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I was never good at comforting my girlfriend.
Mikasa just lay there, quietly falling apart, abandoning her tears on the already soaking duvet. She must have not heard me come into the house because she would've wiped away her tears and pretended to be asleep. She hardly made a sound when she cried.
I hated it.
I gently set my bag down and close the door behind me with a soft click. Our room smelt like laundry, and the nightlight on her side of the bed hit her in a way that made her look so small. I strip slowly, making my presence known, and just like clockwork her normally sturdy frame stops shaking. It was like watching an earthquake.
Her skin was cool to the touch, and her hair damp. I gently run my finger through strands of raven, letting the moisture gather on my fingers. She always loved it when I did this, although it was usually when she had me pinned against a wall, hardly an inch apart, raggedly breathing down my neck. Its so disorienting sometimes.
But I love her.
I shiver when my legs meet hers, entangling with each other, she turns around and burrows herself into me. She knows how bad I am at being the bigger spoon, its hard when she’s almost a foot taller than me. Every part of her feels cold. She was probably standing under a cold tap before she got into bed. A tactic she used when she was deployed, said it calmed her down. I tried to break that habit, I told her she would get a cold one day. She gave me a look; we both knew that wasn't true. It was a distasteful joke for a doctor to make.
I use every inch of me to try and warm her up, using one hand to rub at her back, the other underneath her head. I kiss her brow and she sighs.
“Annie.”
I grunt back in response, the same grunt I use when I’m consumed by paperwork after a bad day at work. Shut up. I pull back slightly to kiss away her tears, I can see the colour of her eyes in the faint light. Stormy grey; such a rare eye colour. She’s stopped crying but she’s looking away from me, blinking slowly, deliberately, as if she’s afraid if she blinks too fast tears will start to leak out again. Her brow is knitted together, nose scrunched up, and her bags suddenly look darker. Frustration and shame leaked out of her and filled the room, crawling into every groove of every piece of furniture. My mouth became a hard thin line and I closed my eyes, bumping my forehead against hers roughly.
“Stop it. I love you.”
Her second sigh is heavy, shaky, wavering. I open my eyes again to finally be greeted with her shifting gaze. We stare at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to say something. Or rather, we were both trying to figure out what to say. Mikasa gets there first.
“Okay.”
I wait till she closes her eyes, and I close mine as well, letting sleep be our remedy for tonight. The skin on her back warm and the third sigh tapers off into a dreamless sleep.