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themanfromu · 17 days

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I love this 🥺❤️

Summary: You witness Sy having a night terror for the first time, and together, you deal with the aftermath.

Words: 14k Pairing: Syverson x Reader, ETS Universe Tags: Nightmares/Night Terrors, PTSD, Anxiety, Angst, and then my all-time favorite trope Hurt/Comfort

Notes: This happens directly after ETS so maybe there are spoilers I guess?

It's the middle of the night when you're awoken from your sleep by a faint and distant noise.

Since moving in with Sy, you’ve discovered many strange noises belonging to this old house. Though admittedly a little unnerving at first, it wasn’t long for you to figure out which sounds were the floorboards creaking due to temperature changes, which were just the old windows rattling from the wind, and which soundswere the fireplace popping. Combined with all the other background noises that naturally come with living out in the country, by now you’ve gotten used to all the small sounds, and typically, they don’t even bother you at all anymore.

So, with this particular noise being nondisruptive enough for you to keep your eyes closed, you scoot your ass backwards towards Sy, fluff up the pillow underneath your face, and wait for sleep to take you under again like usual.

The background sound only increases in volume, however, somehow rhythmic yet spotty, and it just–won’t go away. The steady whirring of the floor fan in the corner of the room does nothing to even cover it.

For a moment, you think it’s just a residual part of your dream, but that can’t be right. It’s getting louder, so it's definitely not in your head. And it’s definitely not a regular “old house” sound, either.

Using the dim light from Sy’s bedside alarm clock, you roll over and slowly open your eyes to look around the room. Next to you, Sy is fast asleep on his back, shirtless with the bed’s thin blanket resting just below his chest. Because he sleeps in all different types of positions depending on how he feels on any given night, it’s not odd at all that he's flat on his back like this. What is definitely odd is how stiff he appears. Instead of being relaxed in sleep, all of his muscles are visibly taut.

You push yourself up on your elbow and stare at him. His mouth is entirely closed, his jaw tightly clenched and his lips pulled downwards in a deep frown, and that’s when you realize that the strange sound isn’t coming from the house at all. It’s coming from him.

Like a deep, muffled hum forming in his chest and trying to push its way up his throat and out his mouth, the sound is…it's weird. There’s no other word for it. It's weird.

It’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard before, actually, and as it grows louder, it only grows weirder–like Sy’s trying to bellow with a hand held over his mouth. Never able to truly escape, the shattered sound forms in his chest and gets caught in his throat. Every single time.

As your sleepy brain finally gets your body to fully register the situation, you sit up all the way in bed. You know Sy has bad dreams sometimes because he’s told you he does, but you’ve never been awoken by him actually having one–not ever. He's been doing much better, he said. He told you recently that he hardly has nightmares at all anymore.

The next series of events happens so quickly that it’s hard for your still-groggy brain to make sense of what you’re even witnessing. Despite the darkness, you see sweat visibly begin to coat Sy’s hairline and even start beading up on his forehead, and his tensed-up arms start to twitch by his sides like he's seizing. The entire time, the awful noises from his throat continue trying to escape.

With your mouth suddenly dropped open, you watch in shock while Sy’s head then turns side to side on the pillow and his arms start stiffly jerking so much that they get caught up in the blanket covering his waist. The entire time, the noises he emits are just horrific, more high-pitched and desperate than you’ve ever heard Sy’s voice sound before, all with his mouth entirely shut.

When Sy's chest starts to jerkily rise and fall, you throw the covers off yourself and hop out of bed, helplessly staring at him violently moving.

Shit.

This isn’t a bad dream. Hell, this isn’t even a nightmare. This is a full-on night terror like he's said sometimes happens, and you don’t even begin to know what to do. All of this has happened in the course of a minute.

“Okay,” you whisper to yourself, walking around the bed so you’re directly next to him. Within a second, the sound of your beating heart starts to join the room’s panicked noises from Sy.

The sounds are starting to scare you; they seem so urgent that you feel like you’re in the middle of a battle or something, like there must be danger right around the corner that you need to brace yourself for, and you’re not prepared for this, you’re not–you’re not ready to handle something like this–you don’t know what to do. If Sy’s showing this immense amount of fear, then surely you have a reason to be afraid, too.

But then you remind yourself that this isn’t real. None of it is real. And even if you aren’t prepared for this whatsoever and have absolutely no clue what you’re gonna do right now, and even if you’re still shaking off sleep yourself, there’s no other option besides helping.

You’re gonna step up and do whatever it is that you can for Sy. Just like he always does for you. You have to act. You have to. You must.

You take a shaky breath. “Okay, uh–Wake him up,” you mumble to yourself. “He said to wake him up if this happens.”

By Sy's nightstand, you reach out to touch his tense shoulder. Feeling its sticky sheen barely give under your fingers, you try to shake it.

“Sy,” you call out, shaking his shoulder again amidst his unpredictable movements. “Sy, baby—wake up.”

He responds by growling at you, and–Oh, God, this is so different than just a nightmare. This is–This is scary. Sy is scared.

You take a deep breath and try to get a handle on your nerves. You can do this. This shit happens to you, too. You get scared at things that aren’t real. You can do this. He’s safe. You’re safe. And you’ve got to make him feel like he’s safe again. You've got to wake him up.

“Sy!” you call out again, bending over him and shaking his shoulders with both of your hands now.

You try to apply more strength in your attempt to wake him up, but a second later, one of his hands–no, one of his fists–quickly comes barreling upwards from underneath the covers. Gasping, you quickly move away as fast as you can while his arm rises upwards in the air, but his knuckles still end up briefly making contact with your left earlobe before you fully get out of the way.

The contact is slight yet unexpected, and it leaves a residual sting that’s sharp enough for you to lift your hand up to alleviate. Instantly, your earring–one of the tiny studs you typically don't even remove for bed anymore–falls to the floor.

“Okay,” you tell yourself shakily, taking another deep breath as the stinging by your ear dissipates. “Okay. You’re fine, it’s fine, it’s okay.”

You don’t care about your earring. Well, you do because Sy gave it to you for Christmas, but–You don’t care at all. You’ll get it later.

Let’s try this again.

Being more careful this time but also somehow more forceful, you shake just Sy’s left arm, staying away from actually bending over his body since that obviously wasn't a good idea.

When you get both of your hands around his bicep, you move his arm side-to side as strongly as you can, calling out louder than before over his muffled shouts. “SY! It’s me! SY!”

Continuously, you shake his arm, feeling as if you’re trying to yank dead-weight off the bed, and all the while, his noises grow absolutely haunting. Some of them are long and harrowing, but most of them are quick and urgent. All of them are loud.

“Wake up!” you urgently plea. "It's okay, Sy, you're okay, but you gotta wake up. Please. You gotta…you gotta wake up."

As you begin losing strength and getting tired, you let go of Sy and let out a dry, desperate sob to match the next hauntingly tortured scream he lets out.

“Please, babe, just wake up,” you beg. “Just wake up. I’m right here. Come on, Sy.”

In a flash, Sy’s eyes open wide, startling you enough to gasp. With eyes big enough to match his, you wipe off your cheeks and just stare at him. Though he’s blinking, he doesn’t seem awake at all.

Because he’s not. He can’t be. Looking trapped in his body, his breathing is still rapid and panicked. Worse, the bellows from deep in his chest go on and on, making you feel like you’re doing nothing to help.

“You’re okay, Sy,” you say in the gentlest, most confident voice you can, despite it shaking. “You’re–You're safe. I promise. Everything’s okay.”

Suddenly, Sy bolts upright and gasps like he's emerging from water, and with huge eyes, he stares outward at nothing. Even in moments of vulnerability, you’ve never seen Sy appear anything but confident and strong, and upon witnessing the most helpless expression in existence spread over his face, you cover your mouth with your hand.

In the next second, the noises Sy’s been making finally stop, and his shoulders seem to slump a bit. With your own shoulders still up by your ears, you take a small step forward and slowly lower the hand that’s been resting over your dry, shocked lips.

You don't know if you should try to touch him again. You don’t know if it’s too soon…if he’ll feel threatened by you like he probably did just a few moments ago when you were leaning over his body… You still don’t know what to do.

“Sy?”

Sy falls back onto the mattress in one fast movement and looks to the side of the bed where you were laying just a few minutes ago. Quickly pushing himself up on his elbows, he then begins to look around the room in a rush, only stopping when he sees you standing next to him.

"Get down!”

Gasping again at the volume of his voice, you stay frozen. “I–”

“Get down!" he orders again.

Your hands stay useless and shaky by your sides.

"You let her go!” Sy urges forcefully, and you step to the side so he’ll be able to see you clearer. “You let her fuckin’ go right fuckin’ now!”

“Sy, I–I’m here,” you tell him, getting whiplash from how quickly he’s gone from hauntingly groaning to outrightly shouting. He sounds so convincing that you have to force yourself to be rational about this; even though it sounds like these words are directed towards you, obviously they’re not.

He bolts upright again, and you step back with another gasp. “Get in position! Now!” he orders. “I got front.”

You swallow, watching him in an agony all your own. “Sy, you’re h-home,” you say, your mouth twisting down. “No one’s comin’. You don’t–It’s just me.”

"You–said–she–was–free!"

As your stomach hurts from anxiety, your heart positively aches, and you fight the urge to cry. “You’re having a–you’re havin' a... You’re in bed right now, Sy. You’re in your bed in Georgia. Everything’s okay. You’re safe.”

Sy's shouts incomprehensibly get lower in volume, ultimately turning to mumbles. Resolutely, you take another deep breath.

“I promise you’re safe, Sy. I promise. You just gotta–You just gotta wake up and see. Everything’s fine."

You heave in another lungful of air.

"Everything’s completely fine," you repeat, clutching your hands together. "You're okay. You’re okay. And–And so am I. Wake up and come back. Come–Come back to me."

Like a gloss has been lifted from them, Sy’s steely eyes change in the darkness, a shift that you can acutely sense. The second he finally focuses on your face, you recognize a semblance of consciousness behind a screen of intense worry.

“Y/N?”

Exhaling all your trembling air, you shakily nod and take a hesitant step towards the bed.

This was…This was no joke. This was…It honestly was scary, and you’re glad it’s over now. For both of you.

“Y-Yeah.” Your voice has gone dry, so you clear your throat. “Yeah,” you repeat.

“You need to be–What’re you doin’ out here?” he asks intensely, almost in accusation, and your mouth drops open. “Get back! Get down!”

It’s not over yet.

Sy's eyes hold residual panic while he looks behind you. Before he can interject like you can see he's about to, you carefully turn on the lamp atop his nightstand.

Slowly, you hold out the hands you’ve just been wringing and gesture around the bedroom. “You're home. See?”

Untensing his muscles, Sy looks side-to-side. After several thick and silent moments pass where all he does is breathe heavily, he finally falls back in exhaustion, bringing a hand to his forehead. The other reaches out and takes hold of one of your wrists, and he pulls you closer to him, squeezing there like a lifeline.

"Oh, thank fuck," he quickly whispers under his breath, and it’s not until he says the words that you’re able to relax a little bit.

But only a little bit.

Gritting his jaw so heavily that it's extended almost in an underbite, Sy examines the ceiling with the passing ghost of fear on his face.

Lowering your shoulders–this time for good–you simply stare at Sy. He’s back, but his face looks like it’s been through a very brief, very intense war.

He’s covered in more sweat than should even be possible, all of his body hair flattened onto his chest and stomach. The bedsheets underneath him are stuck to his back, the pillow underneath his head stuck to his neck. You feel his quick pulse through the hand he’s gripping you with, and with visible effort, you watch as he struggles to catch his breath.

You sit down on the sliver of mattress beside him and put a gentle hand on his chest. “Shh. Try to slow it down.”

“I was–” He closes his eyes. “You–”

You mimic taking a slow breath before speaking softly. “You’re safe. You're okay."

Sy doesn’t keep his eyes shut for long, and he doesn’t remain laying down for long, either. Within seconds, even as you're trying to comfort him, he sits upright and swivels, moving until he’s at the very edge of the bed. After putting his feet on the floor, he shakily puts his elbows on his thighs and drops his head into the palms of his hands. You hear him let out a loud breath like emptying all the air from his lungs.

“I don’t even remember–It was–”

You put a hand on Sy’s damp back, making silent circles until you eventually just stop to keep your arm securely wrapped around his waist. After a while, he places a hand on your bare leg and keeps it there, squeezing. You both sit still in the aftermath, holding each other.

“If that scared you,” he eventually mumbles, "I'm so fuckin’ sorry."

You rest your cheek on his arm. “You don’t have to say sorry. For anything.”

Once Sy lifts his head, you don’t know what else to say or do, so you don’t say or do anything. You just hold onto him, wondering what images he must’ve seen just now, and where he had gone, and what he had been through.

His breathing finally evens out entirely with the help of you audibly assisting him.

“There you go," you murmur, and he clears his throat.

You do the same.

“Are you…Are you feelin’ any better?”

Sy just nods at you. He doesn't let go of your leg.

“Want some water?”

Wordlessly, he nods again, and you stand up to quickly breeze out of the room, glad to be doing something to help, even if it’s just something small like getting something from downstairs. When you ascend the stairs again with a plastic bottle of water, your eyebrows crinkling together in worry, you catch Sy stepping out of the hallway bathroom, dabbing his face with a small towel.

After walking ahead of you into the bedroom, he gets in bed again, sitting up at his sweaty section of sheets and staring blankly ahead at the wall. All earlier fear and exhaustion from his face is erased. Now there's just a shadow of scorn.

You swallow as you approach him, standing next to him like he’s in a hospital bed for a moment, but when you figure you’re probably acting strange, you walk around the bed and join him.

You’re not worried that the blankets are all messed up and wrinkly or even that they’re damp and dirty. There's nothing on your mind except Sy.

He drinks the water you give to him in one go, squeezing the plastic and almost sucking it entirely down, then he tosses it carelessly on the floor. Laying down all the way, he scowls at the ceiling, and you climb in bed beside him and worry even more.

While he lays horizontally, you stay upright, crossing your legs and turning your body towards him so your kneecaps touch his side. You get as close to him as possible, gently touching his chest and running circes over the skin there. He closes his eyes under your touch, so you don’t stop.

You don’t speak until Sy finally breaks his stillness to lift a hand to his forehead. He keeps it there with no purpose before reaching out to touch you, grasping your sleep-shirt and holding it in his clenched fist almost like a lifeline. You cover his hand there with your own.

“Do you not like to talk about it either?” you carefully ask. “Like when I…Like with me?”

Sy shakes his head.

“Okay,” you tell him softly, continuing to touch his fingers until they finally loosen up a bit. “Then we don’t have to talk about it.”

When he finally lets go of the death-grip on your shirt, he keeps his hand on your hip, and the heat from it sears your skin through your clothes. After that, the room remains oddly still. Even the fan in the corner of the room seems quiet.

His croaky voice interrupts the silence. "They just…"

You lift your eyebrows.

"Nothin'," he finishes.

"You can tell me."

He shakes his head. "Just wanna forget that shit even happened."

In understanding, you nod. “I have medicine you could take if you want,” you keep your voice down and offer.

“Ah, I’m alright,” he tells you, almost dismissively, and you just continue to softly frown down at him.

That can’t possibly be true. Not with the look on his face right now, the residual doom, the fear from earlier that no amount of strength or willpower could get him through. Not with the noises he had made. Not with the things he'd said.

Well, he does have the skills to work through this stuff, you know. Alone. He’s not just physically strong; he’s mentally strong, too. His military training and experience are kicking in by now, and he’s probably pushing the occurrence deep down in his psyche. Trying to forget it even happened. Just like he said.

But he’s human, though. And everyone has their limits.

Sy inhales deeply and lets all the air out in a rush while lifting his hand from your side and running it over his forehead again. "Gonna shower," he mumbles.

After nodding, you lean down and kiss his mouth, as gentle and slow as possible. When you back away, your hair falling onto his shoulder, the two of you just stare at one another. While holding each other's gazes so long it almost becomes sentimental, you reluctantly slide your hand off his chest.

"You want any company?"

He tries to smile, but it's only the corner of his mouth purposefully twitching and then evening out again. "Just gonna be a minute," he says, his version of asking for space.

After touching your face and staring into your eyes for another heavy moment, Sy rises. Soon after he walks out into the dim hallway, you listen as loud, cascading water from next door audibly sounds out.

Then it’s just you by yourself.

The guilt from everything that had just happened starts to shroud you, layering up so much in the forefront of your mind that your head becomes heavy.

Of course it’s not your fault that he’d had a night terror or anything, but the fact that he gets night terrors at all…it has you feeling helpless. It was horrific. It was horrific to witness, and it must’ve been just as horrific to experience.

As always, you struggle with the desire to fix everything and make it peaceful and nice again, but with this, you’re in uncharted waters. Uncharted waters that Sy’s had to navigate countless times. With no help.

To keep your mind off worrying with no end in sight, you step out of bed and mindlessly begin to clean up the room, first collecting your earring that had fallen to the ground. Your ear feels sore, so you don’t put it back in your earlobe; you just remove the other earring and put them both on your nightstand.

In between biting your nails, you throw out Sy’s discarded water bottle next along with some other pieces of trash laying around. You then pick up some random clothes on the floor, toss them all in the hamper, and then finally begin to just strip the entire bed. Sy’ll appreciate not having to lay on top of dried sweat directly after showering.

After putting all of the dirty sheets in a giant pile in the corner of the room, you get a set of fresh linens from a closet in the hallway and then get to work stretching everything over the large expanse of the mattress, taking care around all the corners.

Since moving in with Sy and putting your own touch on the house, the bedroom is a little more cozy than the utilitarian way it'd looked before. A new chair sits in the corner of the room, the large window facing the front of the house now has curtains, and a large rug is now underneath the bed, tying together the space by the fireplace on one side of the bed and the window on the other.

You’d like to think the bedroom is more welcoming now, more home-like. That maybe, possibly, by chance, it’s helped Sy’s mind calm down a little.

He's always said that sleeping next to you keeps the bad dreams away, at least.

Usually.

Until tonight.

A recent memory enters your mind while you put a pillowcase on Sy's favorite feather-pillow. When the forest began showing signs of green again–around the time you'd first moved in–you’d opened the windows and watched the newly-purchased curtains move in the spring wind. Sy had walked into the room to catch you staring outside, and he’d matched his chest to your back before placing his chin on your shoulder. Together, you looked out at the pink blossoming cherry trees in the distance, at the bright yellow forsythia bushes scattered throughout the woods beyond the long winding lane, at the random array of tulips you were surprised to see pop up by the garage. You'd remained quiet together. Just looking.

Now that summer’s come early, you’ve started to open the same big window to let fresh air into the house. You frequently still stare outside. At the greenery and the rabbits and the chickens and the deer.

You softly smile while finishing up the bed. You’re happy living here, happy with settling in. And, like Sy's always said, he's happy when you're happy. He honestly doesn't mind you changing or rearranging things. Not even if it requires him to help with heavy lifting. Not even if you move something and decide you liked it better where it was before all along. He may give you a look, but he truly doesn't care.

These bedsheets you've kept the same, though. Sy’s got good taste in bedsheets.

He says it’s because he’s gone too many years sleeping on the itchiest military-grade bedding imaginable and won't settle for less now. You say it’s just because he sleeps naked so much and the expensive sheets feel better on his skin. You hear his voice in your head asking, “And why exactly can’t it be both?”

You can only hope the clean linen offers some sliver of peace to him after his shower. That he can fall into bed and just…be comfortable.

You don’t know. Just…knowing how he is, he’s going to have a hard time relaxing again.

You hope he can go back to sleep after this.

By the time Sy re-enters the room with a towel around his waist, you’re back under the covers in bed again, head on your pillow. You watch him lazily drop the towel by the door while simultaneously opening the top drawer of his dresser. He puts on a new pair of boxers before walking towards the bed and joining you underneath the sheets, and within seconds, the rich and spicy scent from his shower fills your nose. Getting closer to him as he gets situated in his spot, you breathe more of it in.

After Sy finishes fixing the pillows underneath his head, he lifts his right arm in invitation, and you snuggle even closer while staying curled up against your pillow and the fresh blanket. It takes a few seconds before you get settled–your earlobe feels tender depending on how you lay–but you finally stop shuffling around after a minute passes.

In the still air, you run your fingers through Sy's damp chest hair. He stays quiet.

Your hand flattens and pauses in between his pecs while you strain your neck to kiss whatever skin is closest to your lips. Right over his ribs is where your mouth connects. He still stays quiet.

Finally, you lower your hand to rest atop his stomach, and at that, Sy places his own hand atop yours. Gently, he squeezes there. You squeeze back.

"Good shower?" you check in after the silence goes on forever.

"Mm."

"Feelin' any better?"

The noise he replies with is a mixture between a scoff and a chuckle, a sarcastic coping-mechanism you’ve seen him use before.

You know it’s just a facade, but still, you frown. From where your face is pressed so close to Sy’s chest, he can’t see it.

"I just wanna make sure you're okay," you explain against his skin.

"I'm fine, baby," he tells you through a long exhale, and he sounds perfectly normal. "Don'tchu worry 'bout me none. You got work in a few hours."

“I mean…I’m gonna worry,” you admit, glancing up at him. “I just don’t want you to…not be alright.”

His eyes soften a bit when he sees your face. “Just stay like this.”

You nod. He’s probably just as used to his night terrors as you are with your panic attacks. In the shower, he probably already came to terms with what happened and compartmentalized it in his head. Now he just needs time to decompress.

"You stay right like this next to me and get back to sleep," he says with a squeeze to your body.

"Are you gonna?" you ask. "Get back to sleep?"

There's a pause. "With you like this, I can."

You kiss the side of his chest again and then roll over. Facing the window, you cuddle back against Sy until he rolls over to match his chest closer against you.

“Bed smells nice,” he mumbles.

“Mm.”

As he drapes his arm over your body, you recall a similar scene from several months ago–the night of your first panic attack in front of him. On his motorcycle. On the side of the road. Where he helped you breathe again. When you had been mortified.

You both were in this exact same position later that night–spooning in bed.

You sincerely hope his mind isn't running as much as yours had that night.

Maybe this is comforting to him. Just like this. You reach out for his hand that’s wrapped tightly around you, lift it up to your mouth, and kiss it.

“I love you,” you whisper, and Sy kisses the back of your head.

His mouth moves against your hair when he says, “You got no idea how much I love you, too.”

Breathing evenly with your fingers interlocked, you cuddle together and don’t say anything else. With the way he firmly holds you against his body like he doesn’t want you to move at all, you’re eventually lulled back to something resembling sleep. A few hours later when your alarm starts beeping, though, Sy’s no longer next to you.

Finding his departure from bed slightly upsetting but more or less predictable, you groggily get dressed for work and head downstairs without any makeup on and without doing anything whatsoever to your hair. You mess around with it while walking through the foyer so at least it'll look semi-okay for the day.

Drinking coffee at his regular spot at the kitchen table, you find Sy dressed in an old t-shirt and jeans. A wrinkled-up Car and Driver magazine is open in front of him that he doesn’t seem to be paying attention to.

As these things go, there's a strange feeling in the air while you help yourself to the coffee Sy's prepared, but he had already told you last night that he doesn’t want to talk about what had happened–at least not yet–so you're going to respect that.

When you sit down next to him, you hook one of your feet around his ankle under the table and treat him like you would on any other regular day, making small-talk about your plans for the day. Sy will be working on expanding the chicken coop out back before the afternoon heat gets too unbearable; you'll be at the office. Next, Sy will be working on Liana's car in the garage; you'll still be at the office.

Though your morning coffee together is quiet and intimate, it's careful. What had happened last night floats around the room above your heads, but you don’t dare bring it up. Even after all this time with him, you still struggle on a regular basis with knowing the difference between expressing concern for someone and pestering them.

He’d set a boundary, though. He said he didn’t want to talk about it. You’re just being respectful.

After standing up, Sy kisses the top of your head and carries both of your empty mugs to the sink. He stands there for a few moments, just staring out of the window at the windchimes hanging on the back deck. The almost forlorn look on his face propels you to stand up and walk to him.

"You okay?"

He grunts. While he pours coffee into a thermos, you walk to the foyer and put your work heels on. They click on the hardwood on your way back into the kitchen where you meet him by the back door to say your goodbyes.

After an exchange of softly-spoken I love yous, he steps outside through the back door, and to save your shoes from the mud out back, you leave through the front.

Naturally, you worry during your entire commute about Sy. About if he’s really as fine as he seems. About your role in all this. About whether you're not doing enough.

Not able to help it, the moment you're in front of your work computer, you log in, bypass your email alerts to open up a search engine instead, and simply type night terrors. After pressing enter, you click on the first legitimate link you see.

You're not a complete dumbass, so much of the article's information is self-evident and doesn't help enlighten you much, but in the span of one minute, something you read makes your stomach drop.

Under no circumstances should an individual attempt to wake up a person having a night terror.

You read the article three times in a row to make sure you correctly understand what’s written. And even after going to another article to make sure you’re not reading entirely incorrect information–and another article–and another–you find they all say the same thing. Don’t wake up the person having a night terror.

You had…not done that.

You hadn’t done any of the things the articles advise. The more you read about night terrors from an outsider's perspective, the more you realize how ill-prepared and impulsive you really were last night.

You hadn’t stayed out of Sy’s way like these articles suggest. You hadn’t stayed calm, either.

And you had tried to wake him up.

What if that had made it all worse? What if your voice somehow made its way into his head and panicked him more? What if you genuinely scared him?

You think of your own panic attacks. You've had two in Sy's presence already. Two. And he's dealt with you expertly. He's always known what to do.

Though you’re always unreasonable at first, still entirely stuck in your own head and afraid you're dying when you logically should know better after all this time, he's always unfazed. He always focuses on the goal of getting you to breathe again, and afterwards, he always sits with you in silence.

His presence is perfect to have.

He doesn’t make a huge deal about it in the aftermath.

He’s always so confident when it comes to you and your needs. He knows what to say. He knows what to do. He knows everything. And you…You aren't like that at all. Of all people.

Feeling inadequate, you close the door to your cubicle and stare at your computer monitor until the images get blurry and you have to wipe the corners of your eyes.

You have nothing to offer Sy. Really, you just don't. It's always him helping you. Never you helping him. All you do is take. You never give. You're always the one needing assistance. And the one time Sy needed it from you, you still couldn't do it in the right way.

You successfully isolate yourself from your coworkers and your supervisor while putting off all the work you definitely could be catching up on, and the phrase keeps entering your head, again and again–You could've done better. You could've done so much better. Last night and this morning.

But then, even if you had, you'd be sitting right here in this same spot wondering if you’d pestered him.

Your brain just won't let you fucking win.

You close your eyes. What would Sy say to you if you voiced all these thoughts out loud to him? What would he say if you told him you'd read articles about night terrors and that you discovered you'd fucked up? And more than that, that you trying to wake him up maybe made the whole thing worse than it otherwise would've been?

It takes seconds for you to predict Sy's response.

"I was the one who toldja to wake me up before, baby," he'd tell you.

Because he did. He said that. He said that before.

And if you expressed concern that you weren't calm like you were supposed to be–– "It scared you," he'd also say.

And if you worried that you hadn't done a thing at all to actually help— "Just you bein' there was all I needed."

That's what he'd say to you. You can hear it in your head just as clear as if he were truly beside you speaking it. He'd be understanding. He’d be kind. And if you truly had fucked something up, he'd be forgiving. Because he always is.

Talking to yourself internally in a mixture of Sy’s voice and your therapist’s voice and the newly-emerging inner voice of your own, you take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and you rearrange your mindframe.

Maybe he was a little forlorn and shut-off this morning, yeah, but that’s not a reflection of you; it’s the aftermath of the situation he’s personally dealing with. That’s all. And what happened isn't your fault.

You sigh. You can’t believe that he’s the one who had a night terror, yet here you are needing to reassure yourself over it. It’s ridiculous.

But here you are. Y/N. And you’d done the best you could.

You really had tried your hardest to stay calm. And hell, maybe you actually did exude calmness somehow without you realizing it. Maybe your wavering voice still got through to Sy in the throes of it. Maybe it really had helped. Maybe holding onto one another afterwards was enough for him, and maybe when you get home tonight, he'll be okay.

And besides, you hadn’t really woken him up to begin with, had you? You’d tried, but you failed. He was in too deep. So…Maybe you hadn’t fucked up too badly, after all.

You’re still gonna have to talk to him about it tonight, though. The thoughts will eat you alive unless you let them out.

Going easier on yourself, by mid-afternoon, you open up your message thread with Sy to check in with him. When he sends you a picture of himself in the garage, you tell him that you’ll grab supper at his favorite fast food place on the way home. That’ll be one less thing for you both to have to worry about, you reckon.

Even though you end up working a bit late–well past what this little town calls its rush hour–when you finally leave your agency's parking lot, you're surprised to find the traffic unusually thick. Even for a typical Friday, the number of cars out on the road and people walking around the streets is odd.

It takes you a minute to put it together: Memorial Day is Monday. Folks are visiting for the holiday, preparing for the parade that'll go down Main Street.

The drivers in particular seem to be preparing for the parade early–creeping down the road with no regard to any traffic patterns. Cars with people hanging out of the windows. Cars slowing down at stop lights to catch up with friends and family members they recognize in the car next to them. People walking in the streets.

Impatiently navigating around it all, you mutter under your breath, just wanting to get home to Sy. He’d be pretty upset to see what he considers a really somber day be used as an excuse for this sort of excitement.

In addition to all the people out on the roads, there’s also a long line at the drive-thru. The fast food chicken joint, Sy’s favorite, is conveniently positioned directly next to Sy’s favorite junkyard. “The poor man’s KFC by the poor man’s AutoZone,” he likes to say. Normally you crack a smile thinking about that. Now you’re simply too annoyed.

After ordering grilled chicken for yourself and fried chicken for Sy, you load up on a bunch of sides and wait about twenty full minutes to leave with all your food, gratefully speeding once you hit the open, windy roads of the country. You just want to get home.

By the time you arrive and step inside the house with your arms full of bags, it’s quiet. You look to the left to see if Sy’s in the living room, but it’s empty. Next, you walk down the hallway and peek into the kitchen, only to find it entirely empty, too. And clean. Spotlessly clean. That's when you hear muffled music and the sound of clicking metal from down the hall.

You place the bags of food onto the counter and walk towards the work-out room. You stand at the doorway and quietly look inside.

In the middle of a set of bench-presses, Sy loudly grunts while repeatedly pushing his loaded-up barbell away from his chest. With his last rep, he lets out an extended groan before setting the barbell onto the rack above his head.

With no break at all, he sits up, panting, and instantly bends over to lift a singular free-weight off the floor. You continue to watch as he begins doing bicep curls, starting with his right arm and then moving on to his left. In the muscle-shirt he’s wearing, you’re enamored for a bit at the sight of his muscles at work, and you feel like it's worth readdressing his idea of putting a large mirror on one of the walls.

Since Sy hates having headphones in his ears, you clear your throat when you see your opening to get his attention, and he looks back at you instantly, shoulders temporarily rising in a moment of shock that’s short-lived. A line of sweat drops down the center of his nose, and he sticks out his bottom lip to blow it off.

You offer a small apologetic smile after accidentally startling him. “Didn’t hear me come in, huh?”

Sy wipes off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Guess not.”

As he takes a long sip of water, you take in his appearance. His gray shirt is drenched in sweat, almost soaking wet. His loose athletic shorts stop just where his knee-brace begins. His body looks just the same as it always does–impressively large, confident in the space it’s in–but his face is haggard. His eyes are red-rimmed. He’s tired.

You tilt your head to the side to gesture to the kitchen. “Surprised all that yummy-smellin’ chicken didn’t give me away,” you comment, trying to keep things light.

"Yeah," he replies.

You clear your throat. “I’ll warm everything up whenever you’re done. Just say when.”

Sy makes a hand-gesture by his throat to indicate he’s finished. With a grunt, he stands up from the bench and begins to walk towards you.

“What all’d'ju pick up?” he asks before he leans down to pretend-kiss you.

You slide out of the way of his dripping-wet face and stick out your tongue. “Chicken, taters, slaw,” you answer. “Green beans and rolls…The regular.”

While pulling his arms behind him in a stretch, he makes a long, low noise of appreciation. “Thanks, baby.”

You just smile, and Sy stands there momentarily, looking at your face. Seeming to inspect your hair next, Sy’s eyes linger by your cheek in a way that has you tuck a few stray pieces behind your ear with lingering self-consciousness you suppose you’ll never be able to shake.

You’re about to ask if you have something on your face or something, but then he just says, “Gonna shower, then I’ll come back down,” so you nod at him.

Sy lightly taps your ass as he walks around you, and you reach out with your foot to kick his ass in retaliation as you follow him. On your way into the kitchen, the dryer buzzes from inside the laundry room. You gaze inside to see a few baskets of linens sitting on top of the washing machine.

You call out to Sy who’s heading down the hallway, “You do laundry?”

“Yeah,” his muffled voice calls back, and you tilt your head to the side.

“Huh,” you simply murmur. He cleaned up the kitchen and he’s done laundry, and he’s worked outside and in the garage, too. “Well, jeez, Sy, you’ve been busy today.”

You set the table in the now-entirely-finished dining room with care while reheating all the food that’s had time to cool down on your drive home. You even move all the food into nice-looking dishes before setting it all out. It may be fast food, but still.

When Sy comes downstairs in another muscle-cut t-shirt and an old pair of sweatpants, you meet him in the foyer and gesture to the dining room with an exaggerated flourish. “Hope you’re hungry.”

He stretches. “You got no idea.”

After Sy takes his seat at the end of the table, you get behind him and put your chin on his shoulder, wrapping your arms around him the best you can. You squeeze him for a while before kissing his scruffy neck and standing back up and sitting down next to him.

Sy loads his plate up like it’s Thanksgiving, and you fill your plate with the things you’re able to eat. Though he’s acting normal, he looks utterly exhausted, and you can’t help but be concerned.

You don’t know how much concern is appropriate. You keep going between “He’s fine, he’s gone through this before, he knows how to handle this” and “He’s repressing what happened, he’s not fine at all, you need to help him.”

You clear your throat before taking a bite of mashed potatoes. “You been out in the garage most of the day?” you ask, looking at his hands as he shovels a bite of food into his mouth, too. Though he’d just showered, there’s still grease underneath his fingernails.

He nods while chewing. After swallowing, he just comments, “Liana’s air conditioner blew.”

“That sucks.” You make a face. “It’s gettin' so hot outside already.”

Sy grunts. "’Course that’s not all that needed fixin’. Spark plugs covered in grease. Brakes worse’n yours were last year.”

"Oh, no," you make another sympathetic face and reply. "Does she have somethin' to drive while you work on her car?"

Sy nods. "She's in MaMaw's car."

“Oh, nice,” you say. “That car’s pristine.”

“Yeah,” he grunts, “‘cause she never uses it.”

You smirk. “Thanks for also findin’ time to clean and do the laundry,” you tell him before you begin eating.

He nods. “No problem,” he says quietly, and his face turns a little more serious as he chews.

It’s because you’ve reminded him why the bedsheets needed to be washed in the first place. Now the topic is Out There.

After going through a mostly-silent dinner together due to combined hunger and good food, Sy puts his fork and knife on his plate and leans back in his chair. As he wipes off his mouth and beard with a napkin, you know the time is now.

You take a deep breath in preparation to speak, but before you even let out a word, Sy's already talking.

“I got a question for you.”

In slight surprise, your eyebrows lift, and after you swallow, you agreeably nod almost instantly. In reaction to Sy's serious face, you touch the area around your mouth, nervous you have food there due to how intensely he’s suddenly looking at you.

"...Yeah?"

He sharply inhales through only his nostrils, and you're….confused.

"Didju have a nosebleed last night?"

The question takes you as off-guard as his surly demeanor, and your eyebrows furrow in confusion while you shake your head.

"No…" you answer slowly.

Sy mumbles something impossibly quietly, and you continue staring at him, utterly lost.

You've only seen this particular look on his face two times–once with his sister Liana's ex and once with yours. He's angry.

"Sy, what's the matter?" you ask, now growing more worried than confused. "What's gotten you so mad?"

"Myself," he replies.

Your confused face only accentuates. "What on earth for?"

"Your pillowcase has blood on it," he answers.

You pause. “What, the pillowcase in the dryer?”

"The pillowcase that’s on the bed now.”

“Oh…I mean, I might’ve had a nosebleed then, I dunno,” you say, but Sy still doesn’t relax. He keeps looking all around your face.

"What did I do to you?" he asks you through his teeth.

Lost, you blink a few times and then slowly bring a hand up to your left ear. "Oh, that!"

Sy lifts a thick eyebrow at you.

"My earring…" you murmur, reaching up to touch your bare earlobe. "It got snagged last night and fell out. I guess there must’ve been dried up blood from that.”

"It got snagged how?"

"It was–when I–"

You could lie and say it just happened in your sleep, but you won’t. It was when you'd bent over Sy to try to wake him up. Because for some reason, you had thought that doing that was a good idea. To hover over a person actively having a night terror.

"I hit you, didn't I?"

Upset again at the fact that you’d done something so stupid to scare the shit out of Sy in the first place, you frown and look away briefly. That seems to give Sy his answer, and he sharply takes in a breath.

“Just barely, Sy,” you instantly reassure him, not knowing if you should be frustrated or flattered at this sort of response. “Seriously. Just, like–” You make a gesture by the side of your jaw to show how his hand had just barely touched your ear. “Like a graze.”

As Sy's face twists in deeper anger, wrinkles begin to spread along his forehead. To feel that this sort of reaction could be directed at you, you almost wither, but you sit up straighter instead. You know within every pore of your body it can't be directed at you. It’s directed at himself. He’d said so himself.

"Sy, it wasn't 'cause'a you,” you promise. “It was me. I leaned over you and scared you."

Like your words are just making things worse, a grimace takes over the scowl on Sy's face.

“Babe,” you say gently, reaching across the table with open palms. “It’s seriously fine. I promise.”

"You were bleedin’. ‘Cause’a me. You know that ain't fine.”

"I mean, I…I get that that’s how it seems, but it really wasn't–It really was hardly any–" You sigh. “It’s fine.”

"Hittin’ you and makin’ you bleed ain't just somethin' that's fine," he interjects with venom.

You blink a few times. You really weren't expecting this sort of emotional response from him.

While you sit frozen in shock, Sy just shakes his head at himself and stands up from the table, collecting your plate and then his own so the utensils rattle on the porcelain. You quickly rise from your chair and follow him into the kitchen.

“It’s fine because you didn’t mean to,” you tell him. "You had no idea what you w–"

“Doesn’t matter what someone means to do,” he puts the dishes in the dishwasher and gruffly says. “Matters what they actually do.”

“Okay, so, uh. You didn’t actually do anything, though, Sy,” you say, trying another angle. "It was just your knuckle touching my ear. I didn’t even know it was bleeding."

Sy stops messing with the dishwasher and stands upright. He emits a tired-sounding sigh and rubs his face with both of his large hands. “Okay.”

You stare up at him in yearning, hating this stubbornness that's so rarely directed towards you.

"You're makin' me feel bad," you whisper.

"How?"

You shrug. "Like I can't even handle a microscopic injury on my earlobe."

"You didn't–This ain't about what you can handle here, Y/N," Sy says, sounding exhausted.

"I'm–I get that. But I swear to you, I'm fine."

"Okay," he says again, and though it's not condescending–Sy would never–it's still so…dismissive.

You sigh. You’d just told him that he’s making you feel bad by acting like this, so now he’s trying not to make it worse. Now he’s separating himself from you.

After another quiet trip into the dining room, you and Sy both end up in the kitchen once more, loading dishes into the dishwasher together.

You touch his arm once his hands are empty. "You didn't mean to."

He just looks down at you wearily. "But I still did."

Your mouth falls open while you try to think of something else to say besides "I'm fine" and "You didn't mean it" and "It was just a scratch." None of those words have gotten through to him at all.

Ultimately, Sy leaves the kitchen before you can change tactics and think of anything else to say. Approaching the stairway, he briefly turns around and pauses.

“Thanks for bringin’ home supper,” he meets your eyes and says loud enough for you to hear through the hallway. "It was…Everything was great."

You simply nod, almost amused that even while stubborn and grumpy, he’s using his manners. You can’t really be amused when you’re still so worried for him, though. He's being unreasonably hard on himself.

Giving Sy and yourself the alone-time you both need to regroup, you finish clearing the dining room table. After scraping all the leftovers into tupperware and stacking the containers in the refrigerator, you rinse off dishes in the kitchen sink. You load everything into the dishwasher on auto-pilot and then wipe down all the surfaces you can find even though they’re clean already.

Next, you head down the hall to finish up the laundry that Sy had graciously begun taking care of earlier. A giant twisted ball of bedsheets greets you when you open the dryer, and you yank them out and drop them into a wide wicker basket on the floor to get them out of the way for a bit.

Afterwards, you pull out the lint-trap from the back of the dryer while simultaneously reaching out for the giant Mason jar on the shelf on the wall beside you. Peeling off all the fluffy residue from the lint-trap, you add a giant screen of white lint to the existing ball of blue and gray inside the jar, and then you place the lint-catcher back into the dryer. Sy won’t use the collected lint any time soon, but when it gets cold again, it’ll be good for starting fires. You make a mental note to bring a new jar into the laundry room since this one’s getting full.

You fold the two baskets of bed-sheets while letting your mind roam for a bit, and then you go upstairs and put everything away in the hallway closet.

Sy’s in bed watching a movie when you step inside the bedroom, and you know you’re going to have to handle this delicately. The pillow that’s next to him has a tiny spot of brown blood on it.

He watches you from the corner of your eye while you change into comfortable clothes –a pair of athletic shorts and one of his old Skynyrd shirts–and then you join him in bed. Before settling back next to him, you pointedly flip over your pillow.

Really…his hand accidentally hitting your ear had been comparable to him accidentally stepping on your foot that one time you’d gotten him to dance with you at your cousin’s wedding—a quick, sharp sensation that dissipated within seconds. And he hadn’t reacted like this then. At all. If you recall, he'd actually laughed with you that time.

This is nothing like that, though. There’s nothing good-natured at all about this.

“I don’t wantchu to feel bad just ‘cause I’m in a bad mood,” he grumbles.

“I don’t wantchu to feel bad just ‘cause I made a mistake,” you counter.

His answer is a heavy yet clipped sigh.

"Is all this still just 'cause you think you hit me?"

He glances back at you in an instant. "I did."

"Sy, I promise it’s fine. It really is.”

His head thuds against the headboard. “It shouldn’t be fine to you, Y/N."

"But it was an accident. A total accident. You didn't mean for it to happen."

“An' yet it still did.”

"Because I leaned over you," you explain. "It wasn't your fault."

"So you're sayin' it's your own?"

"I mean…" You shrug. "Yeah."

He mumbles something under his breath you can't hear, and you feel him tense.

You've never seen such a bullheaded side to him before. Not towards you, at least. You've seen it to a degree with his family, but this is the first time for you.

"Sy, please," you beg. "Try to see it from my side, okay? You were–You were basically, like, paralyzed, and I was tryin’ to wake you up but I couldn’t, and I shouldn’t’ve even attempted to do that in the first place, but I leaned over you while you were already–I scared you.”

“That’s not how I’m seein’ it.”

You sigh. “How are you seein’ it?”

"I’m seein’ a man hit a woman, and now that woman's blamin' herself."

You blink. Your face softens. Your heart slightly breaks.

"Sy, I–It's nothin' like that. At all."

He remains quiet.

"Look, do you wanna see my ear?" you offer, turning your face to show him. "See for yourself. There’s nothin’ there."

Sy's quiet for a long time until saying, "Let’s just watch this movie."

You try to watch the movie, but you can’t focus. Long minutes stretch by with your mind somewhere else.

“I don’t…I don’t like knowin’ you’re upset.”

"I ain't upset with you."

"Upset at all," you clarify.

"There really ain't no changin' that, babe," Sy says humorlessly. "It is what it is."

You blanch. "I don't think you're bein' fair to yourself. At all."

"It's fine," he gives you a non-answer.

The evening slowly passes. You continue mindlessly watching the movie that Sy’s put on. You do your nightly routine in the bathroom. You get back in bed and decompress by scrolling on your phone. Sy turns the lamps off and switches the channel on TV to ESPN.

Normally ready to pass out after such a long work-week by now, it’s hard for you to actually wind down.

"Please don't shut me out," you whisper into the stillness of the air.

Genuinely struggling with this, Sy looks up at the ceiling. You watch his chest constrict as he takes in a breath.

“We can talk more about it tomorrow,” he says. “Just get some sleep.”

With a frown, you move your eyes from him to the flickering television set in front of you. After sighing, you crane your neck out to offer him your lips, and he meets them with his own. Morphing the meeting of your mouths from just a sulky goodnight kiss to something more meaningful, Sy pours a longing sort of dogged passion into his lips before breaking away.

Like always, when Sy uses his mouth not just to speak, he says much more. He looks at you almost fiercely after breaking away, and you want to just shake him and hug him and pull out all his pain.

"You're a good man," you tell him quietly. "And I love you."

His eyes leave yours after only a few seconds, and he nods almost solemnly.

For once, you’re able to experience first-hand exactly how it feels to want to help somebody so badly and to have them continuously brush you off, saying they’re fine. The situation is eye-opening at best and despondent at worst. You just don't know what to do.

Closely spooning, you and Sy hold each other tightly all night, and all you can do is hope to discuss this again in the morning with well-rested brains.

The next morning, however, the spot next to you is empty again, and you reach out to touch the indentions of Sy's heavy body on the mattress with a wistful hand.

After getting up, you use the bathroom and stare at your completely-fine ear in the mirror while brushing your teeth. Still wearing your pajamas, you go downstairs to find Sy at the kitchen table drinking coffee alone. Just like yesterday. Same spot, same outfit, same scene.

You pour some coffee for yourself. “Mornin’.”

With a voice that sounds off, Sy greets you back. You approach the table and curiously glance at him, and what you see is bad enough that you almost drop your mug of coffee. He looks horrible.

You don’t often think that about Sy, but it’s undeniable–he looks unwell. His skin is dry and pale yet dark under his eyes, and his eyes themselves appear not only red-rimmed like they were yesterday but bloodshot now. Long enough to touch the tips of his ears, his hair is longer than he typically lets it grow, and he hasn't shaved the stubble covering his throat, making his beard extend far down his neck.

Good God, he’s starting to get physically affected from this.

“Sy, you...” You put a hand on his forehead. "You look awful,” you worry aloud.

Sy just makes a noncommittally deep noise, and as he's planning to stand up from the table and dismiss you altogether, you decide to do something rash, especially for the first thing in the morning: you move your hand to his shoulder so he’s forced to remain in his chair.

In response to the challenge, he looks up at you with weary eyes. You just shake your head. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Sy, this–this isn’t okay. You have to know that this…We really need to talk. You’re not okay. You know you’re not okay.”

He takes a deep breath before replying, “I’m fine.”

You audibly set down your coffee cup. “And I say that shit when it’s not true, too.”

Your sentence hits him, and instead of responding, he looks away from you.

You don't take it personally. This surly behavior obviously has everything to do with his self-directed anger that he’d accidentally hit you, but you don’t know how to get him to see that you’re fine. He's clearly hung up on it.

Surely he must subconsciously understand you're fine, though. You'd shown him your ear–your completely fine ear. And his opinion of you would have to be seriously low to think you couldn't handle something as small as a piece of jewelry cutting your earlobe. Yeah, he's protective of you, but you're not made of damn glass.

There's something else going on. This is more than just simple guilt. There has to be something else going on. And he's being way too stubborn to really talk, so you’re going to have to get to the bottom of it yourself, then.

Closing your eyes, you channel the inner workings of his mind.

Sy…Sy…Sy….

Sy.

Similar to how much you hate having panic attacks because of how out-of-control they make you feel, you know Sy’s got to hate his night terrors just as much, if not more. For someone with such a high level of self-control, you imagine that the loss of control would be devastating. He must've hated that you’d had to witness it.

And obviously that he'd accidentally hit you during it–the entire reason you’re in this situation to begin with.

He’s got extremely high standards for personal conduct. One of the only things he's truly unforgiving about is people mistreating the people he loves, so now he’s probably lumped himself in with that category of people he despises. …Which has now resulted in this self-hatred. And moodiness. And stubborn detachment.

Your face softens, and you slowly take a seat in the chair beside Sy. You scoot directly next to him and place your hand on his knee.

To imagine Sy feeling like he's turning into someone like his step-father or something…It fills you with grief. He's such a great man.

He just won’t budge, though. He won’t listen to your reassurances that he's a good person and it was an accident. At all. He’s being far too stubborn.

And that stubbornness goes hand-in-hand with his high standards for personal conduct…the self-control only borne from the military. But he’d slipped in a moment of weakness. Or–in a moment of what he’d consider weakness.

So…Knowing him, that act was unforgivable–even if it was just your earlobe–and this detachment he’s showing is his version of…of what? Of protecting you from him? Of trying to put space between himself and the event? Of punishing himself?

You’re almost positive that he wants to protect you from himself. As if you'd ever have to protect yourself from him–but you know how his brain works. That’s probably exactly what it is. He hates that what happened had happened at all, but it did, and he had no control over it. So…now he’s going to do everything in his power to keep it from happening again. But since that’s something he still has no control over…like, he can't predict that another night terror will happen again, or when it’ll happen again since he’d be unconscious during it, now he's–

As your lips part in realization, your eyes widen. You stare into the dull color of Sy’s own.

“You’re not sleepin’ at all,” you whisper aloud your realization. “Sy, you’re…you’ve been makin’ yourself stay awake, aren't you?”

He doesn't respond.

"Because you think you hit me and you don’t wanna do it again."

He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his broad chest. "I did hit you."

"Your knuckle touched my ear.”

Sy won't look at you. "That's called hittin', Y/N," he says before diverting his eyes and standing up, and then he walks into the living room.

You sigh. Here we go again.

You stand up, too. Unlike last night, you’re not going to give up on this. You’re settling the issue once and for all. You won't continue letting him go on like this. If it means being just as stubborn as he is, then that’s what you’ll do.

Following Sy to the next room, you say, “Sy, it was on me."

“It wasn’t.”

You take the seat next to him on the couch. “Yes, it was.”

He turns to look at you and points to his chest. "I took the action to hitchu."

“Because I took the action to bend over you while you were thrashin' around," you counter. "I got in the way. That’s what happened. I didn’t move out of the way quick enough. That's it.”

Sy closes his eyes, and he tensely inhales.

“Everything I’ve read says that I shouldn’t’ve done that, Sy, but I didn’t–I didn’t know. I had no idea not to wake up someone havin’ a night terror. I just…" You speak quieter when you say, "I was just tryin' to help."

When he opens his eyes, Sy’s expression seems to shift, and you desperately try to read what he's feeling but not able to say. It seems like…shame?

Shame over what, though? For accidentally hitting you? For having night terrors in the first place? For requiring your help?

Your bottom lip inadvertently quivers.

"Please, don’tchu go cryin'..."

"You're not hearin' what I have to say," you tell him.

"Baby, I am hearin' it," he replies after sighing. "I just can’t get myself to agree."

Frowning, you sit still for a few moments. When you finally do speak, your voice is lower than a whisper. "I hate sayin’ this, but you’re almost makin' me feel like I’m inadequate," you utter, looking down at your lap. "Like I’m glass. Like I can't handle somethin' as small as my earring fallin' out."

"It didn't–"

"It didn't just fall out," you interrupt him and finish despondently. “Yeah. I know.”

"Y/N, it ain't that I'm aimin' to treatchu like glass," he sighs again and replies. He puts an arm around you and brings his other hand up to rub his face. “That ain’t what this is.”

"Then what're you aimin' to do?" you ask. "Punish yourself 'til you die of sleep deprivation?"

You can tell he's amused by your blunt statement, but he's still holding on to such a resolute opinion that he won't let anything besides sternness show.

“Y/N….I don't think you're weak. I've said that before. So if that's what you're gettin' from all this…"

“You’re actin’ like you bashed my head against the wall or somethin’,” you argue. “Your hand was, like, going up in the air–probably ‘cause you knew someone was hoverin’ over you–and it just…"

You take Sy's hand that’s draping over your shoulder and just barely tap on the side of your ear. He still doesn’t say anything.

“Why won’t you bend on this, babe?” you ask desperately. “Just–”

"Look, I know you,” he interrupts you with a sigh. “I know you very well. You're a people-pleaser. Whenever somethin' bad happens to you, you got the tendency to think it's not that big of a deal ‘cause you don’t wanna be seen as a problem if you complain."

He squeezes your shoulder to show he’s not trying to be unkind. Finally, he twists his body so he can see you better and make eye contact.

"This isn't me doin' that, though," you earnestly respond, hating the deep bags under his eyes. "It really did only happen 'cause I leaned ov–"

“You also blame yourself all the time when somethin’s not your fault so you can spare anyone else from feelin' bad," Sy interrupts. "When someone else is uncomfortable or somethin’, you’ll do whatever you can to get things calm again. This is exactly one of those times.”

“I–”

Sy knows what you talk to your therapist about. You share just about every conversation with him. You know that he knows how you have a habit of fawning. How uncomfortable you are with other people’s discomfort. How you’ll willingly take blame for things that you don’t need to just to keep things peaceful.

He knows that. But this really isn’t that. This isn’t you taking on something that’s really not your burden to bear.

“It literally was just one time, Sy,” you say, and apparently it’s the wrong thing to say, because Sy’s weary eyes flash.

"One time is one time too many,” he retaliates.

“Sy, I literally was in your face,” you put a hand on his leg again and tell him. “I was bent over you shaking your shoulders. I was trying to wake you up when you were in the middle of–of–I still don’t know what. But I know it was scary. And I know I made it worse.”

“Y/N…”

“That was on me. I shouldn’t’ve done that. I just…I didn’t know. I really didn’t. But I know now.” You take a deep breath and let it out. “I know now, and I won’t ever do it again. Which means I won't get in the way of your hand again.”

“Just stop blamin’ yourself, Y/N,” Sy mutters. “You didn’t do a thing. You didn’t. I did. People get woken up like that all the time without doin’ what I did.”

“Normal people, yeah,” you retaliate. “Not someone havin’ a night terror. You’re a vet who’s been through a lotta shit, Sy. A lot. A lot you probably won’t ever tell me even ten years from now. You were–You were entirely somewhere else in your mind, and I know that I had to’ve scared the shit outta you. I made it worse. I just–I didn't know."

“So it’s all okay?” Sy challenges with a quiet internal scoff. “It’s okay for me to punch my fuckin’--”

You slightly shake his leg. “You didn’t, though.”

“Your ear was bleedin’, Y/N,” he argues. "You don't wanna say what happened, and I get that, but I know. I know what I can do. I hit you, and even after you changed the sheets you were still bleedin’."

"You've never hit anyone in your sleep before," you murmur. "You've never done that. You told me that before."

He’s silent long enough for you to check in.

"Have you?" you clarify. “Hit someone?”

His answer is immediate. "No."

"Then why do you think you did this time?"

"Because I did."

"You didn’t. Your knuckle made contact with the bottom of my ear, and my earring snagged and fell out,” you explain, going over the same information you already have. "But Sy, I've literally run into a door before and had that happen. It’s really not hard to do."

"I made you bleed."

You challenge his stare. "Gettin' it pierced in the first place made me bleed."

"Which you did voluntarily," he counters, starting to slur. "You knew whatchu were signin' up for."

"And I could say that I did the same thing by tryin' to wake you up," you murmur. "But I did it anyway. Because I wanted it to stop for you. Because I care."

He’s silent.

"The arguments never stop with you, huh?" you try to make light. “Tryin’ to think of another one?”

"It ain't a matter of arguin', baby, c'mon.” Sy looks upwards at the ceiling. “I hit you. You bled. That's it. That's what happened. I hitchu."

"It was just–"

"It ain’t what it even was, Y/N,” he exasperately interjects. “It’s what it coulda been. That's whatchu ain't gettin'.”

Your face falls. “Oh.”

“Who's to say that this don't happen again tomorrow night and then it's your face? Then it's your head? Then it's–” He cuts himself off with a heavy sigh. “That’s my point, Y/N. You’re focusin’ on one thing and I’m focusin’ on another."

Impulsively, you make the decision to straddle Sy's lap. It takes him a second to realize what you’re doing and adjust the way he’s sitting, and his legs are so big that it honestly takes a good deal of work, as well, but once you’re fully seated, you reach out for his upper arms and firmly grasp them.

“Sy. I know you say that I have a tendency to downplay things sometimes,” you whisper while looking directly at him face-to-face. “And maybe that’s true. And I’m super happy that you speak up for me all the time ‘cause I’m still…me. And it's hard. But you have a tendency to think that nothin’s ever my fault, and that’s just impossible. Because sometimes things are."

His face gets surly, his mouth turning into a thin line. “This wasn’t,” he maintains, leaning back on the couch so he's now looking up at you. "I hit you."

Your hands fall from Sy’s shoulders and you tilt your head to the side. “I could argue with you,” you reply, “that it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to lean over a man who’s, like, eighty percent muscle actively havin’ a night-terror.”

Sy is about to interrupt, but you continue to speak before he gets the chance to. “But,” you clarify, “you’re right. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know not to bend over you to wake you up. I didn’t know not to try to wake you up so…abruptly. But now I do. And it won’t happen again.”

You’re being a lot more forgiving towards yourself than usual, and you credit therapy for that as well as the fact that you’ve been living with Sy long enough to start to believe all of the things he says all the time.

“You can’t predict that,” Sy mumbles, slightly lifting his hands in the air.

“Predict what?” you ask. “I just said I won’t get in your way, babe, and I won’t.”

“But you can’t predict that I won’t hurtchu,” he argues. “I can’t–What if I–what if it happens when you’re still fuckin’ sleepin’ next time? What then? You can’t predict that. You can't.”

Your face drops while witnessing the distress on Sy's own. Watching him show anxiety in a way he normally never does has your heart feeling torn.

Still, you remain calm.

“Sy, your noises would…they'd wake me up before it ever came to that,” you tell him seriously.

Soft and quiet and serious. Just like how he is with you after you have a panic attack. That’s how you keep your voice.

“You…The noises you made weren't like anything I've ever heard before," you say while trying not to shiver. "They were…They…They'd definitely wake me up first. I promise you.”

Sy still wants to argue, you can tell, and the rebuttal is right there forming on his lips, right there about to exit, but when he closes his mouth, you know he’s finally accepting what you have to say. That, or he’s growing too exhausted to continue to fruitlessly offer arguments.

You're left watching him struggle internally.

“Babe, if it happens again," you promise, "I’d get out of the bed just like I did before, and I’d–"

You'd be worried sick.

You’d be worried and anxious and maybe afraid again, but you’d be prepared and resolved and headstrong, too. You'd be there for him. Just like he always is for you. Every time. No matter how hard it still is for you to accept his help.

"Next time, I won’t lean over you. I won’t get in the way tryin’ to wake you up. I won't make you feel threatened."

You realize your eyes are growing prickly, so you blink a few times in a row.

"And it’ll be fine," you finish. "We'll both be fine.”

Sy takes a long, deep breath, and with deliberately slow words, he responds to you. "You should never have to make up a plan designed to protect yourself from me."

"I–"

"Not from me. Of all people."

"It's not to protect myself, Sy. It's to help you."

"Still shouldn't have to do it."

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have to bring me paper bags when my lungs don’t work," you reply humorlessly, "but here we are anyway, aren't we?"

Sy clicks his tongue. “You can’t help that.”

“And you can’t help this.”

He takes another deep breath, and you put your forehead on his.

“It’s not me protectin’ myself from you, Sy,” you quietly repeat, now putting your hands on the sides of his face. “It’s me tryin’ to help you. You help me all the time. I wanna help you, too.”

"Y/N…"

"Just let me help you. I don’t want you to have to deal with it all alone. I hate that I get panic attacks just as much as I know you hate this. I get it. Of all people, I get it. But it’s not your fault. It’s…You really can't help it," you softly tell him. "It makes you feel so outta control…At least for me, so I can imagine it's the same for you."

Sy shuts his eyes, and he remains sitting there with you on his lap, squeezing your thighs like he’s grounding himself.

"I feel like I'm rude as shit to you when I'm having a panic attack. I always…I always tell you to leave me alone and stuff. Right when I need you the most. And I don't mean what I say at all. And I always feel horrible when it's over. 'Cause words can really hurt. They really can. But what is it you always tell me?"

You don’t give him the time to answer before you’re continuing.

"You tell me I have nothin' to apologize for," you answer for him. "You always say that–You always tell me that you know I didn't mean to push you away. This is me tellin' you….You have nothin' to apologize for, Sy. You really couldn't help it."

Sy opens his droopy eyes, and with an intensity, he says, “You’re important to me. You know that.”

You touch his nose with yours. “You’re important to me, too,” you whisper, starting to see that he’s starting to become so tired he's growing delirious.

"I couldn’t live with myself if I did somethin’ t' hurtchu like that," he practically slurs. "I mean it. I really couldn't. That ain't me. I could never.”

“I know.”

You stare into his eyes for a long, long time. He’s never one to hold back his tongue, but when it’s stuff that he’s ashamed of like this, you get that it’s hard. It's hard for him to not be strong in every single situation.

“You wouldn't ever hurt me, Sy," you tell him.

Practically unblinking, his eyes are like a midnight ocean. On one hand, the heavy intensity is taking you aback; it really was just a knuckle to your ear because you got in his way. On the other hand, though, you get the symbolism of it all.

“You wouldn’t ever hurt me,” you repeat. “Even on accident. You love me too much.”

Sideways, he finally offers a little smile. “I do, but that ain't how it w–”

"And anyway, I've got pretty quick reflexes thanks to workin’ out with you."

Sy lowers all of his fingers at once so they’re in between the webs of your hands, interlacing them in mid-air. "I'm bein' serious here," he says, almost grumpy again.

"So'm I," you maintain, slightly pushing on his palms. "You'd never hurt me while awake, and you wouldn’t hurt me in your sleep. I’ve already told you that your noises would wake me up, and plus, I've got quick reflexes. We're covered."

Your concise and simple summary seems to finally be accepted by Sy–finally–and you pray that he doesn’t drag out his self-flagellation any more.

You know how intimidating he can be. To the people who deserve it, you know exactly what his hands are capable of. You know the pure strength he carries in his muscles. He'll never show you the true extent, but still, you know.

"I'm not scared of you, Sy," you whisper in finality. "You know I'm not."

After a long time, he turns his head and looks out the front window. Several moments pass before he speaks again.

“Thought they were gone,” he whispers. “Hasn’t happened in so long. Thought that I…Thought I was in the clear.”

You reach out and touch his face. “Is there somethin’ that happened recently?” you ask. “That maybe…had somethin’ to do with it?”

He sighs like letting all the air out of his lungs at once. “Shit just comes up ‘round this time’a year more, that's all."

You pause. "Memorial Day?"

Sy nods. You reach down for his hands again and put your smaller fingers in between his larger ones, interlacing them once more in between your bodies.

You remember meeting some of his military friends at Amelia and Johnny's Christmas party. You remember hearing them talk about the people who aren’t around anymore.

"I'm sorry this is somethin’ you have to deal with," you say somberly, and his shoulders shake a bit as he chuckles.

The response would either confuse or offend someone who didn’t know him, but you do know him. You’re aware that his humor can be somewhat dark at times.

You’re also aware that dealing with the loss of so many people leaves its mark, leaves its holes behind. You know Sy in particular carries everything with him deep down, in a way that he almost never, ever shows.

Just like with Aika.

"I get that laughin' is your way of coping, and that's fine," you say, "but I am serious, you know. I'm really sorry that you have to re-live stuff like that when you’re awake and then again when you’re asleep. And that you can’t control any of it. And I’m sorry that you…I’m sorry that it traps you like this."

“Just the price,” he murmurs, looking back at you, and you frown. He’s been up so long his words are starting to be indecipherable.

You nod. “I get that. I know I’m just one person and can’t, like, prevent it from happenin’ or anything, but I’m here to help. However I can.”

He mumbles something you can’t make out. You lean in closer. “Hm?”

“You do, y’know,” he repeats himself. “Help. Livin' here. Bein’ around."

You touch his forehead. “I know. Now let’s getchu back in bed, baby,” you decide.

“C’mere ‘n kiss me first,” he slurs, and you smirk and oblige, but when he wants the kiss to go on for longer, you disengage. Instantly, he sits all the way upright on the couch and wraps his arms around you.

You chuckle quietly while disconnecting his hands from your back. “You’re gonna go upstairs and get some sleep now.”

He lifts a tired eyebrow. “Am I?”

You nod and slide off his lap. “You're done bein' stubborn."

"Yeah? Says who?"

"Says me. Get up."

"Mm?"

"Mm,” you repeat while tugging on his arms to fruitlessly help him get up. “Go upstairs. It's an executive order.”

He lets you pretend to boss him around while you walk him up the stairs, and he watches in amusement as you tuck him in the bed.

He starts to drift immediately, his eyes heavily falling shut and his lips parting like he's about to do some serious mouth-breathing.

His exhaustion doesn't stop him from mumbling one last thing, and you have to lean close to his mouth and ask him to repeat himself.

"Thanks for fightin' for me," you’re able to understand, and then he's out.

#eyes that see #just-chirpin #captain sy #sy #sy x reader #captain syverson x reader #captain syverson #Henry Cavill #Henry Cavill x reader #Reblog

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themanfromu · 20 days

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Henry Cavill: These two wonderful wonderful chaps! What a lucky man I am to have been able to do press with them. We were missing the other Henry and Big AL but we managed to scrape through without them!

If you would like to see more of these two chaps, plus the other two not pictured here (you'll have to imagine what they look like) go check them out in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare in cinemas on April 19th in the US. I'll be in that movie, too.

#Henry Cavill #Henry Cavill Instagram #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Promo #Reblog

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themanfromu · 21 days

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HENRY CAVILL The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Promo Video

#Henry Cavill #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Promo #Gif #Reblog

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themanfromu · 23 days

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HENRY CAVILL as GERALT OF RIVIA Netflix’s The Witcher ‧ Bottled Appetites

#Henry Cavill #Geralt of Rivia #Geralt #The witcher #Scene #Gif #Reblog

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themanfromu · 24 days

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HENRY CAVILL The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Press Conference London, UK | Mar. 22. 2024

#Henry Cavill #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Guy Ritchie #Press conference #London #Reblog

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themanfromu · 24 days

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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare press conference

#Henry Cavill #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Press conference #London #Reblog #Guy Ritchie

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themanfromu · 25 days

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eyes that see (part twenty)

ETS Summary: Your life has consisted of caring for others. This is a story of you learning to care for yourself.

ETS Part 20 Summary: After spending the morning at the Christmas tree farm with Sy, you share a domestic afternoon together before going to Johnny and Amelia’s Ugly Christmas Sweater party. With your relationship with Sy being official, you start having flashbacks of the last time you were somebody’s girlfriend. [previous parts here] Words: 14k Warnings: previous emotional abuse, undiagnosed CPTSD A/N: Um…hi? Hi! Hello! I'm feeling like this chapter is repetitive and sucky but also that's probably because it's been forever to write and is generally plotless but still important! So hopefully it was worth the wait to get the story ready for the next big chapters which include the USP (ugly sweater party), BTWJ (big talk with Justine), and the GTTV (groundbreaking trip to Virginia) Also: There are flashbacks between Y/N and her most recent ex in this part that are all italicized, so I just wanted to share that bit of information since otherwise they may make little sense out of context. Taglist: I will reblog to tag people. Thanks to everyone for being so supportive and nice during the long hiatus!!

When you and Sy both stand up from the floor in the spare bedroom, you’re able to tell that his knee hurts. Like always, he’s purposefully trying to not give anything away–even noncommittally brushes off your questioning expression–but you know. You're better at that now.

There's the regular standing-up-with-a-grunt thing that gives it away, yeah, but Sy's also walking like his knee’s entirely buckled, like he can’t bend his leg whatsoever. There's also the fact that he's clenching his jaw so tightly that instead of just finishing an emotional conversation with you, you'd think he’d just been arguing with your old manager, Cole. He’d obviously done too much walking at the Christmas tree farm this morning.

Likewise, you're worried.

Despite his unspoken discomfort, Sy wordlessly leaves the room with two boxes at once in his arms–one of the ornaments he'd come up here for in the first place, and one of the photographs he just found and briefly got sentimental over.

“Oh, no, you don't,” you simply tell him, blocking his way at the top of the staircase. “That's too much. Let me help.”

Even with grumpy-brows, he surprisingly concedes.

Unsurprisingly, however, he gives you the lighter box consisting of delicate ornaments before walking around you with the heavier one jam-packed with photographs. Sighing, you follow him down the stairs.

You hold back the urgent impulse you're feeling to apologize to him a million times for being the cause of his knee pain. Instead, you carefully glance down at him around the box in your arms to see how he's faring, quickly enough for you to not lose your balance or fall.

That'd be pretty horrible–falling. You'd end up trampling over him and actually breaking his legs, you bet. You guess with all things considered, a sore knee isn't so bad, actually…And surely you can’t be the sole cause of his knee pain. It's cold outside which affects it. And he’d chosen to walk around the farm with you. He wanted to. He took you there.

Your intrusive thoughts need to go somewhere else.

“So what’re you gonna wear to the party later on, anyway?” you ask Sy as you step down into the foyer.

“Eh, some sweater Sam got me," he dismissively answers, and by your side, he looks over at you.

You remain in place and absently glance at his leg after hefting up the box in your arms one last time. At his continued expectant expression, however, you look back up.

“Oh, me?” you ask.

He hums.

"What,” you tease, finally choosing to just secure the box at just one of your hips like you're carrying a baby, “you wanna see if we're gonna match?"

Again, not offering an actual answer, Sy just levels you with a look.

“I don’t really own anything I could wear,” you tell him while slowly walking down the hall and now imagining you're a peasant from long ago, carrying a basket of fresh-picked root vegetables on your hip because the winter will be long and there's still so much work to do, “so Amelia just loaned me somethin’ at work yesterday."

While Sy makes another small noise behind you, you enter the kitchen and set down the box you've been hauling onto the first surface you see. Despite worrying about the state of Sy's knee–and having a million simultaneous and uncontrollable other random thoughts–your attention is quickly consumed by another object on the kitchen counter: the Charlie Brown tree you'd picked from the tree lot.

You can’t help but longingly stare at the tree in all its small and pathetic and perfect glory, and you think to yourself for the millionth time–you're just so happy. You got the tree you wanted.

Sy mirrors your actions by placing his box of photos directly beside the box of ornaments, and by your side, he stands there simply watching you. It’s a calm look of interest, but interest for what, you don’t know. Figuring he just wants to hear you talk, you continue with the last topic you’d just brought up–the sweater Amy loaned you.

“Uh, yeah. It’s just a dark green sweatshirt with, like, red trim at the bottom and top,” you explain while using one of your hands to describe, and even though you feel like the topic is boring, Sy puts his hand on the small of your back and continues providing full attention to you.

“And in the middle,” you go on, now realizing you're chewing the nails of your free hand, “it’s, uh. It's got a bunch of random off-center things. Like a snowman and a Christmas tree and a star. I think there’s a reindeer or somethin’ on it, too.”

Sy slides his hand lower down your back. “Sexy.”

Chuckling, you drop both your hands and push his hand off your ass. “Yeah, and I’m gonna have to wear a turtleneck underneath it, too,” you gesture to your neck and tell him playfully, “so thank you very much for that.”

“Anytime,” he answers conversationally as he touches your ass one last time, ultimately moving his hand to rest on your hip. When he glances at you again and badly winks, you roll your eyes playfully.

Stiffly, Sy tilts his head towards the counter. "You wanna do this now or what?"

You look over at what he’s gesturing to. “Decorate?”

Sy's face curiously tightens while he nods.

"Sure,” you carefully agree. That's why you'd brought down the ornaments in the first place, you remind yourself. “You got some lights we can put on first, right?"

Sy looks up at the ceiling, most likely imagining what's in the storage room you'd both just exited. "Well, hell.”

Softly, you chuckle. “Guess not.”

“I do–Just–Big." He clears his throat. "The ones that're up there are gonna be too long."

Your apology for getting a tree so small that a regular string of lights won't even fit on it is right on your lips. It's right there. You want to say sorry.

Instead, you take a deep breath. You don’t need to have weird continued anxiety over this too-small Christmas tree right now. You like it, Sy likes it–it’s done. What’s more concerning is that he’s so silently uncomfortable right now. Even the way he’s currently touching your hip is telling. As if he's actively trying not to use you as an outlet for the pain, he's purposefully not squeezing too hard. Still, you can somehow feel the restraint.

"I've actually got some lights in my room that'll work," you suggest, sympathetically touching his chest. "No problem."

Slowly, you disengage from Sy and walk to the little cabinet by the refrigerator where he keeps his stash of vitamins and protein powder. You dig around until finding some extra-strength Tylenol, and after shaking out three capsules into your palm, you open another cabinet to find a cup.

"They're the lights around my bookshelf," you tell him while reaching above your head and pulling down a glass. "I'll just bring ‘em by next time.”

You fill the glass with water from the fridge and walk back to Sy, wordlessly placing the pills in one of his hands and then holding out the cup to him in offering. He stares down at his own palm for a moment before ultimately tossing all three capsules into his mouth, accepting the glass from you, and then washing them down with two long gulps.

His face is still pinched when he wipes residual water off his mustache. He nods at you. "Thanks."

After nodding back, you pull your mouth downwards. “Do you think you might need somethin’ stronger?” you quietly ask. “Like, do you have an actual prescription for when your knee gets really bad?”

Sy shakes his head and deeply answers, “I don't fuck with that shit.”

You just nod again. You figured.

After mulling over his pain and then ultimately sighing, you finally just take his glass from him and set it on the counter.

“Don'tchu be worryin’,” he quietly tells you.

“Tryin’ not to.” You shrug. “I just don't want it to hurt.”

“It's gonna,” he bluntly answers. “I'll live.”

He stares at you for such a long time that you end up pushing yourself up onto your tip-toes to casually kiss him, partially in apology that he has to go through this knee shit alone, and partially just because he's who he is. You use the subsequent heavy silence to pick up the Christmas tree and admire it some more. You know that discussing his injury is the last thing Sy wants to do right now.

Imagining where you’re going to display the tree–the first tree Sy's put up since moving into this house, you remind yourself–you slowly carry it into the living room.

Passing the mantle of the fireplace where you imagine some Syerson family photos being displayed soon, you approach the thin table in front of the room's double-paned window. You place the tree there in suggestion and you glance back at Sy who's by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets. After you two make eye contact, he nods just once.

You look at the tree again and then back to Sy. "You sure you’d like it here?"

"Looks good," he affirms.

Touching the tree carefully while you prop it up against the wall to keep it upright, you wonder what you’ll need to use as a tree-stand. You wonder what it’ll look like once it's lit up with fairy lights and adorned with five or six well-chosen ornaments. You wonder how it’d look with strands of tinsel hanging off its too-long branches.

You’re broken away from your daydreams by Sy audibly stretching. “We waitin’ on those lights, then?”

“I guess.” You shrug. “It'd be easier. Plus we need some sorta stand before we put ornaments on here…the tree'll just tip over.”

"Ten-four. I'm gonna go do some chores 'fore we gotta get goin’, then," he tells you, and you turn to him.

“You’re serious?”

Wordlessly nodding, he pulls his chest out while clasping both hands behind him in another long stretch.

“The instant that tree-decoratin’ is off the schedule, you’re already on to the next thing, huh?”

“Gotta feed the chickens, fetch some wood…”

It’s pointless to comment about how he should probably rest his knee. "You go fetch that wood," you absentmindedly murmur as you make your way to the couch and plop down, and Sy stares at you with his expression unmoving until it finally breaks.

Smiling at your hilarity, he steps closer to the couch and taps your nose with his index finger, right above your sudden matching grin. The lingering touch serves as a kiss until he steps away again, heading out of the room. Looking at you one last time with a small smirk on his face, he opens the back door and then walks outside. You lift your hand and wiggle your fingers at him before he kicks the door shut with his boot.

With a smile of your own still on your face, you lay back and stretch out the full length of the couch, and that’s when thoughts of last night re-enter your head. Thoughts of last night on this exact same spot.

While your cheeks heat up, you wonder if Sy was thinking of the same thing while he was looking at you just now, if that’s truly why he was smirking and not from your dry wit he’s totally jealous of.

He was probably thinking of last night, too. Obviously, that’s where his mind would’ve gone…He's cocky that way. But cocky or not, though, he’s still so fucking sweet. For someone so big and so tall and so…large–and honestly quite intimidating-looking with his perpetual resting-scowl-face, too–he’s honestly just so fucking sweet. He really is. As you stare at the Christmas tree for the thousandth time today, you’re reminded that he really would do just about anything for you.

You continue mulling over the insane state of your life–you’re in a relationship, a real one–while grabbing the remote and switching on the television. After changing the channel a few times, you settle on a show about jade-miners in Alaska and hug a pillow to yourself.

It’s still a strange concept–both asking for things from Sy and accepting things from Sy–but you’re really getting better at it. You are. You genuinely are. You’re struggling, but you’re getting there. You’re at that point now where you aren’t so afraid, at least. Things are still just so new and everything is so massively different compared to the men you’ve been with in the past, is all.

Because Sy actually communicates with you and welcomes you to honestly communicate back, you’re always sure where you stand with him. And, more than that, you’re happy. You’re happy for yourself. To be involved in a relationship that’s actually healthy for once, it’s…huge. Despite your anxiety causing you to worry about just about every single thing ever in existence, you don’t have to add your relationship to that list.

You don’t have to worry about picking out a less-than-desirable Christmas tree–he honestly does not give a shit. You don’t have to worry about him being somehow mad at you because he’s being quieter than normal–it’s because his knee hurts. And you definitely don’t have to fret about going to a party with him–you know from experience that it won’t end badly.

If you were going to this party tonight with anyone but Sy, you’d already be anxious. You would’ve been anxious all week, honestly. There’d be entirely too much to consider, too many factors involved, too many option-lines where things could go all wrong. Any discrete miscalculation on your part could open up five or more scenarios that an average person would never typically dwell on.

But, if it were anybody but Sy, you’d have no choice but to dwell.

First, you’d have to plan out who would be driving. It’d almost always be you, but there would always be the chance that could change…maybe you could catch a ride with someone else who was going, too. You’d have to text around to find out who else was invited so you’d know how to plan out all the travel options. At the same time, you’d have to prepare yourself for the socialization, for all the factors at play with everyone’s individual relationship histories.

Then you’d have to think ahead about what clothes you’d wear. (Themed parties would always be hard.) You couldn’t be down-dressed for the occasion or else your partner would feel embarrassed, but you also couldn’t dress in anything considered suggestive because then he’d assume you were trying to purposefully get attention from other men. Then that would start accusations. Then that would start an argument.

Next, you’d have to consider if you’d be able to even drink. That would mean you’d have to know in advance how long you’d be staying and how many drinks you’d be able to metabolize in that amount of time and still be legally good to operate a vehicle–assuming correctly that you’d be driving back home that night, that is. You’d leave the option open of possibly sleeping there, but that would mean imposing and potentially being seen as annoying and needy guests, so that’d be the first obstacle to cross.

If you even got past that hurdle by speaking with the hosts to see if it would even be okay, then you’d have to strategically ask him prior to the party if he’d be willing to stay the night. Almost always the answer would be no, so you’d have to be really careful about your wording so you could at least try to be persuasive when you asked. You’d have to practice what you were going to say a few times, then you’d also have to make sure there was a good-mood-window for you to even take your chance to ask at all, because if he was already in a bad mood, you’d just make things worse by bringing it up. And even if he was in a good mood, you’d still have to fully expect the answer to be no because high expectations only breed disappointment. After all, why would y'all need to stay somewhere else when he’s got a bed of his own and someone to drive him back home to it?

So then you’d have to drink slowly and only socially once you arrived at the party because of you being the designated driver. The medicine you take would also be a factor, of course, but mainly, you wouldn’t want to let your guard down and do or say something stupid with him and other people around to witness. You'd have to be careful. Exacting. You’d have to make sure you weren’t talking with any men for too long. You’d always feel the constant weight of being watched and perceived.

You’d have to secretly monitor his own drinking. You'd have to step in to carefully steer all his later conversations to a happier place, a livelier place, all-the-while stewing in second-hand awkwardness over his loudening and ever-growing embarrassing behavior. Then you'd have to make sure none of it could be seen on your face or else the drive home would be ruined, subsequently the entire night.

You’d have to plan every single thing out.

But you don’t need to anymore. You don’t need to do any of that.

Tonight, all that you’re honestly worrying about is the headache you might have tomorrow from having too much fun. That's it.

You physically shake your head to clear it once you realize that you’ve been thinking so intently about past scenarios that the show on TV is almost done and another episode is about to start up. Christ.

You wish you could get to a point where they’d just not enter at all, anymore–these intrusive thoughts–but you’re just not there yet. They still somehow force their way inside.

But it's okay. The difference you’re seeing is in how quickly the thoughts are beginning to leave. They aren’t sticking around for so long anymore. You credit Sy with a majority of that.

And you also credit him for your sudden interest in Alaskan-fucking-jade-mining, of all things.

Ahead on the television, a giant pick-up truck is driving directly through a large river to get to a bypass road on the other side, and you’re so excited to get to zone out and watch these people arrive at their worksite that it takes several moments for you to notice your phone vibrating from your jeans.

After digging into your back pocket and turning down the volume on the television, you sit up and bring your phone to your ear. "Hey, Momma."

"Hey, Y/N/N," she greets you, and you realize that it’s been forever since you’ve actually heard her voice. “Just wanted to check in.”

"Yeah, I know it's been a while, sorry," you say. "Every time I think I get the chance to call, somethin’ seems to come up. Sorry. Busy time of year. Work and school...Same old stuff.”

She makes a sympathetic noise. "How's everything been goin'?" she asks.

Since she's asking about you instead of immediately venting about something going on in her own life, you give her an honest answer. You talk about work, about how you're down to just one job now. You talk about school and how you're down to just one more semester now, too.

And you talk a little about Sy.

You're cryptic to a degree, still downplaying your relationship, but you mention that she may be meeting him soon. Maybe.

“And you’re comin’ up when, again?” your mom clarifies. “Christmas Eve?”

“Oh, I’m gonna stay here for Christmas,” you mutter, “but I’ll be visitin’ probably the week after. Before New Year’s.”

“Alright,” she simply says, and you pick up a tiny sliver of guilt-tripping she wants to offer from that one word alone, but you close your eyes and count to three, letting the guilt you want to sit with escape. It’s your last Christmas holiday with Justine’s kids, and that’s sort of a big deal for you.

They’re the children here, not you. There’s no honest reason to visit your family on Christmas Day itself. Not when you can get together afterwards and have it still be entirely the same. There aren't any children up there to visit, anyway. They're all adults. They can get over it.

You dwell on your selfishness a little bit while your mother picks up the conversation and starts updating you on things going on with people you don’t really know. Are you being selfish? Or do you just feel like doing anything for yourself whatsoever automatically puts that label on you?

Well. You are inconveniencing people, which you absolutely hate. Your family wants to see you. Your grandma’s recently been hospitalized, and you hadn't visited for Thanksgiving like they wanted.

But then again, it’s your last Christmas with Justine’s kids. Your very last one. (And your first one with Sy, too…Not that it’s some huge thing for you two, but still…)

Okay, you’re overthinking again. You’re obviously overthinking. You’ve made your decision already. You’re going to Virginia after Christmas. It’s settled.

Now onto the next thing: Would Sy even want to come with you?

You don't think he'd mind. You think he'd actually like it, honestly. You'll ask him soon, feel him out. He'll either say yes or he'll say no. No big deal either way.

Your mom talks non-stop after that since you have nothing else to really discuss, but your mind wanders the entire time, anyway, imagining Sy being up in Virginia with you. You don't realize how long your mom has even been talking when the ongoing occupant of your thoughts loudly enters the house from the back door.

“Sonuva fuckin' bitch,” Sy's grumbling underneath his breath while heavily taking a seat at the kitchen table, and you sit up and come to alert with a gasp. His face is pinched and tight.

Fuck. His knee. Fuck, you knew it.

Worried, you quickly interrupt whatever your mom’s saying. "Hey, sorry, Momma, it was great talkin’ to you, but I gotta–I gotta go.”

You've just caught her in the middle of a sentence. "Oh–Okay. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, it's all good," you stand up and say, but by the look on Sy's face, it's probably not. "I'll call you back later, okay? And I'll see you real soon. Love you."

"Love you!" you hear before you disconnect the call and toss your phone onto the couch.

You squint your eyes and take in the scene in the kitchen. While your mind has automatically gone towards Sy's knee, that's apparently not what's wrong at all. He's got his left hand laid out face-up on the table, and he’s actively digging what appears to be a pocket-knife into the center of his palm. As he groans and loudly drops the knife onto the table, you go to him.

“Oh, no, what’d you do?” you ask. “What’s wrong?”

He grumbles something while picking up the knife again, and his words are so low and jumbled together that you don't at first understand. It's not until you walk closer to him that his heavily accented sentence makes sense: He's got a thick, dark splinter in the middle of his left hand.

“Oh, shit,” you swear. “What happened?”

"Was messin’ with the brooder box without gloves on," he says from between his teeth.

You drop your mouth at the size and depth of the splinter, and you watch Sy sternly steel his jaw and cut around it precisely enough to have the end of the piece of wood stick out. When he starts actually pulling at it, your mouth drops even more as the sliver seems to never end.

“Je-sus,” you murmur, holding your stomach and grimacing along with Sy. “That thing’s freakin' huge!”

“Thank you,” he mutters, not seeming to be fazed by the size of the splinter nor at the small wound it’s left behind. If anything, pure relief covers his face once it's gone.

While you roll your eyes at him, he simply licks the end of his right thumb and slides it around his left palm where it's cut. Your grimace continues.

“Here…I–Lemme go get some peroxide or somethin’," you decide, and you quickly walk to the bathroom down by the laundry room.

"Don't know if I got any," Sy hollers out, and as you're already crouching to look underneath the bathroom sink, you figure he's right. The spot is bare, only one singular roll of toilet paper taking up any space at all.

You sigh. You seriously can't wait to eventually freshen things up in here a little bit. Put a little femininity in the house. An actual towel to dry your hands off with instead of paper towels—something.

You stand upright again, and in front of the mirror, you pause and then shake your head at yourself. What the fuck kind of a thought is that.

A thought that Sy should probably keep basic first aid items in his home, that's all. And items for guests. You swing open the closet door that’s behind the hallway door and find a few thin towels, some random tools, Aika’s old dog bowls, and a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol on a sticky-paper-lined shelf. Behind it is a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"A-ha!" you let out, but when you grab the peroxide, you discover it's so nearly empty that it weighs next-to-nothing, though. You deflate. "Dammit, Sy…"

Regardless of its contents, you take the bottle into the kitchen, this time walking a little slower. There’s nothing upfrontly urgent about his hand, you remind yourself—or his knee. He’s fine.

Some weird déjà vu passes through you as you stand in front of the sink, and memories of another scene enters your mind. A kitchen that looks very similar to this one…a sink with a window above it facing the back yard…a door off to the left… Johnny’s farmhouse.

“Ah. Where it all began,” Sy murmurs, showing you he’s instantly matching your wavelength. “Peroxide at the sink.”

You pretend to sigh while you set the bottle of peroxide down and turn to the side to face Sy. “Could be a song title.”

"...Peroxide At The Sink?"

You nod and start singing twangy-sounding, fast-paced lyrics. "Where it all began…Peroxide at the sink…From a man who ran…into me after too much drink."

Sy gives your lyrics a thumbs-down gesture while you grin.

"Whatever. Song wouldn't work anyway," you say. “Everything began before the peroxide at the sink."

"How's that?"

You lean your hip against the counter. "You said you recognized me before that night and just didn’t tell me."

Sy nods once. He'd already admitted that to you in the shower. "I did," he affirms again.

"Watchin' me from across the road like a creeper," you continue to tease while turning to face the sink again, just waiting for him to get up and come to you, just beckoning him almost. You turn on the faucet and begin rinsing off the dishes inside.

You see Sy kick off his boots and lift his eyebrows from your peripheral vision. "I wasn’t creepin’.”

"Mmhm."

You think back to that night at Johnny’s bonfire. Where it all truly did begin. Where you and Sy had talked about Led Zeppelin for all of four minutes after you’d embarrassed yourself to hell by falling almost flat on your face. Now look at you. Here. In Sy's house. In Sy’s house, about to do the dishes like it’s your own space. With him. Really with him.

Your mind has been on overdrive literally all day, starting from the Christmas tree farm and lasting all the way through your recent conversation with your mom, but now it’s starting to slow down a little bit. Even if you weren’t actively flirting with Sy, you’d still feel at ease. He has a way of projecting this strange happiness onto you just by being in the room…some sort of all-over calmness that makes you feel comfortable in your own skin in a way you’re not used to…a goofiness, almost.

"Every breath you take," you quietly start to sing. You grab the dish soap and the brush and start scrubbing while going on, “Every move you make…”

Watching you from the kitchen chair, Sy leans back and widens his legs. "You been drinkin'?"

You laugh and look over at him. “No, why? Should I get a head-start?”

He smirks while sticking his tongue against the inside of his mouth, making his cheek stick out. “Go for it.”

Your happy face falls just a bit. You aren't going to start drinking this early or anything, but you still want to know: “You gonna drive tonight?”

“You know I’m gonna drive tonight,” Sy answers while finally standing, and you look down at your sudsy hands and smile. You knew it.

"And we're stayin' the night, right?"

"Mm. Johnny said we could crash there.” Sy approaches you from behind and puts his hands around your waist. “'Less you just wanna come on back home afterwards."

The word “home” does something to your insides, making them flutter, but so does the fact that Sy’s holding onto your hips while obviously smelling your hair. You currently don’t know how you’re feeling so many–things–while doing something as mundane as washing cups, but then again, yes you do. His body’s matched up to yours and he smells like the outdoors and he’s touching you without reservation. Even though he should honestly have no reason to really want to. Not after everything last night and this morning.

"Honestly, I think I'd like to just stay,” you let Sy know, naturally tilting your head to the side when he puts his chin on your shoulder. “But it's up to you."

His beard scratches your still-sore neck before you feel a more softer sensation from his mouth, right over the slightly sore area he’d given this same type of attention to last night. He pulls a patch of skin between his lips and gently sucks before releasing and asking in a low voice, “Stay where?”

"Uh." You take a second to think. “Stay…there. At their house.”

“Whatever you want,” he murmurs offhandedly.

You have to stop washing the dishes for a moment while Sy continues kissing your neck. Feeling totally enveloped, you grab the edge of the countertop and squeeze onto it while wasted water continues falling down from the faucet.

Your eyes slip shut. "We can–” You clear your throat. “We could stand by their sink and reminisce.”

Sy grunts, but it’s flirtatiously, and you bite your lip through a smile because–how have you come to recognize what a flirtatious grunt even sounds like?

Apparently you chuckle; a second later, Sy makes a questioning sound against your throat.

You let your head fall back onto his chest. “Of the time you spent stalkin’ me from your grandma’s house,” you whisper.

Warm air hits your skin after Sy chuckles. “I didn’t stalk you,” he maintains. As you turn off the faucet and turn around, he’s sure to clarify, “I watched.”

You give him a look. Without looking behind you, you reach backwards for the bottle of peroxide.

“Respectfully."

“You respectfully watched,” you repeat, flicking open the bottle’s cap with your thumb. With your other hand, you find Sy’s left hand and flip it palm-up.

“Yes.”

You mockingly nod and pour the few drops of peroxide left inside the bottle out onto Sy’s hand. The liquid barely bubbles. "With total respect."

"I did," he maintains.

You lift Sy’s hand to gently blow on the skin. "I'm sure."

In the stillness that follows, Sy gets serious. “You know I did,” he touches your forearm with his fingertips and says.

You find yourself suddenly staring up at him in some sort of suspension, eyes glued to his. “Did you, though?”

He closes his eyes briefly, and you watch him in curiosity. He’s usually forthcoming. “Did I what?”

“Watch respectfully,” you give. “You’re sayin’ there wasn’t any sort of disrespectful watchin’ happening?”

Briefly, Sy looks away with his head tilted to the side, and that gives you your answer. In victory, you point your finger into his chest.

“You so did not watch respectfully,” you state, almost in glee, but he just crosses his arms and moves to lean against the side of the counter.

“Ain’t my fault you kept wearin’ those damn short shorts all the time,” he gives.

“Ain’t my fault it was a hot summer,” you reply with a smirk and a shrug, still staring at Sy and waiting for him to look back at you.

But he doesn't, so you move to stand in front of him again.

“Daww, why’re you lookin’ away?” you tease, not used to being in this position. Not used to him being in this position. “‘Fraid your nobility’s finally in question?”

Sy gently grabs your elbow and pulls your entire body towards his. “Get in here and shutch’yer mouth,” he says.

You pretend to look intense while squinting your eyes. “Make me.”

As you continue to look up at him, still on a slight high from whatever this is you’re doing, your mouth slightly parts, and your excited face somewhat falls. What did you even say that for?

“I…don’t know why I said that,” you utter, trying to step back.

He holds onto you. “You sure about that?”

A heaviness sits in the air while you stare up at him and he stares down at you, and you’re careful with the breaths you take until you ultimately have to look away, not sure if you’re imagining this tension or if it’s real. Surely after last night and this morning, he wouldn’t…

When Sy presses his fingers into the sensitive spot by your stomach and hip, you instantly gasp and jerk away with a smile, the thick moment dissipating.

“I didn’t mean it, I didn't mean it,” you laugh while he tickles you again, and you simultaneously lean into his body while trying to break away from his touch.

"I didn't mean it," he copies you.

“Jerk,” you say just as he’s hooking his arm around you to pull you closer against his body again. “I really didn’t mean it.”

Sy moves hair away from your face to see you better, and after staring up at him again and offering him another grin, you nuzzle against his chest.

Even though you're entirely comfortable right now, a memory flashes into your mind–a scene from your old apartment in Virginia. The kitchen. A moment like this where you and your ex were playing around, happy. A pinch at the kitchen sink–too hard. Not welcome. It hurt.

In what you could only assume to be playful, Michael reached out and pinched the exposed skin of your arm as you were preparing to wash the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink. Instead of playfully pinching you, though, he ended up forcefully pulling your skin before quickly and tightly pressing down in a way that honestly burned.

Gasping in pain, you pulled back your arm while your knees slightly buckled. “Ow! Fuck, Michael!”

“Oh, that didn’t hurt,” Michael brushed off, almost chuckling, already on the other side of the kitchen.

“Yes, it did,” you rubbed your arm and sulked, honestly offended that he’d hurt you like that. It was totally unnecessary to be that rough.

“You’re fine,” he repeated with a smile in his voice.

“Because you have the same pain sensors as I do,” you muttered, and then Michael’s playful demeanor left.

He yanked a cabinet open. “God, you can be such a bitch sometimes, you know that?” he asked, and inwardly, you began retreating.

Raising his voice, he went on, “It was just a damn joke. I’m just tryin’ to have a little fun for once, and you’re here bein’ fuckin’ Debbie Downer. Like always.” He loudly shut the cabinet after pulling out a jar of peanut butter. "Because you have the same pain sensors as I do," he mocked you in a high-pitched voice, and all you could do was stare down into the kitchen sink, looking at all the dishes needing to be done.

God, you never made the right choice in things. Not ever. You never said the right thing, you never reacted in the right way. Everything always ended up to shit, all because you ruined them.

Maybe you could’ve pinched him back or something. Turned it into a pinching war. It could’ve been fun. You could’ve flirted or something. You could've been…better.

After carefully walking across the kitchen floor, you opened the refrigerator for two slices of bread, and quietly, without speaking whatsoever, you took the jar of peanut butter Michael had gotten out for himself and began to take over making his sandwich for him.

Back in the present, the feeling of ice water trickling from the stem of your brain and down your spine rushes through you quickly and all at once. Almost lost inside the memory and frozen in another time, you look up at Sy's face to ground you again.

The adoration you find there brings you to reality again. It actually takes you aback for a second, his unfiltered happiness at being close to you like this, verging on devotion, so you have to briefly look away. By the time you look back, his expression is unchanged, and you're finding yourself matching it once more.

You stay as you are for long moments that pass in silence, hugging Sy and letting the world go on around you. You don't know how you’re both able to say so much to one another without actually speaking, but you're grateful for it. You love him.

“You're sweet,” he eventually murmurs.

Your mouth moves against his shirt. “Sometimes.”

“Mm. All the time.”

The corner of your lip twitches. “Just to you.”

“Well, I’d hope just to me.”

Gradually, your smile grows. After finding his hands and squeezing them gently at the fingers, you take a tiny step back. You stand there playing with his calloused hands until finally getting the nerve to bring up a new topic.

"I was on the phone with my mom a few minutes ago," you carefully bring up while playing with Sy’s fingertips. “Before you gave birth to that splinter outta your palm.”

He makes a strange face at your choice of words which makes you laugh, but, knowing there's more you want to say, he raises his eyebrows.

“I’m gonna go visit sorta soon."

"Oh, yeah?"

You look to the side. “Mmhmm."

A few seconds pass. "When?"

"Oh. After Christmas."

He glances at you, still sensing you need time to say something more.

You do, and you still don't know if it's awesome or just plain sad that he's grown to understand that it takes time for you to word things.

"I…You totally don’t have to say yes," you quickly forewarn, "but if you wanna come with me when I go, you’re welcome to.”

With the smallest of smiles, Sy cocks his head to the side. “Is this you askin’?”

You shrug. You nod.

"Then count me in."

In relief, you smile. It slowly fades. “It’s nothin’ fancy where I’m from…I can’t really promise a whole lot of excitement or anything.”

Sy pauses and looks around the kitchen. Pointedly, he looks around, settling his gaze where there aren't cabinet doors at all underneath his sink. "And this is fancy?"

You nod. "It's bigger than any house I've ever lived in. It's nice."

He's quiet for a moment. "Glad you think so."

After a few more silent seconds pass, you force a chuckle. "Okay. You really don't have to tag along, though," you make sure to tell him. "I'll be goin' again in the spring if that's a better time."

Sy blankly stares at you, and you blink.

“...What?”

He tilts his head to the side and continues looking at you. Meaningfully. Speaking to you with the turn of his eyes, with the set of his lips.

"Oh." You swallow. "Am I…Am I doin' the thing?"

"If I say yes, I mean yes," he tells you, and you nod, letting go of his hands.

"Okay," you breathe out, then you clear your throat. “Okay. Got it. Cool.”

He gives you a minute and then asks, “You good?”

“Yep.” You nod, trying to stay casual, but there’s a weird excitement inside that you can’t help letting out by briefly grinning. “So, uh. I guess we probably oughta start gettin’ ready for tonight, huh?”

Sy pauses. “We gettin’ there early?”

You look at the clock on the stove. “No…I mean…I still gotta bake cookies and stuff, and I just…don’t wanna rush.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“What? I don’t like feeling rushed,” you laugh, rolling your eyes. “Just 'cause it takes you, like, five minutes to get ready doesn’t mean it’s like that for everyone else,” you comment before walking through the kitchen. You hear Sy chuckle from behind as you approach the stairs.

Alone in Sy’s bedroom a few moments later, you get changed into a pair of black jeans, a thin turtleneck shirt, and your truthfully-very-ugly sweater that Amy loaned you. Sy begins to slowly come up the stairs right as you’re stepping into the bathroom, and after he goes into his bedroom, you hear him opening his dresser drawers through the bathroom wall. When you’re in the same position as you were this morning–barefoot in front of the mirror putting in a decent effort in making your face and hair look presentable--Sy's large presence suddenly takes up the entire doorway of the bathroom.

He actually casts a shadow in the bathroom from the way he suddenly blocks the hallway light, and while applying mascara, you continue looking straight ahead into the mirror, not able to stop yourself from smirking at how quickly he’s changed his clothes.

“Okay, so…In actuality, guess it only took you three minutes to get ready,” you say.

"I look alright?" he asks, and you chuckle without looking at him. The silence that ensues after that has you curiously turning your head, though, and you realize from his face he’s being serious. Showing a little vulnerability, he’s essentially asking you to give your opinion.

You put down your makeup, turn to the side, and check out his outfit. Despite it being December, he’s in a pair of khaki shorts, and you see he’s put on a knee-brace. He’s paired the chunky shorts with a forest green sweater depicting Santa Claus inside a large tank. As you examine it, he pulls at the bottom of it to show it off better.

“Merry Tankmas?” you ask while making a funny face, and almost with pride, Sy taps to the giant tank in the middle of his shirt.

“We used these in my unit.”

"Ah," you say in interest.

He lets go of his sweater. "Nice, huh?”

“It’s…Yeah,” you agree. “It looks…comfortable.”

He looks down at himself. “You callin’ it ugly?”

You let out a large laugh, bringing your thumb and your index finger close together by your face. “That’s the point, though,” you tell him, “so you did good.”

Even if it weren’t an Ugly Sweater party, though, Sy could somehow make the outfit look good. Even down to the matching green socks. His easy smile matches your own as he steps into the room and gets closer to you, naturally wrapping his arms around you and hooking them together at the curve of your lower back.

He slouches his shoulders in order to lean down and place his forehead against yours. “Can’t all be as good-lookin’ as you,” he says, and you half-groan.

“Oh, my God, stop.” So not true. You're literally wearing the tackiest sweater imaginable right now.

“What?” he seductively lowers his voice. “I can’t call my girl good-lookin’?”

You don't get how he can still look at you after last night and this morning and still feel like saying shit like this, and maybe you never will, but maybe that's okay–as long as you can try to keep reminding yourself that he does mean what he says. Sy means what he says, and he sees what he sees, and whatever he sees, he likes.

Slowly and with purpose, Sy kisses you. Not so slowly, he then hefts you onto the bathroom counter like you weigh nothing. You lower your hands to the countertop so you don’t fall, and he puts his hands on your knees to widen them a little. After extendedly hugging one another downstairs just literal minutes ago, this sort of extended close-contact is unexpected, but you still smile at him when he breaks away.

Instead of leaning back in to kiss you, Sy digs a hand into his front pocket. His forearm brushes your inner thigh as he clears his throat and says, “Gotchu somethin’.”

When he pulls out a small square box from his shorts, you just look down at it.

“It ain't what it looks like,” he says with a chuckle.

You just keep staring, and Sy shakes the box a little to signal you to accept it. “Oh,” you stutter, reaching out.

Slowly, you crack open the box, and whatever’s inside instantly shines. When two little stud earrings come into view, you don’t dare to even touch them. They’re small yet not too tiny, but they’re clearly diamonds, and…you’re hardwired to decline gifts like this. You set the box on your lap.

“Oh, wow…”

Sy remains silent, and so do you.

“These look really nice, Sy,” you eventually murmur.

After a long pause, Sy finally chuckles. “They’d look nicer if you put ‘em on.”

Almost shyly, you smile. “Oh.”

Feeling awkwardly watched for a moment, you finally reach out for the little diamonds and place them in your earlobes, then you twist around to look in the mirror again. The earrings are pretty but modest like you prefer, twinkling in the light from above the mirror. Even though you feel undeserving of the jewelry for some reason, your eyes give away your appreciation at the unexpected gift.

You move your hair from your face and give yourself one final look. “Well, thanks, Sy,” you softly murmur, actually feeling kind of pretty.

Behind his thick beard, you see the hint of a satisfied smile.

“And here I didn’t get you anything,” you say with a small pout. “I…didn’t know you were gonna…”

“My ears ain’t even pierced.” He shrugs.

You roll your eyes. “You’re so freakin’ corny.”

“Butchu love me.”

You reach out and wrap your index fingers into the belt loops of his khakis. Looking up at him, you murmur, “I do.”

Sy smiles. “Say the whole thing.”

“Huh?”

“Say you love me.”

You grin. “I love you,” you say, and though you’re totally happy, there’s another memory-flash from your ex that enters your head like static–“Tell me you love me,” he had once said, and it sounded like an order. Unpleasant. Threatening. You didn’t like it, so you’d paused, and your heart had sped up, and you put on a fake smile. And you said it.

This is different. This is different. Sy is completely different. Your smile is genuine now, and it only grows when witnessing Sy’s face in reaction to your words.

Still hating how you can't stop the intrusive thoughts occurring this afternoon, you push the old memory out of your head as quickly as possible. Maybe this is just your brain rewiring itself or something. Because what the fuck.

“Well, I love you, too, darlin’,” Sy says, and with a final long, drawn-out kiss, he steps aside so you can slide off the counter. He leans against the wall and casually crosses his arms, calmly watching you. You clear your throat.

It doesn’t take much longer for you to finish up. “Well, the hair is as good as it’s gonna get, I guess,” you eventually murmur into the mirror.

From the side of your eye, you watch Sy begin to rub his head. “You think I should do somethin’ with mine?”

“Oh, good Lord. Are you gonna do the dad jokes this entire night?” you ask, unable to stop yourself from laughing. “Should I prepare myself now?”

“Long as you keep laughin’, I will.”

Just looking over and seeing the mischievousness in his eyes has you laughing all over again.

“Good to know,” you say, but even just responding with those three words has you giggling even more. Just–Sy’s in a good mood.

You bet it was the Tylenol and singular drop of hydrogen peroxide you helped him out with. Look at you, mending his ailments left and right. Excellent girlfriend material.

…Are you, though? You’ve literally never thought of yourself like that before. But now…Now you feel like you may be. Now you feel important. You feel special. You were given casual diamond earrings–just because. And you accepted them without fussing that you don’t deserve them. You…You sort of feel like you do deserve them. That you deserve nice things. And it’s enough to make your eyes start to sting from the sheer expansiveness of the happiness taking up your body. The past twenty-four hours have been…a lot. In a good way.

“I think I–” You clear your throat. “I’m all done gettin’ ready now. I’m gonna–I’m gonna go bake the cookies now and then we’ll have time to chill a little.”

With a casual touch on your hip, Sy steps aside to let you walk past him. You’re able to collect yourself to a more appropriately-calm state of mind by the time you enter the kitchen again, and when Sy steps into the room a few moments after you do, he smells like cologne he didn’t smell like before.

The next half hour is spent listening to Christmas music and sharing more stupid banter–you making fun of Sy’s loud kitchen mixer and old half-peeling oven trays and him, in turn, making fun of how sloppy your cookie batter ends up. Through your laughter, you manipulate the sticky balls of dough as best as you can to try to make shapes that are somewhat circular, and in the end, you chalk it up to a success.

“I’m a better cook than I am a baker, alright?” you tell him while he stares at what you’re doing with an eyebrow raised.

“Babe, you ain't even got to the bakin’ part yet.”

You push at the brick-wall of Sy’s arm before placing the baking sheet into the oven. “Shut up.”

While staring into the oven, another memory hits your face along with the heat of the coils inside.

You walked into the apartment to discover the scent of food already being cooked, and in pleasant confusion, you stepped into the kitchen with your plastic grocery bags of taco fixings.

“Hey,” you greeted him, and–

“Hey,” he greeted you back.

“I thought you said you wanted tacos,” you pondered in slight confusion.

He'd shaken his head. “The chicken's gonna go bad.”

You blinked a few times at your bad memory. You could’ve sworn asking him last night what he wanted for dinner and him suggesting you get “taco stuff” from the store–which always meant actual ground beef for him since you couldn’t eat it and never had it on hand. You could’ve sworn that he had even said something about it being Taco Tuesday.

“Oh, okay. So we’re gonna do chicken tacos instead?” you asked, now a bit more excited than confused.

“I got all these leftovers at this work luncheon today,” he answered while shaking his head. “Let’s just eat that. Already heatin’ it up.”

You stuffed all the groceries into the refrigerator while hiding the disappointment on your face. “So did you wanna eat tacos tomorrow for dinner since I bought all the stuff?”

“I don’t know, damn,” he said, his voice getting a weird, irritated edge to it. “We can make it literally any other night this week. Just chill.”

“I was just…asking,” you mumbled in confusion again, and because your comment meant that you were now perceived to be In A Mood, you tried your hardest to make nice conversation while watching television on the couch, a plate of leftovers on your lap.

“It’d be fun to cook for more people every now and then,” you tried making conversation. “Don’t you think?”

Sitting on the chair next to the couch, he asked with his mouth full of food, “Whatchu mean?”

“Like, maybe have friends over one night or somethin’. For dinner.”

“What, you tryin’ to get with my friends?” he joked, and you paused and looked at him strangely. What a weird thing to ask.

“No,” you slowly answered. “Just to, like, get to know people more. Other couples. Or some people in my classes or whatever. Socialize. I don’t–”

“Don’t what?”

You shrugged. Saying “I don’t have that many friends” would just sound pathetic, so you stuck with just telling him, “I don’t ever cook for anyone besides just us. Thought it’d…be fun.”

“What, me alone ain’t good enough for you anymore?”

You smiled a little to hopefully express you weren’t being anything but light and conversational, but inside you were jittering. “Oh, shut up," you joked. "I didn’t say that. It’d just be nice.”

“Okay…”

He was treating you like it was such a weird suggestion. You guessed it really was, because the topic never came up again.

You have to loudly remind yourself internally–That's the past, and this is the present. That was then, this is now. You’re having a great day, it’s been a great day, and your brain needs to stop with this weird flashback shit.

Sy helps. He hugs you from behind for a little while with his hands on your hips, and a few Christmas-songs-on-the-radio later, the cookies are finished. They end up…edible-looking. Even though you’ve turned the entire baking sheet into a glob of dough so giant that the shape of individual cookies is barely discernible.

“These can just be the back-of-the-table cookies,” you decide after using a spatula to separate the cookies into something resembling circles. Sighing in defeat, you're surprised when Sy picks one up after it cools and takes a giant bite. He shows you he obviously likes it by immediately finishing it instead of spitting it out.

“...Verdict?”

“They might look like shit, but they taste great,” he says with his mouth full.

You drop your mouth at his bluntness, causing him to just smirk until he finishes chewing.

You stick out your tongue. “Well, thanks for your honesty.”

“Wouldn’t ever lie to you,” he says, reiterating what he’d finally gotten you to understand this morning.

Still– “Not even about hatin’ the tree I chose today?” you tease.

He snaps his fingers. “Oh, shit, that reminds me,” he mutters, and then he begins walking to the back door. Over his shoulder, he goes on, “Got somethin’ I wanted to show you,” and then, after opening the door, he’s gone.

You slowly walk to the door and curiously wait for him to come back, and when he does, he’s got a small tree-stump in his hand. It’s about three inches tall and probably about the same width. In the very middle of it is a small section where he’d apparently drilled into. You stare at it for a few seconds, not putting together what exactly he’s trying to show you.

“Sorry, but…What is this?”

He looks down at the stump then back up at you. “Somethin’ to put the Christmas tree in.”

You look back at the stump and gasp. “That's perfect!”

Without asking, you take the little piece of wood from Sy and hurry into the living room with it. The stump is entirely level at the bottom, so when you place the small Christmas tree in the middle of it, it doesn’t tilt. And it matches. Almost like a continual tree.

“I can’t believe you just–did this so quickly,” you look back at Sy and enthuse.

He shrugs. “Ain’t nothin’ but a tree stump I drilled a hole into.”

You look down in curiosity. “Yeah, but there’s, like, somethin’ else in the hole, too.”

“PVC pipe. To keep it from rottin’ after water’s in there,” Sy explains.

“Where’d you even get that from?”

“Out in the garage.”

“...And you cut it to fit into this hole you drilled?”

Sy nods.

“Damn, Sy.”

“Ain't really that biguva–”

“Jeez, just accept the praise,” you interrupt playfully. “So–we've got to decorate now.”

“Oh, we got to?” he mocks.

You nod your head. “’Cause this just looks awesome,” you say again, unable to stop staring at the tree. “This is, like, some Pinterest-level shit.”

He laughs. “Didn't know it’d impress you so much.”

You pause. With a soft voice, you murmur, “You always do.”

Sy reaches out with his thumb and slides it across your cheekbone. You duck your head.

In the end, the little tree holds a total of seven carefully-selected ornaments. Lightweight enough that the branches don’t break, the lucky selections include an Army logo, a handmade snowman with one of Sy’s nephew’s handprints on it, and a tiny circular picture of Sy’s parents.

The next time you come over, you’ll still bring lights. Then you’ll bring a tablecloth to bunch up underneath the tree. You’ll tie a ribbon around the top. You’ll get gaudy tinsel. You’ll do all of it. And it’ll look so freaking cute.

“Y/N,” Sy says from your side, and you jerk your head at him. That tone of voice means he’s probably already been trying to get your attention but you’ve been zoning out.

“Sorry,” you apologize, lifting your eyebrows. “What?”

Sy chuckles at you. “All day…You keep starin’ at this damn tree like you’re lookin’ at–”

You pause. “Like what?”

“The look in your eye…. It’s like you’re lookin’ at a–baby or somethin’.”

“Well.” You smile and turn back to the tree. “It looks nice. And I like it.”

Sy stands by your side staring at the tree for a while, too. You’re expecting some cheesy comment like he’s been doing all afternoon– “Not as nice as you” –but he remains silent. In the dim sound of the radio playing Nat King Cole from the kitchen, it’s comfortable.

It’s the first tree in this place in two years.

As you slowly stretch, Sy bends over to pick up the box of unused ornaments. “I can do that,” you stop him.

Sy pauses and stands upright. “My knee’s fine,” he points out.

“Yeah, ‘cause you put a brace on,” you challenge him, picking up the box and going to the staircase before he can interject. “You need to rest it.”

In less than a minute, you take the box to the spare room upstairs and then rush back down to join Sy on the couch. Naturally, he’s on the left side of the sofa leaning back with his legs spread, and naturally, you fit into the spot directly next to him. After squirming around to find your phone that’s been neglected all afternoon and checking any notifications you may have missed–none–you eventually decide to put your head on one of Sy’s giant legs, staring out at the show on the History Channel he’s just turned on.

Immediately, his calloused right hand finds its way onto the back of your head. After touching your ear and feeling the new jewelry there, he lowers his fingers and begins to gently and absentmindedly rub your shoulder. At that, you let out a long groan.

Sy pauses. “You sore?”

You nod against his khakis. “After last night, I’m literally sore all over,” you admit.

“From what?”

“What d’you mean ‘from what’?” you close your eyes and mutter, and he chuckles.

“Ah, c’mon now. I gotta getchu in better shape then,” he jokes, and you open your eyes again just to narrow them even though he can’t see.

“You shut up.”

He pinches your shoulder before going back to kneading your muscle. “Y’know, I do need me a workout partner,” he says seriously. “You should consider it.”

After a few minutes of indulging in Sy rubbing your shoulder and the show on television, you eventually sit up and tilt your head in consideration. Sy’s hand naturally slips off your arm to rest down by your hip. “One of my resolutions for the new year was gonna be to start exercising more,” you say. “Healthy living and all that…”

All he does is look at you, and you’re already pointing your finger at him. “But nothin’ crazy. I’m not gonna be, like, flippin’ tires through the woods with you and shit.”

He winks with both eyes. “Ah, too bad, darlin’. That’s my favorite workout.”

“You got jokes and jokes today.” An exasperated look spreads over your face while you settle backwards against the cushions. When you look at Sy from the side of your eye, you find his own eyes bright. It’s enough to have you smiling despite trying to keep yourself from doing so.

You settle against Sy’s side after he lifts his arm a bit and casually places it around your shoulder. “This guy’s voice on TV is gonna make me wanna take a nap,” you murmur, closing your eyes while the British narrator relays information about different military uniforms through the centuries.

“So take a nap.”

You fake-whine. “But then I’m not gonna wanna wake up.”

Sy grunts. “I’ll find one’a them true crime documentaries you’re always watchin’ to keep you alert, then.”

You open your eyes again. “Ha, ha.”

“Well, we could always do somethin’ else that would keep ya awake.”

You wait for his suggestion, but it doesn’t come. While he trails two of his fingers across your shoulder, you look over at him to find a certain look on his face, almost like he could wag his eyebrows any second, and you simply blink. You’d just told him you’re sore, but it’s more than just your muscles that are sore. Like, everything is sore. And after last night and this morning… You’re still having a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that Sy could still be–that he could still possibly want–

“Um. I'm–” You look down. “I mean, you're–”

He nudges you with his knee. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

“Oh.” Of course it was. Now you feel stupid.

In the silence that ensues, you’re awkward and you know you’re awkward, so Sy nudges you again with the arm wrapped around you. “Y/N,” he says. “Look at me.”

You reluctantly look up. When you do, Sy’s face is strangely serious.

“I know I’ve been teasin’ today, but I wouldn’t ever make fun of you in a mean way. I ain’t tryin’ to embarrass you here.”

You shake your head. “Oh, it’s totally–That's not–You didn't. You weren’t.”

He watches your face for a minute, and then ultimately, he frowns. “Your face changed. I crossed a line somehow.”

Quickly, you shake your head again. “You really didn’t. I promise. It’s really not you, it’s me.”

Sy scratches his beard while watching you curiously. You can tell he wants to speak, but you go first.

“You didn’t do anything–seriously. I’m so sorry. I know we’ve already talked about this already–like, a little bit just as recently as this morning–and it's not that I don't believe you, I promise, but it's harder than I thought it'd be for me to, like, re-learn certain things. So the things that you say…it takes time for everything to actually stick. In my brain. It’s not that I don’t believe you, though. That’s not…That’s not the problem.”

“Okay,” he answers slowly. “...But what is it you’re actually talkin’ about?”

“That–” Ugh, it’s so hard to talk about sex out loud. Openly. “You just suggested…you know. And I…I keep thinking that if I say no that you'll be mad at me or something,” you admit.

Sy inhales roughly, and you look down at your lap.

Man. You really didn't want to ruin the day. For the second time. It’d been going so nice.

Sy pulls you into his side more closely. “I told you. Only thing I'm ever mad at when it comes to you are the people who've made you think that way in the first place.”

Slowly, you nod. “Yeah.” He’d said that before. He says the same things a lot.

You say the same things a lot. It must be exhausting being with you.

“So if I'm ever comin’ on too strong–”

“You're not,” you interrupt. “You weren't.”

Gently, Sy smiles. “But if I ever am,” he goes on, “you just tell me to lay off.”

With a stupidly-small sounding voice, you answer, “Okay.”

It takes a few moments, but after too much silence goes on, Sy finally asks, “What’re you thinkin’?”

“That you’re still somehow gonna get offended or mad if I do that,” you answer straight-away, wincing and squeezing your eyes shut.

“We’re shuttin’ that down,” Sy says. “It won’t happen. It won’t ever happen.”

“Okay.”

“Got it?”

You clear your throat awkwardly and give a tight nod. You blankly stare ahead at the television while lost in thought, and you feel the power of Sy’s attention on you almost the entire time. When you finally turn your face to look at him again, he’s got his eyes on yours already.

“Um,” you begin.

Sy patiently lifts his eyebrows.

“Let’s just say I–Let’s just say you weren’t kidding,” you mutter. “And that–” You start picking at the skin around your thumbnail.

“Just me here,” he reminds you.

“Right, sorry,” you say. “I mean–No, I’m not. I’m not sorry.” You smile. “Okay, let me try this again. Let’s just say that you weren’t actually kidding…” You trail off, trying to put words to your thoughts.

“...I didn’t have to be just kidding,” Sy eventually says, a bit confused.

Your face twists in its own confusion. “See, that’s the thing. If I had said ‘sure’ just now, you’d really…Like, you’d really actually want to?”

Sy looks to the side. “...Yeah?”

“Like, you’d really sincerely want to?”

“Baby, yeah,” he says again, this time with a mix of confusion and emphasis lacing his deep voice. “I mean, it’s you we’re talkin’ ‘bout…”

Sitting entirely still, you just blink while taking in that statement.

“I can usually…” Sy sighs. “I can usually get where you’re goin’ with stuff, Y/N, but I gotta admit…I’m havin’ a hard time understandin’ what the problem is.”

“There isn’t a problem,” you shake your head and genuinely tell him.

“Okay,” Sy slowly says. But he’s still confused. And you don’t blame him. “So you know that you can always say no to me,” he summarizes.

“Right.” You nod. You do know that. And you will eventually get yourself to the point where you intrinsically believe it without doubt.

“And now you know that…you can also say yes to me,” he goes on, “and that I’d be entirely fine with that, too.”

There’s a joke he’s trying to make with that, his voice a little lighter, and you understand how stupid it all seems, but something about it just isn’t–you just can’t comprehend it.

“What am I missin’, Y/N?” Sy asks.

You take a deep breath. “After last night, and then this morning…And you–And you’ve kissed and hugged me a lot today, too…” You finish with a shrug.

His eyes turn hawk-like. “You’re thinkin’ I’m some kinda nympho or somethin’, ain’tchu?”

You could almost laugh. “That’s not at all what I was thinkin’.”

“Then what?”

Again, you shrug. “That, like…I just don’t get it. I don’t see how you could still have any sort of desire after…” You clear your throat. Fuck, you’re weird. “How you could even still want to…touch me or kiss me so much or to do…anything.”

Sy’s eyebrows meet. He hears what you say, and he listens, and he must replay it in his head, because then he’s taking a sharp inhale, and then he’s removing his arm from your shoulder, and then he’s lifting both his hands to his face, and then he’s dragging them down his cheeks.

You close your eyes. You make yourself open them. “Did that make you mad?”

Sy wraps his arm around your shoulder again. “You haven’t made me mad,” he says. “I want you to–” He sighs. “I'm glad when you communicate.”

You nod. “...So that was okay? That I said that?”

“All you did was speak your mind. Which I always wantchu to do.”

You hate that you need so much reassurance, but– “Even if it makes you mad?”

“I’m not try’na make this about me,” he quietly says. “It ain’t about me.”

You don’t know what that means. “Oh,” you utter.

“No–Not like that. You just don’t need to be worryin’ about my reaction when–” Sy takes a deep breath, and a long, controlled exhale. “You don’t make me mad when you say things. It’s the things you actually say that…I just…I’ve gotta learn to get ahold of my temper. Which I will.”

“But…What are you mad at if you’re not mad at me?” you slowly ask.

Sy removes his arm from your shoulder in favor of placing both of his elbows on his knees. “You don’t even see–It doesn’t even occur to you, does it?”

You swallow. You feel dumb. “I’m sorry, but I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve spent so much time with–” He sighs, sits upright again, and fixes his knee-brace where he’d messed it up. “How many relationships were you actually in again?”

You look down. “Officially? Two.”

“That's what I thought,” Sy mutters. “Okay.”

You hesitate. “Why?” you ask. “What’s on your mind?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“I do,” you answer.

Sy side-eyes you. “You seriously don’t.”

“Why did you ask that?” you try again. “About my exes.”

“Because they’re human pieces of shit,” Sy seethes, “and I get that you’re still not ready to talk about everything, but the intel I’ve gathered from what you have already let out…” His nostrils flare.

“I…”

Slowly, you shake your head. Earlier today, you’d already had a conversation about your previous relationships in the spare bedroom upstairs with Sy. Well, as much as you were able to. Ever since Sy had said you’ve been brainwashed, you’ve literally been oscillating between past and present non-stop, old memories popping up like sharp, unpleasant zaps in your mind.

But–“That wasn’t about–I was just making a general statement.”

Sy tilts his head to the side. “What was your general statement?”

“That, like…That it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you’d want to keep kissing me and…that you’d maybe even want other stuff.” You shrug. “After what we’ve already done. Recently.”

“Because it doesn’t make sense to kiss my girlfriend so soon after already taking what I really want from her,” he replies.

“Right,” you answer, and then you whip your head over to look at his face. Those words don’t sound right coming out of his mouth. “Wait.”

Sy's face almost looks sick. “Are you hearin’ how that sounds?”

“But–” Your mouth parts. “That’s not what I meant, though.”

He lifts an eyebrow, and suddenly, your eyes can’t focus. “I…”

Another sharp, zapping memory assaults you.

“Headache?” Michael asked with his hand under your shirt, and you paused, opening your eyes. They instantly furrowed into a slight scowl as you stared at the wall, hidden from your boyfriend as he lay behind you in bed plastered like a barnacle to your back.

You were grouchy. It was your birthday, but you were grouchy as hell.

It was a school night. You’d already been in class all day long, trying to stay as alert as possible so you could succeed in meeting your goal of finally increasing your GPA a little. You then worked a half-shift at the grocery store where you handled dirty cans of vegetables and wet produce items and heavy cases of beer and laundry detergent and dog food for five hours straight. You then made it home in the rain where, upon entering the apartment, you had to instantly muster up energy that didn’t exist in order to cook for yourself and Michael. You were tired.

And tomorrow, you just had to do everything all over again.

“‘M just tired,” you honestly whispered, already close to drifting off with your head on the pillow, and then you felt Michael’s hand under your shirt grab one of your boobs and shake there, almost like he was attempting to wake you up.

“C’mon, Y/N,” he said into your ear. “It’s your birthday.”

You yawned. “Yeah, but we were gonna do somethin’ this weekend,” you reminded him in a drowsy mumble. “I got class and work all week.”

“But it’s your birthday,” Michael repeated, and silently, so that he couldn’t hear it or even feel it with how his hand was so close to your chest, you inhaled.

You knew what he meant now.

You knew what he meant now, and you’d be letting him down if you shook him off and denied him. Not when he’d gotten you birthday flowers.

Wrapped in cellophane on the kitchen table when you came home, they were kind of ugly, like the petals had already wilted or something, but it was still a nice gesture for him to’ve done. Especially because he didn’t have a lot of money. Of course, he probably spent the money on them in the first place to get you to have sex with him, honestly, but–

But, no. That’s a weird thought to have. He was your boyfriend. That’s what couples do together–they…Birthday sex. There’s even a song out there about it.

If you said no, then that would cause him to pester you about it, and then that would either lead to you getting pissed off that he won’t drop it when you were clearly tired and not into it right now, which would cause a big argument, or it’d lead to you just giving in to his persistence and conceding in order to save all the energy that arguing would inevitably expend.

You took another deep breath and then rolled over in bed.

Without preamble, you’re being shaken from your thoughts and immediately pulled into the warmth of Sy’s side again. “C’mere.”

The sheer number of groundbreaking conversations with this man over the past twenty-four hours…Even the past four hours…You’re reeling.

You–You guess you really have been brainwashed.

After continuously being subjected to unpredictable behavior for so long–by so many different people in your life–you’ve had to protect yourself by constantly reading the play ahead of time. By over-thinking and over-analyzing and over-compensating and over-apologizing. And just not doing those things or thinking those things anymore takes time. It takes rewiring.

It really does feel like your head is full of a million crossed wires, and as you’re slowly learning normality with Sy, one individual wire breaks and makes an attachment somewhere else, a joining that only fuses after weeks and weeks of reassurance and witnessing consistent patterns. And then another wire breaks and meshes somewhere else after a few more weeks. And then another. And another.

But where does that leave you? Forever a work in progress?

“None of it was your fault, you know,” Sy’s chest reverberates against your cheek while he speaks, and there’s a confidence and finality to his words despite them still sounding so illicit to your ears.

“I…” Your fingers twitch against the fibers of his sweater. You can’t. You can’t talk about this.

Not just because it’s talking about sex out loud, but it’s because it’s talking about your fucked up past and how Sy should never have to deal with the repercussions of choosing you to date but how you’re so, so happy that he sees something in you worth staying for despite it all.

Sy doesn't speak after that, just puts a hand over your hair and holds you, and you let him. “Thank you,” you finally whisper. Because that’s all you know how to respond with.

Eventually, you sit up and dab the side of your right eye with the pad of your finger.

“We can prob'ly make it through one more show before we gotta leave,” you suggest, picking up the conversation from earlier about how the current show on the History Channel is going to put you to sleep.

After you steal the remote from the side of Sy’s leg, he mumbles, “Woman,” and you just smile at him–a little to thank him for consoling you just now, a little to convey to him that you’re fine.

He relaxes once you settle on an episode of Alaskan Jade Mining instead of The First 48.

“The plant's in jeopardy of shuttin’ down,” you catch him up while leaning against his side again and staring ahead at the TV.

“What'd that dumbass do now?” Sy mutters.

“The land he threw all that money into is yielding, like, no results. The entire crew’s overworked and fed up. Then they hired some new chick that doesn’t have any experience and it’s taking extra time to train her.”

Sy grunts, and that leads into the two of you mindlessly binging the show.

“I'm lookin’ forward to meetin’ some more of your friends tonight,” you say during a commercial, then you instantly think that's so stupid to just mindlessly say like that–he's going to think you're interested in them or something…

No, he won’t.

“Lookin’ forward to it, too,” he just replies.

You exhale. “Who’s comin’ tonight, anyway?” you ask. “Did you ever figure out if Johnny got in touch with anyone from the Army like you said he was tryin’ to do?”

“Nah,” he answers. “We’ll just find out when we get there. Johnny’s been more concerned with–”

You raise your eyebrows.

“Everything in general, I guess,” Sy finishes. “Food and drinks, shit like that. Said they're doin’ some drink station in the kitchen or somethin’.”

You turn to look straight ahead again. “Ooh, that'll be fun.”

“Mm.”

After the TV show is over, ending with drama from an impending storm on the horizon, you gently slap your legs with your hands. “You wanna go ahead and leave?”

Sy looks at his watch. “Sure,” he shrugs. “Or we could stay here for another episode.”

You grin. “I knew you’d get hooked if I put it on.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Easily, Sy smiles, and you briefly glance at his teeth before looking back up at his eyes. “We could be a little late to the party. Ain’t like they’re gonna be missin’ us none.”

“Maybe they won’t miss you, but they’ll miss me,” you stand up and say, and it takes Sy a second, but he finally smiles at your delivery, standing up with a grunt and a playful ass-pinch.

Sy clicks off the television and starts following you into the kitchen. “‘Course they will,” he agrees.

While you pack up your ugly Christmas cookies to match your ugly Christmas sweater, you watch Sy step his feet into his old discarded boots by the kitchen table and then open the refrigerator. He pulls out two cases of alcohol–Bud Light beer for himself and Bud Light seltzers for you.

Quietly, you assess him. He's always just so good at reading you, and reassuring you, and complimenting you, and making you laugh, and making you happy. He’s also so handsome you can’t stand it.

“Hey,” you quietly say, and he closes the fridge and looks over at you.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I never told you…” You look at him head-to-toe. “You look nice tonight.”

Sy smiles. “You admittin’ you like the sweater?”

“I like all of it,” you say–which is true. The sweater, the socks, even the khaki shorts in December. “You look good.”

Sy holds your gaze for one long, charged minute. “So do you.”

You hold yourself back from rolling your eyes. “But I’m talking about you,” you say. “You look nice.”

The satisfaction in his eyes is evident even though he doesn’t respond. After pushing yourself up on your tip-toes to kiss his scruffy cheek, you take your case of seltzer out of his grip, put your container of cookies on top of it, and then begin walking down the hall to put your shoes on by the front door. By the time Sy meets you there, he’s not only carrying his case of beer anymore: he’s got a broom, too.

There’s some shuffling around while you two put your jackets on, and then Sy locks the front door and holds the broom out like a metal-detector on the way to his truck. Immediately, his rooster comes from out of literally nowhere, going from zero speed to full force with one singular goal in mind, but Sy sweeps the broom at him before he can bite at his calves.

By the time you make it into the cab of his truck, you don’t think you’ll ever stop laughing.

"God, he's such a fuckin' dick," Sy just grumbles next to you a few minutes later, and then he sticks his keys in the ignition and revs his engine.

Exactly like you’d done earlier this morning, you place your hands out to the air vents to warm them up before reaching out to change the radio station. When a very country version of Two-Step ‘Round the Christmas Tree begins playing, you turn it up and start tapping your legs playfully.

Sy gives you a look. "Abso-fuckin'-lutely not."

You let out a loud laugh that has Sy scrunching his eyebrows funnily, and you have to clear your throat. "Sorry," you say while changing the radio station. "I'm good."

"Are you, now?"

For no reason, you laugh again, ending it with a nod. "That rooster, Sy...I can’t."

“Glad I can offer you some entertainment,” he mutters, which may have sounded passive-aggressive coming from anybody else’s mouth but his, but from him, there’s no bite to his words.

Sy lets out a small head-shake and smile that’s honestly adorable before he drops his right hand from the steering wheel to rest in the middle seat. Naturally, you reach your own hand out to meet his, and then he begins driving down the lane.

#captain syverson #sy #eyes that see #just -chirpin #captain syverson x reader #sy x reader #Reblog #Henry Cavill #Henry Cavill x reader

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themanfromu · 27 days

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Henry Cavill: Shoutout to "Big AL" which is something I've never called him, but in the vacuum that is Instagram it feels appropriate. Here's to Big AL! He does some seriously cool stuff in this movie. And by this movie I mean Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

#Henry Cavill #Gus #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Video #Henry Cavill Instagram #Reblog

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themanfromu · 30 days

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Henry Cavill is Gus in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

#Henry Cavill #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Guy Ritchie #Gus #Poster #Reblog

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themanfromu · 2 months

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Henry Cavill:

We have a poster! And here it be. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. A World War 2 story about the unconventional men and women of the Special Operations Executive....Guy Ritchie style.

#Henry Cavill #the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare #Guy Ritchie #Henry Cavill Instagram #Reblog

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themanfromu · 2 months

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Henry Cavill's Kisses

All the different kinds of Henry kisses.

Chapter Text

Lazy morning kisses in bed to the back of your neck

Dropping kisses to the top of your head when he walks past

Peppering sweet kisses all over your face as he cradles your head in his big hands when you’re crying

Nose boop kisses when you frown at him because he knows it’ll make you roll your eyes at him

Kisses to your knuckles when you hold hands

Neck kisses when you’re both curled up together on the sofa and he’s got his face squished into the side of your neck and cuddling you like an enormous couch octopus

Drunk, sloppy, messy kisses that end up being Henry literally just licking your face. It’s not that dissimilar to Kal kisses tbh

Fierce, desperate kisses teamed with being lifted off your feet when he finally gets home after being away on set for a while

Kisses that are mostly clashing teeth and bitten lips after you’ve had an argument about something. These ones usually end up with you getting fucked through the brickwork of the hallway

Those kisses that make it feel like he can’t get close enough to you, like he wants to crawl into your skin and live there. Those kisses are all tongue and heat and have you clawing at his skin and climbing his massive frame like a tree

Kisses to your temple and whispers of reassurance as he pulls you tight into his side when you both walk the red carpet because he knows that the shouting and camera flashes make you a little uneasy and overwhelmed

Kisses to the top of your shoulders as he hugs you from behind when you make dinner

Those little kisses and kitten licks to your inner thighs that he does when he’s teasing you with what you know comes next and will turn you into a quivering, whimpering mess

Gentle, tender kisses teamed with brushes of reverent fingers that say what words can’t and leave you breathless in more ways than one when he makes love to you slowly, deeply, and for hours just because he can

Possessive, fevered kisses in the kitchen because he can’t resist you when he catches you wearing his hoodies that turn into riding him on the kitchen floor

Over exaggerated cheek smacking kisses that turn into cheek raspberries because he’s a little shit, but it makes you laugh until you can’t breathe, especially when he moves the raspberry blowing down to your stomach

Giving each of your toes a kiss whenever he gives you one of his world-famous foot massages

Forehead kisses when you’re just holding each other and swaying gently to the radio

The hurried kisses goodbye that always feel sad whenever you have to drop him at the airport, even though you know it isn’t forever

Hot, sweaty teenaged make out kisses when things really do turn into Netflix & Chill

Gentle brushes of his lips to your swollen baby belly that’s cradled in his big hands whilst he murmurs softly to the tiny life within about how much he loves her already, and that he can’t wait to finally meet her

#I want this #Henry Cavill #Henry Cavill x reader #Reblog

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themanfromu · 2 months

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A Bone-Deep Chill (Geralt of Rivia x F!Reader) ft. Jaskier

Caught in a viscous storm, you find yourself in a freezing inn, sharing two rooms between three grouchy people. Worse still, you're fighting off the cold settling deep in your bones.

Friends-to-cuddling, Jaskier is grumpy in this. [4.6k]

CW: hypothermia, storms || Geralt Masterlist

⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔

A dramatic sigh came from behind you as Jaskier bundled into the inn, a gust of cold with him. A vicious rain pummeled against the windows, making the building itself shake as the gale fought to make its way inside.

Geralt was still outside, finding somewhere safe for Roach to weather the storm, and you pitied him as yet another roar of wind blustering through the small town. The innkeeper regarded you with concern, both you and Jaskier shaking from the cold in sopping wet garments, no doubt leaving matching puddles seeping into his floor.

“Two rooms?” he asked, skipping any preamble as your teeth chattered.

The feeling of cold was not just in your exposed skin, but seeping through your very flesh, the ache of it reaching your bones and your lungs. The warmth of the fire in the corner called you, but you knew it would have no chance at drying through to the woollen garments which were uncomfortable and heavy on your skin.

“Please!” Jaskier answered from behind you.

You knew you were in no position to bargain, bracing yourself to be fleeced on account of your desperate situation, but the innkeeper simply nodded. He fortunately offered you a reasonable rate which would not completely empty your purses of coin.

As Jaskier trudged forwards to pay, your brain finally caught up.

“Three! Three rooms if you have them, sir. Our friend is outside.”

The bard hummed a noise of realisation, no doubt struggling to think himself as the wind continued to howl and the pair of you grew closer to freezing by the second.

The innkeeper grimaced.

“We only have two left, apologies,” he tilted his head sympathetically, “storm’s brought everyone in. No-one wants to travel in this.”

“Have you got an extra bed for either of them?” Jaskier was speaking quickly, brushing off the concern as he counted coin onto the table in front of him.

You couldn’t blame him for his dismissiveness, he was no doubt keen to get warmed up and dry his beloved lute. You were desperate to know if the fires were already lit.

The banging of the door behind you and the widening of the innkeeper’s eyes told you Geralt had finally caught up – standing by the entryway to avoid any more damage to the wooden floorboards.

The Witcher’s heavy breathing was even louder than the rain, and you tried to ignore his imposing form behind you as you followed Jaskier and the innkeeper’s discussion. The Bard was getting pissed off, you could hear it.

“You must have one extra bed somewhere in this establishment –”

“Sir I really don’t I’m sorry –”

“Are you kidding me? Have you seen the size of him? No one can share a bed with that!”

“Jaskier!”

You interrupted the bard, hearing Geralt’s footsteps approaching, turning back to the innkeeper.

“There’s nothing else?”

The coins sat between you on the countertop, where Jaskier had left them. You pushed them towards the man, encouraging him to take them.

“There really isn’t, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“I understand, it’s not your fault. We’ll take the two rooms. And any extra blankets and pillows you have.”

He nodded, sparing another anxious glance first at Geralt, then at the shivering, grumpy Jaskier. He finally scooped up the coin, pushing two keys across to you, followed by a folded blanket from beneath the counter.

“Rooms five and six, they’re on your right as you head upstairs. I’ll bring up meals.”

He was speaking only to you, and you couldn’t blame him. The innkeeper made a swift departure back into his own room, leaving the three of you dripping wet in the office. You crossed to the fireplace, shedding your cloak onto a chair, and trying to warm your hands as you shivered.

A scraping made you wince as Geralt dragged a chair across the floor, setting it near the hearth. You took it graciously before he found a chair for himself, joining you wordlessly.

“You okay?” you muttered, noticing the blue hue to his hands, a slight clumsiness to the way his hands found one another and rested beneath his chin.

It was alarming, to see Geralt falling victim to anything as human as a mild hypothermia. You threw another log on the fire.

“Fine. Cold.”

You nodded, not at all surprised to get so little response from the Witcher. For a few moments more you both tried to warm up in front of the flames, listening to the new log crackling and to Jaskier’s footsteps as the storm raged on outside.

“Are you okay?” he murmured, wet leather creaking as he leant forwards.

“Fine, very cold,” you teased.

Geralt laughed, just one huff of air through his nose, but glanced back at your face with something approaching concern. You hummed, leaning forwards beside him, desperate for the warmth of the fire to seep into your very bones.

“I wasn’t expecting the storm to be that bad, sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

He shot you a knowing look, and you smiled through a full-body shiver. Despite his best efforts, Geralt took the whole world on his shoulders sometimes – the weather might be the only thing you could convince him wasn’t his responsibility.

“I should have gotten us to an inn sooner.”

“It’s fine. We’re all capable, Geralt. And none of us predicted this.”

Jaskier huffed behind you, indignant. He had predicted a little rain – though nothing of this scale. Still, he had whinged about being ‘proven right’ the whole journey to the inn. Jaskier approached, and you stood to offer him your chair.

“I’ll get the fires started in the rooms,” you offered, loathing to leave the warm office but desperate to rid yourself of your sodden clothes.

There was a tension in the room that you had no desire to deal with, too exhausted and too cold to watch your two favourite people on the whole Continent bickering all evening.

“I can go?” Geralt offered quickly, but you waved him away.

“All good. I’ll be quick.”

You snagged the blanket and both room keys, the room wordless behind you as you left it.

Upstairs was cold, dark. Torches had been blown out by the wind, the corridor draughtier than you would like, and you pulled the folded blanket closer to your chest.

You couldn’t help wondering what the room configuration would be. Yourself and Geralt would most certainly try to be self-less, offer up the least offensive solution. Jaskier would no doubt be fine with sharing a room, though you wondered if he would object to sharing with Geralt. The two men had been at odds lately, for reasons you couldn’t quite pin down.

The fire was blessedly built already in the first of the rooms you visited, making you sigh in relief as you sank to the floor. You lit the kindling, protecting the flame as wind forced its way through the room, your numb hands less sensitive to the heat as the fire grew larger and larger, finally catching the logs.

Voices floated up through the floor as you minded the fire, unmistakably your companions’. The words were dampened by the floorboards, but you frowned as the flames grew taller and independent, accompanied by harsher tones from downstairs.

You stripped off the wettest of your outer layers and left them by the fire in the first room, wrapping the blanket around yourself before locking up and switching to the adjacent room. As you repeated the process, this time replacing tumbled logs which had been knocked aside by the wind, the voices only grew louder and meaner. As the second fire became self-sustaining, you found yourself reluctant to move from it. Not only was the warmth tempting, finally restoring feeling to your chilled toes and fingers, but the idea of avoiding the full argument burning downstairs was deeply appealing.

Locking yourself in the room and going to sleep tempted you, a siren to your cold, exhausted body, but you begrudgingly stood, taking your blanket and locking the door – bracing yourself as you rushed through the cold corridor once again.

Stopping at the top of the stairs, you winced at the words being exchanged.

“I don’t know why you’re being such a bastard about this, Geralt! Share the bed, let me rest comfortably, and enjoy a cosy eveningwith her for all I care!”

There was movement, that chair dragging across the floor sound again, followed by footsteps. You held your breath.

“I thought ‘no one can share a bed with that’, Bard! Are you trying to get her crushed?”

For a moment you blinked in surprise, imagining Jaskier’s face was going the same.

You weren’t surprised Geralt had heard Jaskier’s comment earlier – you were surprised he had cared enough to remember it.

“I was just trying to barter us more rooms, Geralt. We all know the beds you share – ”

Another shuffle of furniture, and this time faster footsteps. The ping of Jaskier’s lute as it fell to the floor, a growl from deep in Geralt’s chest usually reserved for beasts and pub fights, the pounding of the wind and rain against the windows. You listened with your eyes wide open, blankly looking at the staircase below you, frozen with shock.

They bickered, but they never fought.

You were the problem. They had both presumed their own beds, and you were problem, unwanted in either room and apparently completely left out of the conversation. With the keys warm in your hand, you once-again considered locking yourself in one of the rooms and letting them cuddle.

When you heard another scuffle, saw Jaskier running towards the steps, you finally snapped out of your shock.

“What’s your problem?” you demanded of the bard, already on the defensive.

As you descended you saw the anger drop from Geralt’s features, his face schooled as he halted his chase and feigned innocence. Like children caught brawling they looked across at one another, a silent threat between them.

“Just warming up,” Geralt grumbled, his swords shifting against his back as he fidgeted where he stood.

“Something like that. He’s a maniac, that one. Ready to take my head off.”

You stared them both down for a moment, aware your authority was undermined by the blanket draped around you and the slight chatter of your teeth.

“The fires are lit. Have we decided rooms?”

You reached the floor, forcing them both back towards one another as you made a beeline for the fireplace. The chairs had been displaced as the bard and the Witcher ran around them, and you dragged one back towards the fireplace with a pointed look at Jaskier before sitting in it heavily.

Geralt quietly joined you, claiming the other chair, leaving Jaskier to hover beside the hearth. He picked up his lute, starting to tune it, the fall leaving the strings awfully off-pitch.

“What do you want to do?” Geralt rumbled, his voice far softer than it had been as he argued earlier.

You wondered if it was guilt you were hearing.

“Totally up to you. As long as I can catch some rest, I’m happy.”

Geralt shifted in his seat.

“Why don’t you go with Jaskier? Might be more room.”

You frowned. The beds in the rooms could easily fit two people, likely more. As you went to say as much, Jaskier interrupted.

“Sure, whatever you want Geralt.”

He stretched out the Witcher’s name unnaturally, making you look between the two men, seeing if they would give you some inkling of the reason they were so frosty towards one another.

Instead, the Witcher nodded, holding out his hand for a key. Baffled, you handed him the key for the second room you had lit the hearth in, not even offered a thank you as he collected his damp belongings and stormed up the stairs.

Jaskier was similarly indifferent to you, occupied by his lute as he meandered up to the room, waiting for you to unlock the door without a word.

“You two fight like an old married couple, you know that, right?” you grumbled, making sure Jaskier could hear as he brushed past you into the room.

You wrinkled your nose at the damp of his coat brushing against you. Jaskier appraised the room, judgemental expression lit by the warm light from the fire. It was still burning strong. You hoped Geralt’s fire was the same, hot and welcoming, letting the Witcher relax and calm down.

Everyone was highly strung, you knew this rest was well needed.

“Anyone would be a fool to marry him. He’s selfish as anything.”

Closing the door behind you, you stood in place, waiting for Jaskier to settle.

“He’s not selfish. Nothing of the sort, and you know it.”

Jaskier let out a cruel laugh, set down his lute, and started stripping off his wet clothes, letting them dry on the floor beside yours.

“He certainly fucking acts it sometimes.”

You shouldn’t get involved.

You shouldn’t encourage Jaskier.

You shouldn’t.

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t even offer to share a room. The gentlemanly thing to do.”

You tried not to feel stung by his dismissive tone.

“You didn’t exactly seem to want me either,” you pointed out, hugging your blanket closer to you as Jaskier reached bare skin, pulling a new pair of trousers from his bag.

You didn’t want to strip off, you had barely stopped shivering in the few thin, dry layers you had left.

“Of course I don’t mind, but he should have offered!”

The bard was deflecting, and you tried not to feel the pain of it as it stung deep in your chest.

“Right.”

Wordlessly, you chose the side of the bed closest to the door, keeping the blanket around you as you settled down and occupied as little space as possible.

Jaskier stayed behind you, fidgeting and moving his belongings, trying to dry some and sort others. The noise made it hard to sleep, worsened still by his humming. You screwed your eyes closed, pulled the blankets closer and curled up. The room was warming, and it would probably have been tolerable if you weren’t so damn cold already. Your shivers made you miserable, trying to stop your teeth chattering, groaning at the ache in your skull.

Sleep evaded you as frustration welled up in your eyes, hot, itchy tears falling to the mattress. Jaskier was still fussing, stoking the fire and moving his clothes around. When you heard the first strum of his lute, you wanted to scream.

The distinct press of his fingers ghosting across the frets made you tense, before he strummed the wretched thing again. Fuck. You could kill him.

“Are you really going to play now?” you mumbled, fighting a full-body shiver.

“I’m not tired,” he replied, accompanied by a familiar series of notes from his latest composition.

“You’re overtired.”

He shrugged you off with a petulant huff, the lute getting louder yet again. You heard a thud against the adjoining wall, Geralt clearly equally unimpressed with the wretched noise.

For a few moments more he continued to play, and you tried to fight the anger settling hot in your chest. All of you were exhausted, cold, hungry, miserable. And now Jaskier was being a prick.

He started singing.

You considered murdering him.

Instead you pulled yourself from the bed, keeping your blanket and snagging your pillow, storming from the room. Jaskier seemed to barely notice, continuing his rendition without hesitation as you slammed the door behind you.

Fuck.

True to his word the innkeeper had brought meals up, but left them outside the doors of the room. You knocked on Geralt’s door before taking your own plate and goblet downstairs. Jaskier could have his meal cold. It was all he deserved for that performance.

Hungry and drowsy, you folded yourself into one of the chairs in front of the fire, frowning as you remembered the argument Geralt and Jaskier had been in just minutes ago. It felt forever ago. As you ate your meal you pulled the blanket close around yourself, blinking at the fire. The faint sounds of Jaskier practicing upstairs were blessedly drowned out by the wind howling down the chimney, the storm outside only worsening. Your hands were numb as you threw another log on the fire. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen, the front door firmly closed against the weather

You stared at the flames for longer, no longer feeling their warmth. Your legs and hands were numb, but exhaustion was claiming you, and you couldn’t move to warm up. The chair was hard beneath you, your blanket doing very little to cushion it.

Footsteps on the stairs made you jump, your daze interrupted.

Geralt descended the stairs, crockery in hand, his long white hair hanging limp around his face. You thought it looked like icicles, smoothed in place. He set his plate on the counter with a dull thud, pausing as he looked at you.

“Jaskier said you left,” he stated.

“Hm?”

Geralt looked around the room, at you folded into the chair, a furrow appearing on his brow.

“You left..?” He repeated.

You found yourself struggling to understand him, cocking your head.

“He was loud.”

He crossed the room in long strides, on hand cupping your face and the other finding your hand, hissing as his warm skin made contact with yours.

“Fuck, you’re cold.”

His palms felt burning, seeping fire into your skin, and you shuddered at the temperature difference.

“How long have you been down here? The rooms are warmer.”

“Not long. Couldn’t sleep, too cold.”

You knew your words were slurring, not only to your own ears, but to Geralt’s. He frowned more deeply at you.

“You’re really, really cold.”

Nodding, you closed your eyes, feeling tiredness overcome you.

“You need to come upstairs,” he insisted, taking your plate and letting it clatter to the floor.

You nodded again, but your limbs were too stiff to move. As his hands left your skin, you mourned the loss, feeling that stinging pain return. Your fingers and toes were aching.

“C’mon,” he grumbled, trying to pull you to your feet.

You did your best to comply, but it was difficult, painful. Tiredness flooded your system yet again. The shivering had stopped, and yet the coldness continued.

“Help me out here,” Geralt complained, dragging you by one shoulder as the rest of your body tried felt too heavy to follow.

“I’m trying,” you mumbled.

“Hardly.”

Your feet weren’t behaving underneath you, knees struggling to take your weight. You’d preferred it in the chair, at least your feet ached less. As you stumbled Geralt caught you, grunting a complain. For a moment he held you upright, letting you recover you balance. Suddenly his grip tightened.

“You’re not shivering,” he noticed, words sharp as he frowned at you.

“Should be,” you replied, “I’m fucking cold.”

“I know.”

He seemed to turn dismissive, bodily moving you across the room, but you could sense the concern in him. Even through your daze, you wondered where he was taking you. Neither of them had wanted to share. Getting up the stairs was more of a struggle than you expected, and you frowned at the ache in your muscles are you struggled to ascend them without leaning on Geralt.

The Witcher had gone quiet, hugging you to him, and you found it more terrifying than you wanted to admit. At the top of the stairs he continued to bundle you along towards his room, and you realised he was right. You weren’t shivering, even as wind rushed down the cold corridor.

“Keep talking to me,” he insisted, chest rumbling against your torso.

The thought left your mind immediately. You were fighting to stay awake. He found his key quickly, one arm caging you against him as he opened his door. Geralt worked efficiently as he pulled the sheets aside on his bed, settling you under them and tucking them around you.

The fire had started to dwindle, burning low in the hearth. As you moved under the covers, trying to warm up, Geralt rebuilt and stoked the flames. The fire flickered up, bathing the room in light. You couldn’t feel the heat, but hopefully it would follow soon. You closed your eyes, trying to find sleep now the noise of Jaskier’s lute had finally stopped.

“Talk to me,” he repeated gruffly, standing between the fireplace and the bed.

“Sorry.”

You opened your eyes, seeing his raised eyebrow. You smiled despite yourself.

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything,” he insisted, busying himself with sorting through his belongings, “just keep talking.”

He found another fur but grunted at seeing it wet, setting it in front of the fire to dry.

“I don’t think… I think I got colder than I realised earlier. And Jaskier wouldn’t stop fucking making noise so I couldn’t sleep, and the food didn’t make me feel better, and I can’t feel my toes –”

He stepped back for a moment, appraising the room, and you forced your eyes to stay open against the tiredness trying to claim you.

“As in, they’re cold? Or you can’t feel your toes?” he demanded.

You met his gaze, trying to understand the question. He strode towards the bed and found your feet beneath the blankets, stripping off your socks to feel your frozen toes.

“Fuck.”

He looked up at you, yellow eyes filled with seriousness and concern, and you fought back tears. Had you upset him somehow?

He bundled your feet back up, covering them first with socks then with one of his jackets, all the while tugging at the wooden bedframe. After a few moments of consideration, he suddenly dragged the whole frame across the floor, making you startle and grab at the mattress as the whole piece of furniture was moved closer to the fireplace.

You hoped no one else had been woken up by the noise, but your worry was immediately sated by the warmth of the flames against your exposed face. Geralt looked at you, waiting for approval, and you smiled weakly.

“Thanks.”

He nodded, busying himself with moving things around the newly-rearranged room. A few moments, you heard his gruff voice repeating himself.

“Talk.”

“This is much better, thanks Geralt. I’m sorry for kicking you out of your bed. I don’t know how I got so cold, it’s not even snowing, I guess just the wind and the rain…”

“You don’t need to explain.”

Blinking away tears, you stared sideways at the flames, hearing Geralt approaching behind you.

“I want to warm you up…” he trailed off, “if you don’t mind…”

Nodding, you shuffled forwards, but Geralt’s hand on your bundle of blankets stopped you before you could move from the centre of the bed.

“That’s fine,” he mumbled.

Stripping off his last piece of leather armour, he quickly slid himself beneath the sheets behind you, soothing the sudden flash of cold air with the warmth of his own body. Sandwiched between the Witcher and the fire, a sudden shudder wracked your body.

You heard Geralt exhale behind you. One warm hand found your wrist, and you realised he was checking your pulse.

“Am I still alive?” you teased.

Your smile dropped as his hand tightened on your wrist, before letting go, finding a place on your waist and hugging you closer to his chest instead.

“Sorry,” you apologised to him, shoving your face into the pillow beneath you as Geralt’s breath steadied against your back.

Geralt hummed.

“I think you were in a lot more danger than you realised.”

You lay in silence, giving him the opportunity to elaborate as your shivers and the heat around you finally returned sensation to your body. Everything ached, and you realised with a start that you would still be stuck, freezing in the entryway to the inn without Geralt’s help.

“On Kaer Morhen, when I was a boy… a lot of us didn’t survive. Very few survived, in fact. And they’d often… succumb to the cold.”

Fidgeting against him, you made space for the Witcher to wrap his arms tighter around you. His breath was hot against your neck as he continued speaking.

“We knew they were going… when they stopped seeming cold. The shivering would stop. The pain would stop. Then they would just fade away where they lay.”

His upbringing and training haunted the Witcher, but you had never heard it so plainly in his voice. Pain echoed through every word.

“I’m sorry, Geralt.”

“We would try to warm them up – we would. Ale and blankets and moving them closer to the fires… but the mountains are so cold. The air is thin. If they couldn’t survive it… we couldn’t help them.”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” you reassured, clumsily finding his hand on your waist and squeezing it.

He sought out your pulse again, murmuring something against your neck as he found it stronger. As your warmth returned so did your clarity, and you felt a growing pang of embarrassment at clinging to him. Or rather, letting him cling to you.

“I know you didn’t want to share, I’m sorry,” you began, but the Witcher shook his head against you.

His hair had started to frizz as it dried in the firelight, you noticed.

“No, Jaskier… I’m going to kill him for letting you freeze.”

“Jaskier has nothing to do with it,” you chided, closing your eyes against the warmth from the flames.

“He… I thought the beds wouldn’t fit two people. I didn’t want to take up too much space. Or crush you in my sleep.”

You laughed, and he made an affronted hum. Oh, he’s serious.

“I’ll wake you up if you crush me. I thought maybe I smelled too bad or something,” you teased, but Geralt wouldn’t bite.

“We should have found cover earlier. We left you with Roach for hours, you weren’t moving as much as Jaskier, singing his fucking songs, no wonder you got cold.”

“It’s not your fault –”

“As long as you’re travelling with me, it’s my fault,” his voice rumbled against your ear, and you couldn’t help the deep inhale you took at his protectiveness.

As your sensation returned, you could feel his whole body pressed against your back.

“It’s not,” you argued weakly, not fight left.

Sleep was claiming both of you, and now it seemed far safer, as your shudders subsided and your toes tingled with warmth from the fireplace. You closed your eyes, head beside Geralt’s bicep as he spooned you, fidgeting to get comfortable.

“I’m sorry you thought you couldn’t come to me,” he whispered, a confession.

“I should have – sorry. And I’m sorry about Kaer Morhen… there’s nothing you could have done. It wasn’t fair…”

For a moment there was nothing but his breath, mingling with the patter of rain. Then he answered, another confession against your skin.

“Thank you.”

Sleep grew closer again, Jaskier’s lute quietening and a cosy peace settling over the two of you, an oasis in the cold air of the inn.

“Wake me up if you get cold. I’ll sort the fire out.”

“Mhm,” you mumbled back.

You smiled as his hand found yours once more, checking the pulse at your wrist before cupping your hand against your sternum. You wondered if he felt your heart race at the gesture.

“Thank you,” you whispered, catching his attention one last time.

He shifted, cold sneaking under the blankets for a moment and making you groan, before his lips pressed to your hairline. As he pulled you close to him again you tried to bite down a giddy smile, feeling his own grin against your neck.

The shifting light of the fire was your companion as you let sleep take you, grasped to Geralt’s chest and safe against the storm outside.

Edit: Part 2

#Geralt of Rivia #Geralt of Rivia x reader #The witcher #Reblog

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