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“Get off of me!” you squeal, gasping through chortles as Caleb’s fiendish fingers dance over your belly.
“No can do, pips. Tickle monster doesn’t let his victims off that easy.”
He’s had you pinned down on the couch for almost 10 minutes now, poking and prodding at your sides until you’d grown nauseous from laughter.
But still, Caleb won’t relent. Each time you swat his chest, try to bring your knee up between his legs—cute—he only moves his hands faster. For all the months he’d spent starved for your smile, he’s making up for lost time, he thinks.
“I’m not…laughing because I’m having fun,” you wheeze, wriggling under him unsuccessfully. “This is basically torture. When I get free…I’m making sure you get a dishonorable discharge.”
“What?” he smirks down at you. “If this is so torturous, why don’t you just push me off? Waitttt,” he gasps, leaning in conspiratorially. “It can’t be because I’m stronger than you, can it?”
As his infuriatingly smug, annoyingly handsome face looms over you, Caleb doesn’t realize he’s flown too close to the sun. Before he can react, you capitalize on the opening. Squirming out from beneath him, you take advantage of his surprise and use the momentum to flip him over, your hips now on his waist in a straddle.
“What were you saying?” you ask sweetly, the triumph in your voice slightly dampened by the way you’re still gulping down oxygen.
“Huh,” he shrugs, voice entirely too cheery for someone who’d just been bested. “I guess I stand corrected. Looks like someone’s been getting their reps in.”
“Won’t you admit defeat, then, Mr. Monster?” you smirk. And as you lean over him to assert your victory, Caleb can’t help but gawk at the way your lips part, your shirt rides up, your tattoo shines in the warm light of the—Wait. Your tattoo?!?
No matter how many times he blinked, there was no mistaking it. There, right on the side of your once-bare ribcage, lies the prominent, pitch-black ink.
You’re still hovering over him, your light, playful chuckles fanning his face, but they slowly fade out when his muscles go rigid. Perplexed, you follow his gaze down your body until you finally spot your exposed skin, and with the way you go rigid, Caleb can tell an argument is brewing between you.
The tense silence permeates the air, as if erasing the precious laughter he’d so giddily won from you just moments before.
Like usual, you break first. You couldn’t stand his silence, you’d said the last time. The way it makes you feel small, like you’ve done something wrong, like you’re in trouble. “So help me God, Caleb, I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions. Whatever you’re about to say, drop it. You can tickle me until my sides bleed, just—don’t.”
But Caleb, as much as he loved hearing your voice, wasn’t listening. While you were begging him to drop it, to leave it alone, he was too busy simmering over you doing something so drastic, so permanent to your body without his knowledge—like you didn’t trust him with the information. Didn’t trust him to hold your hand through the pain, to drive you home from the parlor, to wash and treat your tender flesh.
That awful feeling he thought you’d both moved past—had worked so hard to move you past—made him suffocate in his skin.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asks lowly, gravel filling his voice. “Were you…hiding it from me?”
As he rises to lift your shirt and get a clearer view, you intercept his hand in uncompromising resistance. He’d reached for you with his right arm. But somehow, your touch still manages to sting.
It’s Caleb’s turn to laugh, now, but the sound is hollow. “You won’t even show me,” he chuckles humorlessly. “Not even when I already know.” Firmly, but gently as ever, he lifts you off of him and onto the opposite side of the sofa.
You scoff at him, and the look of incredulity on your face would cause a less devoted man to back down. “Don’t lecture me about keeping secrets. I have a tattoo, Caleb. You have a double life.”
“It’s for your own safety that I—”
“Is it for my own safety that you treat me like a child?”
He pauses, and before he can stop it, he feels his face shift into the mask molded for him against his will. The face—his own, but somehow not—that plagues his nightmares. Cold, unfeeling, uncaring, indomitable.
“You don’t have to trust me anymore. But I’d appreciate it if you said it to my face instead of making me believe you did.”
He hears the soft gasp that escapes you, but he refuses to look—too consumed by his emotions, too ashamed to face yours. It’s when he turns to leave that he hears your quick footsteps, and almost immediately, you’re whipping him around to look at you.
Your shirt is raised to the base of your sternum.
And in the warm light of the living room, the soft glow of the summer evening illuminating the streaks on your skin, Caleb sucks in a breath.
VIII
IX
MMXLVIII
August 9, 2048.
The date your lives had changed. The date he’d broken his promise to always be by your side. The date part of him—physical, or something more—had died.
With a bold, decisive line striking through it.
His eyes dart to the space below. You had another one, he realized. This was the one he’d glimpsed earlier, then—the one that’d made him question your faith in him.
IV XVIII MMXLIX
April 18, 2049.
The date his life had been revealed to you. The date you’d fought your way back into it. The date your shattered souls had met again and vowed to mend each other.
This one is different from the last. The numerals are pure. Pristine, clear, unmarred. Unapologetic.
An insidious, deserved pang spreads through his chest. You’d wanted to remember both dates, to etch them into your skin. You’d needed to move past the first. You’d needed to savor the second.
A space on your sacred body, dedicated to him—to you both. To your tragic end, to your new beginning. Forever.
“Are you happy now, you jerk?” You seethe, yanking your shirt down and snapping him out of his reverie.
And as your voice wobbles, Caleb is anything but.
“Pip-squeak,” he starts hoarsely, feeling anxious bile scald the back of his throat. “I didn’t think…If I’d known….”
“But you didn’t know, Caleb. You didn’t need to know,” you stress. The pained inflections in your voice seem to sync with your steps as you walk to him, your head level with his shuddering chest. “I will bare my soul to you. Happily. When I am good and ready. But forcing me to do it before then? Just so you can convince yourself that I trust you? That gives me all the more reason not to.”
The bite in your tone numbs him to the way you push past him, shoving his shoulder hard enough to bruise. When you retreat to your bedroom, he hears the sharp click of the door lock and allows a wry grin to cross his face at the irony. And he thought you’d been shutting him out before.
*****
You wake up with swollen eyes. An uncomfortable reminder of last night’s humiliation.
With a sigh, you roll your way out of bed, your limbs sore from being hunched in the fetal position for so long. You usually slept with a human-shaped back pillow, but you supposed that arrangement was on pause for the time being.
You wonder how he’s doing. How he’d spend the night, if he’d left in the middle of it. As much as you hate to think it, you wouldn’t blame him.
As you exit—or try to exit—your bedroom, though, it seems your worries are unfounded.
There, slumped against the wooden door, is a sleeping, miserable-looking Caleb. Eyebrows drawn, nose scrunched, hands twitching—he must be having a nightmare.
With a resolute swallow, you push down the pain from the night before and, against your better judgment, prop the door open just enough to slip out.
Kneeling beside him, you stroke his hair gently and hold his left hand in yours. “Caleb,” you call softly. “Wake up, please.”
At the sound of your voice, his eyes flutter open—slowly, at first, until they focus on you. In an instant, surprise, regret, and a flicker of hope flash across his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, tightening his grip on your hand. “I shouldn’t have—even if you hadn’t gotten them for us,” he breathes shakily, “I shouldn’t have pried.”
He’s sitting up now, having pushed himself off the door to get as close to you as you’d allow. The next time he speaks, the rasp in his voice suggests he’d slept about as well as you had.
“You should…” he begins, swallowing thickly. “You should only tell me your secrets when you’re ready. I’ll wait. I’m lucky to know anything about you at all.”
Your chest constricts, and the ghosts of mortification and unwarranted guilt are the only things stopping you from forgiving him. With a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes, you remove your palm from his grasp, pretending not to notice when he chases your touch. “You should stretch your legs.”
*****
The day is slow and awkward.
Your top-floor apartment is sweltering in the summer heat, so you don a loose crop top—it’s not like you have anything to lose anymore—and Caleb tries not to stare at your ribs.
It’s Sunday, the day you usually reserve for chores, and you try to ignore the way he follows you through every room: dusting your bedroom fan, mopping the kitchen floor, cleaning the bathtub while you wipe the counter. It’s a wordless process, but a seamless one—evidently, even a stalemate can’t jeopardize your synchrony.
He disappears when you’re finishing up, and as you wonder if he’d gotten sick of your anger, the scent of your favorite food wafts through the air. In curiosity, hunger, and abashed dependence—you couldn’t boil an egg without starting a fire—you warily make your way to the kitchen you’d both left spotless.
It still is, for the most part; the only hint of disturbance is the freshly cooked meal sitting on the island. One plate, one glass, one set of silverware. And Caleb sits in the living room, pretending to busy himself with a diagram, forlornly glancing over to you every few seconds. There if you need him, but not daring to intrude.
*****
It’s nighttime when he tries again.
You’re reading on the couch, instinctively avoiding the cursed spot from the night before, when Caleb shuffles into the room. In utter dejection, he makes room for himself on the floor between your legs and hugs his knees to his chest. The action tugs at your dwindling resolve, weakened by the care he’d shown you today, and before you know it, you’re running your fingers through his hair.
He stiffens and relaxes at your touch before leaning back into you, enveloping himself in your embrace. As he presses innocent, lingering kisses to the inside of your knee, you feel the quiet tension in the room begin to build.
This time, he breaks the silence.
“I never would have imagined those days meant so much to you,” he begins softly. “Wasn’t sure if you thought the first was a blessing in disguise. If you thought the second was some kind of curse.” Your hand falters in his tousled locks, and he exhales shakily. “I was just…surprised, pips. And hurt, I guess. You doin’ something so serious without tellin’ me—it never would’ve happened before,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to guilt trip you into showing me, I just…”
“I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed,” you whisper, saving him from the struggle of finding the right words. “Not because I don’t trust you. I do, if you can believe it. More than anyone.”
Caleb stills against you, and you place a hand on his shoulder before continuing with a sigh. “I basically saw those numbers in my sleep, at one point,” you chuckle in self-deprecation. “They flashed in my head over, and over, and over—the day I lost you, the day I found you. So I figured the only way to stop it was to carry them with me, always. And when the clarity hit…I thought I was silly. Immature. Like, I had something etched onto my body for you, Caleb. I felt like I was too attached. Too dependent on you.”
“Is it bad if I say I’d like that?” he quips with a tired smile. “Pip-squeak,” he sighs. “You could never be too attached to me. When I saw those dates—when I realized what they meant,” he swallows, “I wanted to hold you to me ‘til I couldn’t breathe. Wanted to tattoo your tattoos inside my eyelids so I could see them every time I blink,” he jokes, kissing your palm. “That’s too attached, by the way.”
As you giggle at him—your first in almost 24 hours—he brightens slightly. “I really am sorry for forcing your hand. Makin’ you feel like your only choice was to tell me. But, for the record, those are the least embarrassing tattoos I’ve ever seen. Gideon has one of a monkey, you know.”
And after you duck your head into his shoulder to stifle your laughter, you haul him up and into your bedroom—no door for a mattress, this time. You’re both due for some much-needed sleep.
*****
The next day, you stand in front of your bathroom mirror while Caleb hugs you from behind, admiring the inky black lines on your exposed waist. Leaning in to kiss your cheek, he whispers into your ear: “You know, they say rib tattoos hurt a lot. You shouldn’t have had to go through all that alone. Why don’t I get matching ones so we can share the pain?”