(no subject)
Fic! I'm going to go with using a header as some wacky experimental thing, but unfortunately that means giving this a title...
Title: Parasomnia
Fandom: Boston Legal
Notes: Night terrors fic, as requested by shyday. Three months ago. But I finished in time for her birthday!
Also, I used Pascal for the epigraph, but it could just as easily have been Joyce: "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."
Cross-posted to fanfic100.
“All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his own room.”
--Pascal
Alan fell down the stairs the day Miss O (O for Occopinti), a woman with dulling red hair and a stringent sticker-awarding policy, imparted to his second grade class the secret that the Earth was spinning. She’d distributed a sheet of paper with a black-and-white world skewered on its axis like a shish kebob, surrounded by a flurry of tiny arrows meant to imply that the frostbitten grass and frozen mud Alan trod at recess was actually whirling at the rate of a jet-powered tire swing.
He opened his eyes to sickly gray bristles of carpeting, walls dashed with shadows, stairs ridged like a row of teeth descending upon him. Pain bubbled in his chest and his first conscious breath was choked, as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. He pulled his arms tight around himself, curled his toes, and thought he felt the planet reeling beneath him.
When Alan woke the next day, his mother was repeating his name, voice cycling through arpeggios of anxiety.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, mom, stop.”
She crouched beside him on the narrow landing, touched her fingers to his forehead, continued wordlessly mouthing his name as she stroked his hair.
“I’m okay,” Alan said, squirming away from her hand, ducking out of arm’s reach. He turned from her expression-it was indecipherable, hovering between anger and concern, and he didn’t want to witness the outcome-and squashed his nose against the wall, frowning as if intent on staring down the plaster.
“You’re not,” his mother said, her voice fracturing and falling in a terrifyingly unfamiliar manner. “Alan, honey, look at me.” She reached for his pajamas, plucked at one of the grimy bat signals that curved over his shoulder.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered, pressing her son’s head between her hands, interlacing her fingers in his. “Your hands are sweaty, Alan. Is that a bruise?”
He trembled, nibbled at his lip, sternly told himself to stop trembling. “It’s okay. Okay, mom?” His bedroom was a steep left turn from the top of the stairs, wallpapered in a ghostly floral pattern he bragged to his friends depicted mutilated weeds, strewn with toys whose jagged plastic outcroppings might interlock flawlessly with the angry red indentations in the soles of his feet.
“Mom,” Alan said, wincing his eyes shut at the strangled sound of his voice, the faint gurgle beneath it. Heat rushed to his cheeks and he buried his head in the crook of his arm, felt threadbare fabric affix itself to his skin in splatters, hot tears serving as adhesive. A breath shuddered through him. “Mom,” Alan said, lifting his head, “did you know the earth is moving?”
He’d cried easily as a child and Alan wondered how many adults could tell. There was no question about children, of course-they possessed an unerring instinct for weakness, that preternatural awareness of imperfection refined through hours spent lobbing insults from one end of the playground to the other.
Now, though, he struggled to imagine what the indicators might be. Whether there was some nuanced code of former humiliation he’d yet to comprehend: telltale lines at the eyes, at the mouth, the head’s inclination at a certain angle. Fitful sleep rendered the world translucent, unreal. He marveled at the composition of his watch: circles within circles, as though the designer had intended to create some geometric enigma and it had just so happened to tell time. He appreciated, as never before, the delicate arch of a coffee mug’s handle, rearing from the ceramic and then surrendering in on itself once substantial enough for two fingers to grasp.
Alan half expected the world would flicker out at any minute (the way a movie reel died, with that last wail of distorted sound) and that when it came back, he’d have dropped over the edge of a balcony.
There were occasions when Denny shot him (because with Denny, everything came down to shooting) a look out of the corner of his eye, frowned in a way that in anybody else would surely have been mistaken as signifying deep thought, grumbled inarticulately and then spent the next few minutes studiously pretending he’d meant nothing by it. Alan, for his part, pretended that he’d one day scrape together what little courage he could lay claim to and assemble some sort of coherent narrative-an explanation as to how one could end up petrified of clowns, incapable of sleeping alone at night, a democrat-with which to present his friend.
One day, he thinks, eventually, the night terrors will end and he’ll be able to step into a conference room without speculating as to how many of the people around the table can read in his face the surly college student who, an hour prior to goading his cousin into hitting him, had cried because he couldn’t find matching socks to wear to his father’s funeral.
Movements weighted with solemnity, Alan pressed his palm to the bare skin of her chest, drummed his fingers once over where he fancied her heart was. He touched his other hand to her cheek, brushed her shoulder as though it had acquired a fine layer of dust, remembered himself and kissed her on the lips.
“Yes, like a dog,” he said. “I dream of pursuing rabbits through open fields.”
He’d made the mistake of using the phrase “night terrors”-it was, after all, a technical term-when he told her. She’d laughed; he’d smiled as though she’d just presented him with a heartfelt apology for slamming his fingers in a door.
“You’re full of shit,” she said admiringly. “You are so full of shit.”
He had dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes. If anyone asked, he planned to tell them he had an abusive girlfriend. Humorous on so many levels.
“It usually happens after someone dies.”
“Sorry.” She ran a hand through his hair, a gesture he ordinarily found soothing but on this occasion reminded him of a dog’s doting owner. He awkwardly shifted upright, drew his legs to his chest and clasped his hands over his knees.
“You know what?” Her mouth stretched into a smile, revealing two orderly rows of teeth. “I bet it never happens when you’re drunk.”
Together they emptied a wide array of bottles with dwindling contents, drinking from glasses smeared with the fingerprints of previous users. They had sloppy, drunken sex, Alan constantly moving his hands, imagining prints left all over her body.
Night terrors were supposed to vanish by the time their victim turned twelve, were designed to evaporate with childhood, sparing Alan the agony of a splitting headache, inflamed sense of embarrassment, kitchen tiles imprinted on his cheek, and far too many faults to attribute them to.
He woke with Tara’s hand pressed to his side, nestled between rib cage and hip. Taking a moment (a moment of that early-morning haze when even one wayward beam of light seems like too much, seems like overexposure) to ponder the positioning, Alan determined that to move his torso would be to risk a corresponding shift in the woman beside him. He shuffled his feet in an attempt to gather strewn sheets, sighed and closed his eyes.
Her touch reminded him of childhood towers; poising glass atop glass, touching rim to base with hands that shook all the more for his willing them not to. The acute awareness of the breakable resurfacing the moment he turned away and that reflexive jerk of the head, the hand raised to prevent imminent collapse. Whether the touch, that instinct, salvaged anything he never knew, but he became familiar with the slipping away, the imagined rush of air as the structure crumbled around his outstretched hand.
This was like that, her fingers stabilizing, but only in that when she pulled her hand away, he awaited a collapse of some sort.
He thinks sometimes-usually at night during those moments when he shouldn’t be awake-of his childhood bedroom at the top of the stairs. He reminds himself a room on the ground floor wouldn’t have prevented him from running. He tells himself it was chance, that God or anybody else never designated him that boy at the top of the stairs, eternally poised for a fall.
Title: Parasomnia
Fandom: Boston Legal
Notes: Night terrors fic, as requested by shyday. Three months ago. But I finished in time for her birthday!
Also, I used Pascal for the epigraph, but it could just as easily have been Joyce: "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."
Cross-posted to fanfic100.
“All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his own room.”
--Pascal
Alan fell down the stairs the day Miss O (O for Occopinti), a woman with dulling red hair and a stringent sticker-awarding policy, imparted to his second grade class the secret that the Earth was spinning. She’d distributed a sheet of paper with a black-and-white world skewered on its axis like a shish kebob, surrounded by a flurry of tiny arrows meant to imply that the frostbitten grass and frozen mud Alan trod at recess was actually whirling at the rate of a jet-powered tire swing.
He opened his eyes to sickly gray bristles of carpeting, walls dashed with shadows, stairs ridged like a row of teeth descending upon him. Pain bubbled in his chest and his first conscious breath was choked, as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. He pulled his arms tight around himself, curled his toes, and thought he felt the planet reeling beneath him.
When Alan woke the next day, his mother was repeating his name, voice cycling through arpeggios of anxiety.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, mom, stop.”
She crouched beside him on the narrow landing, touched her fingers to his forehead, continued wordlessly mouthing his name as she stroked his hair.
“I’m okay,” Alan said, squirming away from her hand, ducking out of arm’s reach. He turned from her expression-it was indecipherable, hovering between anger and concern, and he didn’t want to witness the outcome-and squashed his nose against the wall, frowning as if intent on staring down the plaster.
“You’re not,” his mother said, her voice fracturing and falling in a terrifyingly unfamiliar manner. “Alan, honey, look at me.” She reached for his pajamas, plucked at one of the grimy bat signals that curved over his shoulder.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered, pressing her son’s head between her hands, interlacing her fingers in his. “Your hands are sweaty, Alan. Is that a bruise?”
He trembled, nibbled at his lip, sternly told himself to stop trembling. “It’s okay. Okay, mom?” His bedroom was a steep left turn from the top of the stairs, wallpapered in a ghostly floral pattern he bragged to his friends depicted mutilated weeds, strewn with toys whose jagged plastic outcroppings might interlock flawlessly with the angry red indentations in the soles of his feet.
“Mom,” Alan said, wincing his eyes shut at the strangled sound of his voice, the faint gurgle beneath it. Heat rushed to his cheeks and he buried his head in the crook of his arm, felt threadbare fabric affix itself to his skin in splatters, hot tears serving as adhesive. A breath shuddered through him. “Mom,” Alan said, lifting his head, “did you know the earth is moving?”
He’d cried easily as a child and Alan wondered how many adults could tell. There was no question about children, of course-they possessed an unerring instinct for weakness, that preternatural awareness of imperfection refined through hours spent lobbing insults from one end of the playground to the other.
Now, though, he struggled to imagine what the indicators might be. Whether there was some nuanced code of former humiliation he’d yet to comprehend: telltale lines at the eyes, at the mouth, the head’s inclination at a certain angle. Fitful sleep rendered the world translucent, unreal. He marveled at the composition of his watch: circles within circles, as though the designer had intended to create some geometric enigma and it had just so happened to tell time. He appreciated, as never before, the delicate arch of a coffee mug’s handle, rearing from the ceramic and then surrendering in on itself once substantial enough for two fingers to grasp.
Alan half expected the world would flicker out at any minute (the way a movie reel died, with that last wail of distorted sound) and that when it came back, he’d have dropped over the edge of a balcony.
There were occasions when Denny shot him (because with Denny, everything came down to shooting) a look out of the corner of his eye, frowned in a way that in anybody else would surely have been mistaken as signifying deep thought, grumbled inarticulately and then spent the next few minutes studiously pretending he’d meant nothing by it. Alan, for his part, pretended that he’d one day scrape together what little courage he could lay claim to and assemble some sort of coherent narrative-an explanation as to how one could end up petrified of clowns, incapable of sleeping alone at night, a democrat-with which to present his friend.
One day, he thinks, eventually, the night terrors will end and he’ll be able to step into a conference room without speculating as to how many of the people around the table can read in his face the surly college student who, an hour prior to goading his cousin into hitting him, had cried because he couldn’t find matching socks to wear to his father’s funeral.
Movements weighted with solemnity, Alan pressed his palm to the bare skin of her chest, drummed his fingers once over where he fancied her heart was. He touched his other hand to her cheek, brushed her shoulder as though it had acquired a fine layer of dust, remembered himself and kissed her on the lips.
“Yes, like a dog,” he said. “I dream of pursuing rabbits through open fields.”
He’d made the mistake of using the phrase “night terrors”-it was, after all, a technical term-when he told her. She’d laughed; he’d smiled as though she’d just presented him with a heartfelt apology for slamming his fingers in a door.
“You’re full of shit,” she said admiringly. “You are so full of shit.”
He had dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes. If anyone asked, he planned to tell them he had an abusive girlfriend. Humorous on so many levels.
“It usually happens after someone dies.”
“Sorry.” She ran a hand through his hair, a gesture he ordinarily found soothing but on this occasion reminded him of a dog’s doting owner. He awkwardly shifted upright, drew his legs to his chest and clasped his hands over his knees.
“You know what?” Her mouth stretched into a smile, revealing two orderly rows of teeth. “I bet it never happens when you’re drunk.”
Together they emptied a wide array of bottles with dwindling contents, drinking from glasses smeared with the fingerprints of previous users. They had sloppy, drunken sex, Alan constantly moving his hands, imagining prints left all over her body.
Night terrors were supposed to vanish by the time their victim turned twelve, were designed to evaporate with childhood, sparing Alan the agony of a splitting headache, inflamed sense of embarrassment, kitchen tiles imprinted on his cheek, and far too many faults to attribute them to.
He woke with Tara’s hand pressed to his side, nestled between rib cage and hip. Taking a moment (a moment of that early-morning haze when even one wayward beam of light seems like too much, seems like overexposure) to ponder the positioning, Alan determined that to move his torso would be to risk a corresponding shift in the woman beside him. He shuffled his feet in an attempt to gather strewn sheets, sighed and closed his eyes.
Her touch reminded him of childhood towers; poising glass atop glass, touching rim to base with hands that shook all the more for his willing them not to. The acute awareness of the breakable resurfacing the moment he turned away and that reflexive jerk of the head, the hand raised to prevent imminent collapse. Whether the touch, that instinct, salvaged anything he never knew, but he became familiar with the slipping away, the imagined rush of air as the structure crumbled around his outstretched hand.
This was like that, her fingers stabilizing, but only in that when she pulled her hand away, he awaited a collapse of some sort.
He thinks sometimes-usually at night during those moments when he shouldn’t be awake-of his childhood bedroom at the top of the stairs. He reminds himself a room on the ground floor wouldn’t have prevented him from running. He tells himself it was chance, that God or anybody else never designated him that boy at the top of the stairs, eternally poised for a fall.