Nott and Caleb

Six Months Later...

The latch clicked once and the pantry door eased inward.

Nott slipped first. Small, quick, hood low, cracked half-mask strapped across her mouth and nose. The porcelain’s red-painted smile made her look less like an obvious goblin and more like a peculiar night-worker. If you didn’t catch the sharp yellow eyes. Her rag-wrapped feet made almost no sound on the planks.

Caleb waited outside in the alley, scarecrow-tall in a long filthy coat, red-brown hair a matted mess, chin rough with weeks of growth. His travel clothes stank of smoke and river water. He stood still as brick, the kind of man you’d pass without remembering. At the alley’s mouth, Frumpkin sat, tail wrapped neat, watching with bored authority. Caleb’s eyes were half-lidded, distant, his real sight lost in the cat’s.

“Zwei Minuten,” he breathed. Two minutes. In and out before the watchman’s next corner.

Warm air from the ovens wrapped Nott in yeast, onion, brine. She eased the door wider, slid to the inner storeroom lock. Caleb had sent Frumpkin in that afternoon, the tom curling around table legs until he found the pantry. Now Nott knew exactly where she was headed. She pinched her picks from a pocket, twirled one between two fingers.

“Hello, little lock,” she whispered, grin hidden behind porcelain. “Open your hole for mama. Not that kind, though, gods, I miss pussy.” The pick ticked pins into place. “Six days. Six. Do you know what that does to a girl’s balls?” Click. The bolt slid. She breathed out. “Hah. Still got it.”

Six days was the longest she’d gone without getting her fat, nasty, beautiful goblin cock inside someone since the tribe. Six miserable days of pressure climbing behind the jokes, her sack feeling like two hot stones strapped to her thighs. The right amount of cheap wine could quiet it; one swallow too far and she’d tip from “behaving” into an orgy of bad decisions, sweat, and spilled seed that left her shaking with guilt at dawn. Jerking it helped. She did it at least twice a day just to keep her hands from trembling. It took the edge off until it didn’t.

She moved fast, clean. Travel food first: two loaves, a wedge of hard white cheese, a pockets full of apples. She eyed the row of bottles, sniffed the corks until she found a squat one of sweet brandy. That she tucked deep into her bundle. “Mama deserves a drink,” she muttered.

A floorboard creaked beyond the pantry. Nott dropped into a crouch and went still. Through the door-gap: bare ankles and the hem of a nightdress. A tavern maid padded past, bent to snag a fallen spoon. Linen lifted. A flash of ass in candlelight.

“Nice arse,” Nott breathed, shameless and brief. “Wouldn’t mind stuffing it full.” Heat flared low and mean; she swallowed it. Six days. Not tonight. Be good.

From the alley, Caleb’s voice, low but sharp: “Nott.”

“Working,” she whispered back. She shut the storeroom, re-set the outer bolt to leave no obvious trace, cracked the back door, and slid out, bundle hugged to her ribs.

Left at the churn-yard. “Left,” she said. “The dog to the right knows my knees.” It had barked her bloody the week before; no encore.

At the lane’s mouth, Frumpkin flicked his tail once. Caleb’s signal. The watchman had turned his back. They walked through the gap, easy pace. Not running. Running read as guilt.

Gutters, fence-shadows, the street’s rhythm. Past hoops stacked in the cooper’s yard. Along a wall with one brick jutting just enough to toe. Across three loose cobbles they could skirt without looking down. Handoffs were smooth: Caleb took the bundle while Nott climbed the low fence; Nott took it back when he dropped down. No chatter. No need.

At the river they ducked behind tarred nets and a complaining pier beam. Pitch and salt. Water slapping pilings. Their habitual pause: out of lanes, close to escape.

“Keep moving,” Caleb murmured. “Bridge.”

They slid along the river’s dark edge, keeping to weed-shadow and boat ribs, then dropped beneath the low stone arch at the town’s edge. Their little camp was there behind a heap of driftwood and a slumped net, where an old pallet and a patched blanket made a bed that didn’t ask questions. The bridge groaned softly with cart wheels above; the river licked the pier stones below.

Frumpkin padded to the mouth of the underpass and sat like a carved thing. Caleb’s gaze went distant a heartbeat, then returned. “All clear,” he said, settling his back to a pillar where he could see both water and path.

Nott removed her mask and set the bundle on the pallet and spread it out with a flourish. “Two plump loaves. One mean cheese. Some apples. And-” she waggled the squat bottle, “-brandy. For morale. Healer’s orders.”

She popped the cork, took a swallow that burned like a sermon, then hesitated with the bottle at her lips. A beat. She pushed the cork back in with her thumb. “That’s enough,” she told the bottle. “Look at me. Moderation. I’m a lady now.”

Caleb tore bread into halves, neat and equal, and passed hers over. “Thank you,” he said. “Quiet work.”

“Mmm, say it slower,” she purred, bumping his shoulder as she knelt. “I’ll make it weird.”

“Please don’t,” he said, mild as rain. “Eat.”

They did, hunched against the pillar’s cold, the town a muted murmur above. Steam fogged the cracked porcelain; she brushed a dusting of flour from his sleeve. “Domestic as sin,” she said lightly. “Someone should knit us a little bridge cozy.”

He handed her a slice of cheese without looking away from the dark. “Books first. Drink… perhaps later,” he said, almost automatic, and then, softer, “You did well.”

“Don’t spoil me, I’ll expect sweet petting.” She coughed a laugh and bit hard. The food took the edge off. The ache in her sack retreated half a step; the noise in her skull softened from fuck, fuck, fuck to a manageable hum. If she could string another day, maybe two, the pressure would fade to background again. If she misjudged the liquor by a single swallow, she knew exactly how the night would go.

“Tomorrow we raid a henhouse,” she said around bread. “I'll charm the hens. Bat my lashes.” She fluttered them grotesquely. “They’ll lay out of pure dick-preciation.”

“We keep small,” Caleb answered. “Eggs, then away. Mask stays on until we are past the mill.”

She waggled the bottle at him, then tucked it deeper into the bundle instead of opening it. “Hear that?” she told no one. “Personal growth.” The joke wilted; she stared at the river. “I was good tonight,” she added, airy as nothing. “Didn’t climb the maid like a ladder.”

“Good,” he said, and meant it. “Together, ja?”

“Together,” she echoed, catching his eye over the mask. For a breath, the porcelain didn’t matter. She leaned against his arm, greedy for the steadiness. “If I start doing something stupid. Use your words. Or your weight. Dealer’s choice.”

“If you must, you do it with my help,” he said, gentle but firm. “Otherwise, no.”

Her giggle was filthy, automatic. “Ohh, you’ll help me? What, hold her down while I stuff her? Stroke my hair and tell me I’m doing a good job? Mm, Caleb, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Eat your bread, Nott,” he sighed, but the faintest curl at his mouth betrayed him.

“Bossy,” she said, a little laugh scraped thin. “It’s hot.”

Above them, a wagon rattled by. At the mouth of the arch, Frumpkin flicked his tail once, then curled, satisfied. The watch bell coughed the hour across the water.

Caleb raked a hand through his red-brown mess and stood enough to check the path, then sat again with his back to the stone. “All right. I take first watch.”

“Of course you do,” she said, flopping onto the pallet and hauling the blanket to her chin. She turned the bottle once in her hands, then stowed it under the pallet, out of reach. “Tomorrow. Eggs. Pancakes. Another day.”

“We will do better,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Nott let her head thump the pillar and pressed her palm hard between her thighs, holding the ache in place until it listened. “Another day,” she said, soft, like a promise she might actually keep.

They met in a lockup and decided, without much talk, not to be alone anymore. He had his magic cat and a head full of books. She had picks and sticky fingers. Together they walked out, and from then on it was just easier not to split up.

The deal was clear enough. He made the plans, watched for uniforms, counted doors. She slipped the locks, lifted the purses, made the jokes. He said rules in that soft voice of his—mask on in towns, no running jobs alone, if you steal you do it with my help. She broke them, of course, then grinned and handed him the better cut of bread like that made it even.

They learned where to sleep without getting kicked: bridges, underboats, behind mills. Frumpkin did the scouting in daylight, and Nott went in after dark. They even gave names to their tricks, so it sounded clever instead of criminal. Moneypot. Prince and Pauper. Little games they could play without needing to explain.

She tried once to go back to the life she had before. Yeza. But he saw a goblin, shouted for help, raised the alarm. Not a wife, not a mother, just a monster in the dark. And the tribe? They would have loved her, sure. Loved her cock, loved the rutting, loved making her into the fat-balled goblin stud they already knew she was. She didn’t turn that way either. She just kept running, and Caleb was running too, so she stuck close.

She told herself she’d be good. That she wouldn’t touch anyone. That she’d keep her fat goblin cock to herself. But that was a lie she could never hold for long. Somehow she still ended up between thighs she shouldn’t be, drunk or not, buried in women who should have known better. Human wives, halfling barmaids, half-elves passing through. Common women with common needs who let her finish raw inside like it was no big thing. She hated herself for it and yet she kept doing it. She’d wake up sticky and guilty, swearing it was the last time, and a week later be balls-deep again. A disgusting goblin joke, a monster pretending to live small, and still regularly emptying her sack into whoever let her.

Caleb never pressed. He didn’t ask, and she didn’t explain. That was their way. He cared enough to set lines: together, mask on, small jobs only. She cared enough to stay. Somehow that was enough to keep them going.