Chapter 20: Late Night Talk

                                    

                                          
Alex sat up with a start, huffing a bit. He looked around at his dark surroundings, hardly any light in the living room. He rubbed his forehead a bit and cleared his throat, coming down from his shock.

                          
"Hmm... Alex? Is that you?" Rainbow Dash, who had been sleeping on the pull-out couch bed, rose her sleepy head up a little bit, looking over her shoulder.
                          
"Yeah...yeah it's me. Morning." Alex said quietly, with an apparent exhaustion in his voice.
                          
"When did you get back?" She asked, sitting up a little bit. Alex cleared his throat again.
                          
"Uh..." He paused to check the time; 3:12 am. "Like an hour and a half ago. Fluttershy and Rarity took the bed, so I just came out here." Alex explained as he began to stand, walking to the kitchen to get some water.
                          
"Oh...are you okay?"
                          
"Yeah, I'm alright, I just had a nightmare." Alex answered simply, gulping down a water bottle. Rainbow Dash sat up fully, and frowned a bit.
                          
"A nightmare? A nightmare about what?" She asked.
                          
"Eh, don't worry about it. It's not worth talking about." Alex said.
                          
"Okay...you can talk to me, you know, right?" Rainbow Dash asked slowly.
                          
"I'm okay." He said, trying to dismiss it. However, Rainbow Dash didn't drop it so easy.
                          
"You'd be asleep right now if you were 'alright'. What's going on?" Rainbow Dash asked, looking at him. Alex turned to her and their eyes met. He sighed.
                          
"This work schedule is really rough on me sometimes, and when my sleep schedule is bad, I usually have nightmares of some kind." Alex explained.
                          
"What kind of nightmares?"
                          
"Eh, it really depends, I guess. Sometimes it has to do with monsters, other times it's traumatic events, and every once in awhile, I have sleep paralysis, where I'm conscious but I can't move my body at all." Alex listed off. Rainbow Dash's frown deepened.
                          
"Gosh, that sounds awful. Which...which one did you have just now?" Rainbow Dash asked carefully. Alex came back around, sitting up where he had been sleeping on the couch.
                          
"Sleep paralysis and monster, both of them." He answered, drinking more water.
                          
"Yeesh, are you sure you're okay?" Rainbow Dash asked again.
                          
"I will be. I just need some time to calm down again, then I can go back to sleep." Alex said with a nod, doing his best to be reassuring. In truth, he didn't know how long that would take him.
                          
"Okay. I'll stay up with you." Rainbow Dash said.
                          
"No, that's okay, you don't have to do that. It's late, or early, you should go to sleep." Alex said.
                          
"And so should you, but I wanna make sure you're okay first." Rainbow Dash said. Alex paused, and then nodded.
                          
"Okay."
                          
"Let's just talk for a bit. How was work?" Rainbow Dash asked.
                          
"It was quiet really. Not a lot of people showed up. There was one guy whose hand was cut up from a broken beer bottle." Alex said.
                          
"Ouch. How does that happen?"
                          
"I don't know. Maybe he got in a fight. It's also possible he just accidentally set it down too hard or hit it against something and it shattered. Either way, he was bleeding pretty badly, and dealing with drunk people is always a struggle." Alex said, rolling his eyes a bit.
                          
"Did you get him taken care of?"
                          
"Yeah, I brought him in and helped clean up the bleeding, and then another guy got his hand wrapped up." Alex nodded.