Truce Talk

(Trigger warnings: Swearing, threats of death, amnesia (kinda?))

Both Ink and Dream sat on one side in a booth at Ccino's café, anxiously awaiting the arrival of their long-time enemies. Dream sat against the wall of their shared side, fidgeting with his hands, seemingly unable to sit still for even five seconds; whereas Ink, sitting near the aisle, was uncharacteristically still.

"Where are they? Are we just early, or are they late? I wouldn't think the latter would be true since Nightmare had never struck me to be the kind of person to allow himself to be la-"

"Dream. Stop rambling like that, I'm sure it's fine. Remember, they agreed to meet with us in the first place. They're probably just running late... or using this time as a distraction for us, so they can go destroy universes while we're sitting here waiting for them..." Ink interrupted, trying to calm his friend, but trailing off at the end nervously. This thought hadn't yet occurred to Dream, so hearing it from Ink made him doubt his decisions to be here even more so than he already had been.

Ink's head fell dramatically to the table, resting in his arms and sighing loudly, drawing a glare from Dream.

"Is being here even the right choice? How do we actually know that they'll even consider forming a truce?" Dream exhaled deeply, moving from fidgeting with his fingers to playing around with the napkins.

"We don't. That's the thing. We can't know for sure that they'll consider it, in the same way that they can't be sure that this isn't some elaborate plan for an ambush." Ink shifted his head, looking up from his arms to glance at Dream before closing his eyes and sighing again, clearly bored.

There was no response from Dream, the only noise being the ambient sounds from the other patrons.

The silence between the two continued for a short while until the bell on the front door chimed and all sound in the café ceased as they watched who walked in.

Dream stiffened as he could feel the two negative auras approaching from behind them. He was internally scolding himself for choosing to sit with their backs to the door, having wanted to seem like they trusted the two not to hurt them.

But he didn't trust them. Not in the slightest.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, both Error and Nightmare slid into the booth seat across from them, with Nightmare closer to the wall. Ink finally straightened, feeling apprehensive about having them across from him in such a casual setting where people could be hurt if something went wrong.

"Hey, losers." Error snickered once they had settled, his face as mocking as it always seemed to be.

"Don't be rude, Error. What did we talk about?" Nightmare scolded, a quick glare shooting into Error's direction. In response was the most crude mocking of Nightmare's words that Error could muster.

Nightmare rolled his eyelight, then said, "My apologies for being so late, I spent some extra time with Error this morning in order to make sure he wouldn't make such a fool of himself... although it seems my efforts were rather pointless. I hadn't realized how much time had passed, so once Cross pointed out what time it actually was, we hurried right here."

"By 'hurried here', he means that he took less time than usual to get dressed, go downstairs, get the morons in line, and make sure that no one has any plans to burn the house down while we're gone." Error said nonchalantly but joking at the same time, as though this was what happened every day.

Dream's face must have been one of confusion because Error asked, in a surprisingly genuine tone, "What? Does Blue not try committing arson every time you leave him alone?"