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They’re lying on the grass not far off from the mosaic. Quentin’s laying on his back with his arm tucked up under his head, pointing up at a cloud, claiming it’s making a shape it most certainly isn’t, and Eliot’s lying next to him on his side, a fond little smile on his lips as he lets him ramble. He’s making up a story about the cloud, how it’s a fierce dragon, fighting its way to victory across the skies, seeking out its mate. Or the knight meant to slay it. Quentin adds this bit with a slight shake of his head, glancing at Eliot just long enough to make sure he laughs. He does. Because it’s ridiculous.
Eliot plucks a blade of grass from between them and rolls it between his fingers. His knuckles brush up against Quentin’s stomach, and Quentin stumbles along what he’s trying to say. Smirking, Eliot leans in and quirks an eyebrow. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that, Q. You’ll have to start over.”
Quentin rolls his eyes, though it’s more playful than it is annoyed, and he points up at the cloud again. It’s still nothing more than a formless shape as far as Eliot’s concerned, but Eliot follows the motion. He doesn’t miss the movement of Quentin’s fingers, though, as they cast a simple spell. Can’t help the little warmth that spreads through his stomach at the idea of Quentin using his magic to make this interesting for both of them — not that Eliot’s not interested. He’s increasingly more interested by the minute. Quentin’s just too lost in his excitement to realize as much.
The cloud takes a form, suddenly actually a knight, piercing through the sky with a pristine sword.
“This is cheating.”
“No,” Quentin huffs, shuffling closer, “this is storytelling.”
Eliot hums thoughtfully beneath his breath, and tilts his head so it’s barely an inch from Quentin’s. He looks up at the knight as it flexes, a laugh bubbling up and out of his chest. “Really?” He twists his neck, breath catching to find Quentin staring at him with that look in his eyes that Eliot’s never really been brave enough to try and make sense of. He twists back around quickly, swallowing. “I thought it was a dragon.”
“That was before the knight slayed it,” Quentin murmurs after a moment, his hand falling between them. Eliot watches as the knight struts along the sky, a cloud drifting by, shifting as he moves, until it’s the body of a dragon, lying helplessly on the ground. “The knight thinks he’s a hero,” Quentin says, his voice soft against the wind. “That he’s saved everyone from the danger the dragon presents.”
“I sense a but coming,” Eliot replies, scooting closer. The grass is probably staining his clothes at this point, because they’d been too desperate to give their brains a break from the mosaic to think of anything other than getting the fuck away from it. But he finds that he doesn’t care, as the warmth from Quentin’s body radiates between them. Intermingles with the heat from Eliot’s body.
“You sense correctly,” Quentin answers, his hand twitching between them as the cloud-dragon weakly lifts its head, silently, desperately roaring at the knight as he approaches it. “Because . . . The dragon’s not a monster.” There’s a puff of cloud that appears between them, like the dragons trying to shoot fire at the knight as a last defense, but all that comes forth is smoke. “He’s a protector.”
“The actual hero?” Eliot turns to look at Quentin, but he’s staring up at the clouds, a thoughtful wrinkle between his brows. “Look at you. With your plot twists.”
Quentin continues as if he hadn’t heard him. “The protector of magic and good. The knight is the monster. He’s destroyed everything the dragon protects. The people its loved.” He shifts his hand until it’s palm facing up, and the entire scene shifts, as the knight fades away and the clouds turn to a tower with a woman staring out its window. The dragon’s flying overhead. The woman in the window leans out, and looks up at it with a smile. “They were raised together. Born together, meant to die together. Never meant to be separated, but the world constantly set out to do exactly that. Constantly.”
Just like them, Eliot thinks. Every moment before they came here had been plagued by the impending doom that something would separate them — if not magic, then death. And if not death, something far worse. He swallows and adjusts his hand so he can slide it over Quentin’s. The spell evaporates as it’s broken by the contact, and Quentin turns to look at him, frowning. “Nobody ever thinks they’re the villain of their own story,” Eliot says. “Is that what you’re getting at?”
Quentin shrugs, looking down at their hands between them. His index finger twitches, like he wants to lace their fingers together but can’t dare himself to do it. Eliot watches, waits a beat, hoping, but when Quentin doesn’t take the opportunity, he opts to do it himself. He runs his fingers along the length of Quentin’s, and then carefully, and slowly enough that Quentin can pull away if he’s interpreted it wrong, slips his fingers between the crevices of Quentin’s, and weaves them together.
He looks up to find Quentin staring at him wide eyed, but not unhappy. He swallows and his adam's apple bobs with the movement, before Eliot feels his fingers go taut between Eliot’s, a warm viper like grip. The corners of Eliot’s mouth twitch, and Quentin swallows again, before looking up at the sky. “Do you think happy endings are real?” He asks after a moment, tilting his head. His hair scrunches up in the grass, mingling with twigs and leaves.
And Eliot knows what he’s really asking. It’s in the tremble in his voice, and the way he bites down on his bottom lip after he asks it, like he regrets bringing the thought to life. But, Eliot’s never been the be-serious-first kind of person, so he says, soft and flippant, “If you go to the right massage parlor.”
Quentin squeezes his hand, a surprised little chuckle cracking from his chest. “That’s not what I meant, you dick.”
“But it made you laugh,” Eliot points out triumphantly. He leans into him until his chest presses up against Quentin’s shoulders, and their arms dig into his sternum. Reaches out with his free hand to brush the hair in Quentin’s face aside. “I like making you laugh,” he adds, more serious than intended. Something flashes in Quentin’s eyes, that same thing that digs at the center of Eliot’s chest. “And of course I think happy endings are real,” He adds, brushing his thumb along Quentin’s cheekbone. “When we finish the mosaic, we’ll go back to the present, save the world, and you and Alice can figure out your own.”
He doesn’t realize he’s testing him until Quentin looks away, fingers flexing in Eliot’s hand. And even then he’s not sure what to make of the results. Can’t decide if Quentin’s passed or not. Even when he asks the grass, “You still think that?That I —“ he shifts, looks at Eliot again, and Eliot wonders if maybe the answer is in his eyes. In the bizarre flash beneath the sweet auburn. “That Alice — that we’d. That that’d be my happy ending?”
Eliot’s breath hitches for reasons beyond what he’s willing to admit, and he shrugs a shoulder absently. “Why wouldn’t I?” Quentin shrugs and Eliot rolls his eyes, tapping Quentin’s cheek with his thumb, “Come on, Q, out with it. We don’t survive out here by keeping secrets.”
“What if that’s the only way we survive?” Quentin retorts, raising an eyebrow.
“Stop trying to change the subject.”
“I’m not.” He squeezes Eliot’s hand so tight Eliot’s certain he can feel their heartbeats commingling in the press of their palms. “I — I don’t think Alice is my happy ending.”
He looks up at him with so much meaning, and Eliot can’t make sense of any of it. He just smiles, brushes his finger over Quentin’s cheek. “She’ll forgive you eventually, Q,” he offers, his eyes dropping down to watch the movement of his thumb over Quentin’s skin. “You’ve gotta have hope, otherwise you don’t have anything.”
Quentin’s eyes flutter shut, his lips pursing. It takes a moment before he replies, but when he does, his shoulders tense up, and his eyes open, wide and curious and honest and overflowing with — something. His gaze traps Eliot, holds him. And then he says, “I have you.” It’s so quiet, Eliot thinks it’s nothing more than the rustling of the leaves of the trees around them; his mind warping to hear what he wants to hear.
Which, apparently, is exactly this.
His heart stills when he realizes that it’s not the trees or his imagination. That Quentin’s staring at him expectantly because they’re Quentin’s words, and they came from his lips, not from Eliot’s mind. And then it starts up, like it’s been shocked by a thousand watt taser, cycling the beats around the words.
“That’s —” Eliot pauses, swallowing down a lump, and offering a carefree smile, “That’s hardly the same thing as hope.”
Quentin nods once, lifting his head to pull his arm out from beneath it so he can reach up and brush Eliot’s hair aside. “Maybe,” he breathes, swallowing as he sets his head back in the grass and gazes up at Eliot. “Maybe it — it’s more.”
His voice cracks.
And along with it, that shell, or wall, or whatever the hell it wants to be called, in Eliot’s chest comes crumbling down with the force of a thousand tsunamis. It drowns out all the fear and trauma and everything that could go wrong. Sends it drifting to the further depths of his mind, far from where it can hurt him. His thumb stutters along Quentin’s cheek, a warmth blooming in his chest and spreading through his body. Icy waves of hope and happiness and is this fucking real souring through his veins.
And as it cycles back up to pump back through his heart, an answer follows it, echoing and reflecting from the look in Quentin’s eyes — yes it’s real, yes, it’s okay, yes, yes, yes, you —
“Q . . .” It’s all he can muster, his hand shifting around to cup the warm space at the back of Quentin’s neck. Quentin heaves in a breath, his own hand shifting to cup Eliot’s jaw. The look in his eyes doesn’t fade, and neither does the ardent hope in Eliot’s chest.
God, he can’t even remember the last time he had hope.
“I don’t think Alice is my happy ending,” Quentin says again, staring up at him meaningfully. He pauses on her name, emphasis thick in his throat as he says it. “Even — even if we get to. Leave here.”
And there it is. Blossoming at the center of all the hope.
Eliot swallows. “Oh.” He nods once, gaze flickering down to Quentin’s lips — wondering if he can, if he should, they haven’t since that night two months ago, all in the name of not overthinking it, but all he can do now is overthink because — “Holy shit.”
Quentin blinks, furrow forming between his brows. “What?”
Eliot opens and closes his mouth once, twice, three times, before shaking his head. I think love you he wants to say, I think I’m in love with you.
Instead, he moves in to close the distance between them, and is only a little shocked when Quentin meets him halfway to press their lips together. A little shocked because even now, after more than a year here together, the idea of loving and being loved in return is so much to process. Too much. Not enough. God, it’s everything, and it’s soaring through him.
And he’s free falling — right into Quentin’s arms.
He pulls away, pressing their foreheads together. Quentin smiles up at him so wide his eyes crinkle, and it pulls Eliot back in to press another chaste kiss to his lips, squeezing their hands tighter together, while the thumb at the back of Quentin’s neck brushes at his hairline. Quentin’s hand is like fire on Eliot’s jaw, but dim and welcome. Searing him; burning away all the fear as he plummets.
He pulls away again, and smiles down at Quentin as their foreheads bump together. He brushes his nose against the side of Quentin’s. “Tell me more about the knight and the dragon,” he says into Quentin’s cheek. “Make it happy.” Like you make me.
Quentin huffs out a laugh, “And here I thought you’d just want a different kind of happy ending.”
“Stealing my jokes?” He pulls away just enough to look at Quentin with a faux glare, “What kind of story teller are you?”
“At least I’m not a heckler.”
Eliot feigns a gasp, playfully bumping their noses together again, “A heckler?” He asks, “When was the last time a heckler kissed—”
Laughing so hard his eyes force themselves shut, Quentin shakes his head and says, “Shh, let me tell you the story you asked for.”
Eliot can’t help the curve of his lips, as he watches Quentin shake and laugh beneath him. Can’t help the way it feels like an earthquake in his chest, the rumbling of his laughter. Can’t help that he wants to run further into it, be consumed by it. He squeezes Quentin’s hand and scoots down so he can rest his forehead in the crook of his neck. “I’m listening,” He says.
When the laughter fades, and Quentin starts back on the story, it roars through Eliot’s chest, and for once in his life, he can’t help but let it. Let the hope and the sureness of this — them — devour him. Let the love envelope him, and hold him there.