ALL OF THIS!! ALLLLL OF THIS POST!! I actually just saw this while taking a break from writing a fic where Caleb is about to go out looking for Molly in the middle of the night!! IT'S JUST ALL SO TRUEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAA! And the fact that up until the heist Molly didn't have Yasha there to hold him and watch his back is extra soul-crushing.
I hope you don't mind if I use this post as an excuse to share part of this WIP! It's a your-soulmate's-first-words-to-you-are-written-on-the-inside-of-your-wrist AU (which has been especially fun with the animated show, considering the first time Molly addressed Caleb it was to tell him and the rest of the Nein it was their fault his family died).
The night they met, Molly was brittle and lost. He'd radiated tension—the kinetic promise of glass on a hot stove. But somewhere amidst the chaos of their escape, the fire went out. A glaze had welled up in Molly's eyes, and he'd appeared to drift in and out of sleepwalking for much of the journey from their cell to the cave.
By nightfall Molly had been smiling again.
For all his peacock panache, it turned out Molly could be a very private person when he wanted to be. From the moment of Toya's funeral, the pain only shone through in the cries Molly made in his sleep.
Now, as the Nein reunite in Zadash, Molly's facade is tissue-thin and tearing. The Gentleman puts Molly to work on his broken cart, and all of a sudden Molly is a solitary animal. What began as a patch job quickly spirals into a lavish reconstruction project.
In the moments he can be pried from his paint and hammers, Molly hovers at the edge of the party. His nervous energy spills its banks in furtive glances over his shoulder, every unoccupied moment stoppered with booze or shuffling cards.
Molly's nightmares had tapered in recent weeks. He shatters that streak the night before the ball, screaming himself awake like a bat out of hell. Beau has him in a headlock before her eyes are even open. She comes to. "What the hell, man?!"
Molly wheezes unhelpfully. It's a little after two in the morning. Caleb blinks to clear the vestiges of his own nightmare from his eyelids. Somehow Nott is already armed.
"Are we fucked?" Nott yells. "Is it the crownsguard? Is it Trent?"
Beau lets Molly go and deadpans, "It's fine, Nott. Go back to sleep."
Nott looks to Caleb for confirmation. Caleb mouths "nightmare" at her, and she softens, lowering her crossbow.
"Sheesh," she says, plucking the arrow from its barrel. "What time is it?"
"Two-seventeen," Caleb says.
"Good. Still a few hours left to sleep."
There's a knock—not from the door, but the wall. Jester's voice squeezes out through layers of plaster and insulation: "Is everybody okay in there?"
"We're good," Beau calls.
"Okay." The silence settles like dust after a breeze. Then, "Are you sure?"
Caleb and Beau overlap: "Ja." "Yes."
The wall muffles Jester's reply beyond translation, but the tone is acquiescent. Beau crawls back into her sleeping bag. It's her turn to take the floor tonight. Molly sits and massages the skin at the back of his neck.
Beau sniffs. "Sorry," she says.
"Don't trouble yourself," Molly tells her. "I'm sure I gave you all a nasty shock."
Beau swings the drawstrings on her sleeping bag so the beads at the end clack together. Nott asks, "Would you like to talk about it?"
Molly smiles. "Time for that later, I should think. I've stolen enough of your sleep already." He nudges Beau with his foot. "Bed's yours."
"I'm going for a dander. Just to clear my head." He stands, grabbing his coat. "Back in a jiffy."
He's out the door so fast Caleb can't even remember whether he stopped to grab his shoes.
Nott looks at Caleb. Beau looks at Caleb. Caleb grinds his palms into his eye sockets and groans.
"Caleb," Nott says, in the deceptively patient tone of a mother winding up for a lecture.
They haven't talked about it. Nott will readily hand a murderer his own wanted poster as a conversation starter—but she's never once brought up Caleb's mark. This is the first time Caleb has ever caught her looking at him like he's Molly's soulmate, and it twists something ugly in his stomach.
Caleb sets his jaw. "I am not Mollymauk's keeper. If he wants to be left alone, I will respect his privacy."
"We're gonna wake up tomorrow and find him asleep in an armchair again," Nott warns. "And then he'll be dead on his feet all day and we'll have to worry about him driving our getaway cart into a lamp post."
"Or fainting under the weight of that stupid top hat," Beau adds.
"It is good to know that Mollymauk has such considerate friends, at least."
Beau throws her pillow at him.
"Look," she says. "If you really don't want to go, that's fine—I'll find him. But I'm kind of…You saw the way he reacted when Nott asked if he wanted to talk. I tried to level with him earlier and he—I don't know, fuck, you try to comfort him and he grabs whatever you say to him and..." She mimes something too specific for Caleb to parse but may or may not involve a ball somewhere.
Caleb says, "I am…not very good at uh, at talking to people."
"Okay, I know, I get that. But Molly likes you."
"And you know a sleep spell."
Caleb snickers. Beau hastens to add: "In case he—come on, man, you know that's not…I've already got a spell for knocking people out and it's called a concussion. I meant you could offer a magic spell to him. Like as a sleep aid."
"I do not think falling back asleep is the problem," says Caleb—but he's putting on his coat. In truth, he doubts he himself will be able to get back to sleep knowing Mollymauk is loose in Zadash somewhere, outrunning his subconscious in striped socks and a nightgown. "It…wouldn't hurt to check up on him, I suppose. Make sure a tavern chair is the worst place he falls asleep in."
