She slept, blessed calm. It was cool in her room, with the window AC poised right next to her bed and the soft, lulling drone of her box fan going all night. She did, at some point, register a gentle ache in her arm, the one that was looped underneath Isaac’s head. But it was a distant sort of numbness that filtered in and out of her dreams, all varying images of mishmashed nonsense.

At some point in the night they shifted, rolling onto their sides. Cyg pressed closer up against Isaac, higher up on her pillows, her arm threaded in the niche between his neck and shoulder, fingers still entwined. Her other arm snaked over the curve of his ribcage, effectively trapping him in as the little spoon.

He was three inches shorter than her. It made sense.

Morning drifted in through the shut blinds. Birdsong from the dormer directly above her room became intense. There was the sound of the door bell dingling from below as the bakery woke up-- but they slept through most of the prep. It wasn’t until the sound of a full lunch-hour rush finally overrode the sound of her fan that Cyg’s eyes peeled open, with some hesitancy.

She nuzzled up against the back of Isaac’s head, nose dragging through the spread of his golden cowlicks as, slowly, she registered the numbness in her arm and fingers and the dull throb from her wrist from being bent and grasped for the last eight hours. It wasn’t uncomfortable, not completely.

The events of the previous night set in like a stone dropping in a well and she-- she was too tired to care. Too comfy to panic. There would be consequences, eventually. You didn’t do this-- this-- this level of canoodling without… attachments. Because all they’d done was slept and there was weight and meaning in that, too. As much in the actions they didn’t take as the ones they did.

But right then, she didn’t much care.

She tightened the arm around his waist, pulling him back firmer against her.

“Can I have my arm back,” she murmured sleepily over the top of his head, chin resting on the crown of his skull, “I can't feel it anymore.”

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

“Thanks,” she murmured into the top of his head, raising her arm straight in the air to stretch it and get some feeling back into it. The bloodlessness tingled down her fingers into her wrist.

Cyg figured she should get up and go downstairs for coffee and breakfast-- lunch? Brunch, at least-- but he was so warm and soft and the bed was so comfy and the room was cool. And they’d already done this-- this extended cuddle sesh so what other barriers were their in their relationship, such as it was?

"Good." Her brain was still waking up.

Isaac got his wish.

She let her arm fall gently back down into its intended niche and wrapped the limb around his waist tighter, pulling him back closer to her, nuzzling into his hair. It was nice and soft.

“Yes,” she said, muffled by the width of his skull between them, “but only if you really wanna talk about it.”

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

She wanted to cut him off and assure him that she, least of all, had the right to pieces of him-- memories or experiences or opinions-- that he didn’t wish to share. But he did, in a way, seem ready to have it all off his chest, so she sat and listened.

She felt him shiver, caught on the edge of a breath that rattled out of him like a chain smoker's cough. Her grip on him tightened. She didn’t know what else to do to show him that he was safe. His hand threaded back through hers and she let it without complaint, even if her fingers were still tingly.

And she listened, in silence, as Isaac recounted the harrowing tale that almost got him killed, and exposed him to death in a way that would be shattering for anyone, let alone a first-timer. The more he spoke, the colder she got, the more distant he felt. And after he was done, she let his question hang in silence as she-- for one of the only times in her life-- thought about what to say.

“You didn’t fail anyone,” was the first thing, and it was said with an intensity that clenched her jaw. “They-- you--,”

They made their bed as worm-eating pieces of shit and now they get to sleep in it, was what she wanted to say.

But Isaac was so-- so-- he was light. He was air. He wasn’t an innocent, not really, but, he didn’t deserve this-- this-- meat-grinder of a life. She was at a loss. She didn’t know if he needed her frank, unfiltered brutality, or if he needed more comfort. Maybe both. But they were like oil and water… she didn’t know how to mix them.

Cyg swallowed hot tears and released the arm at his waist to slap and grab at her bedside table, wresting a Pokeball out from under a pair of jeans that had been dropped there. She depressed the button and her Gardevoir appeared in a burst of light.

“Kan,” Cyg said, struggling to sit up a little-- wincing when the underwire of her bra bit into her ribcage, she’d slept in it all night, oops-- “can you go down and get us some coffee and food? Just a pot, and whatever they have. Breakfast, lunch, whatever.”

Kanaya tipped her head in silent acquiescence, the graceful curvature of her crest lifting in a questioning glance at the body currently sharing Cyg’s bed.

“Thank you, Kanaya,” she said, pointedly, and the Gardevoir telported from the room with a warbling noise.

Cyg turned her attention back to Isaac, covering him again with her arm. She traced one finger down the ridge of his forearm, down to his palm, pressing it gently back and open so she could hold his outstretched hand.

“You can’t do this kind of thing alone,” she eventually said, “live this life, alone. Maybe… maybe some people can, like the assassin guy. But he’s not special. He’s just another cold asshole killing people. Big whoop.” Her tone had turned bitter and she fought it back under control. “But you can’t, Isaac. Not because you’re incapable, or incompetent, or unskilled. You’re not any of those things. But you--,” she struggled, swallowing the emotion in her voice, “you’re good. You have-- this is going to sound so cheesy-- you have a *good heart.*”

And she knew it and she was right. She’d known it from the moment she’d met him, when he’d fallen flat on his face then had his Totodile fire a Hydro Pump point blank into his eyes. She knew when they fell into that stupid Absol pit and when they sat at the bar and when they discussed the pros and cons-- mostly the cons-- of his Hunka Junka death machine.

She sighed, realizing the weight of what she was carrying in her chest. What she was feeling. It was terrifying. It would, at some point, have to be dealt with-- what she felt for Isaac. What it was turning into. What they were turning into. She would have to assess the fragility of this thing she was holding in her hands and if she trusted herself not to shatter it into a million pieces or tarnish it with her soot and grease.

“I guess what I’m saying,” she said, tone softer, but no less passionate, “is that-- you can’t expect yourself to just feel. Nothing. It’s-- it’s normal for you to wish you hadn’t seen that. That’s not a weakness. Because you’re not weak. But it shouldn’t be, I don’t know, a penance, either. Because honestly? If you’d come back and told me this story and they weren’t dead, I’d have gone and killed them myself.”

She shut up after that, because her voice had turned hard, and she squeezed him, burying her face into the space between his shoulder blades as she tried not to cry angry tears.

A vague worbling sound signaled the return of Kanaya, who brought with her the smell of baked goods and coffee, and she placed a covered tray of pastries and a bag of bagels on the bed, and a cardboard to-go box of coffee on the floor next to the bed, before she vamoosed, again.

⚰︎ oops i 900 words

Isaac Merlo

She knew he was going to argue. It was expected of him. No one let someone else call them a good person without a fight, unless they were actually a dick, and Isaac wasn’t. So she held him through his stuttered disagreement as though she could squeeze the fight out of him. Or into him-- she really wasn’t sure.

“Yeah,” she said, and it melted into his laughter. She smiled into his back. “Yeah, it is okay.” She laughed with him.

“No one’s perfect,” she said. “I didn’t call you perfect. I called you good.”

He asked her if she heard herself and she sighed, stretching up and away from him to lay back on the bed. “Good. I’m glad I bullied into accepting your sainthood. Don’t make yourself a martyr, okay?” She was trying to cover the cracks in her armor with humor and doing a poor job of it.

“Yeah, well,” she said, laughing at his admission that her death threats sounded better than the other guys’, “I’m betting you weren’t in bed with him, either.”

She sat up, reaching for the tray of cafe goodies Kanaya had brought back with her one free hand. “I don’t need to cry,” she said, and sounded angry when she said it, “I need to hit something.” Listening to him tell that story made her so angry. Angry that there were people in the world that would do that to other people. Angry that it had happened to Isaac. Angry she hadn't been there to protect him.

She snapped off the plastic cover and tossed it on the floor. “And also, maybe eat a bear claw.”

The food had taken up all of her focus and she almost missed his little admission, there at the end.

She looked at him.

“You matter to me, too.”

⚰︎ oops i 900 words

Isaac Merlo

So here she was. Just staring into Isaac’s eyes as he laid out his little gameplan. Partners. The word was an omen. It made her heart do funny things, made her pulse sound volcanic in her ears.

Partners. She had to swallow, had to remember how to breathe. Because it was more than that, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Or was she just reading too much into it? Partners. Responsible for each other’s survival. He was worried about her almost dying-- he was worried about her getting hurt.

Partners. Not having to go into any more haunted houses alone. Not having to go back to Sea Mauville, alone. But more importantly, it was Isaac not having to go through this, alone. Not having him walk out to this edge, alone.

Partners.

“Partners,” she agreed, breaking a bear claw in half over the pastry box to not get crumbs all over the bed. She put one half on a napkin and placed it on Isaac’s chest.

“I swear it on the bear claw.”

Partners.

⚰︎ oops i 900 words

Isaac Merlo