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magicianskinkmeme2021-06-06 11:42 am
shmaz) wrote in magicianskinkmeme2021-06-06 11:42 am
Entry tags:
Round #2, June 2021
Rules:
1. Golden rule: YKINMKATO.
2. Book spoilers must be clearly tagged in post titles.
3. All comments must be anonymous.
4. Please title your prompt posts. All prompts are welcome, from fluff to angst to smut.
5. Fills must be posted as a response to the original prompt (links to AO3 etc are allowed) & must have "FILL" in the title.
6. Multiple fills for the same prompt are allowed and welcomed.
7. Content warnings will not be enforced but are appreciated.
8. Please wait until the next round to repost a prompt.
Is it a zombie apocalypse? Perhaps a Season 5 resurrection AU? No, it's the revival of the Magicians Kinkmeme -- we're back for Round #2, baby!
Please hop over to the mod post if you have any questions. When you fill a prompt, please feel free to link to it in the fills post so that others can easily find it.
Have fun, get weird and be kind to each other!
FILL: Quentin/Eliot - Exes to Lovers (1/2 [probably])
(Anonymous) 2021-06-10 03:18 pm (UTC)(link)“Eliot?”
The voice is familiar, but he can’t quite place it. Even when he spots the face it goes with — dark eyebrows sloping elegantly upward in surprise, mouth half-curled to reveal one pleased dimple, eyes sparkling sweet and smart — it takes him a minute before the pieces of his past rearrange themselves to show what he needs to say. “Quentin Coldwater?”
“Hey, you,” says Quentin — and god, it is Quentin, in the flesh and an unexpectedly sharp blazer. Eliot’s one and only high school sweetheart with soft bangs falling across his forehead, like a Katy Perry song come to life. His smile broadens to show all his very white teeth, like he’s really glad to have found Eliot here at the Humble Drum. “Long time no see.”
“Holy shit,” Eliot says, standing up on autopilot for what he thinks is a relatively un-awkward hug as his head buzzes with shock. “I can’t believe you’re here. God, it’s been — what, ten years?” He winces inwardly, because — that wasn’t how they’d planned it, a decade ago, and it’s Eliot’s fault this is how it turned out.
But if Quentin’s still carrying a grudge, he doesn’t show it. “Just about, yeah.”
“How’ve you been?” Eliot asks. “How was Yale? Are you in the city now?” He’s tripping over his words to get the questions out, circling around the real question of what the fucking fuck?
They fall quickly into a comfortable conversational rhythm, catching up on Quentin’s recent move and Eliot’s scattered resume. There’s an ease to their exchange, despite the long absence, that feels oddly familiar even though back in school, they were never this easy with each other. Giddy, excitable, besotted, tense, horny, hormonal, furious, starry-eyed, yes. And sweet — Quentin could be so sweet. But young love had been a rough fucking road for two kids as fucked up as them. They’d done pretty well, all things considered, but it hadn’t been easy. Still — some emotional muscle memory somewhere deep in Eliot’s body remembers vividly that once upon a time, Quentin was someone he wanted to be around. The terror of adolescence has faded, but that’s still true.
Quentin is — in some ways he’s still Quentin. Same soft brown hair and flickering dimples; same way of looking at the person he’s talking to like there’s no one else in the room. He’s still funny and sarcastic and a huge fucking nerd (philosophy, really?). But damn, ten years has been fucking good to him. His skin has cleared up, splotchy teen zits and antisocial pallor replaced by the soft glow of a person who goes outside. Around his mouth are the faintest traces of laugh lines, marks that oddly suit him, making him look solid, like proof that he’s a person who’s learned how to live. Instead of a band tee that’s seen better days and pants left over from before his last growth spurt with the gaping ankles and grass stains to show for it, he’s wearing a shirt that looks to have been ironed recently and jeans that actually fit; when he takes off his blazer to hang it on the back of his chair, Eliot has to fight to keep his eyes widening from the startling breadth in his shoulders, so different from the skinny frame he spent hours memorizing when they were young. The lanky, unkempt mane Eliot remembers falling past his shoulders has been trimmed and shaped into a cut with some actual volume, flattering to his face. His bangs, Eliot notices at some point of his unabashed staring, are too short to hide behind, now — like maybe Quentin’s outgrown his old habit of flinching at every corner from the eyes of the world. Like maybe he’s grown used to getting seen.
It’s not just the haircut. When he was fifteen Eliot fell in love with a boy who could barely look him in the eye, a boy with permanently hunched over shoulders and a simmering uncertainty in his eyes like he expected the proverbial rug to be pulled out from under him any second. He talked too fast when he was nervous, which was nearly always, and walked into most conversations with a preemptive scowl. In three years of melodramatic confessions and desperate touch, Eliot only ever saw the tightness in his shoulders relax in the moments after sex, and even then only sometimes. But the guy — the man, Jesus, Quentin is grown the fuck up, which is slightly terrifying to contemplate given that it suggests Eliot might be too — the man Eliot’s drinking with tonight betrays none of his old tinderbox of nerves. No eyes darting side to side, as if he’s always looking for an escape route should he need one; no slumped posture or stammered speech. Quentin ten years out sits steady, almost sturdy; he’s still animated with that constant flickering light in his eyes that Eliot found so mesmerizing way back when, still talks with his hands, but the anxious undercurrent of need has drained out of him, replaced with an easy smile and a warm, inviting presence. A confidence, Eliot catches himself thinking, and almost laughs at the shock of it — but it’s true, he marvels, watching Quentin roll his eyes at a self-deprecating comment with no bite behind it, hearing his wide open laugh. There’s a sure-footedness to his bearing now that — would be absolute catnip, Eliot has to admit, if he hadn’t so thoroughly sworn off bad ideas.
It’s a mark of his own character development, Eliot thinks wryly to himself, that he cuts himself off after two rounds, even though with every passing minute he feels more like he could sit here talking with Quentin all night. Preparing to part ways, he startles himself by discovering there’s something else he needs to say, first. “Look, I’m really sorry about — disappearing, like I did.”
Quentin tilts his chin slightly, watchful but not wary, inviting Eliot to go on.
“I did mean it,” Eliot says, “when I said I wanted to be friends, after graduation. I just —” He shakes his head. It had seemed simple enough, if not exactly easy, when they’d been talking through their approaching futures that last long spring: they’d do the smart thing, the mature thing, and break up instead of trying for a long-distance love doomed to break their hearts, but they still cared about each other, and always would. They’d email; they’d call. In practice, though, it had felt — complicated. “I got to the city, and I was in the middle of this — giant rebranding, or whatever, and I just — it hurt too much, thinking about home. Even the good things.” He laughs a little. “Or, like — even the one good thing, that I’d really wanted to keep — I couldn’t figure out how to hold onto that, and still be — me. The version of myself I was trying to become.”
Quentin nods slowly, mouth curling prettily upwards. “I figured it was something like that.”
“Yeah?” Eliot wipes his thumb over the cool condensation on his glass, trying not to feel like he’s asking for absolution.
“Yeah. I mean, not at first. At first it fucking sucked.” Quentin shrugs, relegating the sting to the untouchable past. “But once I’d gotten over it, it wasn’t hard to look back and put the pieces together. I mean — I knew you, El. I knew what things were like for you, growing up. I could see, you know, that — maybe you’d need some distance, once it was over.”
Eliot swallows, an unexpected lump in his throat. “Thanks. That — kind of means a lot, actually.”
“Of course.” That smile — god. It’s a good thing Eliot’s getting out of here soon.
“I should head home,” Eliot says, “but — it’s been really good to talk to you. Maybe now that we’re both here, we could — do this again sometime? Hopefully not in ten years?”
“I’d like that,” Quentin says, “Or —” He hesitates, biting his lip appealingly. For a second Eliot feels the same stomach-flip of nerves he felt that day in tenth grade, blurting out his feelings in a rush in the eternity between his garbled confession and Quentin’s soft, dazed reply: Me? But this time it’s Quentin reaching out: “I’m around the corner, if you want to come home with me tonight.”
Eliot stares at him, trying to process what’s happening: the bizarre coincidence that they’d find each other at all and the prospect of going home with his high school sweetheart and the pure does-not-compute newness of Quentin lobbing this at him and then waiting, patient and unafraid, for whatever’s going to happen next. He is trying very hard not to stare at the shadows the dim bar light cast along Quentin’s neck. “Is that a good idea?”
Quentin shrugs. “Probably not. But I spent a long time making my decisions based on what seemed like a good idea at the time, and honestly, it’s kind of overrated as a strategy. Besides —” His eyes twinkle mirthfully. His lashes are so long. “The week I move to Brooklyn, I wander into my local bar to celebrate unpacking all my books, and there you are? What are the odds, man? Seems kind of like a sign.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in signs,” Eliot manages, feeling faint.
“I didn’t. Still don’t, mostly. But —” He laughs, knowing and light. “The shit I believed got me a bunch of nervous breakdowns and three-fourths of a PhD I’ll never finish. I’m thinking it’s time to try out something new.”
“Are we new?”
“Aren’t we?”
And long-lost exes usually aren’t, but looking at him — at Quentin Coldwater, improbably here and impossibly sure, sitting unhurried at this bar looking for all the world like someone who’s never been anything other than glad to be exactly who he is — it’s kind of hard to argue. “Alright then. Take me home.”
Re: FILL: Quentin/Eliot - Exes to Lovers (1/2 [probably])
(Anonymous) 2021-06-10 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)takes a deep breath
oh my god oh my GOD aaaAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
this is SO fucking good. the achey nostalgia of their high school days, the way that quentin has grown up and changed but also stayed the same……!!!
For a second Eliot feels the same stomach-flip of nerves he felt that day in tenth grade, blurting out his feelings in a rush in the eternity between his garbled confession and Quentin’s soft, dazed reply: Me? - wow i am going to CRY
“Are we new?”
“Aren’t we?” - i don’t know how to articulate why but this was SO IMPACTFUL.
god bless you!!!!!! i am screenshotting this in case you don’t upload this to ao3 so i can treasure it forever! looking forward to the next part!!!!
Re: FILL: Quentin/Eliot - Exes to Lovers (1/2 [probably])
(Anonymous) 2021-06-11 01:49 am (UTC)(link)