Archive of Our Own

As a child, you used to tail after Caleb. A protrusion in his shadow, a mess of limbs clinging to his legs like a tumorous mass, a second heart beating to the rhythm of his steps. He’d tolerated you in your tempers, indulged you in your whinings, spoiled you silly. Knowing how to pull him this way and that had been simple. Flash your best pleading expression, pretend to tear up, and he’d crumble apart like a mud house made by children to be left abandoned in the sun. Brittle; yielding.

Oh, there were ups and downs, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by bedtime, either with a clumsily written note—so what I’m saying, Caleb, my gege who is so handsome and so wise and would never hold grudges, is that you’re allowed to eat my portion of dessert for tomorrow—or a can of soda left at your doorstep, followed by those hesitant footsteps you’d come to recognize so well with your ears pressed against the door. Like a code, you had thought as you slowly creaked open the door to retrieve the soda can. Still cold, the remnants of a handprint between the condensate dripping down the side, and that’s how you knew he’d been fretting for a long while as he held onto the can. Debated on whether he should knock. Debated how to best coax you.

Every hint was a code only you knew how to read. Ever tell your own little secret. Your gege, the greatest mystery in your life—and yet, the easiest mystery to unravel, you’ve realized, if given enough time. You would pop open the tab of that soda can and sip on the fizzy sweetness, and it’d be as though the drip of sugar took all your frustrations with it. A soft smile, reflected, at the bottom of the can.

Everything had been simpler, in those days.

Then Caleb died.

And suddenly, nothing could ever be as simple again. Not him, not you, not this tenuous peace brokered by the shattering of a glass over the lapel of a meticulous uniform as he looked at you calmly, Will this ease your anger?

No. Of course not. How could such bitter rage be so easily quenched? What was one broken glass worth in the face of such overwhelming despair?

But when he first took you to his home, he’d taken you by the hand and pressed your thumb to the fingerprint scanner. What’s mine is yours, he’d said, and those eyes flash in the sunlight as though begging, so let me be yours, please.

He’s horrible, no-good at all. Can’t get you to hate him, can’t get you to give up. And you’ve tried, this past year spent trying to pick out the shards of him that have shredded into you from the explosion.

You hate him, you love him, you wish you could take that perfectly formed skull of his and crack it against the ruined wall of your old house. Watch the content of his brain ooze out against red brick, and would the sight be as familiar as the broken yolk of an unsuccessful attempt at cracking an egg? Or would that too be as foreign as the stranger who stood in front of you, wearing the shed skin of your brother?

Put him under the sun, and maybe that freckled skin would melt away from the musculoskeletal frame beneath, slough off like scraping the surface of a popped blister. That flesh, explosion-singed.

But then he’d said, What if I told you, I’ve always been like this?

So. Peel away the falsities, the untruths, and what would remain?

Still your brother, you learn. Your corpse of a brother. Your fool of a brother. A liar, a cheat. Sunlit creature lurking in the shadows—brilliant, still, but no longer yours.

But what if… what if you could bring him back? Mold him to your liking?

What if, what if, what if—

He wakes, empty. Like a bottle that’s been pierced at the bottom, water leaked out of the container. Sweat, evaporated from the skin, leaving behind a tingling sensation that there had been something there, but not knowing what exactly it was. His right shoulder, aching as though his arm has been torn off at the joint. He flexes his hand, frowning at the stiffness there. An unnatural creak to the sensation, as though metal rods have been hammered through the bone. Cold, unyielding.

Yet, despite this, the rest of him is warm, doused in the shared heat of two bodies huddled under the same blanket—becaused curled into his body is… a girl. No, a woman. Just that the peaceful curves to that sleeping face makes her girlish.

Hello, stranger, he thinks, and you are—

An unknown variable on top of all the other unknowns. Breathing soft in slumber, drool forming at the corner of your mouth in a way that tugs at his heart, a swelling affection threatening to burst. The intense sensation that punches through him is an affliction.

It should feel strange; it doesn’t.

Your hands are fisted in his shirt, loathe to let go, and clench on even tighter with the movement. “Don’t go,” you slur. “Don’t leave without me.”

He won’t. How could he leave you behind, with your warmth and your peace and your sleeping face?

He likes you, he realizes. Likes the sound of your voice, soft and sleep-addled, and once upon a time, maybe he would have woken you up despite it, saying exasperatedly, my good meimei who listens to her gege very well, it’s time to get ready for school—the buzz behind his ear shorts out his thoughts, and he stares at you blankly for a while before exhaling.

Bangs a little too long, and he aches to brush them away from your closed eyes.

Right. You’re here, next to him. This isn’t the time to worry. Whatever’s out there that needs to be done, they’re not for him. Instead, he luxuriates in the presence of you next to him—a privilege that isn’t afforded to him often, he assumes, judging by how starved his body feels. The subtle arc of his back, every part of him drawn toward you by an invisible force. During the night, one of your legs must have kicked and slung over him.

Blinking slowly, he shifts toward you. Despite how near he already is to you, it doesn’t feel right to leave a bridgeable distance between. He should be even closer. Glued against you like a second layer of skin. But he… can’t?

Why not? he argues with himself, and receives no answer.

His attention returns to you. Your brows have come furrowed in your distress, and he aches to smooth it out. One hand hovering over your face but never touching. Is he allowed?

And yet, why wouldn’t he be?

The scent of clean laundry tickles his nose. It’s from the pillow. Smells like fresh clothes picked from the laundry line on a sunny day. A boy taking them off from the line to fold, a girl snatching it away. She tosses it at him so that he’s draped in the blue-white sheets like a ghost, then she giggles at his girl-made misfortune.

Her eyes, crescented.

He takes a deep breath, wondering where the image came from. The pillow his face is pressed to is a muted red, a match to your pink one. Is it you that chose this colour? Likely. He—thinks, at least—has no preference. And he gets the sense that this bedroom hasn’t always been so… sparkling. Pink flowers at the night stand, pink cat-eared headphones on the vanity. Even the air itself tinged in a sort of pink, you and your penchant for pink perfumes.

The thought rises: it would be good to die like this. If the world ends, he’d want it to end like this. Doused in the scent of clean laundry, nestled right in a bed of red and pink and grey, lying right next to your body.

This domain isn’t his, but it also feels like it should be. And the mattress is soft in another unknown way, like sinking into a warm bath. His body isn’t used to this kindness either, he can tell; another privilege.

But it shouldn’t be a privilege for you, no, because you deserve kindness. You deserve kindness, care, the best of everything that this world has to offer.

He doesn’t know how he knows this. He just does.

Just like how he’s acutely aware of the warm weight at his neck. It nags at him. Something important, maybe? He slips it out from under his collar, and it’s… an apple? The red gem in the centre glimmers. The apple charm itself is accompanied by a metal tag, engraved, When U come back.

Hm. He thumbs over the apple pendant at his throat, and pulls it forward. The metal link laces the back of his neck, and it almost feels… good like this. Like someone too short to reach him, always tugging at the necklace so that he’d be forced—no, reminded— to bow his body forward and meet their height.

This is familiar. This is right.

He looks at you again. You gave him this, didn’t you?

You did. He doesn’t remember, but he knows this. The fact is carved into him, undeniable.

He exhales slowly as he tucks the necklace back under his shirt. He wants to—reach for you.

But he can’t. The positioning is strange; why is he on the right side of the bed instead of the left? His arm hovers over you, the right one, and it wouldn’t quite feel right if he lays that right arm over your body. It would… crush you?

But why would it?

So he ignores the nagging in his brain and lays his right arm over your body. Guilt washes over him. Instinctual? Or conditioned? He bites his tongue and resists the urge to pull away; you’re sleeping, his stranger of a girl, and likely won’t be disturbed by his curiosity.

But the guilt tugs at him. For daring to approach. As though he’d taken a boulder and tossed it into a serene lake, and it had crashed through the water surface and kicked up the water and ruined the peace. He wants to hold you close, yet hates himself when he does. What’s wrong with the person who’s trained this body, what's right and wrong here?

He observes you, and the disturbance of his touch is swallowed quietly. No ripple. Engulfed, not a trace remaining. You sigh, nuzzle your head to his chest. Your breath lands over his shirt, warm and humid. He twitches, and something else also twitches—

Oh. Hm.

His eyes drift down to the telling tent nudging against your stomach. That… isn’t supposed to happen. That is not good. That is criminal intent. A sin to be cleansed.

…It does feel good, though.

He rolls his hips a little, and you grunt, rolling back against him. Action to reaction, brief lightning of pleasure flashing through his body, and god if that doesn’t feel world-ending in its own way.

But no, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. The routine should be… should be…

He pushes himself up. Prying your hand off him feels as though it’s forever, no, no, he shouldn’t be leaving you like this, but there are more urgent matters to take care of before you find out. He scampers for the bathroom, almost falling off the bed in the process. His hand swipes at your table, then his feet carry him to his destination even without a memory to lead. He breathes out heavily as he closes the door gently—quiet now, no need to wake you up—and locks it.

He shoves down his shorts and holds himself in his hand. His cock is an angry, throbbing red, already leaking at the tip. A quick squeeze has his knees almost buckling. He looks to his other hand, the colourful fabric there. He’d swiped one of your scrunchies as he went, guided by an unknown habit. He hesitates, then crumples the fabric before clutching it to his nose. It smells like… shampoo? Apples? A scent that’s yours, and he breathes it in, oddly put out by how it’s not… hm?

Something dirtier. More intimate. Pilfered from the recess of the laundry basket, maybe.

When he realizes what it is exactly it is that he wants, his face flushes. His cock drools even more into his fist. He bites his lips, frustrated with himself.

Is he that kind of person?

When it comes to you, maybe. He wouldn’t be surprised.

Regardless, there’s a problem and a solution and if the solution involves as tiny a thing as a hair band, you won’t notice. He strokes himself, quick and efficient, practically licking and snuffling at your scrunchie.

This feels… normal. Or maybe normal isn’t the right word here, because despite the lack of memories, he knows this is abnormal behaviour. Aberrant.

Habitual, maybe, is the better word. Like this is what he’s always done. Anything to prevent you from finding out. The tap opens, the sound of rushing water hiding his moans. And just as he’s beginning to fuck faster into his hand, saliva pooling in the back of his mouth as he inhales more of that scent, he fumbles for the necklace and bites the tag between his teeth. He doesn’t want to close his teeth around your scrunchie. Doesn’t want to damage it.

He takes one last huff, then comes quick, spurting into his fist as he tries to contain the mess. A spike of pain shoots up his spine; he tries to suppress the moan being drawn from his throat, and utterly fails, thank god he’d had the foresight to use the running tap as camouflage.

And now, he can finally breathe. Think normally, past the fog of desire that has him wishing he could have just lied in bed, mindlessly grind against you until he came like that, an animal chasing nothing but the heat of release. And maybe you’d have woken up to it, a sleepy smile as you offer to help him before dozing off again when he coos at you, Shhh, just go back to sleep, before he slides into you, nice and slow.

He scrubs his hands with soap. Tries to control his thoughts, wash away these imaginations along with the ejaculate. He can’t be thinking like this, defiling you in his mind so thoroughly.

You deserve better than this.

He looks himself in the mirror, hands over the sink as he holds himself up. The sight doesn’t surprise, nor does the expression. Furrowed brows, almost angry. With himself?

Yes, with himself.

Afterward, he peeks his head into the bedroom, and you’re still there, curled in on yourself like a cooked shrimp without a body to cling onto. Satisfied with how you’re sleeping, he makes his way outside to explore.

Somehow, he wanders his way to the living room. It should be the living room, at least, because there’s a sofa and TV and a casual touch to the place. A robot lays at the side, being charged. The window is open, letting in a nice warm breeze. The coffee table has a stack of engineering books on top of it, diagrams and schematics when he thumbs through the pages. Hm, he understands these concepts. These books must be his.

There’s a photo on the table too. You, kissing his cheek. One hand poised right over his jaw, a cap almost sliding off your head. And he’s leaning into it, that gravity pulling him in again. Always wanting more.

Ah, he thinks. He looks at it for a while, worrying the inside of his cheek. It comes to him in camera flashes—the college graduation when he’d made his speech, the gentle press of your lips to his cheek, soft and light, and he’d been so startled, he’d pored over the tender sensation for the rest of the week, worked himself up to the point of madness—but flickers away too quick to be caught.

The sunlight gleams from the corner of the plastic cover over the corner. The photo frame itself is meticulously clean. Cherished enough to be wiped over and over again should even the slightest dust settle over it.

He strokes the image with his fingers, pleasant numbness gathering at the tips. This is—important to him. So important.

“Caleb?!”

The frantic voice pulls him away from the photo.

You’re at the doorway, one hand over your forehead to block out the sun and eyes peeking between the gaps of your fingers. He freezes, unsure of what to say.

Is this my house or yours—an asinine question, because if it was his then it would be yours too.

You step close to him and touch your palm to his forehead.

“Are you feeling better now?” you soothe. “Let me take a look.”

Your fingers skitter down his right arm, and that doesn’t feel right. The gentle touch—he can tell, how careful you are with him—is imperceptible. He sees the contact being made, but he feels nothing. He flinches.

“You…”

He searches your face, looking for memories he doesn’t have. Bringing in the laundry, taking you out to see the planes, navigating around each other’s body in the kitchen—all of them flutter away as soon as he swipes at them.

“When I woke up this morning,” he says roughly, “I saw you lying down next to me.”

You startle. A little jump, like having been caught doing something bad. Woken up in the night to pilfer the fridge for ice cream? Your eyes shift this way and that. “...Oh,” you say softly. “Is that it?”

Is that it. It’s not such a small thing to him—but he’s not surprised that it is to you. Leave it to you to simplify such a world-ending event. You seem the type.

He remains silent as you take the photo from him, tight fingers loosening as soon as your fingers touch the frame.

It’s yours, everything in this house is yours.

“So…” he says.

And he—can’t help it. Reaches for you, wanting so deeply to hold you. The big, gaping hole in his chest feels only filled with the contact of his fingers against your temple.

Bangs are swept aside again and then gently tucked behind the ear. You really did need a haircut, it’s getting harder to see your eyes whenever your head is down like this. No studs at your ear, something about how you didn’t like wearing earrings after being certified to be a hunter even though you’d been so excited at twelve when you first pierced your ears. Braved your fear of pain for it, gripping his hand so hard that your nails marked neat little bleeding crescents into the meat of his palm. Those cuts had lasted for days, only healed toward the end of the week.

When he’d been watching you at the time, he… he wanted to be the one to do it. Could have done it for you, if you asked. Paperclip sanitized by a lighter. It'd be simple, easy, just like the thread of a needle. Let him be the only one to pierce you like that, the only one who should make you bleed.

He glides his fingers down the side of your jaw, trying to reconcile the shallow arc with the rounder face he remembers in your girlhood. He lifts your chin, and there’s no resistance in the way you raise your head. His good, obedient mei—huh?

Again, the incessant buzz sweeps away the thought, leaving him confused. That dissociation of the mental from physical, as though his body is not his to control. Too large for how small he’s feeling right now.

“Hm?” You tilt your head. Cute—painfully so.

He strokes your cheek. Wondering. “...Who are you?”

“...Caleb?”

You rear back, as though struck.

He should be… needs to. Crawl at your feet. Beg for apology with his head resting in your lap. Please forgive me. But he doesn’t. Too struck by the hurt in your tells, furrowed brow, biting lips, wounded eyes.

“Caleb…” You grip onto his arm. “You don’t remember me?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I wish I did.”

You sink your teeth into your lower lip, and it bothers him a lot, that gesture. Eventually, you grab onto his hand and seat him down on the couch, giving him a once-over with your eyes. Your gaze analyzes through every line, every curve, as though the physicality of his body has also morphed along with the mind.

He resists the urge to shift in place from the intensity of your focus, sitting with his spine ramrod straight, a leftover instinct from years of drills and barking sergeants. Was that what he was before? A soldier?

But none of it is important. The most important thing here, standing in front of him, the name he’s lacking—not his own, but yours. He asks again, “Who are you?”

“I’m…” You pause, bite your lips again, and he frowns. Why did you keep such a bad habit? It isn’t good to hurt yourself like that. Worry your lips more and you just may bleed, and that wouldn’t be good. That would be terrible.

You give him your name, voice hesitant, and it tugs at something in the back of his mind, there then gone again.

“Does that sound familiar…?”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, frustrated at his own lack.

“It’s okay,” you soothe. You’ve noticed his distress, and he doesn’t like that either. “But even if you don’t remember me, do you remember anything else? About yourself, maybe?”

He shakes his head.

“I woke up,” he says, “and I saw you. Everything else… comes and goes. Nothing stays. I’m not even sure where I am, to be honest with you.”

“You can always be honest with me,” you say.

He looks at you, eyes wide. “Yeah?”

“Of course,” you say, and your voice aches with a wistfulness that settles over him like damp rain. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Caleb.”

“...I don’t remember much, but somehow…” He touches his chest. “...I know you mean it.”

Doesn’t mean he’ll take you up on it, doesn’t mean he’ll shed the worries that have their tight grip around his neck, doesn’t mean he’ll unravel so far and let you know that he wants to steal your undergarments and beat off to it—that’s far beyond your generosity. His own sin to bear, beside.

“I know your name, but nothing else. Tell me,” he says. “Who am I? Where is this?”

“You’re Caleb,” you say, “and you’re in Skyhaven. This is your house. Does that ring any bells?”

He shakes his head again. Seeing your eyes darken makes him feel like a failure. He sighs.

“So it's more than just me,” you murmur. “You don't even remember who you are...?”

There’s an edge to your voice, worried but also… almost as though… relieved? That he hadn’t forgotten only you. That he couldn’t exist as a Caleb who did not know you, and if you were wiped from him, then his own self had to be erased too.

He knows—how to read you. As though he’s crawled into your mind himself.

You are a stranger. Nameless, unknown. A girl who has taken up residence in his big, lonely house—a girl he doesn’t remember yet knew so deeply at the same time, an understanding that soaks into the bones.

You look at him, and the distance between is too large to be breached. Your eyes, far away as though lost in the past.

“I don’t remember much,” he says, and there’s those phantom pains again along the joints of the right arm, electrical buzzing at the fingertips, “but I remember the way you made me feel.”

His voice must have sounded pleading enough, because you look at him with that wounded expression again. Longing written so deeply, it must mirror his.

And how do I make you feel? The question is so obvious in your eyes, but to his disappointment, you don’t ask. So he doesn’t reveal it. It sits between the both of you, an unasked question with its obvious answer. A secret never to be spoken aloud—I ■■■■ you. I do, I do, I do.

“I also remember you gave this to me,” he says. He hooks a finger around the metal link under the shirt and brings out the apple pendant. He reaches for your hand, finding a grounding post in how easily you let him hold your fingers. That barrier, broken.

“Were we… close like this?” he whispers.

“We…” You breathe in, the sound heavy and wet. Fish out of water, girl out of home. You temper your voice, say gently as though acting as a teacher to a schoolyard child, “What do you think, Caleb? How would you define our relationship?”

He wanted… wanted too much to encapsulate in words. How could he explain it to you, this itch under his skin to be near you? The draw of your presence, how he soaks it up, and it could never be enough, rippling edges of twin black holes swallowing each other. You devoured him, and he devoured you, and no, it’d never be enough.

You stare into his eyes, pupils wide and seeking answers he doesn’t have, words his mouth isn’t willing to say. It must be habit, because no matter how much he would like to open his mouth, his jaw remains stuck like that.

His throat tightens. At long last, he speaks. Every word hurts. “I don’t know,” he whispers. The extent of his honesty. “But when I see you…”

Leaning toward you, lips just barely brushing past the fragile shell of your ear, he rests his head in the crook of your neck.

“I just want to hold you in my arms…” He hugs you with his arms, and you’re so small within his embrace, a delicate body that’s his to care for, his to protect. He has to be so, so careful with you, lest you break under the overwhelming force of his desire. “...Like right now. Is that okay?”

You remain silent for a long while. You breathe, “Yes. Of course it’s okay, Caleb,” and it’s salvation. The answer to long-held prayers.

You bring your hands around his neck, and he has to bite to suppress the flood of gratitude threatening to pour from his mouth, thank you. Instead, he asks, “Tell me, who am I to you?”

“You're my most important person,” you say. “And I'm your most important person. Do you believe me, Caleb?”

He laughs softly. He has a feeling that when it comes to you, he’d be willing to accept anything. Lies, deceit, poisoned fruit. Whatever you held out, he’d say please and thank you, swallow it whole. Willingly.

“I do,” he says. I do, I do, I do, and these words thrum at his chest like a newly composed symphony, singing out like a bird finally untethered from the ground, wings spread open to grace the wind.

You snuggle into him. “Caleb,” you say, “I'm the only one in this world who truly knows you.”

“You're the only one who truly knows me…” he repeats, voice tinged with wonder.

“You'll never leave me. Just like... the vines that cling to a tree,” you say. “We shared a part of our lives with each other. So, we'll never be apart.”

“...I'm sorry. I want to know what you’re talking about,” he says apologetically, “but I can't remember anything.”

“It's okay if you can't remember for now. I'll always be here for you,” you coo. You tighten your hold, lips brushing against his earlobe, and it’s only habit again that has him suppressing the drawn-out moan in his chest. Instead, it comes out as a rumbling purr as he nuzzles against you. You murmur, “Just like... what you've done for me.”

It’s strange, isn’t it. He doesn’t understand the underlying intent there, but he does know that there’s a deeper meaning to your words. Almost resentful, in a way, yet soaked in so much love it’s hard to deny.

“All right,” he says, and the window in the living room suddenly crashes shut, closing the both of you into your own little world. Alone with nothing save the lingering touches of a dying breeze. The shadows on the floor meld into each other, coalescing into a single entity.

What was two has become one, distanceless. Limit, breached.

“Caleb,” you say. “Can you promise me something? From now on, you won't go anywhere else. You'll always stay by my side. Is that okay?”

Anything. I’d give you anything—as long as you keep holding me like this. He settles his left arm at your back, pulls you even closer to him. He rests his chin on your head and says, “I promise.”

On the first day, you show him around the house later as though you were the owner and he the guest. Kitchen here, living room here, and slowly but gradually, the layout reveals itself. Caleb—that’s what you called him, so it’s Caleb—has a feeling that he would have gotten around fine even without your guidance, but you look so excited at being able to escort him that he doesn’t have the heart to tell you otherwise.

He lets you pull him along by the hand, nodding when he should, humming assent when that isn’t enough, but his eyes never quite leave the crown of your head.

“This is my room. And across the hall…” You close the door to your bedroom and dart to the door opposite to it. Like an excitable little child, he thinks, a smile peeking from the corner of his mouth.

“...This is yours,” you say gently as you show him to the austere, barren bedroom. There’s no touch of life in it, not like it had been with yours. He looks it over, and something on his face must have shown, because you say, “Do you not like it?”

“It’s not that I dislike it,” he says slowly. He runs a hand over the frame of the bed, assessing the blue of the blankets. It’s nothing like the bed he’d woken up in, with its reds and pinks. Nothing so warm. He should have stayed in bed longer, the embarrassment of morning wood be damned, if he knew it would be his last chance to stay with you like that.

You look him over carefully, then smile. “I think I know,” you say. “You prefer mine, right?”

“Never said anything of the sort.”

“You totally thought it, though!” you accuse. When he doesn’t answer, you roll your eyes. “Just wait,” you say, “one of these days, I’m going to do a complete makeover of your room. We’ll bring in pink curtains, pink bed sheets, pink everything.”

“At that point, you might as well also move in and stake it as yours,” he says wryly. Taken in by habit, he raps his knuckle against your forehead.

You blink, caught-off guard. Then shake your head, as though to cast away the startle.

You put your hands on your hips, pout a little. “Maybe I will!”

“Oh? So where does that leave poor little me?”

This is familiar, this is known. The banter comes easily, words spilling out without much thought behind, like babbling on and on without really knowing what is being talked about. Useless words, but good words.

“Hm…” You think about it, then decide, “if you’re good, I’ll let you sleep at the feet of the bed.”

Like a pet dog. He would laugh, if he isn’t so acutely aware that the thought appealed to him more than it should. That if you actually offered it, he would immediately agree. Anything to get close to you.

“I’ll be good,” he says, and the words are caught on a rough edge that you don’t seem to notice.

“Exactly. You better be on your best behaviour, ge—” You stop. Mouth suddenly snaps shut. You clear your throat. “Got it?”

There had been something there. A door almost blown off the hinges. He doesn’t point out your clumsy save, nor does he call out your mistake. Instead, Caleb bows his head and says, his forehead pressed to yours, “I promise.”

You look away, face flushed. “You said it, not me,” you say. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

“Then let’s go eat,” he says gently, one hand at your back to direct you toward the kitchen, letting you have your clumsy pivot.

You’d both skipped breakfast, and there’s not much food left in the fridge. Neither of you feel like leaving the house at the moment—you frown and mutter at the suggestion, I don’t feel like going out right now, I wanna stay here with you—so takeout it is. While waiting for the food to arrive, he watches you tear apart the place looking for his peripherals. Phone, watch, everything gathered and shoved into the cardboard box.

“What was my job?”

“Not important. You’re taking time off,” you say as you slam the box shut, “so there’s no need to have access to these things. Not when you have me. And I’ll always be with you. You trust me, don’t you?”

And he folds. A house of cards, flattened by an insistent, careless hand.

“If you say so,” he agrees.

So there it goes, the clues to his past. Neatly sealed away into a cardboard box, shoved somewhere he doesn’t know, out of sight and out of mind.

When the takeout arrives, it tastes… he wouldn’t say it tastes bad. It tastes good, objectively speaking. It just doesn’t fill the gnawing hunger, especially not when he sees you chew the food. The pit of his stomach sinks; there is something entirely wrong here. Unfair, the back of his mind spits out in resentment, it shouldn’t be like this.

Then what should it be like, he argues back, and there’s only a blank silence in response.

You eat in quiet contentment, occasionally setting aside the random piece of braised pork onto his rice, and he does eat those—of course he’d eat it—sullen all the while. Upon glancing at him, you set down your chopstick.

“I know you’re strict about your diet,” you chide, and what a strange turn of event it feels like, to be pampered like this by you, “but you’re still recovering from the fever. You should eat more. Don’t make me worry.”

“Diet…?” Caleb stares down at his bowl. Sure, that may make a surface-level sense on why he’s being so restless, but. “That’s not it.”

“Then… Is it because it doesn’t taste good?”

The same tone as how you’d asked Do you not like it? when showing him to his bedroom.

“That’s not it either,” he says. His fingers twitch, restless with the need to do something, anything. “Just don’t have much of an appetite today.”

“Maybe it’s the air inside,” you say. “We can go out for dinner later. There’s a restaurant you like nearby.”

“Sure,” he says easily, except he has the feeling that it’s not the quality of food that’s irking at him either. You go back to eating, and the gums of his teeth itch. And the discontent snarling at the back of his neck like a rabid dog has him finally taking a piece of braised pork from the takeout container and setting it into your bowl.

Like this, it isn’t so bad. That gnawing ache lessens, mitigated by the way you smile in thanks before eating so obediently. He does it again with the stir-fried cabbage, and eventually, you roll your eyes and go “Ahhhh” instead so that he could place the food into your mouth directly before purposely chewing as loud as you can.

Oh, he thinks. This feels good. This feels right.

“Leave it to you to do something like this,” you complain around a mouthful of food.

“Finishing eating before you speak,” he says reflexively, fingers tipping your forehead back in gentle scolding.

You grunt, doing just that, the line of your throat bobbing as you swallow. “You’re raising me so well,” you say, “I’m worried that you’re only feeding me well for the slaughter.”

Well. Caleb blinks, considers your point. His mind flashes back to the bathroom, your scrunchie clenched in between his fist. His drool, wetting the fabric. He’d like to devour—something from you. Not what you think, likely.

He changes the subject.

“Is it always like this?” he asks as he nudges a cup of water close to you.

You take a sip. “What do you mean?”

“Being together.”

“...When we’re not called away by other obligations,” you say.

He understands. The moment is too cherished for it to be a regular occurrence. Or perhaps every moment with you is to be cherished.

“...I see,” he says, and when he picks up another piece of braised pork, you open your mouth. Bites into it from his chopsticks, complacent.

After lunch, there’s not much to do. He finds himself in the living room, mindlessly fiddling around with the pieces of a model airplane. The TV is playing in the background, some drama that you’re not paying attention to, your attention fixated on him instead as he fits the metal pieces of the frame together.

“Even without your memories,” you say, “you’re still unfairly good at this.”

“It’s about patience,” he says. “That, and reading the instructions.”

“Are you calling me impatient, Caleb Xia?” you say. “Or are you calling me illiterate?”

“Both.” His gaze flits away from the model briefly to ruffle your hair. Cute, how your nose scrunches up in annoyance. You huff and pat down the mussed strands.

“You’re lucky you’re so tall,” you threaten. “Don’t think you can do this to me otherwise.”

Caleb smiles. “It’s natural for me to be taller than you,” he says. “After all, I’m…”

He trails off. What had he been about to say?

“Because you’re older than me?” you finish.

“Yeah,” he says, focus returning to the work at hand. Not quite it, but good enough. “That.”

He slots the gears together and winds them to test their fit. His hands are big, and at first, he’d thought this sort of work wouldn’t fit him, but it came easily, manipulating the frail mechanical frame. A gentle patience, a coaxing hand—he has had too much practice not to be good with such fragile, delicate machinery…?

Something along those lines, at least.

“You don’t want to do anything else with your time?” he asks nonchalantly. “It’s a long way to dinner. Maybe we should go for a walk in the park.”

Your smile is stiff. “I like it,” you say. “Staying inside with you like this.”

“I like it too,” he admits. From the corner of his eyes, he sees you blink. Once, twice, and three times. Biting your lips again, as though to stop yourself from crying.

He wishes he could remember. He wishes he could understand how it is that he’s come to know you so well.

“We used to do this all the time when it rained,” you murmur as you lay your head on the cushion in your lap. “You with your models of planes and planets while I watched, the both of us trying to find something to occupy our time while stuck inside. Us in our own little world.”

“It’s not raining today,” Caleb says. Indeed, the sunlight from the patio door is almost too bright, irritating spikes of light at the corner of his eyes.

“But it feels like it is,” you whisper. “It feels like it’s raining every day, Caleb. And I’m being doused in the rain every time I step outside to face the world, damp whenever I come home. Why is that, Caleb?”

Caleb sets down the pieces in his hand. He seats himself next to you, patting you on the shoulder. This is what he’s meant to do, isn’t it? Comfort and coax you out of your wallowing misery. Why were you so sad? He wishes you weren’t. When you’re sad, it makes him sad too. And if you were to cry, every teardrop would feel as though it’s been bled out of him instead.

“Then we’ll stay inside. And when you want to go out into that rain, I’ll be beside you,” Caleb says, “umbrella at the ready.”

“You’re horribly irresponsible,” you say. “Always spoiling me.”

“But you grew up just fine, didn’t you?” The words slip out before he has time to analyze them. Disturbed, Caleb looks up at the ceiling, counting the speckles of sun reflected from the silver shell of the model plane. Like the scattering of stars against the backdrop of planes streaking across the night sky. No visible contrails, but read loud and clear if one knew how to decode the flickering signals.

He knew them, he thinks. These signals.

“Yeah,” you say slowly. “‘Suppose I did.”

“Come here,” he says, holding out his arms, and you release the poor, squished cushion from your grip before crawling over to him. You settle over his lap, breath tickling his neck as you rest your head on his shoulder. He closes his arms around you, and yes, this is right. Like returning an off-kilter vision to the right angle again. Finally being able to solve the puzzle that’s been nagging at him for as long as he’s lived, that one last piece missing for ages before suddenly realizing it’s always been under his nose, neat braids by day and mussed strands by evening, the wide eyes of a girl begging for the reprieve of cold soda on a hot summer day.

“Good girl,” he praises. “You listen so well.”

You laugh, joyless. “It’s funny,” you say. “You say you don’t remember, but you act the same as always.”

“It’s ingrained,” he says. “Some things always remain the same, even without the memories.” He puts your hand to his chest, and the vibrations transmit through your palm to his, a rapid thump of the heart caged beneath. “Like this,” Caleb says. “How it beats when you’re near.”

Your hand clenches into a fist over his chest, as though you’d like to strike at his sternum. Put physical rhythm to your anger and your sadness, the drumming boom of lightning as it arcs across the sky—but it too, is trying to find its way to the grounding earth. A thundering journey to home.

You understand. You wish you don’t, but you do; Caleb knows.

Your hand loosens. You pat his chest, fond and resigned and defeated.

“You’re so silly,” you say.

Caleb hums. He splays his right hand over your back, palm pressed to the protruding knobs of your spine, and bones could be so fragile, couldn’t they. One wrong move with too much strength behind the fingers and it’s a dust of calcium. And if caught in an explosion instead, it’s white shards blown sky-high. A limb gone, just like that.

“Only for you,” he says.

“You’d better,” you say.

“Of course,” he breathes. The ingratiating sun shines down on you both, and the clouds outside are rainless. He runs that unfeeling hand down the soft curve of your back, trying to reconcile image with sensation. Short, as expected; no less disappointing. “After all, you’re my most important person.”

Sunset comes quicker than either of you expect. Unless you both want only onions for dinner, which you adamantly refused, it’s off to the outside.

Before heading out, his closet becomes your playground. “Hm, not this either,” you say, tossing another article of clothing aside from the closet. He chuckles as he catches it, putting it back on the hanger before setting it aside on the bed to be hung up later. With your ire the way it is right now, if he hangs the clothes back in the closet, it’s sure to get discarded again.

You hadn’t even asked for permission to dress him up, and he wonders how many times this has happened for you to act so familiar with him. Whether it’s normal for you to treat him like a doll that’s to be tailored exactly to your liking.

Eventually, as you settle on an acceptable outfit, you shove it at him and quickly push him into the bathroom to change. If he was any slower, he had the feeling that you’d be stripping and changing him yourself. Immediately after he comes out, you drag him to your room to pick out your own outfit. You force him to stand there awkwardly as you pull out clothes after clothes to compare against him, tongue stuck out in your concentration. All that endurance, only for you to kick him out without mercy afterward, Get out now, I need to change.

“Look,” you say as you spin around in your jacket and dress, “now we’ll match.”

“That we do,” he says, and he also can’t help the matching smile to yours either as he ruffles your hair, ignoring your graceless yet endearing squawk. You duck out from under him and make your way to the drawers before pulling out a pair of knee high socks.

You inspect him. There’s a gleam in your eyes that is all too familiar, and even if he doesn’t know anything else, he knows exactly what will come after. Likely his suffering at your amusement.

He is beginning to understand how this is supposed to go.

“You know what this outfit needs?” you say mischievously. “A pair of socks to match.”

You place said socks in his hands, the thin fabric catching against the worn calluses of his hand. “And you’re giving them to me because…”

You drop yourself on the bed and kick out your legs. Smooth, clean lines against the grey duvet cover. “So you can put it on me.”

Caleb meets your eyes. You’re sitting there, expectant, and what else could he do except approach and drop to his knee like a knight of childhood fairy tales.

Princess, queen, sovereign. What would be the most apt descriptor?

Mine to serve, perhaps. A title fit for every occasion, ready to bend the knee, ready to please, tend to you hand over foot.

Literally, in this case.

He swallows. He takes one foot in hand, rubs a thumb carefully over the ankle. You breathe out a sharp exhale—ticklish, he realizes. Caleb chuckles as he carefully slides one sock on your feet, watching as the white knit pattern stretches over your skin when he pulls it up. And he can’t help himself from skimming his fingers down the back of your knee and across your calf.

You wiggle a little, admonishing breathlessly, “Caleb! Stop playing around!” Complaining, despite you being the one who asked for his handling. The other sock goes on just as easily, and when the deed is done, he feels—lightheaded, euphoric, drugged up on some sort of power trip from having done what may seem to be such a little thing, but sent his whole world into upheaval. Dressing you himself was intimate in a way that went past anything else he’s done so far. Covering you up with his touch.

And look at you, pretty as a picture.

You pout in annoyance, tiptoe to squeeze his cheeks with your hands. They used to be more delicate, right? Hm. Didn’t have those calluses that now hardened over the fingertips.

“Your face really is too good looking, dear br—” You cough and pinch harder at his face. “Who made you like this?”

Caleb blinks. “Who cares,” he says, “I’m meant to be yours.”

“Smooth-talker,” you accuse. “Bet you do this with all the girls.”

“I don’t know any other girl,” he says innocently. “You’re the first—and only—person I know.”

“You’re too good at this,” you say, and then you pinch his nose too.

“Not the nose,” he says, voice turned nasally as he huffs out, “I can’t breathe.”

“I own the air,” you say imperiously.

His reply is reflexive, “You own me too.”

And you—become flustered at that. Can dish it out, but can’t take it in. His mouth curves in a fond smile. His little idiot.

“Anything to drink?”

Caleb opens his mouth, but you’re faster.

“Lemon water,” you interrupt. You look at Caleb, and he looks at you. “You like lemon water,” you explain, “so lemon water it is.”

And you list out the order for him, rattling off a number of additions to the noodles before ending with, “And no cilantro for him, please.”

The waiter smiles and nods and leaves from your tables. Caleb leans forward. “You’re quick.”

You smile. “Of course,” you say. “I know you. What, don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that…”

As revenge, when the food comes, you shove a sprig of cilantro from your bowl into his mouth. The taste is absolutely horrid, like an amalgam of mud and soap. He pulls a face, trying to understand who in the world would invent such an evil, vile plant. You laugh, but your chopsticks stay in his mouth and he wouldn’t pull away from you, of course not, so he’s forced to swallow it, leaves and all.

He follows with drinking two cups of lemon water, grimacing at the leftover taste of the cilantro. “Ugh.”

“You could have just spit it out,” you say exasperated as you hand him a napkin.

“You fed it to me,” he says simply.

And that makes sense. Of course it does.

“Silly,” you say, then take a delicate sip from your soup spoon.

He stares. He can’t help it. He could make it so much better. Could make sure that everything that passes your lips is the best of the best. And the anger has him taking enough bites to satisfy the human condition for survival, and only that. He watches you from the corner of his eyes the entire time, how you sip your soup, how you lick your lips afterward.

You leave halfway to use the washroom, and the waiter approaches to pour more water for him.

“Your girlfriend knows you so well,” the waiter says. A nice conversation-starter, simple and easy. Unfortunately, they’re completely off the mark.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he says. “No, she’s…”

Static jumps across his temples. That electronic whirring returns, synaptic connections cut off before a coherent thought could even be spun from the mess.

“...more important than that,” he finishes lamely. My most important person.

“Oh, is that how it goes? I hadn’t noticed a ring—are you planning to propose soon?”

“That’s…” Caleb swallows, but thankfully, you return to your seat before he’s expected to keep the conversation going. The waiter winks at him as he leaves, a mouthing of Good luck, clearly under their own misconceptions.

You tug at the hem of your sleeves, smoothing out the fabric there. “Did anything happen while I was gone?”

“Not much. Called for more water,” Caleb says, and pushes the glass to you. “Hydration is important.”

You squint your eyes, but take the water and sips on it. “That it is,” you say, and leave it at that.

When it’s time for the bill, you point at his bowl, “We’ll get it to go—”

“It’s fine,” he interrupts.

You stare at him. A slight tilt of your head, angle almost non-existent if not examined carefully enough, but he notices. “Just the bill please,” you amend.

As the both of you get up from the chairs to leave, you nudge him.

“You never used to be so picky,” you say. “Is something wrong?”

“...Let’s go grocery shopping tomorrow. I can’t stand the fridge being so empty.”

You consider his words, face scrunched. His finger twitches against his leg, and you catch it. Your expression softens. “Ah,” you say. “Got it.”

Afterward, you wander the streets before the sun sets fully on Skyhaven. Due to its altitude, sunsets have always been later than down in Linkon. The thought comes to him randomly, and he accepts it as fact—just as he accepts how your lashes will droop and slow when you’re sleepy, two seconds apart in the flutter. The Asiatic apple trees are blooming, flowers spiralling as they fall and decorate the top of your head. He picks the pink petals from your hair, trying not to laugh.

It rained yesterday, but one would have never been able to know that from how dry the air is today. The only tell of that stormy night is the mild, washed-out fragrance of the apple blossoms.

“‘m tired,” you say with a yawn.

“Let’s go home,” he says, and you lead him away with a soft tug. Your hand in his, small and lovely and warm. It belongs there, and this too, feels right.

The rest of the day is spent catching up on that drama you enjoyed so much as a kid—on its thirteenth season, can anyone believe it. Caleb finds a pair of random knitting needles in the drawers and takes it upon himself to (re)learn how to use them. You giggle at him as you take picture after picture, click click click goes the shutters, “Can’t wait to show this off.”

“Show off to who?”

“Hm,” you say. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

And as he’s about to ask you more questions, your attention turns to the TV. You shout excitedly at something or other, a new twist to the already over dramatic plot point, and Caleb sighs as he keeps at his knitting project. Fingers back and forth, knit the knits, purl the purls, a continuous loop of yarn over needle. Like so many things in his life right now, a familiar unknown.

“What’re you knitting?” you ask absentmindedly as you toss a handful of popcorn in your mouth. Your head is lying on his shoulders, a comforting weight. Like an apple over a piece of paper, set down so that wind wouldn’t blow him away.

“Not sure,” he says. “A hat, maybe.”

“I never knew you liked knitting.”

“You and me both,” he says. He squints his eyes. A hat, maybe? Or a sweater. It’s a bit lumpy now—he’s either out of practice or out of memory. Both, likely.

You nestle against him on the sofa, fingers rubbing absentmindedly at his thigh. He wishes you would stop. He wishes he could tell you to stop, he wishes you would never stop. You… want something. What was it? How can he give it to you? He racks his brain, but you seem content enough in watching your soap opera that it doesn’t seem like there’s any real issues for him to resolve. And the sensation of your hand on his thigh, wandering up to his hips, a mindless roving as though to map out every contour of muscle—it’s torture. His irreverent desires are held back only with recitations of knit-purl-purl-knit. It’s as he’s cursing under his breath while fixing yet another mistake in the pattern, undoing the last stitch once again, that you suddenly push yourself off the sofa.

“I’m going to take a bath,” you announce.

He looks up at you. Whatever expression he makes is the catalyst to everything, which just goes to show why he should watch his stupid face.

“What, you want to take one with me?” You seem to take special pleasure in the way he flinches. You say slyly, “You can if you want, Caleb.”

“Is this normal too?”

“Is it?” you say innocently.

Caleb narrows his eyes. “You tell me.”

“That’s not the right thing to say,” you say. “I could say anything right now and you wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s the truth or not.”

“Then it’s up to you to decide whether it’s normal or not,” he says, then tosses back his own arrow into the fray. “So tell me, do you want me to go in with you? Because if the answer isn't a ‘no’, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

You splutter. “S-Stupid Caleb!”

“Yes, yes,” he says with a laugh, taking the slap to his shoulder, knowing he deserves it this time, “Caleb is such a jerk, a dummy, the biggest idiot you know.”

“As long as you’re aware,” you say indignantly.

“Go take your bath,” he says. “I’ll dry your hair after.”

The words slip out again, unbidden. Routine, habit, a regular service offered to only one.

You—don’t leave for the bathroom. Instead, you shuffle closer to him and tug at his sleeve. The needles stop moving. He stiffens in place, pinned down by your gaze.

You want something, and he doesn’t know if he’s prepared enough to give it without being slaughtered in the process.

“I was only kidding,” he says. His voice wavers, caught between child and man.

“But I never said no,” you say.

“That’s… not exactly right, is it?” he croaks.

After all, he… he isn’t that. Whatever he is in your eyes, definitely not one who’s privileged to that.

“You come in with me,” you insist. Stubborn as always, whenever a strange idea gets stuck in your head. “We’re both each other’s most important person,” you say. “What’s wrong with it?”

And yet no definition beyond that. ‘Most important person’—what does that even mean. Like vines that cling to a tree, you’d explained; should he coil around you tightly that you can’t breathe? Would he be permitted?

“I’ll help you if you need it,” he says, “but only that.”

You lean close. Your shadow falls over him. The buzz under his skin intensifies, pain shooting up his right arm. Every thought, strung up to be rewired.

“Scared?” you say.

And if that isn’t a challenge he’d love to take you up on.

He won’t, though. He can’t. He shakes his head.

“Please,” you say, and he breaks apart.

“Mercy?” Caleb pleads. “Can I call for mercy?”

“Nope,” you say cheerfully.

And you toss aside his needles, kick his yarn until it rolls under the coffee table, clearly hell-bent on mischief, and drag him up by the link of his necklace. “Let’s go, Caleb Xia. This dog is in need of a bath. Owner’s orders.”

“Shampoo’s about to get into my eyes,” you complain, and he could just about cry. Either that, or throw himself off from the tallen point in Skyhaven. Is it not enough that you’re forcing him to wash your hair. The both of you are in the shower stall, you sitting, him standing. Towels on, thank whatever benevolent bodhisattva is out there, because otherwise a certain insistent part of his anatomy would become even more obvious that it already is.

“Squeeze your eyes shut,” he says with a low voice. “Tilt your head, yes, just like that.”

He takes the shower head off the stand and sprays your forehead with a steady stream of water to wash away the suds. Rubs your brows with his hand to get rid of the soapy bubbles before they can drip down into your eyes.

“There,” he says. He puts the shower head back on the stand and lets the water douse the back of your hair. He runs a hand down your wet strands. Your shoulders are drawn tight, one arm pressed tightly to your side—discomforted too, but refusing to run. Water streams down your shoulders, wetting your towel. Droplets of water left on exposed skin, and despite the humidity of the shower room, his mouth is dry. “Better?”

“Mhm.”

“Aren’t I the memory loss patient here?” he says. “Why am I the one washing you instead?”

“Because I asked.”

And damned if that wasn’t reason enough. Caleb sighs as he wrings the water from your hair before slathering the conditioner at the ends of your hair. His mind runs through the schematic for different plane models, and that, at least, is working to make him soft. Enough that it isn’t too noticeable, at least. “Really, the things going on in your head…”

When he’s done with your hair—leave the conditioner for a few minutes minutes, some part his brain insists, and he’s learned to listen to that part of his mind well—you make to get up, “Okay, sit down, it’s my turn to wash your hair now—”

“No, thank you!”

After wrangling you off him—clutching at his side, one hand snaking up his back, clamouring about repaying the favour as if it would be favour and not torture—he forces you to sit down again to rinse away the conditioner from your hair.

“My body needs to be washed too,” you say mischievously. “Can you help me with that too, Caleb?”

“Any more out of you,” he threatens, “and I’m going to blast you with water on the fastest setting.”

“That hurts my skin!” you say. “Don’t be mean.”

“Then you wash off your body yourself. I’m going to face the opposite way, so you let me know when you’re done.”

You pout, but no amount of whining will move him. If he gets his hand on you… it won’t be a good night for either of you. Caleb turns the other way, staring and counting the number of tiles on the wall as he closes his hand, then opens it. Closes it, then opens it. Again and again, trying to work out the tension from his body. You didn’t understand, never understood fully the implications of what you’re asking.

When you declare you’re done, he kicks you out of the shower stall. Whatever demented idea had possessed him to be willing to remain in close proximity with you while you were both half-naked has long escaped, leaving him with only a regretful sort of resignation.

After being told off, you pout and slink off to the bathtub. Through the translucent glass of the shower stall walls, he sees a random towel thrown haphazardly into the sink—the pink one that had been wrapped around your body. He slaps a hand over his eyes, yet can’t help but peek from between the gaps anyways. It’s not as if the frosted window pane afforded him anything even resembling a clear view, but even just the strange flesh-coloured blob of your body has him swallowing.

“Hurry up!” you call. “The water’s getting cold and I’m getting pruney, Caleeeb!”

He sighs. So beholden to your whims, and for what. Who told him to be your… Hm? In any case, he scrubs down his hair and body in record time, curt efficiency in the entire routine. He exits the shower and approaches the tub. You twist your head around to appraise him.

“So fast,” you say. You narrow your eyes. “Did you wash up properly? Or do you need me—”

He leans over the side of the tub and clamps his left hand over your mouth. “Again, that’s a no,” he says firmly.

You bite at his palm, a playful nip to the sensitive, raw skin there, and he jolts.

“Just… be good for once,” he rasps. “Really now, which neighbourhood bully did you learn this temper from—”

The buzz of electricity invades his thoughts again. Erase, erase, it nags incessantly. He breaks off, clenching his jaw and fighting the urge to throw up. His mind blends up into a whirlpool of motion, parts of thought chopped up and spun through a centrifuge before being spat out, I’m Caleb, your ge—

“You okay?” you say softly. You gaze at him. The expression on your face is a mixture of concern and calculation. Worried that he’s ill, worried that he’ll remember. So easy to read.

“Nothing concrete,” he croaks. “Just a passing thought.”

“...Get in, then,” you say eventually, scooting over to leave him just enough space so that he can sit behind you. Testing him again.

Caleb sighs again. He’s been doing a lot of that tonight. Still, he perches himself over the edge, then swings himself over. The water rises up to the top, sloshes slightly before settling in.

“You’re gonna keep your towel on?”

“We’re not all like you,” he says, knocking your head. “Frivolous and impish.”

You pull your legs to your chest, hunched over in a fetal position as though trying to protect your soft, vulnerable belly. “That doesn’t sound like me,” you say innocently.

“Don’t say that with such an obvious smirk on your face. As if you could hide it even while you’re facing away from me.”

“Caleb is a big idiot after all,” you mutter.

“Sure, sure,” he says with a laugh, and it’s as if the panic that had struck him moments before hadn’t existed at all.

The bathwater is… tepid. The tub itself is large enough, at least, which means he doesn’t have to sit all cramped up as he’s done so many times before. Where, he can’t recall, only the sensation of being forced into a space too small, which means resorting to only showering more often than not. But not an issue here; the tub is big enough to fit two.

Case in point, how you’re sitting right in his lap without anything to cover up. Leaning your head back against his chest. To make it worse, the intense heat of your body feels a blight over his skin.

Holding back is its own sort of challenge; the easiest in the world, the hardest. Oh yes, he’s definitely been doing this his entire life. You’re trying something. Tempting him, trying to unravel his control—but he’s been doing this his entire life. He knows it like he knows where you’re most ticklish (the lower left ribs, right below the shifting bones). Can’t understand it; willing to tolerate and indulge, regardless.

Only, there’s no way he’d be unable to have a reaction—but you don’t seem to notice. Or if you do, you don’t seem to care enough to comment. Which is either the best or worst thing about the situation. Small mercy, but small mercies are all that’s holding his sanity together.

“This feels nice,” you say. You lay your feet on the opposite edge of the porcelain tub, ankles crossed. “We haven’t done this since we were kids.”

Kids. As if the both of you are still kids now. Caleb resists the urge to scoff. Instead, he says, “I bet you were the kid who always splashed water everywhere.”

“Ahem.” You clear your throat. “I liked to have a lot of fun, back then.”

“Rowdy,” he chides.

“Easily entertained,” you correct.

Caleb splays a hand over the back of your neck. You shiver at the sensation of his fingers wrapped around your throat, tips of his fingers touching the edge of your jaw. He could snap your neck like this and you wouldn’t even have a chance to stop him.

So defenseless. What’s he to do with you, he despairs.

“Whatever it is that goes on in your mind,” he says, “I can’t tell.”

“But you know me so well,” you say. “Can read me like an open book. Blinked my eyes and you could see through my lies. Bit my lips and you could tell I was upset.”

The words are mocking. There’s truth in them, but also resentment. They prick at him, a needled rage. He lowers his head until his forehead is pressed to the back of your head, the damp strands there. He breathes out, exhaled air flooding over your wet skin.

“You should take care of that,” you say conversationally.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” he says.

“I can feel it,” you say.

“Feel what?”

“You’re a good liar, Caleb,” you say, voice hiding a laugh that he can hear regardless, “but it’s kind of hard to deny it when I can feel it against my back. Isn’t it painful?”

“Again, no idea what you’re talking about—”

Words bitten off when you suddenly turn. Fingers swimming around the bottom of the water to fiddle with the hem of his wet towel. Tugging at it adamantly, and he has to grab your wrist to stop you from tearing it away altogether. “Can I take care of it for you? Or can you take care of it while I watch?” you say eagerly. “Either way, I’ll be obedient, I promise.”

And that’s it, that’s no good, that’s the end of the line. The thread of his patience snaps, and he surges forward to toss you over his shoulder. He rises from the tub, water dripping everywhere as he steps out. He grabs a new towel and ties it quickly around his waist as he exits the bathroom with your naked body tossed over his shoulders, and he’s trying, he really is, mind definitely not focused on the soft mounds pressed up against his shoulder blade, the entirety of your body being slick and exposed as it is. Eel-like. Decidedly not arousing, he repeats inwardly. Definitely not. Nope. Not at all.

“Hey, what are you doing?! Let me go!” you cry. You smack your fist over his back, and then, put out at not getting the reaction you want, start tugging at his towel instead.

“Don’t be like this,” Caleb begs as he tries to stop you.

You both look ridiculous. You, slung over him like a potato sack; him, trying most valiantly to keep his protection from slipping. Eventually, he’s forced into a strange waddle as the towel at his back slips, and the new exposure has you switching tactics to flicking your fingers at his rear instead.

“Wow, Caleb,” you say. You land a slap right at his rear; he jumps, not expecting the sudden stinging smack. “You have a really nice butt, you know that? Is it so firm because of your training—”

He groans. He really, really doesn’t need to hear that from you.

“Quiet,” he says, and wrangles you again to sit in the vanity mirror of your bedroom. “Don’t move from here. Be good.”

Caleb darts off to grab the hair dryer from the bathroom, wincing at the trail of water dripped along the hallway behind in his rushed escape. Clean-up comes later; you must be a shivering mess, left without even a robe.

When he returns to your bedroom, you’re not seated at the vanity where he’d left you–instead, it’s a blur of a naked body from beside the door frame as you jump for him, “Ha, got you now!”, intending to cling onto him like a koala.

Except he’d been expecting this, who did you think he is. He hasn’t lived with you for this long without knowing your exact tricks, so in the blink of an eye, he has you wrapped up like a roll in the huge towel he’d snatched from the storage closet. Sat nice and pretty and bound in front of the vanity mirror.

Expert maneuver, he congratulates himself. And he hadn’t even needed to see too much of your body to do it, eyes half-shut the entire time.

“Not fair,” you say. You shift in the tight fit of the roll, shoulders wriggling in an effort to escape before slumping over as you give up. “This is really not fair, Caleb!”

“What’s not fair is your ambush,” he says with a flick to your forehead. “Childish.”

“Hmph.”

When he starts to dry off your hair with another towel, he hears you sneeze. He sighs before gathering a blanket from the nearby bed and draping it around your shoulders. “No more acting up,” he scolds. “If you’re going to take a bath, you should do it properly.”

“Suffering from memory loss, but you’re as mean as ever.”

“I like to think of it as self-defense,” he says. “You looked about ready to maul me.”

“Did not! I was giving you a very friendly greeting!” If your hands were free, you’d be raising a fist in protest.

“Uh huh,” he says as he finishes with your hair. Dry enough, he deems. “There. Don’t stay up too late after, okay?”

“Caleb Xia is both an idiot and a scaredy-cat,” you mutter. “Bet you’re so eager to run because you want to take care of that small problem.”

Caleb coughs. He flicks your forehead again. “Don’t call it small,” he says, keeping his voice light even when there’s the tug of lust trying to deepen it into something more intentful. “That’ll hurt its feelings.”

“I’ll call it what I want—haven’t been proven otherwise, after all!”

He presses a kiss to the crown of your head, takes a deep inhale of the humid scent of your shampoo, and ignores the insistence of that small problem between his legs. He’s not an animal; he has standards. Though if you keep testing him…

Caleb smiles wryly as he unties the knot that’s been keeping you bundled up and obedient.

“And a good night to you too,” he says.

“Good night,” you grumble, because this isn’t anything like a grudge. More like a fond exasperation, he’d think.

When he leaves, he wouldn’t call it fleeing. Tactical retreat, perhaps. Yes, that had a better ring to it. The floor needs mopping up, after all.

(And if he did indeed take care of his problem in the comfort of his bedroom, any ensuing groans muffled by the tap, that’s between him and no one else.)

Sleep drags him into the unconscious, but kicks him out just as quickly. He startles awake, mind grasping onto the hurricane thoughts, a rip in time revealed from its destructive path.The intense heat of gunpowder. The suffocating darkness of Deepspace, blood splattered over a console as he clutches onto warm silver, mind travelling along that same path again, school to playground to home, hand in hand with a saviour of a girl who looks at him with empty sockets for eyes, black holes for pupils.

His right arm is twitching. Electricity flickers beneath the skin there, numbing the nerves as it travels up the spine, toward his head. It burns everything in its path, demands even more as it knocks at the skull. Caleb holds a hand to his throbbing temple, gritting his teeth as he tries to tamp down the pain.

Eventually, it stops. Signals sent out, signals lost. Sweat dots his face, gathering in a coalesced drop that slips down the jaw and lands over his neck. He pushes himself out of bed and stumbles to the floor-to-ceiling window. Draws open the curtains.

The darkness of night has already stolen over Skyhaven, but beneath the sunless sky remains an eternally awake cityscape. He stands there and looks out toward the distance, but the scenery remains as cold and distant as ever. No matter how long he looks, he can’t shake it off.

Caught between the boundary of dream and reality, he can’t quite tell if he’s truly awake. He paces the room, and the right arm that swings by his side doesn’t feel like his. No, he’s sure of it now, there’s some strange mimicry at play, because this attachment is not a part of his body. It is not his. He is not himself. He should be—kinder to you. Better for you. Not this half-man, half-machine, monstrosity. Human DNA spliced with machine code, artificial and mechanical fingers crawling over him.

A silver glint catches the corner of his eye, and it’s the necklace you’ve gifted him. There were many silvers in his life—silver insignia, silver apple-shaped beads, silver plane—but none as cherished as this one. He presses the necklace to his lips in ritual, closing his eyes. He… He needs to see you. Just to make sure that you too, aren’t an apparition.

So he opens the door—and you’re there. Standing with a pillow clutched to your front, eyes wide in startle.

You look surprised. He is too.

Relieved though, because when you look up at him with those large, pleading eyes, he can see the white of your sclera, the flecks of colour in your iris, the prickle of dark pupil. A person, not a ghost. This is no dream.

“Um.” You fiddle with your fingers. “You’re awake too?”

Caleb smiles. There’s no excuse for why you’re waiting at his door, nor does there need to be. He understands.

“Yeah. How long have you been standing there? You should have knocked,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’ll catch a cold like this.”

“Haven’t been here for long. Couldn’t sleep,” you say. “Will… Will you come sleep with me, Caleb?”

And it’s as simple as that. No other intent behind the question other than the seeking of creature comforts.

“If that’s what you need,” he says. He also needs it, but he won’t ask—so he’s grateful, then, that you take the lead. He lets you pull him by the hand toward your bedroom with its soft mattress and red and pink pillows, that very first place he’d learned in his memory loss, a cradle of civilization. His origin, next to you.

You both crawl into the bed and then lie next to each other, just like before. Your fist clenched in his shirt, head bowed and pressed to his chest. He strokes the back of your head, wondering what it is that keeps you up at night. How he could lull you to sleep—a story maybe? A lullaby? But he thinks he isn’t any good at any of those, and when he closes his eyes, he hears the distant croon of your voice in a soft song. It overlaps with the murmur of a voice, twenty-three planes, twenty-four planes, twenty-five…

“Are you still awake, Caleb?”

“Yeah. Need something from me…? Hm?” He trails off, brows furrowed as the word slips from him, the cherished syllables in an often-used nickname. He opens his mouth, trying to mouth the sounds, but only makes it as far as air quietly exhaled through barely-closed lips.

“I had a nightmare,” you whisper.

“Want to talk about it?”

“...It’s going to sound ridiculous,” you say.

“I don’t mind. I’ll take it seriously, promise.”

“I dreamt about… a kite, being blown skyward. I try to catch it, but the string it’s attached to is too frayed. Every time I caught that string, the end would split off. And it just kept splitting, splitting, splitting—”

“Breathe,” he says. “It’s okay.”

You take a deep breath.

“—It always slips past my fingers entirely. Eventually, the kite flies away. I watch it go, then I never see it again. No matter how many times the sun rises or sets, it never appears in the sky again.”

“...You never know,” he says. He lays his head over yours, trying to keep his voice as low and calm as possible. “Maybe that kite never meant to fly away like that.”

“That’s not the point,” you say. “What matters is that it’s meant to fly, so it will. Whether it wants to or not.”

And he doesn’t know how to comfort you right now. Doesn’t know how to make it better. What words is he supposed to say? How can he make it right? I’m sorry?

“What about you?”

“I…” It’s hard, wrestling the words out. Instincts hounds at him, demands that he be quiet. There’s no need to worry you, no need to reveal himself to be so vulnerable, how will you ever trust him again if he peels off his armour and reveals the soft belly of his vulnerability. “It’s nothing,” Caleb says. “Just that my head isn’t quite… right.”

A blackboard full of formulae and an eraser taken to its chalk lines. Letters and symbols roughly erased, leaving behind a white cast of residue. One look and it’s obvious that something had been written there before, but it’s impossible to make out the exact words. The delimitation between past and present blurs, and the only texts left to read are habits and routines and desires ingrained from years and years of carving chalk into board. Worn lines of time. Follow it, and it will lead to the end of a railroad, a patch of weeds. A handful of cards, but never the whole deck.

Oh, Caleb understands now. What’s written is you.

“You don’t need to remember,” you yawn, already drifting toward sleep. You snuggle closer to him, one leg slung over him again, and the full body contact has him stiffen. “You have me, right? And I’ll always be here for you.”

It’s not about remembering. He thinks he’ll love you even if he remembers nothing. It’s just imprinted in him.

“Yeah,” he says. He tightens his embrace, wanting too much to crush you, to cut you into pieces so you can be safely tucked away in his pockets, and oh god, every atom in his body vibrates in agreement, the nebulous boundaries of his body crushed into a single dense core. A little tighter, and everything will collapse under its own weight before being blown apart. Photons scattered thin in the ensuing explosion before being clawed right back.

And the cause of this supernova-gone-black hole, that ever-present gravity he orbits, is lying in his arms. His to keep, his to hold, his to cherish for the next hundred years.

A lifetime of love, in every life.

The next day, he places his toothbrush in your bathroom. It sits in the same cup as yours, innocuous yet vital. And it pleases him, how they match so well. Bought as a pair, used as a pair. Everything, shared.

You yawn as you stumble into the bathroom, still trying to blink awake, and he already has the toothbrush ready for you, toothpaste and all. There is no question of why he’s there, in your private bathroom. You’d already slept in the same bed—a conscious decision for the both of you, this time—and this is only the natural progression of things. You grunt, roughly shoving it in your mouth as you start brushing your teeth. He does the same, glancing at you the entire while. Gums itching, no relief despite the back-and-forth motion of the toothbrush.

“What’re you staring so hard for?” you mumble through the toothbrush, bumping your hip against his. “Need s’mthing from me?”

Yes. To tug the toothbrush from your fist, pry open your mouth. Let him brush your teeth for you. Let you bite on his finger instead of that plastic stem. He wanted—no, needed.

Caleb says nothing of the sort. He spits out the foam and rinses his mouth with cold water. It helps with the aching irritation, but only slightly. “No,” he says. “Just that you’ve got real bad bedhead, huh.”

You tilt your head up and look at the mirror, then make a noise of dismay, a hand flying to the lifting cowlick of your bangs. You quickly finish up with brushing your teeth before trying to pat the unruly section of hair down. “Rude,” you huff. “It’s not very nice to mention a lady’s appearance.”

“You were the one who asked. And I don’t see any lady here,” he teases. “Only a sleepy little ladybug.”

“The least you could do is compare me to a cuter animal than that,” you squawk.

“Yes, yes,” Caleb says noncommittally, batting your hand away so that he could fix your hair himself. Damp fingers run through your bangs, gently setting them into place. “Our family’s little miss is the cutest in the world, how could anyone else compare?”

You freeze in a place for a moment. Caleb stares, but then your body becomes reanimated once more. You kick his leg with a strange vehemence, “That’s right, and don’t you forget it!”, before making a speedy retreat from the bathroom.

Caleb pops his head out of the door and shouts while waving your tube of cleanser, “Hey! You haven’t even washed your face yet! Get back here!”

The noon sun shines in through the front windows of the grocery story, and its glare is even more intense than yesterday. Gentle light skids down the side of your face, the intensity thinned by the refraction from the glass.

“You wanna hop on?”

You look at the green-painted shopping cart and make a face. “At this age, who still wants to be pushed around like that by their—” You cough. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Oh, it’s embarrassing to be seen with me, is that it?”

“Exactly,” you say with a haughty raise of your chain.

“But you’ll still have to tag along,” he says cheerfully. “Otherwise, who knows what I’m going to throw in the cart.”

“If you put something in there that I don’t like, I’m going to dump an entire bundle of cilantro in there,” you mutter. “We’ll see who’s laughing when we have cilantro-filled dumplings for dinner today.”

“That’s a bit unfair. I don’t remember anything past yesterday, and to me, it seems like you’ll eat anything as long as it’s placed in front of you,” He tilts your head back with two fingers on your forehead, a playful reprimand. “Go a bit easy on me, won’t you?”

“I’ll think about it,” you declare, and then the both of you are off to the race, wandering through the aisles. For every snack you sneak into the cart, Caleb puts two more.

“Spoiling me again,” you say.

“You deserve it.”

“You always say that.”

“Do I? Must be because I meant it.”

“Caleb Xia is so dislikable,” you mutter, and he can’t help but smile in response. As if you don’t enjoy being spoiled so thoroughly.

Soon enough, the cart fills up with food. Chicken, pork, fish, pepper, potatoes. A stack of green leafy vegetables—sans cilantro—and a sack of apples in the corner, honeycrisp. These were always the ones you liked best, trust me, you said as you patted him on the arm, a proud look to your face at being able to identify his favourites. It made him laugh, it made him giddy, it made him want to take you in his arms and raise you up so he did. Held you and ignored your squirming, your breathless protests, Caleb, you suck, and the strange looks aimed from passersby.

How could one person be so utterly endearing, he doesn’t understand. Wants it regardless, your anger and your sadness and your stupidly stubborn pride.

The both of you push the full cart through the personal care section. You flit everywhere, a butterfly through the aisles. He reaches for the scented candles, reads the labels. Lavender, vanilla, evergreen. He picks on up and inhales it, and the scent thunders through him like an earthquake. An earthy, sweet smell. The scent of burnt wood, ripe apples, summer days spent chasing each other in hide-and-seek, it’s not called a win until you catch me!, even after having been found.

Caleb sets the candle down in the cart before his trembling fingers could drop it. You glance at his selection, humming noncommittal as you tap your fingers on the metal railing of the cart, “That’s a nice addition. I’ve always liked applewood.”

“Gaining approval from the home improvement committee,” he says, “seems like I’ve made the right choice.”

“Careful there. That implies I have final say over what goes on in your home,” you say. “If you’re not careful, I’ll turn the place into my very own pink, frilly dollhouse.”

“You’ll do as you wish, anyways,” he points out. “I don’t think my opinion matters much.”

“Exactly,” you say. “You’re learning.”

Just as he’s about to open his mouth to retort, his vision catches on the shelves. Even more muddy pools of unclear habits. Caleb pauses in the midst of the banter and glances at the shelves of feminine hygiene products. He stares at them, embarrassed but his attention remains oddly insistent. You tilt your head, confused.

He clears his throat. “You.. ah… are probably going to need these soon, right?”

It takes you a moment to understand. You roll your eyes as you toss a few packages into the cart. “And how do you know something like that?”

“I wasn’t sure… It’s just a thought,” Caleb says.

“Of all the things to fuss over, it’s about how my period is going to start next week,” you sigh. “Idiot.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that it’s bound to come eventually, right?” he says defensively. “Just want to make sure you have what you need.”

“Food, candles, tampons, pads,” you snort. “You really know how to tempt a girl into staying forever.”

“Yeah,” Caleb says softly. “I want you to stay forever.”

You smile as you press yourself to his side. Your head is lowered, staring at the wheel of the cart, bangs hiding your eyes from him. You reach for his hand and interlock your fingers between his.

“Me too,” you say. “I want that too.”

And it’s oddly domestic, it’s oddly sweet, a confession made in a random, lonely section of a grocery store, it just makes sense that in this normalcy is when a moment like this would happen. A sliver of domestic peace, sandwiched between two shelves of personal care products.

Navigating the kitchen for the first time since he woke up without his memory is… less difficult than he thought it would be. You hover over him as the two of you put away the groceries, meat on the bottom, fruits and vegetables in the drawers, eggs in the middle, soda cans on the top. Neat, everything where it should be.

When he picks out the pan he’s going to use, you squint at him. “Can I even trust you around an open flame?”

“If I can brush my teeth without any problems, then cooking isn’t an issue either,” he says.

“Still. Maybe you should leave it to me. I make a mean dish of roast pork,” you say, rolling up your sleeves and winking at him. “You haven’t had a taste of that yet, right?”

Caleb nudges you out of the kitchen and firmly seats you down right on the sofa. His fingers grip onto your shoulders with more strength than he realized, because you give a slight wince. He quickly loses his hold, indents of fingers left behind in the fabric of your blouse.

“Nope,” he says, patting your head in silent apology. “You can sit yourself down right here and watch your dramas. No stepping away—and definitely no interrupting Caleb’s cooking time. Let your personal chef do his thing.”

“What if you set fire to the kitchen?” There’s a genuine worry shining through your eyes as it nervously darts back and forth, what are you so scared of?

“Then you can come to my rescue and be my little firefighter,” he says, and leaves before you can begin protesting again. True to his word, the skills come without much thought. Handling knives feels natural, and the recipes rise to his mind as he moves about the kitchen. Season it like this, not too salty. Hide the bitter taste of vegetables like this, to coax sensitive taste buds into eating it.

When he’s done, he sets down the dishes in front of you. A glass of water at the side too, to make sure you stay hydrated.

“Braised chicken wings,” you say. “My favourite.”

You set aside the first wing for him, and he puts two on yours in response. He nibbles into his, watching you for your response, and seeing your eyes close in peace, hearing that content hum from your throat—it makes him lightheaded. Delirious with satisfaction, I made this happen.

“You look happier,” you say. “You love cooking that much, Caleb?”

“It’s not that,” he says. “I like…”

Watching you eat the food I make. Feeding you from my own chopsticks. As though you’re swallowing down a piece of me with it. Hearing you say, my brother’s cooking is the best, I want to eat the food my brother makes, how could anyone else’s compare? and crow about it to the moon whether you’re showing off to your friends or offering compliments in apology—

The static comes again. He bites the inside of his cheek until he feels the skin tear. The taste of blood splashes over his tongue like ripe strawberries. The sweetness of summer for a moment, again, before the insistent command comes again, Erase, delete, rewire, reboot.

Signals sent out, signals lost. Not this time, he thinks viciously.

You nudge him for a response. “Hm?”

Caleb swallows the blood in his mouth.

“...Cooking for you,” he finishes. “I like cooking for you.”

You watch him. Stare back with these dark eyes of yours, and then you say, “I’ve never been much of a cook to begin with. Even as an adult, it was hard to ever know what to do with the knives and pots and pans. And I’ve never bothered with it until I moved out during my academy years. Even now, I’m still lacking in too much experience to be wholly comfortable with handling a kitchen knife. Why is that, Caleb?”

Caleb reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind your ears. He smiles, and the decibels flatten out, no ripple in the readings. The only reprieve to be found in this prison is found when emotions are contained and excitement excised.

The easiest things in the world are also the hardest.

“...I wonder,” he murmurs.

The second night is reserved for movies. Something about how it’s always been a film you’ve wanted to watch with him, but there never being a chance. It plays in the background, but he isn’t paying much attention at all, too distracted by the feel of your head lying on his chest. The roving taps of your fingers as they skim over his ribs.

You want something again. Sated of hunger in the stomach, but remaining hungry in another way. He can tell. He can always tell.

“Caleb,” you say.

“I’m here.”

“Will you always be here?”

“If you let me.”

“I’m scared…” Your hand reaches up to hold his throat. Tilt his head back. Fingers splayed at the back of his neck, thumb balanced over the throat. A dangerous position, and even more dangerous thoughts. Your thumbnail traces over the bump of his throat, that Adam’s apple.

“When I was little,” you say, “I remember being scared that you’d gotten something stuck in your throat when this appeared. Then I realized it was only human anatomy, and that you were growing to be different from me. I didn’t like that.”

“...Why?” He can feel his throat vibrating. Your hand closes in around his neck. A gentle pressure, not enough to cut off any airway, but there’s always the potential. He can’t help the shiver that runs through him, the cradling of his life in your palm.

“Because,” you say, “I wanted to fit my shadow to yours. I wanted to be the same as you. But then you grew so tall, and your hands…” You release his throat, slide down his right arm to lace your hand with his, a palm-to-palm kiss. “...Grew so much bigger than mine. Every stride you took dwarfed mine, and I didn’t know how I could catch up if you decided to run. I still don’t.”

“I’m older than you,” Caleb says. “So that means I’ll be taller. My hands bigger. Steps wider. But even so, I’ll always be there to match my pace to yours.”

“And you did exactly that,” you say. “Walked slower so I could follow. But then you flew off the ground and nested in the branches of a tree, and I tried climbing that tree, I did, but I fell before I could reach you. Every time, I was left there with my back to the ground, staring up at the daybreak sky with the sun stinging my eyes like a warning.”

“You’re here now.” He brings up your hand and presses a kiss to the knuckles. The white edges of bone peeking out from how tight you’re holding onto him. "And I’m here too, within your reach. Doors open for you.”

“Dreams so sweet could never last,” you sigh. “Don’t you know that, Caleb? And whatever door is open today will be closed by tomorrow, because that’s just how it works. The sun will rise and the sun will set and one day, there won’t be a sunrise anymore because the sun will explode and take this planet with it. The world will end, just like that. It could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen right as the movie ends with the protagonist’s death”—right on cue, the gunshot rings out, the credits roll—”just like that.”

Sad again. A mournful symphony begins to play in the background. Caleb makes a soothing noise in the back of his throat. He wishes he could spirit you away into the perfect paradise, where the sun never sets and the day never ends. Quiet laughter and bright smile, Caleb, hurry up!

“That's nothing to be afraid of,” Caleb murmurs. “The world we live in is already in mid-explosion. So even if it comes to an end, we can always move on to the next one.”

“You don’t think I’ll believe that, do you?”

“Why not?”

You shift against him, a bitter edge to your voice as you say softly, “Because I’m an adult now. And that means these little white lies are too worn out to be effective. You should know; we’ve both grown up.”

“...All grown up, huh,” he says. “Doing grown-up things. Crossing all the lines we couldn’t before.”

“Couldn’t? Or dared not to?” You rub your fingers against his. “You have to use the right terms here; there’s a huge difference between them, Caleb.”

“How so?”

“Only one of them makes you a coward,” you whisper, “and I think I know which one applies to you.”

He can’t help the self-deprecating smile. “...Do you understand what you’re saying? What you’re asking for?”

“I’ve been asking,” you say. “For a long, long time. Ever since…” You pause. “...I found you again.”

“All grown up,” he repeats, “and yet, still as childish as ever. Still wanting to take a bath together.”

“Hm,” you say. “Would you believe me if I said it’s out of curiosity?”

“Only that?”

You scoff. “Would you dare to find out?”

He flips you over and pins your hands over your head. One-handed, the entirety of his fingers enough to circle both your wrists. You look at him, eyes wide, the slight hint of fear underneath the hesitation.

“What if I do?” he says. “If I cross that line, would you do the same?”

And not just in jest. None of this playing at want. When you’d been in that bathtub with him, he’d understood it very well. What you wanted from him was familial intimacy; what he wants is entirely different. You could act at being a tease all you like, but when it came down to it, there’s still a distance you wouldn’t dare to cross.

Like he thought: you don’t understand the consequences of what you’re demanding.

You look at him, a determined look on your face. “Prove it.”

Caleb smiles wryly. He presses his forehead to yours. The necklace sways at his throat from the motion. “Isn’t everything I do proof enough?” he whispers. “How much more do you want?”

“Everything,” you say.

“...”

He leans over and touches his lips to your ear. Teeth barely catch the tip of your earlobe. You inhale sharply, trembling beneath him, and he breathes out, “I like you.”

“...In what way?” you whisper back.

In every way.

“Does that matter so much?” he says.

“It does,” you say.

“Then…” His voice softens into a tease. “...how else can I show you?”

“Kiss me.”

He hesitates. He’s already hovering over your lips, so close yet so distant.

He’s held back for so long, he doesn’t know if he’s allowed. Whether he’d be struck down for this, as soon as he takes the first step over that line.

The easiest things in the world have always been the hardest.

“Coward,” you say.

He nips at your jaw. Hot breath dragging over delicate skin. “What did you just say?”

“All bark but no bite,” you breathe. “There’s the Caleb I remember—”

Your words are cut off as he leans in, and.

You stiffen. You turn your face away, and his lips brush against your cheek. Caleb grabs onto your chin and turns it back to him. The air is dry with the scent of a freshly-lit applewood candle, and he loves you. Of course he loves you. Even if you don’t love him back, he’ll always love you. Caleb smiles as he tweaks your nose. “Who’s the coward now?”

“...You know, Caleb, I’ve been angry at you for a long, long time,” you say. “On some level, I think I still am. But I still can’t help but forgive you. You always know exactly how to coax me—is it because you have experience, or is it because it’s Caleb that’s the one doing it?”

He closes his eyes. “..I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? It’s not as if you remember how you’ve hurt me.”

“No matter when it is or how it happened,” he says, “I never want to hurt you.”

“If you’re really sorry,” you say, “kiss me again.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Caleb says, backing off. “If you’re good.”

He lets your wrists go, and your hand immediately finds the front of his shirt, wrinkling the fabric as you grip it in your fists. “If the world is going to end soon, I want to at least have this,” you say. “Please.”

Falling from the sky, what is that sensation like? Something like this maybe, lightheaded from the change in altitude. You put your arms around his neck and there he goes, plummeting from gravity. Shot down, an arrow through the heart.

Caleb lowers his head. Lets you guide him to your mouth.

The first real kiss you both share, and it’s soft. Gentle. The warm, cradling wind as it softens the blow of that fall from the sky. Your lips press against each other, dry to the touch. There’s that electricity again, coursing through the veins. On the hunt with wide open maw; dream-eater, memory-destroyer.

It is night, and he wants you more than you will ever know.

“There,” Caleb says as he pulls back. “Is that good enough for you?”

“More,” you say, and he swoops in again, one leg poised between your thighs and the other settling on the couch. Hunched over you like a miser counting gold. The irony of this position is not lost on him, and he wonders if it’s the same for you.

Soon enough, the kisses turn from gentle to rough. Your tongue swipes at the entrance of his mouth, and he opens for you to take what you want. You suck at everything you can, his lips, his tongue, rubbing your mouth over him in whichever way you can. You kiss like a novice, and he does too, but there’ll be time to practice, time for him to put a knife into your hand and teach you the best way to carve him open.

Kissing turns to touching turns to you tugging at his necklace. “Caleb,” you say. Your eyes are watering in the dim lights. “Please.”

“I know,” Caleb says. He’ll give it to you. He’ll give you what you want, what you need, anything. He kisses you again. You breathe into him, and he takes in that hot, wet air as it burns through his throat.

“But not here,” he says. Not while on the sofa of the living, clean enough but not good enough for you. You deserve to be romanced, to be treated gently, kindly. He pulls you up from the sofa, and you immediately crawl and cling onto him, legs wrapping around his torso as you hug him like a koala. Sure, he can take it, he’s big enough to hold you with ease at it, but what’s not so easy is trying to navigate toward the bedroom while you’re trying to kiss his mouth, pecking here and licking there, begging for attention.

When he lays you on the bed—yours, the one he’d woken up in, the one he’d like to wake up in for the rest of his life, the next hundred years—you grasp onto the apple-pendant necklace. “Don’t leave,” you say.

“I won’t,” Caleb murmurs. He lowers his head to your throat, kisses his way up them. He reaches your lips, he kisses you on the mouth again.

How much is he allowed to take? How much does he dare?

You answer the question for him, tapping on his chest with your knuckles. “Shirt off,” you demand and he sighs.

“So demanding,” Caleb says. He pushes himself up, figure towering over you as he pulls his shirt up and over his torso. Your hands are around his neck immediately after, pulling him down until he’s almost crushing you.

“You look nice,” you say, a note of admiration as you tap at his sternum before scratching your nails down his chest. “All that training sure paid off.”

It’s Pavlovian, innocuous stimulus paired to trained response, look at him with those wide eyes and beg and that itself is enough to arouse. He bites back a groan as your hand trails down, finding its way to the bulge of his pants and squeezing playfully. He bucks his hips, unable to stop the instinctual chase for pleasure. “Stop,” he begs.

You blink innocently. “I don’t want to.”

Caleb exhales and you drag his hand to the button of your jeans. “You’ve taken something off,” you say, “so I should take something off too, right?”

“Is it a give-and-take situation happening right now? Is this how we’re making it work?”

“Take my pants off me,” you say. “I want you to do it.”

Caleb draws in a quick breath. He’s so hard it hurts, but what did it matter, when does it ever. “Okay,” he says. “Let me.” He tries to make quick work of your jeans, keeping his touch light, gentle, even as his instincts are jeering at him to just tear all the clothes off, is it so difficult with his strength. In the meanwhile, you’re pulling your top off, and when he tries to help you, you bat his hands away, curling in on yourself with arms crossed over stiffly in resistance, “I wanna do it myself—”

“—come on, we’re already here—”

“—Caleb,” you say. Your voice is serious. “The light is too bright.”

Caleb ruffles your hair. “Acting embarrassed now?”

“It’s too bright,” you repeat, your expression unreadable. “Dim it down.”

“So particular,” he says, rapping his knuckles on your forehead, but swing off the bed to adjust the lighting like you want. Once it’s been set to the dimmest setting, he can still make you out, thank god. Just that the definition is lower like this, eyes having to make do with less light scatter to recognize the finer details.

When he returns to you, however, you’re on him immediately. Skin everywhere, having shed everything. He can’t—doesn’t have the mental capacity—to process everything like this, the situation too quick-paced for him to memorize your body properly. “H-Hey,” he pants as you claw the waist of his pants. “Slow down!”

Your hands tug at the belt buckle, voice frustrated, “Can this stupid thing just—”

“Shhh,” he says. “Let me.”

It’s okay when he’s got his pants and boxers off that the aggrieved expression on your face disappears. He wants to laugh. Like a kid unable to peel the wrapper off a popsicle, he thinks fondly, only placated when someone else can do the job for her.

And the way you’re looking at him… That curious tilt to your head, as though evaluating him. His cock twitches under your gaze, dribbling out precum against his stomach. “Big,” you say solemnly.

Caleb swallows. “Weren’t you the one calling it a small problem before?”

“I’m serious,” you say. “Is it normal to be that big, Caleb?”

“...It works as it should. That’s enough, right?”

“Mm… And it’s also really red, even in this lighting,” you say. You crawl over him and take him into your hand, skimming your fingers down the length before rubbing at a prominent vein. He jerks, hands clenching around the sheets, and you murmur, “Interesting texture—a lot more flexible than I expected?”

Caleb grunts, “Do you really have to examine it so closely?”

“It’s not every day I get to look at one,” you say smartly. “Let alone yours, Caleb.”

“Who else are you looking at—!”

You start stroking him, and the friction creates an explosive feeling in his chest, his heart is racing so fast he’s not sure who’s really got the heart issues between the two of you. “No one else,” you say, amusement colouring your voice. “Only you. Does that make you happy?”

Slightly humiliated, he throws his head back on the mattress and slings his arm over his eyes. “A little,” he croaks.

“The stuff coming out looks so interesting,” you say. “Can I lick it off—”

“No licking!” he wheezes. Forget about coming on the spot, the thought of his cock down your throat just might make him die of an aneurysm.

“You’re such a spoilsport,” you complain. You lower your head and slant your mouth over him, a gentle kiss that turns violent as he shoves his hand into your hair to keep you there, and despite his intentions, the grip of your hand around his cock never loosens. Saliva pools over your tongue and drools into his mouth when you back off from each other, and the distance makes him whine. He surges up to suck at your mouth again, back rising against the bed.

“Hah—are you satisfied, playing around like this,” he says. “Let off already.”

“Don’t wanna,” you coo as you speed up your hand, “I want to see you come for me. Caleb always looks so good, but I bet he’d look even better when he comes.”

“N-Not gonna, don’t even think about it,” he moans, and wrestles you beneath him, strands of your hair sent fanning out. As if he’s going to let you have your way like this, don’t even think about it.

“You’re being a bully!” Your legs kick out, and the next few minutes consist of you both wrestling each other for control. He wins of course, pins you down under him. Like this, even with the hazy lighting, he can finally appreciate the view.

It dawns on him, as he looks you over, that he’s finally here. All those teenage years fueled by wet dreams and waking fantasies, the brief glances of your body through half-closed doors (entirely coincidental, promise), and he’s landed where he’s been longing for all these times.

“Now it’s my turn,” he says,

“Oh, and what’re you going to do—?” You whimper as he palms at your breast, rolling the tip between his fingers. “Don’t pinch it so hard!”

“You say that, but your face turns redder every time I pinch it,” he says smugly, and just to demonstrate, does it again.

“Idiot,” you say. “Less speech, more action, Caleb Xia.”

“But you still need—it’s too big—it’ll hurt—”

“Bragging now?”

You wrap your legs around him, grinding right against the cock slotted over your mound, slick leaking and god, the tip of him lands so far above he’s worried about how is he ever going to fit, and it hits him like a frying pan over the head. Condom, where’s the condom, of all the things to forget buying, blame it on him for being an idiot and not even considering the scenario.

“Wait,” he mutters, “not safe to go all the way like this, ‘m going to run to the nearest store—”

Seeing his panic, you laugh. You kiss the corner of his eyes. “Idiot,” you say. “It’s not an issue for me. Not anymore.”

He looks at you, brows furrowed. “What? When? How?”

For who?

You bite his ear, and not very nicely. “This is not a very sexy topic,” you say. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But—”

Dragging him down by the necklace for another kiss, you whisper, “I want you. Please?”

“At least let me get you off a few times. It won’t fit otherwise,” he says, frowning. “You need to be worked up to it.”

“I don’t want that,” you whine, “I want you in me now—”

Your voice is choked off as he starts to trail kisses down your body. Your hands fly to the back of his head, pulling at his hair, whining for him to let you off, but he ignores you in favour of parting your thighs. When he starts licking into your slit, you jerk and twitch, legs starting to kick out again. And you’re so sensitive, it takes no time at all for you to come on his tongue. A few seconds of his tongue attached to your clit and it’s enough. But even that isn’t enough to satisfy—Shh, let me do this for you—and no amount of scolding has him letting up. It’s not until he’s got you moaning incoherently and stretched out on his fingers, already on the third orgasm of the night, that you gasp as though the air’s been stolen from your lungs. “Caleb!” you sob as you tug as hair. “Stop it, I—can’t!”

“You can. I know you can. Be good and listen,” Caleb says. And when he keeps sucking at your clit, you come with a snap of your body, wetness seeping everywhere, and it keeps going and going, soaking the sheets in a helpless flood.

You pull at his hair again in punishment. “The bed’s all ruined now!”

“It’s okay,” he comforts. “I’ll clean it up later.”

“You can’t do this again in the future,” you scold.

“No promises.”

He’s definitely going to do this again.

“It’s going to kill me. I’m going to lose brain cells every time I become that stimulated and eventually I’m going to become a blithering idiot that you’ll have to take care of for the rest of your life, is that what you want?”

“Breathe,” Caleb comforts. You’ve spit the words without pause for air. For someone who’s supposedly lost brain cells, you’re stringing along complex, compound sentences just fine. How many words were in that last one? He lost count after twenty.

Caleb withdraws his fingers from your cunt—still gripping onto him, trying to massage the digits in the aftermath of an orgasm—and trails that left hand over your body, painting glistening lines from rib cage to shoulder. He kisses the corner of your eyes, licking up the tears before rubbing his thumb against your cheek affectionately to clear the tear stains. “Besides, isn’t that what I’ve already been doing?”

You make a face when he swipes his tongue over your lips in a light kiss. “That’s my mess on your lips.”

“You weren’t so picky when you were offering to lick me,” Caleb chides.

“That’s because it’s you,” you say, offended, as if the situation is completely different.

He ignores your protests in favour of kissing you again, full of the mouth this time, a soft laugh vibrating through him to you. “Silly,” he says.

“That’s you, not me.”

“Mhm,” Caleb says absentmindedly. He has much more interesting things to tend to right now, namely the slide of his length against your folds. Is the roll of your hips conscious or unconscious? You seem unaware. Complaining about being too stimulated, but body still begging for more. He raises your legs, and drags his member along, testing the entrance.

“Men and their one-track mind,” you mutter.

Caleb stills. “Should I stop?” he teases.

“Of course not!” The indignified look on your face has him chuckling again, and he loves you so much, he’s bursting with it at the seams. No programming could ever erase this. They can try and they will fail; every time, he’ll find his way back to you.

He taps the tip of your nose and says, “Then be good and let me in. You’re still so tight, it’s going to hurt.”

Even with the copious amount of preparation, as wet as you are, when he tries to insert himself inside, there’s too much resistance for any easy glide. He moans as he sinks into you, inch by inch, finally swallowed by the intense heat of your walls—maybe he’ll become the idiot instead of you, at this rate. You grunt, face scrunched by painful discomfort, and he gasps as he comes to a standstill. Not even halfway in, and already it feels like torture. When he tries to withdraw, you dig your heels into the small of his back.

“No pulling out,” you say, breathless. You pull at the apple charm of his necklace, as though tugging at the leash of a disobedient dog. “Keep going. I can take it.”

“Can’t,” he says, voice strained. “It’ll hurt you more.”

“It’s all right,” you say. “It’s okay if it hurts—it’ll be like a love bite, right? When I feel it the next day, I’ll remember you. And this. And how you made me feel, all filled up.” You rub at your mound, grinding the heel of your palm down, and he hisses at the sensation of your walls tightening around him. “I’ve got you inside me now, Caleb,” you say conspiratorially. “Don’t think you can escape my trap that easily.”

“Really, what am I supposed to do with you.” Defeated, Caleb puts his left hand to your clit and slowly circles it. It’ll help, though not by much.

“Love me,” you say. ”Cherish me. Keep me with you always.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve already been doing?” The words are repeated, said with a fond smile.

You whimper as he slides more of himself inside, slow and steady. He grits his teeth, resists the urge to slam himself inside. He can be patient—has been patient his entire life. What’s a few more minutes, a few more little eternities? When you’ve finally swallowed him to the base, he slumps over you, but doesn’t forget to pat your head in praise.

“Good job,” he rasps.

You land a scolding smack on his back. “Don’t say it like I’m a grade schooler who needs a participation ribbon.”

Your voice is equally breathless. The both of you sound like you’re all out of air, heaving for air, and his cheeks are so flushed, his face must match the same ruddy red of your own.

“Definitely not a child.” He kisses that sensitive spot along your neck. “You okay?”

“I’m okay. It barely even hurts anymore.”

“It’s over for you now. You’re never going to get me out,” he says. “I’m going to live inside you forever.”

You smile. “You make yourself sound like a parasite.”

Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s all this amounted to. A writhing, blood-borne parasite, eager to eat you from the inside out.

In lieu of a response—if he says anything else, he will become even more honest than he already has been tonight—he starts to move. You gasp as he works himself in and out of you, a pace that increases as you slowly open up to accommodate him. You’re twisting beneath him, limbs flailing as you try to hold on. One hand at his shoulder, nails digging in, and the other hand at his necklace, almost strangling him as you held the apple pendant in a tight fist. And your voice constantly in his ear, crying out demand after demand.

“Not—oh—too fast! Caleb!”

“First it was too deep, then too shallow. Not too fast, not too slow,” he sighs. “You’re so hard to please.”

“You say that but won’t let up at all!” You bite his earlobe, and he’s sure that if he’s to look in the mirror the next day, he’d find neat little teeth marks all lined up there.

“You like it too much for me to stop,” he says. “See how you tighten around me again when I go all the way? Like I’m kissing you deep inside here too…”

“Caleb, you need to shut up.” You shove the pendant in his mouth, jamming it right between the teeth. He chuckles as he bites down on the tag, the taste of metal torched over his tongue. Caleb nuzzles his head against your shoulder as he keeps twirling at the slick bud above your folds. You’re close, he can feel it. His other hand finds your lips, curls a thumb over the corner before prying your mouth open. You hiss a warning, but he presses on anyway. Slips his fingers in your mouth right as he thrusts all the way in, giving your clit a slight pinch at the same time. Just in time. Your entire body spasms as you come, teeth sinking down on his knuckles like the merciless judgement of a guillotine. Canines grind around the human bones there, breaking skin and drawing blood. He hisses at the sting, charm almost falling out of his mouth, but lets you ride out your peak the way you want, following the undulation of your body—you’re not getting away from him that easily. You suck at his fingers for a while, laving apologies with your tongue before pulling his hand away.

“Can you finish already—I’m getting sore,” you say. “Come inside already.”

You kiss his palm. Gentle, tender. He makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat and bites harder on the tags, enamel finding its purchase on the groove of those familiar words, When U come back.

“And if you’re good and listen to me”—your expression turns mischievous, a faster recovery than he’d thought; next time, he should try harder, double the effort, see how long he can get you to stay dazed and obedient without mouthing off again—“I’ll let you lick everything out of me later.”

He moans at the thought. And you press your advantage, pulling him down for a kiss. The charm passes from his mouth to yours; you put it in, so of course you can be the only one to take it out. You suck at both the charms and his tongue, unwilling to let go of either.

His throat feels clogged up. It’s hard to speak. How many years has this want been living inside him, a festering sore over his heart, weeping every time he saw you smile at him, I’m yours, I’m yours, I’ve always been yours. For as long as he’s known happiness, it’s been this way.

When he comes, it’s to the taste of your saliva: metal oxidation, the rust of blood—his blood. And your mouth is so small and sweet and soft, like biting into a ripe apple, freshly picked from the orchard. Summer winds pick up, cicadas chirp, a girl is singing as she trails behind a boy who keeps turning his head to look back, he can’t help it, but it’s all dreams of lucid reveries, he’s shaking, why is he shaking—

“Shh,” you say. “I understand. I understand now.” The warm breath lands next to his cheek. Only then does he realize he’s collapsed on top of you, gasping for air. Electricity surges over his right arm, a swarm of buzzards hissing in his ears. He works through the pain, focusing on the feel of your nails as they dig into his back.

“Go to sleep, Caleb,” you say. Your voice is harsh, as though you’re clenching your teeth. You wrap your arms around him, an iron-tight cage. “I know, even if you won’t say it.”

“Sorry,” he croaks.

“I know. I love you too.”

Then he’s cut loose, set adrift, and everything fades away.

He comes to in the dark, melted skin draped over flesh slapped over a skeletal frame. Everything, folded between the arms of a woman. Ah. He remembers. It’s you. His most important person, you’d told him, and Caleb smiles wryly. It seems like a repeat of yesterday when he’d woken up next to you. Except this time, you have crushed so tight to you that it’s hard to breathe.

The room is hot. His mouth is dry. He detangles himself from you—it’s easy, it’s hard, it hurts every single time—and fumbles for the nightstand only to realize there’s no glass of water there. Right. He’s the one who usually sets the water there. The thirst is overwhelming.

Why is that?

His face flushes, suddenly recalling what exactly happened at the end of your… nightly activity. No wonder the sheets are so clumsily made. He’d fallen asleep and left you to labour alone. Guilt pricks at him, but the thirst screams louder.

“I’ll be back,” he tells you, and even speaking hurts, vocal cords rubbed raw against each other in a sad attempt at creating sound. The pain grounds him.. He looks at you longingly, then shoves his feet into the slippers and leaves the bedroom. As he pads the dark hallway for the kitchen, he sees it. Her. That girl with her empty eye sockets and black holes for pupils.

She’s haunting him. Stay too long in the dark, and she’ll stand right there, waving at him. Mouthing something he can’t quite make out. Two syllables, same sound but different tone, flickering in rapid repetition. A phantom sensation tugging at his right hand and begging, you’re taller, your hands bigger, you steps wider, but you’ll take me with you, right? You won’t leave me behind?

He looks down toward the right arm. Nothing there that’s his own.

He pours water from the pitcher with the right, closes the fridge with the left. Water slips down his throat, desert oasis, paradise.

The light of a sickle moon bears down on him from the kitchen window. Look outward and there it is again, a city built atop clouds, islands and islands strung together like metal links on a necklace. The sunlight is brighter here, and the moonlight is too. Search planes trail overhead, invisible to all but those who can decipher their blinking lights that could be mistaken for satellites or stars. But stars are stationary. Satellites don’t blink.

She’s right. The world may explode tomorrow, who’s to know.

The question in an open hand, the answer in a closed one. A boy’s fist around a girl’s hand around an apple pendant, neither willing to let go. Promises kept, promises broken. Untold confessions lying at their feet, When U come back, you’re my most important person, I’m your most important person, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Caleb heads back toward the bedroom, a glass of water in hand. There are no lights to guide him, only habit, and the darkness notches against his neck like the barrel of a gun. Stifling and strange. He rubs the back of his neck. Arms wrap around him from behind. “Where’d you go?”

Caleb takes a sharp breath. The glass slips from his hand. The woman hugging him tightens her hold around him. The heat of her flesh a brand.

“Oh,” you say. “Your Evol sure comes in handy, Caleb.”

Your voice is toneless, so Caleb can’t be sure whether he’s standing in dream or reality. But does it matter? Eden is like that, a blur between.

He picks up the glass that’s levitating in air. The air simmers as gravity returns to normal. He turns to you. In the dark, he sees nothing. Not you, not the girl. There is nothing save the breathing of two,

“I was thirsty,” he says. “Are you?”

“Always,” you say.

He holds out the water. You take it.

Caleb wishes the lights were on. He wants to watch you drink from the same cup that’s also touched his lips. See your throat move as you swallow the water. How you take what is given to you from his hand. The only way from him to discern your relative position to him is the sound of your breathing in his ears. The swallow of water.

“You know, Caleb,” you say, “this house was once like a prison to me.”

“…Is that still the case?”

“I think so, yes, but not for the reason you might think.” You pause for a moment, and the squeak of skin against glass means you’re running your finger against the top of the cup. The rim, saliva-coated. “Because you’re here now. Also trapped in the same way. When the two of us are here together, that means it’s more than just a prison.”

“What is it instead, then?”

“A paradise,” you say. “A beautiful paradise for two.”

He remembers: I love you too.

There’s a shattering sound in the distance. Far away, in a direction opposite of the bedroom, so he’s less worried about you stepping over the broken glass shards. Tableware can be replaced, but infected limbs will swell and rot and fall to decay under the tree. You hug him again, this time from the front, and he knows what you want. What you need. He picks you up and settles you in the crook of his arm. You wrap your hands around his neck. Thumbs, poised over his Adam’s apple.

Time measures in heartbeats. One then two. One then two. The reverberation of twin sounds between two bodies.

You let go. You sigh. You sound tired.

You touch your cheek to his and he thinks he is going to die anyways.

“...Come back to bed with me, Caleb?”

“I will.”

Gege, since there’s so many monsters outside, will the world end tomorrow?

There's no reason to be scared of the end of the world. Where do you want to play today? Let’s go together.

...The amusement park!

The amusement park is all laughter and smiles and cotton candy clouds swirling in the sky. Gates swung wide open. The sun is shining. There is no rain.

“Hold still,” you say, standing on your tiptoes to try and force a puppy-eared headband onto Caleb’s head. He’s freakishly tall, so of course you can’t reach him, even on tiptoes—but when you pout, Caleb sighs and dips his head.

“Good boy. There you go,” you say as you shove the headband on. “You look perfect!”

“And what are you supposed to be,” Caleb says, tapping your nose.

“A Deepspace Hunter, of course,” you say smartly.

“And if that’s the case, what am I?”

You dodge the question. “A Deepspace Hunter’s sidekick,” you say, patting his hand. “My little tail.”

He shadows you, just like how you shadowed him in childhood. Somehow though, you still have the feeling that you’re the one doing the chasing. You ignore the gentle ache of your body, a leftover secret from last night, and hide every bruise with long sleeves and wide pants. Especially the mark at the arm—it had been risky enough, even with the dim lighting of your bedroom.

You spend the rest of the day dragging him around to all the rides, and like that, the day passes. Far too fast for you, blurred past like the scenery on a rollercoaster. The sun remains a blood orange in the distance, but, even in Skyhaven, will set. Dusk sets the sky alight in wandering wisps of purple-orange; any darker, and it would remind you of Caleb’s eyes.

You both rush for the skytrain and make it just in time to take a seat in the last row, the both of you smiling ear to ear as you glance at each other. “Made it,” you say.

“Just as planned,” he says.

As the wheels begin to rumble in their movement, you glance at your brother. The scenery outside.

Clouds pass, planes pass, and time passes too. Three days. The park will open to close, the sun will rise to set, the plane will land only to leave. Far beyond, the command centre of the Farspace Fleet juts into the sky like an ugly needle. The highest point on the main island, the bane of your existence.

It’ll always come back to land, you brother always insisted, but you’re not sure this time. One explosion, and that plane may land, but only as broken metal bits flung across the earth.

You’re not sure if you have the strength to collect all those bits. Nor the skills to piece them back together. You’ve never been any good at things like that, not like Caleb and his clever mind and his dexterous hands.

All you have is a chip in your arm. An understanding. The same electricity that runs through him is in you too. It makes you jolt with surprise, hiss with pain, clench your teeth at how it burns you from the inside out, ah, ge, so this is what it’s like to fit into your shoes.

And despite all that, still nothing of import. Not to Caleb, your capable, kind brother. Your stupid, stubborn, dirty liar and cheat of a brother.

You yawn, and Caleb pats his shoulder. “Wanna take a nap here?”

“No one wants to waste time sleeping in the amusement park, Caleb.” Still, you lean against him, counting his heartbeat like counting planes. Whatever planes outside are passenger ones; you’d recognize those terrifying Fleet models from a mile away, craned as your neck has been this whole day for them.

“Why’s that?” His voice sounds amused.

“It’s such a…” You yawn again, and he strokes your head. “...happy place, after all. Have to spend all the time you can awake, not asleep.”

“In a happy place like this,” Caleb says, “doesn’t it feel like a dream? And I don’t think it’s a waste of time to sleep in a dream.”

You hold up your pinky. “Only if you promise you’ll still be here when I wake up.”

He hooks his pinky around yours. “I promise.”

“If you break it, you’ll turn into a dog,” you warn.

He ruffles your hair. “So I won’t.”

Liar. Cheat. He’ll wring your heart out until there’s no blood left.

Still, you forgive him. Besides, he’s already got the ears to match. That’s punishment enough.

Caleb rubs tender circles into the inner wrist of your hand. You close your eyes. Slow your breathing. What comes tomorrow can be dealt with tomorrow.

You wake only when there’s a breeze that streams past your face. The dusk is still dusk, and you’re being cradled to your brother’s chest as he carries you in his arms, that ridiculous plush apple bag right in front of your face. You glance up, and the puppy-eared headband is there too.

You pull his necklace, blushing at how the passer-bys are giving the both of you side-eyed glances. “Let me down. I can walk by myself.”

Caleb sighs, “Ah, but you were sleeping so well.”

He’s so ridiculous. You can’t stand him.

He sets you down on a bench on the sidewalk. You pat the spot next to you, “Let’s sit here for a bit.”

“Sure,” he says easily.

You roll your shoulders, joints waking up from their own nap. Behind you, the castle towers cast elongated shadows side by side that remind you of prison bars. Petals float down, landing in your palm. Even here, there are crabapple trees. Ironic, how you’re back in this same surroundings again, blossoming trees and all. The only thing left to set the scenery would be a rainstorm, but that’s already brewing around the Fleet’s command centre. You look up at the sky. Nothing—yet.

Caleb reaches out and touches the corner of your lips “Why do you look so unhappy?” he whispers.

“Because,” you say, “This sweet dream will close its doors soon.”

“The park?” Caleb smiles. “It’s okay. It’ll be open again tomorrow. We can come back.”

And sitting beneath these blooming Asiatic apple trees, you’re struck by the futility of it all. The mild fragrance from the apple blossoms have already been washed out by the rain that tore over Skyhaven days before. The branches are more barren than you remember, wilting expedited by the stormy winds. Petals, shaken off like flower rain.

Nothing ever lasts. Not you, not him, not the apple blossoms and certainly not this secret world. Everything will die eventually. Washed away by the rain. Either that, or collapse in on itself, supernova to black hole.

Caleb, you want to ask, who are you?

Strip your brother of his memories, and is he still your brother? Without blood, what physical proof remains? You don’t know. All you know is the insistent tug of your heart calling out to him, to cage him within your aching arms, love him, protect him, collar him and keep him beside you—always.

“The Asiatic apple trees are blooming,” you say.

“They are.” Caleb puts a hand over your head, as though to shield you from the falling petals. “We should move somewhere else. There’s too many flowers here.”

You tug his hand down.

“It’s okay. I like them,” you say softly.

He frowns. “But didn’t you say a few days ago that…”

He trails off. You smile helplessly.

“When did you remember everything?” you say.

“...Ah,” Caleb realizes. “You lied to me.”

“Only a little. To be honest, though, it was your own admission that confirmed it,” you say. You pat his cheek. “My brother’s the best liar I know, you see, and I only learn from the best.”

Caleb exhales. His gaze never leaves your face, and it’s good, being in the centre of his attention like this. You could almost believe it, this paradise for two.

“I wanted to keep you safe,” you say. “Away from the Fleet.”

“The Fleet is the only source of power I have right now,” he says gently. “And it’s only with their authority that I have a chance of protecting you.”

“I wasn’t the one who died, Caleb,” you say. “I’ve never died.”

His eyes are dark as they look at you. “Like you say.”

“...Who am I to you, Caleb? Do you even care for me at all?”

“After what happened last night, how could you ask me that?”

“And what did happen?” you say. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“You’re being cruel.”

“Just like how you’ve been cruel to me.”

“...”

“Tell me the truth, please. For once.” Your voice is quiet, but Caleb flinches. Tenses as though you’ve become his commanding officer, a foot soldier being sent on a suicide mission.

And he looks at you like he’s throwing himself over a cluster bomb—straight posture, eye-to-eye, death ahead but braved anyways.

“I’ve wanted you ever since I was ten.” He sounds broken, ragged. Truth tumbling out his mouth like fallen glass, shards scattered over wooden flooring. “I’ve wanted you as a child and I’ve wanted you as a man. I wanted you in dimensions you don’t even know, time and space and more than, in front of me or at the edge of the universe, past and present and future. Forever. Always. The origin of my beginning is here by your side and I’ll die here too. I was made for you, did you know?”

Your hand reaches for his face. He closes his eyes and submits to your touch.

“You love me that much, Caleb?” you murmur.

Caleb makes a raw, vulnerable noise in the back of his throat. A soft, defeated laugh. “What do you think, little idiot?”

“I don’t know,” you say. “Just that you’re always the first to find me. Why is that?”

Caleb smiles, but doesn’t answer. “When I’m with you,” Caleb says, “I feel like I can do anything. Be anyone.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” you say. “I only want Caleb. My gege—the most important person in my life.”

Your hands find his, and intertwining the both of your fingers together is natural. Perfect.

“Caleb,” you say. “Can you kiss me?”

He does. He kisses you like it’s the end of the world, and nothing, not even the buzzing in the back of your mind, could erase the magic of the moment. Petals slowing drifting past, scentless as they touch your ears but the only thing in your mind is Caleb, Caleb, Caleb—

You’re drowning. Breaking apart from him is like coming up for air.

You look up. Sunset sweeps over the sky with a severe brush, and what used to orange is almost entirely violet, and ah, there they are. Dots of black in the sky, darkness come to invade. Another person sporadically walks past the corner of your eyes, understanding nothing. Too busy with their lives to notice the collapse of yours.

A drop of water hits the tip of your nose. You feel your heart boom in your chest, about to explode. A programmed scalpel incises through your nerves, and with it, the pain you’ve been holding back floods over you. Erase. Organize. Reboot.

You gasp, and just as you’re about to fall, Caleb catches you.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he says urgently.

Your head—feels too heavy for your body. You clutch onto your right arm.

“Caleb,” you rasp. “Let’s go home, okay?”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.” He pries your hand off your arm, rolls up the fluttering sleeves. “This mark… Where did it come from?”

You shake your head. Pain spears through you again. “Let’s go,” you say again. “Anywhere is fine…”

The buzz returns. Erase. Organize. Reboot.

“...The chip?” he says.

Ah, he found out. The despair of his voice… That is its own kind of pain. A lovelier one.

The chip fizzles. Punishes you for your joy, your rage, your fear. Electricity courses through you, and you slip out just like that, darting out of the time stream. Everything stands still in a blue shimmer, raindrops held off by gravity. He’s shaking you, or maybe that’s your body shaking itself. Storm clouds gather above. Dots become blobs become planes, soon to land in your paradise.

His lips move, but you hear nothing.

“They’re coming, Caleb,” you croak. “They’re coming…”

The pain crashes over you in waves, drips until it diffuses through every part of your body. The tips of your fingers go numb. Your vision blurs, and that whirring, it just refuses to stop. You open your mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Then everything plunges into black.

When had he begun to remember? When he looked at the ceiling and saw the speckles of sun and remembered taking you out to see the planes. The signals there, flickering in the sky. The nightmare that woke him up, the smoke trail of an explosion in a house with a rickety old attic that led to only weeds. Quiet lullabies and applewood candles and first introductions, I’m Caleb, your gege.

Every memory, grasped onto with desperate hands. If he was you, he’d have gathered the shredded, fallen ends of that kite string, gathered and glued it back together, if only to have something, anything.

What hadn’t changed was the unrelenting beating of the heart. How it quickens in your presence, to his detriment yet his delight.

And what he doesn’t tell you—will never tell you—is the real monstrous thoughts lurking beneath the skin.

How he wants to stuff you inside his ribs, crack himself open and have you wear him like the warm carcass of a recent kill—your only kill—his blood still hot as it drips over your lashes. Wouldn’t it be nice to stuff you inside him like those nesting boxes, a small box in a big box.

How could he say this to you: that if he had it his way, if he could be less cowardly and more honest with himself, he’d like to slice away the tendons of your hands and feet, leaving you sitting there nice and pretty for him to pamper. Just like how it had been the night he’d set you down to dry your hair, how obedient you’d been then. He’d be your hands and your feet, would walk you anywhere you’d like, would handle everything you need.

He looks at you through the glass pane. It would be a better procedure than this chip removal one, at least. Equally cruel, but gentler.

He’s been fooled. So thoroughly, utterly fooled. He should have realized, he’s supposed to be the one who knew you best. So how did he miss the crimson snake of a mark that slithered along your arm? It crushes him, and ah, could any pain be as severe as this? The prick of a needle, the stab of a knife, the shrapnels of a bomb, none of it compared. Could any pain be as exquisite?

You’re very, very cruel. But it’s okay. He likes it: the bitterness of that poisoned fruit.

Even with your memories gone, he’ll love you. He’s sure of it. He’s done it so many times before, after all.

“Preparations complete. Chip removal program ready for execution.”

Caleb hesitates, then shakes his head ruefully. What was there to regret? He’d made his decision long ago. First introductions came easy to him now; the easiest in the world, the hardest.

Caleb presses the execution button. There is no remorse to be had. Not for this.

The bite mark on Caleb’s hand stings. He sits by your bed, waiting for you to wake. A pot of congee warmed on the stove, a glass of water sitting on the nightstand. Everything else can wait. He touches your arm, runs a hand along the inner wrist up to the elbow. The red mark there has already healed.

The photos of him knitting are deleted. A plush apple bag and a puppy-eared headband are tossed into storage, sealed away where his phone and watch used to sit. The toothbrush, returned to its rightful place.

After this, he'll let you dress him up all you want. He’ll take you to the amusement park and go on all the rides with you. He’ll soothe every nightmare, cook your favourite dishes, and dry your hair whenever you get too lazy to do it yourself. He'll watch through the thirteenth season of that show you enjoyed so much as a kid, the film that ended in a gunshot, and pretend that all of it is his first time.

Because he loves you. Will always love you a little more than you realize.

Just like he promised, he’s there when you wake. And just like he’d done all those years ago, he introduces himself: I'm Caleb, and I'm your—