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Emmrich was… distracted. Rook had not stopped touching him since they began to make their way home. It had started innocently enough: hand in hand, a thumb rubbing gentle circles from carpus to metacarpus – a step back from the palm which had strayed perilously close to his groin while still at the table. A relief, if Emmrich were to be honest; his self-restraint was proving itself a fickle, fragile thing.
But, that arm had pulled in closer – inch by Maker-forsaken inch – until a shoulder nestled in the crook between biceps and brachialis. Still chaste, sweet, but a more intense contact that had behoved reciprocation. And Emmrich, perfect gentleman, had released Rook’s hand to snake an arm around his waist, high enough for propriety, entirely becoming of a new couple. The arm with which Rook had requited had been decidedly less respectable – not even making a derisory pretence at decorum in its beeline for his backside. The squeeze which followed had been the topping on the torte.
Maybe it was simply the wine talking, but sometimes it felt like the book Rook was reading from was a scarf-spattered serial to his storied epic; the Philliam (a Bard!) to his Genitivi: abridging every component into some fast-paced thriller, until the story he had thought he had known felt unrecognisable. There was something decidedly dangerous in that, a catalyst for thoughts he dared not let complete. If the words on the pages weren’t the same, the beats of each chapter modified, might someone also have tampered with the ending? Might this finally be the dance that concluded with applause? And beneath all of that, the selfish question – the one which made an ungrateful wretch of him: was this what it should have felt like all along?
His reverie was interrupted by teeth in his shoulder. He looked over, startled. Rook – for the first time in Emmrich’s admittedly short experience – had the courtesy to look at least a little sheepish.
“I was aiming for your neck,” he explained. “But I can’t reach.”
A realisation hit Emmrich that felt like rot spreading in his chest.
“You’re drunk.”
“Only lil bi’,” Rook slurred, then – as if making a realisation of his own – grabbed Emmrich’s arm at his waist and held it flush in place. “Not any more than you. Not enough to make this not my decision. Emmrich, that was a joke.”
The rot slowed, but persisted, choking arteries, eating at his lungs. He stared straight ahead. Rook spoke again.
“Emmrich, I don’t think ‘proper courtship’ involves this much time spent with your own thoughts in my company.”
He squeezed Emmrich’s arse again in apparent emphasis.
He was right, of course: to withdraw so completely and so often was unbecoming. Emmrich stopped walking, and turned to look at Rook, his whole body following like the flower grows toward the light. Rook came to a halt a moment later, his hand slipping around to rest upon his other hip until they faced one another.
Rook’s countenance was steady as he held Emmrich’s gaze, as though waiting for judgement. That felt wrong, too, as if Emmrich were holding an impromptu assize. He tempered the rot, let it be quelled by the countless other feelings roiling within him.
Leaning down, he kissed Rook. A gentle, tender thing, an apology and a request. Rook met it, just as gently, wandering hands for once behaving. Paradoxically, the step backwards from licentiousness – burning away the last of the rot – lit a fire anew, stoking the coals of his tempered desire. He ceased to smother it – a momentary lapse, but long enough for the flames to rise to a height that could no longer be safely stamped out.
He stepped in closer, softly speaking into Rook’s ear, “We should get home.”
Rook grinned against his cheek, “I thought you’d never ask.”
***
Rook dragged Emmrich from the Eluvian to his quarters by the sash. Its hold failed just past the doorway, spinning Emmrich as it peeled from his waist. Rook laughed – giggled – at the sight. Once Emmrich regained his balance, his waistcoat joined it on the floor. Rook’s coat had not made it even that far, left littered in the Lighthouse entryway.
Rook leveraged Emmrich’s collar pin to pull the older man into a kiss, fingers muddling at the mechanism until it came loose in his hands and Emmrich pulled away. It felt warm. Rook undid the buttons at the neck of his tunic. He looked up at Emmrich, making no attempt to disguise the desire in his gaze, but trying with mixed results to hide his nervousness.
“I know I don’t have the, um, equipment, but I, well, I’d prefer to, uh, give, if we can make it work..?” Rook trailed off into a half-asked question, his inflection unsure of its own trajectory.
Emmrich looked at him, naked affection in his eyes. A blush Rook hadn’t expected bloomed on the older man’s cheeks. Emmrich coughed, a small, embarrassed clearing of the throat.
“I… erm… may have the necessary apparatus,” Emmrich admitted. “Give me one moment.”
***
Rook wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but the wooden penis Emmrich returned with had somehow not crossed his mind as a possibility. He grinned, a salacious, lascivious thing – growing untamed across his cheeks.
“Ah, I see I’m dealing with a professional.”
For all his teasing, Rook was not immune to the implications. He hoped fervently that the professor had thought of him while using it. However, it was the matter-of-factness of the presentation which truly enamoured Rook. As if Emmrich, kind man that he was, had noticed Rook had misplaced his cock earlier in the day, and this act was a simple transaction to return it to its rightful owner. For all his obvious worry about Rook’s inexperience, this didn’t trip him up. It was affirming, a safe vessel for all the anticipation, a carrier for dreams that felt too heavy to float on more turbulent rivers. As well as being so godsdamn hot.
“One can never be too prepared,” Emmrich affected, adopting an unconvincing air of aloofness entirely at odds with the flush in his cheeks and the bulge in his trousers. “Though I’m afraid I don’t have the apparatus for attaching it.”
“And tell me, professor,” Rook said, stepping forward. He did his best to sound sultry and sensual. He had no idea if he succeeded. “Was I on your mind, the last time you used this?”
Emmrich’s gaze bore into him, eyes tracking the rise and fall of his shoulders, assessing the expression on his face. Rook stared back, drawing lines along all the contours of Emmrich’s face in his mind, imagining every way in which he could be closer – every touch they could share in the ocean of a lifetime, those he would prioritise in the pond of their assured days.
Whatever Emmrich was looking for, he came to a decision.
“Perhaps,” he said, defiant.
Rook stepped forward again. One hand collected the cock from Emmrich’s hand, the other reached around to cup Emmrich’s arse – exploring fingers offering a preview of their planned destination.
“I’d like to make sure that the next time, that’s a definitely.” He angled his hip into the contour or Emmrich’s groin for emphasis, and was rewarded with a slightly strangled noise.
“That…” Emmrich paused to swallow, “can certainly be arranged.”
A waste of good spit, a baser part of Rook observed, with enough fervour to startle him. Automatically, he looked down at himself, checking he was still Rook, and not some ravenous beast deposited in his own place.
“Are you alright, darling?” Emmrich asked, worry pervasive in the stillness of his body and the softness of his voice. “Is this alright?”
Rook thought for a handful of seconds, the time speeding past: unheeded, except by the changes in Emmrich’s breath.
Finally, he decided to check, “Am I…” he started, the words treacle in wool, inextricable. Emmrich waited, silent, patient, real. “Still here? Still me?”
Emmrich’s head tilted, his chin scraping lightly across the top of Rook’s head, the scent of his perfume released by the movement: at once grounding and provoking.
“I should think so. Though you must have a reason to ask?”
“A new side of me, I think. Just… unexpected.”
“I should very much like to meet him.”
And that was enough. The baser part seemed to know what he was doing. He could take control from here. One hand threw the cock – his cock – onto the bed before grabbing roughly at the back of Emmrich’s neck, while the other found its way under his waistband to hold bare flesh. Rook’s mouth dived upward, making no pretence of a chaste, closed-lipped kiss; tongue and teeth and saliva mingled with an abandon fitting to the doomed, end-of-the-world romance they had found themselves in. As he steered Emmrich onto the bed, part of him wished he could slough off his clothes like the salamander shed its skin – for now, his hands were far too busy, and even coming up for air felt like excessive distance.
Emmrich broke the kiss, his head turning to the side beneath Rook and ragged, panting breaths the only sound between them. Rook untangled one hand – the one at Emmrich’s neck – to prop himself up above the older man’s chest.
“Are you ok? I didn’t hurt you?” he asked.
“Rook…” Further breaths interrupted Emmrich’s sentence. “Darling…” More breaths, finally evening out slightly. “I like this new facet you’ve found, but he’s a little impatient.”
He huffed out a laugh. It felt like home.
“I–” Rook started an answer, but abandoned it just as quickly, opting instead to make a start on the excessive number of buttons holding Emmrich’s shirt in place, and occupying his mouth with sucking a bruise into Emmrich’s collarbone.
His eyes flicked upward as he released the flesh, searching for retroactive permission, or at least absolution. Emmrich’s eyes were closed, and his mouth open. Good, then. Good. His hand continued to work down the shirt, his hips grinding slightly as he did so; Emmrich’s cock a point of friction through the fabric of both of their trousers. Rook could feel the wetness from his own pleasure seeping through his underwear already.
With Emmrich’s shirt finally unfastened, Rook pressed a wet kiss to his exposed stomach, where thin skin lay not quite taut over still-strong muscle. He looked up.
“I can’t believe you were set on denying me all this.”
Emmrich’s response emerged at almost a murmur, “Flattery will get you nowhere, dearest. For one, I am already in your hands.”
His eyes still hadn’t opened. It felt like one more extension of trust.
“Emmrich,” Rook said, a subtle, unformulated request in his voice.
Emmrich finally opened his eyes, Rook’s tentative question mirrored in his brow.
“I’m,” Rook continued, “not very good at following instructions.”
“Mmm,” was all Emmrich mustered in response, Rook’s chin still nestled against his abdomen above the band of his trousers.
Rook pressed the point, “And I have no idea what I’m doing.”
As if parsing the unspoken question through a fog, Emmrich lumbered to an answer.
“You won’t hurt me, darling.” He chewed on the words as he spoke them. “I have faith that you shall figure it out; lesser men have done so for ages past.”
Rook grinned against Emmrich’s stomach, “Hey, there’s no need to disparage your former flames – and you’re not that old.”
“I believe I ought to revise that sentiment to specify my belief that you will not hurt me physically.” There was an edge to Emmrich’s chuckle, its vibrations reverberating through Rook’s chin, but the sound arriving airless and spent. “Though that is not an inaccurate interpretation.”
“Mmm.” It was Rook’s turn for inarticulateness. His hands finished their task at Emmrich’s belt and his mouth wandered downward to meet them. “They’re unlucky enough that they couldn’t keep you.” His chin glanced against the shaft of Emmrich’s newly freed cock, and he fought down his impulse to draw back and thoroughly appraise it. “No need to add insult to injury.”
As if to punctuate his sentence, he swiped the base of his tongue along Emmrich’s shaft, hilt to head, feeling it harden beneath him even with the less sensitive nerves there.
“Ah–” Emmrich’s voice was higher pitched than Rook had heard it before.
It didn’t suit him, but drawing it out still sent roiling waves spilling through Rook’s gut. Rook took the head of his penis into his mouth, hooding his teeth with lips still wet from both of their spit. His tongue explored the head, humming at the slight saltiness of sweat and precome intermingled.
Emmrich’s exhale could have launched waves on a still sea.
“Rook, you don’t–” He interrupted his own objection with a soft moan. “You don’t have to–”
Rook rolled his eyes and slid the cock further into his mouth, his tongue still meandering, discovering. Then, he drew back, taking a breath through his nose before bobbing forward again and back once more – this time drawing the air away from his mouth until his hollowed cheeks joined the cacophony of contact. Emmrich’s tune changed dramatically, and his hips twitched up through obvious restraint further into Rook’s mouth.
“Ah! Yes! Yes!” Emmrich almost cried it, inarticulate and too loud for such close shared quarters.
Rook shook thoughts of Taash hearing them out of his head before they entrenched there. The necromancy was more than enough of an entanglement, he couldn’t afford to confuse signals any further. They would smell it on him regardless, but that was a problem for later. He picked up the pace, his free hand rubbing against his own groin – the earlier friction almost drowned out in his slick – while his other hand still worked inelegantly to free Emmrich of his trousers and pants entirely.
An idea struck him.
With a methodicalness almost alien to his being, he coated his fingers knuckle to nail.
When he lifted his head away, still grappling with uncooperative breeches, Emmrich ultimately seemed to get the message, and his own hands joined the effort to relieve him of the last of his clothes. With the reprieve, the older man seemed to achieve some degree of clarity – though not enough to also take off his ridiculously high socks.
“Darling, let me–”
“No,” Rook interrupted, shortly. “Later.”
Now bare, Emmrich’s cock was a sight, holding its weeping vigil like the Necropolis pillars. Rook didn’t have much of a frame of reference, but through besottedness if not judgement, he decided it was exactly the right size and shape. He shuffled in closer, planting his knees between Emmrich’s thighs, and using the opportunity to yank his own tunic over his head in a movement so smooth it felt incongruous amongst the inexpert fumbling of the evening so far. He preened a little as he watched Emmrich’s eyes rove over his newly-bared chest.
“You are breathtaking,” Emmrich half-whispered, genuine awe overtaking his face.
If the evening’s alcohol and exertions hadn’t already reddened Rook’s face, he’s certain he would have blushed strongly enough to be mistaken for an Orlesian quillback. One of Emmrich’s hands cupped his face gently, its thumb stroking soft caresses along the jut of his cheekbone; the other gripped at his shoulder, fingers pressing into the tight muscle, delicate but firm.
“Look who’s talking,” he replied, letting his evident breathlessness make its own, equivalent statement.
Emmrich regarded him fondly a moment longer, that hand lingering at his chin, before it mirrored the other on his shoulder.
Licking his ‘dry’ hand, Rook slowly, loosely stroked Emmrich’s shaft, noting but ignoring the request for “tighter, please” as he enacted the real aim of his plan. The hand which he had been using to pleasure himself ventured lower, past the sag of Emmrich’s balls and between his cheeks, fingers beginning hazy circles that spread Rook’s slick around the older man’s rim.
Emmrich’s back arched at the contact, highlighting the slight cavern of his chest and pressing the almost bizarrely neat thatch of his pubic hair into Rook’s hand. His fingers tightened on Rook’s shoulders, the slow massage giving way to an instinctual grip, a reaction and an anticipation.
Once he felt the hold loosen, he positioned a finger at the entrance, holding it still: a request for affirmation.
“Yes, please,” Emmrich answered the silent question with excitement bare and unmoderated.
Rook slipped the finger in, Emmrich’s relaxation and the lubricating slick letting it enter with minimal resistance. It felt warm, soft. It reminded Rook of the inside of Emmrich’s mouth – another part of him Rook was determined to map out. With that thought, he shifted upward, his other hand leaving Emmrich’s cock to allow him the space to lean upward and take the man’s mouth in his. Tongue and finger matched their explorations: the former catching and cataloguing noises and Rook heeding their timbre to adjust the rhythm and angle of the latter.
As his finger tracked down the spots that drew out the most pleasured noises, Rook’s hips ground gently, gracelessly against Emmrich’s cock where it lay pressed between Emmrich’s stomach and the dip of Rook’s groin. Across so many intimate areas of contact, the line between different sources of pleasure blurred. Rook was no academic, but he had enough schooling to know Emmrich probably wouldn’t approve of his methodology: too many confounding factors – though perhaps, in this circumstance, forgiveness might be more forthcoming.
When he broke the kiss, tingling and slightly lightheaded, he found enough coherence to ask with words: “Another?”
Emmrich’s words seemed less forthcoming.
“Ungh,” he answered, nodding.
The second finger was a different sensation, a decade or more of bow practice in the Tevinter style having lent a callous to Rook’s index finger that was absent from the middle finger which joined it. Rook groaned in tandem with Emmrich as his fingers re-seated in the older man’s hole, the warmth of him its own layer of intimacy. As he moved his fingers in searching patterns, he mapped a trail of kisses along every bit of skin available to him – unplanned, haphazard meanders with no purpose other than the action itself.
Rook didn’t need to ask, for the third finger. He could feel Emmrich’s readiness in the clench and stretch of his arsehole, in the way his precome coated both of their stomachs, and the way Emmrich was almost chasing his fingers down as they moved. As he added it, his eyes glanced over to the wooden dick, and his own excitement grew.
“Darling, I’m–” Emmrich’s words sounded far away. “I’m going to need you to take me.”
Rook pulled his fingers out; they felt almost bereft in the cool Lighthouse air.
Emmrich looked undone. Hair that had been merely tousled from their enthusiastic kissing now stuck in damp locks to his forehead, and his pupils gave the impression of a 4-night lyrium bender. When Rook leant over to brush the sweat-stuck strands from his face, he leant into the touch. The tenderness that swelled in Rook’s chest took him by surprise, even now.
He lingered a moment before drawing away, and picking up the cock.
“Could you oil this up for me?” he asked, a little tentative beneath his veneer of confidence.
He passed the dick to Emmrich, who immediately opened the second drawer of his bedside cabinet and drew out a bottle of oil, in a single, practised movement. Rook was certainly going to have to dig into that ‘perhaps’ very soon, but for now he focused on rinsing off his hand and finally removing his own trousers – which would need a very thorough wash before he could wear them again.
Emmrich was adding oil to the dick, delicate fingers lathering the wood in a sensual, rhythmic cadence. Rook could almost feel the ghostly pattern of touches himself, his mouth hanging open and eyes fixed inelastically on the care those elegant hands offered. For his part, Emmrich, too, was unfocused on his task – even through his own distraction, Rook could see Emmrich’s quiet lust as the man took in his naked form for the first time. Self-consciousness was not in his nature, but he felt certain the look on Emmrich’s face would have chased any such feeling from even the least confident person. He closed his mouth, before his tongue overstepped its bounds and spoke powerful, dangerous words far too soon.
As gently as he could muster, he took the dick back from Emmrich’s ministrations. It was a thing of beauty, now, glistening in the perpetual candlelight, and earlier joking possessiveness became a sinewed thing all teeth and claws and talons.
“It might have been inside you before,” he said, a still-unfamiliar edge of something dangerous enmeshed in the words. “But this is the first time it will be my dick.”
“Dearest, there is no part of you I wouldn’t welcome inside of me – however new an addition.”
In daytime, that might have warranted a quip about something like blighted tentacles and unorthodox tastes – but here it was simply achingly sincere permission for Rook’s ownership. Rook held his dick flush against his groin, holding it in place with his thumb and palm, remaining fingers free and well-placed to attend to his own arousal. At the same time, Emmrich made use of the frankly ludicrous number of pillows on the bed to raise his hips from the mattress. The angle lent a beguiling illusion of limitlessness to his already long legs – Rook ran the fingers of his free hand up the left leg, trailing his fingertips from calf to cock through the soft, sparse hair of Emmrich’s legs, as he brought himself into position between his thighs.
He murmured, almost to himself, as he set, “How are you so beautiful?”
Emmrich’s cock twitched at the compliment, as his hips squirmed. Rook pinned him down lightly as he lined up, his dick feeling unwieldy, despite the lightness of the wood. Slowly, patiently, he pushed the tip in. It entered more easily than he’d expected, but he still paused, waiting for Emmrich’s signal – eager but unwilling to push too far and hurt him.
“Yes, please, more.”
The answer was clear. Rook pushed in a little further, still slow but still easy. He focused on his own breathing to hold steady, matching each exhale to Emmrich’s as he watched his chest rise and fall. He timed his entry to the exhales too, until he was buried in Emmrich, his hand flush with warm, damp skin. He waited once more.
“This okay?”
“More than okay, darling.” Emmrich said. He groaned as Rook shifted. “You are truly a sight to behold.”
Rook started to move: tentatively, more wave than thrust, a gentle drag backward and lean back in. The lazy tide when the moon was at the apex of its orbit, where its pull was weakest. Each movement reflected back through the base of his dick, a pleasant pressure that fear of hurting Emmrich held him back from chasing. Bit by bit, that apprehension fell away, Emmrich’s groans and pleas chasing it back into its dusty corner alongside those words he couldn’t say.
Still faltering, uneven, but confident, Rook found something closer to a tempo for his thrusts, his fingers pressing into himself on the off-beat. He lifted his gaze from Emmrich’s chest to his face, its expression warring between slack-jawed pleasure and babbled requests. As the rhythm became instinct, Rook found himself adjusting his angle, searching for something closer to ecstasy in Emmrich’s countenance. It was trial and error, backing off at winces and from untenable positions that had flashes of pain shooting from his own hips.
He knew immediately when he found it, Emmrich clenching around him, eyes fluttering shut and his vocalisation almost obscenely loud in its own right. He repeated the movement, his free hand gripping tightly at the taut muscle above Emmrich’s hip – enough to bruise, though Emmrich hadn’t seemed to notice. He thrust again, and again, and again, until suddenly the clench around him was not so controlled, and Emmrich’s come splattered brazenly across both of their chests.
Rook slowed, stopped – breathless and exhilarated. Proud. Turned on. He leant back a little, one hand still rooted on Emmrich’s hip. Distantly, he was aware of what sounded like apologies, as he ground into his palm. The sight of Emmrich coming – the culmination of his own dick buried in him – replayed in his mind until he felt his own insides clench, warmth spreading from his abdomen. He moaned, too – and the apologies fell into startled silence.
He took a moment, letting the tension clear, before he spoke.
“That was maybe the hottest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”
“I remain ever so fortunate you think so.” Emmrich’s voice was quiet. “I’m not sure I should believe it, were the evidence not right before my eyes.”
Rook collected a dab of the spend from Emmrich’s chest on a finger, and licked it tentatively, before wiping his hand on his discarded trousers. Emmrich laughed: a genuine, unconstrained chuckle that bordered on wheezing.
“It’s an acquired taste,” he offered.
“It’s definitely not chocolate,” Rook agreed, as he picked up the trousers and began to wipe Emmrich’s chest gently with them. He gave his own chest a less tender, cursory wipe as he stood. “I’ll be… about 12 seconds.”
“While I admire much about your character, I’m loath to rely on your timekeeping,” Emmrich countered. “And you are entirely naked!”
It was too late to make any difference.
Rook called back from beyond the doorway, “Some rogue I’d be if I couldn’t sneak a glass from a kitchen without being seen.”
It was only 28 seconds later that he made it back, water in hand, and clambered back into bed, as close to Emmrich as he could manage within the confines of physical space. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to, letting the intermingling heat of their bodies speak to all the sentiment words couldn’t. He rested his cheek on Emmrich’s shoulder, and intertwined their fingers where their hands met. The dick – his no longer – balanced at the foot of the bed. It could be cleaned up properly later. This time was just for them, and a new closeness that felt like maybe it had already been there regardless.
***
Emmrich lay on the bed, the dual dull sensations of ache and satiety thrumming patterns through his body, limbs to larynx. With slow, measured sips, he drank from the glass Rook had brought him – the cool of the water a pleasant contrast to the heat still immured beneath his skin. The temperatures seemed reluctant to combine, the disparity instead swirling patterns within him, like oil in water. It felt wrong, and right, but mostly all-consumingly dizzying – a hypnotic whirl transported directly to his brain by spinal synapses oblivious to the destruction wreaked by their quarry.
As his brain cooled, he traced absent patterns across Rook’s chest; fingertips, palm, knuckles all walking the path of various ribs, veins, scars.
“I do wish you had let me give you a degree of that pleasure you bestowed upon me, Rook,” he said, at last.
“Nah,” Rook’s drawl was all fatigue and ardour. “This was how I always dreamed it. I’m sure we’ll get chance for you to show me all your expertise next time.”
“I’d very much like to do so.”
“It was okay, though?”
Rook phrased it like a statement, but an edge of uncertainty, of insecurity crept into the young man’s tone. It felt out of place there, amongst the bravado of a man who faced his worst fears every day in the hunt to chase down the gods. Emmrich’s hand stilled, the beating of Rook’s heart the only sensation available to unmoving fingers. Emmrich rolled onto his side, wincing slightly at the premature movement, but judging the price worth it.
“Rook, my darling,” he offered, all sincerity, “it was quite excellent.”
He brought his other hand round to pull Rook into a kiss, gentle and tender.
“And,” he continued, letting his register drop in that fashion he had honed oh-so-well, “I’m of the opinion that practice makes perfect.”