🌙✨

Your staff thought he was terrifying.

This was, to be fair, not an unreasonable assessment. Zayne sitting at a bar in his dark coat, glasses on, expression carefully neutral, reading about cardiac valve regeneration while the dinner rush swirled around him, radiated an energy that made your servers instinctively straighten their posture and stop swearing in the kitchen.

“Your boyfriend is here,” became the unofficial signal for everyone to start acting professional.

He didn’t mean to be intimidating. You knew this because you’d seen this man eat an entire sleeve of cookies at 2am while watching a nature documentary about penguins, and because he once got so flustered by a compliment you gave him that his ears turned red for twenty minutes. But the restaurant staff didn’t know any of that. To them, he was the tall, sharp-jawed surgeon who looked like he could perform your annual review and your appendectomy simultaneously.

The teenagers, though. The teenagers loved him. Not in the swooning, blushing way, but in the specific way that teenagers latched onto any adult who treated them like a competent person. Zayne answered their questions. Zayne remembered their names. When one of your teenage hostesses mentioned she was thinking about pre-med, Zayne spent fifteen minutes of a slow Wednesday evening explaining the residency process with a lot of patience, probably the same amount he gave his own residents, and the girl walked away looking like she’d been handed the keys to the universe.

He knew your schedule better than you did. This wasn’t romantic so much as it was clinical—he tracked your shifts the way he tracked your blood pressure, your sleep patterns, your eating habits. Data points in the ongoing project of keeping you alive and functional, which he approached with the tender, relentless focus of a man who had chosen cardiology because the person he loved had a heart condition and he’d decided, apparently at age fourteen, that he was going to be the one to fix it.

When your period hit, Zayne didn’t talk in person to your manager. Zayne did something worse: he texted your manager. A single, polite, medically worded message about the physiological impact of dysmenorrhea on work performance, citing two studies, and suggesting—not demanding, because Zayne was nothing if not professional—that a modified shift might be advisable.

Your manager, who had a healthy respect for anyone who used the word "dysmenorrhea" correctly in a sentence, gave you the afternoon off.

You found out about the text three days later.

“Zayne. You sent my boss a medical briefing.” you bit back a smile, astonished yet not entirely surprised at the gesture.

He was chopping vegetables in your kitchen, sleeves rolled to the elbow, glasses slightly fogged from the steam. He didn’t look up. “I sent her relevant literature. What she did with it was her decision.”

“You cited sources.”

“Would you have preferred I didn’t?” the ghost of something dry flickered at the corner of his mouth. “I could have simply told her you were unwell. But I find that people respond more favorably to peer-reviewed evidence than to emotional appeals.”

You stared at him. He continued chopping, precise and even and utterly unbothered, and the warmth in your chest simmered the way it always did around him—slow, steady, the kind of heat that didn’t burn but never went out.

“You’re unbelievable sometimes.” you scoffed, amused and smiling so big it reached your ears.

“I’m thorough, my love.” He set the knife down and crossed to you. Pressed his cool hand to your forehead out of what you suspected was pure habit, his thumb brushing your temple. “There’s a difference.”

Xavier

Xavier just... appeared.

That was the only way to describe it. One day your restaurant didn’t have a silver-haired regular who napped in booth six, and the next day it did, and nobody could pinpoint exactly when the transition happened. He materialized quietly, without announcement, as though he’d always been there and you simply hadn’t noticed yet.

He ordered the same thing every time. Whatever you recommended. It didn’t matter what it was. You could’ve told him the special was a bowl of lukewarm soup and a bread roll and he would’ve nodded, eaten every bite, and left a neat, precise tip folded under his glass. Not flashy nor excessive, but simply the appropriate amount that suggested he’d actually thought about it, calculated the percentage, and rounded up because that was what you did for someone you loved.

He never sat in your section on purpose. You figured this out after the third week, when you realized he always chose whichever booth was furthest from your assigned tables—close enough to watch you, far enough not to be in the way. If you caught his eye across the dining room, he’d give you that barely-there nod, calm and warm, and go back to whatever he was doing.

What he was doing was usually sleeping.

Your coworkers had opinions about this.

“Is he... is he okay?” your colleague asked you once, genuinely concerned, peering at the silver-haired man slumped gently against the booth wall with his eyes closed, empty plate pushed aside, looking for all the world like a very beautiful, very tired cat in a human suit.

“He’s fine. He does that.”

“Should I bring him some coffee?”

“He’ll wake up when I get off shift.” And he always did. Right on time, every time, like he had some internal clock synced to your schedule. Eyes open, standing, jacket on, waiting by the door. Ready to walk you home because the route was dark and he just had to make sure you’re safe.

The teenagers on your staff were terrified of him, which was genuinely funny because Xavier was about as threatening as a sleepy golden retriever. But something about the way he carried himself at times—the stillness, the quiet intensity, the fact that his eyes tracked every person who got too close to you with a focus that was more hunter than boyfriend—made the high schoolers give his booth a wide berth.

He knew your manager by name. Your manager did not know how Xavier knew her name. This was never addressed.

On the bad days—the period days, the days when you moved through your shift with a heating pad shoved under your apron and your jaw clenched against the cramps—Xavier didn’t talk to your manager. He didn’t make a scene. He just appeared at the end of your shift with a bag from the convenience store near your apartment: painkillers, your favorite brand of chocolate, a hot water bottle and a packet of those instant soup noodles you only ate when you felt terrible.

He handed the bag to you in the parking lot, took your work tote off your shoulder and transferred it to his, and started walking.

“Xavie, you didn’t have to—”

“I know.” he adjusted the tote strap and kept walking. “I was already at the store.”

He was not already at the store. The store was twenty minutes in the opposite direction of his apartment. You knew this. He knew you knew this.

Neither of you said anything else. You walked home in the comfortable silence, his shoulder brushing yours with every step, steady and warm and there.

He was always just... there.

Caleb

The thing about Caleb knowing you worked in a restaurant was that Caleb was a better cook than your entire kitchen staff, and he would never, ever let you forget it.

“The risotto’s overcooked,” he’d murmur, barely glancing at a plate being run past your section, his cap pulled low and his long legs stretched under the booth he’d claimed as his personal territory every Tuesday and Thursday night. “Tell the cook to pull it thirty seconds earlier.”

“Caleb, you can’t tell my line cook—”"

“I’m not telling him. I’m telling you, baby. You can tell him.” He swiped a fry off the appetizer plate you were about to deliver, popping it into his mouth with a grin that was all teeth and zero remorse. “Also, those need more salt.”

Infuriating. Completely, devastatingly infuriating. And right. He was always right about the food, which made it worse.

Caleb became a constant presence at your restaurant the same way he’d become one in every other part of your life—by simply refusing to exist anywhere else. He showed up after flight briefings still half in uniform, jacket unzipped, looking like the kind of trouble that made your hostesses suddenly very interested in the seating chart near his section.

The teenagers worshipped him. Openly. Without shame. He was tall and athletic and had that effortless, golden-boy energy that made high schoolers want to impress him, and he played into it just enough to be charming—remembering their names, asking about their games, challenging your teenage busser to arm-wrestling contests during slow shifts that he won without trying and then pretended were close.

But his eyes always tracked back to you.

That was the part your coworkers noticed. The way he watched you move through the dining room—not casually and definitely not passively. The way a pilot watched a radar screen. Constant, precise awareness. He knew where you were at every moment, which tables were giving you trouble, which customer had been rude, which coworker had stuck you with their side work again.

He filed it all away. You’d learned that about the new version of Caleb—the Colonel version, the one who’d come back sharper and darker and more honest about what he wanted. He didn’t forget anything. He held it, sorted it, and deployed it later with a precision that was equal parts comforting and terrifying to you.

“Table nine was rude to you.”

“Table nine was just impatient, Caleb.”

He ate another fry. His eyes didn’t leave table nine for a very long time. Table nine left a generous tip and exited quickly. You chose not to investigate why.

He knew your staff better than some of them knew each other, because Caleb had grown up studying people—reading rooms, tracking hierarchies, figuring out who was trustworthy and who wasn’t. Your manager liked him because he was polite and charming and tipped well. Your manager did not know that Caleb had memorized her scheduling patterns and had, on more than one occasion, subtly rearranged your availability through a series of very casual, very friendly conversations that somehow always resulted in you getting the shifts you wanted.

When your period hit, Caleb didn’t negotiate with management. Caleb showed up at your apartment before your shift with a container of homemade soup, the heating pad you liked, and a text already sent to your manager from your phone—which he’d unlocked, because of course he knew your passcode, he’d watched you type it once six months ago—saying you wouldn’t be in tonight.

“Caleb! You can’t just do that!”

“Already did.” he steered you back toward the couch with both hands on your shoulders. Gentle but absolute. The grip of a man who had decided what was happening and was deeply uninterested in alternatives. “Sit down, pips. You’re not carrying plates for eight hours when you can barely stand up straight.”

“I can stand up perfectly—”

He raised an eyebrow. You were, at that exact moment, slightly hunched.

You sat down.

He tucked the blanket around you, kissed the top of your head, and went back to the kitchen to finish the soup, humming something under his breath, his shoulders relaxed in the particular way they only got when you were close and safe and exactly where he wanted you.

“I’m calling in tomorrow, too,” he added, back to you, stirring. “Your fridge is empty. I’m making enough for three days.”

“You have briefings—”

“Rescheduled.” He glanced over his shoulder. You caught the ghost of his smile—warm, certain, the smile of a boy who used to carry you home on his back and had simply never stopped. “You come first. You always come first.”

Your chest ached. The good kind. The kind that had been there since childhood and had only grown louder in all the years since—through the separation, the grief, the silence, and the impossible, aching miracle of his return.

You pulled the blanket tighter and watched him cook, and the soup tasted like home.

Sylus

Sylus didn’t come to your restaurant. Sylus acquired your restaurant.

Not literally. Not on paper. But within approximately two visits, every single person on staff—from your general manager down to the dishwasher who only worked Sundays—understood with perfect clarity that the white-haired man in the corner booth was not a person you kept waiting, served the wrong order to, or looked at sideways. This understanding was not communicated through threats. It was communicated through Sylus simply... existing. In their space. With that energy.

The first time he showed up, your floor manager nearly had a cardiac event. Not because she recognized him—most people outside the N109 Zone wouldn’t—but because Sylus occupied physical space the way a thunderstorm did. You couldn’t ignore it. You just had to decide how wet you were willing to get.

“Table for one?” your floor manager had managed, her voice only slightly strangled.

Sylus had looked past her, found you across the dining room, and the slow, proprietary curve of his mouth made your entire section of tables feel like they were intruding on a private conversation.

“I’ll sit wherever she is.”

He tipped like he was laundering money. Which—given his background—you occasionally worried he was. But the staff didn’t ask questions. The staff had developed a collective, unspoken policy of treating Sylus’ visits with the respectful caution of people who understood that this particular regular could buy the building and was choosing not to out of what appeared to be affection for one specific server.

The teenagers were a mixed bag. Half of them were openly terrified. The other half had developed the most transparent, mortifying crushes you’d ever witnessed, which Sylus navigated with the lazy amusement of a large predator watching smaller creatures attempt to bring him offerings. One of your teenage bussers once left a mint on his table with a smiley face drawn on the wrapper, and Sylus pocketed it without comment, and you watched a sixteen year old nearly ascend to another plane of existence.

He knew your staff. Not by effort—by intelligence. The man ran a criminal organization; he could memorize the name, shift pattern, and temperament of a twelve-person restaurant crew in his sleep. He knew which cook to compliment to get your food out faster. He knew which server was skimming tips. He told you about that last one privately, because he didn’t involve himself in things that weren’t his business unless they affected you, and someone stealing from your tip pool very much affected you.

The period situation was handled before you even realized it needed handling.

You’d texted the twins—because some things were embarrassing even when your boyfriend never made you feel embarrassed—that you were having a rough day. Cramps. Didn’t want to call in because you needed the hours.

Twenty minutes later, Luke texted back. In your work locker, you found a heating pad that was somehow already warm, a thermos of something that smelled like ginger and honey, imported painkillers you’d never seen before that turned out to work twice as fast as anything over the counter, and a note in handwriting that was elegant and unbothered and entirely Sylus.

Take these. Finish your shift if you insist. I’ll be in the parking lot at closing.

—S

p.s. If your manager gives you trouble, give him my number. I’d enjoy that conversation.

Your manager did not give you trouble. Your manager had never given you trouble. Your manager had once seen Sylus hold a door open for you and had immediately restructured the schedule to give you every holiday you’d ever requested off.

You finished your shift. He was in the parking lot, leaning against the car, arms crossed.

“You didn’t have to do all that, Sy.”

“Get in the car, sweetie.” he opened the door for you. “I made reservations.”

“Sylus, I work in a restaurant. I don’t want to eat in another—”

“Not at a restaurant. At home. I cooked.” the smirk softened into something quieter. “You’ve been on your feet for nine hours. Sit down and let someone take care of you for once.”

You got in the car, and let him.

© zaynessbeloved 2026. please don’t copy, repost or translate my works. thank you!

🏷️: @aiycnlyme, @syluslittlecrows, @asiaticapple, @youkoden, @w0ndert1nk, @deadlyskepticalnightmare, @2affectionate4z, @daisybbyxx, @kokoa21, @imaginationofafan

tears spill unchecked down your face, warm and salty as they sink into your skin. you don’t move to wipe them away. you can’t. it’s too much—the crushing weight of doubt, the suffocating certainty that you are somehow not enough for him. for anyone. for the world.

“i just… want to be enough for you.” you whimper out, words constricted. “enough for everyone.”

your eyes squeeze shut and you try to control your breathing. doing all the techniques that you and sylus practiced. in for four seconds, hold for seven and out for eight. except you choke on a sob when you let out your breath. 

sylus can’t take it. he can’t lay there, controlled and relaxed, pretending to be asleep. not when you’re barely holding yourself together. he wants to hear the thoughts rattling around in your head, yes. more than anything he wants to hear how you feel, but he just can’t stand the sound of you trying to keep yourself together. 

“come here,” he whispers, turning onto his side to face you. his arm embraces you, pulling you until you flush against his warm, bare chest. “come on, sweetie. let it out. you don’t need to hold back.”

sylus doesn’t hold your trembling body like it’s something fragile. no, he holds you tight, like he’s trying to squeeze every rotten feeling out of you, like he refuses to let any of that pain stay lodged in your chest. because if there’s anyone who deserves better, it’s you.

you deserve a life filled with forever smiles and eyes that crinkle from laughing too hard. you deserve a softness that stays, a happiness that doesn’t vanish, and the purest love this life has to offer.

the last thing you deserve is to feel like you’re not enough. you shouldn’t be breaking like this in his arms, sobbing against his chest over a lie that was never yours to carry—that you aren’t enough. and sylus wishes he could reach inside your body and take that feeling away because you’re everything and more to him. 

comfort isn’t his forte, but he does his best. 

“it’s me who doesn’t deserve you.” he murmurs, lips pressed to the crown of your head. “you, sweetie… you make me whole. i know there’s something rotten in that pretty little head of yours telling you otherwise, but hear me when i say this—”

he tilts your chin up and his heart breaks in his chest at the sight of your red rimmed eyes and your wet cheeks. he stares you dead in your glassy eyes and says, “you’re everything. you are so much more than you give yourself credit for and i won’t let you run away from me.” 

“but… what if you—” more tears fall as you try to get your words out. “what if i get worse… and you can’t take it anymore?”

he shakes his head before pressing his forehead to yours. “impossible.” 

“you say that now… but what if—”

“shh, no more what ifs, sweetie. i’m not leaving you.” he whispers, eyes fluttering close as the ache in his chest intensifies. “i’ve waited lifetimes to be with you… i’m never going to leave you.”

you sniffle, eyes shutting and letting stray tears fall. “sylus…”

“i love you more than anything in this world,” he breathes, his voice so unsteady he barely trusts it himself. “i’ll stay right beside you—i’ll do anything i can to help you. but you can’t wait until i’m asleep to tell me when you’re feeling like this, okay? i want to be here for you. i want to hear how you’re feeling so i can do what i can to make you my happy kitten.”

you nod, arms sliding around him as you tuck your face into the crook of his neck. “okay,” you promise softly against his pulse point, your words vibrating there. “i love you.”

“till the world ends, sweetie.”

kit says… hi, this is going to be a bit long so you don’t need to read it, but if u do… uh, hello! so i wrote this about a month ago while i was going through a lot. this is my first time ever writing hurt comfort like this so please be kind to me LOL. i know it’s not the best thing ever, but i tried, i swear. i have a rlly hard time handling emotions properly and it really really fucking sucks because it’s not something that just goes away. i found that writing this really helped me while i was having a really really rotten day. yessss i am a zayne main, but i find solace and comfort in sylus. just something about him idk. i #love that man. anyway. this piece really means a lot to me and i dont care how many notes this gets bc this was more of a way for me to express me and my emotions. i hope u enjoyed if u read this! i love u so much and sylus does too :3 — special thank u to my sweetheart @princesspeachi3 for reading this and encouraging me to post it (i was really anxious about publishing as it’s not what i usually write lol) i love u my peach <3 OKAY IM DONE BYEEEE.

You always get clumsier when he watches you. He knows this. He absolutely uses it. He’ll lounge on the couch with one knee up and his chin in his hand, just looking, and you’ll lose the ability to operate a doorknob. Today he’s been sketching you in the corner of his page—not the painting he’s supposed to be working on, the commission one, the important one—and you caught him at it earlier and went so red he had to put the pencil down because his own face was getting warm.

He crouches down with you to gather the brushes.

You’re both on the floor now, knees almost touching. He hands you one, and his fingers brush yours, and you flinch like he’s electric.

“Y’know,” he says, conversationally, lining a brush up on the tile, “for someone who’s been kissed by me a frankly impressive number of times, you still go pink like it’s our first date.”

“I— I don’t—”

“You do. It’s my favorite thing.” He grins, eyes crinkling. “Don’t ever stop.”

There’s paint on your cheek and he refuses to tell you.

You only realize it when you catch your reflection in the window—a streak of pink swept right across your cheekbone, from when you’d rubbed your face earlier. You whirl on him. He’s already laughing, that bright, unbothered laugh of his, head thrown back against the couch cushions.

“Rafayel!”

“What? It suits you, cutie. It’s my color. You’re branded now.”

“You let me walk around like this—”

“For at least forty minutes, yes.” He gets up finally, and crosses to you with that lazy, unhurried gait. His thumb comes up to brush at the paint gently, careful in a way his voice never is in moments like this. The teasing slides off his face for half a breath. “There. Almost gone. Mostly.”

He kisses the spot anyway. Light. Quick. Like he’s signing it the way he signs his canvases, which you might as well be, at this point.

“There,” he murmurs, and he’s smiling, but his ears have gone faintly pink and he won’t quite meet your eyes. “Now it’s mine.”

You hide your face in his shirt. He lets you, one hand settled at the back of your head, and pretends, for your sake, that his heart isn’t doing anything embarrassing at all.

Zayne - When You Drop the Mug Again

He hears it before he sees it hit the floor.

The clatter of ceramic against the kitchen tile carries down the hallway, followed by the small, mortified sound you always make when you’ve done something you wish nobody had witnessed. Zayne is in the doorway within seconds, still holding the medical journal he was reading, one finger tucked between the pages to mark his place. He takes in the chipped mug on the floor, the puddle of tea blooming around your slippered feet, and your wide eyes—and his expression doesn’t change at all, except for the faint lift at the corner of his mouth that you’ve learned, over time, is his version of trying not to smile.

“Don’t move,” he says.

He goes for the dustpan, not for you.

It’s a thing he does on purpose. He told you once, late at night with your face pressed into his shoulder, that he doesn’t want fussing over you to feel like a verdict. So he sweeps up the shards in that quiet, methodical way he has—same hands that handle patient charts, same hands that tie his scarf for him in the mirror every morning—and only when the floor is dry and safe does he straighten up and look at you properly.

“Feet,” he says, and crouches.

“Zayne, I’m fine, it didn’t even—”

“Feet,” he repeats, in the same tone he uses on patients who try to lie about whether they’ve been taking their medication.

He checks for tiny cuts even though there are none.

You sit on the edge of the counter because he’s lifted you there, his palm warm at the back of your knee, and you can feel your ears going hot in that traitorous way they do whenever he’s this close and this serious. He turns each of your feet over in his hand like he’s reading them. Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. He knew there’d be nothing.

“Was it hot?” he asks.

“Lukewarm. I let it sit too long again.”

“Mm.” That single syllable contains an entire diagnosis. You forgot it on the counter because you got distracted reading. You always do.

He kisses your knee before he lets you down. It’s quick. Almost businesslike. If you weren’t paying attention you’d miss the way his ears go a shade darker under his hair, the way he turns toward the cabinet for a clean mug a beat too fast.

“I’ll make you another,” he says, with his back to you. “Sit. Don’t help.”

“I can hel—”

“Sit.”

Later, you find the chipped mug glued back together on the windowsill.

He doesn’t mention it. He never does. But that night, when you apologize again into the dark of the bedroom—I’m sorry I’m such a mess, I’m sorry, I—he sighs, pulls you closer by the waist, and murmurs into your hair, “Stop apologizing for being someone I want to take care of.”

And you don’t know what to do with that, so you just hide your face in his chest, and he lets you.

Xavier - The Counter Is Too High Again

He’s half-asleep on the couch when he hears the stool wobble.

Xavier sleeps the way cats sleep—anywhere, instantly, with one ear still on the world. So even though his eyes are closed and his hair is a soft pale mess against the cushion, he’s already sitting up by the time the legs of the kitchen stool screech against the floor. You’re up on your toes, reaching for the jar of honey on the top shelf, the one he keeps meaning to move down and never does because you keep insisting you can get it yourself.

You can’t get it yourself. Both of you know this.

“Wait,” he says, voice still rough from sleep.

You don’t wait. The jar tips. You make a tiny, panicked noise.

He’s across the room before the honey hits the counter.

It’s the speed that always startles you—that quiet, easy way he moves, like distance is a suggestion he chooses not to take seriously. One of his hands closes around the jar mid-fall. The other settles, warm and steady, at your waist, anchoring you on the stool so you don’t pitch forward after it.

“Got it,” he murmurs.

“I almost—”

“I know.”

He says it without any of the I-told-you-so other people would lace into it. Xavier doesn’t scold. He just notes things, the way someone might note the weather, and then he handles them. You look down at him from your slight height advantage on the stool—a rare angle—and his hair is soft and rumpled and his eyes are the color of a sky you’ve been trying to remember.

You go pink. Of course you go pink.

He tilts his head a fraction. There’s a slow, drowsy smile spreading across his face, the kind he only ever wears for you, the kind that makes him look about seventeen years old and very far from anything dangerous.

“What?” you whisper.

“Nothing.” He hands you the honey jar like it’s a small, ceremonious gift. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“Xavier.”

“That’s my name.”

He doesn’t let you climb down by yourself.

You try. He doesn’t allow it. His hands come up under your arms and he lifts you down off the stool like you weigh nothing—because to him you do—and sets you on your feet so gently your slippers barely make a sound on the tile. His thumb brushes once, absently, over your hip before he lets go.

“You could’ve just woken me up,” he says.

“You were sleeping so well.”

“I’m always sleeping well. You’re more important than sleeping well.”

He says things like that all the time. Quiet, true, unadorned. Like it’s nothing. Like he isn’t slowly dismantling you sentence by sentence. You hide your face in your hands. He laughs softly, low and very fond, and pulls your wrists gently down.

“None of that,” he says. “I want to see you.”

He makes the tea himself after that.

He moves you to the counter—not the stool, he gives the stool a small, suspicious look, like it’s personally offended him—and stands between your knees while the kettle heats. You play with the hem of his sleeve. He lets you.

“Honey?” he asks.

“Yes, please.”

“Mm.” He reaches past you without looking, gets the jar, sets it down. Kisses your forehead on the way back. “See. Easy.”

You don’t trust yourself to answer. He doesn’t seem to need you to. He finds you adorable anyway.

Caleb - The Loose Step on the Porch

He warned you about that step three times this week.

The third one from the top. The wood’s gone soft from winter and he keeps meaning to fix it on his next leave, but his next leave is this leave, and he hasn’t gotten to it yet because you keep finding more interesting things for him to do with his afternoons. So when he hears the small, surprised yelp from the porch—followed by the unmistakable thud of someone going down hard—he’s out of the kitchen before the screen door has stopped swinging.

You’re sitting on the floorboards with one hand bracing behind you and the other clutching a paper bag of groceries that, miraculously, you’ve kept upright. An orange has escaped and is rolling, with great purpose, toward the steps.

He stops in the doorway. He takes one look at the scene. His mouth does that thing where it tries very hard not to smile and fails completely.

“Honey,” he says, holding back a laugh..

“Don’t.” you hiss.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.” you huff.

“I was going to ask if you’re okay.” He crouches down in front of you, elbows on his knees, head tipped to one side. His hair falls into his eyes—that soft, sandy brown he never bothers to push back unless you do it for him. “Which step?”

“…the one you told me about.”

“Which one did I tell you about?”

“Caleb.”

He’s laughing now. Quietly. Mostly to himself.

He takes the grocery bag out of your lap and sets it aside with care. Then he takes both your hands and turns them palm-up, checking for scrapes. Methodical, unhurried, all of his focus settled on you. There’s a small graze along the heel of your left hand. He frowns at it like it has personally offended him.

“Stings?”

“A little.”

“Anywhere else?”

“My pride.”

“Well.” His thumb brushes very lightly over the graze. “That one I can’t kiss better. The hand I can do something about.”

He does. Just a press of his mouth, warm and quick, against the inside of your wrist. You feel it everywhere. You always do. He glances up at you through his lashes and catches the color rising in your cheeks, and his smile goes a little crooked, a little pleased with itself.

“There it is,” he murmurs.

“There what is.”

“That face you make every single time. The one where you pretend you’re not embarrassed and you go pink anyway.” He sits down beside you on the porch floor, knees drawn up, shoulder bumping gently against yours.

He retrieves the orange before he retrieves you.

It’s almost at the bottom of the top step by the time he ambles over and scoops it up, tossing it once in the air and catching it without looking. He’s wearing the soft grey t-shirt you stole twice last month, and he looks so much like home in the late afternoon light that you have to look away for a second just to remember how to breathe normally.

He notices that too. He notices everything. It’s a problem.

“You’re doin’ it again, pip.” he says, settling back down beside you with the orange in his hand.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like I just walked through the door after six months.” His voice has dropped, lost the teasing lilt. “I’ve been home a week, sweetheart.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.” He turns the orange in his palm, smiling. “I just like that you still do it.”

He helps you up like you’re made of something breakable.

His hand is broad and warm at your lower back, and he lifts you mostly with that one point of contact, the other hand finding yours and not letting go even once you’re standing. You shift your weight tentatively. Your ankle’s fine. Your knee’s fine. Everything’s fine. The only thing that’s not fine is the way your face refuses to cool down, because he’s still looking at you with that quiet, careful attention, like checking you over is something he gets to do now, like he gets to be the one who does it.

“Verdict?” he asks.

“I’ll live.”

“Great.” He bends, picks up the grocery bag, tucks it against his hip. The other hand stays in yours. “Cause I’m fixing that step tomorrow. First thing.”

“You said that last week.”

“I mean it this week.”

“You said that last week too.”

“Pips.” He pulls you in by the hand until you’re tucked under his arm, and presses a kiss into your hair, and you can feel him smiling against the top of your head. “Are you tryin’ to start a fight with the man who’s about to make you dinner?”

He does fix the step. Not tomorrow. That evening, after dinner, with the porch light on.

You watch him from the doorway in his soft grey t-shirt, sleeves shoved up, a pencil tucked behind his ear that he doesn’t appear to be using. He whistles while he works. He glances up every minute or so, just to check that you’re still there, and every time he catches you watching him he grins like he’s won something.

You think, watching him, that he’s been home a week and the house already doesn’t know how to be a house without him in it.

You don’t say it out loud for him to hear. When he comes back inside, dusty and pleased with himself, he takes one look at your face and says, very softly, “I know, baby. Me too.”

And that’s the whole conversation.

Sylus - You Spilled Wine on His Shirt

The shirt is black. The wine is red. The math is, frankly, in your favor.

You realize this approximately half a second after the glass tips, which is approximately half a second too late. The stem slipped—your fingers were nervous because he was looking at you the way he looks at you, like you’re the only interesting thing in a room full of people he’s been politely tolerating all evening—and now there’s a dark patch of wine spreading across the front of Sylus’ very expensive, very tailored shirt.

You stop breathing.

He looks down. He looks at you. He raises one brow.

“Sweetie,” he says, in that low, gravel-and-honey voice of his, “you missed.”

He is, somehow, smiling.

It’s the smallest version of his smile—the one that lives mostly in the corner of his mouth and the slight narrowing of his red eyes—but it is, undeniably, a smile. You can feel your whole face going hot.

“I’m so sorry, I’ll— let me—” You grab a napkin. You grab three napkins. You start dabbing at his chest with a bit too much panic, even for your embarrassed state. “It just slipped, I don’t know why, my hand just—”

“Mm.” He doesn’t move from his spot. He lets you fuss. His hand finds your wrist gently, and stills it. “You’re making it worse.”

“I’m sorry—"

“Stop apologizing.”

He says it the way he says most things—like an order dressed up as a suggestion.

You go still. The napkin sits crumpled in your hand. He’s still holding your wrist, his thumb tracing one slow, idle circle against your pulse point, and his eyes are doing that thing where they soften only at the edges, where you’d miss it if you didn’t know him.

“It’s a shirt,” he says.

“It’s an expensive shirt.”

“They’re all expensive shirts, kitten.” His mouth tilts. “That’s the point of having too much money. You get to be casual about ruining things.”

He plucks the wine glass out of your other hand and sets it well out of reach. A precaution. You catch the small, amused tilt of his mouth as he does it, and you go even pinker, if such a thing is physically possible.

“You did that on purpose,” you accuse, weakly.

“I did.” His voice is unrepentant. “You’re quite clumsy with stemware. I’m protecting my furniture.”

“Sylus—”

“And my floors. And my staff. And—” he leans in, voice dropping low, just for you “—my sanity, which you ruin nightly, by the way. In case you were keeping score.”

You make a small, strangled sound. He looks delighted.

He takes the shirt off right there.

Casually. Like it’s nothing. Buttons undone with that easy, practiced flick of his fingers, and then it’s draped over the back of a chair and forgotten, and he’s standing there in a plain black undershirt that does absolutely nothing to help your current condition.

He notices you checking him out. His smile sharpens.

“Eyes up here, sweetie.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Oh, but you were.”

He hooks one finger under your chin and tips your face up. His expression has gone almost gentle—the version of gentle that only exists in private, the version most of the world will never see and would never believe in if they were told.

“Breathe,” he says quietly. “It’s a shirt. You’re allowed to drop things in your own home.”

Your own home. That’s what undoes you. He always says it like that, like the question of whose home it is was settled a long time ago, and you simply haven’t caught up yet.

Later, he absolutely tells Mephisto the story.

You hear him from the next room, low and amused, and you hear Mephisto’s offended kraa, and you bury your face in a cushion and you think, with a kind of helpless, baffled warmth, that you have never, in all your life, been this loved by anyone half this dangerous.

© zaynessbeloved 2026. please don’t copy, repost or translate my works. thank you!

🏷️: @aiycnlyme, @syluslittlecrows, @asiaticapple, @youkoden, @w0ndert1nk, @deadlyskepticalnightmare, @2affectionate4z, @daisybbyxx, @kokoa21, @imaginationofafan

“This thing is so ugly,” you whine, picking at your cast as he walks you back home. “Do you think I’m gross now, Caleb?”

“It’s not ugly. You need it to get better.”

“I thought you’d fall in love with me if I went high enough,” you sniffle fake tears, which he reads in an instant. “I did go pretty high up, though. So maybe you like me at least.”

He laughs, and you scowl, insisting that you aren’t joking. So instead, he smiles and holds your free hand in his again. Your heart skips a beat. A childish, but innocent love fluttering in your chest. “Come on, splints. Let’s go watch TV, and I can sign your cast.”

The broken wrist is so worth it.

With MC being two grades lower than the two of you and thus having a different schedule, it doesn’t take long before you’re doing practically everything with Caleb. He’s your seatmate in class, the two of you walk to and from school, and there doesn’t seem to be a moment where you aren’t glued at the hip. Throughout all of this, you make sure you shoot your shot whenever the chance arises—even when it doesn’t arise at all.

“You get any chocolates for Valentine’s?” you ask as you plop down in your seat with your lunch, not-so-conspicuously eyeing his desk as his friends begin to crowd around the two of you. It didn’t take long for Caleb to adjust to ordinary school life. After his initial bumpy introduction where he seemed hesitant to get close to anyone his grandma would introduce him to, he was quick to adjust to a level of charisma even you haven’t gotten to. 

By now, he’s charisma personified. You, yourself, have no idea how quickly he adapts to things. Though, you do recall that after an exam measuring his intelligence, he was told he couldn’t lower his grade by two years to be with MC. So you suppose he’s rather bright—almost as much as his face.

“Too many,” one of his friends groan, dragging his hand down the side of his face. “Life’s so not fair, dude.”

“Just a few,” Caleb laughs, turning to feel me stare at him expectantly. “Most of them are obligatory. I just helped a couple people out during gym.”

You glance at his friends. “How many is a few?”

“At least five,” another one grins. He wiggles his eyebrows at you, and his friend snickers at his shoulder. “You jealous?”

It’s not like your crush on Caleb is new news. In fact, it’s practically common knowledge at your school, given how open you are with your affection with him. Asking him out with a giant poster on orientation day, sending him notes with hearts littered everywhere during class, and refusing to be subtle when you’re discussing it with your friends…it tends to add up. Most people believe your relationship to be strange, but those who matter thought of it as the norm, so it doesn’t really matter. 

“Jealous? I don’t think so, why?”

“Most girls would be if their boyfriend got a bunch of chocolates,” he responds, to which Caleb immediately reminds him that you’re not dating. Then his friend sighs. “It’s cute when girls get jealous, isn’t it?”

At this, your ears perk.

“Should I be jealous?” you ask Caleb, making his friends erupt into snickers. “Do you think it’s cute too?”

He rolls his eyes and flicks your forehead softly. “Do you ever ask normal questions, splints?”

Throughout your childhood together, everything involves him. Family dinners, graduation, holidays, all of it. Of course, this means that MC is there for all of it too. You’re helplessly in love, but you’re not stupid. You know what love looks like from the movies their grandma would play on their TV. He cares for her with a different look in his eyes. He protects her with a lovingness in his voice that he doesn’t spare for you. 

The same fingers that flick your forehead touch her arm gingerly, like she could crack in half if he holds too hard. He doesn’t touch her very easily either, whereas he often falls asleep with his head fully leaning against your shoulder on the bus ride home. He wakes up at the crack of dawn to make her lunch, while the two of you munch on sandwiches from the school cafeteria during lunch breaks. He scolds you when your clothes are tossed on the ground while he folds hers without her having to ask. He never enters her room to protect her privacy while he lounges in yours like he owns the place.

Your Caleb, you have found, is different from MC’s Caleb. 

MC’s Caleb is easy to depend on. Trustworthy, perfect, and never makes a mistake for the life of him. He never loses his cool in front of her, never has a hair out of place, lets her win at all the board games, and always has this clear but dazed look in his pretty purple eyes. Your Caleb has none of that. Your Caleb teases you mercilessly when you lose the card game for the fifth time in a row. Your Caleb passes out on his desk while studying for an exam, essentially drooling on his notebook to lie to MC that he’s naturally talented at math. Your Caleb sends you stupid videos about plane models and forces you to sit through a thirty-minute explanation about it.

You know he likes her. He knows you know he likes her. She doesn’t know anything at all. All jumbled up, like a wordless pact ready to crumble at any moment. 

Of course, this means that he prioritizes her over you at times. All the time. It’s to be expected. She’s family, you’re not. You’ve grown used to it, and so has he.

MC doesn’t notice though, because she doesn’t have to. Because to her, Caleb is just a slightly nagging but cool adoptive brother. Nothing more, nothing less. And you’re one of her childhood friends, and Caleb’s best friend. Nothing more, nothing less.

The first year after you graduate high school is a dramatic shift from your cozy hometown. You somehow manage to get into the same college as Caleb–and you attribute his tutoring to be the main culprit—though in different majors. It’s a lot to convince him to go so far from home given that MC is still at home, but after a lot of reluctant discussion, he agrees.

“Take off your shoes at the door,” he reminds you as you barge into his dorm room after a particularly difficult exam for one of your classes. You do as he asks, grumbling about how he has no mercy for the fallen, tossing them haphazardly beside the door and prancing past him. He takes the time to tidy them up, as if he’s expecting it. “How was your exam?”

“Awful. I went through war.”

Caleb grins as he sits down at the coffee table beside you, watching as you bury your face into your arms. “And whose fault is it that they didn’t want to study?”

“Yours.”

“Funny,” he snorts, and you feel his large hand ruffling the top of your head. “It’s alright, splints. I can tutor you a bit earlier on the next one.”

“Even you can’t save me for this class.”

“Is that a challenge?”

He ends up cooking up something quick in his makeshift kitchen (essentially just a rice cooker), while you laze around on his bed, scrolling aimlessly on your phone. Once he’s finished, you scarf down his food like a man starved, lips stretching widely. At times like these, you’re oddly grateful for his hopeless love toward MC. How else would he have learned to cook such good food?  “You should honestly be a chef, Caleb. Actually, no, that would mean other people would eat your food. I guess you can just be my personal chef when we’re married.”

Caleb remains completely unaffected, wordlessly cleaning the plate in front of you. “I didn’t realize I was engaged.”

“Well, now you know. Not sure if you remember, but I had fireworks for you and everything when I proposed. Plus an orchestra.”

He hums, looking up as if he’s in thought, and then nods. “Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar, splints. How could I forget?”

You shrug. “You tell me.”

His face falls as you pace to the door and begin to put your shoes back on. “Where are you going? Aren’t you done with class?”

“Going out. I deserve it after that exam.”

“With your friends?”

“No, with four guys,” you joke, but he doesn’t seem to find it very funny. “I’m just going to a club. I won’t be back too late.”

He’s already grabbing his jacket. “I can come.”

You push him back with your finger by the nose, and he blinks in surprise, making you laugh. “No need. You have exams too, y’know.”

“I’m done studying.”

“Liar.”

Though it takes some convincing, you eventually have him sit at his desk once more. He manages to nag a whole lot as you leave, reminding you to call him once you’re done so he can pick you up, but you just wave him off as you leave out the door. You take your time getting ready–dolling yourself up to hide the dark circles beneath your eyes. As you get ready, you video call MC, where she asks how you and Caleb have been doing in her absence. She rants about her days with her grandma, complaining about how quiet the house is when Caleb isn’t home, though she indulged in the beginning. She asks you to show her your outfit once you’re done, and she beams brightly in your screen, squealing about how you’d likely get a boyfriend soon that you can tell her all about.

You just smile, because you don’t know how to tell her that the only boy you want is wrapped around her unknowing hand.

The club is loud. Where the music rumbles through your feet to the tips of your fingertips, and the lights are flashing in a dimly lit room. Your friends flock to a table and order drinks while you let yourself feel the music and crack a joke or two once in a while.

A group of guys approaches you with easy smiles and louder voices than necessary—confidence sharpened by cheap cologne. One of them leans against your table like he’s done it a hundred times before, asking your name, where you’re from, if you come here often. The usual.

You answer, choking out a laugh to humor his unfunny jokes alongside your friends, while the swigs you take from your drink become deeper and deeper. 

He’s not bad at flirting, you think. Subtle, and not too glaring about it. But you don’t particularly enjoy humoring it, and it becomes gradually more apparent as your eyes keep drifting elsewhere and you keep having to ask him to repeat himself. You’re growing bored. Irritated.

Because he’s not Caleb.

It hits you in strange, inconvenient flashes. The way this guy stands just a little too far away. The way his voice doesn’t quite reach you over the music, even when he’s close. The way you don’t feel that familiar, grounding presence like an anchor holding you to the ground.

You find yourself glancing past his shoulder. Half-wishing to see Caleb there. Watching. Hovering.

But there’s only strangers. Blurred faces and flashing lights.

“You okay?” the guy asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah,” you say too quickly. “Long week.”

He grins, like that’s an invitation. Says something else—something about getting you another drink, maybe dancing, maybe getting out of here.

You nod again. Smile again.

Across the room, your friends are already disappearing into the crowd, dragged toward the dance floor by laughter and hands you don’t recognize. One of them glances back at you, gives you a look that asks ‘you’re good, right?’ before she’s gone.

You sit back down at the table when the guy steps away. Maybe to grab drinks, maybe because he senses your attention drifting. You don’t really care which.

The music swells in your chest. The lights flicker. You wish you could enjoy yourself, but it’s particularly hard today.

You take another sip. Then another. Your phone rests face-down on the table, but you flip it over anyway.

No messages.

Of course not. He cares, but not like that. Not in the way that he would spam MC’s phone whenever he didn’t know where she was or how she was doing. No, not like that at all.

Another sip. The glass is nearly empty now.

And suddenly, you’re pressing send before you can even register what’s happening.

[you]: hi

The answer comes immediately, the grey bubbles popping up on his end of the screen.

[futre hubs <333]: do you need me to come pick you up?

[futre hubs <333]: i can

You’re not sure why you feel like shit, but you hate it. In moments like these—moments where the alcohol lets you lower your walls and truly think—it hits you like a truck, like a deeply sinking feeling in your chest. The years of rejection after rejection that the two of you frame like a bit—as if your feelings have become so miniscule that it no longer even phases him. 

It hurts, a bit. More than you let yourself feel.

You’re not sure how much time passes. Maybe minutes or maybe an hour. There’s buzzing throughout your body. The grip on your waist belonging to the man you’ve been half-heartedly entertaining suddenly becomes harsher, snapping you out of your trance. It feels unlike Caleb, but you let it sit anyway. However, the hand moves to your wrist, and you’re being pulled out of the crowd towards the wall.

Too touchy. He’s saying something into your ear, and you feel his breath against your skin. You don’t like it. Too close. The buzzing feeling feels more like an alarm now.

The words either go unheard due to the music or don’t deter him. You want to go back. Back to Caleb. In the moment, you begin to think—almost as if the world is in slow motion. Perhaps the drinks, you think. You wonder if Caleb will leave you. You wonder if he’ll leave to go be with MC. You wonder if the years you’ve spent expressing your love to him meant as much to him as it did to you, or if he just found it plain annoying. You wonder if now that you’re in college, he’d want to explore other people, and he’ll finally find an outlet to get rid of you for good. 

But you know he wouldn’t. Because he cares for you. Just not as much as he cares for her.

You wonder if he’s ever looked at you with the same softness he does with MC.

Someone pulls you away from the man and into their chest, and the worries dissipate in an instant. His scent. His warmth. You knew he’d come. He always does. It only takes a warning glare from Caleb before the man disappears into the crowd again, and you feel the grip on your wrist loosen. Caleb stares down at you, your back still to his chest as you blink wearily, almost in slow motion, and he sighs. He doesn’t give you the same smile he gives to MC when she’s in trouble. 

A part of you wishes he wasn’t always there for you—not when it’s so different from how he’s there for her. 

You sit idly in front of a convenience store parking lot while Caleb fetches you some water and ice cream. You have your knees to your chest, arms pulling them close as you shiver against the cold autumn breeze. You should’ve brought a jacket. The buzzing, hot feeling of the alcohol is subsiding too quickly.

“Drink.” You feel a water bottle press against your cheek from behind, and Caleb plops down beside you with a plastic bag. He notices how you’re holding yourself together and frowns. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“I told you to grab a jacket.”

“You nag too much.”

He snickers and twists open the cap of the water bottle for you to drink, which you sip carefully. He strips his jacket off and drapes it over your shoulders, and you immediately bury yourself in it. It smells like him.

“What kind of woman do you like, Caleb?”

“You and your questions.”

“I want to know.”

He shifts to face you, motioning for you to lift your arms. He grabs either side of his jacket and pulls it shut, fumbling with the zipper until he manages to zip it to your chin. You can barely claw your hands out of his sleeves—the fabric almost engulfs you—but he just laughs. “My type? A woman who brings jackets when it’s cold.”

You scowl, making his laugh echo louder. “Other than that.”

“A woman who goes to class in the morning.”

“...Other than that.”

“A woman who doesn’t leave her clothes all over my floor when she feels like sleeping over.”

“Something else.”

“A woman who eats healthy, balanced meals. A woman who doesn’t steal all my pens and then still ends up asking me for more. Maybe someone who doesn’t pass out drooling on my pillow. Or someone who doesn’t let half the world know that they like someone—hell, maybe even the entire world.”

Caleb glances at you, chuckling to himself, but stops the moment he sees that you’re not laughing with him. Your head hangs low, your feet shuffling anxiously. His face twists, and suddenly the air thickens.  “Splints?”

You pick at your sleeves. “So just not me?”

“I was just kidding around.”

“Jokes have some truth to them.”

“Not all of them. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, Caleb,” you finally meet his eyes again, and shrug. “I know you like someone else. I’m not an idiot.”

Silence commences, like a bell dropping on your head.

Caleb shifts his weight, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. It’s a nervous habit you’ve seen a hundred times—usually followed by some half-joke, something to smooth things over.

But nothing comes.

The space between you suddenly feels too small and too big all at once. You try to act normal. You really do.

You fiddle with your sleeve again, smoothing it down, then pulling at it, then smoothing it again. Anything to give your hands something to do, so they don’t reach for him out of instinct. 

Caleb glances at you. Then away.

Then back again, like he’s trying to solve something written across your face but can’t quite make out the words.

“Hey,” he starts, softer this time.

You hum in response, not trusting your voice yet.

Another pause. God, it’s awkward.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he mutters again, quieter now. Not defensive. Unsure. “You know I think you’re amazing.”

Just not enough.

“I am pretty great,” but it comes out too soft.

Neither of you knows what to do with another stretch of silence. So you opt to drink some more water instead.

“Why do you like me so much?” He eventually mutters out as he bites his bottom lip, eyes falling to the ground like he can’t bear to watch your expression. “You could do a lot better.”

You smile, but it’s half-hearted. “How could I not?”

He pauses, as if choosing his words carefully before his voice comes out in a soft whisper. “You mean so much to me. You’re smart, beautiful, and everything good in between—whoever gets to call you theirs is the luckiest person I know. And you know I’d do anything for you.”

Despite their sweetness, his words feel like judgement wrapping around your heart in vines, squeezing just before it’s about to pop. You wish you could block your ears out for what comes next.

“But it can’t be me.” Caleb’s lips purse, brows furrowing as he looks away. “I can’t give you what you want.”

The rejection hurts more than you realized it would. You want to tell him that it’s not fair to treat you the way he does and expect you not to fall for him. That holding your hair when you vomit, falling asleep at your bedside when you’re sick, and his eyes closing in on you in any room that you’re in is not fair. 

Instead, you nod. And you swear to yourself that you’ll swallow this sickening lump in your throat that makes you want to hurl and sob at the same time. That you’ll bury it deep in a graveyard within you that even the closest person to you would never know of. Especially him.  

“I don’t want it, either,” you snort back, immediately perking up to slap his back in what results in a jolt. His shoulders tense as he blinks wide at you, unsure of the sudden shift in atmosphere. “I don’t want feelings that belong to someone else, dumbass.”

Once it sinks in that you mean it, a smile finds its way onto his face, though something flickers beneath it, like a flash of something you don’t want to look too far into.

Not because you still had hope, but because whatever existed between you had never been something as simple as a crush. It had roots—tangled deep into your souls and impossible to pull free without tearing something open. You wanted to keep what was left. Even if it lingered just a little longer, and even if you pretended not to see the splintering strands in the string tying you together.

So you let it settle. Let it rot somewhere you couldn’t feel it.

The two of you fall into the kind of closeness that you’ve always had, and time passes as if it was always meant to be this way. It’s easier this way. For a while, it does work, but nothing ever really stays under wraps. Despite your incessant protests in telling yourself it’s fading, the scars he’s inflicted on you are just that. Scars. Unmoving yet subtle.

The thinning thread finally snaps a few years later, when MC develops feelings for a coworker in the Hunter’s Association. The day the cracks in the glass bridge holding you together shatter beneath your feet into a million different pieces.

“When’s the last time you’ve slept?”

He’s sprawled shirtless on the couch of his apartment in Skyhaven, freshly out of the shower after you arrived to visit him for the first time in months—only to see that he’s nearly overworking himself to death. Despite him going off to the DAA after college, you’d kept close contact, the connection between the two of you never wavering regardless of your restricted time. It only changed after news of MC broke out. Worried, you’d rushed to Skyhaven to make sure he was doing okay, which you’re clearly glad you did now. You’d practically had to drag him to the shower to keep him from passing out next to the front door in his gear.

Caleb, clearly, is off. You suppose you don’t blame him. The woman he loves is yearning for another. Almost poetic, really, but you don’t like seeing him this way. Especially when you know what it feels like yourself, even if you’ve gotten used to it. Gotten over it. He looks like a kicked puppy. Hurt, like a dog who’s just been scratched by its owner. 

“I dunno.”

You peer into the empty abyss that is his fridge and frown. There’s a few measly apples sitting inside, and a half-eaten protein bar that’s been there for god knows how long. “What the hell have you been eating?”

He responds with a grunt, letting his head fall back against the sofa. You decide to make do with the instant noodles he has stashed in one of the cupboards and bring it over to him once it seems mostly done. With a fork, you stick out a few noodles to his face, urging him. “Eat.”

“Not hungry,” he mutters.

“Don’t care. Sit up.”

He opens one of his eyes to peek at you, which somehow urges him forward. There’s darkness beneath his eyes—even stubble littering his chin from a few days worth of not shaving. You want to reach out and poke fun at him, but the state he’s in deters you. Instead, you silently feed him, watching him chew his food while staring at your hands. It makes you wish you put on a fresh set of polish before you came.

You twirl another small forkful and hold it out. He leans forward this time without being told, taking it quietly. His shoulder brushes yours as he settles back against the couch, and you can feel his skin through your shirt.

“Thanks,” he mutters, voice rough from disuse more than anything. “For coming.”

“Yeah,” you say, quieter now. “Someone had to make sure you didn’t rot in here.”

He huffs a faint laugh, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Probably would’ve. Dramatic way to go out, huh?”

You nudge his knee with yours. “Starving to death in your own apartment? Real heroic.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across his face. It makes your heart flutter. Stupid feelings.

“…thanks for coming, splints,” he says.

Your chest tightens—sharp and sudden. It feels like it’s threatening to feel something that’s not yours to feel. So instead, you look down at the bowl, pretending to focus on separating another bite. You twirl your fork, more carefully this time. “I had to. You weren’t responding, so I thought you died, or something. Open.”

He rolls his eyes, but obeys anyway. “Bossy.”

“Learned from the best.”

His lids flutter shut, voice dropping to a lower hum. “I missed this.”

Your hand stills. “What?”

He shrugs, eyes still closed. “You being here.”

His hair is sticking to his forehead, still damp from the shower. Before you realize what you’re doing, you brush a stray strand of hair off his forehead. You speak quietly. “You look like shit.”

“Wow,” he mutters. “You have a way with words.”

You frown, and without thinking, your hand lingers at his temple for just a second longer than it should. His skin is warm, still hot from the shower.

“Idiot,” you whisper.

He catches your wrist. Not tight, not stopping you. Simply holding it there for a moment that feels too long and not long enough at once. Your eyes meet for a fleeting moment, and then you’re looking away, setting the mostly finished bowl of noodles onto the coffee table to pull away.

“Don’t make this a habit. I’m not flying out here every time you forget to eat.”

“Could,” he murmurs. “You would.”

You don’t respond to that, because he’s not wrong.

“…Is she okay?”

It slips out of him like instinct. Like breathing. And just like that, everything shifts. You don’t answer right away—instead, your fingers tighten slightly around the fork.

“She’s fine,” you say eventually. Leave it, you plead in your head.

“Did she say anything?” he asks, sitting up a little more now. There’s something in his eyes, like he’s searching. “When you talked to her.”

You shrug, trying to keep your tone even. “Just normal stuff.” Stop, you think. Please stop talking.

“Like what?”

“Like her job. Her grandma. Nothing serious.” Shit.

He frowns slightly. “She didn’t mention him?”

There it is. It’s always about her.

You know he’s in a vulnerable spot right now, but it does nothing to ease the sudden flame roaring in your chest. Whether it’s from years of repressed hurt or shame, all it amounts to is a relentless ball of rage inside of you that leaves your nails digging crescents into the palms of your hands. You stare at him, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you inch away from him. 

“Does it matter?”

Caleb’s face relaxes. “What?”

“Why does it matter what she thinks about him? She likes him, end of story, no?”

“I just want to know if he’s a decent guy.”

Your ass. “That’s not really your business, Caleb, but sure. He’s a great guy. Amazing, honestly. He’s really gentlemanly and checks every single box. He lives above her apartment, so they’re right next to each other. He treats her gently, too. I’d bet every girl would jump at a chance to date a guy like that.”

You’re not sure where the words are tumbling out of, but it’s too late to go back. Neither do you want to.

“I wonder if he has a brother. Maybe MC could set me up or something.”

“Oh. Is he…” Caleb’s back straightens, and you notice his fingers digging into his thighs. “...handsome?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m telling you, he’s perfect. His face could pay for the Linkon rent by itself.”

He suddenly stands, and you glare up at him through your eyebrows. “Why are you talking like that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you scoff.

He narrows his eyes. It’s something you haven’t seen in a while, since Caleb rarely gets upset at you. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, splints.”

“Can you just spit it out? What am I saying differently?”

“You’re angry.”

You stand, following suit. He looms over you to have his shadow essentially engulf you, and you wish you could kick his ankle so he falls to the ground. “Maybe if you weren’t so irritating, I wouldn’t feel so annoyed right now.”

“What?”

“It’s hard to watch, Caleb,” you hiss out in exasperation, throwing your hands into the air. “It’s always pipsqueak this, pipsqueak that, pipsqueak what. Seriously, we’re not kids anymore, you need to get over it!”

You’re not sure if you’re talking to him or yourself anymore.

“Can we calm down and talk? If I’ve been talking too much about it, I can stop, so—”

“We haven’t seen each other in months, Caleb! And all you want to ask me about is how she’s been? Why don’t you ask her yourself, if you’re so curious? Oh, but you can’t, because you always have to be perfect in front of her. So instead, you dump all of this on me. Your goods and bads, all of it, just for me to get kicked to the curb like I’m some dispensable object.”

“What?” his balks. “Dispensible? Are you serious? As if I haven’t gotten you out of every little thing you’ve gotten yourself into the past decade of our lives? As if I haven’t picked you up every weekend from your friends’ places at three in the morning? Like I haven’t called you every single week—”

“Well, I want you to stop that!” your words spit at him like weak knives, growing louder by the second. 

“You didn’t seem very against it the last forty times.”

“I am now.”

“What has gotten into you, splints?”

“Don’t call me that right now,” you glower, and you try to ignore the hurt flashing across his expression. “I’m just sick of seeing you follow her around like some wet dog. She doesn’t see you like that, can’t you see that?”

Your breathing begins to stutter, and you suck in a deep breath through your nose. Your chest stings, and you pray that you don’t lose composure so the tears threatening to bubble at the corners of your eyes remain hidden.

“You told me that you couldn’t give me what I wanted. Well, she can’t either,” you bore holes into his chest, too afraid of what you might see if you look up. “If I can get over my stupid feelings, so can you.”

But you’re not over it. Not at all.

He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. For the first time in a while, you’ve rendered him speechless, and it feels even worse than what it felt to be rejected years ago. You’re not sure how your nails haven’t drawn blood at this point. You’d rather that they do, so you have some excuse to use the restroom.

“It’s not fair what you do, Caleb,” you try to will your tears to stay at bay, but you can’t help them. They sting, blurring your vision as you drop your head in some pathetic hope that he won’t face them head on. “How you treat me when you don’t like me like that is not fair. At least MC doesn’t know, but you—you know, and yet you—”

The rational part of you says that it’s not entirely his fault. Sure, you insisted on staying by his side. Sure, you insisted that you could push down your feelings. Sure, you’ve promised a lot of things, but it’s his fault too, for being the way he is—so kind, so thoughtful, just so him. 

You wipe desperately at your tears. It was a lost cause from the start.

“Please don’t cry.” His face drains of color, apparent even against the dim lighting in his apartment. He steps towards you, and you take a step back. “Please don’t cry, splints, just not that.”

But when your tears refuse to cease dripping down your cheeks, your face flushing in humiliation, you feel both his hands cupping either side of it. He tilts your gaze up, and you realize that he’s only inches away from you, so much so that you can feel his breath against your skin. It’s moments like these that you lose yourself in his beauty. The deepness of his eyes that seem to peer into your very soul is one of the first features that you fell in love with as a child, and it hasn’t changed since. Damn him. You blink, eyes wide while his own flicker to your lips. 

“Be as mad as you want. Hit me, hate me even,” he whispers, his nose almost touching yours now. His thumb pad smooths your tears away. “But don’t waste your tears on someone like me.”

You think you might be imagining things. Because with the tension that nearly suffocates you and his lashes almost fluttering against your skin, you think he might be about to kiss you.

A sharp pain jabs you in the chest. Is it pity? A consolation prize dressed up as something softer? Is it to smooth things over, to make this moment easier for him to leave behind? Or is it rebellion? Something reckless from the fact that he can’t have her? Your tears have dried up, but the rest of your body seems to weep, as no excitement, no butterflies course through your veins. 

Why is it always something else? Why is it never you? It only hurts—because even now, you’re just the place he empties everything he feels for her.

Instinctively, you press your palm into his lips to push him away, and it feels like the air itself has stilled.

His breath lingers against your skin. Yours stutters like it’s forgotten how to exist in the same space as him. The air is so thick you could slice it with a knife.

Eventually, he pulls away. Caleb stares at you with an expression you haven’t seen before, though you don’t look long enough to analyze it. Wordlessly, you gather your things, stuffing your jacket into your bag and stumble over to the door—all while he stays locked in a petrified state, like he’s processing what he just did. Your gaze remains fixated on the wooden panels of the floor while you pack, refusing to look any higher in case you might see anything other than his feet.

“Don’t follow me,” you tell him as you leave. 

You don’t wait to see if he hears you.

The journey home feels like there’s a gaping hole in your chest, and all you can do is stare out the window as you feel the vibrations of the train through your fingertips. Outside, the world blurs past in streaks of dim lights and shadowed shapes, and you wish that your feelings were as fleeting as the buildings blurring by. 

You try to count the number of trees you see. Not on the warmth of his breath against your palm. Not on how close he’d been. Not on the fact that, for a second, you almost let him.

If you hadn’t pushed him away, would it have meant anything? Or would you have just been a mistake he’d regret in the morning?

Your phone buzzes frantically in your pocket, and you pull it out to see his name in big bold letters. He’s texting you simultaneously, apologizing in so many different ways that they all start to blend into one message you don’t plan on reading. You refuse to give into what your heart wants. It’s hurt you too much in the past. So instead, your thumb hovers above the ‘mute’ button.

You press it and shut your eyes.

Even if it’s difficult to adjust the first few weeks without him, you can’t bear to face him either. He shows up at your door. Nearly every day for some time, knocking softly and asking if you’d be willing to talk. When you simply plug in your earbuds and bury yourself into your bed, he apologizes through the door and leaves you something to eat. You tend to throw it out at first, but after a while, you figure it’s just a waste. Just like that, a month goes by. And then another. Then another. Until you can’t count them on one hand anymore. He comes by once every two weeks or so now, likely busy with his work.

Despite how much your body seems to miss his presence, you wonder if you should distance Caleb permanently. It’s a daunting idea. One that you never would’ve thought just a few years ago, but the embarrassment runs deeper than you want to admit. The feelings you’ve tried so hard to hide clearly aren’t hidden. Is this sustainable? 

Regardless of what you think, he comes around like clockwork.

“Are you in there?” He knocks gently on your door, voice soft. He probably knows you are.

“No.”

He chuckles from the other end. “Right. Happy birthday, splints.”

You glance at your phone calendar. He’s right. 

As usual, he begins to talk about random events in his life that he hasn’t had the opportunity to tell you, and while you usually muffle it out, you decide to quietly shuffle over to the door today. To tell him, maybe, that you don’t want to keep doing this. Or maybe just to hear his voice, you don’t know. Either way, you slide your back down the door where he’s on the other side, pulling your knees into your chest.

“I don’t know if you’ve read my text, but–”

“I don’t read them.”

Caleb stops, and you can almost hear his breath hitch. You usually don’t give him more than a few words, much less a full sentence, so it seems to have taken him aback. After the brief remission, you hear him clear your throat. “Splints, can you open the door? I want to talk—apologize to you.”

Silence.

“Or I can do it out here. That’s fine,” he sighs. “I want you to know that it’s okay if you want to hate me forever after this. I won’t keep clinging to you if you at listen to what I have to say, but I really just—I need to say that this is my fault.”

You half-heartedly hear his words drone on, his confidence wavering every so often while you pull up his chats on your phone. You have no idea how you hadn’t folded and read his chats until now, though it might’ve been more so for your own peace than anything. There’s too many to scroll up to, so you read the most recent messages, squinting in the dark against the light of your phone. 

[1:41PM]

[caleb]: are you eating well?

[caleb]: i made this today

[caleb]: [image attached]

[caleb]: your favorite dishes :) i’ll drop them off at your place later

[caleb]: i hope you’re not just throwing them out…wouldn’t blame you tho

[caleb]: at least take care of yourself :)

[8:13AM]

[caleb]: hi splints :)

[caleb]: you probably watched it already but that movie you wanted to see came out a week ago. I went to go see it

[caleb]: i still think it’s kind of bad…but it was entertaining

[caleb]: unless you wanna argue about it ?? :3

[5:32PM]

[caleb]: ranked first today

[caleb]: i was excited to celebrate it with you and then remembered :/

[caleb]: it doesn’t feel as good when i can’t tell you lol

[caleb]: hope you’re okay

[11:23PM]

[caleb]: i wish i hadn’t been so stupid

[caleb]: i didn’t deserve you back then

[caleb]: i still don’t

[caleb]: i shouldn’t have lost my cool when you were over here. didn’t like hearing you talk about that guy like that

[caleb]: im sure he’s a good looking guy, and i know you’re particularly weak to good looking guys…

[caleb]: i was being childish and i wish i could’ve explained it to you then

[caleb]: i know you don’t owe me anything and you don’t have to listen to what i have to say

[caleb]: but i never wanted to make you feel used, and i never did. if that even sounds believable lol

[caleb]: it was never about her

[caleb]: there’s so much more i want to say but i’ll say it in person

[caleb]: miss you a lot

[caleb]: sleep tight

You wish the tightness in your chest would go away. You wish you didn’t feel his sorrow through him. And you wish you didn’t care about your own feelings for him.

“I love you, splints,” he murmurs, and your attention tears away from the chats, your phone nearly clattering onto the floor. Your eyes widen, suddenly regretting that you missed the first half of his speech. 

“Not in the way you say it to your friends, or the way you say it to family. You’re my life, and you’ve been my life since the day you gave me that ring. I care for MC, but what I feel for you is different. It’s always been different. I realized that years ago, but I was afraid that it wouldn’t be fair for you. I thought you deserved someone better than someone who doesn’t know how to understand their own feelings.” Your throat dries. “I thought it wasn’t fair because I’d already put you through so much.”

“At the same time, I’m a selfish guy, you know? I couldn’t let you go either, because I couldn’t bear to see you with someone else. I wanted it to be us, and the only way I could think of existing without feeling like I was ruining you was to stay how we were. Stagnant, I guess,” he chuckles, but it feels sad. Weak. “I’m an idiot when it comes to you, you know.”

You don’t respond.

Not because you don’t have anything to say—if anything, there’s too much. It crowds your throat, every word scraping against the next until none of them can make it out. Your fingers hover uselessly over your phone, screen still lit with a conversation you can’t even remember reading.

‘I love you.’

The words echo, but they don’t land the way you once dreamed they would. They don’t bloom or soften or fix anything. They just sit. Too heavy. Too late.

Your chest tightens, aching outward like it’s trying to break free. Because you’ve wanted this—God, you’ve wanted this—for so long that you stopped letting yourself imagine it could ever actually happen. It should feel like relief. Instead, it feels real, but fragile.

Because you remember too much. The almosts. The waiting. The way you learned how to swallow your emotions when he built a wall between the two of you—and that doesn’t disappear just because he finally found the words.

Your hand curls slightly against the door, fingers brushing the cool surface.

Even with all that, you still miss the warmth of his skin. How his hair felt through a towel as you dried it. How he’d flick your forehead when you’d get a question wrong during one of his tutoring sessions. How he’d tease you about your grades or interests, and learn more about them anyway. How he’d message you throughout the day about random endeavors. How he’d always be there. How with just a call of his name, he would’ve crossed the continents for you. His eyes. His lips. His face. His painfully handsome face.

You remember him in all parts of your life—and not a single moment you’ve spared has gone without him. You remember how he held your hand when you’d broken your arm, and the way he’d lifted you into the air and embraced you when you were accepted into the same college as him. You remember how he’d pet your hair as you complained about him going too far for the DAA, promising he’d visit often. And he did. He always kept his promises.

Your body moves on its own, as if this was how it was always meant to be. The door slowly creaks open.

“…We’re a mess.”

A faint, tired smile is all you can give him. Still, when he sees you, the world seems to stop for just the two of you, and it takes him a moment to fully register that you’re really there. That you’re not just a figment of his imagination, and he hasn’t truly lost you forever as he’d feared. “This doesn’t mean you’re completely out of the woods. I’m still mad.”

“You should be,” he whispers out, nearly breathless.

Hesitantly, you step towards him. He reaches his arm out, brows furrowed cautiously like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to even blink right now. The tips of his fingers twitch towards you. You raise a brow, and he swallows the lump in his throat, retracting back until you nod. 

Realizing you don’t have shoes, you step onto the fronts of his shoes one foot at a time, taking his hand until you’re flush against him and he’s already engulfing you into a crushing embrace. His arms wrap around you, strong and warm. He smells good. Though you can’t confidently say the same for yourself given the state you’re in, he drops his chin into the crook of your neck and inhales deeply, like a man starved.

“Note to self,” you mumble. “Don’t propose to any handsome guy you see.”

Caleb laughs, airy this time, and you feel it against your collarbone. “I thought you were going to leave your husband out here to die in the cold.”

“I should divorce you. We’re not even married yet.”

He grins, lopsided. “You should.”

“I won’t.”

“I know.

You bury your face into his chest, fingers digging into the fabric on his back. “I don’t want a version of my life without you, Caleb. As annoying as you are.”

He pulls away for a brief moment and places a kiss on your cheek, his own dusting red. Flowers feel like they’re blooming on the spot he pecked, but somehow, it feels natural. You’ve always been close to him physically throughout your upbringing, even if it never involved lips–that was new territory. You cross your arms, relying on his hands around your waist to keep you upright. “Tell me more.”

“You nag too much.”

He kisses your nose. “Hm?”

“You’re emotionally repressed.”

“Ouch.” He kisses your temple.

“You’re too good at things you don’t try at.”

Your jawline.

“You’re unstable. You’re too protective. You’re stupid.”

“I love you,” he says, pressing his forehead against yours. His lips hover above your own, just centimeters away.

Your lashes flutter against his. “Then prove it to me.”