Adrian, snatch
Tried something a little different with this one. ;w; Poor Adrian doesn’t get a lot of attention, but he sure does deserve it! If only he could stand being hugged …
AU: A Little More Trust, set after the ending
The dream always goes the same way, when it comes. Tonight is no different.
Adrian ventures out of his cozy home in the walls, one he made himself. He wants to find more pictures to stick to the walls, images of landscapes and buildings and faraway places he’d never see if not for the invention of the camera. He wants to see it all, but he’s content with seeing it from a magazine.
He always makes it to his exit from the walls faster than he would in real life. That’s the perk of dreams. They get the mind right to the point of the matter.
For Adrian, the point is always waiting just beyond that exit.
Before he can realize that it’s the same nightmare and turn to run, a huge hand is sweeping towards him. With quick, terrifying motions, fingers stronger than his entire small body coil around him. In a jerking moment, the hand snatches him off the counter and lifts him up towards a giant, glaring face.
The sensation isn’t real, but Adrian’s panicking mind can’t make the distinction. He goes rigid and trembles, trembles like a leaf, all on its own on a long spindly branch. It almost hurts, he’s shaking so badly. The contact surrounds him, so much of him, and he can’t escape it. Can’t even make himself try.
The human’s face is blurred, out of focus. His imagination didn’t bother to make one up. It is focused on the remembered feeling of a hand surrounding him. The helplessness.
With a sudden spasm that twitches through his entire body, Adrian rolls over in his sleep and slips off of his bed. It’s little more than a neatly folded cloth, courtesy of Charlie’s careful arranging, but it’s just high enough that Adrian is jolted from sleep when he lands.
He sighs and lays there, wrapped tightly in his own blanket, and wills his heart to stop pounding.
It’s been a long time since he was taken away, but he can get better. Every time he wakes up and sees that he’s safe, a little more of it chips away. Even now, he sighs, knowing that he’s made progress if his dreams don’t bother to give his would-be captor a face anymore.
He will get better. One nightmare at a time.
Writerly Things 