OK but now that you're caught up: Eliot's little pause when he goes in to kiss memory!Q, just before actually kissing him
This has been fucking me up consistently since I watched the episode lmao like... it’s so subtle???? But at the same time it is SO MUCH
And yeah, it’s not technically Quentin in the flesh, but Eliot knows those lips well enough to remember how they felt exactly, and this is a moment he intends on savoring. It’s so tender and so familiar and tinged with so much gentle, aching regret that I almost feel like we shouldn’t even be allowed to see this. It’s too intimate. Too personal. Too deep. This is Eliot doing exactly what he knew he should have done in that moment and then didn’t and was so filled with regret he literally had to suppress the memory.
And while we’re here can we also cry about
how much he lingers? God Eliot Waugh is just... so fucking in love with Quentin Coldwater it breaks my heart. I understand what it is to love and want someone that terribly, and how breaking yourself away from them emotionally is like a death, and I understand why he would just have to forget his rejection of Q ever happened. But I cannot even begin to understand how that must feel after having just spent fifty years with that person, every day. Every night in their bed, every morning waking up together. Raising their son and watching him walk away. To know that they were the last sight your eyes saw before they closed forever when your old body could no longer sustain your life...
And after seeing this, you know that he meant what he said. If he ever gets out of there, he’s going to make it right.
