enter in, interim

    He pulls an incredulous face.   “Yes for real; why would you ask me to do something if you don’t want me to agree to it?”   ( Part of him knows, part of him, of course, knows that she still wants it, that she will keep asking in the hopes that he will say yes, that she will be delighted every time. )

     And then, long-sufferingly, and smiling in truth:   “Don’t give me time to regret it.”

     You don’t need to tell her thrice!

     “Oh. My. Gosh, Caleb, you are going to feel so. Good.” His smile is perhaps mirrored in hers, only it’s tenfold, and she has a confident air to her as she pushes away from the table, hiking her sleeves past her elbows so that they don’t get in the way of this very important business. Of course she’s talking all the while: “My mama used to let me practice on her all the time, and sometimes she’d practice on me, except, you know, she’s like absolutely amazing, so it’s not like she needed the help anyway...”

     That’s an awful lot of words. It doesn’t take that many words for her to stop behind Caleb at his chair -- in fact, only the few -- but... her fingers hesitate behind the nape of his neck for several seconds, and: 

     She leans around, so that she can see him, and he her. 

  Caleb watches her evenly, and if the effect is studied… well, at least he studies well. Except that in spite of himself, her posturing brings a little smile to his lips. Who is he, after all, to deny her the opportunity to show off and brag a bit?

  He folds his arms across his chest.

     “Show me what you’ve got, Lavorre.”

      -- -- !

      Slam! Jester’s hands slap onto the table and she stands, chair scraping back with all of her excitement. 

      See, here’s the thing: as much as it would have been nice to do such a thing for Caleb... She also knows him. Like, knows him, knows him -- or so she likes to think. And there’s for sure a lot more posturing she could have done, lots of sly little comments and pushing -- but had he said no, of course she would have respected his wishes. And she expected it. Really expected the refusal --

     But.

     But!!?

  Caleb’s expression shifts wary, toward what are you going to ask me to do the second before she follows up. He can already hear the return of a refrain that has become common in his life, and all the Nein’s: Jester Lavorre is impossible to say no to.

  ( It is… preferable. To what might be stuck in his head otherwise. And he doesn’t so much mind being weak-willed in this one thing. It’s only that he cannot predict what will happen when his final resolve meets her inevitable disappointment, and — and he had better not try, now. Not yet. )

  Caleb does straighten, then. It isn’t to his full height, because he remains seated, but his shoulders unclench, surprisingly broad. His gaze comes at her from above, instead of sideways.

     “If you mean that you are offering,”   he begins, and his tone is cool at first, like the ice-blue in his eyes, but it softens, turns mild,   “I get plenty of help from you already.”

      That’s what she notices, this fleet-foot notion that flits from her brain just as quickly as many other thoughts: surprisingly broad.

     “The pain is not your enemy. It is your focus.”

     They are in a dark room. The light would hinder results; if there is any green glow to the crystal, it will be seen. Even the lightest of embers. There is a silence except for a barely stifled laboring for breath. He is behind his student. Behind the wooden chair in which he sits. Behind the scorched brick wall -- a target -- ahead.

      The words are very literal. 

       His arms are folded. There is little inflection to his voice; Bren, of course, will hear the disappointment in the clipped commands.

  His eye catches hers as she — is she trying to imitate his accent? his voice? — and for a long moment he watches expressionlessly. He sits up a little higher, now propped on his elbows, but his shoulders are still high, an ever-present knot of tension between them. Then Caleb takes a short breath, about to protest this caricature of him. And stops. And exhales again, eyelashes dropping, shaking his head.

     “I don’t think I can do that. Look at you, you are nothing but muscle.”

     A pause.

     She kind of -- heh. Dips her chin towards herself, that shade of bashful and also very prideful that she has, that glittering side-glance matching the small shimmy of her shoulders. There’s totally a blush there, for those who look. “Caaaaaaleb -- you don’t need super strength to have a straight back, you know.”

     And then: a gasp! She leans forward, all excitement once again.

     “Caleb -- Caleb -- Caleb -- Caleb --”

     It’s the first thing she gasps when her eyes come back to the Xorhouse, and the third, fourth, fifth things she says too, scrambling from her bed with such speed and little care that Beau sits up from her own bed, a bleary “Jester?” following her out the door. Her feet and her heart are both pounding and with each turn around the house corners her tail whips to keep her balance and she doesn’t even knock or warn them beyond the ruckus she makes in racing here and --

  Caleb hunches in an instinctively protective shell over the books, Xhorhassian mythology on the one hand and grimoire on the other. In his shirt sleeves, the freckles on his shallow collarbone show, as do the muscles in his shoulders. Nott has braided his hair to keep it out of his eyes, after she saw the way he had knotted it up and winced.

  He has not paid much attention to what Jester is doing, although he — he has not been able to devote it completely to his own task with her there, flicking her tail out of rhythm and pursing her lips at him every few minutes. The fine hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck rise, when she studies him. But not, exactly, in an unpleasant way. Not exactly.

     He tries not to look up.   “What do you mean? You have been traveling with me for months.”

    “--Well yeah, but!!”

    Oh, how her nose scrunches in her own self defense!

    “You’re always like thiiiiiiis.” As her voice dips into her faux low growl, Jester slouches just as much, if not more so, than Caleb usually does. Her hair, having grown since their adventure started and is resting loose today billows out against the table and her journal, and her fingers curl around its edge like butterflies. 

     “Caleb--?”

     She’s chilling with him under the company of four dancing globules of light in the library slash alchemical lab slash office -- ( “Oh! Are you reading, Caleb? Cannnnn I -- join you? I’m not really going to read -- well, maybe I am --” ) -- and is halfway into a page of her journal, tail lashing dancing shadows against the wall in focus when the thought comes to her. Caleb’s form next to hers on the page is all robe and feet, so far, all ink, and she touches the end of the quill to her lips, an excitable question meeting the feather.