#I haven't slept in days but who's counting

[nade2308]

“Bad dreams are ghosts of our fears and worries, haunting us while we sleep.” 

― Maria V. Snyder

Part 1 || Part 2

Ao3 link here

@whumptober

@thethistlegirl

[splendidissimus]

2004 - I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?

((Content warning: brief mentions of SA / nsfwhump / incest / sexual situations, imprisonment, emotional abuse, captivity, sleep deprivation, starvation (minor) ))

((Promptspiration: @whumptober 2023: day 12: I haven't slept in days, but who's counting? / Insomnia @whumpitlikeyoumeanit: "Whumpee tied up alone in a bare room... by Caretaker." (Hey, I'm allowed to use my own prompts, right?) ))

Description I feel is necessary: Draco is going insane from lack of sleep from a new potion, and his family have to confine him until it wears off, and Draco goes Full Malfoy in trying to get out. It's frankly hard to tell who is keeping whom hostage. He is brutal. This has Big Rough Draft Energy. It should probably break 10k words when done properly, but there is some yadda-yaddaing to hit the highlights.

Genre: whump

Romance level: some

Angst level: 4/5

Draco's headspace: vicious / irrational

((words: ~8500))

------------------------------------

Draco's previous record for going without sleep was five days. And then he had started hallucinating a little bit, which, yeah, obviously wasn't ideal. He had solved that, though. Now he was on day eighteen and he was fine — beyond fine. He had solved everything. Sleep was no longer a necessity, and it was glorious.

But they didn't understand. Or they were jealous. They were trying to make him sleep. They didn't know he'd already anticipated that, too. Theo had been watching him take his sleeping potions for three days now, and he obediently took it and made a show of being 'sleepy'. But what he didn't know was that Draco had developed — well, bought the formula for and then tweaked — the perfect antidote. He was now completely immune to sleeping potions, spells, hexes, curses, potions, poisons, and magical effects. Let them try. 

-

Theo stood in front of Lucius' excruciatingly neat desk with his hands behind his back, weathering his silently judgmental gaze and the more oblique inspection of the Elizabethan portrait behind him. Time was, that would have made him feel like he was a naughty student pulled up in front of McGonagall again; now he couldn't be bothered. "I need help getting Draco to Saint Mungo's." 

"Why?"

He sighed through his nose. "He hasn't slept in…" He shook his head. "I don't know how long, but I'm betting it's a lot longer than it should be. At least a week."

"It's your job to be keeping an eye on these things."

"Hey," he said firmly, rejecting the blame. "I'm doing the best I can. Do you forget how sneaky he is? I'm not the one who raised him to be a perfect liar who thinks he needs to hide stuff like this." Lucius raised one eyebrow, but Theo declined to be intimidated. "He's not just been avoiding sleep, he's been actively faking it. I knew something was up so I've sat there and watched him take his potions, watched him apparently fall asleep. I think he's developed or bought a new potion that nullifies sleep magic, so he just waits 'til I've gone. Hours, if he has to." 

"I was under the impression you were the one managing his potions."

"It's not like he's not got the use of his arms!" He threw up his hands in exasperation. "If he wants to go brew potions whilst my back is turned, there's nothing going to stop him. Unless you're going to hire in two more nurses and a house elf to physically hold onto him every hour of the day, he's going to be doing some stuff on his own, and some of it's going to be wrong, with the ideas he gets in his head and chases. And frankly, two nurses, a house elf, and me wouldn't be enough to stop him doing something he really wanted to, because you know there's only one thing that can even mostly control him."

"And, unfortunately, he can control her in turn," Lucius distantly agreed, tapping a quill on the blotter and looking thoughtful. 

The caught Theo a little off guard, because he was pretty sure he'd never heard Lucius agree with him so casually before, without couching it in insult or begrudging or some manner of sneer. Wait. Was the secret to getting Lucius Malfoy to interact with you like a human being just… standing up to him? Wow, that would have been nice to know years ago. 

"How is he functioning?"

"Weirdly well." Theo sat down in one of the chairs this side of the desk. "I want to be clear that I'm pretty sure he's off his nut, but at a casual interaction, you don't notice it. He seems energetic and in a good mood. A little volatile, but that's not really unusual."

"Is it actually a problem, then?" Lucius pointed out. "If he's found a way to be able to function without sleep, he might benefit from it."

"I did say he was off his nut, didn't I?" he pointed out. "But that's the problem, it's so subtle it doesn't look like a problem. Doesn't even sound like a problem when I try to explain it. But it's like… Okay, you know how when he's drunk, you can have whole hours of conversation, and it seems fine because he's all confident and charismatic, but if you really pay attention you notice he's not actually really responding to what you said at all? It's like that. His confidence and charm are carrying him, but I think he's actually starting to make really questionable decisions. For the moment it's mild enough that it looks like brilliance or eccentricity, but it won't last. And I want to point out that he's interacting with the public, just, constantly. He's going in front of the Wizengamot next week. Do you want him to do that in this state?"

Lucius made an acknowledging noise without actual words, continuing his pensive look.

"Plus," Theo said, slowly, trying to choose his words to phrase this with both the proper respect for Draco but also acknowledgment of the problem, "right now, he's in a good mood. He's basically treating everything as a game. Even me trying to sedate him, it's just a competition to him. That's fine, it's a good look for him. But I'm… kind of concerned… about what happens when that changes. If someone pisses him off, you know, with his,"  accidental, "magic and no impulse control? Or if something scares him, how'll he react?"

"It's a concern," Lucius allowed. 

Draco was naturally emotional; most of his moods were brief, but intense, turning like the weather. He was naturally cheerful and bright, and when he was up he was incandescent. But when he was down, he was brutal. 

—

((yadda-yadda-ing over the cat-and-mouse of actually capturing him))

—

Lucius brought Narcissa to the drawing room. "Take us off the floo network."

"What?"

"I'll get it repermitted, we can live without it for a month."

"Tell me what is going on."

"Draco hasn't slept in weeks. We can't let him leave." 

"That's absurd, if he truly hasn't slept he clearly should be in the hospital—"

"He just set fire to the house for a distraction, and Confounded you." That made her stop abruptly. "In the middle of a conversation, wandless and wordless. That is dangerous." It was impressive and could be beyond useful, but in this situation, uncontrolled… "And that's what he did to you. He can't be exposed to people he has no reason to care about." 

"That's hardly our concern. It's the healers' jobs to handle situations like this."

While her focus on Draco's wellbeing at the expense of everyone else was admirable, she was perhaps overconfident in their social stability. She thought that any repercussions for what Draco did would be easy to brush off — that everyone else must give him as much leeway as she did and forgive him as easily. 

"They can't hold him," he said flatly. "Putting him in the hospital will only give him more people to, at best, talk into releasing him — and more likely Confound or outright Imperius. Once he extracts himself from the hospital, he will be at large and increasingly more erratic. This may be our last chance to contain the situation."

"Draco does not need to be 'contained'. He has made it clear he has no intention of using the Imperius or of harming anyone." 

"When he's in his right mind," he pointed out. "In his right mind he would not be Confounding you to control a conversation. He has proven that he is still perfectly capable of using the Imperius, wand or no." She looked flatly displeased with his analysis, but didn't argue with it. "The best case scenario, should he make it out of the house now, whether to the hospital or of his own accord, is that his madness becomes public knowledge and his reputation is irreversibly undermined. The more likely outcome is that he destroys everything he's built and is eventually locked away, first in Saint Mungo's and eventually in Azkaban when nothing else can hold him."

"They would not."

"What else is there to do with a wizard who can control anyone he talks to and has no hesitation using it? They've no compunction imprisoning lunatics alongside criminals." 

Her lips pressed into a flat line. 

"Disconnect us," he repeated, stepping away. "I have Nott and the elf watching the doors so he can't Disapparate. I'll find him." 

She considered the fireplace thoughtfully as he left. 

—

When she went to her parlour, she wasn't surprised to find Draco there; he knew his father was looking for him and knew Lucius wouldn't come here, at least not until he exhausted everywhere else. He looked up from the book in his lap, chin resting on his fingers, a little smirk playing about his lips.

She allowed that she could believe Lucius' assessment that he wasn't entirely in his right mind. Lucius only ever saw the worst possible outcomes, though. 

"Is your father right, that you haven't been sleeping?"

Draco shrugged a little bit without changing expression. He seemed only mildly amused. "He might be."

"He considers this a problem worth solving." She studied him, the edge of smugness with which he was regarding her. "So do I," she added. "I need you to go to the hospital." 

He looked at her for several seconds without changing expression, but turning his ring around his finger with his thumb, then shrugged a little and set his book aside to stand. "Very well." 

Good — that would end this absurd situation with the least amount of drama possible. She nodded and led him out of her room, back to the floo fireplace in the drawing room. 

She was reaching for the floo powder when she heard a scuffle behind her and, turning, found the house elf latched onto Draco, just before they disappeared. 

—

Tolly Apparated with a struggling Draco down into a small room in the cellar where the wine had been moved out, leaving bare stone walls and ancient wooden cross-racks built into them. There was one solitary chair in the centre of the room. 

The very moment they appeared, Nott cast Incarcerus and caught Draco in magical ropes that bound his limbs and wrapped around his chest. Draco threw a wandless curse at him that deflected off a shield that Lucius raised just in the nick of time, and in the same moment, the elf took his wand from his robes and vanished. 

In the brief moment when Draco was disoriented by the loss of his wand, Lucius cast a different binding spell on him to replace the Incarcerus, because Draco would end that easily: the Living Rope curse, a Darker spell that needed the counter to be broken and would tighten as the subject struggled. It bound his wrists together and tied his arms behind him to the back of the chair, forcing him to sit. He also Silenced Draco, knowing that wouldn't hold long.

"I'll give you a moment to calm down," he said, pointed for Nott to leave behind him, and then stepped out of the room without turning his back, closed the heavy door firmly between them, and locked Draco in. 

Nott let out a heavy breath. "We got him."

"Yes. Now you have to identify and counter whatever he's been taking that allowed this to happen."

Nott nodded. "I have a sample of it. I can take it to Saint Mungo's and work it out with them."

"Horace Slughorn," he corrected.

"Ugh."

"Invoke Draco's name, and pay him whatever he's looking for." Lucius trusted people he was paying far more than those whose loyalties were split up between institutions and ideals that were hopefully encouraging them to do what he wanted. 

"I repeat: ugh. But fine. I'll work with Slughorn, for Draco."

"Master?" He looked down to see the elf at his feet, gingerly holding Draco's wand, and he immediately took it from her and set it on a high shelf that was now over-filled with disorganised wine bottles.

"You are not to free Draco," he told her, "tell anyone about this, or obey any of his orders until I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Master…" She looked fearfully toward Draco's prison. 

His eyes narrowed slightly at her expression. That could be a problem. She obeyed him out of fear, propriety, and magic — but she actually liked Draco. A willful house elf had options. She might find a way to twist his words to allow her to help Draco, or manage to disobey his orders long enough to do so and then take the punishment. He needed to head that off. 

"This is for his good. He is unwell. He may sound reasonable, but he is not. Don't be fooled."

"Yes, Master." Her voice was more firm this time. "Mistress is coming," she added.

That wasn't surprising, but promised to be difficult.

Narcissa ran down to the cellar. "Lucius!" She was openly furious. The house elf cringed and disappeared, and Nott took one look at her and hurried up the stairs, managing to make his gangly frame scurry.

Lucius didn't move. "We have him," he said evenly. 

"You lied to me!"

"He can read you too easily. If you'd known the plan it wouldn't have worked." 

"You have no right to use me against my son!"

"Our son," he corrected patiently. "It isn't just you; he can read all of us. Whoever acted the bait would have been lied to. But you are the only one he would completely believe was trying to help him, so it had to be you leading him into the trap. I gambled that, it being for his sake, you would eventually forgive me." 

If she would eventually, she hadn't yet. Her expression only grew colder. "Where is he?" she demanded. 

He lifted his wand and drew a rectangle on the wall in front of him. The other side of the wall had been previously prepared, so his rectangle became semi-transparent, a greyish "window" into the room that was now Draco's cell. He was generally facing their direction, still bound to the chair, head hanging onto his chest. The light was coming from one torch beside the door, and there was a portrait on the side wall, the same Elizabethan Lucius Malfoy who hung in Lucius' study, currently looking fairly bored as he toyed with his walking stick and watched over Draco.

"What are you doing to him?" Her voice had risen, somewhere between fury and fear. Though she can't have thought he would actually harm him. It was likely just a shock to see him that way. 

"Ideally, I am stopping him from hurting anyone." 

"Lucius, this is mad!"

"Trust me." 

Nott's heavy step came down the stairs again, and hesitated, so Lucius glanced back at him to get him to speak. "He's still got his potions," Nott said. "I just thought about that. That might not be a good idea." 

He nodded toward the window again. "Relieve him of them."

"Right." He went around them and unlocked the door.

Draco lifted his head when he came in, and his eyes were wide. "Theo." His voice was breathy and relieved. "Thank Merlin, get me out of here…"

He knew better than to look him in the eyes, since that seemed to be helpful to Draco Confounding people, but it was hard. It was hard to see him like this at all. "I can't," he told him quietly, and came up to him, and started searching his pockets. 

"What? What do you mean, 'you can't'?" Draco squirmed to try to stop his search, but tied as he was it was only a little inconvenient. "Please!" 

"I'm sorry, Draco." He didn't find anything but Draco's potions bag and wallet in his pockets, and he cleaned them out quickly.

"Theo, Theo why are you doing this to me?" Draco pleaded, breath hitching. "Please look at me… please… Is it because I didn't want to suck your dick? I'm sorry, I just didn't feel good, but I will, I'll do whatever you want, just let me out. Please, I'll… you can fuck me, just please, please let me out," he sobbed.

Theo fled out of the room and slammed the door. He could still hear Draco sobbing with the occasional 'please' from the other side. Narcissa was staring at him coldly, while Lucius continued to look through the window at Draco.

"I didn't." His words tumbled over each other. "It's not— I wouldn't—"

"It's fine," Lucius observed clinically. "He's opening strong." 

"This is not a game!" Narcissa snapped. 

"We'll see. Nott, stay here a few minutes."

Theo hung around, trying not to look at Draco. Instead he unshrunk the potions bag and started setting them out on the wine shelf beside his wand, labels facing out, so they could be grabbed if they needed them.

Draco's sobbing eventually faded away to silence, and then, in a few minutes, he dropped his head across the back of the chair so that he was looking at the ceiling. A few minutes after that, he started pushing the chair up on its back legs, balancing there. 

"Go back in," Lucius instructed.

Theo glanced at him, and at Draco, and then silently did as he was told. 

Draco dropped his chair down when the door opened, and raised his eyebrows very slightly when Theo came in. "Oh, you're still here." Both face and voice were completely normal. "I actually thought that might work. They are watching, aren't they?"

"More like might get me killed! Why would you say something like that? You know I'd never hurt you."

"Technically, I never said you did. I suggested that you were leveraging your power over me for sex, which, let's be honest…"

"I never have done!"

Draco shrugged a little and leaned his chair back again, going back to looking at the ceiling. "If that's what you really think." 

"Draco…"

"No hard feelings, right? I mean, you are keeping me prisoner." 

"Draco, we're just trying to help you. You need to sleep." 

"With friends and family like you, one hardly needs enemies."

"I'm sorry." Theo backed out of the room again, and this time he locked the door.

When he looked at Draco's parents, his mother was staring blankly through the window with her arms crossed, and his father had his hands clasped behind his back. 

"If either of you doesn't have the stomach for this," Lucius said, "it would be best you leave now."

Neither of them answered, but neither of them left, either. 

—

Near the top of the first hour, Draco began calling for his mother, and after a few minutes she gave in and went to him. He leaned forward as much as he could, bound to his chair, when she came in. "Mother, please…"

She felt his forehead with the back of her hand and summoned the elf to bring her a blanket. 

"Mother." He was looking up at her with wide eyes, vulnerable in his drawn face. "Mother, look what he's doing." There was a quaver of fear in his voice. "This is insane."

"It is for your good." She put the blanket around his shoulders. "It won't be for long. Once you sleep, this will all be over." 

"That's crazy, Mother. Look at this…" He twisted to try to show his bound wrists. "This isn't for sleep, it's for torture!" 

"No one is here to torture you." She ran her hand down his hair. "You only need to sleep."

"I can't, not like this. Who could?" 

She stood with him for a while, but it wasn't really sustainable. Eventually she made a minor adjustment to the blanket to make sure it was tucked around him to keep him warm. "I have to go, but you are not being abandoned," she promised. "I'll be right outside." 

"You're going to leave me here?" His voice was getting shrill with fear. 

"Only for now." 

She was almost out the door when he called out to her again, voice cracking on the edge of tears. "Why are you letting him do this to me?"

She didn't allow herself to look back and quickly left, closing the door between them, only then clenching her hand into a quiet fist. 

"He's trying to drive a wedge between us," Lucius said.

"I know." She still didn't want to look at him. She silently took herself back upstairs. 

—

When Theo got back from meeting with Slughorn in Hogsmeade, he found Draco still tied to that same chair, in that same position. "We can't at least let him walk around, or lay down, or something…?" 

"It isn't possible," Lucius said flatly. "We only barely caught him the first time. To give him back his hands is to give him back a dangerous amount of magic. He's dangerous enough as it is. Without being able to Stun him, this is what controlling him looks like."

Theo looked at Draco again with an uneasy feeling. He didn't really disagree… He'd seen, he'd been on the receiving end of, what Draco could do without a wand. But this didn't feel right…

"He's also willing to hurt himself to manipulate us," Lucius said distantly. 

Theo glanced at him quickly, then looked back into the cell. There was a smudged back mark on the stone wall, that spread toward the ceiling, and he realised Draco's blanket was gone. He'd set another fire, he surmised. Trying to force them to send him to the hospital by breathing smoke? Trying to scare them? 

"At least this way, his options are limited." 

"I understand…"

—

"I'm bored of you," Draco commented to the portrait. "Go away," 

"Would that I could," the portrait sighed. "But you're such a scintillating conversationalist I find myself rapt." 

"Of course," Draco said. "It's my conversation, not your orders to spy upon me that keep you here." 

"Of course it is." He yawned delicately behind his sleeve. 

Draco silently considered the painting for a minute or two, then narrowed his eyes to focus. "Diffindo," he snapped, and a great slice raked it way across the canvas. The portrait's inhabitant yelled and ran for safety in a different frame.

"And that's what I think about your spies, Lucius!" he called out to the empty room, and smirked toward the ceiling. 

It was hours before anyone came to deal with that, and in that time Draco's smirk soured into a cold glare. He glowered and shoved the chair back, scraping over the floor, ramming it against the wall to try to break it, to no avail, although it did make his hands hurt. Then he started ripping out the shelves with his magic, littering the ground with broken shards of ancient wood, occasionally grabbing them and throwing them around the air with a yell. Those bastards! They just left him there to suffer…

When the door unlocked, he jerked his head up, and just as it opened he yanked his head to the side, and with that motion the ruined portrait frame flew off the wall and slammed into the floor right at his father's feet, spraying him with splinters and forcing him to cover his face. 

"Oops," Draco said blandly. "I must be doing accidental magic. Seems someone's taken my wand." 

His father gave him an unimpressed look and shook splinters out of his sleeve. "You know that was meant to keep you from being alone." 

"You know what else keeps me from being alone? People. Like the kind that I can be around by not being locked in this room." 

"That is true," his father said mildly. "You should have a nap and then go find some." 

Draco raised his chin with a sniff and glared. 

"Elf," Lucius said, looking over the room, and Tolly appeared at the doorway. "Clean up this mess before you bring Draco's breakfast." He looked back at Draco. "Next time you feel like throwing a tantrum and destroying your only company, perhaps wait until it isn't the middle of the night so someone will be there to deal with it." 

"You know, that is the one thing you have over Rowle," Draco noted. "When he had me locked away, I could still see hints of daylight. Not with you, though. Your torture is much more effective. This deprivation really goes nicely with my warped sense of time. I can't tell if it's been an hour or a week I've been here. Bravo."

"Well, I would give you a clock," Lucius said, using his wand to draw up another chair by the door and taking a seat, legs crossed amidst the detritus of Draco's night, to look at him. "But clearly it wouldn't be long for this world." 

"Well, at least the gears would be more interesting to throw around than this junk." Draco looked at a large chunk of wine shelf meaningfully and it flew across the room, making the house elf yelp.

His father didn't respond to that, just fastidiously cleaned under his fingernails, and Draco glared at him with mounting resentment. He was so smug… 

"When Rowle had me prisoner," he abruptly snapped, "he made me suck his dick. You know, because that's what fairies do. Is that where we're going here?"

His father's eyes shot up. "Disgusting," he said icily. 

But it gave him a reaction, that soothing balm that gave him back the feeling of control, and, satisfied, he leaned back in the chair. "I know," he agreed. "But I'm not the one who has me tied up in a cellar, just like the last guy. Forgive me if I can't help but notice some unflattering parallels." 

"It doesn't have to be like this." 

"Oh, no, of course not. Let me guess: I made you do this. Or Voldemort made you do this. Or your father made you do this. You didn't make any choices that led to this situation. Poor Lucius, just swept around on the currents of circumstance." 

His father's eyes remained cold, but his voice turned steady and calm. Patient. "Stop this, Draco."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" 

"Very much," he sighed. "Your only enemy here is whatever demon inside your head is making you behave this way." 

"Not from where I'm sitting."

His father didn't answer, and his resentment began mounting again. In a while, he rocked the chair back into the wall, then again, testing how hard it hit his head each time. 

After the third, his father summoned the chair back, scraping, to the centre of the floor, and then cast a sticking charm to hold it in place, so Draco couldn't even rock it back on its legs now. Draco twisted around in the chair, feeling the ropes tighten, and couldn't keep from yelling out his frustration. "Just fuck off already and leave me alone!" 

"I will not." 

—

Because he'd destroyed the portrait, it now fell on the three of them and the house elf to keep watch over Draco at all times. It wasn't safe to leave him alone, and if he was alone they wouldn't know if he actually did start giving in to sleep. 

But the real reason was that Draco simply couldn't handle being alone. Isolation was far crueller to him than to most people, as had been demonstrated repeatedly in the last several years, and the point genuinely wasn't to torture him. If there were any real way to simply hold Draco in a warm, comfortable bedroom where he could chat with his friends and play games until he fell asleep, that would have been far preferable. 

But no. His wandless magic — wandless but mostly assuredly not accidental, every single attempted Confounding and thrown teacup and fire set was under his complete and calculated control — turned every every small luxury into a weapon or an instrument of self-harm, so that he could have nothing but bare stone walls even he couldn't hurt himself with. He turned every attempt at care into a new gauntlet of emotional sadism as he probed for a crack in their defences to exploit, so that his mother had to steel himself before she entered the room and whatever fresh hell of accusation or pathos he was going to heap on her, and Nott threw himself into the analysis of his potion so that he had something more productive to do than weather another storm of Draco's guilting and debasement.

It was hardest to handle because probably very little of what Draco said was an outright lie. That was what made him such an excellent manipulator — he had a real gift for weaponising the truth. It was quite possible the pitiable things he was saying were his real thoughts, or had a kernel of his real thoughts at the core of them, merely now laid bare in the way calculated to elicit the most sympathy, or, if that failed, to hurt them the most. Every cruel observation wasn't merely a cutting insult but a blow to the heart of genuine insecurities he had gleaned. All of his accusations had either crossed his mind, perhaps not what he believed, but things he had at some point felt, or were things he knew they were afraid of. And he knew exactly how to turn every one of those feelings into a deadly curse. 

The house elf was largely immune to Draco's attacks because he knew it was pointless to manipulate her, knowing it was impossible to get her to do anything for him against her master's orders, but she couldn't watch him at all times; aside from the needs of the house itself, which were being neglected, when Draco grew too bored he would still attack her just for amusement. 

Lucius took most of the time the house elf did not. It was as much his role to keep Narcissa and Nott from being bewitched by him and giving in to him as it was to keep him bound there, and the best way to do that was to minimise their time with him. 

He was the most suited to bearing Draco's attacks… and the only one who managed to turn Draco's mind elsewhere for any length of time. He was able, temporarily, to distract Draco and keep him calm by challenging him to mental chess, or directing him into debate or diatribe where his vitriol could have free rein without turning personal.

But it wasn't safe. Draco was always looking for an opening. He once used chess, of all things, as a cover to Confound him, and the elf pulled him out of the room before he could free him; Draco's laughter after that episode was still haunting. His attention could turn in an instant, and the moment Lucius let his guard down the vitriol did turn personal and he found a way to turn the words against him. 

Even he could not hold up under Draco's attention indefinitely. He didn't let Draco be alone for more than a half hour at a time, but he did have to retreat to the other side of the door for respite every few hours. He stood in the same spot whenever Narcissa or Nott took his place, on guard for Draco's influence, and left the room only when the house elf took over the duty. 

This was not sustainable.

—

"Damn it, Draco!" Theo was this close to throwing the toast in his face. He probably hadn't been eating enough during all that time the potion was keeping him awake, and now he was refusing food entirely. He hadn't had more than water and a few cups of tea since he'd been imprisoned, and his body was showing it. He was quickly going from thin to skeletal, with his clothes hanging off of sharp shoulders and the ropes biting into the knobs of his wrists. It was like the potion keeping him awake was eating him alive from the inside to do it. "This isn't about control!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have got confused by the ropes and the locked door."

"I'm trying to save your life!"

"Of course you are; if I weren't here you'd have to go out and find yourself an actual personality. Could you be any more pathetic?" 

Theo let out a helpless groan and dropped onto his knees, with his arms on Draco's lap, holding his head. "Draco… Please, just fucking don't die…" 

"If I do, Theo, it's not going to be my fault." 

—

Draco was crying. Not sobbing, but almost silently, shoulders shaking like he was trying to suppress it, head bowed into his chest so no one could see. 

"This has gone far enough," Narcissa said sharply, going for the door.

"Stop."

"You're the one who needs to stop! Look at what you're doing!"

"He's manipulating you."

"It's not fake," Theo said quietly, staring through the window at Draco. "I've seen him cry enough… that's real."

He flicked that away. "So it's not false. It's still intentional. He's been making and allowing himself to cry to manipulate you since he was two years old; this is not a new tactic. If you let it work this time you're dooming him."

She ignored him and pushed her way into the cell. Draco looked up, eyes wide and startled, then ducked his head, embarrassed, to wipe away his tears against his shoulders. 

"Mother…" 

She came and wiped tears off his cheeks. He resisted at first, then gave in and leaned into her hands with a sigh, eyes closing. Maybe this would relax him. Maybe that was what he actually needed to sleep.

"Why don't you ever protect me from him…?" he asked in a faint, flat voice. 

She drew a sharp breath through her nose and gently lifted his chin to search his face. His eyes flinched away from hers in quiet shame and looked away to the corner of the floor. 

"I know what you're trying to do," she said quietly, and ran her hand over his hair. "It isn't going to work." 

He didn't look up, or give up the act. 

She ran her hand over his hair again, and stepped back out of the room. Lucius started to move, but she made a sharp gesture at him with one finger and carried on up the stairs.

Because she knew that Lucius had harmed Draco. Maybe even hurt him. She had laid ultimata when Draco was young to keep Lucius' darkness and violence away from him. She had intervened when his discipline became too harsh. But they were both prone to operating in shadows, to hiding and secrets. What did she not know? Had she been too distant? Placed too much trust in him? Should she have stood between them more? Had she failed Draco? 

She knew she had, on some level. But not this badly… 

—

"I'm cold," Draco said quietly. His voice was submissive, almost broken. Tired of fighting. 

"Then you shouldn't have set your blanket on fire." 

"You're right. I was just… scared, I guess. I thought you'd have to let me go. I wasn't thinking clearly. May I have another?"

"No."

"…I understand," he said in a small voice, and let his chin hang onto his chest. He was quiet for a little bit before he spoke up again. 

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "For everything. I should have been better. You deserve better. I'm trying, I try so damn hard, I just keep… fucking everything up…"

He didn't respond. Maybe, if he'd thought Draco were actually saying something he meant, he would have, but as it was, it was better for it to just be noise.

Draco was quiet for almost long enough that he thought he meant to stay that way. When he did speak, his voice was low, but without a trace of submission or meekness. "You have to sleep eventually," he said in a quiet, nearly casual voice, and then lifted his head just enough to meet his eyes. His eyes were piercing and cold as any blade. "I don't." 

Lucius was not intimidated — Draco interpreting the fact that he stood that way would be a mistake. But he was a realist, and he knew when wariness was appropriate; if there were any one of them Draco would actually try to harm, it would be him, and it would be best to change the situation before he started getting ideas. "You will, eventually," he promised, and left the room. 

—

The quality of Draco's breathing changed.

Lucius looked up and studied him. He was leaning forward, gasping quietly, eyes on the floor. "Draco?" He stood warily.

"...heart..." Draco gasped out.

Damn it, he'd been afraid of this. He stepped behind him to look, but he saw exactly what he expected to: on his wrist, above the ropes biting into him, the wrist cuff that measured his heartbeat was flashing in rapid alarm. Between the fact that he couldn't take his daily heart regulating potion and the stress...

He stepped out of the room without a word, leaving the door ajar to listen to Draco and looking over the shelf of his potions. He had medications for all of this. There was an emergency sedative precisely for the times his heart ran out of control.

The problem was, they couldn't use them. Nott had brought up a good point: in Draco's mindset of subterfuge and paranoia, they had no way to know which of his medications he had laced with the problematic anti-sleep concoction, but every reason to believe he had done so.

They also had every reason to believe the specific heart medication for this situation would be completely ineffective, at best. It was a sedative. It slowed his heart, for sure, but it also put him to sleep. The chances that his anti-sleep potion would nullify the sleep effect but leave the heart effect intact were slim. It was a carefully balanced blend custom formulated for him, and mixing it with this effect would be reckless and dangerous, even if it weren't laced.

He touched the bottle of sedative, still considering it, for a moment. What was the alternative? Sit back and stonily watch him have a heart attack?

Inside the cell, Draco groaned weakly.

He supposed the real only option was to bring him to the hospital. Maybe he was weak enough or distracted enough they would be able to control him. The risks of what he might do were real, but it would keep him alive...

"Wait!" Nott's voice came from the stairs, and his tromping steps brought him into sight soon thereafter. "Hold on, Tolly got me..."

He narrowed his eyes slightly. Hadn't he been with Slughorn, presumably in Hogsmeade? Willful elf...

"You haven't given him anything, right?"

"No." He dropped his hand from the potions. "There's nothing safe to give him."

"I'll see if there's anything I can do." He hurried past into the cell.

Lucius watched from the doorway as Nott inspected Draco, crouching in front of him, taking his pulse, taking a reading with his wand... Draco weakly twisted to get away from him.

In a minute, Nott stood again, face stony. "Draco, you..." His wand hand clenched tight as he turned away. "He did it to himself," he said in a flat voice.

"What are you talking about?"

"He hyperventilated to speed up his heart to set off the alarm so we'd give him his tainted potions, or send him to the hospital where he could escape, or... fuck it, just to watch us panic, probably. Who knows. It's already slowing down because he can't keep that up."

"Then he was never in any danger," he realised coldly, staring at Draco.

"No, that's the fucking stupid part! It's so bloody dangerous! When that alarm goes off it means his heart's going a hundred and forty times a minute or more, and just because he did it on purpose doesn't magically make it all right! It's still damaging his heart, still wearing out the spells holding it together, he's still going to throw himself into shock or a heart attack, and fucking die, and he doesn't care!"

Draco could obviously hear them; they were still standing there in his cell and Nott's voice was raised nearly to a yell now. But he didn't seem to care. He took a deeper breath and leaned back in the chair.

"He's just..."

"If it's any consolation," Draco said behind him, "it feels rather unpleasant."

Nott whirled on him, wand clenched, then stormed out of the room. "You want these bloody things so badly?" He yanked a potion off the shelf on the other side of the door and threw it. It exploded like a bomb at Draco's feet, spraying shards of glass and muddy red liquid that looked like old blood. "Have them!" Another flew past his head -- Draco flinched away from it -- and exploded against the back wall. A third one hit the floor beside the leg of his chair and didn't break, but skittered away toward the corner. "Fucking choke on them."

Draco looked up without a word, and Nott stomped away. In a second he was back in the door, though. "I just really want you to know that I was aiming for you," he said. "I just fucking missed." Then he was gone. They could hear the door at the top of the stairs slam distantly.

"You don't have anything to say?" Draco shook his head, leaning forward, to make sure there was no glass in his hair.

Lucius summoned the stray potion to hand before it could be forgotten and give Draco the chance to get it. "I applaud his restraint."

—

"You're the reason I tried to kill myself," Draco said in a casual, intimate voice, too quiet for anyone outside the room to overhear even if they were watching. "The thought of living with you a moment more was unbearable. Of being beaten down by you, pushed around by you, of trying to be made to live like you. The only way I could see to get away from you was to take all my potions and never wake up." He leaned back, gaze seeming wistful. "Even afterward, I still wished it had worked. I wished that she'd been a few minutes later and hadn't saved me. Shall we tell her that?" He dropped unblinking eyes down to watch him. "I think she deserves to know that, don't you?"

Lucius watched him expressionlessly, unmoving. 

"Or are you going to let me out?"

"You can say whatever you feel you need to," Lucius said evenly. "You are still not leaving this room." 

"She will never forgive you."

"So be it."

—

"I've got it." Tolly was the one spending the hour with Draco, and so Theo managed to find his parents both in the room outside the cell. They could have been using this time to rest, but instead they were still using it to watch Draco, compulsively, just out of reach of his abuse. 

"The antidote. Slughorn wanted credit for Draco's anti-sleep potion and I told him he was welcome to it, since it apparently drives people fucking crackers. But I've got it." He showed off a phial the size of a large finger. "Now we just need to get him to take it." 

"Asking nicely seems to be out of the question," Lucius said dryly. "Will it be effective diluted in his food?" Well, tea, which was all Draco really ate. 

"It would be, but I don't think he'd take it. He's so paranoid, so vigilant, he'd know something was up." Theo put the potion and his hand back into his pocket, watching Draco with them. "What about acting like it's a sleeping potion? Then he'd think he was immune to it and drink it out of arrogance, to rub it in."

"Maybe two days ago," Lucius said. "He's more likely to destroy it out of spite, now. It's useless to try to Bind him or similar, a wandless Protego is almost signature…"

"Imperius," Narcissa said.

They were both quiet. 

"He wouldn't forgive you," Theo said after a long minute. "He already feels like we control him too much. The moment he got better, he'd leave and we'd never see him again. …If he got better at all, instead of having a breakdown and being locked up in Saint Mungo's."

Lucius nodded. "I would rather not, anyway," he admitted. 

"…Do we have to just physically hold him down and pour it down his throat…?" Theo wondered. 

"A better question is if we can."

"I have four doses. If he breaks a couple…"

Lucius glanced over at met his eyes, considering, then looked at Narcissa, and Theo followed his train of thought with a moment of realisation. It might work. He took out all four potions and held them out to Draco's parents, keeping one for himself and giving her two of them; she blinked at it and at him, then noticed they were looking at her. She looked back at Draco, and nodded as she took them. 

—

On the fourth day, less than twelve hours after being fed the antidote, the quality of Draco's manipulations had changed. When Narcissa came to give him his breakfast, relieving the elf of its vigil, he jerked his head up to look. His eyes were red and sunken into dark circles. "Mother… I give in, all right? Just tell me what you want." 

She studied his face as she finished up his tea. Whatever Lucius believed, she knew Draco, and she wasn't blind to his manipulations, even if she, perhaps, found them difficult to resist; she could see there was something else there now. An edge of desperation, a genuine franticness. Perhaps he was such a master manipulator he could have faked trying-and-barely-failing to cover up his desperation, but he wasn't, not now. "We don't want anything from you."

She helped him to drink his tea, but he turned his face away, and she touched his hair to urge him back toward it. "I only want you to sleep and get better," she said.

"There's got to be something else!" He whipped his head away from her, and the teacup ripped out of her hand and shattered against the wall. "Let me go!" 

When he flipped the tea tray on her, she left the room and sent the elf to get Lucius. Theodore arrived swiftly as well, but Lucius kept anyone from going back into the room. It was cruel, but it was necessary; Draco was becoming more erratic in his desperation. For the first time, the flashes of his magic throwing things around the room did actually seem accidental. It was probably more dangerous than it ever had been; manipulative, he would be cruel, but erratic, he could truly hurt someone from fear or rage and regret it in the next instant, when it was too late.

They could watch the crumbling of his will as the treatment faded, quickly now that the first cracks had formed. His chin sank toward his chest and then jerked up seconds later, over and over. He lolled his head and squirmed in the chair, trying to keep himself alert. He muttered to himself, nothing really sensible, and then broke out into a scream. "Don't make me sleep! Please, I'm sorry, just don't make me!" He broke down into brittle sobs. "Please… please don't…"

He continued begging for some time, growing more incoherent, the words slurring into an exhausted mumble that faded into wordless sobs as he lost the energy even to voice his futile pleading, knowing it would do no good, no one was coming. His sobs trailed away into hitching wet breaths, and those evened out as he finally cried himself to sleep. 

Narcissa closed her eyes in quiet relief once she realised he was actually, finally asleep, and Theodore actually sagged against the wall with his head in his arms. Her arms ached from gripping them so tightly. "Elf," she summoned. She heard an acknowledging squeak and, looking down, realised that it had been there watching from the corner as well. 

"Wait," Lucius said grimly, staring into the other room. "It may be a ploy."

She nearly snapped at him, for caring so little about their son that he could watch even that and only see an enemy, but then she noticed his face. He looked tired. Maybe not physically, or not only physically, but from bearing most of the weight of keeping Draco imprisoned, of having to remain hard-hearted because someone must. Yet he still had to make sure that it was safe before he allowed himself to relax. While they gave in to relief, he didn't let himself feel it yet.

He was starting to move, but she touched his arm. "I'll check." She unlocked the door to Draco's cell. His wariness was contagious, and she wasn't entirely unguarded as she approached the lonely figure bound to the chair. She still didn't believe that Draco would hurt her, even now, but if he was making some last desperate effort for his freedom, he could lash out wildly…

"Draco?" She crouched in front of the chair, looking up into his face. He looked… if not peaceful, then at any rate unaware. He didn't move at her approach, and the quality of his breathing didn't change. After a moment, she reached up and lightly cupped his cheek, pulling her fingertips through his hair for a moment. Then she looked back to the window and nodded.

Theodore entered with the potion bag, taking out a Dreamless Sleep. "To keep him down," he said unnecessarily, and she held Draco's head to help him feed it to him. Draco stirred and tried to wake, alarming her, and she stroked his hair, settling him back into his sleep. She kept him until the potion had time to take effect.

He stood up, hesitating, watching Draco. "I do have some Draught of the Living Death left," he quietly, leaving the decision to them.

She glanced at him and at Lucius, looked into Draco's face, and in a moment nodded. The idea of him waking up again anytime soon was… unbearable. She held him while he fed him that, and Draco's breathing slowed to imperceptibility. Compared to the last few days, it was still a relief. 

Lucius released Draco from his bindings and caught him as he collapsed. Blood dripped from Draco's fingertip, a thin line winding from the deep, raw circles that showed how he had struggled against the ropes over the last few days, and especially the last few hours. 

"Put him to bed," she instructed the elf. "I'll be there shortly."

"I'll go," Theodore volunteered. "He needs healing… He might still need the hospital…"

"I'll be there regardless," she said firmly. The elf disappeared with Draco's limp body, and Theodore hurried after them. 

She touched Lucius' back. "You did well."

"There is no guarantee he will be in his right mind even after sleeping," he warned, looking distantly at the now-empty chair. 

"If not, we will handle it then. Rest."

[jellicle-shifters-au]

When You're Gone

for @whumptober days 10 (can't you see that you're lost without me) and 12 (i haven't slept in days but who's counting)

TIMELINE: early in demeter's second captivity

CW: grieving, bomba is in dark place in this one

-

Go home, they tell her. Go home and get some rest. But how is she supposed to go home when half of what makes her home home isn’t there anymore?

She can’t go home. She can’t even think about the apartment. She can’t think about the empty side of the bed, the cold she’s going to feel if she tries to sleep. She can’t think about sleeping, because sleeping means waking up to another day without Demeter and she can’t wake up to another day without Demeter. It’s been so long since she’s been alone, she never thought it would hurt like this, to have the other half of her home ripped away from her; she didn’t think she’d be up at all hours of the night with such a painful ache in her chest or constant tears in her eyes. 

She doesn’t want to wake up like this anymore, she wants Demeter, and she can’t wait six weeks to see her again, she needs her now. 

It’s another night that she wakes up, grieving and painful, her face buried in one of Cassandra’s throw pillows. She’s been staying at Cass’s apartment for the last week, after stumbling around her neighborhood, too reluctant to go into her own building and unwilling to go to her mother’s house where there’s more eyes on her than she wants — she doesn’t want her siblings to see her this way, even though she knows they’re fully aware of what she’s like. 

You better marry her when this is over, Electra had said, curled up beside her in her tiny hospital bed. Bomba sobs into the pillow at the thought. She can barely think about marrying Demeter when all she can think about is how much she hurts without her. 

I need to see her i need to see her i need to see her i need her so much i need Metra

Bomba all but screams into the pillow. Cassandra and Alonzo are still sleeping; Pandora is a short time away from coming home from her overnight shift at the hospital and she’s going to need sleep.

So does Bomba, but she needs Demeter more.

She grips the pillow tighter, muffling her sobs until she’s biting on it so hard her jaw hurts. But it does nothing to distract her from the pain in her chest and the ache in her stomach and the perpetual exhaustion pulling at her bones.

She bites the pillow until it hurts too much to keep going, then lets it fall out of her mouth and pushes her nose into it instead. Her eyes sting with new tears; she hadn’t known she could cry so much and still have more to give.

I need her i need her i need her i can’t keep going like this i can’t i need her

It’s been one week already. 

How is she supposed to get through five more?

She can’t she can’t she can’t she needs—

Bomba sits up, hugging the pillow to her chest with one hand and fumbling for her phone with the other. Her hand shakes as she unlocks it, her heart races, the same thought ricochets around her head like a bullet, she knows what she needs to do, she needs to see Metra she needs her needs her needs her—

She’s not sure what she writes, if it’s coherent or if it’s a jumbled chaotic mess, but she at least checks to make sure she’s sending it to the right person. If she doesn’t do this now, she never will. She watches it send, then locks her phone, gripping it in her free hand, and waits and hopes. 

The response she gets isn’t the one she was hoping for.

bomba, i’m not sure that’s a good idea…

The words blur in her vision, her stomach clenches painfully, her chest tightens. No no no no no— 

Please, Jerrie, she types back, and she’s not sure what comes after that but it feels desperate.

I need to see her i need to see her

bomba are you sure??

She types back without thinking: Please Jerrie I need to see her

A moment later, she gets a response.

CONTACT: MACAVITY

please be careful.

Bomba sees the message just before she opens the contact information and calls the number. 

The phone rings once, twice, three times, her heart pounds louder and louder with each one; a small part of her hopes he doesn’t pick up but every other part of her hopes he does, and before the fourth ring a voice tinged with anger and annoyance answers.

“Who is this?”

She lets out a thin sigh of relief. 

“Rina,” she croaks, because it’s all she can get out. She curls tighter against the back of the couch, the pillow clutched tiger to her chest. He’ll know who she is, he’ll know, and he’ll know why she’s calling—

For a moment, there’s no answer. Bomba grips the pillow until her knuckles are white and whimpers into the phone. Don’t hang up, don’t hang up. Then there’s a sigh of recognition. Maybe sympathy. Maybe both. “Miss Ford.”

Bomba coughs a confirming sob into the phone. Please don’t hang up. 

“Where did you get this number?”

She sobs again, her face buried in the pillow, the phone away from her ear, but she can still hear as Macavity sighs again and says, “I see.”

“Please,” she begs, “please I need—I need to see her, I need to see her—”

“Miss Ford—”

“Please—”

The line goes quiet.

“Please,” Bomba whimpers. Please let me see her.

Please don’t hang up on me.

Between the two lines is the sound of Bomba sniffling and crying softly, underlaid with the sound of crinkling paper. 

“Tomorrow,” he says flatly. “Twelve-thirty. I have an interview with her in the morning. Ah—and, Miss Ford? Delete this number.”

The line goes dead. Bomba screams.

[lithium223]

[writerartistdreamer]

@whumptober @whumptober-archive

Title: I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?

Hello, everyone! Here is the next little story I wrote about these two adorable people (who are too oblivious to see that they like one another). My first presentation at uni went well, but I have another presentation tomorrow, so I am quite tired, but hey I wrote another story. I didn't have too much inspiration today, but this works. You can also find this on AO3. Enjoy!

Posting day: 12

Prompt day 12: "I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?"

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)

Characters: Belle, Rumplestiltskin

Summary: Belle notices something is not quite right with Rumplestiltskin and finds out he hasn't slept in days. Basically, Belle tries to send Rumplestiltskin off to bed.

As Belle was doing her chores around the Dark Castle, cleaning and dusting around like the dutiful little maid that she was, she noticed Rumplestiltskin spinning continuously at his wheel. While he did spin every single day, today seemed to be more than usual, the creaking of the wheel accompanying her every task. The man barely spoke to her throughout the whole day, though he usually stopped during his spinning sessions to offer a smart quip or two, share a story with her or simply delve into a normal conversation, which usually ended with the two of them debating over a steaming cup of tea for hours on end. The past few days, Belle had found Rumplestiltskin to be more distracted and erratic as usual, which showed in his spinning as the wheel never stopped turning and his voice couldn't be heard throughout the whole day. Unusual, she thought, for a man who was so set on conversing and cracking jokes each and every day.

The spinning became more and more erratic as she completed her chores and Belle decided to put a stop to things and see what was the matter with him. She dropped the duster on the table and walked over to his wheel, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. When she noticed that not even her touch could get through to him, she shook the man slightly and stopped the wheel from spinning. "Rumple!" Belle called out for him and the wheel stopped turning as he finally shook himself out of his daze and looked over at her, as if it was the first time he was gazing upon the beauty, with such awe and wonder. The girl felt herself blush, but quickly got out of the reverie and stood in front of Rumplestiltskin, arms crossed, wanting to find what's wrong. "Are you alright? You have not said a word to me all day and you have been spinning eratically for hours or days on end", the girl said to him, pointing out how strange it was.

Rumplestiltskin felt himself return to reality when she spoke and he nodded, his hands fidgeting with one another. Exhaustion was clearly visible in his eyes, yet it didn't matter to him as long as he could still be moving around, spinning and striking his deals. "I'm quite fine, dearie. I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?", he admitted, letting out a hunourless chuckle as he stared up at his little maid. Had her eyes always been that blue? They matched her dress quite prettily, he thought. As soon as he wanted to return to his spinning, Belle moved his arms away and dragged him away from his wheel. Taken aback and with little energy to fight back, all the sorcerer could do was do as he was told and follow the girl around.

"Days, Rumplestiltskin? Are you serious? You can't just go without sleep! Everyone needs to sleep. No wonder you've been acting so strange these days", Belle exclaimed, concern tinging her voice as she stared up at him.

"I'm the Dark One, dearie, I don't need sleep like a mere mortal", Rumplestiltskin replied insistently, trying to convince her and himself of the truth of that statement. He was clearly tired, his eyes ready to shut down at any point, his hands were fidgeting with one another as he tried to cling to every bit of energy he had left. Still, he couldn't lie to himself and couldn't lie to her about the state he was in, as she was clearly not convinced by his attempt at reassuring her that he was completely fine.

"You, Rumplestiltskin, need to go to bed and you need to go now", Belle spoke determinedly and dragged him away from the Great Hall, like a mother sending her child to bed, who insisted he stay up for 5 more minutes.

"I don't need to go to bed, dearie. You can stop bossing me around now", Rumplestiltskin addressed her, small frown in his brow as he observed how the small slip of a girl managed to drag him around at will and do as she wished. Since when did such a tiny slip of a girl start holding such power over him? He couldn't understand it, yet he could barely fight it as they left the Great Hall and seemingly headed upstairs to his bedchambers.

"You have not slept in days and your eyes are red, Rumple. Who are you trying to convince? You need to get some rest", Belle insisted as she turned around on her feet to face him, glaring up at him. She didn't realize how close they were, their noses almost touching, and she lost her breath, if only for a moment, her heart pounding in her chest. He smirked playfully down at her, trying to insist that he was fine, probably noticing her reaction to their closeness, yet she quickly shook herself out of her daze, grabbed his hand in hers and dragged him up the stairs without another word.

"My, what a fiery little maid. Such attitude", he observed as he let himself get dragged along the castle's hallways and up the stairs, towards his bedroom. He could barely keep his eyes open and was grateful Belle had been so insistent on sending him to sleep, for he would have probably fallen asleep at his wheel, right on his spindle, if not for her.

When they reached his bedchambers, the girl opened the doors to let him in and stood there, her hand still clasped in his. Her gaze met his as their fingers remained intertwined. Her heart was beating out of her chest and, if not for her bashfulness, she would have walked right in there with him and cuddled the whole night. Still, she knew it was the height of impropriety to get into the same bed as a man, although it would not be for any reason other than the simple comforts of a pair of arms wrapped around her. Her hand left his and she stepped away, a blush creeping up her cheeks as she looked away from his gaze, down at the grasp she let go of. "Sweet dreams, Rumplestiltskin", she spoke ever so softly and walked away, ready to silence her thoughts with a new adventure found between the pages of a book.

Rumplestiltskin held on to her hand for as long as he could, gazing upon the beauty for a little while longer. He thought of inviting her in, of showing her the monster's lair and perhaps of offering to hold her at night, if only to banish the loneliness away from both of their lives and enjoy the comforts of an embrace. He almost asked her to stay with him, stay for a little while longer, stay and spend the night in his bedchambers or perhaps jhst stay forever. The man shook himself out of the reverie as the girl let go of his hand, knowing he would never dare utter such words, would never even think of making such an invitation and tainting his beautiful Belle with his darkness. How could she possibly stand to feel the arms of a monster around her, when one tries to look for peace and quiet at night? "Good night, Belle", he said ever so softly and entered his bedchambers, heading to bed to finally rest and allow for his mind to be quiet.

[dirtytransmasc]

concept, cause the dynamics at play would be super interesting:

when Tuk and Neytiri are sucked into the hold of the Seadragon, what if Spider, unwilling to watch another one of this baby siblings, nor his siblings mother (despite everything cause he's a good kid), die without doing anything, jumps in after them?

they're now stuck in a flooding ship, spider knows his way around to a decent extent, they're all tired, they're all scared, they're all hurting. they have to depend on each other for survival.

Neytiri has to not only trust Spider, but has to follow his lead, has to trust him to guide her around a demon ship, has to untrust not only her own life, but the life of her youngest child to this boy.

Maybe they're separated, they have to find one another (my personal favorite scenario is that Tuk and Spider are together and he has to try and find her/guide Neytiri to him)

Spider taking Neytiri and Tuk's arms so they aren't separated by stray currents and raging waters (a parallel to "Sully's stick together"). Spider talking them through the breath holds he learned as a kid in case his mask malfunctioned before bringing them through the depths of the submerged ship (parallel to Jake and Lo'ak)

anyway. I just can't stop thinking about it. think about it.

Neytiri is faced with the fact that Spider jumped in after her and Tuk. he came for them, he put himself in danger to save them, to save her daughter. even after what she did to him. even after she held a knife to him, after she cut him, after she intended to kill him even after Kiri was released. he still jumped to her aid, even if he could have stayed with Kiri above deck where he was safe, he could have just aided Tuk and left her behind, but he didn't.

and there's so many ways to play with it and the aftermath. like.

Spider dragging both Tuk and Neytiri up the surface, trying his best to keep the trio afloat (namely Neytiri who was much less adjusted to the water and is exhausted by the night they've had) as they hope and pray to be reunited with the rest of their family.

maybe the stress gets to them and Spider just starts apologizing. I should have fought them harder. I shouldn't have let Lo'ak and Neteyam try and leave with me, I would have been fine. I should have seen it coming, should have taken it myself. it should have been me. my baby brother shouldn't be dead.

maybe he becomes partly delirious as he too gives into exhaustion, the big brother in him being the only part of him left coherent, so he takes Tuk close, whispering prrnen tsmuke [baby sister] over and over into her braids, assuring himself that she's safe and unharmed. he keeps praying to the Great Mother for his siblings to return to him unharmed. maybe he keeps asking where they are, if they're safe as his awareness fades and his memory weakens. all of his siblings. asking if Neteyam is ok, only to remember he's gone the second the words leave his tongue.

Jake and Lo'ak finding them when they come up with Payakan, both worse for wear, exhausted, clinging to one another, the only thing keeping their heads above water being spiders life vest, Tuk cradled between them. what a sight.

Neytiri watching as Spider looks over each of his siblings, taking them close, holding onto them as if they will be ripped away from him. the realization that he would die before he let that happen again hitting her like a ton of bricks the second she sees the look in his eyes.

a peace being made between the two in the wake of this event. spider silently claiming the role of big brother (he always was, but he had to pretend he wasn't. with Neteyam gone, he can't pretend he's not anymore), Neytiri silently agreeing.

idk man. it would be interesting.

[one-piece-aus]

Could I get brook for #12 for brook from the whumptober list?

Yes, of course! This one took an unexpected turn while writing but hey, I think y'all earned it after the few angsty ones

Whumptober Day 12

Brook x Reader

Warning: talk of boobs and panties (This is Brook so he had to ask the question)

I swear I did not mean for the first half to be so cracked but it just came out that way

"Ah- what the fuck!" You fell against the garbage bins behind you. Now sitting on the ground, you could only look up in horror at the animated skeleton in front of you.

He ceased playing the eerie music on his violin and leaned down, his face too close for comfort. Shivers danced down your spine as his eyeless sockets stared into your orbs.

"My my, what a lovely young lady you are," he spoke, and you would've screamed if horror hadn't taken your voice.

You heard the rumours and read the creepypastas about a skeleton roaming the streets late at night, playing an eerie melody that summons fog to obscure what he does to his victims. Another story made up to get internet views or scare kids away from the streets at night, and you figured if the creepypasta is true, the skeleton wouldn't be walking around a lit-up downtown city. Horror shit like that only happens in small towns or the suburbs, or so you believed, 'cause here he is, leaning over you.

"What- what do you want, man- skeleton- whatever you are?" Part of you hoped and prayed this was some sort of Halloween prank a couple of sick kids were playing.

"May I see-" He leaned further down and made the back of your head kiss the ground. "Your panties?"

"...No?" You didn't intend for it to sound like a question, you were just confused why he would ask that. It's too innocent to be threatening yet too raunchy to be a joke. Is he a virgin?

The skeleton stared, leaning over you. With no facial features, you couldn't tell if he was mad or unamused. The unknown fuels the fear spinning in your mind-

"Okay, apologizes for interrupting your stroll." He stood up straight and tipped his hat. "Carry on with your evening miss." The skeleton turned and began walking away, leaving you in shock.

"Wha...what the fuck- what the fuck just happened?" You sat there trying to process the last 5 minutes and you noticed the skeleton turning the corner. "Ayo! Wait up!" You scrambled onto your feet to catch up to him.

"Hm?" He turned to you. "Do you wish to join me in an evening stroll-"

"You can't just say that shit to people."

"...I don't think it's unusual to ask someone if they want to walk together-"

"Not that bonehead. The- The panty thing, you don't say shit like that and act all nonchalant afterwards!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"HUH?"

"Don't 'huh?' me! I'm the normal one here!"

"If you don't mind me asking, what's unusual about asking a lady to see her panties?" He tilted his head, displaying his curiosity.

"Well- it's just- it makes no sense, I mean- pervy boys would ask to see boobs instead and disgusting men would order for the panties to be taken off, what they do after depends if they're a virgin or not-"

"Well, that's just rude!"

"Huh?" Now the confusion is on your face.

"You don't demand a lady to take her panties off! Where I come you ask a lady to see her panties first, it's the gentlemanly thing to do."

You scoff hearing the word gentleman, "Where do you come from, the 19th century?"

"The 16th century, why?"

You almost hit the floor hearing that response. "No reason, it's just no one really talks about being or acting like a gentleman these days."

"That is unfortunate."

"You can say that again," you muttered thinking of the weird shit males say now thanks to memes on the internet.

"What is your name, if I may ask?" He bowed with his hat in his hand.

"Oh- it's [Y/n]."

"Well, miss [Y/n]-" he placed the hat back on his head. "Would care to join me for an evening stroll?" The skeleton asked, offering his arm.

You stared at his gesture, unsure if you wanted to accept it. What were you even doing out here talking to a skeleton? Your mind is probably making all this shit up because to haven't let it go to sleep in days. Ah, fuck it, it's not like you'll be going to sleep anytime soon. You held onto his boney arm, allowing him to lead your stroll.

"Hey... do you have a name?" You inquired, still wondering if this is real or not.

"Oh, I forgot to introduce myself, how rude of me, I'm so embarrassed," he apologized with a little slump in his posture. For something you were terrified of moments ago, you couldn't see why anymore with how lively he's being. "My name is Brook, known as the humming swordsman and musician of the Strawhat Pirates."

"You were a pirate?"

"Indeed I was, although that was many years ago."

"Can you tell me about your adventures?" A small sparkle in your eye, and who was Brook to say no to a lovely lady?

So the skeleton shared his tales of adventuring on the grand seas, speaking highly of all his crew members and the feats they've accomplished. His joyful memories he told showed how wonderful the crew was and how fond he was of them. You wished you could meet them, or at least people like them.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, [Y/n]." Brook stopped walking and handed you his handkerchief.

"No, I'm alright Brook, it's just very beautiful." You took his handkerchief and wiped your eyes. "They sound like- like lovely friends. Here..." You gave the item back and the two of you continued walking.

"[Y/n], I have a question that's been lingering on my mind since the moment I met you."

"What is it?"

"Why are you up this late at night?" It was an innocent question, yet the concerned tone behind it made you wish he didn't ask.

"Many people are up at this hour, it's not unusual to see someone around here this late." You avoided eye contact, finding the glowing city buildings to be a better sight.

"But you're tired..." Brook pointed out. "Your body is clearly exhausted and your eyes appear as if they haven't rested in days. Tell me, when was the last time you slept?"

"I haven't slept in days but who's counting?"

"It's not good for you to deprive yourself of sleep, [Y/n]."

"You make it sound like it's easy to get some sleep..." you muttered. "If it was that easy, I'd be in bed by now, but it's not... you wouldn't get it."

"Do you have insomnia?"

"How did you know?" You were surprised he even knew the term.

"Heh," He smiled at your shocked face before explaining. "Before I met the Strawhats, I had what you called insomnia. I spent days staring up at foggy skies, left alone with my thoughts, unable to sleep, though I suppose it didn't have any effect on my body since I'm only just bones. The only times I fell asleep were when I played the violin too long, I always fell down because I did it while standing, not the best way to wake up." He chuckled.

"Do you think... you could play the violin for me?"

"Of course." Brook smiled softly and pulled out his violin. "Anything for you, my lady."

Tag @bookandyarndragon @roseoftrafalgar

[keebwee]

Whumptober 2023 No. 12: “I haven't slept in days but who's counting?”

Red | Insomnia | “I’m up, I’m up.”

no warnings for this one :)

the red prompt part is raph. i was originally gonna write a cute fic for it but aughd. holy shit. my brain is fried. illness bro

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Hand in Hand (part five)

@whumptober No. 12 "I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?"

cw: sleep deprivation, manhandling, death mention

prev ///// au masterlist ///// next

~ ~ ~

It's been a few weeks, and Dan is doing everything he can to convince Swift. He attends meetings, voices hollow support for her conquest, defers any questions to her. Around the base, he's either by her side or confined to a locked room. He's been given a bed, but he hardly sleeps. How can he? He hasn't seen Wes since the card game, and all he has are the comments from Swift that may well be lies.

"Very good, I suppose your friend will eat today."

"I went through all the trouble of unchaining him, but now you've gone and upset me."

"Count yourself lucky I'm not punishing him for this."

She won't let him see him. She's hesitant to even give him an update if he asks after his condition, asks for proof of life.

"You'll just have to take my word for it. Or don't your trust me?"

He's behaving as best as he can, but in his head, the one safe place he has left, he's plotting.

An escape will be difficult, but in the long run, he has no choice. Swift will never fully trust him, and it's only a matter of time before she has no more use for him. He knows when that day comes, she'll have no trouble killing them both.

So he plans. He tries to memorize the halls, the doors. There are three exits he knows of; seven ships he's seen in the yard; two small enough for him to pilot on his own.

He hates the meetings, hates sitting in silence as Swift and her new allies plan bloody attacks against a power that won't go down so easily. He's as much against the Fleet as anyone, but can't they see this won't beat them? Can't they see this will only end in countless deaths?

But he never says that aloud. He can't, not when Wes is what's at stake. Once they get out, once he's safe, Dan can worry about the rest of the world.

He practices picking the lock on his door when he can't sleep, which is fairly often. He knows there must be some kind of surveillance in the room, so he makes sure to only work at it when the lights have gone dark. Getting material to create makeshift lockpicks was easy enough. Pens slipped up his sleeve during a meeting, wire and pins scavenged from the garbage when Swift turned her back on him.

It took several tries for him to get his own lock, and from there he did it again and again and again until he was certain he wouldn't fail. The lock on the cell where Wes was kept was different, made for a larger key, but he knew he wouldn't have much opportunity to practice on that one. He'd just have to hope--pray--he succeeded when he made it to that step.

From there, he had to find an opportune time. The shipyard was probably a minute's walk from his room, double that from the cell. Double again, if he's carrying Wes. Adding a minute for possible obstacles brings him to five.

Dan closes his eyes, walks himself through the route. Ten seconds to pick his own lock. A minute to get to the cell---No, he should prep the ship first. If he can't get a craft working , they're dead anyway.

Okay, a minute to get to the yard. Estimated five minutes to check for keys or hotwire a ship. Two minutes to the cell. One minute to pick the cell lock if he's lucky, closer to five if he isn't. Probably another two if Wes is chained. Five minutes to reach the waiting ship.

Twenty minutes. It's no time at all, but it might as well be an eternity. In the moment, it'll all come down to luck, and he hates that. Even if he picks the best possible day, even if he executes the plan in the dead of the night when only the patrols are awake, there's still the possibility that everything could go wrong.

But it's a risk he needs to take.

|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|°|

It's a few days later when Dan decides it's time. He's tried to get more sleep in preparation, even though that mostly just results in him lying on his back, staring at the ceiling for hours on end. He's tried to make himself eat more of the rations Swift sends his way, though he hasn't had much of an appetite. He'll need every advantage he can get.

As the hour draws near, Dan lays on the bed and waits. His hands are shaking again. His whole body feels fragile, like a building that's had its foundation destroyed and is on the verge of collapse, compounded by a bone-deep exhaustion that doesn't quite reach his overaware mind.

As soon as they're out, he can sleep. As soon as he knows Wes is okay, he can sleep.

The time comes, and he slips out of bed, moving to the lock. When it gives way with a telltale click, Dan gently pushes the door open, peering out into the dark hallway. He holds his breath, listening for doors, steps, voices. When he hears nothing but silence, he steps out, closing the door behind him. Ten seconds.

He keeps a decent pace on the way to the shipyard, only slowing down at doorways or corners, and makes it inside without any trouble. One minute.

The smallest ship is the furthest from the door. Good and bad; less chance of being seen, but a longer journey to make. Dan sprints to it, does a quick scan for the keys, sprints back when he finds nothing. His head spins from the exertion, but he needs to keep going. If the escape is ruined by the failure of his own body, he'll never forgive himself.

There's a small office attached to the yard; his next best bet before he has to risk hotwiring the ship. If he fails, will he still have time to sneak back to the room? To reassess and try again?

The door to the office is locked, but that's a good sign. Why would they lock up an empty room? When he sees no light on the other side, hears no voices, Dan begins to pick the lock. It's similar enough to the one in his room that he's done in seconds.

Inside are drawers and desks and filing cabinets; some kind of storage area. He tests drawer after drawer, trying to stay quiet but growing more frantic as each pull turns up nothing until--

One doesn't open.

Another lock.

Dan tries to keep his hands steady as he reaches for his picks, letting out shallow, shaky breaths as he kneels to work on it, not daring to hope when he hears a quiet click.

Relief floods through him when he sees the glint of metal inside, the smooth, colored glass that makes each ship's key distinct. He takes them all. He can worry about which one wakes the small ship once he has Wes.

Dan closes the office door, locking it from the inside, if only to buy himself more time. Five minutes.

Now he just needs to get to Wes. Dan has no idea what condition the other man will be in. Will he be able to walk? Will he even be conscious? Dan is willing to carry him, more than willing, but the thought of what he might see when he pushes open the cell door makes his gut twist.

What if he's dead?

It's that thought that does him in; buzzes in his mind, stealing his focus from the path ahead.

What if I'm too late?

With this new, horrible idea ringing in his ears, he doesn't hear the echo of footsteps until they're too close to hide from.

"What the fuck--?"

"Grab him!"

Even as sleep-deprived as he is, Dan's reaction time is quick, but not quick enough. He's slammed against the wall, an arm on his throat, making him choke.

"How did you get out?" the Riot King--Viktor--growls.

"Doesn't matter!" his partner snaps. Warner. Being able to put a name to every face is far worse than being set upon by strangers.

"Get him back to the cell before she finds out---"

"Great plan, until he escapes again," Viktor snaps, increasing the pressure on Dan's throat. "How?"

"Y' left the door unlocked," he manages to choke out. The lockpicks are in his pocket. Fuck, the ships' keys are in his pocket. If they search him, it's over, and how could they be so stupid as to not?

But Viktor looks like he might believe him. "Who did? Was it Erin? That idiot--"

"Shut up," Warner says, and when he reaches out to pat Dan's thigh, his stomach drops. His hands are shaking again. All of him is shaking.

Warner seizes the contents of his pocket and draws them out, holding the ships' keys in his palm for his partner to see.

As soon as Viktor's gaze lands on them, Dan is thrown to the ground, a heel pressed between his shoulder blades to keep him there.

"Trying to rob us, huh? I knew Swift shouldn't have trusted you, you're a fucking---"

Dan doesn't hear the rest of the man's rant, his mind racing, trying to find a way out, and failing that, he tries to find the outcome that hurts the least. Will Swift be angrier if she thinks he was trying to disable the fleet? Or will she be more insulted by the truth? Should he pretend he was trying to escape without Wes, or would that only serve to put his friend's head on the chopping block?

Outcomes and ideas fill his head like a swarm of wasps, but none of them matter, none of them really matter.

He failed. He's failed Wes. Wes is the one who's going to pay for this.

He makes no move to resist as the men take him by the wrists and drag him down the hall, his chest hitching with barely-suppressed sobs.

It's been two minutes. If he'd been more careful, he'd be at the cell, he'd be unlocking it, he'd be able to see Wes. If he hadn't fucked it up, they'd be out of here, they'd be safe.

But they aren't. They won't be.

He failed.

~ ~ ~

@kira-the-whump-enthusiast @kixngiggles @shywhumpauthor

[serickswrites]

Slept in Days

Warnings: referenced captivity, referenced torture, PTSD, nightmares, caretaker and whumpee

Caretaker walked into the conference room, cup of coffee in hand for them and one for Whumpee. Whumpee had looked so tired when they walked in this morning. Caretaker knew they hadn't been sleeping well and the only way they could think to help was to make Whumpee some coffee.

Whumpee had their head down on the table and they seemed to be sleeping. Caretaker hesitated in the doorway. They didn't want to wake Whumpee, not if Whumpee was finally getting some much needed sleep.

Whumpee started, their head shooting up, and eyes wide. "I'm up, I'm up."

Caretaker sighed inwardly as they stepped into the conference room, so much for letting Whumpee sleep. "It's ok, I know you're very tired. When was the last time you got some sleep?"

Whumpee looked at their phone. "Today's Thursday? I think I got a couple of hours Tuesday night. I haven't slept in days, so it's hard to tell."

"Whumpee, you can't keep doing this to yourself," Caretaker frowned. They set the mug of coffee in front of Whumpee. "It's not a bad thing to need sleep. It means you're human."

Whumpee pinched the bridge of their nose as they sat up further. The dark circles beneath their eyes looked like bruises. And when they opened their eyes and Caretaker's heart broke a little to see the haunted look in their eyes. "It's a bad thing when every time I close my eyes I see Whumper and what they did to me....what they were still planning on doing to me."

"I'm here if you want to talk, Whumpee." Caretaker hesitated before putting their hand on Whumpee's. Whumpee had never been a big fan of being touched and since their time with Whumper, they were even less inclined.

Whumpee's eyes softened a bit as they smiled. "Thanks, Caretaker. But I don't want you to join the no sleep club because of me."

"You don't have to be alone, Whumpee. I'm here."

Whumpee's eyes were tight as they gave a soft smile. "I do, Caretaker. I do."

[sometimesraven]

Ian's Running Slow

Whumptober No. 12: “I haven't slept in days but who's counting?” Insomnia | “I’m up, I’m up.”

Fandom: Quantum Leap (2022) POV Character: Ian Wright Whumpee: Ian Wright

Ian needs to find Ben. Sleep is secondary.

AO3 Link

Eighty-seven percent. Thirteen percent. Twenty-nine percent. Every roll gave them a different number. Every answer gave them another question. Every new algorithm only had Ian tugging at their hair in frustration.

They tried again. 

Run: Find Ben. If: Janis equipment AND full team. Output: ...... ...... ..... Ninety-six percent.

Good. That was good, right? It had to be good. Unless their code was wrong. They should rewrite the code, just in case they missed a fault that was giving a false positive. That would be fine, right? Would only take a few hours. They glanced at the gap in their curtains, shrugging off the peeking light of morning and reaching for their coffee mug. Empty. Damn. Running a hand through their hair, they pushed themself upright to grab another.

"You're kidding." Ian froze halfway out of the bedroom door, realising with a stifled cuss that they'd entirely forgotten Jenn was here, sound asleep on the bed behind their setup. "This is like... night three."

Ian's fingers tapped anxiously on their mug as they turned around, knowing that without sleep there was no way they were succesfully masking the schoolkid guilt on their face. "It's fine. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"No, you-.." Jenn yawned and stretched, pushing herself upright to eye them with the judging gaze that somehow managed to still pierce right through them despite the groggy, half-unfocused haze in her eyes. "You gotta stop this. You can't live on coffee and algorithms, Ian. You need sleep."

"I'll sleep! I just need-.. I have to figure this out, Jenn. I-if I can just figure out how to get Ziggy reconnected with Ben then I'll be able to-"

"For the love of-.." Jenn shook her head, shoving to her feet just to pad over and point at Ian's screen. "This is not finding Ben. You think I didn't notice after day two you started asking it over and over if we'll find Ben? Looks to me like you're using all this as an excuse to avoid sitting down with your thoughts for five seconds. Trust me, I know what that looks like."

"I'm. Fine," Ian reiterated, trying to brush off the way their vision swam a little with the quick change of focus from the bed to the desk. Sure, their hands were a little tingly and the fog in their head was thicker than the one time they mixed pink gin with ketamine as a teenager, but with just a couple more hours they could fix everything. "I just need a little more time."

"In a couple more hours you'll be hallucinating, Ian." Jenn stared them down with more clarity this time, lifting a brow pointedly when the mug they were holding almost slipped out of their hand. "You can't do anything like this. The more you fuck yourself up trying to look for him, the longer Ben's going to be stuck out there."

"You don't-.. You dont understand." Ian laughed, the tiny huff of air making them dizzy. "You don't understand, Jenn. This is my fault. I have to get him back. I have to-.."

Were they hyperventilating? Jenn was across the room before they realised they were falling, catching them awkwardly and dragging them over to sit on the edge of the bed, cradling them gently like a sick child. "Ben knew the risks. He knew what he was getting into. This was always a possibility, Ian."

"Future me's code-.."

"Worked to do exactly what it was supposed to. There was never any guarantee Ben would leap back. And hey-- with the Quantum Leap program shut down there's also no guarantee the apocalypse future will happen." Jenn gently kissed the top of their head, their skin clammy and their hair unwashed. "You saved the world, Ian. It'll help everyone a whole lot more if you believe just for a second that you're capable of that."

Ian blinked, then sharply forced themself out of the daze of sleep trying to take them. "I'm awake! I'm up-.. Just-.. Ben-.. what if-.."

Another blink, and when they opened their eyes again they were laying down, undressed and covered with bedsheets. Their computer was shut down, and there was water by their bedside. Maybe just a little nap wouldn't hurt.

[nade2308]

“Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.” 

— Oscar Wilde

Part 1 || Part 2

Ao3 link here

@whumptober

@thethistlegirl

[mrmustachious]

I haven't slept in days but who's counting?

Summary: After several exhausting weeks at work, Carlos is ready to spend a relaxing weekend off with his husband, but the universe has other ideas.

Day(s): 1, 2, 7, 12, 22, 26

Prompt(s): Swooning, “How many fingers am I holding up?”, Delirium, “Can you hear me?”, “I haven't slept in days but who's counting?”, Vehicular Accident, “Sometimes I get so tired; I don’t even know myself.”, Seeing Double, Working To Exhaustion

Carlos could barely keep his eyes open as he filled in the last of his report. He blinked frantically to stop them from drooping shut, as the words on the screen in front of him started to all blur into one.

He went to take a swig of the coffee on his desk, but it was only when the mug met his lips did he realise it was all gone. He groaned and placed the cup back onto the desk, and rubbed his hands over his eyes to try and wake himself up.

He debated making himself another drink, but he knew he was nearly done and his shift was close to being over. He could power through these last few minutes until he could go home.

He stretched and focused back on the screen, and realised that his last few sentences made absolutely no sense. With a sigh, he deleted the mistakes and rewrote it all again, but he could feel his eyes start to slip shut again only a few moments later.

Read on AO3

[faofinn]

No.12 "I haven't slept in days, but who's counting?" 

@whumptober-archive

Red | Insomnia | "I'm up. I'm up!"

Harrison swayed as he stood, staring blankly at Steve in front of him. He could see his mouth moving, but he couldn't work out what he was saying. He nodded for the sake of it, bored of the conversation and just so tired. Steve knew he wasn't paying attention, but he didn't really mind. He knew Harrison was struggling, it was beyond obvious, but there was nothing he could do. Harrison wasn't going to accept help, and he couldn't force him. 

The conversation seemed to be over, and Harrison didn't have anything else to do. He was exhausted, so disappeared into his room, flopping onto his bed with a groan. 

Steve gave him some space, knowing full well he needed the rest. He was worried about him, of course, but there wasn’t much he could do. He couldn’t fix his sleep, just had to hope he got the peace he needed and was able to drift off. He kept quiet around the house, careful not to make too much noise. 

He’d been worried about Harrison for days, up seemingly all hours. Even when he went to his room, Steve could hear him up, doing things, moving stuff around, going to the kitchen and back at 2am. It kept Steve awake, worrying about him, worrying that he might go back to alcohol, use that to finally settle him off, but for the mean time, he didn’t. 

He did some work in his little office, reading through some old research papers for a patient he’d had on his mind. Time passed, and he’d not heard anything out of Harrison. He hoped that was a good sign, that his son had finally managed to get some sleep. He worried about nightmares, too, knowing full well that was why he’d had so much trouble in the first place, but things were quiet. He typed some notes up, set about making dinner, and still hadn’t heard anything out of Harrison. He wasn’t about to wake him, not for food. He’d cope missing one meal, he could have it another time. 

Once Steve had eaten and put Harrison’s portion in the fridge, he watched some TV for a while and then headed to bed himself. It was late now, and he finally worked up the courage to open Harrison’s door, carefully so not to make a sound. He was passed out asleep on top of his duvet, lights still on and curtains undrawn. With a shake of his head, Steve slipped inside. He draped a blanket over his son, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of his head, drew the curtains quietly and flicked the light off. Hopefully he wouldn’t get woken up by the cold, or the light in the morning.

[yarn-dragon]

Whumptober Day 12! Annie hadn't slept in 5 days, it's probably fine

[foreverchangingfandomsao3]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Quinlan Vos, Anakin Skywalker Additional Tags: Whumptober 2023, Whump, Set after Qui-Gon's death, Tired Obi-Wan Kenobi, Insomnia, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Quinlan Vos is a Good Friend, Young Anakin Skywalker, Happy Ending, Otherwise known as I made myself sad so I had to give it a happy ending Series: Part 12 of Whumptober 2023 Summary:

Obi-Wan comes back from Naboo with a new padawan, nightmares and his life falling apart.

My fill for whumptober day 12: No. 12: “I haven’t slept in days but who’s counting?” Red | Insomnia | “I’m up, I’m up.”