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Molly doesn’t have a type, really. He likes all kinds of people, has as long as he remembers. Yasha could probably tell a tale or two about Molly’s varied tastes when it comes to taking people to bed with him.
One of the ways to live life to the fullest is to connect with all sorts of people and Molly always found it easiest to connect with them… well. Physically. Not necessarily in a sexual manner, but he likes touching people and he loves being touched in return, be it in form of a hug, a tickle or bending someone over a table and making them forget their own name.
When he wakes up, his first thoughts vary from “Fucking shit” and “Not again” to “I really need a hug”.
What he gets first is a loud screech, a suppressed sobbing sound and a muttered “Den Göttern sei Dank” which he doesn’t understand. But he recognizes the voices even though it’s hard to believe that Beau could make a sobbing sound like this.
“Molly?”, Nott yelps and Molly turns his head to see where she is. Her nervous wiggling makes him wonder if she wants to hug him but she stares at him with wide eyes and doesn’t seem to find the courage to come closer.
Both Caleb’s and Beau’s eyes are blue and huge and Molly wants to complain about the rather cold welcome when he realizes what makes them so apprehensive.
They don’t know if it’s really me, Molly thinks. They brought the body back and don’t know who’s living in it.
He feels cold and stiff and everything hurts and when he opens his mouth only a broken sound comes out.
“Careful there, coming back is never easy”, a fourth voice says. Molly doesn’t recognize it so he turns his head and… there is a Firbolg. He has no idea who it is but damn, that guy is huge. And rather pretty. Molly loves people who are just as colorful as he is so this pink and turquoise giant of a man is right up his alleyway.
“I’ll make some tea, purple fella. You should just take it easy and breathe.”
Molly turns his head and looks at Beau first. She is definitely crying while simultaneously trying to hide it. It doesn’t work at all.
He manages to stretch his hand out a bit and wonders what he can do to make them realize that they brought the right one back—not Lucien, not Nonagon or whatever the guy called himself—without talking.
So he opts for sticking his tongue out and throwing Caleb a wink.
Nott’s screech is so loud it hurts his ears and finally, finally they come to him—Nott first, Caleb second and Beau third.
She is still terrible but wonderfully alive so it was all worth it, the pain, the dying. Beau got away so it was all worth it.
Molly will never tell her that.
He wants to ask where the others are, if they managed to save them, if Yasha is alright—she has to be, Yasha is so strong, but… damn, those fucking slavers were also very strong. Molly hates not being able to speak. Maybe it’ll come back in a few minutes but he feels like he should take it all one step at a time.
Nott hugs him, which surprises him immensely. What surprises him even more is that Caleb actually touches his hair. Caleb. Touches. It’s so faint Molly almost misses it but those are definitely fingers stroking his hair and then there is Beau, looking down at him with bloodshot eyes, dark rings under them like a physical testament of all the things she’s lost.
“You fucking asshole, Molly”, she croaks and then without any warning she hugs him as well, crushes him, buries her face in the crook of his neck and actually starts sobbing again.
He tries to lift his arm and wrap it around her and it hurts like hell but he desperately wants to comfort her.
“Glad to have you back, friend”, Caleb says quietly, his blue eyes never leaving Molly’s face as if he’s drinking him in. All well and alive.
Beau keeps mumbling profanities into his bloody shirt and his shoulder.
“I didn’t take any of your stuff”, Nott sniffs and touches the jewelry on his horns, “because you taught me not to steal from happy people.”
That’s all she manages before she starts sobbing as well and now Molly has his arms full of a goblin and an unpleasant monk. It makes him so happy he almost can’t bear it.
“We got the others. They still need healing, so they are staying with Nila.”
Molly has no idea who Nila is but a faint memory tickles his brain in which a Firbolg woman tells them of Nila, the mother who left her clan to save her son. Molly hopes she got to save him.
Yasha is free. Jester and Fjord are safe.
And Molly is alive.
He feels laughter bubble up in his chest and it hurts when it breaks free but damn, it feels good.
“I made some—how did you call it? Dead-people-tea. It’s ok, you can drink it even when you’re alive and I assure you it won’t kill you again”, the stranger says, his face appearing above Molly. Molly really digs his pink hair.
“This is Clay. We found him on a graveyard and he brought you back. He grows tea from dead people”, Nott explains, still sniffing. She sits up again and now helps Caleb and Beau to prop Molly up as well so he can take the teacup that is offered to him.
Clay bows a bit after Molly took one of the cups from his hands.
“Caduceus Clay. At your service. And you must be Mollymauk Tealeaf, the good friend of these fine, slaver-killing people”, Clay says and sits down facing Molly before taking a content sip from his tea.
Molly—despite what his last name is—doesn’t care that much for tea but this is delicious.
He tries to open his mouth and a broken sound comes out.
Fucking shit.
“Take your time, friend. Your voice will find its way back as well. Or. Did he talk before?”, Clay wants to know. Beau snorts and wipes her face on her sleeve.
“Didn’t ever stop to fucking talk. This is actually quite nice.”
Molly snorts and sticks his tongue out again. Damn it feels good to be back. This big ass chunk of nothingness and black void really doesn’t do it for him. No, he prefers this vibrant, terrible place above all other places.
And this time waking up, instead of dirt he had to claw himself out of, there is actually… well.
His new family. Or at least parts of it. And a hot stranger who offered him dead-people-tea safe to be consumed by the living.
After two cups of tea Molly actually feels his limbs again and they wrap him in his coat and put him on a horse in front of Beau.
Caduceus trots alongside them, humming under his breath and stopping from time to time to look at a fern, flower or a tree.
“Will you look at that, those little buggers don’t grow in my graveyard. I’ll have to have a talk with the Wildmother. Aren’t you just beautiful. And what about you—”
“He’s mostly talking to himself”, Beau explains while Molly watches Caduceus touch some rather plain, yellow flowers he seems to find exceptionally beautiful. Molly thinks that Yasha will probably like him a lot.
He tries to use his voice again.
“Are—do we adopt this one?”, he rasps out.
Finally.
Beau snorts.
“Hell if I know. He turns dead people into mulch and heals, so I feel like he’d be pretty useful. And he wanted to leave his weird swamp. Garden. Graveyard. Whatever, you’ll see the place.”
Molly listens to Caduceus’ proclamations. He has such a calming voice that Molly actually falls asleep against Beau, his head lolling back onto her shoulder. In his slumber he could swear that she wraps an arm around him to hold him upright and maybe it feels like she presses her hand on his ribs as if to see if he’s still breathing.
Molly didn’t intend to sleep for so long but when he wakes up it’s dark outside and he needs a moment to realize where he is. This is definitely a graveyard, so it might be the place the others talked about.
It smells overwhelmingly of all different kinds of flowers, which is the first thing Molly notices. The second thing is that he is the center of a cuddle pile. His head rests on Yasha’s shoulder—Jester is curled up against the both of them. Beau’s head lies on Jester’s soft stomach while Nott is splayed all over Jester’s legs.
Caleb lies a bit apart from them, but his hand is stretched out to bridge the distance and his fingers lie just inches away from Molly’s hand. Fjord sleeps on his side, quietly snoring while loosely hugging Beauregard from behind.
This never happened before but here they are, suddenly deeply connected through the trauma that grabbed all of them, either in the form of loss or being lost in one way or the other. Molly would love to stay like this forever, he thinks. He hopes that they’ll keep on doing this even after the pain heals.
As he turns his head slightly his gaze locks onto a tall figure sitting on a boulder a few feet away. It smells like tea and something smoky and sweet which he can’t place. And while Molly loves cuddling he can’t bear to lie down for just a minute longer. His body wants to move again after lying in the dirt for so long so he gets up slowly before standing there beside his family, just watching them sleep and snore and drool.
Damn, he loves them. All of them. So fucking much it actually hurts in his chest.
His body still feels as if someone put metal spikes into it but he still walks over to where Caduceus Clay drinks his tea and looks at the night sky.
“So this is where you get your dead-people-tea?”, Molly asks and stretches his legs, his arms, rolls his neck and wiggles his fingers. What a wonder this body is, moving around on demand, heart beating steadily in his chest. All those nerve endings that feel as if someone set him on fire are just a sign that he is wonderfully alive.
“Oh yes. You want a cup?”
“No, thanks. Maybe later.”
Molly looks at the small pipe Caduceus holds in his other hand. The sweet and smoky smell seems to come directly out of there.
“Want to try, purple friend?”, Caduceus asks and holds out the pipe for Molly.
“What is it?”, Molly wants to know and takes the pipe, inspects it and smells it again.
“Oh, you know. It’s just a bit more dead-people-tea but for smoking, I guess. Makes lonely nights less lonely and sometimes it makes the flowers sing.”
Singing flowers sound as if Caduceus is talking about drugs and Molly is all for trying new things, so he puts the pipe to his lips and inhales. It tastes as if someone set a field of sunflowers on fire, which is interesting enough and he enjoys the slight burn in his throat before he pushes the smoke out of his lungs and sends it up towards the sky.
Then he hands the pipe back to Caduceus.
“Thanks for bringing me back”, he says quietly. His voice still sounds as if he’s been screaming for hours.
“Oh, it’s not a big deal. Usually I’m all for the natural order of things to unfold but you know, your friends there told me all about you. How you only had two years in this borrowed body of yours. And, uh—violence is natural. But deliberate cruelty really isn’t. So I feel like the Wildmother will understand why I uh—took someone back from her soil.”
Molly watches smoke escape Caduceus’s mouth as he talks before the huge Firbolg hands the pipe back to him.
Up in the sky the full moon shimmers brightly and bathes them in a pale light, making Molly wonder if the Moon Weaver is up there smiling down on him. He puts the pipe to his lips again and breathes in.
“So… you lived here… how long?”
“Oh, since I was born. Never been out that far before, let me tell you. It was quite the wild ride.”
“And you lived here alone?”
“No. My family lived here with me but they’re all gone now. I’ve been alone for—hm. Two seasons.”
Molly knows that there are probably more interesting topics to talk about with a Cleric who turns dead people into mulch and guards an ancient elven graveyard in the middle of a cursed forest. But he is still Mollymauk Tealeaf—thank the gods and thank his friends and also Caduceus—and these tealeaves he smokes at the moment make his tongue looser than it usually is anyway.
“So that means you never had sex before?”
Caduceus turns his head to look at Molly, his head cocked to the side, his eyes full of mirth.
“Guess that’s what it means, aside from other stuff it means as well. We never got visitors out here. But I have plenty of visitors now.”
Molly chuckles and thinks about this for a while and the pipe passes back and forth while Caduceus drinks his tea and looks at the moon. Sometimes he also looks at Molly as if he’s trying to assess the weird and colorful mystery that is Mollymauk Tealeaf.
“Do you hear the flowers sing?”, he asks after what seems like eternity. Molly could swear that the moon starts turning pink. He closes his eyes and listens and well, there is definitely a weird sound in the air, almost like tiny hummingbirds mixed with the sound of small bells ringing through the night.
He laughs and opens his eyes again.
“I suppose I do”, he says. Whatever those leaves are, they make him feel warm and heavy and at the same time wonderfully lightheaded. He feels as if his mind could take flight any second and maybe even touch the moon. The pain in his body subsides.
“So you also never kissed anyone.”
“Not yet.”
“Would you want to kiss anyone?”
Caduceus looks at him and grins lazily.
“Dunno. Maybe kissing is terrible. I wouldn’t know either way, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”
Molly shrugs and nods.
“I guess that’s true. Wanna find out if kissing is terrible?”
Caduceus puts his teacup aside and turns until he sits cross legged on top of the boulder, his tall silhouette framed by moonlight.
“Do you like kissing?”, Caduceus wants to know. Molly turns to face him the exact same way and takes one last gulp of smoke before putting the pipe aside.
“Oh yes. I like almost everything that involves touching. And exchanging bodily fluids, for that matter. Well—ah, never mind.”
Caduceus cocks one of his pink eyebrows but doesn’t answer, just looks at Molly.
He just returned from the grave the second time so who the hell would Molly be to refuse a hot guy his first kiss. He wants to grab life by the collar and yank it in, take as much as he can because tomorrow he might face a foe who is stronger. And then he might die yet again.
So living life to the fullest in this very moment seems to involve kissing pretty strangers and smoking flowers while the moon smiles down on him.
Molly leans forward, tilts his head and carefully presses his lips to Caduceus’.
He’s warm to the touch and tastes like tea and burning sunflowers. Molly cups his cheeks and presses closer, nibs at Caduceus’ bottom lip and then pulls back a bit.
“That was quite nice”, Caduceus says. Molly chuckles.
“Wanna try with tongue?”
Caduceus grins at him.
“Well, what can I say. The dead rise, the flowers are singing… It seems to be an appropriate night to try all sorts of things, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”