Eliot isn't good with pity.
So, he decides, that's not what he feels when he walks into the room to find Quentin pressing his right thumbnail into the base of his left thumb, little red marks making a notched chickadee-track line across the edge of his hand.
He does feel a lot of other things all at once: a strange, longing panic; a familiar, nervous tingle in his fingertips; half-forgotten memories of frostbitten fields and creaky floorboards and a ragged diary hidden under his mattress; a desire to walk backwards out of the room and pretend he never saw anything at all.
Quentin doesn't see him standing there; his hair has fallen forward, shielding his eyes and forming blinders that limit his view to the huge, dusty book splayed out in front of him. He mouths wordlessly along with whatever he's reading, stumbling on a few words - from the looks of it, the text he's trying to parse out is in Latin or Greek, one of those languages that were built to trip up the tongue. His hands are on top of the desk, in front of him, and his right nail works its way into the meat of his left thumb. Every time he stumbles, the thumbnail digs in harder and Eliot can see him wince, almost imperceptibly, a quick tug at the corner of his mouth before he keeps going.
"Uh," Eliot says, his voice wavering more than he'd like to admit. Suddenly noticing his presence, Quentin flinches. He pushes his hair behind his ears and crosses his arms, stuffing his hands deep under his armpits and offering Eliot an awkward smile. "Hey."
They stare at each other for a millisecond (and Eliot thinks that maybe Quentin's gaze is a challenge, while he knows for certain his own is just pure deer-in-headlights terror), before avoiding each other's gaze, their matched expressions glazed and jittery.
"What's up?" Quentin says finally, pushing away his book and closing it. A little plume of dust poofs out. "Thought you and Margo were out tearing up the town."
"Nah," Eliot shrugs. "She fell asleep trying to choose a pair of shoes." Quentin snorts a laugh and he feels compelled to add, "I'm really not kidding." He pauses, bouncing on his toes. "So, uh - whatcha doing, friend?"
"Just, y'know," Quentin waves a hand (his right hand, Eliot notes, not his marked-up left hand, which stays partially-hidden) over the books on the table in front of him, "trying to study."
Eliot takes a few steps closer, so he can lean over the desk and take a better look: Caravel's Metamorphosis, The Ethics of Transmutation. Blech.
"Transmogrification," he groans. "Have they already given you that test, the one where you have to transfigure a mouse and then they guilt trip you about it, afterwards, for not 'fully considering the ramifications involved with transfiguring a living being'?" He pitches up his voice and adds air quotes to the last bit, for good measure.
"Uh, no," Quentin says, eyebrows knit together. "Not yet?"
"Oh. Well. Spoiler alert, I guess."
His hands are still shoved under his arms, but Eliot can still see the flush of red spreading out across Quentin's left hand. There's one dime-sized spot, right at the base of his hand, where his thumb meets his wrist, where the skin is raised and angry and white-hot. Eliot's mouth goes dry, looking at it, and he has to drag his eyes away because he's been staring too long and too obviously and some words have to come out of his mouth, now, or else they'll be forced to talk about it. About that.
"I was just gonna," he starts, looking up from Quentin's hands to his eyes and seeing the resignation there, which isn't really the expression he was expecting and it throws him off. He stumbles as he continues, "I was gonna go have a cigarette. If you wanted to come. You could probably use one?" He gestures vaguely at the textbooks.
Quentin frowns at him. Like he's being let off the hook too easily and he knows it.
"Yeah," he says finally, his eyebrows knitting together before his expression softens and he relaxes his posture, hidden hand finally sliding out from under his arm. "That'd be good, thanks."
He follows Eliot to the patio, into the dewy late-evening air and the hazy yellow light of the Edison lights strung overhead, and the click of the door closing behind them feels like punctuation: a full-stop, after which they can both pretend the moment before never really happened at all.