Work Text:
It started with hands grasping in the middle of the night. Bedsheets being thrown away and ripped to shreds during nightly terrors. Choked curses and the hoarse whisper of a name thought lost. They felt the distance, the unspeakable fears in the empty first gaze passed over breakfast, the drowsy blinking of usually unblinking eyes, before they resumed their day-to-day behaviour. They realized that sharing a bed also meant sharing the pain. They didn't know if it was a relief to be there and a witness of the unwanted vulnerability or easier to be away but feel guilty about it.
It would take another century for the nightmares to subside. A century filled of wakings every other week, of sobs that shook the bedframe. A century of the hopelessness of a lover who couldn't soothe his better half enough, the frustration bleeding through his hands onto the other's skin. Said frustration causing a number of fights that happened in the wrong moments, times there should only have been space for love and understanding.
Nights were spent awake and sometimes apart, because sometimes the nightmare didn't stop when they were awake, when it dragged on until someone left and they made the bitter realization that only absence calmed frayed nerves when both parties were on edge. Absence does make the heart grow fonder in some cases and it made it easier to face another day after night terrors one would never know about except one had spoken to the birds (or the ducks or the plants).
A century full of human realizations, of simple regrets, mundane knowledge that couldn't be read about in a book because everyone assumes that it's common knowledge, just as a cooking book never specifies in its recipe that eggs mean chicken eggs and not something else entirely.
It takes them a while to understand how to comfort the other. Learning when the angel wanted to be left alone and when the demon needed the strong touch of an unwavering hand, committed to whatever will be. It's knowing that even when unsure there is always a will and humans suck it up and act as if they can hang stars in the sky, so two supernatural entities could hold onto each other and promise the same, couldn't they?
Humans were stronger, they both thought. But they had become more human than ineffable and over the years they learned how to be just as stoic and withstanding as those beings they admired so much. Yet, it takes them a lifetime to figure it out. Still, they had many more lifetimes to perfect their little dance and it wouldn't be them if they didn't take their time, would it?
Nevertheless, every sob and every shiver, every fear and every doubt always makes way to love. And so, every night, each century it goes on. Love love love, they whisper in their own language. There, they find rest. A place where their constantly searching souls tether to each other. Then, finally, they sleep.