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You arrive at the Farspace Fleet’s annual skills presentation event just in the nick of time. You heave a sigh of relief to yourself as you present the invitation that Caleb gave you. It’s old school: a data chip instead of an email. Supposedly more secure, but you’re just glad that you didn’t lose it on the journey up. It’s a further relief to hand it over to the officer who greets you at the gate to the Fleet’s base where the event is being hosted.
It’s a sunny Spring day, but Skyhaven is a little colder than Linkon, being at a higher elevation. You’re happy you opted for a lightweight jacket. You make your way through the crowd, accepting a couple of delicious and frustratingly moreish little canapés from the waiters that weave their way deftly around the base.
You’re used to being at formal events with the Hunter’s Association. It doesn’t normally bother you to stand in a crowd, after all you fight wanderers in public places all the time as well. You move into the spaces that open up ahead of you and find a spot for yourself near the railing that cordons off the skills presentation area.
It’s a longstanding tradition for military to hold presentations of their discipline and prowess for civilians to see. You didn’t know the Fleet held such events until Caleb invited you, but of course you accepted without hesitation. A chance to see Caleb in his element? To let him show off everything he’s been practicing? To learn more about the person he has become since he’s been away? There’s no way in hell you would pass that up.
A Fleet soldier is leaning up against the railing beside you. From the lack of decoration on her uniform, you can tell she’s a green new recruit. The more seasoned soldiers are seated on bleachers across at the other side of the presentation area, while the officers are on a raised dais to the right.
The soldier grins at you as you settle in next to her. She’s clearly excited to see the skills she’ll be trained in over the coming years. She hangs one hand over the railing, comfortably, like she’s already placing herself inside the arena. You smile back at her, you know that feeling, that was just how you felt when you joined the Hunter’s Association.
‘It’ll be starting soon,’ she informs you. ‘You got here just in time.’
‘Ah, that’s good!’ You reply.
‘Hey, nice boots,’ the officer says, checking out your outfit. Your lack of Fleet uniform clearly marks you as a civilian, an outsider, but this is an invitation-only party and you did your best to dress for the occasion.
‘They ought to be,’ a familiar voice joins in the conversation. ‘She spent so long picking them out, I thought she was going to have to reschedule her transport and be late to the party.’
‘Doctor Zayne!’ You exclaim, turning around to him. You’re both surprised and happy that he found you so soon after your arrival.
He’s exaggerating by a long shot. You two had taken a little shopping trip together after an appointment last week, upon discovering that you were both going to be attending the event. You were invited as Colonel Caleb’s plus one, Zayne was invited as he is currently working with the fleet as a consultant on a medical investigation. It did take you a while to decide, but you still had time to stop for desserts afterward. It was your treat, to make up for the amount of times you made Zayne reach for different styles of boots from high shelves for you.
‘I told you, I had it all under control,’ you say, haughtily raising your eyebrows at the doctor, a playful light dancing in your eyes. ‘Next time you should trust me. When it comes to shopping I can’t be rushed, but I’ll also never be late!’
Zayne’s face warms into a smile like the first rays of morning sun thawing the frost from a wide field. ‘I see now,’ he says in his gentle voice that makes everyone around him lean in to hear, ‘I won’t doubt you again.’
‘You should never have doubted me in the first place!’ You tease. ‘This is a big day for Caleb, of course I’ll always be on time.’
You search for Caleb’s face among the officers on the dais, and realise he’s standing closer than you thought. He is wearing his dress uniform as he will be presenting his skills later, too. The buttons and metal decals on the uniform’s front and at Caleb’s shoulders flash in the sunlight. You expect to see him smiling, or perhaps looking distantly calm and collected in full Fleet Colonel Official Business Mode, but he isn’t presenting either of those at this precise moment. His face is cloudy. His brows are pinched into a creased frown, his lips are turned down, the sides of his nose are flared in abject disgust. You try to discern what could have caused that reaction in him, but before you can see anything else, he flicks his eyes up to where you and Zayne and the officer who complemented your boots are standing.
It’s noisy at the event, with all the people catching up and awaiting the start of the festivities. Caleb doesn’t seem close enough to have overheard, but after his eyes have brushed over your body, after he has quickly checked you over head to toe as he always does when he first lays eyes on you, he turns his steely gaze on Zayne.
There’s always an intensity to Caleb’s expressions these days. It’s one that only used to be there when he was grappling with an extra-credit question on his homework, or trying to beat a particularly difficult level in one of the many co-op games you two used to play together. Now, it’s always there in the set of his jaw, the sides of his nose, in his brow that’s always a little bit furrowed. Caleb’s stare is so sharp that you worry Zayne might cut himself on it. Then, it’s gone, like a signal settling into place on an old lo-fi computer system: one moment it’s all stormy static, the next the vision of Caleb comes clearly projected.
The announcement of the first event begins and Caleb smiles at you. A waiter in white gloves comes and brings Caleb a long-stemmed glass of something golden and bubbly on a chrome tray. He takes it, with an executive nod to the waiter, then raises it to you in a silent toast. Another waiter appears at your side, with flutes of the same liquid. You and Zayne and the officer near you all take one. The other’s attentions are on the event, a horse race, but you raise your glass to Caleb in return. Your sense of pride at your best friend’s achievements wash away all other doubts and fears.
Caleb looks at you for just a moment longer. Like the old days, there’s a message in his face that’s just for you. Only this time, you can’t quite decipher it before he brings the glass to his lips and drinks, looking away from you towards the race.
The last thing you remember is the fizz of the champagne on your tongue. After that, darkness creeps in at the edge of your memories, overtaking everything else.
*
You wake up to a stiffness in your neck. You try to raise your hand to inspect the area at the base of your skull, but you can’t. The shackle around your wrist is tight enough that you can’t move your hand at all. You’re bound, standing vertical, to an upright metal stretcher. It’s dark in the room you are in, the only light coming from a screen that displays your vital signs. Furrowing your brow, you feel a tug at your temple, a monitoring chip has been attached there, feeding your information to the computer.
The unyielding metal at your back cuts through the haze in your head. You know this feeling from waking up after the operation you had to fix your shoulder, injured during a wanderer fight that went wrong a few years back. Anaesthesia. You don’t remember anything after that first glass of champagne. Could it have been spiked? But who would dare to do something like that to the Colonel of the Farspace Fleet’s plus one at a Fleet event?
Before you can agonise over the question for too long, the doors to the room that you are in open and a figure walks in. He’s silhouetted by the light from the corridor outside the room, but you’d know his shape anywhere. Caleb.
“Are you all right?” He asks, the lights in the room slowly powering up as he presses a panel in the wall. He keeps the lights down fairly low, but you can see you’re in one of the Fleet’s hospital rooms.
The rooms in the Fleet base are so spartan that whatever the room’s real purpose, they all look a little bit like cells for interrogation. From what you know about Fleet discipline, that might just be because they often end up serving that dual purpose at a moment’s notice.
“Am I all right? No. Caleb, what happened? Why am I here?”
“You weren’t feeling well after the presentation, don’t you remember? You fainted. Zayne wanted to take you back to Linkon, but I insisted that you should be treated as soon as possible, and that meant keeping you here.”
“I fainted? Really?”
Caleb comes over and checks your vitals on the screen. “Yes.”
There’s no trace of a lie in his eyes, but then again, he has been harder to read since he got back than he used to be. You know what you feel. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve fainted. You have taken tumbles after overexerting yourself multiple times. None of those times felt the same as a drug induced loss of consciousness.
“I brought you here and had one of the Fleet medics take care of you.” Caleb continues. “Zayne wanted to treat you himself, but we’re pretty deep in the base down here. Not a lot of people have the clearance to access these rooms. Not even the good doctor.” His face twists a little with disdain when he talks about Zayne. There’s something a little off about him. Similarly to when you saw him on the podium, the part of the day that you do remember, he doesn’t quite seem himself. He’s not the happy-go-lucky Caleb that you are used to. He’s holding a riding crop, like the other officers and soldiers who took part in the mounted events used. You guess Caleb must have used this one for his events, but you don’t remember seeing it. You had been excited to see some of the dress-only skills he’s picked up during his training. You have seen him fly dozens of times, and as much as you were looking forward to that too, you were most excited about finally getting the chance to see this new side of Caleb in action like you never had before.
“I guess the Colonel would have access to parts of the base that would be off limits to most people.”
“Exactly. I knew you’d be safe down here.”
“But I’m not safe in Linkon?” You ask and Caleb turns to face you, sharply.
“I guess I wouldn’t know. You hardly ever contact me while you’re there.”
“What? Caleb I-“
“Forget it. I just miss you, is all.”
“I miss you too.”
Caleb moves away from the screen and settles against a counter across the room from you. In the low light of the room it’s hard to make out all his features. His eyes are shining, like they’re a little wet with tears, but you can’t tell if he’s actually crying.
“How could you, when you’re spending all your time with other hunters and Zayne and your friends?”
“Well you spend your time with the Fleet-“
“That’s different.” Caleb interrupts. “I don’t care about them. I don’t care about anyone like I care about you.”
His words hang in the air between the two of you. You are still a little hazy from the effects of whatever it was that knocked you out, illness, anaesthesia, whatever it might really have been. It takes your mind a second to catch up. Caleb doesn’t break the silence, he just sits in the dark across from you.
“Let me out of here, Caleb,” you say, finally.
He stands and crosses the room towards you. His hand hovers over the patch that would release your arm restraint. His Fleet wrist cuff lights up, waiting for him to press the button on it and confirm the ‘open restraint’ command.
“I know I should,” he whispers, almost to himself. “But now that I have you here, is it selfish to want to keep you with me as long as possible?”
“Caleb…”
He looks up when you say his name and you can see that there are tears in his eyes that he is not letting fall.
“I want you all to myself,” he says, quietly.
Before you can respond he opens the restraint on your dominant hand. He goes to open the other, but you stop him, with a hand to the nape of his neck. You pull him in towards you.
“Hey,” you say, unsure how else to soothe him, but unwilling to leave him feeling alone.
He leans in to you, his shoulder against your cheek. You move your hand and stroke the side of his face with your thumb. You feel the tickle of his breath on your hand as he sighs at the sensation. Then, his body tenses. He grabs your free hand and holds it close to his mouth.
“Sometimes,” he mutters into your palm, “I miss you so badly I wish I could just eat you, so there would always be a part of you with me, inside me.” He jerks his head and catches your thumb in his mouth, the largest knuckle between his teeth.
He bites down on the knuckle of your thumb so hard it hurts.
You gasp, and he releases you. Squeezing his eyes shut against the look of shock and pain on your face. He walks away again, pressing the flat leather end of the riding crop into his jaw. You are scared that he might hurt himself with it, he looks like he wants to slap himself for scaring you, but he doesn’t, instead he whips the crop through the air. It makes a high pitched, vicious sound.
You call out to him and he turns towards you, slashing the crop through the air again. It impacts the side of the stretcher. It doesn’t come close to hitting you, the metal would always have stopped it from that angle, but the sound it makes is startling.
Caleb looks absolutely tormented. His eyes bore into you. He bares his teeth at the internal conflict raging in his mind.
“What is it?” You ask him, trying not to be frightened of your oldest friend. He has always had moods, periods of elation and periods of darkness, but you’ve never seen him so conflicted as he looks right now. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m torn,” he growls through gritted teeth, “Over what would be the best way to mark you so that you won’t forget about me while you’re away.”
You blink, taken aback by his leap in logic. “Caleb,” you start, unsure which part of what he said to address first. “I never forget about you, I swear.”
He shakes his head, disbelieving.
“I think about you all the time! I even keep the plushies we won together right next to my bed.”
“You don’t even keep them on your bed? You see? See? You don’t want me, you don’t even care.” He leans his head against your shoulder, bending down to rest against you. He presses his head hard into you, breathing raggedly in through his mouth, its a sob of pain.
You raise your freed hand to the back of his head, stroking his head and his neck again, like you would the few times you saw him trying to hold back tears as a kid. “Caleb, that’s not true. I love you,” you remind him, “So much.”
He scoffs, you can hear the spit on his breath, the saliva-thick voice of someone whose body can’t handle the feelings rushing through it.
“I miss you every day,” you insist. “I only put them aside so that they wouldn’t get dirty. If I slept with them every night they would get worn too fast. I want them to last, that’s why-“
He pulls away from you, sharply. He gives you a searching, pleading look, looking for the trick, the lie under your words. You’re breathing heavily. The intensity of the emotion radiating off him is like a fire, like a wall of heat, it makes it hard to breathe.
“If the ones you have get dirty, I will win you more. Tell me when you need me, I’ll fly back to Linkon any time, day or night.”
“I know- I know you would,” you stammer.
“No!” He snaps “Clearly, you don’t. Hold this,” he says, putting the grip of the riding crop into your hand before pushing your wrist back into the shackle on the stretcher.
“What are you-?” You ask, as Caleb throws his long dress uniform coat back out of the way of his legs so he can kneel in front of you. His hands hesitate a moment as they reach up to your hips. He looks you in the eye again. He blinks the frustration away from his eyes and replaces it with a look of determination.
“I need you to let me show you. I need you to feel it, so you believe me. So you never forget, and you never doubt it, how much I just want you to…” he trails off, unable to find a word that encompasses the enormity of his desires. When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse with the effort of compressing it all into just a few words. “… Be happy,” he growls, the words raking out of this throat.
“Caleb, I am. I am happy!”
“Not happy enough.” His voice no longer shakes. The words are sharp, as are his movements as he undoes your trousers and wrenches them down to the tops of your knee high boots.
“Caleb, what-“
“Sh!” He hisses. His fingers are white-knuckled on your trouser waistband, but when he moves his hand to touch your thigh he keeps his grip light. The shackles at your ankles keep your legs in place without the need for force from him, anyway. “You don’t know happiness yet.” His eyes are ablaze with a wild light. He seems to remember, after a moment, to smile. His lips quirk upward at the corners and he tilts his head a fraction to the side, like he’s anticipating you telling him to stop. You are too struck by the unfamiliar shape of this expression to speak. “I’m gonna show you happiness.”
He presses his lips into your thigh. They’re warm, but not as hot as the breath that follows after them.
“I’m gonna make you feel it,” he whispers into your skin in the wake of his first kiss.
He forces more hot kisses into your thighs as he slides his hands up to your hips again and dips his fingertips under the elastic of your underwear. He takes a deep breath in and out through his mouth as he pulls them down to your knees as well. You barely have time to register embarrassment at being so exposed in front of him before his mouth is up against your crotch. He licks his tongue along the slit between your labia once, then immediately purses his lips around your clit and sucks with a force that startes a gasp out of you. He moans at the sound of your reaction.
“Wh- wait, Caleb! That’s too intense!” You manage to say, but he mumbles something that sounds like a dismissal into you and keeps up the force on your clit. He rests one hand on the top of your foot, you can feel the weight and the warmth through your shoe. The other hand, he raises to your stomach. He rubs his thumb back and forth gently, a soothing caress completely at odds with the way he ignored your protest. You whimper and try to catch your breath after the initial shock. It takes some time, with his unrelenting mouth never leaving you, but after a moment or two you are able to breathe somewhat normally, your body adjusting to what he’s doing. No sooner have you finally relaxed than he breaks the seal he’s made with his lips against your most sensitive skin. He rocks back onto his heels and looks up at you, a fiendish smile on his lips, the one you remember from games together: the old Caleb who would always tease you when he beat you whether it was Mario Kart, Tekken, or just a race to see who could finish their homework faster.
“I’ll tell you what’s too intense. I know you better than you know yourself, remember.” He doesn’t make it a question.
He leans forwards again and you brace yourself for more, but he doesn’t put his mouth on you again. Instead, he moves the hand that was caressing your stomach up higher underneath your shirt. He lifts an eyebrow when he feels the lace of your bra, it’s a sheer and delicate garment, not like the heavy duty sports bras you usually have to wear for work.
“I meant to say it earlier, you look beautiful today, pipsqueak. I couldn’t be prouder to have had you here as my plus one.” He squeezes your breast through your bra and leans in closer so that his cheek replaces his hand agains your stomach. “You gettin’ your breath back?”
You pant, not sure how to respond.
“Answer me,” he says, firmly.
“Yes,” you say, on instinct, though your heart is still hammering, your breath far from steady.
Caleb laughs a breathy chuckle into your stomach. You feel his teeth graze over your skin as he skims his way to your hip. You feel the pressure of his mouth again as he sucks and teases the skin of your hip, all the while squeezing and rubbing your breast and nipple. When he pulls away this time, he takes his hand from your breast and pulls your shirt aside so that even restrained on the stretcher you can see the purple love bite he’s left on your hip.
“There,” he says, “That’s one mark to remind you of me.”
His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are heavy lidded when he looks at you this time. You can only imagine how you must look from his angle. You can feel the slick wetness between your legs. Now that your body has really had time to recover from the suddenness of the initial onslaught, it just wants more. Like he can read your mind, Caleb positions himself centrally between your legs once more. You moan in anticipation of his mouth on you again, but he doesn’t lean fully in. Instead he looks up and catches you in the expression of complete and unfiltered lust, and you see him struggle to contain his laugher at your sudden and total neediness.
“Wait, what is it you want, pipsqueak?” He asks, feigning bewilderment. “I’m confused.”
The totally unconvincing look of innocence on his face is as infuriating now as it has ever been. More so.
You are about to scold him like you would have when catching him in an obvious lie in the past, but then his hand is between your legs. This time, he does laugh, when he feels how wet you are. It’s something between amusement and relief. The sound and the possessive way he touches you, like that’s exactly where his hand belongs, send the initial waves of an orgasm radiating out from where his fingers work you in confident, practiced motions.
“Caleb,” you moan.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you. Relax. The sooner we get the first one out of the way the sooner I can make you really happy.”
His words vaguely register through the pleasure that is building in your body. “What?”
“Well, yeah. What, did you think I was going to let you go after just one? You’re mine. You’re not going anywhere until I know that you know that.”
“What if someone comes in?”
“Well, then they’re gonna discover what a needy little slut you are for me. That’s all.”
Caleb’s slick fingers bring you to orgasm three times before he finally lets you take a break. Nobody does come in. The room’s soundproofing means that you can’t tell what is going on outside. It doesn’t matter. Here with Caleb is the only place that you want to be. When he asks you where your head is at, a phrase he would always ask when you were distracted or concerned, you can honestly reply that it’s right here, with him.
“At last.” His whole body leans into you, the best approximation of an embrace that he can manage with you bound to the stretcher. “I’m going to eat you out for a little while longer, because you’re just too tasty. Then I’ll let you out of these restraints, okay?”
“You’re going to let me go? What time is it?”
“Oh, pipsqueak. I said I would let you out. I didn’t say anything about letting you go.”