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Sevika barely uttered a word when she came in that night. You thought to scold her when she didn’t greet you as normal, but judging by her rigid shoulders and perpetual scowl, she’d had a particularly crappy day.
When she finally finished her longer-than-usual shower and night routine, she clambered into bed, reaching to pull you closer before burying her head in your chest. She sighed, then inhaled, then sighed again.
“Hi, baby,” she finally said.
“Hey. You…feeling better?”
She nodded and tightened her grip around you. “’m sorry. Didn’t mean not to speak earlier. Wasn’t mad at you or anything. Just…had a day. Needed to unwind.”
You brushed strands of her loose hair out of her face. Innocent strokes traced arcane marble, massaged her skin until you journeyed to train fingers through dark hair. “You know I’d help you with that if you asked.”
She buried her face deeper, muffling her voice. “You’re helping a lot now.”
You smiled.
Having moved to lay between your legs, Sevika rested there, nuzzling her nose into the side of your breast. She breathed. Deeply.
You sat with her for an unspoken amount of time, feathering your nails across her scalp and down her neck for the occasional shiver that rolled down her spine. She wasn’t sleeping—not yet, anyway, even in the dim, amber-lit bedroom you shared—but soaking in the comfort. For a person like Sevika in her line of work, high stress was a given, an expectation. Day in and day out was a fight for survival and a fight for freedom. There would always be days like this, where she’d come back to you in one piece but her mind shattered from the day’s events, where she’d search for solace in your embrace to help piece herself back together. You always regretted destroying that modicum of peace with the same probing question that came to mind.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Indignation colored the breath that escaped her flared nostrils, and she slow-blinked into the distance. You’d seen that expression enough times to know what fueled it. She left the question to linger in the air. You respected it.
She reached for your free hand. Pulled it close and kissed your knuckles one by one. Then pressed her lips against the heel of your palm. Another. Then another. And on and on until she inched higher and landed in the center of your palm. Like a meditative process, the motions calmed her, relaxed her facial muscles ‘til serenity returned to take control.
“Not now,” she whispered and motioned closer to fit her scarred cheek between your collar and neck. “Just wanna lay with you.”
And so you did.
Silence overcame once more and for a time you lay still, only interrupted by the sporadic moan that escaped Sevika as she succumbed to sleep.