Collapsed bonelessly on his divan, Eliot sets his brandy snifter down onto the hardwood floor. It frees his hands to flick through his record collection from across the room, fingers lazily waving as the cardboard sleeves magically flip in their milk crates. Settling on the right choice - Lee Moses, the exact brand of soul he needs right now, drinking alone in his bedroom - he twists his wrist to swap it with the Curtis Mayfield album still sitting in the turntable and his speakers crackle to life as the needle finds its way into the grooves of the first track.
Leaning back and closing his eyes, he almost jumps out of his skin when, without knocking, Quentin blows into the room like a hurricane and tosses something small into his lap. It lands with a rattle and, before Eliot can ask what the fuck?, Q begins babbling at him at a hundred miles an hour.
"Is this a terrible idea?" he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets and pacing back and forth in front of him, so close that he nearly trips over Eliot's outstretched feet. "I feel like this is a terrible idea - I know we've discussed this before and I know you think it's not a terrible idea, but I think this might actually be a terrible idea."
It takes a moment for Eliot's brain to process Q's words and the plastic prescription bottle staring up at him before he clears his throat and asks, weakly, "When did you get these?"
"Last week. I went to my doctor in the city and, like, forced myself to tell him what was up - he even made me roll up my sleeves and asked me if I was having suicidal urges, it was so embarrassing. He brought up hospitalization again, for fuck's sake. But then he finally backed off or, I don't know, I talked myself out of the corner he backed me into, whatever, and he wrote me a scrip. I sat on a bench outside of the CVS for an hour before finally going in and filling it, and since then they've just been" - he waves a hand at the bottle -"staring at me from my bedside table, and…" Quentin blows the hair out of his face and tucks his hands in his armpits. "And I'm fucking terrified, El."
The words hospitalization and again ping around in Eliot's head as he plucks the bottle delicately out of his lap (sertraline, it reads in dull grey monospace) and rolls it between his hands. The clatter of pills is muffled between his palms.
"Terrified of what?" he asks.
"Of taking them and ruining everything." Quentin freezes for just a moment to look him in the eye before continuing to pace a hole in his rug. Pulling his hands out from under his arms to crack his knuckles and fidget with his sleeves, he continues: "I don't want to numb myself out and turn myself into an even worse magician - I mean, I think we can both admit I'm already kind of a shitty one? Do I really want to sacrifice the one fucking good thing in my life for" - he waves helplessly at the pills again.
"For what?"
Quentin chews at the corner of his thumbnail and doesn't answer, and Eliot can't continue to have this conversation like this: uselessly trying to catch a glimpse of Quentin's face as he stumbles manically back and forth over his feet. Stubbing his smouldering cigarette out, he pushes himself up out of his chair so he can catch Quentin by the shoulders and look him in the eye.
"Fuck magic," he spits. A look of shock and incomprehension crosses Quentin's face, and he starts to shake his head but Eliot gently jerks his shoulders to punctuate his words as he says again, "Fuck. Magic. I'm serious, Q. If you dragged yourself all the way to Brooklyn to lay yourself bare in some doctor's office for these" - with one hand, he lets go of his grip on Quentin's shoulder to rattle the bottle emphatically - "then I think you already know the answer to the question. I'm not sure there's any question at all. Would you agree?"
"I don't even know why I went," Quentin says quietly. "It was a moment of weakness."
"No." Eliot shakes his head firmly. "No, see - weakness would be deciding that you'd rather ruin yourself than risk losing this stupid thing you spent the last twenty-odd years just as well without." He exhales a deep breath and lets go of Quentin who, almost immediately, begins to rub at his biceps like he's trying to soothe the angry spots left by Eliot's fingertips. Taking a step backwards to re-establish a comfortable boundary between them, Eliot wipes a tired hand over his face. "Coming to Brakebills has this weird effect on people, Q. They end up convinced that everything about their lives before the entrance exam was some grey-toned dream they were just waiting to wake up from, a negative space surrounding the nucleus of their magical, Technicolor reality. Once they get accepted, based on some secret thing they're told is inextricably part of them - I'm not even sure it's the magic that gets to people, so much as the feeling that they've been chosen for something. It's like a drug."
Quentin opens his mouth to respond just as the last song on the record finishes, leaving a crackly silence in its wake.
"Hold that thought," Eliot says, holding up a finger and walking over to the record player. "Any requests?"
"Is this your version of pity? You never let me choose." A smirk tugs at the corner of Quentin's mouth, and Eliot feels pleased that he's played the right card at the right moment.
"Well, you should shut up and enjoy the moment then. Pick your poison."
Without even needing to glance at Eliot's collection - stacks of tightly-packed boxes and mismatched shelves full of records - Quentin immediately says, "The National."
"Fine, fine," says Eliot, lightly running his fingers over the spines as he tracks it down, "it's a little too on-the-nose but I'll allow it."
"What? You told me to pick."
"And pick you did," Eliot sing-songs, plucking the record from its spot wedged between Neutral Milk Hotel and a misfiled Nancy Sinatra album (he makes a mental note to reorganize his collection - it'll be the menial perfect task for when he's obsessing over this conversation and what a blind fucking idiot he is, later).
Quentin harrumphs. His posture relaxes slightly as he rolls his eyes. "They're all your records, anyway. I don't see why you're even complaining -"
"Shhh." Eliot presses a finger to his lips and clicks start.
The needle slides into position on the record and the first guitar strums begin to float over them, the reverberations of the crackly old speakers buzzing in Eliot's chest. Didn't anybody ever tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room? pleads the opening track as Quentin chews his bottom lip and tucks his hair behind his ears and Eliot decides he was right: this album is way too on-the-nose for the conversation he's about to blindside Quentin with.
Instead of walking back over to join him, Eliot stays by the record player, dragging his finger along the scuffed plastic of the deck. It's a battle-scarred old thing, inherited from his dad's collection of hoarded junk in the basement along with piles of out-of-print country-western records, and even though he probably should've replaced it years ago he can't bring himself to let it go.
Aside from their cat allergies and distinctive noses, music was one of the few things he and his father shared - probably because it was the easiest kind of bonding they could achieve without speaking or looking at one another. When his dad died, he hadn't been able to bring himself to go to the funeral. But he did muster up the courage, eventually, to show his face at home one last time and pack as many records has he could carry into his rental car. His mom watched silently from the front porch, her arms crossed and her lips set in a grim line, as he loaded the trunk before driving away without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror let alone a wave goodbye.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the way Quentin wraps his arms around himself and kicks at the rug with the toe of his sneaker and, with his gaze still cautiously focused on the turntable, he murmurs, "I think that maybe you went to the doctor because you're starting to scare yourself."
Quentin says nothing.
"Which, for the record," Eliot continues, "scares the everliving fuck out of me, too. But this isn't about me."
It's only now that Eliot notices the way Quentin keeps worrying at a spot on his left forearm, digging the tip of this thumb sharply into the fabric of his hoodie and pressing down. He does it so casually, the blank expression on his face unwavering, that Eliot hardly would have noticed except for the way Quentin holds his breath and sets his jaw every time his thumbnail bites into his skin.
Eliot fishes the prescription bottle back out of his trouser pocket. His voice is weaker than he'd like it to be when he clears his throat and pushes on: "We never talked about it, Q, not after - not after what happened. Which is totally and utterly my fault, I can at least admit that. I said we'd get you help, remember? I really failed you on that one, but I think these" - he tosses the pills to Quentin who, startled, has to let go of his vicious grip on his own forearm to catch them - "are a good first step. One that you were brave enough to take on your own."
Quentin shoves the bottle into the front pocket of his hoodie and shrugs, and Eliot wants to roar with frustration.
"Think about it - you're not going to lose your magic, Q."
"You don't know that."
"Fuck - whatever, maybe I don't. But you were on meds when you got accepted to Brakebills, and you have to admit that counts for something, right?" Quentin shakes his head and chews his lip, letting his hair fall into his face like a shield so he can avoid meeting Eliot's eyes. Undaunted, Eliot urges, "You think you would've beaten out all the other people in that examination room if your connection to magic could be broken by a little bottle full of SSRIs?"
Quentin squirms under his gaze. He's still unconsciously gripping his arm, the tendons in his fingers straining as he digs and presses against whatever he's hiding under his sleeve. Slowly, he says, "It's just that Dean Fogg said -"
"Dean Fogg doesn't know shit." Eliot sighs. He fumbles in his pockets for his cigarettes, pulling one out and placing it between his lips. Around it, he asks, "Do you want one?"
Quentin nods, reaching out to pluck a cigarette from the pack Eliot offers him. "Please."
He cups his hands around the flame as Eliot flicks his lighter, then takes a deep drag, shoulders slumping. They smoke together in silence, both grateful for the tacitly agreed-upon timeout - Quentin leaned against the arm of the divan, Eliot keeping a safe distance near the foot. It's enough time for Eliot to prepare himself to ask the questions he doesn't want to ask but knows he has to.
"Has it been getting worse?" he asks as they stub their cigarettes out in Eliot's half-full brandy snifter (it's just cheap St. Rémy - still, he tries not to mourn it as it goes cloudy with ash).
"What?" Quentin frowns at him.
"I don't know. The" - Eliot stumbles over his words, knowing he can't possibly say cutting out loud because it's too sharp in his mouth and it makes his chest hurt and, also, because he's suddenly not certain it's broad enough - "hurting yourself? Depression? Throw me a bone - you know what I'm trying to ask, Q."
"The 'hurting-myself-and-depression'?" Quentin repeats, mimicking Eliot's nervous blurring-together of the words. He raises his eyebrows and coughs a scornful laugh. It's bratty and defensive and Eliot wants suddenly to punch him in the arm.
"Come on." Eliot mutters as he holds his hands up pleadingly. "Look - all I know is that I thought you were doing better but really, as it turns out, I have no idea what's going on in your head and that fucking flood of words you've just dumped on my head included the word 'hospitalization,' so bear with me while I ask the really stupid questions, okay?"
The look Quentin gives him suggests that all of his questions up until this point have been really stupid.
"Speaking of." Eliot sighs. "You said it's helped, before? Hospitalization?"
Quentin bristles. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything, Quentin - Jesus Christ, stop digging your fucking fingers into your fucking arm," Eliot snaps. Startled, Quentin's hands shoot down to his sides and ball themselves into fists.
(A memory, so sharp that Eliot almost winces: Quentin's arm laying limp in his lap, his fingers squeezed into a white-knuckled fist. Cold tile and Quentin's cold, unreadable face, visible only in profile as Eliot wraps both hands around his skinny arm to stem the bleeding.)
"What's under there, Q?" He points at Quentin's sleeve. "What did you do?"
"Don't," Quentin warns, tone razor-sharp. It's not clear if he means don't change the subject or don't ask me to tell you, and an unexpected rage rises in Eliot's chest. "I didn't come here for an interrogation. I just needed advice, or a sounding board or - I don't know. Let's table this, alright?"
"You don't get to ask for advice and dictate the terms of this conversation."
"Whatever. I've felt worse, El," snaps Quentin. "I can handle it."
"Uh huh." Eliot presses his lips into a sharp line and steels himself for the fallout of what he's about to say. "That's great, Q. Worse than you going days without getting out of bed? Worse than cuts so deep I could see the fat under your skin, through the blood literally pouring out of you? How about, worse than me spending days trying to scrub your dried blood from under my fingernails?"
Eliot is almost surprised by the way the words claw their way out of him - he'd swallowed his feelings down so deep and dark that he thought he could keep them from escaping indefinitely. He'd caged them up tight: with everything so fucked up and precarious, he needed to be stoic to take care of Quentin. Never mind the fact that his own feelings are a too-messy combination of terror and concern and the urge to grab Quentin by the collar of his shirt and violently kiss him.
"Please stop," Quentin says weakly, lowering himself onto the divan. He covers his face with his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. Tentatively, Eliot moves to sit beside him. His hand finds the curve of Quentin's back, and he allows himself to run his palm along the notches of his spine. Under his touch, Quentin's breaths are rattly and shallow.
"You don't get to quietly self-destruct while we all watch, Q."
Quentin wipes at his runny nose with the back of his hand and picks at the edges of his sleeves. "I'm not trying to. Or - I mean. I'm trying not to."
From the waver of his voice, Eliot can tell that he means it. "That's good, Q," Eliot whispers. "You deserve to be happy, you know."
As expected, Quentin shrugs at him: compared to getting him to take his fucking pills, convincing him of his right to happiness seems like the bigger mountain to climb. All in due time, thinks Eliot.
"Will you take them for a while?" he asks, nodding towards the pills poking out of Quentin's hoodie. Following his gaze, Quentin looks down and quickly shoves them deeper into his pocket, out of sight. "If you hate them, or if you decide that whatever side-effects they bring aren't worth it, then we'll change tack. I promise I won't be overbearing or crawl up your ass about it - all I ask is that you give them an honest go and that youtalk to me."
"Alright." Quentin murmurs, so quietly that Eliot isn't immediately sure he's said anything at all. "I mean - you're right. I'll give it a try."
If this were a different moment in a different timeline, Eliot thinks, this would be when he would tentatively lean in to brush his lips against the corner of Q's mouth, a wordless request for permission, and Q would turn his head towards him, just enough to capture his wanting mouth with his own. But this is not that timeline, and this is certainly not that moment.
The record plays on quietly in the background - You know you have a permanent piece of my medium-sized American heart? - and Eliot can't help but think again: too fucking on-the-nose, Coldwater. This is precisely why he's never allowed to choose the music.
Quentin closes his eyes and sways to the beat. "I just thought that magic would be the missing piece, and then I'd be fixed, you know?"
"I know," Eliot says quietly. "But none of us ever are."