Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
Note: PG-13 for language, as usual, and it's not all humorous. Also,
it was Completed Quickly
Dr. Peter Venkman surreptiously studied Dr. Ray Stantz as the two of them finished a quiet, 4:00 am, meal of Lucky Charms marshmallow cereal. Ever since his return from a six month exile in a dark and deadly alternate dimension, only six days to those he left behind, Ray had been exhibiting the nervous sleeping habits of a well-caffeinated, neurotic Rat On Acid and Peter was worried. Ray had even offered to move out of the bunkroom so his housemates, Peter, Egon and Winston, could sleep uninterrupted. Nothing doing.
"Here." Peter picked up the cereal box and refilled Ray's bowl.
"I'm full, Peter!" Ray gently complained.
"Whoever heard of a skinny Ray? EAT, Papa, EAT!!" Peter added a healthy splash of Vitamin D enriched whole milk and Ray reluctantly picked up his spoon again. He loaded it down with crunchy, candy marshmallows and popped it into his mouth. "It IS so good." he admitted.
Peter nodded encouragingly. A skinny Ray was truly an unnatural, rather ugly, thing. His mesomorphic body type handled an abrupt hundred pound drop in weight badly. Everyone in Ray's extended circle of friends and family had been forcing wonderful delicacies on him since he'd been back but Peter could see no real improvement.
Ray lifted a near-skeletal hand and compulsively rubbed his pale face in the 'stay alert' slap that Peter had come to loathe. "Kid," he gently began, "Why won't you rest?"
"I just can't." Ray put his spoon down and pushed his bowl away. Resting his elbows on the table he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Peter wished, for the millionth time, for a wand to magically wave away what was wrong but, such things being scarce, even for a Ghostbuster, he settled for reaching out and linking his fingers behind his friend's neck in a light embrace.
Ray smiled and gave Peter's arm a reassuring pat. "Don't feel bad for me. I know I'm home, now, I'm safe. I'm just...readjusting, like Egon said. Readjusting. And I'm sure I'll hit the wall soon, hit it HARD and sleep for days but right now...I'm like that guy's dog. Y'know the dog that drooled whenever that guy rang a bell?"
"Uh, Pavlov's Dog?"
"That's it! I'm Pavlov's Dog!"
"You're a drooling DOG?! That's it. Too much stress. Time for a nice dose of something...or a two by four to the head..."
"Peter, I know you know what I'm talking about. I'm...conditioned, like that dog was conditioned. My body, not my brain, my BODY has been rewired to believe that extended sleep is dangerous."
"But, Spot, why is sleep dangerous?" C'mon, Peter mentally pleaded, spill your guts to Dr. Venkman, pass the pain onto ME...
Ray smiled knowingly and leaned away, unwilling to cooperate with Peter's masochistic psychology. Why give him nightmares, too? "I was afraid something would crawl into my ear."
This earned him a frustrated shake. "You're blocking!"
"No! I'm serious!" Ray's voice dipped dramatically, "Peterrr, the bugs over there were HUGE! If I stretched out to sleep they'd lie down, too, and throw a leg over me."
Peter blanched with disgust. "Ew. Don't duck the subject..."
"In fact..." Ray continued, suddenly excited, "...the smallest bug over there was twice as big as that three inch cockroach." He pointed over Peter's shoulder.
"What...GAH!" Peter sprang out of his chair and stared with hatred at the insect that was making its ponderous way up the kitchen wall. The bloated thing was almost too heavy to climb. "Nasty! Where's a shoe?" Peter made a frantic search of the premises. "Where's a newspaper?!"
"Wait, Peter..." Grinning for the first time in days, Ray turned around in his seat and pulled a fork out of the utensil drawer. His friends had gone into somber shock over the change in him and it was time for that to stop. Time for some fun. "Lemme show you something I learned 'over there.'" He twirled the fork like the most melodramatic knife-thrower in Vegas and took aim.
Peter judged the distance between Ray and the Roach. "You can't do it."
"I can, too!"
"Fifty bucks says you can't." Peter hoped he could and quickly. Roaches could fly. They could fly right onto a guy's face!
"You're on." Ray brought his wrist down sharply, there was a silver flash in the air and suddenly the roach was impaled against the wall, thin, red legs scrabbling uselessly against the plaster.
Pausing only a moment over Ray's deadly new skill Peter exulted, "Yes! You GO, Ray!" He made a mental note to bury that fork deeply in the garbage.
Ray walked over and pulled the ex-eating utensil out of the wall and waved it at Peter, who cringed. "Fifty bucks for me!"
"You got it. Now, go flush it!" He made frantic 'shoo' motions but Ray just stood there. Oh, Peter was going to freak. Six months of suffering was about to become worth it.
"Flush it?" Ray asked, all innocence. "You mean waste it? I don't think so." He eyed his prize with exagerrated glee.
"Will you PLEASE get rid..." Peter stopped. Ray was laughing. The nasal HEEEEE HEEEEE HEEEEE! giggle of a very familiar cinematic madman. Ray was doing an impression of Count Dracula's zoophagous toady, Renfield.
"Yuck, that's REAL funny. Now go flush..."
Ray bit the head off the cockroach and chewed it thoughtfully. The crunch, crunch, crunch could be heard all around the world.
Peter howled directly from his soul.
"You...that...YOU SICK LITTLE MONKEY!! OH, YUCK! OH, GROSS!"
"You want some? I saved the juicy part for you..."
"GET IT AWAY!!"
"Protein, Peter!!" Ray lunged and Peter grabbed his wrist, keeping the fork AWAY as they staggered around the kitchen, Ray genuinely laughing now at Peter's violent refusal of his generosity. "GROSSGROSSGROSSGROSSGROSSGROSS!!!"
"Try it!"
They tipped the table over and slipped on spilled cereal. The fork flew out of Ray's hand and it landed with a clatter behind the stove. "Hey! You made me lose my lunch!"
"YOU SICK PUPPY!!!"
"What? Something awry?"
"YUCK! I can't believe you did that!"
"Aw, Peter, calm down. Calmmmm downnnn. Here. C'mere." He threw a brotherly arm around his squeamish friend. "Everything is gonna be fine."
"That was just...just..."
"I know. You are so easy sometimes. Hey. Hey, Peter?"
"God, what now?" Peter glared at him.
"KISS ME!!" Ray's hug turned into a Half-Nelson.
"NOOOOOO!!" The esteemed Psychologist broke free and fled down the stairs, his respected colleague right on his heels. "BUG-LIPS!! YOU GOT BUG-LIPS!! BASTARD, GET AWAY!!"
"Ah, C'mon! I really MISSED you!!"
"GIT!!" Now Peter was laughing too as he fled across the garage to put Ecto-1, the company hearse, between himself and Renfield Ray. They did a few frantic circuits around and around the old car and the shouts and guffaws rang all through the old firehouse. Suddenly executing a move that would have been impossible one hundred pounds ago Ray made a standing leap onto Ecto's hood and smoothly dove for his quarry on the other side. Peter hadn't been a star college quarterback for nothing and, with a yelp, dropped and rolled under the old hearse. Ray hit the ground and rolled to his feet with nonchalant ease, like a pouncing cat that MEANT to miss. He glanced under the car and Peter gave him the finger. "Nyah!"
"That's not nice!" He leapt onto the hood again and started to jump up and down. "Come outa there, Jerk-Off! I command thee to come OUT!!!"
Peter listened to the shocks squeek as the old vehicle lurched alarmingly up and down. He hoped the oil-pan, or whatever, didn't give way while he was under there. "I'm telling Winston!! He'll kill you for jumping on his girlfriend!!"
Ray gave a couple more crashing leaps to Ecto's hood and collapsed, leaning back against the windshild he was almost insensate with laughter. Peter joined in between sneezing fits from all the dust and began to sneak out the back end. Ray felt different for the first time in months. He felt...good. Really, really good. A pleasing, languid warmth penetrated his body and his limbs became very heavy. "Peter?"
"Yeah?" Came the response from directly behind him. Ray didn't even jump, a decided improvement over the nervous twitchiness that had consumed him for days.
"I can't get up."
"You can't get it up? Stress..."
"I can't MOVE!"
"Break a leg? Hopefully?"
"No, I...Peter...I think I just hit the wall. I...wow...I don't think I've ever been...so tired." Ray's eyes closed against sudden exhausted tears.
"Well, hell, then." Peter replied and gripping his battered friend around the shoulders slid him off the hood into a standing position. "Time to go to bed." Ray stumbled twice going up the stairs and would have fallen if Peter had not supported him. A good household spirit had evidently been at work, Ray's bedcovers were turned down and his pillows plumped up. Egon and Winston were perfectly quiet, too-obviously asleep, in their bunks. Ray flopped down like a rag doll and Peter covered him with the gloriously warm and clean blankets. "I'm sorry, Peter." The lost man mumbled. "I was just joking..."
"I think I might live. Go to sleep. Now."
"Okay, I...goodnight."
"Goodnight. For a change." Peter watched Ray get pulled, not very peacefully, into the deepest sleep he'd had in days. Possibly months. Months. Peter abruptly shook his head against the thought of that nightmare. Everything was all right, now. He was home. He was safe. All was well. After resting his hand briefly on Ray's hair, Peter turned away to his own bunk. And stopped, eyes narrowing to slits. Oh, yeah, it was business as usual at the firehouse again, for sure.
"Which one of you assholes put that fork in my bed?"
End
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