Work Text:
at first, the choice was just an accident. an oversight. he’d been busy, always excited to be on his own and away from the looming shadow of the jaffa factory, and sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. one day bled into two, bled into three, and maybe four before he realized he no longer knew what day it was at all. sleeping felt like a waste of time, even as his bones ached and his eyes demanded to close. once blurred into twice blurred into thrice blurred into toxic habitual decay. slinking upstairs to his bed always felt like a defeat. he tried to right himself, lied down at sundown and shut his eyes and found himself hopelessly, inevitably awake.
it stopped being fun when it stopped being a choice. like most things. choosing to fall was one thing, being pushed was another. as soon as he got what he wanted, he didn’t want it anymore. that thought bothered him the most—that it could all be distilled down into a childish desire only for what he couldn’t have.
he dreamed—daydreamed, really—that there would be someone around to care. someone to say “you should rest,” in the tone of “you’re hurting yourself” rather than “you’re hurting your productivity.” he wanted someone to care about him, not the results, the output, the product.
but he still couldn’t find sleep, and it was hurting his productivity, and if he couldn’t find solutions his friends were going to notice and if his friends noticed surely they would tell him he was bringing everyone down and then he would have the external confirmation of himself as lalna-the-machine rather than lalna-the-human-person and then it was one bad break away from tearing out whatever stupid squishy human parts were preventing him from fulfilling his function one optimization away from the ideal and, and he would cease to exist as himself as human lalna with squishy parts and outdated insides and he would be gone and he couldn’t risk—
a hand on his shoulder and he startled back into the present. xephos’ voice faded in halfway through a sentence, the tail end of—
“—you okay, friend?”
he blinked, taking in his surroundings. back in the skeleton frame of the jaffa factory. the sun setting through the open roof. the workbench under his hands, half-built sorting system clenched tight. his hands, trembling. his hands. xephos’ hands, one on his shoulder and the other hovering like it wanted to join it. and xephos, still waiting for a response and growing more concerned by the second.
“i— uh,” he inhaled sharply. eloquent as always. nailed it. “um—“
xephos shook his head. “silly question, i suppose. when was the last time you slept, lalna?”
a sea of guilt yawned open and threatened to sink him in its depths. it felt bad, bad bad bad wrong to even acknowledge it because he’d done a thing wrong by not sleeping and now they could all tell and he wasn’t productive enough wasn’t functional enough wasn’t good enough wasn’t—
xephos raised an eyebrow. “that long, huh?”
lalna wanted to cry. he refrained from the urge, but only barely. this was miserable. this sucked. this feeling sucked. he wanted xephos to go away right now and leave him to be miserable and guilty. he didn’t say any of those things, though. instead what came out was a soft, broken, “‘m sorry,” and lalna had to refocus all his energy on not putting his head through the workbench in shame. the words came in a volcanic rush, which was to say, intermittently, with an irregular and viscous flow. “didn’t mean to, heh—uh, didn’t— mean to let it ah— affect anything here, i mean, y’know. gotta be on um. the top of my game here, and— and yeah, sorry about— not doing that?”
he wasn’t sure what he was expecting in response to that, but xephos crumbling and looking positively despondent was not even on the list. lalna scrambled for more words to say, as if he could just say the right thing and then xephos would stop giving him that sad sad look—
“i can—“ he started, and xephos cut him off.
“it’s okay!” he exclaimed, sharp and sudden. “it’s okay. i— we all know how it gets, sometimes—i’ve been there, we’ve all been there.”
relief flooded him, and he forced his hands to drop the components, untensing. “oh, good,” he murmured, letting out a peal of breathy laughter. “i was worried i’d have to replace all my insides.”
xephos had continued talking over him, something about light and nighttime and alien biology. then he processed what lalna had said, and froze. “wh—what?”
he leaned on his elbows, hands framing his face. “y’know,” he added unhelpfully. “replacement parts. for the— for the—“ he gestured with a finger at his own head.
xephos let out a sharp nervous chuckle. “yes, well—that might increase productivity, but let’s try to avoid... replacing parts unless it’s necessary, alright?”
“you got it,” lalna murmured. “got it. hah.. no unnecessary replacement parts.”
“but yes regular sleep,” xephos insisted. “let’s find you a bed.”