Chapter Text
It’s been well over an hour since they called your brother back for imaging and you’re starting to worry it was not the simple broken wrist it had seemed.
The game ought to have been a slam dunk, as Caleb jokingly promised before every match. It was the last day of school, Caleb’s last day of high school ever, and the game was for showing off as much as it was for fundraising. When his team won (when, he always said—never if), a whole ¥3000 would be donated to the uniform fund for those students unable to pay for their own.
It wasn’t the first time you’d seen Caleb’s star-power act as a blessing and a curse; he was popular, yes, but his basketball skill scared off sponsors. “Suffering from success,” he’d sniffed after coming home with only one fistful of promise slips and before you’d hit him upside the head. Nevertheless, with the many small pledges of yuan from every aunty and uncle in the Bloomshore district in exchange for every basket he scored, Caleb was “more or less single-handedly paying for the school’s new computer lab, you’re welcome”.
Caleb was such a liar, but who besides you could blame him for having a big head? The day of the game came and Caleb pulled his team into the lead like always, and, like always, you rushed down the bleacher steps a few minutes before halftime so that you could be the first to greet him with a chilled water bottle. He’d winked at you from across the court.
You’re not sure what happened after that. One of Caleb’s team members, a boy in your year but a different class, called out to you from the bench. You froze, until you understood that he was only complimenting the newly earned S-rank Meow Badge stuck to your bag. You jumped on your toes, setting the water bottle onto the bench to tug your pin binder out of your backpack and shove it into your classmate’s face. He met you on his feet, pulling out his phone to show off pictures of his own collection. Your shoulders pressed together as you both leaned in toward the screen.
He asked, “How have we never run into each other at the cafe before?” and your laughter was cut off by an ear-splitting screeching of sneakers on lacquered floor and a sickening crack.
You flinched, and failed in your instinctual search for Caleb’s head among the tallest of the players now gathering at the opposite side of the court. You tucked your binder away, frowning. The boy beside you tried lifting his head over the crowd, but he didn’t see much either.
“They’ve turned off the Evol suppressor,” you murmured to him, the weight of the artificial metaflux lifted from your shoulders. Someone must have been injured, and you could easily picture Caleb crouched beside them, applying first aid and keeping everyone calm. You chewed on your cheek, politely angling your ear towards your classmate when he resumed talking, and continued scanning for the jersey marked #5.
You found it when the crowd briefly parted, on a boy crouched as you imagined. He made to stand, but the way Caleb had been nursing his arm—
You took off in a run and elbowed your way to his side.
He twisted away when he heard your shout. “Don’t look, Pip-squeak,” he warned, but you’d seen it, seen how wrong it was. Caleb’s right hand dangled limply; his forearm sharply curved downwards. You gasped. He changed tactics. “Don’t freak out. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Ice!” you’d shouted, “We need to ice your arm, and k-keep it elevated!” You took hold of his left shoulder and pushed, attempting to rotate him and take inventory. He didn’t budge. You tried to walk in front of him, but he just circled away again. “Caleb!” you cried, all but stomping your foot. His left shoulder creeped up towards his ear.
“Don’t freak out,” he reminded you, and turned to face you. He wiped at his face, succeeding only in smearing the blood you then saw covering the bottom half of his face. Caleb’s previously straight nose now had a painful crook that sent the tip sideways.
One of Caleb’s teammates handed him a wet rag, and you watched, mouth agape, as he carefully wiped blood and crust from his face. He threw the towel over his shoulder and crouched to speak to you quietly. Looking at his arm made your stomach turn, so you had stared at Caleb’s red teeth. You almost forgot to listen to what he was saying to you.
“—gonna need a cast. It’ll probably take a few hours, so you can go on without me. I’m not going to have you spend your first night of summer in a waiting room.” The thought of leaving him was sickening. You would have flicked him for the suggestion if he were not already so beat up. Looking past the side of his face, you saw another bleeding boy in an away team jersey. Beyond a swollen lip, he seemed perfectly fine; you felt a twinge of anger. You took the wet rag from Caleb’s shoulder and began to dab at the blood that still stained his chin.
“Dummy. I’m staying right by your side.”
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You are jumping and turning at every explosive click and crash of the heavy hospital double-doors. Relief comes to you when you hear that familiar cheerful voice thanking someone you can’t see, and horror takes its place when you catch each other’s eye. You rush to meet him by the door and cover your mouth. He has swollen purple bruises on either side of his bandaged nose, and his right arm, now sealed in an orange cast, is tucked against his chest by a sling.
“Gege!”
“Pip-squeak,” he greets pleasantly. You take his face in your hands.
“You look awful,” Your hands and eyes drop to his chest. You can’t keep your lips from tugging down. “What did they tell you? How long do you need to wear the cast? Did they reset your nose? Are you in pain?” Your hands slide down his arm to hold his unrestricted one. You had realized that you’d never been the one in the waiting room, and that you hated it. You pull him close now. He squeezes your fingers.
“I wasn’t sure how to tell you this,” he says mournfully, “but I’m afraid it’s terminal.” You are unamused. The bruises on his face match his eyes, you think.
“Ge.” He shrugs.
You look at the floor, afraid to say it, but unable to stop yourself after fretting about it since your separation. “Caleb, your basketball scholarship…”
Caleb only laughs and palms your forehead. He shakes you around, asking, “Why are you takin’ this harder than me?” His hand slides down to thumb away the tears collecting in the corner your eye. “Really,” he says, confused but clearly tickled by the attention, “My nose will heal just fine, the bruising should be gone in a couple weeks, the cast’ll be off in around six, and I wouldn’t worry about the scholarship even if it were the only scholarship I’d been offered.” His eyes crinkle, but the reassuring smile he’s attempting errs on the side of grimace.
You push away some nonsensical urge to hold him, cradle him tight against your chest, take his hand, take his pain. You feel sorry for every time you threatened to black his eyes yourself. It didn’t seem like something that could actually happen—Caleb being hurt, Caleb losing—and now that you have been proven wrong, you know that you never want to see it again. You feel misty again.
Caleb’s left arm wraps around your shoulders and you’re tugged into his side. “C’mere, my little crybaby,” he says. He sounds happy. “What’s there to complain about? I’m off dish duty for at least the next month!”
You sniff and wipe your nose on his chest. You see his face on the court again, blood clinging to the spaces where his teeth meet, his limp hand. “Fine. But you don’t need two hands to take out the garbage or load the laundry, so don’t even try it.” He laughs and ruffles the top of your head. Caleb takes your hand again and starts walking to the entrance of the hospital.
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Caleb cruised along the learning curve quick as ever, and things really aren’t so different despite his injury. He mourns the ability to play basketball with his friends, so you’ve been joining him on his morning runs. He can’t grip onto video game controllers too well, so you pulled the board games out of the closet. He lacks the precise grip needed to work on his model kits, so you bought puzzles.
Some evil little part of you delights in having him all to yourself, his snipped wings keeping him that much closer to you before you have to share him with the Aerospace Academy and all the new people who will inevitably be sucked into his orbit. You should have thrown that acceptance letter out the moment you pulled it from the mailbox. You mostly don’t mean it.
For all you rejoice at getting to play the caretaker, Caleb is not so happy. At first, he seemed to love the attention. He said he couldn’t remember the last time you were so nice to him, and that he’d break his other arm too if it meant getting doted on like this.
The novelty of this shifted dynamic wore off quick.
Caleb’s growing stir-crazy, and you have this terrible suspicion that he's avoiding you.
He tried only once to do your hair—it caught and tangled on his rough cast, and you’ve been drying and braiding it yourself since. Twice, he went straight for the shower after your run and didn’t leave the bathroom for a long time. The next day, Caleb actually left without you, saying he was up early and couldn’t fall back asleep. He started sweating bullets when you shook dice during Yahtzee and claimed he had a headache, but he refused to open the door when you brought him pain relievers. When you asked for help getting a book from a high shelf, he pulled it down with his Evol instead of coming up behind you to dangle it over your head and out of your reach to say What? You mean this?
It’s been three-and-a-half weeks since he broke his wrist. You’re sitting on the couch, a whole cushion between the two of you, enjoying reruns of My Pilot. Your attention is split between Ta-ta and Caleb, the latter of whom you can't help but side-eye. He snorts at some cartoonish gag you didn’t see, and you’re filled with a surge of affection and indignation and need for his eyes to be on you.
The only reason he’s even sitting with you now is because the mall trip you’d planned with your friends for the day was rescheduled. Caleb had disappeared after breakfast that morning—the first at which you’d seen him in three days—into his room, and seemed almost frightened when he wandered downstairs for water and found you on the couch. Gran won’t return from her book club meeting until this evening; he must have thought he had the house to himself.
“How long have you been here?” he’d croaked.
When you told him your sob story about being stood up by your friends—you might have embellished—he had given you your first hug in a week and offered to watch a movie with you.
“Do you remember when we were little, and you told me you’d take me there one day?” You nod your head toward the screen. Ta-ta had arrived at Cloudia Island.
“Yup,” he smiles. “It’s still on my to-do list, right under fold you a thousand cranes and above bringing you the moon.”
You smile back and take this as permission to move closer. Ignoring the way he stiffens, you tuck yourself into his side. There’s a familiar smell radiating from his skin and you are caught sniffing. Caleb flinches.
“I ran out of body wash and had to use yours,” he explains before you can even finish asking—
“Did you use my body wash?”
You stare at each other. You both recover.
“Oh, then we can go to the mall together tomorrow—”
“When I go for my run tonight, I’ll stop by the—”
You stare. His eyebrow twitches.
“I’m perfectly capable of getting my own soap.”
“Sure, but you used mine, so you owe me.”
“Then I’ll get you a new bottle.”
“I accept payment in the form of arcade coins.”
Caleb snorts and flicks your forehead. “Why are you so clingy all of a sudden, Pip-squeak?” Classic Caleb technique—distraction. He’s hoping he’ll embarrass you into dropping the conversation. It works for a good five sulky minutes. You pull away and cross your arms.
“I just thought you'd want to spend more of our last summer together together.”
There is a pause imperceptible to anyone but you before he has the gall to say, perfectly cheery, “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“You’re too good to hang out with me now that you’re off to college?”
He wavers. “No. Nothing will change,” he reminds you as he had many times throughout his senior year. “Anything you need, I’ll still be good for.”
“Sure, if I can get ahold of you.”
“You know how schedules get funky over summer, Pip-squeak. We just keep missing each other.”
“No! You’re avoiding me,” you finally accuse.
Caleb’s whole face screams guilty now. He sits forward, head dipped apologetically, but, far be it from him to admit wrongdoing, says, “We’ll go to the mall tomorrow. I’ll get you lunch and milk tea.” Sensing your dissatisfaction, he opens his mouth to offer further recompense.
You interrupt in a small voice, “Did I do something wrong?” Caleb looks like he’s been kicked. The front door’s electric lock whirrs. It’s Grandma, and she has her arms full with grocery bags.
Caleb hops up to assist her, and that’s apparently the end of that.
“I better get to cookin’,” he announces, not looking even slightly in your direction. Gran pats his hand, pats yours, and walks away to wash up and change. You turn off the television and stomp to your room.