Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of all the things that could awaken Darius from his much required beauty sleep, a coughing fit was apparently all it took to ruin his lazy Sunday morning. 

But his annoyance disappeared instantly when he realized the coughing was coming from right next to him.

Rolling over on the bed, Darius saw the hunched form of Sebastian sitting up on their bed, a hand desperately covering his mouth as more harsh coughs escaped his throat, his body shaking with every hack that had come out of him.

“Darling? Are you alright?” came his concerned question.

After what felt like forever to make a response, Sebastian had finally gotten his coughing under control, taking a few gasping breaths before he spoke.

“I don’t feel so good,” he said in a quiet and raspy tone.

Darius crawled across the bed to sit next to him, a clawed hand already resting gently on his face, Darius nothing to himself on how searing hot the avian Amari’s skin felt to the touch.

“You’re really burning up. Perhaps you are sick?”

After holding back another cough, Sebastian answered,

“My head’s been feeling a bit foggy, my throat’s really sore, I feel like I just walked through a blizzard but I feel like my skin’s been set on fire-”

Sebastian turned away, using a wing to divide himself from Darius as he hacked out another, more violent cough. Once he was finished, he let his wing retreat to continue,

“-and I can’t stop coughing. I hope it didn’t wake you up. I know how much you value sleeping in on Sunday mornings, and-”

He was cut off once more when Darius set a hand back on his face.

“I would be annoyed at someone disturbing my slumber, yes, but how can I be if it’s because my beloved farmer is not feeling his best?”

Sebastian smiled at that, before another coughing fit overtook him. Darius drew his hand away, ignoring the sadness in Sebastian’s tired eyes as he got off the bed to pull on his robe and slippers.

“Where are you going?” came Sebastian’s struggled ask.

“What does it look like? I’m going to find the first servant awake at this hour to fetch us a doctor.”

Darius then noticed the fear in Sebastian’s face.

“It won’t be like I’ll be gone for too long,” Darius said, assuming that his departure, as brief as it would be, was the source of Sebastian’s reaction. “Besides, I don’t think the castle’s chambermaids would be best equipped at providing an Amari-”

Now it was his turn to be cut off when he felt Sebastian’s deathly grip around his wrist.

“Don’t,” he said anxiously. “Please don’t.”

Darius gave him a raised brow. “What do you mean? You don’t really want to ride this illness out, do you?” He attempted to tug his hand away, Sebastian keeping his grip tight, which was now starting to tick him off. “Come on! The sooner you let me go, the sooner we can…”

He had lost the remains of his sentence when he spotted the tears forming in Sebastian’s eyes.

“Darling? Are you alright?” Darius asked more softly. “Was it something I said? I wasn’t too harsh with you, was I?”

Sebastian shook his head, failing to hide the single tear falling out of one eye.

“No doctors,” he whispered. “Please.”

Darius had to hold back an exasperated sigh before nodding. “Alright, I won’t. But how do you expect to recover from whatever it is you have without any medical aid?”

Sebastian let out another cough before answering,

“Well, I usually make myself some tea with honey. And if I feel up to it, I make myself some chicken noodle soup. And maybe turn on a fan and grab a few ice packs to cool down my fever when my stash of cold and flu medicine runs low, as I prefer not risking a trip to the store when I’m already feeling like absolute crap, and…”

Darius kept nodding while mentally listing off what Sebastian told him, hiding his surprise that a commoner would go through all those efforts by themselves just to handle an illness without having a servant who could do all those tasks in half the time to do them.

“Alright, I think I can get that arranged. But I’ll still need to leave for only a moment. Servants can’t command themselves, you know.”

Even with Sebastian’s sad expression that begged for Darius to stay, he nodded once in agreement.

“Good. I’ll be back. Until then, you just stay right there in bed and rest, alright?”

Once more Sebastian nodded, coughing twice before settling himself in an attempt to sleep, Darius quickly exiting his room to scan the halls for any servants he could find, and upon finding one just settled on heading straight to the kitchen in hopes that one of the cooks would understand how to make the items he needed.

After all, how does one make tea, and what the hell is a chicken noodle soup?

Chapter Text

The next time Sebastian opened his eyes, he was greeted by the pitch black darkness surrounding him, quickly moving himself up from what he felt was a cold concrete floor instead of the warm softness of Darius’ bed.

He tried to look around, tried to make something out of the sea of black, but anything he could see was shrouded by darkness.

“Darius?” he tried calling out, no one calling back. “Darius? Donovan? Anyone?”

Then came the echo of footsteps.

He spun his head around in an attempt to track the footsteps that sounded so near yet so far away, eventually picking them up when they were starting to get closer…

“Who- Who’s there?”

He was answered by the sadistic laughter reverberating in the dark space.

“Oh, little dove. Don’t you remember me?”

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. It really couldn’t be her , could it?

The footsteps were drawing closer, taking their time with each and every step.

“Come on, little dove. We’ve been missing you.”

No. No.

There was a long and agonizing silence after, Sebastian beginning to wonder if perhaps it wasn’t her after all, if this place was making him hear things.

Until he felt the strong arms grabbing around him, a clawed, one arm holding a paw-like hand over his mouth to muffle his panicked scream, the other keeping a vice-like grip around his waist to keep his body still against the figure’s chest, the limb not bothered at all by his wild kicking and thrashing.

“Don’t fight, little dove,” she said in her sickly sweet tone. “He’ll be so happy once we return home. We’ll be together again as an odd but happy little family, just like old times.”

After some struggle, he managed to feel her index finger slipping over his lips.

“Hey! Stop it or I’ll have to-”

He didn’t hesitate when he managed to get a bite in, her hand moving away as she cried out in pain, her other arm still restricting him in its tight grip.

“You little rat!” her voice screamed, any sugar that once coated it removed to expose its malice. “You’re gonna pay for that!”

Everything was a blur as he was tossed in the air, the ensuing feeling of weightlessness cut short when his head hit against a hard surface with a smack!

***

“What do you mean, you don’t know how to make the soup?”

“Well, your highness, it’s a fairly popular commoner food, and we don’t have many recipes of that kind in our cookbooks.”

“Then come up with something! Improvise if you have to!” Darius then took a deep breath, trying his best not to lose his patience in the face of such incompetence. “At least tell me you know how to make tea.”

“Tea? We haven’t made that in a while, not since your father’s last meeting with that archmage from Sun Haven.”

“Is that a yes then?”

“Um, yes, your highness. We’ll prepare it right away.”

The imp scurried away to heat up a kettle on the nearest stove.

“And the soup?” Darius reminded.

“Um, I’m sure my cooks can figure something out.”

Darius just shook his head before making his leave, trying his best to remember the number of that pizza place Sebastian and Donovan frequently visited in case the soup idea doesn’t end well, and he had a strong feeling it would certainly be the case.

He was so lost in thinking about what else his lover would need that he gradually lost attention to his surroundings as he walked through the halls, not until he heard what sounded like crying coming from the direction of his chambers.

“Hm?”

Picking up the pace, Darius was nearly standing in front of his chamber doors when he felt something drag him a foot away by his arm.

“There you are!” said the voice of Xyla. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking all over this stinking castle for you! Don’t you remember the meeting we’ll be having today to discuss my expansion plan for the carnival? The plan that took me three stinkin’ months just to cook up?”

She continued on and on about what’s at stake at the meeting, Darius mostly tuning her words out to better focus on the gradually growing cries he now realized were coming from behind the door.

Sebastian?

“Hey, Earth to Darius. Are you even listening to me?” 

“Oh, um, yeah. I’ll be on it. There’s just a few things I need to get done first.”

Darius slid her hand off his arm and approached the doors, Xyla just standing there shaking her head.

“Fine, but don’t be late this time. I swear on Dynus that if you’re late again because you were spending some ‘alone time’ with sewer rat I’ll-”

A scream could be heard from behind the door, both demons freezing up in shock.

“Sebastian!” Darius cried, kicking the doors down with all his might, the doors slamming wide open to a sight that made his heart drop.

***

…Wake up…

…Wake up…

…WAKE UP, DAMNIT!

The sharp cuts of claws in his flesh awakened him with his own scream, his thrashing limbs kept still by the metal restraints of the operating table-like chair he found himself sitting in, a bright and sterile light shining from above to reveal the all too familiar room he was trapped in.

Anxiously glancing around, he froze upon meeting the gaze from the pair of her glowing, canine eyes.

“Oh don’t even bother with that,” she said so coldly. “Then again, maybe this will be easier if you tire yourself out.”

“Let me go!” he screamed rather pathetically. “Please! Don’t! Please don’t!”

“Too late,” a more colder, deeper voice said in a near whisper that made his hairs stand on end. 

No. It- It can’t be-

The voice gave a sadistically humored chuckle. “I'm shocked at how you don't recognize me. Then again, it's been so long. Too long, in fact.”

Him.