Incubus
The first thing he did was welcome you home at the end of the day with gentle hands and an embrace. At night, he'd touch your hair softly but never get into bed with you. He'd sit on a chair by your side and you'd drift off to sleep under cotton sheets. The moonlight from the window moved across your skin, and eventually, his torso would slump in sleep across the mattress and his head would loll over to drift near your hand. His sleeping breath would come slowly and peacefully, moist across the gap from his lips to your fingertips.
They tingled.
*************
"Letters?" He asked, poking his head across your shoulder in the morning. He was decked in a green plaid apron, messy black hair tied back in a ponytail, and had one frying pan from the kitchen in hand. The eggs in it weren't the kind you liked but you only smiled. He was always keen on making breakfast, doing household chores whenever you had those brief spells of dizziness that made you unable to cook for the both of you.
"Just a few," you lied to him (again), putting down your pen and stretching your legs under the large secretary desk that took up one wall of the cozy den. There was a pile of letters hidden in your desk drawer, all sealed and stamped that you had never sent.
*************
Sometimes, you go out to see the new movies, but most of the time, the both of you watch old black and white ones on television, curled up together on the sofa.
*************
"You don't like scrambled eggs, do you?" He queried one early day in June, a frown-line marring his brow.
"I like them just fine," you fib.
He smiled and let out a breath of relief. "Good, because I suck at making sunny-side up."
It's not exactly a lie. You're beginning to acquire a taste for them.
*************
He likes his coffee black because he keeps stealing sips from your cup, you realize one day as you are about to put sugar into his mug. You put the spoon down.
He never had a sweet tooth to begin with.
*************
"Do you want to see him?" He said lowly at the door when you walked home in the rain one day, joints aching.
You were dripping a large puddle and there was an adjacent one next to you, from the closed umbrella in your hand that you hadn't used.
"I'll find him," he vowed and fisted his hand. His voice shook. "If it'll make you happy, I'll find him for you."
You were cold and miserable, but he seemed even more so, small and lonely in the foyer and trying so hard to be strong.
"No," you said and reached out for his hands, took both palms in yours. "It's alright."
*************
That night, when he sat by your bed again, instead of feigning sleep, you placed your hand on his cheeks. His eyes were large and startled as you drew his face down.
*************
"What are you doing?" He yawned, looking sweetly sleep-tousled as dawn filled the empty walls of the living room with a rose-tinted paintbrush.
He came over to rub your temples softly when he saw you were wincing from headache – a symptom that came when you were fatigued.
"Throwing a few things out," you answered, throwing a letter into the fire.
His fingers stopped massaging.
"But I thought you wanted to keep them."
You didn't answer, only selected another envelope. There was one from two weeks ago, one from five months ago. You kept digging deeper in your drawers until you found the very first letter. You lingered your fingers across the name on it, the white space underneath where the address would have been, but you didn't know the address. You didn't know where that person lived anymore, what that man looked liked, or sounded like, and it had been years. Years. You tossed the last letter, the first letter, into the blaze and let out a shaky breath.
He came over and sat down by your feet, pushing his head into your lap.
You combed your fingers through his hair.
*************
The sex wasn't as important as feeling his heart beating against your back – nothing but skin in-between.
*************
The last phase came slowly, the way it had progressed unrelentingly for years although your doctors had spent considerable time and you, considerable money, trying to stop the mysterious disease. Spells of lethargy now permeated your limbs like viscous mercury only to cool into an unmovable lead. You no longer wanted to rise in the morning and hunger became something unknown, like the wisp of a dream upon waking.
He stayed with you when you could no longer leave the bed.
*************
"Are you afraid, Seto?" He asked, his fingers entwined in yours, eyes red-rimmed.
You smiled, and looked toward the windowsill. The red chrysanthemums the both of you had planted in early spring were in full bloom now.
"No," You answered, closing your eyes.
He kissed your eyelids. His lips were warm and solid and there and somehow, that made this, the unspoken thing between you two, finally true…
*************
A lifetime ago.
"I'll be attentive," the creature promised in the dark of night. "I'll cherish you."
So beautiful was the guise that he wore. He had smooth skin and unruly hair, his voice grown huskier with age as you'd imagined. You could not tell the difference, such was the strength of his mimicry and the softness of his hands when they wrapped around your waist, your neck.
"I'll be with you until the end," he vowed again, in Mokuba's voice.
You placed your hands slowly across his back, drew him closer to you. So close, everything you wanted, and if you let yourself, you could forget that this was unreal because everything was perfect, down to his voice and the way he responded to your touch so shyly.
"Even if this is only an imitation of love, let this be enough," you thought, and into the shell of the incubus' ear, you breathed your answer.