The room is nothing but grey-on-slate until the light flashes on, and Will blinks away from the lamp with a wince. Even when he spares glances over as his eyes adjust, Rust is just a brightly-eclipsed silhouette in front of his lamp.
"Ugh-- jesus, that's bright." Will's squinting over the arm of the lawn chair, looking for his glasses. He fumbles them up and tries to hook them into a familiar pocket of his jacket and misses, which is how he remembers he's wearing Rust's sweatshirt.
"--As long as you're aware of what you're agreeing to, inviting me to sleep here." He stares down at the absent pocket, glasses in hand, and ends up just hooking one of its arms over the neckline of the sweatshirt, since it's the kind without a front kangaroo pocket, presumably because Rust isn't a college-bound girl.
But Rust is in bed, and the lights were all off, which means Rust just...went to sleep, some time after Will accidentally passed out on him. Rust, who has heard about the encephalitis and the hallucinations before, who must have heard about the sleepwalking since everyone at work still gossips about it, since there was actually a complaint filed several months back by a neighbor who was startled by Will standing in her driveway at 3am.
The room was deeply quiet, before. It's deeply quiet in between the spots where they talk, now. It's warm and now it's bright, but for the brief moment while Will woke up and was trying to shake the cobwebs of his dream, it felt like a barren cave. There's a certain comfort in that sensation of shared solitude.
He doesn't think he'd mind going back to sleep, is the thing. But that decision keeps catching on a snag from what Rust said. "I wouldn't think you were an asshole if you wanted me to clear out for the night, just for the record."
It's possible that talking about it more will just make it harder to handle. That a spotlight will bleach away any sense of normalcy in the fact that they were about to wordlessly share a sleeping space. But Will can't help but scratch at the itch of uncertainty under his skin, make sure Rust isn't going to change his mind about him if an unexpected incident wakes them both up a lot more unpleasantly later.
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"Ugh-- jesus, that's bright." Will's squinting over the arm of the lawn chair, looking for his glasses. He fumbles them up and tries to hook them into a familiar pocket of his jacket and misses, which is how he remembers he's wearing Rust's sweatshirt.
"--As long as you're aware of what you're agreeing to, inviting me to sleep here." He stares down at the absent pocket, glasses in hand, and ends up just hooking one of its arms over the neckline of the sweatshirt, since it's the kind without a front kangaroo pocket, presumably because Rust isn't a college-bound girl.
But Rust is in bed, and the lights were all off, which means Rust just...went to sleep, some time after Will accidentally passed out on him. Rust, who has heard about the encephalitis and the hallucinations before, who must have heard about the sleepwalking since everyone at work still gossips about it, since there was actually a complaint filed several months back by a neighbor who was startled by Will standing in her driveway at 3am.
The room was deeply quiet, before. It's deeply quiet in between the spots where they talk, now. It's warm and now it's bright, but for the brief moment while Will woke up and was trying to shake the cobwebs of his dream, it felt like a barren cave. There's a certain comfort in that sensation of shared solitude.
He doesn't think he'd mind going back to sleep, is the thing. But that decision keeps catching on a snag from what Rust said. "I wouldn't think you were an asshole if you wanted me to clear out for the night, just for the record."
It's possible that talking about it more will just make it harder to handle. That a spotlight will bleach away any sense of normalcy in the fact that they were about to wordlessly share a sleeping space. But Will can't help but scratch at the itch of uncertainty under his skin, make sure Rust isn't going to change his mind about him if an unexpected incident wakes them both up a lot more unpleasantly later.