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Nancy wakes up with a silent gasp, eyes frantically searching the room.
Her whole body trembles and she sits up quickly, letting the covers pile around her waist.
It’s dark. The faint glow coming in from the moonlight outside highlights just enough of it for her to see familiar surroundings. Her walls with her pictures and posters. Her furniture. The comforter on the bed. The outline of a body curled up next to her.
Her eyes prickle and burn but she swallows it down and focuses more on her surroundings.
It’s quiet. The only sound she can hear is the soft shaking of her breathing and the pounding of her heart in her chest, loud and painful in the base of her skull.
She can’t get the images out of her head. His eyes. Those vines. The bats. All of it.
She tries closing her eyes but the images only come at her with claws so she pops them open again and stares hard at the faint outline of the pictures on her walls.
The burn builds.
Her bones rattle.
Her lungs quiver with a small, suppressed sob.
She wishes she could see the actual photos themselves. See the smiling faces of her friends and family so she knows it’s over. It’s done. They’re safe.
If she were alone, she’d turn on the light and go take a few off the wall so she can sit and cradle them in her hands, touching them and feeling the hard edges until those smiles replace the images he gave her.
She’d let the tears fall until she’s wrung out and exhausted enough to fall back into a dreamless sleep.
Her breathing picks up at not being able to. A fear grows. Fear that the photos might have changed. It takes root and expands in her head until her skull starts to rattle with the pounding pressure.
She needs to feel it. Something. Anything. She needs to know this is real. She needs to distract herself. She needs to know she’s really here.
She’s done this before. Too many times before. Anytime she wakes up like this in the early hours before dawn, she knows there’s no easily getting back to sleep that night. Not unless she can wash the images out of her brain with something else and trick her muscles into a false stillness.
Sometimes it’s the photos.
Sometimes it’s whatever bottle of booze she has stashed in her closet that week.
Sometimes it’s going for a walk until the sun rises.
But she’s not alone tonight.
If she’s going to do anything about the images now battering her from every angle, she’s going to need to be very careful about sneaking away.
Her eyes find the lump of the body in the bed next to her instead.
Robin.
She doesn’t want to wake Robin.
She doesn’t want her to know. She doesn’t want her to have to deal with this. They’ve only been doing…whatever this is for a little while. Nancy only broke up with Jonathan a few weeks ago. Nancy and Robin have been orbiting each other closer and closer ever since, the gravity increasing with every pass. The tension only finally snapped last week when they admitted they have feelings for each other and decided to explore it together.
This is only the first time Robin has stayed over since then. Not for any specific reason, they’d just spent the evening together and didn’t really feel like ending it when it got late, so Nancy had invited her to stay.
Nancy didn’t think it all the way through when she offered, though. She didn’t consider this problem.
Naively, she kind of thought it might not be an issue if she’s not sleeping alone.
Especially if it’s Robin next to her.
But it's a problem now.
And it’s too early for Robin to have to deal with any of this. Nancy’s not even sure she’ll ever want to tell her, but definitely not now.
She's fine.
It's fine.
Robin doesn't need to know.
Nancy can handle it.
It’s too early.
And Nancy really doesn’t want to wake her.
She’s curled up on her side on the edge of the bed, turned away from Nancy. Her body is limp and soft. Peaceful.
She can’t see her face, but her shoulders rise and fall in a slow, steady rhythm that makes Nancy’s lungs ache in jealousy. Her breathing shakes a little more as a result and she wheezes.
The body next to her twitches, breathing faltering a bit as a new kind of tension builds there.
Nancy bites her lip and holds her breath, waiting for Robin to settle before moving again so she doesn’t wake her, but the tension in the other woman’s body only continues to grow.
A minute passes.
Then two.
“Nance?” Robin whispers. It’s not as sleepy as Nancy would have expected it to be and the pressure in her head builds another notch higher.
“Shhh go back to sleep, it’s ok,” Nancy whispers back. She does her best to make it sound soft and encouraging, but the ragged edge still haunting her breath makes it come out more desperate than anything else.
Robin tenses further and Nancy cusses internally, closing her eyes and praying that Robin will be too tired to pay attention to any kind of social cues.
But it would seem that Robin’s been practicing, at least when it comes to Nancy, because she doesn’t ignore it. “What’s wrong?” Robin asks.
“Nothing, I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
Robin shifts, rolling onto her back to stare up at Nancy’s seated form. It’s too dark for Nancy to see more than the negative-space outline of her features, but she can practically feel Robin’s eyes on her.
She shivers and her breathing grows a little harder.
Her bones rattle.
The burn builds.
Robin sits up slowly and the weight of her gaze only builds with each inch. “You don’t sound ok.”
Nancy turns her head, hoping to hide herself deeper in shadow. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep. I’m just going to go get some water.”
Nancy shifts, intending to slide out from under the covers, but a tentative hand lands on her forearm. The sudden weight and heat freezes Nancy in place, both because it’s surprising and exactly what Nancy needed, grounding her back into herself and reminding her that she’s real and here and alive.
Her bones creak and settle.
“Nance,” Robin whispers again.
Nancy turns her head further, lungs now practically spasming at the effort to keep her sobs down. The thoughts and images swirl harder, like sharks sensing a bleeding, weak thing in their waters. “I-I’m fine.”
Robin’s hand shifts, smoothing down her arm to her hand where long fingers curl carefully around Nancy’s own. “Did you have a nightmare?”
Nancy twitches, intending to pull her hand away, but she just can’t quite make herself detach from such a strong tether to reality. She can't stomach the idea of choosing that shake. She closes her eyes, wincing when the images from her nightmare only join the others in technicolor. The burning at the edges of her eyes finally wins out and a few hot tears slip through the cracks, rolling down her cheeks.
Her breathing shakes in response and Robin’s fingers twitch a little tighter.
“I-I’m fine,” Nancy tries again.
There’s a slight pause as Robin seems to consider her. Then, she slides a little closer. Not touching Nancy any more than she already is, not yet, but close enough that Nancy can feel the heat of her and smell her shampoo.
“You don’t sound fine.”
Nancy scrunches her eyes even tighter and shakes her head, gasping as another sob tries to spasm its way out of her lungs. “It’s nothing.”
Robin sighs and the air ghosts past the tear tracks on Nancy’s face, sending a sea of goosebumps down her spine. “Nance.”
Nancy shakes her head again. “You can go back to sleep. I’m fine.”
Robin’s fingers curl just a little bit tighter and her free hand comes up. She palms Nancy’s cheek, cupping it as her thumb smooths away some of the tears that are still rolling down in a steady line. “You don’t always have to hold it together,” Robin whispers. “You don’t always have to be strong. Not with me.”
Nancy chokes as a sob finally, fully makes it out. She bites her lip even harder, willing herself to bury it back down, but more keep coming. It’s like unplugging the drain to a bubble bath, once that first bubble slips through there’s no stopping them until it’s empty.
Her jaw quivers and she tries to turn her head away from Robin, but Robin’s hand follows with her, still carefully swiping away the evidence of her tears.
“I’m here. I’m here,” Robin whispers.
Another, rougher sob cuts through her. “Yo-you don’t have to. I know this isn’t what you had in m-mind when I asked you to stay.”
Robin slides a little closer and their sides finally press together under the blankets. She shifts and the hand that was holding Nancy’s wraps around her back instead, pulling her in tighter. “No expectations. I wanted to be here with you…for you…I’m happy to do that however you need. Let me be.”
Nancy’s jaw quivers harder and she finally gives in, turning her head back to Robin and opening her eyes in a desperate attempt to read Robin’s face. It’s still too dark. She sees the glint of Robin’s eyes and the outline of her features, but nothing else.
Another sob rocks her body. “Y-you don’t have to. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be,” Robin says, emphasizing every word.
Nancy shivers again and just like that she breaks. She tips sideways into Robin’s chest, letting Robin’s arms fold around her as the sobs tear out of her on frantic gasps of air.
The images keep flashing in her mind, bright and vibrant, but Robin’s chest is warm and solid under her. And Robin’s skin is smooth and real as she wipes at Nancy’s face. And Robin’s voice is low and soothing as she whispers reassurances into Nancy’s ear.
The images lose their bite, fading at the edges until only the emotion is left.
Nancy sobs.
The emotion fades out as well, replaced by the surge of tender care Robin floods into her.
And Nancy sobs.
As much as it hurts, it’s somehow the easiest it’s ever been for Nancy to let it all go and settle back into her body.
The trembling finally stops.
They end up curled back up against the pillows with Robin cradling Nancy to her chest as everything finally swirls and settles within her.
They don’t talk much beyond Robin’s continued reassurances and Nancy’s occasional gasped apologies.
Eventually, as Nancy’s mind begins to drift back to sleep once more, she thinks she could get used to not being fine as long as Robin’s there to hold her through it.