Work Text:
What is a nightmare, if not your fear seeking refuge in your dreams?
Gun could store his nightmares behind his teeth and let them trip every single word coming out of his mouth, but he won’t allow it. He never has.
“Gun.” Yotha is carding his fingers through the hair sticking to Gun’s forehead, and Gun wants to tell him to stop, there’s no need, he’ll shower first, but he doesn’t want him to move, to go, to leave. There are sobs making their way through his chest like they’re trying to carve a new path for themselves inside of him, and there is so much terror building in his lungs and his limbs that he doesn’t think he’ll never not feel afraid again.
“Gun.” Yotha’s voice is more frantic now, and if Gun wasn’t so used to following that sound to safe places he wouldn’t even hear him. “Hey, it’s a nightmare. You’re awake now.”
But everything is still dark and the sounds are still phantoms and his body is still frozen.
“Beagle. Look at me. Beagle.”
Gun opens his eyes.
Yotha’s gaze is busy searching Gun’s face for any hint to a solution, a reason. The lights are on and Gun wishes he could hide.
“You’re okay.” Yotha’s hands are cool against Gun’s face. “It was just a nightmare. You’re okay.”
But that’s not the point of his fear. Gun can only look at Yotha, unable to reach out and touch him as he tries to catch his breath, he tries to listen as Yotha speaks and sounds fine and the skin on his nose isn’t broken and bruised.
“Yotha,” Gun breathes out, and he doesn’t manage to keep the sob out of it, but Yotha goes immediately, arms enveloping Gun’s shoulders as he keeps one hand on the back of his head.
“It was just a nightmare, Beagle,” Yotha murmurs, and Gun hates that he sounds worried but he doesn’t know how to let go quite yet.
*
Yotha is playing with Gun’s hair because he knows it calms him down.
“We can keep the lights on whenever you want, you know,” he whispers, “if you feel like you’ve had a stressful day – or whatever the reason. We can just keep them on.”
Gun sinks a little deeper in Yotha’s shirt. He’s already made a mess of it anyway. He nods, and he doesn’t have the courage to correct him.
*
Gun wakes up with a gasp, desperately trying to drag some oxygen into his lungs, his whole body shaking and damp with sweat, his ears still filled with Yotha’s screams, and he’s crying, and Yotha’s voice is still in his ears.
He doesn’t realize he’s awake until he can hear the silence around him. The silence beyond the hands he’s pressed against his ears.
Gun blinks. Light fills his eyes. The light Yotha had wordlessly left on the previous night. Yotha, who’s kneeling beside him, eyes wide, looking terrified. His hands are hovering close to Gun’s wrists.
Gun’s breathing isn’t even as he slowly takes his hands away. His face hurts and he’s starting to shiver from the sweat cooling on his body.
“Beagle,” Yotha whispers. And it’s not the same as when he’s quiet because he wants to comfort Gun. He sounds scared of being heard.
Gun blinks, eyes filling with fresh tears he doesn’t want Yotha to see, he pushes the blanket off of himself. “I need a shower,” he mumbles, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed even though he’s not sure they’ll be able to hold him up.
“Beagle,” Yotha calls. His voice is quiet. He doesn’t try to reach out and touch him.
Gun looks at him, because that’s always his reflex and his mistake, and he feels horrible and he’s furious at himself and he wishes he could comfort at least one of them. He bends his lips into a smile that feels too shaky to be convincing. “I just feel really gross. I really – a shower will be good.”
Yotha searches his face for a long moment, and Gun is sure he’s going to call him out on it. But then Yotha just nods and looks away.
*
The third night, Gun has decided he’s going to accidentally fall asleep in Faifa’s room.
But Fai just takes one look at him and knows something is wrong, because he’s made it his mission to figure out what everybody else is feeling before someone can think to ask him if everything’s okay.
“What’s going on, puppy?”
Gun doesn’t mind the nickname. It makes him feel comfortable with feeling sad, sometimes.
Still, he mumbles, “Nothing.”, because Fai is still Yotha’s brother.
Fai rolls his eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong, or I’ll send you back to your room.”
Gun lets himself fall on the edge of the bed.
“You look terrible,” Fai notes, more worry than judgment in his voice.
“I’ve been having nightmares,” Gun sighs.
A crease between Fai’s eyebrows. “Can’t you go back to turning the lights on?”
Gun looks down. He’s twisting his fingers in his lap. He knows the words are going to bring back the sounds and the memories, so he takes a deep breath and braces for it before he says, “It’s a new one.”
He closes his eyes because he hopes he can keep it out of his mind.
Fai’s fingers are soothing in his hair. His fingers dig into the tense muscles in Gun’s neck. His voice is cautious when he asks, “What’s the nightmare about, puppy?”
Gun drags in a shaky breath. “It’s about Yotha getting hurt. It’s about – I can’t help him.” How many times has he cried in front of Faifa? At this point he’s afraid to count them. “In my nightmare, I can’t help him.”
Fai sits very still next to him. His fingers keep moving in Gun’s hair. “Have you talked to Yotha about it?”
Gun shakes his head. “I don’t want him to feel guilty,” he whispers, voice out of his control when the crying he’s trying to keep in his throat gets in the way of it.
“He should feel guilty,” Fai mutters.
Gun looks at him. He doesn’t want Yotha to feel guilty. He just wants him to keep himself safe.
Fai sighs heavily. “You’re hopelessly in love, uh, puppy?”
Gun looks down at his hands. “Can I sleep here, tonight?”
Fai hesitates, fingers stilling in Gun’s hair. “Do you think that would be a good idea?”
Gun shrugs. He doesn’t have a better one.
“Obviously you can sleep here, puppy.” Fai looks at him with a healthy dose of compassion. “But you’ll have to talk to him. Sooner rather than later.”
*
There is a knife.
That’s usually the worst case scenario.
There is a knife and someone is holding Gun by the arms and he’s trying to fight against it but not as much as he’s trying to scream.
Because Yotha is looking at him and not at the knife, wearing a smile he keeps for Gun, and Gun keeps screaming, he can feel the air scratching his throat but no sound is coming out, and the knife is closer and there is a cut on Yotha’s cheek, a bruise at the corner of his mouth but he’s still smiling at Gun, not turning around, and Gun needs to be between the knife and Yotha –
“Beagle!”
Gun wakes up still trying to get away, only to find Yotha looking at him, eyes wide and hair a mess.
Gun is breathing very quickly.
“I think – Try hugging him.”
“What? I don’t think – ”
“Trust me.”
Yotha is hugging him, arms wrapped tight around Gun’s shoulders, tight enough that Gun can’t help but feel that he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s okay, it was just a nightmare.
It was just a nightmare.
Yotha keeps rubbing slow circles on Gun’s back, repeating quiet murmurs in his ear.
Gun doesn’t know how much time he spends like that, face buried in Yotha’s shoulder, but when he looks up Fai is nowhere to be seen and Yotha is still holding on to him.
“Beagle,” Yotha says, and it’s a kind, tentative request, and Gun looks down and then to the side.
Yotha hesitates. Gun can tell he doesn’t know if he should remove his hands from Gun’s shoulder, from Gun’s upper arm. “Are we – okay?” Then Yotha shakes his head, “No, are you okay? These – these don’t seem like your usual nightmares and I don’t – if I’m not the right person to handle them you can tell me, if I’m doing something to make them worse – ”
Gun shakes his head, and that’s enough to make Yotha fall silent. “They are not – I stopped having the old nightmares. The thing – it worked.”
Yotha nods, slowly, confusedly. “Okay.”
“I have – There is this new nightmare.” Gun closes his eyes. He really doesn’t want to keep crying. There is just so much in these new nightmares and he doesn’t know how to escape all of it.
“Can I touch you?”
Gun nods, desperately, and Yotha gently cups with his hand the side of Gun’s face, thumb brushing against the delicate skin under his eye.
“I keep dreaming about the times I saw you being attacked. And in my dreams I can never help you. Even when there is a knife, or a bat, someone is always restraining me and I can’t – ”
“Okay,” Yotha says, “Okay, okay.” More for the soothing of the repetition, more because he’s trying to give them both a second, more because it breaks his fucking heart.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” Gun says, immediately, like he knows Yotha’s patterns better than Yotha himself, and he opens his eyes as if to check Yotha is following his instructions.
Yotha bites down on the I should that’s ready on his tongue.
Gun mirrors Yotha’s hand on his face, thumb stroking under Yotha’s eye, firmer than what Yotha is doing. “It happened. I just want you to keep yourself safe. And you’re already doing it. It’s just that it happened.”
Yotha tilts his head to the side, just slightly. He wants it to be as gentle as possible. “I am sorry that I hurt you like this,” he whispers, and then he goes on before Gun can protest, “And I promise you I won’t do anything that reckless again. And I will remind you as many times as it’s necessary. I’ll do anything.”
Gun nods, slowly. Something loosens in his chest and he breathes, and he pushes himself to his knees, nose buried behind Yotha’s ear, he feels – better.
Yotha hugs him tight. He wants to tell him you don’t have to save me, Beagle. Or no one has ever had nightmares about me. Or I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But he’s still trying to figure it out. He’s still trying to trace a line around his own story.
For now, when Gun asks if he can try being the big spoon, because maybe that will help, Yotha just smiles and nods, and lays with his back to Gun.
And Gun wraps his arms around him, leg between Yotha’s.
For now, Yotha accepts that it happened. And, with Gun breathing softly behind him, he accepts that he can make it better.