fic edited from original version: May 2014
Yuma crawled into the bed - one of the extra mattresses in the house near the corner of his attic of a room - and decided never to have kids of his own. As he pulled the covers over him, the reason for his silent, spontaneous decision crawled in after him, and he felt Astral spoon himself to his side as they prepared for sleep. Yuma grunted in annoyance, feeling his eyebrows furrow and his lips curl in mundane irritation, but otherwise let the alien stick beside him.
Astral considered him for a moment, as though waiting for Yuma to push him away again, but, seemingly, the boy was finally growing accustomed to the alien's supposedly unusual physical habits and awkward pining for touch. Yuma remained silent and somewhat stiff on his back as Astral rubbed his palm up and down Yuma's far arm. "Good night, Yuma," he exhaled before nesting his head in the crook of Yuma's neck. Yuma grew reluctantly tolerant of the thumb that continued to rub the joint of his arm, and soon regarded it as a soothing, constant touch that helped lull him to sleep.
He had been dreaming, and it had been deep and restful, and it was nice. That was why, as soon as he awoke from the chilly hands shaking his shoulders, he glared and huffed at the indifferent stare with which Astral bore down on him. He couldn't remember the dream.
"I am hungry," Astral informed, and Yuma groaned, considering rolling onto his side and just letting the alien starve for the night. Or even better - abandon Astral to the would-be-too-cold bed and return to the familiar comfort of his one-man hammock. As though hearing his thoughts, Astral frowned, and hauled his partner up, forcing him to sit upright.
"Yuma."
"Alright, alright!" Yuma growled, kicking off his covers and stomping onto the floor. Astral trailed after him as they climbed down the stairs and shuffled to the kitchen. Astral's footsteps were lighter than they were when he first became solid, when the alien's footing and balance were almost like a toddler's. Yuma grumbled as he switched the lights on, and the two of them made a beeline for the fridge.
"What do you want," he drawled as he opened the door, stepping to the side and displaying the fridge's contents to his foreign roommate. Astral raised a hand to his chin, as though seriously inspecting each item and deliberating if such would be the best selection in comparison to the surrounding ones. Yuma rolled his eyes at his pickiness.
"Hurry," he snapped, but immediately afterward pulled out a carton of milk and threw the door closed. He strutted to a cabinet and got out a tray of cookies and a glass, and laid them on the table. Astral stood over him as Yuma sat. "What? Sit," Yuma instructed, pouring the milk into the glass. "I'm going to teach you how to have a midnight snack."
Astral sat and bounced his seat closer to the table, and Yuma shushed him so as not to risk waking his irritable grandmother and temperamental sister. Yuma took out a cookie and held the food in display, though his face was still bland and put-off at being woken up for this. "Okay. You take this, and then-" he dipped the cookie into the glass of milk, "wet it a little, and wahla-" he finished, biting the cookie whole. Chewing, he shoved the items towards his partner, who darted his eyes over them with alertness, as though the objects were living things rearing to attack him.
Yuma lazily watched as Astral lifted a single cookie from the tray with his index finger and thumb, and watched as those cat-like eyes stared intently as he dipped the dry dough into the liquid. The next thing Yuma knew, his head was over his folded arms on the kitchen table, and he was at the brink of remembering just what it was he dreamed of when he felt something rough and bumpy hit his lips. He cracked his eyes open in another glare as Astral leaned further forward, focused on inserting the cookie he held into Yuma's lips.
Astral answered the brief, sudden question that passed Yuma's just-awoken mind, "For your energy." Yuma growled and bit down on the cookie before rearing up to throw another at Astral's face.
The alien wasn't fazed as the food bounced off his forehead, but Yuma continued the assault. Dozens and dozens of incidents within the past months erupted from Yuma's sleepy, tired mind and expressed themselves in the clawed hands he used to scoop several cookies at once to throw those at Astral as well. Astral took the attack with the demeanor of a careless statue, and after the last cookie thumped the floor, Yuma shot out of his chair and marched back into his bedroom.
Once more, he plopped himself on the hammock, the back of his eyes feeling hot at the onslaught of almost-resentment and fed-up feelings in him that had accumulated since Astral had been accommodated with a solid, foreign body. He heard Astral enter the attic and pause at the entrance, and imagined the blank stare he must have given Yuma as he realized where the boy had chosen to sleep. Then, Astral's voice was by his ear, and Yuma snapped his body to face the opposite way as Astral monotonously cooed, "Yuma. Sleep with me."
He ignored him. After a moment, he heard his roommate shuffle himself onto the mattress, awkwardly noisy as he toyed with the blankets and rolled himself in the sheets. Yuma scrunched his face and his eyes became tightly shut, and he coached himself to stubbornly forget the annoyances of the other occupant and return to sleep. He coached himself to ignore that he had gotten used to Astral's form beside his when they slept, to ignore the strange feeling of relief that knowing he'd be beside Astral in the morning suddenly brought.
He denied it, and seethed in his mind loud enough for Astral to catch, "He better not-…" even as something in his chest and gut pleasantly melted at the prospect of Astral once more staying up until he was asleep, just to come and cradle him from his hammock and back into the larger space of the bed, and slip in quietly beside him.
Yuma felt the stare of something inhuman and almost endearingly needy grip his back as his breathing evened out. Tomorrow night, he'd give Astral milk or something to help him sleep without having to get up for food. Or maybe, since that might just make him need to go to the bathroom and want to drag Yuma along to make sure he "does the procedure correctly," he could just talk and bore Astral to sleep, like telling bedtime stories. That had worked on him when he was a kid; he supposed the trick could work even on someone like Astral too.
The persistent eyes of his partner still clung to him as the dream once more settled into Yuma's mind, and his last thoughts remained ones aiming to coddle Astral, teach him, scold him. Behind Yuma, Astral once more slid from the bed, and stepped quietly towards Yuma's soft snores.