Somniphobia
by Positively

Warnings: Alfred/Matthew AU
This one is a little weird. Heavily inspired by Anne Sexton's poem "Briar Rose"—you know the drill, go read—but the original idea is my sister's fault for being so anti-sleep. Contains language, sexual abuse, PTSD, and general weirdness.

Summary: Matthew Williams wakes from a three-month-long coma completely physically intact. But he can no longer bring himself to sleep—either from fear that he will never awaken, or the fear of what will happen when he does.

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DISCLAIMER: Hidekaz Himaruya owns the characters of Axis Powers Hetalia.

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When Francis Bonnefoy's third and final wife gave birth to their first and only son, there was a terrible storm.

The days leading up to the grand event were overcast and oppressively still, clouds stewing like gray veils in the sky. This was some kind of cast-off from the hurricanes in the South Atlantic; Newfoundlanders stared bewilderedly around them, wondering where the animals had gone and whence the wind had come. Fishermen watched the sky and stayed out of the water. There was an atmosphere of waiting, and the fascinatingly ominous sense that something was about to break.

The sky burst open on July 1st with a blinding flash, a great peal of thunder, and columns upon columns of drenching rain. It happened so suddenly that many on the street were completely soaked through before the thought of shelter even formed. Falling trees felled power lines, and the heavy clouds blocked out any hint of sunlight. Through those windows that were not shuttered, soft pinpricks of candlelight and waving beams of flashlights could be seen. Children, those wild, untempered, restless creatures of superstition, stared longingly at the dark sky. They felt a desire they did not understand, that yearning for danger and destruction that adults learn to fear, master, or ignore.

Francis and his wife barely noticed. Her screams drowned out the thunder.

After the birth, which had no complications past the usual apocalyptic pain, the exhausted new mother fell asleep with the baby in her arms.

"How about that storm? An auspicious beginning," one of the nurses joked to Francis. "You know, the doctor said the exact moment that boy took his first breath was when the hospital's power went out? It was dark for a second, but luckily we have a backup generator."

"How portentous," Francis said, half-sarcastically.

They named him Matthew, and when Francis held him in his arms for the first time, it was love. A complex brand of love, intermingled with fierce protectiveness, and a sick fear, and a secret resentment. But it was love and it was strong and it was deep, and Francis was blown away. He felt separated from himself, disconnected from his previous identity, his priorities uprooted and completely rearranged. All for this little bundle in his arms. It was maudlin and cliché, and even he was willing to admit that, but it was undeniably true.

Three days later, Arthur Kirkland's wife gave birth to their son, Alfred. The sky was a clear and beautiful blue, though nothing compared to his eyes. The sun was bright and golden, though nothing compared to his hair and laughter. His nurses stared out of the windows longingly. "What a beautiful day," they said to each other.

Arthur, a superstitious man, was pleased. "They say that birth-weather sets the tone for the life to come," he told them. The younger nurses blushed and fidgeted, impressed with his good looks and British accent.

"What does a sunny day mean?"

"Well, I suppose he'll have an easy and pleasant life. Warm and happy. I'll certainly do my best to make it so."

"What if it was storming?"

"A dark and turbulent life. Unpleasant and fearful, most likely."

"How unlucky."

"Is Alfred Jones-Kirkland there?"

"Papa? I mean—Francis?"

"Ah, Alfred. It has been a while." Alfred stared at the phone in shock. He had had no contact with his former stepfather in nearly eight years, by apparent necessity on the part of Arthur. Their divorce had been anything but civil—or rather the reasons for the divorce had left Arthur anything but calm—and so the last time Alfred had spoken with Francis had been at the age of fourteen.

"Uh, yeah. Eight years. What's—what's up?"

"Ah, well, I'm still in Canada, though I've moved to be—to be closer to Université du Québec."

"So you've left Newfoundland, then?"

"Yes. And you've just graduated from NYU? I'm very proud of you, Alfred. Are you working?"

"Temporarily. I'm taking the year off," Alfred explained, seating himself on the couch beside his phone. This was surreal. "From school, that is. I've got a job to save up money for grad school. Uh…how did—how did you know all this? My number, and that I just graduated?"

"I've been looking for you for a couple of months."

Alfred laughed uncomfortably. "Well, you've found me." Eight years. Last time they saw each other, Alfred had still liked Pokemon. He'd still worn glasses. Maybe braces? He couldn't even remember. "Were you looking for me for a specific reason?"

"Yes. It's…it's about Matthew. Your brother."

He didn't bother correcting Francis with "former stepbrother." At Matthew's name, Alfred felt a huge rush of remembered emotion, an influx of memories that he had no time to process, but which filled him with the recollection of the simple adoring love of childhood. The kind of love that you miss being able to feel as an adult.

"Is he alright? What's wrong? Where is he?"

At the age of fourteen, Alfred would have died for Matthew. He'd fully intended to do so, when he was a child and believed heroic sacrifices were effective. That kind of intention, felt sincerely, leaves a mark.

"He's in the hospital. Up here in Quebec. There was…some kind of nail pricked his finger, or a needle, or something. Gave him a MRSA staph infection. The doctors put him in a medically induced coma to get rid of the infection, and it did clear out, but he just never woke up. It's been three months, and they're saying that if we can't wake him up soon, he'll start losing the ability to move and speak."

Alfred was paralyzed for a few moments. He, too, could neither move nor speak. Finally, he asked, "Can I come visit him?"

"Yes," Francis sighed gustily, sounding relieved. "I was hoping you would. Because…the doctors, they say it makes no sense that he would remain sleeping. He is on no sedatives or medications at all, not anymore. I think he just…it sounds stupid, but I think he needs someone to call him back. I've been trying without success. Maybe you will be able to. He did so love you, if you remember. When Arthur and I split, he was devastated."

He had only a vague recollection of their separation. "Yes, I remember." After that, they made arrangements for Alfred to be picked up at the airport.

A week later, on a bitter, freezing day in November, Alfred walked into Matthew's hospital room in Quebec. He had been led in by Francis, but upon seeing his former stepbrother's form lying motionless on the bed, he strode ahead and across the room.

In the past six years he had grown, of course; Alfred could see that he was very tall, as his long thin feet reached the foot of the bed. His face was now well-defined, with sharp cheekbones and hard jaw and long, straight nose. But there was something about his face, an undeniable Matthew-ness, which Alfred recognized even six years later. His glasses sat on his bedside table as though he had simply settled down for a light sleep, and would wake up at any moment to put them back on. His eyes were shut, lashes resting on pale cheeks. Grotesquely, a feeding tube stuck out of his arm. But for that last, he might have been simply sleeping.

And the coma had clearly taken a toll: he was pale, paler than Alfred remembered, and strangely sallow and grayish. The untidy mop of hair, once curly and golden, was flat and dark.

"Matthew," Alfred whispered, and held a cold white hand between his own. Social convention and self-consciousness had completely left his mind; he was fourteen again, greeting his best friend, and the fact that people watched and judged him was completely irrelevant.

Alfred brought the hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. "Matthew?"

Matthew's eyes fluttered. Alfred ignored the gasp from behind him. "Matthew?" he repeated.

"Papa?" Matthew asked. With great difficulty, his eyes opened and met Alfred's.

"Alfred," he corrected softly.

And thus, after one hundred days in a peaceful, numbing coma, Matthew was awakened with a kiss.

Matthew would later attest that the coma had been as death.

There were no dreams, nor sensations; only the impression, afterwards, that a great deal of time had passed. Afterwards he felt more distant from his recent memories than he thought he should have. And it wasn't just memories that had become remote: his emotions were dull, his comprehension duller. He felt imprisoned behind a sheet of ice, locked in a glass coffin, cut off from the world.

But he was alive.

Despite everything, he had been called back to life. Though he had opened his arms for Death, cracked his lips in greeting, welcomed the cold into his body, and with it oblivion, the cessation of pain, he had been foiled at the last. When he had entered into the long sleep, Matthew was relieved to leave that old unhappy place. He was certain that he did not want the love of anyone left to love him, certain that any worthy had died or gone away.

But Alfred had returned. And he, as the only one with the right, had called Matthew back from the quiet limbo of passive death.

Matthew's coma was the talk of the ward. The doctors argued over different theories about the accumulation of medication in his system; they had long discussions about why his body had refused to wake up, if it had anything to do with organ damage, could they use this knowledge in the future. The nurses called it God's will, like Matthew had stayed asleep at the behest of some higher power that, to amuse Itself, would snatch a life away and then—just kidding!—give it back. They smiled and winked at Matthew as though they all shared a secret.

If anybody had asked Matthew, he would have told them straight: I didn't want to live. So I didn't wake up.

But nobody asked him, and maybe that was for the best.

He knew there was a reason that he'd accepted death with relief. There existed something so painful and frightening in his life that he'd thought of oblivion as a blessing. But now, with that strange distance he felt from himself and the rest of the world, he couldn't remember what it had been. He didn't want to remember, in fact. Though he had no idea what this reason might be, Matthew was one hundred percent certain that he'd be happier not knowing it.

And so he accepted this distance, this quasi-amnesia, this peaceful waking numbness.

And then he moved in with Alfred. It would have been fine, but for the fear of sleep.

The doctors had been concerned about his mobility, mostly his poor reaction to tactile stimulus. "Do you feel that?" they would ask anxiously, prodding him with this or that. Matthew was never quite sure how to respond, because he knew that his nerves were registering touch, but he didn't feel it. Just as he was separated from everyone around him and the person he had been before the coma, Matthew was separated from his body. His mind and body had split, and he knew his flesh experienced sensation, but he himself didn't truly feel it. Like a child who wept from the understanding that he was injured, even before he felt the pain.

So Matthew hesitated whenever they asked him that—"Can you feel this?"—and so they thought him to have slight nerve damage.

"He'll recover," they assured Francis and Alfred. "It's just a matter of disuse. He'll be back to normal in under a month, I'll bet. But it's best that he doesn't live alone for a while—just to be sure there are no issues." Matthew knew that this distance was purely a mental thing, and not a matter of nerve damage, but he didn't bother explaining.

"Will you move in with me or Papa?" Alfred asked. "He told me that you were job-hunting when you got the infection. You could try your luck in America, if you wanted. I have room."

Alfred had grown up and filled out, very attractively so, but his personality was nearly unchanged from the time they were stepbrothers. When he walked into the room, it was like he brought the sunlight with him. He still made stupid jokes, and grinned hugely just for Matthew (though now he followed it with a little self-conscious chuckle). His presence was bringing back all sorts of memories, and for some reason the memories terrified Matthew more deeply than he even knew how to express.

Terror, so far, was the only emotion Matthew could truly grasp.

But the idea of living with his father was repellent, somehow worse than the nervousness Alfred guaranteed. So he moved to New Jersey in late November.

At first it was a little awkward, living with a long-lost childhood friend. Both of them had done so much growing up since they had seen each other last that it seemed they should act like distant acquaintances. But the magic of childhood goes deeper than social convention, and often the two found themselves arguing like kids over who had to do the dishes and who got to hold the remote. Matthew sometimes felt like he was living a double-life: one of a child living with his best friend, and one of an adult splitting rent with a stranger.

"You're more aloof than I remembered," Alfred remarked over dinner one night. Matthew, who had been staring down at his plate, looked up to meet his eyes. He scrutinized Alfred's face, trying to decide if he was being criticized or insulted.

"I'm sorry," he murmured sincerely.

"It's nothing to apologize about!" Alfred laughed. "I just noticed that…I don't know. It's okay, I don't mind that you're shy. I like it. It makes you mysterious." Now he was blushing, which was very attractive, but rather out of character. Matthew could not remember a time in their childhood in which Alfred had been bashful.

He could not allow himself to contemplate why Alfred might be blushing—his mind went blank, shied away from the thought—and so he excused himself to go to bed.

But going to bed did not entail sleep, not for Matthew.

He feared sleep, you see. It was too much like that coma, that acceptance of death. When he was asleep, anything could happen, and he'd never know. He could be buried alive and never wake up. He might drift into death, a sleep from which not even Alfred could call him back. He was obsessed with the idea that his lungs might forget to breathe, his heart forget to beat.

And it was such a waste of time. "I slept for three months straight. I'll sleep again when I'm dead," Matthew muttered to himself, reading into the small hours of morning, pinching his arms to stay awake. Mustn't sleep, mustn't sleep, he thought, whispered, wrote to himself repeatedly. Sleep is death. If I sleep, I will never awaken. I must stay awake. Sometimes he dozed, but never for long. He was always sitting up, so that when his neck began to hurt the pain would awaken him.

On weekdays, Alfred had a job as a technical writer for a law firm. It paid reasonably well, enough to provide for the two of them comfortably, but Matthew knew that Alfred was saving up for grad school. He thought about applying for a couple of jobs to help pay rent, but his lack of citizenship was a problem, as was the fact that sleep deprivation had made him into all but a raving lunatic.

"Matthew, how much did you sleep last night?" Alfred asked. Matthew was sitting under the kitchen table, staring blankly at the floor. Alfred grasped him by the wrists and pulled him to his feet, saying "The bags under your eyes have bags." Alfred began wear a constantly concerned expression whenever they were in the same room—"Really, Matt, have you been sleeping?" Really, Matt, have you gone completely insane? Matthew could hear it, underneath, but he didn't have the energy to attempt sanity for appearances' sake. He was spending quite enough effort just staying alive, thank you very much.

But one night Alfred invited him to watch a movie with the lights turned down, and insisted that he lie on the couch with blanket and pillows.

Predictably, Matthew fell asleep.

When he woke up, he was back in his apartment in Quebec, and there was a knock at the door. "Open up, Matt, I got something for you!" That was the voice of Miguel, Matthew's college roommate and on-again-off-again casual boyfriend thing. (Their relationship status was very ambiguous. Sometimes it drove Matthew a little crazy.)

"Cuban cigars," he said when Matthew let him in. "Fresh from Havana. My uncle gives 'em to me for free, because I'm his favorite. Don't tell my brothers, yeah?" He lit one for Matthew, stuck it in his open mouth with the easy familiarity that spoke of practice.

"How is school?"

Miguel sighed. "Exams. Tomorrow is MacEcon, and I'm pretty sure I won't get an A. I mean, I can live with that, but it's annoying. I'm kind of wishing I didn't double-major, you know? I want to be out in the real world. Like you."

"The real world isn't all it's cracked up to be. No good jobs this year. I'm starting to wish that I'd stayed another semester."

They smoked for a while in companionable silence. Miguel, who had allergies, sniffled. "I hate this pollen. First week in May and my nose is running like I have a goddamn head cold."

Matthew finished his cigar. "Liar. This is not Cuban. You bought these at the grocery store."

Miguel crowed with delight. "We'll turn you into a connoisseur yet! How could you tell? Here, take the receipt. Something to remember me by." Matthew took the Wal-Mart receipt—"Your Cashier Today was DARLA"—and stuck it in his wallet.

After Miguel's graduation, his uncle in Cuba died and left Miguel the estate. Matthew got a letter one day in late May along the lines of, "We had some good times, yeah? Have a nice life, bye."

The night he got that letter, Matthew collapsed onto his small bed and fell asleep with tears on his face.

He woke up in Alfred's living room, the movie still playing.

Matthew raised his head from the pillow, glanced at the flickering screen and Alfred's silhouette on the chair opposite. He dropped his head. "I'm confused," he mumbled into his pillow. "What's going on?"

"Brad Pitt is imaginary," Alfred told him.

"Everybody knows that, Alfred." No, Matthew was confused about what had happened while he was sleeping. That wasn't a dream. That was a memory. Matthew wrestled his wallet out of his jeans pocket, opened it up, and found the receipt for that box of cigars. Wal-Mart. DARLA. May 6th. That had not been just a recollection, either. Matthew had relived a memory, inch for inch and word for word. The exact date, the fact that Miguel had a Macro Economics exam the following day…and what's more, he had tasted that cigar, heard, physically, Miguel's sniffling. This was not remembrance. This was time travel. Matthew might as well have been six months in the past, sitting in his old Quebec apartment.

And it had felt so real, probably because it was real, only a few months before. Matthew almost didn't know which the present was: Alfred's living room, or the apartment in Quebec. Which was the dream, if they were both reality?

Matthew wasn't sure what to make of this, so he ignored it.

After the kitchen table incident, Alfred started tucking Matthew in at night. "You have to sleep, okay Matthew? I don't know why you've been going to sleep so late, but it isn't healthy." He would make sure Matthew was lying down with the lights dimmed and his glasses off. Matthew usually just sat up again until he was sure Alfred had fallen asleep, and then he turned the light on and read as long as he could.

"Remember when we used to have those bunk beds?"

Alfred grinned, warm hands pushing Matthew towards the mattress. "Of course. With the blue sheets, and golden moons and stars?"

Matthew jumped at Alfred's touch, tried to ignore the way it tugged at his mind—remember what it is to feel?—and ducked away from the hand. "Yeah! God, those moon-men had freaky-ass faces."

"They sure did. Come on, Matthew, lie down. Please. Between the sheets. Thank you. And Dad would always read us stuff like Beowulf and Shakespeare before we went to bed? And Papa would call him Roast Beef or something."

"Rosbif. It's French slang, making fun of British cooking, I think. Your dad's cooking was awful, by the way."

"Yeah. But Papa's was always pretty good." For some reason, the word "Papa" in Alfred's mouth brought bile to the back of Matthew's throat. Every time he tried to think about Francis, his mind threw up a wall; Matthew knew that he could have pushed past if he wanted to, and that was enough. He trusted his better instincts: If my mind thinks I shouldn't think about it, I won't.

Matthew's odd distance from the world around him continued. He tried to watch television sometimes, but found it utterly trifling. He preferred to complete mindless, busy tasks like cleaning and cooking. Mostly he wandered through the house, confused and hazy, his mind fragmented, bewildered. When he showered, he treated his body like an entity separate from himself, a possession to wash quickly and mechanically. Sometimes he ran his palms along his arms, torso, back, fascinated with this thing that was supposedly "his," though he felt it did not belong to him at all. Actually, the fact of his very identity confused him sometimes: I am Matthew, but what does that even mean? He could not remember what it was like to be the person he had been before the coma; there was a piece of information missing that distanced the two Matthews. Present Matthew was quite content to remain separated from Past Matthew, if it meant avoiding the terrible knowledge that his past self would have died to escape.

Sometimes he dozed dreamlessly, and woke with a start. He was always terrified immediately upon waking; but after waiting for a few seconds—for what, he wasn't sure, didn't want to know—nothing happened, and he could relax.

Alfred's presence was both a balm and an irritant. He made Matthew laugh, cheered him up with stories of work, and reminded him of their lighthearted childhood escapades. But Matthew didn't want to think too hard about their childhood, because…well, he didn't want to think about it. Alfred was so warm and sunny; his presence melted away at the sheet of ice Matthew had built to protect himself.

Matthew feared the healing Spring. He needed the numbness of Winter.

The two of them went for walks on the weekend, breath fogging in the freezing December air. Their noses and cheeks were apple-red, and Alfred's eyes were always twinkling and joy-filled, and his striped scarf was unbelievably adorable, and Matthew was petrified of what these thoughts meant. So he ignored it as best he could.

It was getting harder and harder to avoid thinking about all the things that frightened him.

"Matthew, why aren't you sleeping?" Alfred asked one night, after Matthew had lost consciousness walking to the kitchen. Alfred had carried the sleeping man, bridal-style, back to his bedroom; but in the doorway Matthew had started awake so violently that he was almost dropped on his head.

He considered his answer carefully. "I don't know. I'm afraid, a little." A little. As though fear weren't the only emotion he truly felt anymore.

"Afraid? Of sleep?"

"Well, yeah. What if…what if I don't wake up?"

Alfred grinned charmingly. "Then I'll just have to kiss you awake again!" The moment the words had passed his lips, he turned beet red. Matthew's mind went blank and foggy so he wouldn't have to think about the implications.

"I didn't mean that kind of not-waking-up."

Alfred frowned. "You're afraid of dying in your sleep?"

"I don't know!" Matthew, frustrated, tugged at his hair. "I…maybe. I really don't…I'm just scared. I just don't want to sleep, okay?"

"Too bad. You have to. It's a fact of life. You need sleep."

So Matthew went to sleep anyway, and Alfred shook him awake on blue sheets with golden stars and moons. His eyes were red-rimmed; he had clearly been crying. "Matthew, I think they really mean it this time. I think they're really going to split."

They held each other for a long time after that, in their tiny little bottom bunk, both of them crying and telling the other not to. Eventually, Matthew fell asleep in Alfred's arms and woke up in New Jersey eight years later.

This coma had unstuck Matthew in time. His dreams were always real, realer than memory, as real as the waking present. Sleep was a time machine over which Matthew had no control. It took him backwards and he lived bits of his life and woke up to what he was rapidly beginning to consider "the future."

Perhaps if he'd had a reasonable amount of sleep, he would have been able to think about it more coherently. But the whole world seemed surreal in his haze of drowsiness, and so he continued to believe that his memory was nonlinear, that he lived his life out of order.

It was confusing, but Matthew was rather used to confusion by now.

He was unable to resist sleep as much as he used to. It was Christmas and Alfred had two weeks off from work. He would rent movies or check out books from the library; they made hot chocolate and snuggled up in blankets in the living room. Sometimes they were on the same couch, and Alfred was fond of tucking his big feet underneath himself, or folding is legs in half, toes poking out underneath too-long jeans, wiggling adorably. Matthew often lost the battle against sleep on these occasions. Sometimes it was as dreamless as death, and sometimes he was twelve again, laughing and best friends with Alfred. When he woke up, he would describe the memory to his roommate, who would laugh and say, "I remember that," and Matthew had to bite his lips over the No, you couldn't possibly, not the way I do.

Matthew was beginning to notice that the time machine took him progressively farther into the past every time he dreamt. A terrible certainty struck him—If this keeps up, I will discover the knowledge that my former self feared most; I will learn the truth I locked myself away to avoid.

Needless to say, this realization only increased his fear of sleep.

Alfred became more and more tolerable as Matthew remembered their past. He had been a welcome change, Matthew recalled, loud, distracting, and subtly, astonishingly devoted. In his dream-memories, Alfred's presence was a comfort. Something about him said safety, shelter, relief. He trusted his past self's discretion, and hesitantly became more at ease with Alfred's touch. He stopped trying to deny their mutual attraction, though he decided to wait for Alfred's guidance on how to handle it.

"Seriously, Matthew, what are you afraid of?" Alfred's expression was truly agonized, and Matthew, for the first time in a long while, felt guilt for having caused it. "I promise you, I won't let you die in your sleep."

Matthew smiled, a pained and placating expression, and shook his head.

What are you afraid of? I don't know. And I must, I must, keep it that way.

Matthew was playing a painful game of baseball with Alfred—when Alfred woke him up, because he'd slept too late and they were going to miss the bus—and then he started awake in English class the week before that—and dozed off and woke in the shower, picking at a scab on his elbow—and then he was crashing his scooter, skinning that elbow—and then the phone rang, and he woke with a start, and picked up the phone, and had no idea if he was still eleven or if he was twenty-three again.

"This is going to drive me insane," he muttered to the fridge. Which didn't exactly reassure him of his sanity.

It was mid-February, and Matthew clung to the winter with sick, hopeless desperation. No, no, I must stop remembering, I must not think about—and here he hid behind the sheet of ice, which still protected him, but not for much longer. He could feel the winter slipping away. Soon spring would come, and melt his numbness, and reawaken his comfortably frostbitten body.

Francis called periodically, and every time the phone rang, panic crushed Matthew's lungs and squeezed his heart. Alfred, growing accustomed to his roommate's various neuroses, always picked it up when he wasn't at work.

Alfred was very sweet. Matthew recalled the way that he had idolized his stepbrother as a child, even as he'd seethed with jealousy. He had privately believed that Alfred deserved all the attention. Alfred was magical, he was legendary. He could see through stone and speak with wolves and hear the stars sing. Maybe a little of that exaggerated regard was left over from childhood, but now it was tempered with time and understanding. He was old enough to truly appreciate the affection they shared.

More than anything, Matthew wanted Alfred to understand him. He tried to explain about the time machine. "It's different from just memories, okay? It's like…I know that you were my best friend and brother for six years. I remember you, and your personality, and the things we did together. But it's hazy. More distant than it should be, even. But when I dream, it's so real and detailed that I don't know it's not currently happening. I mean it is currently happening. I mean I'm in a time machine. I'm forced backwards. Things happen to me, every night, I don't just remember, I relive."

"Okay, so you have incredibly vivid dreams that are actually memories. That's why you're afraid of sleeping?"

"You're not listening. They aren't just memories. They're happening again. Every time I dream, I exist in a different—it's like—never mind. It's not just the dreaming. It's that…" If I do not dream, I am dead, and may never be awakened, not even with your kiss. If I do dream, I am forced backwards in time, fourteen again, twelve again, nine again. If I go back much farther, I am certain I will go mad.

Alfred smiled, not getting it, and took Matthew out for coffee.

It was storming when they left the shop, and Alfred opened his coat to try to cover them both from the cold wetness. It didn't really work, and the end result was that they were both soaked and freezing and laughing more than the occasion really justified. Despite Alfred's proximity, Matthew felt completely at ease, mouth stretched so far across his face that it hurt. They took shelter beneath the awning of some former business with a FOR RENT sign in the window.

Alfred could make even a thunderstorm okay.

They were very close, huddled for warmth, foggy breath mingling in the cramped space. Water dripped from Alfred's hair and onto Matthew's face, and Matthew wanted to keep those drops forever, cast them in bronze and swallow them whole. I want you, Matthew thought loudly at him. He tried to push it into Alfred's brain: I want you. I want your fists and your feet and the hollows of your eyelids. Please understand, and act, because I am trapped in a dreaming world of ice, and I cannot move, and I need you to kiss me.

Their eyes met.

"Can I kiss you?" Alfred asked, and Matthew was so thankful for the asking that he was the one to lean in first.

Alfred was a touchy-feely kind of guy, and he was always very, very warm, at least to Matthew. He liked holding more than kissing, was fond of resting his arm over shoulders or wrapping it around a waist. They leaned against each other when they sat on the living room couch, and he told Matthew that the way he curled his toes under himself was adorable, and he did, he really did, he adored Matthew. It was absolutely beyond comprehension, his devotion. He held Matthew's face, tenderly, sweetly; he held Matthew's face, thumbs brushing the enormous bags under his eyes, and looked gravely concerned and disappointed by turns.

Physically, Matthew was overwhelmed. Sometimes he took his distance, fleeing from the constant sunlight and warmth that Alfred radiated. Sometimes he took what comfort he could; he convinced himself that maybe it was okay to take naps on Alfred's lap sometimes, as long as Alfred kept stroking his hair like that. "You're like a cat," Alfred would say, delighted. I shall make you purr, said his hands.

As February became March, Alfred grew more and more cheerful. "I hate the winter," he'd say. "Spring is lovely. Flowers and birdsong and warmth!"

"Oh my," Matthew murmured. They said that the earth sang with joy in the spring, but all he could think of was the pain of frostbitten limbs coming alive again, the agony of birth, new and tender roots pushing away hard soil and rocks. Winter was a peaceful sleep, a numbing. Spring was the awakening into a troubled world.

As the season progressed, the memories reached back into his eighth year, the year Francis and Arthur were married. And then came the memory of their first meeting—Matthew sitting shyly in the corner, Alfred pestering him energetically—and Matthew knew that if he ever dreamed again, he would have to exist in a time before Alfred.

Before Alfred? Before the sun? Unthinkable.

So he tried to stop the dreaming altogether.

After a collapse that left Alfred shaking in fury and terror, he insisted that they sleep in the same room. "I don't care if you put me on the floor or on the bed with you. I don't care. I'm going to make sure you sleep, okay?" They ended up on the bed; Alfred hooked himself around Matthew like a question mark, tucked Matthew's arms and legs against his chest. He murmured comforting things in Matthew's ear, things like, "Go to sleep, go to sleep, you'll be fine, I am here, I will keep you alive, please sleep."

His fingers traced up and down the insides of Matthew's forearms, wrists, down to his palms, tangled in his fingers. It was unbelievably sweet, and Matthew was struck down by the beauty of the moment, a bolt to his chest that was equal parts rapture and sorrow. He tried to stay awake, but Alfred's warm arms were wrapped securely around his waist, and his gentle even breathing was a lullaby in Matthew's ears. He drifted off and woke alone in the night, curled tight into a ball.

Panic and foreboding filled him, his heart pounding in his chest, rabbit-fast. He sat up slowly, surrounded by white walls, and stared at the door.

The door rattled on its hinges.

For a few terrifying minutes, it shook. A great sound, like rolling thunder, filled the room—fists were beating upon the wood, furious at being thwarted. Matthew could feel the rage seeping through, violent, dark, angry, terrifying.

And he faced it alone.

It went on for so long that Matthew thought his heart might burst from the fear, and as the fear grew to a terrible crescendo, the pounding finally stopped. Matthew heard staggering steps fade into the distance and he knew that this was not the end. Matthew pulled a pillow over his head, shaking and trying not to cry. He eventually fell asleep, and woke with Alfred's arms still wrapped securely around his waist.

"I don't even know what the present is anymore," he admitted to the slumbering Alfred. Alfred did not reply; he slept soundly and smoothly, like a steady solid heart, warm. His mouth was open as if in awe of his dreams. Matthew fit himself to Alfred's chest—listened carefully to the slow, steady heartbeat—tried to convince his own fluttering pulse to follow. Matthew stared hard at his face. There is nothing to fear: this is the present and Alfred will protect me.

But what if this wasn't the present? How could he know this was real? Was it all a dream? Was Matthew actually seventy years old and in a coma, watching his life pass before his eyes?

There were more pressing concerns. The door, the door. Matthew knew, down to the depths of his sickened soul, that the door would not always be locked. Or rather, that it had not always been locked. That in a few more dreams, he would live a terrible nightmare, the worst kind of nightmare, a memory.

Even in the next day's light its looming, oppressive presence was near him, just out of sight, just out of reach; he found himself looking over his shoulder for it, and not quite believing that it hadn't been there the second before he turned his head. The memory was trying to break through into his consciousness, and Matthew spent a lot of time staring into space, blanking himself out, concentrating on nothing at all.

The next night, Matthew again pledged to stay awake. He feared sleep more than anything, and after last night's dream—memory—he'd completely accepted that the fear came not from the thought of never waking, but the fear of this door, behind which was a memory that he was certain he should not remember.

But Alfred again insisted upon sleeping in his bed, curled around him like a cat, lulling him with warmth and solidity. It began with hair-combing: Alfred and his thick, blunt fingers, with just the slightest hint of nail, gentle and completely intoxicating. And then Alfred's hands laid to rest upon his abdomen, and the pads of his fingertips rested lightly and perfectly upon his skin; and Matthew should have been tickled, but instead his spine shivered, and carried a message to his brain: Oh, but this is nice.

Contented, he fell asleep and again awoke alone to the sound of thunder on the door. This time was louder, and more insistent, and went on for longer. Matthew huddled in fear, staring at the shadows on his white bedroom walls, trying to contain his gasping breath so that the person on the other side of the door would not hear him. There was passionate rage in that knocking, a will to break into the room, to hurt and to maim and to rend.

When Matthew came to in Alfred's apartment, he gently separated himself from the American's arms so that he might wake himself with a glass of water. Alfred had lain next to him and kept him warm; he sat up and shivered, for the parts of him not next to Alfred were bitterly cold.

Matthew knew, with that same certainty that animals feel when a storm approaches, that the next night held the memory he feared most. If he fell asleep tomorrow night, he would truly awaken to his old self.

He would awaken with the kind of knowledge you'd sleep a hundred years to forget.

But fall asleep he did, and woke again on his childbed. And Matthew heard the staggering footsteps approach the door, but tonight the door was not locked, and it flung open with a violent crash.

He knew what was going to happen, but he could not move; and as the possibility of escape fled, so too did sanity. He could not move, and he could not stop screaming, screams of grief and terror, for himself and for the oppressive heat of his father's—for this figure was his own father's—hands, suffocating upon his body. He did not stop screaming, even when Francis began to beat him between two fists, presumably to silence him. He did not stop screaming until he was physically incapable of doing so, voice giving out as his body already had done, and though his mouth opened only the hissing of breath emerged. He was held down as one's limbs are held in a nightmare, and he could not scream as one is silenced in a nightmare, and a borderless ocean of horror swallowed him as a nightmare could never recreate. When Francis tore away his pajamas, Matthew grasped at unconsciousness, concentrating on the sensation of his multiple wounds rather than that of his own humiliating exposure, of his father's hands upon his body, his flesh upon Matthew's flesh, his whiskey-breath on Matthew's face.

The exposure was the worst part: to be totally at another's mercy, bared and naked, spread open and visible and completely vulnerable. He could not cross his legs or his arms to give himself a measure of privacy, could not recover dignity, could not avoid the reality of his father's violent lust and his own helplessness against it.

He tried to curl into a ball, tried to protect himself, to close himself, for he had been opened against his will. But Francis held him split apart.

He could not speak. He could not move. Helplessly, maddeningly, he was pinned, sprawling upon the bed, exposed, laid bare, stripped of dignity and the virtue he was not yet old enough to understand.

And then Francis left him, naked, on the disheveled bed, and he left the bedroom door open and the once-white walls stained with shadow.

Matthew lay as he had been left on his back, staring at the ceiling, blood running down his face and neck. It was freezing, and he welcomed the numbing cold, and prayed for oblivion. He saw Death's face, reached out to greet Him, embraced his ending, decided to sleep rather than to wake…

But then he felt Alfred's lips upon his own, warm and thawing.

"Matthew? Wake up."

No one else had the right to ask.

Matthew opened his eyes and he was back in New Jersey, tangled up in Alfred's limbs. Alfred was staring down at him with bright blue eyes. His lips shone with their shared kiss.

And then, suddenly, Matthew began to shiver; the numbness rolled back, and he was cold, freezing cold, paralyzingly cold. Alfred's warmth made Matthew colder yet, as the last fragments of numbness shook themselves loose and left him, finally and absolutely, stranded in his body again.

Concerned blue eyes met his. "Matthew, are you alright?"

And then Matthew began to scream.

Alfred had awakened him into a painful spring with a kiss. It was a while before Matthew could do anything but shake from the pain of rebirth, the violent reassemblance of his two halves. Soon he was well enough to speak, and to sleep, and the world began to make a little more sense than it had before. It was an unpleasant sort of sense, and sometimes Matthew missed his bewildered winter, but he couldn't go back.

Alfred had tripped over himself to assure Matthew that if he needed time apart to think about things, that was totally his right, and that he shouldn't feel pressured into continuing the relationship. Matthew had cut him off with a simple, "But I love you." I love you with every splinter of my shattered spirit. It is only with you that I am even whole enough to love.

They moved away from New Jersey, for Alfred thought that a change of scene might be good for Matthew's mental recovery. But neither was eager to settle. They drifted from place to place, at peace because they were together.

Matthew was fond of California: bright gold sun and clear blue skies, like Alfred's bright gold hair and clear blue eyes.

By an unspoken agreement, they always had sex face-to-face. Matthew asked that Alfred keep his glasses on and the lights lit, just so he could be certain of who those blue eyes belonged to. He called Alfred's name, partially an expression of pleasure, partially a reassurance for his own ears. He was never completely at ease, and Alfred understood this, so it was a rare occurrence that was always initiated by Matthew. But it made him finally glad to be inside of his own body again, glad to truly feel pleasure firsthand; this was scarier than, but infinitely preferable to, his previous bodily detachment.

Sometimes he did shy from his lover's touch. Sometimes he was tempted to return to that cold, numb world of denial. He would try to shut Alfred out, freeze his own heart to save them both the pain. But Alfred was too good at shattering that sheet of ice, dissolving that bubble of winter. With a single kiss, he could melt Matthew all over again.

Matthew could never be one hundred percent positive that this wasn't a dream, too; that he wasn't actually seventy, in a hospital bed, ready to die, dreaming of the past, time-traveling. At first it was a scary thought, but soon he realized that even if it were true, it would be alright.

Because he was here with Alfred, and Alfred was the kind of dream from which you never wanted to wake.

END

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Author's Note: Sorry, I know this is forty shades of mindscrew. I think I made the memory and dreams more confusing than I intended. If there's anything you don't understand, please leave your questions in a review OR in my tumblr ask box (link on author's profile), and I will respond best I can.

I was really hesitant to write about rape, because it's serious business, and the internet forgets that. In fanfic it gets treated like a conveniently angsty backstory. I feel like sexual abuse means more than that. It's the kind of thing that can consume a person, yeah? So I wrote this. I'm afraid it doesn't do the topic justice. I don't know. If anyone is offended, please tell me so that I may tear at my hair and rend my garments in penance.