Chapter Text
The hot tub had taken Essek a while to come around to.
Originally he had called it a waste of space. There were individual tubs in each of their rooms and so the hot tub, modelled off the one designed for all of the Nein, felt unnecessary. However it wasn’t as if it was taking up physical space, and it made Caleb happy. And it wasn’t as if it was Essek casting the Tower.
He would never admit out loud to Caleb how much he had come to love it.
“Is this seat taken?” Caleb asked flirtatiously. He lounged back against the natural stone wall of the tub, clearly inviting Essek’s gaze.
Essek smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I can clear some space for you,” he said, the words themselves impassive but his tone anything but.
Caleb smiled, a moment of giddy delight visible before he straddled Essek’s hips. The water kept him light enough to hold but heavy enough that Essek could feel where their bodies met and the dizzying sensation of being held and pinned by Caleb’s weight. He felt Caleb settle close enough that Essek’s cock would press up against his hole as he hardened and Essek let out a heavy breath.
“Already excited?” Caleb said imperiously from above him, shifting his hips in a way that sent a light shiver through Essek. A taste of what was to come.
Essek huffed, tangling his fingers in Caleb’s hair the way he knew made his head swim, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Caleb made a sound that Essek often fondly described as a purr before refocusing and placing a gentle kiss on Essek’s forehead, in sharp contrast to where Essek felt him half-hard against his lower stomach, “Maybe I can change your mind. Can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
Caleb leaned forward to whisper “ Xal usstan tsoss dos, uss’chev ?” into Essek’s ear.
‘May I kiss you …’ what ? It was at least close in pronunciation to something recognisable. The connotation of the words themselves however… Essek almost chuckled despite the charged atmosphere between them. Caleb had indeed said ‘beloved one’, but he wasn’t sure if the implication that the actual number ‘one’ itself was the object of his affections was something Caleb had picked up on. He was almost tempted to let it slide, but Caleb’s mischievous smile made him reconsider.
Caleb leaned forward, but Essek put a finger on Caleb’s lips before they made contact with his. “Try again.”
Caleb’s eyes, half lidded as he had leaned towards Essek, shot open. His brow wrinkled in confusion at first, before raising an eyebrow. “Really? Now?”
Essek smiled back, moving his forefinger and replacing it with his thumb to swipe over the moisture of Caleb’s lips. He gave a considering hum as he watched Caleb’s tongue dart out to meet it subconsciously. “You can earn some kisses when you learn to conjugate correctly. Try again,” he said with feigned impassivity.
This was a game they had played before. It wasn’t as if Essek wasn’t affected; he could feel his cock slowly filling out beneath the water at the challenge that he saw in Caleb’s eyes. Certainly there were more days where they fell into each other's arms without pretence than there were days that they played cat and mouse. But Caleb enjoyed breaking Essek’s focus. And Essek enjoyed having it broken.
Caleb opened his eyes in recognition before Essek saw the corner of his lips twitch up in amusement. He opened his mouth and closed his eyes, sucking on Essek’s thumb and curling his tongue around it while never removing his gaze from Essek’s. He felt Caleb hardening against his stomach. Just as he saw Caleb’s face slackening in relaxation and his eyes begin to droop, focused on nothing but laving attention on Essek’s fingers, he pushed his thumb down slowly until he hooked it against Caleb’s teeth. “Pay attention. Try. Again. I won’t ask you another time.”
Caleb’s eyes fluttered open, and he swallowed tightly around Essek’s thumb before releasing it with a wet pop and the hint of teeth, the promise of something more. “ Usst’chev ,” he said smugly, flushed and breathing deeply. Wrong again. He felt Caleb’s hips start up a slow grind against his as he buried his face in Essek’s neck.
“Caleb, that’s- cheating,” Essek said, trying to hold his composure in his voice and only partially succeeding. There was hardly any friction for him at this angle but the knowledge that Caleb was seeking his own pleasure against the planes of his hips and stomach made his head spin.
He could feel Caleb breathing heavily against the wet skin of his neck. “Is it cheating if you like it?” Caleb whispered, running his teeth up to Essek’s jawline and licking a flat stripe where it met his ear, “Is it cheating if there were no rules against it? I’m not kissing you.”
“It’s still unfair,” said Essek, grabbing Caleb’s hips and tilting his head back in a way he distantly suspected undermined his point, “Caleb, you- fuck, ” Caleb pressed his teeth into the hollow underneath his jaw, not a bite but certainly the threat of one, “You know how to conjugate this. You’ve- fuck - you’ve heard me say it. You’re being ridiculous, I can- ah - I can tell.” It was getting difficult to string sentences together, but Essek hadn’t broken yet and Caleb knew it.
“Mhm,” Caleb hummed against his throat, sending vibrations down his spine, “You like me ridiculous, usstan’chev .”
Wrong again . “You know for a fact that isn’t correct Cal- oh gods ,” he broke off with a cry as Caleb shifted back so that he could take both Essek’s and his own cock in hand between them, stroking them languidly. The slide wasn’t smooth but Essek was already barely hanging onto his composure, and the tight ring of Caleb’s fingers coupled with the evidence of his arousal against Essek’s own caused him to grab the sides of Caleb’s face, breaking his own rule and capturing Caleb’s lips against his own. It was far more of a meeting of lips than a kiss, Essek’s focus almost entirely taken up by the slide of his cock against Caleb’s and the needy moans that escaped Caleb’s mouth as Essek devoured them hungrily. Caleb eventually broke the kiss with a sharp bite to Essek’s lip that made him whine, refocusing instead on pressing open mouthed kisses to Caleb’s stubble that did little to hide his increasingly desperate noises.
All thoughts of maintaining his unruffled persona shattered apart as Caleb spoke a few words of Zemnian and gestured with his free hand, the grind between their cocks becoming smooth and slick as the arcane energy filled Essek’s ears. Once he had finished with the spell he wove his fingers through Essek hair, not enough to hurt but pulling enough that Essek bared his throat to Caleb’s ministrations. He nipped at the junction of jaw and throat, growling possessively as he sucked a bruise under it. Just below where Essek’s high collars would hide, but high enough that there was always the tantalising threat that they wouldn’t.
Essek was breathing heavily now, Caleb’s unhurried movements under the water and his lips against his neck driving him to distraction more than a frantic chase of release would. But he needed to take back what little control he could hold on to. He threaded his fingers through Caleb’s tied-up hair and pulled him off where he was sucking another mark onto Essek’s throat. “Enjoying yourself?” he whispered in a way he knew made Caleb melt, “So keen to misbehave tonight, can’t you control yourself?”
“Are you enjoying yourself? You kissed me first,” Caleb panted through a self-satisfied grin, stopping his hand around them in a delicious frustration against his overworked nerves, “Distracted from your little grammar lesson yet? You gave away my reward so easily, one might think you were desperate” he said, releasing his own cock to focus on Essek’s and rubbing his thumb in smooth circles around the head while gripping the base tightly. Driving Essek to distraction with the sensation, but nowhere near enough to get him off.
“Fuck- ah , gods, Caleb- fuck you,” said Essek, his voice breaking and arms wrapped tight around Caleb’s shoulders, resting his forehead against Caleb’s chest, “You knew this was unfair from the start.”
Caleb laughed and pressed a kiss to the top of Essek’s head, a gesture that usually dripped affection now serving only to drive Essek mad, “You’re too easy to distract. Go on. Ask me to stop, if this is so unfair. I don’t get to hear you beg nearly often enough.”
“You'll have to try a lot harder than that,” Essek barked out through a laugh, undercut by a whine on a particularly delicious but terribly slow upstroke from Caleb, “but by all means, keep- ah, fuck - running your mouth. You know where it will get you- Caleb, gods .” Every second his capacity to maintain any remnant of his aloof persona was slipping out of his grasp, his internal monologue only a litany of more, please, harder, Caleb, faster, Caleb, Caleb, Caleb-
“Hm, maybe. Next time maybe you can use my mouth for better things, hmm?” said Caleb almost nonchalantly, taking the tip of one of Essek’s ears lightly in his mouth to scrape with his teeth. The shivers that went down Essek’s spine went straight to his cock, as Caleb slowly sped up the slick movements of his hand. He had completely abandoned his own release for the time being, hell-bent on tearing Essek’s resolve to pieces.
Essek wished he wasn’t so fucking good at it. His thoughts tangled like string, warring impulses to both take back the control he had started with but also to submit, to let Caleb take him to that place where he existed only to serve and please.
Caleb whispered into his ear, the hot breath and cold water mingling into a burst of sensation, “I think I would look pretty under your desk while you worked with my mouth on your cock. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so unfair to you,” he said, punctuating it with another hard bite just under Essek’s ear.
Oh Light above, that was a glorious image. His beautiful Caleb, lavishing attention upon his cock from beneath Essek’s work desk, looking up through his eyelashes smugly as he licked up his length, saliva dripping from his mouth as he began to swallow him down inch by inch. Caleb’s satisfied hum as he took Essek down to the base, as if there was nowhere he’d rather be. It was laughable to think that Essek could work with the lure of Caleb’s warm, wet mouth like a vice around-
“Caleb- I-”
He was far closer than he should be from just a handjob and dirty talk. Far too close. What had this man done to him, that he could take him apart so quickly-
Caleb stopped moving entirely.
Before he could fully voice any protests, Caleb licked a stripe up the shell of his ear and started up his whispering again, his voice dripping with desire. “Though if the whole point is not to distract you I suppose you’ll have to get me nice and pliable first. Maybe then I’d be happy to just hold your cock in my mouth rather than fight for your attention. Do you want to take me apart? Make me feel so good I want to do nothing more than please you? I know you could.”
Caleb’s hand on his cock was a vice, and with Essek’s hips pinned under Caleb’s he couldn't buck up into its tight heat. The frustration built up into a whine, desperate and debased, as his fantasy shifted. Instead of Caleb’s talented tongue teasing Essek to distraction, now Caleb sat obediently under the desk with his head leaning on Essek’s thigh. Peaceful, content to be nothing more than a warm hole for Essek’s cock. Flushed red from an orgasm that left him so gorgeous, so submissive, all for him. His beautiful and disciplined little toy, ready for Essek to use his mouth to get himself off whenever he wished-
Essek sobbed out a half-hearted complaint, “Gods, Caleb. Move. Touch me.”
“Last time I did that I was in trouble, love. You can hardly blame me for trying to obey. Are you sure?” Caleb asked. Daring Essek to beg.
“You are an asshole,” Essek said petulantly, biting Caleb’s clavicle deeply in a show of frustration. As if he believed that would do anything but turn Caleb on more.
Caleb tilted Essek’s head up and kissed him deeply, equal parts desperate passion and adoration. The contrast only served to turn Essek on more. “Perhaps. But I am an asshole who can make you come if you ask very nicely.”
He was so far gone. If he didn’t finish now he felt as if his body was going to vibrate apart from the frustration of denial.
Essek swallowed his pride. “Gods, just- please . Let me finish.”
Caleb chuckled deep in his chest, the small vibrations making their way down to his hand in a way that made Essek want to scream. He put his mouth to Essek’s neck once more and sucked hard, enough to cause even Essek’s dark skin to immediately bloom in a stormy black. Marking Essek as his. Essek groaned, less from the sensation and more from the lightheaded feeling that came from being claimed by this man who knew exactly how to devastate him, take him apart and put him back together. He whimpered as Caleb started stroking again, rutting against Essek in a filthy grind that gathered speed and whispering in his ear once more.
“Good boy for asking so nicely, ussta’chev .”
Essek didn’t even have the presence of mind to praise him for finally getting it right. As their grind became frantic Essek felt more than saw Caleb’s slick strokes making the water churn between them, his eyes screwed shut in pleasure. As he was about to tumble over the edge Caleb pressed his thumb against the head of his cock, jerking with shallow strokes while he used his other hand to cup Essek’s balls. As if he was an avalanche, pushed to an unstoppable breaking point and only able to follow gravity, Essek wrapped his arms tightly around Caleb’s torso and moaned into his chest hair to shake apart as he came. Caleb followed shortly after, letting out a rumbling growl deep into Essek’s shoulder and stiffening as he let his head hang limply.
The two panted in near silence- only the soft rippling of water and the laboured breathing of both of them to fill the room. Essek’s head was pleasantly fuzzy, drifting through post-orgasmic bliss as the weight of Caleb on top of him and his solid arms cocooned him in safety. Caleb hummed over his shoulder, pressing a kiss into the delicate skin there; not a heated open-mouthed kiss as before but simply a show of affection and warmth. Essek breathed in deeply, nuzzling into the soft hair of Caleb’s chest and revelling in the comfort of his presence.
“Did you know it all along?” he murmured into Caleb’s chest.
“Hm?”
“The correct way to say ‘beloved one’.”
Caleb laughed, sitting up straighter to give Essek a peck on the cheek but making no move to leave his lap, “Smart ass. The first time, no. I actually didn’t know I was wrong. The rest… I wanted to see how much I could get away with.”
Essek scrunched up his face in mock irritation, though he hardly had it in him to put up a convincing charade. He headbutted Caleb in the chest, leaning into his embrace, “I’m going to get back at you for today.”
He could hear the smirk in Caleb’s voice, “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” He tapped Essek's shoulders, “Come, let’s go get you cleaned up my love.”
“Mmph. Comfy. In a bit,” Essek said petulantly, snuggling deeper into Caleb’s chest as the warm water lapped at their backs. Caleb gave a long suffering sigh, pulling Essek in even tighter and resting his cheek on the crown of Essek’s head.
“Five more minutes then.”