to be important if he didn't want to break a rib, and he was grateful Alice had known to think of it. He took a breath, flexing his fingers, then went through the tuts, precise and careful, not wanting to fuck this up and crush his lungs.

He made it pretty loose the first time, not loose enough for really any compression, but it gave him a baseline, an understanding of the spell's limits. He took it off and did it again, this time adjusting it to compress about as much as one of his binders. It was still desperately inferior -- when he tested a deep breath, his chest ached, he definitely shouldn't do this any more than he had to -- but it would work, and work longer-term than someone else's chopped up underwear.

He gave Alice a helpless look, hoping she could see that he was about to cry out of gratitude. She ducked her head, and he reached out to take one of her hands, bowing his head over and then kissing it. Stupid, nerdy, dumb, but it was the only way he could think of to express how he felt right now.

Alice gave his hand a little squeeze, but he almost could have imagined it, because then she was gone, stealing out of Quentin's room and back to her own across the hall. Quentin let out an exhale and set about righting his clothes, pulling down his own thermal, then the turtleneck.

Just as he sat back down, his door banged open, Mayakovsky glowering down at him. Quentin gave him an unamused glance back, and picked up a nail.

~

Hours and hours were spent on this one fucking spell. Trying over and over, failing. It was goddamn mind-numbing was what it was. After another failure and the inability to shout his frustration out, he glanced up. Alice gave him a little smile and a wave, then made a vague gesture across her chest. A small thumbs up and questioning look. Holding up okay?

He nodded a little, giving a small smile back. Then he mimed putting a gun in his mouth and shooting it, slow and dramatic.

The little silent giggle she gave was satisfying, and she mouthed yeah. Quentin smiled a little. He liked making her laugh. He watched as her smile faded, and felt his own do the same.

He almost didn't notice Mayakovsky until he spoke. "Why don't you two...just...fuck? Eh?"

Trust me, he thought, if I had my equipment, I would. Anything to not be fucking doing this. Quentin glared at him, wondering if Mayakovsky was responsible for the spell restricting his breathing right now. Had he seen a binder provided and taken it, not knowing what it was for or not thinking Quentin needed it, or just wanting to fuck with him? Or had one not been provided in the first place, and if so, why not?

It was hours after Mayakovsky's admonition to work that it finally happened. His nail flew into the board, splitting it with a loud crack, and god, if that wasn't a fucking metaphor. Finally succeeding, only to fuck it up a whole other way. Still, he had succeeded, and that was enough right now. He looked up at Alice, celebrating just in time for Mayakovsky to arrive, with his fucking sneer and sarcastic clapping.

Fuck this guy. Quentin knew this spell inside and goddamn out, and he was going to prove it. Incandescent with rage, he gathered the nails all up, arranged them in the air, and slammed them all into the wood so hard the board nearly broke apart.

The slap across the face made him understand how pointless it had been, how childish and stupid this thing that had felt like such a flex was. How stupid and childish it was that he thought getting the hang of this one spell meant he was worth something. Anything.

Alice rushed over to him, looking down at his board, then up at him. Quentin felt a spark somewhere inside him when Alice looked into his eyes, with so much...concern, so much care. She leaned a half inch closer, mouth angled toward his, but not all the way.

Maybe this was all being worth something was. Having someone look at you like this.

Quentin leaned in to close the gap, but Alice shied away at the last second, fleeing back across the hall to her own room, long sweater flapping lightly below where it stretched across her ass. Quentin felt his heart sink.

She ran, but for whatever reason, the spark stayed.

~

For the next couple of weeks, even as their voices were restored, Quentin and Alice didn't talk much, but it was pretty much through the force of her...dragging him through it, her refusal to flag, that he made it without walking out into the snow. She showed him some of the theory of the binding spell so he could control it better, stole a salve that eased the bruises when he pulled the spell too tight, cast it for him when his fingers were stiff. Quentin gave up on trying to figure out her motivations after the failed kiss. Maybe he was just a project, an interesting magical puzzle to solve, and keep solving. The work was grueling enough that it was possible to focus on that instead, anyway, even though Mayakovsky kept shoving them together.

He wasn't at all surprised to find Alice in the front...lobby? That seemed like a weird word for it. Foyer? Whatever. Alice was there when he got there, looking annoyed, but not at him. She nodded to him as he approached.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"Any idea what's happening?"

Quentin knew the answer before she shook her head. He nodded, because of course, and turned away, looking idly around.

"Take off your clothes."

It made him jump, and Quentin turned to see Mayakovsky slowly descending the steps. I hope you get too drunk and fall down them, Quentin thought viciously. I hope you're drunk enough to go out in the snow right now. Maybe I should mind control you.

Mayakovsky shot him an amused glance, like he'd heard that, as Alice protested. "Come on," she tried. "We're already freezing!"

Alice was trying to protect him, at least partially, but at this point, frankly, Quentin wasn't even sure he cared. He hated Mayakovsky so much that he was pretty sure the man couldn't hurt him. The hatred was armor.

"You think this is worst it can be for you?" Mayakovsky asked, then spread his hands magnanimously. "I give you gift." Geeft. Jesus. "I tell you strip."

Quentin stepped forward, giving about negative eight thousand fucks right now. "When someone doesn't want to take off their clothes, you don't fucking make them take off their clothes!"

Mayakovsky just rolled his eyes. "Fine. We fuck up clothes."

He did a spell, too fast for Quentin to catch, and suddenly, Quentin was very small. Warmer than he'd been, he had fur. And he could breathe deeply again. Oh, that was nice.

Almost immediately, his fox brain became aware of the most important thing: there was a vixen nearby. She smelled nice. She smelled like fun. He wanted to investigate, but he was snatched up by a meaty paw before he got there.

He squirmed around as he was turned upside down, a dizzying experience. His legs kicked and batted, trying to get away from the threat -- the smell of predators was all around, ones bigger and stronger than him. His butt was up in the air, where it Did Not Belong, and the ground was further away than he wanted it to be.

He was flipped the other way around, looking up into an ugly, furless face. He batted his front paws toward it, hoping for a scratch, but it was far away, this creature's limbs were too long by half.

"What the fuck?" Mayakovsky asked. Maybe it was in Russian -- the fox was reading the tone more than anything, and English and Russian would probably have meant about the same to him. He let out a high-pitched little snarl and started twisting around, trying to find the predator's paw to bite it, make him let go.

He was dropped unceremoniously, and started to scurry away, vixen scent forgotten, but then he was human again, tripping over himself and falling flat on his face.

"Fucking-" Quentin pushed himself up on his hands and looked around, only to see Mayakovsky storming out. He did it in a way like he thought his jacket was billowing behind him like a grand robe, like some Professor Snape bullshit without any actual physical resemblance. As big of an asshole as Snape, too.

Alice was shivering on the floor, and Quentin went over to her, picking up her shirts. He could see now why the secrets spell had involved them getting naked, because they hadn't weathered the transformation well, like parts of them had gotten yanked into the magic, ripped out of the garments, then fallen away. Everything was in tatters.

"Okay, okay, uh..." Quentin knew a fire spell. He knew a few fire spells, including one for a fuel-less campfire. Not ideal, because it could catch other things easily, the fire in this spell seemed to kind of know it was being forced to live unnaturally, and it reached for equilibrium. But it would get them warm long enough to salvage what they could, because Alice was clearly handling either the cold or the coming out of fox brain much worse than he was. He cast it in the middle of the room, at a safe distance, and pulled Alice up into a sitting position, moving her closer to it. His own nakedness was secondary to making sure she was okay.

In the process, he spotted the robes on hooks. Mayakovsky had prepared for this, he was going to shove them outside, what a...it didn't matter. Quentin left Alice long enough to grab both robes, awkwardly draping one across her shoulders and then shrugging into the other one quickly. Alice was doing the same, responding quickly now that warmth was at hand.

"God, fuck that guy," Quentin breathed, ending the campfire spell and huddling down into the robe, just letting himself shiver to bring his body temperature back up. Alice seemed to have the same idea, having drawn her legs in and wrapped the robe tightly over them.

"Yeah," Alice agreed. "Meddling asshole."

Quentin exhaled sharply, glad she agreed. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said, breath still shaky, but she was shivering less visibly now. "Just the...the fox was so warm and nice and going from that to..."

"Shock to the system," Quentin agreed, nodding. "I get it."

Alice exhaled. "Do you need the spell?"

Quentin looked down at himself. The robe was thick and fluffy, and it stayed closed well once he'd tied the belt. "You know, I think this is the first thing I've worn here that hides me without it. Maybe I should keep it."

Like some kind of miracle, Alice shivered out a little laugh. "I think it would be, w-weird if you started wearing nothing but a bathrobe all the time."

"Probably," he agreed, grinning. God, it made his teeth cold. "Come on, it's not getting warmer," he said, holding a hand out to her. Alice nodded and let him help her up, the pair of them hustling back toward the warmer dorms.

~

A couple of days later, they were heading back to Brakebills. Quentin did actually wear the bathrobe over his clothes for the last couple of days, and everyone seemed to interpret it as him just running out of fucks to give and being comfy. Julia started wearing hers, too.

"Has it been...you know, okay?" Julia asked, walking next to him as they headed for the portal. "I know I haven't been..."

"You've been working," Quentin said, reaching up to put a brief hand on her shoulder. "We all have. I'm glad you worked instead of worrying about me."

Julia pulled her mouth to the side, a shade of her usual self, even though she wore the heaviness of their weeks here like everyone else. "Mayakovsky really is a great teacher."

Quentin rolled his eyes, because she was right. "I will never, ever tell him that."

He let her walk ahead as they approached the portal, going through with another Knowledge student. Mayakovsky was chugging vodka as Quentin passed. He just shook his head, glad to be rid of him, and stepped through the portal ahead of Alice.

She was the last one out, and he heard a dull thump as he started up the hill. He turned, assuming that was just the sound of the portal closing, but he saw Alice in a heap.

"Alice!" he exclaimed, rushing to her side.

"I'm fine," she said, weakly trying to wave him off as she took a knee. "Just the...the warm air, it's..."

"Yeah," Quentin said, nodding. "It's a lot." He was already sweating in the stupid bathrobe, he was going directly to his room to shower and get into some proper compression. "Come on, let's head to the cottage," he said gently, taking her arm.

"You go," she said, shaking her head. "I'll be right there."

"Alice, come on, I-"

"Q." Her voice broke on the nickname as she looked up at him sharply. "I've been handling your fucking feelings for weeks, okay? Every single day trying to keep you...I don't need you to worry about me, okay? I need you to go."

Quentin recoiled like she'd hit him. But she was...well. She was being pretty fucking dismissive of it, but...she was right. Silently, he nodded and stood.

"I'm, um, gonna send someone to get you if you're not there in fifteen minutes." He didn't wait for an answer, heading up the hill and toward the cottage. They were both exhausted, and overwhelmed, and hungry and probably kind of in shock. He passed Julia's robe, discarded on the ground, and sped up.

"You're back!" Eliot exclaimed as Quentin approached the backyard. "Hooray! Drink for the returning heroes?" He picked one up from a tray. "What's with the robe? Where's Alice?" he asked, looking somewhere behind Quentin.

"Um, send someone to where the portal opens if she's not here in fifteen minutes, okay? I just need to..." Quentin abandoned the sentence and just headed inside, desperately ready to get into a fucking binder.