The morning sun was bright - too bright, making Quentin feel strangely like the Beast was slowly ripping his eyeballs straight out of their sockets.

"Everything copacetic, sunshine?" Eliot breezed into the kitchen, a silk robe artfully draped over his shoulders. Nothing about him suggested that he was in the midst of a post-blackout hangover and Quentin immediately felt a surge of resentment, deep in his chest. "I gotta say," Eliot continued, brightly, "after all the liquor I've been feeding you, I didn't think hedge magic would be the trick to finally loosening you up." He snorted a laugh.

Quentin glowered at him. "Did we really - I mean, I mostly remember, but last night, did we... y'know ?"

"Use your words." Eliot cocked an eyebrow, crossing his arms. "If you're trying to ask if we had sex, then, sure. I mean, if you want to call it that."

"What?" Immediately, Quentin's head snapped up. "What does that mean?"

Yawning, Eliot yanked the fridge open, digging through the contents before pulling out the orange juice and giving it a shake. The sound, loud as a jackhammer, made Quentin's hangover go from a low throb to a whining screech and he pressed his palms into his eyesockets, willing his brain to stop spinning. Eliot took a sip straight from the bottle and grimaced.

"I mean that, if it makes you feel better, there was no penetration."

The word made Quentin wince, but he let out a breath he didn't even realize he was holding. "Thank God."

"Except for mouths."

"Please stop."

"And I don't mean with tongues." He paused. "Actually, on second thought? There may have been some, shall we say, digital fun. But you'd have to ask Margo for the nitty-gritty details on that one."

"Jesus Christ," Quentin moaned. "I am such a fucking asshole! All I remember is that Margo started kissing me, and I was all emotionally jumbled up and she was crying and you were there, passed out - and this was a huge, horrible mistake." He paused. "Uh, no offense."

"Mhmm." Eliot rolled his eyes and pulled out a bottle of Cuervo, pouring two sloppy fingers into a tumbler and topping it up with what could generously be called a splash of OJ. He slid it towards Quentin. "Tequila sunrise pour vous? "

"Please no."

"Suit yourself." He slid the glass back towards himself and took a sip, before furrowing his brow and examining Quentin's face. "Did you say Margo was crying?"

Twitchily, Quentin shifted under his gaze and shrugged. "It was just leftover bottled-up emotion brain-junk. No biggie."

"Alright," he said slowly, and Quentin suspected he wasn't quite off the hook. But Eliot's forehead relaxed and he changed the subject, pacing in a circle and waving his drink around, explaining: "Look, you were extremely drunk and hopped up on bootleg magic. The cheap, street stuff is like bottom-shelf tequila: nobody can be blamed for their actions after a few shots, worm and all." Eliot paused, quirking an eyebrow and leaning his elbows on the counter. His robe slid an down his shoulders, revealing a fucking bite mark under his left clavicle, and Quentin dragged his eyes away, doing his best to convince himself that the reddish-bruised imprint was way too small to have come from him. "To be honest, boo, I didn't think you had it in you."

"Thanks?" Quentin said, awkwardly, before shaking his head and frowning. "And that's not an excuse! I really fucked up, Eliot - really, unfixably fucked up."

"Shit happens; chalk it up to a little late-blooming college experimentation. I don't mind being your emotional crisis sexual pawn." He yawned again, dragging a lazy hand through his hair and shrugging his robe back onto his shoulders. "Anyway, it was meaningless fun. You don't have to say anything to Alice, honestly."

"She already knows."

"You told her?" Eliot set his tequila down with a sharp clink and Quentin's brain zinged like lightning behind his eyes. "Why in God's green earth would you tell her?"

"I didn't! She... saw."

"Oh." Eliot paused. "Well. Fuck."

"Yeah. Fuck."

They avoided each other's gaze.

"Well," said Eliot, finally, "maybe she'll understand. The kinky ones are never the ones you expect."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say, and Quentin felt his fingers twitch with the urge to magic-slap the shit out of him.

"Fucking other people isn't just - it isn't just a little meaningless fun, Eliot. We're not all like you."

He semi-regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth - they were crueler than he intended, unfairly retaliatory when he knew his situation was his own shitty fucking fault. But Quentin was too hungover to scramble around in his mush-brain for a barely-earnest apology.

To his credit, Eliot took it like a champ.

"Yikes. That was harsh, Q. But you're right." Eliot cleared his throat, dragging a finger around the rim of his glass. "Not everyone's like me. And you know what? It is such a pity."

Quentin let his head fall from his hands and thump uselessly against the table.

"So, not that I'm emotionally invested in this or anything, but did you two talk yet?"

"I can't find her anywhere. She hates me." Quentin looked at his hands and noticed they were shaking. He tucked them under his legs. "I woke up this morning and she was right there at the foot of the bed, staring at us. She had this look on her face, like... like her heart was broken and I was the biggest piece of shit in the universe."

"Okay, hon, we're verging on melodrama here. Let's reel it on back." Eliot tutted, reaching out to pat an awkward hand on Quentin's shoulder. "She loves you. It'll, uh," he paused, scrunching his face together like the words physically hurt him, "it'll be okay? You're both so disgustingly lovey-dovey together that I can't imagine a few wayward… appendages… would be enough to kill that."

"Thanks?"

Eliot nodded and, offering one last mutually-uncomfortable shoulder pat, snatched up his drink and padded back to his room.

"For nothing," muttered Quentin to the empty kitchen.