The living room is bathed in the faint glow of a full moon that has found a gap in the clouds. It’s enough to see Finn. He’s tangled in my duvet on the pull-out, half-sitting. The unicorn sleep mask has slipped up from his eyes to his forehead. His breathing is an erratic rhythm that cuts through the silence. His eyes are wide, staring at a spot beyond me.
He’s drowning or something. In the middle of my living room, he’s drowning.
My heart pounds so hard it bruises my ribs, and my brain flashes through a list of anxieties.
This is too much. This is how you get burned. This is…
But my feet are already moving. My instinct to fix is a force of nature. This old reflex is stronger than my fear.
And this is not anyone. It’s Finn.
I don’t make a sound until I’m right beside the sofa. ‘Shhh…Finn.’
His head snaps towards me, but his eyes don’t focus. They’re glassy with terror. He’s not here. He’s in another world, somewhere awful.
‘Hey…’ I keep my tone gentle and even, a human stabiliser. ‘Hey, it’s me. Theo.’
I don’t ask what’s wrong. I don’t ask if he’s okay. He is clearly not okay, and the question is useless. Instead, I pull back a corner of the duvet. I budge in beside him, my strawberry-print jammies the wrong uniform for this kind of rescue mission.
No idea if this is one of those ‘do not wake up’ or ‘wake up immediately’-nightmare scenarios. So I’m going with my instincts. They’re all I got. I roll onto my side to face him and carefully pull him towards me. The space is so tight that our knees are bumping. I lift my hands to his face. His skin is clammy.
‘You’re here with me.’ My voice is a quiet line in the dark. I turn his face towards mine, forcing him to see me, to latch onto something real. ‘The power’s out, that’s all. But you’re safe. You’re here.’
His pupils are vast, black holes swallowing the moonlight. He’s looking through me. A shudder racks his body.
‘Hey. Hey, look at me.’ I stroke his cheek lightly. ‘I’ve got you. I’m here.’
I place my palm flat against his sternum. His heart is a wild beast trapped behind his breastbone.
‘Feel that? That’s my hand. You’re safe. It’s okay.’
He gasps, a ragged sound, and his own hands fly up, tangling in my hair. It’s not rough or harsh, more a clutch. A drowning man grabbing a rope. His fingertips press against my scalp, rooting himself in the reality of me. Of us.
‘Breathe with me, Finn.’ I take an exaggerated breath in, hold it, and release it slowly. ‘Come on. In…and out.’
His gaze flickers, a tiny spark of awareness.
‘Again,’ I command softly. ‘With me. In…’ I watch his chest rise in a stuttering, shallow movement. ‘And out.’
He lets it go in a rush.
‘Good. That’s so good.’ I start a rhythm. ‘I’m right here. You’re not alone. It’s okay. It’s okay, love. I’m here.’
His breathing starts to slow, to match my own. The wildness in his eyes begins to recede, and his focus sharpens until he’s not looking through me anymore. He’s looking at me. Seeing me.
The woman in the silly jammies who crawled right into his nightmare.
The erratic pounding of his heart beneath my palm eases and settles into a heavy, resonant thud. We’re inhaling the same cold air, exhaling the same small cloud of steam. We’re breathing each other.
‘Sorry.’ He sounds sandpaper-rough. ‘Bad dream.’
‘Yeah, I figured as much.’
He traces the shell of my ear with his thumb, so featherlight it tickles. ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with this. You need sleep.’
‘Neither should you. Yet here we are.’ I don’t move away. The pull between us has its own gravity, so elemental that it makes physics irrelevant. ‘Wanna talk about it?’
He swallows, the sound audible in our cocoon, and lets the silence settle. I think he’s weighing whether unloading all of it is worth it or not.
