Work Text:
At the Door
The night is quiet for once, in ways it hasn't felt in years.
There's no scream of traffic. No thousand voices clawing against your shields, cracked fingernails of harsh, scraping thoughts in a harsh, scathing city seeking to peel their way through your mind and drive you mad.
No, tonight, it's quiet. The smooth lake of Spoon's mind, the soft, melting warmth of his little body beneath velveteen fur your rock, your anchor. Keeping you grounded tonight as the insipid deceit of silence echoes in your mind. Less silence than void, meant to ward off far worse from entering. There's a string, poppy-red, angry, clawing its way up from your cancerous heart, and it vanishes into nothingness as soon as it enters your mind. Better to feel nothing at all right now. You know this. Learned this. You'd never have made it this far if you didn't know how to kill what makes you feel angry.
Spoon's soft whine dampens the following simmer, and you tilt his head up, kissing his nose. Half comfort to him, half comfort to yourself. You won't lose yourself tonight- not with his help. His small, comforting weight at your side, the dull thud of a tail, lulled to tire by the slow blue glow of dawn, of fluttering happiness for the affection. So much like yourself.
Your lips purse at the memory. Startling away against a warm body as an alarm blared. Gentle, watery murmurs of comfort, it was just his pager, and he needs to go. Foggy memories of helping him put his arms back on. He can take care of his legs from there, he sure, but thanks you regardless when you'd failed to blink the sleep from your eyes. Metal hands tilting your head up, briefly cradling your chin, your cheek. Firm lips warped with scar tissue pressing little kisses into your cheeks, your forehead, before whispering a goodbye. You leave an extra kiss on Spoon's snout for good measure, like he had for you.
Your hands gently scratch Spoon's fur, rewarded with his happy little sigh as his head nuzzles into the sheets once more. Your heart aches.
You'd never been touched like you had the night before.
No tension, no expectation. No arousal, no focus. Just soft affection. Traced into your skin before sleep threatened him with aching joints in the morning if he didn't disconnect his mods. Roughshod steel scratched small patterns against your skin, aimless and airy. You'd shuddered as it first touched your skin. "Cold," you'd said, as if both of you didn't know the real reason your whole body shivered. You'd been called a dog your whole life, but you'd never been petted. Scratched. Touched simply to give affection. To receive it in that way. No obligation except to wiggle away if you didn't enjoy it. Just comfort; the kind only loved things receive.
You bury your face in Spoon's scruff to conceal the sting in your eye. The throbbing sear in your chest has chilled to a dull ache, a pain of a different kind. You're used to waking up angry. Angry at the world, the people in it, yourself- you'd thought you'd carved out the part of your heart capable of longing, and yet here you are. Longing for that touch again. For him. His smile.
Curled up with his noodle dog in stegosaurus pajamas at 3am, fading in and out of sleep, staring at the door, waiting for him to come home.
His home.
You don't dare believe that it could ever be anything else.