The nightmares didn't strike like clockwork, but Nanu almost wished they did. He could prepare, then, if he knew when they were coming. Hell, it wasn't even that. He'd been blindsided plenty of times back in Interpol and handled it fine. It was a matter of adaptability, of quick thinking.

But he couldn't adapt or think his way out of waking up at five-fucking-thirty in the morning with a jerk that didn't, but probably could have, thrown some sort of muscle out, sweat rolling down his neck, and heart pounding like it was searching for route out his ribcage. On a weekday, too, so even if he fell back asleep, he'd be right back up for work. This was great. Wonderful. Just what he needed.

Nanu propped himself up, leaned back on his palms, and breathed. In. Out. Again. Don't think about it. Anything else, fine. Not this. Tomorrow. What did he have to do tomorrow?

He put, maybe, two or three items together in a list before nausea rolled through him and chased all thoughts away. This time he leaned forward, face buried in hands as shaky as his breaths. They were much too loud, much too fast, dammit get yourself under control.

Beside him, something shifted.

He froze.

"Nanu?"

The other voice was soft, a touch hoarse, laced with more concern than should have been possible to pack into a single word. From a slender and dark-haired man who could barely hold his eyes open but righted himself anyway, hands folded in his lap and messy bangs almost – only almost – obscuring the knit in his brow.

Grimsley always was a light sleeper.

He looked Nanu up and down, blinking the sleep from his eyes as he did so and brushing the hair from his face. "All right. All right, first thing. Breathe, for the love of Arceus."

"I am," Nanu, said, in the very moment he realized he hadn't been. He let out the air he'd been holding and slumped down further. He may not have seen his partner scooting closer, but Nanu felt him, a warmth a breadth away, that he leaned into without thinking.

An arm wrapped around his waist, chin rested on his head. "I'm right here," he murmured, brushing a thumb against the skin of Nanu's shoulder. "Tell me how you're doing."

Nanu tangled his fingers in Grimsley's pajama shirt instead of answering. "Didn't mean to wake you up."

"Mhm. I wasn't worried about that, at all. Nor is it what I asked."

"Like you ever give straight answers."

"Be that as it may." Grimsley's hand moved up slightly, just under Nanu's shirt to rub lightly at the small of his back. "I am worried, you know."

Of course he was.

He always worried.

"...Just kinda feel sick." It was half the truth, at least.

When Grimsley's touch withdrew, it was like all the warmth in the room went with him. Drawing to the side of the bed and to the door. "I'll get something to help," Grimsley said, hand on the round knob (changed from handles shortly after they moved in, so the Meowth couldn't turn them). Not that it stopped them from sleeping right outside, curled in little mounds that watched Grimsley as he stepped over them. "I'll only be a moment," he added, before the door clicked back shut behind him.

Nanu felt impossibly horrible again. Or, rather, he hadn't stopped feeling that way. He'd just lost his distraction from that fact. A chill settled across him, into his bones, and he sat still in the same position he'd been in when Grimsley stepped out, for several moments longer, before he mustered the momentum to nestle down into the covers. Pillows propping him near upright, blankets drawn up to his chin to hide the way he thumbed his wedding band. Watching the clock and breathing slowly.

What felt like an eternity was, apparently, four minutes, before Grimsley came back with a glass of water and a squat, white bottle. He sat back on the edge of the bed, handing off the water and then fiddling with the bottle's cap. When it popped open, Nanu also ended up with a pill.

It was too much to ask, he supposed. To manage something as simple as pulling himself together. He was supposed to support his family, provide for them. Not make their lives harder. But he could so clearly see the dark bags under Grimsley's eyes, the exhaustion that he'd once always worn in plain sight that until then had been fading, the risk of waking Acerola when she had school and her Elite 4 position to worry about, the burden it wasn't fair to put on them. He'd tried, so hard, to be a reliable husband and guardian. Tried harder than he had at really anything in his life for a long time: making sure all the paperwork for their little family was in order, putting in actual effort at his job, saving to buy a cheap house-turned-home in Po Town, when it turned out the police station was needed for actual police work again with the League up and running.

None of it kept him from waking in the middle of the night from a bad dream like a toddler.

Nanu rolled the pill between his thumb and index finger.

"...It's just for the nausea," Grimsley told him, when he still didn't take it. "I thought it would be best to have your other with breakfast."

"Ah. Yeah." Swallowing felt awful. Nanu did it anyway. When he set the water on the nightstand, it clunked hollowly. "...'preciate it."

This time, when Grimsley reached out to him, he hesitated, a hair's distance between them. "I won't break," Nanu said, looking at him from the corner of his eye.

"It's just…. For a moment there you looked-"

Nanu grabbed his arm and pulled it around himself, and all further objections withered. They shuffled to reposition again, ending with Grimsley sitting against the pillows, and Nanu's back against his chest, their hands folded together across Nanu's midsection. Grimsley's chin dug lightly into his shoulder, and things were… not as bad. Not good, either, but the pounding in his chest had settled to light thuds, and if he laid just right, his stomach settled to only a mild discontent. Manageable. Not enough that he allowed himself to relax, really. Or, more accurately, not with the way his mind buzzed with or without his permission.

Nanu pulled his hands away, dragging them across his face. Grimsley reached up to reclaim them, planting a kiss on the back of one. "Do you want to talk to me," he said, "or just write it down?"

He meant in that book – the little leather-bound one Nanu had gotten on the advice of that therapist he'd been badgered into seeing – where he was supposed to write when things got bad, and what he did to ease it on those occasions, and other such things. Notable thoughts. Feelings. Nightmares. Over and over and over.

Nanu swallowed, thickly. Watched one number change to the next on the clock.

"...This is kinda pathetic, isn't it?"

"No," Grimsley said. Fast and certain as he tightened his embrace. "I don't think that. In the least. So there's a straight answer for you."

"Guess I figured you'd say that." Nanu half-shrugged, as best he could when so wrapped up in another person.

Grimsley met the motion with a quiet sigh. "Then why ask, if you already knew?"

Outside, the Pikipek were starting to cry their farewell to the night, silhouetted in dawn. Awfully cheery. Harder to block out than Nanu wished. "You know," he said, "when you're young and dumb and you get all these big ideas in your head about how life's going to go for you?"

"If you're referring to people having hopes and dreams, I believe that's perfectly normal."

"That, yeah." This time, when Nanu pulled his hands away, Grimsley let him. He waved around them, somehow both vague and intent. "Well, this is pretty much everything I wanted."

There was a delay to Grimsley's response. Enough that Nanu started to think maybe he hadn't heard, until Grimsley finally asked, "Would you be okay with moving a bit?"

"Huh? Oh. Sure, why not." Nanu wasn't sure how that related to anything he'd said, but didn't object when he was eased back until he was almost being cradled, one shoulder pressed into the pillow, Grimsley's arm looped around his waist and their legs tangled together.

"Now," Grimsley said, their noses almost bumping. He mimicked Nanu's gesture. "What is 'this'?"

"You know. Decent place. Husband. Kid. 'Bout as far from original as it gets."

"And the 'but" you're surely getting at?"

Nanu leaned in closer. "Part of you always thinks that once you've a good life, all that mental shit'll fuck right off."

"Language." The scolding, however, came with with a kiss. "But yes, unfortunately, what you said is not how it works."

"Shrinks are honest about that, at least." Nanu tucked his head in against Grimsley's collarbone. "Just… something I've been thinking about. That this'll be the rest of our lives. Me, you. Ace lost her parents. She's still a kid and she's gotta deal with all this, too."

"And all we can do is cope. Learn better ways to. We are now, aren't we? It's much better than the alternatives."

"What alternatives even are there?"

"Let's see." Grimsley tapped a finger on his chin. "I could go back to gambling my life away. Wager away Acerola's college fund this time, perhaps."

"Or our retirement."

"An excellent alternative! Now, you could isolate yourself from the rest of the world to drink yourself to death, and Acerola – well, you know how she dealt with her parents' deaths at first better than I do. But I doubt it helped all that much, either."

"You've got a point there." Nanu smiled now. It was small, ever crooked, but enough that he knew Grimsley returned it by the tighter curling of the arm around him. "I know there's not much point complaining. 'Specially when I already said I've got it all, right? And you aren't wrong, either. That we're doing better than we were."

"And you, too. That some days will be worse than others. No matter what we do. But that's rather discouraging to think about, isn't it?" Nanu looked up to catch Grimsley's smirk, the one that might signal trouble for anyone else. "Besides, a man has a right to be irritated at being jolted awake so rudely, doesn't he?"

"That, or I'm getting worse at all this instead of better. Going soft in my old age and all."

"There's nothing wrong with being soft. And even if there were, you already are and everyone knows it."

"Proof?"

Grimsley counted off on his fingers, taking the bait of mock offense with gusto. "Between adopting orphans-"

"One orphan, and she more adopted us-"

"-bottle feeding baby Meowth-"

"Fair, actually."

"-and marrying some other old man who didn't think he had anything left to offer anyone..."

Everything about Grimsley's expression was gentle now, and Nanu couldn't find any words to say.

"...it's fairly obvious, really."

Silence settled between them, just as solidly as the warm ache that lodged itself in Nanu's chest, the sort of ache borne of love instead of hurt, that washed over him like a flash flood sometimes.

When the alarm threatened to interrupt, Grimsley quieted it. He sat up, though, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and sitting perched there. "That said, I suppose I'd best get started on breakfast. You lie here and rest a bit longer."

"What'd be the point?" Nanu said, moving back beside him. "I've got work."

"You aren't staying home today?"

"If I did-" He rose to pull his uniform from their closet. "I'd do it for myself. Not a nightmare."

Because Nanu had more important things to structure his life around, starting with his family.

Grimsley came up from behind to hold him, nuzzling into his neck. "Remember that I'm here if you need me."

"I know. You too, if you-"

"I've never doubted it."

"And Acerola."

"We're all in this together."

And speak of Giratina, footsteps pattered from down the hall and scattered the Meowth in the wake of purple striped pajamas and far-too-much-of-a-morning-person-girl. "Is every-one awake?" Acerola singsonged, pausing in the doorway with her hands folded behind her. She grinned when her gaze found her uncles. "You are! What's for breakfast?" she asked, breezing right over Nanu's mutter of 'unfortunately.'

"To be determined," Grimsley told her, not breaking away. "But certainly something that will come faster if the table's already set."

"On it!" Acerola saluted, gone as fast as she'd arrived, purple whirlwind if ever there was one. In other words, a perfectly normal sight in the mornings.

"Cripes," Nanu muttered after, letting his head fall back against Grimsley.

"What?"

"Us getting all domestic and sappy."

"Exceptionally, and of course you love me anyway."

"Ah, maybe I do."

Grimsley helped Nanu button his uniform, because otherwise he wouldn't have bothered, and found himself alone again while the other two chattered away over cooking in the kitchen, their voices floating around the halls to reach him as cheerful and nondescript noise. He listened from the edge of the bed, kneading between the ears of the Meowth on his lap while another weaved between his legs. When he nudged them away, they protested with squeals and nips.

Nanu took his book from the dresser. He flipped through page after page of, well, the same thing really. If it was that dream, the details changed, sure. Someone died, whether they made sense being there or not (KR/the Fallter/Grimsley/Acerola/anyone) or chewed him our for letting it happen (always the same, variable, cast) or any manner of situation that left him with a sense of foreboding and unease the rest of the day. Or the same thing would hit him out of nowhere as he went about his life, and he couldn't even say why – maybe he'd seen a face that looked just a bit too much like the Faller's had, or something that made him think of beasts with gaping maws and rancid breath much too close to him for comfort.

He told himself it didn't matter. Pen ink smudged across a fresh page, recording, remembering, calling back his night terrors and setting them straight beneath (that's not how it happened, this is). Because living in the present meant facing the past, again and again until he'd put it in its place.

When he'd finished, he dated the page. Started to shut the cover, and then propped it back open. He jotted another line at the bottom, because the therapist would ask.

Things are good, it said.

Then, Acerola was calling him to breakfast, and the Meowth were clawing their way up Nanu again, louder this time. "Be there in a second!" he told her, putting the Meowth down as fast as another climbed up, until he caught enough of a break to slip the book back into the drawer. A single tap sent it clicking shut, hidden and already fading to the back of his mind. There when he needed it again.

And only then.

Not going to say much here but this pairing became one of my favorites after Gen VII, but there's so little content for them, I felt the need to help rectify that situation! I mean, they're both old, depressed, snarky men who love cats and can be uncles together for Acerola; What's not to love?

If you see typos/mistakes/anything that can be improved, lay it on me! I'm always up to improve and love hearing what people have to say!