## Preface

between dusk and daybreak, I find you here
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/30189726.

Rating:
  General Audiences
Archive Warning:
  No Archive Warnings Apply
Category:
  M/M
Fandom:
  Critical Role (Web Series)
Relationship:
  Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Characters:
  Caleb Widogast, Essek Thelyss, Frumpkin (Critical Role)
Additional Tags:
  Established Relationship, Future Fic, Alternate Universe - Future, Domestic Fluff, Married Couple, POV Essek Thelyss, Couch Cuddles, Sleepy Cuddles, Fluff, in which Caleb is an exhausted professor, and Essek is just exhausted, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 2 of post-campaign shadowgast
Stats:
  Published: 2021-03-22 Words: 2,953 Chapters: 1/1

# between dusk and daybreak, I find you here

by wytch-lyghts (flight_on_broken_wings)

Summary

> Essek couldn’t help the impossibly fond smile that turned the corners of his lips, pausing to commit everything to memory. The gentle flick of Frumpkin’s tail. Essek’s own worn, oversized sweater Caleb had liberated from his wardrobe. The way those stray locks of auburn hair tumbled over his face and moved on each breath. The soft, barely there part of his lips. The swoop of his eyelashes over the dusting of freckles across his cheeks. All of it.

> It knocked the breath out of Essek’s lungs, the physical ache in his chest as the reminder of how much he loved this foolishly predictable man slammed into him. Caleb, who tried to busy himself until far too late an hour, waiting for him to come home.

Notes

See the end of the work for notes

## between dusk and daybreak, I find you here

When Caleb’s Sending spell reached him, Essek was in the middle of playing peacekeeper among the dens for the Queen.

Essek paused at a random page as he only half-heartedly flipped through a tome detailing the many intricacies of Xhorhasian property law, the dens’ various representatives shifting from lobbying him with pleasant smiles and mostly coherent arguments one moment to glaring daggers or treating each other to grins that were all canines the next. How a simple property dispute over an estate in the Firmaments, even admittedly one he’d been pushing back in his schedule for a few weeks, had grown to encompass three different dens, two different writs of inheritance of suspect origin, and a tedious, hour-long testimonial from the Skysybil (when all he’d needed was confirmation on dates of death, birth, and completed anamnesis of a few consecuted souls), he truly couldn’t say.

The task of condensing all that misery into a twenty-five word excuse for why he wouldn’t be home for dinner seemed beyond even his prodigious abilities. And yet, by some small miracle, it seemed he wouldn’t have to.

“Schatz, I’m sorry,” Caleb’s voice, soft and apologetic, entered his mind. A welcome intrusion, if there ever were one. “I’m dealing with last minute additions to the conference…” Caleb trailed off, and Essek could almost see him counting his words quickly on his fingers. “ My students are struggling to finish presentations in time. I’ll be home late.”

Essek blinked, just then registering that the representative of Den Zolead was still speaking. He held up a hand to pause them; it was after all fairly commonplace for him to be interrupted by incoming messages in need of an immediate response, and they had no need to know this one was purely domestic. Rising from his desk chair, Essek turned away and took a few paces toward the back of his office for privacy, a low hum of continued conversation carrying on behind him.

“No apology necessary,” he assured quietly beneath his breath, one arm crossed over his middle, the other hand tapping at his lower lip as he weighed how many details he could fit in his explanation. None that couldn’t wait, he decided. “Unfortunately, at this rate, I believe you will still arrive home before I do.” Pausing, Essek let go a quiet sigh. “Goodnight, Caleb. Don’t wait up.”

The spell’s connection wavered, and faded.

Taking a deep breath, Essek straightened his shoulders, recollecting himself, and turned back to the three representatives waiting patiently before his desk.

“Right,” he began, forcing a polite smile onto his face. “As you were saying?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rosohna, ever-dark, tended to quiet very little as the late evening hours encroached, the Lucid Bastion least of all. The late hour did not truly begin to weigh on him until Essek’s teleportation spell carried him directly into the upper landing of the central staircase of their home, the constant background noise of armored boots trodding down hallways and the muffled conversations of clerks and couriers vanishing from his ears. Everything quiet. Everything still. Even the arcane lights suspended up the length of the staircase which Caleb tended to leave on for the sake of his only human eyes were snuffed out for the night.

Essek paused only a fraction of a second there, long enough to both consider and dismiss the idea of passing through their little-used kitchen to make himself eat something before collapsing into bed. He wasn’t even sure he even felt hungry anymore, just hollow, even forgetting his annoyance for how tired he was. His head ached, a dull pain behind his eyes, the same that had been hitting him in waves all evening as his exhaustion made itself known.

He stepped quietly, the thick carpet running the length of the short hall doing most of the work as he took care not to wake his husband. It was rare that Essek drifted off to sleep rather than trance, but even when he did, he found it wasn’t quite like what Caleb fell into nightly, adorably incoherent and ill-tempered whenever he was roused before whatever could generously be called late morning. Peering inside the dark doorway of their bedroom however, Essek found his caution was needless. He stopped, blinking for a moment at the dark.

Empty. Not so much as the curled up form of a napping cat at the foot of their bed.

After putting out fire after fire all day, his mind attempted to scatter in a dozen different diffections, each explanation his knee-jerk rising panic provided worse and entirely less reasonable than the last. Essek forced himself to pause, to breathe, allowing for more rational thought to take shape.

He sighed, shaking himself from where he stood frozen in the doorway and pushed inside. Essek took the time to turn down the duvet and spur a fire to life in the hearth with a muttered word and gesture, the room too cold without it, before retreating to the library to confirm his suspicions.

The library, unlike the rest of the tower that evening, was bathed in a warm, low light. Only a few of the enchanted motes of light that hovered around the high ceiling beams were lit, permanent facets of the room that like the thick knit blankets draped over the upholstery and the cat bed under the side table were like Caleb’s handprint on their now shared space, filling a hollow he hadn’t known was there. The lights undulated softly above the couch tucked snuggly into the reading nook between the fireplace—alight, but little more than pulsing coals now—and the rows of towering bookshelves.

A familiar spotted cat lounged across the back of the couch, rhythmic low purring growing louder as Essek made his way silently across the room, carefully avoiding each creaking floorboard mapped out in his mind, until slowly more of his husband came into view.

Caleb was passed out nearly face down in his work, curled in on himself and draped heavily over the arm of the couch. His cheek was pillowed on his forearm, a loose stack of heavily annotated papers trapped under his hand, a few pages having drifted down to the rug below. The rest of those papers, his upper level transmutation students’ term theses, he determined with a closer look, were in a disorderly stack on the coffee table, ink from Caleb’s notes in the margins long dry.

Essek couldn’t help the impossibly fond smile that turned the corners of his lips, pausing to commit everything to memory. The gentle flick of Frumpkin’s tail. Essek’s own worn, oversized sweater Caleb had liberated from his wardrobe. The way those stray locks of auburn hair tumbled over his face and moved on each breath. The soft, barely there part of his lips. The swoop of his eyelashes over the dusting of freckles across his cheeks. All of it.

It knocked the breath out of Essek’s lungs, the physical ache in his chest as the reminder of how much he loved this foolishly predictable man slammed into him. Caleb, who tried to busy himself until far too late an hour, waiting for him to come home.

Exhaling slowly, willing the exhaustion that plagued him to fade away with his breath, Essek sunk down into the couch beside Caleb’s sleeping form, careful not to disturb him.

“Oh, my dear,” Essek murmured quietly, keeping himself upright, it felt, only with his elbows braced on his knees, head hanging low. He reached down to gather up the loose pages that had fallen to the floor, gently, ever so slowly easing the rest out from under Caleb’s hand before he shuffled them back into some semblance of the proper order. “What to do with you…”

Only the larger stack of theses on the table before them bore Caleb’s annotations and commentary in the margins, his scrawl a great deal more legible than in his personal notes. It brought that tired smile back to Essek’s face, the care and patience with which he approached his work, his students. A care which Essek only wished Caleb himself had been shown.

The smaller stack of theses, only three or four remaining, was devoid of any such markings, seemingly at the bottom of Caleb’s pile as he worked through them. Essek opted to place the partly graded papers he’d recollected down on the table between the two stacks.

He didn’t mean to take an interest. Truly, Essek didn’t. He was rarely impressed by the writing of his peers and contemporaries in his own field of study, much less curious about the fledgling musings of Caleb’s transmutation students. And yet, as another moment passed and Essek continued to delay stirring his peaceably unaware husband, the title of the paper Caleb had only gotten part way through annotating before drifting off caught his eye. Essek shrugged out of his mantle and cloak and draped both over the opposite end of the couch, leaning forward slightly to peer at the first page.

Revising Zev’ryel’s Approach: the Transformative Properties of Residuum Suspended within Altered Gravitational Fields

Essek huffed to himself, glancing at the next few lines of the preceding abstract as he plucked at the buckles of his boots until he was able to slip out of them as well, setting them neatly to the side. Rather bold of a student, even one of Caleb’s, to propose an amendment to such a well established and widely accepted theory, even if a rather niche one. He knew Caleb encouraged them to question everything and arrive at their own conclusions, a relatively progressive teaching style that resulted in as many fumbles as it did breakthroughs, but what the abstract proposed was a bit far sweeping to support with the scant number of pages Essek found himself picking up to frown down at skeptically.

Perhaps it was because it was easy to lose himself to the quiet lull of the library, to Caleb’s steady breathing and Frumpkin’s purring as he stretched contentedly across the back of the couch. Perhaps it was his own skepticism, his tendency to approach every break from accepted theory or practice with what Caleb called far too critical an eye. But without quite intending to, Essek began to read.

He skimmed at first, paying most attention to Caleb’s penmanship; he’d struck some lines through, circled or underlined other vocabulary and key phrases, his shorthand tucked tightly between lines and packed into the margins more encouraging than Essek would have been. But it was insightful, highlighting the parts that even Essek would admit showed promise, and offering brief counter arguments to those tangents Essek thought better redacted from the final draft.

He’d only arrived at the third page when, between the author’s work and one of Caleb’s comments pushing for a deeper inquiry, a bit of recommended reading occurred to him. He reached blindly for Caleb’s abandoned quill, inkwell still uncapped, and before he could think better of it, added his own note below Caleb’s.

See D.A. Tasithar’s “Practical Applications of Graviturgy” volume 1, early chapters employ similar assumptions re: transmutative effects

It was doubtful the series would be available in the Empire, but he’d spent too long haggling with the Marble Tomes Conservatory at Caleb’s behest to set up an exchange program with the Academy for him to not encourage Caleb’s students to use it. And should that fail, well, Caleb had a copy, by which Essek meant he had a copy, buried somewhere in the shelves off to his right.

When he lifted his quill from the paper though, Essek hesitated, deciding after a moment’s consideration to initial his addition, just so there would be no mistaking it with Caleb’s. He was, afterall, very much not a teacher, and should this particular student decide Caleb’s thoughts were all that mattered on this particular assignment, no harm done.

It was that little assurance he told himself that had Essek redipping his quill, turning to the next page where Caleb’s notes abruptly ended, and settling in to read in earnest.

It was refreshing, truthfully. His own original research and various drafts of his latest manuscript had been left abandoned for too long now as his political duties consumed more and more of his time, unpredictable yet always pressing as they were. There was not much overlap between the level of transmutation magic these students had reached and dunamancy, much less his own area of expertise within dunamancy, but still, peering once again into the purely academic side of magic, devoid of politics and negotiations, was scratching an itch he hadn’t known he’d had.

He wasn’t even entirely swayed by this particular thesis, the author clearly lacking in some practical experience and, as he suspected, the argument being much too broad to be fully supported by thirty or so pages. But it showed more promise that he expected, which was the pleasantly surprising conclusion Essek was left with as he blew gently on the ink drying on the final page. His last comment was a brief summation of his general thoughts on the article and what direction the author might successfully take it. He’d rather have simply shared his thoughts with Caleb and allow his husband to distill them in whatever form he felt appropriate to pass on, but still fully asleep as Caleb was, well, no peer review was a wasted one in his book.

Shuffling the pages back into order, Essek returned them to their place between Caleb’s two stacks, complete and incomplete, as regardless of his own review he was Caleb would want to return to it.

His eyes trailed over the next two titles he could see, his fingers twitching toward one with a curious reference to reanimation. Essek glanced sideways toward Caleb, eyes still closed, each breath still slow and measured, a faint furrow forming in his brow as he shifted slightly in his sleep, more of his hair falling into his face.

Essek sighed, a small, content smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. He glanced behind him to Frumpkin, the fey cat lounging across the couch’s back blinking his eyes open slowly, low rumbling purr starting up anew as his tail curled, brushing Essek’s shoulder.

“What do I do with him,” he wondered aloud, barely a whisper. He tilted his head toward Caleb curled up on the couch beside him while posing his question to the cat. “I can’t bring myself to wake him any more than I can let him sleep on the couch,” he sighed, his gaze drawn to Caleb again. It was, undeniably, very cute how he’d curled up against the armrest, but it wouldn’t do him any favors come the morning. “He’ll be complaining about the ache all day.”

Frumpkin just blinked slowly, a soft, curious mrrp his only answer. Stretching, the cat dropped down to the cushion in the little bit of space Essek had left between himself and Caleb so as to not disturb him, purring loudly as he laid down partly in Essek’s lap, front paws kneading his thigh, head bumping Essek’s elbow in a demand for attention.

“Yes, alright, hello little one,” he murmured, indulging the familiar with a few scritches under his chin before settling his hand into his thick fur, petting along his back.

“He wasn’t trying to wait up for me, was he? Hm?” he asked Frumpkin, waiting expectantly for an answer.

He earned another chirp, Frumpkin’s head butting under his palm.

“What, and you just let him, did you?” he chastised quietly, slow grin creeping across his face. He rubbed at the spot in front of his ears that had Frumpkin rolling in his lap, the low purring rumble emanating from the familiar reaching a volume that had Essek casting glances at Caleb to make sure he wasn’t stirring.

Carefully, Essek reached out to tuck a loose lock of Caleb’s hair behind his ear, letting his fingertips linger over his temple, combing through his hair gently.

“ D’anthe ,” he breathed, not even quite sure if he was trying to wake Caleb yet, or still just talking to himself. “You are more than I could ever deserve,” he murmured, slowly pulling away and returning both hands to Frumpkin’s fur.

Essek’s eyes were slowly drawn to the papers sitting on the table before them, quill left where he’d set it, inkwell still uncapped. He didn’t have Caleb’s innate sense of time, only able to estimate how long he’d sat here, and how long until morning remained.

Essek figured he had long enough though. He would only need a handful of hours himself to trance, and Caleb would hardly remember being woken and led back to their bed in a sleepy daze regardless of whether Essek did so now or later.

Another slow, deep breath, and Essek let the last of the day’s tension bleed away from where he carried it between his shoulders. It was peaceful, almost meditative, their quite, safe corner of the world. He took another moment to take stock of it, to commit the details to moments like this to memory, Frumpkin beginning to nap again while curled up comfortably in his lap, his husband doing much the same beside him, a collection of students’ theses on the table that wouldn’t review themselves.

Essek reached for his quill with one hand, the next article from the smaller stack that Caleb had yet to get to with his other, and settled in for what promised to be a long night, but not at all an unpleasant one. Particularly not when it also promised a slow, leisurely morning, featuring complaints about neck aches and engaging conversation on the innovative arcane theories produced by students these days over breakfast.

## Afterword

End Notes

> Thank you to @Kipachie_ on Twitter for the beta read! You can find me on Twitter @wytchlyghts for more dumbass wizards in love. Thank you for reading/kudos/comments!

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