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“Mika…”
Yuu talked in his sleep.
When they were little—when they were still living in the orphanage together, before the apocalypse happened—they had to share a room, because there weren’t enough for everyone. Mikaela and Yuu shared along with Akane and a few other of the younger kids, the trio acting as makeshift parents to them, and Yuu had a bad habit of staying up later than he needed to; and, of course, consequentially keeping Mika up along with him.
They talked a lot, talked about a lot of things that seemed so pressing at the time, things that were blown out the window the moment the illness struck; and when they had to be quiet and pretend to sleep, Akane scolding them for staying up so late, Mika found himself reaching out to Yuu, wishing their bunks were closer so he could touch him, never mind that they already shared a bunk bed.
Sometimes, one of the younger kids would wake up crying, and they would crawl into bed with whoever offered it first (mostly Yuu, because he reacted quickest), staying there until their sobs quieted down over the hush of the older children, the gentle and parental-esque words that they so often spoke lulling them to sleep. In the morning, they rolled out of the bunk and scrubbed the dried tears away to be taken out later.
Mika had had times where he’d woken up covered in sweat, images of his old family flashing behind his eyelids even when they were open, mouth salty and covered in the lingering taste of iron and blood. When that happened, he felt his hand twitch, got the insatiable urge to be comforted, to cry out like the children had, to kick and scream and sob and run to someone’s arms and be treated his age for once (weren’t twelve year olds allowed to cry?).
He couldn’t bring himself to act on the urge. Yuu, Akane, and he were the leaders of their family, and he couldn’t break down like that in front of the children, not when they looked up to him so much, not when he wasn’t meant to show that much emotion. He so often said that his old family didn’t matter seeing as he had a newer and better one right there, but that didn’t stop the time behind closed eyes from being plastered in memories of them.
Yuu didn’t have nightmares the way Mika and the smaller kids had. When he’d first gotten there, when they’d just first met and everyone was still getting used to each other, he didn’t sleep much, thus starting the trend of Mika staying up with him.
All the times Mika asked why he so often did that, he only grinned and said that it was fun, but Mika saw him the few times he’d gone to sleep early, and it ended less than pleasantly, Yuu talking in his sleep—although “yelling” was more appropriate a term, as he woke up the rest of the orphanage, shouts of I’m not a demon, don’t hurt me, Mom, Mom— filling the room.
The kids ended up calming him down. He woke up to a bunch of toddlers and five-year-olds hugging him, asking him to please stop crying. Mika watched the display, but didn’t join it, even when he found himself wanting to.
When they were forced to live like livestock—when the vampires had captured them, and the apocalypse had inevitably happened—Yuu’s habit got worse. He didn’t scream names, and he didn’t talk about demons, but he mumbled, he swore, he cursed the vampires and promised to destroy them, his hatred for them burning bright enough in that tiny twelve-year-old’s body to have him think about it even in his sleep, even when he was supposed to be relaxed.
Mika kept the habit of staying up late, but instead of talking to Yuu, he read, and he planned their escape, and he listened to his best friend sleeptalk, fantasizing about leaving with their family and never coming back, just them living on their own and getting by and being free of the parasites that called themselves vampires.
Akane worried. She kept awfully good care of both Yuu, Mika, and the children, and Mika knew she caught wind of him beginning to plan even before he’d told everyone. She never said anything about it, but Mika had a feeling she knew anyway. She really was a better mother than he could’ve ever asked for, although her maternal position did nothing but leave a bitter taste in his mouth. She was twelve. She was a child. She should not have been a mother.
But, then again, they shouldn’t have been a lot of things. Everyone in the orphanage had had hard lives, but most of the kids had been too young when it had happened for them to remember it, so their most horrid memories were of the present.
Days passed, painful and slow.
Mika stayed up later, later, later, until it wasn’t even a bother when Ferid kept him so long that he came back to the sounds of sleeping and one head of black hair that refused to rest for fear of Mika’s safety. Yuu worried. He didn’t want Mika going to Ferid, but Mika had to, had to—
It was the worst decision of his life.
Only Yuu got away.
Mika’s nightmare fuel was replaced, from sobbing mothers to red, red, red; to Yuu’s face right before he turned and ran; to Ferid’s teasing right before he ripped away everything Mika had ever loved right from under him.
Family to family.
His nightmares didn’t stop, they only evolved; instead of a family he was thrown out of, rejected by, it was a family he had destroyed, the deaths of those he loved undeniably his fault and his fault alone. Yuu blamed himself for Mika being turned into a vampire, but the blame rested solely on his shoulders. He had gotten them killed, he had gotten himself turned into the one thing he hated more than anything, he had brought this upon himself.
Even after the war settled—even after he was back with Yuu, even after they’d been saved and found a family again—the fuel never ran out. Red, red, red. This time the images of war, of the countless people he’d killed, visited him as well. Guilt was something he hadn’t known for a long time, every emotion he had besides hatredhatredI’llFuckingKillYouAll having been replaced with a dull, empty throb, a numb pain that sat there and rotted in his stomach for four years. It came back full force and hit him so hard he couldn’t breath for a while.
Yuu still sleeptalked.
Mika found this out the second week of them living together. He hadn’t out grown it. Of all the ways he’d changed, that wasn’t one of them.
Even now, Mika hesitated to reach out. When the images behind his eyelids got too strong to bear and his breath choked out like he was drowning and he tasted iron and blood on his tongue again, Yuu was sure to catch it, to drag Mika back to himself and wrap warm arms around his best friend.
It was nice, Mika could admit.
He preferred it to screaming, at least.
They didn’t stay up late anymore. Over the years, Yuu had fixed his sleeping schedule, but Mika’s had only shifted, another effect of being a vampire that he hated hated hated. While it had been fun when they were kids, it was unsettling now, the way he could go days without sleep, nights spent staring at the ceiling and wishing he were anything but what he was, cursing himself and the way things had played out, like it was some sort of cruel fucking joke God was playing on him, having a laugh up there wherever he was.
You wanted to stay awake so much when you were little; now you have your wish, don’t you, Mikaela? Is it not enough?
It would never been enough.
Not until Mika was dead, at least.
“Mika…”
Yuu was sleeptalking.
He still hadn’t gotten nightmares the way Mika had since they were still at the orphanage, that hadn’t changed, but he spoke quietly, hurriedly, like he was calling out to Mika. It turned desperate in a moment, the dark-haired boy’s hand reaching out to grab hold of something. Mika grabbed it and held on like that could possibly do something to make any of this better.
Yuu didn’t wake up screaming, nor did he even wake up unpleasantly. The dream seemed to have shifted, if the way his body had relaxed once again was any indicator, although he still said his friend’s name, gentler now, fondly.
When he blinked his eyes open groggily, it was because Mika had been crying too hard, too loudly, despite his attempts to stop it.
“Mika!” Yuu pulled his bedsheets back to get closer to the blonde, worry written in the crease in his eyebrows, awake now. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Mika couldn’t stop crying long enough to respond. Nothing is wrong. Nothing happened. I don’t know why I’m crying. I haven’t cried in so long—this hurts, Yuu-chan. I’d forgotten just how badly it hurt to exist. Why am I like this?
He didn’t get anything out. Yuu didn’t need to for him to know. In a moment, Mika had those familiar arms wrapped around him, pulling him into the other. He hadn’t been touched like this in a long time. He hadn’t been touched without the intent to harm in a long, long time.
It hurts, Yuu-chan.
He cried harder. He felt like a twelve-year-old again, forced to grow up too quickly, covered in a shell made of positivity that encased the rawness and vulnerability he had to hide so well. They were back at the orphanage, up talking about irrelevant memories that served to burn the brightest, Yuu’s hand finding his in the dim light their flashlight provided while they flipped through comic books and giggled, teasing and imitating Akane’s scolding voice.
“It’s okay, Mika,” Yuu’s voice said, soft and gentle and just a little bit sad. “I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I love you.
I hurt you.
It hurts.
Remembering hurts.
It hurts. It hurts.
Has it always been this painful, Yuu-chan?
“Yuu-chan,” he exhaled, shaky shaky shaky.
“It’s okay, Mika, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here, Mika. It’s okay.”