greatamazingfeelingsboy

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luke crain

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Caleb doesn't need to be an empath to know that Alex and Michael could use some 'couple time,' which is what he's calling it in his head so he doesn't accidentally stray too close to 'thinking about my big-brother figure having sex' territory. So on one Saturday while he's hanging out, he decides to bundle up Luke and Bopp and bring them out for the day. The whole day. So Alex and Michael can have the whole day.

He starts out with a late breakfast out, with Bopp tied to a bike stand outside of the cafe so they can eat in peace. Later, it'll be the arcade, maybe the park or the natural history museum, some lunch, the aquarium... Whatever they decide to do doesn't really matter to Caleb, as long as Luke is having fun.

Because the kid needs it.

He's been dealing with the fallout of Michael's abduction just as much as any of them, and Caleb hasn't really had the chance to help him with that. Maybe this will do the trick. Just get him out of the apartment, away from school, and let him focus on being a kid and having fun.

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The apartment's smaller than the House, smaller than any of the houses they lived in back home, and that's not a bad thing but it does mean that any feelings inside it sort of...bounce around. Michael's up more now, and talking more, things are mostly back to normal-ish, but it can't have not happened. Luke wants to have his people around all the time, but also for them not to worry, or sometimes he just wants to be quiet and sad and think, and he can't have all of it.

Going out with Caleb is nice, with all that. Caleb's cool, and really nice, and he likes that he wants him to hang out, it makes him feel big. Caleb's older than Stevie but he reminds Luke more of that kind of big brother than Michael or Alex do (which is probably good anyway because he definitely wouldn't do what Steve said all the time).

And they have pancakes, and the whole day's about having fun. It's easy to forget about being worried.

"You don't think Bopp's lonely, though, right?" he asks, swinging his legs and putting one of the banana pieces from on top of his pancakes in his mouth.

Edited 2020-02-08 00:42 (UTC)

Caleb looks thoughtfully out the window. Bopp is too short to see from their vantage, but he can make out the leash.

"Mm, maybe a little," he says, because he's not gonna lie to Luke. "But she's pretty smart. She knows we'll be back, y'know?"

He lifts a piece of bacon off his plate — he'd ordered the biggest breakfast deal he could for himself, and whatever Luke had wanted — and wags it a little.

"Besides, I think a couple pieces of bacon will more than make up for it." He grins and sets the bacon on a napkin, instead of back on his plate.

He nods. Caleb's right, even if just sometimes, he thinks that makes Bopp smarter than he is. "She is pretty smart," he agrees, making a big careful slice of his two-stack of pancakes and chews thoughtfully.

Luke smiles when Caleb waves the bacon. He's never had a dog until Bopp (who he guesses gets to kind of be his too now even if she lived with Michael and Alex before he did) so he hasn't gotten to do all the fun dog stuff, like sneaking them food. "We're gonna be her favorites," he says like it's a secret.

"What do you like better, bacon or sausage?" Caleb has pretty much a little of everything: eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, hashbrowns...

"Oh man, do I have to pick one?" he asks, smiling. "I just like food. But, I guess, if I have to pick just one, it'd have to be... bacon. For sure." He nods decisively, taking a sip of his orange juice. "What about you? Pancakes or waffles?"

"Pancakes," Luke says, "for sure. They're both good, but pancakes are the best, I think. And you can make them in all kinds of shapes." This place has them in perfect restaurant-y circles, which is its own kind of hard, he thinks, but at home sometimes they'd make them and Dad would make their initials.

"But you're right, I just like food too." He grins. "This is really cool of you," he adds more shyly. "What should we do next?"

"Oh, man, whatever you want," he assures. "We could hit the arcade, or the natural history museum, or the aquarium..." He lists them off on his fingers as he says them aloud. "I haven't been to the history museum here, but the one in Boston had dinosaur bones, so. I think that'd be pretty cool." He grins, trying to help Luke feel excited, instead of bashful and grateful and so, so earnest, in the way that only kids can be.

Luke's eyes widen a little as he considers, because having to decide between the arcade and the history museum or the aquarium is almost impossible.

"I love dinosaurs," he enthuses, and he thinks that decides it. Even if it doesn't turn out there are dinosaurs in the Darrow one, he's sure there'll still be cool things to look at. "Let's do that first."

He takes a big bite of pancake, enough that he gets impatient chewing it and makes a face at Caleb because he can't talk. "Maybe afterwards we could go to the arcade though?"

"Oh, yeah, totally," Caleb assures. He's having a hard time not grinning like an idiot, because Luke is excited and it's like Caleb has a trampoline in his belly, and all sorts of people are jumping on it. Everything is light and bouncy and happy, and he's really, really glad he did this.

"I'm pretty sure dogs are allowed into the museum, too," he adds. "We'll just have to make sure Bopp knows not to try to fetch any of the dinosaur bones."

"Oh man, I didn't even think about that! Good," Luke says, looking over his shoulder even though he can't really see Bopp. He laughs.

"Oh my gosh, can you imagine her trying to bring a dinosaur bone?" He giggles, imagining the tiny puppy dragging a big old brontosaurus leg. "Oh, but some dinosaurs are small," he interrupts himself to share with Caleb. "Like some of the raptors, they were like, turkeys! But way smarter and meaner than turkeys."

Caleb grins, buoyed by Luke's amusement and joy. He thinks even if he weren't an empath, it'd be hard not to be. When Luke's happy, he's happy, in a way that most people aren't — either because they're too ashamed to show it, or because it doesn't reach them as fully as it reaches Luke.

He listens to Luke explain some dinosaur facts to him. Some of them, he already knew, but most of them he didn't. He'd been more into Harry Potter than Jurassic Park, so his interest in what Luke's saying is genuine, and he encourages him to say more as they finish eating, as he pays, and as they go outside to get Bopp.

"...but then horses were really really little," he's finishing, having gotten off track with different kinds of ancient animals, and he trails off a little, because horses remind him of Nellie.

As soon as they round the outside of the gate, Bopp yips in excitement, and it's a good distraction: Luke runs ahead and slides to his knees to go wrap her wriggly self in a hug and unwrap her leash.

"Bopp, you were so good," he tells her earnestly. "Thank you for waiting." She puts her paws up on his chest and licks his face and nuzzles him, and he smiles, wrinkling up his face. "Ew, sloppy kisses," he says to Caleb, but he's grinning again.

Caleb watches Luke, taking in the intense feeling of missing he feels, so abruptly that Caleb marvels he hasn't doubled over with it. He's about to ask about it, but then Bopp spots them, and Luke is tending to her, mood rising up again like a balloon.

Caleb smiles, small and grateful, at the dog, but then grins at Luke.

"She's just making sure you didn't leave anything behind after breakfast," he teases.

It's strange, sometimes, being so sad and so happy at once. It's easy for him to let things cheer him up -- and Bopp always does -- but it's like missing his family always sits there under it all, and if there's not enough other stuff, or too much that reminds him of them, it's the only thing he can think about.

But he doesn't want to be lonely right now. It's easier to just think about Bopp and Caleb and having fun.

"You don't have to wash my face for me, Bopp," he tells her exaggeratedly, standing back up. "We got you some bacon." He turns back to Caleb, raising his eyebrows.

Caleb laughs, reaching into his pocket. "Right!" he agrees. The bacon is wrapped in a piece of napkin, so he unwraps it and holds up one finger. Bopp sits promptly, so Caleb breaks off a piece to give to her, then hands Luke the rest.

"I'll let you decide if she should earn the rest with tricks."

"Good girl, Bopp!" Luke exclaims when she sits, and grins when Caleb hands him the rest. Bopp has already scarfed down the first and her eyes are immediately on him. She sits nice, giving him big puppy eyes.

"Okay, Bopp, shake," he instructs, holding out a hand, and she tilts her head. "Shake," he repeats, holding his hand out and she picks up her paw and gives it to him, ears lifting curiously. "Good girl!" he exclaims and gives her half the rest of the bacon.

"Okay, now down." He gestures down with his hand. That one she knows right away and she practically hits the pavement, tail wagging frantically as she eats the rest of the bacon out of his hand.

Caleb grins as he watches this, glad they'd decided to bring the dog after all. She really is good at her job.

"You want me to take the leash, or do you got it?" he asks. He trusts Luke and Bopp both to behave, so it's not like he's offering because he thinks she'll run off, or anything.

"Um..." He kind of wants to hold Bopp, because it makes him feel grown up and because Bopp makes him feel better, but he also thinks if she pulls or if he's just him and messes it up, something bad might happen, and that scares him to think about.

"You can take it for now," he says, as casually as he can, like he's just letting Caleb.

Caleb nods, like Luke is doing him a favor, but he hesitates. "Are you sure?" he says. "She's pretty good with you. I think she likes you more than me, to be honest." He's not entirely sure why Luke feels like he's afraid, like something bad might happen, but he can feel that Luke does want to be close to Bopp — because she makes him feel better, he guesses.

"Bopp likes everyone," Luke says, in a tone that clearly says that Caleb's being silly. He takes a breath.

"She is good," he agrees, hesitantly. "I just don't want to mess up," he admits after a minute. "Like if I drop the leash and something happens, she's so little."

"Hey," Caleb says, and crouches beside Luke. "What makes you think you'll mess up?" There's a certainty behind the fear, but Caleb doesn't understand why. He's just a little kid. How could he be so worried about messing up?

It's hard to explain where that comes from, because he just does. "Um...you know, cause I'm not as big as you and stuff," he says because he isn't sure what to say. That is part of it; he's always been the littlest except for also Nell and they both got told to have Theo and Steve and Shirley do things a lot, and in the Home he was one of the littlest too. He wasn't supposed to do things.

"And...I don't know." He scuffs his toe against the ground. "Sometimes I just feel like that. Like no matter what, something's gonna go wrong and I can't stop it." If he can get something, even a little thing exactly perfect, usually the feeling goes away. But Bopp's pretty important to maybe mess up with. And right now it's been a little more than usual, since there's a lot he can't do anything to stop.

Caleb nods, because he gets it, he thinks. But he smiles small.

"Well, Bopp and I super trust you," he says honestly. "And, you know how she's getting trained, right, to help Alex and Michael out, with Alex's leg and all?"

Never mind his PTSD, which is probably the main reason, but Caleb doesn't say that. Luke doesn't need yet another thing to worry about.

"Well, she's got this special word that makes sure she doesn't move, no matter what, and she's really, really good at listening to it. So, if you remember that word, you never have to worry about her, even if you accidentally drop the leash. But you totally won't drop it. Like I said, we trust you. Wanna know the word?"

Luke smiles a little at that and nods about Bopp being trained to help Alex and Michael. She's gonna be an extra special dog, though he thinks she's special already. Or maybe that's why she gets to be a support dog.

He thinks he might know it already, but just to be sure, and to remind himself that he can easily make her stop if he needs to. Luke nods. "Yeah."

"It's 'Plotz,'" he says, and Bopp drops into a lie-down immediately, looking up at Caleb with almost mournful eyes — as if to say 'why?? I want to walk!' "It's kind of a funny word, right? But it's really important, because it doesn't sound like words we usually say, so she pays really close attention to them."

He reaches into a pocket and finds a stray crumb of bacon, the size of his thumbnail, and offers it to Bopp so she knows she did good.

It isn't the word Luke thought he knew, and he laughs, because it is a silly word.

"Plotz," he repeats, so he remembers it, and Bopp looks up at him with a little furrow in her brow as if to say I'm plotzing already, kid.

"Good girl," he says, a little apologetically. "How do you make her stop?" he asks, more curious than worried, now.

Edited 2020-03-20 23:08 (UTC)

"This one's even funnier," Caleb assures. "Fuss," he says, and it sounds like 'foos.' Bopp scrambles to her feet with all her puppy energy and runs the few steps to Caleb's side, tail wagging now. "Good girl, Bopp!" he praises, for lack of a proper treat.

Luke laughs, partly at foos and partly at how quickly Bopp gets up.

"Wait," he says, "like foosball?" The place they'd lived before the House had had a foosball table in the basement and it's probably the only thing Luke remembers about it, he'd been too little to play but he'd spun the little players around and watched Theo and Steve slam them around.

"Hmm," he says. "I hadn't thought about that!" He doesn't know much about German words, and what he does know is strictly because of Bopp, but now he wants to look that up. At the very least, he'll learn where 'foosball' came from.

"Come on," he says. "I'll look it up after our awesome day, and I'll let you know."

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