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“Let us talk.”
“Come, dear.”
With the delightful buzz on Caleb’s lips where Essek had pressed his own against, they talk. Well— Caleb talks while Essek drifts further into the modest home, humming tones of interest every few words or so.
He slips his arms free of the heavy, woolen cloak with little fuss and lets Caleb unbundle him from the bulkier travel clothes in the gentlemanly way he likes to indulge in.
“Essek, come now,” Caleb tisks in response to Essek’s unhelpful limpness in his arms. Essek only smirks and shimmies his shoulders out of the cloak.
They talk this way until Caleb gently herds his road-weary wizard from the foyer into a kitchen chair, then puts on the kettle to chase away the fall chill from his shoulders.
Though the entrance to the tower is nestled into the front wardrobe, Caleb has learned from Caduceus that this kind of care, slow and patient, heals more than cats despite their whimsy. Essek doesn’t seem to mind the wait anyway. Caleb pushes away errant papers and hastily tosses the dishes from breakfast into the washbin before Essek’s eyes can narrow too much, but even that he doesn’t seem to mind. He only lazily waves his hand to float the rest of the sundry into neat stacks for easy removal.
Essek doesn’t need to manipulate mass to draw Caleb closer. Needs only to place his chin delicately in the palm of his hand and lean forward to have Caleb plop right down across the kitchen table; slow blink dove grey eyelashes to have Caleb fixed in his own micro orbit. Just as he only needs to say small things like ‘Oh?’ and ‘Is that so?’ and ‘Tell me more.’ to keep Caleb yammering on.
He has a scratch in his voice that feels like fingers down the nape of his neck, alighting him from within. Little gifts of Essek’s interest, reeling Caleb in with just a pinky finger. He feels like one of those little clockwork toys that come out of Hupperduke— Essek tugging on a little string on his back to wind up and chatter on.
Between relaying his talks with a snake god and returning to Nicodrans, the kettle whistles, causing Essek to jerk straight, inhale sharply, and blink rapidly a few times.
“Are you well, friend?” Caleb summons a mage hand to quickly remove the kettle from the flame. He reaches out to touch Essek’s elbow where it nearly slipped on the edge of the table, thumbing over the birdish joint.
“I— yes, I am,” Essek drawls, violet eyes looking up through those devilish eyelashes. He sinks his beautiful chin back down into his palm and— is he subtly casting? Or has it always been so easy for Essek to ensnare him with his gaze like that?
“Continue.” The command is soft, but it is a command none the less.
Essek’s words turn into hums of various reactions (short and clipped for surprise, one after another in approval, long and low when curious). His lips curl into a sly smile over the teacup with his eyes half-lidded when Caleb gets to the draconic parts of the Nein’s battle at sea. Though, when those eyes remain half-lidded, even during the more harrowing battle recounting, Caleb notices a glaze wash over periodically in what he can only describe as a half-trance.
“Schatz?”
“Hm?” Essek starts, ears perking up in alert.
“Surely I can’t be that dull,” Caleb jokes, but quickly reaches out to cover Essek’s hand in his when the man jerks up affronted, “You are tired.”
“Oh,” Essek shakes himself and downs the rest of his tea, “I suppose.”
“We should get you something to trance on. Perhaps even sleep, if you’d like.”
“No, that won’t be necessary, Caleb, thank you.” Essek laces his fingers between Caleb’s and squeezes. “I’d much rather listen to the rest of your story.”
“Another time. Come, you are exhausted.”
Despite the moue of his lips, Essek allows himself to be pulled up from the table and over to the armchair by the hearth. Caleb shakes his head fondly when Essek floats himself up just enough to where his toes drag across the rug.
“You were the one who helped take down a leviathan, were you not?” Essek grouses.
“Yes, but I have had time to recover, dear. You have walked a long way it seems.”
“Mmh…” Essek tilts his head this way and that, as if he were weighing the two truths in his mind. “Occasionally I floated.”
Caleb crouches down before him to sit on his knees, hands smoothing down Essek’s thighs until they hit his boot-clad calves. He raises one into his lap, tenderly massaging the muscle there. Essek only tilts his head slightly and cocks an eyebrow as Caleb waits patiently and drums his fingers against the laces under the back of his knee.
With an expectant nod, Essek deigns to give him the privilege of removing his boot. Slowly, Caleb frees the laces with one hand with some doing (they are pulled too tight, a habit Essek will no doubt soon learn to break the hard way) and keeps a steady grip on bony ankle. It’s a slow and focused act, Caleb zeros in on the slide of leather laces, the fine grommets, and sturdy seams.
That is until Essek’s other foot shifts neatly between his legs and presses. Not hard, but enough to feel, to make Caleb gasp. He looks up to where Essek’s face is mostly unchanged, propped up on his fist, brow still cocked, but his smile is a little more smug now.
“Well?” He asks, and presses a little harder, “Keep going.”
Caleb nods jerkily, making quick work of unlacing and moves to pull it free, though pauses to flick his eyes up searching for permission. Essek reaches down to tuck a wayward lock of copper hair behind his ear and gestures with his chin for Caleb to continue, easing up on the hold he has him, already half hard.
The boot comes off freely enough and Essek sighs with content, flexing his leg and socked foot against where Caleb holds them and returns to working the tension from them.
“That’s good,” he hears murmured above him, which makes his belly flutter with moths. He spends a few more moments, trying and failing to hold back the vocal exhale when Essek presses against his cock once more, though briefly. It is, however, long enough for the man above him to feel how much it affects Caleb, and smirk for it.
“Doing this… is it for me, or for you?” Fingers card through Caleb’s hair and scratches the back of his head.
“Can’t it be both?” Caleb dares to rest his cheek against the other’s knee, hands delving into sweeping up and down the back of Essek’s calf. Essek taps the toe of the other boot against Caleb’s thigh before using it to push him backward by the shoulder.
“Either way, there is more work to be done.”
Caleb easily relents and laves the same attention to the other leg, though this time starting with a kiss to the middle of his shin before lowering it back down to remove properly.
With both feet free, Essek stretches to lay more languid against the armchair and lets his thighs part so that Caleb may sit between them. He boldly glides his nails in a gentle scratch up Essek’s thighs, making him shudder, and lays his head on one.
The sky grows dim outside, the fire crackles gently and for a moment they sit quietly. Caleb, after taking in the knitted pattern of Essek’s socks, follows his fingers as they trail up Essek’s legs to see the man’s eyes on him.
“That look will get you nowhere, young man.”
“What look?” Caleb can’t help the smile that tugs the corner of his mouth, “I am simply looking.”
“It looks like you want something,” Essek reaches down and holds a hand in his hair firm, making Caleb’s eyes flutter, “Tell me.”
Many things. Many, many things. He wants to kneel here all night long, he wants this gift of Essek’s regard forever. He wants things he hasn’t gotten the courage to tell Essek yet, he wants the strength to do so. He wants Essek to know the little room in his heart that Caleb has made just for him. But more immediately, he wants to be consumed by him, rend Essek unthinking and unrestrained. To be his source of home and desire and warmth.
“Well?” Essek’s eyes are playful, he thumbs over Caleb’s hairline gently.
“I want to please you,” he breathes, the hardness between his legs growing more insistent from moment to moment, “If you would allow it.”
“And how would you do so?”
Caleb’s lips part taking in a quiet breath before saying, “I would taste you. If I may?”
Just to toy with him, Caleb expects, Essek pauses to mull over his words.
“You may,” He says it with a tone that has Caleb’s legs weak, indifferent as if they were talking about the basic principles of transmutation Caleb’s introduction lessons. He’s thankful he is still kneeling.
Deftly, he takes up unfastening Essek’s trousers, tugging them partially down and rucking up his shirt. Essek is thinner than last time, more taught. He will have the cats make a hearty broth for him later, which is his last coherent thought before Essek’s warm core is revealed. The whole ordeal is at an odd angle with Essek’s pants not completely off, but before he can finish the job or bury his face into hom, devour him whole, the fist in his hair suddenly becomes tight. It guides him so that he is held still, nose rests just above the split and nestles between the sparse down of white that grows there.
“Savor it,” he is commanded and obeys immediately.
He closes his eyes and breathes open mouthed into Essek, a quiet moan in the exhale. Slowly, he presses everything below his nose into silken folds, lustrous with slick and natural sheen of skin there. The color is mauve though the hood of his cock and twin strips on either side of his inner parts shines like the wings of a dragonfly in certain lights. His texture is tender and impossibly soft, which somehow had enraptured Caleb on their first night— how a man with edges like glass, wit sharp as a wasp’s stinger could have had these velvet parts hidden away the entire time.
In contrast, Essek’s trousers are hardy and scratchy, a sturdily woven fabric meant to protect and endure the road. Nothing like the cushion beneath his thighs, worn soft with wear. Caleb, the proper gentleman that he is, carefully draws his trousers all the way down along with his stockings and underclothes so he may have something kinder to rest on. Besides, the hearth is warm and Essek must be getting hot, clearly with the dew that wets Caleb’s mouth.
Once Essek’s legs are freed, he parts them around Caleb’s shoulders, posture slipping to open his hips more. Caleb in turn presses the flat of his tongue against his cock and strokes there with slow purpose. A heavy sigh comes from above him, vocal at the tail end in response. He seals his mouth securely and suckles in tandem with the tip of his tongue to more sighs and low groans.
Essek’s hand after it had taken up to gentle stroking now slightly shaker, gathers the hair that’s fallen from Caleb’s messy ponytail and holds it firm. He uses it like a rein as he pulls Caleb’s head further in, his fist curling in like slow molasses. Caleb’s eyes roll as pinpricks of pleasure cascade from his scalp down to his veins, pushing blood south. He gasps a lung full of air before diving in again with more vigor.
“So easy,” Essek murmurs coupled with a chuckle. He scratches Caleb’s scalp twice before trailing his fingers over Caleb’s face, prodding as if to check if he is real, before, slowly, slowly, he takes Caleb’s nose between the middle knuckles of his index and middle fingers. They close it shut, reducing Caleb to only one way of breathing.
Caleb’s eyes trail up to Essek’s, the shining layer over his irises flashing that dragonfly wing iridescence in the low light.
Oh. Oh.
Caleb sucks in a noisy gasp, continues to suck. A handful of moments later, he draws in air again, wet and sloppy. All the while, his eyes can’t leave Essek’s handsome, terrible, devilish face.
This is a show of power, of control. Caleb has seen him cast with these two fingers, tracing glyphs in the air that rend reality and reshape it to his liking. Like those instances, he controls it now, despite the relatively humble space he reside in.
Ah. He must be feeling a certain type of way about being left out of the leviathan ordeal. No matter.
Caleb doubles down, taking in Essek like the most decadent peach he’s ever eaten in his life. One where the juice spills around his mouth, saturates his beard, and trickles down his hands. It leaves his skin and mind sticky, desperate to take large gulps, delicious to the point of gluttony. And gluttony it is when his shakey pants and ragged breaths overtake the sounds of the crackling hearth and the thudding of his heart.
Caleb unsticks his eyes (when had they closed?) to gaze back up at his— friend, temptation, lover, partner— and sees cheeks flushed plum. Lower lip bitten and bruised, though his mouth is open, revealing wet tongue of a similar mauve color as below. Furrowed brow and eyes starving.
A rattling gasp and hearty suck from Caleb makes Essek’s eyes roll and his fingers pinch harder as his muscles lock in pleasure.
“Essek—“
“Enough—“ Essek gasps. The hand in his hair yanks Caleb backward, and another fists in the front of his shirt and heaves. Suddenly, with the taste of dunamancy on his tongue, Caleb feels three quarters of his weight lighten and he’s thrown on his back on the settee to the side.
“Clothes— Clothes off,” Essek straddles his hips and unceremoniously pushes his shirt up, revealing curly fire and freckles. They work together on Caleb’s pants, after a back and forth battle with the fasteners, and when freed, he kicks his socks off with them.
He reaches up to rid Essek of his shirt but the closures, as usual, are many and strong, his clumsy fingers tug fruitlessly at them. The fact that Essek is bent over to crush their lips together, chasing his own taste, isn’t really helping either.
“Mh— Essek, ah, I can’t—“
“I’ve learned Mending,” Essek hisses against his mouth and rears back, his own hands covering Caleb’s to encourage him to tear. Buttons fly with the sound of popping seams and the outer layer is tossed somewhere behind the couch. The gauzy layer below is done with much the same, and finally Caleb clutches the bare violet skin of his torso, finally uncovered.
Essek is warm, smooth, and so eager, pressing every inch against Caleb’s rougher form. They roll against and bump into one another like teenagers with too much passion and not enough time. Essek’s hands are everywhere, Caleb’s hands are everywhere. Clutching and clawing until Essek reaches below to align himself with Caleb's cock.
“Ah— wait, wait!” Caleb hisses.
To his credit, Essek freezes in his throes to stare like a wide eyed fox at him.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” Caleb carefully fits his arm between them until his hand lightly rests over Essek’s mound.
“Oh. Right— yes,” Essek nods, squirming his hips, and sighs as Caleb plays his fingers over his folds, swiping slick up and around his cock. He raises a hair for easier access when Caleb curls his middle finger up and into Essek.
“Hurry,” the plea comes breathless, ghosted past Essek’s lips Caleb leaps into action as if he were a soldier.
As Caleb flexes three fingers with him, Essek sighs heavily again, rocking his hip minutely back and forth. Slick drools down his knuckles, making the whole thing take double the effort. His hand quickly cramps but Essek’s high sigh when Caleb wriggles his pinky beside the others brings some relief.
Essek kisses and mouths at Caleb’s neck and jaw, reminding him of his tenderness, his eagerness and the days they’ve been apart (34 and a half to be exact). Tells him it’s enough, he’s ready, he needs.
“Okay, okay, ja— up, up.”
He thinks of a year ago when this Essek was untouchable. Fragile trust, but an inevitable gravity between them. It had felt like two forces spiraling together to an unknown and calamitous end, the magnetism enthralling as much as it was frightening. This should not have been the end result in such a joining, a year ago he would have never thought he nor Essek would be capable of such a relatively quiet life as they lived now. Yet here they are.
Essek lines up and sinks down, moaning in tandem with Caleb who basks in the hot clutch of him. He’s never felt something so wonderful, so all encompassing. Night has fallen around the little cottage, but dawn breaks within Caleb, its light growing more and more as Essek takes him slowly, rocking up and down until he’s fully seated.
Essek rises only an inch or so for a while, swaying in the cradle of Caleb’s lap. It’s torturously slow, much due to Essek’s body needing to readjust to the thick intrusion— Caleb knows himself to be perfectly (mostly, probably) average despite how Essek insists he is otherwise.
‘Like a club,’ a wheezing Essek had said their first night together, which had caused Caleb’s ears to burn scarlet.
Club or not, Essek rights himself soon enough and his pace quickens. Little grinds become small bounces which become hops, which Caleb bucks into gladly making a loop of reaction between them. They meet in loud, wet smacks and cries, Essek tipping forward to sink his fingers into the copper curls on Caleb’s chest. Purple eyes made electric and vibrant in the dim light hold Caleb in place better than any spell might— if he is a club, then Essek is an arrow or perhaps the hunter who wields it, fixated on ensnaring Empire game. Caleb bares himself to it, gives into being struck and pinned under such a man, and devoured whole.
His eyes roll up when Essek takes him to the hilt again and again, punctuated with a small grind on his descent. Because some old habits die hard, because sometimes it feels good to suffer still, Caleb denies himself of touch for just a moment. While he fills his hands with only the worn fabric of the sofa, He draws all sensory input from the rhythmic weight of Essek in his lap, the divine clutch of him. Essek was, is, will always be an embodiment of temptation, and Caleb helpless to do anything but relent, whether it be Essek’s brilliant mind or lithe, supple body.
How can he make Caleb miss him even while driving into Essek’s core? The divots of his pelvis, the cording of tendons along the backs of his hands, the plushness of his mouth when dropped half open all have Caleb needing more, more, more.
“Essek—“
“Mh—Jester!” Essek gasps, thighs suddenly clenching around Caleb’s hips and cunt twitching and squeezing in eye rolling tightness.
What? What?
“That is— G-Good to hear. I am, ah— a bit indisposed, I will Send to you shortly.”
Gods, a fucking Sending of all times—
“Fuck!“ Caleb whips his hands to Essek’s hips, forcing him down as he rears his hips up to pound into Essek twice, three times, four. He doesn’t care if Essek’s shocked cry of ‘Caleb!’ makes it into the tail ending of his message. He anchors his feet into the couch and continues his assault, pulling moaning and gasping Essek along. No doubt, rosy plum bruises will dot over Essek’s hips come morning which Caleb will kiss each one tenderly to make up for it.
“Caleb, oh—“ Essek moans, accent clipping his syllables harshly in his stupor. Gentle moans ratchet into quick, ah, ah, ahhs, as Essek takes back the reins. He holds Caleb down and meets him force for force. He reaches for Caleb’s face, and meets his teeth. Caleb sinks them into his palms, kissing his fingers desperately until Essek’s mouth is over him. It’s uncontrollable, uncoordinated, but Caleb missed him so much. He needs to feel that his form is real and present and here with him.
Suddenly, Essek stops his bouncing to rear up and begin a frantic back and forth grind over Caleb’s hips. Wet, obscene noises of Essek’s hungry cunt fill the room alongside his cries of desperation. On Caleb’s part, he throws his head back at the intensity of it, clawing at the man’s hips to both guide his movements and hang on for life itself. He can barely keep up, and Eseek’s thighs, now stronger from the road, hold him tight between them.
“Essek,” Caleb’s voice is torn to shreds, but still he calls his name like it’s the only thing he knows, “Essek, Essek!”
Nails dig into the meat of his chest that will leave his own half moon bruises later on, but for now keep Caleb lucid enough to not completely lose it underneath Essek. He looks up to see him with his mouth dropped open and eyes fluttering and crossed. Gods, he’s a vision, overwhelmed by want and pleasure to the point where Caleb can physically see whatever self preserving pride fall away in his gaze.
As fast as Essek’s hands clung to Caleb, they slacken and fall behind him to brace against Caleb’s legs, quaking with the effort of keeping him up. His chest pushes out fast in ragged breaths, his abdomen twitches, a bead of sweat rolls down into his navel.
“Caleb,” Essek only needs to whimper his name once, pout his heart shaped mouth just so, and Caleb is surging up, gathering him in his arms to lay him back against the couch.
“Yes, dear, I’m here, that’s it,” Caleb coos. Essek goes limp on his back but undulates his hips. Oh, how thoughtless of him. Essek has been traveling, on his feet no less, crossing over great lands to see him. He should be lying down, resting those legs rather than trying to crush Caleb between them. Begging with his fluttering cunt, it squeezes around Caleb’s cock to encourage him to pick up where he left off.
“Sheisse, you feel so fucking good,” he thrusts forward as far as he can go, setting himself flush with the back Essek’s thighs in one stroke. It tears a long, pleading cry from Essek’s throat and has his hands scrambling against the sofa for purchase.
Caleb rears back and does it again, this time forcing a shouted, “Fuck!” from Essek. To the same effect, he does it again, and again, and again, until counting them becomes second to making the man beneath him writhe. Purple hands scratch at his shoulders until they pull him down to hunch over Essek, then rake down his back when the position changes deep thrusts into more filthy grinding against his anterior walls.
“Deep, ja?” Caleb chuckles, near hysterical.
“Yes, yes,” Essek nods frantically, “Caleb, come on, c’mon—“
“Ja, yes, of course. Let me do it, let me take care,” he groans and settles back, anchoring himself yet again with whatever purchase this old couch can give and puts his back into it. Despite the teasing of his friends about being the (almost) eldest, he is still just thirty-four and perfectly capable of fucking Essek silly.
He folds one of Essek’s thighs up to almost his chest, beautiful, supple and flexible Essek, just so and receives hard earned praise for it.
“I’m coming!” Essek gasps, as if it’s some surprise to him, “Caleb, Caleb I’m— fuck, fuck!”
Caleb can’t do anything but moan back in response, and desperately hold onto whatever control he has over his cock as Essek tries to milk him for everything he’s worth. He knows Essek likes to feel him come inside. He’s said so before in far more illicit terms, with a hand clutching his hair at the nape of his neck, whispering into his ear about how hot it feels at first, how it is to feel it drool out of him unprovoked— he wants to so, so badly. But Caleb has a habit of going stupid when he comes, so Essek’s needs come first fortunately and unfortunately.
“Come, dear,” he pants, not having the breath to laugh at his callback. Thankfully Essek is too far gone to chide him for it, if how he starts to shout and violently shudder says anything.
He wrenches Caleb forward, and after a series of overwhelmed cries, Essek comes with a wail. His legs jump and the left one hooks around Caleb as the other draws up with the force of his orgasm. It’s too much, it’s much too much. Essek’s aftershock whimpers and twitches are impossible to bear, and Caleb comes with his own cry, ragged and ripped from his chest.
Through the rush thrum of blood in his ears, he can hear a giddy, pleased humming, and feels Essek’s hips turn up to meet his, welcoming his seed with delight. Essek’s cunt grips in time with his heartbeat, an involuntary mirroring of his subconscious petulance when he wants something Caleb is too tired to give. Though he does anyway, always, lovingly.
Eventually, even that becomes harsh with overstimulation and Caleb has no choice but to pull away, much to Essek’s chagrin. He comes back with twice the force of crushing Essek into the sofa, gathering him up into his arms and lavishing tender kisses all along his jaw. Essek laughs breathlessly, and prods Caleb’s ribs until he wheezes out a few high pitched giggles too.
“Welcome home, dear.” Caleb murmurs into his ear. He’s graced with a gentle ‘Mh-hm’ and hands tucked under his arms. Essek melts into the couch, content to settle through the cracks between cushions with a soft sigh of peace.
The fire, considerably lower, cracks and pops softly. The low light it casts sends shadows dancing over the bookshelf and art against the walls. The autumn wind has picked up outside, bringing with it tap-tap-tapping of the beginnings of rain. Caleb rises and falls with Essek’s chest below, counting the micro changes in his heart until it’s slowed back into a dolorous pace. Rhythms around him layer into fractals, a beat here, taps there, shadows twisting into little happy, jumping figures.
With a a feeling of falling, he jerks back awake, quickly deducing thirty odd minutes since he drifted off when he looks at the hearth holding just embers now. Caleb feels Essek’s right ear twitch against his cheek, which is what must have woken him, for about six and a half seconds, and then—
“Good evening, Jester,” Essek drawls, still a little breathless, “Mmh, no, I am free now to an extent, though I don’t have means of visiting tonight. I am sadly otherwise engaged.”
Caleb huffs a chuckle that extends into a silly laugh and tucks into the crook of Essek’s neck before a familiar voice bursts into his ears.
“Cay-leb! Are you having sex with Essek right now?!”