Archive of Our Own

Mollymauk drifts past Caleb easily, breezily, so light that if it wasn’t for the firm tap he gives to the bottom of Caleb’s chin, perhaps the wizard wouldn’t have noticed him at all.
“Ah-ah, chin up, Caleb.” Molly tuts, languid at his side. He presses a gentle kiss to the shell of Caleb’s ear, the most convenient reach, and draws away enough that Caleb can see his face, “Time for this later, yeah? Come find me when we’re at the Inn. Shout if you need me.” and brushes his fingertips down Caleb’s arm as he draws away.
Caleb breathes in, deep, and pulls his arms back up to cast.

They’re not lucky enough to avoid the humanoid enemies forever, though, the zombies clear away quickly and they reach the circle of the coven.
An ogre zombie lurches toward them, clumsy, backed up by a chorus of cackling from the sickly-looking humanoids pressed into the wall, hands ‘glowing’, drawing in the light for their necrotic energy.
Jester shoves Caleb out of the wide swing of the morningstar and meets it with her shield, there’s the horrid sound of weapon hitting metal, the screech and scream echoes around them in the vault-ceiling chamber. Her choked noise was likely meant to be look out but her air is forced out of her with the force. It works, though, she’s left unharmed and she pushes back, hard, sending the arm and morningstar swinging.
“Beau! Fjord!” She calls to them, “Go for those fuckers ! Yasha-”
She cuts herself off as the morningstar comes down toward her again, and Caleb rights himself to spring, leans over her and winds his arms around her shoulders in the last move of Shield . The forcefield springs up around them both, and the morningstar bounces back, catching the zombie in the face with the momentum. It gives a loud, angry roar, and Jester breathes a sigh of relief from under Caleb’s chin. She uses her free arm to pat back toward him, until she catches his hip,
“Thanks, Caleb! You can let go now.”
“Just a moment-”
The morningstar comes down again and bounces away, the forcefield dissipates as soon as it does. Caleb pulls back with the forcefield, and Jester uses the new freedom to huff a few words and shoot a Sacred Flame up into the zombie’s face. It moans, loud, and steps back, giving Caleb the opportunity to step in beside Jester and fire off a Fire Bolt.
He feels Jester press her back to his and they start a rotation, Sacred Flame after Fire Bolt, with Jester deflecting the morningstar as it comes down. Once, it threatens to catch and crush them, and Mollymauk comes flying out of nowhere with a heaving huff and uses the arm as a springboard, parkouring his way up the zombie’s body. He lights his swords in midair, and comes down with a screeching cross-formation of radiant light. The zombie groans, Molly pushes off it’s decaying stomach and soars through the air over Jester and Caleb’s heads.
He lands in a heap behind them, graceless landing, one of his scimitars goes flying from his grip and flickers dim. Caleb looks after him, stricken, as he groans, and he feels Jester jab him with her elbow.
“Go! I can deal with this ugly fuck.” a corner of a grin, and she coughs up another Sacred Flame as Caleb takes off for Molly immediately.
He snatches the loose scimitar from the floor as he pounds up, lodges his free hand under Molly’s upper arm and tugs, ducks under Molly’s arm and slings it around his own shoulders, he pulls Molly to standing.
The tiefling has a bloody nose, he wipes it with the back of his hand and groans.
“Come on.” Caleb tells him, edge of hysteria to his voice. He rakes his eyes across their fellows, Beau and Nott on one of the Coven members, Fjord and Yasha on one each, a fourth in the corner, manipulating the zombie.
The zombie that looks as though it’s on it’s last undead legs.
Molly looks at it and sneers, and Caleb presses his face to Molly’s shoulder to avoid looking at him as he hisses in Infernal.
And the zombie, inches away from crushing Jester with its morningstar, trembles and falls backwards in a boneless heap of newly murdered, rotting flesh.
“Molly, Caleb, take the one in the corner!” Jester calls to them, leaping up and over the mound of flesh as she does so, heading for Fjord. Caleb gives a wordless shout of affirmation, and they move, together, toward the fourth member of the coven.
“Come on, Mollymauk, you must be okay. I- we- we need you, to be okay.”
Molly laughs against him.
“I’m fine, just dazed. Come on, Caleb.”
He pulls his arm from Caleb’s shoulders with one last squeeze, takes his scimitar from Caleb’s fingers, and goes charging in.

Fjord and Jester’s enemy goes down first, a quick cheer and a high five and they head to Beau’s instead, Beau passes them on the way as she goes to Yasha’s side.
Jester slaps her a high five when their shoulders brush.
Mollymauk is relentless, weaving and stabbing and only once does Caleb collar him and pull, wraps his arms around Molly’s shoulders hard and pushes his face into his lapel, shooting a forcefield up around them to block out the beams of necrotic energy that come Molly’s way.
Molly pulls an arm around Caleb, too, kisses the top of his head. In the heat of battle, it’s almost surprising.
“Thank you.” Molly mumbles. And pulls away, goes back to his swirling.
They fight on, Caleb provides the backup over the attacks and he knows that Molly would never expect him to fight with fire. He’s seen Caleb. He knows.
And then there’s a beam of necrotic aimed right for Molly’s chest.
It hits, square, and Molly chokes on his own shallow breath, time stops around them, and he sinks to the floor with a sense of horrible finality.
“Oh, no.” Caleb says, horrified, takes a step closer, “No, no, no, no, no !”
There’s a flare, horrific and bright and searing, and Caleb screams for Molly as he shoots, one, two, three beams of hot, white fire at their enemy.
And is met with the briefest, most horrifying scream as their enemy melts like snow in sunlight before his eyes, and his memories come in on him like the tide.
He fights them off to throw himself over Molly, physically, fingers trembling as he uncorks and tips the healing potion into his mouth under the dim glow of the ashes of the fallen.
“Caleb! Shit, fuck, Caleb-”
It’s Beau’s voice, but she feels a million, million miles away from him, he drops the empty potion vial and buries his face in Molly’s chest, collapses completely under the weight of his history. An arm comes up and over his back, but it’s distant. Everything is distant. He can hear his parent’s screams, again.
Beau sees him fall and cry after Molly and looks up at Yasha.
“We need to finish this now, at any cost.”
Yasha searches her face, for a moment,
“Duck.”
Beau does, immediately, hits the floor as Yasha breathes, and roars, and the others get the gift of watching her skeletal wings sprout and flourish from her back like undead flowers blooming in a halo of dark night.
Beau shivers with the aura that floods over her, but she’s saved in part by her sheer attraction because fuck , Yasha is hot on a normal day but this is something else.
“Up.” Yasha growls, it sounds angrier than it is. Beau knows, and she stands just in time to catch Yasha driving her greatsword through their assailants chest.
At about the same time, Nott manages a perfect lucky shot right into the eye of their final coven member, and is met with a congratulatory whoop from Jester.
They recollect, Caleb slumped into Molly’s shoulder, he hushes and whispers and tips the wizard’s chin up.
They all look deliberately away as Caleb draws up just enough kiss him, a soft desperation of a man who’s given up.
Molly sweeps him into his arms.
“Maybe we don’t make Caleb go up against the human enemies.” Beau suggests, deadpan, from her place pressed to Yasha’s side.
“It was for Mollymauk.” Caleb’s voice is tired, “And I would do it again.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that, though-” Jester gets halfway through the protest before Caleb holds his hand up, shakes his head.
“No.” He tells them, firmly. “I would do it again.”