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Ford wakes to the sound of their first alarm as he does every morning, ever the infuriatingly light sleeper. He’s not sure there’s a way to quantify, empirically, how annoying a sound is, but if there were, the jingle Bill’s alarm clock produces just might be up there. After he slaps it quiet, he’s content to roll on his side and get back to sleep, but… he can’t? Roll over, that is. There’s something on him. Perplexed and more than a little annoyed, he pulls his sleep mask away from his eyes—
“Jesus fuck!” Ford shrieks, barely able to contain his knee-jerk reaction (to shove, hard) to something — someone, his boyfriend — all of six inches from his face.
Bill is straddling his lap, leaned in as far as possible, a cartoonish grin plastered on his face for the unfunny bit. There are shadows under his eyes a mile wide.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
After Ford gets his heart rate back down to something compatible with life, he regards Bill with an annoyed glare — not that he can see it, obviously. Force of habit. In lieu of a glare, he sighs, loud and exasperated.
“Sweetheart, what in the world are you doing?”
“Listening to you sleep.”
Because that’s a regular thing to say.
“You scared the living daylights out of me. For a second there, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack and die at 25.”
Bill’s smile only gets wider, but it doesn’t reach his eye.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I made your soul leave your body.”
Ford lets his head fall back on the pillow, deciding not to give that remark the dignity of a response. Yes, he walked into that one, but it’s too early for this.
“How long have you been sitting there like that?”
“Since I woke up.”
“Which was?”
“Dunno. Couple hours ago, probably.”
“Are you alright?”
“Peachy.”
Ford knows Bill is lying through his teeth. Bill knows Ford knows Bill is lying through his teeth. He also knows Ford has learned not to push this line of questioning. It goes against his nature to let an obvious falsehood go unquestioned, but he’ll do so for his muse. They’ve been together long enough for Ford to know exactly what his deal is. He’s been awake for it more times than he can count, seen Bill toss and turn, talked him down as he cried into his chest, seen his sleepwalking turn violent as he hit himself to put out a nonexistent fire, heard him beg in the midst of sleep-talking, Mom, Mommy, wake up, please wake up, I didn’t mean it. Bill sleeps like a corpse (lucky) unless he has a bad dream, and if he has a bad dream, it’s seldom about anything but his parents.
99.99% of the time, Bill would rather, and Ford quotes, “put [his] head in a box full of rabid squirrels that also have HIV” than talk about his parents. So he won’t make him. Instead, he tugs at Bill’s arm in an effort to get him to lay back down.
“Come here. You look like hell. You need to get some more sleep.”
Ford doesn’t even get the first sentence out before Bill snatches his arm away and sits up.
“Nah. I gotta be up for work in, like, 30 minutes anyway.”
With that blatant lie, Bill starts to climb off, but Ford grabs him around the waist and wrangles him back into bed before he can stand up, rolling halfway on top of him to keep him there. Bill, to his credit, doesn't try to get up again. This is not a power struggle he often wins.
“It’s Saturday,” Ford says into Bill's chest, stern but not without an undertone of affection, “you don’t have work.”
“I appreciate your concern, Sixer, but I’m wired. I’m not gonna fall back asleep.”
Well, that makes one of them. Ford is already there again, barely able to keep his eyes open, and he’s perfectly content to conk out pinning Bill down if that’s what it takes to make him get some rest.
“Uh-huh. Just give it a try for me, honey.”
Bill huffs, probably rolls his eye, but says nothing. Lulling him back to sleep is much like boiling a frog. He's always so smug when Ford holds him like this, stiff and half-participatory, childish in his certainty that he ‘won't fall asleep.’ One second, he's certain. The next, he's out like a light, his sleep dreamless and calm.
Once he's sure he's out, Ford eases off, tucks them both in, wraps his arms around Bill, and follows suit.