Obsessed With Short Kings

“Are you unable to sleep?”

Vanitas sluggishly looked up from his novel and turned in the direction of the voice. The room was shrouded in darkness, save for a single candle sat on the desk in front of him and the meager light of a crescent moon filtering through the window. He struggled to make out a white silhouette standing just beyond the blackened entrance to the room, eyes strained from reading in the candlelight. There was an undeniable weight to them, but Vanitas had long made a habit of resistance against the world. Holding his eyes open despite their increasing weight came easier than relenting to the incessant pull of sleep.

“I’m not tired.”

A gentle laugh floated from the doorway. It was a fond sound, the kind that spoke of understanding and patience at the musings of a stubborn child. Amused, intrigued, and not intended to slight. 

Vanitas bristled just the same. He pointedly turned back to the open pages of his book. “I’m reading.”

“Very well, then,” The voice said easily. “I am no stranger to sleepless nights. A distraction can be its own form of rest for a mind trapped within a restless body.”

Quiet footsteps drew near, and the vampire’s being became a tangible thing leaning curiously over his shoulder in the silence. The boy turned a page, sobering eyes skimming over words, though his attention had leapt from the story to the presence behind him with no hope of return. To inaudible breaths and unmoving limbs and unrushed spirit. Innocuous actions reminiscent of bygone danger.

He had not known the vampire for long, yet long enough to determine their occasional hovering to be nothing more than harmless interest. The risk of anything risk-adjacent was wrought with well-intentioned ignorance befitting a child: easy to spot and avoid the ill-effects, though at the consequence of equally child-like pouting. Cooking poisonous soup and posing unintentional threats were nothing but the errors of someone who didn’t know any better.

No one that took a knife to the hand with a sympathetic smile had a violent bone in their body.

Still, the known absence of danger didn’t displace the need for a watchful gaze in the night, and Vanitas was nothing if not cautious.

Their voice suddenly came louder beside his ear, and he resisted the urge to flinch. “Reading in low light hurts the eyes of humans, does it not?”

So what, if it did? Such a fact wouldn’t convince him to abandon his practices. “I’ll be fine.”

A contemplative hum rippled through the air between them. He flipped another page.

“Shall I read to you?” They proposed, and the boy’s sheer surprise at such a question finally lifted his gaze from the book.

Luna met his eyes with that ever-present look that lingered in the azure depths of their own. The light of life, of undeterred curiosity and eagerness to experience all it had to offer. A relaxed, singular focus on what lay ahead, and a subtle want for it to be theirs.

And in that moment, those eyes were set on him.

He hesitated despite himself. “Why?” 

“As I am sure you know, a vampire’s eyes can see in the dark as they do in the light. If I read to you, your mind may continue its distraction while your eyes may rest.” 

“But…why would you want to do that?”

Dark features softened in the candlelight, sapphire lips smoothing out into a warm smile. “Why not?”

Vanitas averted his eyes. He opened his mouth to argue, only to shut it a moment later with a feigned huff of defeat. He rose to his feet and pushed in his chair in silent agreement. 

In the corner of his eye, the vampire straightened. They picked up the open book in a hand, thumb pressed between pages to keep his place, and waved it in a motion for him to follow as they moved across the room. They sat in a rocking chair barely made visible by the light from the window, situated between it and the bookcases lining the neighboring wall, its frame softened by the drape of quilts over its back and armrests. He had seen Mikhail curled up in the vampire’s lap in that same seat enough times to know it was their favorite spot to lounge, and it seemed they intended to make him their next victim, if the soft pat of their lap was any indication.

“I don’t need to sit with you for you to read to me,” He huffed even as he followed, as if stating the obvious was any sort of defense. 

That knowing smile was still visible even in the even-fainter light. “I have noticed the jealousy in your eyes when you watch Misha sit with me. And I also know you wish not to take that from him. He is asleep. There is no need to be shy.”

Vanitas’ cheeks grew warm, and for once he didn’t immediately open his mouth to argue. He paused beside the chair, hands worrying at the hanging edge of a quilt. For a long moment, he stood quietly, and Luna waited with the patience of the moon hanging leisurely above them in the night sky.

“This stays between us,” He finally demanded in a not-so-demanding voice, tone hard but empty of threats.

“I won’t tell a soul,” They promised. Fond, genuine.

They offered him a hand, and Vanitas took it and climbed into their lap, and if the clamber of bony limbs over their own caused any discomfort, they didn’t let it show. They simply covered his frame with one of the quilts, tucking the edge up under his chin, and he found himself appreciating that they couldn’t see the heat rising to his cheeks. 

Sitting in someone’s lap was an unfamiliar experience. Their body was an uneven thing, hard juts in some places and soft flesh in others, wrapping around him and keeping him from slipping off onto the floor. Warm, though not as nice as he had imagined. Their chest rose and fell against him, the faint pumping of their heart joining in a slow, steady rhythm that clashed with the nervous thud of his own. One of their arms came to rest over his belly, and suddenly unfamiliar became wrong, that sense of danger beginning to flare up all over again, and he squirmed under it.

They seemed to understand, the arm over him disappearing, and he shifted until he found a more comfortable position on his side. It was easier, somehow, being close to another person when they weren’t behind him. Less intimidating, though likely more uncomfortable for Luna, with his elbow pressed into their ribs. He shifted back into the crook of their arm, legs curled up by their hip, and laid his head on their shoulder. Stayed like that, and when their arm came to rest once more on his side, it didn’t come with the urge to flee. 

“Now then,” They said, their words rumbling gently in his chest like butterflies in a cage. Pages rustled between their fingers, looking for a place to begin. “Ah yes, I remember this one.”

As they read, they began to rock the chair back and forth, the movements a subtle push and pull of muscle beneath his thighs and a gentle lull in his ears. Immediately, the boy grew tense, not one to be fooled by a clear ploy to inflict the curse of sleep, yet couldn’t find the will to tell them to stop. He instead set his focus on their reading of the book, clinging to consciousness by the ebb and flow of the plot.