Chapter Fourteen:
So Just Give Me a Happy Middle
"And a very happy start."
Special thank you to CodeSculptor who's generously agreed to beta for me! Hopefully this fic will be less of an affront to grammarians everywhere.
…
The next day the sun never rose. Swirling, black clouds choked the sky, punctured by the tops of buildings and releasing their frozen insides in a violent gale. Lightning flashed, followed by booming thunder that shook the window pane in its casing.
"It's getting closer," Molly noted, embroidery forgotten in his lap as he watched the storm. He sat cross-legged on the floor on the opposite side of the hearth as Caleb.
Caleb hummed in acknowledgment. He'd been trying to make more progress in 'Sixteen Princes and a Midwife' all morning, but his mind kept drifting. He stroked absent circles between Frumpkin's shoulder blades.
"How's the book?" Molly asked, nodding at where it rested on Caleb's legs.
Caleb regarded the pages in front of him. The lines kept blurring under his tired eyes. The premise was interesting, but it kept getting derailed by side plots he couldn't force himself to invest in. "I don't know," he said at last, voice rough from lack of sleep. "I'll tell you when I finish."
Molly shrugged. He stuck the needle between his lips to hold it while he prepared the next length of thread. "I don't see how a book can be good if you're not enjoying the middle," he said out of the corner of his mouth.
Caleb ran a hand down the edge of the book. "Sometimes good books have bad endings, sometimes bad books have good endings," he said at last.
Molly frowned, removing the needle from his mouth to thread it. "Seems like a waste if you're not enjoying it all the way through."
Caleb fought back the ghost of a smile, still staring down at his book. He should've been used to Molly's strange perspectives by now. He opened his mouth to respond, but something glass shattered in the next room over, and both Molly and Caleb stiffened.
"Beau?" Molly called at the wall.
"We're good!" came her muffled voice.
Caleb swallowed hard. "They need to be careful. If something spills, they can't open the window to vent the room," he said quietly to his open book, rubbing more intense circles in the faux tabby.
"Don't gas yourselves," Molly shouted to the other room.
"Fuck you!" Beau shouted back.
"Fuck you too!" Molly shouted with a wide grin. He turned back to Caleb. "I'm sure they're fine. Nott seems like she's done this before."
"She has," Caleb murmured.
He'd met her gaze on accident earlier. When Love and Rose had brought up an old caldron for her to brew in and some empty wine barrels for the run-off.
He'd been passing their room—her room—and saw her there, small and thin and surrounded by hundreds of bottles of potions they'd bought for her before the storm hit. Pages torn from Lox's journal covered every available surface.
Her face was open, eyes wide with curiosity. Until her gaze found him in the hall. For a beat, their eyes met, and time slowed around them. Then her face darkened, and she looked away. Time resumed. Love pushed past him. Beau closed the door. And that was that.
Molly continued to knot teal stars into his coat, letting the needle bob in and out of view.
"Nott hates me," Caleb breathed, more to himself than anyone else.
Molly's hands paused, and his gaze flicked over to Caleb. "Can't say you haven't given her a reason to."
Caleb's grip on his book tightened.
"I know the going advice for these sorts of situations is to talk to out, but I honestly don't think you should go near her. She might put an arrow through you," Molly said, half-joking, half-serious.
"Yeah," Caleb breathed.
"You know a simple solution would be to just not time travel, you know," Molly said with a measured casualness as he side-eyed him.
Caleb stiffened.
Molly watched him for a moment before resigning himself to Caleb's silence and returning to his stars.
"I-I don't have a choice, Mollymauk," Caleb said a beat too late, voice rough and barely audible over the storm.
One of Molly's dark brows quirked up while his mouth contorted into a thin frown. "Now I thought we were done lying to ourselves," he said.
Caleb looked up at that, caught off guard. "It's not a lie—"
Molly broke him off with a snort and an eye roll. "A word of advice from a professional bullshitter: don't buy into your own con, Caleb."
A flash of lightning lit the sky, and Molly turned to look out the window at the gale.
"Just don't go," he said, voice distant.
A clap of thunder shook the room, and silence followed behind it. The direction of the wind changed, pelting the window with loud, frozen rain.
Molly didn't understand. No one did, and no one could. They all knew about his parents now, but none of them could possibly imagine the suffocating weight of carrying that burden.
But sitting here, watching Molly stare out the window with that sad, far-off expression that looked so out of place on him, Caleb felt another piece of his resolve chip away.
He loved his parents. He owed his parents. So, so much. But he loved the Mighty Nein too and abandoning them here would leave him with the same debilitating guilt.
He could stay and hate himself for what he'd done to his parents, or he could leave and hate himself for what he'd done to the Mighty Nein.
There were no roads to happiness left for Caleb Widogast.
He leaned his head back against the wall, watching Molly stare at the sky. When all was said and done, he might not have a say in the matter. The clock kept ticking onwards, and he still had no more money than he had when he first arrived. The palace heist could sour in a heartbeat. If that failed, he doubted he'd have time to travel back to Zadash and concoct another plan.
All he could do now was pitch in where he could and try not to ruin things more than he already had.
The rain continued to beat down on the world, and a log cracked in the hearth behind them. Wordlessly, Molly started on some sort of fern shape—or maybe it was a feather?
Caleb returned to his book, trying to force the meandering sentences to make sense in his head. He made it through one page, then five, then a whole chapter. With every page turn, the limp, torn sleeve of his jacket trailed across the book.
It'd been sliced from the elbow down the night of his "grand escape" exposing the pale stretch of arm below, like flesh hanging from the bones of a partially skinned animal.
He'd put this coat through hell and back over the years. Patching it up with lopsided stitches until a particularly rough dragon fight a few years in the future tore it to shreds and he finally had to lay it to rest.
A chill ran through him as the cold seeped in through his exposed forearm. They'd only been in Ice Haven for a short while, but he tired of this place and the endless cold and the endless numb. Was it too much to ask to want to feel again?
Molly was engrossed with his fifth feather, leaning close to the fabric to finish the delicate stitching required at the top. His nose scrunched in concentration, and there was a hint of a forked tongue just peeking through the corner of his mouth as he finished the last stitch. It wasn't until he cut the thread with a small knife that Caleb realized he'd been holding his breath.
Molly looked up, catching Caleb staring. "Yes?" he asked, voice tired but free of accusation.
Caleb blinked. Then blinked again. "Oh, uh, do you have an extra needle by chance, Mollymauk?" he managed, blurting the first thing that came to his mind.
He'd hoped the recent group dysfunction would've cured his budding habit of staring at Mollymauk for too long, but when had Caleb ever been that lucky?
Molly watched him for a second longer, confusion flickering across his face before he nodded. He dug around his supplies for a moment before withdrawing a backup needle. "Thread?"
"Uh, yes thank you. Do you have brown?"
"Absolutely not."
"Alright, black?"
"Nope."
"Anything then."
Molly handed over the needle with a length of fluorescent yellow thread.
Well, that would have to do. He shrugged off his coat, and the moment he was free of it winter sunk into his bones and a chill wracked his body.
Molly continued to watch him with curiosity, tail thumping lightly against the floor. "Taking up embroidery, Caleb? I'm flattered to be such an inspiration," Molly said, eyebrow raised with barest hint of mischief returning to his tone.
Caleb let his jacket puddle in his lap and centered the torn sleeve. "No, no, just...fixing," he mumbled to the sleeve, unable to hold Molly's gaze any longer.
"How's your shoulder?" Molly asked, nodding at the now-exposed bandages.
"Sore," Caleb admitted. He tried to feed the thread through the eye of the needle, but his cold, clumsy fingers kept missing.
"Jester should look at it when she gets back."
Caleb frowned, trying to force the thread through again. "She had a big day today. It's not worth bothering her over."
"Why don't we let her make that decision?"
"Alright," Caleb relented. It wasn't worth arguing with one of his only allies about.
That morning Jester had set off for the palace, applying for a conveniently vacated medical apprenticeship but leaving a tense energy in her absence. To Caleb's knowledge, Fjord was still pacing circles in the tavern beneath them.
In the other room, Nott, assisted by Beau and Yasha, slaved over a cauldron full of common potions—something about reducing them down for some shared ingredient she needed at a higher potency. No one felt like sharing the specifics with him, so all he could do was twiddle his thumbs until something changed.
Molly returned to his embroidery, and Caleb continued to try and thread his needle—only succeeding on the sixth try and with a pinch of beeswax borrowed from his component pouch.
After knotting the thread's end, he began the tedious process of suturing the tear closed. It was simple, methodical work, which is why he only found himself getting more and more frustrated with every fumble his numb fingers made. The needle never poked through at the right place, leaving his stitches awkward and lopsided.
What kind of ex-wunderkind couldn't even sew his own coat?
He let the needle dangle there on the end of the thread like a dead fish, still attached to his crooked handiwork. No one else would notice, but he would.
With a tired sigh he couldn't hold back, he dug around in his bags for a knife.
"You have to knot it a second time before you—wait, why are you?" Molly paused in his own needlework to watch Caleb with confusion. "Caleb, it looks fine?"
"It's crooked," he said and severed the beginning knot so he could pull the entire thread out.
"Well, are you trying to win a contest with it? What's the problem if it's a little off?" Molly asked, tilting his head in confusion. His horn jewelry jingled in the firelight.
"It would bother me," Caleb said quietly and knotted the thread again.
Molly sighed, "Alright, here." He put his own coat to the side and scooted forward so their knees touched. He pulled the sleeve out of Caleb's loose grip, calloused pads of Molly's fingers brushing the back of Caleb's knuckles.
Caleb swallowed hard, keeping his expression neutral while some traitorous part of his brain informed him this was the first time they'd touched since the incident. Since their dance.
"I'll hold it so it won't buckle on you," Molly said as he pulled the sleeve taught. "Try it again."
"Alright," he breathed, focusing on knotting the thread in his hands and not the weight of Molly's gaze on him. His hands shook, mostly from the cold and the fact he'd skipped breakfast, but it looked damning in context.
"I still don't know how you manage all of your flowers and stars," Caleb said with a nervous chuckle—anything to fill the electric silence. Rain pattered against the window.
"It's not so hard once you get the hang of it," Molly admitted. "The real trick is being able to hold the fabric tight in one hand and stitch with the other on a moving cart," he said, readjusting his hands as Caleb stitched further down the tear.
"Where did you learn?"
"Oh, here, there, and everywhere."
Caleb finished the line of stitching for the second time but found it to be nearly as clumsy as the first. He sucked his teeth in dismay. "You act like it's so easy," he said, giving the stitches a last frown before looking for his knife.
"Hey now," Molly said, pulling the sleeve away. "You don't have to cut it out again—hand me the needle."
Caleb placed it in Molly's open hand, hyper-aware of the way his fingers ghosted over Molly's warm palm as he withdrew his hand.
"Now, look here," Molly instructed holding the needle up for Caleb to see. "Watch this." He fed the needle underneath the sleeve, letting the gleaming point emerge several centimeters from the ugliest stitch.
Caleb frowned in confusion as Molly pulled the thread through, made a loop, and tacked the loop down before the needle disappeared once again beneath the surface. Molly repeated the motion, creating a second loop from the same center point.
Realization dawned on Caleb. He watched Molly complete the daisy, successfully obscuring the mistake.
"Tada, problem solved," Molly announced, admiring his own handiwork.
Caleb couldn't hold back a breathy chuckle. "Yeah, I guess that is a solution, but now I've got a single daisy on my sleeve, Mollymauk."
"So what I'm hearing is you want more daisies," Molly said looking up at him with a cheeky grin.
"I think you want more daisies," Caleb said, trying and failing to keep his face and tone stern.
"Well, if you insist," Molly said, drawing the sleeve further into his own lap with a widening grin. He rethreaded the needle but paused before continuing, looking up at Caleb in question.
"Go ahead," he said with an easy shrug. "Just, uh, maybe not too crazy," he added, sneaking a glance over Molly's shoulder at his rainbow coat that probably weighed an extra five pounds from the weight of the embroidery alone. "Maybe we only use the yellow thread, ya?"
"Could I sell you on blue too?"
"Alright. But only yellow and blue."
"Oh, I always knew there was a man of taste buried somewhere in there," Molly teased, smiling down at his second daisy.
Despite everything, he had a miraculous ability to make Caleb feel silly. Like a schoolchild sharing secrets in the middle of class. He wondered if they would've been friends as children. Maybe not. Caleb Widogast and Mollymauk Tealeaf did not exist as children. Only Bren and Lucien. Maybe that's why the sensation now was so intoxicating.
Molly's dark bangs fell in front of his eyes in gentle waves, partially obscuring the dimple from his crooked smile. He absently swayed his head in an attempt to move the hair from his vision as he worked, and Caleb was struck by the nearly overpowering impulse to tuck those wisps of hair behind his horns.
That thought alone jolted a fraction of sense back into him, and he became keenly aware of how much he'd subconsciously leaned forward.
Molly looked up, mouth open, but the sentence died on his lips when he noticed their noses were only inches apart. He stiffened, eyes going wide in surprise, but he didn't pull back. The fire beside them crackled. The space between them buzzed with heat and dangerous possibility.
The room flickered white, then a crash of thunder shook the building. Both of them jumped in surprise, ramming foreheads.
They collapsed in opposite direction, Caleb spilling backward with a hiss, clutching at his forehead where bone met bone. Frumpkin darted out of the way and under the bed.
"Mmm, Molly, your horns," Caleb groaned, rolling over onto his side.
"Sorry, can't do much about them," Molly said and massaged his own forehead with a grimace.
Caleb pushed himself onto his knees then stood, joints popping as he did. "I'm-I'm going to get something to drink."
"Oh, bring me a house malt," Molly called from the floor as Caleb excused himself from the room.
He shut the door carefully then collapsed against the nearest wall and sunk halfway down it. A hot flush rose up his body, and he ran his trembling hands down his face while taking deep shuddering breaths. No, no, no, no, no. This wasn't happening. It couldn't happen. Gods, maybe he was insane after all.
He had a plan. A plan over a decade in the making that Mollymauk Tealeaf had already complicated by simply being alive. He couldn't afford to let him complicate things further—no matter how charming his dimples were.
Lightning struck again, revealing a large figure silhouetted by the window at the end of the dark hall. Caleb started, heart pounding in his eardrums.
Yasha strode up to him and eyed him up and down.
Caleb rested a hand over his heart and tried to calm his breathing. It was Yasha. Just Yasha. She had no way of knowing what just happened. Almost happened. This was coincidence.
"Come with me. We need to talk." she said and turned to walk down the hall.
Wordlessly, Caleb obeyed and trailed after her. When a 6-foot barbarian woman with biceps like iron cords asked you to do something, it was best to comply.
She led him to the large window at the edge of the hall. Frost crept at the edges, partially obscuring the view of the storm ravaging Ice Haven.
"I thought you were helping Nott with the poison—" Caleb began, but he was broken off when Yasha stepped forward, engulfing him in a bone-crushing hug.
Caleb froze under the sudden contact, too stunned to reciprocate.
"Thank you. Thank you so, so much," she whispered, voice raw and just above a whisper.
Oh. Oh.
Yasha withdrew but kept her hands on his shoulders to look at him. "Caleb, I can't—if you hadn't been there…"
He put his hand on her arm, giving it what he hoped was a comforting squeeze.
Yasha took a shuddering breath, taking a moment to compose herself before meeting Caleb's gaze again. "I've been meaning to—thank you for saving him, Caleb."
"Of course," he breathed.
She dropped her hands from his shoulders and rubbed the back of her neck. "I—he means the world to me."
"I know."
"I care about him so much."
"I know."
"I'm in your debt."
"No, you don't ha—"
She cut him off. "But please, Caleb, listen to me." Lightning struck in the distance. "I know you have your own plans. I don't care about those. But…please don't hurt him."
"Uh, what do you mean?" Caleb managed, a beat too delayed to sound natural.
Another crack of thunder boomed, and she just gave him a sad, knowing look.
…
Caleb: I don't have a thing for Mollymauk
Also Caleb: But it has been 42 hours, 33 minutes, 17 seconds and counting since we last touched, which is unacceptable.
A purple, gender fluid pansexual half-fiend embroidering flowers with his autistic, German bisexual wizard boyfriend is the future liberals want.
Commenters are my watermelon on the beach in summer, my daisies in summer, my heart-shaped Reese's peanut butter cups on valentine's day.