16 / comfort how to

What is the name for the thing pressing against his breastbone like a tiny Keebler elf trying to get out? He suspects it could be another pesky feeling but hopes it's high blood pressure, or a burp stuck inside of him. He's lying on his side, face pressed into his pillow, wide-the-fuck-awake trying to figure this out.

Above him, she keeps sniffing like she has a runny nose. Tiny movements in the bed bunk's rickety frame are questionable. What is she doing up there?

He thinks she might be upset. In fact, if his feelers are working, he's pretty sure she's trying to hide how upset she is. And he thinks he knows why.

"Bon," he whispers into the dark.

No response. Incidentally, the sniffling also pauses. Does she really think she can fake sleeping on him?

"Bon."

The tiniest sob can be heard from where the roof connects at a point above her head.

"Bonnie?"

He's on his feet before he knows what he's doing, standing on his mattress so he can look over her. She's a lump of blankets facing the other direction, shuddering. She gasps sharply and he's certain now. She's crying.

"Bon, you ok?"

"Mm-hmm," she lies.

He reaches his hand out super tentatively. What if she burns it off? But it's a risk he decides he's willing to take. He flattens his hand on the lump of blankets, hoping to god he lands somewhere closer to her shoulder than her ass. He can't see.

"What's wrong?" he asks, even though he knows.

Now that the jig is up, she just cries harder. Would it be weird to move his hand back and forth? Isn't that how people comfort each other? He isn't sure. He needs to watch a movie to see how it's done successfully. He needs it done to him at least once in his life.

"Hey, it's ok."

He's desperate. He feels like he's trying to calm a baby down, except that she understands language. But what are the right words?

"Hey," he tries cooing. His voice is shaky. Jesus, is he going to cry now too? Something about seeing her do it is really fucking with him, like the whole world is quaking and nothing will be right until it stops.

He moves for the ladder and hoists himself up in one minimally clumsy maneuver. He just has to get closer to feel like anything he says will make a difference. And maybe that's just it. Words aren't always as impactful as touch. Humans need touch. As if he isn't also human, he pauses to solve what feels like a calculus problem in his head as he considers how to do this without getting himself maimed. If he had his phone, or the time, he'd Google "comfort how to" or "wikihow to comfort someone who hates my guts." He lies in back of the blanket lump and puts his hand on what should be the approximate location of her upper arm, his elbow hovering just above rest on her body.

To his utter surprise, he's still living. Stupidly, he pats her a few times, and stops that immediately. She isn't a horse.

"It's ok," he says. He thinks that's right. She hasn't said anything, and it doesn't seem like she wants to talk about it. That's fine with Kai. She doesn't have to talk about it.

He wishes he could wring Jeremy's neck with a string of Christmas lights. What kind of a person gives up on a person like Bonnie? Kai is new to loyalty, but so far it comes most natural to him where Bonnie is concerned. More natural, it seems, than with anyone else around her who's been capable of loyalty their whole lives. He would pull the moon down and serve it to her for dessert if she liked. He could alter the earth's rotational axis with the weight of what he's feeling right now if it was something that could be thrown at the ground. As is, he's stuck with what sits like a supernaturally heavy rock in his chest. He smells her rose and fire-smoked hair and feels the rock shift until it moves him, his chest against her back, her arm hot under his hand. With his other hand, he props his head up and watches her shuddering form become still over time with calm.

Remembering the last time he was this close to her, so close he could smell her hair, he winces. He was holding an arm around her throat from the backseat of a car. It occurs to him now that he should be stunned she's let him so close again. If roles were reversed, and it were anyone but her, fat chance. He doesn't forgive. He forgets it's wrong to kill.

Now that he can acknowledge his own luck, he only wants to cherish it. He deepens his hold on her, wraps his arm all the way so that his consolation is a cage around her, but she isn't trying to get out. He feels her fists graze his hand, so he lets his palm and fingers fall over one of them, knowing there's no way for her to reciprocate, no pressure on her to decide anything but to pull her fist away from his hand or not. And she doesn't.

Though he knows better, it's still impossible for him not to think of where else this could go. She saw his dick the other day. It took a lot of energy not to ask her, in that sly and teasing way he does, if she saw anything she liked. He really didn't mean to flash her, but he thinks it's funny now. Now that his dick is safely in his pants and she can't maim him for the accidental flashing. He wonders still. She's too good to have let him catch her lingering. No double-takes, no peeks. He hopes to impress her eventually, perhaps at a less vulnerable, less accidental occasion. As she drifts to sleep under his arm, he knows that occasion won't be now, and that's fine. He's content, actually. Warm, sleepy, and oozy.

He doesn't intend to fall asleep there, but it happens. Just like shit happens. When he wakes up first in the blue of early dawn and realizes his mistake, he tries to get up without disturbing her. It would be best, he knows, if she didn't wake up to him still being there. He returns to his lowly bottom bunk, which is colder than their nest they'd formed in hers, and he sleeps to dream of still lying there doing nothing in particular but being the guy she lets hold her in times of sorrow.