Sans AU One-Shots

Nightmare || insomnia.

Pairing: Nightmare Sans x Reader
Prompt: You're stressed and unable to sleep, so knowing full well you're going to be exhausted when you wake up early tomorrow but unable to do anything about it, you get up to prepare some tea...and find someone waiting for you.
Type: comfort with a note of angst
Length: 4.5k words
Background: Insomnia = a sleep disorder that makes it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep and usually results in you not feeling well-rested when you wake up; typically triggered by stress or anxiety
Notes: I needed comfort and my brain immediately went 'get Noche'. But of course it's Nightmare so he'll provide comfort in a very detached way (even in my own imagination, the characters I desperately want comfort from refuse to break character for me 💀) | As always, pay more attention to what he does than says - a staple of how I write him - and 'Noche' is my nickname for him ('Night' in Spanish)

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It's fascinating how when something dictates your life so strongly, it's all you can seem to think about. It's rather similar to how when someone is trying to lose weight, they become obsessed with counting every calorie they eat in order to achieve that goal, or someone with the goal of building muscle will religiously go to the gym and research what weights to hit and what protein shakes they should drink in order to see the most gains. It becomes such a big part of your life that it's nigh impossible to stop thinking about it. That's how it was with me and time. I felt constantly rushed, always thinking about what I had to do next and how much time I had left in order to either get something done or how much was time left in a certain activity before it ended. So to go from constantly looking down at my watch to avoiding it like the eyes of Medusa was a bit of an odd switch, but I had my reasons.

The only downside to watching the clock as much as I did was I had a pretty good grasp of how much time had passed without having to look down at the watch on my wrist or turn on the phone beside my pillow. And that wasn't great when I was relying on convincing myself I got enough sleep when I knew damn well that was a far cry from happening at this point. I had to be tossing and turning for hours by now, doing a better job creating snarls in my hair than becoming drowsy, and I'd done everything I could think of to knock myself out with no success. The thing about sleep: the more you want it, the more it evades you. I'd cycled through all 5 stages of grief, and as I sat at acceptance, I decided the only thing I hadn't tried yet was tea. I wasn't going to sleep until my body decided it wanted to so I might as well actually get up and move around - at least there was a chance I'd wear myself out walking around.

I slid out of bed, leaving my phone behind as I tried to put the many unanswered message notifications out of my mind. I was so busy all of the time that I didn't feel like I had time to reply to the people in my life, convincing myself they'd understand if it took me a little longer than usual to text back with everything going on. But even if they did understand, that stress continued to mount in the back of my mind like a silent shadow that refused to leave my side, and even if I wasn't fully conscious it was there, I could tell I was snippier than normal. I'd convinced myself for a long time that I was fine, the stress only really popping up in pivotal moments where I just couldn't take it anymore and cracked, but it became a lot harder to ignore when a physical being of shadow started to follow me around too.

"Unable to sleep?" a chilling voice spoke from the shadows just outside the kitchen, the stark cutoff between the lights of the kitchen and the darkness of the living room clueing me into exactly where the shadow stood. I set the tea kettle on the stove, turning on the burner as I nodded, not even bothering to look up. I had accepted my fate - the insomnia was nothing new, after all. I'd fought with it many times before and I still couldn't break my losing streak. A low chuckle came from the shadow. "I can feel how deeply that bothers you, human."