this is like destroying me to contemplate. because like. he totally had a speech, and the purpose of the speech was totally to like, convince eliot that he could do this and be normal about it. like what did not, at any point, figure into his calculations and plans was any variant of the phrase “i want to sleep with you.” no. that’s not how quentin does. (evidence: throne room season, entirety of season one.) like, obviously quentin wants to sleep with eliot, who wouldn’t want to sleep with eliot, this is known and not worth saying because it’s very embarrassing to desire things, and obviously eliot knows that everyone wants to sleep with him (alexa play gold rush by taylor swift). so. okay. we don’t need to dwell on that UNSEEMLY MATTER.
instead, we just need to convince eliot that it would be a good idea. now, why would eliot not think it’s a good idea? (1) he thinks quentin will be bad at sex. unfortunate, but if this is the case quentin can’t really do anything about it. (2) he doesn’t want to sleep with quentin. likely, but they are stuck together for somewhere between another 12 hours and eternity, and who the fuck else is eliot gonna fuck? the badgers??? eliot is smart enough to understand this, and horny enough to mind, so we don’t need to dwell on that, but we should probably bring it up, just to like, plant the connection in his mind. as a silver lining, being stuck together for maybe together might act as a counterweight on issue (1), since, again, who that is better at sex is eliot going to sleep with? no one. plus, quentin is like, willing to learn. he’s actually demonstrated that provably in the past. should he mention that? no, that would be weird. it would be weird to say “i might be bad at sex, but i’ll do whatever you tell me.” that would make hitting on your best friend that you’re marooned out of time with kind of awkward.
which brings us to reason (3) eliot might not be into it, which is: What If It Makes Things Weird? like, they annoy each other and bicker and are maybe slowly going insane, but things are not weird between them, and that’s great, because quentin’s baseline of weirdness with most representative of the human race is pretty fucking high, so it’s lucky that if he had to get locked in the past with someone, it would be one of like 2 people on the planet he’s legitimately not Weird around, and arguably the only one he’s never been Weird around. actually it’s kind of nice, in ways. not as nice as it would be not to be here, but like. it’s pleasant to just sit and companionably work with someone who knows him really well and likes him anyway. it’s nice when they wrap up for the day and eat dinner and eliot makes him laugh or listens to him complain and it’s also nice when they don’t have anything to say because they’ve been next to each other for 72 hours straight and it’s still not weird. it’s just kind of warm and peaceful. like sitting in the sunshine. sometimes they can’t take another day of mosaic-ing and they go to the nearby stream to swim and it’s like really fun actually even though they’re just taking their same personalities and selves that they should be so bored of by now into a slightly different and wetter location, and like after the third time they did this they didn’t really have it in them to worry much about the nudity thing at the sacrifice of hanging around in wet underwear anymore, which was a little weird at first, for quentin, but eliot was so normal that that wasn’t weird either, and quentin actually really liked that. that they could just like — be bodies, around each other, and be — comfortable. he’s like maybe never totally had that with another person, including any of the (multiple, thank you, hypothetical eliot in his brain) people he has had actual sex with. it’s really nice.
but like, OBVIOUSLY none of that is RELEVANT to the ISSUE AT HAND, which is that quentin wants to have some normal, not-weird sex with his friend. and that’s, like. has he ever done that? no. but he knows he can! he feels like at this point, almost a year in, they’ve like literally weirdness-proofed themselves, which he’s, like, actually really profoundly grateful in a way that might be weird if he thought about it too long, but that’s okay. they’ve been here almost a year. his head is going to odd places. which is one of the reasons he should have sex soon. (should he say that to eliot? argue that like, quentin is a crazy person and also as they both know super annoying but he will definitely be 50% less of both of those things if he starts getting laid, so that would be a big boon to eliot’s, like, workplace satisfaction and quality of life? no, that seems a little desperate.) so, he’s totally sure that this is a great plan that addresses many problems for both of them with like zero downside, because he’s not going to make it weird. (and obviously eliot’s not going to make it weird, because — why would it be weird for eliot? eliot’s had sex with like a million people in his life, because he’s just scientifically the hottest person to ever live. what’s one more added to the list?) he just needs to convince eliot of this totally airtight logic.
so i feel like, that’s what the speech is focused on. quentin is trying to explain that YES he wants to have sex with eliot (duh), and also YES he and eliot SHOULD have sex (less intuitive, which is why he needs the speech), but NO, he’s not going to be weird about it. because obviously eliot will assume quentin would make it weird, right? quentin can’t blame him; he has that vibe. and historically, like, yeah. he has made it weird. but historically he’s had sex with people he either barely knew at all or else was in love with, which is like basically torture, like, how does anyone ever fall in love and not make it weird when it’s this constant nightmare of anxiety and inadequacy as you wait out the timeline on the timebomb of your personality flaws blowing up your first ever shot at happiness? he doesn’t feel anything like that about eliot, thank god. when he thinks about eliot he just thinks about nice chill stuff like laughing and hanging out and how sometimes when they’re falling asleep eliot will start telling him some anecdote from his days of hedonism but he’s so careful with the telling that it almost feels like a bedtime story. and like quentin could say that to eliot, right? he could say, like, “i think we should sleep together and it would be fine because even though i want to strangle you like nine times a week at the core of it you’re just this really constantly positive presence in my life and i can’t imagine anyone i’d be better suited to working on this stupid puzzle with than you and sometimes we’re having so much fun that i forget to mind the fact that our lives are effectively over and sometimes i get sad about that but you’re really nice about it and that’s cool too.” but that doesn’t really feel like it would make it less weird, actually. actually in his head when he says that, it definitely sounds weird, even though he doesn’t mean it in like, a weird way. it’s just, like. eliot. you know? eliot’s great.
given these constraints, quentin’s going to keep it short and efficient and to the point. he’s not gonna do his thing he does when he gets nervous where he just physically cannot stop talking, because then eliot will think he’s nervous, and that will make eliot think quentin’s going to make it weird, but like quentin’s not nervous about that, he’s just hypothetically a little nervous that if he brings this up it might impact their friendship, which would be like one of the most devastating things to ever happen to him probably, but that’s normal, considering that now his life is such that eliot is his only friend. he’s just going to say that the two of them should consider hooking up, you know, for fun, because let’s face it, both of them want to get laid, and both of them are sick of politely finding excuses to leave the area so the other one can get some privacy to jerk off, and it would just be more convenient if they took care of their bodily needs together, and like, maybe kind of fun too (should he say that? maybe he shouldn’t say that. maybe eliot will think that’s weird, or like, trying too hard, or whatever), and like, yeah, on paper, this situation seems like the kind of thing that could “get” “complicated,” but like — come on, el. (he should try to laugh here, but like, real casually). it’s me! q! it’s us! if things haven’t gotten weird by now, a couple handjobs between friends aren’t going to ruin it. (and blow jobs. he’d like that. he’d like to suck a dick, and get his dick sucked. should he say that? eliot likes blow jobs, right? who the fuck doesn’t like blow jobs? maybe he should say it to like, sweeten the pot. no, that’s like, desperate. chill out, coldwater. if you blow you blow don’t make a thing about it.) no pressure, obviously. he should add that, not like eliot will feel pressured, but like — he might worry about hurting quentin’s feelings, so quentin should make sure to be really clear up front that he doesn’t have any feelings here to hurt. no pressure, if you don’t want to that’s cool, i just figured — yeah, i think so — why the fuck not?
and then it’s Time and he’s drunk enough to feel brave but sober enough to know what he’s doing and he’s trying to remember this speech he had but there are too many words and he can’t remember if he decided to leave in the part about blow jobs or not and his brain is spinning with things like I WANNA SUCK ELIOT’S DICK and REMEMBER WHEN WE WENT SWIMMING AND WATCHED THE SUN GO DOWN? I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE TILL LATER THAT THAT WAS THE MOST PEACEFUL I’D EVER FELT IN MY ENTIRE LIFE and YOU HAVE TO DO IT THAT WAS THE PLAN IF YOU DON’T DO IT NOW YOU’LL CHICKEN OUT FOREVER AND THEN YOU’LL NEVER GET LAID AGAIN and he just fucking goes for it and, shit, he might have made it weird, but, well — it’s done. it’s eliot’s turn to make the call.
(then they kiss for real, and then they fuck, and then they fuck again, and i’m not sure exactly when in that timeline quentin realizes that oh, shit, i was being weird about it all along, but, man, that one’s gotta hurt.)
