Eliot Waugh

Eliot stepped out the front door of the house on Apocalypse Avenue to head in to work -- extremely late, yes, but hey, at least he was going, okay? -- and paused to light a cigarette.

It was his first of the day. Not because he was making any sort of concerted effort to quit or anything. He'd just only woken up about half an hour ago. So he could be forgiven, maybe, for pausing on the stoop to savor that first hit of nicotine, closing his eyes and letting out the smoke with a soft sigh.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking at a tree.

With a clock in it.

"Oh fuck me," he muttered. "Margo? Margo, did you get Fillory-napped with me?" He cocked his head, listening for the mellifluous strains of what would surely be an impressive amount of cursing.

All he heard were fucking birds.

"Well. She's going to shit a brick." He sighed, took another drag on his cigarette, then looked around at the nearby bushes. "Any bunnies around here want to go on a trip for me? Hello? I have smokes to spare. . . ."

[Eliot is now officially expat-ed! He'll be showing up from time to time for not_a_goddamn_princess's plot purposes, but will otherwise be low-key and quiet. Because braaaaaains.]

Margo hadn’t been outside the weird nightmare house when Eliot got out. And — and he didn’t really have any other friends around here, did he. Sure there was Jon, but the last time he’d talked to Jon he’d accused him of making history worse by existing in it, so he’d probably burned the fuck out of that bridge.

So Eliot had gone home. And found that empty, too.

( cut for references to substance abuse and self-medication )

[mostly for establishment purposes, but can also be open if anyone has reason to stop by.]

Eliot was very glad to still be his normal adult self this weekend, considering that his child self had not yet been properly Eliot.

Margo, on the other hand, had clearly been Margo through and through since birth.

"You're not doing it right," she said imperiously. "You have to hold your pinkie out like this!" She demonstrated with the little tea set that Eliot had turned their normal sized tea set into for the weekend.

"Ah, you're right, darling," Eliot said with supreme dignity. "My apologies." He held his pinkie out, receiving an approving nod. "And would your majesty like another tea cake?"

Tiny Margo was adorable, and had Eliot wrapped tightly around her little finger. And neither of them would let the other forget it when she was back to her full-sized self again.

[Margo modded with permission! Mostly for Her Majesty, but can be open as well. Standard slow play disclaimers apply.]

The nightmares weren't getting worse, but they weren't getting any better, either. Eliot's usual coping mechanisms of drugs and booze and hedonism hadn't done much more than fuck over his entire sleep schedule, so that he ended up taking naps at random moments and waking up with an overwhelming need to escape. This usually led him to the bottom of a bottle, but Margo had said that she ran into Rafe and Abigail, of all people, at some event thrown by the school, so maybe they were going to make it back to Fillory soon. In which case, he should at least try not to be wasted or hungover.

So today, he was escaping physically. Putting as much distance between himself and his bed as possible. Which led to him hiking, in dress shoes and silk of all things, into the preserve.

He was unconvinced that this was any smarter an idea than losing himself at the bottom of a bottle.

[for one]

"High King Eliot," the Fairy Queen said, from his damned throne. Eliot blinked a few times, having long learned how to keep his surprise and outrage on the inside when facing down a threat.

"Your Fairy Queenness. Can I help you with something?"

"You've been attempting to send rabbits to your High Queen."

Eliot lifted his chin. "I . . . may have tried to make contact, yes."

( In which Eliot makes a deal )

[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. This one is all me. Eliot will be arriving in Fandom shortly!]

Tick Pickwick, former Regent and current CFO of Fillory, stood in his usual position before his monarch, and refused to let his smile waver. "I'm sorry, your majesty. We simply don't have the funds to —"

Eliot cut him off. He was really tired of hearing this. "We'll just have to borrow."

"Begging pardon," said . . . one of Eliot's other advisors. Look, there were kind of a lot of them and they were always whining about money and Eliot's focus had been kind of elsewhere lately since, oh yeah, Margo vanished, Quentin killed a god, and magic went away. "But Tick is right."

Eliot stopped listening. One of the fairies was walking up to the Fairy Queen, who was seated in Quentin's throne to Eliot's left. Glancing over at them and trying not to stare at the empty throne of the High Queen where Margo should have been sitting, Eliot watched as the slightly masc fairy handed their queen a black and white rabbit.

He was the only one who could actually see the fairies, something to do with making fairy deals. Technically, he supposed, Fen could still see them, but she was a bit distracted being completely bat shit crazy and cooing at the log she'd decided was their stolen first born child.

Look. There was just a lot going on here, okay?

( Eliot misses Margo and Josh makes chili )

[NFB, NFI, OOC welcome. Eliot's got a little bit to do in Fillory before he makes it to Fandom sometime mid-week. First scene adapted from Magicians 3x01, "The Tales of the Seven Keys"]