Fifth prompt: Aramis is no stranger to the invasion of distressing dreams, but the unconscious offering of protection and support by his brothers still occasionally takes him by surprise.
A/N: As with some of the other prompts, I lost track of the original source that spawned this one. It's fluffy and reads a bit like an interlude. As a summary of what it turned out to be, we'll call it what it is - a minor moment of upset, followed by instinctive brotherly care.
Sleep
-o-
Aramis wakes from his nightmare with a blink, jolting softly from a messy world of blood and screams into one of silence below a starlit sky.
He stares at first, breathing with his mouth open as a shooting star arcs across the heavens. He follows it, tracing its path again and again with his eyes long after it has disappeared.
His heart feels loud and out of place in the silence. The calm is dissonant. For several seconds, he doesn't remember where he is or how he got there, and wonders for a fluttering beat if the quiet he has woken into is the dream and the screams he left behind are the reality.
The blank confusion only lessens when an expanding motion brushes against his ear, and he thinks – Athos – automatically. A thought solidifying place and time. He sighs in relief, closing his eyes as the motion comes again – Athos' sleeping breaths expanding and contracting in comforting motion. Sometime in the night Aramis' own sleeping sprawl must have carried him lower on the grassy knoll than his companions, his head ending up below Athos' arm, even with Athos' ribs.
There are worse places to be.
On his other side, Porthos has rolled onto his stomach over the joined bedrolls and has his forehead nearly flush to the blankets, breathing halfway into the ground while his heavy arm rests across Aramis' shoulders. His knee is bent, digging lightly into Aramis' thigh.
Aramis likes it. The warmth and the comfort in the crisp night air.
The safety.
It confuses him sometimes, how safe these moments feel – and in the current interlude between screaming and silence, makes him question his reality all over again.
Against his ear, the motion of Athos' ribs changes rhythm and a hand alights in his hair, carding through the curls. "Not sleeping?" Athos murmurs.
"Just a dream," Aramis whispers, and sighs when Athos pauses then rolls a little closer in a gesture that seems almost entirely unconscious.
For his part, Porthos mumbles something indecipherable, stretches his arm more fully across Aramis' shoulders, and curls a loose fist into Athos' shirt.
"Sleep now?" asks Athos, resuming the motion of his fingers through Aramis' hair. He sounds simultaneously more aware than he did before and halfway back to his own dreams.
Aramis has no idea why, but as his body relaxes, he feels a lump rise in his throat. "Yes," he says, swallowing thickly - warmly. "Thank you."
"Not at all, Aramis," Athos says. "Not at all."
-o-