1.
There are little scars all over Quentin's hands and wrists and arms.
Some of them look almost like the smattering of razor nicks Eliot has on his own jaw, down his throat. The kind of tiny, pearlescent healed wounds that he figures are an inevitable mark of manhood. But Quentin has them across his knuckles, too, along the line of his thumb and at the base of his wrist. Nondescript little scars that could just as easily be from carelessly bumping against sharp corners or accidentally nicking himself with one of those shitty potions class-issued obsidian knives. Nothing to worry about, not really.
Not compared to the neat lines that poke out from underneath his sweaters whenever he rucks them up.
Tonight, Quentin's sleeves are pushed all the way up to his elbows. He's too wrapped up in a particularly difficult procession of choreographed hand movements to remember to be sheepish about the scars they all pretend they don't see.
Eliot watches him as he mouths his way through each step, a reasonably simple space-clearing spell: Markov's 3rd, index fingers mirrored through Vladislav's Arc modified by the Summoner's Position in middle and ring fingers, carried through to Bonevere's Hatch with left supra right. All movements must be done cleanly and without hesitation, which seems to be the part really fucking up Q's groove tonight.
He likes these evenings, sitting by the fireplace and sipping at red wine and pretending not to pay close attention as Quentin practices his homework: his long fingers dancing in the firelight and the mood only broken by the occasional "fucking shit" when Quentin buggers a movement and the spell fizzles on his fingertips. The little straight-line slashes on the outside of his left forearm are visible, too, in this light: not clearly enough that Eliot can guess at their age or severity, but enough to make his heart tighten into a ball in his chest.
Glancing away from his arms, Eliot looks up just in time to see the tiny wrinkle of Quentin's nose as he tries to ignore the stray strand of hair tickling at it. Huffing a frustrated breath, he barrels his way determinedly through the steps of the spell for the umpteenth time with furrowed eyebrows and his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth.
"Jesus Christ," Quentin mutters. He's slumped petulantly in his armchair, his elbows planted on the armrests and his hands moving, rhythmically. Q's sleeves creep further up and his arms are illuminated by the flickering light and Eliot realizes, now, the way some of the lines are fresh-red and not old-white.
Eliot leans forward in his chair, his jaw working to shape words he hasn't even decided on yet, but then Quentin fucks up Bonevere's Hatch again and, even with his eyes trained on the cuts on Q's forearms instead of the movement of his hands, Eliot can tell the spell's not working because there isn't enough overlap between his little fingers as he moves through the crosshatch. It's a rookie mistake.
"Your pinkies are all wrong," Eliot says before he can stop himself, breaking the silence, and Quentin glances up at him with a start, his eyes uncrossing themselves from their myopic focus. He slides his sleeves down, reflexively, and Eliot hesitates, wanting desperately to say something because this, this is the moment to fucking say something but he's not sure what to say. He's never been good at this, this worrying about other people and expressing it out loud thing.
So he clears his throat and knocks back the last of his wine, before setting the glass on the floor and rolling up his own sleeves.
"I'll show you," he says with a sigh, sliding into Markov's 3rd and wishing he wasn't such a fucking coward.