Thinking about those nights when you simply cannot sleep.
You've tried everything to quiet the restless turning of your body against the sheets. You ignore your phone, remembering that one article from years ago insisting blue light steals sleep from your eyes. You even move to the guest room once or twice, though you know it's pointless. Suguru or Satoru will carry you back to the main bedroom the moment they get home, half-asleep and insistent that you belong between them.
Are you just excited to see them?
The mission wasn't even that long. Not the longest they've been gone, not the shortest either. You've fallen asleep easier on worse nights than this. Yet your mind refuses to dim. Thoughts keep circling, overlapping, widening even after you get up and take melatonin. It only makes your eyelids heavy, syrup-slow, but your thoughts only stretch further, like paint bleeding through water.
It isn't until you finally begin to drift that you hear the front door open.
The quiet click of it closing. Shoes slipping off with a soft clack against the entryway floor. Their voices, low and familiar, a murmur of relief. A paper bag crackles. You imagine mochi inside, or some small souvenir that you'll give Satoru a kiss on the cheek for. The sink turns on. Water runs. The house settles around them.
Sleep takes you for maybe twenty minutes. Long enough for your breathing to even out, long enough for your thoughts to soften at the edges. Maybe you were anxious. Maybe your mind only truly rests when they're under the same roof.
Satoru comes to bed first. You hear the faint hush of a hair dryer from the far bathroom, the one Suguru always uses out of consideration. Satoru, however, slips in with slightly damp hair, cool from the air. The mattress dips when his knee presses into it. His weight shifts against you as he lifts you without asking, dragging you close until your cheek rests against his chest, still faintly cool from the shower.
He prefers the cold. Always has.
He peppers slow kisses across your shoulder, your temple, wherever his lips can reach. His fingers lace through yours, guiding one of your hands to rest against his chest like he needs the physical proof of you there. Ever clingy. For someone so loud and playful, it's almost startling how soft he becomes like this. His knee nudges between your legs, fitting himself against you as if there was never meant to be space.
"I missed you," he murmurs into your skin. "Love you."
He thinks you're asleep. Maybe you are halfway there, because you can't quite form words in response. Your breathing grows heavier instead, sinking into him, letting the steady rise and fall of his chest pull you down with it.
About twenty minutes later, Suguru joins you.
He doesn't try to take you from Satoru's arms. He knows better. You'll end up tucked against him by morning anyway. Patient, observant, always thinking ahead.
He leans over first, pressing a soft kiss to your temple before settling behind you. One of his hands finds your free one, fingers warm and steady where they curl around yours.
With Suguru, your heart always seems to pound louder. You're not sure why he has that effect on you. It's almost unfair how aware he makes you feel. The telltale rhythm probably gives you away.
Satoru is already asleep, mouth slightly parted where it rests against your shoulder, breathing slow and warm. The slight hint of drool lingering.
Suguru's voice drops low, almost like a purr, meant only for you.
"Couldn't sleep?"
You hum softly, the faintest no slipping out in a sigh.
He exhales, and you can hear the smile in it. Ever the tease. "Missed us?"
This time your hum is a quiet yes.
His thumb begins to trace absent patterns over your palm, then along your wrist, drifting gently across your arm wherever Satoru isn't wrapped around you. Slow lines. Soft circles. Light drags of his nails that barely graze your skin. The touch is soft and full of good intent, like he's smoothing every restless thought out of you by hand.
"Good night," Suguru whispers, pressing another kiss to your hairline.
And for once, your mind goes quiet.
Completely, blissfully quiet.
Ngl I just cried a little
