Snapshots | ✓

Ten: Micah

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014

Apparently, twenty-four hours of being confined to the apartment was all it took for Hayes to start going stir crazy. During the day she had cleaned and rearranged her entire room and had now moved on to the living area. Micah was in his customary seat on the couch with his laptop and notes when she stopped in the middle of the room, staring at the light fixture that didn't turn on.

"I'm going to find the light switch," she declared feverishly.

"It doesn't exist, Hayes," he replied.

"It has to!"

"It doesn't exist."

"I'm gonna find it," she repeated.

For the next half hour the apartment was chaos. She moved all of the furniture around, checked under the area rug, flipped every switch in the apartment, moved the furniture around again in case it had appeared since she'd last seen the part of the wall the furniture was now covering. Micah formulated the apology he would deliver to any neighbours that complained as he was forced to move from surface to surface before settling on the floor in front of the sliding glass doors.

Finally, the cold medication she'd taken right before beginning the venture kicked in and she slowed down before coming to a complete stop, standing in the middle of the room.

"Have you come to the same conclusion I have?" Micah asked, watching her as she spun in a slow circle with a confused and defeated expression. She was somehow charming even when sick and delirious.

"I don't understand," she said. She carefully got to her knees on the floor, then bit by bit lay down with her head resting on his leg. "Mickey, why? Why is it like that? I don't understand why there isn't a light switch for it."

"Because the apartment makes no sense and likes to torture us," he replied, absently stroking her hair. When Hayes was exhausted, had been drinking, or was otherwise not one hundred percent, she had a tendency to become very tactile. He'd discovered that a simple action like petting her hair did wonders to calm her down, and (although he would never admit it) he did enjoy the closeness.

"It's so mean," she murmured. A few minutes later he realized that she'd fallen asleep and resigned himself to sitting on the floor for however long of a nap she ended up taking. He couldn't bring himself to disturb her much-needed sleep. It had nothing to do with how peaceful she looked curled against him, or the tiny possessive noise she'd made when he'd tried to shift into a more comfortable position.

--

When she woke up she was still a bit incoherent. She sat up, patted his hair, and then shuffled into her room and fell back asleep.