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Pelna woke up suddenly.
It was jarring going from not awake to awake and he squinted in the darkness of the room as if the air could tell him what woke him up. Nothing but stillness greeted him. He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to will himself back to sleep. Minutes passed and he was just as awake as that moment when he was jolted awake.
Something inside him was telling him that he needed to be awake and he couldn’t fall asleep now.
With an annoyed huff, he had dealt with way too many late-nighters recently to have his body suddenly waking him up in the middle of the night when he should be resting up, he looked first towards the alarm clock. 2:34 in cheerful red numerals was displayed on the screen. 2:34? He didn’t need to be up until 5:30 at least. He grabbed the phone next to the clock and checked the day (Saturday) and if he had any impending text messages (none).
Unable to think of any astrals-damned reason for him to be awake at the hour he looked to the window, thinking that maybe it was open, when he noticed the moonlit form of Nyx sitting at the edge of the bed. He blinked, but when the image of Nyx didn’t disappear from his eyes he could only admit that for some reason the man wasn’t a mirage and that he was indeed sitting at the edge of their bed in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. “Nyx?”
For a moment it seemed like the other man hadn’t heard him, and then Nyx’s head turned towards him slightly. “Yeah, Pelna?”
Pelna found himself taken aback at the question, and at the listless tone the question was asked in. “Nyx, why are you sitting there?”
There was only motionless silence from Nyx until the question seemed to register for him. “Oh, yeah, I’m-“ Nyx quickly glanced at the wall for no discernible reason before looking back at him. “-did I wake you, Pelna? I’m sorry. Go back to sleep, I’ll be there in a minute.”
He frowned. The answer wasn’t reassuring in the least. He sat up and crawled towards Nyx, placing an hand on the other man’s shoulder. The frown deepened when he noticed how Nyx sighed and leaned into the touch, almost as if he was taking what comfort he could in that brief point of contact. Pelna opened his mouth to ask what woke Nyx, before deciding against it and wrapping his arms around Nyx.
They sat there, entwined in each other for a beautiful, short moment before Pelna spoke up, “come back to sleep with me, Nyx. We can talk about this in the morning.”
( When they finally crept under the covers together, Pelna took note of two things. One was the way Nyx wrapped himself tightly around him, the other was that that clock displayed 2:46.)