#just a cute little sickfic

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Hurt Prompt:

'You're not dying, it's only a sprained ankle' - widomauk (aka: Molly hurt himself and is now trying to get Caleb to pity him) 💜🧡

I am so sorry this has taken so long! But my lovely gf chose this out of my prompts list for my next little fic so here it is, some modern au widomauk family cuteness!

This fic is also on Ao3 if anyone would like to leave a comment!

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Caleb had gotten too used to solving his problems with spells.

He wasn’t very strong so he used a levitation spell to carry his books and papers. His daughter Una wouldn’t sleep so he conjured dancing lights to soothe her and help her forget her nightmares. His son Trinket fell and skinned his knee so Caleb dropped the temperature of his palms and held them to the injury to soothe the pain and still the sniffles. Frumpkin wouldn’t stop scratching the arms of the sofa so a quick prestidigitation made sure Molly would be none the wiser. Caleb was very good at magic, after all.

But it meant that, when he found a problem that wouldn’t bend to any spell, he was a little lost.

At least he could float the mug of tea up the stairs without spilling. It bobbed just above his finger as he made his way up the stairs, deftly dodging toys left scattered by their children and several socks that had escaped the laundry basket, managing to make it unscathed to their bedroom. Frumpkin padded after him, bell on his collar jingling.

“Liebling?” he called softly as he pushed the door back, “I brought you some tea.”

A low groan from the bed was his answer, from the bundle of blankets that had replaced his husband. It shifted, a few crocheted throws sliding down in a wooly avalanche, the curved tops of two horns appearing, followed by a sleepily blinking set of red eyes.

Caleb smiled sympathetically and moved closer into the dim room, only a sliver of afternoon light coming in through the drawn curtains. With his free hand, he summoned a small ball of light and sent it drifting above the bed so he could see better. It was the same cluttered room he’d left an hour or so ago, the same cluttered room they spent every night in. All his books piled in neatly organised stacks that made sense only to him, Molly’s scented candles filling different corners of the room with different smells, scarves draped on nearly every available surface, a closet stopped with equal numbers of thick woolen jumpers and crop tops. Frumpkin sprang onto his usual perch, which was wherever Molly’s favourite cardigan was resting so he could get the maximum number of ginger hairs on it.

“I’m sorry to wake you but the healers said I should check on you every hour,” Caleb set the mug down on the bedside table, perching on the edge of the bed, mindful not to sit on his husband’s tail which was thrashing unhappily, “How are you feeling?”

“Depends,” Molly’s voice was even more raspy than usual, muffled by his blanket horde, “Help me decide which kid gets the high heeled boots in the will and I’m sorted.”

Caleb swallowed his chuckle as best he could, “I don’t expect Una will ever grow big enough to fill them so Trinket will probably get more use. But you’re not dying, Liebling, it’s only a sprained ankle.”

“Only,” Molly scoffed, sitting up straighter, more blankets falling away. He was wearing one of Caleb’s shirts from the university. He'd always preferred to sleep in his husband’s clothes, “You don’t go to the hospital for only anything!”

Caleb smiled sympathetically and moved closer, though he was careful not to jostle the brace wrapped foot that poked out from under the duvet at the bottom of the bed, balanced on a pillow.

“That is true,” he allowed, “Pike did say you were lucky not to break i t.”

“Exactly!” Molly pouted, reaching over for the mug, “And it hurts…”

Caleb patted the tiefling’s uninjured leg, “You can have some more painkillers in forty three minutes. And at least now we have learned a lesson about watching where we’re going on a stage, ja?”

How someone could look so haughty when their injury was entirely their fault, Caleb didn’t know, but Mollymauk managed it.

“Take me through it again?” he chuckled, still rubbing his shin, “Yasha didn’t quite give me all the details.”

In fact, all she’d said when she’d called Caleb to tell him Molly had been carted off to the emergency room mid-rehearsal was that he’d ‘been an idiot’. Not that Caleb would be repeating that.

Molly hunched his shoulders, “Um...we were rehearsing for the show, we’re doing Romeo and Juliet for the summer production. And I was, ah...paying very close attention to Vax’s choreography for the ballroom scene and just wanted to make sure I was getting it absolutely right, exactly as he was telling me to do it over and over and over again…”

Caleb tilted his head knowingly, “You were taking the piss out of him.”

“I...might have been doing an impression,” Molly started to hunch back into his blankets, “Allegedly. You’ll have to question witnesses.”

“Uh huh,” Caleb noncommittally rearranged the covers around Molly’s legs to keep out drafts, “And then?”

“Then. I wasn’t looking where the edge of the stage was and I fell into the orchestra pit.”

So Yasha had got it pretty accurate.

“And now my ankle is all gross and swollen and I can’t walk on it and I’m bored and it hurts!” Molly put more emphasis on that part, throwing his hands out exasperatedly and newly upending his tea.

Caleb smiled in sympathy, moving so he was leaning against the headboard too, stretching his legs out next to his husband’s. Instantly Mollymauk slumped against him, resting his head on his shoulder.

“It’s really shitty,” he mumbled into Caleb’s cable knit sweater.

“I know, Liebling,” he turned his face to kiss the top of Molly’s head, “And I’m sorry I don’t have the spells to fix this, I did look them up but they’re just not my domain and if I got something wrong...but you’ll be feeling better before you know it. And until you do, I’m right here for you.”

“Even if I’m a bit of an idiot? Not that I’m saying this was my fault or anything…”

Caleb grinned, “Come on now, Mollymauk, if I’d cared about you being a bit of an idiot we’d never have had a second date.”

Molly’s tail immediately flicked him on the thigh but he could have sworn his husband was muffling laughter against his shoulder.

Caleb paused, hearing a clatter that was rapidly increasing in volume, a smile growing on his face as the sound of two little feet and four scrabbling sets of claws got louder. He threw an slightly apologetic glance in Molly’s direction, “Sorry, Liebling, I said they had to wait a little and then they could follow-”

He was interrupted by the door bursting back and their children tumbling in, giggling and whispering to each other. Una ran in on all fours, as usual, she hadn’t mastered the wobbly toddler walk the same way her brother had.

“Daddy!” Trinket yelled before clearly remembering Caleb had told him that Molly would appreciate some peace and quiet, dropping down to a still loud stage whisper, “Daddy!”

“Hey there kiddos,” Molly smiled, brightening a little as Una pounced up onto the bed and curled up tightly under his arm, Trinket needing a magical assist from his papa to join them at the foot of the bed, “Sorry if I scared you there, I promise I’m okay.”

“Hurt bad?” Una murmured, staring at his support with wide yellow eyes like two gold coins.

“Well,” Molly ran a gentle hand through her dark hair, smiling demurely, “It’s not exactly comfortable...I’ll be okay, darling.”

“You will!” Trinket beams, bouncing on his knees excitedly, pulling something from behind his back with a flourish that meant he could only be Molly’s son, “Cos we got this!”

The tiefling blinked, eyes widening as he took the card in his hands, bringing it close with the kind of reverence people usually reserved for pieces of priceless art. It was made from a folded piece of paper, that Caleb unfortunately recognised as one of his marking sheets from work, that was already bowing under the weight of all the glitter and glue on it. Somehow it was both simultaneously dripping glue and shedding glitter on the blankets, the adornments surrounding a lovingly drawn portrait of someone very purple, with enormous horns and a tail curled into a heart. One of this figure’s legs was wrapped in a bandage and words were scrawled in a heavy hand around them. We love you daddy!

Molly gave a soft chuckle, closing his eyes a moment so they didn’t look quite so full of tears. He reached out to bring Trinket close to him too, bundling both his children close.

“Thank you, babies,” he murmured, voice a little thick, “That does make me feel so much more okay.”

Caleb watched them fondly before folding them into his arms too, so he could embrace all of his little family at once.

Maybe he had gotten too used to fixing problems with spells, maybe he did struggle when he couldn’t just wave his hands and knit everything back together. But fortunately, he had two experts who were willing to show him how.