Work Text:
Also everything returns,
but what returns is not what went away.
-A Travel Diary, Louise Glück
Ed feels his way toward consciousness, aware that something is wrong but blearily unable to place what.
He knows it's late; the darkness is almost complete in the bedroom other than a tiny lick of ambient light from the street light that casts a glow through the kitchen window at the far end of the hall, so the moon must have set. His body is heavy and stiff, the blankets tucked in oddly tightly around him, so he must have been sleeping hard, too. As the bits and pieces of his waking self struggle to life, he starts to be able to specifically place sounds, and quickly becomes aware that the thing that woke him is Joe breathing harshly next to him. Though it takes another few seconds to twig as to why, Ed turns his head toward him in alarm. The sheets rustle faintly as Joe jerks slightly in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible in his lowest register; it's as if he's locked in a struggle that he's straining to keep quiet, lest a listener in the dark overhear.
It's not unfamiliar.
"Lieb," Ed murmurs, his voice rough with sleep. He does not touch him. "Time to watch the line."
Joe immediately falls silent, eyes flying open. Ed would know he was awake even if he couldn't dimly make out his face; there's a shift in the quality of his breathing, still high in his chest and fast but with an awareness in it. It's as though the sound of his own fear is disorienting, and he's trying to calm himself down while he figures out where he is.
"Easy," Ed says, still quiet, still on his own side of the bed. "Just me. You were having a nightmare."
Joe doesn't move for a handful of seconds. He seems to have heard Ed, his breathing slowing a fraction, but he doesn't otherwise acknowledge him. Slowly, then, he rolls onto his side and sits up on the edge of the mattress. His head drops between his shoulders in exhaustion, hands braced on either side of his body. Ed does reach for him then, laying a hand on the curve of his spine. Joe doesn't flinch, exactly, but a little ripple goes through him.
"You want a glass of water?" Ed asks.
Joe reaches up and drags his hand down his face. Ed doesn't see it precisely in the dark; it is more the edges of the movement that he tracks with his eye. "No."
Ed gives him a gentle tap, and then drops his hand.
A long enough silence settles, with Joe frozen on the edge of the bed, that Ed starts to feel his train of thought pull apart, the way it does when you drift back toward an interrupted sleep at four in the morning. Since he can't drop back into unconsciousness without resolving this, he says: "Come back to bed, Joe."
"I'm fine," Joe grits out, and then his shoulders bunch just slightly, as if in unhappiness at the anger he can't control. He keeps his voice low, too, in deference to the hour, even though there's no need now that they are both awake and aware.
Ed remembers standing on the doorstep downstairs months ago, having waved off a well-meaning neighbour's offer to help him with his rucksack - not that Ed is immune to accepting help in the way that some men are, but he had decided from the moment he'd planned it that his first time standing in front of Joe in almost two years would be on his own steam - and wondering who he'd find on the other side of that neatly-painted door. There'd been a not-unreasonable chance that what had tied them together was gone, the bond of going to war dissipated and the changing they'd done, while Ed had dutifully mailed letters that Joe had rarely answered, just as insurmountable.
He remembers Joe asking why he'd come, and saying Chuck called me. He had seen the mutiny blossom in Joe's face in response, the desire not to be seen like that, and the knowing at the same time that he never would have picked up the phone himself.
Ed had known at that moment, unequivocally and for sure, that Joe was, at his very core, still the person he had handed his whole heart to in Toccoa. He had been young and stupid, of course, the way people often are when they do these things, but he had also been right.
"I know you're fine," he says, not gently - gently rarely gets you the response you want from Joe - but evenly. "Why don't you come and be fine over here?"
Joe takes a breath, and lets it out. Sometimes he can get his fingers just under the edges of that anger and pull it back toward him. Ed thinks he's getting better at it.
Joe inhales and exhales once more, low and slow, and then eases himself back down onto his back.
"Sorry, Tip," he says quietly, after a long moment.
"Okay," Ed replies, because sorry for what? wouldn't pull an answer out of Joe anyway - Joe, who would carry a buddy that everyone thought was a goner out of a war zone, who would be disgusted if Ed ever apologized for being unsteady on his feet from wounds that may never heal properly.
Joe, taking the side of the bed that puts him on the side of Ed's good eye without saying anything, because Ed wakes up with bad dreams sometimes, too.
Resettling himself on his side, Ed slings an arm over him, eyes already closed. "You want to talk about it?" he asks, knowing the answer.
Joe snorts softly, and Ed can feel the small hitch in his body. He sounds more like the version of himself that doesn't scare so easy when he says: "Not a chance."
"Alright." Ed's thoughts are starting to pull apart again. "See you in the morning."
He is almost asleep when Joe's fingers curl gently around his arm, and stay there.