( ᴘʀᴏᴛᴇᴄᴛ ᴍᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪ ᴡᴀɴᴛ )

later~

Eliot was born and raised on a dairy farm in Whitehead, Indiana--or so he thinks. In reality he is not, in fact, the biological relation of most of his terrible family, but the result of a short-lived affair between his mother and a sexy, sexy musician when the two met while doing the same drug trial. Guenievre needed the money, Emeríc thought it'd be a lark, you know how it goes. 

Further, he's actually half a set of fraternal twins, and that drug trial is the reason he's telekinetic. Basically this is a family with a lot of secrets.

Secrets Eliot fled, without learning any of them, to attend SUNY Purchase in New York, where he actually did pretty well (in "the most liberal of arts") until a Tet Corp agent called Henry Fogg found him just after graduation, and that was the end of even pretending to normalcy. Fogg located and trained other young adults and teenagers with similar abilities, at the same time masking their existence from the insidious influence of the Shop.

Over the two years he attended this makeshift school would change his life in a number of ways; it has to be said one of the most important was meeting Quentin Coldwater. Eliot had had warm relationships before; he was close to his older twin siblings before they left for warmer climes while he was still very young, and had what amounted to a romantic friendship in high school before he like ....hideously, awfully sabotaged it, but Quentin ...

Quentin was, and remains, the only person who knows everything about him - his queerness, his telekinesis, his fucked up family, his constant low-key death wish - and still accepted him without reservation and no expectations. He possessed a hard earned thoughtfulness Eliot found kind of impossible to relate to but admired in an abstract "that sounds kind of nice" sense, and like. Let's just be straightforward here, he was very cute. A cute baby psychic who seemed like he needed a wing to hide under.

Over the pre-flu year they were in the same room nearly every day, their friendship became the most significant one Eliot had ever experienced, and so naturally when he felt a slow and stupid crush developing that was just. Terrible!!!!!!! Also, pretty difficult to hide when ur bff literally feels your feelings, but Eliot did his best, and Quentin seemed to respectfully at least pretend he didn't know--and then the flu hit. The two of them found themselves the only survivors amidst their little class, and that meant no more of Fogg's protection. No more other students to unite with and protect themselves. As much as it trained and educated, Tet Corp's program instilled a healthy (...mostly healthy, a little intense) fear of the Shop and what it did to those with abilities like theirs; alone, Eliot and Quentin were vulnerable, and that couldn't continue. Strange dreams (and the on air death of a DJ in the next town over) led them out of New York and on the next flight to Derry.

A destination, of course, it would never reach, and that is where we begin our fireside tale of the apocalypse and what happened after.

( absolutely none of this is work safe. )