Five ways they watch over their sleep
Disclaimer: Five different tv-shows, multiple owners, none of which include yours truly. Just a fan fic written for fun and absolutely no profit. Please do not archive elsewhere without the author's consent.
Author's note: A five-thing fic, five different fandoms, five different takes on a common theme, all strickly gen. Unfortunately for ya'll, not beta-ed.
No spoilers for Stargate Atlantis, set somewhere in the third season.
No spoilers for House, MD.
Slight spoilers for S01E02 of Numb3rs, set in the third season.
No spoilers for Supernatural.
Spoilers for S02 E19 "Stalker" of CSI
1.
Being on an off-world team means you find out things about the people you work with that you'd have always been blissfully un-aware of if you simply shared a shift in the city.
Especially their sleeping habits.
For example it didn't take them long to realize that Ronon can't sleep if he doesn't take the first watch and has prowled their perimeter a few dozen times, silent and menacing like a large cat. After that he falls asleep like a log, and Teyla has always been a little touched that he trusts his team so implicitly to guard his slumber. She confided this to Sheppard, calm as you please, without giving the barest hint that she meant something else, that Sheppard still wakes up at the tiniest sound, all night long, even after three years of saving their lives and being saved in kind. But his problem isn't with trust, he does trust them with his life, literally, time and again. No, his problem is that he's the team leader, and an officer, and therefore responsible for all of them. He trusts them to keep him safe, but he isn't so sure about the other way 'round.
Teyla's dirty little secret is that unless she's well wrapped up in warm blankets and preferably snuggled in a soft bed (extra pillows help), she snores like a chainsaw. It's very unsettling that such a petite, beautiful woman can produce such a sound. In the morning she always acts like nothing happened, and none of her male team mates have ever been brave enough to bring the subject up. She could have been entirely un-aware of it, but John has seen the way she's fixed her hard, standard-issue Lantean bed, so she has to have a clue.
Rodney, of course, has back problems. They're exacerbated by nights away from his prescription mattress and/or boredom, and soothed to the point of oblivion by exciting discoveries or impending doom. When he drives himself to exhaustion (usually to save them all), he falls asleep in the most extraordinary positions, but if they have to spend the night in some village waiting for a trade agreement to fall through, no one is spared from hearing about the protests of his back. But apart from that, he always sleeps pretty deeply. He drools, he won't wake up in the morning unless physically hauled up, but he can honest-to-god actually answer questions in his sleep. He doesn't give back logical replies, mind you, but John's always thought it hilarious that McKay can't quite resist the lure of a question mark, even when he's officially out for the count.
2.
Every now and then, they find House asleep somewhere around the hospital. He's in that lazy-chair in his office when they have a case and he wants to know about developments, or when they have nothing and he knows they're not going to bother him; otherwise empty exam rooms in the clinic or the empty bed in the big room in the Witherspoon wing (long term-care, deep comas and vegetative states mostly) is usually a pretty good bet.
Cameron hates waking him up because even on a good day House always looks like he needs sleep, and sometimes she has to restrain herself from indulging her nurturing side and draping a blanket over him, especially when it's cold and wet outside and even asleep he has a little frown of pain, his leg bothering him in ways she can't even imagine. But if she ever did that she knows he wouldn't appreciate it, and she'd never hear the end of it. On days when he's especially callous, or down-right nasty, she takes a little satisfaction in startling him awake when she has a good reason and he can't complain, but then she always feels vaguely guilty afterwards, and fixes him a cup of coffee, or leaves the last bagel where she knows he'll take it, or sorts through his mail and throws all the spam out before he sees it.
Chase doesn't like waking him up because the chances of him being in a good mood (or what passes for a good mood in House's life) are obviously better if he's well rested. Besides, if he's sleeping he can't nag them or make fun of them, or pull innocent intensivists away from the expert-level Sudoku Sunday puzzle. Life is generally more pleasant when House is in the next room, getting some shut-eye.
Foreman's never been bothered by the idea. If something important is going on, then House wants to be informed, and he's a big man who can deal with being snapped out of a nap.
3.
Frankly, Don's always been a little freaked by Charlie's "brain-storm periods". He went on one when their mother died (the longest one), and again in times of great stress (the three weeks leading up to his first dissertation sounded like pure nightmare, even over the phone and from thousands of miles away), but every once in a while he gets the genuine kind, "the pure frenzy of an enlightened mind sighting the early light of a breakthrough" as Larry puts it.
That's when he goes on a completely inhuman schedule, working non-stop and almost never sleeping, climaxing up to the point where he forgets to eat. Their father taking care of him in those periods is the one thing that's always kept Don from having that serious talk about "leaving the nest".
The latest episode starts in the middle of a dinner, when Charlie goes back in the kitchen to fetch another bottle of wine and doesn't come back. Don remains alone with Millie and dad for a full half hour before they figure out what's happened. He's just about ready to fake a call to get away, and already has a little speech planned for the next time he catches Charlie alone, when Millie gives him the cue to go look for him and he finds him in the garage, in the process of filling the third blackboard. The writing's tiny and he's covered in chalk. Don recognizes the glazed look he gets in reply when he asks him what he's doing.
Two days later, he swings by in the evening only to find Charlie standing in the hallway, unmoving, like he's fallen asleep with his eyes open. People wouldn't believe him if he told them (unless they happened to have first-hand experience with genius) but all Don has to do is give Charlie a gentle push and he starts walking, back towards the garage, seemingly un-aware of a second presence. If he's started to forget to walk in the middle of a complicated thought process, then he's gotten himself into a pretty serious "brain-storm" (his fellow agents don't realize this, but Don's always been a little proud that he can command a SWAT team into action and chew gum at the same time).
The day afterwards an exasperated Alan enlists his help and together they manage to argue Charlie into lying down on the couch for a bit, but Charlie only gets about fifteen minutes of fretful sleep before he jumps up, already mumbling equations, and shuffles his way back to his blackboards. He sits with them at dinner but the whole time he scribbles in a note book, and barely strings a sentence together.
Three days later still, Don comes back to find Charlie sprawled on the couch, deeply asleep. He's slack-jawed, drooling, and looks perfectly content. If Don were younger and in a vindictive mood, now would be the time to write something on his brother's forehead, because at this stage Charlie is not going to wake up no matter what you do to him. Don or dad used to take him up to his room, but they're all a bit too old for that now, and anyway the couch is comfortable enough, and it's visible from the dining table so when supper time rolls in it's still like a family meal, Eppes-style.
4.
When Sam has nightmares he always wakes up, but otherwise his sleep is pretty average. Dean, on the other hand, either sleeps very lightly or very deeply, no middle ground, not even when nightmares are involved. It's probably a good thing because that way Sam can pretend with himself that he didn't wake Dean up when he used to dream of Jess dying every freaggin' night. You know you've startled Dean awake when there's a knife pointed at your jugular, and since Dean never so much as twitched, he's decided that that means his brother was enjoying a particularly long deep-sleep period.
One night Dean has a nightmare all of his own, and being the sort of time when he's genuinely sleeping like a rock, he doesn't wake up until he manages to cut himself on his stupid knife. Sam helps him clean up and tells him (again) that he doesn't need the damn knife right under his pillow, any handy place will do. Dean's usually pretty stubborn about his weapons, but he's really tired and still half asleep and Sam manages to get him to promise to put it someplace where he's less likely to accidentally impale himself.
The next two nights Dean is the most annoying, fretful sleeper Sam has ever had the misfortune of sharing a room with, including his freshman roommate at Stanford who did homework at the most ungodly hours and always woke him up with the desk lamp.
The third night Sam has one of those bizarre, complicated dreams where nothing makes sense and everything is creepy. He wakes up all weirded out just in time to see Dean rolling out of his bed and coming up in a crouch, shiny metal blade gleaming in the dark. After assuring each other that nothing is happening (no, definitely not a vision, salt lines and protections all in place, everything dead quiet), Dean informs him that he's started to hide the knife in his boots, by the bed, and that it's extra handy when he needs to get up quickly so he's sticking to it.
The next day Sam gets him a switchblade knife, something he can keep under his pillow and touch when he needs to know it's there without even having to wake up all the way.
Five days later Sam has a nightmare, and Dean doesn't even seem to twitch.
5.
Nick would not want this to be seen, but it's evidence and it needs to be processed, and being a victim means he can't legally handle the investigation. Warrick wants to do it, and both Sara and Catherine offer to do it, but Grissom thinks this is something he should handle himself and try and give Nick as much privacy as possible. Sometimes being the boss has perks. Sometimes it means sitting in front of endless hours of shoddy footage with a crazy stalker providing the soundtrack.
The cassettes ranging from "N. 27" through "N.48" are all about Nick sleeping. They're each four hours long, and Grissom makes himself watch all of them, listens to Nigel Crane by turns waxing philosophical about the nature of sleep vs death, or asking pointless questions to his oblivious subject. What are you dreaming about Nick? Are you mumbling? What are you saying?
Sleep sound, I'm watching over you.
Grissom catalogues infractions and crimes as meticulously as a child given a grown-up task, but is careful to keep himself detached, analytical, cold. The cassettes will still have to be screened by the doctors at whatever mental institution Crane will end up, the lawyers, the trial… but nobody else should have to comb through them so closely again. All the information will be typed up in his report and busy people usually choose a page, which can be skimmed quickly with the luxury of going over it again if you miss something, over a video where images cannot be controlled and made to adapt to you own schedule.
He learns about the way Nigel Crane thought he was being a good friend, about his fondness for zooming back and forth on faces, the pseudo-scientific method he had developed to catalogue moods and actions.
He learns about the way Nicky snores if he's lying on his back, about the way he always falls asleep on his side and then shifts before reaching the REM stage, about the way he sets his alarm ten minutes early so he can laze around and wake up slowly.
At the end of this Gil Grissom will have virtually stalked Jane Galloway, Nick Stokes and, after a fashion, even Nigel Crane. Then the case will be closed, Jane will rest in peace, Crane will be trapped and Nick will be free to choose if and whom he wants to share his sleep with.
The end