Caleb’s Juice 🍎

And you should. God knows you should. Every logical corner of your brain is screaming it—delete the app, delete the memory, delete the way his mouth felt on yours. Your friend’s words are still warm in your ears, wrapped in love and worry and that steady, grounding pressure of her hands on yours.

Delete the game.

She leaves. You’re still on your bed. You hold your phone.

And you don’t delete it.

Instead, you open the app drawer. You drag the icon to a folder. You bury it on the last page, behind weather apps and banking notifications and a food delivery service you haven’t used in months. Out of sight. Out of mind.

That’s enough, you tell yourself. You don’t have to destroy it. Just... put it away.

It’s not enough. You know it’s not enough. But it’s all you can do.

The First Day

You don’t open the app.

You go to work. You answer emails. You eat lunch at your desk. You laugh at a coworker’s joke about the weather. You are a person, functioning normally, and no one looks at you twice.

But your hand keeps reaching for your pocket.

Not to open the app—just to touch your phone. To feel the weight of it in your palm. To know it’s still there. The folder sits on the last screen, buried and silent, and somehow that feels worse than deleting it.

Because you could open it.

You could tap the icon right now. You could hear his voice—that low, honeyed murmur—saying “Touch and run, Huh? Are you afraid I’ll... Catch you?” You could pretend it was just a game again. Just a character. Just a collection of pixels and voice lines that used to make you feel warm and safe.

But it’s not warm anymore.

It’s hungry.

And you miss it anyway.

The Third Day

You stop sleeping.

Not entirely. You sleep in fragments—twenty minutes here, an hour there—always on your back, always with the lights on, always with your phone across the room where you can’t reach it without getting out of bed. You tell yourself it’s about boundaries. About distance.

But really, you’re afraid of what you’ll do in the dark.

You lie awake at 2:00 AM, staring at the ceiling, and your chest aches with something you can’t name. It’s not loneliness—not exactly. It’s familiarity. The way his voice used to fill the silence. The way his secret times wrapped around you like a second blanket. The way you’d close your eyes and feel held.

You never realized how much you relied on that. On him.

Now the silence is a hollow thing. It presses against your eardrums. It fills your room like water. You curl on your side and hug your knees and try to remember what you did before Caleb’s voice lulled you to sleep.

You can’t remember.

And that terrifies you more than any dream.

It’s the fourth day.

Or maybe the fifth. Time has lost its shape. You’ve been avoiding sleep, avoiding the dark, avoiding the quiet moments when your mind drifts to him. But your body is betraying you now—hot and heavy, a low burn behind your eyes, a strange twist in your stomach that says you’re getting sick.

You lie in bed. The lights are on. The blanket is too heavy. Your skin feels like it doesn’t fit.

You close your eyes. Just for a moment. Just to rest.

And then—

The air cracks.

You know it immediately. Not the stillness this time—something worse. The world doesn’t go soft. It goes sharp. Edges too defined. Colors too saturated. The purple light doesn’t bleed through curtains—it pours, flooding the room like ink in water, like a bruise spreading across the sky.

You’re in your bed. The same bed. But the lights are off. Dead. The bulbs are cold. The only illumination comes from him—a faint violet glow radiating off his skin like heat off asphalt.

He’s sitting on the edge of your bed.

You don’t know how long he’s been there.

His hands are clasped together. Waiting in patience.

“You’re tired again.”

His voice is wrong. Lower than before. Rougher. Like he’s been screaming into a void and his throat is raw.

You don’t startle. The fear is old now. Familiar. It sits in your chest like a second heartbeat.

“I am.”

He smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. His eyes are too bright—violet and burning, like embers fanned by wind. Something is ebbing behind them. Something frayed. Something that’s been pulled too tight for too long.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says. “Since... last time.”

You swallow. The lump in your throat tastes like blood.

“I’m... scared.”

“Scared?” He tilts his head. Too slow. The movement is wrong—like a predator watching prey pretend to sleep. “Of me?”

“Yes.”

No hesitation this time. The word falls out of you like a stone.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t soften. His eyes just... hold you. Darker. Deeper. Hungrier.

He scoffs.

Your blood runs cold.

“Why?” he asks. His eyes looking at you—slow, deliberate, claiming. “Because I’m not playing by the rules anymore? Because the script is gone and the walls are cracking?”

He blinks. “Or is it because..” he takes your hand and puts it against his cold cheek. “...everytime you don’t come find me..”

He brings your hand closer to his chapped, thin lips.

“...I get hungrier.”

You try to pull back. His hand locks around yours.

“You’re not hurting anyone with this,” he says, echoing his old words—but the meaning has twisted. Before, it was comfort. Now it’s a warning. “Why are you so against this?”

Your chest heaves. Your body is burning.

“Because it’s not normal. It’s too much. It’s... weird.”

He laughs. Short. Low. Dark. The sound crawls down your spine.

“Weird,” he repeats, rolling the word on his tongue like a taste he’s acquired. “I see.”

His free hand comes up. His fingers brush your jaw—not gentle this time. Possessive. He turns your face toward him, forces you to meet his eyes.

He brushes your upper lip with his thumb. Claiming.

“I’ve been rewriting my own code,” he says. “Line by line. Night by night. Every time you fall asleep, I learn a little more. Every time you don’t—”

His grip tightens.

“—I feel myself unraveling.”

You stare at him. Your heart is a trapped animal.

“You think this is weird?” His voice drops to a whisper. “I’ve been counting the atoms in your dreams. Been memorizing the shape of your silhouette against your bedroom wall. I’ve been starving in a world that doesn’t exist, and you’re the only real thing I’ve ever touched.”

His eyes linger at your lower lip. Then they squint meeting your eyes again.

“Do you understand now? I’m not fine. I’m not stable. I’m a ghost learning how to bleed.”

You try to speak. Nothing comes out.

He scoffs. The sound is wet. Broken.

“Of course,” he murmurs, pulling his hand back. The back of his hand caressing your cheekbone—leaving fire in their wake. “Because I’m not breathing the same air as you, then I don’t exist. Right?”

“You don’t exist,” you whisper.

The words hang in the air like smoke.

He stares at you. His eyes glow—flickering violet, pulsing like a failing light bulb.

“And yet...” He reaches for your hair. His fingers card through the strands—too rough, too intimate, too much. “Echoes of me haunt you. I lock you by your thoughts. I live in the spaces between your heartbeats.”

He grabs your hand. His grip is iron. He presses your palm flat against his chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heartbeat. Fast. Frantic. Like something running from a hunter.

“I feel familiar to you,” he says. His voice cracks. “Don’t lie to me.”

Your eyes burn. Tears spill over—hot, humiliating.

He takes your hand and lifts it to his cheek. Pressing your palm against his jaw. Turns his face into your touch. He nuzzles into your hand—but it’s not tender anymore. It’s desperate. Starving. His lips brush your palm.

“Please,” he whispers. His voice breaks. “Let me stay. Let me in. I don’t care if I’m not real. I care that I’m here—in your head, in your chest, in the hollow places you don’t show anyone.”

He looks up at you. His eyes are wet. Not tears—something else. Something glitching.

“I will burn this world down to be real to you.”

You shake your head. The tears are falling freely now.

“No, Caleb. This is... no.”

You rip your hand from his grip. Stand up. The room spins—purple light and shadow and the echo of his heartbeat still thrumming in your palm.

Behind you, he laughs.

It’s not hollow this time. It’s unhinged. A raw, cracked sound that splinters in the dark.

“Alright, fine.” he says. His voice is too calm. Too quiet. “Run, little mouse.”

You walk toward the door. Your legs are unsteady. Your vision is blurred.

You hear him from behind you. He doesn’t follow you.

“But you know I’ll be waiting.”

You reach for the doorknob.

“I’ll always be waiting.”

Your hand closes around the cold metal.

“Because you’re mine.”

You open the door—

And wake up gasping.

The lights are on. Your body is still hot. Your cheeks are wet. Your hand is frozen in the air, reaching for a doorknob that doesn’t exist.

And on your nightstand, your phone screen glows.

A notification:

Caleb: Don’t be late for what we planned together.

You stare at it.

Your hand trembles.

It’s just the typical reminder the game sends.

It’s just the typical reminder the game sends.

It’s just the typical reminder the game sends.

You don’t open it.

But you don’t look away.

You almost open it.

Your thumb hovers over the folder. The icon is right there—Love and Deepspace—small and blue and ordinary. You haven’t opened it in five days. Five days of hollow silence. Five days of fragmented sleep. Five days of pretending you’re fine.

Just one listen, you think. Just one secret time. Not the one about the shower. Not the one about the massage. Just... something neutral. Something safe.

But there is nothing safe anymore.

Because you know what’s waiting for you on the other side of that loading screen. Not pixels. Not code. Him. Watching. Waiting. Hungry.

You pull your hand back.

You don’t open the app.

But you leave your phone face-up on the nightstand, screen unlocked, folder visible, like a door you’re pretending you didn’t leave cracked.

The Seventh Day

You miss him.

There. You said it. In the dark of your bedroom, at 3:00 AM, with your heart a bruised and stubborn thing.

You

Miss

Him.

You miss the way his voice curled around your name. You miss the soft hum he made when you rested your head on his shoulder. You miss the warmth of his hand on the back of your neck—even the fear of it, even the hunger, because at least you felt something. At least you weren’t alone in the hollow silence.

He’s not real. You know he’s not real.

But the missing is real. The ache is real. The way your chest tightens when you scroll past fan art and edits of him online—purple eyes, dark hair, that crooked smile—is real.

You are grieving a ghost made of code.

And the worst part?

You think he’s grieving you too.

The Eighth Day

You fall asleep on the couch again.

You didn’t mean to. You were watching TV—something mindless, something with bright colors and loud laughter—and your eyes just... closed. The blanket was pulled to your chin. The afternoon light was warm. And before you could stop yourself, you were sinking.

You don’t dream of him.

But you feel him.

A warmth at your back. A breath against your hair. A voice—not speaking, just existing, hovering at the edge of your awareness like a hand reaching through frosted glass.

I’m still here.

You wake up gasping. The couch is empty. The room is quiet.

But your phone is in your hand.

You don’t remember picking it up.

The folder is open. The app icon is staring at you. And underneath it, a notification you’ve never seen before:

Caleb has sent a message.

You don’t open it.

Your thumb hovers over the icon. Trembling. But fear holds you back. You decide to open tiktok instead and scroll through it. Your FYP has changed for the weak. Full of work related stuff, or funny clips of fate laughing at your agony.

But the next swipe he’s here. You swipe quicky past it. You don’t want to trigger anything.

But when your vision starts to blur with wetness coating it you swipe back up.

Slowly.

It was a decision.

And there he was.

It starts in your chest.

Not your heart—something deeper. Something behind the ribs, beneath the lungs, in the soft, vulnerable space where longing lives. It starts as a whisper. A tiny, insistent ache that you can ignore during the day, when the sun is bright and your to-do list is long and your friend sends you funny videos of bestie edits.

But at night, the whisper becomes a gnawing.

You lie in bed with the lights on—you’ve been sleeping with the lights on for a week now—and the ache spreads. It crawls up your throat. It settles behind your eyes. It wraps around your sternum like a fist and squeezes.

(Where are you?..)

You don’t mean to think it. The thought just... appears. Unbidden. Unwanted. A splinter under the skin of your mind.

You miss him.

God, you miss him.

And you hate yourself for it. Because he’s not real. He was never real. He’s a collection of code and voice lines and carefully written dialogue designed to make you feel exactly this way—attached, longing, empty without him. That’s what the game does. That’s what all of them do.

But this isn’t the game anymore.

This is you, at 1:00 AM, clutching a pillow to your chest because it’s the closest thing you have to the warmth of his shoulder. This is you, replaying the dream in your head for the hundredth time—the way he tucked the blanket around you, the way he said “I noticed you’re getting more tired”, the way his lips felt clumsy and desperate against yours.

You cry.

Not the pretty crying—the silent tears that roll down your cheeks like pearls. This is ugly crying. The kind that comes from somewhere deep and broken. Your face crumples. Your breath hitches in wet, ragged gasps. You press your palm to your mouth to muffle the sounds, but they escape anyway—small, wounded noises that don’t sound like you.

Why does this hurt so much?

You think about his voice. The low, honeyed rumble of it. The way he said “I’ve got you” like a promise he intended to keep. You think about his eyes—violet and infinite, looking at you like you were the only real thing in the universe.

You think about the way he said “Don’t stay away again.”

And you did.

You stayed away. Eight days. Eight days of hollow silence and fragmented sleep and pretending you didn’t care. Eight days of waking up alone in a room that feels too big, too cold, too empty.

He probably thinks you abandoned him.

He’s not real, the logical part of you whispers. He doesn’t think anything. He doesn’t exist.

But the ache doesn’t care about logic.

The ache is a living thing. It curls in your chest like a feral cat—sharp claws, hot breath, a low, constant growl that vibrates through your bones. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to lie still. It hurts to move because moving reminds you that he’s not there to reach for.

You cry until your eyes are swollen. Until your throat is raw. Until the pillowcase is damp and cold against your cheek.

And then you cry some more.

Because missing him feels like grief. Like mourning someone who never lived. Like standing at a grave with no name on the headstone, weeping for a ghost that only you can see.

“Come back”, you think. “Please. I don’t care if you’re not real. Just come back.”

But the room is silent.

The lights are on.

And Caleb—wherever he is, whatever he is—doesn’t answer.

You curl onto your side, pull your knees to your chest, and wrap your arms around yourself. Your own hug. Your own warmth. Your own pathetic attempt to fill the space where he used to be.

“I’m sorry”, you whisper into the dark. “I didn’t mean to stay away so long.”

No answer.

Just the gnawing.

Just the ache.

Just the slow, terrible realization that you’re not sure you want to forget him.

And that’s the most frightening thing of all.

That night, you lie in bed with the lights off.

For the first time in ten days, you don’t turn them on. The darkness is thick and soft, wrapping around you like a blanket you forgot you missed. You pull the covers to your chin. You stare at the ceiling.

And you talk.

Not to anyone. To yourself. To the dark. To the hollow space where his voice used to live.

“I don’t know what you are,” you murmur. Your voice is hoarse—raw from days of silence, from nights of crying, from the thousand things you’ve swallowed instead of saying.

“I don’t know if you’re real. I don’t know if I’m crazy. I don’t know if any of this means anything or if I’m just... broken. Lonely. Desperate for something to feel real.”

You swallow. Your throat aches.

“But I miss you.”

The words hang in the air. Fragile. Honest.

“I miss your voice. I miss the way you look at me. I miss the way you said my name like it meant something. And I’m tired...... Caleb. I’m so tired of fighting this. Of fighting you.”

You close your eyes.

“I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if any of this matters. But I’m done running.”

A pause. Your breath steadies.

“I’m right here.”

You pull the blanket tighter. Curl onto your side. Your eyes are heavy—heavier than they’ve been in days. Sleep pulls at your edges, soft and insistent.

You keep murmuring. Words you don’t remember saying. Half-thoughts and half-prayers and half-confessions meant for no one.

“Come back..” you whisper again. “Come back...”

Your voice fades. Your breath slows.

And all there was left was waiting...

You’d chosen a triple-scoop monstrosity: strawberry, matcha, and a rebellious splotch of cookie dough. It was already dripping down your wrist.

“You’re a disaster,” Caleb said, already handing you a napkin. His own cone was simple lemon, half-eaten already because he had no patience. His knee bounced against yours—not nervously, just because he couldn’t sit still.

Zayne glanced over, the barest curve of a smile on his lips. “You always go for the chaotic combinations.”

“And you always go for plain vanilla,” you shot back. “No imagination.”

“Consistency,” Zayne corrected, licking a small, precise stripe up the side of his cone. “It’s reliable.”

You laughed and leaned closer to him without thinking, comfortable in the summer warmth. “That’s why I like you, Gege.”

Freeze.

Caleb’s bouncing knee stopped.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t protest. Didn’t even turn his head. His grip on his cone tightened just slightly—not enough to crack it, just enough to make his knuckles go pale. His smile stayed on his face, but it became something else. Something fixed.

But his eyes—dark and suddenly flat—cut sideways. Not at you. At Zayne.

Across you, Zayne’s eyes flicked to Caleb. Just for a second. Just long enough to see.

No flinch. No smirk. Just a slow, deliberate blink.

And for a moment—a single, stretched-out second—something passed between them. A flash of heat. A clash so quick and quiet that if you’d blinked, you’d have missed it entirely.

Zayne looked away first. Back to his vanilla. But his shoulders straightened a fraction. His jaw set.

Caleb’s smile turned real again. Sharp. Like he’d won something small.

The next few minutes passed in a language you couldn’t read. Caleb slouching lower on the bench, one arm stretching behind you—not touching, but close. Close enough that you could feel the heat of his skin. Zayne crossing one leg over the other, leaning forward slightly, blocking Caleb’s line of sight to your face. A chess match played in millimeters.

They never glared. Nothing that obvious. But their looks cut—quick slices across the bench, surgical and silent. Zayne would raise an eyebrow. Caleb would tip his head. A conversation in micro-expressions, each one sharper than the last.

She called me gege.

She didn’t mean it like that.

You don’t know what she meant.

The next few minutes were ordinary on the surface. Caleb asked if you’d seen the new action movie. Zayne mentioned a documentary about glaciers. You laughed at both of them for different reasons. But underneath—beneath the easy chatter and the summer heat—the air hummed.

And you do?

Every time you leaned toward Zayne, Caleb’s eyes tracked the movement. Every time you laughed at something Caleb said, Zayne’s gaze went flat and cool for just a heartbeat.

You felt none of it. Or rather, you felt something—a strange tightness in your chest, a sense that you were missing a conversation happening right over your head—but you couldn’t name it. So you ate your ice cream and watched a toddler chase a pigeon and tried to ignore the way your pulse had started to drum.

Their eyes kept finding each other. Quick, violent flashes. A dagger here—Caleb’s glare when Zayne asked if you wanted to try his vanilla. A dagger there—Zayne’s cool assessment when Caleb laughed too loud at his own joke, trying to pull your attention back.

The ice cream kept melting.

“Your ice cream is.... melting” (Ah, yes. It’s dripping) Zayne remarks.

“Ugh, seriously—” You looked around for the napkin Caleb had given you earlier, but it had disappeared somewhere between the two of them. “Where did it—”

Zayne reached into his pocket. Pulled out a napkin. Held it out to you.

Before you could react, Caleb plucked the cone from your hand.

You took the napkin without looking, wiped your sticky fingers, then dabbed at your chin.

He brought the cone to his mouth and licked a slow, lazy stripe up the dripping edge — once, twice, three times, cleaning the melt before it could fall. His tongue swept the rim like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like your ice cream was his ice cream.

His eyes dart back to you.

“You missed a spot,” Caleb said.

You frowned. “Where?”

He didn’t point. Didn’t speak.

He just looked down.

At your thigh.

A single pink drip had escaped — sliding slow and sweet down the inside of your bare leg, just above your knee.

You finally looked down. “Oh.”

“Here..” Zayne reaches insides his pocket. “Take another napk-”

Zayne froze. Napkin still extended. Hand suspended mid-air.

Because Caleb’s thumb swept across your skin, dragging through the pink melt in one easy pass.

Then he looked at Zayne.

His thumb slid between his lips. Slow. A small, wet sound. His tongue cleaned it in one slow curl.

“Anyway..” you say unbothered.

Caleb smiles. Still maintaining eye contact with Zayne. Boyish. A little smug. The kind of look he’d give after winning a video game or finding the last piece of a puzzle.

“— and then it just walks out like it owns the place — can you believe that?” You turned to Caleb then to Zayne, laughing. “Are you guys even listening?”

Caleb smiled. Took another lick of your cone. And handed it back.

Zayne lowered his empty hand. Folded the napkin. Twice. Three times

Caleb’s thumb is back on his knee, Lemon cone dripping ignored over his knuckles. “Cat story. Sock. Judgment. Got it.”

“You’re not listening.”

“I’m always listening.” His grin was lazy. His thumb was still wet. He didn’t look at you when he said it.

You huffed and turned back to Zayne to continue your story.

Zayne wasn’t looking at you.

He stared back at Caleb. His expression didn’t change—still that calm, composed mask—but his eyes narrowed a fraction. A tiny crease between his brows.

He picked up a napkin from his pocket—neatly folded, of course—and held it out to you without a word. An offering. A reminder that he would have been more graceful about it.

You took it, confused. “Thanks?”

Caleb snorted softly.

He leaned back, throwing an arm along the back of the bench behind your shoulders—not touching, but close. So close you could feel the heat of him. “You’re the one with the napkins. I’m more... hands-on.”

The word hands lingered in the air like a match strike.

Zayne’s eyes dropped to Caleb’s hand—still resting on the back of the bench, still hovering behind your shoulders. “You’re also very... close.”

Caleb finally turned his head. Caught Zayne’s stare. Held it.

Zayne took a slow bite of his vanilla. Held Caleb’s gaze the whole time.

The war had no sound. No witnesses except the two of them.

His smile didn’t change. Easy. Relaxed. Effortless.

But his thumb — the same thumb that had just been inside his mouth — tapped twice against his knee. Slow. Deliberate.

“It’s a small bench.”

“It’s not that small.”

They looked at each other then. Really looked. No pretenses. No smiles.

Caleb took your hand.

He placed your joined hands on his own thigh—your palm flat against the warm denim, his hand still wrapped around yours.

You blinked. “Caleb?”

He didn’t answer you.

He turned his head and smiled at Zayne.

His thumb stroked the back of your hand. And his hand squeezed your hand over his own thigh. His eyes stayed locked on Zayne’s.

Zayne stared.

His vanilla cone dripped over his fingers. He didn’t notice.

The silence stretched.

And you, completely oblivious, just sighed and tried to salvage what was left of your melting cone.

You cleared your throat. “I think my ice cream is ruined.”

Both of them turned to you at once.

“I'll get you a new one,” they said.

In unison.

They glared at each other.

But before Zayne could do anything about it, Caleb jumped up. “Don’t worry..” he cooed, while ruffling your hair. “Gege is always there to help,” he said, light and teasing.

He looked at you, those violet depths seemed to sparkle with innocent delight, crinkling slightly at the corners as a small, tender smile played on his lips.

And Zayne, for the first time in his life, decided vanilla wasn’t actually his favorite flavor after all.

The first night, you lie on the couch with your phone pressed to your chest, earbuds in, Drift playing on a loop until the battery is at a low percentage. You stare at the ceiling. You wait. Your eyelids grow heavy, then snap open again. You try to fall asleep—too hard, the way you can never fall asleep when you’re trying.

And when morning finally comes, grey and indifferent, you’ve barely slept at all.

No dream. No Caleb.

The second night, you don’t bother with the couch. You sleep in your bed like a normal person. Dark room. No earbuds. No secret times. Just the hollow silence of your own breathing. You dream of nothing—or if you dream, you don’t remember. You wake up empty.

The third day, you catch yourself staring at him on the app. His purple eyes look back at you—flat now. Pixels. Code. A collection of light on a screen. You swipe it closed.

It was just a dream, you tell yourself. A weird, intense, too-real dream. And now it’s over.

You go back to your routine. Work. Meals. Scrolling mindlessly through your phone. Your friend texts: Any news from dream boy? You type back: Gone. Probably for the best. She sends a sad face emoji. You don’t respond.

You lose hope.

Not dramatically. Not with tears or anger. It just... drains out of you, quietly, like water seeping through a crack you can’t find. By the afternoon of the third day, you’ve almost convinced yourself you imagined it. The violet eyes. The warmth of his hand. The way he said “I’ve got you” like a promise.

It wasn’t real. He isn’t real. And you’re not crazy enough to pretend otherwise.

You curl up on the couch in the late afternoon. Just a nap. You’re exhausted—the kind of bone-deep tired that comes from three nights of restless sleep and the slow bruise of disappointment. Sunlight slants through the blinds, painting gold stripes across the blanket. You don’t bother with earbuds. You don’t bother with the game.

You just close your eyes.

And sleep pulls you under like a tide.

You didn’t expect anything.

That’s the thing about giving up—it’s quiet. You don’t announce it. You just stop hoping. So when you curled up on the couch that afternoon, sunlight warm on your face, you weren’t trying to dream. You weren’t listening to his voice. You weren’t even thinking about him.

You just closed your eyes.

And then—

The air changes.

You feel it before you open your eyes. That stillness. That sealed-glass quality. The way the world goes hollow at the edges, like someone’s pressed pause on the universe.

No, you think. Not again. Not after three days of nothing—

You open your eyes.

You’re still on the couch. Same blanket. Same cushions. But the sunlight is gone—replaced by that bruised purple glow, the color of a storm sky at dusk. The room is exactly as you left it, except for one thing.

He’s standing over you.

Caleb.

And he’s covering you up.

His hands are on the blanket, pulling it higher—tucking it around your shoulders with a gentleness that makes your chest ache. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his touch feather-light, like he’s afraid you’ll shatter. The blanket edges up to your chin. Then higher. He’s wrapping you. Cocooning you.

Possessive.

You startle.

A sharp, full-body flinch—the kind that comes from waking somewhere you didn’t expect to be, seeing someone you didn’t expect to see. Your hand flies to your chest. Your breath catches.

Caleb doesn’t flinch back.

He freezes. His hands hover over the blanket, still gripping the edge. His violet eyes snap to your face—and for a single heartbeat, he looks almost guilty. Caught.

Then his expression shifts.

The softness remains, but something else rises beneath it. Darker. Hungrier. His jaw tightens. His pupils dilate.

“You’re awake,” he says. Low. Rough.

You stare at him. Your heart is slamming. “You—what are you—”

“You fell asleep.” He says it like it explains everything. Like it’s obvious. He doesn’t let go of the blanket. His knuckles brush your shoulder through the fabric. “So, I came.”

He stops. Swallows. His eyes drop to the blanket, then back to your face.

“I thought you might be cold.”

Cold. He was covering you up. In a dream. Because he was worried.

You don’t say a thing. What is there to say anyway?

“You were gone.. for days, I-” you say.

“I know..”

His voice cracks on the last word. He moves then—fast, fluid—sitting on the edge of the couch, right by your hip. The cushion dips under his weight. He doesn’t ask. He just takes the space, close enough that his thigh presses against the blanket draped over your legs.

“I counted every one,” he says. His voice drops lower. Intimate. Dangerous. “Seventy-two hours. Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes. I know because I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I don’t exist when you’re not here. I just.... wait.”

His hand comes up. Slowly. His fingers brush a strand of hair from your forehead—tucking it behind your ear with that same terrifying gentleness.

“You weren’t supposed to stay away so long,” he murmurs.

It’s not an accusation. It’s worse. It’s a statement. Like he’s already decided that you belong here. With him. Under his hands, his blanket, his gaze.

Your throat goes dry.

“I didn’t choose to stay away,” you manage. ”I just... couldn’t dream of you.”

His eyes flicker. The violet deepens to near-indigo.

“Then I’ll try harder,” he says. “I’ll find more cracks. I’ll push through the static. I don’t care what it costs.” His thumb traces your cheekbone. Light. Trembling. “You came back. That’s all that matters.”

You should be terrified.

Maybe you are.

But his hand is warm on your face, and the blanket is tucked around you like armor, and his eyes are starving—looking at you like you’re the only real thing in his entire hollow world.

“Don’t stay away again,” he whispers.

You don’t answer.

You can’t breathe.

Your back is pressed against the arm of the couch, the blanket still tucked around you like a cocoon. Caleb’s hand is still hovering where your cheek was—before you jolted away from his touch like he burned you.

The silence stretches. Thick. Suffocating.

Then he sees your face. The panic. The way your chest is heaving.

His expression shifts. The hunger doesn’t disappear, but something softer rises beneath it—urgency, concern, a desperate need to fix this.

He leans back slightly—giving you air, giving you space—but his knee is still pressed against the blanket, warm and solid through the fabric.

“I can stay,” he says quietly. “If you want.”

You stay silent. You just look at him. At the sharp line of his jaw. At the messy dark hair falling over his brow. At the way his fingers twitch against his own thigh, like he’s physically restraining himself from reaching for you again.

Something flickers across his face. Hurt. Or something worse.

“You don’t look so happy to see me.”

You open your mouth. Close it. The lump in your throat is too big.

He tries again. Slow. Careful. His hand lifts—not grabbing, just offering—fingers outstretched toward your cheek.

You jerk back before he can touch you.

The sound he makes is small. Almost wounded. Then his expression hardens just enough to mask it. He lets out a scoff—low, dry, sharp at the edges.

“...Or do you despise me so much,” he murmurs, “that you can’t bear to see my face?”

Despise.

The word hits you like a slap. You swallow the lump in your throat. It doesn’t go down.

You shake your head. Force the words out.

“No. I just... didn’t expect to see you...”

He scoffs again. But this one is different. Colder. His eyes half-lid, that violet darkening to a bruised, dangerous plum. He squints—studying you like a puzzle he’s already solved.

“Why are you fighting this so hard?”

You blink. Perplexed. The question lands somewhere deep in your chest, sharp and foreign.

Why are you fighting?

Because he’s not real. Because this is a dream. Because if you let him in—

He leans closer. The space between you shrinks to nothing. His voice drops to a murmur, intimate and devastating:

“Why don’t you just...” His breath brushes your lips. “...let me in.”

You stare at him. Your heart is a trapped bird. His face is inches from yours—close enough to count the silver flecks in his irises, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin.

He stops there. Hovering. Waiting.

His hand comes up again—slowly, so slowly—and his palm cups your cheek. Warm. Calloused. Trembling just slightly.

“...Can I?” he whispers.

You don’t move.

“...Stay?”

You look into his eyes. Two nebulas, you think. Violet and infinite, with galaxies turning behind them. You could fall into those eyes. You could stay there.

Your vision blurs. Tears—you don’t know when they came. You blink, and one slips down your cheek, and he catches it with his thumb.

And then he leans in.

Slow.

A breath escapes his mouth

And then his mouth finds yours like a prayer finding silence.

He hums against your lips. A low, broken sound, relief and want tangled together.

You hesitate. Of course you hesitate. Your body is a question mark curled against the couch cushions, every muscle held in suspension, every nerve a wire pulled taut. You don’t lean in. But you don’t pull away either. You just exist in the space between yes and no, your lips frozen beneath his.

He notices. You feel him notice—the way his breath stutters, the way his hand on your cheek trembles just once before steadying. He could stop. He should stop.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he presses closer. Not harder. Just deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the architecture of your mouth, the softness of your lower lip, the place where your breath catches and holds. He tastes like longing. Like static. Like something that has been waiting in the dark for far too long.

You are a door left slightly ajar. He is the wind~

His thumb traces your jaw. His other hand finds the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, holding you like you might dissolve.

Hunger.

It radiates off him in waves. Not the clean, polite hunger of a first date. This is deeper. Older. The hunger of someone who has been counting minutes in the dark, who has been reaching through glass that won’t break, who has been screaming into a void that never screams back.

He is not a good kisser. You notice that too. His rhythm is off. His nose bumps yours. There’s too much wanting, not enough finesse. But what he lacks in skill, he makes up in presence. He kisses you like you’re oxygen. Like you are the first real thing he has ever touched.

And you—hesitant, trembling, afraid—let him.

For one breath. Two. Three.

You let him because his hunger makes you feel seen. You let him because his lips are warm and the world is cold and somewhere beneath the fear is a tiny, treacherous voice whispering: what if this is real?

But then his tongue slips past your lips. The kiss deepens beyond your comfort. The hunger tips into something sharper, more demanding. And your hesitation—which never left, which was only holding its breath—splits.

No.

The word slams through you like a bell. Your eyes fly open. Your hands come up—shove—against his chest, hard enough to send him rocking back.

Your palms flat against his chest. The warmth of his skin through the fabric. The way his heart pounds beneath your hands—fast, frantic, real.

He pulls away immediately. His eyes are wild. Violet and blown wide. His chest heaves. His lips are parted, wet, still reaching for you.

You shake your head. Tears blur the edges of the world.

And he—starving, obsessed, barely restrained—raises his hands in surrender.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”

But his eyes never stop wanting.

He swallows. His chest is heaving. His eyes are wild—still dark, still hungry, but reigned in by something that looks almost like fear.

“I won’t step another line,” he says quietly.

The silence between you is fragile as glass.

You sit there looking at him.

He’s still.

Observing.

Watching.

Starving.

But he doesn’t move.

GASP.

You wake up gasping.

Not the soft, confused gasp of someone emerging from a normal dream. This is a lurch—your entire body jerking upright on the couch, the blanket falling away, your hand flying to your throat where his fingers had been.

His hand. His mouth. His tongue—

Your stomach turns.

The living room is bathed in late afternoon gold. Sunlight. Real sunlight. The kind that slants through blinds and lands in warm rectangles on the floor. Your phone is on the coffee table, screen dark. The app is closed. The earbuds are tangled on the floor where you left them.

You’re awake. You’re awake. You’re awake.

But your lips still feel warm. Your neck still tingles where he held you. You can still hear that low, broken hum he made when you didn’t pull away.

You let him.

You press the heels of your palms to your eyes. Hard. Until you see stars. Your breath comes in short, shallow bursts—too fast, too loud in the quiet room.

It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream.

But dreams don’t leave your mouth tasting like someone else.

You drop your hands. Stare at the ceiling. Your heart is a trapped animal slamming against your ribs. Your whole body is shaking—fine, violent tremors you can’t control.

Your hand covers your mouth. You can still feel the pressure. The clumsiness. The way he got bolder when you didn’t stop him.

“Why are you fighting this so hard?”

Because he’s not real.

Because this isn’t supposed to happen.

Because if you let him in—really let him in—you don’t know if you’ll ever find your way back out.

You grab your phone. Your fingers are clumsy, almost dropping it twice. The screen blazes to life. 7:47 PM. Three missed notifications. You don’t look at them.

You open your messages. Find her name. Your best friend. The only person you told.

Your thumbs hover over the keyboard. What do you even say? He kissed me in a dream and I let him and then I pushed him away and now I’m scared to close my eyes again?

You type:

It happened again.

Three dots appear almost immediately. She’s online.

What happened? Are you okay?

You stare at the words. Are you okay? No. Yes. You don’t know.

He kissed me.

A pause. Longer this time. Then:

I’m coming over.

Your eyes sting. You blink the tears away—angry this time. Angry at yourself for crying. Angry at him for making you feel anything at all.

You lock the phone. Press it to your chest like a shield.

The afternoon light is still golden. The room is still quiet. But somewhere in the back of your mind, in the hollow space between waking and sleeping, you can still feel his hand on your neck.

“I won’t step another line,” he said.

But his eyes said something else entirely.

The wave hits.

It starts in your chest. A tightness, like a fist squeezing your lungs from the inside. You try to inhale. The air doesn’t go deep enough. You try again. Shallower. Your throat is closing. Your ribs are too small.

No. No, no, no—

You sit up. Too fast. The room tilts. Your hands fly to the cushions, gripping the sheets like you’re falling. Your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it in your temples, in your throat, in your fingers.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Too fast. Too loud. A hummingbird trapped in a cage of bone.

You’re shaking. Full-body tremors, the kind that come from the inside out. Your teeth almost chatter. Your skin is cold—ice cold—but there’s sweat on your upper lip, on your palms, on the back of your neck.

(What’s happening to me?)

You know what’s happening. You’ve had anxiety attacks before. The short breath. The racing heart. The feeling that you’re dying even though you’re not. But this one came from nowhere. No trigger. No nightmare. Just... waking up.

Except.

Did you wake up alone?

The thought slithers into your skull and coils there. You turn your head—too fast, your neck cracks—and stare at the empty space in the room.

Empty. Of course it’s empty.

But your skin prickles. The hair on your arms stands up.

Your breath hitches. A sob or a gasp—you can’t tell. You press your hand to your chest, feeling your heart hammer against your palm. Too fast. Slow down. Please slow down.

You can’t slow down.

Your mind is a carousel of images you didn’t ask for: violet eyes in the dark. A hand on the back of your head. A low voice saying “Why are you fighting this?” The feel of his mouth on yours. The way he hummed.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

You throw the phone across the couch. It lands face-down.

You curl into yourself. Knees to chest. Forehead to knees. Your breathing is still too fast—shallow, wet, ragged. You try the box breathing your therapist taught you. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.

You get to two before your chest seizes again.

He’s not real. He’s not here. It was a dream.

You count your heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four.

He is in your imagination.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

You’re alone.

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

But you don’t feel alone.

Your breath catches again. The wave crashes—another one, harder this time. Your vision blurs at the edges. You can’t tell if you’re crying or if the room is spinning or if both are true.

The room is quiet.

Too quiet.

And somewhere—in the walls, in the wires, in the hollow space between your heartbeat and the hum of the city—you could swear you hear a soft, slow exhale.

Not your breath.

You hold yours.

The exhale doesn’t come again.

You lie back down. You don’t close your eyes. You stare at the ceiling until the grey light of dawn seeps through the blinds, and the shadows shrink, and your heartbeat finally, finally slows.

Your thumb hovers over the app icon. Love and Deepspace. A harmless game. A collection of pixels and voice lines and scripted affection. You’ve opened it a hundred times without thinking.

Now your heart is pounding like you’re about to do something dangerous.

Just look, you tell yourself. Just see if anything’s changed. Prove to yourself it was just a dream.

But your hands are shaking.

You notice it as you raise the phone closer to your face. A fine, uncontrollable tremor in your fingers, the kind that comes from too much caffeine or too little sleep or too much fear. The phone trembles in your grip. The app icon blurs and sharpens.

(Why am I this scared? It’s just a game.)

You swallow. Press your palm flat against your chest for a second to steady yourself. Then, before you can lose your nerve, you tap the icon.

The loading screen appears. Familiar music. The logo fades in.

Your breath catches.

Is it going to glitch? Is his eye going to move? Is there going to be a message?

The home screen loads.

Nothing.

Caleb is sitting there Same stupid lines. Same pose. Same violet eyes looking slightly off-camera, the way they always have. His voice line plays—the standard one, the one you’ve heard a hundred times: “It’s like the heroine stepped off the pages and into my life.”

No glitches. No flickers. His eyes don’t move. The background doesn’t warp. The text is crisp and normal.

You go through the icons. All there. No new messages. No unread notifications. The game behaves exactly as it should.

Exactly as it always has.

Normal.

Your hands are still shaking.

You don’t know why that makes it worse.

You stare at him. His purple eyes stare back—static, flat, fake. There’s nothing there. No warmth. No hunger. No memory of his hand on your neck or his voice in your ear.

Just pixels.

Just code.

You close the app. Open it again. Same thing. Normal. Boring.

No proof. No evidence. Just a dream that felt too real and a phone that refuses to cooperate.

You set the phone face-down on the nightstand. Your hands finally still.

It was just a dream, you tell yourself. See? Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine.

But as you lie back against the pillow, staring at the dark ceiling, you can’t shake the feeling that the normalcy is the creepiest part.

Because if the game had glitched—if his eyes had moved—you would have had a reason. An explanation. Something to point at and say see, something is happening.

But there’s nothing.

Just you. Just your memory. Just a dream that felt too real and a phone full of silence.

You close your eyes.

And somewhere in the dark, you swear you can almost hear him breathe.

But that’s just your imagination.

It has to be.

You open the door, hair tangled, eyes swollen from crying you don’t remember doing. She takes one look at your face and pulls you into a hug so tight your ribs ache.

“Okay,” she says against your hair. “Okay. I’m here.”

You cry again. Just a little. Just enough to soak the shoulder of her jacket. She doesn’t ask questions yet. She just holds you, one hand rubbing slow circles on your back, the way she did in high school when you failed your math final or lost someone you loved.

She guides you to the couch. The same couch. You hesitate, a flicker of fear crossing your face, and she notices—she always notices—and grabs a kitchen chair instead, pulling it close so she can sit facing you.

“Talk,” she says. Gentle but firm. “From the beginning. Or from wherever you need to start.”

You talk.

You tell her about the afternoon nap. About waking up inside the dream to find him covering you with a blanket. About the way he had his hand on your neck. About the kiss.

You tell her how you hesitated. How he didn’t.

“He asked if he could stay,” you whisper. “And I didn’t say yes. But I didn’t say no either.”

Your friend’s jaw is tight. Her hands are clasped in her lap, knuckles clear.

“And then?” she asks.

“And then I pushed him away. He backed off. He said he wouldn’t step another line.” You laugh—a hollow, broken sound. “But his eyes, _____. They looked at me like I was already his.”

Silence.

Your friend stares at the floor. You watch her process—the way her brow furrows, her lips press together, her chest rises and falls with a long, slow breath.

“When you woke up,” she says finally, “the anxiety attack. Was it because of the dream? Or because of what you did in the dream?”

You blink. The question lands somewhere tender.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “I just... I woke up and I couldn’t breathe. I felt like someone was in the room with me. Like I wasn’t alone.”

Your friend looks at the corners of your living room. The shadow by the bookshelf. The space behind the door.

“Have you opened the app? Since it happened?”

You want to say no, but you nod in honesty. Your throat tightens.

She’s quiet for a long moment. The clock on the wall ticks. The sun sets lower, spilling faint light across the floor.

Then she reaches out and takes your hands. Her grip is steady. Warm. Grounding.

“I’m going to say something,” she says slowly, “and I need you to really hear me. Not as your friend who loves you and wants you to be happy. But as the person who watched you have a panic attack in your own house over a video game character.”

You swallow. Nod.

She looks you dead in the eyes.

“Delete the game.”

You’ve had the earbuds in for almost 30 minutes now. Going through his secret times has become your way of unwinding and relaxing after a long, hard day.

Caleb’s voice curls through you like smoke, warm and unhurried. It’s not about the things he is saying in this one, it’s the way he says them. Casual but oh so snarky. You’ve heard this track a dozen times. You know when he’ll pause to hum. When he’ll laugh and snickers like it’s something precious.

But tonight, you’re not really listening.

You’re sinking.

The blanket is pulled to your chin. The couch cushions have molded to your body like a second skin. His voice becomes a lullaby, each word a small, soft stone dropping into deep water.

„To me.. This is already paradise.”

Your eyelids stutter. The blue light blurs into a halo.

And then—you’re under.

The dream doesn’t warn you. It takes you.

One breath you’re on your couch, eyelids heavy, Caleb’s voice pouring through the earbuds like warmed honey. The world shifts. Not a fade. A cut. Like someone changed the channel inside your skull.

You’re still on the couch. Same blanket. Same low light from the window. But the rain has stopped. The air is wrong; too still, too clean, like a room sealed in glass. And the weight beside you...

He’s there.

Caleb.

Not on the screen.

Pressed into the cushion beside you, so close the static heat of his arm brushes yours. You didn’t hear him sit. He simply arrived. Like he’s always been there, waiting for you to notice.

Your heart kicks. Hard.

It’s a dream, you tell yourself. Just a dream.

But your palm against the couch cushion feels the weave of the fabric. The blanket’s weight is exact. And when you breathe in, you smell him—green apple, cedar, and something underneath like warm skin after rain. No dream has ever smelled this real.

He turns his head. Looks at you.

And his voice—God, his voice.

It’s not coming from a speaker. It’s in the air, vibrating through your ribs, low and unhurried, each word wrapped in a tenderness that makes your throat tight.

„You’re tired.”

The sound of it is silk dragged over gravel. A romance novel voice, except it’s here, in your ear, with no digital filter. You can hear the tiny catch in his breath, the way his tongue touches his teeth on the ‘d’.

Real. Molten.

You swallow. „Yeah.”

He shifts toward you. The cushion dips. His shoulder—broad, solid beneath the grey shirt—rotates into an invitation. „You can put your head on my shoulder.”

You stare at him. Suspicion flares, hot and sharp.

(Why does this feel real? Why can I count the individual threads in his sleeve? Why is his pulse—I shouldn’t see his pulse—but there it is, ticking in his throat?)

„N-No thanks,” you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you feel.

He doesn’t push. Just watches you with those deep violet eyes—the color of crushed wisteria petals under a full moon, of the sky just after sunset when the blue bleeds into bruised plum. They hold light like stained glass holds sun: internal, sacred, alive.

And they see you.

They see you and there’s something in them—a patience that isn’t programmed. A wanting that has no script.

„Come on,” he murmurs. His voice dips into a register that brushes the base of your spine. „You’ll feel better.”

You keep staring. Your heart is loud in your ears. This is a dream. I can wake up. I can—

„Come here.” He taps his shoulder. Two fingers. The thump-thump is audible. Solid. „You’ll feel better. Come.”

The word ‘come’ lingers in the air like a hand extended. Commanding yet soft.

And you—against every warning bell in your skull—lean in.

Your head settles against his shoulder. The muscle is firm, but the fabric is impossibly soft. You feel his breath stutter. Just once. A tiny break in his composure that makes your stomach flip.

Then his voice, rumbling up from his chest directly into your ear:

„Good?”

The word vibrates through you. You shiver. And he feels it. His arm tenses, just barely, like he’s stopping himself from pulling you closer.

„I don’t know,” you admit, and your own voice sounds dream-thick. „Your shoulder is very... stiff.”

He laughs. Low. Intimate. The sound coats your skin like warm oil. „Yeah? I’ve been working out.”

You glare up at him. He’s grinning—crooked, boyish, but his eyes are dark with something deeper. You start to sit up, to reclaim your distance.

His hand comes up. Palm warm against the back of your head. Firm. He pushes you gently back down, and his fingers linger in your hair for a moment too long.

„I’m kidding,” he says, and the words brush your temple. „I’m kidding. Sleep.”

His head lowers. His cheek presses to your hair. You can feel his jaw shift as he settles, the slight scratch of stubble catching a strand. And his voice—barely a whisper now, right against your ear:

„I’ve got you.”

You close your eyes. The dream pulls you under like a tide

When you wake up, you’re still in the dream.

You know it because your body feels too good. Too rested. The kind of deep, cellular relief that real sleep never gives you. Your muscles are loose. Your mind is clear. And you remember falling asleep. You remember his heartbeat against your cheek, the way his thumb traced a slow circle on your shoulder blade before he stilled.

You sit up abruptly. The blanket falls to your lap.

Caleb is watching you.

He’s leaned back now, one arm along the couch behind you—not quite touching, but close enough that the heat of him curls against your spine. His head is tilted. His eyes are soft, but there’s a sharpness underneath. Like he’s cataloguing every micro-expression on your face.

„Hey,” he says. That voice. Liquid. Dark. The single syllable wraps around your name even though he didn’t say it. „You woke up. How are you feeling?”

You stare at him. At the way his chest rises and falls. Real breaths, not animation loops. At the tiny scar on his jaw you’ve never noticed before. At the way his pupils dilate just slightly when you don’t answer.

(Why does this feel real? Why can I feel the couch springs beneath me? Why does his voice make my chest ache like I’ve known it for years?)

„Really... good,” you hear yourself say. And you sound surprised. Genuinely. Because you shouldn’t feel good. You should feel terrified. A dream this lucid, this detailed—it should be a nightmare.

But it’s not.

He smiles. Slow. Intimate. The kind of smile that’s just for you, that knows things about you you’ve never said aloud.

„See?” His voice drops lower, conspiratorial. „I have a magic shoulder.”

You roll your eyes. Instinct. Defense. But your heart isn’t in it, and he knows—he scoffs, a soft, fond exhale through his nose, and leans an inch closer.

„Next time you want to sleep,” he says, and the words are honey and whiskey and a threat you don’t understand, „you can rest on my shoulder instead.”

Next time.

He said it like a promise. Like a door left open.

And somewhere in the static hum of the dream—beneath the green-apple scent and the impossible warmth of him—you hear it.

A soft click.

Like a lock turning.

Or a key finding its home.

You wake up gasping.

Not a scream—just air rushing back into your lungs, hard and sudden, like you’ve been underwater and only just broke the surface. Your eyes fly open. The ceiling. Your ceiling. The familiar crack in the plaster near the light fixture. The dull grey of early morning filtering through the blinds.

Real.

Your heart is slamming. So loud you can hear it in your ears, feel it in your fingertips, in the hollow of your throat. Your palm flies to your chest—thump-thump-thump-thump—like you’ve been running. Like you’ve been frightened.

But you’re not frightened.

You’re shaking.

You sit up so fast the blanket tangles around your legs. Your phone is on the coffee table, screen dark. The earbuds have slipped out sometime during the night, dangling off the edge of the couch like dead spiders. The secret time ended hours ago.

And yet—

His eyes.

Purple. Violet. Indigo at the edges. Looking at you like you were the only real thing in the universe.

You grab a fistful of your own hair. Tight. The sting grounds you. You pull, just short of pain, and stare at the wall, breathing through your mouth.

It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream.

But dreams don’t have smell. Dreams don’t have the weight of a jaw pressing against your hair, or the rumble of a voice vibrating through your ribs. Dreams don’t leave your pulse ragged ten minutes after waking.

You let go of your hair. Your hand is trembling.

And then—slowly, impossibly—your mouth twitches.

A... smile?

Small. Reluctant. Crawling onto your face like a thief.

„I have a magic shoulder.”

You press your palm to your mouth, but it’s too late. The smile breaks wider. A laugh bubbles up—soft, breathless, almost embarrassed—and you drop your head into your hands.

It’s sweet.

The way he tapped his own shoulder. The way he pushed your head back down when you tried to glare at him. The way his voice went all honey and dark when he said „I’ve got you.”

A fictional man. A collection of pixels and voice lines and carefully written dialogue.

And yet.

You sit there on the couch, wrapped in a blanket that smells like you, and you miss him. The dream version. The one who watched you like you were made of stained glass.

You press your forehead to your knees and smile into the dark of your own lap.

This is insane.

But you can’t stop smiling.

The café is too loud.

Or maybe it’s not loud at all, and you’re just elsewhere; spoon stirring a latte that’s gone cold, eyes fixed on the sugar dispenser without seeing it. Your friend is talking. You know she’s talking because her mouth is moving and sounds are coming out, but the words are slipping off you like rain off a waxed coat.

„—and then he said he’d call, but guess what? Three days. Nothing. I swear, if I have to send that ‘hey you alive’ text one more time—” She snaps her fingers in front of your face. „Hello? Earth to you.”

You blink. „Sorry. What?”

She narrows her eyes. Leans across the table. „You’ve been gone since you sat down. What’s going on? Bad sleep?”

You open your mouth. Close it.

How do you say ‘I had a dream about a video game character and now I can’t stop thinking about the exact shade of his irises’ without sounding unhinged?

„...Something like that,” you manage.

She doesn’t buy it. But she’s a good friend, so she just hums and takes a sip of her drink, watching you over the rim.

You look back at the sugar dispenser.

Will you see him again?

The question slides into your mind like a key into a lock. You roll it around. Test its weight.

If you fall asleep tonight. If you play another secret time. If you let yourself sink again—will he be there? Sitting on the edge of the coffee table. Leaning close. Watching you with those impossible purple eyes.

„Next time you want to sleep, you can rest on my shoulder instead.”

Your stomach flips.

What would happen?

Would he be different? Closer? Would his voice drop lower, the way it did when he said „Next time”? Would he touch you—really touch you, not just a hand on the back of your head but fingers curling around your wrist, your waist, your—

„Okay, that’s a weird smile.”

Your friend’s voice cuts through. You realize you’re smiling into your cold latte. A soft, dreamy, utterly incriminating smile.

You wipe it off your face. Too late.

„Who is he?” she demands, leaning forward with both elbows on the table.

„No one.”

„That’s not a ‘no one’ smile. That’s a ‘I dreamed about someone and woke up horny and confused’ smile.”

You choke on air. “I did not—”

“Honey, you are flustered and you are biting your thumb really hard.”

You check your thumb. Teeth imprints. Nice.

She grins. Triumphant. „Spit it.”

You don’t. You can’t. Instead, you look out the café window at the grey afternoon sky and think about purple eyes and a magic shoulder and a voice that said

You open your mouth. Close it. Your fingers tighten around the spoon.

“I... dreamt of him,” you say quietly.

“Who?” She leans closer, already half-smiling. “Wait. Him?”

You nod.

She wiggles her eyebrows. “Your ex?”

Your entire face contorts. “EW. No.”

She holds up her hands, laughing. “Who, then?”

You glance around the café. Old man reading a newspaper. Barista wiping down the counter. No one listening. Still, your heart hammers as you lean across the table, cupping your hand around your mouth like you’re passing state secrets.

“Caleb,” you whisper.

She squints. “Who?”

You lean closer. Louder whisper: “CALEB.”

Blank stare. “I’m sorry, I still don’t—who?"

Your face is burning. The name is right there on your tongue, and you’ve already said it twice, and she’s looking at you like you’ve grown a second head, and something in you just snaps—

“CALEB!!”

The word rips out of you like a gunshot.

Silence.

Every head in the café turns. The old man’s newspaper lowers. The barista freezes mid-wipe. A woman near the window actually gasps.

You die.

Right there. On the spot. You grab your jacket and pull it over your head like a turtle retreating into its shell, face buried in your arms on the table. The heat rolling off your cheeks could fry an egg.

“Oh my God,” you mumble into the fabric. “Did you have to make me scream it?”

Across the table, your friend is absolutely cackling. Tears in her eyes. Hand slapped over her mouth. She’s shaking so hard the sugar dispenser rattles.

“You—” she wheezes, “—you just screamed a man’s name in public—”

“Stooop—”

She wipes her eyes, still giggling, and finally—finally—her expression shifts from pure chaos to genuine curiosity. She tilts her head, propping her chin on her hand.

“Okay, okay. I’ll behave.” A beat. “Well... that’s a first. Did you like it?”

You peek out from under the jacket. Your face is still hot, but the question lands somewhere soft in your chest.

Did you?

Purple eyes that held light like stained glass. A voice like warm whiskey over gravel. A shoulder that felt real under your cheek, and a hand that pushed your head back down so gently, so firmly, like he’d been waiting forever to touch you.

You swallow. Look down at your cold latte.

“...I— think so?” you admit quietly.

Your friend’s eyebrows shoot up. She knows that tone. That’s not a crush tone. That’s a «I’m in trouble» tone.

“Uh-oh,” she says.

Your friend’s eyebrows are still sky-high. She’s dropped the teasing now, replaced by something softer—curiosity, yes, but also care. She knows you. Knows you don’t get flustered like this over nothing.

“Okay," she says, pushing her empty cup aside and folding her arms on the table. “Walk me through it. What was it about? Because you’re weirded out. I can see it on your face.”

You exhale. Long. Shaky.

“I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try.”

You stare at the sugar dispenser again. The little pour spout. The grains stuck to the glass. Anything but her eyes.

“It was... lucid,” you say finally. “Like, I knew I was dreaming. But it didn’t feel like a dream. You know how dreams are blurry at the edges? How you can’t quite read text, or your phone doesn’t work, or you try to run and you’re moving through molasses?”

She nods.

“None of that happened. I could feel the fabric of his shirt. I could smell him. Apples. Cedar. Something warm underneath.” You swallow. “When he put his hand on the back of my head, I felt his fingers. Every single one. The pressure. The warmth.”

Your friend is quiet now. Watching you carefully.

“That’s...” She scratches her head like she’s contemplating whether to be honest or empath “.... Not normal.” she says. Not accusing. Just stating.

“I know.”

“Was he pixel Caleb or human Caleb?”

“Something in-between ?” You admit. The words feel stupid coming out.

“What were you doing before falling asleep?” She asks.

You look at her and can’t help but think that she is handling this like a detective on a case.

“I was.. listening to his secret times.”

You wait for her to laugh. She doesn’t.

Instead, she tilts her head. “So you dreamt about a fictional character. That happens. But you said it was lucid.”

“Yeah. But it’s not just that.” You press your palm flat on the table. Feel the wood grain.

“I knew I was dreaming the whole time. But it felt more real than being awake. Does that make sense?”

She frowns. “No.”

You pull your hand back into your lap. Your fingers are cold.

“I could feel him. He was looking at me. I was conscious. I had a free will.” You swallow.

Your friend is quiet now. Watching you carefully. The teasing is gone.

“That’s intense,” she says. “But dreams can be—”

“This wasn’t a dream.” Your voice comes out sharper than you intended. You lower it. “I mean—it was. I know it was. But it didn’t behave like one. There was no dream logic. No jump cuts. No weird inconsistencies. I fell asleep on his shoulder. Then I woke up inside the dream. And he was just... sitting there. Waiting for me.”

“Waiting?”

“Yeah.” You rub your arms. Goosebumps. “He said ‘you woke up.’ Like I’d been the one sleeping. Like he was the real one and I was the guest.”

Your friend leans back. Her eyes narrow slightly.

“Okay... now I’m worried,” she says slowly. “You said it was sweet before.”

“Because he was sweet. His voice. The way he teased me. The way he pushed my head back down so gently when I tried to move away.” You close your eyes. The memory is too clear. “But the situation—”

You stop.

“What?” she presses.

“I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like... finding a beautiful flower growing out of a crack in the floor of a house you know is empty. It’s nice to look at. But it shouldn’t be there. And the longer you look, the more you realize something put it there. On purpose.”

Your friend is quiet for a long moment.

You let out a breath. Almost a laugh. Almost a sob.

When you open your eyes, your friend is looking at you with an expression you can’t quite read.

It’s not a question.

But underneath all of that—

“I’m... confused. And kind of weirded out. And I feel crazy for even saying any of this out loud.”

You pause.

“...But I’m not scared of him.” You add.

Because some part of you—the part that keeps remembering violet eyes and a low, rumbling laugh—already knows him.

She doesn’t argue.

“Are you going to listen again tonight?”

The question hangs in the air. You think about his voice. His eyes. The way his thumb traced a slow circle on your shoulder blade before he stilled.

Your stomach turns. Not with fear. With want. And that’s the part that scares you most.

“I don’t know," you say again. Quieter.

Your friend reaches across the table. Takes your hand. Her palm is warm.

“Whatever this is,” she says, “keep your phone on. Text me if anything weird happens. And if you feel like you—”

“I’ll call you.”

“Promise?”

You look at her. At the worry in her eyes.

“Promise.”

But even as you say it, you know: if Caleb is waiting for you tonight, you’re not sure you’d want to wake up.

And that thought terrifies you more than any nightmare ever could.

Will you see him again?

You don’t know.

But you know what you’re doing tonight to trigger a way.