for the fic request thing: shadowghast + mutual pining (bc i am a basic bitch) if you please?
oh man this was... so painful (to clarify: in a fun way!) to write because if I write mutual pining my brain is just in the background throwing popcorn at the screen like “kiss already, you idiots!” and dear god I had to restrain that impulse. I hope you like it, anon!
Essek isn’t quite sure how it happens—it’s been something he’s avoided so far, rooming at first awkwardly with Fjord and Caduceus, which had been a fine if strange arrangement, or splitting a room with Yasha, who had sat across from him and sharpened the Magician’s Judge in what he prayed was meant to be a joke at his expense. Or, on most nights, when they stay in Caleb’s hut, sprawled out among the group, trying his hardest not to let his feet nudge someone else.
He manages it, usually, but often he ends up so close to Caleb that he can hear his breath, feel the soft purr of Frumpkin’s chest, that he barely gets any rest, holding his own breath to keep from doing anything that will ruin whatever tentative truce they have now.
Caleb seems the most likely to forgive him, and yet he cannot bring himself to move any further, stuck in stasis where he doesn’t have to think about the way Caleb catches him in his gaze and fixes him there like he’s being dissected.
Where he doesn’t have to think about how much he would enjoy being taken apart.
It’s not what Essek deserves anyway, that kind of intimacy, so even when the others share casual affection, he holds back. Even when Beau roughs him up, or when Caduceus pats him gently on the shoulder, or when Jester hugs him so tightly he thinks his ribs might break, he does not reciprocate beyond what might be polite.
Even when Caleb’s fingers catch his when they work on spells together, he does not let the flush make it to his face, where it might be seen.
And yet, despite what he has tried to avoid for weeks now, he finds himself sharing a tavern room with Caleb.
Veth is gone for a week, off on a trip with her family, whom Essek has continued to avoid any significant contact with. Caleb had tried to pull him into a conversation about the spell they created, pointing out to Yeza that Essek was instrumental in returning Veth to her real form, but Essek hadn’t been able to look either of them in the eye when Yeza had thanked him.
“It was the least I could do,” he’d said honestly, thinking that helping return a spouse perhaps only just made up for the fact of Yeza’s imprisonment, and had excused himself as soon as he’d thought he was able.
The girls had taken one room, Fjord and Caduceus another, and when it became clear that someone would be rooming alone—
“Essek can share with me,” Caleb shrugged, and downed half of his drink in one gulp, it seemed, to avoid the piercing and pointed stares from both Beau and Jester, where Jester was idly painting Beau’s nails—which Beau had begrudgingly allowed, but Essek recognized the helpless look on her face. He too knew what it was like to be so incapable of denying someone, which was probably why he just nodded in response to Caleb’s suggestion, mumbled a quick affirmation, and followed him upstairs when it was time to retire for the evening.
When the door closed, shutting out any further sound from outside, the silence hung in the air between them like a rope, too heavy to put down.
Essek shuffled to one of the beds, dropping his traveling cloak at the foot of it, and sank heavily into the mattress.
“Do not tell me you are already tired.” Caleb’s words were clipped, and when Essek looked at him, he wasn’t looking back. Instead, he sat down on his own bed, cross-legged, and Frumpkin leapt into the space between his legs to curl into his lap. He pulled the necklace of amber over his head, setting the pieces down in a circle, and muttered, “Una.”
His spellbook appeared in the middle of the circle, and he flipped through it absently, one wrapped palm supporting his chin.
“No,” Essek said. He didn’t need to sleep, but he didn’t think he could’ve rested if he wanted to, not knowing that Caleb was awake across from him. He fidgeted, propping himself up on one elbow, and snapped his fingers to draw his own spellbook from its pocket dimension, along with several other books he kept there while they traveled. Setting the spellbook aside, he pushed one open with the hand that wasn’t supporting him, and tried to focus on the words.
The sentences marched across the page like rows of ants, and he couldn’t pin them down enough for his eyes to focus on them. A jittery nervousness buzzed in his fingers, flicking the edges of the pages again and again, and finally, out of the corner of his eye, in the humming silence, he caught Caleb closing his own book.
“Is something wrong?”
He keeps his eyes, unmoving, on the page of his own, and wonders what he could possibly say that would explain why he’s frozen here on this bed, why he can’t look at Caleb, why he can’t speak if he doesn’t want to ruin what little trust there is between them.
He knows that the Mighty Nein have taken him with them not specifically out of a desire to have him around, but to make sure he doesn’t do anything else that rocks the continent, and to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed before he can make up for what he has already done.
His presence here is little more than a prison sentence, he knows, and it is not wise to express interest in one’s jailers.
“Nothing is wrong,” he says finally, before his heart can betray him and commandeer his lungs.
“I have never seen you so distracted from a book.”
And the edge of the bed sinks as Caleb sits upon it, and Essek thinks his heart is the least of his problems when Caleb catches his jaw in one calloused hand and tilts his face up from the book.
Breath doesn’t come with those fingers on his skin, and he thinks that the pressure in his lungs is what it must feel like when Essek crushes the torsos of their foes with a flick of his wrist, everything collapsing inward.
Caleb looks at him worriedly, though his fingers do not pull away. He’s always had a far more calm and steady form of intimacy than Essek can understand—he shares it with all of the party, but he rarely seems to share it with Essek. Still, the small moments where he does, Essek tries not to look at the motions too closely, or risk drowning in them with the weight of what he wishes it meant dragging at his ankles.
“Caleb,” he exhales, and it sounds too much like a prayer, so he clears his throat and steadies his voice. “Caleb, I am fine. Merely a long day of travel.”
“I was not sure if you were hiding any hurt,” he says, and Essek’s jaw clenches, but Caleb continues, “I did not manage to follow you among the chaos of our fight this afternoon, and I wasn’t sure if you were nursing any injuries that Jester or Caduceus might be able to attend to.”
He shakes his head furiously, pulling away from Caleb’s touch, and his skin stings where the chilly air of this drafty tavern hits it. Ignoring the feeling, he sits up and closes his book. “No, no. I would not do that again.”
The group had thoroughly chastised him the first time he hid a wound, where a stray claw had caught him in the ribs. It had not been lethal even though it stung and bled so much he’d been faint, so he had not thought to request healing, but Jester and Caduceus had impressed upon him the ease with which they could fix that kind of thing, no matter how small the injury.
“Okay, good,” Caleb smiles, but his brow furrows instantly as he reads the title of the now-closed book. They’d gone through several towns to track it down, and he’d been eager to devour it, but here and now the words would not stick in his mind. “Something is wrong, though.”
Essek stares up at him. Even sitting on the bed, he is not tall enough to meet Caleb’s gaze without looking up, and the imbalance between them makes this all the more difficult. “You seem to expect some amount of concern.”
Caleb smiles wryly. “I merely thought that if I was such an objectionable roommate, you should go and knock on Fjord and Caduceus’ door now, rather than too much later.”
Essek’s face flushes, and he stammers. “No, no, this arrangement is more than fine.”
He immediately curses himself inwardly at the phrasing. He is trying not to arouse suspicion, and he seems only to be drawing more of it as Caleb raises an eyebrow.
“Very well,” Caleb says, tinged with a sorrow that Essek can’t place, and when he stands, it feels like Essek’s breath leaves with him, and he curses himself again.
“Caleb, I—“ he doesn’t quite know what to say when Caleb stops in the middle of the room, so he rubs his hands over his face before he continues. “I appreciate the generosity that has allowed me a place here. It is far beyond what I am owed, after what I have done. And I am merely… grateful to be alive.”
And he is, that’s true—but he wonders how close to death he will come before he believes himself worthy of the hum in his chest anytime Caleb touches him, when they share space for long enough that Essek thinks he might burn. Caleb watches him intently, and Essek feels as though he is still waiting for more, the way his sharp eyes hold them there, so he clears his throat.
“And I… I am grateful to you. For the chance you have given me, even with how little I have earned it.”
“I do not give you a second chance because I feel you have earned it,” Caleb says, and Essek can still feel those lips on his brow all of these weeks later. “I give you a second chance because it is the chance that was granted to me. Love is not something you earn. It is something you are worthy of, regardless of what you are worth.”
He sits again on the edge of the bed, more space between them this time, and Essek thinks this mattress might as well be a canyon. “I am…” He trails off, thinking of a childhood spent in distance. “I am learning to understand that.”
“Then I will say it again,” Caleb says, soft and thunderous all at once in this room that suddenly feels too small. “My care is something you have, Essek Thelyss. It is not something you need to ask for. It is already yours.”
Essek is so used to veiled meanings and webs of implications, and Caleb’s quiet intensity is nearly inexplicable to him. “And your affection? Is that something I need to ask for?”
He cannot believe those words have just left his mouth, but Caleb flushes almost as red as Essek feels his face is warm, so he stammers to take them back.
“I apologize, you seem very comfortable with the rest—“
“Yes,” Caleb snarls, and the ferocity of the word stops his voice in his throat. “I have spent enough time with them to know where their lines lie, what boundaries have been set. I will not infringe upon yours.” As he leans back, suddenly the space between them does not seem so large. “You seemed uncomfortable with physical affection.”
“I was under the impression that that was something that had to be earned.” He cleared his throat. “I also, ah, do have some discomfort, with many forms of intimacy. It is not something I am used to, I admit.”
Caleb breathes a laugh. “I surmised as much.”
“But it is not entirely unwelcome.”
It feels as though they were dancing around the edge of a conversation, rapidly spiraling inward, and Essek is terrified to see where this collision meets, but even in his fear he is curious by nature.
“I mean to say—yes, there are things I am… not interested in,” he says, eyes locked on the threadbare blanket covering the bed. “But others, I—“
Caleb tugs on his wrist, pulling Essek toward him, his arms settling around Essek’s shoulders. It’s tentative, and Essek makes no move to stop him. “This is alright, then?”
“Yes.” He exhales shakily as Caleb tightens his hold, and thinks that he has not felt as he safe as he does right now in a very long time. In fact, he cannot think of the last time.
Caleb’s lips rest on the top of his head, and he lets his eyes closed, still waiting for the crash. “How about this?”
“Yes.”
One of Caleb’s hands lets go, but he is still warm and held as Caleb tilts his head up to meet his, and Essek can’t bear to open his eyes, thinking he might find this was a dream.
But he doesn’t dream, after all, so he breathes again very slowly as he looks at Caleb, who stares down with the same intensity with which he casts spells. As if this is not a spell he is casting, one that he knows in his heart more than his mind. “And this?” he whispers.
Essek doesn’t answer, only presses his lips to Caleb’s, and he hopes that is answer enough.
