Carlos slowly opened his eyes, and stared up at the ceiling. Well, where he thought that the ceiling was, anyways, considering that it was still extremely dark in the room and he was a bit groggy from waking up. He grabbed his glasses from off of the nightstand, and looked over at the alarm clock.
Almost 4 a.m.
Wondering what woke him up at such an ungodly hour, Carlos sighed softly and brought his hand up to rub his eyes. Then he heard what had woken him.
It was a quiet whimpering noise and it was coming from his boyfriend's side of the bed. Carlos turned on the lamp next to his bed and turned to look at Cecil.
The man in question was facing Carlos, which gave Carlos the opportunity to see the sweat that had broken out on his brow and the way that his eyes darted back and forth underneath his eyelids. His mouth was slightly open, and he was panting quietly. Overall, he did not look comfortable.
"Cecil?" Carlos asked without gaining a response. He set his hand atop Cecil's shoulder and tried again louder: "Cecil?"
Carlos shook his hand slightly, and then a little harder when Cecil would not wake up. By this time Cecil had tears leaking out from underneath his eyelids. Once Cecil let out a somewhat loud sob, Carlos shook him again—hard—and half-spoke, half-yelled, "Cecil!"
Now wide-awake, Cecil pushed himself away from noise and movement with a small yelp and Carlos pulled his hands back, but kept them in front of himself in a placating gesture.
"Cecil! Calm down," Carlos said hesitantly. "I think that you were having a nightmare."
Cecil was still crying a little bit, but once he looked at Carlos, tears rushed down his face and he was sobbing heavily.
"Ca-arlos! I-I tho-ought—I thought you-ou—" but Cecil couldn't get his sentence out because he was crying so harshly.
"Shh, shh, Cecil, it's okay," Carlos soothed as his boyfriend fell into his uncertain arms and Carlos hugged him while patting his head. "You're okay, and I'm right here."
Carlos kept whispering softly to Cecil until the latter eventually ceased crying and began breathing softly again. But, when he didn't move his head from lying on Carlos's chest, Carlos asked, "Cecil? Are you alright?"
Carlos leaned down a bit to look at Cecil's face, but the other man was already sound asleep. He looked peaceful, but, just in case, Carlos left the light on, shuffled back down under the blankets, and leaned Cecil's head onto his shoulder so Carlos could wrap his arms around Cecil's back.
"You're okay, Cecil," Carlos said before kissing the top of his head and closing his eyes while still rubbing Cecil's arm soothingly.
Imagine Person A holding and comforting a sobbing Person B who just suffered from a terrible nightmare.