Archive of Our Own

When you were younger, you always started Gran’s birthday by barging into her room with breakfast in bed. You would bring it on a little wooden tray, holding it proudly in front of you while Gran sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. There was always a brief moment where her eyes would gaze unfocused at the ceiling before they finally fell on you. Then, she would brighten like a sunflower and usher you forward to pinch your cheeks and pat your head and eat the breakfast you brought in until all the crumbs were gone. She would tell you, “Thank you so much for breakfast, dear,” and you would smile with however many teeth you had in your mouth at the time because it was hard work carrying such a heavy tray of breakfast all the way from the kitchen to Gran’s room!

Never mind that Caleb made the breakfast. Gran must have known it was him, but Caleb still said you should bring it to her because you smiled brighter at the praise, and he insisted that Gran would rather see you waking her up than him.

Even as you got older and carrying the breakfast tray became less taxing, your hands more capable of making a basic omelet, you still found yourself waking Caleb up at the crack of dawn. Barging into his bedroom, ripping his covers off, laughing at the sleep clogging his face before he reluctantly rolled out of bed and grabbed a shirt. The sleepy tone to his voice when he hushed you in the hallways for talking too loudly, indulging in the idea that Gran would wake up again this year and still be surprised you were bringing her breakfast in bed.

This year, there is no bedroom you can barge into in the mornings. Whatever wood framing of the house that was left after the explosion has long since burned to ash. You don’t even know where Gran’s body is or if anything’s left. You never found a resting place for her.

When you first crawled out of the explosion, half-dead and blurry-eyed, you thought you wouldn’t find a resting place for Caleb either, but he stands here clearly now on his own two feet. You’re holding flowers instead of a breakfast tray, and instead of smiling at you from the hall as you disappear into Gran’s bedroom, you stand side by side in front of the remnants of your burned house. Most of the debris has been cleared, but the welcome mat—half melted to the concrete—remains.

“Did you…” Caleb clears his throat. “Did you want to say something?”

You grip the flowers in your hands. “What would I say?” 

Your voice is hoarse from disuse. You don’t think you’ve spoken since this morning when you woke up and realized what day it was.

“Anything you want to tell her?” ventures Caleb.

You huff a laugh. “What does it matter? She won’t hear it anyway.”

The silence stretches on.

“Pipsqueak.” You see him turn to you out of the corner of your eye. “Why did you call me down today?”

You don’t answer that. You just stare at the bare stretch of land in front of you and try to remember how a home used to be here.

“I was surprised when you called,” he admits. “You usually give me more warning if you want me to visit. And the way you were talking…I figured it was an emergency. I suppose I should have known when you told me to come to our old house.”

You don’t get why he isn’t affected the way you are. Your knees buckled the moment you caught sight of the barren field, only to be caught by Caleb who had appeared out of nowhere. He was always so sturdy, even in childhood, like a grand oak in a storm that hadn’t bent in centuries. At the sight of a wasteland, he somehow still stood tall, and still had the strength to pick up your fallen flowers and drag you back to your feet. It was always like this—even back then—the way he lifted your face, wiped your tears, brushed the dirt off your face and held you steady until you found your footing.

“Do you…want to talk about it?”

You finally look at Caleb to see him frowning at you, wearing those sad, searching eyes that have become more and more apparent ever since you found him in Skyhaven. He’s not wearing his colonel uniform (why would he? He has no need to flaunt his titles down in Linkon), instead wearing a simple long-sleeved sweatshirt and jeans. He looks so ordinary, so much like your old Caleb, that you almost want to fall into him. You want to press your face into his warm shoulder and cry while he runs a hand down your back.

You could do that now. You know you’re allowed to. Despite everything, Caleb has made it clear that he still wants to take care of you.

But you don’t do that for the same inexplicable reason you can’t seem to admit why you called him down here, though he’s surely already figured it out by now: you’re lonely, you’re tired, you’re mourning a home you can never return to and you’d rather mourn only one ghost than two.

“Pipsqueak.” Caleb reaches a hand toward you, then hesitates. His eyes flicker away and that hesitation stokes a sudden wildfire of rage through you that you have to catch his dangling hand because you will not let him go so easily again.

His eyes widen.

“I—” You didn’t have a script in your head for this. The word just tumbles recklessly out of your mouth. “I missed you.” 

It’s a truth, a statement that is certainly true, a non-answer to questions you’re not processing.

The corner of his mouth twitches and his eyes turn fond. “I missed you, too, pipsqueak.”

You drop your hands between your bodies and then tug. Just once. Caleb makes no move to step closer.

“Thank you for meeting me here.” You can’t look at him.

His hand tightens around yours. “I would never leave you alone.”

You did once, you think.

“I know,” you say instead. 

When you pull your hand back, he lets go all too easily, but that moment of touch gives you just enough courage to look back at the empty plot of land in front of you and speak again.

“Gran,” you start, throat tight. “I don’t know what you did to me.”

From the corner of your eye, you see Caleb still watching you.

“I don’t understand why you put this—this thing in my heart. Why I ended up surviving. I don’t know why you did anything you did.” You clench your fists around the flowers. “You never explained anything. You just left some papers with Zayne for me to figure out and you didn’t even have the courtesy of leaving a body behind when you died.” Your voice dries up in your throat. When you exhale, all you manage to croak out is, “I’m so fucking mad at you.”

Caleb’s hand shifts—you can hear it in the way his clothes rustle. But still, he doesn’t touch you.

“I’m mad at you, and I hate that you left me alone.” You bite your lip. “And the worst part is that I still miss you.”

You don’t look at the empty land in front of you or the flowers or Caleb. The world before you blurs into blotches of color and it’s not until Caleb finally wraps his arm around your shoulder and tugs you into his side that you realize you’re crying.

“You’re awful,” you say to the field, to the ghost of Gran, to no one at all. “Why did you—why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“Hey,” he says softly, gently. It’s the same tone he used when you were kids after you scraped your knee or got yelled at by a teacher—warm, affectionate, comforting, an underlying promise that everything would be okay because he was there and you were with him. 

You shove him on instinct. “I’m fine—”

He pulls you closer and tucks you under his arm. Despite it all, a cry of relief chokes out of your mouth because even when you’re being petulant, childish, and lashing out—even when you don’t want to see anyone else, Caleb is still pulling you closer, because in the end, he’s the only one you really want to talk to.

“Who are you kidding?” There’s a slight curl to his voice like he’s smiling. “Not me, that’s for sure.”

In another life, you would have laughed at his joke. Now, you give into what you’ve wanted to do since you first saw him and bury your face in his shoulder.

The reaction is immediate. His other arm folds around you while his hand rests against the base of your skull. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, and you can feel his voice vibrating through his chest. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

You cry because you haven’t since the explosion. You cry because you haven’t had a chance to think about Gran until now. You cry because Caleb is here and no one’s watching except him so you cry harder, hard enough until you’re coughing, hacking up spit, smearing snot on Caleb’s sweatshirt, twisting your hands in the fabric of his shirt before letting all of it go as your mouth fills with salt. The flowers crumple between your chests, and you think distantly that you didn’t want to give Gran wrinkled flowers. Then you remember that she’s dead, and there’s not even a ghost to frown at the state of them.

Even in the aftermath when you can’t bring yourself to squeeze more tears out or make a single sound, Caleb holds you as tightly as he had in the beginning, like all of your grief at every stage is worth this comfort. You’ve missed him. You wished he was there when you were grieving him. He’s still here now, even when you are. None of it makes any sense.

It’s only after you’ve gone dead quiet and your hands unfurl from his shirt that he finally speaks again.

“Got it all out?” he teases lightly.

The humor, shockingly, pulls you out of your despair. You pull back and wipe at your nose, suddenly embarrassed. “Hopefully.”

“It’s okay if not.” Caleb’s hand comes to hold your cheek, brushing a strand of hair out of your face with his thumb. “I’ll be here as long as you need me. And even when you don’t.”

Your heart curdles. He used to say stuff like this all the time when you were kids, but knowing what both of you are now, remembering all the graves you passed to get back here, you can’t help but feel that the promise rings hollow.

You don’t tell him that.

Caleb pauses as if to wait for your smile. When you don’t give it to him, his expression shifts. His own smile freezes in place as if being held by force. It’s his false smile, and you could identify it by even touch alone. You almost start to regret not responding more warmly, but Caleb’s hands are already sliding down your shoulders to your arms.

“Hey,” he says, still soft, still kind. “Let’s go home.”

Home—and where that is is always the question. Which building does he mean? Which of your apartments are you supposed to return to?

“Okay,” you say instead of asking any of those questions. 

His hands squeeze your arms. “Okay.”

You turn back to the empty plot of burned land that once held your house. You see a gray sky spread above you, thick gray storm clouds coagulating in the sky. You see the stump of the tree you used to climb as a child where the north end of the house used to be that must have been cut during the cleanup—you’re sure its magnificent trunk must have been so mangled it made no sense not to chop it off. You see ash threaded through the grass like a fine mist, too low for the wind to blow it away.

It’s your first time returning to the house since the accident. You’re sure it’s Caleb’s too.

You hold the flowers out in front of you. They look too vibrant against the backdrop of a grave. That must be the point though, you muse, to leave some reminder of life in places where it has fled. You set the crumpled flowers on the ground before the melted welcome mat. 

Then, you leave.

-

When you were younger, you had a terrible habit of forgetting your umbrella. It was always Caleb that caught you in the rain on your way home from school, or the store, or the playground, running with your sweater over your head like the fabric could protect you from the storm. He never let you make it too far before he appeared with an umbrella in his hand, your shadow eclipsed by his, the rainbeat muting as it drummed against nylon instead of the flesh of your head. 

“You can’t keep forgetting your umbrella like this, pipsqueak,” his warm voice would always come. “You’re gonna catch a cold.”

You would turn to him, smiling, and say in response, “Why would I need to remember when I know you’ll always find me?”

Even after you thought he died, you never managed to pick up the habit of bringing an umbrella. It was as if trying to remember one was a sign that you were accepting that he was gone, that no one would save you from the rain anymore except yourself.

But he has an umbrella now as the storm clouds in the sky fatten with rain before finally bursting, lashing down and down and down at the earth below. One moment you’re walking five steps ahead of Caleb and the next his arm is sliding around your shoulders as an umbrella blooms overhead. You don’t know where he got it from. Caleb is very close, and you can smell the cologne on him and the way it mixes with the humid stormy air. He’s looking ahead instead of at you like he is a captain that must steer both of you to safety.

You step out of his grasp before you realize what you’re doing.

Caleb falters. “Pipsqueak?” He turns to look back at you.

“I—” You don’t know why you did that. “I…can walk myself. You don’t have to…”

To what? Touch you?

Caleb frowns. “Don’t be silly. You’ll get wet.” He holds out a hand. “If you don’t want me to hold your shoulders, will you at least let me hold your hand?”

Your heart curdles again. A lump presses in your throat. You can’t say no a second time and you don’t think you want to so you grab his hand—warm and dry, despite the weather—and let him tug you back to his side right under the canopy of the umbrella.

You walk back to your apartment like this: hand in hand in the shadow of the storm. All around you, people are racing through the streets trying to seek shelter from the rain. Spring has been a long time coming, but the tree blossoms haven’t quite caught onto this fact with the way the flower buds are still tightly wound together, shaking from the early spring storm. You’re watching the ground for uneven cobblestones so you don’t trip, meaning Caleb is leading both of you—another habit from childhood. His grip remains startlingly strong and you feel the same thing you felt when you were a kid all over again: that you could fall and not hit the ground, that you could trip and not worry for pain, that you could walk through the city with your eyes closed and still find yourself safely back at home because Caleb is there.

Caleb is here—an indisputable fact. And still, even as you trail behind him, you can’t help but wonder how much of your Caleb is left.

When you reach your apartment, your socks are soaked through from toe to heel. The ends of your jeans also weren’t spared. While the rest of you seems relatively dry, Caleb’s shoulder—the one which isn’t attached to the hand you’re holding—is entirely wet. If it bothers him, he doesn’t show it. He tugs you both in through the door before he starts to peel off his boots.

The sudden temperature change rattles a sneeze out of you. You tug your hand out of Caleb’s to cover it, but then another comes. Then another. And another.

“You good?” Caleb asks.

“Fine.” You press a hand over your mouth.

Caleb furrows his eyebrows. “Are you sure? You didn’t catch a cold, did you?”

He reaches for you and before you can think, you bat his hand away. “I said, I’m fine.”

Hurt flashes across his face and you regret it immediately. Before you can reach back out, though, he’s already pinching his mouth into a tight smile and turning away. He starts walking toward the kitchen and you’re left hastily pulling your shoes off before chasing after him.

“Caleb!” you call, but he doesn’t stop walking. “Caleb, I didn’t mean it.”

You stop next to him as he washes his hands in the sink. After he dries them, he looks at you with that same false smile. “No, it’s fine. I shouldn’t have imposed.”

“You weren’t imposing.” You look down at the counter where it bumps into Caleb’s hip. “I don’t know why I did that.” 

He huffs a laugh and you lift your gaze to find him shaking his head, as if lightly amused. “Just got too used to living without me huh? I’m sure it feels weird to have me bothering you again.”

“You’re not a bother, Caleb,” you say quietly.

“Am I not?”

He turns to face you. When he looks at you like this—face to face, chest to chest—you have to crane your neck to look him in the eye and remember just how tall he’s grown when you once were the same height. But maybe that’s not it either because he’s been taller than you for a long time now, long before he went to Skyhaven, long before you graduated high school, maybe even before Gran adopted you. There’s a persistent image in your mind of a small boy reaching out to you with the same dirt scrubbed across his skin, fingers knitting through yours—also small, also dirt-stained—as he pulled you into a fierce hug. There are a lot of things you don’t remember from being young, but you remember this.

“No,” you say firmly.

Caleb reaches for you again and you have to fight every muscle in your body that wants to run. He is going to touch you and you will not run. There, that’ll show him—that he’s not a bother, that you have not changed, that you are not afraid of any part of him. You clench your fists behind your back where he can’t see them, and tell yourself over and over not to run. You don’t need to run. There’s nothing to run from. His fingers are near your face and you’re not running. You won’t.

Caleb looks at you for a moment, fingertips hovering right along your jawline. You close your eyes, bracing for impact for better or for worse, but the touch never comes. You open your eyes to see his hand falling away back to his side.

It should be a relief, but you find yourself disappointed anyway.

You lick your lips. “Caleb?”

He laughs. It’s not a happy sound.

“You don’t have to look like you’re fighting a war,” he says, and he would’ve sounded lightly amused to anyone that didn’t know him. To you, though, it’s sardonic.

“I’m not.” You frown at him.

Caleb laughs again. “If believing that will make you happy, then I’ll do it for you.”

Irritation flashes through you. You have half a mind to tug his hand right back to your face just to prove him wrong, but he’s already pulling away, turning towards your fridge.

“Let me make you dinner,” he says, squatting to get a better look at the contents of your refrigerator.

You furrow your eyebrows. “Caleb, I said I wasn’t—”

“Not a lot to work with here, I see.” He turns to you, a surprisingly playful grin on his face. “I see the great and terrible Hunter has been too busy to take care of herself.”

He seems determined not to speak on it. And maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s the fact that you already cried once today, but you decide to let it go.

“I get home late,” you say, sighing. “You know this. I eat out with my friends after work.”

“Let’s hope you’re getting enough fruit so you don’t get scurvy.” He pulls a bag of apples out of the fridge and straightens. “Here. You should eat one while I figure out what to make.”

“I eat enough fruit,” you grumble, but you take an apple anyway.

Caleb pulls every piece of produce out of your fridge that isn’t actively rotting and sets it on the counter. You’re fortunate to have a pound of pork as well, which he takes without asking and tosses it onto the heated skillet. He pulls a cutting board out from underneath the utensil drawer because that’s where Gran kept the cutting boards in her house, too, and begins chopping. You try to help, or you at least offer to help him find the spice drawer, but he pretends not to hear you. It feels like you’re young again, before either of you moved out of the house, where you try to do something for him but he brushes off every attempt while he cooks.

You wait for the comfort of familiarity to set in. That moment where you can exhale, where your shoulders finally unwind, where you settle into the warmth of company in your apartment and think: I’m home again.

It does not come. Perhaps you’re being too naive, sitting here while Caleb’s familiar shoulders shifts in his sweatshirt as he expertly flips the sauteing vegetables in the air, wondering why nothing feels like home when you’ve moved into this apartment less than a year ago and you thought Caleb was dead just a few months back. You want to touch him again, but you’re afraid of being touched back. You want to press your face between his shoulder blades like you used to, but you don’t want to hear the hitch in his breath as if he’s surprised you would touch him. You hate it. You hate everything that’s changed. Even the parts in yourself that stubbornly cannot be moved.

“If you’re not getting through your vegetables quick enough, you can always buy frozen.”

You startle. “What?”

“They’re pretty easy to prepare.” Caleb hasn’t turned to you. He’s still pushing food around on the skillet. “And they stay good longer, too. It’s better to have some vegetables than nothing at all.”

Your heart clenches. “You’re always looking out for me, aren’t you?” you murmur wryly.

Caleb looks over his shoulder, the corner of his mouth quirked upward as if he’s telling a joke. “I’m just making sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

Take care of me yourself, coward, you think irritably.

You don’t say that though. Instead, you mutter, “I’m doing my best.”

Caleb watches you for a moment, his expression unreadable. You hold his gaze, daring to say something, daring to bite back, daring to make any comment, but perhaps your glare is too strong. He turns away wordlessly, and you wonder if that was a battle worth winning.

The next thirty minutes pass in silence. Caleb cooks quietly while you scroll aimlessly through your phone, trying to pretend that you have something important to look at instead of cycling through the same three apps. He doesn’t announce when he finishes, just hands you an empty bowl and a pair of chopsticks before tossing a loose gesture towards your dining room table.

Of course, you don’t just seat yourself so easily. You stand up and pull serving plates out to hold whatever dishes Caleb made. 

“I’ve got it, pipsqueak,” he says softly.

“Didn’t you used to complain about me never helping set up the table?” you retort. “You cooked. At least let me do this.”

He lets out an incredulous laugh. “Alright, sure.”

Just the sound of it eases the knot in your chest. You hope this lasts. You hope this will mean something.

You carry the dishes over to the table one plate at a time while Caleb sets up the dinner mats. He scoops rice into your bowls while you bring cups of water to the table. The both of you set up the table with the same efficiency you once did in childhood and the memory of it pings hollowly against your ribs—not quite pain, not quite relief. Just a neutral acknowledgement of memory.

Finally, you take a seat at the table. Gingerly, you grab your chopsticks and look up at him.

Caleb tilts his head. “Well?”

“You first,” you say before you can stop yourself. “Chef should have the first bite.”

Caleb raises an eyebrow. “Me first? What happened to the kid that shoved all her food into her mouth before I could even sit down?”

You raise your eyebrow in turn. “Are people not allowed to change?”

“You tell me.”

He leans one elbow on the table. He watches you with a mild, painless expression, but there’s still an edge of accusation in his voice. It pisses you off because that’s not fucking fair.

“What do you think I’ll say, Caleb?” You lean forward, also accusatory. You think that if you just stand right now, your faces would be inches away. As it is, neither of you move because you’re both cowards.

“I don’t know,” he admits after a moment. “Sometimes, I worry I don’t—”

He cuts off.

Sometimes, I worry I don’t know you anymore.

He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t need to because you’ve had the same thought before. Ever since you found him again in Skyhaven, it’s been a constant question of which version of Caleb you’re seeing. You see a colonel of the Farspace Fleet, you see the boy that used to hold your hand on the walk home from school, you see the prodigious pilot that graduated at the top of his class in the Aerospace Academy, and you see the face of the portrait of a man you held a funeral for. Still smiling, still in his pilot clothes with sharp eyes and a hand folded over his chest in duty, staring soullessly out at the memorial while everyone milled around paying their respects as you gripped the corner of a table trying not to crumble to the floor. It was pictures of him and Gran sitting side by side, surrounded by flowers you knew they wouldn’t like, but had to buy because they were the cheapest. Everyone, bringing food, bringing gifts—offerings to the dead and to you, though without them it almost felt one and the same. 

No one had been there to hold your hand. No matter how desperately you wished it, neither Caleb nor Gran appeared. You wondered if you just scraped your knee hard enough or starved long enough or cried loud enough that Caleb’s ghost would appear just to appease you, but it was only ever strangers. There was no resurrecting the dead.

You see Caleb in front of you, hesitating. If you could reach under the table for his hand, you know it would be clenched in a fist.

“Say it, ” you demand.

“I lost my train of thought.” He picks up his chopsticks. “We should eat before the food gets cold.”

You want to kick him.

You don’t, though. You bite your tongue and use your chopsticks to pick up a strip of braised pork, the amber sauce dripping slowly off the meat like honey. It’s one of your favorites because Caleb used to make it so often. You think now that the reason he did was probably because it was easy to make and he knew you liked it. You try to search for your appetite, but all you can feel is the bitter tang of unease.

You mean to take a bite—you really do—but your hands are trembling too much and suddenly your chopsticks are clattering to the floor. The meat splatters against your chin before falling gracelessly to the floor.

“Oh.” The noise jumps out of Caleb almost involuntarily. You snap your eyes up at him to see him flinch. “Are you okay?”

He hesitates for a moment before holding out a napkin.

You don’t take it. Instead, you lift your hand and wipe your chin off on the heel of your palm. You look at the furrow in his eyebrows that always betrays his concern for you and you try not to look directly in his eyes because if you do, he will turn away.

“Caleb,” you say slowly. “You did not lose your train of thought.”

He blinks, confused. Then, he gives you a helpless smile. “I’m…not sure what to tell you, pipsqueak. If I could pick it back up and show you, I would.”

You stare at the napkin.

It’s nothing. It’s so small it should be meaningless. And yet, you don’t take the napkin. You don’t move. You don’t touch it. You think about all the small deaths Caleb left behind and how you had to mourn it all alone.

You know you never found Gran’s body, but you start to wonder if you never found Caleb’s either.

“Why are you acting like this?” you whisper, voice cracking at the apex.

Caleb goes rigid. “What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you—” Why didn’t you wipe my face? Why didn’t you make fun of me? Why did you hesitate before reaching out? “You keep hesitating.” His hand is already retreating back under the table. “When we were kids, I remember you scrubbing my face with a wet wipe even when I kept trying to shove you off. Now, you won’t even touch me without flinching.”

He smiles wryly. “I’m not the one who keeps pulling away, pipsqueak.”

You can hear the bitterness in his voice. Not directed towards you—never directed towards you—but at the nameless divide between you two. You both hate this chasm, but neither of you are brave enough to build a bridge. So, you’re left here, flinching from his touch and foolishly thinking he isn’t hurt by it.

A thorn wedges itself into your throat. When you try to speak, a whistle comes out.

“Caleb…” It hurts to speak. Your fault again. “I’m not—”

“It’s okay.” He smiles and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know things have been difficult for you. I don’t mind if you—” He shakes his head. “Look, I’ll wipe your face for you. Do you want me to do that?”

“It’s not about if I want you to do it.” A lump rises in your throat, too thick to swallow. “I’m not a kid anymore—I don’t need you to wipe my face. It’s just that—you don’t even try.” You curl your hands into fists and hide them under the table. “I know you worry about me, Caleb.”

He pauses. “Is there an ‘and’ to that sentence?”

You sigh. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to walk on eggshells around me. I’m still the same person.”

You realize your mistake the moment the words leave your mouth. Caleb goes rigid because you’re both wondering the same thing: is he?

“...I’m sorry,” he says after a moment, “that I’ve made you feel this way.”

“It’s not your fault.” It isn’t. Not really. You try to smile at him. “I think dying and coming back unscathed is kind of impossible, right? It’s inevitable that things would be a little different.”

He presses his lips together. “It is.”

You can’t read his expression. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, of course not.” Caleb blinks at you. Polite. Painless. “Do you think you said something wrong?”

Was that another fumble? Another mistake? You didn’t used to need to think around him so much. You didn’t used to need to watch what you said because being around Caleb should be easy, as natural as coming home. If a house burns down and you rebuild it with new wood and new bones, is it the same home? If you stand at the grave of your house with one of the ghosts its destruction created, were you truly left behind? You’re tired of this tip-toeing and caution. This awful feeling of talking to a stranger. Being with Caleb was never supposed to feel like this.

“No, I—” You swallow again, the ache persisting. “I don’t know. Can we please just eat like we used to? I’m tired.” Your voice wasn’t supposed to waver, but you haven’t been able to control anything in regards to Caleb lately.

He softens. “I’m sorry I can’t be the same person.”

“You don’t need to be.” You suck in a breath—even that inhale is shaky. “I never said you should be the same person.”

He gives you a sad smile. “But it’s hurting you, isn’t it?”

You furrow your eyebrows. “Caleb—”

“I’ll leave if you want me to leave,” he says softly. “I don’t mind. I—”

He cuts off at the sound of hands slamming on the table. 

“How dare you?”

It takes you a moment to register the stinging in your palms, and then another moment to realize it is your hands that are on the table. Your knee throbs from where you’ve knocked it against the table leg from standing too abruptly, but none of the pain registers around the ache in your throat that pulses like a second heartbeat.

He hesitates. “Listen, pipsqueak, I—”

“Don’t call me that!” Even now, he’s still trying to call you that stupid nickname like this is all fine and normal, like he didn’t just say—“You’re going to leave? Just like that? How could you say that to me?”

Caleb is still sitting, his hands folded neatly in front of him. He looks down and lets out a single, bitter laugh. “What else am I supposed to do when you’re looking at me like I’m breaking your heart?”

And that isn’t right because there shouldn’t be a version of Caleb that would leave you so easily—that would walk out your door on his own two feet. It has never been like this between you two and you hate it. You hate this distance. That you flinch away on instinct, that he pulls himself back while reaching for you. That he speaks so blatantly of the grief he gives you and assumes that the only solution is to remove himself. It’s been hard looking at him all evening, but it’s even harder to know he’s been planning on leaving this whole time. As soon as you’re done crying, as soon as you’re fed and no longer need him, he will take the first train back to Skyhaven without a fight.

“Is that what you think?” Your voice cracks and it pisses you off. “You know what, Caleb? You are. You broke my heart when you died and I had to live by myself thinking I’d lost you forever. Do you know how hard it was arranging the funeral for you and Gran by myself?” 

You remember the flowers, the faces, the sky bright and sunny and mocking in its awful reminder that the world would always move on without you. You remember all the condolences and the kind words and the way you just wanted to collapse into nothing, how you wanted to claw at their empty graves in hopes that your tantrum would bring them back. It was a childish hope, but you were only allowed to be a child around them. Everywhere else after, you had to grow up.

“Do you know how I fucking felt when I saw that you were alive? I thought you’d left me forever, but then you came back.” Your voice comes weak. There’s a roaring in your ears louder than a Wanderer’s screech. Caleb blurs in front of you, but you can’t stop now. “I thought you were back for good, but then you never came to find me. You don’t come unless I call. You don’t try to stay unless I tell you to. Sometimes, I wonder if you even care about me at all anymore.”

His gaze sharpens. “I have always—”

You don’t give him the chance. “All I have ever wanted was for you to come back to me, but you keep trying to leave at every turn. Do you know how unfair that is? I don’t want to go to your funeral ever again, so don’t make me—”

Something wet splatters near your fingertips. A moment later, you taste salt in your mouth. It should have been the least surprising reaction to start crying, but you still find yourself shocked, and then ashamed. It’s one thing to throw a tantrum in hopes of resurrecting your ghosts, it’s another to well and truly cry in front of flesh and blood person right in front of you.

“Excuse me.” You lift a hand to hide your face even though it’s already too late. 

You turn to run, but a pair of arms yank you backwards, cutting off your escape.

You don’t know how he got behind you so fast, but Caleb’s arms are warm around you as they hold you against his chest. You can feel how solid he is against the line of your back, the way he always wanted to be your anchor when you were kids. Part of you wants to sink into him and give up this fight. The other part of you still wants to run.

“Don’t go,” murmurs Caleb into your hair. “You don’t have to hide.”

You struggle half-heartedly, but Caleb’s arms don’t give. And maybe just the fact that he’s putting up a little resistance is what makes you sag against him. Your chest heaves. You feel cut open.

“I don’t want you to see me like this.” Your voice wobbles and it’s mortifying.

“Like what?” There’s a hint of teasing in his tone, laced with the kind of familiar affection that makes you feel sick. “Did you forget who you grew up with? Besides, I already saw you cry earlier today.”

“That was different.” You lean back, breath still hiccuping in your chest. “That wasn’t about you.”

Another little huff of laughter. “Are you sure? It sounded a little bit about me.”

There’s a knowing curl in his voice because he has always been able to pick up on what you were saying. Growing up, he always knew when you were lying about eating his last fruit snack or hiding a present from him, when you were mad at him or someone at school had bullied you. He’d seen how you had avoided him the week before he had to move to college in an attempt to curb the sadness, and he’d roped you into a two-day long extravaganza where he drove you wherever you wanted and paid for everything you ate. He’s always been able to see right through you, and now you think there’s no point in trying to hide from him anymore.

You’re tired of fighting. So, you finally turn around and sag into his chest.

You feel the way he jolts in surprise, but that doesn’t stop him from catching you right away.

“It was a little bit about you,” you mumble into his sweater.

His oncoming laugh rumbles through his chest against your face. He’s so warm, like the fireplace of your house before it burned down, like an umbrella cast overhead to shelter from the rain. You press the cold tip of your nose into his chest and feel the warmth burn through you. You can hear the steady pulse of his heartbeat against your ear, reminding you that he is alive, alive, alive.

“I was going to say,” he says after a moment, tucking your head under his chin. “Sometimes, I worry I don’t know my place with you anymore. I don’t know how you want me to act, but I do care about you; I don’t know how to live in a world where I don’t. I worry about you all the time and I think about you all the time and I—I wish we didn’t live so far away from each other so I could see you more often. You’re always on my mind.”

You shudder in his hold. He tightens his arms in response. “Then why don’t you come see me?”

“I came to see you today, pipsqueak.” Another laugh from him, but it’s muted.

“That’s not what I meant.” You pull back just enough to look up at him. He, almost reluctantly, looks down to meet your gaze. “You came because I called you, but you don’t ever reach out first. You don’t—” 

Your throat tightens, cutting off your words.

Caleb is silent for a long moment, darting his gaze around the room. You curl your fingers into the back of his shirt, which seems to finally grab his attention.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” he says quietly. “I think you’d be afraid of how much I’d want to see you.”

“Caleb, I gave you a key to my apartment.”

A wry smile tugs at his lips. “You keep pulling away from me whenever I do see you. You did today—what am I supposed to think?”

Outside, the rain has turned into a thunderstorm. You can feel the rumble of thunder through the building, and you can hear the rain lashing against the window panes. You think about the flower buds on the trees curled tightly around each other to protect themselves—from the storm, from everything because they’re not quite ready to bloom. This is not a soft rain, and you think about the flowers you left on the welcome mat of your old house in Bloomshore. They can’t stay in this kind of storm. The wind must have carried them elsewhere by now. You imagine the ruined petals and the crumpled paper of your bouquet and then you decide you don’t want to imagine it anymore because you won’t go see it in person. You’ve said your goodbyes to the house and to Gran and now all that’s left is Caleb in front of you.

You bite your lip and press your face back into his chest. He still must be using the same detergent Gran used at the house because he smells exactly like home.

“It’s hard to look at you sometimes,” you say quietly. “Let alone touch you. You—you make me so angry.”

He says nothing to that. 

“I just wish you would come without needing me to ask—the way you used to. I want you to impose. I want you to inconvenience me. I want you to stop assuming that you aren’t wanted, that I—” You swallow. “I’m always going to want you and need you and I’d rather you catch me off guard than have you wait forever for me.”

You’ve been listening to his slow breathing through his chest this whole time, and you can hear the moment his breath hitches.

“Really?” A simple, breathless question.

You close your eyes. “I don’t think you realize how much you still mean to me.”

Caleb laughs. “Still? Even after everything that happened?”

“Yes.” You pull back again and lay a palm against his cheek. “Especially after everything. I’m always going to love you, you know.”

Something twists in his expression—something like agony. “...Even if I’m not the same Caleb?”

You brush your thumb up the line of his cheekbones, holding when his eyebrows pinch with fear. “Whichever Caleb you are right now, whichever Caleb you become, you’re always going to be mine.”

He lets out a shuddering breath and crumples forward. It catches you off guard, and you scramble to hold him up by the shoulders, except you realize that he’s actually holding himself entirely on his own and all of his limbs are suddenly draped over your body, his hands cupping your face. You can’t see through the fan of his hair as he presses his forehead into yours.

“Caleb?” 

You’ve pressed a hand to his chest in your haste to catch him, but the only consequence is feeling how erratic his heartbeat has become, thumping wildly against your hand before slowly to an awkward jilt and then picking back up again. You don’t remember his heartbeat ever feeling like this, and you bitterly think it must be the Toring chip, but then you wonder what his heart is fighting so violently for.

“Pipsqueak,” he exhales, voice ruined and breathless.

You huff a laugh, sure that he can feel the puff of it on his face. “Still with the nickname?”

He lifts his head and looks at you. His eyes are a violet storm, his eyebrows pinched at the center. You wonder what he must be thinking when all of his features soften, and a devastating affection warms his face. 

“That’s just what you are to me.” He brushes his over your cheekbones—an echo of your movements.

You laugh. “You’re never going to let it go, are you?”

“Not for as long as you’ll have me.” His eyes are a vast network of stars, all of the cones and rods knitting around each other into stardust. “That’s how I get to tell people you’re mine.”

His gaze settles on you with a weight that steals your breath. You’re suddenly aware of how close he is, how warm he is, how much he smells like home and has never stopped. Even when you were in Skyhaven, even in the interrogation room, the Caleb smell persists across faces and bodies and flowers and ash all the way back to the point where he stands before you now, hands on your face, in your hair, an ache on his face that mirrors the one in your chest. He must be using his Evol because you can’t step out of his orbit—or maybe you don’t even want to try. His eyes flicker down, then up, then back down to your mouth and you—

Flinch.

It’s an accident, entirely instinctual, but it’s enough that Caleb immediately lets go.

He steps back before you can speak, an easy smile already spreading over his face. “If you can handle it.” He ruffles your hair as if he didn’t almost just—

“Caleb.” You step away, furrowing your eyebrows. “What was that?”

“What was what?” He tilts his head, the picture of innocence. “I can’t give you a different nickname, but I can give you another one. How about…shortcake? Or half-pint?”

You frown. “Caleb—”

“Arm rest? Throw toy?”

You’re getting flustered. “Caleb, I’m not that short—”

“You’re short to me.” He walks over and ruffles your hair again before you get the chance to pull away. It almost feels smother, like he’s trying to push you both towards a different conversation. “Any of those nicknames are pipsqueak-equivalent.”

You bite back a groan of frustration. “That’s not the point.”

“Alright, alright.” Caleb drops his hands on your shoulders and your voice dies in your throat. “If it makes you happy, we’ll leave it at pipsqueak.”

He’s so warm, so heavy, so near, you think you could drown.

Caleb leans down—playful this time, nothing serious. He’s grinning with a light that doesn’t reach his eyes and suddenly you are not looking at post-mortem Caleb, but the Caleb that teased you when you were children, that held basketballs too high above your head and pulled your pigtails after Gran braided them.

“I—” 

“What do you think?” He tugs at a strand of hair near your ear. “Are you okay with just being my pipsqueak?”

Your face feels hot and your mind is spinning. You don’t know where the conversation is going anymore. You squeak, “Okay.”

The smile twitches. He pulls back, seemingly satisfied. “I’m glad we had this talk.” His smile softens into something more genuine. “I…feel a little relieved, to be honest.”

Your chest hurts. “Do you?”

“I do.” He grabs your hand away like he can’t stand not touching you for a second. “I’m glad you don’t want to get rid of me. I’d like to be around you for as long as I can.”

“I’m offended you thought I wouldn’t want you in the first place.”

His lips tighten for a moment before relaxing. “We…don’t have to go into detail about this.”

There’s more pain behind his eyes that you can’t reach right now. You could try, certainly, but it has been a long enough day already. Maybe some battlefields shouldn’t be crossed at all.

You squeeze his fingers in your palm and bring them up to your face. You look at his hand when you say, “I’ll always want you with me.”

His voice is soft when he says, “I know now.” He twists his hand out of your grasp and brushes a strand of hair out of your face. Where his fingertips touch your skin, a trail of fire follows. Then, he steps away. “We should keep eating before the food gets cold.”

And so, you do.

-

When you were younger, you always fell asleep on Caleb’s chest because it was the most comfortable place in the world. You had separate bedrooms, of course, but you always had these strange, nebulous nightmares that frightened you awake with a sweat-soaked back and trembling heart, though no they left no memories. Your first instinct was always to go to Caleb, even though Gran’s room was technically closer. You’d push open his door—because he never locked it—and before the hinges finished creaking, he’d be rolling over and sleepily lifting the covers for you to crawl in.

Sometimes he’d be awake enough to talk you through the fear, other times he’d only have enough coherence to pull you into his arms before he passed out again. Each time, though, it would end with you half on top of him, squeezing your eyes into his chest until the morning came with a crick in your neck.

You haven’t slept in the same bed since he went off to college. With him moving out, and then you moving out, and then him dying and coming back to life, there simply wasn’t a chance to. Or a reason. Why would there be, after all, now that you’ve grown up and can handle your nightmares on your own?

Even after you and Caleb have finished dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, he still makes his way to the coat closet like he means to leave.

“It’s raining,” you say as he shuts the door.

“I’ve got an umbrella.” He shoots you an easy half-grin. “A little water won’t kill me.”

The wind howls outside against the windows. The rain has not stopped for hours and you don’t think it’ll let up anytime soon. Viciously, you think that with this kind of storm, Caleb won’t be able to go back to Skyhaven, and then he’ll have to stay the night at your apartment.

“It won’t,” you agree. “But it’ll kill me. Just stay the night, please.”

His eyes widen like he’s still surprised that you would want him to stay, but they soften a moment later. “Well, if you want me to, I guess I have no choice.”

You pull out a spare toothbrush and find dry clothes that would fit him. He finds your spare towels in a closet and disappears into your bathroom without another word. 

While he showers, you change into your pajamas and start pacing around your room. When an eternity passes and he has yet to emerge from the bathroom, you walk into the living room and start straightening pillows that don’t need to be straightened. You pour two glasses of water for you and him but end up drinking both out of nervousness. Finally, you collapse on the couch and start scrolling through the news on your phone because surely anything else would be better than waiting for him.

You don’t mean to fall asleep, but one moment your eyes are drifting at the news of a new mall opening downtown and the next someone is shaking your shoulder.

“Hey.” Caleb sounds unbearably close. “You’re sleeping on my bed.”

You peel your eyes open to find his face inches away from yours. You gasp, jerking your head up.

“Whoa!” Caleb leans back, narrowly preventing your skull from jamming into his chin. “It’s just me.”

You blink, rubbing your eyes furiously. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Clearly not.” Caleb laughs. He’s dressed in the clothes you gave him, but the collar of the shirt is damp from where his hair has dripped onto the fabric. There’s a towel wrapped around his neck and his hair is scruffy from drying.

“Are you done with the bathroom?” you mumble. 

“I am.” He tilts your chin up. “Are you done with occupying my sleeping arrangements?”

It takes a moment for you to register his words. “What?”

“The couch.” His eyes crinkle like he’s barely holding in laughter.

You’re still groggy from the abrupt awakening. All you can say is, “You’re sleeping on the couch?”

Caleb snorts. “Well, where else would I sleep?”

Irritation prickles through you, strong enough to wake you up. Even now, he still insists on taking the couch even though every time he’s come over, he has only ever been too tall to take it and wakes up mumbling about an ache in his neck. It’s stupid, you think, after all you’ve talked about tonight.

“My room,” you say.

Surprise flashes across his face. “Your room? Where do you want me—the floor?”

You sigh and sit up, swinging your legs onto the floor. Caleb leans back, but you can’t tell if it’s deliberate or a natural consequence of changing positions.

“Just sleep in my bed,” you say. “It’ll be like when we were kids.”

Caleb says nothing for a moment, his eyes stormy again. He’s going to say no—you can feel it, and already the bitter tinge of disappointment is seeping into your mouth before his gaze meets yours and he gives you a dry smile. “Sure, pipsqueak. If that’s what you want.”

Several minutes later, you’re both lying under the covers of your bed with the lights out. He’s laying on the left side while you lie on the right—the side closest to the door, and the side you would slip into as a kid. Unlike childhood, though, there’s a six inch gap between your arms that feels like a ravine and you feel brutally aware of the distance.

Next to you, Caleb breathes slow and deep. It sounds even enough, but you know that he’s always been good at feigning sleep in an attempt to spare you from his insomnia. Both of you are wide awake, and you think that both of you know it.

You roll over. “Caleb, if it really makes you uncomfortable here, I can sleep on the couch.”

Caleb peels his eyes open in the dark and he laughs at the ceiling. “I’m not kicking you out of your own bed, pipsqueak.” 

“I’d rather you sleep than stay awake trying to appease me.” You wish you could see what face he’s making in the dark. “I know I said it’d be like when we were kids…but if it’s not working, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

He sighs. “We’ve changed a lot since we were kids.”

There’s a beat of silence because he’s not wrong. He’s not the same boy from your childhood, nor are you the same person, but that’s a natural consequence of the passage of time, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be so damning.

“Yeah,” you say after a long moment. “We have.”

One beat, then Caleb’s rolling over onto his arm and then suddenly you’re facing each other. You can see the collar of the T-shirt you gave him stretched loosely over his neck and you can feel his breath puffing over your forehead when he exhales.

“Did I upset you?” he asks softly.

You curl your fingers beneath your head. “No, you didn’t.”

“Then why aren’t you looking at me?”

You lift your gaze and see him watching you in the dark. He’s close again, close enough that you can see the fan of his eyelashes even in the dim light of your room. You want him to touch you like he had in the kitchen. You want him to touch you everywhere.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?” you murmur.

Caleb goes rigid under the covers. “...What?”

“In the kitchen,” you press. “Why didn’t you kiss me?”

His mouth falls open. His eyes dart up, then down, then up, then wildly all over your face. Then, he rolls onto his back so he doesn’t look at you at all. “I—I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. We were just talking about a lot of emotional things and I just got…carried away, but you don’t have to worry about letting me down or appeasing me or…” You can see his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows. “We can just forget it happened. I won’t do it again.”

You draw in a long breath. “You should.”

He turns his head slowly. “Should what?”

“Try it again,” you say. “Kiss me.”

Caleb inhales sharply. When he speaks again, his voice sounds wrecked. “You can’t be serious.”

You prop yourself up on one elbow, suddenly furious. “Why don’t you ever believe anything I say?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but you don’t want to hear any of his excuses. You hike a leg over his torso until you’re straddling him and his mouth snaps shut. You lean forward, voice low and dangerous.

“Kiss me.”

You can see the moment his self control snaps. One moment his eyebrows are drawn together in fear, in uncertainty, and the next his familiar hands are pulling you in by the back of the neck and pressing your mouths together. 

Caleb tastes like the toothpaste you lent him to let him stay the night. His lips are soft, which you expected, because even when you were kids he was always obsessively putting on lip balm, and he is warm because he is home. He moves with a desperation you never expected him to have and a desperation that confuses you, but you think that if either of you stop right now you will die. His damp hair slips between your fingers as you try to anchor yourself to some worldly sensation to try not to drown, but it’s unneeded with the way he holds you solidly against him. His heartbeat thumps against your own. His other hand threads through your hair in a tight grip like you might float away without him keeping you there.

You’re never leaving him, though, and you refuse to let him think otherwise. You bite his lip, drawing out a sound from him that you’ve never heard before.

Caleb jerks back, shocking you with the cold of the room. You snap your eyes open and barely manage to see the agonized look on his face before he rolls you over until he’s hovering over you.

You gasp. “Caleb—”

He smothers the rest of your sentence with his mouth. 

Laying down makes the lightheadedness worse with the way you have to angle  your chin up to keep meeting his lips. His tongue pokes out hesitantly, shyly, still unsure of what he’s allowed to do and you let him in because of course you do. It’s Caleb. You’ve never known anyone the way you know him and you can’t imagine doing this with anyone else. His arms bracket the sides of your head, and you can feel his knee nudging your legs apart to make room for him to kneel and all you can think about is the ache in your throat at the thought that you finally, finally have him.

“Caleb—” You hiss when he detaches himself. He doesn’t seem to hear you, though, as he starts kissing down the side of your neck stealing whatever words were left in your mouth. His nose brushes your jaw as you tug at his hair, unsure of where you mean to drag him, just knowing that you want to keep him in your apartment, in your bed, hovering over you and invading your space. He’s everywhere and he smells like home and feels like relief and while he licks at your collarbone, the ache spills over and suddenly you’re crying.

Caleb pulls off immediately.

“What’s wrong?” His eyes are wide with alarm. “Are you okay? Was I too much? We don’t have to do anything if you—”

“I missed you so much,” you croak.

Caleb’s expression softens all at once. “Hey,” he says, warm, insistent. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

You pull him back down and bury your face into the warm crook of his neck where you used to hide when everything else in the world was awful. You latch onto him like a koala, wrapping your arms around his neck and your legs around his torso and he laughs while he slips a hand under your back to support you. You think about how you used to do this when you were kids, too, and it means something different now, but it’s also still the same. What a fool you are to think that it would ever be anyone other than Caleb.

“I know, I know,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry. I missed you, too.”

“You’re never leaving me again,” you whisper fiercely. 

“Never,” he promises.

You tighten your arms. Given an inch, you take a mile. “You’re not allowed to go back to Skyhaven tomorrow.”

Caleb chuckles. “What about my job?”

“Take a sick day.”

A laugh puffs against your neck, warm and indulgent. “Alright, if you insist.”

You lay there for a moment, unmoving. His hand has not moved from your back, nor has he made any moves to detach you from his body. Your heart is still hammering in your chest from kissing him for the first time and you can feel the pulse in his neck beating steadily against your cheek. You want to kiss him again, but you think now that you have time to do so whenever you want, so maybe both of you should rest while you get a hold of your emotions again.

As if hearing your thoughts, Caleb presses a kiss to the side of your head, sweet and familiar the way he would have when you were kids. It feels safe and reassuring. It feels like Caleb.

You want to breach the topic, and after a long moment of gathering your nerves, you whisper, “Is that okay?”

You can feel him smile. “You know I can’t say no to you.”

“You almost said no to kissing me.”

His breath hitches. He laughs again, this time into your neck. “I thought it was my sleep paralysis demon.”

“You’re not allowed to kiss your sleep paralysis demon,” you snap.

He pulls back enough to look you in the face. “I’ve never kissed anyone except you, and I will never kiss anyone else now that I know that you want to kiss me.”

Something about his gaze sets your face on far. You glance away. “Good.”

He tilts your chin with his fingers and drags you back to face him, and you feel overwhelmed by the storm in his eyes as they look at you with a fierce determination.

“It’s only ever been you, by the way.” His eyes drop to your lips again, but this time they linger. “Even when we were kids, I’ve only ever—you were the only one for me. No one else.”

You flush. “Me, too.”

His gaze flits back up. “Really?”

You didn’t expect him to be so shocked, but from the way his hands have tightened around your chin and the way his eyes have widened, he really must not have expected it. This, too, makes you feel unbearably shy.

“Yes.” You reach up hesitantly before placing your hand over his. You turn your face into his palm. “I don’t think—well, I never thought about it so clearly because I didn’t know if I was allowed to or if you would ever feel the same.” Your lips catch against his skin as you speak. “But I’ve always known that I wanted to keep you forever. Even if—even if you found someone else or met someone else, I’d try to support you, but I’d miss you. I used to think that I could go anywhere or do anything as long as I had you catching me if I failed. It ruined me when I lost you. I think…no matter what I felt for you, you were always important to me. Are important to me.” You squeeze his hand. “I don’t want to live in a world where you leave me.”

He leans down suddenly, catching you off guard. You have enough time to widen your eyes before he kisses you again—just once—before pulling back.

“You don’t have to.” He’s close enough that you can feel his words puffing across your lips. “I told you that I’m never leaving you again, and I mean it. That’s my promise to you.”

Promises and keepsakes and words that are only as strong as their speaker. There are no certainties in this world, not even with Caleb, but you trust him enough that you know he will try. You will try, too. For as long as there are flowers in this world, you will find your way to each other again.

“I’m holding you to it.” You wrap your arms around his neck again and yank him down. He lands with a light oof.

“Are you still my pipsqueak, then?” he laughs.

“Always will be.”

He smiles. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” you say. “But I’m really tired. Can we talk in the morning?”

Caleb rolls onto his back, taking you with him. Your head pillows against his chest just like when you were younger, and around his insistent heartbeat, you can hear the rumble of his words as he says, “Anything for you.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” you murmur.

He kisses the top of your head. “I am, too.”