Work Text:
Lights out. Black walls. The faint buzz of the electrics gnawing at my brain like a blunt knife trying to make its way through brick.
The clock ticks, I hear a rustle from beside me.
I check my watch, cautious to not disturb the ball of sunshine laying by me, our legs and arms intertwined to the point that I can't tell where one ends and the other starts.
5:43am
Darkness creeps in, not just to my eyes but to my brain, my soul. My heart rate quickens, ba boom, ba boom, ba boom.
It’s all wrong. Everything is all wrong.
And there it goes.
My anxiety caves in, no longer able to support the weight of my pile of worries growing by the second, clouding my mind.
Naturally I try to suppress it, no use of course, there's no point in delaying the inevitable. It just wastes my already depleted energy.
My thoughts explode volcanically inside my head, noticing anything and everything around me that is wrong.
The changed bed position, my floppy pillow, the lack of music that usually helps drown out my late night flurries. Everything but them.
As I get increasingly panicked, I grip onto their everything, pleading that my body picks up that it's safe. It’s home.
Oh fuck.
My breathing shallows, with each passing breath getting harder to take.
My body coils, moving only slightly from them, but enough for them to notice.
I feel pressure on my hand intertwined with theirs, and an arm snaking toward my waist, encapsulating me. Smells like home.
I lack onto them, on the verge of tears, or maybe crying already, and try with all my might and main?, to steady my breathing.
Trying so desperately to fill my lungs but failing only worsens it.
Tears fall out of my eyes, and I move my head slowly away from their bare shoulder.
They turn their head toward mine, trying to find my ear to ask, barely a whisper, if I’m okay. “I can hear your breathing”
Oh fuck.
I nuzzle my head deeper into the crook of their neck, pleading that my body hears me, YOU’RE SAFE YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
It gets harder to concentrate. Not that there's much you can concentrate on in a dark, quiet room. Except for them.
It gets worse, I can feel myself starting to sweat, tears still sporadically falling from my eyes.
Oh fuck.
I need to fix this, come on. I try to think of anything, ANYTHING, that I could do, but the panic has clouded my brain.
Still laying on their chest, I feel their heartbeat. I smell their scent. I’m still panicking, but somewhere in amongst the fog, a switch clicks on in my mind.
I feel my head rising and falling with their chest, and with everything I have left in me, try to sync up our breathing.
Up, down, in out.
It works for a hot minute, but as soon as I lose track of theirs mine crumbles like a sand castle.
Oh fuck.
Tears streaming out of my eyes, burning my skin as they fall, I use my old strategy, the one from months ago I gave up on when I lost interest.
a ._
b _…
c _._.
d _..
e .
f .._.
g _ _.
I continue until I reach Z, and feel as though a weight has lifted off my chest upon realising it helped a little.
Trying to ground and steady myself, I grip onto them.
I grip the hems of their shirt, their hand as tight as I can, their waist, their ear, their hair, their everything. I hold them and feel them holding me tightly against them.
Physical touch has always been our love language.
I breathe in their token scent, trying to chase the smell with my nose like a dog would its precious toy.
I feel two consecutive squeezes from my hand, from them.
Our signal.
I give two back but linger a little longer than usual.
Oh thank fuck.
I relax my muscles, unsure of how long I’d been tensing them for, as if I were bracing for impact.
I practically roll onto them, wanting to be as close to them as humanly possible. My rock. My darling.
I feel the pressure from the hug, and take a deep breath in, and shut my eyes.
They have no idea how much they helped by doing so little.
I strain my neck so my mouth is adjacent to their ear, and whisper “night, I love you” into their ears, trying to keep any consistency I can, not straying from the comfortable norm.
They turn around, meeting my ear with their mouth and I hear their response, not straying from the usual. Comfort.
I fully relax now, and despite still shaking, feel as though I can fall into a peaceful slumber now.
My eyes closed, breathing steady, body sprawled over my girlfriends, hands locked, I do one last thing before I fall asleep.
I squeeze their hand twice, and barley utter a thank you, before I sleep, thinking over our a.m touches.
It’s okay now, you're home.
Sometimes home isn't a roof and four walls, it’s a person. And I know exactly who my home is.