parasomnia

All through winter and in the early spring, Mako enjoys having a Raleigh Becket-shaped heater in her bed.

("Now if we could only clone him and sell the copies," Vanessa muses while Hermann chokes on his tea, "We'd never have to apply to the UN for funding again.")

Mako is not so fond of finding herself pinned under him in the middle of the night, but mornings are a different matter. Her husband is 'up and at 'em' bright and early.

Specifically, 'up' and at Mako.

(Raleigh insists she make an honest man of him because Herc disapproves of them living in sin. "Oh, well, if Hansen-san requires it...")

It is, Mako thinks as he lies sprawled underneath him, a very nice way to wake up in the mornings.

It is, however, not very conducive to getting things done.

("Ugh, you two," Newt grumbles when Raleigh drops a kiss on her shoulder on the way out. "You've been together a year – isn't the shine starting to wear off yet?" )

"Stay," Raleigh mumbles when she starts to ease herself out of the bed. "A little longer."

"I have things—" Mako sighs as he tugs her back into the bed and pins her underneath him, hot and sticky and sweaty and deliciously Raleigh.

"Do them later," he mumbles into her collarbone. "I'll help."

(Tendo gives Raleigh an exasperated look when he trails in after Mako. "You're supposed to give the woman time to actually miss you, Becket.")

Summer is more of a problem.

Raleigh likes her right up against him – spooned, front to back. Whose front and whose back he's not fussy about, so long as they're wrapped around each other. Unfortunately, when it's hot, Mako likes to starfish, not spoon.

This results in Mako wriggling away during the night and Raleigh following her until she falls out of bed and lands on the floor. It also results in a black eye from where her cheekbone met the steel-capped boot she didn't tuck properly under the bed.

(Herc goes very still when he sees her face, then relaxes when she explains what happened. Mako does not tender the explanation to everyone, but Hansen-san's history with his brother requires reassurance, even if he trusts Raleigh.)

"We could push the bed up against the wall and you sleep on the inside," Raleigh suggests after she falls out of bed a second time, his expression all innocence.

"You could stop crowding me."

"I don't do it deliberately."

Mako sighs a little as she climbs back into bed. "I know."

"Hey," Raleigh offers her a long, puffy body pillow that usually sits on top of the bed. "Try this, maybe? Like a fence."

It would not be a very effective fence, to Mako's mind, but she takes it to put at the edge of the bed. Then she leans across – ostensibly to turn off the light, in truth to kiss Raleigh slow and deep and teasing as she trails her nails down his chest.

"You know, I thought you wanted me to stop crowding you."

"That does not keep me from crowding you, however," she teases, her mouth hovering just over his as her fingers slide under his waistband and take him in hand. And Raleigh offers himself in that way that he does - as though he is the rain and she is the parched land in which he will lose himself.

Mako 'crowds' him to his satisfaction and hers, and does not fall out of bed then.

In the morning, however, she finds herself once again at the edge of the bed, hugging the pillow out of necessity. Raleigh is pressed up against her back, his arm firmly wrapped around her waist, his legs entangling hers.

Mako doesn't need to look to know he's smiling against her shoulder.

fin