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“All you have to do is get in, turn the key, and get out fast.” Quentin explained with an almost unnatural level of calm.
“Um, what about the monster?” Josh asks.
“Ora will take care of the monster.”
“What about you?” Alice asks the question that is on the tip of Eliot’s tongue, something is off about the way Quentin is presenting this.
“I stay in the castle. It’s a fair deal. She’s been there for centuries, and she’s tired, and I’m … I’m strong enough, thanks to the quest, so I’m the new jailer,” Quentin explains with an air of determination that seizes Eliot’s heart in his chest.
“This isn’t the solution,” Alice argues.
“I second that,” Eliot never expected he’d agree with Alice Quinn quite so fervently.
“Alice, who’s the one that died for us?” Quentin asked then rounded to look at Eliot, “you were willing to stay in Fillory for forever. How is this different? Someone has to step up.”
The answer is trying to claw its way out of Eliot’s throat. It’s different because I love you. But now isn’t the time for that, right now they just need to come up with any other rational solution.
“Quick alternative pitch: take the gun with the god-killing bullet and shoot the fucking monster in the face,” Margo – his beautiful, vicious, brilliant Bambi who always has his back – proposes.
“Second, second that, yes,” Eliot enthusiastically agrees.
“No, I promised, no clever stuff,” Quentin stubbornly sticks to the terms he negotiated without getting any damn input from the rest of them.
“It’s more bloody and straightforward,” Eliot is desperate at this point. He knows it’s a technicality, he knows it still breaks Quentin’s promise, he knows it won’t work but he has to try.
“Look, this monster, it’s not a joke. We cannot let it escape, and the only way to make sure that it doesn’t is to do this the hard way,” Quentin explains, “the quest taught us that it’s like that sometimes.” Eliot can’t help but think of the Mosaic, of the ‘beauty of all life’ that demanded their whole lives in such a perfect way that by a decade in Eliot had nearly stopped caring about the quest and just took that gift for what it was. But this … this was some perverse mirror of that beautiful life. This was Quentin giving up.
“I don’t like this,” Alice voices everyone's thoughts.
“Me neither, but I’m going to do it,” Quentin said with a note of finality that sliced through Eliot’s heart.
“No,” the objection rips itself out of Eliot’s mouth before he can stop it.
“Look, this isn’t your call,” Quentin said with quiet resignation. To anyone else that look on his face, that steely resolve, might just blend in with Quentin’s particular brand of every day heroism that they all took for granted but Eliot knew better. He’d seen that face every time Quentin tried to pull away in the midst of a depressive spiral for fifty years when his broken brain had convinced him that the people he loved were better off without him.
“I’m not letting you do this,” Eliot countered, “I won’t let you spend the rest of your life locked in a prison.”
“Look, you’ve all made sacrifices, ok? Now it’s my turn.”
“I died to save you,” Alice shouted in frustration, “none of us are dying if we don’t finish this quest, Quentin.”
“We’ve come too far to just give up. It’s my fault that magic was shut off, I can’t let that be my legacy. The world deserves magic.”
“Does it?” Alice asked sharply, “because it seems to me like magic just corrupts everything.”
“Penny fucking died to get one of those keys,” Kady snaps, “we’re not just letting that sacrifice mean nothing.”
“Exactly!” Quentin gestures emphatically like she’s backing him up.
“That doesn’t mean you have to go martyr yourself Coldwater. I think we’ve all lost enough without throwing another one of our friends on the pyre,” Kady shoots back.
“Quentin,” Eliot puts his hand on his shoulder and looks him in the eye, “we will find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Quentin argued, “someone needs to guard the monster, offering myself as the next guard is the only way Ora will let us in, therefore it’s the only way to get magic back.”
“Did you even offer her any other options Q? Maybe like regular supply runs and books to pass her time? Or did you just offer yourself up on a fucking platter?” Margo asked in an icy tone that most people would read as harsh but Eliot saw the underlying concern, he knew that Margo come to the same conclusions about Quentin’s motivations here.
“I … what does it even matter?” Quentin said with a sigh, “we don’t have a way to contact her to renegotiate. It’s done. I’m staying.”
“Then I’m staying with you,” the sheer terror of losing Quentin permanently filters out the petty fears and anxieties that usually prevent Eliot from addressing his feelings.
“Fucking what?” He heard Margo shout behind him amid varied noises of protest or surprise from the rest of the questers but he refused to break eye contact with Quentin.
“Eliot,” Quentin sighed, “you already gave up your life for the greater good. You got married to a woman, you stranded yourself in Fillory while the rest of could leave, you gave up any semblance of the future you wanted twice over. You’ve done your part. Why won’t you let me do mine? How is this different?”
“It’s different because I love you, ok?” Eliot shouted, the rest of the room went dead quiet. Quentin deflated and sighed, not exactly the reaction Eliot could have hoped for his very first declaration of love in this timeline.
“Your … friendship,” Quentin tripped over the word, “means a lot to me El, but I can’t let you do that.” Eliot felt the weight of his own actions hit his stomach like a ton of bricks. Quentin didn’t believe him and it was is own fault because he’d actively misrepresented and downplayed his own feelings.
“Jesus Q,” Eliot hooked his hand behind Quentin’s neck and pulled him into a desperate kiss, “I’m in love with you and I’m not going to let you just throw away your life.”
“You …” Quentin’s bewildered eyes gradually focused into anger, “you couldn’t have said that, like, two months ago when I asked you to give us a shot?”
“Look, I’m a mess. I ruin everything good in my life and I’ve never been in a real long-term relationship. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship by being a shitty boyfriend … but I somehow doubt even I could fuck our relationship up more than trapped in a dungeon on the underside of the planet.”
“Fifty years, El! We were together for fifty fucking years, how much longer-term can you get? We raised a family together, we had proof of concept …” Quentin pulled away and ran agitated fingers through his hair.
“We had fifty years where we were stuck living together to finish the quest. We had virtually no social circle, and you still managed to marry a woman after we’d been sleeping together for years.”
“You loved Ariel! You encouraged me to go after Ariel! And through all of that, we never stopped being together … At the end of it all when we got back and I wanted to try again in this timeline you … you told me that wasn’t you. That you wouldn’t choose me.”
“Yeah, to protect myself from when you inevitably decided you were done with my bullshit and found the next Ariel or got back together with Alice!” Eliot peripherally registered Alice’s indignant shout at being pulled into this.
“Great, yes, perfect logic Eliot. I spent fifty years sucking your cock only for you to assume I’m too straight to actually mean it when I say I want be with you!” Quentin is clearly still exasperated and angry but that is good, that means he’s feeling emotion, that he’s not despondent or catatonic. It’s enough to keep him alive for the moment.
“I’m sorry sweetheart, I know I’m an asshole, I know I fucked up but I can’t …” he pulled Quentin in, tucking his head under his chin, “just don’t make me live in a world without you, without even the chance to ever fix this.” Eliot smiled sheepishly, “I promise I’ll spend eternity making it up to you while we play house with a monster.”
“Eliot, we’re not talking about like, raising a kid here.”
“I mean, we’ve done it before.”
“Teddy was not a monster!”
“Do you remember his terrible twos?”
“I hate to break up this queer apocalyptic domestic fantasy you’ve got going on here,” Margo broke in, “but we need to get real about this plan. El, you’ve got a kingdom to rule.”
“No, Bambi,” Eliot loosened his grip on Quentin enough to turn and look at her, “you have a kingdom to rule, I was deposed then lost an election. You know I want to be there for you, to help you, but If Quentin’s doing this, so am I.”
“Fine then,” Margo cocked her hip and leveled him with a challenging glare and a nonchalant shrug, “two can play at that game. If you’re staying then so am I.”
“What, no?” Quentin cried.
“Bambi …”
“I am Sparticus!” Josh shouted as he stood. “Or, um, if Margo’s staying so am I.”
“I pretty much hate you all,” Penny 23 interjected, “but once we’ve seen the inside, I can travel in and out of castle Blackspire safely.”
“Look, if we’re doing this, we’re doing it smart,” Kady reasoned, “once we’ve got magic back Penny can travel us in and out in shifts. We can take turns taking sanity breaks and supply runs. Nobody is left alone or stuck there forever,” she glares at Quentin daring him to challenge her. “Plus, if we’re traveling in and out we don’t risk the monster figuring out how to escape the way it could with a physical backdoor.”
“As fun as all of this sounds, let’s exhaust all of our options first,” Margo claps, rubbing her hands together then lifting them and her face up in the air she prays: “Oh great and merciful Lady of the Trees, patron goddess of talking Quentin Coldwater off of the ledge, I beseech thee to save this dumbass one last time for the road. I know you’ve got some important goddess shit you’re dealing with but as it turns out, we’ve all been kept in the dark of some pretty major plot points and you deserve to know. Apparently our boys lived a long happy life together to get the time key complete with a polyamorous marriage and a whole ass child. Then my emotionally constipated best friend had a preemptive ‘gay panic’ panic and broke your socially-maladjusted best friend’s heart. Now Quentin wants to do something suicide-adjacent and Eliot is insisting on following him like an incredibly well-dressed puppy. I call upon you, Oh Mighty Goddess, to prevent this – apparently far from a virgin if he spent 50 years fucking Eliot – sacrifice. Without your divine intervention I’m afraid we’re doomed to have a Tim Burton does “Full House” remake where Michelle is a monster and likely to kill us all. I pray to you, Our Lady of the Trees, to save these dickbags from themselves. Amen.”
For a moment, everyone just stared at Margo. “Oh come on, I figure we’re owed a few religious indulgences for all of the shit we’ve been through with Julia.”
The others followed suit with less dramatic prayers. Kady called out to her best bitch, to save her from would-be heroes. Penny, arguably her first devotee, prayed fervently to Julia directly because he knew that she loved Quentin and would be sad if they let this happen. Josh mumbled through something inaudible. Eliot silently prayed to Julia to stop the love of his life from dressing up self-harm as some sort of noble sacrifice.
In the end, it was probably Quentin’s own cry that did it: “No, Jules, you’re off doing bigger things. The quest is my responsibility now,” he looked around at his friends and said, “I can do this, I’ll be fine as long as the world has magic and I know you’re all out there alive and happy, I’m … this is a small price to pay.”
“I leave you alone for one day,” Julia appears in the middle of the room and pulls Quentin into a hug, “and you’ve suddenly got a life partner and a wife and a kid and you’re telling everyone they’re better off without you?”
“No Jules, I know what … this isn’t that.”
“Even if I hadn’t seen you spiral like this before Q, you can’t hide from me now.” Julia’s voice was soft and even. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t separate it out before I left but I’m here now and none of your pain is what we’d call quiet,” she looked around the room at their whole group of friends finally landing on Alice, “especially yours. I know you think it would be for everyone’s good, you’ll see someday, it would not. For now, I need you to stay out of the way.” She flicked two fingers and Alice fell back bound into her chair.
“Jules! What the hell?” Quentin started toward Alice.
“She is planning on destroying the keys, preventing you from returning magic to the world,” Julia said in her eerily calm voice.
“No, I …” Alice started.
“Alice wouldn’t,” Quentin’s big hurt puppy eyes shifted between Alice and Julia.
“I know her intentions the same way that I know that you’ve been struggling alone since the depression key. You’ve thrown yourself into the quest but now that it’s ending you think removing yourself from the world is the best option because you don’t see the point of continuing your life. You are so full of love but you don’t think that love is returned even though every single person in this room cares deeply about you. You have been my best friend since we were kids. You joked about being my official sidekick but I never saw you as that. You were my friend, my family, my anchor, and when I briefly lost that connection I lost myself in a major way. I know, on some level, that my divinity means that eventually you will die and I will be forced to live without you but I’m not done loving you yet Q and you have so much more life to live.”
She started making a circuit around the room, “Kady lost her mom. She watched the deity that was supposed to bring us peace slaughter our coven, she lost the man she loved, and now, in a way, she’s lost her Best Bitch,” Julia’s serene tone cracked ever so slightly on the term, “so the thought of losing one more person, the thought of failing to protect one more friend is unbearable to her.
“Penny lost everyone he ever loved in another timeline and he too had given up on life,” she reached up and cupped his cheek, “then he came here and found a place in this group and started living again. He managed to find it in himself to feel compassion and friendship for you even though it was a monster with your face that took everything from him.
“Josh wants so desperately to be part of something bigger, to matter to all of you the way you matter to him. He shows his love by providing food and drugs and support where he can because that’s all he thinks you’ll let him do. He’s terrified of being left behind because once he was lost, stranded and alone but comparatively safe in the Neitherlands while his friends were dead or dying in Fillory and there was nothing he could do to help them. He can’t bear the thought of losing any of you in the same way while he’s stuck on the sidelines unable to help.
“Margo doesn’t make friends easily. She eventually found her platonic soulmate and thought that was the only friend she needed. Then you came along and showed her that you can be a messy catty bitch and still love the things you love unapologetically; that you can still believe in magic even when you are disillusioned with the world. Yes, she’s afraid of losing Eliot but she’s also afraid that if she lost you she’d lose that spark of wonder and compassion that you reminded her she had and she doesn’t know if she can be a good ruler without it. So she will absolutely do it, she’ll give up her crown and follow you to the dark side of the planet if it means she gets to keep both of her best friends.
“Alice loves you more than she’s ever loved anyone other than her brother Charlie. The way you throw your whole self into helping others reminded her of Charlie from the beginning and she loves you for that. She loves that you stuck around her long enough to get past her emotional defenses, she loves that you continued loving her even when she wasn’t herself, even when she didn’t want you to, even though there’s so much trauma and baggage between you that she can barely stand to be in the same room as you most of the time. She grew up in a house with two parents so focused on their own projects, on their own magic, that they forgot how to have human connections. She saw what Martin Chatwin turned into when he used magic to try to fix the broken parts of his brain. She saw how her relentless pursuit of magic stripped her of her own humanity as a niffin. She’s afraid that’s ultimately all magic does to people and she couldn’t bear to see that happen to you too. Her plan is misguided, but her pain and her love are real.
“And then there’s Eliot,” she turned to face him and Eliot felt stripped bare, he felt her sifting through all of his emotional baggage, all of his hopes and fears and he was powerless to stop it. “He grew up being told there was something fundamentally wrong with him by the people who were supposed to love him unconditionally. Eventually he escaped and went out and built a life around the things he thought were attainable, things he could control. From the very beginning you made him want all of those things he never thought he could have. But you were too good, too sweet, too oblivious to all of his flirtations to fit into the life he’d carved out for himself. Then at the mosaic you gave him companionship, intimacy, a home, a child, and a lifetime of love. You gave him the life he’d dreamed of when he was young and still dared to dream.”
On the one hand, it was supremely unfair that Quentin’s best friend was suddenly omniscient and could just peek into all of his darkest secrets. On the other hand, Eliot hadn’t exactly done a stellar job of communicating these things to Quentin on his own, so a bit of divine intervention was preferable to losing the love of his life forever. She gave Eliot a sad but knowing half smile, “so when you got your memories back, it was easier for him to assume that it was just a dream, or that you’d lived that happy life under a set of circumstances that couldn’t be replicated in the real world and he didn’t want risk tainting those beautiful pieces of a life he couldn’t have with the harsh realities.”
She turned to Quentin, who was now openly crying with an overwhelmed mess of emotions playing out on his face. “And since you were raised with a mother who never got the memo about unconditional love, since you were conditioned to think that you’re hard to love, too needy, too clingy, you believed him when he pushed you away. Even though you love him so much it aches.” Quentin turned to Eliot with those large expressive eyes so full of love and longing and pain that his battered heart broke apart then seemed to stitch itself back together.
“So between Eliot and Alice both pushing you away and my apotheosis you felt expendable enough to offer yourself up as a sacrifice to the quest. One last heroic act that would give your life the meaning you think it should have. I hope now you realize that you are not expendable or replaceable Quentin Coldwater. This weird little patchwork family we’ve got here, we all love you Q. Even if Penny and Kady are rolling their eyes behind my back right now.” The joke broke the ethereal tension in the room startling laughter from her audience.
“Ok,” Margo said in her High King voice, even as she attempted to brush away a few stray tears without ruining her eye makeup, “is the group therapy session over now? Can we talk strategy yet?”
“I think we should let him kiss the boy first,” Julia said, her voice closer to her old self than it had been through her monologue. She gave Quentin a slight nudge and Eliot barely had time to open his arms before Quentin was crashing into him, insistent arms looping around his neck and pulling him down into a kiss. Eliot clung to him as if his life depended on it and felt like he was only being slightly more dramatic than the moment deserved. He could have lost Quentin today, he’d intended to protect them both from further heartache by ending it before it started in this timeline but instead he’d nearly pushed Quentin to do the unthinkable.
“I love you,” Quentin all but sobbed as he pulled away.
“I love you so much,” Eliot said, dropping a kiss on Quentin’s temple then leaning back to look in his eyes, “but Quentin, sweetheart, you can’t let it get this bad without talking to me, or praying to Julia, or, I dunno, take your pick,” he said sweeping his hand across the room.
“I second that,” Alice piped up from her chair in the corner.
“Third,” Josh raised his hand.
“So say we all,” Margo cut off the chain before it made it through the whole room, “now can we get back to solutions? I still vote god killing bullet.”
“If it were that simple, don’t you think that the gods who built the prison would have done it in the first place?” Quentin asked, turning back to face the room. Eliot, unwilling to relinquish contact so soon after he got it back, pulled him against his chest.
“Simple?” Kady sneered, “I had to slaughter a demi-god senator to get that bullet.”
“Ok, so maybe simple isn’t the best phrasing, but, like, I still think we should talk to Ora before we change our plans, she knows what we’re dealing with more than we do.” Quentin argued. “Jules, do you think you could give me another hit of magic so I can go back.”
“Oh, puppy,” Margo simpers, “do you really think we’d trust you with negotiations after the last time?” Quentin bristled and Eliot stroked his arm soothingly, silently agreeing with Margo’s assessment.
“Game plan first,” Kady interjects, “we should have options to present her. God killing bullet is one.”
“There’s the ‘Full House’ guard-shift option where we take turns and Penny shuttles us in and out,” Josh adds.
“We could always ask the knight what she wants in exchange,” Eliot adds, “Calypso said she’s there of her own free will, maybe she just wants like regular mani-pedis and a well stocked bar.”
“That leads to another question,” Julia mused, “if she was always able to leave, what was the contingency plan? Does the monster even need a constant guard? I might be able to ask Iris if she’s still talking to me after I ignored her to come back here.”
“Alright people, here’s what we’re going to do: Our Lady of the Trees,” Margo gives Julia an exaggerated court curtsy and Julia nods back, “will go talk to her new goddess buddy to see if she can get some intel. In the meantime, we’re going to assume worst-case scenario and plan for operation ‘Tim Burton Full House’ and gather rations and supplies for a potential extended stay. Hoberman: you’re on groceries, focus on shelf-stable non-perishables. Penny: camping supplies, cots, water bottles, etc. Kady: go around the cottage and gather sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, etc. and work some planar compression spells on the luggage. I’ll head to Fillory get the the Muntjac ready, and give Fen a crash course on being the interim-ruler. Alice: I dunno, I guess just hang tight kitten and we’ll make sure Todd feeds you until we’ve got magic back and can get you into therapy. El,” she took a moment to look over Quentin and shook her head, “take our boy for a nap it looks like the only time he’s slept in days was when he was astral projecting. We’ll meet back here in a few hours and Julia and I can negotiate with Ora.”
Before scattering off to their individual tasks, the others crowded around Quentin offering hugs and support. Margo pulled Eliot to the side waving a warning finger at him, “nap, Eliot, you’re not going to ravage that boy today.”
“Trust me,” Eliot said seriously, “I have a lot of experience taking care of Quentin Coldwater when he’s spiraling.”
“Apparently,” she said with an appraising look, “I have an easier time seeing you Daddying Q into self-care than caring for an actual child.”
“Which is the exact reason I was Papa, Quentin was Dad but Teddy …” Eliot trailed off in reflection, “Teddy was perfect, Bambi. I was always afraid I’d fall into the patterns I was raised with, that I’d end up a better dressed version of my father, but it wasn’t like that at all. Quentin was such a great dad and I … I loved that boy and he loved me. Quentin and Ariel had this perfect family and for some reason they let me be a part of it. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to want space, or for me to get bored and fuck off with a blacksmith or something, but it never happened. Then when Ariel died Quentin was a wreck and Teddy didn’t understand what was going on and someone needed to be a semi-functional adult. I was so sure I was going to fuck everything up but they needed me so I just ovaried up and took care of my boys until things gradually got better and then eventually things were great and then somehow 50 years went by of this perfect life that I was never supposed to have. What if I can’t do it again? What if I fuck it up?”
“Oh, sweetie,” she said with a rare show of sincere affection, “I’m not going to lie, because if we’re being honest, you might. But do you know what you’re going to do today? You’re going to take care of your boy, because he needs you. Then we’re going to go finish this quest because Earth and Fillory and countless other planets need you to get magic back. And after that you’re going to try your best to be a semi-functional adult and we’ll see how the next 50 years go.”
Eliot pulled her into a tight hug, “and this time I’ll have my Bambi.”
“And a whole family of misfit toys, apparently,” she laughed, “when did we become people with like a whole group of friends?”
“I know, it kind of took me by surprise when the questing creature said it too.”
“Alright, I’m off,” Julia interrupted as she walked over to them with her arm slung over Quentin’s shoulder, “I’m handing over custody to you, Eliot.”
“I’m not a child,” Quentin complained even as he burrowed into Eliot’s side at Julia’s gentle nudge.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t worry,” Julia said in her best mom voice, “take care of yourself, ok?”
“I know, Jules, nap, food, quest in that order.”
“Don’t worry, my Lady of the Trees, I’ll look after him,” Eliot said with a deep court bow.
“You better,” she says as he’s still bowed before her, goddess voice now in full effect, eyes literally glowing, and the air crackling around her with barely suppressed power, “because he deserves better from you than you’ve managed so far. If you ever let your own shit put him in that state again you will know my wrath,” and in a blink she was gone.
“Damn,” Margo breathed in admiration, “I thought my shovel talk was intimidating but I’ll never beat that.”
“Bambi,” Eliot warned, placing himself between Quentin and Margo, “don’t you dare.”
“Calm down,” Margo soothed, “I’m not about to threaten the poor boy in his current state. Besides, didn’t you hear Julia spilling all of my warm gooey guts earlier? I love you both and I need you both so I’m just going to assume that neither of you can screw things up worse than you already have and that it’s all uphill from here.” She kissed them both on the cheek, “now go get some rest, let the rest of us carry the weight of the world for a few hours.”
As the others scattered to their various tasks, Eliot led Quentin up to his room. It was a strange heady mixture of familiar and comforting with new and exciting. They’d slept in the same bed countless times over the course of a lifetime. But that bed was a lumpy Filorian mattress that dipped in the middle on a frame with bed cords that needed tightening every few months and a thatched roof that shed particles everywhere no matter how many stasis and mending spells they used on it.
It had been just over a year on the earth calendar since they’d left for Fillory, probably about a year and a half in present Fillory time, or half a century when you factored in the mosaic timeline. Eliot felt the weight of every one of those years pressing against his chest now. He’d never taken Quentin to bed in his attic room at the Physical Kids cottage. The path was familiar, as was the feel of a warm compliant body under his arm as he made the journey up. For a while he’d been so blissfully content in his hedonism. In the sheer quantity of boys he’d led up to his room and enjoyed himself unabashedly in a way that the sad, scared, broken boy he’d been in Indiana never thought he could. That was exactly who he’d needed to be at that time. Now though? He couldn’t shake the thought that those other boys had never mattered a fraction as much to him as Quentin.
As he urged Quentin to sit on the edge of his bed and started taking off his shoes, Eliot reflected on the three wildly different personas he’d had in that short span of time. Between the Breakbills party boy, the Fillorian High King, and Quentin’s life partner, it was so glaringly obvious which version of himself was the happiest, was the most comfortable in himself and his role.
“I’m not a child,” Quentin repeated his earlier grumble, “I am capable of taking off my own shoes.”
“Oh shush,” Eliot demurred, “I love taking care of you and I know that deep down you love being fussed over, even if you always feel the need to make a token objection.”
“I just,” Quentin sighed as he laid back on the bed yawning, “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“Quentin, baby,” Eliot sighed as he took off his vest and tie, “we’ve all just been through an emotional spin cycle, you’ve clearly been in more pain than you’ve let anyone know about, and I just faced down the prospect of … I promise you are not a burden to me. Right now I need this as much as you do. Please, sweetheart, just let me take care of you.”
“It’s just … this quest was supposed to make me … I dunno, better? Stronger, at least, and we just sidelined the whole quest so you all could throw me an intervention. There’s so much that needs to be done and I’m just laying here.”
“Oh, Q,” Eliot slid into the bed behind him and pulled him close, “this was never supposed to be your quest alone, remember that when I hunted down the Great Cock he listed off all of those people in the room downstairs and told me that no one of us could do it alone. I’m sorry so much of it fell on you.”
“You came to me for help and I feel like I’m failing you. All of you.”
“Never that,” Eliot kissed his shoulder, “I’m the one who lost the plot, he directly told me that we were ‘parts of one whole’ and I still went and broke your heart because I didn’t believe it.”
“For the record, I’m still mad at you for that,” Quentin said, turning around so he could burrow his face into Eliot’s chest.
“I know,” Eliot sighed, running his hand up and down Quentin’s back. “For the record, I’m still mad at me for that too. Hating myself for who I am is one thing, but to hurt somebody else …” Eliot let out a shuddering sigh, “I never would have forgiven myself if you’d …” he couldn’t force out the word so he let the silence speak for itself, “… especially because of me.”
“Hey,” Quentin said and tilted his head up to kiss Eliot, “if I’m not allowed to grief spiral you aren’t either.”
“Right,” Eliot refocused on his task, “I’ve been ordered by a literal Goddess and the High King of Fillory to ensure that you take a nap. Right now the others are making sure everything is ready for the quest. For the moment you’re safe, comfortable, and so very loved. It’s time for you to get some rest.”
“Let’s save our overthinking for after the quest?” Quentin asked with a smirk.
“Yeah,” Eliot smiled down at Quentin, “but I promise not to put the conversation off for 50 years this time.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Good, I need you to keep me an honest man,” Eliot burrowed down and focused on the rhythm of Quentin’s heart and the soft breaths puffing against his chest.
They were both hovering in that moment just before dozing off when Quentin asked, “Hey El?”
“Yeah?”
“Was I really, like, the man of your dreams?”
“Well, he didn’t really have a face, except for occasional appearances by Patrick Swayze, but he was always kind, and sweet, and affectionate,” he punctuated each word with a light kiss across Quentin’s forehead and cheeks, “and he would believe in me and be so brave that he would stand up for me and protect me – usually from my father – and I would cook him dinner and take care of him and love him so much. We’d have a kid who was never scared of us and was able to be exactly who he was without shame or fear. We’d live as far away from Indiana as possible and we’d be like, stupidly happy together, way happier than my parents and their friends were. Most of all, he’d always love me for me, even when I was difficult, even though there were scary parts about me that nobody should have to deal with, even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“El,” Quentin reached up to brush away a tear from Eliot’s cheek hadn’t even realized was there, “you deserve all of that.”
Eliot whimpered into a kiss, overwhelmed by Quentin’s assurance. “So yeah, sweetheart,” he breathed out, resting his forehead on Quentin’s, “swap in wards and battle magic instead of roundhouse kicks and punches for the protection bit and in all the ways that matter you’re exactly the man I dreamed about when I was a scared lonely kid.”
“I love you,” Quentin whispered.
“I love you too,” Eliot responded reverently, “but we should sleep, unless we want to face the combined wrath of Julia and Margo.”
“I would protect you if we did,” Quentin said as if it was the easiest decision in the world and Eliot’s heart swelled. “But sleep sounds good,” Quentin yawned again into his chest and settled down.
There were still so many things they needed to talk about, so much emotional baggage to unpack and so many words left unsaid for far too long. There was still a quest to complete, a monster in a prison castle looming in their near future. There was still political unrest in Fillory, and the McAllister’s owned Breakbills now, and whatever the fuck was up with the Library. Quentin would need to talk to Alice about their metric ton of shared trauma. Their lives would never be as simple as they were at the mosaic, there would always be more bullshit. Those were all problems for later. In this moment, Eliot was safe and warm, curled up around someone who was good and true and who inexplicably loved him even when he didn’t deserve it. So for now they could just rest.