Author's note: A drabble based on a prompt challenge from an unrelated LiveJournal community, involving the elements of the periodic table. I decided to borrow their challenge and just challenge myself. Hopefully they won't mind.

prompt: zinc

303 words

She glanced up at the clock for the third time in an hour. The hands glowed a pale green in the blackness of the room, the second hand ticking a slow trail around the luminescent numbers. Edina sighed and tugged the covers up over her face to block out the taunting advancement of time. She had to be up in five hours for a meeting. Important meeting. Important someone or other. Smoothing the covers back down, she willed herself to fall asleep. She lay for what seemed like ages in the darkness—breathing in, breathing out—and still found herself awake. She cracked open an eyelid to peek at the clock.

Ten minutes. Only ten bloody minutes had gone by.

Sighing in frustration, she threw back the covers and paced a few steps in the empty room. The whole damn house was empty, now. It'd been nice, at first. But then it'd got lonely.

Making up her mind, she slipped out into the hall. The whole house wasn't empty.

She tip-toed through the door to Saffy's room—the door that wasn't locked, or chained, or even closed against her, now. She wouldn't mind, she knew.

She hoped.

Edina poked the bed's occupant in the shoulder. "Pats."

"Mhm," came the reply. Edina suspected it was just a reflex, that she wasn't really listening.

"Pats," Edina hissed, poking Patsy again.

"Mhm, what?" She didn't open her eyes.

"D'you mind if I... you know... sleep here with you?"

"Nah, babe, knock yourself out," Patsy mumbled in a voice thick with sleep.

Edina climbed gratefully into bed next to Patsy, pulling the blankets up to her chin. "Thanks, Pats."

No response came. Patsy was asleep again.

Edina sighed quietly through her nose, eyes drifting shut. It was warm here.

She didn't really notice when she fell asleep.