Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Now

While they’re sitting in traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway Quentin says, “I mean it’s just unbelievable.”

In the passenger’s seat Julia says, “Totally.”

“Just the level of presumption that it takes to even think,” Quentin goes on, “after how shit went down with us — that I would just — but you know, no, he didn’t think. That’s like, the entire problem with him. He doesn’t think. It goes against his fucking aesthetic. This whole stupid — debauched dauphin bullshit, which is — not as attractive as he thinks he is, I mean, he’s like practically thirty, at this point it’s less Oscar Wilde and more Dorian Gray — not that he would get that reference, by the way — so he doesn’t think, just — does things, and, and makes assumptions, and — you know, fuck anyone who happens to be operating from the premise that reality is somehow, like, continuous, and would maybe like it to make a modicum of sense from hour to hour.”

“Ugh,” Julia says, “I hate that.”

“Right? And meanwhile, my whole problem is that I never stop thinking. My brain is just a fucking — swamp of thoughts spawning uncontrollably like mold. Or like a, a psychological tumor. Just these — malignant thinking cells. I mean, I thought myself right into the literal, actual grave. So, first of all, we were obviously never going to work, which was like, the one thing on earth he’s ever been unequivocally right about. One time, he has an actual insight, and —” The car in front of them lurches forward and Quentin begins pressing slowly on the gas. “And second of all, it’s like, I try to take a night off from the pathological verbosity of my inner monologue, which for the record I feel like I’m entitled to at this point —”

“Absolutely,” Julia says.

“— and that’s when he decides suddenly he’s Mr. Taking Things Seriously? Mr. Articulating His Emotions? Like, are you kidding me?”

“God, I know,” Julia says.

Traffic slows back down to a crawl. To their left the river is slate gray under the unbroken clouds and on its other side the Jersey skyline looks drab, lifeless. Less like buildings and more like a set of abstract quadrilaterals deposited as halfhearted scenery. “He probably knows Dorian Gray,” Quentin admits. “He played Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest when he was in twelfth grade.” They start moving again and he lets out a groan. “Why do I still know that? How long am I going to have to fucking carry this library of inane trivia about Eliot Waugh in my brain? How is it that a person can just — implant in you all this bullshit like, the first CD he bought was NSYNC, and he got fired from an organic juice shop whose owner was later arrested on weapons charges — because he’s totally irresponsible, too, that’s like, part of the not-thinking thing — and you just have to — live with it, and pretend you don’t know, and then as soon as you’ve gotten used to it — after you’ve gotten together and broken up with someone else — he’s just like, j/k! What part of that makes any sense?”

“None of it makes sense,” Julia agrees. “So you’re going to want to take exit 4 to get on the Hutch.”

Quentin takes a long breath through his nose and keeps an eye out for the green sign.

Before

He had broken up with Alice because — it almost didn’t bear going into. He had broken up with Alice because he never should have gotten back with Alice; because they were different people who wanted different things in a way that had been easier to ignore when they were grad students wrestling with the same coursework; because he came back from the dead and the person on the other side of the faultline in his life seemed suddenly very far away; because Alice was always saying things like “Q, have you thought about seeing a therapist?” and “I’m worried about you, Q,” and “Quentin, I really think you should be talking to a professional,” and Quentin was always saying things like “I need to go to sleep,” and “I’m gonna get another beer,” and “Not to be an asshole, but can you like get off my fucking dick?”

But also, he had broken up with Alice because he had a sex dream about Eliot Waugh.

He had told Julia about it the next morning in a panic and she had calmly pointed out that dreams are random neurons firing and everyone has had sex dreams about people they didn’t actually want to sleep with and there was a lot of complicated emotional and erotic history between him and Eliot and the fact that his subconscious would process that in this way didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his relationship with Alice.

Which would have been reassuring, if Quentin hadn’t immediately woken up from the sex dream and grabbed his dick.

“Unnecessarily graphic,” Julia had said, making a face into her coffee.

“Yeah, sorry, I hear that now,” he said, shaking his head. “But —”

“No, yeah, I see your point.”

He’d grabbed his dick and thought: Don’t do this. Speaking very firmly and trying to project for himself an air of calm like an unwanted step-parent attempting to play the disciplinarian. Don’t do this, he thought, trying to clear his brain of the last few seconds of the sex dream, in which Eliot had been wearing some kind of Fillorian tuxedo (?) and his hair was very curly. They had been on a boat which was also a hallway from Quentin’s high school and Quentin had been explaining if they got caught they would get detention. In the dream this had been very hot. Don’t do this, he warned his brain, and like a bratty thirteen-year-old mad that he wasn’t their real dad his brain said: Remember when Dream Eliot smiled like a sexy vampire and told you he didn’t need long to fuck you into next week? Remember when Dream Eliot bent you over the spare lab table/bench of navigational instruments and bit into the back of your shoulder because for some reason you weren’t wearing a shirt? Remember how the whole reason you woke yourself up is because you couldn’t stop thinking about how meta it was that you were fucking in your high school, you complete weirdo, because you had not been this hormonally wrecked since you were trying to hide an erection in honors geometry the day that Julia wore a thong and then you started feeling guilty about objectifying her?

Quentin had shaken his head miserably at the ceiling. Don’t do this, he thought, starting to lose his cool. Just — just let go. But his hand stayed stubbornly put while the kindergartener with separation anxiety in his brain started throwing markers across the room: Remember how Real Eliot had like the biggest hands in the entire known universe and it turned out that you were a huge slut for sucking on his fingers till you gagged? Remember his huge cock? God his cock was like, SO big. Remember how sometimes Real Eliot used to kiss you like a wounded soldier coming home to his sweetheart after a battle in which all his comrades had been slain? Remember the time he ate you out so long you cried?

Alice, he had thought desperately, in the tones of an attempt to bribe wayward children with pizza if they just behaved till their mother got home. Alice, Alice, your girlfriend, remember her? Pretty Alice, you’re in love with her, she’s super hot, Alice and her, I mean, really just magnificent fucking tits, sorry, breasts, remember that time she let you come on them and actually seemed sort of into it, remember the noise she makes when you pull her hair, remember how you’re like actually really good now at getting her off and she fucking screams your name for it, extremely sexy, very good times, you’ve really like grown erotically a lot together over the past few years, you should both be very proud —

But he had lost control. The house was a melee. Slamming doors and screaming insults and food being thrown out of the refrigerator and the middle child straight up drawing on the walls. He was left to his own monstrous hard-on and his hand fisting desperate and dry and his brain saying: But like seriously remember his cock? Remember how it was so enormous that for like a year after you’d started fucking regularly you were convinced every single time that you had remembered it being larger than it was but no actually it was that big? Remember it in your mouth and deep inside your ass and leaking in Eliot’s hands that time he tied you up with the rope you usually hung laundry on to dry and when he called you pretty you got so hard you lasted like five seconds once he started sucking you off? Remember how bizarrely hot you were for how sweaty he got when you fucked?

And then he had come — horribly, gratefully, incredibly, guiltily — all over the sheets in the bed where his girlfriend was still sleeping next to him.

“I feel like you could have left out some parts of that story,” Julia said when he told her. “Like maybe the bit about fifteen-year-old me in a thong.”

“I might not be doing great,” Quentin said. “With… things.”

Julia raised her eyebrows. “Might?”

“So like,” he said. “I need to break up with her, right?”

“Honestly?” Julia looked him in the eye. “On principle, no. People in relationships get to have weird fantasies. But I think if this was just jerking off after a sex dream about your ex, you wouldn’t have felt the need to tell me about it. In detail.” Quentin nodded. “In like, intense detail.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said.

“Like really gratuitous detail, Quentin,” she said. “Like details that I just did not need or want to know about, and like, I’ll take it, and handle it, because you’re my best friend and I love you and you’re going through a rough time, but also it is literally 7:45 in the morning. Feels like it’s just — it’s just a lot, first thing after waking up. Like maybe you could have let me finish my toast first.”

“I’m,” Quentin said. “God. I really need —”

“A therapist?” Julia said.

“I was going to say a drink,” he said.

“Okay,” Julia said. “Did you miss the part about 7:45 in the morning? This is not a case where it’s-five-o-clock-somewhere applies. Just to be clear.”

“Technically it is five o’clock somewhere,” he said. “Or 5:45, anyway. But, no, yeah, I mean I was like, mostly kidding.” He had not been even a little kidding. But if she was going to get all judgy… “But I do need —”

“A therapist,” Julia said.

“— to break up with Alice,” he said. “And then I think I’m going to go to— ”

“Therapy.”

“Fillory,” he said. “So we can get some, like. Space. You know?”

“Do they have therapists in Fillory?” Julia said.

“I hear you,” he said, “Jules, and it’s really sweet that you’re concerned.”

“I don’t really feel like you hear me,” she said. Then Alice had come into the kitchen and, well. Band-Aid, ripping. By the time the second pot of coffee had brewed it was over.

Now

“And another thing is,” Quentin says, for maybe the dozenth time, “it’s bad enough that he would just — decide what reality is now, and, like, fuck me for being slow to catch the fuck up, and fuck me for having an alternate version of events, and definitely fuck me for maybe getting a new perspective on some things after, you know, dying, and — god, it’s just — infuriating.”

“The worst,” Julia says. “Now we’re going to merge onto six heading east.”

Quentin nods to show he’s heard her and is not about to keep driving in a straight line until they careen into Cape Cod even though he — kind of wants to. Not seriously, just — the image is there, the screaming bystanders, the trail of wreckage, the eventual sand kicking up against the windows, and then — plunk! Gravity and darkness. Saltwater in his lungs. “But what really gets me is that it’s just — so fucking typical. Like, in Eliot land, feelings are stupid bullshit, until he has a feeling, and then the whole world has to stop on its goddamn axis. Feelings matter, now that Eliot has discovered he has feelings. Not my feelings, obviously. Fuck my feelings. Fuck that I just broke up with my girlfriend — my actual, non-alternate universe girlfriend, who I have actually dated and had sex with while sober in this lifetime — and good sex, too, okay, Eliot loves to think he like, invented fucking but he didn’t, obviously — and fuck that, not to sound like a broken record but, I legit died. Which was kind of, arguably, his fault. Fuck me for feeling maybe a little complicated about the person who dumped me five minutes before getting his dumb ass possessed — like what, I’m the dick now?”

“Ridiculous,” Julia says. “We’re taking the Killingly Street exit into Providence.”

“What a normal, not remotely portentous name,” Quentin mutters, but he starts to scan the signs for it, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he thinks about the mess. About Eliot. About the fucking nerve — “Like, he’s the only one allowed to be a fuck-up with bad coping mechanisms? I really feel like, again, sorry to beat a dead horse, pun not intended, but if dying gets you anything, I think it should get you a pass on some unhealthy coping mechanisms. I think if anyone deserves to get shitfaced and make some bad decisions, it’s me.”

He’s half-expecting and maybe half-hoping that Julia will cluck concernedly at that, but she just says mildly, “Makes sense. We couldn’t get the exact location because Kady said the house has anti-cartographical wards on it, but apparently it’s on the left, light-up lawn gnome out front.”

Quentin watches the buildings drift from gas stations and local chain drive-thrus to evenly spaced white and gray clapboard two-stories, squat brick houses with steeply pitched roofs, lawns revealing varying levels of horticultural interest — shockingly ugly troll-like sculpture of a sinister little man with white and red lights blinking to no apparent pattern in its weather-beaten green jacket. He pulls the car to a stop as Julia lifts her purse onto her shoulder but once they’re parked he doesn’t open the door.

“You coming?” she says.

He stares at the black leather of steering wheel like it’s Nietzsche’s fucking abyss. Wondering what it would see if it looked back. Quietly he asks, “Do you think Alice is ever going to forgive me?”

Julia gives a sympathetic exhale and places a warm hand on his shoulder. “Q, I love how much you trust in my powers of perception,” she says, “but I don’t have any more of an answer for that than I did when you asked me two hours ago.”

He sighs and gets out of the car.

Before

The worst part was how tired she had looked, when he told her. How she didn’t seem at all surprised even though the day before they’d had an actual candlelit dinner at an Italian place uptown and cuddled on the couch while watching old episodes of Weeds and told each other they loved each other and had some very high-quality sex. How he had tried to say, meaning it, “It’s not you, it’s —” and she had finished: “Eliot.”

“What?” he said, both actually shocked and trying to sound convincingly so. “No — no, Vix, not at all, that has — nothing to do with — God, I can’t believe you would even think of — I barely think of him, you know, when he’s not around — it’s like I don’t even have object permanence, when it comes to Eliot —” He had maybe overdone it, in retrospect.

“The actual literal least you could do at this point,” she said, “is not fucking lie to me, Quentin.”

And that had made sense. He had found it kind of moving, actually — like after all they’d been through, every crazy fucked up life-and-death turn in the road, at least they still had their honesty. Like it was okay that they had once again failed to make each other happy, as long as they kept what was really special about them, which was that they tried to show each other their real selves, even when it was hard. So he had taken a deep breath and said, “Yeah. It’s Eliot.”

“Jesus fuck,” Alice said. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“But not like — we’re not — I mean and I don’t even think I, I want that, exactly, like I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, I mean all that stuff with him is, it’s ancient history but I’m realizing things are just really complicated for me right now, you know, with the undying, and like, last night I had this insanely hot sex dream where we were on a boat in the science wing of my high school, and —”

“Quentin,” she shrieked, “why would you fucking tell me that!”

“You said you wanted me to be honest!”

“I said I didn’t want you to lie,” she said, “not give me the play by play of your sexual fantasies about your ex! Also, we’re breaking up! Who cares if you lie to me! I’ll never fucking know! God, you are so stupid.”

“It’s not — it wasn’t fantasies!” he protested. “I wouldn’t do that to you, okay, it was — it was a dream, like a literal when I was sleeping dream — and one round of masturbation, and for the record I felt super guilty about it while it was happening —”

“Shut the entire-ass fuck up, Quentin.”

Behind her glasses her eyes looked incandescently angry. Maybe murderously so. It was hard to believe he deserved otherwise. He nodded very slowly, like you might move to avoid scaring a wild animal. “Duly noted.”

Kady and the Pennys had gathered at the edge of the kitchen, looking, respectively, unimpressed and darkly amused. Quentin still didn’t understand what bureaucratic Underworld finagling had let them two-for-the-price-of-one resurrect him and Penny-40 together, but it occurred to him not for the first time that maybe it involved some secret bargain to ensure his new life remained in practice an exercise in eternal torment. He bit his lip. “I really hope —”

“If you say you hope we can be friends,” Alice said, “I am for real going to kill you myself. I will make it hurt, and this time I will make sure that it sticks.” She leaned in close and jabbed a finger in his face. “None of those bitches could have brought you back without me.”

“Yeah, um.” He cleared his throat. “That checks out.” From the corner both Pennys crowed with laughter. That checked out, too.

Now

The spell goes smoothly. Eight people, five of whom seem to be living in the house, plus three stragglers. Afterwards, once Julia finishes going over the steps for transmission, two residents insist on bringing out refreshments as an offering of thanks and hospitality, and within a few minutes Quentin finds himself in the weirdly familiar position of standing with Julia and apart, next to her and a step behind, drinking Blue Moon while she charms a crowd.

“I’m sorry, I know this isn’t really your thing,” she says low to him while others carry on a good-natured but increasingly loud debate about the most essential warding spells. “We can get going.”

He shrugs. “It’s your turn to drive next, right?” he says, lifting up his beer. “I’m fine.”

She studies him like she’s trying to decide whether to believe him and he amends it to: “I’m not any less fine here than I would be anywhere else. You’re having fun, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, “but —”

The conversation has shifted to a discussion of the Kohler Paradox and its potential applications to the meta-math of psychic mapping. Quentin nudges Julia’s shoulder. “They’re playing your song. Really, don’t worry about it.”

She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before turning back to chime in. “I was actually reading about some work being done in Iceland, I think, around devising a set of testable hypotheses using Okamoto’s number…”

The weird thing is that he does feel fine. He surveys the room — Julia’s crowd of hobbyist theoreticians, a pair in a back corner with arms around each other’s waists tossing illumination spells back and forth in giddy celebration, two girls, younger than the rest by the looks of them, whispering animatedly on a patchwork sofa — and tries to conjure up the expected dread, the old anxiety about disinterested faces and judgmental glances, that lifelong drumbeat reminding him that at some point everyone else had learned the rules and he never would, but it’s nowhere to be found. Like the Quentin that gave a shit about what some stranger with a beard might think of his shirt died, and whatever part of him made it back can’t imagine caring that much. About, like, anything.

The girls on the sofa keep looking over at him and he can see like he’s watching a ghost his old self flushing hot, trying to look busy yet unbothered, ping-ponging back and forth in his head between running through everything wrong with him they might have spotted and telling himself he’s being a narcissist to even think they might have noticed him. Instead of any of that, he feels — nothing whatsoever. A blank and limitless void. It’s kind of nice. He takes a drink, half-listening to Julia ask someone about the disturbances they experienced when they worked at some Scottish hotel, and remembers suddenly —

First semester in the cottage, some unremarkable Saturday night, arm around Alice’s waist and feeling stupid with how much he liked her, the miracle of how easy it was to fit when he had someone to fit against, her scrunched-nose laugh she only made when she was drunk or after sex, loosened into sweetness.

—Ah, the resident turtle-doves.

Margo, hands on hips, dripping imperiousness as ever, and they could only look at each other and smile helplessly while Eliot glided into place behind her.

—Now, Bambi. I think it’s sweet. We could use some old-fashioned necking around here. It would add variety to our slatternly habits.

He caught Quentin’s eye and his smile darkened into something somehow both predatory and proud, that way Eliot always had of being two ways at once which made him frightening but comforting, too, and to be deemed worthy of a smile like that gave Quentin an electric frisson almost as good as how it felt to make Alice smile like it was easy for her…

“Q? You there?”

Julia is talking to him. He stares at her, trying to force his way back into the present. “Yeah, I — sorry, just spaced out a bit. What were you saying?”

She doesn’t seem wholly convinced, but she leaves it. “I was just asking if you wanted to get dinner in town before we headed back out on the road.”

“Oh,” he says. “Sure. That sounds great.”

Before

So he had gone to Fillory, to give Alice time to figure shit out. Or maybe to stay, who fucking knew. Margo was High King, that was cool. Fillory had low-key ruined his life like seven times over but he didn’t have any better ideas. Something about having been a dead person really had a way of fucking with your ability to imagine the future. That might also have been why he’d broken up with Alice: she had all these ideas, and plans, and he was pretty impressed with himself these days if he figured out what he wanted for dinner before nine p.m., and extra impressed if the answer was something other than wine and Pop Tarts.

He’d run into Eliot shortly after stepping through the clock, wandering around Whitespire trying to remember which tower Margo had set as regular quarters for visitors from Earth. Eliot seemed happy and surprised to see him. “Q, what’s up?”

Quentin was glad to see him, too. Possibly he shouldn’t have been, given — everything. But it had just been a dream. A dream that, sure, pointed to some shit buried somewhere in the trainwreck of his memories that might at some point need to be processed. But in the conscious light of day, that seemed very distant. He’d long since nursed the wounds of this particular disaster. It had hurt, and he’d gotten over it. Like adults did, when they cared about someone else more than they needed that person to want them in a specific way. Maybe the sex dream had been about Alice, his brain’s way of alerting him to danger there. Suggesting something in their dynamic that needed to be outgrown. Because seeing Eliot coming towards him down the marble-floored hallway didn’t feel like seeing someone he’d been thinking about getting railed by while blindfolded twelve hours ago. It felt like seeing a friend. He’d worked very hard to get to a place where he looked at Eliot and saw a friend.

Besides, unlike some people, Eliot wasn’t going to give him shit about drinking before lunch.

Maybe he would stay in Fillory for a while.

“El,” he said, “hey. Alice and I broke up.”

Eliot’s face knotted into sad concern, which Quentin hadn’t been expecting. “Oh, shit, Q. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s — fine,” he said. Which — it did feel, weirdly, fine. It also felt like total shit because of his pathological inability to stop hurting the people he claimed to care about and because he was apparently even more clueless about the inner workings of his own mind than he’d realized and because without Alice he was once again a zombie grad school dropout who had probably PTSD or some shit and no job, purpose in life, or reason to get out of bed in the morning, and also now he wasn’t getting laid. But he wasn’t like, pining.

No one else thought it was funny when he called himself a zombie. They gave him these unhappy worried looks like they were afraid he might be contemplating rejoining his brethren on the other side. But no one else had died, so, you know. Fuck them!

“Well,” Eliot said, “I’m glad you’re feeling okay.” He sounded very earnest. With those big anime eyes catching candlelight. It was sweet. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Oh definitely not,” Quentin said. “But I would like to drink about it.” He brandished the wine he’d brought in his bag.

Eliot nodded, brows furrowed. “It’s — well I thought we’d sorted out the time-sliding business but here it’s technically still the morning.”

“Yeah, it’s like eleven-thirty on Earth,” Quentin said, “what’s your point? Did Eliot Waugh go fucking straight-edge on me while I was dead?”

Eliot gave a little laugh — a weird little laugh. “Hardly. But — I am trying to, uh. Be a bit more responsible I guess. About some things.”

Quentin raised an eyebrow.

“Like drinking things,” Eliot said. “Just, you know. I’m doing — royal stuff again, and it’s… mostly pretty minor, but I feel like I should be like, a good role model, and I want to be there for Margo, and support her leadership…”

Quentin raised both eyebrows.

“I mean,” Eliot said, “I’m not saying I can’t, just saying I’m not sure if I… should.” He made a small smile. A weird smile. Why was he being so weird?

“Okay, well,” Quentin said, “I definitely shouldn’t but I’m gonna, and I’m playing the heartbroken best friend card, so, I’m not sure you have a choice.”

Eliot squinted at him. “You just said you were fine.”

“I’m both,” Quentin said. “I’m fine enough that you don’t need to worry about me, but heartbroken enough that you absolutely do have to come get drunk with me. I mean —” He batted his eyelashes. “Gosh, Eliot, left to my own devices, who knows what I might get up to under the influence?”

An affectionate grin spread across Eliot’s face. “Right. Because you’re such a bad boy.”

—You’re so dirty, Q, who knew you were so fucking dirty, you’ll let me do just anything to you and it feels so good, babe, you’re so — Nope! Daylight! Maturity! Friends! “I mean I don’t know if you heard, but I did kill myself a while ago.”

Eliot looked stricken, which — that one he should have seen coming, maybe. “Q, are you —”

“I’m not gonna die,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes, “grow up.” People were so fucking sensitive around him now, and like? It’s his party, and he’ll joke about his own fucking suicide play if he wants to! “But I might do all sorts of other questionable things. Unless my loyal best friend is there to take care of me, so…” He dangled the wine bottle like a cat toy.

“I feel like you might not be processing this break-up super well,” Eliot said.

“Uh, yeah, that’s like my whole point, have you not been listening?” Quentin opened the bottle of wine and took a drink. He was tired of waiting. He held out the bottle to Eliot, trying to cock his eyebrow invitingly although he wasn’t as good at that as Eliot was.

“Well,” Eliot said, “if you insist.” He sounded dubious, but he took the bottle anyway, and Quentin grinned. Good old Eliot. His life might have sucked but it did help, having a friend he could count on.

Now

“It’s just crazy,” Quentin says. “Everything about us was already so crazy, just because of like, circumstance. I’m not Logan Echolls at the alterna-prom here. I don’t want epic. I’m over epic, thank you very much. Possession? Death? These are not the building blocks of a successful romance, and frankly you would have to be nuts to go through what we’ve gone through and still even want to be together. There’s just too much fucking baggage there. I mean, I feel like maybe that’s why I had to break up with Alice, you know? Sometimes you just need a fresh fucking start.”

“Could be,” Julia says. “Can you pass me a Sweet-n-Low?”

He hands her the little pink packet from the white ceramic holder and she empties it into her coffee. They’re in a diner in Providence. Quentin had a BLT with fries but he still feels — not hungry, exactly, but he wants — he drinks the watered-down remains of his soda, ice cubes bumping against his nose. “And frankly, we were a crazy idea in the best case scenario. Which he knows! Like, he was right, Jules. We don’t live in a shack in the woods. In the actual world, we are very different people. We would drive each other completely insane in like, a month. Honestly I think what must have happened is, he felt guilty that I was dead and talked himself into some idealized vision of me, or of us, or whatever, which, I get that grief makes people do weird shit, but to then turn around and act like I’m being the asshole just by, what? By being my actual self, instead of whatever imaginary boyfriend Quentin lives in Eliot’s head? It’s unreal.”

“I know,” Julia says. She lifts her hand just slightly and their curly-haired waitress stops at the edge of their table. “Could we get the check, please?”

“Sure thing, hon.” The waitress scrawls something onto her pad and places their check on the black formica table. “You can pay up front when you’re ready.”

“No rush if you want to take your time with your coffee,” Julia tells him as she walks away. “Just figured since we were done ordering.”

“Yeah, of course.” Quentin takes a sip of his coffee, wishing it were hotter. He wants something that will scald his tongue. Something where he’ll feel the sting later. “More than anything, I just don’t get it. I was — so normal about it, after he made it clear that we were over. I was like the most normal I’d ever been about anything. I was like a fucking black belt of being normal friends with your ex. Where the fuck did he get the idea that I was ready to dive into a relationship with him?”

“Well,” says Julia, “you did break up with Alice and then immediately have sex with him. For like. Hours.”

He stares at her incredulously. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying,” Julia continues, “I can see how that could have confused things.”

“Whose side are you on?” he demands.

Julia holds up her palms signaling peace. “Yours, Q. Obviously I’m on your side.”

“Well — good,” he says, deflating slightly. “Because it’s the right side.”

“Mhmm,” she says. “I’m on your side, and Eliot sucks, and only a crazy person would think it meant anything that his ex dumped his girlfriend, tracked him down on another planet, and begged him to tie him to the bed with shoelaces and fuck his face.”

Quentin blinks in alarm. “Did I tell you about that? I don’t remember telling you about that.”

Julia nods like a doctor giving a grim diagnosis. “You’ve told me about many things, Q.”

“Oh,” he says, disconcerted. “Did I tell you about —”

“Bending you over on the footstool, yes.”

“And when —”

“You did it in character as a bartender and his boss, uh huh.”

“And how —”

“His chest hair gets really sweaty during sex, yep.” Her lip curls slightly. “You mentioned that one several times, actually.”

“I’m — okay, well. The point still stands,” he says, even though he’s not sure anymore what point he was making. He balls up his napkin and eyes the remains of Julia’s omelette and toast. “Are you gonna eat that?”

Before

They’d gone to Eliot’s room to be unbothered and Quentin had felt almost nostalgic, like they were back at the cottage when things were simple. Drinking wine and half-listening to Eliot talk about palace gossip, little sketches of everyday lust and minor betrayal that didn’t matter. It was a relief to be somewhere he didn’t need to matter. By the bottom of the first bottle Eliot seemed to have forgotten whatever reservations he’d had and both of them kept laughing about nothing in particular and that was a relief, too: the laughter and also the nothing. He felt warm and safe curled up in their nothing.

More wine appeared, somehow, and kept appearing. At one point long after Quentin had lost track of time Eliot left and came back with a spread from the kitchen on a gold-filigreed tray they set in front of them on the floor. Quentin sat up — when had he lain down? — to eat and when they’d finished with the pheasant and root vegetable medley and were splitting a soft roll, still hot, with which Josh had apparently recommended the raspberry-apricot jam, he thought pleasantly of how he could sit here and recall fifty years of sharing bread and not feel like it mattered at all. The other thing about Alice was that she was always wanting things from him. Things like waking up before noon, or leaving the apartment. Eliot didn’t want anything from him. It seemed absurd that Quentin had ever thought this was a bad thing. He had been silly not to see how lucky he was to have someone who would never ask him for anything real.

“Maybe I’m just not a relationship person,” he said. He was licking jam off his fingers because it didn’t matter if Eliot thought he was gross. Eliot’s face went sort of pained, like it hurt to hear Quentin talk about himself like that, so he added, “I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just — I mean, you of all people know I’m not good at them. Maybe I need to just stop chasing something that I think is going to make me happy and accept that, you know.” He shrugged. “Some people were just meant to die alone.”

Eliot said, “Q…” in that minor-key worry voice.

“Not die, like, now,” Quentin assured him. “Now I’m feeling great. This was exactly what I needed today.” He gave Eliot a grin to show his appreciation.

Eliot didn’t look appeased. Seriously, what was with him? “Are you okay?” Quentin asked, refilling his glass.

Eliot managed a wan smile. “Yeah, just —” He cleared his throat. “I just feel like you shouldn’t… sell yourself short, you know? You have a lot to offer, and I think — with the right partner, if they… if they let you in, you would make it work. Because you’re a really special person, Q. You’re — you’re brave, and you’re loyal, and you’re full of love, and — and the right person is going to see that. Even if maybe it takes them a while, because they’re dealing with their own shit.”

Quentin shrugged. “Maybe.” He didn’t feel full of love. He didn’t feel full of anything, except wine. He wondered if there were any more of those rolls downstairs.

“Like maybe,” Eliot said, “maybe they were afraid, and clinging to some outdated narratives about who they were as a person, and kind of dumb. And maybe they thought that because they could name their trauma that meant they had processed it but actually they realized they needed to do a lot of work on themselves to stop letting it dictate their choices, and they’re in a better place now, and really proud of themselves, honestly, for trying to like, grow and heal and whatever, but they also really wish they could go back and take back some of the decisions they made when they were still running from their damage.”

“I guess,” Quentin said. He was kind of losing the thread, but it seemed rude to say so. “But I don’t even know if I want a relationship. I mean, what would a relationship add to my life besides drama? Well, and sex,” he allowed. “The sex is nice. That part, you have to admit, I’m pretty good at.”

Eliot choked on his wine and started to cough.

“Ouch,” Quentin said. “Way to kick a guy when he’s down.”

Eliot shook his head; took several slow sips; swallowed again; set down his glass. “Trust me, I was not… disputing your claim.”

Quentin smiled, pleased. Feeling generous he said, “Well, I did learn from the best.”

Eliot made a face Quentin couldn’t read, somewhere between a smile and a wince. Maybe his throat still hurt from the choking. “We learned a lot from each other,” he said.

That was sweet of him. Eliot was being sweet, and Quentin was several stages past drunk but still lucid enough to be pretty sure he recognized a familiar shading in Eliot’s eyes, like Eliot too was remembering how their bodies knew each other, what they could do together if they were allowed. And he thought: why not? Alice was done, his life was in ruins, but he and Eliot had managed to leave everything heavy between them in the past. They weren’t going to ruin that with a little sex. Why the fuck not?

So he leaned over and kissed Eliot hard, and was validated when Eliot immediately kissed him back. God, Eliot was good at kissing. Quentin felt like he was seventeen, that sudden careening sense that his body was one long nerve and everything Eliot was doing with his tongue and his lips and the catch of his teeth was happening simultaneously through his chest and down his spine and in his dick. He scooted over so he could crawl into Eliot’s lap and give Eliot easier access for manhandling him with those gigantic hands. Fingers cupping the back of his neck, Eliot’s stupidly elegant shoulders under his palms. Eliot making soft hungry noises into his mouth. This was the perfect way to get his mind off the Alice thing.

Eliot broke the kiss and leaned back a little, looking up at him with a bizarrely serious expression on his face. “Q — are you sure?”

Quentin smiled. That was nice of him. To make sure that Quentin wasn’t about to impale his own heart on an idiotic decision after a sudden break-up and like three entire bottles of wine. It was considerate, in the way Eliot knew how to be as a gracious host: thinking ahead, asking good questions. But Quentin was fine. They were friends. Friends who happened to know how to get each other absurdly, world-shatteringly turned on, who didn’t usually do that because, like, complicated, but — he’d dumped his girlfriend. Also he’d died. He was due a couple freebies. “Yeah, El,” he said. “I’m sure. I mean —” He laughed, waggling his eyebrows, because the whole thing now seemed so stupid. “I kind of did break up with the love of my life today because of you.” Then he kissed Eliot again, to show that he meant it: kissing him deep and long, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt to open it up so he could bite along Eliot’s collarbone where he knew it made him go weak, grinding eagerly into him, kissing his mouth again while fisting his hair into his hands. “See?” he whispered into Eliot’s ear, letting him feel the heat of his breath and listening with satisfaction to the little sigh he made. “I’m very sure.” He sucked into the side of Eliot’s neck a bit. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Eliot said, voice husky — Quentin shivered to hear it — “yeah, Q, I’m fucking sure.”

And then they were off: stripping each other roughly, hands frantic for touch, pressing quick and hot against each other to feel the heat of skin on skin. Eliot stood and pulled Quentin to his feet just long enough to squeeze his ass hard before shoving him backwards onto the bed and, Jesus, that sent him somewhere he fucking wanted to be. Eliot tossing him around like a goddamn action figure. That was even better than the chem lab dream.

All of it was: Eliot pinned him by the wrists and murmured “God, I could keep you here forever,” possessive like he sometimes got, and Quentin’s hips jerked upward while he blurted out “So fucking tie me in place, then,” and Eliot’s eyes went wide while he started muttering something about looking for his scarves and Quentin told him “What, no, that’ll take too long, just — look, I wore my Converse, just use those, they’re down there, see?” Ten minutes later his wrists were attached to the bed posts and Eliot’s giant dick (yep: just as big as he remembered, how was that possible) was spurting come into his needy mouth. They resurrected Dwayne and Ivan, sullen Brooklynites mutually resentful of their shared attraction and prone to fucking in the back office while Dwayne (Eliot) spanked Ivan (Quentin) and said he should really just fire him for constant overpouring, do you think we’re running a microbrew charity for bike messengers who spent their last dollars on flannel? Quentin came once fucking into Eliot’s face while Eliot lay on his back in front of the fireplace and again into Eliot’s stupidly huge hand while Eliot fucked him from behind on the footstool and again without touching himself while Eliot pinned him down and whispered relentlessly about how filthy and perfect Quentin was and again in Eliot’s ass while Eliot rode him chanting fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck over and over like some weirdly horny Gregorian monk. Just dripping with sweat. Little rivers of it all along his face and his sticky hair. Why was that so hot?

By the time they called it a night Quentin was too exhausted to see straight. Eliot curled around him on the bed and for a second he thought spooning might be the bridge too far that made it weird but he felt sleepy and safe and also too drunk to make it anywhere else, so he figured Eliot who had a lot more experience with this kind of night knew what he was doing and in the morning it would be fine. It wasn’t like cuddling would be the thing that killed their friendship. Eliot said something into his neck but Quentin couldn’t make it out. He wanted to ask him to repeat it but sleep was already tugging at his eyes.

Now

“And he’s so fucking full of himself,” Quentin says from the passenger seat. “It’s super aggravating.”

“So annoying,” Julia says.

“Because that’s really what this comes down to, you know?” he says. “His fucking ego. Like, wow, you got me off, congratulations on hitting the same heights of achievement as an episode of SVU.” Julia gives him a sidelong look that’s halfway to horrified and he hurries to clarify: “Not for like the — sex crimes. I had a thing for that one D. A. they had for a while, what was her name? The blonde with the glasses.” As soon as the description is out of his mouth he wishes he had just said Mariska. Everyone loves Mariska.

“Alex?”

“If you’re making fun of me for having a type —”

“No, I think her name is Alex. I want to say Alex Cabot? Stephanie March’s character, right?”

“I don’t know, I don’t pay attention to that stuff.” Outside the sky is black, the long stretch of highway rendered even less scenic in the nighttime. The occasional backlit sign floats past them like a balloon on an invisible string. “It’s not like we did anything special. We were mammals acting like mammals, big deal. Like, sorry I made the mistake of thinking we were handling our shit like adults. Sorry I wasn’t expecting to get sucked into some high school angst about whether we like-like each other.” Not that Quentin had any of that angst in high school, but Julia doesn’t point this out. “I can’t believe I’m the chill one here.”

“You’re being very chill about this.”

He glares at her in the dark. “You know what I mean. I’m not — dredging up old bullshit to feed my addiction to melodrama.” He glances at his phone. Another hour before they’re set to arrive. “And then that Eliot of all people would have the nerve to act like I’m all fucked up or whatever.”

“Hmm,” Julia says. “I’m gonna play my No Comment card on that one.”

“You think I’m fucked up?” he challenges. He doesn’t know why. Objectively he can see that he is not racking up the wellness points. He wants to make her say it, or not say it.

Julia says, “I think you’ve been through a lot, and it makes sense that you would need time to adjust.”

“So you think I should what, take the weekend and then call him and apologize?”

“I didn’t say that,” she says.

“But you were thinking it.”

“I was not.”

Quentin doesn’t have a comeback for that. Not that he should be looking for one, probably. “Well I’m not going to.”

“Okay.” Julia starts to pull into a gas station. “I’m going to fill up the tank, if you want to get up and stretch your legs for a sec.”

Quentin doesn’t move. “You know what I hate?”

“Eliot’s face, hair, voice, personality, life, choices?”

“Good guess,” Quentin acknowledges, “but no. I hate that the sex was actually incredible.”

“You have made that,” says Julia, “abundantly clear.”

Before

In the morning Quentin’s mouth tasted like death. Actually having died he was now qualified to say: it tasted worse than death. Like death had come into his mouth and then had food poisoning and puked all over everything. His head was — not happy. His whole body in fact was very, very mad at him for what he had done. Eliot was already awake next to him, sitting up. He looked like he was not preoccupied by the vicious maelstrom of nausea and pain racking his every internal organ and therefore Quentin hated him, just a bit. As a matter of principle. “Hey, Q?”

Quentin shut his eyes. “Why are you so loud.”

“Sorry,” Eliot said, whispering. “I just — look I know I should probably let you like, finish waking up and stuff, and, and we don’t have to talk through it all now —”

That was good news. Quentin didn’t think he could talk through anything now.

“— but I just, you were gone for so long, and I don’t want to waste any more time or, or ever leave you feeling anything other than totally sure again, so — so I just want to be clear that, like.” He swallowed. His eyes were very large. Like frogs, Quentin thought inanely. His tongue felt like sandpaper thrown in a blender with formaldehyde. “This is real, okay? I’m, I’m not taking anything back, or pushing you away, and I’m not scared anymore — I mean I am scared, I’m actually, like,” he laughed with eyes bright, “I’m fucking — terrified, but I’m done letting my fears ruin every good thing in my life. And that’s — you did that, Q. Really. You’re so — brave, and amazing, and you make me want to be — better, and I thought, I thought I’d lost my chance to be better for you, like that, and it’s — god, it feels like a fucking miracle that I didn’t, like the thousandth miracle I’ve had since you got back, and, um. I just didn’t want to wait any longer, to say that.”

“Okay,” Quentin managed. That was — nice? Eliot’s face looked like he had been saying something nice. Also like he might start crying. Maybe he was hungover after all. That made Quentin feel a little better.

“And I get,” Eliot went on, “I totally get that — you know, last night was last night, but if starting now you want to take things slower, because of the break-up, that’s fine. You know, whatever you want, I’m here for it.”

“Whatever I want,” Quentin said. He wanted: water, aspirin, a light switch that would turn off the sun, a time loop that would take him back to the previous evening and make him stop drinking maybe like three hours earlier, to die again but only temporarily. Sleep, that’s what that was called. He wanted to go back to sleep.

“Anything,” Eliot said. He was being very insistent. “Just — I know that it’s going to take work, but I’m ready to do it. I promise, Q. I’m not running away this time.”

“Cool,” Quentin said. He tried to nod, because the situation seemed to call for it. That was a mistake. He closed his eyes to make the world stop moving. While he was shuttered in the darkness he said, “Sorry if this is a dumb question, but uh. What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about — us, Q,” Eliot said. “Our — our relationship, our — well our love, I guess, although I totally understand if you’re not ready for that word yet. I know I’ve put you through a lot, and —”

“Wait.” He forced himself to open his eyes. The light hurt so bad. “What?”

“Uh…” Eliot looked unsure now. “I — you know, because we…”

“What did you think,” Quentin said slowly, “was happening last night?”

“I thought —” Eliot’s eyes were clouding over while he tried to keep his face calm. “I thought we — we kissed, and we — did a lot of other things, and we like. I don’t know, reunited? Found our way back after toils and snares? Uncrossed our star-crossed path? Finally lived the truth of our feelings for each other?”

Well this was — not great. “Yeah, so… I didn’t exactly…” Was this really his life? Was he really having to dump both of his insanely hot exes in twenty-four hours? That was… so much more sexual success than he had ever thought he would achieve in his life, god. Lonely is the head that wears the fucking crown.

“Wait,” Eliot said. His face was falling in slow motion. “Are you saying you — last night you weren’t —”

“That is,” Quentin said, “what I’m trying to say, yes. I thought — sorry, El. I thought we were on the same page.”

“And what page was that?”

“The page where we were just — you know, two outrageously sexually compatible people with a complicated past who decided to blow off some steam.”

Eliot was shaking his head. “I don’t — you told me that you broke up with Alice because of me, what the fuck was I supposed to think?”

Quentin winced. “So I can see how that would be confusing, yeah. It wasn’t like — see, I had this sex dream, where you were like, maybe part-vampire, and we were in my high school, right, and what I think it was actually about was my unconscious telling me that I was still with Alice because I was clinging to the past —”

“Jesus fuck,” Eliot said. “What about — I mean I fucking — I told you I loved you, I —” Eliot was staring at him disbelievingly.

“Shit, really?” Quentin felt a squirming in his gut that might have been guilt or might have been nausea. Or, like. Por qué no los dos?

“Unbelievable.” Eliot shook his head. “You — what, you didn’t notice? Or you just didn’t care? That I was fucking baring my soul —”

“I’m sorry, are you mad at me?” Quentin said. “In case you didn’t notice then and somehow aren’t noticing now, I was pretty fucking hammered last night. I thought you were too.”

“I was,” Eliot said, “contrary to my actual plans for the evening, for the record —”

“Oh right,” Quentin said, “you’re like reformed or something now so you were just drinking your face off as a big favor for poor sad fucked up Q —”

“Yeah, actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying — what the fuck, Quentin, that’s exactly what you were saying —”

“Look all I was trying to say now is,” Quentin said, “that I wasn’t exactly in a detail-oriented state of mind last night.”

“Details!” Eliot gave a bitter laugh. “I’m so glad to hear that my fucking confession of the heart rates as a detail. Like saying I am fucking in love with you is name of some fucking Star Trek droid.”

“They don’t have droids in Star Trek. And what do you want me to say, Eliot?” Quentin really, really wished he could sit up in indignation for this, but wow it was really, really not happening. “Sorry that I wasn’t trying to start a new relationship while I was drunk off my ass?”

“Well the last time you got drunk and kissed me it turned out you got mad at me for assuming you weren’t starting a relationship, so I thought —”

“Oh did I?” Quentin shot back. “I’m sorry, I thought that wasn’t me.”

Eliot made a furious tight line with his mouth and for a moment Quentin enjoyed the silence of his defeat. Then he felt bad, kind of. “El —” he started. But then up came the familiar inner lurching and he (“Oh God —”) rolled over just in time to hurl all over the floor by the bed.

It was a bad one. Lots of dry heaving when he’d expelled everything solid inside him and everything liquid inside him and possibly some esophageal lining, just for good measure. Eliot gently rubbed his back through the end of it. When he thought he’d finished he tried to clean up but his hands refused to work the right way and Eliot did it instead. He lay back down with his eyes on the ceiling. After a few moments of watching it swim in his vision he turned onto his side.

Eliot had softened. Like watching Quentin puke his guts out and then some had stirred up some pity in him that reminded him that he was, apparently, in love? The fuck? Quentin rubbed his eyes.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Eliot said. “I — I was feeling really vulnerable and defensive and I lashed out, but. Obviously the way I handled this wasn’t ideal, and — and I’m sorry. You don’t — you don’t owe me anything, god, not after everything I’ve pulled, and — whatever your feelings are, your friendship means more to me than just about anything, so. So I hope I haven’t — fucked that up too bad.”

“Well,” Quentin said, “aren’t you mature.” It came out nasty. Actually it started nasty too. Eliot was being very mature. It made Quentin want to fucking hit him.

Eliot smiled, kind of sadly. “I started therapy when you were gone. I guess some of it’s helping.”

“Therapy’s for pussies,” Quentin said.

“Hm.” Eliot nodded. “I feel like we should unpack that.”

“Hard pass.”

“Q, I —” Eliot brought his hand very near to Quentin’s face and then pulled back. “I know I’m probably not the ideal candidate to say this, given — the present circumstance — but I am… I mean should I be worried about you?”

“Why,” Quentin said, “because I got wasted and fucked someone I shouldn’t? I thought in your house that was just a day ending in y.”

“That’s really unfair, Quentin,” Eliot said quietly.

Maybe it was. But — “I don’t give a shit.”

Eliot looked — sad, which — uuuuugggggghhhhhh. “Okay, well. I know you don’t mean that —”

“Oh good,” Quentin said, “just when I thought things were really bad, Eliot to the rescue, once again explaining to me what I do or don’t fucking mean.”

Eliot closed his eyes. It was possible that Quentin was being horrible. He tried to find the part of him that would care but he got an out of office email with no return date. “I’m trying to say,” Eliot said, “that I care about you.”

If he hadn’t felt like his body was held together with gum and dental floss he would have laughed, because it was — like, now? Eliot wanted to do this now? “I cared about you, too,” he said instead. “I cared so hard I got myself killed. So maybe you can understand why I’m not exactly jumping to dive back into our grand romance.” That wasn’t exactly how it had happened, logistically. But that was how it felt, when he remembered it: like inside him there had been a sun, warm and bright, and then it had gone out.

Eliot bowed his head, apologetic. “I can’t ever say enough how sorry I am for —”

“Fuck your sorries,” Quentin spat. God that felt good to say. Like he was an actual living person. “Fuck your sorries, and fuck your caring.” He forced himself upright, then onto his feet. He was shaking. Probably from the hangover he was shaking. “What the fuck did caring about you ever get me, huh? Headaches and stress and, and hangovers and fucking — months of torture by a fucking demigod, and what was the point? Of fucking any of it? What was any of that for?” He felt that picked-scab feeling in his whole body, sick and alive and itching to see the blood. “You know, I came here yesterday looking for some bullshit distraction from a break-up with someone who actually gave enough of a fuck to tell me she cared before I died, because I thought I’d finally figured out the one thing I could count on you for, and you fucked that up for me too. So fuck your apologies, and fuck your I’m in love with you, and fuck you. I’m out. Go cry about it to your therapist.”

Eliot looked — whatever. He deserved it, for — it should have been simple. Quentin had been so good, for so long. He heard Eliot call his name as he walked out of the room but he didn’t turn around.

Now

As they turn off I-95 Quentin says, “What is wrong with me, Jules?”

“This feels like a loaded question,” she says.

He’s slumped against the door with his forehead resting on the passenger seat, watching the view fill up with the lights of Boston. He feels exhausted and he wants to smoke but he left his cigarettes in his bag in the trunk so instead he’s eating a package of salt and vinegar chips he bought at the gas station. Stinging his tongue. “There were two people who were in love with me,” he says. “And not just any two people, I mean, Alice is Alice, and Eliot is psychologically allergic to the printed word but he’s actually an insanely talented magician, he just puts all of his energy into stupid party tricks. If he didn’t have zero ambition and the attention span of a drunk toddler he could have written half a spellbook by now. And have you seen them? Alice looks like a drawing of a sexy librarian made by a thirteen-year-old boy, and Eliot is seven hundred feet tall with eyes the size of grapefruits and a dick you could hang a flag on. I mean it’s so big, Julia. It’s so —”

“Yeah,” Julia says, “I’ve learned a lot about Eliot’s dick in the past seventy-two hours.”

“I got two hot geniuses,” Quentin says, “to fall in love with me. With me. Me, like, Quentin-me. Me, the guy whose first blow job came from a girl who got confused about who brought the drugs to the party. The guy ranked most virginal in the senior slambook. Did they ever catch who did that?”

“I think it was Blake Epstein who made the copies,” Julia says. “That guy was a douchebag.”

“Didn’t you go out with him in ninth grade?”

“Like, once,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He took me to some World War II movie and tried to slip his hand down my underwear while we were sitting next to these senior citizens who had probably fought in the war themselves.”

“Ew,” Quentin says, briefly distracted from his self-pity. “You never told me that.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t want to make it a thing. It was fine. I dumped my soda on his crotch and walked out.” Quentin takes a moment to savor that mental image.

“I know it doesn’t really matter that they’re hot,” he concedes. “I know that’s not what’s important. The real story is that two people were in love with me, who I thought I had been in love with, and I just — threw them away. Like, the fuck? Do I want to be alone?”

“I know I keep saying this, but you have been through some insane shit. I don’t think you can expect yourself to be operating normally right now.”

“Maybe.” They stop at a red light. Quentin watches a crew of teenagers cross the street, so carefree they seem almost immune to gravity. “Or maybe this is my new normal. I don’t feel…” He trails off, unable to find a word that fits.

“You don’t feel…”

Anything, he almost says, but thinks better of it. Instead he shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Julia looks back over her shoulder before heading into a right turn. “If you don’t know what you feel, that sounds like something you might want to talk to a professional about.”

“I’m not going to therapy,” he says flatly. “I’m fine.”

“You just said —”

“I’m being dramatic,” he says. “I’ve had two break-ups this week, cut me some slack.”

Julia takes a long, deep breath, her mouth a careful line.

Before

“Jesus fuck,” Julia said.

“I’ve been getting that a lot,” Quentin said. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

Quentin had stumbled through the halls of Whitespire back into the penthouse and basically army-crawled to Kady’s room to plea for a dose of her hangover cure. They kept a stash of it in the fridge, but he’d never managed to work the activation spell. Once she’d relented he’d snuck a shower before Alice noticed he was home and then fled the property and texted Julia begging her to meet him somewhere he could update her on the whole sorry story. Somewhere downtown. An establishment, downtown. A bar. He was drunk again. But in his defense: his entire stupid life. Anyway it was a bar with food, at least. He’d eaten a cheeseburger while he was waiting. Then he’d ordered a plate of nachos for them to split, but Julia said she wasn’t hungry.

“I just ate,” she said. “I mean, like — damn, Q.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. “I’m having a real Lemon-it’s-Wednesday kind of week.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Julia said, with a crooked smile. “But it literally is Tuesday.”

Quentin buried his face in his hands. “Fuck my life.”

“So,” she said. “Do you think you’re going to talk to Eliot again?”

“I would literally rather die,” Quentin said. “But I would literally rather die than do a lot of things, so that’s not saying much.”

“Not funny,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure it was.” He scooped up some extra cheese with a chip and popped it into his mouth. “Anyway, Margo has probably already set the clock to like, decapitate me if I so much as dare to show my face over there.” That kind of sucked. He liked Margo. She liked him, in her scary, hostile way, which wasn’t nothing, because she didn’t really like people. But she and Eliot were a matched set. Which was mostly thanks to Eliot’s codependency issues so, really, this was totally Eliot’s fault too. He took a sip of his — martini? Why was he drinking a martini? He hated martinis. He drained the rest to get it over with.

Julia pursed her lips disapprovingly. He had spent more than a decade hiding from that face and now he found it didn’t bother him at all. That part of him had apparently not made it back from the Underworld. It made him feel kind of superpowered. “So clearly —”

“I’m fine, Jules.” He didn’t know why he said that. The facts on the ground were not in his favor. But he wanted to argue for it anyway. Like he would feel better if he could hype himself into believing it was true, even for a few minutes.

Unfortunately Julia knew him too well to take the bait. “I’m not engaging with that.”

“You used to be fun.”

“Clearly you need… something,” Julia said. “And you have, in rapid succession, exiled yourself from both the penthouse and Whitespire. So…”

He hadn’t thought about it in those terms, which was stupid because: duh. “Shit. Maybe I can convince Fogg to put me up in some spare housing at Brakebills for a while. I heard Todd got a real job so they might need some help in the registrar’s office.”

“Or,” Julia said, slowly. “A lot of hedges still have Reed’s Mark who can’t make it to New York. Kady has the removal pretty much perfected — it runs as a two-person spell for safety, and she’s been working on contacting hubs and safehouses across the country so that someone can go, free up a couple locals, and then teach them the spell to take care of the others in their area.”

“Someone,” Quentin said, comprehension seeping in. “Like…”

Julia raised an eyebrow. “You think you can handle a road trip, Coldwater?”

A road trip. Away from New York and Fillory, Alice and Eliot. The entire life he had detonated like a building condemned. “How soon can we leave?”

Now

They’re scheduled to meet the next set of hedges in the morning, so they get ready for bed pretty much as soon as they arrive at the hotel. Brushing his teeth in a T-shirt and sweats over the smooth white sink Quentin remembers a weekend trip the year his mom made him sign up for Model UN, ostensibly to pad his college apps but really because she thought being more involved would keep him from relapsing. Some backroom finagling of secret roommate swaps he didn’t totally follow had led to Julia slipping through his door after room checks so his assigned roommate could go sleep with his girlfriend down the hall. They’d never stopped having sleepovers but something about the new adult-feeling context of a hotel room at a conference and the sight of her giggling at her own illicitness in a fuzzy purple bathrobe and the fact that he was six months out of the hospital and more convinced than ever of his permanent exclusion from the world of romance came together in the cauldron of his raging hormones to make the night excruciating. Hours on sleepless hours of stewing in jealousy for the couple fucking (he imagined) like rabbits down the hall and for Julia so blithely content in her own skin and for every guy that ever had or ever would touch her. Infuriated by the sight of her slender back under her pajamas rising and falling with her breath.

He spits and rinses the mint taste out of his mouth. At least there are some things he’s grateful to have left in the past.

Julia’s already turned the light out when he gets into his bed. He slips under the sterile covers and lies on his back and closes his eyes and tries to breath deeply. But he can’t sleep. He can’t stop thinking about what he’s done. Alice’s face, Eliot’s eyes. How fast it all happened.

How easy it was.

He opens his eyes. His chest is burning. “Hey, Jules?” he says into the dark. She doesn’t respond and he shifts onto his side and tries, “Are you awake?”

“I’m trying really hard not to be,” she says, but cheerfully. She slides her eye mask up to her forehead and turns her face to look at him. “What’s up?”

“Do you think I’m a sociopath?”

She quirks her mouth to the side, playfully reproving. “I feel like this could have waited for morning.”

“I’m serious, Jules,” he insists.

She considers him for a moment, flicks on the green lamp attached to the wall by her bed. In the light he can see that her eye mask is purple, with cartoonishly long sleeping eyelashes embroidered on the front. “Q, obviously not. You know the answer to that is no.”

“But I mean —” He tries to swallow back some of his anxiety. “I just blew things up in less than two days with two of the people I thought I cared about most in the world. And I don’t — I’m not like, thrilled, but I don’t feel —” There should be something. There should be something else there, like a bruise he goes to touch only to discover air. Empty space that isn’t even him. “When you went to the twenty-third timeline, and I didn’t have my shade, you knew that if I could feel what I’d actually done I’d kill myself.” Julia flinches, like she feels guilty for — what, knowing him? “But now I — I don’t even…”

“Q,” she says, not ungently, “have you murdered someone and not told me about it?”

“No, but —”

“Are you planning to murder someone between now and tomorrow morning?”

“No —”

“Then I think you can rest easy,” she says, “and try to get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot lately.”

“But shouldn’t that make it feel worse?” he insists. He doesn’t know what he’s after. He wants her to — agree, or admit it, like that will — “And you’ve been like, so supportive and I’ve spent all day just babbling at you about the bullshit of my love life, I mean — God, I’m a terrible friend. I haven’t even asked you how you are.” He props himself up on his elbow to lean forward. “How are you, Julia?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, you know. Doing pretty well.”

“That’s good,” Quentin says. “I’m really glad.”

“Except I have this roommate,” she goes on, “who can’t go to sleep because he’s convinced he’s a sociopath, so now I can’t go to sleep, and we have to be at a safehouse in Somerville at like ten tomorrow.”

Quentin swallows. “He sounds like kind of a dick.”

“He just went through a break-up,” Julia says, half-smiling. “He has his good qualities, too.”

“I dunno,” Quentin says. “That’s pretty messed up of him, keeping you awake like that.”

“Q…”

“Sounds like maybe the kind of thing a sociopath would do.”

“Go to sleep, Quentin.”

He takes a deep breath and nods at her. Satisfied, she turns the light off and puts her mask back on and curls up, dark hair splayed on her pillow. But he doesn’t go to sleep. He waits for her breathing to even out and then throws up a silencing ward so he doesn’t disturb her when he slips out to the door to go smoke on the sidewalk.