Stephew Oneshots.

Alone At Night

Stephanie lay in bed alone. Glancing over to where the clock sat on her bedside table, she sighed as the glowing red letters informed her that it was 3:30am. Matthew still wasn't back from his flight. When he was beside her, she had no issues with falling asleep but without him she would always sit and wonder whether something had gone wrong. He had to fly home to be with his parents, his father recently had a cancer scare which was thankfully proven to not be true. However, they had been caught up in official meetings with Sony and had been unable to make it out to be with them during the tough times so Matthew had gone to spend the weekend with them. He had left right after the livestream on Friday, meaning that Steph was left by herself.

Friday night and Saturday had been fine as she had been working on a new script for Film Theory but as Sunday dawned, she became painfully aware that she missed her husband. Skip had been good company for the morning, having great fun curled up on her lap as she watched Pride and Prejudice on the TV but as the day drew on, even Skip couldn't fill the hole that her husband had left. All she wanted more than anything right now was to be held in his strong arms and to feel safe. A few days apart was nothing compared to the weeks and months spent apart when he was still touring in theatre.

The creaking of the bedroom door startled Stephanie out of her thoughts and her gaze snapped to it as it opened. Skip's tiny head poked through the gap and a feeble meow calmed her beating heart slightly. He hopped onto the bed and plonked himself by her side, rubbing into her stomach and purring softly. She smiled down at her beloved cat and gently rubbed the crown of his head, enjoying the soft fur under her fingers. Skip was missing Matthew as well, whenever he wasn't on her lap this weekend; he spent the rest of the time in Matthew's office chair – refusing to move. She whispered to Skip, afraid to spook him from his comfortable position:

"I bet you miss Matthew too don't you buddy? His flight was supposed to land several hours ago and he texted saying that he was driving back at midnight but he's still not here. I mean I'm sure it is just traffic and nothing has gone wrong. He'll be home any minute now. Any minute. I promise."

A crashing sound from the street outside caused Steph to jump, a small squeak of fear escaping her mouth causing Skip to leap from her side and run out of the room, moving almost as fast as when he was presented with food. The crash was quickly followed by devastatingly silence, with no auditory cues to indicate what the cause of the event was. Her mind spun in all sorts of dark directions, from car crashes to a drive by shooting. She could feel her breath becoming more rapid and shallow, her chest slowly tightening as it was slowly starved of oxygen.

"You always do this Stephanie and it's always fine. Matthew tells you every time that you don't need to worry about these kinds of things, yet you always send yourself into a state over nothing! Matthew will be back soon, he'll tell me that it's ok."

She muttered to herself, trying to fill the empty silence with comforting words but her echoing voice made her loneliness all the more terrifying. Sitting up in the bed, she bunched the blankets around her feet and pulled Matthew's pillow onto her lap. She cuddled it like her life depended on it, using the calming smell of her husband to try to calm the impending panic attack that was coming her way. With each breath she drew in, she imagined her husband lying beside her, his chest rising and falling as he dreamt of diet coke.

The shadows in her bedroom slinked up the walls, creeping ever closer to her prone form. Clenching her eyes shut, Steph blocked out the world, refusing to listen to the ominous noises of the pipes in her house squeaking and the floorboards groaning as the house moved in the night. For years she had struggled with anxiety, getting spooked by the smallest of things and Matthew had always supported her through it. She was a very introverted person which resulted in her becoming overwhelmed by large crowds and loud environments. Hence why she didn't go to a lot of parties during her college years, although she was glad she went to a few of them as otherwise she wouldn't have ended up with Matthew.