A/N - This chapter is half based on the song Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder and half based on this anxiety dream that I had about my friends at The Natural History Museum recently that, in retrospect, is actually really fucking funny. I hope you all enjoy it.
You grumbled as you turned over in bed, still restless after a night of tossing and turning. You'd managed a couple of hours of sleep, right at the beginning of the night, but now you were wide awake again. It was ridiculous. You were exhausted. Almost every conversation you and Eddie shared ended up with you moaning about how tired you were. And yet, here you were, laying awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling.
Eddie groaned when you shifted again, blinking his eyes open to check you were alright. "Are you awake?" he murmured quietly, hearing you let out a defeated sigh as your answer. "Have you slept at all?"
"A little," you murmured, shifting closer to him as he stretched his arm out towards you, letting you huddle yourself close against his chest. "Two hours, maybe," you added as he pressed a kiss to your forehead.
"What woke you up?"
You let out a soft chuckle, shaking your head. "God knows," you grumbled. "I was in the middle of this weird dream and then poof: I was wide awake."
He stayed quiet for a moment, and just as you were starting to wonder whether he'd managed to drop back to sleep, he shifted again, rolling onto his back and pulling you with him until you were sprawled out across his chest.
"What were you dreaming about, baby?"
"Nothing major-"
"You said it was weird," he interrupted. "Was it weird like a nightmare, or weird like trippy?"
You let out a soft chuckle. "Neither. It was like a really specific anxiety dream."
"How specific?"
You lifted your head to look up at him, frowning slightly. "Baby, you need to go back to sleep," you told him, your frown fading when he lifted his hand to push your back down against him.
"I want to hear about this dream first," he murmured.
A reluctant sigh slipped out of you. "We were at that museum in Indianapolis. The medical history one we went to last summer, remember?" You heard him hum out his understanding, his chest shifting as he nodded. "Well, we'd taken some of the kids with us too, and everything was going fine at first-" you paused letting out a groan. "Eddie, you're going to think I'm an idiot," you murmured.
"Never," he grumbled, his fingers drawing gentle patterns over your spine. "I'd never think you were an idiot."
"But it was a stupid dream. It's ridiculous that I even got so worked up in the first place-"
"Hey," he uttered, silencing you mid-self-deprecation. "I promise I won't think it's stupid, okay? Just tell me."
You hesitated for a moment before clearing your throat. "Well, it was all fine and then Dustin started touching things. He was picking up all these bottles and touching parts of the exhibits and I told him he was going to get us in trouble but he wouldn't listen to me." You paused for a moment. "And then Max, of course, started touching things too, and I just got so freaked out. Baby, these were important artefacts. They were parts of history that were over a hundred years old and they were playing with them like they were toys." You shook your head, letting out a frustrated sigh. "And then, of course, where those two idiots start messing around, so does Lucas. But you'd think 'Oh, don't worry about that. He plays basketball. He's probably the most athletic person you know. He's probably got wonderful hand-eye coordination.' But no. The little shit picked up this brain in a jar and dropped it straight on the God damn floor."
Eddie's fingers stopped their movements, pausing momentarily before he tapped you to sit up. "Your brain is really detailed, huh?" he hummed, shifting until he was looking you right in the eye. "Baby, that's not that weird. That sounds like exactly what would happen if we took those buttheads to a museum."
"But I got so worked up about it," you grumbled. "And now, I can't sleep and I just keep thinking about how stupid that is."
"Get up," he suddenly uttered, climbing out of bed and his discarded T-shirt back over his head. "Baby, come on."
Your brow furrowed as you crawled across the mattress, staring up at your boyfriend in confusion. "What's going on?"
"We're going for a drive. It'll clear your head."
"Eddie, you need to sleep-"
"Yeah, well so do you," he muttered back. "And I'm not going to be able to sleep if I know you're just laying there next to me all worked up, Baby. So get up and put some pants on; don't want you flashing the neighbours on the way out to the van-"
"It's 3 am."
He shrugged. "We have some weird neighbours; I bet some of them are up-"
"No, Eddie, that isn't what I meant," you breathed out. "It's 3 am. We can't just go out driving-"
"Why not? We're adults. We're awake. We have a van. What's stopping us?"
You hesitated for a moment, looking for a logical reason why you couldn't go out. "We'll wake people up."
"We'll be really quiet."
"Have you heard the van? It sounds like a lawnmower combined with a chain saw when you start it up."
He shrugged. "Yeah, well, we had to put up with that idiot kid down the street playing that shitty music of his all hours of the night last weekend, so they can put up with me starting up the van for a couple of minutes tops." He paused for a moment, surveying your frowning features in the darkness. "Come on, Baby. Driving at night always puts you straight to sleep. It'll help."
You let out a soft sigh. "Are you sure it's okay?"
"It's more than okay," he hummed, leaning in and pressing a gentle kiss to your frowning lips. "Come on. Pants," he added, scooping up some of your sweatpants from the floor and throwing them at you.
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