The Insomnia Fix

Of all our rules, the ones about my sleep habits have probably evolved and changed the most. Not that good sleep hasn’t always been important to Quint, because hoo-boy, it has. He is fanatical. But over the years, we’ve both learned what works better when my middle-of-the-night bouts of insomnia strike. Plus the bouts themselves have gotten less frequent since I transitioned off taking medication for my ADHD.

One thing has stayed the same pretty much from the start, though: I’m supposed to wake him up if I can’t fall back asleep after ten minutes.

I sighed and reached across the bed to touch his arm. “Quint?”

He inhaled as he came awake. It took him less than two seconds to pull himself together. Perks of being married to a doctor, I guess. “How long?” he asked in the darkness, his voice raspy.

“Ten minutes.” Okay, maybe more like fifteen, but he didn’t need to know that, right? “I keep thinking about the song I was working on earlier.”

With a quiet noise from deep in his throat, he pulled me closer. “Would it help to write down your ideas?”

I huffed into his shoulder. “I’d have to get an idea first.” I’d been completely blocked all day. And yeah, I know, I know. Sleeping on it, letting my subconscious mind work, was probably the answer. I just couldn’t turn my conscious mind off.

“Alright,” he said. “Take my copy of Children of Dune to the living room and read it by the small lamp. I’ll ask you about the plot tomorrow.”

Leave it to him to prescribe 70’s sci-fi as the cure. My nerd. Smiling, I pointed out, “I could google that.”

“Then perhaps we should skip the reading and I’ll give you a spanking instead,” he said. “It might help you sleep better.”

I lifted my head off my pillow and raised my eyebrows. “Um, hi, it’s Theo. Not Seb.” Missing his foster Brat didn’t mean he got to use those techniques on me!

He carded his fingers through my hair at the nape of my neck and pulled me down for a quick kiss. When our lips parted, he said, “I’m aware, angel. Go read, please. Remember to keep the light dim.”

I nodded, then escaped before he got any more ideas about experimenting.

A few pages into the book, I was bored. Which, yeah, was the whole point, but instead of growing sleepy, I just felt restless. I put it down on the coffee table, went to the kitchen, and opened the fridge in that sort of mindless way you do. There wasn’t really anything “snacky” in it. I sucked on my bottom lip as my eyes travelled from leftover pasta to a package of sliced turkey.

Footsteps came down the hallway behind me. “Theodore, I said ‘read,’ not ‘eat.’”

Trying for an innocent expression, I glanced over my shoulder. “If we’re not supposed to eat midnight snacks, why does the fridge have a light in it?”

He came up beside me and crossed his arms over his bare chest. Nice. But then he ruined it with that damn eyebrow, made all the more pointed by his lack of glasses. “Are you actually hungry?”

“Ummmmmmaybe?”

With a shake of his head, he reached out and shut the door, then moved between me and it. “That means no. Activating your digestive system is not going to help you sleep. Nor is staring into the refrigerator. I told you to keep the lighting dim for a reason.”

I blew out a breath. “I knoooowwww. The book wasn’t working, though. I’m too tense.”

Uncrossing his arms, he started to massage both my shoulders with strong hands.

My head fell forward. “Mmmmm.”

“Does that help, angel?”

“Yes,” I said. “But know what would really help?” I inched closer and slid my fingers under the waistband of his pajama bottoms. Not very far. Just enough to tease.

He smiled. “Oh, you need to be worn out?”

Christ, the images those words conjured. I nodded dumbly, unable to speak all of a sudden.

“Very well, I think I can arrange that,” he said. Taking my hand, he led me back to the bedroom for our oldest, most well-tested, and favorite insomnia cure.