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“Boy, you look rough,” one of your fellow siblings of sin commented as you trudged into the common room on your way to your room, your body exhausted.
You side-eyed them, shrugging, “thanks. I haven’t slept well in weeks.”
The other sibling nodded, a sympathetic look on their face. “Have you gone to the ghouls?” they asked, looking back down at their tablet as you collapsed on the couch, groaning into the cushion.
“Yeah I already tried that. Even Omega couldn’t help. He said there’s too much anxiety for him to grip the tether in my mind to put me to sleep and that he didn’t want to risk hurting me,” you grumbled back, eyes closed as you melted into the couch, your exhaustion catching up to you. There was a restlessness that had settled into your very bones, keeping you up at every hour of the day; this itch to go, go, go, made you exhaust yourself physically, but mentally you never stopped thinking, your brain never ever shutting off. It was like torture.
“Have you asked Secondo for help? He had insomnia pretty bad when he was head of the church,” they offered, looking back at where you were laying on the couch and rolling their eyes.
You pushed up onto one arm, glancing back at them with a skeptic look on your face, “no. Why would I go to him?”
“Well he might have something that could help. It’s worth a shot.”
You shrugged, thinking about it. “Maybe,” you muttered, collapsing back into the couch and resigning yourself to the idea of awkwardly knocking on Papa’s door at 9 o’clock at night.
—
You were trying to find some kind of excuse to talk yourself out of knocking on Secondo’s door and you were failing, despite the constant overthinking going on in your head. It took you a second to work up the nerve, your hand resting on the wood of the door to his quarters before you finally knocked a few times and waited. You were about to turn around and go back to your dorms when he opened the door with a tired grunt and a “what?”
You flushed slightly with embarrassment, the words getting stuck in your throat. “Hi Papa. I was wondering… well, someone told me… I just–fuck. Sorry,” you muttered, shaking your head like one shakes an etch-a-sketch to reset it.
He smiled, leaning into the door jam. “Don’t worry about it. Now, how can I help you, piccolo? I do not usually find visitors at my door at this time, at least not younger siblings,” he said, making you blush even brighter red because you knew exactly what he meant.
You spluttered, “I didn’t interrupt… you know–”
“No,” Papa replied, cutting you off with a small chuckle, “you didn’t. What do you need?”
“Oh. Right. Well, um, I was wondering if you had anything that could help with insomnia. Someone said you had it a while ago and that you might be able to help me,” you explained, looking down at your feet as though the Scooby Doo print socks you wore were the most interesting thing in the world at this moment in time.
Papa smiled again, nodding and moving out of the way of the door. “Come in.” You did as you were told, shuffling inside and out of his way awkwardly, unsure of where to place yourself in the rather large space. “I have something that might work, but you might not want to use it.”
“What is it?” you asked, eagerly waiting for an answer. You were desperate and in need of some sleep; you’d take whatever he gave you.
“Weed,” he answered shortly, turning around with a weed pen in his hand, holding it out to you to take, “I also have edibles if you don’t want to smoke it. You don’t have to take anything if you don’t want to, but this has helped me get to sleep on rougher nights.”
You took the pen, turning it over in your hand as you examined it closely. It was about the length of a pencil, a button on the side that turned it on, a cartridge already plugged into it and ready to go. “What’s the difference between this and edibles?” you asked, confused.
Papa resisted the urge to smile, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement at your innocence. It was always a privilege to teach someone else how to smoke in a variety of ways, even more so when they knew practically nothing about it. “The edibles take longer to work, but they’ll get you much higher. The pen will work faster, but it won’t make you as high unless you take more hits. You’ll also have to inhale the smoke,” he explained, leading you back into his bedroom where he had been preparing to watch a movie and zonk the hell out himself.
You hummed, thinking about what you wanted to do. You were willing to try it if it meant getting to sleep, and you doubted Papa was going to let you get so high you felt miserable. “Okay,” you finally responded, looking at him.
“Okay, you want to try the pen? Or okay you don’t want to try anything at all?” he asked in clarification, walking the line as delicately as he could manage. The last thing he wanted was to make you uncomfortable or scared.
“I wanna try it,” you answered, giving the pen back, “how do I do it?”
Secondo took the pen back, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Well, you put your mouth to the mouthpiece and you hold this button,” he adjusted his position on the bed so you could see him pressing the button and holding it, “and then you breathe in.” Secondo proceeded to hit the weed pen, sucking in his breath for a few seconds and breathing the weed in, then he exhaled a stream of steady vapor, the tendrils of translucent smoke glittering in the light of his bedroom until they disappeared from sight.
Papa handed the pen back, patting the edge of his bed for you to sit and have your turn with it. You hopped onto the bed–he was over six feet tall, thus he had a tall bed, that motherfucker–scooching so you were sitting comfortably. Putting the tip of the pen to your mouth, you inhaled–or at least tried–more so just holding the smoke in your mouth than anything, unable to breathe deeply while sucking the vapor in.
“No, no, child. Breathe in and hold the smoke in your mouth, then breathe. Do it in separate steps so you actually inhale it,” Papa advised, watching as you tried again. This time the smoke got caught in your throat, making you cough from the strength of the weed. You coughed a few more times, coughing more with every breath in. Papa rubbed your back, “that’s alright. Just cough it out. Hit it two or three more times and then you should be good and stoned.”
You did just that, trading the pen back and forth with him for some water he had on the bedside table, your throat growing dry with each deep inhale of the harsh vapor. Each time you coughed, you only seemed to get more high, the thought making you begin to erupt into a small fit of giggles that had Papa raising his brows with a soft smile.
“I think someone is as high as a kite, eh bambino?” he asked, snickering as you giggled harder, slumping against his side. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, his lips kissing the top of your head as you nuzzled in closer, seemingly drawn to the heat of his body. He could see in your eyes how exhausted you were when you first showed up at the door, already planning to find a way to get you to get some sleep, whether that be verbally suggesting it or offering some kind of sleep aid.
Your eyes crinkled with tired delight, the world spinning a little bit as you adjusted to the feeling of being stoned like a woman in the medieval ages was for showing off her ankles. Papa got up from his seat on the bed to put the pen back in his drawer, making you fall backwards onto his bed, another giggle leaving your chest as you sunk into it.
Fuck, how were you gonna get yourself back to your room like this?
You already felt exhausted when you forced yourself to walk to Secondo’s quarters, the exhaustion in your body only growing with the addition of the weed. It seems you didn’t have to ask or plan anything at all, Secondo’s arms sliding under your body to pick you up and put you in the bed properly, your head against one of his luxuriously soft pillows in his massive bed. “I think it’s best that you sleep in here with me tonight, just so we make sure you don’t have any bad reactions to the weed and so I can make sure you have everything you might need,” Papa explained in a soft murmur, his accent thickening as he deepened the pitch of his voice.
You just smiled broadly, not a thought in your head, nodding in agreement even though you didn’t process shit he just said. It went one ear and directly out the other, your mind blissfully blank and unable to conjure up a singular thought past what basic sensations you felt; right now those sensations were warm and comfortable.
“How about a movie, little one?” Papa offered quietly, rounding the bed so that he could slip in on the other side. You nodded, humming contentedly as he turned on the TV and pulled up Netflix. “What would you like to watch, piccolo? Your choice.”
“Hmmm…” you hummed, looking up at the ceiling as you thought about it for a moment, only to practically jump out of the bed with excitement, “how about Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”
Papa chuckled at the display of excitement, nodding in agreement. After a few seconds, the opening of the movie was playing and the lights were turned off, a smile on your face as you watched the screen. The weed began kicking in not long after, your breathing evening out to slow inhales and exhales, your limbs heavy and weightless.
You looked over to where Papa was watching himself, entranced with the bit going on between the characters. You slowly creeped closer, trying not to ruffle the sheets and make too much noise; he was just so warm and you just wanted to bask in it, the steady rise and fall of his chest making you feel calm and safe.
Secondo had noticed this the moment you had started moving, your stoned state making you less stealthy than you thought you were. He looked over after a few minutes of this, finding that it stopped being funny after a minute or three because he knew how exhausted you were. He wanted to keep you safe, allow you to rest and have a break from the expectations of the world. Everything was chaotic and uncertain, but you could escape in your dreams; he wanted to help you escape, to allow you a moment of peace and the safety you hadn’t been given as a child–you were just barely an adult, after all, new to the real world but not the harshness of it.
“Come here,” Papa murmured, staying still while you adjusted your position and laid pressed up to his side, your head on his chest and your arms thrown around him as best as you could manage. If you were a cat–or a ghoul, Lucifer forbid–you would be purring at this moment, so happy and warm and safe that you couldn’t control yourself.
You turned back to the screen, not paying attention as Papa shifted around so he could run a hand up and down your back, his eyes on you and not the movie. Your eyelids drooped after a few more minutes, your mind slowly drifting into a stoned dreamscape that allowed you to relax and go to sleep.
Papa leaned down and kissed your head, allowing the movie to play for a little while longer before he shut it off, moving you off his chest so he could settle in the bed. You whined in your sleep, only to quiet when he pulled you back into him, your face buried in his chest once more now that he had settled on his side facing you.
Kissing your forehead once more, Secondo whispered a loving, “sweet dreams, little one. Your Papa will always be here to help you.”
You woke up the next morning finally feeling less exhausted than you had in a long while, all thanks to Papa and his bedtime greenery.