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By all rights, Ralsei shouldn't have been having so much trouble falling asleep.
To be fair, sleep had never exactly come to him easily. The smooth, barren floor on which he slept made sure of that. But it was all he had, and on previous nights he'd been able to make it work. Tonight should have been the easiest night of all. Every muscle and bone in him was aching from the day's adventures—sprinting through the church-themed Dark World after Kris and Susie, scaling walls while enemies did everything in their power to knock the three of them down, taking on the Titan and somehow, miraculously, surviving. He wanted nothing more than to give in to unconsciousness and take full advantage of the few hours of rest he allotted for himself.
But just as his body was reeling from everything that had happened today, so, too, was his mind. His consciousness wouldn't allow itself to fade—it was too busy focusing on any of the million terrible things that occurred since the morning. There was the sense of dread and terror that sank into his chest the first time he realized the church Dark World contained the entire prophecy, a feeling that hadn't alleviated him since. When that got old, he'd remember the rage scrawled out on Susie's face as she gripped him by the shoulders and demanded to know why he never told her and Kris whole truth about their fates until it was almost too late. Or maybe it was the awkward, pitiful glance Kris and Susie assumed he hadn't seen them share, once during the tea party and then again when they stumbled upon his room.
All of that was churning, filtering through his thoughts and into halfhearted dreams as he drifted into sleep and out again. He had no idea how much time had passed. Was it hours or minutes? Would he be able to get any decent rest before he'd need to get up and start preparing for the next day, or was he already doomed to be drowsy and ill-equipped on his next adventure with Kris and Susie? The new worry diluted, finding its way into the mixture of everything else he had to be scared about.
When he was at the edge of consciousness, he heard a rhythmic, hollow knocking.
It felt real, but he didn’t trust his mind enough to ensure this wasn’t just part of a dream. The noise repeated again a few seconds later, followed by some words. "Ralsei? Dude, are you awake?" He didn't process what they meant, or why the speaker's voice sounded familiar.
More words, this time enough to prompt him to open his eyes and rub them with a lazy fist. "All right, uh. I'm going to come in."
His eyes were only open for a second before the door, sure enough, creaked open, sending light spilling in from the hallway. There was a silhouette blocking some of that light—tall, with a defined snout, and spikes on the shoulders.
"Oh, shit. Did I wake you up?" asked Susie.
The sight of his friend, in the middle of the night, looking into his room for the second time that day was enough to make Ralsei bolt upright, replacing grogginess with pure adrenaline. "Susie! What are you doing here? I mean, is everything okay? Did something happen?"
"Other then a really depressing late-night walk around town and Kris's mom having the worst possible taste in men? Nah, not really," she replied. "Oh, uh, we found out Toriel's safe. If you were worried about that. After that I tried to go home and get some rest, except I couldn't really fall asleep there, so I figured I might as well try here. If, um, that's all right with you?"
"Of course!" Ralsei plastered a signature, Ralsei-brand smile onto his face as he got to his feet. "Do you want me to get you something?"
For some reason, Susie appeared taken aback by that. "Dude. If I showed up at your house, unannounced, at two in the morning, woke you up, and then demanded you get me a snack, I think I'd officially go down in history as the worst friend ever. The only reason I'm bothering you in the first place is that I figured it would be even more rude if I crashed here without telling you.”
"Oh. Right. Um, sorry for not coming to meet you at the gate like usual. I shouldn't have made you come all the way up here when you could be settling into bed right now." Internally, Ralsei chided himself for not noticing Susie's presence in the Dark World. Usually that sort of thing came as easily as breathing to him, but something about tonight must have made it harder.
Despite his words, the guilt wasn't yet gone from Susie's face. "You really think you need to apologize for that? You were asleep, man! And I should probably be asleep, too." She sighed. "I'm telling you, man, you need to quit being so sorry all the time."
Resisting the urge to apologize for being too apologetic, Ralsei mustered out, "I'll, um, try. Do you at least want me to walk you downstairs? These hallways get pretty eerie at night."
Susie shrugged. "I don't see why not. Although it's pretty hard to be scared of anything after we kicked that Titan's ass a couple hours ago." She started making her way down the hallway, and Ralsei quickly got up to follow.
He shuddered at the mention of anything that had happened in today's Dark World. Even if that one wasn't particularly sensitive, it was just a few misplaced sentences away from the last thing he wanted to talk about right now. "Really? I'd think the fact that something like that could even exist would be enough to keep someone up at night." He laughed a little, keeping his expression from becoming too serious. "I, um, wasn't having the best time falling asleep either. In case you were wondering." He hoped she hadn’t been.
"Really?" She was completely deadpan, without a hint of surprise on her face.
He blushed. "Is it that obvious?"
"Your eyebags take up more space on your face than your actual eyes." They hit the staircase and began going down. "Are you, uh, holding up okay?"
Of course, the truthful answer was not at all, I've actually never been worse, but there was no way Ralsei was going to admit that verbatim. However, he couldn't just lie about his mental state, either—not after he'd specifically promised Susie to tell the truth whenever he could. The only remaining option was to deflect the question entirely, turning this conundrum back onto his friend and letting her dictate where the conversation went from here. "Are you?"
Susie laughed. "Oh, hell no. But I'm asking about you, dumbass."
Once again, Ralsei's face flushed red with embarrassment. Foiled again. There was no choice left for him now but to at least try and be honest. "I'm not exactly doing my best, either." They had finished their descent and were now heading down the hallway towards the bedroom—meaning that, if all went well, Ralsei wouldn't have to maintain this conversation for much longer. "It's just... a lot to take in, you know?"
"For me, maybe." She looked down. "I would assume you'd have the advantage of not having found out about all of this crazy shit in one night." Despite everything, there wasn't a hint of resentment or accusation in Susie's words. Only a playful jealousy, like she was complaining about a homework assignment he had extra time to complete. Or something.
Ralsei looked down. "Yeah, but it's easier to ignore… that stuff… when it's not staring me in the face." Truth be told, he had been ruminating on the prophecy since he became aware of its existence and, more recently, when he realized he was genuinely attached to the two people unfortunate enough to also be implicated by it. But in the other Dark Worlds, he at least had the privilege of shoving that into the back of his mind and only worrying about the parts that were relevant in the moment.
"Ha. I get you." Susie punched him in the shoulder, lightly. They were almost to the door. "Better to try and enjoy things while you can, huh?"
"Yep," he replied, as if he would ever just let himself enjoy something when he was supposed to be beneath such simple pleasures. Finally approaching their destination, he twisted the doorknob and pulled it open. "Ladies first."
Susie chortled. "Some lady I am." She shuffled inside and flopped down on her bed. Vulnerable conversation over. Ralsei tried to come up with some sort of lighthearted way to say I’m going back upstairs to my empty room now and try to get some more sleep even though that probably isn’t going to happen, but he must have looked too anxious or taken too long or something, because after a moment, Susie asked, “You wanna come in?”
“Um. Sure?” He stepped inside, leaving the door ajar and standing in place awkwardly on the rug. He still hadn’t cleaned up the mess from this morning—the wall separating Kris and Susie’s rooms was still gone, leaving both sides visible. Additionally, there was still a table in the middle of the shared space with three half-eaten plates of cake and half-sipped cups of tea. “Sorry it’s still a mess in here,” he said. “I can put it back to normal now, if you want.”
“Nah. I’ll pass.” Susie was fully relaxed already, with her hands crossed behind her head and her feet propped up beneath the sheets. “It’s kinda nice, being able to see Kris’s side from here. Besides, didn’t I tell you to stop apologizing for everything?”
She had said that, hadn’t she? “Oops.” While her lack of desire for him to do his job was kind, it also left him wondering why he’d been invited in here if not to fix up the place before bed. Finally, he voiced the words he hadn’t been able to put together before: “Um, I should probably head back upstairs now, shouldn’t I?”
“I guess you could. If you really wanted to.” There was a glint in Susie’s eyes, the type that only ever showed up when she was planning something. “But I had another idea.”
Unsure what, exactly, his friend was about to suggest, Ralsei repeated, “Another idea?”
“Yep. Okay, so get this.” Susie grinned. “What if you slept down here tonight?”
Was Susie out of her mind? “Down here? I couldn’t! This is your space, and I couldn’t possibly… I mean, I just don’t want to intrude, and—”
“Dude. It’s not intruding if I flat-out invited you over.”
Ralsei sighed. “I know. It’s just… I don’t know. It feels like something I’m not supposed to do. Like we’d be breaking the rules.”
“That’s the fun part, dumbass!” replied Susie, and Ralsei cursed himself for forgetting who he was talking to. “Come on, man. Do you really think I came over to your place just to hang out in separate rooms the whole time? I mean, we’ll spend most of it asleep either way, but this way we can have, like, a slumber party!”
“A… slumber party?”
“Yeah! Me and Kris had one last night. It’s only fair that you get to have one, too.”
It didn’t seem like there was going to be any getting out of this now. And Ralsei hated to admit it, but that awful, selfish voice inside of him was actually excited for this. “All right. I’ll sleep down here, just for tonight.”
“Hell yeah!” Susie pumped a fist.
Ralsei looked around, eyes trained downwards. “I guess there’s more than enough space for me to curl up on the floor, isn’t there? I can pick a spot, if you don’t mind.” He sat down on an area of carpet in between Susie’s bed and the tea table, dusting it off before he leaned back.
Susie shifted so she was leaning nearly off the bed, looming over him as she stared down. “Actually, I do mind. Why the hell would you sleep on the floor when there’s an empty bed right there?”
He gasped. Aghast, he asked, “Are you serious? You know I can’t do that! Sleeping in this room is bad enough, but that… that would be crossing a line, Susie!”
She was still smiling, as if she’d been expecting him to react like this. “You sure?”
“I—yes! Of course I’m sure!” He couldn’t believe he had to defend something so intuitive. “That’s Kris’s bed! I can’t just use it without their permission!”
“And remind me, how many times have they actually used that thing?”
“That’s not the point, Susie! The point is, I’d be stealing their space, and that’s wrong.”
Susie crossed her arms. “Okay, so what are the chances of them ever finding out?”
“Higher than you’re thinking,” Ralsei replied. “What? I shed. A lot.”
With a laugh, Susie shot back, “You haven’t seen their family. Having someone shed all over their bed would probably just make them feel even more at home here. On the off chance that they ever actually use it.”
“I… suppose they would be used to that aspect of me, then.” Although the entire group was aware of it by now, his resemblance to Kris’s family was still on the long list of things that Ralsei would rather avoid talking about with his friends. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s still a violation of their space.”
“What I’m trying to tell you is they wouldn’t give a shit, man!” Susie reached out a hand, beckoning for him to take it and stand up. “Come on. Can you really see Kris getting all torn up about something like this?”
Ralsei remembered that morning, when the two of them had been in his room. He’d confessed to them his selfish desires, and they hadn’t scorned him for it. If anything, they’d been happy that he was starting to feel like a person sometimes. Maybe they really wouldn’t care.
But that wasn’t the problem, was it?
“I… still can’t accept that offer, no matter how much Kris would care.” He stared at the floor, too scared to watch Susie’s reaction to what he said next. “It’s… it’s more comfort than I need. It’s beyond my means, you know? It would be selfish of me to take up your offer, even… even if I really wanted to.” There was, in fact, a very small part of him that did want this. He hoped that by voicing his concerns that it would see the face of logic and keep quiet, but so far talking didn’t seem to be doing much.
“Okay, and?” Susie responded. “It might be a little selfish of me, coming here in the middle of the night and bothering you just because I couldn’t sleep at home. But I’m not tearing myself up over it. I mean, it can’t be too bad if the alternative is getting no sleep tonight, can it?”
“Um. Not really?”
“And you weren’t getting much sleep upstairs, were you?”
“No, but—”
“Then you taking Kris’s bed can only be as selfish as me coming over, right? Probably even less, since I woke you up in the middle of the night to make sure me staying here was all right, and now I’m literally telling you no one’s gonna get mad at you if you do this.”
Ralsei sighed. There was no way he could ever get across to Susie how important it was that he follow the rules and stay within his means, especially since he wasn’t even sure himself what kind of consequences he might face for this sort of transgression. At the same time, that selfish voice inside of him said that it couldn’t be too dire if it also meant following a suggestion from one of the Lightners. “I… guess?”
Susie sat down next to him, meeting his eyes. “Look, I’m not gonna force you to do this if you don’t want to, okay? If you really, genuinely think you’d be happier sleeping on the floor, well, who am I to get in the way of that?” Her gaze was intense, becoming brighter with each passing moment. “But, dude, you’re not treating yourself like a person. I’ve been in bad places before, but sleeping on the floor every night without even a blanket or a pillow? That’s a new low, even for me.”
“I do have a plushie. As of yesterday.” He knew it didn’t change much, but Ralsei still felt the need to defend himself. “Besides, I’m not a—”
Susie refused to let Ralsei finish that sentence, but they both knew what he had been about to say. “We’ve had this conversation, all right? I don’t care if you’re still convinced you’re not real. You’re my friend, dumbass, and no one gets to treat my friends like that. Okay? Not even themselves.”
She paused, as if waiting for him to confirm he’d actually heard what she said. “All right. I… I’ll try.”
“Good.” Susie smirked. “Now, are you gonna take the bed or not? ‘Cause I can already feel my eyelids starting to droop, and I want at least a little time to do slumber party shit before we all pass out.”
Ralsei thought about it. On one hand, staying on the floor seemed so much easier. It was what he knew, and what he deserved. But his eyes wandered to Kris’s bed, to the pillows he’d fluffed every morning and the sheets he always made sure were tucked in. It had to be worth a try, right? At least to see if it was as good as everyone always insisted it was.
Besides, if some other friend of Susie’s was over, would he really give them an empty room and tell them to sleep on the floor?
“You know what?” Ralsei said. “I’ll give it a try.”
“Hell yeah you are!” Susie replied, getting back to her feet. Ralsei joined her, carefully sidestepping around the table as he made his way to Kris’s side of the room. When he reached the bed, he stopped in front of it and looked it over.
He realized, quite suddenly, that he had never actually gotten into a bed before and wasn’t exactly sure how it worked.
There was still hope. He’d watched Susie carry out this exact process just a few moments ago, right? Carefully, he pulled the sheets back and raised them up enough so he could slide in one leg, and then the other, scooching himself in so that he was leaning against Kris’s pillow. Every movement was unnatural, a violation of some unwritten contract.
It was also, without a doubt, the most comfortable he’d ever felt in his entire life. Almost his entire body was engulfed by a soft thing of some sort, leaving just his head and part of his upper body poking out. He leaned harder and harder onto that pillow, waiting for the moment where he went too far and ran up against something harsh and unkind. It never came.
Susie was smirking at him from across the room. “How is it?”
He hated to admit it, but this thing really had lived up to expectations. “Pretty amazing, actually.”
“See? Told you!” Her face formed a toothy grin, shining right at him. “So. Slumber party?”
“Slumber party!” Ralsei paused. “Um, what exactly does one do at a slumber party?”
The topic seemed to give her hesitation as well. “I dunno. I’ve only ever actually done it once—last night, with Kris. We started a bit earlier, so we had time to do dumb crap for a few hours before we got tired and fell asleep. I’ve already been doing dumb crap all night, and it’s stupid late, so maybe we could just go to sleep?”
“Slumbering at a slumber party. That makes sense.”
Susie smiled. “You’d be surprised. From what I can tell, most of what you do at these things don’t have very much to do with slumbering at all.”
“Maybe we’re the only ones getting it right,” suggested Ralsei.
That made her laugh out loud. “Nice one!” She settled in, rolling onto her side and pulling the covers even tighter. “You’ve got the lights, right?”
“Got it!” Ralsei snapped his fingers, sending the room into sudden darkness. Usually, he didn't like making his room go pitch-black before he went to sleep, but something about tonight made him not mind it as much.
Susie's voice came drowsily from the other side of the room. "Good night, dumbass."
No matter how hard he tried, Ralsei couldn’t bring himself to repeat the expletive. “Good night, Susie.”
The adrenaline that had been coursing through his veins ever since Susie made her surprise appearance loosened its grip, and Ralsei could feel the fatigue from earlier returning to him. He hadn’t intended to get too comfortable in Kris’s bed, but now there was no resisting the urge to bury his head into the pillow and pull the sheets all the way up to his chin. Did Lightners really get to sleep like this every single night? It was, without a doubt, the most comfortable he’d ever felt. That was terrifying in itself, but he couldn’t dwell on it too much, not when he could feel the pull of unconsciousness lulling him further, further from—
“Hey, Ralsei?”
It was Susie again, but her voice was weaker than before, more exposed. She must be sleepy, too.
“Mmph,” Ralsei replied, unable to formulate a full response. His mind sluggishly attempted to list all the things she might want from him at this hour. Did she need a glass of water, or a midnight snack? Or maybe she’d decided that she didn’t want him here after all, that he needed to go back upstairs where he belonged—
“I’m sorry. For getting so mad at you, earlier today. About all the secrets.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. Usually he was the one giving the apology, not the one receiving it. “Please, don’t be. I really shouldn’t have been lying to you for so long, it was inevitable that you’d start picking up on it eventually.” He'd probably respond like this in any situation where one of the Lightners felt the need to apologize to him, but he truly did wish he’d been more honest with them from the beginning. They deserved better than a liar for a friend.
“I know,” replied Susie. “But that doesn’t make it okay that I yelled at you. I’ve… been trying not to do that as much, since meeting you and Kris. There was no way I could have guessed exactly what was happening, but I should have at least figured that if you were hiding anything, it was for a good reason.”
In all his preparations for working with the Lightners, nothing had told Ralsei how to respond to this. “Oh.”
She continued. “Earlier, I joked that you must have had it easy today, since most of what we learned wasn’t even a surprise to you. But… that’s worse, isn’t it? For those first three Dark Worlds, you had to watch me and Kris running around thinking this was all some sort of fun game. And the whole time, you knew everything. How Tenna’s game show was going to end. The Knight waiting for us at the end of the church Dark World. And how—how the prophecy says the whole thing is going to—”
There it was, out in the open. The thing both of them had been dancing around all night, desperately attempting to ignore. “It’s all right,” Ralsei interrupted. He wasn’t used to doing that. “That’s not going to happen, right? You said so yourself.”
If only it was as easy to believe it as it was to say it.
“Right, yeah,” said Susie. “But you thought it was real, right up until tonight. That… that sucks ass, man. And this was after we saw how shitty your room is—no offense, by the way.”
“None taken.”
“I just… I should have known you were going through some shit! But instead I was busy being stuck inside my own head, getting so excited about that dumb prophecy and angry that I couldn’t know every detail about it right that second. And I took it out on you. I’m so sorry, man. You deserved better than that.”
Ralsei knew that if the universe cared about what he deserved, he wouldn’t have things like friends or cake or a whole bed to himself even if it was supposed to be Kris’s. But he knew that if he said that out loud, Susie wouldn’t buy it for a second, so he did his best to push that thought out of his mind. “Thank you, Susie,” he said, hoping that was the right response. “That means a lot to me.”
“It means a lot to me, too,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ve had enough of this dumb feelings talk. Let’s hit the hay.”
Only a few moments passed before loud, groaning snores could be heard from Susie’s side of the room. Good. She was resting. He closed his eyes, and before he knew it, he was fading away again. This was a better fade than before, though, with the bouts of consciousness filled with thoughts of solace and comfort instead of stress. His last thought before he fell asleep for good was how odd it was, that even the simplest of tasks became so much easier when there was a friend by his side.