Work Text:
I'm in your movie and everyone looks sad
But I can hear you, your voice, the laughtrack
-"Sleepwalker" The Wallflowers
Willie groaned as he stirred awake from a deep ghost-sleep. Since defeating Caleb and being free of his stamp and getting stronger, he could now get real sleep like the other phantoms could. His brain felt foggy as he pried his eyes opened and stretched in the bed, reluctant to move. It was still dark in the garage. Rolling over, the phantom intended to curl up to his boyfriend in hopes it would lure them back to sleep but he was surprised to find the pull-out sofa was empty. Sitting up, Willie stifled a yawn as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and roamed around in search of his boyfriend…
He stopped when his eyes spotted Alex’s figure standing in the dark, by the studio door, just staring at it.
“Hotdog?” Willie called, voice groggy from sleep.
When Alex didn’t answer a pit fell in his stomach, anxiety settling in as he quietly slipped out of bed and approached the phantom.
“Alex?” He called again. “What’s wrong?”
No answer. Swallowing nervously, Willie carefully circled around his boyfriend and froze when he realized what was happening…
“Oh no,” he breathed, “dude! I think you’re sleepwalking!”
He waved a hand in front of Alex’s face to see if he would react- nothing. His eyes were open but all glassed over, and he swayed ever so gently back and forth.
“I don’t know what you do with sleepwalkers!”
For a moment he stared, watching with a mix of amusement and fear as Alex kept standing there, blissfully unaware of the world.
“Maybe I should…” carefully, he reached up to take Alex’s hand but was swatted away, rather forcefully. Willie blinked in surprise. “Okay, we won’t do that.”
As he studied his boyfriend, he was certain Alex couldn’t hear him even though maybe his ghostly senses felt his presence. In dreamland, Alex likely thought he was still sleeping in bed.
“I guess the good thing is that you’re still in the garage,” Willie offered. Could ghosts poof in their sleep? “Just…stay here, okay? It’s going to be okay, Alex. I’m going to stay right with you.”
And so that first night of sleepwalking, Willie stood guard by the garage door. When at last his boyfriend lowered himself to the floor, curling up to fall into a deeper sleep, Willie successfully poofed him back into bed without further fight.
The next night, Willie couldn’t fall asleep. That morning, he had been half-awake as he ate breakfast with Luke and Reggie (no amount of sleep deprivation was going to ruin his chance to enjoy their newfound ability to eat) while Alex napped on the sofa, and Willie had confessed to them what happened. Their faces had fallen right away, and Luke had explained how back in the nineties, after Alex ran away from home, he had a hard time adjusting to all the change and it was like his brain couldn’t shut off his anxiety, even when he slept. They thought they were being haunted by ghosts (ironically) moving things around the garage until they realized Alex was sleep walking. Back then, the sleepwalking only lasted two weeks, but so much was happening in their ghosts lives, he couldn’t imagine poor Alex going through this for two whole weeks.
Willie debated if he should even tell his boyfriend. Alex’s anxiety was bad enough already, without him having to worry about sleepwalking. After waking up from sleeping in Alex seemed okay, completely unaware of sleepwalking again, and had a fairly relaxed day. They hung out in the Molina house, coloring in pages from coloring books of Julie’s and writing in journals. It was, dare he say it, a relaxing post-Caleb day and Alex fell asleep easy enough that night. Maybe, he hoped, the sleepwalking was a one-off thing. Just in case, that night he stayed up, fighting off his own exhaustion as he watched Alex sleep soundly in bed beside him…
…at some point, his body must have given in to sleep because Willie woke up to darkness yet again. This time when he opened his eyes, he was relieved to find that Alex hadn’t gotten up. Instead, his boyfriend simply sat straight up in bed, his face staring straight ahead but eyes closed. Ever so gently, Willie dared to reach up to stroke his fingers through his blonde strands. Alex jerked away, almost zombie-like, with a grunt, and Willie snorted.
“If I wasn’t so worried about you this would be adorable,” he muttered.
Alex was having a really good day the next day, all smiles and wit, spending a good chunk of it at the beach with the guys, and Willie didn’t have the heart to bring up the sleepwalking. He had intended to that evening- honest! But Willie and the whole band ended up lounging around the studio until nearly midnight, watching through the Pixar movies on Julie’s laptop, during which it turned out he and Alex both had fallen asleep. Willie woke up again to find the bed empty, and dread immediately filled his soul as he dared to lift himself up.
This time, Alex was pacing back and forth across from the bed at a dizzying speed.
“I guess your brain really doesn’t give you a break, even when you’re sleeping, does it?” He stated softly.
Shuffling out of bed, he grabbed Alex’s pink hoodie, helping himself to it as he shivered in the cold studio air. That day he had done some reading at the library about sleepwalking and was relieved to know it was okay to try to take a sleepwalker back to bed if he could, but he was also wary of startling Alex again in his sleep. Sleepwalking Alex really did not like to be bothered- not unlike normal sleeping Alex, who was very grumpy if he was woken up too early in the morning. He had initially tried to poof Alex back to bed, only to find himself poofed up to the loft, like the drummer’s brain was fighting him away in his sleep. Willie concluded Alex could be moved once the sleepwalking stopped and he went into deeper sleep but absolutely not when he was actively sleepwalking.
So Willie sat up again that night, keeping an eye on his boyfriend as he talked softly to him, telling him random stories about his days haunting Sunset Boulevard. Alex slowed his pacing eventually, sitting on the edge of the bed instead while Willie took to reading to him from a comic book he had borrowed from Carlos.
Suddenly, his boyfriend stopped pacing and instead turned abruptly toward the garage door and started walking.
“Oh no,” Willie groaned. “No, please don’t…and you’re gone.”
Alex stepped right through the garage door in his sleep. With a sigh, Willie stepped into his tennis shoes, grabbed Alex’s shoes as well and quickly poofed out to catch up with him. The drummer was walking down the street in a zombie-like fashion, shuffling his feet as he moved himself through the night.
“I know I should have talked to you about this,” Willie muttered, rushing to keep up. Sleepwalking Alex, it turned out, was a fast walker. “I’m really sorry, Alex. Please wake up!”
He hurried so that he could walk in front of him, waving his hand, snapping his finger by his ear, anything, but Alex kept walking, heading closer and closer toward the main road.
“That’s it, I’ve got to try to teleport us. I’m so sorry.”
Willie tried to poof them both back to the studio, but instead Alex let out a grunt of protest and grabbed onto him, poofing them away.
Alex woke up feeling groggy and oddly nauseous, considering he was a ghost. He felt sore, like he had run a marathon in his sleep. Not feeling rested at all, the drumming stretched out, reaching for Willie…and he stopped when he realized it didn’t feel like he was in the sofa bed at all. Eyes flying open, Alex froze when he met Willie’s eyes, taking in immediately that they weren’t at home at all.
“Morning, Hotdog,” Willie grumbled sleepily.
Sitting up, Alex realized with panic that no only was he not in bed, he wasn’t even at home.
They were curled up in a corner inside the museum.
“How did I get here?!” Alex yelped. “We were asleep, in the studio, right? We were watching the movie and…”
Willie reached out for him, gently wrapping his arm around him. Bringing a thumb to his cheek, his boyfriend stroked his skin soothingly, staring at him with eyes that were a little too sympathetic.
“So…you’ve been sleepwalking,” Willie confessed.
“What?!” Alex leapt back. “For how long? What did I do? How did I get us here- oh my god, was I sleepwalking through traffic?”
Willie reached for his hands. Giving them a comforting squeeze, he pulled Alex close, trying to bring him back from his spiral.
“Come here,” Willie murmured. His boyfriend was wearing his hoodie, Alex realized, and quickly shrugged it off and pulled it over the drummer’s head, knowing the hoodie brought him instant comfort. At last, he admitted: “It’s been a few days. You hadn’t left the garage before. I’m sorry, Alex, I thought maybe it was a one-off thing. I didn’t want to scare you.”
Alex allowed himself to lower his head to Willie’s shoulder, letting his boyfriend comb his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t even thought about sleepwalking in years- even when he did it back in 1995, that had been his first and only time in his life.
"We'll figure this out," Willie promised him softly, placing a kiss to his shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm not going to let you sleep walk into the ocean or anything."
"Ohmygod I hadn't thought of that!"
He groaned, pressing his hands against his face. A gentle hand brushed through his hair before cupping his face, trying to coax him into looking up. Alex looked up to find Willie gazing back at him with soft, tired, eyes and guilt only ate him up that his boyfriend had been trying to deal with this alone.
"Come on, Hotdog. Let’s find a café to haunt before we go home."
To his credit, breakfast food normally did solve anything for them, but Alex felt too disoriented to think about food right now. His boyfriend shuffled to his feet, reaching down to help Alex stand as well. Leaning forward, Willie captured his lips into a gentle kiss, which did admittedly settle his anxiety down at least a small notch. Alex looked around, taking in being back at the museum, slightly amused that his sleep brain would take him here in time of need. Maybe, he thought, it was his brain’s subconscious way of saying that he had a lot that he needed to get out of his system.
“Actually…could we maybe stay here and do some museum screaming instead?”
Laughing, Willie grabbed hold of his shoulders. He threw Alex a wicked grin before he screamed right into his face, egging him on. Alex echoed his screams, playfully shoving him away, and the two screamed out their stress until they tired themselves out, cuddling up together back in the corner where they had slept. Willie fell asleep first this time, clearly more exhausted than he had let on after staying up with him the past few nights.
“I love you,” Alex announced softly to his sleeping boyfriend, "even though you really need to tell me things like if I’m sleepwalking.”
Not having the heart to be too angry, he knelt down, placing a kiss on Willie’s head. Alex simply sat with Willie in corner of the museum, running his fingers through his long, wavy, hair, and made sure he stayed awake so his boyfriend could get some rest.
Thankfully, the sleepwalking only lasted a few days. The guys took turns watching him so they could sleep on rotation, and within a few days he was back to his normal can-sleep-through-anything-don't-wake-me-before-noon-or-else sleeping habits without too much more ghost sleepwalking drama.
(though he didn't think Luke would ever forgive him for accidentally sleep-poofing them both to the Grand Canyon)