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Margo sets fire to the last candle and takes in the ritualistic scene before her. She’s set up a ring of candles around a sprig of jade blossom behind the couch, the only place where there’s enough room for what she has in mind. The length of rope is laid out next to the dim circle, ready for when Quentin gets home.
Margo knows herself, knows her limits and shortcomings, the insecurities she keeps on a tight leash. Luckily, for the most part, she also knows what she wants.
She wants this thing with Eliot and Quentin - the whole relationship-ness of it all - she wants it to work. Margo hates feeling like she’s the one holding it back from working, so as with all her problems, she’s decided to fucking do something about it.
She probably shouldn’t be drinking wine before spellwork, but she needs a little liquid courage for this.
Quentin blunders into the dark apartment, says slowly, “Uh, hey Margo. What’s going on?”
She takes a too-big swallow of her wine and looks at him. She can do this. Honestly, setting up before he got home was an assurance to herself, physical evidence that means she can’t back out now.
“Hey, Q.” Margo tries to give him a normal smile, a flirtatious smile, any kind of smile but the weird, tight one she ends up giving.
“Is something wrong?” He drops his bag, moves towards her, and his eyes frantically search her face. Given the shit they’ve been through lately, she can’t blame him for worrying.
“Depends on your definition of wrong.”
He moves more cautiously and takes her shoulders in his hands. She’s starting to think that maybe she shouldn’t have ambushed him.
“Hey, whatever it is, we can get through it.” Quentin looks at her like she could make an entire world for him. It bolsters her and makes her heart clench in retreat at the same time. But this whole thing is about beating back that instinct, the instinct to run, to disconnect, to act like none of it matters. This whole thing matters, and Margo’s determined to make it right.
“I want you to see me, but I’m never gonna fucking do it if I have a choice, so I have a solution.”
He stares at her so directly. It’s wild how the same person who awkwardly looked away every two seconds years ago can also be this confident, intimate man before her.
“I want to see you, too,” Quentin says. Margo’s so grateful that he didn’t try to refute her, because they both know she hasn’t given all of herself to him.
“Are you down for some spellwork?”
“Yeah, sure.” He nods. “Just, uh, I did just get home, so I have to use the bathroom first, and then I’m all yours.”
Margo nods, he presses a quick kiss to her lips, and she lets him leave. She takes some steadying breaths, finishes the last of her glass of wine and decides against pouring herself more, and settles herself in the center of the circle she created.
When Quentin comes back, she gestures to him to sit across from her. He sits, and he looks so stupid and good and soft in his jeans and t-shirt. Sometimes she still can’t believe she feels this intensely for Quentin Coldwater.
“What kind of spell is this?” He’s wary but open.
“Mind magic.” She pauses for dramatic effect and waits for the satisfying widening of his eyes before continuing. “It’s kind of like secrets magic, kind of telepathy. It’s gonna give you a front row seat to the life and times of me.”
He looks at her with fondness and sympathy and she wants to wipe it all off his face.
“I want to know you, Margo, I do. But don’t you think we could just talk?”
“No,” she bites out too harshly. She reaches out to rub his knee, hoping to take the sting out of anything she’s going to say. She feels on edge. “If we talk I’m gonna weasel away from it, or you’re not going to understand me, or I’m gonna play it all off like everything from my past is meaningless. So, no, we are not going to talk.”
She feels like her skin is itching with pent up rage and helplessness and the desire to just be fucking seen completely and accepted. It feels like she’s pre-mad, like she’s anticipating that Quentin will see and reject her and she has to prepare herself for the disappointment.
“Ok, so what do we do for the spell?”
Margo teaches him the Japanese phrase they need to speak and shows him the rope they’ll tie themselves together with. For the sake of their kinky sex life, Margo feels like she should tie their hands, but she wants them free to hold onto Quentin. They end up wrapping it around their torsos and holding hands on top of their knees, legs touching.
“Quentin?” Margo’s voice comes out small. She has her eyes closed, unable to look at him. “You better be really fucking sure you want me, all of me, before we do this.”
He takes a moment and rubs his thumb against her hand. She appreciates that he doesn’t just say something to say something. She knows she’s going to get honesty from Quentin.
“I do want to know you, Margo. And I’m not going in blind, I know you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. Whatever it is that has you so scared, it’s going to be fine.”
“I’m not scared,” she whispers, and she feels like a little girl again.
“Ok,” he accepts, still rubbing her hand.
She opens her eyes and looks at him. He’s too sweet for her.
“Let’s do this thing,” she declares, squeezes his hand.
They speak the words together and the cooperative magic rushes open and through them.
The spell starts easy, recent. Margo can feel Quentin inside her head as she’s brought through images and feelings of their recent time together, the careful triad they’ve created. She feels the rush of longing and fear she always does when she’s around them, but she also feels the desire to keep both her boys safe, keep them close.
Her eyes are closed, but she thinks she can feel Quentin smile in her mind.
The next bit isn’t so pleasant. Her mind races through the past year without Eliot, the grief and pain of losing her best friend, the only man she thought she could ever love or know.
For all it hurts, she knows Quentin understands this. It’s painful, but it’s not what they’re here for.
She pushes them back through memories, through things that technically Quentin was around for but may not have fully been present for: her time on the Muntjac, giving up Fen and Eliot’s daughter to the fairies, the Margolem nonsense, worrying about El second year.
She can feel Quentin taking it all in, sitting quietly in her mind while she drags up old wounds and secret shames.
Once she pushes beyond Brakebills, that’s when her heart truly cracks open.
Margo has never been secretive about her sexual experience or proclivities. No, having good positive sex has never felt bad. But part of Margo’s shame is that she’s fucked a lot of guys, and she hasn’t always enjoyed it. She hasn’t always been above it all.
There was Kyle in high school. She still remembers how he looked at her after she blew him in his car. There was that virgin in college - maybe his name was Daniel? - who she used and was legitimately mean to, not just teasing, like actually made him feel bad about having sex with her.
Once Margo latches onto shame, she cant stop. Sex leads to friendship, and she’s pulled into thinking about her original best friend, Sam, the friend she relied on for everything before Eliot swept into her life, the friend who called her desperate slut in the last text message she sent to her and then had the nerve to ghost her like their friendship was nothing. And maybe, before that, Margo had acted like it meant nothing to her, too.
Her manipulative nature has been put to good use with Fillory lately, but she used to do it for far simpler reasons: it was fun. She was bored. Someone was fucking rude and she needed to show them up. She’s embarrassed by how much she used to care.
Margo thinks her body might be crying, but her mind is here bearing witness. And through it all, Quentin is right here, too, just watching.
See? she wants to say to him. This is who you’re dealing with. Get out now.
It’s just a thought, a feeling, but she thinks Quentin might see that, too.
Her emotions swirl though her, tumbling through any little moment that felt like shit or shame or innocence.
Her mind grinds to a halt on her dad.
God, her dad never even fucking did anything to her. She knows about Eliot’s life, his fuckwad of a father, and she feels ashamed that she ever thought she had a bad dad. He never did anything to her. He just didn’t like her. And she’s over it, but it still hurts and makes her so goddamn angry to think about him having the gall not to like the girl he raised.
Fuck all this shame. She doesn’t let herself feel shame anymore.
She pushes through the shame to moments she keeps equally close to her heart for different reasons: the feeling of playing ambassador to Fillory when she was six, the science projects she tinkered with all through high school, the sound of her aunt’s voice. They’re the moments that mean something to her. She lets Quentin see, and she hopes he understands.
She thinks about Eliot, meeting Eliot their first year and just knowing that he was going to be important to her.
Of course it had been hard to reveal herself to El during the secret trial, but it was Eliot. Her soul knew his the second they met. It was so difficult to talk about herself, but she knew he’d understand. They’re the same.
Quentin is so different from her. How can she love someone who isn’t a twin flame?
Quentin is kind and brave and doesn’t let fear hold him back from feeling things. She thinks of Quentin as pure in a way she doesn’t think about herself or Eliot.
She opens her eyes and breaks the spell.
Margo is definitely crying. She figured she would be. She didn’t prepare to see Quentin crying.
“Can I hold you?” Is the first thing he says, and she doesn’t know how she feels about that, but she wants to be held. She wants to scream. She nods her head.
Quentin clutches her to him, big hands rubbing up and down her back, and she gives out an embarrassing sob into his shoulder. She locks her arms around his back, holding her own wrist to keep him in place even though he’s not trying to leave. How does he not want to leave after that?
“I see you,” he whispers into her hair and she cries harder.
It goes on for minutes, just feeling and being held by Quentin fucking Coldwater and feeling the most intimate she’s maybe ever felt with anyone her entire life. She feels cut open and raw and she wants to hide it away again, wants to bottle it back up and act like it never happened but she can’t. And that’s what she wanted: to rip herself open so much that she couldn’t defend herself.
She calms down enough to stop crying, and she feels him rub soothing patterns against her back.
“I think I used your shirt as a tissue,” Margo mumbles.
“That’s fine,” he says.
Quentin rubs her back. Margo can’t get over the way he’s trying to comfort her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks.
“Do I have to?”
“I mean, we probably should.”
It feels stupid, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind, the only thing she needs to know. “Do you hate me?”
“What? No.” He pulls back to look at her.
“No pity? Disgust?” Margo interrogates him.
“No, Margo.” He shakes his head along with his words.
“Then what?”
His eyes dart around like they do when he’s thinking or feeling too much. “I care about you. I hate that you were hurt, hate that you hated yourself.”
“I was a bitch.”
Quentin rubs his hand down her arm. “I already knew that about you.”
“I’ve been bitch-lite lately. I thought-“. Margo stops. She doesn’t know what she thought. Maybe that Quentin would see how pathetic she was and that could be the final straw and then it would be over.
He gives her time to speak, but when she doesn’t continue, he picks up. “You had to be who you were to be who you are now. I lo- I like who you are now.”
Margo looks at him for a long time, assessing his words, his face, his body. The tears have stopped, and she feels more like herself but open.
“You know, you and El are the only people I can stand.” Her heart pounds in her chest. “Is that love?”
“Maybe not the definition of it, but I’d say so, yeah,” Quentin says.
“Then tell me, Coldwater. What is the definition of love?”
His face scrunches up and he worries his lip. “Sometimes it’s like you think I have all the answers to sentimentality and feelings. I don’t know, it’s like a feeling. You just feel it.”
Margo presses, “And do you feel it?”
“Yes, Margo. But I feel like maybe you don’t want to hear it.”
He’s not wrong. Margo hasn’t wanted to hear it for a long time. But she thinks maybe she should.
Quentin says, “What do you feel for me? Try to describe it to me, please.”
Margo can give him this. “I feel warm. Protective. I want to make you feel good, and I want you to make me feel good.” She pauses. “But I also feel like I might throw up.”
Quentin lets out a wet laugh. “That part might just be fear.”
She opens and closes her mouth. Maybe she is afraid. Or maybe it’s like she’s dismissed the fear before she can even let herself feel it.
She can do whatever she wants: she’s Margo fucking Hanson. If she’s in love, she can say it. She doesn’t understand it, but she feels it, feels her heart bursting with tenderness and awe and anger and pride and messy, messy emotions that might overwhelm her if she lets them.
The tide rises up within her, she opens her mouth, and she says, “I love you.”
Quentin smiles. She half expected him to scream, mirror her insides back at her. Instead, he says, “I love you, too.”
And then it’s done. It’s out in the world, and she can’t take it back. Quentin saw her, still wants her, still loves her.
“Well, shit,” Margo says.
“Yeah.”
The desire to just take him overwhelms her. “Come here,” she directs and yanks him with too much strength up against her. She kisses him, and it’s too hard, their mouths not meeting quite right, but she doesn’t care. She just wants him closer.
Quentin half-moans against her mouth, and she pulls him in deep. She can’t believe that she’s in love with someone, in love with Quentin, who is in love with her and kissing her with all the enthusiasm and love in his heart. It’s so fucking weird it almost doesn’t feel real.
Margo wraps her legs around Quentin’s hips, still sitting close on the floor. Their chests are close, arms tight, and there’s barely any room to move against each other, but she doesn’t care goddamn it. It still doesn’t feel close enough.
“I love you,” he whispers into her mouth, and Margo growls. She wasn’t expecting to, but it’s like all the emotional vulnerability has awoken something primal inside of her. Her emotions are soft, but her body wants to be raw and forceful.
Margo holds Quentin’s face with both hands, fingers digging into his cheeks. “I love you.”
The candlelight casts shadows over his face, and he’s so beautiful to her.
She crashes her lips against his again, the dim lighting making her feel like she can do anything.
He clutches her close, his hands rubbing all over her back, down to grab her ass and she suddenly wishes they were naked, wishes they could be as close as possible. She does not want to pull away to actually take her clothes off.
Margo wriggles her hands up under Quentin’s soft t-shirt because she just wants to feel as much of his skin as she possibly can. His tongue is hot and wet against hers and her nails are sharp across Quentin’s back, and that base part of her rears up again at the thought that she’s marking him, putting her claim on him like a sign that reads Loved by Margo.
She shoves a hand around his neck, grasping, cupping his throat as their lips and tongues work together. She can feel the thrum of his heartbeat beating with hers.
His hands are still just skimming under her pants, barely exploring, so she grabs one and shoves it down.
“Finger me,” Margo grits out, and Quentin usually goes along with whatever she says, so he does. After feeling so vulnerable and open, this feels familiar and safe. Love may rip her open, but she can always have some power in this. She knows that most of that power and safety just comes from Quentin, that it wouldn’t be the same if it was anyone else, but she holds it close to her now.
There’s no room for Quentin to move in a way that isn’t awkward, so he presses his hand against her, cupping her under her pants while they make out. Margo’s reminded of some of those shitty sexual experiences she just had to live through, and is relieved that she knows Quentin never judges her afterwards.
Margo grinds against his hand while she holds his body in place.
He slips a finger inside her and presses hard, and it’s enough to feel good. It’s enough, he’s enough, everything is so much.
She’s crying again. She hates that she’s become a person who cries during sex.
“I love you,” Quentin says again, like now that he’s allowed to say it the words have to force themselves out of him whenever he feels it. Margo grips his hair and tugs hard, pulling his head back to stare into his eyes.
“Make me come,” Margo says, even though she’s crying and her face is a mess of mascara and emotion. Quentin does as she says, works his hand against her and Margo grinds herself down onto the wide feeling of his fingers until her body releases. Her legs shake with it, and Margo can’t keep her eyes off Quentin.
Quentin pulls his fingers from her and wraps her close to him. “I love you,” he says again.
“I know,” she sighs.
Margo can accept this. Quentin sees her and loves her, and she sees and loves him. It feels raw and dangerous and risky, as love always is, but she’s willing to go for it.