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He closes the front door and begins to peel layers off himself. His feet find slippers and he tugs his cuffs over his hands, shoulders hiking up, even as it is warm inside. His back feels cold and his clothes are like a sad, ill-fitting costume, weighing him down more with each step finally in the safe cover of home.
II’s voice calls from the kitchen before he enters. “Hey, love.” Blue eyes and a warm smile find him. “How was your day?”
Vessel just walks into the room and into arms that lift after a too-long silence from him and holds on.
His voice is muffled by II’s shirt. “Not good.” He presses his nose even more into the material and the scent and sighs, starting to deflate. The day is almost over. He only needs to get through a few more hours and then sleep this off.
The muscles of his back tense when a steady hand moves over them. “Did something happen?”
Vessel feels his eyes start to sting. He doesn’t know. He supposes nothing really happened, but he still feels bad. Tired. Worthless. Small. Insignificant. But he’s just overreacting. There’s no reason he should have this stupid, small feeling he can’t even name or justify.
“Love?”
The first tear rolls down from Vessel’s lash line as he closes his eyes when the arms around him squeeze and the exhaustion burrowed in his muscles and bones shifts to come closer to the surface of his skin. “Just– not good,” he breathes weakly, wetly, stupidly, unable to explain.
“That’s alright.” II gradually draws back but reaches up to tame some of the hair framing his face and offers easily, “Want me to make you food? A sandwich?”
Vessel’s chin scrunches up and he’s a second away from letting a whimper answer that.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t want anything either, only that one pathetic, needy little thing that’s been stuck on his mind for hours now.
But food is something he needs, otherwise he’ll feel even worse and be even more difficult to be around, so he should try.
Bent fingers line his jaw and a quiet voice makes his body feel weaker. “Just nod or shake your head. It’s okay.” There’s a smile there, understanding and knowing in a way that’s hard to process now, and eyes seeing him all too well. “You had a bad day. Let’s try and make it a little better, okay?”
Vessel nods heavily, dragging his weariness forward as he moves to put the kettle on. Tea isn’t too complicated. He wants a red flavor, picks it from the shelf and makes it with barely any thoughts in his head. Beside him, II prepares his food. Watching each step makes Vessel feel heavier and slower, even as he feels guilty for letting the man do it for him.
At the table, his plate lands in front of him almost without a sound, then a careful weight settles on his thigh. Fingers come to stroke his cheek during his sluggish chewing, which prompts Vessel to turn his head. II seems taller than him like that, settled in his lap, and his caresses and quiet smile make Vessel’s chest grow impossibly fuzzier. It makes him want to cry, but he holds it in and dips his sandwich into the small puddle of sauce on his plate. II put the bottle on the table because he knows he has it with his sandwich sometimes and for some reason, that brings up a vague but deep hurt in Vessel’s chest and gets his cheeks warm as if he's feeling something he otherwise only allowes himself to feel when he’s awake in bed while II is asleep and with his back turned to him.
“Good job,” comes II’s voice, praising him for, Vessel realizes, having finished half his food. He’s so lost, he hasn’t even noticed. He just feels warm and mellow and rotten.
He knows he washed his plate and his mug, but it only registers when II comes to take the tea towel from his hands because he’s apparently been stroking it with fingers long dry.
When warm hands close around his, Vessel whimpers quietly with his mouth closed. It’s embarrassing. He’s tiring II and testing his patience by being so dysfunctional, he knows it and feels the shame of it. He’s feeling so fragile for no reason. He blinks tired eyes at the blurry floor tiles and bites his lip.
Pathetically, he wants his mum. That feeling hasn’t been aimed at his actual mother since he was a child, and it isn’t now either. Wrapped in that feeling and under layers and layers is the needy, shameful wish to be a small child, easy to love, to be cared for like one, properly, with that unimaginable kind of tenderness that he's only ever known from stories. Just for five minutes, maybe, if he could have it somehow. As if he could have it.
“Where’d you go, love?” Vessel blinks down at the parquetry in II’s room, feeling wobbly and disoriented from missing the trip up the stairs. A patient gaze makes him melt even more. It's something of a miracle that he's still standing upright. “Why don’t you go take a shower, then come to bed?”
Vessel goes through his shower shivering and imagining his towel is a hug. He’s drifting somewhere in his head and startles when he realizes he barely remembers getting through his nightly routine. There is the faint taste of mint in his mouth, and his face looks clean and doesn’t feel dry, so he must have. What persists in his mind is the desire to be held tight or, more realistically, to sleep and have the day and his daze over with.
When he returns to the bedroom, he instantly spots II sitting in bed. As soon as the man notices him, he lifts an arm to beckon him in a way that tells Vessel that his don’t weigh a ton each.
“Come to me, love.” Vessel does, like a starving animal, and sits, feeling his bones and skin ache. A hand comes to rest on his forearm, and he leans toward the touch, mindless and hurting with need. “Aw,” II coos under his breath, not condescending, not unkind, simply growing to a better understanding of each shift of the body beside him he’s seen so far tonight. He leans back, opening his arms, and offers the pillow of his body. “Come here. Come to me.” As Vessel finds himself climbing into the embrace, II adds in a murmur just for them, “Want my burrow bug.”
Vessel can only whimper mutedly in the back of his throat and tear up at his little waking dream coming true. It feels so embarrassing, so shameful to react like this to a simple hug, to coming home, but it’s all he’s been craving for hours, ever since he woke up.
Besides, it isn’t so simple and isn’t just a hug.
II makes sure he’s secure in his hold before he begins to sway him. “Burrow bug had a not good day.”
His hands move on Vessel’s body like he’s easy to hold, small and fragile, nothing like how he’s been feeling. His hair is stroked, but no nail scratches his scalp, only mindful fingertips as II’s low voice settles over him and his hazy thoughts. It’s all starting to get to him and the aching need in his whole body takes over every other feeling, wanting and needing still.
“But he’s back in the burrow now, all safe and sound.” II’s voice is nothing but tenderness, like he’s telling him a story. Vessel’s eyes are closed now, he realizes, and he really wants to hear more of the story, more of the rumble under his ear, have more of the cradled feeling. He sniffles and whimpers softly, needy down to his core.
II cups the back of his head, supports his neck like he’s smaller than small. He watches innocent calm push more weariness away on the tired face with each passing moment. Carefully, he strokes the warm cheeks, the soft line of the nose and fights the urge to disturb the ease the man has slipped into by pressing his lips to his rosy skin. Instead, he goes on telling the little story, tightening his hold just a little, to try and sate the need to hold closer, “Burrow bug is loved and wanted in the burrow every day.”