Craig could not sleep.

A hot mug of thick cocoa rested between tired fingers as he drummed a tired song on the tabletop. Insomnia ate away at his mind, keeping him awake and was the cause if him to be sitting at the table at midnight singing a wordless song with no meaning. That and the fact he was he was escaping the horrors that laid behind closed lids. The blackness of his unreality something he just could not stand. He would rather deal with this simple lucidity caused by constant hours of staring at empty space and windows. Craig would not dare to turn on a television for that would wake up his father and that would be a crime, another nightmare but this one reality.

(Sleep.)

Craig took another sip from his cocoa using it to distract him from him from the thoughts of it. He could not dare to sleep at a time like this. Not with the nightmares lurking around the edges of his mind, digging their claws in. He needed a dream. The ends of a dream. The tentacles of one creeping in as he heard the slight vibration of his phone in the other room despite his surreality with the real world, his head turning to look at it in a kind of not there expression. You could say he was not there. He was in a dream, an imaginative place that was not this world. He floated over to the phone picking it up and sliding it open to glance at the apparent text message.

"i miss u."

Craig tilted his head at the text message that weighted him down, drowning him in his chocolate flavoured dream. He could almost hear the voice of the one who had sent it with just three simple textspoken words. Words that drove him back to earth and hitting reality, not cold reality but a warm reality. Warm hot chocolate and a smile that could pass through words. Craig could feel it all as a small feeling he wanted to grasp and tangle and lose himself in overcame him much too fast. It always came too fast, before he could stop it from happening. He was suddenly feeling so many things all at once and had no idea what to do with any of it. The only thing he knew was that a small smile, a ghost of a smile, a secret smile, graced his lips, lifted the corners to match his lifted moods.

For a moment he forgot about the nightmares. The nightmares just seemed to have slipped away and left Craig with a newfound comfort he did not really acknowledge, only felt. He lifted the mug to his lips, and his nimble fingers hardly hesitated in their response as they danced on the keyboard. It was a simple reply for the simple boy, and it simply told everything in a short-worded sentence.

"i miss you too."

Then Craig put his phone down and the mug away as he went back to bed, eyes staring at the sky and wondering if the other was staring at the same stars. He did not know when they began to close, but they did, the only lullaby being his phone vibrating next to his pillowcase mixing with his softening breaths.

"sweet dreams craig."