bluebellles

[bluebellles]

rockstar!lads

hc’s for the lads li’s as rockstars—brought to you by my personal playlists as a former(current) middle school emo kid.

disclaimer: i’m not saying that the bands/songs mentioned are exclusive to the li’s listed, nor am i saying that they are inherently reminiscent of the li in question. i’m moreso saying the VIBE/SOUND of the music is what i think the li’s would sound like if they were an artist.

xavier ✦ sleepyhead by jutes

grainy fuckboy alt rock BUT HEAR ME OUT, the sound is fuckboy adjacent, the lyrics are NOT

as in, it’s the type of music where ur like ‘wow this is hot’ and then you go to look up the lyrics and suddenly can never listen to it again with wanting to cry.

wears gauges and does the camp rock knee thing when he sings

music is sometimes used as thirst trap audios

overall lives a very low profile life. he kind of just drops music and no one hears from him until the next 3-am snippet is posted weeks-months later.

everyone begs for a tour that never happens

caleb ✈ worthy by thriller records & the home team

breathy 5th wave post-emo music with a prominent bass line. almost exclusively love songs about loving a girl that he can’t have. yes, he screams.

wears his guitar low as fuck and it’s definitely not bc of his tendency to wear the tiniest muscle tanks

makes out with the mic when he sings, as in, his lips never leave the mic as long as there’s lyrics to be sung and it’s hot as fuck

is rarely in interviews just bc his vibes are so off , mostly lives out of the public eye. only answers questions about his music in interviews, never about himself, to the point where it’s in his press packet.

rafayel ♫ fast times at clairemont high by pierce the veil

rafayel has earned the pierce the veil vote from me bc he is my princess. 3rd wave emo with riff heavy instrumental breaks that he composes and performs himself. screams too, but not as often (gotta protect his vocal chords).

his albums are treated like chapters in his musical career, both musically and thematically. each album tells its own story, mostly drawing from a narrative of his own making that you’d have to dig through reddit to understand the lore in full (think ethel cain’s preacher’s daughter lore)

he took a years long hiatus after an accident that affected his ability to the play the guitar. came back with a full album that dropped out of nowhere and got the #1 spot.

prior to his accident he was a darling to the public. even if he was a bit of a rock diva.

fan favorites of his are mostly power ballads

has the BEST music videos. artistic and fun with complex storylines that are on theme with the current album’s narrative.

zayne ❅ exit music (for a film) by radiohead

slow, instrumental rock. hard to move past the pit in your stomach when you listen to him, there a subtle feeling of loss or regret in each song and it hurts so good.

has only two albums, both are mid-length and spaced out years apart from the other. they also have very different lyrical vibes, but his sound stays the same.

indie artist that mixes and performs every song himself, dropping music into spotify without a care and absolutely NO warning

no, he doesn’t perform live, nor does the internet or greater public society know who he is. has maintained complete anonymity throughout his career. his (loyal and cult)following both hate and love this.

he has hundreds of unreleased songs that will never see the light of day outside of his hard drive.

sylus ⚜︎ black no.1 (little miss scare-all) by type o-negative

I COULDNT HELP MYSELF!! tellmeimwrong-you can’t

goth rock and doom metal, that’s sylus!!! takes his craft very seriously and yes he does remind me of peter steele .. my bad

you can feel the yearning in every note he sings!!! his vocals are just as poweful, if not more, than the instrumentals that slowly pour thru the speakers as he croons (ha!) into the mic

tours semi-frequently and always ends up in magazines for being pretty and a dangerous party-boy (its all an act, trust) (the mags dont need to know that tho, do they??)

he plays up his persona quite well, but is actually pretty laid back and rarely makes appearances outside of touring/required events.

compilations upon compilations UPON COMILATIONS of him being hot during interviews

has a massive back tattoo that has like a BILLION pinterest saves

HONORABLE MENTIONS: songs that were almost used for the boys and still somewhat remind me of them but not as well as the above

sylus — staring at the stars (from the gutter) by diamond dust

xavier — send the pain below by chevelle

caleb — blue dream by dance gavin dance

rafayel — grace by jeff buckley

zayne — rosemary by deftones

[bluebellles]

put some moves on you, i know you need it

includes: (slight) canon divergence, feelings realisation, finger-sucking, freak4freak

minors pls DNI!!

this entire fic is heavily inspired by moves by suki waterhouse, based off of my promise from my first post!!

this work is dedicated to @bluebellles (꜆꜄ ˃ ³ ˂)꜆꜄꜆ for whom this work would not be possible without! thank u for inspiring me to create again<3 i’m like severely indebted to u<3

fun fact: when i was a kid, i’d buy this candy at the pharmacy before i’d go on a flight because it helped settle my nerves! i was thinking about that a couple days ago and then boom (pun not intended) caleb’s birthday trailer! caleb nostalgia is so real, it existed before even he did🍎🍋

divider by saradika graphics!

He doesn't do it on purpose; inexplicably Caleb allows himself to be burnt, to be a crutch, a moth that sticks itself to the singe of a gas lamp. There's a voice that screams, pleads, that it's always just been for you; for how well-liked, how popular he is wherever he goes, it's a sheen. It's amicable in the light, but turn it the other way and it's clouded, unnerving. You've always resented him for it, just a little, for how he seems to just move effortlessly between people while you've always lingered a bit behind, just a shadow that lurked, never inching past his brightness. Stuck in his blaze, you can't look away. You always want to turn it around on him, be his crutch, let yourself burn so that he'll soar even higher. You'll be the moth that flies right into the Sun.

But isn't it different? Hasn't it been since.. the accident? Today was all the same: the cakes, the lunch, the presents, the places you'd walk around and hang out at.. but it wasn't like this before; was there always this open-wound in your chest, struggling to breathe, to heal, bleeding despite the pressure you placed over it? Packed with gauze and it still called out for him like a missing limb.

You find the resolve to ignite it.

Creeping out into the living room, still strung in the culmination of all your planning, Caleb sits, rumpled like a streamer, still brimming with something inexplicable like a dusk cloud. He's absentmindedly twisting the pendant you gave him. He wears it with everything. It hangs out almost like a sore thumb sometimes.

Wordlessly, you slide him the gift bag, in which Ta-ta slippers, a photo album, a model kit, and a letter lay, nestled under wrapping paper and a tin of fruit candies on the top. You slip onto your knees on the plush carpet, resting your head on his lap. You need him to take the bait.

"What's this for, pipsqueak? The post-credits?" He blinks, giving you a once over your figure.

"I just realised I didn't give you your actual gift. Your birthday's not over yet, gē," Reaching into the bag, you hold up the tin of candies up to him, prompting him to open it.

"'Actual' gift? You're spoilin' me here, pips," You feel his chuckle reverberate as you lie there, hands twisting into your dress like his innocent chuckle didn't light a fire in your stomach, dripping wetness between your legs.

"Was today... fun? Did you like how we celebrated this year?" Your voice comes out small, smaller than it has the entirety of today, smaller than when you woke up on Caleb’s couch, watching him sneak in after a shift and wished him a happy birthday, pulled on top of you in his uniform and all.

"Is.. this question very important to you?" His eyes gleam, cosmos that flicker in the low light. His head tilts, the boyish puppy-like expression that always makes your mind short-circuit. Fuck. You grab your resolve then, twisting it into a firm knot, tighter than the hold this man has on your heart; your fingers slip a lemon candy between his lips, lingering there longer than you should. Caleb sucks in a breath as the acidity hits his tongue, taking the tips of your fingers in his mouth as well. You whine softly, but Caleb catches it, his breath hitching as you push your fingers up to their first joint.

"Remember what I said earlier? That I didn’t realise that the Sun, that you.. my Sun, got lonely sometimes? Well, let me take it away.. some of that loneliness.. Don't leave me behind. Not this time,” You whisper, crowding up into his space. You watch his eyes roll back slightly as your flingers slip in a little more. You don't let up: "Please, let me stay by your side. Promise me you know how important you are to me."

You hold his gaze firmly, almost panting against his skin. He nods imperceptibly and you replace your fingers with a kiss, drawing him in for everything that he's worth.

Caleb pulls back, panting against the seal of your mouths: "I love it, I love it, honey, I love everything you do for me.. Even if you were to step on my back and make me grovel for your attention.. I'd love it, I love you."

just a little something for my beloved's birthday,, i'll edit this with more later but i've been dealing with some health issues (just friday the 13th things) but i wanted to get out something for him, especially after reading his card... those who yearn, earn!!!!

im so normal abt caleb (saying yhis as I gnaw at the bars of my enclosure begging for just one sniff)

as always some memes!! ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜ stay happy and healthy!! 🍎

caleb doggy blow up or treat meme by cutehamsy on twt!

[bluebellles]

Grim Reaper ❄️

Day 36/100

Time; 2 Hours and 47 Minutes

I’ve been wanting to paint this scene for weeks but I literally couldn’t come up with a food composition UE. I love Zayne’s anecdote and World Underneath stories… They’re written so amazingly well. He really blew me away! I didn’t think Zayne was so compelling but I quickly fell in love. I was not immune to falling in love with Zayne Li 😔🫶 Live laugh love Zayne.

[bluebellles]

Reading the new Caleb's Birthday Card. And this part at the beginning got me

SkskskskLMAO mc is so real

[bluebellles]

caleb waiting until i drained all my diamonds to come home... he rly said no i won't make you pay real money but you're also not allowed to pull for anyone else

[bluebellles]

omg ... so sorry to everyone normally i wouldn't reblog my own work but this is the nicest thing you could have said i needed to acknowledge it - yes i would like to get married and if you do end up writing again PLS tag me 🫶

"you're an angel, i'm a dog; or you're a dog and i'm your man"

a caleb character analysis thinly disguised as post-explosion plot; or a more in depth exploration of grief

pairing: caleb x reader / calebmc

genre: angst, sfw, nostalgia?

cw: canon compliant violence and references to child experimentation, codependency final boss, potentially unhealthy dynamics, you and caleb being freak4freak, explorations of how the lab may have effected you/mc as a child, caleb is a stalker but that's canon too, author is halfway through the first chapter of the fic she's supposed to be working on but got brain rot from caleb's birthday trailer, happy birthday here's some misery

You washed your hair today. 

Only enough to get the soot and ash out. Only because the smell kept taking you back to that place.

Nobody was there to dry it.

It wasn’t as if you had never dried your hair yourself, but you couldn’t seem to raise your hands enough to lift the towel to your head.

It felt like betraying something, almost. Trying to do his job. Doing it yourself after he went off to college, after you entered the academy, felt like picking up the slack. Now it felt like filling a role you needed to stay empty. Like you needed to remind yourself something was missing.

You catch a cold from sleeping on your wet hair. You don’t even notice. You accept your stilted breathing and the ache in your head as a part of your new normal. It will be a while before you wash your hair again.

The odd man with the sunset eyes messages you once. His name keeps flitting in and out of your consciousness. He says something about shells and talking to seagulls. You want to call Caleb and laugh about rich people and their weird hobbies. Tomorrow you will care to remember his name. A week from now you’ll be grateful that he reached out. It will be much longer before you can bring yourself to laugh again. 

You don’t cry. Not just now, but never in your conscious memory. Something is broken, something has always been wrong with you. The only person who knew that and loved you anyways is no longer here to do so. No one will pick up the slack. You won’t offer the job to anyone.

It wasn’t as though you didn’t feel enough to cry. You did. It was just that for most of your life, before you could cry or scream or rage, Caleb would be there. Soothing the pain or distracting you from the fear or getting angry on your behalf. Before you could even react, he always saw you. It was enough, for him to see. Nobody else needed to validate it.

You knew it made Gran nervous, that you never cried. You could see it in the way she watched you sometimes. Nearly clinical aside from the concern crinkling around the edges of her eyes. Like she was waiting for something. Like she was holding her breath. Like she thought you’d eventually explode.

Caleb never looked at you like that. Never looked at you like you were wrong, or dangerous, or other. Never looked at you like you were anything other than real. He looked at you like you belonged somewhere, even if it was just to him.

You saw that concern in Gran’s eyes in the car ride on the way to the hospital after you had broken your wrist on the playground in third grade.

Caleb had been playing basketball with some of the neighborhood kids. Gran had encouraged him, ushering him away with assurances that she’d keep an eye on you. She was always so insistent that the two of you make other friends. 

It didn’t stop his eyes from straying over to you. Didn’t stop him from counting the steps it would take to reach you if he needed to or making sure his Evol could extend far enough. 

Some older kids had been playing on the monkey bars. It looked fun, and more importantly it looked normal. You had never done them by yourself, always had Caleb on standby in case you fell, but you wondered if you could laugh that freely and look like all the other kids on the monkey bars if you did them on your own.

He couldn’t have looked away for more than a few minutes, assigned to chase the ball after it strayed into the creek. It was only for a few minutes that he relied on Gran, believed her promise.

When you fall and land on your wrist with an ugly snap you don’t cry out. You don’t even feel the pain, really, your body remembering how much more it had withstood even if your mind did not. It’s the way the other kids look at you with panic and horror that makes you cry out after you suddenly realize that you probably should.

Caleb only sees the aftermath as you clutch at your wrist with exaggerated pain. Gran is standing up from the bench to rush over, her book abandoned. Caleb gets there faster.

The car ride is silent apart from Caleb’s poorly concealed sniffling, tears pooling in his eyes as he gently cradles your wrist as if it’s precious to him. You watch them track down his face, memorizing the path from the galaxies in his eyes to the collar of his shirt. Something in you settles at the sight. If he is feeling the pain for you then it’s fine. It almost feels like the same thing, if not a little more satisfying. 

You ignore the concern in Gran’s eyes. She has been very kind to you, but she doesn’t need to see your pain. Not the way you need him to.

Caleb yells at Gran for the first and only time in your sight after you’ve finished getting your cast. It’s brief, his voice cracking and his hands shaking before he retreats, but you can see the relief in Gran’s expression when he does. You know she watches him too. Sees the way he never really looks at anyone besides you with real emotion. It’s comforting to her to know that he can, even if it’s with ire. 

Caleb is a good kid. He speaks up for his quieter classmates, makes sure nobody’s bothering the girls in his class on the train back from school. He’s the first to start stacking chairs at the end up the day and he’s always the one helping his teachers carry textbooks between classes.

He does those things because he wants to and he likes helping people, but if he can’t help them he won’t feel sad over it. Would never cry for anyone but you. Maybe in a gentler world, he could afford to care about anyone or anything else, but his world is not gentle so it can only be reserved for you.

Gideon mentioned it to you too, once. How he liked your Caleb but not in the way everyone else liked your Caleb. Everyone else who saw him as radiant, likeable, summer personified. A Golden Retriever trapped inside a reliable man. Instead, he liked him for the way he took over during a disastrous training flight during their second year at the academy.

Gideon had frozen when the controls started flashing, pure fear dousing over him like ice. Beside him, Caleb didn’t even hesitate. His gaze was steel as he took over the flight, stoic and unchanging besides a flippant joke he managed to slip in for his panicking copilot. He’d landed them safely.

It wasn’t something Gideon could fully understand, and part of him was a little unsettled by how selective his empathy could be, but there was no one else in the world he’d rather have next to him on a flight. You were grateful to know somebody else saw him like you did, and a little jealous too.

The point being: you don’t cry. You’re not sure you even remember how to. Not at the funeral. Not when Tara had hugged you close, the smell of her vanilla perfume surrounding you as she told you it was okay to grieve. Not even when Zayne had placed his cold hand on your shoulder and looked at you with an uncharacteristic warmth that you knew he reserved for moments that really mattered. Maybe you had come close, knowing you were supposed to, but you hadn’t cried.

It's not until a month later – a month of going through the motions and sleeping on wet hair and staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars Caleb had helped you stick on your bedroom ceiling – that you get the urge to hear his voice again. 

It isn’t as though you’re worried about forgetting it, it’s just that your whole apartment seems so silent. You tried blasting music, blaring the TV, turning on every appliance in your kitchen at the same time but you could never seem to make enough noise.

So you call his phone.

The first time, you don’t even make it through the first sentence.

“You’ve reached Caleb-,”

You hang up with ringing ears and fingers clenched too tightly around your phone. When you inhale, it feels like ice pouring over your lungs and cooling through your chest. It’s not like hearing a ghost, not yet. What hurts more is how normal it sounds. How easy it is to pretend he’s on the other line, when you know you’ll never actually reach him again. 

You pace around your living room a few times before you work up the nerve to try again. You wouldn’t have tried at all if it wasn’t for how silent things got again. 

“You’ve reached Caleb Xia. If I missed your call, I’m probably flying, sleeping, oooor hangin’ out with more important people.”

You hang up again. This time, because you realize you’ve never heard his voicemail before. You can’t remember a time he’d neglected to answer your call. 

You knew he had a special ringtone for you: the audio from a video of you complaining to him for one of his many arbitrary offenses against you. Stupid Caleb, dummy Caleb. It wasn’t normal, the kind of religious devotion he handled your insults with. It should have concerned you more than it filled your chest with a satisfied kind of warmth.

You had demanded he change it out of fear of sounding like a spoiled brat when you called him in front of his friends, but he had refused, insisting they’d all be jealous instead. You were almost positive he was delusional but either way he always knew when it was you calling, and he always answers. Answered. 

He sounded bright. Warm. The kind of charming that got him a locker full of love letters in high school and a loyal friend group during his years away from you. Nothing like your Caleb.

It had frustrated you more when you were younger. You didn’t make friends that easily when you first came to live with Gran. It always felt like everyone was speaking an entirely different language from you. It was a while before you learned the right things to say, the right time to laugh and when silence felt awkward for everyone around you. 

Caleb never had that problem. He never had to worry about when to laugh at other people’s jokes when he was the one telling them. People always blushed a little around him. When he acknowledged them it felt like basking in warm sunlight. It made people just a little more eager to please him than others, even if they didn’t realize it. 

When it was just the two of you, Caleb never felt like sunshine. He was all-encompassing. Not quite warm, but heavy. Smothering you with the weight of the gravity he manipulated. When it was just the two of you, it felt like there was no one else in the world. So why did he need anyone else?

“It’s good for people to care,” he’d said when he ditched movie night for the third time to go play with the neighborhood kids, “It’s good if they notice.”

“Notice what?” you’d pouted. Wasn’t it enough for you to notice him? When all you ever wanted was for him to keep looking at you?

“If we go missing.” His eyes had gone colder then, the way they sometimes did. Like the conversation was over. It’s the only time you didn’t feel like you were in the same orbit. That was your least favorite Caleb. You loved him all the same.

“You’ve reached Caleb Xia. If I missed your call, I’m probably flying, sleeping, oooor hangin’ out with more important people. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

It wasn’t anything special. Impersonal but warm enough to make the listener feel like they were in on the joke. Sunny, golden Caleb. Not your Caleb. Close enough to hurt anyways. 

The line beeps. You stand there in silence for a solid thirty seconds, nothing but heavy breathing escaping you. Then you feel it. The sensation is unfamiliar, awkward, feels like its being wrenched out of your chest. A pained whimper, followed by a choked wail, and then sobbing that burns through your throat and tears that feel searing against your skin. 

You can’t bring yourself to say anything. Your throat won’t form the words. Instead you sob until the time limit runs out. Then you call again. And again. And again. It will be a while before you stop crying. Longer before the battery on your phone runs out and you have to stop calling. You remind yourself, once again, that it will never be your choice to let go.

Caleb wasn’t sure what to expect, when he recovered and charged up his old phone. It was an impulsive decision, one he had abstained from in all the chaos of surgeries, training, flying through the ranks of the fleet. 

Part of him knew, maybe, that any piece of you more concrete than the single picture of you in his otherwise barren apartment would snap the feeble resolve he was hanging on to like a lifeline. Part of him knew he was Orpheus and that he would always look back. 

He tested himself a lot before he let himself have that connection back. The temptation of being able to contact you. He watched you through cameras until he could make it thirty seconds before he had to stop his chip from short circuiting. He waited until he could go an entire shift without checking up on your doctor, partner, artist friend. That one took longer. He even walked your daily route a few times, hood covering his head and a mask over his face until he convinced himself he wouldn’t reach for your wrist if you happened to cross paths. He still wasn’t sure he’d have managed it.

The temptation to go through your old messages was almost unbearable, but he hadn’t earned the right yet. He’d intended just to test himself once more, but the sight of one unplayed voicemail from you stopped him short. 

It looked wrong, sitting there. He’d never had a voicemail from you. Your number was the only one never set to silent. Halfway through a flight, in the middle of the night, during a class. You were never off limits. 

It didn’t sit right with him to leave it unplayed. It felt like proof of how far away you really were. He listened to the voicemail.

For a while, there is nothing but pained and shaky breathing. That in itself is enough for Caleb to clench his metal fist by his side, to bite down on his tongue just to feel a little bit of the pain he thinks he should in this moment. Half in self-punishment and half to feel closer to you. 

At the sound of your sob, something in him breaks. Like the spark of a livewire, the shattering of a glass wall, the whirring of the chip inside his brain.

When Caleb listens to you cry for the first time since the lab, he is suddenly a child again, slamming his fists and his shoulders into the one-way mirror where he watches you sob as they tear you apart over and over again. He is suddenly heaving with broken fingers and his forehead pressed against the glass. He won’t look away. He won’t let you go through it alone. He will always be by your side.

He won’t hang up the phone. He will ignore the ringing in his ears, the panicked breathing trying to wrench itself from his chest, the grating noise of your broken sobs. He won’t let you go through it alone. He will always be by your side. 

He’ll bite down on his tongue until it bleeds. It will be a while until he tastes the copper in his mouth. He won’t stop playing the voicemail until the phone dies. He reminds himself, once again, that it will never be his choice to let go. 

[bluebellles]

being a fic writer on tumblr is not actually about writing fics it's about changing the header image for your fics obsessively until tumblr takes you out back and puts you out of your misery

[bluebellles]

"you're an angel, i'm a dog; or you're a dog and i'm your man"

a caleb character analysis thinly disguised as post-explosion plot; or a more in depth exploration of grief

pairing: caleb x reader / calebmc

genre: angst, sfw, nostalgia?

cw: canon compliant violence and references to child experimentation, codependency final boss, potentially unhealthy dynamics, you and caleb being freak4freak, explorations of how the lab may have effected you/mc as a child, caleb is a stalker but that's canon too, author is halfway through the first chapter of the fic she's supposed to be working on but got brain rot from caleb's birthday trailer, happy birthday here's some misery

You washed your hair today. 

Only enough to get the soot and ash out. Only because the smell kept taking you back to that place.

Nobody was there to dry it.

It wasn’t as if you had never dried your hair yourself, but you couldn’t seem to raise your hands enough to lift the towel to your head.

It felt like betraying something, almost. Trying to do his job. Doing it yourself after he went off to college, after you entered the academy, felt like picking up the slack. Now it felt like filling a role you needed to stay empty. Like you needed to remind yourself something was missing.

You catch a cold from sleeping on your wet hair. You don’t even notice. You accept your stilted breathing and the ache in your head as a part of your new normal. It will be a while before you wash your hair again.

The odd man with the sunset eyes messages you once. His name keeps flitting in and out of your consciousness. He says something about shells and talking to seagulls. You want to call Caleb and laugh about rich people and their weird hobbies. Tomorrow you will care to remember his name. A week from now you’ll be grateful that he reached out. It will be much longer before you can bring yourself to laugh again. 

You don’t cry. Not just now, but never in your conscious memory. Something is broken, something has always been wrong with you. The only person who knew that and loved you anyways is no longer here to do so. No one will pick up the slack. You won’t offer the job to anyone.

It wasn’t as though you didn’t feel enough to cry. You did. It was just that for most of your life, before you could cry or scream or rage, Caleb would be there. Soothing the pain or distracting you from the fear or getting angry on your behalf. Before you could even react, he always saw you. It was enough, for him to see. Nobody else needed to validate it.

You knew it made Gran nervous, that you never cried. You could see it in the way she watched you sometimes. Nearly clinical aside from the concern crinkling around the edges of her eyes. Like she was waiting for something. Like she was holding her breath. Like she thought you’d eventually explode.

Caleb never looked at you like that. Never looked at you like you were wrong, or dangerous, or other. Never looked at you like you were anything other than real. He looked at you like you belonged somewhere, even if it was just to him.

You saw that concern in Gran’s eyes in the car ride on the way to the hospital after you had broken your wrist on the playground in third grade.

Caleb had been playing basketball with some of the neighborhood kids. Gran had encouraged him, ushering him away with assurances that she’d keep an eye on you. She was always so insistent that the two of you make other friends. 

It didn’t stop his eyes from straying over to you. Didn’t stop him from counting the steps it would take to reach you if he needed to or making sure his Evol could extend far enough. 

Some older kids had been playing on the monkey bars. It looked fun, and more importantly it looked normal. You had never done them by yourself, always had Caleb on standby in case you fell, but you wondered if you could laugh that freely and look like all the other kids on the monkey bars if you did them on your own.

He couldn’t have looked away for more than a few minutes, assigned to chase the ball after it strayed into the creek. It was only for a few minutes that he relied on Gran, believed her promise.

When you fall and land on your wrist with an ugly snap you don’t cry out. You don’t even feel the pain, really, your body remembering how much more it had withstood even if your mind did not. It’s the way the other kids look at you with panic and horror that makes you cry out after you suddenly realize that you probably should.

Caleb only sees the aftermath as you clutch at your wrist with exaggerated pain. Gran is standing up from the bench to rush over, her book abandoned. Caleb gets there faster.

The car ride is silent apart from Caleb’s poorly concealed sniffling, tears pooling in his eyes as he gently cradles your wrist as if it’s precious to him. You watch them track down his face, memorizing the path from the galaxies in his eyes to the collar of his shirt. Something in you settles at the sight. If he is feeling the pain for you then it’s fine. It almost feels like the same thing, if not a little more satisfying. 

You ignore the concern in Gran’s eyes. She has been very kind to you, but she doesn’t need to see your pain. Not the way you need him to.

Caleb yells at Gran for the first and only time in your sight after you’ve finished getting your cast. It’s brief, his voice cracking and his hands shaking before he retreats, but you can see the relief in Gran’s expression when he does. You know she watches him too. Sees the way he never really looks at anyone besides you with real emotion. It’s comforting to her to know that he can, even if it’s with ire. 

Caleb is a good kid. He speaks up for his quieter classmates, makes sure nobody’s bothering the girls in his class on the train back from school. He’s the first to start stacking chairs at the end up the day and he’s always the one helping his teachers carry textbooks between classes.

He does those things because he wants to and he likes helping people, but if he can’t help them he won’t feel sad over it. Would never cry for anyone but you. Maybe in a gentler world, he could afford to care about anyone or anything else, but his world is not gentle so it can only be reserved for you.

Gideon mentioned it to you too, once. How he liked your Caleb but not in the way everyone else liked your Caleb. Everyone else who saw him as radiant, likeable, summer personified. A Golden Retriever trapped inside a reliable man. Instead, he liked him for the way he took over during a disastrous training flight during their second year at the academy.

Gideon had frozen when the controls started flashing, pure fear dousing over him like ice. Beside him, Caleb didn’t even hesitate. His gaze was steel as he took over the flight, stoic and unchanging besides a flippant joke he managed to slip in for his panicking copilot. He’d landed them safely.

It wasn’t something Gideon could fully understand, and part of him was a little unsettled by how selective his empathy could be, but there was no one else in the world he’d rather have next to him on a flight. You were grateful to know somebody else saw him like you did, and a little jealous too.

The point being: you don’t cry. You’re not sure you even remember how to. Not at the funeral. Not when Tara had hugged you close, the smell of her vanilla perfume surrounding you as she told you it was okay to grieve. Not even when Zayne had placed his cold hand on your shoulder and looked at you with an uncharacteristic warmth that you knew he reserved for moments that really mattered. Maybe you had come close, knowing you were supposed to, but you hadn’t cried.

It's not until a month later – a month of going through the motions and sleeping on wet hair and staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars Caleb had helped you stick on your bedroom ceiling – that you get the urge to hear his voice again. 

It isn’t as though you’re worried about forgetting it, it’s just that your whole apartment seems so silent. You tried blasting music, blaring the TV, turning on every appliance in your kitchen at the same time but you could never seem to make enough noise.

So you call his phone.

The first time, you don’t even make it through the first sentence.

“You’ve reached Caleb-,”

You hang up with ringing ears and fingers clenched too tightly around your phone. When you inhale, it feels like ice pouring over your lungs and cooling through your chest. It’s not like hearing a ghost, not yet. What hurts more is how normal it sounds. How easy it is to pretend he’s on the other line, when you know you’ll never actually reach him again. 

You pace around your living room a few times before you work up the nerve to try again. You wouldn’t have tried at all if it wasn’t for how silent things got again. 

“You’ve reached Caleb Xia. If I missed your call, I’m probably flying, sleeping, oooor hangin’ out with more important people.”

You hang up again. This time, because you realize you’ve never heard his voicemail before. You can’t remember a time he’d neglected to answer your call. 

You knew he had a special ringtone for you: the audio from a video of you complaining to him for one of his many arbitrary offenses against you. Stupid Caleb, dummy Caleb. It wasn’t normal, the kind of religious devotion he handled your insults with. It should have concerned you more than it filled your chest with a satisfied kind of warmth.

You had demanded he change it out of fear of sounding like a spoiled brat when you called him in front of his friends, but he had refused, insisting they’d all be jealous instead. You were almost positive he was delusional but either way he always knew when it was you calling, and he always answers. Answered. 

He sounded bright. Warm. The kind of charming that got him a locker full of love letters in high school and a loyal friend group during his years away from you. Nothing like your Caleb.

It had frustrated you more when you were younger. You didn’t make friends that easily when you first came to live with Gran. It always felt like everyone was speaking an entirely different language from you. It was a while before you learned the right things to say, the right time to laugh and when silence felt awkward for everyone around you. 

Caleb never had that problem. He never had to worry about when to laugh at other people’s jokes when he was the one telling them. People always blushed a little around him. When he acknowledged them it felt like basking in warm sunlight. It made people just a little more eager to please him than others, even if they didn’t realize it. 

When it was just the two of you, Caleb never felt like sunshine. He was all-encompassing. Not quite warm, but heavy. Smothering you with the weight of the gravity he manipulated. When it was just the two of you, it felt like there was no one else in the world. So why did he need anyone else?

“It’s good for people to care,” he’d said when he ditched movie night for the third time to go play with the neighborhood kids, “It’s good if they notice.”

“Notice what?” you’d pouted. Wasn’t it enough for you to notice him? When all you ever wanted was for him to keep looking at you?

“If we go missing.” His eyes had gone colder then, the way they sometimes did. Like the conversation was over. It’s the only time you didn’t feel like you were in the same orbit. That was your least favorite Caleb. You loved him all the same.

“You’ve reached Caleb Xia. If I missed your call, I’m probably flying, sleeping, oooor hangin’ out with more important people. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

It wasn’t anything special. Impersonal but warm enough to make the listener feel like they were in on the joke. Sunny, golden Caleb. Not your Caleb. Close enough to hurt anyways. 

The line beeps. You stand there in silence for a solid thirty seconds, nothing but heavy breathing escaping you. Then you feel it. The sensation is unfamiliar, awkward, feels like its being wrenched out of your chest. A pained whimper, followed by a choked wail, and then sobbing that burns through your throat and tears that feel searing against your skin. 

You can’t bring yourself to say anything. Your throat won’t form the words. Instead you sob until the time limit runs out. Then you call again. And again. And again. It will be a while before you stop crying. Longer before the battery on your phone runs out and you have to stop calling. You remind yourself, once again, that it will never be your choice to let go.

Caleb wasn’t sure what to expect, when he recovered and charged up his old phone. It was an impulsive decision, one he had abstained from in all the chaos of surgeries, training, flying through the ranks of the fleet. 

Part of him knew, maybe, that any piece of you more concrete than the single picture of you in his otherwise barren apartment would snap the feeble resolve he was hanging on to like a lifeline. Part of him knew he was Orpheus and that he would always look back. 

He tested himself a lot before he let himself have that connection back. The temptation of being able to contact you. He watched you through cameras until he could make it thirty seconds before he had to stop his chip from short circuiting. He waited until he could go an entire shift without checking up on your doctor, partner, artist friend. That one took longer. He even walked your daily route a few times, hood covering his head and a mask over his face until he convinced himself he wouldn’t reach for your wrist if you happened to cross paths. He still wasn’t sure he’d have managed it.

The temptation to go through your old messages was almost unbearable, but he hadn’t earned the right yet. He’d intended just to test himself once more, but the sight of one unplayed voicemail from you stopped him short. 

It looked wrong, sitting there. He’d never had a voicemail from you. Your number was the only one never set to silent. Halfway through a flight, in the middle of the night, during a class. You were never off limits. 

It didn’t sit right with him to leave it unplayed. It felt like proof of how far away you really were. He listened to the voicemail.

For a while, there is nothing but pained and shaky breathing. That in itself is enough for Caleb to clench his metal fist by his side, to bite down on his tongue just to feel a little bit of the pain he thinks he should in this moment. Half in self-punishment and half to feel closer to you. 

At the sound of your sob, something in him breaks. Like the spark of a livewire, the shattering of a glass wall, the whirring of the chip inside his brain.

When Caleb listens to you cry for the first time since the lab, he is suddenly a child again, slamming his fists and his shoulders into the one-way mirror where he watches you sob as they tear you apart over and over again. He is suddenly heaving with broken fingers and his forehead pressed against the glass. He won’t look away. He won’t let you go through it alone. He will always be by your side.

He won’t hang up the phone. He will ignore the ringing in his ears, the panicked breathing trying to wrench itself from his chest, the grating noise of your broken sobs. He won’t let you go through it alone. He will always be by your side. 

He’ll bite down on his tongue until it bleeds. It will be a while until he tastes the copper in his mouth. He won’t stop playing the voicemail until the phone dies. He reminds himself, once again, that it will never be his choice to let go. 

[bluebellles]

whenever i get worried about being judged i just gotta remind myself that most people genuinely just arent mean. some people really do suck but i think 98% of the human population is a lot kinder than your anxiety would let you believe

[bluebellles]

...and use them to catch you.

[bluebellles]

couldn't even last the trailer without saying smth unhinged that's my shayla

[bluebellles]

category is extremely traditionally masculine men written to experience traumas, tropes, and writing decisions that are more typical of misogyny

i'm not sure if i can even articulate this properly but it's something about the parallels between the perfect soldier and the perfect woman ...

the unwarranted burden of sin and the perpetual blame

sacrificing your personal desires and autonomy for "the good of others" and in MANY cases that autonomy being stripped from them against their will

forced into a caretaker role from a young age because of the failures of adults but they'd tear themselves apart before ever admitting it was a burden because of The Love

and then being highly sexualized within the context of the writing both despite and sometimes BECAUSE of that trauma (this point maybe less apparent with caleb but there are certainly countless examples for the other two)

for caleb the parallels to eve and being perpetually punished for the crime of showing mc enlightenment is like . extremely direct lol

idk i hope this isn't misconstrued and it's not a fully elaborated theory by any means just noticing a #trend in my comfort characters

of course my interpretation of them could be completely different from everyone else's idk idk

[bluebellles]

i think sylus’ most underutilized character element is how like. deeply he wants to be desired by mc. i feel like it gets brought up but rarely gets capitalized on but there’s truly something kind of desperate to him at times. like he’s always barely toeing the line. he’s kind of similar to zayne in this respect - but i think sylus has a harder time with it.

[bluebellles]

This is a really beautiful and poignant analysis!! I really agree with your take on his half-man half-machine motifs.

One thing I wanted to add (not to negate what you're saying about his motivation for high achievement because I totally agree that he desperately wants to seem infallible ESPECIALLY in mc's eyes as shown in Hidden Waves but instead to add another layer) is that I also think the reason Caleb went out of his way to be popular in school, well-liked, basketball star, graduating at the top of his class at the academy, etc is because he equates social capital with power and more importantly safety.

I think it's fairly obvious that he has almost no sense of self-worth or desires of his own outside of keeping mc and himself safe (barring a few hobbies i'd love to see him explore more and the desire to fly planes in order to feel untouchable). It likely never gave him an ego boost to achieve these things nor does he even bother to consider if they're impressive. Instead, I think his goal has always been to make sure people would notice if he and mc went missing again. He wanted to be sure that they would care.

Again - thank you so much for the character analysis !! I love seeing other people explore this side of him.

Caleb & Robot imagery work because he aims to be super human.

Thinking about how Caleb was good at basically everything from academic pursuits to sports, to combat.

This guy is basically the jack of all trades according to lore.

I feel this isn’t just one of those “naturally gifted” archetypes but, rather he actively sought to be this way. I think possibly he would’ve allowed others to think it was “talent” since it maintains his facade of invulnerability. He doesn’t want his work to be recognised as “hard work” because ultimately that tells people he’s had to struggle in the first place.

What interests me so much about Caleb is that he’s not possessive in a some abusive Wattpad story kinda way, he actually flips this trope on its head because whenever he has MC cornered it’s entirely desperate?

In homecoming wings, where he’s trying to get MC to stay put, instead of using language of threat or force he talks about actions and what he can do to serve. He doesn’t scare her into submission, he does the opposite. He asks what she wants so, he can conform to it. He’s externally focused, it’s always a matter of “what can I do to solve this problem/fix this flaw.”

He’s fixated on tasks, and function, issues always lie within his perceived usefulness. He neglects what’s going on internally. This is a recurring theme as he excelled during all DAA tests but the mental one, which he dismissed.

It’s funny that in his myth he’s almost like an android and that in the present timeline he has a bionic arm, because to me it almost serves as an extension of the very mindset keeping him stagnant - the idea he has to be above human to be worth anything, ultra useful, ultra capable, ultra competent.

But hey, maybe das just me saying a bunch of shit….

[bluebellles]

tbh i'm nervous about posting my shitty art but i won't let shyness take my joy from me lol. i love caleb a lot!

[bluebellles]

you may be losing the idgaf war but they wouldn't even let me enlist. on account of my poet's temperament.

[bluebellles]

"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread