Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You wake suddenly, your chest heaving with a sharp inhale, your nostrils flaring and eyes snapping open. The room is dark. You stare at the wall across from your bed. (the sunset glitters to your left, blinding to your eye.) You gasp, back arching, fingers stretching and then tightening into fists- (your hands and feet itch, constantly, and on some days it's a more maddening sensation than the pain is.)

Moving, and tumbling, limbs uncoordinated and lamb-like. You reach to use the nightstand to sit up, misjudge the strength in your arm, and collapse, rolling, onto the floor. Noise garbles out of your mouth, and it is wet, and you can swallow without the iron taste of blood, the dry rasp of burns. Your left hand slaps the ground, as you struggle with your body, struggling in a way that you haven't been able to in-

You breathe in again, full and deep, just to feel it, just to breathe unburdened. It gives you a moment to calm, to still yourself. You stare at the coarse carpet - the captain's quarters has carpet, you remember, it's the only other room to have carpet aside from the commons. You don't ever remember paying much attention to it.

In that moment of silence, you finally begin to grasp at coherent thought. Thoughts rapidly flick through your mind; memories, questions, the pain-

Your body jerks, trembles, hands flexing against your will. You force back the shudders, dragging yourself up to your elbows, head bowed and nearly brushing the carpet as you gulp air. Sweat drips off your forehead - you feel feverish, and yet not burned- Hell, if a fever is the worst you have to put up with, you'll take it over...

You blink, tossing your head to grapple with the thought. You'll take it over- Over the second degree burns covering almost all of your body. The majority of the third degree burns were on your limbs, before they amputated them. You blink, again, and again, at your hands, mere inches below your face. Your fingers twitch, and you feel it.

The incredulity of the situation - the impossibility, the dream you've just been removed from- It begins to truly dawn on you, and yet you can't- easily- wrap your mind around it. You stare blankly at the creases in your skin, and at the chewed nails, and at the callouses and at the small scars and-

And then the room is bathed in red, and dread washes icy down your spine at the first siren that howls.

(RED- and RED- and "What the fuck did you do?!" Your hand on the metal of the doorknob, the screens all shrieking with light and warnings, stumbling as the ship lurches, reaching for the controls-)

You don't move, and then you do. Muscle memory from training, maybe, or maybe some vague, half-asserting form of survival instinct. Either way, you’re up, and you’re moving, and you desperately don’t think about how you can move, else you trip yourself again-

The ship rocks. You stagger, and need to lean on the wall, and you run and hobble and pain flares in each step, something of an echo, something like your brain trying to force false agony on you. Your footsteps are crisp against the metal, only drowned by the regular siren. You nearly fall down the stairs.

Jimmy is sitting outside of the cockpit, his head in his hands, fingers digging at his ears. For a moment, you remember when you were young children, and he had thrown a tantrum because it was your turn on the swing. He'd sat like this then, too, on the mulch of the playground, whining and grumbling to himself when you didn't give in.

Words form like ash in your mouth, “Jim, tell me you didn’t.” An echo. Muscle memory, reflex. Repeating patterns-

“What the fuck did you do?!" you shout, voice barely audible over the rolling thunder of the siren. You clench your fists, and bare your (lipless) teeth, and repeat, “Jim, what did you do?”

You do not go into the cockpit. He looks up, grip loosening on his ears, and stares at you, and — damn him — looks surprised. You steady yourself against the wall, and brace for-

The impact throws you off your feet; you see Jimmy tossed against the wall in your peripheral vision.

Fire- blooms, the red washes everything, and then the lights are gone- The ship is rattled again, like a toy, and your hands slip out from under you- You crack your jaw against the ground, and are briefly glad to not have bitten your tongue off, but you still taste blood. Your vision swims, the lights blur.

You’re faster to pick yourself up than Jimmy is. Lurching movements, and you use the next rock of the ship to your advantage, and fall upon Jimmy with ruthless efficiency.

It isn’t like when you were kids, when you were teens, wrestling for play, or a dare, or a challenge. You don’t let him get his bearings, you don’t let him get the chance to defend himself — (he didn’t give you the courtesy) — you bring your fist down on his temple, and his head jerks back from where he’d started to raise it, cracking against the metal flooring. You’re left handed; you focus on the eye, the eye, because you had felt his thumb dig into your missing eye, as he gripped your head back to shove a pill roughly down your throat-

Sparks light his face, and your next blow is weaker than the last, because he looks scared - 

Good, you think, you snarl, and you can’t breathe past the white fire in your chest, on your limbs- (one of the control panels had burst just as you had reached for it, as had part of the floor, and it had thrown you backwards, like a comet passing a star- )

You beat him senseless. You beat him bloody, and distantly you’re aware you’re howling, your voice rising like the crack of the siren that’s no longer sounding, “You fucking bastard! You fucking bastard! See if I don’t-”

Hands grip at your arms, your shoulders, and you jerk and struggle against them, teeth gnashing, eyes locked on Jimmy, wide and staring, your eyelid burned away, “See if I don’t kill you! See if I don’t, Jimmy!”

“Curly, Curly- Christ, Anya, is there-” Your energy saps away from you in dragging moments, your struggling — something that feels more like a reflex than a conscious decision — slowing, and then stopping all together. You hang, limp, slowly sliding to the floor.

You have enough energy to laugh, though, and Swansea drops you like a sack of rocks, but the impact pales in comparison to the- the- tightness in your chest, and you gasp for air between your cackling, until you can’t get any more air in, and then you- scream . 

You see Anya flinch back, where she’s hovering over Jimmy. You scream, and you scream, and you can’t stop, you can’t stop, and your hands flex and clench on their own accord, and you roll, mindless, on the floor, as the steam and sparks hiss around you, as the Tulpar groans and starts to settle, comfortable, into her freshly-dug grave.

Chapter Text

The first time Jimmy comes over to your house, he stands in the foyer and stares up at the unlit chandelier. Your mom never really turns it on — something about faulty wiring, and fire hazards — but in autumn, the sun is in just the right spot to make it glow. It comes streaming in through the large windows above the door, and glints and reflects off all the little diamonds and gold chains and miniature dolphins that ring around the lightbulb candles.

“Is that real?” he asks, as you kick your shoes off into their cubby and sling your backpack up onto its hook. You glance up as you shimmy your coat off.

“Is what real, the chandelier?”

“No, the…” He waves, as if that might explain his question. You look back up, humming.

“Oh- Oh, no I don’t think so. Scott got it for my mom for their third anniversary. It felt like plastic, I think. But the dolphins have real amber eyes, according to him.” Jimmy’s face briefly twists, and you hope that it doesn’t sound like you're bragging. You know he comes from one of the poorer sides of town, and really- it's not like you know Scott too well. Even after four years of knowing him, you still don't really get what he does for work — something about an office, and how he always complains about the people who work for him.

“You can take your shit off,” you say in lack of anything better, tossing your jacket at the hook and fist-pumping when it catches. “Don’t worry about the shoe cubby, but the hooks are right there for your coat and backpack, y'know.”

He doesn’t. He just shrugs noncommittally and shifts uneasily. You choose to ignore it — Jimmy is possessive of his backpack on a good day, and you don't want to pressure him. You wave him further into the house; he follows you, after a moment of staring up at the chandelier.

“Mom, we’re home,” you call, heading past the stairs and towards the kitchen. Quieter, you tell him, “Mom works up in her office ‘til seven, so we have the whole house until she’s done.”

“Oh,” he says, following you as you go to dig through the fridge. He pauses at your side, eyes flicking up and down the recently-stocked fridge as you pull out a couple of go-gurts. “Strawberry or cotton candy?”

“Um. Strawberry?” He says it as if it’s a question, but you ignore it and pass the packet off to him, heading for the basement. He trudges along after you, uncomfortable to the point of awkwardness.

It’s… weird, having him visit. It took a while to convince him to even stop by after school. Yesterday, you’d picked over all the different things you could do, and had eventually settled on gaming. “What kinda games you like?”

Jimmy isn’t great at much of what you have — first-person shooter games quickly devolve into swearing and him tossing the controller down onto the coffee table, and he bores easily with any type of survival game, and it's the same with RPGs. Eventually, you say, “You know, I have this one game my sister gave me. I haven’t played it yet, you wanna try?”

“Better than this shit,” he says, gesturing with the controller at the inventory screen taking up his half of the large TV. He sits back into the couch as you exit out of the current one, thumbing through the home screen to find the old download. You ignore his sudden surprise at finding that the back of the sectional couch moves, as he struggles to sit upright again, turtled by the backpack that he’s still wearing.

You personally hadn’t been interested in the game when Hannah had gifted it to you — some older, early-30s game about space exploration. It’s more story-driven, you think; you don’t generally pay attention to lore or plot in games. You’d downloaded it to the console and had promptly forgotten about it.

But loading up the multiplayer, you find that Jimmy slowly becomes enraptured. It’s sort of a survival game, but he doesn’t seem to mind that — not when there’s a ship to fly through the stars. 

The time passes quickly, then. You still don’t think you’d play it on your own, but Jimmy’s eyes glue to the screen, and he sits hunched forward, at attention. It’s probably the most interest you’ve seen him take in… anything, actually. Now, stealing glances at his face between fights and flying and planets, you find that his expression is open, unguarded, curious.

You… aren’t sure why you’re uncomfortable with it. It’s weird — compared to how he is normally. Jimmy always seems unbothered, uninterested, except for those times where his focus narrows in on one thing or another, hawk-like and intense. 

But really- it is nice to see him enjoy something, for once. So you don’t say anything, and you don’t suggest a different game, and you sit passively by and continue to die and respawn, as he rapidly becomes enraptured in the distant, flickering lights of stars.

Chapter Text

They tried to put you in the medbay, at first.

So you kicked and thrashed and elbowed Swansea hard enough that, later, when he briefly opens the storage closet door to check on you, you notice that his eye has swollen and blackened.

His scowl is particularly ferocious, but he says nothing — gives you a once-over, makes sure you’re not doing something — and then he leaves. Shuts the door behind him. You sit up against the wall, knees curled to your chest and arms cradling your head.

You’re as still as you can be; the overload of sensation prickles across your skin, aching in a way you’re painfully intimate with. But your skin is unblemished, except for a few bruises — and a bloody, loose tooth, which Anya didn’t really know what to do about.

You run your tongue over it now, feeling the pain flare each time you wiggle it. Pain, but different from what you’ve grown used to. 

Your hair is greasy between your fingers. You tug at it absentmindedly. The door opens again, and Anya steps in, You hear the tail end of, “- if he does anything -” and she shuts it gently. Quietly. So as not to startle you. You watch her, unwavering, eye burning, watering.

(you can’t see much of her, from the cot. you can see color with your peripheral vision — something brownish, reddish, foamy, staining her shirt, her uniform, the dark blotch of her hair shifting as her head slumps. but more than anything, it’s the sound that haunts you. hiccups and gurgles as she asphyxiates. chokes. dies, next to you.)

She’s saying something, now, and you stare back from under your brows. Study her. The way she moves differently. The way she looks at you differently. You watch her talk, the pulling of her lips, the furrowing of her forehead. She stands with her head tilted, her hands gripping a clipboard. Tall, and straight. Scared? No. Maybe?

“How is Jimmy?” you ask, when her lips finally stop moving with whatever she’d been saying. You can’t hear well past the ringing in your ears. She shifts, fingers drumming on the back of the clipboard. 

“We can talk about him later, once we finish this psych eval. Protocol, you know,” she says, resolute. She glances around, at the poster to the left and the mop in its bucket, at the shelves above your head, lined with random crap that everyone’s left in here. A whole treasure box of a storage closet, full of the most useless and long-forgotten junk.

You’re both silent for a long moment, the dim bulb flickering wearily above you, hanging from the ceiling, it’s power cord dangling and partway slanted — the whole ship is partway slanted, actually, by just a few degrees shy of comfortable; you had to make sure to keep yourself from sliding in the bed, so slowly that it was only noticeable until it was painful, leaning too heavily onto one side in the med bay cot. 

“So?” she asks, simple, her tone as controlled as it can be.

You gesture, lifting a hand briefly from your hair, for her to continue, and drop it back down.

“... Have you been dealing with any major stressors lately?” she asks, finally starting.

“...” You nearly laugh. And lying would require energy. You swallow thickly, your mind sluggish in trying to piece together a response that can... Do what? Explain yourself? Your actions and words? Hah. Right.

These rooms aren’t as soundproof as solid metal might make it seem. Noise travels . You heard them talking out there — you heard them theorizing. You haven’t heard Jimmy, yet.

“Yes,” you say, eventually. Some kind of emotion pinches at the corners of her mouth, and she marks with her pencil. “Do you feel that you are able to preform... God damn it.” The last part is muttered, and she drops the clipboard to her side to look at you. 

Her eyes lack the pity, you think. That’s what’s different. “Is he alive?” you ask, and she sighs through her nose.

“He’s alive,” she says, and you duck your head in disgust at the glimmer of relief in your belly. “Lost his eye. Parts of his skull are fractured, and his nose is broken, and I had to wrap bandages around his head to keep his jaw in place, since I can’t wire it shut. Why did you do it?”

You sit for a long moment, trying to untangle words and feelings, trying to... “I don’t know how to answer that, Anya.” Whether she’s asking about Jim, you’re not entirely sure. Something’s off, there, in her tone.

Anya stares at you, and her glittering eyes scrutinize you, rubbing you threadbare. You sit up, finally uncurling, and your body protests at the movement, except it doesn’t because you aren’t aflame any more and-

“Would you believe me if I told you I had a really bad nightmare?”

“This isn’t a joke, Captain,” she snaps, waving with the clipboard. “The ship’s mostly foamed up, Jimmy’s half-dead in the medbay, Swansea’s ready to toss someone out the airlock, and I’m- And you , you’re like this , and you- Why , Curly?”

You sit under her wrath quietly, fingers flexing and clenching, teeth grinding, ears ringing, and her voice gurgles and chokes and burbles. You let her go on, let her vent that anger, and when she’s done, she stands, panting, and still angry, but more tired for it. You tilt your head back against the wall, closing one eye to look at her. “... I’m sorry.”

At this, she turns, and leaves, reaching up and snapping the cord of the lightbulb down. The light flicks out, the door slams shut, and the latch cracks and breaks, bouncing back open, and the red light from the hallway spills into your dark little prison cell.

Your hands flex of their own accord; your toes curl; your teeth grind; you can’t shut your left eye no matter how it burns, how you feel it drying out, shrivelling-

The darkness helps, you think. Even when the screen cycled into the nighttime screen, it was still unbearably bright, laying there on the cot. Still so unbearably out of your control.

(“i like it. we’re in control here.”)

You reach up, digging the palm of your hand into your ever-open left eye, pressing hard to see the colors swirl. Slowly, you reign in your desperate panting, feeling lightheaded and dizzy. 

You need to regain control over yourself. You need to think . Plan. You're going to make sure everyone gets off this goddamn hunk of rock. Somehow.

You never heard anybody mention anything about the radio, or even the black box. You don’t know what state the cockpit is in-

(the fire unfurled upwards, 

the first petals of it blooming like lilies, 

and you had the presence of mind to start to turn your head as you still reached for the controls, 

as the floor burst upwards,

as the control panel shattered towards you,

as the floor was swept away,

ablaze-)

You jerk, waking from almost-sleep, as if your brain has to confirm to itself that you’re still alive. 

You abruptly can’t sit still. You struggle to your feet, using the wall to balance. Slowly, fighting against this body that doesn’t feel like yours, you drag yourself forward. Stop, turn, and pace the other way, hand drifting across the wall panels, feeling the creases, the bolts, passing over a sign that reads: ‘POLLE SAYS, ‘KEEP YOUR SHIP NEAT AND TIDY!’’

A mop handle helps your turn around again, and when you’re finally facing the door, you notice Swansea, framed by the ruddy light, looking in at you. 

You stop, taking a breath as if to say something, and then sighing it out just as quickly. Out of everyone, you’ve been aboard this ship with Swansea the longest. Just shy of four years longer than Jimmy, at least. You know he’s a reliable sort of man, no matter how reserved he can be at times. You and him worked well together — you requested him specifically for the Tulpar, after you worked with him on Gloria.

He’s silent; you’re silent. 

Until you say, “You know you’re gonna have to let me out of the storage closet.”

“Can you even walk that far?”

“Sure,” you say, uncertainly, eyeing the long hallway behind him. It’s not really that long — the commons are just a few paces away, really. But your legs still shake, even as you stand, leaning against the mop handle.

Instead of stepping out of the way, Swansea steps in, reaching up to-

“Don’t,” you say, already turning your head down and flinching against the light that hasn’t turned on yet, raising a hand. He stops, and then sighs and drops his arm. “Just leave the door cracked, please.”

“Sure thing, Captain.” He slides the door halfway shut, then leans against the jut of the wall, where one of the water heaters is tucked behind a metal grate. Crosses his arms, and seems to think. 

After a while, you sigh, and before he can start, you say, “I can’t tell you why I did it. I had to…”

 (TAKE—

RESPONSIBILITY;

CARE OF IT;

(CONTROL.)

But. There’s still some little part of you, some part that remembers nights you and Jimmy spent out in a tent made of a few sheets, trying and failing to start a campfire in chilly autumn air. Days where you’d sit across a library table, trying and failing to get Jimmy to do his own homework instead of copying yours. Early mornings on the bus when you had convinced Jimmy to actually come to school; him sitting backwards in the seat and you hanging over the back of his, talking about girls or teachers or parents or how Jimmy’s lucky he didn’t go to juvie the week before.

There’s still that part of you that remembers, and that part says, “Thanks for stopping me.”

Swansea hmphs, and uncrosses his arms to set his hands at his hips. “Not to say I don’t think the asshole deserves to get a bit of a beating once in a while, but you were tryin’ to kill him. I don’t feel like having my last paycheck docked for Pony Express’ medical expenses.”

As if Swansea’s worried about his paycheck. You know him well enough to know he isn’t. Still, though. “Survivors of a crash get a compensation check; it’s labelled as overtime.”

At this, he barks a short, rough laugh. “Yeah, and what happens if our captain kills one of his crew?”

You aren’t actually sure. There are protocols and rules for if the crew starts killing each other — the ship technically has something of a cell, deep in the cargo bay, because some people get sick of being in a metal box in space. The chilling story of the STS Siren briefly comes to mind, and the similarities to your own situation connect quickly, but you shake the thoughts from your head. 

There was never anything in orientation or the handbooks that said anything of the captain losing his shit. Schooling on the subject is a foggy memory, as well. So you shrug, unable to answer.

He doesn’t ask the question you know he wants to — If he saw Anya storm out of here like she did, he can probably figure that you didn’t give any good answers. 

So, you save him the trouble and say, “Close the door, would you? No, don’t- don’t turn the light on, please.”

He drops his hand from where he’d again started to reach for the light, and instead closes the door, though he has to hold it shut. The storage closet is wreathed in darkness; this door doesn’t have a window on it, so there’s only a sliver of red light coming from the crease where the door no longer seals.

You speak low, and quiet, because these hallways echo, and these walls have ears. “If you want reasons, I can’t give them all to you — some aren’t mine to give.”

Some haven’t even… happened. Some are just phantoms clinging to your sweat-slicked skin. You try to blink away feverish haze, but your eyes still blur, your (remaining) eye still drying and itching and dry dry dry-

And to think, you’ve let Jimmy get away with things so far- And to think, what extremes he’d fall to given the chance.

In the quiet, your breathing is hoarse, and very loud. The room is too small and cluttered for it to echo.

“… Tulpar passed Pony Expresses’ safety inspections,” Swansea says, into your absence. 

“… Yes, she did,” you say, and wonder if he’s asking what you’re thinking, and if it would be better to outright confirm it or to leave it to be insinuated. 

“The very rigorous safety inspection.” This is said flatly — both of you know what sort of violation it is to have Daisuke on the ship; if a crew that outweighs the number of cryopods can be overlooked, so can a lot of other things. 

“She passed,” you say, and there’s a note of desperation in your voice now. “Federal inspection, too. Believe me.”

…He sighs, and the shadow of his body shifts, and then he sits down. You breathe in relief and sink to the floor. 

“Captain,” Swansea starts. Pauses. Then: “If I’m to be blunt?”

You wave a hand, which you again notice that you have, and then it clenches, and stretches, and you put it down by your side when that doesn’t stop. 

“Ya look like you woke up with a few marbles missing. I’m not the only one that’s noticed.”

You swallow, feeling saliva stick in a throat that isn’t raw and blistered and inflamed. “I feel like it,” you admit. 

“What will Jimmy say when he’s awake enough to speak?” It’s not really put as a question, more of a reminder, and you take a long deep shuddering breath, thinking of the possibilities.

(This is your fault.)

“He blamed me for it,” you say, quiet, and flinch at the past-tense you use, noticing a twitch of Swansea’s face. “Will blame me. Probably. He’s… not going to be happy.”

“You practically caved his skull in. Like hell he’ll be happy.” 

“Hah!” The first bark of laughter escapes you as a surprise, and it’s followed by a second, “Hah.” And then you bite your tongue, before the shivering in your chest falls into another uncontrollable bout of hysteric laughing.  Swallowing past your parched (burnt) throat, you say, “Jimmy… He’s-“

He’s a lot of things. A lot of things that you can barely articulate, can barely find the words for. They slide around in your head and mouth for what feels like forever. You reach up, and press your palm to your eye. “I don’t know,” you mutter eventually, very suddenly feeling exhausted. 

Swansea doesn’t really need to be told exactly what happened — he knows you well enough, and you know him well enough, and both of you know that Jimmy was a powder keg waiting to go off. A long fuse lit a long time ago. 

Well. You knew, and you’ve known, but you never really wanted to admit it. Could never truly accept it.

“Alright,” Swansea says, coming to some decision, and heaves himself to his feet with a groan. “Let’s get you out to the commons.”

It’s a long, struggling shamble down the corridor. You lean against the right wall, fingers catching on bolts and seams and foam. At one point, you stumble, trip, and Swansea catches you under your arm before you can fall. 

You stand for a moment, trying to get your balance. Your feet feel as if they’re asleep; an uncomfortable buzzing alight in them, making it hard to stay upright. Eventually, you pull away from Swansea, and continue your slow way to the commons.

The medbay gives you pause, when you come to the junction. You stare down the short hall at the door, breath shallow in your throat and hands clenching. 

(the rough cloth of the gown, the tilt of the ship, only so many places to look, unable to stop looking, and the strange snatches of sleep you’d get, unable to tell when you’re dreaming or awake, faces appearing and disappearing, Jimmy gripping your jaw, pills stuck in your throat-)

“Captain.” 

You gasp as if you’ve been drowning, and drop your head, reaching up to press your palm into your eye. “Yeah,” you croak, “I’m coming, sorry.”

“Can you make the stairs?”

You bite back a bark of incredulous laughter, shrug, and shuffle your way towards them. Turning your back on the medbay, with the skin of your neck prickling, the feeling of being seen, of being examined, following you even past the turn of the hall.

After a long struggle, and several wavering points where you nearly tip backwards, unable to balance, of which Swansea thankfully saves you from, you stagger into the commons area, and move, zombie-like, to the couch.

You aren’t even aware of Daisuke at first. A long moment passes of you laying sprawled on the cushions, trying to catch your breath, your arm flung over your eyes to block out that damned red glow. And then, his voice comes, startlingly close. “Are you okay, Captain?”

You jerk, flailing to sit up. For a brief second, your fingers slide uselessly over the top of the couch, and you can’t manage to lift yourself. A hand touches your shoulder, and you flinch away, which is enough to get you upright. 

Daisuke hesitates, offering you something between a worried frown and a reassuring smile, his eyebrows pinched together. His hand wavers in the air, which eventually finds a use in rubbing the back of his head as he stands upright.

Taking a deeper breath now that you don’t feel (hovered over), you slide your legs down to the floor. Words don’t come for a second, and you work your mouth uselessly, your lips numb and dry and (gone). 

“Are you… hungry?” he asks, “I can make some of the, like, lasagna.”

It’s the one halfway-decent meal that can be made with the rehydrator. You think so at least- The other meals all taste the same. 

But the thought of it makes your stomach flip, and you shake your head. “I’m- okay, thank you, Daisuke.”

“Sure, sure.” He leans back on his heels, tucking his fingers into his pockets. Awkward, and unsure.  He rocks on his heels, eyes straying down to your hands before lifting back up again. Clearing his throat, he nods to somewhere behind you. “Extra blankets are over there, so uh… If you want one. Um, yeah.”

“Thanks, Daisuke.” You pause, then move to lay back down, head swimming, everything catching up to you. The ease of the movement still catches you, and you move slowly to overcompensate pain that isn’t there. “I think I need to… I need sleep.”

Finally, blessedly, he seems to get the hint — not that you’re impatient, more just to save him from the awkward moment — and he gives a jerking nod, rocks back on his heels, and leave you with a, “Well, sleep well, Captain.”

Your head hits the seat of the couch, and you roll onto your side, facing the back to press your face into the cushions. Reach, and press the ball of your palm into your eye. 

You have one moment to wonder if your usual troubles with sleep will give you any grief, but the thought swims away, and you easily succumb to your exhaustion.