Chapter Text
A dull ache is there, begging a little harder this time, meeting him before he even opens his eyes. From the cotton-feel in his head, Steven wants to beg back.
The need for sleep fought for his attention just as much as the inexplicable pains, though Steven should be used to them by now. There was always one ache or another pulling at his fatigued limbs, familiar yet draining.
The pains knew him well, he supposes. They knew that sleep was both a temptation and something that should be staved off, two sides of the same coin that Steven was in the habit of flipping nearly every night, despite hardly ever feeling fit enough for the latter. A creeping panic resided, a shaky fear at the swiftness he could lose control, uneasy from what landing on the wrong side could mean for him.
Routine, he reminds himself. Check the restraint and go from there.
He’s in his flat, which is a good sign. There’s a soft glow of sunlight in the hazy air, spilling in from the windows and sitting on the haphazard stacks of dusty books around him, with pages stained and bent and spines weak and worn from being held by curious hands.
He finally sits up, slowly easing into the movement and tiredly peers around, briefly scanning for anything out of place. Steven takes a few seconds to collect himself, letting the quiet and comfort of the flat wash over him.
Another bit of a habit, really.
There were not only books but journals cluttering the numerous wooden shelves, as well as a great deal of documentaries and records, with just as many lamps scattered about and ring stains on any semi-flat surface his late night mugs of tea could find.
It was a bloody mess, was what it was. But it was his mess, something he had control over, and it was nice.
Sleeping disorders left little room for such pleasures, he’s found out.
Sluggishly tossing the covers to the side he takes in the restraint, feeling the smallest swell of relief at the sight of it secured around his ankle, tugging on the length of it for a sense of reassurance. That’s all it really was, he supposes, a reassurance. A small comfort, of sorts, to know his body had not betrayed him. Same with checking the sand around his bed and the tape along the frame of his front door, neither showing any signs of disturbance, instead completely untouched, just how he left it last night.
Just how he preferred.
“Mornin’, Gus, my little one-finned wonder,” he greets softly, catching a glimpse of the small orange fellow happily swimming about as Steven passes his tank. Steven enters his kitchen, reaching for a kettle as he tries to blink the bleariness from his eyes.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he mutters, gingerly rolling his shoulders as he makes his way to the stove. He peers through the window, catching sight of the bustling streets below. The city was grey, though hardly dreary, at least right now. Right now, it was grey but awake and Steven tried, in his tired and sore state, to soak up the feel of it.
Today was gonna be aces. His body felt better but it also felt worse, he thinks, massaging his neck. He woke up early enough to not miss the morning bus, so he won't be late for work again, hopefully giving Donna another reason to move him from behind the gift shop counter to giving tours. There was even a pleasant breeze once he cracked his window open, warm and gentle.
He then looks around his kitchen counter, noticing an empty space where his bread is supposed to be.
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” he mumbles. “I get up and wander about all night, doin’ who knows what, yeah? But can’t be bothered to go shopping, can I? Even when I wake up feeling like I’ve just done a marathon.”
As he waits for the kettle to heat up, he makes his way around Gus’s tank again, pausing at his reflection in the thick glass. He stared for a minute at his curly sleep-mussed hair and wrinkled clothes, and beyond that, his eyes. Darker than ever, with stubborn stains of exhaustion clinging to the skin underneath.
Grey but awake, a part of him thinks, like the streets below. A result of the thing he had no other name for besides ‘sleep disorder’. The streets weren’t like him, in that sense. They had order, with designated directions to drive in, paths to walk down, sides to sell from. Steven only hoped to one day see some semblance of order in himself because now he drifted, lost more time than anything else and couldn't keep the bloody gaps out of his memory to save his life.
He abruptly diverts his attention. “What about you, mate? You sleep alright?”
The goldfish ignores him, hovering near the miniature plastic pyramid and other Egyptian regalia which decorated his sparse tank. He lets out two air bubbles before slowly starting to swim to the other side of the tank, his very capable singular fin swishing away in the water.
After Steven is showered and dressed, he gathers his belongings into his bag, setting aside a thermos for tea, finally feeling a bit more refreshed. Picking up his phone, he sprinkles some food flakes into Gus’s tank before turning to swipe an intricate looking card from the table, the familiar sound of dial tone hitting his ears.
“Hello, Mum. It’s me. Just checkin’ in.” He searches for an empty bit of space along the fish tank where a colorful assortment of postcards messily hangs, easily overlapping one another.
“Umm, I got your postcard, I’m putting it up on Gus’s tank now. Yeah, it’s very nice.” He glances at the fish with a small smile. “He’s fumin’, though. Keeps asking why I don’t take him anywhere nice. Maybe one day, right? I mean, he’d love to get out there, but it’s a bit hard with one fin, innit?”
Steven likes to think Gus enjoyed the view. Right across from the tank was a wall of more postcards, snapshots of a life Steven finds himself quite absorbed in whenever he finds himself staring at it. The locations pictured on each were vastly different from one another, though he supposed his mum liked travelling freely, embracing the destinations just as much as the trips themselves, always sharing a snippet of them with Steven in the form of a postcard.
Vibrant blues of rivers and seas sat beside the rich oranges of sunsets and canyons. Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Peru, some from the States and some from places Steven had never even heard about, though every card intrigued him the moment it arrived. Old churches in Armenia, fjords in Norway, an old fishing village in Malta and the white sandy beaches of Maldives decorated the wall, along with the Pantheon in Rome and the Great Pyramids of Giza and dunes in Cairo. The muted hues of ancient architecture were mixed with various modern façades, giving more depth and a better understanding of the world than the map hanging behind them ever could.
“Anyway, Mum, all’s well here. Not too bad.” He sighs as a sharp pain shoots up his shoulder as he grabs his bag.
“Still wake up every morning feeling like I got hit by a bus, though.
"Laters, gators."
—
“Honestly, I dunno how many times I have to tell you this. You’re not the bloody tour guide, Stevie–”
“Steven, actually,” Steven corrects, not for the first time and likely not the last since his employment. He clips his name tag onto his shirt pocket, tapping it for emphasis. “I am…Steven.”
“No, you’re bloody useless is what you are,” Donna says, placing a hand on her hip as she chews on her gum, a habit that made her voice pair quite well with her face. Bored, a bit impatient, constantly rolling her eyes if they weren’t too busy pulling apart all of his problems. “That is unless you’re actually doing what you’re being paid to do, which is to sell these-” giving a false smile, his boss finally slides a basket of candy in front of him, “-to children.”
Steven forces a nod as he starts unpacking a box holding a shiny ushabti. “Got it.”
It was busy inside the museum for a Thursday morning and, judging from the stack of merchandise in front of him and the way Donna kept threatening to stick him on inventory, he had enough work to keep his mind occupied for the whole day. Steven didn’t mind, though. Another small comfort, it was, one that gave him purpose. Despite having to watch little unattended pricks shove their rubbish in the Great Pyramid of Giza all day and listen to J.B. talk about his otter videos, Steven actually enjoyed working in the gift shop.
Keeping his mind focused was important. Keeping it away from edging towards the bone-deep exhaustion that pulled at his every nerve every so often was even more so–
“-you even listening to me?”
Steven blinks, almost dropping the empty box which had contained stylized effigies of the Egyptian gods. Donna’s got her eyes on him again, giving him a look.
“S-sorry, what?”
“Oh, bloody hell, Stevie-”
“Steven-”
“As if you didn’t already have the knackered look about you, you’re checkin’ out in the middle of our bloody conversations now.” Donna looks as though there are about twenty other things she’d rather be doing, and none of them had to do with Steven. “Well done.”
Steven doesn’t even have the energy to argue. Not that he normally gave in to Donna’s snide comments, he figured he got along with her well enough.
Donna grabs a box from the stack in front of him and begins to open another figurine, using it to point at him accusingly. “It’s the third time this week you’ve shuffled in like a lazy sod and before you blame it on your bus, I want you to know, I’m not havin’ it.”
Steven’s fingers pause at opening the next box. “I know, I know, Donna, look–”
“You know, normally I’d suspect maybe you overslept but clearly that’s not the case, with the dead sort of bog eyed look an’ all.”
“Charming, yeah,” Steven deadpans, reminding himself that an insult was just Donna’s way of showing she was giving him the time of day. “You know, you actually look lovely today, Donna, so–”
The woman grimaces. “I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about you, Stevie. If whatever it is you’ve got goin’ on outside of work is going to start interfering with your lousy excuse for attendance, you can just leave now, yeah? Because I can’t keep havin’ you like this–”
“Right on, yeah–”
“Third time this week means you’ve landed yourself on inventory, you got that?”
There it is. Bloody inventory. Steven gives a weak salute. “All right. Aye aye, Captain.”
Donna unpacks another box, this time filled with magnets. “You don’t want to be fired, do you?”
Steven flounders. “W-what? No, no, of course not! I mean–”
She holds up her hand. “If you’re gonna try an’ natter your way into a yes about the tour guide position, the answer’s still no, I don’t want you that bad–”
“No, I wasn’t I just–” Steven feels his posture slump slightly, his brain finally catching up with her words. “Well that’s actually crushing to hear, but umm, I’m bein’ honest when I say I do like working here, alright? It’s like yeah, some of these are a bit over the top, you know?” He grabs one of the magnets she just set out, holding it up as he studies it. “Nobody’s gonna spend eight pounds on a bloody magnet, Donna, it’s not even the Egyptian sphinx, it’s the Greek. And these–” Steven plucks a bag of candy from the basket, a pack of jelly scorpions– “I dunno what this even has to do with Egypt, really. It’s like, they didn’t have that back then, did they? No. They had like figs and dates and…oh, that reminds me! The banners, I saw them coming in this morning, those and the posters of the Ennead have got only seven gods and the Ennead has nin-”
“I fired two of ‘em for bein’ late,” Donna interrupts, “now get on with it, will you?”
“I enjoy my job, Donna,” Steven finally admits, knowing she didn’t care about all of the inaccuracies littering the poor museum. He’s not even convinced she cared about him, though when he thinks about it, she’s usually gone by now, not wanting to chat with him any longer than she needed to. That meant either she really was thinking about firing him or he looked that bloody awful. He’s not sure which was worse.
“Well bloody hell try an’ make an effort, then, Stevie. Sort out whatever’s got you lookin’ like you’re quite literally dead on your feet and then maybe I’ll consider keepin’ you.”
Steven tries to keep the annoyance off his face as he nods, grateful when something else seems to catch her attention, something more important than chewing him out.
The idea of losing his job over whatever the hell he has is a bit hard to take in. It’s already taken so much, things Steven tries not to dwell on too deeply, knowing it’d only snap the thinning thread he found himself hanging by, breaking whatever sanity he supposed kept him going.
It was grueling, waking up sometimes with nothing but an echo of recollection to get him home, but that wasn’t even the half of it. The fallout rippled violently, determined to touch every bit of his life until it was all misaligned, irreversibly tarnished, uncontrollably so. It seemed as time went on, it only got worse, to the point where dismissing his harsh reality as nothing more than just the symptoms of a sleeping disorder started to sound like an excuse.
—
Lights given from the lamp posts lining the street dance in the puddles on the ground as Steven eats his dinner, sitting on the bench with a small wrap he’d picked up after leaving the museum.
He’d greeted his living statue friend as soon as he sat down, occasionally reminding people to tip once they captured a picture with him while also commenting on the weather or the elderly woman he’d helped off the bus earlier or on how he was convinced children found museums to be profoundly boring and nothing else.
“I mean, parents can’t honestly expect kids to actually enjoy themselves, right? It’s just a big building full of rooms with old rubbish in them, innit?” Steven takes a small bite out of his wrap, shrugging. “Can’t be all that interesting to them, I’ve seen their faces, mate. It’s like as soon as they walk it, nothing but instant boredom, clear as day, bruv. Never fails. You notice that?”
Steven glances over at the street performer, the gold paint coating his body and clothes glittering under the lamp light.
Steven feels like he’d agree. “Yeah, you get it. You’re out here everyday, you probably see plenty of ‘em being dragged in by their parents, wanting to go anywhere besides a big lousy museum.”
A group of people close to one of the in-ground water fountains surrounded by elaborate lights behind them erupt in laughter, half of them huddling near the streams of water for a picture. Bloody tourists, Steven thinks humorously, watching as they pose and smile for the camera.
The water gradually turns from red to pink as Steven spots a little boy in the center of the group, tightly squeezed in between what appeared to be his parents, closely hugging their sides as he sunnily smiled for the photo. Steven wonders if the boy’s parents took him to the museum earlier that day. He wonders if he liked it.
“Don’t know what they’re missing, I suppose. If I was a kid, I would go absolutely mad at the idea of going to the museum. Probably did, too, and I bet Mum loved them, you know? With the way she travels…”
Steven trails off, eyeing the emptiness in the places where those sorts of memories should be, with far less regard than may be warranted. His sleeping disorder stole parts of his day, he knew, but it also took parts of his memory.
At least that’s what he tells himself when something is simply missing and the absence of it starts to overcrowd his head.
Ironic, that was. Best not to think too hard on it.
Except he can’t really avoid it, sometimes, like when he’s reminded he blatantly can’t keep up with the part of himself that creates the gaps and steals the memories, even when trying to land a bloody date.
“So you know that girl I was tellin’ you about? The one from work?”
Crawley remains as still as a stone as Steven continues.
“We’re going on a date tomorrow. And I s’pose it’d be helpful if I actually remembered asking her out, yeah? Except I don’t, which is a bit off-putting, innit?”
Between bites of his dinner, Steven goes on, barely registering the lack of response but not really minding it when he does.
The man had the eyes of a good listener.
“My body has a mind of its own, mate, I swear. Honestly, it’s like it wants to get up and wander about, you know, like it has to get the 10,000 steps in. You know? And I don’t even know about it until I wake up wherever. Bloody dysfunctional, is what it is. What’d you think, mate? Nah. You’re right. I mean, I guess there are stranger things that people do but…No?”
Steven imagines the man giving a wise response, though one that still doesn’t necessarily take the weight off of what was really going through Steven’s head, as much as he wished it did.
Dylan was a beautiful woman with a lovely intellect on the history behind the hundreds of artifacts and displays spread throughout the museum. It was no wonder she ran the tours but it still boggled Steven that she would even look his way under the context of a date. Steven didn’t really go out much.
And he supposes they would be good. Maybe more than good, maybe if he wasn’t so lost all the time.
“Anyway, if I am gonna have a girlfriend, at some point,” Steven says after a while, pausing. “Obviously can’t have ankle restraints on my bed, can I? That’s…like the definition of a red flag, innit?” He thinks about it sometimes, having someone. The next breath he pulls in is tight, reminding him why it shouldn’t be entertained.
He looks back over to his golden friend, nodding. “You know what I mean, yeah? Yeah, you know what I mean. Gotta figure something out.”
Steven places the rest of his dinner in his bag, tossing a few coins into the man’s hat as he stands. “All right, mate, I better jog on. Nice catching up. I will see you on the flip flop.”
—
For a while the motions thankfully take over, guiding his hands to the shelves, his fingers along the pages, his eyes across the words.
It was almost silent in his flat, the only noises coming from Gus’s bubbler and the sound of a small fan oscillating in the corner of the room. Warm light filled the space from the incandescent bulbs in the various lamps, each one giving off a slightly different shade of soft yellow to compensate for the dark moonlit sky through the windows, almost, almost, lulling him to sleep.
Steven shoves the thought away and rubs his heavy eyes, setting his glasses askew.
“Bollocks,” he mutters, reaching across the desk for another book, hoping to prolong what he knew was becoming the inevitable pull of sweet, sweet sleep.
Half opened books lay atop one another, hastily set aside once a specific paragraph struck Steven in the way only a passage depicting an Egyptian sentiment would. He happily lived and breathed Egyptology and despite being unable to place the origin of the passion, he embraced it, leaning into it just as strongly.
Hobby didn’t quite hit it just right, nor did obsession. Fascination held a close resemblance to how Steven felt towards it all, though he’s not sure even that properly covered it.
It was the escape he had when the grey streets of London took on a state of gloom that, at first glance seemed inescapable. When, what he’d later pieced together as loneliness crept in, he turned to his books. The busy streets below became tired and quiet and his flat became unsettling, and that’s when he turned to his documentaries.
The relief they brought was reminiscent of the postcards, he supposes, carrying a careful sort of perspective of the world that Steven knew to nurture well. It was a meticulous one, made up of thousands upon thousands of words, pictures, and diagrams. He scrupulously poured over it for hours on end, the concept of time losing what little sway it had over him to begin with. The essence was practically embedded within every bit of space of the flat just how he liked it, just how that unnameable origin had asked of him.
The page he now stared at described the Ennead and its variations. Steven began to highlight specific texts as he read. Depending on the region, the Ennead had a fluctuating number of members, sometimes omitting established gods and other times including the ruling pharaohs in its number. Either way, these Enneads were tailored specifically to satisfy the explanations people gave to natural phenomena, and the mystic reasonings they came up with to explain such events reflected their views upon the ancient gods themselves.
Words begin to blend and blur after a while, his head becoming foggy. Evading sleep was a promise he’d made to himself, though the task wasn’t becoming any easier as the night progressed.
“Hello! And welcome to Staying Awake.” Steven stares up at the worn wooden boards forming the platform above his bed, listening to the woman’s encouraging voice floating from the speaker of his phone. “Let’s start with trying to solve a puzzle. Solving puzzles is a great way to keep your mind awake.”
He shifts the Rubix cube from one hand to the other, glancing down at it as he slides the colors around, fingers easily flicking them in the directions they needed to go.
“Bored with puzzles? Try a book. Reading can keep your mind alert and focused.”
Alert and focused. He tosses the cube up and catches it a few centimeters away from his face, alert enough.
“Is there an interesting chapter you’d like to be a part of?” He’d left the books wide open at his desk, forgetting to situate them back in their places on the shelves. He was only half aware of himself dressing for bed, only realizing it once he was securing the restraint around his ankle.
“Just remember, you’ll need about five hours to keep your natural self.”
He catches the cube again, though it feels delayed. The colors refuse to match up no matter how many times he shifts the rows.
The woman’s voice was buzzing in his mind, trickling through his subconscious as he sank deeper, deeper, lower…
He felt weightless under the duvet, trying to forgive himself for breaking the promise before it was even broken…