It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?
i n s t r u c t i o n s • Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!
o p t i o n s 01 • FEAR. Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.
02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.
03 • PAIN. Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.
04 • SOLITUDE. For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...
05 • DISCOMFORT. Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.
06 • PENSIVE. Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?
07 • SADNESS. Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.
08 • ANGER. You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.
09 • RESTLESS. You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.
10 • WILDCARD. Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario. |
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bakerstreet2012-11-15 06:41 pm
Irene Adler || BBC Sherlock
07 - Trying something. Email if no good.
He should really cut back on eating so much, he thinks. It's making him tired.
She's different when he hasn't slept. The version of a perfectly primed dominatrix. More clever, perfectly coiffed.]
That time of night, is it?
Eee. <3 Emal ME if this doesn't work for you?
He's different when she sees him on those nights. Rougher around the edges, wearing his damage more obviously, less cleverly calculating. Logically, she knows it can't be real, can't be true, that he is here. But it is only on bad nights that she sees him, so she dismisses it as dreams of a too-tired mind, rather than that of sentiment.
It had been Karachi, this time, that had sent her into the streets like a ghost, the dominatrix her armour against her dreams, to meet the brittle, bitter detective.]
You already know the answer to that question. Why ask?
test
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[he zips up his blue vest and tucks his hands into his pockets. It's cold. He hates how cold it can get here in the winter. It makes his bees unhappy, he thinks. It makes them fussy and irritable and want to travel elsewhere, anywhere else.
Or perhaps he's thinking this because he's tired. This is very possible.]
Not that I'm desperate for it. Not that I've missed any sort of conversations we've ever had ever.
[he looks over at her. She's taller than he remembered. Her hair is smoother. She looks tired.]
Nightmare.
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[The faint smile fades away at his observation, to be replaced by an expressionless look into the middle distance.] And here I thought it was sheer stubbornness that kept you up.
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Bit presumptuous, don't you think? I mean, you listened, that's more than most can say. Until Watson, but that's---different.
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She dodges around a pile of winter slush, and draws her coat around her. Manhattan is colder than London. It's an irritating truth in her little moments of fiction.]
Presumptuous? I believe Dr. Watson might call that the pot calling the kettle black. Or is that too obvious an answer?
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He turns to look at her again. Sharp angles in the light, like a perfectly aligned shadow of the way things used to be.]
Yes, but Watson always has a great deal to say about things I say, whether or not they're any of the good doctor's business.
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I'm sure the good doctor will have plenty to say about your sleeping habits. Case tonight?
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[he gives her a nod.]
Your nightmare, what was it about?
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[That was a far better conversation than the reminder of Karachi, and Irene was tempted to push on that line of thought rather than anything else. But if this was a dream, and how could it be anything else, Irene supposes it there would be little harm in playing along.
Another sidelong look before she looks away again.]
People not being on my side when I needed them to be.
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[his throat tightens as he asks, and he looks away from her, out into the cold night. Two blocks away is his father's other house, and another six to another, warmer house. The Brownstone is the coldest of the houses, of course. But he doesn't really want warmth, not with a question like that.
He clarifies.]
In your dream.
[In his dreams, she lives. He saves her. Over and over again.
He prefers not sleeping.]
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And perhaps it's that something else, that brokenness that coaxes the answer out of her, even though she remains difficult with the answer.]
Every time. I prefer not sleeping.
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I prefer you not sleeping, too.
[Not sleeping, not dead. Not gone. Even in this dream-form, even so wildly different, she's still Irene. He wonders if she'd fit him still, if touching her hand would be the equivalent of sliding a round peg into a square hole or the opposite.
He doesn't touch her to find out, in case it will break the illusion.]
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But she also prefers not starting awake to the vivid feel of a sword at her throat, to the imagined sound of crunching bone and death.
She takes a few more steps, then stops, standing in the middle of a pool of warm light cast by a streetlamp, and regards him.]
So says the dream. This is skirting perilously close to insanity, you realize?
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[He'd take insanity, though. It would be his, uniquely his, and he would wrap it up in locks and chains and hold onto it because then she could never leave him. Never really be gone.
Of course, Watson would find it. She does that. She'd find it and hand it to him an expect him to talk about it. She does that, too.]
Solve the crime with me. You can scare a few of the officers at the NYPD precinct.
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[But she looks up, where a few flakes of snow have begun drifting down.] The maintenance man then, the nanny flinches at the sight of blood, she'd be too ill after the first blow to finish the job.
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[He wonders where his mind must've come up with the name. Perhaps someone Irene had known that he'd met briefly, or a particularly interesting prostitute since his arrival in New York.
It hardly matters, and yet it does. Just how cruel can his mind be?]
A new lover? Unmarried and elderly millionaire? I hear my father's been looking for a new heiress to engage himself with for quite some time. You could be a Holmes.
[Now, that would be his mind being unbelievably cruel.]
Not the maintenance man. His hands are too large. Too unweildy. This type of flaying requires precision.
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[She leans against the lamppost, watching the snow drift down into the cone of light. She doesn't have all the information about the case, of course, but she has some. More than most.]
I assume you've dismissed the parents. The mother's withdrawal means her hands shake too much.
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[She's surreally beautiful, leaning up against the lamppost with the occasional flurry of snow falling around her hair like a halo. Not that Irene could've ever properly worn a halo. She would've been unbelievably boring if she did.]
If I touch you, will one of the two of us disappear?
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[The question startles her into looking back at him, back at the way tension lingers in the line of his body, in the way he's watching her like she is about to disappear. She marvels at how her mind has made those details so clear, while writing him so differently, so subtly unlike the man who'd walked into her flat in Belgravia.]
If you do, I would expect you to disappear before I did.
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[There is no lack of sincerity in his words. He genuinely believes this, just as he genuinely believes that her death is his fault. No amount of psychological nagging on Watson's part will change his mind.
He looks away and sniffs, telling himself that the cold air is irritating his nose.]
Unless he doesn't know. A split personality, perhaps?
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Even Karachi and Islamabad had been defined more by what had not been said than what had, by the recorded breathless moan of a mobile text alert, by the touch of skin that was an unspoken farewell.
That brings a small, melancholic smile to her lips.]
You think a split personality is more likely than the mistress?
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[he raises his hands up to his face and rubs his eyes.]
46 hours, no sleep. Hallucinating. I probably need some coffee.
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