#illiiterate

same belle. same.

the kracken

eyes flutter, but don’t open. he hears sounds around him, but he doesn’t understand where he is, who is there, what happened, if it’s night or day. did his brain dreamed him chasing belle through the village? was he still recovering from that time? - and yet, he doesn’t remember his injuries being so bad, back then. he literally can’t think straight.

when he’s able to open his eyes - hours later after falling unconscious again - the first thing he sees is lefou further in what seems to be a house. a muffled exclamation of pain and darkness falls again, but now he’s relieved. he’s alright. he knows who share the roof and he’s fine with that. he prefers that. no one should see him like this.

lefou can. he doesn’t mind him.

his mind is still confused. what happened exactly? he remembers falling, many floors stopping the speed of his course before he finally met the ground. or it felt like falling. where could he fall from so high?

it’s going to hit him when he wakes up lucid enough, but now he’s trustful of his friend (still his friend, he didn’t do anything, they both came back pretty beaten up from the war). he really just needs to get his timeline straight.

it was rarer.

or perhaps was it that it didn’t always wake him up. perhaps lefou’s brand of nightmares were more vicious, more silent. but gaston never thought that far, even if he should, even if deep within, he knew he should. but it was easier to live with everything at the surface of the world and not dig. the war had killed most of his curiosity.

it didn’t kill his instincts. and an once of comprehension that came with knowing nightmares, knowing their grip on a human soul was great.

he growled of course.his beauty sleep was important, truly.

but as he never abandoned a man on the battlefield, he wouldn’t abandon the other now. even if it was tempting. let the fool struggle so he could get a good night of sleep. his mind felt heavy with fog as he got up, his whole body protesting.

come back to bed, whispered… well said furniture.not that his imagination was good enough.

he forced himself to walk the few meters of distance between their bedroom, lefou’s plaints louder not that his door was open. it was rarer. to hear him squirm from a nightmare. to hear him suffer.

if he went with the number of times lefou had woken him up, it was rarer than gaston’s.

strong hands pinned both shoulders to the bed.

lefou voice: me, no. him… probably. he’s the smarter of us.

you bet your fucking ass that i am

it happened quickly. too quickly. gaston was usually good reaction wise but he hadn’t seen that coming, not before he was too late. before he could scream for lefou to take cover, his friend was already down and gaston was already running ( toolatetoolatetoolatetoolate ). his large body didn’t make a sound when he dropped beside the other, worried. the soldier, however, was resigned. he needed only his whole mind to catch up to the reality of things.

“ sébastien! ”

strong hands handled him to his chest, blood, a lot of it, but gaston didn’t see it at first, clutching the smaller man for dear life. what he noticed was how limp was lefou’s body in his arms and how gradually still he was becoming.

worry shifted in a sort of cold panic. one laced with dull anger.

“ oh no no no, you survived one war, old friend, you can survive two. heaven above you even survived me. ” that wasn’t a sob he squashed in the middle of his throat, not at all. it was only an inappropriate and stressed chuckle.

he cradled the man’s head, hair sticking to his bloody hand, unaware that it was the first time he treated the other with such tenderness.

“ surely, this is nothing compared to it, isn’t it? ”