After the shower I've been looking for the night to come. I was waiting for Clay to fall asleep so me and Nick could talk. I felt a bit guilty about keeping it a secret, but the poor guy already was exhausted and had an injury, I didn't want it to make it harder on him.

It was actually perfect how everything was working out. As the night fell, Nick announced that he wants to sleep in the living-room, which meant me and Clay were going to share a bed and I could put him to sleep earlier by playing with his hair.

And if I succeeded to do that, I'd have a good chance to find Nick on the couch still awake and have a talk.

But all of these thoughts sounded way too structured and perfectly lined up to become reality. As it got darker and darker outside, Clay got more and more energetic.

"Let's watch a movie together!" He looked at both me and Nick. We had a completely different face expression from him. To put it simply, we didn't look energetic at all.

"It's getting late.. and we woke up early." I was trying to not sound too rude, yet Clay's face still dropped.

"The last time we watched a movie together Liz almost died," Nick remembered the New Year's eve incident, "and George got kicked in the balls so hard, I still think he won't have children. Which is a good thing."

Fortunately Clay laughed after Nick's words, which made me think that he'd give up on the idea without any hard feelings. But turns out he had other plans plotted in his head too.

"Wanna stream?" His words were obviously directed to Nick.

"Dude, I'm barely talking to you, how the hell am I supposed to communicate on stream?" He did in fact look very exhausted.

Clay pouted, knitting his brows. I was about to ask him about the reasoning behind this outburst of energy, but my eyes landed on the empty energy drink can.

"Did you drink that?" My voice was alarmed.

"Yeah." He shrugged.

"But you weren't allowed to. With all the pain-relief medication you're taking, and the concussion..?" I was trying my best to not sound too aggressive.

Clay looked dumbstruck. I didn't even see him drinking that, so I couldn't stop him. But I thought he was smart enough to avoid things like that. I was waiting for an excuse, hoping it would be good enough to relieve my anger a bit.

"But it tastes good."

And that's the best he could come up with.

"It literally tastes like donkey piss," Nick shook his head in disapproval, "and before you protest - first, my uncle is a farmer and owns donkeys and second, I know you like piss."

That was way too funny and alarming at the same time. Which was probably the reason we couldn't laugh whole-heartedly.

It took me and alot of time and effort to convince Clay to just let us sleep. And by the end of the day, right before midnight, he finally agreed to go to his room.

And unfortunately I was the one who had to share a room with an overly energetic concussed idiot.

"Are you asleep?" He spoke after roughly 10 minutes of fidgeting in the bed.

"Mhm." I spoke with my eyes closed.

"Okay."

Another set of minutes passed by, and Clay was still turning left and right. I thought if I didn't react he'd get tired and eventually fall asleep, but my heart couldn't take it. I felt bad for ignoring him and turned to face him, only to realize he started biting his nails.

"No, no, no, no," I grabbed his hand and pulled it away from his mouth, "don't do that."

I grabbed both his hands with my smaller ones and tried to hold them together, but they ended up holding mine. Even though the motion in his hands stopped, his legs started to move in random patterns, something that was a nervous habit of him.

"Did you have that one can only?" I looked at his dilated pupils under the dim light.

"Two cans. And coffee." And that both made me worried and disappointed.

But I didn't scold him for it. I'm sure he already knows he made a mistake, there's no point in pushing on him further. I'm sure he was already feeling down to start with.

I knew that trying to force him to sleep in this case would be cruel. So I remembered a small detail he spoke about way back when we first started to get along. It's a bit silly, but he used to watch Animal Planet before bed as a child.

"Wanna watch TV?" I suggested, brushing his hair away from his forehead.

"You're tired.. I feel bad." He sounded so genuine that I immediately started to lie and say that I wasn't.

Didn't take long for us to find the best cuddling position and look at random ridiculous creatures swim in the ocean.

Clay was leaning back to three propped pillows with his legs spread enough so that I could fit between them. My back was touching his torso, which made me feel the quick pace of his heartbeat against my skin.

I also had full control on his limbs, cause he was hugging me and couldn't bite his nails, while his legs were right next to mine which gave me the perfect opportunity to keep track of his movements and give his forearm a reassuring squeeze whenever his leg shaking got a bit out of control.

Slowly but surely his muscles finally relaxed and the heartbeat was now back to normal - which meant I couldn't feel it that loudly on my back.

He finally fell asleep around half past three. I flipped us around carefully, so that now he was on his side spooning me, yet not having my weight leaned on his body anymore.

I looked at the familiar position and my heart fluttered. It was the "arm jail" that I learned to love after having so many painful and sweaty experiences because of it.

I couldn't help but give his hand that was resting infront of my head a small kiss, even though I knew he most definitely wouldn't feel it.

Although from the way his fingers curled a little bit, I suppose he did feel something afterall.