Essek’s voice sounds much louder than it normally does in the peaceful quiet of their bedroom. They’d only been cuddled up together for a handful of minutes, but the quaint calm they always slip into while reading is powerfully silent, so any sort of disruption is pretty obvious and hard to ignore. To Caleb’s credit, he hadn’t even been aware he was being twitchy in the first place.
“Ah, tut mir leid, I did not mean to be a bother.”
Essek shoots him a sympathetic look before running a soothing hand through Caleb’s hair, carding his fingers gently across the human’s scalp.
“You’ve been fidgety all day, chathtiu, is everything alright?”
The pleasant little shivers quivering through him make it a little difficult for Caleb to focus, but he makes a valiant effort and rallies.
“Mm, of course, liebling, I’m fine, I am just a little, ah, restless, I suppose.”
Essek makes a soft noise before withdrawing his hand and returning his attention to the book in his lap. Caleb manages to keep the instinctive whine that bubbles up at the sudden loss of touch tamped down before doing the same. The tome, while small, was ridiculously dense, but he had promised Beauregard that he’d get it read and jot down some notes as a simplified summary as quickly as he could. It’s dreadfully boring, some sort of ethnography of a mostly-extinct culture from Tal’Dorei, and Caleb couldn’t deny the monk would go half out of her mind trying to stay focused on such material. Lucky for her that this sort of shite had been par for the course when he was younger.
Only a few more minutes pass before Essek pulls Caleb back to the present.
“Caleb, my dear, I’m starting to get worried.”
Before he can ask what Essek’s going on about, cool fingers close around the wrist of his free hand. It had been resting on the bed between the two of them, what could possibly be worrying about—
Something about the sudden touch against his skin brings him even more into the present moment, and it’s only then that Caleb realizes he’d been absentmindedly tracing somatics in the air just a scant few centimeters above the blankets.
“You don’t normally move around this much unless you’re particularly anxious or upset,” Essek murmurs. Caleb lets his eyes come to meet the drow’s, and the sweet concern he finds in his partner’s gaze sends a warm rush of affection through his whole body.
“I’m as confused as you are,” Caleb replies once he’s sure he can get words out without choking on pure emotion. Essek’s right, this is more absentminded, frantic movement then he’s used to while completely relaxed. Nothing is particularly pressing in their lives right now. Essek had helped him finish marking his intermediate transmutation students’ essays that afternoon; they had Jester, Fjord, and Kingsley coming to visit the following week—nothing out of the ordinary.
So absorbed in his own thinking, it takes a few moments for Caleb to realize that Essek is watching him carefully, that slight furrow in between his eyebrows the obvious tell that he’s observing Caleb like one of their dunamentic experiments.
His wrist is still held gently, though firmly, by cool indigo fingers.
“Ah, I will strive to be still, sweetling, I apologize—”
“Oh,” Essek cuts the human off, understanding painting his expression in a way that just serves to confuse Caleb further.
“Was?”
In lieu of a proper response, Essek closes the book he’d been reading—some recently-released lurid smut Jester had insisted the two of them talk about the next time they were together—and sends it floating over to the desk with a practiced movement of his fingers. Then, without another word, the drow flops overtop Caleb, straddling him at his middle and pinning both of Caleb’s wrists to the pillows with both hands.
“You’re in, what do Jester and Kingsley call it? A ‘mood’?”
Keen mind still reeling from the sudden presence of Essek on top of him, Caleb blinks up at the other wizard a few times before he processes what he’d just heard. In a split second, nervous energy cascades down his spine, butterflies exploding in the pit of his stomach, and every place Essek is pressed to him feels electric.
Evidently, the moment of realization is plain on his face, because Essek lets out a low laugh and smiles, tiny fangs peaking out past his bottom lip.
“How is it you never figure it out unless someone points it out to you?”
Warmth surges to Caleb’s face at his lover’s words and he’s sure he’s flushed redder than his own hair. Essek’s not wrong. Despite a perfect memory and years of learning that he’s more than allowed to enjoy getting regularly wrecked by the various members of the Mighty Nein, somehow he’s still unable to recognize when he’s actively craving getting tickled until someone else figures it out for him.
Once someone does, however, it’s impossible to ignore.
Without waiting for a proper response, Essek murmurs a few arcane words and lifts his hands from Caleb’s wrists. Caleb doesn’t even bother trying to move his arms—this has happened so many times over the years that he knows he’s still properly pinned down until an hour passes or someone casts dispel magic.
Or if someone recasts the spell in an hour. That’s usually the outcome in these particular scenarios.
Sitting up straight, Essek lets his hands trail lightly across the now-exposed skin on the underside of Caleb’s forearms. Sparks ignite across his nerves like lightning as perfectly-manicured nails skim down the thin skin, and Caleb is trembling by the time they reach the underside of his biceps. They pause just above the hollow of his underarm and the concentrated, stationary teasing is enough to make a stream of frantic giggles pour from Caleb’s lips.
“I’ll admit, I should have figured it out hours ago,” Essek says almost conversationally, as if he had already cracked through Caleb’s resolve in less than a minute. Caleb loses the inevitable fight against closing his eyes at Essek’s words.
“Ah, well, no use dwelling on that,” the drow continues, ever-so-slowly shifting his light tickling lower and lower, “Now that we’ve got it sorted, let’s give you what you need, hmm?”
Then there’s ten fingers skittering rapidly in Caleb’s armpits and the dam breaks, giggles turning to real, full-body laughter as he instinctively writhes against the magical hold keeping his arms up. Even with eyes closed, it’s easy to picture Essek’s expression perfectly, that little overjoyed smile he always gets when Caleb is laid out and choking out laughter beneath his hands.
The onslaught of tickling creeps even lower and Caleb whines between bubbling laughter and half-incoherent Zemnian as skillfully dexterous fingers draw rapid shapes in the space just above his topmost rib. It’s getting increasingly harder to focus on forming coherent thoughts, and that small epiphany is enough to make the swooping waves of pleasure and joy coursing through Caleb double in their intensity.
“Light above, you really are desperate for this, aren’t you?”
The curl of his accent makes it feel like Essek’s words are made of pure arcane energy, Caleb’s laughter adopting the slight tinge of desperation that makes everything feel more intense, more consuming, more insanely ticklish, Scheiße—
Essek laughs warmly, the affection of it making Caleb’s heart jump even with the tortuous fingers tracing rune after rune on his ridiculously sensitive skin. The sound gets a little nearer, and Caleb lets his eyes blink open enough to see his boyfriend leaning down before Essek captures his lips in a deep, sweet kiss.
“Don’t think I’ll ever forget how much you enjoy being talked to while you’re being driven out of your mind with tickling,” the other wizard murmurs into Caleb’s ear. “As much as I adore kissing the laughter right out of your mouth, I’d never deny you something I know you so love.”
The world slips back into blessed black as Caleb’s eyes fall closed once again. His last truly complete thought before letting himself freefall into the warmth and joy of Essek’s evil, wonderful tickling is that he’ll need to get his dunamancer to recast the binding spell in just about forty-nine minutes.
“It’s just your birthday, dear, no reason to look like someone’s kicked Frumpkin so hard he poofed.”
Caleb sniffed, glaring over the steaming mug of tea in his hands at where Mollymauk was leaning against the living room door frame.
“I can tell the two of you are planning something.”
His tiefling boyfriend laughed, the jewelry on his horns clicking together delicately.
“Well of course we are! Like I said, it’s your birthday. We’re your partners. We’re supposed to plan things for you for your birthday.”
It was all Caleb could do to keep from pouting, so he elected to just keep his eyes on Mollymauk as he blew on his tea. Molly grinned at him as he pushed himself forward and plopped down next to Caleb on their sofa.
“Come now, if you can’t trust me to be nice, at least remember that I’m not doing this alone. Essek’s helping.”
“That is not as comforting as I imagine you think it is.”
Molly laughed again, this time his head tilting back from the force of it. Caleb lamented the fact that he still had a nearly-full mug of tea and had only been awake for a half hour. He’d very much prefer to shut Mollymauk up and keep his laughter coming. Ah, well. Time for that later.
“Hey, I’m not that much of a terrible influence, am I?”
“Hmm, that’s up for debate, I think.”
Essek’s voice came from the other side of the room, sleep-rough and warm and affectionate. Molly wiggled closer to Caleb’s side to make room for the drow on the sofa.
“Love, please inform our precious, stubborn boyfriend that he has no right to be this suspicious of birthday shenanigans.”
“Your usage of the word ‘shenanigans’ probably isn’t providing him any comfort.”
Molly pouted exaggeratedly at Essek but didn’t deny anything. Essek wasn’t wrong.
“The two of you do not need to do anything grand, really,” Caleb insisted after a quiet moment passed. “It’s just a day.”
Molly looked like he wanted to say something in response, but Essek cut him a pointed look before focusing back on Caleb.
“We know, chathtiu. But will you at least trust that we won’t do anything that would make you uncomfortable?”
The look on Essek’s face, full of concern and what Caleb thought might be hope, was enough to push past the instinctive fight that always boiled to the surface whenever the human wizard was confronted with being given anything nice. Despite all of the emotional growth he knew he had made over the last handful of years, it was still dreadfully hard to accept the kind of warm comfort and support his partners were always quick to offer.
“I suppose,” Caleb finally replied around a sigh, focusing his eyes back on his tea. The sofa shifted, Molly doing some sort of excited wiggling next to him, and Caleb couldn’t hold back a fond, helpless smile.
—
Birthdays had been a touchy subject for Caleb for a long time. He had been so young the last time they could be considered even vaguely important. When his life had been consumed by Ikithon, he and Astrid and Eadwulf had made a few halfhearted attempts at celebrations behind closed doors, away from watchful eyes, but it had very quickly proven too difficult to even bother.
Thinking about birthdays with his parents made everything inside Caleb burn hotter than fire. His eighteenth passed in a haze of false memories and an ache in the pit of his stomach. If he had it his way, his birthday would be nothing more than another day each year.
But then he had been adopted by a group of ridiculously sentimental idiots with far too much love in their hearts to stand idly by while he continued to self-destruct. He tried, every year, to not be such a “grumpy old stick in the mud,” as Jester liked to say, but it was so instinctive to just let his walls come up and block everything out.
It was lucky, then, that he had two very precious people who loved him so thoroughly that they wouldn’t let that happen. Caleb knew he could trust Mollymauk and Essek to not go overboard. Well—he could trust Essek to pull Molly back from whatever ridiculous plans he’d come up with and hone in on something that wouldn’t make Caleb want to crawl out of his own skin. He loved his partners fiercely, as much as he knew they loved him and each other. He could trust them with anything.
Still, old habits die hard.
The morning of the accursed day, Caleb blinked his eyes open to the feeling of tender fingers carding through his hair and soft lips pressing kisses to his face and neck. It was a lovely way to wake up, but his keen mind quickly reminded him of the date, and unwelcome trepidation began to bubble to the surface. Feeling a bit like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, Caleb braced for whatever his boys had come up with.
He held his breath when Molly bounced out of bed while Essek stayed pressed comfortably to his side, but their tiefling returned bearing only three carefully balanced mugs like he did every morning.
He felt his pulse spike as he entered their living room after getting dressed for the day, but the ostentatious balloons and ribbons he’d been picturing were nowhere to be seen.
There were no lavishly wrapped boxes or suspicious lumps on his desk in the study, only the stacks of books he’d left out the night before.
Their small kitchen was entirely devoid of colorful baked goods, just as it had been since Veth and Jester had nearly eaten them out of house and home two days previous.
“Something wrong, sweet?” Essek asked as he stepped around Caleb to get to the still partially filled coffee pot.
“Ah, nein, it’s nothing,” Caleb replied after scanning the kitchen for anything out of place again. Perhaps he was being a little too paranoid.
—
The rest of the day felt exceedingly normal. Caleb and Essek spent a few hours working on their current research grant proposal while Mollymauk sprawled on the small loveseat he’d insisted they put in the study—“If you two are going to toil away in there all day, I might as well get to relax while watching you be complete nerds”—pouring over a book on practical divination that Beauregard had snuck out of the Archives for him. When he wasn’t shuffling his well-worn tarot deck, the tiefling alternated between his two seemingly favorite activities: sighing dramatically in hopes of luring either one of the wizards to take a break and join him on the loveseat, or draping himself over said wizards in hopes of luring them into taking a break and joining him on the loveseat.
(He would only ever admit it under extreme duress, but Caleb preferred the latter method of distraction, as Molly would always sneak devilish, wiggling fingers up under his shirt or skitter teasing claws across Essek’s pointed ears to aid in his efforts. It was always a very effective method of distraction.)
As the glow of the sun through the study’s gauzy curtains grew steadily more golden, Caleb felt familiar Infernal warmth press against his side. In a true testament to how much he trusted the two other men in the room, he didn’t even flinch at the sudden sensation.
“We should put a bell on you,” the wizard said softly, not looking away from his current page, “You are quieter than Frumpkin.”
“Nonsense, you just block everything else out when you’re reading,” Molly replied haughtily. The tiefling’s hands curled lightly around Caleb’s waist and the human held his breath. His anticipation only grew when he realized Molly was content with just resting the very tips of his claws threateningly against the spot directly beneath his lowest ribs on either side. He felt a shudder ripple down his back as his boyfriend lowered his mouth to Caleb’s ear.
“It’s getting late, so how about we all call it a day and have dinner, hmm?”
And, well, how was anyone supposed to argue when they’ve got a very seductive tiefling fluttering insanely ticklish scritches across their waistline?
They order in from a little place down the road, a restaurant owned by a sweet old Zemnian couple that absolutely doted on Caleb every time he came in. It had taken a somewhat depressingly long time for their affection to not leave him feeling singed and aching inside.
As he sat nestled between Essek and Molly on the sofa with a steaming bowl of hearty stew, something inane and trashy playing on the TV, Caleb reasoned that perhaps birthdays might not be all that bad, if they ended like this. Between the comfort of a familiar meal and the loving little kisses the both of his partners kept leaving on his skin, Caleb figured that he might have figured out what to finally answer when anyone asked him to describe the perfect evening.
But, of course, it was still early. The sun had barely set. Still plenty of time left on the proverbial clock to run down.
As Caleb reached forward to place his empty bowl on the low coffee table, he caught Essek looking rather pointedly at Molly from the corner of his eye. Before he could open his mouth to propose changing the channel, Molly’s soft accented drawl cut him off, making his heart beat just a bit faster.
“Caleb,” Molly said, shifting to sit on his legs to better face Caleb, “Since it is your birthday and all, we should probably discuss your gift.”
A heavy, hard-to-place feeling settled into the pit of Caleb’s stomach at the tiefling’s words. Of course a quiet dinner at home wouldn’t be enough to satisfy whatever part of Mollymauk spurred him into making a lavish show out of just about everything. Turning back to consult Essek didn’t make things any better—the drow mage wore the smile Caleb knew from experience was a mix of fond exasperation (usually geared toward Molly) and warm support (generally directed at Caleb himself). He should have known he wouldn’t make it through the entirety of his birthday unscathed.
“Meine lieblinge, really, today has been lovely—”
“Caleb, dearest,” Essek murmured, reaching forward and taking one of Caleb’s hands into his own. Almost instantly, Caleb felt just how much he had tensed up at Molly’s words. With a heavy sigh, the human let his shoulders relax before turning back to face his other partner. Molly simply smiled patiently at him, waiting, and that alone was enough to get Caleb to finally acquiesce. These were his partners, the two pieces of his heart that he didn’t even try to imagine living without. He could trust them.
“Ah, ja, what is there to discuss, Mollymauk?”
Molly’s smile spread into a gleeful grin, and Caleb caught sight of his tail wiggling excitedly behind him.
“Well, we’re all very aware that you don’t think you deserve anything for yourself,” he continued, ignoring the mildly insulted noise Caleb made in response, “And honestly, between Essek’s extremely deep coffers and my penchant for scamming idiots out of their coin, I figured there’s not much you’d be in need of for a material present. So, our loving boyfriend helped me scheme a bit—”
“Ah, sil'iluuth, ‘scheme’ might not be the most comforting term appropriate—”
“And we’ve come up with what might be, at least in my opinion, the perfect present for you.”
Caleb had to smile at the extremely self-satisfied look that graced Molly’s features.
“And so you’ve come up with, what exactly?”
Molly let out a low chuckle before leaning forward, bracing Caleb against Essek as he invaded the human’s personal space.
“Well, if I recall correctly, you really love when we can get your keen little mind to quiet up for a bit.”
Movement caught Caleb’s attention from the corner of his eye. Mollymauk’s hands were pressed into the couch cushion next to Caleb’s leg, and he’d started gently flexing his fingers, drumming them in a slow, light dance against the fabric of the sofa, and Caleb’s keen little mind was quickly catching his lover’s drift.
“And lucky for everyone here, the most efficient method of doing that is one you rather enjoy for multiple reasons, so it was a fairly simple decision to come to, in the end.”
He was so focused on Molly, already so flustered, that the feeling of Essek’s arms coming to wrap around his waist nearly caused Caleb to leap out of his own skin. The drow simply pressed himself against Caleb’s other side, his minutely cooler temperature a delightful contrast to the nervous heat currently coursing through him. The brush of his lips against Caleb’s neck pulled a gasp from the human, and his attempt to stifle it was severely hindered by the light caress of air in the same place when Essek spoke up.
“Mollymauk, get on with it already.”
Molly’s grin somehow managed to grow even larger before he pushed all the way into Caleb’s other side, his own warm breath dancing across Caleb’s ear.
“We’re going to tickle you incoherent, my sweet. How does that sound?”
Caleb felt his mouth go dry at the tiefling’s words. While it would still take a pack of moorbounders to draw it out of him, Caleb was a big enough man to admit quietly in his own head that he loved when Molly and Essek drove him out of his mind with tickling. Like Molly had said, there were a multitude of reasons he did.
Chief amongst them in that moment might have been the absolutely devilish way the words slipped from that sinful mouth, all clipped accent and raw desire.
Presumably, neither of his partners were actually waiting for a response. Molly’s tone made it quite obvious that he knew what was floating through Caleb’s mind in that moment regardless of anything the human could hope to stutter out in reply. Essek’s fingers, dexterous in the distinct fashion of a gifted caster, started slowly etching random patterns up his sides, and it took more concentration than seemed necessary for Caleb to squash the giggles threatening to bubble up and out of him at the sensation. Unfortunately, the instinctual squirming that always accompanied those giggles was significantly more difficult to squander.
Molly laughed again and leaned back enough to look Caleb in the eyes.
“Honestly, we’ve both been itching to get at you all day,” he said softly, shared like a naughty secret in the shadows, “You don’t know how hard it is to keep from just pouncing on you and making you laugh until you safeword. We’ve really been remarkably good, haven’t we, Essek?”
The drow hummed in the affirmative, still keeping up a steady rhythm of mindless shapes and lines drawn into the human’s abdomen, and Caleb knew he was in trouble when he felt the extremely light drag of tiny elven fangs against his neck. He couldn’t possibly have held in the shuddering, giggly gasp that pulled out of him.
Molly suddenly captured Caleb’s lips in a kiss, swallowing the wizard’s shocked little whines as he burrowed one clawed hand into the space just above his top rib, the other sneaking around to squeeze at his upper thigh. The teasy onslaught consumed Caleb’s consciousness entirely, perception whittled down into only the places his boyfriends were touching him. After a few moments—just long enough to feel like he was just starting to lose himself to the sensations—both Molly and Essek paused their ministrations, causing Caleb to whine a fair bit louder into Mollymauk’s mouth.
“Patience, lotha murrpau,” Essek murmured before slowly pulling away from Caleb and going to stand from the sofa. Molly nipped teasingly at Caleb’s bottom lip before moving back himself, his tail quivering with poorly-concealed excitement as he pulled Caleb to his feet as well.
“Might be a bit easier to do this in the bedroom, hmm?”
The bedroom contained their (honestly a little bit ostentatious) bed, which Caleb knew had several concealed sets of restraints attached to it, so yes, that would make things a bit easier.
The trio quickly made their way down the hall (with Caleb having to swat at Molly’s wandering hands the entire way). Essek made quick work of magicking the mountain of decorative throw pillows stacked against the headboard onto the floor while Molly stalked Caleb backwards until his knees hit the edge of the mattress.
A nervous grin had already spread across Caleb’s face—he was far too flustered to manage a stoic expression for even a moment—and the fluttering in his stomach was only quadrupled when two sets of hands delicately pulled his wrists and ankles to opposite ends of the mattress. He whined helplessly, squeezing his eyes shut when he caught both of them watching him with molten want. Molly let out a dangerous-sounding laugh as he connected Caleb’s bound wrists to an extra strap of leather poking out from between the pillows and the headboard.
“Oh dear, look at that,” came Essek’s voice from his spot at the foot of the bed, checking that the cuffs around Caleb’s ankles were comfortably tightened, “It looks like we’ve broken him already, Mollymauk.”
“Mm, good, means we don’t have to work too hard to get him to actually laugh.”
A truer statement had rarely come out of the tiefling’s mouth. One pointed claw each swiped delicately above Caleb’s highest rib on either of his sides and it felt like pure lightning was coursing through him. A bright laugh punched out of Caleb’s throat, which only seemed to spur Molly into repeating the motion over and over, slow and steady.
And if that weren’t enough to short out the human’s brain, the cool touch of Essek’s hand pushing the toes of his right foot back enough to wiggle clever fingertips into the spaces beneath certainly was. A rushed litany of Zemnian curses and broken pleading poured from him the moment the other wizard’s perfectly manicured nails touched down on his overly-sensitized skin. At his head, Molly cooed in mock sympathy.
“Gods above, darling! I know you’re one of the most deliciously ticklish individuals I’ve had the honor to know, but really, begging already? We’ve hardly done anything!”
“Haa-h, Mollymauk, bitte, the t-heeeasing—”
Caleb’s own frantic laughter cut him off, Essek spidering both hands up his thighs as Molly dove back to his upper ribs.
“Teasing!” Molly affected a melodramatic, affronted tone, carefully filed claws scritching infuriatingly against the ridiculously ticklish skin between his ribs and underarms, “Starlight, I think our sweet human has already lost his mind! I’m not teasing, am I?”
“Hmm, I think you’re right, love, there’s definitely no teasing of any sort happening here.”
Their banter was almost worse than their hands, and Caleb could do little else but thrash his head back and forth as his boyfriends carefully took advantage of two of his worst spots effortlessly. Of course, they both knew the wonderfully tortuous cycle—enough teasing would make the actual tickling twenty times worse, and the tickling would make every cruel word that fell from their lips feel as if someone had unleashed a horde of butterflies in his stomach. Sometimes it would hardly take more than the two of them talking and fluttering fingers threateningly to bring Caleb to this point, Common all but flown from his head and tears puddling in the corners of his eyes (Molly had been particularly proud the first time he’d managed to get Caleb to scream for mercy without even touching him once).
But the electrifying feeling of their touches to his skin, switching between light, gentle tracing to rapid vibrating flutters to nipping pinches across his pale, freckled form were something else entirely. There was nothing else in his annoyingly keen mind but Essek and Mollymauk and the glee in their voices as they pointed out just how ticklish their brilliant wizard was, how much they knew he adored when they would take him apart like this. These moments were the moments Caleb lived for, craved just under his skin like an addict. How wonderful, that the two men he loved were more than happy to be his enablers.
—
After what the others would later insist was just under an hour—despite the human feeling like it was far longer—and he had managed to squeal out their safeword, Caleb found himself being gently eased into their (also a bit ostentatious) bathtub, steam curling comfortingly off of the water’s surface. He reclined with a long, relaxed sigh against the lean, familiar chest of Molly, while Essek began rubbing soothing hands up and down his arms. Occasionally, a firm stroke would lighten to an almost-tickle, or Molly’s exceedingly devious tail would swipe across the back of his neck, but at the most, Caleb would let out a soft giggle before slipping back into a light doze.
It felt a bit like his brain was melting out of his ears.
Delightful.
“So,” Molly’s voice vibrated through his chest, a soothing purr against Caleb’s back, “Good birthday?”
Caleb slowly blinked his eyes open, meeting Essek’s soft, adoring gaze as he replied with a simple, “Ja, very good.”
Perhaps birthdays weren’t so much of a chore. If this was the new tradition, Caleb thought that he might just have to start looking forward to them.
Helloooo may i have an "You're gonna regret that" with the projection wizards pleeease? 🥰-poe
My dear, you can have all that and more <3 I hope you enjoy!
---
“Caleb Widogast, you’re going to regret that!”
The wizard in question is already sprinting from the library, broad grin spread wide on his face. Essek sounds just the right amount of put out, which, perfect. It isn’t Caleb’s fault the drow has caught him on one of the exceedingly rare days where he had no patience for transcription or somatics practice, but like hell if he was going to let a good opportunity to push a few of Essek’s buttons go to waste. Caleb had turned the sweet embrace they were sharing while on a “study break” into a swift, unprompted attack on Essek’s unprotected ears, and the look on the other wizard’s face will live very proudly in Caleb’s mind forever. Very much worth the inevitable aftermath.
(Actually, the inevitable aftermath was kind of exactly what he was going for in the first place, but it would take significant effort and patience on someone else’s part to ever get him to admit it.)
With an honestly surprising amount of agility, Caleb rushes through the hallways of the mansion. He nearly collides with the hulking form of Caduceus, emerging from the kitchen and balancing four teacups in his arms, and shouts an apology behind him as he continues on to the staircase at the end of the hall. By the time he reaches the second floor, he’s already quite winded, but it’s only a short distance to his favorite hiding spot.
Caleb is careful to close the door to Fjord’s currently unoccupied bedroom as quietly as possible before collapsing onto the bed, a rush of breathy laughter escaping as his back hits the blankets with a satisfying fwoop. The wizard closes his eyes and takes a few moments to savor the half-amused, half-betrayed expression he’d seen on Essek before bolting. Perhaps if he could describe it well enough, Jester would draw it for him. It’d make an excellent addition to his own bedroom decor.
The sound of the doorknob rustling breaks the human out of his own head. He shoots upright just as the door swings open, revealing a slightly disheveled and frowning Essek Thelyss. Instinctually, Caleb holds his hands up as he tries to subtly scoot himself backward on the bed, but giggles have already started bubbling up in his chest.
He watches as Essek floats through the door and closes it with a swift flick of his hand. The sound of the bolt latching rings out over Caleb’s half-muffled laughter. The drow before him draws closer and closer before crawling up onto the bed and pining Caleb down with only his eyes. Caleb feels a shudder ripple down his spine at the small, predatory smirk curling up one corner of his lover’s lips.
“That was exceedingly foolish, chathtiu.”
Before Caleb can even attempt to respond, Essek’s fingers are twirling dangerous patterns in the air, somehow making the somatics a tease as well. Damn him. Caleb barely hears the soft incantation of the now extremely familiar spell and isn’t at all surprised when his wrists feel like they’ve been bound together with invisible silken fabric. Another flick of Essek’s fingers and his magically-tied arms fly above Caleb’s head, pinned to the small stack of pillows at the top of the bed.
The restriction seems to kick up the anticipatory giggles tenfold, and Essek gives him a pitying look before leaning forward to box him in.
“Let’s see if we can work some of this juvenile energy out of you, hmm? I really did want to get some work done today.”
Dexterous, wicked fingers touch down on Caleb’s ribs and laughter spills from him freely. Definitely worth it.
