they don't get a happy ending

when the moon is out

𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖗 𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖓 𝖔𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗'𝖘 𝖓𝖔𝖙𝖊

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sapnap jolts awake, his heart thumping quickly in his chest as he looks frantically around. he remains frozen for a moment, back stuck to the bed, nothing like the movies where they sit up in shock and bust into tears.

he sits there in terrified silence, wishing some noise would fill the space that suffocates around him, chaining him to his thoughts.

he wakes up enough to control his body, bringing his hand to his heart to feel how it thumps under the skin, matching his laboured breaths as they slip quickly between his lips.

"are you okay?"

sapnap's head whips to the side, eyes wide in shock as he flinches at the sudden sound.

he comes face-to-face with punz who looks at him with a worried expression, his head tilted and eyebrows pinched together, leaving a crease between them. his eyes take in sapnap's likely petrified expression, concern deep in his pupils.

sapnap takes a deep breath when he realises it's just punz -punz is still here- and rolls onto his side to face the blond, slowly catching his breath as he shuffles closer to the larger boy. punz wraps his arms around him and he cuddles up to the blonde's chest, hiding behind it like a shield and feeling how his heart relaxes.

his closes his eyes, staying close to the blond and reminding himself of the older's company as he works up the confidence to say, "just a nightmare."

punz holds him a little tighter, his big hand stroking gently along the other's back, unintentionally calming sapnap even more. "i'm sorry," he says, pressing his chin against the ravenette's hair. "do you want to talk about it?" he offers.

sapnap listens to the blonde's heartbeats, willing his own to match them even as his heart still aches from fear.

he snuggles impossibly closer to punz, letting himself feel small in the other's company. small, safe.

the only thing that sapnap has ever been scared of is his dreams and, by extension, the things he dreams about. there's been nights in his life when he woke up kicking and screaming, so scared that all he wanted to do was jack up and force his body to forget about it.

he could do that now, technically, but he takes the alternative option and says, "i have night terrors."

punz stays silent but continues stroking his back, pressing a kiss to the ravenette's hair as if to prompt him to continue, to remind him he's safe now, he's awake.

"i think i've probably dreamt about dying in any way you could imagine," he says, squeezing his eyes shut even though the only thing he could see was the other boy's t-shirt. the memories of his dreams aren't real but the way he feels them in his heart would make you think they are.

sure, pennywise has never actually beaten him to death with a bat, but when he closes his eyes at night he can still feel each blow as if it really happened.

"that must be awful," punz speaks sympathetically, free hand coming up to play with the hairs at the bottom of the other's neck.