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The stacks of Noumenon were notorious for being a place to gain knowledge and lose track of time.
Old Sharlayan was a city of scholars, and scholars were not generally known for their regular sleeping habits. Between students working feverishly against a deadline that had snuck up on them, professors engaged in their own pursuits, and the library's mammet caretakers, the flame of knowledge was never truly extinguished. There was always someone about, no matter the hour.
What was the current hour, G'raha found himself wondering. The lighting in the lower levels was ceaseless and unchanging, the steady warmth of the aetheric lamps his constant companion, but the way his eyes had begun to burn with fatigue suggested it was far later than he really wanted to admit. He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed wearily at his face, guilt twisting in his chest over the fact that he had yet again neglected to wear the reading glasses that he really ought to be using to help ease the strain of interpreting fine print. Where had he left them this time? He vaguely remembered seeing them on the desk by his bed, but it was just as likely that he had left them in B'alith's apartment again—in Gridania's Lavender Beds district an entire ocean away from where he currently sat, G'raha thought with a deep pang of regret.
He stood and stretched, feeling stiff joints pop and wincing at how loud the sound felt in the deep silence of the reading room he'd holed up in. It was worth checking to see if he had indeed brought the spectacles back to Old Sharlayan with him; if he hadn't, then a brisk walk and some fresh air would no doubt do him some good anyway. He gathered up an armful of textbooks to bring back to the Annex with him and headed for the lift.
He let his mind drift as he made his way along the tree-lined walking paths, ears swiveling to catch the rustle of unseen creatures and the distant rush of the ocean. Deepest night had drawn a glittering starlight veil over the city while he'd been sequestered, bringing with it a chill that invigorated the senses as much as the innumerable constellations spanning the heavens above did. G'raha tipped his head back to take in the sight with a deep sigh, the weight of the centuries he'd spent on another world settling heavily onto his shoulders once more. Never again, he silently vowed, would he take the sight of a starry sky for granted.
To his right, he spied a trio of students laying cuddled up together on a grassy knoll overlooking Scholar's Harbor—a telescope lay on the blanket beside them, but they seemed to have eyes only for each other. He smiled to himself as he passed them by, feeling a rush of nostalgia for his own misspent youth. Let the young lovers have their not-so-furtive trysts in the moonlight; he was just as glad to have the more private option of soft sheets and a warm bed.
The lights of his room in the Baldesion Annex were still lit, he discovered with no small amount of surprise when he quietly let himself back in. B'alith kept much earlier hours than many of the other Scions did, and should have long since already turned in for the night. If he was still up at this hour, or had been roused by something other than the need for a quick visit to the washroom, that did not bode well for his mental state.
Worry soon turned to relief when G'raha found the man in question sprawled across his bed, deeply asleep and with an open book still propped against his chest—B'alith must have dozed off while waiting for him to return from the library, and had merely forgotten to extinguish the lamps first. Long auburn hair, unbound from its customary loose braid, spilled around his shoulders in thick waves; a lock of it fell across his face and drew the eye to the full bow of his mouth, lips softly parted against the slow, even rhythm of his breathing. G'raha watched him contentedly for a long moment, grateful that his lover seemed to be at ease once again. B'alith had been suffering from a resurgence of the nightmares that had plagued him for years, and it had been making his notoriously short temper even shorter.
G'raha reached for B'alith's book, intending to mark his place for him and set it aside—he was much more casual about treating books as practical items that were meant to be used, but bookmarks did exist for a reason. He murmured something unintelligible and shifted slightly in response to the weight of the heavy tome being lifted free. The motion pulled G'raha's attention further downward to the way B'alith's undershirt had ridden up around his waist, exposing deeply tanned skin and the trail of hair that ran down his belly to disappear beneath the waistband of the baggy shorts he favored for sleep. The ungainly splay of his legs offered a view of the freckles that dappled his thighs, and G'raha smiled to himself at the thought of how he finally understood what it meant for skin to truly be sun-kissed.
His ears pricked forward as something else caught his eye: the unmistakable shape of fabric pulled taught by an erect cock straining against it. An involuntary physical response, he knew—not uncommon for those who possessed anatomies like theirs, but one that still made arousal stir in his veins nonetheless. He should let B'alith rest, but there was no harm in looking a little longer before turning in for the night as well.
B'alith shifted in his sleep again, rolling his hips in a motion that was decidedly closer to the way he squirmed when he was desperate to be touched. The waistband of his shorts slid lower, letting the head of his cock briefly slip free, and G'raha's resolve faltered. Tempting as the thought of waking him was, it really would be kinder to—
"Nngh, Raha—"
The breathy moan that fell from B'alith's lips shattered the remaining veneer of G'raha's noble intentions. The sleeping mage was having a very good dream, and it seemed that it was one in which he was playing a starring role.
A time or two, B'alith had expressed a curiosity about being roused by being aroused, as he had put it. "Next time, don't bother waking me first," he had murmured drowsily one night, as they lay tangled up in each other's arms after having slaked their thirst for more than just a glass of water. "I can think of far worse things to be roused by in the middle of the night than the feeling of you already inside me."
G'raha could not deny that the suggestion had held some appeal for him, too. B'alith had always taken his own pleasure from having a lover use him for theirs, and he had an insatiable appetite for sex—and, as much as G'raha tried to convince himself otherwise, a darker and more possessive corner of his mind could not help but feel a thrill of arousal at the thought of simply being able to have him whenever he liked. The man asleep in his bed had felled gods and toppled regimes. The thought of the Warrior of Light, savior of the star and inheritor of Shatotto's legacy, so pliant and willing and utterly at his mercy…
It was a temptation that not even the Crystal Exarch had been able to fully resist. What hope did he, the achingly mortal G'raha Tia, have in the face of such a thing?
He cast an appraising gaze back over the lean form sprawled out in front of him, tail switching thoughtfully as he set to work stripping off his clothes. How to best take advantage of the situation he'd been presented with?
Simply rolling B'alith onto his side and fucking him awake, while a deliciously arousing prospect, was something they should probably discuss in a bit more detail first. Bringing him to release with hands or mouth would perhaps be a gentle way to ease into this new territory, but the thought of using his sleeping lover's body to satisfy his own growing need was what made G'raha's cock twitch against his palm as he worked himself to full hardness. Those soft, sun-kissed thighs practically begged to be anointed—to be marked—by his seed, and he had no intention of passing up such a perfect opportunity to claim them.
He carefully settled his weight onto the mattress, trying not to jostle B'alith too much or startle him awake with his movements. G'raha reached out to gently remove his glasses and set them on the bedside table—beside the long-forgotten pair of reading glasses that had prompted the excursion back to the Annex in the first place, he noted with a mild pang of chagrin. He watched B'alith carefully for another long moment, searching for signs that he was perhaps not quite as asleep as he appeared. He had always been a sound sleeper, but it wouldn't do for him to wake too quickly.
G'raha leaned down to brush a kiss against B'alith's forehead, infusing the touch with just enough aether to lull him a fraction deeper into his dream. Just in case.
Manhandling him into a better position was not as difficult as G'raha had feared—he was strong enough to easily support an adult Miqo'te's dead weight, but he was just as glad to not have to. B'alith needed little in the way of encouragement, obligingly lifting his hips off the mattress to allow access to the tail flap at the back of his shorts. Another soft moan fell from his lips at the feeling of fingers hooking into the waistband and sliding them down, his tail thumping lazily against the sheets as the fabric briefly caught on the head of his cock before it came free. Even in his sleep, he was so eager to be used.
G'raha bit down on the possessive growl that wanted to rise in his throat at the sight of his lover's erection laying heavily against his belly, and at the thought that another version of himself had been the cause. It was him that the sleeping mage had cried out for—and by his true name, at that—not the other him that had existed on another reflection and taken up residence under his skin upon the Scions' return to the Source. He and B'alith had always had other partners in addition to each other, which G'raha had never taken an issue with before. The unexpected pang of jealousy he felt toward himself was utterly ridiculous.
This was a level of introspection ill-suited to the current hour, to say nothing of the way the ache of his own arousal was loudly trying to drown out what little rational thought still remained. G'raha carefully put those emotions to the side as he reached for the phial he kept on his bedside table instead, trying to stifle his own moans as he slicked his length with a generous amount of the thick oil it contained. He got an arm under B'alith's legs and hauled them up to let them rest against one shoulder. G'raha paused for another long moment, admiring the view of his lover so exposed and helpless and completely at his mercy, then dragged their bodies more tightly together to stake his claim between those irresistibly fuckable thighs.
B'alith arched against him with another needy whine, long fingers unconsciously grasping at a fistful of the blankets at the feeling of G'raha's erection sliding against his. Gods, but the friction was delicious; a sensation unlike the slick warmth of B'alith's mouth or the tighter heat of his ass, but something entirely different and exquisitely its own.
G'raha leaned forward to brace his free hand against the mattress as his pace increased, soft gasps of pleasure mingling with the slap of flesh against flesh, utterly riveted by the way the head of his cock peeked from between B'alith's thighs and by how he responded in kind. He was much less vocal like this than he typically was—his inability to keep his voice down when he was in the throes of pleasure, even when they had found themselves in a location where discovery was a real risk, had nearly gotten them caught more than once. It was a trait of his that G'raha loved, the way haughty arrogance always dissolved into shameless begging, but there was an intimacy to this quieter sort of reaction that was intensely thrilling. It felt rare and precious, a private sort of vulnerability that was not meant for anyone else's eyes or ears, something he could enjoy without worrying quite so much about what anyone else might see or hear. There was only the familiar planes of lean muscle flexing against his, the dizzying rush of sensation that was rapidly building toward its peak and the knowledge that this man and this moment was his—
Release reared up to grab hold of him with an intensity that made him light-headed. He shuddered and went tense as he came hard, burying his face against B'alith's leg to muffle his own cries, feeling his thighs and belly grow slick with the evidence of what his body had been used for and how it only heightened the sensation of using him.
G'raha gently lowered B'alith's legs from his shoulder and sat back on his heels, admiring the thick trails of his spend that he'd left on his lover's skin as he got his breath back. It really would be a kindness to let him experience it in the waking world now, too.
B'alith woke with a startled gasp as the enchantment that had nudged him deeper into sleep was dispelled.
"Who— wait, what are you—" He struggled wildly for a moment, his tail whipping against the mattress again, disorientation warring with the way his body reacted to the sensation of G'raha's fingers wrapping around his cock. "Oh— oh fuck, don't stop, oh gods fuck, yes, Raha—!"
Panicked flailing turned to more purposeful writhing as pleasure caught up with his waking mind. B'alith threw his head back and he clawed at a handful of the blankets, meeting each stroke with involuntary little jerks of his hips that grew increasingly more erratic the closer he got to his own climax. G'raha worked him steadily toward his peak, keeping him pinned down with his free arm while the other kept to the rhythm he liked best. The sight of him so undone and desperate, and the knowledge that the wetness slicking his lover's erection was his own seed, was nearly enough to stir him to hardness again. He put aside thoughts of chasing his own pleasure further and tightened his grip a fraction more, matching the hitch in B'alith's breathing and watching him hungrily as he trembled on the edge of release.
Sensation overwhelmed him and he came with a choked cry that edged into a sob, adding his own spend to the mess G'raha had already made of him. The tension in his body slowly ebbed and B'alith went slack against the mattress again, flushed and breathless and so beautifully alive. G'raha carefully unwrapped his fingers from the spent mage's softening erection, smug satisfaction warring with the flickers of anxiety that were trying to claw their way up his throat as he watched B'alith slowly come back to himself. Did he remember the desire he had previously expressed to be used like this? Had it been a serious request, or merely post-coital banter?
"…What time is it?" B'alith finally managed, once he'd recovered his ability to form a coherent sentence again.
G'raha laughed, relief that B'alith did not seem to be angry with him blooming in his chest and chasing away the slivers of doubt. "Please don't make me answer that honestly. I fear you won't like the answer nearly as much as you seemed to like your wake-up call."
"A fair assessment on both counts, I suppose." B'alith favored him with a lazy, satisfied smile that made his heart lurch. "You have incredible timing; I think I had just been dreaming about you."
"You were. I heard you crying out for me, and I simply could not deny you in the waking world any more than I can in your dreams."
B'alith's ears went flat with chagrin. "…I was?"
"You were."
"And, um, if you'd heard me call out someone else's name instead…?"
G'raha could not help but answer with the sort of cocky grin that always made B'alith's cheeks go a very charming shade of pink. "Then I would've gone to take care of myself, and let you and your dream lover have some privacy."