madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-even the Cheeto dust ships it-

Teqi pushed her face further into her pillow, not wanting to be pulled out of her sleep. When she registered that she was awake though, she remembered what had happened. Was she still in the tent? Had a monster crept in? Had that gods awful snake come to take her away as well? She sat up, scrambling to the corner of her bed and holding her knife out, not that she had registered taking it out of her pyjama pocket. She could hear the cat paced around, meowing loudly. He must have sensed the panic in the room.

"Woah-woah, querida it's me! ...Leo. Your awake now, you're on the ship, remember?" 

Teqi swallowed, lowering her knife, but she didn't let go of it. She didn't want to open her eyes, what if this was still a dream? What if it was the dead version of Leo from the graveyard in her mind? She didn't want to see that again. She couldn't.

The knife was slid out of her sweaty palm, and she uncurled her shaking fingers, Leo's calloused hand slipped into hers. Teqi's breathing slowly evened out, and after a few minutes, or maybe hours, she couldn't tell, Teqi opened her eyes. There wasn't a lot to see. The outline of Leo sitting up in his pull out bed was only just visible with the soft glow of the moon and stars behind the circular blinds. 

"Nightmare?"

Teqi frowned at the question. Had it been a nightmare? Teqi was an expert on them, they were a nightly occurrence, but they never happened in her mind. Not in the fluffy white space that turned into a theme park of evil. She shrugged, but realised it wouldn't be seen in the darkness. "I don't know."

Leo couldn't reassure her, couldn't say it wasn't real. There was about an eighty percent chance it was real, it would happen. He couldn't say it was over now. She would get up in the morning and fight more monsters, and then go to sleep again and re-live it. He couldn't say she was safe.

They were never safe.

Instead of trying to say nice things and lull her into a false sense of her own safety, he just sat with her in the dark. 

Teqi wanted to turn on the lights, just in case there was something in the long shadow on the other side of the room, but she knew if she did, she wouldn't go back to sleep. She would stay awake watching for everything that could possibly go wrong, all the demons in the cracks of the floorboards. It was a routine.

She heard shuffling next to her, and the hand she was still holding moved a little in her grip. A flame sparked as Leo checked the time on the watch Teqi took off before bed, "It's only three. You should probably go back to sleep, need energy for breakfast, we're making omelettes." Leo said, she could hear the false cheerfulness in his voice. "Probably shouldn't let you near the eggs again though."

Teqi nodded in the dark, moving back to her pillow and discarding her messed up blankets. She could fix it in the morning. Teqi frowned, feeling the pool of tears on her pillow. She flipped over her pillow, and drew her hand back once again with a grimace. A few small flames travelled up Leo's fingers, and he smirked at her when he saw the other side of her pillow.

"That's where the Cheetos went." He teased. Bright orange powder smudged the white pillowcase, fingerprints of Cheeto-ness staining it. Teqi picked up the cat that was trying desperately to lick it off.                                                                                                                                                                              

Teqi would have laughed if she wasn't so shaken up, instead she just huffed at her past self. She chewed on her lip, why hadn't she cleaned it right then? God she was useless, what was wrong with her? If she hadn't eaten anything in the first place she wouldn't-

"Hey, querida, cmon, you're okay. We can wash it in the morning, there's a load going on anyways. Jason threw up on his bed because of his concussion." Leo smiled, shuffling over on his mattress and tugging at Teqi's hand. She pulled her eyes away from the pillow and clambered down, sinking into Leo's mattress. He didn't let go of her hand, and extinguished his other one.

Teqi and Leo had fallen asleep together on the quest many times, but after realising that she liked him, every time they touched it felt a lot bigger to her. And now she didn't know what to do. She lied down next to him, feeling the dry pillow beneath the side of her face that wasn't scarred. 

 Leo held her other hand in his, she could sense his stupid smile without even seeing it, so she rolled her eyes, knowing he would be able to tell, just like she could tell what he was doing.

"Warmer?"

AHDKGSJFKDJA

[Also imma do a double update cause this one was short]

<3