Fandom: The Magicians

Ship: Eliot/Quentin

Rating: Explicit

Wordcount: 5,333

Genre and tags: Quentin lives AU, shared fantasy

Being impaled on a magical feminist ice axe has meant a number of things for Eliot, this past half-year. Light gets in, monsters get out, it's all very poetic, but a hole in the abdomen where a hole ought not be can, it turns out, be a bit of a drag in the life of a young magician. Perhaps most saliently, now that the dust has settled, it means that Eliot's not the host that he once was: he can, of course, still throw a party and mix a fucking devastating cocktail, but he can't mingle as effectively anymore, nor can he twirl Margo—or Quentin, or anyone who catches his eye—around a dancefloor, makeshift or otherwise, until he forgets which way is up. It's all very dull.

As a compromise—though, Eliot had confirmed, not a show of guilt—Margo had bestowed upon him a truly regal chair for the castle's reception hall shortly after she sauntered back into Fillory and retook her crown. It feels like an armchair but looks like a throne, and Eliot's fairly confident that Margo enlisted the magical services of some sort of morally ambiguous Fillorian carpentry witch to have it made for him. It means that he can sit and watch the revelries while looking kingly and deliberate instead of maudlin and old, but as much as he loves Margo and her endless attempts to spoil him, it's a poor substitute for actually being in the thick of things.

Then again, Eliot thinks as Quentin swings into view and climbs carefully into the chair with him, it's not all bad.

"Hi," Quentin says, flushed and bright-eyed and a little bit breathless. After some cautious and mutual wriggling they end up with Quentin half in Eliot's lap and half squished in beside him, his legs draped, more or less, over Eliot's own.

Eliot kisses him, light and brief, just because he can. "Hi."

"Nice party."

"Thank you, I strong-armed it onto the royal events calendar myself."

Quentin gives him a look, exasperated but fond. He has a drink in one hand and he shifts it now to the other so that he can drape the arm closer to Eliot along the back of Eliot's chair. "So," he says, playing with a strand of hair near the nape of Eliot's neck. "Truth or dare?"

Is that what they're doing? It seems a bit early in the night, but then again, far be it from Eliot to deny this drunken young man anything. "Dare."

"Hmm." Quentin pretends to think about it, tapping a finger against his lips. "Fuck me over that refreshments table over there."

Eliot raises an eyebrow. "Now?"

"Yes," Quentin returns with a hint of petulance.

"Fen would kill me."

"You don't know that, maybe she'd enjoy the show."

"No, I mean—" Eliot jerks his chin toward the opposite end of the hall. "She'd kill me for stealing her thunder. Look."

Quentin twists to look at Fen, and Eliot watches him take in the spectacle. Fen, standing regal and stunning in a gown from Margo's favourite seamstress, and the girl she's been talking to for the better part of an hour. A captivating little farmer's daughter, dark-skinned and chubby and shorter even than Fen herself, who keeps touching Fen's arm and stepping into her space and glancing up from beneath undoubtedly voluminous eyelashes.

Visibly delighted, Quentin turns back. He hands Eliot his drink and settles back once more, tucking his head under Eliot's chin. Obediently, Eliot downs the drink.

He regrets it immediately. "What the unholy fuck was that?"

"Vodka cranberry," Quentin says happily, and Eliot doesn't need to see his face to know precisely which shit-eating grin he's sporting.

"What have I told you about highballs, Q? Was there even enough vodka in that to be worth the trip over here?"

Quentin shrugs. "You could've just fucked me in front of the entire court," he says, like that had ever truly been the game they were playing.

Eliot hands off the empty goblet to a passing caterer and settles back more comfortably in the chair. Resting his chin on the top of Quentin's head, he says, "You're very annoying. Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

He gives his question some thought, which actually does take a moment. The problem with having the kind of history with someone that he and Quentin have—even if that history is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty weird and fucked up, generally speaking—is that it gets trickier, after a decade or so, to make them squirm.

Then again… "What's something you're into? A sex thing," Eliot clarifies before Quentin can pretend at obtuseness. "One that you're pretty sure I don't already know about."

"Oh." Quentin sounds genuinely surprised. He pauses for a moment himself. "That's hard, actually, you already know… kind of a lot. Okay, I, uh—I like it when people are mean to me. Not just, like, you bossing me around, obviously I'm into that—"

Eliot squeezes Quentin's hip. "Obviously."

"—but like, um, insults and stuff. Like actually being mean?"

Huh. Eliot frowns, thinking this through. "Like… a humiliation thing?" he says, and interestingly enough, Quentin shifts a little bit in his lap.

"Maybe? Or, um, embarrassment anyway? Like, like when Margo tells a whole room full of people that I'm a virgin. Or when we met and you kept acting like I was, like, a basement dweller in bad clothes."

"Well. They were pretty terrible clothes." Eliot's pretty sure he couldn't mask the affection in his voice even if he tried, and Quentin, hearing it, relaxes against him a bit more. Then, because he can't not, Eliot says, "Who else have you had this problem with?"

"God. Sharing a room with Penny was hell. He— hey!" Quentin jerks far enough away to glare at Eliot. "Stop laughing, asshole."

"I'm sorry," Eliot says, though he's absolutely still laughing. He punctuates it with an apologetic kiss to Quentin's forehead. "Please, continue."

"No, I don't—he's really hot, El! And, like, really mean."

"Shh, I know." He doesn't bother to hide his smile. Again, he's not sure that he could; it's pretty embarrassing for him. "No, it's, um—okay, you know what? Free truth. On the house."

The frown doesn't leave Quentin's face, but when Eliot leans in to murmur against the shell of his ear, he can feel Quentin shiver.

Eliot says, "I had a fantasy about that, way back when. You and Penny. Got a lot of mileage out of it, honestly."

Quentin goes utterly, unnaturally still and Eliot thinks gleefully, Gotcha.

Whatever might happen next, though, whatever Quentin might say or do, it's interrupted by the arrival of one Tick fucking Pickwick.

"My kings," Tick says with that broad, phony smile. He casts a delicate but pointed glance at Eliot's hand, which—huh, seems to have found its way to Quentin's thigh. "If I may…"

"You may not," Eliot says. Just to make a point—well, more or less—he rubs his thumb along the inner seam of Quentin's bland Fillorian trousers. "Go bother somebody else, Tick. Go and see how many poor, sad, verbally eviscerated diplomats High King Margo has left in her wake so far tonight."

Tick's smile goes tight and apprehensive. "Of course," he says mildly, then bows and leaves.

The damage is done, though. Quentin glances around, definitely remembering how many other people there are in this hall who aren't Eliot, and slides gracelessly off of Eliot's lap.

"I'm gonna…" His voice trails off and his shoulders hunch a little, sheepishly, like he's trying to turtle into his own body. It's disgustingly cute. "Drinks. Dancing? I'll see you later."

"Of course," Eliot says with a benevolent smile.

The party is a success. It always is. People drink and dance and converse, one or two drinks are thrown in one or two faces, someone storms away from Margo in tears, and at least one pair of young, rich Fillorians sneak off to find a secluded hallway together, blissfully unaware that their king can see their thoroughly unsubtle asses making the great escape. But it's barely midnight when Quentin swoops back over to him, grabs his hand, and frees him unceremoniously from a scintillating conversation with a talking jackrabbit who seems to have gotten himself named the ambassador to Fillory from one of the outer islands.

"Hi, gotta go, kingly business, sorry," Quentin says, utterly unapologetic and absolutely interrupting Eliot's aborted attempt to ask, Do you travel easily between worlds, too, or is that just the little ones? without kicking off a diplomatic incident. He waits for Eliot to stand without exacerbating his injury, lest it heal at an even more glacial rate, and to grab his astonishingly expensive cane. This is all the warning Eliot is provided before he's led, steadily but summarily, through the castle to their bedchambers.

"So," Quentin says against Eliot's lips before the door is even fully closed behind them. He's not shoving, he wouldn't, but his hands are on Eliot's shoulders and he keeps pushing up onto his toes to kiss him. "Um. So, like, tell me."

Leaning back against the door, Eliot pulls Quentin in by his hips until their bodies are pressed together. "Tell you what?" he asks. Quentin makes an impatient noise against the skin beneath his jaw; Eliot tips his head back and smiles at the ceiling, safe where Quentin can't see. "I'm not being a dick, Q, you still haven't told me what's got you this horny."

"You're always a dick," Quentin complains, which Eliot can admit is true. With a bit of artless tugging at Eliot's vest, Quentin adds, "The, the, um, the fantasies. Me and Penny. Tell me."

Oh, good; Eliot really had been hoping. There was a time, a few months after their first anniversary at the mosaic, when they'd gotten drunk at a Fillorian tavern and Quentin had—as if compelled—confessed to harbouring an array of Eliot-focused fantasies in his spank bank. He'd come agonizingly hard to thoughts of Eliot's fingers, Quentin told him unselfconsciously, mere days after they'd first met. Hearing this, Eliot's whole body had abruptly felt like a livewire: bright, thrumming, caustic.

Under the barely-adequate cover of the chatter around them, Eliot had coaxed, wheedled, and flirted as many details out of Quentin as he could. And when Quentin stammered his way through a fantasy in which Eliot telekinetically teased him, under a table, in public—well, Eliot had been forced to drag him outside and shove him against the windowless back wall of the tavern, pushing a leg between Quentin's thighs and slapping a hand over Quentin's mouth to muffle the sweet noises as he came.

So: Eliot's always happy to return that particular favour.

In the here and now, he cups Quentin's face in both hands and kisses him, slow and thorough. It stops Quentin's fumbling, at least, and the clothes-tugging that his poor buttons did nothing to deserve. When the kiss breaks Quentin looks up at him, wide-eyed and almost smiling.

"Sit down." Eliot nods toward their bed. "Pants off."

Eliot's always preferred to disrobe slowly, even BM, Before Monster, and tonight is no exception. It's really not about showmanship, not primarily, more a habit derived from the heady cocktail of expensive tastes and no money. But it certainly doesn't hurt anything, to know that Quentin's impatient eyes are on him as he folds his tie, hangs his vest, unties his shoes.

A glance back at Quentin seated at the edge of their bed, frowning, sexual frustration emanating from him in waves, does Eliot in, though; he's only human, despite his best efforts. He's still wearing his boxer briefs (silk) and undershirt (cotton, white, eminently stainable) when he gives in and crosses the room.

"So," he says, kneeling astride Quentin on the bed. Quentin leans back to accommodate him and he braces Eliot's hip with one hand, automatic, like it's muscle memory. "Which part is doing it for you? The Penny part, or the me part?"

"Um. Uh, both?"

Helplessly, Eliot smiles down at him. "It doesn't have to be," he says, and taps a finger against the frown line between Quentin's eyebrows. "It's fine if it's just Penny."

"No, it's—" Quentin's eyes dart to the side, like everything is a bit much for eye contact at the moment. It's very sweet. "It's definitely both, like. Very, very both."

Eliot kisses him for that, then gestures for him to raise his arms so Eliot can pull his uninspired tunic over his head. (That, of course, goes on the floor. It's beige and looks like it was sewn from a potato sack.) "So you want to hear all the sordid details?"

"Obviously," Quentin says, and Eliot laughs.

He can't really manhandle Quentin the way he used to, either, but they're practiced enough by now that it only takes a few gestures and gentle shoves to get Quentin to move up the bed. Eliot follows after and stretches out beside him. "So," he says, settling on his side. "A lot of it was just that—as you said—Penny is hot. Especially our Penny."

"Preach," Quentin says.

"And, while I'm not sure you're aware of this, I may have had the slightest fixation on this one nerdy first year who could barely meet my eyes."

"And a slight blushing virgin kink."

Quentin knows him too well; Eliot snorts. "Straight boy corruption fantasy, Q, please. Anyway, you were cute and flustered, and even more cute and flustered when Penny was around—which, of course, I now realize was probably about a little more than plain old beta male terror—and then, happily enough for me, you shared a room. So I had some thoughts."

With a little mhm noise Quentin wriggles in closer. Eliot quashes another smile and rests a hand on Quentin's belly, like maybe he'd been planning to, and the timing is just a coincidence. There's a pause while Eliot runs his fingers through the soft hairs on Quentin's stomach and tries to decide how to play this—he's not as drunk as Quentin but he's most certainly not sober, and his fuzzy brain still hasn't quite grasped the shape of this whole thing. But Quentin says Eliot's name and he's absolutely about to start whining, so Eliot rolls his eyes and jumps in.

"Okay. So, picture this with me: I'm alone in my room in the cottage. There was a party, so I've got a nice buzz going, and no one's around to suck my dick because Margo and I haven't replenished our supply after the last round of heartbreaking."

"Oh, of course," Quentin puts in. "That is the only reason and there can be no other."

"I'm sorry, are you telling this story? Please, take it away."

Quentin's face scrunches up, the way it always does when he's trying not to laugh. He shifts onto his side to mirror Eliot and kisses Eliot's cheek in apology. "Sorry. Lips zipped, I promise."

Doubtful, but Eliot will let it slide for now. "As I said: alone, bed, sexually frustrated, devastatingly handsome. I've lit a few candles because even when there's no one there to appreciate it, I look especially ravishing by firelight, and one must always make time for self care."

"That's," Quentin starts, but he cuts himself off when Eliot's eyebrows go up, grimacing in apology.

"My clothes have already been put away, lucky for you, and I'm on top of the sheets, wearing… hmm. Let's see. That decadent red robe, you know it—the one that Bambi's drunk, kleptomaniacal alter ego stole and lost, I still don't understand how—and those navy pajama bottoms made from mulberry silk. No shirt, of course."

Eliot can feel Quentin wanting to comment, can see it on his face, so he stops for a beat, just to see what happens. But Quentin only bites his lip and says nothing. It's a very pointed sort of saying nothing, but still, Eliot is almost proud of him.

So he continues. "I can't sleep because I haven't had a single orgasm, and somewhere in the middle of some good old-fashioned rumination on which first year psychic I can turn my attentions on next… my thoughts fall, quite by accident, on you and Penny."

He can picture this now, actually—the scene is a composite, all sorts of finer details having long been lost to a bottomless flask, but he can see Penny and Quentin in his mind clear as day.

Quentin, his Quentin, is blinking up at him, his mouth turned up a little at the corners. Eliot wants Quentin to see it, too.

"I know Penny didn't show up to my parties often," he says more quietly, "but this time he's there. And you've been doing a decent job of avoiding him so far. He's hanging out with Kady, you're hanging out with literally anyone else… but you must have a song stuck in your head again, because he corners you at the bar."

Quentin looks equal parts fond of Eliot and ready to shove him onto the floor. He says, "What song?"

"Fuck, I don't know." Eliot frowns. "2015, right? Bruno Mars doesn't quite work. What are you into, Meghan Trainor? Hozier?"

"Uh, sure. Hozier's fine."

"Great, then your brain keeps telling Penny to take you to church," Eliot says, and Quentin laughs out loud. "So. You're worshipping like a dog, et cetera, and Penny confronts you. He… says some shit, I don't know, it was never really Penny's every word that I was hanging on. What do you think he'd say?"

It's a risk, opening the floor to Quentin; they both love to tell a story but sometimes Eliot gets the sense that the cogs of their brains churn in precisely opposed directions. If Eliot wants to get to the emotional arc, Quentin might be fixated on the worldbuilding. If Eliot's working on the atmosphere, the immediate setting, Quentin… is also probably still on the worldbuilding, honestly, the man has some kind of awful fetish for the workings of fantastical bureaucracies. They'd made terrible creative partners in Fillory even beyond the mosaic.

But it pays off beautifully when Quentin closes his eyes and takes a deep, shivery breath. "Um. Something about closing my mind. He always—it was that I couldn't figure out my wards, that was the main thing."

Eliot hums a little, thinking. "Of course. So, 'Close your mind, I'm sick of that stupid song,' and so on. Do you think—" Well, Eliot will have to stop skirting around it at some point; he takes the plunge. "Would he call you, you know, incompetent?"

It's the barest suggestion of any part of what Quentin has actually asked him for, and somehow it's still enough to make Quentin shift again on the bed, a restless rearrangement of his weight on the mattress. He keeps his eyes closed. Eliot doesn't understand this at all, not intuitively, but he is undeniably into how much Quentin's into it.

"God. Yeah," Quentin says, already sounding a touch overwhelmed. "Um, you, you were teaching me stuff then, right, like how to close my mind? And I tried to tell him that a few times and it was like… 'Eliot's shit is airtight, so if he can't even teach you—'"

Eliot must make a noise because Quentin stops abruptly and opens his eyes. He catches the grin that Eliot's failing to fight back and frowns with what looks like genuine annoyance. "El, I swear to god."

"Shh, no," Eliot says, brainless and trying hard not to laugh. He kisses the tip of Quentin's nose, like that might somehow soften him up. "It's just, um. About those lessons I was giving you…"

That frown deepens almost instantly. Quentin says, quietly and with feeling, "You're the worst."

"No, I'm not." Eliot pulls Quentin in closer and kisses his forehead, his eyebrow, everywhere he can reach.

"Yes, you are, I can't believe I never—"

"It's just—" Eliot's still kissing him, less an apology and more an outpouring of truly undignified affection. If he's lucky, Quentin will think it's an apology. "—you were so fucking cute when Penny got mad at you, and I have never claimed to have upstanding moral character—"

"Oh my god," Quentin says, "shut up." He pulls Eliot in roughly by the back of his neck and kisses him quiet.

There's no real frustration in it. Quentin's never been great at that, the whole fight-fucking thing, not unless they were actually angry at each other in that way they got sometimes: shouting and escalating endlessly, because neither of them had ever learned, even after five decades, how to back down. This kiss is warm and sweet, the reproachful way Quentin bites his bottom lip notwithstanding, so Eliot figures he's safe.

It ends with Eliot pressing his forehead against Quentin's, breathing a little more quickly than is, perhaps, strictly decorous.

"Um," Eliot says vaguely, blinking. Right, he was doing a bit. "So, that, yes. I guess I'm probably imagining the, um, body language at this point, and—you know, this whole fantasy is very meta."

Quentin's been fiddling with Eliot's undershirt, and now he tugs until Eliot sits up far enough for Quentin to pull it over his head. He scoots back in after to run his fingertips over Eliot's collarbone. "I know."

"God." Quentin's touch is so gentle, so light. It's hard to think. "Like I was saying, the body language is what always got me when this happened. Penny backing you against a wall, looming over you, the way you'd freeze like you didn't know whether to run or try to climb him like a tree…"

Quentin smiles, watching his own hand trace a pattern against Eliot's skin. "I was always scared I'd do something to like, escalate it. Because just him yelling at me was already a lot."

And Eliot can picture that now, too: Quentin, squirming under Penny's glare. Trying to close his wards, but also trying not to let Penny see what he's feeling, why he's so desperate to do so. Or that he's developing an actual fearboner in his jeans.

It's lovely, is what it is, somehow, a little funny but mostly just charming, and now Quentin is running the palm of his hand over Eliot's chest. Eliot wants to devour him. He takes a breath.

"I've probably got my hand on my dick, so things in the—subfantasy? This is so weird—things start getting steamier." A thought occurs to Eliot and he smiles. "I think you'd make a noise when Penny gets close enough. Or when he reaches out to shove you."

"Jesus, El," Quentin mumbles, eyes fluttering closed again. He reaches blindly for Eliot's hand and guides it to his own crotch. Given the circumstances, Eliot allows himself to laugh.

"So needy," he murmurs, and it comes out more besotted than disdainful but Quentin presses up against his hand anyway. Obligingly, Eliot rubs him through the shoddy fabric of his boxers, slow but firm, and Quentin makes a choked-off sound, half laugh and half something else.

"Keep going," he whispers, shifting his own hand to rest on Eliot's shoulder. "He'd—fuck, he'd be so mean about that."

Eliot's not sure Penny would be mean about it, honestly, but he hums agreeably. "He'd be shocked, definitely. Like, 'Fuck, Coldwater, what are you, thirteen?'" Quentin's hips jerk again at that, seeking more pressure, more stimulation. Eliot doesn't give it to him. He eyes the bright flush high on Quentin's cheeks with great interest. "But here's a secret, Q: you're red-faced and squirmy and wide-eyed and I think Penny's into it."

This he punctuates with a brief squeeze and Quentin makes a funny sound. "Eliot."

"Mm, no, we're thinking about Penny right now." This time Quentin's giggle comes out strangled. "Anyway, blah blah blah, he bullies you upstairs and back to your room. I think you're probably a little worried about battle magic coming into play—"

"A little?"

"—but halfway up the stairs, when no one can see you, Penny puts his hand on your lower back."

Quentin doesn't respond this time, not verbally, but his nails dig into Eliot's shoulder in a manner that Eliot finds highly distracting. He takes a moment to get himself back on track, then says, "Once you're in the room, he—god, Q, what he does he do? What do you want him to do?"

It takes Quentin a moment to answer, but Eliot can respect that: Eliot himself is achingly hard and nobody's been teasing him. Eventually he manages, "He, um—on my hands and knees. He tells me to get on the bed."

Interesting. Eliot had kind of been expecting this to head more towards the sloppy blowjobs and frantic kissing end of the spectrum; their Penny, Penny 40, had been a giant teddy bear once you scratched even that slightest bit past the surface. But he can work with this. He pulls his hand back and says, "Roll over. Other side."

Quentin rolls over. He doesn't even complain. Eliot spoons up behind him and goes to touch Quentin again, but—

"Why are you still wearing underwear?" He snaps the waistband of Quentin's boxers, mostly to see him jump. "Why am I still wearing underwear?"

"Yeah." Quentin's voice is a bit shaky but undeniably teasing. Eliot likes him so much. "Seems like a terrible lack of foresight on someone's part."

"Quiet," Eliot says into Quentin's ear, then bites lightly at it. He shoves his own underwear down toward his knees—they're much too nice to risk ruining—and, making an executive decision for the both of them, rips Quentin's off with magic.

"Stop—" Quentin gasps when Eliot gets a hand on him, skin to skin. "You've got to stop doing that."

"No, I don't," Eliot says happily. He kisses the back of Quentin's neck, the soft hairs at his hairline. "They were old and terrible and I did you a favour."

"Debatable," Quentin mutters. Then Eliot gives him a firm, dry stroke and he stops complaining.

For a long few moments Eliot indulges himself, touching Quentin aimlessly, all over. He's always been tactile, always wanted to reach out and touch people's arms and shoulders and knees, even as a kid, it was one of the things— well, no point going there. But nothing beats wrapping himself around Quentin head to toe like a barnacle, nothing, even on those occasions when he's not pretty confident that orgasms are forthcoming. He sucks a mark into Quentin's shoulder and strokes a hand up his stomach, his chest, and Quentin—breathing so hard now, wanting it so much—reaches up and behind him to tangle a hand in Eliot's hair.

Eliot bites Quentin once more, for good measure, and says, "I don't think Penny fucks you."

"El." It's more of a whine than anything, but to be fair, Eliot has stopped touching his dick.

"I think he wants to," Eliot continues, and it's bordering on babble as he shapes out the sigil for the spell that definitely has a proper name but that Quentin always calls Handful o' Lube. "I think—how could anyone not want to—but he's, it's too much, you're already wriggling and panting and it takes too much time, too much work."

Now in possession of a very generous handful o' lube, Eliot drips a healthy amount over Quentin's dick—and lower stomach and the bed, whatever, sue him—and the rest down the crack of Quentin's ass, and on himself. When he nestles between Quentin's cheeks he's rewarded with a gasp, with Quentin grinding back into him, and finally, finally Eliot gets to jack this beautiful man off properly.

"I think he would do this, though." His voice is rough to his own ears, Quentin's hand is so tight in his hair. He rubs against Quentin, setting a rhythm with his hand. "I think he'd hold your hips still and do it just like this, up against you and listening to every sound you make."

A shallow exhale of a laugh. "El. Eliot." Quentin's trying to hook a leg back around Eliot's now, like he wants Eliot closer, wants Eliot inside him. It's very sweet. Eliot is absolutely not going to oblige.

"It's, um—fuck." He's getting close already, which might be embarrassing if Quentin weren't so obviously right on the edge too. "Q, does—what do you—"

Quentin tightens his hand even more in Eliot's hair, the pull just this side of painful. It's—it's exquisite, honestly. Eliot bites at his shoulder again. Quentin says, "Tell me."

It's fucking hard to think like this, with Quentin's skin hot against him, around him, with Quentin hard and gasping under his hands. But he manages, "Penny is, he's talking to you. He's saying—god, I don't know, you're gagging for it? Is that—? He wants you to touch yourself, he wants you to come, he wants to see you, he's—Q. Honey. One more secret?"

No reply. Eliot hadn't really expected one, given everything.

"He would never say this, he would never, but he thinks you're beautiful like this. You're infuriating and you're mind-numbingly hot and he—you're not embarrassing, Q, he doesn't think so at all."

It's not quite instantly that Quentin comes, after that, but it's still close enough to be gratifying: the shuddery gasps, the way he trembles, the hair he nearly pulls right out of Eliot's own kingly scalp. Eliot kisses him through it, kisses his neck and his jaw and the back of his skull, every piece of Quentin he can get to, and it's not long at all before his own orgasm hits him like a freight train aimed directly at his balls.

It takes Eliot a moment or two to resurface after. He knows by the fact that Quentin has already cast his favourite mop-up spell when he does.

Eliot makes a contented noise into Quentin's hair. "Hmm. Thank you. I wasn't going to sleep in the wet spot."

"When have you ever?" Quentin pulls out of Eliot's grasp, but only far enough to roll onto his back. "Good work."

That makes Eliot snort. He pinches Quentin somewhere near his hip. "Thanks for the performance review, Professor Coldwater."

"You're mixing metaphors again."

"I profoundly do not give a shit." Boneless and content, Eliot shifts too, until he's lying on his back next to Quentin. After a moment's contemplation he kicks his underwear off his legs. "Guess I did kind of miss the point of the assignment, though."

"Uh-huh, yeah, it got pretty goopy there at the end."

When Eliot turns his head Quentin is smiling at him, that wide and earnest smile that Eliot had nearly died for. Had, after the monster, spent slow, careful months trying to find again. That smile has always made him feel cracked wide open—at the ribs, maybe, or like a turtle without a shell.

He's not really sure what to say in the face of it. He never has been. But he thinks, finally, that maybe Quentin gets it anyway.

So instead he says, "Well, it's not like the praise was a total turn-off." It makes Quentin laugh.

"Yeah, no, it was passable. Um, but we did drop one of the character arcs, did you notice? What happened to the you-character?"

"All right, that's enough critique from the man who just came so hard he definitely forgot his name for a minute."

"Yeah, no, I'm just—" Quentin cranes his neck to smack a kiss against the nearest bit of Eliot he can find, which happens to be his arm. "—it just left it nicely open for a sequel, is all I'm saying."

Eliot closes his eyes. Mostly to himself, he mutters, "I cannot believe that my lot in life is a goddamn nerd fetish," and tries not to smile too dopily when Quentin rolls in, finally, for his postcoital cuddle.