thebigbangjob: The Tower of Babble 1/4
Title: The Tower of Babble, or The Eliot Spencer Will Never Drink Again In His Life Job
Author: mizzy2k
Beta(s): tinylegacies & whiskyinmind
Artists: deadflowers5 & errant_evermore
Characters/Pairings: Eliot/Nate, Eliot/Moreau
Rating: R
Genre: I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a (British university AU) CRACK ROMANCE.
Warnings/spoilers: BAD LANGUAGE. Drinking. Poptarts.
Word Count: ~29,000
Summary: Eliot Spencer should have learned never to drink again after the incident at the Fresher’s Fair with the giant bunny and the empty beer keg. He never learned this vital life lesson, so life has decided to teach him the lesson directly - with Nate’s unavailable unbelievably hot arse, Hardison’s smart phone, and Moreau’s dirty smirk (and dirtier intentions) providing Eliot’s brain with possibly insurmountable obstacles.
But with his crazy-ass housemates Sophie and Parker, Nate’s past, and Eliot’s insane addiction to Poptarts joining the fray, Eliot may just have a chance of coming out of this with his sanity intact.
(His dignity, FYI, a lost cause forever.)
Masterpost: here.
(Banner made by deadflowers5)
The Tower of Babble
or,
The Eliot Spencer Will Never Drink Again In His Life Job
by mizzy2k
- - - -
It's a fact universally acknowledged that an underpaid university administration assistant, when encountered with a list of unsuitable properties and a longer list of teenagers who are about to spend the next three years of their lives either drunk, hung over or cramming while hung over in the library, well, the administration assistant isn't exactly going to be logical about house assignations.
(This is the only reason Eliot could have ended up with the housemates he has.)
It's also a fact universally acknowledged that at some point in their blossoming university careers, at least one housemate in every houseshare will get a bit confused, possibly even start to think of their housemates as not even human.
Eliot Spencer is pretty sure Alec Hardison has reached this point.
"Eliot, no," Hardison says, like he's spent the whole day watching One Man and His Dog reruns, or possibly even Crufts. They're uni students. It's in the brief for them to watch crazy daytime TV shit. Nearly their whole department is hooked on Neighbours; it's practically their religion. (Eliot once used this metaphor in front of Nate, and Eliot is pretty sure he broke Nate for a second, it was worse than that time he had a field trip to Magdalen College and he froze a deer with his camera flash. There are worse reasons for people to be banned from Oxford University for life, but that's Eliot's reason for his life ban and he's sticking to it.)
Hardison must think he's been housed with dogs. From the state of the kitchen in their houseshare, it's not a leap to see why Hardison thinks they're all dogs, but if Eliot Spencer is a dog, he's a fucking Alsatian and an untrained one at that. Scratch that, he's an Alsatian trained for illegal dog fights but not house trained.
He tells Hardison this, because Eliot's pretty sure he's hit on some mythic epic shit with this realisation, but Hardison looks at him unimpressed. It's probably because Eliot is a dog and not a laptop. If Eliot was a laptop, especially if he was a laptop trained for dog fighting, Hardison would be looking at him like he was a yummy ice-cream, Eliot is positive.
He tells Hardison this as well. Hardison isn't as bowled over by Eliot's obvious genius as he should be, but Eliot's not too worried. Not everyone can be as awesome as he is, after all.
"Eliot, you can't be serious-" Hardison says, and although it's whiny and annoying it's not a dog command so Eliot tries to pay it more attention.
"I am serious. I am totally serious. Do I not look serious?"
"The pink cowboy hat is a red herring if that's the look you were going for."
"Shut up, I look hot." The room tilts a little. Eliot frowns at it and tells it to be still.
"We should get you to bed," Hardison says.
"That's sort of the point," Eliot says. "That's the overall effect I was going for."
"Alone," Hardison says, for the millionth time that night. Maybe, Eliot thinks, Hardison's really jonesing to sing Alone for karaoke or something.
"He totally wants me," Eliot says, waving his hand over at the corner. "Moreau over- you get it? Moreover? Moreau over?"
"I get it," Hardison says behind tightly gritted teeth. "Believe me, I get it. But you're drunk, man. Completely wiped. Even if Moreau does want you, you wouldn't be able to get your dick up for a second. You don't want him to think you have erectile dysfunction, do you?"
"I don't have to be hard to be fucked," Eliot informs Hardison. Hardison responds by hitting his head against the nearest brick wall repeatedly, which Eliot totally gets, because if he hadn't known that essential sex fact, he'd feel pretty stupid too. "There, there," Eliot says, patting Hardison's shoulder, "it's not your fault your face is so unfortunate that you're still a virgin. One day someone will pity fuck you."
"Seriously?" Hardison breathes, and although he's looking up at the sky, and rolling his eyes, and it seems like he's asking the question to God or something, Eliot totally knows Hardison is just looking for reassurance that this epic event will one day occur.
"Seriously," Eliot tells him, as solemnly as he can. He turns to go tell Moreau he has pulled, and frowns. Moreau has gone. "Oh, you see, now look what you made him do. You were a dork and your extreme boring dorkiness has repelled him out of the room."
"Ahuh," Hardison says.
"Like a magnet," Eliot says. "Fucking magnets. How do they even work?"
"They're fucking miracles," Hardison informs him. "Which is something I need to wipe this night from my mind."
"Me too. I want my mind wiped. I was going for Moreau to fuck me so all I had to think about was his spunk, I think he has magic spunk. I was thinking, magic spunk, it would get his ass out of my head when I wank, you know."
"I don't think you're going to get his ass out of your head if it's involved in the process."
"Huh? How is Nate going to be involved in me and Moreau having sex? Hardison, you're drunk."
"This night would be so much better if I was, but Nate? What does Nate have to do with Moreau's magic spunk?" Hardison's face looks like he can't even believe what he's saying, and Eliot completely empathises because it's the smartest thing Hardison has ever even tried to say, and for someone as stupid as Hardison, that much genius in his mouth must hurt.
"Not Nate, Nate's ass. Moreau's magic spunk in my ass might have made me forget about it," Eliot says, in the tone of duh. He's thought it so often that Eliot's pretty sure it must just be up in the air, lodged in everyone's brain, but Hardison's looking as if this information is completely brand new.
"Nate Ford's ass? Our religious, very weird housemate, who thinks a party is something political? That ass?"
"My brain's made of dust," Eliot says.
"Focus, Spencer."
"Oh, Nate. No, Nate. No, Nate's my best friend, I would never- I totally don't- he's-" Eliot's dusty brain clears just a fraction too much, and he turns to Hardison, wincing. "I don't suppose you'll ever, ever forget this night?"
"Not a chance," Hardison says, a hint of glee in his voice now.
"Fuck," Eliot says, and punctuates how screwed he is by throwing up on Hardison's feet. He totally needs another drink.
- - -
Either his oft-visited daydream of his youth of running a unicorn farm have succeeded and the herd has escaped into his room and is having a cricket match inside his skull, or it's a hangover from hell. If it's the latter, he should probably start writing that apology to his liver he keeps intending to write.
Eliot stares up at the ceiling through his closed eyelids. He knows he's staring at the ceiling because the university had this policy of painting all their properties the same-lurid white on the ceiling, vomit white on the walls.
Vomit- it's ringing a bell, and Eliot doesn't like the fact that the metaphorical bell in his aching brain has the distinctive tone that only a chorus of "Eliot Made an Arse of Himself Again" possesses. Did he throw up on Hardison? Eliot tries to swallow, and the taste of it-mixed with sour beer and something else he doesn't want to identify-makes him want to vomit again. Now all he has to do is make his body move so he can extract his toothbrush from beneath the pile of clothes he was choosing from last night, squeeze the last inch of toothpaste from his nearly dead Aquafresh, and maybe, just maybe he will feel human enough to try and face what had happened the night before. Scratch that-he also needs coffee, and what hell else was there to think about-oh, yeah, the very distinctive smell of his unripe armpits. He definitely needs a shower before he knocks out the whole Northern Hemisphere.
Eliot squints blearily at the lurid white ceiling, feeling like someone has poured sand in his eyes again. (He really, really should learn to say no when Parker says "What happens if...?" but he hasn't learned this lesson. Eliot's okay with that, because he's only a First Year, and he's got two and a half years left of education to pay for, and he's pretty sure if they can't teach him to stop eating whatever Parker points him at, or leaping off weird buildings, or wearing bunny ears to lectures, then he's definitely going to sue Bournemouth University and gets his goddamned money back.) He blinks several times, and his aching body growls at him. Breakfast. Totally the greatest plan ever. Eliot knows exactly where his box of Asda's version of Rice Krispies is. He knows if he puts his hand out he can grab hold of it, fuck the concept of milk to the galaxy because calcium is totally overrated, and chug the crispy cereal dry.
Except, when he puts his hand out to grab the box, his hand collides with something warm. And human. And-
"HOLY CRAP."
Eliot's had a thousand different daydreams of how he would wake up in bed with Nathan Ford (oh, shut up, his unicorn daydreams were when he was five, and he's eighteen now, so, okay, he still has the unicorn dreams maybe once a month, but mostly, since the year began, it's been Nate and his ridiculous curls and rough smoker's accent and those blue eyes like the ocean and if Eliot stops thinking like a girl any time soon he's going to throw his balls a parade in celebration) but none of them are anywhere near the reality-he shrieks louder than the time he found a tarantula in his bed (he's learned one lesson-never, ever switch off the wireless router-Hardison's sense of revenge is epic) and falls off Nate's bed, landing on his ass on the carpet.
He only has a second to feel relieved that his ass isn't sore, then a second to feel disappointed that his ass isn't sore (because he's clearly missed a fantastic opportunity, missing memories aside) and a second to feel hopeful (Nate definitely has bottom moments) before Nate wakes up. From the cool air hitting his skin Eliot knows it's nigh on likely that he's naked, but Nate isn't naked, and he opens his mouth to say how unfair that is, and how much easier it would be for Nate to balance that equation, when he realises Nate is smirking at him and that means Eliot really must have made an ass out of himself last night.
"Morning, cowboy," Nate says.
Eliot flails, and knocks the pink cowboy hat from his head. It disappears into the corner of Nate's strangely tidy room. How he managed to lose his clothes but not the hat he has no idea. Perhaps he should have listened more in GCSE Science about gravity or something, but he knew he was headed for something Media related and what does science have to do with TV, anyway. (If you ignored The Big Bang Theory and Brainiac: Science Abuse and How 2 and all the other raft of scientific programming the digital channels insisted on, and, okay, science has a time and a place, but not in Eliot's aching brain.)
"Wharappened?" Eliot manages, congratulating himself on semi-coherency. The more coherent sentence that was trying to get out was "I want to lick your chin" and Eliot's pretty sure if he's naked on his ass in Nate's room with no memory of why said event occurred that he's obviously been humiliated enough.
Nate leans forwards and yanks an extra blanket from the bottom of his bed, throwing it at Eliot. Eliot grabs at it gratefully and covers his, oh god, completely naked crotch. "I told you not to go to the Firehouse without me. Good night, huh?" Nate says, in that ridiculously hot knowing voice.
"I. I don't remember," Eliot says, covering himself in the blanket but not moving from his tangled heap on the carpet. "'s why I asked you."
"I was studying. You and Hardison went to Dylan's for the pub quiz, and then someone had the bright idea of going to the Old Firehouse afterwards." Nate pushes himself easily into a sitting up position while Eliot rubs his eyes exaggeratedly; pretending his best he's not leering at Nate's muscles, the curve of his shoulders showing around one of those ridiculous white vests Nate's so fond of. Eliot wants to burn them all. He's only voiced that out loud once, to Parker after she made him drink an absinthe vodka chaser shot, and Parker was totally in on the plan. Then again, Parker just likes burning stuff. When Sophie brought them back 40% proof vodka from her theatre trip to Poland in half term, Parker spent half the night burning half the bottle. It made strange logic until they realised that was half a bottle of alcohol gone, but by then it was too late. Nate reaches into his bedside cabinet, and brings something out, throwing it at Eliot. Eliot catches it.
"Nectar of the gods," Eliot breathes, cracks it and downs it in one. Thanks to his delicious breath cocktail the Red Bull tastes like feet, but Eliot so doesn't care. Besides, it's better than when Sophie gave him Irn Bru that time-the whole house carefully declared she was only allowed to bring back shortbread or whisky when she goes to see her Gran in Kilmarnock. He downs the lot and then squints at the can. "I can't believe you have this. Isn't this... cheating?"
"God made people, people made Red Bull," Nate says, like he's quoting someone. "Ergo, it's okay to use Red Bull to help me study."
"People invented mornings, though, I'm pretty sure," Eliot says, "and they're the worst thing ever."
Nate chuckles low in his throat. "Think you can find your way back to your own room? Or do you still have alcohol in your system?"
"Can't I stay fused to your carpet forever? I'd make a pretty good carpet ornament."
"I suppose that answers that question. Carpet ornament?"
"Like for the lawn. But indoors."
"I've seen you eat, Eliot. I couldn't afford you." Nate swings his legs from the bed and gives Eliot a nudge with his foot. "Go. Room, shower, clothes."
Eliot wrinkles his nose. "That bad?"
"How about we designate bad as a generous descriptor," Nate says, raising his eyebrows. "If you go now, I'll put the coffee maker on."
"You would make the best housewife ever," Eliot says dreamily, willing his legs to move before the mental visual of that statement kicked in and yeah, Nate in one of those frilly aprons and nothing much else, that's a good one-
"Did I say coffee? I meant the grease from the grease pan, mixed with fried bacon rinds and overcooked scrambled eggs and bleach-"
"I think my armpit might taste better," Eliot says queasily, finally managing to get to his feet, the blanket still wrapped around him.
"In no universe ever," Nate tells him. Eliot frowns, but turns to go for the shower before he does something else universally stupid, like pushing the curl in the middle of Nate's forehead to one side. "Eliot, aren't you forgetting something?"
Eliot turns, and for one amazingly ridiculous second he thinks Nate means "forgotten to kiss me good morning" and so his legs go a little bit jelly even as he's mentally calling himself a moron, but when he turns around Nate is wearing his pink, 'ironic' cowboy hat. Eliot grabs it, stalks out of the room with as much dignity as he can muster (it can't be much) and mentally adds the hat to his growing list of things Parker can burn.
- - - -
Eliot doesn't think it's fair for two such sexy things to exist in such close proximity, but the universe doesn't listen to his rules, and that's probably a good thing. Instead, the universe provides him on occasion with these glorious, glorious sights, like today's fine example: Nate Ford, holding out a steaming hot mug of coffee with his name on it.
(Literally. All Eliot's things have his name scrawled on in permanent marker. In his house, the moment you brought something in, his mum would label it. He took Nate home for one day in the holidays - his house is near the airport and Nate flew back to Boston for Christmas - and his mum labelled half of Nate's belongings in the first ten minutes, and in a flurry of Sharpie related misdemeanours she ended up labelling Nate, too. The word embarrassment really doesn't cover it, and it took Nate three days to scrub his name from his neck.)
Eliot takes the mug and shoves as much of his head into it as he can, inhaling the sweet smell in the hope it will clear his brain. When he eventually raises his head he sees a full complement at the table of his housemates-Sophie, Parker, Hardison and Nate-and they're all smiling these wide, wide smiles.
"On a scale of one to mortified," Eliot says, "what did I do last night?"
"Show him," Nate says, nodding his head at something blue on the table which Eliot recognises a moment too late for his sanity as Hardison's second laptop. (He has four. Eliot still has the small scar from when he touched Hardison's Sunday-best one.) A familiar red and white logo catches Eliot's attention and he groans.
"Guys," Parker asks, "what do you think the chances are that Eliot's crotch will explode when he watches this?"
"I hate you all and you haven't even hit play yet," he tells them, sinking onto the nearest stool. Parker slides him a bowl of fake Rice Krispies. He grabs for a handful of them, mortified, and chews them as the video buffers. They taste stale. Of course, Parker will have taken them from his room. He ought to be mad, but so far, none of them have been quite as mad at her as they should since she managed to steal them free cable from their stuck-up next-door neighbours.
Then the video plays. It's definitely Hardison's smart phone as the culprit this time. Eliot's hanging onto Hardison as he bursts into their shared living room, and he's- is he singing something? He, oh god, he appears to be singing "Magic spunk, magic spunk" to the tune of Abba's "Knowing me, knowing you" and that's bad enough, until he breaks off that tune and bellows "Moreau's magical spunk" to "Food, Glorious Food", except instead of repeating the words he's making up new lyrics, and apparently drunk!Eliot thinks Moreau's cock must taste like Saveloy.
The video crawls to an abrupt end with Eliot swinging for the phone. "You knocked the battery out," Hardison says. "I got you upstairs, and you went through the wrong door and passed out in Nate's bed." Hardison was smirking which probably meant, oh god, Eliot must have said something about his vague, slight obsession with Nate's rear end, oh god, oh god, oh god.
"I'm so sorry," Eliot mumbles, shaking his head and staring at the blank screen, and at the number of hits below the video. 120 hits. He really, really hopes most of those are Hardison, but he doubts it. If it gets around the department, then- "Hardison! I've never even spoken to Moreau."
"Well that's gonna be awkward," Hardison says.
"Dammit, Hardison!" Eliot squints. "Are you still signed into YouTube?" He lunges for the laptop, but his housemates are way too prepared. Sophie grabs for the machine and Parker pulls out the power lead, and the two of them run cackling for the stairs as Hardison blocks the way.
"You'll never get us in time," Parker howls. Eliot thinks about going after them, because he could kick down whichever door they hide behind, but he also knows Alec Hardison now-he'll have made copies.
"I will never drink again," Eliot vows into his hands as he sinks back down onto his stool. Nate pats his back, his hand warm and heavy.
"Relax. Damien Moreau's a tool. I doubt he even knows how to even open a computer, let alone figure out how to find a random clip on YouTube," Nate says. "Ditto with the rest of the student population. You'll be fine."
- - -
The Saveloy sausage curled up on his favourite lecture seat come 9 o' clock in the Macaroni (okay, so it's Marconi, but Eliot was maybe a little hung over on their first lecture there, and thought it said Macaroni, and said it out loud, and then had to spend the next hour insisting it was deliberate and seriously, Macaroni sounds better) Lecture Hall says quite clearly Nathan Ford is wrong.
Eliot stabs it with his pen and holds it out at Nate accusingly. "Seriously? Seriously?"
Nate holds out his hands before picking up Eliot's rucksack and pulling out his notebook and pen. Nate's stationery is already out on the thin table, lined up against the edge, but Eliot's too riled up to mock Nate for his OCD, and besides, there is always the 0.01% chance that Nate will one day accidentally ingest an hallucinogenic mushroom one day and realise he wants Eliot, and sex is more likely in that scenario if it isn't overshadowed by endless memories of Eliot relentlessly mocking him.
"Seriously," Eliot says again, wiggling the Clingfilm-wrapped sausage. He pauses, and sniffs at it contemplatively.
"There isn't a chance on Earth I am letting you eat that," Nate tells him.
"You are not a real student." Eliot pushes the Saveloy from the end of his pen and leaves it curled up on the corner like dog poop. "It is food. We are poor. No student can afford to waste food, especially food which is not Asda's 9p Spaghetti Hoops. Ergo, we're eating the damned sausage."
"I bet you are," Mark Vector says, pushing past Eliot up the steps to the back row of the lecture hall. Eliot flickers a two finger gesture at Vector. He turns back in time to see Nate throw the Saveloy into the bin, which is a good thirty metres away. Eliot stares at the bin, and then back at Nate.
"Why are you not on the Basketball team?"
Nate sighs. "Some of us have paid the extortionate fees to come here and study, you know."
"Fiction," Eliot says. "Fiction and lies. And you know what they say about liars?"
"That they'll go to hell and burn forever in torment?"
"Besides that." Eliot waves his hand dismissively. "They say show me a liar and I will show you a thief."
"So I'm a thief now?" Nate just sounds amused, which is a good sign. Eliot's too hung over for his internal brakes to even let him stop now.
"Yes," Eliot says, nodding as solemnly as his hangover will allow. "You'll be Parker's apprentice. You'll have to go to TA."
"The Territorial Army?"
"Fuck, no. I was one of their junior officers and there was this padre with a creepy grin, he looked like Clark Kent's dad from Smallville," (another opus it was mandatory for all the Media First Year's to be addicted to) "and kept singing hymns as if they were country songs, and you do not fuck with country when I'm around."
"So what does TA stand for?"
"Thieves Anonymous."
"Ahhh."
"Ahhh indeed." Eliot yanks his bag from Nate and drops it to the ground, deliberately skewing his notebook to one side just to mess with Nate's OCD tendencies. He's always careful to disarray his own stuff, because those pages are full of some seriously epic doodles, from the time he drew their lecturer as a crazed Indiana Jones wannabe who hunted down things from the past and dissolved them in goo, to the time Nate and he illustrated the entirety of The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny over what should have been his notes for his essay on Tabula Rasa. Eliot regrets nothing. "You'll have to drink bad coffee, and stand up and say-"
"Hi, I'm Nathan Ford, and I am a thief."
"See, you're doing it already." Eliot beams.
"You're still not eating the sausage," Nate says.
"Na-a-ate."
"Making my name into three syllables is not aiding your cause."
"Names with three syllables in are cool."
"I'll tell Hardison you said that."
"I concede the point immediately." Eliot shudders, and sniffs at the memory of the sausage. "I still don't see why I can't cook it for tea tonight. I'm an awesome chef."
"I'll concede that point too, if we're disregarding the marmite pie."
"We are definitely disregarding the marmite pie. We are forever disregarding marmite pie."
"You said it yourself why we can't eat it," Nate says.
"Of course I did. The marmite pie tasted like shit."
"I meant the sausage."
"...I did?" Eliot thinks about it, and comes up blank. Then again, he did say an awful lot last night to Hardison that he doesn't quite remember, although something is coming back about Nate's arse, and he really hopes his brain is making that up.
"You definitely said it," Nate says slowly, as if Eliot's being stupid, and Eliot can't exactly protest-he does have previous. "It is food. We are poor. Students can't afford to waste food."
"This is exactly my point."
"Wait for it." Nate narrows his eyes. "Only a student could have perpetrated this prank."
"I'm... with you so far."
"It is food," Nate repeats. "We are poor. Students can't afford to waste food. A student placed it on your table?"
Eliot thinks it over. It still sounds like Nate is proving his point, except for the part where a student would never waste a real sausage on something as mindless as a prank, and- "Oh. Okay. I bow to your mastermind-like knowledge."
Nate smiles smugly.
"-and when you've finished yammering to your girlfriend, Mr. Spencer, I can start my lecture," Mr. Dubenich says loudly from his lectern in front.
It takes Nate turning a hilarious shade of purple and sliding down his seat for Eliot to realise Dubenich means Nate is his girlfriend and that's way too awesome a concept for Eliot to properly comprehend. Aside from the idea of Nate with a vagina which is just... creepy. Nate with breasts he could totally be into. Even gay guys like breasts, after all. Breast fondlage is the secret hobby of ages. Okay, so that's Eliot personal POV and he doesn't know otherwise. He's always been too secretly scared of being shunned by other gay guys if he voices the theory, and if gay guys shun him he can't then go and date them and do that cocksucking thing he's so fond of if last night's song was any clue.
"Sorry, I had a sausage problem," Eliot says to his lecturer, ignoring the titters from the probable prank perpetrators. Dubenich stares, and shakes himself.
"Okay, children," Dubenich says, "let's try and learn something, shall we? Seeing as that's what you're all paying extortionate amounts for-to learn things."
"Fiction. Fiction and lies," Eliot whispers gleefully to Nate, who just digs him in the side with his elbow, and Eliot loses a good 35% of the lecture thinking about how nice it was to have Nate touching him just that little bit. When he regains concentration, Dubenich is talking about planes of existence, and so Eliot uses 40% of the lecture trying not to think about how stupid it was to go giddy and girly over Nate elbowing him, and the remaining 25% to draw the Alsatian he mentally is.
Okay, 20%. He loses the last 5% in a mindless haze when Nate leans over and scrawls a pink cowboy hat on the Alsatian's head.
- - - -
"Do you have any-"
"-photocopy credits left?" Nate squints at Eliot as they wait for the others to leave the hall. "Let me guess, you want to photocopy my lecture notes after the seminar finishes. You're assuming I'll lend you my notes."
"Because you always do."
"Maybe this time I won't." Nate looks at him sideways.
Eliot goes for the tried and tested method-a pout. "But if I don't have the notes I'll fail. And then you'll have no one interesting to sit next to. You'll have to transfer to the Scriptwriting course and sit next to Sophie and Parker, and you know what the Scriptwriters are like."
Nate shudders.
"Or you could go into Media Production and sit next to Hardison," Eliot says, as meanly as he can.
"Fine, fine, fine, I've got the picture. My card's got 20 copies left on it. But that'll be 40p."
Eliot pouts, but digs in his jean pockets for the coins, swapping them for the flimsy copy card. "I can't believe you're charging me, man."
"They cost £2.00 each. I am not made of money."
"No, you're made of fleshy man flesh, but charging me proves you're heartless and should be dead inside," Eliot informs him. "You're basically just... a pre-dead zombie. The walking living."
"How does that even work?"
"It's more... civilised. Instead of the crazed zombie drive for brain, you send out for it. Like takeout brain. Room service brain. Restaurant brain. Or like... a surgeon in a hospital."
"Somebody fetch me a brain."
"Exactly."
Nate shakes his head and looks to the ceiling, except he's smiling, and Eliot really loves- oops, likes the way Nate smiles, and shit he's never thinking the lo- like word again. A crush on Nathan Ford is monumentally stupid, but survivable. Being in lo- uh- like with Nathan Ford would be suicidal to say the least. "You'd die in the zombie apocalypse though too," Nate says. "Early on in the outbreak."
"I would not." Eliot hefts his bag onto his shoulder, mentally swearing the thing got heavier per lecture, and wondering if that meant that was where all his knowledge was going - into his ripped black messenger bag with pencil graffiti of Mr. Rogers duking it out with Chuck Norris. (The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny is too epic to be contained purely within the flimsy white pages of Eliot's lecture notebook. Some of it spills out onto his bag, some onto the desk they were sat on at the time-thank goodness erasers worked on the lecture tables-and some onto one of Eliot's trainers. It is totally justified. His messenger bag is generic and looked too identical to all the ridiculously identical briefcase bag things all the lecturers carry around.)
"You totally would." Nate picks up his own bag much more carefully and they start to sidle out from behind the narrow tables. There's no graceful way to manage it, but when he's around Nate, Eliot feels even clumsier. He smacks his elbow against the table several times, and Mr. Dubenich eyeballs them both, as if Eliot's clumsiness is giving him a headache or something. "You'd grab Rice Krispies and a Kitchen Devil knife and half a litre of flat Dr. Pepper and think you were prepared."
"And Poptarts. Don't forget the Poptarts."
"What Poptarts? Twice now, you've bought four boxes at the beginning of term and they're gone in what, five minutes? I think when I met you, you were sat in the debris of the boxes, crumbs on your chin, silver packets all over the place and one of the blue cardboard box flaps in your hair."
Eliot ought to be mortified, but all he can think and say is, "Good times."
"You'd have no Poptarts left to even grab."
"I see where you're going with this. In a zombie apocalypse world, there would never be anyone left alive who could make Poptarts, and in my severe depression at this sad future world I would throw myself on the ravenous hordes of the undead, crying about the death of Strawberry Pop Tarts as they gnawed on my skin."
"Uh, I was aiming for you'd do something stupid like be bitten while trying to save the rest of us," Nate says, "but that version sounds accurate enough."
I'd be bitten while trying to save you, Eliot thinks, and flushes a little, and Nate unfortunately notices the blush, and Nate opens his mouth to say something-
-but of course someone has to interrupt. Eliot wishes for the thousandth time he knew voodoo or martial arts or something which could hurt the interrupter.
"Mr. Spencer." Eliot turns to see Mr. Dubenich still stood at his lectern, looking decidedly unimpressed beneath his decidedly bushy eyebrows. Eliot feels a bit better-he knows exactly how to hurt this interrupter. By being himself and not appearing to give a fuck about any of Dubenich's classes. Ha. "If you and your boyfriend could stop flirting long enough to vacate the hall, I have another class trying to get in."
Dubenich, unfortunately, is right. Nate and Eliot like to wait til the hall is empty to leave so they're not crushed, but Eliot doesn't want to think how long the hall has been empty. Probably at least a minute, which in university time is a millennium, or a millisecond, depending on the ETA of the nearest exam or essay deadline.
Their next educational thing is a seminar in Weymouth House. Nate's quiet as they rush out of the lecture hall. Eliot matches pace alongside him. Nate doesn't speak until they're just entering the building. "That's the third time today someone has insinuated we're gay," Nate says, prodding Eliot in the shoulder.
"Dubenich doesn't count," is Eliot's automatic reaction. "He's permanently got his knickers in a twist. Nothing he says can be trusted. What the fuck is an existential plane anyway?"
Nate shoots him a low and dirty look. "Everyone knows Dubenich is sulking because of the insinuations he stole Ms. McRory's paper for his latest book. It doesn't discount everything he says."
"Call her Cora like she insists we should, freak."
Nate rolls his eyes. "Still, I'll amend it-it's been two times people have insinuated we're gay for each other just in the last hour. It's a good thing my dad isn't around. He'd beat you up for sullying my honour."
"He'd try," Eliot says automatically.
"You'd lose," Nate sing-songs. "You're so weak a box of Nesquik defeated you last term."
"One, and it was banana," Eliot mutters. "Everyone knows the banana Nesquik tubs are solid. But you'll regret saying that. In ten years I'm going to be like Steven Seagal. I'll be able to take out a boatload of crooks with both hands tied behind my back."
"Seagal would be able to break whatever was tying his hands," Nate says. "I'll take it back in ten years though if it turns out you can. A whole boatload, mind. I'm holding you to that."
Eliot tries his best not to squee at Nate saying he'll take it back in ten years, (that and the fact that Nate is holding him to something, because that's one of Eliot's favourite fantasies-Nate holding him against a bed, against the wall, against a door...) because that's him saying he'll still be in Eliot's life in ten years time and that is so beyond awesome-but his masculinity has taken several dire hits over the last 24 hours and a squee would be one hit too many. He would have to, like, go chop down some trees and chug some lager and burp on some hot women, and he doesn't have the energy. He wants to sleep forever. He could manage a half-hearted ball scratch, he's pretty sure, but he's also sure Nate wouldn't appreciate it. Alas.
"Well," Eliot says, and because it hasn't been said formally, and it really should be said formally, and if Nate is going to run a thousand blocks now it's probably best that Eliot get his heart broken as a First Year when the grades only account for 10% of the final degree, "your dad might not approve of me as a friend then because... well. They might have been jokes, but it's true, I-" It's just words, Eliot thinks fiercely. Just three words. Although if they were easy words, maybe Eliot might have spoken them out loud before now, but he hasn't. Because they're difficult, and have an impact every time he says it, but Nate's his best friend, and he has a right to know, and okay, Eliot's going to say it before he loses his nerve. "I am gay."
"I sort of got that," Nate says, looking straight ahead as they walk, "from your delightful song about wanting to suck Moreau's tasty cock."
"A bit of a clue," Eliot says, wincing. "Are you- I mean." He stops, and Nate stops at the same time, turning to look at him with a quirked eyebrow. "Are you okay? Because you can stop sitting next to me or talking to me if it's going to be an issue." Break my heart fast, his thoughts plead, the object of his thoughts beating racetrack fast.
"My dad's the homophobe," Nate says, patting Eliot on the shoulder. "I'm pretty sure it's not genetic."
"But you're all religious and shit," Eliot says. "The bible-"
Nate shakes his head like Eliot's being a complete doofus. "That's my cross to bear," he says, in an unidentifiable tone, and Eliot opens his mouth to say something, because the moment feels odd, wrong somehow, heavy. Like Nate's admitted something bigger than Eliot finally saying he's gay out loud. But Eliot can't figure it out, and he's pretty sure his brain is going to devote itself to worrying about the fallout, because sure Nate's being cool about it now, but maybe their friendship will change, and Eliot really, really hopes he hasn't screwed anything up. "Dude, I can hear you thinking. And you know what that means?"
"The education is finally kicking in?" Eliot tries hopefully.
Nate shakes his head. "The alcohol's finally worn off."
"Oh, god." Eliot holds his hands over the place where he thinks his liver is. "Good liver. You're doing such hard work."
"Come on, we've got the seminar in less than a minute. I'm pretty sure Cora will let you compliment your internal organs during the session if you can link it to Simulation and Simulacra."
"I can link anything to Simulation and Simulacra. That's the joy of Media Theory. You're never wrong."
"Makes a difference from 99% of the rest of your life when you're eternally wrong," Nate jokes as they reach the door. Eliot watches as Nate goes in ahead of him, wishing like mad that Nate's joke hasn't so far proven to be quite so true.
He just about manages to convince himself that Nate is a liar when he follows Nate through the door and remembers why it's a thousand, million per cent true. His life is the wrongest life of all time.
Eliot mentally curses his brain, which must have chosen to sacrifice itself to save his liver. He definitely regrets drinking so much if that's the case, because if his brain was working...
...maybe he would have remembered Damien Moreau is in their seminar group.
Part 2