#poor lil guy thought he failed as a healing angel

[the-soot-nest]

don't get your soot bois wet

but if you do, make a small fire

[kadabralin]

OCtober day 4: Caleb

My boi

https://charahub.com/character/77552/Caleb-Brown

Caleb is a rework of an old OC from when I was 12. She was this chick named Skylar Angel Smith and she was ~magical~ and ~special~ and man it was good fucking times let me tell you. Later I had inspiration from an X-Files episode about a spiritual healer or w/e and I was like “I’M DOING THIS” and Caleb was born.

This guy is a scrawny loser from a rural town in Georgia and his dad was the local Baptist pastor. Also Caleb is 110% gay so we’re already off to a great start. 

Everything was sunshine and daisies until Caleb had a Near Death Experience(tm) when he was like 2 and since then he’s been able to heal basically any horrible disease and injury. And his dad, being a less than savory religious dude, was like KACHING. I mean sure it’s an awesome miracle that needs to be shared with humanity but like it’s also important to cash in on this you know???

Caleb being a lil kid just thought he was doing a good deed but his dad was raking in all this dough from desperate people. Then one day when this poor boy was 14 his parents were out and this lady shows up at his home in hysterics and he’s like “yeah sure I’ll help I guess”. So they go to her house and her 5 year old son is dead. Totally dead, beyond help. And Caleb is like FUCK because like, sure he’s performed miracles and shit and healed the sick but he’s never raised the fucking dead. But the lady is so hysterical that he decides to try anyway and it works! Except not really. This is like that FMA shit where the kids try to use alchemy to bring their dead mom back. Doesn’t work. It’s a literal nightmare and whatever he brought back wasn’t human and it’s was very traumatizing. 

After that Caleb has an existential crisis and wonders if his gift is actually evil and he refuses to heal people anymore, especially once he realizes his dad has been exploiting these poor motherfuckers and they have a huge falling out. A couple years later his dad is dying from heart failure but they’re not on speaking terms, Caleb doesn’t even offer to heal him, his dad doesn’t ask, and he dies. Queue existential crisis 2.0 and exorbitant amount of guilt. Plus his small town is like “woah I thought he was blessed with Jesus to heal people why didn’t he save the Pastor omg”. So that’s a thing.

As soon as he turns 18 and graduates high school he gets the hell out of dodge and runs off to college, but like. This poor kid is so fucked up and depressed and anxious he barely makes it through a semester, fails most of his classes, and once the semester is over he takes his truck and just LEAVES. He doesn’t want to go home, so he just picks a road and drives. He calls his mom sometimes to let her know he’s not dead but that’s about it. He drives, uses his college money to stay at shitty motels and works odd jobs and then moves on.

After a couple years he ends up in Minneapolis, basically in Basanti’s back yard, and after he loiters around her property for a few days she cuts him a deal. He can live at her place in her spare room for free if he works in her tea shop and she gets to use his truck. It’s a good deal and he takes it and they become BFFs. Basanti has her own baggage too and they help each other get over their shit and turn into happier, better functioning adults.

A lifetime later, Caleb has his own dinky apartment and he’s working as a bartender at a local watering hole and he meets this guy named Arthur. (Arthur is @joccatpaw‘s OC). They hit it off and get together (turns out Arthur is a reaper??? Who knew.) and move in together and then Arthur proposes and it’s super fucking cute. Except a week later this creepy asshole named Dai shows up at his bar, threatens the snot out of him, and then everything is on fire and suddenly he’s whisked away by these weirdos that are also reapers? (Except they’re nothing like Arthur and Caleb has to teach them that no, you can’t survive off of uncooked ramen noodles and oreos how the fuck have they lived this long). And also these guys have been stalking him most of his life, and oh, they have physical bodies because he fucked up the boundaries between worlds when he tried to bring that kid back to life once upon a time and they were originally going to kill him but decided not to. 

It’s a lot to take in.

The worst part is that for whatever reason Dai is trying to fucking murder him??? And he isn’t allowed to go back home??? So he can’t even say goodbye to Arthur and Basanti and they think he’s dead.

It’s the shittiest fucking year of his life.