To Be Happy
By FromTheMoon
~*~*~*~*~
How many nights had he laid awake staring up at his bedroom ceiling? There was no pattern to these type of nights, they were only characterized by a familiar feeling. A cold pit deep in his stomach. With eyes half closed, Flash Sentry was not given a moment of reprieve as unwanted thoughts tugged at the corners of his mind.
A loud banging that echoed heavily throughout the room freed him from his train of thought. In his drowsy state it took the teenage boy a few moments to register that the noise was coming from his bedroom door. Flash grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand and took note of the time.
“It’s the middle of the night. Unless parts of the house are on fire come back in the morning.” He told whoever was outside his room.
Still the knocking on his bedroom door persisted. Flash reasoned that maybe if he ignored the noise then whichever one of his house guests it was that was trying to get his attention would leave on their own. Leave him to stare at his ceiling the rest of the night.
The room went silent for a time before the knocking began again. Remembering that his house guests possessed incredible strength, Flash came to the conclusion that waiting it out was not the smartest idea. At this rate he ran the risk of serious damage being done to his door, another worry to add to his ever growing list.
Pulling off his bed covers he felt the coolness of the night wrap itself around his body. Stumbling, he made his way to the bedroom door. With an audible click the door opened inward letting Flash gaze out into the dark hallway.
Squinting his eyes, he was able to make out the girl standing outside his room. “It’s you…” A loud yawn escaped the teenage boy. “...What’s going on?” Flicking his room’s light switch on, he got a clear view of his visitor.
“Hi, Flashy.” Sonata Dusk said as she shielded her eyes from the sudden bright light.
During the day the three girls usually kept their appearances more or less the same as when they had arrived at Canterlot High. At night though Flash had noticed that they took on different looks. Sonata’s hair, usually done up in a long pony tail, fell straight along her back. Her skirt was replaced by pink pajama shorts, she wore a plain peach orange tank top and pink socks.
For a few moments the two just stood there in silence. Stroking his arm awkwardly, Flash decided to break the stillness that had found them. “So is there something wrong...or?”
“I couldn’t go back to sleep, I had a nightmare.” Sonata quickly answered. “Could you maybe talk with me for a little bit, Flashy?”
Flash recalled the conversation that he had with Adagio hours ago. The former siren had mentioned that her sister had nightmares from time to time. Why come knocking in the middle of the night now though?
“It’s really late, Sonata. Have you tried talking to your sisters about this? Maybe they can…”
“Yeah…” Sonata sheepishly answered. “...Me and Aria sorta had a fight because of this a few minutes ago. We kinda aren’t really talking to each other.”
“Okay, but what about Adagio?”
“Dagi said some stuff but told me to go back to bed. She said to just fall back asleep like the other times.” The girl’s eyes drifted towards the floor. “I thought that maybe you could tell me something that would help me sleep.”
If only such a thing existed. Despite his own sleep deprivation Flash gave her the best advice he could think of on the spot. “I sometimes get nightmares too. What works for me is just laying back down, closing my eyes, and thinking about stuff that makes me...I dunno...happy.”
“Does that really work?” The girl asked frantically. “Will I really be able to go to sleep if I do that?”
Taking a step back, Flash put his hand on the bedroom door. “I’m sure that if you try you’ll be able to fall back asleep.” Letting out a loud yawn, he began to close the door. “See you in the morning.”
Just as the door was about to close completely the teenage boy felt something push against it. Peeking through the crack in the doorway, he saw Sonata leaning against the door on her outstretched arm. “Sonata, what are you doing?”
Her response came in a whisper that Flash wasn’t able to hear. He was about to ask her to repeat what she had said but a new noise caught his attention. It was one that he had become all too familiar with in the past couple of weeks.Through the light shining out of his bedroom he was able to see tears trailing down Sonata’s face. The dumbstruck boy wasn’t given a chance to react to the what he was looking at.
“I tried…” Sonata choked out. “I really...really...tried to go back to sleep.” Her tears continued to fall onto the floor. “A-After...after I talked to Dagi, I wanted to go back to sleep. I really did, really!”
The former siren’s arm gradually began to slide up the door as she fell onto her knees. “When I closed my eyes I started to get scared again. I wanted to move my body but it felt like I was made of stone!”
Looking down at the weeping girl, a sense of uneasiness began to slowly seep out of the pit in Flash’s stomach. Acting on instinct he opened the door, quickly bent down, and grabbed one of Sonata’s hands. It startled him when he felt just how cold her hand was. He began to wonder how long she had really been standing outside his door.
“Come on,” Flash gently lifted her off of the floor, “Let’s get a blanket over you before you catch a cold.” Leading her into his room he closed the door behind them and sat her down on his bed. Sliding open his closet he pulled out a blanket and placed it over her shoulders before walking over to the chair by his desk.
“Thank you, Flashy.” Sonata said quietly as she rubbed the back of her hand under her nose.
It wasn’t like he was just going to stand there and let the girl cry her eyes out. It had scared him how similar the scene outside his door had been to a different night in his life. Looking at the girl now seated on his bed and wrapped in a blanket, Flash couldn’t stop his mind from making unwanted comparisons.
“Umm...Flashy? Are you okay?”
The girl’s soft voice brought the boy out of his musings. Flash quickly sat down by his desk and gave his head a good shake to clear his mind. “Hmm? Oh...oh yeah...yeah I’m alright. Just got lost in my thoughts for a moment. What about you? You starting to feel better?”
Sonata lightly nodded her head. “A little.” As she wrapped the blanket tighter around her body her glance fell to the floor. “Sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“I know you don’t like to see me cry and I know I cry a lot.” As soon as the words had left her mouth she began to shiver again. “Dagi says that I don’t have to cry in front of you. She said it’d make you uncomfortable and that you’d kick us out of the house because of it.”
Did seeing her cry make him uncomfortable? Of course it did. Did he hold it against her? Of course not. “You don’t have to apologize for that, everybody cries. It’s a completely normal thing. I’d never kick you three out of the house for it.”
The former siren tilted her head up to look at him. Flash always thought it strange whenever he looked at Sonata and didn’t see a smile on her face. It was almost as if he was looking at a completely different person.
“You had a really bad nightmare, huh? Do you maybe want to talk about it?” Flash asked.
Sonata quickly shook her head. “Not really, no. I just want to forget about it...” With a yawn she rubbed the side of her eyes. “...and go back to sleep.”
A sentiment that the teenage boy could relate with. Believing their conversation to be at an end, Flash got up from his chair and motioned towards the door. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your room.” He waited for Sonata to get up from the bed but she remained firmly seated, she turned her head to look away from him.
“Sonata?”
“Flashy, can I ask you for a favor?” A few moments of silence passed before Sonata spoke again. “Could I...maybe...sleep in here tonight?”
That caught him off guard. “Uhh...hmm...sleep here, as in sleep in this room?” She nodded her head. “Yeah...don’t take this the wrong way but...umm...why?”
“I just don’t want to go back to my room or be alone, at least not tonight.”
“Can I ask why you don’t want to go back to your room?”
Still the girl refused to look at him. “I just don’t want to.”
Flash could have sworn that a million thoughts were racing through his mind. He honestly had no idea about what to make of Sonata’s request. It seemed like he was split in two. One half wanted to send her away for the time being, at least until morning. The other half was screaming at him to let her stay the night in his room.
He wasn’t given a chance to decide on his own. Throwing the blanket off of herself, Sonata got up off of the bed, her eyes pointed towards the floor. “I guess it was stupid to ask that, huh? Sorry for bothering you, Flashy.” With a defeated look she slowly made her way across the room.
Sonata got as far as the door when she felt something lightly grab her shoulder. Looking behind her she saw that Flash’s hand had literally been forced. “Wait,” he began. Letting out a long sigh he closed his eyes. “I never said no and I never said it was stupid for you to ask that.”
“So does that mean I can stay for the night?”
Opening his eyes, Flash saw could have sworn he saw Sonata’s eyes glimmer with hope. “Well, that depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Did Adagio put you up this?” Flash asked bluntly.
The girl shot him a confused look. “Put me up to what? All Dagi said to me was to leave her alone and go back to sleep.”
“That’s all she said?”
“Yeah. Why?”
It was late and Flash really didn’t feel like explaining Adagio’s way of thinking to the girl in front of him. In the end he knew that his decision rested on just how much he trusted Sonata. Thinking it over quickly, the girl didn’t seem to be misleading him.
Some quick rationalizing and he gave her his answer. “Okay, you can stay tonight.”
Flash closed his eyes and braced himself for the rib crushing hug that he expected to come. Surprisingly, seconds passed and he still felt air comfortably enter his lungs. Opening his eyes he saw that Sonata had disappeared from in front of him.
A poke to his back caught his attention. “Flashy, could you please move for a second?” Turning around, he saw Sonata had taken that blanket that he had given her and placed it on the floor. “Your foot’s kinda blocking the blanket.”
“Oh...okay.” Was all Flash could manage to say as he took a step back. He watched as the girl slowly got down onto to the blanket and smoothed out the edges.
“Flashy, can I ask you for one more thing? Could I maybe borrow one of your pillows? Aria took mine and probably won't give it back right now.” That raised some questions that Flash figured could be put off until morning. Walking over to his bed he grabbed the nearest pillow and tossed it over to Sonata. “Thanks.”
Standing up from the floor, Sonata made her way to the room’s light switch. Placing a hand on it she turned to look at Flash. “I’ll turn off the lights so that you don’t trip in the dark.”
It was all very strange, or at least it all seemed very strange to Flash. Looking at Sonata he would have sworn on his life that he was looking at a completely different person. The tear stained face that stared back at him was a far cry from the warm smiling face that always greeted him when he came home.
Sonata watching him as he climbed back into bed didn’t help to ease the sense of bizarreness. It was only when he had laid his head down on his pillow that the lights in the room flickered off. As Flash pulled the covers over himself he heard his roommate lay down on the floor.
“Good night, Flashy.” Said a somber voice in the dark with the room falling deathly quiet after.
For a few moments Flash returned to staring at his dark ceiling as sleep still refused to come to him. It didn’t help matters that he had a girl sleeping in his room, albeit on the floor, but still in his room. Thoughts continued to race through his mind despite how desperately he wished for them to stop. What worried him most was that they all seemed to be about the same thing. How similar Sonata had looked to her on that night.
Flash silently mouthed her name, or so he thought.
“Yeah?”
Caught by surprise, the teenage boy’s thoughts scattered and his mind went blank. He laid there in silence as did Sonata as both waited and wondered who it would be that would speak next. For whatever reason, Flash shuffled to the edge of his bed and peered down into the darkness.
As his thoughts slowly began to return to him he began to remember peculiar things about his room, notably that he had a hardwood floor. He reasoned that it must have been extremely uncomfortable to sleep down there, especially on the makeshift bed that Sonata had.
“Are you comfortable sleeping down there?” Flash asked, breaking the silence that had engulfed the room.
“Not really,” Sonata quickly replied, “But it’s not so bad. I think I can sleep like this.”
She had told him that the reason why she had left her own room was because she hadn’t been able fall asleep there. Flash knew that the cold hardwood floor wasn’t going to help. Silently groaning to himself he knew that his back was going to feel like hell in the morning.
Sitting up on the edge of his bed, he again called out to his roommate. “I don’t think you’re going to get any sleep down there. I’ll sleep on the floor and you can sleep in my bed tonight.”
As Flash got up from his bed he felt a hand push against his chest. “No, Flashy. I don’t want to bother you anymore!” It surprised him just how fast she was able to spring up from the floor. “I’ll be able to sleep on the floor, I promise!” Her voice trembled with those words.
Closing his eyes, the teenage boy allowed his mind to ponder over what options he had left. If he allowed Sonata to go back to sleeping on the floor then more guilt would plague him the rest of the night. If he argued to sleep on the floor then Sonata was likely to break into tears again. Both situations prevented the two of them from having any chance of getting sleep.
Flash only saw one option left, he just hoped that he wouldn’t regret it. “Okay, I won’t sleep on the floor but…”
“But?”
“...My bed is big enough for two people.” It was too late to back out now, too much had been said. Try as he might he couldn’t fight back the heat that had begun to build up in his face. “It’s a queen size bed so there should be enough room for both of us to be comfortable.”
For a moment Flash genuinely thought that he had scared Sonata away with how quiet the room was. “I’m not forcing you to do anything but I think it’s the only way the two of us are going to get any sleep tonight.”
There he was, standing in his room trying to coax a girl to go to bed with him. It felt different then he thought it would.
“You’re okay with that?” Sonata hesitantly asked.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Not waiting for Sonata to respond he laid back down on his bed and waited. Without even thinking he began to scoot over so that there would be enough room for two. Turning onto his side with his back to his roommate, Flash closed his eyes.
His heart skipped a beat when he felt the other side of the mattress slightly sink. The bed’s covers shifted a little as Sonata went about making herself comfortable. With all her movement though Flash never felt her body touch his own.
For whatever reason the cold pit in his stomach that had plagued Flash for countless nights seemingly disappeared. A sense of comfort replaced it and warmth slowly began to spread throughout the boy’s body.
Slowly but surely sleep took him and replaced the sight of his dark ceiling with that of a dream that he would forget about when he woke in the morning.