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The successful completion of a world-saving quest calls for a week in the sun: relaxation, rejuvenation, relocation (while the heat of Trent’s still-ongoing search dies down). With amulets slung over bathing wraps and under wide-brimmed hats, the Mighty Nein make their way back to Nicodranas, pay their respects to a grateful Yussa, and hit the beach.
Essek is invited. Even after the week they’ve spent fighting and bleeding and killing megalomaniacal cult leaders together, the consideration still catches him by surprise.
Compared to the glare of the sun that radiated off the snows of Eiselcross, the glint of the ocean is almost a relief to Essek’s eyes. The tone is less harsh, though still unpleasant, and he buys a pair of tinted glasses from a vendor in the market the first chance he gets. When he mentions his regret that he can’t return to his home in Rosohna to retrieve the parasol Jester gave to him, she kneels down on the boardwalk and paints him a new one right on the spot. Yellow, this time, to ‘match his eyes’. He holds it high, then slips the shades over his nose. Beau gives him a thumbs up, Yasha a grimace. Veth nearly keels over laughing. He finds he doesn’t care how ridiculous he looks, all swaddled in heavy robes beneath the shade of frilly lace. No one knows his name here. No one cares who he is, or was, and that too is a relief, beyond all expectation.
Essek doesn’t dare swim, though the coolness of the water looks unexpectedly tempting in the midday heat. Instead, he casts a simple gravity anchor on the parasol to keep it aloft while he sits on the blankets they laid out over the sand, watching the others pelt towards the surf, flinging clothing all the way. Though they’re far enough from him that Essek can’t make out features, he can tell that some give more heed to modesty than others. The dark brown of Veth’s skin particularly stands out as she sheds the last of her things and dips into the water, naked as the day she rose from the clay. He studiously avoids watching to see whether Caleb follows her lead.
Essek has made good progress on his book, enjoying the salty breeze though it ruffles the pages in a distracting way, by the time the first of the Nein return. He looks up at the sound of shifting footsteps to find Caleb before him, shirtless and dripping, ringing water from his long hair. A few curls cling to the nape of his neck, ones Essek never noticed before amid the rest of its straight length. Then again, he has rarely seen Caleb’s hair loose like this; even in sleep, he keeps it tied back.
Still mostly wet, Caleb throws himself down on the blankets beside Essek, closing his eyes and smiling in a contented way. Sun-drunk, he thinks, and stares at the hair now spread out like an array of reddish gold, catching sand and rays of light in its damp strands. Caleb’s bare arm is five inches from where his hand rests, steadying Essek as he leans over, attempting a casualness he does not feel.
“Caleb?”
“Mm?” A single blue eye cracks open, and Caleb’s grin widens. “Enjoying your afternoon at the beach?”
“I am.” He holds up the book just high enough that Caleb can see it from his reclined state. “This is… surprisingly relaxing.”
“Good. It’s supposed to be.”
Caleb’s chest moves up and down as he speaks, and a rivulet of pooled water runs from his chest down his side. Essek cannot help but mark it. Cannot help himself, though he tries to keep his eyes on Caleb’s face. He is still unaccustomed to this sort of casual disrobing, even among peers, and the proximity makes focus... challenging.
“Are you going to sleep?” Essek squints his eyes at the sun dubiously, still perplexed how humans can bear its oppressive burn. “You should be in shade, if so.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he pats the blanket beside him, not unaware how small the patch of darkness is below the hovering parasol. The knowledge sparks a strange, unexpected thrill in his chest.
“No… No, I don’t think I’ll sleep.” Caleb sits up reluctantly, then makes to stand, and the loss Essek feels is equally unexpected – though perhaps it should not have been. He should know himself that well by now. It is hard not to hoard the moments they have alone, brief as they might be.
“Back to the water, then?” He thinks he keeps his voice from shifting towards disappointment, but when Caleb turns to look at him, something of a glint in his eye, Essek knows he’s been caught out.
“Not quite yet, I think. I would hate to leave you here alone while we all run off.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” he says, and it’s the truth, in some ways. “I’m quite used to solitude.”
“That I know,” Caleb says, a little too understanding, a little too close for Essek’s comfort. He takes a breath, preparing to deflect, but Caleb beats him to the subject change. “But I think I need a break as well. I may be a young man,” he says, and the wink is so quick Essek almost misses it, “but I am old enough that I don’t mind relaxing on the shore for a while. Maybe you could show me what you’re reading?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, this is–”
He starts on a brief explanation of the tome: one of the many they’d collected from Aoer’s depths, before fleeing for safer harbours. Many of the rest will undoubtedly end in the hands of the Dynasty or the Empire – whoever manages the descent first – but he and Caleb have hope there will be time for a return trip before either nation musters the force for a proper excavation. For the moment, they took only what they could carry, whatever seemed most pertinent to their own immediate interests. This one is more a series of essays than a single book, and contains a number of fascinatingly complex equations that Essek has happily spent the morning muddling over. He shows Caleb the trickiest of the bunch – a bit of theoretical work mapping time dilation to a series of elliptic functions – and before long the two of them are huddled close, swapping ideas and trading theories, and Essek almost manages to forget his earlier... distraction.
The discussion soon moves beyond what can easily be conveyed in words, and when Caleb moves to start drawing out hypotheses in the sand, Essek follows without thinking. The sun is hot on his back and bare neck, but the fervour of discovery is far more pressing than any heat, and a good twenty minutes are spent in blissful collaboration before Essek realizes his mistake.
It is, ironically, another sort of heat that reveals the issue. For as much as the work is diverting, Caleb is still very much half-naked at his side, and hunching together over a pocket of damp sand does not make that fact easier to ignore. Every time Caleb’s bare arm brushes against Essek’s sleeve in their mutual rush to add another figure to the growing web, he feels a tingle in his fingers, shimmering and pleasant, and another just below his jaw. He swallows, wanting to blame the heat for the mirage of sensation, for the irrational feeling that his skin is just as exposed beneath the layers, but he is too aware of himself for that sort of denial. Instead, he looks down, focuses on the equations, reminds himself that the likeliest outcome of letting his thoughts wander further than where they have already is rejection, and in the worst case, a shattering of whatever fragile trust they’ve rebuilt over the last week. This is enough – more than enough. He should not ask for more.
Still, every time Caleb glances up at him, grains of sand stuck to his cheek like a hundred new freckles, smiling and warm and close, Essek feels his cheeks heat a little more. They’ve shifted closer while they’ve worked, shoulders now brushing with every movement, and Essek thinks he should move away, regain the space between them, but if Caleb hasn’t moved… does that mean it’s allowed? It’s almost impossible now to focus on anything else but that shared point of contact: Caleb’s skin against his own, the little fabric between them, and now it’s not only his cheeks that are ablaze, but his neck as well, and the tips of his ears. Every inch above his collar burns.
“Essek...” Caleb starts, and Essek hums in return, keeping his eyes fixed on the sand and praying his blush won’t show on dark skin. Evidently, fate is cruel and deigns not to answer his request, because a moment later Caleb takes his chin between his fingers and turns Essek’s face towards him, plucking the tinted glasses from Essek’s nose and staring with unmistakable concern at his complexion. “I think you should get back in the shade.”
“Why?” Caleb’s hand moves against his jaw as he speaks, touching almost absentmindedly, like he’s another puzzle his fingers are trying to suss the shape of. Essek just barely catches himself before he swallows again. The heat intensifies by degrees, almost unbearable now in its intensity. He wonders that Caleb’s fingers don’t char before his eyes.
“You’ve got a sunburn.”
Essek stares, then raises his own hand and places the back of it against his cheek. The skin is unnaturally hot – too hot for a mere blush, and when he touches the back of his neck, he finds the same burning there.
“Ah, I suppose I– but it doesn’t hurt,” he insists, suddenly realizing that being sent back to the parasol means an end to their study session, and he isn’t keen for that end to come so soon. “Ten minutes more–”
“Will leave you regretting the decision for a week, I promise you. You’ve never had a sunburn before, have you?”
Essek shakes his head. He knows of the ailment, of course – soldiers on patrol complained of it often enough in Vurmas, where the sunlight was strong and unfiltered by cloud or magic, and only intensified by the ever presence of blinding snow. But Essek mostly kept indoors during his time there, writing reports at his desk and avoiding the outdoors all he could, so he’d never suffered the affliction himself. Honestly, from the volume of complaints, he’d expected it to be more painful than this.
Caleb winces in apparent sympathy, and he closes the tome before Essek can protest further. “Come on, before you cook.”
Essek follows him back to the blankets. His skin feels strangely hotter once he’s back in the shade, though whether that’s because of the comparative temperature drop or the fact that Caleb is kneeling in front of him once more, turning Essek’s head back and forth and clucking his tongue in displeasure, he cannot say.
“I should go get Jester or Caduceus,” Caleb says at last. “If you were human, I wouldn’t be concerned, but drow are sensitive to the sun, yes? And it already looks quite bad. I’m guessing this is about to become very painful, very quickly.”
Essek’s eyes dart to the water, where just a hint of pink hair peeks out over the crest of the waves. There’s a distant screech of laughter, and then the pink disappears into the surf. This is the first time the Nein have been able to relax in so long, and the thought of dragging anyone back to tend him just because he was careless makes his chest twist with guilt.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” he says, trying for a light, unconcerned smile. “No reason to bother them over something as little as this. Let’s let them have their fun for the day.”
Caleb returns the smile, though he still shakes his head. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. But it’s your decision.”
“Then I think I’ll just enjoy the shade a little longer,” Essek says, then after a pause, adds, “and maybe you should rejoin them? You’ve probably had your fill of magical theory for the day.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” Caleb teases, and Essek smiles serenely, but doesn’t deny it. Truth be told, he wishes nothing more than for Caleb to stay here and keep him company as long as he is willing, but residual guilt over the thought of fetching one of the clerics has crept now into his estimation of the last hour as well. He’s already monopolized plenty of Caleb’s time, and he doesn’t care to wear out his welcome so soon into the vacation.
“Go. Have fun with your friends.”
Caleb chuckles softly. “I thought I already was.”
He finds himself abruptly grateful for the sudden sting along the bridge of his nose; it gives Essek an excuse for his sharp intake of breath, the way his hands tighten in the blankets beneath him. Caleb’s smile falls, and he places a hand on his arm as Essek breathes through his nose, the creeping burn now flaring over his cheekbones and the ridges of his ears.
“Feeling it now?”
Essek nods, wincing. The movement stretches the skin of his neck, and now he feels it there too: not truly painful, but intense, and growing more so by the second. A steadily rising smolder, like electricity searching for a path to freedom, and he is not looking forward when it finds its way to the surface.
“I should see if Yeza has any ointment – he might have brought some for Luc…” Caleb’s hand disappears from Essek’s shoulder, but he barely notices, too focused on the building heat beneath his skin. He touches his face with his fingers, almost expecting to find burns opening up where the pain – and it is pain now, undeniably – is most potent, but his skin is still smooth, if inflamed to the touch.
A minute or so later Caleb returns, triumphantly clutching a bottle of something whitish (and mercifully, apothecary-labeled), but by that time, Essek’s face is buried in his palms. The pressure alleviates a little of the burning, but he only has two hands, and it’s with a small grunt of protest that he allows Caleb to drag them away from providing even that much relief.
“I think we should get one of the clerics,” he says again, once he has Essek’s attention, and Essek’s stubbornness aches to deny him again. None of his soldiers had ever required medical attention for their burns – but then again, none of his soldiers were foolish enough to spend their time frolicking in direct tropical sunlight without a single head covering. Apparently, Essek is that foolish – or, at least, Caleb Widogast makes him so. Another poor decision, too late to unwind.
Essek hangs his head and agrees at last, and Caleb goes fishing in his bag for copper wire.
He expects that to be the end of it. The message is sent and Caduceus promises to return as soon as he can make his way back to shore, and Essek resigns himself to being in misery for the next fifteen minutes or so. But when Caleb returns from re-stowing his components, the ointment is still in his hand. Essek raises an eyebrow – or tries to, though he imagines the effect is dulled by the grimace that immediately follows.
“Come. Let’s treat the worst of it, at least.” Caleb pulls the cork and tosses it aside, then coats his fingers generously from the bottle. He beckons to Essek with his other hand. “Lean forward a little.”
Essek does, inclining his head and keeping his traitorous hands tucked into this lap so that they don’t creep back to his face, clawing or pressing to try and provide any sort of counterpoint to the burn. Caleb shuffles forward on his knees, balancing with one hand while he keeps the one coated with ointment aloft, away from the sand that coats the blankets beneath them. For the second time that day, Caleb’s fingers find his chin, this time tilting it upward so that he can look down into Essek’s face.
“Eyes closed,” Caleb murmurs, and he follows the instruction gratefully.
The first touches are feather light – barely a tickle of sensation as Caleb taps his temples, his cheeks, his chin, and finally his forehead, leaving dots of relief in the place where once he once might have pressed a pearl, or a kiss. The touches smooth along the contours of his face, tracing smudges of soothing coolness through a sea of fire, and everywhere that Caleb’s hands move, the pain eases. His fingers trace the space beneath Essek’s eyes, over his cheeks, then down to rub a little of the ointment along his chin. His lips part involuntarily, catching the edge of a calloused thumb, and Essek snaps his mouth closed as his heart hammers. He tastes herbs and sea salt and old, old parchment on the inside of his lip.
The touches disappear abruptly, and Essek doesn’t dare open his eyes, doesn’t dare move, fearing that any expression will make Caleb think he’s done it on purpose. He didn’t – he wouldn’t have dared – but he’s not sure what excuse he could offer that wouldn’t require stating why, exactly, he feels caught out.
The silence drags on, with nothing but Essek’s own heartbeat to fill the void. He knows that Caleb hasn’t moved away – he would have felt the gravity change, the space become lighter in absence before him – but that is all he knows. The back of his neck still burns fiercely, and he focuses on that pain, lets it anchor him before the anxiety can pull his mind from the present to some safer place.
“Is it alright if I-”
Then he feels Caleb moving around behind him, and hands on the back of his neck. His voice is loud now, and close, and he nods his assent without opening his eyes. In the darkness, the hands feel impossibly large, pressing with a firm weight and smoothing ointment down from the bristle of hair at the back of his neck to where his shoulders dip beneath his mantle. A hesitation, then the tips of Caleb’s fingers slide below the fabric, and Essek shivers as his skin runs hot and cold.
“Sorry,” Caleb says, “I hope my hands aren’t too chilly.”
“No, it’s- it’s alright. It feels good, actually,” he answers before he can think better of it, and when Caleb’s hands start moving again, adding more ointment and massaging it across every remaining inch of inflamed skin, he swears that his touch is a little… more relaxed? Less careful, at least, though he hadn’t realized that Caleb was being careful until now.
“Just your ears now, I think.” And that, Essek might have protested. Might have insisted he do this himself because elven ears are sensitive and millenia of ingrained instinct makes him nervous of letting another person touch them, but before he can say anything Caleb’s fingers are running along the inside shell of cartilage, and he has to shut it again quickly to stop the sound that was about to escape. Not once has someone touched his ears in his memory, and he is… unprepared for the intensity. It feels– It feels like every quiet noise of pleasure he’s ever made in his life is now pressed up to the back of his throat, begging to be let out. He can feel his jaw trembling with the effort of staying still, barely breathing as Caleb’s fingers dip and press and draw out cascades of glimmering sensation from the top of his skull to his shoulderblades.
He’s almost grateful that it’s over quickly, as much as he is disappointed, because he’s not sure how much longer he could have held his silence. Almost as an afterthought, he realizes that the pain has faded. The pressure is still there, the burn beneath the balm still trying desperately to reassert itself, but nothing hurts anymore. He tells Caleb as much, and he thinks he can hear the pleased smile in Caleb’s voice as he replies.
“I’m glad I could help.”
Essek lets out one, long breath, then finally makes himself open his eyes. Caleb is kneeling in front of him again. He looks almost startled when Essek catches his eye, like he hadn’t realized he was still staring. Whatever smile was there is gone, replaced with a pensive, almost nervous look. It makes him look younger than he is, and Essek feels young as well, looking at Caleb and wondering that he isn’t too old for this kind of teenage infatuation, the kind makes him want to lean forward and–
“Heard you needed some healing?”
Caduceus’s low rumble breaks the held breath between them, and Caleb pulls back at the same time as Essek flinches, realizing what he was thinking about– what he was about to–
“Yes,” Essek says quickly, turning his body away from Caleb in a miserable attempt at deniability, “thank you.”
Caleb is blocked by Caduceus’s scrawny form a moment later as he stoops to examine Essek’s face, then sits down crosslegged to get a closer look. That’s for the best, Essek concludes. He’s not sure he could look at Caleb without Caduceus realizing more than he wants him to.
“Caleb did a good job patching you up already, hm?” Caduceus says pleasantly. Apparently his strained smile isn’t terribly convincing, because Caduceus’s eyes twinkle with apparent discovery, and Essek feels a whole new wave of burning wash over his face. “That was nice of him.”
“It was,” he chokes out.
“Hm,” says Caduceus. “Let’s heal you the rest of the way then.”
“Please,” Essek says, truly grateful both for the healing, but also that Caduceus doesn’t push the matter further than an amused look and a knowing incline of the head.
He’s not sure they’d have been so lucky, if it was Jester who heeded Caleb’s call.