small time blogger

Phoebe had settled in for a video essay that had been in her recommendations for the last month, almost convinced she wanted to watch it. Not ten minutes in, Val abruptly hit the back of the couch, hard enough to shake the whole structure. Phoebe lurched back as the phone she had oh-so-carefully propped up fell towards her.

"Hey, careful!"

"No, please…I didn't mean -" the rest of the sentence was unintelligible, whimpered into the pillow. They curled in on themselves and covered their face with twitching hands.

Ah. Nightmare.

Phoebe imagined they must get a lot of those, given how anxious they were while awake. She wondered what it was they dreamed of. She worried it was memory.

She pushed the phone aside and called their name several times, softly at first, but it wasn't enough to wake them. When she raised her voice, it just agitated them further. They looked so miserable. She wished she could reach out and shake them out of it.

"It's okay. No one's going to hurt you," she said. "You're dreaming, you can wake up."

They didn't hear her, not in any way that mattered. Phoebe considered the drop down to the pillow. It wasn't that far. She sat down on the edge and dropped down beside Val's head.

She wasn't really sure what she intended to do next. Everything felt too intimate and too insignificant at once. What would they do to wake her in more normal circumstances? Probably run off and set off her phone alarm, she realized, but it was too late for that. Phoebe had left the phone behind and, unlike Val, she couldn't readily scale the furniture around her.

She settled on whispering more reassurances and sidled along towards their forehead to brush some hair away from their sweaty face. The skin twitched away from her touch as their brow furrowed. Another whimper and a gasp.

Oh, this was a stupid thing she was doing. It was just hard to think of her living room as a place of peril.

Val shifted again, still without waking, and Phoebe scrambled to get out of their way. But between the soft surface and the disorientation she had from being four freaking inches tall, she didn't have much of a chance. Their hand groped blindly towards her, first knocking her onto her ass then awkwardly constricting around her. She was again reminded of how deliberately gentle they were with her when they were awake. Their rough claws were meant for climbing, but like this, they made for imposing weapons—certainly not something she wanted held to her neck.

"Hey, hey, watch your claws!"

"Sorry, sorry," they whined.

She tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of their grasp. Even if they were asleep, there was only so much she could do to get away from a hand twice her size. Val did at least adjust so their claws weren't so immediately dangerous, but then squeezed and prodded her like putty. They muttered something that sounded like her name.

"Yeah, it's just me. It's Phoebe. You're safe," she said.

"Mhm."

"You wanna wake up, then? Val?"

They sighed a non-answer and curled back up, tucking Phoebe against their chest as they did. It was at least another fifteen minutes before they woke up. Long enough that their heartbeat slowed back down to its normal pace. Long enough for Phoebe to resign herself to being pinned against Val's chest. It wasn't terrible, really, to be held like this.

The couch creaked as Val woke up and stretched. The wall of their chest heaved with a yawn and then their breathing abruptly stopped. Their heart rate started to pick back up as they tensed. They'd noticed she wasn't on the armrest.

"Phoebe?" they whispered.

She scoffed and kicked their palm to bring their attention to their own hand.

"How the fuck-?"

They brought her down to the coffee table so fast it left her dizzy. Or maybe she hadn't been getting enough air smothered against their sweatshirt. She leaned against a mug that had been left out and straightened out her skirt as Val apologized. Their ears were pressed back in apparent embarrassment, knocking their bedhead curls into further dishevelment.

"You were dreaming," Phoebe said. "It seemed pretty intense. You don't remember?"

Something flickered in their eyes but they shook their head. It was probably better they didn't remember, she supposed. Maybe next time she'd suggest they grab a blanket or something to hug during their nap so they didn't have to worry about crushing her.