#widojest

so caleb does canonically fall in love with jester and there’s a fair bit of pining evident if you watch liam while they’re interacting. caleb does some very sweet things for her, and jester is jester (i.e. cute) about it lol

liam has basically said that he didn’t intend for caleb to be romantically involved with anyone in c2 but it felt natural for him to fall in love with jester even though he never says it explicitly. this is discussed in an ep of talks machina which has since been taken down bc of Men Being Evil :/ but basically caleb thinks jester deserves better than him :(

i don’t remember if laura has talked about or what she’s said about jester’s feelings toward caleb (i’m pretty sure she’s discussed it? i just can’t find it)

jester and fjord do end up together which is ALSO very cute imo. i just love all the c2 characters sooo much ughhh they should all kiss

Which, in fairness, the fun part was very fun. The hour of honor contest had been one of the funniest things she'd seen in her entire life. Nott—tiny, scrappy, barely-as-tall-as-the-bar Nott—had out-drunk a rather imposing dwarf whose giant mitt had completely encompassed the tankard, and Jester had nearly screamed her own throat raw cheering. The Nein had pounded the table and she'd whipped the crowd into a chant with thaumaturgy, before surreptitiously scratching a tiny dick into the corner of the table. It was ceremonial. Nott deserved a ceremony. They all did, actually. Winning a drinking contest against the three-time reigning hour of honor champions wasn't exactly a small feat. 

But that was different. That was watching people drink, which was basically free entertainment. Actually drinking the burnt shit herself? Absolutely not. Instead, she was working her way through a plate of sugared pastries that Caleb had convinced Ireena to pull a few strings for. They were infinitely better. Ten out of ten. Well, maybe like… nine and three-quarters out of ten. Nothing compared to the cinnamon pastries back home in Nicodranas. They were still good, though. Warm and sweet and nothing that you'd expect in a joint like this. Lovely, really. 

She'd just popped the last one in her mouth when she saw Fjord by the bar.

He was talking to one of the waitresses. Well, waitress wasn't exactly the right word. Jester, having grown up in the Lavish Chateau, wasn't unfamiliar with the practices of the world. It wasn't the same as Mama's, though. Mama's had velvet, and music that was actually good, and nobody would have been caught dead in dress that poorly-tailored. But the shape of the thing was the same.

Fjord had ostensibly gone to ask her rate because they wanted a sitter for Kiri—that was the whole reason he'd gone over there, she'd watched him get up and say so—but he wasn't exactly rebuffing her offers, either. The girl had her hand on his forearm, and Fjord was not moving it away. He was, in fact, grinning that awkward, inexperienced grin of his, the one with the tusks poking out a little as he swayed a bit on his feet from drink, and the girl was laughing in a way that had very little to do with childcare arrangements. 

Okay.

Okay, well. That was fine.

It was fine! It was totally, completely fine, because Fjord was a grown-up man who could talk to whoever he wanted to talk to, and it wasn't like she and Fjord were— they weren't anything, really, they were just friends who sometimes stood very close together and sometimes he said things that made her stomach do a little flip-flop. That wasn't the same as something. She knew that. She knew that.

She'd just thought, maybe, a little, that she might have been… special. Or whatever.

And maybe she was! Maybe she still was! It was just a girl at a bar, probably he was asking for directions or something, even though this was his where they were going to stay but…

Her chest was doing something stupid.

She was not going to look at it.

She looked away. She looked anywhere else. She looked at her empty pastry plate, and she looked at Beau yelling on a stool, and she looked at a slightly slumped, laughing Caleb.

Caleb was laughing.

Caleb. The perpetually melancholic puppy-eyed, filthy, fascinating, guarded dirt wizard. Laughing. Happy.

Okay. Okay, she definitely had to do something with that.

"Caleb," she said, holding her hands out to him like she was presenting a very important gift, "we are going to dance."

He looked up at her with that face he made, that unmistakable Caleb face, where he was already working out how to say no without hurting her feelings, which was sweet, actually, but also completely unnecessary because she wasn't going to let him say no. Not that he ever seemed to deny her anything anyways.

"Jester, I don't —"

"It's a waltz."

"It's not a waltz, it's —"

"It's going to be a waltz. Come on. Dance with me. Please?"

He looked at her hand. He looked at her face. He looked at his glass, like maybe it had an answer in it. Then, and she almost missed it, it was such a small thing, his mouth did something. It was almost… a smile, like he'd accepted his fate and given up trying to convince her otherwise. Except a lot more happy.

He put his hand in hers.

Yes, she thought. Yes yes yes.

She pulled him out into the middle of the floor and turned to face him and put his hand on her waist like she was arranging a doll, because he clearly wasn't going to do it himself, and then she took his other hand in hers and she said, "Okay, follow my lead."

"You are leading?"

"I'm leading."

"Okay."

It took him a second. There was a whole beat where she thought oh no, he's too drunk, this is going to be terrible and I'm going to feel bad about it, but then he just... started. He started moving. And he was good. He was really good, better than any dirt wizard had any right to be. Even if he was sloshed.

"Caleb!"

"What?"

"You can dance!"

"I had lessons. A long time ago."

She filed that away very carefully. She was going to think about that later. There was a whole entire Caleb in there that she only got in little pieces, and every piece was interesting, and she collected them.

She heard the music shift under her feet as the musicians caught on, smoothing the stompy bar song into something with actual shape, one-two-three, one-two-three, and she grinned so hard her face hurt.

"They're playing it for us," she whispered.

"Ja," he said. "I noticed."

Around them people were starting to join in, sort of, in a half-assed drunken way. She could hear Molly somewhere behind her going "excuse me, pardon me, coming through," and Nott giggling, and somebody knocking over a chair. She didn't care. She did not care even a little bit. She had Caleb Widogast in waltz position and he was smiling.

He was smiling.

That was the thing, that was the thing she hadn't let herself fully look at, he was always so behind his eyes, Caleb, always somewhere else, somewhere colder and further away than wherever his body was. But tonight the ale had done something more to the distance. He was here. Right here, looking at her.

"You're doing really well," she told him, squeezing his hand.

"You are leading very well."

"We're both doing really well."

He did the almost-smile again. She felt it land somewhere in her chest, and it was— huh. Okay. She wasn't going to look at that. She was going to spin them through another turn and enjoy the thing while she had it, because she was allowed to enjoy things, and this was a very good thing to be enjoying.

One-two-three. One-two-three.

Then his eyes went somewhere else.

Not behind his own eyes the way they usually did. This was different. This was out, present but aimed wrong, looking at her face and not quite seeing her face. His steps slowed. His hand on her waist got less sure.

"You were always a better dancer than me," he said softly. "Astrid. You were always so good."

Jester's movements slowed, just for a half-step, long enough for the word to get all the way into her chest.

Astrid.

Her first thought was who? Her second thought was oh. Her third thought wasn't really a thought, it was just a feeling, and it was this small stupid dropping feeling in her stomach like she'd missed a step on the stairs. Which was ridiculous. It was a ridiculous feeling to have. She hadn't been expecting anything. She hadn't been hoping for anything. Why would she be—

Oh.

Oh, that was weird.

And no, she was not about to examine the sinkhole opening in her chest in the middle of a tavern dancefloor while dancing a half-decent waltz with a definitely-drunk partner. 

She tried to flash that smile that came easily. It always did. Except for right now. Right now she was finding it uncharacteristically difficult to quirk her mouth upwards.

"Oh, well, you know, Caleb—"

The floppy-haired wizard blinked rapidly, coming back into reality. All the softness in his face kind of... crumpled, and he pulled away from her, stumbling.

"Oh. I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Caleb—"

"I'm sorry."

==

The rhythm is what did it.

One-two-three, one-two-three. He has not thought about this step pattern in… he does not know. A long time. The body remembers things the mind has been very careful to put away, and his body is remembering now, remembering with a kind of muscle-deep precision that the liquor has loosened the lid on.

The tiefling girl— Jester, her name is Jester, he knows this, he is dancing with Jester— is a good lead. Firm and confident, she moves him like she trusts him to keep up, and he is keeping up, to his own quiet astonishment. His feet know where to go, even if his drink-addled brain refuses to keep step, at least consciously.

One-two-three.

The hall is suddenly not this hall.

He notices it gradually, the way you notice a room getting darker before sunset, with no single moment of change, just the accumulation. The floor under his boots is not tavern plank, it is polished stone. The music is not fiddle and pipe, it is strings, a full quartet, the slow measured waltz they played every winter at the Soltryce Academy. He can smell pine. Someone has put pine boughs along the windows, the way they always did.

He is wearing the dress coat. The one with the silver braid at the cuffs. He hated it and wore it anyway because she liked it.

Astrid.

She is laughing at him. Not in a mean way, she never laughed meanly, that was Eadwulf’s job, she is laughing because he has just stepped on her foot for the third time, and she is still letting him lead. She will not always let him lead. One day she will take the lead and it will be a relief because she is so much better at this than he is, at all of this, at everything, she always has been.

"You are terrible at this, Bren."

"I know."

"You are very terrible."

"I know, I know—"

"You have to feel it. Stop counting. You are counting, I can see you counting."

"I am not—"

"One-two-three, one-two-three, Bren, I can hear you. Your mouth is moving."

He laughs. He actually laughs. Eadwulf is somewhere across the hall, watching them sway awkwardly, rolling his eyes affectionately. Somewhere further back, past the musicians, a figure in dark robes is also watching. But he is not thinking about that now, he is not thinking about that figure at all, he is seventeen and his girl is laughing at him and the music is very beautiful and he is going to be—

He is going to be—

One-two-three.

He is going to be something, a great man, something, he cannot remember what now...

"You were always a better dancer than me," he tells her softly. "Astrid. You were always so good."

And suddenly the floor snaps back into clarity. It is wrong.

The floor is wrong, it is wood again, and the music is wrong, and the girl in his arms is—

"Astrid?" the girl asks. 

"Ja..."

"Oh... well, you know-"

The voice is definitely not Astrid. It worms its way into his chest, and the scene in his mind slowly melts away into nothing.

"Caleb?"

The name hits him like a splash of cold water. Caleb. Not Bren. Nobody here calls him Bren. Bren is dead, Bren has been dead for… for… and he is Caleb, he is Caleb Widogast, and he is in a tavern in Hupperdook and the girl looking up at him is blue.

She is blue. She is blue and beautiful and her violet eyes are very wide and she heard what he said.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

"Oh. I'm sorry," he says. His voice does not sound like his. His skin crawls and suddenly the room is very, very cold. "I'm sorry."

"Caleb—"

"I'm sorry." He is already moving. He has to get away from her. He has to get out of this room. His hands are shaking and he puts them in his pockets to make them stop and he is moving toward the door and then her hand is on his jacket and—

She is stronger than she looks. Or he is weaker than he thought. Or both. Probably both.

"No no no, you are not going to go pass out in the street."

He does not have the words for her. He does not have the words in any language. She is steering him toward the stairs and he lets her because his legs have stopped being reliable and because…because it is her, and some part of him that he does not look at directly has decided that if she is willing to touch him after what he just said, he is not going to make her let go.

That is selfish. He knows it is selfish.

She should not be willing to touch him at all. If she knew the half of what he'd done, all of her easy affection would come to an end, and right quick. All of it. The casual hand on his sleeve, the way she drew little doodles of him in the margins of her sketchbook when she thought he wasn't looking, the way she had just now, just now, put her palm flat between his shoulder blades and walked him up the stairs like he was worth walking up stairs for, all of it, gone.

And then he'd be back on the street, with Nott, starving and filthy and— no, that was not even the worst of it. He could do the street. He had done the street. He had been good at the street, in the narrow way you got good at things you had no choice about.

The worst of it was that she would look at him differently. That was the part he could not do. He could go back to sleeping in alleys and stealing bread and flinching at the smell of smoke, he could go back to all of it, but he could not stand up under the weight of Jester Lavorre looking at him the way people look at a thing they have found out is rotten.

Beauregard's awkward judgement, he could handle. Jester's? Absolutely not. 

So he will not tell her. He will not tell any of the others. He will take what he does not deserve and he will know, every minute of every day, that he is taking it, and that is his penance. That is what he gets. To be warm and to know he has no right to be.

Her hand is on his arm and she is saying something, he cannot hear what, and the stairs are moving under his feet in a way he does not entirely trust, and he is letting her lead him.

The stairs take a long time. The room is small and dark and he sits on the bed because she puts him there, and she takes his boots off— she takes his boots off, like he is a child, and he should be humiliated but he is mostly just tired— and she pulls the blanket up and he looks at her face and her face is...

Her face is....

She is so kind. He did not know until this moment how kind she is. He has been around her for four weeks and he has been cataloguing every facet of her— loud, clever, distractingly beautiful, endlessly optimistic, possibly dangerous— and he has missed this, somehow, this very simple thing, which is that she is kind. She is kind and he just hurt her and she is still here, tucking him in, looking at him like he is someone she is glad to know.

"You are blue," he says, because it is the only true thing he can manage.

"Yes, I am," she says, a small, sad smile working its way onto her face. "And you are very nice and a little stinky."

It is such a Jester thing to say that something in his chest does a small traitorous thing. A warm thing. He should not let himself feel warm things. He is going to ruin everything again. He is going to burn her. He is going to… he is going to remember this in the morning and it is going to be… but right now he is so tired and she is right there and there is a rhyme, there is a rhyme he can make—

"One of those things is true," he starts, and his own sing-songy voice sounds stupid and fond in his ears, "and you are bl—"

His stomach chooses that exact moment to protest, and turns over violently.

It is very sudden and very absolute, and he does not even have time to warn her. He opens his mouth to finish the rhyme and what comes up is not the rhyme, and then there is a bowl. Where did she get a bowl, she is so fast? And her hand is on his back, flat and warm between his shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles.

He is retching into a bowl in front of a girl he just called by someone else's name, and she is rubbing his back.

He thinks, dimly, through the heave and the burn of it, this is the kindest anyone has been to me in eleven years.

I do not deserve this.

He does not deserve this. Unless by this, he means the disgusting, awful nausea and retching. That, he is certain, he deserves. 

The soft touch of the kind, pretty, very blue tiefling? Not at all. And yet, only one thought sit in his mind. 

Please, please do not leave. 

Even without his saying it, she does not leave.

When it is over she sets the bowl aside and smooths the blanket back up and says something about Astrid loving him very much, which is so wrong it almost makes him laugh, or cry, he cannot tell which, and then the room is going dim at the edges and his body is pulling him under, and the last thing he is aware of is her weight settling, very gently, onto the bed beside him.

He should say something. He should tell her to go. He should tell her to leave and never look back and let him wallow in his misery because it is all he deserves. 

He does not say anything.

He is a very bad man and is selfish and not at all strong enough to even attempt to push her away. His eyes flutter shut, and he dreams of flowers and pastries and a blue tiefling that he has no right to think of at all.

He lets himself have it, just this once, just for tonight, and he falls asleep with her warmth against his side and the terrible soft knowledge that he is going to pay for this in the morning.

==

She knew she probably shouldn't.

The others would talk. Oh, gods, would they talk. Beau would say something smug and sideways, Molly would waggle his eyebrows, Nott would maybe actually get mad, which would be the worst of all of it because Nott was protective of Caleb in a specific prickly way and would absolutely not think this was as innocent as it was.

And it was innocent. That was the thing. She wasn't doing anything. She was just…just lying in a bed. Fully clothed, because she hadn't meant to stay, she was just going to rest her eyes for a second and then go, and—

The thing was, it was Caleb.

And he was drunk. Really drunk. The kind of drunk where he'd already thrown up once tonight, and what if he did it again in his sleep? What if he choked? That was a real thing that happened to people, she was pretty sure. She'd read about it. Granted, in her books it was not quite so vivid as this. It would be irresponsible, actually, to leave him alone. It would be, like, almost negligent. She was basically on medical duty. Mama would be proud. This was a cleric thing.

She was the cleric of the group. It was… a moral duty.

That was what she would say if anyone asked.

Nobody was going to ask, though, because nobody was going to know, because she was going to wake up before anybody else did and slip out and go back to her own room and nobody would ever have to talk about it ever.

And besides. Besides.

He was warm.

She hadn't really expected that. She'd always sort of pictured him in grays, cold colors, a cold person, but he was warm, and his breathing had gone slow and steady, and the music from downstairs was coming up through the floorboards like a heartbeat, and her feet hurt, and the Fjord thing from earlier had left a weird little dent in her chest that she wasn't going to think about, she wasn't, and…

Caleb was warm.

Which, actually, now that she thought about it, kind of made sense? Because fire was his thing. His whole thing. He did fire spells the way other people breathed, like it was just right under his skin, always. Of course he ran hot. She should've figured. It was almost obvious, really.

She felt very smart for having figured it out.

Caleb was very warm.

And he was not going to call her by someone else's name in his sleep. Probably. And if he did, she wouldn't hear it, because she'd be asleep too, and by morning it would just be another funny thing, a thing she could tell as a story. You guys, Caleb got so drunk, I had to tuck him in, it was hilarious. And the little splinter from the dance floor would be gone, or at least smaller, or at least easier not to look at.

She didn't think about it too hard. It wouldn't do any good. So instead, she kicked her boots off and crawled under the covers.

She closed her eyes.

One-two-three, came the music from downstairs, very faint now. One-two-three.