#yes the title IS very passive aggressive and bitter you're welcome

[hullabelugawhale]

Better To Be Safe

Summary: Looking at Quentin Coldwater for the first time post-Monster was even more difficult than Eliot had anticipated. (Or, a fuck-up fixing fic where Quentin Coldwater is alive and important and loves Eliot Waugh and Eliot Waugh loves him) 

READ ON AO3 or continue under the cut for an alternate ending to 4x13 which I have personally erased from existence using sheer willpower 

Author’s Note: So, a few things, other than the obvious fact that there is NO CHARACTER DEATH in this fic: I think literally the only thing I borrowed from the finale was Eliot's stomach wound. I didn't even watch the goddamn finale because I can't stand even the idea of it, but I've seen gifs of the less offensive parts. I also wrote this completely ignoring the Qualice reunion. While I could come up with reasons why that would've made sense given Q's state of mind, that's not really the fuck-up that I wanted to focus on in this particular fuck-up fix-it fic. So anyways, I really truly want you all to feel like you can use this as an alternate canon to what 4x13 gave you because this world and these characters are real to us and there's no reason why two writers making a terrible misguided decision should be able to take that away from us in one sweep. Okay? So this is your comfort. This is your new canon, if you desire it to be. Quentin Coldwater is alive and he's important and he loves Eliot and Eliot loves him and that's the fucking law. Okay? Good. Without further ado, enjoy <3

                    The truth was, Quentin was glad the Monster had no longer been in the mood to play games. Games meant Eliot’s hand around the back of Quentin’s neck, playing with the wisps of his hair. Games meant Eliot’s arm around his shoulders, or Eliot’s fingers tangling in his own, tracing the ridges of his spine, caressing the line of his jaw. Games meant guilt chewing Quentin’s guts to ragged threads because of how badly he wanted to close his eyes and pretend in those moments that he was feeling Eliot Waugh again.

           So, though it wasn’t like it didn’t hurt to have a shard of glass the size of his hand thrust into the soft flesh of his stomach, he was glad for it. This was no game - this was, truly, a Monster possessing the man he knew, because the man he knew didn’t have the viciousness inside of him to do a thing like that. Eliot may not have loved Quentin like he wanted him to, but Q believed that at the very least, he wouldn’t impale him.

           He was glad to suffer at the hands of the truth, instead of the illusion of tenderness.

           “Oh,” the Monster said, still straddling Quentin on the floor of the library. He cocked his head and stared blankly at the mess he’d just made, his knees sticking in a pool of Quentin’s blood. “I am angry.”

           Quentin choked. He closed his eyes, rocking his head back and forth over the floor, until the Monster grabbed his chin and forced him still. Quentin opened his eyes.

           “You were my friend,” the Monster said, doe-eyed and perplexed. Quentin had hoped he wouldn’t have to use his newly acquired magic on Eliot’s body, but there was still no sign of Margo and the ice axes, and with the Monster’s sister keeping Alice occupied, he had to protect himself somehow. With the force of Quentin’s magic, the Monster had flown back into a mirror, shattering it.

           It wasn’t like the creature needed a weapon when he could have snapped Quentin’s neck with a flick of his fingers. But no. This was personal for the Monster. Quentin was sure he wouldn’t be dying for a very, very long time.

           His suspicions were confirmed when the Monster grabbed the shard in his stomach and twisted upward, quick and vicious. Quentin’s vision greyed; his scream caught in his throat. Pain was all he knew.

           “Please,” he wheezed. His hand pawed dumbly through the air like maybe he could push the Monster off of him.

           “Brother,” said Julia’s voice from somewhere down the hall. The Monster’s hand released the shard. He placed his hand on Quentin’s throat instead, pinning him to the floor as he turned to face his sister. “Leave the human. There is more work to be done.”

           “He tried…to kill me,” the Monster said, as if still puzzled by Quentin’s actions.

           Quentin thought he saw Julia’s eyes flash red and reptilian. Her voice was somehow impatient and stoic all at once. “Kill him then.”

           Quentin’s pain was blessedly ebbing away now, but he felt a numbing cold beginning to settle in his veins, weighing him down. He was also very tired. His eyelids were too heavy to hold up. When the Monster turned back, he let them fall closed.

           He wouldn’t die looking at Eliot’s face. He would die remembering Eliot’s face - the real one, with its wide smile and sparkling eyes, its human joy and human pain. The one full of fierce determination, of staunch protectiveness, of quiet compassion. The one he saw age fifty years and never lose its glow.

           “Hey! Pain in my ass One and Two!”

           He heard Penny’s voice as if in a dream.

           He felt, distantly, the weight of Eli- the Monster lift off of his broken, bleeding body. And as if that alone had been the anchor tethering him to the world, he let himself drift away away away -

           Into nothingness.

———————————

           The thing about Goddesses: they had a lot of power. The power to defy physics, to destroy and create natural laws, to spin worlds out of nothing, and even - if they were stubborn enough to anger the librarians of the Underworld - to bring people back from the dead.

           The thing about Julia Wicker: she was stubborn.

           The other thing about Julia Wicker: She was also, as of recently, a Goddess.

———————————

           Quentin woke feeling like what he assumed a cloud might feel like if it wasn’t water but was actually - as he had believed up until embarrassingly late in his elementary school days - a big mound of floating cotton.

           That was what he felt like. A big mound of floating cotton. Strange, considering he had just taken a very long and boring elevator ride only to be greeted by Penny 40 in a suit and subjected to a lengthy conversation about all of the very boring jobs he could get in the Underworld, punctuated with a Penny-like insult that sounded strangely like endearment -

           (“I gotta admit man, you actually look a little less like someone constantly having a panic attack. Is it weird that I sort of miss the Sigourney Weaver haircut?”)

           - and fully expected to be miserable and dead right about now, not feeling like a cloud.    

           So Quentin opened his eyes to see what the fuck, and found he was in the physical kids cottage. He was lying in a bed he’d been in before. Next to it was a chair in which Julia was curled up, fully awake and looking more like an unperturbed statue than a human being.

           Quentin flinched back, rising up to his elbows. His mind scrambled for some kind of protective spell and came up empty and muddled, like he’d been drugged.

           “It’s okay,” Julia said, holding up a hand, and with a sensation like a warm balm spreading over his brain, he knew immediately that it was true. It was okay. He didn’t know how he knew that, only that something flicked on in his head to make him see the truth and the truth was that Julia was Julia again.

           Sort of.

           Quentin relaxed back into the bed. Julia flashed him a thin smile.

           “How did you do that?” he asked. He remembered what had killed him, and his hand reached for his abdomen, but there was no pain and no gaping hole where there should have been. Instead he could feel only a long, thin scar, barely there.

           The fresh knowledge in his head told him that that had also been Julia’s doing.

           “Why waste time trying to convince you I’m me when I could show you?” Julia said. “Does it freak you out?”

           “That you’re a Goddess again?” Quentin’s voice sounded hoarse and toad-like. He cleared his throat. “No. Only that you were watching me sleep.”

           Julia smiled softly. There was an immaculate glow to her that Quentin didn’t remember seeing before, but that was the only change he could perceive. For all intents and purposes, Julia was still Julia. His heart ached happily.

           And then, like someone threw a wrench into his chest, it ached so bad he thought he’d pass out again.    

           He sat up. “Eliot.”

           Julia held out a hand to stop him. “He’s alive.”

           “Is he” -

           She nodded. “The ice axes worked.”

           Relief crashed over Quentin with the force of a tidal wave. He felt tears spring to his eyes as he threw his head back on the pillow. A shaky laugh escaped him.

           The ice axes worked. Eliot was alive.

           He was back.

           And yet, when he looked back to Julia, she was looking away. Her face was solemn, even beyond the stoicism of a Goddess.

           “Jules?” Quentin said. His stomach bottomed out. “Fuck. Is everyone okay?”

           “Everyone’s fine,” Julia said. She flicked her gaze back to his, biting her lip. “It’s just…you died, Q.”

           Quentin shook his head. “But I’m…I didn’t.”

           “But you did.”

           It wasn’t Julia who spoke but Margo, who was suddenly standing in the doorway to his room, leaning her head against the frame. She’d traded her usual glitz and glamour for a sloppy bun on top of her head, leggings, and a long t-shirt that hung off her shoulder. She hugged herself, looking barefaced and tired and so unMargo-like that Quentin had to wonder what the hell else had happened since he’d been gone. Which prompted the question:

           “Wait - how long was I dead?” Quentin asked. (He rolled his eyes a little, because how the fuck did he get to a point in his life where that was an actual, non-proverbial sentence coming out of his mouth?)

           “You were barely cold,” Margo said, shrugging her bare shoulder. “More room temperature.”

           “So that’s good, right?” Quentin flicked his eyes between his friends. “Right?”

           Margo sighed, rolling her neck. She moved reluctantly into the room. Julia glanced over her shoulder, pursed her lips and stood from the chair. She reached over to give Quentin’s arm a squeeze.

           “I’m glad your back, Q,” she said softly. Then, flashing Margo a knowing look, she padded out of the room.

           Margo took over Julia’s chair, exhaling heavily. She fixed Quentin with sharp eyes despite her obvious fatigue. “Okay. Here's the thing, Q. You know Eliot. At this point, I’d even say you know him as well as I do, am I right?”

           “Um,” Quentin started, but Margo just rolled her eyes.

           “I’m right. So you know that he hasn’t slept since he got his body back. You know that he’s avoiding everyone because he thinks they’re scared of him. You know that he’s out there wallowing in his dumbass guilt about supposedly killing you two days ago.”

           “He didn’t” -

           “He thinks he did,” Margo said firmly. “And that’s all that matters, because you know as well as I do that once Eliot believes something about himself, it might as well be gospel.”

           “Wha” - Quentin started, shaking his head. “That’s - that’s stupid.”

           Margo stared for a moment, as if waiting for him to follow up with something a little more eloquent. When he didn’t, she smiled softly. “Amen, ya nerd. It’s fucking stupid. Which is why, when you’re feeling better, you’re going to come with me to visit that boy and show him just how fucking stupid it is.”

           Quentin nodded fervently. “Yes. Yes, okay, fine” -

           Quentin started kicking the sheets off his legs. Margo caught his thigh, and he froze at the bite of her nails.

           “When you’re better,” she pressed.

           “I’m - ugh” - He shuffled upward on the bed and lifted his shirt enough so Margo could see the scar, which looked several years - rather than days - old. “I’m fine.”

           Margo gave him a grave look. “I’m not talking about your stab wound, Coldwater. You might think you’re ready to look Eliot in the face and see only Eliot, but I know from experience that it’s not that easy, okay? If you go in there and you flinch even a little bit, you’ll break his heart. You’ll kill him, Quentin. I’m serious.”

           He knew she was serious. Quentin didn’t think he’d ever seen her so serious in his life, in fact. There was a veil of tears over her eyes, but through them, she looked murderous. Not toward him, really, but toward…toward life, probably. Toward the injustice of it all.

           Quentin understood that sentiment perfectly well.

           But he couldn’t share it now. Not now, when he knew Eliot was alive and back in his body and sitting somewhere not far from here waiting for somebody to recognize him for who he is and always was, Monster or no Monster. Quentin was full of a radiant, burning heat that felt something like hope.

           “Margo, do you remember your wedding day?” Quentin asked, making a decision. He quickly continued when he saw the fresh murder in Margo’s eyes at the mention of that ill-fated day. “I just mean…I sent you a letter. I told you Eliot and I were dead but we’d lived full, happy lives, and that was the truth. We did. For fifty years in another timeline.”

           Margo’s eyebrows raised slightly. Her jaw slackened.

           Quentin swallowed hard. “And I know it’s impossible, but I remember it. I remember…watching myself grow old, and watching Eliot grow older. And then I remember burying him. But…but I was sort of okay with it because it felt fine and right and not grossly premature like how I pretty much assumed all of our deaths would be. And yeah, technically none of it ever happened and most of it is lost on me now, but I just have this sense…this sense of having known everything about another person and feeling sort of complete because of it. And after we got back, when I looked at Eliot again…I knew it was him. I knew that I knew him. It felt sort of like…it felt like coming home.”

           Quentin felt his cheeks burn and his chest tighten. A painful lump formed in his throat. Margo just stared and stared, her eyes flicking back and forth across his face so fast it was like she was reading him.

           Quentin cleared his throat. “Look, I know that doesn’t make any sense” -

           “It does,” Margo breathed, nodding. “It does, Q.”

           Quentin nodded gratefully back. His heart ached. “I guess…I’m just saying that I’ve known Eliot - or, I know I’ve known Eliot - so long and so much that there’s literally no fucking way I could mistake him for anyone else even if they did have his face. So if he’s back, then I’ll know it. I’ll never forget it.”

           He knew he was lying, technically. He knew he’d taken a second too long to realize it was Eliot he was talking to that day in the park when he’d come momentarily back to his body. He knew if he took a second longer, Alice would have hit him with that blood and he would have been gone.

           Yet, at the same time, it felt like the truth. Because didn’t he know? Didn’t he know when Eliot had said his name with that radiant, addictive fucking joy on his face, that it couldn’t have been anyone else? He’d just been too afraid to let himself hope. He’d been too afraid to let himself believe, because if it really had been another of the Monster’s games and the Monster had the ability to become Eliot in a way that convinced even Quentin, then the Monster would have taken everything. Quentin didn’t think he would’ve been able to handle it.        

           So he stood his ground. He told Margo the truth.

           He knew he wouldn’t flinch.

           Margo nodded. “Fuckin’ aye.”

           She slapped her thighs and shot up from her chair, reinvigorated. She pulled the tangle of sheets off of Quentin in one swift movement, and smiled slyly. “Let’s go get our boy back.”

———————————

1 HOUR AND 12 MINUTES EARLIER

           “Blow into this.” Margo implanted herself in front of Eliot where he was curled up on the sofa in Kady's penthouse. She concealed his view of the window, so he had no choice but to look up at her beneath his lashes, his eyes flicking to the device in her hand and back again.

           “You know I don’t blow,” he said, though his quip sounded tired. He hugged his housecoat tighter around himself. “What is that?”

           “Breathalyzer,” Margo said. “If I find that your blood-alcohol levels are below .30 then I’ll know to be worried.”

           Eliot frowned. “Are you encouraging my chronic dipsomania, Bambi?”

           “I’m encouraging you to relax, Eliot,” Margo said, falling onto the couch next to him. She moved his walking cane from where it was leaning on the couch between them, and she shuffled closer, setting the breathalyzer on the coffee table. She sighed, placing a hand on one of the legs tucked under him. “Look. Magic is back in business, Monster Megadick Squared is trapped in a vase, there are no funerals coming up, and as far as we know there are no impending fuckenings at the moment either. So, I’m giving you permission to put your feet up and have a goddamn Mojito.”

           Once upon a time, Margo’s pep talks seemed to infuse Eliot with determination; hardening his spine, lifting his chin and spurring him in the right direction. She prided herself on her ability to get him back in line when he was spiralling out to the sidelines; she was an anchor of sorts, pulling people out of pity parties and drunken stupors like the resident fucking fairy godmother.

           But this time, much to Margo’s chagrin, Eliot only seemed to curl in on himself further, his lips thinning and his eyes hollowing out.

           There was a cold sensation sparking up in her guts that she was trying her best to ignore. It felt a lot like loss.

           But that, of course, didn’t make any sense, considering Eliot was sitting right fucking there.

           Margo was grateful when her phone buzzed in her pocket; a much needed distraction from the glassy, faraway look in Eliot’s eyes and the way he looked so goddamn small despite towering over her as always.

           The text from Julia read: I’m going to wake him up.

           Fucking finally.

           “Well, Julia’s about to wave her big God wand and bring Quentin back to the land of the living,” Margo said. She looked at Eliot’s sallow profile. “Are you going to keep sitting here wallowing or are you going to put some clothes on and come with me?”

           “You go,” Eliot said. “I’ll catch up.”

           “Like hell you’ll catch up.”

           Eliot closed his eyes. His voice was barely above a whisper. “Margo.”

           Margo, feeling her insides grow cold with anxiety, fought back with the flame of rage that was always burning on the surface. She shot up from the couch, blocking Eliot’s view once again. “Don’t get all Margo on me. I mean, Jesus, if you insist on feeling bad about something you didn’t do, then how about doing something you can do about it?”

           A muscle in Eliot’s jaw jumped. He looked up at her, the half-moon bruises under his eyes looking dark blue in the pale afternoon light, and finally, finally, there was something sparking in his eyes other than that vast, terrifying emptiness.

           “What do you want from me, Margo? What exactly do you think I can do about it? People died. Quentin died.” His voice broke on the word, but he swallowed and forged on. “However briefly. Whether we like it or not, I didn’t stop it. I couldn’t get out on my own. They were my hands. Myfucking hands. I couldn’t stop it, and nothing I do now is going to change that.”

           Margo rolled her eyes with her whole head, lifting her arms and letting them slap back against her sides. “Honestly, Eliot, do you think Quentin is going to take that? Our Quentin? If I go over there without you and tell him you’re staying away for his own good, you think he’s just going to nod his big dumb head and accept that? Not fucking likely. In fact, I think that’ll royally piss him off, and I’m not down to be on the receiving end of his nerd rage, okay? Eliot” -

           She sat back down on the couch now, grabbing his face. She cupped his cheeks in her hands and made him look at her, then clenched her teeth. “Eliot. I know this is going to take some time to feel normal again. I get it. Okay? And I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am that I couldn’t get you out sooner. But…but we went to the ends of the goddamn earth to save you. I was on my knees in the dirt for days looking for fucking sand specks smaller than Christopher Plover’s dick to get those axes. Quentin basically annoyed the shit out of everyone he loves because he wouldn’t take any alternative if it meant you dying, and I know for a fact he hardly slept. He hardly said a word to anybody. And I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad El, because I would do it again and again and again and I’d do it with a goddamn smile if it meant you were safe. Same with Q. Hey” -

           Eliot had screwed his eyes shut like he was facing his worse nightmare, and Margo had to shake his head between her hands, her fingers shoving into his hair, to get him to open them back up again.

           “El, I’m telling you this because I need you to remember how much you matter,” she said. “Please. For Christ’s sake, I need you to try.”

           Eliot’s bottom lip trembled, and he bit down on it. His eyes were wide and afraid but still dry as a bone, like something inside him refused to let him feel.

           And then, without warning, he grabbed Margo’s wrist.

           It was, objectively, no more violent and sudden than the kind of touch he would use to get her attention in the past, like when he spotted a student walking across Brakebills campus wearing all beige, or when he sensed a dramatic public breakup between first years and needed Margo to bask in young love with him. It was an urgent, serious touch, but not at all hurtful, not at all threatening.

           And yet, Margo’s heart froze in her chest, and she couldn’t stop her sharp inhale of breath, or the flash of doubt in her mind that she knew had unwittingly shown itself in her eyes as she flinched back from him, her fist curling against his touch.

           Eliot had the crushing look of someone whose suspicions had just been confirmed. His eyelids fluttered. He let go of Margo as if he’d been burned and gathered himself into the opposite corner of the couch, far away from her.

           “That’s not fair,” Margo said, breathless. She shook her head frantically, her eyes burning. “Eliot, you know I’m not - I couldn’t” -

           She couldn't be afraid of him, she wanted to say, but Eliot shook his head.

           “It’s okay,” El said, soft and gentle. “It’s okay, Bambi. But…will you let me know he’s okay? Just make sure Q’s okay.”

           Margo wanted to scream, because there was nothing left for her to say. She was out of honest words except for the question burrowing into her mind like a white hot poker -

           How, when she used her very own strength to banish him, was the Monster still winning?

———————————

PRESENT

           “It’s man-pain central in there already,” Margo said. “So you better not stink the place up with your own sad shit, okay? This is fucking happy hour.”

           Quentin’s heart was pounding hard enough to make his vision spark. “Shouldn’t we, like - I don’t know…warn him? Or something?”

           She gave him a once-over. “Believe it or not, Q, you’re not that intimidating.”

           Quentin rolled his eyes, his arms slapping hopelessly against his sides. “I mean” -

           “I know what you mean, and no. He’ll run away and he’ll keep running, so we’re gonna corner him while he’s injured.” Margo put her hand on the apartment door and looked over her shoulder. “I guess I'm just a bitch like that.”

           Quentin felt himself frowning dubiously, but Margo was convincing enough in her confidence to get him to stand his ground when she opened the door.

           He wanted to freeze outside the threshold; his dry mouth and sweating palms and racing heart begged him run away, because too many things could go wrong here. But he promised Margo - and himself, and Eliot - that he wasn’t afraid. That he wouldn’t flinch.

           But could he keep from flinching if Eliot was more broken than he could have imagined? Could he keep from flinching if Eliot looked at him like he was nothing, confirming what he’d felt for so long? Could he keep from flinching if Eliot just…turned him away?

           He wasn’t sure he could promise that.

           Margo looked back at him. He steeled himself and moved into the apartment after her before she could drag him in. His whole body quaked with nerves.

           “Eliot!” Margo threw her head back and screeched into the apartment.

           “Jesus,” Quentin muttered, his hands flying to his ears.

           She moved to the stairs and called up the length of them, but Quentin caught movement at the corner of his eye, and his stomach flipped.

           Eliot rounded the corner of the kitchen, gripping the wall with one hand and a cane with the other.Quentin’s eyes wandered up the length of him, and how his form, hunched over against the painful pull of his wound, reminded him of the Eliot he once grew old with - except, where that Eliot was still vibrant, this one looked hollowed out. His face was wan, his eyes were darkened with shadows. His hair was long and unkempt. He wore pyjama sweats and a long housecoat, a sliver of his pale chest exposed.

           And yet, Quentin felt as if he was melting into a puddle of relief. His legs all but disappeared from beneath him.

           Eliot’s eyes swept the room, seeing Margo and landing on Quentin.

           He straightened up slowly, his eyes growing wide.

           And fuck, what else was Quentin supposed to do?

           He closed the distance between them and it felt like a mile. Eliot let out a sharp breath of surprise as Quentin reached up to throw himself around him, wrapping his arms around Eliot’s upper back like he’d done so many times before, but this time was different. This time he felt he had to hold on to the man like he was hanging from the height of a 500-foot-tall tree and couldn’t dare let go on pain of splattering on the ground below.

           “Goddamnit,” Quentin said, his tongue a separate, senseless entity from the rest of him. “God fucking damnit I missed you. I can’t even - it’s so good to see” -

           The words were muffled as he shoved his face into Eliot’s shoulder. And yes, Eliot smelled like he needed to bathe, but he didn’t have the metallic tang of blood in his hair or the salty stench of withdrawal or even the factory smell of a new t-shirt with the tag still on the back like the Monster had, as he’d never taken to wearing Eliot’s clothes. Quentin, for one, had never been more grateful for anything in his life. He’d thank the Monster for that one kindness, that was how elated he was, because these clothes…they smelled like Eliot.

           Eliot smelt like Eliot.

           And that was enough for a moment, until he realized with a pang that Eliot wasn’t hugging him back.

           Q forced himself to let go. He fell back on to his heels and peered up at the other man, his whole body from his ears to his toes pulsing with his heartbeat.

           Eliot’s eyes were owlish and shining. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

           But he had yet to look at Quentin like he was something other than a ghost come back to haunt him.

———————————

           Whenever Eliot Waugh closed his eyes, he saw himself doing the things the Monster had done and he wondered if he would’ve been able to stop him, had he been more sure that he wouldn’t do those things himself. After all, Eliot had killed before. Several times. Hell, his whole life started when he’d killed Logan Kinear, so it wasn’t far fetched to think he’d do it again. And there were other things too; the little things: how, like the Monster, Eliot hosted the best pity parties. How, like the Monster, he was forever searching for something to complete him. How, like the Monster, he was used to getting his way. Shit, he'd made Todd answer to his middle name just so he could own his moniker alone and uncontested, and the Monster got away with going by the Monster.

           So Eliot couldn’t help but wonder if the Monster would have been so difficult to resist, had he been more unlike himself. They were two peas in a pod. They were - to use the term that the Great Cock had once erroneously applied to someone else -  brothers of the heart.

           Perhaps this was why looking at Quentin Coldwater post-Monster was even more difficult than Eliot had anticipated it would be.

           Q, with his soft, caring eyes and floppy hair and wide, honest smile. Q, who dared to believe when everyone else did not. Q, who stood up for everyone but himself. Q, who, for the life of him, could never hide his emotions from his face and who was currently looking at Eliot like he was the Queen herself come to give him a knighthood.

           When Quentin flung himself onto Eliot, swallowing him up in his arms, Eliot felt his heart shattering to pieces in his chest. There was a piece for how much he’d missed Quentin’s ability to light up the whole world in the very specific way that he did. There was a piece for how much he longed to hold Quentin to him and never let him go for the rest of his life. There was a piece for how guilty he felt for ever being the one to dash Quentin’s hopes like he had on the dais that day, the air around them smelling of peaches and plums. There was a piece for how he wished he’d never entered Quentin’s life, even just to spare him the sleepless nights he’d had in his efforts to save Eliot, of all people. There was a piece for how badly he wished he could be punished for having killed this boy with his own hands, even just for a second, because Quentin was a light that the world couldn't bare to lose right now.

           And there was that large, horrible shard, that selfish piece of him that pierced him deeper than the rest, that loved Quentin beyond what should be allowed.

           The audacity of it left him frozen, unable to breathe.

           When Quentin stepped back, Eliot was strangely devastated by the sudden absence of him.

           “El?” Q said, his eyes flickering with worry. “Hey. It’s - it’s me.”

           Eliot felt Margo’s eyes boring into him from her spot at the foot of the stairs. The gaze felt homicidal. It felt exactly how Eliot felt looking at himself in his memory world, appalled by the inaction of his past self while Quentin bared his soul to him.

           What the hell is wrong with you? His own voice echoed in his head. What the hell are you doing?

           Someone good and true loves you.

           The world came back Eliot like breaking the surface of water. His lungs cleared. His ears rang.

           Someone good and true loves you.  

           He looked at Quentin; at his wide eyes and stuttering chest and the unbreakable hope that still remained in him, and Eliot knew that love was still there. Quentin wasn’t impulsive; he was careful with his words, he was true to what he felt. Quentin loved him, even after everything. Eliot was sure beyond a doubt that he didn’t deserve it, but that wasn’t the point, was it?

           Because while Eliot knew he didn't deserve love right now, he knew that Quentin deserved it all.

———————————

           Quentin thought he might throw up. He was ready to turn and run, to mourn Eliot all over again, because this blank stare wasn’t him. He was there, but he wasn’t, and Q couldn’t handle it much longer.

           And then Eliot took a breath. Almost like he had in that day in the park, he came back to himself, the light returning behind his eyes.

           Slowly - so slowly - Eliot raised his hand to Quentin’s cheek. He brushed his thumb under his eye, his face full of wonder. There was an uncertainty to him that Quentin quelled immediately, putting his hand over Eliot’s and squeezing.

           “Q,” Eliot breathed.

           Yes, Quentin thought, an unspoken answer to his unspoken question. Yes, yes, yes -

           Eliot leaned in, careful as anything. His nose brushed against Quentin's as he lingered infuriatingly longer, until Quentin closed the distance between them, latching on to Eliot’s mouth like scrambling for a lifeline. Quentin felt Eliot wobble, his cane shifting beneath him, and Quentin steadied him with his fingers twisting in the arm of his housecoat, anchoring him back to earth.

           Quentin heard himself make a desperate sound in his throat and would probably be embarrassed about it later, but when Eliot’s hand snaked up to the nape of his neck in response, soft and warm and gentle and so unlike the Monster’s touch, Quentin didn’t regret it.

           It lasted fifty years. It lasted forever.

           When they broke apart, Quentin was dizzy with the lack of oxygen.

           “Fucking finally,” Margo muttered behind them, and Quentin heard her retreating up the stairs.

           Eliot grinned at him, and Quentin grinned back. His heart ached at the familiarity of that smile and how long it had been since he’d seen it.

           “For a second,” Quentin started breathlessly, “I thought you didn’t know who I was.”

           “I didn’t,” Eliot said. His eyes wandered to Quentin’s hairline, and he brushed a stray strand behind his ear, sending a chill up Quentin’s spine. “You got a haircut.”

           Quentin snorted, which made Eliot smile again, and Quentin’s heart leapt even faster than it had been going before. Though he knew, somehow, he’d had this for fifty years already, he didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. He didn’t want to.

           But the part of Quentin that was always going and never resting said, “What do we do now?”

           “Well,” Eliot straightened up, then winced. He propped his shoulder against the nearest wall, waving Quentin off when he tried to help. “I was thinking we could make out for a little bit, if you’re done saving the world for the time being.”

           “Um,” Quentin said. He fumbled over words for a second - then, “Yeah? Yeah.”

           And they did.

           And not for a little bit.

           And while Quentin knew there were a few broken things inside Eliot now that may never be mended, he also knew that he had a special knack for broken things; he figured they would get there in time.

           They just had to start with the small stuff.