Quentin's decision was the culmination of a number of things. It was the result of the toil of trying to solve the puzzle weighing on him, it was the lights, the fire, the night, the drinking…the feelings nagging at the back of his mind. The ones he hadn't been able to shake since a messy night gave him a taste of a new side of his best friend.
The night with Margo and Eliot was a point of great guilt for Quentin. Guilt over how it made Alice feel, over how it ruined his first great love and guilt over how some part of him couldn't seem to be sorry for what happened.
For hurting Alice, he was apologetic, but he couldn't be sorry for how that night changed his eyes. Because now every time he looked at Eliot, he could see one layer beneath him.
In every glance at Eliot, he saw their bodies moving together. In every glance at Eliot, he tasted his lips. In every glance at Eliot, he envisioned a thousand what ifs and hundreds of maybes.
In every glance at Eliot, he was hit with a shot of curiosity about what could be. Curiosity that was satiated just by being his friend but that kept pushing him to think about just a little bit more. What could come of sober kisses and clear-headed caresses?
"Happy anniversary, Q," Eliot said, pulling Quentin from his thoughts as he raised a cup for a toast. "To our first and last year at this thing."
Quentin clanked his cup against Eliot's, offering a small, distracted smile as they drank. His mind was full of reasons to try. They were alone. They would be for a while. The night was beautiful. And they were close. So close together that every breath Eliot took moved Quentin's body.
"Hey," his mouth spoke before his brain could catch up.
"Hey," Eliot responded quietly, a question in his voice, the word cut short as Q closed the distance and pressed his lips to Eliot's. It was brief and he pulled back to let the moment hang between them. He couldn't take back what he'd done, he could only leave it to Eliot.
Quentin moved back and watched Eliot decide, watched his brow furrow in confusion, felt his hand caress his own while the other slid up to cup his neck and pull him in. Eliot went in hesitantly, as if he was trying something familiar to make sure he still remembered the taste correctly.
The beautiful thing about the moment was that there wasn't enough thinking. Quentin kissed Eliot without thinking about what his lips on Eliot's meant then and Eliot kissed him back, not stopping long enough to let the questions steal the opportunity.
Their mouths moved together at a languid rhythm, like they were tiptoeing around the thought of pressure and intimacy. Like they were testing the waters, testing if their memories had done justice to the feel of what they were together.
And they didn't let go even when they answered the question they'd both been dying to answer: Should we?
They didn't let go even when clothes were shed and lips became more insistent, tongues tangling again and again, breaths becoming more and more harsh. They didn't let go even when their bodies were slick with sweat, their throats dry, their minds filled with the euphoria their actions gave.
Because in their efforts, they confirmed what they both knew all along.
"Um, so," Quentin started the next day as they were back to work on the mosaic. He needed to know if Eliot felt the same answer pass between his lips.
"Yea," Eliot dragged out like he knew where it was going. "Um, let's just save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?" And he looked at Q with all the wisdom Quentin himself, had learned the night before as they lay together, exploring each other and peeling back layers, putting things in place and taking them apart over and over again until they arrived at the same end.
"Yea," Quentin agreed and they held each other's brown eyes long enough to pass over the beautiful answer one more time.
It didn't matter if they should or shouldn't.
It didn't even matter what they'd done already.
The answer was in the time that passed as Quentin found a wife, had a child, experienced loss and the beauty of shaping a young life and did it all with Eliot at his side. The answer was that it didn't matter what they called each other, what promises they tried to make, what meaning they tried to give to the feeling of skin on skin.
None of it was about romance. It was about the depth of their relationship as a whole because no title, no promise, no feeling would ever change their love for each other. The love that transcended romance and friendship and lust.
The kiss, that night, those nights, were just manifestations of a bond that could never be broken or taken away. All it did was confirm what they knew all along.
They could be whatever they wanted to be because nothing would change what they already were.
Soulmates.
-h-
A/N: Hi, this exists because I over-analyzed the kiss scene so many times and the fact that nothing really came from it that I arrived at the conclusion that maybe it meant that nothing had to. Plus, Hale and Jason said Queliot were soulmates and I screamed so OF COURSE THIS HAD TO EXIST!
Drop a review and let me know what you think and what other scenes/ships you'd like to see written about from my over-thinking perspective. Thanks for reading!