forthsofar | in days to come when your heart feels undone

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caleb

in days to come when your heart feels undone

At first, she'd given that late-night text from Caleb--a friend in trouble, Caleb okay but out of school for the week--a healthy amount of sympathy, but no real concern. She sought out Clint in the senior hallway and divvied up the task of collecting assignments and notes from Caleb's classes, ignoring to the best of her ability the vague sniggers about sex cults she overheard from a few of the other members of the team as she walked away.

It was all working rather smoothly, with very little room for worry--until she stopped by Caleb's apartment that night and actually saw him. Whatever had happened, it left him drawn and tired, something almost lost behind his eyes. Rosie hadn't pried, despite the flurry of questions that rose to her mind, just handed over the collected assignments and made the appropriate vague noises of sympathy before he pushed the front door slowly shut again. Still, the sight was enough to make her worry, to increase that faint concern from before to something far harder to ignore.

Clint had agreed to drop things off the next two days, leaving Rosie time to think--and to plan. By Thursday, she had at least the seed of an idea, something that might provide Caleb with a little more comfort after a situation that had so clearly rattled him. She got Clint's half of the assignments from him after school, then stopped by the small market a few blocks from Candlewood to pick up a few additional things before heading home.

That night, she loads everything into a few tote bags she and Neil had picked up from one Darrow event or another and heads downstairs. She knocks once, twice, then tries the knob, finding it unlocked and barging in before she can quite stop herself.

"It's just me," she calls, nudging the door shut with her foot.

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He looks down, a little bashful. "I would've told you, eventually," he says. He wants that to be true. He hopes it's true. "I just, um. I sort of had it drilled into me, at home, not to tell anyone, and... I mean, I could feel it bugging you, too, but the timing never felt right."

He is glad it's out in the open, now. So far, there aren't any branches of the AM here, and he doesn't expect they'll crop up, suddenly, unless more Atypicals start showing up. He does miss Chloe and Sam.

"I don't blame you at all for not saying anything," Rosie says, opening drawers in search of a can opener. "I haven't mentioned Anterwold to almost anyone here. For the longest time, I thought I might sound a bit mad if I did." She opens up the can of tomatoes, dumping them with a loud glop into the smaller of the saucepans, then unwraps the stick of butter and throws it in too.

"Can I ask questions, or is that rude? We can trade off, I'll tell you about Anterwold, and you tell me about being...you said it was an empath, right?"

"Empath, yeah," he confirms. "You can ask, sure."

He's surprised. Most people don't ask if it's okay to ask questions. They just ask, and Caleb doesn't mind talking about his ability, but it's weirdly nice, that she's being so considerate.

And he is curious about this Anterwold place.

Rosie nods, peeling the papery skin off the onion as she weighs what her first question ought to be. It's not a terribly difficult choice. "Were you always able to do it? Feel what everyone was feeling?"

If she'd been able to do what Caleb does, that's what she thinks she might have wanted. To have it all come on suddenly, a rush of feelings that aren't even your own, sounds altogether too overwhelming.

He huffs a laugh and shakes his head. "No. I'm not that lucky. It started last year? I thought I was going crazy, at first, and my parents were freaking out because I was getting these really bad mood swings, and then I sorta... punched a guy in the face."

"Goodness, Caleb," she says, surprise and sympathy mingling in her voice. Finding a knife in the little block by the stove, she cuts the ends off the onion and then halves it before adding it to the pot of sauce. "That must have been frightening. And then...I mean, at least tell me whoever it is you punched in the face actually deserved it. Even if you didn't entirely mean to do it."

"He totally deserved it!" he says, maybe a little defensively. "He was picking on Moses Miller for being smart and chubby, and he was picking on me for getting a bad grade, and I felt Moses's anger, and my anger, and Tyler's dicky feelings, and it all just overwhelmed me."

He shrugs, forcing his voice a little calmer.

"I'm better, now, I mean. It's gotten easier. Sometimes it still sweeps me up, but I don't totally lose myself anymore."

He tries very hard not to think about Sam's safe house, of Damien, of how much he'd have liked to do that to the jerks that took Michael. But nobody was angry. They were just scared.

Rosie nods, having the decency to look a little remorseful at the sudden defensive tone in Caleb's voice. "I'm not blaming you," she says mildly, smiling over at him as she carries the saucepan to the stove and turns on the burner. "I know an awful lot of people here who'd gladly punch someone in the face for me. Or have, honestly." She shrugs, turning to face him and leaning back onto the counter.

"Okay, your turn to ask a question."

It feels... good, to talk about it with someone who wasn't there and who isn't Dr. Bright. It feels good to not be reminded that he has an anger management problem, in someone's worry for him — or fear of him. He takes a breath and lets it out on a little sigh, smiling sheepishly at her.

"Thanks," he says softly. It doesn't take him long to think of a question. "What exactly is Antler... world?"

That's not right, and he knows it even before he feels her bubbly amusement at his mispronunciation. But he doesn't get defensive this time. He just blushes a little and rubs the back of his neck.

Caleb ducks his head and blushes at almost the same time as she starts giggling--though he would have, wouldn't he? He'd have felt her delight as it happened, a thought that fills her with a bit of wonder beneath her already-evident amusement. "Anterwold," she corrects, even though they both already know he's recognized his error. "Honestly, I don't think I saw anything with antlers at all when I was there, not even when I was lost in the forest at the very end."

Rosie falls into a thoughtful silence, trying to put together an answer that's not going to sound utterly mad, even by Darrow standards. "I didn't see much of it," she admits, "but it seemed to be...a pocket universe, or another dimension, like people think Darrow is. There was this huge forest, and a little village called Willdon, though the people there seemed to think it was an awfully big city. And it wasn't modern at all, no cars or aeroplanes or even electricity."

Rosie catches her bottom lip in her teeth for a moment, worrying it as she debates whether to keep going. "The strangest part was that they called it Anterwold at all. That's the name the Professor used for the society in the story he was writing."

"D'you think maybe he was writing about that place?" he asks. This sounds so cool. "Like, he'd been there, too, before you?" God, he wishes Adam were here, because he'd probably have so many theories about it, so much to say. He and Rosie would get along well, he finds himself thinking.

"That's what I don't know!" she says, the hint of excitement and curiosity she can hear in Caleb's voice fueling something similar in her own. "I got there through this...it was like a glowing doorway in the corner of his cellar, so it's not as though he didn't have a way to get there himself. But does it exist because he wrote about it, or was he writing about it because it exists?"

She stops to catch her breath, a faintly lopsided grin on her face. "Every time I think too much about it, I end up with a headache."

"It's like that chicken/egg scenario," he remarks with a laugh. "Fuck. Adam would have so much to say about this. He's really good at the philosophy stuff, he'd probably manage to convince you that it's, like, both at the same time?"

This feels good. Caleb is excited to learn about this weird, impossible place, and Rosie is excited to talk about it, which means Caleb is more excited. It's a far cry from the couch moment just a little bit ago.

"Well, that's not going to help my potential headache at all," she shoots back, giggling. "It being both at once, and everything with time passing far faster there than it did back home. Which I hadn't even said yet, goodness. The first time I went through, it was only for a minute or two, but I met this boy. Jay, he was...he wasn't very old. And then I went back a week later, and five years had passed for him. He was practically a man."

The sauce lets out a faint burbling noise, starting to simmer; Rosie gives it a stir, crushing a few of the tomato pieces against the side of the pot as she goes. "Okay, my turn again." She crinkles her nose, thinking for a moment. "How does it work? Being able to feel everyone's feelings. Is it just...you just know, or is it something different?"

"It's... both, I guess. Like, you're curious right now. I can feel it like it's mine, but I know it's not. Other people's feelings usually have a physical sensation, but not always. Sometimes it's a color, or a shape in my body? Does that make sense?"

Adam loves it when he talks about his ability, but that doesn't mean he's gotten better at articulating the finer nuances of it.

Even knowing that he can sense it doesn't keep Rosie from letting out a soft noise of surprise as Caleb so accurately identifies her as curious. She sets the spoon down on the stovetop, turning back to face him. "It does, a little," she says. "The bit about colors most of all, that's...that's not uncommon, for feelings to at least be suggested by colors. In art, or someone writing about it in a book. Having the blues meaning you're sad and all that."

"Mm, but not everyone's sadness is blue," he explains. "Usually, loneliness is blue. Sadness that I've felt from other people can be all sorts of different colors, depending on, like, what they're sad about."

"Oh, brilliant," she murmurs, going over to one of the other stools at the counter and sitting down. The sauce has to simmer and can be left alone for a bit, and Rosie's more than happy to take the time to devote all her attention to this back and forth of the secrets they're sharing. "So sadness is more like...a shading over something else? The other color of whatever they feel."

She thinks back to that moment not long past at all, the two of them folded together on the couch as Caleb sobbed out all his grief and hurt. Knowing now how intense a moment that had to have been only makes her more glad she'd come by, that she'd provided what comfort she could.

"What's your favorite feelings color, then? Or sensation, whatever's the right way to put it."

Edited 2020-01-26 03:25 (UTC)

"Joy, I think," he says, though there's another, more complicated answer that he doesn't want to get into. He doesn't want to dim the mood by talking about Adam. Again. "Feeling someone's joy when I'm also happy is, like... Fuck, it's like soaring, y'know? Everything falls away and it's just this perfect moment where everything is just warm light, and..."

He breaks off, blushing a little, because he's starting to get poetic and enthused. He smiles and shrugs a little.

"Anyway, sometimes, feelings are colors, and sometimes, they're sensations, and sometimes they're both. Like... concern. I felt yours through the door before you even got here. It's this yellow-orange color with pokers that come out and sort of jab me? Like... like you're trying to get my attention, or something, almost like your feelings are reaching out to ask me if I'm okay."

He talks about light and about joy, and the deeper he gets into it the brighter his expression seems to grow, something easing in the set of his jaw and the curve of his smile. Even when he stops, cutting himself off with that sheepish roll of his shoulders, there's still the remains of that delight in the motion. Rosie doesn't say anything, just watches him, taking in the sheer fact of his happiness.

When he moves on to concern, she laughs. "Well, I didn't mean to jab you with pokers or anything," she says, light and teasing, "but I suppose I couldn't help it any more than anyone else does when they're concerned, since I didn't know. It's so strange, thinking about everyone going around making you see colors or feel things nobody else does, and none of them have any idea they're doing it."

That has him laughing a little, but he nods. "It's... definitely weird," he admits. "It took a lot of getting used to. Like... when someone's curious, my arms feel like they're covered in Pop Rocks that are just going off against my skin. Or, if they're stressed, I feel like I have bees swarming around in my belly. And nevermind if someone has a crush on someone else." That has another little laugh bubbling up and he blushes, thinking about Clint and his butterflies.

"Oh no," she says, feigning a little more drama in her reaction purely for the sake of exaggeration and teasing. "I'd never thought of that. The crush bit, specifically. And goodness knows there's all kinds of..." She sighs. "I don't think I've ever gone to a school that's more full of gossip and scandal and all the rest as Petros is."

Though she's aware he may pick up on it, Rosie thinks for a moment about all the rumors that have piled up since the start of the school year; whispers of sex cults and suggestions of impropriety, the lingering hints of the kinds of things David had said and believed about her and the other girls at the Home. It's embarrassing, still, but at this point there's far more annoyance in it than real shame.

"You must come home every day with a headache."

"No, not really," he says. "I mean, I can still get headaches, but usually it's if I feel a lot of the same feeling, or if I get drunk because someone else is drunk." He makes a face. "Oh yeah, that's... a thing. If I'm around someone who's getting drunk, I totally start to feel drunk, too." Which isn't fair, and is really fucking frustrating, but mainly just means that Caleb doesn't go to many parties, or tends to hang out with people who don't mind not drinking around him.

"You didn't figure that last part out because you're friends with Guy, did you?" she blurts, having the decency to look at least faintly ashamed a moment later when her brain catches up to what she'd said. "Sorry, that's not very nice. True, but...no. Forget I said it, please." Rosie makes a vague shooing motion with one hand, falling silent again before she tries to shift the topic.

"What else do you want to know about Anterwold?"

But Caleb laughs, shaking his head. "No, uh. That's actually how he found out about my ability. That winter dance? Someone spikes the punch, and, well." He shrugs, because he knows Rosie will be able to make the connection here.

Then he thinks about Anterwold, the things she's said so far, and he hums thoughtfully.

"Does that professor guy, does he know you've been there?"

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