Work Text:
Later, as late afternoon sunlight paints the Cottage living room golden, Quentin curls up in the corner of a couch, chewing on the corner of his thumb. He’d known, he tells himself; he’d known the whole time that the hospital wasn’t real. He’d known. The Scarlotti Web had been immersive, but it hadn’t been particularly convincing - the clumsy mishmash of the real hospital and Brakebills, Julia’s strange behavior, the moths.
There were a hundred little things that didn’t quite add up, to say nothing of the larger red flags. (A lobotomy; Quentin is almost offended his subconscious is using such outdated psychiatry to scare him.) His brain is a fucked up piece of garbage that barely works, but he doesn’t hallucinate, not without drugs anyway. Reality sucks, and sure, he’d used Fillory to escape it as often as he could, but even when reality was just laying in bed, unable to do anything but hate himself, he’d always known what it was.
Except.
Except how could he ever really know? Isn’t that the point of delusions, that you don’t actually know that it’s not real? He’s the right age for the onset of psychosis according to the handful of WebMD articles he’d read in high school trying to find out what the fuck was wrong with him. He’s not aware of any history of schizophrenia in his family, but like, someone has to be first. There are comorbidities with depression and anxiety and all his other bullshit.
And, well, which makes more sense: That magic is real and Quentin can do it or that his broken brain invented the whole thing to escape the tragedy of his actual life? Why shouldn’t some desperate and terrified part of himself take the one thing that’s ever brought him any joy and make it “real”?
But no, he knows. He knows this is real, here, now: the worn fabric of the couch beneath his bare feet, the distant thump of bass from someone’s music playing upstairs, the sharp bite of pain that blooms under his teeth as he worries at a hangnail. Grounding exercises had never really done him much good - grounded was often the last thing he wanted to be - but he knows some. He knows how to go through his senses, focus on each one in turn and count the things that are real. The couch smells faintly like lavender, leftover from a cleaning charm. There is copper on his tongue and the clean, nothing taste of his own skin.
He’d known that other world wasn’t real. He’d known, so he can tell, now, that this is real. And just because he can remember it, the rasp of tearing pages, the soft cotton of his hoodie sleeves, the pinch of swallowing a too-large pill - it’s different. It had been visceral, yes, but the way that a dream is visceral, scenes sliding into each other without transition. Inconsistencies, subtle at first, until they became impossible to ignore.
Because magic isn’t a goddamn inconsistency? says a nasty little voice in the back of Quentin’s head.
It had been so much easier in the fucking force cage in the void of his own head. He’d known where he’d stood there, that nothing was real. Escape had been pretty important to him at the time, but he sort of wants to spend a week there. It had been quiet, and god, he is so fucking tired of treading water, kicking frantically to snatch each breath. He just wants to float there in the dark, surrounded by nothing and no one. No obligations. No magic he can’t seem to wrap his head around no matter how much he studies. No dragging himself through every day, weighed down by a millstone of exhaustion. Just. Peace.
Quentin pauses, frowning at the bloody, mangled corner of his thumb. Okay, that’s. That’s actually a pretty unsubtle suicide metaphor now that he’s thinking about it. Every therapist Quentin has ever spoken to is giving him the same look, knowing laced with pity.
You are the spider and the fly, Jane had said. Or possibly his own subconscious had said. He’s still unclear whether any of it had been the same Jane Chatwin he’d spoken to in dreams or if she’d just been part of the escape hatch he’d built for himself.
Anyway, it should probably alarm Quentin more than it actually does. He’s been tracking his mental state for years by how likely he is to actually make the trip to walk off the old post office on 58th; the vague desire to Not Exist never really leaves. Because sure, it’s alarming, but in the distant sort of way that the possibility of a tornado warning is alarming compared to the existence of a tornado watch. Wanting and doing are two different pathologies: There’s no need to head to the basement until there’s a sighting. People who’ve never actually made an attempt tend to be quite distressed about the desire anyway. Quentin had learned quite quickly not to mention the desire to anyone, but especially to Julia, who would worry and fret and cry over something as banal to Quentin as dry skin.
The point is, this is real, the couch and the cottage and Brakebills and magic. He knows the difference. And as much as he’d like to just… stop for a little while, he’ll keep kicking. Some part of himself, drowned out by a fog that comes and goes, had built himself a way out of the spell, had wanted to keep going. It’s enough that that part of him exists, like an ember he can stoke to flames with the right application of actual literal magic.
A hand lands on the top of Quentin’s head, jerking him out of the thought spiral. He looks up to find Eliot, a soft smile on his mouth. He’s impeccably dressed as always, bathed in the dregs of the afternoon. Something in Quentin settles at the sight of him, his touch further proof of the reality of this moment.
Eliot’s palm curls around Quentin’s skull like a microcosm of an embrace. “Just making sure you’re still with us,” he says. It’s light, like a joke, but there’s something a little unsteady in his voice, a little furrow between his brows.
“Have you ever had, like, a dream within a dream?” Quentin says before he can think better of it. He shoves his ragged, bitten-down thumbnail under his thigh. “Like… you’re aware you’re dreaming and you wake up, except you don’t realize that it’s just another dream until you wake up again? And you’re never really sure if that’s the end of it or if it’s only a matter of time until you wake up again for real?”
“Sure,” says Eliot easily. “Too much peyote mixed with some little pink pills. I never did find out what those were.” He frowns, considering. “Felt like I woke up about eighteen different times. Of course, once I came down, I realized I’d been awake the whole time. I suspect that’s not what you’re talking about though.”
“No,” Quentin agrees. This, too, makes more sense as a hallucination - no matter how often Eliot seeks out his company, Quentin can’t really believe it’s happening, that Eliot actually wants to spend time with him. It makes sense that Quentin wants to, of course - Eliot is magnetic, like the gravity well of a planet, attracting every bit of space junk that comes anywhere close. He’s funny and sharp and cool in a way that seems effortless. And Quentin knows it’s not - “Perfection is created, Quentin,” Eliot had told him once, haughty and imperious after Quentin complained about how long he was taking in the bathroom - but it might as well be magic to Quentin.
And Quentin is just… he’s morose and awkward and he either talks too much or not at all. He’s weird and nervous and, well, Quentin certainly wouldn’t pick himself out of a crowd, not with many more interesting people on offer. That Eliot so often does - that makes more sense as a projection laid over a gregarious stranger.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Eliot says. It’s earnest, but Quentin knows him well enough to notice the tightness in his mouth, like he’s desperately hoping the answer will be no but still felt the need to ask. It’s sweet, and also completely fucking bizarre.
He doesn’t want to talk about it though, not really. He couldn’t avoid Penny knowing where he’d put himself because Penny had seen it inside his head, but Eliot doesn’t need to know exactly how fucked up he is.
Except, well, he kind of can’t stop thinking about it. It lingers at the edges of his awareness, like static in the air before a summer storm. The spell had felt real even when he’d known better, in the way that a particularly vivid lucid dream does; even now, a part of Quentin is waiting for the inconsistencies to creep in here as well.
He means to change the subject to something lighter, but what comes out of Quentin’s mouth is, “This is… real, right?”
Something soft and not quite like pity flits over Eliot’s face. He strokes his palm over Quentin’s hair, reassuringly tactile. “Of course it’s real,” he says, “but…”
“But how would asking you help,” Quentin says. “Yeah.” He pulls his knees in a little tighter and wrenches out his hand so he can resume chewing on his thumb. It’s a terrible habit, and a voice that sounds like his mother is fuming about it somewhere in the back of his head, but he’s used to tuning it out.
Eliot moves around the couch, pausing by the bar. “I think this conversation calls for a drink,” he announces, pulling bottles to his hand with telekinesis and tipping them into a cocktail shaker. He levitates a couple of ice cubes from the ice bucket, shakes the mixture, and then strains into two martini glasses. He floats them both back over to the couch and sits down beside Quentin.
Quentin takes it, more to have something to do with his hands than to actually drink it. It’s cool to the touch, the drink itself pink-tinged and smalling vaguely of cranberry. It’s probably delicious, but Quentin is still a little jumbled up, and he’s not sure if alcohol will calm his nerves or make everything worse.
Eliot takes a delicate sip of his drink. “Here’s the thing,” he says, crossing his legs and leaning toward Quentin conspiratorially. Quentin recognizes the expression of his face; if by some miracle, Eliot’s forthcoming advice is actually relevant to Quentin’s actual life, it will be something that requires more confidence than Quentin has ever had in his entire life put together. “I’ve done a lot of drugs. Like. A lot of drugs.”
Well-intentioned and utterly unhelpful, just as anticipated.
“Last year at Ibiza,” Eliot continues, “Margo and I did so much acid that I’m still not totally sure if there was a third person in that little cabana or if we just fucked each other.” Quentin frowns at him. “The point is, I’ve had my fair share of having a tentative-at-best grasp of reality. All you can really ever do is work with what you’ve got.”
“If I had done that,” Quentin points out, “I would still be stuck there. So.”
Eliot waves a hand at him. “We’d have found you in that closet eventually. And Penny was there to set you straight, wasn’t he?”
God, yet another reason Quentin never wants to think about this nightmare ever again. He is intensely grateful that he’d been able to get Penny’s attention, that Penny had helped him out of the spell, but christ. It’s bad enough that Penny knows about his whole fucked up depression brain thing, but he will never be able to live down the awful caricature his subconscious had transformed Penny into.
Yes, Quentin definitely sees the appeal of the void.
“Ugh,” Quentin says, setting his glass on the coffee table and yanking a throw pillow out from underneath him so he can bury his face in it.
“There, there,” Eliot soothes, sipping at his cocktail while he pats Quentin’s shoulder with his free hand. “Just remember, magic is real. I haven’t forgotten my promise to seduce you if you should be forced to believe otherwise, you know.”
At least the Eliot caricature had made a certain amount of sense. The real Eliot would probably be weirdly flattered by Quentin’s subconscious flattening him into drugs and sex, but if Quentin tells him about it, he’ll want to know about everyone else. And Quentin will tell him about Alice because he’s terrible at not telling Eliot things, and Eliot will draw all sorts of Conclusions about how Quentin’s subconscious version of Alice and Eliot both wanted to fuck him.
Which like, so sue him, all his friends are incredibly hot. Quentin has eyes. But he’s not really sure how serious Eliot’s joking offers actually are. Eliot is definitely the sort of person that could fuck his friends without fundamentally altering the friendship. Unfortunately, Quentin has never in his life managed to be normal about someone after sleeping with them, so it’s kind of a moot point. He still has to live with Eliot, and anyway, his friendship is way more important.
“Thanks,” Quentin says dryly. And weirdly, he does kind of feel better - nothing like his own abject embarrassment to distract him from the nature of reality. He reaches for the drink Eliot made and sips at it. It’s good, tangy and sweet but not overly sugary.
Eliot settles back into the couch with his own drink, a self-satisfied smirk playing at his mouth like he’d known Quentin would like it. “For what it’s worth,” he says, knocking his knee against Quentin’s, “I think this version of reality is pretty decent.”
“It could definitely be worse,” Quentin agrees.