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Mere days after Highsummer, the air feels thick and golden, honeyed in a way that slows time. It’s the sort of natural magic Caleb feels he can appreciate these days. The passage of time something to be admired and respected, not fought against.
“Caleb,” Essek says quietly. He comes back to himself in the garden beds around his cottage, hands still patting down the earth over the seeds he’d been planting. Only a foot away, Essek blinks underneath the wide brim of his woven hat and places a rose-patterned gloved hand over his. “Where did you go?”
“Here,” Caleb says. “Right here.” He brings Essek’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, uncaring of the dirt. “Was that the last of the seeds?”
Essek nods. “Just the watering, now.” He lifts to his feet easily but remains tethered to the earth, all the better to offer Caleb assistance in standing. His knees creak ominously as he does so.
“Let me do that,” Caleb says, as Essek starts towards the watering can. “You did all the digging.”
“It was hardly a ditch,” Essek says, a small smile showing. It’s still strange to see it without at least one fang poking through. He fills the watering can from the barrel beside the door, ignoring with his usual dignity that there are most certainly even more dicks painted onto both than was there at his last visit, and moves back to the garden beds. He lifts into a hover only to reach the tricky flowers in between pumpkin vines and tomato trusses, setting back to the ground when he returns to Caleb’s side. In this guise he is taller than Caleb, and it makes it easier to catch him around the waist, pull him close and press his nose to Essek’s jaw.
“You look lovely amongst the flowers,” he murmurs. It’s sheer flattery and flirtation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth - as a wood elf, his dusky skin and golden eyes make him almost nymph-like in the riot of colours. “Will you stay, this time?”
“Caleb…” Essek sighs, pleasure mixed with regret. He draws back only enough to meet Caleb’s eyes, brings his hand up to smooth the crow’s feet that gather there. A familiar battle plays across his features, one Caleb wishes to end before it begins.
“We have time,” he reminds Essek. Pressed his own hand over Essek’s and lets his cheek be cradled. “Don’t think that I’m running out, don’t think you have to fear not being here. I simply want your company, as I always do.”
The conflict on Essek’s face doesn’t resolve - he just closes his eyes. “I will stay as long as I can,” he breathes. Caleb turns and kisses his still-gloved palm, watching Essek’s mouth quirk in response. “I concluded my business as efficiently as I could, knowing this gathering was approaching, so perhaps… perhaps a few months, before I must go.”
A few months. So insignificant, when compared to the fifty six years of life behind him. Miniscule in the eyes of an elf who has centuries yet to live. But in this moment, he feels as if he can make a lifetime out of those months. Natural magics, indeed.
“Anything you can give me is all that I want,” he murmurs. Essek’s breath hitches, and Caleb presses a long kiss to his cheek. “We have time. Help me pick the apples, now.”
This late in the summer, the apples hardly need encouragement - as they walk to the back of the house where his little orchard backs onto endless wheat fields, baskets collected from the kitchen inside, another deep red apple falls to the ground of its own accord. Essek is the one to scoop it up, admiring it before placing it in his basket.
“More than enough for tarts, then,” he says, and with a quick gesture begins to float upwards, focusing on the fruits clustered among the highest branches while Caleb sets his sights a little lower.
“Oh, ja, for sure. How many tarts can the Nein eat, really?”
Essek pauses, an apple halfway to the basket, looking to Caleb with a haunted expression for only a moment before they both crack. The sound of Essek’s quiet laughter leaves a smile that lingers on Caleb’s mouth even as he continues, “There will be enough. I’ve promised cinnamon bread to Jester, as well, so that may soothe her once they run out.”
“Two for Jester, one for Luc, six for the rest of the Nein,” Essek says, less of a question and more of a reminder. His head disappears briefly, and when he emerges he has two apples in hand and a large leaf in his hair. It’s utterly charming, and Caleb feels a confused moment of yearning for something he already has.
He wonders, sometimes, if this is what his parents had felt. They had been married a year before he was born, he knows, with a short engagement before that, but things he had no interest in as a child remain a mystery. They must have known each other as children, both being raised in Blumenthal - were they fast friends? Or did they have their own reservations with each other, things they had to accept and overcome before something could blossom between them? They must have had awkward moments of closeness, the thrill of fleeting contact, confessions and secrets shared in the dark. They must have had more than the eighteen years Caleb knows.
Caleb has loved Essek Thelyss for twenty two years, and every second makes him greedy for more. He has to believe his parents had that much.
They gather the rest of the fruit in silence, the only noises being the soft snap of stems and the constant rush of wind through the wheat fields. Fjord has only visited the cottage twice, it being overwhelmingly easier to meet in Nicodranas or any other coastal city, but both times Caleb had found him lying under the apple trees long into the night, eyes closed in bliss. It sounds like the ocean, he’d said, and Caleb could agree in sentiment - to them both, it was the sound of home.
There are only a few apples left on the final tree when Essek lands gently beside him and touches his arm. “Caleb,” he says, voice soft. “We should complete the spell before dark, as well.”
This close to Highsummer, the sun won’t set until almost nine in the evening, still four hours away. “I suppose,” he says, and turns to face Essek when the hand on his arm squeezes.
“I--” Essek stops himself, expression smoothing into something more diplomatic than the brief flash of desperation he’d shown. “I cannot convince you, can I?”
Did his parents repeat their arguments, hashed out and settled and revived so many times that they became shorthand, peaceable discussions now rendered toothless? “You can convince me of a great many things. And you have done so, Herr Thelyss - but not with this.”
Essek nods, eyes slipping downwards. “I had to ask.”
“I know.” Caleb leans forward and kisses his brow, forgiveness and apology at once. “I would make for an unsightly elf.”
Essek huffs. “We may have to disagree.” When he lifts his head, his mouth is set with determination. “Caleb, if - if you asked. You will not lengthen your lifespan, but… that is not our only option.”
Foolishly, it takes a few moments for his meaning to register, so unexpected are the words. When it does, despite the golden warmth in the air, Caleb feels the breath freeze in his lungs. He pulls Essek in roughly, wrapping arms around his chest and clenching his fists in the back of his robes. When he breathes out all at once against Essek’s collarbone, it feels too hot to have come from his icy chest.
“If you asked,” he hears Essek repeat, and the shake in his voice is so much more apparent when he can feel Essek’s heart thrumming against his chest like a hummingbird. “I would, I would choose--”
“I would never ask,” Caleb says roughly. He puts one hand to the back of Essek’s neck, curls his fingers and feels the nails scratch, moves it back to his robes. “Essek, please. I would never ask.”
He feels Essek nod, and arms come up to encircle his neck. “I know,” he says. A gentle hand cards through his hair, as if Caleb is the one to be comforted right now. “I know you won’t. But I need you to know. I needed to say it.”
There has been so much love in Caleb’s life - more than he deserves, he used to believe, but these days he is better at recognising the work he has put into growing and nurturing that love. It’s never gotten easier, or lesser. The warm hearth of his parents’ care is the same as the bonfire of the Nein’s, the wildness of his first teenage entanglements with Astrid and Eadwulf as sustaining as the calmness of picking apples with Essek as they have done for over a decade. Listening to Essek offer sacrifice like this hurts just as deeply as watching his friends march in and out of a Hag’s hut so long ago.
“I understand,” he says, because he does. “But I will never ask it of you.” He forces his fists to loosen and instead smooths them across Essek’s back, lifting his head from Essek’s collarbone to press their foreheads together, nudging their noses and savouring the breath on his lips. There are no tear tracks on Essek’s cheeks, but his eyelashes glitter like gold dust with unshed tears, and he is so beautiful that for a moment Caleb resents with his whole being that he must be changed in any way for any reason.
They simply breathe like that for what feels like hours in this honeyed, time-stopped afternoon, if he ignores the certain knowledge within himself that it’s only twenty seven seconds. In the twenty eighth second, Essek opens his eyes and smiles, and leans in to kiss Caleb softly.
In the forty third second, he opens his eyes again and says, “I would make a rather drab human, I’m afraid.”
“On that, we will most certainly disagree,” Caleb says. “Come, before it gets dark.”
The routine of this is familiar by now, having gone through it twice previously. Caleb digs out clay with Cat’s Ire until a shallow hole roughly the size of a hot tub forms, while Essek sits beneath the closest apple tree and describes aloud the general sense of his next guise.
“A sun elf, this time,” he states, and Caleb hums thoughtfully.
“A large step from your roots,” he says.
“A necessary one,” Essek replies. “It will hide my trail a little longer. And.. I believe I would like to spend more time in the light.”
“In Nicodranas?” Caleb says, only mildly coy.
“Among other places,” Essek answers, irritatingly coy.
When the digging is complete, Essek stands, pulling a bag of gem dust from his wrist-pocket and handing it to Caleb, before gesturing casually towards himself and casting Disguise Self, calling forth the person he has been describing for the past minutes. “I have not designed this guise as… thoroughly, as previously,” he says, turning in place to allow Caleb a view of every angle. “I thought we could, ah, haggle over the details, once the spell’s mental connection begins.”
“Your body is not generally something I wish to haggle over,” Caleb murmurs, committing Essek’s new form to memory.
“Not haggling, then. Call it a collaboration on our next project.” Over his shoulder, Essek smirks. “One I assume you have a vested interest in.”
He is too old to blush, Caleb tells himself. “Ja, uh, that sounds fair. You can drop the spell, now.”
Between one blink and the next Essek is himself again. For all that Caleb has a perfect recall of how Essek used to look, cold and aloof on the day they met to bloody and beaten in Aeor and everything in between, it’s easy to think of each successive body as truly Essek. A pallid elf the first time, bright-eyed with long fingers, hair almost colourless, and then the wood elf before him, whose turned-up nose and soft jawline have become beloved to Caleb, just as every part of his drow form was. It’s an ache to say goodbye to this body, even if the person inside will remain unchanged.
“Are you ready?” Essek asks. He’s already taken off his robes and draped them carelessly over a branch, leaving only his trousers and sleeveless undershirt. Caleb nods.
“Ja,” he says, “although I have a request.” Essek raises an eyebrow. Caleb steps forward and cups his face in his hands, relishing the weight as Essek leans into him. “One last time?”
“Of course.” Essek closes his eyes, lips parted slightly, but Caleb doesn’t kiss him - he swipes his thumbs slowly over Essek’s cheekbones, then traces his fingers over his eyebrows, the corners of his eyes, the line of his nose. He runs careful fingers over his jaw, circles the leaf of his ears, presses carefully on the dip of his collarbone, and only when the affection is overwhelming does he lean in and kiss his eyelids, the tip of his nose, his forehead, his lips, his lips, his lips.
When they break apart finally, they don’t go far. Essek meets his eyes from an inch away, breathing a little unsteady. Caleb holds him until it evens out, and only then does he say, “Are you ready?”
Essek nods. “I’m ready.”
It must take a sort of courage Caleb can’t fathom to climb into and lie down in what is essentially your own grave, but Essek does so with graceful movements. He takes a moment to re-cast Cat’s Ire, concentration thoroughly lost, and begins nudging the clay back into the hole, gently ensuring none touches Essek’s face, until the roughly hundred pounds encase his body.
“Here we go,” he mutters to himself, and scatters the gem dust to begin casting Transmogrification.
The connection is always slow to form, so he keeps the exact image of Essek’s new guise in his mind, beginning to shape the clay around it. He only becomes aware of the presence in his mind when the image is subtly shifted, the ears becoming longer, more drow-like than what a sun elf should strictly have.
I’ve missed the range of movement, Essek admits, the words like a whisper a foot in front of him. Caleb in response conjures two fangs peeking from beneath the guise’s top lip.
If we are adding things we have missed, he says.
They only go back and forth like that for a few minutes, in the end, with most of the hour’s casting time needing to be focused on an exact image, rather than something shifting and nebulous. The changes they make are mostly cosmetic, Caleb loathe to impose anything significant despite Essek’s blessing - Essek makes the nose smaller but broader, Caleb adds a scattering of light freckles across the face and shoulders - although he does take the time to see to some anatomy covered by the clothes Essek had been wearing, much to Essek’s resigned embarrassment.
You said yourself that I have a vested interest, Caleb says gleefully.
I did in fact say that, Essek replies in the driest possible tone.
The light-hearted exchange settles into one of focus, and for the duration of the cast, Caleb is intent upon the shape of the clay, using his arcane ability and his love to control it with the utmost precision, every last freckle put in its rightful place, until suddenly the hour is up and he scrambles forward to pull his partner from the clay, brushing off the dried shards and hauling him into an embrace, nothing of his appearance registering, only the strength with which he holds on tightly, the feel of him warm and shaking in his arms.
“You’re here, you’re here,” he finds himself saying, without fully understanding why. “Is this alright? How do you feel?”
“Drained,” Essek says against his throat. “It’s… more than alright. Please.” His voice is still the same, and some tiny fear in Caleb eases - it has never changed with this spell, but that’s no guarantee it never will.
They sit together like that, Essek just coming back to himself in Caleb’s arms, Caleb’s whole world narrowed to the sounds of his breathing returning to the slow, even pattern as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Only when he’s counted those breaths for a full minute does Caleb let himself ease his grip a fraction and murmur in Essek’s ear, “I’ll run a bath for us both. Let me take you inside.”
The aftermath of the spell is always a period of fragile intimacy for them both, and it’s this feeling that gives Caleb the sudden fanciful notion - something more relegated to the sort of trashy smut novels he loves than actual marriage tradition, but in the face of their months together ahead, Caleb finds himself keeping one arm around Essek’s shoulders while shuffling to scoop the other under his knees, lifting him into a carry.
But of course, the realities of situations rarely play into the trashy smut novels he loves, so instead his creaky knees immediately protest to bearing more weight, sending them both backwards instead of upwards, the air driven out of Caleb’s chest as his back hits the earth and Essek lands partly on his chest.
“Ah,” Caleb wheezes, “that was… not as planned.”
Against his shoulder, Essek snorts, shaking now with laughter. Caleb tilts his head down with a grin as Essek raises his own, and just as the breath was re-entering his lungs, he feels it freeze again.
Essek in the sunlight is a vision in gold. His hair is textured and coiled for the first time since he left his original drow form, but instead of a coif of white, it’s now a fountain of dark blonde flowing over his ears and forehead, wild and unsculptured. It sets against his dark brown skin like wheat stalks in the earth, so natural and homely that Caleb’s heart aches. His lithe limbs are thicker, now, robust in a way that puts Caleb to mind of a farmer’s build, and he can feel pressing against him a new roll of fat over Essek’s belly that immediately entrances him. His features are new, nothing specific to tie him to any past guises, but as they look at each other, Essek’s lips part just enough for a hint of a fang to show. And just like that, this new form has become as beloved to him as any before it.
“You’re beautiful,” Caleb says, the catch in his throat making the words unsteady. He reaches up to brush the hair from Essek’s face, the better to see his dark eyes glinting in the sun. “Meine Perle, you’re beautiful.”
Wordlessly, Essek runs two fingers along Caleb’s face, trailing from his temple, where he knows the grey to gather, over his cheeks, following freckles long turned to sun-spots, dipping into the creases and cracks around his mouth. He is not old, not yet, but he is sharply aware of it sometimes, the way they both change with time.
“Caleb Widogast,” Essek says, and what a thing it is to learn for the first time all over again what tenderness, devotion and love look like on your partner’s face. He smiles, laughs, shakes his head, and when his eyes meet Caleb’s again, his eyelashes glitter like gold dust in the sunlight. He takes the hand in his hair and cradles it, pressing kisses to the callouses on Caleb’s palm, the scars on his knuckles. “My Caleb. If in your eyes I hold a fraction of the beauty I see in you every day…”
He finishes the sentence by grasping a hand behind Caleb’s neck and pressing their foreheads together, the shaky inhalation against his lips as plain as any words.
The sun will set eventually. Caleb knows exactly how long they have, his keen mind unable to let him forget. But he puts it aside, for now, and enjoys this moment caught like an insect in amber, a lifetime contained in this honeyed, time-stopped afternoon.