26. diamond
Some nights the nightmares make it hard to sleep. Stress dreams force Sam awake with a racing heartbeat and sweaty palms and the terrifying sensation that something is sitting beside her bed waiting for her. After she's calmed down, assured herself that she's safe and not about to be brutally murdered, it always takes a few minutes for her breathing to return to normal. On nights like this one, when she manages to wake up without jumping or screaming, she likes to watch Baird sleep. It assuages her. And no one is around to make her feel creepy or weird for watching him.
Baird lies on his side facing her, his mouth popped open slightly. The sound of his breathing—heavy and deep, but not quite a snore—fills the quiet of the bedroom. It was a warm evening, as evidenced by his sleeping shirtless; his bare arms are above the covers, reaching towards her slightly. He looks a few years younger in slumber, probably because the frown lines around his face disappear when he's completely relaxed. It's a sight she doesn't get to see very often when he's awake; usually his mouth is twisted in a grimace or a cynical smile. Peaceful looks good on him.
His eyelashes flutter, and she wonders idly what he's dreaming about.
Her fingers brush lightly over the contours of his arms. He must feel something; grunting softly, he moves closer. A grin spreads across her face. She knows the pattern of his scars by heart. Sixteen years of war have left plenty of pale white lines zigzagging across his body. Out of all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you. She thinks she might have read that in a poetry book somewhere (not that she'd ever admit to reading poetry), or heard it in a song back when they used to play music on the radio. He'd give her shit for being so mushy if he was awake, and she would know it was only because he didn't know how to deal with those feelings quite yet.
Sometimes it still seems surreal to her, like this just an overlong fever dream that she'll eventually wake from. Lying here in bed next to him, no longer always worrying about emergence holes in the back of her mind… It seems too good to be true. A small part of her keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something awful to explode this precious, cautious life they've been building together. But the rest of her firmly believes that they can survive anything now. They have been tried and tested, together and apart, refined through fire.
It's just like a diamond. You put something ordinary under enough pressure for long enough, and it either breaks… or turns into something beautiful and indestructible.