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Mason is bone tired. It's been a long week – too long – and really, he just wants to relax. Just wants to sit down and not have his brain go a million miles an hour for just one godforsaken moment.
Unfortunately, Mason is, well, Mason, and asking his brain to stop rushing is like asking an untrained puppy to stop crapping all over your house.
It doesn't work.
Mason throws himself onto the couch, deciding that he's not going to move until the sun explodes in about five billion years.
…Three minutes in and his entire body is trembling, and there's tears pushing insistently at his eyes.
Even trying to relax stresses him out. What in the world has his life come to, that he's this pathetic?
The tears, as they always do, come quickly, wetting the cloth of the couch to a dangerous, suffocating degree. Mason finds that he doesn't particularly care. Let him die. Maybe then he can finally catch a fucking break.
This is the state Ptolemy finds him in.
Sobbing face down into the couch, entire body shaking like a leaf with rage and sorrow and so many other feelings Mason has no energy to name.
Ptolemy, being the perfect, wonderful, amazing creature he is, moves to him carefully, placing a gentle hand on his back, rubbing it like Mason is some sort of fragile thing.
…He likes being a fragile thing.
Especially when Ptolemy helps him sit up just as gently as they had touched him.
"Mason. Are you alright?" They ask in that maddeningly soft voice that's so comforting it hurts.
Mason keens and sobs and is very aware that the answer he gives his Ptolemy is pure and utter gibberish, but he's far too tired to correct himself or care. He just lets himself cry, rubbing his face with the back of his hands. The effort is futile.
He just couldn't stop thinking.
Ptolemy shushes him softly and takes his hands away from his face. Mason, still looking to hide, buries his fave in Ptolemy's firm, steady chest, and the tears slow down.
They don't stop – Mason doesn't think they ever will – but they slow, and he's not sobbing or struggling for air anymore, and that's enough.
Ptolemy just…holds him. Mason whines and he doesn't ask him to explain or tell him to breathe. They just…hold him.
Mason loves it. It's exactly what he needs. Ptolemy is exactly what he needs.
Being held is what he needs.
Mason grips tight onto Ptolemys torso, afraid the man will disappear if he lets go, and buries his face further into their skin. He nuzzles against them as if he can somehow burrow inside and live there, nestled under his lovers skin next to his heart and lungs and stomach for the rest of eternity.
Obviously, he can't do that. But what he can do is hold his lover close and never let go. Ever.
That was enough. For now. This was enough.