#sorry but...once again aching with mollymauk and caleb thoughts

[dent-de-leon]

Head in hands. Oh…I just realized. Caleb is the exact kind of heartbroken soul Molly would have tried to save in choir practice—

Just...all that time Caleb spent suffering alone. Abandoned by Astrid and Wulf. Waking up from nightmares screaming, cold and hungry and haunted by all those long years in the sanitarium--haunted by the blood Trent put on his hands when he was still just a child. The realization of just how much he was manipulated and abused when he was so young and vulnerable--blaming himself for the trauma he endured. Hating himself in his grief.

How Caleb can't even bring himself to put up a fight with he's arrested, how he thinks he deserves whatever happens to him...I can't help but think of Yasha, bleeding out before a temple, grieving and wounded and not even saying a word to the villagers who came to kill her. Molly rushing to her rescue without a second thought--taking one look at all her grief and pain laid bare, and immediately shielding her. How Molly does this sort of thing over and over, how he can't ever bear to just stand aside and watch someone suffer--

Just knowing that...if Molly ever came across Caleb before Trostenwald--back when he was still on the run all alone, when he didn't dare to trust anyone--Molly would still try and save him--

[thatonesadending]

Power of Words - Chapters 5

Molly is overwhelmed with how much has changed, including his body. Caleb helps him feel a bit more normal.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31056542

It could have been minutes, or hours, that Molly sobbed into Caleb’s neck. He didn't have a grip on time, let alone his current reality, so he let himself cry until his voice was hoarse, and his cheeks tight with dried tears. He wasn't sure when he had sunk to the floor, but Caleb had gone with him, holding him close, cradling Molly in his arms as he sobbed his way to exhaustion.

It wasn't that Molly was sad or unhappy really, but he was experiencing a sort of onslaught of grief of his own death. Of all the adventures he missed, the moments he didn’t get to share. Complicating it was that he knew that his friends, people he had grown to love over an impossibly short time, now had images of him hurting them that he didn’t have. Why else had they been scared of him, wary of his return?

And then there was the issue of him. This body. The coat had helped ground him, but it only lasted a short while. Every reflection in the glass that he caught, every flinch when he approached one of the Nien too fast, every time he looked at his own hands and saw the missing rings and golden caps on his fingers … It reminded him of the fact that he had been lost, and someone else had been piloting this body.

The mixture of all the upsetting feelings, with the beauty of all the ways he had been remembered - preserved - created chaos of spilling out feelings that he couldn't help but let out in embarrassing sobs. The only thing that was coxing him back was Caleb’s hand, drawing circles on his back, humming some lullaby he faintly recognized.

There had been a time before, when he had come out empty and hollow from the grave he had been left in, that the only way Yasha had been able to calm him was to sing him a song meant for the Gods. A prayer pressed to melody. Caleb was humming it now, while rubbing his back. When he was able to steady his breathing enough, Molly managed to ask him about the song.

“How do - did Yasha give you the song?” His voice was still quiet, more of a whisper, but the ever preceptive Caleb still heard him.

“Yes, she shared it with me on a particularly hard night, seeing as we both can speak celestial.”

Molly had never thought to ask what language the song had been in, so many languages and things had been forign to him at the time. It didn't surprise him that Caleb had memorized it. He wanted to thank Caleb again, but it wouldn’t have conveyed how actually grateful he was. He stayed there for a few more moments, his cheek pressed to the man's chest, horn resting on his shoulder, and his tail wrapped tightly against his waist. It was only until he felt the ache of tiredness in his own bones, and remembered who he was holding on to, that he let go.

“I am sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It is alright Mollymauk, I only care that you are okay.”

Caleb didn't let Molly get very far in his self-conscious retreat, clasping him at the elbows and looking him firmly in the eyes. Molly wasn’t okay, but he also wasn’t not. He was caught in between glee at being alive again, and horror that someone else had been living for him in the meantime. And then there was that unspoken dread, the one that he was constantly trying not to think of, because what if Lucien ….

“It is alright to need time. I will do everything in my power to give you all the time you need to be okay.” Caleb’s words were like an incoming tide, slowly washing away at the edges of Molly’s worries.

“I am n- it’s just that…” He struggled find the words to try to express how he was feeling everything too much right now, and he really wanted to feel just like himself. Caleb stayed silent and just waited until Molly could compose himself to try again. “It’s a lot. The whole dying, being possessed by your former self - well a sad sack of a soul that was not me- and then living again to-” Molly gestered the gorgeous window and room that surrounded them. “-and still feel, I don't know, like I am not really here. Like I haven't earned the right to it.” Molly hadn’t really understood the weight of his emotions until he spoke aloud, and then he felt his eyes threatened to spill again. But of course, Caleb came to his rescue once more.

“Ah, I think I understand. I believe I can help, if that is alright?”

How Caleb could do anything more for him was beyond imaginable. He had already brought Molly back from his unconscious prison and a chance of life, given him a not only decadent room but one that represented his life, and most of all - Caleb had offered Molly an incredibly close embrace when he needed to cry out the most. Still, he chose to follow the human when they disentangled, and he had been led to the gorgeous red vanity he had admired before.

Caleb pulled out the overstuffed stool, and motioned for him to sit. He did so, admittedly a tad cautiously, since he didn't know what Caleb wanted from him. Nervous hands pulled out the top long drawer, but Molly couldnt take his eyes away from Caleb’s face, trying to see why the man was suddenly shy. He was used to Caleb being reserved, self-deprecating, humble to a fault, that was until he came back, and he found himself with a wizard that was more self assured and hopeful.

“My memory is not perfect, close, but - um - some things can be misremember, so if you would like any changes or if I got anything wrong …”

He looked down at the drawer as Caleb spoke. It was lined in a lavender velvet that almost perfectly matched his skin. Inside was every single piece of jewelry that he was currently missing, the outlandish bits of glitter and gold that Molly had used to set himself apart. From his earrings, the chains that had been in his horns, to the cuffs he had worn around his tail.

“I am not sure which set you would like. I tried to capture each I could remember.” Caleb was being far too modest. There laid perfect versions of every variation of his jewelry from when they had met in Trostenwald to when they left Hupperdook.

“The last ones.” His voice was still rough from crying, but Caleb ignored it and started to lift the various pieces from its place. Molly had wanted to say ‘Oh the ones that I was wearing when I died.’, but he didn't. He didn't want to taint why these were his favorite. How he had eavesdropped on Jester trying to convince Yasha to tell her which one he would like more, the horn cuff with matching  jade studs, or the crescent at the end of a teardrop earring that had a chain that would connect at the top of his ear. While Yasha had tried to convince her money would be better spent elsewhere, Molly could remember Nott sneaking up and simply pocketing both sets. She later presented them to Molly in front of the other women. “That shop was horrible, nothing worth taking, but they wouldn’t leave … so here.” He knew she hadnt meant it, that she was actually offering friendship, not earrings. He took and cherished them all the same.

Caleb was gentle, fastening the earrings with care, being impossibly soft with his horns while he placed the jewelry. Molly didn't say a word, Caleb knew where every bit went. He hadn’t meant to screw his eyes shut, but it was the only way to prevent more tears, those of anxiety, from falling. It wasn't until he felt a thumb slowly pressing gentle circles at the base of his horns, that he was able to blink his eyes open again. Caleb was kneeling in front of where he sat, hands still massaging this temple.

“Would you like to look?” he asked. Molly nodded, though only after a moment. Caleb pulled out a hand mirror, as though he knew that he couldn't turn to look at himself in the large one hanging above the vanity quiet yet. He took the matching ornate mirror and looked at just his horns, then to his ears, and then to his face. His horns and ears were familiar, grounding him in the memories that he felt were just yesterday. They gave him considerable relief compared to the reflections he had caught earlier, that looked nothing like him, but that of Lucien.

It was when he got to his actual face, did he feel the weight of sorrow again. It was still him, of course, but his hair was long and the curls greasy were uncared for. His lips were wind chapped and cracking. The hallows of his cheeks were more pronounced. It was only then that Molly realized how much weight he had lost, his already slender frame now reduced to just what was necessary. It was obvious that Lucien had not cared for his body, not with good food or consideration for its frame.

Molly tried not to let the disappointment show, because the jewelry really had help, and he appreciated Caleb’s sweetness, but there was still a part of him that was missing, hollow. Try as he might, Caleb apparently had the gods on his side.

“Not enough, ja? That is alright, give me just another moment.”

Molly didn't know how this man knew what was going on in his head, especially when he had only spoken a half a dozen or so sentences since entering this magical room. All the same, Caleb rose from his knees and crossed the room where a thick silk rope hung, and pulled on it twice. He couldn't hear what the other man said, but it was brief, and then Caleb was back his side, opening drawers again.

“I will admit, I do not know your preferences, but these are the cosmetics that Jester prefered, I only altered them to what I thought you might have enjoyed.” Molly chose to ignore the past tense, especially when Caleb pulled out several different vials of hydrating oils, scented balms for blisters, and …. A beautiful array of gold tinted make-up.

“God’s, Caleb! How much did you spend on this?!” Molly couldn’t help admonish while admiring a glistening jar of lavender body oil.

“Nothing but my imagination.” Caleb supplied, as though it was the most natural answer in the world. Catching Molly’s confusion, he continued. “This is actually a demiplane, it only lasts for 24 hours, and you can not take out what you did not bring in other than what you consume.” Caleb looked apologetic, as though that wasn’t work that only Gods should be able to do. “So while you may wear anything you want while you are here, unfortunately if it is made of magic, it won't survive outside of the tower’s walls.” Molly didn’t care, it was grateful just the same for what Caleb was giving him. The wizard handed him a balm for his lips, and opened another drawer and pulled out a delicate-looking comb.

“There is a bath on the other side of the dresser, if you have the energy for that. I am sure Jester would be willing to cut your hair, if you would like. But how about I comb it out first, and you can decide if you want that later?” Caleb’s offer warmed him, so he nodded and let the man comb through the knots of his hair, while Molly took advantage of the balms and lotion. They worked in comfortable silence for several moments. Caleb was careful and calm, relaxing Molly enough that he felt is eyes fall closed again, but this time to just sit and feel the small touches of fingers on his scalp and running through his hair. It wasn’t until he felt a small tap, that he looked and saw a cat he’d never met, somehow holding a bowl of fruits and bread and a large glass of water.

“Ah yes. Thank you.” Caleb took the bowl and set it on the table next to Molly. “If you are hungry. But please, drink this.” The glass of water was pressed into his hands, and Molly readily gulped most of it down. “If you need anything, do not be afraid to ask. The cats will bring you what you need.” How that was possible, was beyond him. But he had also been bitten by a wessel that was also apparently a god, so anything could be possible then.

Molly took a few of the grapes, and let himself relax again as Caleb finished with his hair.

“I am done. Does that feel better?” Caleb asked, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to look again. He did anyways, in the larger mirror on the wall, and was pleasantly surprised. His skin was still a bit pale, but no longer ashy with lack of moisture. He did even mind the longer hair, now that Caleb had worked out the tangles, the longer curls falling past his shoulders. He wondered if Yasha would braid it around his horns. His lips even looked more like his, smoothed and shining from the balm. He pressed his fingers to them and hummed a please affirmative to Caleb.

“Good, would you like me to call fetch Yasha for you?”

Yes. He missed her terribly, it felt like it was just yesterday that he had been terrified about how she was because she had been taken from him by slavers. But he still wasn’t quite ready to confront that.

“In a bit, stay with me?” Molly couldn’t read Caleb’s expression, it was a mixture of surprise and warmth. He didn’t say anything, but followed him to sit on the edge of the ridiculous bed. Caleb seemed to be looking to Molly for clues of what to do, so Molly sat close and rested his cheek on the wizard's shoulder. When he didn't flinch, or stiffen like Molly would have expected, he took it as a sign that this was ok. His tail wrapped lazily around Caleb’s ankle, and he drew little patterns on Molly’s knee. They stayed like that for only gods know how long, in comfortable silence, letting the tiefling clear out his mind from all the clutter and noise the day brought. He was beginning to feel like he could maybe, possibly, start process the day’s emotions.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

whose brow is laid in thorn (chapter three)

Chapters: 1, 2, 3

Huge thanks to my lovely friends who beta this for me @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian!

Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment on Ao3!

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Molly realises the true responsibilities of being a prince to a realm with a doubtful king...

Alternate: come and get your homoerotic sword fighting, fellow gays 

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Mollymauk wondered if people speculated about why he spent so much time down in the practice yards, why the early hours of the morning often found him in the armory or out in the moonlit space at the very centre of the castle courtyard, scimitars whirling like shards of starlight in his hands. Probably they assumed he was down here fucking a succession of stable boys and chambermaids, or else this was where he met his personal smugglers who provided him with various powders and pills and injectables.

He wondered if his father ever proudly spoke of how martial his son was, if he ever boasted of his prowess with weaponry. If he ever took comfort in the fact that, despite it all, at least his heir knew how to kill.

Mollymauk didn’t know what he hoped for. He’d long ago given up on trying to understand what the king wanted from him or whether he cared.

The truth was, training just gave him some comfort. It was repetitive, rhythmic and required all of his attention, even thud of his heavy heartbeat. It was simple. When he was swinging at the wicker targets or spearing sacks of flour shaped vaguely like people or deflecting bolts of low level magic that would give him a faint electric shock if they found his flesh, he wasn’t thinking about how he hadn’t been allowed outside of the castle walls more than a year now. He wasn’t thinking about the poorly concealed fury in his father’s eyes when someone had spoken against him in the last council meeting, the frequency with which the occupants of those other seats rotated out, certain formerly important members that he hadn’t heard from since they’d shown their dissent towards some of the latest policies, the angry letters that came from neighbouring kingdoms.

And he wasn’t thinking about how before too long, it would all be his. And he had no idea what he would do then.

He was no fool, despite his carefully sewn costume. He knew the king was keeping him on a short leash these past few years to groom him for the throne he’d occupy one day, so he could learn to inspire the same fear, the same flinches from a gaze alone, the same ruthlessness. He’d had his years of freedom, of slipping past his guards at night to go to the lower echelons of the city and tip in gold at the taverns. He’d been allowed his friends and their little adventures. He’d been allowed to be himself.

And look at the trouble it had caused.

Mollymauk closed his eyes to it all and slid his scimitars out of their sheaths. The yard around him was silent, these earliest hours just past midnight were the only times when the castle and its hundreds of residents made no noise at all. Just after when the night guard took their leave but before the bakers rose to start up the ovens and begin the morning’s bread. He could be completely alone here.

Beau usually said she would kill him for messing with her grounds, asking him if he was a godsdammned Expositor trained monk of the Cobalt Soul explicitly hired by the king to serve as the master at arms or if he was a pampered parrot of a prince whose grip was always off so he scuffed up her training swords and couldn’t work a staff to save his life. But they both knew about these little night time visits he made when he couldn’t sleep or when the day had just been too much for him and not a word was said. Sometimes he caught her putting the dummies back into place after he’d forgotten exactly how she liked them aligned or rebrushing the sand in the training circle after he’d not done it to her exact specifications. A look would pass between them when she saw him watching, a momentary pause, but then they’d go right back to good naturedly insulting each other as only two friends could and not another word would be said.

Mollymauk was grateful for that. Not that he’d ever tell her.

He’d stripped down to just a loose shirt, bound by the leather guards on his forearms and his tight leggings, hair pushed back off his face with a band. The night air rose chills on his purple skin, prickling as it filled his lungs, waking up something inside him.

His first cut was so sharp it could be heard as it pierced the air. Mollymauk revelled in the stretch of his muscles as he held his sword out in a low lunge, holding as still as he could for a few pulsing heartbeats before sweeping into a whirling storm of attacks at nothing. High cuts, low arcs, turns that brought one leg flush with his nose, seconds where the swords changed hands, moments where one hand was splayed on the sand below him and supporting his whole body, snapshot instants rushing by like lightning. It was a dance and by gods, did he miss dancing.

The swords dance fit his heartbeat so well, when one sword stopped dead with a metallic ring, it was as if his heart had frozen in his ribcage. His eyes snapped open.

And found his nose inches from Caleb’s, his eyes bright and a small smile playing on his face. And his fingers tight around the grip of the short dagger whose guard had caught the point of his scimitar.

“I told you years ago that these curved swords of yours are too easy to turn,” he said in that soft, unassuming way of his.

Molly huffed out a laugh, shoulders relaxing though not enough to break the block between the two blades, “So I move so fast no one has a chance to turn them. Problem solved.”

Caleb’s mouth quirked and one eyebrow lifted as he eyed their crossed blades, “No one?”

“Well...we can’t all be Volstruker.”

Something inside Mollymauk thrilled, against his better judgement. Times like this he could convince himself the last ten years hadn’t happened at all and the Caleb by his side now was the Caleb he’d fallen in love with.

“Perhaps...though you really need to tell me if you’re ever planning on leaving your chambers in the dead of night, your highness. I don’t mind admitting you scared me half to death.”

Molly’s smile curdled with guilt, “Ah. I’m sorry. It’s...it’s been a while since I needed to think about things like that.”

“No harm done,” Caleb allowed, “This time...though as long as I’m here, would you prefer to train with a partner?”

Molly’s laugh rang out across the empty yard and bounced off the stone towers that surrounded them, as he finally broke the embrace of their blades and stepped back, “So you can beat the tar out of me like you did when we were kids?”

Caleb replied with simple courtesy, “Oh, I’m sure his highness’ skills have improved at least somewhat. And if not, well, it is as you say. We cannot all be Volstruker.”

“You’re on. Simple straight blades, if you would be so kind.”

Caleb quickly fetched two from the armoury, their edges filed down so they could serve as training swords. Molly couldn’t help but note Caleb was dressed similarly to himself, a simple sleeping shirt thrown over the trousers from his black uniform, cut close so as not to hamper his moves in combat. He also couldn’t help but note his sleep-tousled hair, not tied away from his hard features, the gentler set of his face than any daylight hour saw, the almost see through cotton of his simple shirt…

Molly slapped himself mentally, turning away as soon as his blade was in his hand. You aren’t being fair to him he snapped, control your damn self.

Best to start soon, so he could chalk his raised pulse and flushed cheeks to something else. He turned as Caleb finished tying back his hair and settled into an easy starting stance, mirror to the one Molly quickly established. Their blades tapped once, as if two old friends in greeting, before Caleb lunged forward with a sudden advance. Molly had to move swiftly to block it with a hurried, sloppy front guard.

He looked at Caleb, scandalised, “Weren’t you asleep not ten minutes ago?”

The ghost of his old friend smiled at him and broke the guard cleanly, beginning a rapid exchange of slash and parry that Molly visibly struggled to counter. It had always been this way between the two of them, Caleb’s Volstruker training more than a match for Molly’s own, even after he’d gotten a Cobalt Soul monk as his instructor. In a way, he’d always secretly appreciated each time Caleb knocked him into the dust.

It was just one of the many ways Molly could know Caleb had seen him as a friend rather than a prince.

For a while it was just the clang of their blades against each other, the scuff of their feet in the sand and their own rapid breathing. Or rather, Molly’s rapid breathing. Caleb was like something robotic, never seeming to tire or miss a single move or break a sweat. Molly, in comparison, could feel a blush raising on his chest and see his breath fogging between them.

In fact, the only time Molly saw any change in his expression was when an empty fade of Caleb’s brought their swords kissing sharply in front of their faces, their noses inches from each other. He thought he saw something in Caleb’s eyes then but it could well have been a flicker of moonlight, a second’s beat before they stepped apart and Caleb lunged again.

Molly was flagging badly after another minute of combat, shoulders heaving and brow furrowing as he moved from guard position to guard position, not even able to try and land a hit on Caleb. Before too long his arm would fail and Caleb would have him.

There would have been something comforting about that. Something familiar.

He was a little regretful when the time finally came to shift the position of his feet ever so slightly, to centre himself almost imperceptibly differently. At Caleb’s next slash, he doubled over, hissing through his teeth, pivoting away from Caleb and cradling his sword arm.

“Ach,” he heard Caleb groan, “Molly, I’m sor-”

He didn’t even get a chance to finish. Because in the time it took to form those syllables, the sword changed from one of Molly’s hands to the other and he struck cobra fast. One foot smartly hooked Caleb’s from underneath him, Molly’s perfectly undamaged sword arm pushing his chest so he went down heavily onto the sand. Before he even registered what had happened, his prince’s sword point was at his throat.

Molly grinned down at him, framed in moonlight, “Yield?”

“Yield,” Caleb didn’t even hesitate. If Molly were in the mood to really indulge himself, he’d have said it was awe making his voice so breathless, “I don’t...what happened?”

“We’re not children anymore, Caleb,” he replied, not hiding the tinge of sadness in his voice, “And I am not Volstruker. I tricked you.”

He was relieved to see the smile break on Caleb’s face and how readily he took the offered hand that replaced the swordpoint.

“No. No, you most certainly are not Volstruker, your highness.”

Once he was upright, Caleb looked at him earnestly, barely even noting the sand in his hair, “Can you teach me how to do that? How to feign it so effortlessly, how you shifted your weight like that…”

Molly chuckled, “Wasn’t part of your training, hm?”

“No,” Caleb frowned a little, though at some thought in his head rather than at his prince, “No, the Volstruker… they wouldn’t ever have thought of it. Showing any kind of weakness, ever even seeing it could be an advantage...it is not their way.”

Their way, Molly bit his lip. Not our way.

He wasn’t being fair, he knew that. But how was any of this fair?

“I can teach you,” he nodded quickly, “Of course I can teach you.”

“You teaching me something...” Caleb smiled, “It would make rather a nice change, wouldn’t it?”

It would be about damn time, Molly thought tiredly.

Neither of them noticed they hadn’t yet unclasped their hands.

Things seemed to have gotten a little easier for Caleb over the last months, at least in some areas. Molly was at least relieved to see that he was willing to spend time with their friends.

It had been awkward at first, when he’d been avoiding them entirely outside of when the constant tether between him and the prince forced it on him, when no one seemed quite sure how to act around this new version of him. Quick hellos whenever Jester came in for one of their regular chats, hellos that fast turned tearful. Sad glances from Beau whenever he accompanied Molly to training, ones that quickly turned to anger on her face. Yasha staring at his back with an unreadable expression.

There had been one quite terrible instance when Veth had come in to change Molly’s bed linen one morning and come face to face with Caleb coming out of his own chambers to greet the prince as he finished dressing. Veth had frozen in place, her eyes wide and so heartbreakingly sad as she faced the young man she’d considered a second son. Caleb had opened his mouth, searching for something, anything, to say but Veth had turned and fled before he could. He’d gone very quiet for the rest of the day, Mollymauk noticed.

But Molly couldn’t avoid his friends forever, not when they’d been the only thing that had gotten him through the last ten years. He missed the evenings where they’d lounge in one of the many royal sitting rooms with their feet up on furniture older than they were, making jokes and laughing, and somehow everything would seem alright. He missed how easy everything had been.

And, as it turned out, sometimes things could be made easy. Because after a few times standing in the corner like a ghost, Caleb was pulled back in slowly and steadily, like a man coming in from the bitter cold to a roaring fire. No one was quite sure how it happened, when he started to smile at Fjord’s stories of the sea again or let Veth sit in his lap like she used to or when Yasha began to shave his beard for him again. There was no grand moment when they all whirled around to see him sitting there in the same spot he’d always occupied, the one that no one had dared move into after he was taken away. It happened gradually, the way small streams ford deep canyons. The way raindrops can bring down a prison wall.

The way hope could bloom in the pit of your stomach no matter how hard you tried.

It was one of those long, golden evenings where all of their schedules somehow managed to align and they all found themselves in the room they usually took over. The fire roared, thanks to Caleb, and the wine was flowing for those who cared to partake, the whole air smelled of freshly smoking wood and velvet and warmth. One of those nights where Molly could look around and feel truly, deeply fortunate, the way all the riches and status and power never made him feel.

“...I’m only saying, if a princess can’t eat lemon cakes at midnight, then what is the point of being a princess?” Jester was saying huffily, her head resting in Beau’s lap, “I’d even go down and make them!”

“If you did, we could kiss the kitchen goodbye,” Molly flicked his tail at her nose, she was well in target from where he sat on the carpet, leaning back against one of the settees to be close to the fire, “Most of the western castle too, probably.”

“Stone doesn’t melt, idiot!” she shot back at him, swiping at his tail like a kitten. Yasha, who had her feet in her lap, somewhere within the skirts of her voluminous dress, snorted.

“Dragonfire can melt stone,” Fjord interjected, sipping his wine, “Saw the ruins of Port Udall once. All the buildings were slumped over like old candles, even the stone ones. The rest of it was bone and old ash and nothing growing. They said an ancient red dragon did it.”

“There! If an ancient red dragon can do it, Jessie can definitely do it,” Molly said firmly, before yelping as his sister caught his tail again in retaliation.

“Thank the gods nothing like that has ever come here,” Veth shuddered, glancing up nervously as if dragons might descend at any moment, “Think of the damage it would do to the lower levels…”

“It would be hard for them to look worse than they already do.”

Of course it was Caleb who’d spoken, his voice was softer and quieter than everyone else’s. And now it was especially faded and sad, enough that the light, jovial tone shrivelled as if it had fallen in the fire, while all eyes went to him.

“What’s that mean?” Beau frowned.

Caleb seemed to shrink a little, as he always did when he was bearing the weight of more than one person’s attention. He cleared his throat awkwardly, “Um...well I saw it as I rode through the city. Have...have any of you been down there recently? To the slums?”

“Slums?” Molly repeated, something gripping his stomach in a tight grip.

“That’s what Master Trent called them,” Caleb blinked, looking around them all, “And..well, the description was accurate.”

“There have been more beggars around the docks recently,” Fjord admitted, looking like a man having a difficult realisation. It was mirrored around the group.

Except on Mollymauk’s face. Mollymauk only felt simmering fury.

“And in the marketplace,” Caduceus echoed, “Everyone I’ve seen, I’ve given food to and I’ve treated some deficiencies I’ve seen but...there’s new faces all the time it seems.”

“Tell me, Caleb,” Molly managed to get out through his gritted teeth.

“Well…” he seemed hesitant, probably seeing what was building in the red eyes staring at him, “There’s shacks thrown up all around the inside of the city walls, some on the outside too when they can’t find the space. There was filth running through the streets, there’s no gutters down there so people must be getting sick. Everyone looked...well, desperate. There were, um...there were children. I don’t think they had anyone to look after them. They seemed hungry. Master Ikithon said a lot of them were coming in from the country, the harvest was so poor that many of them lost their farms when they couldn’t pay their taxes.”

Molly’s voice came out with the dangerous regularity of someone about to explode, “And you’re telling me, Caleb, that I knew none of this. I’m the fucking heir to this entire kingdom and I had no idea my people were starving less than a godsdamned mile from where I’m sitting right this fucking second?”

His voice grew to a roar at the end and a crack ran up the glass goblet he was holding. The wine became vinegar on his tongue. No one knew what to say, there was only the crackling of the fire. Or perhaps that was the fury sparking in his chest.

“There has not been a single word of this at any council session I’ve sat on in the last year, no petitions in court. No word of any kind of help, no plan for what to do. Just more and more shit about the fucking taxes that are apparently starving those people. Is that what you’re telling me, Caleb?”

“Yes,” Caleb’s blue eyes were steady and sad, none of the wariness he saw in his friends.

“Then what the fuck is my father doing about this?” he demanded, barely recognising that he was looking down on them all, that he’d stood up at some point and hardly noticed, “Where the hell is he when his people actually need him? I’m just supposed to inherit a kingdom full of starving people who think the man on all their coins has abandoned them? Is this what being a fucking king is?”

Finally the glass shattered in his grip, filling the stunned silence with an icy crunch and a quick hiss of pain he assumed only he could hear as the shards bit into his hand. The anger burned away quickly, leaving a cold, empty vacuum in its wake that shame and hopelessness rushed to fill. Trembling, he pressed his one good hand over his eyes.

“I’m sorry…” he croaked, “I’m not mad at you all, I just…I shouldn’t have lost my temper…”

He knew his sister had stood and taken his hand by the sweet, almost sugary, vanilla smell of her magic, warm as it ran into his cuts and closed them.

“This isn’t the only thing he’s been keeping from us, is it?” she asked sadly.

Molly opened his eyes, wishing there was anything he could say to take the hurt from her voice. She played the innocent, for her and their family’s benefit, but those wide, purple eyes saw more than anyone would expect. He just wished there were better things to look at.

She’d always wanted to believe the best of their father, the way she wanted to believe in everyone, even after his relationship with their mother had started to fray and he’d caused such damage to Mollymauk. But it wasn’t just him who’d started to see the way the crown had poisoned the man they both used to look up to.

“Well…” she sighed, when her brother’s silence answered her, “This doesn’t have to be the way things are. This isn’t the kind of king you have to be.”

Molly inhaled and exhaled slowly, the ghost of the cuts prickling as he flexed his hand to better hold Jester’s, “He isn’t going to like it.”

The shame at the fear in his own voice roiled inside him. How much had been sliding past because he’d been too scared to see it, how many people had been hurt because he couldn’t stand up to the king?

All of a sudden, the distance between him and his friends shrank, he felt them close about him. He felt hands on his shoulders, on his back, on his arms, eyes on him that didn’t judge or scorn. If this room was the only place where he didn’t have to think about everything that worried him, all the imperfections in his life, then this was where he could be brave.

This was where he could decide what his duty really was.

Mollymauk drew himself up and nodded, “And he can go ahead and not like it. He wants me close, he wants me as his heir then he can deal with the decisions I make. What the hell is he going to do, throw me in the dungeons?”

“You’d break out in five minutes tops,” Beau smiled wryly.

“And we’d come get you in ten,” Fjord nodded firmly.

Molly’s laugh was thin but it was there and he felt better for hearing it, “Well then...I’m going to need some gold. Not from the treasury, my own. We’ll need to bring in food from along the coast, I’ll send a request right now. But until then, we’ll take from the kitchens. We have more than enough, there’s damn well going to be some to spare for our own people. Beau, Yasha, go and commandeer us some wagons.”

“Right now, my prince?” Yasha’s flickering smile showed she knew the answer.

“Of course right now,” Molly nodded, “We’ve let far too much time go by already. Anyone has a problem, tell them they can take it up with their crown prince.”

“And their princess,” Jester interjected, beaming.

Molly grinned back at her proudly, “Are you all with me?”

The resounding, affirmative reply was all Molly needed to carry this the rest of the way with a smile on his face.

He handed out jobs and dispersed them, feeling an unfamiliar but welcome sense of pride in what they were doing, in each of his friends and, if he was honest, in himself. It was then he noticed Caleb, still where he’d been sat for the entire evening, not having moved a muscle though his eyes said everything his friends had if in a different way.

“I’ve been a bit of a fool, haven’t I, Caleb?” he sighed once they were alone, feeling the edges of that pit still inside him, still with some room for guilt and shame.

Caleb rose, crossed the space between them and grasped his hand, steadying him enough that the bad feelings retreated.

“I think you’ve been scared for a long time, Mollymauk,” he spoke softly, eyes gentle and reflecting the movement of the fire, the same one that turned his hair into burnished copper, “But now you’re becoming the king I always knew you were going to be.”

“Always?” Molly found himself having to swallow hard, feeling every inch of Caleb’s skin that pressed against his own.

“Of course. From the moment I met you, I knew you would be a king I’ll be proud to stand beside.”

This high up on the battlements, the wind found its way under Molly’s hood even as tightly as it was pulled down to cover his distinctive purple hair. He felt a churning dizziness in his stomach as he peered over the edge and saw the ground so far below him.

“Ready?”

Beside him, Caleb blended almost perfectly into the evening shadows thanks to his uniform and his bound up hair. Molly might not even have known he was there, if his hand wasn’t on his arm to steady his prince.

Molly flashed him a grimace from under his hood, “Feels a hell of a lot longer than a year since I did this.”

Caleb’s chuckle found him even with the wind whipping around them, “But are you ready?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, feeling the truth of it on his tongue, “I’m ready.”

He went first, partly to prove to his friend that he wasn’t quite as terrified as he appeared, partly to get it over with. One step out into the dizzying expanse of the thin air, the forty or so feet between him and a messy death. The second’s worth of terror as everything dropped and the world began to accelerate around him. And the inhalation, the relief so sharp it was like a mouthful of alcohol as his hand caught the edge of the stone crenellation he’d just leapt from and he held fast.

Molly couldn’t help it, he laughed wildly, stretching out as far as he dared into the nothingness with only the hand keeping him anchored and the flat of his boots on the pebbled wall. The wind snagged his cloak and tried to rip it away but he let it try. He felt like he could have taken flight at that moment.

“Quiet!” Caleb whispered, as he dropped down too with much more grace, “Someone will hear us.”

Though as the wind lifted back his cowl, Molly could see he was smiling.

The rest of the way down the wall was easy, there were pebbles and divots put into the old stone for easy handholds. In fact, it had been specifically designed so, in just this one part of the immense outer wall, with the goal of giving the royal family a secret, easy way out if they became besieged. Molly suspected that he wasn’t the only one to use it for this exact purpose, sneaking out of the palace past his curfew to go drinking with his friends.

Once they hit the ground, they disappeared into the small grove of trees that grew around the castle as an extra line of defence and a pleasant garden for autumn walks and summer picnics. As soon as they were underneath the leaves, black in the thickening twilight, they were invisible to any guards atop the wall who might think to glance down. Molly’s heart stayed in his throat as he ran after Caleb, having to steer by the faintest flickers of his cloak hem in the almost solid blackness before him. Twigs snapped under his heels, the air was cold enough to make his throat ache and his lungs burn but the grin never slipped from his face.

He couldn’t help it, he threw back his head and laughed wildly again, the sound bouncing off the trunks and sounding like the call of half a hundred demented birds.

It just felt so good to breathe again.

The meeting point hadn’t changed from when they were foolish kids doing exactly this. It was the same clearing on the outer edge of the copse, on the far side so they were still hidden from the city. Molly and Caleb weren’t the first ones there, Caduceus and Fjord were already waiting for them, greeting them with the correct response to their own whistled tune, the same they’d always used so they would know it was friends approaching. The girls came after, Beau and Jester already giggling and hanging off each other, Yasha smiling as she carried Veth on her shoulders.

Molly saw something similar to his own excited energy mirrored in his friends. Everyone seemed to feel acutely just how long it had been since they allowed themselves something like this, something that felt like a victory.

When they were children, it would have sufficed just to stay in their little clearing, chase each other around and build forts and knock each other into the little stream. But they certainly weren’t kids any more and they knew of a different way to spend this evening.

There was something undeniably beautiful about the kingdom’s capital, Asarius. Not many visitors would think the same upon seeing the black stone nearly everything was wrought in, its winding street that curved around the hill the city sat on and then branched off in endless alleyways and bolt holes like arteries in a body, the shiny, volcanic cobblestones that lined the streets, the stink and din of hundreds of bodies pressed close together by the city walls. But Mollymauk had always found home here. He loved the paper lanterns that swung above their heads to light the streets, the ones he risked pulling his hood back just a little so he could properly see. He loved the babble of so many voices around him, the brushes of other people’s lives as they streamed alongside his own, never realising that it was their crown prince and his retinue passing them by. He loved the many different carts each selling something exciting and delicious or, well, at least exciting. He loved the different languages, the different kinds of people, all finding their own place in Asarius.

And one day, that place would be under his protection. Every face he passed as they walked down the main street towards the glow of red lanterns would be one of his subjects one day. One of his people.

After the last few weeks, the thought didn’t give him the same terror as it once did.

It had broken his heart to see the poverty festering like a disease in Asarius, the first night they’d taken wagons of food down to the poorest parts of the capital. Every city had its less well maintained streets, it’s darker, more shadowy parts, he knew this, but what he’d seen that night was outright neglect. Children with no families to go home to, curled in gutters like stray dogs. Women clutching babies to their chests in a futile attempt to give them some warmth their humble shelters couldn’t provide. An old bone being seen as a feast, hacking coughs audible from every corner, hungry, defeated eyes from the shadows.

It was neglect. It was cruelty. And it had blossomed under his ignorance.

He’d stepped right off the wagon on that first night, so quickly even Caleb hadn’t been able to catch his arm. He’d taken a loaf of bread from the carts of food stacked in the bed and gently approached the closest citizen, a tabaxi woman with a cub on her knee, sitting on the porch of a lopsided shack with only the city wall to keep it from tumbling over entirely. He’d gone to one knee in front of her, saw her expression turn to one of pure shock and fear as she’d realised exactly who it was.

And as he’d pressed the loaf into her hand, he’d apologised to her. And he’d sworn his family would never forget it’s people again.

It would not be a quick or easy fix. Molly couldn’t go with the wagons every time, as he’d wanted to at first, but he knew to push it only so far. Instead he kept the memories close to his chest, the people’s hands he’d shaken, the children whose hair he’d ruffled fondly and asked their name, the stories every elder had told him. He kept their pleas and their needs and their struggles, took them gladly on his own shoulders and made thousands of promises he intended to keep. Instead, he watched the wagons leave every week, laden with food and oil and fabric he’d purchased, and felt a little more like a prince.

Of course, his stomach had been a solid block of ice when the subject of the charity had been brought up in the council meeting, ever so gingerly, nervous eyes darting to the king to see how he would react to news of every mouth in the slums singing his son’s praises. They’d all known, naturally, that the alms weren’t officially sanctioned, that Mollymauk had acted without his father’s permission.

He’d been every bit as fearful to see what his father would say, he’d felt every second of that long, terrible pause tick by. But he had made himself sit back casually, one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, he’d made his eyes meet the king’s in a steady, even gaze. Only Caleb’s strong, sure presence at his side and the memories of the joy he’d brought had kept it all from crumbling.

“Well done,” the king had eventually replied, one hand coming up to stroke his goatee, “It would seem you’ve finally found a...pet project...that interests you, son. For the time being at least. Chancellor, make sure that in future the charity is paid for by the crown treasury. Just in case my son gets bored and his attention wanders. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Mollymauk?”

Molly’s shoulders tightened and he felt the same tension in Caleb beside him. He was an expert in speaking his father’s language and he missed not a single word of what lurked beneath his light, joking tone.

“Fine by me, father. You’ve got me there,” he shrugged in response, flicking his tail idly, “After all, it needs to be done. And...well, it really is a job for the king, isn’t it?”

I can speak it just as well as you, father, are you proud? And I won’t forget what you did. I’m sure you’ll return the favour.

Molly knew some kind of retribution would be coming. But he wouldn’t think about that tonight. Not when the red glow of the lanterns up above was cutting through the gathering night and there was music on the air and the smell of alcohol, a wide variety of perfumes and sparking fires.

They swept into one of the taverns they’d always gone to in their younger days, one where they knew they could count on some discrecion when they pulled their hoods back. As soon as he was under the lintel, Molly felt himself wrapped in warmth and loud, laughing voices and embraced the giddy relief inside him.

Gods, it was so, so good to breathe again.

He let the night run away from him, gladly. It was as if he’d never been away, finding warm, eager welcomes at the dice tables, at the bar, on the dancefloor. In every corner, people clasped his hand and thanked him for his generosity in helping Asarius find it’s pride again and said how good it was to see him back amongst them. Molly gambled freely, he bought drinks, he laughed and swapped stories with the other patrons, he flirted gamely with the servers. In flashes he saw Yasha dominating at arm wrestling competitions and winning almost as many as Jester, he saw Fjord reenacting a fight with some pirates for a captive audience, Cad was choking on some drink Veth had bought for him over at the bar, Beau was making a barmaid blush.

He took a moment to himself, leaning against a beam and taking it all in, enjoying the ache in his jaw from smiling so much. He knew it should feel like ten years ago but, somehow, it didn’t. It felt like here and now.

The only difference was he was happy. At this moment he was happy.

Caleb was sitting at a table by himself which, in fairness, was exactly where he would have been ten years ago. There was, however, a small mug of beer on the table in front of him that had a few sips taken out of it at least.

“You know, for all people hype this up,” he said as Molly approached, turning the tin mug in his hands, “I’d have expected it to taste better.”

Molly laughed, “Not seen you drinking before…”

“No,” Caleb admitted, a smile tugging on his lips, “It seemed like the night for trying something new.”

“Indeed. But how about something old?” Molly returned, suddenly shy and not hiding it on his face.

Caleb’s eyes flickered to his own, questioning. When he saw the hand Molly was extending to him, his expression shifted into something unreadable and he almost lost his nerve.

“Would you like to dance with me, Caleb?”

After a few moments, his old friend smiled and nodded, taking his hand, “Someone might need to protect you out there after all.”

“And there’s no one I’d want more,” Molly beamed.

The musicians were especially fine tonight, the kind of lively tavern music with laughing strings and skirling drums and bawdy lyrics everyone could join in with and slam their drinks on the table to. It was very different from the stiff backed balls that had been his only entertainment recently.

Caleb smiled nervously, “They only taught me how to waltz at the Soltryce Academy.”

“Oh, I seem to remember you not being all that bad,” Molly smiled, holding up his arm for Caleb to mirror as a bright country dance tune burst out from the corner where the musicians were pressed, “But even so, maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will try and assassinate me.”

So at least Caleb had a smile on his face as they began to dance, twirling through a loose knot of other couples like two leaves caught on an errant breeze. It was the kind of stomping, rhythmic, simple two step that left plenty of time for their gazes to linger and hands to brush across each other.

“Not all that different from swordplay, eh?” Molly teased, his voice low under the music.

“I’d rather have steel in my hand, I think,” Caleb smiled, though there was something brittle about it, like he was making his mouth do the movements while his eyes were elsewhere.

When they swapped places, Molly looked around with a moment’s anxiousness. Was he about to be assassinated on a dancefloor? But the place looked much the same as it had before, his friends still mixing and laughing and drinking, part of the warm tapestry of everything.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Molly put in gently, to try and distract him from whatever was causing his anxiety, letting something inside him open up,  “Tonight has been...well, it’s been wonderful. It’s been the best night I’ve had in so long and...between this and you opening my eyes to what was going on in my own city, I feel like I’ve remembered who I am. And not just that, I’m becoming someone I actually want to be, ever since you’ve come home. You were right, whatever it looks like, my life is better with you.”

He’d said more than he’d meant to but the night was just so perfect and it had just been so long since he’d felt so free and so like himself, so far from everything he’d been feeling under his father’s thumb. It was like a deep hunger was finally being sated.

And when the dance brought Caleb and Molly back together and he saw the tears in his eyes, it all came crashing down.

“Fuck…” Molly cursed, stopping dead even as the music kept going and the world kept turning, “Oh fuck, Caleb I’m so sorry...that was too much, I shouldn’t just have rambled on like that.”

“No,” Caleb shook his head, a slight tremble in his hands, “Gods help me, it’s not that, it’s the opposite…”

“Caleb…” Molly breathed, the giddiness from before now a sickening emptiness. Suddenly the lights seemed too bright and the music too loud, the laughter around the room now aimed at him.

The rest of the world caught up with them in a sharp, sudden lurch. Cold wind poured through the door which had been thrown wide. Framed in now harsh red light was one of the royal messengers, their eyes wide and the set of their mouth grim.

“Word from the palace,” their voice sounded through the room like a death knell, “A curfew is in effect from this moment forth, all citizens of Asarius must return to their homes and clear the streets. The Jagenoths have invaded our northern shore.”

The pronouncement was greeted with silence and stares, the kind of silence that followed the sound of ice cracking underfoot. Molly was so aware of the eyes on him, the weight of their shock as they looked to their prince.

From across the bar, he saw his little sister mouth his name, the naked fear on her face.

He found he had no comfort to give them. He’d had the floor ripped out from under him, just the same as the rest of them. All he could think of was the way his father had smiled at him across the council table, the hardness in his eyes.

He wasn’t surprised when the words finally came from the messenger.

“The kingdom is officially at war.”

[seafleece]

“hello, essek.”

“ah— i— hello, mollymauk.” it’s late summer— hot, almost muggy. essek isn’t used to the weather in the empire, even now, doesn’t like the idea of being seen. jester knows, he thinks, that he comes here; she’d gotten him the cloak he’sd wearing now, a thin, gauzy thing that’s still opaque and lets in the rare breeze.

more of molly’s body seems to be fungi, now— he has the urge to compliment caduceus on his work. their time together has exposed the body to the air, and now patches of pale pink lichen crawl over the ribs, the curl of one horn. the jewelry, now cleaned, is bright in the sun.

“if you’re surprised i know it’s you, well, i don’t know anyone else who’s in line to dig up my corpse and talk to it.”

essek winces. “i suppose that is fair.”

“why are you here?”

“i, um,” and he crosses and uncrosses his legs, feeling strangely hot— even more so, were that possible.

(it’s funny, how much he’d pinned his hopes back then. he’s trying to learn to laugh at himself, in retrospect— lonely and simultaneously so afraid to get close, so desperate for it. gods, he’d thought so much of caleb, had dreamed up this person who understood treason, who understood the way solitude feels when it’s been so long you forget the alternative— or, perhaps, never had one at all.

and well, maybe caleb did know it better than him, and thus chose it in the end. over— over things he doesn’t think it does much good to imagine, anymore. and laughing at who he was, he thinks, only hurts them both, the person he was and the one he is now. foolishness is worth laughing at, but pain, not so much.

jester still calls, at least once a week, or answers so happily when he calls her that it shakes loose the cold, cloying thing still at the center of his chest, just a little. he’d helped her augment the spell that one winter’s crest so she could lend it to someone else, and sometimes she puts beau on, or yasha, or even her mother and it still startles him, every time, how they seem happy to speak to him.)

“i don’t quite know.”

mollymauk— he feels more present now, essek thinks. closer to the earth. or perhaps he wishes it were so— says nothing to this.

“would you want to come back?”

essek does not tend to speak suddenly— it was trained out of him so young, startling the umavi— but the question seems to simply pour from him, his mouth, like a sudden flow of water. like an upheaval of something from deep down.

the body of mollymauk, knitted over with the tissue of caduceus’s strange plants, laughs.

“oh— i’m sorry, shadowhand. if you had asked me when i was alive, i would have told you that i was what was brought back, already.”

“and now?”

“i wonder, you know, if it would even be possible for you to know what death is like, now. you’re consecuted, no? i imagine it’s more like a waiting room.”

“what is it for you?”

and mollymauk laughs, again, quieter. “it’s a lot like sleeping, honestly.”

“oh.”

and essek is young, you know, by the dynasty’s standards, infinitely young— not even two centuries, still on his first life— he has so much living, left. but gods, if that doesn’t get at something inside of him, some part of him so tired that sleep can’t even reach it. something that longs, maybe, just a little, for the undemanding weight of the earth, around him. dark, and warmth, and quiet. freedom, maybe, from that funny ache that never seems to leave him, that both intensifies and abates when jester calls, or bowls him over in an embrace when he comes to visit the Xhorhaus while they’re there on business, or vacation, or gods only know what.

“are you going to answer?” he says, quietly, and shoves the thought down again.

“hmm?”

“what i asked earlier. if you would come back.”

“oh.”

there’s a long silence— essek starts to fear if he’s miscounted his questions, and then—

“you know, i don’t know. i would like to see the sun again, i think.”

and essek has his parasol, today— jester’s paints, long-gone as her first set is, are so reliable, it’s survived so many rough seasons beyond rosohna, so many showers of debris and worse— and the sun, he can hardly see when it’s out, but the way mollymauk says it— the body of mollymauk, he has to remember— hits him oddly. suddenly, he longs for its warmth; or, rather, he longs to be in a body that wants to feel it.

“why, shadowhand, are you offering?”

“i— that is—“

and the body of mollymauk laughs and laughs and laughs.

“mollymauk,” he says, suddenly, and the laughter stops. he must be very careful, now.

“yes?” the head tilts, watches him eyelessly.

“if i were to not ask you my last question,” essek says, choosing his words, the lack of tilt to them, “your soul would remain. for a time.”

“for a time,” mollymauk says, and then, more cheerfully, “but all things return to the earth.”

he goes quiet for a long moment. “oh—” as if remembering something he could have learned anywhere else than from essek himself, from jester’s messages she doesn’t know get through, “—but you are very powerful, shadowhand, aren’t you?”

“yes.” essek says it with certainty. it it the one thing he knows he has.

“then,” mollymauk says, “i suppose it depends on how strongly you cast the spell, how long i can stay.”

“i suppose it does.”

mollymauk is quiet again, for even longer.

“you don’t know me, you know. everyone called me molly. you don’t know that.” there’s a note of uncertainty, to the voice, that essek has not heard before. “would you keep me around, then? to have someone to talk to? to abet the loneliness?”

“maybe,” he says. “or.”

“or?”

essek closes his eyes for a long moment, heart fluttering like the wings of some strange, fragile bird, and reaches for mollymauk’s skeletal hand, fits his fingers between the bones. the sun burns where it touches his skin, and he does not flinch away.

“to give you some time to make up your mind.”

( @fiovske and i had a talk about shadowmauk)

[salamanderskin]

Five times Caleb didn’t let the Mighty Nein take care of him when he was sick… (part 5)

 Parts one and two Parts three and four 

Oop I forgot to post this. In which Caleb falls asleep on Mollymauk.

Caleb thinks maybe the rest of the Nein allow him more time on the wagon would be fair, because he can use the time so profitably in transcribing spells or at least resting to recover the magic he has spent. He doesn't complain, if he can read rather than ride he is much happier, especially today Today Mollymauk is the one riding with him. They sit beside each other and Molly is quiet for once. The teifling occupies his hands with his deck of tarot cards. He shufffles them in intricate patterns and pulls the same card from the deck again and again, then makes it appear from each of his pockets in turn. Caleb idly casts 'detect magic' and is amused to see his companion is working with sleight of hand alone.

It would be a peaceful journey if it weren't for how his nose is bothering him. 

The itchiness of the night before has settled in the back of his nose and it seems like every time he gets into the flow of writing he has to turn and fish out his handkerchief for a convulsive, “hetPSch!”

From horseback a little way away, Nott calls, “Bless you, Caleb!” and gives him a wry, sympathetic look. He shrugs back at her.The first ten sneezes or so, his travelling companion doesn't react at all. Molly can read people well enough to know that intrusion into Caleb's reading time is nearly always unwelcome, and Caleb is grateful for this. 

It is hard enough to concentrate as it is, with the wind ruffling the pages and the cold making his fingers shake as he writes. It also makes his nose drip and he swipes it with his coat sleeve until his nose is raw and red. That is what forces the realisation that he is indeed getting sick. Verdammt.

The needling sensation of another sneeze makes his lip curl and he is forced to set down his transcription in order to draw a handful of chaotic breaths. At least it allows him time to dig out his handkerchief, tuck it around his nose and mouth and brace with a hand against the nearest firm surface before they slam through him.

When he looks up, he realises that what he is leaning on for support is actually Mollymauk.

“Bless you!” The teifling smiles, amused.

Another sneeze, another “bless” and he looks up to see Molly eyeing him. 

He shrugs in response, sniffles deeply. “I am very sorry, Mollymauk. If I am disturbing you I can move elsewhere?

”“Not at all,” Molly says easily. “Stay where you are, you're providing insulation. Sounds like something's really getting to you.”

Caleb flushes. Getting sick is nothing to be ashamed of, he knows that, but the attention makes his stomach swirl hot and cold just the same.

“It's really nothing.

”“As you say.” Molly agrees.

That interaction seems to make it harder to ignore how awful he feels. 

Caleb gives up trying to read, after that, though he keeps his book open, waiting for his focus to return. Gods he’s tired. 

He just needs a few minutes. 

He just needs- 

Needs-

Waking feels like being dragged up from the bottom of a swamp. 

His throat feels as though it is on fire, his sinuses are hot and clogged and an ache behind his eyelids warns him against opening them to the light. Ugh. He has fallen asleep on the cart, still sitting but with his head propped against something soft just enough to protect his neck from any jolts. As for what has woken him, it must be the low thrum of familiar voices. 

He hears Nott’s concerned rasp, “- should wake him up-” and a baritone murmur, “- Let him sleep, he’s not bothering-” 

That second, less familiar voice is very close by. So close he can feel the vibrations of it coming through his side where he rests against--against- 

has fallen asleep against Mollymauk. 

Shit.

Shitshitshit.

Caleb is properly awake now, with a jolt of embarrassment-induced adrenaline swirling up through his gut and his thoughts buzzing. Nott is going to laugh. Molly is going to laugh. Jester will never let him hear the end of this. And he is so tired, still, and he feels so awful that he can’t care quite as much as he should.

 It seems that they haven’t noticed Caleb is awake, so he weighs the options in his head. Getting up will mean facing his symptoms, moving out of the warm press of coat and tiefling body heat, then facing a combination of concerned questions and mockery. That sounds like far too much to deal with. Better to keep his eyes closed and feign sleep for as long as he can away with it

. The heavy throb of his head is calling him so firmly to sleep that he is sure he can muster the real thing, given ten more minutes.He turns his face away from the light and into what he now knows is Mollymauk’s shoulder. The space between arm and collarbone is at just the right height to protect his neck from aching, and he can smell the characteristic mix of incense and perfume that marks the teifling’s clothing. Gods, he hopes his nose isn’t dripping on his coat. It feels too stuffed for that to be likely, but he gives a testing sniffle to be sure and feels Molly’s arm tighten around him comfortingly. 

Nott’s voice fades in- “-catch it and then you’ll be screwed-” and Molly’s response, “It’s really, really hard to get a tiefling sick. I’ve got ten times the stamina of this guy.” He thinks it sounds affectionate, but it’s hard to tell. He does feel guilty for catching ends of conversation that are not meant for him, for forcing himself upon a companion in a way he never would if he was entirely himself. 

He manages to will himself back to sleep out of sheer self-consciousness.

Eventually the embrace has to end, as all good things do. In this case, when Caleb wakes again he can feel his nose beginning to run freely and he will not subject Molly or anyone else to that. He raises his head with a groan and tries to dig in his pocket for a handkerchief.

 “Ah, good morning sunshine! Well, good afternoon.” Mollymauk’s cheerful voice makes his head throb.

 “Hallo.” He manages, raspy and congested. 

Where is his handkerchief? He knows it was in his pocket but it is hard to search when ticklish coughs are spilling from what feels like the bottom of his lungs. Molly moves to give him space and graciously turns his head, pretending to ignore his companion’s distress.

 It is impossible to ignore the set of stuffy sneezes the wizard smothers against the sleeve of his coat. Caleb opens his eyes to find a lavender-coloured hand extended, offering a square of silk which is just as richly coloured as any of Molly’s belongings. 

“Need this?”

No. No, that is too much. Far too good for the likes of him, even when he is at his best. 

A blush races up his neck and he glowers at Mollymauk with as much pride as he has left. 

 “Nein, thank you. There’s really no need.”

Precious ruby eyes, big and searching. “Caleb? Let me at least-”  

“Nein. Go back to your cards.”

The hand withdraws, the silk hankie disappears into a pocket in that ridiculous outfit and Molly reverts to a playful shrug. 

“As you say.” 

With that, the tiefling vaults to his feet and moves to the front of the cart to spark some conversation with Fjord where he is driving the horses. Caleb is left sniffling and frowning.

 Alone with his book, just the way he likes it.  This is how things have to be. It’s all he deserves. 

[ladywritesthings]

Welcome to Burlesque, ch4

AO3

---

Caleb got about five steps down the hallway before his legs gave out and he fell heavily against the nearest wall, hands on his trembling knees, gripping them like anchors as he breathed deeply in shuddering bursts.

What the fuck had gotten into him?

He hadn’t expected to see her at all today — had stayed away a full week because of the possibility he might; came during the day, long before the club opened, specifically to lower his chances of doing so — but she lived here? He was going to kill Mollymauk.

It was he who’d suggested going back, after all. Who’d slyly insinuated it was fine, really, Jester might have handed the thing off to Nott, or the bouncer at the door, or literally anyone else — not that she’d personally hang on to it. In her bedroom. He hadn’t fucking mentioned she had one of those here.

And she’d been excited to see him — genuinely excited; like she wanted him to come back, like she wanted to see him.

And he’d been thrown, of course — by her bubbly personality, by her bare feet and loose top tucked into shorts too short, by her dimples and freckles and that plump little mouth going a mile a minute as she chattered all the way to her apartment… By her vibrant, chaotic bedroom, with its scattered clutter and that wide, soft bed, where she’d slunk forward with hooded eyes and hinted at things that could have been.

But none of that gave him the right to play along the way he did. Encourage her.

Win.

Not that it had been a contest, of course. But somewhere along the way he’d picked up that she was testing him in some way, baiting him, and something in him wouldn’t allow him to ignore the challenge. Because it was a challenge — one slight blush at some frilly lingerie had somehow spiraled into a lazy finger trailing up his chest and murmured insinuations about her naked body.

He ran a shaking hand through his hair. Scheisse.

It had been a long time since he’d flirted with anyone like that. At all. And there was no use denying that was what he’d been doing, what they’d been doing, regardless of the intent behind it on either side — might as well call a spade a spade. It had been a while since he’d wanted to. And now he couldn’t help himself. A combined total of less than a day of knowing her, if he was being generous, and already he was thinking with the wrong head.

If it had been a test, or a competition of some sort, the way her breath had stuttered and lips had parted as he left her speechless by her bed seemed to indicate he’d done rather well.

He wondered, not for the first time, what would have happened if he’d been strong — or weak — enough to turn back that night. If he’d stayed. If she’d been telling the truth.

He wondered what could have happened if he’d stayed now…

He shook himself roughly and began his long trek downstairs, every step putting more and more distance between him and the closed door at the end of the hall. No, he couldn’t think about such things. She did this sort of thing for a living — not a judgment, merely statement of fact; making men like him weak in the knees was her business, after all, and he had to be realistic. He couldn’t allow himself the delusion that anything that had happened between them was anything more than what it was: an artist plying her trade. A very skilled artist, plying a very specific trade.

So why did the thought fill his gut with a cold ache he couldn’t quite place?

A tiny voice piped up, sly and winking in the back of his mind: ‘Why do you want it to be real?’

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. She was beautiful, yes, and surprisingly sweet-natured, and excitable and bouncy and somehow genuinely pleased to see him — but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself think about the way her lips curled when she said his name, of the cool touch of her finger through the cotton of his shirt, thin and simultaneously, agonizingly too thick just then; of the way she tugged on his sleeve and the way a part of him almost wished she’d grabbed his hand instead so he could feel the touch of her skin on his.

She had magic. Divine magic, to be sure, but she’d recognized the sigils in his wallet, even if she didn’t know what they meant. And she’d seemed interested in them. In him. In his magic, in his cat, in his life.

She’d asked for his number and he’d just… given it to her. He still didn’t quite know how he’d managed it as smoothly as he did, when the mere fact of it afterwards left him trembling. At some point soon she would text him, or — gods forbid — call him. His phone would ring, and her voice would be there, pressed against his cheek, murmuring in his ear… His face burned as he stumbled down another flight of stairs. He’d offered to help her mother with their books. Her mother. With their books. And she’d taken him up on it, or said she would.

If he’d been trying to extricate her from his life, get her out of his head, he was doing a piss-poor job of it.

But he was weak, and selfish, and she presented herself so tantalizingly, so willingly, and he was so, so selfish. He wanted to see her again. Of course he did. He shouldn’t, but he did.

She seemed to want to, too.

No. Realistic, he had to be realistic. They barely knew each other, anyway. He’d offered her something she needed, and she’d accepted. That she had his number, that he’d be coming back, probably more than once, was incidental. And when it was all done, it wasn’t like he’d have any reason to return after that.

He tried to ignore that icy disappointment slithering up his spine.

Nott eyed him as he finally reached the bottom floor. “Are you sure you don’t want that drink?” she said. “You look a little—”

“Nein, danke,” he muttered, waving a vague hand in her direction. “I should get going.”

“Well, alright,” she said. Her eyebrows were raised, like she was appraising him, but let him leave without further comment. The large woman at the door with the heterochromatic eyes gave him a tentative nod as he stumbled through the door, out into the sun and breeze and blessed, blessed fresh air. He filled his lungs in long, steady gulps, and his coat felt too hot now.

He left it on, sweating, as he made his way home.

In his dingy studio apartment, he collapsed on the couch, draping an arm over his face to block out the light and drifted. He shouldn’t encourage this, shouldn’t let himself, but when his treacherous mind began replaying her performance in excruciating detail for the millionth time, he simply let it. Let her imaginary fingers trace dripping honey in delicate patterns over her shimmering chest, let her hot breath caress his skin as she later moved agonizingly between his legs.

‘I was wearing that bra the other night. When you left.’

He could almost feel her again, finger pausing at his collar just before she touched skin.

‘Maybe you would have found out if you’d stayed.’

Scheisse.

At some point Frumpkin had jumped up to curl on his chest, and when Caleb shifted his arm enough to glance down, Frumpkin was looking at him reproachfully. “I know,” he told the cat miserably in Sylvan. “Believe me, I know.”

Frumpkin didn’t seem convinced.

The day passed in a haze, as did the next one, but by the third he’d finally almost managed to put her out of his mind, at least enough to concentrate on other things. Important things, like transcribing the old arcane manuscript he’d been tasked with for the library’s digital archive. He very nearly didn’t hear the phone when it rang, fifteen pages deep in the text as he was. He sandwiched it between an ear and a shoulder, only half paying attention as he did. These old wizards were fascinating.

“Ja?” he said absently.

“Caleb?”

The phone slipped from his shoulder, and he had to juggle it ridiculously to save it from the floor. It was — she’d—

“Jester?” He swallowed hard, suddenly very hot and very cold at the same time. It was her. That was her voice.

“Oh, good, it is you. Hi!”

Her voice was bubbly and warm. He subconsciously pressed the phone a little closer to his ear. “Ah, hello.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I decided to call — I know some people don’t like to talk on the phone anymore. I thought about texting, but then I thought, you know, ‘Well, he doesn’t actually have my number, so what if he doesn’t know it’s really me,’ because, like, anyone could say ‘Hey, it’s Jester,’ in a text, but you wouldn’t really know.”

She spoke in a rush, and sounded like a summer breeze, light and airy and full of life. His chest tightened. “No, it’s fine, I don’t mind.” He swallowed. “I’m actually glad you called,” slipped out before he could stop it.

“Really?” She sounded delighted. “Good, because I talked to my mom, and this is much faster than texting.”

“Ja?” He leaned back in his chair. “What did she say?”

“She was a little nervous at first, but I’m really good at convincing people and she said she has some time for you to stop by. Do you have time tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” So soon? His palms were sweating.

“Or today, I mean, it’s still pretty early. Unless you’re busy, of course,” she added hurriedly. “I’m not bothering you at work, am I? I’m sorry, I should have—”

“Jester, I — it’s fine, you’re not bothering me at all.” He was lying, of course, always lying — her very essence bothered him, in the most delicious of ways — but she didn’t need to know that. “I’m working from home.”

“From home?” She sounded confused. “I thought you were a librarian.”

He chuckled a little in spite of himself. “I told you I worked in a library,” he corrected. “I never claimed to be a librarian.”

“Huh.” She paused a moment, then continued brightly, “I guess you can tell me all about it when you get here.”

She was making it so hard for him to resist her, and he didn’t even think she was trying this time. He pressed the heel of his palm to his eyes, pressing down hard. Damn this woman. “Ja, I can come today,” he heard himself saying. “I can be there within the hour.”

“Perfect!” she squealed, and it went right through the phone and down his spine. “I’ll see you soon!”

“Goodbye, Jester.”

He held the phone to his ear long after the dead air cut out. What had he done?

He was going to see her again. Today. Soon. He tried to suppress the twisting sensation in his chest as he closed his laptop. Frumpkin was staring at him.

“Oh, shut up,” he muttered.

It was cooler today, even though the sun still shone brightly, and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat as he took his time on the walk to the Lavish Chateau. It was still early — too early, maybe, he’d be there in less than half the time he’d told her, even at this rate — but once he’d finally put the phone down, staying in the apartment had seemed impossible. Concentrating on the manuscript was a fool’s errand, at least, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. He felt jittery, restless, and his mind was a blur.

He was going to see her.

The woman with the strange eyes opened the door when he knocked. “Hello,” he said, rather lamely.

She stood aside to let him in. “Jester’s just in there,” she said, gesturing down the hall to the arch leading through to the bar. “Your name is… Caleb, yes?”

“Yes.”

Her hand hovered a moment, like she was unsure of whether to extend it to shake his or not, and settled for rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly instead. “I’m Yasha,” she said. “I’m the bouncer. One of them.”

“I… gathered as much,” he said, then, “It’s nice to meet you, officially, I suppose.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.” There was a pause, in which neither of them seemed to know what to do. Yasha finally looked away, gesturing again in the direction of the bar. “She’s expecting you,” she said stiffly.

He made it about three steps into the main hall before he heard a squeal. “Caleb!” Jester was bounding towards him, an enormous smile dimpling her cheeks, and the petticoats beneath her vibrant yellow sundress swished and bounced around her knees. She was barefoot again. His chest ached.

“Sorry, I’m a little early,” he said apologetically.

“No, no, this is perfect!” She’d latched herself onto his arm and was pulling him towards the bar, which was empty. “Mama should be down any second, you’re right on time.”

He could feel her grip on his bicep, gentle yet surprisingly strong through his coat, and she still hadn’t let go. “Where is Nott?” he asked. Out of genuine curiosity, of course. Not because her other arm had looped around his elbow and was making it very hard to think right now.

Jester pursed her lips and shrugged. “Upstairs, maybe?” She glanced at him and squeezed his arm a little. “You don’t have to keep your coat on, you know,” she said, eyes glittering. “It’s not cold in here.”

He could feel his ears heat up slightly under her gaze. “Oh, I don’t—”

“I can take it, if you want. Mama keeps her office pretty hot so, you know, you’ll thank me later.”

Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a plausible reason to refute this perfectly sound bit of logic, not while she looked at him so expectantly with those fingers trailing down his arm. “I — ja, okay, I guess.” He sighed as he slowly shrugged the thing off, focusing on folding it neatly. He could feel her eyes on him.

“Caleb, you—”

“Is this him, Jester?”

The soft voice from the base of the stairs made him turn and — oh.

Oh, gods.

Everyone knew who the Ruby of the Sea was, if only by reputation alone. A renowned singer in her own right, now the owner of one of the most widely acclaimed clubs and brothels in all of Wildemount — a courtesan of kings, even in this modern age. He’d never seen her, of course; she was notoriously reclusive, and few could afford her rumored exorbitant prices.

He saw now, of course, these were entirely justified.

Her scarlet skin seemed to glow with an internal light, her dark red hair falling in elegant, effortless curls down her back. Her makeup, though understated, framed the striking white-gold of her eyes and the gentle curve of her full lips. A white silk blouse, two buttons tastefully undone; pencil skirt of a modest length, but tight. Everything about Jester’s looks that made the masses swoon was perfected in her mother, somehow — the hourglass shape, the high cheekbones and the heart-shaped face… Where Jester was small and youthful and wild, Madam Lavorre was statuesque. Refined. Regal. Even from across the room, he could tell how she would tower over him, even disregarding her stiletto heels and the long curl of her horns. Her very presence filled the empty room full to bursting.

He couldn’t even register any form of attraction at the moment. He was too in awe.

“Y-yes, Mama, this is Caleb.” Jester’s voice broke him out of his reverie, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the hint of a flush fading from her cheeks. How odd. Did her mother make her nervous too? This didn’t bode well at all.

He cleared his throat hastily as the Ruby came towards them, a curious tilt to her head. “Ah, Madam Lavorre—”

“Marion. Please.” She extended a delicate hand and Caleb had the odd urge to kiss it. It seemed like the sort of thing one should do to someone like her, as a show of respect. He shook it lightly instead.

“Caleb Widogast,” he said. “I hope I am not imposing—”

“Don’t be silly, Caleb,” said Jester. “I invited you, remember?”

A small smile graced Marion’s lips. “Quite,” she murmured, and gestured back towards the stairs. “Shall we continue this in my office…?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take your coat,” said Jester, and her cool fingers brushed his hand as she took it from him. It looked much too large, bundled up in her arms. He hoped, embarrassedly, it didn’t dirty her dress. He really should get the wretched thing cleaned.

Caleb followed Marion up the stairs to the second floor, past all the raunchily-named VIP rooms to a grand oak door near the stairway up to the third floor. The spidery script on the plaque simply read “Manager.” She held it open for him and gestured him inside. “Please,” she said. “Sit.”

Jester was right; the room was a good ten degrees warmer than the hallway, at least. It was just as elegantly decorated as the club downstairs, but in a more antique sense — all wood panels and deep red wallpaper. An ornately carved desk dominated the room, plush leather chair behind it. Caleb hesitated only momentarily before seating himself in one of the smaller chairs in front of it. He felt ridiculously out of place.

Marion closed the door behind him and once behind her desk, gazed at him deeply over steepled fingers. “So,” she said finally. “Jester tells me you are… an accountant, yes?”

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Not precisely,” he admitted. “I told her I was good with numbers, but I am not… officially trained as such, no.”

“I see.”

“She mentioned you had been having trouble with your former employee.”

She sighed. “A bit,” she said. “He was… not who he claimed to be.”

“I only offered to take a look,” he said. “I thought I could be of some assistance….”

She lowered her hands, tilting her head, those white-golden eyes boring into him. “Why?”

Her voice was gentle, curious, but with her eyes on him and that commanding presence he couldn’t help but feel like he was being interrogated. He resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably in his seat. “Your daughter is… very charming,” he began haltingly. “She mentioned that you were having trouble balancing the books after your… problem, and I thought I could offer my services as I have some… experience with such things, although not in an… official capacity, exactly.”

Those slender fingers pressed together again over pursed lips. “If I may ask,” she said, “what is it you do for a living, Caleb? May I call you Caleb?”

He nodded mutely. “I work in the archives of the Cobalt Reserve here on the Menagerie Coast,” he said. “I mainly transcribe and translate ancient texts.”

A perfectly penciled eyebrow arched at that. “You are a monk?” she said, surprise evident in her voice.

He felt his ears heat up and felt suddenly glad his hair was long enough to cover them. “Ah, no,” he said. “I have a friend who belongs to the Order, but my studies are more… arcane in nature.”

“A wizard, then?” She leaned back in her chair slightly. “How fascinating. I haven’t encountered a proper wizard in many years.”

“We are a dying breed, I am afraid.”

“Not much call for offensive magicks in these times of peace, to be sure.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, crossed her legs under the desk. “Forgive me, Jester told me you were smart, but she did not mention your, ah…” She tilted her head again. “You say you are good with numbers as well?”

“I — ja, I would say so.”

“Indulge me, if you would.” She reached down into a drawer, pulling out a large, leather-bound book, and pushed it gently across the desk towards him.

He opened the book to a random page, seeing the rows and rows of numbers carefully penned in a smooth hand. “You do not keep digital records?” he asked.

The corners of Marion’s mouth twitched upwards. “We keep both,” she said, gesturing at the book. “This one… it is old. You will forgive me for not simply handing you the keys to our current financial records just like that.”

“Of course,” he murmured, but he was only half-listening. The numbers swam before him, the sums adding up automatically in his head as he flicked through a few pages. After a moment he tore his eyes away, remembering where he was. “This book…” he said, “it is from when your previous employee worked here, yes?”

“Why do you ask?”

He spun the book around and pointed. “There,” he said. “That one should be a two. And there—” He pointed again, “—this should be a four. And here…”

Her eyes widened as she followed his fingers, smile slipping as he pointed out mistake after mistake. “You did this all in your head?” she said. “And so quickly.”

He retracted his hand, feeling his face redden slightly. “Ja,” he said, a little embarrassedly. “Ja, I did.”

She studied him for a moment, then pulled out her phone, a small, slim thing, from some unseen source. She tapped a few keys before glancing at him again. “What is fifty-seven plus eighty-nine?” she said.

“One hundred and forty-six,” he said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

A few more taps. “Six hundred and ninety-four multiplied by three hundred and eighty.”

She was testing him. “Two hundred and sixty-three thousand, seven hundred and twenty.”

A last round of taps, a curious expression on her face as she glanced back at him. “Eighteen thousand and thirty-two,” she said, “divided by twelve.”

“One thousand, five hundred and two, point six. And some.”

She leaned back in her chair again, eyebrows raised. “I must confess,” she admitted slowly, “when Jester came to me about you, I was… skeptical.”

He closed the book carefully. “That is understandable,” he said delicately, “considering the circumstances.”

“I mean no offense, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You have impressed me, Caleb,” she said, leaning over to search through another drawer. The open collar of her blouse shifted as she did, revealing a soft expanse of scarlet skin. He looked away quickly.

“I only wished to help,” he said to the ceiling.

The gentle rustle of paper brought his attention back to the desk, at her long, manicured fingers pushing a sheaf of stapled pages towards him. He took them with raised eyebrows.

“This is a… contract,” he said lamely.

“The job is yours,” she said. “You are by far the most qualified person I have met so far.”

“I did not…” He paused as he skimmed the fine print, flipping through the pages.

She cocked an eyebrow. “This is a job interview, yes? That is why you offered your services to my daughter? Or have I misunderstood…?”

“That’s not—” He broke off suddenly, staring at the figures before him. “You’re paying — how much?” he choked out.

Marion steepled her fingers again as she leaned forward. “I understand it might be a bit lower than other, similar positions, but if you’ll look a little further down, you’ll see the lease to the apartment is included in the agreement…”

He was still reeling from the proposed salary, which he still didn’t entirely believe was real. “Low? I — My apologies, did you say ‘apartment’?”

She rose, pulling out a key ring from the same void from which she’d retrieved her phone. “Follow me.”

Still clutching the contract with its absolutely ridiculous numbers, he followed her in somewhat of a daze as she led him up the sweeping stairs to the third floor and down the wide hall to a door near the end. ‘Nearly directly beneath Jester’s room,’ his mind supplied deviously.

The lock clicked quietly as Marion opened the door and waved him in. “It is one of the smaller apartments,” she said apologetically. “But all the utilities are included, of course — power, water, internet…”

Caleb stared at the apartment — at the high ceilings, at the clean walls and pristine appliances in the kitchen alcove; at the wide open archway leading up the half-step to the bedroom. He wandered through the living room area, across the seemingly endless hardwood floor, past doors leading to… where? He didn’t feel like he could open them to look. Not that Marion would have stopped him, he thought, but he was too overwhelmed to even try.

“This… is part of the payment?” he said faintly.

Marion nodded. “If it is unsatisfactory,” she said, “we could possibly renegotiate your salary to compensate, of course—”

“Nein, ah, no, this is…” He inhaled slowly, looking around him. The living room area alone was almost larger than his entire studio apartment. And he could live here. For free.

“I realize you say you have another job,” said Marion. “But I hope that won’t affect your decision…”

“I work from home, mostly,” he murmured absently.

Marion smiled. “Excellent.”

A thought occurred to him suddenly, an ugly smudge of dark on this shining opportunity. “I have a cat,” he said, almost reluctantly. “Would that be a problem?”

“A… cat?” A cloud seemed to pass over Marion’s exquisite features and his heart sank momentarily, but then she shook her head. “Your familiar. Of course. No, that… that won’t be a problem. It is… quiet, I presume? My apologies, I am… unfamiliar with pets. I have never had one myself.”

“He is a good cat,” said Caleb, a little lamely.

“Of course.” Marion nodded. “It will be no problem, then.” She tilted her head again, and he was sure he didn’t imagine the faintly hopeful look in her eye as she did. “So… have you reached a decision? You will sign?”

Caleb smiled weakly. “Do you have a pen?”

As he made his way back downstairs a few minutes later, a little dazedly, he saw Jester still at the bar, still clutching his worn leather coat, chatting animatedly with Yasha. His heart twisted slightly in his chest as he watched her, as she flipped her hair over a bare shoulder and laughed, and a cold, slimy feeling slithered through his gut. What was he doing? He was trying to get out of her life, not insert himself more firmly into it.

She glanced up as he paused there on the stairs, somehow brightening even more when she saw him. “Caleb!” she called, waving him over. “How did it go? Did it go okay? What happened? Tell me everything!”

“Ah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. What had happened, exactly? He was still not entirely convinced he was awake. “I — I suppose… I live here now?”

Jester’s hands clapped to her mouth, eyes widening. “You took the job?” she said.

“I — ja, I did.” Why, and how, were still unclear to him at the moment, but suddenly it didn’t matter anymore because she’d flung her arms around him, and something in his brain short-circuited.

“Oh my gosh, that’s so great!” she squealed, and the gentle squeeze of her cool arms through the long sleeves of his shirt was rapidly turning his insides to jelly. “We’re going to be neighbors! Isn’t that cool?”

“Ja,” he managed awkwardly. He was hyper-aware of every inch of her body pressed against him — he was sure his face was a mortifying shade of red right now, and Yasha’s mildly interested gaze and raised eyebrows were definitely not helping — and tried in vain to clear his head. “Very cool,” he mumbled.

She released him just enough to look up at him. “You’re bringing your cat, right?” she said seriously. “It’s very important that you bring your cat.”

He blinked at her. “Of course I’m bringing my cat,” he said.

Her face split again into that sweet smile, cheeks dimpling. “Good,” she said. “We’ve never had a pet around here before, I can’t wait to meet him! I-if that’s okay with you?” she added, almost shyly.

He couldn’t help it — a corner of his mouth quirked up at that. “Of course,” he said. “We’re going to be neighbors, you should meet my cat.”

For all their similarities, her eyes were so strangely unlike her mother’s, so big, long-lashed; crystalline violet irises instead of the alien expanse of color typical of Infernal ancestry. He could nearly count the freckles dusting her nose at this close distance, count those long, dark lashes; they weren’t entirely purple, he realized, because there was gold in her eyes — just a little, just there, a small ring of amber around her wide pupils…

“I like cats,” said Yasha thoughtfully.

Caleb coughed as Jester released him with a small jerk of her head, the faintest hint of lavender-pink coloring her cheeks. “Well,” she said.

“I should go,” he said simultaneously.

She grinned at him, and extended his coat towards him. “Here,” she said, unnecessarily.

“Thank you,” he mumbled. And then, pausing to put it on, he glanced at her. “Thank you, Jester,” he said sincerely. “For speaking to your mother. This was… an unexpected outcome.”

Her cheeks dimpled again. “Of course, Caleb,” she said. “It was your idea, though.”

“Ja, well…” He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded politely at Yasha. “It was nice to meet you,” he said.

Yasha inclined her head in response.

“Come back soon, okay?” Jester called after him as he made his way to the exit. He glanced over his shoulder and she grinned widely. “You have to, now,” she said.

He was still smiling as he stepped out into the cool Nicodranas air.

The smile died slightly on his trek back to his apartment, however — his soon-to-be-ex-apartment, actually. How had he let this happen? He wasn’t a religious man, and yet a week ago, he would have blessed the gods at such an incredible opportunity. That apartment? The money? He’d never even conceived of earning that much money in his whole life, much less as a yearly salary. And being close to Jester, to be able to see her every day —

No, no, that was a problem, wasn’t it? He didn’t — shouldn’t — want to be close to her. He’d told himself not to lose himself in thoughts of her, hadn’t he? He barely knew the woman, after all. She wasn’t interested in him, not really, and he was in no position to pursue her, even if he wanted to.

‘I do want to, though,’ he thought, and immediately suppressed it.

No, he didn’t. It was lust, pure and simple — it had been so long since he’d come across anyone who’d made him feel like this, that was all. It would pass, as all things eventually did. And then she’d just be another person again; his neighbor, his… friend? Possibly, but probably not. She’d lose interest after the novelty had worn off, and that would be alright. Wouldn’t it?

‘But until then,’ a part of him reasoned slyly, ‘why not enjoy it while it lasts?’

He sighed as he let himself into his apartment, as Frumpkin fixed him with a look. “Don’t,” he said wearily. “You don’t have to say it, I already know.”

Frumpkin hopped off the couch and padded over to the bed, wiggling under it in the very deliberate manner he did when he was sulking. Caleb ignored him and shrugged off his coat. Frumpkin would get over it. Eventually. He’d enjoy the new surroundings, at least. Meeting new people, possibly. Meeting Jester…

Oh gods, it was really happening. He’d be moving, packing up his meager belongings and moving… He’d have to get boxes, of course, and furniture — more than his sagging couch and ancient mattress and flimsy second-hand desk, to fill that enormous, blank space of potential, the mirror image of Jester’s apartment upstairs —

Her flirtatious smirk flitted across his thoughts, her eyelids fluttering as she handed him her phone for his number, those soft, strangely cool fingers brushing his and setting his nerves alight. ‘You know,’ she’d murmured. ‘For later.’

Her excited squeal as she wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself against him. ‘That’s so great!’ she’d said, and when she looked up at him with those amethyst eyes he’d lost the ability to speak.

‘Come back soon, okay?’ she’d said, the grin audible in her voice as though this had been a private joke between them. ‘You have to, now.’

Mollymauk was going to be insufferable when he found out.

[punishandenslavesuckers]

 Mollymauk Tealeaf wakes up in a grave by the road ten years after he died. Things have gone a bit wrong since then and he might be the only one who can set things right… since it’s the Mighty Nein themselves who’ve gone wrong. AU: Where Molly comes back to yell at his super-powered Level 20 friends. (AO3 - part1) (AO3 - part 2) (AO3 - part3) (AO3 - part4) (AO3 - part5) (AO3-part6) (AO3-part7) (AO3-part8) (AO3-part9)

The Blooming Grove is beautiful in the day light.

The sun slides beams of yellow through the gnarled canopy to the undergrowth, dappling dark grass and wildflowers in shifting stripes of sunshine and shadow. That’s what Molly spends the better part of ten minutes staring at when he wakes comfortably drowsy and a bit dehydrated from an all-night drug stupor. The morning is quiet, broken, only by distant murmuring and the muted twitter of birdsong. Mollymauk’s lying on his back still, though someone moved him a little into the space beneath a great oak tree, his head cushioned on a balled jacket.

For a warm sleepy while, Molly dozes a little somewhere between waking and unconsciousness, vaguely roused from his limbo by the impression of another person nearby. Yawning a little, Mollymauk sits up a bit, raking hair from his face.

Caduceus Clay is sitting nearby.

His back is partially to Molly, his face in profile serene as the morning around him.

He’s dressed in full armor, glittering chitinous green and grown with rosy lichen. Someone has taken the long section of his hair and pulled it back so the central part is woven elaborately, plaited and clipped so it stands up from his otherwise shaved skull.  The rest of his hair is braided in a heavy rope that coils over his left shoulder. There are carved bone and amber charms threaded into the soft pink.

He looks war-ready to Molly with his fauxhawk and his armor.

He looks like he’s been waiting for Molly to wake up.

Molly can hear him murmur quietly and in the fifteen seconds that he gets to simply watch, Molly supposes that the cleric is praying. His low voice is like a long chord from a strange instrument, deep bass and vibrato. Eventually, he seems to register Mollymauk’s attention and looks over his shoulder, one long ear flipping upward like a deer detecting a noise. He smiles and the fondness is all the way up to his eyes in a way that makes Molly feel extremely safe even now, despite the facts of his fate. It’s impressive really. Molly thinks Clay could calm a storm with that look.

“Morning,” Molly says.

“Good morning,” says Caduceus.

Mollymauk folds his hands on his stomach.

“I have no hangover. Is that because you have the best drugs in the kingdom, or because you did some healing while I was sleeping?”

“Both.”

“Anyone ever tell you, you’re a gentleman and a scholar, Mr. Clay?”

“No. Because I’m neither of those things.” Caduceus turns a little at the waist and holds out an upturned hand to Molly. “This is yours, I think.”

In his palm something glitters, sunshine sparking molten before Molly gets a better look. There’s a thin chain pooled around a crystal heart amulet and when Molly recognizes it, there’s a moment of mild indifference (like when someone returns a knickknack) then a low creep of unnerve when he contextualizes how someone else came to possess it. The last resting place of this necklace, after wall, was around his own throat the day Lorenzo cut him down.

“Caleb gave it to me.” Caduceus tilts his head. “I think it’s fitting that it come back to you, Mollymauk.”

Molly arches a brow. “Caleb gave you a heart necklace?”

Caduceus gives him a look. “Caleb gave me the pariapt of wound closure on account of how often I was wounded in the course of regularly scheduled idiocy.” He shrugs a little. “But, yes, if you like.”

For a while, Molly says nothing. Then he says, “How does a firbolg cleric end up with the Mighty Nein?”

Silence for a moment while Caduceus thinks on this.

“They came to my graveyard – this one, in fact – on the sunset of your death. They asked me to come with them on a mission of vengeance and justice.” Caduceus looks out over the overgrown headstones, to the temple structure beyond and Molly thinks his expression gets a little wistful, an edge of… not regret but something. “I didn’t know anything about the world back then.” He turns back to Molly. “I know a lot more now.”

Molly stares at the periapt, then says, “No. It’s yours now. I don’t want it. Not if Caleb gave it to you.”

“It wasn’t a gift. It was a tactical—”

“Sure thing,” Molly says, grinning. Then, after Caduceus has reluctantly put the periapt back on, he asks, “You really think Caleb would risk ending the world?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Molly shakes his head. “I always knew he was deep in his head. I didn’t ever think he would… I thought he might fuck us, specifically, over. Or a lot of other people in general. I got that he was putting Nott and himself over everyone else. That made sense. That’s fine. But the whole bloody world?”

“You never knew him in context,” Caduceus says softly.

“Then put him in context.”

A hesitation then. Clay visibly wavers.

“You won’t spoil my good opinion of him, Mr. Clay. He killed me in cold blood for the sake of making a point I think.” Molly cracks a bitter grin. “I’d feel less sore about it, I think, if you gave me some framework for what makes a man do that to someone.”

Caduceus lowers his gaze a moment, then, quietly, he says:

“Caleb Widogast was insane once and finding sanity again required him to take hold of an impossible idea.” He raises his gaze then to Molly. “This idea was so fantastic it could hem in all the broken parts of him and hold his shape, make him a person again long enough to accomplish it. That impossible idea would have also, very possibly, done the world irreparable damage. So, you have this idea that Caleb ending the world is a new development and…” Caduceus shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but Caleb was always willing to end the world, Mollymauk. His restraint now is the new development.”

Quiet for a moment while Molly digests this.

“What do you mean he was ‘insane’? How and why?”

“I mean as a young man, a figure of authority convinced Caleb Widowgast to be a thing instead of a person. They hollowed him out the way authority can hollow a person and laid ideology inside him rather than morality. Then, on the say so of that ideology, he burned his family alive in his childhood home.” Cad is holding Molly’s gaze, unwavering, steady as a load-bearing beam. “The ideology wasn’t rooted deep enough to keep the horror out. He went insane. Then he stopped being insane and decided he might unravel time itself to undo what he’d done because the possibility of ‘fixing it’ was the only port in the storm.”

Molly stares.

“Gods fuck me, I knew something was wrong but… are you bloody serious?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve talked him down from something like this before.”

Caduceus nods. “Yes.”

“How’d you stop him last time?”

“I didn’t. Nott took his hand and asked him not to do it.”

Molly is quiet a moment, then, “But that won’t work this time. This time, he’d kill Nott.”

Something reactive crosses Caduceus’ face. “No. Never. He’d risk killing her,” he corrects. “That’s something he’s not been willing to do in a long time. I’m not saying he doesn’t love others and love them—" bit of a sigh here— “very, very much. But he’ll never care for anyone like he cares for Nott. Nott is what’s holding back the end of the world. Not me or Yasha or you or anyone else.”

“The whole world on a goblin-girl,” Molly murmurs. “Something kinda great about that.”

“Yes. So much depends upon odd everyday things.” Caduceus tilts his head. “Maybe on a carnival performer.”

“Ugh.” Molly rolls his eyes. “Stop. My stomach is knotting up just thinking about it. Did everyone come up with a plan while I was sleeping?”

“Yes. Breaching Caleb’s keep would be impossible… save for the fact we have Jester with us again. The Traveler travels everywhere. It may be a difficult approach, but he won’t be able to stop us like most wizards of his ilk might be able. But he can make it a treacherous road to walk.” Caduceus gestures. “The plan is simple enough, we breach the keep. Jester, Yasha, Nott, and I will try to hold Caleb. You and Fjord will find Beauregard. Fjord will… do what’s necessary.”

Mollymauk leans back against the tree, his arms draped over his knees. “Kill her in her sleep, you mean.”

Caduceus doesn’t flinch.

“It’s been my task all along,” he says, “to one day be the person who ends Beau’s life. If the Beauregard I knew isn’t dead already, then it is an unnatural thread that binds her to the world. As a person whose walked between life and death over and over tied by powers beyond your hold, tell me there isn’t a time to let life let go.”

Molly’s jaw aches from clenching it. But eventually, he shakes his head just once.

“No, I’m not disagreeing there. But she’s my friend, you know?”

“And mine. And Fjord’s. It’ll be him that does it and I don’t envy him the task, but I wish I could relieve him of it.”

“He volunteer for that job?”

“Yes. But even if he hadn’t, you and he won’t survive a direct confrontation with Caleb Widogast if he knows we’re coming. You’ll be best to end the fight at the its source.”

Molly glances across the graveyard, to the faint sound of voices and movement. Where he can sense that the rest of the Mighty Nein are milling around on the opposite side of the shrine, gathering things and preparing. The thought sets his nerves on a preemptive razor’s edge, his heart acidic suddenly in the back of his throat and he finds himself breathing faster, his hands clenching tight and he hears it clear as a breath against the coil of his ear: Lorenzo saying, “Respect.” Caleb saying, “Die.” Fjord saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Caduceus lays a hand on his shoulder and Molly twitches reactive under his palm. He waits for Molly to settle, but kneels there facing him now, pale eyes intent on Molly’s face the way one can be intent on a book they are reading. He squeezes Molly’s shoulder and it’s strange how heavy his hand lies on him, how much density that suggests in the cleric’s bones and build.

“Breathe,” he rumbles.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Molly says.

“None of us know that,” says Caduceus, “but we’re going to try. If you really think you can’t do it, you don’t have to –”

“Fuck you, Caduceus. You brought me back from the grave. If I go back to it, I’ll be on my bloody feet. Understand? I’m just saying, I’m a bit nervous.”

“I understand.” There’s a pause. “Mollymauk, I know I’ve said this before but…”

“Stop.” Molly waves a hand. “I’m sick of people being sorry for me.”

“No, I was going to say you’ve shown unusual bravery in the face of terrible things. Also, I am not really sorry. I would do it again.”

“Weirdly, that makes me feel better, thank you, Caduceus.”

This earns him a head tilt. “If you’re angry with me… with everything that’s happened, you have every right.”

“Trust me,” Molly huffs, “I don’t need your permission to be angry. I’m livid. I’m furious my friends are trying to end the world because one is an emotionally traumatized bookworm.” He sighs and rubs his forehead. “I’m furious they didn’t take care of one another and you had to dig me out of a grave to sort it out for some reason. I’m out of my fuckin’ mind that somehow the gods are hanging this nonsense on me. I’m so mad I want to bite something.”

Caduceus nods. “I understand.”

Up close, the very fine gray down that colors Caduceus’ face and throat seems to shimmer a little and there are shards of gray in the pink ring of each iris. Caduceus Clay is a pastel riot of contradicting pieces and he smells like fresh-cut grass and whatever moss is growing in the chinks of his armor. Molly doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he’s reached up and taken hold of the long, pink braid hung over his shoulder pauldron. Clay doesn’t stop him, just peering curiously.

There’s a heavy iron clasp at the end of the braid, hard in Molly’s palm.

“Why did you stay?”

Caduceus flicks a long ear. “What?”

“With Caleb.” Molly grips the clasp a little, just to feel the metal dig in. He doesn’t look at the other man. “You were one of the last people standing with Caleb. Even after everyone else had gone other directions. Nott stuck it out, I get that. But why did you?”

“Because,” Caduceus says, “there was a time previously that I was capable of holding Caleb back as well. Second only to Nott of course.”

“Wait. What does that…?”

“Hey, Deuce? Molly? You two awake and sober or does Jester need to come over here?”

Fjord’s come around the side of the temple.

He’s standing among a collection of broken gravestones, his arms crossed, wearing that strange set of black leather armor he wore earlier. The only difference now is it looks as though Jester’s painted the symbol of her god across his shoulder guard. In the full light of day, Molly can see that he wasn’t delusional: Fjord looks almost exactly the same as he did ten years ago. Time hasn’t touched him. He’s been held in a capsule. The age is (instead) in his eyes, in the way he looks at them though Molly couldn’t identify what heaviness it is exactly that ten years has put there.

“We’re okay here,” Caduceus says. He leans his weight on his staff and stands up, offering Molly a hand up. “Just discussing the plan.”

Caduceus murmurs something and Molly feels the Death Ward charm again take hold of his soul, anchoring him to the world. The cleric lets go of his hand then.

“If you die,” Caduceus says, “and there is no one there to call you back from death, that’s it. Jester’s asked her god about the rules around you dying. You can be called back as many times as there is someone to call you, but if you die and no one calls…”

“I’m dead,” Molly says. “And Fjord is no cleric.”

“I’ll look out for you,” Fjord says, a little defensive, “but if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. Point of fact, I think I’ll move faster without you –”

“He’s lying,” Caduceus says easily. “He’s just worried, particularly since he’s operating without his patron now.”

Fjord tosses his hands up. “Thank you, Caduceus, for your rousing pre-battle pep talks. Appreciated as always.” Then when his giant teammate just kind of gives him a benign but entirely shit-eating kind of smile, Fjord shoulders past him muttering, “Fuckin’ years later, still weird as hell…”

“I heard that.”

“Yeah, I know, Deuce. It’s what you’re there for.”

He glares over his shoulder, still standing close enough that he kind of has to tilt his head back to do it. Caduceus kind of smiles in return. There’s a beat in that exchange, a crisscross where something in the cleric’s expression gets a little sad despite the unabashed fondness there and something in Fjord’s glare loses the edge. Caduceus is the one to break the wordless quiet, almost too quiet to hear.

“I’m glad you’re with us again, Fjord.”

“I… yeah.” A pause. “Look, Caduceus, about what I said last night…”

Caduceus waves a hand.

“No. Man.” Fjord gets indignant. “It’s not okay. Just… you know…” He sighs. “Thank you. Nott told me a little bit about it, but she shouldn’t have had to tell me anything. I should have known you were doing everything you could. I was just… taking it out on you because I was frustrated and… and fucked up, honestly. It’s not excuse, but it’s what I was doing.”

“I know. I’m not upset.”

“You should be. I was over the line.”

Caduceus doesn’t say anything, just shrugs and glances away which doesn’t work especially well when one is taller than everyone else around them.

“You should have never been trapped as long as you were,” Caduceus says eventually. He meets Fjord’s eyes and Molly can see now what he was masking – a plain and painful guilt. “I was afraid to leave Caleb. I’m sorry.”

Fjord steps forward and grabs the cleric’s sleeve at the elbow, pulling him face to face.

“You listen. What happened to me was my fault and no one else’s. I did what I did. I signed on full well knowing what my patron was and what it wanted. I swallowed the fuckin’ sea and I took the blade when it was given to me.” Fjord hisses through his teeth now. “Dammit, Caduceus, why didn’t you get away from him like the rest of us? You didn’t have to stay.”

“We don’t do that.” Caduceus is perfectly calm, certain as sunrise. “We don’t leave each other.”

“Bullshit, Cad. We all left you.”

“You didn’t leave me. You were taken. There’s a diff—” And here he falters. He glances at Molly. Because in that instant Molly realizes (a slow unraveling dawning) that Caleb was quoting Caduceus on that beach— “there’s a difference,” he finishes. “Maybe not everyone was taken like you were taken, but you can be taken by grief, by despair, or madness, or circumstance. You were all taken by something.” Caduceus trails off. “I’m not angry.”

“You should be.”

“I’m not.”

“Gods, I don’t get you,” Fjord groans, pressing fingers into his temple. “It’s been how long now and I’m never gonna fuckin’ get you, Cad. You’re just so fuckin’ – oof!”

Fjord’s complaint is smothered rather effectively by Caduceus casually reaching out and yanking his shorter teammate into a hug. It’s an expert hug. Both inevitable and affectionate in equal unstoppable parts. Fjord, nevertheless, gives a cursory struggle before surrendering to Clay’s (apparently) unescapable embrace, the tension sliding out of his shoulders in increments. Molly is pretty sure he can see a glow in Clay’s fingers, light sinking into Fjord’s armor before disappearing entirely.

“Did you just hug a Death Ward onto me?” Fjord demands, muffled.

“Yes.” Clay squeezes him just once more for good measure, then lets him go. “Can you go get Nott for me? She has something for Molly, I think.”

“She can’t keep giving me her stuff!” Molly protests.

Fjord looks at Molly. “She can and she will.” He holds up his arm and there’s a pair of strange gold-hammered bracers strapped to his forearms. “I don’t know where she stole these, but apparently you can grab a spell with them and throw it back.”

“I love that girl,” says Molly. Then, after a moment, he jerks his chin to Caduceus. “I’m glad you found him after I died, by the way.” He waves a hand up and down generally encompassing Caduceus Clay as a whole. “You know, good color scheme.”

Caduceus stifles a chuckle. Fjord gets a lopsided grin and pats Molly on the shoulder as he turns to go. But he pauses. There’s just the one look – brief and curious as he looks a Molly, a question in his stare… so Molly slaps Fjord on the cheek in a way that clearly confuses him.

“Oi, none of that. Head in the game.” He winks. “We’ll sort it out later.”

Fjord hesitates. “Alright. I’ll hold you to it.”

Molly smiles until Fjord’s walking away.

“You’re lying,” Caduceus observes blandly. He’s leaning against his staff, head tilted. “You don’t think we’re going to survive.”

“No, I don’t think I  am.”

There’s a quick silence. Then, “Mollymauk, I don’t think–”

But before he can start in on some platitudes about how everything is going to be okay or something, Caduceus makes this aborted choking sound and doubles over. His eyes go wide, his head jerking back, ears coming up like a startled animal. Like he’s hearing or seeing something Molly can’t. Then, with no warning beyond that, Caduceus’ eyes kind of roll back in his skull and he staggers sideways against the oak tree and drops his shoulder against it.

Molly, who watched all this with a confused horror, rushes forward.

“Hey, Caduceus?” He touches his shoulder like you reach for a high shelf. “You okay?”

“Head rush,” the firbolg mumbles, digging around in his robes for something. “Just… have to walk it off.”

“Are you alright?”

“I don’t know. I think something just… I don’t know.” Caduceus seems distressed and a little dazed honestly, so Molly catches his elbow and pulls the gangly cleric upright, letting him lean his weight against his shoulder from his seven feet of height. He’s a little quiet until they’ve walked a little toward the south side of the graveyard, away from the temple and the others. “Apologies. I might have over worked myself. I’ve been getting the team ready for the fight this morning and yesterday was… taxing.”

“Well you did kill a dragon with a tree.”

“It wasn’t really a dragon. It was a warlock.” Caduceus rubs his temple gingerly as if nursing a migraine. “If it had been a real dragon, I doubt we would have prevailed. True ancient sea dragons? They’re leviathans without mercy or the depravity of their land-bound cousins. It would not have played with us. Her cruelty made her stupid and we killed her for it.”

Surprise jolts through Molly then, his head coming up a little to glance Caduceus. Oddly, his calling someone stupid even in death seems off-color for the gentle giant-kin and Molly frowns a little.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t know. I feel strange.”

“Well, shake it off. We have another round of bad business to deal with. Gotta take care of the Mighty Nein, right?” Molly kind of nudges the bigger man when he doesn’t get an immediate answer. “Right? That’s our job in this group.”

Caduceus gives him a strange look, somewhere between sad and regretful. “Yes, I guess so.”

Molly maneuvers around a low headstone, Caduceus’ hand still resting against his shoulder. “Caduceus, you didn’t seem like you had a head rush. You seemed like you saw something and it scared you. Don’t spare my bloody feelings if Malora’s sending you visions or something, you can tell me.” Molly hesitates then adds, “If the endgame in this story is me going back to the grave, you know I… it’s okay.”

“Mollymauk—”

“It’s okay.” Molly laughs, though it comes mirthless in his mouth. “It’s fine if I don’t survive this. Not many people get three lives, much less the number I’ve been afforded. It’s alright, Mr. Clay. I don’t expect to–”

“Hey!”

Molly stops and looks over his shoulder. Nott is rocketing across the graveyard, full-speed, a darting blur of gnomish speed accelerated by some kind of magic that makes her a yelling blur. Her cloak flaps furiously behind.

“Hey! What are you doing!?”

Caduceus turns.

“You’re outside the boundary! Caduceus!?! CAD, WHAT ARE YOU—!?”

Caduceus interrupts her by suddenly raising a hand and saying a word. He thrusts his hand backward. He’s holding what looks like a large diamond between his thumb and forefinger and as he speaks, magic rushes through it like light through a prism throwing a sheet of rainbow like an aurora against the wall, painted against the air like it’s solid. Then the light shudders, the diamond splits, and simultaneously the air collapse inward and becomes a humming door composed of light.

“MOLLY, GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

Molly’s heart stops.

Caduceus grabs him around the waist, hooking one long arm full around his narrow midriff and with a terrible almost beast-like strength the previously gentle firbolg yanks Molly’s slim tiefling weight up into his arms and steps back. Time seems to slow then, like it always does in a moment of horror as the quantum pull of the teleportation spell begins to close around Molly and pull him apart down to the atomic structures of himself. Nott is almost on them, having crossed the yard with expeditious speed.

Molly is inside the tunnel of light, pulled back through the threshold into the howling inter-dimension while Nott is lunging from the foyer of reality. She’s framed in a dark, living green, a window of the Blooming Grove at her back as she dives for Molly, her hand extended as if a gnome-girl jumping in mid-air will stop the pull of a high-level vortex through time and space… and Molly nevertheless believes it. He drives his boot back against Caduceus’ thigh and lunges off him like wall, his middle still collared but like a thrashing animal in a snare he gets just loose enough and shoves one arm forward and –

Reality snaps in that way Molly’s become so familiar with.

   Molly hits the ground at speed. His head cracks hard against the rock, a sick jag of pain spiking his brain and for a red moment the world goes dark and muddled in his skull. Dizzy, the world rotates on a nauseous axis, wobbling like a bowl dropped on a table until it rattles to a stop and he’s laying face down on the ground. The stone is cold against his cheek and palms, the warmth bleeding from his body into the ground.

He blinks slowly, vision focusing…

He’s staring at his own fist against the ground In it: the broken gold chain of Clay’s periapt. Like he tore it from the firbolg’s neck in his panic. Confused, Molly lets it slide from his fingers and rolls onto his side.

Caduceus himself lays some five feet away. He’s sprawled, unmoving. His staff lays on the floor near his head. The amethyst at the head is pulsing slowly, like a heartbeat, revealing the dim fifteen by fifteen foot cavern they’re trapped inside, like a bubble inside solid rock. There’s no other light source, entrance, or seam in the walls of their cell and for a terrible moment, Molly feels the weight of the earth, the walls like a sarcophagus around them and panic begins to bleed in him.

Molly gets to his feet.

“Clay?”

No response.

“Fuck. Caduceus?”

Clay stirs then, groaning as he tries to push himself into a sitting position, head hanging low.

“What… what hap—?” He kind of jerks and doubles over retching. He shudders, then looks up, looks around at the dark cell around them. “Oh no. No…”

“Hey. Clay?” Molly remains at a distance. Molly has both rapiers in hand. “You alright, friend? What’ve you done? It’s okay if you’re okay now. You okay?”

He looks at Molly, looks at his weaponry in hand, the look on his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mollymauk.” He touches his neck and it takes Molly a moment to realize he’s touching the hollow where the periapt once laid. “I’m so…” His expression kind of buckles in grief, a bright pain welling in his pale eyes. “I didn’t think he’d do that.”

“Caduceus,” Molly murmurs, moving slowly to kneel next to him. “What happened?”

“I think he turned the… the chain on my periapt into an enslavement ring.” And, having said the words out loud in all their horror, a low, animal growl rises out of Caduceus’ chest and the fingers at this throat dig into the collar of his shirt just above his armor. “He must have done it… a while ago.” The growl is horrible in the firbolg’s throat, this eldritch-fey noise of rage and sorrow. His words stutter and sob. “I didn’t… I didn’t think he’d…”

Molly sheathes one rapier and loops an arm around Caduceus’ shoulders. “Shh, hey. Stop. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“The others are still out there. He only got the two of us.” Molly squeezes Caduceus’ shoulders meaningfully. “And he didn’t tell you to hurt anyone. All you did was pull us into some stupid pocket dimension or something. He doesn’t mean to kill us, I guess. It’s okay. He just sidelined us.”

“He’s split the party. They need us. We can’t fight him staggered–”

“They’ll be okay. They’ve got gods and assassins on their side.”

“How long have I worn this?” Caduceus seems to be in shock.

“Hey, stop. Hey. This isn’t a subtle spell. If you’d been under its control before, you’d know.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Caduceus covers his eyes with one hand. “I know this is the first time he’s used it, but how long has he been comfortable letting me wear this?”

“Since you switched sides,” says a voice suddenly.

Molly’s on his feet instantly. He’s only aware that he cut himself because his rapier burns now in his fist, swarmed in radiant fire. Blood soaks his shirt collar, his neck bleeding gently. Standing in the room, sudden as a blink, is Caleb Widogast. He glances at Molly’s sword, then meets his gaze. There’s something wrong with his eyes – the halogen blue color has ignited and shifts in his skull like blue flame burns behind the iris. The air around him breathes distorted by heatless mirage, power sweltering off his skin so strongly, it makes Molly’s nose sting.

“Don’t do that.” Caleb’s eyes hold Molly’s. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“You didn’t hurt me, you killed me,” Molly says, this even as dividing by two and just as factual. “What did you do to Clay?”

“Exactly what he said.” He looks at Caduceus then and shrugs. “It was when you asked me if I’d changed my mind about Beauregard. That’s when I changed the chain on your periapt. That night.”

That seems to do Clay some harm because his fingers dig deeper into the hallow at his throat and his eyes clench shut. So Molly steps between Caleb and the other man, his single drawn rapier throwing white in eerie ripples across the walls. Caleb’s eyes slide across the blade, then back to Molly.

“You’re stronger,” he says, “than when you died.”

“Any chance I can convince you to just back off?” Molly says.

“No.”

“Why? You win. We’re stuck in your stupid pocket bubble whatever. Gloating about it is fucking rude.”

“I’m not gloating. I’m sorry, but I need you to–”

“Fuck you and your sorry,” Molly says merrily. He circles a little to Caleb’s right and the wizard tracks him with his eyes, his fingers burning with some held sorcery that Molly talks over. “Rude to kill someone, you know. Rude to enslave someone with a cheap piece of jewelry too.”

“I’m not here to fight,” Caleb says. “Neither of you will win here. This room is made to hold my enemies. So…” He holds out an empty hand. “Molly, come with me. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, sincere as his mask of sociopathy will allow, “but I will hurt Caduceus if you don’t cooperate.” He waits for Molly to react, but only for a second before getting impatient. “Did you hear me? I will hurt him. Put the weapon away. I’m beyond you, Mollymauk. Just do as I say.”

“Suck. My. Purple. Dick,” Molly enunciates.

Caleb gives him a bewildered look.

“Go fuck yourself, Mr. Widogast.”

“I forgot how annoying you –”

“Eat me. Also, you’re terrible.”

Caleb’s eyes roll a little, a low fury coming into his gaze so Molly pivots quickly.

“If you’re such a goddamn monster now, why the hell didn’t you use that enslavement bullshit on the beach?” Molly blows air through his lips, makes a face. “Caduceus sure pissed you off then. If you’re so dedicated to this asshole shtick you should have sold it a little better, honestly. I don’t think—”

“I wasn’t wearing it on the beach.” Caduceus says this quietly, cutting Molly off. Caduceus doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling, one hand still pressed to his throat. “I was… I meant to give it you, Molly, on the day I raised you. I wasn’t wearing it.” He looks up at Caleb then. “That’s the only reason you didn’t use it to stop me earlier, isn’t it? Nothing else.”

“I told you,” Caleb murmurs. “You’re expendable to me.”

“Dramatic,” Molly snaps. “And bullshit.”

“You’ve been dead for ten years,” Caleb says sharply. “You don’t know anything. Now, put that sword down or I’ll make you.”

“I’m not wearing your stupid collar, Caleb. You want me down? Put me down.”

Caleb’s eyes flare then and he hits Molly with a spell.

Molly feels the enchantment clutch his limbs like a seizure; his hands immediately open and drop his rapier. He barely has time to panic about that, because in the time it takes them to hit the ground, Molly’s sprinted fifteen feet across the small room and slammed palms first, then sternum into the wall, pressing there like he can shove himself through the damn stone, his whole body possessed by the compulsion to just get away, far away, as fast as possible. But fast as it drives him to his knees, the compulsion is gone and he’s breathing again, gasping.

He hears voices behind him.

 Clay saying, “Enchant him again and I will make you regret it, Caleb.”

“You can’t beat me here.” Caleb’s voice has nothing in it, but the syllables. Molly looks over his shoulder. Caleb holds one hand toward Caduceus, the other up behind him, a shivering static screaming around one extended index finger. “And I won’t fall for the same trick twice. Anti-magic won’t work here, Clay.”

Caduceus is breathing hard, light fading from his staff, kneeling on the floor still but in a defensive stance now, his holy symbol raised in front of him. Molly can smell the ozone and sugar stink of dispelled magic in an enclosed space. Caleb’s stopped him from doing something clearly because Caduceus is shaking from some exertion, pink light fading off his body like steam from a hot stone.

“Tell Molly to do what I say,” Caleb whispers. “I will bury you here just to make a point.”

“Liar.” There is fey fire in Caduceus stare now, lit rose-pink in his irises, bright as the blue behind Caleb’s arcane stare. “You just attack the things you love because you think you don’t deserve them.” There’s power gathering in him, suffusing his frame and crackling across fur and fabric. “But you’re not Trent’s toy soldier anymore. So stop trying to be the monster again because it’s easier than facing up to –”

Caleb shouts something and throws a hand forward, but Clay’s staff flares and the magic dispels across his shoulders like a snowball breaking against a window. Caduceus’ eyes narrow, but there’s light shimmering on the edges of him now, moss blooming suddenly up in the cracks in the cobblestones and the air smells like soil and crushed grass and fresh sap running from spring-green wood.

“Stop talking, Caduceus.” Caleb’s stare burns chemical blue. “I’m warning you.”

“You can’t put me in a box. You won’t protect me by putting me aside.

“I’m not protecting you,” Caleb hisses, but there’s something in his words now – not anger but fear. “Don’t.”

“You can’t turn back time,” Caduceus says and with each word, the light in his eyes intensifies. His war braid starts to unravel, the light pulsing like a heartbeat in the crystal focus, in the color of his hair, and in the lichen on his armor. Light breathing through the him as radiance through a moral veil. “Live with your goddamn consequences, Caleb.”

Caleb’s eyes go wide and, “Caduce—!”

The cleric slams his staff to the ground.

A terrible scream roars up through the wood, vibrating up the shaft like a tuning fork stuck to the howl of cicadas. It’s so loud, Molly has to clap his hands over his ears and watch, horrified, as the wood in Clay’s hand erupts impossibly into a black, writhing cloud of locusts, so thick they block out all but the smallest shreds of the light in the room. Molly scrambles away, back hitting the wall as Caduceus Clay’s plague of insects consumes Caleb Widogast.

He disappears into a sea of chitinous bodies, breaking like a wave over him. Through the clicking roar of beetles and wings, Molly can hear the wizard screaming. Molly smells blood and somewhere in that swarm, he can just make out the heaving thrash that must be Caleb writhing and thrashing as Caduceus’ spell bears down, merciless as the fucking tide under the moon. He’s not stopping. Caduceus stands in the center of the room, his staff blinding in his hands, a surging mass of insects breaking against the wall in front of him.

There’s blood glistening now on the bodies of the bugs, slick and iron and Molly can still hear Caleb. He’s still screaming. This insane animal sound of agony.

There’s a flare of fire from the mass, a mound of beetle igniting suddenly and a fireball the size of an umbrella erupts through the swarm and rockets directly at Caduceus. But fast as the spell is released, the bugs swarm again, and the wizard’s spell swerves. It rips a flaming path across Clay’s shoulder instead of his core, staggering, his arm suddenly a burnt and bleeding roadmap of fused fur and flesh.

Caduceus stumbles and for a moment the light in his staff flickers and the swarm slows… before he draws a long breath, steadies and with a bullish exhalation he focuses through the pain. The swarm surges again, renewed and Caleb is again, gone beneath the ravenous mass.

“Caduceus!”

Molly lunges off the wall and races to grab his arm. He doesn’t notice. So fixed on his task, he can’t hear.

“Stop! Stop it that’s enough—!” He wrenches Cad’s arm down, grabs his collar. “You’re killing him!” The swarm continues to burrow and spiral, crushing its target against the wall in a screaming wave and Molly can see Caduceus’ face – frozen in horror, his pale, glowing eyes running over liquid light and Molly grabs his jaw and pulls his head down to look at him. “CADUCEUS! Please –!”

And that’s when Caleb, still choking, being torn by insects, manages to say a Word.

Like he didn’t know the one that killed, Molly does not know this one. He, nevertheless, knows that the Word is ‘agony’.

It hits Caduceus like one of Nott’s bullets. It slams home in his ribcage, penetrating his armor like cotton and hurls the cleric down, dropping his body to the floor where the Word takes root like a weed in fast forward. The spell erupts through Caduceus in red veins of light. The veins lash themselves around his wrists, his throat, his skull, and like hideous assassin’s wire, they garrote him to the ground. Then they start to pulse. Fast. Then faster and faster. Until it’s a constant, whirring hum inside Caduceus.

And that’s when the cleric starts screaming.

The Word lights his body up, igniting the root-system of his nervous system until he’s a writhing skeleton caged by cherry-red wiring. A nebula of burning copper with a single racing coal nested in the ribcage. He’s rigid like he’s stroking out, his eyes turning back in his skull as his spine curls up from the floor, his shoulders pinned back by paralysis.

The insect swarm dispels instantly – whatever arcane focus needed to hold it instantly shredded as their spellcaster loses his concentration over to agony. Clay is howling, this horrible split-sound between a beast bellowing and a man screaming. He thrashes wildly, ridden from the inside by the pain, possessed by it until he’s incapable of screaming and he’s just shaking and choking at Molly’s feet.

“I told you,” Caleb gasps. He staggers forward, covered in blood, his entire body a red slick of uncountable insect bites. His robes are soaked and shredded. His blue eyes are still burning, fixed on his fallen teammate’s shaking form. “I told you, Cad. I told you –”

Molly’s across the room instantly. He slams into Caleb, shoving him back against the wall and one hand around the wizard’s throat and his second rapier against Caleb’s windpipe and blade edge digging into cartilage.

“Stop hurting him,” Molly rasps.

Caduceus is sobbing and retching now. Sick with the pain and clawing at the ground.

“Caleb! For fuck’s sake!”

Caleb just looks at him, calm as a summer day, eyes pale as clear skies through the blood that soaks his face.

“You’ve been with them three days and you care so much about even him…”

“You fucking idiot! You’re such a fucking idiot! How can you be so smart and be so bloody stupid!?”

“Come with me, Molly, willingly and I’ll stop.”

Molly throws the sword down and grabs Caleb’s shirt in a two-fisted twist. “STOP HURTING HIM OR I’M GONNA BITE YOUR BLOODY EYES OUT!”

Caleb waves a hand.

The Word douses like a coal dropped in water and the enchantment dies. Caduceus stops screaming instantly. Like someone knocked the air out of him and he lies there dark and numb and gasping. The light in the staff is just barely glowing, soft and thready near Clay’s head where it fell. He’s shivering, half-conscious, hair a pink muddle beneath his skull, curled in on himself like a stabbed creature. His shaking hand closed and pressed against his chest. He looks like he’s fucking dying.

Molly has his fists around Caleb’s throat. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to you? He loves you, you stupid son of a bitch. They all do. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Saving Beauregard,” he says.

He offers Molly an open hand.

“Come with me.”

Molly hisses. Full on, Infernal snarling in his face.

Caleb just grimaces a little.

“Okay. The others are coming. Are you –?”

“I hope Jester punches your teeth in,” Molly snaps.

And he takes Caleb by hand and they vanish.

[civilorange]

consider this, though...

It takes the Mighty Nein a few days to get out of the sphere—on their end. An hour or two was a week, imagine four days...

A lot longer than a week has passed for the one member left behind.

.

.

One moment is all it takes—they’re gone before you can ask them if you can stay.

They’re gone before the storm has left the horizon, and the blue sky spills to the edges of the ocean. They’re gone—and you’re here. For the first time in so long, you’re the one left behind. There’s the smell of ozone in the air, and the taste of petrichor on your tongue. The Stormlord is silent, and the thunder in your blood numbing—you’re alone, and you hate it so when you don’t mean to be that way.

You’re a creature of habit, and you almost leave—almost turn away and move to whatever may be next, whatever empty awaits—but they’re your friends, and they’re all you have left of Mollymauk. The circus had been safety, but this group—the Mighty Nein—were something altogether different.

They were home, your darling tiefling had confessed one night—his red eyes bright in the dark, his smile curled wickedly. But he’d been warm against your side, his sharp tail flopped casually across your lap. “Home isn’t four walls, angel,” his sharp cheek on your shoulder, his arm curled through yours, and your heart had been soft. Had been silent. For just a breath of time it hadn’t ached. “It’s the people who know you. Who care. Who’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

You remember the kiss to your cheek. “And we do, angel. We miss you each time.”

You’re almost asleep when you hear his midnight promise, “every time.”

.

You find the mechanical sphere they’d been toying with—it’s warm, and whirring, and you tighten fingers around it like you might be able to squeeze it until they pop out. Shake it hard enough to rattle them free and spill them back into being—but there’s nothing.

You’re not Caleb, you’re not Molly or Caduceus—you’re not wise, or smart, or particularly perceptive.

You’re alone, and you don’t mean to be that way.

“You’re coming back,” you whisper to the dark, the mechanical sphere resting in the cradle of your lap. It’s warm, and whirring, and your fingers tremble so much you can’t hope to shake it any more. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and you’re truly alone. Curling around the sphere forehead to the warm metal, you hope they know you’ll miss them—that they’re your home, and you long to be theirs too.

“I’ll be here when you do. I’ll take care of your boat.” You promise, hoping to hear Jester’s chipper voice, or Fjord’s drawling confidence. But there’s…nothing. No correction that it’s a ship, and that it’s yours too. Nothing. Just the lulling sway of being out on the ocean—the sun slips over the horizon, the light blinding you for a long moment.

You’re tired, and cold, and alone. Closing your eyes, “you’re coming back.”

.

They don’t come back.

.

Not the next day, or the one after that—not when the boat’s been fixed, and you’re forced to take a mercenary job to pay for the repairs. You refuse to lose the ship—their ship—and an aasimar on a tropical island is a rare thing indeed. You make gold, and give it up the moment it hits your palms—you do what you must to keep this boat that means nothing to you, but had been so important to them.

“We really sh-should be o-o-off,” the tortle says on the eighth day, a promise of thirty gold in the air.

You’re cold, and tired, and smell only salt—no petrichor, no ozone—just salt. “We’ll leave before sun down,” you say, absent and hoping to see even the farthest spark of lightening on the horizon. There’s only blue skies going gold with dusk.

“Aye, aye.”

.

They don’t appear on the ninth day.

.

Nor the following month when you reach the mainland once more.

.

For a whole year you hate a certain tiefling for what you’ve taken as the worst of lies ever told to you. You miss them, and they’re nowhere to be seen. You’re no more their home than a nameless tavern on the edge of the Empire is yours. You hold the mechanical sphere at night, hoping they might feel your warmth wherever they are—they’re alive, you’re convinced. You’d feel it if they died—feel it in the place where you’re cold and untouched.

The place where Molly lives inside you—that graveyard that might be your soul.

.

You save a town—carve through the bandits holding it hostage, and leave their bodies in the square. It’s harder alone, you realize; and maybe that had been the lesson you were supposed to learn. You’re hurt, and rage boils your blood—but the villagers thank you and you don’t know how to tell them you’re not exactly sure why you did it.

Just that it seemed like the right thing to do.

“Who are you?” A girl asks—she’s slim with dark hair and you must blink a little hard, because for half a moment she looks like Beau.

You shake your head and smile, maybe—small and half-thought. “The Mighty Nein.”

She’s confused. “There’s only one of you?”

You think of the mechanical sphere in your bag of holding, down in the depths where it’s safe from greedy hands and pilfering fingers. You think of how your home has been sequestered away for you—but… “Just for now,” you promise, still believing they’ll be back.

.

People whisper of the calamity like it must just happen again. Unhappy deities, and their measly mortal plain.

.

It isn’t until you’re in the middle of your third Dwendalian winter without them that you think maybe they’ll never come back. That they’re dead and gone, and this mechanical sphere is nothing more than a tomb. The winter cold burns your fingers, but you refuse to wear gloves at night—refuse to sleep unable to feel the warm metal of your only companion.

“I’m sorry,” you say, dinging frozen fingers into the edges of metal, wincing not at all when it bites into your palms and blood spills into the gaps and whorls. It hums, and you wonder if maybe they’ll appear if you bleed yourself dry into it.

A sacrifice needed—a sacrifice gladly given.

“I’d do it,” talking to yourself, talking to them, bleeding silently until it drips through whatever pulsing light exists inside it. Onto your clothes and into the white around you. You’re lightheaded and absent, and the cut on you palm scabs over long before anything comes of it.

“For you.” For your home, even if you’re not theirs.

.

It isn’t until the end of that winter that you realize you must tell Jester’s mother something. Your heart sinks and your eyes ache, and when you’re walking the streets of Nicodranas trying to think of how to tell a mother than her daughter is gone—dead, missing. You don’t imagine there is a word for it—much like there’s no word for the place inside you where your wife exists, the place pale and formless that might have been your heart once.

Before it shattered, before you broke.

.

Marion’s still beautiful when she cries—you don’t know why that’s worse.

.

It doesn’t feel like replacing anyone when you find a small goblin boy with no place to go—when he grins and hisses, and picks locks with swift little fingers. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal when a human fighter falls in beside you—enamored by the idea of the Mighty Nein, of the stories told—and you’re no expert of being a hero, but you have learned your lesson.

It’s harder alone.

.

None of them stay for long.

Not because they don’t try, but because you won’t allow it. Your penance is a silent Lord, and muted blood—it’s warm metal and sleepless nights.

.

Somewhere around the tenth year you stop asking wizards what they know of your Mechanical Sphere—they fiddle, and fray, but when they get no further than coins, you pluck it from their knowledge hungry fingers and tell them you’re no longer interested.

.

More than one has tried to come in the night to steal it—more than one has died.

.

It’s harder alone, but you’ve always been partial to challenges.

.

Zuala’s grave is a long aged pile of rocks—the moss has stolen much of their color over the years, and you’re not surprised that they’ve sunk how they have. Into the wet, the cold—the mash.

“I’m here,” your cheeks hurt when you smile, book in hand—thick, and old, and filled to the brim with flowers from every land you’ve seen. Red, and blue, and green—gold, and pink, and purple. “I’ve brought you something.”

You tell her about your adventures—tell her about the Nein, and how you lost them so long ago. Tell her about courage gained, and lost, and answers to questions gone unasked. Tell her that you’re not unhappy anymore, and that you’ve found something you’re really terribly good at—saving people, being something of a hero for those who have none.

“You would have liked them,” a confession, soft as a raven’s wing.

.

“I’m trying very hard,” you say, slow and stilted. Sometimes your voice rasps because you have so little to say. No one to talk to. “To be whom you thought I was.”

.

When you leave, her grave is the most colorful thing in Xhorhas.

Just as she’d been the brightest thing in your world.

.

The Mighty Nein—understood as one single aasimar, though no one can exactly confirm this—there’s whispers of others, recollections of arena battles and bandits killed. Of a group that slaughtered the Iron Shepherds and won a power struggle on Dark Tow—scoundrel pirates, and champions both. They’re myth, and legend, and sticking their nose into wars that have no mind for their heroics.

.

You haven’t spoken to the Stormlord in seasons, haven’t felt him in your bones, or blood. You feel awash with sorrow, and something aimless and flat like guilt. You think of home, and you miss the simplicity of Molly’s promise—the otherness of having something so whimsical as your one truth.

Sometimes you think that you’ve run from your patron much like you did Zuala’s death—a coward existing somewhere on the edges of bravery.

It’s easy to kill and save the day, easier still to make the hard choices for a realm that means almost nothing to you any longer—a fallen god trying to shatter the veil between realms, a coven of vampires praising their deity of darkness.

It’s easy to answer the call when the outcome is so very unimportant.

You’ll die one day—that you know—alone, and homeless, and you’ve no more aches in your chest for such a fate.

.

You’re not unhappy, but you’re something that could be mistaken for it.

.

It’s on the thirteenth year that something happens—you’re asleep, and the Sphere hums in your grasp—whirring loudly, vibrating against the clutch of your fingers. You’re far north—in the shattered snow and brittle ice beyond any known map. A terrible power draws close, a mortal man seeking divine intervention in the most ill of ways—a man dead and dying both, and something about it makes you think of Molly. Of initials and unmarked graves—or traveling circuses and softer nights.

Of losing something you’d only just begun to think of yours.

The Sphere whirs and you hold it close as you wake up—whump—and with a gasping yelp, Beau appears. She’s…young—like she hasn’t aged a day in over ten years. She’s glancing around, and her goggles sit on the crown of her head, and you imagine she can’t see much in the dark. There’s no light this far North, no stars or moon—just black.

“Wha—,” you blink through the haze of her appearing; of her stumbling through ankle deep snow like she’s as terribly out of place as she is, but before you can really devour the sight of her—the life you see in her, the Sphere whumps again. Fjord appearing, with Caduceus following shortly after. You find details that you’ve forgotten over the years—the exact shade of Fjord’s skin, or the cut of Beau’s jaw. They’re singed, and tired, and you ache inside how they seem to outside.

“Well,” Cad murmurs, soft as a butterfly’s wing, “this doesn’t seem right.” You forgot how deep his voice was, how soft his fur looked—how he reminded you so terribly of Molly. A bright spot in all the bland.

Whump—Caleb appears.

They look like children now, bright and colorful in this world of white you’ve sequestered yourself. Caleb’s copper hair, and the soot to his cheeks.

Whump—Nott.

Whump—Jester.

There’s a bitter taste to the air—like sadness and desperation, and you know it’s the feral tilt you’ve gone since these friends left you. You can taste it on them, the fear lingering like musk on their skin. Inhabiting them as another whump cracks the night—the little gnome girl, the bearer of this Sphere.

“Where…” Beau starts, spinning in place, eyes alighting upon the group, finding and tracing them—but then they land on you. “Yasha.” You know you’re different—larger, and darker, and maybe your breaks are more obvious, because there’s pain in Beau’s eyes. You stand, the Sphere fitting naturally in the bend of your elbow—it’s been there for years now, after all.

Maybe they see the blue ink marking your neck, the curled horns on either side that match the pattern of Jesters—or the massive falchion sat on your hip, the compliment to Magician’s Judge on your back. They have no way of knowing your bag is full of buttons, and incense, and books you’ll never read. That you only drink tea now, though you hardly know why.

They don’t know that you’ve remade yourself with pieces of them.

.

They’d been somehow immortal in your mind.

Unable to die, and yet dead already.

Schrödinger’s home.

.

“I don’t understand,” Nott urges, yellow eyes darting around, hands already curling around her weapon. “Where are we?”

“You couldn’t have gotten this far north in four days,” Fjord rationalizes, his eyes looking for the solution—for the reasoning.

.

It’s Cad who knows, who understands. “It hasn’t been four days, has it?”

.

When you go to sleep that night, your still refuse to wear gloves—refuse to be unable to feel the warmth, except this time is isn’t metal. It Jester’s hand in yours, and Nott’s body tucked in-between. It’s Beau’s shoulder brushing yours, and Caleb’s hesitant smile—more a grimace, but so very close to a smile. It’s Caduceus lying flat on his back, fingers wrapped around your ankle like he knows you need the reminder that he’s there.

It’s Fjord trying to explain, trying to understand, we didn’t know, and knowing somehow after only a moment that tonight isn’t the night for explanations. He’s on Jester’s other side, but his hand finds your shoulder—for only a moment, like a reminder, but it’s enough.

.

Home isn’t four walls.

It’s the people who know you. Who care. Who’ll miss you when you’re gone.

.

You suppose Molly wasn’t a complete liar.

[moiraineswife]

The Eye Of A Hurricane - A Widomauk Fic

i wrote this decades ago and in the haze of dissertation Stress completely forgot it existed until i unearthed it just now so like...enjoy y’all? 

Title: The Eye Of A Hurricane 

Summary: Set the night of the Zone of Truth scene from episode 14. Molly has trouble sleeping and remains awake alone in the empty common room of the Leaky Tap, drowning in the old feeling of emptiness dragged up by the group’s interrogation. Until Caleb finds him and keeps him company. 

Teaser: ‘After a long moment, he said, “How much have you had to drink?” Molly considered the question. The answer, in his book, was set firmly between ‘far too much’ and ‘not nearly enough.’ His response to Caleb, however, was the vague semblance of a shrug.’ 

Link: AO3

***

“Mollymauk?”

The fire in the hearth was dying.

It had been struggling to cling to whatever feeble life it had left for as long as Molly had been watching it.

The tavern had emptied in that time. All of his friends had gone to bed. He had been alone. Alone with the grasping remains of a once roaring fire.

Seemed a shame to abandon it now just because someone had said his name.

His name...

Even that hadn’t been his until he had made it so. Gustav had given it to him in the carnival...The carnival that felt like a lifetime ago.

Movement in front of him. Something apart from the fire that, if he’d had any mercy in him, he’d have put out of its misery some time ago. It distracted him, making him blink as though emerging into bright light from a lifetime in darkness.

Caleb, failing to get an answer, had padded in front of him, Frumpkin trotting quietly at his heels like a small, furry ginger shadow. Apart from that he was alone. His other small, green, sticky-fingered shadow was nowhere to be seen.

Still, Molly didn’t look away from the fire. Caleb, following his gaze, frowned slightly, then asked softly, concern evident in his tone, “Are you cold?”

That tiny, distant part of his brain that was still somewhat connected to him thought vaguely, bless him.

The gaping, abyssal void he’d prayed never to know again just continued to stare at the ghost of the fire which seemed to have succumbed at last to the cold, dark oblivion Molly must have known once before, and would beg to take him back where he belonged. If he’d had any voice to beg.

Instead, he only stared.

A sudden flash of light illuminated the room and the grate burst into life once more. Flames danced merrily before him, uncaring of what had been before and a soft, welcome heat filled the room. It helped. Molly hadn’t realised it until Caleb’s fire had warmed him. He had been cold.

The fire roared happily and Molly gazed silently at it.

If only the wizard could bring him back as easily.

Someone, or something, once had. It had pulled him out of a grave 2 years ago. In the moment he wished it had left him there to sleep. At peace. Untroubled by the tragic monster it had instead created in him.

“Mollymauk,” Caleb repeated, quietly.

He came closer, but didn’t touch him. He was grateful for that. It seemed as though the lightest touch right now would burn him. Burn with a heat not even the Nine Hells could conceive of. Burn until he clawed the flesh from his bones just to let his blood flash to ice and soothe him. He couldn’t bear that right now. And he couldn’t bear Caleb to be the one to do it. He wasn’t sure...Why. But the instinct to protect Caleb from that was almost as strong as the desire to protect himself.

Gazing at Molly with the same intensity Molly still gazed at the fire with, Caleb said, sounding more worried, still, “Molly, can you hear me?”

Molly made himself nod.

It took a lot, as though his skull had been filled with lead and he was trying to drag it through a thick bog just to make it move. Any response from him at all seemed to cause Caleb to relax just slightly, however. Instead of staring fixedly at him, he inspected their surroundings.

After a long moment, he said, “How much have you had to drink?”

Molly considered the question. The answer, in his book, was set firmly between ‘far too much’ and ‘not nearly enough.’ His response to Caleb, however, was the vague semblance of a shrug.

The wizard’s question reminded him of the alcohol, however. He reached blindly for it. If death couldn’t be so good as to come and take him back, back to something that might feel like home in a way this damned, battered body barely ever had. The least the gods owed him, he figured, was a single night of dreamless, liquor-induced oblivion. Let him pretend for a little while, at least, until his watchful Moonweaver passed and gave him over to the care of the relentless, burning sun.

His fingers fumbled the smooth exterior of the glass for a moment before a hand far more agile and dextrous than his current, drunken, clumsy efforts, plucked it deftly from his reach.

“It will not help,” Caleb’s voice told him, with an aching gentleness that made Molly want to punch him for daring to be able to feel tenderness and pain, for being able to feel anything at all, while he felt like he was back, back in that grave where they had left him for what seemed a century.

Alone. Forgotten. Empty.

Something in the wizard’s tone made him pause for just a moment. Then, the desire to snap at him, to lash out, to take whatever this was out on him, to hurt him, just to see if it hurt him, too, if it made him feel anything at all, reared again, like a hidden serpent.

If he’d had the words, if he’d had the will, he’d have verbally eviscerated him. A part of him knew that he was only trying to help. The rest of him didn’t care. But as he had neither, so he slumped back in his seat instead.

Defeated. Somehow, judging by the look on Caleb’s face, this was worse.

Molly had gotten his wish after all. He’d hurt him. He still felt nothing.

Caleb stared at him for another long moment. Frumpkin did likewise. Molly ignored both of them.

Until, that was, Caleb got slowly to his feet beside him and said, voice low, and reassuring.

“I will be back in a moment,” he said, jerkily. He was fidgeting with that diamond again, the one he used in combat. Molly might have been amused, knowing what it was capable of, if he had been capable of that feeling. “I’m going to fetch Yasha for you,” he continued, gently.

He swept past Molly, but before he could make it more than a foot, Molly’s hand closed around his thin wrist, claws biting in so deep the warm rush told him he’d drawn blood, but he didn’t tear his eyes from Caleb’s face.

Still unable to speak, he shook his head jerkily. Yasha had seen him in this state before.  While he was currently cursed to relive it, he had no desire for her to have to do the same.

“Alright,” Caleb said gently, clearly trying to defuse the desperate tension from the moment. “Alright,” he repeated, as though he was trying to soothe a terrified child after a nightmare.  

Cautiously, like a wild animal being taught trust for the first time, he released Caleb’s wrist.

Slowly, he made to return to the chair at Molly’s side. Then he stopped.

“Would you like me to stay?” he asked softly.

Molly froze, stuck by the question. He tried to wrestle some kind of sense from the knotted mess of his emotions, but before he’d even begun, he found himself nodding. Fears of vulnerability, thoughts of the awkward conversation the morning might bring, and the desire to always appear in control were swept away, like a thin paper shield in the face of a hurricane.

There was only one truth that consumed his existence in this moment: he did not want to be alone. It felt like the impulse to spare Caleb had, earlier impulsive, and instinctual, transcending any kind of logic, or reason, or even emotion.

He realised he was still nodding frantically. Only when Caleb laid a gentle hand on his forearm and said softly, “I will stay with you, Mollymauk. I promise. I will stay with you until you ask me to leave. I won’t leave you, otherwise.”

The words draped over him like a warm blanket, bringing with them an inexpressible sense of comfort. He nodded again, but calmly this time, gratefully, and Caleb nodded in return.

They remained in silence for a long time. How long Molly didn’t know. Minutes. Hours. It didn’t seem important. Throughout, Caleb kept his hand resting, almost absently, on Molly’s forearm. Molly did not pull away. At some point, he beckoned jerkily to Frumpkin with a small, summoning flick of his wrist.

The cat had been curled in front of the still dancing fire, eyes on Caleb. At this, and without any obvious further prompting from the wizard, he rose, stretched, then trotted silently to Molly and leapt lightly into his lap.

With a slightly dazed feeling, Molly stroked the cat’s soft fur as he kneaded his trousers with his sharp claws. As he did so, Frumpkin began to purr loudly. Molly blinked at him. You better not be pitying me, you useless bag of fleas, he thought, irritably.

Another long beat of silence passed until Caleb quietly told his hands, “You know, I have some experience with this,” he motioned awkwardly towards Molly, “When the words just – Won’t come.”

Molly swallowed and nodded with difficulty, burying his hand deeply in Frumpkin’s thick, fluffy fur. “It has happened to you before, hasn’t it?” he said, quietly. Molly nodded stiffly again. “I am sorry,” Caleb said, softly.

And he was. Molly knew somehow, he truly was. Molly shrugged vaguely, one hand still gently stroking through Frumpkin’s soft fur.

“I can talk if you would like, or if you would rather-“ Molly nodded before he finished.

Caleb took a short breath, clasping his hands in his lap. “I am not as good a talker as you,” Caleb murmured. Molly’s lips twitched, as though, in another life, he might have smiled. “Today was quite intense for you,” Caleb said, softly, “I take it that is why-“

Molly jerkily shook his head before Caleb could finish. The last thing he wanted to hear about right now was that.

Caleb blinked at him, confused. “You would like me to stop talking?” he asked, slowly.

Molly shook his head frantically, desperation and hopeless, frustrated panic started to claw at his chest. He had been alone down here in the silence for hours and it hadn’t bloody killed him. But right now, the thought of being engulfed by silence in this moment felt like he was drowning, and Caleb’s voice was the last bit of desperate air in his lungs that he couldn’t lose.

Caleb stared at him, lost, then he hastily searched through his satchel, then shoved pen, ink, and parchment into Molly’s hands.

“You can write, can’t you?” he said, suddenly concerned.

Molly shot him a filthy look and scrawled ‘fuck you’ in Infernal.

Caleb gave him a little half-smile as though well-aware of what had just been directed at him. Not having the patience for niceties he scrawled, in Common, Talk. But about something else. Then he thrust the paper towards him.

“Ah,” Caleb said, softly. He bit his lip, considering the scribbled command he was holding.

Finally, he said softly, “Have you ever been to the Zemni Fields?”

Molly shook his head.

Caleb smiled, a little sadly, “I could tell you about it?”

Molly motioned for the paper again and Caleb handed it over.

Home? He scrawled.

Caleb nodded.

Molly mirrored him.

Caleb gathered himself for a moment, closed his eyes, breathed, opened them again, then began to speak. “It is quite a poor area of the Empire. Life there can be very difficult. But it is peace, too, I think. And it is beautiful. The fields themselves are soft and gold, towering over the land. They are sometimes called pillars of gilded moonbeams. Or oceans of light that were gifted to mortals by Gods.”

Molly raised an eyebrow and scribbled down quickly. How poetic of you.

Caleb blushed and admitted, “It is actually from a song.”

Molly blinked and a memory drifted across his ravaged mind, with the clarify of an oasis in the desert.

Sitting on a cliff’s edge, a velvety blanket embedded with thousands of sparkling diamonds spread across the dark sky above him. A soft sea breeze ruffled the hair on his head. It was starting to grow in again. The salt stung in his eyes, but he didn’t close them.

Some buried instinct he shouldn’t have warns him of movement behind him. He turned to see a tiny figure creeping towards him, blonde hair billowing in a halo-like cloud around her young face.

“Molly,” Toya said in her soft little voice, clearly wanting to come nearer but afraid of the sheer cliff-edge.

He gave her a soft little smile, trying to look reassuring, though wondering how the fuck the face of a scarred, purple demon face could ever reassure a child.

Yet, miraculously, Toya gave him a tiny smile in return and timidly moved a little closer. She set down in the grass beside him, crossing her legs, not on the edge, as he was, but still at his side.

“Are you having another bad day, Molly?”

The name still felt a little strange. Wrong and right at the same time. Him and not him. He lived in a strange world.

He nodded jerkily.

“Would you like me to sing it again?” she asked, softly placing one of her small hands on his shoulder.

He nodded again. She gave him a little smile that might have shattered his heart, if his chest hadn’t been so empty.

She opened her mouth and the sweet, soothing music of her voice felt like a balm to his ravaged soul. He closed his eyes and let it wash over him like the soft sea breeze pressing its kisses to his fever-hot skin.

The ghost of a smile dared to tug at his lips.

Molly glanced at Caleb then wrote, Would you sing it for me?

Caleb flinched a little, “I do not have a very good voice, Mollymauk, I don’t think you want-“

Hand shaking, Molly scrawled a barely legible please on the sheet of paper Caleb had given him. Caleb looked down at the word, then up at Molly.

He frowned, wringing his hands in his lap, then said slowly, “It is a work song, sung in the fields, and should really be sung in Zemnian to-“ Molly was already nodding. “Alright, alright...” Caleb closed his eyes, lips moving soundlessly for a moment.

Then he began to sing, soft and halting for the first few bars, but old memories and instincts soon smoothed out. His voice was not the best Molly had ever heard, but the melody was simple, made as a driving rhythm for poor field-hands, and he carried it well.

Molly closed his eyes and breathed. Just breathed. As Caleb came to the second verse, a warmth built slowly in his chest, and he didn’t resist the gentle hum that vibrated from his throat, just as it had all those months ago with Toya.

Caleb stutterd for a moment, but managed to regain his flow. As they ended the song, more or less together. Molly felt a sense of peace it had seemed would never grace him again, settle over his chest, like a shroud.

As he glanced towards Caleb again, wanting to thank him, his eyes fell on the wizard’s wrist and the deep scarlet puncture marks he realised with a shock he had caused.

“Caleb.”

The wizard jumped at the sudden sound of his scratchy voice, the first word he’d spoken in hours.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb looked down to what he was gesturing at.

The cuts his claws had left in the human’s wrist had scabbed over by now, but they were red and raw. Thin rivers of red still ran from them, the tracks of dried blood evidence of the damage he’d done.

“Oh,” Caleb said, sounding surprised and blinking down at the marks as though he’d only just noticed them. “It is nothing,” he said, dismissively, waving his hand. “They are only scratches, they will be gone by morning, I’m sure.”

“I shouldn’t have-“ Molly began hoarsely, but Caleb cut him off.

“It’s nothing.”

Molly swallowed with difficulty, his throat feeling raw and dry, like sandpaper left in a desert. He licked his lips nervously. “Maybe we should still clean them, though-“

“Molly,” Caleb interrupted, tone almost stern, “I appreciate your fussing, but I assure you, I have had worse injuries from Frumpkin.”

Frumpkin, who was still curled contently in Molly’s lap, made a small noise of what seemed to be affirmation.

He couldn’t quite believe he was being ganged up on by a scrawny string bean of a wizard, and a cat. Or, more to the point, that it was working.

But it had been a very long, very exhausting day, so he let it. After a long pause, in which Molly scratched the bullying bag of fleas behind the ear, Caleb said tentatively, “Would you like to talk?”

Molly let out a bitter, humourless laugh. “There’s nothing to say,” he replied, irritated that the words had sounded more unconcerned in his head than they did out loud. “I just...Broke and-“

“No,” Caleb said very quietly.

“Excuse me?” Molly said, incredulously.

“No,” the wizard repeated, more quietly still, “You are not broken, Mollymauk. You will know if you are. It is not so easy to come back from.”

Molly frowned slightly, “What are you?” he demanded irritably, lounging back in his chair and staring over at the wizard, “An expert on broken people?”

“Yes,” Caleb replied simply.

Molly opened his mouth to say something but then shut it. The word had been a little too heavy, and the eyes behind it a little too haunted to allow him to spill the sharp words that had been on his tongue.

Instead, he diverted himself by soothing Frumpkin who had sat up, apparently sensing Caleb’s momentary distress.

“Well,” Molly said, finally, covering the pregnant silence left in the wake of that last word, “That makes two of us.”

Caleb looked up at him and he said softly, “I know what it feels like to be broken. And I know that it doesn’t feel like anger, or grief, or pain, or rage. It just feels like, like...”

“Nothing,” Caleb supplied in a hoarse whisper.

Molly nodded, his hands trembling slightly. He hastily stroked Frumpkin again, trying to hide it. Then decided that ‘fuck it’, Caleb had already seen enough to damn him, and he reached for the glass on the table in front of him.

This time, Caleb didn’t stop him. He drained it in a single swig, and refilled it again from the bottle, which he passed to Caleb. The wizard peered into it, sniffed it gingerly, winced, then sighed, apparently resigned, and swallowed a generous gulp himself.

Staring down into the deep amber liquid he had poured out, Molly swirled it in the glass, making a tiny whirlpool form in the middle, which he stared down into.

He found himself whispering softly, “I don’t want to be that way again, Caleb. I can’t, I can’t.”

He shook so violently again that the glass slipped from his hand and smashed on the floor, making both of them jump. Molly cursed viciously and bent to pick it up, forgetting for a moment that Frumpkin was curled in his lap, squashing him a little. A mumbled meow of protest brought him back to his senses.

“Wait,” Caleb said, catching Molly’s arm and halting him, “I will summon Schmidt to take care of it, so you don’t cut yourself.”

“I’d have earned it,” Molly muttered darkly, glancing down at Caleb’s wrist again, but he swallowed down his drink again.

He watched in silence as Caleb completed his ritual then, as the wizard relaxed and sat back, the glass began gathering itself up and shuffling towards the bar. Molly stared after it, “Quite something, that,” he muttered into his glass.  

“I cannot imagine,” Caleb said, quietly, “Coming into the world as you did.”

“Oh,” Molly said, waving an airy hand, the effect somewhat ruined by the fact his hand shook as he did so, “Everyone came into the world the way I did, Caleb. Clawing their way out of darkness with no memory, in a haze of blood and confusion.”  

Caleb smiled thinly, “A fine thought,” he said, quietly, “But not quite the same. I did not come into the world with-“ his eyes found some of Molly’s many scars and as soon as they did, he stopped what he was saying, reaching for the bottle and taking another sip to cover the awkward moment.

Molly smirked and rolled up a sleeve, displaying more of the thin silver bands, “Look all you like,” he shrugged, “They’re not going anywhere, and I’m not ashamed of them.”

Caleb flushed slightly, “I did not mean to imply that I thought you should be. I only meant that they...Hint at something. Something that came before. And-“ He paused, frowning slightly, struggling to express what he wanted to.

“I believe,” he said, finally, “That there is a difference between nothing and between emptiness.” Molly stiffened slightly in his seat, but only took another drink, and made no move to silence the wizard, who continued. “

We know nothing when we are born, we are blank, and quickly filled by the things the world around us has to offer. When we are empty...”

A muscle went in his jaw and he sipped at the bottle again, but went on, “When we are empty, we know there should be something there, we know we should be more, we know we should be...Something. That is...That is very different to simply being born with nothing.”

Caleb took another drink of the alcohol, which was not good, but did its job well, “I cannot imagine coming into the world as you did. I cannot imagine how I would have survived that.” He paused, considering the matter for a moment, then said, more softly still, “I would like to believe that I would. But I would be lying if I said I was sure.”

A thousand quick, witty remarks leapt to the tip of Molly’s tongue as a response to that. Instead he found himself swallowing hard past the tightening lump in his throat, shaking worse than ever and trying to find some semblance of composure.

Empty.

The word whispered through his mind again, like the spectre of the nightmare he had dragged himself from once, and knew he never could again, and it wrecked any chance he might have had at stopping the words that now tumbled from him.

“I couldn’t do it again,” he choked out, abruptly.

His eyes had wandered back to the fire the wizard had conjured. It had burned low, with the time they had sat talking, and the time before that Caleb had sat with him, but the flames still dance, casting their shadows onto the ash-stained brick wall behind it.

There was something hypnotising about them, and they coaxed the words from him almost against his will, “If it happens again,” he whispered, “If it ever happens to me again, if I ever lose myself again, I want you to kill me, Caleb. Kill me, rather than let me live like that again.”

The words had snapped out of him without conscious thought, and without permission, and a part of them wanted to take them back, to hoard them within himself again. But another part of him was relieved at finally having this great, dark secret prised from him again, and given to another that might be able to do something to relieve it in a way he never could.

Caleb started, spilling some of the drink Molly had given him, but Molly shook his head and gripped his arm, looking at him now, seized by this, “Promise me that. Promise me, Caleb. I can’t do that again.” He was shaking again as he looked at the wizard’s pale grey-blue eyes, slightly avoiding his, but present all the same. “You know,” he breathed softly, “You understand.”

“I do,” Caleb admitted, the words grudging. “Molly,” he said, softly, “I do not think it will be necessary.” He gently squeezed his wrist, “We will not let you get lost again, you know. We are not like whoever you were with before, who would just, just leave you in the ground like that and walk away.” He frowned slightly, “Well,” he amended, “Perhaps some of the others may be, but I would not be able to. And so you have the Mighty Nein with you now. And you have Yasha. She would certainly not let us leave you. We will keep you safe, and we will not let you get lost again, I promise.”

“Caleb,” Molly bit out, sharply.

“But,” he continued, as Molly’s tail began to lash back and forth in his agitation, “If it truly comes to it...I would do whatever you felt needed to be done.”

A grim smile tugged at Molly’s lips, baring his fangs. “I’d do the same for you, you know,” he said, casually, as though they were discussing sensible battle plans for a quick skirmish, “If there was anything that would tip you over the edge.”

Caleb stilled and sobered before he said, softly, “You will know if such a situation presents itself, I think.”

“Noted,” Molly replied, with another dark smile.

“Will you be alright?” Caleb asked quietly after a long, tense pause, peering owlishly over the glass he had scavenged from the table and had poured the alcohol into with a prim sense of unnecessary dignity.

Molly realised, with pleasure, that he was able to find a lazy smile to answer the wizard with, “Aren’t I always?” he said easily, cocking his head to one side, letting his smile broaden and, just for the heck of it, fluttering his eyelashes a little.

Caleb gave him an ironic smile in turn and said, “Ja, as I always am.”

Molly met his eyes for a moment and gave him a thin smirk. Then, without warning, he scooped Frumpkin up and he jumped to his feet, clapped his hands together, which made Caleb jump again, and announced in a business-like tone, “We should sleep.” He could tell Caleb was still processing this as he went on, “We have to descend into undead oblivion for The Gentleman tomorrow, we need our beauty rest.”

Molly deposited Frumpkin in the chair he had just left and the cat gave him a distinctly displeased look at the rough handling. Molly blew him a kiss.

“Are you sure?” Caleb said, looking surprised, and a little as though he’d just gotten whiplash from the speed of the interaction. “You are ready to just...Go back to bed and move on from all of this?” He gestured around them expansively. “You were...Not in a good place when I came down, Mollymauk.”

“I’m in a much better place now you’re in it,” Molly smirked, anticipating the overtly flirtatious tone to discomfort the wizard enough to make him drop the questions.

In truth, he had no idea if he would be alright. For all he knew, he would return to the darkness and silence of his room and break all over again. But he had already let Caleb get in too far, and see too many of his weak spots. He was no longer that shattered, desperate soul reaching out for any anchor point it could in the storm of annihilation that had built up and cast him back into the empty abyss he had stumbled into once more when he’d clawed himself from that shallow grave.

He was still teetering on the edge of it, to be fair, but he didn’t need Caleb, and he couldn’t summon the strength to allow himself to want him.

What he needed right now was the control firmly in his own hands again, without any strings connected to other people.

Caleb studied him for a long moment, apparently searching for any twitches or tells in his face. Then he said with characteristic bluntness, “And if I leave that place again? You’ll still be fine?”

“I’m fairly sure I won’t die without you, Caleb,” Molly grinned, clapping him on the shoulder, making him jolt slightly. “But I’m glad to see your self-confidence is improving in leaps and bounds.”

Caleb flushed slightly. “That is not what I was implying at all, Mollymauk,” he began, primly.

Molly cackled. “Oh, I know,” he said, winking. “C’mon, let’s get to bed. It’s been a damned long day.”

Caleb grunted, unable to disagree with that, and at last acquiesced.

Before they left the bar, Molly tossed the paper Caleb had given him to write on into the fire and watched it burn away to ashes as he climbed the stairs of the Leaky Tap.

Outside their respective rooms, Caleb took a breath, as though steeling himself, then said firmly, “Frumpkin will stay with you tonight.”

The cat meowed softly in assent, winding around Molly’s ankles. Apparently the thing was quite taken with him, for reasons Molly suspected had a lot more to do with the heat he naturally gave off as a tiefling, and a lot less to do with his sparkling personality. Damn thing just wanted to use him.

“I don’t think Fjord would appreciate that,” Molly shot back, grinning, even though he found himself rather tempted by the offer, as well as touched by it, given how fond of the cat the wizard was. Caleb’s face fell, clearly not having considered this, and Molly added, “But thank you for the offer. It was a very kind thought, I appreciate it.”

“You are welcome,” Caleb mumbled. Then, “Well,” he said, clasping his hands together and swinging them back and forth a little, “I suppose we should say goodnight, then.”

He turned to unlock the door to his room, but Molly said, “Caleb,” and he shuffled back to face him once again.

Standing on his toes and resisting the urge to yank on Caleb’s jacket to bring him closer to him, Molly leaned in and kissed his forehead.

Then he said, with all the sincerity he could muster, which was, as always, a relatively surprising amount, “Thank you.”

Caleb nodded, then, “Ja. That makes us even, now.”

“Even?” Molly repeated, head cocked, an eyebrow raised as he frowned at him.

“From the mines,” Caleb replied, as though this should have been obvious, “When you told me that there would be time for that later. You helped me get out when I-“ he waved a hand, frowning as though he didn’t like to remember what had happened.

Molly stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed.

“Your mind works in strange and mysterious ways, Caleb Widogast,” he informed him, lightly, shaking his head.

“So I have been told,” the wizard replied, tone utterly serious. But there was a slight twinkle in his eye that made Molly wonder if the miraculous could have happened, and he might have actually told two jokes in a single day.

Molly smiled again.

“For the record,” he said, lazily, lightly jostling Caleb’s shoulder with his own, bracing a hand against the wall and leaning up again to whisper into his ear, “You didn’t owe me anything for what happened down in the mines.” He shrugged and added evenly as he drew back, “I just did what anyone would have done.”

“Except, ‘anyone’ did not do it,” Caleb replied, pedantically. “Only you.”

“I suppose that’s true enough,” Molly said, after considering it for a moment and not being able to come up with any kind of counter-argument to the wizard’s unnecessary but nevertheless impenetrable logic.

“You still didn’t owe me anything in my book, though. But,” he added, grinning lazily again, “If you want me to owe you for this, then consider it noted.”

“I mean,” Caleb said, “According to you, I only did what anyone would do.”

Molly smiled, “But it wasn’t anyone. Only you.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Caleb shot back with a shrug.

Molly grinned again, “Bad dreams?” The wizard shivered slightly but didn’t answer and Molly, feeling that he might be pushing things too far, said quickly, “But fair enough, if that’s the way you want this to work, that can easily be arranged.”

“No!” Caleb said, a little too quickly, “No I, I was teasing you, Molly, I do not actually want you to ‘owe’ me anything for this. I do not want this group to work that way.”

Molly grinned, “Good boy,” he said, giving Caleb a friendly pat on the cheek, “I don’t want it to work that way, either. World would be a much better place if everyone thought that way.”

“You are not wrong,” Caleb murmured.

His gaze grew distant for a moment before he abruptly pulled himself back together, blinking rather rapidly. He turned quickly to his room, unlocked it, and, just before he disappeared inside, he said, “Goodnight, Mollymauk.”

Molly waited until he heard the door click shut then said, too softly for Caleb to hear, “Night, Caleb.”

[contagious-addiction]

The Adventures of Mollycock Pealeaf and Co. Pt 1

Beaten, bloody, and furious, Beau brought her staff down with a resounding crack atop the remaining magic user’s head. They crumpled into a pathetic heap at her feet as she struck them one more time for good measure, just to vent her anger at being surprised - once again - by an ambush in the middle of the night. It was something she was really starting to get tired of.

Nott was heavily wounded, two large gashes in her sides but still managing to carry herself closer to the rest of the group with her crossbow still notched.

“Yasha? Fjord? Jester?” Beau called over her shoulder after giving Nott a nod, scanning the area for the heads of her companions she’d lost track of in the fray.

The snow obscured their forms over the dip of the hill, but the sound of Fjord’s “We’re alright” Yasha’s “I am fine.” and Jester’s “Right as rain!” seemed to show that they weren't in any harm.

“I think we have, ah… A problem, Beauregard.” Caleb spoke hesitantly from his place on the ground, cloak obscuring what she could only assume was Molly. Beau shifted, her brows pulling together as she frowned, suddenly worried.

“Hah?”

Caleb scratched the back of his head with a strange expression on his face. He looked puzzled but almost... Asmused.

“Mollymauk.” His mouth twitched and he cleared his throat, hiding his grin with the back of his head. “He is a... Bird. For now.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Nott stopped her scavenging of the bodies of the sorcerers around them and watched Caleb stand aside to reveal in all his glory, a lavender peacock with horns and jewelry to match.

Fjord, Yasha, and Jester crested the edge of the snow covered hill just in time to watch Beauregard dopple over in a fit of laughter while Nott brought her silver flask to her lips, drinking deeply in response.

“Why is it always Molly shit happens to.” Beaureguard howled, bent over and clutching her sides in pain and histarea.

The peacock - polymorphed Mollymauk, as Caleb said between his own smirk - seemed to take offence in Beau’s laughter, his feathers lifting as he made a god awful trill of a noise and displayed his wings aggressively at Beau, flapping them and kicking the air in her direction. Snow followed his movements and he sunk lower into the powder before shaking his feathers again and jerking his head to look at the figure of Caleb beside him as if to plead for his defense. He was given no assistance from Caleb, who only lifted and eyebrow and shrugged.

Beau flinched at Molly’s display and brought up her staff, holding it between herself and Mollymauk

“I fuckin’ hate birds.” Beau grouched, glaring at Mollymauk before looking up at Caleb who had contained his previous laughter and was now watching Mollymauk with interest.

“Can’t Jester turn him back with one of her restoration spells?” Nott asked as the rest of the Mighty Nein caught up and took in the sight of Molly.

“Mollymauk will be fine,” Caleb assured them as Jester gasped excitedly, eyeing the new visage of Mollymauk as if he were a cute puppy instead of the distressed form of a polymorphed Mollymauk. “This spell will wear off in an hour or two at most. For now we, ah. Have to keep him from running away or hurting himself. Which should be easy enough.”

“Molly you are so cute.” Jester cooed, rushing up to kneel beside him. Molly blinked at her and tilted his head, fluffing his feathers and raising his tail feathers slightly which were oddly maroon, similar to his coat both in color as well as spotted with the vague symbols of his coat. “I don’t think you’d very warm with your little bird legs in the snow so let me carry you.”

Reaching out for him was a mistake on Jester’s part. Mollymauk raised his legs and wings, pushing off her offered arms in a desperate attempt to distance himself from her embrace.

“Ouch-” Jester rubbed her inner arm where Molly scratched her, pouting as Mollymauk flared his wings and quickly retreated and flead down the snowy hill.

“Shit he’s runnin’-!” Fjord cursed.

“Yasha, grab him!” Beau shouted.

“Oh. Ah. Okay.”

Bending down, Yasha beconed Mollymauk from her place a bit farther down the hill. Molly slowed, but lowered his head and tried to dart past Yasha after a moment of hesitation. It was all over for him in that moment as her hands caught him in a vice grip around both wings in a way that held him secure as well as kept him pinned to the snowy ground. He made a call of distress and eyed Yasha with betrayal in his eyes.

“Got him.” She called as the rest of the group followed suit.

“Mollymauk.” Caleb knelt and Molly’s wide red eyes snapped to attention, training themselves on the wizard warily. “I’m going to cover your head with my jacket. You will feel safer then but you must trust us.”

Molly’s eyes narrowed and his neck bobbed as he took in the sight of his friends.

“Ja, that is good.” Caleb soothed before slipping his battered coat off his shoulders and throwing it over Yasha’s hands.

“Should I-”

“Mm. You can let go Yasha, I’ve got him. Danke.”

With quick hands Yasha released Mollymauk and Caleb replaced her hands with his own, folding the coat around Mollymauk snugly but enough to allow him room to shift if he was uncomfortable.

“There.” Caleb huffed, his breath sending plumes of steam into the air.

“Jeez, you would think he would have been fine with me picking him up…” Jester frowned as she stood beside Caleb. “I can take him now if he’s too heavy for you Caleb.” She offered.

“No, it is fine.” He assured her, shaking his head once before adjusting his grip and holding Mollymauk a bit closer to his chest. He could hear him make a soft crooning trill, which was still loud compared to the volume of the group around him, but not nearly as loud as the near screech he’d sent Beauregard’s way before.

“Yes yes, you are fine now, Circus Man.” Caleb reminded Mollymauk before looking to the rest.

Jester was already tending to the rest of the crew, patching them up with healing words and first aid where it was needed. Luckily Caleb was barely touched, thanks to Mollymauk’s quick reflexes and successful blood maladict. He just was hit in Caleb’s sted with one of the caster’s last ditch spells.

“You make a very good bird Mr. Mollymauk. Very showy.” Caleb said with a grin as he trudged his way back to their cart through the snow. They got a new cart weeks ago after they rescued their friends and Molly had… Well. Caleb tried very hard not to dwell on what transpired then aside the fact they needed to be more careful with the people they make enemies with in the future.

He could hear Molly hiss under his coat and Caleb chuckled softly, carefully adjusting his grip on Mollymauk so his tail feathers weren’t bent awkwardly against his arm.

“I am sorry,” he admitted “I did not think the caster would turn you into - ah - eh. A peacock. Like that. But you will return to normal soon.”

He reached the horses and cart soon enough, climbing into the canvases back of it with Mollymauk as the rest of the party got to their own horses - three of which they’d purchased recently due to the death of their other two horses and release of Loaf after the kidnapping situation.

Settling against a sack of grain they kept for the horses, Caleb settled Mollymauk in front of him and lifted his coat hesitantly.

Molly raised his head with a jerk, glancing around the wagon before seeming to relax.

Satisfied that Mollymauk wouldn’t run off immediately, Caleb sniffed and pulled his coat back over his shoulders since the biting cold was starting to numb his hands, wrapped as they were.

Mollymauk snapped his beak twice, catching Caleb’s attention as he crawled into his lap.

“Ah- wait, Mollymau-“ Caleb protested with his arms up, but it was no use. Molly worked his way into Caleb’s lap, feathers fluffed and tail splayed out behind him in a maroon waterfall of feathers as he made himself comfortable in the crook of his cold legs.

“Okay.” He sighed, resigning himself to a lap full of bird that reminded him strangely of Frumpkin weight wise. Molly adjusted his wings and flared them ever so slightly, and Caleb hesitated for a moment before letting his cold fingers press into the inviting peaks of Molly’s feathers.

He was warm. Not that Caleb thought he would be anything different, but it was still a drastic difference from the ice of his finger tips that his skin felt raw and ached.

Mollymauk barely reacted, just stared outside the wagon as the rest of the Nein saddled their horses and talked amongst themselves. He did however, make an awful crooning call sound that made Caleb jolt and Molly shift in his lap. By the sound of it Mollymauk had caused Beau to fall off her horse, her indignant “Fuck You Molly!” following soon after.

“You stop that.”

Mollymauk turned his attention to Caleb now and if a peacock could look smug, Mollymauk was in fact wearing a shit eating grin. As if to say “now why would I do that”.

With a shake of his head and a gentle brush of his fingers through Mollymauk’s feathers, he turned his attention away from his feathered friend and out the back of the cart as Yasha poised her horse just behind the wagon. Most likely to guard their backs, but mostly to keep an eye on Mollymauk in case he tried any other daring escapes while he was transformed.

“Ready back there Caleb?” Nott’s voice called from the front of the wagon - she must be driving the horses today.

“Ja. We are settled.”

“Let’s move out then.” Fjord called from ahead somewhere.

“Yeah I’m sick of sleeping in the cold,” Jester replied with a sigh “Next town we stop at we’re staying at the nicest, warmest hotel okay?”

“I’m alright with that.” Yasha replied.

“Eh. I mean. We could save up our coin for, I don’t know, diamonds worth 300 gold a piece or something instead.” Nott stressed.

“Now that is a stupid idea.” Jester pouted, and Caleb shook his head with a fond grin. He didn’t have to see her to know she was springboarding off of Nott’s criticism and would make sure they had what they needed by the time they reached any type of situation close to death again.

The cart lurched forward at the snap of Nott’s wrist, and Caleb grasped Mollymauk a bit firmer who slipped in his grasp with a displeased hiss.

“Sorry.” Caleb apologized as Mollymauk settled himself again in the tangle of his legs.

[rowan-raven-rogue]

dark!Caleb AU 🌙

for @yettinim; Chapter 1 (2380 words)

content: (canon-typical violence, widomauk if you squint, Trent Ikithon, bad German translation (please advise if you’re a native speaker!))

        He feels, rather than hears, the soft thrum, vibrating through his bones and settling at the bottom of each of his ribs. His head swims, vertiginous, as he is (but iss not) pulled forward, feet firmly planted - and then everything goes dark behind opened eyelids. He breathes, deep - phosphorous, ozone, and some ancient, otherworldly scent that spices his lungs and quickens his blood. In the void, he watches billowy clouds of purple and blue grow on the horizon and quickly engulf the darkness as he passes. Dark silhouettes of passing spheres and other objects speed by, their shapes elongating more and more by his increasing speed. Tiny dots of light begin to prick at the edges of his vision, and soon stars peek by as well, backlighting the distant clouds in a faint gray nimbus. His limbs and face buzz as he approaches that familiar threshold, the headlong speed of it all in constant contrast to the steady, pulsing hum in his chest. His heart beats so rapidly as to be nearly one continuous, clenching ache, a cold dryness at his temples and on his tongue, and - with a flash of familiar, silvery light, he halts, stock-still.

        The faint shadows of an infinite array of Caleb Widogasts stride past, every which way, as he stills like an anchor among them. Hypnotized, he watches their darkened forms, so exactly identical and wildly different all at once, mill and stride down countless paths, until something snags at his periphery. As he turns, he sees one of the figures pause. Tall, straight-shouldered, with the profile of short-groomed hair and a clean-shaven jaw; Caleb and his possible-self acknowledge each other for an icy heartbeat, until the other Caleb turns and continues on his path.

        Frowning, he focuses on the rhythm of humming vibration, affixing himself to it, avoiding the pull of infinite Calebs that tug him down every conceivable path at once. The void seems to grow and swallow him, as the other Calebs withdraw further and further. He’s struck, yet again, by the indecipherable scale of emptiness and potential, of everything and nothing surrounding him; the ancient, immediate dark. Finally, he looks down, surrendering to the warm, welcoming pulse of light that appears not a foot from his chest, and gladly sinks in to the yearn to touch. A tiny mote of glittering gray energy floats into his chest, filling him with sharp, prickling heat and burning cold, and he sighs, content, as the void disappears, extinguished by the Fragment of Possibility.

        “...Caaaleb? CalebCalebCaleb- oh, you’re back!”

        He blinks, and the lavender light of early morning stings his eyes. Immediately, the nauseating stench of rotting flesh floods him again; the blue tiefling girl is frozen, the tip of one finger stuck prodding at the center of his forehead, the other hand clutching her pink bag as it dangles, open.

        “Eh, ja, sorry,” he murmurs, shaking the hazy scale of possibility from his head. He resists the urge to wretch and choke on the foul smell in the air. Jester smiles and withdraws, closing the bag with one-handed grace and slinging it back over her shoulders.

        “Okay, we’re ready!” she whispers, her voice coated, like everything else, in the morning dew. She crouches behind the scrubby bushes that conceal their position, and turns a firm nod over her left shoulder. Caleb watches the half-orc Fjord, from behind a moss-covered boulder several yards away, affirm and pass the signal on to Beau and Yasha, further still; turning his gaze upward, into the boughs above their heads, Caleb makes brief contact with a pair of catlike yellow eyes, and Nott nods her agreement as well. Then to his right, searching and failing in the green-dark undergrowth to find the lithe, purple form of Mollymauk, before -

        - a crossbow bolt sinks into one of the garish orange buds of the enormous plant before them, and sprays the misty morning air with the wet-green stench of decay.

        Immediately, each of the buds falls open, releasing a gurgling screech and another wave of rotting stink. Pale green tendrils, thick as a man’s leg, begin to unravel and uproot themselves from the soil, and one shoots out, whip-like, just above Jester’s head. She ducks it with ease, and the familiar giant lollipop floats from behind just above the shrieking plant and sinks deep into the green, sickly cluster at its center with a thud. From the left of the clearing, a blue blur jettisons out and strikes at a second tentacle, then a third, as Beau’s staff whips over her head and whirls into a fanning circle behind her back. Close behind comes Yasha, swinging overly wide at the creature’s muddy roots, burying her sword into the sodden turf. As the plant continues to rear up on writhing tendrils, Caleb nearly gags a second time; more soil and debris shake from the creature, and he can just make out the distorted forms of moss- and vine- covered skulls, ribcages, spines, and the like, a mass of corpses which form the heart of the monster.

        A string of strangled epithets, mingled Common and Infernal, explode from the stand of trees to Caleb’s right. Turning sharply on his heel, Molly swings one glowing sword at an approaching knot of vines and tentacles, just barely stopping short as the blossom tipping the end slithers through the air. With a wet, heaving sound, the flower opens to deposit a mildewed, humanoid corpse directly before the whirling tiefling, who thrusts his sword into the body with a dull crunch.

        “Oh, lovely, it makes friends!” barks Molly. Caleb raises a blackening hand, ignoring the continued curses from Mollymauk mingled now with a series of similar protests from Fjord, who’s dealing with a mossy-green corpse of his own - and a stream of fiery rays bursts forth, sinking directly into the plant’s center. Hissing shrieks bubble forth, and greenish steam erupts from the ashen wound Caleb’s blown deep into the plant, but still it continues on with its gruesome attack.

        There is a wet, sickly sound of a crossbow bolt embedding itself into something to Caleb’s left - the decaying body attacking Fjord goes down, with one of Nott’s well-aimed bolts loosed directly into the back of its head. The giant, spectral lollipop once again slams into the orange blossoms and green vegetation above the plant’s core, as Jester sprints from her hiding spot behind the bush to Fjord. Beau strikes another whirling series of blows to the tendrils approaching her before hauling Yasha to her feet, the pair beset by yet another vine-covered, skeletal body. Caleb whispers the tips of his fingers into glowing black once more, and another blast of flame erupts into the monster’s body - barely singeing past the circling form of Molly, as he lops off the zombie’s head with one artful swing.

        A third bolt strikes the body before Yasha and Beau, earning a muffled “Shit!” from the monk as it topples forward, moldering jaw agape, and falls still at their feet. A shrill whistling, followed by a slick, heavy thud and a growling cry from Fjord - he’s been hit by one of the flailing tendrils. There is a roaring cry of Infernal from Jester, and the shimmering lollipop crashes down a third time.

        “Finish it!” she calls, the edges of her words still rough and grinding Infernal.

        Ignoring the wretching, nauseous protest in his belly, Caleb closes his eyes and prepares a final, fiery blast, silently praying for the fight’s end. As he opens his eyes to unleash the burst of flame, he locks onto a single, perfectly outlined skull right at the center of the monstrous creature; one delicate, orange blossom peeks from inside the vacant eye socket.

        The spurt of flames goes just too wide, fizzling out above the clearing and into the pale purple morning sky.

        “Dammit!” Caleb hears Molly’s frustrated snarl, as the tiefling turns . “Caleb, try-”

        The rest of Molly’s urging is cut short by a rapid burst from the center of the tiefling’s chest, as one of the creature’s tendrils spikes sharply through his back and emerges just below his heart. His words drowning in a spurt of blood, Molly only stares wide-eyed at the green and scarlet spearlike point, gurgling hoarsely.

        The cry that rips Caleb’s throat raw pulls every bit of air from his lungs and collapses his chest like a dying star. Focus, focus, focus, he thought desperately, and - calls.

        Something inside him begins to stir, then vibrate, then warm, and then burn with familiar pulsing energy. He feels… silvery. The air around him grows thick, nearly malleable, and as he breathes he focuses on the last fiery rays he had aimed at the creature, willing them in his memory to bend and strike true to the monster’s center. Everything around him slows to molasses-still, and a gray, oily radiance distorts his vision. He watches, ears and heart hammering, as the tendril withdraws from Molly’s chest in an exact backward path; he sees Molly mouth Caleb, try - turn to him, - dammit - and feels his own body shift, palm raised and burning -

        The clearing buzzes into impossible, sharp silence. Caleb locks eyes with the orange-blossomed skull, exhales, and fires.

        The creature, engulfed in flame, gives one last piteous, hissing scream, and the flames wither it to a pile of ash, dust, and bleached white bones.

        The party remains still for a breath.

        “...Fuck.” Caleb hears Molly murmur. Then there’s a whooping cry from Beau, and a scattered rustling as Nott drops out of the tree behind him.

        “Caleb! Are you alright?” the goblin says, her black-slit pupils ringed entirely by yellow.

        “I’m absolutely fine, Nott, sweet of you to ask,” says Molly, his easy, loping strides to Caleb betrayed by the nervous flicking of his tail.

        “You guys? I think Fjord might be poisoned,” Jester calls from across the clearing. Nott waits for Caleb’s curt nod, before scurrying off, clawed hands already scrabbling at her bag for her alchemical supplies. Caleb turns wordlessly at the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, the wide-eyed thanks of Molly…

        …and the entire forest dissolves, swirling, into silvery blue ripples.

        The surface of the scrying bowl gradually comes to a still, and in it is reflected a gaunt, sharply angled face, pockmarked and liver-spotted. Yellow-sheened skin hangs loosely in bags near the scrub white-bristled jaw, and hollowed at the cheeks. Wide-set, watery blue eyes are jaundiced at the whites, and clumps of stringy white hair cling above the man’s ears and encircle the shiny crown of his head.

        Trent Ikithon smirks, thin-lipped.

        “Caleb,” he says, clawing an arthritic hand to the stone pendant at his neck, “komm hier.”

        Minutes pass, and then comes a soft tinkling slide of metal on metal, as the magical locks to Ikithon’s study open.

        “Ja, Meister Ikithon?”

        A young man enters the room, dressed in the blue and gold military mantle given to all of Trent’s apprentices. Neat red hair, only just long enough to suggest a curl, glints in the dim firelight reflected across the surfaces of dozens of scrying bowls. The young man stands, a respectful distance behind his master, straight-shouldered and wiry, a lean, agile strength.

        “Das Leuchtfeuer, Caleb.” says Trent, oily and dark. “The Beacon.”

        “Soll ich es für dich holen, Meister?” says Caleb. Proud, angular features twist, just so subtly, on the water’s surface, rippling into concentric, wolfish expressions. “Tell me where, and I will go.”

        Ikithon straightens, pauses. “Tell me what you know about scrying, Caleb.”

        Without hesitation, “It is a form of divination, using a focus - in this case, Master, bowls of holy water, sometimes crystals, or mirrors - through which one may see a person or object of their choosing. The spell becomes more effective the more knowledge you are able to obtain of the target, or if you have a portrait, a possession, or better yet,” he finishes, “a body part.”

        “Very good,” Ikithon concedes. “A minor correction. Under normal circumstances, one may only divine something which exists on the same plane,” he said, lightly stroking one gnarled finger across the surface of the bowl in front of him. “However, in this study, I have created a pocket dimension through which we simultaneously occupy all and none of the planes. What does that mean, Caleb?”

        “Each of these may be used to scry on a different plane,” Caleb answers, with certainty.

        “And more,” corrects the old Master. He pauses again, staring deep into his own reflection. “Time, much like our multiplanar Universe, is not a singular thing,” he said. “It fractures, it bifurcates, it,” and he gently skimmed the water again “ripples, over and over, collecting in infinite loops. In some cases.” He lets his pupil reflect on this for half a breath. “I have also collected means to scry on timelines alternate to our own, Caleb. Universes which are hardly recognizable as parallels to our own, timelines in which one single action altered the course of history… and some, which, in the grand scheme of things,” he grinned sharply, “are not very different from our own.

        “The Beacon is an unusual artifact,” Ikithon goes on. “Can you tell me why?”

         Caleb inclines his head, politely; a trained soldier might have noticed the tenseness in his shoulders, anticipating admonition.

        “If,” he begins, “as you say, the natural order of the universe is to exist, multiplicate… then one could assume something unusual would exist outside that order, in- singularity.” Caleb concludes. “There is only one.”

        “Excellent,” says Ikithon, beckoning his pupil closer. Caleb complies, stepping forward briskly to watch the rippling font over his master’s shoulder. “In all the many timelines I am able to divine, there is only one Beacon, Caleb. And,” allows Ikithon, “shall I tell you something interesting about the person who currently possesses it?” He generously accepts his student’s polite silence before finishing, “I can’t see him.”

        “But… you know his identity, Master?” says Caleb, hungrily. Ikithon grins again, reaches up, and pulls one red hair from just behind his student’s ear. He deposits the hair on the water’s surface, and, in the ripples, watches something cold and cruel draw Caleb’s piercing blue eyes half-closed in recognition.

        “I’ve got a task for you, Caleb.”

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Their First Time

So the ever incredible and wonderful @minky-for-short got a very well deserved promotion at work so to say well done, I wrote her a little something based off a fantastic piece of art she did. 

----

The whole house felt different.

Molly thought it as he walked Trinket to bed, leaving Caleb sitting awkwardly on their threadbare sofa, looking like he didn’t want to put his feet down anywhere or even let his eyes linger on anything too long, in case he caused it to burst into flames.

It was such an enormous difference, as if the whole of Foamside, the little life he’d built for himself and his son had been taken in two malicious hands and shaken up, sending them all reeling and landing in places that weren’t their own. It was a piece of Mollymauk’s old life jammed into his new one like a puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit, like a grain of sand in a loaf of bread, an upset to a routine that was so well established. Caleb seemed as aware of the discomfort as Molly did, if his dizzy gaze and hands anchored to his sides were anything to go by. When they used to spend time with each other, his hands would flit about like excited birds, flapping and twisting in the air to illustrate the thoughts pouring from his brilliant mind. If they were limp and still, it could only be a bad sign.

Trinket clearly felt the unease too, as fiercely as a little boy who’d had his perfect bedtime routine upset could. He didn’t want to go to bed, asking again and again who the man was, why he was up in their home when customers belonged in the store, why daddy was crying. Molly rubbed at his eyes frantically at the last one, he hadn’t realised they’d filled up again. After a lot of reassurance that everything was okay, the man was called Mr Widogast and he was...an old friend...Trinket finally fell asleep in their bed, clutching his cloth toy. His little face was still slightly crumpled in an expression of unease and it hurt Molly’s heart to see it.

Molly shut the door firmly and slumped against it for a long moment, letting out a long, shaky sigh and finally allowing himself some time to weep. Not all the time he needed, just a little, to release the pressure building up in his chest.

Wasn’t this what he’d always wanted? To have Caleb back in his life, smiling down at their son with such a tender expression, telling Mollymauk that he loved him?

How many times had he allowed himself the selfish daydream, that Caleb would come bursting through the shop doors, throw himself down on one knee, saying he’d always loved him, that even back in Zadash he’d known they were meant for each other despite the chasm between their backgrounds. Like a fucking smutty pulp romance, the archmage and the courtesan.

Maybe it was because he’d never thought Caleb would look so much like a man crushed under the weight of the whole world. He never thought there would be such loneliness and sadness in his eyes. Sure, when he’d first turned up at Marion’s, there had been a little of it in him, something that had pulled at Molly’s heart, called out to him even when he knew what a powerfully bad idea it was to fall for a client. Something that needed healing.

But now Caleb had turned up looking so much older than the years that had elapsed. He looked like all the healing they’d managed over their time together had gone and the wound inside him had been ripped wide open, further than it ever had.

In his daydream, Molly had never had to feel so guilty for leaving.

He wasn’t angry at Caleb, for disrupting their lives. He was angry at himself, furious, for not trusting Caleb. If there was anyone in the world he could have trusted, it was his archmage who pressed flowers into books for him and opened up to him about his nightmares and looked at him like he was a person with heart, rather than something to own. And he still hadn’t been able to do it.

He hadn’t. But now he would, if there was still a chance.

Mollymauk walked quickly to the living room. Caleb was still sat on the sofa, awkwardly posed like a doll with wires in its limbs shaped to be the perfect figure of anxiety. He did soften a little as Molly walked in, as if he’d been worried that everything since he stepped through the door of the little store had been a dream. Molly couldn’t exactly blame him.

“Tea?” he offered, voice a little weak, limply gesturing to his tiny little kitchenette and praying internally that he’d put enough in the meter last time.

Always offer a drink, he heard Marion saying in the back of his mind, a drink smooths the way into any conversation.

But Caleb simply shook his head, looking like he had a million things to say trying to burst out of him all at once but the clamour was so intense that none could actually get through his mouth. Molly wilted and sat across from him in the little chair he and Trinket had rescued from the antique shop.

“Are you mad at me?” he breathed, cringing as soon as he said it. Of course he was mad at him. How could be not be? He’d hidden the fact that they had a son together, cut him dead and ignored him for nine months before fleeing the city entirely, never once having the courage to think that maybe Caleb wanted them in his life.

But Caleb, his beautiful, kind, gentle Caleb, just shook his head, finding his voice.

“I’m not mad at you, Mollymauk. I’m just...I’m scared.” His voice was tiny, not much above a whisper.

“Scared?”

Caleb looked down at his hands. Molly noticed they had a few more burn scars than they had when last he’d seen them, stroking and parting his thighs.

“I...I’m scared I’m not the same. That I’m not the Caleb you used to know. I’m scared I’ve turned into something else, something that’s not worthy of you. Certainly not worthy to be a father.”

His eyes flickered nervously to the bedroom just behind Mollymauk, as if a tiny child as sweet and so completely in love with life as Trinket were something to be afraid of.

Molly wanted desperately to reach out for him, to prove to him (and also to himself) that the scars he saw weren’t permanent, that they could be healed with kisses and gentle touches and sweet words like they always had before. That the love he’d been so certain could grow between them still had a chance.

“You still look like Caleb to me,” he murmured, “You still sound the same. You still look at me in a way that makes me feel like everything will be alright, even when I’m so worried. And I still want you, though that's the least of it right now. I still feel like I love you.”

“Feel like?” Caleb managed a thin little smile, a hopeful, hesitant smile that wanted to be more.

“Since when were you the big risk taker out of the two of us?” Molly teased gently, answering with a smile of his own.

“Since when were you a reader of bedtime stories?” Caleb shot back, grinning, his fingers starting to flutter, tapping on his knees.

Molly snorted out a laugh.

The two of them felt a spark of something, something that crossed the space between them and made the night seem less dark.

“Make love to me, Mollymauk,” Caleb said in the gentle pause that followed.

Molly hesitated, nervous, trying to still cling to their joking back and forth and had been starting to feel familiar, “My rates have gone up. Independent contractor now.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Caleb’s expression stalled and his eyes fell like stars from the sky, burning out and turning dark.

“I’m sorry,” Molly said quickly, “That’s not...I don’t think of you that way anymore. I hadn’t for a very long time.”

Caleb managed to pull himself back, “Then...can we? I want to do it where we’re not...like that. Where it's just us. I know it feels a little crazy and it might be a bad idea but…I want to.”

“Me too,” Molly nods, feeling himself start to ache for it. He let himself feel it, unashamedly, let himself want Caleb, so sincerely it started to hurt but he didn’t shy away from it. It was a good kind of hurt.

“Not up here,” Molly rose to his feet, offering Caleb his hand which he gratefully took, “I don’t want to wake up Trinket.”

Caleb nodded, blushing a little. The blush made Mollymauk grin, he’d loved that so much.

At the brothel, they had expensively scented candles, rich silk bed covers, musicians playing in the bar room that could be heard throughout the building but turned up or down at the will of the room’s occupants, thanks to a clever amplification spell. There had been lube ordered in from Port Dumoli, wine from Nicodranas, ale from Trostenwald, everything that could possibly be desired by the expensive tastes of the clientele and the workers.

Down in the store, there was a battered, nicked oak desk and what moonlight made it in through the shutters. But that was all they needed.

Molly discarded his leggings swiftly but didn’t have time to take care of his shirt before Caleb distracted him with a long kiss deep as the sea which they could hear faintly in the background. It would do. The desk was comfortable enough to be bent over, listening with a maddening anticipation, sharp like lemon juice on his tongue, to the sounds of Caleb unbuckling his pants.

When he pushed into him, one smooth, deliberate motion, there was the sense of coming home.

It wasn’t exactly the same, it never would be. Molly had stretch marks on his legs and stomach, the legacy of his pregnancy, and the stretching and exercise regime he’d followed religiously in his younger days had fallen by the wayside significantly. He felt a brief moment of shyness about this before he realised Caleb touched him, moved in him, moaned his name with as much tenderness as the very first time they made love.

As long as that was still there, everything was as perfect as it could be.

It wasn’t long, by any means. It was hurried, a little frantic, a little messy. But there was something sweet about that, like they were two anxious teenagers fumbling at each other for the very first time, seeing what fits where. Caleb soon found his rhythm, knocking Molly’s hips into the desk perfectly in time with the sharp, longing cries he wrung from the tiefling.

And then that was it.

Molly’s nails raked the wood as he came, crying out, feeling it run down the inside of his thighs. Caleb was half a thrust behind him, whining Molly’s name. He always said Molly’s name.

There was a touch of shyness after that, as they untangled themselves and yanked their clothes back on. But they kept catching each other’s eyes and grinning, dizzily, delightedly, the two of them a little drunk on it all.

Before they went back upstairs, before Caleb insisted he’d sleep on the couch so as not to upset Trinket too much, before Molly spent a night tossing and turning, his thighs aching so sweetly and his mind wondering frantically what would come next, he kissed Caleb. And it was so sweet and so gentle and so right, the moonlight washing over them both, for that moment it was as if Mollymauk’s daydream had come true. Caleb was here, he was his, they loved each other and everything was absolutely perfect.

Tomorrow would wait.

[ladywritesthings]

Welcome to Burlesque, ch2

AO3

---

Caleb barely managed to catch himself before he fell flat on his face at her feet, tripping and stumbling over the doorframe. He whirled around immediately, but the door had already smacked shut behind him and he could hear Molly cackling madly from the safety of the hallway, and the echoing slaps of what could only be exchanged high-fives.

They’d planned this.

That must’ve been why they’d left him alone at the bar — they planned this while he was trying to get his head back on straight, and he’d been too distracted to notice until it was far too late. The pricks.

“You must be Caleb!”

He froze at the sound of her voice, high and sweet and playful — because of course it was. He hadn’t had any idea what she could have sounded like before he heard her but now that he had, he couldn’t possibly imagine her sounding like anything else. She had the light, lilting accent of the Menagerie Coast, and something deep within his chest ached at the sound of his name on her tongue. How did she—?

“I’ve been expecting you.”

They hadn’t just planned this, it wasn’t just a prank meant to embarrass him, throwing him into a room with an unsuspecting dancer. They’d arranged it. Money had probably exchanged hands to put him in this room — oh gods. It was worse than he’d thought.

“You don’t have to leave, you know, you can turn around. It’s okay, I won’t bite.” He could hear the grin in her voice. “Probably.”

‘Götter helfen mir.’

Every muscle in his body screamed in protest as he turned, very slowly, to face her. The room was plush, a comfortable and elegantly decorated room clearly designed for… private encounters, but relatively small — too small, actually; she was far, far too close to him. She was shorter than him, of course, and even in those kitten heels of hers she barely came up to his chin. Her train had been exchanged for a sheer dressing gown edged in soft down, open and flowing, a sleeve of which had slipped down her shoulder. She was looking at him with those huge, violet eyes, lashes impossibly long and thick over the freckles dusting her button nose, and he swallowed harshly. Gods help him, indeed.

“Hello,” he croaked lamely.

“Hi, I’m Jester!” she said brightly. “It’s very nice to meet you.” She extended a delicate hand and he could only stare at it dumbly. After a moment she retracted it and squinted at him. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

It took a lot more effort than expected to clear his throat. “I — ah, n-no, I can’t say that I have,” he mumbled awkwardly.

“That’s okay,” she said kindly. “Molly said you might be a little nervous.” She extended her hand again and, when he didn’t take it, tugged on his sleeve instead. He was powerless to resist her as she guided him to the long couch that lined the walls, to move away when she gently pulled him down to sit next to her.

“Molly—?”

“He was the one who told me about you,” she explained, a little unnecessarily. “He said he had a friend who would like to meet me, if you know what I mean—” She wiggled her eyebrows, cheeks dimpling, and his heart jumped in his chest, “—and of course I said yes, because Molly has such good taste in friends, but…” She leaned close, a smile somehow simultaneously sweet and sultry curling her lips. “I didn’t expect you to be so handsome.”

His chest tightened as she tilted her head, eyelashes fluttering as her eyes traced him up and down. ‘She is being paid to do this,’ he reminded himself, ‘it isn’t real,’ but that fact was hard to remember with her breath tickling his cheek and her fingers ghosting over his hand. She smelled like cherries and honey and she was really too close now if he wanted to keep his wits about him, but before his brain caught up to his body enough to react she was gone, up and across the room before he could blink.

“You’re really quiet,” she commented.

He coughed, feeling his face heating up as she rummaged around in the drawer of a small end table in the corner. “I’m… sorry,” he said haltingly. “I — did not expect to be here.”

She glanced back at him, quirking an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“This was… not my idea,” he confessed awkwardly.

She paused, turning back to him with her hands clasped behind her. “No wonder you seem nervous,” she said, and cocked her head. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder, gems glinting in the ambient lighting. He swallowed.

“I am sorry,” he said again weakly.

“Oh, no, don’t be sorry!” she said. “It’s really cute, actually.” It was absolutely the wrong thing to say if she was trying to ease the tension in his gut, but she didn’t seem to notice. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.” She smiled again, in that coy, wicked manner that set his nerves alight. His mouth went dry as she came slowly towards him, slipping the dressing gown from her shoulders. It pooled around her feet and she paused briefly in front of him, tail swishing slightly. Caleb now saw she held a length of thick silken ribbon, which she wrapped once around each hand before slipping it around the back of his neck. She yanked him forward as she leaned in close, nearly nose to nose. “There are other things we could do instead,” she purred.

He wanted to scoot back, leave now, knew he should; she was far too dangerous and far too sublime and he really, really shouldn’t be here with her so excruciatingly, tantalizingly close — but she was much stronger than she looked and he was helpless as she began dancing again, twisting languidly, and thinking became impossible as she nudged his knees apart, moving torturously between his legs.

She took her time, teasing, tormenting, never quite touching, but inching closer and closer with every shimmy of her hips, every turn of her body. It was getting harder to breathe now, and it was hot in here, so unbearably, terribly hot — damn Mollymauk, damn Beauregard and Fjord and damn Mollymauk to hell for putting him here, for locking him in this room with this woman, and —

She lifted herself smoothly onto the couch with one knee on either side of his lap, not quite straddling him, but not quite not. And then she was moving again to the faint music of the club below, body curving, hips rolling, agonizing and seductive and never quite crossing the line into something more. His heart thundered in his chest as he sat there, paralyzed, as her thighs pressed against him, fists clenching and unclenching unconsciously on the couch cushions beneath them as he watched her — he was well aware he was staring, well aware of the lecherous way his eyes roved her body, desperately trying to capture every part of her at once, commit her to memory — but he was unable to look away. She released the ribbon then, fingers tracing slowly down his arms, taking him by the wrists as she placed his hands gently on either side of her corseted waist. “You can touch me, you know,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. He could feel her smiling. “If you like.”

She was warm from dancing, his hands fitting perfectly into the curves of her, and she smiled again as his fingers tightened reflexively around her. A hand trailed back up his arm, tracing up his neck, running lightly through his hair. She put her lips close his ear again as she leaned forward, her voice a breathless whisper, “I like it when you touch me.”

It would be so easy to buy into the fiction she was presenting, to allow himself to run his hands over her and lose himself in the idea that she cared about him at all. That the way she was making him feel was in any way reciprocated, that she would even look at him twice if Molly hadn’t pulled some strings; that, if only for one night, or one hour, or even a single minute, she wanted him. And she was so good at pretending — the swell of her chest pressed against him, her hips moving beneath his hands, her fingers in his hair — that he almost did, almost let that little groaning sound caught in his throat to escape him as she breathed hotly in his ear, but —

He ached to touch her, touch her properly, feel her skin on his — to run his hands up her thighs, to bury his face in her neck as she said his name, again and again...

It was too dangerous, too much, too —

He let go of her then — with one hand, he wasn’t strong enough to pull away from her yet, not entirely, he was too selfish for that, even now — fumbling through his pockets. ‘Where is it, where did I put it, where—?’

She slowed her movements, pulling away slightly to look down at him with those huge, gorgeous eyes. “What’s wrong?” she said. “What are you—?”

He didn’t answer her, too focused on the singular task of pulling out his wallet, and somehow managed to wrench his other hand from her waist to rifle through it.

She let go of him then, her eyes widening slightly, her plump mouth a small ‘O’ of surprise and — what was that? Anxiety? “Is that — Are you—?” She swallowed, and her confidence seemed to be melting slightly, and suddenly she seemed much younger now. “I don’t — th-that’s not really what I thought — Molly didn’t say anything about a-actually—”

He brandished his prize in her face. “Cat!” he barked.

She blinked down at the picture in his hand, that small spark of unease turning to confusion. “…Cat?” she said.

“My cat,” he croaked. “His name is Frumpkin.”

She looked at him, gaze traveling from his face to the image of Frumpkin and slowly back again. “I don’t…”

“He can change shapes sometimes, but he prefers to be a cat mostly,” he babbled. “He likes to be scratched behind the ears when I read.”

She was looking at him like he’d grown an extra head, utterly bewildered at this sudden change in subject. He was well aware he must appear deranged — who in their right mind would start talking about their cat in the middle of a lapdance with her? — but he couldn’t keep going like that, couldn’t let her continue, not if he wanted to keep his head on straight —

There was a sudden clattering, and both their heads snapped to the door as it opened.

A firbolg stood there, towering and grey, with long, violently pink hair, carrying a mop. “Oh,” he said, looking bemused but not at all embarrassed at the sight of Jester straddling him. “Hello.”

“Caduceus!” said Jester, scrambling off Caleb’s lap to the cushion beside him. She was blushing now, the same lavender-pink as her tongue, her arms wrapped protectively across her chest. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, they didn’t tell me the room was being used.” Caduceus scratched his head with the mop handle, pink eyes taking in the scene before him — Jester, half-naked and flushed; Caleb, frozen in place, still holding the picture of Frumpkin aloft.

“Well, it is, and we’re kind of, um, busy, so if you could, like, come back later—?”

“My mistake, I’ll leave you to it.” He smiled pleasantly, nodded at Caleb. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “You two have fun.” The door clicked shut behind him.

They sat in silence for a long time, Caleb still stuck in place, although he’d finally managed to lower his arm. He could feel Jester glancing furtively at him, her arms still wrapped around herself. She seemed different now, as though a spell had been broken — still gorgeous, heart-stoppingly so, but… uncertain. Young. Innocent. He was suddenly, painfully aware of how much older he must be than her, and how close he’d been to allowing himself to get lost in the fantasy. How close he’d been to doing something he’d regret.

He stuffed the picture back in his wallet, for once not caring if it creased or crumpled, and stood abruptly. “I should go,” he said.

She blinked. “O-oh,” she said.

“Yes, I should — hmm.” He wanted to say something — thank her? Gods no, how pathetic would that be? “I should go,” he said again.

She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher, almost seeming to deflate a little. “Oh. Okay…”

In two quick strides he was at the door, but hesitated with his fingers on the handle. He could go back and salvage this — she was so close, so beautiful, so… He shook himself. No. He wouldn’t do that to her.

He left without saying anything else.

Molly nudged Beau and Fjord in the ribs as Caleb stumbled back to the bar, disheveled and heart-sick and probably covered in glitter. “He returns!” crowed Molly triumphantly, clapping him on the shoulder as he came close and collapsed on a stool. “Veth, we’re gonna need some shots over here. Now, tell us everything.” He plucked slyly at the ribbon still draped around his neck.

Nott slid Caleb a shot of something and he downed it without bothering to try to identify it. She slid him two more and he downed those too, savoring the burn as they hit his throat. His palms were sweating again. He nearly slopped the fourth shot all over himself, his hands were shaking so much with latent adrenaline, but tossed it back anyway.

They were watching him. Beau grabbed his wrist as he reached for the fifth shot, smile slipping slightly. “Dude, slow down,” she said, her brows knitting together in mild concern. “You’re gonna throw up.”

“I knew she was good, but I didn’t know she was that good,” joked Molly. He swiped at Caleb’s face, finger coming away blue from a smudge of lipstick he hadn’t realized was there. “This is a good color on you.”

Caleb shook his hand out of Beau’s grasp and downed the final shot. When he rose from the barstool his head swam, but he was surprisingly steady on his feet as he took Molly’s face gingerly in his hands, leaning in close. “Mollymauk?” he said, only slurring a little.

Molly was grinning. “Yes, Caleb?”

He patted his cheek. “Fuck you,” he said, and left.

“Oh, come on!” yelled Molly as he walked away. “We all saw you looking at her, I was doing you a favor! You deserve to have some fun every once in a while!” But Caleb didn’t look back.

It wasn’t until he got home, collapsing on his dilapidated couch with Frumpkin flopping over in his lap, that he realized his colossal mistake.

He’d put the picture back in his wallet, but never put the wallet back in his pocket.

He groaned, pressing his palms into his eyes, but not seeing didn’t change the facts.

He’d left it at the Lavish Chateau. In the VIP room.

With Jester.

He’d have to go back.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

come home with me (part four)

Sorry for the short, kinda shitty chapter. I just didn’t want you all to think that I’d forgotten this fic and really wanted to write something for it. Consider this a brief interlude before shit kicks off. 

If you like this, please consider leaving a comment on Ao3, reblogging or donating to my ko-fi

Under the rows and rows of raised seating, in the shadows, it was surprisingly cold.

Caleb was grateful for that, out there under the bright lanterns and in amongst the press of their newest audience, it was stifling. How Molly could bear it, with the hat and the massive swirling coat he wore, he’d never understand.

But he was letting his thoughts stray too much. He had to be listening, he had to be ready. He had his own part to play in this and he refused to do it poorly.

Thirty seconds until Molly’s introduction. Enough time to tie his hair back and roll his sleeves up to the elbow. Enough time to centre himself, settle onto the balls of his feet, loose and ready.

It felt good. It felt right. The whole show was its own beautiful piece of music, orchestrated and free flowing, made up of so many individual melodies woven together. And Caleb had his own part, his own small piece. He was fiercely proud of it, even in amongst the nerves. They weren’t enough to reach up and strangle him, like vines in his own throat, stealing his words. Instead it was a bearable crackling in the tips of his fingers, excitement and anticipation and jumpiness all in one not exactly comfortable but stimulating sensation.

He didn’t feel like a scared child. He felt like a performer.

So it was with a small, proud smile on his lips that he whispered Mollymauk’s words along with him, as they boomed out, magically amplified, through the tent.

My, my, my. What a wonderful crowd we’ve got here tonight. We’ll have to work extra hard to put on a show deserving of all you lovely folk. But then again…

Twenty six seconds. A gasp erupted from the crowd above his head as Mollymauk stepped into the open air. Caleb had made him explain the many weights and pulleys that held the trapeze ropes and made the stunt possible, to assure him it was safe.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

He let the magic surge out of his palms. It was invisible but it felt like he could almost see it, like a wave disturbing the sawdust on the floor, rippling out, one stone thrown into a still lake that set everything in motion.

A rush of fabric. A delighted gasp from the audience. And light suddenly poured through the forest of legs, stripes of it falling across Caleb’s triumphant smile as nearly fifty dancing lights sprung into life, all different colours.

That’s exactly what we do.

Before his first show, Caleb had been informed of the most important, sacred, almost holy tradition the circus had. The fact that, after their first show at any stop, there was an absolute rager of a party held afterwards.

Caleb could hear the noise of it already in full swing, the pulsing of music, the crash of tankards against each other, the babble of many voices. He’d promised Jester and Beau he’d be out there in a little while but for now he just wanted a moment of quiet, a moment to feel proud of himself.

The empty tent was a strangely beautiful thing. It was almost like a cathedral or a temple in its quiet sense of power, its air of promise. The ceiling was so high it disappeared into shadows up above him, the stray pieces of confetti and odd bits of popcorn had been cleared away until there was just the quiet, the scent of sugar and gunpowder, the remembered tunes haunting the space until the next show. And him, in the middle of it all.

“Didn’t fancy the party, darling?”

Caleb turned, smiling. He’d been expecting Molly to come find him before too long. The tielfing had been incredibly attentive of him in the run up to his first show, ever since the day in the woods. Even as he’d seen Caleb’s confidence growing, his impressive command of magic slowly returning, Molly had stayed protective of him, always reminding him that he didn’t have to push himself, that he could take things as slow as he needed. Five times he’d reminded him, in amongst the manic rush of the circus getting ready for opening night, that he could pull out if he wanted to.

Every time, if he hadn’t been wildly busy, Caleb could have leapt into his arms and kissed him.

“I’ll be along in just a little bit,” he replied, standing in the dead centre of the stage, watching as Molly danced effortlessly down the row of seats as if they were steps, “I was just…decompressing, I guess.”

“I like to do that after shows too,” Molly smiled fondly, reaching the bottom and immediately running to Caleb to hug him tightly, “And you were incredible,darling, have I mentioned that?”

“A few times,” Caleb laughed, “Though I’m still not tired of hearing it.”

“Well, you were, you were amazing, you were wonderful, you were spectacular,” a kiss to the forehead accompanied each superlative, until the wizard was red in the face and giggling helplessly.

“You were brilliant too, you know,” he finally managed to get a returning compliment in.

And it was true. Mollymauk had been his usual effervescent self, playing host to the magic of the night with all the jokes, smiles and grace Caleb had seen in rehearsal but dialled up to the extreme. The song he’d sung to close the show had been enough to ensure Caleb had moved through his cues for the bows with tear tracks on his cheeks.

Though he looked even more beautiful now, with his make-up wiped away and costume hung up for the next night, just in his patterned leggings and open shirt, sweating and exhausted and satisfied with yet another performance. Exactly how he’d looked when he’d approached Caleb after that first show, the night he’d rescued him.

The night he’d saved his life.

Molly had squeezed his hand one last time and was now moving around the ring, touching the trapeze ropes that had been lowered and tied away, checking the supports of each one.

“This was my job before I was made ringmaster, you know,” he said in a light conversational tone that was a little too practised, winding one length around his wrist, “I was the trapeze artist.”

“Really?” Caleb tilted his head admiringly, “I can imagine you being great at that.” He’d always thought Molly moved like he was meant for something more than mere walking.

“I miss it like crazy sometimes, I never get the chance to practise any more apart from that one time at the start of the show…”

The soft longing in his voice and the way he was drifting towards the bowl of powdered chalk like he was orbiting it made what he did next inevitable though Caleb decided to play along.

“Show me?”

Molly gave him a delighted grin, sinking his hands into the powder and clapping them together, sending a burst of it into the empty air where it turned golden in the sunset light streaming through from above. He knotted his hand in the rope, kicked his boots away and made another hold for his  bare foot before shifting his weight ever so slightly to bring the rope off the hook. And with a rush, fast as a striking snake, he rose.

Caleb had to stifle a shout of fear and dismay, eyes darting frantically to follow the violet blur but he moved too quickly, too erratically, he couldn’t track what was going to catch him…

Until the quick moving smudge of colour resolved itself into Mollymauk once again, casually, almost lazily swinging back and forth from one of the overhead swings. He laughed delightedly, with all the carefree joy of a playing child, the sound echoing and bouncing in strange ways. Caleb found a smile, though his heart was still in his throat, the dull buzz of a Feather Fall spell tickling his palms.

Molly shifted into a new form at the apex of each swooping arc, incredible strength in his arms allowing him to swing by one hand, then flip up to sit on the bar as if it were a summer’s day and he was swinging over a little brook rather than at a dizzying height. His delight was so obvious, Caleb’s heart ached. Then he leapt again, out into thin air without a flicker of fear, catching a free hanging rope that swung him in one wide, smooth circle around the ring while he stayed perfectly still, his form precise. Those red eyes, that dazzling smile, found Caleb as he moved, making him a fixed point as the whole world rushed past, as if the two of them were careening through the air together.

Next was another swing at the bar, a flip in the air to catch another and take him further, never losing momentum, certain and sure that he’d never fall. His impromptu aerial display ended with him in the large hoop right in the centre of the tent, upside down, rotating as the rope released and he drifted down slower, slower, slower…until he was just a few feet above where Cale stood, smiling brightly.

Caleb reached a hand upwards, as if there were any hope of touching him. Molly did the same. And for a moment, the distance between them was nothing.

“Come down here and kiss me,” Caleb murmured, voice barely more than a hush but it was enough in the silence of the tent. And it was more than enough to bring Mollymauk into his arms. That, and the release of another ballast.

He could see sweat shining on the tiefling’s forehead now they were nearly nose to nose, feel how his chest was thumping in and out like a bellows, the only proof that the display wasn’t as effortless as it had seemed from below. Caleb didn’t care, he poured every ounce of awe and delight and enchantment he’d felt watching Mollymauk into that kiss. Judging by the way his face was a darker purple than usual and his eyes were wide and wanting, the message was well received.

“What are the chances of anyone coming back in here for the next twenty minutes or so?” Caleb breathed against Molly’s lips, eyes dark and pupils wide, holding the sunset in their depths.

“Not high enough that I give a damn,” Molly returned hungrily, hands already at his shirt buttons, tearing a few off entirely in his haste.

Sawdust wasn’t the finest bed to lie on and he’d be brushing it out of his hair and off his skin for days afterwards but Caleb was far from caring because Mollymauk was on top of him, his hands were cupping his face as they kissed, his tail was wound around his leg tight as a ship’s anchor.

Fortunately, no one had business in the tent for the next half hour or so and the music was more than enough to drown out the noise.

Molly and Caleb joined the party outside without any fuss or awkward questions. Caleb settled happily by the already roaring bonfire while Molly slipped off to procure some cups of Grog’s homebrewed ale. He’d been there less than a heartbeat before Jester waved at him across the fire, Caduceus called out his own hello from where he was tending a teapot handing over the flames, Yasha nodded and smiled in his direction, Beau yelled from her lap that it took him long enough and Fjord was pressing a mug of cider on him.

The feeling of being an audience member was long, long gone. Caleb was in the heart of it, warm and smiling and happy. He had his part to play, his small song to add to the chorus of it all. He was wanted. He was cared for.

It would be much like this for the weeks to come. The same script over and over again, similar days rolling past one after the other until it all became soft and familiar and comfortable. Until Caleb could forget that he’d ever worn another name, that he’d ever known anything other than his circus family.

But even as they moved further south, even as the days grew warmer and the summer covered them all like a blanket, there were black clouds gathering, unseen in the skies ahead.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Selcouth with widomauk? xxxxxxxx

“No one should be allowed to look that handsome when they’re in the midst of a mental breakdown,” Molly commented from the doorway, “There should be a law against it.”

“You’re mocking me,” Caleb grunted, face still pressed to the wood and the book he’d been trying for five hours now to scratch some level of understanding from.

“I would do no such thing, my darling, as you well know,” though he can’t see, Caleb hear him take a sip of something, either a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Probably the former, it was so late that he’d lost the sun long ago.

With a deep sigh, he rolled to see his boyfriend reclining easily in the doorway of the bedroom. He wore a short robe in an airy silk fabric, one that stopped just at the top of his thighs but with sleeves that billowed and seemed to be where most of the fabric that had been intended to preserve his modesty had ended up. Definitely brought from his place, Caleb owned nothing that gorgeous or colourful or so straight out of a pulpy romance novel.

“You look handsome,” Caleb grunted, wishing he could think of something more amorous to say but his brain just couldn’t keep up and all that came out was something that sounded more like an insult, “Asshole.”

Molly laughed, setting what was indeed a glass of dark red wine on the desk, somehow finding a place in amongst the books and all of Caleb’s hastily made and abandoned attempts at the essay on magical crystal properties he had to finish by Monday. He came up behind Caleb, behind the office chair he’d long ago ‘rescued’ from a street corner downtown, and gently drew him up.

“Your spine, my love,” Molly chastised him softly, fingers digging and rubbing in the knots that were once his shoulders, “I’m very fond of it, please don’t damage it irreparably.”

“I was just taking a break,” Caleb murmured, though the more his fingers worked, the more he realised just how much ache was in them and the more his weak body betrayed him and relaxed further towards total shut down.

“Did you manage to finish the introduction at least, my love?”

Caleb grunts, “Kind of. Still not happy with it but it’s…serviceable.”

“Which means by anyone else’s metric, it’s fantastic,” Molly chuckled.

His fingers had moved from his shoulders to his neck now, somehow knowing just where to press. Caleb couldn’t stop a low moan escaping through his lips and he rankled at his body’s betrayal.

“I’ve taken a break, I can get back to work now…”

“No bloody way,” Molly returned conversationally, resting his chin on the top of his head, “You’re done for now, my love. Consider this a rescue mission.”

“I do not need rescuing, Liebling.”

“Then consider it an annoyed, disgruntled lover wondering why he’s been invited to stay the night at his boyfriends to only be ignored in favour of a pile of dusty textbooks,” Molly said pointedly, bending down and nipping Caleb’s ear lightly. Only lightly, his tone was still jovial.

The redness from his nip seemed to catch and spread across most of Caleb’s face as he blushed, “Ah. I’m sorry. I guess it has got kind of late.”

“Yes, it is,” Molly chuckled, “I forgive you though, or rather I will, provided you leave those boring books and come ravage me spectacularly.”

“I don’t know if I can manage spectacular,” Caleb laughs gruffly, “But we’ll see.”

With a whoop, Molly seized the chair and rolled it towards the door. Caleb half laughed, half yelped and clung on for dear life as the broken wheel and his boyfriend’s enthusiasm sent him careening in a far less neat path than he’d have wanted.

“If I die on the way to the bed it’s going to put a dampener on the evening!” he shrieked, clinging to the seat as Molly sent him down the hall into the bedroom like he was a hockey puck.

Molly only laughed, chasing after him and tackling him straight onto the bed with a playful growl, pinning him down. Even as the air rushed out of him, Caleb grinned and blushed, loving the sensation of Molly, only Molly, enveloping him until he comprised his whole world. All he could taste was his tongue in his mouth, all he could smell was the soap from his earlier shower, all he could hear were his soft little noises whenever their lips parted to take in air. And as long as his world was Molly, he was okay.

Caleb knew he had to untangle himself and go fetch the strap from the other side of the room but at the moment the idea seemed ludicrous. The idea of anything existing beyond the bed was insane and he wanted no part in it. But then Molly whimpered hungrily and there was nothing in the world Caleb wanted more than to turn those whimpers into screams.

He nearly tripped over the knitted shawl Molly had been wearing for their lunch date, it’s purple length snaring his foot and making him stagger. “Oh, sorry!” Molly sat up, making to catch him if he needed it.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Caleb smiled, “I like it.”

He froze, as he often did when he realised the odd thoughts that swam around in his brain sometimes had accidentally surfaced and materialised where others could hear them.

But Molly only tilted his head slightly and looked gently curious, “You like it?”

“Yeah…” already wincing internally at himself, Caleb feels colour rising in his cheeks, clashing immediately with his hair, “I like your stuff being all over the place, where mine is. Together. I like you being here.”

There was a second pause where Caleb was gauging how to back pedal from this conversation and twist it into something a normal person might have said but then Molly smiled, somehow making the room seem brighter for it.

“I like it too. It’s cute, right?”

Suddenly, Caleb needed to be back in that bed like his life depended on it.

Molly seemed pleasantly startled as his wizard came bounding back over to him, laying him out on the pillows. But as he ducked down between his thighs, parting them and pressing kisses where his skin became a darker sunset blush, he soon caught on.

As he worked, as Mollymauk’s soft groans grew and swelled into loud gasps and shrieks, as his tail lashed, tensed and coiled, as his toes curled and back arched, Caleb felt those long fingers brush through his hair again and again. The same way they’d worked the pain from his shoulders, in his hair they drew every scrap of self-doubt, every anxiety and worry and fear and tossed them away, to a place they couldn’t find him.

It was pretty damn close to spectacular.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

“No, like…. It’s just, I can’t believe you’re actually wearing my clothes.” or “Would you mind if I kissed you?” for widomauk maybe? <3

Thanks so much for the request, I love getting new people suggesting story ideas! <3 

This one ended up a lot longer and a lot smuttier than I expected…

“Mollymauk? Molly? Dear, I think there’s enough sugar in there now…”

Molly’s ears picked up suddenly, his eyes pulled away from fervently watching the busy street outside the café window by Caduceus’ voice. He realised that he was still holding the sugar dispenser over his coffee, that a steady stream of white was still merrily pouring into the cup and had been for some time now, turning the drink cloudy and probably undrinkable.

“Oh…” he mumbled, rather feebly, setting the glass back down and wondering if his dignity would be salvageable if he just stubbornly drank it anyway and gave himself diabetes in the process.

“Distracted, are we?” Clay asked delicately from behind the counter where he was already putting together another latte for his friend. It was no trouble, customers were few and far between this late on a Monday night and Mollymauk looked as if he could use some warm, caffeinated distraction. Though maybe he’d make this one stealthily decaffeinated, the poor tiefling looked wired enough.

Molly grunted in response, resting his head listlessly in his hands against the aged wooden flat top. As much as he tried to force his eyes downwards and at least act vaguely normal, they kept stubbornly drifting to the window again, searching the faces sweeping past in the gathering dusk. His heart rose with each new one and sank almost immediately when it wasn’t the right one, quickly making him feel ill, as if he were on some kind of rollercoaster all while just perched on the stool at the counter of the Nestled Nook.

“He should be back by now…” he muttered distractedly, under his voice though Caduceus’ large ears flickered and picked it up.

“The train must be delayed,” the firbolg soothed as he slid drink number two across to Molly, “I’m sure that’s all it is. You know he’s as eager to get back as you are to see him.”

He bit his lip, not really in any mood to hear any comforting words, even from a friend, just restlessly drumming elaborately painted nails against the side of his mug. He always poured his attention into tiny things when he was feeling forlorn and two nights ago it had been his nails; currently they were a deep purple with intricate, glittering gold pattern work done with a toothpick. It had taken his mind of missing Caleb for a full evening.

“He said six. He said his train got in at quarter to and he’d be here by six…”

Caduceus nodded slowly. He hadn’t needed to ask what was wrong when Molly had slumped into the counter seat nearly an hour ago. All of the friends had been kept well up to date with this tumultuous week, where Caleb was away for a whole three months, off in a city on the other side of the country to do research in a sister academy’s even vaster library. With Molly trapped on the verge of a new production opening at the theatre, the two had been very reluctantly separated for the longest time ever since they’d met.

The tiefling had been, understandably though not exactly forgivably, insufferable the entire time and if Caleb’s texts were anything to go by, he’d been exactly the same. Caduceus quietly pitied whoever owned the coffee shop closest to that other library as they’d probably had a scruffy, mournful Caleb haunting their establishment for the last three months like a plaid ghost. Just like he’d had an increasingly agitated and restless Mollymauk glued to his counter, checking his phone every two seconds for texts from his boyfriend and grumbling loudly when there wouldn’t be one nine times out of every ten.

But the torture was nearly over. Or rather, it should have been fifteen minutes ago. Though the evening was rough; the world beyond the window, beyond the brightly and cheerfully painted letters that spelled out the name of the café, was slick and shimmering as rain came down in sheets. No wonder Caleb was running a little late, Caduceus thought, though poor Molly was past such common sense, only desperately wanting to see his boyfriend again.

Caduceus was considering playing Molly’s favourite albums over the speakers to try and cheer him up, temporarily lifting last year’s blanket ban on folk music, instated after he’d wheedled him into playing the same song to death even after several customers had complained.

But then Molly suddenly jerked bolt upright and the door chimed as someone walked in. Someone in a dripping wet trench coat, with auburn hair plastered to their head, a scarf around their neck that looked like a drowned snake and the most relieved and joyful expression on their face.

Molly nearly sent the stool crashing to the floor as he leapt up and launched himself at Caleb, unashamedly. Caleb’s arms were wide and ready for him, gathering him up and clasping him tightly, the two of them uncertain whether to laugh with relief or sob with joy.

Molly chose the former, Caleb the latter.

“I’m sorry, I’m soaking…” Caleb murmured into Molly’s hair, in between pressing frantic kisses to his head.

“It’s fine,” Molly giggled and he truly didn’t care, even as rainwater started turning the front of his shirt dark and damp, “Fuck, I missed you so much. Never leave me again, okay?”

“Never,” Caleb promised, voice thick,” Never ever.”

The rest could only be said with kisses, Molly catching Caleb’s face in his hands, wincing a little at how cold and wind burnt it was though it didn’t deter him as he pressed their lips together. He could almost say that all those nights in his big, lonely bed, falling asleep with the phone digging grooves in his palms and his cheek after a painful goodbye, were worth it just for how sweet and lovely that first kiss was. Almost.

“You’re so cold…” Molly murmured, letting his hands flit from his cheeks to his neck to his shoulders, trying to warm him up with the natural heat of his skin.

He knew of a much better way to warm him up quickly and could see in Caleb’s eyes that he was having similar ideas but there was that damnable sign on the bathroom door and Caduceus was definitely going to notice something if he seized his boyfriend by the front of his coat and led him in that direction. Once bitten, twice shy.

Which meant home. Home back to the way it was supposed to be, with Caleb’s coat on the hook by the door, his long red hairs clinging to the shower door, his books on the coffee table next to a cooling, forgotten mug, his hand never far from Molly’s.

Home.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a long trip and Mollymauk had an umbrella though it was made slightly longer by the two of them nearly constantly snagging each other for kisses.

Caleb gave a cry of delight as the door was pushed open and warm light flooded the apartment, “Frumpkin!”

The cat seemed just as pleased to see him, darting from the cushion he was sat on to rub himself against Caleb’s ankles, purring like an engine in bad need of repair.

“How was he?” he asked, scooping him up and cradling him against his chest like a baby, Frumpkin kneading his arm gladly, “Were you two nice to each other?”  

“Who, Freeloader?” Molly grinned as he tossed his bag and coat down, “Sweet as pie. You know how well me and him get on.”

A blatant lie. Molly and Frumpkin were long time mortal enemies turned reluctant roommates, constantly competing for Caleb’s attentions. Neither of them had been pleased by the fact that Caleb’s accommodation during his research didn’t allow pets or magical familiars of any kind. It had been a long three months of deliberately shedding on clothes, being chased off said clothes, knocking vases and photo frames off high surfaces, cursing and hissing and glaring at each other from opposite ends of the sofa.

And of course now he was a little furry angel, gazing up at Caleb with full moon, amber eyes dripping with adoration. Typical.

Once extracted from his cat’s welcome home, Molly pressed Caleb up against the wall in the way that he knew drove him absolutely wild, kissing him with much more intent, gasping softly as his lips parted for him. Caleb responded eagerly, as hungry for this as Molly. Phone sex and naked pictures were fun in their own way but after a whole three months, they’d proved a very poor substitute for this.

“Gods, Molly…” Caleb whimpered lightly as his boyfriend pushed the shirt away from his shoulders after practically tearing through the buttons. He was in no mood for patience or care, he wanted him so badly it was a metallic taste in the back of his mouth and a flaring ache between his legs.

They blindly made their way towards the bedroom, a hopeless tangle of limbs scrabbling with the doorknob, nearly tripping over the edge of the rug. Along the way, Caleb’s jeans were abandoned, as well as all four of their shoes, socks, Caleb’s boxers and packer, Molly’s tights (which Frumpkin immediately seated himself on as a final act of defiance).

Mollymauk found himself tipping suddenly, fortunately down onto the bed which rushed up to catch him, knocking the air out of him with a breathless laugh. Caleb soon came tumbling on top of him and Molly immediately began pressing kiss after kiss to his jaw, neck, chest, re-familiarising himself with all the hollows and lines and ridges he loved so much, with the rapid hammering of Caleb’s heart behind his ribs, so alive and real.

He’d missed it more than words could possibly say. So, he intended to express it by fucking Caleb so hard he wouldn’t be able to walk straight for at least a day.

Though he found his plans suddenly interrupted as Caleb froze in his grip and pulled away.

“Hey…” Mollymauk whined pathetically, “What gives?”

Caleb looked surprised as he fingered the fabric of Molly’s shirt, “You…you’re wearing my shirt?”

Shit. Molly had forgotten that.

The shirt was in fact Caleb’s. One of his favourite ones in fact that Molly had snatched from his suitcase the day he left and stuffed under his pillow. Mustard yellow plaid with brown lines and fraying hems, it was as quintessentially Caleb as it was possible to be and carried all of his musky, bookish and coffee scent. Molly had been sleeping with it pressed to his nose most nights, inhaling deeply as he could in an effort to not cry himself to sleep, and wearing it during the day though only around the flat. Gods only knew the comments that Beau would make if they saw him dressed like this. In his rush to get to the Nook and count down the minutes until he saw his boyfriend again, he’d forgotten to change.

Caleb began to laugh bemusedly, face frozen in exaggerated shock, “Dear gods! What happened, did you go temporarily blind this morning? Is hobo couture on the catwalks right now?”

“Shut up man…” Molly felt his face flushing and he pressed himself to Caleb’s collarbone to try and hide it, “Come on, back to fucking…”

“No, no, no,” Caleb caught him and pulled him back, eyes shining, “Seriously, what gives? I thought everything I wore was, and I quote, ‘only fit to reupholster the awful furniture in some old geezer’s depressing man cave.’”

Molly snorted, bashful and coy, two expressions that had almost never appeared on his face but only made him more tempting to Caleb for all that.  

“Look, I…I really, really missed you, okay?” he mumbled, biting his lip, “And wearing your clothes, having your smell on me…it helped.”

Caleb’s expression turned gentle, soft as the well-worn cotton of the shirt Molly wore, his fingers delicately tracing the lines of his jaw, “Well…I didn’t think my smell was something people actually wanted? But you’re very sweet.”

“Hey, I keep you right these days, your stink’s decreased considerably,” Molly smirked, flicking his arm lightly.

Caleb snorted, “I just can’t believe you’re wearing my clothes…”

He punctuated that with a kiss to his forehead, rolling them gently so Molly was the one on top. His voice suddenly turned huskier, his pupils widened a little, none of which the tiefling’s hunter eyes missed.

“Hey…could you keep that on? My shirt, I mean, the rest can come off but…”

In almost the blink of an eye, without another word being said, Molly’s skirt, binder and underwear were on the floor and all that lay underneath the dark fabric that still held Caleb’s scent, Caleb’s ink marks, was a skin that wasn’t his own. The material curved in a way it never had on him, hugging the fullness of Molly’s chest, stretching and revealing in the most teasing way. Purple as a winter sunset, soft as silk, burning hot under his still cold hands as he slipped them past the lip of the fabric.

How he’d lived without it, Caleb had no idea.

“Do you want to…or I could…” he whispered hoarsely.

Ever the decisive one, Molly rested his hand on Caleb’s chest, “Just give me a moment to get the harness on, darling. You stay right there looking pretty.”

It was a simple process and one Molly was well versed in. It was made even lovelier by Caleb lying on his side and watching the whole thing with a devoted, ravenous gaze, moaning softly under his breath at every snap of the leather and ring of the buckles.

Purple skin brushed lightly over amber as Molly pushed his knees to his chest, purring delightedly at what he found, “Baby, you’re so wet for me…missed me, huh?”

Caleb whimpered and nodded in response, running the fabric of his shirt through his fingers as Molly positioned himself, the toy shining in the low light as the whole length of it buried into Caleb with a soft sound and a throaty cry from Caleb.

“Fuck, that’s it,” Molly shuddered, feeling the pressure right on the spot he needed it most, almost as good as Caleb’s long legs anchoring around his waist, “You’re home.”

The headboard began to thump rhythmically against the back wall, reliably hitting the twin spots where the paint was already chipping and the plaster already denting. Caleb twisted and whimpered beneath him as the toy that Molly operated as skilfully as if it really was his skin and bone pressed him on and on towards the edge.

Molly was in a generous mood, holding nothing back as his hips rolled back and forth, giving Caleb everything he needed and feeling warmth flood through him in turn, that deep sense of pleasure from being connected to the man he loved. His own fingers dug into Caleb’s hips while those long, arched ones worn from writing and reading so much twisted and grasped at the pillows.

For a shy man, Caleb was so vocal in bed, narrating his clamber towards the edge, gasping and moaning, cursing breathlessly in any of his many languages and, over and over, Molly’s name. Molly himself was focused and determined, growling low in his chest with desire.

Though when his own orgasm dragged him under, completely by surprise after he’d been so absorbed in Caleb, he screamed his boyfriend’s name and was vaguely aware of his own name being moaned in a shuddering voice heavy with relief.

Mollymauk didn’t expect to be as out of breath as he was when it was finished, as he pressed his forehead to Caleb’s and kissed him long and slow and lazy.

“I love you…I love you…” he murmured vaguely hands stroking back the hair from his damp forehead.

“I love you too,” Caleb rasped, “I’m never leaving again, I swear. Fuck it, I’m never leaving this bed again.”

Molly laughed raggedly, rolling out of him and off him, too exhausted to consider taking the harness off yet which amused Caleb no end, flicking the cock lightly and watching it wobble back and forth and giggling helplessly.

“Grow up,” Molly snorted, lying close to him, arm pillowing his head so he could stroke his hair.

“Shut up,” Caleb grunted in response, grinning, “I’m going to need that shirt back, y’know.”

“Too late, it’s mine now,” Molly purred, letting his heavy eyes close, all the sleepless nights when he’d been alone suddenly rushing to catch up with him, “You’re never getting this back.”

Caleb groaned and rolled his eyes but, in all honestly, he didn’t care.

Mollymauk looked much better in the old thing than he ever had.