Eloquence Lost

Requested by Chris! 

For reference, the poem Leon reads is “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand” by Walt Whitman, and can be read online at the poetryfoundation.org website. It’s probably a good idea to read the actual poem, because obviously I add a bunch of interjections and change up the punctuation a bit. Also, trans!Leon because it’s my fantasy and I’ll trans genders if I want to.

—-—

They come together in Piers’ bedroom, late at night, when he seems the most alive. Leon thought of his own room for a moment, right at the beginning when his shirt was coming off, but that bed would be wrong for this. All white sheets, fluffy down duvet, expensive pillows that support the vertebra in the back of the neck as one sleeps the luxuriant sleep of the well-off.

Piers’ bed is thin and narrow, barely big enough for the two of them to fit on, and likely almost as old as he is. It creaks to bear Leon’s weight, the springs shrieking when he falls back against them suddenly, shoved by a slender hand in the center of his chest. The sheets are scratchy and cheap, and when Leon’s eyes dart up, there’s a water-stain gone dark along the rim of Piers’ ceiling, between the window and the corner where two walls meet.

A siren wails. Piers’ fingers are rough and calloused as they pry Leon’s belt buckle open, and he looks down his body to take the sight in. This fantasy, for the two of them. He doesn’t understand the request Piers has made, but he’ll follow it through to the end, if only to chase the passionate flush in his cheek, and for the novelty of it to imagine again and again later.

They’ve learned so many wonderful things together, and Leon can hardly imagine this will be any different, as Piers pulls his jeans down and off his body, casting them back into the shadows of his bed, where the thin duvet has already been stuffed into a ball. His nails are black-varnished and permanently chipped, his lips so full and red Leon wants to suck the sweetness off them even when they’ve spent half an hour kissing already.

A hand on his belly, creating pressure as Piers leans up across him to grab the worn book he’s chosen for this and set it onto Leon’s chest, then flicks off the light. The vanished bulb burns phosphorescent blue and green on the back of Leon’s eyelids, and he closes them to feel the weight of Piers above him in bed. Not a heavy body, yet reassuring in its presence. Even with his eyes shut, Piers is still there in that weight, the heat of his body, the sound of his breaths and the scent of perfume that wafts out of the collar of his shirt. Floral, like a garden, like an open bottle of gin. His breath is a rasp, and Leon loses track of it as it circles his ear.

“Piers,” he breathes, the name an entreaty, and feels a kiss land warmly between his brows, a giant raindrop that turns to smooth lips sliding down the bridge of his nose. Piers’ mouth is open, it’s wanting, it’s hungry, it’s—pick an adjective, any adjective. The hardness of his teeth against Leon’s jaw, breath whispering against the hairs of his beard before falling, lower, across the bulge of his throat, sucking at the lump there and traveling to his clavicle.

“Read for me,” Piers commands, somewhere around his sternum, and Leon shakes himself as though from a dream, fumbling for the book in the sheets. Disorientation as his eyes open to that unfamiliar ceiling and the blaze of pink and blue light from neon signage outside that paints the stained white plane. The world rights itself, coming into orderly and sensible shapes, and Leon grasps the book by the spine, raising it obediently above his face as Piers pulls back from his skin with a wet noise.

His mouth glistens in the dark, and he grasps the book himself, thumbing through the pages until he finds what he’s looking for and holds it back out to Leon. What is this, what are these words that are so important as to be part of this fantasy? What deserves to be spoken aloud here, in this place for calling pleasure and lover’s names?

There’s surely a significance; with Piers, things are always significant in one way or another. He’s a musician, a lyricist. Good at saying something in a thousand personal ways, of crooning and singing and screeching, and making it relatable even still. Leon licks his lips and focuses on the tiny words, squinting until his eyes adjust to make them out.

“Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.”

The words come out of him in a jumble because Piers is kissing down his sternum, and the silk fringe slide of his hair is purely distracting. Piers is a lesson in juxtaposition, how one can be soft and spiked at the same time. The rose, and the thorns.

Leon reads the next lines instead of thinking too hard on the implications of that metaphor.

“Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?”

Another siren outside, the Doppler effect of it drawing close then rushing past interrupts the silence as Leon swallows around the emptiness the words leave behind in his mouth. He wonders who this is for, whose self is meant to be found in these lines. Is he the follower, or as the speaker, is he meant to be the one imploring?

Piers’ tongue caresses the center of his body and Leon’s stomach jumps, quivering with ready, uncaring lust at the touch of warm breath against the hair there. A kiss beneath his navel makes him shiver, and his hips stir instinctively, only to be held down by strong hands.

Piers never lets him have the easy out.

“The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,” he pants.

The formality of the words is a contrast to the wet heat of Piers’ lips, touching here, caressing there in the dark. He can’t watch both his lover and the lines, and chooses the lines with no small amount of regret. There’s still the meaning to be found—when was the last time he heard the word novitiate?

I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard...the speaker is saying they, he, wants to be the only person in the life of the listener. And yet saying that as a warning away, a defense against being taken in hand.

Thin fingers spread his thighs, and Leon feels the breath flee his chest, lungs tightening in the shock of being opened this way. It’s nothing new, nothing they haven’t done before, yet Piers unfolds him like the pages of a beloved novel and Leon can’t look down to see him do it. The colours of the light swirl on the page and he’s desperate to plead as he always does; a singular fingertip traces a line of freezing heat up the inside of his thigh, following one of the strongest arteries in his body.

The lifeline, passageway of his blood. Disturb it, and he’d die.

Yet Piers worships it with that singular digit, waking every nerve with the simplest of touches until Leon’s hips lift for him readily, shaking with the newness of desire. His body is so strong, so reliable, and yet Piers turns it into an unknown territory with a flick of his calloused fingertips.

Breath ghosts the curls of his sex, and Leon’s hitched breath finishes his verse.

“The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.”

Piers’ lips meet his sex in a passionate, open-mouthed kiss.

Stunned, Leon’s words break off on a cry, and he struggles not to drop the book on his own face at the suddenness of the touch. When did he get so sensitive, so wet? Piers’ tongue is relentless, twisting through the folds of his cunt, teasing his hardened clit until showers of sparks flash through his body. Overwhelmed, Leon squirms as though to run from the touch, but he’s being held in place and devoured hungrily.

As always, Piers is ignoring any command, poetic or otherwise. Looking down his body, Leon watches the silhouette of his head tilt and feels his tongue spear inside, a fierce and demanding kiss that takes far more than the champion ever thought it possible to give. Piers isn’t just tasting him, he’s consuming him, as though the source of all the world’s goodness and pleasure is buried deep within Leon’s body and only a tongue can coax it out.

Release me now before troubling yourself any further.

Beneath him, Piers’ moan reverberates from his pussy all the way up his spine, and down to the soles of his feet, every nerve alight with unexpected desire. Again, like Piers is the one being pleasured by this, and Leon answers with a frantic and nonsensical noise of his own.

Always too much, by quarters and by halves, always too loud and rough and sharp. Piers is a man who takes what he wants, and yet—and yet Leon was the one who envied him for it, all these years. That he could walk in the sun or shadow, and freely say yes or no to the world and its offerings. That he was never enamoured by Leon’s championship title, seeing through the veneer of gold to all the things he would rather have had hidden away, and biting down on them nonetheless.

Leon doesn’t know why Piers wants him, even after months of this. Doesn’t understand it, yet can’t bear to give it up. He knows that Piers has struggled and fought all his life, and wishes desperately that he’d been a stronger man, that he could have alleviated it all sooner, yet somehow senses that Piers wouldn’t have wanted that either.

That Piers wants this, wants Leon pleading with his entire body as his mouth presses in, tongue snaking from between his teeth to lick at sensitive flesh and send him shuddering again. Piers, the singer, the word-smith; surely there’s a meaning to the orality of this act. That all the world is known through his mouth and his voice is his greatest strength, yet he greedily tastes in curves and twists from Leon’s cunt, muffling his strong tongue in heat and cream.

If love is consumption, Piers eats his lust whole.

It’s unfair, purely unfair, how Piers can make him tremble and shake like this. He’s the strongest man in Galar, dammit, and yet he quivers under the onslaught of a stiff, clever tongue and gentle sucks to his hard dick. Goddamnit. Even when others adore him, even when they tell Leon he’s the greatest who ever was or will be, they don’t even begin to approach this sort of worship.

How the light loves a shadow, how the stars require night.

Distantly, he recalls that he’s supposed to be reading, not just thrashing on the bed, and fumbles for the book in lieu of the plea already on his lips.

“Or else by stealth in some w-wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not—” Piers’ lips wrap around his clit and it’s hard to keep his focus on those tiny letters, infinitesimal black shapes printed on the page that skew to nonsense and back again.

“—Nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,” Leon swears that he can feel the stretch of every breath in his lungs, the apogee of expansion and contraction, and then it drips away into the ecstasy of having his pussy eaten like this.

His heart is drumming in his chest, his ears, and the pink-blue-black of the page is his only anchor from being swept away on a tide of pleasure. At this point, he’s close to writing a few poems about Piers’ mouth, the velvet of his tongue and the flash of white teeth seen out of the corner of an eye when he moves away and sinks instead into the meat of Leon’s thigh.

The pain is a mark of possessiveness, ownership, and Leon’s head is too busy swirling to deny any of it. The poet is right, he wouldn’t want anyone else to intrude on this. He yearns to detach this bed, this room, from all the rest of the world and send them spiraling away into their own dimension, with only the warmth of Piers’ mouth and the cold of his hands guiding every thought.

“Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine—“ His voice breaks here, inserting new punctuation into the poetry, which was surely never intended for a use like this. Never meant to be the sweet nothings of the bedroom, and yet with every word, he is certain perhaps that the author meant nothing different. No more or less than this, than lust and love and the scent of Piers on the sheets which he’s slept on for so long, wafting now to Leon’s nose.

“—I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband...and I am the comrade.”

Is this sparse mattress a nuptial bed, then? Piers moves as though spurred by the words themselves, sliding his shoulders down beneath Leon’s thighs and wrapping pale hands up across his hips, gripping with imploring palms at his stomach. Enveloping him, so that even when his thighs writhe and squeeze, they are captured still and held apart, at the mercy of the mouth that continues to torment him. Pleasure and torture alike. A long-dwelling kiss he cannot escape from, and failing that, opens himself to with a spreading of his thighs.

This, then, is the indescribable name of desire. For so long, Leon thought that Piers loathed him, was hating him every minute for the things that he uncontrollably was, and even that was a relief after the endless bland adoration of the crowds. When all you have is sugar, bitterness is a welcome novelty of flavour.

Yet Piers never hated him; that was never the point. He was always seeing Leon, looking at him in ways that he wouldn’t even look at himself, staring through all of the cracks in the gleaming golden armor and Leon’s self-consciousness was what drove them apart as much as anything. Piers wears his imperfections on his sleeve, but Leon had spent a lifetime burying his own so deeply that dragging them out was a painful intimacy.

Another siren passes by outside, but it may as well be a million miles off, the screaming of a gnat’s wings. Louder is the wet sound of Piers sucking him, taking him all in and begging silently for more, pressing their most vulnerable parts together until they both tremble at the rawness of that sensation. Breath scrapes from his lungs, and Leon looks down to see Piers’ mouth open in a broad lick against his sex, wetness glistening still on his tongue, eyes gone dark with pleasure.

They are alone together, and that itself is ecstasy.

“Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hi-ip,” he hiccups, and Piers’ tongue drives inside his pussy again, twisting to the rhythm of the words.

“Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;” The words are a rush, too fast and rough.

“For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep—and be carried eternally.”

Now a finger joins, and Leon knows it’s over. He can’t even see the page anymore, can’t focus on the stained ceiling above. Piers’ hands play him like a favored instrument, targeting every sensitive spot inside his body, and his back arches up off the bed as he feels the tension build at the base of his spine. It winds tighter and tighter in his gut until, with a shaking hand, he grabs Piers’ monochromatic locks and pushes him in close to ride his face through the orgasm.

A tidal wave of pleasure takes him, and Leon feels himself climb higher and higher, until he wonders if it’s possible to lose himself in this forever. To float on waves of heat for the rest of eternity, with only the sensation of his lover’s mouth meaning anything as his mind goes blissfully blank.

Yet all too soon he drops back to the bed, body still trembling, lines of the poem still a confusing mantra in his head that makes him jolt like the most intimate dirty-talk. His lungs are aching, and he realises he’s pulling on Piers’ hair; the grip is released, but Piers is still busy licking the orgasm out of him. When his breath returns, it’s raspy and hot across the back of his tongue, voice too broken to form words as Piers finishes with his treat and rises over his body.

“I will not release you, nor depart,” he mumbles against the side of Leon’s neck, hovering above him, the muscles in his shoulder sliding back and forth as he strokes himself. “For I not only admire and vauntingly—fuck—vauntingly praise you, and you’re not only pages. I’m holdin’ you in my hand, and my mouth, and my arms, Lee. You’re not getting away from me.”

The words only halfway make sense, but Leon kisses him even without context. There’s no need for Piers to be coherent in order to be beautiful, to be loved by him. He tastes the flavour of his own slick on Piers’ lips and gladly sucks them clean, until heat spreads again across his belly and rolls down his sides. Each moan is swallowed up, his own act of ingestion, and breath is the only thing between them for long minutes.

Piers doesn’t have to worry, because unlike a poet, Leon is happy to be held.

But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.