Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Oneshots/Imagines

Nick Scratch - No Rest For the Wicked

Full credit to steveshardaddy

It's 5 AM when you wake with a start.  Your face is hot and there's hair sticking to your forehead.  You already can't remember which nightmare it was that jolted you from your sleep, they've all blurred into one by now.  

Your hands are clammy, as you lift yourself into a sitting position against your nest of pillows and calm your racing heartbeat.  Soft early summer light filters through the blinds and casts dancing patterns on the floorboards of your attic room, chasing the shadows of the night into hiding.

You smile, imagining a world in which darkness only exists in dreams.  Your familiar, a small-statured Spaniel, watches you intently from his bed by the door.  You exchange a silent understanding and he settles back into sleep.

You notice that cobwebs adorn the highest corner of your ceiling, and just as you make a note to deal with them presently, the figure next to you stretches his arms and yawns widely. 

Nick squints against the morning sun which decorates his face with a golden glow.  He reaches for you with his eyes closed and when he finds your body is not lying peacefully next to his, he turns to look up at you in confusion.

Your name is a murmur on his lips and you reach your hand to settle in his hair.  Waves fall over his eyes in his unpolished state – the state only you get to see. 

'Nightmares?' he whispers, scrutinizing your face, a little knot of concerned wrinkles folding between his eyebrows. 

You nod solemnly and he rests his face on your thigh in defeat.  When he looks up again he seems so small and powerless, you can see that his worry for you consuming him.  He motions for you to join him, and you wiggle back down to lie next to him.

Your nightmares had become so frequent, you had begun to dread falling asleep.  The only peace you found was in Nick, and his ability to bring some happiness into your waking hours.  He is a master of distraction.  In this bed, graced by sunlight, inhabited by darkness, your faces almost touch as he mutters words of consolation, searching your eyes and kissing your forehead in turn.

He stresses over your nightmares, they aren't a good sign in any world or strand of belief.  And he can see how much they are eating you up from the inside. He holds you close, and eventually you fall into sleep once more.  Sunlight dances over two bodies, clinging to one another.  One in desperation and one in disbelief.

A disbelief that he could ever love as the mortals do.  He refuses to lose you to the darkness that gnaws away.  Curses can be lifted, he assures himself.  Nightmares go away.

~

Your sleep was uncharacteristically peaceful, wrapped up safely in Nick's arms, where nothing bad could surely reach you. A smile warms your face as you wake to find the two of you bundled together, tangled with sheets and each other.

As you both pull yourselves from the draws of remaining in bed for the foreseeable future, you watch him closely.  His body is silhouetted in the window, soft light dappled on his skin.  He runs an absentminded hand through his hair and it sticks up on end.  He turns and catches you staring, smirking knowingly.

There is a determination in him today.  He's going to the library, he says. 

He places kisses on your face, holding your chin in his hand. 

And you think to yourself, as you watch him leave, so filled up with love and his kisses lingering on your skin, that maybe your reality right now, with him, was a dream after all.