Caleb hadn't noticed the droop of Caduceus' ears. He hadn't been looking at him when he'd made his confession. He couldn't. But he could hear his breathing in the otherwise silent room, and he heard the crack in his voice when he spoke. The reassurance helped a little bit. It didn't quite quell the sharp spike of nerves, but it was enough that some of his muscles unclenched a bit. He nodded, moving to push himself further back on the bed so he wasn't taking up quite so much of it. It was only then that he noticed he was wearing his clothes from Aeor. Cognouza. Whatever. He pulled his feet out of the blankets and started unlacing his boots. It was something to do with his hands, something to refocus his mind on while he waited for Caduceus to process.
His attention snapped back up, though, when Caduceus started to speak again. There was some stupid excuse hanging off the end of his tongue right up until the end when that one phrase clicked everything into place. He hadn't given Caduceus a choice. No, he hadn't. He had been afraid that Caduceus' choice would be to follow him and then he'd just get the man he loved killed too. All because he wanted to do something stupid. There was a part of him that didn't want Caduceus to hear certain things, either, or see them. If it had spiraled off in that direction. There were still parts of himself he wanted to hide. He was sure they all knew, anyhow. Beau, at least, knew. Maybe even Yasha. Molly would have figured it out. They'd all seen the way he flinched.
He sat in silence for a moment even after Caduceus finished. The pressure in his eyes moved across the bridge of his nose. "I don't know," Caleb murmured, barely a whisper. The spike in his chest met the pressure behind his eyes and he felt it spill over into the corners of his eyes. Warm, wet, but a relief in some ways. He breathed a slow exhale and dropped his knees to the sides. His hands were still in his lap. Strands of hair fell from the bun of the back of his hair and brushed his cheeks. His body was curled into a deep semi-circle. For a moment there was only stillness, then he reached up and wiped his cheek. As he started to speak, all that feeling balled up in his throat again, and he had to hold his breath and squeeze his eyes shut just to keep it choked down. It didn't help.
He shook his head again, "I don't-" he started, stopping to take a deep breath and try to get himself under control again. "Whatever you need to do." His brows scrunched, his face twisting into something like pain or shame, and he lowered his head even further. He didn't even realize that he was bracing for something. If he'd realized it, he would have also realized that it wasn't something he had to do. But that was just the way his body reacted. And something Lucien said to them was still stuck in the back of his mind.