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Yor cracks an eye open to squint up at the humming lamp, harshly bright in the dark bedroom. She then glances over at the alarm clock. 3:08 am.
Her husband sits in the same chair, legs crossed in the same position, mulling over the same book he was an hour ago.
“Loid,” she mumbles, cheek squished against the pillow.
“Hm?”
“That light is still on.”
He angles the shade a little further away from the bed. It hardly helps the situation. “Sorry. I’m almost done.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“I just need to finish these last few chapters.”
She sandwiches her face under the empty pillow next to her. “Why…” she groans out.
“Well, I thought things were slowing down enough for me to find a stopping point.” The page flips noisily, and his explanation continues mild-mannered as if he was at an afternoon book club and not up at this ungodly hour. “But then the childhood friend was killed and there was this big emotional moment so it started to… pick up…”
And then he was lost in the story, yet again. She turns over, trying to block the offending light with her back. “Have you even looked at the clock since you sat down?”
She hears the leather creak slightly as he cranes over to view the display. “You know, earlier than I thought it would be. I’m making good time tonight.”
“Please just come to bed… you know I’ve got a morning shift.”
He tries to placate her with the same sentiment he’s listed off four times now. “Almost finished, Yor.”
Finally, she gives up. The pillow is yanked off the mattress as she gets out of bed, the air cold against her bare shoulders and legs when the sheet is tossed aside.
“I’m just going to go sleep in the other room tonight—“
That does it for him.
The lamp is clicked off immediately, mattress dipping down with the weight of another inhabitant.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” His arm slides around her torso and pulls her back to warmth before her feet can touch the ground. Her back is drawn flush against his chest, and his leg hooks around hers as an extra layer of security to keep her from getting up.
“I thought you had just two more chapters,” she mocked quietly in the dark, pressing one arm over his and readjusting her pillow with the other.
“That was before I was threatened with this unprecedented level of blackmail,” he whispers back, tucking her shoulder under his chin. “Coercion is not a good look on you, my dear.”
“Don’t think of it as coercion. Think of it as the common sense voice needed to remind you of the better option here, because that’s what it is. Good night.”
She receives only a murmured “Mmm” in reply, and thinks that is the end of the matter. They can make the most of these last four hours of precious sleep before the alarm clock angrily buzzes them awake again and the new day begins. Because that is her role as the Forger wife: maintain order and keep her husband grounded when he begins to spiral beyond reason. And now that he is laying here next to her, recharging for the next day, she feels she has succeeded in that responsibility.
Until she hears the unmistakable flap of paper.
She opens her eyes again to see if he has actually dared to pull such a stunt. In front of her, lit by the sliver of moonlight coming through a gap in the curtains, is that damned book turned open and held aloft by the arm pinned under her middle. She turns around to face her husband incredulously. Loid is sheepishly not meeting her gaze but wears the all too familiar crooked smile of a child being caught exactly where he shouldn’t be. As quietly as he had turned the page, it wasn’t quiet enough to bypass her.
“Are- are you… actually serious?” she splutters out.
He has no answer.
Keeping her eyes on him, the book is yanked from his grasp without looking. She skims the final pages as he reaches for the volume, trying to wrestle it away from her with little success. Her arms stretch further out of his reach over to the corner of the mattress.
“Bondman vaults over the alligators by distracting them with slabs of raw meat from the festival stalls,” she reads the dialogue bubbles aloud, using an elbow to trap his legs against her side while her foot expertly keeps his hands pinned and far from grabbing the book. “He stops the toxin right before it can be deployed. The childhood friend was never dead, he was wearing a bulletproof jacket and Bondman needed to think he was dead to grow as a spy. The end.”
She holds his shocked stare, kneeling over him mercilessly as the comic is flung against the far wall of the bedroom. It flaps onto the floorboards unceremoniously, some of the pages crinkling at the treatment. His body drops back onto the mattress, limp with defeat. She plants a brief kiss on his forehead before laying next to him, nuzzling her head into his chest and wrapping arms around his middle.
“Good night,” she says, artificially sweet. He’s silent for a good minute, and it’s the quietest they’ve been all night. He does not even reciprocate her touch. Briefly, Yor wonders if she took it too far.
Eventually, his fingers come up to trace rows into her hair and over the curve of her skull. She has this uneasy feeling in her stomach that it’s more for his own comfort than a sign of amends between them.
“Spoilsport,” he mumbles stiffly.
She sighs; this, unfortunately, won't do. His arm is picked up off of her and she crawls out from under the covers, the cold floorboards stinging the bare soles of her feet. Wordlessly, she takes the comic book from the ground. The cobwebs it caught when it landed in the corner are gently brushed away. She lays it out flat on the dresser, and her ceramic jewelry box is set on top of it as a weight to press out the creases.
Once she is satisfied with the fix, she trudges back to bed and resituates herself under Loid’s arm. She is silently relieved when she feels his fingers and muscles curl around her with more purpose this time, pulling her up next to him.
“I love you,” she offers into the dark. The response is still a little delayed, but comes back to meet her eventually. She knew it would; it rumbles through his chest and vibrates into her ear, down the side of her face that is cradled against him.
“I love you, too.”