#is this a drabble tho? i feel like i've exceeded the... usual length of a drabble

[doodamancy]

Note: Many thanks to everyone who has enjoyed this little series of drabbles so far! It’s time for some more pining wizards B)

No major warnings this time, though some serious questions of self-worth and self-doubt come up. Final thoughts & credits in the tags.

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The following morning, after Caleb had finished copying down the surprisingly intricate web of magical runes for the spell Sending, the copper-haired human laid still in his bed, light filtering through his closed curtains and into the room to spill over his sheets. His bedroom was small, but comfortable—it had just enough space to fit his bed, a small desk, and a small bookshelf comfortably, leaving enough space to move freely without feeling too crowded or cluttered. Overtime, this may change—already, Caleb’s desk was starting to collect piles of scrolls, paper, books and other miscellaneous things—but, at least for now, it was organized. As he lay there, he idly pondered some guestimations for how long this may last—another week? Two? At the rate he had been working, well…

He let out a small laugh and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, mind then wandering to the previous night as his eyes fell onto the desk and the scroll he had copied carefully into his book. “Hm. I think, first order of business, Sending to Essek, yes?” he murmured to himself. He had been tempted to last night, but it was late and he did not wish to risk disturbing the other wizard from his Trance. No, much better to wait till it was a more reasonable time. Stretching a hand out as he turned to reach under his pillow, Caleb slid his spellbook toward himself from its night time resting place beneath his head. This, of course, was a habit borne from both a sense of paranoia and from being on the road for as long as he was. He could no longer sleep unless he felt the tome resting beneath his head and he didn’t have any strong desire to put his anxiety to rest on that particular matter. (He didn’t think he could, if he was honest with himself—not even he wanted to.)

Flipping open the book, he began to go through his usual morning ritual of preparing his spells for the day. He stood carefully and began to slowly pace along the pathway between the closet and his bedroom door as he did this, thumbing through the pages and lingering on the runes of each particular spell. Committing them to his near-perfect memory. He could probably recite the contents of his spellbook from end to end from heart, but that wasn’t necessary. This practice was less a matter of refreshing his mind and more an act of committing to a decision, and… well, maintaining a ritual, a habit. There was comfort in that routine.

Once he was done, Caleb closed his spellbook and set it on his desk, moving to his closet to prepare himself for the rest of the day. As he did, he pondered just what he wanted to say in his Sending to Essek. Only twenty five words was a restriction he had to abide by, but there was much he wanted to say to the drow. Perhaps… I should simply ask if he is available to meet sometime soon? Then I could Teleport him here, offer him something as an anchor. But what? he thought.

After slipping on clean pants and an undershirt, Caleb grabbed his book holsters and shrugged them on, eyes wandering about as he considered. Once the holsters were on, he picked up his spellbook and strapped it under his arm, all while racking his brain for something to give to Essek. It could be pretty much anything as long as the object had been taken from here, from amongst his possessions, but he also… It was Essek, and Caleb had a desire to find something special for him.

As Caleb mentally fumbled through various objects he had in his possession, he felt a familiar ping in the back of his mind as the wards set at his gate went off, alerting him to an approaching guest and cutting off his thoughts. Brows rising in surprise, he quickly turned his head in the direction of his door. “I wonder who…” he muttered absently, moving toward his bedroom door to make for the entryway to his home. As the wizard quietly padded through his hallway, a small streak of orange and white ran past his bare feet, meowing as it went. “Yes, yes—you’ll get your breakfast soon, little one,” he said, looking back to see his latest addition to the home, a young orange and white tabby he had found huddled under his porch the other day. She was probably barely a year old at the oldest and, at the time of being discovered, her long coat was matted and covered in burs from the nearby bushes and tall grasses. She looked considerably better now, after Caleb carefully cleaned and brushed her. She was surprisingly friendly, leading him to believe she had at one time lived with someone, though who would have left such a kitten outside to fend for itself in the bitter cold winter of Rexxentrum, Caleb had no idea.

She was warm and happy now, however. And also very vocal around feeding time. Bending to give her some scritches behind her ears, the red-haired human smiled.

“I must tend to some unexpected company first, though, alright?” Allowing her a moment to rub her furry cheeks into his palm and bunt into him, he sighed softly before rising back upright and making his way through the rest of the hallway into the living room where the front door awaited him. With nearly perfect timing, Caleb was less than ten feet from the door when he heard a familiar knock—five knocks in a particular cadence he had quickly become to associate with none other than his friend Beauregard. Apprehension he didn’t realize he held melted from him and he took in a deep breath before temporarily releasing the wards on his entrance with a flick of his wrist and opening the door, a slow smile curling his lips upward.

“Beauregard,” he said as a way of greeting. “Should have known it was you.”

Returning his smile with a crooked grin, the monk raised a hand in a casual wave. “Sup Caleb. I got some news you’ll wanna hear,” she said. Then, taking in his disheveled hair, quirked a brow. “You just getting up? It’s like, almost 11, dude.”

Chuckling, he offered a sheepish shrug and stepped aside to allow her entry. “I stayed up a little later than I usually do last night copying a new spell. Also, it’s not that late. It’s 9:47,” he said, giving Beau pause, her face contorted in a mix of surprise and disbelief.

“What, really? Holy shit.”

“Yes, really. But please, come inside before the cat gets out,” he said, amused.

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” At that, she quickly shuffled inside and Caleb shut the door with a furtive glance behind him, making certain the cat in question was still safely indoors. As he did, he caught a glimpse of an expectant yellow-eyed gaze boring holes into him from the archway leading into his kitchen and his smile widened fondly at the sight. For Beau’s credit, she did not waste any time quietly approaching the creature, crouching as she came into arm’s length and extending a hand. “Hey, you—you look so much better now than when I saw you a couple days ago,” she cooed in a soft tone Caleb, when he had first met her, would never have imagined her capable of.

The ginger and white tabby flicked her tail, meowed, and scurried away to march into the kitchen where the food dish sat. “Wow, fuck you, too.” The surly pout in her voice and the immediate slump of her shoulders pulled a warm laugh from Caleb, earning him a glare from his dear friend. “Aw, fuck off, man.” When he simply grinned at her, Beauregard’s expression softened into a smirk and she pushed herself back up into a standing position.

“So, what brings you here again? You mentioned news, ja?” Caleb asked, grin subsiding into a more serious expression—one of genuine curiosity, though he tried not to seem too concerned or apprehensive as his mind wandered over the most likely topic of concern here. Trent Ikithon.

“Uh, yeah. Like I said, I thought you’d wanna hear this. But maybe we should sit down first?” The way her smirk faded from her expression and her tone shifted into something more careful and articulated spiked Caleb’s anxiety a little. Blue eyes darting about his living room, he lifted his hands to nervously wring at his wrists, resisting the sudden urge to scratch at the scars beneath his sleeves.

“Ah, yes… um. Let me just… feed the cat and put on some tea, I think,” he said, forcing his mind to focus on the two tasks he set before him. Quickly, he moved toward Beau to slip past her into the kitchen and breathed in deep through his nose.

“Yeah, of course, man. Let me help,” she said, following after him.

Caleb, for his part, did not argue, though there was some hesitance in his nod of acceptance. Beau was his guest and having her help with tea felt wrong, but he also didn’t feel in a position to insist on such pleasantries. Instead, he focused his attention on preparing some food for his insistent furry friend. As he focused on this task, she weaved through his legs, rubbing up against him meowing and chattering excitedly. It was more than enough to distract him from Beau’s own prepping of the kettle and rummaging through his cupboards for his stash of tea leaves.

As he knelt to set a small clean platter of food for the cat, he heard the monk behind him ask, “So, have you thought of a name for her yet?”

The platter barely clinked against the floor tiles before the cat was practically on top of it, stuffing her face between contented meows. Smiling at this, Caleb shook his head. “I haven’t settled on one just yet, no,” he said before turning around to look at the other. “I have some I’m considering, though.”

“Yeah, like what?”

Caleb slowly moved for the table at the other end of his kitchen, pulling out a chair to sit and look up at Beau. “Hm, Gerbera is one. Marigold or Marmalade also. I don’t know. What do you think?”

With a laugh, Beau pulled out a chair next to him and flopped down. “What do I think? Well, shit.” She looked over at the cat as she continued eating her breakfast, a hand rising to clutch her chin in thought. “Copernicus. Or, Mrs. Nezbit. That one’s good.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, considering. “Charles Wallace? Mabel? What about Sausage? Or, ooh, Bacon! Remember, I helped lure her out from under the porch with my pocket bacon—”

 As Beau continued, Caleb’s expression shifted from one of consideration to confusion to exasperation, a hand rising to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Ah, yes, thank you, Beauregard, for your—” He cut himself off, struggling to find an appropriate word to describe her input. “Contributions. I will think more on this.”

“Hey, man, you asked for my suggestions,” she said, turning back to face him in her seat.

“…I did, yes,” Caleb relented with a sigh.

With a roll of her eyes, she shifted in her seat and rolled her shoulders a bit. “Alright, well. About that news.” Her gaze dropped briefly to her lap, one foot propped up on the seat of the chair by her heel as she leaned forward against her thigh. “I’m sure you probably guessed it was about Ikithon. The Cobalt Soul’s uncovered more evidence against him recently, so between yours, Astrid’s, and Eadwulf’s testimony and this new evidence… We got a pretty sizable case against him. Things will be moving forward pretty rapidly from here.” She paused then to meet his gaze as her words slowly cycled through his brain and he processed the information.

“That’s…” Slowly, Caleb leaned back into his chair and took in a deep breath, holding it a moment, before releasing it slowly through his nostrils. With it, some of his earlier tension left him, but he could not let go of all of it. He still felt some apprehension, there was still some part of him that feared the worst against all odds. “Gut. Good, that’s… good. Right?”

A half smile briefly flashed over Beau’s features, empathetic and understanding of her friend’s current struggle. “Yeah. Yeah, man, it’s very good,” she said. Then, dropping her propped foot to the floor, she furrowed her brows as she contemplated her next words, forearms coming to rest on her knees and her hands loosely clasped together. “I just… I wanted to check in with you before we move on to the next stage. I know you said you’re willing to testify, but I want you to know you don’t have to. We have everything we need to put this asshole away. I already talked to Astrid and Eadwulf about this, admittedly because I knew you’d ask—” True to her expectations, Caleb had begun to open his mouth to do just that; quickly, he closed his mouth again and nodded to let Beau continue. “—and Wulf is going to continue forward with testifying in court. Astrid, for her part, said she doesn't trust herself not to throw a fireball in Ikithon’s direction. And I think I believe her on that one.” A hint of a smile briefly tugged at Caleb’s lips at this, his gaze dropping to his lap where he wrung his wrists a little too tightly.

“No, I-I appreciate it, Beauregard. But I would very much like to testify. I think… I think I need to. I need to be there,” he said. I need to see him as they drag him away.

When he finally looked back, Beau met his gaze with a look of understanding and nodded, a hint of a smile quirked slightly on her lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I kinda expected that much. I just… needed to make sure,” she said.

Caleb offered her a weak but grateful smile, shifting to sit up more in his seat as the kettle began to whistle, startling them both and breaking the tension.

“Oh! Shit, forgot about the tea,” Beau said, scrambling up to grab the kettle off his ironwood stove. “Uhhh, towels? Mitts!?” Caleb couldn’t help but laugh as the monk began to look about frantically for something to use to set the kettle on. With a flick of his wrist, a spectral hand floated up to grab a towel from the counter behind Beau and drop it on her head. “Wh—What the fuck— Oh. Thanks, asshole.” She quickly grabbed it and leveled a sour look at him, to which Caleb just smiled, leaning against the table now with his stubbled chin in his palm.

“You’re welcome, Beau. Thanks for offering to make tea,” he said. “I’ll get our cups.” And, with another flick of his free hand, the Mage Hand opened a cupboard and grabbed two tea cups from within, carrying them to the table beside him.

He could hear her muttering something under her breath (something about wizards, he was certain) as she made her way back to the table, but made no indication he heard anything even as she tossed the towel beside the tea cups and set the kettle on top of it. “Anyway, change of topic, but I can’t help but be curious—what’s up with that letter Essek asked me to give you?” she asked, catching his gaze before turning back to grab the container of tea leaves she’d left on the counter. Caleb paused, blue hues drifting almost sheepishly as his thoughts from this morning instantly flooded back to him and he remembered the task he had initially set out for himself.

“Ah, well, it’s…” Suddenly, the state of his bare feet was very interesting. Why didn’t he grab his slippers? Why indeed.

Beau, seeing this, bit back a laugh. “It’s what? Surely he wouldn’t confess his undying love to you in a letter.” He could hear the tease in her voice, could almost see the accompanying smirk on her lips as she regarded him, as he felt warmth crawl up his neck, expression shifting to something akin to incredulousness that this was even a question she’d think to ask him.

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous, Beauregard. Nothing like that.” He forced himself to meet her gaze, though he wondered how fruitless it was to hide his growing interest in the other wizard—the tumultuous feelings he had been struggling to hold at bay for… awhile now, if he were honest. He was tired of denying them to himself, though he had done little to fully express those feelings. He wondered if he could without guilt of some kind creeping in. There was a vocal part of himself that had difficulty allowing him the little bit of happiness he had found in this home. Imagine how loud that part of him would be if Essek expressed any desire to share any part of his life with him? Surely, that was too much to hope for, anyway.

“Alright, then what?” She punctuated her question with the clunk of a tin as she set it on the table next to their cups, then sat, looking at Caleb pointedly.

“He told me he was working on something and wished to talk to me about it,” he replied simply, reaching out for the tin of tea leaves. Popping it open, he breathed in the fragrant leaves before he began portioning some of the contents into their cups.

“That’s it? C’mon, man, I know he wouldn’t have been so cagey about something like that.” She watched him a moment and when Caleb didn’t respond, she sighed and swung her head back to clunk against the tall back of her chair. “Fiiine, whatever. You don’t have to tell me. What spell did he send you, though?” When he turned to look at her, opening his mouth in an attempt to deflect her question, she sat up and jabbed a finger in his direction, a crooked smirk on her lips. “You can’t tell me he didn’t send you a spell scroll, Widogast! Why else would you have spent all night copying a new spell?”

A huff of a breath left his lips, a frown set over his features. Caleb should have known better than to underestimate Beauregard’s uncanny ability to extrapolate details and connect the dots, as it were—that was her job, after all, and she was exceedingly good at it. Her brilliant mind was likely one of the reasons he had come to respect her most out of all the Nein, as much as he loved all of them. “He sent me a Sending scroll,” he relinquished, meeting her gaze with some reluctance. He could see the gears turning in her head, the look of genuine surprise over her features, before the monk burst into laughter. Confused, he furrowed his brows, trying to understand why this was so funny to the other. “What? He said, as much as he enjoyed hearing of all our exploits from Jester, some things he would rather hear from me.”

This only made Beauregard laugh harder for a moment, clutching her side, before eventually tapering off. “Oh, man, I gotta admit, I don’t really know what I expected, but I really should have seen that one coming,” she said. Then, more seriously, “Have you messaged him yet?”

Caleb, unsure what Beau meant by that at all, leveled her with a look of suspicious apprehension. “...No. No, not yet. I was in the middle of trying to decide what to say when you showed up,” he admitted.

This made his friend’s face split into a very suspicious looking grin and he narrowed his eyes. “Hey, Caleb?”

“...Ja?”

Her expression shifted into one of contemplation for a moment, as if considering her words, before she said, “You should tell him.” At those words, Caleb felt a leaden weight drop into his stomach and he quickly looked away, a hand reaching out to the kettle he had momentarily been distracted from in a desperate need to focus on something other than what Beau could possibly mean by that.

“Tell him what, exactly, Beauregard?”

He could hear the sharp intake of breath, followed by the slow exhale, even as he tried to focus on the act of pouring, hazel blue hues intently watching the swirl of loose leaves whirling in his tea cup.

“You care about him, don’t you? I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. You both have been dancing around each other for… for months now. Especially in Aeor. Don’t get me started on how—”

“Beau.”

He cut her off, setting the kettle down with a louder thunk on the table than he intended, his fingers clenched around the handle still. Silence hung over them for a long moment, the monk watching him carefully, waiting. She’d gotten a lot better at knowing when to give him space, at least, learning when she was pushing too hard and how to pull back. Caleb was begrudgingly grateful for that, but she was also just that much more effective at getting him to talk about things he didn’t particularly wish to talk about.

This was one of those things.

“It’s… complicated,” he finally said, voice breathy and strained. He wished, for all he was worth, it wasn’t—that he could pursue what he wanted guilt-free or without worry of rejection, betrayal, or any million other things he could think of. So many reasons Essek wouldn’t want him. So many more reasons neither of them would be good for each other, even if Essek did. The weight of his doubts hung heavy on him, though he wished desperately to will them away, to just linger on the longing and joy he felt when in the drow’s presence.

He didn’t realize he’d been trembling slightly until he felt a hand on his shoulder, steadying him, and closed his eyes, his hand falling limp and retracting to himself.

“Hey.” The grip on his shoulder squeezed slightly, Beau’s tone both firm and strangely consoling. “Hey, look at me.” Caleb nearly refused with a huff, but he knew Beau wouldn’t let up until he did. So, with a sigh and some reluctance, he lifted his head to look at her where she now stood next to him, crouched slightly so as not to seem too overbearing. “I know you’ve got this whole… internal struggle going on or whatever. And, look, I get it, man—I mean, I didn’t go through the same shit you did, but I can see it and I understand.” Here, she paused, brows furrowing as she tried to think carefully about her next words—not something she was great at, but Caleb at least appreciated the effort and growth here. She was trying, where she had fumbled many times before, to level with him. “Look, uh, I’m—” She sighed and closed her eyes a moment before forcing herself to meet his gaze again. “You already know I’m shit at words in times like this, but you gotta believe me when I say whether or not you think you deserve happiness or whatever isn’t for you to decide. That’s for the people who care about you. And I— we—all the Nein—want you to find happiness, whatever that looks like for you.” Then, she straightened and lifted her hand to muss up the (already disheveled) hair at the top of his head roughly, pulling a strangled noise of surprise from the older human’s lips. “I don’t expect that shit to go away overnight, but think about it. Just don’t think for too fucking long, our lives are too short for that and you got, like… ten years on me or some shit.”