'i love you'
Jacob’s POV
My eyes open up sleepily to the digital clock on my bed side table telling me that it is 02:34 in the morning.
I realise that there is no longer a small Troye in my arms. My eyes that struggle to open suddenly fly open and I breathe in quickly.
My mind goes back to after we woke up earlier, after he wasn’t as exhausted from our activities, especially after having decided to have a second round. The bed is cold without him and my arms are clutching a pillow he must have put there in place of himself.
I get out from the bed, my feet cold against the hardwood flooring. The apartment feels oddly chilly, I think to myself, but my thoughts all halt at once when I hear a strangled whimper coming from down the hallway outside my bedroom, my blood freezes in my veins.
I rush out my bedroom to find Troye, he is hugging his legs to his chest, his face buried in his knees, and he is shaking with violent sobs. His phone sits, cast aside at his sock clad feet. He is wearing my jumper and my sweatpants that he must have just thrown on.
I remain silent, although I make my steps very deliberate so that he can hear someone is coming down the hallway.
As I get to him, I slide down the wall to sit beside him and I pull him gently against my chest. He melts against me immediately and buries his face further into my chest but his arms remain around his torso, as if he is trying to keep himself from breaking, shattering into millions of pieces.
“Shh,” I hush, “Just breathe, baby, just breathe for me,” I tell him softly.
I allow him to snuggle even more into my bare chest; his tears feel warm against my skin. He is still shaking and as I pull him into my lap to cradle him, he whimpers a bit again but wraps his arms around my neck while I hold him as close as possible to my chest.
It's then when I realise he is on the verge of a panic attack.
“Okay, baby,” I whisper into his ear as ragged intakes of breath replace his sobbing, his tears still fall, however, there are much less. “I need you to feel me breathing, yeah?” I say to him, but it is useless as I know he can’t hear me.
I pull him away from my chest to sit between my stretched out legs anyway. His back is flush against my chest to make sure he can feel the rise and fall of my inhales and exhales.
I whisper sweet nothings into his right ear to calm him and eventually he becomes less tense and his breathing becomes more normal, however it is still a bit too uneven.
“There you go,” I say to him encouragingly, bringing him up to cradle him once again, much more comfortably this time round. “Well done, baby.”
“Jake,” he says, his voice still sounding a bit strangled. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
“Why are you sorry, sweetheart?”
“Because I hate feeling so pathetic, I feel so pathetic when this happens.”
“No, baby, please don’t say that. You cannot help it, it’s alright,” he doesn’t say anything back but I think I got through to him, at least a little bit, I can tell when he tightens his arms around my neck and how he presses the lightest of kisses onto my skin.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“Do you want to go to bed, babe?” he shakes his head, I furrow my eye brows.
“I can’t fall back to sleep, not now, Jake.”
“Can we go downstairs, let me make you some tea or something,” I offer, I don’t think I could fall back asleep after seeing him like this again anyway.
