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Caleb almost didn't hear the knock on his door. He paused for a moment before closing his book (which he knew by heart anyway, that being the nature of his entire library here). He began to approach the door, still half convinced nobody would be on the other side of it, but--there, he heard it again. Still very quiet, a little hesitant.
He opened the door.
On the other side, Essek was beginning to turn away, so Caleb caught his wrist.
"Please, come in."
Essek had the look of a startled animal, skittish and shrinking back. It made Caleb's hold on his wrist feel too forward, to overbearing, so he let go and stepped back, still leaving the door open in invitation.
"I..." Essek began, "I probably should be trying to trance, given what you've said about Lucien and his ability to dispel this tower, but I'm used to trancing in the latter half of the night and... well I'm rambling... I--never mind."
"You are still welcome to come in," Caleb reiterated, though he didn't attempt to reach out for Essek again.
Essek, again on the brink of turning away, paused for a moment. His eyes flickered in different directions, sometimes briefly alighting on Caleb's face, brief glimpses of yellow light from a candle almost spent. Finally, he nodded and moved toward the door.
Caleb stepped back to allow him through, then closed the door behind them.
"Would you like anything to drink?" Caleb offered.
Essek shook his head, then, belatedly, said, "No, thank you." He looked a bit ill.
There was a very long moment of uneasy silence. Twice, Essek opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't quite seem to get the words to come out.
"Are you all right?" Caleb asked.
"I'm fine," Essek said. He did not seem fine. "I--it's a difficult thing... I hardly feel like I have any right--"
"Essek..."
"--but I may not have another chance so I..."
Essek took in a deep breath and let it out, then looked Caleb in the eye.
"Caleb, I am in love with you."
The pronouncement hit Caleb like lightening, setting his extremities tingling. His chest was filled with something sweet and soaring and terrifying all at once.
"Well, I just wanted to say it. You do not need to respond," Essek mumbled, his eyes dropping back to the ground, and Caleb felt the absence of their pale light (like the star Caduceus had described when he asked the Wildmother if Essek would help them).
Almost as if in a dream, Caleb walked forward and held Essek's face in his hands, turning it upward so he could see his eyes again. This close, his eyes looked almost crystalline, amber facets glinting in the firelight. For a moment, he just felt the gravity between them, that something that always beckoned him closer, against all his better judgement.
He gave in to the gravity. He kissed him.
The kiss was long and slow and still, like falling, like flying, like possibility and impossibility at once. He could feel Essek's hands clutching the fabric of his shirt, but that was the only thing that seemed real. It almost seemed incongruous that when he opened his eyes again, he was still in his own room in his own tower.
A part of him wanted to name this feeling, a name that had been spoken aloud just moments before, but that would make it too real. It could not coexist with the dusty, weathered floorboards in a cabin on the Balleater, the confession that happened there, the reckoning that had been taking place in Caleb's heart ever since.
"I do care for you, very deeply," Caleb said. It didn't feel like enough.
Essek's face tightened. "I suppose I've lost any chance I had at anything more than that," he said, moving back so that Caleb's hands fell back to his sides.
"Perhaps not irrevocably."
Essek nodded, his eyebrows knitted together in thought. He looked up again. "If we get through this, I will earn back your trust, whatever it takes."
Something about that didn't sit quite right with Caleb, even with as much time as he has spent wondering whether Essek could be trusted. "I care more that you are happy with yourself," he said.
Essek smiled ruefully. "That's... unlikely to happen."
"Unlikely isn't impossible," Caleb pointed out.
Essek shrugged. He looked small and sad and lost, and Caleb could not help but to go to him again and wrap his arms around him, and tuck his head into his chest and press a kiss into his hair. Essek took a long breath in, and then with his breath out, his shoulders loosened, his arms came up to wrap around Caleb in return, his feet lowered until they touched the ground.
"I don't want to leave," Essek murmured into Caleb's shirt.
"Then stay," Caleb said, and he led Essek to the couch by the fireplace, and he sat down, and Essek sat, and curled into Caleb's side like he fit there, like he belonged there, and within minutes, he had fallen into a trance. Or at least that's what Caleb assumed. His eyes were still open, still glinting in the firelight, but he did not respond when Caleb tried to talk to him.
So he just sat there, and held Essek, and lost himself in thought.