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"Don't be afraid. It's only a dream. It can't hurt you. Don't be afraid."

Kuwabara knows better. He knows there are dreams that hurt, dreams that maim, even dreams that kill. He knows there are dreams that are real. And when he looks back, he thinks he always has.

Before his spiritual powers are strong, Kuwabara still wakes from nightmares, as any child does. The old words comfort him then. He sleeps again with the false hope that in his dreams, he is perfectly safe. And if his narrow escapes into the waking world are sometimes too vivid, too close, too real, his childish naiveté lets him believe his parents when they blame it on his overactive imagination.

Puberty hits, and with the explosive growth and development of his body comes an equally explosive – if not more so – growth and development of his spiritual awareness. While his friends – red-faced and abashed – recount, in hasty whispers, stories of their sheets soiled after pleasant midnight dreams, Kuwabara can recall only how he wakes, terrified, to find his sheets sticky with sweat and blood. Those words murmured in the dark of night help little now; indeed, he hears them less and less as the years go by, until he finally stops hearing them at all, and Shizuru only watches him sadly, knowing firsthand that he no longer believes those sweet lies.

Now, Kuwabara's spiritual powers have – for the most part – plateaued, and he is slowly learning to control them under Master Genkai's tutelage. He understands and appreciates now that some dreams are worse than others; some dreams are only frightening where others endanger his very life. When he wakes at night, breath shallow in his chest, skin slicked with cold sweat, he is still aware that he is unharmed, that his skin and bones are unbroken and whole. He triumphs in each night that he does wake unscathed, because they are small victories within the larger picture.

So when he comes awake after a nightmare, heart pounding beneath his ribs, and his lover rolls over next to him, sliding long fingers and warm palms across his bare chest – scarlet locks pooling, dark as blood, around and between and across their bodies – and murmurs sleepily, "What's wrong?", Kuwabara only smiles and takes the slim fox-demon in his arms, brushing a gentle kiss across his lips.

"It's nothing," he whispers – heart still racing, but for a different reason now – as he tangles their legs and presses their bodies together, skin against skin.

"It was only a dream."