"Don't leave me in this loneliness any longer."

Everything around you is a heated blur. His jacket uniform is off, leaving him naked—not in body, but in soul. 'You killed my Caleb,' you had said, striking him with a single sigh from your lips. It's treacherous—playing with his heart like that, making him flinch and squeeze his eyes shut, knowing you would forever remain under his eyelids, under his skin, in the circulation of his blood.

He would agree to that torture in every life.

You lean to brush your lips across his forehead in a wanton motion. The sound he makes is a strangled whisper of a prisoner in a cage he put himself in willingly. In Morse code, his heart beats against his ribcage: If I kept you here with me like this... would you think I'm being too selfish? It's a hot avalanche that crashes over him—Caleb focuses his gaze on your eyes, not on the way you're so placidly perched on his lap. Vulnerable, feverish, with the most beautiful eyes (impregnable and spotless, you are). His fingers shake ever so slightly when he brushes his pinky against your lower lip. It's an act of valor that he doesn't dip his head to catch the sun and laughter from it, to finally give in to the temptation nursed in the most patient and desperate vessel. But for now, he touches the knuckle of his own finger instead, sharing an indirect thirst.

Will it be troublesome to lock you in a room where no one can bring you harm; to put you in a golden cage where he's the one on a leash?

Your head swims again on those chaotic waves of hidden exhaustion and illness. But Caleb is always there to catch you—despite broken expectations, wants, needs.

"You need to go to sleep," he whispers, anguished to catch a tremble rolling off you, to grab the sound from you and devour it.

But he has been so good all these years. You're his to worship, to take care of, just his, in the most twisted way stars can think of. So he lowers you gently onto your back, his palm spread on your knee, squeezing it gently.

"Just tell me what you need."