Wrote this one night while listening to "I Hold You" by CLANN. On repeat. About a dozen times.


#04 HELD

Hurt/Comfort, fluff, established relationship, A/C slash.

I wake up in the middle of the night, startled, and there are ghosts of memories lingering in the darkness. In this moment of in-between, of half-sleep, I drift back into the illusion of running my fingers through his hair and it seems so real that it sends shivers down my spine.

A dream, no more.

The realisation leaves a deafening silence in its wake, a heavy weight that settles on my chest while those dream-shapes of touch and warmth and need are still dancing shamelessly in the dark.

Mocking.

Suffocating.

Overwhelming.

Too much.

I reach out then, helplessly, blindly. For something - anything - to cling to and my hand brushes against skin that is not my own.

There is a sleepy sigh and the rustle of sheets, and I tear my hand away as if it was burned, holding my breath, pressing my eyes shut.

"Angel?"

I would recognise his voice anywhere.

Shouted from across the street over the noise of cars rushing past.

Mumbled from behind a piece of newspaper he's pretending to read.

Whispered dazedly in the middle of the night with no light to see his face.

"Angel, 's up?"

A hand reaches over and bumps into my arm clumsily. I lay paralysed, barely dare to breathe. His smell is there, too, now - how had I not noticed it before? - and his fingers find my wrist and linger there. Forming words into a sentence has never been harder.

"I woke up," is what I manage eventually.

"Yeah. Woke me up, too."

"I'm sorry."

"Nah. 's fine. What's the matter?"

There is genuine concern in his voice, so much of it that my eyes are stinging with tears all of the sudden. I cannot remember having heard him like this ever before. Quiet. Tender, even. Slow, as if I was a grazing deer, easily startled.

It's too much, I mean to tell him while he pushes himself up, awake now, and throws his shadow over me (invisible in the darkness, but I can feel it). His fingers tighten around my wrist, his skin cool to the touch. Cold-blooded, I remember vaguely.

"Angel," he repeats for the third time, low and gentle.

I cannot quite recall when it was that he began calling me that, or when this simple word became so inexplicably soft rolling off his tongue that my breath catches in my throat.

"You're here," I say, too far gone to be embarrassed about stating the obvious. "You're real."

He laughs then, a quiet sound, and leans forward to nuzzle my neck. Hot breath washes over my skin, and this time I cannot suppress the helpless gasp in the back of my throat.

"Hush," he whispers against my skin before pressing an open-mouthed kiss below my jaw. "I've got you, angel."

Before my brain has time to catch up, I sink one hand in his auburn hair, carding my fingers through them like I had in my dream. Had it even been a dream? So many centuries spent, watching him drag his fingers through those strands carelessly. Push back that one that keeps falling into his eyes.

In a moment of wonder, I realise how I must be the first with his permission to touch him this way. How I must be the only one.

"You're here," I mumble again and feel his lips curl into a smile against my skin.

He doesn't remark on the pathetic tremble in my voice.

He doesn't laugh at the desperation with which I cling to him.

He wraps me up in his arms like a child and pulls me closer. Tucks my head under his chin and presses another kiss into my hair.

"I'm here," he confirms, voice vibrating in his chest like I never heard it before, and he holds me until I drift off to the sound of his heartbeat.


Well?