Liara can always tell when Javik is having a long string of nightmares. He can't sleep because he's fighting reapers in his dreams and she sees it in his eyes, in his posture, in his attitude, that he's war-weary and tired of battle. She sits on his knee and put her hand on his face, stroking the bags under his eyes with the tip of her thumb and he forsakes eye contact, ashamed or perhaps afraid. Maybe he dreamt of losing her, but Liara does not ask.
She plants a kiss right below Javik's leftmost eye and asks him if he's hungry instead.
When night falls Javik doesn't find his mate in her bed, but in the spot next to the door where he usually sleeps, waiting for him. He's alarmed and confused and is wondering what she's doing there, but Liara just wordlessly smiles and opens her arm, inviting him down with her.
"What are you doing?" Javik's words are stern, but his arm finds itself snaked around Liara's waist all the same.
"I haven't slept well lately," there's a certain uplift in Liara's voice that is not quite mocking. "So I figured I would join you for once." She grabs the neatly folded blanket beside her, pulling it over Javik and her both. He wonders if she purposefully chose a short one, because the asari has to pull herself over his legs in order for both of them to be properly covered.
Feeling her weight on his thigh and shoulder, and her cool fingers wrap themselves around the hand not occupied by his gun, Javik lets out a small sigh through his nasal cavities. Liara is going to make a habit of this, he knows, but he strokes the back of her hand with his thumb anyway, a warm feeling inhabiting his chest. Perhaps he can allow himself to put his pride away, to accept her help, just for tonight.
It does help, and Liara can tell because Javik rewards her in the morning by making love to her. I need to do this more often, she thinks as she wakes up and he kisses her, softly at first and then a bit more intensely as he slips an arm under her knees and carries her to their bed. She swears that, perhaps for only a split second, she saw a smile flash across his lips.
And slowly, but surely, Javik starts to depend less on the comforting grip of his rifle, and more on the soothing hold of her hand.