#just having some late night tealeaf thoughts

[dent-de-leon]

Lucien is like a fun vampiric archetype kinda character to me. His whole power is about blood and sacrifice. In the Orders, blood hunters would mix their blood together and then literally just drink it. Lucien gifts Cree a vial of his own blood, something that they both consider sacred. He even vows to her, "Blood of mine for blood of yours."

Lucien is both dead and alive--Taliesin mentions he was always certain Mollymauk would've set off Detect Undead. Lucien is among the living once again, and yet, still a ghost forever haunting his own skin--he's felt death sink its claws into him. He's tasted immortality. He sees himself as a god, a king, claims other mortals are beneath him. "I've come to take my reign, long may it be."

(And if we want to talk about Tealeaf as a spirit, Lucien as metaphorically undead--I think it's also worth noting that Mollymauk is also intended to be Taliesin's interpretation of a mermaid. Specifically, because they supposedly have no souls. Soulless? Clawing out of their own grave feeling hollow, empty, forever changed? Sounds very reminiscent of vampires to me, at least thematically--)

Lucien is the ruling lord; inheritance of the whole broken world is his destiny, his birthright. He's an orphan child all alone in the world, curled up in an abandoned cellar for shelter, desperate for an escape.

To the ruling families of Shadycreek and powerful mages of the Cerberus Assembly? Lucien Tavelle is nothing, nobody, another tool to be discarded when he's no longer of use. In another life, he's the exact kind of unfortunate, lonely soul who would've been led to a monster. The kind of person Gustav let Kylre devour--"Those no one would miss." As just a chid, Lucien is forced to feed other desperate souls to a monster himself. Just as much of a victim as the puppets on display in the witch's house.

Something about how Lucien has all these vampiric qualities of a powerful--cursed--undead monster, how he hungers for connection and control over other desperate souls, feeding on the dreams and minds of city trapped for centuries. And yet, the fact that his whole power is about sacrifice, and how that's reflected in Molly.

Someone who will bleed himself dry to save everyone else. Recklessly risking his neck for someone who might never thank him. Unable to bear watching others suffer--willing to stand and fight in their stead. Taliesin taking this premise of someone who's supposed to be hollow and empty and without a soul, someone who's often seen as monstrous, and yet...being so full of love and joy, he gains a soul all his own--

[spritewrites]

excuses

Fandom: Critical Role

Characters: Yasha & Mollymauk

Word Count: 1290

A/N: Never let it be said that I’m all talk no fics.

Mollymauk isn’t usually at a loss for words.

It’s something that Yasha likes about him. They’re a good duo that way; he’s the mouth, and she’s the muscle. Or rather, they used to be. It’s much more complicated now that there’s so many more of them.

He’s still got a hell of a mouth, though. Yasha’s pretty sure that’ll never change.

It’s just that sometimes he isn’t great at using it.

Sure, he can probably talk his way out of a moorbounder’s jaws, and he’s hopelessly certain that strangers are just friends he hasn’t convinced yet. But. He can’t seem to shake that… that whatever it is that’s always getting him into trouble. A mischievous streak, maybe, but it seems like more than that. Gustav used to blame his demon blood, and that seems closer. 

It’s… it’s his Mollyness, really. That’s how Yasha’s always thought of it. It twists his tongue, and she finds herself being talked into dangerous situations nearly as often as he talks them out of them. He does it to himself, too, sometimes even to her – and those are the rare moments when his mouth fails him.

Like now.

Yasha smiles to herself. It’s funny, sort of, the way that a situation can just unravel under Molly’s feet. One second, his devil tongue is getting him into trouble, and the next, he can’t seem to summon enough words to get him out again.

“Fuck—” 

Well, there’s one. One too many, in Yasha’s opinion. The goal is to shut him up.

It’s not hard. Not for her, anyway; a lot of people have a hell of a hard time shutting up Mollymauk Tealeaf. If he weren’t so dreadfully lucky, it might’ve landed him in worse situations. Situations where his smart mouth could’ve saved him (although Yasha isn’t certain that “saved” is an accurate descriptor for what Molly wants out of this). Fortunately, he’s only here, in her lap, and not in the claws of some enemy. And although Yasha’s trying her hardest to ensure that his mouth is of no use to him here, he’s with her, so he’s not suffering.

Much.

“No!”

Yasha glances down at the squirming pile of tiefling on her knees. She currently has one thick arm wrapped around his hips to keep him still, and one hand digging under the folds of his coat to tickle ruthlessly at his side. Molly’s wriggling frantically, pushing at her forearm between giggles, but that’s only opening up more and more spaces for Yasha to poke nimble fingers into.

“I fu – I fucking – shit,” Mollymauk gasps, “Yasha—”

“Hm?”

He shivers. “—tickles—”

“Yes,” Yasha sighs, moving to knead at his ribs. His eyes go wide, but he doesn’t seem to have the oxygen to reflect the jump in intensity in his voice, so all that comes out is a squeak as he attempts to curl up. “Yes, I’d imagine it does.”

The other thing about Mollymauk is that he needs… amusement? Stimulation might be a better term for it, but Yasha’s nose wrinkles if she lingers on the connotations of that thought for longer than a moment. He needs to be kept busy, entertained, and if he can’t do it himself, he gets restless. The number of times that he crept into her tent at the circus late at night, some kind of small creature or spell in his hand to spook her out of bed… well, it’s nonzero. And Yasha loves Molly, she does, but she isn’t overly fond of the bothering.

A high-pitched desperate noise distracts her from her thoughts. The bothering, the smart mouth, the neediness… Yasha digs a thumb in just under Molly’s ribs, and he flops almost all the way out of her lap. It takes a good yank to reel him back in, and he’s gasping out protests all the while.

“Yasha – Yasha, please—”

“Stay still,” she says, trying to hide her smile behind a cross demeanor. “I’m not done with you yet.”

When Mollymauk acts up, she’s responsible. It’s part of what makes them work. Lucky for her, she knows exactly the right sort of punishment to teach him a lesson, get out all his energy, and make sure that he teeters right at the edge of enjoying himself the whole time.

“Fucking – gods,” Molly chokes, smothering a laugh in the folds of Yasha’s cloak as a strong hand tickles over his side to wriggle into his stomach. His tail twitches, shudders, and winds itself around her arm, tugging gently. “Be nice—”

Yasha’s eyebrows quirk up. “Nice?” She diverts her attention briefly to tickle along the underside of his tail where it meets her sleeve, eliciting a stream of distressed giggles. “Why?”

He’s still struggling with stringing words together, but finally he gasps his way through “—didn’t do anything—”

And, well. He’s not wrong.

Mollymauk has a smart mouth. And he’s bothersome. And he’s needy. And he’s clever. Every single one of these qualities make him a prime candidate for a grab-you-by-the-horns-and-make-you-wish-you-were-never-born tickling, in Yasha’s opinion.

Still, there are times when he’s being… good. Good, comparatively. Behaving. Staying out of trouble.

Doesn’t mean that Yasha doesn’t see that smug little twitch of his lip, the way his shirt rides up when he stretches, the ringing echo of his laughter – and get a little zing up her fingertips. And, well. There’s only so long she can resist that.

Maybe she isn’t being entirely fair, she thinks to herself over the sound of Mollymauk falling to pieces. There’s no harm in going a little easy on him. He hasn’t done anything wrong.

Her fingers wander down over his hips, narrowly avoiding a threatening swipe from his tail, and latch on to his thighs, squeezing and burrowing and tickling relentlessly.

The kicking is expected. So is the cackling. The wheezing, however, is new.

“Ple—” is all Molly has time for before he’s lost to laughter, shaking and helpless under her strength, making some sort of delightful breathy squeaky sound that Yasha’s never heard out of the tiefling’s mouth. She chases it, pinching from the tops of his knees up to his hips, and the pitch skyrockets to a whine.

There are tears at the corners of Molly’s eyes when she stops, and his breathing is ragged and deep. Then, slowly, his fangs reappear in an easy grin. “You’re going to kill me with that someday, you know.”

Yasha smiles. “You wheeze.”

“An unfortunate side-effect of needing air, my dear,” he replies breezily, flopping an arm over his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Hm.” Gods save her the day Molly thinks to try for revenge. She’s pretty sure they’ve only gotten this far because she wears him out so much. That, and the fact that he likes being on the receiving end so much that in all their years together, he’s never once asked her to stop.

Lost in thought again, her thumb rubs a gentle path over the spade of his tail.

“That,” says Molly, snatching it away, “is mine, thank you.”

Yasha huffs a small laugh. “It wasn’t a minute ago.”

Mollymauk’s eyes narrow to crimson slits. “You’re teasing.”

She doesn’t reply, doesn’t really need to. Molly seems to be the only one who sees that she’s always teasing, at least with him. Instead, she ruffles his hair and gently nudges him off her knees, laughing when he tumbles horns over heels into the grass, the itch in her fingers gone. Maybe he was a mouthy troublesome scoundrel of a tiefling, or maybe that was an excuse she’d made up to make sense of her inexplicable need to watch her best friend writhe on the ground, crying with laughter.

Or maybe both. Probably both.

[thatonesadending]

Caleb gets to show Molly his Tower, but Essek doesn't approve (Chapter 3)

Caleb knew he was being childish, overly excited. But he had put a lot of work into his tower, spent a lot of time thinking about his friends and their own stories, and how they impacted him. He was eager to share it with Molly. The man was that was ostentation to a fault, and so Caleb thought he might appreciate how much thought and whimsy he had put into their little band of hero’s home away from home.

He lead Molly through the entrance of the Tower, he hadn't explained anything, and the tieflings reaction didn't disappoint.

“What the fucking hell. I am still dead aren't I?” He had almost ghosted past Caleb to the middle of the Entryway. Looking up, he gasped and put his hands on his hips. “Caleb Widogast, you tricked me. You made me think I was going back to the material plane, but this, - this is Heaven, isn't it.”

Caleb couldn't help but chuckle at the mocking tone. He was surprised when Molly looked back away from the ceiling, and stode back to Caleb to clasp his shoulders. “I knew you were a sneaky little bastard, smarter then you let on. Good Boy.” Caleb should have felt embarrassed at the teasing praise, but he wasn’t, at least not yet. Mollymauk continued to wander around the Entryway. He spent a good long while asking questions and Caleb gladly answering.

“How do you get up there?” Molly pointed up thru the center of the tower, after taking in all the windows and art surrounding him.

“Come, I will show you.” Caleb offered his hand to the other man, normally he would not be so bold, but he was riding a high from having all of his worries and suspicions so easily dowsed. He could overthink things later, currently, he just wanted to think about the now, something that Molly valued.

Molly took it easy, and Caleb told him all he had to do was think “up”. Of course, in an effort not to be outdone, he said what Caleb could guess was the infernal translation and pulled the wizard with him.

They made it to the center of the salon floor before Mollymauk stopped and stared. Truth be told, isn't not that Caleb had forgotten, but he had never thought Molly would see the salon, never prepared an explanation for the large stained glass window. He had made it of course as a tribute that the other Nien would appreciate as much as he. It hadn't occurred to Caleb until that moment that he had surrounded his books, his knowledge around the lighted artwork that represented Mollymauk Tealeaf.

“Caleb, I -” he wasn't sure he had ever experienced Molly speechless before. Embarrassment was spreading up his neck, and Caleb wanted to find a way to explain, minimize - lie - about the significance of the fact that the third floor of the Mighty Niens home has a vast library containing all the books and knowledge Caleb ever held dear, and a larger than life depiction of Molly’s tattoos, that case color and light on all of Caleb’s texts. He wanted to say that he had just made it as a comfort for his still grieving friends, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t lie.

Surprisingly Cad started answering some of Molly’s questions when he eventually stopped staring. It wasn't until Caleb scanned the room and remembered that Essek was also with them, that he realized Caduceus was being more polite than him.

Caleb tentatively walked over to the other wizard, unsure of what to say. There had been a lot of floating and conflicting feelings around the two of them as of late, but Caleb had just started to feel like they had been unraveling them, getting to a place where they could be more than friends with a tentative trust. But then Caleb had asked Essek on this trip, and then literally kissed the enemy. He had no idea what the man must be thinking.

“Thank you for guarding me, you know - while I cast th-”, but he was caught off by Essek.”

“This is foolish.” Caleb hadn't been expecting the reprimand. Essek didn't let him respond.

“You have now twice let a man that may or not contain a friend that you knew for only a couple of weeks into your home. Shared your secrets. For what Caleb? I understand that your friends and you -”

Caleb cut him off abruptly, but did not slow Essek down. “Our friends.”

“Yes, our friends - have an affinity for this ‘Mollymauk’, but it is my understanding that you only knew the man for 4-5 weeks. How do you know this isn’t Lucien? Playing off your limited memories of a man who barely knew you. Whereas I -”

The door two floors below them slammed open, and Caleb found himself prepping to use his arcane fire, but all he saw was the rest of the Nien trudging in, and closing the door behind the,

“Cad, do you think you could come heal Beau? She is ok, we got Cree, but Jester is a bit tapped.” Fjord’s deep voice rung through the tower. Cad excused himself from Molly, and drifted down to Beau. the rest of them followed soon after, back to the Entryway. Caddie quickly took care of all of them, but took care not to include Cree, who was flung over Yasha’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes and unconscious.

“Molly what do you think?! Isnt great?!” Jester asked to her fellow tiefling.

“Love, I am fairly sure that I am stuck in a coma or a demiplane somewhere, but this all couldn't possibly be real.” He said with a grateful smile on his face. Caleb barely heard Essek mutter, uncharastically, ‘I am sure you would fuck with demiplanes.’ Before Caleb could confront that, Molly was calling to him.

“Caleb, this is truly fantastic, and I really would love to see it all, but I wasn't lying when I said I was tired. I don't know what that other guy did with this body, but it doesn't feel like sleep.”

“Oh Molly! You can stay with me! I am sure you don't want to be alone, and Essek has the guest room, and my room is like - really really awesome. We can totally snuggle and I can-” Fjord was growling again, it wasn't loud, but just displeased enough that Jester heard. Caleb wasn't sure what to make about this recent possessive streak, but he knew his own jealousy isn't helpful since Fjord had obviously scared Molly.

“Or maybe Yasha would be better, she really really missed you.” Jester supplied, with a bashful smile.

“That would be divine dear, if that’s ok with Yash, don't want to intrude, love.” Molly said, but he seemed to be struggling with something. It Caleb only a moment to realize that the man was overwhelmed with their change in dynamic, unsure of how he fit in, and might need some space.

“Actually, that might not be necessary.” Caleb hadn't planned on telling them all, but he also hadn't planned on being able to bring back Molly as such. He kicked himself mentally for not arranging things in the tower before he cast it, but hopefully the others left him alone about it. He wasn’t going to hold his pride up before making sure Molly knew that he belonged here with his family.. “Both Mollymauk and Essek have their own rooms if they choose to stay in them.”

Caleb noticed Essek’s normally imperceptible demeanor change, soften just a bit, he was thankful for it after their brief but tense exchange.

“Ah, Essek, I had wanted to show you your first night here, but unfortunately circumstances as they were prevented that. I would show you tonight, but I would like to take Mollymauk to his, seeing as this is all a bit new to him.” Caleb waved his hands to indicate the tower, but what he didn't say was why it could only be him that could show Molly.

“That is alright. I would be glad to wait, I didn't get to explore your library as much as I would have liked anyway.” Essek’s offer of patience was welcomed. It meant that he wasn’t too angry with Caleb. “Thank you, Essek.” Caleb knew the others didn't understand Caleb’s gratitude, but he didn't care at this moment.

“Caleb, when did you find the time to make Molly a room? And I count the same amount of doors, where is?” Of course, Beau would be the one to pick up and challenge Caleb on this first. He couldn't think of a convincing lie, so he tried to go for nonchalant.

“On the floor above Veth’s and my own.” He tried to say it casually, but not a single pair of eyes around him didn't stare.

“Caleb, when did you put a room for Molly on the eighth floor?” The question came telepathically, though Caleb could hear Beau’s pointed tone perfectly. His eyes immediately jumped to his hands, the other red eye still there. Before panic could flood him about what that meant, Beau was in his mind again.

“We can worry about it tomorrow, Molly doesn't have any eyes on him other than his tattoos, we probably just have to kill this city. Now, tell me, when?”

So he wasn’t going to be able to avoid this.

“It’s always been there.” A simple answer to a very complicated issue.

“Fuck man, why didn't you - I, I didn't know.” Caleb didn’t like hearing her pity. Part of him was grateful that she understood why he had included it in his floor of memories, however, he didn't want to talk about it just now. Everyone was still staring at him, they knew Beau was in his head, and likely knew what she was asking, but mercifully not saying anything.

“Ja, well, Yasha can put Cree in one of the rooms of requirement, no? For us to deal with tomorrow?” He supplied quickly to change the focus of the room. “And I can take Mollymauk, to at least change into different clothes for now, and he can choose where he stays.”

“That sounds like a fine plan, I can help Yasha. Then we all can get settled for some needed rest.” Fjord supplied, taking control of the situation from Caleb, which he was very grateful for.

“Lovely. Caleb, dear, take me wherever you want, to be honest, I would be happy to sleep on the floor right here, but I’d love a change of clothes just as much.” Molly didn’t look tired, as much as a man who really wanted to catch his breath. Caleb knew this feeling well, and only hoped he could maybe provide a calm space for Molly to get a little more acclimated in. Without really thinking about it, he put out his hand to the purple man, and of course, he took it in return.

“You only need to think the word ‘up’.” He reminded.

“But where is the fun in that? Up.” Molly tugged Caleb up through the floors of the towers, and he couldn't help but laugh at the other man’s enthusiasm as he fell upwards.

[chaos-burst]

#29 for beauyasha or any ship with molly you like

29. Staring at each other’s lips for a moment before moving closer, as if drawn together by some unseen force.

Essek has never kissed anyone. 

The problem with being a prodigy is that you develop certain expectations of yourself and it becomes near impossible to try something new in front of another person that you might not immediately excel at. 

That is the inherent flaw with kissing. 

Another person is, by kissing’s nature, very present. Not only present, but involved. Kissing someone without knowing if you’re going to be good at it sounds like a terrible ordeal. 

There is no way he can try kissing by himself. Not that he’s particular interested in kissing just for the kisses’ sake. But there might be a particular person who makes Essek’s potential disastrous kissing skills a nuisance. 

When Mollymauk Tealeaf waltzed into his life with the rest of the Mighty Nein Essek was straight up offended by him. But as it turned out, there are many fascinating qualities about Mollymauk that Essek finds endlessly captivating and even impressive. 

While he carefully builds his image and upholds his reputation where ever he goes, Mollymauk simply doesn’t care what people think of him. He is just himself, unapologetically and oftentimes obnoxiously so. Essek isn’t even sure who he really is under all the pretense and the lies. 

Mollymauk also doesn’t care for the future in any capacity. While Essek despises his culture’s obsession with being reborn, Mollymauk lives every day as if it might be his last. No regrets. No holding out for a future that might never come. Essek wishes he could live like this. 

He watched Mollymauk for too long. Now he cannot look anywhere else. 

Sometimes Essek wonders if Mollymauk finds him endlessly dull. But then Mollymauk sits down next to him, calls him “mage boy”, bumps Essek’s shoulder with his, winks at him, lays out tarot cards for him and calls him “too pretty and smart for his own good”. 

Essek files it all away and by now it has surmounted to an incredibly big part of his brain that is only occupied with Mollymauk Tealeaf. And kissing Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

Maybe that is due to the fact that Mollymauk talks about things like kissing and sex a lot without considering that not everyone around him is so open about things like this. 

Mollymauk has kissed so many people. He’s probably very good at it--a fact that Essek also files away and that makes his cheeks darken and his pulse speed up when he thinks about it for too long. 

At some point, when he arrives at the “Xhorhouse”, as it has been called, Jester shouts up the stairs: “Molly, your boyfriend is here!”

Essek is very tempted to teleport away right there and then. But he keeps his face neutral, ignores his hammering heart and leaves his floating spell at the door as he steps into the house that is, by now, so familiar to him. 

“Hey Essek, how are you doing?”, Jester asks with a friendly smile as if she didn’t just grab Essek’s insides and twisted them into an anxious knot. 

“I am doing alright, thank you. I hope everything is going well?”

“Sure! We’re off to do some super secret crazy shit and Molly has to stay home because he might be in danger if he comes or something, Beau explained it all but I didn’t listen all the way to the end. Anyway, there are cupcakes in the kitchen and there’s water in the hot tub if you want to take a bath or. You know.”

Jester grins at Essek and winks multiple times in a row. Essek clears his throat. 

“So, should I stay here in case Mollymauk gets into trouble?”, he asks and regrets it immediately because Jester’s face lights up with a mischievous energy he’s come to know in these past few months.  

“Yes, please keep Molly safe for us, Essek. Be his bodyguard. Don’t let him out of your sight!”

“Not like he ever does”, a blunt voice comes from their left and Beau stands there with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face. 

“I am certain I don’t know what you’re implying”, he says stiffly. Beau snorts.

“Sure you don’t. Ok, Jes, you ready to go or what?”

Essek watches them go and takes a deep breath as the door closes behind them. He’s unsure what to do. Maybe he should just go again. But Jester said Mollymauk might be in danger. 

He can only assume that it has something to do with the group looking into this moving city in the astral plane and Lady Vess Derogna. 

“Do you want cupcakes? Jester left about twenty in the kitchen.”

Mollymauk’s voice rips Essek out of his thoughts and for a second he forgets that he already discarded his floating spell so he does a very awkward little sidestep and a hand gesture that amounts to nothing. 

Truly, he is a prodigy at interacting with others, there is no doubt about it. 

“I don’t think I ever had a cupcake. Is it a cake in a cup?”

Mollymauk looks delighted and Essek’s stomach does some very impressive gymnastic figures he didn’t know were possible. 

“You are delightful in your ignorance. Come on, let’s get some cupcakes into that pretty mouth.”

Pretty mouth. 

Essek stands in the hallway for a good fifteen seconds before his brain has rebooted itself and he is able to follow Mollymauk into the kitchen. It turns out that cupcakes are not cakes in cups, although Essek isn’t sure why they are called like that. 

Mollymauk says it’s because they’re small. Essek says that there are big cups. Mollymauk laughs at him for a good minute before holding out a cupcake with pink frosting and colorful sprinkles on top for Essek to bite into. 

Essek stares at it, then at Mollymauk’s hand, then at Mollymauk’s face. 

“Try it”, Mollymauk urges. 

“Can I... hold it myself while I try it?”, he asks and hopes that his cheeks haven’t turned a darker shade of purple. Mollymauk grins and shows off his fangs and Essek swallows. 

“No. I can’t trust you to hold this cupcake. Take a bite, don’t be a spoilsport.”

Essek takes a bite and it’s ridiculously sweet. It tastes similar to what Jester’s voice sounds like when she messages him in the middle of the night asking if he’s read any good “smutty books” lately that he can recommend to her. 

Mollymauk puts the cupcake down on the table and before Essek can react there is a finger right in his face and Mollymauk’s thumb brushes away some pink frosting from his upper lip. Essek doesn’t know what to do as he watches Mollymauk licking his thumb without breaking eye contact. 

He’s not prone to swearing but right now he feels like, for the first time, he really understands Beauregards need to say “Fuck” very loudly. Mollymauk’s eyes drop down to look at Essek’s lips and he wonders if he still has some frosting somewhere in the corner of his mouth. 

Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, spy, double agent, magical prodigy, genius, traitor, war criminal, all this means nothing right now, in this untidy kitchen with a half-eaten, pink cupcake on the table and Mollymauk staring at Essek’s lips like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. 

Essek can’t help but look at Mollymauk’s lips, too. 

He never wanted to kiss anyone before, but he desperately wants to kiss Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

For a second Essek wonders if there’s magic involved as his body moves forward as if it is pulled by invisible strings. Mollymauk, like a magnet, reacts just in kind and Essek has barely any brain capacity left to be concerned about his lack of kissing practice when a pair of slightly chapped, warm lips brush against his. 

He probably tastes like pink frosting. 

Mollymauk’s hand sneaks to the back of his neck and Essek can’t do much aside from following Mollymauk’s lead. It’s probably clumsy and not at all skillful but Mollymauk makes a contented sound and sighs against Essek’s lips and all he wants is to be closer and have more of that. 

He doesn’t know for how long they kiss but when they pull away Mollymauk licks his lips and his cheeks are a way darker purple than the rest of his face. 

“Been waiting to do that for ages”, he rasps and Essek’s heart does big leap against his ribcage. 

“I never did this before”, he admits and feels very exposed for saying it. 

“Do you want to do it again?”, Mollymauk asks. 

Essek finds himself nodding. 

“Although it is very... disconcerting to do something I am not yet very good at.”

Molly grins and there’s something reckless about it. 

“Oh, you know what they say. Practice makes perfect.”

[hauntingtherosebush]

Mollymauk Tealeaf - Part 2

!SPOILERS FOR EISELCROSS ARC! (I’m not 100% sure what episode it is when it’s first mentioned but tread carefully if you aren’t past ep100)

My health (on top of assignments) has been kicking my ass so apologies for this being so late lolllll 

The world above was interesting you on this arctic night. The sky was a deep navy blue with faint black streaks bleeding through. There were many shades of green which danced across the midnight sky. The stars were brighter than you had seen them these past couple of weeks and you felt that the gods were on your side. You weren’t on the same magical intelligence level as Caleb, but you spent the majority of your life researching history and astronomy, so you knew your constellations. They were the only thing that kept you sane some nights and particularly this night.

There were rumours and tonight you would see for yourself if they were true or not because no offence to Jester, but you didn’t believe her when she announced that Molly had rose from his grave. You needed to see for yourself.

Jester had asked the Traveler if he could bring you into her scry and somehow, he agreed. How he would or could do it was beyond your knowledge, but you were up for the journey.

“Are you ready?”

You turned to face Jester as she grabbed your hands in her own; a silent comfort for you both. “Don’t be scared, whatever we see I’m sure it will be ok. The Traveler will keep us both safe, you know so you don’t need to worry.” You couldn’t help but smile as her face lit up as she mentioned the Traveler’s name.

“It’s now or never Jessie.”

The sound of the blood pumping around your body got louder as Jester gently tugged your arm to bring you to sit with her in the snow.  Your friends were standing in complete silence. Waiting. Waiting for you both to enter the scry and waiting for your reactions to whatever you would see.

A cold breeze gripping your shoulders is what brought you out of your thoughts. It was a change from the heat of Caleb’s dome and caused your spine to shiver against your will. One look at Jester’s face was all you needed to know that this was the presence of the Traveler.

A soft voice, so faint but so present, met your ears. “Let’s see what he has been up to, shall we?” And with that you were forced through a magical screen into where Molly supposedly was. You didn’t want to open your eyes, scared of what you would see, but the sound of drawers opening and paper rustling piqued your curiosity.

“Well lookie here.”

That was all you needed to hear to know it was true. You shifted your attention to the figure in the room, that of an all too familiar purple tiefling. However, you knew this wasn’t Molly for his accent was thick and the way he held himself was too uptight and serious. This must be Lucien. You didn’t know much about this man; in fact, you knew virtually nothing as you kept yourself out of the Nein’s discussions about your former lover.

Memories of days that you had spent with Molly flashed in your head and thoughts of his recent escapades formed into conspiracies. You couldn’t bring yourself to focus on him any longer, instead just wishing you were out and back in the comfort of your friends.

You had no sense of time for how long you had been squeezing your eyes shut, both to stop the tears and to avoid looking at him. Hours seemed to pass before you were pulled back into reality. The cold but comforting presence of the Traveler seemed to wrap you both in a hug before disappearing and the warmth seeped through your chilled bones once more.

Sitting cross-legged in the snow, you wouldn’t dare to look at the Mighty Nein; your lap being very interesting to you at this particular moment in time. You held onto Jester’s hands with more force than before, trying to calm yourself. Sensing your discomfort, she leaned forward and enveloped you in a hug. You gladly returned it as you gave in and let the tears fall. You buried your head in her shoulder as you tried to make sense of what you had just seen but you came up with nothing.

Snow crunching under the feet of multiple people caused you to look up slightly as your friends sat down in the snow around the pair of you. Not saying anything, just as silent support.

As the tears slowed, you brought yourself out of Jester’s hug but still held onto her. Her gaze met yours and you felt your heart ache more. Her eyes held so much grief and the normally vibrant purple irises were dull. “We can get him back, right?” Looking round at your friends you knew that you didn’t want to know the answer to that.

Fjord was the first to speak up, awkwardly clearing his throat as he spoke against the tension in the dome. “We will try. I don’t want to speak for everyone here but I think we all miss him, no matter how annoying he could be. So we will try our best to bring him back to the Mighty Nein.” The half-orc may have been slightly socially awkward on occasion, but you appreciated his words, letting out a breathy laugh at his attempt to lighten the mood.

Minutes pass as one by one they start to sit by the fire, listening with a saddened urgency as Jester describes the scry. You could only stare at the fire as it crackled; the flames casting mesmerizing patterns in the air. Pale hands pulled you into their owner’s body as Yasha wrapped her coat around your shoulders. She had known Molly just a few months more than you had and guessed that she was feeling the same as you were with the recent discoveries.

“I know you want nothing more than to bring him back to us and I am with you on that. We don’t know if it’s possible but between all of us I’m sure we can do something.”

As the late night started to approach and your friend’s voices turned into gentle murmurs, you fell asleep with your head resting on Yasha’s shoulder. Your last thought being how you were getting your purple tiefling back.

[grimmseye]

A Bird in the Hand: Chapter Six

Read on Ao3 here!

Rating: T

Fandom: Critical Role

Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (eventual)

Chapter Characters: Mollymauk Tealeaf, Essek Thelyss

Chapter Tags/Warnings: Molly Rez, Amnesiac Mollymauk, Oh My God They Were Roommates, Existential Topics, Essek getting excited by both Mollymauk and his weird magic, Mention of Torture (in literally like the first sentence)

— — —

The scars littering Mollymauk's body weren't a result of torture, as Essek had first assumed. Blood magic was still fairly taboo, but he knew it had its merits. The life force was a powerful source of magic, and drawing blood was safer than drawing directly from the soul.

Most blood magic came in alteration and control. One could use their own blood to change themself, to augment their power by manipulating the force that defined them. Or, they could take another's essence, claim it and use it to collar its source. Blood made scrying simple and curses into child's play. It was a very useful component, and Essek preferred to stay quiet about his own applications of it.

What Mollymauk did, he theorized, had to do with sacrifice. There was power in that, too. The giving-up, the exchange of something to gain, or to take from another, was a form of magic that dated back to its most ancient roots. Before there was wizardry, druids, artificers, those who learned their craft and honed it through study and training, there were those who made pacts with something else.

The question then became what Mollymauk was sacrificing to. A god, a demon, a devil? Or simply to the Weave itself, using his blood as the guidelines to tangle its threads in new formations.

It was all very exciting.

So was watching Mollymauk, though he was ashamed to admit it. He hadn't asked the tiefling to undress, but Mollymauk had been more than happy to divest himself of his shirt. It left him in loose pants, the material fluttering in the cool wind that blew past. He'd taken up blades in Essek's backyard at Essek's own request. One of his swords was wet with his blood, and illuminated with a radiant glow.

The radiance took a point away from Mollymauk contacting of the negative planes, though Essek knew better than to negate it completely. Tieflings had infernal heritages, it was entirely possible that all the oddities of Mollymauk's body were tied to a single source. It was doubtful, but it was also worth noting.

Essek did just that, writing down his thoughts, knowing he'd be glad to have them later. A stream of consciousness on a page was better than neat and tidy notes that lacked detail and most importantly context. He seethed when thinking of the number of projects he'd had to abandon all because he hadn't marked down a late-night thought.

"You have another of these, you said," Essek prompted. "The other sword does not use radiance?" It was difficult to look at the blade directly with its sunlit glow.

Mollymauk twirled one scimitar with an idle air, catching it in his palm. "Yeah. Ice for that one."

Essek moved forward, wanting a close look. He muttered a word, burning the first-level slot to sharpen his gaze to magic. "Activate it, please."

Without missing a beat, Molly obeyed. It made his insides shiver to see the blade come up, cutting neatly into his skin. It was shallow and precise, drawing a scarlet line along the edge of the blade that beaded and dripped over Mollymauk's collar. Molly held it still against his chest for Essek to watch as the blood crystallized, frost crawling over the surface of the blade. It was evocation that brought the ice to the surface, and that brimmed off the blade's glowing twin.

A hint of necromancy burned in Molly's blood, and suddenly Essek had the thought: what would he find if he drew some from Mollymauk's veins, was the blood under his skin inherently magical was he built from necrotic energy, he'd crawled his way out of a grave so what did that make him. Surely he wasn't undead, or the way magic interacted with him would change, the spells Essek had cast on him wouldn't work, but he couldn't count as mortal, either.

So what on earth was Mollymauk Tealeaf? The question had a giddy sensation roiling up in his stomach.

"What's up with your eyes?" Mollymauk asked, and Essek blinked back to himself.

It took a moment to remember what he meant. The spell gave his eyes a kaleidoscopic appearance, reflecting colors that shifted madly in the presence of magic. "Ah. I cast a spell on myself, it lets me sense magic in the vicinity. Do you know about the different schools of magic?"

Mollymauk closed his eyes, arms swinging at his sides so the sword blades dragged in the dirt. "... No," he concluded, with a definitive nod. "I really don't know shit about magic as a whole. I don't know why or how this happens, but cutting myself makes my swords fancy."

Essek remembered the way blood had burst in a gnoll's eyes, blinding them, making the snap of their jaws only seize the air. "Is there anything else you can do?" He pressed.

Mollymauk gave him a long, withering look, and snorted. "Wizards. They tell you I know a place and then spend the time quizzing you about your blood curses. Yeah, if I cut a bit deeper, I can affect other... things. People, monsters, whatever. It's only temporary, but it can be enough in a pinch. If someone's about to get run through with a sword..."

Mollymauk's gaze went distant. His breath hitched, and he lifted a hand, putting it on the ragged scar on his chest. "It might be enough to throw them off."

Essek let him linger, uncertain what had captured his mind but hoping that maybe this would help unlock the rest of his memories. If he could return Mollymauk to the Nein, safe and happy and just as they'd found him, then maybe he could relieve the weight of his guilt. If bad and good were opposites, then surely if he just did enough good, that would eventually outweigh the bad.

He knew that logic was flawed. If that were the case, then the teleportations would have eased the pressure. But that was small, not necessarily easy for him but simple enough, something he could do for anyone. This was different. This was special. This would mean something, and then he could be forgiven, even if they never knew of his betrayal.

Eventually, clarity returned to Mollymauk's eyes. He shook himself, his expression pensive and tail coiling. Essek prompted him with a quirk of the eyebrow. Each time this happened, there was the hope that maybe he was fixed at last. And as was true each previous time, it didn't seem to be so — Mollymauk only gave a yawn and stretched his arms out, mindless of the blades he held. "So, yeah. Blood curses. Can't exactly demonstrate them without a target, though."

Essek sighed, but let himself be swept into a new focus. In time, he soothed himself. Mollymauk would regain his mind in time. Regardless, letting the memories filter back gradually seemed to treat Mollymauk better than forcing the issue, even if Essek was still looking for a more direct way to unlock those memories.

He tapped his own temple, refocusing. What Mollymauk said was true, there wasn't a target to use for a demonstration. Unless —

"You said the effects were temporary," Essek checked.

Mollymauk gave a shrug. "Far as I've seen."

"No lasting effects?" The question got him a shake of the head, as expected. Magic usually wore off without a trace. To call Mollymauk's abilities a curse was likely a stronger word than was accurate, too small and too brief to qualify. Curses clung and festered, even a blindness spell was likely to have more effect than what Mollymauk could do — except that it wouldn't come through in a split-second of need, by the time Essek was finished pulling his components and conjuring the sigils in his mind, a sword would be through Mollymauk's chest, through Caleb's, through Jester's.

Life for life. Perhaps it was a more equal exchange than he'd believed.

"In that case..." Essek drew the words out, giving himself a moment longer to consider. "Target me."

Mollymauk's face contorted into bewilderment. "Are you sure?" He prompted.

"As long as what you said is true, and the effect is only temporary, then yes." Even if the thought did make his skin prickle, remembering how blood spurted around the eyes. He wondered how badly it would hurt. Essek could fight, but it did not mean he was comfortable with pain. Not like Mollymauk.

The tiefling shrugged, shifting his weight between each hoof. "Ready?" He asked. Then he broke out into a sudden grin, saying, "Honestly this is weird. It's always a split-second thing for me, I've hardly had to think about it."

"Would it help if I attempted to strike you?" Essek pulled a curl of ice between his fingers, crystalizing purple magic that was so dark it bordered on black. Mollymauk watched the movement of his fingers, teeth sinking into his lower lip as he grinned.

"Talented hands," Mollymauk commented, and then cleared his throat. "But uh. You know what? Fuck it, why not. Give me your best shot, Thelyss."

Mollymauk slunk back, and the shift to his posture held Essek's gaze where it didn't belong. Mollymauk typically held himself lofty and large, filling up the space around him. That meant this change made for a captivating view, to watch as he became a serpentine creature, one who curled one way to the other and then lunged in to strike. He wasn't attacking Essek, though, was only on defense, swaying in place with a hypnotic flow.

Essek watched him, biding his time, a stalemate. He counted the seconds, learned the pattern of Mollymauk's weight, found the point when he'd struggle to shift his movement and then —

Crimson splashed in his vision. Essek gasped, a hand flying to his face as the burn began to settle in at the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his tear ducts in heavy drops, sticky as they rolled down his cheeks. The sensation was nauseating.

Necromancy, he recalled. That had been the magic that flashed the second before he lost his vision. He cleaned the blood away with a few casts of prestidigitation, blinking his eyes to find Mollymauk standing much closer with streaks of blood on his own cheeks, and not so much as a speck of frost on his skin.

"Handy trick," Mollymauk commented, as the blood wicked off of Essek's skin. "You mind...?"

He swallowed his nausea, saying, "Of course." Essek cupped Mollymauk's jaw, sliding his thumb across his cheek to where the peacock feather was inked to clear the blood away. He only realized a moment later he hadn't actually needed to touch Mollymauk.

"Thank you," Mollymauk all but purred, and Essek would swear the tiefling pressed into his hand before he pulled it away.

He drew in a breath, and as he let it out he forced his muscles to unwind. "Thank you," Essek returned. "I have some interesting points to consider from that."

"Oh, yeah?"

A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips. "You wouldn't understand it." It wasn't meant as an insult. Or, perhaps it was a bit of an insult, but mostly just a statement of fact.

"True enough," Mollymauk shrugged, and to Essek's disappointment, he didn't bother prying.

In the distance, the sky began to change. The change in the light was enough to draw both their gazes. The clouds that cast the city in darkness had begun to spiral open, an eye dilating over the Bright Queen's palace to let in a light that made Essek wince even from so far away.

"I suppose we will have to pause this," Essek said, turning away to head into the house. "I prefer not to willingly blind myself."

"Please think about what you just said," Mollymauk drawled as he trotted up beside him, tail flicking against the back of Essek's calf.

He had to snort. "You have something of a point, but that was performed as apart of an experiment. Learning, studying, improving, not just..." He stopped himself and just huffed out a breath.

"Oh?" He could hear the smirk in Mollymauk's voice. "That means something."

Essek considered how honest he wanted to be here. Mollymauk was not a subtle individual — to call him such would likely be considered an insult. In that same vein, Molly had shown little if any regard for social norms and standards, often to a frustrating extent. "I am only frustrated," he said. "What you see there is apart of worship of... something they do not understand, and treat as a deity because of that."

"Lot's of folks don't understand me but I've yet to be treated like a god. Shame," Mollymauk sighed. "So it's some kinda ceremony? They wouldn't be having a festival, would they?" His expression lit up.

Essek actually felt bad dashing his hopes. "No, it is not the kind of ceremony you would want to partake in," he said. "It is... reverent, to an alarming degree."

"Wrong: I'd love partake in that — just as long as I'm the center of attention." Mollymauk's comment dragged another chuckle from Essek's chest. He'd been laughing more in general, since meeting the Nein. It followed that one of their early members would be much the same.

Mollymauk continued, "Really, though, what's going on? You conjured a big spooky cloud to keep the sun out, didn't you?"

"You have not heard of our Beacons yet, have you?" Essek prompted. They stepped across the threshold, Essek drawing the curtains that ideally would have only been for decoration.

"I've heard 'em mentioned?" Mollymauk shrugged. "That's — lemme guess, beacon of light?"

"That is the idea, yes." Essek lowered himself into a chair, while Mollymauk all but threw himself into another. He wrinkled his nose as the furniture creaked under the tiefling's weight. "There are these... dodecahedrons. They were found, and so were some of their properties. They found that when one is consecuted — I would say attuned, but they use consecute — their soul enters this Beacon upon death, to be reincarnated at a later time."

As Essek explained the beacons to Mollymauk, the tiefling's gaze grew distant. Snippets of conversation pulled to mind, pieces falling into place for Essek. He nipped his own criticisms of the practice short, circling around to say, "That is reason why your friends are so revered in the Dynasty. They —"

"We found one," Mollymauk interrupted. His voice was distracted. "No. We met in the sewers — Thuron."

The name pinged in Essek's mind, one of those sent to retrieve a beacon. He hummed, quiet and prompting, not wanting to break Mollymauk's reverie.

"He was killed. The guards took it, but we —" A smile pulled at his lips. "Caleb and Nott, those fucking bastards. Can't trust either of them, clever assholes'll stab you in the back at the first sniff of trouble."

Essek swallowed a protest as Mollymauk trailed into silence. Molly's brow furrowed and he shook his head, a hand coming up to cover one eye. "Gods," Mollymauk groaned. "So we'd been lugging around your god in a lead box."

"Allegedly," Essek couldn't stop himself from breaking in. He bit back any further words, but the moment had passed. Clarity returned to Mollymauk's gaze. He gave it a moment before continuing, "I have my doubts that it is any sort of deity. I think they need to be studied, not worshiped. By I am in the... extreme minority, in that regard. And I would prefer these words not be repeated."

Mollymauk gave him a crooked, tired smile. "What's a little blasphemy between friends, Mister Thelyss? And honestly, I don't blame you. That reincarnation thing, that sounds like a nightmare."

The words were alien enough to shock Essek. He cocked his head, leaning forward. "You wouldn't want to be consecuted, given the chance?"

When Mollymauk only scrunched up his nose he added, "Theoretical immortality. Death is no longer an object of fear, as it becomes a delay, not an end. That doesn't appeal to you?"

By his expression, it definitely did not. Molly's voice was rough when he spoke. "What you said about how the souls... awaken. What about the person they would have been? Is it really even their soul, or are they just suppressing someone else? I wouldn't..." Mollymauk pulled his legs up, tail curling around his shins as he rested his chin on his knees. He looked small, in that moment. His voice shook. His eyes were wide. "I don't want anyone else's memories. I don't want anyone else's thoughts."

Essek stood up. The movement was sudden enough to snap Mollymauk out of it, leaving him blinking at Essek with wide red eyes. He wracked his brain for something to say, a way to interrupt this descent, and landed on Caduceus' voice: "Would you like some tea?"

Mollymauk stared at him. Then he laughed, hoarse, and pushed himself to his hooves. "Sure," he croaked. "But there's not a chance in all the hells that I'm letting you make it."

They were silent as they moved to the kitchen, Essek standing begrudgingly aside to let Mollymauk make a mess of things. He was a good cook, but hardly a considerate one.

And maybe it was poking the sleeping owlbear, but Essek couldn't deny the questions that lingered on his tongue. "It would, theoretically, still be you," he said. "And who is to say that the person you become is not influenced by the person you were."

Mollymauk snapped his head to look over his shoulder, pinning Essek to the spot with a near-snarl. With teeth bared and ears pinned low, he looked a beat away from outright snarling in Essek's face. Then the fight drained from him. He breathed a sigh through the nostrils, drawing himself upright as he poured water into a kettle. "I am the last person to yuck anyone's yum," Mollymauk said. "If someone wants to go body hopping to the end of time, they can be my guest. But I want no part of that. It's just not for me."

Essek hesitated before dipping his head in a nod, even if Mollymauk couldn't see. "That is fair," he murmured. "I do not think it is for me, either."

"You were pretty pushy about it." Molly clicked his fingers at Essek and pointed to the stove. Essek just sighed and touched the runes, igniting a fire for him to set the kettle atop.

"You can do that on your own. Regardless, I was curious," Essek said, leaning back against the counter. "You are so against having another person's memories, but you want your own back. What is the difference there?"

"It just is." Molly started taking out the tea — all of it, in tins and bags and boxes. Most were blends that Caduceus had given him, but some came in his grocery order. Essek hardly understood the difference between them all. As Mollymauk worked, his tail lashed. It would betray his agitation if the tension in his voice hadn't already. "It feels different. Right now I'm missing pieces of myself. Those people, your people, the Nein, they're important. I don't know why, but they just are. But there was something before them."

Mollymauk turned, the anger in his face now resembling fear. Dread, maybe, or horror. It left him pale and clutching the edge of the counter, looking at Essek like he expected him to sprout fangs and lung for him. "There was something else, and I don't want it. This is my body now, my life. He gave it up. He doesn't get to take it back."

Essek remembered the haunted sheen in Molly's eyes when he'd called him by a different name.

Mollymauk.

Lucien.

"If that is true," Essek said, giving up on any further inquisition, "then you have nothing to worry about. He is... whoever he is. And you are you. You cannot become him."

It didn't work that way. He was making a statement with no backing, barely even understood what it was Mollymauk feared so terribly. But whatever he'd said, it seemed to work, with Mollymauk's shoulders going loose and a sigh expelling from his chest. "Yeah," he puffed. "Yeah that makes sense. Good thinking, Mister Thelyss."

"I am... happy to be a help to you."

And though it was said with a dryness in his voice, Essek found the words rang true.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Pigments

Art Teacher Molly! Based on a set of head canons I posted a little while ago

Please consider reblogging or leaving a comment on Ao3!

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Caleb’s school had been a handful of rooms in the town hall building. He and the other children of the village had been roughly divided into two groups by age and taken by either the town’s only cleric, a dwarven priestess of Erathis who’d been sent to Blumenthal years ago to establish a strong faith amongst those people of the earth and had remained despite the local’s pleasant indifference, or the herbalist whenever she left the store with her nephew. Caleb would complete every task set for him within ten minutes and, instead, would be allowed to sit in the corner and read while the other children staggered their way through multiplication and verbs and basic Dwarvish. He read everything that could be found within the building, even staying in during playtime. The herbalist would share her tea with him and bring him scones when she could see that his parents were having a rough month.

Even as everything between who Caleb was now and that small child with unruly red curls and hollow cheeks and big eyes, even as all of it cracked and broke and rotted away for a number of reasons, it wouldn’t take much to bring him back to that little room. The dust motes dancing through the sunlight slanding in through the windows and falling on the blackboard with lines and lines of loopy handwriting that was clearly made to draw intricate sketches of plants and write labels on bottles of strange green liquids. The taste of flour and sugar baked together on his tongue, heavy with cherries, nettle tea, the taste of reassurance that maybe his stomach wouldn’t ache so bad when he went to bed that night, that maybe his mother’s heart wouldn’t break quite so much when she saw him. The promise of new words, so many it felt like he could barely hold them all in his mind, but he’d still always want more. Feeling like maybe one day he would be somewhere that would appreciate him for everything he knew.

It didn’t take much to send Caleb back there, to remind him of his days at school. Any little similarity would do it. But standing here, in an actual school, all he could think was how different it was from his own.

Molly’s hand hadn’t left his own since they’d gotten into the taxi. Caleb thought that meant the date was going well. The thought gave him a happy warmth in the bottom of his stomach, though he was very aware of his own inexperience. He wouldn’t really know if it was going well one way or the other, he had next to no data to fall back on.

But there was something in the way Molly kept stealing glances at him, leaving Caleb to just catch the slightest edge of his glance, the way there would always be a smile on his face whenever it happened. Almost as if just the sight of Caleb still sat beside him was enough to make Molly smile.

The hallways were left by the wide windows to alternate strangely between pitch black and wonky squares of yellow streetlight. The only noises were their own footsteps and the muted rumble of cars and voices outside. Of course, at nearly midnight, there was absolutely no one in the school.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here so late?” Caleb finally asked, his voice reverberating off tiles in shadow that he couldn’t even see.

Molly turned a little from where he was determinedly leading the way through the corridors and up the silent stairs, “Of course.” His hand, the one that wasn’t entwined with Caleb’s, reached into his shoulder bag and flashed a red lanyard with a faded, blurry picture of a far younger purple tiefling, “I’m staff. And you’re my guest.”

If he couldn’t see the staff badge for himself, Caleb wouldn’t have been able to believe that the loud, extravagant, naturally hedonistic singer he’d been dating for a month now was a teacher by day. The idea of Molly being an authority figure was like trying to imagine a fish climbing a tree or a shark swimming backwards. Something just wasn’t right about it.

But there was his name on the door they were approaching, Mr Tealeaf, neatly typed out in large, rounded letters surrounded by childish cartoons of paint brushes and easels, clearly added by whoever had made the sign in an attempt to make it brighter. But the stickers that had been placed around it with a heavy, generous hand and the graffiti style doodles done in loud, colourful marker were undoubtedly the work of Molly himself.

“Also I leave stuff in my classroom all the time,” Molly added, a little bashfully, “They gave me a key after the one time they found me trying to climb through the window. Someone called the police.”

Caleb had to smile at the mental image, “What did you forget that time?”

Molly suddenly seemed very interested in his keys as he put them in the door, “Uh, my phone.”

Caleb’s smile grew, “The same thing we’re having to come back here to get right this moment?”

Molly turned and poked him in the chest with a finger tipped by a long, deep red nail, playfully challenging, “What’s your point, Widogast?”

“Nothing at all,” Caleb showed his palms, his grin not fading at all.

Molly flicked his tail at him and disappeared into the classroom, “I wouldn’t bother but it’s got the cinema tickets on my email…”

Caleb nodded along, more absorbed in looking around. Even with the light off, the small space was a riot of muted colour, there wasn’t an inch of the walls that wasn’t covered in an art piece of some description. One was groaning under what looked like three classes worth of crookedly sewn embroidered patches, one dripped with just as many watercolours, one had bunting haphazardly strung up that boughed under a store’s worth of bead bracelets and paper flower garlands. Even things that couldn’t be pinned up found their place; the long banks of sinks that circled the room like a moat had sculptures standing sentinel, frozen in the act of listing slightly to the left or right.

Where there wasn’t displays of work there were boards on different artists and movements, one about Frida Kahlo backed by loud, patterned fabric, one about Van Gough set against a recreation of Starry Night done with twists of blue silk. The others were people Caleb had never heard of but he was sure he’d know everything he needed to after reading all of the carefully typed out squares of information.

Though the colour could only slightly be seen with the lack of light, Caleb could practically smell it. The scent of charcoal and pigment and fresh paper was on nearly everything, buoyed by strong coffee and sugary tea. Less pleasant was the slightest smell of stagnant water, probably left in paint trays and clinging to brushes, though it was mild enough that Caleb didn’t mind.

Molly went straight to his desk while Caleb was still staring, digging around in drawers that looked like they were overflowing until he came up with his phone, “There you are, you bastard. Yasha said she was going to super glue it to my hand if I left it at work again, let’s hope she’s forgotten that...”

Caleb made a soft noise of affirmation, ninety nine percent of his attention still on the room around him.

Molly gave a soft chuckle, “Do you like it? I know it weirds some people out, they can’t imagine me actually doing this as a job.”

Caleb’s eyes flickered over to Molly, managing to pull himself out of a sudden hyperfixation on L. S. Lowry. He allowed himself a long moment just to look at him, standing there in the half light. Though all they’d been planning to do was go to the pictures and get a few drinks afterwards, he was dressed as extravagantly as ever. Enough piercings to make his ears droop a little, a shirt made of nothing but glittering mesh patterned with stars over a tight vest and leather pants tucked into boots that went up to his knees. Not much on display but everything hinted at, his tattoos vibrant even in shadow. He looked as far away from a teacher as anyone could imagine.

But Caleb could see touches of him everywhere in the room they stood in. He saw him in the messiness of the desk but how he clearly knew where everything was regardless. He saw his guiding hand in every single work of art on the wall, he saw him in the gushing praise scribbled in red pen on the front of the pile of test papers near his computer. He saw him in the tin of biscuits right by his elbow, ready to be brought out at a moment’s notice for a child who was having a hard day or who’d achieved something after trying so hard.

Or a child who maybe hadn’t had any breakfast that day.

Caleb felt his lower lip wobble dangerously for a moment but he quickly brought it under control, managing to smile, “I don’t think it’s weird. I can’t imagine a job more perfect for you.”

Molly beamed at that, some pride warming his eyes now as he gently touched a piece of paper lying on his desk, a pencil drawing done in bright colours that was clearly meant to be himself done by a child that had clearly just been introduced to Cubism.

“Well,” he was even blushing a little, around the edges, “I do enjoy it. And that is about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me about my job.”

“Well, it’s true,” Caleb leaned against one of the tables, one hand awkwardly seizing his arm, though the smile on his face was undeniable, spreading across his face the more Molly kept looking at him like that.

Molly twirled his tail between his fingers. Was Caleb thinking wishfully or did he always do that when he was feeling charmed? His eyes roved over his desk, looking like he was trying to decide whether something was a good idea or whether it would come off as dorky.

“I...I have something for you,” he eventually grinned, eyes flickering up to Caleb, “Call it a prize for coming on this rescue mission with me.”

“Oh?” Caleb leaned forward slightly, hoping it might be a kiss.

Molly swept up, ringing slightly as he went with all his adornments, “My students were learning about mosaic and glass work? So we did a little jewellery making and seeing how I have to demo everything, I ended up with this…”

Caleb suddenly found something small and smooth in his hand. He looked to see a bracelet, a simple loop of black string with rounded, oblong beads in alternating sea green and vibrant blue.

“They’ll really bring out the colours of your eyes,” Molly murmured hopefully, “They always remind me of the sea so I guess I must subconsciously have been...thinking of you? While I made it? I must have always meant to give you it, even before I realised it.”

Caleb’s mouth opened, hoping words adequate to express just how much the gift meant to him would just come pouring out. Of course they didn’t, he was just left stammering until he stopped himself and just looked Molly in the eye as he slipped the bracelet over his skinny wrist.

“I love it, Molly. Thank you.”

Judging by Molly’s face, Caleb’s eyes must have said what his words couldn’t. That was when he got his kiss, sweet and gentle, coloured in moonlight.

And the bracelet would stay on his wrist all night. And the many dates they’d have after their slightly delayed trip to the cinema.

And the years they’d have together after that.

[celestialsexdreams]

and they were roommates pt.2

ah shit. here we go again.

I had NO IDEA this was going to be multiple chapters what??? I’m just running with it until I run out of idea. But my eternal love for BeauJester burns like the eternal flame. let’s boogie.

PS as I’m thinking about this series in the long term, I think I’m going to change the title so it can be it’s own series. Maybe I’ll get into it next chapter?? I have a little more drama to throw at you but I’m just following this writing bug as far as it leads me.

(part 1)

Beau still wasn’t happy to have been kicked out of her old dorm room, but after meeting Jester, she couldn't deny that the experience would be interesting. She stood on the balcony of her and Fjord’s old room, gazing down at the quad while some of Fjords rowing team huddled around a game console. She took a hit of the joint she was smoking and ashed it over the rail. She heard the door open behind her and Fjord’s new roommate, a ginger Art History major named Caleb, joined her. He reached over and picked the joint from her fingers as he spoke.

“Having fun yet, Beauregard?”

She took a swallow of her drink and sat beside him on the balcony chairs.

“I was having a peachy time until you showed up.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Neither am I.”

Caleb paused, then handed the joint back to her.

“I take it your new living situation sucks?”

Beau blew a puff of smoke and scoffed.

“The opposite. I don’t know what I expected, but she definitely isn’t that.”

Caleb studied Beau’s face for a moment before he reached for the joint.

“You like her.”

“You’re baked, Caleb. I met her less than twenty minutes ago.”

“They say the first impression is the most important... I bet she likes you too.”

Beau chugged the rest of her drink and glared at Caleb. 

“Do you have a point, Widowgast?” Caleb put his hands up in surrender, the joint between his fingers. Beau eased up and Caleb took another hit.

“Will we see her tonight?”

“I don’t know. She’s going somewhere, but I don’t know if its the same party.”

“Pity... I’m curious to see who does this to you.”

Beau sighed, rubbed her face, and held her hand out for the weed. Caleb obliged, and Beau inhaled until the embers pulled all the way down to her fingertips. She flicked the butt at Caleb and exhaled a cloud into his face.

“I’m going to Calianna’s place. I’m sure she’d like to see you at her party, Mr. Caleb.”

Caleb muttered something probably profane, but he couldn’t hide the flush of his cheeks. Beau chuckled, stood, and headed inside.

***

“So it’s my friend Calianna’s party. She and I met at a poetry slam, you’ll LOVE her Jester.” Molly was pinning their hair back while Jester was debating dresses.

“Does that mean I should wear a party dress or a poetry slam dress?”

“Whichever is tighter.”

Jester shot a look over her shoulder. Molly blew her a kiss in the mirror before going back to their mascara. 

“Wear the blue one. Everyone always loves that color on you.”

***

Jester was excited. She had to admit, in her blue dress and borrowed black coat, she felt hot. She and Molly waltzed through the cool, foggy air, admiring the dew and the ethereal evening. They walked and chatted, heading past the other dorm buildings towards the gates of the campus.

“So our uber should come to the McDonalds across the street right, that way they have a set address.” Jester was tapping on her phone, one hand resting on Molly’s elbow. Molly swiped the phone out of her hand and tucked it back into her purse.

“You’re not allowed to be responsible tonight.” Jester made a face, which only made Molly laugh. “Don’t give me that, it’s a Friday night! This is the time to get drunk with a bunch of strangers and then faintly remember them when you’re all hungover for class on Monday.” Molly twirled Jester in her flouncy dress, which always made her laugh. “You have no choice, you’re going to have fun.”

A new voice called out to the cousins in the moonlight.

“As I live and breathe!” Jester looked up to follow the voice, spotting a ginger man looking off a dorm balcony. “Is that Molly Tealeaf I see? Causing mischief as always?”

Molly followed Jester’s eyes and broke into a grin.

“Only for you, Caleb!”

“What are you doing out in the cold?”

“We’re going to a party!”

“Fuck that! You’re already late, come spend 10 minutes with me.” Caleb paused, gesturing to Jester. “Of course, any friend of Molly’s is always welcome here.”

Molly turned to Jester. murmuring in her ear.

“That’s Caleb Widowgast, we took a couple classes together, maybe hooked up a few times and he has cute friends. Do you want to go say hi?” Molly kept their face as serious as the grave. “We do not have to if you don’t want to. I can take him or leave him, honestly.”

Jester looked up at the ginger. He waved to her with a smile.

“Let’s go say hi! But you owe me a cute friend.” Jester didn’t miss the sparkle the flashed through Molly’s eyes. They looped their arm through Jester’s and dragged her towards the door to Caleb’s building.

“You’re going to love Caleb. And he has this one roommate who is just- well, you’ll see.”

***

Half an hour later, Jester and Molly left Caleb’s room. Molly was high and Caleb smelled like Molly’s perfume. Jester had met Caleb’s roommate, and she was positively smitten.

Molly credited his smooth accent - everybody loves a good Texan boy - but Jester thought he was a character from a romance novel come to life. He’d offered her a spot to play games with his friends, and he’d been a perfect gentleman, even when Jester mercilessly wrecked him in Mario Kart.

When Molly came to collect Jester from their pre-game visit, Fjord had slipped her a phone number and said: “don’t be a stranger”. Molly wasn’t impressed.

“I love Fjord, but honey, I promise he’s just a five-minute fling.”

“I don’t know Molly, I think he really liked me.” Jester was star struck - her head was in unreachable clouds.

“One party at a time, young grasshopper. We’ll see how many phone numbers you have to choose from at the end of the night.”

Molly grinned and tugged Jester towards their Uber; she was tipsy on life and happy to be out and about.

***

Beau was really regretting going out that night.

She couldn’t think of anything but this roommate situation.

After visiting her old room and her talk with Caleb, she was sure she couldn’t stay with girls. At least not this girl. Beau couldn’t resist her train of thought switching tracks to Jester.

She came into the room blushing with the softest, sweetest smile Beau had ever seen. Never mind her swirling dress that I was admiring, not staring at.

Beau shook her head, trying to clear it, but the THC in her system was clinging to Jester, drawing her into Beau’s bloodstream.

Stupid useless lesbian brain.

Beau sulked around the party, trying to find anything or anyone to distract herself with. She made her way to the kitchen, where she could barely recognize a silky emerald green dress as Calianna. Beau perched on a square of empty counter space behind her, scooping a bowl of pretzels into her lap.

“Hey, Cali. Great party.” Calianna looked up and beamed when she saw Beau. She flittered across the floor in a pair of insane stilettos, squeezing Beau’s shoulders. Beau slid an arm around her waist, resting her hand on Calianna’s bare back.

“I’m so glad you’re having fun. I feel like I haven’t seen you in so long!”

“It has been a while.” Beau took a swallow of her nearly empty drink. The last time she’d had seen Calianna, they’d gotten far too drunk after finals and ended up in Calianna’s bedroom to celebrate. “Last time we saw each other was at your summer bash...” Calianna squeezed Beau’s leg.

“That was a fun party.”

Beau smirked in spite of herself and ran her thumb up and down Calianna’s spine. It had been a fun enough night back then, and when is a drunk hookup with no consequences not fun? 

When it has consequences.

Cali was a sweet enough girl, with a sweet enough smile, and in Beau’s crossfaded fog, her green eyes sometimes looked blue.

“Calianna, do you want to go upstairs?”

[equalexits]

A couple of months down the line, Caleb is walking the streets of yet another city. It’s late, and the stars shine like swords in the sky over the softly hushed roads and alleys. He’d left the rest of the Nein at the inn’s bar, talking and laughing and enjoying the time spent together. It was something that they did much more now than they had before the Iron Shepherds. It was... nice. Nice enough that it didn’t take much for him to convince Nott not to worry as he stepped out alone into the brisk air of late winter to search for a bookstore that he could patronize in the morning.

But he must have had bad luck in his cards. He wanders the streets for what feels like hours, and finds nothing. When the cool wind sets into his bones even through his heavy coat, he makes the choice to cut his losses, and return to the search in the morning. He turns his back on the further outstretching streets and maneuvers himself onto a direct path towards the inn.

It’s a shorter and quieter walk back. Quiet enough for Caleb to breathe deeply and revel in the peacefulness of it all. Despite valuing the time he gets to spend with his... friends... it is still nice to have some moments to himself. It’s quiet enough for him to hear his heartbeat. Quiet enough to hear the more subdued sounds of laughter from behind the warmly lit door of the inn as he approaches, ready to slip upstairs and into a nights rest.

Quiet enough that when the yell comes, it cracks through his small peace like thunder.

“Oi!” a voice calls out from behind him.

Caleb whirls around on his heels immediately, hands already pulled from the pockets of his coat and sparking defensively with controlled flame. He’s dropped on instinct into a sturdier stance - not exactly like the one Beau had shown him, but a passible imitation, and Caleb, for his part, is grateful that he’d allowed her to teach him the basics of hand to hand fighting, in an effort to make him less... well, as Fjord had said, squishy.

There before him stands a figure, slightly taller than himself. It’s difficult to see the build of them, because they look to be bundled heavily against the cold. The light of the inn pours towards them from behind Caleb’s back... but whoever they are, they’re standing just outside of the golden glow, so that they are silhouetted by the light of lamps and stars.

“Who- who- who is that?” He demands, and his voice, to his credit, only shakes a little bit. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Easy now, friend,” The person says- and that voice... it is so familiar that it stops all of Caleb’s other thoughts in their tracks. His brain falters and then flies into doubletime, working to place the playful lilting tenor. 

The figure raises their hands in the universal signal for no harm meant, and begins to step forward. “Easy. There’s no need for that, now. I’m just looking for someone, friend, and I’m wondering if you could help me.”

The figure is almost to the light, and as Caleb’s head spins with the weight of unplaced recognition, his eyes are drawn to the glitter of metal flashing in the lamplight. A sound like jingling bells sparkles through the night air as the figure walks towards him with a light, careful step.

“Would you happen to be Caleb?” The figure says, crossing into the golden glow of the inn’s front door. “Caleb Widogast?”

Light spills over leather boots - pointed toe first, then the heel, moving all the way up to the embroidered edge on a slender mid-thigh, where the footwear almost disappears underneath the edge of a thick, dark coat, with fur spilling out from its inside lining. A technicolor scarf is wrapped tight around his neck. And then Caleb’s eyes track up to his face- and he feels all of the breath leave his body at once.

A wide smile dimples the feathers of a vivid peacock tattoo that skirts around gleaming fangs and fans out gracefully next to two impossibly red eyes. 

Caleb stares.

“It’s only,” The tiefling presses on, “the last month or so’ve been right weird, and... well, let’s start with the first things first. My name is Mollymauk Tealeaf, apparently, and... hm.” Face thoughtful, his hand darts into his pocket and comes out just as quick, fingers flicking upward to showcase a battered piece of paper held daintily between two neat claws. “Well, i believe I got your note.”

[landcfstxries]

Good As New (Pt. 1)

{ hi henlo

Uhhh i wrote this up at maybe 4-5 AM and im just now posting it djdhhdbd

Y'all know im into Critical Role but I'm not gonna put this in the main tags jdndbhdhd too scared

Tags: @maybesortaahazel @shadlicious @vampire-fucker-3000

Varan Luro is a dnd oc of mine. He's,,,, an odd one, let's just say that.

Mollymauk Tealeaf is a character off of Critical Role, and belongs to his creator Taliesin Jaffe. This is purely just fun writing, and I'm not trying to claim the character in any way. Even though this blog has a small following, I felt I should preface this for future followers. "^^

Enjoy, y'all!

Usual warning: some possible misspellings bc I did write this pretty late at night }

---------------------------

He remembers passing out.

Was it passing out? He wasn't sure.

He had felt the pain in his chest for only a moment, yet he still hasn't grasped what happened.

It was just...

Empty.

Empty.

Empty...

....

Crimson eyes opened once more.

Everything was a blur for many moments, he didn't dare to try and sit up. He would let it pass for a moment before he felt comfortable.

Said moment felt like ages, but it came eventually.

The tiefling slowly sat up, feeling the cloth over his body shift down slightly. He caught it before it could easily fall off and reveal his full form....

Wait.

He wasn't wearing any clothes.

No wonder it was so cold in the room.

He looks around, hearing the familiar soft jingle of the jewelry that decorated his horns. Well, He thought, at least no one took those.

But the more important questions at hand: Where did everyone go...?

Where was he?!

"Ah! You are awake! Finally!"

The tiefling's head snapped into the direction of where the sudden voice came. The accent sounded familiar. Like a wizard friend he knew... But this definitely wasn't him.

Standing in the doorway was a Drow Elf, with dark purple skin; a very stark contrast from the tiefling's own lilac skin. He had white hair that reached a bit past his shoulders, red irises that seemed to stand out against the black scleras of his eyes. He wore some sort of fancy garmets, as if he was of high regard.

It took a very long time before the tiefling spoke up. "Uh... Hi," He started. He took a moment to look around before looking back to the Drow. "Where... Am I? Who are you? How am I here?"

Too many questions. Time to take it down a bit.

He rubs the back of his neck a bit. "Ah, sorry for the amount of questions. I guess I'm just... A bit confused, to say the least."

The Drow chuckles. He isn't sure if it's all in good fun or if it's quite the opposite. "It's quite all right. I'll answer as best as I can... Allow me to introduce myself first. My name is Varan Luro. And who might you be, colorful one?" The Drow says, holding out his hand for the tiefling to shake.

Molly. That's it. You actually remember this time.

"... Mollymauk Tealeaf. Molly to my friends... Since I, uh... I guess we're friends now, aren't we?" The tiefling speaks up, gently taking Varan's hand and giving a small shake.

"Huh... Mollymauk... Molly... Peculiar, but unique name. Almost familiar, and rolls off the tongue." Varan says, with that weird chuckle again. "Beautiful tattoos, by the way. Thought I would mention that."

Oh, right. He wasn't wearing anything besides a sheet over him. Molly smiled sheepishly. "Uh... I think this conversation might continue better if I had my clothes back. You got those anywhere?"

-------------------

It was surprisingly quick, and Molly was back to his old look in no time...

Save for the giant scar across his chest.

He shuddered a bit. Is that what happened to him...?

Damn Lorenzo-!

"Mr. Tealeaf? You alright?"

Molly quickly snapped out of his conflicting thoughts, turning to look at Varan. "Oh. Sorry. Just... Trying to figure out things. This definitely isn't the first time I've experienced this sort of thing, but I'm surprised I'm still... Myself."

"You... Have been through resurrection before?"

"Something like it. Wasn't my body before. Thought it was gonna end with two years of having it... Guess not." Molly explains. He then gives a chuckle. "I don't know whether to thank you or be actually creeped out."

"Both would be natural reactions."

A laugh was shared between the two. Varan then spoke up. "Come, Molly. We should... Discuss this whole thing and I should catch you up to speed. Sure you've been dying to know."

"You could say that."

-----------------------

"... Huh."

"... Is that all you can say?"

"Well, Varan, forgive me if I'm taking a moment just to think about it."

Molly sighs, then chuckles. "Never thought I'd end up meeting a warlock that could bring me and practically almost anyone back from the dead... With a little work, of course. Necromancy, man. Wild... I've only ever been near one warlock in my life, and his powers were vastly different from yours. Something with the ocean or whatever, long story I probably wont get to know." He rambles, laughing softly... Followed by a sigh.

Varan knows that sigh. "... You... Miss your companions?" He says, genuine worry in his voice.

"Is it that obvious, my friend?"

"... Heartbreakingly."

Molly chuckles again, and proceeds to sigh once more. "Yeah... They're miles away now, I know that. There's no way I'll be able to catch up with them. I just hope they're doing alright without me... And no one's blaming themselves..." He goes on, putting a hand over his face and leaning against it. "Oh, gods... Yasha... I can't imagine how she took it..."

Varan could only offer a small, hopefully reassuring pat on the back. "I'm... I'm sure they miss you dearly, Molly. You seem like you were the light of that group. Sure, some... Mistakes here and there, but you likely brought joy to their lives. I'm sure you'll cross paths with them eventually... Everyone finds their way."

Molly looks up at Varan, smiling sadly. "I... I guess you're right, my friend... I just hope that meeting isn't too long from now. Maybe it's just right around the corner... We can only hope."

"I suppose...."

Molly suddenly remembered something. "Say," He started, "You... Didn't perhaps see a long, red and beautifully gaudy coat where I was buried right? Bunch of symbols on it?"

"Hm... I'm sorry, no. However, there was something there that I figured had it resting. A staff or something... A log? I don't know. All I can figure is that it was holding up something. Perhaps your coat?"

"No. No one would just... Steal the damn thing. I mean... Who would even dare to off of a grave? It was either one of my group, or an old friend."

He hoped this was the case. He really hoped.

Molly then switches gears. "Hey... Varan. You'll let me stay here until I get my bearings... Right?"

"Of course! What reason would I have to deny hospitality now?"

"... Fair point."

Varan had secretly formed a plan in mind as Molly rambled on. Really, he had one in the works ever since he heard the tiefling's name fall from his lips. That's why it was so familiar to him. He knew why now.

Because of her.

[mnemememory]

the dose makes it

Insomnia is a subtle, bitter poison.

(or; the mighty nein haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the three were taken)

prompt fill for @theclockistickingwrite! I’m open to prompts at the moment, if anyone feels like enabling me :)

Insomnia is a subtle, bitter poison.

Beau is dead by the third night, with webs in her eyes and spots on the horizon. There’s little to do but watch the sky and wait for morning, but it’s hard when everything feels so washed out and hollow. She cracks her jaw open and struggles to breathe through her nose, content with – something. Content with her mind on fire, maybe.

Mollymauk gives her a grim smile and watches the sun burn itself into existence across the treetops. There are bruises under his eyes, a wild look to his sharp features.

“Didn’t you sleep?” Beau says, the morning thick in her throat.

“Didn’t you?” Molly says. His voice is teasing, but his eyes are stone cold.

Caleb and Nott are by the fire, shaking at a groggy Keg to get her up and moving. Wake up, Caleb says. It’s early enough that the air hasn’t had a chance to warm; frost still sits like film, frozen lace atop densely packed mud. There is little heat to be found in this barren lie of a world.

Beau snorts and shakes her head. Everything is heavy. She wants to yawn, but it hasn’t done her any good before. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says.

Mollymauk doesn’t reply, but the sleepless, gleaming look in his eyes says enough.

(After –

Well, after.

Afterwards, Beau wonders about it. She wonders a lot of things about Mollymauk Tealeaf and his coat of many colours; she wonders about his constant smile, the infuriating lies, the tarot cards she holds heavy in her hands. She wonders about sweet dreams, and of making the world a better place. She wonders how he could stand it, being so wonderful in a world that very clearly wasn’t.

But mostly, when Beau thinks about Molly, she thinks about sitting around a campfire with people pretending to be asleep, staring at the stars and searching desperately for ghosts.

This is ridiculous, she wants to remember saying. I’ve only known these people for a few weeks, and already I feel so lost without them. I feel like I’ve been caught off balance. It’d ridiculous.

Moly would have said something vague and annoying, if he’d had the chance. That was always the way with him – or at least, it felt like it. Trying to fill in impressions between lies and smiles. There isn’t much of Molly that feels real, looking back.

They sat there in silence and stared up and out, above the trees and into the velvet darkness. Death row without the creeping paralysis; bright in a way Beau could never be, no matter how close or far she knew her own impending demise to be.

You’d better not have any regrets, Beau thinks, even though she knows he had at least one).

Things get a little better on the first night, with Caleb’s bluebell fire a solid thing around them. Beau grips Jester tighter than she ever thought possible, stares at Fjord as he curls to the side, drinks in Yasha’s unconscious face. It’s small, and slightly cramped, and Beau lets out a breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.

They’re here. They’re here, and they’re safe, and –

She slips out, when it all gets too heavy, when the sharp lack of sleep aches like a physical presence and she needs something to remind her what’s real. Keg is all rough edges and tough forearms and she’s gorgeous, they’re gorgeous together. They laugh in a house that demanded nightmares, and it’s so wonderful. Beau rolls over, exhales, and sleeps.

Unfortunately, as things are so want to do, morning breathes new fear into Beau’s still exhausted mind.

“Good morning,” she says, acid a rancid taste at the back of her throat.

“Good morning, Beau!” Jester says. She sounds bright enough to ache. Looking at her now, she’s tired, blue skin wan and smile shockingly brittle. There’s no way, Beau thinks, and she goes to hug Jester all over again.

Fjord’s presence is a steadying weight that Beau hadn’t even known she’d been missing (lie, lie, lie) – she listens to the deep timber of his voice and struggles to contain the massive, raw burst of joy that threatens to consume her. Relief makes her muscles ache with unreleased tension. She’s shaking with the release. Seeing her friends here, awake (so awake), it’s the best thing she’s ever known.

Yasha does not wake up.

Beau steadies herself next to the girl without wings, kneels down to press a hand to her hair. Yasha’s pale, bleached skin still crackles with the aftermath of Jester’s magic, pink sparks stitching across scarred skin. She doesn’t look quite real, lying on the ground with blood on her face. Something horrible rests just beneath her expression, shoulders wound tight enough to break. This is not the sleep I want, Beau thinks, and tries to mean it. This is not peace. This is anything but.

“Wake up,” Beau says, and her voice sounds foreign to her own ears. She’s lying, too. She needs Yasha to keep on sleeping, forever and ever, until the world ends and the sky splits black lightning forth to wreck whatever’s left. Beau needs Yasha to keep on sleeping, because when she wakes up –

When Yasha wakes up, she will be alive in a world without her best friend. Beau is, at the heart of it all, a coward. She doesn’t want to look at that kind of grief.

Yasha wakes up anyway.

The settle into it, an odd routine that sands away rough edges and leaves everything else a broken thing of what it once was. There are two empty spaces next to them on a cart that Molly has never, not once, sat on.

“Does it bother you?” Beau asks, once, when she’s very drunk and it’s very late. The week stretches out like a ribbon, long and blood-red. “We’re using the cart that you were –”

She cuts herself off. That you were kidnapped it, she was saying. Jester gets the message anyway, because Jester is many things, but stupid has never been one of them.

“Not really,” she says. She touches her wrists, where scars rope long and thing into blue skin. Beau wants to reach out and touch her, make sure she’s still real and not some figment of her exhausted imagination. “It was very different. And very dark.”

“Are you okay with it?” Beau says. She wants to know. She’s desperate to know. They can’t keep going on, not like this, if any aspect of that stupid fucking cart is going to cause Jester anymore nightmares than she already has. Beau will go downstairs right now and burn it.

(Neither sleep at night, not really. They compare stories and make jokes and blink as sunlight filters, dizzying in its entirety, through the window of their shared bedroom).

Jester thinks about it for a long time. Beau sort of dozes off but also sort of doesn’t, alcohol lending weight to her eyelids.

“I was very scared,” she says, finally. “It wasn’t very nice. It was dark, and there were people everywhere, all around me. Fjord was there, and Yasha, but we were all tied up so tight I couldn’t feel my arms. We tried to talk, but we were gagged. The cages were too small for all of us.”

“Jester…” Beau says.

“It is very different, now, when we travel like that,” Jester says. “There’s so much room. I can stretch out my legs are far as they can go, and I’ve still got room. And the illusion makes me feel – safe. Just a little bit. It is very nice, knowing that I can stay inside and no one can see me.”

“We’ll always be able to see you,” Beau says. She is very drunk.

Jester smiles and nods, reaching over to pat Beau on the head. “You are very good friends,” she says. “As soon as Fjord gets back, I’ll tell him that he is a very good friend, too. Yasha as well. I was sure you were coming to get us.”

Beau snorts and knuckles at her eyes, because she’s not sniffling, goddamn. Her reputation must be in tatters, by now.

“You’re a good friend, too,” she says. It’s worth it, for Jester’s smile.

“I don’t know how she can keep smiling,” Fjord says. It’s just the two of them, at a bar, laying low and drowning out steam. “I can’t.”

Beau knocks back another glass. “Things can’t be so bad,” she says. “So long as she can keep smiling.”

Fjord’s face is strained. “She can’t be lying,” he says, like a prayer. Beau doesn’t want to know about what went down in that basement, with those cages and those pokers and those manacles, but curiosity peeks its ugly head out every once and a while.

What she knows, for certain, for sure, is this: Fjord is so close to breaking.

Beau doesn’t say: I can’t tell, anymore.

Beau doesn’t say: I’m worried about her. I’m worried about both of you. I’m worried about all three of you.

Beau absolutely does not say: I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in almost a month. The air feels solid. The ground moves beneath my feet. I can’t concentrate, I can’t focus. I keep jumping from one thing to another. I’m worried that if I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up and none of you will be here anymore.

Beau says, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

…

…

This is why Beau needs sleep. This is so very much why Beau needs sleep. Gods, look at what happens when she doesn’t – she loses her mind and she buys an owl.

The thing stares at her with a familiar kind of ambivalence. She sees it every time she looks in the mirror, every time she catches her eye on a reflective surface. Why are you bothering me? it seems to say. Beau is thoroughly sick of herself.

She narrows her eyes at the owl. It blinks back. It is an owl. It has very large eyes.

“What the fuck,” she says in a low, traumatised whisper.

Please, gods, let this be a dream.

It is not a dream.

There isn’t a fix to the thing in her head, not really.

Poison drips, drips, drips down the back of her throat, and she numbs the burn with alcohol, with lies (I am fine, you are fine), with laughter. A lot of it is real. Beau isn’t good at misdirection – it forms, awkward and heavy, on her tongue and sticks to her throat like tar. What Beau says is, Everything is fine, and that’s more of an extended form of truth than any one thing she says. Creative storytelling. Everything will be fine, eventually, with time. Beau has to believe that.

Sleep comes from a variety of things, one of which is exhaustion.

(This is the thing they do not say:

We’ll sleep in shifts. At any one point, they huddle together under Caleb’s blanket of light and stare at the stars, just like before. Molly’s weight does not leave. Yasha’s absence is a missed step on a stairway; uncomfortable at the best of times, sickening at the worst. Horrible, wretched screams echo in their ears and snow-drenched hilltops are stamped to their eyelids.

We’ll sleep in shifts, they do not say, even in closed spaces with doors and locks. Caleb threads silver wire along the edges of their own little corner of everything and promises, with magic and fire and blood in his eyes, that this will never happen again.

Please, Beau thinks, desperation clawing broken fingernails and bleeding stubs at the back of her mind; Please, let this never happen again).

But –

(But –)

Beau is sitting on the ground (on the floor) (on the cart), clutching Jester’s scarred, warm wrist, listening as Fjord laughs at something slow and subtly hilarious that Caduces says. Nott is tucked into Jester’s other side, watching at the fire with rapt attention. Caleb sits with Frumpkin on his lap, eyes closed, a contented smile sloping along the edges of his mouth.

(Somewhere, a woman with mismatched eyes and a hole in her heart stares up at the same sky as a storm gathers, lightning an awful light).

(Somewhere, the indistinct and shapeless existence of the thing once known as Mollymauk Tealeaf is smiling).

This is the poison: Beau sleeps. She does not dream.

[multifandom-damnation]

The hags voice came to him again, piercing and gravely, shattering the happiness of the memories and bringing dread back to his heart. Molly closed his eyes, his heart shattering into a million tiny pieces of agony as he realized that there was no escaping this. No escaping her. No escaping them.

“If you give me what you want, I’ll give them back to you.”

Molly knew she was telling the truth, and she wouldn’t stop until she had what she wanted.

A memory- pulled straight from that deep dark place he holds close to his heart and hidden behind cages in his mind, pulled before his eyes for all to see, reliving it again.

Silently, he stands, awkwardly in a too-big brown shirt that may have well been a sack and the same shade as the ground he awoke in, his hair too short, his horns too dull looking. He stood stock still as a large figure- Dragonborn, scales black, like the late night time darkness he was hiding in- rushed him, fist raised high.

Looking back, the words he spewed at Mollymauk were not what rooted him in place, the angry calls of curses and insults, “demon-spawn” and “devil blood” and “monster” ringing in his ears like a battle cry. It was the fear of death, again he supposes, with nobody but a man who wanted his blood spilt across the dirt.  He couldn’t speak, his voice died in his throat as his efforts to call for help died with it and the man came closer, and closer, his fist raised high and Molly could do nothing more than stand there and look at the oncoming pain in fear-

Green shoved its way into his vision, scared green skin tightening its hold around chipped black scales, the fist covered in cuts and calluses as a flaming fan rushed into view, the tips right underneath a scaled neck and the other resting gently just above his privates.

Molly’s breath rushed out of him in one relieved breath, Bosun growling low at the tiefling’s would be attacker as Ornna stood as beautiful and poised as ever, her fan burning the fabric of the man’s pants just slightly. Even in the memory, Molly couldn’t remember what was being said, but it resulted in the dragonborn leaving in a huff and angry, hateful looks shot back at Molly, a warm and heavy hand resting on his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” Bo had said, a wide grin splitting his face as Ornna put her fans away and came up on Molly’s other side, threading her arm through his. “We’re all freaks and monsters here. No one messes with our own. We’re family, we all look after each other. Right?”

The memory faded in a flash of white, replaced by another.

Yasha, standing over him, his eyes swimming with the poison pumping through his veins. Her snarl had warped into something feral and protective, her sword glowing a heavenly light and her fist clenched so tightly Molly could see her veins stark against her pale skin from his place on the floor. He reached up and yanked the dart out of his neck with shaking fingers and when he yelped from the pain, Yasha’s eyes darted to him and narrowed in silent fury.

“Stay away,” she called simply to the trees, the men retreating back where they came from after the pounding of Yasha’s heavy footfalls echoed through the valley. “Stay away and never come back.”

Even with his heartbeat pounding in his ears Molly heard sniggers, catcalling from the trees. “You need your big sister to look after you?” One called, and Molly saw red robes out of the corner of his eye. Another voice, one belonging to the person he knew held the blow gun, chortled “Your mummy’s come to save you!”

In the blink of the eye, Yasha -she was the new girl from the carnival he remembered later- roared louder than a thunder crack and charged, screams and death following the swift hiss of her blade as it sailed through the air. “I told you,” she snarled, prowling back to Molly “Stay away.” She knelt down by the tieflings head and with surprising softness for someone of her stature asked. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened?”

His words caught in his throat, but he sent his blurry eyes sharply towards the dart, lying in the ground and Yasha lifted it in nimble fingers and growled. “Alright,” gently, she hoisted Molly in her arms and carried him back to the carnival. “Poison. Not to worry, Ornna’s got something to take care of you. Don’t scare me like that, I’m not letting you out of my sight until you get better.”

A world shifted as the memory changed and Molly held his breath.

His hands were in Toya’s hair, threading brightly coloured flowers into the braids as Gustav sipped at some rum and tea concoction that Toya wrinkled her nose at. The sun was bright, too bright for the time of the morning and warm. The warmth was welcomed, having made camp at a snow-covered town a week since coming here.

“You know, kid,” Gustave yawned, leaning back in the ugly broken chair as he watched the clouds. “You need a name.” Molly looked at him with confusion. “You know, a name. Everyone needs a name, like Gustav and Toya.” At this Toya sat up straighter, tipped her head back and grinned at Molly. Gustav thought for a moment. “Do you want a ridiculous one or a serious one?”

With less than a second to think, Molly pulled one hand out of Toya’s hair and held up one finger. First one. Gustave grinned. He looked at the sky and the rolling clouds and birds flying past. He remembered that song, about the seabird, the ridiculous one, and could not think of anything that would fit better. “Mollymauk.”  He determined, turning back to the purple tiefling. His eyes were bright, his grin large enough to show the points of his fangs and he nodded. “Alright, Mollymauk it is!”

“What about a last name?” Toya asked, picking up a flower from Molly’s pile and twirling it between her palms. “Everyone needs a last name.”

“Hmm…” Gustav thought, sipping his tea. He turned to Toya after a moment. “Do you remember those halflings that used to come? With the crystal ball?” Toya nodded so he turned to Mollymauk again. “We used to have these visitors I suppose they were, who thought they could tell fortunes with this giant crystal ball. They wanted a place at the carnival, but we wouldn’t give it to them. But, I think you coming here and joining our family was fate.” He paused, and Molly looked at him with expectant excitement. “How do you feel about Tealeaf?”

Gustav thought that if Molly nodded any harder, his head would fall off his neck. “Mollymauk Tealeaf.” Gustav tried it out on his tongue and smiled. “Welcome to the family Mollymauk Tealeaf.“

Another disorientating change of frame and Molly was reliving something else.

He was sitting at a bar with Nott, an old and grotty one, it stunk of alcohol and his coat kept getting caught in the sticky table. As one, they threw back a shot, blinking at the horrid taste and licking their lips to get it off of the corners of their mouths.

They weren’t drunk, just buzzed enough for the colours to blend to a comfortable fuzziness and their laughter to be louder than really needed. The clock on the wall struck midnight and Molly looked sideways at Nott, slumping deeply in her hair and her head pillowed on her hand.

Molly stood. “Come on kid,” he sighed, and grabbed Nott, holding her in his arms like he had been doing it all his life. “Time for bed.” He made it up the stairs, scowling at his coat each time it swept under his feet and at the wall every time he bumped into it. In his arms, Nott was tense and still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to speak and ask what was going on.

Swinging the door to Nott’s room open with his foot, Molly saw Caleb already asleep, buried under pillows and blankets and his jacket laid over the covers. He knelt as he sat Nott down, ruffled her hair, kissed her head and paused. “I’m sorry,” he whispered once he realised, fearful eyes as wide as Nott’s confused ones. “I’m so sorry. That was just always something I did with Toya when she tried to stay up too late at the campfire. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking-” the words were coming too fast and not even Molly could keep up with them but Nott stood on her toes and placed her hand over his mouth.

“It’s ok,” she whispered, kind and quiet. “I don’t mind. It’s ok, really.”

“I guess I just think of you as a little sister.” It was out of his mouth before he realised he’d said it, and he watched Nott’s eyes widen once again. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry, I must be drunker than I thought.”

She was grinning, the kind that showed all her miss-match teeth and threw her arms around his neck. “Uh,” Molly mumbled, confused. “I should go-”

Nott pulled away, sprinting to a little box under her bed and dragged it roughly out. Caleb stirred at the noise but stayed asleep. She rifled through it, muttering under her breath as she looked for something and pulled it out with a triumphant grunt. Shoving the box back under the bed, Nott padded back to Molly holding something gold carefully between her fingers. She held it out for Molly to take.

It was a gold chain, thin and delicate, a small black gem curled between platinum bands holding it all together. “I don’t know what it is or what it does but it was pretty.”

The image faded with Molly throwing his arms around the goblin as she carefully slipped it over his horns and onto his neck where it was to stay.

A new scene, filled with dark smog, a heavy spattering of rain and a lone horse rider on the streets in front of him. Spurring his own horse on with a flick of his heels, Molly pulled his horse up next to Fjords, keeping pace side by side. “Feel like being alone?” He asked, voice too serious to his own ears, and Fjord’s shoulders straightened out of their perpetual hunch. “I mean, I’m not going to care if you do or not, I’m gonna stay right here, but it’s always a friendly thing to ask, just in case.”

Fjord shot him a sidelong look. “Why do you care, Molly?”

Shrugging, Molly pulled the flask off of his hip and dangled it in Fjords face. When he didn’t move to take it, Molly pulled it back and took a swig before putting it back in its place. “I don’t know, the same reason you care whether Jester has enough healing potions, or if Caleb needs any more ink and scroll for his spells or if Beau got into another fight.”

“Yeah well, none of those things are happening to me, so you have nothing to worry about.”

“On the contrary,” Molly sniggered, indifferent on the outside but there was deep, burning concern hidden snug beneath his flesh. “I know what it’s like to have an off day. If you wanna talk about it, I’m always here. You know where I am, we share the same room.”

Sighing, Fjord shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand-”

“Try me.”

The abruptness in Molly’s voice had Fjord look at him closer now, eyes fully on him and this may have been the first time the purple tiefling had ever looked so sincere. “What?”

“Try me. You don’t think I don’t know what it’s like to wake up from a nightmare? Sure, you vomit seawater and I end up with more blood on the sheets, but I still have them. I know how you feel to not understand what your point of being here is, what your reason is for existing. I understand it all. So when I say ‘try me’ I mean there is nothing you could say to me that I wouldn’t understand and haven’t already felt.”

Giving in, Fjord rubbed his head. “Fine,” he grumbled, “but don’t tell the others. Jester will never let me hear the end of it.”

Casting a look back to the rest of their party travelling in the cart and remaining horses some ways back, Molly grinned. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

Like being sucked down a whirlpool with too-bright whiteness, the horses and Fjord shifted into nothingness and now Molly was in an old wooden room, ropes around his ankles and a pounding in his head. Someone was calling his name.

“Mollymauk,” it was hushed and panicked, but it was Caleb, his voice pounding in Molly’s ears. “Mollymauk, can you hear me?”

“What?” Molly mumbled, tongue too heavy and eyes too blurry as he looked around the room. “Where are we? What happened? Why am I-”

“You were drugged,” Caleb said simply, relaxing now that Molly was awake. “They slipped it in your tea. You gave us quite a scare.” He reached out and untangled the stray hairs from Molly’s horns as he saw Molly struggle to do it. “I don’t know where we are, we were brought here blindfolded but I can get us out, so do not worry.”

Molly was too tired to argue, his mind still slow and his tongue still like a mouthful of cotton balls, but he looked up at Caleb through half-lidded eyes. “So what are you doing here?”

“I volunteered to go with you.”

“You gave yourself up? For me?”

“Ja.”

“Why?” The concept was so new, so strange to Molly that even the state he was in, he knew something was off. “No one would just sacrifice themselves up for me. Maybe Yasha, but you’re not Yasha, so you shouldn’t be here.” Even like this, Molly was using nonsensical ramblings and running his words in circles and he inwardly sighed at himself.

“True,” the wizard said in a way that means he didn’t think it was at all. “But to be fair, I did not think you would be able to escape on your own in your current… condition.” To make his point, Caleb watched his friend struggled to sit upright on the hard, dirty floor and grabbed Molly by the shoulders, pulling him over to his lap and lying his back down. “But do not worry. You are my friend, Mollymauk, and I will make sure you get out of here safe and sound.” Looking back down at the purple bundle on his lap, Caleb watched Molly’s eyes glass over again and his tail swish slower and he sighed. “However, maybe we should wait until you are feeling better, ja?”

“Maybe,” Molly mumbled, resting his head heavily on Caleb’s. “Why aren’t you drugged too?”

Caleb laughed, threading his fingers in Molly’s hair as he would Frumpkin and the kneading motion made Molly’s eyes fall shut.  “It seems they only wanted you, my friend. Do not worry, when you awake we will leave this place and find our friends.”

Wanting to argue Molly opened his mouth, but soft, sweet words in Zemnian flowed from Caleb’s lips and he found himself falling asleep to the song as the image wavered and he was plunged into a memory filled with blue and anger.

Both Jester and Beau were on the floor, chained to a wooden platform. In the crowd were the rest of the Nein, desperately calling out to their friends as they tried to force their way through the vast gaggle of people. Molly watched, stiff, as Jester called something out, something about being innocent, and something flew out of the crowd to land in her horns. Beau snarled, yanking hard on her chains to get to her friend, but the chains were stuck tight.

A man stood on the platform, long black mask and robes, light green skin and a great axe gripped tight in his hand. Jester hissed in Infernal and the man flinched, but Molly had to hold back a smile. “I hope your kittens explode” wouldn’t be a threat in any other language, but Jester made it work.

In the memory, the nature of their crime was hidden in slick molasses and as Molly tried to reach for it, he got caught, stuck between confusion and determination. Something to do with a theft, or a fight? Probably both.

The crowd’s booing suddenly changed into loud cheering as the man off to the side in gold and red robes raised his hand, pointing to the man with the great axe then to the girls chained to the ground. Beau was bleeding, blood pouring steadily from her nose to drip onto her blue sash. Jester had her head down, face hidden behind her hair and tail whipping back and forth nervously behind her.

The man with the great axe- executioner Molly realised, looking back on the memory- stepped forward and raised the blade, the Mighty Nein in the crowd screaming and crying and begging to be let through, crying out to stop stop stop, telling the girls they would be alright as the blade came down-

Molly was moving before he even knew what happened.

A sharp pain exploded in both his shoulders that forced him back a step, a large great axe caught between his swords, one glowing in holy light and the other crackling in frigid ice. Blood was pouring down his skin but Molly hardly noticed, eyes boring holes deep into the larger man as the crowd went silent.

Blood poured down Molly’s front as he slashed at the executioner, weaving tales of hatred and anger into his skin before the larger man fell off the stage, panting hard and groaning. Sliding on blood-soaked knees to his friends, Molly broke the chains with swift strikes with his swords and whispered to Jester in Infernal to “Run and hide back at the wagon, Fjord will meet you there” before she nodded and he stood.

Holding his swords out to either side of him, hands trembling in rage and fangs bared, Molly called out over the crowd in the loudest voice he could muster. “If you want my family,” he roared, eyeing the king. “You’ll have to get through me.”

Dimly, he was aware of Yasha shoving through the crowd to join him on stage, of Caleb lighting his hands on fire to manage crowd control, Fjord and Nott rushing to the girls as Beau and Jester dragged themselves off the stage, but it all fell to background sound to Molly, body and mind focused on nothing but protecting his family and the feeling of blood on his skin, remembering black scales, a green grin and vibrant flames and hoped he was doing his family proud.

“We’re all freaks and monsters here. No one messes with our own. We’re family, we all look after each other. Right?”

The image flashed as Molly buried his scimitar into flesh to be rewarded with a spray to blood, speeding quickly to memories he held dear in his heart.

Sitting down with a little girl alone on the street, handing her a flower and watching her grin stretch across her face.

Paying for an old man’s ale, watching the confusion at being handed a jug after just being told he didn’t have enough.

Lying with a young couple as he read their fortunes and shuffled his cards, watching the joy glow on their faces.

Carrying a sleeping young boy back home after he stayed up all night and joined the search party to help find him and the joy and relief on his mother’s face as he was placed back in her arms.

Staying up late with a young woman at a bar, holding her as she cried into his shoulder and rubbed her back as she shook.

Letting a pair of druid twins weave flowers and twigs and leaves through his hair as he listened to them giggle.

The hag’s voice came to him again, piercing and gravely, shattering the happiness of the memories and bringing dread and defeat back into his heart. Behind him, the disembodies and empty souls of the Nein floated in the air behind cages, dimming with each passing moment and screaming his name in a wail louder than the dead. They were dead, he realised, if he didn’t do this. Molly closed his eyes.

“If you give me what you want, I’ll give them back to you.”

“But my memories are the only things I have-”

A cackle, like the splitting of a mountain. “Exactly. You can have your memories or your friends. Your choice. But choose quickly little demon, they won’t last long.”

“So, you’ll just take my happiest memories?”

“In exchange for your friends.” Victory laced her words like the golden threads in Jesters dress and they both knew she had won.

“I’ll just lose them? Forever? I’ll never remember them again?”

“Choose quickly dear. They don’t have long now. I’ll even let you see the ones you’ll lose, one last time…”

With a sigh, Molly opened his eyes. He made a decision.

“Take them,” He called into the empty void. “I choose my friends. You can have the memories, give me back my family.”

In another flash, The Mighty Nein were lying on the floor of the inn, groaning as they came to consciousness. Faintly, Molly realised he couldn’t remember what he had given up for his friends return, but he decided he didn’t care.

Anything was worth them.

[owlsshadows]

Make Them Kiss (Shirasuzu and Yuzuobi)

... it’s all @superhappybubbleslove‘s fault for calling my out like that.

The plan was supposed to be easy. But as any plan including Suzu and romance, it has been doomed from the beginning – and Yuzuri, after three years of blood and sweat and energy drained, stands on the verge of giving up.

Her verdict is clear.

Suzu is too clumsy for love.

She tried, she really tried, but no matter how many times did she give him a chance or momentum – the second she left him to his own devices, he slipped up.

At age six and twenty, Yuzuri feels like a battle-worn veteran, tearing at her hair whenever Suzu misses his chance.

“You should stop doing that. Your hair is thinning,” comes a shrewd remark from behind, and as she glances up, Obi greets her with two flasks of beer.

“But if he is so… dumb!” she flails around with her arms vaguely. Today she has deliberately locked the two pharmacists into the southern hothouse for almost half a day, hoping that the hot and humid air will somehow stick them together – only to discover them well-dressed and well-behaved, deep in a scientific discussion.

“You should probably stop doing that too,” Obi sits down beside her, helping himself with a bite of her tart. “I get that you love playing the matchmaker, but there are certain matches that even you can’t make.”

Yuzuri grabs one of the bottles and drinks at least half of the beer before she replies.

“I may have failed getting you and Shirayuki together, but not everyone sees her as some celestial, untouchable being.”

“My bad,” Obi cocks his head to the side, flashing his predatory grin at her. “I hope you’re not that mad that I married you instead.”

Yuzuri’s frown softens, fondness replacing frustration. She downs the rest of her beer, reaching out for the one Obi has brought for himself.

“I’m not that mad,” she teases softly, leaning in for a lazy kiss. “But I would’ve killed you if you knocked me up and left.”

“Aren’t we lucky,” Obi whispers to her ear, “that we have two eager babysitters guarding the little demon tonight?”

Yuzuri pulls back, eyes wide with surprise. “Two?”

“You asked Suzu, didn’t you?”

“You asked… Shirayuki?!”

“I heard a good husband supports the aspirations of their wife.”

*

Taking care of a child has never been one of Suzu’s specialties – not that he had too many to begin with. He is painfully aware of his lack of talents – especially when it comes to the romance department, but children department follows shortly.

The dervish born from the affair of Yuzuri and Obi has midnight blue hair and bright golden eyes, rosy cheeks and mouth half the size of his head – and oh he screams, he cries, he whines.

“Come on, Mori. Just one more bite,” Suzu babbles in his kindest voice – undoubtedly a tone he could never master in front of Shirayuki.

Be it her huge green eyes or soft pale lips, or the reddened tip of her pointy nose; be it in the morning or the afternoon, or late night as they say their goodbyes after a party – he could never coo to her, not in a thousand years.

The sudden knock on the door makes him jump. He drops the bite-sized piece of pie into his lap, calling forth another cry from Mori. “Damn,” he murmurs under his breath as he stands to get the door.

Ideally, he would not wear a pair of pie-speared beige pants with a disheveled black shirt that a baby has teared at to greet the subject of his longtime affections. Ideally, Shirayuki would not greet him with a practical huff, walking past him and chirping to a baby.

“Shirayuki?” Suzu walks back to the room, catching her in the mid of cleaning up the mess he created. Mori sits in the chair his father made for him, a content smile spread across his face, his puffy red cheeks being the only indicators of his tears just a moment ago. “How come you’re here?” the question comes out agitated. He is not angry at her, oh, how far from it – he is mad at himself, unable to handle the situation. Yet his voice cuts, cold and reserved, and he cannot help but notice the small frown running across Shirayuki’s face.

Congratulations, you managed to hurt her, he thinks to himself.

“Obi told me that they wanted a night out with Yuzuri,” Shirayuki replies. She looks composed, but red tints her ears – a sign of irritation.

“Yuzuri asked me to babysit,” Suzu says, deadpan from the fear crawling up his spine.

“Obi told me this as well. Knowing how it ended the last time you were here with Mori alone, I offered my help. I know… it may seem haughty but… I didn’t mean to question your capabilities,” Shirayuki says with a small smile. She speaks with caution, as if she was afraid she hurt his feelings by being here.

“Really?” Suzu asks. “Now, you may finish feeding him, since I’ve already failed. I’ll be in the kitchen making some tea.”

It is bad and turning worse, he realizes storming off.

He did not plan it this way. They had such a nice conversation going on after they got stuck in the hothouse. They had a thing going on; her eyes were sparkly and she tucked her hair behind her ears with that sly movement that flashed a considerable amount of skin on her arms. They were heated in a debate, inching closer and closer to each other with each remark they made…

Suzu planned to walk up to Shirayuki’s room and confess before Yuzuri asked him to look after her evil spawn – and now it all seems so far, like some dream or a story from another world.

He played his chances, and messed things up. Again.

He pours boiled water on the tealeaves with a long, dragged out sigh, indulging in his own misery for a minute or two.

He watches the leaves swim around in the teapot. One of them reminds him of himself; stuck on the wall of the pot, never quite reaching the water and the others.

“If only you didn’t mess up everything all the time,” he speaks, addressing the tealeaf as he would address himself.

“Not everything, and only around half the time.” The soft voice is followed by an even softer touch on his shoulder, encouraging. “Mori is the kid of Yuzuri and Obi after all. He inherited both of their worst traits. I don’t think there’s any shame in struggling to deal with him.”

“Yet, you manage so wonderfully,” Suzu says. His voice is no longer sharp like a knife, it is just sad. Stating facts as they are.

“He does love me for some reason,” Shirayuki admits, her hand running down his arm to stop by his hand on the teapot. “Mind to pour me a cup?”

“What about the devil?” Suzu asks, readying their tea.

“I fed him and told him a tale. He’s asleep now.”

“Are you some kind of magician?”

“I wish I was,” Shirayuki answers, cupping her mug between her hands.

“So… what would you do with your magic power?” Suzu settles across her at the table.

Shirayuki trails off a second, wondering.

“Try to heal the patients for whom traditional medicine can no longer help.”

“That’s such a typically Shirayuki answer.”

“Why? What would you do?”

“Something selfish, of course,” Suzu says with a hint of self-loathe in his voice. “Like travel back in time to correct my mistakes. Won’t you want to fix the things you regret? Or, do you even have any regrets?”

“Believe it or not, I’m full of regrets,” she replies. “Yet I believe that regrets make us to be who we are. You know, how people always go ‘what if…?’ Now imagine if you really did the thing you regret missing out on. Are you sure you would still be the same person?”

“Maybe I don’t want to be the same person I am today.”

“But then, won’t you make the same mistakes over and over again? You go back, correct the things you regret, and with no regret left you do them again.”

“Is there really nothing you wish to change?”

“Hmm… I wish I could travel back in time and save the life of my mother,” Shirayuki ponders. “I wish I could break it off with Zen on friendlier terms. I wish I did something stupid when I had the chance.”

“Something stupid?” Suzu jumps in. They had talked about Shirayuki’s mother, trying to figure out her illness and all known medication based on her hazy childhood memories and on the testament of her father – Suzu even accompanied her once to the village of the Mountain Lions, looking for similar cases and cues to the sudden illness. They also mentioned her relationship with the prince a few times – always when they were at least the three of them, and always when Yuzuri brought up the topic – but Shirayuki mentioning doing something stupid is new, unprecedented.

“There was this guy, at Yuzuri’s wedding three years ago,” Shirayuki starts, fingers dancing slowly around her mug. “He was dead drunk and I was tipsy, and he asked whether he could kiss me and all I did was laying him down on a sofa and telling him to sleep.”

Suzu remembers.

Oh how, for the longest of winters, he would not. He never forgets a thing he does, no matter how much he drinks. If it is a talent, he adds it to his curt list, right after the skill to make a fool out of himself at all possible social occasions. He was that drunk guy, introducing himself to everyone as a young and capable bachelor.

He is only half aware of emerging from his seat – his hands barely register the hardness of the wooden tabletop under his palm, his legs only faintly feel the edge of the table.

“Can I kiss you?” his lips utter the words, while his entire insides scream.

He would love to run away and hide. Yet he stands, pressed against the table and leaning over her, and he sees as her eyes widen in shock, surprise or disgust.

He may have a bad breath, he realizes.

She may not even have thought about him; his brain adds helpfully.

“If you’d still like to,” comes the unlikely answer, and Shirayuki tilts her head back for him, half-mast eyes looking at him expectantly.

He bends down, pecking her hesitantly.

The next moment he tries to flee and hide in a hole in his embarrassment, only to be yanked down against the table by the collar of his shirt. His thighs hurt, so does his nape where the fabric rubs into his skin.

Shirayuki kisses him fiercely, with the same amount of vigor and enthusiasm she pours in everything she does. Her lips taste like the tea he brew; they are soft but firm on his, and she pries his lips open with a lick of her tongue.

If he had any blood left in his body – which he doubts by the way his cock twitches in his pants – he would blush violently.

“Shira…” he pants when they part momentarily, but Shirayuki does not let him finish, standing up and coming round the table to pull him closer to herself.

“I hope Yuzuri and Obi does not want to spend the entire night out,” she whispers against his lips, his lids, his ears as she litters his face with kisses. “It would be atrocious to make out on their sofa.”

“Do you plan to make out?” Suzu asks back, catching his breath in huge, erratic gulps.

“Certainly, there are some regrets better be fixed,” she admits, cupping his face in her hands. “Some doesn’t even need magic.”

“Fix my regrets for me, while we are at it?” he leans his forehead against hers, nudging her nose adoringly.

“And what would that be?”

“There is this woman I’m head over heels in love with. She’s beautiful and intelligent and every time I meet her I make the biggest dork out of myself.”

“Only around half the time,” Shirayuki says, kissing him again. “Did this help with your regret?”

“Maybe… can I get another?”

“If you wish.”

*

Yuzuri is not even surprised when Shirayuki and Suzu leaves that night with fingers entwined.

“Should I even ask how you did this?” she turns to her husband.

“You have to choose your player well,” Obi replies. “Also, it can work wonders if you let them know that you are setting them up.”

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Black Coffee (part four)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

If you like this, please please please consider reblogging, leaving a comment on Ao3 or even donating to my Ko-Fi

~~~~~~~~~~

Every single time, Vax told himself he was an idiot.

Every time he caught himself staring at Percy’s smile. Every time he’d replay his laughter over and over again in his head as he fell asleep because the sound soothed him so much. Every time he’d sleep over and find himself wearing one of Percy’s shirts in the confusion of gathering up their widely scattered clothes, only to curl up into it tighter, pulling it over the lower half of his face and inhaling deeply, feeling something inside himself unwind at the smell of Percy.

Each and every time, he’d think to himself afterwards: Vax’ildan, you are an idiot.

He told himself it was pointless. He told himself it was a ridiculous infatuation that was only going to get worse the more he indulged it. He cursed himself for a moony eyed teenager, he cursed his blind, ridiculous heart, he cursed his piss poor judgement in growing a silly crush on someone who saw him as a friend at best, a way to indulge a kink at worst and most likely.

But those moments didn’t stop coming. So he remained an idiot.

Another week, another email.

Percy tapped his fingers against the keys, enough to make an irritating noise but not enough to actually make words appear on the screen, as if the right thing to say would just come passively if he made the night motions.

The first part of the email had been easy, congratulating Cassandra on getting through her finals, encouraging her with her upcoming dissertation and exhibition, promising he’d fly out and come to opening night.

The second part was where he got stuck, as soon as he was required to talk about himself. He knew Cassandra would have absolutely no interest in the company, how the profit margins were doing, any reshuffling of the board. Percy was supposed to be the figurehead of all that and even he barely managed to care. He knew she’d at least feign polite interest in the new rotary motors he’d designed but there was only so much he could say about those without attaching blueprints to his response.

And he still felt a panic attack coming on whenever he thought about even trying to tell her about Vax.

At least he had Keyleth to talk to about that. He was getting better at being more open with her, probably thanks to Vax himself. Yet another thing he owed him.

Just yesterday she’d come over for dinner (a dinner that consisted of food from their respective favourite takeaways, he’d never learned how to cook) and Percy had found himself talking for hours about things Vax had said, date ideas that had been his that Percy never would even have dreamed of doing but had enjoyed immensely. Even Vax’s sister had gotten a mention and he’d grinned to see Keyleth’s ears quite literally pick up and her eyes brighten. He quietly resolved to find out if Vex’ahlia was single.

But there were things he couldn’t even tell his best friend or his sister. Things he was still struggling to admit to himself or even give form to inside his own head.

The idea that maybe he was starting to feel differently about Vax. That as fun and exhilarating as the sex and honeymoon dates were, things were changing below the surface.

Percy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fingers itching to take him back to the dog adoption websites he’d been obsessively browsing lately. But Cassandra had been waiting two days for a reply now and he’d be damned if she was going to beat him at correspondence.

He tapped out a brief reply, one sentence to say work was fine and he was building new stuff, as always then launched into more praise for her recent art pieces she’d put on Instagram. Much safer brotherly territory.

But then there was the last part of her email. The one his brain had desperately tried to slide right off of but had become embedded inside him like a bee sting.

So, I saw the anniversary is coming up next week. I hate calling it an anniversary but you know, there’s no good word for it. I know it’s hard so call me if you want to, okay? Or go to the charity gala, one of us probably should. Just don’t be alone. Promise, Percy.

Of course he’d forgotten, if there was such a thing as wilfully forgetting something. The gala was organised without any input from him, it was a company thing, the purview of their non-profit division. People at work had long ago learned not to bring anything even tangentially connected to the anniversary (Cassie was right, there really was no other word for it) to their boss’ attention.

No doubt the invitation would appear on his assistant’s desk in the next day or so, ready for its annual frosty ignoring before being consigned to the shredder the second the date inscribed on it had passed.

But if Percy was completely honest with himself, as rare as that occasion was, he really didn’t want to face that day alone. He didn’t want to bear it in his usual way. Not that he ever had wanted to get through it by finding a bar and drinking until he passed out but he’d always just sort of sunken into that.

And Cassandra knew it. Hell, she’d been the one who’d had to take a red eye flight to the city and sit by him in the hospital as he’d recovered from getting his stomach pumped last year.

The look on her face when he’d finally woken up and broken down into wracking sobs wasn’t something he ever wanted to see on his baby sister’s face ever again. He wasn’t going to be responsible for adding to her pain ever again.

He finished his email with a single sentence, no context, no other acknowledgement of the hot coals they were both trying to dance around.

I promise, Cassie.

“Holy fuck…I don’t think I have anything that fancy, Freddy,” Vax yelped but he was grinning, excitement already lighting up his face.

Percy smiles, reaching over and tucking Vax’s hair behind his ears, he remembered him saying it annoyed him when it was in his face, “I’ll take you shopping. But wait until you’ve actually been to one of these parties before you thank me for the invite, they’re painfully boring.”

“Probably to you!” Vax maintained his dreamy eyed excitement as he swept his shirt over his head, “I’m gonna drink fancy wine and admire fancy dresses and dance to fancy music. I’ll finally get to use the waltz moves I know.”

“I look forward to seeing them,” Percy let his jeans fall to the floor, “I’ll admit, it might actually be worth my time if you’re with me.”

Vax grins, wiggling out of his boxers, “Freddy, if you need someone to show you that getting drunk in the name of charity can be fun, I’m your man.”

“You are,” Percy’s demeanour became hungry, grinning crookedly as he pulled the now naked Vax against him, spinning him into the shower and under the warm spray of water. The half elf was giggling, legs anchoring around his hips, by the time Percy kissed him up against the tile wall.

It was so easy to smile and laugh and make jokes when he was kissing Vax. It was so easy to forget.

“The car will be here in half an hour,” Percy called out, walking into the living room as he fiddled with his cufflinks. He’d never gotten the hang of these things.

A memory rose up in the back of his mind, unasked for, unbidden. His own hands, awkward and spindly with youth, struggling with a set of cufflinks. Stronger hands, wearing the signet ring that Percy now saw on his own hand every morning, covering his own and guiding them.

Here, son, let me. It takes some getting used to.

Percy cursed as one slipped out of his fingers and hit the hardwood with a sharp crack that rang louder than it actually had been in his ears. The black stone in it fractured, a hairline break down the middle. It must have landed in just the wrong way.

“Whoops,” Vax was suddenly there, scooping up the little shining piece of silver, “Here we go.”

“It’s broken…” Percy frowned, half his brain still somewhere else.

“Not all that much,” Vax reassured him, taking his hand gently and fixing it into place, “It’s still good, see?”

Percy managed a thin smile. It was hard not to smile, seeing Vax all dressed up.

They hadn’t found anything that suited Vax at the place Percy went to get his suits, they’d both agreed everything there was a little too stuffy for his tastes. Instead, they’d turned to Mollymauk Tealeaf, who took the black dress Vax had worn to the ballet and an old suit of Percy’s and made something spectacular.

It was a little bit of both, a black, clinging suit of silken material that flowed down his body as a stunning waterfall of inky fabric, affixed at his wrists to make something not unlike wings. It rippled when he moved and caught the light in the most beautiful ways and made Percy’s mouth a little dry.

It was going to cause a stir, Percy knew with a satisfied smile. It was his name on the silverware, after all.

“You look beautiful,” Percy leaned in and kissed him, quickly so as not to pick up any of his black lipstick. There would be plenty of time to get it in all manner of scandalous places after the party.

“You’re a charmer,” Vax purred, straightening his jacket lapels, “Half an hour, you said?”

Percy could see where his mind was going and he dearly wanted to follow him down that train of thought but he knew letting Vax go into this blind would be a bad idea. So he sighed and gave a little shake of his head.

“Just so you know, love? This night…it’s for the charity that was set up in my parents’ name after they died. Like a memorial thing? So if people treat me weird tonight, that’s why.”

Vax blinked, understandably a little rattled by that, “Oh…right…”

“Sorry,” Percy winced, he couldn’t pretend to be surprised, “That’s a lot to take in at once…”

“Maybe a little,” Vax admitted, hands resting on Percy’s chest, “But…I get it’s a difficult thing to put into words. Thanks for letting me know though, I could see myself putting my foot right in it.”

Percy let himself relax a little into Vax’s contact, safe in the knowledge he’d keep him upright, “All I need from you tonight is to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is probably going to do and not treat me weird. Just…dance with me, let’s make a few people whisper and if you could remind me that I’ve got some pretty amazing sex waiting for me if I make it through tonight, I’d appreciate that.”

Vax smiled and kissed his cheek, “I can absolutely do that.”

“Oh,” Percy hesitates, another wince in his expression, “And don’t let me drink?”

Vax sensed a strong undercurrent of ‘do not ask’ under that so he just smiled and nodded, squeezing Percy’s arm.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay, Freddy. I’ll be with you.”

The party was held in a manor house a little ways out of the city, a place that seemed to have been built purely for ridiculously grand parties like this one. The whole exterior was illuminated by soft dancing lights, making the high stone walls, the flowers in the garden, the couples that filed in all look vaguely angelic and otherworldly.

Vax gawked and stared shamelessly as they moved into this other dimension of cream and silk and champagne. Flower garlands grew up the walls and spread curious fingers across the floor, actually growing if you looked for long enough, filling the room with a fresh, clean scent. Glasses were pressed on them as soon as they entered, full of a wine that actually changed as you sipped it, moving along a spectrum of fruit flavours.

Percy politely waved his on.

There was an upper mezzanine with tables, clearly where the food would be served, but the whole lower floor was kept free for dancing and mingling, what most of the guests were actually here to do. Already groups were forming and breaking up in smooth succession, like leaves borne on an unseen current, snagging and being swept on. The rhythm of it all was odd when seen from above, like a sort of dance.

“I do not belong here,” Vax laughed delightedly, leaning against the balcony.

“Count yourself lucky then,” Percy smirks, straightening his glasses, “Looks like I put on a pretty good party, huh?”

“And all without looking,” Vax chuckled, “Very well done, Mr de Rolo.”

Percy puts his hand on Vax’s, “Well, it’ll raise some money at least. Rich people get really generous when they drink.”

Vax took another drink, tasting tart plum this time. He let his eyes rove over the dance floor below, still finding interesting little finishes he hadn’t noticed yet. The way the candles hovered under some spell, somehow knowing where they were needed, following the larger knots of people. The troupe of musicians, sporting everything from sleek Marquetian guitars to elaborate stringed affairs from the Menagerie Coast, whose music could be turned up or down in any listener’s ears as they wished. There were bowls of iced fruit glistening on an array of tables, the perfect thing to snack on when you knew you had a banquet in an hour. No one was dancing yet, the party still being in its fledgling stages but Vax already had a mind of change that. The people here seemed older, the ones here to network rather than relax, but maybe even they could be convinced if they had a good enough example. Vax saw mostly humans though there were a few with the easy, self-confident air of the Aasimar and, of course, the only other race who could look even more self-possessed-

“Shit,” Vax choked out, suddenly drawing back as if he’d been sprayed with scalding water.

Percy turned, suddenly alert, “What? What’s wrong?”

Ashy with shock, eyes roving for the exits and well aware it was too late to pretend the answer was nothing, Vax mumbled, “I didn’t know Syldor Vessar would be here.”

Percy frowned, “I…yeah, he often comes to things like this…I think my father worked with him on a few projects in the past…Vax, what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” Vax insisted weakly, “Well, no. I mean. He’s my father.”

Percy’s eyes widened behind his glasses. Vax knew he was suddenly seeing matching features, commonalities, making sense of the distinct point to his ears.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you, how could you know?”

Vax was instinctively moving away, acting like a cornered animal, backing up in a secluded alcove. All of the delicately bouncing candles within a five meter radius fled in a heartbeat.

Percy followed, suddenly standing protectively, making himself a shield, “I can have a car here in five minutes, are you okay until then? Or we can just go, we’ll walk a little…”

“No, no…” Vax said quickly, biting his lip, “No, sorry. It was just a shock. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Though it was clear some of the pieces were already in place, Percy asked haltingly, “Was it not…”

Vax pulled a face, “He doesn’t like that I’m trans. He doesn’t like a lot about me, really. And I hate a lot about him. So me and Vex left.”

Anger flashed across Percy’s face, brief but intense, “He what?”

Vax gave a short sigh, “Freddy, three quarters of the people here would probably think he was right. Please don’t go punch him. It won’t win you any friends.”

The anger collapsed under the weight of discomfort, “Oh. I wasn’t going to…”

“Sorry,” Vax shook his head like he was shaking sense into himself, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Seriously, I’m fine. This is your night, I’m here for you.”

“Vax’ildan…”

Vax had his mind made up. It was clear since he’d admitted what this party was for that Percy had taken a long, long time to convince himself to go. He needed to be here, he needed to honour his parents in some small way, even if it was just for an hour. Vax wouldn’t be the reason he caved.

“Seriously, Freddy, it’s fine. The party’s big enough that we can avoid him and even if we do need to say a five second hello…well, fuck, it’s going to actually be fun for him to see me on the arm of someone whose twice as rich as he is. Just don’t tell him I’m technically on the job.”

Percy still looked like he would protest, for honour’s sake, but he let it go and gave a little smile, “You’re not on the job, Vax, not tonight. At least, it doesn’t feel like it. I’m glad you’re here just as my friend.”

Vax swallowed, a feeling he was irritatingly familiar with making its presence known.

Vax’ildan, you’re an idiot.

The party went smoothly for a while.

It was fun, Vax realised, like play acting. Like they’d all raided a parent’s closet for odds and ends, mismatched bits and pieces, makeup that they only had the vaguest idea of how to use but were all having enormous fun enacting scenes from an elaborately illustrated fairy story. They were all aware of the absurdity of it, underneath, but it paled in comparison to the entertainment value.

Vax was reminded of the times he and Molly had gleefully wasted hours in the costume storage rooms of the community theatre, trying on coats that didn’t fit them, hats that were ridiculously small, anything with an excessive amount of beads or sequins, laughing until it hurt.

Quickly and easily, Vax lost himself in the performance of it all. He perched happily on Percy’s arm, always making sure he had a glass at least half full in his hand with which to gesture, listening to the conversations they were pulled into like asteroids being snatched up in the orbits of various planets. They were like a foreign language, talking about places and people he’d never heard of and had to force himself not to laugh out loud at, they seemed so odd. Fortunately, though he hid it much better thanks to years of practise, Percy seemed just as bewildered as Vax did by most of it.

Every so often, he’d interject something, a sprightly little comment or joke, more often than not to save Percy when he’s clearly ran out of things to say. Each new group would look surprised the first time, like they’d assumed he couldn’t talk, like he’d been presumed to be Percy’s handbag or something. But then they’d laugh, either out of politeness or genuine amusement, Vax didn’t care. It was the relieved, grateful little glances from Percy that he cared about.

There were awkward moments, of course, whenever someone he recognised from his and Vex’s years of incarceration with Syldor appeared in that moment’s huddle of listeners. He could see the hesitation on their face every time, the shock, the clear attempt to guess whether the situation had changed, the rumours had been incorrect and he was back in his father’s good graces.

But if any of them had chanced to notice that, despite the undeniable pressure of natural social graces, Syldor and Vax’ildan never ended up in the same circles, they would have had their answer.

There was a moment, in the lull between songs where the chatter seemed to press in a little louder, where Vax had been admiring the flowers again, trying to see if their colours were magical or a feature of the plant itself. His eyes must have slid the wrong way at the wrong time because suddenly he was making direct eye contact with Syldor from across the room. And those eyes were filled with a stunned, scandalised anger.

The part of Vax that was and probably always would be the terrified young teenager who’d lived in fear of those eyes, that look, recoiled in panic. But there was more to him now, a stronger, surer part that simply smiled and squeezed Percy’s arm, prompting him to lean over and kiss his cheek softly. What Syldor’s face did after he saw that, Vax didn’t know.

He didn’t look back.

As if the night couldn’t be more full of surprises, Vax found that his shy, mechanically minded wallflower was a superb dancer.

“You’re a natural!” Vax laughed in delight as they moved in perfect time with the delicate waltz filling the space.

Percy blushed, as Vax knew he would, “I took lessons when I was younger, under threat of having my controllers taken away. All of my siblings did but I think they acquiesced much easier than I did.”

All of your siblings? Vax kept his face very deliberately unchanged.

“The world of dance doesn’t know what it’s lost,” he said confidently, moving through easy, rolling steps around the space. Not many other couples were dancing so they had practically the whole floor.

“Maybe I’m trying extra hard just to keep up with you,” Percy pointed out, tilting his head.

“Ballroom isn’t my thing,” Vax shook his head, “You’ve just got some serious natural talent.”

“Shut up,” Percy laughed coyly but at the very next turn he suddenly dipped Vax low, expertly, in perfect time with the music.

Vax would have kissed him fiercely if he hadn’t been worried any distraction would end with him in a heap on the floor.

Once righted, instead of moving back into hold, Percy paused, taking Vax’s hands in his own, “I...I didn’t think it was possible for me to actually enjoy this night. And I actually kind of have. Or at least, I’ve been able to distract myself enough to…” he flushed bright red, “Anyway. I’m rambling. Thank you, is what I’m trying to say.”

Vax smiled softly, “Don’t mention it, Percy. Seriously, don’t, it looks like you might pull a muscle if you keep trying to.”

Percy snorted at that, “See? This is why I love having you around.”

One of those odd moments followed, the ones where it really felt like someone should have been saying something. A cue had been missed, the progression had halted, empty space that wasn’t supposed to be empty suddenly hung between them.

Percy opened his mouth, looking like he was going to say something but part of him didn’t want to.

And that was when the music stopped, fading into silence in as classy a way as that could be done. Immediately, the people around them began moving back to the mezzanine, apparently all knowing that it was time for food and speeches. Vax felt like he’d missed a memo somewhere.

“Dare me to ask for tomato sauce with whatever fancy stuff they serve?” Vax turned back to Percy, grinning.

As soon as their eyes met, that grin died like a scrap of paper set alight, turned to nothing in half a heartbeat. Percy looked like he was about to throw up, paler even than he usually was, a rabbit suddenly caught in the headlights of a sixteen wheeler.

“Percy?” Vax was alarmed, squeezing his hand, “Percy, what’s wrong?”

There was a clear moment of hesitation, uncertainty, but something seemed to swerve to the left at the very last moment and he fixed a thin, unconvincing smile on his face, “Nothing. I’m hungry, let’s head up there.”

Vax frowned, not sure how he was being expected to believe that but then Percy was moving, taking his hand and leading him towards the stairs without another word. Hesitant to make a fuss, Vax sighed internally and didn’t resist. But he would definitely be bringing it up again on the ride home. Maybe Percy would be able to breathe a little better once it was just the two of them again.

They sat about as far back as they could physically manage without sitting on the floor. Vax was about to ask if they should move closer, surely if it was his company’s whole production, they’d want him visible? His surname was on the logo being projected up on the screen at the front, after all.

But he got the sense that hiding might be the whole point.

There was more fancy wine set out on the table, ones with names even longer than Percy’s. Vax eyed a glass thoughtfully but he had a pleasant, warm buzz going through his veins. Enough to make this party a damn sight more fun but not enough to risk him embarrassing himself. That was a comfortable place to be.

As he was looking, he saw Percy’s hand go out and draw a glass in, a quick, furtive gesture like he was hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.

Vax frowned. He was really getting his intelligence insulted tonight.

“Percy, you said you wouldn’t be drinking?”

Percy’s shoulders tensed, every inch the child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “Just one with dinner. I’ll barely feel it.”

Vax paused, a bad feeling opening up inside him, “You asked me not to let you drink, Percy. There must have been a reason for that. I...I’d feel better if you didn’t.”

That brought Percy’s hand back to his side, if a little reluctantly, accompanied by a defeated sigh, “You’re right…”

Vax bit his lip, that bad feeling growing, “Percy, we don’t have to stay if something’s making you feel uncomfortable.”

He couldn’t read the expression that shifted across Percy’s face in that moment and before he could make any greater effort, the lighting in the room changed and everyone’s attention was politely turned to the front of the dining area, to the lectern before the screen.

An older human man settled there, bringing a neat set of cards from his inside pocket and clearing his throat in the manner of someone who was very comfortable with having about a hundred people listening to his every word.

“Well, firstly, an enormous thank you to all of you. Through your attendance and generosity, we have managed to raise an incredible amount of money to go towards the de Rolo Foundation, even more than in previous years. This money will undoubtedly be instrumental in ensuring those who lose their families to violence have support and care. I am certain the entire de Rolo family would be immensely proud.”

Beside Vax, Percy seemed to sink down lower in his seat as the eyes of everyone who actually knew who he was turned to him in that moment.

“What happened to the de Rolo family was nothing short of a tragedy,” the man continued, voice turning grave rather than celebratory, “Many of you who knew them still feel a strong sense of grief and outrage at how they were taken. Hopefully there is some comfort to be found in the fact that, through our actions here tonight, fewer will suffer as they and their remaining heirs did.”

A picture suddenly took up the screen behind him, replacing the Whitestone logo. Vax felt his chest tighten.

The first of the family in the picture that he recognised was of course Percy. He stood as stiff and aloof as the rest of the people around him who shared his facial features, though he was off to the side somewhat, certainly not the focus, part of the background dressing. There were nine of them, all dressed similarly in what had to be the colours of their family. An older woman and man who were of course the mother and father. The much younger Percy seemed to fall into the middle range of ages. More central was an older young man, placed right between the mother and father. Then a sister. Though they all looked incredibly similar, same angular faces, same hair, most of them wearing glasses, there were two who were identical enough that they had to be twins. That gave Vax a start. A couple of younger siblings too, barely into childhood.

It took him a long time to realise what was wrong, why something wasn’t quite right. And then it clicked, with another unpleasant lurch.

They all had brown hair. Brown as chestnuts, brown as chocolate, brown as mahogany.

And Vax had been picking white hairs off his dark clothing for as long as he and Percy had been an item.

“The loss of nearly the entire de Rolo family was a shock to us all,” the man continued, though his voice seemed further away to Vax, as lost as he was in the picture, “And even worse the years of turmoil that followed before their killers could be brought to justice. Of course we remember and acknowledge the bravery of Percival in his years of ensuring the truth came out and the company could return to his and his sister’s hands. Many thanks to young Percival.”

Vax couldn’t help it, he turned to Percy, confusion and shock on his face.

He wasn’t there. Both he and the bottle of wine from the centre of the table had disappeared.

Suddenly Vax realised everyone was looking at their table, expecting to see Percy as much as he had been, equally as surprised to be staring at an empty seat. There was a long, awkward silence where no one seemed quite sure of what to do.

After a moments carefully considered thought, Vax decided to get up and make a very swift exit.

Night had fallen when none of them had been looking, blissfully ignorant in the shrouds of both magically and mechanically generated lighting. But outside was fully within its arms; the air was chilly, too chilly for evening gowns, the sky was blacker than usual given they were a little outside the city and pierced through with starry pinpoints. The gardens that surrounded the manor had turned to silver and stone, what had been grown looking more like it had been carved or sculpted.

As anxious as he was to find Percy, Vax couldn’t help but feel some relief. He much preferred it out here to in there. In fact, it was only now that he realised he’d practically been holding his breath the entire evening.

He hitched up his skirts with one hand and hurried past flowerbeds and underneath overhead carpets of vine, listening for anything underneath the gentle but ever present trickle of water running somewhere unseen.

The water only seemed to grow louder as he went, naturally pulled into the epicentre of the garden. But underneath it, he managed to pick out a noise that could only be crying, acting as a perfect counterpoint to the rushing and babbling that already filled the space.

It made sense all in the same moment. An enormous fountain sat proudly in the little hidden courtyard that was revealed behind the shrubbery. It’s flow arched into the night sky where it came close to becoming pure moonlight before falling back down into the basin, ready to trace the path again like blood in an ornate, black iron body.

And slumped on the edge of it, sobbing softly with his tears hitting the gravel below like a tiny rainfall, was Percy.

As Vax watched, he groped for the bottle of wine that was resting haphazardly against his legs and drank deeply, an errant trickle running from the side of his lips though he didn’t seem to care. Only when the need for breath forced him to stop did the bottle return to it’s perfectly circular divot in the gravel, not half drained.

Vax lurched forward, forgetting that he’d wanted to make a more gentle entrance, “Percy, no…”

Percy jumped so badly it was a miracle he didn’t pitch backwards into the fountain. That probably would have soured things even more.

“Vax’ildan…”

Wanting desperately to hold him, touch him, fix this somehow but having no clue of how to go about it or if it would even be welcome, Vax just sat beside him on the cold, wet rim of the fountain, eyes wide and sad, “I’m here, Percy, it’s okay…”

“Vax, go back,” Percy croaked, turning his head as if it wasn’t too late to hide the tears, “You don’t have to...go back inside, enjoy yourself.”

“How could I enjoy myself without you?” Vax asked softly, reaching over and taking his hands.

Percy was quiet for a moment before the tears flooded back in with renewed strength, leaving him choking. Vax didn’t hesitate, taking him into his arms, letting him cling on as tight as he needed to. It was hard not to cry himself, listening to the agony that came pouring out like poison from a wound. It was so clear that years and years worth of pain had been locked inside him and were leaving him in one rush.

All he’d been missing had been someone to hold him, someone to tell him it was okay, someone who would say here, hold on to me, it will end.

How long had Percy been living without the reassurance that if he cried, someone would hear him?  

It could have been a lifetime before the tears finally ran their course, Vax didn’t care. But eventually Percy was left choking on air rather than salt water, chest heaving as his body dragged in deep breaths to replace what he’d lost.

“Easy, nice and easy,” Vax encouraged, placing a hand on his back, “You’re okay.”

Percy seemed to be calming down for a few moments until his eyes bulged suddenly and he threw himself to the side, vomiting copiously into the fountain.

Vax winced, reaching over quickly to save his glasses that were about to slip off, “Yeah, we’re never getting invited back…”

“Good,” Percy panted weakly, managing to right himself, “This whole night was a mistake. I don’t know why I keep trying to make this day anything other than a fucking disaster.”

“Well...I think that might be reasonable,” Vax said placatingly, “Given what I’ve come to understand about this day…”

Percy hunched in on himself, guilt clear as day on his face, “I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry. It’s just...it’s so hard to say the words out loud…” This voice grew dangerously thick and fragile.

“Darling, I understand,” Vax murmured, hand making slow, comforting circles across his back, “I’ve been there.”

That caught his attention. Vax hesitated, ready to see the same pity and condolence he’d been seeing in everyone’s eyes for years, the kind that made him feel vaguely ill.

But it didn’t come. The two men looked at each other the way two people who had been blindly fighting their way through a storm would, when they suddenly reached the eye at the very centre and, in the silence, realised they hadn’t been as alone as they thought.

“Who?” Percy asked softly.

“Our mother.”

And just like that he could see her face again, he could hear her voice, feel her fingers combing through his hair. Vax’ildan had a strong, deep resentment of every single piece of his DNA that had come from Syldor bar one. Whichever piece had given him an elf’s exceedingly good memory. Otherwise, who knew how much of his mother he might have lost.

Percy’s hand took Vax’s, fingers threading together, holding on tight. Vax managed to smile, even if it was a little shaky.

Nothing else came of that but both knew it was okay.

“I...I just didn’t expect all that,” Percy finally admitted, sighing deeply, “I didn’t expect the speech about them, actually talking about what happened...but it was, um, the picture. I couldn’t take that.”

Vax nodded slowly, “Have you not…”

Percy shook his head quickly, “No. Even looking at my sister is hard. It must be the same for her, I guess that’s why she ran to the opposite end of the country.”

Vax gently leant his head against Percy’s shoulder, “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

There was a long pause before he could find the right words. Having to open up something you’d hidden away for years wasn’t a simple task, not when every nerve in your body is screaming at you to do the exact opposite.

“I don’t really know what exactly my family did to piss them off,” Percy eventually began, “I don’t want to know either. I don’t care how it started, I care that it’s finished.”

“Who’s them?”

Percy swallowed hard, “The Briarwoods.”

Then it all came out, disjointed and rambling and disconnected but Vax edited it in his own mind after the fact. How one night at dinner after the family had welcomed two guests, a married couple of wealthy socialites, into their home Percy had begun to hear screaming.

He couldn’t remember a lot of the details, which was understandable and probably merciful. What he did remember was the sound of gunfire, muffled barks of exploding muzzles echoing through the hallways of the family home. He remembered blood pooling on the hardwood floors. He remembered pleading. He remembered laughter.

The only thing he could then say for certain was that he ended up outside, running for as long as his body could physically manage before collapsing at Keyleth’s door, his friend from school the only person his fevered mind could think to turn to.

When the sun rose the next day, every paper and news anchor in the city was reporting that his entire family had been killed in a robbery gone wrong. Everyone save himself, who was missing, and his youngest sister Cassandra, who was saved by the intercession of those same guests, the Briarwoods. He recalled a tearful Delilah Briarwood on the news, saying she only wished they could have done more.

In the exact same voice Percy had heard laughing in the blood spattered hallway.

Percy wasn’t fit to leave Keyleth’s sofa for the next few months, nearly broken clean in two by grief. So everything just happened around him, the grateful Cassandra signing over the family’s entire holdings to the Briarwoods in the absence of her brother, the whole company being seized, the locks on every property the de Rolo’s had owned being changed, barring Percy from any kind of financial help.

When he was finally well enough to open his eyes, to face the world around him, he found that he was completely and utterly abandoned by it.

Vax tried to absorb all that, heart hammering in his chest, “So...what did you do?”

“Kiki was happy for me to stay with her but…” Percy pulled a face, “I wasn’t fit to be around anyone. I wasn’t well, I was...drinking a lot. She kept trying to get me to go to therapy but that would mean people knowing I was alive and, with the Briarwoods still out there, with all of the money and protection I’d lost, I didn’t that that was such a good idea…”

“How did no one know?” Vax felt anger in the back of his throat, “Didn’t they investigate? Work out that the people who were pretty much strangers that had come to the house might have had something to do with the murders that happened that very night?”

Percy shrugged, “They had magic and money on their side. Delilah was a powerful magic user but...well, I doubt it was ever really needed. You’d be surprised how much suspicion and supposed authority can be turned aside by putting coin in the right pockets.”

Vax scowled down at the stones, feeling the injustice but also the truth of that burn in his chest. He’d seen Syldor do it enough times.

“So...I got a job as a mechanic. My father had always told me my tinkering would be nothing but a distraction but it was what got me through those years. That and not caring that the cars I was fixing were obviously stolen and I was being paid off the books.”

“Seriously?” Vax couldn’t help being a little impressed by that.

Percy gave a wayn smile, “If any police officer had looked in my workshop, they’d have found enough to put me in jail for a very long time. But bribery is not just the purview of the rich, thank the gods…” he looked back at his hands, “So I spent a long time not being Percival de Rolo. I just made as much money as I could, tried desperately to keep myself alive and spent years thinking of how to rescue my sister and make the Briarwoods suffer.”

The tone of Percy’s voice in that moment worried Vax, his smile falling into a concerned frown, “Understandable…”

Percy didn’t seem to pick up on it, “I was going to do something stupid. Very stupid. But fortunately, despite my being a shitty friend and all round terrible person, Keyleth stuck by me. She convinced me to hire a lawyer instead, do it through the courts. Gods, it was a nightmare. It took years longer than I wanted it to, I was on the verge of tearing my hair out or just finally drinking enough that I’d never wake up again.”

Vax’s stomach dropped.

“But then I’d think of Cassie,” Percy’s voice quietened, “How she must have felt as alone as I did. How I couldn’t let her down. Gods only know what they put her through while they had her, she won’t talk to me about it. Every second I was wasting feeling sorry for myself and falling asleep in gutters was another second she was under their power. And if I died then...then her hope died too.”

“But you did it,” Vax said quietly, squeezing his hand, “I’m not a big news watcher but I remember it a little now, I just never connected it to you. How you got the Briarwoods convicted, got custody of your sister back, everyone saw them for what they were. I remember everyone talking about how you were a hero, Percy.”

Percy grunted, nudging the wine bottle over with his toe so it’s contents spilled across the stones, “Maybe. But there’s still days I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier just building myself a gun and shooting them both in the heart.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vax said firmly, turning him a little so they were facing each other, “And you didn’t. And that makes you better than them, Percy. That’s what makes you a hero.”

Percy managed to meet his eyes, though he still looked so young and so scared, “Then why does it hurt so much?”

“Because what happened to you was awful,” Vax said without hesitation, touching his face with a gentle hand, “It was unimaginably awful, most people couldn’t have survived it. And you’re allowed to feel that hurt. You’re allowed to cry. But I promise, one day, this pain will be manageable. You’ll be able to carry it.”

“How?” Percy whispered brokenly, desperation in his eyes, “I...I just can’t see how. I’m not strong enough.”

“I’ll help you be,” he murmured, stroking his thumb back and forth across his cheekbone, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Percy swallowed hard, resting his forehead against Vax’s for a long moment. Sometimes words just weren’t enough.

Eventually he mumbled, like a child tired after a long day, “I’d like to go home now.”

“That sounds good to me, darling,” Vax smiled, “Let’s go brush your teeth, huh? Cos your breath is really...interesting right now.”

Percy laughed weakly, letting the half elf pull him to his feet, “Wine and vomit. Sorry your sugar daddy turned out to be a huge mess.”

“Ah, I’m sure there’s way worse than you out there,” Vax put his arm around the taller man, glad then he was wearing heels or the effect would be a little ruined, “And you have better reason than most.”

It took a few moments for their car to be brought around to the front of the house. A few moments to sit in a stronger breeze and catch their breath, to let the tears dry on Percy’s cheeks and for them both to realise that they’d had nothing to eat all evening and would definitely be stopping for a McDonalds on the way home, if they could convince their chauffeur to go through the drive through.

Feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his life, feeling like he might be on the way towards some kind of healing, Percy murmured, “You know...sometimes I think Percy de Rolo died that day too. Like I haven’t been myself since.”

Vax looked over at him, through his rapidly unravelling hairdo, strands of black hair falling into his eyes. The party behind them, faint with distance, had become just a soft background to their soft little moment.

Vax’ildan you poor fucking fool.

“I like who you are now, Percy.”