Eliot hums, a placeholder response while he tries to think about how to parcel out this information so as to avoid completely overwhelming Jack with it.
"The school I attended was further north," he says, weaving through the racks in the direction of Men's Basics. "A prestigious academy hidden away along the Hudson River." He sounds like a brochure, he knows, but he can't think to describe Brakebills any other way. As insufficient as his education had been for all the horrors that came after, passing that exam had still gotten him away from his fucking family, still saved his life. Eliot's sure of that. He clears his throat, and looks back at Jack to see how well he's keeping up. "I lived in the city for a time after that, and then..." He sighs. "It's a different world, a more magical world that I was taken from. My friends and I, we'd discovered a means of travel between...different planes of existence, and I'd been living there for some years before Darrow snatched me up."
Eliot realizes his hand had wandered into his pocket, thumbing the surface of the silver button. It's only a lump of inert metal now, no hint of enchantment. No escape hatch. He gives Jack a rueful sort of smile. "So if I seem remarkably well-adjusted to...well all of this, really, that's why. I've already got experience with the...core concept. Anyway--"
He stops and makes a sweeping gesture at their destination, the array of half mannequins displaying briefs and tanks in a way that manages to be lewd and oddly sterile at once. "Here we are, there's different styles but like, you get the general idea."
no subject
"The school I attended was further north," he says, weaving through the racks in the direction of Men's Basics. "A prestigious academy hidden away along the Hudson River." He sounds like a brochure, he knows, but he can't think to describe Brakebills any other way. As insufficient as his education had been for all the horrors that came after, passing that exam had still gotten him away from his fucking family, still saved his life. Eliot's sure of that. He clears his throat, and looks back at Jack to see how well he's keeping up. "I lived in the city for a time after that, and then..." He sighs. "It's a different world, a more magical world that I was taken from. My friends and I, we'd discovered a means of travel between...different planes of existence, and I'd been living there for some years before Darrow snatched me up."
Eliot realizes his hand had wandered into his pocket, thumbing the surface of the silver button. It's only a lump of inert metal now, no hint of enchantment. No escape hatch. He gives Jack a rueful sort of smile. "So if I seem remarkably well-adjusted to...well all of this, really, that's why. I've already got experience with the...core concept. Anyway--"
He stops and makes a sweeping gesture at their destination, the array of half mannequins displaying briefs and tanks in a way that manages to be lewd and oddly sterile at once. "Here we are, there's different styles but like, you get the general idea."