A/N: This chapter is way too short. This is what happens when I try to write over a summer full of writer's block. I do think this chapter is important, though, and I promise the story gets better after this!

Surprisingly, the end of the semester went down smoothly. I got through finals and made it through another semester without any C's! Moast of the summer was a lot of laying around and enjoying the freedom of not having anything to do. I mostly binge-watched YouTubes and "Dragons: Race to the Edge" because it finally had audio description!

Erik and I both had our introvert times, but there were also those times when at least one of us would get clingy. My sister had her own group of friends, but my friends all had crazy busy jobs and though I thought they were flaky it was really just there unpredictable work schedules. Erik was always there when I felt lonely. I felt bad when I "ignored" Erik to enjoy the internet, but he said that it was all right as long as he could be close to me. We both knew that no matter what, every night we could snuggle and talk while sleep evaded us. And when there was nobody else in the house, we could fill the whole place with music instead of just filling our headphones.

One night, though, we both experienced the power of a good playlist.

I'd only recently learned what sleep paralysis was, but it fit the description of quite a few of my nightmares: hallucinations of frightening things coming to get me in my bed, and me being unable to move a muscle. It's when you're half-awake, but the paralysis part of REM (the brain stem stopping you from acting out your dreams) is still turned on. And then when I wake up all the way, I think, "Where'd the nightmare go? It's going to jump out at me again, isn't it?" Not cool...so not cool.

I read somewhere that it's caused by stress. I was worried about what I would do after graduating, and seeing that horror movie a couple days previously probably didn't help, but one night in particular was full of sleep paralysis. I know what it is now and can recognize it, so it's not quite as scary, but it's still very freaky. I didn't even know what was after me that night or what was preventing me from moving in the dream; it could have been something that wasn't scary at all, but I was scared. Really scared. I stayed awake for a long time each time I woke up completely-two or three times total in one night? That's a little concerning.

How the crap was I supposed to get through the night? Wait, morning now-three in the morning. WHY? Make it go away. Help me to relax, Lord. Normally I would toss and turn for a while, but I didn't want to disturb Erik. I pressed closer to him-another body meant comfort. And when Erik draped an arm around me like he would always do when we were half asleep, I did relax a little. Just a little.

"Lauren?" Erik whispered. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Erik pulled me even closer, seeming anxious. "I...why are you awake?"

"Bad dream. Stupid sleep paralysis!"

Erik let out a breath and seemed to relax a little. "Me too."

"How do you deal with it?" I had a couple methods, but Erik had worse nightmares than me, I would think, and I was curious how he handled it.

"I stop sleeping for the night...But holding you seems to be chasing them away already."

Phangirl likey. "I usually say a little prayer and-wait! I have my bedtime playlist!"

"May we try that?"

"Yeah." I shuffled the playlist and put the phone under the pillows as the intro to "Like I Am" by Rascal Flats started. Two or three songs in, we both were asleep, still comfortably close.

A couple of hours later, my phone had played the hour-long playlist through and died. I plugged it in but didn't get up. I like the cozy, still-sleepy feeling of laying in bed in the morning.

When Treblemaker knew for sure that I was awake, she rattled the rattly bars of her big crate and started making Treble noises. "Mmmmmmmm, arrroo, ooooph."

"Fine," I groaned. "Erik, let me up."

"No," came the sleepy reply, and his arms pulled me closer against him.

"But Treble wants out to pee and I'm hot!"

My sister wasn't awake yet and my parents were both already at work, so Erik walked around the house practically glued to me. When we were eating breakfast, Erik brought up the bedtime playlist. "That was the perfect antidote, Lauren! I may just have to figure something like that out for my own home...the power of music. I think I know everything about music, but every day I learn something new. And you-you show me that. I'm a bit jealous of you, actually, wielding its power so expertly."

"And you don't?" I was incredulous. This was kind of the selling point of the POTO: to be musically powerful.

Erik chuckled. "I like to think I do...But even so, there's just a special something about music...it does not discriminate and it knows just how to touch you in the right way, even when you're not expecting it. And you're open to that...its power is simply obvious to you."

"I love you," I said casually as we cleaned up the dishes. "You know that, right? You're cooler than cool."

Erik took my hands and touched his thin, flesh-colored mask with them. "You know what else I can do with this mask on?"

He could clearly eat with it on, which was good. "Uh...what?"

Erik gently and patiently tilted my face upwards and leaned down. And then he kissed me and waited for me to respond, which I happily did! We pulled away just before I heard my sister's bedroom door open upstairs.

"I love you too," Erik whispered.