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“You take it.”
They said it in unison, a race almost, to see who could be the most accommodating. Their voices were both hoarse and tired, their souls on pins and needles. They’d been running a long time, on increasingly less sleep, with increasingly less a sense of security. And, fortunate or unfortunate, they were both being quietly wearied by their growing fondness for each other. Concern, though flattering, bred some sort of sacrifice. Time. Comfort. Physical well-being.
Patience.
Something they had a scarce amount of when they were so worn down.
Grillby had only just dropped the heavy bag off his shoulder and onto the ground, and it took him a moment to register that he and Gaster and spoken at the same time. He blinked tiredly, then shook his head, “I’m not sleeping.”
“When was the last time you even slept?” Gaster countered, his own voice weary but not unkind, “Yesterday? The day before?”
“I slept in the car.”
“What? When?”
“Truck stop,” Grillby muttered, unburdening himself of various concealed weapons and devices - a nightly routine Gaster was still getting adjusted to seeing. He checked them all, one by one, for signs of wear or malfunction. He’d used two rounds from his pistol today and took the time to add two more back in.
“At the tr - we were only there for half an hour!”
Grillby paused in his process to look up at him, “What’s your point sir?”
Gaster sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “When was the last time you slept before that?”
Grillby parsed through his memory slowly, trying to think - and admittedly finding it a bit difficult past how tired he was. The truck stop was around noon? He hadn’t slept last night, he’d been driving. The night before, then? He knew he’d gotten some sleep then, but he’d been woken up at three in the morning because someone was breaking down the door - he’d gotten three hours of sleep? That sounded about right.
“Well?” Gaster asked, his worry making him impatient.
“This is irrelevant,” Grillby said quickly, waving a hand dismissively, “I need to keep watch in case we didn’t lose them, and you are wounded and need some rest. Keep at that long enough and it’ll get worse, and then where will we be?”
Grillby ushered vaguely in Gaster’s direction, and the skeleton dropped his gaze down to his ankle. When they’d been ambushed last he’d twisted it pretty badly - nearly broken it, in fact, and he’d been limping ever since. Rest and food would heal him up simply enough normally, but all he’d done was catch glances of shut-eye in the car ever since they’d started driving. Nothing truly restful or healing.
“For heaven’s sakes, Grillby,” Gaster sighed, turning his attention once again to the exhausted elemental, “You need the sleep more than I do. You’re going to run yourself to dust.”
“I have been trained for this sort of thing, sir.”
“Stop! Calling me sir. You already know I don’t like it,” Gaster snapped, “And I hardly think they trained you to run yourself ragged for weeks on end.”
Grillby offered a helpless shrug.
Gaster frowned. Alright, fine. Time for a change in tactics then. The lights of his eyes flicked around the cheap motel room for a moment, finally settling on a towel folded in the tiny bathroom hallway. With a quick flourish of his blue magic he wadded it up into a ball and tossed it at the elemental, who had gone back to parsing through his inventory with a noticeable slowness. It smacked him in the side of the head, spraying the air with a plume of startled sparks as Grillby batted it off of him.
“What the hell was that for?”
“Just testing your reflexes,” Gaster said, unable to keep the smug grin from creeping into his voice, “So, great protector, riddle me this one: How are you supposed to save me from bullets when you can’t even dodge a dish towel?”
Grillby blinked at the towel, crumpled on the floor. It was probably mean of him, but Gaster felt a creeping satisfaction in his soul when he saw the elemental’s shoulders slump, defeated.
Then Grillby said in a voice that was startlingly small, “I’m a terrible bodyguard.”
“Wh-what? No that’s not what I-”
“You need your rest,” the elemental pressed again firmly, running a hand through the flame of his head, “What happens if we have to run and I can’t carry you and your ankle’s still bad? But I can’t keep -!”
He let out an exasperated growl, smoke blowing with his breath. It was almost like he’d short circuited for a moment - torn in half by two driving needs to keep Gaster safe, and finding no way to satisfy them both.
Gaster watched him for a moment, and then looked to the little bed in the room, and then back to Grillby, “We could share?”
“… we could share?”
“I mean, yeah. The bed is big enough for two people,” Gaster offered lamely, and, he noticed, somewhat nervously, “And I mean, if something happens, I’ll be right there when you wake up. So…”
“And you’d be okay with that, s-” Grillby checked himself, and then said, “You’d be okay with that Gaster?”
Gaster. Gods above. He didn’t know why, but the way his name sounded on the elemental’s voice made his soul do flips. He was almost too flustered to respond.
“Y… yeah. I mean, are you okay with that?”
For a moment, Gaster might have just been imagining things, but he thought he might have seen the barest hint of a blush color the normally stoic flame, “That’s fine.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Yeah… fine.”
Without another word, Grillby finished his nightly routine of checking through all of his equipment, making sure to keep a knife ready on the bedside table - just in case. Gaster tried not to be nervous about it. After all, Grillby was like this every night. They just happened to be sharing a bed this time.
The elemental, to satisfy some of his paranoia, picked the side of the bed closest to the door, so Gaster found himself facing the bathroom all night. For the longest time he couldn’t get to sleep - though he noticed Grillby’s breathing seemed to deepen and still within moments. He must have been exhausted. Meanwhile Gaster was self conscious, and adjusting to Grillby’s closeness. He was warm, the kind of soft, seeping warmth that wove its way into his marrow and relaxed his whole body like a sigh. And he smelled like smoke tinged with the bite of gunpowder. The smell seemed to eat up the space between them until it was about the only sense Gaster was capable of feeling, like an aura around the sleeping elemental.
Gaster stared at the smoke detector near the ceiling, watched the little red light blink and listened to the distant sounds of neighbors in their rooms as they shifted and moved. And he listened to the sound of Grillby breathing, soft and light, and he basked in the warmth and the smell of smoke.
He didn’t know how long it took, but eventually he felt himself drifting off to sleep. His thoughts got more distant. The red blinking light blurred. Just before he could fall asleep completely, Grillby shifted. For a moment, Gaster’s whole body tensed, wondering if Grillby was waking up. Maybe he’d heard something Gaster hadn’t? Maybe they were in danger, and in that weird sense only Grillby seemed to have, he had noticed it coming and was moving to confront it.
But instead of speaking some ominous words about Gaster needing to move quietly, instead of jerking awake to reach for his knife or conjuring magic to launch at some unseen attacker, Grillby turned over in his sleep, rolling close enough to the skeleton’s back that his face buried itself by his shoulder. He murmured something sleepily, and then was silent.
Oh. God. That was adorable. Gaster was sure he was blushing. Nearly too scared to breathe, Gaster relaxed again, this time incredibly aware of Grillby’s closeness. And then with surprising fastness, he was asleep.