A/N: Written for the 5,10,20,50,70,100 fandoms challenge, fandom 49: Elfen Lied, for the A-Maze-Ing Race Challenge, prompt: belt, and for the 50_friendships challenge on livejournal, prompt #007 – erasure with the friendship: Mayu/Nyu.
Erasing her Nightmares
The unclicking of a belt still followed her in her nightmares. It dragged her from her warm futon at night, sometimes made warmer still by Nyu wandering in and clinging to her like a teddy-bear. But Nyu wasn't there that night. Nyu was comfortably asleep in her own futon, and Mayu felt a small sense of relief as she threw back her covers and the felt the cold sting her.
Nyu couldn't possibly understand how it felt to be wrapped in arms after one of those nightmares. She didn't understand the sweat that clung to her either, nor the insistent trembles that wracked her frame, or – to her utter humiliation and disgust – the moisture she sometimes felt between her legs… Nyu was just too innocent for all that, and Mayu, all alone, rolled over and clung to her pillow, wishing she could just cry it all away.
But the belt still clicked loose, and she could still hear it in the silence of the room, and Mayu dragged herself up. Dragged a sweater over her nightclothes, dragged her feet over to her slippers, dragged her slippers on.
Eventually, she dragged herself outside, to the steps where she expected to find Wanta, as she did some nights. But that night it wasn't Wanta, but Nyu humming some song or other quietly to the moon.
She stopped when she say Mayu, but Mayu wanted Nyu to continue. To erase those sounds from her mind: the unclicking belt, then the hot pants and squashed moans that followed –
Nyu suddenly hugged her, and Mayu stiffened, but Nyu was already humming again. Humming wrong probably; she was a hopeless student at some things after all, even if she had gotten a hang of the cleaning easily enough. But Nyu was a different sort of warm, and somehow Nyu knew what Mayu needed without the other ever saying so.
Mayu closed her eyes, letting the older girl take away both the cold of the night and the clinging hotness of her nightmares.