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theinkquiry · 3 months ago

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i've been looking at you so long now i only see me caleb x reader (mc)

word count: 4.5k tags: Alternative Ending to Homecoming Wings, Because we couldn't just let it end like that! “You can’t protect me forever.” You reached up with your free hand to cup his face. This was the closest you’ve really gotten to seeing him since he’s come back to you. He leans into your touch. “I can and I will.” He speaks with such conviction. The tone is familiar even if the empty stare accompanying his words is not. “But you didn’t." Things come to a head on your last day in Skyhaven. This wasn't the Caleb you knew. You weren't the same girl he left behind. You still love him anyway. (homecoming wings and it's completely different but also still homecoming wings.)

ao3 link (also in the fic title): https://archiveofourown.org/works/63833728

Three days. He said it like it was no time at all, but it was long enough to make you begin questioning your sanity. To say you were traumatized all over again by the sudden appearance of Caleb with the Farspace Fleet was an understatement. You pushed the initial concerns aside. He was here, alive. That was all that mattered, or so you thought.

The routine was too typical. Too easy. You never dared let yourself imagine what it would be like to have him breathing in front of you again. But of all the possibilities you could have conjured, to simply keep carrying on was not one of them. Carrying on was what you did when he left. It wasn’t how he was supposed to come back to you.

You didn’t even know if he was supposed to come back to you.

He had you down against the couch after three days of unending rain. Your petulant nature once again gets you into hot waters with him. You were pushing the same buttons, but the commands were not the same. His words simmer with a cold flame.

“No one will ever be able to find you ever again. I’ll protect you forever.”

There it was again. His unending need to shield you from all the world’s harms. It was touching when you were children. Romantic, even. Growing up, you slowly lost the concept of what it felt like to be truly afraid. There were the thunderstorms and the usual mean kids on the block. You were comforted by the notion that Caleb would always be there. That you would never be alone, just like he promised.

But now your heart thundered in your chest as your eyes stared into his. The purple-grey storm brewing behind his gaze pinned you down like nothing you’ve ever felt before. There was a gnawing sensation that you didn’t want to admit, a fear whose source you dare not name.

What if I told you I was always like this?

Since he said them moments ago, you’ve been trying to make sense of the words. As much pride as Caleb took in being able to see through you, it came at the expense of you being able to peer right back at him. Those words weren’t total lies, but they weren’t the full picture either. A half-truth. The Caleb you knew could be mischievous and cheeky towards you, sure. But he never did anything as underhanded as keep you locked up for days on end. A half-explanation. Even after so many questions and days to get his side of the story, he was still keeping things from you. A half-Caleb. Something was still wrong. He never used to make you feel so… alone .

He still had you pinned underneath him. His grip was strong, but you don’t think either of you were putting your full strength into fighting with each other. Even after looking at him so many times, here, alive , you still had to bite back tears each time.

This was the closest you’ve really gotten to seeing him since he’s come back to you.

He leans into your touch. “I can and I will.” He speaks with such conviction. The tone is familiar even if the empty stare accompanying his words is not.

“But…” The air was so still. You hated it. In fact, you’ve hated every minute of the last three days. It wasn’t just that Caleb was lying to you. It wasn’t that he’d leave you with nothing to do but sit and try not to cry and end up crying whenever he left anyway. It was that you wanted to talk to him again. You wanted the easiness of your Caleb back. The Caleb you whispered secrets to under cover of dark. Not this half-stranger, half…

Friend? Family? He was always just Caleb. You never had any other word to describe who he was to you. You never needed one. But whatever he was to you, it was not this. Something had to give. You were either going to get half of the past back, or you were going to confront something new. None of which would be accomplished if you kept biting back your words or if he kept avoiding you like this.

For all of his swift acting and nonchalant attitude, you knew something was off with Caleb no matter how much he denied it. Or maybe he wasn’t “off” at all, and the person you dedicated your entire life to really was a mirage. You were never the quickest to pick up on things. You may not be the smartest. But what you did know was that, even if Caleb was entirely right and he hadn’t changed at all in the months since the explosion, you did.

Your voice was soft. “But you didn’t protect me, Caleb.”

You curled your hand that was still pinned down into a fist. Not to resist him, but to let him feel the tension in your muscle. He opened his mouth, ready to shut you down again. You didn’t let him.

“You didn’t come visit me at the hospital after the fires.”

You remembered the sterile white walls and the too-thin sheets.

“You weren’t there when I dug through the ashes, trying to find something, anything left of you and Gran.”

The suffocating smoke lingered in your lungs, no matter how much the doctors told you that you were clear.

“You aren’t there when I’m out on missions fighting Wanderers.”

Work. Heavens, did work bring a whole new layer of pain. It was one thing to be the only survivor. It was another to survive day in and day out as skittish coworkers fumbled through apologies and tip-toed around you like fragile glass. Even if that was exactly what you were.

“You weren’t there when I couldn’t eat for days because all I wanted was your food. You weren’t there for the nightmares that I still have because every time I close my eyes I just see that day over and over again.”

You don’t realize how much you’re shaking until Caleb’s grip finally loosens. His facade begins to crumble as you see your own heartbreak reflected back in his eyes. He was lost for a moment. The strength seemed to slip away from him as his hands hovered uneasily. Unsure of whether he ought to let go or hang on. You didn’t give him a chance to decide as you entwined your hand with his. You weren’t going to let him slip away again. You needed him to ground you.

“You weren’t there when I had to bury the absence of you in an empty grave. So no, Caleb. You didn’t protect me.”

Surprise flashed across his face for the first time in a long while. A sickly satisfaction took root in your gut. Caleb, who always thought he knew best about everything when it came to you, at last confronted with his own contradictions. The bitter victory went as soon as it came.

“It was all for your own good.” His justification was so predictable you almost laughed. “It was the only way to make sure you were safe.”

You shook your head. Caleb may think that he was doing it all to keep you safe. He may even be right that you were safer thinking that he was dead. At the same time, you never felt such raw vulnerability as you did while believing Caleb was gone from this world. Your entire perspective shifted. Who you were as a person changed. It had to. You had your own apartment in Linkon, but it wasn’t home. You had to make peace with the fact that you were the only one who could make a home for yourself. Everyone you held in relation to you was gone. You learned to define yourself apart from those who left you.

Perhaps the reason why it was so hard to talk to Caleb now was that you were also changed. Caleb’s death rocked your very foundations, and you came out the other side by reconstructing your personhood by yourself, brick by brick. Did he notice it? All the changes you underwent because of him. For the last week or so he’d give you these stares which you found puzzling. It reminded you of whenever he misplaced his phone or forgot his thought mid-sentence. You were right there, so what was he looking for?

From your closer vantage now, you realized that searching wasn’t the only thing about his eyes. It was almost like pleading, begging even. You may have reunited physically, but you’d hardly found each other again at all.

“I was the one who learned to bear the thunderstorms at night, alone. I was the one who showed up to family-at-work day events, alone. I was the one who learned to live in a world without you. All alone. So don’t accuse me of trying to go back there.”

Each word of yours left a cut in him. At last he was open, without retort. He tried to avoid your gaze. Your thumb and index fingers guided him back towards you again. “You left me to grieve you, all alone.”

He didn’t get to look away. If he wanted you to see him, you needed him to see you as well. An unconscious resistance gripped his body, yet he couldn’t break away. You knew the feeling well. It was exactly the sensation of being in that interrogation chair the first time you came face to face with the Colonel.

“Don’t leave me again, Caleb.” You don’t notice that you’re crying again until his thumb wipes away your tears. Your voice trembles as you say it again. “Please, don’t leave me.”

For the first time, he seems to understand what your words meant without misconstruction. He continues to brush your tears aside even as he’s holding back his own. “I’m here. I’m here now.” He said it as if he was also trying to convince himself.

You let go of him and, for the briefest moment neither of you are touching the other. You wonder what he sees of himself in your eyes. Two mirrors, forever destined to reflect back at each other until you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. As you looked and looked and looked, you found what you were searching for. What you found was, frankly, a mess. Then again, so were you. And the discovery sent your heart aflutter as something in this hellscape of a world finally made sense to you again.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and tugged him down beside you, throwing yourself into his chest. “You’re here.” A statement so obvious that it makes you laugh. But the laughter quickly devolves back into crying. You cling to him like a lifeline because you really don’t want him to go. Because for the first time since you set eyes on him again did you fully process that Caleb wasn’t just ‘not dead’, no. Regardless of the technicalities between life and death, for all intents and purposes he very much did die.

Now you could hear his voice. Touch the tears on his cheeks. Hear his heartbeat pounding. “You’re really here.”

Caleb brushed his hands through your hair. You wondered if it was more of a gesture to calm you, or if it was to soothe himself. “I’ve always held myself back and endured. Day, after day, after day. It was suffocating.” His breath shuddered with each sentence. While you were mourning, Caleb was facing his own struggles. You didn’t know the details. He wouldn’t tell you if you asked. At least not right now.

He’s in a better place now , is what people would say to you in the early days of dealing with his absence. You wonder if Caleb told himself that about you, wherever he was. That even though you both possessed two different sides to the same tragic story, you both pushed forward in the hopes of reaching some semblance of a happier ending. Perhaps the reason why he put up such an aggressive front whenever you said you didn’t need him was to hide from the fact that he also needed you.

Caleb curled himself around you, leaning closer to your ear. “All I ever wanted was to come back to you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t.” He choked on the words like they were poison down his throat. You try to filter his words into something intelligible. I did it to protect you.

“Oh, Caleb-” You hold onto him tighter- “but who was protecting you?”

He buried his face into your hair and let out a painful sob. His whole body shook as the rain hit the glass windows. His presence screamed, I’m tired . You held a steady hand to his back as his shoulders heaved up and down. His breath came out ragged and uneven. I’m so tired . Just as he did to you many times before, you held him through the panic and shushed away his fears.

You would protect him, even if you didn’t know what doing so looked like yet. You could have run away, called for help, brought down the entire building if your hatred and anger were genuine. In truth, you were scared for him. You wanted to monitor him. Figure out why there was a sudden darkness emanating from his being when he thought you were turned the other way. If staying away from you was genuine protection, then returning to your arms was no coincidence. Somewhere in his subconscious, he was reaching out to you.

You were not going to let him go. Not again.

The two of you lay curled into each other as a single mass. The sensation was oddly familiar. You couldn’t quite place it. A far away, cold place. Someone’s warm hand in yours. A vow to never be apart. A boy whose reassurance put you at ease even if the smile never quite reached his eyes. Was there once a time just like this one when everything lay so far out of control? When there was nothing to do except hold the other as tight as you could, crying and wishing for brighter days ahead. Or simply an end to the darkness.

A cacophony of tearful whispers and sniffles mixed with the sound of never-ending droplets pitter-pattering around your cellophane birdcage. You thought by now you would have run out of tears for Caleb. Yet it didn’t feel so much like you were crying for him so much as you were crying on his behalf. And he, yours. All the pain and regret built up to be released like a message in a bottle to the sea. The glass object containing all the apologies too late to say, all the memories you didn’t get to make, bundled up and set adrift to whatever mysterious fate the waters held in store for it. Drifting and drifting, casual and random, into the fog of your mind until it was gone entirely.

All that’s left is you, and Caleb, and the words you get to say to him now.

“Caleb.” His name is, at last, comfortable in your mouth again. He senses it too, eyes flitting to yours with none of the harshness that you’ve detested growing accustomed to.

He speaks your name with the same care. As if you were giving it back to each other.

“If I stay, would you really accept me? As I am now?”

“I already accepted every version of you. The boy from my childhood. My pretend-boyfriend who was off to college. The Farspace Fleet Colonel.” You pressed your forehead against his. “I even accepted you dead. Because you wanted me to, right?” He took a shuddered breath as you brushed stray strands of hair away from his eyes. His hand encircled your wrist again. Absent was the forcefulness from before. His grasp this time was desperate. A silent apology for all the pain he’s caused you.

You rest your palm atop his hand, an assurance that you weren’t going anywhere. “I never wanted you to be anything other than my Caleb.”

His eyes widened, gleaming at the sound of the last two words leaving your lips. You honestly surprised yourself with your candor. It couldn’t be helped, really. Not when he was finally his unfiltered self. Take away all the heaviness surrounding the two of you bearing in from the outside world, and you’re left with a Caleb that you only thought you could see in your dreams. Laying by your side, holding your hand, like he only wanted to pull you in closer.

“I like you like this…” You find yourself inching closer naturally. Were you in a more teasing mood, you might have accused him of using his Evol to draw you in. “I like being with you like this.”

“Like how?” He asks. You were both too tired for any more games. Chase the other too long, and you’d only end up going in circles.

You run a finger down his face. How many scars were there that you couldn’t see? “Next to me. Beside me. Not pushing me back, where I can’t see you. Or leaving me behind, where I can’t reach you.” Your finger trails along down his neck, past his shoulders, towards his back. “I like… you.”

You blink. The realization landed like a feather on a still pond, but hit you like a meteor. “I like you.” You say it in a full breath. You say it to see the way Caleb’s eyes swirl with stars. You say it because it’s the thing you’ve been trying to say this whole time.

“Just figured that out?” He means to tease, but his voice gives away the vulnerability lurking just behind. The arm around your waist freezes. His weariness leaves him with no defenses. You see in full for the first time how his eyes search yours for something. An answer? Permission?

You lean in and close the distance. It’s soft at first, the kiss. Hesitant. A ghost of your lips on his. A test of the waters. You lean back for his response, unprepared for the raw emotion you’re met with.

His hold on you is a plea of the most desperate. Tears prick at his eyeline again. He opens his mouth only to close it again. A million unspoken questions, unsure which is the right to ask. “Please,” is all he can manage. “ Please. ”

When it’s clear that you are going to kiss him again, his body takes over. He pulls you into him, fervently and entirely. You can’t form proper thoughts, as if his own weaved into your mind with each press of his lips against yours. He moves a bit clumsily, but with the surety of a man too long deprived. Little gasps leave his mouth each time he pulls away. “I can’t believe-”

Caleb kisses you before he can finish his own sentence. Delirious to the point where he didn’t even realize he was speaking aloud.

“You’re so-”

He gets drunk on it. The way you fit so easily with him. The small breaths you take in between his. Your hooded eyes as you meet him halfway each time.

He calls your name like it’s sacred. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

You grab at his shirt in an effort to steady yourself. You continue to kiss as you let yourself be guided underneath him. His hands know exactly where to hold to make you feel at home. You reach up to hold his face again, gently this time cradled between your hands. “You always have me.”

Caleb keeps pushing down until you’re flush against the couch. He kisses you softer, yet with the same rush as if you were made of sand that could slip through his fingers at any moment. “Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” You’ll repeat it as many times as he needs. “And you?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yours.”

You put your hands on his broad shoulders before he can kiss you again. The disappointment is immediate, but he waits. He always waits. There’s a softness to his features as he tilts his head a little. “What’s wrong?”

You shake your head. “Nothing, I just-” It felt silly to admit. “I just like looking at you.”

The smile he gave you tugged at your heart. You felt tears welling again, this time from relief. If he was able to read you before, you were able to read him right back. With all his defenses lowered, it was like opening the pages of your favorite book.

I’m here . Your whole being was reaching for him.

I’m yours . Caleb handles you with care. Not because you’re breakable, but because you’re treasured. He brushes aside your hands, guiding them back down to rest on the plush surface of his couch.

I’ve always been yours. He presses his lips to your forehead first, then your nose. You can’t help a small laugh. His eyes crinkle in response and you know that, this time, he is asking for permission. You grant it.

Without a word, he carries you up in his arms. Where you find yourself next is the home you had missed. It’s not entirely familiar. It isn’t the summer sun as he walks back with you on the last day of school or the first hug you gave him after he graduated from the DAA. Clumsy limbs and racing hearts. Your small gasps and the reverence with which he calls your name.

But you know it all the same, the way he makes the entire world fade into the backdrop, taking you someplace outside of time and space. You were two halves of the same whole, split apart. Coming back together.

Between it all there is a gnawing sensation that the peace was fragile. Two split parts were bound to grow, to cover up the scars left behind by their torn half. The pieces would never fit quite right again, not without cutting back into the other.

His hand grips your waist and you take deep breaths against his neck.

The questions, the technicalities, they were all for tomorrow.

For now, you let yourself be content just as you are. You and Caleb. One and two. Caleb and you. Somewhere along the way you stopped having lines of your own and let yourself bleed into him, and he into you. His hot breath fans the side of your face. You make a thousand silent promises to one another, though you both know keeping all of them is impossible. If even a handful survive, you’d take it.

If the sky clears sometime in the night, you don’t notice.

At dawn on the fourth day, you see him off at the airfield. It’s the same as all the other times you’ve seen him off. Almost. You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to him in his Colonel’s uniform. It doesn’t look bad, few things did on Caleb, but it was another reminder that things were different now.

He was different now. Only time would prove whether that was a good or bad thing.

“Make sure to look after yourself. Eat three full meals a day and go to bed before dawn. You got that, pipsqueak?” Caleb ruffles your hair.

You swat away his hand in annoyance. “Caleb! As if the Skyhaven winds weren’t already bad enough for my hair.”

Some things would never change.

An alarm blares. Several Fleet members rush toward their ships. Caleb shouts something over to his crew, but you don’t hear it. The sun was out in full force after the storm, though the chill of the morning air prevented its full heat from blanketing where you stood. You squinted against the rays, following a particular glint of silver around Caleb’s neck.

“Well, I guess it’s time to say goodbye.” Caleb takes a step towards you, but stops himself from going any further. There it was. That strange hesitance lingering over him like smoke.

You used to let him walk away on his own. This time, you cross over to him. “Not a goodbye.” You smooth down his shirt before reaching up to tease out his dog tags. You look up at him, defiant. “See you next time.”

Whatever he sees in your eyes puts him at ease. A gentle smile graces his features as he echoes your words. You hate the uncertainty in his eyes. You swear to yourself that you’d clear the cloudiness. That shade of violet which is pure, unburdened. You’ll take all that’s grey and wilting about him into yourself if that’s what it took to bring back some of his shine.

You do what you weren’t brave enough to do before. Looping a finger through his silver chain, you tug him down and press a firm kiss to his lips. It is determinedly quick, but the full effects were felt. Caleb cupped your face and stole a second, then a third.

The sound of spacecraft engines cuts through the air. He sighs. “You’re not making this any easier.”

“Have I ever?”

“No,” Caleb chuckles. He gives you a look. He could tell, you think, that you too have changed. “You never do.”

You don’t know if things will ever truly go back to being easy, if they ever were in the first place. Caleb adjusts the cap on his head and gives your hand a final squeeze. A crinkle draws your attention, and you feel old paper against your palm.

“What’s…” You smooth out the yellowed scrap and scoff once you see the old coupon. You look up to find that his remorse is genuine. You don’t ask what forgiveness he’s asking for. Nothing and everything, is what he’ll say. Instead, you slap the paper back on his chest. “Coupon denied.”

“Excuse me?” He let out a laugh that he didn’t even expect. “It’s not expired!”

“It’s invalid.” You retort, folding your arms and giving him your sternest glare. “There’s nothing to apply the coupon to.”

“But-”

“Save it.” His hand ghosts over where yours rests, right above his heart. You feel every beat drumming underneath your fingertips. “Save it, and come back to me.”

A kaleidoscope of emotions flits across his face. He’s holding back the truth. He wants to tell you off. He needs to kiss you again. All these confusing and wonderful things bundle up to make your Caleb. You meant what you told him yesterday. Whether he was finding a way to claw back to who he was, or whether he was entirely changed, you would be there waiting for him. Just as he’s waited for you all those years before.

“I will.”

#love and deepspace #caleb love and deepspace #caleb x reader #caleb x mc #caleb lads #lads x reader #lads fanfic #love and deepspace fanfic #i don't know how to post fics on here anymore so apologies if this looks cringe #please just read and comment on ao3 idk man #whatever happened to just posting a gif for the header i had to google and save a whole ass caleb picture for this #i cant believe gifs are cringe now T-T and that im aging #anyway #enjoy my first fic in like...four years

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