Quentin's been in a coma the last week and some odd days but has finally woken up (with the bonus of new memories), much to Eliot's
relief.
⚠
MENTIONS OF TRAUMA AND CHARACTER DEATH, GENERAL ANGST
”What did you do?”
“Just a minor mending.”
He’d started running as fast as he could in the aftermath of his spell, but it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. The consequences of doing magic in that place were what they were and everyone knew that there was only one option.
Death was inevitable.
The last thing he remembered seeing was Alice’s desperation and horror as Penny pulled her through the doorway, her screams of anguish something that he knew would haunt him. Ha. That was kind of funny for a dead guy, wasn’t it?
On the plus side, at least this death didn’t hurt. He was sure the other ways he’d died in 39 other timelines had; The Beast hadn’t exactly been fond of making death a peaceful experience. But this? It was surprising more than anything. One moment he was there, trying to escape, and the next it was… nothing. Darkness. That was when the sounds of the machines in the hospital room broke through and he felt himself, somehow, come back into his own body. A soft gasp of breath was followed by his eyes fluttering open, looking around in confusion. Where was he? Why was he there? He’d been to the Underworld before and this wasn’t that, but he was… definitely dead, right?
His vision was blurred and his throat dry, a weak cough escaping him as he slowly continued to come to with memories -- if that’s what they were -- suffocating at the front of his mind. Julia. Alice. Margo.
Eliot.
No, not Eliot. Nameless. A monster in Eliot’s body. But Margo had saved him, hadn’t she? With her axes, as awful as that sight had been. The creatures had been put into bottles and thrown through the mirror, but he never even got to see El again after that, not after he’d--
He never got to see Julia again either.
Those realizations were overwhelming and Quentin felt his face crumble, tears welling in his eyes and he looked around as a panic started building in his chest. Was there anyone there? Was he alone? “Fuck,” he murmured to himself, though his voice was hoarse and almost painful.
Eliot’s neck hurt.
He had somehow folded himself origami style into a chair in the corner. He and Julia had taken turns holding vigil, but Julia was barely over five feet tall and everything about Eliot trying to sleep in a chair felt large and awkward.
Even in fragile and terrible states of near sleep, he was still conscious enough of the way he never quite knew where to put his feet, which didn’t quite fit anywhere, and the pain radiating along different parts of his spine.
That was all forgotten about instantly when Eliot heard a single word, and his eyes popped wide open to make sure he hadn’t dreamt or imagined it.
Fuck, indeed. Quentin was stirring. Eliot nearly fell from the chair to burst out of it and clamber to Quentin’s side.
“Q? Honey? Stay with me, okay? Stay awake.” With Eliot’s impressive reach he was able to press the call button multiple times. Then he worried the even presses would turn off the call button and had to think if he’d ended on an even or odd press. Realizing he didn’t know, Eliot continued pressing the button frantically several times and hoped that would be enough to give anyone at the nursing station the general hint.
“How are you? Say something? Are you okay?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck! He felt so helpless to be of any real use. Not in the way he worried Quentin needed exactly in that moment.
It wasn’t so unreasonable that between his half-lidded eyes and tear-blurred vision that Quentin had completely missed the sight of Eliot folded awkwardly up in a chair in the corner of the room. Of course, it was also somewhat dark -- why? What time was it? How long had he been asleep? And what happened? His immediate memory was overcome with home, of Monsters and sacrifice and--
Or was it?
When Eliot came into his vision suddenly, the panic flared up, his eyes going wide with a brief moment of fear. Of possible unrecognition? Except he did recognize him. He knew that face, that voice; something felt different though.
The panic had started to recede the longer he looked at him, though his vision was still a bit blurred at the edges, tears still brimming at the corners of his eyes. He wanted to ask if he was dead, or to say something so that he could make sure that was really Eliot, or just anything, but when he went to open his mouth he simply coughed again and grimaced at how much his throat hurt.
The next thing he knew, there was a flurry of muffled commotion nearby and suddenly he felt swarmed. There was that panic again. Quentin squirmed against the bed he was lying in, his brain slowly catching up to his surroundings. Nurses, machines, and what was… oh. He felt himself gag a little when he saw the IVs in his arms and looked over to Eliot desperately, quietly trying to plead for help without being able to talk.
“Quentin,” Eliot tried. But the nurses and staff were trying to direct Eliot out of the room so they could do their work and see to Quentin now that he was awake. He resisted being ushered out only slightly, trying to talk to him in the calmest tones his urgent voice could muster.
“I’ll be right back as soon as I can. I promise. I won’t go far, okay? I’ll be right outside. You just focus on getting better. Okay?”
There were other voices, mostly trying to reassure Eliot that they would let him back in as soon as Quentin was up for visitors. But Eliot wasn’t paying attention to the nurses as they were ushering him out, instead he craned his neck to try and get a better idea of where Quentin was at and what he was doing. Did his eyes seem focused? Would he speak? Did he seem likely to stay awake?
Eliot would cling to those glimpses of Quentin when he was finally forced out into the hallway of the hospital and the door to the room was closed while the staff did their work.
Fuck. Eliot paced anxiously outside, waiting for the okay to be let back in. The more time that passed the more anxious he got until a random nurse directed Eliot to wait even further away in the waiting room after being forced to promise multiple times that Eliot would be allowed back in to see Quentin at the moment he was able to.
What if something was wrong? What if he wasn’t really waking up but having some kind of stroke or heart attack? His mind automatically went to the worst possible scenarios and he desperately needed a cigarette, but Eliot was scared if he went outside to smoke he would miss an update on Quentin’s condition.
No, no, no. He wanted Eliot to stay in the room with him. Or at least whoever it was that looked like Eliot -- it was him, right? It had to be. And the nursing staff that was more or less converging on him were real, too. Very real. So real that he caught sight of the monitor he was hooked to and saw his heart rate increasing.
“Quentin, try to calm down,” he was assured despite the panic that was still settling uncomfortably in his chest, the face of someone he didn’t know swarming into his vision, though her voice was gentle. “We’re glad to see you awake. That was a bit of a scare you gave us.”
What did that mean?
Fuck.
He found out over the course of the tests that they ran, making sure his motor skills were good, his vision, his hearing. That was a different story and no one could be certain if it was permanent, but if that was the worst of the long term injuries, then he should consider himself lucky.
Time passed slowly and it felt like it had been hours before the last nurse finally left the room and he was alone again with the steady beep of the machine next to him. Except when he looked at the clock, well -- he couldn’t be positive, but it had maybe been 45 minutes or so? The last nurse had assured him she’d go tell Eliot that he could come back in before she left and so he laid there. Quietly. His eyes wide and nervously staring at the speckled ceiling above him.
Every ten minutes or so Eliot looked at the clock in the waiting room and thought to himself, if I had just left right away, I could have had a cigarette; guess it’s too late now. Another ten minutes and the thought came him to again. And again.
By the time the nurse approached Eliot he was already on his feet. His hair wasn’t as well kept and there was growth on his face that honestly was a little like The Monster. But Eliot didn’t have those memories and he’d refused to watch the show so he only knew a little bit about them second hand.
He did not mean to make a Cramer via Sienfeld sort of entrance into Quentin’s room, but his anxiety and fear and excitement, not to mention a desperate need for a cigarette made him more jittery than usual. Eliot marched up to Quentin and planted a soft kiss on the other man’s forehead, holding his lips there as if maybe he could force some small amount of healing magic from them. His hand gently caressed the side of Quentin’s face.
When Eliot stood back up straight, his eyes glistened but he managed to keep his tears in check, “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again, Quentin Coldwater.”
When the taller magician came back into the room and immediately to his bedside, lips to his forehead and a hand to his face, Quentin felt relief. He closed his eyes and brought his hand up to cover Eliot’s. With his new memories, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this close to him. Well -- no, he could. Vallo. That didn’t change. He had a life here, somehow, but now he knew more about the events of home than he’d cared to. Or so he thought. He’d been curious at first but now that he knew, he wished he didn’t.
This was just one of those memory dumps Julia had mentioned happening to her, wasn’t it?
“I don’t even know what I did,” he said quietly, his voice less hoarse now. One of the nurses had made sure he drank some water. Sure, the IVs kept him hydrated, but his mouth had felt like a desert when he woke up.
He chuckled half-heartedly. “I’m sorry for scaring you, though.” Well, the apology was a moot point, really. It hadn’t been his fault. No one was really to blame except for that huge, awful woman that had turned them all into husks. Not that he really remembered any of that, but one of the nurses had clarified that ‘Mr. Yu’ had explained what happened as best he could at the time and that information was relayed to Quentin while they did brief tests on him.
Looking up at Eliot, his expression was sad, eyebrows furrowed. “I can’t hear out of my left ear.” His confession was soft and he glanced down to his lap, fingers picking at the white hospital blanket that was draped over him. “They told me I was lucky to even be alive, so I guess being partially deaf now is…” He shrugged. “Sorry. Hi. That’s a bit of a downer topic, huh?”
“Your left ear, hm?” Eliot’s expression softened. Eliot leaned in across his face to whisper something into his deaf ear. It was as if to test it, but in reality it was to confess the things he did not normally have the courage to say to Quentin.
I love you. Don’t ever leave me.
Then Eliot straightened back up and shrugged.
“You’re back and awake. I don’t think downer is the word I’d use right now. Did the nurse or doctor or whatever say when you would be discharged? My coma was more of the magical variety so the recovery period was negligible really.” Eliot wanted to take Quentin home with him now, but there was a part of his brain that was forced to acknowledge that might not be possible.
Eliot’s hand slid into Quentin’s and gave it a squeeze.
That hadn’t exactly been the reaction he’d expected from Eliot when he told him about the sustained injury that had been done. He was confused briefly and the machine he was connected to gave away how his heart rate increased at how close he’d suddenly become.
Fuck.
Quentin blushed a little but closed his eyes when he felt breath against his ear. He couldn’t hear the words, whatever sound that Eliot was making came out quiet and muffled, but he could feel that he was saying something. Testing his hearing, wanting to see just how deaf he was now in that one ear. The answer? It was pretty bad.
“Not yet. The doctor that’s been overseeing me -- uh, Danvers, I think? She’s not in yet, but she’s going to come assess me later and there’s some more tests they want to run. Do another MRI… all that fun shit I’ve been asleep through this whole time, I guess.”
He sighed quietly and looked down at their hands, pausing for a moment before he took the chance and gently weaved their fingers together. “Thank you for being here. Though I was pretty fucking freaked when I first woke up cause the last time I saw you, you weren’t yo--”
Wait. No, that wasn’t right. Quentin stopped himself and that confused look crossed his face again. “Sorry, um… weird dream.”
Eliot frowned and combed Quentin’s hair with his fingers to put the pieces back into place. “Well, I promise I am no longer a figment of your imagination and I am actually here.”
How long had Q been trapped in a coma of nightmares? Eliot tried not to think about it. And though he had been told, briefly, about The Monster, he hadn’t made that connection.
“You missed my show,” Eliot also added, a little petulantly. He meant to sound more difficult and demanding, but the small smile at having Quentin back betrayed him. He just wanted to have something normal to complain about. Lightly admonishing Quentin was one of Eliot’s love languages.
Quentin took a slow, shaky breath as Eliot moved his fingers through his hair. “I know you are.” Even if things did still feel fuzzy on the edges — what was Vallo and what was home? Eliot didn’t look the way he had in his memories. The long hair wasn’t really a factor and the growth on his face seemed minimal in comparison.
Then he rolled his eyes, slightly, playfully. “I’m sure you were incredible. You’re always incredible.” Fidget, fidget, fidget. Q squeezed El’s hand again and brought his free hand up to scratch at his jawline, grimacing slightly at the feeling of his own growth. Well, that was… embarrassing. He’d never been good at growing facial hair, so he didn’t really want to imagine how he looked.
“One of the nurses told me you and Jules have been here every day. You didn’t have to do that but it means a lot that you did.” Because really, what was going to happen when he was in a medically induced coma? Nothing. But at least he still had those two, even if he hadn’t been aware of it.
“I was serviceable. My best friend was in a coma. Also I stabbed my boyfriend apparently. Fandral is fine. Probably too fine. Or I’m not fine. I don’t know.”
Eliot sighed. Way to make Quentin waking up from a coma all about him. That wasn’t what he meant to do. He just hadn’t spoken much to any of his other friends.
“I just need you to ace those medical tests so you can come back home and things might start to feel vaguely more normal again. Cheat if you must.”
Again, Eliot wasn’t being serious. He did not want Quentin to come home and somehow make things worse but he was both desperate to lighten the mood and also express how much he missed him. In his own way. By being a demanding little shit.
Q definitely hadn’t expected to hear that Fandral had been stabbed, let alone by Eliot and that surprise was very obvious on his face. Though somehow he wasn’t surprised that Fandral was fine -- he was an Asgardian after all. Not that Q knew a ton about Asgardians, just more or less what he knew from mythology and Marvel movies and…
Okay, he probably knew more than he would have ever let on, but no one needed to know.
“Hey, I’m gonna do my best to get out of here as quick as I can, okay?” His voice was soft when he spoke and the look he gave Eliot was gentle, but very sincere. He didn’t want to be stuck in a hospital any longer than he had to and by this point, it seemed he’d already been stuck there long enough.
But almost as if on cue, he smirked a bit, teasing, and let his head fall back against the pillow more that was propped underneath him as he looked at him still. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you missed me.”
“Hopefully that’s not too surprising,” Eliot said, gentler than he meant to. Naturally, he had to cover himself by adding: “I’m prone to codependency and general neediness.”
Eliot reached to take Quentin’s hand gently and give it a squeeze. “You really fucking scared me, you know that?” His brows lifted, his expression softened. He was determined that in this timeline or any other, that Quentin Coldwater would not die on him.
Fuck the tv show.
“Also I stopped working out with Fandral--” He couldn’t bring himself just yet to pick up a sword against his boyfriend. Perhaps he wouldn’t ever again. “--and Fen keeps making sympathy food and I would consider it a favor if you came home sooner rather than later so I can maintain my girlish figure.”
He smiled as weakly as the joke. Eliot already asked Quentin to come home. Again and it came off as slightly desperate.
Though Eliot was used to trying to cover his overly sentimental feelings with exaggerations or changes of topic, Quentin knew him well enough by this point to be able to see through to the actual meaning behind his words. Even if he wasn’t saying them, with his new knowledge that had been bestowed upon him (hah) during his less-than-restful sleep, he knew one thing more than anything else.
He loved this man and he was pretty sure, deep down, he loved him back.
And that thought made his heart rate increase and he nervously glanced over at the monitor beside the bed, grumbling quietly under his breath when he saw it jump. And if he tried to take the stupid thing off of his finger, it would alert a nurse, so he suffered. Briefly.
“Are you at least still spending time with Fandral?” he asked quietly, eyebrows furrowing slightly in concern. He didn’t know much about their relationship, but he knew enough to know that putting a pause on the sword lesson aspect of it was -- at least from his perspective -- kind of a big deal. “Though, I’d guess he probably understands if you haven’t been…?” Honestly, he had no idea.
“Either way, I’m pretty sure your figure is going to stay the way it is just fine.” Q snorted softly, amused, and offered Eliot a small smile.
“He’s been extremely understanding and supportive,” Eliot replied, but he didn’t sound especially happy about it. Eliot had wronged Fandral. He was struggling with forgiveness, with the kindness. He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed slightly on his throat.
If it hadn’t been for Quentin being in a coma and having Julia to bond over panicking with, Eliot’s choices would have been infinitely more destructive at this point.
But like home, there was one too many crises to deal with, which demanded Eliot not give in to his inner demons and partake in whatever magical substances Vallo had to offer.
Eliot let go of Quentin’s hand, pulled up a chair next to his bed and sat down in it. He hadn’t gone anywhere while Quentin was unconscious, seemed silly not to plant himself now that Q could speak.
He just wasn’t sure what to say.
The tone in Eliot’s voice at his response about Fandral made him curious, but he withheld asking about it and instead decided to just focus on… well, this. Now. Because Eliot was here and Quentin was awake and he had so many thoughts swirling through his mind.
Except when he looked at El, those thoughts seemed to quiet a bit. The newer memories of the Nameless muffling in his mind, the sight of Eliot bloody on the ground thanks to Margo’s axes. Why the fuck was the only way to get that monster out of him by almost killing him? Fuck magic, honestly.
He watched as the other man pulled over the chair he’d been sitting in and sat down, quiet and content with that as they just enjoyed each other’s company. Though he did drape his arm over the edge of the bed again, palm up - a silent plea for Eliot to hold his hand again.
Or to just touch him.
“I’m sure you’re going to get kicked out again soon so they can do those tests, but who even knows. Just stay with me for as long as you can, okay?”
Eliot reached out and placed his hand in Quentin’s. It felt like a miracle that Quentin was awake, that he seemed himself, more or less, that he could squeeze Eliot’s hand in response. None of it had required magic, just luck short of miraculous.