Late Nights and Anxiety
.x.
It starts out like any other day: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, drive to school. There's little warning at Casper High, either, except perhaps a glimpse of Danny talking animatedly to a girl you've never really spoken to before. Sam, her name is. Danny talks about her often, and you're pretty sure he has feelings for her. You can only hope he won't do something stupid to impress her.
How wrong you were. Dead wrong.
You come home late that evening - you'd stayed behind for a tutoring session with one of the younger students; bright, but lazy and unfocused (she reminds you of your brother). You enjoy helping others, especially the ones truly willing to learn (but you'll never admit that really you just want to get out of that madhouse for a little longer). You come home late, you open the front door, and it's like you're suddenly watching one of those ridiculous televised dramas Mum so loves. Dad is probably down in the lab, judging by the crashes, and Mum herself - well, you're not sure what she's doing, but the term 'everything' comes to mind. Tucker and Sam sit frozen on the sofa, looking traumatised; you think Sam is crying. You suddenly realise what they're staring at, what they're crying over: your brother, asleep or unconscious or worse, stretched out limply on the other sofa.
You snap out of your initial shock - someone needs to have a clear head, and nobody else in the house seems about to step up. You march over to your brother, intent on assessing the situation at hand. As you check his breathing - a little slower than normal, but nothing much to worry about - you demand of his friends what happened. They tell you about the Ghost Portal in the basement, how it wasn't working, how they'd decided to have a little look themselves, thinking it was safe; their voices waver and their tones are uncertain, but you pass it off as shock and continue with the checkup. Danny's pulse is sluggish and his skin is cold, but he's alive, and that's all that matters. Mum assures you that the anomalies aren't enough for him to be taken to hospital, and since she seems calmer now, you accept her decision.
Hours later, it's dark and your brother has been moved into his own bed and his friends sent home. Mum and Dad have gone to bed, exhausted; they'd been up all of last night working on that damned dangerous contraption, and that afternoon's excitement hadn't helped in that department. You stayed up despite your own tiredness, despite how seriously you take your sleeping schedule - bed at nine, wake at five thirty, for the ideal eight and a half hours you need. But your brother has just been in a lab accident, and suddenly your own health doesn't matter anymore. He's got enough to worry about as it is, between the bullies he doesn't want you to make a fuss about and your crazy parents.
You sit in a corner of his room, your pillow cushioning your back against the wall and your duvet keeping you warm. You read your book - You Are Not So Smart: Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction And 47 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself - by torchlight, carefully angled so that Danny, if - when - he wakes, won't be blinded by it. Your eyelids droop, and the words on the page are beginning to blur, but you can't allow yourself to sleep. Not when he still hasn't woken up. You know for sure that you wouldn't want to be alone if the roles were reversed.
Later still, and you're pretty sure you dozed off for a little while; you don't remember seeing midnight come and go, and yet here you are at two in the morning. You sigh gently; tomorrow will be difficult. You get up and creep to the window, shivering as your duvet drops from your shoulders, but that's a good thing; the cold will keep you awake. You lean on the windowsill, forehead pressed against the glass, and you survey the road from above. The streetlights shine for nobody's benefit and every house's curtains are drawn. You can't see the stars for the thick dark clouds, and that drags down the corners of your mouth. Stargazing has always been Danny's thing; he can name every constellation, point out every major star and planet and can easily spot the ISS when it passes overhead. It seems…wrong, somehow, that they should be absent from the skies, tonight of all nights.
You're jerked from your contemplation by a soft moan, and then you're immediately kneeling by your brother's bedside. Familiar blue eyes flutter open, unfocused and confused, and for a fleeting moment they almost seem to glow green - but that's ridiculous; just a trick of the light. He moans again, but this time it's less pitiful and more protesting. His eyes open properly now, adjusted to the darkness, and he sees you almost immediately. "Jazz?" he croaks, and you smile because finally, finally, here's confirmation that your little brother is okay and the worry that has been gnawing at you for hours dissipates at last.
"Hey," you whisper, unwilling to risk waking your parents; three a.m. is not the time for loud voices and hysterics. "How do you feel?"
"I'm okay. What are you doing in my room?" he whispers back, picking up on the need for quiet.
You look away, suddenly embarrassed. "I didn't want you to wake up alone," you admit. Then, quieter, "I know I wouldn't want to."
He frowns, confused; you've never really been close in any other way than geography, and certainly not in recent years. He doesn't really understand why you're here, and Mum and Dad aren't, but that's okay because you're not sure either. You've always been overprotective, but never to this point. Maybe the shock of seeing him laying lifeless on the sofa got to you more than you thought it had.
Danny's frown doesn't lighten, and all of a sudden the situation feels awkward. You make to stand up, to gather your pillow and duvet and book and leave, but there's a tug at your shirt and you stop. "No, Jazz, you're right," he says. "I don't- I don't want to be…" he trails off, but you know what he's asking. You smile.
"I'll stay, if you want me to," you tell him, and as you move your affairs closer to him, you almost miss him saying, "Thanks, Jazz. You're the best."
That night you both fall asleep with smiles on your faces.
Disclaimer: DP is obviously not mine, and Jazz's book is real and one I'd quite like to read myself.
A/N: Crossposting from Tumblr, as this is one of my better oneshots. I intended this to be sad and angsty but then it just...wasn't. I don't know what happened.