criticalkink | CR Campaign Two: Mighty Nein era (characters)

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CR Campaign Two: Mighty Nein era (characters)

The rules are under the cut for you to read if you haven't already checked out the profile!

Welcome to the kink meme for Critical Role!

This community is open to all fans of Critical Role no matter what your preference for pairing may be. You do not have to join the community: you can either watch it or just track the post. Anon commenting will always be on, and IP tracking will be off. So feel free to stay anon if it makes you more comfortable.

What is a Kink Meme?
It's pretty simple. You post a prompt and your fellow fans get inspired and write fic based on that prompt. As it is a "kink" meme, a great deal of fic will be of the smutty variety, so if you aren't into that or not of a porn-reading age, this place won't be for you. Not all fic has to be smutty, but it does have to be kinky.

Clarification: This is a kink meme, therefore prompts must be kink-based. It is not a general prompting/headcanons meme. There have been a couple of people confused by that, so we're just making it extra clear.

Please only post one prompt per comment so to avoid any confusion.

How do I prompt?
Post each prompt as a new comment to the main post. Include pairing (or threesome or more if that's your thing) and anything else you want to add. You should put, at the very least, the pairing in the subject line along with a specific kink if it applies. You can put the whole prompt in the subject if it will fit, but if it doesn't, use the comments. For example:

Subject line: Beauregard/Jester, friends to lovers

Body of comment: Jester's been letting Beau use her for sparring practice. That kind of proximity does things to a tiefling.

I see a prompt I want to write! What now?
Go for it! You don't have to claim it, and fills can be written by more than one person. Once you've finished you must post it as a response to the original comment. Responses should use a subject line that includes the pairing, rating & any necessary warnings (i.e. incest, non-con, etc.). If you have titled your fic you can also include that. Also, as LJ limits the size of comments, if your fic goes into multiple comments, please note that your comment is part 1/5, part 2/5 and so on. Using the prompt above, the subject line could read:

"Punches and Pastries, Jester/Beauregard, M, 1/3"

And now some rules...

Since we're all supposed to be adults here, let's act like it. Be respectful to your fellow posters.
Your kink is not someone else's and their kink may not be yours. If you don't like it, don't read it. It's really that simple.
Please no bashing of other pairings. Just like with kinks, everyone has their own flavors, and this is neither the time nor place for ship wars. This meme is meant to include the entire fandom.
Crossover prompts are allowed, but they must include a Critical Role character as a main part of the prompt.
RPF is also allowed, but please prompt it over here!
Het, slash, femmeslash? You're all welcome here. The more the merrier!
It's not a requirement by any means, but writers love feedback, so if you read something you enjoy, take a second to tell the writer. Whether it's a one word response or something longer, it's always appreciated.
Please follow basic kink meme etiquette by not linking the cast or crew to this meme.

While we want this to be a relaxed and cool place, we also don't want people to feel uncomfortable being here. If you have suggestions or comments on how this community can improve please address to them to

criticalkink in a PM or drop a comment on this post.

The most important rule of all? HAVE FUN.

Now go forth and prompt!

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He’s chosen to remain in the magnificent library, rather than the room with the bed. Lovely as those chambers are, the openness has an appeal he’s too tired to read into. By silent, mutual agreement, those present directed him to a large, low lounge by the fire. Jester fussed over him for several long minutes, arranging a small army of pillows just so, then tucked a heavy blanket of nearly incomprehensible softness over his legs.
“You need to put on weight, my friend,” Caduceus says, once he’s settled.
“And you can ask the cats for anything!” Jester chimes.
Anything feels overwhelming. Surely there are limits to Caleb’s construct, and while Essek is sure he must be hungry, he can’t untangle that from the exhaustion and malaise that permeates him down to his bones. Caduceus and Jester are staring at him expectantly though, so it seems he will be eating.
“Whatever you think, Caduceus,” Essek says, finally.
Caduceus hums to himself, tapping one long, thin finger to his pink chin.
“I know just the thing.”
It is easy enough to simply leave him to it. Jester settles on the far end of the lounge, just past his feet, with her sketchbook and some charcoals. Yasha is nearby, Essek can hear her tending to her weapons. Beau and Fjord have disappeared upstairs, following Veth and Caleb perhaps. That’s everyone accounted for, and nothing for him to do but lie there.
He stares into the fireplace, while a discordant jumble of conflicting impulses simmers in his chest. There is a part of him, small and suspicious and afraid, that wants to have them all in sight, as if they are all threats. Another that would relish being alone—perhaps forever. And yet another that hungers for more of the quiet company and gentle treatment he’s received. A last that is screaming that this could be a trick, that he will wake chained.
His hands hurt, he realizes. He looks down, sees that he’s clenched them so tightly his knuckles have bleached lilac. It takes more effort than it should to straighten his fingers, to force them to relax. Maybe if he had something to do—
He casts Prestidigitation. He is clean (someone must have done that and—why does it chafe to think of being so vulnerable in front of his friends, when he’d already been lain open by a monster?) but he focuses on his face and neck anyway, drawing a few threads of magic from the current of the universe to do his bidding. Feels a wash of gentle energy flow over him, removing anything that shouldn’t be there. And with that, relief.
Relief that he can cast, that he is no longer helpless. That he could fight or flee. That he can exert control, once again, over himself, his situation.
He’d already used his levitation cantrip, done so almost reflexively, so he knew, intellectually, that magic was once again at his disposal, but this is the moment it sinks in. He casts Prestidigitation again and again and again, cleaning every inch of himself, burning away any trace of where he’d been. Of who had been there with him.
“Essek?” Jester says, softly. “You’re crying—oh.”
He freezes, mid cast. Shame he can’t explain, bubbles up from somewhere in his guts, choking any explanation he could give before it could even form.
Jester sets aside her sketchbook and draws her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. Her arms loop around her shins, her tail curls around her ankles, and she looks into the fire. Behind them, the small sounds Yasha had been making stop entirely.
“I got—once—” she bites her lip. “A long time ago, a real asshole took me and Fjord and Yasha from the group. It sucked really bad,” she pauses, and her gaze loses its focus for a moment. “I was still scared and felt so helpless.” She shakes her head and turns back toward Essek. “I had my friends with me, at least.”
Now, Essek hears Yasha move. He can’t help but look, and sees her coming closer. She walks around the couch and sits on the floor, near enough for him to touch, if he wanted, but facing away slightly.
“I Scryed on you,” Jester says, voice uncharacteristically small. “I just— you weren’t alone, okay? I know you couldn’t have known, but every day, after we knew something was wrong, I Scryed.”
Essek shudders. The things she must have seen. It feels like a new kind of sin, to be the reason someone like Jester now carries those horrors.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner, but we’ll be here for you now, okay?”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Jester. If I hadn’t—” Essek can’t help the bitter laugh. If he’d been more cautious travelling, if he’d paid more mind to martial spellwork, if he hadn’t started a fucking war—
“Hey,” she says. Her face is deadly serious. “Icky-thong did this, and he deserves the blame.”
That’s when Caduceus returns, carrying a bowl of soup and half a loaf of crusty bread.
--
Essek feigns sleep, and after some hushed discussion, they leave him in the salon. He probably could have simply said he’d prefer to stay there, but they would have asked why, and he doesn’t want to examine that now any more than he did earlier. He only knows that the huge space, filled will books and firelight, feels more welcoming than any other place available to him.
A few of the cat servants are lounging nearby, available to him any time, but he hasn’t needed them since he sent one in search of a book. He thought it would occupy his focus, but his eyes kept sliding off the pages. He’s tried trancing, but he can’t quiet himself enough for that either. So he’s staring into the fire again, feeling dull and agitated.
“Mrow?”
A cat, a lanky, orange creature, appears at the end of the lounge, regarding him with a strange intensity. It looks more properly feline than the servants, but they take so many forms that Essek can’t be sure. But there is one particular cat that is so far unaccounted for—
“Frumpkin?”
The cat just blinks coolly, somehow disapproving, and while he knows Frumpkin can take a variety of shapes, usually his coat is more dappled and dark than this animal’s. It’s not impossible that this is Caleb’s familiar, but it is likely? Essek doesn’t know enough about cats or fey to be sure.
The cat slowly, cautiously picks its way up the lounge, avoiding stepping on Essek for the most part, until it reaches his hands. Then it bumps its head against knuckles, fairly demanding he pet it. Essek huffs, more bemused than anything, and scratches it under the chin. The cat immediately begins to purr, then pushes closer. It nuzzles Essek under his chin, then settles against his chest, still purring, seeking him out whenever he stops his ministrations.
The low noise of the purring, the repetitive motion of running his fingers through cat’s soft fur, give him the mindlessness he needs to finally quiet himself. It’s not long before he finds his mind slipping into a trance.
When he rouses, the cat is gone.

Ohhhh my heart.

It feels like a new kind of sin, to be the reason someone like Jester now carries those horrors.

Essek did you not JUST hear her say that she had been abducted before and it had nothing to do with you? I mean, she didn’t really specify the torture, but I thought it was implied… then again I suppose in his state of mind implied meanings might go over his head. There’s too much for him to deal with to accurately gauge what people aren’t saying. Also, I’m glad that you brought the Iron Shepherds up. It gets kinda left by the wayside a lot in fics, but…I think with the exception of Caduceus, all of them have been kidnapped and/or tortured before.

And CAT-LEB oh my sweet boy! I hope he at least feels better getting to give Essek this comfort, even if he doesn’t feel he can approach him in human form. I have to wonder if Essek would be upset at the deception if he knew… but also I fucking love that he knows exactly what Frumpkin’s coat looks like.

At some point the lounge became his lounge.
It takes on the colors he tends to favor in his dress, becomes plusher, with pillows more suited to keeping him comfortable while reading and trancing. Gains a companion in the form of a low table. Books he’s shown interest in manifest on the table, along with similar tomes, rather than him having to ask for them each time. The far end grows slightly farther away, to accommodate Jester’s frequent company without leaving him cramped.
All this consideration, and Essek only ever sees Caleb for the handful of minutes it takes him to exit his tower, recast it, and enter it again.
Essek doesn’t know if that is a kindness or not.
Because his pulse still quickens, and his stomach still knots with fear, but his heart aches for that quiet, brilliant company.
--
The little orange cat visits more nights than not, patient but insistent on his attention.
“Does the master of the house send you, I wonder?” Essek murmurs. The cat is curled at his hip, purring loudly. Essek strokes it behind the ears. “He sends the others to wait on me, but you don’t seem like the usual staff. And I know you aren’t Frumpkin.”
No, he’d spotted Frumpkin, in his usual livery, and Essek is certain Caleb would not expend the resources necessary to change his coat with such frequency. So this is someone else.
“Well, even if you are here under orders, I appreciate your company.”
The cat lifts its head to stare up at him with its vibrant blue eyes. If Essek didn’t know better, he’d think there was something sad in that gaze. He wonders if he’d said something wrong, before realizing that he could hardly offend a cat, arcane manifestation or no. Still, he scratches it under the chin in what he hopes it a suitable attempt at mollification.
The cat leans into his fingers for a moment, then climbs onto his chest and curls up again, purring more loudly than before.
--
He might spend most of his time in the salon, on his lounge, but Caduceus has encouraged him to walk around. Exercise, to regain his strength. If that first circuit around the salon, holding Yasha’s elbow, hadn’t exhausted him, he’d have brushed the idea off as well-meaning but ludicrous. Surely walking couldn’t elude him.
But Caduceus is an expert in his own field, and Essek should have known better than to disregard his advice.
He can’t very well walk around outside (which is Uthodurn, apparently. They deemed it sufficiently remote and neutral for the purposes of hiding him.) so he makes due with wandering the tower. He no longer needs an escort, at least, and he takes it as an opportunity to study Caleb’s handiwork.
It’s the detail that consistently impresses Essek. This is masterwork, and it never grows less careful, no matter how many times he recasts it. No matter how many times he changes it. Essek has so many questions but—
A turbulent mix of emotions rears up—fear, anger, longing, sadness, worry. His grits his teeth, breathes the way Caduceus taught him. Eventually, the chaos will to turn to exhaustion and numbness.
What was the other advice? Focus on his senses. Hearing for example. What can he hear, besides the pounding of his pulse?
Voices. Whose voices? Beauregard’s and—
And Caleb’s.
Essek is on the sixth floor, the furthest he usually ventures upward. Below Veth and Caleb’s rooms. The iris is open—not unusual—but Essek doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything from that floor.
Eavesdropping is rude, but it is also second nature to him. A return to one of his worse habits can probably be forgiven, under the circumstances. And Essek misses the sound of Caleb’s voice very badly.
“—Fuckin’, seriously? There’s self-flagellation and then there’s whatever the fuck you’re doing.”
“Beauregard.”
“Don’t ‘Beauregard’ me, I’m right.”
A beat of tense silence, then—
“No, you think you’re right. But I’m not going to subject him to more pain because of what you think.”
“The fuck? You’re acting like this is your fault or some shit.”
“It’s not about fault. It’s about—” Caleb’s voice dies. Essek can picture the tense, grim expression that must come with a silence like that. “I know how he prefers to break people down. Not just pain, but lies, and—and—” There’s a soft choking sound, very like the prelude to a sob. “Essek is afraid of me. I don’t care if it looks like self-flagellation to you, if I were him I’d never want to see my face again.”
“He’s not you, though. And we both know it’s not you wigging him out.”
“And it doesn’t seem to make a practical difference.”
“You wanna live like this forever? Never talking to him again?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want, so—”
Essek doesn’t hear the rest, he is already fleeing. He doesn’t know why, just that he doesn’t want to hear more of that conversation. He fairly flings the door to his own chambers open, only barely keeps himself from slamming the door behind him.
Essek sinks to the floor almost immediately, resting against the door. Curls into himself, head resting on his knees. Tries not to shake.
He cannot name this feeling, this yawning ache. The know that Caleb knows, to know that Caleb is trying to spare him in the ways he can, to miss Caleb bitterly, to hate that he cannot stomach what he desperate to have.
To know that Caleb, too, is hurting for his hurt.
It occurs to him that the last words they exchanged, if they could be called that, were Essek’s bitter attempt to fling vitriol at someone else entirely.
Will that be it, then? Will that be forever how things stood between them?
Essek finds he hates that thought more than almost anything else.

^^^^
It's above, I don't know what I'm doing here

You’re breakin’ my damn heart, is what you’re doing, my gods
Poor everyone.
Also bless Our Lady Of Real-Talk, Beauregard Lionett. Love her so much. She is the bullshit detector every group needs.

Time might be specialty of his, but he finds it’s escaped him of late.
He realizes he doesn’t know how long he’s been absent from his post. He’s even lost track of how long he’s been with the Nein. The days in Caleb’s tower run together in his memory, one long blur of plush and restless monotony. None of them have commented on the amount of time they’ve spent playing his nursemaid. Neither has there been any mention of how much longer they will indulge him.
They go to great lengths for their own, he knows, and he has counted enough to be saved, but they cannot house him here forever. His sanctuary will come to an end, and he will need a plan. It had been Vurmas, but now—
Away without leave, for who knows how long. If he’d managed to avoid suspicion before, surely this has drawn it. There is no lie he could tell that would stand up to the scrutiny a lengthy, unplanned absence would entail. And the truth could spell either renewed war or another prolonged stay in a torturer’s care.
His fingers drift up to the knotted scar at his throat, an ugly reminder of his final attempt to deny Ikithon. Feeling wretched and ungrateful, he wonders if it would have been better had they let him die there. There is a kind of freedom in death he’d never appreciated before. A gentleness to oblivion.
“Essek?”
Jester’s voice jolts him from his morbid thoughts. He glances over to her, once again perched at the end of his lounge. Fjord, not far away, looks up from the book he’d been reading with a look of gentle interest.
Essek returns his hand to his lap, perhaps a little too quickly to go unnoticed. Jester’s expression shifts, becoming just a bit sadder. She scoots closer, just barely not touching his feet.
Essek misses the times when she would throw herself at him without a second thought.
“Do you need something?” she asks.
He needs quite a lot, but nothing she can give. And even if she could, she’s already given him quite enough, more than he could ever repay.
She’s still staring at him, waiting for an answer. If none of the Nein will bring up what comes next, then maybe he can broach the topic. Give them their out. Maybe, in a way, that will pay down a little of what he owes them.
“Just thinking about the future.” He tries to say it with a small smile, but from the way Jester’s lips thin and Fjord shifts to lean over his knees, he realizes he must fail to look pleasant.
“What do you think the future looks like, friend?” Fjord asks.
Bleak, Essek doesn’t say. Entirely too long or too short.
“Not as I had been planning, certainly.”
“I tried to tell you but—” Jester reaches up, scratches her pet weasel under his chin. Soothing herself by soothing it. “The Bright Queen told us you were dead. I haven’t told her you’re not. We didn’t want to make the decision for you.”
Essek feels relieved at that, even if it does close many avenues forward. There’s little reason to hunt a dead man, and who would miss him? His brother might, but—
Well. With the matter of his consecution long since settled, Essek suspects Verin had slowly been making his peace with Essek’s eventual absence, one way or another.
“It’s probably for the best the Dynasty continues believing that.”
Jester nods, more enthusiastically than the statement warrants.
“There’s lots of other great places, anyway! Do you like sailing, we have a boat, or, or Nicodranas is just the best, and the Wildmother has all these cool sanctuaries, and there’s Rumblecusp.”
Ah. So they must have been planning to leave him somewhere. He wonders if they have allies in the places Jester mentioned. How would those allies fair against the Assembly’s forces? Ikithon wasn’t the only archmage who would find things simpler with Essek off the board.
At least the others would probably content themselves with merely depriving him of life.
“You could stay with us,” Jester says, softly. “If you wanted to. But if you don’t—we’d understand.”
“It’s not like you need to decide anything now,” Fjord adds gently. Carefully. “But we’ve all given how to keep you safe some thought. I hope knowing that gives you a little comfort.”
Put like that, it does. Put like that, it guts him. He wonders, against his better judgement, what plan Caleb put forth.
He is presumed dead, and therefore safe from the prying eyes of his homeland, with allies strong enough to pull him out from under the Assembly. Not just allies, but friends.
And the dearest of his friends makes him want to flee his very skin.
Perhaps this is the universe, exacting justice on him.
--
“I miss him, little one,” Essek says. The orange cat abruptly stops purring, looking up at him with a strangely knowing stare. Essek pets it between the eyes, gently, in the way it seems to like best. It leans into his hand for a moment, but wriggles upward, trying to curl up under his chin. Essek sighs, runs his hand lightly along the animal’s spine. “I don’t know what to do about it, and I hate it so much. I could get up and find him, right this moment, if I wanted but—”
There is a lump forming in his throat.
Essek buries his face in the cat’s fur. Heaves a shuddering breath against it. The animal tolerates his imposition with grace.
“I am freer than I have ever been, but the cost—” His eyes prickle. “He took Caleb from me.” What’s the harm in weeping? Only the cat will see. “I don’t want him to have the satisfaction. I don’t want to be afraid of Caleb. I want him back.”
Suddenly, the cat pushes away. Sick of Essek’s tears and squeezing no doubt. Essek lets the creature go. It walks to the end of the lounge, then yowls at him, low and plaintive. Asking a question Essek doesn’t understand.
“What is it?”
In answer, the cat ceases to be a cat.
“You have him, if you can stand him.”
Caleb is looking away, face nearly entirely hidden behind the curtain of his hair. Essek gasps in reflex, and Caleb hands jump into the first somatic component for Seeming.
“Don’t!” Essek snaps. “No illusions.”
Caleb shudders, but his hands drop back to his lap. He still won’t look at Essek. Essek, who feels panic creeping up his spine and affection blooming to meet it, reaches out, thoughtless and bold. He trails the pads of his fingers over the sleeve covering Caleb’s arm, watches as the fabric moves like it should. It feels like it should, sturdy and warm from Caleb’s body. The clothes, at least are real. He continues down to Caleb’s hands.
Caleb turns them over, letting Essek do what he wills. The scar is there, a line of thick keloid tissue bisecting one of his palms. It feels right, as do the many callouses and smaller scars. No glamour covering them.
Caleb isn’t breathing, frozen utterly in place. Letting Essek pet and prod.
“Caleb. Let me see your face.”
Caleb twists even further away, just for a moment, but slowly the assents. His eyes are downcast, but bluer, realer than Ikithon ever made them. His beard is thick and course under Essek’s inspection. The hollow line of his cheek matches perfectly with the report of Essek’s fingers, and it breaks his heart.
“I meant every word,” Essek whispers. He laces their fingers together. Feels the scar against his own palm. Presses his face into Caleb’s shoulder.
Something in Caleb deflates, and he breathes again.
“I—I didn’t—I thought I could only make it worse.”
“You are a balm, one I have sorely needed.”
Caleb, clever Caleb, maneuvers them with only the barest touches. Essek isn’t sure how he traversed the space from upright to lying mostly on top of his fellow wizard. Caleb doesn’t hold him close, only brackets him with one arm—keeping him safely on the lounge—and resting his other hand gently on Essek’s flank. Not holding. Not confining. Just there.
Essek buries his face into the blessed darkness where Caleb’s neck joins his shoulder. Rests his eyes in the gentle warmth he finds. Breathes deep the scent of human and leather and ink and magic. This, this is Caleb. Not an illusion meant to make him mad.
Essek, in that moment, finds a new thing to sustain him—
I will not lose this.

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CR Campaign Two: Mighty Nein era (characters)

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