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Essek returned to his study to find Caleb had relocated to the floor.
His inkwells sat to the side of his empty chair, still within reach but out of the way of a careless foot or knee. His papers lay spread in a small arc before him, his notes and reference scroll in a wider arc beyond that.
With one heel drawn up against his body and most of his weight on his other hip and thigh, his position appeared to give him a view on all of his materials at once. If the side table Caleb had abandoned didn’t suit for his work, Essek’s own desk would have been the next logical choice, but perhaps his human sensitivities preferred the ground?
Caleb’s expression was distant, two fingers tapping at the interesting little divot in his chin. He gave no indication he’d even noticed Essek come back.
Curious, Essek moved behind him, peering over his shoulder. It looked as though he’d made some good progress, judging by the volume of copperplate handwriting covering his papers. As Essek tried to decipher a note in the margin of one page, Caleb lowered his chin to his knee, a sheaf of his hair swinging down past his cheek. Absently, he tucked it back behind the round curve of his ear.
Human age could be hard to read, so odd and condensed and sudden. Caleb’s friends might look up to him as a mature presence in their group, and Essek could see it, most of the time. Not now, though. The arrangement of his limbs, the neat slope of his back, all curved inward — the picture he made struck Essek as almost adolescent. Even while he watched, the troublesome section of hair drifted into a loose loop before giving up and sliding back down over Caleb’s face again.
Taking a seat in Caleb’s abandoned chair, Essek reached forward. “May I?” he asked, already gathering the fall of coppery hair in one hand.
Caleb stilled. From where he sat, Essek could just see a sliver of his face, the fan of his lashes as he blinked. Caleb didn’t reply, but he did sit up just a little, lessening the need to reach.
Essek moved past hesitation with careful fingers. This sort of contact wasn’t Empire custom. He hadn’t forgotten so much as fallen too easily into unthinking habit. But the only thing more awkward than proceeding now would be to stop.
That thought didn’t appeal. Caleb’s hair was such an uncommon color, distracting at first glance and fascinating up close. Even the texture was unfamiliar, not the weightless white spider-silk Essek was accustomed to, but a heavier gauge. He set aside the impulse to frown at the state of it in his hands: loose, tangled, in need of a trim at the ends. But as he smoothed through it with slow, careful fingers, it took on a sleekness to rival any drow in Rosohna.
Old, familiar motions grabbed hold of Essek. Small braids bloomed under his hands, curving over Caleb’s sweetly rounded ear, above the pale stretch of his neck. Essek twisted larger sections into ropes and wove them together, admiring the almost imperceptible threads of gold glinting amongst the copper. He found himself wishing he had some wildflowers to hand as he worked the smaller braids into the weave of larger pieces, a loose crown beginning to take shape.
Caleb sat still under the attention. Essek couldn’t read any discomfort in his posture; if anything, the collective lines of his body had softened. Whatever breed of trust they shared, it hardly showed to the naked eye, but Essek...felt it. The realization sent a jolt of wistful longing through him, an old ache. He secured the trailing ends of Caleb’s hair and reluctantly lowered his hands.
To his credit, Caleb waited a long moment before glancing over his shoulder. Without the disordered fall of hair obscuring them, his eyes were startling in their loveliness. Essek’s heart took up a more insistent beat, and he almost forgot himself and let his difficulty show on his face.
“I hope I have not distracted you from your work?” Caleb spoke with the awkward hesitation of someone who meant to ask a different question. Essek allowed himself a small smile.
“No.” His eyes passed over Caleb’s head, taking in the full picture. “It’s been a long time,” Essek started— stopped. Closed his mouth.
Caleb lifted a hand toward his head, slowing at the last second. “May I?” he said, quietly amused to be asking permission.
“Of course,” Essek said, nodding to a wall mirror near the door. Caleb got to his feet to look. His fingers explored the criss-crossing plaits with a delicacy that made Essek swallow. It occurred to him, as he watched, that he’d never seen Caleb’s hands move with anything but gentleness.
“It’s beautiful,” Caleb said, catching Essek’s eyes in the mirror. “An unusual skill for someone with hair as short as yours, if you don’t mind the observation,” he said. To Essek’s surprise, he walked back and reclaimed his seat on the floor, looking up in the mode of one prepared to listen. The instinct to stand and back away tensed in Essek’s legs; he allowed himself a wry huff of laughter instead.
“It’s called a khorona,” he said. “It is a…classic Xorhassian style, particularly within Den Thelyss.”
Caleb’s brows drew together in the center. “I can’t recall having seen it before.”
Ah. Caleb and his merry band had hardly met everyone within the den, but then Caleb did have that remarkable memory. Truthfully, he would not have seen the style because it was most often worn before consecution.
And, less formally, as a gesture between lovers when they meant to declare their intentions.
“You likely will someday, now that you have permanent residence here,” Essek said instead, neutral. Caleb nodded, accepting this.
“It may surprise you to learn we’ve spoken about this, you know,” he said, soft humor in his eyes and his voice. “Jester has admired the handiwork of your kinsmen at length. It seems like a point of pride for many drow. Are you so uninterested in frivolous admiration?”
Stricken, Essek said nothing. He remembered the curl of his mother’s lip the day he arrived in court with his hair shorn almost to the scalp. He remembered feeling the stares like a cool breeze across the back of his exposed neck. It had felt important at the time. It had felt necessary. Caleb couldn’t have known, but to land so near the truth, inviting warmth into territory Essek had spent decades defending alone? It stole his breath.
Caleb’s face changed, absorbing the silence, and he looked down at his hands.
“My mother liked mine long,” he said after a drawn moment, quiet. “I favored her.” He gestured upward.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Essek admitted.
“It is not especially common, even where I am from,” Caleb said.
“And do you prefer it long?” Essek prompted, curious. He had to assume so, unless Caleb’s mother had a reach as long as Essek’s own.
“They expected us to keep it short when I was in school,” Caleb said, and offered nothing else.
An unfamiliar melancholy stained the air like tea on parchment.
Essek became aware of his hands in the same jarring, unwelcome way he sometimes remembered he occupied a body. The wood grain beneath his fingers ran in long parallel lines that fell over the graceful turn of the chair’s arms. Seen from a certain angle, they looked like paths that extended into a horizon that abruptly disappeared. Beyond that, out of focus: Caleb’s bent head, staring down at his own hands.
Abruptly, the oddness of their positions became impossible to ignore. Essek stood, smoothing the fall of his robes as he did.
When Caleb finally looked up, his expression held a lingering wryness, but it was still warm. He shifted, getting to his feet, and Essek reflexively held out a hand even as he realized that whatever had unspooled between them was being reeled back in, packed away.
“The hour is getting late, I think,” Caleb said, slowly.
A child’s protest leapt in Essek’s breast, the shock and sting of disappointment. It didn’t reach his mouth, where a half smile tugged instead. It was a perfectly reasonable social nicety, but the retreat left a faint hollow feeling just beneath his ribs.
“Of course,” he said, glad he had the moment it took Caleb to gather his belongings to school his features. “I should get back to my…serious work, that it might be worthy of the solemn admiration I prefer.”
Light forgive him, he peeked up as he spoke, hoping his own offer of dry humor might be accepted — not quite an apology, not quite a jibe. An acknowledgement, like a raised glass.
He was not prepared for the careful way Caleb looked at him, or slowly lifted his hand, waiting for some sign its approach was unwelcome. Essek froze, heart thudding like a fist against his ribs, as Caleb’s fingers met his temple, smoothing through the bristle of his hair over his ear.
“It suits you,” Caleb said, lowering his arm.
The tidal rush of blood in Essek's ears swallowed their polite exchange of goodbyes: a small, private smile and pleasant ‘gute nacht’ from Caleb, Essek’s own soft farewell. The rushing broke like a wave upon the snick of the latch, the door shutting behind Caleb’s swinging coat.
Essek steadied himself against the wood, closing his eyes. He stood there until the incandescent memory of touch faded from his scalp.