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lieutenantfloyd · 2 hours ago

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I absolutely adore the way you write for Cyclone. I was wondering if you'd be open to writing about Beau where his wife is having a bad day and she's just really in her own head and not really paying attention and he helps pull her out of own head in his own quite steady loving way

Beach House - Cyclone x Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary: When life gets to you, your husband Beau helps in the only way he knows how—by being there.

Warnings: domestic fluff, light angst, husband! Beau trying his best.

Author's Note: Thank you for this request and the kind words!

Read on AO3

Beau had never been good at these kinds of things. Let anyone who knew him tell it, he was all firm looks and practical advice. Not a warm and forgiving bone in his body.

But he had a good head on his shoulders. A strong pair of hands—not soft, but always warm and just as steady—that he was ripe to use whenever he felt the situation called for it. Beau was not a gentle man, but he was one who fixed problems.

Tonight Beau stood in the kitchen, holding a mug uncomfortably in those same hands he silently prided himself on and had spent the day using to sign off on papers he still didn’t feel quite qualified to handle. The steam rising from the mug taunted him in his staring, a steady stream not too dissimilar to the thoughts running through his mind. He glanced around the too quiet house as if that would give him some direction. He could hear the clock ticking away in the hallway and the faint sound of the ocean and wind funneling in through the open back door. There was no TV in the background, no dinner baking in the oven. And most of all, no you.

When the door slammed shut on the rare occasion Beau arrived home in the evening earlier than you did, you hadn’t said a word as you flung your bag onto the strategically placed hooks in the hallway—all Beau’s doing—and kicked your shoes off with the last bit of energy you had. They landed vaguely under the hall entryway table—a bright addition to the space you had suggested—and headed out the back door, still yet to speak a word.

That was two hours ago.

Beau, again, was not a man to hover. Dawdling away idle time was a sin of great measure in his book. There was always something to be done, and in his commanding mind, idleness was akin to laziness, and laziness akin to failure. Yet in the two hours you’d been outside, a myriad of tasks had been completed. A new bulb in his bedside lamp. The complete reorder and organization of the kitchen junk drawer. New linens put on in the guest bedroom. All quiet things, chores and charges he knew had been on your list for weeks or, in the rarest of cases, had been asked of him mindlessly over dinner when both of you were set in avoiding the topic of your respective days.

Still, those tasks had only made a dent in the overall load of life lately. Not one of them had helped him forget that brief flash of complete fatigue he’d seen in your eyes.

He didn’t know what had happened that day. If anything, he was the type to expect you to come to him with any problems, complaints, or just a random story instead of relying on close looks and guesswork. Too much expended energy, he told himself. But tonight you hadn’t offered, hadn’t sought him out in his office or on the couch to ramble on about all those small details with that bright eyed look while he listened with a far more rapt attention than he’d ever dare to admit to. No, you just…left. It was an act all too familiar to not bother him, though if anything that was his MO, not yours. Maybe that’s why it ate at him more and more as the minutes passed. You hadn’t offered up a word, and he just didn't know how to ask.

So there he stands, back against the counter and still holding that mug, the warmth of it against his hand doing little to make up for what should be flowing through his bachelor pad-turned-marital home. Beau was a well rounded man, prideful in that. So he bit the bullet and stepped out of the back door.

The slight chill in the air reached him first, then did the cotton candy sky and the now louder sound of waves. It would have been a beautiful night in San Diego if the weight of everything wasn’t looming over him, but again he steeled himself and forged ahead.

Sitting in a metal deck chair just beginning to rust was you, knees pulled up and expression as unreadable as you always joked his was. Your arm rested on your knee and your head rested atop that, face turned towards the horizon and the ocean you could just make out beneath it.

Beau paused, debating his next move, then took a step forward. The weathered boards creaked under his weight, and you finally glanced up. You didn't say anything, just watched him almost curiously for a second before going back to the view.

That wasn’t a rejection, so permission it was.

Beau stepped quietly over to you, posture as straight and expression as unreadable as ever. He cleared his throat and held out the mug.

"No milk," he says simply, "Just honey."

You glanced at him again then. Only now does he see that your eyes are tired, and it takes more effort than he’d admit to bite back a curse.

Eventually you reach out, taking it with the smallest of smiles. It doesn’t lift at the corners, but at least it’s a start.

"Thank you," you say, voice quiet as your fingers wrap more firmly around the mug, as if the warmth of its contents is shaking the frigidity from your being in real time.

Beau nods firmly, letting a beat pass before he takes a seat in one of the adjoining chairs scattered around the deck. Now a few feet away, he lets out a sigh and settles in to stare vaguely where you are, though really he’s lost in thought.

“…you can say it,” he chimes in after a moment.

He didn’t even need to look over to see your brows furrow, and a part of him finds some kind of amusement in your expression—purely because he can tell it’s forced.

On a good day, you picked at him. Nothing genuine or even that specific, just liking comments made about his firm disposition. He’d gotten more and more into the habit of sighing lately, something he hadn’t even noticed until one day you chimed in about his “old man habits” from your spot across the living room. It’d earned you a hardline scowl then, which only spurred you on more, much to his complicated amusement.

He’d expected another comment then—or at least what’s what he told himself. Your jokes and well meaning annoyances were expected, not wanted. But now that they were missing he couldn’t help how his instincts screamed for him to fix it. That’s what he does, after all. He wanted to ask what happened. To have all the necessary details typed up, filed, and pushed across his desk by the end of the hour. But that's his own wants speaking, not what you needed.

So he sat.

You sipped your tea at irregular intervals, and the sun fell lower and lower right on schedule. He checked his watch, and fought the urge to sigh at nothing. There was a ribbon of discomfort in the silence between you, but nonetheless he persisted.

Time passed. Minutes first, then larger chunks. He stopped counting around the thirty minute mark because it truly didn’t matter. Instead he focused on what did. The tangible. You were breathing deeper, taking longer sips of tea that even he had to admit must be somewhat refreshing. You looked better, too. Maybe not perfect and far from happy, but less like the sky was falling. Less like everything you both knew had been pulled into question. He finally lets the sigh escape.

"…your age is showing," you mumble.

There she is, he thinks. And damn it if he doesn’t feel a hint of amusement tug at the corner of his mouth

He glances over. "Bad day?"

It’s your turn to look at him now, eyes just a little brighter. "Yeah."

“I figured,” He nods firmly. Almost simple in gesture. Accepting.

You watch him for a while longer, eyes tracing over his features in a way that felt like home to you after all these years—second nature, in a sense.

"It’s not a big deal, just a bad morning then things piled up and…yeah. By the time I got back I didn't have the energy to explain it all, and then I felt stupid for thinking about it that much at all."

"You're not stupid,” he says firmly.

You know that. Of course you know that. But on certain days logic just seems to go out the window.

“Yeah. Yeah of course, I just…” You trail off there, and he jumps right in.

“If it causes you to shut yourself off like this, it’s a big deal,” he says, adding on with those words said in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

You nod faintly, blowing on your tea despite the fact that it hasn’t been anything but lukewarm in half an hour.

“I just don’t want you thinking it’s your job to fix it.”

It’s his turn to pause at that, he briefest of looks flashing through his eyes, something you would’ve called hurt if you didn’t think you know better.

“Anything to do with you is my job. You’re my wife.”

You looked at him again, more directly this time. Blowing on your tea once more to give you a minute to think. Something in your own expression flickered, his words being something you always knew to be true but at the same time never spoken aloud, at least not directly.

Beau takes his own breath. He wasn't good at this. He didn't know how to throw out words of comfort or even positive emotion explicitly. Those things didn’t occur to him. But what he had was time and attention to detail that rivaled none. He could notice a shoelace tied wrong from across the room just as well as he could tell when to shut up. Which he did then. Letting you work through your own thoughts in a silence that wasn't absence, but presence. All from a man who loved you more than life itself. That, he figured, had to count for something.

You both sat like that, together for a long while. Candy pinks gave way for deep blues until somewhere down the street, you could hear a party being thrown.

Finally meet the neighbors, you thought. Another task on your list that had gotten pushed back and then forgotten. You’d lived here for years, made the place your own in a way Beau never got around to in all the time since he’d bought it after being stationed. He’d kept the place bare enough to be functional, white plates that screamed economical and a few extra places to sit so he could pretend he ever had people over if anyone asked. It was smart. Boring maybe, given the hopelessly neutral grey-beige-brown theme he fell victim to in the name of practicality. But really it was nice enough. Then one year you moved in after a long and somewhat unprompted situation, and in with it came comfort and colors and nights spent together just like this. He was reluctant, of course he was, ranging from mild grumbling to straight up vetoing your idea to repaint half the house together next time he was on leave. Life went on, and he was still Beau, though things…changed. The dishes in the cabinet were still that same white porcelain but the towels in both bathrooms were fluffy, vibrant, and definitely not purchased at the Navy Exchange.

There was a metaphor there. Beau didn’t think about it.

The tea cooled, and most of the house now was a softest blue hue.

Eventually, you shifted. Setting your mug on the ground then leaning over just a bit so you can rest your head against his shoulder. Beau tensed--an old habit he never could quite shake--before he began to relax just enough.

He puts an arm around you, pulling you a hair closer with his hand on your middle as steady as ever before he speaks.

"I mean what I said," he speaks, slow and quietly, "I’m here, doll. I'll always be here."

You let out a breath at that, finally steady and sure yourself.

"I know you are.”

His grip tightened, assured at your words but he didn’t smile, not exactly. Instead, when you glanced up you spotted him looking first, the faintest hint of affection in his eyes—something you’d happily tease him for at a later date once tonight has blown over.

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