Archive of Our Own ^beta

It had been a very long day.

Essek unlocked the front door to the house and entered, exhaustion pulling at his shoulders and aching in his neck. If he had been walking his feet would have been dragging. He shut the door behind him, mentally cataloging exactly how much magic he had done during the day: several high level acts of Dunamancy, a short distance teleport, two simpler but still tiring casts of magic missile. He leaned against the door and rubbed at the bridge of his nose for a moment in a feeble effort to dispel some of the tension from behind his eyes, just taking a minute to breathe, to ground himself. He was home, now. The wards he and Caleb had placed were all still gently humming with Weave, perfectly intact.

He tried to convince himself there wasn’t going to be any reason for him to do more than mutter a cantrip now that he was home.

The front room was dim and cold, empty. The hearth was dark, still stocked with logs. He had been gone for two weeks and Caleb had left before him with Beauregard to investigate rumors for the Cobalt Soul, and the house had remained without any residents in the meantime. He vaguely remembered thinking it would be nice for Caleb if he came home to a fireplace that was ready for a simple conjured flame.

Light, he missed Caleb. He knew the other wizard was safe -- they were constantly sending each other twenty-five word messages when they could -- but it wasn’t the same. He craved Caleb’s unbridled company, his lengthy conversation, his quiet presence, his body heat, his cooking, his help in the garden. As good as it was to be home, the thought of sleeping in their bed alone made him frown.

Essek scoffed at himself. Here he was, finally home, and already ruining his own mood with unpleasant thoughts. Caleb would be home in the next few days, that was the last message he’d received. Getting home first just meant he could make the place more welcoming in the meantime.

With a wave of his hand he set the hearth to a gentle, welcoming blaze and set the oil lamps to a low light.

He shrugged out of his cloak and his disguise spell at the same time and hung the mantle on the coat rack beside the door. Mechanically he removed his boots, then debated for a moment before shedding the rest of his clothes and walking up the stairs to their bedroom. He deposited his bedraggled robes into a wicker basket by the door for washing later and made his way into the bathroom.

A hot bath. A book. Maybe he would pour a glass of wine and think about making a meal that wasn’t cooked over a campfire.

Essek took his time drawing the bath, sprinkled several handfuls of lavender and bergamot scented salt into the water before settling himself against the smooth ceramic of the clawfoot tub. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes to the wooden ceiling. The water was just cool enough not to burn. The warmth seeped through his purple skin and sank into his sore muscles, unwound some of the pain that had crept up in his spine and neck. The headache that had been building behind his eyes eased to a distant, dull thing that he could ignore.

As much as the Mighty Nein seemed to enjoy the perils of adventure, Essek was more cut out for feather beds and quiet study halls than rocky campgrounds and rain soaked treks through the mud.

He lacked Caleb’s innate ability to know exactly how much time he had spent in the tub. The water grew cool before he pulled the drain and extricated himself from his soak.

The return of gravity brought with it some of the exhausted throbbing pain so he willed himself to float a few inches above the ground. No one expected that in the empty house, but it was still worth the relief it gave his sore legs.

Far cleaner and more relaxed than he had been in days, Essek dressed himself in a comfortable set of soft, linen nightclothes, the kind he rarely got to wear while adventuring across the continent. They were a light blue that he normally wouldn’t wear, but Jester had given them to him with the intent of reminding Essek of the color of Caleb’s eyes so he had to make an exception. Over that he threw on his dark purple housecoat, and then stood in front of the coat rack for a moment, smiling fondly at a burgundy scarf Caleb had left behind.

Gently he took it from the rack and wrapped it around his own neck. It still smelled like smoke and catmint and sea salt and iron, with a hint of sulfur, and under all of that a scent that he could only categorize as distinctly Caleb Widogast. A delighted shiver ran up his spine. He indulged himself just a little more, pulled the fabric directly against his face and took a long inhale.

Just a few days. Just a few days and he would have the real Caleb home and he could bury his face in the man’s neck. Until then, the scarf would have to do.

He poured himself the glass of wine he’d been thinking about, grabbed a book Caleb had recommended years ago, and settled into the dimly lit study, intending to wile away a few hours before trancing. The sun wasn’t even properly down yet, shining a warm amber light through the western facing window.

Tusk Love, the book was called. The spine well worn, a few pages dogeared. Frowning, Essek flipped quickly through the pages, checking the margins.

And then there it was, a tiny penis, drawn into the blank space at the top of page 69.

“Oh, Jester…” He laughed to himself, sipping his wine -- it was not complex, more a red table wine than a wine worth savoring, so he sipped it again. Naturally Tusk Love was Jester’s book; Caleb did not dogear pages, Yasha did not crack book spines, and Beau did not return the books she borrowed, so Jester was the only real option, dick doodle or no.

He was halfway through his glass of wine and had only just been introduced to Oskar when the distinct whoomph of a teleportation spell and a crackle of arcane energy pulled his attention in the direction of the laboratory.

“Goddamn it, what do you mean it should be there?!” Beauregard’s voice was angry, or maybe concerned. The two emotions were the same color when she wore them. “Fuck! Watch your side!”

Essek was on his feet and running to the laboratory before he could think twice about, book discarded, his floating cantrip forgotten. He pulled the door open just as the two of them were coming to it.

Beau’s hair was pastered to the side of her face with drying gore, her blue robes stained purple along the left side where she held Caleb’s arm draped over her shoulders.

The wizard’s coat dripped blood, his scarf soaked all the way up to his throat. His hair had fallen partially out of its tie and stuck to his face in bloodied clumps and knots, his amber locks dyed crimson. His left eye was open, the right closed by a cruel gouge that cut from his hair line through his eyebrow and then out toward his temple then down and around the orb of his eye. He could have lost the eye, should have, if the thing that cut him had any aim.

Still, Caleb smiled at him in his tender way. “Hello, dearest. Sorry for…” He blinked very slowly, slumped harder into Beauregard’s side with a wince. “... das Chaos..”

Essek frowned while Beau barked a laughed.

“You got a potion?” Beau demanded.

Essek huffed out of habit and pushed past her back into the laboratory. The room was a cluster of ideas and projects, das Chaos -- a mess, a wreck, disorderliness incarnate. Unless the person looking knew how he and Caleb thought. But that was not the mess that Caleb meant to address--

Essek opened a drawer on the left side of the laboratory and fumbled for a moment before he found the potion he was looking for.

“I’m sorry, I thought it would be more beneficial to keep them here because--”

Beau ripped the bottle from his hand and uncorked it with her teeth before she unceremoniously tilted it down Caleb’s throat.

To his credit, Caleb quaffed the bitter liquid like it was an especially large shot of alcohol, only scowling at the flavor when it was finished. After a breath, he was able to push himself up to stand more steadily. His face was still cut, his posture unsteady, but he no longer looked ready to die if someone sneezed at him.

“What happened?” Essek swept under Caleb’s other arm and placed his right hand across the small of Caleb’s back.

“Would you believe me if I said it was fucking bandits? Fucking jumped us in the woods with garrotes and knives like professionals.” Beau grumbled. “Sometimes I think Molly cursed us when he stopped us from killing that one gang. Twice.”

“Heh--ow...” Caleb intoned softly. He leaned a bit more of his weight into Essek as they left the laboratory and moved toward the bedroom. Essek and Beau lowered him gently to the edge of the bed and he let out a slow, shaky breath. “It is a little nostalgic though, getting stabbed with daggers and shot with arrows.”

Essek placed a hand on his dirt smudged cheek and sighed. “Please tell me your thirst for danger has been sated for the next few years?”

“Hm… give me three weeks.” He replied with a weak and lopsided grin.

Beau moved about their house with the sort of familiarity of a family member, gathering fresh water and bandages from the bathroom, and clean clothes from the dark wooden wardrobe. Meanwhile, Essek set about disrobing his partner, though in a decidedly different context than he would prefer. Caleb sat very still, eyes closed, breathing slowly through his nose.

Under the fabric of the blood soaked scarf the skin of his throat was bruised yellow and purple, smeared with gore, and striped with small scabbed over wounds. One larger wounded still oozed and Essek could see from the bloodstains on his jacket and shirt that it was meant to be a mortal blow, a blade pulled across his neck to kill him.

“Light above,” Essek cursed softly.

Caleb’s left eye opened and focused on him, a small smile curled at the edge of his lips, too slight for someone who did not know him well to notice. “Oh, it can’t be that bad, can it?”

“Maybe we skip the bandages and I’ll go get another potion from the laboratory.”

“You needn’t waste--”

“Shut up.” Beau cut in, placing the medical supplies beside him. “Get cleaned up and then you can decide what to do.” She glanced at Essek. “You got this part?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“Good. I wouldn’t wish my bedside manner on a corpse.” She offered a smile that did not reach her eyes. “I’m going to raid your wine cabinet and take a nap in the guest room. Come get me if you need me.”

“There’s already an open bottle of unimpressive red on the table in the study, if you want to take that.”

Her expression brightened and a chuckle crackled in her throat. “You gotta work on your sales pitch, Essek.” She gave him a firm, friendly punch in the arm that would probably leave a bruise before she made her way out of the bedroom, shutting the heavy door behind her.

Without her there, Caleb sagged a little more, shoulders slumping into his coat. Trembling fingers came up to grab at his lapels and tug at it feebly, the motion mechanical.

Essek slipped his fingers under the hem of the coat by his right shoulder to allow Caleb to shrug out of it a little easier. The blood on his chest was not only from the cut across his neck. A deep puncture marred his right shoulder where an arrow had landed its mark, the wound bleeding ever so slightly through the fabric of his no-longer white shirt. They left the other sleeve of the coat on for the moment while Essek went about removing the right side of the ruined shirt from the wound.

Jester would have talked the entire time she worked, would have asked questions and babbled about her own adventures. Essek went about the task with the same single mindedness that he had in spellwork, saying and doing nothing unnecessary.

He found a second arrow wound low on Caleb’s back, and two more knife wounds on his left arm, one above the elbow and one below. He cleaned them and dressed them before he sank down on the mattress beside Caleb, his own shoulders and neck aching from leaning over for so long.

Caleb let out a long sigh and titled until his head rested firmly on Essek’s left shoulder. “You look very good in my scarf, by the way.”

Essek felt his face heat in a blush. “I got home this afternoon and put it on because I missed you.” He said honestly. “I was reading that book you recommended, the one Jester gave you, just making an evening of not resting outside--”

“Tusk Love? We have had that book in our house for years and you have refused to touch it with a meter stick!” Despite the incredulity in his voice, Caleb did not pull away from Essek, but instead cuddled a little closer, a laugh under his breath.

“Anyway,” Essek turned his face so he could lay a kiss on the top of Caleb’s head. “I am sure you want to regale me with all of the details of your trip with Beauregard, and explain how exactly a group of ordinary bandits nearly killed you, but did you want some dinner or water or sleep?”

Caleb grumbled low in his throat and threw his left arm across Essek so the two of them tumbled gently against the brown duvet, their feet still hanging off the bed. “Sleep. Gods, I’ve missed you.” He tilted his forehead into Essek’s and closed his eyes. “But the stories can wait until tomorrow. I am… tapped. I don’t think I could evoke a firebolt. I’m so tired.”

Essek pressed their lips together in a brief, chaste kiss that filled his chest with emotions he was still struggling to find words for in Common. “I will go get a few things then.”

“You don’t have to sit and watch me sleep, if you don’t want to.” Caleb did not open his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll sit and read Jester’s atrocious romance novel and drink my wine for a little, and then I’ll watch you sleep for an hour or two before I trance.” He felt the huff of warm air that was Caleb’s chuckle spread across his chin. “And if you sleep late I will bring you tea and one of those apple tarts from the bakery down the street before I make you think any coherent thoughts or put together a narrative. Oh, and I’ll bring you that book I found on ancient draconic magic.”

Caleb hummed contentedly, a warm smile creeping across his face. “You are perfect. A treasure. Du bringst Licht in mein Leben, Liebling.”

“Ah,” Essek hummed. He could not help but see some humor in being called a bringer of light after their history, but he knew Caleb did not mean anything having to do with the Luxon or the Beacons. “Do take your boots off before I come back here, or I might have to take them off for you.”

“Threatening me with a good time?”

“Not tonight, ussta che. Now get comfortable, I’ll be right back.” Essek pushed himself up to his elbows before Caleb’s arm slid limply off his chest. Before he had made his way all the way to the bedroom door he heard a deep, slow breath behind him, so relaxed and rhythmic he knew his partner had already fallen asleep.

With a lilt in his step he had not felt since his return home, he put the medical supplies away and made his way back to retrieve his book and his glass of wine. When he returned, he slipped Caleb out of his boots and belt, then laid a throw blanket across his body and propped his head on a pillow. Caleb slept through it all.

Essek settled himself beside his partner, wine on the nightstand, book in hand. He smiled to himself, tucked the scarf a little tighter around his neck, and opened Tusk Love.