There’s touch, pressure at his face, warmth, movement, but it doesn’t place. It doesn’t anchor the way it should. His head jerks slightly at the contact anyway, breath catching sharp like his body recognizes something his mind can’t quite hold onto yet. The panic is still there, loud in a way that has nothing to do with sound, his pulse hammering hard enough it feels like it might split him open.
Then her hands stay. Consistent. Grounding.
The kisses don’t sound, but he feels them, soft, repeated points of contact mapping across his skin. The air shifts when she speaks, even if he cannot hear it, the shape of it brushing faintly against his lips, his cheek. It is enough to start pulling him back, piece by piece, out of that empty drop.
“Milla…” It comes out rough, uneven, more breath than voice. His hands move blindly at first, then find her wrists, grip tightening like he is afraid she might disappear if he does not hold on hard enough. His breathing stutters again, but it is starting to slow, just barely, dragged back by the fact that she is there.
His other hand presses clumsily over the one she is tracing on, fingers shaking as he tries to follow it, to understand it. Safe. The realization hits in fragments, not all at once, but enough to catch on. Enough to matter.
He leans forward into her without thinking, forehead knocking lightly against hers, needing the contact, needing something solid that does not vanish the second he tries to grasp it. His chest rises hard, uneven, but not spiraling the same way now.
“I… can’t…” he tries again, voice breaking under the strain, frustration threading through the fear. His grip tightens just a fraction. “Can’t hear anything.”