#courtesy of brennan lee mulligan's insane description of his 81st hour awake

[stoppit-keepout]

Miss out on energy (s & d tier fic)

[maybe i’ll clean it up and put it on ao3 at some point but for now, here’s all it is! Here’s the link to the NEW AND IMPROVED version on AO3! title from WTF Is Sleep by the Worriers, direct follow-up to episode 132, AKA “Alex doesn’t sleep for 3 months and Morgan tables the turns”

canon levels of shippiness, that is to say, Alex thinks Thoughts and nothing happens lol]

Ninety consecutive days awake was a lot like 2 months awake, or like 1830 hours, or eight weeks, or at least it was something sort of like those things. The whole endeavor may have made Alex's perception of time rather squidgy.

At first they'd had a week (estimated) of being tired, then some interval feeling like they were made of felted wool, and now it was like they were encased in glass, observing in fits and starts the people around them moving so, so fast.

Well, the person around them. Morgan.

Morgan, who had a stubborn hand fisted in Alex's shirt and was dragging them down the hall.

Manhandling them, to use their own words, words that were still connecting in Alex's muddy synapses. Manhandle you off of this couch and into your bed.

Alex felt their mouth moving, giving Morgan some sass, but their brain was still stuck on what came next.

Pin you to the bed until you fall asleep.

And suddenly, that's what was happening. Alex was face-down on the bare sheets. Morgan had their wrists in a secure grip that would nevertheless be easy to brute force out of if they didn't mind breaking the wrists of anyone involved.

Breaking a wrist had a unique feel. Snappy. You had to at least get the radius and the ulna, which already gave a great two-part harmony, but if you placed it just right you could try for all eight carpal bones to get a truly satisfying crunch. It didn't even take that much strength if you knew your angles as well as Alex did.

"Now you sleep," Morgan said as if there were no other way this could go.

Their weight settled firmly on Alex as they switched to a full-body pin from the strategic one they'd used to throw Alex onto the bed.

Alex hadn't broken anybody's wrists.

"Stop thinking," Morgan said.

Alex wasn't aware they'd started. They were, however, a contrarian, so they tried to marshal whatever thoughts Morgan had detected into order. That would show them.

The first, most logical option would be to snap and do... something. They could refresh themself like they had been intermittently, or teleport away, or kiss Morg--.

Nope, they couldn't do that.

"I could kill you with a thought," Alex said into their pillow.

"But then Barnaby would never let you touch Kotetsu for sure." Behind Morgan's ribcage, Morgan's heart sped up as they chuckled.

Alex could feel it against their shoulder blades.

"You have a point," Alex said, and craned their head around so they could see Morgan's mop of hair. They turned their face back to the pillow. "You're lucky I'm a dog person."

Option two, become a dog. The two of them have shared a bed before with Alex as an animal, this could just be another installment of that.

The glass Alex was trapped inside shivered as they considered rearranging their body.

Morgan would cuddle a dog, instead of pinning it.

Their breath tickled the naked skin of Alex's neck, which stayed perfectly human.

"Can you breathe with your face in the pillow like that?" Morgan asked.

Or they could kiss Morgan.

"You remember how I'm the most powerful person who's ever existed, right?" Alex said. They could twist around and Morgan would be in their arms and--, "I don't need to breathe."

"See, the fact that you had enough air to say that out loud means you can in fact breathe," Morgan said. "Meaning you could have just fucking said 'yes.'"

They shifted on top of Alex, and Alex closed their eyes for a molasses-sticky second. They could feel every freezing hot atom: Morgan was lying on their front now, body soft and inescapable above with their chin resting on their crossed forearms, evenly balanced across Alex's shoulders.

In the darkness beneath their eyelids, Alex felt like they were everywhere. It was like making themself incorporeal to phase through a wall, except instead of feeling nothing, they felt Morgan. Warmth and pressure and bony knees.

"Do you know the Tam Lin story?" somebody asked.

"What?" someone else replied.

"What?"

She had to hold onto him, Alex thought in answer to that earlier question. Tam Lin turned to beasts and monsters and at last to flame, and she had to pin him to the bed and make him sleep.

No.

Alex pried their eyes open and turned again.

This time, they could see their own reflection in Morgan's irises, gold tumbling down from brown. Their spine strained and their cheek felt liquid against the pillow.

"Is that what this is?" Morgan asked from just five thousand hair's breadths away, and Alex didn't kiss them. "Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?"

"No," Alex said. They tried to shake their head; the rustle of hair against their ears, the thud of ear against bedding, swallowed them momentarily.

"Good, 'cause I'm not doing it," Morgan pronounced.

"I know."

Alex sloshed around inside Alex's skin, inside the glass that held Alex. Did Tam Lin become a bucket of water too, or was that some other story?

Morgan cursed and moved to pin their legs more thoroughly. They asked, "Why are you making this so fucking hard?"

"I'm a villain," Alex tried to explain scornfully, but their stupid sloshing body hijacked the words with a yawn.

"You're exhausted is what you are. Just fucking sleep." Morgan affected a sing-song, mimicking tone and said, "'Eight hours a night, Morgan, energy drinks are poison, Morgan.'"

Alex protested wordlessly and glared over their shoulder into Morgan's smothering eyes.

"Your problem," Morgan continued contemplatively. "Is that you can dish it out but you can't fucking take it, can you."

Even hidden behind Alex's half-lowered lids, the room suddenly seemed brighter, slower, sharper.

"I can take anything you want," Alex's voice said.

"Oh holy shit, have your eyes always been able to do that?" Morgan's mouth moved further away as they raised themself up on their elbows for a better look. "You're like a cat."

"I'm a glass of fire," Alex said.

Their mind's hands were still running over and over Morgan's low voice talking about them fucking taking it.

It was a dangerous thing to be dwelling in, but 'dangerous' was kind of Alex's thing.

"Like, I know I said you had to sleep, and you do, but now I've gotta know," Morgan said. White teeth flickered sharp. "Do you purr, too?"

The distant, dizzy remnants of Alex's dignity dragged at least three answers to that back into the dirt.

"… No?" Alex said once it became clear there would be nothing else they could muster.

"I don’t believe you for a second." Morgan grinned. It was a miracle they were maintaining eye contact with them. "I am absolutely going to use this against you, you know that."

Alex could not remember if they could purr. Probably they could, though, they could do anything, take anything, conquer anything.

They turned back down into to pillow and disappeared into black with a feeling like falling.

Waiting in the void was Morgan's voice, each perturbation of air resonating perfectly, meaning nothing.

"Do lizards do that too, the pupil thing? No, no, I'll check it when you're actually asleep, don't think I'm letting you up so easy."

Sounds as standing waves in the air, in Morgan's chest, in Alex's bones.

"But you might actually be out now."

Warmth changed from a dense crushing to something lighter, wrapping every edge and threatening to carry them away.

"There you go. Was that so hard?"

Nothing was.