#i prooooomise they are going to talk the misery will end i just have to break them a little more first

[lizardkingeliot]

For this week’s WIP Wednesday, please enjoy this miserably on-brand, out-of-context, and possibly too-spoilery snippet from chapter 7 of time cast a spell on you (but you won’t forget me).

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“This is what he does,” Quentin said, voice thick and quavering. Ruined like his brain and his heart. “This is what—you’re not going to find him. He—”

“Like hell I’m not,” Margo cut in, eyes spilling over with so much fiery determination Quentin wondered at how the air around her didn’t combust. “He doesn’t just get to walk out on me when—” She took a breath, exhaled slowly. “Fuck that. I’ll track his ass down and drag him back here by the ball sack myself.”

Quentin felt a scream on the verge of bursting in his throat. He swallowed it down, let it fester in his belly until he felt sick. “You don’t get it, you don’t—” He let a bitter laugh roll out of his chest. “You’re not his keeper, okay? And neither am I. If he—if he wants to go. That’s it—that’s—I don’t know how you’re not understanding this, Margo.”

Margo watched him with her dark eyes for a handful of seconds. Tension in the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders. Then, without a word, she was lunging forward. Sudden blur of movement startling Quentin’s animal brain. He flinched, anticipating something sharp and bruising. Her open palm, the bony jut of her knuckles to his cheek. In the stasis of that moment, where everything and nothing seemed to be happening at once, Quentin thought it was probably what he deserved. That when it was all over, it would probably even feel good.

But the blow never came. Margo reached down and snatched up the note from where it was lying between his feet. She spun on her heels. She disappeared into the hall.

Quentin and Julia sat on the bed together in silence for a long moment after she’d gone. The specter of Eliot haunted every corner of the room. The objects scattered on his desk in a chaotic constellation: talismans and charms; a strip of condoms and the box they came in; a pen, an open book, an ashtray spilling over with butts and half-smoked cigarettes. His shelf of tinctures and potions: swirling colors; silver, violet, Prussian blue; golden flowers in a vial watching like unblinking eyes. His closet, half-open, lined with all his beautiful, expensive shirts. A pair of red suspenders in a coil on his dresser. A richly colored silk tie, still knotted, hanging from one of the bedposts. The way the sheets on his unmade bed were still all rumpled from where he’d been sleeping in it just hours ago.

Quentin reached over, touched a pillow. Knew if he pressed his face into it, it would smell like Eliot’s shampoo. Lavender, with something heady and masculine underneath. Pheromones, the lingering whisper of his sweat. The sharp sizzle-pop of his magic. Like a shot into Quentin’s bloodstream, a volley to the heart. A kick of desire between his legs. So much mindless, animal wanting from the scent of him alone.

“Hey,” Julia said softly, pulling Quentin from his longing. “Q, I’m sorry.”

He ran a hand over his hair and sighed. “It’s, uh—it’s better this way, right?” His teeth were chattering, his whole body trembling. He couldn’t hold it in. “I mean, this—this is what I should want, right? To be done with him. To just… be done.”

Julia wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into his neck. “Yeah,” she said. “It should be. But I know it’s not.”