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The silence is golden.
Dream basks in it, tension high. He can feel where his heart beats in his chest, hammering and careful. The world seems to stand still, even if only for a moment.
His own bedroom has never felt so unfamiliar, so stifling. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.
So he doesn’t move. Only lays in the darkness, eyes on the ceiling, a lone finger tapping against his wrist. The radiator buzzes in the distance, blowing wind soft outside the far windows.
Dream doesn’t move. He thinks he’s too afraid of shifting something, unearthing something, but it goes deeper than creased sheets.
But something else moves before he can. And it’s distinct, tainted by alertness, a sighing exhale ringing out from the body laid beside him that he hadn’t been expecting.
It feels like it changes everything. It probably doesn’t change much at all.
“So,” Dream mutters, speaking slowly.
“So?” comes the tired voice at Dream’s side, mattress shifting beneath a turning weight. “You’re awake, too?”
Dream hums, confirming. “Can’t sleep.”
A sigh filters through the tense air between them. “Me neither.”
Their whispers fade again. Dream focuses on the hum of the radiator before it goes quiet, leaving their silence all the more deafening.
Dream holds his breath. This is too much for him to take.
He should’ve known that sharing a bed with Punz was a mistake. Inviting him over at all was a mistake—especially to spend the night. They could’ve ended this hours ago, when the sky was still golden-orange, but they didn’t.
So now they’re here. In the darkness of Dream’s bedroom, the room silent enough to hear each other’s breath. Dream’s fingers tensed against his chest.
“You sound tired,” Dream mutters, an afterthought of observation; he clung to the low notes of Punz’s voice like he needs them.
Maybe he does.
“I am,” Punz answers, another sigh spilling through his lips.
“But you can’t sleep?”
Punz makes a noise, turning over in bed. “There’s something keeping me up.”
Dream thinks Punz might be looking at him. Through the veil of darkness, he swears he can feel his gaze.
“What is it?”
Somehow, the tension grows. Dream thinks he may have said something he shouldn’t have, heart rate growing quicker in his chest. He can feel the way it thrums beneath his fingertips, a rush of blood that persists even when he holds his breath.
He blinks up at nothing, a ceiling unseen. Nothing changes when he shuts his eyes.
“Can’t tell you,” Punz mutters, weak-voiced. “I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”
Dream huffs out a laugh, strained by his position. It feels nervous, not amused, but he still spins a lilt on his tone when he’s desperate to distill the heavy tension.
“You can’t do that to me, Punz.”
“Too bad,” Punz retorts, turning his face into the pillow, “‘m doing it.”
His muffled words are far too endearing. Dream wears a stupid smile on his face, and for once, he’s grateful for the darkness that hides him. It leaves him with the last of his invisibility, a blush spreading across his cheeks in pretty, reckless red.
He can’t tell if he wants to know what’s up with Punz out of curiosity or concern for his friend. Either way, he’s apt to pry, a compromise sitting light on his tongue.
“But—” he starts, squinting, letting his head fall to look where he knows Punz is in the dark. “What if I tell you what’s keeping me up?”
He hears Punz shift again. As if in self-betrayal, he imagines the way he looks with his cheek pressed to the pillow, and he nearly loses himself for a moment.
“Depends on how much of a secret you’re keeping,” Punz answers, and Dream considers himself.
It’s probably the only real secret he has left. Well, a piece of it; something that comes as a result of everything greater than Dream, a result of decisions that could land him in tears on the floor if they don’t go the way he wants them to.
“It could go probably go in a way I don’t want it to,” Dream confesses, all the worst endings flitting through his mind.
Punz seems to think for a moment. Dream only makes assumptions off of silence, but it’s a quiet moment that lingers, long enough to make him go tense beneath the sheets again.
“We have to say it at the same time,” Punz says, decisive, “okay?”
“Yeah,” Dream whispers. “Okay.”
Punz shifts again. Their countdown starts in earnest. “Three.”
Dream swallows, heavy and nervous. “Two.”
“One,” Punz finishes, and they both take a breath.
As promised, their answers come at the exact same time.
“It’s because you’re here.” / “The sheets smell like you.”
Dream can barely discern Punz’s words over his own. And even when he does, he furrows his brows at the darkness that hides the ceiling.
“The sheets smell like me?” he asks, small yet curious, and he isn’t sure if he fears the answer or not.
“They’re your sheets,” Punz mutters, obvious.
Dream is too nervous to laugh, though he wants to.
“But it’s keeping you up?” he questions.
Punz doesn’t answer. The silence is heavy and stilted; Dream doesn’t like it.
Desperate, he tries to joke. “Do I really smell that bad?”
Punz doesn’t laugh. Maybe he’s nervous, too.
“No, it’s just…” Punz hesitates, and Dream swears he can hear the gears turning in his head. “It’s distracting.”
Thoughtful, Dream repeats, “Distracting.”
Noisy, the sheets shift again. Dream grows tenser than he already was.
“And I’m distracting, too?” Punz asks, a little lilted but more than curious.
Dream swallows. It feels like something he shouldn’t admit to, shouldn’t have admitted to, but it’s too late to take his words back, now.
He can’t sleep when Punz is next to him, breathing so awake and alive, and he knows that now. That probably makes it worse: harder to sleep, harder to breathe, harder to find rest.
His ability to regret wanes thin.
“A little,” he relents, though his voice comes weak and strained.
Like a broken record that plays the sweetest song, Punz mutters, “A little.”
“I don’t know,” Dream says, quick and with the taste of defense. “In my head, it was a lot easier to fall asleep next to you.”
“Same,” Punz admits in a murmur.
It’s as if Dream wasn’t meant to hear it at all. But he does, and his nerves spark, the air crackling like fire between them. He isn’t sure which way to take that, and a part of him worries that it was an insult unlike how Dream’s was a compliment.
That he doesn’t like Dream at all. That he can’t stand being this close to him. That it makes him uneasy.
“The sheets smell like you.”
Dream turns on his side, facing into the bed. He knows where Punz is, but he still can’t see him, even when his eyes adjust to the steady darkness of his room. He thinks he can feel his tension, though, and it rivals Dream’s own.
“Punz,” he whispers.
Nervous, Punz hums, “Hm?”
Dream swallows the last of his hesitance.
“Can you get, like…” he shifts his arms, “closer.”
He hears Punz’s breath hitch. “Closer?”
“I wanna…” Dream starts, and ends, all the hesitance he’d done away with flooding back to him.
I want you to be closer, I want to touch you, I want you between my arms.
I want to feel the way your heart beats beneath my palm, I want to feel your breath against my chest, I want to know that way you’re so alive.
“You wanna what?” Punz pries, quiet.
“Hold you,” Dream admits. “I think I wanna hold you.”
Without so much as a moment of pause, Punz whispers back, “Okay.”
Dream hadn’t thought it would be that easy.
But Punz is moving across the bed, turning, settling with his back pressed against Dream’s chest. And just as he’d wanted to, Dream wraps his arms around Punz, pulling his body as close as he can get it and breathing in his scent where it sits on the back of his neck.
His presence is warm in every way imaginable. Dream basks in it, a smile on his lips where they press in a line to the back of Punz’s shoulder.
“Better?” Punz asks, and Dream thinks he can hear a smile on his lips, too.
“Mhm,” he hums into Punz’s skin. “I can sleep now.”
“Yeah, me too,” Punz admits, settling closer. “You’re very warm.”
You’re warmer, Dream doesn’t say. Instead, he holds a little bit tighter, alight with the vivacity he holds between his arms.
“Good night, Punz.”
“Good night, Dreamie.”
The nickname makes Dream laugh, breathy and into the back of Punz’s neck. Maybe he won’t fall asleep for a little while longer, but he’ll be alright with it, and the air won’t feel so tense and unmanageable anymore.
It’ll feel right. Because, really, who was Dream meant to hold if not Punz?
They can talk in the morning.