be discreet

[msmage]

It's not much later, in Isabella's room, that she asks:

"So... is Alex really a dom?"

Comments

[kindestgarden]

"Oh, well enough," yawn, "it's only I don't drink coffee besides on school days. I'll be awake in a bit."

[mrmage]

"Why don't you?"

[kindestgarden]

"If you take coffee every day it doesn't work as well." She munches pancake.

[mrmage]

"Oh. Fair enough, I suppose."

[kindestgarden]

"Mm-hm. Besides, I never really got used to the taste and don't need all the cream and sugar."

[mrmage]

"I can take it or leave it. Sleep has never really given me trouble, I do need it but as long as I get a reasonable amount of it more-or-less daily I can function well during the day."

[eclipsi]

"Same here."

[catalexis]

"Gosh, I wonder what getting enough sleep is like, I will probably never know."

[mrmage]

"Don't you get enough sleep with Isabella at school? The room for yourself?"

[catalexis]

"It helps but the house'll settle or somebody'll be up using the bathroom or it'll be windy or a dog'll bark or the air conditioning'll come on or something."

[mrmage]

"...the house'll settle? You ever think of getting noise-cancelling headphones or something?"

[catalexis]

"I wear earplugs, they just don't help that much. You figure out how to sleep with headphones on and I will be eternally grateful except not in a way requiring me to do anything."

[mrmage]

"Do you also toss and turn a lot? I'm pretty immobile when I sleep."

[catalexis]

"...No idea. Dunno."

[mrmage]

"Ma'am?" he asks Isabella.

[eclipsi]

"I wake him up, not the other way around. It is possible I have never seen Alex actually asleep when he wasn't really sick, which might affect things."

[mrmage]

"Huh. I suppose you could, like, put a camera somewhere and record yourself sleeping?" he asks Alex.

[catalexis]

"...the point of finding out if I toss and turn would be...?"

[mrmage]

"Finding out if you can sleep with headphones on?"

[catalexis]

"Headphones aren't really comfy even if you don't roll over."

[mrmage]

"Hm. I suppose."

[catalexis]

Shrug. "I get by."

[mrmage]

"Yeah. I wonder if that's something a psion could fix."

[eclipsi]

"Well, I could deafen him at bedtime and fix it in the morning, but it'd be pretty useless as a skill otherwise. Not sure what other angle I'd take."

[mrmage]

"Magic is pretty opaque to me, but this doesn't particularly sound much different than somehow figuring out what counts as nightmares and then making me not have them."