Nighttime by Elina Chris's hands are heavy. JC doesn't notice it any time except when he's trying to sleep, and Chris's hand is lying heavy on his hip, or across his stomach. But sometimes he can barely draw breath for the weight of Chris's arm on top of his ribcage, and he doesn't know what to do. He wants to slide away, scoot over to his side of the bed so he can breathe deeply and drift off to sleep. But he thinks somehow Chris will know it, and be hurt, even when he's been fast asleep for half an hour, snuffling and snorting in unconsciousness. And he doesn't really want to give up the warm comfort of Chris's body wrapped around his own. Sometimes he feels like he's all angles and lines, stretching out into infinity. Chris's soft bulk limits him, gives him a starting place and an ending place. So instead he scoots closer to Chris, tucks further into his body and inside his arms. And it works, because now the weight of Chris's hand falls on the bed, and JC is left with the reassuring solidity of Chris's body behind and around his own. He becomes heavy, himself, and sleeps. Sleeping with Justin is an adventure. He thrashes and mutters, busy and energetic even in his sleeping world. More than once JC has woken up to a hand thrown in his face, or an elbow in his side. Justin, though - Justin never seems to hurt himself enough to wake up, even when he flings his arm over his head and hits his hand on the headboard, hard enough to leave a bruise on tanned skin the next day. Sometimes his mumblings make sense, as much as the product of any dream can make sense. Other times JC watches his lips murmur out nonsense sounds, and imagines that this is what language sounded like before there were words. Tonight JC shakes himself out of sleep at the sound of fear in Justin's voice, and switches on a lamp to see a frown furrowing between his brows. He gathers Justin to him, wraps those long limbs in his own, and strokes his head, his back, until the tension leaves his body and he relaxes back into the grip of peaceful sleep. JC turns the light off, and is just getting back to sleep himself when Justin resumes his nightly struggle, twitching and moving in an unknown dance. Lance can't sleep when he thinks he has too much to do. JC wakes up to the tapping of his laptop keyboard, and sighs. He goes for days with only three or four hours of sleep at night - a concept JC can barely understand. But he gets wrapped up in his business; in making his contacts; in his deals that absolutely have to be tended to or they will fall through. Eventually he always crashes, sleeping ten or eleven hours at a stretch, but he is miserable and snappish before it happens. He always has apologies to make for the things he says while he's sleep-deprived. JC knows that if he can just keep him from starting the cycle, things will be okay for a while. So he haul his sleepy self out of bed, closes Lance's laptop gently on his fingers, hushes his protests with caresses and kisses, and makes him forget business for a little while. There's always the possibility that Lance will get back up and go to his laptop afterwards. But JC will take that chance when he might, instead, slump boneless in JC's arms and lose consciousness for the night. Everyone jokingly refers to Joey as "the Human Heat Source," but he is, and it makes JC nuts. JC thinks there is nothing like lying curled up with him, his head on Joey's chest, Joey's heart under his cheek, but he absolutely cannot stand to do it during the summer. The heat Joey generates makes JC sweaty and sticky, and he can't sleep that way. He ends up sprawled across the bed, barely able to even touch Joey. But in the wintertime, Joey is perfect to curl up with. No matter what the chill in the air, he warms JC and keeps him feeling safe and cozy - his favorite way to sleep. And then one muggy summer night Joey hits on the bright idea of running the A/C on full-blast all night, and in the resulting icebox JC can have Joey just the way he likes him: skin to skin, warm and necessary. JC likes to sleep naked, except for socks, because his feet get cold. Actually, he doesn't even like to sleep with socks on. What he really likes to do is warm his feet on the feet and legs of his bedmate, but Chris kicks him when he does that, and Lance grouses until he gets up and puts socks on, and Justin's feet are just as cold, and Joey is always a little too warm, so that JC's feet start to sweat, and that's not what he's going for at all. So JC strips down naked, and puts on fresh clean soft white cotton socks, and slips into bed. And Chris tugs him close, and Lance snuffles into his arm, and Justin flings an arm out across him, and Joey sighs contentedly and settles further down into the pillow, JC's weight across his chest. |