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The nightly watch was a necessity of travel. Usually, the group split into easy duos for the night, grouped together by longevity and comfort more than anything else. Molly and Yasha often sat together, Nott would tuck herself against Caleb’s side, and Beau, Fjord and Jester would jostle for position until they worked out a routine. It was normal, made sense, and didn’t truly vary save for the few times Beau made a desperate bid for Yasha’s attention.
They had a system. They had a routine.
Which is why it was so damn weird when Yasha offered to take second watch with Caleb.
Nott blinked from where she’d already been outlining the spell she’d been desperate for Caleb to teach her. Beau blinked over at Caleb, lips pursed in confusion. Caleb seemed - surprised, yes, but also pleased? It burned something in Beau’s chest. Didn’t matter. They all needed rest and honestly, she had no doubt Fjord would take this sudden departure of routine as a sign that they all needed to take watch with someone they didn’t usually.
It was fine. Just a one off thing.
Except it wasn’t.
By the third time Yasha offered to take the watch with Caleb, the rest of the group was becoming suspicious. Nott dropped her hands back down into her lap, frown more pronounced as she eyed the slight smile on Caleb’s lips and the quiet dust of pink over Yasha’s cheeks. Beau’s shoulders tensed. No, this was fine. It was whatever. Yasha could do the watch with whoever she wanted. It wasn’t like Beau was jealous.
Jester skipped over to where Beau was clearing a patch for her sleeping roll and tugged on her robe. “We should spy on them. They’re being naughty.”
“Jester!” Beau snapped, startled. Jester grinned. “They’re not doing anything like that. Besides, Yasha wouldn’t - I mean, Caleb probably hasn’t ever - shut up!”
Jester giggled, clapping her hands in delight as she shot a side look to where Caleb and Nott were setting up their own bedding. “Caleb is so quiet. The quiet ones were always my mother’s favourites.”
Beau made a face. “I didn’t need to know that, Jester, holy shit.”
Another giggle as Jester skipped her way over to Fjord, leaning in to whisper at him, and Fjord’s head jerked up sharply before glancing in Caleb’s direction. Beau threw her hands in the air and informed everyone she was getting firewood. Jester waggled her brows. This was ridiculous.
The sixth time, Jester cooed softly at Yasha and Caleb, who both didn’t seem to understand. Beau seethed. Nott was surprisingly hurt. Caleb and Yasha tilted their heads together as they went off for first watch. Beau woke in the morning fully rested but not, grumpy as she sat down beside Caleb and shovelled the food he’d made into her mouth.
The tenth time, Caleb offered that he and Yasha do second watch. Yasha smiled, that small secretive one that Beau coveted with a ferocity she hadn’t quite had the courage to look into just yet. Jester sidled up beside Beau, Molly in tow, and they both were waggling their damn brows now.
The night was a horror show from the beginning. Beau couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning back and forth, certain a rock was under her, or a stick, or just anything that could be forcing her awake. It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t annoyance. She liked Caleb. She really liked Yasha. It was fine. The two of them could be friends and take the watch together and it was fine.
Beau rolled over. The fire was crackling embers now, a bare wisp of light in the darkness at this point. She strained her eyes in the darkness toward where Caleb and Yasha were taking their watch, but could barely make out their forms amongst the trees. What she did see, instead, was Jester and Molly creeping quietly toward where the duo last were; the glint of Molly’s horn jewellery and the flash of Jester’s smile caught in the moonlight.
“Really?” Beau muttered under her breath. Pushing up, she dug through her bag until she located the night goggles and snapped them on, staying low to the ground as she followed.
They hadn’t gone far. The trees around their makeshift camp were thick and well lived, creating a pocked canopy for starlight to poke through. Jester was tucked behind one of the trees, peering out behind it, and Molly was beside her edging around the other side. In the clearing beyond, Caleb and Yasha were just visible, their voices a low murmur.
“What are you doing?” Beau hissed. Jester startled, slapping her hands over her mouth to keep quiet. Molly just rolled his eyes and went back to spying.
“We’re going to catch them,” Jester explained under her breath. “They are being suspicious.”
“No one likes taking that many watches with another person unless they’re wooing them,” Molly spoke up. Jealousy flashed hot in Beau’s chest before she shoved it down.
A quick streak of movement caught her peripheral as Nott joined their group, tucking herself into the folds of Jester’s dress. “It’s for his own safety.”
“Not you, too,” Fjord groaned as he approached.
Molly waved an irritated hand. “Hush, all of you. I’m trying to listen.”
Throwing her hands up in the air, Beau wiggled into a spot beside Jester and peered beyond the trees at their two quietest members. Caleb was cross legged with a book in his lap, a single globule of light hovering just over his head. Yasha sat beside him, knee crooked to the side so it was pressed against Caleb’s, with Frumpkin sprawled languid in her lap. The relaxed flick of his tail caught on another globule of light.
“He likes you,” Caleb said, his smile a shadow.
Yasha scritched under Frumpkin’s chin. “He is easy to like.”
Caleb ducked his head at that, spreading his fingers over the edges of his book. The night was surprisingly loud when the two of them were silent, the forest humming with nightlife and excited shrieks of bats and bugs. Frumpkin rolled in Yasha’s lap until he was practically melting into her, the purr of him shotgun loud in the clearing. Caleb chuckled. Yasha smiled.
“Boring,” Jester murmured, tucking her chin against Beau’s elbow. Beau shook her off.
“Caleb,” Yasha said, her fingers stilling on Frumpkin’s fur. “Would you speak with me again?”
“Ja, of course,” Caleb said immediately, closing his book. He bumped his knee against Yasha’s. “What do you wish to speak of? We could continue our last conversation?”
Yasha paused. She stroked her thumb between Frumpkin’s closed eyes, rubbing lightly against his nose. Her brow furrowed. “Perhaps about your past?”
Beau stilled. Her gaze snapped down to Jester below her, bright with curiosity, to Fjord frowning in her peripheral, and the quirked brow of Molly beyond. Nott brushed against her knee, tiny fingers closing over her loose pants and holding tight. No. Beau should stop this. She should pull the others away, shoo them back to bed, before Caleb’s horror splattered across the empty meadow and tarnished the relationships of his new travelling family. This wasn’t how he’d want them to find out.
Beau should stop it.
She should.
But -
“Ja,” Caleb said. His shoulders drooped. His head tilted back. The rust of his hair brushed over his ears and the moonlight spread gentle fingers over his cheeks. He smiled. “I think I would like that.”
And then - music.
Music left Caleb’s lips, the same music they’d all heard the day Yasha went winged hell-creature; the same music that hummed and tangled in the air with a visible shimmer. It tumbled from Caleb’s lips in reverberations and whispers, silky as a slip of fabric and rough as a cat’s purr. Yasha exhaled sharply beside him before her forehead met his shoulder, her hands blindly reaching until Caleb threaded their fingers together. Her melody was quieter, a query as delicate as the mote of light above Caleb’s head. Together, they sung, back and forth, a seamless harmony that wove into something secret.
As Caleb composed, Yasha’s skin began to glow. Faint at first, and then brighter, as delicate webs of light lifted from her skin and her hair, hanging in gossamer threads. Caleb was cast into shadow; his eyes closed as he continued to sing, a give and take that Caleb was slowly taking control over. Yasha lilted a series of notes and Caleb continued before she’d finished. Her skin shone.
Yasha lifted her head as Caleb grew louder, her voice calming until it was a simple murmur beneath his tenor, a platform for him to push off of. Caleb twisted his head to the side but did not stop. He pushed forward.
The song picked up speed. Feverish. Hopeless. Caleb’s voice cracked as his consonants twisted sharp and his vowels twanged hard; his voice crescendoed and Yasha’s rose to match it. With a furious desperation, Caleb held the highest note, a flashfire of emotion swelling as he shook and shook. Yasha whispered a lyric. Caleb responded with a pleading chorus, still high, still strained, until it burned.
His voice dipped low, hard, scrapping against the imagined weave of the language they were singing in. A deep sob rose from Caleb’s chest, his fingers clawing once at his throat, but he did not stop. Tears flowed freely from his closed eyes. Yasha cradled his hand in hers, burnishing light into the smudges of his knuckles. He sang and she responded, taking control of the narrative.
“It’s beautiful,” Nott whispered, fragile with the pain of knowledge. Beau blinked, her gaze watery, and she removed her goggles to rub the tears from her eyes.
“He’s in so much pain,” Jester gasped, barely above a murmur, nearly lost in the delicate harmony of Yasha’s query. “How can something so beautiful be so sad?”
Fjord shifted, a warm hand splayed against Beau’s shoulder, voice soft and pained. “We shouldn’t be here, this isn't for us.”
“Wait,” Molly said. “Wait.”
The conversation was tilting, now. The uncertainty in Caleb’s tenor was beginning to take a clear toll, a hiccup nearly derailing the entire thing. Yasha shone brighter. With an almost angry jerk of her chin, Yasha’s gaze darted to the shadows where the five of them were tucked away. Beau recoiled. Fjord swore. Molly hissed out a stream of Infernal but they kept their place. Trapped. The language twisted around them, humming like the heavens themselves, tangled up in the pain of a man born of flame and a woman burning bright as a fallen star.
Yasha released them from her gaze. She cradled the tear stained edge of Caleb’s jaw, caught and held the tremble of his skin. Music flowed out of her, loud now, commanding now, and Caleb stilled. He hung onto her wrist desperately, fingers pinching. The light coalesced in waves around them. Another shimmering crescendo from Yasha, tilted at the end as though in question. Caleb shook his head, stilled only when Yasha’s hold tightened, and hummed his response.
With a gentleness Beau had rarely witnessed, Yasha dropped her forehead to Caleb’s. Light exploded outward, bleeding over Caleb’s skin until he shone as brightly as Yasha, iridescent in the darkest pull of night.
Shadows twisted and fractured behind Yasha’s shoulders. The spread of wings dusty with misuse warped the light, sucking everything upward until the gossamer light hung like stripped feathers over a skeletal frame. Caleb whispered another line of the song, a plea, and Yasha pressed her lips to Caleb’s forehead. The wings snapped wide as Caleb curled forward. Yasha’s wings, dappled in light and shadow, vast in a meadowed clearing surrounded by trees, folded down, down, until they and her were wrapped around Caleb’s trembling form.
The light faded. The song ended. And the wings disappeared.
Quiet fell over the meadow once more.
“Thank you,” Yasha said in Common. Caleb remained tucked against her, his face once more in shadow, his response lost in the cascade of Yasha’s hair.
Yasha smiled, that small, secretive one that she had been showing more often now, and finally pulled away. Swiping at his eyes, Caleb kept his gaze down until Yasha touched his chin. She sung quickly to him. Caleb sighed back another whisper of song but nodded, lifting his head.
“I share your pain,” Yasha said, plucking Frumpkin up from beside her and depositing him in Caleb’s lap. “I will share it many more nights if you will allow me to.”
Caleb shoved the palms of his hands into his eyes. He took another shuddering breath before shaking his hands out. “I was not - not expecting that.”
“Nor was I.” But Yasha was smiling, pleased, and wrapped Frumpkin’s tail around two fingers. She cast her gaze away, peering around the clearing. Caleb carved his fingers through his hair.
As almost an afterthought, Caleb caught the twist of Yasha’s fingers with two of his own. Frumpkin chirped. “Danke, though. For that. Thank you.”
Yasha ducked her head. The two of them continued the rest of the watch in silence.
Beau did not sleep for the remainder of the night.
When Yasha offered to take watch with Caleb, the others did not argue. It was rarer now that Yasha would spend her nights sitting with Caleb, but there was a pattern, a routine. A bad battle where Caleb’s magic burned the sky red and orange, his blue gaze electric with arcane power and memories blown wide; a bad interaction where Yasha’s heritage was picked and poked at until she was nothing but a silent sentinel; or a bad mission where Yasha needed familiarity and Caleb needed catharsis.
The rest of the group did not argue. They knew, though. Sometimes, on nights when no one could sleep, they would stay awake until they could fall under the spell of a heavenly language sung in perfect harmony by their quietest members.