#threadbare

There are moments you power through, mind racing to gain lost ground on an endless, looped track. You grow so tired, and it’s never just one thing. It’s water and sand and nothing all at once, vast forces beyond your control.

What else? What more? Why so long?

There are barriers no one else can see, and it’s not their fault because it doesn’t match up. We move through life at different paces. We experience different struggles. We are stopped by different forces.

“How was work?” Steve asks, a chipper smile on his face as he places dinner in front of you.

“Fine.” There are no other words.

“Really? Seems the project is right on schedule, thanks to you.”

You see him pause before he takes his first bite, and rush to pick up your fork, knowing it’s best to participate, knowing the barriers may be invisible but effort is not.

He eats his mouthful, and you stare.

Dinner isn’t a line in the sand, but it feels like one, another interaction you’ll be disappointing in, another fear you can’t explain.

“Not my best work, but it got done,” you manage, mechanically feeding yourself, showing the effort, making a show of the effort. “How was your day?”

It’s a flat question. The response is muddled by water and wind and doubt.

Why can’t you focus? Why can’t you do better for him? Why does he stay?

Steve can’t see any of it. He can’t get to you because there’s no one place you’re trapped in.

You do the dishes. You watch TV. You start your bedtime ritual, and you’ve participated as little—and as much—as possible because treading water is lonely. You grow so tired.

Tomorrow could be better. You can do better tomorrow. It’ll take effort.

Tomorrow you’ll work harder and you’ll be less afraid. But that’s what you thought the last time you were stuck. That’s what you think each time you find a line in the sand.

You stare at your reflection, still treading, still scared, still misaligned.

“Did you hear me?” Steve loosely holds you with his palm on your hip. Standing behind you, face sullen in the mirror, he asks where you’re hurting.

To Steve, there has to be a solution. Each mission must have a goal.

You spit, rinse, and put your toothbrush in the holder.

“Just tired.” That’s the sand he cannot see.

“Seems like more than ‘just tired,’” he huffs, unsatisfied, and turns you toward him. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing you can help with.” That’s the water he cannot navigate.

You’re on your own.

He smirks humorlessly. “That’s never stopped me before.”

But you don’t have the words. All that comes out is “my head.”

“Headache?” He reaches for the medicine cabinet. “You need some—“

You shake your physically fine skull. “No. It’s not a headache.”

Steve’s face…changes in a way you’ve never seen before. You expected confusion, perhaps pity, but this is something all-together reminiscent. His eyes dart around the bathroom like he’s taking inventory, and for the first time today you aren’t the most distracted person in the room.

Then he returns to you.

“I think I’d like a nice bath. Will you join me?”

He sets it all up, using the best smelling bubbles, setting out the softest towels, and inviting you back into the little spa he created by handing you a lovely chocolate.

When you try to refuse because you’ve already brushed your teeth, he replies, “live dangerously,” and pops a bonbon for himself.

Hopefully, it is dark enough for Steve to miss the tears in your eyes.

He lets you settle in the water against him, playing by splashing warmth over the parts not submerged. He kisses your shoulders and neck, the back of your head. Steve keeps himself attached by the lips, breathing you in but feeling so far away. Your mind wanders to nowhere, thinking nothing.

“Feels good—I mean, bett—feels okay, yeah?”

He suds up his hands and washes a bit of you, but your muscles are tight and curled.

You’re tucked into yourself, small as can be.

“Can you try to relax for me, sweetheart? Can you let yourself float?”

The tub works for a guy Steve’s size. There’s a little space but not enough to stretch out completely.

The tension in your body is slow to release. You manage to let your arms, knees, and feet peak through the bubble clouds.

Steve nudges, “and your neck?”

You didn’t realize you were holding it up.

There is infinite space to lay flat in your endless sea. Floating offers a respite, a view of the sky, the same sky blanketing your beach.

Invisible barriers at least spare the scenery.

You and Steve watch the fragrant foam burst for a while. It takes you much longer to truly relax back into Steve. The quiet of the bath drowns you with the noise in your head.

What else? What more? Why so slow?

It’s never just one thing. It is all things, all at once, and nothing at all. All of the elements to survival and understanding are there if you just focus your attention, if you just put in the effort, but you are so tired.

Steve wraps you in his arms to press you deeper into his chest.

“Sometimes my ma would burn dinner,” he starts quietly, voice rough from holding back all his questions you can’t answer, “and we would scramble around, combing the cupboards. We’d make the oddest meals out of bits and bobs. Maybe half of it, we should’a never touched, but we did what we had to. Ya know what? Those were some of the best times. We did the best we could with what we had—sometimes less—and that’s what made her so amazing. On what she probably considered her worst days,” Steve kisses behind your ear, “I admired her the most. Formed some of the best memories.”

“Let me guess. Because she smiled the whole way through?”

“Nah,” he muses, chuckling enough to shake you in the water, “she threw a pan once. Loosened the door of the stove she slammed it shut so hard. She cried usually until we were sat down eating. Always tried to give me the most food because I was so small… 

“I made it a game. I only took a bite if she did. Win-win.” 

He stays quiet for a beat, assured you’re hearing him.

“You’re not ruining anything by crying,” he says solidly, almost loud in the confines of the bathroom. “Good things can still happen. You still did good today.”

He continues. He details little things he admires about you; how hard you work for yourself, for him, he notices all that. He wants you to see what he sees.

There’s no barrier stopping him.

The water turns tepid, and Steve gets out first to ready a towel for you. There’s a difference between him treating you like a china doll and his doll. His doll is not breakable. He isn’t gentle because you are fragile; he does it to preserve you for the next day, and the next. Steve refuses to place any more burden on you than already falls.

He’s right there, strong, noble, and determined with forces working against him.

He’s scared and he doesn’t understand. He can’t fight. He has to scramble to catch up, to change plans, to make a meal out of nothing, to turn nothing into something. He doesn’t understand why he’s in a different sea, or why he can’t get to you standing on the same damn beach. His hand is right there on the barrier, but his shouts are muddled.

It’s not fair, and it never will be.

He physically lifts you up, wrapped in a plush bath sheet, his hug strong enough to thump against that clear wall that springs from your line in the sand.

That’s when you realize the barrier isn’t impenetrable. You can still see the scenery. You can still hear muddled sounds.

Some of his voice gets through. Sunlight and warmth get through. The water still buoys you up.

If there are directions to go, there are paths to take.

If there are ways in, there are ways out. 

There are invisible barriers everywhere, but they don’t stop Steve from being there for you.

One more chocolate. One more brush of your teeth. You trade the fluffy wrap of a towel with the cozy wrap of a t-shirt, and he makes sure you’re comfortable.

A simple goodnight kiss alone might tip you over into exhausted euphoria, but Steve is not that kind of simple.

He props himself up on an elbow and rolls you onto your back.

Kissing your right temple, he whispers, “I love you.” Kissing your left temple, he confesses, “I love your voice,” the peak of your forehead, “I love your spirit,” between your eyebrows, just above one ear, and the other.

“Miss you when I’m not here. Miss you when you’re not here. I miss you even in my dreams.”

Then, and only then, do you get that simple kiss goodnight. His soft lips melding to yours for a long, soothing moment before you two drift off to sleep.

When you dream of a beach and an ocean and nothing at all, you miss him, too. You remember his presence, and the truth becomes as clear as the sky above.

There are pieces of you to love. You are a loved thing. You are light and heat and sound that can get through, even when misaligned, even when you don’t match up, even when not in the same sea.

Steve’s love is invisible, but you know it’s there. It’s not a limit to fear. It’s not a barrier to turn away from. His love is not an obstacle you want to get past.

Not every invisible force is bad.

Sometimes, barriers slow you down, let you listen, make you rest, and help you float.

There are barriers everywhere, but nothing between you and Steve.

Ransom Drysdale and a kiss out of spite ⬅️ ➡️ Ari Levinson and a kiss out of envy

A/N: oof. *walks away crying* I'm fine. It's fine.

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