…sleep deprivation
tw sleep deprivation, self harm, general misery, death mention
give me a whumpee so sleep deprived that their entire body hurts— they feel the ache in their bones, every muscle weeping for a break.
whumpee pinching their skin to keep themselves awake, twisting until it burns, digging their fingernails in until they feel warm blood seep out, dragging and ripping until it’s caked under their fingernails.
they can’t let themselves sit down—they know they’d just collapse. but they’re swaying on their feet, staggering a little. they feel their legs shaking in protest with every excruciating step.
give me the brain fog, the confusion, the slurred words and jumbled sentences— the inability to keep more than a single thought in their head at once.
let the dull pain of thinking too hard wear them down.
let them run on empty fumes until they’re forgetting things as soon as they occur.
until all they can think is how tired they are— the exhaustion pressing in around their brain like a thick syrup, sticky and sinking in around them until theyre suffocating, breathing in poison.
so exhausted that they blink and realize they’re crying.
feeling like a dead man, for all intents and purposes, were it not for the way they’re still barely standing, muscles quivering with each labored step.
they know they’re bad for thinking it but—
at least the dead get to rest.
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The Shade of It All
Listen.
Titania, Queen of the Fae, can't accept that Dream of the Endless never took her up on a second invitation to her bed.
(For once, Dream decided to be sensible about his lovelife, which was, as everyone knew, tended to be catastrophic. That has since been addressed, but we'll get to that in a little bit. Give us a moment.)
So the vain, capricious, very dangerous Queen is incensed when she hears that His Darkness, the King of All Night's Dreaming, has taken up with a human. An immortal human, mind you, but the insult absolutely cannot be borne! It was insupportable!
And for the love of the Puck, they were married? Bound in heart, mind and soul, so Dream claims, that the very Dreaming itself recognized Robert Gadling as mate to its King and Heart? Yeah, Titania was going to challenge that, because Dream had been married before and gods above and below only knew how that ended.
So she thinks she's going to get a free show out of this, right? Bring the Lord of Dreams low, expose him in his passions before the avid, greedy eyes of the entire Unseelie Court, witness losing himself in the carnal charms of his chosen mate. She'll take whatever petty vengeance she can get.
(Perhaps there was a little bit of deviltry here from Desire's direction, because they were quite annoyed at the want and need that was currently centered around their brother. It was enough to make them reach for the Endless equivalent of Brain Bleach.)
Except she doesn't count on Feral Chaos Gremlin Hob Gadling.
Feral Chaos Gremlin Hob Gadling, who honed his eloquence and gift for words in an age where literary giants like Christopher Marlowe (and Shakespeare) had lived and breathed and spun their out their stories and tales to inspire the dreams of men.
Feral Chaos Gremlin Hob Gadling, who was quite capable of reading one capricious, glamour-ridden Faerie Queen for filth, stripping away her carefully crafted illusions with every word, every truth, with the sharpest wit and caustic humor that sent the Unseelie Court and the denizens of the Dreaming rolling in the aisles.
"Lubricate, Your Royal Nibsiness," Matthew the Raven tells him, nudging a whimsically carved goblet of dreamwine in Hob's general direction.
Hob takes it without missing a beat of his scathing read on Titania's grooming and beauty routine, which had already stripped her faerie web gown to ragged shreds.
The shade of it all was so epic that it had cast a cooling effect over the Dreaming, which had been suffering a bit of a heat spell, mainly because His Darkness and the Prince Consort had been thoroughly enjoying their honeymoon before they were so rudely interrupted.
Dream could only smile, cat-content and he had put a very eloquent period on Hob's Epic Read of Reads by dipping his consort into a kiss that was somehow far more passionate and hotter than the lurid fantasies that Titania and her Court had hoped to see. Frankly, they were all blushing like virgin maids in the end.
Desire closed up the Threshold and sulked for a solid six months.
Titania holed up in her chambers and was not seen for another century.
-end-
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