An Astute Observation | Caleb/Reader
About: A short what if scenario wherein you noticed Caleb didn't get any snacks at all. Who could've thought you catching eye of that would change the outcome of the story?
Pairing: Caleb/Reader
“We’ve been outside for too long. Gran’s going to be worried.”
“You’re doing it again. Go inside by yourself. I’m not your sidekick.” You huffed at Caleb, watching him approach the front door of Grandma’s home. But instead of following him, you paused. “Wait. Did you even get the snacks I asked for?”
“I thought you said you’re grown up now? Get it yourself.”
You pouted. The gall of this man you have as a childhood friend. You were about to retort, the words forming on your tongue like old times, until realization hit you.
“So you were following me this whole time!” You accused him, and he had the guts to look unfazed, merely blinking at your words. You’ve expected him to trail after you, as he has always been protective of you since childhood. But somehow it… hurt, like he didn’t trust that you would be fine on your own.
Not wanting him to pick up on the conflicting feelings within you, just as he always did with one glance at you, you turned away to hide your face from him, and began to make your trip to the store.
“Hmfph fine! I’ll go get them myself, I don’t need you to help me anyway.”
And just as expected, Caleb grabbed your wrist before you could take another step.
“...Are you really going to walk around with a wound like that? You’re going to hurt yourself like that.”
“Didn’t you say I was a grown up? I can take care of myself–”
The odd tension that hung in the air this entire time suddenly snapped, and instinctively you yanked Caleb backward, shielding him from–
-
“Hey! Hey pipsqueak! Help is on the way, don’t fall asleep–” “Dammit– Focus on me–”
-
“She will wake up soon, go and get some rest first.”
“Thank you Zayne.”
Caleb sighed the moment Zayne, or Dr. Zayne now, stepped out of the room. It’s been hours since the blast and while he and you were fortunate enough to have survived the disaster, Grandma… wasn’t.
He pulled a chair to the side of your bed and sat, observing your sleeping face as he grasped your hand tightly, as if scared you would be out of reach if he were to let go.
You shielded him from the blast with your own body, thus protecting him from the shockwave and debris that flew out. He remembered cradling you afterwards, trying to keep you conscious to no avail. The emergency response team tried to convince him to get himself checked for injuries while they treated you but he refused, citing that he was fine and he never let you out of his sight until Zayne appeared.
He was forced to get himself looked over after Zayne took her into the emergency ward. And during the medical examination, a question came to the forefront of his mind and stayed there.
If he had went in as planned, would the little argument he and you had beforehand be the last conversation before he…
And if he did go in… That meant you would be alone. Alone against this world that he was desperately trying to shield you from.
He lowered his head at that thought, bringing your hand to his lips and murmured.
“You still have me… I will protect you to my dying breath, I swear to it.”
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masochist gojo. gojo who's in love with pain, so much that it feels like pleasure, he can barely distinguish between the two anymore.
gojo who's so starved for touch. who's had an infinite space between himself and the whole world for so long, for so many years, every day in and day out.
gojo who's survived off glancing presses when a barista hands him a coffee, the rare hug from his students (who are mostly orphans) that he can't bring himself to decline.
gojo who craves more but can't bring himself to accept it except in fleeting moments with strangers or students.
his hands that long to be held. he wants it so bad that he teases a cursed spirit, laces his fingers with its own, right before he utterly crushes the being in battle, untouchable all over again.
gojo whose skin is hungry for someone else's. he hasn't felt the warmth of a hand in his own in so long. not since - since his youth.
gojo who sometimes wishes he could get hit. who sees the impact of curse techniques on his infinity and feels a wild, strange desire for them to go straight through and strike him.
he imagines it, vividly, being impaled by a long spear (inverted spear) that goes straight through him. how it would lance his flesh so cleanly.
being struck so hard, across the face, in the stomach, enough to knock the wind out of him.
enough to feel it with his whole body.
gojo who wants to be touched so bad he doesn't even care if it hurts anymore. infinity couldn't protect him from geto's betrayal.
gojo who keeps infinity up not because he doesn't want to get hit, but because he's terrified of what he might do when it happens.
gojo who got hard whenever geto sparred with him. he still doesn't know if it was because of geto, or because he had no infinity back then, no way to block the strikes.
he dreams of his youth. bruises littering his pale, pretty form like kisses, proof that he was human, there, that there was someone who could reach him.
dark purple things that turned pretty colors as they healed. he remembers pressing into them, relishing the hurt, feeling like he was getting hit (touched, reached, connected) all over again.
nothing ever touches him again. not like that. not like anything.
he never feels it. he never feels anything.
satoru gojo who wants, so very very badly, to feel something.
pain is a choice for him, always a choice. he alone has the privilege of deciding whether or not anything can touch him.
he could try to let more strangers touch him. one night stands, discreet arrangements. he had a pretty face and a body to match. there was no shortage of willing partners.
he lets them touch him, lets them hurt him. lets them drool over his body and use it at their leisure. they tell him he's beautiful, and he believes them.
white hair, blue eyes, sprawled out with a lean, unmarred body full of bare flesh for them to bite and scratch and bruise. he finds people who will do it, do it hard, fuck him up until he's lost entirely in the feeling of being touched, having someone against him, with him, above him.
it makes him feel like a piece of meat. it makes him feel good.
or he thinks it does, anyways.
sometimes, when he's gone particularly long without sleep, when his partner has gone particularly hard, he gets a real rush.
heart racing out of his chest. a cold sweat that overwhelms him. breaths coming in labored gasps. he can heal himself, he's physically fine, so this must all be in his head.
he acknowledges that information, distantly, like it's not happening to him. it doesn't help.
it feels like part of his body has been ripped away from him, something vital and important, and it's about to get up and run away.
always, always, it happens when his partner is no longer touching him. when he lays alone in the sheets, by his own volition, because of course these partners are not meant to be attachments.
love is not a privilege, though, not for the strongest sorcerer. it's a curse.
it's the only curse which infinity cannot protect him from.
so gojo stays untouchable. distant.
but the hunger doesn't go away. never.
he likes to imagine that suguru swallowed this one last curse before he died. something sweet and bitter, like losses at the arcade, sunny days at the beach, walking together with shoko, nanami, haibara.
but even suguru couldn't have absorbed this curse. it's in his bones, deep, longing and wanting even after he's dead and gone.
gojo is hungry. he is so, so hungry. and he has nothing to eat that will not leave him just as empty as before.
touch-starved. love-starved. pain-craving.
if someone could hurt him then it wouldn't matter that he was terrified of attachment. they could latch onto him, into his heart, under his skin. bury themselves in his chest like they belonged.
they could kill a hundred and twelve people and it wouldn't matter, because he wouldn't be able to kill them.
gojo is hungry, so hungry.
please feed him.
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okay so i was thinking of a joke earlier about how in DPDC Amity Park's slogan "a great place to live" is not only city propaganda but also the city lording it over the rest of America for being normal. But then I remembered that, despite how many DCU Cities with heroes in it there are, the amount of cities in America without heroes still far outnumber the amount of cities in America WITH heroes.
So I did a little digging so the joke would still land. Something most heroes have in common is that they operate in major cities. What makes a major city? I found that the general consensus is that the population is roughly over or around a million. THEN I looked up the populations of cities in the DCU that I thought of off the top of my head. So Gotham, Metropolis, Starling City, Central City, Jump City. All of them ranked up to millions in population (most of them were in the tens of millions).
Amity Park's wikipedia describes it as being similar to specifically Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Philadelphia's Population: 1.576 million as of 2021
Chicago's Population: 2.697 million as of 2021
San Francisco: 815,201 as of 2021
Whiiich means that Amity Park if we take that from canon, is probably a major city. There are approximately 19,000 cities in America with probably less than a hundred that are major cities. Adding the DCU major cities wouldn't skew the data too much.
Which MEANS that I can make the joke that Amity Park's "great place to live" is not only just typical city propaganda, but also its Amity Park lording it over the other major cities for being one of the only major cities that doesn't have problems bad enough to warrant a superhero or a vigilante. Cue stage left the Fentons and Phantom :)
Amity Parkers were probably SO proud that they didn't need a superhero. They didn't have to worry about things like 'world ending threats' and 'super-powered individuals' and 'staggering property damage'. And then enter Fentons.
It also could be used as an excuse for why nobody took notice to Amity Park getting ghosts if folks like me aren't huge fans of the notion of a media blackout via Tucker, Technus, or the US Government. Or if you want to keep Amity Park as its urban city self. Amity Park's news on ghosts gets drowned out in a week because there's news on more popular, well-known cities going on every other day. The shit going on in Amity Park is every other major city's regular Tuesday and it gets filtered as such.
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