You stay up waiting for him but eventually let yourself fall asleep his voice repeats in your head not to wait up.
What feels like seconds later you’re woken up by the sound of him stumbling into your apartment. You get out of bed, trying to maintain a steady heartbeat. This is something you signed up for when you decided to be with him. Wondering if on any given night he would come home half dead, if he even makes it back home at all.
You grab a clean washcloth from the linen closet and meet him in the bathroom where he’s turning on the shower. You say a little thank you to god in your head, something you’ve only started doing recently. You’ve never been particularly religious but now it’s just in case.
Without words you take his face in your hands, giving him a quick once over and once the water is the right temperature you both step into the shower. The first moments the water hit you almost take your breath away. You lather a bar of hypoallergenic unscented soap onto the washcloth and then begin to gently wipe him down. You take extra care around the bruises, all of varying shades and dates. His hard muscles flex, tense up to the touch and then relax when his brain tells his body that it’s you doing the touching.
You flash back to several arguments you’ve had with him in the past all amounting to the same conclusion: you love him too much to let go, selfishly.
When you’ve cleaned him up, you step out of the shower before him, letting him enjoy the therapeutic feeling of the water, while you grab a towel. You reserve the softest ones for him, they’re plush with high thread counts and feel almost like a fuzzy blanket. On queue he turns off the water and steps out and you wrap the blanket around him. You hover close to his face, your eyes closed, before you kiss his forehead. Your lips have trouble parting. He made it back this time. He’s gonna be okay. For now. You can let yourself stop mourning him.
You go to the kitchen and fill a glass with water and take it to his nightstand, you’ll tell him when he gets back to the bedroom to drink the whole thing. You sit down on the bed and wait.
When he’s dried off he comes into your shared bedroom and he’s naked and his hair is still damp but it doesn’t matter. He drops himself down onto his side of the bed and his spine decompresses. You crawl up to the head of the bed and get back under the blanket, enveloping you both. He’s hard but his skin is soft and warm from the water. You put your arms around him, burying your head in his back and breathing him in. Right under your nose is a scar and you nudge at the raised skin before placing a gentle kiss there. You eventually fall asleep in that position, but only after you know he’s fallen asleep. You hear his breathing grow louder, his chest rising and falling. It’s what lulls you to sleep. He’s here. Right now he’s here and that’s all you can let yourself take comfort in. He made it through another night and when you wake up tomorrow it will be next to him.