He had been vaguely aware at some point during the night that Norway had seized his arm while in the throes of a perhaps not-so-pleasant dream. Naturally, he wasn't about to object to it for several very good fucking reasons.

And it was not because he was pathetic.

It was never because he was pathetic.

Even his brain rejected that level of weakness.

He drifted off again eventually, still not quite used to the sensation and the weight of the reality clinging to him in that darkened room, sheets adhering to his skin from the sweat of an entirely different kind of exertion that equated to being both agonizing and not completely unpleasant.

He was awoken again later by anxious shifting beneath the covers, half-formed words dying on sleeping lips, the grasp on his arm growing inexorably stronger and more insistent, knees drawing up to press into his side, and soft keening being amplified in the silence.

Denmark could only grimace at how damnably fucking whipped he was.

...he must be, if he was waking up for this.

He shifted to look at Norway, made difficult by the weight of the reality clutching at his arm and the weight of Knowing If He Looked, There'd Be No Going Back like lead in his gut, pinning him in place.

Still, he moved and crossed over that mental nonexistent but still-so-obvious checkpoint (the one he'd crossed once before centuries prior, shied away from and then approached again, standing on its border uncertainly) and looked at the face burying itself into his shoulder.

And then he forced that face and the rest of that reality awake, slowly slowly, painfully slowly. The eyes staring back at him were hooded and confused and confusing and he almost regretted Looking in the first place. Almost.

Norway when asleep could be anything Denmark wanted.

Norway when awake was another type of reality altogether.