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Yasha had arrived back at the inn before Molly, wrath in her eyes, and had explained what had happened with Gustav. Harsh words were bandied about- Nott protested all the gold they put in to get him out of prison had basically gone to waste; Jester was patently miserable; Beau looked ready to chase the ringmaster down and punch him harder than Yasha, herself, had.
And Caleb was silent and spent all of his time staring at the absent seat at their table where Molly should have been.
When Molly finally returned, waterlogged and supported by Cree, he was immediately set upon by people trying to console him, but he gave a gently terse response and headed right to the fire. From a distance, Caleb watched as he removed all of his rings from swollen, shaking hands tinged blue enough to turn his skin the color of a bruise.
He shed his coat and peeled off his soaked-through shirt that clung to him like a second skin, and Caleb cursed himself for biting his lip at the arching of his back and the roll of his broad shoulders.
The brief moment of physical weakness didn’t last long- Molly looked pathetic with his tangled rain-soaked hair, shivering violently from having gotten caught in a notorious Empire winter rainstorm and curled in on himself like a scolded child, his tail wrapped around his ankle.
He lifted his still-shaking hands and came close to just shoving them directly into the flames to warmthem before Caleb chose that moment to intervene, snapping out of every stupid, foolish thought in his head all at once.
“Here. Let me.” He knelt in front of Molly and pulled his hands into his lap, massaging the swollen fingers with a gentle heat produced by his control flame cantrip. Neither of them looked up at each other, just stayed focused on their hands.
“Did you-” Molly started, then stopped, and then started again with a heavy sigh. “Did Trent ever make you believe he was a good person before he turned?”
The thought was laughable, even though Caleb didn’t laugh at all. He would choke on it if he did. “No. He was always a snake… But we were young and we did not know any better.”
He smoothed his thumb over Molly’s knuckles. He had never seen his hands so bare- he wore his rings in his sleep like the weight of the pretty little trinkets were comforting to him. The amount of times now he had woken up the indentations of cut costume gems on his palm from gripping his hands too tightly in his sleep was troubling. Molly kept leaving marks on him.
What was he going to do about that?
Well. Right now he was going to keep him from getting frostbite and it seemed as though Molly had nothing more to say about Gustav and the sting of fresh betrayal, so he changed the subject. “This is not from the rain. How did you do this to yourself?”
“Funny how you know I did it to myself.” Molly pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and hissed. “Stuck my hands in the Ustaloch.”
“I am not even going to ask why you did that.”
“Good. Because I really don’t want to talk about it. Not right now… Later.” He added, as if he was concerned that Caleb would call him on later usually meaning never (though he had grown past that, hadn’t he?): “Promise.”
Yasha joined them before anything more could be said, pulling Molly into her lap so she could brush his hair. Caleb should have left them to it, but he couldn’t stop massaging warmth back into Molly’s nimble fingers. It was all he could do for him- anything more than this was treading towards dangerous and they were already navigating dangerous waters as it was.
⚔
Molly’s misery was tempered by late afternoon the next day, barring a case of the sniffles. He’d slept with Yasha because the barbarian woman refused to have it any other way and that had secretly been a relief to Caleb because he didn’t know what he might have done otherwise. Mutual misery bred awful bedfellows.
He couldn’t do that to him. Not to Molly.
He had, eventually, explained about how his anger at Gustav had caused another one of the Somnovem to reach him, bringing him up to a total of seven eyes active and warring in his head. The attempt to freeze his fingers off was a concentrated effort to stop the burning in the marks that came when he ignored them and didn’t act accordingly to how they believed he should act.
Self-destruction was an artform Caleb knew all-too well, just as he knew that the tempering of Molly’s mood was only a smokescreen. It had been a day since he realized that every memory he had of Gustav was now tainted by what the ringmaster hadn’t been saying. He wouldn’t speak anymore of it except to Yasha, but at least he was talking.
He was still prone to periods of uncharacteristic silence, lost in his own head in a way he had never been since before he died, since before the Somnovem, before DeRogna… Gods, it had been one thing after another for all of them, hadn’t it? Caleb could not stop the gnawing in his heart that there was more that he could do to free Molly from the prison of his mind before his shine dulled beyond repair.
Before they left Zadash, Caleb, still reeling from everything and his own mind burning a hole through his skull with unspoken thoughts and fears, had transformed himself into an orange cat and gone wandering the streets. It had been an idle thought- something to do while the rest of the Nein were tending to their own errands- but after an hour of leading with his cat-brain instead of his human-brain, he found there was something so liberating in the freedom. For an hour, he was a little stray cat, getting scritched behind his ears and offered treats and called a sweet boy and none of his problems existed.
They were still there when he was Caleb again, but that hour had taken him out of his head in a way that he could never do as a human. No clarity came to him, nothing was solved, but he felt… Better.
The problem with extending this offer to Molly was that the last time he had polymorphed him, he had been in the thrall of a night hag and the spell had not been consensual. He still had the marks on the space between thumb and wrist where Molly-as-a-fox had bitten him (another mark to add to his collection) for manhandling him.
He very sincerely doubted that Molly would be offended by the offer, so it was own discomfort that kept him from dragging the suggestion out until the next day when he finally approached him.
“I have an offer for you, circus man,” he said, blood pounding in his ears. He felt like a fool behaving like this. It was only Molly, only an offer of kindness… It didn’t mean anything.
It didn’t have to mean anything, anyway.
Molly made a face that made his heart stop for a second. “Maybe no circus man for awhile.” He made an even more awkward face like he mistook the look of slack-jawed surprise to mean more than it did. “I like it when you call me that. It’s just-”
He flailed his hands miserably and then laid his arms across his lap, giving up on an explanation. Caleb could relate and he understood without it having to be spelled out. “What’s the offer?”
(His tail thumped the ground in hopeful excitement even if his expression was neutral. That was cute.)
“I… Believe I have a way of getting you out of your own head.”
Molly dragged his fangs down his bottom lip, red eyes lit up with mischief. “Really? Because the last time someone said that to me, I got tied up.”
Caleb felt the heat rise to his ears and turned to go immediately before he could humiliate himself. Molly scrambled to his feet and grabbed his hand to keep him from bolting in the name of social anxiety.
“Wait. Wait… Sorry. Impulse.” He let Caleb’s hand fall and sighed with relief when he made no move to return to his hasty retreat.
Caleb had to speak through a mouth gone dry. No effort to swallow could ease the sandpaper feel of his throat. He was losing track of all the things he had to be anxious about, small in scale but they came in battalions. “I know the last time I turned you into something, it was… I was compromised. I’m sure that was not pleasant for you, but… Being a small animal is not so bad in the right situation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Animals do not think so much.”
Molly cocked his head to the side. “So you think I should… What? Be an animal for- how long does it last?”
“An hour.” Caleb’s teeth tugged at the inside of his cheek. “But it could be shorter if you decide you do not enjoy it… Or if you do, I could spare another spell for it. You are under a great deal of stress, Mollymauk. I do not want you to shatter underneath it.”
He rocked back on his heels. “You know I told Yasha I just wanted to kill something. That would make me feel better. This seems…” He wrinkled his nose. “...Less violent? Maybe.”
“Less hazardous to your health, I would say.” Caleb reached into his pocket to stroke the cocoon for the spell- a nervous tic. “Does it seem like something you would enjoy?”
“I love new experiences, even if I’ve done this one before.” Molly’s lips quirked in a smile. “I’d like to be able to see what it’s like when I’m not having a panic attack.”
Caleb gave a breath of warning and crushed the cocoon in his palm. Molly’s form shifted and shrank and with a little pop of magic, he was a plum-colored fox sitting daintily at his feet.
When he was compromised he hadn’t cared enough to take in the extent of his handiwork- he had only, as he recalled, wanted the tiefling in a portable form, all the better to please Master Ikithon- no, the night hag. His memories of the moment were still muddled between what the hag wanted him to believe and what actually happened.
Now he could actually look at all the small details- the plum coloring was broken up by whorls of peacock teal and distressingly his little body was marked by nine red eyes, but they didn’t matter to Molly at the moment. He lifted a little paw and scrubbed it over his sharp muzzle and then took off at a run, scattering a flock of winter robins who were trying to pick out their breakfast from the hard ground, buried under inches of muddy snow.
He did acrobatic leaps and scrambled into snowbanks and came out sneezing with powder clinging to his fur. The rest of the Nein stopped what they were doing to watch (and Jester even turned herself into a fox to play with him until their wrestling got too rough and she had to break her own spell to halt the game).
“Molly!” She scolded, brandishing a small bitemark on her arm. “Don’t play so rough.”
Molly, dejectedly, slunk down onto the ground on his belly and made sad puppy eyes. Even as a fox, his eyes were one solid color and yet they conveyed emotion surprisingly well.
Jester healed the bite right in front of him to show no harm done, and then reached down to pet his head. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you. You just got excited.”
He rolled over and exposed his belly to her, kicking his legs, and she rewarded him with scritches until he got overzealous again and resumed romping in the snow. The Nein, deciding the novelty had worn off, returned to their afternoon preparations for the next leg of the journey, and Caleb settled in to let Molly run off the last of his energy as the spell waned.
Towards the end of the hour, Molly-fox came up to him (currently engrossed with Ishel’s spellbook so he could find a new spell to copy with his freshly bought paper and ink) with a robin in his mouth, looking very proud of himself.
Caleb smirked. “You are a mighty hunter.” He paused. “You should not eat that. You will regret it later.”
Molly’s jaws clamped down like he expected Caleb to try and take his prize away. Seeing the way he’d play-fought with Jester and the mark on his own hand, he dared not risk the ire of a fox and shrugged. “Do not whine to me later.”
He carried the bird off with a smug little flick of his tail. Eight minutes later, he heard Molly choking and gagging from six feet away.
“That was a mistake! Oh my gods, that is foul.”
“I warned you,” Caleb sing-songed, mostly to himself.
Beau was howling. “You’ve got feathers all over your face.”
Jester was mock-scandalized. “I can’t believe you ate a bird.”
“Big deal,” Nott scoffed. “I eat raw birds all the time. You don’t see me throwing up about it.”
Caleb buried his face in the spellbook to hide his laughter, but his shaking shoulders must have given him away. A shadow fell over him. “Seems like I wasn’t the only one who needed a bit of fun.”
Molly was standing with one hand on his cocked hip, the corners of his lips and his teeth still stained with blood and maybe faint traces of vomit. He was looking a little green still- well trying to choke down raw meat will do that to you.
He was still fucking beautiful, with just a bit more shine than he had before, and once more Caleb realized he was helpless in the face of him and there was nothing he could do about it that wouldn’t hurt them both.
“So you had fun?” He coughed, tearing his eyes away from him.
“I did, actually… Well, besides the fact that I ate a bird.” He flopped down onto the damp ground next to him. “Thank you for that.”
The proximity to Molly’s furnace-hot skin versus the cold all around him made Caleb shudder and want to lean closer. It made him want to do a lot of things.
He just swallowed it all down as he always did. One day he’d be the one coming up vomiting from it. He did not look forward to that day. “If you want me to do it again, just ask. I… We have many people here. I do not worry about spell economy so much on the road after what we have faced.” They had come a very long way. Most bandits actively avoided them- he’d watched several ambushes slink away from their camp, like the sight of unattended horses (carefully observed from the dome) scared them into believing they were the ones being lured. “And if it makes you happy… That is a good thing, cir- Mollymauk.”
Molly rested his chin on his shoulder and Caleb’s useless heart stuttered. “I changed my mind. You can call me circus man all you like. I think I’ve still earned it, even after everything.”
“You have.” Caleb could feel the blush creeping back across his cheeks again from the proximity. He cleared his throat. “You know, Gustav did not make you. You only copied what you saw. You kept the parts of him that he showed the world and you used all of that to make people happy and be completely insufferable. That is not part of his lies. That is who you are.”
Molly reached over to grab his hand and Caleb felt the press of his rings against his knuckles, the heat of his hand that always reminded him of the way fire felt for good and for ill. “If that’s true then Trent didn’t make you either.”
“I copied what I saw?” He blinked, voice dry, but Molly’s hand only tightened.
“You saw that arsehole and decided you would be better than him.”
He choked on air, rather than laugh. “Oh, Mollymauk… You have such a strange perception of me.”
“Well.” Molly drawled, but didn’t pull back. “I think you have a stupid perception of yourself, so we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?”
He finally did laugh this time, hoarse and strangled and lacking in humor, but Molly didn’t pull away from that either. He just let him have that moment of hysterics- gods, they were a fucked up pair, weren’t they?
When the laughter ebbed away, Molly tapped a finger against Caleb’s knuckles. “Think you can afford one more go? I promise I won’t bite anyone or eat any birds.”
“You cannot promise that.”
Molly turned his nose up in a pout. “I will try.”
Caleb chuckled and dug another cocoon out of his pocket. A moment later, he had a scrawny purple fox flopped on his back in his lap like a cat, trying to chew on Ishel’s spellbook. He put it down and Molly settled.
“I see how it is,” he muttered. “I should have made you a cat if you were going to behave like this.”
Molly’s response was a yipping sound and a kick of his back legs as Caleb, driven like a man possessed, found a spot on his side that delighted him.
The fox’s need to run and play overwhelmed him not fifteen minutes later, but Caleb didn’t pick up the spellbook again- merely watched Molly be carefree and devoid of any worry or care. There were a lot of weights on his shoulders, like the fabled albatross bearing a millstone of his own- what a concept- but for now he could be the person he was before he started down this path that began to change him- also for good, but a little for ill, because that was simply the nature of carrying more baggage than you could safely ignore.
And he absolutely did eat another bird, which was, honestly, fairly in-character in its own way.