[The darkness almost has a weight, like something slick and invasive pressing against his skin and against his mind. It’s not just the low, whispering voices, the disembodied hands or the flashes of spell-fire that Quentin can still see at the edge of his vision.

It’s the darkness itself, like it’s alive somehow, and it’s hungry.

Quentin still has one arm wrapped around Riku, and he has his fingers wrapped around Riku’s cold ones and every shiver that goes through the other man, echoes through him, too. Riku’s bare skin is ice cold under Quentin’s hand even if it barely registers.]

I think there’s a bottle of something that tastes like toothpaste in the general store? It— it really doesn’t taste like something you’d want in your mouth? But also, it hits like a slap in the face. If- we could, maybe, go get that?

[See if it’s possible to drown out Julia under a sickly sweet layer of alcohol and companionship, to drive Alice away when there’s only Quentin to yell at, and he gives Riku a tiny squeeze around the shoulder.]

That’s fine. I— it’s— I never really expected anything else. We can go? Now?

[Before the monster catches up, before his brain breaks wide open and spills everything out on the cold, hard ground. Before the hands catch them or worms themselves in to places they shouldn’t be.]