Chapter Text
Caleb’s office day four of making you extend your stay
He’s throwing the papers left to right and up to front at the desk now. This is the last file of 1336 pages he had to review after the meeting. However, his attention is not anywhere near the file, their contents and nor the military politics. His screens are only waiting for the knob of the bathroom to move. There are 10 screens next to his face and his attention seeks only one presence- you.
“Her vitals are normal but what’s taking her so long inside the bathroom.”
Neither has she created a faux call, rang the fire alarms, called the emergency numbers (which only had a sweet colonel talking back, hello sweetheart, how can I help you), tried to cut apples and get a minor cut, all which had the demanding Colonel of the Farspace Fleet dancing on his tippy toes to rush back home.
He couldn’t say he didn’t like it. He had to jump through the unnecessary protocols and meetings to create a sweet exit back home. Adjutant Liam had been noticing the Colonel acting extra swanky these days with extra bandages but his job was paperwork and adjusting to whatever his Colonel said about the smiley hello kitty bandages being just for the aesthetic. He also received a certain odd question about the possibilities of the monitoring tag being hacked or manipulated but he knows the Fleet’s devices carry no such malfunctions.
He assumed the Colonel was trying to become kid-friendly for the media’s current speculations. “I can’t believe I get to work under the eyes of such a hard-working officer” were his final work comments for the day.
Caleb was not heartbroken to skip work unlike how Adjutant Liam concluded.
He was waiting for his sweet cat to create trouble.
And today seeemed like a long text waiting to be written to him, his heaving breaths, his heavy chest all running to the cold interiors of his car leaving consistent phone calls to his beloved all received no answer.
“Has she fainted? Has she run off? What new technique has she brought up today”
He wasn’t sure if he was grinning to himself or worried sick, his brain liked the games she played and today was going to be the start of another one.
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Excursion one through caleb’s eyes:
He slammed the shoes and ran like he was trained for it. To save her, she was his only beating lifeline and he hadn’t seen her for six hours, thirty two minutes and now fifty nine seconds.
“How can the monitoring tag malfunction? What has she done again?” Kept being repeated as a string of questions as he stormed through the door with his fingerprints and five layers of security protection he installed alongside OTTO that no one could break into or break off. A fortress just for his princess and the hero that could just be him.
What Caleb was not expecting behind the door through his rough day of meetings and the questions, the awaited glance that made him skip beats and cells of his missing beloved inside the bathroom and an already awaiting discussion on why a camera is now necessary inside the only unbroken fort room.
His storming feet awakened the lying presence on the sofa. Hearing the soft “you are….back?” sent the lightning in his heart a soft hug. It felt like years since he heard her soft voice again. With every passing day in arguments and makeup that never happened, he could only cry behind closed doors knowing he was hurting his pipsqueak, the only one he loved.
“I am here but where are you?” said Caleb’s deep tiny voice who just wanted to graze the beautiful edges of his precious, hidden treasure. His cravings suddenly met the gust flowing from the deserts colder than the Deepspace Tunnel’s dangers.
His love was wearing a bleeding lip and a bikini.
Simultaneously gnawed at all edges, he forced himself to maintain a grin and his emotions. He was Colonel Caleb, the most feared in the world and he was definitely short of falling on his knees. Yet. Yet in the real world. Yet in front of her. His closed doors have always been for a reason and she was the reasoning. He couldn’t let her know how much he craved for her every lock, every touch, every time she moved, he didn’t end up in the air military accidentally. He had built years of self control, push up by push up and sprints through malicious storms in machines, yet a girl whom he had been looking for the entire day showing up on his sofa where he spent his endless nights dreaming of had been lying.
Instinctively, he wanted to close his eyes, look to the other side but her bleeding lips needed tending. But her pose, the image she was lying in was beyond engraved in his brain. Her feet tracing the tag on the other with barely opened eyes and a face as soft as the angels that could bring eternity to mortals that needed all his protection and all that childhood Caleb has vowed to protect and …..
the cause of his current crisis, her body, wrapped in a soft cotton bikini with pastel colors he was yet to identify because he couldn’t bring himself to look at her
body that needed to be on him at the current crashing moment, all the sleepless nights spent on roaming her body with his hands and making a prayer only a priest could make to the gods. He knew scrolling on bikini options with his pipsqueak on the same bed during his DAA break was one of the worst options he could do in her proximity. He had not yet forgotten how denying those bikini options and the favorite one she loved and was wearing currently had made him see stars in daylight. He would rather be bonked by bats than witness this nightmare in the thin day of the skin.
The colonel was infact very good at identifying colors (and sniffing) too. He was trained even before pipsqueak to find out the colors that fit on her well. But today he failed to count the number of lights that were touching his pipsqueak. “Should have been me”, he thought later painting the picture of her in his head twenty days later,
but coming back to his current crisis, he couldn’t avert his eyes because of her bleeding lips, he touched his beloved’s hair silently, “i will bandage and clean your lips, don’t worry, right”. He got the opportunity he was not looking for, to do his ritual, close the door and scream in a pillow, nothing 20 sets of push ups couldn’t fight. Funny how he knew how this time, neither time nor exercise would heal the damage inflicted. His brain was a processor quite literally and it couldn’t keep finding the excuses to keep running.
Only the sight of her bleeding lips kept him and his walk in a straight pace. How did she bleed? What happened? Did she bite them? Could she have bitten my lips instead and her hand- F.O.C.U.S. Caleb. Pipsqueak is hurt.
Running to the first-aid kit which had become a six hourly repeat event for Caleb should have been a habit. But were his hands shaking or was it the box, Caleb would not like the narrator to disclose that. Assuming the box sensing his seething nerves of anger seeing the narrator hurt or his hands becoming weak at sensing the sight of his pipsqueak in a bikini, we will now proceed to the next event.