When he grabs Eliot’s arm, Eliot grabs back at him. It’s clumsy, though, almost like Eliot didn’t actually mean to do it, and Quentin— squatting on the kitchen floor at fuck o’clock in the morning, his head throbbing and his heart pounding— thinks about babies, of all fucking things. How they’ll clutch at anything you put near their hands out of just like, pure instinct, and nothing else.

As far as spots go, finding Eliot here is… not great, but it’s not the worst. Not by far. Quentin can make this work.

“Hey,” he says gently. Too gently, apparently. He has to squeeze Eliot’s elbow, which at least gets Eliot’s head to list toward him. “El.” Recognition clicks in like dropped frames in a laggy stream: Eliot is staring at him, and then there’s a smile smearing across his face, and he’s sitting up, pressing closer, grasping back harder, still clumsy but at least more deliberate about it. “El,” Quentin says again, while Eliot tries to lace their fingers together, “I think you’re blackout.”

He’s not. Not yet, anyway, Quentin doesn’t think, but he will be if he keeps going at the pace he’s at. Which is, you know. The point.

“Worrying,” Eliot says. He’s smiling still, and he reaches up to press his thumb to the corner of Quentin’s eye— slash, more like his temple, actually. “Don’t worry, Q.”

He didn’t hear what Quentin said, or he wasn’t listening, or he wasn’t able to focus long enough to listen. That’s basically what Quentin has learned that means.

“You’re blackout,” he says again, and this time Eliot hears him; Quentin can tell, because all the good humor in his body language crumbles on the spot.

He fumbles to salvage- anything, honestly. “Hey.” He tries to squeeze again, like- like a reassurance or something, maybe? But Eliot is already shifting back, twisting his arm away, and Quentin doesn’t know what to do except let him. “El, come on.”

Eliot exhales harshly, almost gutturally. “Jesus christ, Quentin.”

“We had a deal,” Quentin tries. “We agreed. You remember? You said specifically—”

Eliot braces both palms down on the dirty tile floor. “I know what I fucking said.” He tries to push up to his feet, but he loses his balance; one hand claws clumsily back out for Quentin’s shoulder, and he ends up dragging Quentin’s collar sharply in against his neck. “Jesus— fuck. Goddammit.” When Quentin tries to get an arm in under his back, Eliot swats him away. “Stop it. You’re overreacting.”

“You said you trusted my judgment.”

“I say a lot of shit,” Eliot says. He manages to drag himself up to his knees, and then to one unsteady foot. “I am fucking- constantly spouting bullshit. It never stops. How have you not caught on to this by now?” He sways, and Quentin doesn’t know if he’s going to, like, topple over or not, but he reaches out anyway, catches his palm under Eliot’s ribs.

“See?” Eliot says, like he’s done anything except fucking- not get off of the goddamn floor. “It’s fine.” He drops his head on a rough, hiccuping giggle, close to Quentin’s cheek. “You’re worrying. It’s fine. Come on, I’ll show you. Where’s Margo?”

Quentin doesn’t know. It would have been a better idea to go find her before he tried this, probably, to have the united front— but he didn’t, because Quentin doesn’t actually fucking know anything about anything. He’d thought he could handle it, he guesses. Fucking delusional.

Eliot’s hand curls tight around his elbow, for balance, and Quentin thinks about- Julia. About her sitting on the edge of his bed, on the floor next to the couch, at the end of the pier with her toes hanging over the water, while he—

He swallows. “Let’s just get up, okay?”

He can do that, at least. He can brace his knees, and lift from his core, and get Eliot back on his feet. For the next five seconds, at least.

“You know, I get it,” Eliot says conversationally, against the side of Quentin’s neck. “I appreciate the- whatever. The concern.” His hand slips from Quentin’s elbow, and braces hard against the island countertop behind Quentin’s hip. “The interest in my well-being. You’re just a little hair-trigger about it right now, you know? You’re still calibrating.” He sighs like a laugh, and leans his weight forward into his toes. “Blah blah blah. It’s okay. Just relax, yeah?”

Quentin isn’t expecting it. That’s the only weak-ass, bullshit excuse he has. It’s late, and he hasn’t exactly been the perfect example of sobriety, either— and he isn’t expecting it, when Eliot crowds forward, bends down, and catches their mouths together.

It’s a rubber-band reflex. Like the goddamn- babies again, turning their heads in a blind, instinctive search for something they know they want. Quentin’s stomach swoops, and his heart leaps, and goosebumps race up the backs of his forearms. He’d been about to say something, that’s why his lips were parted. That’s why it’s easy, for a split-second moment— too long, even that’s way too fucking long— to let it happen.

He isn’t even responsible enough to be the one to break the kiss. Eliot does, his smile splitting between them, and it’s not even… It feels real. Breathless. Giddy. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Come on, see? It’s fine. All fine.” He nuzzles close again, lips soft at the corner of Quentin’s mouth. “Just—”

Fuck. Quentin’s fucking this up so bad, in so many ways. “El.” He manages to pull his chin back, just barely. He gets his palms against Eliot’s chest. “Hold on, just. Wait, okay?”

Eliot stops, but for a brief, frozen moment he doesn’t pull away, and— Quentin thinks about flowers dunked in liquid nitrogen at the science museum. Beautiful and eerie and brittle. Petals smashed to pieces for a fucking spectacle.

Eliot shoves away, from- from the counter, technically, but actually from Quentin. “Jesus.” He’s reaching again, that same blind grabbing motion, only this time he finds the ridge of the opposite countertop, and uses it to twist himself around. He reaches up for the cabinets, slamming them open one by one and leaving them that way. “I don’t have time for this.”

Quentin doesn’t know what to do. This is so— He doesn’t know what he should do. “Hey,” he tries again. “El, come on, I’m just trying—” His throat is thick. He’s trying not to fucking cry in the middle of the kitchen while Uptown Funk plays in the background. “I want to help.”

“And I’d really love it if you’d mind your own business for once,” Eliot snaps. He finds a glass and slams it down on the counter. “So neither of us are hitting the mark tonight, are we?”

Quentin should do something else. He should try— literally anything else. Eliot’s drunk; he can barely get the lid off of the bottle of vodka he finds in one of the open cabinets. Quentin could do something. He should do something. He’s the one who has to figure this out, now. It’s his best friend, now.

Instead he just stands there, while Eliot fills his glass. He watches, when Eliot strides out of the room and doesn’t look back.