Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

You don’t know why, but you didn’t think he’d let you go so easy. But he does. Almost silently, he packs himself up and out of your life. He checks himself into another hotel room and just like that, he’s gone. Suddenly, you only hear about your previous life partner on the news. It’s almost like you never knew him at all.

It kind of hurts.

You thought that maybe he’d… fight a little harder to hold onto you. You thought that maybe your relationship meant more to him than whatever this was supposed to be. He’d made it seem that way. He’d made you seem like his whole world. But Quentin Beck is a master of illusions, and he’s gone.

You have money, but not enough to start over. Beck’s place was his before you came along, so you don’t feel right going back to that. Maybe with the funds you have you could settle down in some middle-of-nowhere state and take up some regular job, but just the thought of that sickens you. We all like to say we change, but do people ever really change, or do they just post up to the borderline and look to the other side?

So you’re just stranded in Europe, far from home. If you can even call it that anymore.

Nobody’s to blame here. You did it to yourself, but you’re still utterly heartbroken. It’s embarrassing to admit, but that’s how you feel. Even when your body heals up enough to walk around again, you can’t find the desire to. Every day your hand twitches over your phone, thinking maybe you could just call him and apologize. But what do you have to be sorry for? You wanted him to stop, and he wants to keep going—bigger and better, always and forever. Maybe once it’d be okay to just take the simple route rather than the primrose path. After all, you just don’t agree with each other anymore.

But could that still be okay?

You did try. To give yourself credit, you tried to be a good person. You tried to move on, find a hot European to take you on cheap thrills; but you only think about how they aren’t Quentin. They have charm, but it’s not his charm. They’re all smiles and there’s nothing behind it. Quentin always has something behind the shadow. It’s alluring. Drawing. Addicting.

You know the next one will be Prague. You don’t have to go. Now, nobody’s asking you to go anywhere or do anything. You could stay here in Venice, or go literally anywhere else but Prague—hell, you even have the choice to go to some town right next to Prague. But you go to Prague. You tell yourself it’s not for him, it’s for you.

But he’s started to rub off on you, because you’re a damn liar.

You know he knows that you’re here. The second you decide you’re going to Prague, you expect him to expect you. He has to—Quentin knows everything. In fact, it only takes a couple of hours for somebody to show up on your private room’s patio. Impressive, even for him.

“You really take a drone with you everywhere you go?” you ask, opening the sliding door. You try very hard not to act like these very short days have felt like years, and it takes all you have to not look excited or relieved when Quentin walks in.

“You do remember I can’t actually fly, right?”

It’s the same tone of witty quip that made you fall for him in the first place. If it had no context, you could be like, “oh yeah? With all that hot air in your head I thought you’d be in the stratosphere.” But there sure is context to this—dark, bloody context—so you keep your mouth shut.

“Why’re you here, [Name]?”

He asks it so heartbreakingly softly that you almost burst into tears for no reason. You look away and sit down onto the bed, crossing your legs so that you make yourself smaller. Now that you’re here, you still don’t know why you’re here. You had thought that seeing him would settle everything in its place and you’d know what you want and what you need. You don’t know why you wanted him to come so bad, now that you’re feeling that he shouldn’t look at you at all. Quentin follows you and kneels on the floor before you. He takes your hands and pulls them apart from the painful clenched double-fist you’d made, and kisses the nail marks on your palms.

“I get it, darling. You want to be saved.”

Your breath sticks in your throat. It’s equal parts disgust and joy, because shit, he’s right.

You want to be a hero. You want to be good. Save the world. But you also miss him—the way he grins, having to bite his lip to hide it; the way his eyes burn with desire when he looks at you so close. He’s insane. You know this. God, you know full well he’s the U-Word—unstable—

Yet you still love him, so that means there’s something not entirely right with you either.

Your silence is enough for him. Quentin fishes in his pocket for something, and then pulls out one of the silver rings. Blearily, you stare at it in his fingers.

“One got burnt up… the other flew off somewhere. So I’ve only got two left.”

They’re too big for your fingers, so he places it in the middle of your left palm and closes your fingers around it. It’s an open invitation, though it feels more like he’s given you a responsibility you didn’t ask for and can’t give back. It’s got a heavy weight to it.

“It’s yours, [Name],” he says simply. “Come back to me.”

Not will you marry me? It’s no questions asked. It’s a statement. “It’s yours”—

you’re mine.