It seemed to take a minor, hellish eternity to coordinate getting both of them up the stairs and into Caleb and Nott’s room. Caleb took two steps into the room, got Molly leaned against a wall, and then he closed the door forcibly behind them. With his fingers shaking as badly as they were, it took him three attempts to properly latch it closed but once he did, it felt like he could finally, properly breathe again, it felt like his heart might regain its normal rhythm at last.
He rested his hands against the solid, reassuring roughness of the door, rested his forehead against it, and tried to breathe. In a minute, he’d take out his silver thread and ward the room, but that could be in a minute.
It was a horrible feeling to fully appreciate in the hardwon stillness just how close he was to tears. The last dregs of adrenaline were leaving him shaking and shocky as they faded, with numb fingertips, stinging eyes, and a stubborn weakness in his legs. He hated confronting people directly. He hated standing out. That wasn’t supposed to be what his life was. That was supposed to be something that being in a group would let him avoid, and yet, and yet—
“Well, that was exciting,” Molly said from behind him, making Caleb flinch. He still sounded woozy and unbothered. He sounded as if he were simply commenting on the weather rather than his near miss. “I’ve never been fought over before.”
Caleb didn’t quite know what to say to that, didn’t pick up on the meaning there even if he could tell there was meaning there. He simply gave an acknowledging hum at first, and only after fumbling his silver thread from his pouch was he able to muster a reply. “May it be the last.”
He started to wind the silver thread around the room. Then he stopped, retrieved a chair, and shunted Molly into it so he could start over without the tiefling in his way. The weakness he could feel beneath his hands was starting to scare him. Enchantment magic didn’t usually have such visibly physical effects, did it? “S-Stay here. I, I need to make certain we are safe. Just sit.”
Molly nodded easily, did not protest, and Caleb turned back to his work with his mind racing.
Poison, perhaps? A mild poison to cause weakness and clumsiness for a while, probably mixed with a potion to charm and enchant the victim. That way, the man wouldn’t have had to worry about concentration, and if Molly had managed to shake off the enchantment halfway through, he still would have been helpless to resist whatever his attacker might have wanted to do to him.
It was unfortunately plausible. Caleb knew that magically endowed potions played very nicely with poisons. He could only hope that his guess was right, and that Molly hadn’t instead been dosed with something more lethal. Of course, the Crownsguard would never listen to a vagabond tiefling reporting being violated by a well-to-do human resident, but perhaps the man had intended to dump a body in a ditch rather than leave a living victim behind to even attempt to cause problems.
The thought made him shudder, swallowing down a fresh surge of dread. He had no way of knowing one way or another. All he could do was keep them both safe and alive until this wore off or until Nott returned. She’d be able to tell him more.
“I suppose it’s only that—” Molly continued on, as Caleb started working his way along the last wall. On the very edge of his hearing, he heard a sound like…rustling? It made him frown curiously. “--I didn’t think you would be the one fighting over me. But I don’t mind it. Honestly, Caleb, if you wanted to fuck me, you only had to ask.”
A choked, strangled noise escaped Caleb, and he nearly dropped the thread. He held on to his concentration and his component by the tips of his fingers, cursing himself. Every minute that passed without this room being defended felt like it was killing him by inches. He would not stop again.
“I do not want to fuck you, Molly,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall as he resolutely continued to spin the thread along. “I am not going to touch you.”
Molly laughed – it sounded bright as spun glass and just as brittle. “Of course you do and of course you are, Cay-leb.” There was a childishly singsong note in how he said Caleb’s name that only made what he was saying even worse. “Lots of people want to fuck me, I’ll have you know. I am very handsome.”
Once again, Caleb heard what he could not deny now was the sound of rustling fabric, and the sound made him cringe forward against the wall. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape to that wouldn’t leave Molly alone and vulnerable all over again. And Molly kept talking – whatever he’d started letting out, he seemed genuinely unable to stop, and the cheer in his voice had the air of a well-worn lie that was doing less and less with every word to hide the pain that lay beneath.
“I am very handsome, I am incredibly striking, in fact. I’ve even been called ‘bewitching’, I think. Once. That was nice. I am one-of-a-kind! That’s what matters. Not another tiefling in all of Wildemount like me. And that’s fine. That’s good! That’s what I want. I just want to be me, as much and as hard as I can. And sometimes people like that. Sometimes they don’t, and fuck ‘em.”
The air around him felt suddenly, oppressively heavy. His limbs felt numb and divorced from his control. It felt exactly like he was in a nightmare in fact and, like his nightmares of burning or falling or failing, Caleb could see exactly where this was going to end and yet he could do absolutely nothing to stop it.
Moving like a puppet on strings, Caleb tied off the thread into its proper loop then slowly, slowly turned to face Molly. The tiefling was sitting on the floor, his coat discarded to one side and his shirt discarded to the other. Caleb could see the bundle of flowers at his shoulder and the peacock’s tail curling down his neck, the emerald trail of the serpent curling down his arm and the various stars and constellations wound throughout the other designs wherever there was room. He could see the neat, thin, silvery scars that covered Molly’s chest and shoulders, left there by the tiefling’s own hand.
He could also see, now, that Molly was trembling finely and starting to sweat, that his eyes were staring back into some past private hell that he could not admit had been a hell because of what such an admission would mean.
Caleb understood. He understood so well that it hurt.
Molly was still talking, and all Caleb could do was listen and wish that things were different. “And sometimes, people like the look of me enough to want me all to themselves for a while. That’s fine. And sometimes they want me bad enough to say things like ‘be quiet and I’ll let your circus stay in town another day’ or ‘be good and I won’t tell anyone about the three silver’. And that’s fine. They get something out of it, and so do I. That’s fine. That’s fair.”
He shouldn’t be hearing this. He didn’t want to hear any of this. Molly wouldn’t want him to hear any of this. But here he was, here they were, and there was nothing either of them could do to fix anything.
All Caleb could do was understand, and he did understand all too well.
“He put something in my drink, didn’t he?” Molly mumbled. He was starting to sway, now, even while sitting down. “I had a minute where I. Um. Where I wondered.”
Caleb nodded, though he had no idea if Molly saw it. Indeed, when the tiefling raised his head to try and look at Caleb, it seemed like he was only staring towards his best guess of where Caleb even was.
“That’s new. Never had to watch my drink before, y’know? But that’s not so bad, isn’t it? It’s nice that he thought I was worth the effort of something like that. Nice to not get threatened, or dragged, or—"
His composure snapped. His helplessness became too much to keep swallowing down. And so Caleb was finally able to shake the leaden numbness from his limbs enough to stand, enough to move, enough to kneel down in front of Molly. He reached out with shaking hands and guided his companion to slump forward, to let his head rest on Caleb’s shoulder and maybe, finally stop.
Molly didn’t seem to understand, at first – Caleb heard him make a soft, confused noise, and he stayed otherwise rigid under Caleb’s hands. But doing anything more felt as if it would have been crossing a line and, thankfully, after another minute or so his patience was rewarded and he felt Molly relax at last. It was Caleb’s turn to tense as he felt Molly’s arms wrap around him loosely, but it didn’t seem to be a prelude to any more awful misunderstandings and so he resolved to live with it.
“You are going to lay down,” Caleb said, and he barely recognized the sound of his own voice from how thick with emotion it was. “You are going to rest. In a while, you are probably going to be very sick. But you will get through it, and I will keep watch, and no one else is going to touch you beyond that.”
Molly didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t entirely dead weight as Caleb struggled to get them both back to their feet, so Caleb was at least relatively certain that he was still conscious. But he remained quiet and pliant as Caleb helped him collapsed onto the bed, only shifting a little and apparently on instinct to help accommodate for his horns. But for a time, he simply laid there, his eyes half-open and staring blankly at the wall, his breathing shallow.
Caleb, meanwhile, took up an anxious perch on the windowsill. His and Nott’s room faced the front of the building, and so he was afforded a look at the street outside through the fading light. At least this way, he could have some advance notice on the return of his friends or the arrival of Crownsguard.
When Molly spoke again, his voice was little more than a rasping whisper, as if two words alone sapped nearly all his strength.
“Thank you.”
It barely caught the edge of Caleb’s hearing, soft enough that he might have been able to convince himself he’d hallucinated it. But he looked anyway, and saw Molly looking back at him, having clawed back a moment of focus no doubt by the tips of his fingers.
Caleb reached out slowly and patted Molly gently on the head, right between his horns. “Try and sleep,” he whispered.
Molly nodded slowly, then let his eyes fall closed and did just that. Caleb was left to keep an uneasy vigil for the next two hours and thirty-three minutes, staring out the window, running his fingers anxiously through Frumpkin’s fur.
Entitlement (3/?)
He rested his hands against the solid, reassuring roughness of the door, rested his forehead against it, and tried to breathe. In a minute, he’d take out his silver thread and ward the room, but that could be in a minute.
It was a horrible feeling to fully appreciate in the hardwon stillness just how close he was to tears. The last dregs of adrenaline were leaving him shaking and shocky as they faded, with numb fingertips, stinging eyes, and a stubborn weakness in his legs. He hated confronting people directly. He hated standing out. That wasn’t supposed to be what his life was. That was supposed to be something that being in a group would let him avoid, and yet, and yet—
“Well, that was exciting,” Molly said from behind him, making Caleb flinch. He still sounded woozy and unbothered. He sounded as if he were simply commenting on the weather rather than his near miss. “I’ve never been fought over before.”
Caleb didn’t quite know what to say to that, didn’t pick up on the meaning there even if he could tell there was meaning there. He simply gave an acknowledging hum at first, and only after fumbling his silver thread from his pouch was he able to muster a reply. “May it be the last.”
He started to wind the silver thread around the room. Then he stopped, retrieved a chair, and shunted Molly into it so he could start over without the tiefling in his way. The weakness he could feel beneath his hands was starting to scare him. Enchantment magic didn’t usually have such visibly physical effects, did it? “S-Stay here. I, I need to make certain we are safe. Just sit.”
Molly nodded easily, did not protest, and Caleb turned back to his work with his mind racing.
Poison, perhaps? A mild poison to cause weakness and clumsiness for a while, probably mixed with a potion to charm and enchant the victim. That way, the man wouldn’t have had to worry about concentration, and if Molly had managed to shake off the enchantment halfway through, he still would have been helpless to resist whatever his attacker might have wanted to do to him.
It was unfortunately plausible. Caleb knew that magically endowed potions played very nicely with poisons. He could only hope that his guess was right, and that Molly hadn’t instead been dosed with something more lethal. Of course, the Crownsguard would never listen to a vagabond tiefling reporting being violated by a well-to-do human resident, but perhaps the man had intended to dump a body in a ditch rather than leave a living victim behind to even attempt to cause problems.
The thought made him shudder, swallowing down a fresh surge of dread. He had no way of knowing one way or another. All he could do was keep them both safe and alive until this wore off or until Nott returned. She’d be able to tell him more.
“I suppose it’s only that—” Molly continued on, as Caleb started working his way along the last wall. On the very edge of his hearing, he heard a sound like…rustling? It made him frown curiously. “--I didn’t think you would be the one fighting over me. But I don’t mind it. Honestly, Caleb, if you wanted to fuck me, you only had to ask.”
A choked, strangled noise escaped Caleb, and he nearly dropped the thread. He held on to his concentration and his component by the tips of his fingers, cursing himself. Every minute that passed without this room being defended felt like it was killing him by inches. He would not stop again.
“I do not want to fuck you, Molly,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall as he resolutely continued to spin the thread along. “I am not going to touch you.”
Molly laughed – it sounded bright as spun glass and just as brittle. “Of course you do and of course you are, Cay-leb.” There was a childishly singsong note in how he said Caleb’s name that only made what he was saying even worse. “Lots of people want to fuck me, I’ll have you know. I am very handsome.”
Once again, Caleb heard what he could not deny now was the sound of rustling fabric, and the sound made him cringe forward against the wall. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape to that wouldn’t leave Molly alone and vulnerable all over again. And Molly kept talking – whatever he’d started letting out, he seemed genuinely unable to stop, and the cheer in his voice had the air of a well-worn lie that was doing less and less with every word to hide the pain that lay beneath.
“I am very handsome, I am incredibly striking, in fact. I’ve even been called ‘bewitching’, I think. Once. That was nice. I am one-of-a-kind! That’s what matters. Not another tiefling in all of Wildemount like me. And that’s fine. That’s good! That’s what I want. I just want to be me, as much and as hard as I can. And sometimes people like that. Sometimes they don’t, and fuck ‘em.”
The air around him felt suddenly, oppressively heavy. His limbs felt numb and divorced from his control. It felt exactly like he was in a nightmare in fact and, like his nightmares of burning or falling or failing, Caleb could see exactly where this was going to end and yet he could do absolutely nothing to stop it.
Moving like a puppet on strings, Caleb tied off the thread into its proper loop then slowly, slowly turned to face Molly. The tiefling was sitting on the floor, his coat discarded to one side and his shirt discarded to the other. Caleb could see the bundle of flowers at his shoulder and the peacock’s tail curling down his neck, the emerald trail of the serpent curling down his arm and the various stars and constellations wound throughout the other designs wherever there was room. He could see the neat, thin, silvery scars that covered Molly’s chest and shoulders, left there by the tiefling’s own hand.
He could also see, now, that Molly was trembling finely and starting to sweat, that his eyes were staring back into some past private hell that he could not admit had been a hell because of what such an admission would mean.
Caleb understood. He understood so well that it hurt.
Molly was still talking, and all Caleb could do was listen and wish that things were different. “And sometimes, people like the look of me enough to want me all to themselves for a while. That’s fine. And sometimes they want me bad enough to say things like ‘be quiet and I’ll let your circus stay in town another day’ or ‘be good and I won’t tell anyone about the three silver’. And that’s fine. They get something out of it, and so do I. That’s fine. That’s fair.”
He shouldn’t be hearing this. He didn’t want to hear any of this. Molly wouldn’t want him to hear any of this. But here he was, here they were, and there was nothing either of them could do to fix anything.
All Caleb could do was understand, and he did understand all too well.
“He put something in my drink, didn’t he?” Molly mumbled. He was starting to sway, now, even while sitting down. “I had a minute where I. Um. Where I wondered.”
Caleb nodded, though he had no idea if Molly saw it. Indeed, when the tiefling raised his head to try and look at Caleb, it seemed like he was only staring towards his best guess of where Caleb even was.
“That’s new. Never had to watch my drink before, y’know? But that’s not so bad, isn’t it? It’s nice that he thought I was worth the effort of something like that. Nice to not get threatened, or dragged, or—"
His composure snapped. His helplessness became too much to keep swallowing down. And so Caleb was finally able to shake the leaden numbness from his limbs enough to stand, enough to move, enough to kneel down in front of Molly. He reached out with shaking hands and guided his companion to slump forward, to let his head rest on Caleb’s shoulder and maybe, finally stop.
Molly didn’t seem to understand, at first – Caleb heard him make a soft, confused noise, and he stayed otherwise rigid under Caleb’s hands. But doing anything more felt as if it would have been crossing a line and, thankfully, after another minute or so his patience was rewarded and he felt Molly relax at last. It was Caleb’s turn to tense as he felt Molly’s arms wrap around him loosely, but it didn’t seem to be a prelude to any more awful misunderstandings and so he resolved to live with it.
“You are going to lay down,” Caleb said, and he barely recognized the sound of his own voice from how thick with emotion it was. “You are going to rest. In a while, you are probably going to be very sick. But you will get through it, and I will keep watch, and no one else is going to touch you beyond that.”
Molly didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t entirely dead weight as Caleb struggled to get them both back to their feet, so Caleb was at least relatively certain that he was still conscious. But he remained quiet and pliant as Caleb helped him collapsed onto the bed, only shifting a little and apparently on instinct to help accommodate for his horns. But for a time, he simply laid there, his eyes half-open and staring blankly at the wall, his breathing shallow.
Caleb, meanwhile, took up an anxious perch on the windowsill. His and Nott’s room faced the front of the building, and so he was afforded a look at the street outside through the fading light. At least this way, he could have some advance notice on the return of his friends or the arrival of Crownsguard.
When Molly spoke again, his voice was little more than a rasping whisper, as if two words alone sapped nearly all his strength.
“Thank you.”
It barely caught the edge of Caleb’s hearing, soft enough that he might have been able to convince himself he’d hallucinated it. But he looked anyway, and saw Molly looking back at him, having clawed back a moment of focus no doubt by the tips of his fingers.
Caleb reached out slowly and patted Molly gently on the head, right between his horns. “Try and sleep,” he whispered.
Molly nodded slowly, then let his eyes fall closed and did just that. Caleb was left to keep an uneasy vigil for the next two hours and thirty-three minutes, staring out the window, running his fingers anxiously through Frumpkin’s fur.