Chapter Text
Here’s the problem with Mollymauk, when left to his own devices.
He pines.
He doesn’t know when it begins; when he crosses the line from plain old attraction to romantic inclination. Because there is a line, hard and cold drawn in the sand, between the two. One which has never been crossed before, given how little experience he has, which is still quite a lot considering his personal circumstances, but not very much in the grand scheme of things. At first, he doesn’t understand it, the emotions that seem new and all-too-familiar all at the same time. The gap between platonic and romantic small, yet large enough that a good running start is required to leap over it.
In the two years since his rebirth, he was very aware that he was attracted to many different types of people. Sex and everything to do with it came very easy to him after his initial trauma from digging himself from his own grave. It was something he did with everyone he met, from Yasha and everyone else at the circus to each of his current companions as well. A little game he played, to see how many people he’d shag, racking up the numbers in his head to some vague amusement
Jester. Fjord. Caleb. Yasha. Nott. Beau.
Yes. Probably. Definitely. Maybe. No. Not a chance in hell.
Sex is easy when it all comes down to it. It starts in mutual attraction, ends in mutual satisfaction, and when done right, and both parties agree, there’s no need to move on from there.
And then there’s Caleb Widogast, who is a problem, to say the very least.
It’s like being pushed into a frozen stream when he finally realizes it. He likes to make people smile, it’s just part of who he is. Seeing Jester’s bright and sunny grin has been one of the highlights of his day since they had met. But Caleb doesn’t really smile, not as obviously as Jester does at the very least. It’s not in his mouth or cheeks where he displays his joy, it’s in his eyes. They begin to twinkle, like Molly images what the ocean looks like on a very sunny day. He captures those moments as well as he can, hordes them with as much possessiveness as Nott when it comes to her more valuable possessions.
He likes it when Caleb is happy. He likes it even more when he makes Caleb happy.
It feels wrong at first. Caleb is not his by any means, but he doesn’t know how to properly describe his feelings by any other word except greedy for the other man’s happiness, attention, affection.
It’s not just physical, he realizes. Because physical is easy for him. He’d never been a hormonal teenager, doesn’t know that that’s even a thing, but with the way his mind works the metaphor is a good one. It’s easy to imagine what one looks like when they’re naked, the sounds they make during sex, the expression on their faces when they come. Except with Caleb, he’s moved past that. Way past that. He’s so far gone that the idea of sex with Caleb doesn’t even matter anymore.
And fuck, isn’t that a little strange.
LIke any personal quandary that he finds impassible, he goes to Yasha with her calm demeanour and her non-judgmental eyes. He would never describe her as beyond her years, but she definitely knows more about the world than he does, so that makes her advice more valuable than anything else he could come up with.
They sit around the campfire late one night, whispering to each other as the others sleep around them. Yasha puts an arm around his shoulders, curls him into her side under her cloak and doesn’t complain when he turns his head to rest the side of his horn against her chest. Her heartbeat is slow and strong against the skin of his cheek. At times like this, he forgets how prone she is to anger.
“Mollymauk, have you ever been in love before?” She asks.
He looks up at her, slightly taken aback, “Well I love you, of course. And Jester, and Nott, and the entire lot of them. The old family. That’s no surprise to me.”
“No. Not that. It’s something more. Y’know when you-- No, it’s just-- how do I explain this,” she asks herself, staring down into her lap, “There’s your family, yeah? And you love them because they raised you and took care of you. And there’s your friends, and you love them because you travel with them, and they make you happy, and you want them to be happy in turn. And then there’s something… more.”
“Well that’s bloody fuckin’ confusing.”
She chuckles, a low grating sound that echoes through her chest. It’s comforting, at least, “Isn’t everything with you?”
“True enough, friend.”
Yasha’s words, while not providing any comfort, do give him the unexpected gift of perspective. And it’s the perspective he needs to figure things out in time.
One night before bed, when they're resting up in a tavern instead of the open road, he knocks on the girl’s room door. Jester is the one to open it, pillow in her hands, raised to hit someone before she realizes its Molly standing there, “Oh, Molly. Have you come to join the pillow fight too?”
He chuckles, “No dear, just came to ask if I could borrow a book or two?”
She smiles, leaning in closer to him as she looks up through her lashes into his eyes, “Do you want the porn?”
He leans down to her, “I wouldn’t say no.”
She giggles and turns back into the room, closing the door behind her. She returns under a minute later, two books in her arms which she eagerly hands over, “There’s Tusk Love and I even stole Courting of the Crick from Beau. You should read that one first, she won’t like it if you steal shit from her. I like Tusk Love better, though, Oskar is so handsome,” she pretends to swoon, placing the back of her hand against her forehead, “Have fun with the porn, Molly!”
He blinks as she slams the door behind her, no regard towards the other people staying at the inn or the incredibly late time of night.
Back in his room, he lights a small candle, sits up against the headboard of his bed, and reads. It’s not a pastime he’s incredibly enamoured with. The ability to read and write came back naturally to him after a couple of months, but he wasn’t necessarily good at it, and he never found that he needed to be to be good at his job.
The Courting of the Crick is difficult to read through, requiring several days of reading before sleep after receiving it. It’s written in ridiculous, almost flowery prose, with so much descriptive weight put on the historical sequence of events that he’s forced to skip through many of the opening chapters to get to what he’s looking for. In the end, the romance between the Wildemount general and the Xhorhasian assassin is bittersweet and less than satisfying. It’s a mere backdrop to the historical content, and it doesn’t appear to be exactly what he’s looking for. It’s not a healthy relationship, to say the least, many of their interactions with each other have an underlying tension that is more violent than sexual. The smut itself, while appreciated between the long-winded explanations of definitions and events, was not given nearly as much time or attention than the rest of the book.
He finally moves on to Tusk Love a week later, giving up on the other book a few chapters before he was even finished it. The first chapter in, he can already tell why Jester loves Tusk Love, main characters with vague similarities to his roommate notwithstanding. The writing is cheesy, to say the very least. It’s sappy and corny and a little over the top at times, but it’s exactly what Molly was looking for. He spends the night with the book open on his lap, hunched over its pages until his candle burns out and his lower back begins to ache. He finds himself to fit inside either of the character’s shoes as they lust after one another, as the physical attraction turns into something more on both sides of the equation, yet neither of them wants to admit it in fear of getting hurt or the termination of the relationship. It does almost end, right in the final chapters of the book, but it’s resolved by the final page and, as Jester said, Oskar carries the merchant’s daughter Angela across a field, escaping the overbearing oppression of her parent’s desires and the racial discrimination of the Empire to go live out a life on the Menagerie Coast, happy and together.
It’s a little on the nose.
He returns the books to Jester the next day. She lifts her eyebrow at him when he does, no doubt wondering whether he got off to them or not because that’s just how her mind works. He spins a tale she enjoys, and leaves her to her thoughts, no matter how explicit and untrue they may be.
He spends the next night alone down in the bar. Yasha has disappeared for a spell, making alcohol his second-best confidant for his wayward thoughts. He hasn’t done this in a long time since joining up with the others, hasn’t really needed to since they all know what he’s put behind him. It’s all out in the open, no need to sit and stew when any of them are able to lend a good ear whenever he requires one. But this is a little too close to the chest for that. It needs a delicate touch.
“You okay, Molly?” Fjord asks as he sits down on the other side of the table, scaring Molly from staring into his drink.
“Oh, yes. Hello.”
“Hi.”
“What’re you doing down here?”
“Saw you weren’t up in the room, and it’s getting late. You’ve been pretty into your reading there the past couple weeks.”
“Well, I’m done now.”
“Oh… did you like them?”
Molly smirks and leans in, “D’you really want to ask that?”
“No. I’m just a little… concerned seeing how you’re down here. All alone. Gettin’ drunk.”
Molly leans back in his chair, chugging the last bits of his ale before waving to the bartender to serve him a new one, “I’ve been going over a little predicament of mine, I find booze to be a very good conversationalist in lieu of friends who run off at very unfortunate times.”
“Well, maybe I can help with it,” Fjord shrugs his shoulders.
Molly look towards him, tapping his fingers on the wood of the table before he makes his decision, “Have you ever found yourself in love with someone else?”
Fjord looks slightly taken aback, “No. Never. You?”
Molly gestures to himself, “Two years old, remember? Not much time to form attachments to people., much less anything so… time-consuming.” He plays it off well, he thinks to himself as he tries to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Right. So why’re you so chewed up by this?”
He takes another drink, “Not chewed up, just inquisitive I guess. As is my nature, being the youngest one here and all. Everything’s new. Everything sounds strange until you’re given time to mull it over.”
“All right. Just don’t go drinking yourself into a stupor over this, we’re back on the road tomorrow,” Fjord said as he got up from his chair, clapping a hand on Molly’s shoulder before heading upstairs. Molly sighs, taking another sip of his drink with no intention to stop.
Because it’s Love now, capitalised-for-effect Love. He’s pretty sure of it. It’s a little strange to him, almost borderline obsessive, but beginning to calm down once he’s realized what it means. Perhaps he wants to make Caleb happy. Perhaps he wants to protect him, make sure no harm is done. Perhaps he wants to help Caleb after his attacks, comfort him when he cries. Perhaps he wants to hold him in bed at night and whisper sweet nothings into his ear.
But Caleb doesn’t know that. Caleb never has to know that. He’s made no inclination towards a romantic partner, and Molly is just fine with that. Or so he tells himself and his tankard of ale, whispering into it as he falls asleep with his head on the table in front of him.
No one needs to know.