sleep companions
pairing: jacob lee x reader
summary: black irons is a hard place to break free from; its roughness seeps into everything. But sleep helps brush off the hard edges and allow for a tenderness found in napping.
wc: 1.5k+
genre: COMFORT, soft!Jacob, a lot of fluff, napping, caring for each other!!
a/n: i too am a sleepy one; hopefully, this piece brings you wonderful dreams.
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚.───
“Jacob!” His name rushes past your lips as he stumbles into you. Exhaustion steals his energy. His steps drag against the ground and his breaths are slowing.
Your arm reaches to curl around his side, pulling his armored body into your own. You try to compensate for his lack of coordination as best as you can, walking slower and leaning into him so he can prop himself against your body.
He grunts as you weave his arm around your shoulders. “Sorry,” he huffs, voice right near the shell of your ear, “I just can’t get my feet to act right.”
The last few battles between those weird mutated creatures must have worn him out. Jacob took more hits to the stomach and torso than usual in your last skirmish. You had done your best to give him as much covering fire as possible, but eventually, you were tackled to the ground and forced to concentrate on saving your own life.
You haven’t seen many of those creatures in the last hour or so. Maybe it was about time to give yourselves a break before moving on to the surface.
“Let’s rest for a bit,” you adjust your grip on his torso. There are a couple of crates in front of you. He could rest there while you count your ammo, medical supplies, and other trinkets you’d picked up along the way. “Give you a chance to sleep for a bit.”
Jacob hesitates before continuing, your momentum dragging him along. “No. I’ll be fine. We should keep going.”
“You’re not. Besides, you’re not in any condition to fight should those things come back.” You lead him over to the crates and help lower him to the ground so he can rest his back against one. “We’ll be safe here, for now. I’ll keep look-out. Go over inventory.”
You slip Jacob’s arm, originally on your shoulders, over your head. Before you can drop it into his lap, his hand curls around your arm. “Really. We should keep going.” His eyes are wide and pleading, but the corners around them droop and his gaze is slightly unfocused.
There’s no way you should keep going. The longer you take in his features, the more relaxed his body becomes. According to your calculations, he’ll be asleep in a few seconds.
“Sleep, Jacob.” You place your hand over his hand and squeeze it. Gently, you pry it off and carefully place it in his lap before moving up to check his health status. It’s green but teeters on yellow. He’ll need a med pack before you move to fight again.
You feel his gaze as you inspect his armor. “Hey.” His call is gentle and you meet his eyes with a softness you haven’t been able to muster in a while. Between the fights and general fear for your life, there hasn’t been much room for tenderness.
Jacob takes a deep breath, letting his eyes linger closed for a moment before he opens them, looking considerably closer to dosing off. A small grin crawls onto your face. He scoffs at your new expression but a light lingers behind his eyes. “You hear anything and I mean anything,” he leans over to nudge your shoulder, “wake me up.”
You chuckle before tapping him on the shoulder. “The world will still be here. I promise.”
“Whatever,” he grins before closing his eyes. As he relaxes, his body learns toward where you’ve perched on the crate next to him, as if instinctively wanting to be closer to you.
A small, shy smile spreads across your face as you start to count your magazines for the second time.
…
You jolt awake, frantically brushing off clawing hands and faces with sharp teeth. They felt like they were all over you, but now that you’re looking around, you realize you are inside the lab.
Jacob said he wanted to go over some upgrades. You only remember sitting down before blinking awake, arms swinging and flailing.
The weapon machine’s whines mix with your cries of fear. As much as it grounds you, the noises combine in an overwhelming combination of sounds and you clench your eyes shut, trying to fight through the lingering screeches of the creatures in your ear.
Jacob’s voice cuts through it all, concerned and gentle. “Hey, hey, hey. You’re alright.” You hear him getting closer, now sitting next to you, body angled toward you, his hands automatically reaching for yours. “You’ve only been asleep for a little bit. Figured you needed the rest.”
You take a deep breath and slowly open your eyes, focusing on the ground first and then on his gently determined gaze. It made your stomach warm. It made being vulnerable easier. “I saw those…things. It was like they were all over me.”
He squeezes your hands. “I get what you mean. I see them too.”
You nod, both saddened that this horror-filled place still follows you into your dreams and comforted by Jacob’s presence and admission. At least if you both have to witness deadly beings, you don’t have to do it alone.
You try to blink away the sleepiness, but it doesn’t work. You can still feel sleep’s pull.
Jacob picks up on the way your body slouches over and your responding grip on his hands weakens. “Come here,” he mumbles, wrapping his arm around your waist and drawing you into his chest.
Your heart picks up before a sense of comfort douses any rising anxiety. His head curls into yours. His lips ghost over the crown of your hair. “I’ll be right here. Go back to sleep.”
It takes no time for your eyelids to droop closed as you relax into his torso. It’s the first time you can remember Jacob being so physically affectionate with you but you’re not complaining. You like it, being close to him like this.
Before you sleep, you register a dorky smile on your face and a feeling of gratitude that you have each other.
You don’t have any more dreams of creatures.
…
You’re on the tram, traveling between the colony and the inner lab. Wind rushes past as you sit with your back against a stack of boxes. They buffer the wind while your blinks start to slow into sleep.
Absentmindedly, you register the cut along your cheek but you don’t think much off it. Your body is too tired to worry about wounds right now.
Jacob’s hands against your shoulders and cheeks slowly close your eyes as you absorb his tenderness. His thumb ghosts along your cheek as he tilts your head.
“You look alright. We’ll see what they have back at the lab to cover that.” Jacob sounds focused but you know he’s as drained as you are. Another stint with the creatures always does this. The only difference is this was the longest battle you’ve had yet, and there was one much larger than the rest this time.
It took almost everything you both had to beat them all.
Your eyes flutter open before you muster a weak smirk. “You look as tired as I feel,” you mumble, reaching up to grasp his arm before tugging him over near you.
He crawls so he’s next to you, resting his shoulder against yours. A painful grunt echoes off the box as he tries to get into place. You keep ahold of his arm, sliding your hand down to interlace yours with his.
Your squeeze is answered by him. A relaxed breath slips through his nose as his grip carefully tightens.
“We should rest for a little while.” You whisper, already starting to lean your head toward his. To your pleasant surprise, your head brushes against his less than halfway. He must have been leaning toward you already.
You feel him rest his cheek against your head, bringing your joined hands closer to him. “Yeah, good idea.”
“Jacob?” He adjusts his head so his cheek brushes tenderly against your head.
He hums, “Yeah, (name)?”
“Thanks. For everything.”
“Yeah — yeah, of course. And thank you. You know, when we get out of here, let’s make sure we sleep on some actual mattresses.”
You chuckle and his giggles blend with yours. “Sure. But we have to sleep near each other. Just to make sure we hold up our side of the bargain.”
“Of course. I mean, that’s only fair. Have to make sure everything’s been honored.”
You blush and shake your head, leaning into him further. You knew just as well as he did that the chances of you getting out were slim, but you also knew that you would not sleep nearly as well if he wasn’t there with you, right near you. Somehow, you think that Jacob thought about the same.
…
After a few years of being separated, fighting your way around other planets and new people, your paths meet again. For a minute, it’s awkward and you both stumble over words, but soon, it’s like you both were never separated.
And you get that nap. Together. Except, instead of separate beds, you both lay near each other, facing each other’s chest.
Jacob reaches out first, an arm tentatively wrapped around your waist before drawing you gently closer until your hands are curled against his chest. He presses his cheek into your head as before and you press your nose into his collarbone.
You sigh and feel his smile as he does the same.
Finally.
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Okay. Yes, Jacob is a chatterbox.
He talks about stuff like his school play from a million years ago or trees or whatever, and he does overshare in Valentine’s Day, but that was very positive oversharing and there’s a pretty high possibility that he knew people weren’t really fully listening to him.
I guess that in Festival when he talks about his night terrors that can also be seen as oversharing, but it’s heavily implied that he is loopy from sleep deprivation. Which just goes to show that Jacob’s most likely to show negative feelings when things have gotten absolutely unbearable.
Because in Holiday Hookah it was like pulling teeth to get him to admit why he was acting how he was.
And he did spend over a year not mentioning that he had a boyfriend of two years. He has not once mentioned either one of his parents when the other two younger teachers have mentioned at least one of theirs, and often. He pretty rarely mentioned Zach. Most instances of him talking about himself have been offhand or pretty surface-level. His life revolves pretty hard around his work and the people he’s met through Abbott.
(And given what we know about him and his people pleasing tendencies, it’s much easier for me to imagine him not saying anything to Zach out of fear than him bringing up to him that he’s unhappy in the relationship. Which is essentially what the episode says.
And lbr, we barely knew Zach. Anything is IC for him. And given how little we knew about the relationship…tbh, their relationship dying isn’t so much a surprise for me as exactly as believable as their relationship being happy.)
And sure, maybe he says more off-camera, but it’s still reasonable to assume that he isn’t saying the most important things. What I’m saying is that Jacob is cagey about his personal life.
And Jacob does not like having personal problems. He likes fixing problems. (He often makes them instead, but hey, I never said he always sets out to do what he wants to do.) I do think it makes sense that he would simply not bring up his own personal conflict, especially given that he’s prone to avoidance and it’s a very painful issue, and I think that the fact he did bring it up was because he really trusts Gregory.
Anyway, that is my take on Breakup and why I was not surprised by the breakup or the seeming abruptness of it. It was all brewing in Jacob’s head for months; we just weren’t privy to it because he guarded that part of his life from his friends and from the cameras. (Who were gone for five months anyway.)
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