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It had been the type of week where not even a good shag was enough to send Sam off to sleep. Instead of letting Gene get the cloth to wash them both off (it had apparently been a. not wet enough and b. too cold for Sam’s poor, sensitive skin when Gene had fetched it the last time), Sam had insisted on getting it himself even though he looked dead on his feet, eyelids drooping with fatigue in a way that could not pass for heavy-lidded lust.
Sam came back to bed holding a washcloth. And that dratted book. The book he had said helped him get to sleep, though Gene had seen him shake himself awake on the edge of sleep in order to finish another few pages. Apparently the threat of falling asleep at his desk and waking up with various precious forms and pinups glued to his leather-jacketed self wasn’t enough to keep him from trying to prop his eyes open to finish the latest le Carre.
Gene considered various ways of getting Sam to give in and go to sleep without it, from attempting to order him to relinquish the book (and Gene knew it would only be an attempt, where Sam was concerned) to suggesting they keep it in the Collators’ Den on slow days. But he knew Sam would look mutinous at the first and superior at the second.
And then he hit upon a solution Sam just might find acceptable and that just might mean that Gene could turn out the light at a decent hour. Not that Gene cared overly much about “decent hours” when not keeping them involved work, the boozer, or shagging. But he wouldn’t let his Inspector be sleep deprived over a book. Cock yes, a book by a tosser who’d voluntarily chosen to publish under a French-sounding name, no.
Gene grabbed the book from Sam, then rolled over and reached into the bedside table drawer and pulled out a pair of reading glasses, silencing Sam’s protest.
Gene donned the glasses, opened the book at the page Sam had marked, and began to read out loud.
Sam stood there, stunned, still holding the cloth.
Gene paused. “The cloth’ll be too cold if you wait forever, Sammy-boy. Clean us up, then get in bed and close your eyes while I finish reading this riveting….whatever it is.”
“You wear reading glasses,” Sam said, sounding hornier than he had any right to. God, next Sam would want Gene to be wearing them in the Collators' Den and he’d have him up against the stacks…Well. Maybe this had been a good idea for several reasons. But he needed Sam to sleep now. They could have sex in multiple locations on all sorts of surfaces when Sam seemed like less of a zombie.
“I do,” Gene said, shivering while Sam cleaned him off, and then went right back to reading.
Sam slipped under the sheets, but did not close his eyes. This time it seemed like the sight of Gene in his reading glasses was keeping him awake rather than the spy novel.
But Gene had a solution to that as well. He held the novel with one hand and stroked Sam’s hair with the other, prompting him to close his eyes and let the words of a faux Frenchman soothe him to sleep.