Archive of Our Own

Things had kind of changed, recently.

Fjord tells himself he doesn’t know what happened, but he’s just mentally exhausted. He needs a break.

Maybe it was all the drama from the things they were doing bled into his emotional state. That sounded like something Caduceus would say, and the thoughtful motherfucker was usually right about stuff like that, even if no one wanted to admit it to him.

Either way, a lot had happened in the past couple weeks that had Fjord feeling like he was on the wrong end of a cannon-fight most days. He’s sore all over, his brain hurts from all the thinking he’s been doing, and they haven’t had time to relax in what felt like months.

Realistically, they shouldn’t be relaxing now. Fjord knows that, and so does Caleb, and so does Beau. They’d all swapped looks when Nott had insisted they all go out and actually explore the town they were staying in — and had heavily implied she meant explore the bars — but when Yasha had lifted her head up and said, softly, “oh, I haven’t had the ale here in so long,” it had been collectively decided that, yes, okay, we’re going just to get Yasha something nice. We all love Yasha, we’re thrilled you’re here.

Yasha had been the one to point at this bar a little ways into their walk and smile when she saw it. “They’re dancing in there,” she’d said, and Beau had led the charge into the building with all the earnestness of a racehorse in the final stretch.

Fjord can see their resident barbarian now, on her fifth mug of alcohol, smiling over at Jester as the tiefling speaks to her. Her voice carries, “can you drink so much without p-ewk-ing because you’re so big?”, and Fjord watches Yasha’s laughing mouth form the word “yeah”.

To him, the ale tastes about the same as the ale anywhere else, but he isn’t much of an ale drinker when he had his choice in things. And it clearly makes a difference to Yasha.

Beau, too. She’s next to him, tonguing at the rim of her mug trying to get the last of the alcohol out, and Fjord grins as he watches her give up and belch into the mug instead.

“Ew,” he says approvingly, and Beau snorts and punches her fist against where his hand is laying on the bar in what must be an attempted fist bump. “Ouch.”

“You wanna have a drinking contest?” she says, without apologizing, because obviously. Beau turns in her seat and leans closer to him, grinning and wiggling her mug in his general direction. “I bet I could drink you under the table, man.”

Fjord looks over at her and sneers. “I’ve already had three. And I’ve got a hundred pounds on you.”

“Hundred pounds of… coward.” Beau snickers into her mug, then gives him a once over and smirks. “And you wish.”

“Hey—” he begins, automatically pulling himself up to his full height in the little barstool, when he’s cut off by the figure appearing in front of him like a ghost.

It’s a relief to see that it’s Caleb that’s suddenly in front of him, swaying a touch where he stands. He looks mussed, hair falling more out of his ponytail than in it, stripped of his fancy new Xhorhassian jacket and leaving him in his slightly less fancy Xhorhassian tunic. Lately, he’s been dressing in grays instead of browns, and while the change is slight, to Fjord it makes something about him different enough to catch his eyes. Like the color swap made him look more like… smoke… than dirt. Fjord blinks dumbly at him, wondering why that would matter.

He looks smaller out of his jacket. More like the old Caleb, when they’d first met him.

Or, no. Not at all like that, Fjord sees, looking up into his face and noting a familiarity in his eyes that had not been there for a long time, at the beginning. There’s warmth, when he looks for it, and if he looks even deeper, something like appreciation.

“Fjord,” the new Caleb says, and folds his arms, tipping his head back in a way that shows in an instant that he’s been drinking. Fjord smirks around the rim of his own mug, feeling the twang of ale on his tongue, and tips his head in a similar way. Something around the corners of Caleb’s mouth tweaks in what looks like amusement.

“Hey, Caleb,” he says, leaning back against the bar. He props his elbow on the wood, resting his head on his fist, and he can feel Caleb looking at him. The warmth of the alcohol feels like a simmering flame in his gut; it pushes him to meet Caleb’s eyes. Or try to; Caleb is currently busy looking somewhere around Fjord’s bicep, though his attention redirects after a moment with a blink.

“I do not think I have ever seen you dance at these taverns,” he says abruptly, pale lashes low over his blue eyes. He sways where he stands, then rights himself, frowning seriously. “Do you not know how?”

Fjord shifts slightly as he senses the way Beau moves next to him, directing her attention their way as subtly as she can — so not at all, especially when she’s just as tipsy as he is. He clears his throat, taking another slow swallow of ale to steady the sails, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Where do you think I’d learn to dance like this?” He gestures to the people twirling each other around on the floor, bitterness rising in his throat. “The orphanage or the ship on the ocean?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out harsh, and he’s biting back a wince as he finishes speaking, but it’s true.

Caleb looks undeterred, his frown deepening almost comically.

“That is a shame,” he says smoothly, and tips his head the other way, like a sad dog, “because I was going to ask you to dance. The music here is… lively. And I have… never seen you dance. And I’d like to. See you dance.”

Beau lifts her brows in his periphery, and Fjord tries his damndest to ignore her as he gazes up at Caleb in blurry surprise.

“Oh.” Suddenly caught off guard, he finds himself floundering. He’d never expected this kind of attention from Caleb, even if maybe once or twice he’d thought about what it would be like. Wondered if Caleb maybe…

“Oh,” echoes Caleb, like he’s just had a realization, “unless you two were having a discussion. I can… I apologize, Beauregard.” He looks at her with apology written on his face; Beau waves a hand at him.

“Nooo. Not interrupting,” Beau says immediately, and there’s something in her voice that makes the skin of Fjord’s face begin to burn. “Fjord was just about to turn me down on a drinking contest because he knows he’d lose. He can try and catch up when he gets back.”

Fjord is a bit too concerned with working out his reaction to respond, but Caleb’s eyes crinkle anyway. “... If you are certain.”

Caleb just wanted to dance. It didn’t mean anything, probably. Fjord was probably the first person he saw that he knew when the impulse had struck him. He’d danced with Jester, before, too. Fjord digs through his tipsy brain trying to remember if he’d asked her, though.

Bluh. What did it matter?

Caleb got a little goofier when he was drunk, he wasn’t immune to it. They all did.

Including himself. The eyes on him, from both his friends and the monstrous strangers around the bar, fade in the background. In the back of his mind, he can feel the pressure of how it would look, to these people, to see him dancing with a human. It would just other him more, make him seem like even less of someone that could fit in here in Xhorhas. And it wouldn’t help that he doesn’t even know how to fancy-dance, so he’d just be making a fool of himself, anyway…

But that all kind of melts away when Caleb shifts his feet closer to him, and holds out a pale, ungloved, unbandaged hand, with soot marks splayed across the palm. Caleb looks at him like he had all those weeks ago, like he was challenging him to do something frightening that neither of them knew the outcome to, and lifts an eyebrow in unison with a smirk. “I can teach you, if you’d like.”

Fjord blinks, and flicks a look over at Beau, who is watching this entire thing with a mildly intrigued expression. He meets eyes with her, and she stares back at him in complete staunchness, unflinching. He can practically read the words ‘don’t be a puss’ in her pupils, and she knocks her chin forward in a pushing motion. ‘Go,’ as blatant as she’d say it.

When he turns back to Caleb, the man is still looking down at him, though his expression has changed. Before, there was a challenge. Now, Caleb’s eyes have gone sky-blue soft and half-lidded. The stress lines around his mouth have vanished, the smirk curling on his thin lips into a smile Fjord isn’t sure he’s ever seen there before. The wizard curls his long fingers just slightly; a beckon. “It will be fun,” he says, and it’s in a whisper that sends strange tingles up the back of Fjord’s neck.

Suddenly flustered, Fjord doesn’t really feel like he can control the way he reaches out and takes Caleb’s hand, letting the scrawny thing pull him up like he’s a sack of potatoes.

“Sure,” he manages, belated but suddenly important, and stares bemusedly down at their clasped hands as Caleb opts to not let him go after helping him up. “It’s probably like something you pick up and then can do forever, right?”

Caleb has to tilt his head back to look at him now, eyelashes still low. Fjord feels another weird buzz when he thinks about how Caleb looks like nothing but a human made of yarn to most people, but how even holding his hand like this sends magic sparking through Fjord’s veins, like Caleb couldn’t contain the power he really held.

Or it was probably that, anyway. To account for the goosebumps skittering up his arms. Magic.

Had to be.

Caleb adjusts his grip and slots his fingers between Fjord’s in a way they’ve never done before. Still fuzzy around the edges, Fjord looks down at their hands, notes how different they look. His own hands are practically paws, he thinks, derisive in his drunkenness, black-clawed and wide and thick-fingered. Caleb’s look like a craftsman’s, or a pianist’s… long, narrow fingers with big knuckles… nails kind of dirty, smudged, but… a strength in them.

Fjord doesn’t remember the last time someone that wasn’t Caleb had held his hand.

First, the handshake-turned-arm grab, something almost militant in it that had felt like the beginnings of trust, a solid choosing of one another as “the person to help me watch over the rest of them”. It’d made him wonder about Caleb, about where he came from that a simple handshake wasn’t the same for him. It had felt like something flippant, almost, something Fjord could have taken back had the wizard ever turned those blue-fire eyes on him. But even in his moments of doubt, from his blade to Caleb’s neck to wondering when the man was going to scamper off into the dark without them, he hadn’t let Fjord down in this. He kept the ship steady.

Then… the pact, the mark of which is now pressed to Caleb’s palm, the scar tissue still just raised enough that Fjord knows Caleb has to be able to feel it. A bigger decision than he thinks he meant for it to be, that he isn’t sure he entirely thought out, that he doesn’t care to spend too much time mulling over except alone in his room, just before he falls asleep. Wondering when Caleb will ask him to deliver, and knowing that he will. He shifts his grip gently, just to feel the rub on Caleb’s smooth palm. The contact feels strangely meaningful, though he’d never admit it. Caleb politely ignores this.

And then that night just a few weeks ago, where Caleb had taken his hand in what had seemed like a handshake at the time, but in the nights following had been spun over enough in Fjord’s mind that he didn’t know how to categorize it anymore. Caleb had just said ‘give me your hand’ and Fjord had done it without really thinking, with any suspicion faded in the face of the admittance that Caleb cared about him. They’d been agreeing that they were friends, but was that handshake material? In the moment it had felt like that must be it, but Fjord had felt comforted by the touch just as much as the words.

Caleb was many things, but he wasn’t a liar. Not when it came to caring. He’d told several of the party straight up he hadn’t trusted them, in the beginning, but… things had changed. His words were sincere. He’d said it so simply, like he was trying to gloss over it, but that’s accurate is printed like a tattoo in the back of his mind.

Things had always been a little uncertain between them, considering they were some of the more reticent of the group to initiate conversation, which left the pair of them in a weird space where they trusted each other without ever really talking too much about it.

But that night, thinking about how Caleb’s fingertips had brushed against his wrist, how the scars of their foolish impulse had lined up in a reminder of how, together, they could do dangerous and powerful things, he had seen only plain honesty and trust in Caleb’s eyes. Fjord had quietly asked for more time, had promised Caleb he’d tell him, and only him, and Caleb had taken those words and then he had taken Fjord’s hand. We are friends.

We are friends.

Fjord thinks about the intent in his gaze, now, as he feels static crackling gently under his skin where the insides of the wizard’s fingers slide against his own. Caleb doesn’t seem to notice, thoughtfully contemplating their joined palms in a way that makes Fjord start to worry he’s clammy or something before suddenly Caleb blinks; Fjord has almost forgotten he’d spoken. “Oh. Ja, kind of. Dancing isn’t hard. If it was, no one would do it.”

Fjord thinks of every time he has seen people dancing, how in his eye it always looked so complicated, and huffs incredulously. “Well, you haven’t seen me dance. I can make anything hard.”

Caleb stares at him for a moment, a funny little twitch around his mouth, before apparently fighting back the laughter and shaking his head. “I am sure,” is all he says, “but you will be fine. I…” He sways a step, and now the smile does break through, sheepish, “I am an excellent teacher.”

He pulls Fjord a step further away from the bar, his hand loose enough in Fjord’s that he kind of presses his fingertips into Fjord’s knuckles. Fjord stumbles after him gracelessly before catching himself. He flicks another quick look over his shoulder at Beau, who is slouched against the bar, snatching up the ale Fjord had left behind.

She cocks a brow at him when they meet eyes, flicks him a thumbs up, and then makes it into a finger gun with a drunken wink.

He turns back around, unsure why that has his face burning, and watches Caleb’s smile sink into something more thoughtful as he tips his head. “This song is easy,” he says, looking up at Fjord with a looseness to his expression that Fjord finds interesting.

It’s only now he actually starts paying attention to the music, and he peers over Caleb’s shoulder to the band playing in the corner of the tavern. They’re comprised of a gruff-looking bugbear, two goblins stacked on top of each other, a hobgoblin, and a drow in the front. The tune they’re currently playing is actually pretty quick, in Fjord’s opinion, but Caleb looks confident enough that he can’t muster up the energy to question him.

The song is surprisingly cheerful for the company they’re in, but as Fjord takes another look around, he can see a wide variety of people dancing around to the tune. What’s more, everyone looks like they’re having a good time. He isn’t sure he’s ever seen a bugbear smile before today, but as he watches one twirl another around to the beat, he can confirm he’s now seen two.

Which is nice. He feels warm in his gut when he looks back at Caleb, even if he isn’t really sure he’s going to be anything other than a bumbling idiot at this.

“Uh, okay,” is what he says. Caleb’s amused look is enough to tell him he didn’t really fool him, but the other man just takes Fjord’s hand in a perfunctory way and places it on his own shoulder. Fjord looks at the way his claws slide on Caleb’s nice gray shirt and pushes back another wave of uncertainty, clasping the muscle gently and looking back to the wizard for direction.

“I’ll lead,” Caleb murmurs, and slides his hand around to Fjord’s back, pressing him a hairsbreadth closer and splaying his fingers on his shoulder blade. Fjord’s heartbeat kicks up a notch, suddenly realizing there’s going to be a lot of touching he isn’t used to, but any potential protests die down with the way Caleb peers up at him and lifts their still-joined hands up on the other side. “We can go half-speed until you pick it up.”

“Uh, okay,” Fjord says again, and Caleb snorts a soft little laugh that makes Fjord’s ears strain to catch it.

“If you really do not want to, you can go sit back down, Fjord,” he mumbles, head bent down and sounding sincere even as he looks half-lidded somewhere around Fjord’s throat. “I will not be offended. Perhaps Beau will… well, no. I can find another dance partner. I suppose I am just… in a mood.”

Pride stung, Fjord puffs up, reaffirming his grip. He knows Caleb doesn’t know Fjord has never even had the opportunity to dance with someone; he’d never been asked before, not seriously. Not by a friend. Even with his apprehension, the idea of Caleb’s sympathy making him reconsider dancing with him, go to find someone else when Fjord was his first choice, was one he didn’t like.

Besides, Caleb being ‘in a mood’ was a rare enough thing that he couldn’t help but be curious.

“What, am I that bad already?” he asks, trying for a joke, but knowing it comes out more prickly than he means for it to. He can feel the expression on his face go sharper, more challenging, and Caleb’s eyes snap up to it at once.

He searches, and then hums. “Come on then,” he says, and tugs Fjord toward him with the palm on his back, using their joined hands to begin twirling Fjord in a circle.

Welp. Fjord jerks and stumbles along, looking at Caleb’s feet quickly to try and mimic what he’s doing.

Immediately, Caleb uses their clasped fingers to push Fjord’s chin back up, lingering there as they meet eyes. “Do not look down,” he murmurs, leaning closer to be heard over the bright music. He smells like ale, and hair soap, and fire. “This is called a box step. When I step back, you step forward. When I step left, you step right. Like we are stepping in a square, even while we twirl.” He squeezes Fjord’s hand in his own, and wiggles it back and forth in the messy way a drunk person can, rubbing his knuckles thoughtlessly along the bottom of Fjord’s jaw. “Follow this hand, ja?”

Fjord blinks, brain sweetly slowed from the contact and the proximity, but nods, and Caleb tugs him along again, withdrawing to continue the dance. Fjord admits to himself he only gets the first few steps correctly because he’s more focused on following Caleb than trying to work his feet right. The wizard doesn’t seem to mind, head tilted to the side as he begins swaying gently in time to the music, a look like memory suddenly curling in his eye. “Ready… eins, zwei, drei, eins, zwei, drei, follow my hand, Fjord… look at me.”

Fjord does his best, looking up at Caleb and feeling for the cues Caleb gives him with the leading of his hand. It actually works better when he looks right in Caleb’s eyes, as the other man is staring up at him with confidence and a steadiness to him that lends well to concentration. He eventually realizes the pattern is actually fairly simple, and Caleb begins twirling them in place, letting them move in a small circle.

It feels nice. Once Fjord stops tripping over himself and Caleb’s poor feet, the spinning motion feels… fancy. He feels almost debonair, and relaxes his hand on Caleb’s shoulder, letting it slide closer to the side of his neck, curling his arm into it. For his part, his companion doesn’t seem to mind, his eyes just going clay-like around the edges and a small smile curling his mouth.

“You see?” Caleb splays his long-fingered hand on Fjord’s back, little firebrands against his spine, and in a smooth motion brings them to the dancing speed everyone else is at. “Easy, as I said.”

Fjord only stutters for a second before falling back into the pace, huffing a laugh. “Yeah, well, I’d never exactly danced like this before. You can’t blame me.”

“Hmm.” Bright blue eyes linger on his face, skittering from his brows to his nose to his mouth and back to meet his gaze. “Have you danced in other ways?”

Fjord snorts. He makes an apologetic sound as Caleb quickly guides him away from crashing into a dancing goblin pair, who laugh raucously at him, but shrugs one shoulder. “Ah, you know. Sailor shit.”

“Sailors that dance?” Caleb’s smile is more conspiratorial. “How very… romantic.”

“Ha!” Fjord shakes his head, wrinkling his nose. He begins bobbing his head to the music as it picks up, and the dance becomes decidedly more bouncy as Caleb suddenly grows more enthused with the change of pace. Following as best he can, Fjord continues, “You sound like Jester. No. Not romantic, I promise. Just a bunch of drunk idiots teaching each other how to line dance. You know those, uh… the dances where you’re basically just dancin’ by yourself, but everyone else is doin’ it too, so it’s all… in line… and shit. Huh. Guess that’s why they call it that.”

“I guess so,” Caleb allows, eyes twinkling.

“Hey,” Fjord complains, frowning as Caleb’s smirk just twitches further at the admonishment. “Don’t look so self-satisfied, it’s a weird look on you.”

“Me? Self-satisfied?” Caleb’s usually so stoic face is expressive, even in the small allowances that being drunk gives him. His smiles are never huge, but even the small ones are rare enough normally that they’re almost strange on his face. Gentle him in a way he very rarely is. “I am never satisfied… with anything… you should know that, mein Kapitän.” There’s the stroke of melancholy that never really left Caleb, but there’s also a playfulness there. It reminds Fjord that Caleb was actually kind of dorky, when you came down to it. Incredibly serious, stern, intense, but… he also had a cat named ‘Frumpkin’ and sang in Zemnian real loud when he’d been drinking, so.

Speaking of. The song changes and Caleb’s head perks up, jerking from where it’d slowly, slowly begun descending to almost droop to Fjord’s chest. “Mh! I know this one.” He changes the rhythm of their dance without warning, leaving Fjord stumbling behind. “Perhaps… it has different meaning here… or it’s just that universal… interesting.”

Baffled, Fjord can’t help but notice the song is significantly slower than their last one. The friendly jaunt they’d been going at is suddenly pulled taut like warm taffy, leaving little space for distraction. Caleb’s hand moves thoughtlessly against his back, a caress that sends the hairs on his nape standing up. “Mmmh,” Caleb sighs, and closes his eyes, tilting his head to the side, leaving a column of white throat and mussed red hair for Fjord to deliberately avert his eyes from. “I like this song.”

There’s a moment of silence as the hobgoblin plucks at his lute, and then Caleb is leaning closer, pressing his chest to Fjord’s and letting his hand dip from the middle of Fjord’s back down to the small of it. “Erlaube mir… just for a moment. Is this okay?”

“This okay,” says Fjord, hoping against hope Caleb can’t hear the way his voice has gone up a couple octaves.

Abruptly, he is back to the shyness that had taken him back over at the bar. When he spares a look that way, Beau is still seated there, nursing another mug of ale, looking like she’s halfway paying attention to them. The other half is keeping an eye on Jester and Yasha across the tavern playing cards, on where Fjord can see Nott and Yeza murmuring to one another in a corner, on Caduceus trying alcohol for the third time a seat away from her.

That makes things better. Knowing she’s there, but not particularly watching like a hawk. That she’s keeping an eye on the entire group, not just the pair of them. It makes him feel less awkward about the heat rising to his face as Caleb begins humming close to his ear.

Fjord isn’t sure how much of this buzzing in his gut is the ale, how much is general nerves about dancing, and how much has to do with Caleb and the amount of physical attention he’s getting.

He’s never been touchy, but then, people weren’t usually very touchy with him. At least, not in ways that weren’t overtly flirtatious or completely superfluous.

This… is different. Intimate. More than friendly, but Caleb isn’t groping or feeling up his chest or anything. Sensual in a way he can’t remember being touched before. The dragging movements of Caleb’s hands, the way his shoulder flexes under Fjord’s palm, the occasional curl of breath he can feel against his jawline. Caleb isn’t flirting with him, really… he doesn’t think. He tells himself. But the feelings are there anyway. The slight giddiness, the nervousness, the shortness of breath that came with someone attractive having their attention completely devoted to you.

And Caleb is attractive. He could admit it while he was sober, but it’s startlingly foolish to even pretend he didn’t always think so while tipsy. He’s cleaned up since their days in Alfield, and the change since they entered Xhorhas has been immense. Caleb’s always been good-looking, but the slight stubble darkening his jawline now a couple days after his shave, the freckled skin that showed up from under the grime, the neat ways he’d been tying back his hair… it all brought his appearance to the forefront. Fjord can see, now, why Caleb had called himself ‘charismatic when he needed to be’. Given incentive, Caleb could really, uh… turn heads.

Even his own.

Things between them have been… clearing up, lately. Fjord thought they’d been friends for awhile, even if they hadn’t said it, but the vocal affirmation had warmed a part of him he hadn’t known was chilled.

And now Caleb’s hands are warming the parts of him none of his friends had really touched before. The palm of his hand, the spanse of his back, his waist. And maybe getting warm all over was normal when a friend touched you in ways most people didn’t, but maybe it was something else, too. Maybe he needs to reexamine a few things.

“Mein Geliebter ließ mich auf dem kalten weißen Meer zurück,” Caleb sings quietly, twirling them in place and finally half-opening his eyes again. “Ich warte darauf, dass mein Herz nach Hause kommt…”

Over him, Fjord can hear the drow singing, too, in a reedy kind of voice that carries over the loud din of the tavern. As he sings, Caleb purrs along in Zemnian in Fjord’s ear, his hand in Fjord’s swaying slightly with the tune.

“My lover left me on the cold white sea,

I wait for my heart to come home.

He says he has trouble to keep far from me,

Away in the water and foam.

If only he knew that I don’t fear the waves

If the ship is his home, so it’s mine.

I fear only whispers of sailors and graves,

Of the lovers they’d lost to the brine.”

Fjord blinks as Caleb looks up at him, pulling just enough away. He looks thoughtful, frowning slightly as he guides Fjord into slower and slower spins. “Fjord,” he says quietly.

For reasons unknown, Fjord’s pulse jumps immediately. “Hm?”

“… Ha,” Caleb laughs, soft, sheepish, and Fjord watches with some drunken fascination as pale pink curls it’s way onto the human’s face. “I was just thinking… um…”

“What?” Fjord leans closer, abruptly seeing the appeal in the slower dance. He can get closer, shift enough that he can almost see the pink moving up Caleb’s nape in the dim lighting of the room. “Thought we were bein’ honest with each other, now, Widogast.”

Caleb snorts, real quiet, tilting his face away, but Fjord can see the way his lashes flutter. The simmering heat in his stomach grows hotter looking at it. He is almost emboldened enough to pull the same trick Caleb had on him, tilt his chin up so he can see his eyes, but the idea makes his heart thump so hard he can’t bring himself to do it.

This is… far more intimate than he’d thought it’d be. The music is a low thrum in the back of his mind, now, drumming along to the pulse he can feel in Caleb’s hand.

“Dancing looks good on you,” he says softly, and peers up at Fjord through those eyelashes. “It suits you, I mean.”

Fjord looks back down at him, feels his mouth go dry under the inebriated warmth in Caleb’s expression. He’s seen looks like that thrown his way before, even recently, but never from Caleb. Never so blatantly, and never with the other person held in his arms like this. It’s like someone’s running cold water through his veins after a long time in a hot spring; shivers lick through his muscles, dragging along his skin like fingers.

Caleb and his damn hands.

“It looks good… it suits you, too,” he finds himself saying, and if his voice is rougher than normal, Caleb doesn’t comment on it.

He looks down again instead, smiling, almost bashful. It’s driving Fjord nuts. “Pass auf was du sagst.” Before Fjord can ask, Caleb barrels on. “I had a lot of practice.” The way he says it doesn’t sound like a translation.

“Did you… dance a lot, then?”

“Mmh. Academies, you know. Very proper. There were balls and galas.” Caleb shrugs a shoulder. “We didn’t attend many, not like the other, ah, students. I have only been to three. But we were not to be embarrassments, so. We had to learn a wide variety.” Fjord can see this topic beginning to veer into upsetting territory, and scrambles for a change.

“That where you learned to clean up so good?” It feels awkward, saying it aloud, but Caleb’s eyes flick back up to his own in apparent surprise before the pink that had begun receding down his neck starts flushing back. So still a win.

“Just some new clothes and a shave,” he mumbles, deflecting the compliment in such a Caleb way Fjord has to huff a laugh. This was every conversation about his impressive magic all over again.

“I think everyone would agree it’s a good look on you,” Fjord demures instead of pressing, and Caleb’s face goes hotter as he awkwardly looks off to the side.

“Ja, well. Everyone is very charitable.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Fjord lets him have it; the man just couldn’t take adulation without turning into a flustered mess, and while the part of him that’s sizzling in his gut is very interested in that, he tamps it down, doesn’t think about it, preferring when Caleb was confidently singing in his ear.

They sway in silence for couple more verses. Caleb doesn’t pick the tune back up, but his eyes do close after a moment, cheeks still soft pink and a strand of hair dangling against his temple.

Caleb has never looked ‘at peace’ in all the time Fjord has known him, and now is no exception — there are still the lines on his forehead, the faint circles under his eyes — but in the still frame where Fjord is watching him… well. The trust that Fjord will make sure they don’t bump into anyone, the simple enjoyment of the song he seemed to like, the easy curl of his breath, the small smile that grows on his mouth… it’s a view that leaves Fjord wondering how many other people have seen it.

He can’t imagine many.

The flame in his stomach purrs, pressing up against his insides, trying to push him to do something about that. Asking what it means that Caleb looks so close to pressing his cheek to Fjord’s chest, wondering what would happen if Fjord just guided him there with the hand on his shoulder. He could. He wonders if Caleb would let him. The idea tastes alcoholic on his tongue. He feels drunker than three mugs of ale should’ve left him. It’s a little frightening, how suddenly this is taking him, and that fear blurts words out of him before he does something he doesn’t fully understand the consequences of.

“If this place played something real loud and bawdy, I could show you a good time,” Fjord says instead, tipping his head back and slapping a cocky look on his face when Caleb’s eyes flutter open and he glances back at him.

The wizard’s nose wrinkles, contentment blossoming into humor. “Oh?”

“Yep.” Fjord smirks, rolling his shoulders and feeling Caleb’s hand skitter where it is on his waist — how had it ended up on his waist? “Fast line dances are fun. There are a couple of ‘em you can do with partners, if you like… if you try.” He thinks briefly back to too many drunk nights where he nearly flung Sabien over the ship’s bow, briefly wishes he had, before coming back to himself. He puffs his chest up and flicks Caleb a wink. “I could show you sometime.”

Caleb’s mouth is fully upturned now, and he cocks a brow, bemusement and suspicion warring on his face. “Well, Fjord. You could always ask if the band knows one of your fancy sailor songs.”

Fjord blinks down at him as the current slow song comes to a resounding end, leaving them both standing there as some of the other dancers make their way to the bar to cool down and others wait with anticipation for the next sound of music. “Uh… I dunno if they’d know any of these songs,” he begins, lifting the hand from Caleb’s shoulder to scratch at his chin. “Like I said, they’re real bawdy… not really for uh… public dances. Kinda gross, really. Wouldn’t wanna ask them to play stuff like that.”

Caleb’s smile turns mischievous.

“Surely you can just adapt one of your dances, then.” He leans closer, eyes sparking. “Or are you all talk, big guy?”

Floundering at the accusation and the nickname, Fjord clears his throat. Caleb was challenging him again, and the ale is clearly flowing real hot through his blood right now, and he’d never been someone to hold back his impulses when it came to the wizard.

Well. Most of the time.

“Fine,” he says, and with a tug at Caleb’s hand, pulls the other man closer. “See if you can keep up. I’ll teach you the patterned one.”

Caleb grins back, all teeth. “I’ve done fast dances too, Captain; I was going easy on you. Show me the pattern once and I will never forget it. I will keep up fine.”

There’s a lull between the last song and the next, and Fjord’s blood roars as he guides Caleb through the admittedly repetitive steps of his own dance without music accompaniment. There’s a little less touching than Caleb’s box step — he hadn’t been lying when he’d said it was a lot less romantic — but it’s different in the way that they separate and come back together, link both hands, touch forearms, swing around each other. It’s all in slow-mo for now, Fjord murmuring instructions between them, but Caleb looks like he’s memorizing it all, a light in his eyes that usually caught when he was reading his spellbooks.

The music starts before Fjord is completely done explaining the big finish, but Caleb earnestly begins anyway, face set with determination. Fjord watches as he immediately steps out and helplessly follows after his movements.

It’s a fast song, as Fjord had hoped; it seemed maybe the band alternated back and forth between group dances and couple dances. This one has a lot of audience participation right off the bat; people sitting at the bar begin to stomp along to the beat of the lute, the drums, the flute. It’s friendly and playful, curling through the air like an anthem, and the Xhorhassians around them roar with the apparent familiarity of it.

Many of the people around them begin moving in unison, all doing a dance that leads them to twirling around each other in a way that’s surprisingly graceful for a place called ‘the city of beasts’. Fjord and Caleb are among the standouts, obviously not knowing what everyone else is doing, and swing their way near the edge of the crowd with the other stragglers who don’t know the correct steps.

Caleb doesn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the crowd at all, focusing intently on moving his feet correctly and occasionally flashing a competitive sneer Fjord’s way.

Another expression Fjord isn’t sure he’s ever seen on Caleb’s face. It boils his blood, but probably not in the way Caleb intends. He ignores it for now, focusing enough on his own movements, but he’d chosen a simple sailor’s dance he was familiar with very deliberately; it allows him to watch Caleb more closely than he might’ve otherwise.

And he’s… graceful. He’s not exceptional by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s drunk, and it’s his first time doing the dance, and he’s somehow still picked it up well enough to go toe to toe with Fjord. The music kicks up around him as Caleb spins, locking eyes with Fjord across the floor and then spinning out of view again. He’s treating it like it’s super important, which is kind of funny, but also kind of not, in a way that has Fjord sweating to keep up with him, pushing himself to execute the turn more tightly just before they clash forearms.

As they collide, fingertips brushing over their arms, the beat pauses for a split second, a moment of silence, to let the drums slam twice, ba-bump, ba-bump. Fjord stares behind his palm at Caleb’s face, flush with blood, both of them posed in straight-back positions, two frozen silhouettes as the room continues spinning around them. Caleb’s eyes are blazing hot blue, like fire, mouth open as he breathes. Fjord can hear his own panting in the empty space, can hear Caleb’s too, and then the music comes back in full force and Caleb is twisting away from him again.

Claps join the stomps around the bar as the beat picks up, one, two, one-two, and Fjord feels like he’s going to go careening out of control any moment, his feet moving quickly across the tavern’s floor. He hasn’t done this stupid dance in almost a year; the last time had been months before the Tide’s Breath had fallen under the water. Every spin he does reminds him that he’s been drinking, the world going briefly watercolor.

But despite himself, he can feel a grin curling his mouth.

He had forgotten how much fun it was to be drunk and idiotic and dancing.

Ignoring everything he’d been before gaining his powers (and woof, that was a can of worms for another day) had made him forget that before he’d been anything worthwhile, he’d had a lot of his best moments listening to sailors sing about the lovers they’d left behind and fucking mermaids and shit while trying to outdo each other in dancing. Usually, of course, the dance-offs were preceded by drink-offs, which were preceded by a long day of backbreaking labor, which sucked. But those raucous nights out on the water had to be filled somehow, and Fjord had never been the most graceful creature — hell, half the sailors had elf-blood in them, which was frankly unfair — but he’d still had a good time. Those memories were fond.

The music is running through him, pattering across his veins like cat’s feet. He can feel sweat dripping down his temple as he turns and meets up with Caleb once more. They clasp both hands between them, swing in and then out, and then touch opposite palms, moving around each other in a circle. Fjord locks eyes with Caleb again, and Caleb is smiling, wild and exuberant and with all his teeth.

They are suddenly two large predators, a tiger and a shark, circling each other, the scars of their pact pressed between them. Two creatures made of blood and power and impulse, bound together, irreparably.

Fjord flashes his teeth, too, even the dull tusks pressing against his lower lip, in a grin masquerading as a snarl. Caleb huffs, and then laughs, breathless.

“So dangerous,” he teases, just audible over the music.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Fjord pants back.

The song is reaching its crescendo, and the pair of them separate again. The clapping and stomping is as loud as the violin and the drums, booming in Fjord’s ears so he can hardly hear anything but the music. Caleb lifts his hands to clap twice at the same moment Fjord does, and they repeat their twisting forearm clash, first one side and then the other, never breaking eye contact. Fjord feels like Caleb’s bright blue irises is the only thing that isn’t washing away in the adrenaline-fueled drunkenness of whatever the fuck they’re doing. He’d almost suspect magic for how much they stand out; it just isn’t natural.

But what about Caleb ever had been?

Up, up, up. The beat slams faster and faster, they move quicker and quicker, hands, hands, forearms, forearms, eyes, eyes, and when Fjord can sense the end approaching, he moves forward, snatching one of Caleb’s hands in his own as the wizard zips past him.

Caleb falters, just for a moment, before Fjord spins him around by the fingers, twists just a little, and slides a foot around behind the other man’s. His other hand latches around Caleb’s back as the music resounds loudly through the tavern, the final beat a pound that sounds like the world ending, and Fjord dips Caleb back in a decidedly unpracticed move that almost has him dropping the wizard to the ground like a sack of bricks.

He doesn’t though, barely executing the move but holding it, arms straining as he holds Caleb a couple feet off the ground. The two of them stare across the space, and Caleb looks stunned, eyes wide and nails dug into Fjord’s shirt like he’d been anticipating having to catch himself; Fjord feels a blaze of pride at that. Whatever game they’d been playing, this feels decidedly like a victory, even as he gasps for breath.

Fjord holds the dip for a good five seconds before tugging Caleb back to his feet. Caleb keeps his fingers latched in Fjord’s top, still looking startled, and sways into him like he hasn’t quite gathered himself. The panted “Scheiße” seems only to emphasize it, and Caleb stares somewhere around Fjord’s throat for a long moment as he seems to pull himself together.

For his part, Fjord is hot and sweaty and his blood is going a mile a minute, and the break in eye contact has him rushing back to reality in a hurry. He feels shaky and fantastic and uncertain all at once, one hand wrapped around Caleb’s damp back and the other coming up to wipe perspiration off his forehead. “Shadesbreath,” he sighs, just to say something. “Haven’t done that in a hot minute.”

Caleb blinks, and then snorts, finally taking a step back to put a normal amount of space between them. “And you said you couldn’t dance, damn you.”

“No,” Fjord corrects, letting his palm slide from Caleb’s spine to his shoulder, in a totally more appropriate way to be touching someone you weren’t dancing with anymore, “I said I couldn’t do that fancy dancing you were asking me to do.”

“And this was less fancy?” Caleb looks incredulous, and still out of breath, flush high in his cheeks and a strange, hot gleam in his eye. “I know you give yourself little of the credit you deserve, Fjord, but this is a bit overkill.”

Fjord turns a narrow stare at him. “You’re coming at me for the self-deprecation, Widogast? You won’t win that fight.”

“Ja, I am, because that was… something else.” Caleb’s voice is tinged in something soft that feels like cool silk sheets on Fjord’s overheated body. “I thought you said there was nothing romantic about your sailor dances.”

Fjord feels heat rise, impossibly, further, up into his own face. “There isn’t.”

“Dipping someone at the end would rather qualify as romantic, Fjord, no matter how you spin it,” Caleb replies, but there’s something cajoling in his voice, playful. “The image is enough to make one swoon.”

Fjord rubs the back of his neck, glancing over at the bar again to try and search out Beau. “Yeah, well, that was more... improvisation. If I dipped any of those sailors they probably would’ve dipped me right back into the floor.”

Caleb seems to process this. “Oh. So just this dance, then. With the dipping.”

Just go right for the jugular, then. “Yup.”

“I see.”

Fjord can’t bring himself to look at Caleb from anywhere but the periphery of his vision, but Caleb has turned his face away, his expression hidden as he dips his head to adjust his clothing. He finally spots Beau, away from the bar and standing over by where Jester and Yasha had been before. She has an arm slung around Jester and is almost pointedly turned away from he and Caleb, chatting to the two girls with a mug of ale in her hand. When Fjord looks at her, it’s like she senses it; she turns her head to the side just enough to peer at him from the corner of her eye.

Fjord doesn’t know what his face is saying, but apparently it’s funny. Beau smirks, and with the hand that’s perched on Jester’s shoulder, she flaps her fingers at him in a shooing motion. I’ve got this, is what her face says, and before Fjord can process that she’s turned back away again.

Incredibly, that actually soothes the nerves that have sprung forth. A rush of affection and relief blossoms over it instead. He knows he’s gonna have to have a couple discussions in the near future, but Beau is giving him time. Fjord exhales quietly, and then turns back to Caleb. After a moment of hesitation, he drapes his arm across the wizard’s scrawny shoulders, hoping to mimic Beau’s casual intimacy and definitely not make it weird intimacy.

Funny how he was supposed to be the one teaching her to be socially charming, and he’s standing here hoping he doesn’t reek too bad under his arms.

“I’m fuckin’ parched,” Fjord says, “you want somethin’ to drink?”

Caleb seems to take a breath — Fjord can feel the rise and fall of his shoulders against his bicep, and thrills privately — and then looks up at him. His eyes flick down over Fjord’s face, across his sweaty throat and chest where his shirt is sticking to him, to the arm pressed to his nape. His throat works around a swallow that makes Fjord swallow, too. He can suddenly smell Caleb’s exertion and it is decidedly not a reek.

“Some water, I think.”

That sounds incredibly smart.

Fjord chews on his lip for a second before deciding to just go for it. Too bad I’m stupid as hell. “Water’s free at home.”

Water is only a couple copper here. Caleb has every reason to point this out.

“... That is true,” Caleb allows, though he still sounds like he’s hesitating over something.

When Fjord glances down at him, he’s also looking over at Beau with the girls. Fjord can’t tell what exactly he’s looking at, but there’s a kind of guilt hovering around his face that probably explains at least a little of it.

Fjord knows. He can feel some of that guilt percolating in his own chest, now that Caleb had inaudibly brought it up. Jester’s laughing at something Yasha is saying, her chin propped in her hands, and Fjord still thinks she’s damn near the most charming person he’s ever met. It was impossible not to love her.

But.

Things had kind of changed, recently. Fjord tells himself he doesn’t know what happened, but he thinks maybe he does. He’s standing under his arm and fiddling with the sleeves of his shirt and looking conflicted over getting a cup of water with a man he’d just swept around a dancefloor. He’d asked for Fjord’s hand, with expectations and then without them, and Fjord had been the one to give it to him every time. And that meant something, even if Fjord’s heart is stuttering too fast for him to really put his finger on what.

The music starts up around them again, a slow song this time. He almost just wants to tell Caleb to forget it, they can just ignore the drinks and keep dancing. Maybe he could come up with the right words to say when he was holding the man in his arms again. But he knows it’s too late for that now.

“... Caleb,” is what he comes up with, and the wizard tears his eyes away and up into Fjord’s face. He looks like he’s waiting for an excuse, and Fjord doesn’t have one. “... We don’t have to talk about it.”

Caleb’s brows lift, and his mouth goes wry. “We are very bad at that, aren’t we? There is so much we haven’t talked about, mein Fruend.”

Fjord slips his arm from around Caleb, lets his palm slide down his back and then across to his waist. He’s still not good at the whole touching thing, doesn’t know how to do it right, light someone up from the inside like Caleb had to him. But watching the way Caleb’s eyelashes flutter again and how the hesitation briefly disappears… it’s enough for him to think it doesn’t really matter to Caleb.

“Maybe some things don’t need words,” Fjord says, as softly as he can, trying to catch the other’s man eyes in his own.

Caleb peers up at him, pained. “They will eventually, Fjord.”

“Maybe not for now, then.” He reaches up with his free hand, finally pushes back the piece of hair that’s been dangling in Caleb’s face all night, tucks it back. Lets his scarred palm settle on Caleb’s cheek, his clawed fingers press into the soft skin under his ear. Caleb’s eyes slowly flicker closed, and he sighs; the ale on his tongue is close enough to taste in the air.

He tilts his head up into Fjord’s hand, lets his eyes half-open, leans up a little. Fjord feels his heart start to vibrate against his ribcage.

“Ich bin so versucht. You always do this. Damn it.”

Fjord stares down at the warmth in his face, the freckles he can count this close, the magic in his irises. His lips are chapped. “What?”

Before he can answer, Caleb jerks against his palm, and slides back down onto his feet — he’d been on his tiptoes, holy shit — abruptly snapping out of whatever state he’d been. “Ah, Scheiße.”

And now Fjord can feel eyes on him. Gathering his bearings, he flicks a glance over at Beau, but it’s not from her. A look around the room finds him meeting looks with a wide, yellow stare, intent and cat-like in its intensity. Nott is not smiling, not letting Yeza’s confused look beside her redirect her attention. Her hands are up near her mouth; he can see the gleam of copper wire around her knuckles.

The two of them stare at each other; Fjord blinks first, feeling Caleb’s breath on the delicate flesh on his inner wrist, and then Nott drops her hands. Her expression is stony, and then uncertain.

Fjord swallows, looks away, back down to where Caleb has turned his face into Fjord’s palm. It’s only for a moment; Caleb reaches up, takes Fjord’s wrist between his fingers, and brushes his mouth against the long line breaking his skin in two. Fjord’s pulse hammers against his throat, watching as the wizard hesitates, and then presses a firmer kiss there. He can’t breathe.

“Caleb?”

He steps back, one step, two, and Fjord lets him slide out of his hands, clenching his fists at the loss.

“Caleb… ”

The other man looks hopelessly flustered, pink blooming over his face like flower petals. He lifts his own fingers to his mouth, presses the tips of his fingers there, and looks up at Fjord across the empty space, pupils dark against the bright blue. Fjord wants very desperately to pull him back, wants Caleb to lift his mouth up so Fjord could meet him in the middle, like he’s been doing all this time. Just hold out your hand. You know I’ll always take it.

But Caleb doesn’t. He smiles, fleeting and looking a little frightened, and takes another step back. “Thank you. Fjord. For dancing with me. I needed it… out of my system.” His fingers don’t move from his own lips, and how is Fjord supposed to look away when he’s doing that? “You are… you constantly surprise me.”

They look at each other for another moment, Caleb’s eyes tracing his form, Fjord scrambling to find the right words to lure him back, wracking his brain for something, anything.

But then Caleb turns and disappears into the crowd, taking his mouth and his hand and his fancy gray tunic with him. He hesitates, a breath of space, but he doesn’t look back.

Fjord stares after him, his hand still hovering in the air before he manages to pull it to his chest and peer down at his scar. He smooths his thumb over the crease. It tingles, and Fjord wonders if Caleb had somehow pressed magic there.

It’s only later, when they’re all leaving as a group, that Beau finally comes back up beside him again, greeting him with a hard punch to the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“What happened? He was like… right there!”

“Wh— how long have you— “

Beau sighs, leaning into his side and rubbing her temple. “Whatever, man. I was wing-manning for my life for you both. Did something happen, or not?”

Fjord slows his walk, letting the pair of them fall to the back of the marching order. He looks up at the retreating backs of his friends. Nott is sticking close to Caleb’s side, holding his hand and chattering loudly at him, flashing the occasional glare back Fjord’s way.

Caleb, for his part, laughs softly along to whatever she’s telling him. Fjord feels a pang in his gut.

“... I don’t know,” Fjord answers honestly. He can feel Beau staring at him. “I… think so.”

Beau blinks, then snorts, folding her arms behind her head. “Yeah, that sounds about right. You know Caleb.” She peers at him sideways, stares until he finally looks at her. “... You’ve got some shit to do, though.”

Fjord sighs, feels the fun he’d had during the night slowly becoming crushed under the weight settling back on his shoulders. “I know.”

Beau’s eyes are hard. “For a couple of people.”

Fjord droops further. “I know.”

Caleb, ahead of them, sidesteps, sways where he walks. He catches himself, huffing another laugh, and for just a second, flicks a look over his shoulder. When he sees Fjord looking, his shoulders lift up high, and he whips back around, walking quickly to keep ahead. There’s color crawling up his nape.

Fjord feels another pang in his gut, warm and wanting. “... I know.”

Beau stares at him for another minute, then sighs, punching him in the arm again, though less hard this time. “You know I care about you, man. I’m glad you’re having some realizations or whatever. You’re like… somehow just as emotionally repressed as he is. If you can help each other through that… that’s great. Just… figure your shit out. Or I’ll kick your ass for hurting either of them.” There’s an exasperated fondness there, like she’s tired of him, and Fjord feels a rush of appreciation for his best friend.

“Thanks, Beau.”

“Yeah, well. Do something about it.”

Fjord thinks about Caleb holding out his hand, every time, always waiting, always patient.

Maybe it’s just his turn to make the offer, this time. Be patient. Wait.

“... I will.”