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You wake with a start and a half-garbled scream, your arm jerking forward to protect your face. Your knuckles collide with the nightstand and the pain sings up your arm.
You grab for the person behind you.
The person that's supposed to be behind you.
The person that's not there.
"Leon!"
The mattress isn't entirely cold yet. You throw back the comforter, and the sheets are still crisply white. If he was taken, he didn't put up a fight –
"I'm in here, clover," a quiet voice says, crackling through the baby monitor on the nightstand.
You recognize the last word for what it is: not your name, not a term of endearment, but a code word delivered like one.
Everyone healthy and accounted for. No present danger.
You spend a dizzying moment remembering that you're in your warm bed, in your safe bedroom, in your locked house, on your quiet street. The morning sun threatens entry, nothing more.
Leon’s voice sounds from the baby monitor again, fizzy with speaker static.
"Don't get up, we're coming to you."
The familiar weight and cadence of Leon's footsteps in the hallway is further comfort. You sink into the mattress, unwinding in measured breaths so you don’t spiral. The problem floorboard outside the bedroom door creaks, and then he's there, and so is she.
Your daughter. She’s still small enough that Leon’s hand spans her entire back, holding her easily against the warm skin of his chest. Despite the relocation, she’s fast asleep.
He takes one look at you and crosses to your side.
“Hey,” he says softly. “You're okay.”
You're almost okay. The adrenaline is draining and your heart has stopped kicking you in the ribs. You’re staring up at the ceiling. You feel him touch your arm.
"Look at me."
You do. His gaze is steady and stalwart, a code all its own. I'm right here. The sun, a bright sliver through the curtains, paints a stripe of beaming gold down the side of his face. The silver in his stubble shines like metal shavings and his rumpled hair gleams like polished brass, but it's the illuminated depth of his eyes that you can't look away from.
He gently pushes a strand of hair back from your sweaty temple.
"Same nightmare?"
"Same flavor." You touch the downy-soft hair of your daughter. Her cheek is pressed right over Leon's heart. "I didn't hear her fuss."
He gives you that little smirk, moving to get up on his side of the bed. "That was the idea."
He sits carefully against the headboard, movements so controlled that your daughter barely jostles. The train of his robe catches and hangs off the edge of the bed, but you pull the comforter up and tuck it around him, around the both of you, realigning as you fit together. The cotton of his boxer briefs is soft under your hand when you settle it on his hip. His free arm comes around you, drawing you in close, a cradle of its own. He presses a scruffy kiss into your hair.
Your daughter gives a tiny sigh. Her perfect little hand, balled into a loose fist, overlaps the raised end of a scar that cuts across Leon’s pectoral. She rises and falls with his every breath, and this close, you can see Leon’s heartbeat gently rocking her. It almost chokes you.
Leon turns his head, his chin scratchy against your forehead.
“You’re tense.”
You’re gripping his hip; you only realize it when he brings his knee up a little. His hand on your daughter’s back still bears the faint marks of the defeated virus, his skin pale and patterned like crawling mycelium. You set your hand on top of his.
“I feel like I'm still waiting for the next shoe to drop,” you admit.
He's silent, his lips against your hairline, but his hand tightens ever so slightly under yours and his bicep flexes, as if to squeeze you closer.
"And you're checking perimeters again,” you add.
He doesn't deny it. That's why the sheets were cool, that's why you hadn't heard the baby fussing. He was already up.
You pull back to look at him.
"Did we rush into this?"
Your daughter senses the distress in your voice. Her little face scrunches and her body squirms, but Leon reacts with a calm as smooth as glass. He strokes her back and hums low in his chest, a deep, soothing thrum that vibrates across his sternum. Her face smooths out, her storm cloud dissolved before it can form, and she settles in again.
He looks up at you.
"What if we'd waited forever, and the shoe never dropped?"
You’re still rocked by the way he’d handled your daughter. You think, maybe if he did that to you, it would fix you.
“I can’t promise you that it’s over, forever,” he continues. “But something felt different this time. Like I could finally close the book.”
“Then why the perimeters?”
Leon shrugs one shoulder.
“Old dog,” he says.
You look between his eyes, searching for something to feed the panic. He reads you too easily, and tugs you in close.
He kisses your lips, sweet. Reassuring.
“It’s safe in the nest today, little bird. No one’s shaking the tree.”
You snort a laugh against his mouth, because he’s ridiculous. But the viscid knot in your belly finally starts to loosen, and the last tatters of your nightmare feel ashy and dismissable.
His hair is soft, combing through your fingers, and the weight and heat of him beside you is an anchor. He kisses you while the inviting smell of coffee, brewed on a timer, curls into your bedroom like a beckoning finger, but you don’t want to heed it just yet. You kiss him until your daughter starts to squirm again, and Leon transfers her to your chest, because it’s an empty tummy this time.
The sliver of morning sun has moved, and your daughter’s fine hair glows like a halo in its golden warmth. You stroke your thumb over her soft, soft skin.
It could all go tits up tomorrow. But today, at least, no one’s shaking the tree.