Joshua x Reader
653 words, comfort
Summary: If you died, Joshua wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
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The ceiling was spinning.
You hadn’t even realised your eyes had fluttered open and you didn’t even register that you had woken up after being asleep for a long, long time. Had you been sleeping? …You didn’t remember. Your arms and legs were heavier than lead. The rest of your body felt far away. You attempted wiggling your fingers, and with sizable effort, they obeyed begrudgingly.
Your vision focused on the wooden beams overhead. Oh, this must be the Hideaway’s infirmary.
Hadn’t you been journeying somewhere?
You remembered gnarled talons tearing at you and seeing red before you even saw the monster.
Oh, right. You had thought you were dead. Maybe you were, and heaven took the form of the Hideaway’s infirmary.
“...awake,” you barely heard someone say. You searched for a face, but as long as you didn’t move, all you had was a wide view of the creaky wood on top. “Can you move?”
It was Tarja. Stomach tensed, you pulled yourself up with everything you had left in you. Surprisingly, you were successful.
The first face that greeted you was Tarja’s. No surprise there. Laden over the rest of the infirmary beds were familiar faces. Your team members for that most recent assignment—and none of them were awake.
Joshua stood at the foot of your bed, lips pressed together so tightly they were turning white.
Your head spun. “What was..?”
“You’re lucky Clive found all of you when he did,” Tarja said. She was sitting on a stool, fiddling and doing something or other with a bowl. “I’d have less patients to tend to if he didn’t. Living ones, at least. And as for you,” she grimaced, “with the shape you came in, normally, you’d never be out in the field ever again.”
You felt like you were going to vomit. “Then I—”
Tarja patted Joshua’s arm. “You’ll be as good as new in a week, I’d say. Thank him.”
Joshua?
Now you understood. Never setting foot in the field ever again was an understatement from Tarja. You’d already be dead if it weren’t for the flames of the Phoenix.
Clenching the blanket in fistfuls, you began, “Joshua—”
Hearing his name from you broke a dam inside of him that you hadn’t even known was there. He was over by your side in two strides and before you could continue, he throttled you in an embrace, weight pushed onto you and face buried in the nook of your neck. You heard Tarja complaining (“Hey, be gentle with the patient!”) but her words fell on deaf ears. You shifted, raising a hand to steady on his back, letting him all but melt into you.
“I—I thought—” He was stuttering, something you’d never witnessed from him before.
You didn’t know what it was, but hearing him, feeling his touch—you felt the firing of your neurons and life pulsating through your veins. You were alive again.
“You’re back.” Joshua sounded like he was stifling a sob, and when you felt warm wetness pool in the shoulder of your shirt, you raised your other hand to the side of his head.
“I’m here,” you reassured him.
“I thought you’d left forever…”
“I haven’t.”
Tarja raised a brow at you and turned to leave to the other side of the partition. You supposed that meant you were in the clear.
Joshua peered up at you ever so slightly, but enough for you to see part of his tear-tracked cheeks and glistening eyes. You met his gaze, now wide alert, and then he buried himself in your shoulder again like a puppy did in its familiar bed.
You turned your head and lowered it, resting your cheek against his fluffy tresses.
“Please…” his voice, almost a cry, was muffled, “don’t go somewhere far away again.”
His grip on you was tight like you were going to slip away in a moment’s notice. You rocked him gently.
“I won’t.”