Chapter Text
“Thanks so much!” Quentin said to their Lyft driver as he helped him and Julia take their luggage out of the trunk. They’d pulled up just in front of a cottage, where Quentin could see a sign by the door that read “Welcome Centurion Challenge Competitors!” At least they knew they were in the right place.
Quentin was in a surprisingly good mood, and their driver had been friendly, so he decided to have a little fun before he drove off.
“Here, hold out your hand,” he told the driver. Quentin took out a $5 bill and made a grand gesture of placing it into the man’s hand. “Now close your hand around it,” he instructed. The man did as he was told, curious as to what was happening.
“Ok, now I need you to channel your inner Hamilton. I’m gonna need you to sing!” The Hamilton album had been playing in the car their whole drive here, which is what had given Quentin this idea in the first place. Julia laughed, seeing where this was going.
“Alexander Hamilton! My name is Alexander Hamilton!” The Lyft driver sang loud and proud.
“Ok, open your hand. You’ve made him appear!” Quentin exclaimed. The $5 bill had turned into a $10 bill.
“That’s amazing!” The man said, laughing. He started handing the money back to Quentin, but Quentin told him to keep it as a tip.
“Ooh, classy. They teach Magic Tip Giving 101 at Brakebills?” Julia smirked before turning to pick up her suitcase from the curb. Quentin smiled. It was nice that they could joke like this. Even as recently as a year ago, he and Julia had barely been on speaking terms, and on the rare occasions they’d exchanged texts, Brakebills had been a sore topic.
Brakebills University for the Magical Arts was a 3-year intensive, highly prestigious magic program. A lot of the world’s most well-known magicians had graduated from Brakebills. About five years ago, Quentin had received a handwritten invitation in the mail to audition. Julia had not.
_ _ _ _
“Q, please. Just tell them about me. If I can just get an audition, I know that I can make it in. Come on Q, we learned everything together, you know what I can do. Please.”
“Jules… I can tell them about you, but the auditions are really an invitation-only thing…”
“But you’ll tell them about me?” Julia asked, eyes pleading.
“Yeah, Jules. Sure.”
“Thank you thank you thank you!” Julia squealed, wrapping her arms around Quentin’s neck.
_ _ _ _
But Quentin never told Brakebills about Julia. He’d only just gotten in, and he hadn’t wanted to risk losing his spot, or even just giving off a bad first impression. Julia had figured that out pretty quickly, and Quentin hadn’t exactly been kind when confronted about it. Honestly, he’d acted like a snob. As a result, Julia had essentially stopped speaking to him.
At first Quentin had been mad at Julia for abandoning him. And by the time he came to his senses enough to want to apologize to her, it had seemed too late. Julia had moved to another city, and Quentin’s studies were too demanding for him to be able to put in the effort to repair their friendship that Julia deserved.
Quentin’s time at Brakebills had been intense. They taught all types of magic there – card tricks, coin sleights, stage illusions, escape artistry, mentalism, and more. To graduate, each student had to demonstrate high proficiency in each category, as well as mastery in one specific area of concentration. Quentin had selected card magic as his discipline.
The final requirement for graduation was to invent a new trick. The trick had to fool at least 3/4 of the panel of professors in order for it to count. It took Quentin three tries to devise a trick that was good enough, which was about par for the course. But Quentin couldn’t help but be disappointed in himself. Brakebills’s most successful magicians had all succeeded on their first tries, and the tricks they’d invented for their final exams had helped kickstart their careers. Now, here Quentin was, two years after graduating, with barely anything to show for it besides having performed in a few small gigs.
But now he and Julia were a team, just like the old days, and things were starting to look up. They’d reconnected 6 months ago.
_ _ _ _
Quentin shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets. It was early April, but in Boston it still felt like winter. Quentin was here for a weeklong stint as an opening act for a not-so-famous stage illusionist. It was his third day here, and he was on his way to Quincy market for lunch. He passed a street performer who’d gathered a pretty large crowd doing some kind of trick involving ropes. He didn’t pay attention at first, but stopped dead in his tracks when he recognized Julia’s voice amplified by a microphone.
“Ok, for this next trick, I’m going to need a volunteer from the audience!”
Julia selected someone who could only be described as an adorable old man. She helped him into a chair, and then sat next to him. She handed him a green piece of paper, keeping a pink one for herself, and started up some music. She performed the rest of the trick without saying anything.
She first demonstrated folding her paper and cutting it into a heart shape, motioning for the man to do the same. She acted out falling in love, with the man soon catching on and happily following her lead, fanning himself dramatically with his paper heart. The audience was loving this already, laughing fondly at the display.
With the man following Julia’s lead, they each tore a corner of their heart off, tucking their own corner piece into their shirt pocket. Julia then pretended to be nervous, and offered the man her heart. They traded with each other, both acting excited that the other had accepted the offer.
Julia then acted out a fight, which the man enthusiastically joined in on, raising his fists into the air. They both ripped up the hearts they were holding, adding their own heart’s corner piece to the mix of papers. Julia was now holding a mostly green ball of ripped-up paper plus her original pink corner, and the man had the opposite – a pink ball plus his original green corner.
Finally, they traded torn paper balls, acting as if they were making up from their fight. In the final reveal, they both unfolded the papers to reveal two completely intact hearts, one green with a pink corner, and one pink with a green corner. The man looked absolutely dumbfounded.
Quentin was amazed, not by the trick’s method, but by its impact. Julia had told a beautiful story, without even talking, and had gotten a spectator to play along perfectly.
Quentin continued to be amazed for the rest of the show. Julia’s tricks were, for the most part, based on fairly standard magic staples. But every time Quentin thought he knew where a trick was going, he kept finding himself surprised by an unexpected twist or beautiful storyline. Julia’s energy performing was magnetic, and Quentin couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. Despite all his classical training and well-practiced skill, Julia had a creative quality to her performances that Quentin just… didn’t have.
Quentin had been standing far back in the crowd, but once Julia had finished and was starting to pack up, Quentin approached her.
“That was amazing, Jules,” he said. Julia jumped upon hearing his voice, and looked at him with an unreadable expression, not saying anything.
Quentin fumbled around in his pocket, taking out a piece of paper he’d prepared during Julia’s last act, and showed it to her. It said “Friendship” written in black ink.
“Um, so I know that this is what I did to us,” Quentin said, and he started tearing the paper into little pieces and crushing them into a ball. “But I’m hoping that it’s possible to repair,” he finished, handing the crumpled ball of paper over to Julia. She slowly unfolded it to reveal the original paper saying “Friendship” completely intact. Her face softened and she gave Quentin a real smile.
“Q, that was so cheesy.” But she was still smiling. “Do you maybe want to get lunch?” She asked. Quentin let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“Yeah, that would be really nice.”
_ _ _ _
While the Centurion Challenge was a respected competition in the magic community, it was still a reality TV competition show. Quentin had seen every episode of the previous two seasons, and knew well enough that the cameras didn’t just care about everyone’s magic abilities, but were looking for drama between contestants and interesting backstories. As much as Quentin hated to admit it, his and Julia’s past was likely what had gotten them a spot on the show, not just their skills. Housing everyone together in this cottage was another way to encourage interaction between the contestants.
They entered into the living room to see a dozen or so contestants already there, mingling. They saw some luggage in a side room, and went to add theirs to the pile.
“Well look who it is,” a woman dressed in tight, black clothes approached them as soon as they returned to the living room
“Marina,” Julia said, her face losing all trace of the smile she’d just had.
“Looks like they’ll let anyone into this thing,” Marina said, sneering.
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” Julia shot back. Well, there was some kind of story here Quentin was certainly missing. He felt like he had to do something to fill the awkward silence.
“Uh, hi, I’m Quentin.”
Marina glanced at him for a moment without turning her head, looking unimpressed, then brought her eyes back to Julia.
“Well, I’d better get back to Pete,” she said. Julia’s eyes widened.
“Seriously, Pete’s here too? Why am I even surprised,” Julia muttered.
“Well, lovely as this has been,” and without finishing the thought, Marina smiled sweetly and walked away toward a blonde-haired man on the other side of the room.
And that’s when Quentin saw a man he recognized immediately, standing across the room closely examining the bar. His heartrate started to increase. Hazel eyes with just a touch of eyeliner, faint stubble, dark gray vest with a purple tie, long legs, and curly hair falling perfectly over his forehead – Quentin suspected he arranged it like that on purpose, to make it look just the perfect amount of messy. Eliot Waugh.
Quentin had encountered Eliot only a handful of times during his first year at Brakebills. Eliot had been in his third year when Quentin had started school there, and he and his best friend Margo were something of social legends. People talked about them even by the time Quentin was graduating. To Quentin, they had always seemed untouchable, too far above Quentin’s social status to ever even talk to, much less become friends with. And now Eliot was here. Quentin gulped, momentarily forgetting the drama he’d just witnessed between Marina and Julia. He quickly came back to himself.
“So uh, what was that about?” Quentin asked. Julia sighed.
“I’ll tell you the whole story later, but sufficed to say, those two are Bad News. We used to perform together. They stole of bunch of my tricks and basically ran me out of New York City.”
“Holy shit Jules, what the fuck, that’s awful.”
“Yeah,” Julia replied. “They are.” Julia then saw someone across the room and looked relieved. “Oh, I know someone over there, I’m gonna go say hi real quick.” She squeezed Quentin’s shoulder in reassurance, knowing he wasn’t the most confident when left alone in social situations, and walked off towards a woman wearing her hair in a ponytail.
Just then, a stunningly beautiful woman with dark hair approached Quentin. He recognized her right away as Margo. He’d never really been sure what her and Eliot’s relationship was, as it seemed to go beyond friends in some way. They’d been practically attached at the hip at Brakebills. Quentin had rarely seen one of them without the other. But Eliot was known for hooking up with plenty of guys at Brakebills, so whatever he and Margo were, it didn’t seem like a typical relationship.
“I’m Margo,” she said, giving Quentin a once-over with her eyes. They’d met before, but only briefly, and that had been several years ago, so Quentin wasn’t really offended for not being remembered. Just as he was about to introduce himself, Eliot emerged from behind Margo and spoke.
“Quentin Coldwater, nice to see you again,” Eliot said, sticking out his hand. It took Quentin a minute to register what was happening and reach out to shake it. How did Eliot remember him? They’d never spent any significant amount of time together. Well, for the most part. And they’d only overlapped for the one year.
“Eliot, um, it’s uh. Yeah, good to see you too,” he said. Margo glanced at Eliot, then back at Quentin, pursing her lips and raising an eyebrow. Quentin noticed he was still gripping Eliot’s hand for what had definitely been longer than a typical polite handshake. Quentin let go instantly at the realization, pulling his hand away like he’d touched a hot pan.
“And how do you two know each other?” Margo asked.
“Brakebills, Bambi,” Eliot cooed, turning to face Margo and rubbing her shoulders.
“Uh, yeah, Eliot’s the one who took me to my audition room. He um, also gave me a tour my first day.” Oh my God, stop talking, Quentin thought. He didn’t want to sound creepy, like he remembered each and every encounter he’d ever had with Eliot. Which, to be honest, he definitely did. Eliot carried himself with a sort of easy grace that was positively magnetic, yet intimidating at the same time. It always left Quentin in a confused mess of both wanting to be around Eliot for as long as possible, and also wanting to run away so he couldn’t embarrass himself.
“Did he, now?” Margo asked, looking back at Eliot. “Hmm,” she shrugged, and started walking off. Eliot followed her, and Margo said something to him Quentin couldn’t quite hear. Eliot then glanced back behind him, meeting Quentin’s eyes. Shit, now Eliot thought Quentin had been staring at him. Which he definitely had been doing. Quentin quickly went to find Julia.
“Oh, Q, this is Fen. We met back when I was doing street magic. You have to see her knife routines, they’re incredible.”
“Aww, stop,” Fen giggled. Quentin could instantly tell she had a very bubbly personality. It was pretty refreshing, honestly, after all the intense introductions Quentin had been a part of today.
“Alright everyone, it’s time to get you all settled in!” A female voice with a British accent announced from the doorway. Quentin looked and immediately recognized her as Jane Chatwin, the host of the show. Next to her was a man carrying a camera and some other equipment.
“My name is Jane, it’s a pleasure to meet you all. And this is our camera man, Todd.” Todd gave a little wave, and in doing so dropped one of the many items he was carrying. Jane rolled her eyes as he bent down to pick it up.
“Just as a reminder, there are cameras setup all throughout the cottage, except in the bedrooms and bathrooms. You can have privacy, of course, but we’d prefer you to spend as much time in public spaces as possible. This is a tv show after all. I’ll be doing some introductory interviews with each pair of you, to get your initial impressions. Let’s start with,” she looked down at a piece of paper, “Josh and Fen.”
“Ooh, that’s me!” Fen said, clapping her hands together. She and a man Quentin hadn’t yet met followed Jane and Todd to another room.
Quentin tried his best to make small talk with the other contestants while they waited for his turn. Quentin wasn’t great in front of cameras, but he was committed to doing his best. He and Julia had already done an interview when they were first cast where they talked about their general backstory. Julia had done most of the talking, explaining how she and Quentin were childhood friends, Quentin had gone to Brakebills while Julia had learned street magic, and how they’d recently reunited to form a well-balanced team with each of their unique skillsets. Quentin was curious how much Julia was going to say about Marina to the camera when it was their turn.
Eliot and Margo were called on next. The longer it took to be their turn, the more nervous Quentin was getting. Fortunately, they were third to be interviewed.
“Just take a seat right there,” Jane told them when they entered. “Perfect, just like that. So I know you’ve already had one interview with us, but just as a reminder. Look at me, not the camera, when we’re talking.” Quentin nodded. He remembered that well. His first interview they’d had to redo several takes because Quentin kept forgetting and would stare directly at the camera whenever he spoke.
“Ok, Julia, let’s start with you,” Jane said. “Are there any contestants here that you knew already?”
“Yeah,” Julia said, sitting up straight. “I met Fen a couple years ago. I saw her doing some impressive knife acts, and we’ve kept in touch with each other. She’s great, definitely some steep competition. And then there’s Marina and Pete,” she paused for a second, seeming to consider how to word what she wanted to say. “They were some of the first magicians I ever worked with professionally. We performed street magic together, in a group with a couple other people, for about a year. Let’s just say, we don’t get along very well now.”
“Oh? Interesting, do keep going. This is the kind of thing viewers will love!”
Julia looked away. “Um, I’m not really sure how much I want to say…”
“Julia,” Jane started, sounding reassuring. “Tension between contestants is the type of thing the audience is going to absolutely devour. Remember this competition isn’t just based off what the judges think, it’s also based off of audience votes. Something like this could help keep you in the competition longer.”
Quentin immediately felt more stressed out. The Centurion Challenge eliminated one pair of contestants every week. After each performance episode, the audience would vote for their favorites. The judges would select a bottom three, and the audience vote would determine who was eliminated. The results were announced during a 1-hour reveal episode, padded with performances from famous magicians, along with footage and interviews of the contestants. Competition shows were masters of stretching out information that could be delivered in one sentence into an entire hour.
When three pairs remained, there would be a final performance episode, at which point only the audience vote mattered for selecting the winning magic duo. There were ten pairs to start, so that made a total of eight performance episodes. Eight weeks living in the cottage, if you made it to the end.
Quentin was confident in his magic, but certainly not in his ability to appeal to an audience. He was aware of all that when he agreed to this, but he thought his skills alone could at least be enough to take him pretty far, if he could just avoid ever being in the bottom three. But hearing Jane say all of this out loud was making Quentin start to panic. What if they ended up in the bottom three and the audience hated him? What if it ended up being his fault that they got sent home, just because of his personality? How would that be fair to Julia?
He was interrupted from his thoughts when Julia spoke. “Ok, you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sure you’ll hear some kind of lie from Marina, but this is what actually happened. We worked together for about a year as street performers. Marina was the leader of the group – they had a pretty strong presence in New York when I joined. But they started to drift away from magic, and more towards hustling. 3-Card Monte, shell games, those sorts of things. I didn’t want to take part in that, so I tried to leave.
“Marina threatened me to stay, she said they’d keep performing all of the magic tricks I’d invented, even sell them to other people without my permission, if I left. But I didn’t want to scam people, so I stuck by my decision and left the group. And she followed through on her threat, stealing all of my tricks. I couldn’t even perform in New York anymore, because everyone assumed I was the one who’d stolen Marina’s tricks, since they were so well-established. So, I left and started working in Boston instead. Marina is going to play dirty during this competition, and I’m going to be ready for it.”
“Thank you for sharing that, Julia,” Jane said, looking pleased. “Ok, Quentin, let’s do you. Is there anyone here you knew before today?”
“Yeah, I guess. I knew Eliot at Brakebills University, he was two years above me. We never really talked much though. I guess I kind of knew Margo, too? Well, we’d met, at least.” God, Quentin sounded so lame. There was no way he could follow up Julia’s story. He really just wasn’t an interesting person, all of these interviews were going to be humiliating. But Jane looked surprisingly interested. Quentin assumed that was just part of her job as interviewer.
“So how did you meet Eliot, exactly?”
“Umm, he was the first person I met at Brakebills, actually. I’d received this mysterious invitation to audition for something, I didn’t even know exactly what it was for. And I’d showed up to the location described, and Eliot was there to take me to my audition room. I was so nervous at the audition. I started by performing a routine I’d perfected over the years, but then they threw me a curveball – one of the professors performed a trick I’d never seen, and they gave me 15 minutes to figure it out and perform the same trick back to them, all while adding my own twist. It was terrifying, but um, also kind of thrilling.”
“Very interesting. And what was your first impression of Eliot?” Jane asked. That kind of seemed like an odd question. Quentin thought they’d want to talk about magic, but Jane was really leaning into this.
“Well, I mean, Eliot seemed, I guess, kind of indifferent to everything? I don’t mean that he was a snob or anything,” he clarified quickly. He did not want to insult anyone on this show, the last thing he and Julia needed was more enemies. “He just, seemed really um, I don’t know, confident I guess. You know, cool and confident.”
“Hmm,” Jane said, nodding her head. “And he took you on a tour of Brakebills when you started school there, right?”
“Wait, what? How do you know that?” Quentin was shocked.
“I interviewed Eliot right before this. He had quite a bit to say about you.”
“Uh, I uh…” Quentin didn’t know how to process this. What did that mean, exactly? Eliot had probably talked about how lost Quentin looked when they first met, how stupid his questions had been on their tour, how lame his tricks were at the first Magic Night he performed in, which was a monthly sort of open mic night at Brakebills. Quentin had really made a fool of himself there.
“Yeah, he took me on a tour. But um, Eliot was pretty popular there, and he was two years ahead of me so, beyond that, we didn’t really uh, interact. Much.” Quentin could feel his face starting to turn red. He was thinking back to one night in particular, the only other time Quentin had ever been alone with Eliot, at Woof Fountain. He was sure Eliot didn’t remember. He really wanted this line of questioning to be over.
“Great,” Jane said. “Now, what do you both think about the judges this year. Are any of them going to be particularly hard to impress?” Thank God. This, Quentin could talk about happily.
“Well, I’m most excited to perform for Alice Quinn,” Quentin said. “I’ve admired her work for years. I’m mainly a card magician, and, I mean, the moves she’s come up with! It’s a bit harder, you know, for woman in card magic, at least in general, because women’s hands tend to be smaller, and they’re not expected to wear suits with jackets and sleeves on stage like men. Which is honestly, in my opinion, part of the reason there are so few female magicians who do advanced card magic. For so long, magicians’ props and costumes have been tailored to men. But Alice came up with so many moves that can work well for anyone. And I mean the props she’s invented, and her trick decks! They’re just genius.”
Quentin could talk about this stuff for hours. The gender barrier in magic, how it was finally starting to change for the better, how much respect he had for people like Alice Quinn who invented so many unique methods. He was about to keep going, but Jane stopped him there.
“That’s great, Quentin! And what about you Julia?”
“I’m most excited to get feedback from Kady Orloff-Diaz. I really look up to her, because she’s kind of like me. She didn’t get formal training, she started out performing at carnivals, and had to teach herself.”
“And what about Penny Adiyodi?” Jane asked. Quentin considered how to respond. Penny was the closest thing the Centurion Challenge had to Simon Cowell. He was an incredibly impressive performer. He was such a good escape artist he was sometimes called The Traveler. It was like he could teleport out of any location. He was also great at mentalism, able to predict seemingly anything an audience member was thinking of. Quentin usually didn’t like mentalism tricks, since there were only so many ways they could be done, but Penny used a few secrets he’d never released to the broader magic community.
Julia spoke first. “Well, Penny Adiyodi is certainly amazing, but I have to admit, I’m a little nervous about what he’s going to say. I mean, we have seen the show after all, we know he can tear magicians apart,” she laughed. Jane chuckled along with her.
“That was great. Thank you both so much for talking with me. You can go back out into the room while I finish up all the interviews.”
When they went back to the living room, Quentin’s eyes were immediately drawn to Eliot and Margo, standing in the corner, engaged in what appeared to be an intense conversation. As if sensing Quentin’s eyes on them, Eliot turned and stared at Quentin. Quentin stared back, unmoving. Someone walked between them blocking his view, and as soon as they’d passed by, Eliot had turned and was walking away from Margo towards the bar.
“Ok!” Jane announced, coming back into the room after all the interviews were done. Todd followed behind with the camera. Quentin had settled himself on the couch, tired of mingling, idly practicing some simple coin sleights. “We’ve assigned each of you roommates to start out with! It’s a way for you to start to get to know each other a bit better. I’ll read them off.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her back pocket.
“Margo, you’ll be rooming with Ess. We don’t have an equal number of men and women, is that ok with both of you?”
Margo gave Ess an appraising look, the corners of her mouth quirking up slightly. “No, I don’t mind,” she said with exaggerated innocence.
Ess grinned and said, “Nor do I.” Ess was here with a man named Idri as part of a father-son duo.
“Great! Next, Julia, you’ll be rooming with Marina.”
“What!” Marina and Julia both shouted at the same time.
“No, no no no no no,” Julia said. “You cannot do this, this isn’t fair.”
“Now now,” Jane said. “We thought it would be good for you two to get reacquainted, that’s all.”
“No, you’re doing this on purpose!” Julia shouted.
“I will not room with her, this is completely insane,” Marina yelled.
Julia turned to face the camera Todd was holding. “This is the one time you’ll see the two of us agreeing on anything, so yeah, better get it on film.” Wow, Quentin had never seen Julia like this. Julia, who was usually so composed, so well-spoken. Julia, who had been Quentin’s voice of reason for most of his life.
“I’m afraid these rooming assignments are final,” Jane said, with what was clearly fake sympathy. “Now, moving on.” Julia kept grumbling next to Quentin. He squeezed her shoulder in support, but didn’t say anything for fear of missing the assignments.
“Pete, you’ll be with Humbledrum.” Pete didn’t look too happy with his assignment, either. Humbledrum was a strange character. This show liked to have a few oddball contestants for entertainment purposes. Humbledrum was his stage name, although Quentin wasn’t sure what his real name was. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d changed it legally to the mononym Humbledrum. Quentin had never spoken to him, at least not before briefly meeting him today, but he knew of him. He always performed dressed as a bear. He was a comedy magician, but the comedy largely came from the fact that he took himself extremely seriously in his role. He always performed with his partner, Fray.
“Idri, you’re with Sebastian. Josh, you’re with Benedict. Poppy and Zelda, you’re together. Harriet is with Arielle.”
Oh dear. Quentin looked around nervously. There were only three remaining men – Tick, someone who’s name he couldn’t quite remember – Luke? Link? – and Eliot. Jane continued reading.
“Fray, you’ll be with Fen. Tick is with Lunk. And Quentin, you’re with Eliot.”
And, yup, there it was. Having seen people’s reactions to their roommates, not even just Julia and Marina, Quentin could tell there was definitely a rationale behind these assignments. It made Quentin that much more curious about what Eliot had said about him during his interview.
“Alright, that’s everyone. Now, upstairs with you all, time to get settled in!” Jane chirped.
Quentin lagged behind while there was a mad dash for the room holding everyone’s luggage. He wasn’t feeling any particular rush to be alone in a room with Eliot. He was trying his best not to think about the fact that they’d be sleeping near each other, they’d be changing in that room, there were things they could accidentally walk in on each other doing… Nope, nope nope, Quentin was not going to let himself go there. Quentin watched Eliot go up the stairs. He took a deep breath, grabbed his suitcase, and climbed up to his room.
When he walked in, Eliot was already carefully hanging up his clothes in the larger of the two closets.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, not turning around, “about the closet. I just brought a lot of clothes, and I kind of figured you wouldn’t have that many.” He turned then to look at Quentin, who was still standing in the doorway. “But if it’s a problem we could share the total closet space, of course.”
“Um, no I don’t, uh, I don’t mind.” Quentin plopped his suitcase gracelessly onto the bed Eliot had left for him. The beds were next to each other, a few feet apart. Quentin’s was closer to the door, and Eliot’s was closer to the bathroom they shared. Eliot nodded and went back to unpacking. The silence felt awkward to Quentin, but he didn’t really have anything to say. He started putting his clothes into the dresser.
A few minutes passed before Eliot spoke. “I don’t know if you heard, we’re gonna have a party downstairs tonight. Should be interesting. You coming?”
“Um, I’m not really a party kind of person. Besides, I should, uh, probably practice. Our first performances are just two days away, after all.”
Eliot walked over to Quentin, getting just slightly closer than Quentin was comfortable with for someone he barely knew.
“Come on, Quentin, it’s our first night here. They specifically made the first performance two days from now so we could all party tonight and not be hung over for it. Besides, is another night of practicing your own routine really more valuable than a night talking to people with different magic backgrounds? You might learn something.”
Quentin had to admit he had a point, but Quentin was never very good at that type of networking anyway. He was usually either too shy to bring up what he actually wanted to talk about, or he’d start babbling about it so much that the other person would come up with an excuse to leave the conversation.
“It’ll be fun,” Eliot ran his hand lightly over Quentin’s arm and batted his eyelashes. Quentin’s brain stopped working for a second, and before he registered what his own mouth was doing, he was saying, “Ok, fine, I’ll go.”
“Excellent!” Eliot said, spinning around with a flair and walking over to his closet. He seemed deep in thought, then pulled out two vests that looked identical not only to each other, but also to the one he was currently wearing. “Which one should I wear?”
“Uhhh, is this a trick question?” Eliot let his face fall dramatically.
“Oh, Quentin. I can see that you are going to be completely useless to me. Fine, I’ll get Margo’s opinion instead.” And with that, Eliot and his many vests exited the room.
Quentin sat on his bed, trying to calm himself down. This was fine. Everything was fine. He was going to a party, with a bunch of people he barely knew, Julia’s arch nemesis, and his roommate who he was extremely attracted to. Living in a house where he was filmed every second of every day. And about to compete in probably the most important event of his life, where he’d be judged by people all over the country. No cause for alarm.
He started feeling a panic attack coming and was extremely glad Eliot was out of the room right now. He could not let him see him like this. Fuck, what if he kept having panic attacks throughout the whole competition and Eliot saw him and made fun of him? What if he had a panic attack before a performance? He thought he’d gotten control over this, he hadn’t had an issue performing in so long, but what if this was too much and he’d end up humiliating himself in front of the entire country?
He heard Eliot’s voice in the hallway, and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and collapsing back against it, sliding to the floor. He did his best to keep the crying quiet. He just had to wait this out. He would be fine. It didn’t feel like it now, but he knew logically that he would be fine, that he’d eventually get his breathing under control, that he’d eventually be able to stop crying. He did his best to focus on his breathing.
“Quentin?” Eliot knocked softly at the door. It had probably been about ten minutes. Quentin was finally starting to calm down, but he knew he must look like a wreck. “Umm, not to rush you or anything,” Eliot continued, “but I was just wondering if you were going to be done soon? Otherwise, I can use Margo’s bathroom, it’s just, I have some stuff in there I was going to use…”
Shit, he didn’t need to be known as the roommate who hogged the bathroom for obscene amounts of time.
“Yeah, sorry, just a second,” Quentin said. He stood up to look in the mirror. He looked worse than he’d thought, his eyes were puffy and his whole face was red. He rinsed off his face in the sink and patted it dry with a towel. It didn’t look much better. He hid his face as best as he could behind his hair and quickly walked out of the bathroom, looking away from Eliot. He thought he’d gotten away with it, but Eliot grabbed his wrist.
“Are you ok?” Eliot asked, trying to get a better look at Quentin.
“Uh, yeah, no I’m fine, I’m just gonna go, uh, talk to Julia.” He wasn’t meeting Eliot’s eyes, but he couldn’t completely hide his face at this angle.
Eliot was silent for a moment, then let go of his wrist. “Ok, sure,” he said softly. Quentin was almost out the door when Eliot spoke again. “If you ever need someone to talk to… I know Julia’s the obvious choice but, we are going to be roommates for a while. Well, I hope, at least.” He changed his tone, “I swear to God, if one of us gets eliminated before that stupid bear…” That made Quentin laugh, and he allowed himself to finally look at Eliot. “Anyway,” Eliot continued, “I know we don’t know each other well, but I’m happy to talk, anytime.”
“Thanks,” Quentin said, not sure what else to say. Eliot seemed really genuine about his offer. Even though Quentin knew he looked like a mess, he wasn’t even feeling embarrassed about it anymore. Quentin still wanted to see Julia, so he gave Eliot a small smile and walked out into the hallway. Julia could probably use Quentin’s support just as much as he needed hers, if the shouts coming from her room were anything to go by.