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The trouble with being in a long-term relationship is that, eventually, you run out of birthday present ideas.
By this, Essek means that he has run out of birthday present ideas. Caleb was a specialist gift-giver when Essek met him, and his ability has only honed itself over the years. For Winter’s Crest, he presents Essek with an enchanted paperweight that initially looks like a smooth ball of smoked glass. When Essek (and only Essek) looks directly at it, it shimmers and shifts into a smaller version of a beacon, stars and moons twinkling within its inky dark.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Essek says, looking up from the piece of expert craftsmanship in his hands to see Caleb smirking at him. “I got you socks.”
“I always need more socks!” Caleb protests, gathering the aforementioned socks to his chest, as if Essek is about to take them back. They’re good quality, if Essek says so himself, but he still feels bad. “My feet get cold.”
“Remember when I used to use you to warm my feet?”
“Vaguely. Back when my hair was red.”
“It still is, in some places.” They waggle their eyebrows at each other, and Essek sighs, weighing the small beacon in his hands. “You are the best gift-giver I know. What am I meant to get you for your birthday, hmm? I am fresh out of ideas.”
“You know I don’t want anything but you.”
“You’re very romantic, but that actually makes it harder. You see how that makes it harder, ja?”
“Ja.” A draught swirls up from somewhere or other, and a scrap of the tissue paper that Essek used to wrap the cursed socks floats off the table. Caleb stretches out his hand, but he can’t grab it in time; he begins to bend to scoop it from the floor, and Essek clucks at him.
“I’ll get it, d’anthe.”
“I have already done the painful part,” Caleb points out, his breathing a little laboured. “This is actually quite pleasant.” He is bent double, gnarled fingers closing around the piece of paper. “Now we have come to the painful part again.”
“Silly man.” Essek slips out of his chair and comes around to Caleb’s side of the table, kneeling so he can put his hands on Caleb’s shoulders, give him something to brace against. Caleb’s mobility varies with the seasons and the weather and his mood, but they both prefer manual methods to using their magic, unless the situation is dire. Caleb needs to save his spell slots for his students, he says, even if he won’t be teaching at Soltryce all that much longer. He’s turning eighty at the end of Sydenstar, after all.
Together, they get Caleb sitting upright again. Essek stays by his side, because Caleb tucked his face into the crook of his neck once he was in a position to do so, and that means it’s illegal for Essek to move. He can bear this slightly uncomfortable half-crouch, if it means Caleb gets a little bit of neck time. “Alright, there?” he asks, stroking over the back of Caleb’s head.
Caleb makes one of the grumbling noises that have only become more frequent as he’s gotten older, but Essek speaks his language well enough to know that it’s not a negative one. He has an idea of what Caleb is thinking about, and pokes him gently in his temple, where the white hairs spread from, when Essek and Caleb first got together. Look, Essek said in the autumn of Caleb’s sixtieth year, holding one of Caleb’s long white hairs up to his own undercut. We match.
“You’re thinking about your birthday, aren’t you?” Essek’s accuracy is rewarded with a louder grumbling noise and an arm around his waist, keeping him close. “Hold on, there’s a better way to do this. Let me just -” Essek carefully extracts himself and clambers into Caleb’s lap, adjusting his weight so Caleb’s hips won’t complain too much. Caleb’s head is still tilted at the angle he had it at in Essek’s neck, but he’s just staring into space now. “Caleb.”
“Hmm?”
“I know you heard me, Caleb Widogast.” Caleb’s hearing isn’t what it used to be, but Essek can always tell when he’s only pretending to be deaf. “How are you feeling about it?”
“Turning eighty, you mean?” Caleb sighs, but he looks at Essek properly, which Essek is taking as a victory. “Not the best.”
“Detective Agency,” Essek says, as he must, and strokes a few strands of hair back from Caleb’s face. “You are still quite the handsomest man I know. I doubt that will ever change.”
Caleb huffs at him, but he’s smiling. “Flatterer.”
“I have to be, to keep you interested. This only gets me so far.” Essek takes Caleb’s hand and gently moves it to his own backside, to indicate what he means. Caleb gives him a squeeze, which he appreciates. “I know it doesn’t solve everything, that I’m still obsessed with you. But I hope it’s some comfort, as we enter this period of our life.”
“Our life?” Caleb repeats, eyes glimmering.
“Yes,” Essek says primly. “Our life.”
The answer comes to Essek, as many answers do, in the garden. Caleb is with him, unusually; cold spring mornings do not often tempt him from their warm bed. But today he came to join Essek in the vegetable patch, and who is Essek to deny him?
Essek is wrist-deep in mulch. The spinach seedlings need protection from the lingering frost. Carefully, fastidiously, he gives them their own warm bed to schnuggle up in (he has spent too much time with Jester, over the past decades).
He has not brought quite enough mulch with him, and asks Caleb over his shoulder if he would mind collecting more from the potting shed. He hears some muttered calculations and then a soft curse, and kicks himself. The shed is just out of the range of the cat’s paw. Caleb will have to move, if he is to fulfil Essek’s request, and setting himself in motion is almost as uncomfortable as stopping, or getting up.
“Wait, Caleb -” But Caleb is already off, moving slowly but surely down the row to where the shed squats, wreathed in fog. He is bundled up in his long overcoat, Frumpkin III scarfed around his neck and the item that Beau refers to solely as his old man cap jammed over his red ears.
He is so darling to Essek, so precious, and that feeling is very strong in his heart, watching his husband walk away from him. But his mind is busy with another thought, growing clearer as the seconds pass, like a ship emerging from thick fog.
Of course. That’s what Essek will get him for his birthday.
The trouble with hiding an ambitious birthday project from your husband of forty-two years is that, unlike most people, he can tell when you are lying.
The other trouble with it is that Essek wants to stay up for a week working on the chair and give it to Caleb now. This has happened before with other projects - notably, the first scarf Essek ever knitted Caleb, which was objectively horrible but which Caleb still wears with pride (and Mends every time it gets frayed). It was meant to be a Winter’s Crest present, but Essek finished it in the small hours of 15th Duscar, and vibrated with so much excitement over breakfast that Caleb put him out of his misery and opened the damn thing five days early.
Essek will only miss twenty-eight hours of trancing, if he blitzes through The Present in a week. Barely anything.
Three decades ago - maybe even two - he would have done it. But he knows now that disrupting his routine can throw his mood into disarray. So he parcels out two hours every weekday to work on The Present, in the early afternoons, when Caleb is at the academy.
He spends the first month getting to grips with the enchantment. It is a tricky thing, to localise anti-gravity to a relatively large object. He does multiple tests on prototypes before he commissions the chair itself from a local carpenter. He colludes with Jester on the designs for the arms: cats, mostly, but also stylised versions of the Mighty Nein, and arcane symbolism, and dicks, both obvious and concealed. Essek does not have a whole year to spend on it, but he tries to pour as much care into it as Caleb clearly did into the Tower. That the work is enjoyable for him is the icing on the cupcake, as Jester would say.
The work is so enjoyable, in fact, that Essek is wont to lose himself in it, occasionally. This is not a safety hazard; Light knows they have built enough wards around their little house. It just means that he does not hear the familiar whoosh of the teleportation circle activating as his husband comes home early.
Essek looks up to find Caleb standing in the doorway of the workshop, blue eyes wide.
“Ah,” says Essek.
“Ja,” says Caleb.
“You were not -”
“There was an event, at school. My third-years were required for it, but I was not.” Though he is talking to Essek, Caleb’s flame-blue eyes have not left the chair since Essek spotted him, and there is a grin curling up the side of his mouth.
“It was meant to be a surprise,” says Essek, fiddling with his focus.
“I can act surprised on my birthday,” says Caleb, now smiling so much the skin around his eyes crumples like wet paper. “Come here, hot stuff.”
Essek goes into his arms willingly, transferring the focus into his helping mage hand so he doesn’t accidentally stab Caleb with it. “Do you like it?” he asks, which is mortifying, but luckily they have been together long enough that he no longer really feels embarrassed around Caleb. Except when he mispronounces a Common word because he has only read it, not heard it said out loud.
“I love it,” Caleb says, and though Essek can’t see his face, he knows he’s staring at the chair over Essek’s shoulder, knows he has that fascinated glint in his eye that drives Essek wild. “Can I see how it works?”
“Absolutely not.” Essek leans back so he can tap Caleb gently on the nose with his index finger. “You will have to try it out for yourself, Caleb Widogast. On your birthday. Because it is a birthday present.”
“You are cruel to me,” Caleb declares, and then bumps his forehead against Essek’s surprisingly firmly. “And also devilishly smart. I cannot wait to act surprised.”
Caleb’s birthday party is very tastefully done, if Essek says so himself. He’s allowed to, because he planned it with the whole rest of the Nein, not on his own. Marion kindly lends them the Lavish Chateau, and their family festoon the place with decorations both tangible and magical. There is some Empire tradition around turning eighty and oaks, so Caduceus coaxes a big old tree to rise from the centre of the courtyard (“It’s temporary, don’t worry”), and the children help with hanging baubles and trinkets from it, most of which appear to be cat-shaped.
A destination party is always a good idea, because it means that only the people you really want to come will make it. In Caleb’s case, that’s the Nein, and the extensions they’ve added to their family over the years: Jester and Fjord’s kids and grandkids, Beau and Yasha’s brood, Luc and Jora and their little ones. A few friends from Caleb’s work. Not Astrid and Eadwulf. They always do dinner just the three of them for their birthdays. They are quite touching occasions, in Essek’s book. Caleb always comes back drunk and giggling, which is one of Essek’s favourite looks on him.
Essek is so preoccupied with making sure that everybody is having a good time that he clean forgets about The Present until the gap between main course and dessert, which is, of course, the traditional time for speeches. He knows this because the Nein have chanted speech, speech, speech at each other enough times in his presence that he has an instinctive fear of it. He can see the impulse growing in Beau’s eyes, so he heads it off at the pass and taps his fork against the side of his glass, slowly levitating himself to his feet as the chatter dies down.
“Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for coming. It’s lovely to see so many of you here to celebrate Caleb.” Jester lets out a whoop, and Essek waits for the resulting cheer to die down before he carries on. “Yes, yes, he is the best. And he is married to me. Who would have guessed.” He smiles down at Caleb, who is a little red, but grinning too. “This is not a speech about how lovely Caleb is, though. We can save that for later. For now, if you would all indulge me, I would very much like to give my husband his birthday present.”
He waves his hand, the assembled company murmurs in anticipation, and the chair, waiting patiently in an alcove just to the side of the dining area, bobs gently into view, a foot off the ground. Essek couldn’t get it to sit completely still in the air, but he doubts Caleb will mind.
Caleb’s eyes are on the chair, greedy thing that he is. He works his way up from his normal, non-dunamantic seat, using Essek’s elbow for balance, and heads over to his new throne. “Designed to your measurements,” Essek says smugly, accompanying Caleb so he can help him to sit down. “With enough space for a cat or two in your lap, of course.”
“Or a drow,” Caleb suggests, winking, and flexes his hands on the carved armrests. The chair is made of sturdy Zemnian oak, but the seat, backrest and footrest are padded just how Caleb likes it, in soft burgundy leather. There are no legs, of course; there do not need to be. Essek doesn’t want to toot his own horn, but it’s a beautiful piece. Caleb looks right at home in it. “It is controlled by me, I assume?”
“Indeed. You just think that you want to move, and it will move.” As in the Astral Sea, many years ago.
Caleb gives it a try, and the chair glides over to Veth and Yeza’s chairs. “Brilliant!” Veth squeals, creaking to her knees and waving an arm underneath the chair (to make sure it’s not a trick, Essek supposes). “Brilliant, Caleb! Oh, you’re so smart. Isn’t he smart, Yeza?”
“Essek built it,” Caleb points out, almost as excited as his best friend. “I am just piloting it. It must be localised dunamancy of some sort. But able to withstand a Dispel, presumably...” He does not seem to have noticed the mobility aspect of his gift; only the arcane wonder of it. Which was, of course, Essek’s goal all along.
Caleb floats back over to him and puts a hand on his arm, his eyes shining. “Thank you, Schatz. ”
“Sehr gerne. By the way, your surprised face is very good,” Essek murmurs, low enough that only he and Caleb can hear, and Caleb yanks him down by the front of his embroidered jacket and kisses him silly.
“Ewwww!” comes the chorus from the grandkids (they are none of them blood related to Caleb or Essek, but that doesn’t matter all that much, with the Mighty Nein). Caleb breaks the kiss so he can waggle his eyebrows at their audience.
“Hört mal zu, meine Lieben, one day you too may want to kiss the person that you love, and if they want to as well, it is always a good idea. Except when you are in a temple,” he adds, his eyebrows drawing together like two furry white caterpillars. “Or a battle.”
From the buffet table, Beau brandishes her staff. “Speak for yourself, old man!”
“Not everybody is as cool as you, Beauregard!”
“Out of interest, what’s the max speed?” Fjord asks as Yasha lifts one of her grandchildren onto Caleb’s lap for a ride. As if they needed another reason for Opa Caleb to be their favourite.
“There isn’t one,” Essek says cheerfully. “So, I suppose, the limits of his imagination?”
“Please tell me it can’t go up and down.”
“It can’t go up and down.”
“Yet!”
“Caleb!”
Once the music has turned soft and slow and the dancefloor has all but emptied, they float gently in the centre of it, Caleb in his chair, Essek in his lap. It doesn’t take long before Essek’s head comes to rest on Caleb’s shoulder, where a thought drifts through it lazily.
“Could you bear to live outside the Empire, do you think?”
Caleb makes a thoughtful noise that vibrates through Essek’s bones. “That depends. Will you be there?”
Essek snorts. “Unless I’m at the shops, yes.”
“Then I could bear it.” Even after almost half a century together, Essek’s breath still catches in his chest when Caleb says things like that. “Where did you have in mind?”
“Here.”
“Nicodranas?” Caleb taps Essek’s chin until he lifts his head, so that they can look into each other’s eyes. Caleb’s are a little less sharp than when they first met, but just as beautiful. “You hate Nicodranas. It’s too bright.”
“I have my parasol.” It’s over fifty years old now, but Jester’s magic paint must be hardy stuff, because it’s not shown any sign of ageing. It will outlast Essek, maybe. “And I can wear a hat.” Caleb is giving him A Look. “What? You will be much more comfortable here, where it’s warm year-round. I can see you now, in one of those ghastly short-sleeved patterned shirts, sitting out on a rocking chair on the porch. Watching the waves come in.”
“Sand would get everywhere,” Caleb says, but Essek can tell by his tone that he’s already won. “And we’d have no escape from Jester.”
“And what a hardship that would be, to see our best friend more often.” Essek cups Caleb’s darling face in his hands, brings it down so he can kiss him right in the middle of his forehead. “Allow yourself a little ease, my love. Light knows it’s past due.”
“For you as well, Schatz. The sun is not kind to you.” Essek smiles, rubs at Caleb’s hoary beard with the pads of his thumbs.
“I can live with the sun, as long as you are comfortable.”
Caleb doesn’t know it, but Essek’s phrasing comes quite close to a few oft-quoted lines of a drow epic. For I could brave even the light of the sun, so long as my love was well.
A little dramatic, perhaps. But there’s something reassuring about the fact that for almost as long as they have existed, his people have been proving their devotion by making themselves uncomfortable. Caleb’s arms around him are solace enough.
Essek has borne far worse for far less.