Work Text:
Seraphina preferred the morning shift at the library.
She enjoyed opening the dusty place back up to the fresh air again, unlocking the doors to let in the slow, steady trickle of Waterdeep's most studious residents. The stillness of the library during the day was a peaceful sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the busy city streets, and the clientele felt like an extension of herself—quiet and always eager to learn something new, to devour some novel snippet of information.
Closing up at night was a little more unsettling. For all its bright, shiny veneer, the city of splendors had an uglier side. As soon as the city outside fell under a cloak of darkness it began to reveal itself: drunk patrons spilling from taverns to raise slurred voices at one another in arguments that erupted easily into violence, shadowed alleyways concealing grim figures, eager to find easy marks in the darkness. The library was a haven away from it all, but even that carried an almost eerie stillness past a certain hour. Corridors abandoned, books neatly stacked away, candles flickering down to their last embers. The quiet hush that usually accompanied research and discovery stilled to nothing. It felt almost lonesome.
But sometimes, necessity dictated that she worked late into the night.
Gale, ever the gentleman, was on his way to meet her so that they could walk home together, as he often did when she worked this late. Though she did not necessarily need his protection—she had, after all, sharpened her magic to such precision in recent years that she could fend for herself, if she had to—it was still a comfort to have her husband beside her.
And it was a good excuse for them to have a pleasant evening stroll together.
She had just climbed to the top of a ladder, precariously cradling a stack of books in her arms, when the great doors to the library boomed with a knock that nearly sent the entire stack toppling to the ground in her surprise.
She shifted, resting the stack on the step above her and summoning a mage hand. For the briefest moment, she waited. Even for all her training, wild magic still simmered in her veins. There was nothing that could be done to temper down its influence: it either rose and she dealt with the consequences, or it lay in wait.
Thankfully, for now, it chose stillness.
So she instructed the hand to unlock the heavy door and pull it open to allow Gale inside.
"My love?" he called out as the door closed shut with a heavy thud behind him.
"Over here!"
She glanced over her shoulder to watch him make his way further into the library. His eyes sparkled, crinkling with a smile as he looked up at her, and the faintest flecks of grey in his hair shone in the candlelight.
He was wearing his purple wizard robes. The same ones which had seen him through their weary days on the road, faded a little after years of being patched, mended and cleaned with magic, but soft and worn-in. She knew with certainty that if she was close enough—if she could curl up into them like a cat, kneading a perfect bed for herself—she would be able to smell the familiar, comfortable scent of him: paper from the books he caressed, sandalwood from his soap, and the faint trace of magic always clinging to him like second skin.
The sight of him, even in such basic clothing—though he would scoff at the notion of his clothes ever being called basic—was enough to steal her breath away.
"Evening, love," she said, giving him a soft grin as she rested her hip against the ladder rung. "How was the walk?"
"Chilly," he confessed, rubbing his hands together as though to chase the cold away from his extremities. "I daresay winter is well and truly on the way. And, of course, my evenings are always the colder for not having you beside me."
"Flatterer," she chided playfully, warmth flooding her cheeks as she turned back to her task, picking up a book from the top of her pile and seeking its place along the shelf. "And how was your day?"
She heard him taking up a spot somewhere below her, feet shuffling against the stone floor, a desk creaking. "Oh, about as well as can be expected when the young apprentice I'm guiding is infuriatingly stubborn."
"Mm. He sounds like somebody else I know."
"There's a rather marked difference between being stubborn and being correct, my love," he said, and she turned around to raise an eyebrow in his direction. He cleared his throat. "I admit that the lines have… blurred on occasion."
She chuckled softly, turning back to her task and letting his soothing voice wash over her.
"But in this case, I am correct. These are rather basic magical theories I'm trying to impart, not moral conundrums to be dissected and analysed. You'd think being the Chosen of Mystra might grant me a certain level of esteem. At the very least, I always gave Elminster his due respect."
"Did you?" Serphina's lips quirked upward.
"Most of the time."
"I would have thought dissecting and analysing moral conundrums might be a part of a balanced curriculum?" She said, reaching up to tuck a book onto the top shelf, her skirt tightening around her waist with the strain, riding up the back of her legs ever so slightly. Gale remained silent behind her.
"Love?" she said, brows pinching together as his silence extended, and she twisted around to glance down at him.
"Hm?"
He was leaning back on a nearby desk, arms folded across his broad chest. His eyes roamed up her body as she peered down at him, and though they locked respectfully onto her own the moment he noticed she was looking, it was clear he'd quite literally lost his trail of thought staring at her backside.
"Enjoying the view?" she teased.
He had just enough manners in him to pretend to look a little sheepish. "Quite."
"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt the show, but I need to collect more books—"
"Stay where you are," he said, his voice coming suddenly, such a heady mix of lust and gentle authority that she felt a familiar spark of arousal pool low and hot in her belly. He let his eyes wander shamelessly over her body again as he flicked his dexterous fingers in the direction of the pile of books down on the trolley beneath her.
The books sprang to life, floating up on curling tendrils of magic to meet her, and she rolled her eyes playfully, giggling with endearment.
"I can't tell if you're showing off, or just doing everything in your power to keep ogling me for as long as possible."
"I'm offended, darling wife. I am merely being a gentleman."
"Mm-hm," she said, pressing her lips together around a grin, taking each book offered to her with a teasing roll of her hips, gratified by the greedy look in Gale's eyes when she turned back around to look at him. His wizard robes were too heavy to get a good look at his trousers from this distance, but knowing him with the intimacy she did, she wouldn't be surprised to find him at least half hard beneath his clothes at watching her.
"That was much faster than doing it alone," she said as she filed away the last book and descended the ladders, rolling her shoulders against the stiffness of working with the heavy tomes.
"You know, I could always teach you how to how to summon your own simulacrum," Gale said as she approached him, his pupils blown wide and his voice gravelly with arousal. "She could do the heavy lifting, the climbing, the stacking, the sorting. Plenty of uses for such a spell," his fingers found her waist, and he pulled her in close to him. "Both at work and at home."
She raised an eyebrow, narrowing her eyes at him with mock suspicion. "Yes, I'm sure you've given plenty of thought to the uses for an exact replica of your wife around the tower."
"And why not?" he said, entirely unashamed as he pressed his lips against her neck, his breath hot. "You've certainly put mine to his fair share of good use over the years."
His tongue licked a deliberate trail along the shell of her ear, and her eyes closed for a moment, revelling in the quiet ecstasy of his mouth on her. Heat crept up her neck, blooming into her cheeks, and she could have so easily succumbed to him right there…
But she pulled away.
"The thing is, Gale, I happen to quite like doing the repetitive tasks of my job," she said, wheeling the book trolley back to its space in the storage cupboard. "It keeps me active."
"There are an abundance of other ways to stay active, I assure you," he teased. "But, if we're being sensible, allow me to ask—shamefully late—how was your day?"
"Well, I had no stubborn wizard apprentices to manage," she said, locking up the cupboard and walking back to hang the key in its spot at the front desk, "so I'd say it was a comparatively rather bright day."
"No stubborn wizard husbands, either," he grinned, winding a hand around her waist and pulling her in close again. This time she felt him through the weight of his clothes, the evidence of his arousal pressing lightly into her thigh and making her shiver.
"Mm, no. At least, for most of the day," she swallowed thickly. She turned a little in his arms, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear and losing herself in the deep brown of his eyes. "You know," she breathed, "you really shouldn't be distracting me while I'm working…"
"Not distracting," he said, his voice low as his lips dipped behind her ear. "I'm merely… providing you with motivation to finish quickly."
His breath was hot on her neck—irresistible and entirely unfair. He knew precisely what was doing to her.
Her heart hammered in her chest, heat pooling between her legs.
She didn't want to wait until they got back to the sanctuary of their tower. She didn't want to be sensible. She didn't want to be good. Instead, every part of her screamed with a single, primal need: to claim him here, among the darkened, dusty shelves that held sacred texts.
And why not? After all, the library was completely empty.
The doors were locked.
Nobody need ever find out…
She grabbed him roughly by the lapel of his cloak, gratified by the startled yelp he let out as she shoved him, unceremoniously, back against the nearest bookshelf. Her lips were on his in an instant, swallowing both his grunt of shock at the press of wood against his spine, and the groan of assent that followed. He pulled her into himself, deepening their kiss as her body pressed flush against his. His beard scraped against her skin as he slipped his tongue past her lips, tangling it with her own.
They'd done this a thousand times at home, and if there was supposed to come a point where it became less exciting, less intoxicating, less satisfying it had not arrived yet. But there was something uniquely tantalising about this forbidden venture: him pinned to a bookshelf that held histories older than the two of them, written by scholars wiser than either of them, and her defying every rule she was supposed to adhere to in order to indulge in such a simple pleasure.
Her fingers fumbled between their bodies, unclasping each metal hook that kept his robe fastened. One by one, they gave way. By the time she made it down to his waist, he pulled away from her, a single eyebrow arched, entirely smug at having reduced her to such desperation.
She pulled the fabric open.
His sharp inhale was her reward, and she grinned almost devilishly as her fingers rushed to tangle in the dark curls of hair on his chest, running across the raised flesh of the faint scar mark on his skin where the Netherese orb had once been embedded beside his heart. Now she could feel his pulse race beneath her fingers, without the awful hum of that cursed thing accompanying it.
"My love—" he breathed, one hand bracing against the bookshelf, the other tangling in her hair to drag her back to his lips. He groaned into her mouth as her hand continued down the plane of his chest, and further still, past the waistband of his pants, into his briefs—
And whimpered as she wrapped her hand around him, rolling it slowly from base to tip.
Just once. Just enough to leave him wanting.
Then, without a word, she pulled away from his kiss and sank to her knees on the cold, stone floor.
"Phina—"
"Yes, my love?" she cooed innocently as she freed his erection from its constraints, the tip of it already slick with arousal.
"You don't have to— we can— gods!"
His words left him entirely the moment she enveloped him in the warmth of her mouth, and she couldn't help the triumphant grin around his shaft at the sheer power within her to make such a prestigious man fall apart completely.
Her tongue traced the sensitive underside of him, flicking indecently against the tip of his cock as she let him almost slip from her mouth before engulfing him fully again. Her hand joined her mouth, stroking at the very base of him in tandem, and his head fell back against the wood of the bookshelf with a dull thud, hips bucking up into her touch unconsciously. His moan echoed through the corridors of the library, sensible words all but evading him. She might tease him about that later: how, even while he was surrounded by the well-considered passages written by his fellow scholars, his own words had gotten lost at the simple act of being undone by the wet heat of her mouth.
For now though, the only sensation that mattered was the exquisite weight of him on her tongue.
His fingers curled around the nape of her neck, tangling in her long hair, while his other hand scrambled for purchase against the shelves behind him, trying desperately to anchor himself to something solid before pleasure swept him away completely.
She pulled her head back, until only the tip of his cock remained on her tongue, looking up at him through her eyelashes. His bare chest heaved with breath, a flush of colour extending up his neck to temples already dotted with tiny beads of sweat. His usually sharp, bright eyes were lidded and hazy as he stared down at her with adoration, and for just a moment she let him wait.
Just long enough to make his breath catch in his throat.
For the anticipation to make him shiver.
For him to beg.
"Please, Phina…" he whispered, voice shaky and broken.
She answered him with a deliberate swipe of her tongue across the head of his cock and he whined, hips jerking forward once again, apparently of their own accord.
She knew, with delightful satisfaction, that this secret would live forever in these vaulted halls with her. Every time she straightened the books some member of the public had lazily discarded, whenever she guided some oblivious scholar to this very section of the library, the memory of her on her knees, worshipping every decadent inch of Gale would rise unbidden in her mind, pressed between the pages of the tomes here like deliciously lewd marginalia.
She couldn't help her own moan as she sank all the way back down his shaft, gagging a little as the tip of him met the back of her throat.
Gale broke at that, the silence of the library shattering completely around them. His breath came in short, ragged pants as he muttered a litany of incoherent praise over the wet, rhythmic slide of her tongue against him. The bookshelf groaned as he collapsed his entire weight against it, his boots scraping against the stone floor as he fought to maintain his balance.
He was close now. His body coiled with the tension, knuckles white against the shelf, thighs trembling against the urge to simply let go. The hand at the nape of her neck fumbled to caress her face, thumb pressing desperately against her cheek to coax her to look up at him.
His eyes sparkled with both reverence and desperation, jaw clenched tight. "Phina—" he panted, voice breaking under the weight of her name, the syllable cracking in two. "I'm… nearly… I'll—"
Her own moans tangled in the air with his, fierce arousal burning inside her at the knowledge that she could do this to him—reduce him to such a mess. She sank deeper onto him, cheeks hollowing, wrist and mouth working him in a steady, practised rhythm together, and it was enough to push him over the edge and into ecstasy.
His entire body went rigid, spine arching, hips thrusting up into her, every instinct in him chasing pleasure. His hand tightened against her cheek and with a ragged cry of her name, his release spilled hot across her tongue. She continued to work him as he broke apart, watching him pant and plead as his cock pulsed with each fresh wave of pleasure that washed through him.
And when, at last, his body slumped back against the shelf, every nerve in him spent, she pulled her mouth from him and smiled in sweet satisfaction.
Her knees protested against the hard floor, but she didn't move, ignoring the discomfort to press a single gentle kiss to the head of him. He flinched, oversensitive, a quiet huff of a moan escaping him.
"That was—" Gale breathed, reaching out with a shaky hand to find hers. She took it, allowing him to pull her up into his embrace where he stole a languid kiss from her, his body still shivering with exquisite aftershocks. "Unexpected. Truly, my love. I hunger for you, always, but you didn't have to—"
"I know," she said, caressing his cheek with her thumb, kissing him softly again and wondering idly if he could taste himself on her tongue, that same tremour of arousal burning fiercely within her at the thought. "But you arrived looking so… irresistible. And then you started teasing, which you know is entirely unfair. I didn't want to wait."
"It's not like you to misbehave. In the sanctuary of the library, no less," he tutted playfully against her ear, the sound sending a shiver down her spine. "I thought librarians were supposed to be such sticklers for the rules."
She hummed against him, her lips curling into a satisfied grin as she ran her hand through the hair on his chest. "Perhaps there are certain advantages to working the late shift."
"I'd certainly say so…"
"Nobody around—"
"Darkened corridors—"
"The smell of books—"
Gale laughed, capturing her earlobe between his teeth. "Mm... And plenty of empty surfaces to sprawl across."
She blushed furiously, whimpering a little as his tongue dipped down her neck, pressing an open mouthed kiss just under the collar of her shirt.
"Perhaps," he said, working to slide her skirt up her legs with agonising slowness, "we ought to make the most of the rest of the evening…"
