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The whole house felt different.
Molly thought it as he walked Trinket to bed, leaving Caleb sitting awkwardly on their threadbare sofa, looking like he didn’t want to put his feet down anywhere or even let his eyes linger on anything too long, in case he caused it to burst into flames.
It was such an enormous difference, as if the whole of Foamside, the little life he’d built for himself and his son had been taken in two malicious hands and shaken up, sending them all reeling and landing in places that weren’t their own. It was a piece of Mollymauk’s old life jammed into his new one like a puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit, like a grain of sand in a loaf of bread, an upset to a routine that was so well established. Caleb seemed as aware of the discomfort as Molly did, if his dizzy gaze and hands anchored to his sides were anything to go by. When they used to spend time with each other, his hands would flit about like excited birds, flapping and twisting in the air to illustrate the thoughts pouring from his brilliant mind. If they were limp and still, it could only be a bad sign.
Trinket clearly felt the unease too, as fiercely as a little boy who’d had his perfect bedtime routine upset could. He didn’t want to go to bed, asking again and again who the man was, why he was up in their home when customers belonged in the store, why daddy was crying. Molly rubbed at his eyes frantically at the last one, he hadn’t realised they’d filled up again. After a lot of reassurance that everything was okay, the man was called Mr Widogast and he was...an old friend...Trinket finally fell asleep in their bed, clutching his cloth toy. His little face was still slightly crumpled in an expression of unease and it hurt Molly’s heart to see it.
Molly shut the door firmly and slumped against it for a long moment, letting out a long, shaky sigh and finally allowing himself some time to weep. Not all the time he needed, just a little, to release the pressure building up in his chest.
Wasn’t this what he’d always wanted? To have Caleb back in his life, smiling down at their son with such a tender expression, telling Mollymauk that he loved him?
How many times had he allowed himself the selfish daydream, that Caleb would come bursting through the shop doors, throw himself down on one knee, saying he’d always loved him, that even back in Zadash he’d known they were meant for each other despite the chasm between their backgrounds. Like a fucking smutty pulp romance, the archmage and the courtesan.
Maybe it was because he’d never thought Caleb would look so much like a man crushed under the weight of the whole world. He never thought there would be such loneliness and sadness in his eyes. Sure, when he’d first turned up at Marion’s, there had been a little of it in him, something that had pulled at Molly’s heart, called out to him even when he knew what a powerfully bad idea it was to fall for a client. Something that needed healing.
But now Caleb had turned up looking so much older than the years that had elapsed. He looked like all the healing they’d managed over their time together had gone and the wound inside him had been ripped wide open, further than it ever had.
In his daydream, Molly had never had to feel so guilty for leaving.
He wasn’t angry at Caleb, for disrupting their lives. He was angry at himself, furious, for not trusting Caleb. If there was anyone in the world he could have trusted, it was his archmage who pressed flowers into books for him and opened up to him about his nightmares and looked at him like he was a person with heart, rather than something to own. And he still hadn’t been able to do it.
He hadn’t. But now he would, if there was still a chance.
Mollymauk walked quickly to the living room. Caleb was still sat on the sofa, awkwardly posed like a doll with wires in its limbs shaped to be the perfect figure of anxiety. He did soften a little as Molly walked in, as if he’d been worried that everything since he stepped through the door of the little store had been a dream. Molly couldn’t exactly blame him.
“Tea?” he offered, voice a little weak, limply gesturing to his tiny little kitchenette and praying internally that he’d put enough in the meter last time.
Always offer a drink, he heard Marion saying in the back of his mind, a drink smooths the way into any conversation.
But Caleb simply shook his head, looking like he had a million things to say trying to burst out of him all at once but the clamour was so intense that none could actually get through his mouth. Molly wilted and sat across from him in the little chair he and Trinket had rescued from the antique shop.
“Are you mad at me?” he breathed, cringing as soon as he said it. Of course he was mad at him. How could be not be? He’d hidden the fact that they had a son together, cut him dead and ignored him for nine months before fleeing the city entirely, never once having the courage to think that maybe Caleb wanted them in his life.
But Caleb, his beautiful, kind, gentle Caleb, just shook his head, finding his voice.
“I’m not mad at you, Mollymauk. I’m just...I’m scared.” His voice was tiny, not much above a whisper.
“Scared?”
Caleb looked down at his hands. Molly noticed they had a few more burn scars than they had when last he’d seen them, stroking and parting his thighs.
“I...I’m scared I’m not the same. That I’m not the Caleb you used to know. I’m scared I’ve turned into something else, something that’s not worthy of you. Certainly not worthy to be a father.”
His eyes flickered nervously to the bedroom just behind Mollymauk, as if a tiny child as sweet and so completely in love with life as Trinket were something to be afraid of.
Molly wanted desperately to reach out for him, to prove to him (and also to himself) that the scars he saw weren’t permanent, that they could be healed with kisses and gentle touches and sweet words like they always had before. That the love he’d been so certain could grow between them still had a chance.
“You still look like Caleb to me,” he murmured, “You still sound the same. You still look at me in a way that makes me feel like everything will be alright, even when I’m so worried. And I still want you, though that's the least of it right now. I still feel like I love you.”
“Feel like?” Caleb managed a thin little smile, a hopeful, hesitant smile that wanted to be more.
“Since when were you the big risk taker out of the two of us?” Molly teased gently, answering with a smile of his own.
“Since when were you a reader of bedtime stories?” Caleb shot back, grinning, his fingers starting to flutter, tapping on his knees.
Molly snorted out a laugh.
The two of them felt a spark of something, something that crossed the space between them and made the night seem less dark.
“Make love to me, Mollymauk,” Caleb said in the gentle pause that followed.
Molly hesitated, nervous, trying to still cling to their joking back and forth and had been starting to feel familiar, “My rates have gone up. Independent contractor now.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Caleb’s expression stalled and his eyes fell like stars from the sky, burning out and turning dark.
“I’m sorry,” Molly said quickly, “That’s not...I don’t think of you that way anymore. I hadn’t for a very long time.”
Caleb managed to pull himself back, “Then...can we? I want to do it where we’re not...like that. Where it's just us. I know it feels a little crazy and it might be a bad idea but…I want to.”
“Me too,” Molly nods, feeling himself start to ache for it. He let himself feel it, unashamedly, let himself want Caleb, so sincerely it started to hurt but he didn’t shy away from it. It was a good kind of hurt.
“Not up here,” Molly rose to his feet, offering Caleb his hand which he gratefully took, “I don’t want to wake up Trinket.”
Caleb nodded, blushing a little. The blush made Mollymauk grin, he’d loved that so much.
At the brothel, they had expensively scented candles, rich silk bed covers, musicians playing in the bar room that could be heard throughout the building but turned up or down at the will of the room’s occupants, thanks to a clever amplification spell. There had been lube ordered in from Port Dumoli, wine from Nicodranas, ale from Trostenwald, everything that could possibly be desired by the expensive tastes of the clientele and the workers.
Down in the store, there was a battered, nicked oak desk and what moonlight made it in through the shutters. But that was all they needed.
Molly discarded his leggings swiftly but didn’t have time to take care of his shirt before Caleb distracted him with a long kiss deep as the sea which they could hear faintly in the background. It would do. The desk was comfortable enough to be bent over, listening with a maddening anticipation, sharp like lemon juice on his tongue, to the sounds of Caleb unbuckling his pants.
When he pushed into him, one smooth, deliberate motion, there was the sense of coming home.
It wasn’t exactly the same, it never would be. Molly had stretch marks on his legs and stomach, the legacy of his pregnancy, and the stretching and exercise regime he’d followed religiously in his younger days had fallen by the wayside significantly. He felt a brief moment of shyness about this before he realised Caleb touched him, moved in him, moaned his name with as much tenderness as the very first time they made love.
As long as that was still there, everything was as perfect as it could be.
It wasn’t long, by any means. It was hurried, a little frantic, a little messy. But there was something sweet about that, like they were two anxious teenagers fumbling at each other for the very first time, seeing what fits where. Caleb soon found his rhythm, knocking Molly’s hips into the desk perfectly in time with the sharp, longing cries he wrung from the tiefling.
And then that was it.
Molly’s nails raked the wood as he came, crying out, feeling it run down the inside of his thighs. Caleb was half a thrust behind him, whining Molly’s name. He always said Molly’s name.
There was a touch of shyness after that, as they untangled themselves and yanked their clothes back on. But they kept catching each other’s eyes and grinning, dizzily, delightedly, the two of them a little drunk on it all.
Before they went back upstairs, before Caleb insisted he’d sleep on the couch so as not to upset Trinket too much, before Molly spent a night tossing and turning, his thighs aching so sweetly and his mind wondering frantically what would come next, he kissed Caleb. And it was so sweet and so gentle and so right, the moonlight washing over them both, for that moment it was as if Mollymauk’s daydream had come true. Caleb was here, he was his, they loved each other and everything was absolutely perfect.
Tomorrow would wait.