logsinthenight | I once believed love would be burning red

Entry tags:

I once believed love would be burning red

characters: Quentin Coldwater and [SO VERY OPEN]
location: Around Beacon
date/time: Most of January
content: Quentin has a sad, and a lot of wine
warnings: Drunken shenanigans, sadness, more to be added

Jan. 01st - Jan. 06th. The cabin.

[Eliot is still dead.

He checked.

The bed hasn't been slept in, and there's still too many fancy shirts in the closet. Except for the one Quentin is clutching in his fist, the fabric all but ruined from being crushed and fiddled with for days. From being slept on.

He raises the bottle and takes a deep swallow of cheap wine, head tilted back and some of it runs from the corner of his mouth and down to the already-spreading stain his hoodie.

Fuck it. It's not like it matters anymore. The only one who's seen him so far is Riku, or Quentin thinks it's Riku. There are hazy memories of a lot of wine and something silver at the edge of his vision, offering food. It could have been a dream, though.

Fuck that too. Because Eliot is dead and they're not going to see each other again, because who the fuck knows what happens to people who stop being here. Maybe they wink out of existence. Maybe they go home. Maybe this is all a fucking big joke, to see how they'll all react to the dark and to the horror.

Classic dick move from a God.

Quentin settles down on the floor, back resting against the couch and he keeps drinking until there's a knock on the door]

What!?

Jan. 07th- ?? (when the booze runs out?). The Invincible.

[He didn't want to do this, didn't want to leave the familiar cabin and treck across Beacon in the freezing cold, but there was no wine left and even Eliot's stash of the better kind of alcohol was gone. In a week.

Maybe he should be worried. Maybe he should scream at the disapproving looks he just knows Julia would level his way, if she knew. You're better than this, Q and he didn't hate his name so much when it was her saying it.

Perched on the edge of a stool at the bar at the Invincible, Quentin slams back another shot of-- something? It could be wine, doled out in small glasses to make it go further. It could be fucking antifreeze and it would still be a lot better than the wine he had in Fillory after Alice died.

Like Eliot died.

Everyone just keeps dying around him and-- really, Quentin gets it. Hell, he even did it himself just to get away. Too bad he's stuck with himself now. Stuck in the bar, too, since the outside is a white-out of snow and freezing winds howling around every corner.

His elbow slips off the counter and he smacks his face in to the bar with a dull thump, leaving a red mark at the center of his forehead and Quentin just shrugs and toasts whoever is closest.]

Cheers! Bottoms up, right?

January ?? After the blizzard. The Invincible- the kitchen

[Right. So. There were still things to do. Still people to help and he'd even made a half-assed promise to someone. It could have been less than a promise, but more than a suggestion.

Whatever it was, it was enough to make Quentin slam down the empty glass on the counter and make his unsteady way to the back of the Invincible. There was a kitchen back there somewhere.

Kitchen means food, and it means not dying when the noises start or worse, throwing up. But. He's up for it. He's so up for it, and really? How hard could it be? All he has to do is chop things and wash things. Quentin is so down for washing things.

There's a loud crash as he stumbles to the sink, already pulling his sleeves up past his elbows, with red wine on every exhale and a little too much slur to his voice.]

Okay, so. Yeah, 'M here. Where-- uh, oh. So, where do you want me to start?

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[It's almost comforting, almost familiar, the sounds of someone rooting around in the kitchen, the bangs of pots and pans and how there's the sound of someone else breathing close by.

Almost.

And it's Riku, because who else would brave the cold and come out to the cabin, just to start cooking immediately? well, fair enough, Mrs Maisel might. If she knew. But Quentin hadn't been in to town since he left the church and really, he was fine.

Wine made it fine.

He's sitting there, glass of wine in hand, when something new happens and his head snaps up to look at Riku. Red-rimmed and his eyes are too wet, but he's still looking back and he pours a glass of bad red wine for him and pushes it over.]

Hey.

[ What Riku brings over to eat are simple things - soup and sandwiches, pasta out of a box, meat sauce out of a jar, vegetables that could use a real cook's touch. Today it's more of the same, a pot of water put on to boil and a box of spaghetti noodles, a jar of some kid of red sauce.

It's the only way Riku can guarantee it won't be terrible. He's not a natural cook, didn't have a chance to really learn. The king was too polite to complain and instead would bring snacks and lunch in a box to share when they traveled together. What he does manage can be bland and nourishing at best, but that's about it.

He's marginally better if he follows a recipe.

Riku looks over when he hears him pouring. It pains him, how used to it he's getting to seeing him like this, cried out and maudlin. But the best thing he can do for him is be here, try to coax him to put something in his stomach that doesn't come from a bottle. He leaves the pots - of water, of sauce - warming on the stove and retrieves the glass before something can happen to it. ]

Thanks.

[ He doesn't drink yet. ]

Spaghetti again. Hope you don't mind.

...Still thinking about him, huh. [ He notes, his voice gone soft in sympathy. ] Wish I could say that gets easier.

[There's this part of Quentin that never really comes out, the hurt and snide one. The one that's snorting back a sarcastic laugh at Riku for even asking - still? It's only been days, weeks at the most and right now, it feels like it's never going to go away.

This gnawing empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, that's part guilt and part longing. And missing him. Missing Eliot like he'd miss a limb, only he knows of ways to regrow those, or he could get a peg leg. There's no substitute for Eliot.

Not ever.

But Riku doesn't deserve that. Doesn't deserve to get sneered at or yelled at, and Quentin is still sober enough to keep it all in his head. There's where he spends most of his time, anyway.

In the memories of what could have been.]

Spaghetti's fine.

[He lets his head fall back to rest against the back of the couch, eyes closed, and he wraps his arms around his bent legs.]

I know. It's-- yeah, I know. That I'll learn to live with it. Eventually. This isn't the first time. It still [a hard, shaky exhale before he turns his head and opens his eyes to look at Riku] sucks, though.

[ Riku doesn't mind it - Quentin is Quentin, all the jagged edges where he's been broken and put himself back together again and the softer parts that he's glimpsed. He's his friend, and that means knocking some sense into them sometimes, as well as throwing away sense in solidarity, too. It means accepting even the parts that aren't convenient or pretty. Grief is never pretty.

Quentin scoffs but doesn't take that further. Riku resumes his work at the stove, soon waiting on water to boil. When he does get around to picking up the wine glass, it's not with some clumsy grasp like he's never handled anything other than a water glass, but he isn't a drinker.

But he holds it like he naturally knows the proper way without thinking about it. There could be many of reasons. His might be related to the fact that the view from his old bedroom balcony included marble columns and a panoramic ocean view. ]

I know.

[ After tasting its contents, Riku puts down the glass, leaning on the arm he rests on the counter, staring a the pot on the stove. ]

...Do you remember that night near the river? Just two dumb guys trying to keep it together.

Fuck, yeah.

[It's hazy, but not like the mistakes of years ago or even of Fillory-past. With the soft veil of time to sooth most of the painful ones. It's not even because it was weeks ago and because it happened before. Before Eliot died, before Quentin found out that he really didn't have it in him to hurt someone else just to get back at the spirit who wouldn't or couldn't bring him back.

It the wine, it's softening everything, to the point where there's no sharp edges on the world. Not in the world he's decided to stay in, here within these walls.]

That was-- we were so messed up. But. We did it, right? We kept it together and we made it. We fucking made it.

[Instead of pouring more wine in to the glass on the floor, Quentin just drinks straight out of the bottle.]

And for what?

[ He should tell him something that gives him hope, Riku thinks. No- that's too tall an order, more realistically what Quentin needs is a friend, not a savior.

That's fine. One thing this world has taught him was that Riku wasn't very good at saving anyone. ]

I don't know. A chance, maybe. To make this world right again for the people that can live in it.

[ And what of them? What happens if they - against all the odds stacked up against them - manage to succeed? They're dead, brought to a dead world. If the world lives again, will it become hostile to the dead things in it that no longer belong? Riku's belief is they'll cease to exist, erased as the laws of this universe exert their own form of equilibrium.

That doesn't scare him. Rather, he's changed, slowly, vitally. Sometimes he thinks it won't be so bad, maybe his heart would even go where his friends went. But after his encounter with that boy with keyholes where his pupils should be, he's sure of two things: that his best friend is dead, but his heart isn't at rest.

Riku turns. He's tall, he lines his hips up with the edge of the counter as he leans back against it, listening to Quentin drink. ]

A little while after that night, I thought I saw Sora.

[There's nothing to say to that. That is what they're here for. To save the world again, and surprisingly- a lot of the people he's talked to over the last few months have done just that. Saved the world.

Before.

Before dying. Before they made that one mistake that they couldn't, or wouldn't, take back and all of them, they ended up here. In Beacon.

Doing it all over again, but in the dark and with malicious spirits breathing down their necks at every turn. With no guidance except for a young girl trapped in a tower and each other and Quentin takes another sip of wine, letting his head hang down.

The days and nights drag on, bleeding in to each other like smoke and Quentin remembers this. This vague sense of disconnect. How he ran in to it when Alice died, and he didn't even get to bury her because Margo and Eliot had already done that once Quentin came back.

He remembers the black hole of thoughts sucking him down, of living more in his memories than in the present and how much that sucked. And yet, he keeps doing it, slipping away inside his head to turn over every memory, like jewels, setting off sparks and feelings.

So many fucking feelings.

And that's where he is, when Riku keeps talking and Quentin rolls his head around to look up at him.]

Where?

[ Riku reached the age of fifteen and suddenly his life took a turn, where his most important decisions weren't about when or what to start driving, who and when to start dating, how to pass his final exams or what school and career path to set himself off on.

It became about decisions that dictated the survival of the universe. About getting on the winning side of a battle between the forces of light and darkness.

He hoped for a time when he and his friends could go back to having a normal life but never counted on it. In all honesty, Riku never considered a future without Sora and Kairi in it, so sure he would be the one to disappear first. Who deserved to die sooner, to make up for his mistakes, maybe. ]

...Bonfire square. Then the forest.

I saw his lantern shattered.

[ He says it easily, but when he finishes, Riku's chin dips down, his adam's apple bobs in a mute swallow, and in the light of his lantern, his eyes seem too bright. ]

In that moment, I felt like it was all for nothing. That there was... nothing, nothing left.

[Yeah, all that bright hope and sheer determination that has carried and pushed Quentin all this way. Through heart-ache and hardship, he survived losing Alice and losing Julia. He's lost and loved and lost again, over and over and still, he kept having hope.

That never dimmed.

It was the one thing, aside from Margo kicking his ass, that got his working on getting Alice back. On getting Julia's Shade back from Elysium and it kept him up even when his own shadow-self tried to drown him in every bad and guilty thought he's ever had.

It's not that bright right now, like the flickering flame of his lantern, it ebbs and flows and never flaring in to something so bright you can barely look at it.

But.

He can fucking fake it until he makes it for Riku. Who's lost more than Quentin. Who is still out there, still trying to make his mark on the world and still trying to hard to help.

So. He drinks again, and sets the bottle down before looking up and catching Riku's eyes from across the short distance.]

There's always something. It doesn't have to be much, but. We're still here, and we're still breathing. Maybe-- maybe that can be enough? For a while.

[ Riku hasn't felt bright hope and sheer determination in... half a year. ]

...Yeah. It's. You.

[ The silver-haired young man hangs his head, speaking soberly, eyes downcast with half his attention on the pot as it eventually comes to a boil. ]

You and the others. People who became...

[ Riku exhales softly: ] Important to me.

[ What Riku doesn't say is that he almost didn't make it. That the losses he suffered was almost great enough to sunder his heart. It was only by pouring his determination and the friendships he's forged here into the cracks of his broken heart that Riku has made it this far. ]

You're right. That's enough. That should be enough.

[Quentin makes a wet kind of laughing snort and he rolls his head back against the couch, looking up at the ceiling. It's made of wood, and if he looks at it for long enough, he can just about make out faces in the knots and swirls up there.

It has a name. Seeing faces where there aren't any. Something latin and something he feels like he should know, but it slips away. Like everything slips through his fingers.]

I had Eliot.

[Once. Twice. And it never seemed to stick. Maybe they were cursed? Maybe it's one of those ill-fated things that the gods liked to do - tear them apart over and over again, just to laugh at the result.]

I had-- I had friends? Back home. And--and do you want to know the crazy part? I didn't even miss them at much? Coming here? I was just-- so busy, trying to solve this quest like it actually matters and I didn't even think about them.

[It's horrible and it's true.]

I had Eliot, and--and I met you? You... you saved me. More than once, and. I don't just mean in the woods, or at the beach. I mean, you keep going. You just-- you keep going, and that's-- that's not nothing. That takes so much.

...

[ Riku's fingers curl around the edge of the counter that he leans the line of his hips back against, his head bowed. ]

I almost gave up. There was someone who came from the ferry a few days ago.

Someone from another world. He had... some of Sora's memories.

[ Even with the lights of their lanterns, it's hard to see. His face is fairly downcast, his eyes shine with damp in the dim lighting, and it's anyone's guess if that's just eyestrain or sorrow. Riku has never been known to cry.

But his voice is thick. ]

It means... he's gone. He's been gone. For a long time. Everyone I cared the most about... they're dead. I'm the only one left.

[ Admitting something he's never admitted to anyone else, he turns his face away: ]

It never should've been me.

[Sora. That rings a distant bell somewhere in the back of Quentin's mind and he frowns back at Riku.

Sora.

A friend who went out to talk to the spirits. The last one.

Shit.]

There's someone here who--

[He lets it linger in the still air in the room. Not on purpose, but it's hard to imagine. Someone having someone else's memories. All he ever got was a monster living in Eliot's skin and that had been--]

It's hell. Looking and seeing all the way they're not really-- who you want them to be. But. That's not-- [a deep breath before he goes on, and Quentin drinks again, the wine hitting his empty stomach like a lead ball, spreading warmth all through him.]

But the worst part? Is when you can't? When they-- when it's just right and you can forget for a second.

[Shaking his head, Quentin reaches out to pat Riku's boot with clumsy fingers.]

Destiny is bullshit. It's never about that, about who deserves it or who doesn't. Things just are.

[And quieter]

It was never supposed to me either. But it is.

I know.

[ That's all Riku says about there's someone here who because Riku thinks he knows what Quentin's referring to, or who, because meeting him is a big part of why he's feeling like it's all a little pointless. Why his outlook is so bleak. Quentin gets it, he breaks sometimes.

He doesn't agree on when it's just right and you can forget for a second because Riku never forgets, but there are days, hard days, when he wishes he could. When he wishes it was as simple as doodling a better image on paper and letting something fake and pretty subsume what hurts so much.

But that's the easy way out and Riku can't abide erasing any part of Sora's impact on his life. The water begins to boil, and he turns to add the noodles. ]

Sorry. I'm in a mood, I guess.

Yeah, well--

[Quentin holds his arms out, gesturing at-- everything. The room, himself, the bottle of wine. The clothes that's still on the couch before he slid down to sit on the floor.]

You've come to the right place for it.

[It's harder to host a pity party for two, and there's the smell of food in the air. Or, boiling pasta. What ever it is, it's still more than the smell of desperation and loneliness.]

It's this place. It's like-- it gives you hope and--and maybe happiness and then it just takes it away. How sure are we that this isn't literal hell?

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I once believed love would be burning red

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