Moonlight feigned a blue glow across Skwisgaar's ceiling. His drunk waned and with that, the hope for sleep disappeared. Something he once took for granted didn't come so easily, anymore. That could be said for a lot of things in his life, right now. What came first, the perpetual alcoholism or the inability to get it up? Did he use the drugs as an excuse for the lull in his promiscuity? Was it a mask, to obscure the root of self-subjected numbness?
A reach over the edge of his bed found a vodka bottle in a natural manner not unlike Pickles might execute. Skwisgaar couldn't sleep, not here. A burning swig simultaneously helped and didn't help. The internal monologue bent to return subsided again in whispers, but failed to fill the hole in his chest along the way.
He stuck close to the wall in the corridor. Mordhaus seemed too big lately, too cold. Imaginary frost nipped at his heels and snagged the blanket wrapped loosely around his waist. Gnarled brambles curled about his ankles, the closer he got to Toki's room. Only inside, with the door closed against the evil conspiring against him, could Skwisgaar find relief.
Nothing changed here, and that saddened Skwisgaar the most. He fought the klokateers against dusting, cleaning, or otherwise altering anything in the Norwegian's room, even if he understood the reasoning that Toki would want to come home to a fresh bed. But thanks to Skwisgaar's protest, everything remained stuck to the day they left for Iceland. Crayons laid across the desk, the chair was pulled out, and a colouring book laid face down on the floor. The only thing Skwisgaar allowed to change, because he himself was the culprit, was the bed. Yet again, he let his own blanket form a fur sea by the door in lieu for the cotton comforter. Curled up and tightly wound, Skwisgaar buried his nose into the pillow and pulled Deddy up from somewhere near his feet.
Deep, slow breaths didn't lull Skwisgaar to sleep as effective as the scent still locked in all these pieces of fabric. It grew difficult to find some nights, since his constant attendance slowly eclipsed any trace of Toki. As much as Skwisgaar took, he gave back: unintentionally—involuntarily—as he drifted off, a damp spot developed on the pillow. Its likeness pooled in the corner of his other eye until a furrow of the brow and further turn of the head forced it along. Then, his expression relaxed and the minute twitch of his fingers proved he could dream again.