Breath 
 

He doesn't dream much, any more. 
 
When he does, it's ordinary, muddled, blurry, like a half-remembered phone-call in the middle of the day. He almost expects to find scrawled words that will make no sense to anyone except him and Wes on the ever-present pad that lies on the bedside table, and sometimes he does, but they're in Wes's writing, not his. 
 
Sometimes, though, he half-surfaces, muttering, some sense of unease driving him upwards into the silk-shimmered room, and every time, Wes is awake before him, thumb tracing over his wrist, pulse point pressing inwards. 
 
I trust you his eyes say. 
 
"I love you," he says, voice gravelled with sleep. 
 
In four months (Spike knows, because he counted days first, and then weeks, and now months, and someday he thinks it'll be years, and he'll still be measuring it) Wes has never flinched away from Spike's hand, when he brings it up to touch his lover's lips, and feel the warmth of his breath. 
 
He curls in more tightly to Wes's warmth, to the feel of long fingers moving over his skin, and puts his mouth to the hollow between the too-distinct collarbones, feeling the slow, sleep-laden pulse there. 
 
He falls asleep between one breath that isn't his own, and the next, that should be his, and never is.