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11. "I know baby" while you are cumming with Caleb.
🔞MDNI🔞
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The silence was the worst part.
Thirty two days of it. It was not like the comfortable quiet of your apartment on a Sunday morning, it was something heavier, pressing down on your chest until every breath felt like work. You'd developed routines around it without meaning to. Checking your phone at the same times every day. Sitting on the edge of your bed in the dark, watching the notification light on your watch for something that never came. Eating when you remembered to. Sleeping when you couldn't stay awake anymore.
The Fleet had given you nothing.
You weren't official family. That was the problem, the one that the Farspace Fleet kept running into every time you called. Childhood bonds didn't have paperwork. Shared trauma didn't have a form number. The promise made in the darkness of his room more than a year ago didn't hold any legal weight, and so every time you called you got the same automated voice, the same words in the same order.
The expedition into the deepspace flux zone is ongoing. All communications are classified under Level 4 security protocols.
You'd stopped counting how many times you'd heard it.
A week ago rumors started moving through the hunter channels, spreading fast and going quiet the moment an official walked into a room. A collapse inside the tunnel. A squadron cut off from the extraction point. You'd cornered a senior officer at the Association headquarters and watched her look at everything in the room except your face while she told you to prepare for the worst. As if that was a sentence you were supposed to absorb and go home.
They were writing him off. Filling in forms. Moving toward the moment where they'd call it officially and send you a letter with his name at the top and a condolences paragraph at the bottom, and the universe would have taken him from you a second time. The first time had been the explosion. You'd been clueless then, and the grief had carved something out of you that had never fully grown back. Thirty two days of silence and you could feel those same edges again, the same hollow shape of a loss you didn't know how to survive this time.
You'd spent the last two days crying under your duvet without a reason to come out.
2:14 AM. The front door clicked.
You sat up so fast the blood rushed out of your head. Sat completely still in the dark, heart hammering, telling yourself it was nothing— probably a neighbor's door, your own exhausted mind making up sounds it wanted to hear. You'd been doing that. Hearing things. Seeing his face in the corner of your eye on the street and turning to find a stranger.
Heavy footsteps in the hallway. A duffel bag dropped onto the hardwood floor. The weight of it, the carelessness of someone too exhausted to set something down gently, sent something electric straight up your spine.
You got out of bed. Your legs weren't entirely reliable. You caught the door frame, steadied yourself, crossed the hallway on autopilot with your heart somewhere in your throat.
The bathroom light was on. Through the glass the steam was already building, the shower ran hard and hot, and you could smell it from the doorway—your shampoo.
You pushed the door open.
The steam rolled out around you, warm and thick, and through the clear panel of the shower glass—
Caleb.
He didn't know you were there yet.
He was standing under the water with his forehead pressed against the tile, shoulders rising and falling. The water was too hot—you could tell because the steam was already thick enough to blur the far wall—but he wasn't adjusting it. Just standing in it. Letting it hit the back of his neck and run down the lines of his shoulders to carry whatever he'd brought back with him down the drain.
His skin was pale, the kind of pale that came from a month without real sunlight, and every muscle in his back was wound so tight it looked painful.
He looked like he had fought his way to a door and wasn't entirely sure yet that he'd made it through.
His head turned.
His eyes found yours through the condensation and steam, bloodshot from lack of sleep and completely awake in an instant, and the look on his face when he saw you standing there—the unguarded relief of it—hit you somewhere behind your ribs and stayed there.
He reached back to shut the water off then stepped out without reaching for a towel, water running off his shoulders and chest, steam rising off his skin. He looked different. Harder at the edges. Several days of dark stubble caught the harsh bathroom light and he looked nothing like the man who'd kissed you goodbye a month ago, or he looked exactly like that man, just with everything worn closer to the surface, less of it contained.
Neither of you spoke. You weren't sure you could. The reality of him standing in front of you—breathing, dripping water onto the floor—was still making its way through days of silence and the grief of someone who had already lost him once and had spent the last forty eight hours preparing to do it again.
"Caleb." It came out barely a sound.
He crossed the bathroom floor in three steps, water trailing behind him, and his hand wrapped around your wrist. His grip was warm, real and it made your eyes sting immediately. He didn't say anything. He just held you for a moment, his thumb pressed against your pulse point, and let you feel that he was there.
He kept hold of your wrist the whole way. Down the hall, through the door of your room, until your shoulders found a wall and he stopped in front of you. The sight of him, still yours, broke something open in your chest that you'd been holding very carefully shut.
"Caleb,—the fleet, they—I thought you were—"
"I'm right here." His voice came out rough, scraped down to something raw and unrecognizable, nothing of his usual warmth in it yet. "Forget what they said. I'm right here. I'm safe."
He placed his palms against the wall on either side of your head, steadying the space around you like he always had. The heat coming off his skin was startling against the cool air of the bedroom. You looked up at him, at the dark sharp lines of his jaw and the thick stubble that made him look exhausted and more real than anything you'd let yourself imagine in the last four weeks.
"Look at you," he said quietly, eyes moving over your face, your shaking hands, "Why are you trembling. It's okay." His voice dropped further. "I've got you."
"I thought you were dead." The first sob broke through before you could stop it "They wouldn't tell me anything, Caleb. They told me to prepare for the worst, I didn't know what that—fuck, I did know what it meant and I couldn't—"
"I know." He pulled you away from the wall and buried his face in the curve of your neck, you felt the rough drag of his stubble against your skin and gasped. He breathed you in slowly, deeply, his whole chest expanding against yours. "I know what they're like." His arms tightened around you. "But I promised you. I have always promised you. I fought my way out of that tunnel because leaving you again was not an option."
His hands moved down and without any warning he hooked his hands under your thighs and lifted you clean off the floor.
You wrapped your legs around his waist on instinct, hands flying to his shoulders. Your shorts rode up with the movement, bare thighs pressing against the heat of his hips.
"Baby—"
His mouth came down on yours.
It wasn't desperate in the way you'd expected. It was slower than that, deeper, a kiss that had too much behind it to rush. A month of darkness, cold and whatever he'd fought through to get back to you, all of it pressing into the way his lips moved against yours, his tongue parting your mouth in a heavy stroke that made your fingers curl into his damp hair and pull.
He shifted your weight, pressing your spine gently but firmly into the wall, and you felt the full length of his cock against you through the thin fabric of your shorts—already hard, already searching for the closeness you both needed, his hips moving in a slow rhythm that mirrored exactly what his mouth was doing.
He broke the kiss just far enough to look at you again.
"I'm here," he said, his words almost too quiet to hear. "Right here. I'm not going anywhere."
"I need—" Your voice broke, tears were streaming down your face. "Please. I need to feel you. I need to know you're actually—"
The sound that came out of him was pained. He lowered you until your feet touched the floor, keeping one arm tight around your waist, and his free hand went to your waistband, careful, guiding your shorts and underwear down together until they pooled at your ankles and you stepped out of them.
He straightened back up and you looked at each other in the quiet of the room. He was watching your face with an expression that made your throat close up again. The marks of the last month were all over him, the exhaustion, the weight loss, the hollowness around his eyes, and he was still the most beautiful man you'd ever seen.
He reached for the hem of your shirt and pulled it over your head, tossing it behind him without looking. Then he was back against you, chest to chest, and the heat of his body in front of you and the cool hard wall behind you made your breath leave you all at once.
His jaw dragged down your throat. The stubble was rough and you felt every millimeter of it, that scraping friction kept pulling you back into your body every time emotion threatened to pull you out of it. He was doing it on purpose. Making sure you felt him. "Right here," he said softly against your skin. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."
There was nothing left to say that your body wasn't already saying for you.
He hooked one of your legs over his hip, his forearm sliding under your thigh to hold you there. His free hand moved between you, guiding himself to your entrance, and he paused—just for a breath, tip pressed against your heat—eyes on your face, waiting.
"Please. Now. Ca—"
He pressed forward and you buried your face in his neck.
The sob that came out of you surprised both of you. He felt it move through you and pulled you closer, both arms wrapping around you, his hands spread wide across your back.
"I've got you," he whispered, lips against your temple. "I've got you. I'm here."
He pulled back slowly. Almost all the way. Let you feel the drag of it, the absence, and then drove back in deeper.
"Caleb—" he swallowed the sound of his name with a sound of his own, low in his chest, his forehead dropping to yours.
He began to move and there was nothing fast about it. Just you and him.
The heat built fast anyway. Your nails found his back, his shoulders, whatever you could reach, and he let you—didn't flinch, didn't shift away, just kept moving in a steady rhythm while the wet sounds of it and both of your breathing filled up the room. Your tears were still falling and you stopped trying to do anything about them, just let them come while your mouth left marks on his body.
His shoulder pulled away from your mouth.
"Look at me." Came his voice, strained, like it cost him something to speak. "Let me see you."
You lifted your head. Your vision was a bit blurry, everything fractured through tears, but you could see him clearly enough, jaw clenched, neck tight, the muscles in his face working against something he was holding back.
"You don't have to be scared anymore," he rasped, hips driving forward again, finding a shorter faster rhythm that dragged against every nerve ending you had. "I'm right here, baby. I'm staying right here."
"I was so scared—" The words broke apart before you got through them, your body clenching around him in tight pulses. "Caleb, I thought—I kept calling and they wouldn't—and then she said to prepare and I didn't—"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you had to sit with that."
"Don't apologize—"
"Look at me," he said again, softer this time. "Stay with me."
He grabbed your other leg, hoisting you higher until you were fully suspended—nothing under you but him, every thrust finding someplace deeper, enough to make your whole body seize up and your head fall back against the wall.
"Oh—Caleb—I'm going to—I—"
"I've got you." He brought his face to your cheek, lips moving against the wet, salty skin there, breathing you in. "I've got you. Let go."
The past month collapsed into a single point in your chest and then detonated. Not just pleasure—though that rolled through you in long shaking waves—but everything under it. Every night staring at his empty side of the bed. Every time a voice said please await official updates. The two days under your duvet where you'd let yourself start to grieve him. All of it coming up at once, unstoppable, your whole body shaking with it while he held you against the wall and didn't let you fall.
"I love you," you sobbed into his neck, the words coming out in pieces. "I love you—I love you—"
"I know." His voice cracked on the second word. He was close. His lips pressed to your temple, your jaw, your wet cheek "I know, baby. I love you. I love you. I'm home."
He buried himself as deep as he could go, shaking, your name in his mouth like a prayer he'd been repeating for a month to keep himself moving forward.
He carried you to the bed eventually. Lay down with you still tangled against his chest, one hand moving slow up and down your back, the other tucked under his head.
"They really told you to prepare?"
"Three days ago."
He was quiet for a moment. His hand stilled on your back.
"They wouldn't tell me anything because I'm not—I'm not on any form. There's no box I fit in. I'm not—" You stopped. Felt your throat tighten again and breathed through it. "There's no paperwork that says I'm yours. So as far as they were concerned I was nobody and they owed me nothing."
Caleb didn't say anything. His chest rose and fell steadily.
"I need that to change"
"Okay," he said.
"I mean it, Caleb." You pushed yourself up onto your elbow and looked at him, his eyes were already on you. "I need it to actually change. Not someday. Not when things settle down or when the fleet rotation is easier or when we find a better time. I need—" your voice came out fierce and a little unsteady and you let it be both. "I need to be your wife. Legally. On every form and every document and every emergency contact line they have. I need there to be paperwork that says you're mine so that the next time someone tries to lock me out of a room where decisions are being made about your life, I can put it on their desk and they cannot say no to me."
He was very still.
"I'm not asking you to do something romantic," you said. "I'm not—this isn't about a ceremony or a dress or any of that, though I want all of that too, I do. I'm asking you because I spent a month being nobody to the people who had information about whether you were alive. I'm asking because I sat in this apartment with no legal right to know anything and I cannot do that again. I will not do that again."
Caleb looked at you for a long moment then he reached up and put his hand against the side of your face, his thumb brushing your cheekbone.
"I've wanted to ask you, I kept waiting for the right moment."
"This is the right moment."
"You're proposing to me at four in the morning."
"I am."
The corner of his mouth pulled up. The first real version of his smile you'd seen since he walked through the door, the one that reached all the way up, the one that was so him it made your chest ache.
He pulled you back down against him, arms wrapping around you, lips pressing to the top of your head and staying there. "First thing tomorrow we go to the registration office. We fill out every form they have. We put your name on everything."
You pressed your face into his chest and closed your eyes, this time it wasn't to wait for a notification that never came.
This is my precious baby, treat it well cause I don't want to drop it. 💜💜
🔞MDNI🔞
CW: Jealous Caleb. Mentions of piss 🫣what did you expect? they are dogs 🫣
Part 1 here (Valko's POV)
The day you moved in, Caleb had no more than twenty minutes.
Valko wasn't part of the day at all. He'd told you, the week prior, that he thought it'd be easier on you if he stayed out of the way —no awkward energy while you figured out where your pots and pans went, no stranger on your first night in a new apartment with your boyfriend present. He'd gone home to his parents for the whole weekend, giving you a few days to make the place feel like it was yours too. Considerate, you'd called it and Caleb had thought so too, at the time.
Which meant, practically speaking, that Caleb had never laid eyes on the man whose apartment he was about to wire for sound and picture. He'd done the responsible version of due diligence weeks earlier, before he'd ever agreed to any of this, he pulled together what he could on the guy, the boring paperwork version of a person. Clean record. Solid grades that came from actually doing the reading rather than skating by. No red flags, no history that raised anything, nothing that looked like a reason to say no when you'd asked if he was okay with you signing a lease with someone he'd never met. By every measure that mattered on paper, Valko had checked out fine. Better than fine. Caleb remembers being almost reassured by how unremarkable the guy seemed. A soft looking student with tidy grades and a clean background was about as low risk as roommates came.
It hadn't occurred to him that the things worth worrying about were never the ones that showed up on paper.
He'd priced out the hardware weeks earlier, because reassured wasn't the same as unconcerned, and unconcerned had never once been a setting he came installed with. Units the size of a shirt button, nothing that would catch a casual glance unless you already knew exactly where to look and what you were looking for.
You and your friends had done the actual moving that afternoon — furniture, boxes, all the unglamorous parts — and by the time Caleb showed up it was mostly done, and you'd kissed him hello smelling like cardboard dust and the particular sweat of hauling too many boxes up three flights of stairs. After everyone was gone you told him to give you twenty minutes to shower and change before dinner. Twenty minutes.
The second the bathroom door shut and the water started running, he got to work.
He was fast, not rushed but no wasted motion. The hallway smoke detector took under two minutes, the housing popped and reseated so cleanly you'd never notice it had been touched. The bookshelf in the living room got the smallest unit he had, tucked into the seam of a decorative box you'd already unpacked without knowing it would ever hold anything but its lid. Your bedroom took the longest because he stood in the doorway for a minute first, boxes still stacked waist high, your bed frame leaning in pieces against the wall, and he felt something he didn't have a tidy name for yet.
He told himself it was diligence. A man in his position —deployed on short notice, gone for weeks at a stretch, leaving you alone in a new place with a stranger he'd approved on nothing but a clean background check and a gut feeling— was entitled to a baseline of security. He wasn't watching you. He was watching the apartment. There was, he told himself, a meaningful difference between the two, and he fully intended to respect it.
He mounted the last unit above the window frame, angled down across the bed and the door both, hands perfectly steady, and if some quiet part of him already understood that watching the apartment and watching you were never going to stay as separate as he wanted them to, he didn't let the thought get any further than the doorway.
He checked each feed once on his phone, everything exactly where it should be, and had just enough time left to sit down on the arm of the couch and look unbothered before the bathroom door opened and you came out toweling your hair, already asking if he was hungry.
He said he was starving. He wasn't lying, exactly. He just wasn't hungry for what you thought.
-------------------------
For the first few weeks, Caleb barely thought about the feeds at all.
That had surprised him a little. He'd expected to check them constantly, some low hum of vigilance running in the back of his skull every time he was away, but the footage that came back was really boring. Valko unpacking boxes, arranging books by subject. Valko in the kitchen at eleven at night making tea and reading something on his phone with his glasses pushed up into his hair. Valko on the phone with what turned out to be his mother, every single Sunday, always from the kitchen, always with something already going on the stove. It was almost soothing to watch.
The things about you took longer to notice, because it never happened all at once. They happened in small behaviors stacking one on top of the next until the pile stopped looking like coincidence and started looking like a pattern with a shape.
He noticed the way Valko's head would turn before you'd finished speaking, like he was tracking something about you a second ahead of your voice. He noticed that Valko always knew when you'd walked into a room, even from the kitchen, even with his back turned or before the door had fully opened. Small things. Explainable things, on their own. Roommates picked up on each other's footsteps eventually, right? Caleb told himself that, more than once, in the early weeks, and mostly believed it.
Then there was the smelling.
It started as something he found funny. You'd come home from the gym, sweaty, half collapsed on the couch complaining about your knees, and Valko would drift past on his way to the kitchen and just pause. Head tipping, nose working like he was standing in front of an open oven and enjoying the warmth of it. He did it with your coffee mugs too, picking them up off the counter to rinse, holding them up a beat too long first, eyes half closed.
Caleb had laughed, the first handful of times. Actually laughed, alone in his room at Skyhaven with his boots up on the desk and the feed running small in the corner of his screen, because his first read on it — his honest, uncomplicated first read — was that the guy had a small crush on you and your scent. Some private, harmless thing Valko indulged when he thought no one was watching, like the equivalent of a man who liked a particular perfume on a woman's neck. Caleb had known guys like that. He was like that. It wasn't the strangest thing a person could be into, and it certainly wasn't his business what some guy did with his own nose in the privacy of his apartment. As long as he didn't touch you.
What made him stop finding it funny was the accuracy of it.
Because it wasn't just that Valko smelled things. Lots of people smelled things — coffee, rain,food, the inside of a bakery. It was that Valko was able to smell things nobody should reasonably be able to smell. He'd know if you were coming down with something a full day before you noticed it yourself, showing up with soup and the specific cold medicine you liked, no explanation offered, none asked for. Once —and this was the one that had actually made Caleb sit forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, replaying the clip twice— Valko had stopped dead in the hallway outside your door, utterly still for almost ten full seconds, and then knocked and asked if you'd used a new shampoo. You had. That morning. A sample bottle a friend had given you, something you hadn't mentioned to anyone.
Caleb turned it over for a long time, alone with the feed and his own unhelpful thoughts, and came up with nothing that satisfied him. Good sense of smell didn't cover it. Attentive roommate didn't cover it either. There was a word for what it looked like, and the word was obsessive, he knew obsessive, and once that word showed up in his head it didn't leave again.
He watched Valko lean in doorframes a beat too long after you'd passed through them, chest expanding slow, like he was trying to hold something in his lungs for as long as physically possible. He watched him sit on your side of the couch when you weren't home. He watched, once, an evening when you were out with friends, as Valko stood in the middle of the empty living room for almost ten minutes, eyes shut, breathing slowly through his nose like a man meditating, and Caleb had felt something cold and unfamiliar move through his chest.
Some part of him had started needing to know exactly how far this went before he decided what to do about it. Not for your safety. Not yet, not only that. For the shape of the thing itself — because a man who paid this much attention to a woman he lived with, who catalogued her this precisely, who treated the ordinary residue of her daily life like something worth memorizing, was either about to become a serious problem or already was one, and Caleb preferred not knowing which.
----------------------
Whenever you went out to Skyhaven, Caleb asked about Valko the way you'd ask about the weather. Casual. Woven so naturally into the rest of the conversation that you never once thought to notice the frequency of it.
How's your roommate? Is he still cooking those mystery soups you keep sending me pictures of? Small questions, easy ones. You always answered them the same way, warm and a little exasperated. He's good. The other day he left a whole container of dumplings in the fridge with my name on it like I'm going to forget I live there. He tried to fix the shower instead of calling a plumber and now the water pressure's worse than before. Caleb listened to every word of it and heard nothing in your voice that shouldn't have been there. That was worse. It meant whatever was happening on the other end of this was happening in a direction that only ever pointed one way.
Because you never crossed boundaries. You didn't flirt with Valko, didn't linger, didn't so much as change the register of your voice when his name came up. You borrowed his phone charger and let him borrow your blender and that was the whole of it, as far as you were concerned, a friendship built on shared space and nothing else. When you were with Caleb, you were entirely with Caleb. You curled into his side on the couch without thinking about it, threaded your fingers through his under restaurant tables, said his name first thing when you called. There wasn't a single thread of you that had gone anywhere near Valko, not once, not even by accident.
Caleb knew that. Knew it with total certainty, watched it confirmed on a screen more nights than he wanted to count. And it didn't help even a little.
It was never about whether you'd stray, because you wouldn't and you hadn't. It was about a man miles closer to you than Caleb ever got to be, learning the exact temperature of your laugh, memorizing what shampoo you used before you'd finished the bottle, existing in the same rooms as you for more consecutive hours in a week than Caleb sometimes got in a month. Devotion didn't need reciprocation to be a threat. It just needed proximity and time, and Valko had both in a supply Caleb couldn't compete with.
He didn't talk about any of that. Wouldn't have known how to, and wasn't sure it would sound like anything but paranoia out loud. What he did instead —the only outlet that ever actually took the edge off— was let it out somewhere else entirely.
You'd noticed it, the last handful of visits. A new weight to him. He'd pull you against him the second the door shut behind you, like he'd been rationing himself all week and finally didn't have to anymore, his hand holding your ass tightly, keeping you exactly where he wanted you. "Say it" he'd murmur against your throat, teeth grazing skin, deciding whether or not to leave visual proof. "Who do you belong to?" You always answered him easily, breathless, meaning it completely, never once understanding what you were actually settling in him when you did, some ugly certainty that needed re confirming more often than it should have. He held eye contact longer than he used to during the quiet after, checking your face for a softness only he was supposed to put there. He'd trace his fingers along his marks on your body and think about a man miles away who didn't get to see this. Who only ever got the version of you that came home clean.
It never lasted long enough, the satisfaction. He'd lie awake after, you asleep and warm against his chest, and some part of him would already be reaching for his phone. He hated that he did it but he did it every time anyway.
The night everything changed you'd been out shopping and Caleb had pulled up the feed out of nothing but habit, expecting the usual, nothing worth the guilt of looking.
What he found instead was Valko standing in front of your open closet and it took Caleb a few seconds to understand what he was looking at, because his brain simply refused the information the first two times.
He watched Valko lift your panties —Caleb's favorite pair— to his face like he was breathing through it. Watched his eyes close, his shoulders drop, something helpless move through his whole body. Watched him search, actually search, even in the middle of what was clearly costing him every ounce of self control he had, like he was checking for something and Caleb couldn't yet guess what. And then he watched the rest of it happen, when Valko's back hit the wall, watched his hand move, heard a sound come out of him that even through a speaker made the hair go up on the back of his neck.
Caleb didn't move, he couldn't breathe for a while. He sat there in the dark of his own room with the computer screen throwing pale light across his knuckles, and watched the entire thing to its end with a stillness that had nothing to do with calm.
Two days later, he was on his way to you.
----------------
He didn't sleep on the transit out.
That wasn't unusual for him, he'd trained himself out of needing to sleep on schedule years ago. He sat with his bag between his boots, his phone dark in his lap and ran the footage back in his head anyway, even though he didn't need to, even though he'd already watched it enough times that the memory of it was carved into him.
Caleb understood obsession. He'd have been lying to say otherwise, sitting there, thinking about a stranger's face pressed into fabric that belonged to a woman who wasn't his. He recognized the shape of it because he was looking at a version of it every time he looked in a mirror. The difference, the only difference that mattered to him, was that he had a claim. He had two years of your voice choosing his name first. He had every right the other man didn't, and he intended to make that distinction impossible to miss.
He didn't tell you he was coming. That had been a conscious choice, made somewhere over the first hour of travel and never once reconsidered. If he called ahead, you'd ask why. You'd want to know what had prompted an unscheduled weekend, and he didn't have an answer he was willing to give you yet —not I've been watching your roommate lose his fucking mind sniffing your panties on hidden cameras I never told you about.
That conversation existed somewhere down the line, distant and unavoidable, but it wasn't a conversation for a phone call from a transit seat. It was a conversation for later, once he understood the actual size of the problem.
He used the key you gave him the first day you moved in.
He let himself into the apartment a little after one in the afternoon and stood in the entryway for a moment just breathing the place in, coffee snd the warmth of a lived in apartment in summer.
He didn't unpack. He sat down on the couch with his boots still laced, jacket still on, and waited.
You came home first, a little after three, keys jangling, humming something under your breath before you'd even gotten the door fully open and then you saw him and the sound cut off into something bright and delighted, and for a moment none of the rest mattered at all. You crossed the room fast, half a laugh already escaping you, and folded into him with your whole body the way you always did. He wrapped an arm around you and breathed you in properly for the first time in a month, and something in his chest that had been wound tight since the transit finally loosened, just slightly but it was enough.
"You didn't say you were coming," you said into his shoulder, half accusation, entirely pleased.
"I wanted to surprise you." That part, at least, was true.
You settled into his side on the couch, legs tucked up, head finding his chest like it had a reservation there, and told him about your week. He listened to all of it with one hand moving slow through your hair and the other resting loose against your hip, and underneath the listening, underneath the genuine warmth of having you back in his arms, some older and more watchful part of him stayed fixed on the door.
He heard the key before you did. A second of hesitation on the other side of it, a small pause of someone checking a doorknob, unremarkable to anyone who hadn't spent the last several weeks learning this particular man's habits off a camera feed, then the lock turned, and the door opened. Caleb got his first look, in person, at the man that had been living rent free in the back of his head since the closet.
He was bigger than the footage had suggested. That was Caleb's first thought, purely tactical, the assessment running before anything else had a chance to. Broad through the shoulders, glasses fogged from the heat outside, a bakery bag hooked over two fingers like he'd planned a small kindness for the afternoon he had no idea was about to be interrupted. He looked, Caleb thought, exactly like what you'd described. Soft and harmless.
Caleb had spent two days watching him come apart with your underwear pressed to his face. He was not interested in the soft version.
He watched Valko's whole body go still in the doorway, watched the moment recognition landed and something flicker fast and unguarded across his face before it slammed back down into something more careful. His grip on the doorknob went white at the knuckle. His chest rose once, sharp, trying to solve the room through his lungs before his eyes had finished the job.
Caleb didn't move. He let the silence stretch and watched Valko's eyes cut once toward the couch —toward you, tucked against his side, laughing at something he'd said before Valko walked in— and then back to Caleb, dark and assessing, doing a poor job of hiding either.
Good, Caleb thought. Let him look.
You were the one who broke the tension. You sat up, delighted, already making introductions.
"Good to meet you," Caleb said. He'd practiced the tone in his head the whole way over, and it came out exactly as unbothered as he'd wanted it to.
Valko's hand closed around his and it wasn't what he'd braced for. He'd expected tension, maybe something petty and territorial passed hand to hand like men sometimes did it, a grip held a second too long, knuckles pressed a little too hard. What he got instead was entirely outside of anything he had a category for, a kind of current running up through his palm.
He watched Valko's pupils blow wide. Watched his knees go soft, just barely, enough to notice the shift in his weight before Valko managed to correct it. Watched two years of careful, controlled devotion crack visibly down the middle in the space of about four seconds, right there in front of him, right there in front of you, and you hadn't noticed a single second of it. Not even the bulge forming in Valko's pants.
"Something wrong?" Caleb asked. Almost bored. He wanted Valko to hear exactly how little this was costing him, even though it wasn't remotely true.
Valko didn't answer. He pulled his hand back too fast, said something about a lab, something he'd forgotten, already retreating toward the door before the sentence finished coming out of him, and then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
Caleb sat back down on the couch beside you, pulled you back into the space against his side like nothing at all had happened, and kept his voice easy while you laughed and wondered aloud what had gotten into him.
He was still smiling by the time you settled back against his chest. It didn't reach anywhere past his mouth. Somewhere underneath the calm he'd built for your benefit, he was turning that handshake over and over, trying and failing to make it mean anything less than what it had felt like — and understanding, with clarity, that whatever this was, it had just stopped being only about you.
---------------------
Valko didn't come back that night, or the next. He called you Saturday morning, and Caleb was close enough on the couch to catch your unbothered "oh, no worries, family stuff happens" and gathered from the rest of the conversation that Valko had suddenly needed to go home for the weekend. Something about his mother needing help with some family stuff. You'd relayed it to Caleb after, propped against the kitchen counter with your coffee, not thinking twice about it. "He's probably just giving us space," you said, half smiling, already moving on to what you wanted him to cook for dinner.
Caleb made a low agreeable sound into your hair and thought that "giving space" was an interesting way to describe a man circling the block.
Because he'd seen him from the window. That morning, unmistakable, even from half a block off, standing on the opposite corner with his phone out and not actually looking at it. Not going in. Not going anywhere. Whatever internal negotiation was keeping Valko rooted to that corner instead of walking the last fifty feet home, Caleb wasn't in any hurry to interrupt it. It told him plenty on its own.
He used the rest of the weekend well.
He started in the kitchen, because it was the room that most obviously belonged to someone else. Caleb cooked for you Saturday and Sunday with his sleeves shoved up, moving through the space like he had every right to it, and when he was done he didn't wipe the counter down the way he usually would. He let his palms rest flat against the surface a bit longer than necessary. Nothing you'd notice. Everything a nose that had spent two years cataloguing this apartment down to its smallest note would.
He hung his jacket over the back of the chair Valko used the most. He left the jacket there for two days and didn't move it.
The bathroom he didn't think twice about using. What he did on Sunday sfternoon, though, midway through a shower with the water running loud enough to cover the sound, was something closer to instinct than plan. He stood there with the water running down his back and thought about everything he'd watched over the last two years. A man who could smell what others couldn't, Caleb reasoned, half serious and half not, might be able to smell this too. So he did it, he took a piss right there, telling himself the whole time it was an experiment and nothing more, then stepped back into the spray, rinsing the tile down like nothing at all had happened, filing the thought away with something that wasn't quite a smile.
Valko came back Sunday night. Caleb heard the key turn from the couch and he didn't get up. He sat with one arm along the back of the couch, ankle crossed over his knee, and let the silence stretch as long as it needed to before Valko finally pushed the door open.
Valko's shoulders were doing something different this time. Something tighter, a man arriving already braced for whatever he was about to walk into.
"Evening"
Valko didn't answer right away. His eyes moved once around the room —Caleb's jacket still slung over his chair, a mug left unwashed on the counter— and something crossed his face. Recognition, maybe. The kind that arrives when a man realizes the target he'd assumed was passive has started, without any warning at all, to fight back.
"You're still here," Valko said. Careful.
"Weekend leave, figured I'd make the most of it."
He watched Valko's jaw work, watched him fight against whatever had risen up first. Valko set his bag down slow and made no move to come any further into the room.
"She's asleep," Caleb added, tipping his head just slightly toward your closed door. Valko's throat moved once, like he was swallowing something that refused to go down easy.
"Right," Valko said. "Good."
He didn't sound like he meant it. Caleb hadn't expected him to.
Neither of them said anything else. Valko crossed the room eventually, avoiding the couch like it was something that might bite him if he got too close. He disappeared down the hall, and his bedroom door clicked shut a moment later.
Caleb sat alone for a long while after that. Two years the other man had spent building something out of proximity and starved patience and Caleb had walked in and rearranged the entire foundation of it in less than seventy two hours.
It should have felt like enough. It didn't,not all the way. Some part of him, the part that had felt his own pulse jump under a stranger's grip in the middle of the living room, understood that this wasn't finished.
He got up. Turned off the lights. Went to bed in your room, in your sheets, in the space that —for tonight, at least— was unmistakably his.
He lay there for a while, listening to the apartment settle. You stirred beside him at some point, half asleep, murmuring something into the pillow, and he found himself watching you in the dim light coming through the blinds, patience finally running out of road.
He woke you up slowly, his mouth at your shoulder and your name low in his throat, and you came up out of sleep soft and pliant and already reaching for him, no hesitation in it at all, as if some part of you had been waiting even asleep. He didn't ask you to be quiet. That was the point. He kept his hands on your hips the entire time, murmured mine against your skin over and over again, except tonight he let the headboard knock against the wall it shared with the hallway, and let your voice carry further than it usually did, and didn't do a single thing to soften either.
Down the hall, Valko lay flat on his back with both hands pressed over his own face, listening to every second of it, breathing in a room that no longer smelled like only you, and understood that he had just lost the first real skirmish of a war he hadn't known he'd already started.
summary: Caleb was your neighbor, and absolute best friend growing up. But when your relationship reaches a fork in the road, everything crumbles. A selfish mistake leaves you both devastated. Will you forgive him? (spoiler: you definitely do.)
cw: angst?, smut, piv sex, no protection, virginity loss, missionary, teasing, aftercare, profanity, Caleb is the king of asking for consent. 18+ minors dni! Too lazy to proof read:P
boy nextdoor!Caleb who’s been there since you guys were children. Sitting under the big oak tree in your front yard, his grandma bringing cold, perfectly cut fruit for the two of you to snack on. Musing young Caleb’s wild black hair with a smile before heading back to finish preparing dinner.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who became your best friend. Same elementary, middle, and high school. The two of you were inseparable. You showed up to his basketball games in corny, homemade shirts, and over-the-top school spirited attire. He always made a big deal of asking you to the school dance. The bestest of friends.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who gets a hefty scholarship to go play basketball on the other side of the country. He seems hesitant, since you had already committed to a university only a few hours from home.
You tell him this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To attend such a prestigious school on a full ride, to experience a different community, to be free! He would be a fool to not accept it. It’s with tears in his soft, sweet eyes that he finally agrees, and officially commits.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who spends his last few months at home just about glued to your hip. If people thought you guys were inseparable before, they would think you guys are dating now.
boy nextdoor!Caleb drives you two down to the beach in his beat up, 2006 Toyota Tacoma the night before he’s set to leave. You sit in the bed of his truck, splitting an order of carne asada fries, watching the sunset. It’s quiet. You barely spoke when he walked to your door to pick you up. And now you sit here in silence, both of you clearly distraught over the major life change that was happening too quickly.
“My flight is at 9, by the way.” Caleb breaks the silence, solemnly. His eyes still cast on the warm pinks and reds that dance over the blue horizon. You wipe your mouth on a napkin before peering over at him.
The Caleb sitting next to you had changed so much over the 14 years you had known him. The golden hues of the sunset helped to blur some old, teenage acne scars. His jaw was well defined and sharp, definitely a result of years of corrective orthodontic work. You’ll never forget how corny and irritating he was when he finally got his braces off. Gloating about how he was about to be the most good-looking guy in the school, and the girls were just gonna be swarming all over him.
A wave of jealousy washed over you. But you naively passed it off as irritation from his new found ego. Because why would you be jealous of your friend getting attention from other girls?
“Surprised you would book a flight that early, I rarely see you out of bed before 10.” You chuckle, trying to make light of the aggressively glum conversation. He finally looks over at you, and you can tell he’s holding back tears.
Not because his eyes are watering, or his lip is quivering. To a stranger, there’s nothing about his expression that gives away how he’s feeling. But after years of reading Caleb like a book, you know his giveaways. The shifty eyes, the biting of his inner cheek, the near imperceptible bouncing of his leg.
He pinches his lips together and looks down at his hands in his lap.
“I’m gonna miss you, Caleb.”
“I know, Pipsqueak.” But he just can’t bring himself to say it back.
Of course he’s going to miss you. He’s probably going miss you more than you miss him! It’s him who’s leaving after all. He just… can’t acknowledge that without it turning into a big sappy mess. And he knows that when it turns into that big sappy mess, of him being honest with you, he’s not getting on that airplane tomorrow.
And so he keeps his feelings balled up tight. Changes the subject to ask about how you’re feeling for university. Let’s you scold him for eating more than his half of the carne asada fries, even if he did pay for them. Gives you his zip-up when the sun finally disappears below the horizon, and the ocean breeze gets too chilly.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who fights for one last night of normalcy with you, because he knows your relationship will never be this comforting, this intimate, this homey, ever again.
boy nextdoor! Caleb who lies to you about when his flight takes off.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who couldn’t even bear to think about you waving goodbye at airport curb. He knew you would have insisted on taking him to the airport yourself. He knew that one tear running down your cheek would have had him cancelling his flight.
So he’d rather just not deal. So he’d rather tell you his flight was taking off an hour after it really was.
When you wake up to see him off, you already feel nauseous. Trudging through your front lawn to his front door, expecting a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Caleb to answer. But it’s Josephine.
“Don’t tell me he slept through his alarm.” You kid, oblivious to the truth. Josephine looks at you with furrowed brows and a confused expression.
“Dear, Caleb’s uber came and got him over an hour ago.”
…
What?
You let out a nervous, forced laugh. You poke your head into the house, hoping to see Caleb standing around the corner playing one more cruel prank on you.
The living room is empty.
“Very funny, Josephine. Did Caleb put you up to this?” Your voice is shaking. Tears are threatening to spill. Your hands are trembling in the pockets of the zip-up he left you last night. The one you slept in after he walked you back to your doorstep and hugged you just a little tighter than he normally does.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. He told me you had your reasons for not seeing him to the airport…”
You can see her lips moving, but your ears are ringing so loudly you can’t understand a word she’s saying. Your feet are carrying you through the house before you know it, pushing right past the small, frail woman. Bounding up the stairs, throwing the door to Caleb’s room open, to find it near bare.
His closet is significantly emptier than it was last week. His posters are gone. His bed sheets are the neatest you’ve ever seen them. His favorite model planes are missing from their spots on the shelves.
He’s gone.
He’s gone.
He’s gone and he couldn’t even say goodbye.
So many emotions run through your head. Devastation, confusion, betrayal, rage.
How could he put you in this situation? How could he be so selfish?
You’re crying before you can even register it. Your best friend. The one who used to let you eat all the red sour patch kids from every bag he got. The one who carried you a half mile on his back from the skatepark because you thought you could drop into the bowl with almost no skateboarding experience. His signature was the first, and the biggest one on your cast.
He was your rock, from when you were 6 years old and missing your front teeth, to when you were 17 and sneaking around the neighborhood with a plastic bottle full of shitty tequila.
You’d think those memories meant something. That your relationship was important enough to at least say goodbye.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who broke your heart without even being in a relationship.
Five months later
It’s your winter break. You made it through your first quarter of college. You had taken your last final yesterday, and immediately drove home for the 3 week break.
You’re helping your parents carry in groceries from the car. Christmas isn’t for another week, but of course your Mom still bought way too much food from the store. Can never be over prepared, as she says.
Standing in front of the trunk of your moms car, you look to your right to see Caleb’s truck still parked in Josephine’s driveway. It’s exactly where it was all those months ago when he just about vanished from the face of the earth. It’s covered in pollen and bird poops. The bed of the truck blanketed in a layer of dead leaves. It’s the dirtiest you’ve ever seen it. The Caleb you know would never let his beloved truck get this filthy.
Or maybe he would. After basically ghosting you all those months ago, you’re questioning if you ever knew him at all.
The last bag of groceries gets taken in, and you’re handing stuff to your mom as she reorganizes the fridge to make space.
“Josephine said Caleb gets in tomorrow afternoon.” She mentions, almost too nonchalantly. Your mom knows what happened. She was the one who held you when you came back to the house in tears after finding out he was gone.
You huff, trying to appear somewhat unphased.
“I’m sure Josephine is excited to see him.” You say, coolly. You know your Mom isn’t falling for the unbothered act. It’s more so for your own sanity. Digging into the crunchy grapes you carried through the door less than 10 minutes ago.
She arranges the last item on the shelf, shutting the refrigerator door and turning to face you.
“Honey.” She lets out a long sigh. “I invited them over for dinner.”
You immediately stop chewing the food in your mouth and meet her gaze.
“Huh?”
“Josephine is coming over for dinner tomorrow. And I told her to bring Caleb.”
A beat of silence, before nearly spitting out your food. It takes effort to finish chewing and swallow.
“Mom, are you being serious?” You try not to raise your voice at your mother, but you’re obviously upset. “I don’t want that selfish dick in my house!”
“One, language! And two, you don’t have to speak to him, but you will sit down and have dinner like a respectful young adult!” Your Mom points a finger towards the dining room table in emphasis.
“I know you’re still hurting, baby. But Josephine told me Caleb is having a hard time being so far away. He’s obviously hurting too.” She walks around the kitchen island to meet you. “You don’t have to talk to him tomorrow, but just show up for him. I think it would mean a lot.” Her gaze is soft as she cups your cheek for a second.
“He didn’t even want me to show up at the airport. Why should I show up for him now?” You spit, fighting back tears as you storm up to your room.
The next day, you’re just in a shit mood. You decide to take a walk around noon, hoping to enjoy the calmness of your childhood neighborhood. Dissociation gets the best of you, and you don’t get back home for another two hours.
When you get back home, you can’t help but notice the shining navy blue paint of Caleb’s truck. No pollen or bird poop to be found.
His car is clean.
Meaning he’s inside the house.
Part of you wants to stomp through the beautiful hydrangeas in his front yard, break that front door down, and give him a piece of your mind.
The other part of you doesn’t want him to know how bad you’ve been hurting.
How you’ve secretly missed his company more than anyone’s in the world.
How you compare him to all of your new college friends. How they never come close to understanding you like he did.
Fuck this.
You can’t let him know he’s under your skin. You have to show up to the dinner tonight. He will see how well you are doing. And when he comes running back to you, it will be your turn to break his heart.
Your Mother always does a little too much when she’s hosting. She definitely made way too much food for a casual dinner. Roast chicken, potatoes, brussels sprouts, the whole nine yards.
You come down from your room after spending hours getting ready, only to pull off the “I’m not even trying” look. Just enough makeup to make you look alive. Your hair is blowdried, but not styled. Picked out a very simple outfit, too. Just some lowrise bootcut jeans, and a navy blue long sleeve.
“Jesus, I thought we were only feeding Josephine and Caleb. Not the whole dang neighborhood.” You quip to your Mother as you enter the kitchen, seeing all the completed dishes waiting on the counter.
“It’s better to have too much food than not enough, sweetheart. We can always send them home with leftovers.” She responds as she does the finishing touches on a few dishes.
A knock on the front door sounds through the house.
Your Mom looks at you expectantly. But you make your way to the sink to start tucking dishes into the dishwasher.
She lets out a deep sigh as she wipes her hands down on a towel before making her way to the front door.
You hear her greet sweet, elderly Josephine. You hadn’t seen her since Thanksgiving break. She had also come over for dinner, since Caleb hadn’t come home. Their voices draw closer, but suddenly the dirty measuring cups and pots in the sink are much more interesting.
They enter the kitchen, and you still only hear two voices, your mom and Josephine. Did Caleb not show up? Was he too embarrassed to see you? You scoff to yourself. Not surprising, he couldn’t deal with you face-to-face once again. Shutting the water off and drying your hands, you think you’ve won.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Because there he is, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
Eyes staring directly at you.
It’s irritating how he looks like he’s doing great. His shoulders are a little broader, his posture a little straighter. Did he get taller?
Your Dad interrupts your inner monologue by giving Caleb a firm handshake. Since when has Caleb been taller than your Dad? You can’t pull your eyes away from their interaction, Caleb being nothing but polite, as usual.
Josephine is what saves you from your trance.
“Hello, dear. You look wonderful!” She coos sweetly, pulling you into a gentle hug. “The food looks great, Caleb and I are grateful to be invited into your home.” She smiles up at you.
“Please, it was Moms idea to invite you guys over. She prepared all the food. No thanks to me.” You sheepishly rub the back of your neck, suddenly feeling Caleb’s undivided attention on you from the other side of the room. A quick glance in his direction confirms your suspicion.
Your Dad is saying something to him, but his gaze flicks over to you every couple seconds.
“Well, however things panned out, we are happy to be here. Caleb was looking forward to this.”
It takes everything in you not to laugh.
Looking forward to this? And he can’t even grow the fucking balls to say hello? Just stare at you from across the room? You want to rip his head off.
You can’t even respond to Josephine, just a sweet smile, nod of your head, and back to scrubbing dishes.
It’s ridiculous. This whole situation is so laughable. What kind of fucked up, pussy ass bitch would—
“Scrub any harder and I think you might burn a hole through that cast iron.”
You freeze. Too afraid to turn around, but you can feel him not far behind you. Close enough to use a soft voice to get your attention.
Gently setting the pan and scrub brush into the sink, you stare at the suds.
“Hi, Pipsqueak.”
You want to slap him. You want to hold him tight and never let go. You want to scream in his face until your lungs give out. You want to stare at him until his features are burned into your retinas.
You opt for the safe option. The one where you simply ignore him.
When you turn around, you don’t even look at him, just shoulder past him. You try to shoulder check him, except he’s got about 8 inches of height on you, and another 60 pounds, at least. So much for the intimidation tactic.
He lets you pass. Doesn’t try to stop you, to say anything to you. He just watches as you walk, as unbothered as physically possible, out of the kitchen and towards the bathroom.
You lock the door behind you and turn to meet your reflection. Your face is red, and a little sweaty. Trembling hands find their way to the cold water knob. Not to splash water on your face, but to just hold them there. To let them turn a little numb. To give you something to focus on besides the boy in your kitchen.
When you can’t feel your fingers, you turn the water off and dry your hands. Running your fingers through your hair to tame some of the anxiety frizz. Straightening out your clothes, and putting on your best, fake smile in the mirror. Show time.
Your Dad and Caleb are seated at the table when you enter the kitchen, probably rambling about basketball or whatever. Your mother and Josephine are setting the prepared dishes on the table. Josephine takes the seat next to Caleb, and your mother takes the seat next to your father at the head. You sit next to your mother.
Mindless chatter fills the room as everyone serves themselves. Your father asking Caleb about life as a college athlete, balancing training with his academics, whatever. Your dad always seemed to like Caleb. Even after he abandoned you all those months ago.
“An athlete and an engineering student. How impressive!” Your dad clasps a big hand on Caleb’s shoulder, to which he sheepishly grins and shakes his head.
“It’s all at the expense of my social life.” He chuckles, starting to slice into a hunk of chicken.
“Surely you have some free time. These first few months are supposed to be the most fun.” Your Mom chimes in as she takes a sip of her wine.
“The big parties aren’t really my thing anyways. Just me, the gym, and my textbooks.” Lies. Caleb was literally part of student council in high school. He loved planning big events and wearing ridiculous, school-spirited costumes. Caleb was, without a doubt, the more sociable one between the two of you.
His eyes find you staring a hole through your plate. His comment feels very pointed. As if he trying to make sure you know there is absolutely nothing, or no one, in his life right now. Like he’s almost punishing himself.
“I’m sure you’ll find your people, Caleb.” Your Mother reassures him.
The rest of the meal is cordial. Your Dad acts like he missed Caleb more than anyone else in the world, asking him question after question. Josephine kept diverting the conversation to talk about you, what you were studying, how the new independence was treating you, how you were faring making new friends.
As suspected, there was way too much food left over. Caleb and your Dad stood by the front door while your Mom and Josephine packed some tupperwares to take back. You collected the plates and silverware from the table to wash.
“Thank you for helping, dear.” Josephine said with a kind smile, a soft, wrinkled hand coming up to cup your cheek. “Don’t be too in your head, now. I know you’re a kind girl.” And with that, she turned to make her way towards the front door.
Your parents bid them both goodbye, Caleb throwing one last look over his shoulder to where you stand in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. Hoping to finally meet your gaze, yet your arms are crossed and the living room rug is the most interesting thing in the world, apparently.
Later that evening, when your parents had turned in for the night, you sat on your living room couch with your cheesy ass romantasy novel. The warm lighting from the Christmas tree creating the coziest ambiance. Grimy sweatshorts from your high school days, holey summer camp tshirt with the neckline cut out.
The zip-up he wrapped around you in the bed of his truck, the night before he disappeared. Smells like your laundry detergent now.
A quiet knock rings against the front door.
There’s only one person who would have the audacity to knock at a time like this. Unless it’s a murderer. Might be a better option at this point, though.
Your bare feet pad over to the door to look through the peephole. Before you can even look, Caleb’s voice comes through the door.
“I know you’re standing at the door, Pips.”
Did this guy have echolocation? X-ray vision?
“Can you just open it?”
Through the peephole, Caleb stands on your porch in a university-branded sweatshirt, black sweatpants, and his own house slippers. He looks directly at the peephole, and your breath hitches.
He sucks in a deep breath before shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Or don’t. Just… hear me out. Please.”
You think about unlocking the door. Think about how pathetic he probably feels standing on your porch at close to midnight. Think about how he’s probably freezing. He was always more of a warm weather guy, where you preferred the cold.
You don’t open the door. But you lean your forehead against it.
“I didn’t want to leave you. I was so afraid that college was going to turn us both into different people. I didn’t want to think about you not needing me in your life anymore.”
You swear you hear a sniffle.
“I was selfish. I was a coward. I thought running away would preserve what we have. Or had. That if I didn’t acknowledge it, everything would be just as I left it. I could come back and we’d still be… friends.”
You lift your head off the door and glance at the locked handle.
“I don’t want to be your friend, pips.”
Your hand is frozen on the knob.
“I don’t want things to be like when I left. I don’t want to keep thinking about what things would be like if we were… more than friends.”
You think you might start crying. You know Caleb already is.
“I just… I’ve known something was wrong. Getting that scholarship was just… I don’t know. It made me think of a life without you. And I hated it. I hated the idea of not having you with me. Not being able to look at your face, or hear your laugh, or smell your favorite perfume.”
That was almost a year ago. Just how long has he been feeling this way?
You begin to silently cry on the other side of the door.
“I kicked myself everyday for leaving. I couldn’t think about anything besides you. I wanted to know what you were doing. What classes you were taking. What you ate for breakfast.” Caleb takes a deep breath in.
“I wanted to know if you were talking to anyone. The idea of another man taking my place… I didn’t even know how to describe how I felt.”
Another sniffle comes through the door.
“That’s when I realized I couldn’t be your best friend anymore. That just running away and hoping everything would stay the same was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
Your hand trembles on the cold, locked door handle.
“If you don’t wanna forgive me, that’s okay. I just can’t go on any longer with this tearing me apart from the inside out. I’d rather watch you live your life happily without me, than constantly think about the ‘what-ifs.’”
There’s a minute of silence. A strong exhale from Caleb’s side of the door.
You’ve never unlocked a door faster.
Caleb had taken about 5 steps down your lawn before the door got just about blown clean off the hinges. His head whips around, revealing his wet cheeks and red, puffy eyes.
There you are, standing in the doorway, just as red-eyed and puffy as him.
All he can do is stare at you, sniffling. You throw your hands out to your sides.
“You’re letting all the heat out.”
boy nextdoor!Caleb who nearly knocks the wind out of from how hard he collides with you, two big, strong arms wrapping around you. His face finds the crook of your neck.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” All he can do is say it over and over again into your hair, wetting it from his tears. You smack a hand on his back.
“You’re… suffocat—ing… me.” You say with a strained voice. He loosens his grip, hands sliding out from around you to rest on your waist. He pulls his face out of your neck to stand to his full height.
You think this is the most handsome he’s ever looked. Yearning, soft eyes swollen from crying. Thick, furrowed eyebrows. Lips pinched together.
Your hands reach up to thumb away his tears. He all but melts into your touch.
“Do that stupid shit again and I will actually fucking kill you.” You say sweetly. He laughs through his tears.
“Never again.” He smiles. As you both stand in your living room, trying to be as quiet as possible, laughing through sniffles and sobs, he soaks in all your beautiful features. The ones he hasn’t been able to admire this close up since that night he left.
Your sweet, kind eyes. Rounded cheeks. Straight nose. Your bright, beaming smile. Your lips.
Your perfectly pink lips. Perfectly full. Perfectly… kissable.
His gaze flicks from your lips to your face, leaning in an imperceptible distance.
“I…” he swallows. “Can I kiss you, please?”
Caleb’s hands tremble on your waist. Your eyes move to his lips as you gently nod.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who kisses you like it’s the easiest, most natural thing in his life.
He’s so soft. Your lips move and glide together like they’ve done this a million times. A warm, callused hands finds its way to the back of your neck as your smaller ones find purchase on his solid, broad chest.
His tongue runs against the seam of your lips, asking for permission. You invite him in, letting him explore your mouth. His hands snake down your body to cup the backs of your thighs.
“Jump.” He murmurs into your mouth. Which you do, so obediently.
Caleb hoists you up, your legs wrapping around his trim waist, arms hugging his neck. He begins to walk towards the couch.
You hear a door open upstairs. The two of you freeze.
“Honey?” Of course it’s your Dad. The floorboards creak as his footsteps draw closer to the staircase.
Caleb just about throws you onto the couch before quickly assessing the living room for the best hiding spot. He decides to simply duck behind where you’re sitting.
Just as he attempts to hide all 6’2 of him behind the couch, your Dads footsteps come into view. He comes about halfway down the stairs before sleepily surveying the room.
“Everything okay down here?” He rubs an eye.
“Yep! Just… trying to fall asleep!” You chirp, probably a bit too eagerly considering it’s past midnight. He scans the room.
“Ok, honey… just— just keep the TV volume low, alright?” He turns to go back up the stairs. Did he think you were watching TV?
“Will do, Dad. Goodnight!” Again with the over enthusiastic response. Your Dad throws a hand over his shoulder before wishing you goodnight, as well.
Caleb is smiling up at you where he lays on the floor. He wiggles his eyebrows. You bend down to smack him.
“Don’t give me that look, you prick.” You whisper-yell at him. He’s trying to block your smacks, keeping his giggles to a low. “You could have offered to tuck him into bed and he would have said yes, kiss-ass.”
“He would not.” Caleb grabs your wrists and pulls you down on top of him, preventing you from thudding against the hard wood floor. You squirm and continue to try and slap him, but he’s got your wrists pinned.
“Would to!” You’re straddling him, still whisper-yelling in his face. “Oh, Caleb, you’re an athlete and an engineering major. You’re so smart, please be my son!” You say in a mocking voice. “You guys were having total bromance the entire time we were eating, and you know I’m right.”
Caleb playfully rolls his eyes, placing your hands on either side of his head before settling his own on your hips.
“Just say you’re jealous and move on.” He smirks, looking so boyish from his spot under you.
“Jealous?! Jealous of what? Of you or my freaking Dad?” You arch an eyebrow, tilting your head down at him.
“Jealous of all the attention I was giving your Dad. Obviously.” His fingers lightly pinch your sides in emphasis.
“I’ll have you know I was the furthest thing from jealous. I was one comment away from smashing a plate over your head the entire night.”
He throws his head back in playful, silent laughter.
“Yeah? And where’s that hostility now, hmm?” He teases, earning him a flick to the forehead.
“Ouch, Pip—!” He groans, rather loudly. You clamp a hand over his mouth to shut him up.
“Shut the fuck up, Caleb! Do you want my Dad to come back down here?” You scold him, albeit with a smile on your face. His eyes crinkle, and you can feel his grin under your palm.
“Maybe he’d be nicer to me than you’re being right now.” He says from under your hand. You roll your eyes and move to get off him, but a strong arm wraps around your torso and flips you both. Caleb’s large, muscular frame looms over you. The warm, incandescent bulbs from the Christmas tree softening his features.
His intense gaze makes you shyly look away.
“Don’t look at me like that, it’s embarrassing…” you murmur. A warm hand cups your cheek to turn your face back towards him, before tucking a stray piece of hair behind your ear.
“You’re so pretty.” His compliment makes your cheeks turn red. “You’ve always been the prettiest.” His hand on the side of your face is forcing you to hold his gaze. Uncomfortable under his attention and praise, you can do nothing but squirm.
“Caleb, stop…” An attempt to turn away is ruined by his thumb dragging over your chin, using his forefinger to pinch your jaw. A quiet exclamation of your name leaves his lips.
“Let me tell you how beautiful you are.”
You feel flustered and uneasy.
“I’ve never tried to be beautiful for you. You’ve never seen my beautiful side.”
“You don’t have to try for me. You’ve been beautiful ever since I met you. I thought you were beautiful when we were 9 and you had sand and strawberry ice cream all over your face after the beach. The same way I thought you were beautiful when we were 16 and I had to watch that water polo scumbag pick you up for your first date ever.” You can’t help but laugh. “Never liked that guy, by the way.” He adds, so matter-of-factly.
“You are the worst at holding grudges, you know that?” You reach up to pinch his nose. He just smiles and laughs. You love his smile. It’s just so… Caleb. You love his laugh.
You love Caleb.
You’ve always loved Caleb. You thought you loved him as a friend. Someone you could depend on to have your back through thick and thin. A shoulder to cry on. A set of ears to listen to your stupid, unimportant rants.
Five months apart changed your perspective. Caleb was more than that friend. Caleb was someone you wanted to grow old with. He was the person you wanted to come home to every night. The person you wanted to fold laundry and do your taxes with. Caleb was the person you saw yourself starting a family with.
Like he could hear your thoughts, he broke the moment of quiet with a whisper of your name.
“I love you. I love you so much.” He leans in to say against your lips, before kissing you so softly.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who kisses you exactly how you need to be kissed. His lips are soft, moving dominantly against yours to guide you. One forearm braced beside your head, the other hand gently squeezing your waist.
“I don’t wanna do this on my living room floor.” You mutter against his mouth. Caleb begins to trail kisses across your jaw, your neck, under your ear.
“Tell me where you wanna go, baby. I’ll take you anywhere right now.” Another wet kiss to your neck. He definitely just left a hickey. A small whine escapes you.
“My room,” is all you say before Caleb is effortlessly scooping you up off the floor. All four limbs wrapped around him like a koala as he ascends the stairs as quickly and silently as possible. No direction necessary, Caleb knows your house like the back of his hand.
He pushes his back against the door to open it, then his hand leaves your thigh for a split second to silently close and lock it behind him. Very carefully, he sets you onto your childhood, twin-sized mattress and climbs on top of you.
Caleb’s hips bracket yours as he wraps your legs around his waist. He wastes no time crashing his lips against yours. As his hips press against your core, you begin to feel his hardening length behind the layers of clothing. He feels big. Too big. A string of saliva connects your lips when he pulls away.
“You know, I used to have wet dreams about this exact scenario. About me getting to take care of you in this very bed.” His ears are pink at the admission, but he embraces it. Another hickey on your neck, right below your ear before he whispers.
“Dreamt about you screaming my name, too.” His tongue finds your earlobe. “But we will have to save that for another time. Need you to be quiet for me tonight.” The sensual voice in your ear makes you shudder.
Big, warm hands unzip the hoodie and dip under your shirt to trace the bottom of your ribs.
“Tell me to stop.” He whispers against your lips.
“Keep going.” You say, pulling him into the kiss with a hand carded through his hair. Caleb’s hands travel further up your ribcage to caress your breasts. One squeeze has you both moaning into each other’s mouths.
“Wanna see them.” He mutters against you while greedy hands bunch that ratty, summer camp tshirt up and over your perky tits. You feel him get a little harder when your chest is exposed to him.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” You snort. He pinches a nipple in retaliation.
“Brat.” He teases before diving straight into sucking a tit into his mouth.
The sight before you is… indescribable. Caleb, the same guy who used to knock on your door and ask if your mom if you could come out to ride bikes, has his face buried in your tits. Grabbing, squeezing, pinching, drooling all over them. His hips are starting to slowly grind against yours, rubbing his fat erection on your heated core.
All in your childhood bed. There’s a trophy from an 8u recreational soccer team on a shelf next to a one-eyed, stuffed bunny. The literal shirt you’re wearing is from a summer camp you both went to when you were 14. Your parents are 15 feet down the hall.
Teeth gently clamp on your nipple and tug, instantly knocking the thoughts from your brain. He kisses, sucks, and bites his way back up your neck to your lips.
“Take this off.” You grab at the hem of his sweatshirt, before he swiftly pulls it over his head in one smooth move. You take the break to completely shed your zip-up and tshirt.
Has Caleb always been this fucking ripped?
Strong, rounded delts bracket a broad, solid chest. One, two, three… is that an 8-pack? His abs look mandoline-level sharp. A light trail of hair from his navel chases a few veins down his v-line, to below his waistband.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” He quips in a mocking tone. You roll your eyes as he collapses back over you again, smiling into the kiss.
Exploratory hands roam every inch of each other’s bodies. His muscular, firm pecs press against your perky, cute tits. Warm, callused palms run up and down your waist, down to your hips, where they trace around to the front of your sweatshorts. Caleb lightly teases a finger underneath the drawstring.
“Is this okay?” His eyes find yours, full of want and hunger.
“Yes.” And his fingers immediately dip into your sweatshorts. He freezes for a moment.
“No panties?” He chuckles.
“It’s bad for your pH to wear panties to bed.” You retort, cheeky grin spanning your face. “And I didn’t know you were gonna show up and cry on my porch!”
“You’re never gonna let me live that down, huh?” His boyish smile making his eyes crinkle.
“Nope.” You taunt, popping the “p” in emphasis.
“Cruel, cruel woman.” His smile beams as he presses his face in your neck, hand disappearing under your waistband.
Greedy kisses explore your neck as his long, dexterous fingers trace up and down your wet slit. Using his middle and ring fingers to draw featherlight circles on your clit. Caleb lifts his head to watch your expressions.
Your mouth slightly agape as quiet pants escape you. Your eyebrows pinches together in concentration, trying to be as silent as possible.
“You gotta tell me if I’m doing good, I— I’ve never done this before.” He hesitates for a second before coming clean with you.
“Yes, just keep going.” You gasp as he increases the pressure on the little bundle of nerves. His two fingers move down to circle your drooling hole, his thumb taking their place on your clit.
“Christ, you’re fucking soaked.” Caleb braces his free forearm beside your head. When his fingers finally push into your pussy, he can’t help but smile at your cute little gasps. “Feels good?” Your eyes squeeze shut as you nod mindlessly.
The hand that’s not scissoring your insides comes to pinch your cheeks together.
“Nuh-uh, Pips. Use your words like a big girl.” Your eyes open to see his smug expression, and it makes you blush even harder.
“I want to fuck you, Caleb.” He tries not to laugh too loud at your muffled request.
“I know, baby. Just a little longer.” He teases as his fingers continue to pump in and out of your squelching pussy.
The pressure from his thumb on your clit is dizzying. His two thick fingers massaging your walls are driving you wild. You want more.
Your small hand trails down his torso to try and dig into his sweatpants. With one hand, he grabs both of your wrists and pins them above his head.
“If you touch my dick right now, I am going to cum in my pants.” He states, not a hint of embarrassment in his voice. You whine at his rejection.
“Caaleeebb…” you whimper, that knot building in your tummy.
“Just cum for me. Cum for me one time and then I can fuck you. Okay?” His thumb moves and little faster, fingers driving a little deeper. “Let go, baby. Just let go.” He’s muttering against the side of your face, his own hips starting to buck erratically again.
Your nails dig into the sheets as your orgasm barrels towards you. All it takes is another soft kiss from Caleb, and the knot snaps. He swallows your moans with a bruising kiss, fingers still working you. When the pressure begins to dull, your hips instinctually buck away from his hand, clit too sensitive.
Caleb smiles ear to ear, obviously very proud of his handiwork. You pant and cover your face, embarrassment taking over. He pulls your hands away from your face, lacing your fingers together.
“Ready for more?” He grins as kiss after kiss is pressed to your cheeks, your jaw, your forehead.
“Mm, yeah…” You moan into a kiss, mind still a little fuzzy from your orgasm. Small, shaky hands start to push at his sweatpants, until Caleb gets the hint and pulls his sweats and boxers down in one go.
boy nextdoor!Caleb who is so achingly hard in your bed right now. Pretty, pink-tipped cock that is so fucking fat, it’s struggling to stand upright. Slightly curved upwards, veins pulsing as they dance upwards from base to tip. A dark, well groomed patch of hair dusting his base, sprawling out from the happy trail leading from his belly button.
You barely have time to admire before he’s placing a quick kiss to your navel and pulling your shorts off, too. Heavy thighs push against yours, coercing your legs to go up and over his elbows. A few thrusts have his leaking dick sliding through your wet folds.
“Wait.” He pauses, sitting back on his haunches. “Do you have a condom?” You blink up at him, the question totally pulling you from the moment.
“Why the fuck would I have condoms in my childhood bedroom?” You retort, moving to sit back on your elbows.
“I don’t fucking know what you were doing in high school!”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You say that like you weren’t attached to my fucking hip!” You’re whispering-yelling in each other’s faces now.
“You could have hooked up with that water polo prick for all I know!” Caleb is smiling. When is he not smiling?
“Don’t mention another guy when you’re about to fuck me! And I didn’t even kiss him, by the way!”
“I’m not going to fuck you if we can’t find a fucking condom! Don’t you remember anything from sex ed?”
“I’m on the pill, you moron!” He blinks down at you before running a hand through his hair.
“You could have lead with that!”
“Can you just fucking put it in?”
“Well, are you clean?”
“I’ve never fucking had sex with anyone!”
…
“Really?” He doesn’t mean it insultingly, like he doesn’t believe you. It’s more so said like he’s surprised.
“Yes, really. Can you stop interrogating me and just fuck me already?” He smirks to himself. “Stop smiling like that!”
“Like what?” He braces himself over you again and begins stroking his dick.
“Like… I don’t know! All smug and shit.” Your voice wavers when you feel his cock notch at your wet hole.
“You wanted me to be the one to fuck you for the first time, huh?” A kiss to your neck, before sucking another hickey. A small gasp escapes you when his tip breaches your winking hole, already squeezing him so tight. Caleb lets out a quiet groan. “Wanted your Caleb to take your little virginity.”
His fat cock slowly pushes in, your walls clamping down like a vice. A hand reaches down to rub your clit.
“Come on, let me in.” Moving to sit upright as one hand continues to work your little bundle of nerves, while the other pushes a leg up towards your chest. Pupils dilated as he watches his length disappear into you.
The stimulation on your clit has your hole softening for him, letting him slide all the way to the base. He moves both of your legs to rest on his elbows, in awe of the sight of you two connected.
“Holy shit.” He groans, throwing his head back.
“Caleb, fucking move.” You urge him, trying to move your hips for any kind of friction.
“Just… give me a second.” Thick cock splitting you open, your chest heaves in time with his. After a few moments, his hands come to brace on either side of you, legs still hooked over his elbows. His hips begin to gently thrust into you, cock coming out only an inch or two before sliding back in.
“Harder, Caleb.” You moan, pulling him into a kiss with a hand on his nape. He can’t help but moan in your open mouth.
“You’re gonna squeeze my dick off.” He grumbles, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. With each thrust, he pulls out just a little more, until he’s sliding out nearly to his tip before pushing back in. “God, you feel so fucking good.”
“Better than your dreams?” You grin, still panting with each thrust. Caleb lets out a breathy laugh before pressing his face into your neck.
“Shut up.” He emphasizes with a particularly hard thrust, earning a loud moan from you. Your hand comes to cover your mouth, terrified of being heard. “Next time, I wanna hear you scream my name so loud.”
Next time. Your heart warms at the idea of there being a “next time.”
“Caaleeeb,” you whine.
“Yeah, Pips?”
Pips. The nickname he gave you when you were 7 at the summer county fair and you weren’t tall enough to ride any of the rides.
The contrast of the nostalgic name being used as a pet name in a time like this. When you’re both 19 and he’s rearranging your guts. It’s jarring.
“I love you, Caleb.”
His jaw drops open as an unfiltered groan escapes. You throw a hand over his mouth to muffle it.
“I love you so much, Caleb.” His eyes are so soft and full of yearning, mouth still covered as he drops his forehead onto your shoulder. “Never wanna leave you again…”
Thrusts turning animalistic and desperate, Caleb bites down on your shoulder to stifle his noises.
“I wanna cum together, baby. I’m so close.” You whisper in his ear, feeling him nod against your collarbone. His hips stutter once, twice, three times before you feel his warmth flood your pussy. The feeling of him filling you up so generously pushes you into your second orgasm of the night. You bite down on the back of your hand to keep quiet.
Caleb slumps on top of you, panting hard. His hair is damp with sweat, face totally red and glowy. You run a nail down his spine, and he shivers as he pulls out and rolls to your side.
“Fucking hell.” His gaze is fixed on the ceiling as he comes down from his high. “Does this mean you forgive me?” He laughs, turning his head to look at you. You shove his chest.
“I think you still owe me big time, crybaby.” A playful grin pulling your smile from ear to ear. He turns to his side, propping his head up on his elbow.
“I thought girls were into the emotional guy!” He bickers, smoothing a hand over your waist, trying not to openly ogle the mess between your legs.
“I’m kidding,” you push his hair out of his face. “Your big show was very sweet.” The hand on your waist pulls you into his embrace. “What would you have done if I didn’t open the door?” He rubs his chin in exaggerated thought.
“To be honest, that wasn’t even an option in my head. I probably would have slept on your porch until someone found me.”
“You’re such a weirdo.”
“You love it.” He smiles and pulls you into a soft kiss. After a short-lived makeout, Caleb moves to stand up.
“What kind of guy would I be if I didn’t clean up my girl?” He snorts, pulling his boxers back on. “Be right back.” And with a wink, he’s silently sliding out of your bedroom.
His girl. Caleb’s girl. You turn over and bury your face in the pillow to keep from squealing.
boy nextdoor!Caleb returns a few minutes later with a glass of ice water and a damp cloth. A sheepish, embarrassed grin on his face.
“I don’t think your Dad ever went back to sleep. I just ran into him in the kitchen.”
note: feedback is appreciated! send me an msg if u have any ideas/requests for what I write next!!
being late getting into a piece of media or joining a ‘dead’ fandom is not that bad actually cause even if it seems like the party is over there will always be people still celebrating and the decoration is still up and there’s a piece of cake reserved especially for you in the fridge you just have to come and enjoy it.
The scent of the apartment hit him before he even reached the door.
That was always how it worked. Valko would clear the front door, shift his bag on his shoulder, and without thinking—without even meaning to—his chest would expand, pulling in everything. The sharp bite of the laundry detergent you both used, the faint trace of the citrus dish soap from the morning’s coffee mugs. The ghost of whatever you'd cooked that morning. And underneath all of it, quiet and constant and unbearably familiar, the warm specific sweetness of you.
Two years of this. Two years and it still stopped him on his tracks every single time.
To anyone who shared a class with him, Valko was the guy with half rimmed glasses, soft sweaters, neckband headphones around his collar like he'd forgotten they were there, a battered copy of whatever textbook he was working through dog eared on his desk. He took meticulous notes in handwriting that was almost too neat.
He called his mother every Sunday without fail, usually from the kitchen while something was already on the stove. He brought back containers of homemade food after weekend visits home and left them in the fridge with little labeled lids because he knew you'd forget to eat otherwise.
He was, by every reasonable measure, a gentle giant with a soft spot for his family and an embarrassing weakness for old equipment manuals.
The wolf underneath all of that was another matter entirely.
He'd stopped trying to logic his way out of it somewhere around month six of your lease. The obsession had settled into him quietly, the way water finds the shape of whatever holds it—gradual, total, and by the time he noticed, already everywhere. He loved the way you laughed when he miscalculated a doorframe carrying furniture. He loved that you used his arm like a headrest when you were tired without seeming to notice you were doing it. He loved that you trusted him with the small, unglamorous parts of your life—the bad days, the grocery runs at midnight, the moments when you needed someone solid nearby without having to explain why.
He told himself it was just closeness. That it was natural, living with someone this long. That plenty of people felt this way about their roommates.
He was lying to himself and he knew it.
You never noticed the small things. That was the part that made it simultaneously easier and worse.
You didn't notice the way his jaw tightened every time you mentioned Caleb's name in passing. You didn't notice that when he draped his coat over your shoulders on cold nights, he always took a moment longer than necessary to settle it there, his hands resting briefly on your shoulders, his nose dipping almost imperceptibly toward your hair. You didn't notice the way his whole body oriented toward you when you moved through a room, like a plant turns toward a window without deciding to.
Two years of this and you'd noticed none of it.
Caleb, though. Caleb was a different kind of problem.
The name sat wrong in Valko's mouth every time he heard it. Your boyfriend. The pilot stationed out in Skyhaven, the one who'd existed in Valko's life as nothing more than a name and a reason you packed a bag every other weekend. You always went to him. A wave from the doorway, a small oveñnight bag, the shuttle to Skyhaven. Back by Sunday night, sometimes Monday morning if the transit ran slow.
Two years, and Valko had never once seen him. Fine. He could work with that.
What he couldn't work with was the scent. Or rather, the complete absence of it.
It defied every instinct he had. A man who kept a woman—who spent weekends with her, who held her hand and her body—should leave something behind. It was a biological fact, not a sentiment. Every time you came home from Skyhaven, Valko would brace for it. Would stand in the hallway with his teeth ground together preparing to smell another man all over you.
Every single time, there was nothing.
Just you. Clean and warm, like you'd spent the weekend alone in a hotel and not with someone who was supposed to love you. No territorial overlap. No claim. Nothing.
It didn't reassure him. It made him furious. A man who loved you would mark you without even trying—it would just happen, the natural consequence of closeness and time. The fact that it hadn't happened said something.
He doesn't know what he has.
Since Caleb clearly wasn't going to handle it, Valko had decided— without discussing it with anyone, including himself—to handle it instead.
It had started small. Sitting on your side of the couch when you were out because "the lamp was better over there". Leaning in your doorframe a beat longer than necessary. Gradually, the apartment had become his in ways that only his own nose could confirm. Your throw blanket carried him now. The pillow on the left side of your bed—your side—carried him. He'd lie across your mattress on the afternoons you were in seminar, shoulders rolling slow against the sheets, transferring the scent from the back of his neck and the inside of his wrists onto everything you'd touch when you slept.
He wanted to be the reason the room felt safe to you, even if you'd never know why.
The laundry had come later. He'd started folding yours without being asked because it was a practical thing to do, a completely normal roommate thing—and if his hands slowed over certain items, if he stood in the laundry room for longer than strictly necessary with warm shirts pressed to his face, that was between him and the four walls.
He wasn't proud of the drawer.
Your scent there was undiluted, something the rest of the apartment couldn't match—private, concentrated, intimate. The first time he'd opened it he'd been looking for your spare key. He'd stood there for a long time, glasses pushed up into his hair, one hand braced on your dresser, taking slow careful breaths and trying to remember what reasonable behavior felt like.
He'd gone back to his room. He'd thought about you.
He'd told himself it would clear his head.
It had not cleared his head.
Two days ago he stood in front of your closet with his heart going faster than he wanted to admit.
You'd been out getting groceries. His hand moved through your dirty clothes on autopilot, past the jeans, past the sweaters, until his fingers closed around silk.
Soft. Warm from being buried against other fabric. Almost nothing against the width of his palm.
He lifted them to his face before he'd fully decided to.
There was your scent, the core of it. He stood there breathing it in with his eyes closed and his chest heaving, and then, he searched. Every thread. Looking for any trace of another man underneath yours.
Nothing. Just you. Entirely unmarked you.
The growl that came out of him was low enough that only he could hear it.
Something about that absence sent a rush of heat down his spine that he wasn't prepared for. His back had found the closet wall.
He couldn't stop himself.
One hand kept the silk pressed to his face. The other worked fast around his cock, his jaw tight, breathing controlled through sheer habit. He'd imagined you beneath him, his weight pinning you into the mattress, his teeth finding the curve of your shoulder, his scent finally, permanently replacing the nothing that Caleb had left behind. When he came it was blinding and quiet, his head dropping back, his whole body shaking with the force of it.
He'd cleaned up carefully. Returned everything. Walked to the kitchen and put the kettle on like a normal person.
He was a patient man. He was methodical. He had excellent grades and he called his mother on Sundays and he was going to wait for the right moment. But the conclusion had already been reached, somewhere in the back of his skull where logic and instinct lived side by side.
He was going to take you. It was a matter of time. He was just waiting for the right moment to show you that a real man didn't leave his woman smelling like an empty room.
--------------------------
The July heat was suffocating. Valko had been inside an exam room for two hours and his brain felt wrung out like a dish cloth. His glasses had fogged twice on the walk from campus, he was looking forward to the AC. He was looking forward to you.
It was a Friday so he'd stopped at the bakery on the corner. Two cinnamon rolls, extra cream cheese frosting. He had them in a plastic bag hooked over two fingers.
He reached the door and stopped. His nose twitched.
The scent of the hallway was wrong. Not dangerous, just wrong.
Valko's brow creased. He put his glasses back on.
He unlocked the door slowly, the click of the mechanism very loud in the quiet hallway, and pushed it open.
The air inside hit him all at once.
He stopped moving. His hand stayed on the doorknob, grip tightening by degrees until the metal pressed hard into his palm, and he stood in the entryway and looked at his living room like a man trying to solve a problem he hadn't been told existed.
There was someone on the couch.
Long legs stretched toward the coffee table. Dark tactical jacket, sleeves pushed up, the kind of build that came from actual use rather than a gym.
And tucked against his side, head on his chest, hand flat against his collarbone—
You. Laughing at something he'd just said.
Caleb.
Valko's mind was still trying to catch up. His instincts weren't waiting.
The heat that moved through him was immediate, flooding from his chest out, his vision sharpening at the edges the way it did when something in him decided a situation required full attention. His breathing stayed controlled—barely, through discipline and nothing else—while every animal thing in him was screaming to move forward. To put himself between you and the man currently comfortable in a space he had no right to be comfortable in.
My couch. The thought was irrational and he knew it and it didn't help. My apartment. My—
As if feeling the shift in the room, Caleb's head turned.
His eyes found Valko's across the space with a directness that said he'd known someone was there before the door finished opening. Dark eyes, calm, taking in Valko's full height and the white knuckled grip on the doorframe.
He didn't look away.
Neither did Valko.
You sat up, something lighting in your face when you saw him. "You're home early." You smiled, easy and warm, completely unaware of the temperature of the room. "Valko, this is my boyfriend Caleb. Caleb, this is my roommate, Valko."
Caleb stood up and extended his hand. He was tall—nearly matching Valko’s height—but where Valko was built like an immovable wall of muscle, Caleb possessed the lethal, agile grace of a feline.
Valko crossed the room and took it.
"Good to meet you," Caleb said. Flat. Even.
And the bottom dropped out of everything he thought he understood.
The scent hit him the second their palms connected, not foreign, not the aggressive territorial brand of another man he'd been grinding his teeth against for two years. It was you—your exact scent, the one Valko had spent two years cataloguing down to its smallest note—but run through something else entirely. Deeper. Heavier. Amplified through the biology of a dominant male until it had become its own thing, something that pressed into Valko's lungs like a hand against his sternum and didn't let up.
Caleb smelled like you the way a home smelled like the people who lived in it.
Two people did not share the same biological signature. That was not how any of this worked. Unless—
His brain didn't finish the thought. His body had already moved on without him.
The heat he felt all over his body was not aggression. That was the part that made no sense, the part that his wolf had no framework for because this wasn't a territorial response. This wasn't the hot, focused anger he'd been bracing for every time he imagined finally meeting the man who had you. This was something strange and considerably more humiliating, a frequency he hadn't known he could receive, vibrating straight through the bones of his hand where Caleb's grip still held.
His cock hardened so fast his vision went momentarily white at the edges.
He couldn't stop it. Couldn't reason with it. Two years of wanting you, of your scent living in the back of his throat like something he'd swallowed and never fully digested—and now here was this man, wearing you like a second skin, your sweetness wound so completely through his scent that Valko couldn't separate the two. Couldn't find where you ended and Caleb began.
It was the most overwhelming thing he had ever experienced. His knees felt weak.
Caleb's grip tightened.
His eyes hadn't moved from Valko's face. Valko watched the shift happen—the smile staying but changing underneath, becoming something quieter and darker. He'd clocked the pupil dilation. He'd clocked all of it.
"Something wrong?" Caleb asked
Valko could not breathe. The apartment was saturated with your/his scent and his body was making decisions he hadn't authorized, and he was going to do something catastrophic if he stayed in this room for another ten seconds. He didn't know what but he didn't want to find out.
He pulled his hand back.
"I forgot—" His voice came out completely unrecognizable. He didn't look at you. Couldn't. "The lab. I left something. I have to—"
He was already at the door. He had no memory of crossing the room.
The hallway air hit him cold and he kept walking, down the stairs, out into the July heat that suddenly felt like nothing compared to what he'd just left behind.
The Importance of Being Gege (AKA why MC doesn't always stand up to Caleb when she definitely should)
[spoilers ahead for Spotlit Gaze]
Finally got around to watching Spotlit Gaze (Caleb's very excellent new Promise card) and it got me thinkin about MC and Caleb's relationship and why she puts up with it when he lies or avoids telling her the truth, and how that gets under my skin sometimes. (For the record, that doesn't happen in this card, but you'll see why I thought of it if you keep reading... Also the reason may have been painfully obvious to you this whole time, but I only just got it 🫣.)
It's not the fact that Caleb lies or does other problematic things that bothers me. That's part of the story and his character and I ADORE Caleb's crazy like 95% of the time.
What gets to me (or used to get to me) is when he lies to her and she lets it go. When he keeps secrets from her, VERY IMPORTANT ONES, and she lets him off the hook, despite the fact that those behaviors are not signs of a healthy relationship AND the fact that MC is not the type of person to stand for being treated poorly in any way. Caleb's not just her gege anymore, he's her partner too, and while he's not alone in having moral grays (looking at you, literally all the guys except for maybe Zayne), no one does it quite like Caleb.
I don't want him to stop those behaviors necessarily. Conflict makes for good drama and tension is key for desire. I think that's why Caleb hits different than the other LIs, even Sylus. Caleb is the only one who low-key threatens MC's autonomy. Not maliciously, but he can be manipulative and evasive in ways that the other four just aren't. It makes him (you HAVE to forgive me for saying this) juicier.
But even so, I have trouble accepting the way MC responds to Caleb's more red-flaggish behavior and I think it's because I treat the game as roleplay.
Roleplay (to me) is similar to self-insert, but not quite. I don't see myself as MC when I'm playing. I sort of project myself INTO her, take on her thoughts, feelings, abilities, experiences as much as possible. I would never make some of the choices she makes in game, but I feel what it would be like to be someone who would make those choices. But when she makes the choice to give Caleb pass after pass, I balk. I can't understand why MC, who is a straight baddie and headstrong af, would let some of that shit slide.
True, there is a lot of trauma there, and I know a big part of it is not wanting to lose him again, but that never seemed like enough to me. Backing off here or there, sure, but she does it to the point where I couldn't believe it wasn't coming from somewhere else too. MC has flaws, but she's mostly secure in herself and who she is and knows what she wants and how she deserves to be treated. When she finally refused to let Caleb deflect her in Lingering Lust, I said "thank you!" out loud because FINALLY. THAT'S the MC I know. (It's like she pushed back hard that one time in Hidden Waves and then barely ever again until LL.)
Only today after finishing Spotlit Gaze did the thought occur to me that her letting these things go is not just a trauma response or low self-esteem. It's because he's her older brother.
I'm an eldest sibling, so I did not get the full weight of this at first, but something about SG just made it click. For all the teasing MC does to Caleb, all the ways he dotes on and caters to her, there's power in him being older. He says it several times in game, how she used to follow him around and look up to him, how she used to try to compete with him, likely because she wanted to be just like him. In Spotlit Gaze, she has a bunch of recordings of him humming to himself when they were younger, showing she was admiring (and possibly in love with) him on a deep level from the very beginning.
Caleb must have seemed so much wiser than her growing up, so capable, so smart, so caring. He was a golden boy, he could do no wrong. He would never do anything to harm her, even indirectly (or so she believed). He's still kind of like that even today, as we see in the way people are drawn to him in cards like Chasing Summer. So MC still has him on that pedestal in some ways because that is her gege.
From a relatively young age, Caleb practically raised her. I think about how long it took me to stop feeling like a kid around the people who raised me, and how easily I can still slip back into that role without even noticing. I think that's what's happening to MC when Caleb decides to be on his bullshit. She's not dismissing Caleb's behavior out of insecurity or a lack of self-respect. She does it because of that part of her that still recognizes him as her big brother.
In the 4-star art for Spotlit Gaze, Caleb looks like an idol, towering over us but looking down with a beatific smile, lights shining around him like a halo. That's how MC sees him sometimes. She worships him. (And you know what? SAME, GURL. SAME.)
It must be hard when a person you love that much, someone who you've trusted on a core level to look after you, lies to you or hides themselves from you. She can stand up to everyone and anyone else, but Caleb? He's always been the one in charge. If he truly puts his foot down, then that's that. And on top of that, he almost always gives her what she wants anyway, so she doesn't always know how to deal with it when he doesn't do that. She's always seen him a certain way, so when he insists on only showing that side of himself, the path of least resistance for her is to let it lie, another reason why she may have held back being honest about her less-than-familial feelings for him.
And that I get. I really do. Part of what draws me to Caleb is the fact that I've never really felt that kind of security at any point in my life, even now. He scratches that itch, offers a facsimile of what it would be like to have someone look out for you in that way, someone who is everything to you and WANTS to be everything to you. (Only he isn't that secure, because he's always lying and disappearing, but we won't get into that today.)
And not for nothing, but can't no one convince me that Caleb only wants a romantic relationship with MC and wants her to stop seeing him as gege entirely. Ain't no way. He wants both. And if MC's responses have been any indication, she's trying to let him have it. Whether or not that's sustainable remains to be seen.
TL;DR: MC lets Caleb lie to her and keep secrets from her not from a lack of self-respect, but because part of her still sees him as her big brother who can do no wrong, who she trusts as a caregiver and guardian, who has that authority over her. Even if her adult mind knows better, deep down, that's still her gege, and gege knows best.
Okay… two glasses of wine in, so I’m gonna speak my truth. Take off ya pearls bc this is the second time in history I’ve been as brutally honest as I can be in this fandom so here goes nothing
First. I was genuinely excited about Valko. Not because I already loved him. I didn’t even get the chance to
I was excited because my birthday is in July and I wanted to hear another LI sing me happy birthday. I wanted to see whether he texts with emojis or uses caps or not. I wanted to see how the fandom’s art of him would evolve as his story unfolded. I wanted to find out if I could love another LI the way I unexpectedly ended up loving Caleb
Maybe I would’ve. Maybe I wouldn’t. But I wanted the chance
I know people have all sorts of reasons for feeling the way they do, and I’m not trying to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t like. But… I just can’t stand the atmosphere in this fandom lately. Every announcement feels like it immediately turns into panic, doomposting, or people deciding something is awful before it’s even had the chance to exist
For me, this game has never been politics. It’s my escape after a job I don’t enjoy. It’s my silly lil delusion. It’s the place where I’ve met some of the kindest people I know
Today I was outside powerwashing my terrace and caught myself wondering something~
Does Infold ever wish their audience would meet them halfway? Whether the developers ever wish we’d let a story breathe before deciding what it is?
Not by loving everything they make. Criticism is and should fine. But… maybe by giving new ideas a genuine chance before writing them off and calling them out on past mistakes?
I looked at Valko and saw imperfect teeth that somehow felt perfect. I thought he looked charming because he wasn’t polished into perfection. He looked worn. I was curious about who he could become. Curious about the story he had to tell me
Instead… much of what I saw was people calling him ugly and a thief before his story even had a chance to begin
I’m endlessly grateful this game came to the global audience. I really am. But sometimes… being part of this fandom feels like walking barefoot on a sword. It’s brought me some of my closest friends yet it can also be exhausting in ways I never expected
Sometimes I just want to step off that sword… and take Caleb with me
I think people underestimate how much joy there is in simply being curious. I wasn’t waiting for Valko to replace Caleb. I was excited to meet someone new. To discover his habits. To find out what made him him. That’s half the magic of otome games to me. Maybe I would’ve loved him. Maybe I would’ve shrugged and gone back to Caleb after a week (very likely). But… I’ll never know. And.. I was excited to find out
I just wanna visit Valko’s drawer at Infold hq and leave flowers… but I don’t even know his favorite ones. Guess Caleb and I will have to bring asiatic apple blossoms then.
I’ve carried Robert Frost’s nothing gold can stay with me for the past fifteen years. Today… for whatever reason it feels fitting
scraping your knee as a grown adult was way more humiliating than it had to be. seriously, who scraped their knee past age 13? you did, that's who. rushing back to caleb's house, you were so excited to see him that you hadn't seen the rock laying in the middle of the sidewalk until you tripped over it and hit the ground. right knee taking the brunt of your fall, you now had a hole in your brand new jeans, and a nasty scrape that stung like a bitch. it took you an extra ten minutes to get to caleb's, limping a bit and wary of the rock having friends waiting for you. getting through his door, all your energy has been left with the smear of your skin on the sidewalk.
"is that you, pips?" caleb calls out as he makes his way from the kitchen to meet you, sunny smile faltering when he notices your ruffled appearance and bleeding knee, "you run into a wanderer on your way over?" you would've preferred that, you think to yourself, ears getting warm at the thought of admitting to caleb of all people that you had tripped and scraped your knee. tossing your bag to the floor and carefully stepping out of your shoes to avoid irritating the injury anymore, caleb's by your side once you've got two socked feet on the ground. pursing your lips together, you avoid the eye contact he tries to make.
"i...trippedandscrapedmyknee," you rush out in a mumbled mess of words, practically gibberish, and caleb's eyebrows pinch together as he leans in closer. "you huh?" you almost stomp your foot in frustration, the heat from your ears spreading to your cheeks as you turn towards him with a slight pout and raise your voice. "i tripped and scraped my knee!" caleb's expression changes in the blink of an eye, confusion melting into amusement as he coos at you and reaches up to pinch your cheek between his thumb and index finger. "d'awhh, did meimei scrape her widdle knee?" he teases, the baby talk making your face burn as you swat him away and attempt to stomp away in a huff–only for him to wrap you in his arms before you could get very far.
hauled up into a princess carry, legs hooked over his forearm and leaned into his chest, caleb clicks his tongue at you with a shake of his head. "ah ah, where do you think you're walking off to with such a serious injury?" he questions in a serious tone that doesn't match the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, "i can't have my precious meimei losing her leg. we gotta patch you up, asap." rolling your eyes with affectionate irritation, you loop your arms around his neck and decide to play along, knowing he isn't going to let up on this anytime soon. you lay your head on his shoulder with a long sigh, throwing in a little sniffle while you're at it as caleb carries you to the bathroom. "what would i do without you, gege?" somehow, his eyes get even brighter at those words.
the bathroom counter is cool against your thighs when he sets you down on it, making you squirm as it seeps through your pants. caleb nudges his way between your legs, hands settling on your hips as he hooks his thumbs into your waistband, giving it a little tug. "lift up for me." you do as he says, pushing yourself up a few inches so he can shimmy your pants down your legs, and watch with a frown as their thrown onto the ground, the large hole in the knee staring back you mockingly. "i really liked those," you mumble to yourself, and caleb hums as he leans in to press a sweet kiss against your cheek. "we can go shopping tomorrow and get you some new ones," he promises, pecking your cheek a few more times before crouching down on the floor to rifle through the cabinet for his first aid kit. you bump your foot into his shoulder, smiling down at him.
"two pairs," you bargain, and caleb snorts as he hops back up, first aid kit in hand as he starts to grab what he needs from it. "two pairs," he agrees easily, and you squint at him with a thoughtful hum. "actually–make it five," you decide, and caleb only smiles wider, wetting a cotton ball with saline solution before standing between your legs again. "let's make it a nice even ten," he argues, and you nod in agreement, grabbing his free hand and wrapping your pinkie around his with a squeeze. "deal! no take backs!" he chuckles, giving your pinkie a squeeze in return before tangling his fingers with yours, letting your intertwined hands rest on your thigh. "no take backs," he repeats softly, shifting on his feet as he waves the cotton ball in front of your face. "this is gonna sting a bit. feel free to cry on my shoulder like you used to."
punching his chest with your free hand, you scoff at him before giving his hand a squeeze, preparing for the burn of the saline solution against your raw skin, and caleb squeezes right back before gently touching the cotton ball to the scrape. the reaction is immediate, your leg tensing and kicking out on instinct as a sharp hiss escapes through your clenched teeth. caleb's quick to shush you, thumb rubbing over your knuckles as he continues to clean the scrape as quick and efficiently as he can. "shh, i know meimei, im sorry. it'll be over soon, just relax for me, yeah? can you do that for me?" nodding your head firmly, you blink away the tears that had gathered in your eyes and focus on your breathing and the feeling of caleb's hand in your own.
it's over a few moments later, as promised, cotton ball tossed into the trash as caleb carefully applies a few dabs of ointment before putting a bandaid over it. bending at the waist, he presses a soft kiss over the bandage, then stands back up and cups your face in his hands, smothering you in kisses until you whined. "you did sucha good job. my brave little meimei, im so proud of you," he coos, nuzzling his nose into yours before stealing a quick kiss, "alright, c'mon, let's get you changed so i can finish up dinner. you need some food so your body has the energy to heal." you nod along with his words, and before you get the chance to even think of walking on your own, you're already being swept up into his arms again, held tight against his chest as he carries you to his bedroom and rambles on about what he's making you two for dinner tonight.
•°. An old aviation book and one innocent question about pilot jargon turned into the creation of the most important protocol Caleb had ever approved.
✧･ﾟ: Pairing: Caleb × Reader
✧･ﾟ: Contains: Tooth-rotting fluff, domestic life, established relationship, playful banter, aviation nerd Caleb, soft kisses, cuddles, light humor, and excessive amounts of affection.
✧･ﾟ: Author's Note: Caleb literally invaded my dreams just to give me an aviation lecture. I'm not kidding. He yapped about aviation communication for HOURS. I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about any of this, so I had to actually research everything afterward, sorry if its not acurrated ;p
✈︎ ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆ ✈︎ ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆ ✈︎
It was supposed to be a lazy afternoon.
Neither of you had plans for the first time in weeks—no official state dinners, no Fleet galas, no urgent strategic briefings. For once, the time was just for the two of you in Caleb's apartment.
Well, supposedly.
You lay stretched out across the sofa, idly scrolling through your datapad while Caleb sprawled beside you, one arm flung casually across the back of the couch as he stared out through the panoramic viewport overlooking the city.
Beyond the vast spectrum of blues and purples, the stars burned like innumerable pinpricks of light scattered across an inky canvas.
Nobody had bothered you for what had to be a new Fleet record.
Nearly twenty whole minutes.
Abruptly, the silence was broken by the chime of a priority incoming transmission.
Caleb immediately let out a weary sigh.
"Don't."
"I wasn't saying anything," you countered, raising an eyebrow.
"You were about to."
Another chime rang out.
And another.
A stark scarlet Fleet emblem flashed across his wristband.
Priority Command.
Caleb stared at the alert for a long beat before slowly exhaling.
You narrowed your eyes suspiciously.
Before you could even ask what it was, Caleb muttered, "Classified."
He offered you a contrite look but didn't elaborate.
"That's bad, right?" you asked, a small pout tugging at your lips.
The notification flashed again.
Caleb slowly closed his eyes, the muscles in his jaw tightening.
"I'm going to need about an hour."
He rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger.
"That's what you always say."
You cocked an eyebrow, folding your arms across your chest.
"I mean it this time."
Caleb pushed himself to his feet.
"That's also what you always say," you muttered under your breath, pouting in earnest now.
"Unhelpful."
He held up a finger, amusement flickering beneath his exasperation.
You let out a soft snort of laughter.
Caleb stepped closer and rested his forehead briefly against yours, the warmth of his breath brushing your skin.
"Just... don't do anything that gets you into too much trouble."
"In your apartment?" you asked, raising an eyebrow with an expression of innocent, mock offense.
"I know you too well," he scoffed softly.
He stepped away, the office door sliding shut behind him with a quiet click.
Silence settled over the apartment.
It lasted all of three minutes before boredom inevitably found you.
You got to your feet, paced around the living area, contemplated the eternally shifting stars beyond the window, and reread all your recent messages.
Twice.
Your gaze eventually fell on one of the crammed bookshelves.
It was predominantly filled with technical manuals, but intermingled with them were a few classic novels: Sense and Sensibility, The Little Prince, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and a couple of naval warfare texts that only Caleb could conceivably be fascinated by.
Then your attention was caught by a particular title: The Aviator's Almanac.
The cover, a darkened, weathered blue, clearly showed it had been well loved.
Driven by a nascent curiosity, you reached for it, surprised by its unexpected weight.
As you opened the first few pages, a small folded note slipped from the binding and landed on the floor at your feet.
Property of Caleb Xia. Cadet Year One.
You let out an amused chuckle.
"Oh, this is going to be good."
And indeed, it was.
The margins were filled with Caleb's sharp, meticulous handwriting.
Under a description of the Wright brothers, he'd scribbled:
"No reward without risk. The sky doesn't care if you're afraid."
You chuckled again, only to be interrupted by an instant message pinging on your phone.
Caleb: Ignore the notes.
A second message followed immediately.
Caleb: I was a pretentious academy kid.
You offered the security camera in the corner of the room a small smile and gave it a meek wave before typing your reply, sinking back into the comfort of the sofa.
Three dots appeared, vanished, and then reappeared.
Caleb: Please stop reading.
You threw your head back, laughing heartily this time.
You: No.
A moment of silence stretched into a prolonged pause.
Caleb: Traitor.
For the next half hour, you remained riveted to the sofa, immersed in the history of flight through Caleb's annotations.
The historical tidbits were indeed fascinating, but the personal musings offered an even more intriguing window into the man himself.
Periodically, an instant message would pop up on your phone.
Caleb: Still alive.
Caleb: Send help.
Caleb: And snacks.
You responded with an ever-growing—and increasingly passive-aggressive—arsenal of unimpressed emojis.
Eventually, you received another message from Caleb.
Caleb: Almost done. Five minutes.
Just as you turned the page, the office door slid open, and Caleb emerged, his sleeves rolled up and wearing the tired, battle-hardened expression of a colonel who had just endured a particularly arduous briefing.
The second his eyes landed on the book in your hands, he let out an audible groan.
"No."
You met his gaze, maintaining an expression of pure, unadulterated angelic bliss.
"Yes."
"You found the notes."
He crossed his arms, feigning a look of extreme disapproval.
"I found the notes."
You flashed him a widening, mischievous grin.
Caleb collapsed back onto the sofa beside you, burying his face in his hands.
"This relationship is founded entirely on betrayal."
"You're being overdramatic," you retorted, swatting playfully at his arm.
"Says the woman rummaging through my embarrassing academy journals." He scoffed.
"It's educational," you giggled.
"It is unequivocally not educational." Caleb shook his head, his lips pursed in fond exasperation.
You flipped to a random page.
"What's 'Roger'?"
Caleb blinked, a slight frown etching itself between his eyebrows.
"'Roger'?"
You pointed at a messy annotation in the margin, right next to a chapter detailing aviation communication protocols.
"Why do pilots say 'Roger' instead of just saying they received the message?"
A dangerous flicker ignited in Caleb's eyes—you knew, you knew you'd inadvertently tripped his aviation wire.
He leaned back against the cushions, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his lips.
"Oh," he murmured. "Oh, that's actually a really great question."
And just like that, another hour evaporated as Caleb expounded on everything from the nuances of "Roger" and "Wilco" to the critical importance of distinguishing between "Mayday" and "Pan-Pan," not to mention the strategic value of knowing your bogeys from your bandits and how to manage your joker and bingo fuel.
"So if I'm running low on Caleb kisses..."
He paused, instantly on high alert.
"Yeah?"
"...that's joker." You nodded with utter seriousness, your smile widening into a smirk.
Caleb simply stared at you, but his lips began to twitch upward into a hesitant smile.
Your smile widened. "And if I run completely out..."
A fond smile spread across Caleb's face. "Bingo."
A huge, rumbling laugh burst from him, his eyes crinkling with genuine mirth.
"That might be the best use of aviation terminology I've ever heard."
You preened, feeling remarkably clever.
Caleb shook his head, the deep laughter still resonating through his chest.
The two of you fell into a companionable silence for a beat, the warmth between you a palpable force in the air.
Then you tapped the cover of the book with your fingertip, your expression thoughtful, almost contemplative.
"Okay."
Your eyes twinkled with amused speculation.
"We're making a new one."
"A new one?" Caleb asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.
"A new one," you repeated, your mind working before finally settling on an idea. A mischievous smile spread across your lips.
You snuggled closer to him, tilting your head back and looking up at him with your best serious, completely business-like expression.
"How about... 'Situation Indigo'?"
A small, fond smile touched Caleb's lips.
"What does that mean?"
You gently touched your fingertips to his eyes.
"Indigo."
Then you pointed to yourself.
"And 'situation.'"
"Meaning...?" Caleb asked, the corners of his lips quirking upward.
"Meaning my need for Caleb has reached critical levels and requires your immediate attention." You paused for dramatic effect."And perhaps some strategic cuddles and kisses."
Your completely business-like expression never wavered.
Caleb burst into another fit of hearty laughter, while your expression settled into one of utter and complete smug satisfaction.
"Situation Indigo," you repeated to yourself, giving a tiny nod of approval. "Our new official pilot terminology."
"That's not official," he stated, shaking his head with fond amusement.
"It is now."
You looped your arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer.
"Fleet regulations are very clear."
"Oh, they are?" he asked, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you snugly against him.
"They are now," you giggled. "And how is this protocol supposed to be responded to, Colonel?" you asked with a wicked grin.
Caleb's smile softened as he wrapped one arm around you.
"Immediate deployment of affection."
"That sounds incredibly fake," you laughed softly.
"It absolutely is." He lean closer.
He pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead.
"But it's my favorite protocol now."
You hummed in quiet approval, your fingers lightly curling into the fabric of his shirt as you looked up at him. Caleb met your gaze with that familiar soft smile that never failed to make your heart flutter.
Without another word, you closed the remaining distance between you and captured his lips in a slow, lingering kiss...
Caleb wakes up bright and early every morning to workout. Not just because he's a colonel and needs to keep his strength up, but because he's simply like that. This was a routine he had been doing since his teen years (though you personally suspect he did it because he used to get bullied for being so tall and lanky). He usually exercised alone, but last week, you swore you could keep up and get up early to work out too. One week. Caleb gave you one week to back out, but you didn't. And now, today's the day it begins.
Caleb slowly creaks your door open with a grin, violet eyes searching in the dark for your sleeping form in bed. "Wakey, wakey, princess. Time to struggle and sweat," he teases, stepping inside the room when you don't move. He walks up to the side of your bed and gently taps your shoulder. "C'mon. Don't tell me someone stayed up all night and couldn't get any sleep."
You groan, finally stirring in the covers, but you don't look at him. You turn just enough to slide his hand off your shoulder. "Go away," you murmur, voice heavy with restless sleep.
Caleb is amused at first, assuming you're regretting your vow to exercise so early. "Aw, come on, pips. The first week is always the hardest, but we can start slow."
"Caleb, I'm not in the mood for that," you sort of snap, causing him to flinch just a millimeter.
When you hiss back at him, Caleb realizes you aren't just being difficult. The smirk on his lips is replaced with a softened look of concern. "I know that tone. You only act like a kitten backed into a corner when you're hurting. What's wrong?" Caleb reaches over before you get to reply and turns on the soft lamp to take a better look at you. Seeing you in the light, you look like you've fought a war. Your eyes are sunken and outlined with dark rings, and when he checks your temperature, your skin feels clammy. "Hey, are you feeling okay? You're not sick, are you?:
You sigh, knowing you can't hide anything from Caleb. "No," you reply in a short, snippy remark. "I'm just on pain."
Caleb's eyes drift over to your calender. Growing up, he would see a mysterious red mark on the calender once a month without any further context. As a boy, he thought you had a strange fascination of marking days you were angry, but as he grew up, he realized you weren't just marking the days you were moody and ready to fight everyone and then cry for a few hours. He remembers crystal clear the day Grandma Josephine had Caleb run errands with her and they stopped in the feminine hygiene section to do some shopping for you. From that day on, Caleb also paid attention to your cycles and your supplies as well, though he never liked to admit it. But whenever he noticed you were low on something, it would always mysteriously appear on your bed while you were at school or out with friends.
Caleb's eyes soften as he reaches for the covers, tucking you in tighter. "Don't worry, pips. I've gotcha. I'll go get your heating pad and some hot tea, and if you need anything else, just let me know."
You don't turn over to face Caleb, but your cheeks adopt a rosy tint, your skin growing warmer. You get lost in the pounding of your own heart that you don't even notice when Caleb leaves. But you turn over instinctively when you hear the teacup rattle against the saucer.
Caleb sets the cup down on the nightstand and takes the heating pad draped over his arm and places it against your abdomen with a touch that's feather-light. "There ya go. Nice and cozy. I know you have anxiety about swallowing pills, so I mixed the medicine in with your tea to make it easier. Don't worry, I made sure it's not bitter. Take a sip," he gently nudges, blowing the tea before lifting the cup to your lips. He notes the subtle sink into bed like a kitten loafing in her blanket. "Just right, huh," he chuckles, allowing you to take the cup from him.
"Your customer service is pretty good, but I'll give it four stars. You're missing something," you tease in a tired but content voice, beginning to feel a moment of comfort.
Caleb grins and raises a brow. "Oh? Allow me to fix it, then." Caleb leans in slowly and presses a kiss to your forehead. "How's that? Will you consider re-evaluating my services now?"
"Mmm, I suppose I can manage five stars," you mumble, turning your head with a flushed smile."
"Good, because they're only for you, and I can't have my only customer unsatisfied. Now rest. I'll go make you some breakfast."
Someone said “The slow burn of becoming yourself” and I think that might be one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. It’s such a good reminder of how much it takes, how much character development, how much change, and beauty and courage it takes to reach your soul and I hope no one ever gives up on becoming themselves because it’s a never ending journey that only gets better.
aaaa...ahh... i don't really know what to feel about this update. june was supposed to be a happy month, but it ended up feeling gloomy thanks to the company that ironically created the very muse that inspires me rn
i'm indifferent about the 6th LI. he's closer to my type for sure. if this was a console otomege, i'll do his route after my main. but yeah nobody tops the yasashii nii-chan type *taps my username* so whether he's in the game or not, i don't mind. but i'm just sad that he's released at the wrong timing.... where everyone is upset for the lack of content, especially xyz... 520 days without a main story update, bond, or anecdote. what the hell are they even doing?
i'm very patient you see, but it's starting to get to me seeing my close friends slowly leaving.......... 😔 i didn't make many friends when i first joined because the state of the fandom, people used to witch hunt CN trope players so i was afraid to get to know more ppl. now, those left were hurt by the way the company is handling things. im scared that in the end i'll be left alone bc i don't want to stop playing and let him go yet T__T i still love xyzmc so much.
i've always supported the game, bought all the official merchs, but now i feel like the money i spent was for nothing... and bc all of this, it's really hard to hype on the new update, even if i want to.
anyway, i'll keep drawing xyzmc. i just ccan't stop, they heal me.
