pressure (pushing down on me)

bridge to the turnabout

VI: bridge to the turnabout

February 6th, 2019

Sugar-bright eight-bit blares in his ear, and he snorts awake. Fumbling blindly for his side table, he garbles into his pillow and squishes Winston against a cheek.

"H'lo?"

"Guess what!"

"Nnn..." He sighs heavily into his mattress, mind already drifting back into the embrace of slumber. "...Whuh?"

"Nick, are you still asleep? For shame, it's already ten."

"Leave me 'lone," he mumbles, head lifting to scowl at the dim light slicing through the edge of closed blinds. "Used to sleep until two unless I kicked you off m'couch."

"I was a growing teenager, Nick. Now I'm responsible and have a job, unlike some people."

"Ouch," he says, sighing as sleep falls away from his mind. He might have been dreaming, he thinks, but can't say what about; all that lingers is disintegrating images. Falling gavels, storm clouds. The impression of water rising around his legs and too-tight hands wrapped around his arms. He rubs their memory from his eyes, Maya's voice tethering him to wakefulness.

"You don't have a client right now, I know you don't!"

"Exactly, which is why I'm allowed to sleep in." Harrumphing, he leans up with noisy effort, pressing himself up against his headboard. "So what's going on? Interrupt my beauty rest just to bully me?"

"Beauty rest can't fix everything, Nick."

He snorts away from the speaker and flattens his sleep-gruff voice. "I'm hanging up."

She giggles. "No, don't! I'm sorry, you can look decent sometimes, just not often—!"

"Wow."

Witch cackling. "You—you pull off the accountant look really well—"

"Tell me what you really think—"

"I'm sure you'd look cute in a turtleneck or something, maybe you could branch out your closet a little—"

"So you called to criticize my wardrobe and my appearance. Awesome. Anyways, my bed is calling me—"

"Maybe a turtleneck or a nice jacket, something to keep you warm, I mean! Because you're gonna need it!"

He frowns, casting off his blanket to place bare feet on the floor. "What?"

"It's cold at Hazakura Temple, you're going to need at least something warmer than your suit jacket. You're not allowed to wear your court clothes on vacation, by the way."

"Vacation?" he echoes. "Maya—"

"And you can't say no because I already arranged for room and board for the three of us."

"The three of us?"

"Obviously Pearly's coming! She's been bugging me to see you since we came back! She's annoyed that every time you call, she's practicing her training."

"Yeah?" he asks, a smile tugging at his mouth. He never thought, when they first met, that the shy Pearls would want to waste time talking to him on the phone. But ever since the two months they spent living in his apartment after the Engarde trial, she's been grilling him on everything about life outside of Kurain at every opportunity, like he's her own personal Google. And if he's honest, he doesn't mind. Pearls, for all her fire, has the strangest way of looking at the world...no doubt encouraged by Maya's vivid imagination, which seems to be getting worse as she ages instead of more sensible.