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Pick Your Poison, Thursday

Eliot had an Eldritch whatever attached to his brain, sucking down his nightmares like he was a cup of soda with infinite fucking free refills. The guy responsible was a sad sack of a man who barely knew anything, and they were in this situation because he’d tripped over his own shoelaces once right into fucking Eldritch god juice.

Margo had a headache.

Margo wanted a goddamn massage, her book, and her new Mr. Hitachi.

Instead Margo was at work, sitting on the floor between the scented candles, trying to remember second year Brakebills bullshit about energy cords. She hated everything. Everything.

Except for Eliot. She hated his dumb fucking stoic silent drunken bullshit, but she could never hate him.

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It's safer.

If you have a death wish.

"I have just met a giant sharkman," Eliot said, swanning into the shop as though he didn't generally feel like death warmed over.

She loved Eliot. He was the only human being she could genuinely stand.

She wanted to throw a candle at his head.

“Did you now,” Margo said, as she kept staring at her notes.

"Prince Sidon," Eliot said, ignoring her ire with the ease of one who knew he could get away with it, "of the Zora." He frowned faintly, peering down at her. "What are you studying for? Is there a 'banished by a god' exam no one told me about?"

“Trying to figure out how to get the nightmare god out of your head, thanks for asking,” Margo said. Her eye snapped up at him. “But by all means, tell me about your royalty watching expedition. Give my regards to Kate.”

Eliot rocked back a step. ". . . Ah. You've . . . heard about that."

“At what point were you going to tell me, El?”

Her voice was sharp. And not in her usual way.

“Because you’ve been walking around looking like a wreck all week and when I ask you how you’re doing, all you do is smile and drink.”

"Because I'm fine, Bambi," Eliot said. Even as his hand reached into his vest for his flask. "So I'm having some extra nightmares. That's not that new."

Margo knew he’d say that. She didn’t know why she felt the barest hint of surprise. “You’re connected to an Eldritch god by the brain,” she said. “You are not fine.”

Eliot looked away. Took a swig from his flask.

". . . Fear entity," he said, and by his tone he clearly knew how that would sound to her. "Technically."

He held his flask to his chest without putting it away.

"And anyway. Like I said: nightmares. Not new. It's not even about anything major, just . . . Logan Kinnear."

You know, one of his deepest defining internal circumstances. No biggie.

Not for the first time in her life, Margo wished slapping the flask out of his hands would do something. Anything.

She closed her eye and took a deep breath.

“Yeah, no biggie,” she rasped. “Just one of the worst things that ever happened to you.”

"It's not something that -- happened to me," Eliot said. He shook his hair off his face and looked at her properly again. "It's something I did. Telling a near-stranger about it in a bar, now . . . that happened to me."

He sighed, taking another swig from his flask, and then closed it and tucked it away.

"Right. Well. Have you found anything?"

“I gotta get to that store you work at, pick up some books,” Margo said. She looked back down at her notes. Seemed like a better place for it. “He says it’s vulnerable to symbolism. And some junk that sounded a lot like a sensitivity to internal Circumstances.”

"So . . . we should be able to get his creepy Eye an eye patch and be done with it?"

“With a little fuckin’ around in your dreams, probably,” Margo said. “But I’m not an expert on fear entity magic, so what the fuck do I know?”

"From the sound of it, neither is Jon," Eliot mused. "I didn't see anything specific at the shop this week, but, well. I wasn't paying that much attention."

He'd been too busy having a staring contest with the Halloween decorations and vaguely wishing he was dead.

"I suppose there must be a library around here somewhere as well. . . . Ah research." A deep, sad sigh. "My favorite."

“I swear to Ember’s dead, decaying corpse that Jon guy is like talking to Q but worse,” Margo muttered. She pressed two fingers to her forehead and rubbed it profusely.

Why do you think Eliot kept talking to him, Margo?

“It’s all the stammering. High-strung super-nerd chic.”

“If you start crushing on a literal fear demon, El, I’m staging an intervention.”

“Jon’s not a fear demon, he’s just . . . inhabited by one.” Eliot shook his head. “But never fear, Bambi. He’s no match for Q in the adorability front.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMG I love Margo. (I do not think this is news to you.)

Eliot is also Extremely Awesome.

😘 Thanks for giving us something so meaty to run with in our first month!!

“Ugh,” Margo said.

It was a very expressive ugh.

“So. How grievously did you injure him?”

“I didn’t, we still need him,” Margo said, with an expressive shrug. “I just shut him up for a while.”

“Got tired of his verbal gymnastics when he wanted to avoid asking a direct question?”

“Worse,” Margo snarled. “He asked me a question.”

Eliot grimaced. He could picture how she'd respond to that, and it was with much less airy ire than his response was.

"I'm impressed he survived the experience."

“Like I said, we need him,” Margo said, rolling her . . . eye. “I can drag him down the stairs behind a horse-drawn cart later.”

Practicality: the only credible defense against Margo’s rage.

Eliot reached over to pull her into a sideways hug. "I love it when you get all righteously defensive of me."

Margo made a noise that could. . . charitably be called a grumble while she sank into that half-hug. She sighed loudly and gave in to the urge to pout. “All I wanted was a nice week off with a dysfunctional spaceship crew and my favorite portable masseuse, but someone had to go and be a dumb bag of dicks to you.”

Edited 2021-09-23 21:15 (UTC)

"I know, Bambi, I know." Eliot rubbed her arm soothingly. "In Jon's defense, though, he did try to warn me. Just -- apparently a little bit too late. Did he tell you about the 'statements'?"

HOLY CRAP YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE ICON XD

ROFLMAO!

I actually have *three*! But he doesn't exactly laugh much, and I haven't used the spooky reversal one yet, 'cause he hasn't gotten this spooky yet!

“Yeah, he craves ‘em like they’re Waffle House burgers at three in the morning,” Margo said. “It sounds creepy as hell.”

"Yes, well. Genius that I am, I said 'oh, what, like people would just come in and start talking about the time they found out magic was real by killing a bully' and then . . . I was telling him about the time I found out magic was real. By killing a bully."

“Jesus, Eliot.”

That fucking death wish of his was gonna. . . jesus.

"Yes, well. I assure you that lesson has now been thoroughly learned."

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