Chapter Text
The thing about the brain repressing traumatic memories is that, well, you don't remember them.
Dust sometimes wishes he could.
The nightmares that awake him in the middle of the night, the nightmares that he doesn't remember despite having them every single night.
Dust wishes he knew what was in them.
He knows it had to have been horrifying, because why would his brain lock those memories up if it wasn't? It had to be horrifying and Dust wishes he remembered it.
He wishes he knew. He wishes he knew what had happened that day. But he doesn't, neither do the cops, the detectives, the lawyers or the judge. No one knows, no one will ever know. Because the only thing that he kept from that day when fate decided to fuck him over is a hallucination of his little brother, his kind, brave, always smiling little brother, chanting on a daily basis that Dust killed him.
Dust killed him, because why else would he be plagued by nightmares and guilt and hallucinations if he didn't? Why would his parents ignore him and send him away if he didn't?
Those were the thoughts that Dust had when he gasped awake, his eyes filled with unspilled tears. Everything was quiet for about five minutes before his surroundings came crashing down and he was flooded by the noise. Today had been a bad day, what with the ghost-hallucination of his brother chanting louder and talking more and criticizing him on everything he did, between that and the many classes it had been exhausting.
It was a friday night and everyone was in the common room, watching movies, doing homework, and celebrating the end of another hell week of endless school hours. It was overwhelming, definitely not helping his creeping headache and frankly all Dust wanted to do was to yell at them all to shut up. He wouldn’t, because it was his own choice to stay here and not go back to the room for his nap.
He’d figured out sometime in the first few months of his stay here that he’d rather wake up to loud, obnoxious reminders that all of his– and he’d never call them that to their faces– precious people were alive and safe enough to be the loud and obnoxious fuckers they are than to wake up to a silent and empty room.
He takes a moment to take a glance around the room.
In front of the TV; Epic, Cross and Ink are sat on the rug playing Mario Kart while shouting insults at each other, a little further from them on the couch are Error, Nightmare and Blue watching something on Error’s laptop the former two occasionally yelling at the others to keep it down and the latter sometimes looking back at the game and cheering for whoever is losing.
Red and Classic are both on another couch, sleeping one on top of the other.
Dream is sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room, headphones on and head bobbing while typing something in his laptop. He was sipping on what Dust can only assume is tea.
When Dust finally looks beside him he sees Killer ranting about one thing or the other to Horror, that’s clearly falling asleep. A quick glance down and he realizes he’s holding Killer’s hand, he squeezes it to make sure it’s real, catching Killer’s attention. He immediately gets up in Dust’s face, rant forgotten.
“Oh! Dusty, you’re awake!!” seeing the wince Dust let out at the loud volume he backs up the slightest bit and says in a lighter tone “Did you have a good nap? You were all tired the whole day.”
“The nap was fine. What time is it?”
“It’s nearing midnight, a supervisor is gonna come and bug us soon about how ‘weekend nights are not excuses to sleep late’ and shit”
“Can’t they mind their own damn business for once, they bug us all week about curfews, why not leave us alone on our days off.” Dust rolled his eyes, annoyed, and immediately regretted it as his creeping migraine took the occasion to remind him of her presence. He took his head in between his hands, covering his ears.
“Awh baby, is your migraine still there? Fuck..” Killer immediately went to rub his back in comfort but Dust grabbed his hand to stop him.
“Stop babying me, I’ll be fine, this is far from the first time this happened, you know it.” Dust said with a deadpan look and a stern voice.
“Sure, you’ll be.” Killer said, this time being the one to roll his eyes. He stares at his boyfriend a while before sighing, “Okay then Dusty, tell me if you need anything, but I'm sure you’ll be perfectly fine” his last two words dripped with sarcasm.
Killer turns back to a very asleep Horror, pokes his cheek a couple of times, almost gets his finger bitten clean off, gives up with a dramatic sigh and pulls out his phone.
And so Dust pulls out his own phone, in an attempt to ignore the cacophony of noises coming from all sides, the guilt ridden thoughts and wonderings about the biggest mystery of his life and the drum solo playing in his brain.
Their mutual silence lasts all of three minutes.
Dust, really fucking done with everything around him, not wanting to be alone with his Ghost-hallucination brother in the dark hallway leading to the dorm room he shared with two of his boyfriends, tugged on Killer’s sleeve, to which Killer responded with a smug smirk that Dust would slap off his face had he been feeling any better, but at the moment all he wanted was to get the fuck away from all the noise.
“Ooooh whatever do you need, Dusty?”
“I want to go to our room.” he said it in a stern but strained and slightly pained tone that stopped Killer from making any joke about going to the room together alone away from everyone that he’d usually make.
“Alright then” Killer said with a seemingly carefree smile, getting up and pulling Dust along with him by his hand.
The room they both share with Cross is the furthest from the common room, at the very end of a dark hallway. It’s a long walk, and one that would be very painful and silent (as silent as it could get with Papy as active as he was today).
Thankfully the walk is far from silent with Killer complaining about what the assholish teacher did that day or humming a song or bragging about his newly broken personal knife throwing distance record.
Not once since they first got up from their places in the common room did either let go of the other’s hand, Killer swinging them violently as they walked.
Killer only stops talking when they get to their destination, opening the door to the dark room and leading Dust in towards his designated bed and dropping both of them on it.
The bed was small and their shoulders were touching as they held hands, the warmth from Killer’s body chasing away the coldness of Papyrus’ ever-looming presence making it but a small hum at the back of Dust’s mind.
It might’ve been a second or an eternity before either of them talked, just marinating in each other’s aura.
Eventually Killer spoke up: “Hug?”
Dust shook his head.
“Kiss then?”
Dust let out a low hum and Killer sat up to lean on him, kissing his forehead, the tip of his nose and letting a peck on his lips.
“Do you need me to stay here?”
“No.”
Had the lights been on Dust would have seen the unconvinced but resigned look on his boyfriend’s face.
“Alright then.”
And then the warmth was gone as Killer got up to join his own bed.
And Dust immediately regretted not asking him to stay because suddenly he was so so cold and alone and all of the nightmares that haunt his every waking moment were back as if they never left.
“Wait, stay.”
And if Cross walked into his room in the early hours of the morning and paused to look at his boyfriends sleeping in the same bed holding hands as if their lives depended on it and joined in, well, none of them would mention it in the morning.