Chapter Text
Sometimes it takes a while for pain to sink in. When the adrenaline is high your nerves just stop listening, they flee the scene. I always thought they were smart for doing that, so in 1969 I followed their example. The problem is when your nerves spend that long in hiding you never really know what to do when they come back, and they prefer to come back when you least expect it. When the threat is neutralized, and the pain has the space to exist.
For the first time in my life I feel safe where I am, and the second I realize it the world tilts right in front of me. It feels like that moment when you’ve been upside down long enough that everyone's faces start looking normal again. The world looks normal again, in a way I’m not used to, but I still feel upside down.
He’s still asleep next to me on my bed. Our bed, I guess. Everything I own is his, too. His because I let him.
We’re only in New York for a week, doing business mostly, catching up with old friends when we have time. Sometimes we go out together, sometimes we go out alone, and coming home is the same. We drift in and out of eachothers space easily. Planets and gravity. Celestial truths. We go out to dinner with old friends, and nobody mentions it, because they don’t need to. I look at him constantly, everyone but Greta pretends not to notice, and it simply is. Me and him.
We’re staying in my old apartment, obviously, because why wouldn’t we? This place is no longer haunted by unhappy endings, just the muscle memory of them. There’s two toothbrushes in the bathroom, two sets of clothes strewn mostly on the floor, but it’s different this time, because it’s the right ones. I wake up next to the man I love just as often as we can manage it, and we’re doing something right this time.
He looks so beautiful like this, completely peaceful. I pull my knees up to my chest where I’m sitting against the headboard. His breathing is even, and he sighs a little bit as he presses his face further into the pillow. His eyebrows pull together when he reaches out for me, noticing the absence of my body laying next to him. I put my hand in the way of his so he’ll find me, so he won’t wake up. He grabs it in his sleep, pulling my arm to his chest clumsily as he sighs. I grin, because it’s stupid and sweet and I love him, and that’s a striking contrast against my memories of this apartment.
I feel ok, in general, by default. My baseline is less than miserable. The thought is a little unnerving.
I move my free hand to his hair, not sure if I’m trying to tame it or mess it up more. He is the only person I have ever done this with: waking up together, at least on a habitual basis. In a way that means anything. He stirs in his sleep, blinking up at me slowly as he wakes up. He lets go of my hand when he realizes the weird angle it puts me at, but I didn’t really mind. I probably had 5 more minutes in that position before it became really unbearable.
“I love you.”
He snorts. “You too, baby. Even when you watch me sleep like a stalker.” He sits up against the headboard, and I move to wrap my arms around my knees again. He looks at me then like he’s noticing me for the first time that morning. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just-” I have no idea how to finish the sentence other than by weakly saying “thinking.”
He kisses me, his hand moving to the side of my neck, then the back of my head. He keeps it there when he pulls back. “You do that too much.”
“I know.”
We shower together. It takes longer than it should because he’s distracting and I’m terrible at multitasking, but it doesn't matter. There is no second shower to save hot water for. He says he’s going to clean up a little in the bedroom, and I go to the kitchen to make coffee. I habitually get two cups out of the cabinet and I make his coffee just how he likes it, because I know how he likes it. I know wherever I go now I have someone to come back to. I have a home.
I have a home. That thought shoots up my spine with so much electricity I could almost be convinced it wasn’t imagined, and there are my lost nerves. Welcome back, guys. It’s been a while.
I have something to lose. Something I could actually lose, because I’m no longer expecting it to leave. I’m standing squarely on the rug, staring right at him, and sometimes, when he looks at me, I don’t bother to prepare myself for him to pull it out from under me. My bare feet are no longer on their toes. I’m thinking about sitting down, actually. Someday I might even sleep.
Trust. I am so, so afraid of how much I trust him. It’s paradoxical, the fear I feel over my lack of fear. It’s like I’m not allowed to stop being scared.
I don’t notice him walking up behind me until he’s touching me. He lays a familiar hand on my hip, grabbing one of the mugs in front of me. He doesn’t let go, just presses a kiss to my bare shoulder before taking a careful sip from the drink.
“You’re thinking again.”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out hoarse. I clear my throat like I’m starting a car, warming up the engine in the winter.
“What’s wrong?”
I stare into my own cup, taking a long drink without waiting long enough and feeling it scald my tongue a little. I wince, but the feeling grounds me a little. “I’m not afraid you’re about to leave me anymore.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” He asks the question as if he’s genuinely curious. He’s not pissed at me for being cryptic again, just waiting for me to explain. I think he’s resigned himself to a lifetime of waiting for me to come around with the right words. I’m working on it, baby, I really am.
A lifetime.
“It’s worrying, because now I'm not prepared for it. If- if you leave me I won’t be ready.”
“What makes you think you ever were?” When I turn to him he’s staring at me assuredly, like he’s got it all figured out for us. I love it when he does that; I’m starting to believe him. “Fear doesn’t make you prepared, Ryan. It just makes you scared.”
I shake my head. “It used to. It made me prepared to take whatever my dad did, or whatever Pete was going to throw at me, whatever the band was going to say, the next person to leave.” I pause, adding “for you to leave,” a little quieter.
He sighs, takes my cup from me, and puts it down on the counter so he can turn us to face each other fully. He puts both hands on my waist, settling right above my hip bones. Solid. Grounding. “No, it didn’t. None of that hurt any less because you were expecting it, you just got to tell yourself afterwards that you saw it coming.” He moves one hand to my face, like he’s holding me here in this moment. Keeping our eyes locked. “If we want to get on with our life, we both have to figure out how to spend less time seeing things coming.”
Our life. Singular.
I kiss him, because I don’t have the words right now, but I have this. He seems to get that. His form is solid against me, something to hold onto in the liquid sensation of my own anxiety. I’m still terrified of this, of just letting us be us without worrying about a theoretical end, but I don’t want to be.
I’m trying not to be.