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Your eyes blink open and adjust to the dark room. You look around and find everything as usual, the ceiling fan still awkwardly ticks, the rain still pours down, the occasional lightning flash.
You wouldn’t consider yourself the most light sleeper, it would take more than just a few thunderstorms to wake you, but if it wasn’t the weather…?
You turn to your left side, facing Ren, your boyfriend, and pat around in the darkness to find him. You do, though something’s wrong.
His form is shaking and tensing under your touch, his legs are softly kicking and squirming, his touch is warm.
You slowly push up onto your knees, leaning over to see if he’s awake.
“Ren?”
A beat passes.
“Ren? Wake up.”
Another.
You gently nudge his shoulder.
“Ren, hey, wake up.”
This time he answers to your calls and darts up, chest heaving, hand clutching his shirt and another pulling at his hair.
You immediately intervene, attempting to soothe your boyfriend’s racing heart and mind.
“Hey-hey it’s ok. It’s ok, look at me. See? You’re alright, I’m right here.”
It takes a few moments to rein him in-his conscience still half asleep-though when you do, his eyes lock with yours, his breathing steadies, and grip on his hair and shirt loosen.
“Angel!”
He whisper yells out.
You smile sadly at him.
“Are you ok?”
His nod is hesitant and jagged. You tilt your head at him and narrow your eyes, while his notices your reaction to his blatant lie and darts around the room.
You sigh before bringing your hand to rest upon his forehead and only retracting once you feel his skin burning up.
“Oh god, Ren, you’re completely burning up!”
“Oh.” He simply says.
“Are you not feeling okay?”
“Uhm, just a little. I’m just cold, but like a really bad cold, where it settles into your bones.. and my head hurts really bad, my heart too. It feels like it’s beating out of my chest.”
“Ren! That’s not ‘just a little’! That’s really bad.”
You scold and his head immediately hangs low, his eyes darting to the blanket.
“Any other symptoms?”
“N-no”
“Ok, I’ll be right back.”
You begin to get up from bed but he grabs hold on your wrist and tries to tug you back, though he’s not very strong. His arm-no, his entire body and frame is completely exhausted and weak.
“Ren, come on, I’ll be right back.”
“But I don’t want you to leave, please don’t leave me.”
His eyes are half lidded from exhaustion, his voice is shaky from pain, and his pleas grab hold of your heart. You’re almost tempted to stay put just to please him, but you know that wont help him as much as medicine and water would. So you peel your arm away from his weak grip and tip toe off, only whispering out:
“I’ll be right back, stay put.”
You come back with two different types of medicine for colds, and a glass of water. You set all the items down on the bedside table and try to read the instructions and measurements before handing them over to Ren.
“Drink up.”
The medicine is sickly sweet, a scent you yourself have always hated, and Ren apparently too, because he looks down at the tiny measuring cup in disgust.
“Come on, you have to take it, you’ll feel so much better after, please?”
Almost after hearing your plea he immediately coughs down the medicine and you hand him the glass of water.
“Good boy.”
You smile down at him and rub his head before taking the glass, setting it down, and crawling back into bed with him.
“You must’ve gotten sick from the rain outside. When you went out to pick up dinner?”
He hums in response, him too settling back into bed.
You fluff up his pillow and cover him with the duvet, then lean down to peck his cheek, but he jerks away.
Surprised, you pull away too.
“Sorry, are you alright? I didn’t mean to-“
“No-no it’s not that at all angel, just. I don’t want to get you sick.”
You bite down a laugh and simply smile.
“It’s only a matter of time before I get sick too, buttercup, I walked home alone in the rain after work.” You tease and he flushes.
He seems to think it over, before sneakily wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you down to his chest quickly.
You squeal out and poke your head out from the covers.
You try to reposition yourself so you’re not hurting him, but he holds onto you so tightly you wonder where all this extra strength came from.
You two settle into a comfortable silence, him holding you tightly, you tracing patterns along his chest. Only many moments later do one of the two of you speak.
“Ren? Are you still awake?”
“Yes, angel.”
“Can’t sleep?”
He hesitates before saying; “No.”
“What’s wrong? Is the rain too loud? Are you uncomfortable? Is anything still hurting?”
“No-no, it’s not that, just, I can’t sleep.”
“Is it about your nightmare from earlier?”
He doesn’t say anything, only offers a clipped nod.
You wrap your arms around his chest, rubbing soothing circles into his skin and calming his racing heart.
“Do you maybe wanna talk about it?”
This time he answers all too quickly.
“No, it’s ok angel, I’m just.. glad you’re here with me now. In my arms, lying on my chest. Please don’t ever leave, angel. I’ll never let you go, but I want you to stay.”
While he said he didn’t want to talk about his nightmare, you could guess what it could maybe be about.
Knowing very little about his past, or things that haunted him on nights like these, you couldn’t pinpoint just how to comfort him. He was clingy, and protective, and loving, and the only thing you could think of to help him, would be to cling harder onto him. Hold him tighter. Love him more-at least try to make him know how much you loved and cared for him.
“I won’t ever leave you, Ren.”
He nuzzles into the crook of your neck, inhaling the scent of freshly washed hair, and sighs in content.
It only takes a few moments before you feel his breathing steady, and heart calm, and you know he’s fallen deep asleep.
You on the other hand stay awake. Listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, lulling you into an intoxicated sense of calm. Being around Ren always made you feel so warm and comforted in a way no one else had before. Maybe once though.
He’d make the occasional small snore, or mumble under his breath, but no shakes, tremors, or kicks to the gut again from him.
Only once you know for sure he’d had fallen asleep, and his fever had dulled, did you allow your eyelids to fall, and sleep to welcome you.
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