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She’s never claimed that days were easy, but they were better.
Better than nights.
Nights were always the hardest.
Or at least, they used to be.
Back in the ‘before’.
Before Elliot came back to New York.
Before she had someone to call in the middle of the night.
Before he started sneaking into her bed after the sun went down and her son was asleep.
Before he was hers, again.
Now things weren’t so bad at night.
She’d still have the nightmares, the bad dreams, the terrors, whatever you wanted to call them.
But she no longer woke up alone and terrified.
No, rather, she’d wake up and Elliot’s arms were already around her.
His face buried against the back of her neck, or pressed against her hair, his breath warm and comforting amongst all the chaos in her head.
He’d kiss her skin softly, let his hands smooth over bare skin, doing his best to settle her without scaring her.
At first he had been afraid to speak, too worried that he would frighten her or make things worse.
So he would move in silence, a simple ‘shhh’ leaving his lips every so often.
But never any words.
Finally, one night, after a particularly rough dream had caused her to almost spiral into a panic attack, he had spoken up.
He had whispered against her hair that he was there for her, that he loved her, that he was never leaving her again.
She had struggled to believe those words the first time that he had said them, but now, now she knew that he meant them and they made her heart relax and flutter all at the same time.
After he learned that speaking wasn’t going to have her hiding from him, he started doing it every time her dreams were plagued with thoughts of what had happened all those years ago.
He would calm her down with soothing words, comforting her as best as he could.
Sometimes he would ask her questions to try and distract her.
Other times he would tell her stories, something silly that Noah had done during their time together, something that Eli had learned at school and hadn’t shut up about for a week, sometimes it was news about the girls, or a story from his time in Italy.
But his words always worked best because after ten years without hearing his voice, it was what relaxed her more than anything else.
Every now and then though he would keep his words to a minimum, and once she was calm and steady he’d roll them until he was hovering over her, his lips kissing a trail down her body, his fingers tracing over every line that he had surely memorized by now.
She would never admit it, but sometimes she liked it best when he soothed her this way.
It brought back a sense of peace that she had long ago lost and it made her full whole again.
Everything about him made her feel whole again.
And even in the darkness of night, or rather, especially in the darkness of night, he was there.
He was always there.