Everything Caleb has done is unforgivable and he will remain a ✨ douchebag ✨, but I love it when villains are layered and complex and still portrayed as somewhat human, so I wrote a couple headcanons.
• Contrary to popular belief, Caleb has feelings but he crushes them beneath his boot soles.
• His life in the 1920s before he died was tough.
• He had a husband and an adoptive son, and he wasn't exactly the best father in the world but he was always there.
• He met his husband at a jazzclub.
• They were in their early twenties.
• His name was Silvio Dìaz and he played the piano for a popular jazzband; The Black Dahlias.
• That evening, Caleb had been watching him play in fascination.
• Silvio's hair was a dark wild mess and a glass of whiskey rested on top of the piano. His playing was fervent, technical, jam packed with emotion.
• When he began to play with one hand all Caleb could do was stare.
• The lead singer blocked his view of Silvio a couple times, and Caleb found himself straining his head to see the pianist.
• After the performance was over and he had finished his drink, Caleb was just gathering up his coat to leave when the pianist interrupted him.
• The band had finished packing up their equipment and had started to mingle with the audience.
• Caleb hadn't expected to be singled out.
• "Excuse me but I had to ask- you're that magician, are you not? The Vanishing Act, no?"
• Caleb was actually thrilled that the pianist knew who he was, but he'd be damned if he let it show.
• "That's right. How can I help you?"
• "I am Silvio, and my friend here -" he gestured towards the lead singer, who was watching from the doorway with a bored expression - "thinks you're a fake. Now I know you're not but I have no way of proving it to him."
• Caleb couldn't help but smirk at the pianist. He had been happy to admire his talent from among the crowd, but he was even happier to be having a conversation with him.
• "Tell you what: I'll make you an offer. Invite me to your next performance and I'll invite you and your band to one of mine. I'll show your friend just how real magic is."
• Silvio grinned, clearly pleased. "Alright, Magic Man. We have a deal."
• At his next performance, Caleb vanished with a flash and a bang before reappearing among the audience. He made a black cat appear from thin air and pulled six doves out of his hat. He lit a stack of playing cards on fire with his hands and made them disappear.
• (He definitely wasn't overdoing it just because Silvio was watching).
• It was safe to say no one in Silvio's band doubted him again after that.
• Speaking of Silvio, Caleb attended almost all of his performances. The two would often sit backstage together beforehand and talk, grinning and chuckling at each other like excited school girls.
• Caleb would arrive earlier and earlier in order to listen to him talk longer.
• Silvio was the polar opposite of Caleb; happy and kind and full of enthusiasm for everything.
• Caleb felt like a different person around him.
• They kept their relationship a secret. Everyone around them knew them as friends. It was only when they were alone that they would finally relax and really enjoy each other's presence.
• Caleb joined Silvio's band after their lead singer quit years later, but it took a lot of convincing on Silvio's part.
• "Sing for us Caleb, your voice is magical! You can't have a voice like that and not sing!" "I'm a magician, Dìaz, not a musician." "Dios mío ayudame con este terco. Why can't you be both?!" "You know I understand Spanish right?"
• At thirty they adopted a son.
• His name was Dorian, and he was a clever little kid with floppy hair and big eyes that all the adults around him couldn't help but adore.
• Caleb and Silvio found him wondering the streets in tears as a toddler, and after finding out that he had no parents or relatives, they both took him in and raised him as their own.
• Silvio would often play the piano for Dorian, and Caleb would entertain the kid with overly dramatic magic tricks that used to make his eyes go round with awe.
• Caleb became known as the best magician in California for being able to set things on fire with his hands, escape straitjackets underwater, make people levitate and disappear, cast illusions and play tricks.
• Sometimes Silvio would join him onstage for a specific trick, and then beam when Caleb would take his hand afterwards and bow with him while the audience thundered with applause.
• When he was eight, their son died of the Spanish flu.
• Both he and Silvio struggled deeply afterwards, and Caleb found himself overworking to cope.
• His magic tricks became more impossible and his escape acts became deadlier. There were newspaper articles about him and black and white photographs of him performing onstage in his glittery coat and top hat.
• Almost everyone in California knew who he was.
• And everyone remembered how he died.
• Caleb worked with fire a lot onstage, but it was almost always safe and professional. That night the plan had been for them to set him on fire, and for him to vanish.
• His assistant would strike a match and drop it onto his cloak. Caleb would vanish in flames and then reappear on the other side of the room completely unscathed.
• If it hadn't gone so wrong, it would have made him worldwide famous.
• But his jealous assistant had replaced Caleb's non flammable cloak with an ordinary cloak, and Caleb burnt to death onstage.
• The assistant wasn't caught, and he instead profited off of all the magic tricks and techniques Caleb had once taught him.
• Silvio was crippled with grief.
• Caleb didn't leave. He stayed at his husband's side until he died years later, in his sixties from a heart attack.
• (Neither of them had taken off their wedding rings).
• Decades later, Caleb founded the Haunted Ghost Club.
• It is a place that he uses to steal the souls of rich thieves, all the Lifers that profit off of other people's deaths, a place he uses as vengeance.
• It is also a place to remind him of Silvio and his son.
• He wears black dahlias on his coat to remind himself of the life he once had, of the person he once was before everything went so wrong.
• Some days when the pianist in his house band plays a specific song, he can't look.
• And when he sees Carlos for the first time after having possessed Nick he feels like he can't breathe.
• This kid is the spitting image of him.
• At the Molina's doorstep he chokes out, "Dorian?"
• Carlos just stares at him, bewildered, and that's when Nick-Caleb notices his eyes. Brown eyes. Dorian had blue eyes.
• Everyone he once loved is dead, and only he remains. There, but not there.
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