Disclaimer – I do not own or profit from Demon Diary. It belongs to Kara, and Lee Yun Hee, I think.
Rated PG-13 purely because it hints at slash. There is nothing remotely objectionable in this story.
Contains references to things that took place in the second volume, but really nothing beyond that. So, SPOILERS for up to volume two only.
This was intended to be a drabble, but it really didn't turn out that way...
Anyway, enjoy. Peace, all.
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Night Terrors
by Ghost Helwig
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Raenef has bad dreams sometimes. Eclipse knows this, knows that sometimes his master cries out in the night, his dreams filled with things Eclipse can only guess at. He would be horrified – and bemused – to know that most of Raenef's 'bad' dreams are simple, childlike; monsters under his bed, for instance, or other such things.
But all Eclipse knows is that sometimes Raenef screams, and it rips into his heart. He teleports into Raenef's room every time it happens, but there is nothing he can do. His young charge sleeps on, usually, oblivious to his own turmoil and terror. But this cannot go on. His nightmares are draining him, whether he wakes for them or not. He falls asleep even easier during his lessons now. They are disrupting his schooling. They must be stopped.
And hearing Raenef scream is driving Eclipse ever so slowly crazy. It keeps him up nights. He is drifting during class.
And he is worried. Very, very worried.
The last straw comes when they're sitting outside. He's supposed to be teaching Raenef, and for a while, as his thoughts drift, he thinks that he is.
But then, later, he finds himself sprawled on the ground, his master spread-eagled just feet from him, sleeping. And the absolute indignity of it all is that he had been sleeping, too.
This must end.
So that night, when Raenef is sleeping, Eclipse slips into his room. He isn't sure at first, what he'll do, but as he watches Raenef that matters less and less. He is here, and Raenef is before him, and that is all that truly matters.
He drowses lightly in a chair beside Raenef's bed, until finally a slight moan catches at his ears. His eyes open, and in the gloom he can see his master's fair hair spread on the pillows, glittering, gold. It's a sight that for some reason makes the breath catch in Eclipse's throat.
He's too tired to think of why, too tired to think of anything. All he knows is that Raenef is starting to moan a little louder; whatever he's dreaming is obviously upsetting him. And without really realizing it Eclipse is reaching out, reaching to touch him, to comfort that obvious and blatant unease, to smooth the lines of stress and worry from Raenef's so-young (too-young) face.
His hand hovers over Raenef's pale cheek, and he watches its descent as though it isn't even his; he's watching someone else's long fingers delicately trace over his liege's pale flesh, watching someone else's palm cup that soft cheek...
He growls low in his throat, startling himself. He's startled further when he realizes that the reason he'd growled was that he was starting to become jealous – of his own hand.
Raenef's insanity is spreading, it seems.
That thought makes him smile, and his hand returns to caressing Raenef's skin. He jumps nearly out of his skin when he finally, finally,realizes that Raenef has calmed. His bad dreams have settled into nothing more than simple... dreams.
It's a welcome thing, but a strange thing nonetheless.
He waits an hour to see if the nightmares will return, absently stroking Raenef's cool flesh as he waits, warming the skin with the hot press of his fingers. When the moon has fallen a little in the sky, he gets up, giving one last, gentle touch to Raenef's soft cheek before he turns to go.
The words that will return him to his own bedroom die on his lips when he hears a small whimper behind him. Raenef needs him, he realizes now. He will not leave.
And so, somehow, as weeks of this pass, weeks during which Raenef is fully energized and he is prone to falling asleep in the middle of speaking (Chris calls him Sleepyhead exactly once, and never again), he goes from dozing fitfully in the chair to unconsciously draping the upper half of his body half-on, half-off the bed where Raenef slumbers. He always leaves before his master awakens. He is never caught.
Until three weeks later, that is. Raenef awakens for no discernible reason just as he has passed out, his head drooping onto the edge of the bed, long hair spreading out around his sleeping face, ebony silk on a white sea. Raenef is confused, naturally, but being an unusually amiable boy, a boy who trusts Eclipse implicitly, he shrugs off the weirdness and confusion and simply wonders what he should do to make Eclipse more comfortable.
Any other boy would have awoken Eclipse with soft caresses, gentle fingers in his hair or perhaps running over his lips, memorizing the smooth contours of his face; braver, more forward boys would perhaps have awoken him with kisses, either chaste kisses on his lips or not-so-chaste kisses a good deal lower down.
But not Raenef. When Eclipse awakens, his master has his slender arms wrapped around him as he wheezes and huffs, trying in vain to bodily haul Eclipse into his bed.
Eclipse says something, an inquiry perhaps – all that matters about what he says, really, is that the shock of realizing Eclipse is awake causes Raenef to drop him. Hurried apologies and unnecessary explanations made, Raenef asks, begs, and finally 'demands' ("You will sleep with me, vermin!" followed instantly by a very becoming blush) that Eclipse share his bed. If he needs sleep, Eclipse needs more of it, if only so Eclipse can keep up with him.
So that's how Eclipse begins to share his master's bed. Neither knows it, but this small ritual, formed out of happy necessity, will shape the rest of their lives – they will not sleep apart, not ever again, except on those days when they are not together. And those days are the hardest of all.
It is three more months before Eclipse discovers the source of his master's woes; and by then, their ritual is too well-established for either to let it fade. They do not even mention the idea.
But as Eclipse settles into bed beside Raenef, he wonders how many other demons can say that they owe their happiness to the constantly-harmed specter of a large, smiling...
Tomato.