Chapter Text
Luke is cold.
Which doesn’t make much sense if you think about it. The closed lid of the toilet seat is warm underneath him from sitting on it for so long, and the warmth of the summer sunlight had only just fully faded away this late in the night, and the cuts on his thigh are burning red-hot like magma—
He doesn’t really feel any of it though, is the thing. There’s a sting as he pulls the blade across his skin one more time, but it’s a lesser one than most of the others he did that night. The first ones always hurt the worst; you get used to them after a while. Other than the sting, though: nothing.
He watches the blood dot up, unblinking. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know when that started, but he knows it’s been going on for a while. If not when he started cutting, then when he brought the blade out for the night.
The others are asleep on the other side of the door. They’re nearing the end of their Fringe run, and as much as Luke hates the thought of having to leave them again so soon, he can’t help but be relieved that the month is almost over. They’ve all been so stressed lately.
Luke’s been making them all so stressed lately.
AJ’s still having trouble sleeping, after all this time. His illness hasn’t fully worn off, and Luke can feel the guilt churn in his gut every time he catches a glimpse of AJ’s pale face and his dark circles. Tom’s panic attack, the mi cielo incident, the fact that Luke was so fucking careless and stupid—
He draws another cut. Takes a deep breath.
He’s seen the worried glances they’ve been throwing his way, has heard their loving platitudes. But no matter what they say, he knows the truth.
It’s his fault. It’s always been his fault.
He looks over the cuts he’s done so far tonight and sighs. He’s running out of room on this side; he’ll have to switch to his left leg before long. If not tonight, then tomorrow.
The ache in his chest switches colors to disappointment. He knows, in the back of his mind, that he shouldn’t be doing this, knows he’s only letting himself down. The last time he was cutting this regularly was in secondary school — unless you count a couple of uni relapses — and he had been genuinely proud of himself for getting through that part of his life. Getting past it.
There are other reasons not to do it, he supposes. His partners, for one.
But then again, they’re why he has to. He has to keep his troubles under control, has to keep his stupid insecurities hidden away so he doesn’t infect the others with them and make them worry and make them panic and make them not able to sleep—
And then, of course, there’s the fact that he already has. He has made them worry, he still makes them worry. So he needs to punish himself, too.
Part of him wants to stop for the night. Surely this has been enough, surely he can crawl back in bed and wrap himself around the others and forget about the world again for just a little while. Surely he can hold them, and be held, and just rest. He runs a finger across one of the dryer cuts, breaking the seal and smearing the blood.
The rest of him knows he doesn’t deserve that.
The door to the bathroom suddenly opens.
Luke looks up, alarmed. Tom stares back at him, squinting in the light.
Tom's been there for a while, hasn’t he? He’s been knocking on the door and softly calling Luke’s name for a few minutes at least. Luke just didn’t register the noise until well after it stopped.
Tom furrows his eyebrows at Luke. “You good? You weren’t responding. You’ve been in here for ages.”
Luke is frozen. He’s eternally grateful for the sink beside him, blocking Tom’s view of his legs. That is, until Tom steps forward.
“Luke, wh—” And then Tom is frozen, his eyes wide, and Luke is shaking harder than before because he saw he saw they weren’t supposed to see. “Oh my god. Luke— Luke?”
Luke can barely hear him. He’s staring down at his lap, thoughts racing — he fucked it up he fucked it up so much worse than what’s he’s done before, and they’re never going to forgive him, and they’re never going to understand, and they’re never going to let him do this again—
Tom is kneeling in front of him. Luke isn’t sure when that happened. He can see the fear shining bright in Tom’s eyes like a torch in the night, can see the way Tom is shaking with him, can see the clear signs of an oncoming panic attack and Luke can’t help but curse himself. He wasn’t supposed to make them fucking worry — especially Tom, who has already been so anxious this past month. Luke can feel his throat closing up, can feel tears welling in his eyes.
“Hey, hey, Lukey, it’s ok, it’s ok.” Tom’s voice is shaking, but it manages to cut through into the fog of Luke’s mind nonetheless. There’s a hand on Luke’s knee, rubbing soothingly, as Luke hiccoughs through a sob. “It’s ok, don’t— fuck.” Tom’s breathing is picking up, and the guilt washes over Luke anew. “It’s ok, Lukey, it’s ok, I promise. Can— can you give me what you were using?”
Luke squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his fists, hiding the razor inside. He takes a heaving breath and shakes his head as much as he can — not very much, honestly, given how hunched his shoulders are and how deep his chin is being driven into his chest. He squeezes the razor again, grounding himself with the soft sting. Not enough to break his skin, but enough to quell the raging storm of emotions crashing through him if only for a brief moment.
He feels himself slide off the toilet and press against the wall beside it, directly across from the door. He brings his knees up and wraps his arms around them as he buries his face down, distantly aware of Tom continuing to keep a comforting hand on his knee. He feels like a fucking child. He cannot believe that Tom is tolerating this- this bullshit. That Tom thinks he has to pretend to.
Maybe if he sits here for long enough, Tom will realize that he’s allowed to leave. He’ll walk away and leave Luke behind like he always should have. Luke has only ever made everything worse.
Luke chokes out another sob at the thought. He can barely breathe, and his eyes ache from crying, but it’s true, isn’t it? Luke has only ever hurt them, all three of them. For their own good, they need to get rid of him. For their own good, he needs to get out of their lives completely.
“Luke, sweetheart, please.” Tom really is panicking, now, his grip too tight and his voice too loud. “Breathe with me, please, you have to breathe.”
Luke just shakes his head again. God he’s even difficult when they’re trying to help him, he really is a fucking child, how much worse of a partner could he possibly be—?
“Breathe, Lukey, please, fuck— In…” Tom sucks a dramatic breath in and holds it for a second. Not very long; he’s clearly struggling through the exercise. “And out. In… and out. Just follow my lead, love, it’s ok, it’s ok, I promise.” He takes a few quick breaths, scrambling to ground himself. “In… and out.”
It takes a minute, but Luke gets the hang of it eventually. Or something close to it, anyways. His body is still pulled tight like a bowstring and tears are still running down his cheeks and onto his glasses and smearing across his bare leg. He’s only in his boxer-briefs and a sleepwear shirt, and the sudden thought shocks a quick laugh out of Luke. Not much of one, but enough that Tom begins to calm down as well.
“Can you stretch your leg out for me?” Tom gently asks, and oh right this whole thing is still going on. Luke clenches his jaw and curls up tighter. The entire experience is mortifying.
“I know, sweetheart,” Tom mutters. “But I need to clean them up. It’ll be ok, I promise.”
It takes a minute, but Tom eventually coaxes him out. Luke looks up for long enough to see Tom’s blinding smile before tucking his head back on his other knee, pointedly looking away.
He can hear Tom’s quiet, wavering gasp as he takes in the cuts in their entirety. He can imagine Tom’s face, as well: the worry, the disappointment.
Luke closes his eyes and shutters as another sob falls out of him. He keeps it as silent as he can.
The sting of the antiseptic as Tom wipes down the cuts is distant, like a memory. Tom pries the blade out of his hand at some point, and Luke doesn’t try to fight it. The tears have stopped coming as well, Luke thinks. At least for now. Maybe.
Right now he just feels cold again.
“They’re not that bad,” Luke mutters. Tom pauses at the sound of Luke’s voice, but he continues cleaning in silence. Luke continues, “I won’t need stitches or anything. Most of the ones from tonight have probably stopped bleeding already, honestly.”
Tom swallows thickly. “They have, yeah.”
“So you don’t have to…” Luke sighs. He shifts his head so his forehead is resting on his knee; it’s the closest he can get to facing Tom right now. “You know. Clean up. I can do it myself, you can go back to bed.”
Tom really does stop at that. “Of course I’m going to clean up.” His voice is incredulous as he says it. “Of course I’m going to help you, this isn’t a matter of have to, of- of course I am, Luke. I love you.”
Luke squeezes his eyes shut, feeling himself tear up again. He doesn’t respond. Tom just sighs and finishes wiping down the cuts. There’s no bandages in the bathroom — at least not any that would effectively help, given the amount of space the damage covers — so simply cleaning them will have to do for now.
Luke glances down at the cuts once Tom’s done. The whole area is red and irritated, still pulsing with heat — but the cuts themselves are small. Thin. Insignificant. Such a little thing for such a fuss to be made over. Such a foolish thing.
“They really don’t look that bad once they’re clean,” Luke mutters.
Tom gives a frowning hum. “Agree to disagree.”
Luke snorts out a gentle laugh despite himself. He pulls his leg back up, pulling the fabric of his pants down to cover the scars again. Tom pulls him into a tight hug, and Luke lets him. Luke doesn’t feel his own tears until they’re already soaking into Tom’s shirt, until he’s already shaking in Tom’s arms. No matter what he does to stop them, they keep coming. He curses himself for letting his emotions get the better of him like this, but that only makes the tears fall harder.
And then the door opens again.
Luke immediately stiffens, pulling away from Tom’s embrace. This has already been mortifying enough with just one person catching him, now with two— Luke groans as he realizes that they must have woken the others up. Of course he’s made things worse once again. Of course.
“Hey.” It’s Sam. His voice is hesitant, unsure. “I heard voices, what…” There’s a pause. Sam steps further into the bathroom, picks something up.
There’s an infinite and suffocating silence.
Then, gently, terrified: “What’s going on?”
He already knows. Luke can tell he already knows. Blood rushes through his ears, and Luke wishes more than anything that the earth beneath him could come to life and swallow him whole, that he could run away from this conversation as fast as humanly possible, that he didn’t have to be here right now, why does he have to be here? Why did he have to be so immature and so stupid and such a horrible fucking partner that only ever makes things worse when they’re already bad enough as it is?
Tom’s voice is distant when he speaks, as though Luke is hearing him through a wall instead of right beside him. “He was… cutting himself, when I came in—”
“Fuck,” Sam curses.
“It’s not bad, I don’t think,” Tom rushes to continue. His voice rises in pitch as his breaths pick up. “They’re not very deep, they’re not bad, there’s just— a lot, and I- I- I don’t know what to do—”
Tom cuts himself off with a harsh breath. Luke curses himself, pulling at the hair at the nape of his neck — of course he’s making Tom have a panic attack. Again. Of course his emotional overreactions to his stupid fucking insecurities have led to something like this. Luke loathes himself for it, for Tom’s panic attack right now and the entire situation unfolding around him and the domino line of mis-steps that led them all to this point. He wishes that Tom hadn’t taken his razor, he wishes that he could just give himself what he deserves, can’t they see this is what he deserves?
“I’m going to get AJ.” Sam’s voice cuts through Luke’s spiraling thoughts, and Luke immediately whips his head up.
“No!” he hisses. He collapses as another sob rips through him. “No, no, you can’t, he’s still sick, you can’t wake him up, it’s a miracle he fell asleep tonight as it is, you can’t wake him up, you can’t wake him up, you can’t, you can’t, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Luke can’t stop speaking once he’s started. He has to clench his mouth shut and press a fist into his chin to keep from constantly blabbering apologies. Everything about him feels broken, from his disobeying body to his creaking, sobbing voice to his shattered emotions and his fraying mind.
“He needs to know what’s going on, Lukey.” Tom is whispering beside him, rubbing a hand up and down his back in an attempt to ground him. “I know it’s hard — trust me, I know, but we can’t do this without him. It’s going to be ok.”
But it’s not going to be ok, how can Tom not see that? Luke has put this burden on them that’s never going to be able to be removed, and now nothing will ever be ok again.
Fuck, why did Tom have to take his razor? Luke doesn’t even know where it is, Sam could have taken it away for all he knows. Sam probably did take it away, actually, knowing him. Luke claws at his cuts and he whines. He feels broken, he feels rabid, he feels cornered, he feels abused, he feels like concrete torn asunder by a root, he feels like the water at the bottom of the ocean with however many tons of its own pressure pressing down on top of it, he feels flayed alive, he feels bare, he feels raw—
“No, no, sweetheart, please don’t do that.” Tom is gently pulling Luke’s hand away, wrapping it up in both of his own hands and pulling it close to his chest. “Can- can you breathe with me? Remember? In and out, slowly, like this. In… and out.”
In and out, right. Luke goes along with it, if only because he has no other escape.
In
And out
In.
And out.
In.
And out.
“There we go, that’s it.” Tom kisses Luke’s hand, not letting go. It’s the only part of Luke not curled tightly in on itself. He’s squeezing so tight; Luke squeezes back as hard as he can. It isn’t much. “In and out, keep breathing.”
In.
And out.
“You weren’t supposed to see,” Luke whispers. More tears flow forth as the words unlodge what was stuck in his throat. He can feel the urge to blabber bubble up again, the relentless I’m sorrys, and he clenches his jaw shut in an attempt to stave them off.
In.
And out.
In.
And out.
In.
And out.
“I wasn’t supposed to worry you.”
Tom doesn’t respond to that. He just squeezes Luke’s hand again and pulls him in close, kissing his hair.
Sam and AJ come back at some point, alongside the mortification. Luke feels Sam sit down beside him, immediately pulling Luke into his lap. The motion forces Luke to uncurl most of the way, and a bolt of frantic panic shoots through him until he finds new comfort in Sam’s arms wrapped securely around his torso.
AJ settles on his other side, running a hand through Luke’s hair. He leans forward and kisses Luke’s head, softly and sweetly and filled to the brim with love. Love that Luke doesn’t deserve.
The words are out of him before Luke can stop himself, in a choke and a sob and an unending torrent: “I’m sorry.” He gasps, desperate for air as the tears start up again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
AJ is still running his fingers through Luke’s hair. His voice is kind when he speaks, gentle and soothing in a way only he knows how. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Lukey.”
“Yes there is!” Luke vehemently shoots back. “The fact that you all had to see all of—” He gestures as wildly around him as he can with only his hand, keeping his arms wrapped around him. “This! I woke everyone up, I woke you up, I’m giving Tom a panic attack, I make everything worse—”
Sam stops him in his tracks, resting his chin on Luke’s shoulder. “Whatever it is you think you’ve done, we’ve already forgiven you.”
Luke goes quiet at that.
“How bad is it?” he hears AJ ask the other two.
“Not… not that bad, I don’t think,” Tom says shakily. “None were very deep. There were… it’s just… there’s a lot, though.”
“Where?” Sam asks.
“His thigh.”
“Just his thigh?”
There’s a pause, and Luke realizes that Tom must be looking at him to answer the question. Luke nods. He can feel Sam practically collapse with relief behind him. There’s a kiss at the nape of his neck, and then Sam’s holding him tighter.
Luke lets his leg stretch out at Tom’s coaxing. His boxer-briefs had already ridden up from the scratching, and some of the cuts had opened up again. He feels more than hears the other two’s responses — Sam’s arms tightening around him and AJ’s hand stilling in his hair.
“Luke,” Sam says, gently, as though treading over unsure ground. There’s a hand on the side of Luke’s thigh, beside the cuts. “A lot of these are from before tonight.”
Luke swallows down the bile rising in his throat. “Mhmm.”
“How long has this been going on?”
Luke gives a halfhearted shrug. “A week or so. Since a little after AJ got sick.” A week or so of pulling away (for their own good, for their own good), of stopping any intimacy before it started to keep the cuts hidden, of cramming down his anxieties and insecurities so his stupid emotions won’t overflow and worry them—
“Why didn’t you say anything?!”
Too late for that, now.
“Sam,” Tom chastises, gently. “Not now.”
“Lukey,” AJ whispers, grabbing his attention once again. Luke peeks up at him, enough to see the crease in his brow and the terror in his eyes. But as soon as AJ sees Luke looking back at him, he beams. “There you are. Hello.”
Luke lets out a little smile despite himself. “Hi.”
“I know this is a hard question, but it’s really important.”
Luke’s smile falls as he looks away, silently prompting AJ to continue. He hates it when the others are delicate with him.
AJ sighs. He takes Luke’s glasses off and puts them aside to be washed later — Luke gives him a weak half-smile in gratitude — then goes back to petting Luke’s hair. “What were you using to cut yourself? We need to have it.”
“Oh, I have that, actually,” Sam mutters. He shuffles a bit, keeping one arm wrapped around Luke as the other reaches down and into the pocket of his PJs. Luke watches keenly as the steel blade moves from Sam’s hand to AJ’s, then as AJ frowns down at it. “I was planning on throwing it out,” Sam adds.
AJ nods and hums. “Are there any more? Luke?”
Luke ducks his head back under his arms and sighs. He wants to sob again, but he’s honestly too exhausted to even try. “Under the sink.”
AJ kisses Luke’s head as he stands up. Luke can hear him as he shuffles around — he opens the cupboard under the sink, pulls out the box of razor blade refills that Luke had bought from a convenience store down the road a couple weeks ago, and he sighs softly. There’s a soft clink as the used blade falls in with the rest, and then he puts the box aside to be dealt with later.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Sam asks again, this time a whisper.
Luke winces, his breath catching in his throat. “You- you weren’t supposed to know.” Tom rubs a hand up and down Luke’s leg as a gentle, steady comfort.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning, ok?” says AJ. He sits back down with a grunt, his hand immediately finding Luke’s hair again. “We don’t have to talk about anything tonight, especially if you don’t want to. The important thing is you aren’t in danger anymore, everything else can wait.”
“Fucking can it?” Sam hisses.
“Yes, it can,” AJ immediately shoots back. “We’re all way too high strung to have an actual conversation about this right now, are you kidding me?”
The two continue to bicker over Luke’s head. Luke can feel his own breathing pick up again, can hear Tom’s picking up as well. Luke reaches out a hand to grab Tom again, to soothe him, and Tom immediately grabs back and squeezes.
“In and out,” Tom mutters. Luke nods and squeezes his hand back. “In… and out.”
Sam and AJ have stopped, at least. Sam sighs roughly, resting his forehead on Luke’s back as he gathers his thoughts once again.
“Luke’s been cutting himself for over a week and we had no idea about it until right now,” Sam says, measured and slow and on the verge of tears. “We absolutely need to talk about this at least a little. I mean, what if we never noticed?” He whips his head back up while Luke curls further down. “What if it got worse? What if—”
He cuts himself off before he can finish the last thought, but they all know what he means. The silence that comes over them is overwhelming. Sam sighs, plopping his head on Luke’s back again.
Slowly, unsurely, Luke begins to unfurl himself. He keeps his arm around his waist, resting over Sam’s, and his other hand in Tom’s grasp. His rests his feet on the floor, his knees now further away from him than they were before, but he continues to stare resolutely at his lap.
“I don’t want to die,” Luke says, as confidently as he can. He can feel them all relax in the following silence, but before any of them can respond, he continues. “But, well…” He winces, his voice gradually growing more and more timid. He’s terrified to put the thought into the world, but he’s also infinitely more certain of it than the last. “Wouldn’t it be easier?”
“No?!” all three gasp out at once. Sam squeezes him tighter and doesn’t let go. Luke can feel Sam’s hitching breath soak into his back, and once again the guilt rears its ugly head.
“For you all, I mean,” Luke continues. They need to hear him out, they need to realize the truth of the matter. “Then you wouldn’t have to deal with all of… me, and my problems, and my stupid irrational thoughts that make it seem like I hate you when I don’t, and all my childish overreactions, and everything else I do that makes you worry on top of everything else you all have to worry about.
"I only make everything worse. Of course you all would be better off without me. It’d be one less thing to stress over.”
Sam is squeezing him so tight Luke can barely breathe. He can feel Sam’s tears now, his quickening breath. Even fucking Sam is going into a panic attack because of him, yet another thing Luke has fucked up—
“Luke.” Tom squeezes his hand. “I promise you, you have only ever made things better. A world without you is not a world I want to be in.”
Luke’s face crumples as he shakes his head. He doesn’t even have any more tears to cry. “That’s not true! You can’t just say that—”
“Yes it fucking is,” Sam shoots back with as much force as he can muster. He sniffs and pulls Luke closer and slots his head on Luke’s shoulder, pressing into his cheek. “We fucking need you, Luke. Even when it gets stressful, or we worry, or whatever. Especially then. We love you, and we need you, and nothing you say is ever going to change that.”
Luke frowns. “But you shouldn’t have to worry.”
“You don’t get to decide what we should and shouldn’t worry about. If we never worried about you when you’re in trouble, then what the hell is our love even worth?”
“You say that as though I’m in physical danger,” Luke scoffs. Sam shutters through another flow of tears.
“You kind of are,” AJ points out. Luke just shakes his head.
“All the trouble I’ve caused you is because I overreacted and got too emotional about silly insecurities that aren’t even real, and then you all worry about me and it makes everything worse, and, and…” Luke sniffs. “I just make everything worse.”
“Luke?” AJ takes his hands, even grabbing the one that Tom was holding so he hold them both and pull Luke close. “Luke, listen to me. Listen to me. They’re not silly. Anything you go through, anything you’re insecure about, it’s never silly, not to us.” Luke looks away, burning under AJ’s intense gaze. “Would you say that my insomnia was silly, even though I don’t know why it happens half the time? Or Tom’s panic attacks, when he says they come out of nowhere? Or Sam worrying that we’ll leave him, even though we never will?”
Luke furrows his eyebrows. “Of course not, but—”
“Then your problems aren’t silly to us. We’ll figure things out together, just like we do everything else.”
“We want to worry about you, Luke,” Sam adds, kissing his cheek. “We love you.”
Luke is silent, staring down at his lap. He can feel more tears impossibly running down his face.
“We love you,” Tom repeats. He leans forward, resting his head on Luke’s shoulder alongside Sam’s. “And we’ll keep telling you that until you believe us.”
“Of course I believe you,” Luke frowns, “It’s just—”
“Well, no, I don’t think you do,” Sam cuts in. “We worry because we care, and we care because we love you. You can’t take the love without the worry, it’s a package deal.”
Oh. “Well then you shouldn’t love me at all.”
Sam sighs and holds him tight again, burying his face in Luke’s shoulder.
“Why wouldn’t we love you?” AJ asks with a confused smile. “You’re the most wonderful man in the world.”
He says it like it’s obvious. Luke buries his face in his hands, blushing. “You can’t just say that.”
“We want you, Luke,” Tom says. “Nothing would be the same without you. As I said, we’re going to keep telling you this until you believe us.”
Luke sighs. Gives a weak smile. He’s more exhausted than anything, at this point — too exhausted to argue the truth over again. “I love you too,” he mutters, because he does.
The other three grin, and Sam chuckles wetly into Luke’s back. “I love you so fucking much,” Sam mutters. Luke sniffs and smiles and lets himself believe it for a second.
“Seriously though, we should get to bed,” AJ says, standing up. “We’ll talk more in the morning. I’ll throw away the, uh. The… yeah.”
And so they all get up. Luke leaves his glasses where AJ put them — not that he has much of a choice in the matter, since Sam immediately sweeps Luke off his feet the moment they’re both standing to carry him back to bed. Tom stays in the bathroom to pee (what he had come to the bathroom for in the first place), and AJ carries the box of razors off to who-knows-where, which leaves just the two of them. Sam and Luke. Standing over the bed, Luke still in Sam’s arms.
Luke glances up at him questioningly as Sam continues to hesitate. He’s looking at Luke’s thigh, then he’s looking up at Luke, a thoughtful frown on his face.
“Promise me,” Sam says.
“Hm?”
“Promise me you won’t kill yourself.”
Luke honestly chuckles a bit at the thought. It feels like a pointless question now; outside of the bathroom, his spiraling thoughts can’t cut as deeply as they were cutting before. Now that the fathomless sea of despair is mostly behind him, he can’t imagine what it would feel like to truly want to die.
Or maybe he’s just exhausted. Maybe his brain’s capacity for self-loathing has capped out and now it’s wrapping back around to zero. Maybe it’ll reset overnight, after a moment of comfort. Maybe he’ll feel it all over again in the morning.
He probably will. He’s already dreading the thought.
“I promise,” Luke says. Sam nods, solemn and relieved.
AJ comes back in then, chuckling when he sees the two of them still standing over the bed. “Aren’t you going to lie him down?”
Sam looks over and lets out a gentle self-deprecating laugh of his own. “I can’t let him go, to be honest.”
Luke’s cheeks flush with shame at the words, for once again bringing Sam’s abandonment issues to the forefront. But there’s an element of fondness in there as well, something in him melting at the sheer amount of love Sam says it with. To love is to worry, after all. They’re a package deal.
“Here,” AJ says, crawling into bed. He puts his arms out to take Luke, and Sam hands him off with a healthy amount of reluctance. AJ pulls Luke close and tight against his chest, and Sam is quick to get in bed with them and wrap his arms around Luke from behind.
And then Tom comes back and joins in their pile as well, turning off the stray lights as he goes. He settles behind AJ, his arms reaching out to hold Luke as well. All together, their love is almost suffocating, but Luke knows there’s nothing he can do to quell it. Or if there is, there’s no use trying.
The knowledge of that fact settles something in his heart.
He looks up at AJ, who is scanning over Luke’s face thoughtfully. He looks so awake. Luke frowns.
“Please go to sleep,” Luke mutters. He doesn’t know what he would do with himself if AJ has yet another sleepless night because of him.
AJ chuckles softly and kisses Luke’s forehead. “I will if you will.”
Luke hums, nods. He feels wrung dry as it is — empty and exhausted and fully spent. He’ll almost certainly be asleep in minutes. “Promise?”
AJ huffs out another gentle laugh. “I promise.”
“Mmk.” And with that, Luke closes his eyes and begins to sleep.