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Maybe if he searched his foggy memory - all the pages of days that blended together into one life too grand, too happy, to belong to a man who had once been a kid cursed with a name (you were cast away, like a Stone) to show how disposable he was, how forgettable - he could find which moment it was, between which breath and the next, that he had fallen in love. Maybe then he could find out why waking up in Caleb's lap and Caduceus' arms felt like exactly the place he wanted to be.
Maybe if he could pinpoint that moment, he could make sense of why his heart was wrapped so tightly around both a man who tended to destiny like a sweet garden and a man who could bend the fabric of the world and destiny with a word.
For Caleb, things had begun like admiring the flicker of a flame. Then in a moment, a flashpan of distrust that ignited as quick and hot as a fuse on a bomb and sizzled out into something less like the cruel sting of betrayal and more like the cautious insecurity of not being able to fully believe that someone like that could care for him, truly care for him, at least not in a way that didn't have a contract tangled into a few spoken promises. But even that melted away between a roaring fire cut across the salt-sprayed wooden deck and a once-coveted glove slid onto a powerless hand.
For Caduceus, bewilderment at such a strange and insightful creature, bizarre and outlandish, had moulded away to the simple awe of someone who seemed to have everything figured out, who offered safety and guidance when he desperately needed it, only then to reveal a man who was terrified underneath that serene smile, stubborn in his beliefs because he needed the stability of a divine plan, of someone else knowing which way the path bended, even if he didn't.
Maybe he could find the answer in him relaxing into himself, in shedding the bravado and the masks and the voice. Maybe he could find it in how he was became less afraid of being seen, in how he could stumble, bleeding, to a sleeping Caduceus and receive gentle healing and simple acceptance, in how he could talk around his deepest troubles and cruelest sides and know Caleb was watching, sharp, understanding, carrying something different and yet the same within his own heart.
Maybe he could find the answer in his fear of being seen and known, his fear of judgement for his visibility at worst, dismissal at best, collapsing under the weight of Caduceus spending months on repairing a sword for him; in taking the time and thoughtful consideration to commission a pin and wait for the perfect moment to gift it to him. Maybe he could find the answer in that fear in Caleb asking his past of him, asking for explanations, and Fjord's fearful refusal being met with simple acceptance rather than prodding persistence; maybe he found the shift in the walls crumbling down between them as that unspoken understanding that the two of them were painfully similar was no longer unspoken.
Maybe the answer was in Caduceus' delight at a new perspective on the nature of, well, nature. Maybe it was in Caleb's understanding of how they both had been crushed under and mismanaged the power of control. Maybe it was in Caduceus' high, flustered babbling, or Caleb's anxious fussing, or Caduceus' compliments or Caleb's compliments or the awe they both inspired as they weaved magic of very different forms or the simple joy of saying I like being around you.
It was a puzzle, and he was a curious man, and perhaps if he pondered long enough, he could make sense of why Caduceus pulling a seed of corruption from him and healing over a wicked, cruel wound, and Caleb carrying that seed around his neck, heavy as a shared burden and light as a piece of amber on a chain, felt so right. Maybe he could ponder on how the corruption of Uk’otoa, as sharp as blade through the heart and as possessive as lungs full of burning water, was remedied by slowly surfacing to life again, held as if by gentle waves in the warm hands of two men he admired so fiercely.
Or perhaps it wasn't something meant to be pondered. Perhaps he should simply feel what it was like to have two men peer inside of him - two men with different experiences, different manners, different desires and personalities - and both see someone they loved.