Caliban wasn't sure, initially, what woke him up in the middle of the night – something rare enough that he was disoriented by the dark when he first opened his eyes. Then he heard the door to the refrigerator close in the kitchen, quietly, but just loud enough to be audible. He slipped out of bed and stepped out into the hallway, shivering a little. The apartment wasn't exactly warm in the middle of winter. The light, as he had suspected, was on in their little kitchen.
"You're up late." He said, wandering down the hallway.
"Go back to sleep, Cal." Niko's voice sounded tired. It surprised him, in a way, and then alarmed him, because Nik just didn't…sound tired. Not like that.
"Can't, now, you woke me up. What're you making?"
"Nothing you'd like. Don't be ridiculous, Cal, sleeping is one thing you don't have trouble doing more of."
"Maybe I'm feeling in the mood for some good old soy pancakes or whatever it is." Caliban wandered the rest of the way into the kitchen and leaned on the counter. "So is this your new sleep schedule?"
"Sleep is for the weak." Dryly. Cal examined his brother and frowned, wondering how he hadn't noticed the very slight telltale signs of exhaustion on Niko's face. "Get, grasshopper. Or I'll make you a cup of lemongrass tea and you'll have to drink it, too."
Cal crossed his arms, wishing he'd brought a blanket, and noted during the brief silence that Niko was dressed. So he hadn't just gotten up, either. Had he ever really gone to sleep? "Sure, sounds delicious. So why are you up?"
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Sagely, and still not looking up or at him. Caliban looked at the unevenly cropped fringes of hair as his brother turned away from him to set a kettle on their stove and felt a little twinge.
"Ha ha. Right. Spit it out, Cyrano."
"Cal." It was meant to be a warning tone, but it came out just sounding tired, wrung out, a little bit exhausted. "Leave it." Caliban leaned back on the counter and looked up at the ceiling, grimacing a bit at the corners peeling up.
"Nightmares are a bitch, aren't they?"
The activity by the stove stopped. "Excuse you," Niko said, his voice still calm and level.
"Sorry," dryly, "Nightmares are a slatternly wench."
"Congratulations. I didn't think you knew what slatternly meant."
"You're trying to change the subject, and not very well. Is this about Abbagor?"
Amazing, Caliban thought, how quickly the atmosphere of a room could change, and because of one person. The air abruptly thrummed with tension. Nik hadn't moved so much as a muscle, but suddenly he was much more alert, the tired evaporating. The speed of the change told him he was right.
"First guess, wow," he said, to fill the silence, still not looking at his brother. "Let me guess, have you just been not sleeping the past couple days?"
"I have slept." Stiffly.
"But not much, am I right? Maybe a couple hours before you wake up?"
"Cal," warningly, again, but he sounded too tired to make it truly effective. "We aren't going to talk about this."
"Yes we are. What are you doing about them?"
"If we're going to talk about this, then we're going to talk about –"
"Oh no you don't," Cal interrupted, stubbornly. "And we're not. This isn't about me. For once. This is about you. What are you doing about it?"
Niko sighed, rubbed his forehead, half exhausted and half exasperated. "I'm doing just fine. Leave it alone."
Caliban set his jaw. "No. I'm not going to just leave it alone."
"I can deal with it." The flat stubbornness in Nik's voice would have warned off anyone else. Caliban wasn't anyone else. He matched it, surprising himself with the steel in his own voice.
"No. You can't."
"Cal," definitely weary, this time, as Nik shut off the stove and turned around to face him. But he didn't give his brother a chance to continue.
"No, you can't, and that's the problem. You're Niko, so you can deal with whatever fucking thing life throws your way, a punk ass brother who can't keep himself on his own feet, a vampire girlfriend, whatever the fuck it wants to do. But not this. Because it's not real. And how are you supposed to fight dreams, huh? They come at the worst possible time, when you're relaxed and not on your guard – probably the only time, for you – and just start gnawing away at everything and idon't leave/i and there's nothing you can do to change them. Because you can't fight nightmares. Can't fight things that come from your own head. Your own goddamned memories." Caliban took a deep breath and turned to face his brother. "Look. You can't tell me it'll just be okay. iI know/i it won't be. But I need to know. What are you doing about it?"
Nik stared at him, eyes narrowed, mouth a little line in that stone face he knew so well. It took him several moments of the sudden silence that stretched out to realize that he'd referenced the one thing they never spoke of, that he never spoke of. His own dreams. He tensed, expecting anything, a question in that direction, a demand that Caliban talk about his own struggles with nighttime visitors that he couldn't acknowledge existed. Because if he admitted they existed, he would have to look at what they were memories of. And that he didn't have the guts to do.
Cal looked down, and then Nik's hand settled on his shoulder, his expression unfathomable to anyone but Cal, who could read it like his own. He looked at his brother's eyes. "What am I doing about it?" Nik said, in a low, rough voice. "Fighting it, Cal. iFighting it./i"
Cal stared at him, bewildered, and then Nik turned around and turned on the stove again in a click of gas. "So, grasshopper. Tea or bed?"
"You're a goddamn dictator," Cal said, irritably, and scrubbed back his hair, glancing down at his feet. So many things left unsaid. And they'd better stay that way, too. "Are you going back to sleep soon?"
"After I finish my tea." Steadily, peaceful. Zen. Goddamn it. It was impossible to tell, again, what Niko was really thinking. Caliban sighed, again.
"Fine. Bed it is, then." He turned around, wishing, not for the first time, that he could actually do something. It seemed as though he'd never be able to. "G'night."
"Goodnight, grasshopper. Sleep well."
Caliban glanced over his shoulder, pausing, wondering if there was more to that than politeness. Niko's back told him nothing. Trudging down the hallway, he crawled into bed and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
He didn't dream.