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It’s times like these that you almost wish you could remember your dreams, if there was one — a reassurance that the searing pain in your chest as you struggle for a single breath of air is purely due to whatever’s going on in your head and not something that’ll send you to an early grave.
It fades to nothing soon enough. There’s no movement on the mattress beside you; somehow, in all your writhing and ragged gasps, Jakurai didn’t stir. This is rare: normally, when you wake up in a haze like this, Jakurai is either already awake due to problems of his own or otherwise alert and ready no matter what stage of sleep he’d been in some minutes prior. You’re not sure which option is worse — only that most of the time, your problems are a disturbance, and you count this instance as one hell of a lucky blessing.
You stare at the ceiling for a while. You’re not sure how long it is, or what time it is: only that the fan is still but there’s a chill in the air and the extra blanket wrapped tight around your shoulders is both too hot with and too cold without. A blessing and a curse. You could laugh at the duality of it, at the duality of everything, but that would risk waking up Jakurai. You can’t do that.
There’s a dryness in your throat that’s tolerable at best and deathly uncomfortable at worst, and you shift your head to watch Jakurai like a hawk as you ease yourself out of bed. He doesn’t stir, thank god, but you nearly go down as your feet hit the floor and it turns out your legs aren’t as steady as they normally are.
Shit, you think, but you don’t say out loud, because that would risk waking up Jakurai, and you can’t do that.
You make your way to the bathroom. It’s slow, but you’ve found a little more stability in your legs by now. You flip the switch, and the sudden light almost sends you back into the doorknob (but it doesn’t, because even down the hall like this Jakurai might hear, and you can’t wake him up.)
You could stare at yourself in the mirror for hours and try to piece your features back together into something that makes sense. Something with a little less blue under the eyes and a little more smoothness in the cheeks. Something without that dead-eyed stare reserved for a reflection in a fingerprinted mirror at the depth of midnight.
If you stare for too long, you’ll either take yourself apart or start seeing ghosts. You decide that neither of those are good ideas — not because they’d wake up Jakurai, which you really still can’t do, but because... well, you don’t want to do that right now. And if Jakurai did wake up, (which you can not do) you don’t want him to see you like that. Not Jakurai.
It’s not as though Jakurai doesn’t know of your imperfections. You know he knows all too well the ways in which you pull yourself apart — probably has it all catalogued neatly away in his pretty head. Goddamn. Something like the Amaguni Hitoya Certified List of Fuckup Shit... or something. Cursing is easier than trying to figure out what he’d call it, trying to figure out how he thinks of you, how he thinks of anything, really, because Jakurai’s mind is an endless labyrinth of mysteries that you can only hope to conquer someday.
Fuck, you’re not holding up so well. You’d laugh, but that would wake Jakurai up, and... yeah.
You let out a tired sigh, fingers coming up to tangle in the mess of your hair. You’ve never been a fan of the way it looks down, and that isn’t helping with the distortion of the harsh bathroom bulbs casting too-deep shadows under your eyes and in the hollows of your cheeks (or maybe that isn’t distortion, maybe that’s the result of how little sleep you’ve gotten tonight, how little sleep you’ve gotten over the past week.)
Splashing cold water onto your face doesn’t fix matters much, and neither does the small cup of it you down like a shot. It sits uncomfortably in your stomach, and you idly wonder if it would have been better to continue on parched as before.
That doesn’t matter now, because you have to tackle the challenge of returning to bed without waking Jakurai up. Maybe it would be on the okay side to wake him up now, obscured by the dark and without the same sense of urgency as earlier, but — no. No. No.
You can’t burden Jakurai like that. The man sleeps light as it is — he must be worn out as hell to have slept through the night’s earlier events. To wake him up now — it’s inconsiderate. Rude. Proof that you aren’t worth it. Proof that you don’t deserve to have him here, in your own bed — the more rational part of your brain supplies that he wouldn’t be in your bed had he no desire to be here with you on his own accord, but who are you to listen to something like reason at the peak of the goddamn witching hour?
You squint into the darkness and flick off the bathroom light. It isn’t too far back to the bedroom, but it’s too dark to see. You hope your hapless fumbling along the walls to find the doorway doesn’t wake Jakurai up. You can’t wake him up now. You can’t.
There’s a perfect strip of moonlight from the window that falls across Jakurai’s face, illuminating his skin to something alabaster-pale and his hair to something equally radiant. You don’t think there’s a light in which Jakurai couldn’t look absolutely ethereal; when Jakurai stands in front of the bathroom mirror at two in the goddamn morning, he doesn’t seem misshapen, not even under the lights. Not even in the fingerprinted mirror.
You can’t quite figure out whether you’re incredibly lucky or incredibly undeserving of the angel in your bed. You’re almost leaning towards the lucky side of things as you lower yourself gingerly back into the depression in the sheets left by your absence, when—
“...Hitoya?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. You failed. You failed the one thing you had to do perfectly and you can’t turn your head to look Jakurai in the eye, even as you feel the bed shift beside you and concern lace its way into his distinctly sleep-roughened tone. Still smooth as honey, (perfect as always) but with an edge to it that almost makes him seem human.
Almost. You feel Jakurai’s hand fumble its way into your hair, down to your shoulder, and you don’t have a choice anymore but to turn over and let him see you.
You don’t know how you look, but you don’t look him in the eyes. Even if the light (or lack thereof) makes it hard to see, you know that if you make eye contact you’re liable to do several things you will absolutely regret while in a more stable state of mind. Like cry. Or talk.
“Hitoya,” Jakurai repeats, and you can tell he’s more awake now. More alert. Damn it.
You don’t look at him. You can’t. You see it out of the corner of your eye, though; “it” being the look on Jakurai’s face. “It” being the way that his features have softened into something halfway between concern and some sort of affection that might not be affection but damn it, it sure looks that way. It shouldn’t be that way.
“Hitoya,” says Jakurai again, and his tone is forceful now. Urgent. He’s always been quick to get his bearings after waking up, no matter the time. No matter the circumstances. That’s something you can’t hold a damn candle to... another thing on the list.
A cold hand brushes against your cheek, and the clear waters of Jakurai’s eyes have turned to something distinctly turbulent. It’s unmistakably concern and that has you furrowing your brow and tensing your jaw in a way that does nothing to calm the raw disquiet radiating off of Jakurai in steady waves.
You finally break with a muttered “couldn’t breathe.” You don’t meet Jakurai’s eyes — not because you’re lying, but because you can’t: can’t look at him, can’t admit what you’ve been thinking, can’t place the turmoil that’s settled itself directly beneath your skin and begun to rise to the top. You settle for turning away, for digging your face into the pillow as you curl in on yourself, for making it all but vocally confirmed that this conversation is going to wait until morning because dammit, Jakurai needs to go back to sleep and you’re sorry you failed at the simple task of getting a cup of water and coming back to bed without causing a disturbance and you’re sorry you didn’t think to not come back in (though the loss of body heat would have probably worried Jakurai further, and—
Jakurai shifts beside you and you tense as he wraps long arms around you, as he pulls you close against his chest and presses a kiss to the top of your head. He settles into the position and you could almost call it comforting. You could almost call it tender. You could almost call it an action borne of love, without pity or obligation or anything like that behind it.
There’s something about the way Jakurai murmurs “It’s okay” somewhere close to your ear that has you biting back a lump that rises in your throat. You can’t raise a hand to your face with the position he’s got you in, so you settle for a shaky exhale as you force yourself to relax in his hold.
You drift off again to the feeling of Jakurai’s lips pressed in a smile against the crook of your neck, the whisper of his hair buffeted in the breeze you’ve determined to be coming from the half-open window, the hold he has you in: warm, engulfing, a little something like home.