Queliot

Sunny Day in October

Summary: Alice gives Quentin Eliots book that she stole from the library, Quentin learns about their relationship from a different perspecive.

She had stolen his book. Quentin couldn't believe she had stolen his book.

"Why did you even take them Alice, why do you read them!"

"I needed to make sure the library could not follow us! I needed to know our next move!"

"No fuck you Alice. I cant keep having you fading in and out of my life. i don't care what you do for me I didn't ask you to do it. I loved you."

Alice was biting the inside of her lip, the buzz of the radiator rang in the back of Quentins mind.

"Im sorry Q."

Quentin had to look away from her, it only took her a moment to walk away. Her walk was still familiar, the syncopated clock of her worthless heels that reminded him of a lovestruck fantasy he had once all but forgotten.

She left a book on the counter, green and covered in delicate gold spirals. When Quentin picked it up he saw how jagged they truly were though, overlapping and smothering each other, a chaotic scene that seemed to sing of the tragic soul it was meant to portray. The spine read Eliot Waugh.

Quentin didn't want to read it. It felt to invasive, it felt like he was undoing credence to the dead. It felt like what he had done with Alice for years. They ran in circles till they were so tied up in each other they just choked, but when they tried running away again the tension would just grow so strong they couldn't help but come crashing back.

But she had place a golden bookmark on one page. One page in a story he had lived, but from a different perspective, Eliot's.

And so the story of Eliot Waugh began and ended on a sunny day in October, a simple contradiction that he lived for. A boy fell asleep on his lap with a book folded on his chest. A boy with whom he was to live a life in a day, and so many more lifetimes.

On that sunny day on October Eliot twirled a chestnut curl on his finger, and let it fall across Quentins face. He felt guilty when he did it, it bubbled up his throat and slashed at his guts. Eliot Waugh began to list every reason why this was all temporary.

Quentin could be destructive, impatient, a fantasist and restless. He had taken the portrait Eliot had so carefully crafted and peeled away the layers til only what he had hoped nobody would never see remained. Eliot couldn't tell if it was a careful deconstruction or a brutal annihilation of that persona, he'd lost the will to chase after a scapegoat anyhow.

Eliot was in love with Quentin. Not just on that October day, not just that week or that year. Eliot had fallen in love with him over walks and over drinks. A name on a card written with swirling letters. A sunny day in October he hit rock bottom, and realized how much it all hurt to love him, to touch him, to be this close to him.

Quentin stopped reading because he remembered that day. He remembered being 22, lying across the Brakebills grass on a day when everything just was. He was spaced out and could barely remember what it felt like to sleep. It was like he had forgotten how to be sad, or maybe he he was depressed he could barley function. Just had forgotten what everything else felt like.

Quentin remembered falling asleep on Eliot's lap, and when he woke up Eliot was near having a spasm from trying to stay so perfectly still, and the sun was beginning to set.

Quentin knew what came after, so many days of After. But no matter how much he didn't want it too Eliot's love in fillory had felt desperate, a nuclear option. It was because Eliot was scared. He needed years of isolation to get over how damn scared he was. Quentin thought Eliot's love for him had just been his nuclear option.

He threw the book against the wall because Eliot loved him too. All that life hadn't been a consolation prize it was love, it was theirs. Eliot had loved him, Eliot needed him.

It mad Quentin shake and sob and long find some way to make it back to that sunny day in October. Before the foxes, before the beast, before magic and all that came after, and tell him.

"I love you."