Eliot's eyebrows climbed. "She's not? Or she's just not yet? I thought you wanted her to be." It would be ... less dangerous if she were, because Eliot was drawn to Q like a magnet, and a girlfriend would be a solid deterrent. Without that, Eliot's odds of doing something stupid and drunken at some point went up exponentionally.

Not that he was guaranteed that he wouldn't do it even if Quentin had been dating Alice, but he was less likely.

Eliot nodded though, letting Quentin off the hook. He'd been the one to come down and invade Q's quiet time, after all. He probably shouldn't keep pressing him to talk, even if Eliot wanted to keep him talking and replace everything in his brain with the sound of Q's voice and the shape of his lips as he talked. "Sure, you can pick. Or I can take myself off back to bed and actually give you the space you were looking for, if you'd rather keep your quiet time quiet." Eliot in no way wanted to go back to sleep, but he could always slip out and go for a walk or something. Prowling the grounds at night was not unfamiliar to him.