Chapter Text
Distractions
Chapter One: Poetry (Or, Caleb Distracts Essek)
“My darling, that is incredibly distracting.”
Essek can feel Caleb’s lips curl up in a smile at his words, and feels his own grin form in response. The two of them are curled up together in bed, Caleb’s back pressed against the headboard, arms wrapped around Essek where he lays, back to Caleb’s chest. Caleb isn’t the most comfortable pillow, but Essek doesn’t mind. He loves being able to press his head against the crook of Caleb’s neck, loves the feeling of Caleb’s arms wrapped around his stomach, fingers trailing absently over him as they read the same book.
This one in particular is a book of Kryn poetry, written in Undercommon. It’s part of an ever-growing collection of similar books, shipped straight from the source via Verin. This particular volume is a collection by a relatively new poet on her first life, and the poems are shockingly erotic and intimate, especially for a society that tends to display a more formal and sophisticated front. It’s one reason why Essek had wanted the volume so badly. Even here in Rexxentrum, he’d heard whispers of the outrage the book had caused and, ever curious about things his former homeland deems blasphemous, Essek had wanted to study it.
It has nothing to do with the fact that he wants to read erotic poetry in his native tongue while naked in bed with his husband. Nothing at all.
The volume had arrived earlier that day, with a pointed note from Verin about how much they owe him for forcing him to purchase such a scandalous book- “I had to go into a smut shop for this! Do you realize how quickly that bit of information is going to spread?!”- and despite it only being four o’clock in the afternoon, they’d immediately retreated to their bedroom so that Essek can read to Caleb.
After casting Tongues on himself to fully understand the words, Caleb had hugged Essek to him, pressing a kiss to his husband’s temple, and Essek had begun to read.
About four poems in, a trail of light, soft kisses start making their way across Essek’s temple. Gentle, teasing nibbles press to the sensitive tip of his ear. A few kisses press to his cheek. Fingers inch lower, caresses verging on being ticklish cause Essek to gasp and stumble over the words as he recites a sonnet of pure filth and desire to his husband, voice losing its practiced steadiness under increasingly sensual touches.
“Is it?” Caleb asks, and Essek doesn’t have to look at him to know his husband is wearing a shit eating grin. “Should I stop, then?”
“I will be most annoyed if you do,” Essek responds with as much dignity as he can, which isn’t much considering Caleb’s fingers are driving him wild. His right hand is tracing absently against Essek’s thigh as the left slides upwards, catching Essek’s nipple between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it softly until it pebbles under the touch. Essek shifts in both pleasure and mild frustration. “Though I’m not sure I can keep reading if you intend on being such a nuisance.”
“Oh, I think you can manage,” Caleb murmurs, continuing his ministrations, “Unless you truly wish me to stop.”
“Don’t you dare,” Essek breathes, hips shifting as arousal begins to heat up his blood.
“Read to me, Essek,” Caleb requests, and he lightly pinches Essek’s nipple, causing the drow to groan, head lolling to the side for a moment before he forces himself to focus on the book and begins to read the next poem.
“Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine—tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun.”
Caleb’s hand brushes over Essek’s nipple, trailing in delicate brushes upward, teasing tenderly over clavicles before fingers walk their way up his throat, over the bob of Essek’s Adam’s apple to brush against his chin. He matches those touches with soft kisses against Essek’s temple, his ear, and if he shifts just right, his cheek. All the while his fingers tease, the ones below the blanket lightly squeezing Essek’s thigh to the rhythm set by the poem.
Unable to help himself, Essek stumbles over a word, but continues on, trying his hardest to stay still, though he finds it increasingly difficult when, during the next lines, Caleb’s hands trail over him, switching places. His right hand now teasing the other nipple, his left lightly scratching down Essek’s thigh and lightly pinching the flesh where his leg and hip connect.
“Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come—“
Essek gasps in spite of himself, at the image the words paint, evoking a similar scene in his mind’s eye of Caleb burying his own face between Essek’s thighs, loving them tender before moving to swallow him down, sucking him until Essek cries out and spills himself between Caleb’s lips. From the way Caleb has grown hard behind him, from the way the hand at Essek’s thigh shifts to brush over his own erection, he thinks perhaps they are envisioning similar things.
“ the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there—
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth—“
The last word is cut off with a moan as Caleb tugs Essek up higher, closer, and bites down on Essek’s neck with a tenderness that sharply contrasts the hard pinch of his nipple. Crying out, Essek nearly drops the book as he lifts one hand up to clasp the back of Caleb’s hair, holding him in place as his husband seers scorching kisses onto his skin, loving him so well that those kisses will leave blooming splotches of bruises on his skin for him to admire in the days to come. He’d not thought himself someone who would enjoy the lingering marks of such lovemaking, but when it comes to Caleb, Essek knows he would love nothing more than to be a canvas onto which Caleb can cover him with whatever form of devotion he sees fit.
“Oh, darling, please,” Essek pleads, wanting nothing more than to thrust up into Caleb’s hand, but knowing his husband far too well to trust that Caleb won’t be merciless and leave him pressing into the empty space around them instead.
“Patience, liebling,” Caleb murmurs, angling Essek’s head back to kiss the corner of his mouth, “Just a bit more to go. I want to hear how it ends.”
With bated breath, Essek shifts and rights the book.
“your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out-“
Caleb’s hands seem to be everywhere at once: playing with his ear, stroking lightly over his throat, rolling his already sensitive nipples between tongue-wet fingers. Sliding over his stomach in such a gentle manner that Essek spasms from how ticklish it feels. Over his sides and his thighs, to the place he desires Caleb the most. A murmured cantrip slicks Caleb’s hand in between lines of the poem and he begins to stroke Essek’s cock, and it’s all Essek can do not to beg for mercy.
Instead, he reads, and the words are as much a benediction to his lover as they are lines of a poem:
“your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting for years for you
in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.”
The moment the last word is breathed, Essek- in a shockingly uncharacteristic move that Caleb will spend months teasing him over- throws the book aside and spins around, grabbing Caleb’s face and seering their lips together. Almost as if he anticipated such a move, Caleb slides his legs together and tugs Essek forward in tandem, causing the drow to straddle his lap, and the kiss is broken by a mutual moan as they press together, arousals pressing against their stomachs as they grind together in desperation.
“Oh, Caleb, please,” Essek breathes against him, “Have mercy.”
He feels the laugh in Caleb’s chest, tastes the joy on his tongue, and loves him deeper for it. “Of course, my husband,” Caleb says, fingers already pressing against Essek, causing him to gasp. “Anything for you.”
He presses inside, slowly and carefully at first, but Essek is already so far gone that he trembles and sucks in a heaving breath from the pleasure of it. Caleb moves steadily, working him open as he kisses him, wet and eager and very near frantic.
“Something has gotten you all worked up,” Caleb remarks with a laugh as he presses a second finger inside, relishing the way Essek trembles around him. “If I’d known poetry was such an aphrodisiac, I might have had you read some to me sooner.”
It’s difficult for him to form words beyond more and please and Caleb! but Essek manages after a few moments as he adjusts to the second finger. “It is more the combination of this specific work combined with your blatant teasing,” Essek says as he reaches down to stroke Caleb’s cock, taking a moment to enjoy the way his touch makes Caleb falter on a gasp. He isn’t the only one coming undone at the seams here, and he has every intention of dragging Caleb over the precipice with him.
“It is not teasing when I have every intention of making you come while riding my cock,” Caleb says plainly, and it’s through sheer force of will that Essek doesn’t spill over them right then and there.
“You’d better hurry, then,” Essek breathes as Caleb presses a third finger inside, causing Essek to momentarily lose his words as he adjusts to the stretch. “Else I may preemptively spoil your plan.”
“Oh, don’t worry, liebling,” Caleb says as he slowly removes his fingers and lines them up. “There are still plenty of poems to read; and we have all night.”
He presses in, slow but sure, and Essek gasps at the fullness of it, of how alight he feels with pleasure. Nevermind the ceremonies he used to attend in which they basked in the light of the sun, this is where his true worship lies, where he feels caught ablaze and alight by the intensity of his love for Caleb. He feels overwhelmed in the best way, in a way he once dismissed as unimportant. But now, to feel Caleb pressed inside him, to feel the intense closeness between them, both physical and emotional, he thinks this is the true religion. That no god or goddess could ever provide a boon so great as to compare to the overflowing intensity of the love he feels bursting forth between himself and Caleb.
Essek rocks a few times, the feel of Caleb’s cock within him nearly too good to bear. As he moves, Caleb wraps his hand around Essek, giving him a few strokes before he can’t contain himself anymore, and with a shuddering sigh spills out his praise against the pale skin of Caleb’s stomach. He trembles in the immediate release, the refreshing contentment of having been so full and now so free. Caleb waits a moment, then upon Essek’s shifting of his hips, begins to thrust once more, hugging Essek close to him as he rocks upward into him, again and again, until he follows his lover over that edge, where he need no dunamantic magic to feel as if time and space have ceased to exist around them.
For the longest time, neither of them move. There’s no rush, no need, and both are content to remain plastered to one another, breathing in the calm aftermath of such a brilliant unraveling of love and desire. Eventually, Essek sits up. He can feel Caleb grow soft within him, but makes no effort to move. Instead he merely lets his fingers trail over Caleb’s jaw, over his chest where his fingers tangle in his ever-beloved chest hair. He presses his forehead to Caleb’s in that well-used gesture of comfort and affection, and smiles when he feels Caleb’s hand brush over his back soothingly.
A kiss to his lips follows, then Caleb eases back, blue eyes searching gold with the deepest and sincerest affection.
“I think that poem is my favorite so far.”
A feeling of intense giddiness and mirth swells within Essek, and a laugh escapes him before he can truly help it.
“As you said, there are plenty more poems in the collection. You might not wish to declare a favorite so soon.”
With a smirk Essek can only describe as wicked, Caleb cleans them off with a quick cantrip, then reaches for the book. “Then why don’t we keep going?” He holds it up between them, and with a grin that says I accept your challenge, Essek takes the book and, still straddling Caleb, opens to the next poem and begins to read.