xp_logs | Quentin & Clint, Sunday afternoon

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Quentin receives an unusual message from his parents, which Clint helps him process.

The mansion was, for once, graveyard quiet. Appropriate, Quentin considered, as he had to fortify himself to visit a real one shortly. Aimlessly walking down the residential area hall, his attention was entirely focused on his phone, as he read and reread the curt text message his mother had sent him. She couldn't even have graced him with a voice message.

"At hospital with Quartus," he read out loud for the thirtieth time, still trying to make sense of it. "Possible heart attack. Not expected to survive." That's it. He stopped walking and slumped against the wall, and put the phone into his pocket. After a few seconds, took it out again and reread the text. What the hell was he supposed to do with this?

Clint might not have super hearing like Matt, but even while occupied with experimental arrowheads, his brain could process the words "heart attack" and "not expected to survive." Looking up, he had to blink once or twice to refocus his eyes from the very tiny parts he'd been tinkering with to the world at large. He'd been sitting on the floor, hidden by the couch as he worked at the coffee table with a very small headlight on, so in an effort to sort out who was losing somebody, Clint turned the light off and took it off his head, made sure all the components to his arrowheads were safe and not likely to roll away, and then stood.

When he saw Quentin, he wasn't entirely sure that he should approach, but given his experience with losing people -- so many people -- and the fact that he actually liked Quentin, he figured it couldn't hurt to at least make himself available for talking if the other man wanted to talk to someone. "Hey," he said softly, trying not to startle Quentin. "Couldn't help but hear what you said a minute ago."

Had Quentin just been sitting there in silent contemplation for a whole minute or longer? No one had even died yet and he was already going crazy and misperceiving time. Worse, he was losing it in front of the white knight of Xavier's Institute. How shameful. He quickly tempered his expression and stood up, leaning against the wall with faux-casualness.

"Don't worry about it, Barton," he said, though his dead tone did not match the demeanor he was trying to pull off.

Well, that was a weird juxtaposition. "Q," Clint said, stepping over to lean against the wall beside the younger man and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I'm not worrying about it. I'm maybe a little bit worried about you, but like. Mostly cause I don't think you should be stewing all by yourself with... y'know. Whatever you've got going on right now. So we don't have to talk or anything, if you don't want, but I'm here. Just in case."

Of course, Quentin's first instinct was to tell Clint in graphic anatomical detail where he could put his concern, but for once, he did not see the fun in that. Instead, he pulled up the text thread with his father and handed his phone to Clint to review. There was not much, mostly short messages about where one or the other would be at a given time, with timestamps separated by weeks or months. Not a single gif or emoji. It looked more like automatic email notifications bouncing between professional colleagues than conversation between father and son.

"So, you see, him croaking isn't really going to change anything. I won't even notice he's dead 'cuz he's hardly alive to me now."

Clint handed Quentin's phone back to him and nodded slowly, then stopped and tilted his head to the side as he squinted up one eye. "I get what you're saying, but there's also the like. Finality of it? Whether you think you want it or not, there's always that possibility that... I dunno. Something else could have happened somewhere down the line." He leaned over to bump his shoulder against Quentin's. Sometimes being physically present was the best you could do.

And Quentin bumped him back, though maybe it was more of a sharp jab of the elbow against Clint's torso. Still, something approaching a grin appeared fleetingly on Quentin's face.

"He was never going to change. We were never going to. I'm barely a son to him. I'm sure if he'd had his way, I never would've been. All he ever gave me was his name, his credit card, and his penchant for promiscuity."

Reaching over to circle his arm around Quentin's shoulders, Clint gave him a shrug. "Families are complicated and leave behind complicated feelings." He paused for a moment, giving the younger man's shoulders a squeeze, then continued, "Are you gonna go see him? Before he passes?"

"No, they're in like fucking LA or somewhere. He'll die before I'm even on the plane. And he's probably unconscious, so what would be the point?"

Clint hummed a bit, not really sure how to explain the weird feeling he got when he thought about his parents and his grandparents, then the whole circus debacle that was his childhood before Andre and Steve found him. "Sometimes there are just... regrets. Like you never got to say something or whatever. And even if he can't hear you or whatever, it's still cathartic to say it to him. Plus, we know Clarice. She can literally drop you in LA wherever whenever. I'm not trying to like, pressure you, but you've got options."

When Quentin finally realized he was leaning into Clint's half-embrace, he shrugged out of it. He looked away to hide his reddening face for Clint. "I'm not going to owe someone a favor just so I can say good riddance to a corpse. No." But even as he rejected the idea, another one started to form. "But I guess . . . I don't need to actually be there physically. And as long as he isn't actually braindead . . . But I still have nothing to say. Except ask him why."

"Well, as a telepath, you might actually get an answer from him regardless of the state he's in," Clint offered, not following Quentin when he shrugged away from the contact. "Which is... more than some people get." He offered the younger man a rueful smile.

"Maybe. Can't say the prospect of rifling through his dying brain is particularly appealing. Who knows what shit I'll find there? I have bad enough memories of the time we went to Bora Bora, I don't need to see it from his perspective, too. Makes The White Lotus look like Mister Rogers."

"I mean, if you're sure you won't regret never getting to ask him 'why,' then don't worry about it. But parents are complicated and sometimes tragic and understanding why they did the things they did might be helpful, but it might also not be," Clint said. "There's nothing I'd wanna talk to my biodad about, but maybe my grandparents? Never really got the chance and I was young, so it's not like there was a lot of... formative stuff. I wasn't really messed up until after the circus..." Clint frowned a bit. "Not much I'd wanna ask anybody there, either. Except maybe I'd punch a few people in the face. That might be nice."

"You were raised in a circus? That . . . explains so much about you."

"Fuck off," Clint said, laughing quietly, nudging Quentin's side. "I was only there for a couple years. Then the foster system for a bit. Then my dads adopted me. So while formative in many ways, it doesn't... well, no. I can kinda see where you're coming from."

Try as he might to not react, Quentin snickered at Clint. "Now I'd much rather go through your head and see what stories you have in there. They'd surely be much more entertaining than anything from my parents. Plus, old national security secrets from SWORD might be worth a penny. I've been wanting a new car . . ."

"I'd invite you in," Clint said, expression serious, "But most of what I learned there wasn't fun or entertaining. There was a fair bit of generalized physical abuse, to say nothing of the psychological stuff Swordsman and Trick Shot doled out. I've had a lot of therapy..."

"Maybe it would rub off on me if I visited." Quentin got back to his feet and pulled out his phone again to see if his mother had sent him anything new. But no new messages. Of course. He was going to have to do this the mutant way. "I'm going to go. And, uh . . . thanks, Barton. That was our least unpleasant conversation ever. Weirdly enough."

"What're you talking about?" Clint asked, half-smiling now. "I'm a genuine delight. Always."

"Bitch," Quentin snorted as he walked away.

~*~

Quentin would need to maintain perfect concentration for the feat he was preparing. He knew he could do it—he was one of the top five greatest psychics in the world, after all, and he would even say top three—but he was not foolish enough to think he could just raw dog it. Like every conscientious partner, he would prepare himself first. Not with fiber pills and Fleet, but with sensory deprivation and drugs. When he found the strain he needed from his stash box, which conveniently lived on the kitchen table now that he had the suite all to himself again, he rolled a joint, opened a window, and partook.

The high came quickly, so Quentin wasted no time. He stubbed out the roach in an ashtray and retreated to Elizabeth’s abandoned bedroom, pitch black thanks to blackout drapes and silent without the chittering of a playful chinchilla in his habitat. He sat cross-legged on the ground, inhaled deeply through his nose, and let his mind slip out of his body as he exhaled.

The signal was faint, given the distance and upcoming death, but there were few psychic signatures he knew better than his own parents’. Some day he might interrogate why the people he detested were so easily identifiable to him, but not now. Now he had to focus his full attention on…

“Father.”

Quartus Quire faced his son in the blank expanse of the Astral Plane.

“Quentavius. Where are we?”

“Your mind. We don’t have much time. This is…hard for me and I don’t know how much time you have left. I just…wanted to talk before you go.”

His father hesitated, then nodded. “Fine. Let’s talk.”