Or How I Manned up and de-anoned with this shit.
From
THIS post at the xmen_firstkink meme.
Prompt: "I just want fic where someone naps often and in strange places, and it weirds their SO out."
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'Why the hell is the Demon sleeping in the Closet?' OR Azazel's got a really funny sleep schedule and has stopped giving a shit about it.
HE doesn't think it's strange at ALL. It takes a surprisingly large amount of energy teleporting all over the god damned world, really, and nobody seems to respect that. It's damn well tiring.
So it's no big thing for him to claim sleep whenever he's got the chance, especially with Shaw constantly sending him on impromptu recon missions to Argentina and the fucking middle-of-nowhere Africa. (Honestly, he had no real IDEA where he was, only that after thirty-two straight hours he had managed to come to the conclusion that really, elephants were not all that interesting, and Africa was boring as sin. Oh, right, and that kid he was supposed to be watching was just tall. Nothing mutant about him.)
When he'd gotten home, Shaw had sent him out to take out some government lackey he swore was plotting something, eh, who cared, Azazel had simply gone, stabbed the man in the eye with his tail, and teleported back, exhausted and cranky.
And had then proceeded to pass out for the next two days to sleep.
Shaw had either decided to let him be, or, more likely, had realized that an exhausted teleporter was a sloppy teleporter. (Azazel had warned him once of the dangers of teleporting into solid matter. Graphically. With hand-motions to describe the effects.)
But exhaustion aside, it never actually explained why Azazel seemed content to sleep so much.
He always claimed it was just because he kept strange hours- they all did, really- and he wanted to always be rested for the next mission.
The others left the subject alone for a while after that.
Emma merely shoved him aside when she caught him stretched out on the couch in the lounge- he'd smacked her with his tail on instinct, but she'd only caught it- telepath reflexes were something scary- and given him an icy glare until he'd shrugged unapologetically and rolled to his feet to go do something else.
Riptide had been rather curious when he'd found the red-skinned mutant asleep standing up once. Azazel's tail had been wrapped around his own waist and then looped around a support beam he was leaning on, arms crossed over his chest as if he were simply waiting for something...but Janos had gotten close enough to realize he was fast asleep... that didn't last long, though, as a tiny little tornado placed just inside one of those pointed ears jerked him awake, yelping and swearing in a low snarl of Russian before he recovered and proceeded to teleport Janos to Siberia for an hour before finally being ordered to go get him back.
(Shaw had seen the whole incident occur. Emma was, for the longest time, convinced he would have been content to leave Riptide there a lot longer if it hadn't been necessary to have him rip through an air field right then.)
Shaw was actually lucky enough to see him lying on the floor behind the Hellfire Club's bar- the one in the 'private room' they used- Shaw hadn't said a single word, just left him there as he mixed up his martini, then left. (Azazel was free to sleep wherever the hell he liked, as long as he was ready whenever Shaw called him. And indeed he was, appearing by his side with a a puff of black and red smoke without a hair out of place not twenty minutes later when Emma summoned him to them.) Azazel had just muttered something about eating olives out of the jar as he'd left, and Shaw had sent him on a recon mission to Tibet for the next week. (So THERE.)
After Shaw began to institute his plans for his revolution, Azazel's habits only ever got weirder.
He began to take full advantage of any moments he wasn't required to be killing, teleporting, or driving a damned nuclear submarine to be sleeping. (Or polishing his swords. Or training- okay, he had a lot to do, really, but free time was frequently spent napping.)
Angel, the first day after she'd been recruited, found him in a closet. He was curled up on the floor, knees drawn up to his middle, forehead resting on knees. He'd stared at her when she'd pulled the door open- (she'd been looking for windex) and just rather impatiently regarded her until she managed to squeak out a request.
"Um. Windex?" She'd asked hopefully.
Azazel's tail had uncoiled from where it had been curled around his leg (huh, Angel thought, never knew he did that), snagged a bottle of the electric-blue spray cleaner, and handed it to her, even as the demon-mutant's head dropped back onto his knees.
Angel had just stammered out a thanks (she got a dismissive snarl in return) and shut the closet to wander off rather confused about the whole ordeal.
Later, Riptide had merely shrugged when she'd told HIM about it. Emma had patted her shoulder and done about the same. She never said a word to Shaw.
Emma got to find him passed out in the laundry room. Looking disgustingly comfortable in a pile of freshly-dried towels. She'd found THAT little picture too funny NOT to share.
For a solid three weeks afterwards, Janos was calling him 'Zazel-kitty' and asking if he wanted his chin scratched or a bowl of cream. Azazel had teleported him to an unnamed location in the middle of the Amazon river that time. He'd smelled of fish when Azazel finally dragged him back, and wisely had ceased with the nicknames.
Of course, it didn't help that not three days after that, Riptide caught him legitimately curled up in his quarters in one of their safehouses just beneath the window in a patch of sunlight. 'Zazel-kitty' was returned as a Nickname and Azazel nearly murdered Janos until he remembered a certain lovely pair of shorts and 'Cabana-boy' was brought back.
(The Cabana-boy/Zazel-kitty war lasted all of a week before Shaw got sick of it and told them to shut the fuck up and just do their god damn jobs already.)
And this habit persisted even after the day on the beach, when they acquired a new leader and teammates. Of course, Magneto (never Erik, he'd informed them all with a tone nobody felt like arguing with) didn't notice at first, even when Riptide had been shouting something in Spanish about Azazel being asleep in the shower. Because, really, it had been a tiring few days, and Magneto just assumed the demon-mutant was tired from the constant trips to retrieve files, people, supplies, and the like to set up their new base of operations. And, of course, the breaking Emma out of Jail bit.
And then he walked into the kitchen one morning to find a contently-napping Mutant on the kitchen table, using a telephone book as a pillow.
Magneto had been completely speechless. Janos had fixed this lovely issue by merely walking in, grabbing hold of Azazel's tail, and jerking him into a red heap on the floor.
"I thought you were going to stop sleeping on the table, we eat there. God knows if you have fleas or something."
Azazel's response had been to wrap his tail around Riptide's calf and disappear. Magneto had just sighed, grabbed his coffee, and decided 'fuck this' before going to eat in the living room.
He never did find out where Azazel had teleported Riptide to, only that they were both rather sandy and smelled like salt when they came back. Emma had raised one perfect eyebrow at them, and gone back to reading her paperback novel.
Now, to be honest, Azazel's weird sleeping habits never actually bothered anyone. Sure, it was strange as hell to find him around like that, but by the time you got used to having him simply teleport in six inches from your face with no forewarning, finding him NOT spontaneously materializing in front of you was easier to deal with.
Except in Riptide's case. Because one ill-placed comment about him getting tired of Azazel not keeping a damn normal schedule had pissed off the Russian mutant to the point that from then on, Azazel was ALWAYS caught napping in a bed. Only it always happened to be Janos' bed. because what did locked doors mean to a teleporter?
Complaints were made- loudly. Emma just as loudly informed him to shut up and deal with it.
So Riptide did. And the next time he caught Azazel in his bed, he was dealt with quite severely, to the point that BOTH of them were quite tired after that, and the pair ended up passed out on Riptide's floor in various states of undress.
Neither of them complained much after that.
Emma was just glad it meant Azazel would stop napping in her closet. Because of course now, he was far more entranced by napping with Riptide. Only not much napping got done. Well, sometimes. But usually after the sex.
FIN