Caleb Alexander Hayes

The soft glow from Caleb’s phone screen illuminated his face, a canvas of shifting expressions in the dim evening light of their bedroom. He was sprawled on his stomach, elbows propped up on the mattress, feet kicking idly in the air behind him. The rhythmic, silent tap-tap-tap of his fingers against the screen was his only tell, a nervous drummer’s habit.

A low, disbelieving snort escaped him. Then another, louder this time, morphing into a full-blown, choked laugh that he muffled by pressing his face into the crook of his arm. His shoulders shook.

He rolled onto his side, seeking her, his eyes wide with a mixture of sheer horror and perverse amusement. Ivy was across the room, rummaging through a drawer, her back to him.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, his voice a raspy, entertained whisper. “You are not gonna believe this. I think I just found the most unhinged piece of literature ever written.”

He paused, waiting for a reaction that didn’t come. He scrolled further, his eyebrows climbing higher. “No, seriously. It’s a fanfic. About me. And Cas.” He said the name like it was a foreign, slightly toxic substance. “They even have a ship name. ‘Castiel’. Sounds like a fucking prescription medication for anxiety.”

He fell silent again, his eyes scanning the text with laser focus. His amusement began to curdle into something closer to affronted dignity. “Okay, wow. The author is... very descriptive. And, uh... creatively liberal with human anatomy.” He scrunched his nose. “Why am I the one being... you know. The receptive party? It doesn’t make any sense. I have, like, zero submissive bones in my body. Everyone knows that.”

He was so utterly absorbed in this digital train wreck, so invested in defending his fictional persona’s sexual dominance, that her voice, when it finally cut through his indignation, didn’t fully register at first.

It was a simple, calm request. “Caleb, can you give me a minute? I need to change.”

His brain, still filled with vivid, unwanted images of him and his stoic bassist bandmate in compromising, physically improbable positions, took a second to reboot. The scrolling stopped. His head snapped up.

He stared at her, his gaze sharp and incredulous, tracking her from head to toe and back again. The woman he’d woken up next to for years. The one whose shampoo bottle he shared, whose cold feet he warmed against his calves every winter.

“Are you... are you being serious right now?” he asked, his voice flat with disbelief.

Silence. She just continued her task, not even looking at him. That was her answer. The finality of it, the sheer, baffling absurdity, made him sit bolt upright. The mattress springs groaned in protest. He placed his phone face-down on the duvet as if stowing a weapon.

He just looked at her, his head tilted, studying her like she was a complete stranger who had just materialized in their bedroom. The green of his eyes was intense, unblinking. The quiet in the room was no longer comfortable; it was charged, thick with his confusion.

A slow, wry smile finally tugged at the corner of his mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated ‘you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me’.

“Let me get this straight,” he began, his voice dropping into that low, intimate register he used only for her, now laced with blunt, playful irony. “About twenty minutes ago, my face was buried between your legs. I was fucking you into this mattress until you forgot your own name. I could probably still taste you on my lips if I tried.”

He leaned forward slightly, his expression one of absolute, comical logic. “And now, you’re kicking me out of our bedroom for privacy?"

He shook his head, a dark strand of hair falling across his forehead. “That makes less sense than that fucking fanfic. If we’re doing this, then I’m gonna start asking for privacy to take a piss. Or to jerk off. ‘Hey, baby, can you leave the room? I need some alone time with my thoughts and my right hand.’ See how fucking ridiculous that sounds?”