there's a boy in town, says he'll love me forever.
there's a boy in town, says he'll love me forever. pretty little liars. caleb/hanna. 3622 words. pg13. Caleb, through all his ages and places, and all the things he won't tell Hanna yet.
Rachel Rivers goes into labor at 10:12pm two weeks before she is due. Her water breaks and she’s afraid she peed herself - pregnancy keeps fucking with her bladder. It’s sticky warm outside, almost unbearably so, and all her windows are open. There are two fans whirring lazily by the bed and her tank top is pushed over her stomach, shorts resting low on her hips.
She doesn’t know where Aidan is. Two nights ago they’d gotten in a fight over that girl he was flirting with at a bar while she sat on the couch at home, ankles swollen with stretch marks on her hips and a stomach the size of a basketball.
I had a great time last night, the message said. The girl sounded pretty. Rachel hated her immediately. They fought about it of course, Aidan screaming about freedom and trust while she had kept two hands on her stomach and her fingers itched for a cigarette.
“This is not what I signed up for!” resonated throughout the room and Rachel flinches as if she’d been hit. For all of Aidan’s faults - his flakiness, immaturity, irresponsibility, selfishness at times - he had never purposely hurt her.
She is eighteen years old, in love with a boy she’s losing, and very, very pregnant. This is not what she signed up for either.
“Fine,” she says with a steady voice and thumping heart, “you can leave then.”
They stared at each other, a game of emotional chicken, and he kept looking towards the door. It takes him five minutes before he takes the first step, and then he can’t leave fast enough, knocking down the only piece of artwork in the whole damn apartment on his way down the hallway. He doesn’t look back once and Rachel doesn’t cry till after he slams the door shut.
After her water breaks, there is a sharp pain, followed by another, and another until they wrap themselves tight around her squeezing, pushing, tearing. She is alone in the hospital, her mom and dad back in New Jersey and Aidan probably with a girl. The nurse holds her knees back as she pushes for one long, horrible hour. She screams more than she cares to admit and cries just as much.
“It’s a boy,” the emergency room doctor says after fifteen strenuous hours and Rachel collapses back against the bed. She feels like she’s been ripped from the inside out, already sore, but there is a baby on her chest and he is perfect. She tears up at the sight of him - ten tiny fingers and toes. This is something she knows she will do right.
“His name is Caleb Anthony.”
Caleb Anthony is brought into the world with one mother who loves him. There’s no guarantee that he will get to keep her.
Louisiana is home for the first five years of his life. Rachel works double shifts as a waitress at a Joe’s Crab Shack and a maid at a touristy hotel in downtown New Orleans. Caleb learns the sound of Louis Armstrong drifting through the night and the taste of a spicy gumbo on his tongue. His voice lilts in a Louisiana accent, dulled by his mother’s New Jersey cadence but there all the same.
On nights when his mom wasn’t working, she would read him a book and run her fingers through his too-long hair. “You need a haircut,” she teased. He just smiled and shook his head no, laughing when she tickled him hard until he was gasping for breath. She kissed his head and sang him into sleep.
On nights when his mom was working, Mrs. Owens from next door would come over and give him a cup of hot cocoa in his favorite mug. It was white with a picture of the Batman logo, cracked all along one side. “It’s a miracle this old thing doesn’t leak,” Mrs. Owens said with a shake of her head. She tucked him into bed and stayed in the kitchen until his mom got home. He sat in bed, watching the light pour in from underneath his door, until he could hear his mom’s voice.
They were dirt poor, of course. Christmases and birthdays were small little things. He got a basketball once, ate a chocolate cake that his mom made and played with the two girls down the hall. Louisiana was good to him, mostly.
Rachel’s crossing the street, hand digging around in her purse for her tube of lipstick on her way home from a night shift, when she gets hit by a drunk driver. The light was flashing walk, so she did. The car wasn’t so much a car as a machine - a massive, black pickup truck that gleamed under the streetlights. The driver’s name was Toby, alcoholic for 10 years, married with kids and the like. Convicted of manslaughter and rotting in prison, Caleb hopes.
Mrs. Owens makes him another cup of cocoa, and cries into her hands. Cousins in New Jersey, the social worker said. He’s five years old and not sure about where his mom is.
“What if I take him in?” Mrs. Owens whispered to the tired young social worker. She kept wringing her hands and patting Caleb's head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. He can never remember the worker's name. “But the kin claim they want him, and they get priority.”
Mrs. Owens sighed into the air and wringed her hands again. He left the next morning, and his mug gets smashed on the flight to New Jersey.
He never sees her again - hardly even remembers her now. Shame.
New Jersey was a whole mess of people - cousins who pinched his cheeks and prodded his sides, held his face to talk about how much he looked like poor, sweet Rachel.
There are three other kids, eight year old Tony and six year old Lucy and three year old Charlie. They share their toys and tell him how to avoid eating brussell sprouts. He lives with them for four easy months, tucked into bed with Tony every night and playing with Lucy every day.
Kids are expensive, he learns early on. Aunt Molly and Uncle Trevor argue a lot - mostly about money. He can feel it before he knows it’s happening, a slow sense of exclusion that sneaks around him until his bags are packed and Charlie plants a wet kiss on his cheek.
“We love you very much, so so much, but we can’t handle this right now,” Aunt Molly apologized when she hugged him tight. Her tears stained his t-shirt and he played a game with himself - what do the blotches look like?
There’s Pennsylvania first. Land of Brotherly Love or some bullshit and he’s young enough to still believe in it. Three years in Philadelphia and more knowledge about the Liberty Bell than he thought was possible. His best friend’s name was Thomas. Caleb learned to love Philly Cheese Steaks.
Next, it’s back to Jersey on the opposite side of the state. He wakes up thinking Tony will still be there. Sometimes, he screams in his sleep. The foster parents don’t like that at all.
After that, he’s nine years old and unsure what home means. On to New York, three more years in Poughkeepsie. He sneaks into the city on the weekends with a less-than-stellar crowd, tries pot for the first time as a 12 year old and goes on a bad trip. He ditches the drugs but keeps the reputation.
Then it’s back to New Jersey again, different school different city. He still sneaks into the city on weekends - it’s where he learns how to tweak technology his way. Word gets around and pretty soon that’s what he does for money, when he needs it.
There are more after this, of course, but they blur together. One mixture of people and parents and cities that he tries not to think of. It’s easier that way.
Rosewood, he hates on sight. It’s all perfect families, perfect houses, perfect girls and mostly he feels out of his place.
“I’m Shelley,” his foster mom said with a brittle smile. His new dad was sitting on the couch, groaning as he got up and made his way over slowly to the door.
“I’m Robert,” and Caleb thought he was friendly enough, “but do not call me Bob or Bobby, or any other nickname pops into your brain.”
“Ok, Robert. Where should I put my stuff?”
He’s directed to a small room tucked away in the corner of the house. The walls are painted in yellow and white stripes, making him slightly nauseous but the bed is clean. A large map of the world is on the wall across from the bed, and Caleb thinks of all the places he’s been, the ones he still wants to get to. He puts his head in his hands and debates whether or not he’s going to unpack.
There have been worse places than here, surely.
Shelley yells something about dinner in a nasally voice and Caleb cringes. His t-shirts stay in his bag and Robert drinks too much at dinner. Apparently, Shelley’s chicken is too dry and the broccoli too soggy. Caleb’s not surprised. This is the sort of thing he’s seen a million times. Nowhere is safe from this kind of abuse, demons inside gated neighborhoods and houses with bars on the windows. Rosewood is no different. He didn’t think it would be.
There’s yelling, later that night. Something thuds against a wall. Caleb washes the plates as silently as he can, instructed to do so by Robert. Decides he won’t be staying here around the second week when he drops a glass in the sink and Robert hits a perfect spot on his temple. He sees stars for hours, sleeps in the library that night.
Later, when he sneaks back into the house to get his stuff back, he leaves a note for Shelley.
I’m safe, it says. Robert will be happy he’s still getting his checks. He signs the note with a flourish and hesitates with his hand over the doorknob. There’s a nervous tremble to the way she moves, he remembers. Surely this won’t help.
The first time he sees Hanna there’s no epiphany. He doesn’t fall in love at first sight, or think he has a new reason for living.
Her hair was braided to the side and she was wearing pink lipgloss. She was wearing tight skinny jeans and a sparkly off the shoulder shirt, with heels. He remembers thinking that was weird, heels in high school. Cute girl, he thought simply before ducking into the principal’s office to get his new schedule. Shelley was outside in the car and he didn’t want to keep her waiting.
Cute girl, indeed.
Later, when he met her, on a different day, she smelled like lilies and cinnamon. Strange combination, but she was proving to be a strange girl. Fitting, he muses.
The car thing he does to impress her. She’s not really his type, but cute is cute. Girls can definitely make his life easier and she seems like she’d be fun to try and keep up with.
It’s easy enough, sneaking out briefly and pressing his fingers until he heard the gentle pop of the hood opening. He knows the parts of an engine better than a lot of things, thanks to a halfway decent shop teacher in Pennsylvania. The part falls off into his hands easily, and he turns it over in his pocket the rest of the day.
It leaves oil marks on his jeans, but he doesn’t really mind.
“This place is kind of creepy. Almost like Stepford.”
He’s leaning against her locker and playing with the car part still, hidden in his pocket like some sort of trophy.
“You have no idea.” If it seems like she’s talking mostly to herself, Caleb doesn’t say anything.
She takes two books out of her locker, before closing it hard and turning towards him.
“Is this going to be a thing now? You, me, these fun little chats when I’m running late for class?”
He leans in towards her, makes eye contact, and says, “You can count on it.”
“Well that’s just great,” he catches as she turns around and walks away.
“Bye Hanna,” he yells down the hallway obnoxiously but she doesn’t turn around.
Hanna is beautiful. He comes to the realization slower than most, until it creeps up on him in the middle of math class.
Her friend Emily’s sitting to her left, the weird little one whose name he still can’t pronounce to her right. He wonders if they do that automatically, protect her like that, since the accident. When he heard about it, there was a knot in his stomach and his throat got dry. Women and cars - it's never been a good combination around him.
He lets himself gaze appreciatively at Emily - there was a girl in Rhode Island who looked like that, long dark hair tumbling down her back and ethnically ambiguous. He thought he loved her, as a fourteen year old at least, and her name was Charlotte. He doesn’t think about her much anymore, actually.
Hanna pokes him in the side with her pencil and whispers a pointed Hey!, snapping him out of his trance. His hair is falling in his face, and she rolls her eyes as he runs his hands through it.
“You can cut it out with the Fabio act. I bet you spend more time on your hair then I do.”
“Aw, don’t be jealous because mine is shinier. The secret’s washing with shampoo twice instead of once.”
This is where he loses her - she huffs and apparently forgot what she was going to ask him. She looks back twice though, equal parts confused and content, to evenly spaced to be coincidences. He follows the line of her neck with his eyes and imagines what she tastes like.
“I can feel you staring at me, perv.”
It makes him smile when he notices the slight turn of her mouth, and this is when he knows he’s in trouble.
Emily shoots him a dirty look and he waggles his fingers at her. Charlotte used to love that, he remembers. She presses down on his heart heavy and sure; he’s sick of carrying all these ghosts around with him.
Hanna sits in front of him, hair dulled under the fluorescent lighting, and he has to restrain the urge to laugh.
Hanna’s basement is cold - in fact, she had warned him about that earlier in the evening.
“I’m sorry it’s like, freezing down here. It’s always been like that ever since I can remember. But the comforter’s the best - it’ll even keep your toes warm?” Then she laughs a little, as if she realizes she’s talking faster than her brain’s keeping up. There’s a quiet hum in the room that he bets is a radiator, or something like it.
Caleb knows by now that sometimes she rambles. He catches himself hoping it’s because of him more than not. When he smiles at her, he makes sure she sees.
“Quit smiling like that,” she mutters indignantly before shifting her weight from left foot to right. “This isn’t a big deal or anything.”
Her hair is wavy down her back and her makeup’s still on but this is not the Hanna from school. She’s wearing old grey sweatpants and a tattered tee. Earlier, she laughed at one of his jokes and didn’t try to cover it up. It was louder too, less controlled. This is new for him, noticing these kinds of things.
“This is a big deal,” he wants to say. Then he realizes that he did, and Hanna’s staring at him, flushing a pale pink that reminds him how very much of a teenage boy he still is.
She turns around to leave and he reaches out to grab her wrist, pulling her back towards him just a little bit.
“Seriously, Hanna. Thank you.” He feels like he won something when she smiles back at him, teeth and lip showing.
“As long as you don’t get caught, it’s fine. Really.”
There’s silence, that low hum in the background again and it’s not the first time he wants to kiss her.
“Well, I’m gonna…go to bed now. Night.”
Left alone in someone else’s basement, Caleb curls up under the covers and sleeps well. He dreams of his mother and Hanna and Hanna’s mother, generations of women who love him, disprove of him, help him. He wakes up not knowing where he is or what to expect.
The shower thing...it happened. He never can get past that really, always thinks he made it up in his head. Even more miraculous was that she left before he got half-hard, thinking about her hand on his mouth and seeing drops of water on her face. It's the kind of things wet dreams are made of.
If he manages to keep his cool, then Hanna loses all semblance of hers. She blatantly ogles, blushes, avoids him, and rolls her eyes more than usual. Baby steps, he reminds himself. Baby steps.
They are in Hanna’s room, which is somehow exactly how he thought it would be. Her bed is nicer than anything he’s ever slept on, and she’s pressed underneath him, warm and soft in all the right places.
His hands linger on her jeans, and she kisses on his neck while his eyes close slowly.
“Hanna…” he drawls, a tiny bit of Louisiana leaking in, which always catches him off guard.
“What?” she giggles, hands wandering down the expanse of his back and coming back around to the front. “My mom won’t be home for hours, it’s fine.”
The sight of Hanna, arms above her head and flushed slightly with her hair mussed and eyes fluttering rapidly, is better than anything else he’s seen in Rosewood. She’d be worth staying for, maybe. Arizona can be a bitch in the summer, his friend told him.
“Earth to Caleb? Half-naked girl here.” Her fingernails drag down his front and linger at his boxers, he kisses her slowly and gently removes her fingers.
“You first,” he murmurs into the skin right next to her ear, and the shocked little o her mouth makes stays with him as he kisses down her stomach and stops between her legs.
When she comes, hands tangled in his too-long hair and his name resonating through the room, he laughs. His shirt is on top of hers on the floor, and he feels happy.
“I like having you here,” she blurts out when they’re still on the bed, in various states of undress. He raises an eyebrow at her, tucked into his arm like she could belong there or something, and tries to laugh it off.
“You just say that because you’re getting lucky.” She punches his stomach lightly, runs her hands over the same spot seconds later like she wanted to soothe it.
“Well, that certainly helps.” Her voice gets quieter for a minute, and he strains himself to hear her when she says, “I don’t know, I just feel…safer when you’re around, or something.”
“Careful,” he whispers, “you’re dealing with damaged goods here.” He’s learned certain things through all his years, and self-deprecating almost always works. Hanna stares at him, and kisses him slowly, slipping her tongue in between his teeth gently.
“Please, I know people much worse off. Trust me.”
She gets up to put on her skirt and he admires the long line of her legs. He bookmarks the comment in a section of his brain that keeps track of All Things Hanna - it’s taking up more and more space these days.
The next day at school, she’s wearing his gray beanie.
“Hey Caleb?”
It’s late at night. Hanna snuck down to visit him with a bag of chocolate chips, in bunny slippers that he made fun of. He’s been living here for over a month, and it doesn’t feel like home necessarily but he doesn’t feel unwanted either.
“Don’t go to Arizona.”
She’s half-asleep, fingers tangled in his own and chocolate chips spilling onto the sheets in the small space between them. It seems ridiculous now, leaving this warm place where he’s wanted and half belongs. They aren’t in love - not yet at least. It could get there soon enough.
“Sounds good to me.”
Hanna’s mother finds them the next morning, their bodies curled into one another and breathing even. In the moments that Caleb slowly wakes up, registers what’s happening and that the loud screeching noise is Hanna’s mom, his heart rate accelerates to an unhealthy level.
In this moment, he’s not sure what will happen next. Hanna’s hand is warm and still in his. That’s what he focuses on.
He moves in the next day, carefully unpacks his stuff into an empty dresser and settles comfortably on the bed.
Hanna pops her head into the doorway and smiles brightly. Caleb tucks his hair behind one ear and pats the space on the bed next to him. Her weight creates a dip in the mattress and when she leans into him he smells her shampoo.
“I’m really glad you’re here Caleb.”
He pauses for a second and lets the words rush over him.
“Yeah, me too.”
an: So since I'm officially in loooooove with Caleb, especially with Hanna, I wrote this in a fit of inspiration within two hours. It's unbetaed and purely fictional, but I wanted to flesh out Caleb's backstory since we don't know much about him yet. If I messed some canon up, forgive me but I was far too lazy to do a lot of research.
Rachel Rivers goes into labor at 10:12pm two weeks before she is due. Her water breaks and she’s afraid she peed herself - pregnancy keeps fucking with her bladder. It’s sticky warm outside, almost unbearably so, and all her windows are open. There are two fans whirring lazily by the bed and her tank top is pushed over her stomach, shorts resting low on her hips.
She doesn’t know where Aidan is. Two nights ago they’d gotten in a fight over that girl he was flirting with at a bar while she sat on the couch at home, ankles swollen with stretch marks on her hips and a stomach the size of a basketball.
I had a great time last night, the message said. The girl sounded pretty. Rachel hated her immediately. They fought about it of course, Aidan screaming about freedom and trust while she had kept two hands on her stomach and her fingers itched for a cigarette.
“This is not what I signed up for!” resonated throughout the room and Rachel flinches as if she’d been hit. For all of Aidan’s faults - his flakiness, immaturity, irresponsibility, selfishness at times - he had never purposely hurt her.
She is eighteen years old, in love with a boy she’s losing, and very, very pregnant. This is not what she signed up for either.
“Fine,” she says with a steady voice and thumping heart, “you can leave then.”
They stared at each other, a game of emotional chicken, and he kept looking towards the door. It takes him five minutes before he takes the first step, and then he can’t leave fast enough, knocking down the only piece of artwork in the whole damn apartment on his way down the hallway. He doesn’t look back once and Rachel doesn’t cry till after he slams the door shut.
After her water breaks, there is a sharp pain, followed by another, and another until they wrap themselves tight around her squeezing, pushing, tearing. She is alone in the hospital, her mom and dad back in New Jersey and Aidan probably with a girl. The nurse holds her knees back as she pushes for one long, horrible hour. She screams more than she cares to admit and cries just as much.
“It’s a boy,” the emergency room doctor says after fifteen strenuous hours and Rachel collapses back against the bed. She feels like she’s been ripped from the inside out, already sore, but there is a baby on her chest and he is perfect. She tears up at the sight of him - ten tiny fingers and toes. This is something she knows she will do right.
“His name is Caleb Anthony.”
Caleb Anthony is brought into the world with one mother who loves him. There’s no guarantee that he will get to keep her.
Louisiana is home for the first five years of his life. Rachel works double shifts as a waitress at a Joe’s Crab Shack and a maid at a touristy hotel in downtown New Orleans. Caleb learns the sound of Louis Armstrong drifting through the night and the taste of a spicy gumbo on his tongue. His voice lilts in a Louisiana accent, dulled by his mother’s New Jersey cadence but there all the same.
On nights when his mom wasn’t working, she would read him a book and run her fingers through his too-long hair. “You need a haircut,” she teased. He just smiled and shook his head no, laughing when she tickled him hard until he was gasping for breath. She kissed his head and sang him into sleep.
On nights when his mom was working, Mrs. Owens from next door would come over and give him a cup of hot cocoa in his favorite mug. It was white with a picture of the Batman logo, cracked all along one side. “It’s a miracle this old thing doesn’t leak,” Mrs. Owens said with a shake of her head. She tucked him into bed and stayed in the kitchen until his mom got home. He sat in bed, watching the light pour in from underneath his door, until he could hear his mom’s voice.
They were dirt poor, of course. Christmases and birthdays were small little things. He got a basketball once, ate a chocolate cake that his mom made and played with the two girls down the hall. Louisiana was good to him, mostly.
Rachel’s crossing the street, hand digging around in her purse for her tube of lipstick on her way home from a night shift, when she gets hit by a drunk driver. The light was flashing walk, so she did. The car wasn’t so much a car as a machine - a massive, black pickup truck that gleamed under the streetlights. The driver’s name was Toby, alcoholic for 10 years, married with kids and the like. Convicted of manslaughter and rotting in prison, Caleb hopes.
Mrs. Owens makes him another cup of cocoa, and cries into her hands. Cousins in New Jersey, the social worker said. He’s five years old and not sure about where his mom is.
“What if I take him in?” Mrs. Owens whispered to the tired young social worker. She kept wringing her hands and patting Caleb's head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. He can never remember the worker's name. “But the kin claim they want him, and they get priority.”
Mrs. Owens sighed into the air and wringed her hands again. He left the next morning, and his mug gets smashed on the flight to New Jersey.
He never sees her again - hardly even remembers her now. Shame.
New Jersey was a whole mess of people - cousins who pinched his cheeks and prodded his sides, held his face to talk about how much he looked like poor, sweet Rachel.
There are three other kids, eight year old Tony and six year old Lucy and three year old Charlie. They share their toys and tell him how to avoid eating brussell sprouts. He lives with them for four easy months, tucked into bed with Tony every night and playing with Lucy every day.
Kids are expensive, he learns early on. Aunt Molly and Uncle Trevor argue a lot - mostly about money. He can feel it before he knows it’s happening, a slow sense of exclusion that sneaks around him until his bags are packed and Charlie plants a wet kiss on his cheek.
“We love you very much, so so much, but we can’t handle this right now,” Aunt Molly apologized when she hugged him tight. Her tears stained his t-shirt and he played a game with himself - what do the blotches look like?
There’s Pennsylvania first. Land of Brotherly Love or some bullshit and he’s young enough to still believe in it. Three years in Philadelphia and more knowledge about the Liberty Bell than he thought was possible. His best friend’s name was Thomas. Caleb learned to love Philly Cheese Steaks.
Next, it’s back to Jersey on the opposite side of the state. He wakes up thinking Tony will still be there. Sometimes, he screams in his sleep. The foster parents don’t like that at all.
After that, he’s nine years old and unsure what home means. On to New York, three more years in Poughkeepsie. He sneaks into the city on the weekends with a less-than-stellar crowd, tries pot for the first time as a 12 year old and goes on a bad trip. He ditches the drugs but keeps the reputation.
Then it’s back to New Jersey again, different school different city. He still sneaks into the city on weekends - it’s where he learns how to tweak technology his way. Word gets around and pretty soon that’s what he does for money, when he needs it.
There are more after this, of course, but they blur together. One mixture of people and parents and cities that he tries not to think of. It’s easier that way.
Rosewood, he hates on sight. It’s all perfect families, perfect houses, perfect girls and mostly he feels out of his place.
“I’m Shelley,” his foster mom said with a brittle smile. His new dad was sitting on the couch, groaning as he got up and made his way over slowly to the door.
“I’m Robert,” and Caleb thought he was friendly enough, “but do not call me Bob or Bobby, or any other nickname pops into your brain.”
“Ok, Robert. Where should I put my stuff?”
He’s directed to a small room tucked away in the corner of the house. The walls are painted in yellow and white stripes, making him slightly nauseous but the bed is clean. A large map of the world is on the wall across from the bed, and Caleb thinks of all the places he’s been, the ones he still wants to get to. He puts his head in his hands and debates whether or not he’s going to unpack.
There have been worse places than here, surely.
Shelley yells something about dinner in a nasally voice and Caleb cringes. His t-shirts stay in his bag and Robert drinks too much at dinner. Apparently, Shelley’s chicken is too dry and the broccoli too soggy. Caleb’s not surprised. This is the sort of thing he’s seen a million times. Nowhere is safe from this kind of abuse, demons inside gated neighborhoods and houses with bars on the windows. Rosewood is no different. He didn’t think it would be.
There’s yelling, later that night. Something thuds against a wall. Caleb washes the plates as silently as he can, instructed to do so by Robert. Decides he won’t be staying here around the second week when he drops a glass in the sink and Robert hits a perfect spot on his temple. He sees stars for hours, sleeps in the library that night.
Later, when he sneaks back into the house to get his stuff back, he leaves a note for Shelley.
I’m safe, it says. Robert will be happy he’s still getting his checks. He signs the note with a flourish and hesitates with his hand over the doorknob. There’s a nervous tremble to the way she moves, he remembers. Surely this won’t help.
The first time he sees Hanna there’s no epiphany. He doesn’t fall in love at first sight, or think he has a new reason for living.
Her hair was braided to the side and she was wearing pink lipgloss. She was wearing tight skinny jeans and a sparkly off the shoulder shirt, with heels. He remembers thinking that was weird, heels in high school. Cute girl, he thought simply before ducking into the principal’s office to get his new schedule. Shelley was outside in the car and he didn’t want to keep her waiting.
Cute girl, indeed.
Later, when he met her, on a different day, she smelled like lilies and cinnamon. Strange combination, but she was proving to be a strange girl. Fitting, he muses.
The car thing he does to impress her. She’s not really his type, but cute is cute. Girls can definitely make his life easier and she seems like she’d be fun to try and keep up with.
It’s easy enough, sneaking out briefly and pressing his fingers until he heard the gentle pop of the hood opening. He knows the parts of an engine better than a lot of things, thanks to a halfway decent shop teacher in Pennsylvania. The part falls off into his hands easily, and he turns it over in his pocket the rest of the day.
It leaves oil marks on his jeans, but he doesn’t really mind.
“This place is kind of creepy. Almost like Stepford.”
He’s leaning against her locker and playing with the car part still, hidden in his pocket like some sort of trophy.
“You have no idea.” If it seems like she’s talking mostly to herself, Caleb doesn’t say anything.
She takes two books out of her locker, before closing it hard and turning towards him.
“Is this going to be a thing now? You, me, these fun little chats when I’m running late for class?”
He leans in towards her, makes eye contact, and says, “You can count on it.”
“Well that’s just great,” he catches as she turns around and walks away.
“Bye Hanna,” he yells down the hallway obnoxiously but she doesn’t turn around.
Hanna is beautiful. He comes to the realization slower than most, until it creeps up on him in the middle of math class.
Her friend Emily’s sitting to her left, the weird little one whose name he still can’t pronounce to her right. He wonders if they do that automatically, protect her like that, since the accident. When he heard about it, there was a knot in his stomach and his throat got dry. Women and cars - it's never been a good combination around him.
He lets himself gaze appreciatively at Emily - there was a girl in Rhode Island who looked like that, long dark hair tumbling down her back and ethnically ambiguous. He thought he loved her, as a fourteen year old at least, and her name was Charlotte. He doesn’t think about her much anymore, actually.
Hanna pokes him in the side with her pencil and whispers a pointed Hey!, snapping him out of his trance. His hair is falling in his face, and she rolls her eyes as he runs his hands through it.
“You can cut it out with the Fabio act. I bet you spend more time on your hair then I do.”
“Aw, don’t be jealous because mine is shinier. The secret’s washing with shampoo twice instead of once.”
This is where he loses her - she huffs and apparently forgot what she was going to ask him. She looks back twice though, equal parts confused and content, to evenly spaced to be coincidences. He follows the line of her neck with his eyes and imagines what she tastes like.
“I can feel you staring at me, perv.”
It makes him smile when he notices the slight turn of her mouth, and this is when he knows he’s in trouble.
Emily shoots him a dirty look and he waggles his fingers at her. Charlotte used to love that, he remembers. She presses down on his heart heavy and sure; he’s sick of carrying all these ghosts around with him.
Hanna sits in front of him, hair dulled under the fluorescent lighting, and he has to restrain the urge to laugh.
Hanna’s basement is cold - in fact, she had warned him about that earlier in the evening.
“I’m sorry it’s like, freezing down here. It’s always been like that ever since I can remember. But the comforter’s the best - it’ll even keep your toes warm?” Then she laughs a little, as if she realizes she’s talking faster than her brain’s keeping up. There’s a quiet hum in the room that he bets is a radiator, or something like it.
Caleb knows by now that sometimes she rambles. He catches himself hoping it’s because of him more than not. When he smiles at her, he makes sure she sees.
“Quit smiling like that,” she mutters indignantly before shifting her weight from left foot to right. “This isn’t a big deal or anything.”
Her hair is wavy down her back and her makeup’s still on but this is not the Hanna from school. She’s wearing old grey sweatpants and a tattered tee. Earlier, she laughed at one of his jokes and didn’t try to cover it up. It was louder too, less controlled. This is new for him, noticing these kinds of things.
“This is a big deal,” he wants to say. Then he realizes that he did, and Hanna’s staring at him, flushing a pale pink that reminds him how very much of a teenage boy he still is.
She turns around to leave and he reaches out to grab her wrist, pulling her back towards him just a little bit.
“Seriously, Hanna. Thank you.” He feels like he won something when she smiles back at him, teeth and lip showing.
“As long as you don’t get caught, it’s fine. Really.”
There’s silence, that low hum in the background again and it’s not the first time he wants to kiss her.
“Well, I’m gonna…go to bed now. Night.”
Left alone in someone else’s basement, Caleb curls up under the covers and sleeps well. He dreams of his mother and Hanna and Hanna’s mother, generations of women who love him, disprove of him, help him. He wakes up not knowing where he is or what to expect.
The shower thing...it happened. He never can get past that really, always thinks he made it up in his head. Even more miraculous was that she left before he got half-hard, thinking about her hand on his mouth and seeing drops of water on her face. It's the kind of things wet dreams are made of.
If he manages to keep his cool, then Hanna loses all semblance of hers. She blatantly ogles, blushes, avoids him, and rolls her eyes more than usual. Baby steps, he reminds himself. Baby steps.
They are in Hanna’s room, which is somehow exactly how he thought it would be. Her bed is nicer than anything he’s ever slept on, and she’s pressed underneath him, warm and soft in all the right places.
His hands linger on her jeans, and she kisses on his neck while his eyes close slowly.
“Hanna…” he drawls, a tiny bit of Louisiana leaking in, which always catches him off guard.
“What?” she giggles, hands wandering down the expanse of his back and coming back around to the front. “My mom won’t be home for hours, it’s fine.”
The sight of Hanna, arms above her head and flushed slightly with her hair mussed and eyes fluttering rapidly, is better than anything else he’s seen in Rosewood. She’d be worth staying for, maybe. Arizona can be a bitch in the summer, his friend told him.
“Earth to Caleb? Half-naked girl here.” Her fingernails drag down his front and linger at his boxers, he kisses her slowly and gently removes her fingers.
“You first,” he murmurs into the skin right next to her ear, and the shocked little o her mouth makes stays with him as he kisses down her stomach and stops between her legs.
When she comes, hands tangled in his too-long hair and his name resonating through the room, he laughs. His shirt is on top of hers on the floor, and he feels happy.
“I like having you here,” she blurts out when they’re still on the bed, in various states of undress. He raises an eyebrow at her, tucked into his arm like she could belong there or something, and tries to laugh it off.
“You just say that because you’re getting lucky.” She punches his stomach lightly, runs her hands over the same spot seconds later like she wanted to soothe it.
“Well, that certainly helps.” Her voice gets quieter for a minute, and he strains himself to hear her when she says, “I don’t know, I just feel…safer when you’re around, or something.”
“Careful,” he whispers, “you’re dealing with damaged goods here.” He’s learned certain things through all his years, and self-deprecating almost always works. Hanna stares at him, and kisses him slowly, slipping her tongue in between his teeth gently.
“Please, I know people much worse off. Trust me.”
She gets up to put on her skirt and he admires the long line of her legs. He bookmarks the comment in a section of his brain that keeps track of All Things Hanna - it’s taking up more and more space these days.
The next day at school, she’s wearing his gray beanie.
“Hey Caleb?”
It’s late at night. Hanna snuck down to visit him with a bag of chocolate chips, in bunny slippers that he made fun of. He’s been living here for over a month, and it doesn’t feel like home necessarily but he doesn’t feel unwanted either.
“Don’t go to Arizona.”
She’s half-asleep, fingers tangled in his own and chocolate chips spilling onto the sheets in the small space between them. It seems ridiculous now, leaving this warm place where he’s wanted and half belongs. They aren’t in love - not yet at least. It could get there soon enough.
“Sounds good to me.”
Hanna’s mother finds them the next morning, their bodies curled into one another and breathing even. In the moments that Caleb slowly wakes up, registers what’s happening and that the loud screeching noise is Hanna’s mom, his heart rate accelerates to an unhealthy level.
In this moment, he’s not sure what will happen next. Hanna’s hand is warm and still in his. That’s what he focuses on.
He moves in the next day, carefully unpacks his stuff into an empty dresser and settles comfortably on the bed.
Hanna pops her head into the doorway and smiles brightly. Caleb tucks his hair behind one ear and pats the space on the bed next to him. Her weight creates a dip in the mattress and when she leans into him he smells her shampoo.
“I’m really glad you’re here Caleb.”
He pauses for a second and lets the words rush over him.
“Yeah, me too.”
an: So since I'm officially in loooooove with Caleb, especially with Hanna, I wrote this in a fit of inspiration within two hours. It's unbetaed and purely fictional, but I wanted to flesh out Caleb's backstory since we don't know much about him yet. If I messed some canon up, forgive me but I was far too lazy to do a lot of research.