Chapter Text
Mike claws up from sleep kicking and screaming, limbs trapped in a cocoon of blankets and sheets. He scrambles for the lights but he’s in an unfamiliar hotel room and he bowls the bedside lamp over with a tremendous clatter. He finally gets himself up and the light switches on across the room as the occupant of the other bed wakes and stirs in the commotion.
“Mike?” Tommaso mumbles, wiping his eyes, trying to blink away the sleep. He flips the lamp on and the room is bathed in yellow lamplight.
Mike has to investigate each shadow cast by it before his heart starts to slow back down. He’s shaking from the burst of adrenaline and Tommaso is sitting up, blankets pooled around his waste and looking worried.
“Weird dream.” He tried to sound confident but his mouth is dust-dry and it comes out more a shaky croak than anything else.
“Are you okay?” Tommaso asks. “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about what happened with-“
“Don’t- say his name.” Mike snaps, takes a second to breathe and compose himself. “I don’t, and I’m fine.”
“It doesn’t have to be me, it could be anyone.”
If Mike was going to confide in anyone, it’d have been Tommaso. He doesn’t say this out loud. He doesn’t say anything. He pulls the blankets up around his shoulders so he can pretend that he’s just shaking because the room is cold.
“You’re safe here.”
“But how do you know that? How do I know that?”
Tommaso doesn’t answer that, but he scoots over a little on his bed. And Mike doesn’t say anything, but slides over to the other bed, casting looks at the dark beneath the bed as he goes. He slips under Tommaso’s blankets and curls up around himself, in a little ball.
Tommaso curls around him, pulls the blankets up. Maybe Mike was cold after all, because the warmth of another body is so soothing. He thought he’d never sleep again, but his eyes are already drifting shut.
Neither of them will talk about this in the morning, or ever again. But Mike sleeps through the night and wakes up softly in the morning, and Tommaso is there, and he’s not going anywhere, and he thinks that things might be okay.