You don't.

You stir, amongst the blankets and the unwashed sheets - but you're not even close to getting up.

How dare he even ask it of you?

You burrow back into the pillows - body feeling heavy, eyes baggy and stinging with salt. Not quite tears, but...different, somehow. You swear these eyes were easier to break open, once.

His calloused fingers drift onto your shoulder, and he's not one to swallow so hard - but he does, all the same.

He sucks the inside of his cheek; hand squeezing on the sheets.

"What is it?"

He wants to fix something vague. Something not quite described to him - ethereal, when it sits in your muscles. Tightens in your chest. Why do you wake up, some mornings, heavy and dark and aching?

A nondescript feeling. Oddly painful in the way it constricts over you - flattens you, as you stir and hope the sunlight will kiss you into something better.

"Go shower," you tell him, your dry tongue finding the top of your mouth as you wrap your arms around yourself, "I'm fine."

I'm fine.

I'm fine, you've learned, is a form of punctuation.

A full stop. It invites nothing - no beginning, even as Charlie's brow creases. Something warm traces down your cheek, and...those are tears, somehow. You'd forgotten it, maybe.

Forgotten that crying is painful. It aches; a tight ball in the bottom of your throat.

Dear God, but did it always ache like this?

"I'd rather stay with you," he tells you, with no uncertainty. "If that's what you want."

His lips find your forehead, and you're groggy. Aching, under the weight of this, as his plush lips imprint something meaningful onto your hairline.

Silent. It's quiet, here, as you shake in his grip.

He kisses your forehead, and you snake around him; and the silence breaks, little by little, with the sound of you hitching on a sob.