I have to give complete thanks for this fic to my friend slr2moons. She got me into DMFA in the first place, then she requested fic, then she took the time to beta this for me! Seriously, she is just the best and you get to enjoy this fic all thanks to her!

This takes place between page 1164 and page 1171 and explores a little of what went on while Jyrras was asleep. It was written for 12daysofxxxmas day 2. Prompt is friendship (alternate prompt: cute animals).

The floating pink bunny of insanity was gone. It had disappeared at some point after Abel had curled up in the corner to quietly lose his mind. All he knew was that he had gotten bored waiting to have his impending breakdown and when he finally looked up, it was gone.

Instead of panicking, Abel felt a great deal calmer once the hallucinations went away. If he had been hallucinating, at least he was done now. If he had seen something real, it would be stopped by the wards he had put up. Probably. If not, at least he would have a better idea of what it was. Right now there was nothing in the room but him and Jyrras. Well, there was a lot of equipment and things, but he was pretty sure that had all been there the whole time.

Jyrras was still asleep, and he'd just been reminded a few weeks ago how long beings' sleep cycles could last. If he wasn't going to have a breakdown then he needed to find something to do with himself.

Exploring seemed like a good idea, but he wasn't really about to leave the lab even if that didn't involve unblocking the door. Trying to explore the lab led to mostly standing around looking at things thinking, "Oh wow, another huge shiny thing that does who-knows-what."

One machine looked like some sort of demonic grill with far too many pointy robot appendages. Then there was something that was like a vending machine on a base with spider legs. . . and it did make the expected drink-delivery 'thud' noise when Abel pushed random buttons, but then he realized the delivery slot looked way too much like a mouth and he wasn't about to stick his hand in there.

Every few minutes he would glance back at Jyrras, who was only moving to breathe. Beings already had such short life spans, so why did they have to spend such a large chunk of them asleep? It seemed like such a waste. Then again, he was only going to know Jyrras for a year or two, so why should it matter?

Abel didn't want to think about it. He searched the room for new distractions.

If he'd had the right materials, he could have redecorated. Maybe something in blue. Blue suited Jyrras. Not pink, since he'd found out a little while ago that was apparently the color of insanity. Was there a design that would soothe mad scientists and make them more willing to not perform experiments on their friends?

Not that he was Jyrras's friend or anything. . . but if Jyrras was going to consider him one against his wishes then he wanted the perk of not being hooked up to electrodes.

Interior decorating being out of his reach, Abel degenerated into fiddling with things. He just wanted to see how some of this stuff worked. He wasn't going to take anything apart. . . much. He just wanted to poke around to see how all the wires and shiny bits were connected.

A nice shock the minute he decided to put his paws where they didn't belong discouraged him, and left him to shake it off and try to smooth down his fur. Okay, no playing with the machines. Or at least not the buttons or internal electrical bits.

From one of the doors leading into deeper parts of the lab, sealed with wards but not even closed or barricaded, Abel could swear he heard someone say, "Shh, Daddy's sleeping."

That got him right back into freaking out territory, even though he couldn't see what had spoken. It sounded like the pink rabbit thing from before, but now he couldn't see it. Either it had gone out and couldn't get in again, or he was just hearing it out of crazy. It was enough to make Abel retreat to his corner.

Options? There were things in Jyrras's house that he hadn't been told about, and either Jyrras was a bad friend or he had just been too loopy with exhaustion to think of it. Or there were things in the house that even Jyrras didn't know about, and that was bad. Or Abel was going mad.

If it was the second option, maybe he should be protecting Jyrras. Beings were kind of fragile. Except as long as he stayed against the wall, nothing could sneak up on him! And he could see the whole area around Jyrras if anything tried to go for him, so really he shouldn't have to move, Abel tried to reason with himself.

Jyrras was still asleep. He was already kind of susceptible to death just by lacking a creature's natural defenses, and sleep made him even more vulnerable, and on top of that there were a lot of things that would consider him a nice little bite-sized snack. And he was halfway across the room from Abel's safe little corner. . . .

Reluctantly, Abel left his corner and crept across the room to sit with his back against the table Jyrras was sleeping on. He couldn't see anything through the open door, but he could have sworn it hadn't been open when he'd been putting up the wards.

After maybe half an hour keeping watch, smoothing both his hands over his tail until the fur finally decided to stay down, Abel felt himself relax again, just a little. They were safe in here. Unless he managed to electrocute himself.

"You'd better appreciate this," he told Jyrras in a low voice. Not that he was going to tell Jyrras about protecting him from crazy-making things that probably weren't really there. No, that way led to hugging. There would be no more hugging.

Jyrras's response was to roll over in his sleep, letting one arm slip off of the table to land on Abel's head.

"Keep your hands to yourself."

Abel tried to push Jyrras's limp arm back up with the rest of him, but it just fell against his shoulder this time. Abel had to scoot over to avoid it.

Still nothing appeared. Watching was starting to get boring when all he could hear was Jyrras making the occasional little noise in his sleep. Insanity was surely never meant to be this boring, and neither was actual danger. Abel was almost ready to rule out both once again.

Jyrras was still asleep, and he wasn't getting any more interesting. This time Abel inspected the things spread out on his worktable. A nice collection of sketches sort of helped identify some of the things scattered around the room. For example, the demonic grill-thing was apparently for babies. Abel looked at it, then at Jyrras, then back at the notes. Jyrras really didn't seem the type to cook and eat babies, or to help others do it. Maybe it was for entertaining demonic babies? Who liked fire and pointy things? That would make sense.

When he put the papers back he noticed there was a metal dish of paperclips on the middle of the worktable. Jyrras wouldn't mind him using those, surely. He could always get more.

It was immediately obvious what he should do with the paperclips. Jyrras's hair really needed fixing, and he'd just had to ruin it right after Abel had gone to the trouble of making him a more flattering outfit, too. Even if Abel could remember where Jyrras had announced his scissors were during that whole run of half-crazed chatter earlier (he had been a little more concerned with the knife at that point) he wasn't about to go looking for them.

Obvious did not mean easy, however. The paperclips did not want to take a new form. It was as if they were slimy, and his magic just kept slipping off. It seemed really strange for Jyrras to have something that was so saturated with magic that it wouldn't even shift. What was he doing, breaking down powerful artifacts for paperclips? But Abel wasn't really thinking of the difficulty so much as that Jyrras's haircut was very bad, and it would be fixed, so these stupid paperclips needed to listen to reason. Or alchemy, whatever worked.

Stubbornness won the day, and Abel emerged triumphant with a pair of nice, sharp scissors.

He probably should have waited for Jyrras to wake up, but Abel was really bored, and at least Jyrras was holding still. . . .

Abel was very careful to keep from catching the scissors on Jyrras's ear, holding it gently out of the way when he had to. He unsheathed his claws just enough to delicately untangle Jyrras's abused hair without nicking his scalp. He eventually had to cut Jyrras's hair quite short just to get rid of all the ragged bits.

He trimmed down half of Jyrras's hair until it was at least neat and then stopped, brushing hair trimmings from Jyrras's fur to scatter them across the pillow (his claws carefully sheathed now). He would need to wait for Jyrras to roll over before he could get the other side.

When he touched Jyrras's head, Abel could instinctively feel the shape of the mind shield he had placed there. With his hands cupped over the spot he could almost sense right through it, feeling the vaguest shadows of dreams flit below the surface like colored fish in a murky pond.

It wasn't like Jyrras had any specific reason he needed a shield to keep Dan out anymore. Then again, there wasn't any reason to take the mind shield off, either. It wasn't like Abel had any interest in peeking into Jyrras's head, even if there were dreams in there. . . . Besides, he didn't need to read Jyrras's thoughts to deal with him. Jyrras was all too open and friendly as it was. He didn't need those fluffy ideas of friendship being thought at him as well.

Abel tightened the threads of the spell, maintaining and strengthening it until he couldn't sense the flickering dreams anymore. The instant he was done he took his hands away, irritated enough to look for something else to do.

There was hair all over the pillow. Abel tried to focus on that instead. It just stuck to him or Jyrras or the pillow when he tried to brush it off, irritating him even more. He certainly wasn't going to pick it up strand by strand.

What if it was just all one long strand? Abel rolled one snippet of hair against another, spinning them together with a feat of magic that was outright lazy after the scissors. He rolled hair up off of the pillow and into his growing string, happily distracted for several minutes by the task. When his nice long string started to get tangled he simply 'borrowed' a pencil from Jyrras's workbench to make a spool for it.

Abel didn't need hallucinations or dreams to occupy him. He had string! And sooner or later Jyrras would roll over in his sleep and let him get at the rest of his mangled hair.

Jyrras was still asleep, but at least now Abel was no longer bored. He wouldn't need to wonder if he was losing his mind, or let his thoughts drift to places he didn't want them, for as long as the distractions would last.