Slice
He wakes suddenly in the middle of the night, yanked directly into complete alertness by the shocking realisation that the bed is cold, and that although the sheets are rumpled and her pillow flattened next to his, she is not there beside him, snugly filling the dents her weight has left in the mattress. He sits up, pulling the sheets with him to cover his chest, and peers around the room in confusion. There is no sign to show where she has vanished to.
There is always the possibility that she has merely gone to the bathroom, of course, but she would have to have been gone a while for the sheets to have cooled so much. All the same, he has always been a one for thoroughness, and he drags a dressing gown over his stubbornly awake frame, and pads through the blackness of the corridors to check.
Nothing. The room is empty and dark, and the clean white tiles gather every noise he makes and fling them back at him, far too loudly to be comfortable in the silence of the sleeping house. He closes the door hurriedly.
He wanders the wide, bare rooms of the top floor, avoiding the bedrooms but checking everywhere else in his suddenly uneasy search. Each room is dark and noiseless and deserted; and his own room, when he half-heartedly returns after his fruitless search, seems just the same as all the others; and it is cold, too, without her.
No, dammit, he is not going back to bed until he finds her. The prospect of creeping wretchedly back under the covers and shivering alone and silent, lacking her spark and warmth and companionship, is not in the least bit appealing.
He resolves to look downstairs. She has never found it easy to remain still, possessing an energy and a twitchy restlessness that manifest themselves in her occasional fidgeting and the way she works so diligently. Not only that, she has also been hungry as hell recently. Midnight snacks, he thinks, are not such a far-flung explanation to her absence.
But the kitchen too is dark and bare, and he shies away from the clean smooth surfaces and the hard freezing stone floor.
Maybe the living room?
As he turns to head in that direction, he hears a clanging sound from the other room, the obvious room, the only place she could be; why didn't he go there in the first place?
He opens the door to the workshop, and the busy sounds of clanking metal, along with a warm, soft yellow light, emerge and cut a bright slice of sound and radiance through the shadows and silence of the empty corridor.
Author's notes: Also written in bed. I only write about sleep and beds at night XD I should write when I'm fully awake more often.
Ok, so I got another anonymous review, and once again I would like to reply to it, so will have to leave comments here. First of all, I know the original review was not a flame. Did I ever say it was? Don't think so. . . -looks back over previous statements- Don't take my reply the wrong way. It's not that I can't take criticism. My only issue with the review is that the person criticised the pairing when I had clearly warned about it in the summary. I was feeling a little pissy that day, so I over-reacted and it all got rather out of proportion. My apologies for that. I take back most of the things I said, but I will stick by some things: namely, that if you don't like a pairing, it's your job to stay away from it. I hope that this issue can be resolved here, as I would rather avoid conflict where possible. As for the correction. . . well, I'm a grammar Nazi, I'm afraid. It may not be cool but it's not going to change.
And I apologise for my overly long replies (the last one and this one), but once again that's just me.