Chapter Text
Essek’s laughter is what finally broke the silence between them. It was a quiet thing, gentle and under his breath, but in the silence of the Aeorian ruin it was the thing that drew Caleb’s attention first. The next thing that drew his attention was how lovely Essek looked when he laughed, his eyes crinkled shut, but he kept that thought to himself.
At least Essek had the courtesy to look embarrassed when Caleb turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he whispers, ducking his head back into his book.
“It’s alright,” Caleb says, a little bit louder, his voice echoing in the empty chamber. “What was so funny?”
Essek squints at his book, holding it up for Caleb to see. “It’s a diary,” he confesses, like a teenager who has been caught reading smut. “A young girl’s life, locked in a book. I had thought it was something more serious, given the level of enchantment, but, ah, it seems she was just a young lady who valued her privacy, and was a decent spellcaster.”
In spite of that, Essek had continued to read the book. Which made sense: they had learned not to discount anything that might have been of use. They found an incredibly useful map in the back of a recipe book, for example, and so they kept an open mind towards the books they found.
“What made you laugh, though?” Caleb asks, curiosity getting the better of him. If he’s completely honest, part of it is curiosity, and the other part of it is boredom. The book he’s been digging through has been a tedious slog of academic jargon, and while he normally enjoys reading such things, this author’s style has been dull and monotonous. A brief break is exactly what he needs, especially if it comes with a good joke.
“Oh,” Essek shakes his head. “Just her description of her first kiss.”
“ And? ” Caleb prods.
“It’s ridiculous,” he laughs again. “And cliché,” he held the diary up and began reading from it. “ Oh, today Daieros kissed me for the first time. I felt butterflies in my stomach the entire time. He made my palms get all sweaty and my knees get weak. It’s comical.”
“Aww,” Caleb grins, scooting closer across the dirt floor, so that he sits right next to Essek. “I remember my first kiss, and feeling like that. Don’t you?”
Essek snorts. “My first kiss wasn’t like that.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Mine was,” Caleb shares. “Mia Wagner. She lived a few houses down from me, and I had the biggest crush on her. I was--fourteen? Maybe thirteen. It was before I moved to Rexxemtrum and attended the Academy. We kissed behind her parents’ barn. I was so nervous, I felt like I was going to vomit the entire time.” A few weeks after that, of course, he moved to Rexxemtrum, and that was the last time he saw Mia. He wondered briefly where she was now, and if her life had ended up marginally better than his own. He hoped so, for her sake.
Essek scrunches his nose. “Ew. I never felt like vomiting while kissing,” he places a scrap of paper in the diary to hold his place, closing the book and setting it to the side.
“What was your first kiss like, then?” Caleb nudges him, his knee rubbing against Essek’s.
His partner looks inquisitive. “I don’t remember her name. She was taller than me, and older, I think. I kept hearing people talking about kissing and how enjoyable it was, so I approached her and asked if she wanted to try, and it was--ugh. Wet, mostly. I was unimpressed,” he turns towards Caleb, a light smile on his face. “My second kiss was better. A little bit, at least. His name was Iildan, and I was fifteen and smitten. Of course, it turns out he was an asshole in a previous life, so as soon as his memories came back it was a bit of a lost cause. Still, he didn’t make my knees weak or my stomach full of butterflies or anything ridiculous like that. I liked him because he was clever and tall, not because I was obsessed with his face or anything.”
Leaning back against the stone wall, Caleb eyes Essek, studying his face. “No one’s ever made you go weak at the knees, huh?”
“No!” Essek laughs, avoiding looking at Caleb. He brushes a few strands of hair out of his face back into place. There’s a bit of dark purple to his face that Caleb finds...fascinating. “Honestly, I thought that was just something people said in bad smut novels. I didn’t think it was real.”
“That’s a shame,” Caleb muses. “You deserve someone who will make your knees go weak, Essek.”
Caleb did not think I bet I could make you go weak in the knees , and if he did--well, no one had any proof of that, did they?
This time, he was positive Essek was blushing, based on how dark his cheeks had turned. “Well, I’m unlikely to find him in this ancient, cold place, am I? We should call it a day, I think.” He stuck the girl’s diary in his bag, and pulled out his map and quill. “What do we want to name this room?”
“Obviously, this is the kissing room,” Caleb teases, leaning even closer to Essek. “In honor of our friend, the teenage diary writer.”
Essek cocks an eyebrow. “You don’t think future adventurers won’t have questions about that, you think?”
“Let them,” Caleb stands up, offering Essek a hand as he does. “If they wanted to name the rooms we find, they should have gotten here first, don’t you think?”
He doesn’t see Essek write it down, but when he looks at the map later, he does see that it’s marked kissing room, for Caleb (and Juno) , and it makes him smile.