WHO: Fen and Eliot Waugh WHEN: Sunday, January 26th, after this and this. WHERE: The Physical Cottage WHAT: Eliot has a complicated emotion. Fen wonders why Eliot is in the shower for so long. TRIGGERS: NA
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Eliot stood in the shower, palms outstretched and pressed flat against the wall, with his head bowed. The water hit him in such a way that his hair was now shielding his face, with the water dripping down from the strands. He'd sought the refuge of the shower over fifteen minutes ago but hadn't actually moved to go through the motions of his routine. It wasn't about hygiene this evening. It was about escape.
In here, he didn't have to try to be pulled together. He didn't need to look as though nothing were wrong. He could bow his head and let the water run over him as he tried to work through the all too familiar feelings.
Fen needed the bathroom. Seven months pregnant, their yet to be named child had a talent for stomping on her bladder. She waited for as long as she could, gave up, and went to another bathroom. It was when she came back, sensitive to the intricacies of Eliot’s beauty regimine, that Fen suspected something was off.
She stood indecisively outside the door before quietly entering and spotting El in the shower.
“Babe?” Before he could defend himself, Fen slid open the glass door to the walk in shower and gave her first husband a look.
His throat had closed up on him, with his eyes misting, as he tried to push the thoughts from his mind. It wasn't working. Little flashes of memory came one after another. Opening the door of his first Cruise suite to find Ren in the hallway, who'd sought Eliot out for conversation, and who Eliot had been happy to see when he'd felt so abandoned both due to the Portal and due to his psyche in Fillory. Sitting among strangers to witness nuptials of people he'd not truly cared about just so Ren wouldn't be alone. Opening the Cottage up so Ren could escape from a family that was familiar but strangers all at once. A kiss in the shadows of the Bronze, with Eliot's hands on either side of Ren's face, a broad smile crossing his features that he couldn't reel in. The feel of Ren in his arms the first night they'd been together.
It was all spiraling ahead to the front of his memory and it made his attempt to pull in a breath end with a cracked sound. He was dangerously close to his face crumbling when he heard her. Tensing, he caught sight of her from the corner of his eye just as he jerked his gaze towards the wall.
As if that was going to shield him or the truth of this. "Yeah?" He asked, voice compromised.
“Eliot,” Fen said. Her voice was calm. Her expression knowing. Maybe she didn’t know exactly what this was about, but she knew her husband. The water from the shower splashed onto her clothes, still dressed, but the priority was Eliot. She was a very visibly pregnant which in her mind made her a very large, immovable (but gentle) object which Eliot could not ignore.
“Talk to me,” she said. "Fen," he returned, without pulling his gaze away. His voice sounded deflecting, tossing back to her the baton of this interaction, but unlike her? His voice was not calm. It waivered with that simply syllable. He squeezed his eyes shut at the request she offered and flexed his fingers against the tile.
Only after a moment did he dare cast a look back towards her and his frown etched as he straightened up. "[[Baby]], no," he said, voice cracking. He ignored it as he pushed off from the tile. A hand reached out to rest on her shoulder, frowning at her increasingly drenched appearance. It wasn't much in terms of increased weight on her but it still made him frown.
“No?” Fen asked, frowning. “No to talking? What do you mean no?” Fen’s eyes went a little wide. Not angry with him, but slightly exasperated. “I know I’m not Ren. I know it’s not the same, but you can still talk to me.”
Fen’s wet hand went to Eliot’s and gave it a squeeze. But she was more determined than ever to plant her feet on the ground and stay exactly where she was until satisfied.
He pulled in a breath and his gaze moved up to the ceiling of the shower for a moment, thumb running against her skin. "I, no, that's not the no," he was able to say before he brought his gaze back down to look into hers. And then he gave the smallest shake of his head. "And no, we're not going to talk to Ky right now, either," he declared.
How would that be fair to him, after all? Ren was the one who lived it. Ren was the one who knew what was seconds away. Not Eliot. And yet, the thought crept back up once again, of the sound of the tablet chiming a departure, and of Eliot looking up to see the other man gone.
“So this is about his new memories?” Fen asked, her face carefully neutral as she measured Eliot up. Ren, was after all, still here. Fen did not feel the need to express grief. No final lays in a pile of his clothes, no bare breasted lamentations.
Ren was still with them.
“What Eliot?” Fen asked. She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.
"Please don't..." Eliot whispered, exhaustion apparent as he did so, but he didn't finish the statement immediately. He didn't want to have to explain the need to find an outlet for his emotions. He didn't want to explain himself at all.
He just wanted a place to simply be.
He brought both his hands up to push the heels of his palms against his eyes, wiping them, before looking to her. Forced, steady smile. "It's fine."
Fen frowned. She stared at Eliot as if a period of silence would compel him to speak, to say anything to her. When that did not happen, her shoulders slumped slightly.
“Okay, fine,” she conceded. “I need to dry off.” She wasn’t Margo or Ren. More useful to her husband when they were in Fillory and he needed her advice. Here? She wasn’t the one with the expertise besides knife making, which wasn’t especially helpful.
But backing out of the shower was awkward with her newly added weight. Making a pregnant three point turn to get out mostly was just getting her more wet.
While he didn't want to discuss it, he realized as she began to turn to exit that he didn't exactly want her to go. He turned his gaze up to the ceiling for a moment, taking a steadying breath, before he took a step forward.
He wrapped his arms around her from behind and bowed his head so he was able to press his forehead to the crown of hers. "I don't want to talk about it," he whispered, "But...stay?"
Fen froze. The tension in her shoulders melted as she felt Eliot’s arms around her. Her expression softened, not that he would be able to see it. Her clothes were soaking through next to him, but she didn’t care. Instead, her hands went up to hold the arms around her.
“Okay,” she said.
Feeling her relax in his arms, he held the position. Shifting one hand, he searched for hers, threading their fingers together, as he focused on breathing. Ren was the latest punch to his emotions but there had been a time, on the last Cruise, where his grief was tangible and real for Quentin but also her. A distance of three centuries made it very possible if she ever returned back to Fillory from Tumbleweed, she'd either be struck down by the Dark King (whoeever the fuck he was) or she'd live out a life in hiding never knowing what became of him or their friends.
Most days, he could push all of this from his mind.
It was harder when news came like the news they'd just received. Sighing, he pulled back just enough so he could help her as he said, "We should get you out of those, Fen."
Thankfully maternity clothing was designed to be easy. Fen slipped off her increasingly wet clothes, with an assist from El, was more appropriately undressed for the shower. Unfortunately, perhaps it was the maternity clothing themselves or her changing shape, but removing her clothes in the shower did not feel as sexy as it might normally have otherwise.
“You know you’re stuck with me,” Fen said, smiling softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He had helped her step out of the clothes and once they were discarded, he wrapped his arms around her once again. He shifted to rest his forehead against hers. It was a promise that she couldn't keep, just like all the promises Ren had given that he couldn't keep, or Eliot himself had given them. They had no say over any of this. They could just give soothing words of intention to stay.
"I'd be thoroughly disappointed if you did," he reassured her.
Fen exhaled softly. Both thankful to have Eliot close and saddened by his need to keep things close to the chest. Their relationship had always been complicated, and they were closer now than ever before.
Fen always felt a little guilty for wanting more. She wrapped her arms around his instead.