The coffee warmed in his hands as he stared at the cup as if the stare alone could will it back to being hot, and for the half a second it took for his brain to catch up with what happened, Quentin thought it had actually worked, if the wide eyes were any indication. Then he realized, of course, and hid his sheepishness behind another sip of the now-hot beverage, along with the smirk toward Eliot’s offense at even considering a conga line within his presence. He set the cup aside and huffed his indignance at the accusation thrown his way.
“I don’t post like a Midwestern mom,” he said, tucking his hair back behind his ear. He hardly posted at all, having several long gaps on his Facebook profile to show for it. What was wrong with posting pictures of himself and his friends? Granted, several of them weren’t at a great angle, but still. “There’s not much of interest there at all, really, so. Yeah.” Stellar argument, Coldwater.
He raised an eyebrow, slowly but surely getting an idea of what kind of student Eliot was: the one who barely tried or didn’t bother trying, yet still did well in his classes. Quentin admired and envied people like that, really, but it wasn’t too bad. He liked reading and learning new things. “You were a problem student?’ he asked anyway, curling more into the leather back of the chair he was in. “One who threw parties and did well anyway. Can’t believe I’m talking to the type of person who would’ve picked on me in high school–but those were usually jocks.”
Quentin listened to Eliot as he listed off the possibilities, feeling whimsical when he gestured to the book in his lap and joked about being High Kings. “Something tells me being royalty might be a bit harder than it looks,” he said, tracing a sentence on the page he was staring at. Eliot actually asked him to talk about Fillory though, and he was hesitant at first, eyes searching for something that might say this would be used against him later, but the moment passed and he felt himself physically perk up at the thought of discussing the books at all. “I-I mean to some, sure, and there are some books that I wouldn’t either. I have another set at home, a collector’s edition, that’s completely clean. No notes.” Which was the very definition of nerd, but whatever. He looked to the notes and tapped on one quickly, wheels in his brain turning. “It’s just, magic has to come from somewhere, right? It–it doesn’t just exist, nothing just exists, there’s always a reason as to why something happened. Like, um, like the Big Bang and how it created the universe: there was a high density of light and high temperature and a single event that sparked everything, and just… never mind. Anyway, there’s this thing called the Wellsprings in the books, which is said to be source of all magic in the universe, and it’s right in Fillory.”
Quentin paused and chewed the inside of his cheek, mulling over his words. “These books… there’s something about them that makes me think there’s more to them than just children’s tales. It’s not just because they helped me through rough spots in life, though. I… sometimes I think I can literally feel the magic while I’m reading them, like something is there just waiting to be found, and if that’s the case, why let it stay hidden? T-that world is so vast, Eliot, and leaves so much more to be explored and discovered, and here on Earth? It feels like we’re at a standstill, just… waiting for something to happen. Waiting won’t make things happen, though, won’t change the pain we supposedly draw magic from, or make our lives any less shitty. Why not try to find something that could do that instead?”
He took a deep breath and looked away again, embarrassment creeping up on him. “So, um, yeah. I just look for answers in the books, and you can’t find answers without keeping track of the information you find. It’s a bit silly, I guess.”
The indignation that greeted his judgement of Quentin’s Facebook presence had him hastily covering a laugh with the rim of his coffee cup with a murmur of, “Calm down, Susan,” eyebrows raising innocently before he conceded, “No, I suppose you don’t,” without even a hint of remorse before amending, “But your friend Julia sure does. Does she have one of those bumper stickers that says, ‘My kid is on the honour roll’ as well?”
And smothering best friends were a relatable topic, at the very least, even if Quentin had to go and veer straight into the minefield that was the high school experience. Tread lightly. “I didn’t just throw parties,” he replied, as if he could nonchalantly dismiss the wreckage of his unearthed high school self and dive straight into his glorious reinvention without any implosions, “I was Royalty.” And he was never, ever going back to Indiana so it didn’t matter in the slightest who he’d been there which only served to prove his point, Alice was wrong, he wasn’t going to go spilling every last detail of is life just because Quentin Coldwater was cute.
Eliot could expound on the struggles of being campus royalty, he supposed, but Quentin actively lit up at being asked about the notes scattered through his margins. Fizzing and sparking with an energy Eliot hadn’t seen from him before, bright pops of excitement that set his hands in motion and eyes wide and intent, filled with purpose as he talked rapidly and with vigour without seemingly any need for input from Eliot himself. It was so completely the opposite of the wry, reserved Quentin he’d met so far that it stunned him, just a little, to see him so wholeheartedly enthusiastic about anything. Eliot, well-aware he hadn’t exactly absorbed much of anything from Quentin’s words, settled back to just watch.
“Margo’s going to love you,” he murmured more to himself than anything, more than a little enchanted by the whole charade as Quentin reeled himself back in with a half-embarrassed, half-dismissive, It’s a bit silly, I guess.
“Not at all,” he replied firmly, dragging his thumbnail across the seam of his coffeecup absently, as inside him a complicated yearning for anything so pure as that bright and shining moment of belief rattled through dusty layers upon layers of cynicism. “It’s an interesting theory,” he blinked a few times, clearing his throat and feeling a little caught off-guard before he offered, “Our doorman, Penny, his discipline is — it’s rare. He can travel, just about anywhere he wishes, in an instant. He’s been to other worlds before, usually unintentionally. Maybe somewhere out there your Fillory does exist, in some form.”
Eliot cleared his throat, glancing away to add, “Of course, Penny’s also a raging dick, so the last time anyone asked him to take them to another world with him he left them in a Denny’s parking lot in New Jersey.”