#drowsiness

Raoul was missing, and Christine was beginning to grow incredibly worried.

It was unlike Raoul to leave in the middle of the night, much more so without telling her. And after everything that had happened those few months ago, neither of them were very heavy sleepers—which was why Christine was alarmed to wake up in the morning to find him missing from their bed.

None of the servants knew where he’d gone, and there was no indication at all that he had even left. His shoes were where he had left them, and his night slippers were still by the bed. All of his clothes in his closet were untouched, indicating that he had disappeared in the same nightclothes he’d slept in. Everything in their bedroom seemed to be completely untouched, and it frightened her.

Almost immediately, a search was organized to find him. Christine herself would not allow herself to simply wait at home for his return. No—she quickly dressed and went looking for him, trying not to let her imagination get the best of her. He had to be alright. She refused to imagine what sort of state she might find him in. He had to be okay.

Of course, her first and initial assumption was him. But surely he should have given up on tormenting them by now? She hadn’t heard from the Phantom in months now. And he had let them go. Surely he had left them alone?

But she could not get the thought out of her head, so she made her way to the Opera House.

Immediately, she made her way to her old dressing room. If it was truly Erik who had taken him, then he would be at his lair, and the only way she was certain of how to get there was through her mirror. She had not been there in months, and normally the trauma of that night would have kept her from returning.

But with her husband missing, she barely even thought about it once.

As she rushed into her old dressing room, she braced herself for something horrible. An ominous note, a wall covered in blood, or a body hanging from a noose, its neck snapped and blood trickling from its mouth.

But instead, she found her husband asleep on the couch.

At first, Christine felt relief rush through her body. But then it soon turned into confusion. Why was Raoul here, of all places? He made every effort to avoid the Opera House, just as she did… and soon, her confusion turned into a cold fear, a sick feeling settling in her stomach.

That was when she realized that there was something off about him. The way he was breathing… It was wrong. And suddenly, she found herself afraid to go to him. But she forced herself forward anyway, not even breathing as she slowly approached the couch.

Once she saw Raoul up close, she felt her blood run cold.

He was covered in blood.

No. Christine rushed forward, falling to her knees next to the couch. She pulled the blanket off him, and she had to choke back a horrified sob. He was covered in blood, bruises, and cuts across his entire body, and his nightclothes were stained a dark ugly red.

“Raoul,” Christine sobbed, gently grasping her husband’s face, turning his head to face her. She let out another choked sob as she saw the swollen mess that was her husband’s face. She ran a hand through his hair, the usual bright blond matted with dried blood.

She sat on the couch and pulled his head gently into her lap, cradling it to her chest and leaning her head over his while crying. “Raoul, Raoul, no… darling, please, please wake up…”

Her tears dripped onto his face, and she hiccuped and wiped them off, holding his head and desperately pleading with him to wake. He was breathing wrong, and he smelled strongly of alcohol and something else that she did not want to identify.

“O-oh, Raoul…” Christine pressed her forehead against his, sobbing.

Then suddenly, she felt a slight movement, Raoul’s breaths becoming suddenly stuttery. She sat up, her eyes flying open to see Raoul stirring. She hardly dared to breathe, until she saw his eyes open. Then his gaze, slightly unfocused, landed on her.

“Ngh… Christine…?”

“Raoul!” Christine sobbed, pulling his head into her chest. Raoul let out a quiet moan of pain, and she quickly loosened her grip on him. She gently placed her hand on either side of his head, tilting it slightly so their eyes would meet. She was unable to stop her tears.

“D-darling, wh-what… oh…” she could not manage to finish her words, only able to stare brokenly at her husband’s broken body. She reached and grasped his hand, and he suddenly lurched slightly, gasping in pain. She looked down and found that his fingers were horribly damaged and swollen. And around both his wrists were rings of raw, swollen flesh, as if his hands had been tightly bound. She let out another strangled sob.

“Darling,” Raoul gasped, his voice hoarse and weak. Though he was clearly drowsy from whatever had been given to him, he seemed more distressed by the fact that she was crying. “M-my love, Christine… I’m fine…”

Christine shook her head fervently, unable to tear her eyes away from his damaged hands. Raoul shifted slightly, moaning in pain, then reached up with a shaky hand and gently touched it to the side of her face.

Another sob broke free from her throat as he did this, as she felt the way his hands trembled against her face, how they were unable to cup her jaw like she knew he wanted to. She stared down at him, his slightly dazed eyes staring back up at her with guilt and pain.

“I am so sorry,” Raoul choked out, his voice becoming broken and smaller. “I didn't mean to worry you, Christine. I am so sorry, I didn’t… I don’t…”

“Shhh,” Christine finally hushed him, lowering her head so their foreheads were touching. He fell silent, as her tears dripped down her nose and onto his face. Raoul was crying too.

“Are you okay?” She asks. Tabian squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, trying to fight back his exhaustion, and sits up, looking down at Ava, whose face is round and soft. She doesn’t belong here, in this place.

“I’m fine,” he says, resting his hand on her head. His hand is big enough he can cover the entirety of it. “Give me a second to get dressed, okay?”

“Okay!” She says, easily deceived, smiling brightly at him before leaving him alone. She shuts the door. As best she can, that is. It doesn’t have a knob, only a chain. Sighing, Tabian rises from bed and takes off his clothes, which are soaked in sweat. He throws on some new clothes, namely a ratty pair of shorts and a thin t-shirt. He looks in the mirror, his usual scowl fixed on his face, and tries to smile. It doesn’t last long. Sighing, he stops and runs his hand through his dark, chestnut hair.

“Alright, let’s go.” Turning, he pulls open the door and steps out into the decrepit house.

The place is small, with a tiny bathroom, two bedrooms, and a living room with a connected kitchen- both of which are crammed with furniture that doesn’t really fit. He goes to the bathroom first, getting inside and opening up the mirror. The painkillers are missing.

“Fuck me,” he groans, and shuts the mirror. He tries the sink. Not a single drop of water to be had. “Fuck me.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Ava asks, taking his attention. She stares up at him with wide, blue eyes.

He sighs. “No reason, kiddo.” He pats her head again as he moves past her, causing her to wrinkle her nose at him. He wrinkles his right back and heads for the kitchen. “What kind of pancakes do you want?”

“Blueberry!”

He opens the fridge, searching through it. “Sorry, kiddo, no blueberries.” She whines, and he shuts his eyes as if it will block out the noise. “Just pick something else,” he says, fighting to keep his voice even.

“Chocolate!”

He turns to check the pantry, shutting the fridge. “Chocolate it is,” he says, grabbing out the chocolate chips. She cheers. Gathering the ingredients, he starts measuring them out into bowls while Ava waits in a chair behind the island. His headache is getting worse. He shouldn’t be around her while he’s sick, but if he’s not, she won’t get fed…shaking himself, he keeps working. The longer he works, the more tired he becomes. His nose is running. He wipes it off on his sleeve, his eyelids sagging.

“Tabby?” Ava asks when he reaches back to work his fingers into the aching muscles of his shoulders.

“I’m fine,” he repeats, looking up at the dilapidated ceiling. “What’d you learn about in school yesterday?”

“Uhm…multiplication!”

“That’s exciting. How are you feeling about it?” He asks, whisking together the wet and dry ingredients. Math was his favorite subject in school.

“It’s boring,” she complains.

“Hm. What’s not boring in school?” He asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but she begins talking about her friends and then how her mother won’t let them come over. That’s one thing Tabian really can’t blame Eliza for. He pours some pancake batter into the pan, getting out a spatula. The heat from the stove top exacerbates the heat already in his body and makes him more and more tired. His muscles ache so bad.

“Tabby!”

He jerks back to attention, eyes snapping to Ava in concern. “Wha- what?”

“The pancake!”

He looks down, to see its burning. “Fuck.” He scrapes it up and flips it over. “Sorry, I’ll have this one.” He finishes making breakfast and serves Ava first, cutting up her pancakes, before sitting down with his own, burnt, pancake. A couple minutes pass as he rubs his temples.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Ava asks around a mouth full of food.

Sam doesn’t eat much, and Dean only eats junk food and pie. They both get hit in the head more than their bodies should reasonably be able to handle. Also, all Dean drinks is beer, and Sam drinks a lot too. They drink with pills, and are a little too quick to brush off injuries. The one thing that he sees legitimately affect them is exhaustion, but even that takes longer than it should to kick in.

One time Jack walked in to find Sam sitting at the table with a bunch of books. They were scattered around his seat, and one was open in front of him. He was sitting with his chin in his hand, and his eyes were half closed. He looked drowsy, and half asleep.

“Hi, Sam. What are you doing?” Jack asked, walking up to Sam. He wrung his hands, curious, but anxious about interrupting.

“Oh, I’m just researching. You’re welcome to sit down and join me if you want.”

“You took tired.”

“Oh, I’m fine. I just need some coffee, or something.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve been at this for almost ten hours, and I’m not sure how much longer it’s going to take to find what I need.”

“I’ll help then.”

Sam blinked owlishly as if he didn’t think Jack would actually take him up on it. He pushed his phone over, turning it on as he does. There was a picture on there of some sort of symbol.

“We’re trying to figure out what this symbol is. So look for this image, and or anything that looks similar. If you find something similar, we can look more closely at the lore surrounding it.”

Jack nodded, and Sam motioned towards one of the piles of books.

“These are the ones that I haven’t gotten to yet.”

Jack grabbed one, and started flipping through it. Sam flipped the pages about a third as fast as Jack did, and he had to keep forcing his eyes back open every time he blinked. Jack tried to keep his eyes on the book in front of him, but occasionally he would get distracted watching Sam. Sam’s eyes would water as he yawned repeatedly, turning the area around his eyes red as though he was crying. His posture was slouched, and his guard was completely down. Part of Jack felt happy that Sam trusted him that much, but the other part wondered if that was wise. Jack eventually focused fully on the book in front of him. Half an hour later, footsteps drew his attention from where he was reading.

Dean walked in, and they locked eyes. Jack glanced back to Sam, who was now asleep with his head in his arms. Dean squinted at Jack.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for information. I haven’t found it yet.”

“Alright, well, take that somewhere else. We wouldn’t want to wake Sam up.”

Jack looked down for a second before nodding. “Alright, I can do that.”

He grabbed the book that he was reading, and the last two that he hadn’t finished yet, then headed to the kitchen to set up at the table in there.

Another time, Jack walked into the kitchen to find Dean already asleep at the table. Dean was normally still on edge when he was asleep. Something felt different this time, and it took Jack a second to figure out what was going on. Normally Dean would be at least a little awake once someone approached him, and he’d either go back to sleep, or wake himself up fully depending on how much he trusts them. This time, he didn’t even stir. Jack looked around, then sighed. There were beer bottles scattered around, and some kind of burnt mess still on the stove.

He grabbed the trash can, and took it with him as he picked up bottles. He threw them straight into the bin, and once he was done with that, he wiped all the surfaces down with a Clorox except for the part that Dean was laying on. After that he headed to the stove to start cleaning that. He removed the pot, scraped it down, and set it to soak. Then he wiped down the counters and the stove. He cleaned up any remnants of the cooking disaster. After that, he settled down to watch over Dean. It’s not as though he rationally thought something was going to happen, but he had just slept through all the noise Jack just made.

So Jack quickly grabbed a few things so he could work on trying to move them while Dean was asleep. He was close enough that nothing was going to happen to Dean, but far enough away that he could work with his powers. He worked on moving the objects into a design a couple of inches off of the ground. He was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, his face scrunched up in concentration.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked, his voice rough from sleep.

Jack jumped, dropping all of his trinkets. “Oops.”

He glanced at the clock, surprised to see that he had been sitting there for an hour.

“I was just working on something.”

“On the floor?” Dean asked, looking around. He frowned. “Wasn’t my beer right in front of me?”

“I thought you were done with it. I cleaned up.”

“Oh, that explains it. I don’t remember this place looking this good when I went to sleep. Why are you on the floor though?”

“I just thought this seemed like a good place for this,” Jack lied, knowing that Dean wouldn’t like the real answer.

He might have seen through what Jack was saying, but he also might have thought that Jack was just being weird. Dean nodded.

“Alright, just don’t stay there too long.”

Jack nodded too, turning back to what he was doing. He was smiling gently.

The next time he saw either one of them fall asleep it was actually both of them at the same time. They were working a case, and Sam turned on camera footage from the building where the first victim was killed. Then started it a few hours before the woman was killed since they were looking for anything that could tell them who their monster was, and he had come back to this building a few times since then. So, Jack fidgeted and tried to keep watching. Eventually he managed to override his small attention span by tricking his brain into thinking that there isn’t anything else to think about, or look at. It helped that he doesn’t have to blink as often. He watched as countless people walk past, but none of them threw off any red flags.

It was hours later when a noise finally drew his attention away from the footage. It sounded kind of like a snort. However, the first thing he noticed when he looked over at Sam and Dean is that both of their eyes were closed. He sat up straighter to get a better look at them as Dean snored again. They were sitting next to each other, Dean’s head resting on Sam’s shoulder while Sam’s head was tipped straight back.

They must have been tired. I mean, this is also ridiculously boring. I won’t wake them up. I can watch this by myself, and I won’t miss anything.