👀 (if you have anything left! no pressure, but please sir I want some more)
Aw, just for you, Anon! :) Thank you!
Anyway, here is a bit from my Fake Dating Holiday AU that is full of Christmas warmth as you’ll see under the cut. The basic plot is: Season 1/No Beast Quentin and Eliot fake a relationship to spite Q’s terrible mom, except oops… they’re both already in love with each other.
I’m planning on repurposing it because the original title was Let Your Heart Be Light and well… the content wasn’t tonally consistent. I think it would work better outside of everyone’s fluff fests right now. ;)
Regardless, here’s ~500 words of Protective Eliot for your troubles.
You know what to do.
—
The festive good cheer didn’t last long and he shouldn’t have been surprised. Life was bullshit. So was Christmas.
But as Quentin dropped the last trash bag into the oversized bin and wiped his hands on his jeans, he actually was startled to hear yelling voices, loud enough to be heard through the heavy garage door.
Making his way back through the garland gilded hallway, Quentin stopped at a convenient, yellow-lit corner, tucked away from sight. He hid there expertly—his most common undertaking while at his mother’s house—and sighed to himself. He hoped Eliot hadn’t gotten stuck awkwardly between another one of his mom and stepmom’s overwrought intellectual debates. They always turned nasty and way too personal the second wine was introduced.
Quentin pulled out his phone and shot Eliot a quick text to say, Hey, make your escape now, booze awaits in the study when a jolt hit his spine. His brow furrowed as his brain arranged itself around the words he could hear streaming out of the kitchen, growing tenser and more cutting with each passing barb.
Fuck.
… It wasn’t Deb and Molly fighting.
“—and I will not be among the litany of people treating him with kid gloves,” Deb’s voice roared, spiteful as ever. “It doesn’t help him grow.”
“Wow, nail on the head,” Eliot’s voice laughed back, just as bitter. “That’s definitely Quentin’s problem. He’s been too coddled. Life’s been too kind to him, everything comes too easily.”
“That is not what I said,” Deb scoffed, heel clicking sternly on the tile floor. “Don’t misconstrue—“
“Your son doesn’t break,” Eliot said quietly, dangerously. “He mends.”
“My goodness, how sentimental,” Deb simpered out. Then she sneered. “That’s exactly the kind of meaningless nonsense those good-for-nothing therapists would tell him, instead of getting him to buck the hell up and—”
Quentin swallowed a thousand knives, hands and feet jumping with hot pins-and-needles. Despite his better judgment, he peeked his head around a weirdly placed wreath, nose filled with pine needles. Along the kitchen island, Eliot stood tall with his arms crossed, still as a statue. But his eyes burned into Deb, who was pacing back and forth with her hands on her hips.
“Do you have any idea how remarkable Quentin is?” Eliot said, slowly tilting his head. “Do you know how good he is? Do you even give a shit?”
“He’s my son,” Deb snapped back, without further context. That made Eliot laugh, tongue sliding across his front teeth.
“I told him we should leave. That if he said the word, we’d be gone,” he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. It was a shock that no flames burst out. “But he wouldn’t do that, even after all of your sniping and all the ways you obviously don’t know what a fucking marvel he is—your wonderful Quentin—who cares about things so goddamn much and who always looks for the best in others, even when he never sees it in himself.”
Quentin’s chest clenched tight and his fingers shook, whole body lighting up with way too much hope, hope, hope. But in contrast, Deb was unmoved. She let out a shrieking banshee laugh and stormed right up to Eliot, tilting her red face up at his.
“Oh, you think you know my son better than me?” She lifted her lip into a sneer. “Because you’ve been sleeping with him for a few months? Grow up.”
Eliot held onto the counter with both hands, shoulders haunching as he stared Deb down, curls falling across his forehead.
“No,” he said softly, with fervent eyes. “I know your son because I was offered that privilege and I took it. Have you?”
