so this ain't livejournal

More fic. YAY!

Title: Sleep.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst/Reflection
Characters: Crews & Reese pre-ship
Summary: I was thinking about what happened in 2x10 Evil...and his brother Ziggy, with the whole hotel room thing. This could be read as AU to that, in that Crews did stay in the hotel room or you can imagine it happening again, this scene just came to me, and I wanted to see what peoples reactions were to my Crews & Reese before I started posting a longer story. So comments are loved and cherished. Link text from the Eels song "I Need Some Sleep."



The dark is oppressive. It is never this dark in the city, she thinks. She fidgets a bit and then hears the one thing she was really hoping to avoid at this time of night, morning, whatever.

"Whatcha doin' Reese?"

"I'm sleeping Crews." She mutters irritably.

"No you're not."

She rolls her eyes. "I'm trying to sleep."

He is silent for just long enough to think he has given up. "Counting sheep?"

"Yes, now shut up, you're making me loose count."

"It going well?"

You can't shoot him, you can't shoot him, you can't shoot him circles as a mantra in her head. "Excellently, Crews." She lets out a sigh of relief when after ten sheep (and god she could kill him, that never helped her sleep) he said nothing.

"In prison, it's never silent. Even at night, even if everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing, the guards still make their rounds every half hour."

Her eyes open at the admission. They never talked about this, and now, now he was, she resists turning over to face him even though she'd only be able to see the white of his eyes in this light.

"It was something you didn't really notice the. And I was in the infirmary and solitary so much I didn't even really notice it until I got out." Reese remains silent, and his nervousness at her response forces him to prolong his babble for just a few more seconds. "Ted said the first time it sunk in that he was in jail was when he woke up on morning to find he'd slept through a fight. It isn't the big things, the things you see in the movies, that get you," His lips twist into a grimace, "It's the little things."

Reese is silent and he thinks maybe he stepped over the line when he hears: "Like fruit."

He smiles. "Like fruit, Reese." Part of him expects her to apologize, he learned quickly after he got out that that was all any one did when he talked about the inside. He hears her turn over and waits for the sorry to slip out. He hears an intake of breath and prepares.

"You don't sleep properly for about a year after you stop using." Her voice is quiet. "Only when exhaustion makes you, and even then only an hour or two at a time." Her voice grows louder as she says: "Your body, it forgets how to function without the dope." He can imagine the small wry smile on her face as she continues, "They don't show you that in the movies, the fact that when your high you sleep a lot." Her voice quiets again when she says, "And after, it isn't just the drugs, it's the nightmares."

It is his turn to be silent then and think of how to respond, before finally he says: "They scare me too."

Dani starts at that, she hadn’t meant to say so much, sure, but it is the gentleness in his voice that takes her of guard, and a part of her can't help but feel relieved. There isn't any judgment. Not one iota of pity is in his statement, it's just him agreeing, understanding. "Goodnight Crews."

"Goodnight Reese." He falls asleep with a smile on his lips and for the first time in a long time he doesn't expect to be woken up by the sound of boots on grating and a flashlight moving over his prone body. Instead he dreams of being woken up by sunshine, and fruit pancakes. When he does wake up he finds his partner bathed in the few rays coming in through dark clouds, he thinks it isn't really a disappointment.

"Get up Crews, we've got bad guys to catch."

Nope, not a disappointment at all.




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