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iatethepomegranate · 3 years

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Just a fic about Caleb buying a house in Rexxentrum with Beau and Yasha, and coping with that kind of change and newfound stability (and becoming Professor Widogast). Angst and fluff are at war in this fic.

Chapter Summary: Caleb was loved, in so many different ways, by so many people. The Nein were a whirlwind of chaos and dick jokes, but they were his. And Essek... even when Essek did not use the words "I love you", every word he said and every touch he offered was proof enough. In other words, the Mighty Nein crash at Caleb and Beauyasha's place and shower them with affection.

Notes: Chapter title is from Five by Sleeping at Last. Here's some fluff. Caleb is still Caleb, but everyone loves him and wants him to be happy. Hug your sad wizard friend/research partner/it's complicated.

****

Chapter 2: But something gets lost from a safe distance and now I can't put my mind to rest

There was enough furniture in the house to sleep for the night. After an enormous grocery shop that made gratuitous use of Yasha’s muscles, Beau’s superhuman balance, and Caleb’s telekinesis, the three of them collapsed on the couch.

Beau piled her feet onto Caleb’s lap, resting her head on Yasha’s. “Hey, Caleb?”

“Ja?”

“You good now?”

“I think so.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Nein.” Caleb had zero interest in talking about how much he had cried on their kitchen table earlier. He wasn’t ready to process it.

“Cool. Good talk.”

Yasha smiled down at Beauregard, fondly but with an edge to it. “Shh.” She put her finger on Beau’s lips. “Let us just… be quiet for a while.”

Caleb tipped his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. He drifted close to sleep, but Essek’s voice filled his mind.

“Caleb. How was the house? I am in a safe place. I will visit when you have a safe landing spot. Talk soon, love.”

Caleb couldn’t help burst into a grin. “Hallo, Essek. We bought it. Veth gave me the money. Go to the Grove when ready. I will come get you. Ich liebe dich.”

“Gross,” said Beauregard. “You know I can understand you now, right?”

Caleb pinched her ankle. “I remember.”

“Beau,” sighed Yasha.

“I’m kidding. I’m happy you’ve worked things out with him.” She shifted, digging her heel into his thigh. “Look, I don’t give a fuck about your sex life--”

“Good.”

“--but you know you can tell me shit, right? It was just the two of you for weeks, and now it’s… not. Are you okay with that?”

Caleb sighed; he already missed Essek dearly, but he always knew it would be like this. “Ja. We talked about it a lot. We want to be together as much as we can, but we are practical people, ja? I will bring him around soon, for a few days at least. Rexxentrum is not safe for him.”

“Well, good thing you have your own space. I don’t wanna hear that shit.”

Caleb rolled his eyes at her. “We are more likely to stay up late talking.” Sex with Essek was more of a (great) side benefit than a core element of their relationship A relationship they had never bothered to define. It was what it needed to be in the moment.

“That’s even worse, Caleb.”

“How the fuck is that worse?”

Beauregard shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s fuckin’ romantic as shit.”

“Ja, I am sure that you, the woman who makes out with her girlfriend in front of all our friends, is disgusted by romance.”

Beauregard grumbled incoherently at him.

****

Caleb was soon preoccupied with ferrying the Mighty Nein to the new house. He first collected Veth, Fjord and Jester from Yussa’s tower. Kingsley had wanted to explore Nicodranas for a while, without Fjord and Jester’s supervision. They had tentatively allowed it, not that they could’ve stopped Kingsley even if they had wanted to.

“Omigosh it’s so pretty !” Jester screeched upon seeing the house. “The windows are kinda boring, though. Can I paint them?”

Caleb was not in the habit of refusing Jester anything. “I suppose. Ask Beau and Yasha.”

“Which door is theirs?”

“The right. It should be unlocked.”

Jester tore ahead and disappeared inside. Fjord hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, gazing up at the exterior.

“It’s bigger than I expected,” he said.

“Ja, the previous occupant is a professor at Soltryce Academy. She lives alone, and it was too much space for her.”

“You’re okay with that?” asked Veth.

“Ja, she was very nice. She lives on Astrid’s estate now.”

“Trent’s old place?” asked Fjord.

“Ja.”

He whistled softly. “That must be weird.”

Caleb didn’t want to talk about it. “The professor gave us a good deal. I am meeting her for coffee tomorrow to talk about Evocation.” He looked down at Veth. “Thank you for the money.”

“I just wish I could’ve given you more, Cay.”

“It was plenty, Veth.” Caleb led them inside and picked Veth up so he could give her the hug he had wanted for days.

******

Next, Caleb teleported to the Blooming Grove. The grass had grown back where it had once been burned, and the house had been repaired. The tangled residuum trees had held strong, keeping the corruption of the Savalirwood at bay. It was quiet, save for the distant clattering of dishes coming from the house.

Caduceus appeared in the doorway before Caleb had taken more than a few steps. “Oh, excellent. Essek’s in the garden. Go get him. I’ll be out in a moment.”

Caduceus didn’t specify where in the garden, but Caleb assumed he was giving him the satisfaction of figuring it out for himself. Caleb walked further into the grove, occasionally stopping to cradle a blossom or sniff a particularly sweet scent.

He spotted Essek’s broad-brimmed hat first. On loan from the Clays. Caleb approached quietly, watching Essek hover over the bed of a herb garden, wearing the rose gloves Jester had made him while he carefully pulled weeds with a look of utmost concentration. The kind of look that made Caleb remember how attractive it was to watch him work.

As Caleb drew closer, Essek froze. Looked up. Relaxed as his face broke into a smile.

“I am sorry I startled you,” Caleb said, closing the distance.

Essek floated away from the herbs and opened his arms, accepting Caleb into them. “It’s all right. You know I’m a little… jumpy these days.”

Caleb kissed his neck; Essek was taller than him when he floated, and only when he floated. “Are you sure you want to visit Rexxentrum?”

“No one will expect to find me there. It will be fine for a few days.” He kissed Caleb’s forehead, and then lifted Caleb’s chin to kiss his mouth. “I wanted to see your new house. And you.”

Caleb dropped his head to Essek’s shoulder, breathing him in. This was the only peaceful moment they would have all day. Essek tucked Caleb’s head under his chin and gave him a squeeze.

“Caleb, are you all right?”

Caleb laughed softly, remembering the first time Essek had asked him in the heat of battle. “I don’t know. This is a lot.”

Essek kept squeezing; they had both discovered one rough night in Aeor that Caleb found this kind of careful pressure extremely comforting. “I understand. This is a huge change for you. Are you overwhelmed?”

“Ja, very.”

“I hope having me there will help, for what little time I can give.”

“You are already helping, Essek. Danke.”

Essek kissed the top of his head. He had slowly begun to initiate more physical contact, and their time together alone in Aeor had accelerated the process. It let Caleb pull back a bit and let himself accept Essek’s affection once in a while instead of constantly being the one to initiate. It was good. They were good.

Fuck , Caleb had missed him.

****

After saying his hellos and goodbyes to the Clays, Caleb palmed a small stone Yasha had dug from the garden bed behind the house and teleported himself, Caduceus and a disguised Essek. They landed in Caleb’s currently sparse sitting area, as planned.

“This is my side of the house. We are working on the furniture situation.” Caleb took them on a quick tour of the house, and was pleased to find Essek equally excited by the possibilities of the study as he had been.

They then used the door on the middle floor to cross into the other side and down the stairs into the crowded sitting area. Yasha was sitting on the rug, stitching a thick floral fabric to make curtains while Jester “helped” by painting tiny dicks on it. Beau and Fjord were sitting on the couch, watching with a mix of amusement and concern. Veth had probably been with them, but launched herself at Caleb for a hug as soon as he had appeared.

She had more or less glued herself to him since she had arrived, evidently sensing his lack of equilibrium. He was grateful she was there to ground him. For a long time, she and Frumpkin had been all that held together the tattered shreds of his mental health.

Caduceus slipped into the kitchen, but was the least sneaky man alive when he wasn’t trying to prank his siblings. He had a parcel in his hands, brought from the Grove. Caleb followed him.

Caduceus carefully stripped off the brown paper packaging to reveal a small wooden crate, from which he lifted a tea set complete with a kettle. He filled the kettle with water and set it over the fireplace, directing Caleb to light it. Caduceus pulled out a few small boxes of tea and cooking herbs from the Grove, arranging them in cabinets.

“I’ll bring another set next time I visit,” Caduceus promised. “Until then, you are required to spend time with the ladies. No locking yourself in the study and forgetting to eat.”

Essek chuckled from the doorway, knowing full-well Caleb would do exactly that. Repeatedly.

“We’ll go shopping together tomorrow,” Caduceus continued. “There are some things you three need for a good, complete kitchen and I don’t trust you to remember any of them, even with your memory.”

“Thank you, Caduceus.” Caleb was getting emotional again. “I, uh, am having coffee with an Evocation professor tomorrow morning, but we can go after that.”

Caduceus smiled at him. Soft, knowing. “I look forward to it.”

****

The Nein had apparently agreed without Caleb’s knowledge that they would stay on Beau and Yasha’s side for the night to give Caleb and Essek some privacy.

Caleb had ultimately decided to use the larger bedroom (the rest of the Nein may have insisted he treat himself). He was glad for it now that he had Essek in his bed. They were too tired for sex, and not really in the mood, but cuddling is a lot more comfortable when you’re not afraid of falling out of bed.

Essek had arranged things so he was lying on his back with Caleb curled around him. Caleb rested his head on Essek’s chest, listening to the gentle drumming of his heart, while Essek drew lazy patterns on his back with a finger. Spell symbols, mainly. Some Caleb recognised, and some he didn’t.

“This is a good location,” Essek said quietly. “Beauregard showed me a map of the city. It is central, but not too close to anything that would upset you more than the city in general already does.”

“Rexxentrum doesn’t upset me,” Caleb mumbled, halfway to sleep already. He tended to sleep better with trusted company these days.

“Beauregard told me what you said the first time you stepped foot here in years,” Essek said softly.

I don’t know if I can do this. “That was some time ago. It’s… easier now.”

“That does not mean it is easy.”

Caleb sighed deeply, closing his eyes. “Okay. It’s not. But that’s not… the last time I had a house was the Xhorhouse, and we all knew that was never permanent. The only home I’ve ever had that was supposed to be long-term… I burned it. The shitty hospital room they kept me in for eleven year was a roof over my head, one I barely remember, and that was… not a home. I was homeless for a long time. I have slept in the woods, in the streets, under bridges, where I could find even the tiniest bit of shelter. Now I own a house .”

“Caleb, I told you in the Grove this is a huge change for you.” Essek’s voice was soft but firm, as it often was when he thought Caleb was being needlessly stubborn or foolish. “You have been through so much , and now you are doing normal things like buying a house and putting down roots. And you have many painful memories here. I believe you will be okay, but you do not have to be. Not before you’re ready.”

Caleb felt foolish for letting this get to him so much. The last few days had been full of nothing but good things. But he was exhausted nonetheless, and eternally a hair’s breadth away from tears. Even in his worst moments, he had never been fragile in this way, like he was a bucket of water with a hole in it that would leak at the slightest provocation.

Essek pressed his palm down between Caleb’s shoulder blades, forcing him to exhale. “Caleb. Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself time.”

Caleb chucked a little, despite his mod. “That is your specialty.”

“And I have taught you well.”

“The best teacher I ever had,” Caleb said quietly.

“You deserved better. Let yourself have better now, in your own time.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know. Stop pushing it. You know better than anyone it doesn’t work that way.” Essek’s hand slid into Caleb’s hair, cradling the base of his skull. “You of all people deserve patience and kindness, most of all from yourself. I will remind you of this.”

“Thank you.” Caleb pushed himself up on his elbows, finding Essek’s features in the dark. “You know, this is probably the safest I have been in close to twenty years.”

Essek reached up, tucking a strand of Caleb’s hand behind his ear. “Good. You deserve it. Even if I never have a moment’s peace for the rest of my life, all I want is for you to have all the safety and kindness you could ever need.”

“I would give it up in a heartbeat if I could help you.”

“I would never ask that of you,” Essek said warmly, but with a firm edge. “There are a great many things we have already given up. That one is not an option. Of all the people I have known in my 120 years, you deserve a lifetime of peace the most. Even if you will get bored eventually.”

Caleb slid a hand over Essek’s cheek, rubbing the soft skin with his thumb. “Remember when we thought we would never be the kind of people who would make big declarations of love at each other?” Because even if Essek wasn’t explicitly saying I love you , the words he did say were dripping with diamonds of unadulterated affection.

Essek huffed a soft laugh. “Most things between us do not need to be said. This does.”

“Thank you, Essek. I love you too.” Caleb rested his head over Essek’s heart once again, and let the gentle rhythm lull him to sleep.

#shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek thelyss #critical role #cr2 #fanfiction #my fics #the pomegranate's professor widogast fic

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weedandcum · 4 years

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Sharing a bed with the Mighty Nein

I realized as I was going through this tag that a. there’s like no critical role x readers and b. none of them include nott! so i’m gonna show some love for my goblin girl and also molly’s not in this because as much as i love him i don’t think he was around long enough that i can write him well. also these all could be taken platonically, but cmon...

Fjord

As soon as he realized there was only one bed in the room he had offered to share with you, his emerald cheeks flushed pink. “You know what, I’ll just sleep on the floor” he croaked, his accent fluctuating between his posh British voice and his former southern drawl. It took a lot of convincing, but you got him to crawl into bed with you. He situated himself on the edge of the bed, taking up as little of the covers as possible, but you woke up at some point in the night with his arms around your waist and his nose buried in your hair. His legs were entangled with yours and you felt his breath fanning across your ear. You curled in closer to him, already imagining his stammering when he wakes up with you in his arms.

Caduceus

There wasn’t even a little bit of hesitation when you discovered that you two would have to share a bed, he just discarded his armor and splayed his gigantic form across the bed, exhausted after a nasty encounter with a roc. He opened up his arms to you in an invitation, which you took gladly. You laid flat across his chest, his white fur surprisingly soft where your head fit into the crook of his neck. His pink hair tickled your neck, and you let yourself inhale the strong scent of tea and incense that emanated off of him. “We survived, it’ll be okay, we’re all okay,” he whispered, and you could feel the deep rumble of his voice as it resonated through your chest. You drifted off, feeling the meditative vibrations of his continued assurances slowly transition into a deep snore.

Beau

“I–you’re–I’m not sleeping on the floor,” Beau stammered out upon realizing you would be sharing a bed that night, trying to hide the blush that was evident on her face. “Dibs on this side!” she said, placing her bag on the side closest to the door, and you pretended not to notice when she glanced at you to make sure that was okay. You laid down on your assigned side, trying not to watch her as she curled up, looking surprisingly innocent. In a wave of confidence, you scooted over and put your arms around her, and she let out a little sigh. Quickly, she turned around, grabbed your hips and flipped you over so that you were on her other side. “Sorry, but I like to keep an eye on the door and there’s no way in hell I’m being a little spoon.” You pressed a little kiss to her jawline and turned back around so your back was to her chest. Her deft fingers found their way to your hair, and she wrapped her other arm around your hips before falling asleep.

Caleb

“You know what, let me go get another room, ja? On me.” Caleb said when he saw the single queen bed in the room you would be sharing. You insisted it was fine, and he grumbled that a room with one bed shouldn’t be so damn expensive. He did his standard night time ritual, and offered one more time to sleep on the floor, before finally laying down on the very edge of the bed. You grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to you, calling him ridiculous. He let out a deep groan as he resigned to placing a gentle hand on your hip and trying to ignore how neatly your body fit into his. His other arm curled under your head like a pillow, and his whole body emanated heat. As you were drifting off, you heard a quiet voice whisper, “I don’t deserve this,” and you almost couldn’t tell if was real or a dream.

Yasha

“It’s okay, I prefer the ground anyway,” she said as she opened up the door. Without hesitating she placed all of her stuff on the ground, and only bothered to take off her armor before curling up, using her pack as a pillow. It only took you a moment to realize that she was serious, and that no amount of convincing would get her into bed. You figured that if she was going to be on the floor, she might as well be a little bit comfy, so you pulled the blanket and pillows off the bed and laid them next to her. “Mind if I join you?” you asked, and she looked up at you and nodded, a shy smile across her features. You tried for a moment to be the big spoon, but her lion’s mane of curls kept getting in your mouth so she turned over and encircled you in her muscular arms. Her bulky form was surprisingly gentle around you, and the faint smell of flowers filled your nose as you drifted asleep.

Nott

You knew that Nott always took the floor or the bottom of the bed, so when you realized you would be sharing with her you made sure that she would be comfortable. As you entered she immediately went to curl up on the floor, but you perched yourself on the edge of the bed and opened your arms to her. You saw the hesitation in her eyes, but then a toothy grin stretched across her face and a clawed hand went up to cover it. She clambered up into your lap, looking up into your eyes as she whispered a little “Are you sure?” You nodded, and she moved across you to lie down on the bed. You situated yourself behind her, and put an arm across her tiny frame. She let out a quiet purr, almost catlike, and froze in a moment of embarrassment. You kissed the tip of her ear in an attempt to reassure her, and it twitched in response. Not even bothering to get under the covers, you fell asleep with her small form cradled in your arms.

Jester

Upon realizing you would be sharing a bed, she jumped in excitement. “It’ll be just like a sleepover!” You couldn’t help but grin at her response, any hesitation you had disappearing. While doing your respective night time routines, she chattered to you about the Traveler, and the moment she finished she grabbed your hand, pulling you into the bed. Her fingers dart through your hair, leaving little braids in their wake. You continue to chat with her until you find yourself yawning, and you pull her close to you. She whispers a quiet “oh” and looks at you, cheeks flushed with pink. She lays her head on your chest, one arm curling around your waist and the other trapped underneath you. After pressing a gentle kiss to your cheek, she falls asleep, her fingers tracing words onto the exposed part of your hip.

#critical role x reader #cr headcanons #critical role headcanons #mighty nein x reader #mighty nein #fjord x reader #caduceus clay #caduceus x reader #beau lionett #beau x reader #caleb widogast #caleb x reader #yasha x reader #cr yasha #nott the brave x reader #nott x reader #jester x reader #jester lavorre

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agerefandom · 3 years

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Picking Up The Pieces

Fandom: Critical Role

Characters: regressor!Caleb, Caduceus acting as current caregiver. The rest of the Nein are briefly present.

Words: 2,100

Summary: Takes place during Episode 49: A Game of Names. Caleb and Nott have been fighting, and Caleb is exhausted. Caduceus is the one who has to step in and help. (regressors are established in this world. Could be seen as a sequel to Books and Pigments, my other agere!CritRole fic. I’ve been wanting to write this fic ever since I listened to episode 49 and it made me cry.)

Warnings: This is heavy on the angst! Unsettled conflict, hurt/comfort, fears and feelings of abandonment, panic attacks, involuntary regression, abandonment by a parental figure, and cglre terminology (Mama!Nott)

All seven of the Mighty Nein are exhausted by the time they get to the Felderwin inn, their rooms for the night already arranged.

They all gather in one room to debrief, the backpack holding the newly named ‘beacon’ sitting between them as they debate their next move. Caduceus breaths in the atmosphere of tension and uncertainty, glancing around the rough circle they’ve formed on the floor.

Nott has finally dropped her disguise, her sharp broken teeth in jagged contrast to the freckled halfling she’s been for most of the day. Caleb is sitting with his eyes on the ground and Frumpkin on his lap, hood pulled up despite the heat of the inn.

Everyone is watching the two of them, even as they discuss amongst themselves. It’s been a long day for everyone, but Caleb and Nott have always shared a special bond. The way that Nott had screamed at Caleb in that cellar, the dullness of Caleb’s eyes ever since, the quiet retelling of his past that Caduceus had only half-heard… the group feels bruised by the conflict, drained by the number of secrets revealed in a day.

They discuss plans and names and family, but the tension doesn’t dissipate into the easy banter that the group shared on the road before. Jester reaches a hand for Caleb’s knee, and he allows the contact without reacting. His eyes never shift from Frumpkin’s place on his lap, even as he throws the occasional sentence into the conversation.

“Well, I’m going to bed,” Fjord announces eventually, standing up. “Caleb? Caduceus? Want to group up for the night?”

“That’d be nice,” Caduceus says.

“Ja,” Caleb agrees, still sounding distant. “Roomies.”

“We’ll head off, then.” Caduceus also gets to his feet, and Caleb follows suit. Frumpkin climbs off his lap, clearly disgruntled, then vanishes into nothing. “Goodnight, everyone.”

A cacophony of “goodnight”s follows them into the hall. The four women can divide the remaining rooms between them: no one expects Caleb and Nott to share tonight.

The three men have shared rooms enough to have a routine. Caleb and Fjord get the bed, as Caduceus rarely fits and sleeps just fine with a pillow on the floor.

Caduceus pulls a blanket from his rucksack and leans against the wall to watch Caleb organize his books, tucking one under his pillow and opening the other as he begins to trail his silver thread around the room. Fjord goes straight to the bed and barely manages to get his boots off: Caleb is still finishing his spell by the time Fjord’s snores fill the room.

Caduceus can hear voices through the wall behind him: Jester and Nott have taken the room next-door, and Jester’s voice always carries. She’s chattering about the town and the shame of the buildings burned, clearly nervous in the face of Nott’s continued silence. Caduceus can still remember her face at the meeting.

“I’m really sorry for everyone,” she’d said, and Caduceus had felt the helplessness in her voice. It was a sentiment that he was familiar with, feeling the heavy history in the air yet being unable to dispel it or lift the weight for the members of their group who were struggling. Caduceus has never liked feeling helpless.

The mutter of Caleb’s spellcasting suddenly breaks off into silence. Caduceus glances over and sees Caleb kneeling, both hands moving in glowing gestures. As the words stop, so does the shine of the air around Caleb’s hands, and they drop to his sides. The silver thread the wizard had lain around the room doesn’t glow and vanish as it usually did. Caleb mutters something frustrated, running a hand through his hair and pushing back his hood.

He looks over his shoulder at Caduceus, who blinks back at him calmly.

“Are you alright, Mr. Caleb?”

“Fine,” Caleb grits out. “I’m going for a walk.” He stands up abruptly, takes two steps towards the door, and then stops short. He stands there for a moment, his back to Caduceus, the line of his shoulders tense. Then he slowly crumples to his knees, bringing his arms around to hold himself.

“Mr. Caleb?” Caduceus shifts to kneeling, ready to come forward if he’s wanted. He’s seen this kind of despair, and knows how easy it is to lose yourself in.

“They’re out there,” Caleb hisses. “It’s not safe.”

“I can go with you,” Caduceus offers. He needs to get some sleep tonight, but a night walk was never an unpleasant experience.

Caleb laughs, an unpleasantly jagged sound. “You couldn’t help if they saw me. If they recognized me.” He’s shaking, his breaths coming faster.

“Can I help you now?” Caduceus asks. His instincts are telling him to get over there and wrap Caleb in his arms, but he holds himself back. Physical contact isn’t what everyone wants, and it’s never safe to assume such things. He’s seen Caleb be comforted by touch before, and he didn’t turn Jester away earlier, but the human has never initiated such contact with Caduceus before.

Caleb shakes his head side to side, and Caduceus can see that his eyes are squeezed shut. Fjord is still snoring, and Jester’s voice rises and falls in the background. The noises almost block out the sound of Caleb’s broken breaths, but Caduceus can feel each one burn in his chest.

“Trapped,” Caleb mutters. “Not safe.”

“You’re safe here,” Caduceus says, drawing each word out, keeping his voice low. “You can rest however you need.”

Caleb laughs again, choking on the noise as it turns into a sob. Caduceus watches him grit his teeth against the sound, clearly holding back tears.

“Let it happen,” Caduceus advises. “Let it go.”

And Caleb begins to cry. The tension of panic leaves his body all at once, and he collapses forwards, still on his knees, his forehead resting against the floor. His tears are quiet, only the shaking of his shoulders giving him away.

“There you go.” Caduceus stays against the wall as he reassures Caleb, not wanting to crowd him. “Good to let it out. That’s good. You’re safe.”

“I’m sorry,” Caleb manages. His voice has changed, something Caduceus has only heard once or twice. Nights when he was supposed to be asleep, but the owls were too loud, and Caleb was with others on watch.

Jester made no secret of the fact that she was a somechild, containing two ages in the same mind. Caduceus has swung her around as a child, let her climb onto his shoulders and exclaim at how far she can see. But Caleb kept quiet about his own status, never a child in front of Caduceus or the group, only letting his guard down at night. And now that guard has been stripped away from him by exhaustion, leaving Caleb as a child crying on the floor.

“No apologies needed. Can I help?”

“Blanket,” Caleb says, voice high and choked with tears. “Please?”

“A special one, or any old blanket?” asks Caduceus, already gathering his own blanket into his arms. Instead of answering, Caleb starts to cry louder, rocking back on his heels and covering his eyes. Caduceus approaches him slowly, blanket outstretched.

“Here, Caleb.” Caduceus offers the blanket and Caleb reaches out a hand, twists it into the fabric, and keeps crying. Both hands fist in the blanket, pulling it from Caduceus’s loose grasp. Caleb throws the blanket to the floor and returns to sobbing.

“No good?” Caduceus pushes the blanket aside and kneels beside Caleb on the floor. “Do you need something else?”

“Mama,” Caleb sobs. “Mama.”

Oh. Caduceus has heard that too. Nott calls Caleb ‘her boy’ to anyone who will listen, and ‘her son’ when she’s had too much to drink. Caleb smiles at her names, but Caduceus has only heard him call her Mama one night when he was little, and once after a fight when Nott came rushing forward to cradle Caleb in her arms.

“I can get her,” Caduceus offers. He fears that Nott will be too angry to come, but if Caduceus were Caleb’s caregiver, he would never let an argument with the adult stop him from caring for the child that Caleb sometimes was.

“Nein!” Caleb shakes his head, reaching out and seizing Caduceus’s shirt to prevent him from leaving. “She… she doesn’t want me!” This time, he bursts into proper tears. Caduceus would be worried about the boy waking Fjord, if he didn’t know that Fjord could sleep through a hurricane.

“Caleb, that’s not true.” Caduceus stretches out his arms in a wordless offer, and Caleb throws himself into them. His small human body collapses against Caduceus’s chest, so easy to lift and cradle him close. “Hush, child, it’s not true.”

“She- has- a NEW son!” Caleb wails. Caduceus rocks him slightly, trying to comfort him. “I was- just- nothing.”

“She loves you.” Caduceus has seen Nott run to Caleb’s side too many times to doubt that.

Caleb’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “She yelled at me. She said it was my fault.”

“She was wrong.” Caduceus sighs, remembering how he’d carried Caleb out of the cellar, the smell of vomit hanging in the air and Caleb dull-eyed and limp in his grasp. “She was angry. She apologized later, she knows it isn’t your fault.”

“I don’t know.” Caleb’s voice is small and muffled by tears. “She yelled.”

“She shouldn’t have yelled at you.” Caduceus pushes the hair back from Caleb’s face, revealing his dirt and tear-streaked cheeks “You didn’t deserve it.”

“I did,” Caleb whispers. “I’m bad.”

“You’re not bad.” Caduceus presses Caleb’s head to his chest, holding him closer for a moment. “You’re trying very hard. And I’m very proud of you.”

Caleb makes a sad little sound at that, and puts one hand on Caduceus’s arm. His fingers disappear into the fur.

“M’sorry,” he says.

“Nonsense.” Caduceus shifts into a cross-legged position, keeping Caleb in his arms. “There’s nothing here to be sorry for. I’m sorry it was such a hard day. Tomorrow we’ll get some answers.”

“I…” Caleb’s face changes, his eyes glassing over for a moment. Then he frowns, confused. “Tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry.” Caduceus continues his gentle rocking. “Tomorrow is for big folks to worry about. The only thing you need to worry about is bedtime.”

“Bedtime… it’s ten thirty-five,” Caleb says, sounding quite proud of the fact.

“Is it really?” Caduceus doesn’t have a way to check, but he doesn’t doubt Caleb. “That’s very late.”

“Not really.” Caleb’s eyes are starting to blink closed, clearly exhausted from the long day, the panic attacks, and the most recent bout of crying. Caduceus uses the soft pads of his fingers to wipe the tears from Caleb’s cheeks, taking some of the dirt with it. Caleb will have to reapply his disguise tomorrow, but for tonight he can sleep without tears on his face. “S’early.”

“Not for little ones who need to rest,” Caduceus assures Caleb. His eyes drift closed with a little hum of acknowledgment to Caduceus’s words.

Caduceus sits in the center of the room with Caleb in his arms, rocking him gently until Caleb is fast asleep.

Then Caduceus carefully gets to his feet, lays Caleb in the bed next to Fjord, and tucks the blanket gently around him.

He takes his pillow and lies in front of the door. It’s not a magical silver thread, but Caduceus figures he’ll wake up if someone opens the door into his back. Caleb and Fjord’s snores intermingle in the quiet room, and Caduceus watches over them until sleep claims him as well.

#agere writing #agere stories #agere fanfiction #fandom agere #critical role agere #cr agere #my writing #sfw agere #cglre terminology #my stories #critical role

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chockfullofsecrets · 4 years

Text

Critical Role: Sleep and Stories

(Read on AO3)

Rating: Gen

Summary: Here, sitting with Caduceus in the rooftop garden of what with the Mighty Nein’s growing penchant for multilingual portmanteaus was becoming colloquially known as the Xhorhaus, he was feeling oddly relaxed.

A little too relaxed, maybe.

Fjord has trouble staying awake during one of Caduceus’ stories. It’s not hard for Caduceus to find a way to help him pay attention.

Wordcount: 2710

A/N: An anon sent me a description of a fic they were looking for, and even though we couldn’t find it the idea was so soft that I decided it had to exist :)

Fjord was starting to see the appeal of gardens.

He definitely had a long way to go before becoming a proper follower of Melora - it was painfully easy to picture the Wildmother’s well-meant disapproval every time he got within five feet of some foreign plant or animal and promptly embarrassed himself - but here, sitting with Caduceus in the rooftop garden of what with the Mighty Nein’s growing penchant for multilingual portmanteaus was becoming colloquially known as the Xhorhaus, he was feeling oddly relaxed.

A little too relaxed, maybe. He and Caduceus had just finished cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, and he had asked for one of the stories of the Wildmother that his fellow disciple seemed to be in endless supply of. Fjord was doing his best to pay attention, but up here it felt as if the entire world was wrapping around him and lulling him to rest - the ever-present darkness broken only by the glow of divine lanterns, the gentle rustle of a thousand leaves in a slow breeze, the smell of earth and greenery in every direction telling him that he was being watched over and cradled in caring hands. The worst culprit, perhaps, was the bass of Caduceus’ slow voice, pitched even lower to better embody the gravity of the ancient tale he was telling. It gave him the childlike urge to lay his head against Caduceus’ chest, to feel the words echo through the emptiness Uk’otoa’s orbs had left inside him and take root in his bones. Not, he thought sleepily, that he would have been able to act on such an urge as the orphan child or the lonely adult that he had been only a year ago. He was endlessly fortunate to have such an intimate gesture as even a passing consideration now.

Maybe, just maybe, the Wildmother was telling him to go to sleep before he did something stupid.

“You’re not listening at all, are you?”

Fjord came back to himself at the remonstration, realizing with a sudden shock that he was no longer imagining the physicality of Caduceus’ voice. A quick canvassing of the surroundings revealed that he had, in fact, dozed off on top of Caduceus, temple pressed just below his collarbone.

Oh, Wildmother, nature really was a fickle bitch sometimes.

“Oh! My apologies, Caduceus, I - the story was lovely. I’m afraid it failed to compete with the tranquility of the lovely space you’ve created up here.”

Caduceus waited for him to trail awkwardly into silence, chuckling as Fjord tried and failed to stifle a stray yawn. “That’s fine, Fjord. I’m glad you like it up here, and I know I’m not the most exciting person to listen to. Why don’t you head down for the night?”

“No,” Fjord protested, feeling terribly guilty as his impromptu pillow started to get up, and in a moment of brash inspiration he slumped further into Caduceus until he was certain the firbolg wouldn’t be able to move without toppling them both. “Start again, please, if you have the time. I’m the one who asked you to tell a tale, and I would truly love to hear it.”

Even from a low angle, he could make out the surprised twitch of Caduceus’ ears, the corner of a smile in sudden bloom - he was pleased, heartbreakingly so at such a simple courtesy, and Fjord resolved instantly to say nice things to him more often.

“Might be easier to stay awake if you sit up,” Caduceus told him. One of his hands came up, and Fjord thought for a second that Caduceus might shove him off. Beau would definitely have shoved him off by now. But the hand simply enveloped his shoulder, warm and waiting.

Fjord elected to take full advantage of the invitation. “You’re comfortable,” he grumped, scrubbing the side of his face against Caduceus’ homespun shirt before it occurred to him how weird a thing that was to do.

Caduceus rumbled beneath him in quiet amusement - if Fjord wasn’t pressed up against him, he didn’t think he would have noticed. So much about Caduceus, he was starting to realize, was buried about six feet deep beneath his placid exterior. “Well, then. In that case, maybe this will keep you up.”

Natural as rainfall, his hand skimmed off Fjord’s shoulder and down his ribs, his thumb tracing a meandering line along the side of Fjord’s stomach. Fjord flinched instinctively, sniggering before he could stop himself, and buried his nose in Caduceus’ shoulder with even less decorum than before to keep himself from laughing outright. “Ah - I-”

Caduceus, entirely unworried, swiped his thumb back up and then down again. “Yes?”

Part of him was trying frantically to think of how Caduceus knew that he was ticklish - had he seen Beau prodding at him? Did Jester let it slip? It was the same part of him that, even now, kept track of how visible his tusks were every time he opened his mouth, the part that bristled in fear-anger-control when he met someone taller or broader than him or at a certain look in a bystander’s eye.

The rest of him, still soothed by the scent of plant life and the drowsy contact of cheek against skin-warmed cloth, was awash in mirth as goosebumps prickled in the wake of Caduceus’ fingers. Fjord tried to encourage it; his side was already growing sore from shoving into Caduceus’ space and holding himself there and so he sprawled even further to pillow his head in the firbolg’s lap, met his tranquil gaze and let the helpless smile pulling at his lips settle as it wished.

“I’m listening,” he said, hyper-aware of how the syllables crackled with laughter. “For - hm! - for now, at least.”

Caduceus started the story again. It was, surprisingly, easier to stay awake with the new sensation, the lazy loop of Caduceus’ fingers altered just enough at each pass to keep them constantly nudging at his attention. His fingers caught on the edge of Fjord’s navel, once, and he apologized mid-sentence as Fjord snorted out a proper laugh and squirmed in an involuntary moment of panic.

Stories of the Wildmother, from what Fjord could tell, had no clear rise or fall of action, just a simple sectioning by quests or commands or pure happenstance. Still, he could tell that the tale was nearly over when the trapdoor leading up from the tower to the garden creaked open.

Silver-tipped horns and blue hair popped up over the edge in a pretense of stealth, violet eyes making the most cursory attempt to evaluate the scene before the tiefling they belonged to sent the wooden door clattering open and scrambled up. “Hel-lo! Caduceus, can I ask you something - oh, hi Fjord! - ooh.”

Caduceus wasn’t talking anymore, but his thumb continued to rub gently against Fjord’s belly. Fjord tried to prop himself up on an elbow anyway, at least making a token attempt at dignity, and realized a moment too late that his muscles had apparently jellified in the face of his ticklish stupor. He wobbled and ended up right back on the ground where he’d started, cheek planted against Caduceus’ thigh. “Hi, Jester,” he sighed. Squeaked, if he was being honest.

Jester crept over to him as if he were some kind of rare woodland animal - though, knowing her, she’d probably rush straight at the thing and try to scoop it up - and cooed. He would have been embarrassed, but his ability for it had apparently disappeared along with his brain’s connection to his arms.

Relaxation was wild.

Still, something tweaked the pit of his stomach with subdued alarm as Jester suddenly blocked out his entire field of vision. “Oh, can I?” she asked abruptly, fingers out and wiggling diabolically. She wasn’t looking at him.

“Um,” Fjord said.

“Sure,” Caduceus allowed easily from what seemed like miles above his head. “What did you want to ask me?”

There were a number of things Fjord wanted to say about this development, most of them starting with ‘wait, what?’, but then Jester was scrubbing her fingers over his belly in a way he was pretty sure he’d seen her do to her dog once and it was entirely impossible for him to participate in any sort of conversation given how desperately he was laughing. “Jes!” he barked, scrambling for her wrists, or maybe to tickle her in return - if Caduceus’ ministrations had mired him in quietude, then Jester’s brazen attack was certainly a trigger to fight back.

Unfortunately, whatever battle lust he could muster couldn’t change the fact that he was at a complete disadvantage - he was prone, no armor of any sort to protect the soft spots that Jester was ruthlessly exploiting, and the way he was leaning against Caduceus made it nearly impossible to free either of his arms. Jester’s tail clamped around his knee, squeezing in a way that made his entire leg spasm, and he laughed even harder in a poor attempt to repress outright hysterics. “A-hah!-Jes, c’mon, stoppit-”

“Shush, Fjord, Caduceus and I are talking,” Jester said, almost petulant in her teasing. Her casual disregard was immediately belied by the warm smile she gave him, ruffling his hair into a complete disaster over his eyes before returning to tickling him silly, all the while chattering with Caduceus about pastries of some sort.

Fjord thought that maybe this was going to be how he died. Well, at least he was here with two clerics; he’d probably come back.

“Fjord,” Caduceus said what seemed like an entire hour later, catching the last fraying edge of his sanity as he looked up in desperate hope of salvation. “Should I start telling the story again?”

“The- the story?” Fjord’s spine nearly broke of its own accord as Jester zeroed in on a particularly delicate spot just south of his ribs. “Noho! She’s going - gods, plehehease Jes - she’s going to kill me, help!”

Fjord continued to plead for his life as Caduceus frowned slowly, processing the situation, and finally - “Oh, Jester, wait - hey, now-” He reached over Fjord, and abruptly his body was blessedly free from evil tickling fingers and Jester was squealing with laughter of an intensity that made him wince on her behalf.

Fjord finally struggled up to his elbows, wheezing out the remnants of giggles as he watched Caduceus efficiently mine every inch of ticklish flesh on Jester’s hips for unrestrained, screaming laughter. With his long reach, he herded her struggling form away from Fjord until she gave up completely and flopped to the ground in front of them, spouting fervently incomprehensible apologies.

Through it all, Caduceus didn’t even bat an eyelid. Fjord was probably going to have nightmares about this.

“There we go,” he said a moment later, rubbing Jester’s back where she lay face-first in the soil and glancing back down at Fjord. “Sorry, kind of slipped my mind there - you look, uh, purple? Are you okay?”

Thin fingers, appreciably delicate despite their size, brushed his hair away from his forehead and patted gently at his cheeks. As if he was a drooping flower, or a twisted stalk that needed to be nudged back towards the sun - it was tender enough to make Fjord dizzy.

“You’re my hero,” he confessed, grinning helplessly, and slumped back onto Caduceus with an unceremonious thump. “Okay, keep going, I want to hear what happens to Palak.”

Like one of Caduceus’ mushrooms, Jester’s head popped up from the soil with alarming speed. “Wait, is there a story?” she asked, pausing to spit out a mouthful of dirt. She was kneeling in front of Caduceus in an instant, one hand planted just shy of his furred leg in supplication. “Can I listen too?”

Her voice was light, but with his face so close to the earth Fjord could just make out the way her other hand clenched reflexively against her skirts in the face of Caduceus’ unperturbed expression. “It’s just been a while since I’ve had a nighttime story, you know? I mean, I read ‘Tusk Love’ all the time before bed because it’s the best story ever, but it’s not the same, and - ooh, does your story have true love in it?”

Caduceus tilted his head, considering. “Well, it’s an ancient tale that’s been passed down through my family. I suppose you could say it has a similar kind of devotion.”

“There’s a guy with a shovel that has a holy leather thong on the handle,” Fjord added helpfully. Jester’s grip on her skirts relaxed as she threw back her head and laughed at the unintended innuendo, just the way he knew she would, and he smiled back at her.

Caduceus smiled too, although Fjord thought it might be more in response to Jester’s happiness than an understanding of the joke. “Of course you can listen. Should I start at the beginning?”

“No, wait, I can do it,” Fjord insisted, reaching blindly up to pat at Caduceus’ shoulder. “I’ve heard it twice now, after all.” He cleared his throat as dramatically as he could while flat on his back. Jester leaned in, Caduceus looking down on them both, and Fjord dutifully recounted what he remembered of the tale - a barren, cracked land where seeds lay atop the earth and were ravaged by birds, a mossy-skinned orc receiving a sign from the Wildmother and following the jagged scars on the earth back to their source so he could dig up an ancient boon. Caduceus remained silent through his rendition of the tale, even when Fjord referred to one of the more persistent avian attackers as ‘a real fucker’.

He’d been told that he had a knack for stories out at sea, with all of his crewmates having nothing better to do when the winds calmed - accomplished liars, every single one of them. He wasn’t sure if the Wildmother would approve of his particular style of embellishment, but it did feel nice to tell a true story for once.

Eventually he reached the point where Caduceus left off and came to a stop himself. Jester appeared perfectly rapt, budged up against him and Caduceus with wide eyes and one leg crooked up over his arm. He looked next to Caduceus, somewhat anxious, and found him pleasantly approving. “That was really good,” he commended, and the compliment felt all the better for the way Fjord could feel it echoing through his skull. “You’ll do a good job of passing these on, when the time comes.”

“It’s not finished,” Jester protested, tail lashing animatedly behind her as she sprang up and unleashed a flurry of gentle slaps on both of them - being Jester, they still stung quite a bit. “Caduceus, tell us how it ends!”

“Please,” Fjord drawled, purposefully patronizing, and just laughed as Jester slapped him again before dutifully echoing the pleasantry.

He laughed again as Caduceus harrumphed and blinked, moving even slower than usual in a way that he read as absolutely intentional even before feeling the same slow rumble of amusement against his shoulders. “Sit still then,” Caduceus intoned, teasing, and with a pout Jester settled back with legs crossed primly, the picture of an intent listener.

From the corner of his eye, Fjord could see her trying to tickle the sole of Caduceus’ bare foot with her toes. Smirking to himself, he rolled over a little and added a finger or two to her efforts.

The rumble intensified into something that could probably be quantified as an audible laugh. Fjord was tempted to push further, but Caduceus reached out again, drawing Jester’s offending foot into his lap and bringing one silvered hand back down to Fjord’s belly in warning. “Don’t tickle me,” he said mildly. “I’m trying to tell a story.”

“Okay, o-kay,” Jester squeaked hastily, shuffling to accommodate the new twist of her legs and eventually just laying down on her side and cuddling up next to Fjord. Her hair smelled of paint and cinnamon - he wondered where she’d found the latter in Xhorhas, and decided he might be better off not knowing. “There, we’re ready, go!”

The soft breeze blew a little warmer, as if in approval. Fjord watched Caduceus smile up at his tree, at the lights, and found himself pleasantly sure of a happy ending.

#tickling #critical role #fjorclay #caduceus clay #fjord #jester lavorre #chocfic

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nicolewrites · 4 years

Text

o captain! our captain!

Major Spoilers for Campaign 2 Episode 98 ahead. You have been warned.

I said I wanted hurt/comfort and this wrote itself in under two hours instead so that works I guess.

Rating: T Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Friendship Characters: Fjord & The Mighty Nein Words: 4,545

For one terrible, horrible moment, Fjord is dead. / death never gets easier

AO3

caduceus

It’s cold and raining and Caduceus’s hair is sticking to his face.

Jester beats him to Fjord’s side and Caleb and Beau were already there. Yasha and Veth follow, but Caduceus just pushes the wizard aside so that he can kneel on the wet wood. Jester is across from him, already digging through her satchel for a diamond. Her cheeks are wet with both rain and tears as she shakes, trying to pull out the precious gem.

Dimly, Caduceus notes his own eyes are warm and he reaches for his own diamond. Jester pries her free of the pockets of her haversack before Caduceus does and she holds it out over Fjord’s still chest and hesitates. When she looks at Caduceus, there’s an edge of fear in her eyes as her lower lip trembles.

“Caduceus,” she whimpers quietly. “What if my power isn’t enough?”

Caduceus knows that she’s scared. He takes out his own diamond and gently pushes Jester’s hands away. “Then help me,” he says gently. “Help us.”

Jester sniffs hard and rubs her hand across her nose. She places the diamond back into a pocket in her bag and places one hand on Fjord’s chest below were Caduceus holds the diamond and one hand along the side of his face.

Caduceus presses the diamond against the skin of Fjord’s chest. Their friend’s shirt is bloodied and cut-up and barely there and Caduceus presses the diamond hard into Fjord’s flesh. He closes his eyes and he reaches out to the ocean cradling the boat and to the winds across the sea and he calls to the Wildmother.

He is one of yours now too, Mother, Caduceus thinks. Protect him as you have protected me.

He inhales and he casts Revivify. The diamond shatters under his touch and Caduceus opens his eyes. The dust glitters in the air around them for a moment, shimmering and glistening above Fjord and Caduceus and Jester. It starts to stick to Fjord’s skin, collecting in places where he is particularly bloody or rain-soaked.

Caduceus feels a pull in his stomach and he leans into it, letting the spell draw from him what it needs. It draws on his faith and his friendship and his love for his friend. The spell hums through his fingertips and the gem dust starts to glow in shimmers of green and blue and pink and purple. Caduceus closes his eyes again and reaches into the deepest parts of his soul.

Wildmother, I have served you faithfully. I have brought him into your light and I have guided him thus far. Let me have more time to help him. Let me have more chances to see him grow. I want to see him grow.

Caduceus lends his heart to his prayer and, finally, he feels the telling warmth spread from his fingers into his friend. He opens his eyes, his ears falling flat against his head in a last, lingering bout of worry as he waits. The gems glitter before they fade into Fjord’s skin as it knits beneath them.

Fjord’s chest fills with air sharply and he breathes.

Across from him, Jester gasps and trembles with relief, her hands cupping Fjord’s face as she stares at him. Caduceus waits patiently, but even after three seconds of breathing, Fjord’s eyes stay closed.

A warm feeling brushes the back of his neck, and on the wind, he hears her voice.

I brought him back, but those blows went to his soul. He will need time. Well done my child.

Caduceus touches Jester’s wrist. “He is alive. He just needs to rest now.”

Jester slips one of her hands into his, turning her eyes to meet his. “Thank you, Caduceus.”

- ~ -

yasha

Caduceus and Jester bring him back. He was gone for less than a minute and Yasha can still feel the blood searing through her ears in the aftermath of her rage. One of her hands is still clutching the hilt of her Skingourger so tightly her knuckles are white. She feels like lightning is crawling in her veins and she still wants to strike out at the monsters who hurt her friends.

Still, he is breathing now, even if it is hard to see past the pouring rain and the darkness of the early morning. Caduceus looks up at her as if he can feel the burn of her gaze and he stands, stepping back from Fjord.

“Can we bring him inside?” the firbolg asks in his gentle, rumbling voice.

Yasha doesn’t hesitate to move forward and kneel next to her friend. Jester hasn’t moved and is still staring at Fjord’s face like she expects him to open his eyes.

“Jester,” Yasha says quietly. “I’ve got him.”

Jester tenses, but she looks at Yasha. She must see something in Yasha’s expression because she slowly retracts her hands. Then, halfway through the motion, her breath catches and Jester scrambles to her feet.

“Orly!” she cries out.

Yasha watches her scramble across the deck to Orly, ripping out her diamond and beginning a second ritual, with none of the hesitation she showed with Fjord. Yasha looks back down at Fjord and reaches out, sliding an arm across the wet, bloody wood under his shoulder. With a grunt, she pulls him up and manages to get him positioned well-enough over her shoulder so that she can carry him.

Fjord is not extremely buff, but his orcish heritage means he is not small by any means. She stands slowly so she doesn’t jostle him. He keeps breathing and his heart keeps beating as she walks slowly with him across the deck, headed for his cabin. She doesn’t wait to see the results of Jester’s spell for Orly. She just wants to get Fjord out of the rain and somewhere where they can rest.

“I almost killed you once,” she says to Fjord’s unconscious form as she walks. “I still regret that.”

She has not forgotten the image of her blade cutting into Fjord’s body back when Obann had infiltrated her mind. She has not forgotten almost striking down Beau either. She knows she was not there when Caduceus died or when Nott died and she blames herself for that. She knows that she was not there for Mollymauk when he died. She did not even see Zuala die.

She watched every horrid second of those filthy sea creatures spearing her friend.

“We have seen too much death already,” she continues as she finally reaches the entrance to the captain’s quarters. “Surely this peaceful operation we are on cannot see this as the end.”

She has to duck to enter the room and she is careful not to bash Fjord against the doorframe either. The window facing the ocean by his bed is shattered and there is glass littering the bed. The sheets themselves are bloody too and Yasha notes that whatever had attacked them must have come after Fjord when he was alone and defenceless.

She is about to place him down so that she can clear off the bed when Beau slips past her into the room, taking care of it for her. Beau strips the mattress of its sheets efficiently, leaving it bare, but clear of glass and Yasha lowers Fjord down to the bed. She places him on his back and stands over him for a moment, just watching him breathe.

- ~ -

veth

Yasha carries Fjord away by herself. Beau hesitates for only a second before she follows, trailing by a few feet. Veth turns away from the stained wood of the deck where Fjord was killed and looks to Jester.

The diamond dust of the second Revivify ritual of the night is settling on Orly’s body and Veth walks over to catch the very end of the ritual. She has seen Jester do this spell before and she has also been on the receiving end of the spell. The cleric has her eyes closed and her fingers are still glowing green as the spell fades.

Thankfully, it seems to take as Orly’s chest rises slowly and the old tortle cracks open his good eye, squinting up at them through the rain. Jester leans back a little and places her trembling hands into her lap as she smiles down at Orly. Veth touches Jester’s shoulder reassuringly.

“You did it,” she says quietly.

Jester nods. “I did.”

Marius and Gallan moved forward to help support Orly. Veth tugged on Jester’s arm, pulling her back so that the crew had space to take care of their navigator. Jester followed and Veth gripped her hand, escorting her back toward the main mast where Caleb and Caduceus were still standing.

The rest of the crew seems to have gathered on the deck and are exchanging nervous looks as they study the remains of the battle. Veth looks around and notices that neither Beau or Yasha have re-emerged from the captain’s quarters. Caduceus has his eyes closed and his face tilted up to the sky and is probably praying to the Wildmother. Caleb is scanning the horizon with a tense, alert gaze.

There is no one to attend to the crew, Veth realizes and she swallows. She straightens her shoulders. “I’m the powder monkey,” she mutters to herself before she turns to face some of the startled crewmen. “Listen up! I want this boat back on track and cleaned up. Get some people below deck to sort out the cannons and stuff and I want this ship back up and moving with the rest of the fleet.”

The crew gives her an awkward salute-nod gesture before they scatter madly to take on their duties. From across the deck, where he has limped to, Orly nods to her and Veth exhales with relief. Marius takes Orly below deck and then Gallan joins the rest of the crew as they move ropes and shift crates and get the ship moving back at full speed.

“That was impressive, Veth,” Jester says softly.

Veth shrugs. “Someone needed to do it and if Captain and First Mate aren’t going to, it might as well be me, right?”

“You did good, my friend,” Caleb agrees. He surveys the ship once again. “I think we are okay for now, but perhaps I should place my alarm in Fjord’s room just in case.”

“That might be good,” Caduceus agrees without opening his eyes.

Veth nods shortly. “Yes. Now, I want to get out of these wet clothes and get some more sleep. I’m exhausted.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Jester mumbles weakly.

Veth looks at her. Jester looks tired and sad and as crushed as she did when she learned that Molly was dead after the Iron Shephards. Something motherly and warm in Veth’s heart ached and she reached for Jester’s hand again.

“Come on Miss Lavorre, we can try together. We’ll feel better when we’re warm and dry. Maybe after a bit we can trade-off with Beau and Yasha to keep watch over Fjord.”

That idea seems to appease Jester and Veth pulls her towards the lower decks. She takes one last moment to survey the dark skies before she heads down the stairs.

“At least this one wasn’t my fault,” she murmurs to herself.

- ~ -

caleb

Caleb can still feel the Disintegrate spell tingling in his fingertips. He knows that it can’t be what he’s feeling, but somehow it is. Maybe it’s just adrenaline because he’s so tired of watching his friends die.

If he closes his eyes he can see his house burning. He can see Lorenzo’s glaive piercing Molly’s chest. He can see the glazed look in Caduceus’s eyes after his body was rocked by Nott’s exploding arrow. He can see the slack features of Nott herself after she triggered the trap in Halas’s Happy Fun Ball.

He had been too far to see the emotion in Fjord’s eyes when he had died, but he had heard him cry out and had seen the pain in his body clear enough. And he had seen the sword that had done him in: a curved sword covered in barnacles. It is enough to make his shoulders tighten with discomfort, especially given the conversation he had had with Fjord just recently.

Their half-orc friend had seemed so light and relaxed recently and he had admitted to feeling more at ease now that he was in the welcome embrace of the Wildmother rather than the suffocating grasp of Uk’otoa.

Caleb is smart. He knows that the reason those fish-monsters attacked the ship and went after Fjord specifically is tied deeply to the broken pact between Uk’otoa and Fjord. He knows what it is like to have a background that sinks claws into you and won’t let go. It is entirely too likely that whatever happened tonight was more than just a simple act of revenge: the beast attempting to steal Fjord’s body had cemented that thought.

After Veth rallies the crew of the Ball-Eater, Caleb follows after Beau and Yasha to Fjord’s residence in the captain’s quarters. He hears Yasha’s quiet voice as he approaches and then Beau’s rougher retort, but he can’t pick up on their words over the storm that rages on around them. He taps his knuckles against the door to announce his arrival before he enters the room.

He slides into the room which, despite the grandeur of the cabin, feels almost too small with the two women plus himself and the unconscious captain of their ship. Yasha nods to him as he enters and steps outside the door to give him more space, but he notices she seems determined to post-up directly outside the door. He doesn’t mind. Yasha is strong and if her presence deters any more assaults against their friend, he welcomes it.

Beau is standing at the foot of Fjord’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall with her arms folded over her chest. She’s bleeding from a cut on her cheekbone, but her jaw is set and she doesn’t seem to be moving anytime soon.

“He would not want you to stare blankly at him like that forever,” Caleb says when Beau doesn’t even acknowledge him.

He sets to work setting up his Alarm spell, stringing the fine silver thread across the doorway and the windows to the captain’s cabin. He reaches over Fjord’s bed to string it around the broken window when Beau finally shifts so that she is not in his way.

“I’m his First Mate,” Beau says tersely, as if that explains everything.

“And he is not the first of us to die,” Caleb replies. “We will simply have to see to it that he is the last.”

Beau looks at him, the darkness in her gaze haunting. “How can you say things like that with such conviction?”

Caleb sighs deeply and closes his eyes. “I say it because I do not know if I am strong enough to go through this again so I do not want to consider it.”

- ~ -

beau

Caleb leaves after he sets the spell up around the outside of Fjord’s room. Beau stays mostly because she doesn’t know what else to do. She knows she should probably go deal with the crew. She is the First Mate and the captain is out of commission, but she can’t bring herself to leave him lying defenceless and still on his bed.

He is alive, she reminds herself when she watches his chest rise and fall. Still, she feels uneasy. The cold fear that had gripped her when she had watched him fall from the crow’s nest has not subsided. She had had a brief moment of levity when Caduceus had cast Healing Word, but then she had been powerless to stop it when the ocean-spawn-monster-thing had used that horrid sword to cut into her captain again and kill him.

The screams of the monsters are still lingering in her ears and she can vividly remember how her muscles had tensed up in reply. She had taken the poison damage from the spines without flinching thanks to her ki, but the stun had caused every muscle in her body to tighten to a point of petrification where she couldn’t do anything.

It is a horribly poetic feeling to how many monsters and people she herself has stunned using techniques she learned from the Cobalt Soul. It is made even worse by the fact that when she tried to return the favour, the monster had hissed in her face and shaken her off like nothing was wrong at all.

When Fjord had gone down, all she had seen was Mollymauk lying in the dirt on the Glory Run Road spitting blood at Lorenzo. Fjord had not even been given the justice of one last act of rebellion and something about watching the sword had made her tattoo, the one with the all-seeing eye, burn against the back of her neck.

Beau sits in the desk chair on the opposite side of the room and rubs the sides of her face. Fjord was, without a doubt, one of the people in their misfit group who she felt closest too, so it was terrifying to consider the group and whatever future they faced without him. He was good at people and Beau wasn’t and she loved him, damnit.

“I know you’re alive now, you idiot,” she mutters, “but I’m not doing another Mollymauk. I can’t do that again and Caleb can’t and Yasha can’t and Jester can’t. We’re not doing this without you, Fjord.”

Across the room, Fjord’s breath hitches and Beau shoots to her feet, crossing the room in three panicked strides. By the time she reaches him, his breathing has evened out already and she can even see the tips of his growing tusks as he exhales through his mouth. Her heart rate is elevated and her nerves are wound so tightly she feels like she’s going to burst.

Beau sighs. “Damn, Fjord. We already sorted your shit out, why does it all have to come back now?”

She turns away from him and wipes at her eyes which, to her annoyance, are wet with salty tears. She hates crying. It makes her feel like a scared, rough-around-the-edges teen again who had run away from a monastery she’d been shipped off to by her abusive father. It makes her feel like the scared girl who had mercilessly clobbered the monster in the face after it killed her friend.

It makes her feel as cold as she did the day that they buried Mollymauk on the side of the road after she stole all his stuff.

Beau glances back at Fjord. He’s still sleeping and unmoving. “I’ll take care of you, Captain. I’ll take care of all of them,” she vows. “No more death, no more losing people.”

- ~ -

jester

She tries to sleep. She really does. She and Veth had curled up on Jester’s big bed together after stripping out of their soaked clothes into something warmer.

Jester keeps reliving the moment where that thing had killed Fjord.

Fjord, her first real-life friend. Fjord who had never questioned her or doubted her or left her behind through everything. Fjord who had faced down the gripping evils of a patron for their group and had tossed his only source of power into the lava of a kiln to be free of it. Fjord who had told her she looked pretty in Nicodranas.

She relieves the moment where she threw herself to his side over and over again. Her hands had fumbled over things in her bag until she’d found her diamond, but then she couldn’t even cast the spell. She says a prayer to the Traveler that they have Caduceus and the Wildmother because they were the ones who brought Fjord back, not Jester and her archfey-sort-of-god.

The prayer to the Traveler makes her feel a bit dirty. She hadn’t cast the spell because she had been so dreadfully afraid of messing it up. She hadn’t even considered the fact that she has already used Revivify twice successfully. She had just felt a horrible, unshakeable fear that this time, the Traveler wasn’t going to be enough. He isn’t even a real god.

Jester frowns and sits up in the bed. Veth doesn’t stir beside her and Jester can’t feel the Traveler’s presence like she normally can. Maybe he can sense her stress and is just giving her some space. She knew her god-patron-whatever didn’t like Fjord and she knew that Fjord was worried about the Traveler. So, she had panicked and Caduceus had had to take over.

Her palms are warm and a bit sweaty as she swings her legs over the edge of the bed. It creaks softly, but Veth just shifts and keeps on sleeping. She reasons to herself that even if she just goes to see that he’s still breathing, she’ll feel better. She knows that healing isn’t an easy process, especially when it’s healing from literally being dead, but she’s still worried about the fact that he hadn’t woken up.

Jester creeps upstairs, mindful of the crew who seem to have filed back to their beds after getting the ship back in working order. Caduceus and Caleb aren’t on deck anymore. There’s someone manning the helm of the boat and a figure up in the crow’s nest keeping watch. Yasha is still standing just outside the door to Fjord’s room.

Jester approaches shyly and wrings her hands in front of her. “Is he okay?”

Yasha’s multi-coloured eyes are soft when she nods. “Caleb set an alarm and Beau’s in there right now. Do you want to see him?”

Jester nods. “I feel like it will help. I’m just so worried something will go wrong.” She wiggles her fingers. “Plus, maybe I can give him another healing spell or two to speed him along.”

Yasha nods and Jester slips past her into the room. Immediately, she sees Fjord lying on his back with his chest moving in a steady rise and fall as he breathes. Beau is seated at the desk across the room, leaning back on two legs with her feet propped on the desk. She drops the chair down when Jester enters.

“You okay, Jes?”

Jester nods, letting her gaze go back to Fjord. “I just wanted to check on him.”

“I’ll give you a minute,” Beau says and makes for the door, slipping past her and squeezing her shoulder briefly before she’s gone.

Jester moves and sits on the edges of the bed next to Fjord. She brushes her fingers along his forehead, moving his still-damp hair out of his eyes. She swallows the lump in her throat as she watches him. She had lost him and she is still so terrified of losing him.

She lets her hands glow with a low levelled Cure Wounds and watches as the warm glow sinks into his forehead where she touches him. She sniffs slightly and lifts her hands to wipe at her nose. She had been so afraid and even now, she’s still scared.

“Be okay, Oskar,” she whispers to him.

- ~ -

fjord

Someone is humming. The sound is melodic and gentle and it makes him feel safer than he has felt in a long, long time. Fjord tries to focus on the sound, but there’s a dull ringing in his ears that makes it hard to make out.

It’s here when he notices that his chest hurts and his limbs feel weighed down. His lungs are tight and it feels like drowning all over again. He tries to force his arms to move so that he can swim only for him to realize he can’t move his arms. The feeling is dizzying and he realizes that he is in his own head.

Wake up, child, a voice says suddenly. The voice is without gender and yet it is soft and feels like home. He knows, suddenly and without a doubt, that this is the Wildmother.

I died, he remembers. I’m dead.

Of course not, my child. They’re calling for you and all you have to do is go to them, the Wildmother answers plainly.

Calling? Fjord spreads his consciousness and tries to reach for his friends, searching for them in the blank abyss that is his mind in whatever state he is in. The only thing he hears and feels is the quiet, gentle humming he heard before.

It’s familiar to him. He focuses more intently on it and is suddenly standing at the party in Nicodranas next to Beau as he listens to Marion sing. The sound is close, and similar, and pulls at something deep in his chest, but it’s not quite right.

He dismisses the memory, searching further for the sound he hears. Something close to Marion’s voice, but not quite. In a moment of clarity, he hears the laughter of his friends and, most notably, the lilting singing voice of one Jester Lavorre.

There she is, the Wildmother urges. She’s calling for you. Caduceus brought you back and the rest of them have built their protections around you, but she is calling for you.

“Can I go?” he says and the words feel real in his mouth like he has physically said something.

I am not your jailor, I am your guardian. I will follow where you lead.

Fjord reaches for Jester’s voice. He reaches for the memories of Caleb and Beau and Yasha and Caduceus and Veth and he pulls on them as hard as he can. The pain in his chest intensifies until it is crippling and he seizes it, pulling even harder.

- ~ -

He wakes suddenly and without glamour. He starts on the bed, jolting against the bare mattress and the gentle touch at his forehead. He blinks at the ceiling as it comes into view and his head tips to the right until he can see Jester where she is sitting on the edge of the bed, combing her fingers through his hair.

She tenses when their eyes meet and her hand drifts down his face until her fingertips brush along the top of his cheekbones. She stops humming and swallows tensely. Fjord breathes and just watches her face.

She was beautiful in Nicodranas when they were all dressed up for the party, but she has never looked more radiant than she does here, bathed in the faint glow of the lantern that burns on the desk behind her.

“You came back,” she says quietly. The words are shy and careful, but they seem to give Fjord the air he needs to breathe and he gives her a tiny smile in response.

“I’ll always come back,” he says. As long as you let me, he adds for the Wildmother.

Warmth curls in his chest and across his palm and Jester cups his face and smiles at him. He feels safe here, with her, because he knows she will watch over him and he has come to understand that the Wildmother will not let him go so easily either.

“Go back to sleep, Fjord. Death is pretty exhausting,” Jester says.

He doesn’t have the strength to protest as his eyes slip shut and he falls asleep feeling safer than he has felt in a long, long time.

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itsomgitsgreenblogging · 4 years

Text

Pour Over Me: A Critical Role fanfic, chapter 3

Well folks, we’re at the end. Yes I am aware of the latest episode...so....uh....I guess this fic isn’t canon compliant but you know what that’s alright. I don’t mind.

Thanks everyone for all the love and support! I really enjoyed writing this fic, and look forward to my next Shadowgast endeavor.

Enjoy!

Read on AO3

Read chapter 1 and chapter 2 on Tumblr

Warning: Explicit sexual content (starts with “Essek fell back into the bed with a huff of air that escaped his lungs” and ends with “ Caleb smiled against his lips, and made it all worth it.” )

Preview:

“This is the world I live in. It’s quite beautiful...but it’s hollow. I’m sure you understand why I prefer to be alone.”

“No one prefers to be alone,” Caleb told him. “No one. That’s just a lie we tell ourselves.”

“Oh? Are there any other nuggets of wisdom you would like to impart upon me?” Essek asked sarcastically.

“I did cut in because you looked uncomfortable...but I was uncomfortable too,” Caleb said, looking off to the side where Danton had disappeared into the crowd. The sharp line of his jaw was clenched. “I did not like the way he was touching you.”

The ballroom itself was a sparkling diamond with many facets alight with great lanterns and the setting sun. Those nobility who had been lucky enough to receive an invitation were dressed in all the finery that could be found in the kingdom. Some in traditional Xhorhassian cuts, others in the foreign vivid fabrics of Nicodranas, some splashed with silks from Pride’s Call, while some wore jewelry work from Uthodurn. Essek did his duty, greeting the most powerful denmothers who lined the way to the Bright Queen’s throne who had taken their places as they had been introduced. The throne itself was empty, the Bright Queen would join them all last. She always did love the dramatic, Essek thought ruefully. It was normal enough that it made his smile feel more genuine upon his face. Thankfully he could hide his trembling hands in his long sleeves.

“Shadowhand,” Skysybil greeted, lantern-eyes gleaming. She was seated, dressed in fine black and white robes as her long intricate braids hung by her sunken wrinkled cheeks.

“Honored Skysybil,” Essek said with a deep bow before he moved on. Usually he would take his place by her, but since he had been tasked with keeping his eye on the Mighty Nein, he went ahead to find them. It didn’t take long to cross their paths as they all stood as a garden of colors amongst the extravagant guests. Before Essek could even get a word in edgewise, Jester bounded up to him with her abundance of energy and nearly bowled him over in her enthusiasm.

“Oh. My. Gods!” Jester squealed, rushing up and grasping his hands. “You look so beautiful, Essek. Were you hiding that outfit under your mantle the whole time? And are those heels?”

“They would be,” Essek said, turning his heeled boots to the side. Along the side of his shoes groups of crystals clustered together like natural geometric formations. He had been quite fond of them and their design, especially considering that when he wasn’t floating he tended to be even more lithe and small than the average drow. Any advantage of height he got was a good one, it helped him keep the illusion of power at least.

“You look…” Caleb’s voice cracked and splintered. Essek looked up, to see Caleb staring at him. The depth of emotion on his face was hard for him to parse out, but all Essek knew was that the look sent shivers down his spine. Essek was about to say something, but the sound of strings caught his attention.

“Ah, the Opening Dance is about to start,” Essek said, strangely grateful for the distraction.

Around the dancefloor, all of the guests gathered to watch the beginning. The Bright Queen descended down the stairs with the Dusk Captain, her wife. She was the moonlight catching the waves, as her dress sparkled and shimmered with every step as if it were alive. The Bright Queen took her place in the center of the floor as the Dusk Captain taking her hands reverently. The audience bowed and curtsied to them first, showing reverence to their majesties. The Dusk Captain then kneeled, took the Bright Queen’s hand, and kissed it. This elicited a delighted gasp from a few of the Mighty Nein. Essek though was trained on the Bright Queen’s expression...soft and longing as she drew near to her wife.

Their bodies pressed together as closely aligned like the two halves of the moon. And then with the swelling strings they began to dance. Heels flicked, the Bright Queen's dress flashed in the lantern light. They moved like one being, like they shared breath and heartbeat and life. Every move one took was balanced perfectly by the other as they swept across the dancefloor like the oncoming tide rushing in to the beach.

"They are so beautiful," Yasha whispered, her colorful gaze full of longing.

"They are two souls as one," Essek said back, looking forward so that his gaze wouldn't betray anything...the yearning that carved itself into his bones as he watched the Dusk Captain lift his Queen, and she melted into her arms. "Bound together by fate for all eternity, they dance. They are souls completely intertwined, with their bodies acting as a sacred conduit instead of a barrier. That is the meaning of this dance, and for us, romance. They are our highest ideal."

Essek didn't say that the first time he had seen them dance he had cried in an empty room. Their love had made him desolate...it had ravaged his heart completely. For in the face of such splendor, how could he ever find anything to compare? He didn’t say that he had long since taken to watching them, never joining in on the dance. There was so little that was beautiful about this world and this country...he had often felt that he had to savor whatever little things he could.

The tempo began to change, and the dancers began to sweep to the sides, ready to enter the space that the Bright Queen had made holy.

“It is time,” Essek told the Mighty Nein. “Pair up.”

Just as practiced, they paired off. Essek went to step back, to attempt to disappear within the crowd where it was safe, but immediately he was caught. Caleb’s hand was outstretched to him, and Essek raised his face to meet his gaze.

“Would you dance with me?” Caleb asked, his voice like a small fledgling riding upon wings of hope...so easily dashed by harsh winds. And so much of him wished to say no, to duck back into formality and courtly manners because they would all see him. It would be just like Adore said, his heart would bleed out upon that sacred space that the Bright Queen and the Dusk Captain had anointed with their love and everyone in the dynasty would know that Caleb had his heart. They would know what Essek had hardly admitted to himself...but now could no longer hide. They would all know that Essek was in love with Caleb.

But if this is your only chance to hold him...could you bear to pass it up? Would you ever forgive yourself if you didn’t let yourself live in this bright shining moment? Essek thought to himself, steeling his spine and fishing into the depths of his courage. Be rebellious. Be courageous.

“Yes,” Essek said, barely recognizing his own voice. He pushed through it regardless. He took Caleb’s hand, and he was swept out to the floor with the rest of the dancers.

His hand pressed into the small of Essek’s back, branding his touch over shoulder blades. Despite all the layers, Essek could feel him and he didn’t fight it. He pressed his chest close, his cheek almost brushing the hollow of his neck. The music moved them across the floor with all the other dancers...allies...enemies...all of them spiders on a web that tangled them all up together inextricably. But they didn’t matter as Essek’s fingers trailed from Caleb’s arm to his back, and as Caleb spun them with tight almost militaristic precision. Patterns. Dancing was patterns, magic was made of patterns. To someone else, it may have seen impersonal but when Essek caught his gaze his eyes were glimmering with desire.

The music echoed distantly in Essek’s ears, all that mattered was Caleb’s warm breath...the scent of woodsmoke and something sweet and something distinctly male. Essek’s palm found the ridges of his ribs as Caleb’s fingers for a moment ghosted from Essek’s neck, down his arm, to grasp his hand and lead them into another turn and spin. Essek’s body...the cup in which his soul was residing, was overflowing with this touch.

There was magic in this, Essek thought as he leaned back into a dip. He was resonating with it. This he would remember, he would be sure of it. Even as everything else slipped from his grasp one day, he would remember the moment where he was sure that he too had been transformed by his own love. He had found something divine and sacred in a world where the sacred was as rare as touching a star. Essek had never enjoyed the light, it had been too hard for him to bear. But now, he was drawn to the beat of Caleb’s heart like a moth drawn to flame and without it he was sure to be left cold.

“Essek,” Caleb said, voice caught in the exertion of the dance, and the sound was so pleasing that it pulled on something deep and primal inside of him.

“Caleb?” Essek asked as they turned into the last movements of the dance. They danced, Essek’s leg hooked to Caleb’s. He cradled Essek’s back as he raised his hand in the finishing posture as the song ended. There was the loud sound of clapping from all the onlookers that rained over them, for a moment blocking out everything but the puff of Caleb’s breath and his cheeks stained red.

“You look beautiful tonight,” Caleb whispered.

Essek’s voice was caught in his throat, and all he could do was smile in return. He took Caleb’s hand, and kissed it.

----

Essek was in the depths of his first glass of wine, watching as the ball continued. The dancers continued their twirling to a litany of Xhorhassian classics as the bards continued their well practiced tunes. He had stationed himself at the edge of the ballroom in a private corner away from the gossiping ladies who flitted about like a colorful array of tropical birds in the dangerous jungle of society, but of course there was always one such bird who attempted to rope him in to some asinine nonsense.

“Come along, Essek,” Adore said, hooking his arm with hers. She was dressed in a beautiful sunset-orange gown with a daring low back, and her smile flashed at her husband who waved at her from his own conversation. Her horns glittered with golden jewelry, and her face nearly sparkled in the low light. “You must say hello to the ladies.”

“You must be awfully bored if you are attempting to add me to the conversation,” Essek noted, before putting on his professional face. Immediately though, he saw the game Adore was attempting to play as Lady Kilsek looked up from her glass. He was half tempted to just stop walking in the middle of the room, but thought better of it. No need for any more unnecessary drama this evening. After all, he was sure there would be plenty to have.

“Lord Shadowhand,” Lady Kilsek said with a gracious bow of her head. Lady Kilsek, the matriarch of Den Kilsek, was an ancient drow woman in her third life...though soon it would be her fourth. The other ladies at the table all made moves to get up and curtsy, but Essek waved them off with a practiced smile that felt slick upon his face.

“My lady,” Essek said, plucking her outstretched hand and bowing. “How are you and your kin?”

“Blessed by the light upon this day,” Lady Kilsek said. “And by good company, of course. And entertainment.”

Essek followed her gaze to where Nott was currently engaged with her fourth glass of wine, and Beauregard and Fjord were laughing at the faces Jester was making as she told some story. Caduceus, Yasha, and Caleb were off somewhere in the crowd, beyond where Essek could see. They were rowdier than polite company would allow, clearly designated by the way the other nobility had placed at least one table between themselves and the Mighty Nein, but they were having fun.

“They are quite the handful,” Essek said simply.

“They did well in the Opening Dance,” Lady Omryn said as she fanned herself with a delicately painted fan. “I hear that was yours and Adore’s doing, hm?”

“As our Queen required,” Essek said with a simple nod as he took the free seat.

“I was especially surprised by their grace,” Lady Destor giggled, plucking a flute of liquor from a servant. “Who knew those boorish Empire types could pick up our dance with such ease! It gives me hope for their types, you know, when the war is over.”

When we have absorbed their country, destroyed their culture, and have enslaved their citizens to our wills more like, Essek thought, resisting the urge to snort. What a joke.

“They are an eclectic group of individuals from different countries across Wildemount,” Essek said as he folded his hands upon his lap. Lady Destor looked like she was about to say something else, when the moment that Essek had been dreading arrived. Sir Danton appeared naturally as if this had not been planned. Essek revealed nothing, his face surely still a pool of calm.

“Grandmother,” Sir Danton said, bowing and kissing his grandmother’s hand. There was a look that passed between them, and then Danton looked towards Essek. “Lord Shadowhand.”

“Blessed be,” Essek said with the slightest inclination of his head.

“Lord Shadowhand, if you would do me the honor of the next dance?” Sir Danton asked, offering his arm. Essek stood up in a fluid motion as he knew he was unable to refuse, feeling Adore’s eyes and he knew his mother’s somewhere. He took Sir Danton’s arm and allowed him to lead him out onto the dancefloor as the next song began. Essek looked at Danton with a clinical gaze, categorizing his features like he was studying his runes. He did cut a handsome figure, with broad strong shoulders for their rather small race. When his hand moved a bit too languidly against his back Essek leveled a look.

“As a warrior, I would have thought you would have more control over your movements,” Essek commented coolly. The hand moved back to somewhere much more appropriate as they spun, corrected as if it were nothing but a slip during the dance.

“Forgive me, Lord Shadowhand,” Danton chuckled, cavalier in the face of Essek’s quiet anger. “I just thought this is what you enjoyed, considering what I saw in the Opening Dance.”

“You certainly got an eyeful of something,” Essek noted as he seethed. “Though your capacity for imagination is impolite at best, coarse at worst.”

“Now, we both know better than that,” Danton said, moving them closer in time with the music. Essek felt cold and somehow even more detached, moving impersonally with the steps. “I am not a jealous man. In fact, I quite enjoy a show of passion...regardless of the recipient.”

“A voyeur then,” Essek said with a roll of his eyes. “How lovely.”

“There it is...that disdainful expression, I do like that about you.”

"All you like about me is my face," Essek scoffed.

"Of course I like your face," Danton chuckled, fingers stroking along the back of his hand. "You are quite arresting, and you know that. I like your vanity as well."

"Clearly," Essek said, hoping beyond all hope the dance would end soon. “Forgive me that I could not give you a smile as delicate as the sliver of the waning moon.”

"Ah, how utterly cruel of you. I do like your cruelty," Danton purred, face close. "Does your pet enjoy that about you as well? Do you take him into the dungeon to show him what you are truly like? Or are you afraid he would flinch from you?"

"You know nothing about me," Essek commented, unable to help the way his voice went hard and cold as ice. He itched to cast a spell that would truly let Danton know what he was really like, but managed to control himself.

"You are right, you make yourself uniquely unknowable. But I would have all the time in the world to know you, if you would let me."

"You are a small man with smaller thoughts," Essek snapped. "You already bore me, I doubt I could stand you for longer than just this dance."

"You will regret loving him. It is only a matter of time, Essek."

“I don’t believe I gave you permission to call me by my name,” Essek reminded him.

“You are right, but of course, your mother did give me permission...when she granted me her blessing as your denmother.”

"If there is one thing you should know about me, it is that my Denmother's opinion matters little to me. In fact, if she has given her approval to you, you are the last man in the entire world who I would ever consider marrying--"

Essek was about to say something else that was probably far more rude when Danton spun him, and then Essek was pulled out of Danton’s grip.

"If you’ll allow me to cut in," Caleb said, giving Danton a glare. Essek started, and Danton bowed in defeat.

“Of course,” Danton said, before he could say no more because Caleb half whisked him away. Essek followed the steps for a few moments before being unable to resist sighing.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Essek chastised him, but regardless he melted back into Caleb’s arms. It should have been horrifying...embarrassing...just how easy it felt to slip back into his embrace and into the rhythm of their dance. But instead, it was the most comfortable he had been all night, the smile that had so grated against his face felt natural once more.

“Why? He was obviously making you uncomfortable,” Caleb said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I am not good at social cues, but even I could tell that much.”

“Oh it is all just a stupid game,” Essek huffed.

“Game?”

“Have you had the distinct honor of meeting my mother yet?” Essek asked Caleb, whose brows furrowed as they moved into a longer promenade.

“Lady Theylss...yes, I did.”

“I’m sure she was lovely and considerate and said wonderful things about me,” Essek said tiredly. “And that is the man she has given permission to court me, without my input, because it suits her best to have me under her thumb at all times.”

“Why would she do that to you?” Caleb asked, sounding more concerned than Essek had ever deserved. It would have been heartwarming, if it hadn’t been so foolish. He didn’t need Caleb to be worrying about him. It just made it harder to separate his fantasies from the reality he lived in.

“I’m sure in her head it all makes perfect sense, and I ought to follow conventions and do my humble duty with a smile on my face. I…I just can’t seem to squash my own feelings. Really, having emotions is quite cumbersome,” Essek explained, resting his cheek against Caleb’s shoulders. “It just tires me, is all.”

“Would she force your hand?”

“No, she would try to convince me or blackmail me, but I’m too wily to fall for such a thing, and too willful. My mother knows I would rather burn down everything than succumb to her tricks, and she would rather corner me,” Essek said, pulling his head back slightly to look Caleb in the eye. “This is the world I live in. It’s quite beautiful...but it’s hollow. I’m sure you understand why I prefer to be alone.”

“No one prefers to be alone,” Caleb told him. “No one. That’s just a lie we tell ourselves.”

“Oh? Are there any other nuggets of wisdom you would like to impart upon me?” Essek asked sarcastically.

“Don’t,” Essek warned him, though it sounded too close for begging for his own ears. “Don’t.”

“Essek?” Caleb asked, the concern in his voice striking him like an arrow to the chest.

This was no good, Essek thought desperately. It was one thing to be in love with Caleb, to know that and accept it. To hold him in his arms...but to not cross the line that was so obviously drawn in the sand. But this was something else entirely… it was treading into dangerous waters. Essek could never have the things he wanted. It was one of the unwritten rules of his universe...that the world would conspire against him in some way any time he even thought he might receive even the smallest of concessions in return.

“You aren’t being fair,” Essek told him. “You can’t just��”

“Essek...I…” Caleb spoke, but it sounded like he was struggling against the waves as well. It almost made Essek laugh...and it almost made him cry.

As soon as the dance ended, Essek tried to extricate himself from Caleb’s grasp. He really did try. But he couldn’t seem to find it in himself to let go of Caleb’s hand. He wished he could just rip his traitorous heart straight from his chest, to let it crumble to ash and be swept away on the currents of the wind. But Caleb instead continued to hold his hand, to lead Essek somewhere...though he could barely focus until Caleb stopped and released his hand.

“You’ve shared so much with me,” Caleb said quietly, turning to face him as he closed the door behind him with a click. “Would you allow me to share something with you?”

Essek finally came out of his head, back to his body, and saw that they were out onto a balcony, blissfully alone. The sound of the dance and the laughter echoed from inside as light poured from the other balconies. For a moment he gripped the railing of the balcony, looking out at the city that settled like a glistening tidepool on a distant shore. Even now there were the sounds of celebration as the Parade of Lanterns continued through the streets. It may as well have been a different planet with the distant ruddy moon peeking out from behind the veil of night and the larger one glowing in the sky so brightly that it almost hurt.

Essek nodded and when Caleb held out his hand, he took it. Caleb began dancing with Essek, leading him through a simple four step dance. And yet, despite the simpleness of the step, the dance itself was elegant and smooth. It reminded Essek of watching children skate over ice in the center of Rosohna. He had never been allowed to do such childish things...but often he had watched them...he had yearned for something similar. After he began to float he learned the cost of such childish wishes. Somehow he was always punished for the things he wanted...even if they were the smallest of things.

It was strange though because he was so used to their dances. But this dance was a different type of intimacy. Instead of the representation of passion, it was something else. It was like something delicate and fragile was budding between them, the way that the druids called flowers to grow from barren ground. The sound of the music grew more distant, their movements grew slower...and quieter, until Caleb was simply holding him. Essek caught his gaze, and something electric passed between them. His mouth went dry.

“You mean a great deal to me, though I can’t say that I believe that I deserve it,” Caleb said softly.

“What are you trying to say?” Essek asked him, and just that comment was enough to tear him from his revelery. He didn’t realize he was floating until he bobbed as Caleb’s hand continued to grip his forearm. “You don’t deserve it? Don’t deserve what?”

“I don’t deserve your...your consideration,” Caleb said, squeezing Essek's hands in his own desperately trying to keep them occupied. “And I certainly don’t deserve your kindness. And I know...I know that sounds terrible. I wasn’t attempting to use you in a political game. I overstepped, I allowed my feelings to overshadow my logic. I know you don’t feel the same, but--”

“Stop it,” Essek demanded,pulling a hand away and holding it up. “Stop it, you are being mean. Stop it!”

Caleb froze, a small animal caught in a trap. Essek attempted to breathe past the frustration that was welling up inside of him, he took a single step back. All he wanted was to remain in Caleb’s arms, soaking up his warmth, but he couldn’t bear it.

“Mean…?” Caleb echoed.

“Kindness?” Essek parroted back to him incredulously. “Consideration? Why are you ascribing me the barest modicum of...of decency and yet you think so lowly of yourself?”

“That isn’t--”

“What do you think you do not deserve? You don’t deserve my kindness? My consideration? My decency?” Essek demanded, eyes stinging with his own tears. “I barely have any of those things to spare myself or anyone else, and yet I have given it all to you...and found more of that within me while loving you! You already have all those things and my heart. Are my feelings that mysterious to you...you...you utterly obtuse moron?!”

“Essek,” Caleb said as he moved closer.

“I won’t do it,” Essek snapped, fists clenched. “I won’t do it! Not when I’ve already made such a fool out of myself, loving you. I have more respect for myself than that--I have to have more respect for myself than that. I am the only one who does--!”

“Essek,” he whispered, drawing even closer but Essek couldn’t breath, he couldn’t stop the fact his heart was pouring out over Caleb.

“--and everyone else I’ve ever met has only ever viewed me as an object. All I’ve ever done is provide what others need, and I’ve received paltry scraps in return and I was happy with that and being alone, until you and your friends came along and ruined me--!” Essek gripped Caleb’s wrist as he cupped his face and turned it up tenderly, like he was the most precious thing he had ever held. “--take responsibility for this, you bastard!”

“Essek, I’m sorry,” Caleb whispered, completely shattering Essek. He breathed it against his lips, so close to him that they could almost... “I’m sorry that I...I never wished to make you cry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry, I don’t want that,” Essek told him, finally working up the courage to look at Caleb directly. His expression was searching...longing...soft with grief and something deeper and more ardent. He couldn’t stand it, so he turned away. He looked at the balcony. They were only a few feet off the grounds that led into the royal garden. Twisting his wrist, he hopped over the balcony and settled on the ground.

“Essek--”

“You’re wrong about me,” Essek said, schooling his voice into something professional. “I cannot allow myself or you to be destroyed by what we have between us, so, if that is the case we best end whatever this is here and now.”

“Is that what you are so afraid of?” Caleb demanded hotly. He swung a leg over the railing of the balcony.

“Wait, Caleb, no--”

Caleb swore as he jumped to the ground, almost teetering over but managing to catch himself at the last minute. Essek looked at him and saw his jaw set in a stubborn line.

“Why are you following me?” Essek snapped, walking further into the royal gardens.

“You are afraid of them? Of what they will think of us? I have lived my whole life absolutely terrified, and I am not going to be afraid to love you,” Caleb’s words punched Essek right in the gut as he pointed back to the balcony they had both jumped off of. He tried to suck in air, to breathe, past the desperate hammering of his heart but it had jumped up in his throat.

“No,” Essek nearly hissed, swatting at his hand. He was thankful he knew the gardens well, or else he would have ended up tripping over a lightly glowing flower.

“You can’t tell me no! I love you. I can control my feelings for you as much as I can control the fucking sun rising and setting!”

“You barely know anything about me,” Essek told him, stamping his foot on the cobblestone path. “And they will hurt you, and I will hurt you...you don’t understand what they are like! You don’t understand what I am like!”

“I think out of everyone in the world, you would know I can understand,” Caleb said as Essek finally stopped by the fountain. The weight of what Caleb was saying was settling on his shoulders and making it almost impossible to move away, the horrible, seductive, wonderful words that he couldn’t allow to piece his carefully constructed armor. “Why is it that you are allowed to love me but I am not allowed to love you, that you think your demons are somehow stronger than mine and the burdens you bear are heavier? I would do everything with you, if only you asked. I thought that was obvious, but clearly it wasn’t.”

“I will lose you,” Essek said with a laugh that had a sour bitter twist to it. “I lose everything I love. No, it’s not just that...I am always abandoned or failed. It all just slips away from me...it becomes impure and tainted somehow. I don’t have anything real. I don’t have a real family...I’ve never had real friends or even love. I am not even sure which one of me is the real me, is it me here or is it the one who was out in the ballroom or is it the one who I am when I am alone. I don’t even know myself anymore, and it doesn’t matter.”

“I will not lie to you and say that one day you won’t lose me...you will. I am human, not a fool--”

“Is this supposed to convince me somehow?” Essek interrupted incredulously. “You are doing an absolutely outstanding job. Would you like a handshake?”

“So what’s the alternative, I live my life without loving you and being loved by you in return?” Caleb asked shaking his head and shuddering like that really was some kind of horrendous fate. Essek searched his expression for some show of facetiousness, but saw nothing but honesty. That alone was enough to hollow his belly further. “No, no. I won’t do that.”

“You don’t get to make that decision,” Essek said, jabbing a finger in his direction. “I will do whatever it is I want to.”

“So you’ll stop loving me then?”

“I will! Just watch me!” Essek shouted, throwing his hands up indignantly.

“Sheisse, are you always this stubborn for the sake of all the gods!”

“I am, and if you don’t like it then just admit you don’t actually love me.”

“Nein, I still love you.”

“Stop saying that!” Essek hissed.

“And I know you love me, you wouldn’t be trying this hard to push me away if you didn’t. Trust me, I know a thing or two about that sort of behavior.”

“You are making it very difficult to love you, considering how much I hate you right now,” Essek said as he glared up at the star-filled sky. “Luxon protect me.”

“What I was going to say before you interrupted me, was that one day I will lose you or you will lose me. I’ve lost enough in my life...I know how terrifying and horrendous it can be. It eats you up...like...ah, I don’t know the word in Common. The...the worms that grow in meat--”

“Maggots? Grubs?” Essek offered, though Common wasn’t his first language either.

“Yes,” Caleb said fist in his hand. “That. But, that fear...somehow you can grow from it. I did that with my friends once...I would do it with you too. It doesn’t matter to me if we never kiss, or touch. Or if we never get married, or if that dance we had is the last time I ever held you in my arms. Just being by your side for the rest of my comparatively short life, knowing that we love each other would be enough.”

“It wouldn’t be enough,” Essek said, more sure of that than anything else in this life.

“Essek?”

“Just being with you wouldn’t be enough. I’d at least want to hold your hand every day,” Essek admitted, sneaking his hands into his own sleeves. Though he told himself it was to hide their shaking once more, it was mostly because he wished to so badly reach for Caleb in that moment.

“Oh?” Caleb asked, sounding surprised at the confession. Essek was too, honestly.

“And...I’d want to sit beside you,” Essek said, looking at Caleb. “Every night...I have a fireplace in my second tower I haven’t used in thirty years. I would make you light it, because I love watching you do magic.”

“If we are on the topic of necessities, I wasn’t being completely honest, I have to tell you now. I would need at least three cats. Frumpkin will always be my number one but, two others,” Caleb said very gravely.

“I do like Frumpkin,” Essek said fretfully, pacing...though he was gliding, because he didn’t know what else to do with his body, “I’m just a little concerned about them getting somewhere they shouldn’t. Maybe just in the residence tower?”

“That is a solid proposal.”

“I’m an absolutely horrendous cook too,” Essek admitted breathlessly. “I usually have a servant or two but...if it’s more than just me I may need to invest in a cook. Would you require them to cook Empire food or would--”

“I’m not picky at all, really if you didn’t it would be fine. Essek--”

“No, no you don’t understand I can’t be responsible for you dying. Even if you will die...one day, oh you know what I’m trying to say don’t you?” Essek demanded.

“I do. Essek...since we are on the topic tangentially...how do you feel about kissing?” Caleb asked, drawing close.

“Kissing?” Essek repeated, feeling as if someone had lobbed a feeblemind in his direction. Essek moved back and Caleb didn’t push into his space, instead he let Essek go. “How do you know the word tangentially but not the word maggot?”

“I don’t think you are focusing on the right part of the question, though, I can’t answer that question besides just admitting my mind works in strange ways?”

Essek paused and reoriented himself so that he was looking at Caleb more directly.

“Do you mean kissing in general or just you?”

“I...well both I suppose, though I hope you would mostly be kissing me, though, I have no qualms if you also would kiss others as long as we perhaps discussed it first. That’s not...I am not a jealous man.”

“You were jealous earlier!”

“I was angry, because he was treating you in a way that was making you clearly uncomfortable--”

“And you were jealous.”

“Ach...perhaps a little...he was very handsome, and you...also…” Caleb trailed off, ears reddened.

“To answer your question, I feel...fine about kissing. I would want two kisses a week.”

“Two?” Caleb asked, sounding utterly aghast. “Only two?”

“You said I would be enough, it’s time to live up to your word,” Essek pointed out.

“Could I bargain for five a week if we have one less cat?”

“You are lying, and I know that because you would never trade a cat for anything.”

“You know me well.”

“I think...I...I would feel differently about kissing, if I am kissing you,” Essek said softly. “All of the other kisses I’ve had before...they were from people who didn’t love me. It was the same with sex. It was a lot of sticky and messy and panting and then quiet and I just didn’t…”

“Essek, I was being serious when I said--”

“I didn’t love them, Caleb,” Essek told him firmly. “And I...I said two because I don’t want you to think I'm greedy. I’ve wanted to kiss you almost every time I’ve seen you, nothing you do will change that.”

“If I may admit it, that makes me feel relieved,” Caleb laughed. “Since I’ve felt the same way for a long while now.”

“Oh,” Essek said, without having anything better to say to fill the air.

“Are you still hoping to convince me to stop loving you, because I don’t think you are being successful.”

“This was all hypothetical,” Essek said simply. “Loving me is still a foolishness you should not allow yourself to dabble in.”

“That’s not the way love works, you and I both know it.”

“All we’ll do is talk in circles...I’ll just keep orbiting around you,” Essek bemoaned. “Don’t you see? This is what you get for loving me. I won’t be able to change that, nor how I feel about this. Maybe you are right, I'll admit it. I am a vain man, not an idiot. I am in love with you and want a life with you, but I can’t have those things with you.”

“What stops us?” Caleb asked. “You are one of the most powerful people in the Dynasty, and I am not too bad in a scrap myself.”

"But they--"

“Fuck them!”

“You know there is more to it then that,” Essek said with a sidelong look. "Don't act a fool, I know you are not one. It is what makes you attractive to me to begin with."

“I know there is but I don’t care. If this is what we both want, then...then we should just do it,” Caleb told him. “A life together is what I am offering, Essek. In whatever form you would prefer, for the rest of my days.”

"That is a paltry sum to be negotiating for," Essek noted. "You should have asked for all the secrets of dunamancy, or something--"

"I don't think so. You are the greatest treasure I believe I could ever hope for. Even with your irrational practicality included. Though, I can't help but hope I also learn some more secrets. You are a wonderful teacher."

"But what of your friends?"

"What about them? They all adore you."

"You will want to be with them, and a life adventuring and a life with me are in direct conflict. I am not the adventuring type."

"I don't see how, I won't adventure forever. I'm 33 and my knees are already in rough shape."

"Now you are messing with me. And on top of that...your goals," Essek said. "I know for a fact you have important goals. Things that you have kept a secret from me.”

“I will not lie to you, and say I do not have other goals besides peace and...bringing down the Cerberus Assembly. What I have done in my life...perhaps I would never be able to right those wrongs if I had a thousand lifetimes. But maybe…”

“I could be sustained for a thousand lifetimes on the small kindnesses you have already shown me,” Essek admitted, “but I’m not sure I can weather the heartache.”

“My life has been a thousand heartaches, but just recently I’ve come to see that to cherish is to overcome that.”

“And you would cherish me?”

“I already do,” Caleb said with a frown. “Was that not obvious?”

“I…” Essek searched for the words but failed.

“I will love you and cherish you for the rest of my life,” Caleb promised him, taking his hand, lifting it, and kissing it. Essek stopped floating, and let his feet touch the ground. “I won’t ask you to do the same, but even if it’s just for the sliver of time in which we share a life...would you love and cherish me?”

“I already do,” Essek admitted. “And I want to promise myself to you...more than anything.”

“Then why won’t you?”

“I won’t be able to stop loving you,” Essek said, trying to keep his voice from cracking under the weight of all of this--of this moment in time that he never wanted to abandon. “I wasn’t able to stop myself from falling in love with you, how can I stop myself from loving you?”

“Kiss me,” Caleb asked, cupping Essek’s face in his hands. “Essek...kiss me.”

Essek pressed up on his toes, and kissed Caleb.

The kiss itself was short and soft, their mouths closed and Essek’s fingers clenched on Caleb’s shoulders. But kissing Caleb was like clinging to a flame. There was a flash of heat so intense that Essek was afraid he would burn with it, and yet, the moment he pulled away his mouth felt strangely cold. Caleb’s eyes met his, and he released a shaky breath. His face was flushed, his eyes dilated and glistening in the lowlight. Caleb’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, as if tasting the flavor of their kiss on his lips.

“Caleb,” Essek said, his voice breathless and strange to his own ears. He could barely hear it over the frantic butterfly beating of his own heart. “Again...please--”

Essek couldn’t even finish the request, Caleb was already ducking down once more to claim his mouth. He melted into Caleb’s arms even further. Another kiss turned to two, three, then four, and then somewhere along the line Essek lost track. Caleb gasped as his tongue brushed Essek’s sensitive incisor, and Essek shivered at the taste of Caleb’s mouth and the feeling of his hair twisted in his fingers.

Finally, they had to part to breathe. Essek's mouth tingled and he could almost taste Caleb upon his lips still. Caleb's lips parted with his own breath as he reached his arms out hesitantly. Giving in to what he had wanted for so long, Essek curled his arms around Caleb's back in an embrace.

"I would love you for a thousand lifetimes," Caleb whispered, just for his ears, tucking him against his chin.

"Oh Caleb," Essek sighed, burying his face in Caleb's neck. "I know."

---

Essek fell back into the bed with a huff of air that escaped his lungs. Unhurriedly, Caleb pulled Essek’s boots off, and helped to slide off Essek’s trousers with the same reverence as someone opening a treasured spellbook. Caleb hummed, taking one of Essek’s legs into his hands. He couldn’t help the way he shivered at the sensation of calloused fingers squeezing and rubbing at the muscle there.

“You are so beautiful,” Caleb moaned, kissing his shin...the inside of Essek’s thigh in languid unhurried kisses. His fingers traced the divot of his hips...as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Essek’s belly. “Every part of you.”

"You’re teasing,” Essek said, leveling his best annoyed look but it felt disingenuous even to him. He felt so warm, loose-limbed and love-sick. Essek’s whole body arched as Caleb tugged at his nipple. “Ngh!”

“Never,” Caleb told him, though his eyes sparkled with mirth. “I just wish to remember every part of you.”

Essek nearly growled, and yanked Caleb up to kiss him. They stayed that way for a long while, kissing and pressed skin to skin except for the last thinnest of barriers. Essek ran his foot against Caleb’s leg and was rewarded with a shiver and an obscene gasp that Essek wanted to repeat in his mind a million times over. Caleb’s hips canted forward, Essek dug his fingers into Caleb’s hips, and he could feel Caleb hot and hard against him. Suddenly, Essek could understand why someone would want to do this.

“Caleb,” Essek gasped, tearing his mouth from Caleb’s lips. The pleasure was almost too much suddenly.

"I want to feel you inside of me," Caleb said, pulling away. His eyes were a study in black-and-blue, his mouth was red, his skin was an utterly pleasing shade of cream and pink. Essek could follow the bursts of color...of freckles and silver scars across his skin and red hair across his body...and he was so beautiful for it all.

Essek’s mind reeled at the request. He had to admit to himself that he had probably read too many cheap romance novels, and what he knew about romance between humans was most likely extremely biased based on old anti-Empire sentiments. Rough, uncouth human men were always portrayed in a certain way. He had always been passive in his previous couplings… and Essek hadn’t minded the idea of being...well...dominated by Caleb to a certain extent. But this idea had Essek’s brain completely misfiring.

But practicality did have to come first.

“I’d come too quickly,” Essek admitted. “And I haven’t done this in a long while...we may need to work up to something like that. I may get...overwhelmed.”

“Ah...you probably have a point,” Caleb said, not looking offended or off-put. And Essek nearly fell in love with him all over again.

“Perhaps another time,” Essek offered, sitting up to curl his fingers in Caleb’s hair and pull him into another kiss. Just the action gave him an idea. “But considering how much you seem to like my legs, I think I have an idea.”

“I do love your ideas,” Caleb said, pressing a tender kiss to Essek’s temple that left him almost as breathless as rutting against Caleb had made him. He slid off his underclothes. Essek grasped the vial of oil from the side table, and upended it, pouring an obscene amount on his thighs. He could feel Caleb watching, gaze heated and mouth parted in longing, and he made a show of spreading his legs for Caleb once he felt that he was sufficiently prepared. He gave himself a cursory pump or two. His own arousal had been slowly simmering in the back of his mind, and he had forgotten how hard he was.

“Come here to me,” Essek beckoned, curling his finger towards Caleb. Caleb wasted no time, kneeling between Essek’s leg, grasping Essek by his thighs and closing his legs around his cock as he hooked them over one of Caleb’s shoulders.

“Oh, oh,” Caleb moaned unabashedly, he pressed down hard and thrusting into Essek’s thighs with little abandon. Watching Caleb’s expression dissolve into teeth-gritting, desperate pleasure had Essek taking his own cock into his hand. The mental thrill of this, of watching the man who loved him so desperately receiving so much pleasure from his body as he brushed over all of the sensitive parts of him, was just so good. It was addictive, if he was being completely honest.

“Caleb,” Essek moaned, twisting his hand in rhythm. “You’re making me filthy.”

“Wanna make you feel good,” Caleb nearly slurred, tip leaking and Essek could feel Caleb getting him wetter, and the glide of it getting smoother. “You feel so good, Essek.”

“Yes,” Essek gasped, shivering at the sound of his name being said like that. Like Caleb was desperate, like he was in love with him, like Caleb would tear the sky apart for him, like Caleb’s love could encompass him and destroy everything that he had worked for to build up his walls and he wouldn’t care. As long as Essek could have this, could have Caleb loving him and begging for him, he would do nearly anything.

“Essek, Essek!” Caleb gasped, slamming into Essek’s legs, rubbing against him in a way that had Essek throwing his head back. His efforts became more frantic around himself, curving his fist to get the right friction. With the way Caleb’s hips were twitching it wouldn’t be long, and he wanted to come with Caleb so badly it was tearing at his belly like some kind of feral beast but he knew he wasn’t close enough. It didn’t matter. His own pleasure seemed secondary to this.

“I love the way you touch me,” Essek admitted, his voice caught and breathless and pouring out of him unrequested. “Oh Caleb, please come. I want you to come so much, I want to see you. I’ve dreamed of this, wanted this for so long.”

“Essek,” Caleb groaned before spilling himself on Essek’s legs...on his cock and belly. The heat was striking and sudden. Essek managed to pull his legs off of Caleb’s shoulders, settling them bent on either side of Caleb. Breathless and dazed, Caleb looked at Essek with an expression so hungry that it left Essek bereft of a response. To Essek's surprise, his fingers traced the mess on Essek’s legs and belly. He paused and met Essek’s gaze. “You didn’t come.”

“No,” Essek confirmed, though, he was slightly confused at the direction of the conversation. “I can take care of it.”

“I want to make you feel good now,” Caleb said, leaning down, kissing his knee as he did so. “Won’t you let me?”

“I…” Essek blinked, surprised. “Yes, if you don’t mind?”

“Could I use my mouth?” Caleb asked, and Essek immediately felt himself blush so hard his ears ached. Caleb’s mouth twisted into a smile, and Essek was rendered so speechless that all he could do was nod. Caleb wasted no time, sinking down and enveloping Essek in a hot wet heat that had him twitching with pleasure. Caleb moved like he was starving for the taste of Essek’s cock and was eternally grateful to have it. He lapped at Essek’s cock as he caught his breath. “You seemed so surprised that I should want this, Essek...mmm, tell me, after everything you do, how could anyone not give you any pleasure you wished for?”

“Caleb, oh by the Luxon,” Essek cried as Caleb flicked his tongue over his cock, before taking him again. He was so close to the edge that he was trembling with it, it was building so fast that Essek almost couldn’t believe it. There were kisses and little scrapes as Caleb clearly experimented with what would bring Essek the most pleasure, leaving Essek totally helpless against it all.

“Anything you want,” Caleb promised. “Let me care for you, as you care for me.”

“Caleb, my light, please--!”

Caleb took him in deep one final time, and Essek came apart at the seams. Caleb sucked him through the most bone-shattering orgasm that Essek had ever achieved in his whole life, lazily releasing Essek with a pop when it was over. Essek was left drenched in sweat, completely limp and barely able to summon enough strength to pull Caleb into a long, amorous kiss. Though the taste of himself wasn’t the most pleasant, and his skin was still drenched in a mess of oil and fluid, it was perhaps one of the most fulfilling kisses of his whole life.

Caleb rolled over to settle next to him, hair a mused mess, lips swollen, eyes dreamy, looking well and truly fucked out. They stayed like that for a while, Essek letting his heart rate settle down to an acceptable pace, and Caleb catching his breath. Finally, some thoughts managed to settle back into Essek’s brain through the fog of their coupling and his love-drunkenness as he gazed at the series of bruises along Caleb’s neck, fang marks and hickeys that bloomed his skin into lovely colors that had to be relatively painful.

“I’m sorry for that,” Essek said, tracing the marks so delicately that he could barely feel Caleb’s skin...only the emenanting heat.

“Oh,” Caleb said, palming his neck and wincing slightly. “It’s alright, my clothing and scarf should cover it...and I could ask Caduceus to heal it later.”

“Not asking Jester is most likely a good idea,” Essek noted, managing to sit up. Caleb curled an arm around him, and he was thankful for the warmth. He cast a critical eye to his clothing, all crumpled up in a pile by his bedroom door and sighed. He would need to steam those at some point.

“Do you have a bath?” Caleb asked, kissing Essek’s ear. Naturally it twitched at the sensation of the stubble and the touch, and Essek could feel Caleb smile against it. “We should take one.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me,” Essek said, kissing Caleb once more...because he could. Caleb smiled against his lips, and made it all worth it.

---

“What the fuck did you do to Caleb?” Beau asked him roughly. Essek looked over the rim of his teacup at her. He was sitting at the edge of the hot tub, as Beau soaked her defined shoulders flexing with her question as she asked it. Essek had dipped his feet in, glad enough for the heat, and feeling totally at ease. It was a strange thing, but welcome.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Essek said, taking a sip. He sighed with pleasure as he did so. “Caduceus, this blend really is lovely. Did you grow everything here?”

“Aw, thanks so much,” Caduceus said with his usual kindly meandering demeanor as he sat down on the opposite side of the hot tub. He sipped at his own cup before reaching to give Fjord his own. “Some of it is from home, the rest is from here. Here you go Fjord.”

“Thanks Cad,” Fjord said, accepting the cup. He looked at it a bit skeptical before taking a sip.

“Stop getting off topic, he’s been all...weird since the night at the ball when you guys totally bailed,” Beau said, jabbing a finger in Essek’s direction.

“That was probably for the best though, your sister and your mom were pretty pissed,” Fjord pointed out. “Like, I’ve never had such an awkward conversation before in my whole life.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Essek noted, raising an eyebrow to Beau. “You won’t like the answer anyways, so it’s better not to know.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Beau demanded.

“It means that Essek and Caleb totally kissed,” Jester said in a sing-songy voice as she skipped in, with Nott and Yasha at her heels. All of them were in robes.

“Whatever you would like to think,” Caleb said, entering and settling next to Essek purposefully. Essek leaned against Caleb oh so slightly, curling the hand that was behind him in Caleb’s. His fingers interlocked with his easily, as if they had always been meant to be there. It was just like the tree or the dancing jars of sunlight in the Rosohna night...it shouldn’t have gone together and yet it did perfectly.

“They definitely fucked,” Yasha noted softly as she shed her robe and got into the hot tub with little decorum, and Essek inhaled his drink so quickly that it scalded him on the way down.

“Oh sheisse, Essek, are you alright?” Caleb asked, as Essek attempted to gain control of his voice.

“OH MY JESUS YOU DID?!” Nott shrieked, seemingly prepared to run across the water to do something. Jester stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Who the fuck is Jesus?” Jester demanded.

“I dunno, I think I heard that name somewhere,” Nott noted.

“He isn’t as cool as the Traveler!” Jester said forlornly. “You should be saying, oh my Traveler!”

“Jessie, I think you are focusing on the wrong thing,” Fjord said sheepishly. Yasha and Cad shared a look. Beau buried her head in her hands, and looked ready to drown herself.

“You were right, I didn’t want to know,” she said mournfully.

“Well, it was pretty good,” Caleb said with a confident snarky grin, totally meant to upset Beau who lobbed a splash of water at them both. Essek was hit, but somehow he couldn’t find it in his mind.

“Ew! Caleb! Don’t tell me about your sex life!”

Essek shook his head with a smile, and took another sip of tea.

#shadowgast #critical role #essek theylss #caleb widogast

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the-big-nope · 5 years

Text

A Family Tradition (1/2)

Short fic prompt: Nott and/or Jester braiding ribbons and flowers into everyone's hair?

I decided to split the ideas into two parts because it’s ending up longer and taking longer than expected, so expect part 2 within a couple days. So first up: Caleb, Yasha, and Caduceus.

Submitted by: @yesiamplease

Neither Nott nor Jester could exactly remember when the flower braiding tradition had started. It had been around almost as long as the Mighty Nein had become a group, but the exact date or memory eluded them. Regardless, it was just part of Mighty Nein culture now. Or at least, it would be if Nott and Jester had anything to say about it. Some members were more amenable, some were not, but the two detectives of the team were confident that with enough time, everyone would be on board with this new tradition. It just took a little persistence.

***

Caleb, surprisingly enough, was one of the first to be assimilated. Although Jester supposed it wasn’t actually that big of a surprise. Even just a few days into their time as a group, it was clear he could deny Nott almost nothing. It was just a small step beyond that to including Jester in the process.

They were taking a rest in the middle of their journey, the horses casually grazing while the rest of the group gave their legs a stretch. Caleb sat hunched on the edge of the cart, eyes vacant as he scouted ahead with Frumpkin.

With the ease of a thief and a consummate trickster, Nott and Jester sidled up beside him, a bushel of wild flowers clutched in their hands. Nott rubbed at her chin, examining the blind and deafened wizard like a block of marble she was intending to carve.

“I think cornflowers today. It’ll stand out against his hair.” And without further ado, she pattered up to him and began braiding.

Caleb sat up rigidly for just a moment. “Nott?” he asked, eyes still clouded. One tap of a clawed little hand had him settling back down immediately.

“Come on, Jester. More hands equals more braids before we have to get moving again.”

Jester felt a flash of uncertainty for a moment as she settled down on her knees next to Nott. Caleb trusted Nott completely, but that might not extend to her. Still, she reached out and grabbed her own lock of hair.

Again, Caleb tensed up, worse this time, but Nott gave him another pat on the shoulder and grabbed his hand. She guided it back until it rested on one of Jester’s horns, a thumb catching on her silver jewelry chain.

“Oh,” Caleb said. There was a pause for a moment, before once more he settled into his familiar’s vision, loose-shouldered and quiet.

Nott flashed a jagged grin. “See? He trusts me, and that means trusting you because I trust you.” And with a raspy hum, Nott went back to work.

By the time they got back on the road, there was almost more blue in Caleb’s hair than red.

***

Yasha’s love for flowers was a known fact relatively early, so one night, while Nott and Yasha were stuck together on watch duty, it occurred to Nott that maybe offering a flower braid would be a decent way to pass the time. Yasha scared Nott a little, but she felt at least asking would be better than the mind-numbing silence of deep night.

“Would you...Would you like me to do your hair?” Nott asked, twisting her hands together.

The big, scary woman turned away from the horizon and blinked owlishly at her. “Uh... sure. If you would like to, Nott.”

That was easy, Nott thought. She knew Yasha liked flowers, but she was just so large and intimidating and off in her own world. Nott had half-expected her to say no.

The two of them shuffled a little, awkward and unsure who was supposed to make the first move here. “My, uh, my hair might be a little difficult,” said Yasha, head hanging a bit. “It’s, it’s a little all over the place and not... not the best.”

“Eh, I’m a goblin. My hair’s not all that great either.”

Yasha sat motionlessly, before rapidly spinning herself around to face the opposite direction. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Thinking, Nott dug into the pockets of her clothes. There were some flowers in there that she’d plucked, going a little crumbly but still workable. She also had a few strings of ribbon, filched from a doll that had been thrown away in Zadash. They were a pretty blue color, and wouldn’t look half-bad with Yasha’s pale skin and dark hair.

Slowly, Nott ran her spindly fingers through the tangles and began weaving them together as best she could. For a while, Yasha remained rigid, but as the minutes went by she steadily began to relax. As Nott pulled back a dangling strand of hair that had fallen beside her face, Yasha sighed deeply. It was a sorrowful sound.

Nott shifted her weight from foot to foot. “You okay there, Yasha?”

“...Yes. Just... reminded me of something. Someone. It doesn’t matter.”

Nott’s lips thinned, but she knew very well that there were some things people would rather keep silent and confined in their own hearts and memories. Instead, she held out her hand, two withered buds cradled in her palm. “Would you like the purple ones, or the pink ones?”

“Which do you think?”

“Purple. It goes better with the ribbon.”

“Then purple it is.”

***

Jester didn’t know why she hadn’t done Caduceus’s hair before. It’s not like he wasn’t up for most anything, he liked flowers, and his hair was already so long and pretty that it was practically begging for some decoration. But for whatever reason, it had never come up until now, which wasn’t how Jester had imagined it would turn out.

The minotaur demon beneath the well was dead, Caleb’s dome was encasing them safely, and the Mighty Nein were all alive, even Caduceus. He was snoring faintly near her, as peaceful as if he hadn’t just died little more than an hour ago.

Jester was having a much harder time going to sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking of how close they’d come, how they very nearly lost Caduceus like they lost Molly. Wanting to be near and reassure herself that her friend was okay, she scooted closer, doing her best not to wake anyone else. She picked up a long lock of pink hair, one that wasn’t too matted with dirt or blood, and began twisting it together.

Caduceus grunted softly and stirred. “That’s nice,” he rumbled, voice hushed and not entirely awake.

“Sorry I woke you,” Jester whispered.

“No trouble. Feels good.”

“Sorry I don’t have any flowers right now. Your hair would look so nice with flowers.”

“Mmm. Lots of flowers back home. Used to be even more. Maybe you’ll see it someday. I, uh, hope there are still lots of flowers,” Caduceus murmured, sounding a bit addled and even a little sad.

Reaching out, Jester laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll help you save your home, Caduceus. Then you can show me all the flowers and the graves and your house. I didn’t get to see it when... when we left Shady Creek. I’d really like to.”

Caduceus’s head turned just enough for Jester to see the sleepy grin on his face as his eyes fluttered shut. “That would be... wonderful...”

#this is a super cute prompt #thanks for that!#critical role #fanfic #fanfic prompts #m9

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bboiseux · 5 years

Text

For Your Consideration (The Epic Results of the Nomination Round i.e. a massive pile of fic)

Jester and Beau present the results of “The Traveler Presents the Order of teh Cobalt Soul’s Kinda Annual Awards for Awesomeness in Fic.” In other words, LOTS AND LOTS OF FIC RECS! A big thank you to everyone who submitted nominations!

Want to help narrow the list of fic down to the finalists for the award show? You can vote for your top three in each category at this link!

Don’t forget to reblog so that this gets visibility!

[ALL THE RECS under the cut] (also, if you haven’t seen it, I put up a brief note about this.]

JESTER: Oh my goodness, Beau! There are so many fics! And they're all so good!

BEAU: Yeah, it is pretty cool. Now what?

JESTER: Oh, um, know we have to read them all.

BEAU: Jess, that's a lot of reading. Like, more than I had to do at the Cobalt Reserve.

JESTER: Well, it's not more than I had to do while I was stuck in my room all the time!

BEAU: Oh, uh, do you want to talk about that?

JESTER: Nope! Let's look at the fic!

Made You Laugh

JESTER: These were all so funny!

BEAU: Yeah, some of them were pretty hilarious.

JESTER: All of them, Beau.

BEAU: Some of them, Jess.

A Marriage of Convenience, Ch 1 (conceptstage)

A Mote of Possibility (SwissArmyKnife)

Anthropology for Beginners (Verity_Kindle)

cat magnet (adhdmollymauk)

CAT PEOPLE (and Cat People) (Mikkeneko)

Dear Traveler, Ch 1 (PrincessAmericaChavez)

Fantastically Normal (cinderfell)

Five Soda Maximum (chaya)

Gobsmacked (Five Times Nott Gave the Shovel Talk) (Mikkeneko)

happy people (mnemememory)

How to Train Your Blink Puppy (Angel Ascending)

listen to the fucking gps not my heartbeat (celebreultimaverba, Royalwriter) Mature

Paper kisses (happierhere)

Paying the Rent (HappiKatt) Mature

Something New For Me And You, Ch 1 (sockablock)

sweet, a little selfish (coraxes)

Talk to the Tail (Grimalkin)

The Traveler is My Co-Parent (sabinelagrande)

There's a Ghost in My Lungs, Ch 15 (QueenWithABeeThrone)

Tuskless Rescue Mission (Tsark) Explicit

Gave You Warm Fuzzy Feelings

JESTER: So. Cute. I just awww.

BEAU: [Shrugging] Whatever. I mean, I guess they were kind of cute. Not my kind of thing.

JESTER: What about the one about Frumpkin? He's adorable!

BEAU: Eh.

JESTER: Okay, grumpy, what about the one where Yasha cradles you in your arms and is like "Oh, I love you so much, you mean--"

BEAU: CAN WE MOVE ON NOW!?

A Mote of Possibility (SwissArmyKnife)

A Song That Claims No Language (sockablock)

all these ribbons you use (to tie yourselves to me) (RobinLorin)

Can We Stay Like this? (cecilantro)

Familiar Comfort, Ch 1 (Angel Ascending)

High In A Blue Sky (CrunchyWrites)

Limbo (Awesome_sauce432)

Logistic Regression (CrunchyWrites)

My only sunshine, Ch 1 (Meridas) Explicit

Paying the Rent (HappiKatt) Mature

Something New For Me And You, Ch 13 (sockablock)

take your kid gloves off (gealbhan)

The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face (steelneena)

The Long and Winding Road (CatKing_Catkin)

The Mighty Nein, Protectors of the Innocent (When They Feel Like It) (justanotherfangirl) Not Rated

The Taryon Darrington Queer Society, Ch 1 (wibbelkind)

This Town is a Song About You (everything555everything, Flavortext, Fuzzyface, MamzelleCombeferre)

Three Heartbeats (Steve)

True North ( Angel Ascending) Mature

Utility, Necessity, Enrichment, Decay (Mightybignein)

We'll Burn That Bridge When We Get To It (Awesome_sauce432)

When You Wake Up The World Will Come Around (infraredphaeton)

Made You Ugly Cry and Curse the Name of the Author

JESTER: [Trying hard not to cry and failing miserably.] Why do so many people write about Molly dying and--and Fjord and Yasha and me being locked up?

BEAU: [Rubbing Jester's back] Hey, it's alright. People write about it because it means a lot to them. It's important. Molly was important.

JESTER: [Sniffling] I know, it's just, I wish he was back.

BEAU: We all do. How about we think about something else? What about that story about some Cassandra chick. That seems like it might turn out alright? Or what about where Caleb--uh, okay, maybe not that one.

A Song That Claims No Language (sockablock)

All That's Ahead And Behind (steelneena)

COMPLICITY (Mikkeneko)

i could be a morning sunrise all the time, Ch 2 (strongbut) Mature

I made the earth remember him (brinnanza)

lord, what a lonesome song he sings (batyatoon) Not Rated

Ode to A Caged Bird (Ara) Explicit

Paying the Rent (HappiKatt) Mature

Someone Else (protectoroffaeries)

The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face (steelneena)

the mist upon the hill (BucketofWater) Not Rated

Things that remain (Beleriandings)

This One's For Molly (protectoroffaeries) Mature

Turn Undead, Ch 1 (Mightybignein)

twisters chasing storms (wayonwayout)

until you set your old heart free (QueenwithaBeeThrone)

We'll Carry On (MeBeShe) Explicit

what doesn't kill you/makes you wish you were dead (LoveWithAGirl)

Where the Wild Song Echoes (distractedKat)

Made You Super Horny

JESTER: People really want Molly and Caleb to [waggles her eyebrows] fuuuuuuuuck.

BEAU: I'm pretty sure reading about two men getting it on is every woman's gods-given right. [Shrugs] Whatever gets you off.

JESTER: And what gets you off, Beau? [She elbows Beau ... suggestively.] What about that one about Yasha, huh?

BEAU: [Beau flushes] I don't know what you're talking about. Although ... that one about Avantika makes me seriously think I should have gotten a piece of that action before she got herself killed.

A Fur Lined Cloak (chaya) Explicit

A Visit In The Garden, Ch 1 (pastelNothing) Explicit

blackpowder (erebones) Explicit

Confluence of Humors (chaya) Explicit

everything and nothing, or, the meaning of meanings (celebreultimaverba) Explicit

Forsythia (ccaleb_widogast) Explicit

Manifest (ladyofrosefire) Explicit

Moonstruck (Moonybandit) Explicit

Negative Space (erebones, lose better) Explicit

o captain my captain (zemnian_nights) Explicit

Over the Wall (wilderswans) Explicit

Paying the Rent (HappiKatt) Mature

Read Me Like One of Your Zemnian Tomes, Ch 2 (curiawesome) Explicit

short skirt, long jacket (I want a girl) (friendlyghost) Explicit

Stammtisch (chaya) Explicit

Tactile Stimulation (SnubbingApollo) Explicit

What the Water Gave me (fiach_dubh) Explicit

Yours and Mine (keefling) Explicit

Made You Go "What the Fuck?" in the Loudest Possible Voice

JESTER: Um, well, these are stories.

BEAU: Fucking awesome stories. Some of you people have got messed up minds. I love it.

a country far away as health (LoosePilgrim) Mature

Born in a Box, How Do I end?, Ch 10 (purplehuntress3) Mature

Carry It Until We Die, Ch 7 (Starkraving)

Choke Me With Your Kiss, Eat Me From the Inside, Ch 1 (bboiseux) Explicit

Eight of Swords (SwissArmyKnife)

Erebus (daddykeehl) Mature

i broke the world for us (freckledshoulderblades)

one nerve remaining (tardigradeschool)

Something New For Me and You, Ch 25 (sockablock)

swallow up the flame like me (words-write-in-starlight) Mature

the mist upon the hill (BucketofWater) Not Rated

to the willing souls (kimaracretak)

We Are the Shadows in the Mirror (bboiseux, fiach_dubh, ginnyvos, TheLastNoel) Mature

We Circle By Night, Ch 11 (Insanity Silver)

Most Epic, Heart-stopping Fic

JESTER: Oh, people put everything in this category! Romance! Adventure!

BEAU: Yeah, but it's mostly dark shit.

JESTER: Nooooo. Did you read the one about Caleb and Fjord being all cute together?

BEAU: Jess, I'm not like you, two dudes kissing and being cute can't make me forget everything else. There's some dark shit in these stories.

JESTER: But also dudes kissing.

A house by the sea (erebones, losebetter) Mature

a truth so loud you can't ignore my youth (my youth is yours) (whyyesitscar)

All That's Ahead And Behind (steelneena)

Betrothed, Ch 1 (MeBeShe) Explicit

Carry It Until We Die, Ch 7 (starkraving)

Chaos Theory: The Butterfly Effect, Ch 27 (Scarecrowlover) Mature

In the Moments We Were Alone (sockablock)

My Friend Filthy (99BottleofBeerontheWall)

Rogue (sockablock)

the mist upon the hill (BucketofWater) Not Rated

Traveling Hearts (CatKing_Catkin) Mature

water; fire (frarernite)

Gave You Sweet Sweet AU Feels

JESTER: Aw, it's like ... we're different, but the same!

BEAU: Yeah, this shit is pretty cool. Like, we get to see our life in a different way.

Can We Stay Like This? (cecilantro)

Five Soda Maximum (chaya)

Goodnight to An Old Soul, Ch 1 (fiach_dubh) Explicit

I Ship It (pinkevilbob)

listen to the fucking gps not my heartbeat (celebreultimaverba, Royalwriter) Mature

Paying the Rent (HappiKatt) Mature

Prophet of Tortham, Ch 1 (TheInevitableSense) Mature

Resonance (RecklessDaydreamer)

Something New For You and Me, Ch 1 (sockablock)

Take your kid gloves off (gealbhan)

The Descriptivist's Approach (CrunchyWrites) Explicit

the mist upon the hill (BucketofWater) Not Rated

The Taryon Darrington Queer Society, Ch 8 (wibbelkind)

The Winter's Crest Episode (Angel Ascending)

Trust Me, Trust You (NeverSeenHer)

Tuskless Love (MidnightMinx90)

We'll Carry On (MeBeShe) Explicit

yesterday, today, tomorrow (sidonay)

Favorite Ficlet (under 1,000 words)

JESTER: They're so tiny, but so cute! [Hands on cheeks]

BEAU: Haven't you learned yet that powerful things come in tiny packages?

A Collection of Wants (Sour_Idealist)

Deck of Many Things, Ch 79 (invoked_duplicity)

Goose (TwinVax)

Midnight Hour (keefling) Explicit

pass on the summer, Ch 2 (JumanjiCostco)

something in the blood denies the memory (Steve)

Through the Forests of Wheat (sockablock)

to feel a little less (okaymae)

To Have, To Hold (AuditoryCheesecake)

To Remember (conceptstage)

Traveling Show (RenrijraKrin)

Two vowels go a-walking (chaya)

what's in a name? (thepensword)

"How come you've only got one arm?" (sockablock)

"watching" (xhorass)

Favorite Medium-Length (1,000 to 20,000 words)

JESTER: There's just all sorts of different kinds of stories here.

BEAU: Yeah, but ... a lot of them are here to mess us up.

A Wizard Down (Angel Ascending)

and we still had hours (poppyseedheart)

Back on Track (readytobebolder) Explicit

Discover Us Safely Destroyed (thismagichour) Not Rated

Don’t Expect Payment (ohjustdisarmalready)

Familiar Comfort, Ch 2 (Angel Ascending)

From Hostile Ground (Sour_Idealist)

HOPSCOTCH (Traveler, Take the Wheel) Mikkeneko

La Douleur Exquise (NinjaDragonWhat)

lesser of two evils (sparxwrites)

lord, what a lonesome song he sings (batyatoon) Not Rated

Miss the Sky (AnaliseGrey) Not Rated

My only sunshine, Ch 1 (Meridas) Explicit

sandpaper and solder (impossibletruths)

So fearsomely bright (Beleriandings)

The Stars Between Bruised Knuckles (sockablock)

Till the Last Flower (vannral)

We Belong Dead (CrunchyWrites)

Favorite Long-Form Fic (20,000 words or more)

JESTER: WOAH. Did you see how long some of these stories are!?

BEAU: I read them, so, yes, yes I did.

A Mote of Possibility (SwissArmyKnife)

Beware, Beware (gayshitiguess)

Five Soda Maximum (chaya)

My Friend Filthy (99BottleofBeerontheWall)

My only sunshine (Meridas) Explicit

Resonance (RecklessDaydreamer)

some sun has got to rise (allapplesfall)

The Descriptivist's Approach (CrunchyWrites) Explicit

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (steelneena)

The Gay and Wonderous Life of Caleb Widogast (erebones) Explicit

the mist upon the hill (BucketofWater) Not Rated

Traveling Hearts (CatKing_Catkin) Mature

We'll Carry On (MeBeShe) Explicit

Where the Wild Song Echoes (distractedKat)

JESTER: And that's a wrap! Can you believe that these 130-some stories are just a tiny fraction of the fic that people wrote about us? Over 4,000 fics were written about us this year.

BEAU: I don't even have words for that commitment. Thanks--you're all pretty dope!

JESTER: And now it's time to narrow this list down to the finalists! Pick your top three in each category at this link and Beau and I will be back to announce the finalists!

[And don’t forget to REBLOG!]

#critical role #awesomeness in fic #fic recs #critficrec #critfic #holy shit that is a lot of fic

138 notes · View notes

howlingheartdemigod · 5 years

Note

Request: Jester tries to ask for more "practice" kisses. Beau, a nervous wreck, keeps trying to wiggle out of it until finally Jester is open, she wants to kiss her... Badly. She needs it.

so y’all did not like the fact that I am an angst monster and angsted up the end of THIS THING i wrote up for @iamwalkingdead1

so OKAY FINE HERE I WROTE MORE AND IT’S SOONER THAN I EXPECTED

title from here

one day you will arrive

Beau spent a week avoiding Jester. It wasn’t like… totally obvious. She was chill. It was chill. They were in Zadash anyway, it was totally normal for her to spend all her time in Zadash training at the reserve. Totally normal.

It just… It was a lot to process, was all. It was a lot to think about. She didn’t know how she felt about Jes on the best of days, and this wasn’t the best of days. This was. Rough. And confusing and every time Beau so much as looked at Jester, all she could think of was the slide of her lips, the rough press of her fingers on Beau’s skin, the feeling of her soft thighs straddling Beau’s hips, and that-

That was not productive. That was not helpful. Jester was her friend. Her friend who liked Fjord, and the Traveler, and guys named Oskar in romance novels. It… It wasn’t gonna happen. And she liked being Jesters friend anyway. She really did.

So Beau spent a week at the monastery. She woke Caleb up before she left, telling him if they needed her that’s where she’d be. Then she didn’t come back for days. She just needed to think. She needed to meditate. She needed the hard scheduled time to push down the feelings and move on. She’d be fine. She’d be fine.

When she left the reserve, robes tied properly for the second time in living memory, she felt… still shit but, better. Not great. Not good, but better. Plus, if she spent another day sleeping on a roll on stone she might actually give herself back problems for real.

She didn’t go straight to her friends, instead wandering around the pentamarket, looking at this and that. She figured she could come back and buy dinner as an apology. Tell them that she’d been planning on going in for a day and then got caught up in a cool new training thing. She didn’t know what she’d show them if they asked what she’d learned, but it was a good enough lie as any.

“Beau?” She spun around, eyes going a little wide. Caleb was standing outside of Pumat Sol’s store, brow lifted. He looked her up and down. “Okay, this was already weird, but, uh, that makes it weirder.”

Beau slumped a little, leaning on her staff. Seeing Caleb sent a burst of happiness through her she hadn’t been expecting. They’d only been a mile away, but Gods knew how much she missed them. The Mighty Nein had become her center, which, she didn’t know how to feel about, except that she couldn’t quite bring herself to be upset.

“Ah, yeah.” she said, looking down at herself. She reached up to scratch the newly shaved back of her head. Her top knot, for once, was well tied. She looked like a proper Monk. “Been training.” She told him, the lie falling flat.

Caleb squinted at her, coming to stand by her. “Hmm, sure.” He looked past her. “You know, what’s funny, as soon as you left Jester decided to throw herself into reading about healing, and historical Clerics, and… she’s been training herself, too, I guess.”

Beau felt like she was talking to Caduceus, with the knowing look in Caleb’s eye. she took a breath, looking past him. “It’s… Look, I… It’s so fucking dumb. It’s like, so teenager. It’s stupid, Caleb. but… we kissed, and I’m all fucked up about it.”

Caleb, to his credit, managed to keep from laughing at her. “She seems pretty fucked up about it too.”

Beau snorted. “Sure she is. No, she’s probably just upset that I pulled my bullshit and left. That’s all I’m fucking good at.”

Caleb fixed her with a look. “You’ve stayed with us considerably more than you’ve left us, Beau. And you weren’t gone. We knew right where you were.” He seemed to think about it. “Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe you should talk to her. I don’t know.”

Beau took a breath, giving a nod. “We still at the Leaky Tap?” She asked.

Caleb nodded, and turned off. “Let’s head back. I’m sure everyone will be excited to see you. Plus, buttoned up Beau is quite possibly the weirdest thing. Can’t deprive them of that.”

Beau’s return was met with a round of drinks and interrogation about how her time at the reserve had been. But she couldn’t meet Jester’s eye, and felt like there was a pit in her throat, and when a reason to get out of the city, to keep moving, fell into their laps, that was the best thing that could have possibly happened.

Beau could not figure out why she kept finding herself drawn to Jester. It was driving her crazy. She’d be walking along side the cart, and hear a dramatic sigh, and look up to see Jester with her back slumped on Caduceus’ shoulder, loudly complaining about how hot it was while tugging the collar of her blouse. Beau had to actually pinch herself to keep her eyes from trailing.

Jester would offer to take watch with Beau, batting her eyes, and acting a fool. Acting like Jester. It was probably some long form joke, knowing Jester. Or she’d re read Tusk Love. her flirting always got worse when she did that.

Beau would go down mid fight and, even though she knew that Jester was yards away casting spells when she went down, she’d wake up with her head cradled in Jester’s arms, the look of concern melting away.

It was trouble. She was sure she was just magnifying it all. Jester certainly wasn’t actually any more touchy and flirty than before. It was just projection. It was just wishful thinking.

It was hard to convince herself, but it had to be.

Yasha returned to them, which was great. When Yasha was around Beau could get away with not taking watch, with having a buffer roommate. When they stopped in Alfield, which was looking considerably better rebuilt than the last time they’d been there, Beau tried her best to forget that they’d ever even kissed. She flirted with barmaids, she got drunk and challenged Bryce to an arm wrestling match, then Fjord, then Yasha, then Caduceus. She acted like an idiot, really. And she steadfastly kept from looking Jester in the eye for more than a second. When she caught herself looking at the swishing skirts and soft curves, she forced herself to look away and take a shot.

And if she ended up outstandingly drunk muttering to an equally drunk Bryce about how ‘fucking beautiful’ Jester is, and how ‘shit’s fucking torture,’ then that was just fine, because Bryce couldn’t remember the next day anyway.

Everyone was kind enough to give Beau a day of recovery in Alfield before moving on. She needed it too, her head pounding like a drum, her stomach wrenching every time she tried to stand for the first two hours she was awake. She cursed the day she ever learned what alcohol was. She cursed who ever invented it too.

Yasha brought up some kind of broth, and turned the chair to face her as Beau dragged herself upright to drink it.

“You want to explain why you were drinking like the world ends tomorrow?” She asked, leaning on the chair towards her.

Beau let out a little groan. “Trying to wipe my memory.” She muttered. “It’s… I…”

“Is it something to do with why you locked yourself at the reserve for a week?” Beau squinted at her, an unasked question that Yasha shrugged and answered. “Caleb told me.”

“Damn that hobo wizard.” Beau muttered. “God, it’s so fucking dumb, Yash. Jester… she wanted to practice kissing, and I was like ‘yeah, sure, whatever, I’ve made out with straight girls before, no biggie, but then… It was a biggie. and I’m all fucked up about it.”

Yasha squinted at Beau. “So, let me track this. You and Jester kissed.”

Beau nodded.

“It was a good kiss?”

“Very.”

“You ran off to a monastery.”

“To be fair, I’m already technically a monk, but yes.”

“And now, even though she’s basically throwing herself at you, you decided to drink away your feelings instead of just locking the door and going at it.”

“Yeah, wait, no what?” Beau looked up from her bowl, scowling. “What? Jester’s not… that’s just how she’s like.”

Yasha snorted, and pushed to her feet. “If you say so Beau.”

Yasha left the room, leaning Beau to stare at a wall, thinking about it long enough for her soup to go cold.

It was a week later, visiting Marion Lavorre at the Lavish Chateau, when Jester got fed up. She’d tried flirting, she’d tried being super interested in what Beau had to say about training at the reserve, she tried showing more skin. But none of it was working, and it was torture. So she gave up on being subtle, waited until she knew Beau was alone, and stormed into the room, swinging the door shut behind her.

“Okay, I don’t know what I am doing wrong, but” She wheeled towards Beau, who was lounging on the bed a book in hand, looking confused. “I swear to The Traveler Beau, that if you don’t explain right now why you don’t want to kiss me again I’m going to lose my mind!”

Beau sat up, setting the novel aside. “What?” She said, head tilting adorably. ‘God, everything you do is cute.’ Jester thought. ‘It’s rude.’

Jester crossed her arms. “I know I was a good kisser. You were too bright red for me to not have been, but then you went off with your cool Monk buddies for a week and then when you came back you wouldn’t even look at me, so explain what I did wrong, so I can kiss you again and fix it, because, and I’m serious Beau, if I don’t get to kiss you again I am going to explode.”

Beau stared at her for a good ten seconds, and Jester felt like she was going to scream, or cry, or… or she didn’t know what. Then Beau was on her feet in front of her, reached to hold her jaw with one hand, and her waist with the other, pulling Jester close, kissing her like she was water in a desert.

Jester gasped, pressing back into the kiss. She lifted a hand to catch the back of Beau’s neck, slotting herself against Beau. She tilted her head, convinced Beau tasted better than sugar.

Beau broke the kiss. “so… You have been flirting?” she said, brow lifting.

Jester stared at her a second. “You seriously haven’t noticed?”

Beau shrugged. “I mean… People maybe have pointed it out to me but…”

Jester let out a little laugh, and ducked to kiss her again. “that clear anything up for you?”

Beau smiled wide, nodding. “Yeah, but I could use some more clarification on some points, if you don’t mind.”

And that was clarification Jester was more than happy to provide.

#critical role #beaujester #critrole #mine #my writing #yall; hey how about some practice kissing fluff?#me; pratice kissing angst! I've already got that in the oven!#yall beating me with a stick; NO ONE WANTS THAT. THAT'S NOT EVEN A THING!#me holding my arms up to shield from the blows; AHH alright you meddling kids!#almost angsted this up too #so you're welcome that i didn't lol #Anonymous

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mithrilwren · 5 years

Text

if we knew the end (would we even start?)

Jester finally takes the Traveller up on his offer and decides to push her relationship with Fjord to the next level, courtesy of some dubiously-moral magical techniques. It goes wrong as quickly as you'd expect: read, instantly.

Warning: fjorjester, but make it angst. look not here for happy endings.

Also available on Ao3!

---

[There are many enchantments I could teach you.]

I don’t know if that’s the way I want to do this.

[How do you know, unless you have tried?]

Well, for one thing, I don’t even know if he feels the same as me. I mean, he would probably tell me if he felt like that.

[I have watched you both, my sweet. His eyes have lingered on you often. Just as mine do.]

…Really? Do you think… he’s watching me? Or he’s watching me?

[Heh.]

Oh, Traveller, what should I do? I really like him, but I don’t think he’d say anything even if he did like me back. He doesn’t like talking about stuff like this. You know; fun, sexy stuff. He gets all flustered and starts biting his lip and it’s kind of cute but also not very helpful. I don’t know what he’s thinking. That’s really frustrating, you know?

[He frustrates you. And yet you love him?]

I didn’t say love . I just… I want him to like me too. Like that.

[And I want you to have everything your heart desires, Jester. It hurts me to see you unhappy.]

I…

[Let me help you.]

I…

[Have I ever let you down?]

No, of course not!

[So?]

Um…

...alright.

[Yes?]

Yes?

[Excellent. You’ll need to get him alone.]

Well, that part’s easy. I’m very charming.

[That you are. Hands like this.]

Like this? Oo, that looks kind of naughty.

[Stay on task, my dear. Now the words.]

Traveller, this is so exciting. I mean… it’s a little scary. But mostly exciting. You know I’ve wanted this for a very long time.

[I do.]

You’re always so good to me.

[It’s only what you deserve. Now, focus. Repeat after me.]

“Bind me now, this heart, my heart, with a line that does not fade.”

The last muttered word of the enchantment draws like a thread from Jester’s tongue. She dizzies with the pounding flow of arcane energy as it pours out of her. It’s beyond anything she’s cast before, anything her fingers know how to shape. The energy has a life of its own, pulling from her chest and her heart and sizzling beneath her skin. It’s not a spell level she knew she could cast. It’s exhilarating. It’s terrifying.

Fjord’s dark eyes glaze liquid black and his hands go slack in hers, and for a moment Jester is desperately fearful her meagre grasp wasn’t enough, that the magic’s gone sour. But then his fingers stiffen and his head shoots up and he’s looking at her with wide eyes and he’s looking and oh, her head’s spinning, she can’t breathe-

Fjord pulls his hands out of her tentative hold and clears his throat. Why couldn’t it be a little lighter in this tent? She can’t see what shape he’s in. Is his skin flushed? Do his ears twitch? Is his heart beating as fast as hers?

“I, uh- really don’t want to keep you up any longer.”

That’s his voice. What’s he saying? It’s hard to hear over the rush of blood in her ears.

“’Night, Jester.”

He’s speaking, but he’s not looking at her anymore. He’s standing and brushing past and stepping out of the tent and Jester shivers in the cold wake of his departure. The tent is very lonely without him.

She gives Fjord five minutes to come back, but the ground is hard to kneel on and she doesn’t hear anything. No returning footsteps, no godly whisper in her ear. Jester balls up her hands and presses them to her eyes. Her head hurts, it hurts, but no worse than the ache in her chest.

Traveller, I don’t think it worked.

[]

Can you tell me what I did wrong?

[]

Traveller?

[]

Can you help me?

[]

Are you there?

No footsteps, no whispers. Her heart starts to slow, just a little.

After another five minutes, she leaves the tent. Not much to see except for the little fire at the center of their encampment, and Beau keeping watch, lazy as a cat by its warmth. She drops down to the ground by their small collection of firewood and Beau eyes her strangely but Jester twists out a smile, holds it until Beau stops looking so closely.

For lack of anything better to do, Jester pulls a little spool of twine from her bag and starts twisting it around her fingers. Her throat feels sore, like she’s been shouting all night long. Like there’s still something aching to come out.

What was it her singing tutor said, those many years ago? Remember your head voice, darling. Make your words dance, light as lilacs on the breeze.

When she finally speaks, her voice peals like summer bells, sweet and unconcerned.

“Have you ever played cat’s cradle? It’s really fun. Here, I’ll show you.”

One loop over the other. Practiced patterns. An easy way to pass the time. Beau relaxes into the simple game, which gives Jester the leeway to let a little bit of apprehension slip onto her face. She flicks her eyes from her hands to the darkness, searching for a trace of familiar dark leather between the trees.

There’s something brewing in her stomach, a sickening roil of humiliation, and disappointment, and something almost like relief.

Maybe everything will be ok tomorrow. It’ll be fine. Tomorrow. Right?

[]

---

The Mighty Nein take a leisurely breakfast when they wake, because it’s a luxury they can’t usually afford. It’s strange, to not be in a hurry. The next errand is a simple supply drop for the Gentleman’s network, a mission extended courtesy of a cryptic letter from an even more cryptic courier. Compared to the fury that was the Xhorhasian landscape and the terror of their barely-successful rescue mission, the endless fields of the Dwendalian countryside are almost quaint.

Homestyle food, the kind they haven’t had in months, crackles over the coals of the dwindling fire: fried eggs, slices of wild green tomatoes, bacon sides spitting globs of grease at anyone who wanders too close, a bushel of aromatic mushrooms that smell of moss and springwater (browning in a separate pan, per Caduceus’s request). Jester’s stomach is too knotted up to be tempted. She nibbles on a piece of hard cheese and watches Fjord from across the makeshift cooking pit.

If anything, Fjord is actively not looking at her, which tells her all she needs to know, really.

He must have just gone back to his and Caduceus’s tent last night to sleep. That’s all it was. So silly to get worked up over just that. And obviously her spell had failed since he wasn’t acting like the tales said he would be, falling over her with kisses and sweet nothings and devotional sonnets. Her toes tingle, remembering all the stories she’s read and heard and spied in her mother’s bedroom.

She considers sending another prayer to the Traveller, maybe we can try again, I’ll do it better this time! but catches the thought before it can escape her mind and find its way into the ether. It’s disappointing that the enchantment failed, of course. Really, so disappointing. But also…

Saying those words last night was maybe the most terrifying thing she’s ever done, and waiting the rest of the night to find out if Fjord was coming back had been pretty terrible too, and this was all a very good idea but maybe, it’s also ok that things didn’t work this time. At least it gives her heart a chance to recover. She’s not sure it could survive another night of it beating so hard.

She’ll definitely tell the Traveller all that, the next time they talk. Waiting can be good! She can wait, to try again. He’ll understand.

Jester offers to take Fjord’s plate to wash for him, just to prove how very ok she is and how she is not being awkward and avoiding him and-

“I’ve got it, thanks.”

Fjord jerks the plate away from her outstretched hands, like they’re dirty, like he doesn’t want them near him. She searches his face, trying to understand the sudden coldness, but all she sees in his eyes is disgust and it stings like a slap. She’s left standing there, frozen, as he stomps away towards the communal basin and begins furiously scrubbing the dish.

Beau’s looking at her again with those piercing eyes, and this time Nott and Caleb are looking too. Jester usually likes having their attention. It feels nice, to have people looking at her. Usually.

“Ok! You got it!” she chirps at Fjord’s back, and tries very hard to keep her smile even and cheerful.

Caleb goes back to his breakfast, but Nott keeps on staring, wide yellow eyes darting between her and Fjord. “Did you and Fjo-”

Beau’s hand clamps down on Nott’s shoulder. “Go bridle the horses. We should get a move on.” She looks at Jester like she wants to say something, but bites her lip and turns away at the last second.

Jester makes sure to wait for Fjord to start loading up the tents into the cart before washing her own plate. Nobody’s watching her now. That’s good. The smile was getting very painful to hold.

---

There’s a fairly established order to how they do things, now that they’ve all gotten used to travelling together. Caduceus drives the cart, with Nott occasionally taking the reins to give his arms a rest. Yasha and Beau trade off lookouts at the rear, and the spellcasters do their studies and preparations for the days ahead on jostling knees, tucked into their separate corners. Jester’s preparations are much simpler than Caleb’s – a few prayers, some little drawings to remind the Traveller that she’s here and she’s listening and that if he wants to talk, you know, about anything, she’s here…

Fjord generally spends the days slouched near the back, making small repairs to their armour and teaching Nott various sailor knots and taking shifts on rear watch. It makes it so easy to steal moments together. She can lean over to show him passages from her books or poke him in the ribs if he looks too sullen or ask him to darn her stockings to see if he blushes.

They’re all just trying to stave off boredom, generally. He’s a good distraction. And there are moments, when their hands brush accidentally after a bump in the road, or when he leans over her to call a direction out to Caduceus, or when he steals her sketchbook to jot down something he’s been thinking about from their travels, that she wants to live in forever. It just feels nice to be next to each other. That’s all she wanted, really. A little bit more of that.

Jester crawls over to Fjord’s side of the cart. Maybe she can apologize for whatever she did at breakfast to annoy him. But Fjord shifts to his knees as soon as his eyes catch hers, then hoists himself over the sideboard and onto the road. “Need to stretch my legs for a bit,” he calls to nobody in particular.

Jester barely catches the flicker of Beau’s elbow jabbing at Yasha’s side, and after a moment Yasha mumbles, “I’ll join you,” and hops off after him.

A fragment of a hypothesis forms in Jester’s mind. It’s a nagging worry that only grows more insistent with each hour that Fjord plods beside the cart, just out of reach.

Traveller, say just hypothetically, is it possible for a spell to do the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do?

[]

Cause, I think maybe Fjord hates me now.

[]

Please, I know you’re busy, but can you help just a little?

[]

Please?

Cart rides are usually the best time for praying since there’s nothing better to do, but maybe her heart just isn’t in it today. She’ll try harder tomorrow.

---

The delivery to Zadash goes off without a hitch. Their contact is all smiles, pays them well, tells them the Gentleman is out of town on business and not to bother enquiring at the Evening Nip.

“I don’t think he was being entirely truthful,” Caduceus murmurs as soon as the man strolls around the corner. Jester’s not always first to notice these things but that much wasn’t hard to guess.

“Oh, well, maybe the Gentleman will be back next time we’re in town…”

Does she even want to see a father who doesn’t want to see her?

If the answer is yes, does that make her just a little bit sad?

Better not to think too much about it.

It’s Yasha who suggests the bathhouse, of all people. Jester doesn’t really want to go. It was Molly’s favourite place, and it doesn’t feel right to go without him. But if Yasha suggested it, it’s probably fine. She was his most special friend, so she gets to choose how they remember him. That’s just how these things are. She tells herself this, but her stomach is still all twisted up in knots as they enter the elegant building.

Nott pays for all of them, which is ironic at best considering they all know full well she won’t set foot in the water. She’s been paying for a lot of things recently. Says she needs to make it up to them for getting them all stuck in Xhorhas so long in service of rescuing Yeza, and after a while it seemed fruitless to keep protesting.

Jester reminds herself to slip a few gold into Nott’s pouch after dinner. It’s her turn today.

They get a private room, same as the last time, and everything really does seem fine, right up until the moment that clothes start coming off. They’ve all seen each other naked enough at this point that the awkwardness of their first visit feels silly in hindsight. But Jester happens to look Fjord’s way just as she steps out of her skirt, and he freezes, face hardening behind the shirt pulled halfway up around his shoulders.

“…I think I might go back to the Leaky Tap. Not feeling well,” Fjord says finally, pulling the shirt back down. Jester hugs her arms closer to her bare chest.

Say it.

Oh no! Well, whatever you want, Fjord!

Just say it.

I hope you feel better soon!

How long can she keep the group from realizing it’s only her he doesn’t want to be around anymore? Not much longer, if she doesn’t open her mouth and-

Whatever she was going to say is drowned out by a resounding splash and the wave of water cascading over her bare feet.

Jester blinks at the afterimage of a blur of green and grey plowing into Fjord’s legs and sending him tumbling back into the center of the pool.

“Revenge, motherfucker!” crows a fully clothed Nott as she rolls into a half-crouch by the edge of the water, teeth bared in a victorious grin. Fjord comes back up sputtering, his soaked shirt hanging off one shoulder. He pushes the mop of black hair off his forehead, glaring at Nott, and then from the opposite end of the pool a low, dark chuckle begins to echo. All heads turn to look at Yasha, who lounges at the back with her arms spread wide along the tile edge. The faintest of smiles ghosts over her lips.

Jester hasn’t seen her face light up in a very long time. Ever, maybe. Certainly not since before Xhorhas. Her own smile comes a little easier after that.

If Fjord meant to protest more about feeling unwell, the impact of the water seems to have knocked the notion right out of him, and soon enough everyone is in the bath. Even Nott sits crosslegged by Caleb’s head, blowing bubbles through the neck of a brass flute she pilfered from some poor student in the Tri-Spire. Fjord is still keeping his distance, but at least he isn’t actively running away. That’s a good sign, right?

And there are some benefits to sitting on opposite ends of the pool. For one, she’s got a perfect view of what little remains above the rippling water.

He’s still wearing the shirt he was tossed in with, and his pants too. It can’t be super comfortable, but something about seeing that white linen almost transparent in the clear water, clinging to the hollow of collarbones and the divot of shoulders is mesmerizing. Goosepimples rise along the dip of her neck as a cool breeze drifts in from the hallway and she’s staring but she can’t help herself. It’s so hard not to fall back into daydreams, even if the reality is so much farther away than it was two days ago. A hand on her waist, the other wetting her hairline as it draws along her neck, and how nice it would be to return the kiss she didn’t get to feel the first time, to press her lips into the place where the fabric ends and the skin begins, to-

“Time to go, Jester.” Caleb’s hand comes down gently onto the water near her head, and little droplets of spray land on her cheek. She blinks and realizes the pool is nearly empty. The only people left are her and Fjord, who Beau is currently trying to drag out with a slightly less gentle approach.

“Oh, right, ok,” she says, and taking Caleb’s offered hand she clambers up the side. Behind her, Fjord insists he just wants one more minute.

‘Not feeling well’, huh?

Outside the safety of the steaming water, the air is impossibly cold, and Jester pulls her clothes back on as quickly as possible.

---

Somehow they manage to go a week in Zadash without the whole thing ever coming to a head. Sure, they share the same inn and the same meals and the same trips to the launderer’s but it turns out it’s very, very easy to avoid someone in a city. Or to be avoided, more precisely. Everywhere Jester is, is somewhere Fjord is not. That much is painfully clear to even the most unobservant in the party, and the looks get more frequent and more concerned. Eventually, Jester gives up on trying to corner him because what’s the point? The spell that she so masterfully screwed up isn’t wearing off, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

In the end, she spends the week shadowing the Halls of Erudition, searching for an in. She doesn’t take Nott with her because Nott would tell Caleb and Caleb would be upset, she thinks. Tell her it’s too dangerous. Well, it probably is, but she’s lost the Traveller’s favour along with Fjord’s friendship and that’s at least one thing she can work on. How better to prove her devotion than to paint his name across their worst enemy’s doorstep? And really, Oremid Hass can go fuck himself and his shiny school. He doesn’t deserve it, not after what the Academy did to her friend.

Getting in is easy-peasy. One quick Disguise Self and she’s a professor rushing back through the gates for a forgotten scroll, secure in the knowledge the actual professor is headed for the Pentamarket. The guards don’t even question her, just let her pass by, safe behind her waspish mask of feigned worry. She’d thought there would be better security, considering the remnants of rubble that still dot the base of the refurbished spire.

---

The getting back out? Not quite so easy.

There are five sets of footsteps dogging her own, and her hands pressing pink and emerald and maroon handprints into the fabric of the haversack as she hastily shoves the paints into the opening. Two doors to her right and left swing open and a wave of dispelling energy washes over her like a warm breeze. The black robes dusting her feet shimmer and shorten and fold into blue pleats and she’s running faster than she’s run in her life.

In her panic, she almost forgets not to expect the Traveller’s voice when she calls out to him, and that’s a few more precious seconds gone. She ducks down a winding corridor and throws another message to the wind.

Nott, I did something really stupid, and now I’m trapped in the Halls of Erudition and I haven’t got many spells left please come help-

For a second, there’s nothing but silence and the sound of Jester’s heavy breathing, and empty walls on all sides. She throws herself into the shadow of a curtained alcove just in time to hear the reply.

We’re coming for you, Jester! Just hang on!

And she’s hanging onto it, that last thought, when the hands reach through the fabric and pull her back into the light, and her bones lock in place, and she can’t move her mouth to scream.

---

Jester’s cell has no windows.

The stone beneath her skirt is slick with the condensation that drips from the low ceiling, and she sketches little animals in the pitted surface of the floor with her finger: a menagerie of familiar faces. She used to draw on her walls when she was younger, filling the empty space with forests of strange creatures, every single one with its own name and history. Then her mama gave her that first set of paints and papers, and she filled books with her imaginary friends instead.

She thinks she was unconscious when they brought her in here. That archmage knocked her out with a snap of his fingers, and now she’s in a cell. She doesn’t know where.

The mage didn’t ask any questions about Caleb. He thought she was just a common hoodlum, looking for kicks or credibility for having broken into such a prestigious school. She made sure he thought that. See, Beau? She is really, very good at lying.

“You definitely are, Jester,” she whispers to herself in a deeper tone, and adds the curl of a ribbon to the lion’s topknot before wiping the drawing away and starting another.

Given enough time, she could probably carve a stone out of the wall. Make her own little window into what lies beyond this little room. She’s done it before. She’ll do it again, if she has to. But she’s too tired tonight.

The faint runes inscribed into the metal around her wrists are cool to her cheek as she lays her head on her hands. No magic, no messages while these things are on. At least they didn’t gag her. She’s not sure she could bear that, not with the taste of Lorenzo’s iron bit still curdling in her mouth each time she lets herself think too long about chains.

Traveller?

[]

If he didn’t come to her rescue then, why would he come now? This isn’t nearly as bad as that time. At least now it’s only her she has to worry about, not Yasha’s ragged breathing from the adjacent cell or Fjord’s nervous groaning at her side.

And somebody will come check on her eventually. They have to. This is civilized society.

Probably.

She really doesn’t know where she is.

Another drawing. Caleb takes up two whole stones, and by the time she’s finished the soft sweep of his tail the feline points of his ears have all but faded back into the grey. She starts again, lets her eyes slip closed, welcomes the darkness.

In her dreams, the drawing comes alive. Claws grip the mortar by her cheek and scramble their way out of the stone, and then there’s a cat sitting in front of her. It mews softly, insistently. Wake up, Jester. Wake up. The cat’s yellow eyes blink, and she blinks back. When she reaches her fingers out to pet the creature, the shape is right but the hair feels all wrong – wiry and tangled instead of thick and soft.

What was-

“Jester, wakeupwakeupwakeUP!”

Jester opens her eyes, and the yellow eyes squeeze shut in relief.

“Nott? You came?”

“Promised, didn’t I?”

Nott starts to work on her handcuffs with a lockpick and Jester lays there, staring past her shoulder and watching the flick of a speckled tail bounce in and out through the slit beneath the cell door. That means Caleb’s not far away, and the others too. They’re here, sticking their necks out to fix her screw up. Nott is risking capture and probably execution to rescue her from a cell of her own making.

It feels so good to be loved. It hurts so much.

---

“That was reckless, even for you.”

Jester tucks her hands beneath her thighs, hiding them under her nightgown. Her feet don’t dangle from the bed, but it’s a near thing. She watches Beau pace as she unwraps the blue linen from around her wrists in long, winding circles.

“I don’t want to tell you what to do-”

Please tell me what to do, Beau, I don’t know what to do .

“-but could you leave off the sacrilege for a while? For the rest of this trip, at least.”

“Are you mad at me, Beau?” Beau always says things honestly, and she wants to hear it, even if it hurts to know the answer. Better to know than to wait in silence. That way, she can start fixing things, somehow.

Beau stops pacing and flops down onto her back by Jester on the bed. “I’m… worried about you, Jessie.”

Jester laughs. “I’m fine, Beau.”

“You’re not. You’ve been acting very not fine since we left Alfield.” She catches Jester’s eye. “Fjord too.”

Oh. So that secret is out. If Beau caught on, then the rest are sure to follow. Her heart is starting to beat too fast again.

“I saw you two. That night? You were alone in that tent for, like, twenty minutes before Fjord came out. Did something happen?”

“We were talking,” Jester says weakly. “Just talking.”

“Mhm,” Beau says. “Sure.”

And they were just talking, only she’d been talking to the Traveller too, and he’d told her what to say and what to do and how to do it, and every word was perfect but she still messed it up somehow, how was that even possible-

“Look. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But talk to someone. Tell Nott. Hell, drag Caduceus out for a stroll, he lives to stick his nose in other people’s drama.” Beau puts her hands behind her head and stares up at the ceiling. “Or, you know. I’m still here, Jester. Whenever you need me. I’m here.”

“Ok,” Jester says. Her voice sounds small, far off. “Thanks, Beau.”

“Anytime.”

Beau eventually curls onto her side and Jester follows suit, and when Beau puts her hand out, palm up, Jester threads their fingers together without a second thought. This is something she was offered. This is something she’s allowed to take. She’s starting to suspect all of this is punishment for not making the distinction sooner.

---

They spend their last night in Zadash in the Silken Terrace, because they can. Breakfasts and baths and soft beds, all in the course of a week. It should be the best week of Jester’s life. It really, really isn’t.

There are only four rooms left at the inn, but that’s par for the course. The usual roommate assignments split off, but so does Yasha for the evening, and suddenly they have a one room surplus. Caduceus offers to take it to give Fjord a little more space from their usual cramped arrangement, and Jester is stupidly grateful because she didn’t want Beau to jump at the chance and force her to admit she’d really rather not be alone tonight.

It’s late by the time they get checked in and finish dinner and Jester nearly forgets to run and check the mail for anything from the Ruby. To her delight, a little package is waiting. Crinoline and silk wrap another vial of purple ink and an embroidered sash that matches the silver in the tips of her horns. Smiling genuinely for the first time in days, she bounces back to the table. Caduceus is the only one left, still sipping on the dregs of his tea.

“Oh,” he calls out to her. “Beau wanted me to tell you that you two are in room 3 now, up in the terrace. Something about another guest getting sick and leaving early.”

“Ok! Thanks for letting me know,” That’s fine, Beau had the key anyway. She bids Caduceus goodnight with a soft kiss on his cheek and runs up to the third floor, darting around a pair of escorts as they make their way back down to the lobby.

Room 3, Room 3… the door is on the left side of the hall, and when Jester turns the handle it swings open easily. “I’m coming in, Beau, turn around if you’re naked-”

The door closes behind her with a click, and she finds herself face to face with a familiar half-orc who looks at her like an apparition of death itself.

“Um,” he says. Jester flushes. He’s got his leathers off, and all that’s left is his white undershirt and dark trousers, and he’s halfway through unlacing his boots, and the sheets are silken and expensive and the furniture refined and the carpet lush beneath her leather soles.

She indulges herself in a wave of self-pity. Isn’t this how it was supposed to end? Fjord would lay her down on a bed like this, hike her skirts up and kiss her senseless against the pillows, and there would be only one name on her lips and it would be his, before it’s swallowed again in the press of his mouth. That’s what she was promised. The books said she could have it. The Traveller said she could have it. She’d spied her mother having it twice daily through the hole in the curtains. Isn’t she deserving of love?

Fjord just sits there, watching her warily. Jester opens and closes her mouth like a fish, flailing for what to say. I’m sorry, Beau’s playing a silly prank, haha, I’m going to go now… And then she’s stuck heading back to her room and avoiding Beau’s pointed questions for the rest of the night.

No.

She’s not going to leave it like this.

“Fjord,” she says, and takes a step forward. He’s still watching her. That’s good. She takes another step and sits down on the bed beside him. The mattress shifts as he inches a little farther from her. Not quite as good, but he’s not running away. “Why are you mad at me?”

It’s better to know. It’s always better to know.

He chuckles, a low, derisive sound, and it stings till she looks at his face and sees that he’s got his chin buried in his hands, fingers pressing against the place where his tusks are just barely starting to grow in, and he doesn’t look angry. He just looks sad .

“Jester, I’m not… I’m not mad at you. I know I’ve been snappish, and that’s not fair to you, but… I’m not mad. I promise.”

“Then why? Why don’t you like me anymore, Fjord?”

Fjord shudders, pressing his face deeper into his hands. The sharp edge of his tusk starts to dig dangerously deep into the skin of his thumb, and a small prick of red blossoms at the point. “That’s not… the issue, Jester.”

“Then why,” and she reaches out to his hand, to try and get him to stop pressing so hard just for a second, but he pulls away just as quickly.

“ Don’t ,” he growls, but she’s quicker than him and she manages to wrench the hand away and in return he grabs her wrist and shoves her back onto the mattress and then he’s over her, and it’s nothing at all like the stories, and Jester is suddenly afraid in a way she’s never felt before as Fjord’s eyes grow wild and his hand presses her deeper down into the sheets.

“Fjord?” she whispers, and he shudders and lets go of her wrist before scrambling backwards.

“I’m not… feeling well, Jess,” he mutters. “You need to go.”

“You look pretty healthy to me,” and she’s not stupid, she knows what he meant, and neither of them laugh. Jester pushes herself up until she’s sitting, facing Fjord as he curls back down into the same hunched form.

“… You’re not going to go away, are you?”

“Never,” she says.

Fjord shudders again, forcing his words out through gritted teeth. “You remember that night, back in Felderwyn? That one, fuck, when Nott took us to the river?”

“Yeah,” says Jester. “Of course I do, Fjord.”

“You asked Beau if she was secretly in love with you, and it was a real funny joke. And then you asked Caleb. And that’s the moment when I realized what a fool I’d been.” His laugh is harsh, biting with reproach. “You were telling me all along, weren’t you, that it was a joke? The Oscar thing, and the offers, all of it. And I still-”

Fjord chokes off on the word and Jester doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand-

“I didn’t let myself admit it, not until that night in the tent. Think I was trying to hold off the inevitable. But I- I want you, Jester. I want you like I didn’t know I could ever want anything in my life.”

Jester feels her breath leave her body. Fjord… wants… “Oh,” she says.

Fjord curls his lip over his teeth. “It’s disgusting. ”

A second shockwave of cold ripples through her at the self-recrimination in his words. “Fjord, I don’t understand,” she says, crawling forward. He doesn’t flinch away this time, but he sits very still, and she doesn’t touch him. “You… want me?”

“Yeah, Jester. I do.” He drags each word through shattered glass, and they all cut on the way down. “It’s all I think about. No matter what I’m doing, I can’t stop thinking about it. I see you and it’s like I lose my goddamn mind. Something just… takes over.” He stands abruptly, and Jester nearly tumbles as the mattress shifts without his weight. “I swear, I didn’t mean to.”

“Whatever you’re sorry for, you don’t have to be, Fjord, I-” I love you, she almost says, but does she?

Does she?

She was sure she did.

“You don’t have to be scared, Fjord.” Jester is so, so frightened. She doesn’t know how she didn’t see it sooner. There’s no fury in his eyes, just nauseous, heart-pounding fear and she never wanted him to look at her like this.

“There’s something wrong with me,” he says hollowly, staring into the space between his hands. “I see you and it hurts so much not to… not to touch you, and I need to keep away from you because sometimes I don’t know if I could stop myself.” He shudders. “How did I become this person?”

How did I become this person?

“Must be the orc in me,” he says bitterly, and Jester’s stomach bottoms out because she’s seen him get better about that part of him and to see him blame her magic on his blood is more than she can take. “But I’ll control it. Always have. I won’t be that person to you, Jester. I just… need space.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “And that’s all there is to it.”

Traveller, make it stop. Traveller, take it off him. Whatever I did, put it back, I can’t be the reason he feels like this.

“So,” he says, spreading his hands. “Now you know.”

With every second she stays silent, desperately praying, Fjord’s eyes grow more distant. “I… uh. I’m going to go.” And he makes for the door. But before she can reach out, her vision is eclipsed by a darker, shadowed shape: a verdant hood, a wicked smile.

[Why the tears, my darling?]

Sick relief mingles with the thrum of stop him, save him, call him back and she speaks with her mind and pushes past with her body.

Where have you been?

[I meant to give the two of you privacy. But by the state of things, perhaps I stayed away too long?]

His hand is already on the knob, turning, pushing. Leaving.

Traveller, what do I do? How do I stop this?

[Why the sudden change of heart, Jester? Isn’t he what you wanted? And now he wants you too. There’s no need for any pain. Give yourself to him, and he will love you eternally.]

I don’t want him to want me if I’m making him do it.

[There are few who fall in love without encouragement. Is this any different than the charm of a wink, the lure of a smile and a becoming hemline? Your magic is a part of you, like any other.]

If you won’t help me, then get out of my way.

[Your heart is bound to his now. That is the bargain you made. The line cannot be broken, by you or me.]

No one is coming to save her. Fjord is already past the threshold, and he’s leaving her alone, and he loved her , before she did all this, before the river in Felderwyn, he loved her, and there’s nothing else to do.

I can’t break the line.

But there’s something else I can break.

“Fjord, wait.”

He stills. Jester’s voice drops to a whisper.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

She tells him everything. She tells him the Traveller’s offer, and what she did, and why she did it. Impatience, boredom, lust. Nothing else matters but the look of betrayal in his eyes as she explains what she’s done, how she opened his mind and put something there not his own, how she made the choice for him. She watches as he gaze slides from self-recrimination to disbelief, to a deep-seated hurt that tears years from his sallowed cheeks and leaves him a boy, new and fragile and lost.

“Why?” he asks, like he’s never seen her before.

“Because I could,” she says, and watches as his heart breaks. Something silver and tight loosens around her heart and falls away, and Fjord takes a shuddering gasp as the magic that binds them fades.

And Jester runs.

---

There’s a window, somewhere in the West, that has the stain of sugared fingerprints and tiny palms. The room sits dark and empty, but if you flew high enough, you could catch the edge of little paintings ringing the walls in the midnight gloom, flashes of yellow and orange and aquamarine.

Jester goes there to hide when things become too much, unfolds the vision like silk and wraps herself in the familiar visage of home.

Her feet are dangling over the edge of the bridge when Beau finds her, and she has to blink the shades of green out of her eyes before she can focus on Beau’s brown skin, her blue eyes, her weary look filled with too much understanding.

“So Fjord came to see me,” she says, and she’s looking past Jester towards the stars, her arms propped on the stone railing. “He asked me if I knew.”

Jester keeps silent.

“Asked him, ‘knew what’? And well… guess I know now.”

Jester taps her fingers against the railing.

“He’ll forgive you, you know. He’s upset, but he asked me to come find you. Before you did anything stupid.” And Jester doesn’t miss the way that Beau’s posture is loose but the muscles in her shoulders are tight and primed to lunge.

“Think I already did the stupidest thing possible. It’s ok if you hate me, Beau.”

“Eh, but I don’t want to.” Beau kicks off and jumps up beside Jester so their thighs are brushing, and her body is warm against the night chill. “’Sides, I think I’ll let Fjord make that call.”

“I fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, and slings her arm around her shoulders. “You did. But we’ve all done fucked up things, and you came clean. That’s more than most of us do.”

“Fjord shouldn’t forgive me.”

“But I think he will anyway. He loves you, Jess.”

Yeah. He did.

“Will you come back?”

“Okay.”

Jester lets Beau take her hand and lead her back through the street and to the Pillow Trove’s painted doors. The common room is empty. Jester wonders if Fjord told anyone else. Somehow, she doubts it. He’s always been one to lick his wounds in secret. She knows this, better than anyone.

Her head falls to the pillow with the exhaustion of wrung out tears, and she’s asleep in minutes.

[You cannot break the line, so you break the heart instead. Clever. That’s my girl.]

…

[Jester?]

…

[Goodnight, my sweet.]

…

Goodnight.

#critical role #critrole fic #critical role fic #jester #jester lavorre #fjorjester #fjord #critical role angst #the traveler

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nicolewrites · 5 years

Text

i’ll follow my heart (all the way home) - pt. i

study for my last exam? nah, take pt 1/3 of found-family mighty nein love that I wrote instead of studying for all my exams in the last two weeks.

Rating: G/G+ Genre: Friendship and Family Characters: The Mighty Nein + friends Words: 4,680

the mighty nein are a mess. but they're a family and they love each other. / kisses of the mighty nein, from a kissing prompt. pt. 1/3

AO3 | FFN

i. goodbye kisses

Caleb watches Yasha closely. The barbarian’s shoulders hunch forwards uncomfortably, but she still stands miles taller than Beau, who hovers awkwardly behind her. None of them have quite known what to say about the whole thing.

Fjord is sitting in almost complete silence beside Caleb with Nott on his other side, but arguably he’s doing the best of the three. Jester is curled in the back of the wagon with her sketchbook and since she started crying this morning she has said almost nothing to any of them.

Yasha’s wail still echoes in Caleb’s ears and he lowers his eyes to the ground. He hates this. This is not at all what he signed up for and now he’s stuck with it. He would be content to stare at the earth forever, but Beau’s startled cry draws his attention. His eyes land quickly on the two women.

Yasha is kneeling and Beau looks taken aback. Caleb watches Yasha lean forward carefully and press a gentle, tender kiss to the coat draped over the grave. Tension bleeds out of Caleb and sadness fills its void. It’s a goodbye to a friend she never saw off.

Yasha will leave–they’ve come to expect it–but this moment at Molly’s grave feels more personal than the usual emotions the barbarian shows around them.

ii. hello kisses

Fjord is watching Nott. The goblin is seated at the bar, drinking heavily from her bottomless flask and Fjord is watching her nervously. Caleb and Beau have been out all day, doing some Empire related thing that they wouldn’t explain fully when Jester asked.

Fjord has been stuck on babysitting duty for the rest of the day. Jester has pouted for most of the day because of Beau’s exclusion, and Caduceus is content to just meditate or chat with locals, but Nott has been getting steadily drunker. It’s not like she can’t take care of herself, but Fjord doesn’t want her halfling disguise to slip.

The tavern door swings open and the two Empire kids trudge in. Beau’s sporting a black eye and Caleb has soot smudged on his cheek but they’re both smiling, something rare when it appears on Caleb’s face. Nott springs up when she sees them and runs as well as she can across the bar.

She ends up with her arms wrapped around Caleb’s lower half and she presses an awkward kiss to his arm where she traps it against his side. Caleb’s grin falters for a moment before he pats the goblin’s head. Fjord relaxes.

iii. breathless kisses

Jester has the key. Her chest is burning. Her eyes are burning. Her mind is racing and her lips part in a desperate attempt for air and she’s not rewarded. Nott is jerking at the trap door at the top of the chamber, but Jester has the key.

She’s going to die, and they’re all going to die.

Jester’s lungs burn and she sends a quick, graceless prayer to the Traveler. Her eyes are about to flutter shut when the water ripples ahead of her. There’s a cool pressure on her lips and then, gloriously, AIR.

Her eyes flash open and she can barely make out through the gloom that Fjord has desperately pressed his lips to her and he has given her his air. It’s awkward and his hands are gripping her face with too much desperation.

He pulls back and though Jester can feel the familiar burn of air in her chest, she can see that Fjord has given her all of his air. Her heart twists sickeningly.

iv. heated kisses

Beau has never felt quite as terrified as she did in that moment. Adrenaline is still rushing through her veins and she can feel her heart pounding. Blood rushes through her ears and she storms forwards.

She parts Caleb and Nott easily and the wizard stumbles at the force of her shove. Yasha watches her approach silently and steps aside, not even getting in the way. Fjord and Caduceus’s attention is not directed at her.

Fjord is kneeling beside Jester, watching as Caduceus murmurs a few incantations and Jester’s abdomen glows with healing magic.

“You’re so stupid!” Beau growls out, throwing herself to her knees. She wraps Jester in her arms without saying another word and presses a firm kiss to the tired tiefling’s brow.

Jester twists to look up at the furious monk. She lifts a blue finger and dabs it against the cut on Beau’s cheek carefully. Beau feels Jester’s familiar magical warmth and she scowls. “Heal yourself, not me.” She kisses Jester’s horn this time and just holds her friend.

v. first kisses

Caduceus is meditating when Jester sits down next to him. At first, he does not acknowledge her presence, but she starts to fiddle so he turns towards her carefully. She’s tugging on a blue curl with one hand and the other is rubbing at the symbol of her patron.

He says nothing, simply waits for her to talk. She pauses for a moment and looks to contemplate leaving before she lets out a long, shuddering sigh.

“He’s with Avantika. I haven’t talked to him about anything.”

Caduceus puts on a sympathetic smile. Jester is sweet and he hates to see her so sad. Even when discussing this subject usually, she’s fired with jealousy, but now she just looks defeated. Caduceus takes Jester’s hand. She looks at him and his smile widens a little. He brings it up and kisses it carefully.

Kissing is a slightly foreign form of affection for him still, but he has seen the comfort it can give to people. A familiar smile splits across Jester’s face and she squeezes his hand in return.

“I’ll talk to him soon,” she promises.

vi. post-sex kisses

Keg’s stubble brushes Beau’s collarbone. The monk rotates her head to look at her bedmate. They’ve both shed their clothes and sweat is making them stick together awkwardly.

The dwarf is staring at Beau and they make eye contact. Keg’s hand tugs Beau’s jaw down and the monk’s neck is craned at an awkward angle as their lips brush together lightly.

“Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll never leave,” Keg whispers.

Beau tightens her arm around the fighter’s waist and says nothing.

vii. morning kisses

Yasha picks awkwardly at her food. She has always been a morning person and has always known that Molly isn’t one. She hadn’t realized quite how much the rest of the Might Nein like sleeping though until it was just her and Nott sitting at a table in the tavern just after sunrise.

Nott hasn’t said much, as is typical, and Yasha makes no attempt to get her to talk. Caleb is the next to descend the stairs, looking haggard with the dark circles under his eyes. He sits between Yasha and Nott and the barmaid flutters by, asking if they needed anything. None of them say a word and the girl backs away, a little alarmed looking.

Caleb brings out a book he’d bought in town and flips through it with Nott leaning in to observe some of the magic enchantments as well. The stairs creak and Yasha glances up to see Molly finally gracing them with his presence. He basically dances over to the table.

Taking advantage of the fact that he’s taller than Yasha when she’s sitting, he leans over and kisses the direct top of her head. Yasha smiles and watches as he does the exact same to Caleb and then to Nott who both stiffen awkwardly. Molly sinks into his seat and beams.

viii. reluctant kisses

Avantika’s hand is cold and rough from years of work. Her eyes bear into his and she waits patiently for his reaction. Fjord swallows stiffly. Caleb’s words echo in his head and his dreams make his stomach swirl.

He stands, walking around the desk, and stands next to her. Avantika rises so that she’s a little closer to level with him, but doesn’t drop his hand.

Feeling a little ill, Fjord leans in. For the Nein, he thinks desperately and Avantika surges up to meet him, their lips crashing together.

ix. festive kisses

Jester doesn’t drink at the bar. Instead, she and Nott dance and tease and try to distract the competition. In the end, Caleb doesn’t need the assist as his opponent passes out face-down on the floor.

She busies herself with the drunken antics of Beau and Molly and Caleb while Fjord drinks so she doesn’t have to watch him, but gives Nott the support the little goblin needs to win her round of the drinking contest. There’s laughter and cheering and Jester’s stomach warms.

It feels like a festival, even though it’s just a drinking competition. Beau and Molly try to headbutt as a celebration, but Beau bangs her head on Molly’s horns and the two crack up. Even Fjord laughs at the display.

She drags Caleb onto the dance floor and they clumsily waltz for a few steps and Jester giggles uncontrollably.

“You were always a better dancer than me, Astrid,” he mumbles awkwardly.

The music in the tavern is loud and everyone is still celebrating. Jester goes up on her tiptoes and kisses Caleb’s cheek. “Let’s get you to bed, Stinky Man.”

x. comforting kisses

Beau awakes to Jester shaking on the bed across the room, convulsing in her sleep. Beau swears and jumps to her feet. She crosses the room and lays a hand on the cleric’s shoulder. Jester shoots up, eyes blown wide and tears staining her cheeks.

Her eyes are wild in a way that Beau knows exactly what Jester had been dreaming about. She doesn’t even hesitate. She pulls away and sprints for Fjord’s room. She pulls the half-orc almost out of bed before he awakes. He blinks at her blearily, confused and a little upset.

“Jester,” Beau hisses at him.

Fjord is then fully awake and leads the charge back to Beau and Jester’s room. He rushes to her and holds the trembling tiefling against his chest, kissing the top of her head and cradling her carefully.

Beau pauses in the doorway. The intimacy between the two is deep and she doesn’t dare interfere. It is a space that the two, and Yasha, can fill, but Beau will guard her friends till she dies.

xi. ‘i thought i’d lost you’ kisses

Nott fires off her last bolt and turns her back on the beast, not waiting to see if her hit connected. She rushes to Caleb’s side and struggles to roll him over. His face is streaked with soot from his magic and there’s blood in his hair from a nasty gash on his forehead.

Jester kneels next to them just moments later and mutters an incantation. Light shimmers over Caleb’s wounds and his eyes shoot open. The blues of his irises are crisp, but unfocused and in pain. The wizard gasps and the tension in Nott’s stomach fades.

She squeezes Caleb tight and presses a few furious kisses to his face and cheeks. “I thought you were dead.”

The monster roars and the three tense uncomfortably. This isn’t over yet.

xii. ‘we can’t do this’ kisses

Fjord is staring at his hands where they are placed flatly on his knees. His friends surround him in a loose circle. They’re sitting on boxes and barrels and Jester has claimed the only stool in the small alcove on the ship.

“She will kill us all,” Nott growls.

Caleb and Yasha nod their agreement and Fjord flinches. He has always known this. She’s not exactly sane after all.

“Fjord?” Caduceus sounds concerned. “You understand, right?”

“Of course,” he says sharply. “We can’t do this. We need to go or she’ll kill all of us.”

They’re all watching him, and Fjord waits for the subject to drop. He hopes he’s masking his panic well enough, but when Beau shifts, he knows she’s seen through him.

“But?” she inquires.

Fjord’s defences crack just a little. “She knows about Vandren. I need to know what happened to him.”

“Okay,” Jester answers meekly. “And then we go.”

Fjord nods. He feels as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “And then we go,” he affirms.

He holds an arm out and Beau ducks under it, dragging Yasha with her and it spreads around the circle, uniting the Mighty Nein. Fjord kisses the side of Jester’s head because she’s the closest, but he knows the group knows the affection is for all of them.

xiii. ‘come to bed’ kisses

Yasha is watching the clouds darken when Beau finds her. Something heavy twists in her stomach and she knows Yasha will likely be gone when the group awakes in the morning.

“Hey,” she starts awkwardly.

The barbarian turns a little, looking a tiny bit surprised. “Hi.”

Beau wets her lip and shuffles her feet. “Are you leaving?”

Yasha doesn’t reply and Beau steps a little closer. It’s a cool evening and Beau mildly regrets her aversion to sleeves. Yasha’s eyes drift back to the horizon and the heaviness persists in Beau’s stomach.

Without thinking too hard, Beau leans up and kisses Yasha’s cheek as lightly as she can. “We’ve got a room and everything paid for, so you should come inside soon. If you leave though, stay safe.”

She doesn’t wait for a reaction before heading back into the small rural tavern they’re staying at for the night.

xiv. ‘you look beautiful’ kisses

Caleb knows that Jester lives to make everyone uncomfortable. Lately, though, she’s taken a particular interest in making Fjord flush as dark as he can. They’re several hours deep into a market trip and Caleb is starting to regret tagging along with Jester and Fjord instead of going with Beau and Nott.

She doesn’t really need any new dresses, but she wanted them and nobody can say no to Jester when she gets an idea in her head. This has led to Fjord and Caleb waiting patiently while Jester tries on a dozen dresses and asks for their opinion on every single one of them.

Her most recent choice is almost the same green as the skin on the upper half of Fjord’s head and it’s paired with a yellow sash around the middle. Jester’s blue skin glows against the bright fabric and she looks very pretty. Caleb looks back at the book he’s been perusing and flips another page.

“Well?” Jester asks expectantly.

Fjord coughs and a quick glance at the half-orc tells Caleb that he likes the dress and that he thinks Jester looks great if the dark flush on his cheeks is any indication. Caleb looks back at his book and Jester giggles.

“He thinks it’s great and that you look beautiful,” he finally says when it seems truly like Fjord has swallowed his tongue.

Jester laughs again and Caleb glances up at her. She blows both men a kiss and waltzes back into the change room teasingly.

xv. ‘i’ll be right back’ kisses

The woman on the other side of the bar is starting to unnerve them. Nott keeps her hands clenched around her concealed dagger as she narrows her eyes at the elf staring at them.

“What’s her deal?” she hisses sharply.

Beau is also studying the woman across the bar. “Not sure, but I’m going to find out. Be right back.” Beau drops a brief kiss on Nott’s head and is up and heading across the bar before Fjord can grab her and make her stay put. Nott knows that Fjord really doesn’t want another bar fight.

Beau doesn’t break stride as she slides into the booth across from the elven woman. There’s some kind of intense staring contest before there are a few sharp words exchanged. Nott can’t hear anything, but she doesn’t miss the way Beau’s spine goes rigid.

After a second, they both stand and walk over to the table. The elven woman takes in their group before giving Beau another skimming look. Beau has a tiny smirk on her face.

“I’m borrowing your friend here,” the elf says without hesitation and grabs Beau by the arm, dragging her towards the stairs towards the second floor.

Caleb and Jester both laugh and Fjord rubs his face. Nott just blinks in surprise.

Caduceus’s brow wrinkles in mild confusion. “I thought Beau said she’d be right back.”

“Not going to see her until morning,” Jester howls through her laughter.

xvi. ‘i missed you’ kisses

“Yasha!”

Jester’s voice is loud and it carries over the tavern’s raucous noise. Beau stiffens and looks up. The barbarian is standing awkwardly in the entrance and Jester has her arms wrapped tightly around the barbarian’s middle. Nott jumps up and races over to join the hug. Beau laughs to herself before picking through the crowd to reach the other ladies of the Mighty Nein.

The hug wraps up right as she arrives and Jester grabs Nott, pulling her onto the dance floor after flashing one last grin at Yasha. Yasha has a small smile on her face when Beau finally reaches her.

“Hey,” she greets.

Yasha blinks down at her. Contemplation skims across her face before she leans down. Beau goes completely rigid as Yasha’s lips press tentatively to the top of her head.

“I missed you guys,” Yasha says. Beau melts.

xvii. angry kisses

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Nott is mad at him. She crosses her arms angrily every time he steps near her and turns her head away when he tries to talk to her. She’s been mad at him before, but Nott’s anger is usually fickle and fades quickly.

This time, it’s been three days.

Caleb sits quietly by the fire and stares into the dancing flames. Something itches in the back of his mind as he stares at the fire and it hurts. He remembers pain and anguish and desperation. He rubs his temples and sighs deeply. The others are still asleep or, in Beau’s case, out gathering more firewood while he keeps watch.

There’s a short cough and Caleb glances up. Nott’s arms are folded and she looks mad.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

He waves a hand at the fire dismissively. Nott scowls and grabs his arm, tugging him up. She spins him around and walks him towards the hut.

“You hate fire,” she reminds sharply. When they get to the entrance to the hut, Nott tugs his arm down and presses a short kiss to his cheek. “I’m still mad at you for trying to die,” she says sharply before spinning and walking off.

xviii. sad kisses

Jester tucks her knees into her chest and lets her chin rest atop them. She reaches over the edge and lets her fingers trail above the water. She thinks about trying to send another message to her mother, but she decides to save her spells. The ocean is dangerous and who knows when she might need them.

“Jester?”

She stiffens and looks up sharply. Fjord is standing above her, figure tall and imposing, and he looks concerned.

“Are you alright?”

She shrugs in response. “Fine, yes, fine.”

He laughs shortly and drops to the deck beside her. “I’m sorry we had to leave so soon. I know how much you care for your mother.”

Jester feels her shoulders cave in a little. “Yeah,” she mumbles softly. “But, you know, Fjord, I care about you guys too and that’s why I’m here.”

The wood creaks and Fjord lowers his tall form to the ground next to her awkwardly. He doesn’t say anything, just offering a supporting presence. Jester sniffles and leans into him half-heartedly. She tries to push away her sobs, but they spill over. Fjord doesn’t leave, he just slides an arm up to pat at her back gently.

After a long moment, Jester exhales and sniffs. She twists her face towards Fjord and presses a soft kiss to his cheek.

“Thanks,” she says softly.

xix. in the dark kisses

Beau swears heavily. They had been doing fine, scrounging in the old shop, but now it’s completely pitch black. The window above that had been providing the light had slammed shut and Jester, Caleb, and Beau had been plunged into darkness.

Beau steps forwards, her hands out, and immediately trips. She curses the darkness as she tumbles, crashing into some other form which swears in Zemnian as she takes him down with her. She lands half on top of him, the momentum carrying her lips straight to the corner of his mouth, almost kissing him.

Beau rolls off him immediately and clambers to her feet, wiping her mouth. The window above slams open and Caduceus’s head peeks in the opening, a sheepish expression on his face. Caleb looks mostly confused and also a little disgusted at what has just occurred.

“We’re never discussing that,” Beau declares. Caleb nods shortly and everything is fine until Jester lets out a loud, rambunctious laugh and Beau curses the Traveler and the dark vision that tieflings have.

xx. dying kisses

The seawater stings his eyes. His chest burns as he swings his gaze through the water. He spots Nott, Beau, and Caleb struggling up near the trapdoor. Caduceus and Avantika are off to his left, swimming upwards desperately, but Caduceus is clutching at his chest.

And Jester is a couple feet below him, her violet eyes wide in panic. Something cold clamps over Fjord’s heart as he sees bubbles escape her lips. Her eyes flutter and Fjord turns to swim towards her.

She has the key, he knows, but that’s not his only motivation. He grabs for her face, tugging the barely conscious tiefling to him and pressing their lips firmly together. Fjord blows his air into her lungs and Jester seizes against him, eyes shooting open.

With no air left in his chest, their lips part and Fjord feels water rush into its place. Not even Uka’toa will be saving him from this one. As his vision darkens around the edges, Fjord watches as Beau reaches for Jester, dragging the cleric upwards.

xxi. interrupting kisses

Caleb twists the orb furiously in his hands. It has a very distinct arcane signature, something he’s never seen before, even through all of his time spent serving Ikathon. The way the gears and levers and rings all spin are enticing. If someone had wanted to kill him, all they would have to do is hand him the orb, get him sufficiently invested, and then strike him down.

It’s a momentary thought that flickers through his brain, but he glances up at the gnome who had been carrying the orb. Her hair is a wild nest, but her eyes are bright and happy as she tickles Frumpkin, playing with the cat like a child.

He glances down, losing himself in the puzzle of the orb. He is a curious man and despite the chaos of the ocean floor, he’s been craving an old-fashioned puzzle since he cracked Avantika’s journal. One of the rings twists beneath his fingertips and he guides it, following it with his eyes intently.

There’s a scuffle of tiny feet in front of him before a gentle kiss presses against his cheek. Caleb freezes.

Twiggy laughs. “You’re funny, Mr. Wizard. And your cat is very cute.”

xxii. clumsy kisses

Fjord knocks back another shot. The tavern is alive with music, but Fjord’s shoulders are hunched as he tries to blend in at the bar. It doesn’t seem to be working as the trio of young women down from him keep giggling and glancing his way. He wishes Molly were here; the tiefling certainly had a way of drawing the attention away from the other members of the Mighty Nein.

He almost stands up and leaves, before someone bumps straight into him and basically falls, completely wasted, onto the stool next to him. Fjord tenses and, out of reflex, nearly summons his sword. He forces the instinct away and realizes he has simply been joined by a very drunk Beau.

The monk’s hair is almost completely free of her usual topknot and she gives Fjord a half-smirk through her drunkenness. “You’re Mr. Popular over here, aren’t you?”

Fjord narrows his eyes, unamused at Beau’s teasing. Beau rolls her eyes and pulls the rest of her hair down, looking a bit more like the noble girl she was raised to be. She laughs loudly, and fakely at something Fjord definitely didn’t say. She leans in and tries to kiss him on the cheek, but she’s drunk and clumsy enough that it lands closer to his ear.

She pulls back and Fjord glances by her to his admirers. The girls have all looked away, apparently disappointed.

Beau fakes a gag and lurches on her stool as she leans away from him. “That was so Jester didn’t explode of jealousy and I am never, ever doing that again.”

xxiii. desperate kisses

The first time that Caduceus really goes down in battle is a terrifying moment. Jester knows that the Traveler has blessed her as a healer, but its nothing compared to the help that Caduceus can supply to their friends.

She dashes to the fallen Firbolg, forgetting the skeleton she had previously been engaged in. She heaves his upper body up so he’s leaning against her and she hurriedly casts Cure Wounds, pressing her hands to his chest. The blue light of the Traveler crawls across his wounds, but he doesn’t awaken.

“Up! Get him up!” Beau yells from nearby.

Jester swallows and sends a quick prayer to the Traveler. She kisses Caduceus’s brow and casts Cure Wounds again, with a bit more power, and this time, he stirs. She nearly crumples in relief and she kisses him one last time.

“Oh please don’t ever go down again, I’m not doing this again,” she murmurs.

xxiv. accidental kisses

Molly had a habit of getting right up in people’s faces when he was talking to them. Especially when he had snuck up on them to try and distract them from casting a ritual spell. Still, Caleb had jolted, thanks to a lack of foresight and perception, when the tiefling had suddenly interrupted him.

The spell fizzled at his fingers and the arcane runes he’d etched into the ground lost their glow. His components were wasted and now he had to start again. Caleb scowled and turned quickly to face Molly, only to bang his head on one of the tiefling’s horns.

Caleb lurched back, but Molly surged forwards to stop the wizard from crashing to the ground and somehow Molly’s lips found themselves planted right against Caleb’s nose. After setting the wizard back on his feet, Molly stepped back, smirked, and walked away.

Caleb frowned.

xxv. distracting kisses

The man in the dark coat has been following them. Yasha noticed him a couple minutes ago, and from the way that Beau’s shoulders have been tightening with tension, she knows the monk has noticed the man as well.

Still, the pair peruses Zadash’s market and tries to ignore the presence. None of the bystanders in the market seem to notice their tail, but Yasha lets her guard stay up. They finally find the stall with the components that Caleb had requested. Beau starts haggling the shopkeeper for better prices and Yasha scans the crowd. The man is openly staring at her now, watching from the middle of the marketplace.

Yasha folds her arms and frowns. “Beau,” she says quietly. “We need to go.”

Beau doesn’t reply and Yasha turns to her. The monk is arguing loudly with the shopkeeper over some incense. Her brow is knit and her arms are thrust out in her frustration. Yasha feels a small smile creep over her lips.

She steps behind Beau, to shield her from the view of the mysterious man and kisses the top of the monk’s head. Beau goes instantly rigid, argument forgotten, and she wheels to face the barbarian, looking surprised.

“We need to go,” Yasha repeats, but doesn’t explain.

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