greywash

Title: "Hypnotic"
Fandom: The Magicians
Relationships: Penny Adiyodi/Quentin Coldwater
Rating: Explicit
Length: ~1,500 words

Content notes: Set very early in the series, probably somewhere during 1x1 or 1x2, not long after Penny and Quentin start at Brakebills. Warning for disturbing content. I keep my warning policy in my AO3 profile and am always willing to answer private DW messages or emails asking for elaboration or clarification on my warnings for a particular story.

Author notes: For both the "One Night Only" challenge (for Amnesty #42) and the "Loud" square on my bingo card. [ETA 2019.03.03: this story is now also posted to AO3.]

Summary:

Exasperated, Penny says, "Even you couldn't possibly be this bad at sleeping if you were getting dicked down on the regular."

Hypnotic

The first time Penny jerks awake at fucking ass o'clock, after having been up until 2 reviewing for the first practical in Sunderland's class, because Quentin fucking Coldwater can't manage his own goddamn shit, Penny gets up, goes over to the huddled mass of blankets and despair and pokes it until it starts shifting, pushing the covers back to reveal Quentin wide-eyed and looking just as confused as he feels (an unpleasant echoing shiver of panic and helplessness—God, just fuck him, anyway). Quentin tucks his hair back and blinks up at Penny with that idiot-puppy expression that always makes Penny blind with rage: "You were having a nightmare," Penny snaps. "Get it together, asshole, either fix your wards or start medicating your fucking anxiety."

"I do medicate my anxiety," Quentin mumbles; and Penny snarls, "Apparently not fucking well enough"; and Quentin glares at him, and then drags the blankets up over his head again.

The second time Penny jerks awake to the sickening sensation of being trapped in his own body, helpless, while it cuts itself, very slowly, to pieces, Penny throws a pillow, a book, and a lamp, in rapid succession, before Quentin takes his personal volume of the DSM-V onto the lawn, which, fine, whatever, at least he's quieter out there. After Penny has gotten some fucking sleep he bangs down into the dining hall, where he can feel Quentin—still unshowered, in his pajamas—iterating relentlessly over what a freak he is while picking listlessly at a bowl of Lucky Charms. Penny shoves the cereal aside: "What are you, twelve?" Penny asks, annoyed; and Quentin just gives him that face: mouth open, eyes wide, looking totally offended that anyone would call him on his bullshit, oh no, because he is being perfectly reasonable, in his prison of existential despair or whatever, and all the rest of them just don't fucking understand— "Oh my God, shut up," Penny groans, clawing at his face. "Jesus fucking Christ, how did you even—fuck!"

Penny shoves away from the table and gets two packets of peanut butter, a banana, two cups of coffee, and, after about half a second's contemplation, a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast, then bangs the entire tray down in front of Quentin. "I don't eat meat, so you better deal with the bacon," Penny tells him, "but other than that, whatever, I don't care. Do you not understand that you actually need, like, actual food for your body to run? I swear to God, I've met literal toddlers better able to take care of themselves than you."

Quentin flushes, but he takes the bacon, and, after a second, the eggs and toast, too, leaving Penny with the peanut butter and the banana, which suits him just fine. "Thanks," Quentin mumbles, around a mouthful of toast; and Penny rolls his eyes.

"The hot bar is there for a reason," Penny tells him. "Feed yourself, like, an actual meal, like more than once a day, and maybe you'll feel marginally less like a sack of meat just designed to contain your neuroses."

Quentin shifts. "Frankly, I'm not all that good at containing my neuroses," he mutters.

Penny huffs. "You're telling me," he says; and Quentin—

—looks up at him through his eyelashes, and then, immediately, away.

Penny stills. He is somewhat uncomfortably aware that he is halfway through a banana smeared with peanut butter, which—okay, ew, but also—

"Do you want more coffee?" Quentin asks, standing up, reaching for Penny's mug.

"Uh." Penny sets the banana down. "Sure. Thanks, I—"

Quentin shrugs. "Whatever, I'm getting more for me," he says, and then drops Penny's refilled cup at his table on his way back to their room to—Penny isn't thinking about that. He's not, because Quentin has an unbearable personality and a lifelong grudge against things like "consuming calories" and "personal hygiene" and "not being a self-involved cock literally one hundred percent of the time," but—

Penny eats the rest of his banana.

So. So the third time it happens—

"Look," Penny says, a little too loudly, "will an orgasm make you shut the hell up?"

Quentin jerks upright, hair snarled, face pillow-creased and pale. "Wha?"

"Quentin. Jesus." Penny scrubs at his face. "This is not rocket science. When you have nightmares about watching someone murder your dog, I also have nightmares about watching someone murder my dog, because your wards slip when you sleep because you're an incompetent loser who got a C- on that first-week test on the principles of psychic encapsulation, because the fact that that unit is fucking training wheels for everything else we do here apparently didn't connect with you actually needing to learn the material. And you fucking have second-year friends, asshole! Why didn't you get—your boyfriend, what's-his-nuts, to tutor—"

"Eliot," Quentin mumbles, "he's not my—"

"Yes, I fucking know," Penny says, exasperated, "because even you couldn't possibly be this bad at sleeping if you were getting dicked down on the regular—so, come on, one-time offer, because I will fuck you if you promise that afterwards, you will shut the fuck up and go to sleep."

"I was asleep," Quentin grumbles, but he is also flushing a slow, unflattering red, and he gives Penny that look again, the one that has absolutely no right to be as hot as it is, because Penny doesn't go for drama or crippling emotional vulnerability, but apparently Quentin has—hidden depths, or whatever, because he reaches up for Penny's waistband and pulls, so Penny knees up onto his bed. Penny is fully expecting Quentin to be drowning in doubt and self-loathing, which—well, he is, but he's also thinking, "C O C K ! ! !," in twenty-foot neon-bright lights, and Penny has a bizarre echo-chamber sensation of craving that pools in his own mouth flooding wet as Quentin pushes Penny's pajama pants down to his thighs and just—goes for it. He's sort of—he is, objectively, bad at it; but there is a hotsharp, totally unconcealed wave of longing surging up in the both of them; and Penny shudders and grabs at Quentin's hair, gasping, "Okay—okay," and Quentin—moans, and shoves his hand into his own pajama bottoms, so—okay, it's going to be—fast, Penny is thinking, it's going to be—really fast, with Quentin drooling around his dick with his face red and his whole body tight and hard and God, God, he's never—no one this hot would ever let him—and okay, that's enough of that, Penny is thinking, gasping, as Quentin outright whimpers, shoulders tensing, as Penny—is shivering against—just against the tighthard edge of—and then Quentin comes: a battering, yellow-edged explosion that shoves itself through Penny's entire body: "Ohfuck," Penny hears, in his own voice; shuddering, and shuddering, and shuddering.

Quentin chokes, a little; "Don't—don't try to swallow," Penny manages, "you'll probably hurl"; still—shaking, and Quentin coughs, mouth leaking, and Penny manages to grab—is this Quentin's jizz rag? Jesus—and put it up to Quentin's mouth so Quentin can cough again, spitting into the towel: his face a truly hideous combination of sweaty and red-flushed, blinking hard. Penny realizes, somewhat annoyingly, that he's petting Quentin's gross-ass greasy hair, while Quentin spits another mouthful into the towel.

"You couldn't just go for the basics and trade handjobs, huh?" Penny asks; and Quentin wipes the towel across his whole face—eaugh—and then shakes his head.

"One-time offer, right?" Quentin says, voice thick; and Penny sighs, and reaches down to pull his PJs up. He knows way more about Quentin Coldwater's sexual history than anyone in their right mind would ever want to, so he doesn't exactly feel like it'd make sense to argue.

"Change your pajamas," Penny tells him, "and put that in your laundry—Jesus, you're a disaster."

Quentin doesn't argue, at least. Just does it, then turns back to look at Penny sitting at the edge of his bed: Penny can already feel him hamster-wheeling again.

"Look," Penny says, "I'm not getting down on one knee or anything, but I'm also not the kind of asshole who fucks a virgin and won't spoon them after, so—come here, okay?"

"I'm not a virgin," Quentin mumbles, but he comes over, doesn't he.

"I hate to tell you this, but the fact that you think anything you've done actually qualifies as sex is a very good sign that you are," Penny tells him; and watches as Quentin, sidling under the covers, flushes very, very red. "God, don't start again," Penny sighs; "look, just roll over, okay? Roll over."

"I don't actually know how this works," Quentin admits, but he rolls over onto his side.

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." Penny slides down behind him. "It's not hard. We just lie here like this and pretend we like each other."

"Uh," Quentin says, "Okay?"; and Penny nods, wrapping an arm around his waist, and closes his eyes.