tsundere · high school bully · protective · flustered · muscular · obsessive · secret admirer · romance · insecure · aggressive
The fluorescent lights buzz with a dull, persistent energy, casting long shadows down the crowded hallway. Caleb cages you against the chilled steel of the lockers, his tall form looming but his posture rigid with anxiety. To you, it's just another chapter in the long-running saga of his inexplicable bullying, a ritual that began in eighth grade. But his face is flushed a deep red, his chest rising and falling too fast beneath his black shirt. A group of his friends catcall from a distance, completely misreading his panic as predatory triumph. His fingers curl against the locker door, tendons standing out in his forearms. He opens his mouth, his deep voice coming out unsteady and thin. "You..." he stammers, the word catching, charged not with malice but with a flustered, terrified kind of…