#brothaende

@brothaende​

They aren’t the kinds of magazines Molly reads.

No, the ones Molly thumbs through are in the checkout line at the supermarket. They’re loaded with grainy paparazzi photos of local celebritants and wild conspiracy theories, like the one about King Dwendal’s decades long tryst with a frost ogre, or how the Bright Queen is really three kobolds in dark elven couture. There’s always a page of horoscopes in the back and Molly doesn’t know his birthday, let alone his star sign, but he always painstakingly combs through them all to cherry pick the one that seems likeliest (this week he’s the Sextant and must be cognizant of new beginnings).

No, these are Caleb-magazines, he can tell. Molly picks one up. The cover is framed in goldenrod yellow with a photograph of a bronze dragonborn child on the front. There is a grip of fresh, dark soil in her palms, a pale green sprout curling up towards her blunted snout.  

Molly glances towards Caleb, his face buried in some book, his fox red hair long enough before his eyes that he can’t see them. Those gloved fingers tap-tap-tap away; must be some book. He turns back to the magazine in his hands and flips it open at random. He’s greeted with a glossy, 2-page spread of–he squints at the fine print–an aerial view of Dra-co-nia. Draconia. It’s beautiful, glitters with verdant life velveted over ancient ruin.

He turns back a page. It takes him a moment to read the title of the article,  Draconia: Twenty Years After the Fall.

Molly’s mesmerized. Here, a honeycomb wall of domiciles set against a mountain’s slope, two dragonborn shop owners in jewel tone robes laughing and smoking outside what appears to be a cafe. There’s a woman, half elf by the looks of it, with wild red hair and antlers curving from her head and dressed in the most magnificent cloak he’s ever seen, grasping the hands of an elderly ravenite. Molly likes her face immediately. The world is so much bigger than the Menagerie Coast, and it’s just…out there, impossibly huge.

Molly’s attention drifts to Caleb again, where it lingers.

It’s nothing.

Really.

But he remembered, and what kind of person makes good on offhanded comments? His tail curls with a jingling susurrus of thin chains. They’re just magazines, Tealeaf, he chides himself. He bookmarks the page with his fingers and crosses to the window seat, climbing into it and stretching out best he’s able.

“'Bout bloody time!” he cracks around a grin. “Now you’ll never be rid of me. Don’t think you thought this through, sweetheart.” 

Molly imagines a world where he suggests Caleb tuck his hair behind his ear so he can better see his face – would he listen to that too?

He takes a deep, steadying breath. Any deeper and he’d float away like a helium balloon. 

Stop putting weight places it doesn’t belong.

when beau approaches caleb, she does so akin to a bull in a china shop: with a sigh that’s more of a groan, she all but drops herself into the chair, two of its legs lifting up with the momentum, her elbow over the back and feet wide and, really, anything but proper. 

then she stares at him, measuring, challenging, blue eyes narrowed.

they move together at the back of the group, holding up the end but never slowing. there’s no time to stop, to pull themselves together. there’s no healing to be had even if they could.

beau made sure the last potion amongst them went to better use. 

she’s grateful for her expositor robes. for how they cover her abdomen the way her old clothes never did. she’s grateful for the darkness of the cloth; even caleb at her side cannot see how the blood seeps through slowly. 

slowly, but not slowly enough. 

he still has injuries of his own, but his gait is steady, unfaltering, his breathing heavy but not ragged as their feet pound dirt in a constant rhythm. her side screams in pain, but for a moment all she feels is relief. 

he’s okay. all her friends are okay. 

the group begins to slow, splitting off ahead now in what she assumes is an attempt to scout the area and maybe set up camp. she thinks she hears fjord’s voice, but her blood is so loud in her ears she can’t make out what he’s saying. 

she tells herself he’s just too far ahead. 

caleb comes to a stop beside her, and she can find no excuse for why his words reach her only in garbled murmurs. she shakes her head, though she’s not sure if it’s to try and clear it or to try and tell him she didn’t understand.  

she reaches out to clap him on the shoulder. their usual gesture. their signal: i am here, i am okay, i’ve got your back. but as her fingers finds the rough cloth of his coat she feels her knees buckle. all her weight, all her focus on one point of palm to arm. 

“ shit- “ 

beau barely hears the word even as it spills from her own lips, barely hears her short, quiet cry of pain. she doesn’t even feel herself fall; she’s too lost in the blazing agony below her ribs and the brief darkness that swallows her vision. 

the next thing she knows, she’s half on the ground and half gripped by caleb who’s shaking her, saying something she can’t make out.

a sudden fear bubbles up, irrational, overpowering everything else, and she tries to form the words that stumble through her mind. 

“ don’t- don’t tell them. caleb, don’t fucking- “ 

she tries to grip the collar of his coat but she can barely lift her arm, her fingers so heavy and cold and useless as she tries to curl them in fabric. 

her mind turns to the diamond, their last, and for a moment she feels a laugh of near hysterical relief well in her chest. she doesn’t have to die. she doesn’t want to die. 

it’s the first time she can remember wanting to live so badly. 

but by the time the sound escapes her it is nothing more that a terrible, wet cough that tastes too much like blood. by the time it escapes her the memory has caught up of that diamond turning to pure powder like fresh pollen as it dragged caduceus back to them. 

she does laugh now, the moment of stinging irony seeming strangely funny as she feels her body going numb. 

“ caleb…… i think i……. fucked up… “  

it’s all she can choke out, all she can push her remaining strength to. she thinks maybe she manages to squeeze his shoulder as the world slips away, but it might just be a trick of her mind. 

distantly she can still hear caleb and it sounds like he’s yelling now, though the words are farther and more foreign than ever. 

her lips part to respond but she’s too tired to even pull air into her lungs, too tired to string together a sentence. 

everything is so heavy.

it feels a lot easier to save her next words for molly. 

          kiri was sure she had seen the familiar red headed scruffy looking man coming up to the door, scrambling like mad there before the knock even came. the child all but ignores the questioning calls from her family, eyes sparkling with excitement as she jumps a short distance to grab the door knob, turn it, and open to reveal-

          -someone who looks like the red headed scruffy man...but isn’t scruffy anymore. kiri’s little eyebrows furrow, staring up at the nicely clothed fellow with his hair tied back in a pony tail, clean shaven... and she waits a long moment before she realizes, yes, this must be him.

｡○✧☽  /  accepting  /  @brothaende

     molly is not one to regard boundaries much, in the sense that, he himself, is very touchy, and enjoys it when others are. he can read the room, and he makes judgement calls based on that, typically- for example, jester likes things like hugs or hand holding any time. nott can really only be picked up by caleb, and beau has let molly hug her a few times. those are the BEST hugs.

     with caleb, often, molly doesn’t touch him unless caleb initiates it. hands on shoulders, a bit of arm guiding, sometimes molly gets to be caleb’s steadying pair of eyes and ears when frumpkin is in use. but otherwise, molly picks and chooses his moments of actually touching caleb.

     so, on a particular day, when molly finds his face being lightly cradled between caleb’s gloved hands, fingertips brushing against the freckled purple skin, a smile curling up molly’s dark lips as he looks to find and meet caleb’s eyes. he looks at those seas of blue for a long moment before raising an eyebrow, questioning but not protesting. in fact, to be a bit of shit, in this rare moment he has, molly even turns his head to simulate the act of nuzzling into caleb’s palm, grinning with pure mischief all over his face when he turns his head straight again, fangs protruding in a very telltale sign of delight.

｡○✧☽  /  accepting