JAWS (Complete)

Chapter 22

*Unconditional love*

Erwin wakes up in the middle of the night, as he often does now-he remembers being a young man and being able to sleep for eight, ten, even twelve hours at a stretch and barely even move, let alone have to get up-and slips out of bed, leaving Mike's slumbering hulk behind to go down the hall and use the toilet. As he shuffles sleepily down the hall, he notices the door to the boys' room is open, and with a force of habit nearly thirty years in the making, he ducks his head in to check on them. Even now, with Marcel seven years in his grave, the need to check on the boys, to make sure they're okay, is almost a compulsion, and it must be met.

Both boys-adults, really, but Erwin will never be able to look at Pok and not see the tiny, fiercely brave little boy he'd once been-have crammed into one bed, the bed that Marcel always slept in, the one Erwin is sure Pok had directed Reiner towards. Reiner is sleeping on his back, head tilted back, snoring quietly through his bent nose. Pok has curled up alongside him, wedged between Reiner's side and the wall, his head on Reiner's shoulder and one hand resting across Reiner's chest, one of his legs thrown across Reiner's. Reiner has his arm draped around Pok's shoulders, the gesture protective, his other hand tossed off the side of the bed and trailing on the wooden floor.

The scene is so familiar, so achingly reminiscent, that Erwin has to shake his head. Pok used to share Marcel's bed like that, back when they were very small and the younger boy had been plagued by nightmares. On the rare occasion when Pok had stayed with them and Marcel wasn't there, Erwin could almost guarantee that he and Mike would have a midnight visitor, frequently tearstained and clutching his worn stuffed rhino, begging to be admitted to their bed, always fearful that he'd be turned away. The visits had tapered off as the years had worn on, and as the boys got older, Pok had stayed in his own bed, sleeping on his own when Erwin went to check on them. Seeing him now, though, curled against Reiner, needing that physical comfort but, Erwin is certain, refusing to admit it out loud, gives Erwin such a case of deja vu that it's almost dizzying.

He's glad Pok found someone, though, someone who clearly doesn't mind sharing a bed with him, even if the bed is far too short and narrow, leaving Reiner hanging off it on two different sides. He's glad Pok has someone to be with him right now, in ways that Mike and Erwin himself can't be, and he's glad that someone is a person like Reiner. Reiner is the kind of match for Pok that Erwin can approve of, stable and considerate and intelligent, and it only took one dinner of watching them together to know that Reiner cares deeply for his nephew. Reiner's eyes had rarely left Pok, but there was no possessiveness there, no jealousy, just simple, deep, honest concern and, dare Erwin even think it, love.

He wants Pok to have found someone who loves him, and who he can love back. He wants Pok to be happy, even if that state has always proved elusive for him. Marcel, Marcel had been happy, always sunny and bright and alive in the world, and Pok had started that way but then slowly built up a simmering rage, a resentment, that had always bubbled just below the surface. Knowing what the boy had to deal with at home, Erwin can't blame him, but he's equally glad to see that that undercurrent seems to have died away. Pok is older now, and sadder, but the rage seems to have gone away, replaced with a melancholy that Erwin doesn't care for either, but which he hopes is temporary. When Pok interacts with Reiner, that melancholy fades into the background, and the sweet, affectionate little boy Pok Erwin once knew peeks through. Maybe, given enough time, Reiner can draw that to the surface.

Erwin goes back to his own bed, and Mike shifts beside him, rolling over and blinking owlishly at Erwin.

"The boys okay?"