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Troy awoke with a loud gasp, jerking hard enough as he came to from the nightmare about Madison to jostle Nick into consciousness along with him.
Nick grunted, lifting his head from Troy’s shoulder to look around the dark van for whatever threat must have been the cause of Troy’s sudden movement. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked quietly, voice rough from sleep.
Troy let his head fall back against the floor of the van with a shaky breath. The arm he hand around Nick tightened, pulling the smaller man closer as he tried to steady the rapid beat of his heart. “Nightmare.” He croaked, throat dry.
Heaving a sigh Nick wrapped his own arm around Troy’s waist tighter, snuggling close and returning his head to the older mans shoulder. “You wanna talk about it.” He whispered, trying not to wake his sister, who was still asleep behind him.
“No. It was the same as the last one.. I just woke up before she hurt you this time..” Troy said, fighting the sudden urge to cry. “Tell me something?” He asked, desperate for a distraction.
Nick hummed, trying to think through the fog of sleep that still had hold of him. “Like what?” He asked, squirming a bit to get more comfortable.
“Anything.”
With a sigh Nick let his eyes slip closed as he thought. “When Alicia and I were kids we would get mistaken for twins all the time.” he said after a moment of silence.
Troy blinked dumbfoundedly at that. “Really?”
“Yeah. We were practically joined at the hip once she was old enough to walk.” Nick explained, rubbing his cheek against Troy’s shoulder a bit. “It started around the time I was 7 and Licia was 5. She was tall for her age. We would be out playing in the yard or in the store with mom and people would stop and tell her how cute her twins were.”
Troy turned his head, letting his chin rest against Nick’s forehead as he listened to him speak.
“I remember this one time we found a frog, it had hopped into the back yard through a crack in the fence, and we caught it and put it in one of those little plastic beach buckets. Licia wanted to keep it as a pet and we knew mom would say no, so we snuck it inside and hid it in a old terrarium under Licia’s bed.” Nick said softly, hoping his story was starting to calm Troy.
“I’m gonna hazard a guess that Madison found out what you were up to real quick.” Troy said, finally feeling himself start to relax a little.
“Yup. We had gone out to look for crickets to feed it and forgot to put the lid on the tank. Mom went in to clean and found the thing on top of the dresser.” Nick said with a chuckle. “She was so pissed. Dad calmed her down thought. Said if we wanted a pet so bad we should ask instead of adopting stray amphibians.”
Troy hummed in amusement at that. The adrenaline in his system from the nightmare fading fast now.
“Another time, we we’re out riding our bikes and some kid that knew Alicia had yelled to her. She looked without thinking and crashed her bike. It was totaled and Licia scraped her knee pretty bad. I made her friend walk her bike back to our house while I rushed her home riding on my handlebars.”
“Was she okay?” Troy asked, voice sleepy along with his mind and body. He was fading fast, but he wanted to hear more about Nick’s childhood.
“Yeah, she was fine. Mom and dad weren’t home when we got back, so I ended up being the one to clean her up and put a band-aid on her knee.” Nick explained, fighting sleep himself. He told a few more stories, Troy humming in acknowledgement until they both were too exhausted to continue and they fell back to sleep.