"Sylus."

"Hm?"

You roll from your back to your side to face him, yet your eyes lock onto the cover of the novel in his hand. "Do you…"

You hesitate, but shake your head. In it, you tell yourself again the same thing you've gotten into the rhythm of thinking, which is not to think. Don't think, or you'll back out of this again. You can't back out of this again.

Hoping they hold no particular weight, the words ghost past your lips.

"Do you ever get upset that we haven't done much?"

The page of his novel lifelessly flips to the other side, his thumb paused mid-air just as it flicked it over. His eyes shift from the text to you, his attention fully shifted. You're only thinly proud of yourself for not contorting into yourself while beneath his gaze.

There's a quirk of his brow as a small smirk tugs at the corner of his lips, teasing, "Is jumping out of a helicopter too light of an activity for you, sweetie? Or, perhaps the car chase we were in just two days ago has become too predictable an occurrence."

"Alright, fair, but that's…" A huff pushes through your nostrils in irrational discontent. "That's—that's not really what I meant."

Here starts the ceremony of thought again. Breathe. Don't think of your body. Don't think of any perceptions or preconceptions made to figure out the shape of you. Don't think of how you must appear to him now, with clothes that bind and wrap around your flesh, thin in a way that was once only familiar to the walls of your apartment. Don't think of it as something to be, or is at all, perceived—as actively observed, at this moment, under eyes that you can't hide from.

Don't think of your body as a sin. Don't think of it as a possession. Don't think of your body as anything beyond something that's just…there.

You'll lose your nerve and sit stagnant in the familiarity of your self-pity if you allow yourself to think.

"I just meant how we…" You exhale, trying to find the words. "Haven't done much physically. As in—"

Don't pause. That gives your brain too much time.

"You know. Sex."

Christ. This time, it feels more difficult not to outwardly cringe. There's a part of you that knows that you shouldn't feel that way, but you can't help it.

It's not like you haven't had a version of this discussion with him before. When the lines between what you were began to sharpen from their blurred beginning, and after your initial (and months-long) denial of what you wanted waned, you made sure to fully disclose, despite your sheepishness, that there are certain things that you needed some grace for. You made it abundantly clear that anything more physical in your intimate life would be delayed or gradual, and that you need time. Potentially a lot, or less.

You couldn't bring yourself to say maybe never.

He didn't seem to mind. He just listened, attentive and observant as he always was, and told you to take all the time you needed. That he wasn't going anywhere because, though he spared you the explanation, you know he could sense the underlying fear that caused your hands to tremble throughout the whole ordeal, despite your poor attempts to hide it. Somehow you get the sense that he knew what you couldn't bring yourself to voice, and he still insisted anyway.

You remember how the relief of his acceptance lifted something off your soul that you had long forgotten was even there.

Yet, that doesn't mean that your fears went away. It was easier to ignore at the start. Though, with time, like all things, it started to weigh on you. There's always been a lingering guilt that surrounded you in the past, long before you got with Sylus. First influenced, then ingrained in your consciousness from its repetition. Imprinted in the crevices of your mind was that foul idea that one's body is owed, or a possession to wield at another's transgression. That it's never truly yours, no matter how much you may train it to be.

So, despite his acceptance, comfort, and seemingly never-ending patience for you, thoughts of something darker reintegrated into your head. You know you don't want it, but your mind has never cared for your wants or comfort. It tries to justify or entertain certain things that make your throat clog up with heated bile because they're too much. Like that you deserve to have your boundaries crossed if you keep him waiting.

You have to suppress a shiver, to ignore the frost that spikes along your spine whenever you have those thoughts. You know that they aren't true. He's done more than enough to prove that his patience is true.

That doesn't always stop them from bubbling over the surface, though. That's why thinking is too dangerous.

Even when you two are just lying in bed beside one another, they scrape at the forefront of your mind like grating nails, hungry to watch you shrink under their probing. There's no prospect for anything beyond the routine of sleep in his embrace, yet they whisper as they sink into your mind.

You've caught desire burning in his eye more than once. He'll get tired of waiting. He'll get tired of you.

Your heart had twisted. Your hands clenched, palms biting from the frigidness in them.

A quick shake of your head draws you back to yourself. What were you just saying to yourself about not thinking too much?

Your eyes flicker back to him. The teasing tint in his eyes fades, his smirk falling into a neutral line. He places his novel on the nightstand without sparing it a glance. Again, you try not to squirm under the attention.

Don't think too much. Don't.

There's a pause. It's brief, and no one else would notice what constitutes a pause for Sylus, with his sharpness always supplying an answer, but you're the exception. There's a particular carefulness that he carries in the minimal times you've brought it up, because he's long learned it's what you need for it. He knows how sensitive the subject is for you. At least, to an extent, since you couldn't bring yourself to share everything at the time—then guiltily apologized for not being able to, despite his reassurance.

He knows when to pause. He knows when to weigh the balance between lightness, comfort, and solution. He respects what you need. It makes you equal parts grateful and ashamed (which, again, you can't help but feel, despite that solace he always holds for you).

After a moment, he asks, attentively, "Does it bother you?"

Clarity. Partly for him, but also for yourself. He wants you to feel like you can tell him exactly what's wrong, rather than leaving it susceptible to assumption, or not allowing yourself to understand your emotions and where they're coming from. You've talked about this too, long after your resentment faded and ceased in pulling black-shaded glasses over your eyes at every little thing he did.

Your fingers twitch. Don't.

Still, an urge to shift takes over. You reluctantly comply with your body's restless demand, lifting yourself to sit up with your legs crossed, the sheets pulling with the movement. The sound of their ruffling feels like cotton in your ears. (You ignore, then pointedly squash the meek voice in the back of your skull that begs to return to his side.)

You take a moment as you breathe, lids fluttering shut. You try to clear your head as much as you can so you can find your voice. He doesn't push you to answer, not prompting you for anything. He never does when you get like this. It helps.

When your gaze reopens, they don't land on him. "It's just, well, I know that it's taking me longer than a normal person to…yeah. And, logically, yes, I know that everyone goes at their own pace, and we haven't been together long—you know, officially—but it—it's just…"

The back of your hands rest on your knees, palms turned to face you. Your eyes lock on them. You don't look up.

It takes damn near everything in you to conceal the instinctive grimace in your face, but you push yourself to continue, to say what you once couldn't. You feel like you need to, so he can know before you're too deep in it.

"What if I never do, though?" You blurt. "As in, what if I never get that feeling? What if—what if I never feel like going beyond, you know, making out or whatever?"

Your eyes move again, fixing themselves to the patterned rug. Your neck strains under the dead weight of your head, filled with too many thoughts waiting to breach your resistance.

Don't think. Don't think. Don't think.

Yet, no matter how much you replay it, your voice wavers along the edges.

"It's…not fair to want you to stay, if it's something that you want," you mutter, too quiet and uneven to feign composure. "If it's one of your desires."

The remnants of your doubts lie clear in the open stillness that follows. You ignore the cold that remerges in the center of your chest, discomfort in how you just laid yourself bare that makes that ugly sensation of wanting to curl into yourself rear its ugly head again. You can't do that though, because then you'll overthink yourself into an even worse hole.

He senses the growing tension in your form. He doesn't need to touch you to feel it. You don't need to look at him to know that he does.

Sometimes, you're not sure how to feel about just how seen you feel with him.

"Sweetie," he murmurs after another moment. Even as it nearly comes out as a sigh, your ears don't pick up on any trace of irritation or anger as you feared. The gentleness in it makes you finally flick your eyes up to his own.

He's looking at you. Of course, you expected nothing else. That still doesn't prepare you for the tender surety in his gaze.

"I will never ask more from you than what you're ready—and eager—to give," he states, as if it were just a fact. Like it doesn't make your breath stutter at the sheer conviction in it, and nearly hold your breath as he continues. "Knowing the trust you have in me to bask in you at all is more than enough for me. And if you ever allow me more? I'll be more than happy to continue to let you set the pace, kitten."

There's a turn in his eyes as they hold a silent series of questions. Is this okay? Can I meet you where you are physically, too? Would my touch be wanted now?

Even in this, he knows not just how to ask when it gets to be too much for you, but lets you know that you hold the choice. He asks of your wants and needs without pressure. Just understanding, and secure acceptance of whatever they may be.

Your chest aches with something different than the fear you've been ignoring. It feels softer.

A minute nod is all the signal you give. His movements are gradual, like he's not necessarily expecting you to, but giving you time to change your answer, your needs. His arm reaches to rest along your shoulder, gently pulling you against him. Your head is at height with his silk-clothed chest, but he doesn't fully press you against him just yet, and you know why. He wants you to see him—his eyes—to both ground you and assure you of their truth.

His free hand rests along his thigh, curled into itself. He doesn't reach any further. Another silent invitation, only for whenever you're ready and wanting.

You don't reach just yet, but the choice of it alone helps a little more in calming you all the same.

He continues, but an underlying emotion you can't quite discern peaks through; the warmth in it still there, but cut with it. "The implication that you're somehow abnormal—" He nearly scoffs the word, "—for not being ready, or for not harboring that particular brand of desire, is…"

A brief flash of what you think is frustration tightens his features. It passes before it can settle, simmering back into a gentle yet firm certainty. "Insulting to yourself, to understate it."

The hand thrown across your shoulder settles into running a slow, methodical pattern along your arm. You know that it's meant to be reassurance, too. He knows you caught the slight darkness that crept through, but that it wasn't, nor ever will be, aimed at you.

You know what he's thinking. That he hates that whoever, or whatever, put these ideas in your head has sunk their claws into your mind. Yet, this time, rather than justify their hold on you, you find understanding for his temper on your behalf.

It just assures what you knew deep down, in the buried part of your mind that had grown quiet under the noise of your hollow deprecation—that he adores you, no matter when or what you choose to bare. That he'll dispel any thoughts you have, or challenge anything or anyone that dares suggest otherwise.

There's a sensation that you feel in your soul. It feels like it's realigning itself, reminding you of what you've always known. That he cherishes you, no matter what the worst corners of your mind whisper.

Clearly, he's not done making the sprouting feeling in your chest sing. He insists, with finality, "This doesn't make you any less than if you were to experience those feelings, nor does this make me see you as less than. Nothing could ever make me see you less than what you are. And I will say it again, as many times as I have to, because my truest desire is your safety, is that I will always match your pace. You have my word on that."

Your breath nearly catches at the promise intertwined in his words. He's so sure, absolute in his affirmation, that it almost feels overwhelming.

Something almost unbearably warm overtakes you. Your head is nearly overflowing.

Then, just as it starts to feel like too much at once, his tone curls into something more lighthearted, teasing, "Besides, this has nothing to do with why you're strange. You are, but just for other reasons, of course."

There's no hesitation in the prompt flick you give to the space between his brows, even as the corner of your lips twitches up despite yourself.

He scoffs, yet presses a soft kiss against the peak of your head as he chuckles, his chest shaking with the weight of it.

The vibration of his quiet laughter helps soothe something in you. It, with his teasing (though you'll never admit it to his face), brings you back down again. There's a mellowing in your languid bones; the heat of his body, his words, the weight carried in each movement, that seeps through the layers of your skin. It settles in the width of your ribs, subtle yet warm, and your body finally allows your shoulders to loosen, the tightness in your chest and throat following in tandem.

You know that this alone won't be enough to drive away those thoughts in full. Yet, as you've promised that you'd try your hardest to do when you first began your relationship in sincerity, you allow yourself to try and believe the truth behind his words. There's never been hidden expectation in his voice, eyes, or touch. Instead, what you've always found is acceptance from a man who takes in your words and mind, and holds them above all else—who sees you for what you are, in all iterations, and never falters in showing you the purest form of love.

You feel loved. You feel safe.

"Sylus?"

"Yes?"

Hesitance has no hold over you anymore. Your hand slips over his enclosed fist, gently squeezing it once it unravels. Your heart skips at the faint, pinkish tint that you catch pecking at the tips of his ears.

"When you said what you are…" You start, the last remnants of meek uncertainty scarcely peeking through. "What am I?"

His eyes crinkle as his smile widens, both bright with devotion as he states like a fact, "Everything."

Oh. And you thought your heart skipped before.

Unable to form a tangible retort as warmth sprouts within your cheeks, you land on, dumbly, "…See, that's just unfair."

A playful glint enters his eyes, yet they're no less genuine. Affection intertwines with subtle smugness in his voice. "I hardly see what's unfair about it. Though, if you want a more precise list, I'm more than happy to go on about every little thing I adore about you."

God. How does he always manage to blend intensity and tenderness without even trying to? Almost fearful for your softened heart, you decisively lean up and press your lips against his own in place of an answer. Not that he has any complaints, of course, with the brief vibration of more laughter as his only acknowledgment of your bashfulness.

Peace slips over the security you've built together, holding you caringly in its embrace. Maybe those thoughts will come again, when your mind dips into a more shadowed place, but now, in this space, and in his arms, your mind no longer buzzes.

Even as your heart is shared, your body is yours. You will let him press further against your skin on your own terms, if you ever so choose.

Without another thought, you allow yourself to return fully to him again.

(note the 'influence' section isn't me saying that that's the reason for why you don't want this kind of intimacy. it more so adds onto the general lack of want (again, for being ace or any other reason), and why it causes a strong sense of self-doubt. just to clarify because i'm unsure if that was confusing, looking back on it. anyway ty for reading <3)

Your clothes softly dance with the swaying wind. They hang loosely from your body from years of wear. You shiver as each gush of wind passes through, the air brushing curtly against your skin.

The wood of the branch you've been gently swinging on is too rough against your legs. You keep having to maneuver them each time your pants catch on an off-key piece, poking out from the rest of its kin. The palms of your hands probably looked inflamed as they rested idly against the hardened texture.

You don't really care.

School's been slowing down again. For you, at least. You can't speak for the other kids, but you'd guess they'd feel the same. Probably. A small breath of time, in the grand scheme of things, but it's long enough for the air to fill your lungs, and you can release it without fear of interruption, even though the stress lingers in the back of your head in anticipation of its cue. So, right now, it's manageable. No one's been bothering you, either.

That's why this is so stupid.

You don't get it. There's no reason to feel like this. You don't even know what you're feeling, if anything.

Sometimes, your head gets all weird. Grandma once called it fuzz, after the one time you tried to explain it to her. You don't think you did a good job at explaining it, though, so that might be why that was the only word she could give for whatever this is. You think that's why it hurts even more, after.

She wasn't really wrong. It does feel fuzzy, in a way. Like cotton filling your skull. It gets hard to hear anything over it all, and it's like it just gets overwhelmingly warm. And stuck.

Like the cotton is filling your throat.

You didn't tell her that part.

It feels like more than that, though. Whenever this happens, everything feels too fast and too slow all at once. Your body starts to ache, and your legs feel hard to move, forcing you to stay still until your teacher tells you that it's time to go, and it takes effort to stand. Your vision gets dark when you do so too fast.

You wonder if it's possible for bones to feel tired. You wish you could ask Caleb, but he'd probably freak out over it.

The worst part of it is that you get weirdly angry. Or sad. Both. Wherever the cotton decides is the best place to tumble around and idle in your head, probably.

You also think of things like that. As in, stupid stuff that doesn't make any sense.

It can also make you mean. You don't like being mean. Sometimes you can't help it, so you say or do something to the other kids that makes them not want to have to partner with you in their groups, or makes them look away from you in the hall when your eyes catch theirs. It's fine. It sucks sometimes, like when you get bored tracing the outline of your desk while everyone else talks, but you'd rather be somewhere else, like in your room or outside, anyway.

Besides, even if you weren't in whatever this weird non-mood is, you'd probably be too weird for them. That's usually the case.

You're used to it.

You trace the roughness of the bark with your finger.

Grandma said middle school would be better. Feel better. Caleb gave you hope, too, but you're already in eighth grade now. It's been everything you're already used to. There's been nothing. Not yet.

Now that Caleb's in high school, you sometimes wonder about it. Knowing that you'll see him at school soon makes you feel a little better, but you doubt it'll bring anything. Nothing else has.

You doubt if anything can bring you…well, anything, at this point.

This isn't fair.

It doesn't make sense. No one can say that it's a lack of effort, like some of your old, bitter teachers have tried to drill into your and Grandma's heads before.

You try. Probably not as hard as you used to, if you're being honest, but you really do. You've tried to "apply yourself"—whatever that means—and participate more in class, join a club or two, and attempt to talk to some of the other kids outside of the forced group assignments. But when they look at you like you're not meant to be there, or when their conversations come to a halt the second you try to chime in, it doesn't really feel fair to you.

They're the ones not giving you a chance and acting like you're somehow doing it all wrong. Sure, you know that you're not always the best at conversation yet, and that Grandma calls you a late bloomer for your "shyness" when you approach people, apparently, but it still sucks.

Then your teachers will look at you, too, like you're somehow trying too hard yet not enough. Maybe you don't always answer their questions quite right, or word it in a way that weighs against your tongue after it slips from your mouth, so you guess that's somehow on you, but you still don't like how it feels.

Then it feels even worse when they would sometimes watch you leave through the door after class ends, but you don't understand what they're looking at you for, or what they see. Is it worry? Concern? Or something worse.

It doesn't really matter what it is, though, right? You hate it. Don't they get that you deal with enough already? What right do they have to look at you like that on top of it all?

It doesn't help that, sometimes, you feel like Grandma looks at you like that, too. But at least she tries to hide it after she catches you catching her.

You try not to be too upset when she does it. Try to understand. Try not to get angry.

It doesn't always work. You suck it up, anyway.

This isn't fair.

Everyone else in school learned things in their earliest years. They were taught how to speak, how to move, read, write, and play. It's not your fault you can't remember anything beyond flashes of light, blinding in their harsh fluorescence, and an amalgamation of impassive voices, never offering anything softer than pity.

It's not your fault that the only remembrance of warmth that you can recall comes only in your deepest dreams, from a face you can't shape beyond dull colors, before it's replaced with the cold again, warning you that nothing tender can ever last.

It's not your fault that you don't remember learning how to be normal.

It's not your fault that you don't remember learning the start of how to be a person.

Your stomach is empty. Your eyes burn.

This isn't fair.

An inhale of a hiss suddenly escapes you. You immediately pull your hand back to examine it.

A small splinter sticks straight out from the very tip of your pointer finger.

For a second, all you do is stare at it. It doesn't hurt beyond a mild stinging sensation, concentrated only in the pad of your finger where it stands. You blink at it once, twice, before sighing.

You don't want to be angry. You just want to feel good for once.

Your eyes turn down for a flicker of a second. The ground looks so far down, like the surface is sinking deeper into the Earth, the longer your eyes linger on the patch of grass, waiting directly below you.

You tilt your head. Wonder.

Then, with a strange violence, you shake your head, like it'll eject something from inside you.

You close your eyes for a second, breathing in deeply before releasing it slowly. Maybe it's time to get down. They're probably home now, waiting for you.

Bringing your knee up, you start to shift, then—

An old woman's voice calls your name.

The familiarity of it is indisputable. You know who it is. You were expecting it eventually, really, when you didn't come home right away.

It should be comforting. It shouldn't surprise you.

Yet, in a way that you can't reason with too few words at your disposal, it rattles you so greatly that your arms twitch with a violence that shoots up to your heart.

Your grip loosens too much under the force of it. You can barely register your immediate panic as you try to regain your strength, but your legs spasm, flailing in uncertainty.

Your mind has no time to catch up to the sudden weight dragging your body down.

You slip.

Fall.

A sickening crack.

The light fades, and Grandma's voice booms in terror.

_____________

The wind briefly picks up, gently swirling the leaves around you, before stilling again. The chill of it lingers.

The ground isn't kind to you. It's bumpy and carries a slight dampness from the morning frost's leftover moisture. You can feel the saturation of your pants. You're sure that you'll have to pat your backside down whenever you will yourself to stand, the grass undoubtedly growing overly acquainted with it.

Yet, you don't move. You're not sure why. Or, well, you do know, you guess. Loosely. Kind of.

Work was minimal today. You weren't assigned to any missions. Instead, you were condemned to the forlorn duty of writing reports before you could leave. You had no complaints, not with the languidness of your limbs weighing you down with each letter you grudgingly conjured.

You've been tired lately. Not so much for what you were once used to, though, where ghosts would settle in the center of your chest and weigh you the same as your limbs did when the morning rose, your bones groaning with the knowledge of something buried in their depths as the phantoms wisp and wrap around them as a twisted form of confinement.

No, that kind of ache has quieted for some time now. Those pains have been meek since your chest has been too full to allow anything beyond the charged heat of a certain hunter's loyalty and adoration to accommodate anything further.

They drum their fingers against the layers protecting your heart at times, but they haven't made it much further than that lately. Not if he can help it.

Still, that doesn't mean other things don't plague your mood and mind, of course.

It's the oppressiveness of the darkened mornings, you think. Or it could be the familiarity of the scent that the cold always brings with it that takes you back to your youth. Or it can be the reminder of how the shifting seasons mark many things, pulling the passage of time to the forefront of your thoughts.

It could be the culmination of several small things that you might've been able to manage if they drove into your consciousness one at a time, or when you have his arms to press further against in the night, but that you can't shake away when the day comes, because your mind can never let you truly rest, it seems.

There's no precise reason for whatever itch you had that told you to carry yourself here, under the same tree you once fell from as a kid.

It's weird how it's both grounding and distressing, stabilizing you in the present yet making something creep uncomfortably in the underbelly of your stomach. At first, you just thought you needed some time to yourself for a little while, but then your feet led you here, and your body offered no protest as you sat on the darkened grass.

You wonder if it's a weird subconscious thing. Maybe you thought, hey, I'm past this point now, I'm grown and free and something new. I can sit here now like a normal person, looking normal while I do a normal thing. Look at me go. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm healing.

Of course, you were proven wrong and now find yourself in this weird, liminal stage.

It made you exist somewhere between the construction of peace born from an impulsive attempt at meditation and a strange temptation that brings a familiar dread, despite how irrational you know the feeling is.

You're not on the branch. You wouldn't fall, even if you were. You know how to keep yourself up now. In a way, at least.

You don't get why it made your hands shake when you looked at it again as you first approached.

It doesn't really matter now. You're under it now, and your heart's slowly beginning to settle. From what you're still not entirely sure, but it is. So that's progress.

You look up at the expansive leaves for a moment with a tilt of your head.

There was a time when being here wouldn't be as grounding as it is now. It probably made things a little worse, really. You don't remember it well enough.

Your eyes catch on a particular branch. Something forgotten comes forward.

You used to see yourself falling from worse heights.

It's after that thought that nearly makes you choke in its abruptness that you look in the direction of a suddenly crunching leaf beside you.

"Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Your shoulders drop as a short sigh escapes you, relieved.

"Xavier," you breathe as your heart settles. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be away until tonight."

A mission was what took him away from you in the tenderness of the morning, as it almost always was. A ping of disappointment had swept over you when you first woke up, then tightened into your already brewing conflict of emotions when you saw the messages he left for you. The first was a text telling you not to wait for him tonight if you felt too tired. With a bitter taste in your mouth, you thought to text him that you had already succumbed to tiredness the moment you read the message, but decided against it when you berated yourself for how it sounded like an admission.

When you eventually forced yourself out from under the covers, you found a sticky note plastered on the fridge that said there was breakfast waiting for you inside (to which you sighed in relief after you confirmed that he hadn't attempted to make it himself). The little drawing of the food and a bunny in the corner of the note only made you feel somewhat less mournful. Barely.

Still, it became another pillar among its comrades to form the constitution of your already indiscernible mind. You just hated how irrational it was, like the rest of the not-quite-reasons that brought you here.

There wasn't any doubt that he'd come back. You knew he would. You didn't even worry that he'd be injured this time. That's one of the few things you've felt certain of all day, in fact.

Your confidence didn't stop the strange frost that encapsulated your heart's core.

It wasn't what drove you here. In the grand scheme of things, it's such a minor disruption—a routine one, at that. It's just that it's another thing on top of another, and then another, then this, then that, and more and more and more.

Again, you know that it's irrational. You think too much. That might be the only other thing you know without any distrust lingering behind it.

The wind briefly brushes along your arms, pulling you back from where you almost left to again as they twitch at the reminder.

You're so tired of your mind.

You can't let that seep through now, though. You don't want to taint what's in front of you now. You don't want to let your dumb mind try to take away any more time away from him than you've had to endure already.

(Your mind immediately disobeys you, because then it croaks about how pathetic your reliance sounds before you can squash the thought in time. Ugh.)

With a shake of your head, you try to shift your focus to what you can see in front of you, and don't have to question if it's real.

"Not that I'm complaining," you say with a tone that you hope reads as nonchalant.

You immediately get the sense that maybe you said it weirdly, or he just caught the philosophical dread that was just laid bare across your face just moments ago, before you forced your face to contort into something presentable, but he tilts his head and looks at you for a moment in a way that makes you have to force yourself not to shift.

There seems to be some kind of higher power on your side (for once), though, because he doesn't speak on it. Not yet, at least. Even as there's a strange, careful look in his eyes.

"I finished pretty early," he draws. "I wasn't expecting it to be over that quickly. After the infiltration, the actual threat ended up barely even being second-rank."

His eyes briefly look down at the plastic bag in his hand as he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. "Still worked up an appetite, though."

He quickly looks back at you with a small tilt of his head. "What about you? Why are you sitting on the ground? Isn't it cold?"

Ah. You felt the wetness of the lingering frost when you first sat down, but you somehow didn't even register the light tremor in your limbs until now. Though you're not entirely positive that it's just from the cold.

"Uh," you stutter for a moment. "There…wasn't a bench."

You mentally face palm as you cringe. You know it's kind of an omission, but how else are you supposed to respond? I came here to remind myself of something that I can't even fully remember, articulate, or rationalize in a way that makes any coherent sense? Oh, you're sure that would just go so well.

Yet, he still doesn't push. Just another brief moment of him looking at you; not with hardness in his eyes, or scrutiny, indifference, or any of the other variety of things that you used to think rested in them when they cast themselves on you, before you began to unravel him. They just looked patient, you think. Like he somehow knew it wasn't the time to push.

Guilt and gratitude: they resonate at once in you at the thought. You don't like lying to him at all, and you hate the idea that you're making him wait for your incoherent mood to loosen, despite the rational part of you knowing that that isn't the case. Yet, the warmth that comes with being recognized, even if not quite understood, loosens something in you. Just a little.

"Well," he starts, "can I sit with you then? I think I could use a picnic with my partner right about now."

There's an inward sigh as minuscule relief finds you. You're not sure what it's for—that he didn't force it, that he's offering to be beside you despite how you don't feel yourself entirely at the moment (whoever that really is).

Of course, you want him with you. You always do.

It's just that it can be hard for you to accept his closeness at times, especially when you get like this.

"Your pants will stain on the grass," you mutter more quietly than you mean to, like it were nothing more than a polite dismissal. As if that contradictory part of you wasn't quickly growing anxious to feel his warmth next to you.

He only offers a small smile in response, somehow, you think, in understanding. "We'll be matching, then."

He leans down until he's sitting beside you, placing the container in front of you as he sits with one knee pulled up. You can't help but lean a little into his space despite the revival of your nerves.

The wind suddenly feels insignificant.

With a shift of your eyes, suddenly overwhelmed, you ask, "What's in it?"

"It's not much," he says, tugging the plastic wrapping around the container. "But you can have some, if you want. It's chicken kebabs, fries, and some kind of side salad. I got it at a small market stall a few streets back. It smelled really good."

Your lips twitch for a moment in something close to a smile.

It's a replica of your usual pace, as if the silent disorientation that's been stirring in you was nothing more than a phase. Just as you know the cries of dread when they feel the need to make themselves known (though it's never really gone, you think; more so just resting, waiting, hatefully), you know the loose routines that you have set. So, this also helps, too, at least a little.

You allow yourself a sideways glance in his direction. He pulls the containers out of the bag, setting one to balance on his thigh and its kin on the ground. You watch as he opens them, his eyes catching yours as he lifts a fry in a silent offer, popping it into his own when you reject it with a shake of your head. Doesn't question it despite your usual appetite.

You just watch him for a minute. You think this is also helping you in a way. There's always been something outlined in his features that's brought you peace, but you think it's more than that. It's registering what, yes, is obvious, yet you process fully now as the worst of the tension in your bones gradually fades.

He's here now. Sitting unbothered, he picks at the impromptu picnic, slotted into place by your side, just as you've done so many times before.

It eases something. Not much, but enough to matter.

With a short breath, you try not to ruin this for yourself with your endless thoughts.

"You know," you start. "Kebabs and fries aren't usually what people bring to picnics. Not that I'm complaining or anything, though."

That small (adorable, peaceful, homely) smile returns to his lips. "Maybe we can be the first, then. I almost got much more than this because of all the other stalls that were around. There were these large beef dumplings, some ginger soy fish…"

You playfully shake your head in mock disapproval. "I think you'd find a way to bring hot pot if you could."

"I don't think that'd be as odd as you're making it sound," he says. Then, a new light enters his eyes with genuine glee. "Do you think we could do that next time?"

A huff of laughter escapes you, a grin betraying you. "Only if I don't have to carry the pot."

His eyes seem even brighter in the wake of your smile. "That was a given."

There's a brief lull in conversation. He takes the chance to steal hearty bites of his food, while you feel the great big pile of thoughts in your mind being partially swept towards the back ends of your consciousness before you can blink. Your mind, that had just been running on nothing but fear on an unstable foundation, slowly unwinds from its curled, defensive stance.

This is far from the first time that it's been rendered down so easily before you can even fully process the shift, but it almost always gives you whiplash nonetheless. It's kind of just sitting in the air's expanse now, more so lingering than resting inside the crevices between your ribs.

It feels safe enough to place it in front of you now. To at least put the isolated lump of whatever the hell you're feeling out beyond the ceaseless void of your mind in some way, rather than just leaving it to fester again and again and again.

Even if the shame doesn't quite leave while you push it into the outer world.

"I fell from here once," you suddenly mutter, looking forward. Not at him. Too much at once. "The tree, I mean. As a kid."

From the corner of your eye, you catch another tilt of his head. He seems to think for a moment in the aftermath of your hesitance that you couldn't quite seem to conceal in your voice.

Then, he asks, almost carefully, "Why come back?"

That makes you pause. It's not so much born from your wavering this time. It's more that you never really found your answer, or if you even want one now. A lie or dismissal doesn't really come to you, either. For once, because of course you can't when you actually need to, you don't really think at all.

You blink once, twice, before taking a breath in, out. When nothing tangible comes to you, you land on something that comes out true enough despite the strange way it sits on your tongue.

"…I don't know."

Your eyes fall, and you look at your hands. You turn them palm-side up. They're still flushed.

"I think, earlier today, or possibly for a while now, I felt the same way I did…back then, for a minute," you say. Your voice feels small enough to be lost to the brushing wind. "But I'm—I'm better than I used to be. I feel better. I am better. I guess I thought…"

A short lull, then your shoulders slowly slump in uncertainty. "Actually, I…I don't really know what I thought."

You lean back against the tree's trunk. You still don't look at him. Force a small grin. Feel nothing behind it. "I know it's kinda dumb. It doesn't really make any sense. Forget it."

His face does that again—that curiosity written across his features as his brain works to make sense of you and where you're at, so he can reach you. Taking his time to decide the right path to follow so that he'll come back to you eventually.

Even if he diverges from the right way sometimes, if for a moment.

"Does the height scare you?" He asks.

That irrationality from before doesn't seem to know when to quit, because your heart squeezes pitifully.

Right. Of course. What you said made no sense. What you're feeling, if anything at all, makes no sense. You knew that. You don't know what you expected.

You don't know why it hurts anyway.

Ignoring the sudden lump in your throat, you curl in a little more on yourself. "That's not really what I meant."

Somehow, without even looking at him, you can sense his frown.

"I know," he says, in the tone of someone who knows what they said hit something the way it wasn't supposed to.

Another pause comes, filling the space that you always seem to leave behind. You watch him for a moment, a breath lodged in your chest as his eyes briefly flicker up and scan the branches above.

You can't stop the frown tugging at your lips. Whenever you get like this, with this overly exposed feeling despite your resignation from the world, it always makes you irrationally wistful when his eyes unlock themselves from you. Maybe because they're the only thing that keeps you grounded at times.

You're relieved of your shame at your illogic when he turns back to you, before that short relief twists into confusion.

He looks determined.

"I understand if you don't want to, but…"

He hesitates. He looks up at the branches again for a second, eyes hardening as they strain their gaze along the length of its largest limb, before they turn back to you.

With his resolve, he asks, "Do you want to go up?"

A sharp breath, an immediate straightening of your back. Your eyes widen before you can help yourself; something completely incoherent and layered beyond comprehension shoots directly into your heart.

He senses it just as immediately before you can begin to process what it could be. Putting the container aside, he shifts to sit upright on his knees, hands twitching for a moment, like they want to reach out, before decisively resting on his thighs. Patience, again. Understanding.

"I can hold you steady," he says. It sounds close to a vow. "I wouldn't let you fall. And we'd only do it if you want to."

You don't say anything. Again, you don't really think. The initial panic—that's what it was, you think—fades, and you steadily ease back, yet you don't say anything. Barely think. I don't know. Maybe. I think. I don't know.

His shoulders slump as he looks increasingly unsure of himself. "I'm sorry. Did I upset you?"

"No—no," you utter. "It's not that. I…"

Repeated hesitation. Again, words clog your throat like bile, resting against the back of it. Yet, this time, you swallow it down, because no, you're not letting yourself get in the way again. You want to confide in him. You want to talk. You at least want to try to put it out there instead of letting it sit until it hurts too much to look at it.

It doesn't matter how unorganized it—you—might be. You deserve to feel safe enough to talk about it: the part of you that's grounded in your new self says, no matter how much the ugliest part of you rejects the thought.

You're…safe. You can talk. At least to him, if no one else.

You reach for his hand. Immediately, he locks his fingers with yours. You briefly run your thumb over his skin. Breathe in deep, release it slowly.

"I don't not like the idea of being able to get over whatever this is," you assert. It sounds and feels clearer than anything else you've said today, despite your fear. "I just…think I still feel scared, even though I can't really explain why, you know? And I feel bad that I can't. I don't like not knowing. And—and I don't like that it makes me upset and act all weird, and that it makes me feel like I'm not really here whenever I think too deeply into it.

"Maybe it's just all the bad that happened back then coming back up because I haven't felt the best lately, and my head decided that now would be the best time to remind me of this shitty thing that I didn't ask to think about, but it came anyway. I also know that it probably just can't really be explained. Maybe I just have to…let it happen and feel through it, and then hopefully let it pass."

Then, because you can't hold in your doubt for the life of you, apparently, you add on after a second, "If that even makes any sense."

"I think it does."

Your head snaps to him. Again, he's looking at you (you wonder if that's his thing: the thing that he can't hold in or can't help but do) with no judgment to trace. It's just attentive, as it always is when it lands on you. Yet, there's a deeper kind of sympathy in them this time, too, like he somehow knows what you can't articulate.

"Really?" you question. Curious (and as if you don't always hunger to know more about him, and maybe in need of the reassurance in his answer), you ask, "Have…have you felt like that?"

Unwillingly, your mind suddenly goes to how he used to sleep. How hard it sometimes was to wake him up, in the times before you first sought his hand.

Your heart somehow finds more room to ache.

You don't expect an explicit answer, or even an allusion to one. You never do anymore. Yet, after a passing stillness in his breath and a brief, tentative shift in his eyes that's so quick you almost miss it, he hums.

"It can be hard to phrase certain things," he murmurs, his thumb caressing the back of your hand. "I think some stuff is hard to try to connect to a distinct thing, especially when there's a lot of it at once, or to explain why they come up when they do. Or why they feel like a big weight that's hard to get off or out of you. The bad sometimes comes up when it feels like it, whether it's relevant, prompted, or not. And when it does, it can want you to do certain things, either to remedy it…or make it worse."

There's a gentle squeeze of your hand as his eyes drop to look at them, still braided together. His gaze lingers on their embrace.

"But you don't have to know the why for you're upset," he says. "Maybe trying to find it is just adding more stress to you. What's important to know is that it passes, even if it doesn't feel like it will right now."

"How do you know that?" you ask. It's not an accusation, but just a reach for something tangible. Something to ground you back to where you are.

That smile stretches his face again. The wind feels like it's stopped alongside your breath.

"Because I know you," he says so easily, like it's a simple fact. Like it doesn't make you want to press impossibly closer to him. "You're not stagnant. But what you are is the strongest person I know, and my brave partner."

He looks to you again, the resolve in them never dimming. "I…I know I can't always know what's going on," he mutters. It sounds like a quiet mourning, but he shakes it off quickly. "Still, you're resilient. Whatever you're feeling now may not always be avoidable or easy to go through, and maybe it'll come up again, but you've grown so much. You've always been strong, but you've put a lot of effort into who you are now. I know that you can get through this. You will feel better."

In that moment, you realize that you've been squeezing his hand back. Your heart is racing. Your hand is warm.

"And, if it helps…I'll always be here, for every step of the way. And like I said, I will never let you fall."

A squeezing sensation in your chest finds its familiar home in you again, but its intent is different. In place of the fist that imprisoned your heart is a clasp with warmth embedded between its well-worn creases.

It doesn't come as an eruption that bursts and spreads through your exhausted skin, clogging your throat and eyes with a stinging heat. In place of that suddenness is a calm, unhurried warmth. It cradles a part of you in its hands and wraps itself around the whole of you, binding you to it. Its hold isn't like another that's long been lost to time and the earth, where you never felt that the whole of it was meant for you.

Entangled with it, you feel assured. There's safety here, and its softness is yours to feel. In this, you know.

Even if there's still something that feels a little clumsy while you're in its grasp, where there's something just slightly off center in the security of its hold—

"Again, we don't have to do anything. It's your choice. It always will be."

Oh. That's what it was.

You take a second. You try to think back to that time, when you used to think of falling beneath the soil. Not too deeply—you still aren't ready for that, but at least now you think it's okay not to be—or for long, but you know some of it. You've known some of what you used to feel for a long time now, but it's easy to lose sight of it in your mind's persistent assault.

Beneath the supposed emptiness was fear. Unwelcome awareness of what the world forcefully painted you to be. Anger for things you still can't remember or control. Powerlessness, that you swore in your later years that you'd never let yourself feel again.

That's all you thought you were. You sometimes still do, feeling like the ghost you once convinced yourself you must've been. It felt easier than trying to bring it forward.

You follow his lead, looking at your intertwined hands.

There's no pressure in the underbelly of his words. Pity never crossed his tone or expression. It's just an offer and understanding, regardless of your choice.

Yet, it's more than an offer, isn't it? In it lies the allowance of reclamation. Something in the new world to replace the old. The security of strong, steady hands and a gentle voice laced with regal devotion and with a now centered grasp, in place of the forceful wind and a call to return to confinement without acknowledgement. (So many big things that were never explained to you, housed in your too-small body.)

The chance to just be, knowing that you're safe. That you can be caught before you hurt again.

You know dread. You know fear, and a tenet that conceals itself behind a null absence to not release something that can't be taken back for the sake of maintaining peace. But you also know the shape of him: soft smile, understanding eyes, lips, mind and body and soul and more and more and more. The mold of his loyalty, belief, and your conviction of it rests about it all, wholly belonging to you.

You know…yourself, too, despite your earlier doubt. Not clearly, obviously. Not through the same loving lens (perhaps, one day, closer than you once thought possible), but you weren't lying before when you said that you're different now. There are things you know now, even if you wish you could've known them back then, and even if you lose sight of them when it all resurfaces.

You're not bad for wanting to be understood. You're loved (and even more for, not despite, those imperfections, even if the thought of that sometimes scares or confuses you). You have an identity outside your pain. You exist beyond your faults.

You also know you deserve to be fairer to yourself, and that you have the will of choice. Those just seem harder to remember at times.

Slowly, you lean back again against the trunk. You don't think you feel guilty for being uncertain anymore, or for feeling what you're feeling.

This will pass. If it comes back again, you have him and the self you are now to come back to. You won't have to hurt the same way again.

"I'll see how I feel in a bit," you decide, eyes finally relaxed. "After I've downed some of your fries."

After a moment, when he finds that the fear has dissipated, something seems to ease him, too. He graces you as he smiles back, your heart skipping.

The cold is slowly being forgotten, replaced by the warmth you've come to learn with him. Your hands don't ache anymore.

The dark will not claim you again.

( a/n 2: mentally drained and ill yet currently healing mc reader who constantly fears that they're irrational or overdramatic despite it being a completely understandable trauma response/outcome but is trying to get better, my beloved. anyways like i wish i couldve gone longer into this but man. this was supposed to take place in spring. finals and work were holding me back. anyways thanks for reading <3 )

Your clothes softly dance with the swaying wind. They hang loosely from your body from years of wear. You shiver as each gush of wind passes through, the air brushing curtly against your skin.

The wood of the branch you've been gently swinging on is too rough against your legs. You keep having to maneuver them each time your pants catch on an off-key piece, poking out from the rest of its kin. The palms of your hands probably looked inflamed as they rested idly against the hardened texture.

You don't really care.

School's been slowing down again. For you, at least. You can't speak for the other kids, but you'd guess they'd feel the same. Probably. A small breath of time, in the grand scheme of things, but it's long enough for the air to fill your lungs, and you can release it without fear of interruption, even though the stress lingers in the back of your head in anticipation of its cue. So, right now, it's manageable. No one's been bothering you, either.

That's why this is so stupid.

You don't get it. There's no reason to feel like this. You don't even know what you're feeling, if anything.

Sometimes, your head gets all weird. Grandma once called it fuzz, after the one time you tried to explain it to her. You don't think you did a good job at explaining it, though, so that might be why that was the only word she could give for whatever this is. You think that's why it hurts even more, after.

She wasn't really wrong. It does feel fuzzy, in a way. Like cotton filling your skull. It gets hard to hear anything over it all, and it's like it just gets overwhelmingly warm. And stuck.

Like the cotton is filling your throat.

You didn't tell her that part.

It feels like more than that, though. Whenever this happens, everything feels too fast and too slow all at once. Your body starts to ache, and your legs feel hard to move, forcing you to stay still until your teacher tells you that it's time to go, and it takes effort to stand. Your vision gets dark when you do so too fast.

You wonder if it's possible for bones to feel tired. You wish you could ask Caleb, but he'd probably freak out over it.

The worst part of it is that you get weirdly angry. Or sad. Both. Wherever the cotton decides is the best place to tumble around and idle in your head, probably.

You also think of things like that. As in, stupid stuff that doesn't make any sense.

It can also make you mean. You don't like being mean. Sometimes you can't help it, so you say or do something to the other kids that makes them not want to have to partner with you in their groups, or makes them look away from you in the hall when your eyes catch theirs. It's fine. It sucks sometimes, like when you get bored tracing the outline of your desk while everyone else talks, but you'd rather be somewhere else, like in your room or outside, anyway.

Besides, even if you weren't in whatever this weird non-mood is, you'd probably be too weird for them. That's usually the case.

You're used to it.

You trace the roughness of the bark with your finger.

Grandma said middle school would be better. Feel better. Caleb gave you hope, too, but you're already in eighth grade now. It's been everything you're already used to. There's been nothing. Not yet.

Now that Caleb's in high school, you sometimes wonder about it. Knowing that you'll see him at school soon makes you feel a little better, but you doubt it'll bring anything. Nothing else has.

You doubt if anything can bring you…well, anything, at this point.

This isn't fair.

It doesn't make sense. No one can say that it's a lack of effort, like some of your old, bitter teachers have tried to drill into your and Grandma's heads before.

You try. Probably not as hard as you used to, if you're being honest, but you really do. You've tried to "apply yourself"—whatever that means—and participate more in class, join a club or two, and attempt to talk to some of the other kids outside of the forced group assignments. But when they look at you like you're not meant to be there, or when their conversations come to a halt the second you try to chime in, it doesn't really feel fair to you.

They're the ones not giving you a chance and acting like you're somehow doing it all wrong. Sure, you know that you're not always the best at conversation yet, and that Grandma calls you a late bloomer for your "shyness" when you approach people, apparently, but it still sucks.

Then your teachers will look at you, too, like you're somehow trying too hard yet not enough. Maybe you don't always answer their questions quite right, or word it in a way that weighs against your tongue after it slips from your mouth, so you guess that's somehow on you, but you still don't like how it feels.

Then it feels even worse when they would sometimes watch you leave through the door after class ends, but you don't understand what they're looking at you for, or what they see. Is it worry? Concern? Or something worse.

It doesn't really matter what it is, though, right? You hate it. Don't they get that you deal with enough already? What right do they have to look at you like that on top of it all?

It doesn't help that, sometimes, you feel like Grandma looks at you like that, too. But at least she tries to hide it after she catches you catching her.

You try not to be too upset when she does it. Try to understand. Try not to get angry.

It doesn't always work. You suck it up, anyway.

This isn't fair.

Everyone else in school learned things in their earliest years. They were taught how to speak, how to move, read, write, and play. It's not your fault you can't remember anything beyond flashes of light, blinding in their harsh fluorescence, and an amalgamation of impassive voices, never offering anything softer than pity.

It's not your fault that the only remembrance of warmth that you can recall comes only in your deepest dreams, from a face you can't shape beyond dull colors, before it's replaced with the cold again, warning you that nothing tender can ever last.

It's not your fault that you don't remember learning how to be normal.

It's not your fault that you don't remember learning the start of how to be a person.

Your stomach is empty. Your eyes burn.

This isn't fair.

An inhale of a hiss suddenly escapes you. You immediately pull your hand back to examine it.

A small splinter sticks straight out from the very tip of your pointer finger.

For a second, all you do is stare at it. It doesn't hurt beyond a mild stinging sensation, concentrated only in the pad of your finger where it stands. You blink at it once, twice, before sighing.

You don't want to be angry. You just want to feel good for once.

Your eyes turn down for a flicker of a second. The ground looks so far down, like the surface is sinking deeper into the Earth, the longer your eyes linger on the patch of grass, waiting directly below you.

You tilt your head. Wonder.

Then, with a strange violence, you shake your head, like it'll eject something from inside you.

You close your eyes for a second, breathing in deeply before releasing it slowly. Maybe it's time to get down. They're probably home now, waiting for you.

Bringing your knee up, you start to shift, then—

An old woman's voice calls your name.

The familiarity of it is indisputable. You know who it is. You were expecting it eventually, really, when you didn't come home right away.

It should be comforting. It shouldn't surprise you.

Yet, in a way that you can't reason with too few words at your disposal, it rattles you so greatly that your arms twitch with a violence that shoots up to your heart.

Your grip loosens too much under the force of it. You can barely register your immediate panic as you try to regain your strength, but your legs spasm, flailing in uncertainty.

Your mind has no time to catch up to the sudden weight dragging your body down.

You slip.

Fall.

A sickening crack.

The light fades, and Grandma's voice booms in terror.

_____________

The wind briefly picks up, gently swirling the leaves around you, before stilling again. The chill of it lingers.

The ground isn't kind to you. It's bumpy and carries a slight dampness from the morning frost's leftover moisture. You can feel the saturation of your pants. You're sure that you'll have to pat your backside down whenever you will yourself to stand, the grass undoubtedly growing overly acquainted with it.

Yet, you don't move. You're not sure why. Or, well, you do know, you guess. Loosely. Kind of.

Work was minimal today. You weren't assigned to any missions. Instead, you were condemned to the forlorn duty of writing reports before you could leave. You had no complaints, not with the languidness of your limbs weighing you down with each letter you grudgingly conjured.

You've been tired lately. Not so much for what you were once used to, though, where ghosts would settle in the center of your chest and weigh you the same as your limbs did when the morning rose, your bones groaning with the knowledge of something buried in their depths as the phantoms wisp and wrap around them as a twisted form of confinement.

No, that kind of ache has quieted for some time now. Those pains have been meek since your chest has been too full to allow anything beyond the charged heat of a certain hunter's loyalty and adoration to accommodate anything further.

They drum their fingers against the layers protecting your heart at times, but they haven't made it much further than that lately. Not if he can help it.

Still, that doesn't mean other things don't plague your mood and mind, of course.

It's the oppressiveness of the darkened mornings, you think. Or it could be the familiarity of the scent that the cold always brings with it that takes you back to your youth. Or it can be the reminder of how the shifting seasons mark many things, pulling the passage of time to the forefront of your thoughts.

It could be the culmination of several small things that you might've been able to manage if they drove into your consciousness one at a time, or when you have his arms to press further against in the night, but that you can't shake away when the day comes, because your mind can never let you truly rest, it seems.

There's no precise reason for whatever itch you had that told you to carry yourself here, under the same tree you once fell from as a kid.

It's weird how it's both grounding and distressing, stabilizing you in the present yet making something creep uncomfortably in the underbelly of your stomach. At first, you just thought you needed some time to yourself for a little while, but then your feet led you here, and your body offered no protest as you sat on the darkened grass.

You wonder if it's a weird subconscious thing. Maybe you thought, hey, I'm past this point now, I'm grown and free and something new. I can sit here now like a normal person, looking normal while I do a normal thing. Look at me go. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm healing.

Of course, you were proven wrong and now find yourself in this weird, liminal stage.

It made you exist somewhere between the construction of peace born from an impulsive attempt at meditation and a strange temptation that brings a familiar dread, despite how irrational you know the feeling is.

You're not on the branch. You wouldn't fall, even if you were. You know how to keep yourself up now. In a way, at least.

You don't get why it made your hands shake when you looked at it again as you first approached.

It doesn't really matter now. You're under it now, and your heart's slowly beginning to settle. From what you're still not entirely sure, but it is. So that's progress.

You look up at the expansive leaves for a moment with a tilt of your head.

There was a time when being here wouldn't be as grounding as it is now. It probably made things a little worse, really. You don't remember it well enough.

Your eyes catch on a particular branch. Something forgotten comes forward.

You used to see yourself falling from worse heights.

It's after that thought that nearly makes you choke in its abruptness that you look in the direction of a suddenly crunching leaf beside you.

"Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Your shoulders drop as a short sigh escapes you, relieved.

"Xavier," you breathe as your heart settles. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be away until tonight."

A mission was what took him away from you in the tenderness of the morning, as it almost always was. A ping of disappointment had swept over you when you first woke up, then tightened into your already brewing conflict of emotions when you saw the messages he left for you. The first was a text telling you not to wait for him tonight if you felt too tired. With a bitter taste in your mouth, you thought to text him that you had already succumbed to tiredness the moment you read the message, but decided against it when you berated yourself for how it sounded like an admission.

When you eventually forced yourself out from under the covers, you found a sticky note plastered on the fridge that said there was breakfast waiting for you inside (to which you sighed in relief after you confirmed that he hadn't attempted to make it himself). The little drawing of the food and a bunny in the corner of the note only made you feel somewhat less mournful. Barely.

Still, it became another pillar among its comrades to form the constitution of your already indiscernible mind. You just hated how irrational it was, like the rest of the not-quite-reasons that brought you here.

There wasn't any doubt that he'd come back. You knew he would. You didn't even worry that he'd be injured this time. That's one of the few things you've felt certain of all day, in fact.

Your confidence didn't stop the strange frost that encapsulated your heart's core.

It wasn't what drove you here. In the grand scheme of things, it's such a minor disruption—a routine one, at that. It's just that it's another thing on top of another, and then another, then this, then that, and more and more and more.

Again, you know that it's irrational. You think too much. That might be the only other thing you know without any distrust lingering behind it.

The wind briefly brushes along your arms, pulling you back from where you almost left to again as they twitch at the reminder.

You're so tired of your mind.

You can't let that seep through now, though. You don't want to taint what's in front of you now. You don't want to let your dumb mind try to take away any more time away from him than you've had to endure already.

(Your mind immediately disobeys you, because then it croaks about how pathetic your reliance sounds before you can squash the thought in time. Ugh.)

With a shake of your head, you try to shift your focus to what you can see in front of you, and don't have to question if it's real.

"Not that I'm complaining," you say with a tone that you hope reads as nonchalant.

You immediately get the sense that maybe you said it weirdly, or he just caught the philosophical dread that was just laid bare across your face just moments ago, before you forced your face to contort into something presentable, but he tilts his head and looks at you for a moment in a way that makes you have to force yourself not to shift.

There seems to be some kind of higher power on your side (for once), though, because he doesn't speak on it. Not yet, at least. Even as there's a strange, careful look in his eyes.

"I finished pretty early," he draws. "I wasn't expecting it to be over that quickly. After the infiltration, the actual threat ended up barely even being second-rank."

His eyes briefly look down at the plastic bag in his hand as he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. "Still worked up an appetite, though."

He quickly looks back at you with a small tilt of his head. "What about you? Why are you sitting on the ground? Isn't it cold?"

Ah. You felt the wetness of the lingering frost when you first sat down, but you somehow didn't even register the light tremor in your limbs until now. Though you're not entirely positive that it's just from the cold.

"Uh," you stutter for a moment. "There…wasn't a bench."

You mentally face palm as you cringe. You know it's kind of an omission, but how else are you supposed to respond? I came here to remind myself of something that I can't even fully remember, articulate, or rationalize in a way that makes any coherent sense? Oh, you're sure that would just go so well.

Yet, he still doesn't push. Just another brief moment of him looking at you; not with hardness in his eyes, or scrutiny, indifference, or any of the other variety of things that you used to think rested in them when they cast themselves on you, before you began to unravel him. They just looked patient, you think. Like he somehow knew it wasn't the time to push.

Guilt and gratitude: they resonate at once in you at the thought. You don't like lying to him at all, and you hate the idea that you're making him wait for your incoherent mood to loosen, despite the rational part of you knowing that that isn't the case. Yet, the warmth that comes with being recognized, even if not quite understood, loosens something in you. Just a little.

"Well," he starts, "can I sit with you then? I think I could use a picnic with my partner right about now."

There's an inward sigh as minuscule relief finds you. You're not sure what it's for—that he didn't force it, that he's offering to be beside you despite how you don't feel yourself entirely at the moment (whoever that really is).

Of course, you want him with you. You always do.

It's just that it can be hard for you to accept his closeness at times, especially when you get like this.

"Your pants will stain on the grass," you mutter more quietly than you mean to, like it were nothing more than a polite dismissal. As if that contradictory part of you wasn't quickly growing anxious to feel his warmth next to you.

He only offers a small smile in response, somehow, you think, in understanding. "We'll be matching, then."

He leans down until he's sitting beside you, placing the container in front of you as he sits with one knee pulled up. You can't help but lean a little into his space despite the revival of your nerves.

The wind suddenly feels insignificant.

With a shift of your eyes, suddenly overwhelmed, you ask, "What's in it?"

"It's not much," he says, tugging the plastic wrapping around the container. "But you can have some, if you want. It's chicken kebabs, fries, and some kind of side salad. I got it at a small market stall a few streets back. It smelled really good."

Your lips twitch for a moment in something close to a smile.

It's a replica of your usual pace, as if the silent disorientation that's been stirring in you was nothing more than a phase. Just as you know the cries of dread when they feel the need to make themselves known (though it's never really gone, you think; more so just resting, waiting, hatefully), you know the loose routines that you have set. So, this also helps, too, at least a little.

You allow yourself a sideways glance in his direction. He pulls the containers out of the bag, setting one to balance on his thigh and its kin on the ground. You watch as he opens them, his eyes catching yours as he lifts a fry in a silent offer, popping it into his own when you reject it with a shake of your head. Doesn't question it despite your usual appetite.

You just watch him for a minute. You think this is also helping you in a way. There's always been something outlined in his features that's brought you peace, but you think it's more than that. It's registering what, yes, is obvious, yet you process fully now as the worst of the tension in your bones gradually fades.

He's here now. Sitting unbothered, he picks at the impromptu picnic, slotted into place by your side, just as you've done so many times before.

It eases something. Not much, but enough to matter.

With a short breath, you try not to ruin this for yourself with your endless thoughts.

"You know," you start. "Kebabs and fries aren't usually what people bring to picnics. Not that I'm complaining or anything, though."

That small (adorable, peaceful, homely) smile returns to his lips. "Maybe we can be the first, then. I almost got much more than this because of all the other stalls that were around. There were these large beef dumplings, some ginger soy fish…"

You playfully shake your head in mock disapproval. "I think you'd find a way to bring hot pot if you could."

"I don't think that'd be as odd as you're making it sound," he says. Then, a new light enters his eyes with genuine glee. "Do you think we could do that next time?"

A huff of laughter escapes you, a grin betraying you. "Only if I don't have to carry the pot."

His eyes seem even brighter in the wake of your smile. "That was a given."

There's a brief lull in conversation. He takes the chance to steal hearty bites of his food, while you feel the great big pile of thoughts in your mind being partially swept towards the back ends of your consciousness before you can blink. Your mind, that had just been running on nothing but fear on an unstable foundation, slowly unwinds from its curled, defensive stance.

This is far from the first time that it's been rendered down so easily before you can even fully process the shift, but it almost always gives you whiplash nonetheless. It's kind of just sitting in the air's expanse now, more so lingering than resting inside the crevices between your ribs.

It feels safe enough to place it in front of you now. To at least put the isolated lump of whatever the hell you're feeling out beyond the ceaseless void of your mind in some way, rather than just leaving it to fester again and again and again.

Even if the shame doesn't quite leave while you push it into the outer world.

"I fell from here once," you suddenly mutter, looking forward. Not at him. Too much at once. "The tree, I mean. As a kid."

From the corner of your eye, you catch another tilt of his head. He seems to think for a moment in the aftermath of your hesitance that you couldn't quite seem to conceal in your voice.

Then, he asks, almost carefully, "Why come back?"

That makes you pause. It's not so much born from your wavering this time. It's more that you never really found your answer, or if you even want one now. A lie or dismissal doesn't really come to you, either. For once, because of course you can't when you actually need to, you don't really think at all.

You blink once, twice, before taking a breath in, out. When nothing tangible comes to you, you land on something that comes out true enough despite the strange way it sits on your tongue.

"…I don't know."

Your eyes fall, and you look at your hands. You turn them palm-side up. They're still flushed.

"I think, earlier today, or possibly for a while now, I felt the same way I did…back then, for a minute," you say. Your voice feels small enough to be lost to the brushing wind. "But I'm—I'm better than I used to be. I feel better. I am better. I guess I thought…"

A short lull, then your shoulders slowly slump in uncertainty. "Actually, I…I don't really know what I thought."

You lean back against the tree's trunk. You still don't look at him. Force a small grin. Feel nothing behind it. "I know it's kinda dumb. It doesn't really make any sense. Forget it."

His face does that again—that curiosity written across his features as his brain works to make sense of you and where you're at, so he can reach you. Taking his time to decide the right path to follow so that he'll come back to you eventually.

Even if he diverges from the right way sometimes, if for a moment.

"Does the height scare you?" He asks.

That irrationality from before doesn't seem to know when to quit, because your heart squeezes pitifully.

Right. Of course. What you said made no sense. What you're feeling, if anything at all, makes no sense. You knew that. You don't know what you expected.

You don't know why it hurts anyway.

Ignoring the sudden lump in your throat, you curl in a little more on yourself. "That's not really what I meant."

Somehow, without even looking at him, you can sense his frown.

"I know," he says, in the tone of someone who knows what they said hit something the way it wasn't supposed to.

Another pause comes, filling the space that you always seem to leave behind. You watch him for a moment, a breath lodged in your chest as his eyes briefly flicker up and scan the branches above.

You can't stop the frown tugging at your lips. Whenever you get like this, with this overly exposed feeling despite your resignation from the world, it always makes you irrationally wistful when his eyes unlock themselves from you. Maybe because they're the only thing that keeps you grounded at times.

You're relieved of your shame at your illogic when he turns back to you, before that short relief twists into confusion.

He looks determined.

"I understand if you don't want to, but…"

He hesitates. He looks up at the branches again for a second, eyes hardening as they strain their gaze along the length of its largest limb, before they turn back to you.

With his resolve, he asks, "Do you want to go up?"

A sharp breath, an immediate straightening of your back. Your eyes widen before you can help yourself; something completely incoherent and layered beyond comprehension shoots directly into your heart.

He senses it just as immediately before you can begin to process what it could be. Putting the container aside, he shifts to sit upright on his knees, hands twitching for a moment, like they want to reach out, before decisively resting on his thighs. Patience, again. Understanding.

"I can hold you steady," he says. It sounds close to a vow. "I wouldn't let you fall. And we'd only do it if you want to."

You don't say anything. Again, you don't really think. The initial panic—that's what it was, you think—fades, and you steadily ease back, yet you don't say anything. Barely think. I don't know. Maybe. I think. I don't know.

His shoulders slump as he looks increasingly unsure of himself. "I'm sorry. Did I upset you?"

"No—no," you utter. "It's not that. I…"

Repeated hesitation. Again, words clog your throat like bile, resting against the back of it. Yet, this time, you swallow it down, because no, you're not letting yourself get in the way again. You want to confide in him. You want to talk. You at least want to try to put it out there instead of letting it sit until it hurts too much to look at it.

It doesn't matter how unorganized it—you—might be. You deserve to feel safe enough to talk about it: the part of you that's grounded in your new self says, no matter how much the ugliest part of you rejects the thought.

You're…safe. You can talk. At least to him, if no one else.

You reach for his hand. Immediately, he locks his fingers with yours. You briefly run your thumb over his skin. Breathe in deep, release it slowly.

"I don't not like the idea of being able to get over whatever this is," you assert. It sounds and feels clearer than anything else you've said today, despite your fear. "I just…think I still feel scared, even though I can't really explain why, you know? And I feel bad that I can't. I don't like not knowing. And—and I don't like that it makes me upset and act all weird, and that it makes me feel like I'm not really here whenever I think too deeply into it.

"Maybe it's just all the bad that happened back then coming back up because I haven't felt the best lately, and my head decided that now would be the best time to remind me of this shitty thing that I didn't ask to think about, but it came anyway. I also know that it probably just can't really be explained. Maybe I just have to…let it happen and feel through it, and then hopefully let it pass."

Then, because you can't hold in your doubt for the life of you, apparently, you add on after a second, "If that even makes any sense."

"I think it does."

Your head snaps to him. Again, he's looking at you (you wonder if that's his thing: the thing that he can't hold in or can't help but do) with no judgment to trace. It's just attentive, as it always is when it lands on you. Yet, there's a deeper kind of sympathy in them this time, too, like he somehow knows what you can't articulate.

"Really?" you question. Curious (and as if you don't always hunger to know more about him, and maybe in need of the reassurance in his answer), you ask, "Have…have you felt like that?"

Unwillingly, your mind suddenly goes to how he used to sleep. How hard it sometimes was to wake him up, in the times before you first sought his hand.

Your heart somehow finds more room to ache.

You don't expect an explicit answer, or even an allusion to one. You never do anymore. Yet, after a passing stillness in his breath and a brief, tentative shift in his eyes that's so quick you almost miss it, he hums.

"It can be hard to phrase certain things," he murmurs, his thumb caressing the back of your hand. "I think some stuff is hard to try to connect to a distinct thing, especially when there's a lot of it at once, or to explain why they come up when they do. Or why they feel like a big weight that's hard to get off or out of you. The bad sometimes comes up when it feels like it, whether it's relevant, prompted, or not. And when it does, it can want you to do certain things, either to remedy it…or make it worse."

There's a gentle squeeze of your hand as his eyes drop to look at them, still braided together. His gaze lingers on their embrace.

"But you don't have to know the why for you're upset," he says. "Maybe trying to find it is just adding more stress to you. What's important to know is that it passes, even if it doesn't feel like it will right now."

"How do you know that?" you ask. It's not an accusation, but just a reach for something tangible. Something to ground you back to where you are.

That smile stretches his face again. The wind feels like it's stopped alongside your breath.

"Because I know you," he says so easily, like it's a simple fact. Like it doesn't make you want to press impossibly closer to him. "You're not stagnant. But what you are is the strongest person I know, and my brave partner."

He looks to you again, the resolve in them never dimming. "I…I know I can't always know what's going on," he mutters. It sounds like a quiet mourning, but he shakes it off quickly. "Still, you're resilient. Whatever you're feeling now may not always be avoidable or easy to go through, and maybe it'll come up again, but you've grown so much. You've always been strong, but you've put a lot of effort into who you are now. I know that you can get through this. You will feel better."

In that moment, you realize that you've been squeezing his hand back. Your heart is racing. Your hand is warm.

"And, if it helps…I'll always be here, for every step of the way. And like I said, I will never let you fall."

A squeezing sensation in your chest finds its familiar home in you again, but its intent is different. In place of the fist that imprisoned your heart is a clasp with warmth embedded between its well-worn creases.

It doesn't come as an eruption that bursts and spreads through your exhausted skin, clogging your throat and eyes with a stinging heat. In place of that suddenness is a calm, unhurried warmth. It cradles a part of you in its hands and wraps itself around the whole of you, binding you to it. Its hold isn't like another that's long been lost to time and the earth, where you never felt that the whole of it was meant for you.

Entangled with it, you feel assured. There's safety here, and its softness is yours to feel. In this, you know.

Even if there's still something that feels a little clumsy while you're in its grasp, where there's something just slightly off center in the security of its hold—

"Again, we don't have to do anything. It's your choice. It always will be."

Oh. That's what it was.

You take a second. You try to think back to that time, when you used to think of falling beneath the soil. Not too deeply—you still aren't ready for that, but at least now you think it's okay not to be—or for long, but you know some of it. You've known some of what you used to feel for a long time now, but it's easy to lose sight of it in your mind's persistent assault.

Beneath the supposed emptiness was fear. Unwelcome awareness of what the world forcefully painted you to be. Anger for things you still can't remember or control. Powerlessness, that you swore in your later years that you'd never let yourself feel again.

That's all you thought you were. You sometimes still do, feeling like the ghost you once convinced yourself you must've been. It felt easier than trying to bring it forward.

You follow his lead, looking at your intertwined hands.

There's no pressure in the underbelly of his words. Pity never crossed his tone or expression. It's just an offer and understanding, regardless of your choice.

Yet, it's more than an offer, isn't it? In it lies the allowance of reclamation. Something in the new world to replace the old. The security of strong, steady hands and a gentle voice laced with regal devotion and with a now centered grasp, in place of the forceful wind and a call to return to confinement without acknowledgement. (So many big things that were never explained to you, housed in your too-small body.)

The chance to just be, knowing that you're safe. That you can be caught before you hurt again.

You know dread. You know fear, and a tenet that conceals itself behind a null absence to not release something that can't be taken back for the sake of maintaining peace. But you also know the shape of him: soft smile, understanding eyes, lips, mind and body and soul and more and more and more. The mold of his loyalty, belief, and your conviction of it rests about it all, wholly belonging to you.

You know…yourself, too, despite your earlier doubt. Not clearly, obviously. Not through the same loving lens (perhaps, one day, closer than you once thought possible), but you weren't lying before when you said that you're different now. There are things you know now, even if you wish you could've known them back then, and even if you lose sight of them when it all resurfaces.

You're not bad for wanting to be understood. You're loved (and even more for, not despite, those imperfections, even if the thought of that sometimes scares or confuses you). You have an identity outside your pain. You exist beyond your faults.

You also know you deserve to be fairer to yourself, and that you have the will of choice. Those just seem harder to remember at times.

Slowly, you lean back again against the trunk. You don't think you feel guilty for being uncertain anymore, or for feeling what you're feeling.

This will pass. If it comes back again, you have him and the self you are now to come back to. You won't have to hurt the same way again.

"I'll see how I feel in a bit," you decide, eyes finally relaxed. "After I've downed some of your fries."

After a moment, when he finds that the fear has dissipated, something seems to ease him, too. He graces you as he smiles back, your heart skipping.

The cold is slowly being forgotten, replaced by the warmth you've come to learn with him. Your hands don't ache anymore.

The dark will not claim you again.

( a/n 2: mentally drained and ill yet currently healing mc reader who constantly fears that they're irrational or overdramatic despite it being a completely understandable trauma response/outcome but is trying to get better, my beloved. anyways like i wish i couldve gone longer into this but man. this was supposed to take place in spring. finals and work were holding me back. anyways thanks for reading <3 )