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Caitlin blinked awake, unsure what had stirred her. She rolled over on Cisco’s couch and saw his stooped form at his kitchen table. His silhouette was illuminated by the harsh glow of his laptop. His shoulders were tight and she could see his hands flexing over the keyboard.
She pushed herself up onto one arm. “Cisco?” she asked softly, but he didn’t answer.
Across the apartment, the stove clock glowed 2:57 AM. She swung her legs off of the couch and went into the kitchen.
“Cisco,” she said, louder, and he jumped in his seat. He glanced up at her and flinched.
“Hey,” he croaked.
The glow of the laptop illuminated every line on his face and the deep bags under his eyes. “What are you doing awake?”
He gestured wildly at the screen. “I can’t- I don’t know what to write.”
Her heart twinged. Dante’s eulogy. “I thought you finished it.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t- it wasn’t- it felt all wrong.” His hands clenched the edge of the laptop.
She waited, in case he wanted to say anything else. “Why don’t you sleep on it?”
He shook his head again. “Cait, the funeral’s in-” He glanced at the timestamp on the bottom of his computer screen. “-ten hours and I have no idea what I’m going to say.” His hands were shaking and he grasped at his hair. “Every time I try to write it just sounds so insincere, a-and if I say something wrong, or don’t say the right thing-” He broke off. He was hyperventilating.
“Hey.” Caitlin slid into the chair next to him. “Breathe.” He did, a shaky, shallow breath. “Again,” she commanded, and he tried, trembling as he did. She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he flinched away. She stared at him, feeling a little stung, but she shook that off. She waited until his breathing calmed down. “Do you want me to help you write it?” He shook his head and his hair fell in front of his eyes. “Okay. Then do you think you can try to lay down and get some sleep?”
He shook his head. “I need to do this.”
“But you’re not. Get some rest and we’ll worry about this in the morning, okay?”
Cisco didn’t move for a long while, and then he stood up wordlessly. She reached out to touch him, instinctively, and then remembered how he’d just flinched away from her.
Come to think of it, he’d done that a few times today. She wasn’t sure how to handle it- Cisco had always been the touchiest person she knew. No matter how low he was feeling, a hug always seemed to make him feel better. Now, when he needed comfort most, he was flinching away from her.
Grief was funny that way.
She followed him to his bedroom, but he just stood in the doorway, staring ahead, like he’d forgotten what he was doing.
“Cisco,” she said softly.
Cisco turned around slowly. He was still slumped, the way he’d been standing all week, his head drooped like a wilted flower. “I don’t think I can sleep,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t stop thinking about him long enough to fall asleep.”
He hadn’t slept much over the last few days. She’d stayed up with him as much as she could, but it had been an exhausting week for her, too. She was tempted to get him sleep meds- he really needed to rest, not worry himself sick the night before his brother’s funeral -but a chemical depressant was the last thing he needed right now.
“Okay,” she said. “Do you want me to stay up with you?”
He shook his head. “You can go to bed,” he mumbled.
“Do you want me to stay up with you?” she repeated.
His hand clenched against the doorframe. His arm dropped to his side and he nodded.
She followed him back into the living room. She moved the pillow and blanket she’d slept with onto one side so that he could sit down. He curled into the corner of the couch and hugged himself tightly.
Caitlin found the remote on the coffee table and navigated through Netflix. “Anything you want to watch?” He shook his head, so she turned on Firefly. He always liked watching that. She turned down the volume down low enough that he could fall asleep if he needed, but loud enough that it could still be an effective distraction from the pain that occupied every inch of him.
Cisco stared at the screen silently, and then he reached for the blanket that she’d pushed to the side. “Okay if I steal this?”
“Of course.” She watched as he wrapped the blanket around himself. It was in the eighties outside, but she didn’t mention it. His hands closed around the edges, scrunching the fabric and letting it go.
She wished she knew what to say. He had done this for her, so many times. Over and over again, he’d coaxed her out through her pain and sadness and grief and somehow managed to say the right things, no matter how dark things were.
Caitlin watched his dark eyes go unfocused and sad. She wondered where he’d gone inside his head. She wished she could make it stop, for him. They’d spent the last four days in his apartment together, and she’d spent the same amount of time hyperaware of his emotional state, doing everything she could to be there for him. Now, in a few hours, they had to leave and face the world in the hardest way imaginable. At the funeral, she wouldn’t be able to protect him from his family’s pain and heartbreak. She wouldn’t be able to protect him from the harsh, painful reality.
God, she just wanted to shield him from the world and everything in it. His heart had taken too much.
She glanced at him, curled into a ball. He looked like small and vulnerable like a little kid, and at the same time, his face was lined with the sorrows of eternity, his shoulders slumped like they held the weight of the world.
“Cait?” Cisco said out of nowhere.
She glanced at him. “Yeah?”
His eyes were fixed on the screen, still unfocused. “Tell me it gets better.”
Her heart broke in two for him, again. “It gets better. It takes a long time, but I promise you won’t feel like this forever.”
His throat was constricting tightly, like he was trying not to cry. He hadn’t cried once since he got the phone call. “He was my brother,” he said in a soft, choked voice. “We grew up together. Even if we didn’t always get along- I just thought he’d always be there, you know? And he was always part of who I was.” His lower lip trembled. “I don’t know who I am without him.”
She turned to look at him. “You’re my best friend,” she said softly. Then slowly, carefully, she placed her hand on the couch between them.
He stared ahead, his throat twitching as he swallowed a sob.
Caitlin leaned back into the couch cushion and stared forward.
Then she felt his hand, hot and heavy, close over hers.
She squeezed it as tightly as she could.