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Quentin would not go to sleep.
He had come much too far in his real life and inside the fog to fall asleep at camp and risk actual death. There’s no way in hell that he’d work his ass off and barely escape sacrifice each trial only to fall asleep and meet his demise by the claws of one gloved gremlin. At least, That’s what he told himself every time his eyes started drooping.
He’d shake his arms out in front of himself, run his hands down over his face and sit up straighter, determined not to topple over into sleep. It worked pretty good, Quentin thought. He’d only napped a few times, and he’d not had enough time to dream, death so far avoided. It wasn’t nice to go back to having to stay awake, and being tired all the time did bring up a lot of old memories, but Quentin’s alive and breathing, so it’s cool.
Right now though, his determination was wavering. Wrapped in someone else’s thick jacket, bundled up between a set of warm thighs as the hands that belonged to the thighs carded slowly through his hair, his determination was definitely wavering.
Quentin stifled a yawn into the collar of the quilted jacket dwarfing him, wincing when the deep wound across his chest throbbed in warning. “Stay still,” the soft voice above his head instructed, and Quentin gave a noncommittal hum in response, laying his cheek against a plush thigh. The attentive hands stroked over his cheek and brows, delicate fingers swiping sweaty hair away and tracing patterns over his forehead. Quentin’s eyes flutter shut, his legs slowly slump to the side, he feels the weight in his body slowly leave him and-
No. No sleeping.
Quentin jolts up, shocking the hands away from his face as he coughs onto himself. He groans as his chest flares in pain, shuffling himself back so he can sit up straighter. “Quentin,” the soft voice above him scolds, laying stern hands over his shoulders. Quentin gives his best apologetic sounding mumble and he blinks hard, looking upwards towards the treetops.
“You have to rest, Quen.” The voice says, it sounds stable and stern, like a mother. Quentin glances to the fire, off to the side, down at his legs and then settles on the dancing flames, aptly ignoring the suggestion from above him. “Quentin.” The voice says again, the tone suggests disappointment but the hands are moving gently back to his hair, stroking over pale skin to reach the mop of sweaty, brown curls. Quentin huffs an audible sigh and, with a painful effort, brings his arms up to hook over the thighs either side of him, leaning his head back and looking up at the person behind him.
Rich brown eyes meet his gaze, soft and careful. He offers a weak smile, to which the woman frowns and lays a hand over Quentin’s forehead. Quentin twists his face up, “‘m fine, honestly.”
“A fever like that makes me believe otherwise.” She scolds, scooping his arms up and moving them back down by his sides. Quentin allows the manhandling, sniffling through a blocked nose as he’s laid back against the thigh by a guiding hand.
Woe has become him, he thinks as he breathes noisily. Why the entity allows them to literally come back from the dead but doesn’t clear them of a common cold, Quentin can’t quite figure out. The recent slash right across the middle of his chest was hindering his recovery too, making breathing twice as hard. He resolved to being miserable, a sorrowful frown plastered to his face as he lay still against the warm thigh. There were hands back in his hair, sending pleasant shivers down his back and pulling his eyes shut.
...Maybe he can nap? He napped last time and nothing happened. Plus, the body he was currently resting on would have to move eventually, and that would wake him up. And if it didn’t, they’d at least be able to help him wake up. To Quentin’s exhausted brain, it made enough sense. He’d fight sleep as long as he could, give it a good try, and if he fell asleep, he felt sure he’d be half safe.
As it turns out, sleep deprivation, stab wounds and a head cold have about 3 and a half minutes of fight in them, and Quentin’s mouth hangs open slightly as he slumps fully into the legs that bracket him, breathing laboured but slow. He’s out cold, he doesn’t even register a pair of strong hands moving him down onto a bed roll and tucking another ratty coat over the top of him.
He only wakes up briefly to the commotion of a team of survivors coming back from their own trial, his eyes barely open as he pushes himself onto his elbows and then collapses back down, drawn back into sleep in an instant.
There’s a woolly hat that isn’t his fitted carefully onto his head when he next pulls his eyes open, and he pulls it tighter down onto his head, the warmth much appreciated. A heavy weight leans on his side, Quentin feels it move away when he rolls himself onto his back and then replace itself again carefully, laying against his waist. He feels the vibrations of it’s speech reverberate across his stomach, but he’s not disturbed. He doesn’t care for who it is, as his eyes are closing again and the noise fades out.
The next time he wakes up, he stays awake for around ten minutes, stuck in the limbo between being asleep and awake. There’s a solid warmth to each side of him, one has an arm thrown over Quentin’s chest, the other is facing away from him but remains tightly close. Quentin props himself up on his elbows, looking over the dwindling fire and the collection of sleepy survivors, each in their own little huddle. He locks eyes with a blurry figure who offers a neat thumbs up but Quentin’s too fuzzy to reply, squinting before dropping back onto his back, asleep before his head even touches the floor.
He stays asleep for a good while. A few survivors have visited, fussed over him, pressed a careful hand to his forehead and cheeks, tucked the numerous jackets and blankets he’s acquired more tightly against him, though Quentin stays blissfully unaware. He doesn’t move in his sleep, though the camp moves around him. The other survivors are grateful that the entity seems to be giving him a break as they each cycle in and out of trials, leaving and returning to the same slumbering teen.
It’s only been a few hours since Quentin began his uninterrupted sleeping, but David keeps stealing wistful glances at his jacket as he huddles even closer to the campfire, shivering, and so Feng squats beside Quentin and stares at his prone form, watching his chest rise and fall and his eyes occasionally flicker behind his eyelids. “Should he sleep for this long?” She asks in the direction of the campfire, receiving no reply. Claudette and Adam are in a trial, and Dwight is off with Kate and Laurie going over escape strategies. Only dismissive shrugs and unsure grunts are offered to her.
“Quentin...” She prods his shoulder. No response.
“Quuenntiiinn...” She prods a little rougher, rocking him slightly. There’s a huff of air from him.
When Feng grabs his shoulder and shakes him, he comes to with a startle, grabbing at Feng’s wrist and shoving her away. Feng lands on her back in the dry dirt, a grin already working its way onto her face. “Quentin!” She exclaims, barking out a laugh. Quentin’s sitting up, staring accusingly at her, his hands still raised in front of himself. “Feng? Feng. Feng.” He confirms her name to himself repeatedly under his breath, bringing his hands to his face as he yawns deeply into them.
“You’ve been asleep for years, man.” Feng tells him, swinging herself back into a squatting position. She presses the back of her hand to Quentin’s forehead like she’d seen Claudette do before she left, though the stickiness of his skin makes her retract her hand just as quickly and she doesn’t note his steep temperature. Quentin draws his knees up and rests his chin on them, regarding Feng with lazy eyes.
“I didn’t dream.” He mutters, mostly to himself. “Good job.” Feng replies as she stands and dusts herself off. “Are you cold?” She asks, and Quentin shakes his head minutely.
“Oh, do you mind if I take that little blanket off of you?” She points at the earthy toned scrap of cloth hanging from his shoulder, and he holds it out to her. He watches her give a firm nod and then shuffle over to David, dropping the blanket over him and then returning to her own spot by a few of the other girls. David seems grateful enough, wrapping it around his shoulders and finally releasing Quentin of his mournful stares.
Quentin hadn’t dreamt at all, which was kind of weird. Even when he didn’t have nightmares, he at least had dreams. He can only remember going to sleep against a solid thigh and then waking up here, repositioned and bundled in other people’s warm clothes. He doesn’t feel much better, his head is still thick and his chest has a constant ache, but he’s here. He’s alive, breathing and living. No extra claw marks on his body. No weird room to wake up to. Nothing. Nothing has changed, Quentin notes. There’s markedly less people around the campfire, but Quentin doesn’t know exactly how long he’s been asleep, so he can’t judge where they might be.
Quentin discovers there’s still a body next to him, a lump with a thick beanie pulled down over it’s eyes, apparently undisturbed by the noise. He thinks it might be Jake, judging off of the neutral tones of his outfit and his ability to sleep like a rock, and a quick glance around the campfire confirms that he’s not sitting anywhere else. Quentin’s still in the fuzziness of sleep, his nose is still blocked and his head feels full as he lays himself back down, turning to cuddle himself against the maybe-Jake body. He lays still for a few minutes before the pain in his chest and the stuffiness of his head have him sitting back up. He pats aimlessly at the jacket pockets and then at his own pockets under it, hoping to find a pack of any sort of medication. No such luck, his search turns up useless. There’s no medication left on the ground around him, so slowly, he turns to the body next to him.
He lays his hand flat against Maybe-Jake’s back and shoves, hoping to wake him up. After a few weak willed shoves, Maybe-Jake flings his arm back and swats at Quentin, grumbling as he pushes himself up on his other arm, pushing his beanie out of his face. He squints at Quentin, huffing a breath through his nose. “What?” He grunts, his voice is coarse and raspy. Quentin feels kind of bad for waking him.
“Do you have any medicine? I feel... bad.” Quentin manages, to which Jake’s demeanour softens. He sits back, still squinting through his sleepiness as he pulls a glove off, sticking his arm out to lay his hand gently over Quentin’s cheek. “You’re still hot.” He states, and Quentin hums. “I feel hot.” He responds, then frowns.
“Claudette left... Claud, uhm..” Jake begins, pulling himself to his feet and shuffling past the campfire, towards Claudette’s usual spot. There’s a worn out pack of pills set on top of her small collection of belongings, and Jake pops one out, glances back at Quentin, turns back to pop another one out and then returns to Quentin, dropping heavily back to the ground.
He picks up an old looking water bottle up from beside his own backpack, and Quentin doesn’t have time to hold his hand out to receive the tablets as Jake uses one hand to tilt Quentin’s head back and the other to drop the tablets into his mouth, as if he’s forcing then into a sick dog’s mouth rather than another human survivor.
Quentin would be angry at the manhandling if it didn’t hurt so much to keep his eyes open. Jake holds the water bottle to Quentin’s mouth and Quentin brings his own hand up to hold the bottle, squinting at Jake. Jake takes the bottle away before Quentin is finished and screws the cap on, tossing it towards his backpack. He lowers himself back down to the ground, his back to Quentin, and buries his face into his arms.
Quentin blinks slowly, turning his gaze away from Jake, towards the dark woods surrounding him. Here, it’s not like the real world he came from before. Things are different, they don’t always make sense. He has died a few hundred times over, by the hands of multiple different brutes and creatures. At the end of a sword or a knife or a hatchet. Quentin supposes it makes sense that he didn’t dream of anything when he slept. Does the entity know what a dream is? Quentin carefully lays down on his back, staring up at the starless sky with weepy eyes.
The entity knows what the moon is, and the sun. It knows the difference between day and night, it knows how to touch things with light as well as how to destroy them with darkness. But it doesn’t let Quentin dream. Maybe it’s a one-off, he thinks. He is sick after all. But really, Quentin can’t remember ever dreaming. He’s stared into the darkness long enough that he starts to see figures sleuthing around, and he’s thought himself into panicked frenzies that leave him pacing around the campfire, pushing back images of colourful classrooms and a dark descending staircase. But never, as far as he can remember, has he actually, really truely, dreamt.
Beside him, Jake breathes slowly. Quentin tucks himself up in the jacket wrapped around his shoulders, he shuffles across, presses his back to Jake’s and focuses on the feeling of Jake’s breathing. The continuous movement against him. The noise of the leaves rustling. Hushed chatter from the other survivors.
As his eyes close and he explores the weightless sensation of sleep for the second time in what feels like years, Quentin thinks about his dad. He thinks about his school work, his backpack, and his classmates. He thinks about the route he’d take from home to highschool every morning. He thinks about Nancy’s house, about Nancy and her mother.
Quentin falls asleep trying to put a face to the fuzzy image of Nancy’s mother.