driftfleet | two ○ voice / text

Entry tags:

two ○ voice / text

Who: Caesar Zeppeli & u
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: None this time!
When: Late night, 7/28

( joseph : voice : 1 am )

[The dreams are always the same. A great wind comes and cuts his skin; he is alone, and it hurts, but he doesn't cry out, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth in the dry air. Blood bubbles out of his nose. He is very afraid.]

[He's pretty sure he doesn't make any noise during these dreams. No one's said anything, anyway. He could get away with keeping it to himself. But tonight something at the base of his skull urges him to tell secrets.]

[His voice, when it comes, is very quiet.]

Are you awake?

( public : text : 2 am )

I have questions about nightmares.

Do you have them? How often? What do you do to make them go away?

( ooc ; caesar is affected by augment glitches / compulsion! )

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[The noise the communicator makes when he gets a private message is enough to pierce through Joseph's sleep. He wakes, but his eyes stubbornly refuse to open. Then stubbornly refuse to stay open once he manages to peek just a little bit. Thus, he's mostly reaching around for his communicator blindly, and once he has a hold of it, he's squinting at it until he gets the right combination of buttons and can just leave it on the pillow beside his head. He lets one eye fall shut and forces the other one to stay open.]

No. [Joseph's voice is rough with sleep. There's a slight pause, though the communicator is close enough that it's not completely dead air and traces of his breath, steady and deep, can be heard. The words are a little slow to make it from his brain to out his mouth.] And you shouldn't be either.

[There's a sound - a sharp exhale, not quite a laugh. Such a deep sleeper. This would be the time to retreat if he's going to do it, wouldn't it, to make up some excuse that Joseph probably wouldn't even remember by morning.]

[Words come out anyway, unbidden.]

I need to talk to you.

[Well, Nightingale isn't sleeping tonight- As little as possible, until Ino gets back to her about the tea leaves. So something like this catches her attention pretty easily.]

Every night. I used to have special tea that made you sleep without dreams. I ran out of it here, though.

Somteimse but motstiems i dont remmeber tehm cleer

[ Okay, Asteffiel recognizes that as a bad idea. Also he's sleepy and it makes typing harder than usual.

So here is a whisper. ]

I don't usually remember them. But talking about what I just remembered to my little plants help. Or going and laying on my friends.

[ Oh ... :c

Well, she has plenty of experience with that, as unfortunate as it is to say. ]

It helps me if I feel safe when I sleep.

[ Aka, when she's sleeping next to someone, or with someone she trusts nearby ]

Meditating before bed can help a lot too.

Does anything else work?

[Because right now he would give a lot of money to sleep without dreams, frankly.]

Not sleeping.

[Oh, okay. We're doing this? We're doing this. He hesitates briefly, then switches over to voice, too, matching Asteffiel's tone.]

Laying . . . on?

[He has questions about the plants, too, but this seems more weird and pressing.]

[He wasn't expecting her to respond - was sort of hoping that she wouldn't - and his heart sinks a little when she does. Still, she's offering, and he desperately needs help.]

I've tried breathing exercises. They didn't help.

Safe?

[There's a few minutes pause before he responds.]

When's the last time you slept?

[There's a shorter pause, but a definite pause nonetheless as nightingale has to think about that.]

Two days ago, I think.

The longest I ever stayed awake was three. I wonder if I could do longer.

Three's normally my limit too. I can stretch it to five if I use magic.

I didn't know you could use magic for that.

It's not exactly healthy.

Now? [Joseph turns his head away from the communicator to yawn. Rubbing at his closed eye with the heel of his hand, he looks at the communicator again.] I guess you wouldn't have called this late if it wasn't important.

[Or so he hopes. He will smother Caesar with a pillow though if he's just waking him up for no good reason. But he doesn't think Caesar would do that. It's more Joseph's style to be that kind of pain in the ass.]

What is it?

[ Sorry Caesar! :( But hey, if she can be helpful, she will be. Especially towards someone she actually thinks is pretty nice. ]

It's not just the breathing -- clearing your mind is important, too.

Well, most of the time when I have nightmares it has something to do with a situation I was in where my life or the life of my friends or family was in danger. But if I feel like I'm safe where I'm sleeping, it seems to help that anxiety go away a bit.

I couldn't sleep. [No, wait, that's not quite right.] I woke up.

[And if he left it there, again, Joseph would just get irritated and hang up and forget it in the morning. But he only hesitates for a moment, before:]

I keep having nightmares.

Edited 2015-07-28 20:13 (UTC)

Nightmares?

[Joseph frowns. He thinks that maybe he was wrong and Caesar really is just screwing around here. Even if Caesar were the type to have nightmares, he wouldn't be calling Joseph in the middle of the night about it. He'd just lose out on sleep and be pissy the next day. Naturally a little annoying, but on the whole not that big of a deal.]

What about? Kissing ugly girls?

[This would ordinarily either piss him off or make him laugh, but his response this time is curiously muted.]

Mm-mm.

[Another pause this time, longer.]

About Wham.

[Blood in his throat, on his lips, on his teeth, every square inch of skin, building in his belly. He exhales, soft and slow, and closes his eyes.]

[He was expecting Caesar to get annoyed if he was serious about having nightmares. Or to laugh, if he wasn't. It was supposed to be a good test and either way, hopefully, speed the conversation up so he could go back to sleep. Caesar's quiet response and answer though?]

Wham? [For the first time since Caesar called, Joseph sounds awake and alert. He certainly feels it.] How long has this-- This isn't the fi--

[The words come out a little jumbled, mirroring his thoughts. They haven't talked about any of this. Not really. Joseph's avoided it, unable to really sort through his own thoughts and feelings about it and it seemed to him that Caesar didn't care to because it wasn't that big of a deal to him. It was almost as if it never even happened sometimes. And now it doesn't feel like that's the case. Joseph is fumbling here and he knows it.]

[So he takes a breath and he tries to rein it in. This isn't about him. He needs to remember that if he's going to be any help here.]

Listen, Caesar: forget that guy, okay? He's not worth losing sleep over.

[He just listens as words fall out of Joseph's mouth, as he starts and stops and starts again. In a way, he knows this isn't fair. They've just been - ignoring this, allowing it to be this ridiculous elephant in the room, sidestepping it neatly, except in those moments where one or the other of them gets angry and refuses to quite admit why. And now he's throwing it in Joseph's lap out of nowhere.]

[But he really does need help, and it's easier to talk tonight than it's been on other nights, when the prospect of sharing what rises up in his mind every time he closes his eyes just seemed impossible.]

[Joseph's advice is honestly almost funny. Caesar almost asks him if he really thinks that hasn't been tried and discarded. Being cruel is the opposite of his intention right now, though, so he just makes a soft, helpless noise and shakes his head where Joseph can't see him.]

But I am, Jojo.

Their beds aren't usually big enough for me to sleep next to them, so I lay across their feet.

[ To be fair, the friends in question are also Sylvari, so it's less uncomfortable than it sounds? ]

[He opens his mouth and then snaps it shut. That should have worked. But no, Joseph knows better. Of course it wouldn't work. It was a lame thing to say. But Joseph doesn't know what else to say. He rolls over some to face the communicator better, his hand resting just underneath it. But he's silent as he stares at it.]

[It's not that he doesn't understand. Joseph's had plenty of his own nightmares, but most of those had been fears rising up to the surface after he made the deal with Wham and ACDC. They weren't things that happened. He can't tell Caesar they're just dreams.]

[And yet, he also knows that sometimes, when it's quiet, things come back to him unbidden. He doesn't know what it was like for Caesar and h wouldn't dare imagine it, but he still has his own memories of it, of how many times he called for Caesar again and again only to hear nothing but Lisa Lisa's sobs against a backdrop of deafening silence.]

Caesar... [He doesn't want to insult Caesar or injure his pride, but,] Neither one of us can change what happened. I know that if I could, I would.

[The scary part for Joseph is that he doesn't know if Caesar would or not. He hates thinking it's a possibility, but he's not that stupid to pretend like Caesar isn't the sort of person who commits wholeheartedly.]

We also can't predict what's gonna happen here, but I do know one thing: you're safe. Nothing's gonna to happen to you as long as I'm around.

If you can't convince yourself that it's over and they're just dreams, then you can believe in me. I won't let anything happen to you.

[ There's a looong pause as he debates answering.]

I sleep with my pet in my bed.

[ FIGHT ME I'M STILL MANLY. ]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 10

two ○ voice / text

private voice, etc.;

this thing until further notice

text

Text -> voice

text;

no subject

no subject

voice!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

voice!

no subject

Text