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Exhibit A.
Less than a week after Quentin and Alice return from Brakebills South, Eliot watches Quentin take some random psychic girl up to his room.
"The fuck?" he murmurs from his vantage point at the bar cart, as Quentin grabs the psychic girl's hand and smiles sheepishly at her over his shoulder.
"Who's fucking?" Margo asks. Eliot jumps, knocking over the caipirinha he'd been mixing, the glass clattering noisily on the cart. He barely even processes the mess he's made, still staring at the staircase, where Quentin and his companion have just disappeared. "Hellooooo, earth to Eliot."
Eliot blinks and finally turns his attention to Margo, who's standing next to the cart and fixing him with her third-most judgmental expression. "Uh. Quentin is fucking, it appears."
"Christ on a flaming unicycle, are he and Alice still going at it? He must be a real freak in the sack, because she could definitely—"
"Not Alice," Eliot interrupts. Why does he feel so bothered by this? He takes out a cloth and starts wiping down the bar, even though cleaning it up with magic would be much faster. "Quentin just took some rando upstairs."
"Hmm." Margo crosses her arms over her chest and turns her gaze to the staircase, as though she's considering following Quentin to either eavesdrop or simply demand the sordid details. "I thought you said he was with Alice."
That's what Eliot had assumed, when Quentin and Alice had returned from Brakebills South with those guilty expressions on their faces. They'd definitely fucked — everyone fucks someone at South — and Eliot had extrapolated from there. Neither Quentin nor Alice had seemed the casual hook-up type, but clearly— "I guess I was wrong."
"So what's got your thong crammed up your butt?"
"My thong is not—" Eliot starts, then stops when he sees that Margo has upgraded to her second-most judgmental expression. Her eyes flicker down to Eliot's hand, which he realizes has been vigorously scrubbing the same three inch square of the bar for the past minute. "I'm just surprised, is all."
"What's surprising? The fact that our high-strung super nerd actually has game, or the fact that he's using said game to hook up with someone who isn't you?"
Eliot feels a twinge of something in his chest, which he emphatically ignores. "That ship has sailed, Bambi, as you well know." He glances across the room to where Mike McCormick is sitting, chatting with a group of nature students and being his usual gorgeous, charming self. The last thing Eliot had expected when he'd gone to Encanto Oculto with Margo was to come back with a boyfriend, but he'd found himself endeared to Mike since the moment they met at the opening orgy. It was something about the expression that had been on his face, wide-eyed and overwhelmed, like he'd somehow ended up in Ibiza completely by accident, which had made Eliot want to immediately sweep him under his wing. Eliot wasn't exactly convinced about their long-term compatibility, and they'd mutually decided to not adhere to any sort of exclusivity, but being in a relationship was a comforting distraction from the other minor inconveniences in Eliot's life at the moment. "Besides," he adds, "you've met Quentin. The only game that boy has is Settlers of Catan."
"Yeah, and he kicked everyone's ass when he finally convinced us all to play."
Luckily, Eliot hadn't started mixing a replacement drink, because he would've spilled that one too. "When the fuck was this?"
"Easy, tiger. It was the Sunday afternoon right before the firsties left for South. I don't know where the fuck you were, but you were high as a kite at the party the night before and left with some pastel-haired twink I'd never seen in my life, so I'm assuming you were off balls-deep somewhere. Probably for the best. Q's a surprisingly saucy bitch when it comes to board games."
Eliot tries to picture Quentin being a saucy bitch about anything, and— well, yeah, he can picture it, actually. He's probably a real rules lawyer, he thinks fondly. He will not be confirming this suspicion with Margo, as he would then have to admit that he knows what a rules lawyer is. "Well, I'm sorry I missed it," he says, with what is probably excessive nonchalance.
"Are you? Tell me the name of the guy you were fucking while we were literally prying the Longest Road card out of Quentin's clenched fist."
"Bambi, please, I'm a known slut. You can't expect me to—"
"Uh-huh. I bet you don't remember because you were calling him Quentin in your head."
"Don't be crass. I'm very respectful to all my sexual partners." The truth is that Eliot doesn't remember this guy at all, so unfortunately what his mind is conjuring as a replacement is a distinctly Quentin-shaped man with pink hair, which doesn't bode well for the reality of the situation. "Anyway, we're not talking about me. We're talking about Quentin potentially boning a psychic."
Margo smirks, her gaze cutting from the stairway to Mike McCormick and back to Eliot almost faster than he can track it. "Which you clearly have no feelings about. Because that ship has sailed."
"I have a casual friendly interest. As Quentin's friend. We are friends and I am therefore interested on those grounds only."
"Riiiiight. Listen, hot stuff, I'm gonna go hunt down the person who's gonna be screaming my name in thirty minutes. Can't let Quentin Coldwater outpace me on the casual party hookup front. Why don't you go cuddle up to your paramour and let him kiss your poor, sad dick all better?"
"My dick is not sad," Eliot insists to Margo's retreating back. "I have a healthy balance of chemicals in my dick, thank you very much."
"Whatever you say," Margo calls back, in the tone of voice that means I See Directly Through Your Lies, Eliot Waugh, But Am Choosing To Ignore Them Because Continuing To Engage With Your Bullshit Will Only Delay My Own Sexual Encounter. He can just barely see the accompanying dismissive wave of her hand before she disappears into the crowd.
(Eliot's dick is just fine, if Mike's glowing review is anything to go by.)
Exhibit B.
Two days later, while Eliot is hosting a casual physical kids' brunch, he turns to refill Quentin's mimosa and realizes that Quentin is gone.
Alice is sitting in the chair next to the one that Quentin has recently left vacant, primly reading a book while she sips sparkling water through a straw. "When did Quentin leave?" he asks her. He doesn't sound even a little bit disappointed, he thinks. Definitely not desperate.
"Mmm, five minutes ago, maybe? He'd been talking to someone for a while and I think they decided to go up to Quentin's room."
That can't possibly mean what Eliot thinks it means. Sure, he'd confirmed through the grapevine that Quentin had, in fact, left the party two days ago to get up close and personal with a psychic girl. And sure, Eliot has left brunch parties before to get in someone's pants. But he can't picture Quentin as the type of person who would want to bone down after frittatas and fruit salad. "And who's managed to seduce our little nerd this time? No offense."
"None taken." Alice has been a little less tightly-wound since the firsties returned from South, which Eliot had chalked up to her finally getting laid, but he's still surprised by the spark of amusement in her eyes when she says, "I think his name was Isaac?"
It takes Eliot a moment to process this. His brain feels syrup-slow. "Isaac Verdansky? The lightning guy?" Eliot is ninety-five percent sure he's fucked Isaac Verdansky the lightning guy.
"Astrapomancer," Alice corrects. "We've chatted a few times about the similarities between manipulating light and electricity. It's fairly analogous on a basic level, though Isaac's methodology is a little unorthodox."
"Uh-huh," Eliot says. He's remembering now: Isaac's skin produced static shocks when he got turned on, which had made for a very entertaining night. "So Quentin is, what, asking for help with his homework?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," says Margo, clear on the other side of the table, as though anyone had asked for her opinion.
"They seemed to really hit it off." Alice's attention is back on her book. The temperature in the room seems to be rising very quickly. "I wasn't really listening, but Isaac was laughing a lot. Quentin was being really handsy. It was egregious."
Quentin? Handsy? Why hasn't Quentin ever been handsy with Eliot? What has Eliot done to deserve this? "Ah, well," Eliot says as he begins his retreat to the kitchen, "it's a shame he's missing dessert."
Eliot's about to open the freezer door and stick his head inside — why is it so fucking hot in here? — when a small hand grabs his arm and spins him around. "What's for dessert?" Margo asks, smiling sweetly up at him.
"You know there's no dessert," Eliot whispers. He'd intended for this party to be an afternoon-long affair, with charcuterie and wine on the patio when the guests started getting peckish again. "What is Quentin doing with Isaac?"
"Nothing too different from what he did with the psychic girl or Alice, I'm guessing. Are you having a secondhand gay panic right now?"
"No," says Eliot, who definitely is.
Margo reaches up to gently pat Eliot's cheek. Her hand feels cool on his skin. Eliot loves having a cryomancer as a platonic life partner. "Not gonna say I told you so."
"You literally did. You said the exact words. Prefacing it with 'not gonna say' doesn't make you unsay it."
"Caught me," Margo laughs. "Why don't you conjure up some cupcakes and I'll cryomance you some ice cream?"
(The cupcakes and ice cream turn out delicious, and Eliot absolutely does not sulk into them.)
Exhibit C.
The third time it happens, Eliot sees the whole thing, though he doesn't quite realize what's happening at first.
The problem, really, is that Quentin is talking to two people at the same time, which is practically unheard of for him. In Eliot's experience, Quentin has two modes of semi-comfort: one on one, or a group of four or more. Even just talking to Eliot and Margo together makes Quentin twitchy, like he can't quite decide how to act when there's exactly two people to attempt to please. But tonight, at what Eliot had billed as a study group but was actually a front for a mid-week party, Quentin is casually perched on the arm of the couch while he chats with a cute second-year girl with frizzy hair sitting on said couch and a scruffy first-year boy leaning his elbows on the back of said couch. If someone had asked Eliot last week to guess what was happening in this little scene, he would've assumed that the scruffy boy was successfully hitting on the frizzy girl while Quentin lamented his lot in life, but now Eliot has no idea what to think. All three of them look equally invested in the conversation, which doesn't remotely assist in Eliot's deductive reasoning.
"Damn, Coldwater's really cutting a swathe, huh?" Kady says conversationally as she sidles up to the bar cart, Penny following behind her like the obedient, pussy-whipped puppy he is.
"Can I help you with something?" Eliot shoots back, only aware of how petulant he sounds after it's already come out of his mouth. He needs to stop getting distracted by Quentin's fresh catches and focus on being a proper host.
Kady, bless her, is impervious to Eliot's bad mood. "Two tequila sours. With the good tequila this time, not the swill you pawn off on the masses."
Eliot would be annoyed that she's calling him out, but he's too impressed that she actually noticed. He zones out of the conversation as he mixes the requested drinks, his gaze drifting back to Quentin, who — god fucking dammit, Alice, it's her fault that he's even looking — has his hand resting casually on the frizzy girl's upper arm.
"You a betting man, Waugh?" Kady asks, nudging his shoulder to get his attention.
Eliot attempts to guess what this question could possibly be in reference to, and immediately gives up. "Depends. What're we betting on?"
Penny waves his glass — did Eliot hand that to him? whatever, it doesn't matter — in the direction of Quentin and his two new best friends. "Who Coldwater's gonna take to bed tonight."
"That's a little invasive," Eliot says.
"Bitch, please," scoffs Kady. "Like you and Margo aren't the joint Gossip Girls of Brakebills."
"Since when do you care?"
"Since when don't you care?"
"Stop fighting, children," Margo demands, gliding up to the bar cart and ingratiating herself under Eliot's arm. "I heard we're betting on who Coldwater's gonna fuck."
"Fine," Eliot says, closing his eyes and letting out a long-suffering breath. "It's all in good fun, anyhow. Just because Quentin takes someone upstairs doesn't mean he's going to sleep with them."
"Ah, but see," says Kady, leaning on the bar conspiratorially and grinning over the edge of her glass, "that's where you're wrong, Waugh. We've got a psychic on our side."
Abso-fucking-lutely not. "That is invasive."
"Ugh, god, I'm not going to eavesdrop on Coldwater while he gets his dick wet." The disgusted face that Penny pulls is truly a work of art, though Eliot is too preoccupied to properly appreciate it. "I only agreed to read their thoughts while they're downstairs, and only because I'm stuck listening to them whether I like it or not."
"How sad," Margo says, reaching for the good tequila and pouring it straight into her half-drunk Manhattan. Eliot wrinkles his nose at the flavor crime she's committed. "Quentin's wards are still patchy?"
"Nah, he's been airtight ever since I gave him shit about it. Those two he's talking to, though? Couldn't tune them out if I tried. People get so lazy about mental wards when they're horny."
"I think he'll pick the girl," Eliot blurts out, because the alternative might result in hearing a sentence containing both horny and Quentin Coldwater. "She seems more his type."
"Because she has tits?" Margo sighs dramatically. "Are you still on about this?"
"No," Eliot says. He's not still on about it, because he's chosen to not think too hard about why Quentin, who is not heterosexual after all, has thus far expressed no sexual interest in Eliot. "I mean she looks nerdy. You know. Bookish."
"Every single student at this school is Ivy League material, but sure, let's single out Hermione Granger over there for being bookish." Margo takes a drink of her half-Manhattan-half-tequila and somehow swallows it without batting an eye. "I pick the guy, just to piss El off."
"Fuck you," Eliot says, mostly affectionately.
"Not to be heteronormative," says Kady thoughtfully, "but I'll also pick the girl. Look where Quentin's hand is."
Eliot will not. "So that's one for the boy, two for the girl. I assume Penny is ineligible?"
"I don't want to be fuckin' eligible," Penny grumbles.
"Then cheers," Margo says, clinking her drink merrily against Kady's, then downing the rest of it. "May the best magician win, and may Quentin's dick also win."
(Everyone loses, because Quentin goes upstairs with both of them. Eliot feels extremely normal about it.)
Exhibit D.
He almost misses it the fourth time, right up until he doesn't.
In Eliot's defense, it's a Friday night party, planned specifically so he could destress from the horomancy exam he had to take earlier that morning. Earlier that night? Yesterday? Horomancy fucks up everything. Regardless of when exactly it took place in the common linear timeline, Eliot had taken an exam and then he took some extremely delicious brownies provided by a nature student who was also in the horomancy exam and now he is here, in the window seat, watching the crowd like it's a gently rolling sea if a sea had, like, glitter and leather jackets and stuff.
Eliot is aware that Mike is here, because he welcomed Mike to campus in the pre-brownie times, but he hasn't spoken to Mike since. He's also aware that Quentin is here, because Quentin approached Eliot slightly post-brownie and asked Eliot to mix him a drink, and Eliot can't say no to a cute boy who appreciates Eliot's very specific talents vis-a-vis mixology, no matter how said cute boy might feel about Eliot sexually. He can't remember exactly what he mixed now, but Quentin seemed to like it and that's all that matters.
So, Mike and Quentin. Both known quantities at this party. Which is why Eliot can be excused if he initially glosses over the fact that Mike and Quentin are talking to each other. They're adults! They're allowed! Eliot loves when people he likes talk to each other. It's great when everyone gets along, because then he doesn't have to deal with awkwardness, like the way Quentin acted when he got back from South and first met Mike. That was awkward. Eliot didn't like it. But this, this is nice, Mike lounging on the couch and Quentin perching next to him, smiling and waving his hands around while he talks. It's good. A peaceful little tableau that Eliot acknowledges and then forgets about completely in favor of staring up at the array of glittering lights on the ceiling. Did Margo cast that? Or maybe it's the brownies making everything all glittery? When Eliot closes his eyes, some of the glitter is still there. That's neat. What a cool spell. Or drug. Spell-drug.
Anyway. That's why he almost misses when Quentin grabs Mike by the collar and kisses him.
He does not miss it, though. He sees it very, very well.
Oh, he thinks distantly, that's nice.
No, some enterprising less-impaired brain cell insists, your secret crush kissing your boyfriend is not nice.
Well, when you put it that way, Eliot internally replies, and then he's up, on his feet, and crossing the room to get a closer look.
To put a stop to it! the sensible brain cell corrects.
Right, right, Eliot tells himself.
By the time Eliot gets to the couch, Quentin is fully in Mike's lap, hands sliding firmly up the front of Mike's button-down. Mike, for his part, has one hand on Quentin's waist and the other gripping Quentin's ass. All of the warm, soft feelings imparted by the brownies are instantly subsumed by a wave of jealousy so intense that even Eliot's helpful brain cell is surprised by its vehemence.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Eliot demands, loud enough that it catches the attention of most of the partygoers.
Mike breaks free immediately, his hands flying away from Quentin's body so he can hold them up on either side of his own head like he's about to be arrested. "Eliot!" he yelps, his voice significantly higher than usual. "I thought—"
But Eliot never finds out what Mike thought, because Quentin presses two fingers against Mike's lips. "Shhh," he says, presumably to Mike, though he's looking right at Eliot as he says it. "This is fine. This is good." He tilts his head, a smile pulling at the corners of his well-kissed mouth. "Hi, El. I'm borrowing your boyfriend."
Eliot has no fucking idea what's happening right now, and he can only sort of blame the brownies. "Okay?"
"Cool," Quentin says, before turning back to Mike and dipping his head to nip at the curve of Mike's jaw. Mike, whose mouth is still obstructed by Quentin's hand, makes a noise that Eliot is very familiar with. Eliot's brain stalls out entirely for long enough that everyone who'd turned to look at his startled outburst loses interest.
"Wait," Eliot finally makes himself say, because he feels like he should.
Quentin breaks away, looking at Eliot like he's supremely annoyed. "What?"
What, indeed? There's surely some reasonable objection that Eliot could raise — Quentin is clearly drunk, Mike is also probably drunk, Mike is Eliot's boyfriend, Quentin's relationship status is a huge question mark — but what actually comes out of his mouth is, "I had dibs."
As if Eliot didn't have enough problems already, this statement makes Quentin's mouth drop open. "You had dibs?"
"He did," Mike says, muffled by Quentin's fingers.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing," Eliot insists. Why has the impending sexual encounter between his boyfriend and his secret crush suddenly become about him? "Don't worry about it. I think I would prefer that you stop kissing my boyfriend though."
"But why?" Quentin asks. More like whines, really. He's so fucking cute that Eliot can barely stand it. "You're not exclusive. Mike said so."
Only because Mike is a distraction from how badly I want to telekinetically shove you against the nearest surface and fuck your epic-fantasy-loving brains out, Eliot thinks.
"What?" Quentin and Mike say in unison.
Oh. Eliot did not think that. Eliot said that out loud.
Mike swats Quentin's hand away from his face, and Quentin scrambles off Mike's lap just in time to avoid being deposited on the floor of the common room. Eliot is pretty sure he's about to get yelled at, or maybe punched in the face, but all that Mike says is, "It's about fucking time you admitted it."
"Sorry?" Eliot tries.
"You're not," Mike tells him, which is unfortunately accurate, "but it's not like I was looking for my future husband out of a long-term Encanto hookup. At least now you'll be moaning the right name in bed."
"I did not," Eliot insists, at the same time that Quentin says, "You did?"
Mike laughs, but not in the rueful way one might expect; he laughs like this whole thing is genuinely funny to him. "He didn't," he says to Quentin, giving him a friendly bro-pat on the arm. "I just wanted to see you both freak out about it." He turns to Eliot and gestures with his thumb back at Quentin. "Do you want to know what this guy's big pick up line was? 'I wanna kiss the mouth that kisses Eliot's mouth.'"
And then Mike is gone, disappeared into the party, leaving Quentin and Eliot to stare at each other.
"Um, El," Quentin starts.
"I have to go," Eliot practically screams before he turns tail and dashes up the stairs.
(The absolute worst part, Eliot thinks as he lies in bed and tries to sleep, is that he's totally wasting the rest of his brownie high.)
Exhibit E.
When Eliot wakes up the next morning, he feels— light. Buoyant. Which, upon reflection, is probably not the way a person normally feels after breaking up with one's boyfriend after said boyfriend nearly got into the pants of the person said boyfriend was meant to be a distraction from.
Which. Right.
Eliot drags himself out of bed and down the stairs to Quentin's room, where he proceeds to stare at the closed door, contemplating his next move. Should he knock? Should he go downstairs and mix a hangover cure? Make some coffee and toast and eggs and— bring it back to Quentin's room? Wait downstairs with it in case Quentin turns up? Every single possibility has the potential to be horrifically awkward. Maybe there is no follow up to this situation that isn't horrifically awkward.
He's still contemplating when the door slowly opens, revealing a bleary-eyed Quentin. "Um," Quentin says. "Good morning?"
"Hi," Eliot replies intelligently.
"Were you just, like, lurking out here?"
"I wouldn't say lurking," Eliot says, convincing exactly no one, himself included.
"Uh-huh." Quentin sounds exactly the amount of convinced that Eliot expected, which is none at all. "Listen, um. We should probably talk. But I have to, uh." He flaps his hand in the general direction of the bathroom down the hall. "You can wait in my room if you want? Or, I guess, downstairs, if that's—"
"Downstairs," Eliot says immediately, because the idea of waiting in Quentin's room, where Quentin has recently had sex with several people, none of whom are Eliot, sounds akin to medieval torture. But then he realizes that he would rather plunge himself into the deepest part of the Hudson with rocks tied to his feet than talk to Quentin about feelings with any sort of potential audience, so he quickly amends, "I mean, I'll go downstairs, but will meet you back up here. Do you need anything? Hangover cure? Coffee? Eggs and toast?"
Quentin looks flummoxed. "Um, maybe just a glass of water?" he says, looking supremely embarrassed about this absolute bare-minimum request. "I'll only be a few minutes, I think."
Eliot assumes it will be his luck to find the entire common room and/or kitchen flooded with people. He expects to at least find Margo there, ready and waiting to ridicule him mercilessly for how this whole situation has turned out. But, somehow, Eliot doesn't see a single soul when he retrieves Quentin's glass of water. Someone has been here already, because there's hot coffee waiting in the pot but no trace of the person who made it; Eliot figures it's some kind of sign and gets Quentin a cup of coffee as well, just in case. There's orange juice in the fridge too, he remembers, left over from last week's brunch mimosas, and Eliot decides there's no harm in providing a little variety. This means, of course, that he has to levitate one of the glasses on the trip back up to Quentin's room, but that's barely a hardship.
The door to Quentin's room is part way open when Eliot gets back upstairs, but Quentin himself is still in the bathroom. Technically Quentin had said that Eliot could wait in his room, but he can't stop thinking about the looming specters of Those Quentin Has Fucked Before, so he waits awkwardly in the hallway until Quentin emerges, looking bathroom-ruffled rather than just-slept-off-a-hangover ruffled. "You're looming again," Quentin tells him.
"Sorry."
Quentin sort of half-smiles, like he's trying to hide it but can't help himself. "Are all those drinks for me?"
"I thought you'd appreciate a wide range of options."
Eliot regrets his quip instantly, because Quentin's almost-smile disappears. "Okay, that's—" He rubs his hand over his face. "I need to sit down for this."
They make their way into Quentin's room, where Quentin hastily clears a spot on his bedside table for Eliot to set all the drinks down before sitting heavily on the bed. "Just so we're clear, first and foremost," Quentin says, before Eliot has even had a chance to decide where or whether he's going to sit, "the fact that I didn't present you with some kind of, of business card that clearly stated my sexuality doesn't mean that I was trying to deceive you."
"Oh," Eliot says intelligently. He hadn't anticipated that this would be Quentin's first objection to the situation. "I made a shitty assumption, yes, but I never thought you were tricking me." He'd been hurt, certainly, but he's not about to admit it.
"And this isn't, like, a new thing for me," Quentin goes on. He's looking right at Eliot through this whole little speech, and the direct attention makes Eliot's skin feel tingly. "I'm not having, like, a, um—"
"Bisexual slut phase?" Eliot suggests.
Quentin's face twists up in distaste, but he nods. He reaches for the glass of water and takes a sip before adding, "I'm just generally kind of a slut, I guess."
Thank god Eliot hadn't been the one to take a drink, because he would've spit it out. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah, I had a, um, plethora of sexual experience in undergrad." Eliot's face must be doing something weird, because Quentin's half-smile is back. "What? Did you think I was a nerdy virgin?" Eliot opens his mouth, but Quentin waves his free hand dismissively. "Rhetorical question. I know you did."
Jesus Christ. "You didn't exactly give off experienced playboy vibes when we met."
"Well, no." Quentin looks down at his water glass, cradled between his palms. "I kind of had a big breakdown right before I came to Brakebills, so. Not many opportunities for sleeping around at the Midtown Mental Health Clinic."
And now Eliot feels like an asshole. "Q..."
"Then I came here," Quentin goes on, bulldozing through Eliot's attempt at sympathy, "and magic was real, and everything was so much all the time, so I had to compartmentalize a few things."
There's a pause, and Eliot feels like Quentin is waiting for some kind of prompt, but he has no idea how he's meant to respond. "And then, after South," he tries, "you decided to stop compartmentalizing?"
"Kind of?" Quentin sets the water glass back down on the table with a strange kind of determination, then looks directly into Eliot's eyes and asks, "You were really dating Mike to distract yourself from me?"
Eliot cringes internally, but it's not like he can deny what his drug-addled brain blurted out last night in front of God and everybody. "Yes, I met Mike at Encanto and I brought him home with me purely to give myself something to focus on other than how badly I wanted you. Is that what you want to hear?"
"Yeah, it is, actually," Quentin says, to Eliot's surprise. Quentin glances away, his tongue nervously darting out and tracing his lips, like he can still taste Eliot's boyfriend there, before his gaze slides back to Eliot's face. His expression is anticipatory, like he's laid all his cards on the table and is waiting for Eliot to count them up.
It takes Eliot another few seconds, but— "You were doing it on purpose. To get my attention."
"It was Alice's idea," Quentin says quickly, then laughs, seemingly at himself. "That's not fair of me. It was, um. A collaboration, I guess? She saw how annoyed I was when you implied that I couldn't have seduced her while we were at South, and she made some extrapolations, and we mutually decided that I should try and prove you wrong." He runs a hand through his hair, though it only stays pushed out of his face for a second before tumbling back into place. "I thought I was going to have to sleep with the whole fucking school before you noticed me, Eliot."
A thrill goes through Eliot at those words; he shouldn't think it's hot that Quentin was basically whoring himself out, but he definitely does. His mouth is dry, but he doesn't trust his own hands to handle any of the various drinks he brought up for Quentin. "I think there's a crucial piece of information missing from your story."
"Yeah?"
Eliot wants to sound nonchalant, but he knows he can't possibly manage it. "Why didn't you just try and seduce me?"
He watches with rapt attention as Quentin chews nervously on his bottom lip. "You had a boyfriend, El."
"That didn't stop you from seducing the boyfriend in question."
Quentin rolls his eyes in a self-deprecating way. "Yeah, that's fair, I guess."
"So do it, Coldwater."
A laugh startles out of Quentin, as if Eliot had punched it from him. "Do what?"
Eliot smiles, feigning all the confidence he usually feels. "Seduce me."
"Um," Quentin says, his eyes going adorably wide and his cheeks going adorably red. "That's— I can't just—"
"What, would your infallible technique not work on me?" Eliot forces his smile a little wider, batting his eyelashes for good measure. Another laugh tumbles from Quentin's mouth, less panicked than the first. "It certainly worked on Mike."
Quentin's face twists into something complicated. "I was so fucking drunk last night. I mean, god, he told you the embarrassing shit I said. If I'd been thinking straight at all I never would've—"
"It's fine," Eliot interrupts with a casual wave of his hand. It is fine. Sure, it stings a little that Mike was so easily swayed, but it's hard to blame him when he looks at Quentin, adorable and blushing and so fucking sincere. If their positions had been reversed, Eliot absolutely would've ended up with a lapful of Quentin. "Forget about Mike. Pretend he never existed. We have a clean slate, you and I, and I want you to try and seduce me."
What Eliot won't tell Quentin is that he doesn't have to try. Quentin could say or do anything at all from this moment forward and Eliot would instantly acquiesce. But no matter how badly Eliot wants to drop all his pretences and pounce directly on Quentin's dick, he refuses to give up an opportunity to be seduced.
"I can't," Quentin says.
"No? I find that a little implausible."
"I just mean, um." Quentin cuts himself off with a self-deprecating laugh, running both hands nervously through his hair. "None of my, uh, infallible techniques would translate, exactly."
Eliot smiles and leans against the wall in what he hopes is a non-threatening way. "Try me."
Another nervous laugh from Quentin. It's hard to believe he's the same person who was aggressively kissing Mike last night. "Okay, so, stay there." He stands up and grabs his water glass before crossing to the opposite side of the room from where Eliot has stationed himself. "Pretend we're in the common room, and it's a party, and you're not you."
Now it's Eliot's turn to laugh, though he manages to refrain, just barely. "Strange way to go about seducing me."
"I told you," says Quentin, who seems to be unable to look directly at Eliot. "The techniques don't translate. So, um." He rolls his shoulders back, like he's steeling himself, and then—
It's not like Quentin transforms into a totally different person. All of the elements of Quentin that Eliot has gotten to know over the past few months are still there: he's a little fidgety, and though he crosses the bedroom with an air of intent, he manages to be hesitant about it, like he'll immediately stop if someone tells him no. He sidles up next to Eliot with a confidence that's very clearly feigned and takes a nervous sip from his water glass before saying, "I don't think we've met. How do you know Eliot?"
Eliot doesn't mean to immediately break character, but he can't help himself. "That's your big pick up line?"
"Stop it," Quentin grouses.
"Did you pull that one on Mike, too?"
"You fucking know what I said to Mike." Quentin thumps his head back against the wall, exasperated. "God, this is so fucking stupid—"
"No, no, it's cute," Eliot tells him, which only makes Quentin cringe harder. "If you're picking people up at my parties, it makes sense to start with the most obvious common ground."
Quentin's face relaxes a little, the crease between his eyebrows smoothing out. "Yeah, exactly."
"Okay, so." Eliot clears his throat and, for the first time in weeks, lets all of his interest in Quentin show on his face. "Eliot? He's in all of my classes. He invites me to all of his parties, too. I'm surprised you've never tried to flirt with me before."
"Jesus Christ," Quentin mutters. "You could, like, attempt to take this seriously."
"What? It's true." Quentin's face is scrunching up in frustration again, and Eliot is starting to feel a little desperate. "It's fine, I promise. You can just walk me through it instead. The bullet points of seduction."
Quentin's expression is skeptical, but he sighs and relents. "Okay, so, I'd start with talking about you — stop making that face — and from there I'd usually figure out some kind of, like, shared interest. Magic, usually, or the food at the party, or sometimes we'd manage to get to pop culture. And then it'd just be, like, a conversation." He blows out a breath. "It sounds boring, to describe it. It's not, like, sexy."
Eliot thinks that Quentin is sexy when he's eating cereal in the morning, but he's not going to say that. "I don't know," he says instead, trying to sound thoughtful, "listening while someone talks about their interests sounds pretty sexy to me."
Instead of responding, Quentin drains the rest of the water from his glass and sets it down on the desk behind him. "So, um, then, if it seemed like the other person was, like, into me or whatever, I'd start, uh. Touching them. Not, like, groping them or anything!" he adds in a rush. "Just, sort of..." Quentin gives Eliot a questioning look as he tentatively reaches out and brushes his fingertips across the skin of Eliot's elbow, right under the short sleeve of his silk robe.
The elbow is, objectively, not an erotic place to be touched, but Eliot barely suppresses a full-body shudder. He can tell, too, that Quentin must notice, from the way his eyes get a little wider. Quentin's fingers trace higher, over the curve of Eliot's bicep, and Eliot feels like he might spontaneously combust at any moment.
"And then, if they seem to like that," Quentin says breathlessly, "I would say..."
He doesn't finish. There's a blush dusting his cheeks, spreading down his neck; Eliot wants to see how far down it goes. "You would say?"
Quentin leans forward, bridging the gap between them, and Eliot thinks he's about to be kissed— but then Quentin tilts his head and whispers in Eliot's ear, "Do you want to go up to my room?"
"Well," Eliot says. He wants to make it a purr, but it comes out too weak for that. "Mission accomplished."
And then, all at once, Eliot is being kissed, Quentin's mouth hot and desperate and open against his, Quentin's hands gripping the lapels of Eliot's robe so he can drag him across the room. They break apart when the backs of Quentin's legs hit the bed, and he loses his balance, collapsing backwards. "El," he gasps, but that's all Eliot lets him say before he's pushing Quentin down, straddling his hips, and kissing him until they have to break for air.
"So," Eliot says conversationally as he slides his hands under Quentin's threadbare Fillory t-shirt, "what does a slut like you do after you get someone up to your bedroom?"
"You would know," Quentin replies as he fumbles with the knot in Eliot's belt, "since I hear you're also a huge slut."
"Did you hear that from Isaac?" The affirmative hum Quentin makes in reply is muffled when Eliot tugs Quentin's t-shirt over his head. "Is that why you chose him? Just like Mike? You wanted all my sloppy seconds?"
"God, that's so gross," Quentin says, laughing, shoving Eliot's robe off his shoulders. "No, I picked Issac because he's fucking hot. And he has good taste in Marvel movies."
"I think I watched the one with the blond guy once," Eliot says, because he knows it will rile Quentin up. "Is that a good one?"
"You could tell me that Age of Ultron is your favorite and I'd still want to suck your dick, so."
"Is that what you like to do when you get boys in your bed?" Eliot's so turned on that his voice is shaking, which is crazy considering that Quentin was literally just talking about comic book movies. "Use that pretty little mouth?"
"Maybe you should get on the bed and find out," Quentin tells him.
Eliot doesn't have to be told twice. He rolls to his side to let Quentin up, and Quentin wastes no time at all pouncing back on top of him. Eliot's robe falls off his back and onto the floor in the shuffle, leaving him spread out and naked in the middle of Quentin's horrible jersey knit sheets. "This seems unfair," Eliot says, rubbing his thumb along the waistband of Quentin's sleep shorts.
Quentin makes a noise that's two steps away from a snarl. "Shut the fuck up and let me look at you."
It was bad enough earlier, when Quentin was looking at Eliot with a combination of determination and sincerity. Now he's looking at Eliot hungrily, like Eliot's a snack Quentin can barely wait to consume. Which, upon reflection, is completely accurate to the situation. They stay like that for what feels like hours but is probably less than sixty seconds, Quentin staring while Eliot's dick gets progressively harder — from what? Being looked at? Eliot knows he's vain, but this is something else entirely.
"Okay," Quentin mutters, and all at once Eliot realizes that this little show of dominance was a front while Quentin psyched himself up. There's a thrill of emotion in Eliot's chest, something softer than the steady thrum of his arousal, but he doesn't have time to identify it before Quentin leans in and circles the head of Eliot's cock with his tongue.
When Eliot refers to himself as a slut, he's using the term to not only indicate the amount of sex he's had and how much he likes doing it, but also to convey a certain level of skill. Eliot has had enough sex to know that he's very good at having sex. Yet, when Quentin had described himself as a slut, Eliot hadn't extended the same definition, his mind still stubbornly clinging to his erroneous interpretation of Quentin as a nerdy virgin. It's immediately and abundantly clear that Eliot was wrong once again; Quentin sucks dick both enthusiastically and skillfully, but also like he's got something to prove. That last bit is certainly Eliot's own fault, but he's not going to protest when the result is Quentin reading him like an open book, playing him like an instrument. Eliot's mostly gotten used to the fact that his size scares a lot of boys off, but Quentin dives right in, taking Eliot deeper into his mouth than Eliot expects on the first go, and then deeper still on the second. "Oh my god, Quentin," Eliot gasps when he feels the head of his cock slip into Quentin's throat, "how are you so—?"
Quentin slides off with a slick pop and looks up at Eliot with lust-dark eyes. "You asked me what I like to do when I get boys in my bed," he says, his voice already on its way to wrecked, "and I fucking love sucking cock."
Before Eliot can even react to that, let alone come up with a response, Quentin shifts between Eliot's legs, splaying his hand across Eliot's hip, pinning him down before he swallows him again.
Eliot, for all his sexual prowess, is not ashamed to admit that Quentin's talented mouth brings him close to the edge embarrassingly quickly. He's able to hold back for a little while, somehow, but then Quentin's tongue moves just right when he swallows and Eliot nearly screams. "Quentin, Q, I need, do you want me to—?"
Quentin must make some kind of noise, because his tongue vibrates against Eliot's cock and that's the end of it. Eliot curls into himself a little when he comes, his blood so loud in his ears that he can't hear his own voice, and Quentin presses him down even harder into the bed, working him through it with his mouth and his hand.
There's definitely a few moments where Eliot loses all sense of his surroundings; when he regains awareness, Quentin's head is resting on his thigh, looking up at Eliot with a combination of awe and smugness. "Okay, don't get cocky," Eliot tells him, then realizes what he said a beat too late.
"Thanks, I'd love to," Quentin replies, though he barely finishes the sentence before he breaks down laughing, which makes Eliot laugh too.
"Really, though," Eliot says, once their giggles subside. He hesitates for half a second before reaching for Quentin's face, dancing his fingertips over Quentin's hair and down his cheek. "What can I do for you?"
Quentin hums, leaning into Eliot's touch. "I'd probably come in, like, twenty seconds flat if you jerked me off."
"Seriously?"
"I really like sucking dick," Quentin says, totally unashamed. He pushes himself up on one elbow so he can slide up Eliot's body. "And you were really fucking hot. The noises you made..."
Instead of elaborating, Quentin scrapes his teeth over Eliot's collarbone as he reaches for Eliot's wrist, moving his hand so Eliot can feel how hard Quentin still is. "These are still unfair," Eliot tells him, rubbing Quentin's dick through the fabric of his sleep shorts, making him moan. "Unless you want me to jerk you off like this? Get you all messy?"
"Wanna get you messy," Quentin whines. He shoves Eliot's hand out of the way and does an elaborate wriggly maneuver to get his sleep shorts off, which should not be sexy but somehow Quentin makes it that way. His cock presses against Eliot's stomach when Quentin leans back in, and he shudders at the contact. "Fuck, El—"
Eliot conjures moisture into his palm before reaching for Quentin, wrapping one hand around his cock and bracing Quentin's shoulder with the other. Quentin hadn't been exaggerating; it only takes a few strokes before he's gasping, shuddering, spilling all over Eliot's hand and shooting halfway up his chest.
"Jesus," Quentin mutters as he collapses at Eliot's side, throwing one leg haphazardly across both of Eliot's. "That was..."
"Yeah," Eliot agrees. "That definitely was." He waves a hand to spell them both clean and dry, and laughs at the disappointed noise Quentin makes. "Is it always like that for you?"
He expects a quick answer, a clever quip, but instead Quentin frowns, his eyebrows knitting together. "Um. No, not really." He chews on his bottom lip, then looks up nervously. "To tell you the truth, I, uh. That's the first time I've had sex with someone I actually like."
Eliot blinks, stunned. "You didn't like any of the people you've had sex with before? Tough luck for Alice."
"God, no, that's not what I—" Quentin grimaces, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he's looking at Eliot with that intent, sincere expression from earlier, the one that makes Eliot's skin tingle. "I'm trying to say I like you, Eliot. Like, want to have sex with you more than once like you. Like, want to go on dates with you like you. Like—"
"Stop, stop, the word like is losing all meaning." Eliot reaches for Quentin's face, tipping his chin up with his thumb. "But I like you, too. Your seduction was successful."
"Well," Quentin says, leaning in, "it is an infallible technique."
(At the next cottage party, two days later, Eliot and Quentin spend the whole evening engaging in egregious amounts of PDA, and Margo begrudgingly hands Kady a fifty dollar bill.)