agender_mess
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(your face in my hands is) everything good i need by mllekurtz (TheKnittingJedi)
Fandoms: Critical Role (Web Series)
04 May 2021
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Summary
The last person Caleb Widogast, Professor of Modern History, expects to find as he walks in a random pub in a foreign city at the end of a long conference is Dr. Essek Thelyss, eminent Latinist and his sort-of intellectual crush.
Things rapidly evolve from there, in rather unexpected ways.
(Written for Essek Week 2021)
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- English
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- 25,884
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- 8/8
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Bookmarked by agender_mess
23 Dec 2025
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"Unfortunately, our progress has stalled out somewhat," Ikithon says, slowly circling the beacon on its stand. Under any other circumstances, that would be the thing that drew Essek's eye.
Instead, his gaze is fixed on the man sitting in a chair at the circle's center. A picture of misery, he is bound hand and foot to the chair with thick iron cuffs. His face is mottled with bruising, his rust colored hair hangs in limp, tangled clumps, and his clothes are torn and burnt. Wide, frightened eyes the color of daylight sky whip frantically back and forth between them.
Essek knows that face. He knows it all too well. Not two months ago, that face kissed him on the forehead and told him that he was still capable of good.
The bottom drops out of Essek's stomach. Please not him.
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After the peace talks at sea, Ikithon approaches Essek with an offer he can't refuse... But dearly wishes he could.
- Language:
- English
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- 27,347
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- 8/8
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Bookmarked by agender_mess
22 Dec 2025
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Deine Gegenwart ist Asche (Your Present is Ashes) by ThreeKoboldsInATrenchcoat for JustNap
Fandoms: Critical Role (Web Series)
13 Sep 2024
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Set before and after the events of Deine Vergangenheit Brennt (Your Past is Burning), from the perspective of Beau and the Mighty Nein.
Essek was taken by Trent Icky-thong, and Caleb insists on interrogating a Volstrucker regarding Essek's whereabouts on his own. Beau is not happy about that.
Excerpt:
This is not an unfamiliar Caleb to her, though. All of the Nein have seen it before. Glimmers of it in battle, at Vergesson—or so she’d been told, in conversations with Lucien. Fleeting glimpses they’ve all seen at one time or another. But Beau has become far more intimately familiar with this side of him than any of the others. This is the Caleb who was bred to be both a protector of and a scourge on the Empire. This is the Caleb who was proud to extinguish the lives of those who would dare to question his country for some misguided sense of the greater good. This is barely even Caleb, to be honest.
This is fucking Bren.
And no one else seems to notice the way their friend is twisting into a warped shadow of himself in real time.
Series
- Part 3 of Whumpril 2024
- Part 2 of Dein Leben ist ein Feuersturm (Your Life is a Firestorm)
Bookmarked by agender_mess
21 Dec 2025
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“You are being gentle with him.”
Essek stills his hand on Frumpkin’s back, arching a questioning eyebrow. Frumpkin looks over his shoulder in indignant protest, but before he can so much as merp, Caleb has scooped him into his lap. The cat’s eyes fall closed with contentment as Caleb takes his face in both hands and rubs his thumbs in firm circles.
“Cats are not so fragile,” he explains. “They like a little bit of-- here.”
And then Caleb reaches out and takes his hand, and Essek is afraid to breathe.
Bookmarked by agender_mess
19 Dec 2025
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Essek uses more high-level dunamancy in battle, and Caleb tries to reverse-engineer it when he can't sleep.
AKA What if we were both wizards and I cast Tether Essence on us to save your life?Bookmarked by agender_mess
19 Dec 2025