Work Text:
It is very late at night when you hear your brother shift on his side of the bed.
You are not stirred from sleep, but rather a haze of drowsiness that predates it. You have much trouble sleeping at all, these nights, what with the ache of your joints and the soreness of your legs. Your back, too, bothers you more often than not, and your overactive mind prevents your body from resting. And so the nights are felt for every hour, and you are awake and aware, and slowly, slowly slipping under deep water, until you are unconscious.
But your brother does not have problems going to sleep. Dream sleeps immediately, as if on command. And tonight, he is awake. He is awake, you hear his breathing shifting, and he is sitting up beside you.
The weight on the mattress dips, and he sits there like that. The blanket is pooled in his lap, and uncovering your back - where you are lying on your side, facing away from him, eyes closed. There is a window on the wall where you are facing. If you opened your eyes, you would see his reflection cast onto the glass by the oil lantern on the dresser. But you stubbornly keep your eyes shut, because you want to sleep, and whatever Dream is doing is probably only temporary.
But your mind will not stop clinging to this anomaly. Dream is awake, and that is not normal. Dream is always asleep after you read him a bedtime story. But he isn’t. He is awake now, and it is late at night, and he is sitting there.
He has been sitting there.
For a long time, now.
Your body grows slightly tense, for a reason you can’t decipher. Your brother is no danger to you, but he feels different. The person in the bed next to you feels different. It does not feel like your brother. But someone is awake, and sitting in the bed, and they are next to you, and your eyes are shut. Because you are asleep. You are pretending to be asleep.
You are pretending to be asleep, because you understand, now, through the foggy haze of almost unconsciousness - there is someone in the bed with you, and they are not Dream.
You prod the mental link between you and your brother.
He is asleep.
But his breathing is different. Their breathing is different. They are awake, then. You have verified this. You understand this. But this is not Dream. It cannot be Dream, because Dream is asleep.
Who is in the bed next to you?
Your body is taut like a wire pulled between the two hands of a hunter. But though your shoulders are tense like that wire, you feel something in your body thrum swiftly with the same heart of a cornered animal that gazes into the eyes of the ravenous predator.
But your eyes are shut. You are not looking. You are not awake.
And you will not look at it.
As if in response to your thoughts, it shifts in the bed once more. In a motion that bears fruit of near relief to you, it slips to the edge of the bed on its side, and its weight completely leaves the mattress. But then it begins to move, and if you had been unsure now, you are completely sure now - this is not Dream.
Its gait is uneven, as if injured. As if its body is too heavy to bear. It shambles to the foot of the bed, so awfully slowly. Dream's footsteps are always light and quick, no matter how tired he is. He does not walk with the same thudding noise, but you hear the tell-tale click of his toes on the wooden floorboards with the way that the stranger walks.
But it is not Dream.
Dream is asleep, still asleep, even as you frantically grip the tether between you both and pull, ringing a bell. And you curse the way he falls asleep so easily.
It hasn't moved, you realize. The thing. The stranger. It stands at the foot of the bed, and your chest thrums with terror, and it is looking at you. It is watching you. It is standing at the foot of the bed, and you feel as though it is searching you. It's watching your breathing.
You manually take deep breaths, letting your chest rise and fall. You cannot untense your body. You hope you do not look obvious.
Your eyes are shut.
But they want to open.
You do not want them to open, but you feel them struggling. Your eyelids. Your body wants to look. It wants to look and see, so badly, what looks at you.
You have never been very good with self-control.
And so your eyes open.