A/N: Thanks to everyone who's supported me on my MayBlade journey so far, both here and on Tumblr. I've been enjoying, not only writing these, but seeing what people have to say about them - especially since I'm playing around some with characters and topics I don't normally. That being said, this one isn't all that original for me, but I had fun nonetheless.

Day 8 | TyHil | Rated K

Sleep

"When I said you could stay the night, I didn't realize it would be an hour before I got my turn in the bathroom."

Hilary was rubbing the fourth goop of the evening onto her face. It had come out of a tiny fridge she'd brought with her and plugged in on his bathroom counter. It was a brilliant idea, as far as Tyson was concerned, until he realized it contained her twelve-step skincare routine and not snacks for when you wake up hungry in the middle of the night.

When she finished, Hilary made eye contact in the mirror with the most unimpressed look he'd ever seen on her face.

"There's more than one bathroom in this house, Tyson, if you're really that impatient," she said, capping her goop bottle and putting it back in the fridge. Then she picked up something that looked like a rolling pin on a stick and started rubbing it on her face.

Tyson watched her, growing more and more confused by the second.

"I need my toothbrush, whenever you're done steamrolling your face."

"I'm not stopping you from brushing your teeth!" Hilary exclaimed, sounding exasperated. "In fact, please do – I think I can smell your breath all the way from here."

He took that as his invitation to cross the threshold and join her in front of the mirror. The counter in front of him was littered with all kinds of bottles and vials and tools, some of which he couldn't even identify. He did count at least four separate types of lotion, as long as 'lotion' and 'moisturizer' were interchangeable in girl language.

"The problem with that is I'd have to be able to find my toothbrush first," he said, scanning the counter top. "How much stuff did you bring?"

Hilary rolled her eyes and handed him his toothbrush, miraculously plucked from among her things, and claimed, "I only brought the necessities, Tyson."

"Necessities?" he asked incredulously. "I don't even know what half of this junk is!"

"Don't worry, Tyson," Hilary said sardonically, "it shows."

"See," Tyson said, fishing around for his toothpaste, "that might offend me if I knew what any of this was for." He found the elusive tube and held it up in triumph. "As it stands, I'm happy being able to go to sleep when I'm tired and not after an hour of greasing up my face."

Hilary scoffed but didn't make any other comment.

He finished with his teeth at about the same time she finished with her face and took off the headband that had been holding her hair out of the way. Foolishly, he thought that meant they were going to go to bed. Instead, Hilary began misting her hair with another mystery bottle.

"Now what are you doing?" he whined.

"I'm doing my hair – what does it look like?" Hilary looked at him like he had two heads as she pulled a foam cylinder out of a bag and began rolling the ends of her hair around it.

"But we're going to bed!" If anyone was growing a second head right now, it was Hilary, and it was parasitic, feeding off her brain. "It's just gonna get messed up."

"I'm going to sleep in the rollers, Tyson," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I do this every night."

"Wait," he said, holding a hand up while the dots slowly connected, "is that how you get it to do that thing?" He used his hands to make a flipping-out motion above his shoulders, where her hair would fall. He could tell by the vexed look in her eyes that she knew what he meant.

"Yes."

"I thought it did that on its own!"

"Oh, Tyson." The look on her face turned to pity.

After that mind-blowing revelation, Tyson needed to lay down. He retreated to the bedroom to let her finish her convoluted routine in peace. He was winding down in bed with a comic book when she finally joined him, dressed in a set yellow floral pajamas, hair rollers neatly in place.

"Is Her Majesty finally presentable enough to go to sleep?" Tyson teased, setting his comic to the side. He patted the other side of the mattress as an invitation.

"Hmm… That depends," Hilary said thoughtfully, but she was already on her way across the room. "Is the court jester done making lame jokes?" Her last two words were said with a yawn as she slid in beside him. She didn't protest when Tyson pulled her close and tossed the sheet over them both, despite the warmth of the evening. "I'm so tired."

"I'm telling you," Tyson said, reaching out to turn off the lamp on his bedside table, "it's the hour it takes you to get ready. No wonder you're exhausted."

"I think it's being around you," Hilary retorted. There was enough light shining in from the moon outside for Tyson to watch her pull an eye mask down over her forehead. She paused before covering her eyes, and turned to him. "Thanks again for letting me stay while my parents remodel," she said sincerely. "All the dust really sends my allergies into overdrive."

Tyson grinned and replied, "Hey, what are boyfriends for?" He still got a weird, giddy feeling in his stomach when he used that word. It hadn't been all that long since they decided to put a title on something that had existed for years before either was brave enough to acknowledge it. "You're always welcome here."

She leaned in and kissed him, tender and sweet. Whatever concoction of products she had on her face smelled amazing, and her cheek was soft under his fingertips.

"Goodnight," she whispered into the space between them as she pulled back.

"'Night, Hil." His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears.

Hilary settled her eye mask over her eyes and Tyson let his own slide shut.

When he woke up a little while later, it took him a minute to realize why. At first, he only registered that it was way hotter with someone else in your bed in the middle of summer. He kicked off his half of the sheet and got instant relief. He was almost back to sleep when he heard the gentle whoosh of wind and water, like he was at the seaside.

His eyes snapped open to scan the room. In his sleep-muddled state, it took him longer than it should have to spy the tiny blue light that signaled an electronic in use. Hilary had apparently also packed a white noise machine.

Tyson groaned and swiped a hand over his face, willing himself to fall back to sleep. Normally he slept like the dead, but the longer he lay there trying to fall asleep, the harder it became to actually do so.

Maybe the key wasn't to resist the white noise, but to embrace it. He tried closing his eyes, breathing deeply, and listening to the peaceful sounds of the waves. There were even seagulls. Seagulls were nice. Seagulls were squawking every twenty, then forty, then thirty-five seconds on a loop.

Grumbling to himself, Tyson rolled over, pulling his pillow over his head in an effort to muffle the sound.

Unfortunately, all of his shifting around jostled Hilary and woke her up.

"Wha – What's going on?" she yawned, fatigue etched in her voice. "Tyson?" She fumbled with his pillow, impeded by her sleepiness, before finally lifting it away. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Trying to drown your white noise machine out," he muttered into the mattress. When it became obvious that this was going to turn into an entire conversation, he propped his chin up on one hand so he could see Hilary. She was blinking at him with bleary eyes. "How do you sleep with that thing on?"

"It's meant to be relaxing, Tyson," she explained as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Her mask was on top of her head.

"Have you ever actually listened to it?"

She sighed and dropped her hand from her face to the mattress so hard that it bounced.

"You're not supposed to listen to it – that's not the point," she groaned and swung his pillow back over to land across his shoulders. Then she collapsed, boneless, back onto her own. "You're supposed to let it fade into the background and lull you into a relaxing and meditative sleep."

"Hey, I tried!" Tyson defended, hugging his pillow in front of him. "It was the stupid seagulls."

Hilary let out another deep breath and used a remote on her bedside table to silence the machine.

"If you're done," she said, pulling her mask back down, "can we go back to sleep? I don't know what time it is, but it's going to be seven before we know it."

Tyson snorted and said, "I'm not getting up at seven, but you go ahead." The way he figured it, he'd more than earned his right to sleep in after years of beyblading tournaments and kendo drills. "I'll be right here if you need me, sleeping in like a normal human being."

"Seven is sleeping in for me, Tyson," Hilary said, making his jaw drop in horror. "I can't sleep past then, even if I try. It's much better to get up and seize the day."

Tyson wrinkled his nose. He couldn't think of many things worse than being physically incapable of sleeping in. He couldn't fathom why Hilary sounded proud of the fact, either.

"Newsflash Hilary, you're not superior because you can't sleep in until noon – you're sick."

"Well excuse me if I want to be awake before lunchtime."

"The only valid reason to be awake before lunch is for breakfast," Tyson argued. Then he thought about it and added, "Or the World Championships."

"Ugh – you know what?! Your yammering is worse than your snoring," Hilary shot back, crossing her arms over her chest and, more than likely, glaring up at the inside of her eye mask. "I could have just gone to sleep on the couch you know, but I was really trying to make this work, and you–"

"Wait a minute," he cut off her rant and sat up, turning to look at her even though she couldn't see him, " is that why you put on the white noise?"

"Yes!"

"Oh."

Well, now he felt like a jerk. He didn't want to keep Hilary awake all night, especially if her morning routine was as strenuous and time consuming as her nighttime one. He racked his brain. There had to be a solution. Then it clicked.

"Tyson," she sighed, "I–"

"Shh, hold on!" Without saying another word, he got up and opened the window. "Now, listen."

He could feel the confusion pouring off of Hilary until she heard the soft trickling of the fountain and the chirping of the crickets. There was even an odd frog or owl sending their cries up into the moonlight, and a pleasantly cool breeze to go with the sound of leaves rustling.

"Oh," she echoed his earlier sentiment.

"This always helps me when I can't sleep," Tyson admitted, shuffling a little awkwardly back over to the bed. The sounds of the garden outside had always been a comfort – maybe it would work for Hilary too. He took her slack-jawed silence to be a good sign and sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. "Will this be okay?"

She smiled. He could tell it reached her eyes, even though she'd never taken the mask back off.

"This will be perfect, Tyson."

He nodded to himself, before laying down on his stomach and tucking his arms up under his pillow to offer his head extra support. If he slept on his stomach, he shouldn't snore so much. Daichi used to complain, too, though Tyson had never been sure how he could hear him over his own loud mouth.

Hilary, on the other hand, was someone he actually wanted in his bed. It was worth finding a compromise.

"Goodnight, Hilary."

The sound of her even, soothing breaths was his only answer.

A/N: This idea sprung from two random notes I had in my phone, plus the "sleep" prompt. It's so satisfying being able to finally incorporate ideas that I've had laying around for a while. That's probably why it went a bit longer than I originally intended. In my defense, I could probably fill an entire book with things Hilary does that Tyson does not understand.

Thanks for reading!