Chapter Text
There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.
Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?
There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.
— Mary Oliver, "Moments"
Caleb wakes up twenty-eight minutes before dawn, to the insistent mewling of a cat on his chest.
"Ja, I know, you are hungry," he agrees, diplomatically, not yet opening his eyes. It is early. For once, he feels like he had very pleasant dreams, and he wants to linger in them a little longer.
But Mitzi will not be denied. She only gets louder, and pushes her face into his neck. She hasn't been this pushy about her breakfast in a while. Not since Essek's been staying here in Caleb's home—so far eight days and counting—because he's taken to feeding her in the middle of the night, as soon as he finishes his trance. So, if something happened that made him break that habit—
Ah. Caleb remembers, vividly—something did happen last night. Not a dream. Amazingly, impossibly, not a dream.
His heart beats hard in his chest. Smiling, he imagines the luxury of what he may soon see: Essek still in his bed, reading quietly in the dark; or perusing his bookshelves, running a slender finger along the spine of any tomes he's curious about. Waiting for Caleb to wake so he can ask to pull them off the shelf, like a good guest, even though Caleb has told him already that he's welcome to anything and everything in this house. That it's all his, if he wants it. Last night, it felt like he did.
Caleb opens his eyes.
The other side of the bed is empty. No Essek anywhere in Caleb's bedroom. The sheets are cold to the touch; Essek must have left some time ago. It seems that, for now, Caleb's domestic fantasies will remain only in his head.
He is packing away his disappointment when, unhappy with being ignored, Mitzi resorts to violence. Her paw swats Caleb's cheek, once and then again for good measure.
"Yes, I know. You will die if you aren't fed immediately. One moment, please."
He tucks her against his side, ignoring her protests, needing the comfort of her small body in his arms.
Of course, there is nothing to be done now but get out of bed. If Essek did not feed Mitzi because he had to leave overnight, without warning—well, he will have left regardless of how long Caleb hides in his bedroom. And it is not as though Caleb can blame him; they both knew Essek was taking a risk by staying this long in Rexxentrum. His safety has to come first. Instead of sulking, Caleb might as well get up and check if he did leave. Hopefully he had time to leave a note.
As soon as Caleb pulls the sheets back, Mitzi makes a break for it. That is just the way it is, with her; unlike his familiar Frumpkin, she refuses to ever do what he asks when he asks it. That is okay. She is her own cat.
Quickly, Caleb wraps his house robe around himself to ward off the early morning chill across his bare chest and arms, and at once Mitzi squeezes through the gap in the door, left ajar, and leads him down the steps to the living room, where her food bowl is. She does this every morning, like she's making sure Caleb hasn't forgotten it's there. At this hour, it's dark in the house, with only slivers of moonlight peeking through the gaps in the closed curtains and silhouetting the furniture, but together with Caleb's perfect memory that dim light is enough to navigate the space for now.
When he gets to the bottom step, worn smooth and slightly concave by decades of the previous owners' feet upon the wood, he stops, noticing two things:
One: Mitzi's bowl looks full, and she's not headed toward it, but toward the half-closed door of the kitchen.
Two: there is a faint smell drifting out through the gap—the smell of something burning.
He hurries across the living room to that door, his mind racing. There is no smoke yet. The smell is—just charred food, he thinks, not an active burning, nothing like—
Quickly he pushes open the door into the kitchen, heedless of the loud creak of the hinges, and there's a startled squeak and the clatter of something light and wooden fumbled and dropped to the floor.
And there, in the dark, only faintly discernible by the glow of the fire on the stove—Caleb summons his Dancing Lights to be sure. His chest feels lighter when he sees.
There is Essek. Not gone, after all.
"Caleb." Rattled. He was the source of that high-pitched squeak; the last twenty-four hours have been a marvel of discovering all manner of sounds Caleb never dreamed he'd hear from Essek's lips. He sounds almost accusatory when he asks, "Why are you awake?"
"You are in my kitchen," Caleb observes, stating the obvious, nervous now for a much better reason. "Were you... making breakfast?"
Looking away, Essek smothers the fire lit on the stove with a gesture. Then he flicks his wrist, and a wooden spatula levitates up off the floor and into his waiting hand. That must have been what he dropped when Caleb came in. He sets about rinsing it in a bucket of water set out on a stool for such a purpose, his back to Caleb, not answering.
But Mitzi is less inclined toward silence. Twinning around Caleb's ankles, she starts meowing again, in that persistent way some cats do that makes them sound like they're talking. Not for the first time, Caleb wishes the spell Tongues worked on animals. But even without magic she makes herself understood well enough: she jumps up onto the kitchen table, directing Caleb's attention to the veritable cornucopia of dirty dishes there. Curious, he directs one of his globules of light over. There are eggshells in a bowl; a glass with a thin white film of milk remaining at the bottom; butter on a plate where a dull-pointed knife also sits. Mitzi's paws leave prints in the flour that dusts the table here and there.
On a larger plate, there is a stack of thin and dense-looking... pancakes, he thinks. The one on top is a little burnt. Caleb lifts it up to look at the rest and sees they all fared much the same. The plate is a mass grave.
"You weren't supposed to wake up for a while yet," Essek says, and sighs.
Caleb looks at him again.
This situation seems like a scene out of Caleb's many unwise daydreams, in which Essek is always here and they spend their days talking of everything under the sun, dancing without music by the fire and driving each other up the wall with their most annoying habits. This could be that kind of intimacy, the two of them together before the world is awake, but something about Essek's manner feels wrong. He's tense, like a cornered animal. He won't meet Caleb's eye. And he's fully focused on drying the spatula with a kitchen rag now, which is another clear deflection; usually he's quick to use Prestidigitation to clean whatever he needs to. Any tool or surface. Last night he insisted on using it on the bedsheets—on the sweat‐damp wrinkling made by Caleb's back pressed hard into the bed and the drying stickiness lower down—before he'd allow Caleb to doze off next to him.
An unhappy possibility occurs to Caleb: maybe Essek changed his mind.
He's had a whole night to think things through while Caleb slept. He seemed so certain last night, but there is a whole slew of reasons why he might prefer to remain platonic after all. Essek is a wanted man, and Caleb is neck-deep in a high-profile case against the Assembly. Essek is always on the move, by necessity, and Caleb will not abandon his purpose in the Empire to travel with him. Essek will live quite a few centuries yet, if he's careful, and what time Caleb can give him will pass in the blink of an eye.
Essek sets aside the spatula and rests his palms flat against the counter, head bowed as he exhales heavily. This is it. He must be preparing to tell Caleb. And Caleb needs to nod and say that he understands. Even if it breaks his heart.
Essek says, "I wanted to surprise you when you woke up. But I can't get the batter to rise like it should."
Caleb blinks at him.
"The pancakes," Essek tells him, peevish, gesturing impatiently toward the plate. Caleb is at a loss for words. He's reeling from this sudden reframing of the situation. Essek insists, "They are supposed to rise in the pan, Caleb Widogast. Not lie flat and burn, like those. Look at them! I've wasted two hours, four eggs, a good amount of milk and flour and sugar, and I have nothing to show for it. This is disgraceful."
This is why Essek looked uncomfortable with Caleb's presence here. This is why he was busying himself with the spatula to avoid meeting Caleb's eyes. Caleb should have remembered: Essek hates to be seen to fail at anything. That's what's wrong.
He can't help the overwhelming relief that bubbles out of him.
"Are you laughing at me?!"
"No," Caleb says, but he can't stop, especially when Essek grabs the spatula again and points it at him like a weapon. A little hysterical, Caleb says, "Please, dear, put that down. Don't do anything you'll regret."
"Young man," Essek hisses, clearly not appreciating the levity, advancing on him. Caleb has to brace a hand on the table behind him to support his weak knees. "I am cooking for the first time in eighty years because I wanted to bring you breakfast in bed. I used all my third levels Sending to Yasha in the middle of the night to get instructions. You are acting terribly ungrate—stop that!"
Through a mouthful of dreadfully dry and chalky pancake, Caleb asks, "Stop what?"
"You can't eat those!"
"I just did, though," Caleb points out, grinning. "What are you going to do about it?"
Anything would be fine by Caleb. He's got the rest of the rolled-up pancake in his hand and he's ready for Essek to try to snatch it away, like he clearly wants to. Essek is like a cat about to pounce. He narrows his eyes, calculating. He's especially attractive when he gets that look, like he has already won even if the world doesn't know it yet; even more so disheveled as he is now, the sleeves of his borrowed house robe rolled up to his elbows, his lovely hands spotted white with flour.
Caleb's too distracted by the sight of him, the thought that here's a new reason to treasure his perfect memory. He doesn't notice Essek's somatics until it's too late to counter them. The pancake flies out of his grasp and into Essek's waiting hand.
"As I was saying," Essek says, shooting Caleb a superior smirk that makes his insides turn to jelly, "you can't eat this. It's a terrible excuse for a pancake."
"I don't mind that." It isn't even the fact that Caleb's eaten some truly foul things just to stay alive. It's everything Essek said a few moments ago—the Sendings, the fact that he hasn't cooked in nearly thrice as long as Caleb's been alive. These are vulnerable things to say. Even if he said them as a means of reproach, Caleb feels fit to burst with the warmth of them. "You made it for me."
Essek’s face does a complicated thing, like he's going through too many emotions at once and he's not sure which to express. He spent many decades behind a mask. He is still learning.
"You are strange," he murmurs. His shoulders relax. He floats the spatula to the table and the pancake to the trash, and doesn't look upset when Caleb chuckles this time.
"Ja, I'm very strange. Come, dear. I want to kiss you."
"With your terrible pancake mouth," he grouses, but he steps close and tilts his chin up.
Caleb kisses him. Cupping his gorgeous face, smiling when he hears Essek's little sigh as he deepens the kiss. Who needs breakfast. This is everything. Everything.
Against his wonderful mouth, Caleb asks, "Do I taste so terrible?"
"Too brief to tell," Essek breathes. "Let me check again."
It takes quite a bit of checking. Comprehensive information gathering is the necessary first step of any new theory. Of course.
"You do taste a bit like burned pancakes," Essek concludes, afterward, making no move to step away when Caleb settles hands on his waist. Finally he seems to have graduated from chagrin to amusement about his failure. "They turned out even worse than I thought."
"Mm, ja, they are quite bad."
"Don't you agree with me," Essek snaps, slapping his shoulder. He's clearly not as affronted as he tries to seem. Caleb kisses him again, just because he can.
"Did you wake up Yasha with your questions? It can be dangerous to Send to her and Beauregard at night sometimes, you know."
Essek gives him a confused look. Well, if he can't figure out what Caleb means, Caleb isn't about to explain. One day, when Essek times his message poorly enough, he'll make that discovery on his own.
"Apparently it's storming in Zadash, so she was awake," he says. "She told me the batter is supposed to make many little bubbles when it's time to flip the pancake, but mine wasn't doing that. So I waited too long, hoping it would, and, well. You saw."
"Ja. So that was the first attempt. What happened to the others?"
One of the great delights of having been granted so much time around Essek is that he can now tell what he looks like when he blushes, even in the dimness of the Dancing Lights.
"We, ah... realized I must have forgotten to add baking powder to the mix. Which—explains the flatness."
"Ah. Yes, that would. Were you able to find any in the pantry?"
As he thinks back to recall when he last used it—nine days ago, to make a loaf of fresh brown bread in nervous preparation for Essek's stay—he realizes he used what was left, and he hasn't bought any since. So there was none to find, even if Essek searched the pantry top to bottom. Giddily, he imagines another dizzying possibility. "Don't tell me—did you Teleport to Zadash to borrow some from Yasha?"
Essek rolls his eyes.
"Caleb Widogast, I'm a fugitive of the Kryn Dynasty, and an inconvenience to the Cerberus Assembly. I do not have the luxury of depleting my higher-level spells for the sake of groceries."
But the way he says it, like he had to convince himself of it earlier—he definitely considered the Teleport. Caleb is inundated with two familiar and conflicting emotions: sadness that Essek has to live always looking over his shoulder, and a distinct and unreasonable horniness that he was tempted to take the risk anyway.
"However, I am a dunamantic prodigy," Essek goes on, not seeming to notice that Caleb is combusting. "And the rise of the batter is no more than a change in density, which is a primary focus of graviturgy. So, theoretically, I could compensate for the lack of baking powder; it is just that, ah, Caleb—"
"You," Caleb tells him, between kisses along the corner of his jaw, "are very clever, Essek Thelyss."
"You are not listening to me," Essek scoffs, but helpfully tilts his head to the side for better access. Caleb shivers, drunk on that invitation.
"On the contrary, I am undone by listening to you." But he draws back, though it takes significant willpower. "You must forgive me, my friend. I've spent many months hearing your brilliant thoughts about magic and unable to show you the full scope of my admiration, so now that I can, I find myself getting carried away."
"I'm not upset." The smug smirk returns. The barest hint of fang against his full lower lip. "I think I like it."
"You think, huh." Caleb feels faint.
"Though it feels a little undeserved in this case, as I haven't quite solved the issue." He looks faintly embarrassed now, like it is truly an abject failure that he couldn't develop a complex dunamantic theorem in half an hour. Caleb is going to perish. Caleb is going to sweep all the dirty dishes to the floor and spread him out on the kitchen table and make his admiration understood as many times as he needs to, like he's twenty years old again. "Fine-tuning density on a molecular level while there is an active source of heat is more challenging than I expected. A few—ah—popped like a bubble before I—"
A crash of shattered glass makes them both jump.
On the table, Mitzi meows, her paw still raised, proud of her cold-blooded murder of an innocent glass of milk. Apparently she could not go another second without being the center of attention.
"Needy cat, you." Sighing, Caleb scoops her up despite her obvious displeasure—her legs stiff, her toes spread and claws out. "You are evicted from the kitchen. You're interrupting important magical research."
"Give her to me, you'll cut your feet," Essek says, before Caleb has a chance to move. He takes Mitzi and rises to his old hover.
His personal gravitational trick has the unfortunate side-effect of displacing whatever is underneath. Like Beauregard's ball bearings a lifetime ago, in the Xhorhaus, the fragments of broken glass in his path scatter outward as he levitates by with the cat in his arms, which is quite a spectacle. He deposits her in the living room and then firmly closes the kitchen door so she can't come in again. Caleb just watches him, struck by the realization that this is the first time he's seen Essek hover since he arrived in Caleb's home over a week ago. This whole time, he has been at ease with his feet firmly planted on Caleb's floors. He has felt safe here. Living where Caleb lives.
Having shut Caleb's cat out, Essek turns to him and asks, "Is she the reason you woke up earlier than you were supposed to?"
"Ja," Caleb says, mouth dry, experiencing a gentle cave-in at the core of his being. There's no ignoring the facts. He is in love with Essek Thelyss.
Who scoffs, and says very seriously, like Mitzi is a rambunctious child, "I see. Very well. I will have a word with her later."
Caleb has witnessed him talk to the cat many times before. In the study, when she sits on a book he's referencing; at the dining table, when she takes Caleb's chair the moment he stands up; in the living room, Undercommon whispered in the dark when Caleb comes down to use the restroom: do not tell him I gave you more wet food. He asks, "Do you often find her a good listener?"
"Only when it is to her advantage, I'm afraid," Essek replies, lips pursed, long-suffering. Caleb is dying to go to him, but before he can move, Essek holds a hand up. "Stay where you are. Let me gather the pieces first."
It doesn't take him very long. He is clever. Capable. He gathers the shards of glass into a ball that he compresses—sharp edges pointed inward—and tosses harmlessly in the trash, along with the rest of the pancakes he burned in the course of his experiment.
Caleb tells him that he would have eaten them regardless, but Essek is not swayed. Still, he is smiling a little after that, just the corners of his mouth.
"Are you going to keep trying? Make another batch?"
"I'm not sure," Essek says, doubtful. "You are here now. Even if I get it right, it isn't much of a surprise. And... it may take a significant amount of trial and error. You'll get tired of waiting."
"Try it anyway," Caleb asks. "For me."
There is no truer way he can think of to say this. That he knows this new territory they are stepping into will be challenging for them. That they won't always get it right. That every moment of it, good and bad, will be worthwhile anyway.
From the look on Essek's face, he knows that Essek understood his meaning. That is what Caleb has always yearned for, from him. To be understood.
"Let us try together, then, Caleb Widogast," Essek says, softly, reaching out to cup his cheek. His thumb brushes absolution across the arch of Caleb's cheekbone. "You and I once bent the flow of time to our will to save the world from ruin. A batch of pancakes will be no match for us. There is nothing we cannot do, together."
He lets Essek rest their foreheads together, and breathes him in. Watches him smile. It is everything.
"Together," he agrees. And, for as long as they stay that way, he is happy.