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She wasn’t sure when they started sleeping together.
She couldn’t remember if it was before or after John had woken her up repeatedly, talking about nightmares, voice coated in a thick veil of exhaustion.
All she could ever do was pull him into bed, wrapping her bony arms around him, pulling him close to her chest, whispering soft reassurances into the crook of his neck. He would fall asleep not even 10 minutes after seeking her, but he stayed with her the whole night, only crawling out of the bed and out of her arms at the brink of dawn to cook breakfast.
———
It seemed to be some unspoken agreement the first time he snuck into her bed without even going to his own, pressing himself up against her quietly, whispering a small ‘goodnight’ before falling asleep.
Neither of them say anything about it, because it’s just another thing that they do, another routine that they have.
Another way to shut out everything that they don’t care about.
———
He tells her later it’s because it stops the nightmares.
At this point, she knows he’s lying. She’s watched him turn and tangle himself in the sheets in fear, such agony in his voice as he screams about Jack, Jack, please, stop-
She never really told him that she had nightmares just like that. She knew, though. She knew she deserved them.
John did not.
She never complained, or cried to him. Not once.
It wouldn’t have been fair to anyone. It was her own fault.
———
She asks him again one day, long after he’s started to crawl into her bed at night, why he still sleeps with her at night, he has a perfectly fine bed, and surely the nightmares must have stopped by now.
“It just…feels like home, with you.”
She’s ok with that answer.
———
The one time the nightmares are too much for Vriska, John is right there, asking her what’s wrong. He doesn’t see her like this often, seemingly lost. Confused. She’s never confused.
She can’t give him a straight answer, all she can think about is the red and teal mix blurring her vision, the worst color combination she could think of, why did that even happen, it should have never happened-
She doesn’t realize she’s babbling until John hugs her, his hands resting on her back and rubbing.
She cries for the first time since the game’s end, dark blue tears sliding down her cheeks and staining his shirt.
For once, though, she doesn’t feel weak.
Not tonight.