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Sky knew, with the weary certainty of someone who had already spent far too much of his life arguing with his own mind, that there was nothing wrong with the apartment. The knowledge ought to have meant something. It ought to have settled beneath his ribs, taken root there, persuaded the frantic little creature clawing at the inside of his chest that no danger waited for him in the dark. Instead, it merely made the whole situation more infuriating, because Sky could account for every ordinary detail surrounding him and still feel as though the world had shifted under his feet. The front door was locked; he had checked it twice before going to bed and once more when he got up for water, because apparently trusting a perfectly functional lock to perform the single task for which it had been designed was too much to ask of his brain at three in the morning. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn against the city's scattered lights, and the air conditioner hummed its familiar, unremarkable song. Nothing moved in the hallway. Nothing waited beyond the bedroom door. In the living room, Prapai's outrageously expensive shoes were lying beside the sofa, abandoned with the particular carelessness of a man who could probably afford to purchase the entire building but apparently considered putting his footwear away a personal attack on his freedom. It was their home, cluttered with the evidence of two people living in it, and Sky knew every inch of it. Everything was fine. Unfortunately, his body had never been particularly interested in consulting him before deciding otherwise.
It had begun with a noise so insignificant that, under ordinary circumstances, Sky would not have remembered it by morning. Something metallic had struck the ground somewhere outside: perhaps a bin lid tumbling into the alley, perhaps a delivery worker fumbling with a trolley in the corridor, perhaps nothing more sinister than a careless stranger passing through the night. The explanation did not matter, because he had woken before he could attach one to the sound, opening his eyes into a darkness that was suddenly unfamiliar. For a single, devastating second he had not recognized the ceiling above him, the texture of the sheets under his fingertips, or the warmth of another person asleep beside him. His mind had been slow to catch up. His body had not. It remembered hands that refused to let go, the suffocating helplessness of a locked room, Gun's voice and the terrible realization that saying no could become meaningless when the person listening had already decided not to care. Memory did not arrive as a neat sequence of images that Sky could examine and dismiss; it flooded through him in sensations, in the expectation of pain, in a terror older than the room in which he was sitting. He jerked upright hard enough to send the blanket slipping to his waist, and his lungs, apparently determined to make matters worse, forgot how to draw in air without turning each breath into a small disaster.
He tried anyway. One breath, sharp and shallow, followed by another that seemed to stop somewhere near his throat. He could not fill his chest. The more urgently he attempted to breathe, the less air he seemed to have, and soon his fingers began to tingle while a cold numbness crept into their tips. Sky recognized the symptoms almost immediately, which should have been reassuring and instead felt like an insult. He knew what hyperventilation was. He knew that panic could make his heart race and his muscles tense and his head feel strangely detached from the rest of him. He had read the explanations, listened to the advice, and lived through enough nights like this to understand that the terrifying pressure around his ribs was not proof that he was dying. But knowledge belonged to the calm, reasonable part of him, and that part had abruptly lost control of the conversation. Fear had no interest in language, logic, or the quite relevant fact that Gun was nowhere near this apartment. It did not care that the man sleeping beside him would tear the city apart before willingly allowing anyone to hurt Sky again. All it understood was the remembered possibility of being trapped, and all Sky could do was sit there, trying to drag air into his lungs while the present kept slipping out of his grasp.
He reached for the bedside lamp and missed the switch. His knuckles caught the nightstand instead, setting the glass of water upon it trembling with a small, hard rattle. The sound was hardly loud enough to carry beyond the bed, but Prapai stirred immediately. That, Sky thought in the distant corner of his mind still capable of being unreasonable about ordinary things, was profoundly unfair. Pai slept as if he had personally negotiated a peace treaty with the universe, usually stretched across more than his rightful share of the mattress, one arm thrown across Sky whenever he thought he could get away with it. He was the sort of man who could fall asleep five minutes after declaring that he was not tired. Yet somewhere along the way he had learned the difference between Sky shifting in his sleep and Sky struggling to breathe, and the slightest disturbance in that fragile rhythm could wake him faster than any alarm. His eyes opened, the last traces of sleep vanished, and the expression on his face changed so quickly that Sky felt another, entirely different kind of discomfort twist inside him.
“Sky?”
It was the softness that nearly undid him. Pai did not shout, did not demand an explanation or react with the frightened urgency that might have confirmed every terrible instinct Sky was fighting. His voice simply became careful, lowered into the tone he used when approaching something wounded that might bolt if startled. Sky hated that tone. More humiliatingly, he hated how instinctively some part of him reached toward it, how easily his body recognized tenderness even while his pride scrambled to reject the implication that he needed any.
“Don't.”
The word came out ragged and unpleasant, and Sky could not have explained what he was forbidding even if his breathing had allowed him to finish a proper sentence. Don't touch me. Don't watch me fall apart. Don't turn the shapeless terror in my chest into something real by acknowledging it. Don't be kind enough to make me want to lean on you. Each possible meaning felt worse than the last. Yet Pai did not ask him to choose between them. He stopped moving immediately, and Sky noticed that too, even through the pounding of blood in his ears. The man who ordinarily treated personal space as a delightful challenge to be overcome sat up slowly and placed both hands on his own thighs, plainly visible, leaving the distance between them untouched.
“Okay.”
Such a small answer. No injured pride, no attempt to explain that he was only trying to help, no suggestion that Sky should be grateful for his concern. Just a quiet acceptance that Sky was allowed to decide what happened to his own body, even now, especially now. It should not have mattered so much. Sky wished it did not. He attempted another breath, felt it break halfway into his chest, and cursed at the pain that followed.
“Fuck.”
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
“I know I don't.”
Sky wanted, with a fierce and almost comforting irritation, to throw something at him. It would have been much easier if Pai had argued, if he had insisted that he understood exactly what Sky was going through or promised that there was nothing to be afraid of. Sky could have attacked either statement and hidden behind the familiar sharpness of his own tongue. Instead, Pai admitted the limit of his understanding without retreating from him, leaving Sky with nothing to fight but the panic itself. Somewhere beneath the strain in his chest, something loosened by an amount too small to measure and too important to ignore.
“Can you look at me?” Pai asked after a moment, shifting only enough to sit facing him. “Just for a little while.”
Sky shook his head. It was easier to stare at the crumpled blanket, even if the folds of fabric kept losing their shape at the edges of his vision. Looking at Pai would mean accepting where he was. It would also mean allowing the man to see his face, and Sky suspected that his face was currently revealing far more than he wanted anybody to know.
“Sky.”
“Don't order me around.”
Pai paused. Sky could almost hear the ridiculous gears of his mind turning, searching for some route around an obstacle that did not involve stepping over it. Then his boyfriend, who apparently possessed neither shame nor the instinct for self-preservation, gave a solemn little nod.
“Fine. Please insult me while looking at me.”
The absurdity caught Sky unprepared. Something jerked in his throat, halfway between a laugh and a breath that had gone wrong, and the resulting noise was pathetic enough to make him want to bury himself under the covers. Pai, infuriatingly, looked pleased, as if even that miserable sound counted as progress. Perhaps it did. Sky's eyes rose to his face almost despite himself, and there he was: familiar dark eyes, hair sticking up at the back, the lingering crease from a pillow on his cheek. Not Gun. Not a stranger. Not the room from his memories. Prapai, looking unreasonably handsome for somebody who had been asleep less than a minute earlier.
“There you are,” Pai murmured.
“Shut up.”
“Beautiful, too.”
“Pai.”
“Yes, darling?”
Sky glared at him with whatever strength he had left. It helped, surprisingly. Irritation was familiar ground, a feeling that belonged wholly to the present, to this particular man and the appalling pleasure he took in provoking his boyfriend. Pai's mouth curved, but he did not crowd him. Instead, he leaned forward by the smallest degree and waited until Sky's eyes met his again.
“Can I touch you?”
Sky's first instinct was refusal, immediate and reflexive, born from a time when touch had become synonymous with losing control over what happened next. But there was another impulse beneath it, quieter and more difficult to acknowledge, that remembered Pai's arms around him on ordinary evenings and the comfortable weight of his hand against Sky's back. He wanted that warmth. He wanted it badly enough to feel embarrassed, which was perhaps the surest sign that he was beginning to come back to himself. After a moment, he nodded. Pai moved carefully, giving him every opportunity to change his mind, and laid one hand against his forearm. He did not grip or pull or attempt to gather Sky into an embrace he had not asked for. His palm simply rested there, warm and solid, an invitation rather than a demand.
Sky looked down at it for a long moment. He recognized the elegant length of Pai's fingers, the faint mark near his thumb left by a motorcycle accident that Pai had described in such spectacularly dramatic detail that Sky still suspected the original injury could barely have qualified as a scratch. There was the expensive watch he had neglected to take off, another small piece of evidence that his boyfriend had once again climbed into bed without performing half the civilized rituals Sky considered perfectly reasonable. These details were so ordinary that Sky could almost feel himself becoming annoyed about them, and that ordinariness was precisely what made them precious. This was a hand he knew. A hand that had offered him food, brushed stray hair from his eyes, held his when he had finally allowed it. It was here, in this room, in the middle of a night that belonged to neither Gun nor the past. Sky stared until he could feel the warmth reaching through his skin.
“Good,” Pai said, very quietly. His thumb moved once, a slow stroke that asked nothing of Sky except permission to remain where it was. “Deep breath, sweetheart. Don't force it. Just try breathing with me.”
Sky very nearly told him to go fuck himself. The temptation was powerful enough that, for a second, it competed successfully with the fear. Unfortunately, his lungs appeared to consider Pai's suggestion worth trying. He drew in a shaky breath, pushed too hard, and felt his shoulders jerk when the movement failed to deliver the relief he wanted. Shame flashed hot beneath his skin; even something as simple as breathing had apparently become a task he could not accomplish properly. Pai's expression did not change. He neither praised a failure as if Sky were a child nor looked disappointed. He merely kept his hand in place and gave him room to try again.
“I can't,” Sky managed.
“You don't have to do it perfectly. I'm right here.”
“Don't be annoying.”
“That's a very unreasonable request. I'm extraordinarily talented at it.”
Another breath scraped through Sky's throat, still too quick. He shut his eyes in frustration and regretted it instantly. Darkness stripped away the reassuring details of the bedroom, leaving room for another room to impose itself over the present. Gun existed behind his eyelids as vividly as if the years between them had collapsed. Sky opened his eyes so abruptly that his vision blurred. Pai was still there, bare-chested and disheveled, studying him with an intensity that made Sky's heart ache for reasons no longer entirely connected to fear. He looked worried, of course. Perhaps frightened as well, although he was doing an admirable job of pretending otherwise. What Sky did not find in his face was pity. Pai was not looking at something ruined. He was looking at someone he loved who was having a terrible night, and the distinction mattered more than Sky could bear to say aloud.
“Watch me,” Pai suggested. He inhaled slowly, deliberately enough to make the movement visible, then let the air leave his lungs at an unhurried pace. There was something comically theatrical about the performance, especially when paired with his determined expression, and Sky felt a faint, stubborn urge to criticize it.
“You look stupid.”
“Excellent. Then you'll have no trouble keeping your eyes on me.”
Pai repeated the movement, letting Sky choose whether to follow. On the next attempt Sky managed to breathe in a little more gently, although his chest still protested. The breath after that was easier. Pai did not count aloud or turn the process into a test; he simply stayed with him, adjusting his own rhythm when Sky needed a moment. Slowly, the tingling in Sky's fingers began to diminish. The room stopped feeling as though it might tip sideways. The bedside lamp, the glass of water, the rumpled sheets and the irritatingly handsome man in front of him regained their familiar, fixed positions in the world. Fear did not vanish in a single dramatic instant. It retreated unevenly, returning in little surges that made Sky tense before ebbing again, until he could finally take an ordinary breath without wondering whether the next one would come. Only then did he realize how exhausted he was.
The aftermath was almost as hateful as the panic itself. His hands still trembled, his muscles ached from being held rigid for too long, and a damp chill lingered against the back of his neck. The fierce urgency that had kept him focused on surviving the next few seconds was gone, leaving embarrassment free to settle in its place. Sky looked away, suddenly aware that Pai had witnessed all of it: the struggling, the fear, the helpless way Sky had searched his face for something to hold on to. He wished the man were less observant. Unfortunately, Prapai had made a deeply irritating habit of noticing everything about him.
“Hey,” Pai said.
“No.”
“I haven't said anything yet.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say come here.”
“That counts as saying something.”
Pai seemed to consider the objection with profound seriousness. “Technically, yes.”
Sky rolled his eyes, which required far less effort than attempting to convince him that he did not want exactly what Pai had offered. His boyfriend opened his arms but remained where he was, waiting with a patience that would have been entirely unbelievable to anyone familiar with his ordinary approach to courtship. Sky regarded the invitation suspiciously. Somewhere inside him, his dignity rose to object that he was a grown man who did not need to crawl into somebody's lap after a nightmare. Unfortunately, dignity was a remarkably unpersuasive argument when the alternative was a warm, broad chest, arms that had never once refused him comfort, and the uncomplicated pleasure of being close to the person he trusted most. Besides, sitting upright had become exhausting, and Pai was right there. It would have been wasteful not to make use of him.
Sky did not crawl into Prapai's lap. He simply adjusted his position in a manner that, by pure coincidence, placed him sideways across his boyfriend's thighs with his forehead tucked into the curve of Pai's shoulder. The distinction was important, even if nobody but Sky could reasonably be expected to appreciate it. Pai, demonstrating the kind of survival instinct that seemed to abandon him during every other conversation they had, made no comment whatsoever. He lifted his arms slowly, giving Sky time to move away, and wrapped them around him only when Sky settled closer of his own accord. The embrace was firm enough to be felt without becoming a restraint. When Sky shifted, Pai shifted with him. When his shoulders finally began to lower, Pai's hand followed the movement without trying to guide it. Sky could leave whenever he wanted; he knew that with the same certainty with which he knew the lock on their door was closed. Perhaps that was the cruelest and most miraculous part of healing: realizing that two gestures could look almost identical from the outside and mean entirely different things to the person receiving them. One man's arms could become a prison. Another man's could make the world feel large enough to breathe in again.
Pai pressed a kiss to his temple. Sky made an unenthusiastic noise, mostly for the sake of appearances, and received another kiss for his trouble. He could feel Pai's smile against his skin and knew, with the resignation of a man who had made a series of questionable romantic decisions, that the bastard was enjoying himself now that the worst of the fear had passed.
“Stop.”
Pai kissed him again.
“Prapai.”
“Yes?”
“You are taking advantage of a vulnerable man.”
“I'm comforting my boyfriend.”
“With excessive kissing.”
“Is there such a thing?” Pai asked, sounding sincerely interested in the answer before placing another kiss near Sky's hairline.
Sky pinched his side. Pai twitched, and the small, offended noise he made was so satisfying that Sky felt a smile threaten the corners of his mouth.
“Violence,” Pai complained.
“Self-defense.”
“Against affection?”
“Against a repeat offender.”
The laugh that escaped Pai vibrated through his chest, and Sky felt it against his cheek. It was such an ordinary sensation, the kind he had once believed other people experienced without thinking, that he found himself lingering over it. Pai's hand traveled slowly up his back before coming to rest between his shoulder blades, where it began tracing unhurried circles through the thin fabric of his shirt. The warmth made Sky's muscles loosen despite his best efforts to maintain an expression of proper disapproval. His body, the treacherous thing, apparently had no intention of supporting his dignity tonight. Nor did his boyfriend, who possessed the infuriating ability to detect the smallest shift in Sky's mood.
“You like that,” Pai said, the satisfaction in his voice almost tangible.
Sky lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Do you want me to have another panic attack?”
He meant it as a joke, a vicious little exaggeration of the sort they exchanged so often that neither usually bothered to take offense. But Pai's face changed before Sky had finished speaking. The smile disappeared. For one brief, unguarded second, genuine fear crossed his features, sharp enough to make him look younger and more vulnerable than Sky was accustomed to seeing. Then Pai smoothed it away, apparently under the impression that Sky would not notice. Sky regretted the words immediately. Not because he thought Pai was angry, but because he suddenly understood how frightening the last few minutes must have been for somebody who could only sit beside him and wait for his breathing to settle. Pai had not known what Sky was seeing, what he was remembering, or how far away he had felt. He had only watched the person he loved struggle for air, and no amount of cheerful confidence could make that a pleasant experience.
Sky raised one hand and caught Pai gently by the jaw, turning his face back toward him. “You know I didn't mean it.”
“I know.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
“So are you.”
Sky squeezed his cheeks, a small and thoroughly undignified punishment that Pai accepted without complaint. For several seconds he simply looked at him. It was easy to forget, when Pai was busy being shameless or ridiculous or extravagantly devoted, that he could be hurt too; that loving Sky did not turn him into an unbreakable object whose sole purpose was to provide reassurance. Sky had spent so long dreading the consequences of being vulnerable that he sometimes overlooked the vulnerability of someone choosing to stay beside him. The realization settled heavily in his chest, but unlike the panic, it did not make him want to flee.
“You were scared,” Sky said.
Pai's arms tightened by the smallest amount before relaxing again. “Of course I was.”
“I was fine.”
“You couldn't breathe.”
“I started breathing again.”
“Yes,” Pai said. He did not argue with the outcome, but he did not pretend that the outcome erased what had come before, either.
There was something terribly inconvenient about being loved by a man who refused to make frightening things smaller merely because they had ended well. Sky had become accustomed to dismissing his own pain as quickly as possible, filing it away under things that had already happened and therefore did not deserve further attention. Pai never seemed inclined to cooperate with that particular strategy. He was willing to joke about almost anything, but not to the point of treating Sky's fear as imaginary. The gentleness of that refusal made Sky feel far more exposed than pity ever could have. He lowered his gaze to the watch still sitting on Pai's wrist and traced its edge with his thumb, trying to find words that did not reveal too much.
“I hate this.”
“The panic?” Pai asked.
Sky shook his head and gestured vaguely at the small space between their bodies, the space that had become almost nonexistent without his noticing. “This.”
Pai blinked and glanced down. “My chest?”
“You being useful.”
A dangerous smile began to spread across Pai's face. Sky recognized it immediately and wished, not for the first time, that he had chosen to fall in love with someone less insufferably pleased with himself. Unfortunately, he suspected he would have hated that hypothetical person for entirely different reasons. Pai was a nuisance, but he was Sky's nuisance, and apparently Sky had developed a disgraceful fondness for being adored by him.
“Oh?” Pai asked.
“Don't.”
“You like me taking care of you.”
“Pai.”
“You like being held.”
“Prapai.”
“And unless I'm very much mistaken, you seem to enjoy sitting in my lap.”
Sky stared at him. Pai grinned, smug and radiant with the satisfaction of a man who believed he had won an argument before his opponent had even bothered to participate. It was a serious tactical error. Sky was tired, yes, and his hands had only just stopped trembling, but he still possessed both his pride and a rather thorough understanding of the effect he had on his boyfriend. He shifted his weight, deliberately and only once, watching the grin vanish from Pai's face as if somebody had wiped it clean with a cloth. The sudden change was so gratifying that Sky almost laughed. He leaned closer, allowing his lips to brush the shell of Pai's ear, and discovered that reclaiming even this small degree of control felt unexpectedly wonderful.
“Be careful,” he whispered. “You're getting excited while comforting a traumatized man. Very immoral.”
Pai made a strangled noise that sounded as though several possible responses had attempted to escape his throat at the same time and collided on the way out. Sky smiled, properly this time, and felt the last stubborn knot in his chest ease at the sound of his own amusement. He had been afraid only minutes ago, afraid enough that breathing had seemed impossible, and now he was sitting in the very same bed tormenting his boyfriend for being hopelessly attracted to him. The past had not disappeared; it would be absurd to pretend that it had. But it was no longer the only thing occupying the room.
“You're evil,” Pai muttered, hiding his face against Sky's neck.
“You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
Sky pinched his side again in retaliation, and Pai laughed against his skin before drawing him a little closer, one hand resting securely against his back. The kiss he placed beneath Sky's ear lingered longer than the others, but there was no demand behind it, no expectation that the night had to become anything beyond this. Sky appreciated that more than he knew how to explain. He allowed himself to settle into the embrace, his weight supported by Pai's thighs, the world reduced to the softness of the sheets and the steady rise and fall of the chest beneath his cheek. For several minutes neither of them spoke. The silence no longer resembled the suffocating quiet of a locked room; it was full of the gentle hum of the air conditioner, the distant movement of a city that had no idea what had happened in this bedroom, and the reassuring sound of another person's breathing. Gradually, without making a deliberate effort, Sky found his own breaths falling into the same rhythm.
“Better?” Pai asked eventually, so softly that the question barely disturbed the quiet.
Sky considered lying out of habit. He could say that he had been fine all along, that none of it mattered, that Pai was making an unnecessary fuss over a temporary inconvenience. The familiar answers lined themselves up, ready to be used. But he was tired, and the warmth surrounding him made honesty feel less like a surrender than it usually did.
“Yes.”
Pai kissed his hair. Sky allowed it, generously deciding that one small expression of affection could hardly damage his reputation. Then came another kiss, and a third, and he sighed with theatrical suffering against Pai's shoulder.
“You're pushing your luck.”
“I know.”
“Stop looking so pleased.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
Pai drew back just enough to look at him, and this time the smile on his face was different. There was no smug triumph in it, no trace of the teasing performance he usually adopted when he wanted to make Sky blush. It was simply tender, open in a way that made Sky feel as though his heart had been set down somewhere it could be seen from every angle.
“Because you came to me.”
Sky went still. Pai said it as though it were something small and wonderful, as though Sky had given him a gift by crossing the few inches of mattress between them. Perhaps he had not intended the words to sound so important. Perhaps he understood perfectly well what they meant and had chosen to say them anyway. Either possibility was devastating. Sky remembered another room, another man, and an earlier version of himself who had learned that survival depended on becoming quiet, unnoticeable, unreachable; on swallowing every instinct to ask for help because help was not something he could count on receiving. He remembered how long it had taken to believe that wanting comfort did not make him weak, and how much longer it had taken to believe that accepting it did not mean owing someone a part of himself in return. Tonight he had woken in terror, flinched from the offer of touch, and somehow still found his way into Pai's arms. Nobody had forced him there. Nobody had demanded that he stay. It had been his choice, and the man holding him looked as though that choice meant the world.
Sky studied the arms around him, knowing they would release him the moment he asked. He thought of the way Pai had stopped when he said don't, of the patience with which he had waited for permission, of the ridiculous breathing demonstration and the kisses and the stupid jokes that had made the night survivable without pretending it had not hurt. He could not guarantee that he would never wake in terror again. He could not erase Gun's voice from his memories or promise that the next unexpected sound would leave him unmoved. Healing, he was slowly discovering, was not a straight path leading away from every terrible thing that had ever happened. Sometimes it was a night like this: the fear returning, the body remembering, and Sky discovering that he had choices he had not possessed before. He could open his eyes. He could say no. He could say yes. He could let himself be held, and he could stay because he wanted to.
“Don't make it weird,” he muttered at last, resting his forehead against Pai's shoulder again.
“Never,” Pai replied, smiling into his hair.
“You make everything weird.”
“That sounds like a personal problem, darling.”
Sky rolled his eyes, although neither of them could see it, and allowed Pai one final kiss without complaint. Then he closed his eyes. The gesture was small enough that it might have gone unnoticed by anybody else, but Sky felt its significance in the quiet space where panic had lived only a short while earlier. No locked room waited behind his eyelids now. There was only the warmth of Pai's skin, the weight of an embrace he could leave whenever he wished, and the gentle movement of a chest expanding beneath his cheek. He drew in a deep breath. It did not catch. It did not hurt. He let it out slowly, felt Pai's hand move once against his back, and stayed.