Chapter Text
The fine strands in his fingers unravelled slowly from their tangles as Caleb felt the rising tide of his own guilt dragging him under.
“You are hardly responsible for this Lich,” he said, his voice catching slightly. “As far as being a good person, it sounds as though you cannot be responsible in any way for Lucien’s death, or the duties he held in life.”
Mollymauk sniffed a little before rubbing his face again, pulling his hair through Caleb’s fingertips in a rush of rough silk.
“You say that, but it doesn’t really change anything.”
“I suppose not,” Caleb said, after another moment of quiet contemplation. He picked at another knot and sighed a little. “Do you mind if I use a comb?” he asked in a more business-like tone.
Molly laughed and tilted his head back to look up at him. Caleb couldn’t help but notice that his eyelashes had clumped together into tiny triangles before he looked back to his hands.
“If you have a comb, you are welcome to use it,” Molly said. He looked back down. “Do you ever… do you ever wonder what might have been? If you’d… I suppose you do think things through.”
Caleb focused on casting prestidigitation, once to make a small bone comb and once to clean Mollymauk’s hair of the last of the errant burrs. Unfortunately, it took a matter of seconds, and then he was left with his husband’s question hanging in the air like thistledown. He could almost feel a noose at his throat as he tried to frame an answer. The comb tapped out a staccato code against Molly’s horn before he jerked it away and clutched his shaking hands together. He took a shaky breath, and tried to smile when Molly tipped his head back to look.
“I- I am very much aware that had I just… if not for my plans. If not for my revenge, the Cerberus Assembly would have been able to withstand and crush this.” Molly turned a little and reached up to touch his cheek. Caleb closed his eyes rather than try to decipher face. “I let the war go on and on, and all my reasons seemed so very important. This chaos seemed so very important. Now… now everything – everyone – I care about. Anyone could die tomorrow and I…”
He cut himself off and tried to find some semblance of calm in his breathing. Unseen, he felt Molly climb up to sit next to him on the couch once more.
“We cannot do anything about the past, only the future. That is Caduceus’ opinion anyway,” Caleb said. He tried very hard to believe it as he took another breath. “As far as you having been… that is to say, your body was once another’s, but it is not for us to decide if that person deserved more time or less.” He glanced over to see Mollymauk watching him closely, and forced a small smile before looking at his hands. His chest hurt. “I know that I do not deserve more time,” he confessed quietly. “But an old friend insisted… I am all tangled up now…” he trailed off uncertainly, fragments of possible conversations whirling in confusion through his head.
To his side Mollymauk shifted, his purple fingers coming into view to take the comb. A moment later, soft pressure on his cheek and the gentle warmth of Molly’s breath locked something in place. The whirling thoughts fractured and reordered themselves around the truth Caleb had been trying to ignore. Twisting his trembling fingers together he made an effort to look at Mollymauk.
“I am not sure…” he began, haltingly. “I have done so much wrong. My old master – I can almost hear him laughing at me. He was a piece of work, but he at least held things together.” He paused a moment, and forced himself to look Mollymauk in the eyes. “I never planned to outlive the Assembly, at least not in any… I planned to see things stabilized and then to fix things for Nott – I am so close, I do not think it will take much longer – but then I was going to take care of the last dregs of the Assembly and be done with it.”
Molly’s expression was impossible to decipher. After a long silence, he looked away and began to carefully comb his hair. Caleb’s heart dropped, becoming a heavy sickness in his gut.
“I suppose this isn’t really any comfort for you, is it?” he asked Molly bluntly.
Molly huffed a laugh out through his nose and looked over with an expression of wry amusement.
“Not exactly the comfort I dressed for,” he quipped, before taking on a more sombre aspect. “It is, in a way, comforting to know I’m not the only one who doubts their worth. Caleb, you are a hero—”
“—I let a war drag on so I could murder people and bring my homeland to its knees. I am a traitor,” Caleb interrupted. The words were biting ice on his tongue. Mollymauk opened his mouth as if to voice a rebuttal, but it never came. Caleb looked over his husband’s shoulder into the middle distance and let the space stretch out between them.
“Your plans have changed, though?” Mollymauk asked, eventually, his tone carefully neutral.
Caleb forced himself to nod. Even through the spreading numbness, the weight of Molly’s attention felt crushing.
“Any particular reason?” Molly prompted.
Finding his tongue, Caleb swallowed hard. None of the sensations biting at his chest gave up their quarry, even as he tried push them away. He glanced at Molly, then down to his hands, then across at the stained-glass cats above his fireplace.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said in barely more than a whisper.
“I love you, too,” Molly replied, barely hesitating.
All thought scrambled out of Caleb’s mind in an instant. Looking at Molly in shock, he barely had time to recognize an expression of amusement before being overwhelmed by the softness in his eyes and at his lips. Somewhere in the back of his head he could feel the seconds falling away dizzyingly.
Eventually he remembered to breathe.
Molly waved a hand in front of his face.
“Not too much to assume, I hope,” he said, sounding falsely blasé.
It registered somewhere in the white noise of Caleb’s skull that if he didn’t do anything, Mollymauk would undoubtedly begin to think he had been wrong. Lurching forward and awkwardly grabbing at his husband’s hand, Caleb tried to ignore the heat in his face, the sudden sweat, and the welling memories of laughter at his first clumsy attempts at romance. He froze for a moment at the sensation of Molly’s hand in his, and he fumbled enough that he ended up kissing the top of Molly’s thumb instead of brushing his lips suavely over his fingers, but his husband still seemed taken by the gesture.
Lifting his head just enough to meet Molly’s eyes, he tried a smile.
“Not… ah… not too much at all,” he finally managed to confess.
He couldn’t bear to keep watching Molly’s face and wonder at the expressions crossing it, and so Molly’s lips against his fingers were a surprise. When he looked back, Molly placed one hand on his chest and leant forward to softly press their lips together.