“ pip-squeak , have you been getting enough sleep and to eat lately ? ”
@farstium || From a meme I cannot find (or maybe it wasn't even a meme? LOL
Hyori pauses at the nickname. Pip-squeak. Somehow it lands differently now.
Once, it would’ve earned him a shove and a dramatic sigh, maybe an eye roll. But now it settles somewhere deeper—in that fragile, undefined space they’ve been orbiting since he came back from the brink. He’s returned to her taller somehow, sharper at the edges, with a right arm that holds no warmth and eyes that hold too much calculation.
She lifts her gaze to him.
“Are you conducting wellness inspections now, Colonel?” she asks lightly, too lightly.
The mention of his new title is deliberate. A line drawn in soft chalk. If she keeps him there—in rank, in uniform—then maybe the space between them won’t collapse too quickly into something harder to control.
She folds her arms across her chest, containing the instinct to reach for him. Because she does feel it—that pull—the gravitational force he has draws her in, shackles her to him without chains.
“I sleep,” she answers after a beat. Not entirely honest. “And I eat when I remember to.”
His gaze lingers.
It always lingers now—not just fond like when they were children, but watchful. Protective in a way that borders on territorial. As if the world has already tried to take too much from him and he’s calculating what it would cost him to keep her safe.
Hyori exhales softly.
“I’ve just been… busy.”
Busy with what she doesn’t say. Busy adjusting. Busy learning the rhythm of this new version of him. Busy pretending she doesn’t notice how often his attention tracks her movements in a room. Busy pretending she doesn’t like it.
“And you?” she counters, red-violet eyes steady but gentler now. “You ask like you’re in perfect condition yourself.”
There’s an unspoken tension between them—low and humming. It’s not uncomfortable. Just aware. Like both of them are testing the boundaries of something newly alive.
She steps closer before she can stop herself. Close enough to feel the heat from him. Close enough to notice how careful he is with that altered arm—how he angles it slightly away, as if protecting her from it. Or protecting himself from her reaction to it.
Her fingers twitch at her side, closes into a loose fist. She wants to reach for his hand. But she doesn’t.
“I’m fine, Caleb.” she repeats, softer—reassurance wrapped around his worry, neatly packaged with his name from her lips.
Because she knows what he’s really asking.
Are you safe?
Are you eating?
Are you sleeping?
Are you still mine to protect?
And beneath that, a quieter—
Are you slipping away from me?
Hyori's gaze flickers over him. The sharp collar, the faint tension in his jaw, the way exhaustion hides beneath composure.
She feels it then—the possessive spark in her own chest. But she swallows it down. Careful. Measured. Deliberate.
She's afraid that if she pushes too fast, if she reaches too boldly, she might fracture whatever fragile balance they’re slowly rebuilding. Or worse still, she’s afraid that she might wake up from this dream to find out that he’s still dead.
Her voice lowers.
“Don’t… look at me like that, Caleb.”
Because when he does, it makes her want to close the remaining distance. It feels like he’s measuring how much of her he has left. And she isn’t sure yet how much of him has truly come back to her.
