Even though it happened a bit more frequently than Roy would like to admit, it still happened; and when it did, he'd embrace the welcoming arms almost desperately. Once cradled and wound around his protector and dare he say...savior, all his worries disappeared, all his fears dissolved and all his paranoia simply up and left. It was a sense of relief Roy couldn't seem to get enough of.
He remembered the first time he had experimented with this particular "remedy".
He had run out of options.
The meditation techniques, the breathing exercises, the mentally stimulating work-outs...the drugs...
All of them had failed him.
This was truly a last resort. So elementary in perception, Roy would have never thought he would turn to it, let alone it be so damn effective.
He had been paralyzed in his bed, his nerve endings tickling uneasily from his neck to his toes. His posture was too straight and his eyes were trained on that terrifyingly dark corner... He knew they were there, waiting for him, waiting for him to fall back asleep. Only then would they attack. He wanted to look away, he had to! But he could not. His brain was screaming at his neck to turn, to look out the window...but his head was too heavy for his neck muscles to move. He swallowed.
He counted to three a multitude of times, anxiously trying to persuade and motivate his body to move. Each time he mentally screamed three, he expected his legs to swing off the side of the bed, and end up in the sitting position. Yet more often than not, he found that his efforts were futile. He hadn't moved an inch.
About the fifteenth time he had counted those three damn digits, his body twitched and he was able to regain control. This small effort was already exhausting him more than it should have. Too bad it couldn't be helped.
Panting lightly, the archer kept his gaze at his bare feet. After a few minutes of being silently mocked and interrogated by those shadows that slithered about his room, Roy slowly drug himself to his door. Once it slid open, he quietly dashed around the corner to a hopefully much less tormenting place.
He gripped his comforter around his shoulders. Huh...he didn't remember taking it with him.
He carefully knocked on the door, his throat dry and the hairs on his neck standing on end. They could be following him. Fuck, are they still watching! Are they still waiting! They can still get him! Oh God. They can still get him. A wave of panic crashed onto him, causing a chill to choke him without second thought.
"G-Garth!" he knocked on the door louder, more continuous, "Garth...!"
He could cry. He could easily just crumble into hysteric cries and panicked screams, pounding on the door as a last resort to any hope of sanctuary. But he didn't. He couldn't let them win. They'd won too many times before, and before Roy could be defeated, he had to attack with one last battle strategy.
Finally, the door slid open and a very wary, baggy-eyed Atlantean stood in the doorway.
"Roy...it's...two in the morning..." he muttered, scratching his head.
The archer internally smiled, knowing they couldn't get him anymore, or at least right now...
"I-I..." Roy stopped, holding the comforter over his shoulders still, "...Can I sleep with you...?"
Wow, it actually came out audible, and he was pretty straight forward with it.
He was too nervous to blush, too panic-stricken to feel any embarassment. Hell, he was more terrified of being rejected than anything. He couldn't afford to be thrown back to them like meat scraps being tossed to the wolves.
"...What."
The Prince's expression was pure and utter disblief, webbed with much confusion.
"Please..." Roy whispered, unable to form any other way to plea.
Garth was a genuinely very passive guy, and this scenario (despite the extreme uncharactaristic abnormalities) was no exception. He supposed Roy had a good reason to ask such a...questionable...request, probably for a reason he wouldn't know for a long time. With a yawn and a sigh, Garth moved to the side. Roy scurried inside and stood next to the bed.
He looked at it as if it were almost a foreign object to him.
"...Don't you know how to get into a bed?" Garth wondered, sliding into the sheets and pulling them up to his chin.
"S-Sorry..."
Roy edged himself onto the water bed, feeling the waves glide around his body, rocking him into a much more relaxed state of mind. The theraputic motion calmed him a bit as he took in his surroundings. The shadows weren't as dark, more blue in color, and so far, they were not here.
But the poor archer's extreme paranoia had gotten the better of him, so it was only inevitable that he found his back pressed against Garth's figure. The Atlantean found it more than just plain freakish, but he didn't complain.
For the first time in over two years, Roy had gotten a night's sleep without them prying at every corner of his mind.
...
It wouldn't be until quite a few visits and relationship developments later would Garth truly begin to probe for some answers.
"Roy..." Garth began one night as Roy still semi-awkwardly slid into his bed.
"Hm?"
"...It's been nearly five months since you've started this...routine...and I feel like I have a right to know what's going on. I've been patient with you, but it worries me that you need someone to accompany you in sleep. What's bothering you?"
Roy shifted positions, turning away from Garth. He knew this was going to happen. He was just waiting for the day Garth would truly begin to question his motives. He didn't reply.
He had never told anyone about them before, so trying to explain it to someone was really quite a personal challenge Roy wasn't honestly ready to try to execute yet.
"Well?"
The archer swallowed. What if...they heard him? What if they knew he was telling somone his secret about them? Would they get mad? Would they try to hurt him more? He always seemed safe with Garth next to him, so why should telling the secret stop that safety?
He would just have to gamble his safety he supposed...
Taking a deep breath, he managed to roll back around.
"...Ever since I can really remember..." he started quietly, "when I sleep, I'm never alone. N-Not like...how we are...but rather...there's always...things...that follow me into my dreams and are...uhh...like...in my room with me. You know, shadow stuff...?"
A bit surprised, Garth blinked.
"They uhh...probably aren't real-or at least not real to regular people. But uhh...they're pretty real to me so uhm...yeah they like...yeah...can't sleep and stuff...mmnn...got nightmares 'n' shit..." the archer's explaination trailed into a long line of mutters and grumbles for lack of any better way of explaining his situation.
For the first time in his life, Roy realized how incredibly ridiculous this sounded. He knew it was crazy since he was a kid, but never did he realize the magnitude of this insane concept until he verbalized it out loud.
The Atlantean stared at the archer, in a haze of amazement and shock. Roy looked down, a bit ashamed of himself, feeling weak and vulnerable. It wasn't his fault they were so harmful to him...it wasn't his fault that they were so damn scary...
After a moment of hesitation, Garth pulled Roy close to him and pressed his lips against Roy's. He pecked a few more kisses on his cheeks and jawbone. A loving hand cupped his cheek. Roy hadn't expected such a small explosion of affection, so he didn't really reciprocate like he was probably supposed to.
"...If you need to, you can sleep in my room every night," Garth managed, searching Roy's teary, green eyes.
The other boy swallowed hard, countless flashbacks of them raping his mind bombarded his memory. He could only snake his arms around Garth's figure and hold tightly. He buried his face in the Atlantea's neck and let out a shuttered sob.
Finally, after all these years...he had an anchor...a light...a cure.
"Thank you..."
So Speedy is a bit OOC but I think it's safe to say it's because of the circumstances. -le shrug-
I wanted to write really badly because why not? So I scribbled up this little one shot here. Hope you enjoy it!
Unfortunately for me, Roy Harper/Speedy and Garth Curry(thehellisthatname)/Aqualad do not belong to me, they're property of DC, etc.