Seri smiled, his own eyes blurring with tears as he lightly brushed the man’s away. “My head seems even more fucked up than I realized. I should feel relieved, shouldn’t I? Right now, I should feel like I can breathe clearly, heavily, without worry, but…I feel the same.” Seri swallowed hard, smile slipping away. “It doesn't feel like anything has changed. I still feel…like there is this weight pressing down on me, ready to topple me at any moment. Why don’t I feel better?” Seri sobbed. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing! Nothing is wrong with you.” Severo wrapped his arms around him, pulling him tightly to his chest. “Give yourself time to breathe, Seri. By the void, it’s been mere hours. Whose standards are you judging yourself by? Because throw them out. Whatever you are feeling, or not feeling…there is nothing wrong with it. There's nothing fucked up about it… Just let yourself deal with whatever you need to deal with on your own terms.”
Seri clutched onto his shirt, burying his face into the man’s chest as he started to sob harder. He didn’t know what he was crying about. His mind was blank, not one thing, or one reason came to mind, yet at the same time…it was everything. Everything was wrong, everything that had happened to him, everything that he had experienced.
It was everything. Seri wailed in despair, as instead of relief, he let himself feel the full weight, the full loss, of these last six years. Buried in the arms of the man who loved him, who even now cried with him, Seri held none of the pain back.
Seri snuggled into Severo’s chest, still not really awake. Despite getting to Severo’s apartment around 5pm the other day, after their confessions…and having a slight—okay, it had been more than aslight—emotional breakdown, Seri had pretty much conked out. He actually didn’t even know when he fell asleep. He had just been crying one moment and then, yeah…
“You awake?” Severo murmured, voice a deep rumble.
Seri grunted. “Time?” He slowly opened his eyes, winced at how grainy they felt. His throat didn’t feel much better…
The Dweller laughed softly. “I'm guessing the answer is, you're about as awake as you are going to be at the moment without coffee. It’s almost 11am.”
“Mm.” What he wanted to say was thank you for getting up and taking care of Skya, because she had no doubt woken up demanding food.
He’d thank the man later. Seri glanced up. The Dweller was looking down at him. His eyes looked red… He reached up and lightly brushed his finger over the raw skin. “Big softy,” he grumbled.
Severo smiled, grabbing his hand, and he lightly kissed his finger. “Yours don’t look any better.” The Dweller gave his hand one more kiss, and then he had the audacity to slip out from under Seri and get up.
He let out a huff.
Severo chuckled. “Let me go get the little gummy bear, not to mention your cup of coffee…and then we should probably talk.”
Seri sighed, and murmured, “If we must.”
The man snorted. “I’ll go get that coffee.”
Fifteen minutes later, Skya was sitting in his lap shaking a toy, while Seri sat back against the wall, holding his heavily sugared cup of coffee. He blew on it lightly before taking a long sip. As the thickly sugared, syrup mixed substance made its way into his system, he let out a happy groan. It felt good against his slightly scratchy throat.
Severo got on the bed beside him, and handed Skya a sippy cup in exchange for her toy. She dropped the toy and snagged the cup, and started to suck it down.
“Well now that you two have your drinks…”
“Talk, talk,” Seri grunted, taking another sip.
“About the future, or…last night…or well, what I didn’t tell you about yesterday?”
Seri thought about it… The future…even with the good that happened yesterday, still seemed way too horrifyingly complicated… Ugh, should he get last night out of the way? And then maybe yesterday? “Last night and then whatever the thing was yesterday.”
“How are you feeling?”
Seri frowned and thought about it. “I don’t…feel relieved yet. But I feel less like my world is about to come crashing down around me this morning. A little less. I think I was able to let go of some things last night though. Some of the things I refused to let myself feel while I was still in the middle of it all. But…I think it would be best if I…got my meetings set up with Lance as soon as possible…”
Severo reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m proud of you.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I really know how to lose my…poop.” He eyed Skya in his lap, when she didn’t yell out her little ‘oop’. The little girl was still sucking down her juice. “Anyway, that is where I am at. I need help. So, tell me about the thing you didn’t tell me yesterday.”
Severo cleared his throat, and crossed his arms. “Well…you know how Cyrus is a Grimm, right?”
“Aren’t most in charge at the CEB part of that family?”
“Yes… Um, but…Cyrus and I have been, well, I’ve known him since I was a child. Our families, well, his parents and mine, are friends.” Severo sighed, frowning.
Seri took another sip, before setting his mug on Severo’s one end table that luckily happened to be on his side. “Tell me, what happened?”
“They see things. And they don’t think the way most people do. So, they make decisions based on how they view the world, accepting things as unchangeable, without considering how those decisions will affect the people around them.”
