content, warning edited as of April 14, 2011; no author's note added.
Warning: Soubi/Ritsuka, slightly depressing. Contains minor spoilers.
For a pair as broken as Loveless, nightmares were a relatively common occurrence.
Those of the young Sacrifice usually revolved around a single subject: being left behind.
In the arms of sleep, his subconscious would produce images of Seimei leaving, of Seimei dying, of the other Ritsuka taking his place, of Soubi going off without him, or even of Soubi being killed. (Recently, the last two had been increasing in frequency.)
The nightmares were stupid, he knew: Seimei hadn't truly died then, and he now was honestly all right with Seimei leaving. According to his doctor, the other Ritsuka was never coming back. And it didn't matter really (though it always stung a bit) if and when Soubi went off without him – they would always be able to find each other. He had no reassurance when the last of these happened.
They left him chilled and upset, and often he would wander into Soubi's room and sleep with him.
Those of the older Fighter were always memories.
Often when he closed his eyes, it wasn't the blissfully dark oblivion that greeted him, but the memories. They were all painful, those that he met during sleep. Memories of Ritsu, and the room with the dead and beautiful specimen butterflies he had come to sympathize with over the course of his childhood; memories of Seimei and the knife, and a day that could have been absolutely gorgeous had it not been stained so red; and very rarely of the day just before he met Ritsu, of the accident that had left him orphaned and at the mercy of a stranger.
They were all cold, sharp memories of a past he sometimes wished he could forget. (When this happened, it would almost always be followed with either "without any of that happening, Ritsuka and I wouldn't have met" or "without a memory to guide you, you wouldn't know who you are.") Still, he would wake half-terrified and half-relieved, with wherever his head had been wet with tears. Nights like these he was always gladder when Ritsuka asked timidly if he could join him for the rest of the time before it was a decent hour to be awake.
When the two would share a bed from the beginning of the night, Ritsuka rarely had nightmares. He felt irrationally safe with Soubi wrapped around him, aware of the light breath that disturbed his hair. When he he woke from a nightmare during this time, he would simply burry his head in Soubi's shirt and breathe in the warm, familiar scent of his Fighter, who more often than not hadn't been wakened.
Soubi didn't have as many nightmares either in these conditions. Ritsuka was his lifeline to the present, a reminder of happiness, of a joy he had rarely had. When Soubi woke from a nightmare here, he would just cling a little tighter to his petite Sacrifice and hope the extra pressure wouldn't wake him.
But when Ritsuka's nightmares woke Soubi, the blond would hold him, whether or not he was awake, until he fell into a less troubled sleep. And when Soubi's would wake Ritsuka, more often that not with a too-tight grip or wetness (tears) against the younger man's neck, it would be Ritsuka who would wrap his arms even tighter around the blond and wipe the droplets from his face.
It was comforting to know they had each other.