Work Text:
His breathing is slowing down, and you don’t have to look at him to know that he is struggling to not fall asleep.
A smile appears on your face when you turn your head slightly to look at him.
Yes, he was fighting asleep like an old man.
“Hey”, you called softly, hand stretching enough to touch his shoulder.
He hummed after straightening his back and clearing his throat like he hadn’t been about to fall asleep at all.
His head turns to look at you with reddish eyes.
“Go to bed and take a nap. You look exhausted”.
“Nah, I’m fine, don’t worry, Bonnie”, he answers, accommodating against the settee again.
His eyes travel to the telly once more and he stares at it for a while, before you decide to return to your book.
A few pages later, you felt him slightly falling in your direction.
Your shoulder catches his head just in time.
As soon as it touches it, he backtracks, straightening again.
You let a chuckle go, turning your head again to look at him.
“Not fallin’ s’eep”, he assures, before you can even ask.
“If you say so”, but you don’t return to your book.
You stare at him instead and he looks back at you.
“Wha?”
“Why don’t you take a nap?”
“‘Cause I’m here with ya and I don’t want to waste that time”.
“You aren’t wasting it by sleeping, John”.
“I don’t see ya every day, bonnie, I want to spend time with ya”, and if his words weren’t still so new, you would have a chuckle at the cute, annoyed way his eyebrows frowned, and his nose wrinkled.
You stay in silence, instead and he returns his baby blue eyes to the telly.
You watch him for a while, how he accommodates again, leans back in the settee, making his an arm hang from the settee and the other is on your thigh, squeezing you softly.
How his eyes start blinking heavily as time passes, how he suddenly is seeing the telly more with closed eyes than open ones.
How his chest starts breathing slowly and his weight starts falling to the side again.
This time you use your hand to stop him, and he doesn’t wake up when you touch him.
You sigh before smiling.
“John”, you softly call.
He groans as if he was annoyed.
“How about we take a nap together?”
At that, he opens his eyes and goes straighter than a board.
He then looks at you with narrow eyes like he is trying to understand if he heard wrong or not.
“Did ya ask me to take a nap with ya?”
“Yes”, you say, hand still in his person. “You are too stubborn for your good”.
“Is wha makes ma charmin’”, and then he gives you a sleepy smile.
You almost roll your eyes to say something else, but before you can, he gets up from the settee like a bolt, turns off the telly, gets the book off your hands, and grabs you to rush to the hallway.
You weren’t as surprised by that as you should, so you let him be, even if hanging from his shoulder like a potato sack wasn’t ideal. He arrived at the room you two shared in record time and threw the two of you on the bed pretty unceremoniously.
While you mumbled a complaint he let go a satisfied sound that made you stop for a second. He stretched like a starfish, his shirt revealing a lot of skin and hairs you have seen a thousand times before. He closed his eyes and smiled satisfied.
He looked like a damn dog.
He didn’t look at you though, he kept his eyes closed before proceeding to move to cage you in his arms.
Usually, you wouldn’t complain about being in that position, being in his arms and feeling his chest against you or his breathing lulling you to sleep but this moment wasn’t about you.
“I want to be the big spoon”, you said, and by how his eyes opened and he stopped frozen, you could tell he was surprised by that.
He bats his pretty long eyelashes at you for a moment or two.
“Why?”
“‘Cause I say so”, you answer, using the same tone he uses when he decides that he is going to spoil you with affection and nothing you say will stop him.
He stares at you for a while until he sighs dramatically, giving up.
“A’righ’”, and then he rolls over, giving you his back, his shirt clinging too hard to it.
You don’t lose time and in a second, your arms are around his stocky figure, your leg, over his too.
His smell hits you full force when you settle behind his neck.
It is wild, familiar, and dangerous. It brings you comfort, especially on the nights you realize you’ll have to sleep alone…again.
You don’t blame him. His job was what he wanted; you couldn’t get that away from him. You had talked about it a thousand times.
A content sigh escapes him when you kiss him on the shoulder.
His calloused hands fall over yours.
You allow yourself to close your eyes and when you are about to drift to sleep, you hear him mumble something.
At the start, you didn’t get what it was, but then your brain caught up and a stupid silly grin appeared on your face, against his shoulder blade.
“I love you too, John”.
And he lets you know he knows by curling his fingers against yours.