#big henry

“Just hang on.”

Henry wasn’t sure who he was saying it to anymore.

His voice was hoarse and he hacked loudly into the rainy salt-spray that came up over the bow, his boots gripping the textured floor beneath him as he gripped tightly to the wheel.

“Just hang on.”

When his empty hand slipped on it, he could feel how cold the steel was wherever he hadn’t been holding. The other hand released from the wheel, hauling hard on the rope that was wrapped tightly around his palm and wrist as another gust came to try and take them off track once more.

They were nearly there.

They had cleared the black stones.

They had made it past the point.

They were nearly there.

He could see the trees on the hills, bowing and bending with the gusts of wind that would’ve likely torn any other sloop’s sails from the mast and rigging. If he could keep them from catching one more bad gust-- if he could ride this next wave with the tide--

“Hang on!”

He turned the ship at the last, pointing her straight in toward the shore that the waves were throwing him at as he hauled on the sail rope for that one, final, desperate moment.

She practically flew, weightlessness nearly overcoming him as they left the crest and hopped toward the next wave, her keel clearing the hump of any dropoff there if he was lucky. 

Another gust rushed at them sideways, this one threatening to undo all of his hard work.

He let the rope fly free, the wind whipping it with such a noise as he had never heard before, and he felt blood rush back through his palm to his cold, numb fingers.

 That hand fell over his chest, while the other gripped the wheel to help him brace for the impact as the Swift Landslide’s belly landed on the sand and beach rocks, sliding and scraping with the surf up the beach.

His knees had hit the deck, one leg splayed toward the port side to brace against what little this vessel’s helm offered as a foothold, merely a strange recess that had so very recently seemed so very, very different. In the profane, vulgar stillness the vessel had come to in defiance of the gusting, churning winds, the pounding sheets of rain, and the rolling of the sea, Henry tried to slow his ragged, hacking breathing while it drowned out nearly every other sound even as the water lapped loudly against the propped and tilted bottom of the boat.

“...Keel’s gone,” he called through panting gasps, loudly enough to carry through the storm to--

“Fuck,” he swore much more quietly, his hand lifting away from the breast of his coat as he scrambled to his feet, splashing in the water that had collected on deck. He fought his way inside. The strangely-folding hinged door to the now cramped, almost suffocating cabin was barely still attached.

“Fuck, please--” he breathed in panic, struggling to close the door behind him in effort to shut out the storm, standing at an angle on the stepped ladder between the bench and the tiny galley. “Please, are-- are you alright? Please, can you-- can you say something? Anything?”

He pulled the coat gently open as he finally got himself onto the floor proper, staring down at the top of the inner pocket, his mind already firing through a thousand or more worst-case-scenarios. He couldn’t tell if he was still shaking too much, or if his eyes could truly make out anything in the dark.

A breath rushed out of him deeper than the one he was sure he had taken as muffled noises managed to reach his ears, followed by what was clearly coughing. The fabric moved, though it seemed so wrong in its way.

She was alive. That alone put so many of his barely-formed fears to rest.

…She was alive. That alone ignited so many new fears and confusions.

“I-- I need to get you out of there,” he muttered, his tongue and lips seeming to move of their own accord and stutter his words like he meant to say so, so much more. Water dripped from his brow, splashing into a growing puddle collecting on the floor as rain and more of the sea trickled in under the door and over the steps behind him. “I-- there’s wat-- it doesn’t matter,” he mumbled to himself, his heart pounding as he struggled to figure out the next step, her sounds still incomprehensible.

The boat rocked under him as a particularly large wave crashed around and under it; not enough to dislodge, but enough to have him bump his head on one of the overhead devices that had seemed miles away the last he had bothered to take any stock of them. Mindlessly his hand kept coming to press against the outside of his coat, knowing without truly acknowledging that there was panicked movement inside it. If he would stop to think about it, Henry would either tell himself he was trying to offer comfort and reassurance, or he would realise that it clearly had the opposite effect and would stop. As it stood now, however, he could not stop to think about it, so he moved himself to sit on the lowest-tilted bench, positioning himself next to the ridiculously small counter.

He couldn’t get lost in the thoughts of the size of things right now; at least things outside of her.

Another noise he couldn’t make out was followed by obvious coughs as he opened his coat once again, the man muttering apologies and directions-- mostly to himself-- as fingers reached to the pocket’s top seam and opened it.

“Wait!”

It was a shrill scream, and the first understandable word she had used since this nightmare began, but as quickly as the man stopped at the sound of it, her next explosive wave of coughs spurred him into thoughtless action again, and those fingers-- still with the cold of the storm clinging throughout them-- fumbled her screaming, flailing form out of the damp fabric.

Everything about this felt so wrong to him. A desire to clutch and hold to stop her frightened attempt to escape him was nearly overbearing all of his better senses, simply due to the adrenaline-filled instincts that coursed through him with the thundering of his heart still.

All the while as he tried to wrap both hands around her, his stomach lurched and mind stabbed at him with the memories of his own terrors; of his own hatred for what he was doing to her. These were fresh wounds of fear, even, that he now was inflicting on her with no excuse other than that itself: Fear. 

He was frightened.

Though as he released her onto the slanted counter, hands staying to try and create a wall so she wouldn’t throw herself over an edge in her panic, he realised he was not nearly as frightened as her.

Melanie’s throat was raw and still she screamed. It was a compulsion, it was instinct. Involuntary, along with the scrambling and flailing. She hadn’t gotten her bearings since she could remember the wave knocking her onto the cushioned bench while she had attempted to reach for Henry. That was when everything turned into… this.

Gravity wheeled and sent her head spinning again as she struggled uselessly against what she refused to admit were fingers; what she refused to let herself believe was the oppressive strength of her being pulled and pushed into a palm, her legs and feet dangling and kicking until they too were wrapped and squeezed and restrained in that bizarre, pulsating way she had been struggling to process the entire time she was in that damp, tight dark.

She had thought for a brief time in that terrifying lightless sack that being able to breathe fresh air again might save her from feeling so sick and disoriented as the world around her had moved and spun and jumped and lurched and swung and compressed and…

Being out in the open air of-- she couldn’t bring herself to even try to grasp it-- proved that thought so very wrong. All it managed to give her was more air to scream with as she felt herself swinging through the air once more.

Everything was so loud.

Her feet collided with a hard, solid surface finally and all at once the constriction around her body released, leaving her free to do what she wanted. Which was, apparently, to scramble away from the moving shadows that were all around her while a cacophony of horrible noise was momentarily drowned out by an excessively loud, deeper sound.

“Melanie.”

Her hands leapt to slap against her ears and she slipped on whatever surface she had been placed on. “Wait, wait--” the voice continued, resonating through her chest even while it seemed to get quieter and quieter as she tried to gasp for air.

It was no use. Her screaming ceased, only because she couldn’t fight her lurching stomach any longer.

“Breathe, please… just breathe,” his voice came again, so strange and so different it would have been completely unfamiliar were it not for the tone; the rhythm. “I’ll speak quieter, you speak louder, and we’ll get through this.”

Despite her shaking she attempted to move herself into sitting up, or at least kneeling, a hand reaching for anything to brace herself with but staggering back into just holding herself off of the ground on all fours, shuffling herself further away from her own sick as she spluttered out coughs.

The owner of that rumbling voice went back to what must count as mumbling, even at that volume, muttering out worries and pleas and everything else before his voice raised with revelation.

“Ah, here--”

The shadows that had been moving all around and above her throughout this nightmare so far were suddenly no longer shadows, a loud clunking noise announcing the arrival of light just a couple of brief seconds before it flickered into the gargantuan space all around her.

Melanie finally looked up.

And up.

And up.

Then back down, her body curling in tightly against itself as if that would protect her somehow from this reality. This dream. This insanity.

“It’s me, it’s me!”

It may have been an attempt at reassurance, but it just made her cover her ears again. It was what happened next that finally offered her something of substance; something that could help her finally catch her breath.

As she cowered on what she could less and less deny was the counter of the galley, the presence of his hand had barely enough time to make her shiver before it was pressed fully against her back, his fingers curled and creating a canopy over her head that dimmed the light. Instantly, it felt so much better; instantly she was in a smaller space that wasn’t restrictive or terrifying. Instantly she was feeling honest, genuine comfort.

“There, there,” he tried to whisper, his voice like gusts of wind pushing against a sheltering wall in a storm, the comparison so easy to make as the ship rocked again with a wave and another, actual howl of wind. “It’s… you’re fine, breathe.”

Breathing was a struggle, but no longer impossible even as she quivered. There was no way for her to know how long it took her to stop shaking, only that by the time she had realised she had, Henry still clearly had not. With a deep, nearly gasping breath, she reached a hand above her head to rest on one of the fingers that was creating her shelter as the lights beyond it flickered again with the pounding sound of rain against the ship.

Melanie’s mind was ablaze with everything the sensation of his finger meant in this moment. Everything about it; the texture, the faint warmth still growing through the chill that lingered, the feeling of the muscles beneath shifting as it twitched and reacted to her own touch. His thumb dropped, sagging almost as it rested across her arm and her side, and she moved to touch the back of it instead, her hand shakily rubbing back and forth in some attempt to ground herself more.

“What happened?” She croaked out, eyes closed and flinching against the sounds of the nightmarish hurricane outside.

The sounds that obviously made it so he couldn’t hear her.

She cleared her throat with a few short coughs before trying again, shouting as loud as she was able to convince herself to, against every instinct she had trained over the last two years. “What happened?”

He let out a noise of surprise, stammering in a percussive way; a way that made her ribcage feel like it was resonating along with his words and utterings. “I… I don’t know, I can’t-- it just happened.”

His whispering was like the wind, but so much less threatening, so much less terrifying.

When she opened her eyes to finally look beyond what little safety she had, it took a moment to recognize exactly what she was seeing. His glistening-wet coat and wrinkled damp shirt shifted with his gigantic breaths, dark tendrils of dripping hair messily splattered or dangling across the fronts of both.

“...I was worried you’d say that,” she gathered the energy to shout to him, trying to make sense of just this little window of the massive new world around her. A world that was so familiar, not that long ago. A world that was supposed to be like home.

Her hand splayed and tensed against the back of his massive thumb as if to hold him down, her precious man-made lean-to tipping back as the view from her haven shifted dramatically before her. The startling blue-green shine of his eye absorbed all of her focus as she jumped back in her lying position, his hand tipping back down over her in response. “Sorry,” he muttered, raising his head back up so she could only see his chin and the coarse hairs that framed his mouth. “Am I really that frightening?”

“Yes!”

He sputtered out a surprised laugh that caused her to wince again, and he hushed himself as best as he was able. “I-- I was just trying to be funny,” he explained. “I’m also trying to see if you’re alright.”

“I’m not alright,” she said, loudly but less than shouting as she tried to hold back more coughs. “I-- this is--”

The words stopped. She couldn’t force out any that would make sense of any of this, so whatever had made it out simply hung there until the man around and in front and over her all at once heaved a sigh. “You still didn’t have to be so blunt,” he said under his breath after a moment, and the shock of that being his response in the face of everything else caught her with such force that she laughed as well.

“It’s true,” she called. “Why would you ask if you--”

“I don’t recall being that horrified by seeing you the first time like… this.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t! I--”

“No!” she shouted in this bizarre, distracting argument, trying to make sure she was loud enough for him to hear over his own oppressively loud voice. “You were panicked! You ran and hid behind a-- a towel, for God’s sake, you--”

“That was because I was naked,” he stated, his face shifting again in her little window to try and see her again. “Which, I’ll point out, you’re lucky enough not to be, so. I think I deserve a bit more credit.”

“Credit for what?” she shouted again, the absurdity of the conversation helping her let go of the terror of the situtation.

“For being kind, for one thing,” he replied, that giant mouth flashing into his cocky, lop-sided grin of a smirk before sliding out of her view and those eyes coming back into it. “And incredibly brave for another.”

“You drew a sword on me,” she said, her voice much more sheepish in that massive, unavoidable gaze, his gargantuan face turning to point an ear more toward her.

“You certainly just seemed like you’d have done the same,” he teased again. “You’re just lacking the opportunity.”

“I still have my dagger,” she called after checking her belt for it. There was an awkward pause, quieting them both amongst the calamity of the storm still pounding on the ship all around them. “I suppose I won’t be needing that anymore.”

“Keep it,” he said, those eyes lifting out of her view again as a non-smirking mouth reappeared. “But… yes, I imagine we won’t need the performance any longer. At least not from you.”

“...Oh god,” she breathed, another couple of coughs leaving her. Finally, she felt brave enough to try and sit up, her hands moving to try and guide his massive one away from her. Her eyes lingered on the texture of his fingers, the wrinkles and scars on his hands she had never seen before. Even as she blinked away the light as his hand moved away from her, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him in full. Not yet. “Do you-- are you the right…? For here, I mean, are we-- did we make it?”

His hand left the counter and she was alone there, trying not to look at him as his gigantic movements near her caused her to shiver from the size of them alone. “We’re somewhere I know, I’m sure,” he said in a mix of whistling, wind-like whispers and deep resonating words, creating such a strange emphasis while he spoke. “We passed barrier stones, so we must be on the shore of Vogunti, or perhaps if we’re too far south, Hostenia, but… I won’t know for sure if it’s anything I recognize until daybreak, at the least.”

Melanie took a peek only enough to see that Henry was fixing his wet hair, and distracted herself by trying to do something with her own just using her fingers. For the amount she had been in the wind and rain before all of this happened, on top of whatever happened when she had been confined to the dark and damp of his coat, it was useless and frankly painful to try and tame it right now.

“...I don’t know if I’m right or not,” he added with an exhausted-sounding laugh that made her flinch much less this time. “That will… that will also have to wait until daybreak.”

“How long will that be?” She asked, though his soft ‘hm?’ and the oppressively massive gesture of him leaning just slightly closer to listen better caused her to repeat it louder.

“I’ve not the faintest idea. At least five hours, I’d imagine? It was near nine when we hit the storm, if I remember correctly.”

His hands finished their work with his incredibly long hair, but instead of returning to her they dropped to his lap, somewhere beyond the little wall the counter had at the back by the bench seating. He was turned to face the other side of the boat now, the rise and fall of his chest more prominent as her eyes became braver and braver, taking in the massive sight of him piecemeal. 

“Keel’s gone,” he said after a moment in the quiet.

“I heard earlier,” she said, gathering herself to stand, trying to watch her footing as the wind sent what felt like small quakes through the whole boat.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed out in shame, rubbing at his face and causing her to stagger back with the movement of even his most distant arm. “I-- am I quiet enough? Are you hurt? Did I-- when I grabbed you, was it--”

“Henry,” she said, staring at his familiar and strangely unfamiliar face, trying to make sense of the angle and the size and the detail versus the image she had had of him before. “It’s fine, I-- I’m not hurt, I don’t think, I--”

“You don’t think?” he asked, and his head turned to stare at her, both of them this time balking as their gazes met. “Melanie, if I hurt you--”

“You didn’t, I’m sure you didn’t,” she stammered out loudly, fighting the tightness in her chest that threatened to choke her words out. “I just-- it was a lot. It’s a lot. I’m still… this is still new.”

The mountain of a man continued to look at her, and she realised his pupils were moving, jittery and quick. He was looking at all of her, so quickly; so easily. Her arms wrapped around herself and she fidgeted, eyes dropping to his clothes again.

“I shouldn’t have,” he uttered again on an exhale that seemed like it could fill the whole room. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. The grabbing, the pocket, I-- but I didn’t have any other choice, I just--”

“It’s ok!” she called, stepping back and forth as she shook her head. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if you’d left me in here, I don’t-- I don’t wanna think about it.”

Her eyes moved back up and up again to his face, meeting his startlingly giant gaze once more. “The pocket probably wasn’t so bad,” the insignificant woman on the counter admitted with an uncomfortable shrug. “It was just… fast, and dark. And wet-- it was… it was wet. That didn’t help.”

“Oh shit,” he swore, turning his attention down to the coat. “I-- did it soak through? I thought if you were inside it wouldn’t.”

“No, I don’t think any came from outside. I think it was just already damp from… everything else.”

“Well, the weath--”

Another crashing wave bumped the bottom of the vessel again, and the counter was nearly a springboard to her as it rocked aggressively upwards at a slant. Her arms had barely spread out to help her balance when a wall of a hand came sweeping toward her, a startled noise catching itself in her throat.

“Sorry, sorry!” he was babbling in his full voice again, the panic strong and clear. The ship finished landing back on its beached angle as the water outside receded, and she took deep breaths to slow her heart as she leaned against his fingers with her arms splayed over the tops of holding them close to her, relieved that he hadn’t closed them this time.

“Thanks,” she said, getting her balance and footing firmly again but finding herself reluctant to let his hand go.

He was just as reluctant to move it away.

“...As I was saying,” he continued with a chuckle that seemed to echo through his throat with a gritty texture to its sound, “the weather is shit.”

Melanie laughed, and whether he could hear it over the sound of another pounding of wind and rain above their heads, they both found themselves relaxing. A quiet, far more comfortable than the last, stretched between them and she found herself captivated by all of the details that were invisible to her for the last two years, now completely shocking to her in their size and texture both.

Meanwhile, Henry felt like the churning waves outside.

“...I don’t know what to do,” the man attached to the hand she was touching in long, slow sweeps of her fingers and palm said.

“Did you lose the sail?” the woman he watched move in such small and delicate ways asked, while he tried to imagine himself in her hands now.

His finger curled hesitantly inward to meet her touch. “I meant with you.”

Tiny hands grabbed his finger and rubbed the pad and the nail at the same time, exploring the textures of both. She didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at him. He spoke again.

“We should try to sleep.”

Her shoulders may have raised at that, and it upset him thoroughly that he couldn’t tell. His head tipped and turned, trying to find some kind of angle where he could see her expression without it being so obvious that he was staring.

“...Is the boat going to be safe?” 

“Would you like me to go drop anchor?” He asked, unable to help himself. The sour look she shot at his cocky grin was luckily an expression that didn’t often contain much subtlety. She turned her attention back to examining his hand, and he turned his attention back to watching her as he gave the question more serious thought. “The surge seems to be receding. The waves aren’t reaching as far, and not nearly as often as they were; we may still get a few rockings like this, but it won’t be enough to dislodge us.”

He looked to the floor and the water around his toes. “...If the rain keeps pushing in through that door, we may have something to contend with in the morning. I highly doubt it will get to the point of overtaking the cushions, but…”

“Where am I going to sleep?”

Clearly, she didn’t much care about the water.

Henry finally took a moment to really absorb his surroundings, fighting the strange overbearing sensation of claustrophobia as he continuously clocked where the ceiling was. He had never felt so cramped aboard the Massingill, or any of his other vessels, had he?

Everything was so… small now. Everything was like a toy to him, and his head ached as he looked at once familiar things and tried to grasp now that he could actually grasp them in a single hand if he wanted to. The sink faucet. The dislodged GPS. The cans of food and bottles of spices tipped sideways on their railed shelves.

The stairs and walkways they had built for him.

Before he could no longer fight the urge to bury his face in his hands and trying to hold his skull together around all of this insanity, his eyes fell on another item that otherwise would’ve sent him spiraling.

“The hammock?” he suggested weakly, and she turned to try and locate it near the forepoint behind him, past the sliding doors that had slipped ajar in their wrecking. Her mouth moved, that much he could see, but whatever swear it had been was too quiet for him to hear. “No?”

“I can’t,” she called louder, her voice so vastly different to the one he knew the best. “Not tonight-- not with the boat like this.” He had heard her almost like this, previously, when he had snuck away with her without her knowing; when she had no idea he was nearby, and didn’t feel the need to accommodate him like she would every time they spoke together.

He nodded, glancing around again for some kind of solution. “I suppose you’ll still want the bed, then,” he said lightly, that smirk tugging up one side of his lips.

“It’s my bed,” she called back, coughing a bit from the strain.

“You don’t need all of it,” he teased, lifting an eyebrow and cocking his head toward the higher end of the cabin. “Why not a quarter berth? You can have the whole thing-- the one without the extra lifejackets on it, even!”

“No!” she shouted, though he could hear her laughing in spite of herself. “I still want the forepoint, I just don’t want the hammock.”

“Fine,” he said, tossing his hands up like this was any other joking argument they were having in her kitchen while she cooked, or while they spent time sprawled beneath a tree in the backyard of her home. She staggered back from the motion, his eyes being drawn back to her doll-sized form again and he lowered them carefully with a wash of shame. It wasn’t enough to completely destroy what levity they had managed to find, however, as he added: “Will it be big enough for you?”

Melanie attempted to run her fingers through her hair again and he closed his eyes against the wave of memory of how her hair used to feel to his hands, thick silken threads sliding between his fingers. Now he could probably pinch the whole of her hair between two fingers. “...There’s room for one more,” she called to him, pulling him back to this wild dream.

“It’s not a hammock,” she added, arms hugging around themselves again as she started to take small steps on the counter.

“I know,” he said, sighing. He was finding it harder and harder to look away from her. “Are you-- would it be alright?”

“Of course it’s alright,” she sighed right back, shrugging. “It was never a problem, we just--”

“I don’t want to hurt you, like this.”

Henry had cut off her answer because it wasn’t what he had meant to ask her. He knew. He knew he had always been welcome. He knew that wasn’t the reason it had stopped. That wasn’t what he was asking about now.

She had tensed more into herself, somehow shrinking further. How had she ever dealt with this? How had she made it seem so natural and easy? All he wanted to do was comfort her, but he couldn’t simply wrap his arms around her fingers like he used to.

“You won’t,” she said in a voice he barely caught, repeating it louder and with a false confidence he could notice. “...Do you want the left side or the right side?”

“I’ll take your side so you can be close to the hammock, for when you come to your senses.” 

The giant man smiled at her, and the small woman smiled back, a strange pain just barely hidden behind both. The moment lingered, passing on to the point of having to take the next step. He waited for her to say it; it was the last thing he wanted to suggest.

“It doesn’t sound like it’s getting any nicer out there,” she said, looking up at the ceiling to listen to the next wave of pounding rain against it. He watched her knees seem to buckle as she did, her gaze promptly dropping back down, the woman steadying herself on the counter. “...Think you can get us to the bed?”

“What do you mean by that?” Henry’s brow furrowed over a skeptical, smirking expression. “I got us here, didn’t I?”

“Without a keel,” she stressed, smirking back, though even at their distance-- at her size-- he could see the exhaustion on her features now.

Henry lifted his hands up, bringing them slowly to the edge of the counter just past the little wall at the back of it, nearest him, one flat and the other tilted. Whatever bravado she had attempted to have for the joke evaporated instantly like a drop of water on a hot iron. He would wait; he didn’t want to grab her again.

“I-- Henry I don’t… I don’t think…”

“It’ll be fine, you can sit if you--”

It was, in truth, a much smaller knock of a wave than the boat had suffered previously since he had landed her on the beach, but it was still enough to have her stumble and yelp. His hand had moved instinctively, nearly knocking into her as she seemed to roll against it and throw her arms over the top.

“Please,” she begged after the vessel had settled on its rocky bed again. “Can you… like you did for the pocket. Just… just take it slow.”

“But--”

“Please, Henry,” she said louder, not able to look up at him, and clutching his hand even tighter to her body.

It felt wrong. It felt so wrong to do it. It had been something he would have hated had she done it to him, and instead she was asking for it again.

His fingers closed around her, thumb and forefinger under her arms as she finally relented her grasp on him, as small as it was. His mouth opened to stammer out excuses, more argument-- perhaps she was just lacking confidence. Perhaps he could make her feel better, feel safer. Perhaps he could make her do this any other way.

She was so delicate. So fragile.

How had she done this? Any of this?

How had he, when he was in her position?

It had been so natural when they had done it even just hours ago. It had been natural for nearly years. Now they were negotiating back and forth with words and movements like one wrong move could set off a keg of powder. He twisted his hand, she shifted to correct him. “Am I squeezing too much?” “No.” “Now?” “No. Keep your fingers where I put them.”

Finally they were both as happy as they would be with how he was holding her, and he wondered if his heart being in his throat had any effect on the pulse that was thundering back against her ribcage. He hadn’t thought of this-- any of this-- the first time. He had simply grabbed her small, squirming body, an mere fistful of a person, and dropped her into his pocket while his mind had directed him to seventy other, ‘more important’ things.

He didn’t notice until he started to lift her that her eyes were closed, and closed tight. Had they been closed this whole time?

Melanie’s chest stretched and pressed against the flesh of his hand in rapid rhythm, her arms and hands gripping desperately over the back of his thumb and clinging to a fingernail. He heard her make a sound-- some kind of yelp of whimper and stopped his movement as her legs dangled and tensed and fidgeted out past his smallest finger, the whole of her waist and hips and the tops of her thighs in his horrendously diffident grip.

“Don’t stop!”

Henry blinked at the sound of her near bark of a command, her terror literally sensational to him in every aspect. He swept her further up, another less loud and less sudden shout of “not so fast!” giving him the kind of helpful direction he needed. Then… he was holding her.

Her entire self was in his hand. Tense, but not panicking or flailing as she had before, and tipped just slightly back into his palm with her eyes closed tightly; every muscle taught as they could be around him.

Of all the times he had humoured the thoughts of swapping positions with her, not once had he imagined this. Not once had he even wondered what this could be like or feel like from this perspective. For all the faults he was quick to pinpoint and address and correct as he was able, never was there a thought of being in these shoes.

His other hand had moved without thought to support her legs, his thumb almost mindlessly running over the tops of her thighs and knees in an attempt to get her to relax and unbend them. Her chest expanded with a gasp he didn’t hear at his touch, and she tensed even more at first before relenting.

Still, her eyes would not open.

He didn’t want them to. 

Not yet. Not while he was unable to stop staring at her in a way which he knew he had been subject to so many times over the last two years. Gawked at. Inspected. Henry had hated the feeling of it then, and likely still would now, regardless of how much he suddenly felt himself empathizing with them all.

“I’ll take it slow,” he whispered, his thumb caressing softly over her shins for lack of anything better to do while he still held her steady with his other hand.

Melanie nodded, her arms flexing so strongly against him for her size, in spite of all of the frailty she looked like she should possess.

His eyes hardly left her even as he made his way to their once massive berth, only relenting his delicate hold of her legs enough to maneuver the sliding door and close it behind them. Stooping lower over the mattress and its tangle of blankets and sheets, the pillows nowhere near where they typically were, he did his best to gently position her into sitting on the side that was nearest his ridiculous, shamefully small hammock where it swung with the latest tiny bump of a wave. Fingers opened and slid away, her hands trying to hold him until the last second when she seemed to settle herself properly on the cushiontop.

“Thank you.”

It was probably her second attempt at saying it, and still it had nearly not made it to him.

“Get yourself situated,” he said to her. The directions of a Captain. The soft voice of a friend. “I’ll make the last checks, hang my coat, and then I’ll be in.”

Those tiny dots he knew were supposed to be hazel opened and took their time to look up at him, bouncing across the features of his face and between his own two eyes. She nodded, her tiny hand clutching at the blanket beneath her like it was a life preserver.

Henry smiled, a finger tapping the mattress through the blankets in lieu of letting himself say anything further. Then, he took a deep breath, and stood himself back up.

…Promptly knocking his head into the ceiling.