Sneak Peek
I feel like I’ve been largely inactive for a bit other than random reblogs. Just throwing out there that I am sill working on the next installment in the Emotional Motion Sickness series!!! Have a sneak peek of what I’m working on right this minute:
Tim had spent long days at WE many times in the two years and some months he had been working there. Sometimes, he could admit, it wasn’t always 100% necessary. There were nights he just didn’t want to go home to an empty apartment and nothing but the tv to keep him company.
But other times they were busy enough, and it was a big enough deal that when all he wanted to do was go back to his apartment and crawl into bed, he stayed. Because guilt would strangle him if he left before the others still hunched over their desks.
It was one of those weeks. A series of big contracts up in the air, under negotiation with multiple different companies meaning presentations that had to be perfected, and sometimes put together from scratch for Tim even though he wouldn’t even be the one presenting them. On top of that it was open enrollment, the HR department’s nightmare month when anyone could choose to change their health plan, but none of them knew what forms to fill out to do so. And tax season was fast approaching. The accounting department was scrambling to get everything prepared after a switch over to a new software that had glitches transferring previous data and suffice it to say the entire place was scrambling.
Add to that an Arkham breakout that took three days of surveillance and staggering patrols so someone was always out in order to round up the escapees, not to mention deal with the chaos they unleashed while out - Tim was admittedly a little run down. But so was everyone else.
Which was why he ignored the soreness in his muscles and the aching in his joints as just simple exhaustion. Right up until he woke up with an itch in his throat that quickly accelerated to a rasping soreness, and a tightness in his chest that left him coughing painfully.
He’d gotten all the way to dressed and putting a tie on before he tugged it back off and slumped over his mattress with a groan. He would be stupid to go into work like this. Especially because Bruce was going to be at the office that day, as he had been all week - along with Jason.
Bruce would take one look at him and send him home and he didn’t need one more reason for the man to think he couldn’t take care of himself.
So as much as it pained him to do so, he unbuttoned his starched-white shirt and tossed it on the floor, fumbled with pulling off his pants while still sitting on the bed and managed to squirm back into the pajama’s he just changed out of before tugging the blankets back over his head. He snaked his hand out to grab his phone off the nightstand, dialed HR to call in sick, sent a quick text to Bruce that he woke up with a cold, and then he passed back out.
When he woke up again, it was past eleven and his mouth felt sticky and full of cotton and his eyelids scraped like sandpaper. He knew he needed water, which was the only thing that pulled him out of bed, plus the possibility for cold medicine. His head was pounding and his whole body hurt and some Tylenol would at least help that part. Maybe some cough syrup.
So he dragged himself out of the warm blankets and drank a full glass of water, took a dose of Dayquil Cough and then wrapped himself in his comforter and laid across the couch.
Bruce had returned his text somewhat predictably paranoid when he eventually checked it, squinting at the screen for an extended moment.
Bruce:
How sick is, ‘I have cold’? Should I send someone over?
And then an hour later,
If I don’t hear from you by noon I’m sending someone.
Tim felt a flare of panic before he registered that he still had a few more minutes. The brief spell of cleanliness after his dawning realization that he was exhibiting clear signs of depression had quickly died out when work and patrol joined forces to sabotage him. When he looked around his apartment now the sink was once again full of dishes, the trash was overflowing, and there were clothes littering his bedroom floor.
He felt a bone deep weariness at the thought of trying to tidy it up before someone showed up just to make sure he wasn’t dead. It would probably be Alfred, since it was the middle of a Friday, and he couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing it a mess like this. So he quickly tapped out a reply.