Chapter 11 #2
“Are you real?” he wonders aloud dumbly. “Did I just meet the ghost of really good soup?”
A scoff floats down the hall, and Caleb pads out of the bedroom. “Rest,” he orders, taking the bowl from Asher.
Asher closes his eyes and stifles a yawn. Filled with all that food, his brain begins to slow. A nap sounds delightful. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on will be future Asher’s problem.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Ohio?” he asks as Caleb shuffles him into the bedroom.
An odd expression crosses over Caleb’s face. “Guess my head wasn’t in the game,” he says finally.
When Asher sinks down into a mountain of pillows, fog curls around the edges of his brain once more.
His body seems to know it is safe enough to let go though, for his lungs let out a contented exhale.
The final thing he briefly registers before the mist of sleep whisks it away is calloused fingers brushing his fringe out of his eyes.
Asher wakes up some undetermined amount of time later with a ringing in his ears and tiny knives stabbing his brain.
He stumbles to the bathroom, choking back bile until he collapses knee-first onto the tiled floor.
The movement itself, jerky and dizzying, makes his head throb, and Asher finds himself dry-heaving into the toilet bowl.
Blanketed with a lethargy that seeps into his bones, he sobs and hugs his knees against his chest. Tears stream down his face and pool on his lips.
Asher’s long grown accustomed to living away from his parents, but in a moment like this one, where he’s all alone to pick up the pieces with no one to comfort him, believing that he’s going to make it out in one piece feels impossible.
Nothing but a hollow ache of loving and longing, he finds himself wishing with an overwhelming intensity that his parents are by his side.
The thought—part homesickness, part fear—is enough to send a fresh wave of tears down his face.
He craves his mom’s arms around him and loathes how he has to settle for self-soothing by imagining her hands on his shoulder.
Except . . . it’s real.
“It’s okay, hey,” a low voice says, and there’s a pair of warm arms encircling him and soft shushing noises by his ear.
Asher blinks miserably. Caleb? He’s still here? Asher tries to ask but instead retches again. Exhausted, he rests his cheek on the disgusting ceramic seat. This is gross. He craves the sweet release of death.
There’s the sound of a tap running before a cool towel is pressed against his forehead.
“Come on,” Caleb says. He rubs slow circles on Asher’s back. His face is inches away from Asher’s, brows knitted together. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
Curling an arm around Asher’s waist, Caleb helps Asher up.
He walks Asher to the bedroom, stopping every couple feet so Asher can whine and let out a frankly pathetic sniff.
When they reach their goal, Caleb presses a glass of water to Asher’s lips, coaxes him into downing a few sips, then tucks a blanket around his shoulder.
“I’ll be outside,” Caleb tells him. “Give me a shout if you need anything.”
“Can you—” Asher reaches toward Caleb without turning his head.
He searches for Caleb’s wrist and wraps his fingers around them.
He’s surprised to discover a scar there too, the inch of skin raised and bumpy from a smattering of stitches.
Years ago, there was a cage match where a length of barbed wire shredded Caleb’s forearm to ribbons.
He had refused to stop despite bleeding all over the ring.
Asher hadn’t realized it was that severe.
For a moment, the rivalry and hatred fades into the background.
What if he’s not the only one who needs to be held? “Can you stay for a bit?” Asher asks.
He pulls, just the lightest tug, and his heart lurches at how easily Caleb goes.
Caleb is stiff at first. It’s an awkward dance.
Trying to fit himself against Asher’s back is so different from what they do in the ring.
He moves like his body yearns to come close, but his brain holds him back.
Eventually, he settles, wrapping an arm around Asher’s waist. He spreads his palm against Asher’s chest, and they both still, pressed close in the darkness.
Asher scrubs his eyes. “Sorry for being a baby.”
“Brat,” Caleb corrects him, but there is no venom in his voice. He huffs out a small laugh. Asher feels it under his ear and shudders. Caleb’s other hand makes its way to Asher’s hair, scratching softly at his scalp.
Asher might cry again. “Thank you,” he murmurs, hoarse.
The arm around Asher’s chest tightens. Asher relaxes into it, and the white-hot flashes in his head slowly subsides.
“I’ll stay,” Caleb says.
Asher’s voice comes out small. “You promise?”
“Yeah. Goodnight, Ross.”
“Goodnight, Knight.”
Caleb keeps his promise. He stays.
In fact, he continues to be a sort of semi-permanent fixture, puttering around the apartment with laundry or bedsheets in hand.
He wakes Asher up each morning and makes him finish a slice of toast and two half-boiled eggs drenched in dark soy sauce before letting him go back to bed.
He leaves occasionally, disappearing for a couple hours before he returns in a change of clothes and paper bags filled with berries, leafy greens, and all sorts of protein that are supposedly good for cell recovery.
Perhaps most alarmingly, he continues to hold Asher at night.
Sometimes it’s a careful arm draped over his torso.
Other times it’s a hand on his hip. It is admittedly not particularly straight of Asher, but Asher lets him because the alternative of being alone is far worse, especially when the world outside is too quiet.
It’s hard for his brain not to leapfrog from one worst case scenario to the next now that there is nothing else to distract it.
He can’t work out. He can’t do anything that remotely saps his energy to quieten that inner voice.
And it is saying: What if he never gets better?
What if his neurologist is wrong and his career is over?
Rationally, this isn’t likely to be true, but his overactive imagination manages to convince him otherwise.
Having Caleb around helps. His soft but constant snoring helps.
The increasingly familiar steady but insistent pressure of his palm against Asher’s chest lulls him to a restful sleep.
This whole coexisting situation is peculiar as fuck, but it’s also . . . not awful.
“How are you feeling today?” Caleb asks on a Tuesday morning.
Asher turns as the now-familiar set of footsteps comes out of the kitchen.
He watches, heart inexplicably in his throat, as Caleb rounds the corner with another tray in hand.
When Caleb sets it down on his lap, he sees it holds a bowl of congee with bits of shredded chicken, a soft-boiled egg, and some leafy vegetable that might be bok choy.
“Good morning,” he says. He blinks back a smile. “Did you buy this too?”
Caleb shrugs. “Sure.”
Asher picks up the spoon and tips some of the porridge into his mouth.
It’s hot and comforting and sinks right into his core, exactly like what his mom cooks whenever he falls sick.
Warmth spreads through his body. “Better,” he says.
This time he does smile, the corners of his lips tugged upward by some invisible force that he’s helpless against. “I’d put my odds of dying at a solid zero percent. ”
“Good.”
Glancing at Caleb, Asher notices his disheveled appearance for the first time. His usually perfect hair is askew. A curl falls into eyes that are papery. He doesn’t join Asher on the couch. Instead, he holds himself some distance away, muscles locked, arms crossed over his chest like a shield.
For all Caleb tries to hide, it’s strange how Asher can read him like a book.
He knows what Caleb is anticipating, not unlike the way they seamlessly move together inside the ring.
There are his arms, always right there, ready to catch him.
Asher can let himself fall, sinking into nothingness, without so much of a glance over his shoulder, and those arms will find him.
They’ll bring him back to the surface. Those are his shoulders, his body, always cushioning blows.
And those are his fingers, rough against Asher’s knuckles, communicating through nothing but touch.
Giving Asher what he needs right when he needs it.
Asher doesn’t know the when or why of it, but it’s almost magnetic. Two parts of a moving whole.
Now Caleb’s anticipating Asher ordering him to leave since he’s on the upswing. Throwing him out. To be told the already known truth that this isn’t his home. He’s just a guest.
The truth is also that it would be so easy to hurt Caleb in return.
To remind Caleb that he did this. Actions always have consequences.
With one simple word, they can go back to what they used to be: nothing.
What surprises Asher is that he can’t bring himself to deal that final blow.
He tries to, briefly, but the mere thought of it makes his chest squeeze terribly.
“Stay,” Asher says quietly. “You don’t have to leave, not unless you want to.” He shovels the last bits of bok choy into his mouth and places the tray back on the coffee table.
Caleb’s gaze slices over. A muscle in his jaw works. Asher can sense Caleb cataloging his words and trying to drag his fingers through it, pulling them apart. “It’s fine,” he says finally. His back hunches over ever so slightly. “Whatever.”
Asher rolls his eyes. “You made a promise, remember?” An olive branch. He pats the cushion beside him.
They hover there, staring at each other. A beat later, Caleb collapses gratefully beside him on the couch.
“Okay, so.” Asher spreads his palms out, waiting. When Caleb remains silent, he adds, “Entertain me, my clown.”
“Pretty sure that’s you,” Caleb says dryly. His lips twitch.
“He has jokes? Who would’ve thought?”
“Brat.”