Barbara's tired, but by no means exhausted. Darkness plays against the backs of her eyelids in phosphene patterns as the room quiets to the faintest noises of bodies shifting, and then breathing, and the air circulation. For as much as the little Victorian Hotel is done up in hokey haunted house appearances, it doesn't creak or moan. There are no scratches on the window, no shutters banging about. It's just a quiet that feels a little too big, a room that feels too small, a bed that is somehow both at the same time, and sleep a little too far beyond physical reach.
But Barbara is steadfast in focusing on trying to sleep, and if two or three questions she hasn't asked yet come to mind, she doesn't think about asking them. She turns them over in her thoughts, like something she could manipulate with her hands, but she doesn't break the silence. She knows Dick needs the rest—the same as she can tell he's fighting his own restlessness with everything, against everything, to get there—and she knows today has been stressful enough. So, no. It's not easy, and at some point, she does turn on her back, arms crossed over her stomach under the blankets, but sleep comes. Slowly, nebulously.
Somewhere, just as she's finally slipping off, some part of her knows, it's not the silence, but the sound of Dick breathing, that makes her able to.
Which, perhaps, makes it all the more ironic when it is the thing that drags her back upward from the depths, too. Soft and slow and deep. Somewhere just above her, against the curve of her forehead. Soft and slow and deep. Shifting the hair that's fallen over the side of her face, so that it tickles the rise of her cheek and the edge of her jaw. Soft and slow and deep. As she realizes it's the movement beneath her other cheek, too.
Barbara's not entirely awake, but she's not asleep enough to not work out that equation—as her eyes slit open just barely, just enough to verify, even in the pitch dark of the night, yes, she is somehow curled up against Dick's chest, as well as the rest of him—and the next sound is her own soft huff.
no subject
But Barbara is steadfast in focusing on trying to sleep, and if two or three questions she hasn't asked yet come to mind, she doesn't think about asking them. She turns them over in her thoughts, like something she could manipulate with her hands, but she doesn't break the silence. She knows Dick needs the rest—the same as she can tell he's fighting his own restlessness with everything, against everything, to get there—and she knows today has been stressful enough. So, no. It's not easy, and at some point, she does turn on her back, arms crossed over her stomach under the blankets, but sleep comes. Slowly, nebulously.
Somewhere, just as she's finally slipping off, some part of her knows,
it's not the silence, but the sound of Dick breathing, that makes her able to.
Which, perhaps, makes it all the more ironic when it is the thing that drags her back upward from the depths, too. Soft and slow and deep. Somewhere just above her, against the curve of her forehead. Soft and slow and deep. Shifting the hair that's fallen over the side of her face, so that it tickles the rise of her cheek and the edge of her jaw. Soft and slow and deep. As she realizes it's the movement beneath her other cheek, too.
Barbara's not entirely awake, but she's not asleep enough to not work out that equation—as her eyes slit open just barely, just enough to verify, even in the pitch dark of the night, yes, she is somehow curled up against Dick's chest, as well as the rest of him—and the next sound is her own soft huff.