The Ereri Project (#2)

Middle of the Night

A/N: 10 more days!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Levi wakes up with a gasp around four in the morning. He can feel the residual tickles of fear lapping at his veins and coursing through him. The darkness of the room is oppressive and he feels like the monsters from his nightmare are going to burst from it and attack him.

He can feel himself starting to have a panic attack when – Eren makes a noise in his sleep and rolls over, curling up against Levi – it stops.

He takes a few deep breaths and rolls toward Eren, holding onto him in an effort to calm himself down. He doesn't have nightmares often but when he does it's usually hard to sleep for the rest of the night, if he can get back to sleep at all.

"Levi..." Eren groans drowsily.

Levi backs off a little. "Go back to sleep."

Eren squints around the sleep in his eyes. "Why're you awake so early?"

"Nothing, go back to sleep."

Eren wraps an arm around Levi and nuzzles his neck. "It was a nightmare then, huh? Tell me about it."

Levi rolls his eyes. "You're very presumptuous."

"Nightmares are the only reason you wake up in the middle of the night."

Levi sighs. "It's no big deal."

"So what happened?"

"I was in this place where they keep people who you would find in slasher movies. There were a few of them but the one I remember had Beetlejuice hair and knives and they told us he broke his own legs because he was crazy. Apparently they were all making plans to get out once they were free we found out he's legs weren't actually broken. They went on a killing spree and made me be one of them and they made me kill a kid with a bag of brown sugar."

"A bag of brown sugar."

"I had to crush its head with it."

"Ouch."

Levi sighs and curls up around Eren.

"Are you okay?"

Levi shrugs. "It just really creeped me out."

Eren hums quietly, rubbing Levi's back. "You're awake now," he says. "They can't do anything to you now."

Levi yawns, unable to fight his eyes sliding shut. "Thank you."

Eren kisses Levi's forehead. "Night."