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The barrier between focus and obsession was glass-thin and shaped like a trigger. One decision, one small flick of a finger away from shattering.
Obsession was an itch, fleeting, temporary. But focus? Focus was ambition, determination, winning.
That’s why Caleb had always been a creature of restraint, the very picture of self-control. As a boy, when he set his sights on something, he never burned with want. Wanting was purposeless.
Instead he would set his focus on whatever it was — sweets, trinkets, secrets, toys — until he found a way to make it his. Until he carefully maneuvered the object of his desires right into his little grasp.
Caleb didn’t wish, he didn’t desire.
He conquered.
Only this time, his focus wasn’t on a conquest. It wasn’t on a mission, or a lab data report, or a secret he could use to his advantage. It wasn’t power or strategy or survival.
It was you.
From the very beginning, you’d been the object of his focus. Your affection, your thoughts, your wit, your emotions. Everything that made you tick, he’d picked up and studied like the rarest gem.
And now? Now your fingerprints were sewn permanently into his heart, holding together the thing that beat in his chest. Now, he was light years apart from the boy he’d been, and yet you still gripped it tightly, your hand too small to keep that shriveled and charred, bloody mess together.
But the taste of your laughter, the sound of your skin, the feeling of your scent? Every moment of disorientation you created within him only served to reinforce his lifelong focus on you.
Military training, tests, experimentation chambers, nothing upended the center of his gravity like you.
From the dim hallway, Caleb watched you. His gaze — deep purple with motes of gold, an iris bloom washed in sunset — mapped the coordinates of your smile, measured the radar of your thumping pulse, calculated the precise trajectory of your movements as you fluttered around the small group of Hunters you were meeting with at the Association for a late night UNICORNS debrief.
You’d never understood entirely how you affected him. No one did, he’d made sure of it. Not your mutual friends growing up, not the woman who’d raised you, not the laughing fool you were talking to right now. Not even your Hunter partner across the table from you.
Caleb knew you better. Treated you better. He always had.
It’s because none of them actually took the time to see you, not really. Not like he did. And no matter how far apart you two got, that would never change.
You were an enigma to them, a cluster of ridges and buttons in a cockpit, unfulfilled in an amateur's grasp. Dormant without expert handling and care.
But Caleb had long ago solved you — your wants, your vulnerabilities, your secrets, your fears, your weaknesses. He'd seen you bared before him and had figured you out. Down to the very core in your heart.
Even within the darkest depths of the universe, with no sense or feeling, he would know exactly where to trail each of his fingers. How much pressure to apply to every delicate divot. The precise combination and rhythm to elicit a response.
The way he could guide you, command you, the way he could make you take flight for him? It would be… explosive.
The melody of your sudden laughter extinguished the heat that had started to lick its way down his body as he watched you give them the version of yourself they expected. Amiable, innocent, polished.
As your meeting came to an end and you and your colleagues stood to leave, the shadows shifted around Caleb as he pushed off from the wall he’d been leaning against. Pulling the DAA clearance card that had kept the door behind him open, he took a step into the corridor that would lead to his quiet exit.
Only he knew where your smile dented into your cheek. Only he knew the cadence of your breaths when you spoke. Only he knew what you looked like when your guard was truly down. When you sighed, cried, hurt, and slept. Only he was worthy of seeing it.
Only Caleb had forged himself into a man worthy of loving you.
The night was thick with fog when he watched you step out of the Hunter’s Association, your shadow dancing across the concrete under the warm glow of the street lamps.
As you parted ways with your colleagues, Caleb studied the elegant line of your throat, the way it expanded and contracted around the hum of your voice.
He knew the exact shape of it by memory, — all those times you'd looked up at him to smile at him, to talk to him, to argue with him — the softness of the delicate skin there, the way it would feel under his palm, under his mouth. Fluttering, warm, alive.
He wasn’t supposed to be here, not away from Skyhaven, not in a darkened alleyway by your workplace where the lamp light barely even reached.
But as the sound of your footsteps ticked over the hum of the city, as each of your movements brought you closer to the corner of the building, to him, the oxygen funneling into his brain seemed to thin, and the rational part of his mind, his focus, took a backseat.
The sight of you walking toward him was so right, so inevitable that Caleb barely even realized how far out of the shadows he was leaning, how quickly he’d snapped himself back into your orbit.
He, the metal, you, the magnet.
The fist of his right arm clenched as he forced himself to stay in place, to stop leaning toward you on the off chance the sweetness of your skin would enter his nose. The connection between you was so physical, pulled so taut, that he almost couldn’t believe you'd never sought to close the distance, that you’d ever accepted his death so easily.
That had always been your biggest mistake, though. Thinking that he’d ever allow something as trivial as mortality to sever what bound you to him.
He shouldn’t reach for you. He knew that. And yet, as you closed the distance, he stepped closer. Just enough to feel your presence pull against him.
His evol stirred, faint but insistent, brushing against the edges of your space like a ribbon. The pull of you was so familiar, so tangible, he could feel every cell, all the matter that made up your beautiful existence.
Suddenly, without his permission, his hand shot out, gently enveloping your wrist as you passed.
You spun around, your instincts awakened, and in one fluid motion the barrel of your gun was aimed at his chest. He almost chuckled at the sight, but the intensity on your face kept him quiet.
Your eyes widened, shock and incredulity clicking into place when they finally registered Caleb’s presence. “You…” the sentence withers in your throat.
“Hello, pip,” he said softly, raising a brow at the gun. “Still using that move?”
Your eyes flicked across the contours of his face like a laser, his hair, his cheeks, his eyes, his jaw, no detail escaping your notice before you stuttered, “C-Caleb? Bu— You’re supposed to be…”
He felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth as the letters of his name curled around your tongue for the first time in what felt like an eternity. “I still might if you don’t put that away,” he said mildly.
Your grip on the weapon tightened reflexively, but it didn’t lower. Interesting.
Moving with military-like precision, too quickly for you to counteract it, Caleb’s hand shot out, hitting the gun and dislodging it from your grasp.
You froze, hooking your gaze into his as he tested the weight of it in his hand, the barrel pointing at your chest for one second, two seconds, three... before he aimed it at the ground.
“Tsk, tsk. So careless.” The soft click of the safety flicking on pierced the air between them. “Someone could’ve gotten hurt, pipsqueak.”
“How did you… how are you…?” there’s a faint tremor in your tone and your eyes turn glassy.
“Shh,” Caleb stepped closer, close enough to feel your shaky exhale against his throat like a wave of summer air, close enough to reach around you to place your gun back in the holster on your hip. Close enough that his forehead brushed yours. “I missed you too.”
For half a second, he saw your guard slip, your face caught between disbelief and longing.
And then, like feeling an engine ignite, he knew exactly which of your buttons he’d just flicked. Before the anger even had a chance to crackle across your irises. Before your palms came up to his chest and shoved at it. “I went to your funeral.”
“My funeral, hm?” His body had barely swayed, but his amused, love-drunk smile never wavered when he decided to press another button. “Did you cry for me, then?”
Caleb’s evol flared, and he had your hands lowered — eyelashes fluttering in surprise, back and palms pinned to the building behind you — before you’d even finished the thought of shoving him again.
With your hands out of the way, as you struggled against the bindings of his evol, Caleb finally took the chance to cup your face in his hands, cradling it like it was the very nucleus of his life force.
“Hey. Hey,” he soothed, re-familiarizing himself with the contour of your jaw beneath his fingers. “I’d never leave you in a world without me, pip, you know me better than that.”
“I thought I did,” you gritted out, the confusion and betrayal in your voice slowing your movements. "Now, I'm not so sure."
He took advantage of your hesitation, brushing the bow of his upper lip against the bump of your lower one.
“You do, though,” he reassured. “Just like I know you. Better than anyone ever could.” Caleb reached out, his knuckles grazing your cheek. “Your anger, your love” His hand went to the steel-chain tag that hung around his neck. “Wants. Needs.” His nose traced the bridge of yours and he reveled in another one of your shaky breaths. “Outside…” His voice roughened, “Inside.”
Just as you quit struggling, just as your confusion fissured and your body turned languid against his, just as you gave in, Caleb released you, taking a step back to enjoy the sight of you trying to find your footing.
“Now you’ll never doubt that I’ll always find you.” His mouth curved into the charismatic smile he was known to flash at his general when he gestured toward the street. “It’s late, pipsqueak. Get yourself home.”
Your chest heaved with what were no doubt a dozen of your favorite insults, but you didn’t voice any of them. Instead, you clenched your jaw, straightened your shoulders, and bit out, “I’m going to— I can’t believe— No, I can’t do this right now. This isn’t over, Caleb.”
You turned sharply on your heel, your footsteps echoing in the silence as you walked away, steps stiff and uneven. And Caleb watched as the shadows swallowed your figure and you disappeared from view.
He’d wait, he decided. he could play the long game. He already spent all these months away from you, what were a few more if it helped you realize the raw, unfiltered truth — that he belonged to you.
And that was the moment the glass barrier shattered, a pulled trigger that splintered his focus into shards of obsession.