Loki has not slept well in weeks; on some nights he refrains from it actively, avoids sleep as one might avoid walking too closely to the border of darktown, and on others he attempts to succumb and finds he cannot. Tonight had been neither and, for a few hours, wrapped in the warmth of his bed and the warmth of his bedmate--ah but touch still scalds and he finds he cannot force the tension out when it is upon him--he found some measure of peace.

His dreams were black and formless, a mass of nothing wrought from a mind to exhausted to even conjure images. He rises from the depths of that blessed darkness as the bedding pulls--shears away from him at an angle--and he knows that Alexandrie has bolted upright. He does not need to ask, nor even be fully awake, to know what has awoken her so. The image is back in the forefront of his mind and his hands tense where they are fisted in his coverlet.

She is trembling, he can feel it despite how she draws away. She wants to scream and, at the same time, is desperate not to. Her silence is caustic and, tonight, it comes with the smell of blood.

He will not be able to sleep again.

"Are you alright?" He asks, knowing already that the answer is 'no'. Had he more wits about him he might have pretended that he had awoken slowly, that his ascent hadn't been abrupt and draining, but he was drawn thin. He sits, lets the blankets fall away, and turns to look at the woman beside him.