Chapter Text
it’s 12:46 a.m., the a.c. in her new apartment isn’t working, and azzi is ready to kill herself. tomorrow is the first day of her big girl job—junior brand manager at a decent-sized company, with decent pay, the result of five years of studying—and she’s too jittery to sleep, even though she really should. but it’s like her body knows tomorrow is an important day and has decided to betray her in the worst way possible, self sabotage in the form of poorly-timed insomnia. if she falls asleep at her desk tomorrow, she might actually have to quit and move across the country to live on a mountain with a couple of goats. her parents would be so disappointed. she has to go to sleep.
the first problem to deal with is the a.c. not working—but in all honesty, it might be working fine. it’s just that the control system is so unnecessarily confusing that azzi still hasn’t figured it out. why are there so many buttons? what the hell does auto cool for heat even mean? she tosses her blanket to the side, the slight breeze from the motion cooling her sweaty skin for a brief moment, then turns on the flashlight on her phone and steps out of her bedroom. the circular blue screen of the control system stares at her mockingly at the end of the hallway.
74 degrees fahrenheit is the current temperature of her apartment. 20 degrees cooler than it was outside today, but still an abysmal number to be reading. she clicks the button with an arrow pointing down, watching the set temperature count down to 66, then watches as the current temperature changes to 75.
incredible.
she’s managed to find the only apartment complex in dallas, texas, with a sentient a.c. system that also hates her.
she stares at the control panel for another moment, clicks the down arrow one more time out of spite, and watches the number climb to 76.
okay. so that's not happening.
she shuffles back to her bedroom, grabs the hem of her shirt, and pulls it over her head, dropping it somewhere on the floor, and cracks the window open two inches, just enough to let in whatever sad excuse for a breeze dallas has to offer at this hour. she stands in front of it for a second, hovering a hand near the bottom mesh of the window screen. a warm, vaguely humid exhale of air moves past her.
it’s not much, but she’ll take it.
she gets back into bed in just her sleep shorts, kicks the blanket fully off the bed, and closes her eyes, trying to will herself to sleep.
she's already tried the obvious things. she's tried the no screens thing and lasted four minutes. she's tried counting backwards from three hundred and lost count somewhere around two-sixty because she started thinking about her commute tomorrow morning and whether she'd be able to find parking and if she'd packed her bag right. she's tried lying still and doing a body scan meditation that she half remembered from a youtube video she watched two years ago.
none of it worked.
but maybe counting sheep will?
she gives it a few moments, picturing fluffy white sheep against a dark blue background with sparkly white stars, jumping over a wooden fence. ten sheep, then twenty sheep, then forty five sheep, all jumping with smiles on their faces and bleating sleepily. and for a moment, the sheep slip away into darkness. the edges of unconsciousness creeping in slowly as her breathing evens out.
until a sheep dressed in a suit and tie comes back, ignoring the fence in favor of telling her she’s fired for coming in late.
fuck the sheep.
she closes her eyes again, breathing in and out for a minute or so, before giving up. she’s not going to find sleep by herself tonight, it seems.
she grabs her phone from the nightstand and opens tiktok, typing how to sleep fast into the search bar as a last resort. the fast is the crux of her search—it’s almost 1 a.m. now.
the results are about what she expected; cold water, magnesium, no caffeine after 2pm. thanks so much, incredibly helpful, i'll get right on that, she thinks grumpily, turning down the volume before the too-perky health guru can lecture her about drinking tea before bed. she scrolls past a video of someone explaining sleep cycles, past a white noise compilation, past something about mouth taping that she's not desperate enough to try (yet), and then the algorithm serves her a video titled basketball asmr 🏀 tapping and scratching (no talking) by someone called pb.asmr.
she pauses. the thumbnail is just a pair of hands holding a basketball. they are nice hands though, azzi can admit that.
but azzi is a grown woman with a masters degree. she is not going to watch basketball asmr at one in the morning because she's too anxious to sleep before her first day of work.
she clicks on it.
the video opens on those same hands, turning the basketball over slowly, rolling it against their carpeted floor. then a voice—low, but feminine—says: "today we are going to be doing...basketball asmr."
azzi can hear it, the tiny pause before basketball asmr. the way the word basketball is said with the slightest burst of laughter before being reined back in, like the person behind the camera is physically biting the inside of their cheek.
she watches the hands tap the surface of the ball in a soft, uneven rhythm, alternating between tapping then scratching down the length of the ball, running a clean, manicured finger against the black seams. not even that good, honestly. the audio isn't perfect and the lighting is a little flat and whoever is making this video clearly thinks it's a little funny that they're making this video.
azzi watches the whole thing, one hand holding her phone, the other tucked under her pillow, cheek pressed into the silk covers. it’s more calming than she expected—the only asmr videos she’s watched are slime-poking and soap-cutting, and those normally only elicit jealousy that she doesn’t have slime to poke and soap to waste. but her eyes, at least, finally feel a little heavier from the basketball tapping, though it could also be the result of staring at her phone in the dark for so long.
she opens the account, tapping on the blurry profile picture of a blonde girl leaning against a wall and wearing a cap pulled low to cover her face. pb.asmr has around fourteen thousand followers. not bad, azzi thinks, for the quality of content being offered. the bio says your favorite basketball player's favorite asmr account, which isn’t enough to make her laugh, but earns a slight exhale.
she scrolls through the videos, and there are a lot more; tapping on a hardcover book, scratching on a textured wall, hands running over different fabrics. the quality is inconsistent and the premises are a little dumb and whoever this pb.asmr is, she started an asmr account as a joke and then just…kept going it seems. they’re definitely not dedicated to the craft enough to have all the lighting and backgrounds set up nicely. most of the videos are filmed shakily and under the glowing lamplight of someone’s—pb.asmr’s bedroom.
azzi manages to scroll down to the first video, posted in 2023, and it’s a three minute long video of tapping and pressing on the buttons of a playstation controller.
she turns up the volume a tad bit before clicking it. the introduction is short, just a “hey guys–” the same pleasantly low voice pausing for a soft laugh, “here’s some asmr,” before a finger reaches out to push the joystick.
she's asleep before it ends.