Narcolepsy (A Love Story)

2: Abby

It had now been twenty-five minutes, almost half the meeting, trying to slap a Band-Aid on an arterial spurt and I was getting frustrated. I don't do well with...such things, so I needed to move the discussion along to a viable solution.

I went into the meeting already tired and had spent the last 15 minutes struggling against the inevitable, and my growing anxiety was making it worse. I could have been a little more tactful, I know that looking back, but at the time I just needed to be back at my desk before I humiliated myself.

Blake was talking, and normally I could be perfectly happy listening to him read a Unix manual in that sexy fucking rasp of his, and he had a decent workaround, I could see where he was going with it even if Charles was completely lost per usual, but it was still a workaround. I hate workarounds.

"Look," I said, interrupting Blake and getting a pretty severe scowl for it, "the shipping module is crap. It's bad code. We all know it, and it's used in way too many sites to keep throwing good code at the bad. Instead of trying to patch it, we should take the opportunity we have here to redo it and do it right this time. Get rid of some technical debt."

"I wrote the shipping module," Blake said, his face completely void of any emotion.

Dead silence. Furtive glances. Aww fuck.

I sucked in a breath. The feelings... fuck. The mix of regret and mortification was nauseating, so intense so fast that it felt like getting hit by a tsunami of exhaustion. I stumbled on my way out the door, my left knee buckling, but we were in the conference room closest to Rick's office and I was determined to get there.

I made it in and hit the floor, kicking the door shut behind me.

~ oOo ~

I have a routine when I wake up. Before my eyes even open, I try to guess where I am based off the smell, temperature, texture of any surface touching my skin, and the sounds.

Here's what I got: smells like industrial-grade carpet and Italian food; it's a constant temperature with no breeze; I'm on carpet and I can hear typing. I knew I was in Rick's office on the floor, and then remembered why.

"Fuuuuuuuuck."

"Mornin' sunshine," he said from the other side of the room.

"How bad?" I asked, rolling onto my back and flinging out my arms like I was going to make snow angels on his office floor. My hip ached from lying on it funny.

"No one knows what happened after you left the room. As to the rest? Just...go back to your desk and don't worry about it."

"I need to apologize to Blake. That was...incredibly rude of me."

"Seriously, Abs, don't worry about it. Just go back to your desk."

I sighed, wearily pulling myself to my feet, and ran my hands over my hair. It was only a little bird's-nesty. "Got a comb?"

"You're my wife's cousin. In no way is that familial bond close enough to share toiletries." He never even looked up from what he was working on. I blew out my breath in a huff. I knew I was just hiding in here, trying to avoid dealing with my colossal attack of foot-in-mouth disease, but I think I had a right after announcing in a room full of our professional colleagues that the code written by the most beautiful man I had ever seen — and not just physically perfect but also the epitome of cool, the one who just effortlessly knows exactly what to do, or say, or wear — that his code was utter shit. It was gloriously offensive, so beyond acceptable and appropriate that it circled back again, lapped past acceptable and appropriate, and kept on going until it was way out of sight. I was tensing up, I could feel weariness start to settle around me like a waterlogged quilt determined to drag me under and drown me in sleep.