Author's Note: Blame Lombnut! This is his fault for encouraging me to write like this, and currently I'm so sleep deprived I can't even type straight, so this will be far, far from up to par. But for lack of other ideas our plot can just be 'love and angst and comfort and stealing things' at the moment. Timeline wise this is sometime after Bentley was hurt and after they started working with the Panda King. And that's all the continuity I can manage at this hour.

I was just going to do a one shot, but I've been up for nearly thirty six hours and I just don't have the energy. Enjoy a multi-chaptered angst fest instead. It even comes with an obligatory cliff hanger. Whee. I know this draft is far, far from perfect, but it's a rare pairing, so hopefully people will overlook my lack of knowledge and be nice enough to pretend like I know what I'm doing.

When Sly had nightmares, it was Bentley who comforted him.

Sly didn't particularly want to comforted. He tried so hard to pretend like he was perfect, infallible, that sometimes he even fooled himself. He was a strong man, capable of smiling and joking through his own personal Hell, but his subconscious couldn't be fooled by his bravado. He woke up gasping for air, sweat streaking his ash gray fur, fists tangled up in the sheets. His amber brown eyes darted around the room briefly before he shut his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep. Bentley didn't know who he thought he was fooling with that.

If it was particularly bad, Sly would go outside for some fresh air. He'd come back laden with loot they didn't really need and money they didn't want. On a very rare occasion he'd brought Murray back some gifts. A statue of the Seattle Space Needle, a doughnut burger when they were in Missouri, a pumpkin for Halloween. They were very minor things, and he shrugged off any thanks. What they really were, Bentley knew, were distractions, conversation pieces that divert attention away from Sly's terrifying dreams. It kept Murray off of his case. Murray's attention span had never been anything like Bentley's.

Bentley couldn't be distracted with gifts. The first time that he heard Sly gasping for air late in the night, he shook him awake. They were six then, Sly barely a few inches taller than his best friend. Bentley managed to snap him out of it, but once he did, he found he had nothing to say. Sly was embarrassed. His dad never had nightmares. Coopers weren't supposed to be afraid of anything. They never talked about it. Bentley woke him a few more times and Sly told him not to, because people might see or hear and he didn't want that. That was the end of their conversation as far as Sly was concerned.

But Bentley was a hard man to deter, and he watched with worry as his friend flinched in his sleep yet again, gasping for air. These nights had become so rare with age it was possible to pretend Sly was an invincible as he said he was. Then Panda King joined up with them and Sly lost his ability to sleep. No matter what he said or pretended, he wasn't okay with working alongside the man who'd murdered his father. He tried to smile through it, only to be betrayed by his own mind when he lay down to rest. His ears twitched as he turned, clenching his teeth. Though he never did it when awake, when he was asleep Sly had a tendency to lapse back into Raqas, the language of racoons. If he had to attempt speaking with a native speaker he'd stumble through it from sheer disuse; as certain languages became more common native and traditional dialects faded from memory entirely. Bentley spoke no Tortoisei, and Murray only knew two words in Hippon. Sly's status in his people's dying language was uncertain, though significantly better than his friends'. Bentley knew the Coopers had been traditional and kept speaking it long after common languages began to spread across the globe. He also knew Sly had made zero effort to keep himself fluent.

Over the years Bentley had heard Sly say a lot of things he didn't understand. He wrote them down and tried to decipher it, but racoons weren't very open about their heritage to outsiders. He didn't know what Sly was saying and he likely never would - that topic was completely off limits. It always had been. Sly's voice strained with pain and obvious distress as Bentley fought with his desire to wake the poor man up. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and rolled over to where Sly lay, spouting gibberish and clearly in pain.

"Qasruqtuq, ikayuq, ikayuq, papaq!" Sly whimpered, thrashing. Bentley winced sympathetically, his theory about the source of Sly's nightmares confirmed instantly.

The only words he'd ever managed to translate, even with the aid of the internet, were papaq and agu. Father and mother. It wasn't hard to put the dots together, to see the look of pain and horror written across Sly's fingers as he fought it out with his own personal demons.

Bentley shook him by the shoulders, leaning forward in his chair to do so. Sly's hands clasped about Bentley's arms like he was fighting off an attack, until his eyes opened. His breathing was coming in short gasps and his ears were flat against his head as he stared up at his best friend blankly for a moment. His body was tense, his eyes wide even as Bentley leaned in closer. Sly's hands were going to leave bruises if they stayed so tightly clapsed, but it didn't matter. The turtle smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way.

"It's me, Sly. It's okay. You're awake now."

"Be... Bentley?" he murmured, body relaxing instantly. "I... I thought I told you not to wake me up unless we were alone."

"We are alone, Sly. Nobody else sleeps through the middle of the day like you, remember?" Bentley said gently.

"Heh. Sorry. Nocturnal, you know?" Sky tried to smile, weakly. His grip on Bentley lessened so that it didn't hurt, but he didn't release him. "You can, just, you know, go be our techno wizard again. I'm gonna go take a walk."

Bentley grinned, briefly. "You'll need to let me go to do that, Sly."

Sly immediately released him, blushing through his fur. He coughed, awkwardly. The greatest thief that ever lived did not need to be held. "I need fresh air."

"No, what you need a therapist-"

"Bentley, we've talked about this."

"You telling me to mind my own business hardly constitutes a conversation, Sly." Bentley frowned. "If nothing else, you could at least hear me out for once in your life."

"I don't want to talk to some shrink about what happened. They're legally bound in most countries to turn me in to the cops, and then they'll blab to the papers." Sly stood up and rubbed at his eyes, tiredly. His posture betrayed his true tension. "It's not a big deal, so let it drop, Bentley. It's not affecting our performance as a team."

"This isn't about that!" Bentley half shouted, suddenly angry. Sly turned, surprised. Bentley almost never yelled; usually it indicated things were really going south. "You think I care how this affects our income? I'm worried about you, Sly, and how you're holding up. Money's replacable. You're not!"

There was a long pause before Sly sighed. "I... I can't. I can't talk about it. I just can't. Bentley, you don't understand. I... I don't want to think about it. It feels..." He paused, looking uncertain and strangely vulnerable.

"Sly. You can tell me. You know you can trust me," Bentley said solemnly, looking into his friends' eyes. "When have I ever lied to you?"

Sly sat down on his bed, tail wrapped around his legs. "It's like a knife in my chest that just keeps getting twisted deeper. And when I think about it I can't breathe. My thoughts just... blur together. I can't think. I can't stop thinking. It's like everything snaps in and out of focus. I can't take it. And it's getting worse and worse and I don't want to talk about it because that makes it worse. I just want it to go away. It always did before," he added bitterly. "It wasn't like this before. It'll pass, right? ...right?"

"Sly, you're describing panic attacks to me and asking me to pretend that they'll just vanish. That's not how they work. You need to talk to someone, anyone, about this. Or it will only get worse now that Panda King's with us," the turtle explained, choosing his words carefully. "I know a guy. Top of his class in Psychology, both childhood and normal. Trustworthy with more unusual clients. He can make this go away. But you have to be willing to let him in."

The raccoon shut his eyes tightly. Bentley could see his mind forming protests, see the obvious disdain on his face. Sly never liked admitting he was weak or incapable of solving a problem. He never could swallow his pride. It was his only flaw, besides a terribly unhealthy tendency to pretend everything was fine when it clearly wasn't. He crossed his arms, looking down at the floor. His expression was unmistakbly defeated, even humiliated "I don't want a therapist. I don't want some stranger. I want to talk to you - and you have to promise not to tell anyone," he grumbled, eyes still downcast. "I can't take this anymore."

"A therapist would be far more qualified to-"

"But I know you. I already want to tell you, if I can talk about it without freaking out. I don't want anyone else. I want you."

Bentley knew what context Sly meant that in, but he still went red. Fortunately Sly's eyes were still trained on the floor, so he didn't see Bentley's jaw drop. Now is not the time, he reminded himself. Rule one, never mix therapy and romance. It will only hurt the patient. "Sly... if you wanted to talk to me, why not just come to me?"

"Because it's stupid? Because I'm a big boy now? Because I should be over this already?" he volunteered, sounding increasingly angry, although all of it was turned inward. "Because I'm supposed to be the badass fearless leader?"

Bentley watched Sly sit down and pull his knees up to his chest with a strange feeling. He had the realization he'd dropped the ball, letting this go unaddressed for so long. He shouldn't have just ignored this pain Sly was trying to hide. He reached out and pulled himself onto the bed in a few swift motions, and wrapped his arms around a surprised Sly. For a moment the raccoon just looked at him like he'd gone mad, before gingerly hugging him back. Sly smelled like copper coins and smoke, earth and rain. It was the smell of home, Bentley realized as he pulled Sly closer.

"This is the point where you tell me stuff, according to my research," Bentley informed him. Sly snorted and choked back the start of potential tears.

"Okay. Where do I start? Sometimes I dream I'm in the closet and I can't get out to save them. My parents, I mean. And sometimes they're already dead and I'm trapped in there again, or I hear screaming and it's you. And I can't get to you in time..." His voice trailed off, eyes on Bentley's legs.

The turtle's eyes widened. "You blame yourself."

"Because if you never met me, your life would be pretty much perfect, yeah."

He looked into Sly's tired, tawny colored eyes. "That's not true."

"You'd have a real job, better friends, a good apartment and, you know, you could walk. Why would you ever want to even know me anymore?"

Bentley never looked away from Sly's eyes. "Because you're the most corageous, confident and stubborn person I've ever met, and I love you."

Sly started some sort of witty reply. Then his mind processed someone had just said they loveed him, and his face went blank. He looked like he thought he was hallucinating or just couldn't believe what he'd heard. The look on his face said the idea he was loved was totally foreign to him, as incomprehensible as snow was to a desert born scorpian. So Bentley gathered up every ounce of bravery he had in him, inhaled deeply, and braced himself for rejection.

Then he leaned upwards and kissed him.

So much for rule one.