3:25 a.m.
"They're coming, I can-c-can hear them. I know--ah--I know they're almost here."
"It's okay. I won't let them get you." His voice is soft and smooth, like the texture of darkness. Darkness missing the horrifying and endless unknown. The shaking boy curls into the other's chest, fists clenching around his thin shirt in fear of separation.
"P-Please--they--they'll t-take--"
"It's okay. I promise, I'll protect you."
3:26 a.m.
"Oh my god," he whimpers, the tall boy's arms slipping around him in silent words of comfort and wisdom. Their thin bodies are pulled together in an act of hope for security, dark-haired boy whispering reassuring nothing into the other's ear, fingers lightly running up and down his spine, keeping the imaginary eyes off his back.
3:27 a.m.
One hears whispers and mocking titters from every space in the pitch black room. The other hears shaky, harsh inhalations and the shifting of a trembling body against the mattress.
"They're everywhere, th-there's even more this time..."
Facing your fears does not eradicate them. It makes them worse. Tweek faces his fears every night. He doesn't try to, doesn't want to, but he has to, and he's more scared every time. It's the same thing, at three thirty each morning, but that doesn't take away from the horror of the thing. Routine, yes, but not boring. Not mindless.
"Just ignore them."
He doesn't get that he can't just ignore them. He can't soothe him. This is his first time seeing the boy this vulnerable, and he's trying to help, but nothing helps.
3:28 a.m.
He reaches down, pale thumb ghosting across Tweek's jawline, lips brushing against his, suggesting without initiating the gesture of reassurance that he usually gives to the smaller boy. His lips move over the side of his face, to his ear, to whisper more words, just words, the English language that sadly can't stand up to the physical threats that endanger (well, it could be debated) Tweek.
"P-P-Please..."
He presses his face into the other's sharp shoulder, the warmth better...better than the cold unknown, and wraps himself as tightly as he can around him. He still can't get away from them, their derisive laughter, their unseen eyes glittering with malice, the fear that they induce. He can tell that they're closer now, around the bed, tugging with their tiny, nimble fingers on the sheets that hung low enough to reach. He feels the inevitable tears beginning to leak from their hiding place right behind his lower eyelids, always prepared to spill out, and shudders at the warm wetness on the sleeve of Craig's shirt.
Craig lays there calmly, wishing he could hear and see what Tweek was so he could do something. He feels as powerless as his lover does, with the inability to make it stop, please make it stop. He lets the boys nails dig into his pale flesh, lets his thin tears soak his thin shirt, and waits. The digital clock taunts him, red numbers jumping boisterously and ignoring the solemnity of the shared fear and anguish of the boys whenever he watches them for too long. He blinks, long black eyelashes fluttering down over equally dark eyes for just a fraction of a second, and in that fraction of a second they have transformed.
Before his closed eyes.
3:29 a.m.
He stares at the clock, hand running up and down the other's back, trying to believe he was protecting him with simple words and movements. Tweek became more hysterical with each heavy second that passed, Craig counting them down in a soft, quiet place inside his mind.
Fifty-two, fifty-one.
"No," Tweek manages to sob into the skin between shoulder and neck. "No, no, please." He doesn't seem to be talking to Craig anymore.
His panicked cries escalate, fingernails desperately clawing and searching for a place on Craig to hold onto so he won't be pulled away by the tiny creatures. "No, no, no..."
Craig hears his erratic breathing and holds him so close it hurts him, their fragile structures intertwined and inseparable in the breathtaking, tragic, ever-lucid moment of peril. There isn't anything else he can do except hope. Every night, at three-thirty, he closes his dark, worn eyes, deprived of sleep now, and hopes.
Two, one.
Tweek's breath catches in his throat and he is silent. Craig hopes.
3:30 a.m.