Melodies

I woke up as soon as Kell jerked out of my hold, sitting up and breathing heavily. I stared at him in confusion as he pressed his hands to his forehead, clearly trying to calm himself down.

"Kell?"

He looked over his shoulder at me in surprise. "Did I wake you up?"

"No," I lied. "Did something happen? Are you okay?"

I sat up next to him, running my thumb over his cheek. It was wet, I noticed, and warm. He looked down, away from me, pressing his hand back to his forehead.

"Come on, let's go downstairs so we don't wake anyone else up."

I coaxed him out of bed (we'd been sharing Courtney's bed. We made her sleep on the floor with the other girls) and led him downstairs into the kitchen, where I took some ibuprofen from the 'hidden' bottle by the dishwasher and gave the pills to Kell along with a glass of water.

He took the pills gratefully and swallowed all 4 at once, something I'd seen him do before. He must have been pretty desperate for pain relief.

He set the glass down next to him on the counter, running his hands through his hair, pushing it back. I took each of his hands in mine, bringing them down and pushing our foreheads together gently.

"Tell me what's wrong."

He told me about the nightmare. It actually creeped me out a little just to hear him talking about it, mostly when he kept saying how Jamie was calling him fat.

"He doesn't really call you fat, does he?"

"No. He never has. He goes on and on about how 'pretty' I am."

I smiled a little. "So he's still sane."

Kell sighed. "I just can't believe that it only got scary enough for me to wake up when I realized I was touching that stupid spider. I thought I would die from a heart attack. But when Jamie starts randomly gushing metal? No, I'm okay with that, apparently."

"You were asleep. Dreams are weird like that." I kissed him once, raising my hand to his cheek. "Is your headache any better?"

"Sort of."

"Do you want me to take you home? I don't mind to."

He shook his head. "I don't want to be home right now. Let's just go back upstairs. I'm actually really tired."

Once upstairs and back to invading Courtney's bed, I pulled him close to me and kissed him for just a minute before pulling away and deciding to let him sleep.

He turned to face away from me, allowing me to wrap an arm around his front and hold him before his breathing began to steady.

"Kell," I whispered in his ear.

"Nnngh."

I smiled at his half-aware response. "I love you."

There was a pause before

"I love you too."