Chapter Text
Eliot walked down the stairs of the Physical Cottage, at least as his mind remembered it. This Physical Cottage actually being his Happy Place; a term Charlton had coined, and Eliot allowed himself to continue calling it as such. This was apparently Eliot’s comfort place. Which made sense in retrospect. Brakebills was filled with simpler times. Martin seemed like a much larger problem than he was at the time. Not that he wasn’t a problem, he was, just now...it feels like it was so small compared to what they were currently dealing with. This Gods Play Thing having control of his body and doing lord-knows-what with it.
Eliot held onto the newel of the staircase as he hopped off the last few steps like he would as a kid. No one cared how Eliot appeared here — they were all imaginings of people built from Eliot’s memories. Margo still took a sharp intake of breath and nearly laughed, “you’re spry today. What’s up?”
“I," Eliot started, almost like an announcement, "am going to try to speak to you today. Obviously not you-you, the Real You. I can only assume she needs me, or at the very least misses me. I need her to know that I’m in here.” Eliot responded to her as he lead her gaze to the chalkboard he had imagined into the room. He flipped it to the list of his regrets. “Look, if Logan Kinnear and bullying my…” Eliot caught himself and looked at her nervously, “ex-best friend didn’t do the trick then we have to break down the nitty-gritty shit I guess.”
Margo’s eyes did narrow at the mention of Taylor, “it’s in the past, also you and I both know I could step on you in ways you wouldn’t enjoy if you tried.” She grinned at him as she stood beside him at the chalkboard.
Eliot chuckled and wrapped his arm around her waist. "Honestly Thank God for you, Charlton was such a bore with this whole thing." Margo truly was Eliot’s favorite person and one that he trusted with his entirety. She may be one of the physically smallest people he knew but that was the only thing small about her.
Margo was looking at the chalkboard but turned back to him at that statement. "Plus, I know you way better.” She almost sounded offended, she probably was. “I don't know why you trusted him to help you, hon." She gave him a sympathetic look as she fixed his waistcoat from slipping up after his parkour move from the staircase.
"I guess — this whole Thing," he gestured all around them. The Physical Cottage, him not actually controlling his body, just blind hedonism in his own mind, apparently. He had no control of anything besides this. Charlton was something new, a chance to escape. To get to himself, out There. To make contact with anyone. Hopefully one of his friends, or Henry, or someone, anyone. "It was overwhelming me and he felt the most…real I guess. I'm not sure." Eliot frowned. He really wasn't sure why he had trusted him. The last time he had actually seen him in real life —
"I mean you shot him, El. Plus weren't the only things the monster could feed on also locked away by the Gods? If I were you, I'd get him out of me as quick as I could." Margo was harsh, as always. But she did have a point. She however was the one who had the idea to shoot it in the first place, he just...bit the bullet in that case. It was to save Quentin, he wanted to be the one to do it. He had to be the one to do it, he already knew how to handle a gun, John wouldn't have had it any other way in their household...
"Fair," Eliot sighed. "But the only way I'm going to be able to do that is if I talk to you…" He turned his attention back to the chalkboard. "Which memory do you think will do that?"
Margo looked at the chalkboard too. She hummed softly, and pressed her head against his side. "Maybe the one you told me in the trials?" She asked a manicured nail pointing out the words ‘Dads heart attack.’ Now Eliot wished he hadn’t even humored writing that on the chalkboard.
"Please, anything else —" Eliot couldn’t even look at the chalkboard now, and took a few steps away from it and Margo.
"He said it was your most traumatic memory, right?" Margo turned to him and took his wrist in her hand.
"Goddammit, Margo."
"Look, I'm just saying…it's worth a try." Margo brought his hand up with hers to hold it rather than his wrist.
Eliot sighed heavily. "Can you please come with me, for moral support?"
"Of course."
Eliot led the way to the front door of the cottage, “I guess you do get to meet dear old dad after all.”
Margo grinned at that, “I’ll try not to kill him, but I make no promises.” She hummed as she opened the door and followed him through it.
The memory was hot and sticky with that Midwestern Summer humidity. The sounds of cicadas filled the background noise around the two of them as they exited what appeared to be a rooftop door. Eliot and Margo did not fit in one bit, and honestly even though it was a memory and they technically were not there Eliot still opted to imagine them in some different clothes. He still had to build on remembrances so it ended up for him being his white polo shirt with red and blue trim, with his matching red, white, and blue gingham shorts, and red, white, and blue striped socks, his grey loafers he wore pretty often for his cooler toned outfits. Margo was in her true blue peplum top and very graphic fitted skirt with blues, yellows, blacks, pinks and whites splattered all over it. She had a chunky white bracelet, and chunky pink necklace on, she was in a pair of yellow pumps. They both color-coordinated so well.
Margo laughed at the change of clothes, “could you do that the whole time? Or is that new?”
“New, I think.” Eliot did one of his breathy laughs when something took him aback. All he did was think of them really needing more suitable clothes. He hadn’t expected them to actually change. He was thankful for it though.
Then they heard it, the beginnings of this memory. A younger Eliot, shorter head of curls and a very loose fitting t-shirt and jeans, very unlike his current self, but most clothes at this point made him feel dysphoric about his chest. He was sitting in one of those white plastic lawn chairs you saw at every barbecue function in the Midwest. Literally every single one, unless they were that dark forest green. He had a wad of tissues pressed up against his nose. “Fuck, Taylor, why would he fu— ”
“Stop talking, El. It’s not helping.” Taylor was on his knees and digging around a first aid kit. Taylor was Eliot’s best friend in Indiana. He was the only other out gay kid, and he had a very loving family that Eliot could escape to when things with his family got bad. Like tonight.
Though in Whiteland Indiana...there were reasons Taylor was bullied more than Eliot and being biracial was the kicker. Eliot’s father would never warm up to Taylor or his mother and would call them shit to Eliot’s face to try to get a rise out of him, and he would. Like tonight.
“Fuck, did he really beat you up that bad, El?” Margo asked, semi-rhetorically. Mostly she just sounded mortified.
Present Eliot was locked in on the memory and barely registered Margo’s words. “Uh, yeah...often.”
Younger Eliot groaned and squirmed in the lawn chair. “Please, I can’t go to the doctor again. Mom can’t afford to on top of —”
“Eliot.” Taylor said, and looked up at him. “I know. I’ll fix this.” He went back to the first aid kit and plucked out a few specific things. “Plus, you could help too, if you thought about it hard enough. Mr. Magic.” He smiled as he stood up and moved to the front of Younger Eliot.
Younger Eliot almost laughed, and pulled the wad of tissues away from his face. It was more than likely a broken nose, his lip had a blister on the right side, and he had a black eye too. Taylor practically had to straddle Eliot in the chair to get a good angle at his face, "sorry." He mumbled as he tried not to put too much weight on Eliot, and also not be too close to his chest. “He really did a number on you this time.” Taylor breathed as he began his work on Eliot’s eyebrow. “Seriously, any magic you could spare would help.”
“I really think that was a fluke — Just a thought that came to reality by coincidence. I don’t think I’m actually —"
“Yeah and the bus driver who reported being in park, really agrees with that, Eliot. Plus the other things. The glasses, coming out of nowhere, the rake right in your dad's path…”
“Okay, okay, but who says I can heal with that. All the shit you just listed…”
“Was to hurt people who deserved it. You, Eliot Waugh, deserve to be healed. I need you to believe that.” Taylor held the good side of Younger Eliot’s face in one hand. The other was putting butterfly closures on his eyebrow.
Younger Eliot sighed, “fiiiiiine.” He closed his eyes and twisted both of his wrists around.
“Oh,” Present Eliot watched his younger self do what he now recognized to be a Popper 75, followed by something else, a definite homebrew, Younger Eliot didn’t know any proper magic. It was just stuff that he ‘made up’ and did the guesswork of but this was almost an actual spell he did.
And it did work, it made Younger Eliot scream, the feeling of his nose twisting back into place and the cartilage and bone stitching itself back together still haunted Eliot to this day. It was still heavily bruised, and didn’t look very pretty, but it was a lot better than it was before.
Younger Eliot laughed, in that same, taken aback and breathy way and he smiled up at Taylor, and Taylor smiled back at him. Taylor hesitated, looking down at Eliot in that fond way. Present Eliot knew exactly why now, but back then he just thought it was because he was amazed that Eliot actually did have magic. Not that they were both pining after each other that entire time.
Taylor went back to now dabbing Eliot’s lip with an alcohol doused cotton ball. “I knew you could do it!” He smiled and busied himself with fixing Eliot up as best as he could manage.
Younger Eliot hummed, keeping himself quiet as Taylor was focusing on his lips. He nearly wanted to squirm out of that chair but he needed to be fixed up.
“You guys really were clueless, huh?” Margo smiled at Eliot.
“Yeah, we were.” Eliot smiled sadly at the two of them. If only they hadn’t been. But not here. Not in Indiana. Things couldn’t have gone well here. Not even a little bit. It was best that nothing did happen between them really. It was best that way.
Suddenly, A loud noise erupted from underneath Younger Eliot. It was his phone's ringtone which was Taylor Swift’s Picture To Burn, and both Taylor and he jumped. Younger Eliot stood up after Taylor dislodged himself from his lap. Eliot pulled a Razr from his back pocket and flipped it open. “Yeah, mom?”
At least in this version of the memory Eliot didn’t have to hear her. He could, a little bit, with how loud her sobbing was, but not directly into his ear this time. Margo held his hand. His mom was the only other person left in Indiana besides Taylor that Eliot really had a soft spot for. It was his mom after all. She was the only parent that even tried, at all. Even if it only ended badly for both of them.
Taylor watched concerned, and Younger Eliot looked upset too. “Yeah. Yeah. I can be there.” Younger Eliot sighed into the phone. “Love you too,” he said as he closed the phone and held it in his hand for a moment before sliding it back into his pocket.
Eliot remembered wanting to chuck the damn thing off the roof. Forget that he ever got that call in the first place. He just wanted to stay with Taylor.
“What’s wrong?” Taylor asked Younger Eliot.
“It’s dad.” He frowned, “apparently. He…” Younger Eliot stuttered and had to take a deep breath and hold his hand up to his mouth. “He had a heart attack after I left.”
“What the…” Taylor frowned as he took a few steps towards Eliot.
“I really just,” Younger Eliot moved his hands in that trying to think way, but he gave up and laughed, full on laughed. “Wow. So you beat up your son, who you refuse to call your son, and then decide to have a heart attack because he leaves your abuse? Fuck him! Just fuck him! I don’t give a shit!”
Margo’s hand tightened its grasp of Eliot’s. She leaned against him, providing him some touch comfort. Because if she knew anything, it was Eliot’s love language. He needed touch in these moments.
Taylor just listened to Younger Eliot as he paced around the rooftop and yelled at the sky, or God, or whatever soul he was trying to reach. It was mostly just cussing and yelling about how shitty of a father he was.
“I don’t give a shit!” Younger Eliot repeated, not as strongly this time. Now he was crying. “I don’t give a shit.” He repeated again, the sobs starting to take him over as he crumpled to his knees.
Taylor walked over as calmly as he could and wrapped his arms around Younger Eliot.
“I don’t give a shit.” It was like a mantra Younger Eliot didn’t want to let go of. He kept repeating it anytime that he could between his tears. "I can't give a shit." It turned into after a while.
“Eliot,” Taylor whispered into his hairline. “Eliot, you have to stop.”
"No!" Younger Eliot screamed. "Fuck him! I can't feel sad over this!" Younger Eliot screamed, and tried to wrestle out of Taylor's grip.
"Eliot." Taylor was stern in his grip but he didn't want to cause anymore pain so Eliot was able to get free. He stood up, looking like some wild animal. Eyes wide, and ready to fight or fly, he was breathing heavy and his curly hair fell into his eyes. He was manic and the adrenaline was practically the only thing he could feel at the moment.
"Look, uh…" Younger Eliot tried to calm down enough to talk evenly, but it wasn't quite working out for him. "Thanks for fixing me up. I gotta go." He didn't give Taylor a chance to respond before he ran through the door they had come through earlier in the memory.
Taylor just sighed and sat down on the floor of the rooftop.
Present Eliot finally breathed after holding it in the whole time his younger self was screaming. "I think a field trip is required for this memory. Two-parter, you know."
Eliot patted Margo's hand which had a vice-like grip on his hand, and made the way to the same door his younger self just ran through.
"We don't have to, if —"
"Margo, if it takes me to you or Quentin, I don't care. It's already happened. I lived through it once, I can watch it again." Eliot opened the door and stepped through.