invoked-duplicity answered:

Caleb isn’t sure how it happened, even though he knows exactly when it started.



What he knows is this:

Mollymauk has been flirting with him. Caleb knows this because he has watched him for a very long time, flirting with other people, winking, swishing his tail playfully, licking his lips when he is interested in someone. Caleb has catalogued every movement, every expression, every dip of Mollymauk’s voice when he speaks with someone he finds attractive.



His memory is flawless.



So when Mollymauk’s voice dips lower when he tells Caleb that his newest spell in impressive, Caleb knows. It’s in the way Mollymauk’s eyes linger on his face and how he smiles–almost absentmindedly–when he watches Caleb read in the corner of an inn while everyone else is drinking and having fun.



What Caleb also knows is:

Mollymauk always goes for what he wants. So it doesn’t make any sense that he would simply keep looking and smiling and flirting without ever getting physical. Without ever making innuendo that would suggest the two of them having sex. Mollymauk is very careful about the way he touches Caleb and it’s never suggestive. Never makes Caleb uncomfortable–as if Mollymauk has done all the calculations, has catalogued Caleb’s reactions to being touched in different ways, and then proceeds to stay in his lane.



Mollymauk Tealeaf, by definition of his very being, never stays in his lane.



Except when it comes to Caleb Widogast, it seems.



Caleb is a very smart man, but he has no idea what is going on. He’s able to understand the most complicated concepts, the most difficult types of magic, mathematical equations, elaborate grammatical structures of languages long dead. But he cannot for the life of him figure out one chaotic disaster of a Tiefling.



At this point, Caleb is sure he understands Jester better than he understands Mollymauk, and that is a feat he never hoped to accomplish when they first started traveling together.



It has been almost 15 months since Mollymauk came back from the grave a second time. It has been almost 14 months since Mollymauk started flirting with Caleb.



And in those 14 months not once has he tried to kiss Caleb, or put his clawed hands on Caleb’s thighs, or pushed him into a wall again, like he did so long ago in those catacombs.



It took Caleb 6 months to understand that he is, in fact, helplessly in love with Mollymauk Tealeaf.



But Caleb is still Caleb.



And of course it takes drastic measures to push Caleb over the edge.



What happens is this:

Keep reading