#andrewserkis

He dutifully brought out his own spellbook, with a more petulant air than he perhaps intended if the roll of Caleb’s eyes was anything to go by, and set it down beside Caleb’s own book. 

“Take this off,” Caleb ordered, already tugging Essek’s cloak off of his shoulders. If Essek wasn’t irritated by his injury and Caleb’s continued disregard for his own safety, the way Caleb was taking charge and ripping off his clothes might have led to a far more enjoyable evening. As it stood Essek had a bone to pick with his partner. 

“You shouldn’t have focussed on me,” Essek scolded. He hissed as Caleb applied a thick green ointment to the scrapped skin around his arm. The absorber’s tail had wrapped around his arm tightly and when Caleb had launched a more compact and slightly less volatile version of Brenatto’s Fluffernutter to drive the beast back, the abrasive hide of its tail had ripped away a layer of his skin with it. 

Caleb muttered darkly in Zemnian before switching back to common to further scold him, “You were the one who drew its attention first.”

Essek stiffened as Caleb finished painting the tender skin in ointment, hiding the red that was such a jarring difference to his usual violet skin tone. Moments like this were a stark reminder of the life he had now chosen and how often he was proved to be an amateur at it. It never failed to make something horrible and cowardly curl in his gut, questioning his very reason for being there, whenever their hands and clothes were soaked in their own blood. Caleb began to wrap the wound from the shoulder, unaware of the familiar turmoil of Essek’s thoughts as he focussed on the task at hand. 

“Because it had joined its mate in targeting you, I was attempting to even the field a little,” Essek pointed out and Caleb pulled with bandage unnecessarily tight in retaliation for Essek’s logic. 

“I was fine.”

Essek growled and poked sharply at Caleb’s still healing side, the thin shirt was beyond the aid of a mending spell and the skin beneath had only just begun to knit itself back together. Essek could still see the violently red torn muscles as Caleb doubled over for a moment hissing through his teeth, “Yes, perfectly fine,” Essek snapped. 

Caleb looked ready to retort but seemed to take a moment to collect himself. After a few deep breaths he looked back at Essek, his gaze was fond but subtly mixed with a thread of grief that made something in Essek’s stomach curdle like he had eaten one of Jester’s stale cupcakes. There was a fear there that Essek knew far too well. 

“Perhaps next time we should bring Dagen?” Caleb suggested and Essek let his own  frustration bleed away. What use was anger when the battle was already done? He had no desire to attack Caleb, the very thought of it made him sick with half-remembered nightmares. 

He did want another shot at the absorber though but that, he was aware enough to know, came from a more animalistic rage than anything resembling intelligence. There was something primal and deeply alluring about the joy of taking down the beast that had hurt Caleb. But Essek was not a fighter by nature and he shied away from the dangerous potential of such thoughts. He knew where the line was, he’d crossed it already but Caleb both affirmed and muddied where his morality lay now. 

“Perhaps,” he muttered as he focussed on Caleb as he finished bandaging Essek’s hand. In stark contrast to earlier, his touch was soft as silk as he tied off the bandage. He held Essek’s hand between both of his, rubbing his thumb delicately over Essek’s skin. 

“We need someone to keep us in check, as I suspect neither of us will cease trying to protect the other,” Caleb mumbled with a small bittersweet smile. To love someone, Essek was learning, was to also know some measure of pain. Not unlike the tether essence spell, so often what happened to one of them reflected on the other. Essek would have despised the connection, the believed weakness of it all not long ago. But the Mighty Nein had changed him, Caleb had changed him. He couldn’t pretend it was a detriment anymore. There was strength in the bonds they’d all forged and he realised now how his life had been lacking something fundamental. 

Essek leant forward enough to push their foreheads together, “And you think Dagen is the man for the job? I believe we may annoy him enough that he’ll drop us down a ravine and offer a sad but humiliating obituary for our friends.” 

Caleb laughed lightly, “You may be right schatz, we may have to ensure he’s well paid.”

“Or at least offer only half up front,” Essek suggested, brushing their noses together. Caleb sighed, leaning into the affection but still carrying tension in his shoulders. 

“You vex me liebling,” Caleb mumbled and Essek snorted, stifling an undignified giggle. 

“As you test me,” he pointed out. 

Caleb chuckled slightly before sobering quickly, he breathed in deeply a few times as though trying to commit Essek’s very essence to his memory before exhaling a long resigned sigh, “Do not fall for my benefit,” he begged quietly, a lifetime of old grief in his shaky tone that made Essek’s heart ache something fierce. 

Essek reached out with his good hand to cup Caleb’s cheek gently, smiling a little as Caleb turned to kiss his palm, “Only if you can guarantee the same Caleb Widogast.” 

He tilted his head up to place a delicate kiss on Caleb’s furrowed brow, pressing all his love and hopes into the familiar action that once rearranged his own future. It was hardly the promise his heart wanted to make but it was far more sensible than what their fates usually dictated of the two of them.