#published fic

They are departing for Nicodranas in the morning. Caleb stares at the ceiling of his bedroom in the Xhorhaus, and marvels at how things are changing, how things will continue to change. Nott will get her body back again. (Veth, her name is Veth the Brave, he mustn’t forget.) Yasha has returned to them. Caleb himself is making leaps and bounds in his study of dunamancy. He has used it to create a brand new spell, albeit with the help of his friends. (The control and manipulation of time itself is perhaps not such a pipe dream as he once thought, if they will help. Or perhaps he must get stronger yet.)

This is what Caleb muses, one hand absent-mindedly petting Frumpkin, when there is the shumf of a teleport taking root, and Essek falls into the room. Caleb sits up in bed immediately, dislodging Frumpkin, and Caleb doesn’t stop to shush or comfort his familiar’s yeowl of complaint because Essek is disheveled, Essek is bleeding.

“What has happened?” he asks, reaching out. “Are you injured? I’ll call for Jester—no, for Caduceus—”

“Don’t, please,” Essek says weakly, and Caleb can see now that while he is bloodstricken, Caleb can see very few visible wounds. A bruised face, a few scratches. No, the Shadowhand has appeared drenched in the blood of strangers.

“I merely came to say—” Essek’s face scrunches as if he had eaten a lemon. “No, that’s not right. I needed to tell you— ah, this is difficult. This was a mistake, I’m sorry.”

“Peace, friend,” Caleb urges. “Come sit, tell me what happened.”

When he reaches out for Essek’s hand, to his great surprise, he is allowed to take it, and he leads Essek over to his desk.

“Thank you,” Essek says weakly. “I’m sorry, I think I’m going into shock. There were— I had— I was, you might say, victim of… an attack, in my towers.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Caleb asks immediately, before his mind catches up. “Who attacked you?”

“Ah. I believe they were Scourgers.” Essek avoids his gaze, and then seeks it out as Caleb startles and starts to lock up. “Ah, please don’t worry. You are safe.”

“That is not my concern”, Caleb says. “That they would risk an attack on a high-standing member of the Dynasty, mere days before the peace talks…” His mind is racing. It races, in particular, to a theory that Caleb had been holding close to his chest, and had recently set aside as paranoia. Please, no, he thinks. “Have you informed your superiors?”

“Yes, I have.” He is lying. “I am… I am scared, my friend.” Essek curls in on himself. “I am going to be taking, ah… you might say a leave of absence, for a while. I wanted to come see you, before…”

Suspicion is roiling in Caleb’s stomach, forever a friend of anxiety and fear. He can’t tell which is strongest.

“Will I see you again?” he asks. His voice is even, he hopes.

“I hope so,” Essek says, and he looks Caleb in the eye, hesitates, and reaches out to take his hand. “You have been… all of you… I never had friends before, you know. I’m so very glad that I got the chance— to teach you. To know you.”

He smiles, and there is blood in the crease of his cheek. There’s a beat, a moment where Caleb finds he is holding his breath, and it all escapes him at once in a gust of air when Essek presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I wish I could have gotten to know you better,” he whispers, wistful.

“You make it sound like you’ll die as soon as you walk out the door,” Caleb says carefully. “Like you and I will never get the chance to know each other.”

Essek smiles again, but his face goes slack, eyes wide, as Caleb reaches out with his free hand to wipe the blood from the single dimple that Caleb recently discovered exists.

“You had something,” he says, gesturing. Essek blinks, and then he looks at Caleb’s mouth.

Caleb’s mouth is, incidentally, dry.

“Can I…” Essek leans in slightly. He swallows. “Caleb Widogast, may I…?”

One breath, two breaths between them, and Caleb nods. Essek closes the distance and there are lips on his. It is… sweet. Chaste. When Essek pulls back, Caleb wets his lips. “Who are you scared of offending?” he asks. Essek startles, brow quirked, and Caleb huffs a laugh to himself. “Try this,” he offers, a little sarcastic, a little teasing, as he reaches out to clasp the back of Essek’s neck and reel him in for another kiss: a proper one, deep and searching. He delights in flicking his tongue over Essek’s sharp eyeteeth, in learning the shape of his nose as they press closer, in the bereft noise that Essek makes when he pulls back that almost sounds like an angry mrrp that Frumpkin would make.

Caleb wants to kiss Essek again, he realises.

Caleb might not ever kiss Essek again, he realises.

Essek seems to be going through the exact same thought journey, a violet blush high on his cheekbones. He licks his lips and coughs. “Thank you,” he says formally, as if he were not still soaked in blood, as if they had not just swapped spit.

“My pleasure,” Caleb responds. Then: “Don’t go.”

Essek shakes his head. “I’m not safe. You aren’t safe.”

“You are a dangerous man, and so am I. You killed them, yes? The Scourgers.”

“Some of them.” Essek looks conflicted. Caleb wishes he could have seen it, that powerful dunamancy in motion.

“It will take them a while to send more. We have a little time.”

A shudder. “I would like to spend it with you,” he confesses. “I merely fear that it is… unwise.” His hand comes up to cup Caleb’s ear, his cheek. His fingers are elegant, shorter than Caleb’s—his entire hand is small, Essek is small when he is not floating—and cold against his skin. Caleb shivers, and when Essek makes to pull away in apology he covers that hand with his own.

They stand like that for a moment, breaths intermingling, and then Essek slumps forward, letting their foreheads touch. “Caleb Widogast,” he says. “While I may be a specialist in matters of time, I fear that I don’t know a way out of this one. For want of a better solution…” He swallows. “May I stay the night?”

Caleb kisses him again.

“That’s a yes, right?” Essek asks when they separate.

“Foolish man,” Caleb laughs. “Yes, it’s a yes, now come here.” He sits on Essek’s lap, and his desk chair lets out a groan of protest. The Shadowhand makes no such complaints, and instead fists his hands in Caleb’s nightshirt.

“I must be in a state,” Essek says, apologetic.

“We’ll both be, by the end of this.” He links his hands behind Essek’s neck, pulls him close and leans in to kiss across a sculpted cheekbone, down jaw and neck and throat. “I hope you don’t mind that it’s been a while for me,” he murmurs.

“I bet I’ve been longer,” Essek says, breathless.

“Fifteen years,” Caleb challenges.

“Try fifty.” Essek smirks, but his cheeks are flushed and his eyes wary.

“You win.” Caleb rises a little to press their foreheads together. “Let’s remedy that for both of us, then.”

Essek settles his hands on Caleb’s waist, squeezing firmly, and his fingers slip underneath the loose cotton of his house clothes, seeking skin. He traces up Caleb’s knobby spine, seeking out each new vertebra as he plants kisses to the hollow of his throat.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he says between presses of his lips. “I’m sure there are some differences between humans and elves, but you might have to guide me—I’m assuming your ears are no more sensitive than the rest of you?”

“Meaning yours are?” Caleb grins wickedly, reaching out to trace a pointed edge and watching Essek’s face scrunch up.

“Yes,” he answers. “But I was asking after you, Caleb Widogast.”

“What you’re doing now is perfect.” With Essek occupied with sucking bruises on his collarbone, Caleb decides to up the ante, and rocks his hips—he has to scrabble for purchase with his knees against the chair, but he deeply enjoys the throaty sound Essek makes.

“None of that,” he says reproachfully. “You’ll have us both on the floor for your mischief.”

Caleb waggles his eyebrows. Essek raises his own primly, and they both crack a grin, huffing laughs.

“Perhaps we might move things to your bed, if you are so eager,” Essek offers, hand playing across the drawstring collar of Caleb’s shirt.

“Yeah, well, it’s such a long walk…” Caleb looks to the bed, a mere few feet away, with wistful eyes.

Essek sighs and mutters something under his breath in Undercommon, and Caleb flails when Essek stands up, holding Caleb up firmly with his hands on his rear. His arms end up thrown around Essek’s neck, and they float like that to the bed, where Essek drops him down and then crawls over him.

“So this is that dangerous potentiality of dunamancy I have heard so much about,” Caleb teases, and he’s taken aback at the sheer fondness in Essek’s eyes, the wet shine there.

“I adore you,” he says, and Caleb doesn’t know what to say to that. I could love you would be suitably romantic in turn. I fear you are the traitor we seek would rather ruin the moment, he feels. You entrance me so much that I am here, vulnerable and wanting, despite the weight of my crimes and yours, if I am right about you is altogether too wordy. In the face of all these things he cannot say he merely pulls Essek down for another kiss, and hopes that his passion says what his words cannot.

Essek pulls back with his eyes still full of emotion, but he is smiling now. “Perhaps we should disrobe,” he suggests.

“This must be why they call you a prodigy.”

Essek tugs at Caleb’s sleepshirt; the gaping collar makes his work easy, as does Caleb’s eagerness to raise his arms. “Do you ever stop joking?” he asks, a little flustered as he goes to unfasten the neck of his own robes. Caleb helps, unclasping cloak and jacket, hands seeking out the fine pearl buttons that decorate even what seems to be a comfortable house-shirt. His retort vanishes as he peels away layer after layer, finding yet more undershirts each time.

“Do you even have skin?” he asks, baffled.

“Hush,” Essek shushes him, face burning. “Foolish man.”

Caleb makes a victorious noise when he finally, finally strikes gold and feels the smooth pane of Essek’s chest. “Let me see,” he whispers, tugging the last, diaphanous vest away so he can better look at Essek’s long neck, slender torso, the wispy fine hairs gathered under his arms and on his chest and belly.

“I thought elves were hairless,” he remarks, leaning down to press a kiss into that thatch. He realises, immediately after, that he has pressed it over Essek’s heart, can feel it rabbit-quick under his lips, and panics. Too much, too much. He kisses lower, takes a nipple into his mouth, pretends that was his goal the entire time.

“When we are children, maybe— ah,” Essek gasps. He cups Caleb’s head with his hands, tracing the contours of his face lovingly, fingers lingering over the edges of his ears. Caleb smirks against a violet pectoral before coming back up to kiss at Essek’s neck.

Essek cradles the back of his head and does his best to turn his head, pressing faint kisses to wherever he can reach, mostly peppering them into Caleb’s hair. His other hand returns to Caleb’s spine, fingers seeking out skin hungrily. He lingers over every scar, traces over where Caleb is still slender over his ribcage. When Caleb takes skin between his teeth, Essek reaches down to pinch his backside warningly.

“Mind yourself, young man,” he whispers.

“Okay,” Caleb groans. “I don’t think that had the effect you were hoping for.”

Essek lifts an eyebrow and slides his hand over Caleb’s hip, going to ghost over where he is half-hard in his trousers. “Pinching does it for you?” he asks, incredulous.

“Not quite...” Caleb leans back into the pillows so he can tug his fly open and give them both a little more room to work with. He can see that Essek is in a similar state, and the sight is striking: Essek, wanting, in Caleb’s bedroom. There are streaks of rust on his face, still, on his hands. Caleb takes them both and pulls Essek down into another searing kiss, because it is easier than reckoning with the fact that he would like to stay and flirt like this forever; that he would like to keep Essek in his bed forever.

Essek is slow to pull back—in fact, he keeps ducking back in for more kisses, he holds on to Caleb’s lower lip like he hopes to take it home with him. Caleb gets a little drunk on it, a little dizzy, finds that he chases after him every time, and he makes a noise of upset when Essek draws back onto his knees to pull Caleb out of his trousers. His pettiness is only soothed away when Essek takes him in hand and begins to stroke, leaning down to press their foreheads together. Caleb refuses to close his eyes, even with the proximity, wants to take every second of this in so he can replay it in his memory.

“What do you want?” Essek murmurs, eyes burning into his, mouth a mere inch away from Caleb’s own.

Caleb arches up, reaches up to lock his hands behind Essek’s neck. “You,” he says dumbly.

Essek smiles, his eyes crinkling and shining. “Be more specific,” he says, and Caleb hones in once again on his dimple. He may have started the war between their two nations, and he has his hand on Caleb’s cock, and he has a dimple.

“Fuck me?” Caleb asks.

Essek startles and slows in surprise. They both do, in fact—Caleb hadn’t meant to say that. It isn’t wise, not with the things left unsaid between them, not with secrecy hanging as it does, not when there is much to be done on the morrow and Caleb needs to be in good form to go to Nicodranas. But right now, wisdom is losing out to desire, is losing out to longing, is losing out to want. Caleb wants, so badly. Wants to feel Essek in him, wants to see him tremble apart, wants to see his face open and wanting.

“Oh,” Essek breathes out, his eyes wide and so, so dark. He dives back in for a searing kiss, abandoning Caleb’s hardness to cup his face with both hands, something wet and all-consuming, and now his cheek and beard are slightly sticky. A lean dark thigh slips between Caleb’s own, and they rock together until Essek finally pants, “Oil?”

“What, do you not know the cantrip?” Caleb asks, blinking.

“No, I do not know ‘the cantrip’,” Essek sounds flustered. “Don’t you have,” he gestures with a hand, “a sex drawer?”

Caleb grins. He swallows a laugh only barely, lifts a single finger to say, “I feel like I need to see this drawer at some point.”

Essek nips at that finger sullenly.

“I’m sure I have something that’ll suit, let me get my component pouch.”

“Your component pouch!? What do you do when you— Do you not touch yourself?” Essek is balanced on his elbows above him, their waists still touching, their legs still intertwined, and he is looking at Caleb with wide eyes, as if he were some kind of alien.

“Of course I do,” Caleb laughs. “And I use the cantrip.” He takes Essek’s hand in his own and murmurs an incantation, twitching his fingers in a somatic gesture that coats them, and Essek’s hand, in oil. Essek blinks at this development, bringing their joined hands close to his face so he can smell the unscented oil, his tongue darting out to taste it.

“Huh,” he says. “There may be some merit to Empire magics, after all.”

“Yeah, now get to work, hot boy.” Caleb draws their hands down to rest between his legs and leans back into the pillows.

Essek nods and gives Caleb a soft smile, somehow not at all at odds with the circles his fingers trace around his rim. “I truly never imagined,” he whispers, and presses their foreheads together once more, their noses bumping. “What a gift you are, Caleb Widogast.”

Caleb doesn’t answer beyond a sharp intake of breath, because Essek takes that moment to push a slender fingertip inside. It’s altogether difficult to focus, because Essek’s free hand is still stroking Caleb’s cock, and everytime he looks at it he’s overwhelmed by the aesthetics of it, dark violet on ruddy peach, all of it glistening. There’s something calculating in Essek’s face during his thorough exploration, eyes hungry as they scan over Caleb’s body, as if he is a particularly intriguing equation to unravel. The attention has Caleb gasping, but for all that Essek is being gentle in his touch, Caleb is tense, the both of them struggling.

“Relax,” Essek murmurs against his cheek. Caleb huffs, and Essek plants a kiss at the corner of his mouth. “I know, I know. Easier said than done.” The look he gives Caleb is wry. “What can I do to help you?” he lets go of Caleb’s cock to rub soothingly up and down his thigh. “Should I talk you through it? Use my mouth? Tell me, dear.”

Caleb shivers. The endearment doesn’t hurt, but what can he say? I want you so bad I can barely fucking see, but I don’t trust you?

“Get me out of my head,” he gasps. Taps his own temple. “It acts up at the worst of times, I’m sure you know. As to how—dealer’s choice.” He reaches out to touch Essek’s lower lip. “Either. Or. Both.”

Essek takes his thumb into his mouth and hollows his cheeks around it with a promise in his eyes that takes Caleb’s legs out from under him. “As you wish, young man,” he says, and the spark of mischief in his face shows that he understood exactly what Caleb meant earlier. “Let’s try this again.” He pulls his fingers out entirely to bring one hand up to stroke at Caleb’s collarbone and chest, and with his other tugs one of Caleb’s legs up and around his waist to create a delicious friction when they rock against one another. Caleb lets his head fall back and his eyes flutter shut as Essek traces spirals through the hair on his chest to scratch a smooth, blunted fingernail over his peaked nipple. Essek speaks against his ear the whole while, a low tone that sends waves of heat coursing through Caleb, even more so for how Essek is clearly not unaffected—for all that he tries to project an air of suaveness, he stutters when the grind is especially good, he loses his train of thought when Caleb moans.

“Gorgeous,” Essek is saying, “you’re s-so gorgeous for me. Gorgeous tout court—I don’t even know the words in Common anymore.” He laughs, a breathy thing that is far sweeter than it has any right being, especially for how the words shoot straight to his dick.

“Not an issue,” he groans, voice two pitches higher than he’d like. Essek grins, and Caleb can feel the shape of it against his cheek.

“Ah? Ça te plaît, alors?” He teases little sentences of Undercommon between kisses. “Hhah, si ça te plaisait autant, t’aurais pu apprendre la langue, le temps que vous étiez là. Ma vie aurait été net-nettement plus facile.”

“Fuck, your mouth.”

“Tu veux que je te parles ou que je te suces?” He noses at Caleb’s cheek. “Hmm? You want me to speak? Or suck?” His Common is decidedly worse for the frequent switching, his accent all over the place, and Caleb could die like this, he thinks.

“Suck me?” he begs. “Try and stretch me again, come on, I need you in me yesterday.”

“Give us that pretty spell again, then.”

Caleb reaches blindly to link their hands and casts the cantrip—he casts it twice for good measure, and then chokes a laugh when Essek swears as his hands are suddenly overflowing with oil. “Ah, fuck, I’ll presti- I’ll clean it later.” He presses a messy kiss to Caleb’s chest, to his navel, to the shock of curls above his cock, and then he’s kneeling between Caleb’s legs as his fingers trace a familiar path below. Caleb looks, and looks, and looks, drinking in the sight. Essek smiles at him, cheek dimpling, smear of blood not entirely wiped away in the corner of his grin, before he presses a kiss to the crown of Caleb’s length and takes it in his mouth. There is no fluff about it, his gestures straightforward, taking in hand what he can’t take in his throat, and it takes a moment of concentrating for Caleb to realise that, ah, yes, that’s a finger moving in and out of him with much more ease than before.

The last person he did this for was Eadwulf, he realises as Essek slips him a second. He tries to swallow and finds that it’s altogether difficult, and wouldn’t this be a stupid moment to cry? Caleb reaches down, not sure what he’s reaching for, and he finds it when Essek drops everything to clasp his hand. He’s sure that nothing has ever been so reassuring as that oil-slick hand in his, at least until Essek pulls off to say “You’re doing so well, dear one, so well.” He scissors his fingers apart inside him and Caleb gasps. “Can you take a little more?” He brings their joined hands to his mouth and showers kisses over Caleb’s knuckles as if they were precious, despite them looking so ugly and square next to Essek’s noble, manicured hands.

Caleb nods, and Essek draws his hand away to push back in with three fingers. “Marvelous,” Essek says. “Parfait. Perfect for me.” He sucks a bruise into the meat of Caleb’s thigh, near the crease where thigh meets ass, and then pulls away with a strange expression. Caleb wants to ask, and then he sees Essek not-so-gracefully spit a curly red hair out of his mouth and then brush his lips against his bare shoulder.

“Sorry?” Caleb chuckles with what breath he has left in him, which is to say, not much.

“Don’t be.” Essek’s face is burning hot, as if somehow all the sweet nothings and baring of skin and meetings of flesh have been fine, but it’s the indignity of catching a pubic hair in his teeth that embarasses him. “Occupational hazard,” he offers with a grin and a curl of his fingers that has Caleb jack-knifing in the bed.

“Hhah, enough,” he grits. “Come here.” Essek plants one last kiss on the tip of his cock before drawing his fingers out and clambering up to meet him in an embrace.

“Like this?” Essek asks, reaching up past where Caleb lays to snag a small decorative pillow that Jester had made for each of them. Essek blinks at the embroidered penises on it before deciding not to ask. “I admit that I’d like to look at you when we make love, but if you prefer something else, tell me.” He presses a kiss behind Caleb’s ear, which is good and well as it gives time for Caleb to blush crimson at his phrasing. Is it an error of translation, he wonders, or something else? A declaration of feelings? Or do his noble sensibilities disallow him from saying anything as crude as when we fuck?

“This is good,” he croaks. Essek slides Jester’s little throw pillow under the arc of Caleb’s back and they both take a second to settle it before Essek pushes Caleb’s thighs open even wider.

“Are you ready?” he murmurs, and when Caleb gives an impatient nod he huffs a laugh and takes himself in hand to press in. Caleb gasps at the first breach, and then gives Essek a dirty look and a wiggle when the other freezes, “Keep going, go on, go on.”

Essek does continue, to his merit, but it’s a painstakingly slow slide, the moment stretching around them like toffee, every feeling magnified, every sensation tripled. Caleb looks up at his face, the sweat dripping down his hairline towards his lovely hooked nose, the slick and spit still shining on his lips, and wonders if this is some dunamantic effect or merely speaks to the power that Essek holds over him. Either way, the moment is heady as Essek begins to roll his hips, and Caleb lets out a long moan that Essek echoes. It takes a few strokes, each one going deeper, until Caleb can feel Essek’s hips against his ass and a fullness that he hasn’t felt in years. It takes his breath away, leaves him panting messily against Essek’s mouth.

“Alright?” Essek groans, his lovely brow furrowed, his lip thick where he is biting down on it. Caleb wants, he wants, all thoughts of betrayal and treason and war gone from his head, replaced instead by roaring desire and brightly burning affection.

He hitches his legs up to cross his ankles behind Essek’s back and they both gasp at the change in angle. He takes Essek’s mouth with his own, bites down to hear Essek’s breath catch. “Come on, Essek,” he moans.

“Fuck me,” he means to repeat.

“Make love to me,” he says instead.

Essek nods furiously, blinking wetness away, and takes Caleb’s face in his hands for one more dizzying kiss as he begins to finally, finally fuck into him with sharp thrusts of his hips. It punches the air out of Caleb, and he reaches up with one hand to brace against the wooden headboard of the bed, the other curling into Essek’s hair to press their foreheads as close as they can without knocking into one another. It’s hot and wet where they breathe one another’s air, pressing lips messily against lips, short kisses that are more attempts to silence their sounds than anything else.

“You’re good at this,” Caleb gasps, “So— fuck! There, stay there,” he begs when Essek finds an angle that sets Caleb's synapses on fire.

“Anything,” Essek chokes. “For you, anything—you’re so good, Caleb. Perfect, lovely, parfait, mine,” he groans, each one increasingly desperate; his voice breaks on the word mine, and so does Caleb, jerking in Essek’s arms and finishing between them in a sudden rush. “Oh, fuck,” Essek cries, and pulls out to take himself in hand. Caleb surges up to kiss him as he strokes his cock until he spills over Caleb’s belly.

Time stretches again, both men breathing heavily as they come down, Caleb looking at the mixed fluids on his stomach with a red face. He draws two fingers through the mess and sucks on them idly, and Essek wheezes as if he’s been stabbed and then falls on top of him, pressing furious pecks against every part of Caleb’s face that he can reach as if compelled. Caleb dirties the digits again and holds them to Essek’s mouth, who wrinkles his nose adorably.

“Come on.” Caleb pokes his cheek with his pinky finger until Essek sullenly pokes his tongue out and licks his fingers clean. He makes a face afterward that Caleb can’t help but laugh at, and once he starts he finds that he cannot stop.

“It isn’t funny,” Essek complains, but a smile blooms on his face as well, and he rolls over to Caleb’s side and lays there contently.

“I suppose I should thank you,” he says as Caleb is still coming down from his stitches. “That was… there are no words.”

“Don’t thank me,” Caleb whispers, all of a sudden much more solemn. It’s frustrating: he would have liked the moment to stretch out longer, to last infinitely. Now that his mind is free of the haze of need, doubt starts to trickle back in, and he doesn’t want to doubt, doesn’t want to mistrust this man who held him so sweetly, who took him apart so well.

“No, I must.” Essek wipes his hand on the coverlet and reaches out to cup Caleb’s cheek gently, so gently. “You have no idea… Caleb Widogast, you have been a catalyst in my life. Your friendship, your care, your brilliance. Your desire…” His thumb pets ever so lightly against the rasp of Caleb’s beard. “I was a different man before I met you, and that is a fact. You have helped me realise what it is that I need to do—there are wrongs that I need to right.”

Caleb doesn’t know what his face is doing. That sounds like a confession—a confession of so many things. He lets out a long, stuttering breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and that scares me,” he says. Essek makes a wounded sound and presses a chaste kiss to his lips. It’s somehow just as overwhelming as his cock had been, grinding against his prostate. “Promise me, promise me that…”

“Yes?”

“Promise me that you mean well,” Caleb says. “That you won’t hurt us… that you won’t hurt yourself. That you’ll be safe.”

Essek gives him a sweet smile. It’s heartbreaking.

“I do mean well,” he says, and presses a kiss to Caleb’s forehead. “And the last thing I want is for you and your friends to be hurt. I can promise you that.”

“That’s not good enough,” Caleb insists.

“It’s all I can offer.”

“Then promise me that we will meet again, as allies still. As friends still.”

Essek looks at him with wide eyes. “Is that all?” he asks. Both of their eyes are gleaming with tears.

“No, it’s not all,” Caleb breathes. “Never just that. You are so many things, Essek. My teacher and colleague. The Shadowhand. My friend.” He looks Essek in the eye, takes his hand. His voice is even when he continues. “A traitor. My lover and my love.”

Essek flinches, but does not break eye contact. He does not deny it. Of course he doesn’t. The one time Caleb wanted to be wrong about something...

“I am trying,” he says, still stroking Caleb’s cheek, still holding Caleb’s hand. His hands are shaking. “Caleb, my dear. My love. I am cutting them out, now that the peace talks are happening. If it means having assassins on my tail for the rest of my days, so be it, but I must do this.” Tears finally spill down his cheeks, and he dashes them away impatiently before Caleb can wipe them himself.

“Would you have told me?” Caleb asks.

“That I care for you? I have wanted to do nothing more. I would have invited you to my room the other night, had Beauregard not tagged along. That I have been working with such unscrupulous people… I do not want you to think less of me, for all that I deserve it. I would have, I think. I hope. Once I managed to cut ties permanently.”

Caleb nods, and wipes at his own eyes absent-mindedly. “We should probably clean up,” he says.

Essek nods and picks up one of his seven thousand undershirts, sacrificing it to the cause. The silk feels slippery on Caleb’s skin, and he shudders as Essek diligently wipes his belly, his cock, his rim, before tossing it aside and cleaning himself with much less finesse: a wave of a hand and a prestidigitation do the trick. He looks at the rest of his clothes and hesitates.

“Stay,” Caleb entreats. “Don’t leave me alone after all this.” There’s a desperation to his words that is deeply honest—Caleb doesn’t know what path his thoughts would take if he were left alone, but he knows himself well enough to guess that it would be a dark one. Better to keep Essek close. There is absolutely no ulterior motive at play here.

Essek hesitates. “I don’t want to put you in danger,” he says. “Don’t think I’m making excuses—I want nothing more than to be here with you, but I was already targeted once tonight.”

“And you will not be targeted again,” Caleb says with a confidence he doesn’t quite possess. “Trust me. I know how they work. If their first strike failed, they will not return so swiftly.”

“Honestly,” Essek lets out a humourless chuckle. “I’m not even sure it was meant to be one. I returned from the Bastion early to find them in my laboratory, rifling through my things. I was… perhaps you might call me trigger happy.”

“Even more reason to expect no repercussions tonight.” Had Essek meant to keep the Assembly for allies, this might even be the kind of incident that could be brushed over as a mistake. Caleb can see a handler twisting it to be proof of Essek’s insecurities, reason to keep him on a tighter leash or perhaps taken out of the picture completely. Either way, it will come in the following days, not tonight.

Essek searches his face for a long moment, open and vulnerable and lovely. He doesn’t respond verbally, but he does collapse back into the mattress with a soft sigh and curls an arm around Caleb’s naked shoulders.

“I don’t suppose you have a nightshirt to lend me?” he asks.

“What, isn’t this good?” Caleb gives his bare form an admiring look.

“I don’t sleep, Caleb,” Essek reminds him. He begins tracing glyphs into the skin of Caleb’s arm. “I will stay until you wake, but we have at least four hours difference in our patterns of rest. I’d… prefer not to be nude for it.”

“You could wear my shirt,” Caleb jerks his head in the direction of the floor, and Essek sniffs once before going to fetch it and shrug it on. The visual is… deeply satisfying, and when he burrows back into Caleb’s side there’s the feel of very warm, worn, familiar cotton against his skin. It’s almost as enticing as Essek’s nudity had been, even if Caleb had never tied the collar so tightly. Essek tugs the sheet and quilt over them, too, and it’s altogether very cozy, very domestic. It’s almost laughable: a would-be Scourger and a traitor in bed together. Caleb finds himself content, though, somehow, dozing off in Essek’s embrace. He licks his thumb and reaches out to wipe the last smear of blood on Essek’s cheek away, finally, and Essek lets him. It’s very easy to drift with Essek still tracing symbols into the sensitive skin of his inner elbow, with the weight of him nearby, the coverlet draping them in warmth. He turns over to kiss him, once, twice, thrice, until it is too difficult to aim them correctly.

“I’m so glad you came to me,” he whispers. He can hear Essek swallow.

“As am I, more than you know. Rest, Caleb. My dear. My love. Rest now.”

Caleb shuts his eyes, face and chest burning at such a blatant confession, and allows himself to drift off in the arms of a man who started a war; a man who worked with Caleb’s greatest foes; a man that Caleb cares for deeply.

He wakes several times during the night. For all his idealism, he is not good at sharing sleeping quarters with those he is unfamiliar with, and Essek is not so familiar as all that. Each time he jerks awake, Essek is there: curling a strand of Caleb’s hair around a finger with his eyes wide and blank in trance; in the midst of a staring contest in the dark with Frumpkin; sitting up in bed and scribbling in his spellbook. Each time, Essek turns to look at him and gives him a trembling smile that Caleb can barely make out in the darkness. “Go back to sleep,” he would whisper, and Caleb would roll over and do just that, until finally his internal clock informs him that it is past seven and time to get up.

He sits up in bed and props his head on Essek’s shoulder, where he is seemingly selecting his spells for the day. Essek smiles and shuts his spellbook, turns to press a sweet, short kiss to his lips; Caleb was a vagrant far too long to be held up by something like morning breath, but Essek wrinkles his nose apologetically when he pulls back.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” Caleb replies. They watch one another; it’s a little awkward, but not in a bad way. “Where do we go from here?”

“I received a few messages while you slept,” Essek admits. “I need to go to Nicodranas to speak to the Martinet.” Caleb carefully masks his reaction; to think that the corruption goes that high… but of course it does. Essek clearly sees something in his face, because he rushes to continue: “I promise you, I plan to end things.”

“I believe you,” Caleb says. “We are heading as well, once we all get up. We would have gone directly, after helping Caduceus’ family, but I needed to collect components for Veth’s spell.”

Essek perks up. “Ah, have you solved the problem that was halting the spell’s functioning?”

“Yeah. Jester is a frightening woman.”

“You will have to tell me the story some time.” Essek squeezes Caleb’s hand. “I am happy for all of you, so much. I know that this is something Nott—ah, Veth—has been waiting for.”

Caleb means to reply, but he’s certain there’s an expression along the lines of speak of the devil, because there’s a rap at his door and a shrill voice calling through it. “Cay-cay,” Nott yells through the wood. “We want to know if you’re up yet, and if Essek is staying for breakfast.”

The both of them fall silent, each rapidly flushing, head to toe.

“Yeah,” Beauregard calls also, “You were both, like, super loud last night.”

“You could have been louder!” Oh, good, Jester is there too. “Some of us wanted to hear it.”

“Ignore them,” Nott shrieks. “They’re being weird. It was fine, it was very fine. You’re the only one who sleeps on the ground floor. But are you coming for breakfast? Are you still in there?” She knocks again. “Caleb?”

Caleb looks at Essek with wide eyes. “I am so sorry,” he mouths.

Essek has a panicked deer expression on his face, and buries his face in his hands. “Thank you, Veth,” he calls.

Jester and Beau both start speaking over one another, extremely loudly, right outside the door.

Caleb shoots Frumpkin a dirty look. “You could have warned us, you know,” he says. Frumpkin looks at him and rolls over, showing his belly in a blatant trap.

“Yeah, we’re coming out,” Caleb says eventually. “Get the fuck out of here though, we’ll join you at the table, raus.”

Nott starts shooing Jester and Beau away loudly, and he can hear a thwap that might be her resorting to physical violence to do so. Essek is still shaking. Caleb draps himself around him and presses a kiss to his temple.

“Sorry if you meant to keep this on the low,” he murmurs.

“Please don’t tell them,” Essek gasps into his hands. “I will— I will speak to them, after the peace talks, but please.”

Caleb thinks on it. “I cannot wait too long to tell them, Essek, you know this.”

“Just a few days.”

Caleb sighs and nods. My, what a mess. What a day. “I suppose we should get up, then. Caduceus and Fjord can be trusted to be normal about us, at least. Yasha too, I suspect.”

Essek seems to calm a little at being reminded that there is an us. They both rise and wash and dress, Essek in the clothes he appeared in last night, albeit prestidigitated back into pristine conditions and a few undershirts short. They pause at the door to the study. Crossing the threshold seems as if it will make this entire unreal experience real, Caleb thinks, and Essek must be sharing the thought.

Essek leans up onto his tip-toes to press their foreheads together.

“It will be fine,” he whispers, as if speaking to himself. “Breakfast with our friends, and then off to Nicodranas, and I’ll tell the Cerberus Assembly to go fuck themselves. What could go wrong?”

Caleb bumps their noses together and cups Essek’s cheek. “That’s the spirit,” he says. “Come, now, let’s go face the firing squad. This will make speaking to Ludinus look like a vacation in comparison.”

“That’s not helpful,” Essek laughs, and Caleb grins.