Disclaimer: I do not own Hellboy. Sorta sequel to Only One-Fourth, Ma'am. For those that have read the last story, Laura was the girl in John's Bio on the DVD set.

Not meant to be slash. Gen. Written for hc bingo prompt: cuddling.


It was the fourth night he had been awake past midnight. Manning left before him to go home to his wife, and he passed by John's office every time. John was the only one caught up on paperwork. That mean he had nothing to keep him at the office, and keep him up. The last few times he had gone to sleep, nightmares of what could have happened kept waking him up. He took to doing all his paperwork to keep himself awake. It hadn't worked, but the nightmares were shorter.

It was his fifth night trying to stay awake. He made his way down to Hellboy's room with dinner. There were two plates also squeezed in. Liz took hers and sat down while John set out the bowls. He joined when Hellboy came back and started digging into his. When John finished, he planned on heading back to his office to start pre-writing some reports.

"Movie night," Liz pestered, blocking his way out. She led him back to the truck bed and poked him until he took took off his jacket and tie. They watched a cartoon before Hellboy finished his meal and came to join them.

"Move it, scout," he grumbled. John tried to use it as a excuse to grab his stuff and leave. The tail wrapped around his waist and pulled him back. The stone arm lifted him so he was tucked in tight against his side and then draped over him so he couldn't move without asking. Liz started the movie and the three watched the main screen facing the bed.

About halfway through the movie, John began getting sleepy. The heat from Hellboy's body lured him to curl up on his side, brain close to shutting down that he didn't even register the fact his head landing on the other half-demon's body. He closed them once and missed several minutes. The second time, he didn't even wake back up.

"About time he went to sleep," Liz commented, looking over, "Manning was noticing he wasn't sleeping."

"Abe knew too. Said he kept feeling his nightmares," he added, "He ain't the only one." The last few weeks had been filled with abrupt awakenings from John's nightmares. He noticed the last few days were later and shorter, and thought they had been dwindling. Then Liz had told him what Manning had been seeing and got annoyed. If he couldn't get any sleep, then the next monster was going to get away, or be crushed and dusted. It would depend on if he could keep himself awake long enough.

Liz moved a little and wrangled the blanket so she could toss it over the three of them. Herself covered, she settled more and quickly fell asleep to the credits. Hellboy carefully moved his stone arm so he could move the blanket more and cover John as well.

No, no Red, stop!

The tail ended up winding around John's wrist to keep his balled up hand from hitting him. "Knock it off, Boy Scout. The world didn't end; I'm not evil," he murmured in the agent's ear, "You're still my kid; you have to live with that." Whether the nightmare was fading or his words got down somewhere, John stopped fighting and settled back down.

My neck is going to kill me in the morning.


Thank you for reading.