Work Text:
I will meet you again
To skip flat-stones across that moon lake
The mood's young
I will see you again in the field
To pick wild roses in due sun
To handle growth with tender care
I will see you again
-note to mrs, milo
"Do you miss it?" Quentin asks, voice shaking as he rubs his finger like there's something missing. The thin copper circle, from a spool of wire purchased at the market because the three of them barely had any money to their name and enough sense to avoid shelling out all of their savings on dramatic rings. Quentin misses the little thing, small and precious on his hand. He leans back against the edge of the sofa, tips his head back to look up at Eliot. He smooths his hand over the plush carpet and thinks about the quilt on their mattress outside.
"The mosaic?:
He nods, closes his eyes and imagines the smell of bergamot cigarettes and plums.
"Yes, Q," Eliot says, uncurling from the sofa in Marina's safe-house. The others are all asleep, but with the windows open to the night air and a breeze flowing into the room, Eliot and Quentin can sit on the too-perfect cushions and pretend they're in Fillory.
Eliot sinks to the floor, draws his knees to his chest and swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. Quentin remembers licking up along his throat and mouthing the edge of his jaw. After a moment's hesitation, Quentin leans against Eliot, relaxes into a familiar embrace as Eliot's hand comes up to rest on the back of his neck, rings cool against his skin.
Eliot looks beautiful with dark brown dirt up to his elbows, hair hanging in sweaty rings that stick to his forehead and temples. He keeps complaining about how his manicure is really, finally dead, but Quentin has to stop himself from sitting back on his heels and watching the arch of Eliot's neck as he hunches over to comb through the roots of a Fillorian pepper plant. He looks real for once - touchable, with his gaudy rings discarded on the picnic table and the top two buttons of his collar undone.
Human.
"Enjoying the view, Coldwater?" Eliot says, and the lazy carelessness in his voice (almost disdain, really) is enough to send spikes of embarrassment through Quentin's stomach.
"I - um - " he stammers and curses himself for it, "the garden's, uh, coming along nicely."
"Nice save."
"Just - plant your fucking peppers, El."
They've been at the mosaic for - what, five months? And they're starting to figure out how they fit together and how they fit into this world. It's all tip-toeing tentative, and Eliot catches the barest hint of a blush coloring the tips of Quentin's ears. It makes him a little proud, that he can make the boy blush. It's something he's good at, but it's fun and exhilarating in a different way now. It's not just about a good lay.
Eliot's not sure what it's about, so he turns back to the little hole he's dug in the dirt and scrapes his fingers through the roots one more time before gently lowering the plant into the ground. He scoops handfuls of dirt out from the pile he's made and smooths it around the plant.. Back to planting things. But it was his idea anyways - they have to do something to make the mosaic and the cottage feel a little less like a pit-stop, a halfway place between lives and times and quests and people. He figures a garden is practical and doing something besides the puzzle might make the two of them somewhat less miserable.
Also, he likes reclaiming the earth, the plants and the all the green things. He takes it back from his family (from his father), uses his past for something good now, and something that's just for him. Standing up sends shoots of pain through his knees and he groans, stumbling, but he wants to see the garden. It's not a grand farm or orchard, not something he has to do because he's king or because his father yells at him until he checks the fucking corn for cutworms.
No, he things as he turns a slow circle to see the messy piles of dirt and half-planted root herbs, this is something he's choosing to do. A decision that's wholly his own. They could buy food from the market or use magic to turn seeds into fruit, but a garden is sustainable and he needs something to be his. That's what it's about.
His cottage and his mosaic and his garden and Quentin - his Quentin? - and he has free will, for once. No father to hide from, no school to obey, no crown to collapse under the weight of.
It's exhilarating.
"You look awfully happy for someone who hates farming."
"No, Q," Eliot drawls, turning back to his companion in this, "I chose to make this, and I haven't gotten to chose things for myself for a long time."
Everything seems so easy with magic - easy and safe and comfortable, that warm wrap of electrifying power that coils through Quentin’s veins. After years at the mosaic (years in their little cottage, slotting tiles together or hanging basil up to dry in gold-dripped sunlight), Quentin thinks he’s found his favorite type of magic. It’s the quick snap of Eliot’s fingers to boil water, the zig-zag twists he makes in the air with his pinkie fingers to grow carrots just right, or the magically-sealed jars of raspberry preserve that line the uppermost shelf of their too-small kitchen.
Domestic magic, probably, or something like that.
Quentin digs his toes into the dirt and flips a page of his book. He still hasn't figured out how they print here, if it's a printing press or fluid magic, but the pages have that deepset-ink quality that only old, old books on Earth have. He runs his fingers over the paper, feels the indents of deep black words and rough handmade paper. This is an artisanal world, without machines or grease. Rough tradesman's hands weave magic and magic weaves the world, and it's deep in the veins of this place, trickling down Quentin's spine and seeping into his bone marrow.
Domestic magic. Maybe he’s overthinking it.
Because it’s not just the exhilarating flow of magic magic magic in his fingertips that sends a warm feeling pressurizing in his chest when Eliot looks up from where he’s crouched over a pot of coffee (Quentin’s decided he likes Fillorian hand-brewed coffee much more than the stuff that comes out of a Kruieg cup). Eliot has freckles dusting his cheeks now from the bright, bright sunlight and the days spent outside working on the mosaic or the garden. There’s something in his eyes that wasn’t there in his life before, too. A warm clarity. Contentedness. Quentin also feels it. He likes to think it’s the magic. Right?
“Coffee, Q?” Eliot calls, extending a cracked mug towards Quentin, “It’s from our neighbors, the ones down by the lake.”
They have a few neighbors, a little spattering of cottages and cabins with a marketplace about the size of a public restroom in New York. Eliot has taken to frequenting the market, always dragging Quentin along.
“The Massouforts?” Quentin asks, trailing forwards to collapse by Eliot in a soft patch of grass. He leans against the other man with an ease he never thought was possible. He hasn’t been this comfortable around someone since, well, since he was a playground-child with no secrets or worldly ambitions.
Eliot smiles again, honeysweet like a sugar cube, “Absolutely.”
"You don't know, do you?"
He scoffs, "I wasn't paying attention, they're country hicks, Q. Drink your coffee."
"El. No - what? We're also country hicks."
"Oh, fuck. We're Fillorian rednecks. This is the worst day of my life."
But his eyes are bright and his hands are a little callused now when he brushes his fingers over Quentin's knuckles. Quentin catches the wry, teasing look in the twist of Eliot's mouth when he leans back, tipping up his chin, mustering his royal demeanor that hasn't faded - won't ever fade, really.
"I doubt it, King Eliot the Spectacular," Quentin says, lips curling up to smile that would have embarrassed him any other time, because, really, he's sure he looks love-struck and foolish. But when he looks up at Eliot, he's wearing a mirror expression that makes Quentin feel much less ridiculous.
"God, we were kings, Q."
Well, Eliot was a king. Quentin was never much of a ruler, but Eliot - Eliot - he's just meant to be draped in finery with gaudy rings and gold-trimmed cloaks. He might have thought a crown was unnatural on his forehead but Quentin doesn't believe that because he'd bow to worship El in a heartbeat. And he has, exalted and honored him on his knees.
"I had a," Eliot pauses, and it's so strange hearing him talk about their lives (their real lives, not their fantasy mosaic lives) in past-tense, "I had a wife."
Quentin takes a slow sip of coffee - warm and slightly floral - "Fen really did care about you."
"I think it was a great, cosmic joke."
That's - no, that can't be right. It's in Eliot's blood to be king, in his posture and the way he draws himself up to his full height to intimidate vendors at the marketplace into giving him the best price on freshly-baked eggwashed bread.
Maybe that's a misuse of power, but he's not king here so Quentin just stands back and watches with something akin to pride. Eliot isn't king here, not anymore (not yet, actually), not right now, but it's almost as if the people can sense that he's got something royal in him, something regal and proud.
So Quentin frowns, "A joke?"
Eliot doesn't even look sad when he says it because it was so long ago, "Why else would Umber make the gay alcoholic marry a very pretty woman then rule a whole country?"
"Maybe it was toget you here," Quentin tries. It's possible, right?
That puts something warm in Eliot's face, sends a little glow in his eyes and that's something that makes Quentin so fucking proud. The happiness that he can make someone else feel and the fact that, yeah, he's happy now. Who would have thought?
“Maybe,” Eliot says softly, voice trailing off a little.
He never expected this, never expected to drink coffee in early-morning sunlight at the start of summer.
Quentin laughs, and, god, does it feel good to laugh a real laugh, unburdened. He leans forwards and takes Eliot's tipped chin as an opportunity to mouth along his jaw, sucks and bites at his neck where he can feel muscles move as El grins.
"Watch it," Eliot says, playful but edged with something intoxicating, "the Massouforts might start asking questions."
Summer nights in Fillory are stuffy and hot, so Quentin and Eliot take to sleeping outside tangled up in quilts and lumpy pillows. There are no mosquito in Fillory, no nighttime bugs or moths to fear. Eliot smokes languidly from a hand-rolled cigarette and twirls his fingers through Quentin’s hair, and Quentin thinks about how the stars here are different but so, so beautiful.
The longer he looks at the sky, the more stars reveal themselves. Constellations here are different. There's no Big Dipper, no Hercules. Instead there are kings and dragons and gods, there's Ember and Umber (Eliot likes to flip off those Northern constellations, because, really, he's not about to fucking worship them). There are monsters and battles painted in the horizon, and the twilight clouds look like plumes of smoke. Cicadas buzz in the forest, a soft cacophony of sound that drapes over them. Quentin closes his eyes and feels the perfect nighttime chill in his bones and memorizes the texture of Eliot’s skin beneath his fingers.
He watches Eliot’s lips around a cigarette from the corner of his eyes, inhales the woody, bergamot scent, and lets himself languish in the calm, happy feeling that’s bubbling up in his chest.
“What’re you thinking about, Q?” Eliot asks in a low voice that Quentin feels in his fingertips. So he traces shapes along El’s collarbones, fingers dancing in the smoke and woolly moonlight. He thinks that Fillory doesn’t need opium in the air to be enticing, it just needs the heady smell of Eliot’s cigarettes, the warm vanilla of his curls, and the soft rustling of nighttime trees.
“Humm?” Quentin asks, shifting to press his lips against Eliot’s shoulder. He’s got freckles now, a little dusting of them from days spent in the sun. Quentin likes them, likes how Eliot’s hands are a little bit rough and he’s got a sunburn on his nose because it’s so human. His life feels so real and grounded and tethered in the best way possible.
Eliot laughs, warm affection dancing in his eyes, “You’re making that face.”
“What face? I don’t - I don’t make a face.”
“Yes you do. Your eyes get all crinkled and you chew on your cheek.”
Quentin abruptly realizes that he’s chewing in the inside of his cheek and shrugs as best as he can when he’s laying down with his arm thrown over Eliot’s chest, “I just feel good, you know. Happy, that’s all.”
Before Fillory, he never talked like this. Or felt like this, really.
“Well don’t think yourself out of it, Q,” Eliot presses a kiss to Quentin’s forehead, “Just enjoy it. How’s that sound?”
Looking up at the dark sky, with stars and purple plants, Quentin thinks maybe that's not so hard. It's Eliot's constant mantra of don't overthink it, and Quentin knows it's as much for him as it is for El, too.
"I'm not thinking," Quentin says, somehow managing to sound defensive about that. But, wrapped around Eliot and wrapped up in that moasic quilt, maybe not thinking really is a good thing.
"Maybe," El says, smiles and passes him the cigarette, watches with heavy-lidded eyes as Quentin takes a slow drag. He savors the hot smoke in his lungs and thinks about how there's no cancer on Fillory, nothing to blacken his organs. Not like that ever mattered to El, but Quentin quit smoking when he was an undergrad (philosophy, all Benjamin and Cixous and bell hooks). Everyone in his department smoked, pretentious clove cigarettes like the absolute assholes they all were. Eliot would have liked it.
But there aren't carcinogens on Fillory, just smoke that tastes like lemons and earth and the evergreen trees that line their little cottage. Eliot rolls his own cigarettes, grows or buys herbs to dry long the clothesline. They leave him smelling like incense and candels, all mingled together and sunken into his skin and his clothes. He tastes like rosemary and tangerine.
Quentin loves it.
He hands the cigarette back to Eliot and rolls on to his back, kicking off the quilt and lacing his fingers through El's. It's a perfect warm summer night. He runs his other hand over the deep weave of the blankets below him, knows he's smearing chalk pastels all over it but everything is a rainbow of green and red and yellow and every other color now anyways.
"What're we doing in the morning?" Quentin asks, because Eliot likes to plan plan plan out their weekends - their only two days when they let themselves be free from the pressing anxiety of do the mosaic, get the key, go back to Earth. But Earth has faded by now, and Quentin can't quite remember what Alice looked like or how much he loved her. He used to be able to force up those feelings and make himself love Alice again, love her memory, but now - now, he can't remember what it felt like to be in love with Alice because there's someone much more important next to him.
Eliot blows smoke at the sky, "Arielle is coming by," he says, "we're going to help her deliver peaches and plums."
Delivery days are, strangely enough, absolutely wonderful. The three of them barely get anything done and, more likely than not, they'll show up to the neighbor's door with inky purple on Quentin's throat because El and Arielle discovered that spot below his ear and Quentin's not about to tell them to stop.
And there are the wild crab apples that grow along the edge of the Roseberg's farm, just close enough to the property line that their asshole neighbors will claim picking basket-fulls of the fruit is sealing, but the pie they make is worth running through the woods while the wife throws poorly-aimed spells at them.
Quentin nods and watches the sky and tries to remember what the air tasted like on Earth. But all he can taste now is Eliot's cigarettes and the crisp nighttime air.
That's fine though, that's perfect.
Quentin mashes soft carrots into baby food. They grow a special row of vegetables for Teddy, because it's not safe to feed infants magic-infused food this early. It'll become an addiction, worm into their minds and weaken their bones. So Quentin makes baby food by hand in a mortar and pestle grinding bowl, the sort of thing he used to see in museums or cooking shows on Earth. It's nighttime, or it nearly is, and the a fall chill is creeping up outside. Yesterday afternoon they reworked the temperature wards, switched them over from chill to heat.
"We're not heroes anymore, Q," Eliot says, soft and barely-spoken words because Teddy is sleeping against his chest, curled there like the whole world is tucked under his collarbone. At least, that's what it feels like
"Is that a good thing or - or - a bad thing?" Quentin asks, wiping his hands off on a tea towel. He rolls up his sleeves a little higher and twists the wedding band around his ring finger, moving to crouch down next to Eliot where he sits at the scratched and stained dinner table.
Eliot smiles, a little sad, "It's a good thing. I'm not meant to be a hero."
"What - yes, yest you are - " Quentin wants to jump to Eliot’s defense because he understands the darkdark thoughts and that void that screams nothing at him, you’re nothing. He knows Eliot has it too, just a different type of void that makes his veins ache for chemicals and chemicals and chemicals to drown out that hot fizzy itch in his blood.
"No, Q," Eliot interrupts him, "I'm not, and that's not a bad thing. It's just, without this - " he's talking about this, all of this, the crown of Teddy's forehead and the watermelon vines winding along the steps to their patio and the way Quentin's hair is growing past this shoulders now, "without this, I would have died. I wasn't meant to be a hero I - I was meant to die before I turned thirty in some drug-induced catastrophe. I’m happy not being a hero anymore."
They wake up when Julia finds them in the morning, leaning on each-other in a mess of limbs on the living room floor. Just asleep, foreheads pressed together. She hasn't seen Quentin looks this peaceful in - well, not in a long time. It's just enough for her to think that maybe, maybe things will be alright.
"Sorry," he mutters through a yawn, a little embarrassed but, Eliot is tracing the lines on the palm of his hand, "We just - uh."
" It's alright, Q. You look happy - I can feel your aura, and you've never been this content."
" I have, Jules - but - "
"But that was at the mosaic, in Fillory, and it never really happened," Eliot says in a slow drawl.