Pairing: Halsin x Tav (female reader)
WC: 3,811
Summary: There's a rite of blooming that Halsin feels called to do in the forests surrounding camp. He feels safe with you, secure in the knowledge that you'll keep him safe as he brings fruit to bare in a ritual.
Tags: ritual sex, grounding, body worship, female oral, breeding if you squint?
NSFW
this is written in a new writing software so sorry if the formatting wound up odd in the cross over (ellipsus, i quite like it actually), and edited by my always lovely and amazing beta @emfirebender! enjoy some Halsin! we sure did :) 💙💚
(Suggestions/pairings/spicy ideas or challenges are welcome!)
--
Halsin’s invitation is not spoken lightly.
He says your name as if it belongs in his mouth; deliberate, careful, like a sacred verse recited at the foot of an altar. His voice is low and laced with meaning, but devoid of demand. It’s not a command. It’s a gift, and an exceptional one. “Come with me,” he says, and though his tone is gentle, something ancient stirs beneath the words, rooted and waiting. The air thickens, the soil seems to warm beneath your feet, and every leaf in earshot stills.
He doesn’t reach for you. Instead he simply turns, barefoot and steady, and you follow him as if pulled on an unseen tether. Past the soft boundary of the camp, past the sentinel trees whose branches seem to bow in recognition. Soon enough you find yourself deep into the wooded copse and with every step into the forest’s heart, the world grows quieter, more reverent. The air grows heavy with moisture and meaning, nature holding its breath at your approach. The moonlight here feels different, weightier somehow, with the shadows coiling at your feet. You feel it in your belly— in the slickness between your thighs.
The trail disappears beneath the new Spring’s eager growth. Moss thickens beneath your soles, plush and yielding. Blue flowers, tiny and luminescent, bloom as your skin brushes them, as if called to life by your passing. Spore-laced air drifts thick as incense, curling in your hair, clinging to your lashes. The scent is damp and green and faintly sweet, like something blooming after rain. You feel seen. Unmade. Desired by the land itself.
At last, Halsin stops.
The glade is alive. Not in the way that plants are alive, but in the way that even long forgotten temples remember. Moss breathes beneath your feet. Stones encircle the space like ancient sentries, half-swallowed by ivy, crowned in white nocturnal blossoms. In the center, an ancient tree towers with impossible grace. White petals spill from its limbs like falling stars, blooming only in the hush of night. The air here is dense with meaning. You feel it settle into your lungs, into your blood. Everything here has the unmistakable taste of beginning, of renewal.
Halsin turns, golden even in the shadows, his silhouette cut in solemn lines against the bioluminescence behind him. His bare chest catches the moonlight in silver arcs. His hair is damp with sweat or dew. When his eyes meet yours there’s something in them. Something sharper, hungrier. Something ritualistic.
“The Spring Equinox,” he says, voice rough velvet, “is not simply a date. It is the axis upon which the entire season turns. It marks the end of sleep. The beginning of bloom. The moment the world remembers itself. The time when all things, beast, tree, and man, must remember their need to touch, to hunger, to thrive."
You swallow hard. Your throat is dry and tight.
"This rite is older than any written instruction," he continues, steadfast eyes never leaving yours. "It is not performed. It is surrendered to. We submit to it. We become the vessel.” He puts a hand to his own chest, dipping his head to regard you with respect. This is Holiness to him. “We offer our bodies, yes, but also our breath, our blood, our will. We let the seasons pass through us. We let the body be broken open by it. And when it finishes with us… we are changed, and the world blooms anew."
"It blooms anew?" you echo, the slightest bit of hesitation evident in your voice.
"The area will be cleansed, the ground sanctified. It's not just the soul that's changed in the rite. The land remembers. Where we join, the forest marks it. It blooms louder the next spring. It beats back the darkness that we've both seen encroaching on the land." Your mind flashes back to the Shadow-cursed lands and the darkness emanating from Thaniel, tainting the ground and the very essence of the world.
"Then let me see you as you are, antlers and all. Don't mistake me for something fragile at the center. We've come this far together, so take me the rest of the way there. I came here to bloom." Your own voice feels foreign to your ears with how assured you are.
His eyes glow faintly in the dimness with their rich intensity, earthen and grounding.
“I have prepared,” he says, voice quieter now, gentler. “Three days without food. Without fire. I let the river scour me raw until my skin burned with cold. I walked barefoot beneath the stars and let the wind cleanse me. I’m empty now. Carved out by the Mother and made ready.” He takes a breath and it’s shaky despite his poise; he’s just as nervous as you are. “But a vessel alone is a hollow thing. I need one who can anchor me. One who will not break when I come undone. Who will see what I become and not turn away.”
Your heart is pounding hard enough to bruise bone, pulse thundering in your throat and blood rushing in your ears.
“Why me?” you ask, your voice a tremor against the stillness. It escapes before you can stop it, a momentary show of weakness.
He steps forward. It’s just one step, but the air reacts like he’s crossed a boundary. It presses in around you, warm and thick and humming, like the glade itself is listening for his answer.
“Because the forest listens when you moan. Because your scent is carved into my bones. Because you undo me with a look, and still, I am not afraid. Because I have imagined taking you a hundred ways beneath a hundred trees, and still it is never enough.” His jaw flexes. “And because when I lose myself tonight, I want to be found in you.”
He’s close now. Not touching, not yet, but the heat of him rolls over your skin. The scent of resin and warm leaves radiates from his chest. Under it: something darker. Not violent, but vast. Wild. Like wet fur and lightning, feral musk and fresh-cut blooms. It terrifies you. It thrills you.
“You may still say no, still walk away,” he says, voice gone rough and hushed. “But if you remain, if you open yourself to this rite… I will not stop once it begins. There will be no holding back. No gentleness. No false restraint. I will take you until the forest itself is sated.”
The glade tightens around you, listening with bated breath. Nothing stirs, and time pauses to the perfect point of a needle, poised on a dew drop. Mother nature herself kneels to you, holding space for your momentary internal pause.
Then, softly, reverently, he speaks your name. It's no longer a question.
It's a ritual unto itself.
“Will you let me bless you?”
“Yes.”
The rush of air that leaves him is replicated by the forest around you and it seems to surge forward as he does, his arms wrapping around your waist and pulling you close to him in one motion. Halsin’s lips find yours quickly, a soft hesitation still behind his motions. You part your lips against him and return the kiss, bringing a hand up to caress his cheek gently. At your touch any pretense of holding himself back disappears, and a low growl rumbles in the back of his throat like rolling thunder. A small part of you cowers at the sound and the implication, but it shrinks away to nothing when Halsin’s calloused hand lands on your waist.
His hands are large for an elf, but you never expected that he would be able to engulf your whole hip in one palm. You’ve never felt so fragile, yet so gently handled. Halsin’s lips move from yours to the hollow behind your ear. His hair tickles you and goosebumps erupt on your arms and neck. When he speaks again his voice is raw, thick with emotion.
“You… Are the whole of me. Would that I could have filled you with only myself before the rite… But this was needed of me, of us.” The hand on your waist flexes just slightly, just enough to show how much he’s holding himself back, keeping the beast at bay a little longer, to be present with you as just himself. His strong, tanned arms wrap around your body like ivy along a beautiful trellis.
One hand presses gently between your shoulder blades as the other tilts your chin upward. Halsin’s lips find the hollow at your collarbones and he presses another kiss there, starting to sear a scorching path to your navel. He lowers himself in front of you, sinking to his knees and running his nose gently along the hem of your low-slung cloth skirt. On instinct you drop your hand to his head, carding your fingers through his brown locks.
A gasp tears its way from your throat when he positions his mouth between your thighs, lifting one leg over his shoulder with careful strength and balancing you on him. The weight of you against him draws a pleased sound from deep in his chest, rumbling and animalistic with its intent. Heated air from his quick breaths spreads along your center and you’re not surprised to find a low burning fire already in your core. The first press of his tongue against your cunt is met with groans from both of you— yours of pleasure and his of embers stoked to roaring flame.
A kiss, light and breath-warm, pressed to your slick center. Then another. His mouth opens, tasting you slowly, savoring like it’s his first drop of water after days in the sun. A peach, pared open for him and dripping with the simple press of a finger to the flesh. Large hands manipulate your body with ease, and the same gentleness and care you’ve come to expect of him.
The moan he gives is low and shaken. “You taste like spring. Like waking up.” At his words you tighten your fingers in his hair, looking down at him and watching with soft pants of desire. His eyes are closed, eyelashes tickling the insides of your thighs as he caresses his nose along your pussy. With every movement of his nose and tongue across your clit you breathe out in a rush, your hips starting to move counter to his tongue.
“Are you… Are you still you?” you venture, tugging his hair gently until he pulls back and allows his eyes to meet yours. They’re clear, fully him.
"You will know when I'm gone, love." His voice rumbles in your core and you watch him with half-lidded eyes as he runs the tip of his nose just below your navel. "This body is precious. I'm afraid of harming you."
"Sweet bear," you croon, your hand running soothingly through his hair. His eyes close again and he leans his forehead against you, wide palms caressing either leg where he holds you against him. "I came with you willingly. I didn't come here to tremble like grass before your storm. Show me the gales inside, and let the Mother heal." This time when he meets your gaze again there's something deeper- an acceptance that you truly won't turn away. A letting go.
"As you wish." With no more hesitation he devotes himself entirely to your pleasure, tongue slow and deliberate, unfurling you with each stroke. His lips seal around you, sucking softly, and your hands twist into his hair again. You brace against his shoulders, gasping, thighs shaking with the effort of staying upright, fingernails digging in the meat of his shoulder. Halsin holds you firm, one hand spanning your back, the other gripping your thigh with reverent possessiveness.
His eyes flicker open to meet yours, and it’s almost like staring into the forest itself.
Wild. Rooted. Eternal.
When you cry out, when your legs begin to tremble and your orgasm threatens to crash over you like storm tide, he doesn't stop. He holds you tighter. Guides you through it. You cum with a shudder, head thrown back, body arching against him, and Halsin's hands tighten in response against you. He holds you like that as the echoes fade, as the night seeps back into your awareness, and when your breath finally steadies he presses a kiss to your inner thigh.
"Now is the forest's turn," he murmurs, presses another sticky kiss to the sensitive skin below your navel. When you nod your continued assent he lets your leg drop gently back to the forest floor, rising with one fluid motion. Before he can speak again, your hand finds his chiseled jaw.
"Let the forest remember us." He smiles at your words, leaning forward and pressing his forehead to yours.
"It will." The arc of his shoulders and the tremble in his breath betray how staunchly he’s holding the beast at bay, how deeply your permission steadies him. You can feel it in the air now, thicker and warmer as if the rite is already blooming around you in response to your first climax.
The moss beneath your feet has gone plush. Springy. The petals that have fallen from the great tree seem to gather themselves into a soft nest where he guides you with care. There's no force in his actions, only quiet inevitability and soft affection. Like water drawn downhill. When your head touches the soft moss pillow he follows, pressing his forehead to yours and locking eyes with you.
He presses his forehead to yours again. “Lay back,” he whispers. “Let me see you.”
When you obey, the hush that falls over the glade is absolute. Even the wind goes still. His hand rests at the junction of your hip and thigh, thumb rubbing the sensitive skin there.
You watch his eyes scan across the whole of your body, drinking in the sight of supple flesh and devotional beauty. His tongue darts out to meet his lower lip, the only nervous gesture you've ever seen the man make. The other hand, somewhat shakily, goes to the base of his cock where he strokes himself, flushed and pulsing.
You watch the moment that his restraint breaks.
There's the curl of his lip as he presses just the head of his cock inside of you that gives it away, and the furrowing of his brow as your tightness envelopes him. Your cunt is already soaked from his mouth and the glide is smooth, easy. He tries and fails to bite back a groan, meeting your eyes with a wild look in his own. A single bead of sweat runs down his temple and you track it until it meets his jaw.
With one hand splayed beside your head and the other steadying your hip, Halsin pushes inside. Slow. So achingly slow you can feel every trembling inch. It’s overwhelming and the stretch feels nearly unbearable, until it isn’t. Until it feels right.
You don't breathe, not fully, at least. Not until he's buried to the hilt and trembling above you.
You gasp as he moves, testing the rhythm, drawing halfway out only to sink back in with an unhurried groan. The weight of him is immense, both in body and presence, his thrusts steady as rain. The tree overhead groans with it, shedding petals like offerings to your joining. Your fingers dig into his back, sliding against the sweat gathering there. Each thrust presses your hips into the moss, grounding you to the land itself.
"This," he breathes against your mouth, "is what the season aches for—this heat, this wetness, this closeness of two beings." Halsin's hand comes to your cheek, roughly cupping your face in his palm as his breathing grows heavier. "Do you feel it? Tell me you feel it."
Your moans aren’t quiet now. They can’t be. He pulls them, aching, from you with every motion of his cock. They echo, and you realize that that is part of the rite too— your pleasure, your sound, your yes, filling the clearing. Letting the gods, if they still listen, know you chose this. That you welcomed it.
Halsin’s head drops into the crook of your neck. “Say it,” he whispers, voice frayed and tight, "say that you feel it."
"I feel it." Your lips ghost against his as you reassure him. "I feel it all. The forest is here with us, Halsin. Let go." Halsin growls lightly in response, his hips stuttering. A low rumble grows from his chest, something deeper, more wild. A sound dragged from the heart of the rite, and in response he starts to move harder. Not rough, but full… Devouring.
You wrap your legs around him instinctively, gasping each time he sinks home, and you swear the flowers bloom faster, the wind stirs stronger. The entire glade is being rewritten with every thrust of the druid above you. Just before he falls apart you feel the shift. Not in his rhythm or pace, but in him. A tremor ripples through his limbs, the power coiling under his skin.
"Stay with me," he growls, his voice low even as his eyes briefly reflect something deeper, something worried.
You do.
His thrusts deepen into long and unhurried strokes that seem to reach into your very lungs, claiming every breath before it can fully leave you. The moss gives slightly beneath your back with each movement, springy and wet. It makes for an interesting dichotomy, cool where your spine presses into it but burning where his skin touches yours. Halsin's strong body surrounds you entirely, his forearms braced by either side of you, chest brushing yours with every motion of his hips, and the thick root of him pulsing inside of you a second heartbeat.
One of his hands slides beneath you to the small of your back, levying you against him and changing the angle, allowing his every thrust to press hard against that aching place inside of you that makes you see stars. The sounds that spill from you are wholly ones of filthy pleasure, echoing against the canopy of the leaves. Every breath you drag is filled with him now— his sweat on your tongue, his name on your lips and your slickness still lingering on his. You cling tightly to him, your nails digging furrows into the skin of his back, making him shudder with each score.
"Look at me," he commands, his voice deeper, more primal. Halsin pulls back from you just enough for your eyes to meet. His eyes are intense, blown black with arousal and the presence of… something else. "Don't look away. Not when I make you cum."
He doesn't wait for your response, reaching between your bodies with a shaking hand, rough thumb finding your clit with precision. His pressure is just right, circling, coaxing, devastating— you aren't prepared for it. Your body arches against his as you tighten on his cock, mouth falling open with a wordless cry of pleasure, every sound swallowed greedily by the glade around you, the forest itself drinking you in.
"That's it," Halsin whispers in encouragement, his eyes taking in every inch of you, "let it take you. Let it change you."
And gods, does it.
You shatter like a storm breaking over the treetops, the band of pleasure in your gut snapped taut and broken by gale force winds. Halsin holds you through it once more, hips still thrusting against yours and whispering to you, even as you come down gasping, dizzy, wet with sweat and the thick scents of moss and sap and sex.
Halsin groans again, lower now, the sound scraping raw from his throat as though he's been waiting a lifetime to release it. Your name falls in a litany from his lips, fractured and reverent. He loses whatever fragile restraint remained to him, his rhythm stuttering and then breaking entirely. His hips snap into you with no identifiable pattern, each thrust driving a cry from your mouth, body already oversensitive and trembling.
You cling to him anyway, taking all of him, as you promised you would.
The full weight of him bears down on you like thunder made flesh, all primal arousal and self gratification.
"I can't-" he chokes, voice sticking thickly in his throat, "I can't stop- you're-" His body tenses over you, every muscle pulled as taut as a bowstring. The he surges forward, burying his cock in you as deep as he can, whole frame shuddering and breath catching against your skin as his climax finally takes him— forceful, unending.
Halsin groans your name like it's the only thing tethering himself to his body, spilling inside of you in hot, heavy pulses, hips jerking with each wave of pleasure. Finally his forehead drops to your shoulder and he growls from deep within his chest, clutching you to him as though he might fall apart without you there to hold him together.
The forest holds its breath.
So do you.
Everything is still except for the tremor in Halsin's limbs and the sharp, panting breaths he draws against your neck. He doesn't pull out. Doesn't move. Not yet. He just lays over you like a great oak fallen in worship before a storm, chest heaving, cum leaking from where the two of you are joined.
Beneath the thunder of release and beneath the sweat and your pulse, you feel it— the glade remembering, waking up, blooming anew.
You lie together in the silence that follows, the sound of your mingled breaths slowly softening. Halsin's weight remains above you, grounding, anchoring. His arms are wrapped fully around you, not with passion, now, but awe. The tremble in his arms is different as well, as though something vast inside of him has finally quieted.
And then the glade exhales.
A warmth pulses beneath you, faint and golden, spreading in slow and deliberate rings. Where your bodies met, where your breath caught and his name left your throat in a cry of release, the moss grows deeper, thicker. From the base of the great tree, white blossoms unfold, the petals full and dewy. The earth beneath your spine thrums with new life and around the edge of the glade, new vines creep and curl. Ferns begin to stretch toward you like supplicants.
The forest remembers.
You feel it claim the shape of your pleasure and the weight of his body, the place where his seed spilled inside of you. It records each gasp and rhythm and whispered name in every root and petal, in soil and in leaf. A prayer written in sweat and joined flesh.
Halsin brushes a kiss to your temple gently. "We've given the land something to sing about, hm?"
Overhead the tree shivers in full bloom, shedding soft white petals across your skin like falling stars.
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Halsin has some anxieties about being surrounded by so much stone, cold and unfeeling. Luckily, the easiest way to get back to nature can be found in your arms.
i didn't do a word count for this one, and if there's any typos i'm sorry lol. tldr it's wednesday and i'm a recovering catholic. enjoy some heretical and blasphemous smut, i guess? and an excuse to use some of my favourite words.
NSFW Below
Halsin x Tav (female reader)
--
The city gnaws at him.
It’s in the way Halsin hesitates on the threshold, broad shoulders brushing the doorframe as he ducks through it, face drawn tight as if the cobblestones outside have worn down his ease. His eyes, so often rich with the warmth of forest glades and soft birdsong, are sharp now, restless. You see it immediately-- the tension in his jaw, the subtle twitch of his fingers as he unclasps his cloak.
His face is clean and smooth, scrubbed of the evidence of the road and the long nights of travel. Gone is the dirt under his fingernails and the smell of earth and grass from his tunic, replaced by some soft fragrant perfume that smells foreign on the tall elf. Halsin's eyes scan your face, flitting back and forth between the walls and you, his jumpiness evident.
He doesn’t speak. He just comes to you.
Large hands find your waist before you can ask if he’s alright, and he buries his face in your neck, breath hot and uneven, staggered with the depth of his sudden anxiety. You feel him inhale deeply with a shudder, like he’s trying to breathe in everything you are. His cheeks rub gently against your skin, and the sigh that leaves him is heavy and relieved.
“The city is... too much,” he murmurs against your collarbone, voice roughened by strain. “Stone everywhere. No wind. No soil. I needed…” You can feel his hand against your back as he clutches at you, trying to find the words.
His lips brush your throat as he attempts to speak. Once. Then again. Slower.
“…you,” he finishes simply, weakly.
You thread your fingers through the strands of thick hair at the nape of his neck, grounding him the way only you can. “Then take what you need.”
That’s all it takes. Halsin lifts you as if you weigh nothing, lips finding yours with a hunger that’s quiet but immense-- like roots spreading beneath the surface he flows into you, the essence of him, masculine and heady. He doesn’t throw you to the bed. He lowers you to it with reverence, like you're something sacred, the very culmination of mother Earth and soul-- a being born of love and to love.
His hands are gentle, but they're not shy.
They know your curves, your textures, the sounds you make when he slides his palm up your thigh and brushes the edge of your underclothes. Halsin knows that your breath will come sharply when he presses you just there and when he kisses you just here. Every movement is unhurried, but no less demanding.
His touch coaxes, not commands.
His tongue explores, not delves.
Halsin peels you apart delicately under his calloused but gentle hands, folding you open for him with a touch that feels like worship, and when your thighs part, the sound that leaves him is a wordless catechesis.
“I feel more alive,” he whispers, mouth against your breast as he frees it with a grasping and clumsy paw, “when I’m inside you.”
And gods, he proves it.
His tongue is slow, teasing. His hands cradle your hips as if they’re delicate stems and blooming in the space where the meet, beautiful and rosy. When he pushes into you, it's like a prayer—long, aching strokes that make your back arch and your breath catch. Halsin buries himself fully, pressing his forehead to yours as he rocks into you with the the fervor of fresh spring.
The bed creaks softly, muffled by the thick walls and distant city din. Here, in this quiet room, you give him the wilderness he craves. The nature of beast and man. He pants your name into your mouth as he moves deeper, slower, hips grinding as if trying to become part of you.
“You’re my forest,” he groans, voice cracking like a rock slide. “My earth. My peace.”
You wrap your legs around him and pull him in, again and again, until the pressure mounts between you both like summer thunder. The sounds of skin on skin feel loud in the small room and you whimper under him, hips rocking in tandem with his to force him deeper. You tremble first, helpless under his touch, and he follows, moaning low in his throat, holding you as if the city will tear him apart if he lets go.
When it’s over, he stays inside you, still pulsing, still breathing your scent in like he might lose it the moment he leaves. One large hand cups your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone as if he's memorizing the shape of you.
“I can face the stone again tomorrow,” Halsin says, lips soft against your temple. “As long as I have this. You. A place to return to.”
And just like that, you anchor him, the druid, warrior, lover; he's tamed not by chains, but by the promise of your hands.
When you're with Astarion at night, in his bedroll, in the hush beyond the campfire’s dying glow, the world folds itself shut around you like a cloak. There's no Gods there— no Absolute, no tadpole writhing behind the eye, no divine judgment cast from on high.
There's only him.
Him, and the careful wreck he makes of you.
It's a world of your own creation, stitched together from stolen blankets, moonlight, old blood, and the soft, scandalous shape of his mouth… A world where the grass beneath you becomes the finest silk sheets, where the night air turns sweet as plum wine, where every kiss feels like a confession dragged willingly from your throat.
His whispers aren't prayers, Gods, no.
But when he lowers his mouth to your pulse and murmurs, “There you are, darling,” it feels too much like absolution to be entirely mortal. His bed isn't a chapel, his kisses no holy rites, and yet you learn devotion beneath him all the same.
He says, “Hold still for me,” and you do, trembling beneath the velvet command of it, your hands fisting in the blanket as his lips trace the column of your throat. Not biting yet. Never without making you wait for it, yearn for it, crane your neck for it... Never without making you feel the terrible privilege of being wanted by something that has spent two centuries being starved.
Astarion doesn't worship easily. He doesn't kneel unless he means to make a performance of it, but when his body presses to yours, when his pale hair falls loose around his face and his eyes flicker crimson in the dark, hungry and beautiful and unbearably alive, you think perhaps this is the only kind of worship he still trusts. The kind made with hands.
With teeth.
With breath.
With choice.
And his body—
Marble made wicked. Moonlight given teeth. A palace so beautifully carved it feels almost cruel to touch him, dirty him, bleed on him. Your fingers move over pale skin and old scars, reading him like scripture written in wounds. White ridged marks whisper their history under your palms, and they tell you the story of- “Careful,” he murmurs. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll start expecting offerings.”
You would give them. Your body, your blood, your breath, your soul.
Your condemned ruin of a corpse, if he so desired.
His voice slides through you like smoke, sweet and poisonous, curling behind your ribs until your thoughts feel less like yours and more like something he has coaxed from the dark. His thumb strokes over your pulse. His fangs graze your skin. Your breath catches.
“Astarion.”
He stills.
For all his hunger, he stills.
Beneath the velvet cruelty, beneath the performance and the facade, he's there: the man under the monster. The wound beneath the smile. The fear of wanting anything freely given. The fear of loss.
You touch his cheek.
“Yes,” you whisper.
Something in him breaks open.
Then he bites.
Pain blooms first, bright and clean. Pleasure follows, dark as wine. His hand tightens at your waist. Yours tangles in his hair. He drinks like a starving saint, like a sinner at last allowed communion. Then he kisses you, and you taste yourself on his tongue.
It should frighten you.
Beneath him, in the ruin of blankets and blood, you understand the only sacrament Astarion offers.
Halsin’s quarters smell of wild sage and soft earth, a mingling of dried herbs and sun-warmed wood. Lanternlight glows low and amber along the curved walls, casting golden halos on stone and fur-lined floor. The grove breathes gently beyond the door, crickets humming, the occasional rustle of leaves slipping into the hush between heartbeats. It's only been a few days since you arrived with the last refugee train, but you already feel at home amongst the Druids.
You stand at the center of it all, bare feet brushing against woven reeds and cool painted stone, watching Halsin unlace his tunic. His eyes hold yours, steady and warm. He strips with the patience of one who knows there is no rush, no pressure. Only trust. When he approaches you, it is without pretense or performance. He touches you like he already knows your body, not from having claimed it, but from having imagined it with reverence.
His fingers graze your shoulders first, brushing the straps of your garment away, letting it fall. The fabric slips down your body and pools at your feet. His hands are gentle on your skin, but hardened with callouses. Halsin slowly leans in, his mouth at your collarbone, breath curling into your skin. He kisses you there, slow and sure, then presses another kiss just below your jaw.
His hands cup your face, warm and strong, thumbs brushing your cheeks as if you are something fragile. Halsin's eyes meet yours and you hear his sharp intake of breath-- he wants this too. You lean into his touch, and his lips find yours, soft and coaxing. He kisses you with care, drawing out each breath, each sigh, until you feel yourself tilting into him, anchored only by his arms around you.
He guides you to the low bed tucked against the stone wall, layered with fur and thick woven blankets. You sink into them, watching him through your lashes as he joins you. He crawls toward you with the quiet grace of a bear through the woods, large and grounded and focused entirely on you. When he lies beside you, he doesn’t reach for anything but your hand.
You lace your fingers with his. Halsin smiles.
He leans in again, his mouth brushing the corner of yours, then your cheek, then your temple. His free hand drifts across your waist, curving around your hip. He pulls you closer, your thighs meeting, his warmth folding around you until the outside world disappears. You rest your palm against his chest, over the steady beat of his heart and the course hair .
His kisses deepen gradually. He lets you set the pace. His hand trails down to your thigh, resting there until you shift, canting your hips towards his hand and inviting him in. His fingers slide between your legs, gliding through slick heat. He hums against your lips, his pleasure threaded with awe. He murmurs to you, voice low, each word spoken like a gift.
He strokes you gently, never hurrying. The rhythm he finds is easy, meant to soothe, to open. Your legs fall further apart for him, hips rising to meet his touch, your breath catching on every slow, deliberate movement. When he slips a finger inside you, the stretch is perfect. Halsin's fingers are short but thick, the nails well trimmed and clean. His finger crooks perfectly inside of you to hit the spot that makes you see stars and you gasp, one hand flying to grip his forearm. You can feel his muscles under your hand as his moves, flexing and relaxing with each slow pump of his finger inside of you. The Druid's thumb finds your clit, circling, coaxing. You gasp into his mouth and he drinks it in, his own breath growing shallower.
Another finger joins the first, and still his hand remains gentle, reverent. He watches you, every twitch of your brow, every press of your lips, every gasp that leaves your throat. Halsin's eyes sweep up and down your body, hovering at the spot where you and he are joined. You feel completely seen, laid bare in a way that leaves no room for shame.
You whisper his name and he answers with a kiss, tongue parting your lips with ease as he redoubles his efforts between your legs.
When he finally withdraws his hand, it’s only to push himself up slightly, adjusting his body so that he can slide between the apex of your thighs. You part them further for him willingly, arms wrapping around his broad back as he lowers himself over you. He pauses, forehead resting against yours. His hand moves between you, guiding himself to your entrance. The back of Halsin's hand bumps your clit and you gasp, arms tightening around him briefly.
He pushes in slowly. The first inch is nothing but pressure and warmth. He groans softly, a sound full of restraint and reverence. You wrap your legs around his hips and he sinks deeper, filling you in long, careful strokes until he’s buried to the hilt. He stills, letting you both adjust. Your fingers flex against his back.
He begins to move with unhurried precision, hips rocking in a rhythm meant for connection, not conquest. Each thrust sends a new wave of sensation through you, soft and consuming. The friction builds gradually, tempered by the way his hands cradle your face, the way his lips return again and again to yours. He kisses you like he’s trying to etch the shape of your mouth into memory.
You whisper to him.
Praise, need, love.
Whatever slips free from your lips, he answers it in kind — with his mouth, with his body, with his hands. He never looks away. Not once.
Your climax builds without force, a warm tide that rises and spreads, tightening your thighs around him, stealing your breath. He feels the shift in you, adjusts his angle slightly, and your moan is immediate, raw. He whispers your name, then again, then again. The tension coils. Then breaks, and you come with a cry muffled against his neck. He holds you through it, moving just enough to carry you through the tremors, his own breath labored, his arms around you like sanctuary.
He follows moments later, hips stuttering, voice catching. His release is quiet but devastating, the sound of it carving through the silence like devotion. He stays inside you as he softens, breath mingling with yours, lips pressing lazy kisses along your shoulder. The last few pulses of his thick cock make your own hips jolt under his, drawing slight hisses of overstimulation from the both of you.
Afterwards, you lie tangled together, bodies still humming with the afterglow, heat softening into comfort. Halsin's hand moves in slow circles along your spine, a steady, grounding rhythm that lulls you into stillness. Your cheek rests against the curve of his shoulder, his heartbeat slow and strong beneath your ear.
He does not speak. Neither do you. The quiet is full of understanding, of gratitude, of something deeper that you do not dare name. He shifts only to pull the blanket higher over your bodies, then settles again, curling his arm tighter around your waist.
His nose brushes the crown of your head. A kiss follows, light and lingering. His hand slips down your back to the curve of your hip, not to tease, only to hold. You press closer, letting your leg slide between his, your fingers stroking the short hair at the nape of his neck.
You feel safe. Sheltered. Cherished.
His breath deepens, and yours soon matches it. Sleep doesn’t take you all at once. It comes slowly, cradled between his warmth and the quiet symphony of the grove outside. The room seems to breathe with you, the stone feeling safer than the camp ever could. Here, with his body wound around yours, with his scent in your lungs and his heart beating against your skin, the world is as it should be.
Eventually, Halsin shifts to pull a thick woolen blanket over both your bodies. He curls his large body around you, shielding you from the cool night air that blows through the cracks in the stones, pressing one last kiss to the back of your neck.
Sleep comes easily in his arms. The grove outside continues its gentle song, but here, within these stone walls and warm blanket, the world has narrowed to the steady rhythm of Halsin’s breath and the memory of his hands on your skin.
pure porn inspired by a request from @the-phoenix-and-the-dragon! This spiraled out of control into around 2,000 words, sorry.
I was like "oh professor dekarios means he has a desk means desk sex, lets go". anyway, enjoy.
this is barely edited since i wanted to get this out before i had to go back to work and my break is short sorry~~
--
Pairing: Gale x Tav (Reader)
WC: 2,155
Summary: Gale is able to be "unleashed" after his orb is under control, and shows you exactly how much he's been holding back on you.
Tags: teasing, from behind, hair pulling, hand sucking, fingering, maybe slightly out of character, i got carried away
NSFW
(Suggestions/pairings/spicy ideas or challenges are welcome!)
The nights have always carried a hum of restraint between you and Gale, a thread of tension spun tight by necessity. Every kiss, every lingering touch, is drawn out with aching patience. His body, warm and wanting, presses against yours only to still, breath trembling as he murmurs about "control," about "care," about the lurking danger of the orb that pulses just beneath his skin. It’s sweet. Torturous, but sweet. Beautiful in a way that leaves you burning from the inside out.
You have learned to be patient. Mostly.
Still, you have your moments.
You love teasing him. A whisper of your fingers at the edge of his belt, a slow grind of your hips when he least expects it, a wicked smile shot over your shoulder when his hands twitch at his sides. You take pride in the way he clenches his jaw, his knuckles whitening as he reins himself in with iron will. He is always careful. Always considerate. Always good.
Until now.
Now, the orb is silenced. Mastered. His body, once a ticking heart of danger, hums only with power he commands. Gale’s eyes are dangerous where they used to be cowed and nervous, and the tempest of untapped power swirls dangerously there, always drawing your eye.
And the way he looks at you tonight—standing behind the desk of his new office at the University, sleeves pushed back, eyes dark and glittering with intent—tells you that patience is no longer part of the equation. He stands from the large seat behind his desk, almost sliding out with an eager slither of his figure and rounding it so he can approach you. Gale leans back against his desk and folds his arms across his chest, a self-sure smile on his handsome face. He crosses one ankle over the other, leaning comfortably and confidently; he has the stance of a man who knows his whole life is ahead of him, and his.
You shift in place, a slow awareness prickling along your skin. Gale steps forward, stalking you with the easy confidence of a man who has spent years studying the art of restraint and has finally, finally, cast it off. The crimson beneath your cheeks grows hotter, feeling his arcane gaze roam up and down your body, and you stifle a heavy swallow as the seconds tick by. One look tells you everything he's thinking. You turn your eyes away, swallowing the growing lump of nerves in your throat, palms sweaty as they clutch the heavy textbook between two delicate and not at all clammy hands. Gale finally releases you from his stare and turns his head to the side slightly to sweep his palm to the stack of documents and texts on his desk; white sheets over wood, inked with a fine ornate design and a large "GD" embossed on them.
“Add the text to the stacks, hm? I have a lot to go through later this evening, it seems.” You nod and lean forward quickly, the spell finally broken by his voice. "Good girl." The praise settles deep in your gut with a sensation like a warm blanket, stoking the fire that's been roiling there ever since the new professor’s sly and unobtrusive proposal. Now that he's here, an inch away, with the office door closed and not even a teacher’s assistant listening in, you feel an odd airy sort of light-headedness.
Gale leans forward slightly, testing the waters. There is no jumping back, no backing away as if burned by fire. Instead, there is a growing tightness in the space between your hips and an audible intake of breath. The small sound is enough for Gale to lean down, running the tip of his nose along the smooth, gentle curves of your neck and inhaling deeply. A gentle nudge in the space below your ear causes you to stutter out a ragged breath, another deep inhale and he growls lightly at your neck, one hand coming to land gentle on your upper thigh.
"You always did enjoy provoking me," he finally says, his voice a low purr. "I think it’s high time I repaid the favor," he croons, breath hot and heavy, tinged with the slight hint of black tea. When you nod shakily he huffs out a soft laugh again, pulling back slightly as his hand travels farther upward. "I want to see your face," Gale says, his voice low, "when I get to fuck you for the first time as a whole man."
As soon as you make a sound his hand is at the junction of your legs, pressing directly between your thighs with little room to escape; the sensation alone makes your lips part in a silent plea for more. His fingers flex and you tremble underneath him, the growing wet patch on his palm only making his smugness more apparent. It’s clear that he knows what he’s doing— he’s been holding out on you… holding back. His tongue moves to wet his lips again, this time in anticipation of things to come, eyes dark and his jaw tight as he stares down at you.
He gestures once, a lazy flick of his fingers, and you gasp as unseen magic tugs at your wrists, binding them loosely together with threads of shimmering force. It’s delicate, ornamental almost, but the implication is clear. Your breath stutters as the magic presses you down over his desk, your ass raised and on display for him. Your hands hit the surface at the same time that your knees bonk into the hard paneled wood-- it's loud and effective, but doesn't make your knees sting or ache. He kneels behind you, hands skimming down your thighs and back up as he carries the fabric with it.
"You teased a man who once entertained a goddess," he murmurs against your newly exposed thigh, his breath warm. "Did you truly think I would be anything but... thorough, once I was my own man again? Let’s see," he muses, almost to himself, "just how many ways I can make you beg."
Gale’s hips press against your ass, the not so subtle bulge of his cock perfectly in line with you through his professor's robes. The urge to be filled, to feel him in you, to forget the words to everything you just finished studying-- you feel so incredibly warm.
“Gods, I want you,” you manage to get out between gasps, your hips wriggling against the invisible restraints.
"Yes, tell me," he prompts, rocking his hips once more against your ass, urging the words out of your mouth. "Tell me what you want." His hands clap down on your ass, kneading the muscle there as his breathing deepens. The thin fabric of your underwear gets pushed aside by his roaming hands and he groans under his breath at the revealed skin there. Gale’s hips roll against you in fluid motions, becoming more and more desperate and intentional as the seconds tick by.
“Fuck, just touch me already,” you find yourself begging through gritted teeth. Your clit aches to be touched, and every heartbeat sends an electric shock through your body. There's a rustle of cloth behind you and his hand roughly pulls your panties down until they bunch around your upper thighs.
“As you command, my Goddess.” His voice is rich, dripping with lust and arousal. Your muscles are taut, clenched and held in place by sheer desire and arousal, at this point. You can feel the evidence of your arousal on your inner thighs where the air kisses them, now that the soaked fabric of your panties has been slid down. You'd expected him to take them off, but it's no matter. There's no time anyway.
He makes a noise that you're not sure you can replicate - one of absolute hunger, a primal craving for what the two of you are about to do, deep in the back of his throat-- a sound of claim... of ownership. Gale runs his hand up your sweat-slick back until his fingers find your hair, tangling into your locks with a confidence that only makes your cunt ache with sudden desire. His fingers tighten harshly in your hair, gripping it and forcing your face down onto the desk in the same instant that the head of his cock, now free of his pants, bumps against your entrance. You whimper against the wood and squirm against the sensation, already quivering, too close already.
Gale groans and you can hear him shifting behind you, the sound of skin on skin as he strokes himself slowly. The sight he must be looking at -- you -- sprawled out in such a state of desperation, back arched and skin of your neck sweaty, lips parted and a permanent blush of pink dusting your cheeks. He hums in appraisal, and you can practically feel his gaze as it drags along the length of your body.
"Beg," comes the simple command.
And you do.
When his cock finally slides inside of you, you groan for the whole length of it. The professor is generously endowed; more than long enough for him to be a problem if he got overexcited.
Gale moves his hand under your waist to keep you angled perfectly for him and you writhe in his hands, trying to loosen the magical grasp on your wrists. In response he thrusts into you sharply and you gasp, his free hand twisting in your hair. He fucks you with short thrusts, pulling almost completely out of you before grinding his hips back down. Each movement from the man above you serves a dual purpose: to seek out pleasure and to taunt and to tease.
"You're doing so good, aren't you? Taking me so well, like this... Usually-" Gale cuts himself off with a particularly deep thrust, making you yelp and gasp. "-they can't take me from behind the first time, when I’m myself. Such a beautiful pussy though… Always wanted to do it right.” Another series of sharp thrusts and you're already squirming underneath him, gasping and moaning through his movements. "Almost like you were made to be mine, isn't it?" You crane your head as far back as you can to let him know you're listening and nod, even as his hips continue moving. He fucks you slow and indulgent, pulling his cock out leisurely before rolling his hips back against you. The hand that was once tugging at your hair drops down to your back, rubbing it in what you can only assume is him rewarding you-- at least, it scratches your praise itch all the same.
“Always thought- I was- too,” you gasp between thrusts, allowing your eyes to drop closed as you get closer and closer to your own climax. The coil in your gut tightens as you tip over the edge into your orgasm, your senses heightened until you can practically feel the veins in his cock inside of you.
Gale’s voice is suddenly loud in your ear, his breath, hot and needy, and his thighs and hips slamming against yours with a desperate need, almost uncontrollable. It stings, it hurts, but you know you've never felt better. "Such a good girl, you take me so well like this. Didn’t think you would be able to but- Here, see?"
Gale swipes his finger between your legs and you yelp when they pass over your sensitive and throbbing clit before he brings them to your mouth. You wrap your lips around his fingers gratefully, swirling your tongue around them as you would a cock and moaning for him-- whatever it takes for him to fill you.
With a pleased grunt, the wizard’s body arches back, the force of his hands holding onto your hips doubling, and then a second and so very unplanned orgasm has you white-knuckling the front edge of the desk again, your throat entirely given over to vocalizing your pleasure-- but no sounds come.
"Please," he breathes and then you feel the heat, filling you up, each pulse of his heartbeat filling you with ropes of cum. You can see nothing, hear nothing but your own heartbeat in your ears for a moment.
The slow drip of his release between your thighs causes your cheeks to flare up in embarrassment. He wipes his fingers off with one of the tissues from the box on his desk, pulling a few more out to gently wipe your inner thighs and still soaking core. Finally, he presses a warm, flushed kiss to the swell of your ass.
“I never knew you could… That you were like…” You stammer your attempts at pillow talk and compliments, blushing even further when he waves your words away with a wry smile.
“No one knew but her… and now you.” Gale shrugs, a bit of sheepishness coming back into his face now that the post-orgasm glow has faded.
You lay stretched across the deep crimson bedspread, the soft velvet catching faint golden light from the hearth beside Wyll’s writing desk. The chamber is too grand to feel truly intimate, all gleaming wood and polished brass, but the air holds a quiet anticipation that makes the room feel just a little bit smaller. Closer. Warmer. You’d made sure of that; fluffing the pillows just so, letting your shift slip low on your shoulders, brushing out your hair until it shone to match the fabric. Of course it was artfully laid out by you, but he would be none the wiser. You have been waiting for him for what felt like hours now, but you knew how busy Wyll was now that he had ascended. You had waited long enough that the wine you poured for him had gone warm.
You lay stretched across the deep crimson bedspread, the soft velvet catching faint golden light from the hearth beside Wyll’s writing desk. The chamber is too grand to feel truly intimate, all gleaming wood and polished brass, but the air holds a quiet anticipation that makes the room feel just a little bit smaller. Closer. Warmer. You’d made sure of that; fluffing the pillows just so, letting your shift slip low on your shoulders, brushing out your hair until it shone to match the fabric. Of course it was artfully laid out by you, but he would be none the wiser. You have been waiting for him for what felt like hours now, but you knew how busy Wyll was now that he had ascended. You had waited long enough that the wine you poured for him had gone warm.
Since the end of the war and the restoration of his title, Duke Ravengard had been stretched thin. Meetings bled into councils, which were followed by endless inquiries from noble houses eager to reassert their relevance. Their bloodlines were older than the city, their opinions louder than a tavern at midnight. There were always fires to extinguish, letters to answer, rivalries to mend or sever. And yet, he always made time for you.
Even at his most exhausted, he would stride through the door in a breathless rush, shedding politics like a second skin the moment he saw you. He’d bury his face in your hair, inhale deeply like your scent alone could unmake the day, and launch into a tirade about the latest noble schemes with a sort of weary theatricality. You cherished it—those quiet moments where you could cradle his stress in your hands and coax the tension out of his shoulders with a word, a kiss, a laugh. It was your favorite ritual, being the place where his burdens could fall away.
The door creaks open. You don’t stir right away. You know he sees you. You feel his eyes on you. When you turn your head, you catch sight of him standing in the doorway, his expression tight, mouth drawn in a familiar line of exhaustion. His shoulders are bowed slightly under the weight of titles and responsibilities.
“Long day, Duke?” Your voice is soft, but teasing.
He huffs a tired laugh, stepping inside and letting the door fall shut behind him. “Wretched. I was ambushed by a delegation of merchants before I even had a chance to finish breakfast.” He shrugs off his coat with a heavy exhale and tosses it over the back of a nearby chair. "Then came the requests, the questions, the godsdamned banquet planning. You had a good day of doing nothing, it seems."
He moves to the desk, pausing as if to gather himself, then looks back at you. Some of the tension in his posture ebbs. You sit up, letting the shift fall off one shoulder in a calculated slip.
“Come here,” you say, your tone softer now. Inviting. Familiar.
Wyll obeys without question. He crosses the room, and you rise to meet him on your knees as he reaches the edge of the bed. Your hands make quick work of the buttons on his vest, and then his shirt, brushing the fabric aside to reveal warm skin and the faint sheen of sweat from a long day. His chest rises and falls more slowly as your fingers trail across it.
You press a kiss just above his heart and feel the deep exhale he lets out, his head bowing slightly. “You always know how to unravel me,” he murmurs.
You smile against his skin. “Let me.”
He lets you guide him to sit at the edge of the bed, and you sink to your knees in front of him, your hands at his belt. Wyll’s breath stutters when you look up at him, already half-hard beneath the fabric. You press a kiss to his hipbone, then another to the inside of his thigh. He groans low in his throat, fingers curling around the sheets.
You free him slowly, deliberately, wrapping your hand around his length and stroking him once before leaning in to take him into your mouth. He gasps, hips jerking slightly, and his hand tangles in your hair almost immediately, palm pressing against the crown of your head as he presses you down. His grip is gentle but firm, as if he's grounding himself against the onslaught of sensation.
You work him slowly in tandem with his movements, taking him deeper with each pass, letting your tongue tease and explore. Every twitch of his thighs, every soft curse that slips from his lips spurs you on. You hum around him, the vibration making him groan and tip his head back. The closer he gets to his own climax the tighter his grip on your hair becomes, his cock bumping against the back of your throat as you gag softly.
When you feel him starting to lose control, his hips bucking slightly, you pull back with a soft pop. His breathing is ragged. He looks dazed. “Lay back,” he says, voice rough with need. "Let me see you."
You climb back onto the bed, sinking into the pillows, and Wyll follows, crawling over you with slow, deliberate movements. He pushes your shift up inch by inch, eyes drinking in every bit of newly exposed skin. His mouth follows the path of his hands—your stomach, your ribs, the dip between your breasts.
When he reaches your thighs, he pauses, placing a kiss at the crease of your hip. Then another. Then lower.
He spreads your legs with reverent hands and leans in, his breath warm against your skin. The first pass of his tongue makes you gasp. He hums, satisfied, and begins to work you open with slow, languid strokes, each one deliberate. His hands never stop moving, stroking your thighs, anchoring your hips, smoothing over your belly.
Wyll devours you like a scholar reads a favored tome, eager and meticulous, returning again and again to the places that make you moan and tremble. When he sucks lightly at your clit, you cry out, your fingers twisting in the sheets. He moans in response, the sound sending a new wave of pleasure coursing through you.
Your climax builds in steady, sumptuous waves, the heat gathering low in your belly and spreading outward with each flick of his tongue. The tension winds tighter with every delicate, purposeful stroke, each soft hum vibrating through you until the ache becomes too full to contain. Your fingers dig into the sheets, hips canting upward of their own accord, legs trembling beneath his hands. When the release finally takes you, it floods through your body in a burst of blinding pleasure. You cry out, spine arching as your vision whites at the edges, and still he doesn’t stop. He lingers, mouth gentle but insistent, coaxing you through every ripple and aftershock until your body finally softens beneath him.
When he lifts his head at last, his lips are slick with your release, and for a moment, his expression is unreadable—his brow furrowed, jaw tight, as if the heat still burning behind his eyes hasn’t yet cooled. There’s reverence, yes, but it’s wrapped around something rougher, something gnawing just beneath the surface. Frustration. Need. The remnants of a day that left him coiled too tight.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and well-toned forearm, but his gaze never leaves yours. It pins you in place. When he moves, it’s without hesitation. He grabs your thighs and pulls you down the bed with a force that draws a startled gasp from your lips. His grip is firm, fingers digging into your hips as he positions himself between your legs again, not with gentle patience, but with a hunger that has long since broken free of restraint. The softness of earlier lingers in his eyes, but it is buried beneath the weight of a long, miserable day—and the desperate way he needs to lose himself in you to silence it.
He kisses his way back up your body, murmuring praises against your skin. Then he nudges your legs apart again, positioning himself between them. He presses his forehead to yours.
“Look at me,” he whispers.
You do, lips trembling with the intensity of the eye contact.
He enters you slowly, inch by inch, groaning as he sinks deep into your body. The stretch draws a sharp gasp from you, your thighs tightening instinctively around his waist. He stills when he’s fully sheathed, his breath catching as your bodies adjust to one another. There’s no urgency, only a charged stillness, his forehead pressed to yours as he lets the moment settle. His hands cradle your face with tenderness, brushing your hair back from your temples, his thumbs tracing the curve of your cheekbones as if to anchor you to him.
Then he begins to move. His hips roll in slow, purposeful strokes, each one designed not just to take but to give. To share. The rhythm is unhurried, his body moving against yours like a slow tide. His pelvis grinds against you at the end of each thrust, drawing out the sensation, making your toes curl and your fingers dig into his shoulders. His lips find yours again and again, each kiss deep and aching, tongues sliding together in a rhythm that matches the rise and fall of your joined bodies.
You whisper to him between breaths. Fragments of adoration and surrender, your voice trembling with emotion. He responds in kind, not only with his mouth but with the way he holds you. The way he moves deeper into you, his voice a hoarse murmur of your name, of how beautiful you feel, of how long he’s need a release like this.
The pleasure rises with the precision of a melody. He senses it in the way your breath catches, in the way your body arches to meet his. He shifts, angling his hips slightly, and the next thrust finds that place inside you that makes your entire body seize with pleasure. You shatter around him, your release rushing through you like a storm breaking the sky. You cry his name, nails raking down his back, body clutching him tightly as he holds you through the unraveling.
Wyll follows, losing himself in the heat of your body, spilling into you with a choked gasp. He rides it out with his forehead pressed to yours, the world narrowed to the space where your bodies meet.
He doesn’t leave you when it's done. He stays. He presses kisses to your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder. He whispers your name.
Eventually, you roll onto your sides, tangled in each other. You trace slow lines along his arm, and he strokes your hip lazily, his eyes soft.
“I missed you today,” he murmurs.
“I was here,” you reply. “I’ll always be here.”
He presses a kiss to your brow. "You're the only peace I have left."
Outside, the city sleeps. Inside, beneath velvet sheets and the warm hush of the hearth, he is simply Wyll. And you, always, are his.
Pairing: Gale x female reader (non-Tav)
WC: 8,336
Summary: It's the final day before you and Gale leave for the Spine of the North, and things have begun to take a turn towards the unsettling... Until Gale visits your chambers to help you relax in the best way he knows how.
Tags: light dom/sub, male oral, riding, lots of plot
NSFW
special thanks and love once more and always to @emfirebender the most loveliest editor in the woooorld!!
we're getting into plot heavy territory but the smut will continue, don't worry!
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“The diligent student learns quickly: doors open for signatures.”
— Notes on Institutional Magic, Anonymous
Morning comes, and with it, a piece of parchment pushed under your door. You sit up, bleary with sleep, and rub at your eyes until they're able to focus.
The parchment is not Academy-issue. It's not crisp, not stamped, and not letter-headed. It’s not the kind of paper you've grown accustomed to using lately. The fibers are thicker, almost handmade, and the edge has been torn roughly rather than cut.
You swing your feet to the floor, cold stone biting at your soles, and retrieve it with two fingers as if it might bite you. You still aren't sure of the capabilities of your peers, and the forethought for safety wins out over curiosity. You shake the paper lightly before holding it up, reading it slowly with eyes still blurred by sleep. There's no identifying marks on the page, just ink, cramped and slanted, the kind that looks like it was written too quickly to be pretty but too carefully to be illegible.
Apprentice—
I told you not to sign anything for him. You did it anyway.I am not scolding you. I am checking that you are still you.
Answer this to yourself before you answer anyone else:What is your name?What did you seek?What did it say to you when it took the request?
Ink is an anchor. Your hand remembers what your mind forgets.
Your stomach tightens. You glance at your bedside table where your notebook sits, fat and familiar, the black-hide cover worn shiny where your palm always lands. It feels heavier this morning, as if it spent the night swallowing something you didn’t mean to feed it. The leftover carcass of the knowledge from yesterday spills at the seams, crammed with papers that you hadn't yet catalogued.
And if he tells you you’re safe because you're “tracked”—understand what that means.Tracked means on file. On file means owned. Owned means disposable.
Your throat tightens at the last word but you swallow hard and press on, looking at the bottom of the page where a symbol has been etched. It's two triangles, one of them inverted from the other and joined with a circle. Darkened slightly in the angle of the left triangle is a capital L.
Do not ask for me by name.
Names are the first thing they take.
I will contact you when possible.
Your eyes skim the last lines again. 'Do not ask for me by name'. The symbol at the bottom of the page catches your attention again and when you look back, one of the lines has softened at the edge, as if someone breathed on the ink and it decided to obey.
You try to say the name anyway— just in your head, just to prove you can. It catches like a fish bone in your throat and slides away downstream, leaving only the impression of lilac and the shape of an avian nose. You can remember the warning. You can remember the ink.
You cannot remember the name.
Your heart kicks hard in your chest and you feel panic start to swell in your throat.
You sit very still, as Gale instructed you to, and force your breath into a slow rhythm. In. Out. In. Out. Your fingers curl around the paper until it creases. “What is your name,” you whisper to the room over the sound of the crackling page.
You reach for the notebook, more instinct than intention. When you drag it into your lap the black-hide cover feels almost warm, as if it has been waiting for you to pick it up from the cold bed-side table. The binding creaks softly when you open it and the smell of ink rises up, familiar enough to steady you for a moment.
The first page you land on is not completely blank. It shouldn’t be, because you remember flipping past your notes last night with the lazy, satisfied ache of afterglow still humming in your bones, but there it is anyway: a page that looks emptied, not unused. The faintest ghost of pressure remains, an impression in the paper where a pen once pressed hard, but the words themselves are gone. Your throat tightens and you breathe out shakily, turning the page.
The next page is your handwriting again— your cramped script, impatient arrows, and half-finished thought about confluence points… except the last line is wrong. The letters are shaped like yours, but the cadence isn’t. It reads like someone wearing your voice like a borrowed robe and says simply: Write it out. Under it, three tiny triangles are sketched with a line through them, and beside the leftmost one, a capital L so small you might have missed it if you weren’t already hunting for something out of the ordinary.
You swallow and force your grip to steady, because the letter told you what to do and you refuse to lose more of yourself, as Lenore warned in the library. You flip to a clean page, press the notebook flat against your thigh and dip your quill, watching the ink bead at the nib like black blood. “My name is—” you start, and the pause that follows is so sharp it hurts.
What is your name?
You know your name. You have known it longer than you have known Gale, than you have known the Academy, than you have known the taste of the Weave blooming sweet and floral at the back of your palate. And yet the name refuses to come forward cleanly, as if it has been made shy by being expected, a circus performer with stage fright. Panic claws at the back of your tongue. You press harder, like Lenore said, and the quill bites into the paper. Your name appears under the stroke of your hand, black as a bruise and real, and the relief is immediate.
You write it again beneath the first and then again, each repetition solidifying your resolve. Only then do you realize your hands are shaking. You breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, and add the second question to the page because you cannot afford to skip steps: What did you seek? This answer is easier and comes faster to your hand as you ink the words: The Master Ley Registry. The truth. The discs. You write the words, anchoring them with ink.
Final question: What did it say to you when it took the request? Your stomach turns over as if you’ve swallowed something that suddenly wants out. You write the Advisor’s phrasing slowly, carefully: You follow. You borrow. Request heard. The memory of the interaction comes with it— the weightless obedience of the paper leaving your fingers, the cold velvet pressure behind your eyes, the missed-step feeling of that long blink. It's sharpened by the act of writing it, and your quill hovers over the page for a moment and you swear you can feel that same pressure now, faint and curious, almost as if something has leaned closer to listen.
The Tower creaks somewhere overhead, a settling sound that used to be comforting and no longer is, because it reminds you that buildings have bones too, and bones have memory. You glance back to Lenore’s letter, to the softened ink line and the little L hidden inside the sigil, and you understand with a chill that the warning wasn’t merely advice. It was a concerned hand reaching through a system that is already trying, and succeeding, at erasing its own fingerprints.
Your gaze drifts slowly to the gap beneath your door, to the strip of hallway visible in thin shadow, and you realize you can't remember hearing the parchment slide. No scrape. No whisper. No footsteps retreating. Blackstaff Tower groans and sighs when it breathes; it always announces itself or its patrons when they move. This particular delivery did not.
If Lenore is right and if tracked means filed… and filed means owned… then there will be a paper trail waiting for you with your name on it. You try not to think about how easily your signature had come yesterday, how warm the pen was in your hand when you stole it from Gale and just how satisfying it felt to write your name as if the act itself made you important, authorized, chosen.
You close the notebook with a decisive thud of the leather bound covers, as if you can trap your name inside it where the library can't reach, and tuck Lenore’s letter between the cover and the first page, pressing it into the seam where it sits flush with the pages. Then you dress quickly, hands still unsteady but practiced enough to fake calmness, pulling your robe into place and fastening it with more care than usual as if neatness can pass for safety.
The corridor outside your door smells like stone and old incense and other people. The scents calm you, ground you, remind you that this is somewhere that you belong and your name is-
Somewhere down the hall, a door opens and closes, and you freeze until you can place the sound as mundane and ordinary. Only then do you move, notebook held tight against your ribs like a shield, and head toward the part of the Tower that churns with morning bureaucracy.
At the bottom of the steps from the dormitory is the common area, a large stone room lined with comfortable and overstuffed chairs, walls of bookshelves and a crackling hearth. A large desk dominates the far end of the room towards the exit to the Tower at large, manned by a slender drow wizard. She leans on one hand, elbow resting on the massive desk that seems to shrink her frame. Her free hand idly flips through a large tome in front of her, a magical pen scratching alongside. When she looks up and sees you she waves and beckons you closer, a light smile curving her full lips.
You approach with a smile of your own, stretching up a little to rest your arms on the desk and nodding towards the book in front of her. She sits up a little straighter and repositions it with a look of self importance on her face, knowing that you're going to ask about what is obviously under her proud supervision.
"Has anyone come for me? Any messages?" You give her your name after a momentary and panicked pause in which you try to remember it and then follow up, "I'm Professor Gale's assistant."
"Ah, yes, I was wondering when you would emerge from that stack of reading he assigned to you. Honestly, sometimes I don't know how his assistants survive." She turns the pages backwards for a moment, the quill beside her perking up as it waits for instructions. "I don't think I have anything for you, I would have remembered something for you…" She pauses and looks up. "I don't mean to offend, only that your trip with the Professor is something of a rumor in the dormitory. I'm Llelia of House- of Blackstaff Academy." Llelia corrects herself so quickly that you almost don't notice the slip up in her introduction.
"I gathered," you laugh, easing her tension. When her shoulders relax you nod back to the book. "Nothing then? No one came by asking for me, or were allowed up to my chamber?" Already, she's shaking her head.
"Nothing! I'm sorry. No gentleman callers, either," Llelia adds, arching one eyebrow delicately. You feel the flush climbing up the column of your throat and you cough lightly, covering it with what you hope is a soft laugh.
"I wouldn't expect any. Not for me, at least." The look in her eye is enough to tell you that she doubts that very much, but you press on. "Please let me know if anyone comes looking. I'll be back at dusk."
"Dusk?" Her eyes widen slightly before narrowing again. "You know if you're not back before the lamps go out I have to report it, right?" You're already nodding, placating her with another smile.
"Yes, of course, Llelia. I've just got to do some last minute reading before the Professor and I leave for our trip tomorrow. Trust me, I don't want to be out reading any more than you want to write someone up." She tosses you a coy smile that isn't particularly reassuring. "Could I leave a message for Lenore, then? Just in case she comes by before I come back." Your tone is light, conversational, but your heart starts beating faster as soon as you speak her name. It drops when she frowns in confusion.
"Lenore? I don't know one… Are you sure she'll be in the Evoker dormitory?" When you nod your assertion her frown deepens, small creases appearing in her smooth ebony skin. "I'll ask around for you, I haven't been here as long as the others. I'll leave a message for you if I track anything down, okay?" Her smile is genuine and so is the one you return to her, tapping the desk in silent thanks and moving to the large, propped open doors of the dorms and exiting into the Academy proper.
—
On your way to the study rooms lining the lower level of the Academy you come abruptly face to face with one of the administrators, an Illusion magic wizard. He's tall and lithe, his skin a dark ebony and hair shock white. You vaguely remember him being at your panel interview when you applied to the Academy, but your paths never crossed again afterwards. He voted "yea" on your proposal and seemed welcoming enough, his smile easy and seemingly genuine.
"Oh! Professor Dekarios' assistant, right?" You nod and he smiles down at you, excitement evident in his eyes. "The two of you are leaving tomorrow, I recall. His letter for sabbatical was quite convincing, but light on details." He looks down his nose at you, squinting slightly, and you get the feeling that he's gently pressing you for more information.
"Just some field research for my capstone thesis on the use of Weave throughout Faerun." The lie comes easily to your lips, almost before you consider lying at all. Gale was adamant about the need for secrecy when it comes to the purpose of your field research, and the cover seems reasonable enough. Relief floods your stomach when the drow appears to accept your easy lie, and you tamp down the worry as best you can.
"I'm sure that will be fascinating to read. You bring pride to the Academy, you know." He casts his eyes down the hallway before returning them to your face as he leans in and says ardently, "We've been worried about Professor Dekarios lately, after what happened at the Gate. It is good to see him moving on. Two years is a long time for a human man to mourn, you know." You're briefly taken aback, surprised at the blunt mention of his service to the city far South of you.
"He's never spoken of it to me, and I've never wanted to ask." The Professor nods gravely, standing back to his full height and clearing his throat.
"Perhaps a tale for the road, then. I likely won't see you again before you depart so, allow me to leave you with this," he starts, putting a broad and gentle hand on your shoulder, "be safe, and ask questions. Forewarned is forearmed. The North can be unforgiving, and we've lost assistants to its icy grasp before. One was his assistant, now that I think back." You swallow hard.
"The Professor has assured me that he's taken every possible safety precaution for our trip, short of a hired guard." You give him a strained smile and adjust your bag on your shoulder, gripping your notebook tighter as you indicate your intent to move away. "Thank you for the well wishes and the warning, Professor…"
"Baenre. Do take care of yourself." He nods down at you and strides away down the hallway, leaving you alone with your gradually worsening thoughts.
As you walk to the study rooms you turn your thoughts over, palms slick around the spine of your notebook. Llelia hadn't been able to find Lenore in the records, or at least wasn't aware of her, and the difference between the two nags at you. Perhaps the other dorm assistants had more information, but for now you have to assume that they don't. “I haven’t been here as long as the others,” she’d said, and you cling to that. Somehow Lenore, or whoever is calling themselves Lenore, snuck into your bedroom without alerting any of the dorm assistants or book keepers and pushed the note under your door.
After years around magic and the Weave, knowing the kinds of things that the Arcane can do for you, the part that makes you the most uncomfortable is the human violation. Someone came close enough to you to leave a warning and left without being seen— someone who may be operating under a completely false alias that was given to you in person. The paper wasn’t passed in a dining hall, pinned to a board, or left in a cubby where anyone could plausibly have placed it. It slipped under your door, in the quiet hours, delivered without a scrape of sound, and it contained a symbol that now feels like a clue to nowhere.
Professor Baenre’s parting words don’t help, implying that the North is some mouth that simply sometimes closes on people, not a place with cause and effect. You scoff to yourself lightly as you walk, attempting to dismiss the idea of dying in the North as ridiculous. But something he said settles over your shoulders like a dark cloak.
'One was his assistant', he’d added, like it was an afterthought, and you can’t stop the phrase from snagging. Not one assistant— one of his. The casual way he’d offered it up, the gentle hand on your shoulder, the implication that this isn’t merely gossip makes the knowledge sit heavy in your stomach. You try to make your mind go elsewhere by focusing on the Professor's earlier line about mourning, about how two years is a long time for a human man to grieve, but that only opens a different trapdoor: the way Gale goes still when the Gate is mentioned, the way he keeps certain stories tight lipped and short. The Academy feels suddenly full of people holding pieces of his past, each one too polite or too afraid to put them together plainly in front of you.
By the time you've reached the study rooms you've composed yourself. The corridor here is quieter, lined with doors marked in careful script, each one warded just enough to deter casual eavesdropping. You choose a room without thinking and let yourself in, closing the door behind you with a muffled click. The air inside smells faintly of chalk dust and old vellum, and the narrow windows let in a washed-out slice of morning light. You set your satchel down on the old table and sit down heavily, dragging your notebook across the table towards you and opening it to the dog-eared page.
You pull out your notes on the pilgrimage circuit and the Spine of the World as your first destination, and start copying them cleanly into a new section, making them neater and more organized. It's soothing to do this, the type of rote note taking that proceeds an exam, and something that you're exceedingly comfortable with. It gives your mind something to chase besides the worry in your gut. The rhythm of scholarship dulls even the sharpest edges of panic and for a while, it almost works.
Then you turn a page and in the corner of your notes you see the faint outline of the sigil from the letter, the two intersecting triangles with a darkened L, only now it looks like someone has scrubbed their thumb vigorously over the ink. You rub a hand over your eyes to clear what you hope is just blurring vision, but the sigil remains the same. You flip forward a few more pages and the worried feeling deepens further— you swear it had said "anchor required" in your neat, cramped handwriting, but it now reads "conduit required".
In a rush to be suddenly back in the perceived safety of your dorm room you scoop your papers and books into your satchel, crumpling some of the loose pages as you do. You sling the strap over your shoulder and gather your notebook into your arms, hurrying from the small and suddenly stifling study room and dashing down the halls until you reach the Evoker's tower.
The new dorm mother, a short dwarven woman, is just beginning to douse the sconces in the main common area. She greets you with a warm smile that fades when she notices how out of breath you are, and her eyes take on a hint of concern.
"How are ye, girl? Ye look like ye've seen a ghost!" She laughs lightly and you appreciate the attempt at levity as you smile back at her wanly. She notices and looks at you with sympathy, demeanor softening as she comes closer. "Swee'eart, how can I help ye? Is it finals?" You shake your head and sit in one of the overstuffed chairs she gestures at, thankful for the calming presence.
"I feel like I'm losing pieces of my memory," you start, running your hands over your face and slumping forward in your seat, "My notes are different than when I take them, and things keep appearing around me." You leave out the anomaly of Lenore, unable to voice the concerns that you're being haunted by someone who doesn't exist, or never did.
"Aye, ye've been to the depths of the Library, 'aven't ye?" She comes to sit across from you, perching on the edge of the table and swinging her feet lightly as she does. When you nod she reaches out and puts a hand on your knee, squeezing reassuringly. "It won't remove more than ye let it, girl."
"What do you mean?" She pulls back a little, her hand running along the frayed hem of her shirt as she thinks before speaking.
"When I was yer age, I lost some things to the Library too. Aye, those advisors took somethin' from me… I don't 'member what it was, but it was related to me studies. Pieces of it I kept, ye know?" Her fingers pull methodically at a loose thread as she speaks and you realize with a horrible suddenness that she's afraid. "I musta been your age, 'round that time. Hells, decades ago now." She huffs out a dry, humorless laugh. "Can't even 'member what I lost. Just that my Professor was right excited 'bout it. Makin' a name for 'imself, I reckon."
"Would he remember? Have you asked him?" She's already shaking her head before you finish your question.
"He passed years ago, rumor is. Earthquake from a ritual he did. Master Blackcloak 'asn't been seen in years since." Her expression turns a bit rueful for a moment before she continues. "He was a right dick, he was. Di'n have all his faculties intact. Obsessed with Outer Planes and new forms of magic."
"Do you think your research for him was in those topics? The things that the Library took?" You can't help your curiosity, even though you feel a mild pang of guilt for pressing her about it through her discomfort.
"Aye. I'm sure of it." She falls silent for a moment before her eyes meet yours and she forces a smile onto her face. "S'probably for the best, aye? No need knowin' those things as a dorm mother. What's your name, girl?" You provide it with no hesitation this time, and no blank spaces in your recollection. "Aye, a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I'm Taliesen."
"Thank you, Taliesen. I… I think I needed to hear that from someone." The smile reaches her eyes this time and you feel a little of your earlier anxieties lift from your shoulders. She claps her hands onto her thighs with a sharp "well!" and stands, laying a warm hand on your shoulder again.
"You best be gettin' on to bed, aye?" You nod and stand, breathing out steadily. Her presence was a welcome one, and the prospect of heading up to your bedroom alone no longer seems as daunting. "Ye look tired— all of ye do, these days. I swear, the older I get, the younger ye all seem." Taliesen's laugh is warm and motherly, and exactly what you need after the odd occurrences you've been dealing with all day.
She sees you up the stairs with a wave and sturdy hug and the walk to your bedroom feels lighter than it has in days. Your mood improves even further when you unlock and shove open your heavy door only to be greeted with your favorite person.
Professor Gale Dekarios is sitting in your comfortable chair by the window, gaze fixed out at the city beyond and seemingly at peace. He has one leg crossed over the other and his chin is placed in his hand as he watches the world outside. His robes are parted around his knees and his book satchel coils at his feet like a dozing pet. He startles when you enter before relaxing again, chuckling at himself.
"There you are, my dear. Ah, and you look ravishing, as always." He stands and moves in front of you, his hands coming easily to your hips with a warm intimacy.
"How did you get in here?" you laugh, placing your hands gently on his warm chest and inhaling his scent for the first time all day. He's become a grounding presence for you, and just having him here, in the room you'd been afraid of, has a way of making you feel comfortable and safe.
"It wasn't easy. That dorm mother is quite discerning, and I haven't had to sneak into the opposite dormitory in quite some time." The light in his eyes is mischievous and you laugh, pressing closer to him and running a finger along the front of his robe.
"Go on then, tell me how you did it," you prompt. He shakes his head, a sheepish look crossing his face as he does.
"It was nothing particularly to brag about, I'm afraid. A scroll of Greater Invisibility and a cleverly tossed pen when I thought she'd noticed me was all I could think to do." Gale frowns good naturedly when you laugh again, eyebrows furrowing. "I'll have you know Taliesen is well regarded for catching unwanted evening visitors. I expect I'll have to leave through the window, this time."
"This time?"
"Ah," he stops you, holding up a finger, "we're not going down that particular route of conversation."
"As you wish, Professor," you acquiesce, just happy to be in his arms. His warmth is all you really needed, you realize, and the thought floods you with a sudden sense of belonging. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
"I've been wanting to see you all day." His soft eyes move from your eyes to your lips as his tongue darts out to wet his own. "Sort of like the night before a wedding, isn't it?"
"In what way?" you ask, a teasing smile playing on your lips. He leans back slightly, eyes to the ceiling before leaning back in and moving one hand to the small of your back.
"We leave tomorrow for a great undertaking, you and I. Just me and my partner, traveling the world on the hint of knowledge, looking for the merest glimmer of history." His eyes are excited and animated, even as he tries to keep his voice from reaching the boundaries of your small room. "I feel like we would be remiss if we didn't treat this as something as grand as it is."
"And the grandiosity of our travel prospects made you sneak into the women's Evoker dorms?" You can't keep the teasing from your voice and his responding laugh is warm. "Not that I'm complaining, Professor." You tug at a crease in his robes with your thumb and forefinger.
"I didn't think you would." Gale leans in, pressing a warm and intimate kiss to each of your cheeks before pulling you into a hug and tucking your head under his chin. "Before we indulge in each other, though… I wanted to go over our morning plans." You barely suppress the huff of frustration.
"Go on, I suppose… But at least let us get comfortable, hm?" you ask. He places a soft kiss on your forehead and steps away, sitting back on the chair with a grunt and patting his legs. You roll your eyes and join him, settling in carefully on his lap and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, playing with the longer pieces of his hair gently.
"You know you’re addictive, don’t you?" Gale closes his eyes, leaning his head back and allowing you to run your slender fingers through his hair. "Whenever I'm without you, my body aches for you. It's like you're all I need." He enjoys it for a moment, one hand running up and down your thigh under your robes while the other winds itself around your waist.
"The plan, Professor?" You tug a small piece of his hair gently to hurry him along and laugh when he grumbles at you.
"Can't a man enjoy the weight of his assistant on his lap for a moment?" He pats your thigh again before clearing his throat, suddenly serious. "I'd like us to leave before first light. The Academy offered to see us off with a breakfast, but I've told them there's no need. Our trek to the Spine of the North is going to take several days and it's best to leave early."
"Do you have all of the maps we'll need?"
"If you have the one that I've drawn, then yes, we'll be well prepared. I managed to find some old writings about pilgrimage paths to the North that were used by the ancient travelers, and I have more faith in their records than ours." Gale pats your thigh with an open palm and gestures towards your satchel, abandoned by the door where you'd left it coming in. "Go get your notebook, let me see what you've found last minute today."
You obey quickly, scrambling off of his lap and picking up your satchel quickly from one side of the strap. The weight slides unevenly to one side and sends your notebook and assorted pages flying across the floor of your room in a flurry of paper. Gale suppresses a laugh and watches as you drop to your knees, scrambling after the pens rolling away towards your bed frame and sliding the pages together into a heap. The map that Gale drew is at the top of the stack, creased slightly from being shoved unceremoniously into your bag earlier.
Rather than sit in his lap again you opt to sit on the floor, crossing your legs and leaning against him as you sort through the papers and attempt to put them back into some semblance of an order. His hand comes to rest on the crown of your head, fingers carding through your soft hair as he watches over your shoulder. Finally you pull free one of your pages of summarized notes from this morning, and you notice with curiosity that the wording still states "anchor required". You hadn't been seeing things earlier.
"Good, good. Perfect." The tug of his fingers through your hair distracts you slightly and you tilt your head back, resting it on his knee and closing your eyes. You love when he's like this with you, closely intimate and comfortable. You startle a little from your own thoughts when he speaks next. "And you've noticed no changes in any of the notes you've taken?"
The question comes suddenly and your heart beat quickens, worried for a brief moment that he had read your mind previously. Before you can stop to think you're already shaking your head no, returning to ruffling and re-stacking the pages to cover your suddenly shaking hands.
"Anything odd at all?" Gale presses.
"I was sent a letter this morning," you finally respond, and verbalizing the oddity from this morning makes it feel more real. "It felt like a warning of sorts." His hand goes still in your hair and you feel his breathing falter for a moment. It’s so brief you could almost pretend you imagined it, except that you’re pressed close enough to him to feel the truth of it in his body before he can smooth it away.
“A letter,” Gale repeats, very evenly. His fingers resume their slow motion at your scalp, but the touch has changed— the tenderness is still there, but it’s more deliberate now, like he’s measuring you while he comforts you. “From whom?”
"It wasn't signed, or sealed. It just warned me about the trip ahead. About potentially being tracked, and not signing for things. About you." You keep your eyes focused on the papers in your hand as you speak. “There was a symbol. And a name I can’t-” you stop, startled by the way your tongue refuses to cooperate, by how the name slides away the moment you reach for it. Heat flares in your cheeks again, not arousal this time, but embarrassment that's been sharpened into fear. “I can’t remember it.”
Gale is quiet for a beat too long. When he speaks again, his voice is gentle. "My dear, you've had a long day and will have an even longer one tomorrow,” he murmurs, and the endearment lands like a hand at the back of your neck, steering you closer towards the calmness you had felt just a moment ago. "You’ve had an unsettling week, I'd say. You’ve been in the restricted stacks, you’ve been under more wards than most students encounter in a year, and you’re likely exhausted.” He pauses, thumb brushing the crown of your head in a small, soothing circle. “People in the dormitories hear rumors and get bored. They play at mystery. They like to frighten bright, beautiful young women and call it a joke.”
“It didn’t feel like a joke,” you say, and you hate how small your voice sounds against his calm. How juvenile.
“No,” he agrees easily, "but some people enjoy scaring apprentices before they leave for field work, and it seems that someone has deemed you an easy target." His fingers comb through your hair again, slow and steady. "Tell me exactly what it said, my dear. Maybe I can put some fears to rest, hm? Help you rest easier?"
You hesitate, then pick up another one of the sheets to pretend you’re sorting while you speak, allowing the movement to hide the tremor in your hands. "It said-" you clear your throat uncomfortably and start again. "It said that tracked means on file, and on file means owned, and owned means disposable." The words come out sharper than you expect, serrated with the memory of reading them in bed.
Gale’s hand stills again, just for a heartbeat. Then it resumes, and when he answers his tone is light, almost amused. "A dramatic little thing, isn’t it? Whoever wrote that has a flair for rhetoric." You nod, turning to press your cheek into the palm of his hand and sighing when he strokes your cheek with his thumb. "No one is tracking you, my dear."
"It also said," you add, the confession pulling itself out of you now that you’ve started, “that I’m not the first." You brace yourself for what he could possibly say next, but his warm touch grounds you.
Silence. Not empty, but weighted. You feel it in the way his knee shifts under you, in the way his ribs expand more with his next careful breath.
When he speaks he does it softly, like he’s attempting to placate an argument before it begins. “You are not the first person to apprentice under me,” he says. “No. That’s hardly scandal.” A beat, then the smallest exhale. “And it is precisely why I choose my apprentices carefully. Because the work I do attracts attention. Curiosity. Envy. Petty malice.”
“So you think it’s someone… trying to scare me away?" you ask.
“Yes,” Gale says at once, and his hand cups the back of your head, anchoring you there against him with a pressure that feels warmly possessive, "almost certainly. Or trying to get inside our work by making you doubt yourself. The easiest way to steal a discovery is to make the one holding it loosen their grip."
"I suppose that's true."
"You won't loosen your grip, will you?" Gale's hand stops on your hair and you finally turn to meet his gaze, smiling as soon as you see the genuine worry behind his eyes.
"No. Never, as long as I'm your apprentice."
"Good," Gale says and the relief in his voice is enough to shake the rest of the worries from your mind. “Then we do what scholars do. We document and we proceed. We don’t waste our time chasing shadows in dormitory hallways.” He leans forward slightly, enough that his breath brushes your temple. “And you don’t let anyone—anyone—put fear into your head.”
“I… kept the letter,” you admit, quieter, breaking your eye contact with him as you do. “In my notebook.”
"Good. Keep it there," he says, voice mild, almost dismissive sounding. “If it’s a prank, it will sour and die in the dark. If it’s not, we’ll address it when it becomes something more than just a cheap scare tactic.” His hand pauses, then resumes, gentle again, intimate again. “Now. Show me your notes. Let’s see what is real, and what can affect us tomorrow.” He gives your hair one last, affectionate tug, and you feel yourself exhale despite everything, because it’s what he does best— he makes the world feel manageable. He makes you want to hand him your fear along with your papers and let him file it away where you won’t have to look at it.
The two of you pour over your notes for several minutes, comparing paths and routes and charting out a course for the morning. It doesn't take long for you to solidify your plans for travel, as Gale seems to be well connected on the route leading to the North. He's already marked a couple of inns as potential "free stops" on the way, and there's only the slightest hint of pride in his voice when he mentions that several town magistrates owe him a favor.
Eventually his hand finds its way to the top of your head again and you turn to rest your cheek on his leg, enjoying the intimacy as it returns to the evening. You set your notes aside, running your hands along the planes of his legs until they come to the apex of his hips.
"You did promise me a pre-wedding night, Professor," you say quietly, smiling when his breath catches and his eyes move to your lips. It's so easy to make him respond to you and you'd be lying to yourself if you said it wasn't fun. A casual movement during class, eye contact and a flash of your leg is enough to have him begging to take you after the students leave… and it's no different when you're alone together.
"So I did." His voice has lowered to a hoarseness tinged with hunger that goes right to your core. He moves slowly, hands coming to rest on top of yours at his waist. Gale caresses your hands gently for a moment before parting his robes and adjusting himself in your chair in order to undo his belt. The jangling sound of the metal makes your mouth water expectantly and you watch the bulge of his cock start to harden.
"Already ready for me, then?" you ask lightly, one palm running along his length slowly. He groans softly, rocking his hips up to meet your hand and chasing the sensation when you pull away.
"Devious," he chides, a smile in his voice. "I do so love the sight of an apprentice on her knees." His hand runs through your hair again, only gently pressing you closer to his hardening cock. You lean further than he pushes anyway, running your lips along the fabric where it stretches over him. His eyes catch on yours and hold, gaze dark and intense.
The air between you thickens with that familiar tension— your breathing and his, the scrape of fabric, the soft jangle of metal as he shifts, until it feels like the room has narrowed to this singular spot. Your breathing is already coming hot and heavy and you can feel the warmth in your core pooling into a singular want. When you finally pull his cock free and squeeze it in your palm both of your groan in tandem, Gale shifting his hips again and leaning further back in your chair languidly.
"That's it," he murmurs, his voice roughened by devotion that snags at your ribs. Your own breathing feels embarrassingly fast and loud, yearning as you are for the taste of him, almost desperate— something that you’re sure your Professor has noticed, if his sudden chuckle is anything to go by. "Show me what you want." You oblige him happily, leaning in and kissing at the shaft of his cock, trailing your lips up before taking it into your mouth fully.
Gale's hand twists into your hair and you can feel him straining to hold himself back from thrusting into your soft lips. You wince slightly and moan when his fingers tug at your hair, the grip tightening when you lathe your tongue along the bottom of his shaft. Through your hand on his leg, you feel him gather himself, try to keep his voice measured, and fail as you drag another sound from him, and the failure is its own reward for you.
"Seven hells," he groans, the sound coming deep from his chest. "Always so perfect." You hum in response, the vibration of it causing him to buck up into your throat. You keep your eyes closed as you start to slowly bob your head, one hand coming to rest on the inside of his thigh and the other wrapped around the base of his cock. Your tongue swirls, a slow, deliberate exploration of every ridge and vein, tasting salt and the faint, clean scent of him. Your cheeks hollow with the pressure, and you can feel the thrum of his pulse against your tongue.
The only sounds are the wet, rhythmic noises you're making and the low, broken sounds he's trying desperately to swallow. The dormitory isn't particularly sound proof and neither one of you wants to risk being caught the night before you're set to leave. It isn't the first time you've had to be quiet with one another, but you usually had the assistance of silencing charms.
You pull back to breathe, a string of thickened spit and pre-cum connecting your lips to the flushed head of his cock. It pulses in your hand and you squeeze in response, smiling when Gale's hips jolt forward. You look up at him, your own pupils blown wide with desire, and watch the way his chest heaves. The sight sends a fresh wave of heat through you, a desperate, aching need to have him inside you, not just in your mouth.
"Up here," he urges, his voice strained with want. "Now."
You don't need to be told twice. You rise, knees a little unsteady, and straddle his lap in the chair. The worn wood of the armrests digs into your hands as you brace yourself with them. Your knees settle into the cushion on either side of his legs, parting your robe with ease. He reaches between you, not to guide himself, but to run his fingers through your slick folds. A choked moan escapes your lips at the contact, your head falling back as he circles your clit with perfect, maddening pressure.
"Already soaking for me and all you've done is suck my cock," he murmurs, a smug satisfaction in his tone that would annoy you if you weren't so desperate for more. He lines himself up, and the broad head of his cock nudges at your entrance. The anticipation is a coiled spring in your belly. You sink down, an inch at a time, letting your body adjust to the delicious stretch. Gale sighs as he accepts the weight of you, hands coming to rest against the swell of your ass. He fills you completely, and for a moment you just stay there, connected, breathing the same air, his gaze locked on yours.
You start with a slow grind, a circle of your hips that makes him gasp, his hands flying to your waist to hold on. You rise up until just the tip is inside you, then slam back down, taking him to the hilt. The force of it sends a jolt of pleasure through you, a gasp tearing from your throat. His hands guide your pace, encouraging you to go faster, harder. The room fills with the sounds of skin meeting skin, panting breaths and broken moans, both of you attempting to be as quiet as you can. You lean forward, bracing your hands on his shoulders, changing the angle, and the head of his cock hits that spot deep inside that makes you weak.
"I never thought I'd find another apprentice like this," he says, voice muffled as he presses his face to your chest, kissing and biting at the small amount of skin visible between the parts of your robe. "It's been so long… You're so perfect…" You wince when his teeth find your breast, one of his rough hands pulling it free from the fabric. Gale's facial hair scratches against the delicate skin of your chest and it only adds to the fire in your belly which soars even higher when he bites down gently on your hardened nipple.
You can feel the tension coiling in your core, tighter and tighter, a knot of pure sensation threatening to snap. His thumb finds your clit again, and that's all it takes. The world dissolves into a blinding, white-hot rush of pleasure. You bury your face in his neck to muffle yourself, your body convulsing around him as your orgasm crashes over you.
He follows you over the edge a moment later, his own release a deep, guttural groan as he buries himself deep inside you, hands gripping your hips tight enough to hurt. You feel his cock pulsing inside of you with each wave of his climax and you bare down on him with your hips, grinding against him until he hisses with overstimulation. Finally you collapse against him, boneless and spent, your face buried in the warm crook of his neck. His arms wrap around you, holding you close as you both come back to yourselves. The only sounds are your ragged breaths and the frantic beating of your hearts, gradually slowing in sync. You press a soft, lazy kiss to the sweat-dampened skin of his throat, utterly content.
For a long while you remain just like that, a tangle of limbs in the worn fabric of the chair, a satisfied weight against him. His hands trace lazy patterns on your back, the touch light as a moth's wing. The room has cooled, and a fine sheen of sweat on your skin begins to prickle in the air. The moon has risen high into the sky and the touch of midnight air makes you shiver a little. You shift slightly, the movement sticky and intimate, and a soft, satisfied sigh escapes you.
He chuckles, the sound a low rumble in his chest that vibrates through you. "Tired, my dear?"
You lift your head, propping your chin on his shoulder to look at him. His face is softened in the dim light, the usual sharp intelligence in his eyes replaced with a warm and lazy affection. "Worn out," you correct him, your voice husky. "In the best possible way. But I'm already worried about being tired tomorrow. We should get some rest." He shifts, and you feel him soften inside you, a final, tender pulse of connection before he gently lifts you off his lap, standing and rearranging his robes.
"You're right of course, as you often are… I should sneak my way back to the faculty tower, I suppose." He draws you into his arms again, pressing another kiss to your forehead. "You should get ready for bed as well." You stretch up onto your toes and kiss him properly before stepping away and watching as he slides the window open. A flash of pink light and he's gone, leaving a small ripple effect and the sound of a grunt as he heaves himself through the window. There's another flash of light, blue this time, and you know without looking that he's levitating himself down to terra firma.
You shake your head and unbutton your robe, allowing it to drop the floor along with your other layers of clothing. A sigh of contentment leaves you as you stretch down onto your bed, nude, and face the ceiling of your small room. You cross your arms over your stomach and look around the room, settling in for one last night in the space you've come to consider home. A smile slowly grows as you think about the potential future you're starting tomorrow. You stretch and curl into your bed, reaching an arm under your pillow.
And finding a piece of paper.
You sit upright, gripping the paper and pulling it in front of you, hastily conjuring an arcane orb of light as you do. In the corner of the paper is the same sigil as earlier and your heart drops into your stomach, skipping a beat.
He will tell you this power was your choice.
“Power always offers choice. Consent is how it keeps its hands clean.”
— On Devotion and Consumption, Uncatalogued Fragment
