It was three in the morning by the time Steven admitted to himself it just wasn’t going to happen.
He’d lain completely still, tossed and turned, taken a midnight stroll, made himself a cup of warm milk, counted sheep, meditated, installed extra blue light filtering apps on his phone before looking up how to meditate, done a quick round of cleaning to clear his mental to-do list for the next day, put some relaxing music on, emptied his bladder, counted sheep some more...
But nope. Burning eyes, heavy limbs, slow and muggy thoughts: check. Actual sleep: no check.
"Marc?" he whispered. He stared at the ceiling, sprawled in bed like a puppet that had its strings cut and was unceremoniously tossed aside. (Maudlin brain weasels: check. Sweet, sweet sleep so his mind could work all that drama out in its natural habitat of exciting yet nonsensical dreams: no check.) "Marc?"
"Hrm?" Marc mumbled internally. "Whah?"
(Marc, on the other hand, had been sound asleep from practically the moment he relinquished the body to Steven.)
Steven dramatically threw an arm over his eyes and whined. "I can’t sleeeeeeeep. Why can’t I sleep? I have mountains of sleep debt to catch up on. A Himalaya’s worth of it! Sleep should be the easiest thing in the world right now, after – after everything!"
He could feel Marc doing the mental equivalent of pushing himself up against the headboard and yawning. A surprisingly physical mental image, considering how ‘physically’ limiting Steven still found being in the backseat. There must be gradations to be had. Marc clearly knew plenty; with all the danger and misunderstandings out of the way, Steven should probably start exploring some too. Unsurprisingly though, the yawning was even more contagious this way than when he saw people he didn’t literally share a brain with do it.
"You’ve spent the past few months trying to teach yourself not to need any sleep," Marc said wryly. "You may not have felt you were succeeding well enough to suit your purposes, but you did succeed in fucking up your ability to fall asleep."
Steven’s mouth snapped shut mid-yawn. "Oh – bollocks. I’m such an idiot."
Steven felt an odd urge to pat himself on the back, a phantom sensation he was beginning to recognize as Marc’s way of interacting with him from within. "Let’s just say that one’s on me for trying to have it both ways, and be done with it. We’ll switch places, alright? Falling asleep is much easier back here. We can figure out how to train the insomnia out of you again in the morning, when you’re not stressing out about wasting precious hours of socially acceptable nap time."
Annoyed with himself but relieved by the easy solution to his hours of futile struggle, Steven sighed. "Fine, fine..."
The disembodied feeling of falling backwards was familiar by now. Steven sank away through the mattress, and Marc drifted back up.
He nudged Steven into that warm, dark pit of instant sleep that normal consciousness sealed off with a dozen layers of bullshit, and then stared at the ceiling, rubbed his eyes, rolled onto his side...
And stared out the window until the sun came creeping over the horizon.
Steven stirred with the light. An instinct ingrained into both of them, it seemed. Closing his eyes, he idly observed Steven’s slow, almost languid awakening. It hadn’t been anything close to the recommended eight hours, let alone the ten to twelve they probably needed to recover after everything they’d put themselves through, but this half night was more than Steven had let himself have in weeks. Marc wondered if this was how orcas did it, sleeping with one hemisphere of their brains at a time. Probably not, he concluded uneasily. Mentally it was a life-saver, but physically, there was no denying they hadn’t gotten a moment of proper rest. His stomach was a confused, angry knot of ‘what time is it? what the hell am I supposed to be doing during this part of the sleep-wake cycle??’ and his joints were filled with hot coals.
A huge, jaw-cracking yawn echoed through his mind, and then a blissful sigh.
"Wow," Steven said with feeling. "You’re right, this is so much easier..."
Then he trailed off, already, and Marc suppressed a groan. Oh yeah, here we go.
"Hey. Did you sleep at all?"
"Just need to take a leak," he said, and swung his legs out of bed.
Steven caught his eye from their reflection in the fish tank and gave him a flat, unimpressed look. "Liar."
"Fine, I’ll wet the bed."
He was already on his way to the bathroom, though. Consistency was for not-liars.
"That’s not what I meant and you know it," Steven said, making a valiant effort to look at him from the unwieldy glare of the bathroom light in the wall tiles. "Did my insomnia training infect you too?"
"I don’t think so."
"Was sleeping a problem for you before?"
"Not usually. And it’s not a problem now. It’s fine, Steven," he sighed, tucking himself back in.
"So what’s got you so awake then?"
Marc shrugged, washed his hands, turned off the light, and shuffled back to bed.
"When’s the last time you got a proper eight hours?" Steven persisted.
Another shrug. Marc let himself fall into the messy tangle of Steven’s blankets and tried to remember if there was anything special about the last night he slept beside Layla, the day before he got the call about his mother.
"Should we switch out again?"
He sighed, aggravated. "No. You need to be rested to figure out how to fix this in the morning. And no, it’s not morning yet. Go back to sleep. I’ll get the rest of what I need once you’re up and about."
Steven sounded aggravated right back: "Well that’s not how it’s supposed to work either, is it? Is it the flat, is it not a familiar enough place for you to relax in? I’ve read that’s hugely important. Or do the city noises bother you?"
Marc thought of the sound of Layla breathing beside him; her little sighs when she rolled over, her occasional smacked lips and indecipherable mumbling; the bed creaking under her weight when they stayed in cheap hostels; the way even busy freeways or tourists partying through the night or police sirens twice an hour were no match for the anchor of her heartbeat.
(This, he decided, was as good a time as any to stop lying or denying altogether. He pulled an end of blanket over his stomach, closed his eyes, and said nothing.)
"Is it the bed? Do we even like the same type of pillow? Did you leave a stuffed animal behind when you left for Chicago? ...do you need the ankle restraint back on?"
Marc thought of Layla’s body close to his; the warmth of her nearness, the weight dipping the mattress as constant proof of her being there, being real; the tickling, silky coils of her hair when he buried his face in it; the smells of her fresh sweat and the products she used; pulling her back against his chest, having her sprawled all over him, lazy games of footsie under the blankets, getting his legs tangled with hers just because.
"Marc? C’mon, mate. The silent treatment isn’t going to help either of us. We’re a team, remember? Helping each other out is not supposed to be a one-way street anymore, I get to have a say in how I want to contribute to our joint well-being too. So let me, will you?"
Marc squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face in Steven’s pillow. Marc thought of Layla so hard his very soul ached with it.
"Oh," Steven sighed. "Of course. Oh, Marc."
There was almost, almost a hand in his hair, ruffling it gently.
"We’re a right pair of tossers, aren’t we? What were we even thinking, splitting up and going back to London without her, just when we were starting to work it out? Honestly, I... I genuinely can’t remember what we were thinking when we made that hare-brained decision?"
Something odd drained out of Marc. He frowned. Me neither.
A firm mental hand turned both of their minds away from that train of thought and in a different direction entirely: a memory.
"I’ve got it!" Steven exclaimed, taking over their body so abruptly it felt to Marc almost like getting pushed down the stairs by someone rushing to get ahead of him. Steven jumped out of bed, climbed the scarily rickety side table, pried loose the boards hiding Marc’s secret compartment, and dug out the deactivated phone.
(Who put that back there? one of them thought, just for a split second.)
Eyes glued to the device, Steven stumbled back to bed and got comfortable. As he waited for it to boot up, he tried his own charger and was happy to find it fit. Huh, one of them had changed the lurking crocodile background picture to the silhouette of a traditional Spanish dancer, fan gracefully aloft. (But when?) Then he went searching through the phone’s contents, familiar and yet not.
Marc knew what was coming – and yet not.
Something felt weird here.
Then Steven found what he was looking for and pressed play, and Marc (as he was only very distantly embarrassed to note) instantly stopped thinking about anything else.
‘Hey baby, just calling to say I love you,’ Layla’s voice said. ‘It’s been a quiet day. I spent most of it missing you. Oh, but I’m dying to show you what I’ve done to the kitchen. This house is getting so great, it almost makes me want to cut down on us traveling so much. Almost.’ She laughed, bright and carefree. ‘Let me know when you’re, ah, half an hour out, okay? I’ll swing by the Greek and pick up your favorite. I can’t wait to see those souvenirs you’re bringing me, you tease. Okay, bye for now. Still love you. See you soon.’
A voice message saved from better times. Happier times. When their marriage was shiny and new, and the love Marc felt for Layla so unprecedented and incandescent and disorienting, it had, if only for a while, been simple and untarnished, and let him do the impossible. Maybe the worst thing he had ever done, but also the best. The very, very, very best.
Ask for her to love him back, and take what she was offering.
Steven gave him a leg up, and Marc pressed play again. And again. And again, and again and again, until the rising tide of his emotions ran its course and ebbed away, until her voice and the sweet simplicity of the message pulled the plug out of the sink of his stress. Then he pressed play one more time, and before the recording ran out, he had fallen into a deep, deep sleep.
They didn’t wake from their much-needed rest until the sun was starting to set again and the real Layla started banging on their door.
(They’d turned the phone on; of course she’d come for them. She always would.)
(Oops, Jake thought.)