Hey, can you do prompt n.45?
This one got really, really angsty, so be warned …
45. “I had a nightmare about you and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
It’s when you sleep that things get you. When you let your guard down. They slip inside you and touch you. Touch all the places that hurt and that make you feel insecure.
That make you quake and whimper and curl in on yourself until your limbs cramp up and your bones want to break with all the tension. When you sleep you have no defenses. You mind does what it wants.
And David’s sometimes lets things in.
It’s always been this way. It’s like he has the keys to all the doors. But when he falls asleep the keys fall out of slack fingers that used to make tight fists. His unconscious scoops them up, puts them into the locks, turns them and then …
He often doesn’t even know what he dreams about. Most of the time, when he dreams and it’s bad, he doesn’t see things. He mostly feels, which is worse, because things that can be felt and not seen are always scarier. You don’t know where they come from. You can’t know where they will touch you, can’t anticipate what something will make you feel if you can’t see its shape.
Very often, David dreams that he can’t move. That something is holding him down. He dreams of someone, something – who’s to say it’s a person, he can’t, because he can’t see, he just can’t see – looking at him. He can feel the eyes like insects, crawling, burrowing. It’s helplessness and panic and the fact that he doesn’t know what the thing looking at him is, means he has all the time in the world to imagine what it might look like. David’s mind doesn’t ever come up with beautiful things when it comes to that.
Tonight, though, it’s worse.
He still cannot see what the thing looks like. He still can’t see anything but complete and utter darkness. He can move, but the air feels more like water between his fingers, heavy and elusive, even though David can’t move it away from him. He doesn’t know where to turn, where and how to move into any direction.
He doesn’t know much. What he does know is that the thing is still there and it has got Matteo.
The knowledge of that is so deep inside him, it’s in his bones. Because he can hear him. It’s Matteo, though he hasn’t ever heard Matteo sound like that. He didn’t think he would ever hear him sound like that. A sound like that shouldn’t exist.
David can’t describe it. But whatever the thing is doing to Matteo makes him make noises David wants to tear out of his head because he doesn’t want to remember them.
Move. He needs to move, but how? Matteo is right there, he can’t be far, not when David can hear him so clearly. So damn clearly that his heart wants to twist out of his chest because he can’t do this, this is worse than anything, how can he help, how can he get to him?
If he were anywhere else, he could run, he’s fast, he’s strong, but here he isn’t. Here everything is wrong. If he could only see, god if he could only see, he could get Matteo away, hide him, makes sure he is safe.
Matteo is still making sounds but they’re getting softer and weaker and suddenly David is gripped around the middle by the ice-cold vice of utter certainty that, if he is too slow, if he doesn’t do something soon, Matteo will be gone. Hurt and hurt and hurt and then gone and it will all be David’s fault.
A sob tears itself out of David’s throat and he tries to thrash more, to do something, to get away, to run, to, to to—
With a hard flinch, David wakes up.
For a moment he can’t do anything but stare. Stare into the darkness and almost panic all over again until he notices that it isn’t complete darkness he is in.
There is the blue of the digital clock on the bedside table. It reads 3:47.
The moon shines softly through the window, helping David make out shapes he knows are his desk and his chair and his wardrobe.
He notices that he is propped up on his elbow, body askew, half off the bed, half not.
Behind him, there are the soft noises Matteo makes when he sleeps.
When the tension flows out of him, it feels like melting. David slides back onto the bed, which seems unnaturally soft. His arms and legs hurt, as if he had clenched them up for too long. Air runs out of his lungs with a shudder.
Gradually, tears start stinging in his eyes and he can’t help it anymore, okay?
Scrunching up his face he turns around as quickly as he can, lets his arms dive under Matteo’s blanket, which is when he realizes how cold he is and how much sleepy warmth Matteo gives off, and wraps his arms around the other boy.
Matteo feels normal, feels good and soft and pliant in his arms. He sleeps so deeply, David can arrange him the way he wants, can tuck him under his chin and move Matteo’s whole body so it’s draped over his own. The pressure feels good this time.
He’s whole. Nothing did anything to him. He’s still here and still David’s.
David swallows and it’s dry and loud in the room. It sounds like it hurts and that’s because it does.
He rubs his lips across Matteo’s forehead, smears a kiss into his skin.
The moment it happens, he can feel Matteo waking up, because he goes stiff and then immediately pliant again. David’s heart takes a bit of a tumble. It always does when he’s shown just how much Matteo trusts him.
“You okay?”, he hears him whisper.
David only hums, unsure what he can say or if he even wants to say anything.
He doesn’t have dreams like this very often anymore, but it’s worse when he’s stressed. Uni has been kicking his ass and there are midterms and work and lately, it all feels like it’s on the verge of being too much.
There’s a hand on his cheek and it turns his head down and towards his boyfriend who is always ready to be worried.
In the dark he can’t see a lot, but he knows Matteo’s eyes are open and looking at him.
“What’s wrong?” He always wants to know. David is only slowly getting used to someone always wanting to know. About him and what is going on with him. Someone who wants to live in his head. Matteo once said he would crawl into David and live there if he could. It’s the best thing anyone has ever told him, because it means he is home to Matteo just as much as Matteo has come to mean home to David.
“I had a nightmare about you and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
The hand on his cheek runs down his neck until it reaches the hem of his sleep shirt where it has ridden up on his lower back. Slowly, it strokes up his back until it comes to rest between his shoulder blades, fingers spread as far as they will go, hand big and solid and there.
Matteo makes it so that they’re both lying on their sides, facing each other, pressed together, chest to chest. David didn’t always like that, but he does now.
Lips are brushed against his, dry and soft. “I’m okay”, Matteo reassures him, voice sounding like he’s half asleep again.
David just nods and takes another kiss for himself. And then another one so it’s been three, because that’s supposed to be lucky, right?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
There’s a pause. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t want to go to sleep again.”
“Then we won’t.”
“You don’t have to stay up for me. I’ll just go to the living room and watch—”
“David.”
He can’t help the smile that tugs on his mouth.
“Okay.”
And he knows, as he always does, as he has known ever since they got together, how lucky he really is, three kisses and all. He’s got the sleepiest boy in the world in his arms, willing to get up at ass o’clock, just so David won’t be alone.
He’s willing to have nightmares, once in a while, as long as he gets to keep this.
___
If anyone wants me to write more, here’s the prompt list.
