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It had been many years since Essek had considered the logistics of sharing a sleeping space with a person who did not trance.
In fact, it was only when he had first begun trancing that this had ever been a concern. Verin, still young enough to true-sleep, had been irate considering the idea that Essek might go on secret adventures in the small hours of the morning without him.
As all the Thelyss children were quite exceptional, this meant Verin learnt to trance early so that his brother would not leave him behind. He was, then, very disappointed to learn that Essek spent the very early half of his mornings reading, and not doing anything exciting at all.
— — —
While camping with the Mighty Nein in a dangerous ruin full of monsters, Essek’s trance had been convenient. He spent half the time the others were sleeping staring out of the amber-tinted dome, his sharp night vision watching for danger in the surrounding area.
Essek took pride in his small part in keeping his friends safe and was, admittedly, a bit put out when they bunked down in the Tower the following eve.
Not so put out after he saw the thing, though. Caleb Widogast’s mind was an enchanting place. And Caleb himself, brightly describing his tower as he gave Essek a tour, completely comfortable in a domain of his very own, was just as alluring. Essek could not help being drawn in.
He had his own room in the tower, and in it, there was a bed. Caleb knew he tranced, he would not have forgotten. Essek had, however, heard the way all the Nein expressed their relief at the idea of ‘sleeping in a real bed.’ This simple piece of furniture, as elegant as the rest of Essek’s conjured suite, existed because Caleb had put thought toward Essek’s comfort.
Essek laid down to trance that night. The bed was very soft, very warm, and somehow smelled like the inside of Essek’s tower.
This, too, had been decided with his comfort in mind.
— — —
Though a trance was not true slumber, the body still liked to follow regular circadian rhythms, as much as one could while adventuring.
This was how Essek found himself adhering to Caleb’s bedtime as the two of them traveled alone through Aeor.
A trance was short enough that he roused in the middle of Caleb’s resting hours, and was faced with a quiet, empty tower, most of the cats adhering to their master’s schedule and resting during the night. Essek would have taken the extra four hours or so to strategize for their next day of travel through Aeor, but he was loath to do so without Caleb’s input, so instead, he ended up perusing the library.
The arrangement of the Tower had been compacted a bit, as there were only two occupants, but Caleb kept the study the same as it had always been.
Essek liked the study a great deal. It was warm and comfortable, and despite having been conjured each day, it looked well used. The books lining the shelves were all manifested from Caleb’s memory, a feat so impressive Essek shuddered to think of it.
(It was a pleased shudder. Essek found Caleb’s intellect deeply fascinating.)
He only noticed upon examination that each book featured notations at the beginning in Caleb’s own hand. These were likely not extant in real-world copies of the same, as plenty of the books displayed were ones Caleb did not own. Essek took special delight in looking through the marginalia, taking a peek into Caleb’s opinion of every text, even if he didn’t continue reading each one.
The magical tones and textbooks mostly had recollections of his time initially studying them. “I once read this entire book the night before I was tested on it—for most, this is a study strategy I would not advise, but I am blessed in my memory and recall it to this day,” was written inside a basic Illusion textbook, right beneath a bookplate that listed the names of all the students who had previously owned it. The most recent read ‘Bren Ermendrud’, in Caleb’s handwriting.
Caleb’s collection of non-magical nonfiction was largely practical. History, geography, naturalism, the sorts of things an adventurer would need in the back of his mind. One history book said, “the latter half of this is blank, because we were forcibly removed from the Cobalt Soul library before I was allowed to finish it.” A book on the climate and geography of the Greying Wildlands was prefaced by, “a good deal of this text is inaccurate to the present state of this area. Ask Caduceus instead.”
They were weeks into their exploration by the time Essek perused the fiction. He was already aware, by the titles on the spine, that the collection was rather… tawdry. Essek wasn’t the sort of man who looked down on romance novels on the whole—they served their purpose as entertainment—but there was something about knowing Caleb’s particular tastes that felt slightly invasive.
Still, he did cave eventually.
The romance novels had, by far, the most amusing notes.
“Someday, we will tell Fjord and Jester’s grandchildren that they have this to thank for their existence,” was written on the inside front cover of Tusk Love.
In a book with a cover illustration of a woman lying on a bed, her arm outstretched to another woman with a sultry look in her eyes: “The sex in this one is highly athletic and seemingly anatomically impossible. Beauregard assures me it is not. I did not want to know this, but now I do, and now you must share in my pain.”
“This is Veth’s personal favorite,” was inscribed on a book about a Minotaur and a princess falling in love. “She still does not wish to use Polymorph to turn her husband into a Minotaur, though I believe it would be a fun experience. But who am I to give the Brenattos sex advice?”
Essek’s nose wrinkled when he pulled the next book free of its shelf. The Courting of the Crick had been banned in both the Empire and the Dynasty, for very different reasons. He remembered scolding Caleb for including it in the pile of significant books he’d left in every bedroom. Caleb’s notes were lengthy, and Essek’s demeanor relaxed when he realized they were largely disparaging.
“This is perhaps the most societally inaccurate text on this shelf. It is tasteless, exaggerated, and more racist than racy. And yet, I include it in my collection and am pleased to have found it, for it is the first time I had seen any literature portraying a drow as the sort of person one could fall in love with. While they are certainly not as exotic as the book portrays them, the Kryn I know are proud, bold people, infinitely lovable. This opinion is, perhaps, swayed by my personal attachments. Nevertheless, the book is exceedingly trashy.”
Essek flattered himself to think that penultimate sentence may have been penned with him in mind.
He slid the book back onto the shelf without looking past Caleb’s inscription, both loath to read on and suddenly feeling like he might be caught with it in his hands. Caleb, of course, wouldn’t wake for hours and was not prone to somnambulism. Essek would smell breakfast in the kitchen long before he saw Caleb.
Still, he treated Courting rather like a hot coal.
As it probably deserved.
— — —
The first time Essek entered Caleb’s bedroom instead of his own, he forgot to worry about sleeping arrangements.
In his defense, it was a bit difficult to remember such silly things as a human sleep schedule when Caleb was lying back on the bed, disheveled by kisses, red in the face, and looking at Essek with a hunger heretofore only seen when he observed ancient magics.
What was Essek to do but climb astride his lap and let his dear friend have his way with him?
It was a cause for anxiety as much as joy—Essek was terrified to ruin this all somehow. But the anxiety gave way, unraveled by Caleb’s careful hands and the soft words of comfort he pressed into every inch of Essek’s skin.
Caleb pulled the covers up over himself afterward, still completely nude under the sheets. Essek was not accustomed to being unclothed for any length of time, and put his robe back on before returning to the bed. He was kissed goodnight thoroughly, and, given that he was already in Caleb’s bed, he presumed it was only appropriate that he stay there to rest. He sat at the headboard to trance, his legs outstretched, hands carefully resting one over the other in his lap.
Caleb settled in close by, extinguishing the lantern-light and leaving the bedroom in the cool, neutral tones of Essek’s dark vision. Caleb’s forehead rested against Essek’s hip, hands tucked safely against his own chest, and Essek slipped into his trance feeling and appreciating the single point of warmth that was Caleb against him.
When Essek came to consciousness, however, Caleb had moved. His hands had shifted from their careful hold, one of them slung over Essek’s lap and the other wedged under his leg, fingers curling against the soft skin of his inner thigh.
His back rose and fell with slow breaths as he continued to sleep, the bedroom dim. The artificial sun beyond the stained glass windows would not rise for several hours.
Would Caleb wake if Essek shifted out from beneath him? Wasn’t it impolite to rise before one’s partner? Or was that based on the presumption that a couple would wake at approximately the same hour? Surely there was a societal standard for couples with differing sleep cycles. One could not be expected to remain in bed for another four hours or so while one’s partner slept.
If only Essek knew what that standard was. He had never bothered to learn.
Essek considered the idea of leaving the bed to study for a few hours, and then returning so that he would be there when Caleb woke. He had no way of knowing whether Caleb would notice his absence in the latter half of the night, and if so, whether it would seem deeply strange to return come sunrise.
He began contemplating the idea of Misty Stepping out of the bed (for minimum disturbance of his partner) when Caleb’s head lifted, and his hand left Essek’s hip to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“Good morning,” Caleb said, his voice rough from disuse.
“It is not yet dawn,” Essek said. “I didn’t mean to wake you—I do not even know how I did.”
Caleb turned his face into his shoulder to yawn. “I have become a light sleeper by necessity.”
Essek ran his fingers through Caleb’s hair, smoothing it where it had ruffled from sleep and sex. “Go back to your rest, then. I will be up getting some reading done, and I will see you for breakfast.”
He shifted, as if to stand, but Caleb rolled onto his front, the majority of his torso now on top of Essek’s thigh, weighing him down. Caleb’s arms cinched tight around Essek’s waist as he cuddled into Essek’s lap.
Essek was deeply charmed, and knew Caleb could hear it in his sigh, try as he might to sound put-upon. It was hard to tease when your partner was so cute. “If you would like me to remain in bed while you sleep a full night, you must tell me beforehand, so that I can put a book on the nightstand,” Essek said, while Caleb eased himself into a position where he was not pinning Essek’s legs, but resting between them.
“Nein, no.” Caleb’s head lifted, and Essek watched his hands move as he cast his Dancing Lights, draping them across the canopy of the bed like lanterns on a string. “It will take me a while to settle down again.” One of his hands came to rest on Essek’s thigh again. Under the robe.
“Are you implying you have some business to attend to before you sleep?” Essek said.
“Mm. We had talked.” His fingertip hooked in the knot of Essek’s robe. “About my mouth.”
They had. In filthy detail. Caleb had done most of the talking, as Essek’s capacity for higher speech had been rendered mostly useless by Caleb’s hand between his legs.
“I hadn’t thought you were intending to put that to action no less than four hours after,” Essek said.
“Feels more like five and a half,” Caleb said. Essek trusted his internal clock to be correct. “If you’d rather I find something else to occupy my mind with until I am tired enough to sleep again, I can follow you to the library.”
It wasn’t meant as a tease. Caleb was genuinely unsure how awake Essek’s libido would be—a fair assumption, given what Essek had told him about the rarity of his sexual attraction. Not so, when it came to desire. Not when it came to Caleb Widogast.
“I used to think our friends were exaggerating about being horny every hour of the day,” Essek said.
“To be fair, that is an impossible thing to exaggerate on for Jester. And Kingsley.”
Essek gave him a flat look.
“I know what you mean,” Caleb said, “I can, ah. Tone it down.”
“That isn’t what I meant—I mean only to say that I am surprised at myself, for my own…”
Caleb’s look of concern brightened to a smile. “Are you telling me you’re interested in my plans to tire myself out?”
“I am.” With Caleb, Essek felt a confidence he usually associated with coldly rejecting someone. He knew he was desired, and he knew what to do with it. It was only the result that differed when it came to Caleb. And it differed spectacularly. “I’d like you to show me exactly what you meant when you promised to… what was it?”
Caleb tugged. The knot on Essek’s robe slipped loose. “I promised,” he said, “to make you come on my tongue, until I am soaked from my nose to my neckline.”
“Ah.” In the amber light, Essek could see pink bruises scattered across Caleb’s neck and shoulders, and knew it had been his doing, and remembered how it made Caleb beg for more. His pale skin showed the marks so distinctly. “That was it, yes.”
Essek’s fingers brushed over one of the bruises, his thumb pushing into another. Caleb sucked a breath in between his teeth.
“Harder.”
The darkest mark was at the join of Caleb’s neck and shoulder. Essek dug his thumb in and Caleb shuddered, a low moan dropping from his mouth.
“Good,” Caleb said. He kissed the center of Essek’s chest, his warm hands coming up to part the robe. Essek had considered putting on underclothes. He was glad he had not.
Essek’s heels slipped on the silky sheets as he parted his legs, feeling ridiculously debauched. Of all the things. He’d come on Caleb’s fingers at the start of this night, and then he’d rutted together with him, the slickness of his own orgasm wetting Caleb’s cock until he spilled. This was what flustered him? Sitting with his legs spread?
His position himself wasn’t what did it. It was Caleb’s reaction that set his heart rate faster and faster. It was the look in his eyes as his gaze raked down Essek’s body and then up to meet his eye again. The shake of his breath, as he said, “fuck, Essek,” and then, “I used to think you would be a hard one to read—that I would need to ask you to be sure you wanted what I did.”
Essek’s grip tightened on Caleb’s shoulders.
“But you are pretty plain in your desires, aren’t you?” Caleb pressed one finger against Essek’s sex, the digit curled so that the space between his first and second knuckles parted Essek’s cunt, running all the way up to his cock. He lifted his finger to his lips and made a soft sigh of satisfaction as he licked it clean.
“I can be,” Essek said. “When properly motivated.” He passed his hand over Caleb’s hair, letting his palm rest on the back of his neck, the same way Caleb had held onto Essek when he’d first kissed him. “Will you—please?”
“Anything you ask, Schatz,” Caleb whispered into the crease of Essek’s hip and thigh. He laid a kiss on Essek’s inner thigh, right where there was a freckle that showed, as all of his did, as a pale speck against his violet skin. “I will take care of you, I promise.”
“So good to me,” Essek sighed, shivering as he felt the first slow, gentle touch of Caleb’s mouth against him—a kiss. The tickle of his beard and mustache, grown in full and neatly trimmed, made Essek shiver. It was followed, quickly, by the hot pass of his tongue. Essek squirmed into it so terribly that Caleb had to seize his hips to hold him still.
Essek plastered his hands over his mouth as Caleb worked his tongue over him, then into him. He had no hesitation about any of this, moving with a surety that spoke of, well, practice.
«You have done this before, haven’t you?» Essek did not have the confidence nor the wherewithal to say it in Common. Caleb would understand from his tone that whatever he was saying was complimentary and filthy, and that was enough. «Often enough to be very good at it.»
Caleb pressed the tip of his first two fingers against Essek’s entrance, then met his eye. He was smiling, his cheeks flushed and his grin crooked in a sweet, almost shy way. “Okay?”
«Yes,» Essek said, then corrected himself to their shared tongue, “yes.” Perhaps a needless addition, as Caleb had likely picked up on Undercommon that simple.
Caleb murmured something to him in Zemnian, likely a reflection of Essek’s own soft-spoken words. Perhaps even dirtier. Caleb was always more comfortable with explicit language.
“Keep talking to me?” Caleb asked, before returning to his work.
Essek presumed the intelligibility of his choice of language was no problem. He liked Caleb’s voice—he could understand Caleb liking his own. «I have read a few of your books—the vulgar ones,» Essek said. «More than one of them featured this, and more than once, I have needed to stop reading to keep myself from picturing you licking my cunt. I couldn’t let myself— ah, there!»
Caleb’s lips pursed around Essek’s cock and sucked him firmly, the point of his tongue working over the small swell of it. His fingers, in time, plunged deeper into Essek’s cunt.
«The way you went on about it last night— ah!»
Caleb’s free hand pressed flat against Essek’s stomach, once again in need of something to keep him from thrusting upward. Essek discovered quickly how much he enjoyed that resistance to push against.
«More,» Essek said, «don’t stop, Caleb, please!»
Caleb understood ‘please’ in Essek’s first language, and didn’t stop. In fact, he took Essek’s tone of general encouragement as an entreaty to double down.
Essek did not expect, and was lightly mortified by how loud he was when he came. Had he been like this at the start of the night?
The flat of Caleb’s tongue passed over Essek’s cunt a few more times, warm against the tingling, overwrought nerves. He drew his fingers free, then slid them into his mouth, eyes fixed on Essek’s the whole time. He was flushed across the bridge of his nose, his eyes shadowed with blatant arousal from just the taste of Essek.
He kissed Essek’s thigh, right where he’d started, on that speck of white that, earlier that same night, he had said looked like a star.
Ah—a kiss. That was why he had been so much louder the second time. For the first, he’d been kissing Caleb, and that had muffled him.
Essek relaxed into the veritable mountain of pillows stacked against the headboard, catching his breath while Caleb kissed his way all the way up to Essek’s neck, before tucking his face there.
«I need to find out who taught this to you,» Essek mumbled, «so that I can thank them.»
“You have met Astrid.” Caleb settled his weight onto Essek, doing his best not to squish him or put any sharp angles in soft places.
It was a very courteous way to cuddle him, but unfortunately, any of Essek’s post-coital lassitude had deserted him as soon as he realized Caleb had accurately responded to a full sentence of Undercommon.
Essek’s ears pinned back and his eyes went wide. “How… how much of what I said did you understand?”
“Most of it. I have been studying Undercommon for several months now. I am not exactly confident enough to reply in kind.”
Essek muttered an extensive and despairing string of curses.
“That, I did not understand, but I assume it was profane.” Caleb lifted his head, brushed the back of his knuckles against Essek’s cheek. “Is something wrong, dear?”
“I am… I’m only embarrassed,” Essek admitted, tucking his face into Caleb’s neck. “I allowed myself a frightening amount of vulgarity because I believed you did not understand what I was saying.”
Caleb hummed thoughtfully. “I had thought you were speaking Undercommon because dirty talk sounded better to you in your native tongue.”
“No—though, I suppose it does.” He had learned Common for the sake of diplomacy; Undercommon would always feel more intimate.
“I feel the opposite, personally. Saying such things in my childhood language sounds especially wrong.”
“Zemnian sounds beautiful,” Essek said, “especially when you speak it.” His voice was quiet, but Caleb could hear him even from where he was hiding his face.
Caleb kissed the side of his head. “Thank you, Schatz. I agree that it is a beautiful language. But not very sexy. Or perhaps it is just that I began to regularly use Common in my rowdy teenage years.”
Essek sighed, refusing to let Caleb continue to distract him from the real issue at hand. “None of what I said was… an overstep?” Even to his own mind, it felt like it must be. He’d made reference to one of Caleb’s previous lovers, for the sake of all Light.
“Not even slightly,” Caleb said. “May I show you how much I liked it?”
Concrete proof always did go further than words of reassurance. “I would appreciate that.”
Caleb drew Essek’s hand down to his cock, a very physical show of his appreciation that was not unexpected, but still made Essek startle. Luckily, his face was still tucked into the crook of Caleb’s neck, so Caleb did not see his utter shock.
Essek recovered himself after a moment, wanted to offer something, and tried to think how he might sound alluring doing it. “May I be of assistance?” was perhaps a little clinical, but not the worst thing his newly-woken, post-orgasmic, mildly embarrassed mind could think of.
“I would like that,” Caleb said. He kissed Essek’s ear with a messiness that should have made Essek flinch, but instead reduced him to the putty-like state he’d found himself in only moments ago, under a very different application of Caleb’s mouth.
‘Better than expected,’ was something his mind had repeated more than once tonight. He imagined Caleb had much to do with that.
With quite a nasty pang of anxiety, Essek realized he had no clue what he was doing. His instinct was to pretend he did—stroking someone’s cock could not be so difficult, after all—but there was, of course, the catastrophic possibility of doing sex wrong in front of Caleb Widogast, who Essek had come to believe was the most sexually attractive person on the whole of Exandria. And possibly the best at any given sexual act, too.
He hesitated long enough for Caleb to say, “let me show you how I like it?”
“I fear you must,” Essek grumbled.
“You know there is nothing wrong with that.” Caleb shifted, putting his back to Essek’s front, so that Essek could look over his shoulder.
“There is everything—“ Essek huffed an irritated breath. Over a century, and he was still acting like an adolescent. “I ought to know.”
“Essek. I am happy to reassure you that your need to be good at things the first time you do them does not apply in the bedroom,” Caleb said, “even at a point where I am not already aching for you, and it hasn’t just hit four-thirty in the morning.”
Essek put his forehead on Caleb’s shoulder. “I am making a mess of this.”
“I am never bothered by a little mess.” Caleb turned his head, just far enough to kiss Essek’s brow. “Will you put your hand over mine?”
This settled Essek much more than a useless reassurance that he wasn’t a disaster. Rather, his ineptitude was having no effect whatsoever on the mood. He did as Caleb said, feeling the fragile bones of Caleb’s hand moving under his skin, tucking his fingers against the gaps between Caleb’s as he watched, with no small amount of interest, Caleb work himself to climax.
He understood immediately why Caleb had gone about things this way. After so long researching together, Caleb knew how Essek learned, for it was much like his own process of study. Reading a new spell and watching someone else perform the gestures was all well and good, but he’d never truly commit it to memory until he went about the motions himself.
All the better if he had Caleb’s hands to gently correct his posture and his gesture, broader palms and longer fingers showing him the shape to imitate.
Eventually, Caleb swapped the positioning of their hands, letting Essek stroke him while Caleb’s hand guided him—mostly urging him faster and faster. His head dropped back onto Essek’s shoulder and he said, “that’s good, yes, keep going, Essek—“
He cut himself off when Essek’s free hand wound around his chest, playing with him idly while he focused on Caleb’s cock in his hand. All Caleb said was, “good, you’re so good,” and then, to Essek’s delight and lingering embarrassment, he repeated it in Undercommon.
Essek bit him on the neck, right over a fresh bruise, and Caleb forewent language entirely.
When he came, he spilled all over Essek’s knuckles, and laughed giddily when Essek made a surprised yelp at the sudden wetness. He murmured nothing but praise as Essek cast to quickly clean his hand, then held him close for a moment.
With a few soft words and softer kisses, Caleb settled back down to sleep the rest of the night, and Essek got up to do his pre-breakfast reading.
Well. This was certainly a new way to greet the morning.
— — —
Essek had expected that night to be a one-off. He wasn’t even sure he would sleep in Caleb’s bed every night, much less wake beside him and indulge carnal wants together on a daily basis.
His expectations had been largely incorrect.
In the week since their first night together, Essek had used his own bedroom for little more than its wardrobe. He would have used his own en-suite bathroom, but Caleb had immediately begun including Essek’s preferred toiletries in his own chambers when he cast the tower. It was a touch so sweet that Essek couldn’t help but use them—and he liked listening to Caleb mutter softly to himself while he read and Essek bathed.
Essek noticed one morning, as he stirred from his trance to find Caleb already pulling him back into an embrace, that he was having an effect on Caleb’s sleeping schedule.
They did not have sex every evening when they went to bed. Surprisingly, this was not due to Essek’s lack of desire, but was instead a product of exhaustion from their studies or their adventuring. There had also been a night where they’d gotten into a lengthy discussion on the difference in first-year curriculum in their respective alma maters, which turned into teasing one another and languid kissing and nothing else besides.
But each day, Caleb, through some preternatural alertness, noticed when Essek was rousing in the small hours of each morning. He was always eager to take Essek into his arms, the both of them delighting in soft, sleepy lovemaking and the warmth of one another in a bedroom touched by an evening chill of Caleb’s design, for Essek’s preference.
(Essek was unused to trancing under a thick duvet, cuddling a human furnace, and Caleb was happy to lower the temperature if it meant Essek would spend every night in his arms.)
This pre-dawn affection had, every single day, turned to passion.
Essek was surprised it had taken a week for him to notice it was a pattern. This would be a morning for realizations, this one only the first of several.
Caleb kissed the back of Essek’s neck, and he realized that someday soon, he would forget how many times they had slept together—in both senses. This was the seventh of the less explicit version and the tenth of the other.
Caleb fit his thigh between Essek’s legs and pulled him back so that Essek’s crotch was pressed firmly against him, and he realized there may never be a time he would not want this man. His body and his mind both responded with arousal whenever Caleb was close enough to touch.
«This was a very pretty sound,» Caleb said, his accent terribly Zemnian and his grammar just so slightly off.
Essek relaxed into his arms, and realized he was in love with Caleb Widogast.
Caleb eased Essek’s nightshirt up just far enough that he could push inside of him, joining them in the most intimate way Essek knew of. He spoke quietly in Zemnian—which by his own distinction meant the things he was saying were beautiful, not sexy—and he either did not notice or pretended not to see Essek casting Comprehend Languages.
The instant Essek did this, he realized Caleb loved him in return, because he was saying it directly into Essek’s ear, with his arms tight around Essek and his hips moving at a pace far too rowdy for sleepy middle-of-the-night sex.
Caleb was saying, “so good for me, my love, Essek,” and rocking into him in a way that forced Essek to roll almost flat onto his stomach, pleasantly crushed by the weight of his lover and his depth of feeling. Caleb said, plain as could be through Essek’s spellwork, “I love you, I love you,” and the force of it made Essek sob, and the force of that made him come, and the force of that made him shout in a way that, he realized, no longer embarrassed him.
“I love you, too,” Essek said, once he had the capacity to do so.
“You do not speak Zemnian,” Caleb said.
“I do not need to.” He held up a hand in the first somatic position for Comprehend Languages, by way of explanation.
“Sneaky,” Caleb said, kissing Essek’s nape. “Ah, Essek. You make me terribly happy.”
Essek enjoyed the feeling of him moving, the feeling of him coming, the feeling of his breath at the back of Essek’s neck.
«Beautiful,» he said, when he was finally able to turn to Caleb in his arms.
He realized that he liked knowing Caleb was well aware of what he meant.
When they were tidied and Essek started to slip out of bed, Caleb asked him to stay. “Until I fall asleep,” he said.
“I will only wake you again when I do get up,” Essek said.
“I know.” Caleb took his hand. “I am greedy for your company, though.”
“You are too much,” Essek told him, already slipping back under the covers beside him.
“You love it,” Caleb said, his eyes falling closed and his hand curling softly beside his face as sleep caught up with him once again.
He shifted as Essek got up, but said nothing, only blinked sleepily at him and smiled gently as Essek kissed his temple before slipping out of the bedroom.
— — —
They were becoming the sort of new lovers that Essek normally took great irritation with, but with nobody around but Aeorian beasts and the tower cats, he wasn’t as embarrassed of his over-affection as he might be.
He wondered, often, if the spell the two of them found themselves under would be broken once they returned to Vurmas, and other people. When he posed this question, Caleb said, “shall we make up for the time we may lose, then?” and Essek kissed him. He did not stop to discuss more.
Their trip was going on a month now, and when Essek asked, “how long has it been since I first kissed you?” at breakfast, Caleb told him it had been fifteen days, eleven hours, and twenty-four minutes. He said it with the sort of smile that meant he knew Essek wanted to shift around to the other side of the table and climb into his lap and kiss him again.
Which, of course, meant Essek had to do exactly that.
They were truly incorrigible.
When Essek woke from his trance at the very beginning of that sixteenth day, Caleb did not stir. He was breathing slowly, heavily, his arm tucked against his own chest rather than draped across Essek’s waist.
This was only sensible. They’d had a long day, and had been drinking more than usual, as they’d found a description of the brewing process for a type of Aeorian liquor that Caleb had used the tower to recreate. It was delicious, and far more alcoholic than Essek had expected it to be, or could first tell from the taste. Caleb maintained that he’d followed the text exactly, and the alcohol content was not his own modification.
Regardless, Essek had finished his trance and was still tipsy. Caleb absolutely needed more sleep, and looked adorably peaceful, and Essek would not dare to wake him.
This was how he discovered that his body had become accustomed to some kind of stimulation on first rousing. Barely over a fortnight, and Essek had developed a habit. Unusual.
Perhaps it was the drink. Had Essek been totally sober, the arousal he woke with wouldn’t have been a need, just a low-level desire. Something ignorable. Nothing that would necessitate he undo the front of his robe just to alleviate the heat.
Today, his fingers fell to unlace the knot.
He was already wet.
Essek had never understood the idea of a sexual dream. He’d begun trancing as a pre-adolescent, and had never had a dream with that sort of content, so he thought he’d avoided them altogether. Trancing involved the subject matter of one’s memories, however, and it seemed that when one’s memories involved sex, it cropped up from time to time in one’s subconscious.
Tonight, he had been recalling the only time they’d been intimate outside the tower—Caleb had approached him a few hours after combat, once they were assuredly safe, told him he could not focus with this excess of adrenaline, and Essek, who had been feeling the same but had not considered a way to relieve it, happily floated off the ground so that Caleb could press him into a wall and fuck him.
Essek could still feel Caleb’s warmth from behind him as his lover slept quietly, entirely unaware of Essek’s activities. He probably should not be doing this.
He considered how he might react if he woke to find Caleb doing the same. Favorably. He pictured rousing from his trance and finding Caleb turned away from him. He would come closer, only to realize that Caleb was stroking his cock under the blankets. Essek would lay a hand on Caleb’s hip, slowly, as not to startle him, and bid him to turn over to face him. Caleb normally put up his Dancing Lights when he awoke to spend time with Essek in the very early morning. Essek would do it himself, just to see how flushed Caleb already was.
He turned his face into the pillow to stifle any noise he might unconsciously make, and fucked himself as deep as he could.
All the while, Caleb slept.
— — —
“You could have woken me,” Caleb said later, when Essek admitted to his early-morning self-pleasure.
“I would not wake you up just to get off,” Essek said.
“I am telling you now, I do not mind, and you have full leeway to do as much.” Caleb took a sip of his coffee, brewed strong, because, as he’d admitted, he had a bit of a headache from the drink. “Or, you could start fooling around with me while I’m still asleep.”
Essek had pictured Caleb waking to find him touching himself. He had not pictured Caleb waking to find Essek touching him. “I do not think I could,” Essek said.
“Would it help if you weren’t the one initiating that?” Caleb asked. “Or should I keep my hands to myself if I happen to wake up first?”
Essek’s thoughts devolved into something far too risqué for the breakfast table. He cleared his throat.
“Please do tell me to fuck off, if you don’t like that idea,” Caleb said. “I only mean to say, I have enjoyed it in the past.”
“Do not take my silence as hesitancy,” Essek said.
“No?”
“I am trying not to jump you right now.”
“Ah.” Caleb’s expression smoothed into clear delight. “Normally I would suggest you don’t bother to suppress that urge. But I am not at my best this morning.”
Essek laid his hand over Caleb’s on the tabletop. “We will take it slow today,” he promised.
Unfortunately, Aeor usually had a very different idea about what ‘taking it slow’ meant.
— — —
Essek tranced so deeply that night, it was very nearly true-sleep.
He hadn’t been injured, but it was a near thing, and he’d used almost all of his magical capacity to keep himself safe. Caleb was equally depleted—he very nearly didn’t have enough in him to cast the Tower, but they had just barely managed.
After all his travel, Caleb was better at managing magical exhaustion than Essek. Essek would not be surprised to learn that Caleb was the first to wake, his mental clock rousing him at Essek’s usual waking hour, while Essek ‘slept in,’ as it were.
Essek did not know this, however, because, he reasoned, he must have been asleep when Caleb woke that morning.
His body was always still for a few minutes when he came out of his trance, even as his awareness returned. Normally, he came to with the feeling of the blankets up to his shoulders, Caleb breathing slowly behind him. He would then become aware of the places Caleb was touching him, arm around his waist, knee between his legs, chest against his back.
Today, Caleb was not breathing the slow, even rhythm of sleep. Quick, sharp, hot against Essek’s shoulder. He was panting. The blankets were down somewhere around their shins. Caleb wasn’t behind him, but over him, Essek laying on his belly.
Most notably, Essek came to attention right as Caleb’s long, pretty fingers spread his cunt so that Caleb’s tongue could work into him.
The first thing Essek did that morning was moan.
Caleb pulled back, replacing his tongue with two of his fingers, curling them down into the spot that made Essek squirm against the sheets.
“Good morning,” Caleb said.
“Caleb Widogast,” Essek said.
“Hallo, Schatz.” A perfectly cheerful greeting, like Caleb was kissing his head at the breakfast table.
“What have you done to me,” Essek breathed, with great feeling. He was already far more aroused than the few moments of awareness that he was being touched should have allowed.
“My dear, I know you are sharp enough to have that figured out,” Caleb said. “If you would like specifics, however, I have been eating my fill of you for the past fifteen minutes, or so.”
Essek knew he had encouraged this, but the timing was unexpected. “So, so I tell you that you can—just do this, and you do this the very next day?”
“There is, as they say, no time like the present.”
Essek wanted to tell Caleb to take his pithy sayings and, to quote Beauregard, stick them up his ass, but he found himself unable to make any sound that did not involve his mouth hanging open.
“I was hoping you would wake up with my cock in you, but I can do that now,” Caleb said, and did so. Slowly, almost lazily, rolling his hips at the end.
Essek used what little grasp on language he still retained to curse Caleb in Undercommon.
“What does that mean? May light shine on every part of your body?” Caleb asked. “If it is a compliment, you do not sound very pleased to dispense it.”
“It is a way,” Essek breathed, still trying to wrestle with the way his body felt when Caleb drove fully into him like this, “to simultaneously call someone a blasphemer and, and— ngh— and a slut.”
“Ah.” Caleb kissed behind his ear, then licked up the line of it, reminding Essek that he was so naked, he was not even wearing earrings. “My love, you know me so well.”
Caleb looped a hand around and under Essek’s stomach, lifting him up just a little, just to put him at the right angle for Caleb to utterly destroy him.
It did not last long, and was incredibly intense while it did. Essek wondered at first what had gotten into them, and then realized that Caleb had worked both of halfway to orgasm while Essek slept.
When they had both come, Caleb flipped Essek onto his back, helped him put his legs over Caleb’s shoulders, and licked his own spend out of Essek’s cunt until Essek reached a second, then a third climax. Possibly a fourth, as the third one felt like he came twice over.
“Good morning,” Caleb said again, kissing the corner of Essek’s mouth, his beard so soaked with Essek’s come that Essek could smell it. “Rest well?”
“Go back to sleep and leave me to piece myself back together, because you have broken me,” Essek said.
“As you wish.” Caleb rested his head on Essek’s belly, and slept to the white noise of Essek catching his breath.
Essek sighed, and floated the book he’d begun bringing to the bedchamber over to his hands. They still shook, for a long while after his heart found its usual pace.
Turnabout, at least, was going to be easy.