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our second year at this

Notes:

Happy pine4pine, CypressSunn! I'm sorry to hear you've been having some health issues, and I hope these sweet dramatic boys pining hard for each other will help take your mind off things.

Content note for discussion/depiction of depression in Chapter 6.

Thank you to my lovely betas and cheerleaders R and H!

Chapter 1: one year + one day

Chapter Text

Eliot’s voice echoes in his head all morning, over and over: ”Let’s just. Save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?”

He’d had a little smile when he said it, and his voice was soft and kind, not mocking. It’s probably the nicest way Quentin’s ever been rejected. Which. Doesn’t say a lot of good things about his past partners, because this really sucks.

Quentin’s working on collecting the green tiles into a pile so they can move on to their third pattern of the day. He lets himself glance over at Eliot, bent over at the other corner of the puzzle, gathering the pink tiles. His hair is a little more tousled than usual (from Quentin’s fingers running through it) and his shirt is riding up to show a sliver of skin (that Quentin got to taste last night, finally, after months of thinking about it).

Quentin is acutely aware that he’s been building this up in his head for far too long. He’d convinced himself, somehow, that if he just made the first move, he and Eliot would move beyond being good friends (best friends?) and into— something else. He thought something was there. Some potential. At the worst he’d thought it would just, take a while to settle in. Like of course they’d have a period of It’s Complicated, probably, because things for Quentin are always Complicated no matter how desperately he’d like them to be simple, but he had hoped that eventually—

He focuses back on his green tiles, shuffles sideways to grab some more of them.

At the very least, forget anything about best friends or best something else or whatever, at the very least he’d hoped that Eliot would want to fuck him twice. Or more. Was it that bad? (Of course it was, whispers his self-loathing.) It’s been a while since he was on the giving end of a blowjob, but supposedly he’s pretty good at them, or he was. And he got it in as deep as he could, Eliot has to expect people not to be able to deepthroat the whole fucking thing. And Eliot came, definitely, he can’t fake that. Quentin doesn’t think he can fake that. Can he fake that? How would you even—

“I think we stay on the nature theme,” Quentin says out loud, just so he doesn’t have to keep listening to his own thoughts. “We’ve done sunsets, we’ve done forest stuff, maybe we go ocean next? Shells, starfish?”

“Yeah, maybe all those bougie moms with beach houses have been onto something this whole time,” Eliot says wryly. “If that doesn’t work we can try ‘live, laugh, love’ next.”

Anger flashes hot across Quentin’s skin. How can Eliot just— was turning Quentin down not enough cruelty for one day, now he has to be a fucking asshole when Quentin’s trying to make totally normal suggestions about this stupid fucking bullshit quest—

He squashes the anger down. He can’t actually be mad at Eliot, that’s not fair. Eliot doesn’t want last night to— be anything, and that’s his right, Quentin would never want to coerce him, or. And this is just how they work, this is normal. One of them says something, the other banters back. They go on with their day. They keep working through this stupid, endless, awful, torturous—

“So what’s your idea, then?” Quentin asks, finally, managing to sound just his normal level of snarky, not wounded.

“I was just giving you shit,” Eliot says, waving a hand casually. “Ocean’s a good call. Anemones, dolphins. Tropical islands.” He stands, stretches with his hands on his lower back, pushing his stomach forward. Quentin looks down at the tiles. “How about this, I’ll get the red tiles, then go make us some lunch. We can plan while we eat.”

Quentin nods, staring resolutely at the tile in his hand. “Yeah.”

”Yeah”— the same thing he’d said earlier. The thing he says to pretty much whatever Eliot asks him. The only thing he could have said, reasonably, right?

”Let’s just. Save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Maybe someone else could have said, “Wait, what?” and gotten more of an explanation. Maybe someone else could have said, “Why?” or “But I want you, please” or even, fucking, “Okay, but I’d really like to still suck your dick every once in a while.” But that wasn’t an option for Quentin. Because it’s not just about the sex, for Quentin, although that was— great. It’s about more. It’s.

Hard to explain.

It’s Eliot’s voice saying, “Good morning, sleeping beauty,” when Quentin wakes up to him throwing their makeshift curtains open, already dressed, a fire blazing under the steaming tea kettle. It’s the thrill of bickering, picking stupid but hilarious fights to proverbially pull on Eliot’s pigtails. It’s the seven loaves of bread Eliot baked, using up their entire precious sack of flour, when Quentin was coming out of his last bad depressive episode and finally wanted to eat again, but only carbs.

It’s not that hard to explain, actually. But the words for it are big, and get snagged on Quentin’s brain any time he tries to use them, even think them. So he’d just said “Yeah,” like he always does, and now here he is. Still Eliot’s good friend, and only that, nothing more.

When Eliot finishes with the red tiles, he heads past Quentin into the house, pausing to ruffle Quentin’s hair on his way in. Quentin reflexively smacks at his hand, and Eliot twirls out of the way, grins at Quentin as he dances backwards to go get lunch ready.

Quentin glares back at him. Eliot’s shirt is mostly unbuttoned in the late spring sun, so Quentin’s got a perfect view of the red bite marks on Eliot’s neck, his chest. Marks Quentin made last night, that he’d thought at the time he’d get to make again. That he almost wishes he hadn’t, now, because what if that’s the thing that Eliot didn’t like? It could’ve been that. But it could’ve been about a thousand other things, too, or a combination, or nothing. It could’ve been just Quentin himself, his whole general thing. Quentin is — a lot. This quest is a lot. Being on this quest with Quentin, for a year so far and who knows how many more days beyond, is A Lot.

No matter how much Quentin stupidly built it up in his head, this outcome was always likely. Maybe all but guaranteed. He tried, he made the first move, Eliot doesn’t want him. Quentin could have seen that coming. He should have.

”Let’s just. Save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?”

To say that Quentin’s not good at not overthinking is an understatement. But he said “Yeah,” so. Here he goes.