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Ryland wakes with a gasp.
He sits up fast enough to make himself dizzy, blankets and sheets pooling around his hips, cold recycled air hitting his naked chest hard enough to hurt.
His skin is crawling.
Ryland drags his palms down his arms, his ribs, his abdomen, fingernails digging into the skin as he searches desperately for electrodes and cannulas and needles and he can’t do this again–
“Ry–?”
A sound frightfully close to a sob tears its way out of Ryland’s throat.
A light flicks on, a soft warm yellow glow that does not belong to the moment Ryland has found himself in. He hardly even notices it. He’s too busy trying to tear into his skin. To get whatever is stuck underneath it out.
“Hey–hey–”
A hand catches one of his own.
Pulls it away from Ryland and closer to something else, pulls and pulls until Ryland’s palm is splayed across a broad chest. The muscles beneath rise and fall in a steady and deliberate rhythm, 14 sets of ribs expanding with an elasticity that the hardened calcium of bones should not have allowed. Ryland presses closer, curls his fingers into worn fabric and a leather cord. He moves his hand down. His fingers catch something hard and round. Ryland grabs onto it, is allowed to hold it for a few moments before his hand is gently pried away.
“You’re going to hurt yourself more–”
Is he?
“Just–” His hand is guided back to the center of that chest. There is a hitch in the voice that’s speaking to him, a sluggish backfiring of the heart thumping behind that strangely shaped rib cage. “Can you feel me breathing, Ryland?”
Can he–?
He can feel a set of lungs rise and fall underneath his palm.
He can feel warm air puff against his cheek.
Ryland’s other hand twitches from where it’s resting beside his thigh, then he lifts it, presses it hard against a corded torso. He can feel the faint indent of flesh underneath the fabric his fingers cling to, just below the last set of ribs, flexing in time to the expansion of the lungs that it feeds.
Yes.
Yes, he can feel breathing.
Ryland nods.
“Good. Focus on that.”
Ryland can do that.
A calloused thumb sweeps over the back of Ryland’s hand. The movements are slow. Gentle. Done in time to the breathing that Ryland has been told to put his attention on. Ryland matches his own breathing to that steady rhythm, and it’s hard, and it hurts, but he manages it.
He is breathing.
He is breathing on his own.
“That’s good–you’re doing really good, Ryland.”
Ryland nods, presses his nose underneath a strong jaw, and breathes in honey and copper and sweet brine. His hand falls a little, fingers hooking onto that leather cord again. It’s worn. Soft. Familiar. Ryland curls it around his fingers, fiddles with it like he’s playing a game of cat’s cradle. Something bumps into his hand, bounces along his knuckles a few times before it loses its momentum. Ryland untangles himself from the leather cord, lets his fingers drift a little lower, and this time when they curl around that little round thing they’re not pulled away. It’s hard. Smooth. Ryland flicks his eyes down and, oh, yes. Of course. It’s a pebble. A tiny little brown one that Ryland had picked up on one of his walks to give to…
“...Simon?”
“Hey.”
Ryland blinks slowly, tearing his gaze away from that little pebble and up to a pair of eyes that are damn near the same color.
“There you are,” Simon says, and he sounds relieved.
Ryland’s skin is still twitching and ticking.
His throat feels tight.
Closed off.
But he is breathing.
He spoke a word.
A name.
He couldn’t do that last time.
He also didn’t wake up next to someone last time. Well. He did. But he didn’t wake up next to someone who was breathing, who was talking, who had body warmth and muscle movement and a gentle rumble in their chest.
He didn’t wake up next to someone alive.
“Simon,” Ryland says again.
Then again and again, over and over, because what if he–he can’t forget everything again–
“Yeah, I'm here,” Simon said softly. “I'm right here with you.”
His hand slides up Ryland’s arm, follows the slope of his shoulder and the curve of his neck and the steady line of his jaw, coming to finally settle at the rounded apple of his cheek. Simon holds him so gently. So sweetly. Like he’s freshly blown glass, still too brittle to safely handle. That same calloused thumb sweeps underneath his eye, clearing away the sting of tears before they can properly fall.
Ryland swallows, and it feels like there are needles in his throat.
“Do you know where you are?” Simon asks softly.
Ryland doesn’t answer right away.
He looks around the room. A bedroom. Their bedroom. Not the sleeping cabin of the Hail Mary.
“...I woke you up,” Ryland says instead of answering.
Simon hums. “It’s fine.”
Ryland swallows again.
It’s not any easier.
“I’m sorry–”
“Don't fucking apologize.” Simon cuts him off before he can finish, but it’s not done unkindly. His voice is gentle. His words soft. He tugs Ryland closer, and Ryland doesn’t fight it. He slots himself neatly against Simon’s side, drops his head onto Simon’s broad shoulder, then tilts his head just enough to watch the miniscule fluttering of the gills on the side of Simon’s neck. It’s not breathing, not really, not in the way that Ryland knows it, but it is proof that Simon is alive. That there is oxygen going to and from his lungs.
“I just–” still, Ryland keeps going. “--you don't really sleep and–”
“Ryland.” Simon says firmly. “I don't care.” Then, “and you don't sleep either.”
“Well, yeah, but–thats different–”
“It's really not.”
Ryland snaps his mouth shut.
“Tell me where you are, Ry.” Simon asks again, except it’s not really a question this time. It’s more of a request.
A plea.
“Erid. In our bedroom.” Ryland answers quickly.
Simon lets out a sigh, and his entire body shakes with it. “Yeah, yeah that's–” he drops his head down, pressing a trembling kiss to Ryland’s temple. Ryland leans into it, rocks forward for more, tangles the fabric of Simon’s sleep shirt around his fingers so Simon can’t pull back. “--fucking hell–”
“I’m sorry,” Ryland says again, the words coming out before he can really register he’s saying them at all.
“Don’t apologize to me, I just–” another kiss, this one to the corner of Ryland’s lips. “--just need a damn second, okay?”
Ryland nods.
His memories are…mostly there, these days.
There are still things missing, of course, There always will be. It’s not something that Ryland has come to terms with, necessarily, but it’s something he’s learned to live with. It’s a grief he’s taught himself to carry. But it has been a long time since Ryland has woken as jumbled and confused as this, memories knocking into one another like a pinball machine, leaving Ryland disoriented and stuck and unsure of where he is. It always scares Simon when it happens. Heck, it scares Ryland. He has no idea what set it off this time either–a dream, he assumes, although he can’t recall anything about it except an looming sense of dread and desperation–and that makes it, arguably, worse.
Maybe once he’s a little more calm it will come back to him, but…it doesn’t matter.
Not right now.
Ryland lifts his arms, wraps them around Simon’s shoulders to hold him a little closer, a little tighter, and it’s only then he notices the marbled red and pink lines on his forearms.
Oh.
That’s right.
He’d dragged his nails across his arms when he snapped awake, trying to rip out IVs and electrode lines that hadn’t been there in years.
It's kind of a miracle Ryland hadn’t drawn blood.