[Steven? Hey, Steven, you okay?]
-It had been hard to take a breath with a hole in his lungs and he remembers the way the second bullet punched through their body, ripping through skin and muscle and bone , remembers the way Marc’s balance tipped, the way he’d tried to stay on his feet as long as he could. Instinctively. Stubbornly. He still swears he can hear the softly lapping waves against the stone steps, the steady drip drip drip that echoed around the ancient burial chambers. Swears he can still feel the way their heart pounded in their body-
Until it didn’t.
His knees feel weak now [Steven- Steven, hey, take a breath for me, buddy-], and despite his best efforts, it’s like there’s cavewater in his mouth and throat, suffocating him- drowning him- he can’t think, he can’t see anything- his eyes are squeezed tightly shut and he rocks back and forth and back and forth and he thinks Wake up, please, please I just have to wake up-
There’s a pressure building in the empty space where his heart should be and his head feels light and his throat constricts and clicks. He’s terrified, he can’t make heads or tails of the right way up- wake up wake up wake upwakeupwake-
‘Steady, hermanito.’
Steven’s eyes fly open and he’s almost startled to realise there’s no one physically in the room with him for a moment before his gaze immediately snaps to the only reflective surface, the window. He hasn’t been asleep for long- it’s still dark out, and there, just in the corner of the glass, there’s movement-
It hadn’t sounded like Marc, but... that could only mean..
‘M-Marc?’ Steven tries for words [he checks, just in case], his voice raw and his jaw is clenched, making coherency even harder to attain.
‘Yeah, Steven?’ comes the response, but not from the figure in his reflection. His muscles ache as he tries to sit up, to get a better view. ‘I’m here.’
His tongue refuses to cooperate and he groans- his limbs feel like lead. It helps to know that Marc is there, that he isn’t alone, but for some reason tonight his body is stuck in the past and even as he desperately tries to unclench his fingers from their white-knuckled grip on sweat-dampened sheets, to catch his breath, the sting of panic doesn’t lessen. He wants to close his eyes again, he wants to scream. There’s an ache in his gut that pulls and twists and it’s got him caught in the eye of a hurricane as his nightmare fades.
‘Keep your eyes open, Steven.’ and he knows that voice- that’s Jake- ‘You had a pesadilla, a dream. You’re awake now.’
He’s sure he mishears something even as comfort washes over him, becalming him. Then he pauses- Jake’s words pull a short huff of incredulous laughter from his chest like a cork and he’s able to suck in a deep inhale before his eyes latch on the reflection. His expression furrows for a beat as he tries again to wrestle with words. ‘Uh, I had.. I had a baked potato last night, mate.’ he says through stuttered pants, swallowing hard, trying to process what he’d heard with a muddled mind. Steven finds himself chuckling again breathlessly. ‘I haven’t had mexican food since-’
‘A nightmare,’ Jake corrects himself, but there’s a smile in his voice. ‘You were sleeping, hermanito. But now you’re awake.’
The ‘and safe’ is left unsaid, unnecessary.
‘Oh,’ Steven says, and he can hear Marc snickering about quesadillas. His heart isn’t pounding near as hard, now, although it still feels as though it skips every few beats. He rubs at his chest. ‘R-right, sorry-’
His reflection waves off the apology before it can even truly begin. ‘No need for sorries, Steven,’ he says, and gestures to the wall beneath the window, where a small night light in the shape of a moon illuminates the floorboards. ‘I’m just returning the favour.’
Steven’s smile trembles ever so slightly at the edges, and the cold feeling in his chest is slowly warming, pleased to have been helpful. The fragments of his nightmare feel further away.
