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sapphicquill · 3 years

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congrats on 100 followers friend <3 may I ask for anything with ler!Fjord bc the way you wrote teasing in your TAZ fic was so good? or lee!Lucretia during the Stolen Century arc being tickled out of her antisocial little shell if you're in a TAZ mood :) -Chock

Whoops. This is what happens when my whole life gets flipped upside down and I have to move cross-country back home out of no where! Sorry for the long wait, I'm finally making headway on these fics. I owe the entirety of this fic to @ticklishnonsense's honey-tongued because that’s the Ultimate Teasey Ler!Fjord fic and to @poesparakeet-fics for the plot because my smol brain could not come up with anything good and she gave me THE GOODS. Hope you enjoy, @chockfullofsecrets!

(ao3 link!)

Rating: Teen

Characters: Fjord, Caleb Widogast

Wordcount: 2423

After everything they’ve all been through, Fjord thinks he can handle most things. Spitting up salt water in the mornings, nearly getting impaled by strangers on a regular basis, Nott rifling through his shit—while he’d rather not deal with all of that bullshit, he can and that’s the important thing.

But the crushing weight of all the damn pining happening between Caleb and Essek might be the one thing Fjord absolutely cannot handle for any longer.

It had started innocently enough. Hands brushing and secret smiles and eyes briefly meeting before diverting, full of nerves and excitement and swirling butterflies. He’d experienced some of the same with Jester, but the two wizards were starting to get insufferable. It was painfully obvious to anyone in the room that they had a thing for one another, and even if it wasn’t, Fjord had overheard Caleb whining to Jester more than once about the entire situation, so it wasn’t like he was entirely oblivious to his own crush.

But apparently perpetually sad and stuffy wizards are really bad at just admitting what was right in front of their faces. Fjord’s worried that one of them might just explode soon, and that’s the entirely altruistic reasoning that finally inspires him to insert himself into the situation.

Caleb’s problem, Fjord thinks, is one of confidence. He gets too caught up in his own keen mind, tangling everything up in his head and overthinking and overanalyzing and panicking and deconstructing until everything’s just a jumbled mess of knots. He just needs a little push is all. A little something to nudge him past the trouble that is thinking and into acting. And Fjord thinks he knows a fairly good method of encouragement.

Thus, Fjord is currently standing in the doorway of the mansion library, trying not to reveal his presence too early. Caleb is folded over a desk with a pinched expression on his face that Fjord knows by now means he’s reached some sort of roadblock in whatever he was working on. In other words: a perfect time for an interruption.

“Productive afternoon?”

It’s a testament to how close the group has gotten that Caleb only sort-of flinches at the sudden sound of Fjord’s voice.

“Ah, nein, not really,” the wizard replies as he straightens up. His back makes an ominous cracking noise as he sits up and Fjord winces in sympathy.

“Gods, then maybe it’s time to take a break, hm?”

“Ja, a break…” Caleb trails off, eyes drifting back to the scattered parchment and books on the desk. Fjord resists the temptation to roll his eyes at the utterly predictability of their headstrong wizard.

“Okay, well now I’m making you take a break, Widogast,” he says as he marches swiftly over to Caleb and practically hauls him out of his chair. Caleb, unsurprisingly, goes willingly, letting himself be shuffled over to a nearby sofa.

With a huff, Caleb sits and begins massaging his temples, willing away either a physical ache or a swirling mass of snarled thoughts and ideas. Fjord lowers himself down next to the human and pretends like he isn’t thrilled over what he’s about to do.

A comfortable silence descends then. After a few more vigorous rubs, Caleb leans his head back against the leather of the sofa and closes his eyes and Fjord figures this is the best chance to spring the trap.

Quick as a slash of his falchion, Fjord twists from his spot next to Caleb and pulls him down into a horizontal position before caging the human in from above. He hovers over the now-prone wizard and tries not to feel too smug as Caleb yelps but doesn’t move an inch to try to wiggle away.

“Scheiße, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something,” Fjord says casually as he can. Caleb gives him an exasperated look, complete with raised eyebrow and suspicious frown.

“And this ‘something’ requires you to pin me to a sofa?”

Fjord grins before scooping both of Caleb’s wrists up with one hand and pulling them above his head. Exasperation shifts quickly into a mix of disbelief, fear, and anticipation and Fjord is lucky that around his friends, Caleb wears his emotions very clearly on his face.

“Well,” the warlock starts, “I kind of figured that this particular topic would send you scampering off if I didn’t take some preventative measures.”

A fiery blush colors Caleb’s cheeks and Fjord tries not to laugh.

“And something tells me I thought correctly.”

Caleb makes a noise not unlike one Fjord’s heard from Frumpkin and finally starts to struggle lightly in his grasp, like his body is only now catching up with the rest of him. Fjord lets him, figuring that letting the wizard work himself into a bit of a tizzy will just make his own task easier. Caleb’s terribly predictable. As the human squirms minutely under him, Fjord lets his free hand curve subtly into a claw and hovers it just next to Caleb’s lower ribs.

“Now, see, I also think you might benefit from a little preemptive encouragement, because you’re the most stubborn fucker I’ve ever met when you have to talk about anything personal...”

Fjord trails off when he notices that Caleb’s eyes have locked onto his hand, mostly because he knows that the brilliant mage has connected all of the appropriate dots and will voice a protest in three, two—

“N-nein, Fjord, wait just a moment, there is no need for—”

Fjord slowly flutters his fingers, still poised a hair’s breadth from the stretched expanse of Caleb’s ribs, and Caleb cuts himself off with a hitched laugh-gasp, eyes wide as saucers.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate right now,” Fjord says, the edges of his voice tinged with a low growl as he keeps the motion of his fingers going. Caleb doesn’t really do much aside from grow ever so slightly redder in the face.

Without further preamble, Fjord finally moves his hand to meet Caleb’s torso. It’s like the wizard has been hit with a successful Thunderwave—his whole body jolts before tensing up so tightly he trembles. Continuing the fluttering from before, Fjord traces across the space between Caleb’s two lowest ribs and grins when Caleb lets out something between a giggle and a whine.

“Gods, you’re so easy to rile up, you know that?”

Caleb’s giggling picks up at Fjord’s words. He’d have pity on the wizard if it wasn’t so adorable. Still gently teasing at the softness of Caleb’s lower ribs, the half-orc leans forward until his mouth is right next to his victim’s ear.

“You’re just that ticklish, huh?”

Caleb thrashes, throwing his head from side to side so rapidly Fjord would be worried the human would hurt himself if he hadn’t watched this happen numerous times before. For good measure, he lets his fingers drift up Caleb’s ribs and lets out a small laugh himself as the giggles morph into airy, full-blown laughter. Exactly as planned.

“So you and Essek,” Fjord says casually as he straightens back up, pitching his voice a little louder to be heard over Caleb’s bubbly laughter. The wizard definitely seems to register his words if the cut-off gasp and even more desperate wiggles are any indication. Fjord laughs a little to himself at the adorable way Caleb scrunches his nose when the increased movement does little to deter his attack. Taking a little pity, Fjord pushes on, his free fingers swirling tight circles up and down Caleb’s right side.

“You know he likes you too, right?”

Fjord’s not exactly sure humans are supposed to turn that shade of red, but Jester’s got healing spells to spare right now, so he continues.

“And as amusing as it is watching you two dance around each other, it’s getting a bit old.”

“B-bitte, Fjord—!”

Caleb’s own laughter cuts off whatever plea was going to escape next. The wizard flops his head a bit side to side, like if he shakes enough he’ll clear Fjord’s words like trapped water from his ears. It’s downright precious and one hundred percent ineffective.

Adjusting his grip on Caleb’s wrists, Fjord lets his fingers trail up his captive’s ribs in the same slow pace he knows will drive Caleb up the damn wall. It’s a little impressive, actually, how easily this light tickling can take their resident wizard apart. Particularly useful at certain times. He can feel Caleb trembling under him, laughs high and desperate as the light tracing fingertips slowly migrate up to what both Jester and Molly affectionately refer to as his worst “death spots.”

“So, here’s my idea.”

His fingers flutter just below the space where his holsters normally are—fortunate Caleb feels comfortable and safe enough to remove them when at the house—and the wizard groans through his laughter.

“Either you promise that you’ll confess to Essek the next time he’s around, or I’ll just have to keep tickling you forever. How’s that sound?”

“Wh-aaat? Bitte, no, that is e-eehviil!”

“That’s kind of the point, bud,” Fjord replies around another laugh of his own. He floats his fingers up the scant few millimeters to the space between Caleb’s uppermost ribs without prompting and hopes that the wail the human lets out doesn’t worry the rest of the Nein. (It shouldn’t, not with the frequency Caleb makes noises like that.)

“I’m not letting up until you tell me the first words out of your mouth when you see Essek next are ‘Can we talk somewhere privately, Shadowhand?’” Fjord pitches his voice into a terrifically awful imitation of a Zemnian accent that has Caleb laughing, somehow, even harder. Though, on second thought, that might have more to do with the rapid little scribbles he’s got focused on the space above Caleb’s top rib than his attempt at accentwork.

Unsurprisingly, Caleb doesn’t say anything much in response, instead throwing all of his effort into laughing and squirming ineffectively. Fjord keeps a careful ear out for any hint of the safeword Jester had insisted everyone know about and respect upon pain of near-death, but the only thing coming out of Caleb is whimpered begging and a spray of foreign curses. Perfect.

Fjord takes a split second to send a silent apology to Jester, who will no doubt be massively upset she missed out on assisting Fjord with this bit of encouragement, but this was his game right now, dammit, and it was time to go for the kill.

(Would it be worth the inevitable tickling the blue tiefling would dish out later? Most definitely.)

“Alright, well, suit yourself, Widogast.”

With that, Fjord moves the tickling to Caleb’s exposed underarm and focuses the entirety of his attention on making the human melt.

With an impressive amount of core strength, Caleb attempts to jackknife in half to throw Fjord off. Fortunately, their wizard’s tricks are well known by now. Fjord barely budges as he keeps up the spidering under Caleb’s arm, letting his fingers trail just the slightest bit up the underside of Caleb’s bicep before reversing back down to the soft spot just above Caleb’s uppermost rib.

The fight drains out of the mage just as quickly as it revved up, leaving him loose and floppy and lost in the throws of his own cackling. Fjord would feel bad if he didn’t know how much Caleb was enjoying himself. Time to step things up a notch.

“You know how to get me to stop, Caleb. Do you really like the thought of me tickling you like this more than the idea of confessing to a crush you know is damn-well mutual? Really seems like it.”

More wailing, more thrashing, but still, no dice. Maybe a slightly different approach…

“Gods above, you’re just too ticklish for your own good, aren’t you?”

As always, Caleb responds viscerally to the mere word and that, of all things, seems to be the final straw.

“Scheiße, bitte! Habt mitleid! Ohhkay, I pr-promise!”

“You promise what?”

“Oh please, I caa-aan’t—!”

Fjord shifts from light tracing along Caleb’s top ribs to a solid press of his palm, steadying the human as his laughter slowly eases up. After a few gulps of air, Caleb continues.

“I will tell Essek how I truly feel when we next encounter him, I swear to you!”

“You’re absolutely promising me you’ll spill about your deep, undying love for Essek Thelyss the very moment he’s within twenty yards of you?” Fjord taunts, curling his fingers back into a claw at Caleb’s right side. The human tenses and anticipatory giggles start bubbling from him almost instantly.

“Ja, ja, I a-ahh-m!”

“Good!” Fjord says brightly, pulling his hand away from Caleb’s squirming form. He smiles down at Caleb, who looks about ready to protest the large hand still pining his wrists to the sofa, before lowering himself to speak directly into the wizard’s ear.

“And maybe after you two have worked everything out, I’ll have a little chat with Essek myself about how much you like this particular method of torture.”

Caleb looks a bit like he’s swallowed a toad.

“F-fjord, mein Gott, wait—”

“I’m sure Molly and Jester would be more than happy to help me tell him all of the best ways to tickle you senseless, hmm? They’re tieflings, you know how honest they get when tickling comes up. They’ll just gush about how much you love it when we wreck you until you can’t remember your own name.”

He isn’t even tickling him anymore, but Caleb is giggling, light and bubbly and tortured, all from Fjord’s teasing alone.

“Hell, maybe we’ll all get you the next time Essek comes by the tower. How’d you like that, him watching you get tickled by every single one of us until you cry and knowing you love every minute of it?”

Caleb’s just babbling in Zemnian through his laughter, eyes squeezed shut and a grin pulling wide at his lips.

“D’you think he’d join in if we asked him to?”

Caleb just keeps laughing. Fjord grins. Mission successful.

#tk fic #tk fic community #tickle fic #critickle role #critickle role fic #cr tk fic #lee caleb #ler fjord #prompt fill #chockfullofsecrets #100 follower prompt celebration #finally filling these bad boys #big thanks to poe for actually motivating me to write this thank yooooou #sapphicquillfics

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thought-42 · 4 years

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Fictober Day 5: “Unacceptable, try again”

Critical role, 950words, Caleb. Warnings for Caleb’s backstory, torture, burning people alive, unreality "Unacceptable, try again."

Bren breathes in, holds for seven seconds, breathes out. That's fine. He can do this again. 10.6 seconds and an increase in forty degrees at maximum temperature, but sure. Yes, Master Ikithon. Bren will kill another fucking drunkard too stupid to keep his mouth shut in the presence of foreign spies. He has absolutely nothing better to do with his day than stand here in the stone basement beneath the manner house and clean up the trash to satisfy Trent's hyper-fixation on detail. Fire is an efficient weapon, a difference of a few seconds isn't going to make anyone less dead.

The man in the cell in front of him is saying something, but the words are just noise. When Bren meets his gaze --never let an opportunity to practice pass you buy-- his form wavers, like a heat haze over cobblestone. He extends a hand, and his forearms do not ache-- of course they don't. They burn. They always burn, the pain never settles into the kindness of an ache.

The fire blackens his fingertips. Trent says it's a gift, the way it comes so naturally for him. Trent says it makes him superior, naturally so. Trent says he is nothing more than a barbaric beast if he cannot identify each component of his fire, the precise pressure he must use when he reaches out with his sense of self to the air and the earth around him, the exact time and heat and force of each bit of flame. Though he would never say it, it makes Bren think of the schoolmaster asking him to show his arithmetic work. Things have always come easily to him, and to pull the process apart into its component parts simply slows it down, makes something that ought to be beautiful and instinctive into an awkward, clunky thing.

Bren thinks of each particle of air heating around his hands, the blue white flare, the rapid disintegration of everything in his path. Something cold trickles down his neck and something warm tickles down his cheek. It's always hot in the basement after he's been practicing for a while. Trent says he should be able to control that, too, focus the radiant heat until there is no excess spill-off.

The body in front of him curls inwards and blackens. He can hear screams. The other prisoners must be awake. Easy enough to ignore.

He pulls energy through the foreign presence under the skin of his forearms. The flames should burn hotter. They don't. Something flickers off to his side-- movement, but he can still hear Trent's even breaths behind him. Keeping the fire burning, he flicks a hand out and catches whoever, whatever it is moving in the shadows-- not an object, blood and air and warmth-- his hold on the creature is almost absent-minded, but he forces himself to take the milliseconds for a more deliberate restraint. He remembers the first and only time Astrid accidentally crushed a tiefling's lungs in her enthusiasm. He's not sure Astrid remembers that night, but the lesson stayed with all of them nonetheless.

"Unacceptable," Trent says, "try again."

There is still fire in his hands. There is still someone screaming.

"Unacceptable," says Trent. "Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Unacceptable." And gods, Caleb *knows*, you don't have to keep reminding him.

Another drop of water slides down his neck from the dripping cave ceiling.

"I think I am bleeding," he says.

"Unacceptable," says Trent.

"I'm sorry."

"Caleb."

Someone touches his hands. He can smell burning flesh. Someone else takes his wrist and--

"Fuck, Don't!"

Trent is cutting into him, he is putting something beneath the skin of Bren's arm and the rope holds his wrist pinned to the table because he is too weak to keep it there himself, and--

"Caleb!"

He looks down. There is mud on his boots.

"Unacceptable."

"We're safe now," someone says.

"You can stand down."

Caleb shakes his head furiously. His entire body feels numb and shaky, like being drunk without any of the good parts. He gasps in air frantically, curling in on himself.

"Fuck," says someone-- Nott. Veth. Veth is beside him and her hands are blistered. Caleb spreads his fingers in front of his face and the fire grounds him but he forces it away. What he needs doesn't matter. What he needs is rarely what other people think he needs.

"Are you back with us?" Essek is on his other side, robes torn and dirty, leaning against the wall with an arm wrapped tightly around an outcropping of rock.

"Sure," says Caleb. "Ja."

He looks in front of him and where there were once bandits there is now only ash--

"The others?" he asks, closing his eyes.

"Safe," says Veth, shortly.

"Cowards," says Essek.

Veth growls lowly, but she doesn't contradict him.

Caleb opens his eyes again and looks over Veth towards the cave entrance. He can see Beau standing guard, back turned to him, and Molly pacing around her, hands in his hair, tail lashing.

"The others are outside," Veth says. "I promise they're safe."

Caleb breathes out shakily, forces himself to take slow, even breaths, feels his ribcage expand under his book holsters. He's dizzy, and the floor keeps shifting beneath him like the deck of a ship. He looks again at Essek, the clench of his trembling jaw, and then at veth who is holding her hands out away from her body like she's afraid to brush against her clothing.

"So," he says, aiming for levity and definitely hitting manic, if nothing else. "We just live in this fucking cave now, ja?"

#fictober20 #cr2 for ts

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grimmseye · 4 years

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A Bird in the Hand: Chapter Five

Read on Ao3 here!

Rating: T

Fandom: Critical Role

Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (eventual)

Chapter Characters: Mollymauk Tealeaf, Essek Thelyss

Chapter Tags/Warnings: Molly Rez, Amnesiac Mollymauk, Oh My God They Were Roommates, Shower Scene, Nonsexual Nudity, Touch Starvation, Dissociation

This fic now contains spoilers up to Episode 97: The Fancy and the Fooled

— — —

For a blink of the eyes, the world fell away.

The sensation of stone under his knees became cold tile. Mollymauk didn’t know how they’d gotten there, one moment in the market and the next here, but he couldn’t dwell on it. A chill was settling under his skin, offset only by the heat of his wounds, the pressure of Essek’s vice-grip on his arm.

That grip vanished as soon as he registered it. Mollymauk slumped without its support, a whine leaving his throat, panic crawling behind it. Somehow he knew what came after this, and he did not want to be alone for it. He wasn’t the first time, he wasn’t the second, but the third was cold and e m p t y and

He was on the ground, now, panting. Black dots flickered in his vision. He saw the hem of Essek’s clothing dragging along the floor, saw a line of red that streaked from where he laid to where Essek stood. There was a rattling, something fell to the floor and clattered and rolled. The image doubled and then blurred beyond recognition.

And then he was upright, and the rush of it nearly made him vomit. Something was pressed to his lips, Essek’s voice in his ear, rough and breathless. He couldn’t respond, eyes rolling in his skull. There was something he was supposed to do. Something important, something easy, but his brain wouldn’t keep up.

A snarl sounded, making him flinch as Essek seized his jaw and squeezed. Molly’s teeth parted, and a bitter flavor drenched his tongue. He gagged, and a hand clasped tight over his mouth before he could spit it out. He retched, air and liquid expelling between Essek’s fingers but not fast enough. So Molly swallowed.

Essek let go to wrap his arm around Molly’s side instead, keeping him upright as he choked. It dissolved into heaving breaths, all his weight leaned into Essek. He didn’t get a chance to catch his breath before Essek pulled him along, Molly staggering with each step.

The drink — the potion, he realized — had been thick and lacked temperature, but now he could feel a warming sensation spreading from his belly and chasing away the ice under his skin. His wounds crawled and then cooled, the labored beating of his heart eased. By the time Essek lowered him into a seat, Mollymauk’s head had stopped spinning.

He blinked, eyes refocusing as Essek knelt down in front of him. The drow was a mess: his hair stuck out of place, his clothes were torn and sopped with blood. His hands, too, were slick with it, skin drenched red with what was probably Molly’s own blood.

And he was speaking, lips moving and brow furrowed. Molly only caught the tail end of a question, forgetting the words a second later. His mouth opened, tongue rolling out over his lips and not even wincing when he tasted iron.

“We just took a bath,” was what Mollymauk said.

The dumbfounded look on Essek’s face made him giggle, a high-pitched noise that began to slip to hysterics.

“Did you hit your head?” Essek started, only for Molly to laugh harder.

“Maybe,” he wheezed, “because I have no idea how we got here .” He nearly hit Essek in the head as he gesticulated about the room. It was all white tile, an opaque glass door on each side of the room. Circles of runes were etched and painted into the wall, and the floor had a shallow slant to a drain in its middle, letting the blood ooze down. “I think I blacked out on the way.”

“Ah,” Essek said. “No, that would be the teleportation. If we had traveled any other way, you would have expired long before we got any help.”

He reached up, pushing Mollymauk’s coat from his shoulders. Molly let it fall.

“This room functions as an emergency shower,” Essek continued. “You should get cleaned up.”

“What about you?” Molly asked, the words slurring together. He went to lift his shirt over his head, hissed as the muscles pulled at a wound. The potion had stopped his bleeding, and was clearing his head, but the damage remained.

“I can wait.” Essek’s hand shifted towards him, then paused and drew back again.

“That’s…” He failed to find a good word. “Dumb. What you said was really dumb.” Realizing what he’d been doing, Molly gave him a defeated smile and asked, “Mind helping me outta this?”

Elven ears were fun, he noted. They twitched, folding closer to the sides of Essek’s head, where his hair was buzzed short. Did the stubble tickle his ears when he was surprised? Or was that not surprise but something else — acknowledgement, maybe even interest? Probably not, but Molly could dream.

Essek cleared his throat and stood. His feet were on the ground, Molly noted. He himself was startled when Essek did lean in, head tilting up automatically, eyes finding lips before the pale pupils that didn’t meet his gaze. Essek’s hands were warm, brushing his sides as he took the hem of Molly’s shirt and lifted. Molly raised his arms, practically holding his breath as Essek slid his shirt over his head, feeling the slow draw of fingers over his skin, tracing a burning line up his ribs before the material was lifted over his head and away.

“Is that why you wear such wide collars?” Essek asked.

Molly blinked, looking up at him. His ears felt hot. “Uh — huh?”

“Your horns.” Again, Essek looked like he was going to touch one, but pulled back a moment later. “A shirt with a tight collar wouldn’t fit around them.”

“Oh, yeah. No, if it’s got a tight collar it needs buttons. Your tailor friend made note of that, no worries there.” Molly stood as well. Even with Essek touching the floor, Molly was only at eye level with his throat. It wasn’t a terrible angle, looking up at him. And with Essek looking down — a grin toyed at his lips. “Do you pay attention to the cut of my shirt?”

Essek only sighed. Molly watched the swell of his chest, the slump of his shoulders. He didn’t know a lot about anything, not about the world he’d been tossed in, not about the people he was chasing, not even about himself. But he knew things he liked, he knew what was good. Making people smile was good. People were good. And there were a few different ways to enjoy people, and at least one of them involved pressing his mouth up to Essek’s neck and feeling that sigh against his lips.

Bloodloss did funny things to his brain, it turned out. Molly swallowed, dragged his gaze up to find Essek staring back at him. Essek wasn’t shy, nor bold. He couldn’t pin Essek down as much of anything, and that was as disconcerting as it was intriguing. It made Molly want to put his hands everywhere they didn’t belong, search until he could find the chink in the armor and peel it away, piece by piece. What did Essek look like when he wasn’t wearing a mask? He would also settle for learning what he looked like when he wasn’t wearing clothes. Wishful thinking, again.

“We got off topic,” Molly drawled. “Get undressed. We’ll just shower together, this is a big room. Why do you even have a room like this?”

“Arcane materials are dangerous,” Essek said, voice clipped. “If an experimental potion begins eating through your flesh, you’ll want to wash it off expediently.”

“Fair enough.” He snorted. “You could afford to make it look nice, at least! If you’re going to have a giant shower you might as well lean into the luxury and live a little.”

“I have my own casual bathing facilities,” Essek sighed. And that was a treat if Molly had ever heard one. Essek had been holding out on him.

Molly took a step forward, intending to hunt for whatever mechanism turned the water on. Instead his knees buckled. Essek threw an arm around him, Molly clinging to keep his balance. He wheezed out a breath, laughing, “I may — shit, I may actually need your help just to shower. I swear this isn’t a ploy.”

“I didn’t think it was until you said that. Can you stand?”

“I’ll find out.”

“Sit on the ground if you must.”

That was what Molly did, sitting on the cool tile and wriggling out of his pants, tossing his remaining garments aside. Undressed, his body was a mess of scabs and dry blood. More scars to add to his collection, but at least he had the story for these ones.

He watched Essek approach one of the doors, touching a crystal embedded in the nearby wall. Where the rune circles were carved into tile, streams of water began to pour down. “Tell me when the temperature is comfortable,” Essek called.

Molly stuck a hand under the water, feeling it slowly warm. He waited until it was just on the edge of too hot to say, “Good!”

He scooted himself under the stream, finding a pleasant pressure behind the water. It ran a rusty brown, blood chipping away from his skin and running down the drain. Essek was shuffling out of his clothes where he stood, and Molly averted his gaze. He wouldn’t step further than he was allowed, and try as he might, he couldn’t get a beat off of Essek.

It surprised him to find Essek approaching. He had a towel in hand, sat down beside Molly and lifted it in an offer. When he nodded, Essek began to draw the towel over his skin, delicate passes of soft material.

Too delicate, really. It made shivers wrack along his spine, his chest feeling too tight for his lungs. If this were just for some heavy petting, he’d be happy to lean into it and purr, but that wasn’t the case. “You don’t like touching people much, do you?” Molly drawled, letting his eyelids droop.

The motion paused. “I don’t dislike it.”

“Then put a fuckin’ hand on me. I won’t bite unless you want me to, and you’re not getting anywhere treating me like those fancy plates you’ve got.”

More readily than he’d expected, a hand clasped on his uninjured shoulder. His skin buzzed under Essek’s touch, the drag of the towel growing more firm, making him hiss through his teeth. He tried to focus on the hand over the pain, how it slid down to lift his arm, how the pads of his fingers weighed on the back of his neck as Essek examined a ragged bite.

When it was done, and Essek pulled away, he mourned the loss. “You want me to get yours?” Molly offered, catching Essek’s gaze in the corner of his own. “At least the ones you can’t reach.”

He watched Essek weigh that in his mind. Something about the way he calculated things in his silence pinged a memory, someone else who was stuck in his own head, curled in on himself rather than open up to the world. The memory was there, in his grasp, and then it was gone.

“That’s reasonable,” Essek murmured at last. Molly watched the stains on the towel clean themselves before Essek handed it over, and turned so his back was to Molly. And again there was that thought of just bending down and kissing the skin where the water ran over his shoulder blade, and maybe parting his lips and seeing if Essek would like him to bite after all.

Then he set his hand at Essek’s unmarked hip, and he watched his shoulders jump and the breath freeze in his chest.

“You alright, there?” Mollymauk checked, not removing his hand but ready to.

“Fine,” Essek said, in that clipped voice again. So Molly began to wash the dry blood from his skin, abandoning the towel nearly at once to just work with his hands. It ran down Essek’s leg, and he murmured a soft ‘ excuse me’ as his fingers drew down to the back of his thigh, working quickly and brusquely to return to a spot that Essek’s arm had hidden.

Hands came up into his hair, where flecks of dry blood stood out against white. Essek made a noise, then, the muscles of his back winding tight but head seeming to tilt into his touch. The sound replayed in Molly’s head as he teased his fingers over locks of hair, dragged nails along stubble. Short and throaty, shaking into a sigh — it was a good sound.

He was massaging his thumb along the crease of a rib when he realized Essek was shaking. His breaths sucked in too quick and too deep, shuddering on the exhale. Molly’s hand froze in place. “Are you —”

“I am fine, Mollymauk.” The words were jagged things, broken and sharp. Essek yanked away, clambering to his feet. “I will take care of the rest myself, thank you. There are towels through there.” He pointed, hand quivering, to the first door in the room.

Mollymauk was silent as he stood and took his leave.

Towels were located in a cabinet as promised, alongside too-long robes. When Essek emerged, Mollymauk had donned one, black material bound around the waist, hanging open in the front. The drow did not so much as meet his eyes, the towel they’d used now clean and dry and wrapped around his hips for modesty.

Molly caught Essek’s movements in the edge of his vision. They were jerky and rough, reminded him of something — of a construct of metal and blades, of a prison and children in need and friends, one was an orphan like these children and one was like him and one was like Essek and there was a child with seven voices and black feathers and a knife in one hand and Welcome to the —

“Mollymauk.”

He nearly flinched, but held himself steady. Essek had already moved to the other door, levitating now in a robe that fell to the floor, covering himself completely. When he was bare, when skin was on skin with no layers in between, he shook and he cracked like glass struck so many times.

Molly followed without a word.

Essek made himself scarce, after. The day passed, and morning rose. No elven mage was there to literally hover over Molly’s shoulder, nor to show him about the city nor treat him to a day at the spa nor even cook breakfast.

That last number was just fine in Molly’s book. Essek’s cooking implied he usually didn’t cook in the first place.

The house — though it was more of a tower, round and tall instead of a box — was large and stunningly empty for something so elaborately furnished. Of half a dozen bedrooms, only Molly’s saw use. Without Essek around, he had an entire vacant home to snoop through.

The first hour was dedicated to finding the most comfortable couch in the building and the one after that to lounging on it naked. Fifteen minutes following that was the hunt for Essek’s bedroom, another five scrounging around for some hairpins, and then longer than he cared to admit spent on his knees trying to pick the lock before he realized it was magically sealed.

“Fucking wizards,” he growled, and left it at that.

Lunch was burning the most expensive cut of meat he found in the kitchen and then spotting a basket of strawberries for dessert. He wandered the house with sticky fingers, scanning over bookshelves and pulling one title off before realizing he didn’t care much for reading. A study yielded good, thick paper and pencils and pens that Molly scooped up to carry to the dining room table, uncertain what his hands wanted to do with them but willing to find out.

An image of a raven etched itself onto the page. It was crude, abstracted. Turned one way, the bird was falling, feet scraping the air to catch the branch that snapped under its weight. Turned the other, it ascended.

Death, he scratched on one end. Then he spun it around and wrote atop the other: Revival.

The raven had too many eyes. A sick feeling rose in his throat and he crumpled the page in a hand.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, hand locked around paper, staring into the table. When his mind returned to him, the clock on the wall sat at a different angle. His skin felt like cotton, sand filled his head. It weighed too heavily to the side, feeling that if he let it droop too far his insides would come dripping out his ear.

Molly slouched in his chair, realizing distantly that his muscles ached.

What was he doing?

He should stand up.

Mollymauk stared at the paper. He should stand up, he told himself. That wasn’t working. He should move his leg, then. It didn’t move. His head tipped just faintly, making his brains swim in his skull. He could hear his vertebrae creak with the motion. A finger, next, the knuckles smoothing out, index finger flexing. Middle, ring, pinky, and thumb followed, and he found himself able to let the paper go, to push himself mechanically away from the table, walk five paces and sink to the ground there.

He laid there, and then he started shaking, and then he started sobbing.

He didn’t know why he was sobbing. The tears poured off his nose and the breaths left his chest quicker than they came, until he was dizzy and shaking and wheezing into the rug. He couldn’t feel his own skin, he was empty inside, he was empty, he was — he was —

And then his breath was steady again and he was just lying still, wracked with sudden bouts of tremors for a stretch of uncounted time, until the tremors became less frequent and stopped altogether and his body went lax again.

Eventually, he would stand, and the clock had inched even further along.

Molly moved back into the kitchen, craving stew and not knowing why. Something about the idea felt like being surrounded by friendly faces. They didn’t have enough but they made do with what they had. That’s what he told her , the big one, his favorite, his heart.

Faces poured into his mind, faces and feelings, colors and music and days rolling by.

Stew was a meal meant to be shared, so when he thought it was almost done, Molly went to find Essek.

A set of three towers made up Essek’s property, surrounded by a garden Molly knew he didn’t tend to himself. There was a plot of loose earth hidden behind the tower that made up Essek’s actual living space, the shortest of the trio. All three towers were connected by bridges.

Mollymauk paused halfway across one walkway, the cold night air sweeping through his coat. He leaned over its edge, elbows braced on the thin rail to gaze out at the city sprawling around them. In the distance, he could see that house, the one with the glittering tree, the place he’d blindly crawled to and found empty.

The clouds opened up at night, here, allowing the moon’s glow to bathe the rooftops, the stars matching Rosohna’s lights.

His ear twitched at the sound of a door opening. He turned, seeing Essek drifting from the tallest tower, the one Molly had been approaching. As the drow locked the door with an arcane word, he turned his head, pausing when their gazes met.

Molly gave a smile, a faint wave. His voice felt stuck in his throat.

“Mollymauk,” Essek observed. He moved across the bridge, coming to hover a few feet from Molly’s side. His eyes seemed to catch the moonlight, pupils glinting white. “What are you doing here?”

It took a conscious effort to form words. “Made dinner. Have y’eaten?” He had to clip his own voice, wincing at how unnatural it sounded, like he grated each sound between his teeth before letting it out.

“... Not yet, no,” Essek said, meaning he’d likely skipped lunch and breakfast, too. Molly just gave a chuckle, raspy, and swatted his leg with his tail. He reached for Essek’s arm — wanting contact, needing to ground himself — to pull him back to the first tower.

He leaned into Essek, walking slowly to drag out the time he could spend close to another person. The material of Essek’s mantle was surprisingly comfortable, like silk. Molly would happily nuzzle a cheek into it if he didn’t know that would be crossing a line. If he could get skin contact right now, that would be worth the world. But Essek wasn’t offering a hand, he was letting Molly cling to his arm, indulging whatever he thought this was.

As they passed back into the first tower, the scent of cooking meat and spices filled the air. Essek’s stomach rumbled on cue, and Molly laughed. “Glad to have me now, aren’t ya?” He rasped.

Essek gave him a single laugh. It was better than nothing, he thought, until Essek turned that calculating gaze on him. “Did something happen?”

Molly made a vague noise, finally letting go of Essek to move into the kitchen. “Get some bowls down for me, would ya? You keep them in the worst place.”

Essek let the question drop. Molly took each bowl from a mage hand, filling each one nearly to the brim. Everything was cut in thick chunks, beef and vegetables in a rich gravy. He stuck a slice of bread in each and passed a bowl to Essek on his way to the table. It wasn’t pretty, but it was everything a meal needed to be: hot and filling and delicious.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Essek said, as he sat across from Mollymauk.

“Turns out I lived with a carnival,” Molly shrugged. “Learned that today.” Essek looked like he was going to dismiss the comment, and then gazed at Molly for a bit and seemed to concede. Molly snickered, then said, “Anyway, things like this are easy to make and can fill a lot of bellies. And when you have spices like what’s in your cabinet, it’s better than the ten-gold meals down the street.”

He watched, chin in his hands, as Essek gave his bowl a dubious look. “It does smell good,” he said, picking up his spoon and lifting it to his mouth. The ears and eyebrows went up, and before he was even done chewing Essek had another spoonful.

“Y’see?” Molly grinned. “I’m a pleasure to have.”

Essek only smiled down at his bowl. It was a good look on him.

They ate in a comfortable silence, broken only for Molly to tease Essek about the dainty way he ate his bread, for Essek to scrunch his nose at him when Molly licked his fingers instead of using a napkin. He got gravy on them on purpose after that, just to watch Essek’s displeasure as he licked them clean. He had to wonder if there wasn’t an interest in the fork of his tongue.

“You are repulsive right now,” Essek stated.

Molly clutched his chest in mock pain. “Oh! How could you say that.” He leaned an elbow on the table, grinning as he said, “And why don’t you just use your mage hand, huh? Then you never have to get so much as a spot on your beautiful hands.” He paused in his heckling, then gave a delighted grin. “That started as a joke but I actually need to see this, now.”

“See what?” Essek tore a small piece of bread and dipped it ever so slightly into his bowl, maintaining eye contact as he lifted it to his mouth. His fingers didn’t touch so much as his own lips, and Molly made an affronted noise.

“If you won’t get your hands dirty, use your magic hand.” Molly wagged his own hand at him. “The thing you got the bowls with.”

“Why would I do that.” Essek’s voice was flat.

The answer was easy: “To prove you can.”

He knew he’d won, at that point. Essek sighed, lifting his hands as though in surrender. A swirl of purple magic formed into a third, spectral hand, and Molly rapped his hooves on the ground in anticipation.

“This is inane,” Essek sighed.

“This is entertainment,” Molly corrected.

They both watched as the hand tore a chunk of bread, dipped it in the stew. When the hand lifted up to Essek’s face, looming closer to his half-open mouth — Essek’s will broke. His face pinched, a breathy sound hissing from his lips before he turned his head away. He laughed through his nose, eyes shut and lips spread around a smile, a series of quick exhalations as his shoulders shook.

“You can’t!” Molly crowed, smacking a palm on the table. The hand dissipated as Essek sputtered, covering his face with his own hand. “You call yourself a wizard!”

“What was the point of that,” Essek rattled out, losing the fight to hide his smile.

“Purely for my enjoyment.” His cheeks hurt, he was smiling far too broadly. There was something genuine at last, and it was a smile and laughter and the red tinge to the tips of Essek’s ears. Watching him fight to gather his composure felt like he’d finally gotten a peek under the mask.

He didn’t even care when he was caught staring, Essek spotting him with his chin propped on his knuckles and a smile on his face. For a long moment, they were both just smiling at one another, the warmth of laughter softening the air.

Then Molly asked, “Why are you doing this, anyway?”

Essek’s smile waned at the question. He finally seemed to pull himself in order, straightening up in his chair. “What are you referring to?”

“Just. This.” He gestured about, and then to himself. “Me. Keeping me in your house, getting mauled, dumping your potions on me. No offense, my friend, but I know you’re not just a charitable soul.” He recalled the bodies pulled into Essek’s magic, crumpled and broken, killed by the man sitting across from him without an ounce of remorse.

Essek inhaled slowly, as Mollymauk picked up his own bowl and walked to the sink. “That would be an… accurate assessment,” he said, and fell silent. When Molly had washed and dried the bowl, and was setting it on the counter, Essek spoke again.

“I owe the Mighty Nein a great deal,” he said. Molly turned, and found him hunched over the table. He gave a breathy laugh, said, “Technically, they owe me quite a few favors. But I do not think I will ever claim them. Not how I originally intended to.”

The silence stretched, and then Essek shook his head, a slow and delayed motion. “In any case. They are… my friends. I care for them. And with the weight of what I owe them, returning someone that they love to their sides feels like I may finally be able to alleviate some of that weight.”

He lifted his head, giving Molly a thin, somber smile. “So, no, I am not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I am simply, blindly hoping to weigh the scales in my favor. I apologize for that.”

And to his credit, there was a flash of guilt.

Molly only shrugged, giving him an easy smile. “Listen. My carnival memories are still fuzzy as a lamb, but from what I can make out… you find your family, and you live and die for those people. The rest are just… the rest.” He holds up a finger, adds, “And that doesn’t mean you get to go fuckin’ everyone over along the way. Everything I did, I was doing for those people and for myself. I’ve lied and I’ve cheated and I’ve cut a few throats when I needed to. But I tried to at least put a smile on the faces of the saps I was scamming.”

He walked to Essek, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Kindness is kindness. As long as you’re not gonna stab me at the end of this, I can appreciate that.”

Essek was still and quiet under his hand. His head bowed low. Molly ran his fingers through short, white hair. He nearly leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head before he pulled away.

“Mollymauk.”

He paused half in the doorway, looking over his shoulder to where Essek had spun in his chair, gazing back at him. “Yeah?”

Essek pulled in a breath. Let it out, slouching into the back of the chair. “Just… goodnight, Mollymauk.”

A smile graced his lips. “Goodnight, Mister Thelyss.”

#shadowmauk #mollymauk tealeaf #essek thelyss #mollymauk #essek #cr #cr fic #my writing #a bird in the hand

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