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Ray can't sleep.
He wants to - he's exhausted, wrung out by the emotional toll
(my fault all my fault didn't listen never listen why couldn't I just -)
he's taken in the last couple of the days - but at the same time he doesn't. There's a half-formed, wholly superstitious thought in the back of his mind that all of this was too easy – that it was so easy it can’t possibly be real. That if he closes his eyes when he opens them he'll find himself alone in his bed, choking on the bitterness of his own regret.
(he'd tried to explain to Sand earlier, stumbling over the words, fresh tears leaking from his swollen eyes. It had been easier in his head; in front of the real Sand it had started to sound like nothing but excuses, lame bullshit, just one more fucking reason why Ray wasn't good for Sand and never would be, but it was like Sand hadn't even needed to hear it. He was just so relieved that Ray was back, that Ray knew that he could never, would never -
Ray had cut him off with a kiss then. Desperate and deep, trying to push everything he felt but couldn’t articulate - his remorse, his love, his terror that Sand had accepted his dad's money because he'd finally learned what Ray knew all along: he wasn't worth all the care that Sand kept giving him - into him that way. And Sand had kissed back like he understood, like he knew exactly why Ray had acted the way he had, why he'd lashed out. Like he could sense the space he'd made for himself inside Ray's very bones, and needed him to know he wasn't going anywhere.
Like maybe Ray had his own space inside him)
Ray thinks about Sand's eyes going cold and remote, his voice hard as he says that he's finally done it, finally hurt him too much, so much that he never wants to see him again, and he shivers.
Sand shifts slightly. "Cold?" he asks, voice heavy with sleep. He tightens his arm around Ray, inching him closer - almost impossible with how closely they're pressed together already - and clumsily reaches down to drag the comforter up around their shoulders.
Within seconds he's asleep again, breathing slow and deep.
Ray tilts his head back to look at his face, but the angle is wrong and all he can really see is the bottom of Sand's chin. He doesn't mind - it's a good chin. Everything about Sand is gorgeous, Ray thinks, and far too good for him. He knows it; he's always known it. But for whatever reason, Sand wants Ray, with all of his flaws and his indecision and the awful things he's said and done that have hurt him. He
(loves)
likes Ray, likes him so much that he keeps giving him chances in spite of all the ways that Ray can
(will)
screw this up. All the ways that Ray has already screwed this up.
Ray circles one of Sand's bony wrists with his fingers; he lifts Sand's hand to his own lips and presses one, two, three gentle kisses into the soft flesh of his palm.
"I'm going to do better," he whispers into Sand's hand, a soft, secret promise that he’s half-afraid to say aloud, as if giving voice to his determination will shatter it even as it forms. "I'm going to make you so happy."
As happy as Sand has made him, without even trying.
Ray has been almost unbearably stupid about this whole thing, he knows, but he's getting smarter by the day. He knows exactly what he has now, and he'll do anything
(anything, please just let me -)
to keep it.