Eliot smiles, startled despite himself when Jack comes to sit closer and examine his notes.
“Yes,” he answers, losing a moment in staring at Jack’s fingers. “If it is a sphere, that is. I mean that’s what I’d like to find out, and you—” he’s getting ahead of himself, and he wants to explain, but it’s difficult. Jack likes knowing things, and he inspired this idea, but with him sitting closer Eliot can smell his hair. He remembers how soft it felt, how satisfying to have his hands in. For an insane moment he wants to lean in and kiss his neck.
He gives Jack a quick, apologetic smile and clears his throat. “You mentioned…going out on the water to try the boundary from there,” Eliot says, avoiding the mention of both Anne and the circumstances under which Jack told him about it. “And it got me thinking about how I hadn’t examined it from that angle, and what else I might have overlooked in accepting what people said, about not being able to leave here.”
“What I’d like to do is get a series of measurements of the barrier, to see if there’s a curve to it, and from there calculate the overall size of the thing.” He glances as Jack and sees him nod, and remembers the books and notes in Jack’s sparse apartment, how he feels like he doesn’t know enough and how he chafes at that.
Eliot continues his reasoning, drawing more diagrams on the notebook between them. He drifts from physics to philosophy as he speculates about what the possible shape of the barrier might mean, if it’s something deliberately put in place, or a naturally-formed aspect of this world.
“Like a pearl growing around a contaminant,” he says, and Jack’s hand stills on the page for a moment. “If it’s natural there could be imperfections, weak spots somewhere. Or maybe it’s artificial like a column, and in that case how high does it extend?”
Because if its purpose is to contain people inside it, Eliot reasons, it only needs to extend as far as a person could reasonably go. He smirks at Jack as he theorizes that with enough magic layered on him he could do some very unreasonable things, and if the barrier has an opening or an edge deep underground or in the stratosphere, he would be able to go there and find it.
“That would take months and months of preparation,” he adds, swallowing a too-large bite of danish. “But if there’s a way out to the rest of this world, then…”
What then? Eliot knows Jack wants to leave. He doesn’t want him to leave, but he would feel terrible saying that. “I miss New York,” he offers, but he’s not sure it sounds at all convincing. “We could..I don’t know. There’s a world beyond the city limits, and a limit to what we can understand about it, stuck inside here.”
Eliot shrugs. The logic is sound, he thinks, but it feels like an insufficient kind of compromise. But he has to do something to try and make Jack a little happier. Just like encouraging Jack to go on a date with the musician, he thinks. Eliot has no hope of a future with him, can’t even envision the possibility beyond a vague sense of wanting, and in the meantime he has to construct a kind of sacrifice that he can live with.
“So it’s very early days, this idea,” he says. “And in the meantime…well, you’re meeting up with Jacob for some music appreciation, how are you feeling about that?” Eliot smiles. He really does want to be excited for Jack with this, but it’s hard work. “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”
no subject
“Yes,” he answers, losing a moment in staring at Jack’s fingers. “If it is a sphere, that is. I mean that’s what I’d like to find out, and you—” he’s getting ahead of himself, and he wants to explain, but it’s difficult. Jack likes knowing things, and he inspired this idea, but with him sitting closer Eliot can smell his hair. He remembers how soft it felt, how satisfying to have his hands in. For an insane moment he wants to lean in and kiss his neck.
He gives Jack a quick, apologetic smile and clears his throat. “You mentioned…going out on the water to try the boundary from there,” Eliot says, avoiding the mention of both Anne and the circumstances under which Jack told him about it. “And it got me thinking about how I hadn’t examined it from that angle, and what else I might have overlooked in accepting what people said, about not being able to leave here.”
“What I’d like to do is get a series of measurements of the barrier, to see if there’s a curve to it, and from there calculate the overall size of the thing.” He glances as Jack and sees him nod, and remembers the books and notes in Jack’s sparse apartment, how he feels like he doesn’t know enough and how he chafes at that.
Eliot continues his reasoning, drawing more diagrams on the notebook between them. He drifts from physics to philosophy as he speculates about what the possible shape of the barrier might mean, if it’s something deliberately put in place, or a naturally-formed aspect of this world.
“Like a pearl growing around a contaminant,” he says, and Jack’s hand stills on the page for a moment. “If it’s natural there could be imperfections, weak spots somewhere. Or maybe it’s artificial like a column, and in that case how high does it extend?”
Because if its purpose is to contain people inside it, Eliot reasons, it only needs to extend as far as a person could reasonably go. He smirks at Jack as he theorizes that with enough magic layered on him he could do some very unreasonable things, and if the barrier has an opening or an edge deep underground or in the stratosphere, he would be able to go there and find it.
“That would take months and months of preparation,” he adds, swallowing a too-large bite of danish. “But if there’s a way out to the rest of this world, then…”
What then? Eliot knows Jack wants to leave. He doesn’t want him to leave, but he would feel terrible saying that. “I miss New York,” he offers, but he’s not sure it sounds at all convincing. “We could..I don’t know. There’s a world beyond the city limits, and a limit to what we can understand about it, stuck inside here.”
Eliot shrugs. The logic is sound, he thinks, but it feels like an insufficient kind of compromise. But he has to do something to try and make Jack a little happier. Just like encouraging Jack to go on a date with the musician, he thinks. Eliot has no hope of a future with him, can’t even envision the possibility beyond a vague sense of wanting, and in the meantime he has to construct a kind of sacrifice that he can live with.
“So it’s very early days, this idea,” he says. “And in the meantime…well, you’re meeting up with Jacob for some music appreciation, how are you feeling about that?” Eliot smiles. He really does want to be excited for Jack with this, but it’s hard work. “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”