Work Text:
The only rule the landlady had given you was simple: by the time the witching hour hits, be asleep.
For the first few nights, you complied- too tired out from the stress of moving and starting college to even contemplate staying up.
Once you had settled in, though...
It was really easy to lose track of time when you had so much work to do.
The first time you stayed up until three, you didn't even notice. The second, you brushed it aside.
On the third night, you looked up from your laptop and locked eyes with a figure in the shadows.
It was glowing softly, eyes a gentle grey, and had no other discernable features besides that. Despite not knowing what it looked like, you immediately thought of it as beautiful.
Before you had realized what happened, you had set your laptop aside, posture slackened as it approached.
A creak in the floorboards broke you from your reverie, and you jumped slightly.
You could feel the sweat rising to your skin as it climbed atop your bed, and you crowded yourself against the headboard.
Suddenly it paused before backing away, returning to the shadows.
You grabbed your glasses from the nightstand. The clock read four.
Of course you wanted to move out- no sane person would want to live in a house with that thing! It's just... you couldn't really afford another place. You didn't have enough time to get another job, and all of the other forms of housing were closer to the college, making them more expensive.
So you held out instead. You started setting alarms for 2:45, and every time it went off, you went to sleep. And that was the end of it.
But, the thing was- you had a research paper due in your 8 AM class, and you had procrastinated for most of the week. You only had a page finished. Without thinking, you turned off all of your alarms and got to work.
You noticed, this time. You found yourself fighting yawns and you shook your head, wondering why you were so tired.
There was a creak, and you froze. You kept your eyes on the laptop.
You took a deep breath and forced yourself to think.
You had an idea- not a good one, one that was almost guaranteed to fail- and you could only hope that it would buy you some time.
You focused your gaze at a point to the right of the thing and held out your left hand, palm up.
"Hello," you said, fighting to keep the waver out of your voice, "could I have your name?"
The room seemed to freeze in place. All of the usual sounds of the apartment disappeared, and your hand trembled.
Then, the thing stepped back into the shadows.
You sucked in breath after breath before forcing yourself to calm, counting one-two-three-four in your head.
You glanced at the clock- three thirty. Still during the witching hour.
You paused, trying to make some sense of the situation.
Shaking your head, you closed your laptop and set it on the floor. You'd finish your paper in the morning.
The next time it happened, you had nearly forgotten about it. The salt on your windowsills was still there, of course, and there was a rosary hanging above your bed- you weren't even religious, you had to go and look for it specifically- but other than that? There was no time to think about the mysterious monster that only came out during the witching hour.
You had deleted the alarm from your phone a few weeks ago, and you relied on your instincts to get you to sleep on time.
You had accidentally stayed up for the earliest bits of the witching hour a few times, but the thing didn't show up. You wondered if you were hallucinating.
And then it came back.
You were eating popcorn and watching horror movies in bed- a stupid idea to begin with, now that you thought about it- when you saw the light. Your heart stuttered to a stop, and the hand in your bowl of popcorn clenched into a fist.
"Hel- Hello," you said, sticking a hand out, "could I have your name?"
And then the thing opened its mouth.
"Eyuken," it said, voice somehow guttural and beautiful at the same time.
You felt something come over you- at first a gentle tingling teasing at the tips of your fingers, then rushing through your body with the force of a river.
Euphoria flooded your senses, and you couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled past your lips. You felt as if you were floating, like you could never be hurt, never die-
The high slowly ebbed, and you felt yourself settle.
The thing- Eyuken, you thought, and a burst of that euphoria shot through you- seemed less magnetic suddenly. Its glow had dimmed, and you could make out its features. It had many eyes speckled across its body, a mismatch of scales and feathers covering every bit of skin.
"What are you, Eyuken?"
Its name seemed to slip out on its own accord, and the question became an order.
"I am an Incubus," it- he?- said in that amazing voice, now just a bit rougher.
The moment the words had been spoken he froze, then let out a rattling equivalent of a gasp.
"What have you done to me, faerie? Stop this!"
You blinked.
"I'm not a... faerie. I'm just a human."
Eyuken seemed to curl in on himself, arms coming to wrap around his head.
"I was ensnared by a fledgeling?"
"...a what?"
He didn't answer, only muttering to himself in a language you couldn't decipher.
"What is a fledgeling, Eyuken?"
He went rigid, one of his mouths opening to respond, and you felt a grin spread across your face.
This would be fun.