who: Eliot Waugh & Kylo Ren when: The night of Alucard's birthday, a couple days before this and this where: The Physical Cottage What: Eliot being emotional over his fear of losing Quentin & Margo warnings: Just Eliot making incorrect assumptions status: Complete.
When they'd gotten home from the party at Maresh Palace, Eliot's attention had been focused on the sight and sound of the Cottage. Any discussion that was being had by those he'd attended the party with was tuned out as he fixated on trying to establish if anyone else was in the structure. There'd been a small, pathetic hope inside of him that they'd return to the sound of the other inhabitants of the Cottage; even if those sounds were minimal. He just wanted a reassurance of their presence. Instead, all he could pick out in the way of sound was the soft sound of presumably Thatch and Tom running above on the next floor. His throat hitched and his hand lingered on the door knob.
They weren't back.
Whether Fen or Kylo were speaking to him, Eliot couldn't say, because he had a flash of pain as a sudden headache appeared. He pulled in a breath, his hand sliding off the door knob slowly with finger tips dragging all the way down till his hand hit his side, and his shoulders dropped. He moved without a word for the stairs. Once on the next level, he moved down the hallway, stopping in front of Margo's room. For a second, he stood there, looking at her door. He knew she wasn't inside but the confirmation had felt necessary. He turned his head, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of Quentin's, and got a second confirmation.
He swallowed and made way for his bedroom. The door shut softly behind him.
Ky could sense the shift in mood, or maybe not even so much a shift, as a deepening of it. It wasn't as if Kylo wasn't aware of the fact that Eliot wasn't in a good place right now. He was very much aware of it, he just didn't know quite what to do with it. It was probably good that he was certain, overall, that this had more to do with the other Eliot, than it had to do with the engagement, or anything else that had shifted between him and Eliot, or he might have felt a lot more insecure. But as things stood, he just wanted to try to help, even if he wasn't certain he could.
He headed for the kitchen, making short work of some heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and a balsamic vinegar into a salad, which he then took up to their bedroom. He didn't even know if Eliot would be hungry, but he figured that, and the drink in his hand, couldn't hurt. He used the Force to push open the bedroom door, stepping in and putting the tray down on the bedside table.
"El, talk to me." It was a request, not a command, but it was a serious one.
El had taken a seat on top of the comforter and had his legs stretched out ahead of him. Tom was curled by his side and Eliot had his had resting gently above the cat's fur, with his eyes focused ahead in the direction of his feet, which were crossed at the ankles. He'd not even turned his gaze to the door when it opened.
He flexed his fingertips against Tom's fur at the sound of Kylo's voice. He was aware enough to know what Kylo was asking him to talk about, even if it wasn't direct, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to. He turned his eyes to look at him and tried to offer a smile but it didn't land.
"I hope Alucard goes with Dirty Dancing," he said, quietly, in reference to the gift he'd given the other man. 'Suggestions for Cultural Education,' he'd called it.
It wasn't at all what Kylo was asking about but it was at least acknowledgement.
Kylo knew Dirty Dancing. Well, he knew he'd watched it at one point, and that it was a favorite, but it really didn't have much to do with what they were in the middle of at the moment. At least he didn't think that it did. "It'd be a good pick," he responded, voice low, without any particular emotion.
There was a heartbeat as he considered, and then he sat down on the bed beside Eliot, but where his Fiance's gaze was on the tuxedo kitten in front of him, Kylo's gaze was on his Fiance. He reached a hand over to slide it across Eliot's shoulders. He wanted to fix it. He hated not knowing how to fix whatever was wrong, but he was also pretty certain this was outside of his ability to do.
Silently, he reached his other hand up as well to massage tension from Eliot's neck.
Eliot's eyes shut the moment Kylo's hand brushed across his shoulders and there was an exhale of breath. His free hand, which had been resting on his other side upon the mattress, shifted to grab hold off the sheets. It wasn't that the touch wasn't welcome. It was that he'd sequestered himself off and away from either of his two significant others because he was waiting for the feeling that the dam was going to break to pass.
Kylo's touch brought it all crashing back and he pulled in an uneven, shaky breath.
"It's fine, I'm fine," he said, without any real convincing weight to the words.
Kylo hummed an uncommitted response to this. Eliot wasn't fooling him, and he was pretty certain Eliot wasn't fooling himself either. He didn't really want to force him to talk about anything, and granted, that wasn't really possible to do anyway. But he also was pretty certain that El was not fine, and Kylo wasn't certain not talking was doing any good.
"Eliot," he finally spoke softly. "I'm pretty certain you're more tightly wound than a hyperdrive core."
He gave a light huff. While he'd not seen one of those before, the analogy wasn't lost on him and he just nodded his head, slowly.
"They aren't here," he offered up, a brief glimpse into the issue, but without specifics. Eliot didn't think it would be difficult to chip away at the phrase and distinguish who he was referring to.
"I noticed," Kylo was quiet for a moment, and he kept his eyes on Eliot. "I'm sure they'll be back," he offered, although he didn't think that was really the problem. "Did they... " Kylo frowned, his conversation with Margo earlier floating back. "Did they say where they were going?"
"Yeah," he whispered, as his hand stroked lovingly along Tom's fur once again. He rationally knew they would be back, too, and hadn't really doubted that they wouldn't. He also knew it was unfair of him to be upset about their departure, only Quentin had said he'd needed time away to figure out how he felt about everything that was happening. Margo had eventually told him she was leaving too, even if he had known from when Quentin said.
His breath caught with that thought.
"They went to New Orleans," he added, his throat tight, "For the weekend. And...it's Tuesday." There was probably a logical explanation. He was aware enough of their home to know that they'd come back on Monday. There'd been the small signs. But they'd both left without telling him again within hours.
Maybe they'd not figured out everything with just a weekend.
Kylo pressed his fingers against Eliot's neck, trying to also press comfort along with those fingers. However, he didn't know for certain how well that would work, even with the Force, and any ability he might have to use it to help supplement the touch. "Something else must have come up," he offered, but that felt weak in a way. It felt as if they could have mentioned where they were going, not that it was like it was required, but still… He and Margo had been talking earlier, and she hadn't mentioned anything to Kylo, of course why would she? It felt as if she was barely willing to talk to him about a birthday party.
"Have you tried contacting them?" For all whatever was happening went, and for all Kylo wasn't so good at communication himself, he knew Q and Margo well enough to believe they didn't intentionally mean to block Eliot out. Unless they were upset about the engagement, he supposed. That was a possibility, and it was one that settled heavily in Kylo's stomach. Eliot made him ridiculously happy, and he felt as if they were doing something good now, but he worried sometimes that he just complicated things with Margo and Q. Maybe it would be better if he wasn't there?
He breathed out, and shook those fears away, not wanting to dwell on them. "They might have forgotten to leave a note."
Eliot leaned into the touch and let his attention focus briefly on the attempts to rid him of the tension. In doing so, he'd shut his eyes once again and just tried to be there in that moment. Only, it felt impossible when he was still letting his mind wander to the observations that he'd been making over the past few weeks. Something else likely had come up and Kylo wasn't wrong. It also wasn't wrong if something had come up. But since when did they not tell one another when things were happening?
When had that become an aspect of their lives?
As for Kylo's other question, he swallowed, "No." Quentin had said he'd needed time. He didn't need Eliot reaching out to him and making it more difficult. "That isn't better," he whispered in response to the idea of them forgetting. There were a lot of things he wondered if they'd forgotten.
"Quentin left to figure out how he felt about the other me," he then spoke out. "Margo, too. Maybe they..." His words trailed off and he'd sucked in a breath. "...Maybe they need more time."
With that, he pulled from his lover's hands and shifted, moving to thread his hands up through his hair as he bowed his head and rested his elbows against his legs. "It doesn't matter," he tried to play it off, as if those string of words could ever actually be true when it came to Margo or Quentin.
"It does matter," Kylo pushed back against that statement. It wasn't difficult to see that it did and despite his own rocky relationship with Margo, he could see that it did. And having wandered through at least some of Eliot's memories on the subject, he understood better why it might. And Quentin, of course Kylo understood, even if that knowledge was its own series of complications, because whatever they might be doing here, it didn't mean there wasn't the memory of the other lifetime.
He frowned, trying to run through his own thoughts, to pull any sort of information from his own background that might help Eliot right now. The truth was that he didn't have much to pull from. His own relationship history was a battlefield of broken and wounded ones and the man in front of him seemed to be the only one he had managed to not make worse. He didn't want to do that right now, but that pulled at least one thought to his mind.
"I think you should talk to them," this was voiced tentatively, almost as if he wasn't certain. Because he wasn't… one hundred percent certain. But if he could say anything, he could say that not talking had never helped. He hadn't talked to his mother about her fears that he could feel in the Force. He hadn't talked to his father, and talking had almost never been as bad as what he'd imagined in his head. Even here, when Han had shown up again - he'd imagined something bad, and it hadn't been. "I think it might help, El."