Chapter Text
It’s that feeling again. The sinking, bubbling feeling in your stomach that tightens your chest and makes you woozy. You’ve been here several times. It rarely goes further, but it still hurts.
Breathe in, breathe out. It doesn’t help. That clawing feeling of worry and nervousness sits, a tangled ball of terrible worms, in your gut.
You’ve told almost no one, outside of jokes. Everything is overwhelming, if just one thing is wrong it gets worse. You have no comfort, nothing to help, other than to watch the clock and wait. Music plays in your ears, slow and melancholy, but it does little to calm your frazzled nerves.
You feel like crying, but you’ve been out of tears to spend for too long. So blankly you stare in the distance, hands icy cold. Almost everything makes you feel horribly nauseous. Your eyes squeeze shut, trying to block out the world, trying to compose yourself.
Suddenly there’s a weight on you. It’s comforting, almost soft and gentle, like a blanket. But that’s strange, you don’t own a weighted blanket. You never have, because no one was allowed to know.
A rumbling sound makes itself heard, and then you know. It vibrates in your ears and head, soothing your aches and sorrow. Claws, usually so sharp and threatening to others, gently massage your temples and stomach, loosening the barbs that jabbed into your mind.
It’s him, you know it is. Who else could be so large and monstrous, yet so sweet? He drapes himself over you, quieting the intrusive thoughts and worries and bumping his head on the back of yours like an enormous cat with a purr. The awful, nauseating feeling in your stomach calms, going from a boil to more of a simmer. It’s still there, but simply more manageable.
He lets out another purr, deep and steady. You shift so you can look up at him and he wraps his arms around you, nudging your face with his own, covered by that red, curling mask. You’re surrounded by only him, there’s nothing else to worry about.
The world is quiet here, and the nerves will never truly go away. But perhaps it can be easier, when you’re asleep in his arms. You lean against his chest, drowsily watching his sparkling cape flow like the night sky, listening as his purrs fade into background noise.
And there, in the gentle, loving grasp of a monster, you slept.