Chapter Text
This should work, Essek nods to himself both in mental preparation and anticipation.
Thoroughly cleaned of the day's sea-air pursuits, indulgently moisturized, and dressed in comfortably loose loungewear tucked at his hip, Essek stands in his second chamber within the tower, facing this newest door Caleb has gifted him.
He picks at the cuff of a sleeve.
It should work. Why wouldn’t it? He’s simply yet to test it.
So test it he does.
What awaits him is exactly what he expects: an empty room- Zemnian wainscot, warm amber lighting, two doors on the perpendicular walls, one each.
He breathes a smile as he crosses the threshold into the second of Caleb’s rooms, two floors up now a simple hop away, and steps with socked feet to the door of the bedchamber.
This is quite a convenient arrangement, he decides. He pauses to rap his knuckles, since that is the polite thing to do.
A muffled, warm-lilted sing-song greets him.
“Who is it?”
Who else could it possibly be. He sent just moments ago.
“It’s Essek. May I come in?”
Caleb’s regular dropped chuckle passes through the door.
“Yeah.”
The door is only a hair ajar when Caleb’s voice returns, playful again.
“Wait, I’m naked.”
Essek stops on decorous instinct.
No, Caleb is probably lying. Again.
Even so, Essek still only slowly peeks, ready to snap the door shut if need be.
The peep reveals Caleb, grinning wide and sly, his long hair spilling loose over shoulder and collarbone. He reclines atop bedcovers, propped against pillows and headboard with one leg stretched and the other crossed under, book and quill in lap and angled just enough to be purposeful.
His lounging form is, also, decidedly dressed.
Essek enters with a chuckled tut.
“Fool me twice.”
“Who knows, maybe the third time it will be entirely true.”
“You have new markings to show this go around, do you?”
Caleb barks a laugh.
Success.
Essek pads to the chaise lounge, remaining at a distance from the bed to offer privacy as Caleb writes.
But Caleb does not write, though still rolling his blue shell between fingers, instead keeping his gaze to Essek as he settles in.
“You have fun with Yasha and Kingsley?”
Essek throws a compulsive laugh to the room.
Caleb beams back.
“I see.”
An idle hand under his chin with the other’s arm crossed over his chest, Essek provides a little more detail.
“Yasha was quite right about the fish market. There was a cook with- I think it is fusaka? For lunch. Very good- it had a coconut milk curry alongside.”
“Bring anything for me?”
Based on the way Caleb bats his eyes, the question’s a rhetorical tease, but Essek gives him a sincere answer regardless.
“We did gather a fresh batch of honeyflame bread before returning this evening—that one kind with the extra cinnamon that Luc cares for—intended for everyone, but. Well.”
He chuckles behind his index finger.
“King held onto the rest of it, so consider it gone.”
Caleb gasps, faux-scandalized.
“And you let him?”
Essek offers a one-sided shrug.
“He liked it. What was I supposed to do, take it from him?”
A sigh of resignation.
“No, he works the puppy eyes too well.”
“Exactly. How was dinner with the Brenattos?”
“Good, good, you’ll never believe after.”
“Try me.”
If smiles could blind, Caleb’s is close.
“Luc kept begging me to make him float like kind Mister Kaelyn did.”
“Ah.”
As expected, then, since he still asked for more time after Essek indulged him for an entire concentrated hour yesterday. Essek thumbs at the small leather loop turned bebuttoned bracelet he’s been reluctant to remove since.
Caleb goes on, waving his quill-holding hand.
“I didn’t though, unfortunately. Veth repeatedly asked that I not use up a spell slot despite my offering, while Yeza just sat back and laughed.”
Now hold on a moment.
Essek sits up from his lounge.
“Really. Veth said for you to not expend a slot.”
And Caleb laughs a bright grin.
“What’s that tone for?”
“I’m assuming you’re rather fresh today?”
“Just the tower, yeah.”
“Unbelievable.”
“What?”
With a toothless huff, Essek kneads at the bridge of his nose with a thumb and second finger.
“Once my first cast ran out, she insisted I continue.”
He splays a disbelieving hand.
“Ate through all my seconds and thirds.”
Caleb’s eyes, caught on the bracelet of Essek’s raised hand, now gleam a puzzle-piecing mischief.
Oh no.
Essek withdraws his arm, tucking it away. Caleb cracks an even wider grin, shell rolling paused.
Oh no.
“You’ve been using Levitate?”
With fingertips and all the feigned indifference he can muster, Essek idly twists the smooth silver band on his right hand’s third finger.
“Caleb, I can float and can cast Feather Fall, Fly, and Telekinesis. Mage Hand. I can adjust the very density of objects themselves. Why would I have any need to know Levitate?”
It’s far too late, the base slot and component already gave it away.
Caleb keeps his cheeky grin.
“That is adorable.”
Well, there’s the tease.
Not as bad as he expected.
Still, Essek plays dumb.
“What is?”
“You learning spells specifically to make a child smile.”
Patently untrue, it is simply less taxing.
…When the sole goal is to make a child smile….
Essek remains contrary purely for the sake of argument. He doesn’t know it for Luc.
“It has other applications.”
“It’s been said, my friend. No backtracking.”
Essek crosses his arms just to project petulance, jutting his chin up as he’d learned from the child himself.
“If you weren’t so far, I’d flick you.”
And Caleb bats his eyes yet again.
“You can come closer if you’d like, tuck in cozy. I don’t bite.”
Essek narrows his eyes, sensing a punchline.
Caleb delivers.
“Unless you want me to.”
And Essek rolls his eyes.
“Save it.”
A blue-hued wink.
“I think I will.”
While not quite ready to ‘tuck in cozy’, as it were, nor dressed for such, Essek would like to be closer with Caleb after spending the day apart.
A day’s not so long, but time together after months away has been the sweetest of treats.
Caleb sits up proper and scoots aside towards the armoire opposite as Essek rises to approach the bed, and he returns to writing. His quill flies over the page as though it must be filled in a minute.
Close up, Essek notices that the bedsheets catch a strange sheen that they haven’t before, shimmering like a different silk under the faint scintillation of this room’s arcane burners.
Curiosity piqued, he pulls back a corner to feel them.
It’s odd; the texture of them is different, but it’s… familiar.
Taking a moment to rub a pinch of fabric between fingertips, recognition mounts.
It is very familiar. Why is it familiar?
It clicks.
But he holds back judgment. Perhaps he is mistaken.
He reaches a hand to his shoulder, just under the overshirt collar, just to be absolutely sure.
Well. That is certainly it.
The sheets hold the exact same thinly smooth tooth as the silken garment he wears directly against his bare skin.
And immediately, a burn rises through his neck, overtaking his cheeks and ears.
“Caleb?”
The first syllable cracks, pitched far too high.
He’s already mortified, what’s another embarrassment? He certainly can’t flush any further, he’s pretty sure.
Caleb closes his book immediately, turning to Essek with plain concern on his brow.
“Yes?”
Essek clears his throat once, twice, hoping to extinguish his blush and any follow-up to that strangled catch.
“I-.”
There’s his tenor. He meters his words to ensure no other odd slips.
“I don’t know how to ask you this without untoward implications.”
This seems to give Caleb pause, which he turns into a slow nod, concern easing into clear confusion.
“Alright?”
Essek takes a breath, measures clumsy words, and lifts the corner of the sheets he still holds.
“Why does this feel like the fabric of my undershirts?”
Caleb’s eyes go wide.
“Oh-, I thought that you might find it, ah- comfortable, familiar-? I didn’t mean-. I can have it changed.”
Comfort and familiarity, of course; Essek did say he wears the shirts for textural purposes.
So Caleb, again, wanted to provide him the opportunity of further sanctuary, here in this room of himself. Took an offhand comment and an instant’s worth of examination, and he reconstructed it into a tangible gift he is sharing willingly. Cleverly captured, freely given, as all his personalized kindnesses have been.
Stark embarrassment flips on its head, its magnitude shifting elsewhere entirely, layered sweet.
The way his heart begins its frigid pounding, Essek is quite convinced he’ll develop palpitations at the fresh young age of twelve decades. That is, if he isn’t frozen unmoving as a sculpture of ice first.
Further thoughts slip, his only consideration: regaining warmth.
His eyes flick to the secret notebook resting closed in Caleb’s lap, the shell and unspillable quill-and-inkwell he’d gifted him.
He’d suddenly much rather take their place. Very much indeed. In order for that to happen, they must be moved.
Forgoing peeling back the covers to investigate further, as all interest towards that has waned, Essek sets a knee to the bed.
His frame still, Caleb’s gaze drops to the impression before returning to holding Essek’s.
Essek speaks up, his voice passing lower than expected.
“Do you trust me, Caleb?”
He adds a supporting hand, kitty-corner, two of four limbs towards his goal.
Owlish blue blinks.
“That depends.”
Hm, not a yes. Essek will have to demonstrate at a distance, then. Not an issue.
He begins methodically casting Mage Hand.
There is no counter; Caleb stays put.
Essek sends his spectral hand to Caleb and grasps the book, shell, and writing implements from his lap, lifting them to chest level in the case Caleb wants to take them back.
Though he makes no move, the way Caleb’s eyes shift indicates uncertainty. He must not want Essek to read it.
No bother there, as he wasn’t planning to.
Items held firm, Essek sends them to the writing desk in the opposite corner of the room. He dismisses the hand.
He’ll apologize for ruining Caleb’s order later, thank him for the confidence.
Essek sets his other knee and hand to the bedspread, and Caleb’s sharp eyes hold fixed. He remains perfectly still and Essek would think time itself had stopped if not for the near-negligible expansion of Caleb’s chest and the drumming beat within his own. He is not being repulsed.
Onward, then.
He brings himself to kneel before Caleb, crouched just enough to be below eye level; coiled, or cowed? Either way, he admires—the faint stubble Caleb is gradually working into a fuller beard for the sake of Essek’s curiosity, his patient lips, bright eyes, the way his chest moves as he breathes steady, heavier now, the shift of his pretty hair over collarbone as he tilts his head just slightly—as though he, Essek, is the most voracious of votaries.
Slowly, slowly, Essek raises a humming hand, and he isn’t sure who he is afraid of scaring more.
With his freezing heart fluttering so loud, how is he to tell if he is the creature stalking, or the one who is wary prey?
He brushes fingertips to Caleb’s rougher cheek, and Caleb finally relaxes with a long, soft sigh as he leans into the touch. Still watching, observing with focus, but his gaze has lost all its sharp edges, sanded fond.
Good, good good good. Essek tries not to vibrate out of his own skin.
With every ounce of restraint, he hopes his slowness is question enough as he leans, because he can’t formulate words with any meaning while thrumming thoughts tangle.
Essek kisses Caleb’s cheek unimpeded, holding soft, then withdraws.
A ghost of warmth lives on his lips.
And like a dam’s hairline fracture, a faint rumble begins in his ribs, so, so quiet.
The room around is quieter.
Caleb takes Essek’s hand from his face, holding it in both his and running his warm thumbs over trembling palm back.
“What are you doing, Essek?”
“I don’t know.”
He presses a kiss to Caleb’s jaw; it’s faintly scratchy against his lips now.
Caleb chuckles, his thumbs making circles.
“Is this a ‘no leave it’ or a ‘yes change it’?”
Leave or change what?
Setting his lips under the corner of Caleb’s jaw, Essek finds him pricklier here, slightly more so than yesterday. Caleb tilts his head for easier access.
Is there something Essek could be dissatisfied with?
He reaches a stabilizing hand to the pillow behind Caleb’s back as he leans lower. The fabric is very smooth.
Oh, that’s right, the sheets. Sheets don’t matter for this.
“Leave it. Can I kiss you?”
At that, Essek can feel the laughter bubble up Caleb’s throat.
“You have been. And you still are.”
Essek removes his lips from Caleb’s neck and rests his forehead against Caleb’s shoulder with a shaky sigh. He smells nice- fresh-washed.
“Caleb.”
One of Caleb’s palms finds Essek’s. Fingers interweave.
“Yes?”
“You said I only need ask.”
Circumstances all seem stable enough.
Caleb runs the thumb of his loose hand down Essek’s jaw to chin.
“I did say that, you are correct.”
Essek attempts to kiss at his teasing hand without withdrawing from his shoulder, but barely manages a brush. Caleb chuckles.
“Did you miss me all day?”
“Caleb.”
“Yes?”
Essek tightens his grip within Caleb’s held hand, his one grounding tether of consistent heat.
“Please.”
“Am I talking too much for you?”
Caleb’s wide smile is evident in his slow tone and Essek shifts his clutching fingers within Caleb’s because friction can start fires.
“Please.”
And Caleb nudges him up, teasing hand holding his chin with fingers curled under.
He leans in, granting Essek the briefest touch of lips before drawing away again.
It’s plenty enough to knock the frigid wind from Essek’s lungs, a firm freeing of firn that reveals the deep glacier below.
Keeping him in place, Caleb does not let Essek chase warmth. Instead, he pauses, looking between Essek’s eyes.
With all the sincerity he can muster, Essek combs his free hand through loose waves of red, runs icy fingertips along the scalp behind Caleb's rounded ear. Tucks away the soft hair there, the motion very well-practiced.
“Please.”
They’re close enough that Essek can say it with Caleb’s own breath.
From corner-crinkled blue eyes that squint curved enough to turn dark, to off-balance laugh lines that appear and indent deep, to the scrunch of his nose as it folds a little sharper than Jester’s, to cheeks raised apple-ruddy round, these are all independent indicators of Caleb’s contentment that Essek has learned to recognize.
When thoroughly happy, the deep-set quiet sort, Caleb wears them together in every inch of his face.
And when Caleb slides his hand from chin to nape, that expression’s exact matching smile, a reassurance like no other, is the last thing Essek sees as he meets it with equal measures of habit and hunger.
He near melts when matched the same.
Caleb is warm, the way Essek has come to anticipate and cherish, encompassing and comforting in the assured ways he holds and moves. Yet he hasn’t managed to be overbearing, even when leading their meanders such as this.
Now though, Caleb seems to be letting Essek decide, receptive to his nudges and breaths, gifting him soft little noises while Essek runs fingers through his red hair as though each strand is a discovery. Essek keeps holding his hand, just because he can.
Scented pleasant from what Essek now knows is tower-conjured conditioning cream, he finds Caleb’s hair to still be damp at the nape.
He backs for breath, gives a light tug.
“Can I dry this?”
Caleb hums nodded assent into him and recent memory claims Essek’s air the same as Caleb- he’s told Caleb what this means, the care of hair, its upkeep in private.
He forgets to dry it while the words to do so are ardently misplaced against Caleb’s lips, his fingers too tangled in hair and hand to cast.
Eventually, though, it’s silken smooth.
Plush kisses continue, shared smiles and breath, small sounds exchanged in conversation, but Essek could be warmer. He could be. He has been, he could be. Caleb is warm.
A test of tongue, a slip readily accepted, and Essek is surprised to recall keltaly. Twice tangy-sweet in two nights, this night unordered by him. Caleb must have liked it. Essek releases his hand in order to cradle his jaw and find the slant that works best. Because how nice, he tastes quite like home.
Caleb announces his promising findings on sharp teeth with a caught call in his throat, drawing Essek from distraction, and he obliges quick, nibbling a fang to pink lip.
He catches Caleb’s resulting groan before it can join the room’s air, letting it rest warm and pleased in his cold lungs.
Caleb likes when Essek does this, he’s said both in word and present response. And Essek quite likes that Caleb likes it, likes that he can provide something nice for Caleb all his own.
He is sure to let Caleb know, to call back and reply just the same, exploring further alongside him.
Caleb is so, so warm, his hands now holding nape and back, fingers curled tight without grip into still-short hair and palm circling spine, his lips consuming all of Essek’s senses and sense.
But this can’t seem to curb the syrupy tug of longing desperation that the building chill in his chest seeks to sate. What does it want? To be touched, to be held, for certain, as that is what it always pleads for. This is what he’s asked for, what he’s so graciously received- receiving. Yet still, an untouchable craving seeps through him like honey; it burns in his throat, aching as like the best of gifted sweets. His imagination provides nothing else but Caleb, the concept of him and his continued warmth idealized and an achievable solution unrealized aside from that core component, he.
Then again, Caleb has been so, so very clever with all else regarding their touch together, and Yasha has been so encouraging about Essek finding contentment with touch in general, both independently indicating that very little is unwelcome, so maybe, maybe maybe- Essek doesn’t know maybe what, but maybe still…
Regardless, Caleb could be closer. Essek could be warmer. He seeks Caleb’s wrists, sets warm palms insistently to his own hips and presses on, claiming Caleb's lap as he had forgotten he’d intended at the start, and his arms return to twining neck, his fingers again tangle in soft hair. Pulling himself to overlap, he can feel Caleb’s ribcage expand with his own, feel the press of Caleb’s hidden-pendant silver ring into his achingly chill heart, feel external warmth percolate through fabric and into frosted flesh.
But gentle hands slide up to waist and collarbone, and Caleb nudges him away, out of his lap. The purr fades and Essek does not whine in reluctant withdrawal as he endeavors to rein himself in, his own hands haltingly reclaimed from their clinging grasp with this denial.
“Essek?”
Caleb’s voice is as rough as Essek’s breath.
He should say something, probably, but he can’t find any words because he cannot see them on Caleb’s lips, and he simply flicks a further wetting of his own between heavy pants. His heart is rather loud in his ears and he flexes ice-cold fingers, grips into his thighs to keep his hands from reaching, holding, grabbing, taking.
Both warm palms are back to Essek’s sides.
“Essek.”
Caleb squeezes and Essek draws a sharp breath.
The pressure near lights a fire under him; it feels very, very good.
Red hair sways as Caleb dips his head and sky-deep eyes, darkened as a sinkhole, catch Essek’s attention, heated intention; they grip and peer and Essek stares back silent.
“Are you asking?”
Is Essek asking is he asking is he asking, what would he be asking. That is very unclear. But? Oh, no he knows, remembers now that this is their code, their roundabout way to talk about that, about this. They could be clearer, probably should, as ‘this’ could be anything new, anything progressively bold labeled under a shifting signpost of arbitrary designation. But for now his thoughts spin. He’s thought about it, different reaches, different places, different touches. He’s thought about this, about himself, about Caleb, about them, about Caleb, about Caleb.
Essek’s voice, now found, is air.
“Maybe.”
Caleb licks his lips, breathes. Swallows. Breathes more, swallows again. Essek’s eyes eat every twitch.
And then Caleb leans in, and Essek tries to match, to meet him sweetly in the middle as longing dictates, but he is held at bay by a forehead and a chuckle.
Caleb’s hands find Essek’s, gingerly pry them from fists. Their fingers tangle tight and Essek’s blood sings of snowmelt.
“Sit with me a moment?”
Patience and caution and caution and patience, as if this is anything but safe.
But, if that’s what Caleb needs, wants.
Essek can do this for him.
He can.
He nods.
Foreheads remaining together, they simply sit.
Essek fights from fidgeting.
Since they fill all current vision and thought, Essek examines Caleb’s eyes while he waits for whatever Caleb is doing to resolve itself into another decision. Close enough to see every minute shift, every twitch of iris and flick of lid and flutter of lashes, he considers these traits in order. They’re dark, black subsuming, but blue is not hiding and a pupil doesn’t count for much when it doesn’t take up its own space. They hold steady, save for unhurried blinks, and the finest lines of laughter frame them. They’re dark, like his brows, without the brighter reddish shine of his hair even when they flicker. Perhaps his pretty hair has grown lighter with time in the sun. It’s his; it’s pretty.
Essek’s breathing begins to settle to a composure a few steps below purely ragged. His heart slows enough to hear Caleb’s breath.
Caleb is so close they share air- how could he not have heard it before now?
He manages to remain still despite the quivering, burning chill under his skin, the consuming honey-draw to Caleb and his warmth, that deep ache settled low. He keeps holding Caleb’s eyes and hands like the lifelines they are, and the hum and tug and ache do not disappear despite Caleb staring into his very soul.
Oh.
Ordered notions finally collect enough to discern, barely.
One thought: the feelings are not going away.
One question: what is he doing?
A second question: what are they doing?
A second thought: they’re doing nothing and Caleb is staring and the feelings are not going away.
One question: what has changed?
A second question: what happens next?
This hush between them suddenly feels quite like the withdrawing tide of an awaiting tsunami.
A third and final thought, more extensive than the two prior: the hum, the tug, the ache. The first and last can be dealt with together and alone, respectively. But that middle aspect, distinct from and fusing the two? That still eludes his grasp, defies direct definition, makes no sense. He can’t hear a thought buzzing about it beyond Caleb.
It’s as Essek is considering this when Caleb’s lips quirk a slight smile, a brow cocks.
“This is different.”
It’s a statement-phrased question, the way his graveled voice pitches up by a hair with what sounds like surprise, the way his bright eyes seem to be searching Essek’s own.
There’s a slight waver to Essek’s surety, vague nerves settling into undirected uncertainty.
“Is different… unwanted, at the moment?”
Oh, wide eyes and a wider grin, Caleb appears rather eager.
“Absolutely not- it is very, very wanted.”
Very eager.
Now the pendulum of Essek’s fervor swings entirely opposite, enthusiasm leaking away and into the strange-hollow pit of his stomach.
Though keeping their hands together, Essek removes his forehead from Caleb’s, with effort, and draws back in his sit, a motion made distracting with ache.
A drop of realized comprehension wells up into chagrin. He’s recently read moments quite like this, now more familiarized with the script.
“Have you been waiting for me, Caleb?”
All this time, is this how it’s been, this strain of composure?
Essek had gotten a glimpse, he thinks, during their experiment with Telepathy in the ninth floor’s chamber, but all feeling of overflow has since slipped from memory like fine sand through a sieve.
He does not add this clarification.
Caleb tilts his head, runs his thumbs along Essek’s, seeming to contemplate Essek like silvered glass.
Then he simply shakes his head.
“Waiting implies expectation.”
This is different.
Something soothing trickles a pool into worrisome cracks and space, though it’s not quite enough to quell doubt.
“Have I been testing your patience?”
Caleb gives another shake.
“Expectation again.”
This is different.
Relief roots, blooms to unbridled curiosity.
Essek leans in as before, his head now tipped a reciprocal hint to match Caleb opposite.
“How would you describe it, then?”
Caleb chews his lip. Essek could do that for him. Caleb, looking aside, likely cannot tell.
“I… am….”
And Caleb takes a breath, before meeting Essek’s eyes again with a hunger that sends a heated shiver down his cold spine.
“Intrigued.”
Intrigued.
Essek squeezes Caleb’s fingers and gestures his chin up, just a little, just enough to prod, to dare.
“How much?”
Blue eyes flick, twitch a tiny narrow.
And that is the only warning Essek receives before Caleb pounces forward, toppling him to his back and pinning him to the mattress by bracketed hips and interwoven hands.
Caleb’s voice drops to Essek as a caressing rumble, his sunlight smile spreading sly a mere nose away.
“Quite a lot.”
Gaze affixed to Caleb’s eyes as if by the tether of their silver rings, Essek breathes deep, once.
Twice.
Three times before he screws his eyes shut, as if that will quiet the cold buzzing caught taut in all his muscles, as if that will calm the tangled torrent of torrid nebulosity in his mind. He is now glad to not have laughed when Caleb was in this exact position, attempting to settle himself; the effort is monumental at present.
Eventually, he looks up to Caleb, ever-patient and red-curtain flushed. He squeezes Caleb’s hands.
“Do you like this angle?”
“I am not picky.”
It might not be kind to Caleb’s knees, hurting or not, if he were to stay like this; a conversation feels imminent.
“Come down?”
With a nod, Caleb settles beside him, hands now regrettably reclaimed and pillowed under one cheek.
They are facing the wrong way, lying on their sides with their feet towards the headboard. That’s unimportant. Caleb is here and all else could be upside down and sideways for all Essek cares at the moment. He can deal with strange gravity. This seems different from that, too.
Caleb blinks his pretty blue eyes.
“What do you want?”
That’s the issue, isn’t it? Right to the heart of the matter. Essek wants so much that it’s nothing, so little that it’s everything. It’s incredibly hard to gauge without a baseline of comparison set at the same contradictory magnitude, without a workable vocabulary to draw from.
So he reflects both pose and question like he can put up a semblance of self-possession.
“What do you want?”
And Caleb, smiling sweet, shrugs.
“As I’ve said, I am not picky. Ah- and, if need be, the nightstand drawers can produce anything.”
Eyes now narrowed, Caleb looks away and squiggles his mouth in consideration.
“Well, not anything anything. Smaller-scale things. Many things. Some things do require more preparation and conversation but, ah. Ja.”
He punctuates this with a decisive nod and returned gaze.
And Essek balks despite himself, turning his eyes to the mattress. Caleb seems thoroughly primed for quite a lot, as though he’s planned for circumstances such as this for a while. No, not planned, he’s already said his piece on expectation, time and time again. Prepared is the best term. And even so, Essek retreats, intimidated, to his familiar fortress of frigid comfort with nothing to offer Caleb but too many ideas, too many paths, none of them sticking in mind long enough to present themselves as feasible or phrasable. It still hums in his bones like a spell on the cusp of being cast.
He’s thought along lines similar, he has, so why can’t he focus and find anything now?
Caleb seems to sense the pause, calling Essek’s eyes up.
“Essek?”
“Yes?”
“Where did all that confidence go?”
It is not a mock. Instead, it sounds more like concern with how it’s woven with a little smile, gentle-drawn brows.
Essek lets his weak wall fall; Caleb’s already seen past it now.
“Where do you think it went?”
“I was asking you.”
And Essek breathes a slow sigh.
“I don’t know.”
Caleb’s smile settles soft.
“There is no obligation with anything, you know. I’m having fun just like this.”
“I know, I do, I just-. Something, is…”
Essek draws his brows.
“New?”
Caleb’s grin warms.
“And have you ever shied away from learning something new?”
As if this is yet another dance. May as well be, for the bat underwater Essek feels.
He presses a flat grin in reply.
“You’re taunting me.”
And now Caleb’s eyes crinkle deep.
“A little.”
Exasperation is not what’s coating Essek’s tongue, but instead something adjacent that rubs elbows with self-consciousness.
“I’m all talk with this, Caleb.”
“That’s alright, it’s entertaining.”
He waggles his brows.
“Besides, you know one of the genres my preferences in leisurely reads lie.”
As if those have been helpful at all.
Essek can only give a tense sigh in response, heart thrumming his ribcage gelid.
Though Caleb’s expression settles to a cautious concern, he keeps a soft smile.
“Are you alright?”
Thought is one matter, action another, and sentiment yet another besides, but none of it matters much if Essek can’t get his mind to rest intelligibly quiet.
So he offers a wry admission.
“I don’t know what to do with myself.”
And Caleb replies with a toothy-cocked grin as though he’d never dimmed.
“What do you usually do with yourself?”
Haze finally settled but mind still churning, Essek now can’t fight a flush nor a reflexive rebuke at Caleb’s salacious spin to his statement.
“Presumptuous.”
“My apologies.”
And Caleb backs down, a stalemate.
This won’t get them anywhere but longing looks and Essek has had enough of those to last a lifetime.
So he takes a breath, clenches fingers into the bedcovers.
“I’m- teasing.”
Hopefully not too blatant a lie.
Then he squeezes his eyes shut tight for a moment, forces a mumble despite his burning cheeks.
“And nothing particularly… interesting, I don’t think.”
Certainly nothing like the sorts of things in the books Caleb enjoys, and Essek would know, having snuck quite a few since Caleb gathered the newest bunch.
A moment of silence and then he cracks his eyes open to see Caleb shrug, face neutrally pleasant as if they are talking about the weather.
“It’s all interesting to me.”
Essek manages to hold back a scoff.
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I can imagine.”
Quiet nerves return, thickening Essek’s throat.
What is unfounded imagination if not another facet of expectation? And that aside, despite having lost the ability to recall telepathically shared sensations, Essek is still distinctly aware that they feel things such as this very differently.
“And if I’m… what is it… lackluster? To whatever stirs in that mind of yours?”
“‘Lackluster’? Essek….”
Caleb’s tone sounds too soft to chide, too kind to pity.
Essek wrinkles his nose. Perhaps that was a mistranslation.
“Poor phrasing on my part. I don’t know how to express it.”
Caleb’s lips quirk to one side.
“Imagination has nothing on reality and interesting can come later, then. How is that?”
The reiteration of a point two nights prior and its present addition have Essek’s heart caught in his throat, and he isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing.
“There will be a later?”
“If you want.”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t even know… however many minutes ago.
Caleb would know how many minutes ago, smart man.
The smart man speaks.
“What about now?”
“I…”
Now? Yes.
The rest of what that entails beyond the pinprick instant of the present?
Unresolved, unknown.
He has such a lack of capacity that he can’t even begin treating this as a challenge, something he can easily puzzle and overcome, let alone decide where to go from here.
And Light really, where is his mind? Icicled thoughts slog as though through achingly sticky honey, all thrumming Caleb Caleb Caleb, which is not helpful in the slightest. Yes, Caleb, Caleb is here, he knows this, he knows, and that’s half the problem; all else is too large or too loud to fathom.
But Essek knows very well that Caleb is warm. He knows very well that he himself is cold.
Thus, the only currently feasible direction of comfort and relief is Caleb.
A first step.
Essek shuts his eyes again since hiding always seems to help, recreant that he is.
Words pour without order.
“I want to do something about- whatever this is, because it’s incredibly distracting and it’s not going away, and I feel-”
His brows feel tight enough to crack opal, his face and ears aflame as with his worst sunburn, and there’s no Yasha nor Jester here to assist him. This is the worst.
But maybe saying this next part aloud will make things better, or at least set the stage for solution.
“I feel it might be nice, whatever this could be.”
When he’s only met with lasting silence, craven tension grows to tentative curiosity.
He peeks.
Caleb is staring, unsurprisingly, his blue eyes darting over Essek’s face, seeming to drink detail like a parched man in summer’s first monsoon.
And he’s not probing per se, not with his mouth set as a smirked squiggle- instead his expression is flavored as focused, attentive, maybe even amused. Under this gaze, Essek finds himself feeling adjacent to an arcane curiosity, a puzzle posed. He knows very, very well just how much care Caleb places into learning their intricacies once they’ve captured his interest.
Caleb’s mind and memory may just be a blessing in this case.
Determination sets in.
Let him decipher, then, since Essek can’t seem to.
They’ll make something work for the both of them.