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“Can I ask you something?”
Akaza turns his gaze from the stars to look at Rengoku, taking in the sight of the ridge of his brow, his slightly upturn of his nose, the curve of his lips. Rengoku, for his part, continues to stare at the sky, gaze unwavering.
Akaza says, “Go right ahead.”
It’s the dead of night, and they’re many hours away from sunrise. The ground beneath them is cold, and the grass nearby collecting dew. A cricket chirps from somewhere to their left, and the leaves of the forest rustle in the wind.
It’s a nice night, to be sure, and Akaza cherishes these kinds of nights like previous jewels. After all, he never knows which night will be the last. So he’s content to horde them, clutching the memories of Rengoku protectively to his chest for as long as he can.
"Do demons dream? Do demons sleep? Do they even need to sleep?"
Sleep. Dreams. Akaza has had little of one and none of the other for as long as he’s had Muzan’s blood coursing through his veins, turning him from man to monster. It’s not something he has often thought about, ever since becoming a demon.
Demons, to Akaza’s knowledge, do not need sleep. They do not need comfort. They hardly even need to eat, truthfully. Consuming humans is not driven by a need to satiate an appetite for hunger, but to satiate the appetite for power.
And Akaza enjoys power. Of this, he’s always been sure.
Sleep, however, is a different story. There’s hardly a moment that Akaza feels safe enough to indulge in the practice, but he does occasionally sleep if the situation allows for it. He does not dream though. No, sleep for him is more like a state of limbo, where he ceases to exist until his eyes open next.
And so Akaza enjoys sleep too, in a way.
“We don’t dream,” Akaza tells Rengoku. He’s tucked against the Pillar’s side, head resting on his chest as he listens to the steady drum of Rengoku’s heartbeat. “At least, I don’t dream. I don’t go around asking the others if they do, but I can’t imagine that we’d be that different.”
“So you do sleep then?” Rengoku asks. He lifts a finger to the sky, tracing the pattern of a constellation Akaza does not know. He has no use for such knowledge, after all. And yet there’s a strange sort of yearning as he watches Rengoku trace patterns undoubtedly familiar to him.
“Sometimes,” Akaza answers tersely. His nail, sharp but cut to the quick, runs across the button of Rengoku’s slayer uniform. It feels smooth beneath his fingertip. “Rarely.”
“Do you remember dreaming?” Rengoku asks, finally turning to look curiously at Akaza. His face is, for once, open. No tension in his jaw, no furrow to his brow. When Akaza looks into his eyes, he feels as though the Pillar can see every inch of his soul, if he even still has one. “When you were human?”
Akaza shuts his eyes. “No. Not really. I don’t even remember being human.”
Rengoku rumbles, the vibration of his chest placating the demon. He says, “That sounds very sad,” in a voice as soft as morning breeze. Not that Akaza knows how soft a morning breeze is, as he needs to hide when the sun rises on the horizon.
Akaza wonders if he would miss dreaming if he could remember the sensation. He misses sunlight, he thinks. The light of the moon and the stars are just not the same as the burning brightness of the sun. The emptiness of dreamless sleep isn’t the same either, he supposes.
“Perhaps to some people it is sad,” Akaza replies, not knowing how else to answer. Is he sad about it? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember, so how could he be sad about memories he doesn’t possess?
“Well, at least you don’t have to deal with nightmares, hm?” Rengoku asks, and he reaches out with the same finger he’d used to trace the stars, brushing a strand of hair from Akaza’s forehead. It’s such a gentle gesture, and Akaza’s chest aches.
Akaza knows he has a heart, a physical one that beats in his chest, pumping demon blood through his veins. But when he’s with Rengoku, he wonders if his heart has another use. Humans say that you feel with your heart—it’s certainly something Rengoku has said often enough—and Akaza has to wonder if there’s some truth in it.
“You can find something redeeming in even the most rotten things, can’t you?” Akaza asks.
“Are you saying not being able to dream is rotten?” Rengoku asks, and his hand is over Akaza’s hand now, the one that had been playing with the button of his jacket. “Or are you saying that you’re rotten?”
Akaza bites his tongue to keep from answering. He doesn’t know what he’d even say to that, but he knows that he never wants whatever those words may be to spill from his lips.
“Tell me about your dreams,” Akaza says instead. “Your nightmares.”
Rengoku, bless him, accepts that Akaza doesn’t want to answer his previous question. He says, “I dream about chasing the moon. Sometimes I’m the sun, sometimes I’m not. But we always run across the sky in a never ending chase. I can never catch him though.”
“Is that the dream or the nightmare?”
“It’s commendable that you think there’s a difference.”
“How poetic,” Akaza says after a moment.
Rengoku’s answer is a deep chuckle. Akaza likes his laugh. Perhaps if he himself were more poetic, he would liken it to the melodic sound of chimes, the ringing of bells. Something beautiful and fleeting. Something ephemeral.
Rengoku’s hand feels warm over his.
He is surely the sun, Akaza thinks, and then wonders just how long he can bask in his warmth before he gets burnt. He’s a demon, and he doesn’t deserve the sun. He’s the moon in Rengoku’s dream.
Rengoku has already caught him, though.
Akaza stares up at the twinkling stars, at the maps of constellations he cannot even begin to understand. Rengoku’s arm tightens around him, and Akaza’s eyes flutter shut.
He’s asleep before he knows it.
He does not dream.