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The magic of gravity was a much easier force to harness than sleep.
Essek struggled with it for his entire life. He could doze off on a stiff library bench or on his desk, but it still was difficult and only happened when his body gave up after fifty hours of no sleep.
Insomnia felt like a magnet that pinned him to a pillow, pulled down, leaving his body restrained and thoughts sluggish. It was as if all his spells turned on him. Grey viscosity.
There was a period when he used soporific potions intensively, but it felt like cheating and had a potential to ruin other things that depended on the delicate balance of an organism's humours.
Decades later he discovered that having someone by your side in however uncomfortable bed helped immensely. Caleb was warm and soft, his steady breath – a metronome, a rhythm to follow. When, that is, he also had a good night.
~~~~
"Hmm?" Caleb mumbled when Essek stood up to try and go out after five fruitless hours of staring at the ceiling.
"Don't wake up," Essek whispered, though it was obvious that Caleb was no longer sleeping. His sleep was always lighter than a feather in the wind.
He got up too, with a frustrated sigh, possibly aimed at Essek, or himself, or at their bodies preventing their own proper functioning, or at the horrible world. Most likely, all of it.
"Couldn't sleep again?" Caleb asked, and having received a nod as a response, went towards the door. "I have an idea."
"Here," Caleb said, still only half-awake. He handed Essek an empty mug.
"Erm, danke, Schatzi?.." Essek raised his brow.
"I'm not done yet," Caleb said flatly and stumbled all over the kitchen of the tower, gathering ingredients. The cats could've done it for him, but it seemed, in itself, to be an important part of a ritual.
First, their place in the mug found two spoons of honey, then a tiny bit of butter. After that, Caleb put a jar of milk on the table next to them and sprinkled something apparently floral into the mug.
"What is it?" Essek asked.
"Lavender."
"Oh."
Herbalism wasn't Essek's strongest suit, but he knew the flower’s properties.
"It won't work in these proportions, it's simply a placebo!"
"I know," Caleb said and sat down on a chair in front of Essek the way their knees touched. "Of course it won't. That's not the point. Shut up."
Essek sighed, resigning, and watched milk fill the mug. It was cold enough for fingers to feel it through clay.
Caleb put his hands on Essek's. Warmth spread out from them into the mug, heating up the milk without burning skin.
Essek caught himself smiling. Milk, butter and honey mixed into liquid of a sun-warm colour, and tiny violet buds were floating on the surface in circles.
"Drink," Caleb pushed the mug closer to Essek's face but didn't remove his fingers.
Essek took a sip.
"Sweet."
"Ja," Caleb took a sip too, not letting Essek's fingers go.
They drank half the mug in this tug-of-war fashion.
"Are you alright?" Essek asked, and Caleb shrugged.
"I believe so. Are you?"
"I believe so too."
Caleb touched Essek's forehead with his, almost the way cats do when they show affection. Essek leaned into it, and they sat like this for a minute or two.
At some point Essek looked up and caught Caleb's intense, but gentle stare.
"Hm?"
"Nothing," Caleb shook his head. "It's just…" He picked a long stem of lavender and touched Essek's cheek with it. "What a colour."
Essek huffed and reached forward for a kiss.
"Okay, you should finish it," Caleb said finally and warmed the drink up a bit more.
Essek took his time, savouring the taste of honey and, of course, the tint of lavender in it.
Despite not being supported by scientific evidence, the drink somehow did help, and his eyes started to droop.
"I think it's working," he said, and followed Caleb out of the kitchen through the door that now led straight to the bedroom.
Caleb's Minor Illusion – a play of moving patterns they often drew to hypnotise themselves into dreaming – dissipated like a crumbling sand as he drifted off, and Essek's own was losing its structure and integrity too.
His thoughts moved slowly now, and he almost wasn't registering them. Slowly in a good way, like warm honey and not sticky tendrils of dunamancy. The thoughts were hazy enough not to bother him too much with their importance, and he was safe in this slow current of realisation that he finally felt as if he belonged; that he finally put the last piece of puzzle into the picture; that he found a home he couldn't even dream of because he didn't know something like this could ever exist; that he missed something for his entire life, and now discovered it in the most unexpected place; that he was happy; that, either through luck, chance, fate, or his own volition, the gravity was losing its hold.