Title: Until The Light Stops Shining
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Word Count: 3,241
Summary: The fight to get rid of the Monster and save Eliot had kept him going, pushing himself beyond his limits of sleep and food and all those self-care things that had been drummed into his head during all the institutionalisations until he had nothing left except the desperate desire to bury himself under the blankets and tell the world to fuck off. (A 4x13 Queliot fix-it)
Warnings/Spoilers: If you haven't seen the 4x13 finale, there are going to maybe possibly be things that don't make sense but honestly I'm dispensing with huge chunks of that finale too to save myself so. I don't think it exactly spoils things given it's a total canon divergence. But. Be gentle. It's only the second thing I've posted in almost three years.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with The Magicians, Syfy, the various other writers/producers, or anything else related to the Lev Grossman universe. (Probably because if I was involved in the show somehow, I wouldn't be writing this to fix the mess they made.) (Eighteen years writing fic and I don't think I've ever got snarky in a disclaimer before. So. That's new.)

At first, he doesn't have time to really register what Margo had done to Eliot's body to release the Monster because he's more focused on ensuring the Monster's essence is stored in the bottles and he's somewhat desperately leading the charge trying to contain it and distantly hoping and praying that Kady and the hedge witches will come through. He can't break his concentration, can't bear to look, and manages to the best of his abilities to block out the sound of Margo's screaming for the sake of saving Eliot, magic, and the world.

But when he finally pauses, finally stops to catch his breath, he's pretty sure his heart stops because Eliot has his eyes open, and he's whispering to Margo and calling her Bambi, and it's so clear that it's Eliot that is speaking now, with his gentle care and desire to bestow reassurance on the people he loves even when he's covered in blood and holy fuck, there's so much blood. And where Quentin's hands had been steady and certain casting the spell only moments ago, they're now shaking so badly he has to shove them into the pockets of his hoodie as Penny touches his shoulder and whirls them all back to the Brakebills hospital wing.

Saving Eliot the 'old-fashioned way' is, honestly, terrifying. It's messy – there's so much blood, blood, blood splashed across his vision every time he dares to close his eyes while sitting on a fucking uncomfortable plastic chair – and it's unpredictable – because no one can really tell him or anyone else if he'll pull through, or if getting rid of the Monster will restore him to who or what he was before – and it's heartbreaking – because he spent months trying to save Eliot and now that he has he's left wondering what it was all for, exactly? Quentin might have been still holding a torch for Eliot while they fought to save him (okay, maybe it's been reduced to the equivalent of a lit matchstick now) but the fight to get rid of the Monster and save Eliot had kept him going, pushing himself beyond his limits of sleep and food and all those self-care things that had been drummed into his head during all the institutionalisations until he had nothing left. Until he's now a husk of emotion because saving Eliot… They got rid of the Monster but Eliot had made it pretty clear that they were going to remain in separate orbits when Eliot had had the chance. And without the fight to sustain him, the clear purpose that had been dogging Quentin's every step for months has left him without any sort of traction in reality.

So he watches from a distance, sitting on the hard and uncomfortable plastic chair. He watches the way Margo awkwardly rinses Eliot's hair from his bedside to try to remove traces of the Monster's lack of care about his physical appearance. He watches the way Julia presses her palms to Eliot's forehead and chest with glowing energy that might be the only thing sustaining Eliot's heartbeat. He watches the way Kady hovers and mumbles occasionally about getting the hedge witches to cast more magical spells. He watches Alice, bent over books and trying to determine spells to cast on Eliot, or whether their plan truly succeeded, or how to support Eliot when he wakes up.

But Quentin can only watch from a distance because he feels like he has no right to move closer, to engage in anything now that it's over, because he did what he set out to do: he saved Eliot. And now that he has, nothing else matters.

Maybe that's why the noise in his head gets so loud that he can almost hear his sanity splintering. It felt like if he looked closely enough, he could see the cracks spreading from his fingertips and down the back of his hands towards his heart, the determination of the demons to destroy him making it impossible to think straight. He told Alice his brain breaks but this is… This is something that scares him, that is so consuming that he burrows into his bed for a week and draws the covers over his head, refusing to emerge for food or conversation even when Margo starts shouting at him to just "pull himself together". The only time he leaves is when he absolutely can't resist the bathroom any longer and even then he usually makes sure no one is aware that he hauled himself up and staggered to the toilet because someone might see that as a sign he was better and start expecting things out of him and he's not sure he can be expected to do anything ever again. If Margo was right, if it was so easy to knit the pieces of himself into neat rows, he wouldn't have been in and out of so many institutions for over a decade when it became so impossible to breathe.

And how he feels now is… It's been a long time since he was this afraid of himself.

There's a knock at his door and he's so depleted of food and sleep, so fatigued right now down to an ache in his bones, he can't even be bothered groaning at whoever it is to simply fuck off and leave him alone. Opening his mouth takes energy he doesn't have and trying to force his vocal cords together is just…impossible. Meaningless. Pointless. No one has really respected his space all week, varying in pleas and demands to get up and failing to recognise that it just wasn't something he could do.

Regardless of whatever he wants, and ignoring how much he can't express it anyway, he hears the squeak of the doorhandle and the first shuffling footfall, followed by a second, across the carpet in his bedroom. Beneath the blankets, soaked in too much body-heat which probably doesn't help the suffocating feelings, Quentin wishes he had enough energy to wiggle his fingers and vanish from existence for a while where everyone could just leave him be.

But it's the unsteady exhale that stops him from reacting too harshly to another invasion of his room, air escaping from lungs he knows almost as well as his own. He doesn't move, doesn't quiver, but his heart definitely skips a beat when the mattress dips with the weight of another.

"Hey, Q."

Unbidden tears prick his eyes because it was so fucking simple. Two syllables and he fractures all over again, scattering pieces of him through the multiverse and making it harder to breathe. And he couldn't- He can't- He won't let himself cry.

"I'm just going to…to sit here a while, if that's okay with you," Eliot continues, and Quentin listens to the sound of shoes being toed off and thudding to the floor, and feels the bed jiggling as Eliot repositions himself. Quentin has a vague idea that Eliot's probably settled against the bedhead beside him, one of his long legs bumping against Quentin's curled knees. "I just felt like… I just felt like I'd seen everyone else so much while I was in the hospital and I hadn't seen you. Now I know why."

Behind the words dance hazy memories of a life together, a life lived with hope and joy and despair and everything in between that had been the best way for Quentin to live out his life and give it meaning, and which had been summarily and wholly crushed by Eliot. It hadn't deterred Quentin from trying to keep saving him, because he would have fought to save anyone from the Monster, but…now that he had… Well. Eliot had made his choice. And it wasn't Quentin. It would never be Quentin. And it's really hard accepting that.

"You know I… I decided if I ever got rid of the Monster, I wanted to be braver? I wanted to use my words and say how I felt, or what I thought, because I have hidden myself and all the fucked up shit I've done from everyone, and probably also myself, for way too long," Eliot says. His voice is low, his tone gentle, but it's laced with a melancholy that Quentin is familiar with, that wraps him up so tightly sometimes that he's not sure he can ever shed the binds. His whole life had been the contracting pressure of depression and the slight release where he gained the space to breathe for a few brief, agonising moments. "I wanted to be braver because…because of you, Q. You put yourself out there for the people you love, like everyone matters more than your own life, and that makes me feel like an incredibly selfish person because I run. I always run and in doing so, it hurts the people that I love."

The weight of his hand settles somewhat awkwardly on a gap between Quentin's head and his shoulder under the blankets. When Eliot realises he hasn't settled on something solid, he gropes a little until his palm cradles the back of Quentin's head and for the first time in days, Quentin almost feels like he wants to draw the blankets back and see someone.

But maybe this is easier for Eliot. Maybe being here and not being seen makes it easier. Because now, Eliot doesn't have to see how much of a wreck Quentin is with his broken brain, and broken heart, and broken soul. All Quentin is now is broken parts that don't even resemble a whole person anymore. Maybe he understands the Monster's quest to piece his sister together better than he'd like to admit.

"Quentin, I- I need to apologise. For so much," Eliot says, and Quentin can't decide if the weight of Eliot's words or his hand or Quentin's emotions are heavier. "But mostly- mostly for knowing that I knew what you were saying was an important moment and it mattered, but I also knew what to say that would hurt you, that would halt you from…from loving me the way you wanted, and I- I did that. I did that because I was scared and…I know there's no coming back from that but I need you to know I'm so, so sorry."

And Quentin – stupid, broken, depressed, unlovable, pathetic, suicidal, scared, lost, hopeless Quentin – hooks his fingers into just enough of the blanket to tug it off his head until it reaches his nose, until his eyes are exposed and he can peer up at Eliot with something akin to numbness. He learned to stop trusting anything anyone says when he was this much of a hollowed-out mess years ago. People were so filled with platitudes and warmth when he was at his worst, like they were trying to put him on a path laden with guilt just so he'd get up and get going again and then when it seemed he could stand on his own two feet, they returned to their everyday lives and ignored he hadn't actually recovered anything resembling normality.

But Eliot meets his eyes with a steadiness Eliot has never had before. Eliot's always trying to avoid long periods of eye contact, a twitch in his cheek when he's ultra-nervous betraying his discomfort with difficult conversations. This Eliot… This Eliot who looks at him with such calm assurance is not one Quentin's ever encountered before and he finds it just as hard to look away when he wants to soak in everything Eliot says, and everything Eliot looks like, after months of a Monster terrorising his life.

"I'm not asking you to abandon how you feel, or to stop hating me, or to talk or return to living or any of that bullshit if you don't want to. You'll do what you want in your own time," Eliot says, fingers tentatively settling again on Quentin's hair and experimentally tugging at a few strands. "I just need you to know I'm sorry. I had…a lot of time for introspection these past months, of working out who I was and who I wished I was and I… I promised myself I'd apologise to you as the first thing I did because I needed you to know that I know that I fucked up. I know I hurt you and I want to own that. I know you deserved so much better than me being so careless with your feelings and disregarding how you…how you just wanted to love me and how scared that made me. And I just… I just really needed you to know that."

Quentin blinks, wishing he'd set a stopwatch because he's honestly not sure Eliot's ever stared at him this long without looking away or making some off-hand comment to break the tension or generate a laugh or turn away in search of a drink. Eliot so often used feelings as a punchline to a joke, pretending he didn't have a heart, that now…

Only, Quentin realises, he's not sure there is tension. Sure, Eliot is staring at him but it's not discomforting, and he's espousing such lovely words which Quentin wants to nestle into the darkest parts of his soul until they maybe grow the flowers of hope again, but there's just…something settled about Eliot, a confidence he radiates now that he'd never shown before to just be. And Quentin's not really sure what to do with it. It's unchartered territory, which is surely a first when you'd navigated fifty years with someone.

"Eliot…" he whispers, because even if this is an unfamiliar Eliot, it's still an Eliot. It's not the Monster, wearing Eliot as a meat suit. It's not the Monster, staring at him through the deadened eyes of someone Quentin had looked to for warmth and life and love. It's Eliot, exposing his fears and vulnerabilities and not hiding behind the façade of a guy that's got it all together under layers of expensive clothes and buttoned vests.

"Can I… Will you let me just…hold you?" Eliot murmurs, index finger trailing around the curve of Quentin's ear and along the angle of his jaw. "I have a lot of stitches but… I feel like asking you to move so I can hug you might be too much for you right now so can I just…? Or is that too much? I don't kn-"

"Do it," Quentin says, fighting the tremble in his bones when the voices rage that he shouldn't so easily forgive, he shouldn't so easily forget, and he's certainly not deserving of comfort from Eliot because he's a waste of space that everyone should just unburden themselves from. He tells himself he's not exactly forgiving Eliot, not now, not yet, but Eliot was offering a salve to the gaping wound that had been haemorrhaging every piece of his optimism and hope for months. It was a battle no one else could see but…he thinks after fifty years together, maybe Eliot is the only one who truly understands. He'd already seen all this before. He'd already seen Quentin cave in to the negativity and sink to the bottom of his darkened abyss, and he'd found ways to keep Quentin going, another week, another day, another hour, another minute, until – if nothing else – he had a flicker of a candle lighting his way again.

Eliot shifts and Quentin watches, like a terrified puppy or maybe like a hawk, and he catches the grimaces on Eliot's face, and the way his hand covers his stomach as he lays down, and the slight gasp when maybe a stitch pulls the wrong way. But Eliot is eventually lying beside him, an arm curled around Quentin's with his hand settled at the bottom of the tattoo between the wings of his shoulder blades and Eliot's lips are pressing a kiss to his hairline. If Quentin had truly been able to feel anything, maybe he'd start crying. For now, he just feels…safer. Like Eliot has the ability to settle some of the noise that steamrolls through his head all the time and help Quentin inhale without the vice around his ribcage just by placing his palm against Quentin's skin.

"Thank you for saving my life," Eliot says, his words a warm breath over Quentin's forehead as he tucks a lock of hair behind Quentin's ear. "If I have to spend every one of my remaining days for the next fifty years proving to you that it was worth it and I will live and be a braver person because of you, Q, then I will."

Quentin peers at Eliot, a little blurry with their proximity now but still able to see Eliot's looking at him. Watching him, maybe. This entire conversation, Eliot's been nothing less than wholeheartedly earnest and genuine and it flickers something within him that he gets to see a part of Eliot that had always been so closed off to him. "Fifty years?"

"Too much?" Eliot says, quirking an eyebrow, and Quentin wrinkles his nose, the faintest of amused smiles twitching one corner of his lips because a joke is usually Eliot's thing but they always had this natural banter that he'd never had with the others and he hadn't realised how much that was missing from his life until he has Eliot, with a twinkle in his eye, gazing back at him and daring him to be humorous.

"The miracle of modern Earth medicine is you may well live longer than you did in Fillory. Just saying."

"Well shit," Eliot gasps, overdramatic enough that if Quentin had been able to feel something underneath all the heaviness, he might have actually laughed. But even just that realisation, that he could laugh, is something he hasn't felt in a while. "How many years are you shackling me down with apologies and a meaningful life here, Coldwater?"

Quentin shrugs one shoulder, nuzzling his head against Eliot's collarbone and letting his eyes droop closed because maybe Eliot can keep all the demons away long enough for Quentin to get some much-needed rest. He's too afraid to really spread his arm over Eliot's torso, too afraid of jostling a stitch or leaving Eliot in pain, but he's okay with this. He's okay being tucked into Eliot's side and listening to him breathe, feeling his chest rise and fall and the soft fan of his breath tickling over Quentin's face. "As many as I can get, El," he mumbles.

Eliot's hand cradles the back of Quentin's neck, thumb smoothing over the hinge of his jaw and doing that thing Eliot used to do in Fillory by providing an anchor with his hands and his body that unwound some of Quentin's knots of anxiety and slowed some of the racing thoughts. He's not sure if Eliot's even aware of what he's doing, or that he even has such power, but it's soothing and he's glad Eliot keeps doing it. "Let's start with you getting some sleep and we'll work out the details of this contractual obligation of me living my best life because of you afterwards, okay?"

Quentin hums, somewhat with contentment, somewhat just acknowledging what Eliot said. Mostly he thinks his scattered thoughts have already started drifting on the breeze into something resembling sleep and he's thankful he has Eliot there to watch over him without judgement, without pretence, and without demands that after he sleeps, he has to get up and go back to the hardest thing about life: living.

~FIN~