Distractions

Sleep is a Necessity

This next drabble is from @nnaguilera: Everest having to be forced to sleep by Magnus and Alec cause she is too busy writing to remember to sleep.

It's totally not a call out to Alex (who's name keeps being autocorrected to 'Alec' btw) and Helen /hj.

Everest wasn't tired. No, she was far past tired. She was exhausted, drained, worn out, absolutely knackered, dead on her chair. Her left leg had fallen asleep hours ago, not having been moved for a very long time. Her right leg bounced up and down in an irregular pattern that irritated every fiber of her being, but she was too tired to try and stop her leg from bouncing in that way. Her eyesight was fuzzy around the edges as she looked at her computer, round blue light glasses perched on her freckled nose, and she was fairly sure she hadn't blinked in a while. Maybe sleep was more important than she wanted it to be. Which could have been the tiniest bit important seeing as she didn't have a very high opinion of sleep (it was literally less than zero on a number scale). She was pretty sure that the fuzzy vision and phantom breaths she felt on the back of her neck every once in a while were because of the lack of sleep. She had read something the other day about how after two or three days of no sleep you had hallucinations. Did phantom breathing count as a hallucination? She didn't know and she was too tired to look it up.

Her eyelids drooped and Everest fought to keep her eyes open. She had to finish this chapter, had to send it to Roslyn to beta-read for her. She typed a few more sentences. She had to—what did she have to do again? She couldn't quite remember.

"Everest?" Multiple sets of rushing footsteps filled the apartment and then there were hands on her arms and faces in front of hers. "Are you okay? What are you doing?"

"Why're you up? It's four in the morning."

"No is not. It's ten in the mornin,'" she mumbled, words slurred in her exhaustion.

"Darling, it's four in the morning," Alec said, his voice that was already naturally a little rough, was gentle. "Have you been up all night?"

"What's the date?" She rubbed her eyes as Magnus checked his phone.

"The seventeenth," he answered, glancing at her worriedly.

"I thought it was the fifteenth."

She looked up from her keyboard, which she had changed to light up a pink color to match her hair, when Magnus sighed and Alec muttered something about time ignorance. Both men looked worried and slightly distressed as they shared a meaningful look. Everest set her hands back on the home row of the keyboard to type again, but her hands were pushed away from her laptop and into her lap. Her brows furrowed and she frowned.

"What was—gahhh!" Even her shriek sounded tired and dead. "What're you doing?"

"Bringing you to bed," her warlock boyfriend said simply as he carried her bridal style out of the spare room that had become Everest's office and into the bedroom she shared with Alec and Magnus.

"Why? I'm not—" A yawn cut Everest off, "—tired Mag," she protested weakly.

"You only call me that when you're tired," Magnus said. "You are too tired."

"I don't want to sleep," Everest protested. "I have things to do!"

"They'll be there once you've slept," Alec told her gently. He pulled back the covers so that Magnus could set Everest on the bed. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You need to rest, Darling. You didn't blink for three minutes when we got home, you thought it was ten in the morning on the fifteenth, and your words are all slurred. You need to sleep."

The frown stayed on Everest's face as Magnus placed her glasses in their case and crouched beside where she was sitting on the bed.

"You need to at least rest in bed, okay Cupcake? I'm pretty sure you've been awake for two days and if nothing else you need to rest." He handed her a simple pajama set (black shorts and an oversized Stitch tee that reached her knees) with a smile. "Do you want to put pajamas on?"

She took the set without a word and started to change, her lack of sleep causing her to have nearly no shame. Alec and Magnus averted their eyes until they heard the covers rusting and a soft, "okay." Everest was curled up in a ball in the middle of the California King bed and under the soft navy duvet. Alec and Magnus smiled softly at the sight of their girlfriend curled up with a small, petulant frown on her face.

"Why are you frowning?" Alec asked when he sat on her right side, Magnus sat on her left.

"I don't wanna sleep," she grumbled, stifling a yawn. "It's morning time, I shouldn't be sleeping."

"Cupcake, it's four in the morning," Magnus reminded her. "You wouldn't be awake for another four hours anyway."

Alec gently ran his fingers through her dark pink hair. "You don't have to sleep, just lay down and rest."

Everest leaned into the touch, feeling her shoulders relax. "Okay," she mumbled. Her eyes were closed and she leaned back against the pillows, practically melting into them. "Only if you two stay."

"That can be arranged," Magnus said, and she could hear the smile in his words. It made her smile softly too.

There was rusting across the room, likely as Magnus changed out of the tight pants and white button up he had been wearing before and into something more comfortable. The bed dipped on her left side and Alec's hand left her hair. Her smile fell slightly, she had been content and enjoying that, but then Magnus's arm rested on hers and her expression cleared. Everest moved his arm so that it was draped across her stomach and he began to trace patterns across her ribs, thighs, and stomach. When Alec slipped under the covers too, Everest's leg was immediately on top of his and his hand was back to playing with her hair. She yawned, not bothering to stifle or hide it this time.

"I love you," Magnus whispered and kissed her cheek.

Alec pressed a kiss into her hair as he whispered, "I love you both," into the quiet room.

"Love you," Everest returned easily, the words second nature by now. "I missed you guys while you were in Spain."

"Next time you can be the one to go with me," Magnus said. She was sure he was smirking when she heard a huff from Alec and felt Magnus press his face into her neck with a slight chuckle.

"And if I want to go with Everest?"

"Then you can wait your turn, Alexander."

"Can we talk about it later? I don't wanna deal with logistics right now," Everest requested. The two fell quiet, but she was pretty sure they weren't annoyed by her ending what would have turned into a debate of sorts.

The three cuddled up to one another and soon the pink haired twenty year old was fast asleep, not to wake until the next day. The men took a while longer to fall asleep, but eventually they followed in their girlfriend's footsteps and fell into dreamland. It was a good night; Everest finally got the rest she needed, Alec and Magnus came home from their trip, and Everest finished most of the chapter she had to send to Roslyn. (Or so she thought until she read through it two days later and literally screamed in disgust at the gibberish on the screen.)