#yaps !

You wouldn’t have needed to hold back tears when you stumbled upon a random alley to throw up after having one too many vodka shots, only to see the image that would be imprinted in your mind even years later.

The stop-motion scene before you showed the unmistakable broad shoulders of your longtime crush being caressed, then pressed against the alley wall. When you caught sight of who was kissing him, your eyes nearly bulged out.

What the fuck? Wasn’t she his…weren’t they—

You shook the scene from your mind, willing it to dissipate as if an iron-clad eraser had been taken to it, rubbing furiously and tearing it apart like a flimsy sheet of paper. 

You had backed out of the alley on shaky legs, stomach still threatening to revolt despite being smacked right out of your tipsy haze. A million questions bubbled in your mind, and you weren’t sure why you were having such a strong reaction towards the situation.

Caleb Xia was not your boyfriend, you were the one with the stupid crush, so his alleyway hookups shouldn’t bother you this much.

It's said that when you’re attracted to someone, you start to notice them everywhere, and back in college, it was a rare occurrence for you to not end up in the same room as him one way or another.

Caleb sat a few tables away from you in the library, coincidentally picking the same times to study that you did. He would hover bare inches away from you when you stood in line to get lunch, so close you could’ve sworn you felt the warmth of his body against your back.

Then he started talking to you, and you were done for.

Already psychologically wired to see him everywhere; his charisma was like the final nail in the coffin that cemented your feelings for him. 

Unfortunately, someone had let your little crush slip, and you braced yourself for rejection that never came.

In hindsight, you really wish it had.

Caleb started lingering outside your lectures, waiting for you, then offering you a ride home. Admittedly, you shouldn’t have brushed it off when he drove straight to your house without needing any directions, but you were too busy floating on cloud nine to do so.

Some days, Caleb would make the occasional detour to a cafe where he, rather rigidly, only ordered apple crumble pie at. And when you would walk back to his car side by side, your mind tricked you into thinking that his knuckles brushed over the back of your hand, just shy of holding it. 

How naive you were to think that meant he reciprocated your feelings.

Thinking back on it now, you wholly believe his actions were more of a kindness to you, because Caleb was just too good a guy to embarrass you by outwardly rejecting you in front of your mutual friends.

But after seeing them together that night at the party, you did it for him.

The day after you found him outside your class, leg propped against a wall as he waited for you, you walked right past him. You made it all of two steps before a hand latched around your wrist. It wasn’t exactly rough, but it was firm enough to stop you in your tracks. 

“Where are you running off to so fast?” That adorable chuckle of his almost made you forget yourself. “It looks like it’s about to rain. I can drive you home.” 

You tugged your hand out of his and shook your head at him, “That’s not necessary, I think I’ll beat it if I head out now.”

“Come on, I really don’t mind—”

Never one to bite your tongue, the words tumbled out.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m gonna get dragged into some back alley in broad daylight.”

Caleb’s dark eyebrows knitted in confusion, lips parting to tell you that your little ‘joke’ only made him want take you home more, but then, as if something clicked into place, he froze.

Dragged into an alley?

You had seen him. Seen them. He was sure of it. A hand went to scratch the short crop of hair just above his neck, “Oh, you saw that, huh? Pips was drunk, probably mistook me for Zayne or something—”

Your hand lifted to stop him. 

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Caleb.” His hand dropped to his side, smile wavering at the sharpness of your voice. “But I think it’s best we stop whatever this is while we’re ahead. Just so no one gets the wrong idea.”

Namely you.

You’d like to say a strange look passed in his peculiarly purple eyes, but that wasn’t the truth. They just sort of…went blank. Scarily so. As if you were looking at a walking corpse whose soul had just been scooped clean out their body. It unsettled you enough to make you walk away without waiting for his response. And he let you. Or at least you think he did. 

If love were truly a choice, that would’ve been the end of it. Your eyes wouldn’t have looked for him in every room, heart nearly thumping out of your chest when you found him already watching you. And you wouldn’t have envisioned every partner you had thereafter as having those boundless indigo eyes everytime they looked at you. 

For some reason, none of your relationships lasted. It was like a switch would flip, and they’d want to call it quits. And you, so worried that they had seen through you, seen that you were thinking about someone else every second you were with them, didn’t pay attention to the busted lips and black eyes most of them sported. 

Moving away after graduation did you good. It gave you a fresh start with a man who didn’t randomly go hot and cold. Of course, until that fateful day, he did go cold. Dead cold.

You hated funerals.

Not that you thought anyone sane liked them, but there was something unnervingly wrong about being at your boyfriend's one. 

During the service, the room was saturated in a dark, suffocating gloom. Everyone mechanically moved towards Aaron’s coffin and just placed their hands on it, as if they wished they could touch him one last time. Some people you had never seen before were sobbing harder than his family was, harder than you were and falling over themselves while their bodies jerked like they had been dipped in acid. 

Aaron couldn’t have an open casket, and it was just as well because you don’t think you could see him that way again. 

His voice rang so clearly in your ears that it was hard to believe he was gone. Just days ago, he had hulked into your shared apartment with his cap sitting low over his face, greeting you before saying his famous catchphrase. 

“What’s for dinner, babe?”

“I thought we could order in tonight.” You told him without even looking up from your laptop, way too engrossed in finishing a presentation. Aaron closed the door behind him, footsteps loud with his heavy work boots and the sound he made had you bristling.

“You didn’t cook?” He asked with his voice gruff, and when you finally looked up at him with a raised brow, he offered you a pacifying smile. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

“Mhm.” He moved in on you, and you turned back to your work as a soft kiss was pressed to your cheek.

“It’s only because I love your cooking so much.” He said, gently petting the bear (you) so it wouldn’t bite his head off.

“Yeah, yeah go shower, you oaf.” You felt him smile against your skin before pulling away.

You watched Aaron’s back as he retreated into the bathroom, and a fond smile tugged at your lips. Your longest boyfriend was a man who was rough around the edges but became as soft as a ball of cotton candy where you were concerned. He loved you and somedays, especially ones a certain dark-haired colonel didn’t plague your thoughts, you felt your heart softening towards him too. 

You loved him. And one day, college crush be damned, you knew you’d fall in love with him too. 

Feeling the strong need to take a breather after being stuck behind the screen all day long, you slid on your shoes and knocked on the bathroom door to tell Aaron you'd be going straight to the restaurant instead of having the food delivered.

It took a few tries for you to remember everything he wanted as he called out his order over the light pitter-patter of the shower, but once you finally memorised it, you were off. 

You had been gone for over an hour, so coming back to the apartment to hear the shower still running had you at a loss. 

“Just how much work were you doing at the site to need an hour-long shower?” You got no response when you walked past the bathroom and went to put the paper bags on the counter. 

You were curbing your rumbling belly with one fry at a time when you decided that you had waited long enough. Why he always insisted on eating together just for you to always beat him to the table, you’d never know.

“Aaron, come on.” Sliding out the chair and leaving your cheeseburger behind was no small feat, but you managed.

You leaned against the bathroom door, knocking a little too hard. You always got moody when you were hungry. “I’m eating without you if you don’t come out in the next two seconds!”

Silence.

“Baaabe.” You lamented over another hunger pang, but aside from that sound, you were met with silence again. 

You wished you never pushed that door open because through the thick blanket of steam billowing around the room and the pour of water from the showerhead, you saw it. 

The deathly still outline of a silhouette.

“Aaron…?”

You squinted your eyes as if that would force more light to pour into the space, and maybe it worked because you finally saw him slumped against the once pristine bathroom wall.

Because now it was anything but, as a large splatter of blood strained it, spoiled it, and formed a halo of crimson around his head. He looked like some kind of underworldly creature with his once tanned skin dimmed ashen white and his veins skirted under it in thick ropes. They were coloured a bright blue, like a bolt of lightning had shot through him.

Except it wasn’t lightning.

The unseeing curtain that fell over his eyes and refused to ever open told you that. And the gaping hole between his eyebrows told you more. At complete odds with the mess of blood and gnarled debris spurred over his ghostly face, the wound was a clean, professional shot that cut right through his skull and came out the back of his head matting his stringy hair dark red.

Your legs gave out, and you weren’t sure what sound wrenched itself from your throat, only that it was loud enough to make your own ears ring. Knees meeting the tiles in a hard blow, the jolt of pain surging through your bones was the last thing you remembered before your vision went dark. 

A week had passed since then, yet the image still gave you sleepless nights. Your red rimmed eyes stung when you rubbed at them and when you heard your name being called, you almost thought you had finally drifted off to dreamland.

Everyone had left, but you were still at the cemetery, gaze sightlessly hollow as you stared at Aaron’s tombstone, but that voice…the familiarity of it, it had your head turning.

Then your eyes landed on him, and you decided that this was undoubtedly the worst week of your life. 

First, a dead boyfriend and now Caleb.

Clad in a plain black suit, Caleb had a beautifully crafted wreath in his hand, and seeing you needed some time to gather yourself, he didn’t rush to greet you. He just walked to the tombstone, set the flowers down, then wordlessly stood at your side. 

It was just your luck that, along with your mutual friends, the man was back like a bad rash to see you in your most vulnerable state.

Caleb stood in the back of the hall during the service, and your soft cries were heart-wrenching.

It was almost enough to make him feel bad for being the cause of your distress. But he didn’t have much of a choice.

He could blame his actions on the Toring chip, say that when it dampened his mood, it also clouded his judgment and made him act out of character, but that simply wouldn’t be true.

Because even before joining the Fleet and getting the implant, Caleb still had a short fuse.

When he heard that you liked him, his excitement nearly had him sprouting goddamned wings and taking flight. He had liked you for longer than he could remember, so the prospect that you felt even half of what he did made the nature of his crush a little obsessive.

It turned into a ghastly, twisted thing that had his feet following you around before he could even stop himself. But despite this, Caleb was smart enough to know that he couldn’t come on too strong and risk scaring you away.

He needed to be careful, and he needed to be patient.

It was hard enough when you cut him off after seeing that accidental alley kiss, a kiss he immediately broke away from, but apparently, you didn’t see that part.

It was even harder when you moved to the other side of town and shacked up that foreman of yours. 

Caleb was always nearby, of course, whether that be digitally via the cameras he installed in your house or physically as a dark shadow in the deep corners of the rooms you walked into.

It was all going well until he broke his routine and decided to follow Aaron instead of you.

His heart painfully shuttered in his chest when he saw the man walk into a jewellery store. Caleb’s breath was heavy when he saw the man pick out a ring. One that you wouldn’t even like, but an engagement ring nonetheless.

No, that simply wouldn’t do. He thought.

Aaron wasn't like one of those spineless boys Caleb roughed up to make them stop seeing you. The man would sooner laugh in his face and rush to propose if Caleb even tried anything.

So, he knew he needed to take more extreme measures.

Caleb wanted to be quiet about it. He didn’t want to take care of Aaron in a way that would weigh on you too much. He wanted to make the man disappear quietly…but he had put up a fight.

Caleb reached for his gun before he could even stop himself, and even as he stared unblinkingly at the man shuddering as his last few breaths left him, he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it.

He really meant to clean up after the mess so you wouldn’t see the grotesque scene, but with a glance at his phone, the tracker he put in your car told him that he didn’t have enough time. As it were, leaving your apartment in that state made you the prime suspect of the murder, but the police’s power trip only lasted a couple hours before he swayed the Fleet’s influence over the department and told them, in no uncertain terms, to look elsewhere.

And a week later, in true unhinged fashion, he walked into the very funeral of the man he killed, more than ready to console his would-be fiancée.

“What are you doing here?” Your tone was odd. While clipped and sharp enough to cut through anything with unnerving ease, it had a wobbly lilt too, like it would topple over into a sob if you didn’t hold it together firmly enough.

“I wanted to offer my condolences.” His words only elicited a shaky breath from you, so he felt the need to continue. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Caleb turned to you a little, just enough to see your lower lip tremble.

“Thank you.”

Your voice came out a little too thin, and when the first tear fell, he fully turned to you, hand hovering above your shoulder but not quite touching you. A wracking sob shook them.

“Hey,” his voice was soft as he stepped closer to you, crowding in on you. And he was stunned when you threw yourself into his arms, small hands clutching at his blazer while you cried into his chest. 

It seemed you had finally reached your limit. You had come fully apart, shattered like delicate glass into a million tiny shards and turning to whoever was closest so you could try to meld yourself back together with the comfort they offered. 

As it turned out, Caleb was the closest person. And he had to catch himself when he felt the corners of his lips curling up. 

You choose him. And he would be more than happy to oblige.

“I’m sorry.” You choked out, utterly apologetic as you wet his dress shirt. 

“Shhh,” His hands wrapped around you, and he placed a gentle kiss on the crown of your head. “I’ve got you.” 

A hand pats your back, then rubs soothingly.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

And you knew he meant it, because when you were still considered a suspect for Aaron’s murder, the police had searched your apartment and unearthed a couple dozen hidden cameras.

Belatedly, you realised their craftsmanship was unmistakably similar to the robotics project Caleb had all the professors swooning over back in college.

So, if love were truly a choice, you would have sought justice for Aaron and immediately reported Caleb to the police. You surely wouldn’t be clinging onto him as if he were your sole anchoring force. All while a dark, pleasurable hum buzzed along your skin. Low and hissy it told you that if you ever doubted his feelings, the macabre display of the lengths he was willing to go to keep you at his side should silence all uncertainty.