Work Text:
"Oh! I have a question! Is there anyone in the group you find super attractive?" Jester's teasing voice interrupts the barrage of frankly anxiety-inducing questions, even as a spectator.
"Yes," Molly's voice cuts in.
Caleb feels his heart stutter, try and climb its way up his throat. He grips his hands into fists so tight his knuckles go white. He nearly has to remind himself to breathe. Blushing is absolutely not allowed in this situation, for any reason, so he measures his breathing, counts silently, in-hold-out, until some semblance of control returns to him.
But still, Molly's response echoes between his ears. A rather unwelcome seed of hope starts to sprout only to be gripped by a freezing fist, determined to rip the thing out by the barely-grown root.
It doesn't matter. There is nothing appealing about Caleb, not anymore. So much of it is intentional, no one looks twice at a dirty, average man hunched in on himself on the street corner or in the alley. They avoid the smell of a man, days unwashed, of how Caleb's components mix in sometimes noxious ways in the pockets of his dirty, worn coat. This has worked for him. Between the necklace and his disgusting camouflage, he has gone unfound.
But it isn't just how he looks, how he smells. Every day, he feels the edges of his corroded soul, insides eaten away like flame to rotting wood. There is no "good" left in him. That died, even before Bren did. That died with every cut, with every cold bit of destruction, with every ounce of pain felt because of his soot-stained hands.
It died in a blaze of timber, in the screams of his family, on the back of a wagon, in a small town in the Zemni Fields.
But Mollymauk is different. It isn't a lie, what he tells the other man. Second chances are things to be given. The man in front of him, doing his best to keep himself together in the face of suspicion and pressure from the people who he saw as companions, as friends, is floundering and Caleb can see it so clearly. Does no one else see it? Why are they still going? Has their curiosity not been satiated? It is when Nott, his constant companion, keeps pushing that Caleb has to make it stop.
And so he speaks, making sure to emphasize the other man's name. Mollymauk's name, not whoever had that body before. That isn't who he is. That isn't the brilliant, caring, strange, asshole who has become, somehow, part of the guiding force of their ragtag mashup of misfits. Mollymauk is kindness, he is a firm hand and gentle kisses, he is sharp and mindful and loyal, he is forgiveness, he is hope and pity and empathy, he is love in all of its forms.
He is beautiful.
He is everything Caleb does not deserve, but wants anyway.
For the briefest of moments, Caleb considers following the other man downstairs to share a drink with him, to show him that it is him who matters. He wants to tell Mollymauk that he is the one who Caleb wants, not whatever being held the body that Molly has decorated, beautiful and tacky in the same breath. He wants to press his thumbs into those tense shoulders, work out the knots of fear and pain, to gently brush Mollymauk's hair from his forehead, to buy him a drink, to walk him back to his room when he is too drunk to walk on his own, to press a soft kiss to his forehead after he lays him in bed with a bucket on the floor for the unfortunate inevitability of consuming too much.
Instead, he will return to his room. There are spells to study, after all. No one would look twice.
He watches Mollymauk leave the room, that cold fist moving from his hope to his heart. With a flourish of that garish coat Caleb has come to love, Mollymauk is gone. Gone without a glance.
He doesn't look back. He never does.