Title: Night Sounds
Author: TracyT
Summary: Will's awake in the middle of the night
Category:
Character(s): Will Zimmerman
Rating: G
Parts: 1/1
Pairing: None
Spoiler: None
Feedback to:
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a while.
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Will woke up at around 3 am for no other reason than he did. No nightmares, no anxieties, he just woke up. He lay there for a moment analyzing this, decided it was probably just habit and relaxed. He could hear the hiss of rain outside combined with the louder splats as the drain pipes discharged their load onto the flagstones.
In his past, awaking in the middle of the night was usually due to nightmares about his mother, then fairly recently, it was due to anxiety about losing his job at the bureau and grieving after Meg had left him, awakening alone in their bed. Eventually his unhappiness and frustration at not being taken seriously at the PD would be the cause.
Then Helen Magnus had come into his life. When he finally agreed to work with her, he had no intention of giving up his apartment and coming to live at the Sanctuary, but after the first few missions or working late delving into Magnus's library in search of information on the abnormal world he'd ended up taking a room 'just for the night.' Or so he thought. Eventually he'd closed up his apartment and moved all his stuff here. His 'guest' room became his permanent room. He tried not to dwell on the fact that Magnus looked awfully smug about that.
For about the first month here, he'd wake up in a panic wondering where he was. It would take him a few minutes to remember, to get his bearings, and longer to relax enough to calm down. Eventually the bouts became less and less.
Now he'd wake up and listen to the noises around him, chiefly, the Big Guy snoring the wallpaper off the walls. Helen's manservant had a room way down the hall from everyone else's but his snores still rocked the place. "Dude, why do you think I sleep with my iPod on?" Ashley had said when he commented on it. Thankfully, Bigfoot only snored for the first part of the night. After about an hour he'd stop. Will wondered why. Did he roll over and get into a better position? Did he stop once he'd reached Delta sleep, or did he only sleep for an hour or so every night? Will hadn't had the courage to ask him so it remained a mystery.
Tonight Will must have awakened after snoring time because it was fairly quiet aside from the gentle patter of rain on his window. Occasionally a muted roar or growl would filter through the air vents, but it was so routine now Will barely paid attention anymore.
His room looked down into the square below and across the courtyard was Magnus's office. She often stayed up most or all of the night and if he got up and went to the window, he could look down into her office and watch her doing paperwork at her desk. Sometimes she'd put on a record—yes, a record, not a CD or tape—and the muted music would waft up to his room. Sometimes she played music suited to the Victorian era, Gilbert and Sullivan or something like that. Sometimes it was more Gershwin or Irving Berlin. Sometimes the Beatles or jazz. When she was sad it was opera. Even if he didn't get out of bed when he awoke, the faint, ghostly notes would float up to his room and he found it comforting.
Sometimes he'd wake up just in time to hear her heels clicking down the hallway outside his room on the way to hers. Even if she stayed up all night she'd go to her room before dawn to shower and change before breakfast.
Henry was a fellow insomniac. His sneakers could often be heard scuffing down the hall on the way to his lab in the middle of the night.
Will rolled over, smushed his pillow against the headboard and sighed. All of this had seemed so strange to him when he'd first come here, now he realized it had become something else. Something new to him.
It had become home.
Will sighed and almost immediately went back to sleep.
fin