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Nightmare slams the door shut behind himself and presses his back against it, his chest heavy with the pound of war drums. In his head, he can still hear the fast, familiar footsteps of his pursuers. Their voices blur together in his panicked mind, and their words become muddled.
Dream slowly brings his spoonful of sugar frosted cereal to his mouth. He doesn't say a word.
The apartment is quiet, save for the faint crunch of Dream’s breakfast and Nightmare catching his breath.
Once Nightmare has settled down, he stumbles to the small, small plastic table over in the kitchen, and collapses across from Dream into a folding chair. He’s got beads of sweat rolling down his chin, and his jacket is only a little torn in a few places, but Dream deduces that he's at least better than last time. He eyes the gash in Nightmare’s shoulder - clearly a graze from a bullet.
"They were close." He remarks, eating another spoonful of corn flakes. Nightmare heaves an added wheeze to be dramatic, and takes Dream’s napkin to wipe some of the sweat off his face.
"Yeah, we gotta get outta here. The fuckin' - can we just move? Can we just go to a different country?" He aggressively shrugs off his jacket to hang it over the back of his chair, then checks it quickly to make sure he didn't further any damage. Finally, his thin purple eyes, slitted like a cat’s, flicker to Dream. He takes off his mangled, thrift store sweater, and deems it a casualty of war by throwing it over the lip of the trashcan.
Dream watches him take out his frustration as he undresses to change into another set of clothing. His bowl of cereal is nearly finished. “Where would you suggest going next?”
"What about like - like France or something. Fucking Japan. I don't know, anywhere but here?"
Dream finishes chewing before he answers.
"Actually, I think they're developing a new tracker technology in Japan specifically for us." Dream pulls up a few text messages on his phone, leaving it on the table for his brother to look at as he picks up the bowl of milk and downs it, before rinsing it in the sink. Nightmare squints at the screen and expands the letters to read better, blinking rapidly at the brightness of the screen. He mutters to himself as Dream cleans his bowl and prepares some more cereal for Nightmare.
"Stop keeping your brightness so fucking high, holy shit." He turns down the brightness of the screen with a flick and reads the messages. They're in short paragraphs and bursts, with the occasional news article and pdf download. Dream deigns not to grace him with a response, giving Nightmare an excess of milk so that he'll have to drink more milk after eating.
"Oh god."
Dream snorts. "They're very dedicated people." Nightmare grunts in response, reading the name of the contact. "Error's really good at what he does. This sounds like some kind of top secret, futuristic, Neon Genesis Evangelion shit. Cruel Angel's Thesis kinda stuff. Pretty sure this is advanced enough to surpass any regular tech that's been released."
The bowl is set in front of him, as well as a spoon with a smiley face imprinted in the scoop. It clunks on the plastic surface of their cheap, Ikea table. "You've been hanging out too much with that Ink guy, haven't you?" Dream smiles at him, in a non-threatening way.
Nightmare goes to stick his fingers in the milk, but Dream quickly picks it back up and glares at him. "You've been hanging out too much with that Ink guy," Nightmare mocks. "Dude, we're like, centuries old. Fuck off my back." Dream squints at him, as if trying to see through a haze of bullshit.
"You seriously think that five centuries of living in this accursed, mortal form, will seriously teach you not to be a dumbass?"
He opens his mouth, and then closes it, lowering his finger. "I may be stupid," he begins.
Dream puts the bowl back down in favor of putting his hands on his hips. "You nearly crashed your motorcycle into the convenience store across the street, because you 'forgot how drive momentarily!'"
His brother goes to retort, but then there are several hard knocks on the door. Nightmare stuffs the spoon into his pocket and starts actually drinking the cereal, while Dream sets his ratty, Goodwish sweater aflame as Nightmare hurriedly puts on his jacket as quickly as he can.
There's a series of varied expressions made in confusion and anxiety, traded between the two of them in passing looks and hurried, quiet footsteps across the room and racing past the front door.
Downing the milk (and flakes) in record time, Nightmare throws on a black backpack and sweeps a nondescript pill bottle for Abvil off the drawers into the pack within their bedroom. Dream, in the kitchen, dusts the ashes off of himself, tucks his phone into the inside pocket of his button-up, and takes the time to trade out his nice dress shoes and socks for nothing but his soot dusted, bare feet. Once Nightmare sweeps back to the kitchen with the backpack, Dream shoves his stuff into the back and zips it up for him. His circlet warms briefly around his ring finger, and Dream purses his mouth, glancing at Nightmare.
There's a call from the door, and Dream curses. He places his left hand into Nightmare's, and the ring grows hot.
Nightmare removes the ring from Dream's finger and places it onto his own ring finger, where it rests above a matching ring that mirrors his own circlet. Dream's form de-materializes, like a ray of sunlight blocked by a shadow, and wings spring forth from Nightmare's shoulder blades. He turns on his heel and pitches through the back window of their cheap apartment as cops break down their front door. Dream hastily weaves a blinding spell and launches it onto the cops before they can fire at Nightmare, sending bullets spraying everywhere.
Dream and Nightmare soar into the sky radiating so much light they could be mistaken for a small star. Dream continues to control the wings on Nightmare’s back with haste and sends them shooting through clouds and towards the airport, landing them in a relatively empty part of the area and turning off the glow.
Nightmare smoothly takes off his jacket after the wings fold and disappear, then puts on a spare hoodie he grabbed from the Goodwish when they were shopping, along with a pair of sunglasses and magically magnetic earrings. The jacket is stuffed into his backpack. He adds a beanie to the look as he strides out of the alleyway, causing people to instinctively duck out of his warpath to the airport.
He lets the jacket hang off of his body and barely cover him if at all, bunching around his elbows and around his waist as he crosses the street, taking to following a crowd of monsters with one other skeleton monster hanging around them. They’re all sporting suitcases and travel clothing, one of which has a small human child tucked inside. They’re snoozing away, stickers plastered on their cheeks.
He tails the small, energetically talkative group to the airport, zoning out momentarily and going to walk on autopilot while talking internally to Dream. His brother’s voice projects as if he’s walking right beside Nightmare, but no one turns a head to listen.
Someone must have leaked us. I fucking bet it was that old lady downstairs. She was looking at us weirdly.
While Dream mutters to Nightmare, the only other skeleton monster in the group lags behind a bit to walk a little closer to him. Nightmare sweats at the prospect of social interaction.
“‘sup.”
Nightmare awkwardly looks at the skeleton monster for a moment, turning with the rest of the travellers. “Hey.” He reaches into his pocket for his phone, before realizing it’s in his backpack. He shrugs off one of the straps to pull it out of a smaller pocket, zipping that back up before the chargers can tumble out and fumbling with it a bit as he tries to keep up the pace of the other monsters.
The sun’s glare is too much for the near pitch brightness of his screen, and it blinds him, causing Nightmare to pull a hard grimace and wrestle for the damn light. The streets are flooded with sunlight and the weather is too warm to really put on his jacket all the way without looking odd.
The two skeletons lag behind the rest of the group slightly and reach a public bus to the airport, hopping on and sitting as the monster crowd is putting away their suitcases. Nightmare briefly marvels at the thought of actually speaking to another skeleton monster, being that he’s always seen them as flashes in a crowd or paired with a much taller skeleton, before being swallowed with social anxiety as the other goes to talk again.
“‘so.”
Nightmare despairs at the long pause the other makes, staring at him. His tight smile grows slightly wider. Where were the other skeletons’ eye lights? Where the fuck were the mans’ eye lights, god dammit? What was he supposed to look at?
“you come ‘round here often?”
“Uh, no. I actually came from up north.”
It isn’t really a lie, the apple tree is very, very far up north.
The monster nods wisely. “i’m sans.”
Nightmare’s eyes flick around the closed, metal skeleton of the bus, and his clammy hands find their way to his ring. The lights are a little dim and it’s still very early in the morning, so the shuttle feels just a little off. Even with the small group of monsters further down the array of seats, he can’t help but feel squeezed into a box next to this guy.