Chapter Text
C00lkidd was sleeping unnaturally soundly.
007n7 had noticed it almost immediately after laying him down for his afternoon nap.
Normally, getting the little boy to sleep was an entire campaign. There would be climbing. There would definitely be bargaining, and at least three attempts to escape the bed under the excuse of needing water, despite the cup already sitting beside the bed.
Sometimes C00lkidd simply decided blankets were optional and rolled himself onto the floor instead.
Today...
"...Huh."
The child had curled beneath the blanket, thumb loosely tucked against his mouth, and simply... fallen asleep. Just like that. Simple, and perhaps innocuously deceptive.
007n7 stood in the room for another few moments, waiting for the inevitable stirring as he backed away to the door. Maybe the pads of his feet were loud enough to be heard by the child, what with the unique genetics the kid had.
Nothing.
His chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths as 007n7’s eyes tracked them carefully.
"...Well."
He wasn't about to complain.
Quietly, 007n7 eased the bedroom door almost shut and returned to the rest of the apartment.
As he tiptoed to the kitchen to grab a snack before his eventual working-on the deadline that he had for work, he found himself choosing the least crinkly plastic chip bag out of habit to not risk a chance of waking the kid up every time he reached in for a bite.
As he successfully made his way to the table and opened his computer, waiting for it to boot up, the silence felt foreign. There were no tiny footsteps racing across the wooden floor, no mysterious crashes followed by suspiciously innocent silence. No small voice proudly announcing he'd found a bug and wanted to keep it.
Just...
Peace.
He could get used to this.
Over the next hour, 007n7 was surprisingly productive.
He actually managed to wash every dish stacked in the sink. Then, he swept the floor. He then chose to repair the loose cabinet hinge that had been bothering him for two weeks. He even organized a shelf he'd been meaning to sort through since adopting C00lkidd.
The house had never looked more spick and span, but every few minutes, he found himself instinctively pausing, straining his ears.
Waiting for the familiar little patter of feet.
Absurdly, there was nothing.
Maybe this was what happened when kids grew older and got over the wailing every few hours stage of being a baby.
"...Best nap you've ever taken," he muttered.
It was almost impressive.
Nearly two hours later, curiosity finally won.
007n7 cracked open the bedroom door. The room looked exactly as he'd left it, just with soft afternoon light filtered through the curtains.
C00lkidd hadn't moved an inch, not even enough to kick off his blanket.
"...Still?"
He walked over quietly.
Children slept deeply all the time.
Didn't they?
The kid’s red fur was soft and fluffy, cresting the crown of his horns and threading through the pads of his claws, leaving them out in little tufts that poked through so only itty bits of it could be seen.
He reached down, meaning only to straighten the blanket where it'd folded awkwardly. The back of his fingers accidentally brushed the child's arm.
007n7 immediately pulled back, freezing in the icy silence, awaiting the eventual fluttering open of eyes.
C00lkidd was a light sleeper despite all his protests about bedtime. A touch, a creaking floorboard, sometimes even a louder breath was enough to earn a sleepy complaint.
"Hm."
007n7 shrugged it off. Must just be exhausted. He left him to rest. Maybe he’d go prepare some more preparation intensive dinner, now that he had the time.
Another hour passed.
Dinner was past ready.
The smell of soup drifted through the apartment.
007n7 glanced toward the clock.
"...Okay."
Four hours for an afternoon nap.
That was more than enough sleeping for a child of his age right?
He returned to the bedroom.
"C00lkidd," he whisper-called, sneaking into the room with a grin.
No response.
He smiled.
Figures.
He edged over, and sat carefully on the edge of the mattress, feeling it dip in a slow gradient until it stopped dipping, and then he moved again.
"Hey."
A gentle pat on the shoulder.
"...Come on."
He poked him lightly. The red kid’s breathing stayed slow, an infinitesmally small rise and fall that it felt too delicate to be real.
"...Kid?"
He placed a hand on him, feeling the velvet fur. The weight should’ve been enough to wake him by now.
The smile disappeared from 007n7’s face.
"C00lkidd."
007n7 frowned harder, and shook him a little more firmly. The little, tiny body rocked with the motion.
"C00lkidd."
No sleepy groan. No grumble, no annoyed swatting away of the hand.
Nothing. A cold feeling crept quietly into his stomach.
...That's not funny.
He knew it wasn't. C00lkidd wasn't pretending. He'd barely learned what pretending even was.
007n7 reached down and gently lifted one of the child's hands.
Oh gods he wasn’t waking up.
The panic arrived all at once. The room suddenly felt much too quiet. His thoughts started tripping over each other.
Was he breathing enough? Was he hallucinating that he was breathing?
007n7 put his ear to his chest, but with all the roaring blood coursing through his ears, he wasn’t sure he would hear anything but his own thoughts.
Had he hit his head earlier?
Had he eaten something?
Had he gotten sick without showing it?
Was this normal?
No.
No, this wasn't normal.
Children didn't sleep through being shaken.
Did they?
"C00lkidd?"
His voice cracked.
The little boy's head lolled with the movement. 007n7's heart lurched so violently he thought it might actually stop.
He put both hands on the kid, and shook him.
"...Mm..."
007n7 froze.
A tiny sound.
Barely louder than a sigh.
The child frowned.
His nose scrunched.
One eye opened halfway before immediately trying to close again.
"...No..."
His tiny voice was thick with sleep.
"...Sleepin'..."
007n7 blinked. His own breathing had become shallow.
He'd never realized how terrifying sleep could look, he dimly recalled, as he tried to let out the breath he’d been holding to suck in a fresh cold one.
“...Wake up c00lkidd…It’s time for dinner.”
C00lkidd rolled onto his other side.
"...Five..." The child buried his face further into the pillow. "...Minutes..."
007n7 simply stared. "...You."
His shoulders sagged so suddenly they almost hurt. "You absolute menace," he weakly grinned, ruffling the boy’s head.
C00lkidd responded by making an incoherent sleepy noise and attempting to pull the blanket over his head.
007n7 actually laughed.
It escaped somewhere between a sigh and something suspiciously close to tears. He sat there for a long moment, one hand still resting lightly on the little boy's shoulder.
You scared me half to death, you know that?
That’s what he wanted to say. Instead, very carefully, he brushed a strand of hair away from C00lkidd's forehead.
His kid was warm, healthy, and breathing.
Just...
Apparently capable of sleeping through the end of the world.
He stayed there another minute anyway, watching the tiny rise and fall of his chest, just to reassure himself it was real. Apparently, this time it looked like a larger rise and fall, if his mind was tricking him again.
Only after convincing himself for perhaps the tenth time that everything was fine did he finally stand.
"...I'll reheat the soup."
As he reached the doorway, a tiny sleepy voice drifted after him without opening its eyes.
"...Dad..."
007n7 stopped.
"...Yeah?"
"...Soup..."
A pause.
"...No peas..."
007n7 couldn't help smiling.
"...No peas, I got it buddy."
"...'Kay..."
Silence settled over the room once more.
Even so, throughout dinner, and long after C00lkidd finally woke, rubbing his eyes and asking why 007n7 looked so tired — 007n7 found himself absentmindedly checking every few minutes that the little boy was still breathing.
He never admitted why.
And C00lkidd never understood why, for the next several weeks, every nap came with 007n7 quietly peeking through the bedroom door every fifteen minutes, just to make sure an impossibly deep sleeper was, in fact, only sleeping, much to his father’s inconvenience when the somehow suddenly back-to-light-sleeper was being waken up by the sheer sound of 007n7 sighing at the doorway again.