Of Legends and Angels - 18+
summary: You (afab!reader) are a dissillusioned war medic who never wanted this life. But you're good at what you do. There's no denying that. They call you the Angel of the Med Tent. It's not something you claim. Caleb Xia is more Legend than man. The Man Who Can't Get Shot. Well, until he does. And so it begins. ≈ 6.8k words
tags and cw: caleb x reader, soldier!caleb x medic!mc AU, war, a bit of medical horror, description of surgery, bullet removal, blood, limb loss, descriptions of war, bits of fluff, ANGST, sex, oral (f recieving), fingering, piv, creampie, 18+!!! MDNI!!!
an: the idea for this AU hit me a couple days ago and I've done nothing but research and write since. This is my first time writing anything related to war like this, so it's likely inaccurate. i genuinely couldn't figure out how to end it so sorryyyy for that if it seems sloppy. I'm proud of some parts of this and less of others if i'm being wholly honest. so yeah read with a couple grains of salt please and thank you. ANYWAY here you go. comments and rbs appreciated ^^ as always
short playlist for better reading -> here
You never wanted to be a war medic. Not really. Since you were young, you thought you'd be a pediatric nurse—scraped knees, gummy smiles, common colds, bright colors on your scrubs, and handing out stickers for bravery. Nothing like this. Here, there's sand, and blood, and screams in the dark. You're here holding hope for men who lie before you, with your shaking hands pressed against chest wounds. While bullets hiss overhead and while bombs drop in the distance, the ground below you quakes.
You've learned to dissociate. You keep moving, you become steady. Eventually your hands don't shake, and the screams don't phase you.
That's when he comes to you. You've heard a lot about him. Caleb Xia: The Man Who Can't Get Shot. The purple-eyed legend of a man, a man who practically bends the gravity around him. The man who makes men kneel before he kills them — as if they have no choice, as if the air itself buckles their knees.
Ironically he comes to you, slumped over as he's carried by two men below his station. He's got two bullet wounds in the same leg.
So much for the unshootable man.
“He wanted us to bring him to you specific. Said you were the best of the best and no one else could touch him.”
You don't mean to scowl but you do. You're not even ten minutes from your last operation and here he comes, pale with the fabric of his pants a torn and bloodied mess. You stand up, wipe your hands on your uniform and nod at an open cot as you walk towards it.
“Lay him here, carefully. I'll handle the rest. Thank you, boys.”
When they lay him down you get your first good look at him. He looks too calm for someone in his position, as if he's above the pain, but he winces just a little with every movement. His eyes are as purple as they say. Like a coastal sunset, or bruise. Widened slightly by pain.
When you cut away the ruined fabric of his cargo pants, and probe slightly, you see the two bullet wounds, clear as day. You shake your head.
“So you can get shot.” You mutter. “Looks like you're lucky, Xia. Two hits, and both missed everything vital. Either you've got a guardian angel or you really do bend luck around you.”
Caleb… laughs. “No luck, no angels, just bad aim, and a soldier who can avoid a bullet. You don't seem like you believe in luck or angels, sweetheart.”
You don't answer him. This isn't the first time a soldier has tried to be a cocky flirt in order to brave the pain.
You work on him in silence, fingers steady, the room heavy with the scent of alcohol, blood, and sweat. His leg is a mess, but fixable.
The first bullet wound is easy enough. It's got a clean entry and exit, both less than a centimeter. No major vessels are hit, and his femur is untouched and intact. It barely bleeds. You pack it with hemostatic gauze and apply pressure. He sucks in air through his teeth, just once, but his gaze never leaves your face. That is a first.
“Hurt?” You ask. Your voice is clipped and professional. You're well practiced by now. This isn't new. The blood, the gauze, the men. But something about the way he looks at you almost makes you falter. Almost.
He tilts his head. “Less when I'm lookin’ at you, angel.”
You snort. “Save that for when you don't still have a bullet in your leg. This second one's gonna hurt more.”
He laughs like it doesn't hurt to.
“Stay still.” You say it firmly and he breathes out through his nose.
“Yes ma'am. Your house, your rules doc.”
“I'm serious. This one is not nice, One wrong move and you're out of combat.”
That shuts him up. You take a bottle of vodka and hold it to his lips.
“Drink. I need you not to feel this so much.”
He looks up at you as he sips and for a moment. Your eyes lock. You turn to hide the blush on your cheeks as you pull the bottle away.
“You're gentle,” he mutters.
“Mm.”
You give him the strap to bite, place it in his mouth. You know he'll need it, but you're mildly surprised he doesn't protest.
The second wound is bad. Flashes of experiences flicker through your mind's eye as you find the bleeder and press your finger there. Crimp the vessel shut with a clamp. And with a scalpel, you begin to fish out the pesky bullet, careful not to let it migrate.
Caleb doesn’t scream or pass out as you operate, but he bites down so hard on the strap you think his teeth could break. His knuckles are white. All the while, his gaze never leaves your face, your hands, his haunting purple eyes tracking your every movement. Most soldiers at least close their eyes. He doesn’t even bother.
“Got you, bastard.” You pull it out with a wet sound.
The bullet drops in the metal tray with a clink.
“That's the worst part, I promise.” Your voice is uncharacteristically soft as you say it.
With deft movements, you clean, pack, and suture like it's nothing. Your hands are steady. His heart rate reads 120. He spits out the strap with a big huff of breath.
“I knew you were the best of the fucking best,” he slurs, “they told me I'd have to get evacced… but I've heard about you. Knew you'd fix me. Unit talks about you like you're heavensent.”
He makes direct eye contact when he says it, like a test. You ignore him, call it passing. Your face twists when you remember you can't just send him off. The wound could get infected. You have to watch for swelling, fevers and any other signs.
“You need at least a week off of that leg. If you're lucky. And for the next forty eight hours, you stay in this cot, you hear me? Legend or not, it's my job to make sure you're able to fight at all.”
He smirks.
“You… you didn't ask how I got shot, doc.” His voice is gravely and low when he says that.
“Should I? This is war. It's kind of obvious.”
You move to clean your station when suddenly his hand is around your wrist turning you back. It's not forceful, just surprising. Unexpected.
“I let them. I let them hit me.”
He lets you go.
“Yeah right.” Dammit. Your voice is uneven. He notices. Raises an eyebrow.
“Had to meet the Angel herself — see you work with my own eyes. I'm not the only ‘legend’ around here, honey.”
☆☆☆☆☆
Supervision of Caleb's recovery proves difficult. He's a predictably awful patient. He doesn't listen. Takes crutches, hobbles around, refuses pain medication longer than a sane man would. You're yelling at him within the first 18 hours.
“Xia. I told you to stay off that leg!”
“It hurts. I'm bored and need distracting.”
“By… walking on it?” You're flabbergasted. He's like a petulant child.
“I didn't know you outrank me, Doc.”
“Here?? In this tent? Yeah, I do.” You snap, but for some reason unknown to you, you soften. “Please, Caleb, just lay down. I don't want you to have any complications.”
When he finally obeys, you station yourself at his bedside between patients, arms crossed, watching him like a hawk. He grins up at you, all lazy arrogance, but there’s something else in those violet eyes—something that makes your pulse stutter.
“You’re staring, doc.”
You scoff. “I’m supervising.”
“Mmm. Like what you see?”
You roll your eyes, but your cheeks burn.
It’s infuriating.
☆☆☆☆☆
The dreams start at the 30th hour.
You wake to the sound of his voice—low, strained. You find him half-conscious, drenched in sweat, fingers clawing at the sheets like he’s trying to fight off an invisible enemy. His skin is boiling. Nightmares, fever. Infection. Shit. Shit. Shit!
“Caleb. Xia. Wake up.” You smack his face, his bicep, again and again before his eyes flicker open in terror. Until he sees you.
“Mm... Hey, Angel… it, uh, it hurts pretty bad… to be honest… Are you gonna… fix me again?”
You nurse him through the night. You use everything you can: cold compresses, antibiotics, IV fluids, constant monitoring. You don’t sleep. You talk to him all night. Tell him about how you wanted to be a pediatric nurse until war came, and you, like many other medical professionals, were deployed. How the first time you lost a soldier you were full body sick for days on end, but it was the last time it got you that hard.
Instead, you got good enough to know it would never be your fault.
You whisper for him to come back to you over and over and over.
You don't know why. You convince yourself it's professional care, due diligence. But it's more than that. A legend like him deserves to die better than this. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter. Other people do. Other people who need the hope you long realized you had to give up on.
Then he mutters something in his feverish haze.
“I thought you'd remember me.”
You were falling asleep, but not now. You shoot up.
“What was that?”
“From… high-school. You were there.”
“Xia… you're delirious…”
“No… ‘member? I Graduated… b'fore you… Linkon High.”
You freeze. You went to school there. You didn't tell him. He's unconscious again before you can probe him for answers.
Caleb’s fever breaks.
You’re slumped in a chair beside his cot, head lolling against your shoulder, when you feel fingers brush against your wrist. Your eyes snap open.
He’s awake, and he's smirking.
“You stayed.” His voice is rough, but the teasing lilt is already creeping back in.
You jerk upright, wiping the exhaustion from your face, slipping back into professionalism like armor. “Of course I stayed. You were septic, you idiot.”
He hums, watching you. “Liar.”
“Excuse me?”
“You stayed ‘cause you like me.”
You scoff, but your pulse betrays you.
“I'm sorry for not listening to you. I'll rest now.”
You breathe out a sigh of relief.
☆☆☆☆☆
After Caleb recovers, he’s relentless in finding excuses to see you—"check-ups," fake complaints, "just passing by."
One night, you're beyond exhausted, half-asleep in the med tent, and he catches you when you stumble. Instead of letting go, he holds you just a second too long, his voice uncharacteristically serious:
"You don’t sleep enough, Angel."
You freeze. "War doesn’t stop for naps, Xia."
His thumb brushes your wrist and you shiver. "Yeah, but you’re no use to anyone dead on your feet."
"Why are you even here?" You try to push him off of you without being rough.
Caleb doesn’t answer your question. Instead, his grip tightens just enough to keep you upright, his thumb tracing idle circles over the inside of your wrist. The contact is electric, infuriating.
"You never answered me," he murmurs. "About high school."
You stiffen. "You were delirious."
He shakes his head, “Uh-uh. Not really.” He mutters. “You were the library assistant. I was the guy who checked out all those books about planes.”
Finally, and suddenly, it clicks into place and you remember.
You remember him.
Back then, he was just that guy from second period shop class—quiet, always scribbling in the margins of his notebook. He’d come into the library during lunch sometimes, eyes barely meeting yours, fingers stained with grease or charcoal or both, asking for technical manuals, books on aerodynamics, flight trajectories. He’d borrow them in stacks, carry them like they were sacred text.
You remember the day he left—graduated a year ahead, vanished into the military pipeline like so many others. He never said goodbye. You never thought you'd see him again.
“You remember,” he says, softer now.
“I do,” you say.
And it’s quiet. For once, he doesn’t smirk. He just looks at you like the war outside doesn’t exist, like this blood-soaked tent could be a confessional booth in another world.
“Who would've thought we'd both be stationed here?” He whispers.
He finally pulls away when a handful of men are being carried to your tent. A skirmish. Caleb fades away into your duties.
☆☆☆☆☆
You think it’s over when he’s transferred out of your station. You think he’ll vanish again, back into the smoke and blood, into some legend retold over campfires and comms chatter.
But he doesn’t.
He writes.
Letters. Sent by hand, tucked into ration shipments, passed from soldier to soldier until they reach you.
Updates on his healing. Fragments of memory. Tiny jokes. Questions about you. Always signed the same way:
- C (not dead yet)
You don’t answer the first few. But eventually, you do.
And then? It starts. The burn.
A slow build of connection that stretches across miles and dust and time. After months of back and forth, by some miracle, you're both rotated to the same base again, just for a few days.
His name meets you again before he does. A patient in a cot muttering about how the Invincible Xia saves their asses every time.
“Xia? Caleb Xia?” You barely believe what you're hearing.
“Heard of him?”
“Something like that…” you trail off.
A couple days later when that soldier’s leaving, you call back to him.
“Hey. Tell Caleb Xia there's a medic that wants to meet the legend.”
☆☆☆☆☆
He finally finds you again.
Dust-streaked, bleeding from the knuckles, but alive. You treat him in silence, your hands steadier than your breath. Wrap his hands in bandages. No questions.
Tonight, the entire camp is tense. Rumors of a full-scale offensive begin at dawn. You both know what that means. High casualties. Maybe final goodbyes. Caleb appears at your cot just after lights-out, limping slightly, a tin of contraband instant coffee in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
"You still awake, Angel?"
You want to send him away. You should.
But instead you say, “Yeah.”
You drink coffee from metal mugs, seated on supply crates outside the tent under a bruised-purple sky. It matches his eyes.
You don’t speak for a while.
“Do you ever think about what happens if you don’t make it back?” You finally ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is hoarse.
“I used to. Not tonight, though. Not when you’re here.”
The silence between you buzzes.
When Caleb kisses you, for the first time since you met him, you too believe that he is the man that bends gravity. Because you can't pull away.
Your haphazard tent turned bunker is small, and your cot is only a little bigger than an average twin. But you drag him into it anyway by the collar of his shirt, kissing him as you stumble back, then fall onto the bed. Your breaths are heavy when you finally pull apart to breathe. His eyelashes flutter over his reddened cheeks.
“Angel,” he whispers in your ear with hot breaths, caging both sides of your head with flexing arms while you're laying flat under him. “Will you… allow me the pleasure of…taking care of you now?”
The moment stretches between you. His body above yours, shadowed by the dim light that filters through the tent wall—soft and dusty, flickering like candlelight in a church neither of you believe in anymore.
You swallow, your breath shaking. “Yes,” you whisper. It’s barely audible. But it’s enough. Caleb hears you and he sees you. He shifts just slightly, like the earth itself is tilting toward you.
His mouth meets yours again, but this time the kiss is unhurried. Like he’s reading you, memorizing the shape of your lips, the sound you make when he brushes just a little harder, then softer. One of his hands finds your cheek, thumb skimming the hollow under your eye. He exhales like he’s in awe. Like he’s been waiting for this—for you—since the beginning.
“I remember your laugh.”
Your eyes blink open.
“In high school. You laughed when I dropped all those fucking manuals. You helped me pick them up. You smiled at me. I thought it was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. You were so pretty. and… and I really never forgot you, not really. You told me once that if you ever had to go to war like I was gonna, it would kill you. That you preferred the thought of stickers to gunshots.”
“Still do,” you say, only because there's nothing else, too much, everything else to say.
He kisses your face. His lips are softer than war should allow.
“I know, Angel, I know.”
His mouth leaves your face only to trace lower—along your jaw, down your neck, lips brushing just beneath your ear. He breathes you in, inhaling the scent of you. The way he touches you it's like you're the only proof left that this isn’t just a hallucination conjured by his exhaustion and his adrenaline.
“You still sure?” he asks, voice gravel low, lips at your throat.
You nod—but he doesn’t move until you say it aloud.
“Yes.” A whisper again, but this time steadier. “Please.”
Caleb exhales against your collarbone like it’s the answer he’s been waiting for all his life. His hands—battle-worn, calloused, prayerful—slip under your shirt with careful fingers. He doesn't tug or rush, just explores, tracing the slope of your ribs, the curve of your waist. The way he looks at you when he pulls your shirt over your head—like he’s seeing something holy—makes your stomach flip.
“You’re real,” he murmurs, as if to himself, pressing a kiss just between your breasts.
You reach for his shirt in return. It’s half unbuttoned already, streaked with sweat and desert dust, but he helps you the rest of the way. His chest is hard, scarred, and warm. You run your fingers across old wounds. Some are jagged, and some are smooth—like layers in sediment.
“Still think I’m unshootable?” he says, breathless, watching your hand move across a thick scar over his ribs.
“No,” you say softly. “Just stupid. Lucky.”
That earns you a real laugh. He kisses you again, harder this time. There's more heat now, less caution. The kind of hunger that’s been simmering for months in every letter, every near-miss, every time he touched your wrist and didn’t push further.
“Ah, so you do believe in luck,” he mutters into your chest.
“Yours, yes.”
He huffs another quiet laugh, low and warm against your skin. “Good. ‘Cause I’m starting to think I used it all up just to get here.”
You want to tease him, say something clever, but your words dissolve into a gasp when he takes your nipple into his mouth—tongue flicking gently at first, then sucking, drawing a low moan from your throat. His hand cradles the other, thumb brushing over the sensitive skin in slow circles, learning you, memorizing what makes you twitch and tremble.
“Fuck,” you whisper, arching into him.
“I’ve imagined this,” he murmurs, voice rough and uneven, moving lower—lips skating across your ribs, down your stomach, leaving a trail of kisses. He may not bend the air, but you bend for him. Into every last touch. “Around when you started writing me letters back. Couldn’t sleep half the time, thinking about what you sounded like when you came. How those eyes look without the focus.”
Your face flushes, heat rushing everywhere at once.
“You imagined me?” Your voice is breathy. Dazed.
“Every goddamn night. Does that scare you?”
You shake your head. You can't bring yourself to say there were nights where you let yourself do the same, with him in your mind's eye.
His hands slip slowly beneath your waistband, the pace an unspoken request for permission. When you don't protest he touches you, pressing his calloused hands to your aching heat. When you cry out his name, when his fingers are immediately soaked with your slick, his breath shudders.
“This is mine, yeah? Just for tonight?”
“Caleb… please…”
That’s all it takes. He kisses the inside of your thigh as he pulls your pants—what’s left of them—down your legs, eyes never leaving your face. It's like that first time with him bleeding in your hands, where his eyes never left you. Except now, he wants to watch you come apart. He wants to be the one to do it.
And when his mouth replaces his fingers—hot, wet, careful at first—your back arches off the cot. He moans when he tastes you, like it surprises even him. The sound goes straight through you, and so does the way he buries his face between your legs like a man starved.
He’s good. Too good. He learns your body fast, tongue curling against your clit just right, licking in slow, reverent strokes that make your thighs tremble. When you thread your fingers into his dark hair again, tugging without meaning to, he groans and pushes in deeper—his nose brushing your pelvis, his hands anchoring your hips down like you might float away.
“Please,” you pant. “Caleb, I—”
“Let go for me, Angel,” he says, voice husky against you. “Come on. Wanna feel it. Wanna taste you fall apart.”
You do.
The orgasm crashes through you like a wave—hot and sharp and blinding. You cry out, your thighs clenching around his head, your whole body tensing as pleasure floods through your system like morphine. Caleb doesn’t stop, doesn’t flinch. He rides it out with you, licking you through it, slowing only when your gasps turn to whimpers.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are slick, his eyes blackened by his blown out pupils. He climbs up your body again, kissing your jaw, your cheek, your temple, whispering something soft between each one.
Your legs wrap around him instinctively, and you feel how hard he is against your thigh—hot and insistent even through the thick fabric of his fatigues.
“I need to feel you,” you whisper, half-lost already in the aftershocks, but it's somehow still not enough. “Please, Caleb. I want you inside me.”
He groans, forehead falling to yours. “Say that again and I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.”
“I want you inside me.”
His pants come off in a scramble, his hands shaking now, not from nerves but from restraint. He doesn’t rush, even now. He lines himself up and pauses, waiting, always waiting—for your nod, your “yes.”
You cup his cheek and say it again, firm this time. “Yes.”
He slides into you slowly, carefully, like he doesn’t want to hurt you, like he’s trying to savor every second he gets the opportunity to be inside you. You gasp at the stretch, at the pressure of him. He's bigger than anyone you've ever had, and you haven't had many, but your hungry cunt does anything it can to pull him deeper, to stretch wide around him.
He curses under his breath, buries his face in the crook of your neck. “You feel… fuck, you feel so good.”
You hold him there, arms wrapped around his back, fingers digging into scarred muscle as he starts to move. His thrusts are slow at first, deliberate—hips rolling, not pounding. He kisses your throat, your collarbone, your lips between each rhythm. You taste yourself still on his lips when he kisses you.
His pace is relentlessly taking, so slow it's torturous, it pulls quiet moans from your throat even as you try to suppress them for the sake of not being heard by the rest of the camp. Caleb's reputation would likely save you both from trouble but there's no guarantee. He fucks into you like he doesn't care.
You try to stay quiet, but it’s impossible. The drag of his cock inside you is too much, too slow, too deep. You clamp a hand over your mouth but he catches your wrist mid-motion, presses your palm down beside your head.
“Don’t,” he murmurs against your ear. “Let me hear you.”
You nod again, helpless under him, overwhelmed with the way he feels, the way he holds you there— with his body, and with the weight of everything that’s passed between you. Every night he wrote, every glance across the tent, every time he called you “Angel”. Every time that you wrote back. The first time you wrote “Caleb” instead of “Xia”, then “Dearest Caleb”.
He thrusts again, deeper now. You gasp—louder this time.
“Yeah,” he whispers, voice shaking. “That’s it. That’s what I wanted.”
Your eyes flutter, then snap open to look at him. He’s above you—disheveled, flushed, purple eyes shining in the low light, half-lidded but never looking away. He watches every expression on your face, memorizing it for the battlefield.
You arch your back and roll your hips to meet him. He groans, drops his head to your shoulder.
“I can take more, I need more,” you whisper desperately trying to buck your hips into him faster for effect.
He growls low in his throat—a sound that doesn’t belong in war, or prayer, but maybe both—and pulls out nearly all the way before driving back into you, slow and deep, grinding his hips until you cry out.
“You’re gonna ruin me,” he murmurs against your skin. “God, Angel. You already have.”
And you believe him.
You believe it in the way his voice cracks when he says your name, in the way his body trembles as he rocks into you with growing urgency, each thrust harder, faster, deeper, as if the world might end and he needs this—needs you—to tether him to the earth.
“Fuck—Caleb…” Your whisper bends into a whine.
“I know, you're gonna give me another aren't you? You're close, I can feel you tryin to milk the life out of me.”
You moan—a quiet and breathless gasp—your back arching as the heat coils tighter inside you. It’s unbearable, the way he knows and the way his voice roughens as he says it. He fucks you like he’s worshiping and destroying you at the same time—deep, smooth thrusts that grind against the spot inside you just right, over and over.
“Caleb—” you gasp, nails biting into his shoulder. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare—”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he growls, lips brushing your throat as his hips rock into you again, firmer this time, more desperate. “You gonna come for me again? Let me feel you lose it?”
His hand slides between your bodies, fingers finding your clit with practiced precision. You gasp at the touch—sharp and sensitive—and he moans low in his chest, like your reaction feeds him.
“God, you’re soaked for me,” he murmurs. “Like you were made to take me, Angel. Fuck. This—”
He cuts off with a gasp when you tighten around him, your walls fluttering with every stroke, every filthy word. His thumb circles your clit just right—tight and slow, like this isn't the first time he's had you.
“I’m gonna—fuck—Caleb, I can’t—” You twist beneath him, pleasure building too fast, too thick to hold back.
“Yes, you can. You’re gonna come again. All over my cock this time. That’s it, my Angel, please let me have it.”
You do. It crashes over you like a tidal wave—blinding and hot, your whole body shaking as your orgasm rips through you, harder than the first. You cry out his name like it’s the only word you’ve ever known, trembling as your cunt clenches tight around him, pulsing and slick and soaked.
“Shit—fuck, that’s it—” Caleb groans, burying himself deep inside you, grinding his hips as you flutter and tighten around him, over and over. “You’re gonna make me—”
He loses it.
With a broken sound, he thrusts once, twice—then comes hard, hips jerking, cock twitching deep inside you as he spills into you with a guttural groan. You feel every throb of him, every ragged breath against your neck as he rides it out—his hands gripping your hips so tight it borders on bruising. His whole body shakes with the force of it, chest heaving against yours as he pants into the hollow of your throat.
“Jesus fuck—Angel—”
It takes a long time for either of you to move. You're still trembling, your legs wrapped tight around his waist, holding him there, his cock still buried inside you, twitching with the last aftershocks.
He kisses your temple. Then your cheek. Then your lips—slow and messy, like he’s drunk on the taste of you.
“You okay?” he murmurs, voice hoarse.
You nod, dazed. “Yeah. You?”
He lets out a soft, breathless laugh. “I’ve never been better.”
He doesn’t pull out yet. He just stays there, pressed against you, forehead resting on yours, as your breaths sync in the dark. His cum begins to seep out around him, warm and wet between your thighs, but neither of you care. There’s nowhere else either of you would rather be.
His thumb traces your cheek.
“You really are my Angel,” he says, so quietly it’s almost a prayer.
You just hold him tighter.
☆☆☆☆☆
Later, when you're both cleaned and curled beneath an extra blanket in your cot, his arms around you like armor, he whispers.
"If I die out there tomorrow, or after that—"
You shake your head when you interrupt him.
"No, stop it, don't talk like that," you whisper against his neck.
"C'mon, baby, I need you to know." His thumbs rub circles against your lower back.
"You're not allowed to fucking die. You're here with me. My rules, Xia."
He's silent for a moment before he talks again, holding you even tighter.
“Okay, Doc. Then. When this is over... we’ll find somewhere better, okay? Somewhere with bookstores and sidewalks. Somewhere you can wear scrubs with cartoon pandas and hand out sticker sheets. I’ll follow you anywhere.”
You don't believe him, mostly because belief is expensive. It costs too much.
Whispers spread first. They always do.
They arrive on the backs of the wounded—half-conscious soldiers mumbling about movement to the east, drone strikes gone silent, entire platoons going dark on comms. Some speak in riddles, others in prayer. But it all amounts to the same thing.
It’s coming.
By midday, the tension hangs so thick in the air you could choke on it. You prep your tent for mass casualties—reloading morphine pens, checking defibrillators, laying out body bags at the ready. Just in case.
☆☆☆☆☆
You don’t see Caleb all day.
Not until dusk.
He shows up at the edge of your tent with his sleeves rolled up, bandages still snug on his healing hands, jaw tense. There’s dried blood down his arm—not his. His eyes find yours, and you already know what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth.
“It’s real this time,” he says quietly.
You nod.
Caleb steps into the tent like a man walking into confession. You don’t know who moves first—you or him—but the next thing you know, he’s holding your face between both hands, pressing his forehead to yours.
“I need to say this before we go,” he breathes, rough and fast, “and I need you to actually hear it, please.”
Your throat tightens. “Don’t.”
“Angel.”
“No. You don’t get to say goodbye. Not to me.”
“I have to.” His hands tremble where they hold you. “If something happens—”
You grab his collar and kiss him hard. It’s messy, desperate, all teeth and breath and no finesse. His hands slide down to your hips anchoring you both.
“I’ll come back,” he swears against your lips. “I have to. You’re the only one I wanna—.”
“Don’t promise me things you can’t keep,” you whisper. Your voice cracks. “Just promise me you’ll try.”
He nods, once. Sharp. “I always do.”
☆☆☆☆☆
The sirens don’t wail. There’s no dramatic countdown. Just the distant thud of mortar fire echoing like thunder from the hills—and then hell breaks open.
Your med tent fills by the dozen. Blood and sand coat the floor in layers. You lose track of the bodies, of time, and there's no room to grieve, or pause, or ask who’s missing.
You don’t see Caleb.
Not that night.
Not the next morning.
Not even by the second sunset.
But the whispers continue. About how one unit got cornered and somehow made it out. A single soldier took a rooftop and held until backup arrived.
They say he was smiling.
They say he moved like gravity didn’t apply.
You say nothing.
Until—
A soldier staggers in at midnight, wide-eyed and coughing up smoke. He’s burned, dazed, but conscious enough to speak.
You lean over him, adrenaline in your throat.
“Who brought you out?”
The soldier smiles faintly through cracked lips.
“Xia. Said to tell the angel he bent the air for her again.”
Your knees almost give out, but you don’t cry. You keep working.
Later, when the noise dies down and your hands finally go still, you slip outside the tent and look up at the night sky—starless, bruised purple with war, still like his eyes.
You whisper to the wind.
“You better come back, you stupid fucking legend.”
You finally let yourself cry. A few tears that blow away as they come.
☆☆☆☆☆
2 months pass, and you only know Caleb is alive because of the gossip. It takes time to get to you.
‘They say he held down the last push in the east. Had them running in horror.”
“Did you hear Xia's still alive? Those bastards must have shit for brains if they haven't killed him.”
Twice. Your whole team has to relocate twice. You're scared. What if he can't find you?
☆☆☆☆☆
Another month passes and gossip’s next to none. All you know is that too many people are dying. On both sides. People are calling it the One to One War.
No one's winning. It's a bloody draw, held together by body after body.
☆☆☆☆☆
The sky cracks open in muted gray—no thunder, no smoke—just a silence so thick your ears ring. You’re mid-suture, needle paused above a soldier’s temple, when the first orders come through: cease fire.
Around you, the med tent erupts in stunned whispers.
Another medic shoves a folded radio transcript into your gloved hand. You read, breath catching: the high command has negotiated a window. No more bullets, no more drones. Safe corridors open. Field hospitals will exchange supplies and personnel. You hardly notice the words beyond no more bullets.
Outside, the distant thud of mortars has died. You stand, unsteady, blood-caked syringe still in hand, and peer out through the tent flap. Camp suddenly looks like a ghost town—hulking vehicles stalled in the sand, soldiers frozen, unsure.
Delirious relief fills you. You drop onto the ground, pulse pounding. Across the clearing, the other med tents mirror your disbelief: gurneys abandoned, surgical kits left open. For two long minutes, no one moves.
Then the wounded continue to stir.
You’re back on your feet, adrenaline answering the void of violence with motion: triaging sprains, cleaning grazes, offering water. The fear in everyone’s eyes is still there. But so is something else, something like… hope.
You wash your hands for the first time in hours, letting the cool water chase away the metallic tang of war. Your reflection in the stainless basin startles you: dark circles, smudged camouflage, lips cracked from dehydration. You touch your face and realize the world outside has shifted while you were drowning in blood and screaming.
“Hey, Angel!” A voice calls from the tent entrance. You whirl, expecting Caleb’s grin—and instead see one of the Lieutenants, leaning on his crutch, eyes wide.
“They’re bringing in evac helicopters,” he says, voice trembling. “They said… they said we’ll swap supplies at dawn. No shooting.”
“Right,” you breathe, in disbelief still. “No shooting.”
He nods, glancing over his shoulder at the silent horizon.
“Every unit’s standing down. Rumor has it a treaty’s comin.”
And yet—Caleb isn’t here.
Your heart twists. No letter, no shadow at the tent’s edge, no purple-eyed savior bending his luck for a moment with you.
You swallow hard, letting the sudden emptiness hollow out your chest. Around you, the camp buzzes with hurried whispers of relocation plans, bed shortages, resupply manifests. But in your mind, there’s only one question: Where is he?
As dusk bleeds into night, you stay outside, arms wrapped tight against the cold wind. The last of the dust settles, and for the first time in weeks, the world feels still. You close your eyes, willing your heart to silence the questions, but they echo louder.
Did he make it through the push?
Did he follow the orders?
Or did the cease fire come too late for him?
Night blossoms in bruised purples and inky blues. A single lamp flickers by the tent flap, casting your shadow long against the sand.
And you stay there, listening for the familiar echo of his steps, the soft scrape of his boots in the sand—anything to tell you he isn’t gone.
☆☆☆☆☆
The cease-fire holds.
For three days, the camp is a flurry of movement—supply drops, medevacs, soldiers shuffling in and out like ghosts. You work until your hands cramp, until your vision blurs, until the names and faces of the wounded blur into one endless stream of pain.
You don’t sleep.
You don’t stop looking for him.
On the fourth night, you’re outside again, staring at the horizon, when you hear it—the distant hum of an engine. A single jeep rolls into camp, kicking up dust, its headlights cutting through the dark like a beacon.
Your breath catches.
The vehicle stops. The door opens.
And then...
Him.
Caleb Xia steps out, silhouetted against the headlights, and your heart stops.
He’s alive.
But something’s...
wrong.
His right arm is gone.
Just—gone.
A clean unbloodied bandage is wrapped tight around the stump, just below his shoulder, stark white against his dirt-streaked skin. His face is pale, his lips cracked, his violet eyes shadowed with exhaustion. But when he sees you—when his gaze locks onto yours across the distance—he smiles.
Like he alone has won the war.
You don’t remember moving. One second you’re frozen, the next you’re sprinting, boots kicking up sand, lungs burning. He meets you halfway, his left arm catching you around the waist as you crash into him.
“Angel,” he breathes into your hair, voice rough.
You don’t say anything. You can’t. Your hands are shaking again. You're gripping his shirt, his neck, his face just to prove he’s real.
He lets you.
When you finally pull back, your fingers brush the scarred stump, hovering just above it. Your throat is too tight to speak.
Caleb exhales, bending to press his forehead to yours. “Still in one piece. Mostly.”
You swallow hard. “What happened?”
He shrugs—or tries to. The motion is lopsided now.
“Took a hit for the team, I guess. We got hit harder than before. I had to choose between the arm and my life.” A weak smirk. “And someone ordered me not to die. I was in recovery. Off of the Field.”
You choke on something between a laugh and a sob. You almost wonder if he lost it on purpose. You wouldn't put it past him.
He’s here.
He’s alive.
And he’s discharged.
No more war. No more bullets. No more waiting for him to come back in pieces.
You drag him into the med tent before he can protest, ignoring the way the other medics stare. He’s too weak to fight you, leaning heavily against your side as you guide him to a cot.
“You’re an idiot,” you mutter.
“Yes ma'am,” he slurs, already half-asleep.
The injury is clean—surgically amputated, already healed, mostly. They’ll fit him for a prosthetic soon. But for now, he’s here. Whole enough.
Yours.
You bandage him back up, your fingers lingering on his skin. When you look up, his eyes are closed, his breathing steady.
You don’t let go of his hand.
☆☆☆☆☆
The prosthetic is sleek, military-grade, all black metal and whirring joints. Caleb hates it.
“Makes me look like a fucking cyborg,” he grumbles, flexing the mechanical fingers.
You roll your eyes. “You are a fucking cyborg.”
He scowls, but he barely means it. Sighs in relief when you kiss him.
The war is over for you both.
The letters don’t stop.
Even when you’re lying beside him, even when you can reach out and touch him whenever you want, he still writes them. He leaves them tucked under your pillow, slipped into your pockets, folded inside your books.
You keep every one.
And when the time comes—when the discharge papers are signed, when the transport planes are waiting—you pack your bags together.
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