ICARUS.
☼ PAIRING: Caleb x blind!Reader
☼ CW: SFW but MATURE, obsessive behaviour, descriptions of gore, body horror, yandere themes, codependency, consensual captivity, manipulation, violence, implications of violence, suggestive.
☼ W.C: 2.0k
TAG: @starryeyed-apple
| DIVIDER: @sweetmelodygraphics | INSPO |
You had never been the type to fight back.
Even as they bashed you against the lockers, head bouncing off the metal with the recoil of a deflated basketball, enduring pain so immense you swore you bled.
Even as they dunked your head under water, letting water seep into the eyes that never aided you throughout your entire life (those god forsaken eyes—the source of all your woes). By the end, your eyeballs had felt so turgid you pondered how they hadn’t burst.
Sometimes, you wished they had. Perhaps, having empty flesh-pits for eyes would keep them away. It was better to be feared than to be looked down upon.
Even as they pressed straighteners into your skin, the hot metal pinching a chunk of your flesh. You remembered the sound of your own cries as the girls took turns placing their fingers upon the plastic already burning you dry, all while you thrashed around frantically, trying to locate the source of the laughter that came from everywhere, and then squeezed—
That night, you wept incessantly.
The burn blistered cruelly. The pain was unforgiving—dull, sharp, persistent, numb, all at once—and you knew then that you could no longer hide.
Caleb waited by your door the whole day.
The bright, puppy-eyed boy who’d given himself to you. You likened him to Icarus—you learned of him in your English class, as your fingers skimmed through the braille—a boy who’d flown too close to the omnipotent sun, who came crashing down after his wax wings melted beneath its heat, and eventually, he perished beneath the waters, crushed to death by its mounting pressure. Icarus had burned, too. He had drowned. Just like you. You wonder if he had felt it, just moments before his death: the water rushing into his eyes, making them bulge out of his head. The way his skin screeched as he bathed his burns in cold, frigid water.
Maybe, if Caleb stuck with you, he would share the same fate.
Caleb, too, had wings of wax and model parts he engineered himself. He was a brilliant boy, they all had claimed. He was Grandmama’s pride and joy. Her little golden boy. Talented, intelligent, brimming with rays of warm sunlight he’d stolen since his birth. They said his eyes reflected the violet that followed the death of a sun, and his smile represented the sun itself. (Oh, how you wished you could have seen him smile). He had held the ball of heat in his heart, kept it close to his beating heart, cherished it, loved it with his all.
You were the sun. Caleb’s sun. And just like it had betrayed Icarus, it would scorch him too.
Caleb smelled it the moment you stepped home. The strong, undeniable stench of raw flesh permeating from your sweater. You reeked as if you’d passed by a butchery on the way home, maybe rolled about in some of their products as well.
Worried, the bright-eyed boy watched you quietly as you went about your day.
He noticed how your brows furrowed, how your eyes flicked to your hand when they contorted with pain. He noticed how you had deliberately kept it still, refusing to move it, even when absolutely necessary.
So, like any good friend does, as he approached you that day, and as you looked at him with fear, immediately pulling away at the echo of his familiar footsteps—
Caleb hooked his arm around your shoulder, pressing you into a playful chokehold, and with the other, he squeezed—
He waited by your door the entire afternoon, and then the whole night, as you locked the door, shut yourself in, and wept the entire time.
The muffled sounds of your sobs and sniffles bled through the door. And for a while, Caleb thought he couldn’t take it anymore. He pictured himself kicking the door open, barging in, and pulling up your sleeve. But what good would that have done? The door was locked, and if he were to blast it with his evol, surely, you would never look at him the same.
So, like a loyal puppy awaiting its master’s return, he waited by the door. Eyes unblinking, refusing himself sleep. He waited, waited, and waited... until the crying had quieted down, and the door had creaked open.
That night, you had been rushed to the hospital with only Caleb by your side.
Even after the treatment—the antiseptics, the slicing off of dead flesh, the endless layers of gauze and ointment, the enormous prescription of medication that followed afterwards—your skin had never truly healed. Even now, as an adult, the burn stuck, glaringly obvious.
For the first time in your life, you were thankful to have been born blind.
But ever since, something had changed.
You were scarred. Physically, mentally. It would be expected for you to have changed. But what didn’t make sense was how it had impacted Caleb.
Ever since the incident, he had never once left your side.
He walked you to school, hand-in-hand, guiding you gently, away from all the noise. Away from people, you soon realised. Every time, he had taken a detour. A quieter, more desolate route. One his lingering touches and calm voice had distracted you from mapping out.
But it was okay, right? It was Caleb, after all. Your naive, whole-hearted Icarus.
By some miraculous twist of fate, the same day, Caleb had been transferred to your class. And despite the horde of girls and boys alike urging him to occupy their adjacent seat, without hesitation, he had slipped into the empty spot beside you.
And when you’d looked at (what you assumed to be) him, confused, he only replied with a pat to your head.
“I’m your friend,” he said, “I’ll always be by your side.”
Or, perhaps, the bigger change had been in his behavior.
The sudden surge in the areas of your life he controlled. From your meals to those you conversed with, everything was planned by him, set up by him, and executed by him. That meant that throughout your high school life, you had never spoken to another non-educator, and neither had you heard their voices approach you. Strange, you thought; nobody laughed at you either.
Perhaps, it was by the courtesy of Caleb’s charm. The brightness that he exuded, the peace he brought about wherever he treaded. Surely, in his presence, would anyone consider violence a viable option to pass their time?
Bit by bit, it was as if Caleb had reshaped your orbit to loop about him, and only him. Not that you minded, of course. After all, he was the only one kind to the blind such as yourself. The only one in the world who accepted you and your inability.
“The rest are cruel. Evil.”, he used to say. “Humans, the able-bodied and privileged ones, are the ones truly blind.”
Why would you want to be with anyone else? If the world was as cruel as he’d said, why would you need another’s company? Caleb would never leave. Not until you burn his skin and cast his decaying body into the sea. But a cruel, evil human being? Perhaps, they’d stick with you out of pity. But in the end...
“They’ll leave you,” Caleb turned your head to his, “They think it’s embarrassing to lug around a disabled girl.”
An uncaring crowd zoomed past you as the bell rang, the noises they exuded blurring past. Tables overturned, chairs screeched against the floor, footsteps avoided your desk with a large radius. You heard some approach Caleb’s desk, but in seconds, they diverted.
You turned away and drooped your head. “Am I a burden to you too? Are you also lugging me around?”, you whispered, tears welling in your eyes. A warm hand encompassed yours. “You’re my sun, pips,” you felt the warmth of plush lips pushing against your fingertips. “I chose to burn with you.”
Or, perhaps, the biggest change had been in him.
You were blind. You couldn’t see Caleb’s expression as he delivered that line. You couldn’t see whether his other arm twitched, or whether his lips were bent into a frown. You couldn’t see the look in his eyes, or the way the light bounced off his irises and reflected his soul.
But you could feel it.
You could feel the way he burned inside. You could feel the tightness of his grip, the sharp glares he sent people’s ways, allegedly capable of scaring them away. You could feel the whirlpool of emotions laced with his every touch—with every brush against your arm, with every interlocking of your fingers, every caress on your cheek, and every grip on your lower back as he guided you a certain way.
You could feel it lurk beneath his words. His desire, emotions—you weren’t sure what to label them at that time. (It was obsession, you soon learned.)
Caleb wanted something. Something he was yet to obtain. Something his touches could only graze. Something your current relationship didn’t allow. He yearned to breach a boundary you couldn’t name.
Sometimes, you felt as if he wanted to fuse into your skin.
Molten chunks of his gummy flesh, sticking to yours, diffusing beyond, flowing into your bloodstream and clotting it.
You felt he yearned to bear your burns. You felt he yearned to be them.
You felt he yearned to be the molecules of water seeping into your incompetent eyeballs, the ones making them turgid and fat.
He wanted to wear your pain.
He believed only he deserved to cause it.
And you would soon begin to believe that the day the boundaries had been breached. The day your Icarus flew too close—the day he became an ugly, blistered mess, ruined by your hands.
His body loomed over yours. Your hands were pinned to the headboard, ensnared by his large palm. Though, you had believed it quite pointless.
Broken breaths fell upon your face. As Caleb shuffled, you felt it ghost over your neck. And then, he dove—his lips latched onto the flesh.
“I want to be your only source of happiness...” You flinched as his teeth grazed over the damp spot. “... And the only source of your pain.”
Now adults, you and Caleb only seemed to grow closer.
After all, he had made sure you lived with him, in his room, in the house that he paid for. For how else were you to navigate life? Who else would guide you through the rooms, make you daily meals, and dress you up each day? Without him, you would have died in a day. You were grateful for him. For everything he gave you, and for everything he took.
“The door’s unlocked,” he muttered, “You could run away. You should run away.”
But you did not move an inch. The grip on your arms loosened. Your wrists fled from your restraints, but instead, they landed gently on Caleb’s cheek.
“My Icarus,” you smiled, “I’ll burn your pretty feathers.” Your fingers trailed his nose, his cheeks, resting on his lip. “I’ll scorch your skin, and I’ll toss you into the sea.”
If you were to claim you weren’t aware, you would be lying. You heard the wails. You felt the blood drip off his knuckles. You felt the chains tighten. You sensed the world; the people around you burn.
But you did not pry. You did not bother to look their way. For humans, the able-bodied and privileged ones were the ones truly blind. If they had refused to see, even with their eyes, it was simple—you would let them burn. You would let them burst with water, you would let them be bashed out of their heads, and you would squash them beneath your shoe.
For the sun never moved—it stayed anchored in the sky, looming in perpetual silence, watching as men perished chasing its might. It was Icarus who chased the sun.
Caleb’s hand travelled down your back.
“Please...” His shaky breath kissed your fingers. “Let’s burn together.”
Your Icarus had fallen.
All while you burned with all your blaze.
