Chapter Text
Timeline Undetermined - Quentin
Quentin is on a stage again, singing. Singing terribly, in fact, which is a truth that never seems to change, even in his dreams. Why this is his recurring nightmare when he has no musical training or experience beyond elementary-school recorder class, he will never really understand. Ever since he knew that anxiety was a thing, it manifested in this way, in his dreams. It wasn’t always music, either — usually it was theatre, and on particularly awful nights, it was musical theatre. Nothing more embarrassing than discovering that you must suddenly perform the part of Jean Valjean to a house of thousands in your underwear with a frog in your throat.
He doesn’t know why, but it has been a part of his life for so long that he no longer questions it. On this day, however, there is no exam to worry about, no family drama, nothing. The most stressful thing that had happened all day was when he was rushing to the subway station and bumped shoulders with an unfairly gorgeous man. When he turned to apologize profusely, anticipating an irate asshole, the man was long gone, meshing into the throng of people crossing Houston Street. He made his train with no problem, and got to class, which was a pleasantly boring lecture on a text by Spinoza that he had read ages ago. So there is no earthly reason for him to be having his singing nightmare tonight.
Of course, this will all be processed after the fact. In the moment, he is in the dream, and nothing that occurred in his waking hours holds any bearing over him, so he tries again and again to hit the mystery note, squawking every time. “Come on, Quentin,” he hears James say from the back of the theatre. He leaps from the stage and crouches down in the front row of the audience — hiding, perhaps? He feels very small suddenly, like a scared child. The theatre had been grandiose and luxuriously lit, but now it feels small and dark. He looks across the aisle and in the darkness, he swears he can see someone else huddled there. Dark curls, rakish grin, surreal length, arms like branches of a tree. His eyes are kaleidoscopic, and they get bigger, and closer, and in the pupil of one he begins to see a shape. He crawls inside, and as he revels in the shower of silver and green and gold flecks he spots something a few feet away on the smooth black surface inside the eye. He tries to reach it, but his legs won’t work. He senses a weight in his hand and looks down to see a key.
The key is something like you would see in an old Victorian mansion, or a Scottish castle. An elegant brass circle is carved at the top of it, with a triangle embedded in the center. As he stares at the symbol he feels an intense rush of love, fear, and sadness, foreign emotions that don’t seem like his own. He feels the crush of time, so much time and he realizes his body has changed. He is ancient, skin papery and clinging to his bones. He needs to get back, to get out of the eye, he has a concert coming up, but before he can move he hears a soft voice from the distance that he doesn’t recognize, calling to him: “stay.”
And he wakes up.
He gets his bearings, looking around the room. Everything seems normal, just another Wednesday. He's got class at 11, and his watch currently reads 9, so he has plenty of time. A glass of water waits on the nightstand. By all accounts, he should be able to shake off the weird dream and get ready for his day. But he just can’t let it go. Nothing has ever felt so real , so momentous, as the moment he held that key in his hand, when he heard that voice calling to him. It stays with him all that day, and the next, and the next. He doesn’t dream of it again, specifically, but he finds himself doodling the symbol all over his lecture notes, seeing patterns in things that make him think of it, and it starts to take on a meaning for him that he can’t explain. After a few days, he makes a decision that seems rash when it first pops into his head. But once he adjusts to the idea, it’s almost as though it has always been there, and a certainty falls over him: he will get a tattoo of the key.
He’s always wanted a tattoo. He has! Julia teased him all the time when they were growing up as he said — ooh, I’ll get a tattoo of this fish, or this fantasy map, or whatever. Fillory came up a lot. But once he was 18, and could actually put his money behind it, he found himself suddenly indecisive. What if he picked the wrong thing? So it continued to be this little game he played when he was bored — where would he get it? What would it be? Never really intending to act on the idea.
So to say the least, this sudden absolute clarity that he will get a tattoo of the key on the meat of his left calf is bewildering. He even knows the tattoo parlor he wants, which had been another choice he spent many hours researching on instagram at night over the years. He makes an appointment that same day at The Cacodemon — they have something available next week, so he books it without even looking at his class schedule. This feels like something worth missing a lecture for.
“Quentin, man, I can’t say I understand, but good for you!” James gives him a thump on the back when he tells them that night at the bar. Quentin tamps down on the thrill the jolts through his body whenever James touches him. It’s the same with Julia, although he’s gotten good practice around her. This thing with James is new, for her, and so Quentin is trying to get used to hiding his bottomless pit of desire from yet another person. At least this thing, this tattoo, is something that’s just for him.
Julia doesn’t like it. “I don’t get it, Q. You’ve had every idea in the book, and then some, that made far more sense to you as a person, to your life. And you never pulled the trigger. What about the idea you had of the rainbow bridge? Or the cozy horse? Now you have some random dream and you instantly know what you want? You don’t even know what that thing means to you! Why does this rank higher than all your other ideas?”
True — he doesn’t know what it means, exactly. But he does know what it evokes: brilliance, passion, security, love. Peace.
Every time he sees the image, a soothing blanket falls over his mind, quelling his anxious thoughts for the moment. There is also the memory of another presence in his mind. It didn’t seem intrusive in the dream, just comforting. A reminder that he doesn’t ever have to be alone. So if he can put it somewhere on his body, somewhere hidden from the public eye, secret, but still visible to him, where he can peek at it, rub it with his thumb, in moments when he needs it, and take refuge in those feelings? He will do it without hesitation.
Julia tries to get him to take her to the appointment but he refuses. He’s a grown-up, he can handle a silly little thing like a tattoo. He enters the shop and marches proudly up to the receptionist, saying that he has an appointment with Cara.
“So, actually, Cara is out sick.”
His heart sinks. “Can I reschedule?”
“You got her last free slot for the month, unfortunately. She is booked up now until November. But we have a guest artist in town with us — she’s very good, and she had a cancellation today. There’s a slot in 30 minutes. Her name is Jane — would you like to look at her book?”
It’s weird, the way calm settles back over Quentin when he hears the name Jane. He agrees to look at the book, but even as he reaches for the leather binder he knows he’s going to say yes. The artwork only confirms it. Much of it is fantastical: animals in ruffs and berets, otherworldly foliage, a castle that looks familiar. He gasps when he sees the ram’s head symbol for Fillory, from his favorite book series of all time. For a moment when he sees that particular piece of flash, he almost reconsiders his choice. But no — he’s here to get the key.
“I’ll take the appointment,” he confirms, returning the book. The receptionist sighs in relief and gestures for him to wait in the back.
He sips some water and tries to read his classwork with little success until a cheerful British woman calls to him. “You must be Quentin!”
She looks familiar, but he can’t place her so he lets it go. She brings him to her chair and hands him another glass of water. “So what is it that you are looking to get? I saw you eyeing Ember’s Seal out there.”
“Umm, actually, I was hoping to get something original? I sent it to Cara last week, but she probably didn’t pass it on to you, since she didn’t know she would be out today…”
“Why don’t you describe it to me and we’ll see what I can do.”
So he does. “It’s an old-timey key, and the top is just a triangle, with a circle around it? There are a few like, curly bits around the edges. I can draw it for you, if you have some paper.”
Her eyes have gone wide as he speaks, and now she smiles. “No need, I think I can work with that.” She grabs a notepad and spends a few minutes sketching. She turns the notepad around and shows him. “Something like this?”
His mouth falls open. “Yes! It’s — well, it’s exactly like that. How did you know?”
She flashes him what can only be described as a Mona Lisa smile. “Let’s just say you described it quite well. I must have seen something of the like elsewhere. Where did you get it from?”
“That’s just the thing,” he mutters, frowning. “I’ve never seen it in the real world, not that I can remember. It just came to me, one night, in a dream a few months back.”
“And you don’t remember anything…unusual from that day?” she prods.
“No, nothing unusual,” he replies. He doesn’t tell her about the collision with the stranger, because honestly that’s just the kind of thing someone with his bizarre brain would latch onto and most normal people would never think of again.
She nods as if he has said something she expected, but she looks a bit disappointed in him. “Very well,” she says. “Let’s give you a tattoo!”
“I was thinking, my lower leg? My calf?”
She frowns. “Are you sure? The calf can be a bit challenging. Have you considered your chest or side, perhaps? Inner thigh? Something a little softer might be easier.”
“But those are like where — sexy tattoos go,” he protests, blushing a little.
“Not necessarily. It could be something grand, to have it close to your heart.”
That does sound nice. So he agrees on his left side, below the ribs but above the navel. She presses the outline sheet into his skin and pulls off the backing. He checks out his new design in the mirror, and feels something settling in him at the sight. “That’s perfect,” he smiles.
The tattoo itself takes less than an hour, which surprises him. He could swear Jane was slowing down time, or something. But at the end of it, he has a perfect recreation of the image from his dream, and the shading is so realistic he feels almost like he could reach into his skin and pluck it out.
“Thank you,” he says, meaning it with every ounce of his heart. When he shakes her hand goodbye, he gets a strange sense of deja vu, but it passes as quickly as it comes. Nonetheless, he makes sure to leave her a large tip when he pays at reception. Yes, he’s grateful and very impressed with her work, but also, she’s a little bit intimidating and that makes him nervous, which is always when he compulsively overpays. It’s a whole thing.
Over the next few weeks, the tattoo heals and becomes such a part of him he’s not sure how he ever felt whole, before. He rests his palm over the skin there instinctively, whenever he’s feeling lonely, or sad, and the warm comfort that washes over him is surely imagined but it feels as real as it does foreign, like he’s sharing the feelings with somebody else, someone he has never met but he’d sure like to, now.
—
Timeline Undetermined - Eliot
Eliot is in a forest again, hunting. But not some kind of Midwest hick hunting trip like his dad used to try to force him to go on, the one and only thing Eliot ever fought him on before that fateful day. That fight ended with his dad nursing a broken wrist and Eliot leaving home. That time, he definitely thought the thought.
In this dream, that seems to occur whenever he is feeling particularly aimless and lonely (something that has happened with increasing frequency as he nears graduation), he is using a bow and arrow, and is dressed in some kind of rough linen. It’s baggy, and fastened with twine, handwoven and handspun. He has never been able to smell things in his dreams, but if he could, he’s certain he would reek like a wild animal. He’s searching endlessly for something, and he knows it will give him what he needs, what he’s looking for.
But he doesn’t feel directionless or lonely at the moment. He got his acceptance letter today, to the graduate Theater program at the New School, and he had a real actual date with Derek, someone he didn’t even meet on Grindr or a club. Derek was wholesome, and yet not entirely boring. So unless this is some kind of residual stress unspooling, there’s no apparent reason for this dream.
He steps softly through the underbrush, and there, around the corner, he spots them — a hare, long and muscled, yet attired like a human from the Renaissance. A ruff around their neck and a red velvet coat. Did he pop a pill earlier in the evening and forget? It’s hard to keep track some days. Yes, he did have that lovely date, but that didn’t exactly preclude him hitting the club in search of a blowjob from a hot twink afterwards. What Derek didn’t know would hardly hurt him. And he needed it after the stressful day of maneuvering through sweltering August crowds in the city to make it to the restaurant that Derek insisted on, despite it being an awful tourist trap. So maybe Derek isn’t actually the gold star Eliot keeps telling himself he is. But he’s the best prospect Eliot’s had in a long while.
The rabbit is saying something, actual words in English, but it’s muffled so he can’t quite make it out. He steps softly closer, and has a strange urge to nock an arrow and shoot the poor thing, but before he can do so, the rabbit runs off. Eliot’s pursuit leads him out of the woods, where he comes up short at the precipice of a large canyon. Across it stretches a rope bridge formed of a thousand flowering vines, in glorious colors, and he’s struck with awe at its beauty. There’s also something familiar about the scene, which makes no sense, seeing as how he actually has no clue where he is. The hare is waiting for him on the other side, and now he understands by the magic of dream logic that it would be pointless to shoot the thing anyway, and he should just cross the bridge and the answer will be revealed.
But then he hears a voice behind him and he turns to see a boy gripping a book in one hand and a key in the other. He looks vaguely familiar. He peeks up shyly through a curtain of silky brown hair and holds up the key. “I think you’re looking for this,” he says and as Eliot reaches out and grips the thing in his hand, it starts to burn into his palm. He stares numbly as it sears a symbol into the flesh, a triangle circumscribed, with arcs curving off in embellishment. He doesn’t feel the pain of the burn, not in the dream, but he knows it hurts, and that despite the hurt he shouldn’t drop it, even as the bridge behind him grows until it stretches below his feet and keeps extending forward no matter how hard he tries to step off. The boy sits down, criss-cross applesauce, on the rocky bluff and starts to read, waiting for him. Eliot shouts for help, but the boy just looks up and smiles. He will still be there waiting when he finally makes it off the bridge, Eliot understands, and feels certainty wash over him at the thought. No matter what happens, the boy will still be there.
Light gradually penetrates his consciousness and he blinks. First, he’s aware of the warmth of the late-morning sun. Second, the fact that he had most likely missed class, but it hardly matters as he has an acceptance letter sitting over there on his work table. And last, the sensation of a horrid pain in his hand. It rises above the pain of his hangover, for which he has developed a fairly high tolerance over the years. He looks at his hand warily, imagining he will find that he has cut himself on some rusty fence stumbling back to his apartment. But he sees nothing there.
For days, the pain persists and seems to have almost a shape to it. Finally he takes a sharpie to his hand, trying to trace the lines of sensation. As the symbol becomes clear, he remembers the dream. The feeling of searching that always went on until he woke up, unfulfilled, and the way it changed on that particular night. The way it went sideways when a beautiful brown-haired boy sat down to wait for him, assuring him that he would always wait, no matter how long it took him to figure his shit out.
Eliot would like to claim that he forgets about it, in the days after he remembers but before the sharpie finally fades from his hand. But that would be a lie. He often catches himself running a thumb around the shapes, hands loosely clasped in his lap during lectures. No stranger to the undercurrent of magic in the world, he can’t help but wonder if there is something sinister happening in this instance. So after a couple weeks of this, he heads to the safe house to ask his coven leader.
“Amal,” he calls out as he buzzes through to the back of the store and strides into the warehouse. His voice echoes into the cavernous space, blending with the murmured castings of hedges practicing their latest finds.
“Eliot Waugh, it has been a while,” she greets him warmly. “What brings you by? We don’t have any new spells today, I’m sorry to say. But there are some new kids here who could use some guidance if you are planning to stay for a bit?”
Eliot has long since gotten all he could from the Hedges. He knows enough now to keep his magic under control, which brings him a degree of comfort he’s not sure how he ever lived without. He still returns to the safe house from time to time, mostly to maintain the connection. As a result he has become a sort of occasional assistant, or freelance mentor, when new kids come in sporting telekinetic powers that terrify them as much as they had him, once upon a time.
“Of course. But first, I wanted to ask you something. What do you make of this?” He holds out his palm, the sharpie dark from a refresh this morning. For whatever reason, he wasn’t ready to let it go. She cradles his palm and inspects it closely, but shakes her head.
“I haven’t seen it before,” she replies. “Where did you find it?”
“It was in a dream, actually. A few weeks ago. It was a very unusual one, for me. I don’t usually put much stock in dream magic, but this symbol was attached to a key, and the person who handed it to me in the dream looked so familiar. I just — I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Do you think it’s possible someone has some kind of psychic ability to enter my dreams? Some rival coven, perhaps?”
“I’m sure there are psychics who could do this, but I don’t know anyone in our circles who has figured out a spell of such magnitude. Even if they had, I can’t imagine why they would go to all the trouble just to bother you with a cryptic symbol. I think it’s probably just something you saw in the world that resonates with you on an aesthetic level, and your subconscious turned it into something more. That’s all.”
But the key haunts him, along with the boy attached. He finally comes back to the safe house and asks if he can get a tattoo. He’s ushered back past a makeshift screen to where Kim is busy inking a star on one of the new kids, who looks positively bursting with excitement.
He waits until Kim is finished, and then shows him the image of the key, which he has sketched out onto a piece of paper. “Can you give me this?”
Kim spares a cursory glance while cleaning his equipment. “Sure, but I actually need to run to an appointment now. Can we do it tomorrow? Say…around 3?”
“Perfect,” Eliot replies, feeling something loosen in his chest. He sleeps well that night and has no dreams.
The next day he returns to the hedge house at the agreed time but nobody is around so he sees himself into the back. Kim is nowhere to be found. He makes a full circle, baffled at the scene — he doesn’t think he has ever seen the safe house empty. He’s about to give up and leave when he hears some rustling on the other side of the screen and a cheerful British woman emerges into the workspace. “Hi there!” she chirps. “You must be Eliot. I’m Jane, and it is so good to meet you.”
“Uhh, okay…what happened to Kim? And the others?” A warning bell sounds in the back of his head, but he feels completely secure in this woman’s presence. Like she is supposed to be there. He isn’t sure he entirely trusts or likes that feeling.
“Oh, they just had to pop around to follow a lead on a whole packet of new spells. Highly difficult to obtain, required all hands on deck, I suppose. I’m just visiting the city, thought I’d check out the local coven while I was here.” And she rolls up her sleeve just enough so Eliot can make out the cluster of stars, which brings him some small comfort.
“Well, welcome to New York, then. I was supposed to get a tattoo from Kim today, but I guess I’ll just come back tomorrow. If you see him, it would be great if you could let him know.”
“Oh, goodness!” Jane exclaimed. “I happen to have quite a bit of experience with tattooing myself, I could fill in if you like?” And she turns her ankle to reveal a beautiful, intricate clock on the side of her lower leg. “Did this one myself, by way of credentials.”
“Wow, yeah, that’s — incredible. Sounds great, actually.”
He hands her the sketch and her face breaks into a huge grin. “Well, well, twice in one week, how about that,” she mumbles to herself, and Eliot just barely catches the words.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” he asks. “I didn’t quite hear it.”
She shakes her head, coming back to reality. All that is left of the grin is a small, mysterious half-smirk. “Have a seat, Eliot, I can definitely do this design no problem. Where would you like it?”
Now it’s Eliot’s turn to show his stars. He peels off his shirt, revealing a line of them curling from his bicep over his shoulder. He points to a gap between two stars on his left bicep. No reason to mar any other part of his body with the thing. But in response, she frowns.
“It seems important to you. Are you sure you want to hide it among all your hedge marks? What about something a little less covered?” Eliot thinks about it. She’s right, honestly, the more he thinks about it. This thing, whatever it is, deserves its own blank canvas. Always a fan of a good composition, he chooses his right side, just below his ribs, where it will balance the rest of his ink. She approves, and begins her work. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as Kim’s, so he supposes there is some high-end magic involved, a spell to lessen the pain from the needle that he has not learned. He makes a note to ask her more afterwards.
About an hour later, he has a shiny new tattoo. It’s incredible how well she has captured it, even from his rudimentary sketch and shoddy dream memory. Almost as if she actually knew the thing she was inking on his skin. Luckily, he does know the spell to protect the thing while it heals, and once the protection is in place, he brushes his fingers over it in wonder. The first tattoo he has allowed himself that wasn’t hard-won, that isn’t a reminder of his tenuous grip on sanity and control. One that represents a possibility for something else. Maybe that’s why the dream had changed — because he is finally getting on with his life, and he can escape from that weird endless hunt. When his fingers touch the tattoo, he picks up a vibration thrumming through them, like the thing is alive, or embroidered with a spell of some kind, besides just the protection spell.
“Did you put something in this?” he lifts his head to ask Jane, but she has disappeared.