#layvau

His eyes do an ever slight swipe your way, but you’ve no idea if he's registered anything by the glossy look he keeps as he runs his pen through his students’ work. These papers hold all his attentions, evidently. Each assignment and essay is being annotated with detailed remarks, underlines, cross-outs, praise, and grading despite how, inches above them and their coherence, their writer mutters syllables in quasi-correct order to himself.

It’s a sorry sight, but you’re no better yourself. Of course, you’ve thought before, the two insomniacs found each other in this world. Perhaps a hypocrisy you should think that; he keeps himself up for work and other such noble feats, while you keep yourself up fiddling with everything in his office tonight because, as has been a rule since the beginning of time itself, you physically cannot relax. An obligation and a flaw cannot compete in good faith.

One of his strange knickknacks rolls under your fingers, and you twist it over in your hands absentmindedly. “Hershel–”

“Please don’t touch that,” his voice breaks through with the hand that takes the stone from you and puts it on a shelf.

Now he’s beginning to get on your nerves. In any case, at this instant your priorities lay in getting things through his skull while you have his attention.

“You should really be calling it a night now.”

“I’m almost done. I pray you’ll give me a minute to finish up.”

“You’ve said that three times now.”

Going home is always an option. Neither you nor Bearik need to stay here for any particular reason (even if the creature has already made this place his second home, sleeping very soundly on the green felt couch). But you have reservations about it, the idea that you’d leave him here to keep at this — this… insane routine, of his. And until when? Until dawn breaks through the trees? There must be something you can do to at least rid yourself of worrying about him. Waiting around won’t get you anywhere.

Subsequently an idea comes to mind. Careful not to make a sound, you unfurl an arm from the nest you’ve made beneath your chin and hover your fingers behind him. No reaction. Had this been any other time (and had you known him a little less than you do), you would have been worried. Or, you wouldn’t have been — you would have clouded your intentions with a joke at his expense. Tonight you were trying something out. Still hid behind something like you can’t be seen for who you were lest something catches up with you.

You doubt he was so stupid so as to have not noticed you by now. Shaking fingers fumbled for some few torturous seconds before settling, comfortably, to small circles on the edges of the back of his neck. It was going to start slow, steady, and small. (Not like you know advanced masseuse techniques, but you think your fingers work magic given the effort.)

At some point he makes a sudden noise — “Ooh,” he shivers — to which you jump and retract your arm.

“Ah.” He blinks and clears his throat. In the dim illumination of his desk lamp you start seeing darker hues on his cheeks. His voice softens when he looks at you. “My apologies. Did I startle you?”

“No.”

When he chuckles it makes you feel like you’ve given yourself away somehow.

“I must say, I feel quite relaxed now. Many thanks to you and that wonderful massage just now.”

While you work to right yourself — and hide your face away, for it is now undeniably red — Layton has, with a decisive yet gentle push of his desk, gotten up from his chair. Stretching. Yawning. Looking still as tired but much less tense now. Your chest drops itself in warmth. Even when he's up and delirious he maintains such a clear vocabulary, with the kink of his somewhat slurring them the single indication that something was off.

“I suppose I should retire for the night,” he turns to you, a fond sort of half-smile playing on his lips, too tired to be pulled into a bigger one. “As should you, Vaughn.”

Oh, that's right. Now that you've stayed up so late, you'll spend hours beyond schedule trying to sleep as per usual, and this time with the added delay of having to wake up Bearjollnr and drive all the way back home. This was a strange idea on your part. A very unhealthy one which gains you nothing useful at the end of the day.

Speaking of delirious minds, yours has just caught up with you. Layton’s face is a little funny in this light, and you're sure you're smiling funny, too, but for some reason… though you should be pissed clean off that it's this late and you're still here, everything is so great right now. Something pulls you to holler a laugh of triumph.

“I've finally got you to bed! Yes! Take that, Layton!” you cheer and pump your fists.

And he laughs along with you. “Oh? Why the sudden formalities? I thought you were set on calling me Hershel tonight.”

Now you regret everything you've ever done in your life. Everything is horrible forever and should blow up this instant. Forever. Your face heats the cold night asunder as your palms grip the wooden desk as if demanding for it to do something about this man. If you were any more hunched over you'd be a bridge. Perhaps he was delirious after all.

And perhaps you have let a delirious man persuade you with his stupid “logic” and “reason” to not drive back home tonight on account of your fading consciousness, instead letting him lead you back to his bedroom while he insists on taking the sofa. Stupidly, in a state where you can easily pull him to take the bed with you. Which you do.

He accepts your dastardly plan as reality with so few rumblings that you don’t care to hear from him in regards to this. You’ll both think about this situation in a clearer fashion in the morning, but for now there is only the bed, and the rustic smell of pinecone, and the blankets draped over you while you fall asleep in company.