Work Text:
The room was dimly lit with the warm but centred glow of a desk lamp, strategically positioned to light up the mass amounts of paper and books scattered in front of you, alongside your trusty laptop. As your eyes began to slowly dip between a very slow blink and fully blown out unconsciousness, you quickly brought yourself around and averted your eyes to the time on your watch - 3:04am.
An essay was due in within the next few hours, but it was worth a large majority of the grade. It was something you could not screw up on, as you had put in so many late nights and missed opportunities with friends already to get yourself this far. This essay on the nutritional needs of premature neonates will not stop you tonight, oh no. Plus, late nights were a normality to you now, but your worrisome roommate never seemed to agree.
You hear an over exaggerated sigh make its way through to your bedroom from the lounge. "I'm hoping that tapping I hear is in my imagination..."
You let out a groan before you reply,
"No, not in your imagination unfortunately", you lay your head in the crease of the book, listening to the hum of the laptop motor before footsteps followed.
"This is surely not a sensible thing to do you know," Charles begins, leaning his weight into the doorframe. "You're a nurse in training, you /should/ know this". You lift your head from the book to meet his gaze with a scowl, but instead you were met with a lopsided grin. Your expression quickly began to melt into a smile as your eyes met his bright blue ones that always seemed to shimmer, like there were glitter grains implanted into them.
"Charles honestly, thanks for the concern, really," you begin before slumping your shoulders slightly, "but I need to get this done. It's due in tomorrow and I'm only 3000 words in when they have asked for 5000, and I haven't even started on the references...." You say, your speech increasing in speed. A sudden anxious feeling began to rise in your chest as you remembered more things to do. "Why did you choose to do another smaller essay before this one? "You should have prioritised..." you cursed yourself as your head drooped down and your eyes snapped shut, trying to control your breathing.
Charles seeing (and also sensing) your anxiety levels and agitation growing, he loses his smile as it becomes replaced by fully fledged concern. "Hey hey," he says in a hushed tone, walking in your direction, "you've done quite a chunk of this tonight, that's something to be proud of."
He placed a hand on your shoulder ever so gently and tried to coax you to lift your head up once more, "please have some sleep, it will do you more good than you think".
Thinking to yourself that you won't ever beat Charles in a reasoning game, you lifted your head and nodded gently - this brightened up your roommate's face with another, more subtle smile. "Good, I'll see you bright and early, and I mean it Aleisha.." He says semi-serious while shutting your laptop lid, "Don't make me come back in here and stop your workaholic tendencies" he said with a soft chuckle. You couldn't help but laugh along as you waved him goodnight - he gently padded out of your room.
A few minutes passed by and the anxiousness started to slowly seep into your thoughts again. You looked at your watch, "It's only 3:24am, I could get another 1000 words done... Yeah, that'll be okay, I'll still get sleep..." you think to yourself, trying to be your own voice of reason. Opening up the laptop lid again, you started to type as quietly as possible...
---
While he lay on the brown leather sofa with his own thoughts, a smirk began to pull on the corners of Charles' mouth. He could hear the quiet thrumming of keys coming from your room and shook his head in response, "I knew she wouldn't" he whispered to himself. As the key tapping continued for another ten minutes, Charles began to grow worried, but he also had a spark of mischievousness about him a moment after the initial worry.
He put his two fingers to his temple and closed his eyes, still maintaining his smirk. A few seconds passed by this way, and the typing coming from Aleisha's room began to slow. 10 seconds later, it slowed a considerable amount. Charles waited for a short while and then got up quietly, trying to minimise his noise pollution. He walked over to her room and peered inside only to see Aleisha stood up and swaying gently whilst her eyes were fully closed. Charles decided that before you spend your already rough night on the floor through collapsing, he should intervene.
Knowing she wouldn't open her eyes so long as his telepathy was strong enough to her resilience, he walked up behind her and hooked his arms around her waist before slowly (at her pace), lead her to her bed. He managed to manoeuvre her enough so that she could sleep without any numb extremities when she woke, while also ensuring she felt comfortable. When a sigh came out of Aleisha's mouth, he knew he had done the right thing. He grabbed the blanket that was draped over the sofa and proceeded to drape it over her unconscious and exhausted body, making sure the blanket was a light as a feather as he did so.
As Charles made his way out of the room, he turned around to make sure she was still asleep - he was happy to see that the answer was yes. With a smile and a click of the lamp switch on her desk, he left to go to his own bed for a well deserved sleep.
"Goodnight, you workaholic".