Their situations reversed with such rapid speed that Memo felt dizzy. He imagined their little scene spinning out like a scene transition on old episodes of Batman.

“Hey.” He reached up and scrubbed at Alex’s arms, as though to rub the warmth back into him. “You’re okay. We’re right here. We’re safe.”

It was the same thing Alex had been telling him all night. He exhaled, long and slow, realizing. The heavy truth settled in his gut.

“We’re both going to be okay.”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

“Me too,” Memo said, which felt a little silly to say because it was so freaking obvious, but sometimes there was comfort in acknowledgment.

He wiggled back to sit up on his elbows and kissed the bridge of Alex’s nose.

“We will,” he said, and there was no doubt, not the hint of a waver. “Of course we will.” He brushed strands of white-blonde hair behind Alex’s ear. “It will just take time.”

Oh, how the turntables?

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

Guillermo wrapped an arm around Alex’s shoulders as the two of them settled into the pillows, both of them reaching a sort of emotional equilibrium for the first time in the evening.

Memo gave a short sigh, because he wasn’t sure he really wanted to risk plunging them back into turmoil, but…

“If you want to share, then yes.”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

Guillermo’s eyebrows knit together as he listened to Alex speak, rubbing over his shoulder and bicep gently with the palm of one hand. A couple of times he wanted to jump in and interject, to tell Alex that nothing he was saying was his fault, but fought the urge down, instead allowing his boyfriend to speak his whole piece.

“On the beach?” Memo says, feeling Alex’s rabbit-rate heart race beneath his palm. “After everything? Yeah. Th-that’s when I found you… again.” And he’d loaded Alex up on the dragon and whisked him away to the hospital and--

“Do you think… the other you. He’s still there? Like, he came back with you?” He frowned. “That seems unlikely, honey. Maybe you’re just having… stress responses. Like me and my night terrors.”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

Memo’s brow creases with concern, and he cups his palm around Alex’s cheek, frowning.

“This is… I don’t even know how to go about fixing that,” he said, quiet, slightly stupefied by the volumes of fucked up that seemed.

“How do we fix that?”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

Memo didn’t have an answer for him, and it was deeply unsettling on more than one account. He reached forward and took Alex’s head in his hands, sliding his fingers between Alex’s palms and his ears, and did the only thing he knew how to do, really: he pulled him down into a kiss, firm and hard and insistent.

It worked to distract him so he wagered-- he hoped-- it worked for Alex, too.

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov