Work Text:
After a long day of work on the mosaic -- they'd managed three whole patterns today, a record -- Quentin laid in bed, already clean and in the Fillorian linens that worked as pajamas. Eliot had insisted on doing something outside, so he was only just getting his work clothes off as Quentin yawned widely.
"Well, I probably fucked the most people in college," Eliot was saying as he draped his ratty old Earth shirt over the back of a chair, making Quentin -- forcing him, really -- to eye up that patch of chest hair. "Mostly boys, but a girl or two. I was figuring out what I liked, you know? And I figured out that I was smooth enough to find out by trial and error."
Quentin laughed at that. "God, smooth is not the word for me. Never was. I didn't do, like, the worst in college, I had a couple girlfriends. One boyfriend."
"None in high school?" Eliot asked curiously.
"Just one, actually. Girl in my AP Chemistry class, we went steady for like, most of a school year. Only after I got over myself."
"What do you mean?"
Quentin shook his head, shifting to tuck an arm behind it. "It's embarrassing."
"Well now you have to tell me," Eliot said with a grin, refolding his pants.
Quentin was too tired to resist all that hard, so he just heaved a sigh. "So, I memorized all this like, famous erotic poetry, thinking I was gonna recite it at girls and seduce them."
Eliot was silent, just staring at him.
"Fuck you."
Eliot burst out laughing, like Quentin knew he was trying not to. He couldn't help smiling, too; it was the kind of misguided but charming shit all teenagers tried at some point. "Oh my god, please tell me it worked," Eliot said.
"No, not even a little," Quentin said, still grinning. "But it did make me realize there wasn't, like, a hack for it, I should just talk to girls? I think Jenna was as terrified of the opposite sex as I was, so, you know, we muddled through it together. It was nice. We were cute."
"Woulda worked on me," Eliot said casually, now naked and heading for the wash basin. "A cute boy reciting poetry about dicks was like, top five fantasies. I don't believe you memorized it, though. I mean, you're a nerd, but no one is that much nerd. I think you had crib sheets."
Quentin just shook his head. The challenge was obvious, but he was game. "All right, I can't do all of this one, because it's like a hundred lines or something, but it's basically just one long thing of a guy being horny on main for his wife. From To His Mistress Going To Bed, by John Donne." He cleared his throat. "In such white robes, Heaven's angels used to be received by men; thou angel brings with thee a heaven like Mohammed's paradise; and though ill spirits walk in white, by this, we easily know these angels from an evil sprite: those set our hairs, but these, our flesh, upright."
Quentin watched him process that, squinting a little, and then laugh incredulously. "Holy shit, no wonder we didn't learn that in Indiana. When was that written that he could get away with 'set our flesh upright'?"
"I don't know, like, the 1600s I think?" Quentin guessed, scratching the side of his head. "Uh, what else do I remember from that one. Oh, the proof that it's about his wife. 'To enter into these bonds is to be free, then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.' He's talking about the bond of marriage," he added.
Eliot nodded. "Well, I can see how that should work for seduction. Was that your only one?"
"No, I remember some of the shorter ones. Oh, one of my favorites was, um. 'My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, it gives a lovely light.'"
Eliot's smile was gratifying. "So like, my life, basically, before we came here."
"Yeah, pretty much," Quentin said with a grin, then sobered a little. "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action; and till action, lust is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, extreme, savage, cruel, not to trust, enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight. Past reason hunted; and no sooner had than past reason hated, as a swallowed bait. On purpose laid to make the taker mad, mad in possession, and- no, wait, it's..."
"Mad in pursuit and in possession so," Eliot continued, wiping dried sweat from his neck with a wet cloth. "Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme, a bliss in proof and proved, a very woe; before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." His tone had been wistful, but was normal again as he glanced over his shoulder with a smirk. "You were gonna break out Shakespeare on a theater major and think I don't know it?"
Quentin smiled, and finished the sonnet. "All this the world knows, yet none knows well how to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell."
"You do it pretty well," Eliot complimented. "You trust the rhythm to carry you and don't try to break up and emphasize line breaks."
"Thanks," Quentin said. "I, uh, was actually in a Shakespeare play in high school, and that helped me get how it should sound? Nothing big, I was just a fairy standing at the back of the stage in Midsummer."
"The furry play," Eliot said, nodding sagely.
Quentin giggled as Eliot kept cleaning himself, giving a thorough scrub. Quentin had done the same earlier, feeling grimy from the long day of work. "Lady," he began, "I will touch you with my mind. Touch you and touch and touch, until you give me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene. Lady, I will touch you with my mind. Touch you, that is all, lightly, until you utterly become the poem which I do not write."
"Jesus," Eliot said, finally coming toward the bed. "How many of these do you have?"
"Just one more." He took a deep breath, letting his voice fade a little quieter as Eliot put out the lamp, then crawled into bed with him. "Now sleeps the crimson petal," he said softly, "now the white. Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font. The firefly wakens; waken thou with me."
He sighed as Eliot rolled toward him, and Quentin reached out to touch. His hand bumped Eliot's hip and gave it a squeeze. "Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, and like a ghost she glimmers onto me." He turned his head so he could see Eliot's face, just barely outlined in the slim moonlight from the window.
"Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, and all thy heart lies open unto me. Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves a shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me."
Eliot reached out, wrapping one big hand around the back of Quentin's neck and tangling fingers in his hair. Quentin leaned into it and sighed, letting his eyes close. "Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, and slips into the bosom of the lake." Quentin reached back, pulling Eliot in close so he could end the last line with a kiss.
"So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip into my bosom and be lost in me."