Chapter Text
2011
Caleb woke up feeling weird. He was comfortable and sore at the same time with a dry taste in his mouth, a buzz in his head and the undeniable feeling that something was wrong. As his eyes fluttered open and found the sheets next to him wrinkled but empty, his suspicions were confirmed. The cute guy he brought home from the show disappeared, like they always did.
With a groan, he grabbed his phone- and his eyes went wide. He only had an hour to get into his club for rehearsal.
“Fuck.”
The entire crew was ready for dress rehearsal when he strolled into the ballroom exactly an hour later, protein bar in mouth, bottle of water in hand, and cloak thrown over the warm up clothes he had just fished out of the dryer. He was the boss, he got to be out of dress code if he wanted to.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dante teased, slow-clapping as Caleb hopped up on stage.
Callie wolf-whistled as she cleaned out clarinet on stage. “That’s some walk of shame.”
“Scale runs,” Caleb announced, jabbing a hand toward her. The clarinetist blinked. “That’s all you’re doing for the next five minutes. Go.”
His employee and friend scowled at him before beginning a familiar riff of scales.
“Okay, Mr. Grumpypants Boss,” Fuego snorted as he joined him and Dante on stage. “What’s up your butt this morning?”
“It’s afternoon, Fuego,” Dante muttered, “and I think the more appropriate question would be who was up his butt last night?”
His best friend since starting his post-college dance career wiggled his eyes at him and Caleb threw him a glare of a thousand daggers. Drawing in a deep breath, Caleb closed his eyes, trying to focus on the rehearsal at hand and not his pathetic love life. If you could even call it love. Was spending his nights off desperately searching for a man to bring home to bed so that he didn’t feel alone at least a couple times a week anything close to love? Did he even know what actual love felt like?
Opening his eyes, he found a sea of judgmental faces staring back at him, and he knew his answer.
“That’s it!” Caleb clapped his hands together. “New routine. Pay attention, we’re performing this tonight.”
“But that’s like three hours from now!” Chloe, his newest dancer, cried. “Are you trying to kills us?”
“Are you a professional or what?” Caleb snapped back.
“Are you?”
“You’re fired!”
The ballroom fell quiet. Even Caleb was surprised he said those words out loud, but he was at least self-aware enough to admit when he made a hiring mistake. Chloe was barely twenty-two and had just arrived in Hollywood a few weeks ago when Caleb gave her a chance because he bought her sob story about how she escaped her small town in Texas and was looking for any kind of chance. But she must have thought she was a hot shot in Texas because she already waltzed around his club like she thought she would own the place someday. She constantly spoke over him in rehearsals and he was done with the attitude.
(Today, he felt a bit done with everything)
Chloe wasn’t moving.
“I said out!” Caleb roared.
“You know what. Fuck you. I don’t need this place.”
The dancer flipped him off as she stormed out, but he didn’t even care. Fuego looked like someone ran over his puppy (he knew Fuego loved his dressing room gossip with Chloe) and Dante was throwing him judgy eyes now, but he didn’t care.
“New routine!” Caleb bellowed to his crew. “If you’re not onstage in ten seconds, you can go with her.”
To his surprise, one of his best dancers actually did turn around and leave- and her girlfriend left right with her. Three dancers down three hours before the show. Five years ago, he might have gone on a minor rampage in response and then had a secret panic attack in his dressing room but today, he was just done. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t feel anything. Caleb slept with a guy last night who he met a little over twelve hours ago, whose name he didn’t even remember but whoever he was, the guy clearly knew Caleb wasn’t worth sticking around for.
And none of it mattered.
In a week, he wouldn’t even remember that guy at all- or how this show went. In a year, at least twenty percent of his crew would have left to find better gigs, gigs where they could be an actual star. The only people who might remember anything he did today were his audience, that was, if they didn’t get too drunk to forget him too. He supposed that’s what he deserved. And it’s what he should want- after all, he made more on alcohol sales than ticket sales.
“Okay, what the actual fuck is going on?” Dante muttered before disappearing to his spot side of stage.
Caleb didn’t even respond. He didn’t know, that’s what was going on. He was thirty-eight years old, and he had no idea what he was doing with his life. He spent his life working and rioting and grieving and trying and now he had it all, in most people’s eyes. He was living in his late mother’s Hollywood Victorian mansion, a home most people would kill for, he owned a Hollywood club, he entertained for a living. He should feel like he had it all.
Ten years ago when he had the opportunity to buy out this club he would have killed for the kind of constantly sold-out success he had now, but lately it felt like none of this mattered.
Because something was missing.
There was an emptiness in his life that Caleb couldn’t quite fill, no matter how many men he dated or slept around with, no matter how many friends he went out with after shows. His life should be more than this, shouldn’t it? Was this just what he was going to do for however many years it was before he eventually blew out his back, went grey or worse…got wrinkles? No one wanted to see a wrinkly gay magician dance, even in Hollywood.
Caleb shuddered at the very thought and counted his dancers off to start the new routine.
The show went by in a blur. His remaining dance crew picked up instantly, the professionals they were, and put on big smiles as they performed it as the crowd went wild. As the club closed down for the night, everyone collected their tip money and one by one, his club emptied as quickly as it filled.
And then there was Caleb.
Alone, at his own bar.
“Seriously though,” Dante said as he took a seat next to him. He grabbed Caleb’s second glass of whiskey and dragged it away from him, ignoring the magician’s whine of protest. “What the fuck is going on with you?”
With a groan, Caleb finally sighed and dragged a hand over his face.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. He stole his whiskey glass back and took a sip. “Do you ever feel like you’re wasting your life?”
“Yeah, but only because I work for you.” Caleb glared, and Dante quickly stopped teasing. “Look. I believe in living life to the fullest. Life is too damn short, you know? Before we know it, we’re all just gonna be yet another ghost haunting this creepy ass club. When I was a kid, did I dream of dancing for a bunch of drunk rich white people alongside the gayest man I’ve ever met while he wore a purple suit and top hat that he pulled bunnies out of? No. But I’m making it. You’re not all I have in my life, you know.”
“I’m not?”
Dante shook his head. “No, my man, you are not.”
Caleb frowned. In all the years he knew Dante, he had been introduced to a couple of his brothers and his mother once (she had smacked his shoulder, that woman, for keeping Dante so late after work for extra rehearsals, a practice he quickly stopped after being told off by someone’s mom). Dante didn’t seem to mind dating around and being unattached, though the man was a few years younger than him. Dante had no idea what it was like to almost be- gulp- forty and have nothing figured out about your future beyond work.
"My life just feels so empty lately," he finally confessed. He waved his hand around the club. "What even is all this for?"
"Besides paying all our bills?" Dante asked. "You love this place, Caleb! Don't pretend like you don't. Half your Facebook photos are of you and this building."
"And don't you think that's kind of sad?"
"I...think it shows you have passion." It was an admirable save. "I think it's totally normal for us to feel a little lost in life sometimes, but we got time to figure it out."
Caleb took another sip of whiskey.
“That's easy for you to say, you’re still kid,” Caleb complained, “try being in your forties.”
“You're literally only thirty-eight! And whatever happened to ‘forty is the new fifty?’”
“I was wrong,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t be allowed to get old, it’s not fair. This face wasn’t meant to age!”
“There there, drama queen,” Danta patted his head. “You’re not old, and I’m not a kid. I’m in my thirties, in my prime, and I’m trying to enjoy life best I can with my crazy work schedule.”
He actually was a little thrown at the comment. On the surface, it always seemed like Dante loved working for him. He never complained and when they hung out as friends, he never had anything bad to say about work. But he probably just never noticed because he was probably as bad of a friend as he was a boss and lover.
“So!” Fuego chirped, appearing on his other side. “You gonna tell us who you banged last night or what? It had to be pretty good. You were limping; I noticed.”
He sounded way too proud about that fact, and Caleb couldn’t exactly argue. Maybe he didn’t remember the guy’s name, but last night had been good.
“Thanks for pointing that out to the class,” Caleb snarked.
Fuego ordered one of his favorite fruity drinks from the bar and actually sucked the juice out of the orange before sipping it. He was the only person Caleb knew who did that. He looked between Fuego, who seemed perfectly content with his after-work drink and Dante, who was casually scrolling through twitter and gaped at them.
“Don’t you two feel a crushing sensation like you’re missing something in your life?!” Caleb cried dramatically. “Do you not wake up every morning wondering if this is what you’re supposed to be doing?”
Shrugging, Fuego squeezed the last of the orange down his throat.
“I mostly just wake up and write in my dream journal right away so I can remember all my dreams ever."
Caleb blinked before turning to Dante to help.
“It’s true,” Dante, who was not only Fuego's oldest friend but his roommate, sighed. “He has an unhealthy amount of dreams about magic.”
“Magic?” Magic always peeked Caleb’s interest.
“I’m a witch in my dreams!” Fuego explained happily. “With magical powers. Sometimes I can fly and sometimes I have to do a spell to pass potions class and I can never quite get it right and I turn the teacher into a toad by accident and sometimes that teacher is you and oh! I think I get what that dream was about now.”
He blushed as Caleb glared at him, but he didn’t have the heart to poke fun at him. With how things were going at the Club lately, even Dante and Fuego were probably wondering when Caleb would lose it and let them go too.
“I mostly dream about taxes and death, like a proper adult,” Dante remarked dryly, “but you do you, Fuego.” With a dramatic sigh, he clasped Caleb’s shoulder. “Look, my friend. You’re having a mid-life crisis. You’re wondering if this is what the rest of your life is going to be, and I’m afraid the simple cold hard truth is: yes. Probably.”
Scowling, Caleb massaged his temples. He was slowly regretting letting these two join him for his post work pity drink.
“But maybe, just maybe,” Dante went on, “if you get your head out of your ass for like two seconds and stop feeling like the universe has turned specifically on you, you could at least find someone to spend it with. If that’s what you want.”
“Is that what you want?” Fuego mused. “Because me? I totally want the whole husband and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and a big fancy wedding. The whole nine yards.”
Something about his comment made Dante shift uncomfortably, Caleb noticed, but he quickly forgot because he was hanging onto one very important word Fuego said. Kids.
“Kids?” He repeated. “You think I would be a good dad?”
“Well……”
Fuego stammered while Dante looked away innocently as Caleb stared them both down, awaiting an answer.
“I mean, you’re a magician, right?” Dante finally gave in. “Kids love magic! You definitely have enough money to have kids, which is more than most of us can say.” If Caleb were paying attention, he would have noticed Fuego’s face falling. “But kids require you know…stability. And patience.”
“I deal with you hooligans all day, I have the patience of a saint.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say hooligans?” Fuego snorted. “Sometimes I swear you’re like a 1930s jazz singer or something.”
He turned back to Dante for help navigating this, but his friend only looked smug.
“If you think he’s bad, try dealing with a tiny Fuego running around reigning terror on your house and needing diaper changes. Then imagine teenage him bringing boys home who eat all your food.”
“But there are good years in between!” Caleb pointed out. “And kids are fun. Like you said, kids love magic. Kids used to love me back when I worked birthday parties! I could connect with them easily."
“It’s pretty easy to connect with kids on one of the happiest days of the year,” Dante pointed out, “and when there’s cake and presents.”
Caleb ignored him as he drifted deep into thought.
Were kids something he might want? He always assumed what he might be looking for was a partner: someone who was more than just a lover. The first natural step to that should be finding someone who was more than just a one-night stand. He should be going on proper dates. Making human connections outside of work. Finding an actual family.
But…that’s not really what was bothering him, was it? He could admit that he was lonely, but he wasn’t sure having another adult around him all day every day was the solution. He wanted to be something more than what he was. Dante was right, he had money, he had privilege. Shouldn’t he be using it to…help?
“I could open up my home to kids,” Caleb thought out loud.
Dante held up a hesitant hand.
“That sounds creepy.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I mean, maybe I could say, adopt.”
Fuego’s eyes went wide as saucers as he spit out his drank.
“Woah! Don’t most people get a dog first? Or at least a goldfish. Maybe an easy to keep houseplant?"
“Or you know, obtain any caregiving experience with children whatsoever?” Dante added. He clasped a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “I think you’re spiraling, Covington.”
The more he thought about it though, the more the idea made sense. There were tons of kids in Los Angeles that needed homes, right? And he had a house full of empty rooms. It should be illegal for one man to have so much space to himself when he wasn’t even home half the time. He wanted to do something more with his life, he wanted to share it with someone, but he was tired of trying his hand with lovers. Maybe that wasn’t what he should be doing at all. Maybe he really could help someone.
All he knew was that he had a lot of research to do. Caleb downed the rest of his whiskey and sat the empty glass back down on the bar.
“I’ll be in my office doing paperwork if anyone needs me.”
“We won’t need you because we will be going home!” Dante called after him.
“Our home!” Fuego agreed. “Where we are totally just roommates and are not secretly doing it.”
Caleb swirled back around. Dante was gaping at his best friend, whose eyes widened in horror when he realized he just spilled what was for some reason a secret his two closest friends were keeping from him.
“You two?” Caleb asked, waving a hand between each of them.
“I’m afraid so,” Dante sighed. He reached for Fuego’s hand, and as soon as their fingers interlaced their faces melted into something Caleb had never seen them wear before: a softness, love. “We didn’t want to tell you because, well, you seem kind of lonely lately.”
“That’s because I am!”
“You can join us, if you want,” Fuego smirked. Dante choked on his own breath before managing to swat his partner in the shoulder.
“No he can’t! He’s our boss! And our best friend.”
“But he looks so sad!”
What even was his life?
“I’m not sad, I’m working!”
It was in that office where he woke up the next morning, curled up on his leather sofa with his own suit jacket thrown over him. His phone was laying on his chest and when he clicked it on, he saw he had fallen asleep reading about the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. There really were a lot of kids who needed help. It made him feel at ease, thinking this could be something he could do with his life. If helping unhoused kids didn’t make him feel meaningful, what would?
But morning brought a glaring fresh perspective: what was he thinking, thinking he could actually provide a home for these kids? He didn’t even get home at a decent hour or at all some days. Dante was right, kids needed stability. They needed someone to tuck them in at night and make them breakfast in the morning, someone to take them to school. And school started so early.
The club was empty as Caleb finally left it that morning, and his Porsche sat lonely out in the parking lot. His house would be lonely too. At the least, he still had time to swing by his favorite café for breakfast. As he drove though, Caleb found his thoughts quickly drifting from food to yesterday. Had he really fired Chloe? Had two of his best dancers really walked out on him, just because he couldn’t control his temper? Were Dante and Fuego really sleeping with each other?
If his best friends paired off, where did that leave him?
Caleb cued up his ultimate ‘need to let out some steam while driving’ playlist and began to sing along with the Indigo Girls’ “Closer I Am to Fine” (he was a big fan long before the Barbie movie was ever even written, for the record).
I'm trying to tell you something 'bout my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all, yeah
He needed more than this in his life. He needed to find passion again- and not just in his work. He needed motivation to actually get home at a decent time and to wake up in the morning and feel like he was contributing something to the world.
Caleb turned up the music to belt it out once the song hit the chorus:
And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine-
Bang.
Crash.
Glass went everywhere as his head snapped forward against the steering wheel. Caleb saw stars as the car stalled. The battery still ran, hauntingly playing the music in the background as Caleb looked straight ahead in shock through his cracked windshield. People were racing down the sidewalk to help and in his daze, it took him a moment to figure out why. He was fine. He was trembling and there was glass and he felt cold but he was fine.
Shaking, Caleb forced open the door and stumbled onto the street- and he froze when he realized who everyone was rushing to help. There, in the road beside his car, was a child wearing a helmet with a huge crack in it and a cut bleeding on their forehead. From the dent on his now totaled hood, it looked like the kid was hit, flew up, hit his windshield and was now on the ground in a mess of blood and bruises.
Caleb stood over them, breathing harshly and sharply himself, not able to process what he was seeing until the child reached out and gave his pantleg a tug. The hand holding onto him was scraped up; their other arm was bent at an odd angle. So was their left leg. They were trying to talk, he realized. Caleb collapsed to his knees on the ground beside them and leaned down so that he could hear.
“M-my board,” the child managed to whisper.
Caleb looked around, trying to figure out what the kid was talking about and then he spotted it: there, tangled up behind his right wheel, was a skateboard.