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Essek’s hands are strong, a fact that no one would guess from looking at them. Wizards are not known for their physical strength after all, and the thin, lithe structure of his fingers do not suggest the power behind them. When put to use, the pressure and grip of Essek’s hand at the back of Caleb’s neck holds like a vice, like the grip of a more dominant cat on one that needs to be put back into its place. Nails do not need to dig, skin does not need to break to maintain control. The power is in the pads of his fingertips, and in the composed calm of his stature.
His hands are strong and the silk of his bed sheets is soft under Caleb’s rough-hewn knees. It’s a hard task for Caleb to give up control in any given situation, when he’s spent so long reclaiming his own agency. Nonetheless, he’s found in these moments that Essek is the right combination of powerful and reassuring. Caleb is safe in Essek’s space, or as safe as he will ever be with his necklace hanging from his neck and grazing against the sheets. He’s as safe as he will ever be stripped bare and breathing heavily with his forehead pressed down and his vision limited to a field of grey silk in the otherwise candle-lit darkness. All logic and paranoia constantly shouting in the back of his mind for him to run, to hide, to blaze it all to the ground goes quiet with Essek’s hand drifting down his neck and press firmly between his shoulder blades.
The silk sheets are collecting the sweat that beads down from his hairline; he doesn’t feel the dampness of it, not really. In the infrequent sexual experiences of Caleb’s life before Essek, before this unintended experience of being known and understood, Caleb had been fully and entirely present. He lived entirely in his head in those moments, calculating the equations. He could count the feeling of every arm hair against wool and linen beds. He would know exactly how long it would take for him to come with the exact variables of the situation in mind. It shouldn’t be Essek who had calmed the storm of his mind and brought him to the eye of it. It shouldn’t be the Shadowhand to the queen of the Xhorhassian enemy. He should feel played. He will know, as he always does, what an equal and opportune exchange this all is when he’s putting his clothes back on and reasoning out his undeserving comfort. Essek is using him with conscious finesse to match Caleb’s own manipulations, of that he is sure. He knows what’s real and what isn’t. He knows what their dalliances are in truth, not in the translucent pretense they have barely constructed around their intimacies.
He knows that if anyone were to come for him now, here in Essek’s bed, Essek would be more than capable of taking care of them both when perhaps Caleb would be a second behind. He knows that if Essek were to take the opportunity to cut his throat or plant magic in his mind to enthrall him entirely, that would be the end of the Shadowhand whether by his own hand, or Nott’s, or Beauregard’s. He knows. He knows that Essek knows. All is calm in Caleb’s starlit sky.
Safety is a foreign concept, a distant light at the end of an endless tunnel that extends forever forward through rough terrain and endless traps. Caleb hasn’t felt safe for a long time now. He hasn’t felt relaxed in even longer. Safety is a distant concept, belonging to a life where being controlled felt like being appreciated, where being hurt by those you trusted to mold you into someone who could make your parents and your empire proud felt admirable, if only because everything you had ever known had told you that in the arms of the academy was the safest place one could be. Safety belongs to a world where being someone’s tool felt like being loved. Relaxed belongs even further afield still, to the comforts of a home burnt to the ground, a gentle kiss to his forehead from a mother whose face always turns to ash if he thinks too hard on it.
He shouldn’t feel safe in this den of wolves but Caleb is no misplaced rabbit. Symbiotics come naturally to jackals and wolves when there’s plenty to eat.
“You’re thinking again.”
Essek presses his lips against the small of Caleb’s back. Essek’s fingers curl upwards inside him and sparks fire off behind Caleb’s eyes in dunemantic colours.
“Tell me what I told you about thinking when we’re doing this. My exact words, please.”
He has to find those words through the sparks though they sit in their exact phrasing on the tip of his eidetic tongue. This is a first; sexual intimacy that slows the gears down. Not thinking on his feet is foreign; not detaching himself from his own body to focus on a task at hand is foreign too.
“In first person or second?”
The pads of Essek’s finger press again with purpose, and a whimper of a moan drops past Caleb’s lips. Those three fingers pushing forward in controlled, even motions have Caleb’s hips canting backwards and his knuckles white against the sheets. As quickly as they began Essek’s fingers still, the silence broken only by the heavy, off-tempo rhythm accompanying the rise and fall of Caleb’s chest. He waits, expectant.
“Scheisse…If I am thinking too hard about sex, then I am not truly enjoying the well earned rest. That is what you said.”
“And I likened it to…?”
“Meditation. And then I reminded you that unlike your kind, I actually need to sleep eight hours to rest, and don’t always have the time to stop thinking.”
Essek chuckles. The sound is quiet and affectionate behind his lips. Essek’s fingers retreat from inside Caleb, leaving his body feeling empty and wanting. The cant of Caleb’s hips backwards again is ignored in favor of hands pressed against the small of his back, thumbs pressing against the knots tight around the base of his spine. Those deft hands slide down to grasp onto Caleb’s hips, and while one thumb begins that comforting motion of stroking the skin beneath it, the other hand finds its way up to Caleb’s hair. The touch is gentle; Shadowhand Essek Thelyss remains full of surprises.
“You have time now.” Essek’s breath near Caleb’s ear sends a shiver down from his neck to where that stable, solid hand remains fixed on his hips. Fingernails scratch gently against Caleb’s scalp in rhythmic circles, they card through his hair, they push the tie down and out so the length of loose strands hang beside his face. “No one is chasing you here in Rosohna, and no one is hunting you here in my bed.”
Vaguely, somewhere quiet but constantly nagging in the back of his mind, Caleb wants to argue. He’s always in danger, he’s always hunted, but the sensation of fingers carding through his hair and massaging his scalp is a comfort unparalleled. When was the last time someone did this? When was the last time that someone treated his body with this level of patient kindness?
(Never. Not like this. Nott’s nails catching the knots in his hair when in a state most vulnerable isn’t quite the same. It isn’t quite so intimate. The attention is motherly, not loverly. It’s not like this.)
A shiver runs down each vertebra in his neck and the nagging need to be worried feels distant under Essek’s ministrations, like he’s barely hearing it through water. There is no twinge of magic in the quiet, measured tone that Essek takes as he speaks intermittent sweet nothings. No magical leading drives Caleb further into the state of calm that petting gives. He feels almost like a cat, and he can hear Frumpkin purring behind his eardrums. It’s not the first time he’s thought in his thirty plus years of life that to be a cat, well, that would be the best comfort there is. Warm, soft, unthreatened by the world, self sufficient and unburdened.
The purring in his ears gets louder as he sinks into it, and he can see Frumpkin’s eyes blinking at him from behind his eyelids.
When Caleb’s elbows give out on him and his balance falters, Essek chuckles. He presses a kiss to the back of Caleb’s head, making a playful quip to check in on him. He expects a half-hearted protestation or a murmur of approving comfort. When he receives no response, his smile falls.
“Caleb--”
In an instant Caleb’s head is on Essek’s knees, carefully placed in the autopilot of care to avoid Essek’s erection entirely. His instinct is to check that Caleb is breathing regularly, that he hasn’t lost consciousness, to figure out why. The worry and potential for murderous intent that was building in his chest subsides when he brushes the hair back from Caleb’s face to find his eyes wide, open, and white. Caleb’s breathing is normal, his pulse is calm under Essek’s fingertips. The Shadowhand to the Bright Queen, arguably the second most powerful person in all of Xhorhas, releases the breath he was holding. Any layman might remain worried, but any wizard worth his salt knows exactly what it looks like to slide into the consciousness of one’s familiar.
Of all the many things that Essek has experienced in his many years, a sexual partner all but collapsing midway through his best attempt to drop them into subspace is a first.
Essek’s laugh is a sudden breath of surprise escaping past his lips. Sitting on his bed, hard as a rock and stroking the hair of his partner who has, in a moment of seemingly unprecedented relaxation, left his body entirely; how can he not laugh? It’s ridiculous, it’s charming, and it warms his heart when all logic says that it should confuse him and maybe even offend him. It doesn’t offend, not when he can confidently claim that he’s achieved his goal: Caleb Widogast is, at this exact moment, most definitely relaxed.
The moment though, for as fun as it was, is over, and relaxed in this case does not mean conscious. Essek continues to toy with Caleb’s hair, giving him the physical sensation that perhaps he’s enjoying in Frumpkin's skin. It’s been some time for Essek since he’s been inside his own familiar in the presence of another, but he recalls well enough the sensation of another’s physical presence from afar. Caleb, feeling Essek’s fingers in his hair as if they were carding through fur, is still somewhere in the house. Somewhere, in some nook or corner sits a fey being in the form of a cat, purring, resting, of two minds and tucked away.
With a flick of Essek’s wrist a mage hand is summoned to continue playing with Caleb’s hair, to keep the comfort constant in Caleb’s current state. He rests Caleb’s head carefully on the bed to readjust his legs out of the way, prop them over the edge, and work his magic to get him standing. From there a dressing gown is tied closed around him before the search for where the cat has curled up begins. A simple locate spell does well enough. A bit of fur kept amongst Essek’s vials fizzles out of existence and sends him in the right direction. Down the stairs to the ground level of his home, into the kitchens where he rarely goes.
At this hour the kitchen is empty, his cook and his housekeeper both gone to bed to wake early and prepare his breakfast. There is no sound to follow, no presence on the lower level of his home but the cat, hidden contently beneath the iron stove that still clung to the warmth of the fire that once was. Essek can’t see Frumpkin, whose liquid body had slipped past any easily visible space, but he knows Caleb’s familiar is there. With the locate spell dispelled he makes himself as comfortable as he can upon the floor, leaning against the cool stone wall of his kitchen.
A cat is not Sassandra’s preferred form, nor is a cat the form that Essek himself would prefer for her. He would rather see her a spider or a raven, common shapes in Rosohna, so easily ignored. Cats, Essek was taught quite young, encourage sentimentality, and sentimentality has no place in a life dedicated to espionage and politics. Having changed her into a cat so recently for Caleb’s delight might only prove that point, but Essek is pleased to have her present at the snap of his fingers none the less. She rubs affectionately against his arm before she darts under the stove. He sees through her eyes with his head rested safely against those cool kitchen stones, and he watches her join Frumpkin. The ginger cat rests there in the back, curled up in his contentment. Silent as the night in this kitchen, white feet pad over to Frumpkin and her black furred body curls up beside him. Essek can hear Frumpkin purring at Sassandra’s presence, and the contact of one familiar to another leads Sassandra to join in as well in a chorus of delight. Caleb is in there, warm and safe within his Familiar’s space, and Essek can’t imagine. He can’t imagine what it takes to slide into one’s familiar unwarranted. He knows full well what it’s like to not feel safe and comfortable in one’s own body, but the memory is distant. It lives in his childhood, it lives in a time before his confidence in his own abilities had manifested beyond his handicap.
He can’t imagine the dissociation that it required for the comfort of being inside your familiar to feel more like home than being in your own skin.
Essek leaves Sassandra’s consciousness, letting her rest beneath the stove curled up with another of her kind.
Sentimentality is dangerous. Sentimentality makes you soft, bends the sticking place that once you stuck your courage to. Sentimentality can lead to disaster, can lead to the weakening of wills in trying times. Sentimentality can lead to the Queen’s spymaster sitting prone in a position on the floor difficult to rise from in an emergency, in a room of his house he rarely visits.
Essek sighs, pressing the bridge of his nose between two fingers as he gets up off the floor. Enough of this sitting on the kitchen floor in naught but his dressing gown. Enough of that, he thinks, heading up the stairs and back to his bedroom, where he can lay Caleb down to rest properly. It will be a comfort for when he returns to consciousness within his own body, and Essek has been trusted, after all.