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winterFandom: OUATIM
Pairing: None
Rating: R for language
Summary: Sheldon can't sleep. Or won't. Part of the Back in the Fold series.
Previously in the series:
Back in the Fold
Things to Do in Sinaloa When You're Dead
First Blood
Ballad of the Blind Gunman
DARKNESS, AND THE FEAR OF DARKNESS
by Beth (bwinter@extenuation.net)
"You were my masterpiece, or so I thought. A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart."
-Dream, in Sandman: The Doll's House
I don't sleep much anyway
And it is true, too fucking true. At first he slept, in the hospital they brought him to once he hit stateside. They put up so many pharmaceuticals into his bloodstream that all he dreamed of was giggling at the pretty colors.
(And hey, colors. Way cool as far as he was concerned.)
Then they kicked him out, pronounced him healed. He is probably far too well-adjusted to the government job if he managed to bullshit his way past the psych counseling without any conscious effort: he was too busy thinking up the plans to get himself back into the saddle.
He's kept himself busy ever since.
And okay, now that the team's set up it's back to the basics, back to the way it was when he had the largest collection of stupid-ass t-shirts on the western seaboard. Shooting people up, yes, but rarely. And between those moments (noise and metal and blood and feeling so fucking alive he could scream) there is fuck-all to do.
And this time around Sands is fairly sure El would choke him with guitar strings if he tried to set up a coup to alleviate his boredom.
So far Sands has learned Braille, and how to use an image-to-sound converter (experimental, and banjaxed as far as he was concerned, no matter how many bucks DoD spent on it). He's done online shopping for both himself and the team, and fudged expense statements to match. He's spent a fairly productive week right at the beginning analyzing his people. His conclusion was that Lorenzo's buttons might as well be labeled with flashing lights, Davis is a bitch too alike for comfort, Fideo's dead in the water even if he isn't drunk out of his mind and Garrett is just too happy to wander around the countryside. Nobody has the right to be that happy to be in fucking Mexico. The rest of the team - American or Mexican - are still too scared of him to let down their guard. And good for them.
Which leaves El, who's frequently amusing. Once you get past the stony act he gives to people he doesn't like, the mariachi is a challenge. Sands doesn't even mind the guitar - and shit, the song the bastard wrote was actually sweet.
He particularly likes the lurid description of his own bloodied body lying in the square.
And okay, Sands thinks as he taps impatiently on the side of the Brailler printer, if he's currently occupying himself with editing El's surreptitiously recorded songs into something that could quite possibly be a demo tape, this might actually mean that he's avoiding going to sleep.
Others notice it too, and the unspoken diagnosis seems to be nightmares about the Day of the Dead. Not quite so: after all, he survived it, yes? No walk in the park, but he pulled through.
No. What he sees when he closes his eyes are reruns, Sunday morning filler stuff. Not the high moments, not the lows. The tree three exits before Langley, a Garfield cartoon, some girl's panties hanging in his bathroom. He doesn't even remember her name.
A mute music video of the moments that aren't much of anything. The daily grind, snapshots of the sisyphean task that is being Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. That was being Sheldon Jeffrey Sands.
This was your life.
When you don't sleep, there comes a moment where you just stare at a fixed point and see only darkness. Thought is gone. Pain, forgotten. You are alone in the darkness, and you have always been there.
Sands likes the feeling.
Footsteps behind him, and is it pathetic or just well-adjusted that he doesn't need the jangle of the pants to tell him who it is?
"Well, would you look who's here." He turns his head in the direction of the mariachi. "Trouble sleeping?"
Another step, and then El sits down beside the American. His voice is rougher than usual. "When I sleep, I dream."
There are a dozen standard responses Sands could choose from, and later he always blames the float-sink feeling of self-induced insomnia when he remembers the one he chose.
"Me, too."
~FINIS?~
Next: "On the lips and hearts of children" -
Add comment? (Yes/No/Bang!)
Pairing: None
Rating: R for language
Summary: Sheldon can't sleep. Or won't. Part of the Back in the Fold series.
Previously in the series:
Back in the Fold
Things to Do in Sinaloa When You're Dead
First Blood
Ballad of the Blind Gunman
DARKNESS, AND THE FEAR OF DARKNESS
by Beth (bwinter@extenuation.net)
"You were my masterpiece, or so I thought. A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart."
-Dream, in Sandman: The Doll's House
I don't sleep much anyway
And it is true, too fucking true. At first he slept, in the hospital they brought him to once he hit stateside. They put up so many pharmaceuticals into his bloodstream that all he dreamed of was giggling at the pretty colors.
(And hey, colors. Way cool as far as he was concerned.)
Then they kicked him out, pronounced him healed. He is probably far too well-adjusted to the government job if he managed to bullshit his way past the psych counseling without any conscious effort: he was too busy thinking up the plans to get himself back into the saddle.
He's kept himself busy ever since.
And okay, now that the team's set up it's back to the basics, back to the way it was when he had the largest collection of stupid-ass t-shirts on the western seaboard. Shooting people up, yes, but rarely. And between those moments (noise and metal and blood and feeling so fucking alive he could scream) there is fuck-all to do.
And this time around Sands is fairly sure El would choke him with guitar strings if he tried to set up a coup to alleviate his boredom.
So far Sands has learned Braille, and how to use an image-to-sound converter (experimental, and banjaxed as far as he was concerned, no matter how many bucks DoD spent on it). He's done online shopping for both himself and the team, and fudged expense statements to match. He's spent a fairly productive week right at the beginning analyzing his people. His conclusion was that Lorenzo's buttons might as well be labeled with flashing lights, Davis is a bitch too alike for comfort, Fideo's dead in the water even if he isn't drunk out of his mind and Garrett is just too happy to wander around the countryside. Nobody has the right to be that happy to be in fucking Mexico. The rest of the team - American or Mexican - are still too scared of him to let down their guard. And good for them.
Which leaves El, who's frequently amusing. Once you get past the stony act he gives to people he doesn't like, the mariachi is a challenge. Sands doesn't even mind the guitar - and shit, the song the bastard wrote was actually sweet.
He particularly likes the lurid description of his own bloodied body lying in the square.
And okay, Sands thinks as he taps impatiently on the side of the Brailler printer, if he's currently occupying himself with editing El's surreptitiously recorded songs into something that could quite possibly be a demo tape, this might actually mean that he's avoiding going to sleep.
Others notice it too, and the unspoken diagnosis seems to be nightmares about the Day of the Dead. Not quite so: after all, he survived it, yes? No walk in the park, but he pulled through.
No. What he sees when he closes his eyes are reruns, Sunday morning filler stuff. Not the high moments, not the lows. The tree three exits before Langley, a Garfield cartoon, some girl's panties hanging in his bathroom. He doesn't even remember her name.
A mute music video of the moments that aren't much of anything. The daily grind, snapshots of the sisyphean task that is being Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. That was being Sheldon Jeffrey Sands.
This was your life.
When you don't sleep, there comes a moment where you just stare at a fixed point and see only darkness. Thought is gone. Pain, forgotten. You are alone in the darkness, and you have always been there.
Sands likes the feeling.
Footsteps behind him, and is it pathetic or just well-adjusted that he doesn't need the jangle of the pants to tell him who it is?
"Well, would you look who's here." He turns his head in the direction of the mariachi. "Trouble sleeping?"
Another step, and then El sits down beside the American. His voice is rougher than usual. "When I sleep, I dream."
There are a dozen standard responses Sands could choose from, and later he always blames the float-sink feeling of self-induced insomnia when he remembers the one he chose.
"Me, too."
~FINIS?~
Next: "On the lips and hearts of children" -
Add comment? (Yes/No/Bang!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-06 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-07 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-07 12:15 am (UTC)And you just reminded me that there was supposed to be a demo-CD lurking in one of my fics. Prod me hard if I don't include it sometime soon. Although it won't be in the 3k words I plan to type up and spam you with tonight.
I love the way that this one comes back yet again to Sands and El and the fact that Sands can't lie to El as much as he would like.
Gina
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-07 03:05 am (UTC)And glad you liked the little thing :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-07 10:51 am (UTC)Gina
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-16 06:38 am (UTC)Things I particularly liked:
Sands' entrance to HQ, and I could just see him taking off the sunglasses, utterly nonchalant, friendly smile.
The story being told, and Sands sitting there, all, "I'm so cool," and then, "hey! not dead!"
The chumminess between El and Sands, right from the first, "I heard you were dead." "So did I." is - it isn't logical but it just makes sense, y'know?
The Batcave, and the costumes (*snerk*) - Sands with his little jokes. El thinking of Sands as a hero.
(And hey, colors. Way cool as far as he was concerned.)
and shit, the song the bastard wrote was actually sweet. He particularly likes the lurid description of his own bloodied body lying in the square. - that's so... Sands.
the float-sink feeling of self-induced insomnia - perfect description.
Also, I went to your site for the rest of your OUATIMfic, and. heh. Sands/Sunglasses. girl!Sands - who was scarily convincing, btw.
Also, Johnny Depp/Electric Guitar? Hot.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-16 03:04 pm (UTC)