Touch Me to Sleep

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The whole campus found out our resident heartthrob can't get it up.

The Confessions page detonated. Thousands of comments, every single one of them laughing.

Here's the part nobody knew yet.

I'm the one who told them.

Yesterday I covered a dorm check for my roommate. Room 250, bed four.

The guy wouldn't get out of bed. Just a lazy voice from under the blanket, way too smug for someone about to get inspected.

"Write whatever you want."

So I did.

By that afternoon, my little note on the dorm bulletin board was the most famous sentence on campus.

Bed 4, Room 250. Tried every position. Still couldn't get it up.

A few hours later he had me cornered downstairs. Stepped in close. Dropped his voice low enough that only I could hear it.

"You didn't even try. How would you know I can't get it up?"

Funny thing about that.

Three days later, I was the one begging him to take me to bed.

Chapter 1

"QUINN. What did you do."

Zoe came flying into our room like the building was on fire, which was unfortunate, because I'd just gotten my first three hours of sleep in over a week.

"...What?"

She shoved her phone in my face. She'd gone pale. "Just look."

I looked.

The campus Confessions page was on fire. Somebody had posted a photo of the men's dorm bulletin board, the whole inspection log from yesterday. Room 203, all clear. Room 207, smells questionable. The usual.

Then the last line. The one with three hundred comments stacked underneath it.

I'm not going to repeat it. You already know the one.

Commenters: [I am DECEASED. hahahaha]

Commenters: [so we're just telling the entire school Max can't get it up now? incredible]

Commenters: [whoever wrote this is a legend and I need her hand in marriage]

Commenters: [y'all stop. Max hasn't even slept. he's been staring at his phone for like an hour]

I stared at that last one for a while.

Slowly, it came to me.

The legend was me.

In my defense, there were extenuating circumstances.

Zoe's an RA, and yesterday was the big dorm health-and-safety sweep. Everybody out of bed, no exceptions. She was short a person, so I took a floor for her.

Room 250 had exactly one occupant, and he was asleep, fully cocooned, absolutely refusing to acknowledge my existence.

Honestly, I got it. College kids tormenting other college kids for no reason. I was fully prepared to phone it in.

Then I noticed the dorm supervisor filming the entire inspection two feet behind me.

So I poked the human burrito. "Hey. Out of bed, quick check, then I'm gone."

One hand slid out. Long fingers, irritatingly nice. It flapped at me, then vanished back under the blanket. He rolled over.

Cool.

I glanced at the supervisor. Smiled. "You'll want to be up before the check's over."

Then I leaned in and said it quiet. "Stick that hand out one more time and you're finished."

The blanket shifted.

A foot came out.

Directly into the supervisor's face.

Then, from somewhere under the covers, lazy and completely shameless:

"Write whatever you want."

So, under the supervisor's murderous glare, I did.

With maybe a little editorial flair.

I felt genuinely awful about it. For a solid hour.

Right up until Max posted this, in public, where God and everyone could see it.

Max: [Quinn. Second-year vet student, section three. You didn't even try. How would you know I can't get it up?]

The thread lost its entire mind all over again.

My phone was blowing up. Three different friends, all asking when Max and I got so close.

Somewhere behind my eyes, a herd of extremely judgmental llamas started to stampede.

Great. Takes one to know one. Neither of us was a saint here.

Apologizing was off the table. We'd just have to destroy each other instead.

Max caught me downstairs on my way to the health center.

Casual jacket, hair still doing something stupid and adorable at the crown, like he'd rolled straight out of bed. He looked me over, clocked the shadows under my eyes, and smirked.

"Those raccoon eyes," he said. "Guilty conscience keeping you up?"

For the record, the raccoon eyes are a chronic-insomnia thing.

And for the record, last night I slept a glorious three hours.

But he'd said it in front of an audience. The guy's a campus celebrity, there's always an audience. And something in me just snapped.

So I dropped to the ground and wrapped both arms around his leg.

"I'm so sorry, Max." Loud. Devastated. "This is all my fault. If I'd just tried harder you could've gotten it up. I swear I would've given it another shot"

I let the last part land nice and clear.

"but there was no sign of life down there. None."

Then I looked, pointedly, at the region in question.

The crowd inhaled like they'd struck oil.

Max looked down at me, expression flat. "You sure you want to do that?"

Uh.

Before I could answer, he bent, hauled me up over his shoulder, and walked off.

Then dropped me onto the back of his moped. "Hold on."

I spent the whole ride braced for death.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I fell asleep.

I know how that sounds. I have severe insomnia. For me, falling asleep is a full-contact sport.

And yet. Rattling down the road on the back of a moped, cheek against Max's spine, out cold. I even dreamed. Something about the giant fried drumstick at the dining hall.

Twenty minutes later I woke up, registered the drool patch I'd left on the back of his jacket, and sat with that for a moment.

"My bad."

Max rubbed his forehead and walked into the health center.

Why he'd brought me to the health center, I had no clue. It definitely wasn't because he knew I was headed there and wanted to do something nice. Obviously not.

I trailed in after him, thoroughly lost.

The nurse took one look at the two of us and froze. "You two know each other?"

Max and I stared at her, then at each other. "What?"

She pointed at Max. "He's the one I told you about. The narcolepsy case."

Then she pointed at me. "And she's my insomniac. You two are my only regulars, and your conditions are freakishly complementary. I've been meaning to introduce you for weeks. So? How are we feeling?"

Max looked at me for a long, complicated second. "I've been wide awake all day. Which never happens."

The nurse's eyebrows climbed. "That's new. Any idea why?"

"One thing's different," Max said. "She showed up to inspect my room yesterday."

He pointed at me. I blinked at everyone.

"Full disclosure," I said. "I hadn't slept in ten days. Then I passed out cold right after that inspection. And again just now, on his moped. The only thing different both times was contact with him."

We looked at each other.

Neither of us said anything.

Because we'd both just run the same horrifying math.

What if our conditions had gotten bad enough to start rewiring other people.

The campus heartthrob. My human sleeping pill. And me, his alarm clock. Two people who couldn't quit each other if we tried.

To test the theory, we made a deal. Three days. No contact.

So I didn't sleep for three days.

If you've never seen the light, you can survive the dark. But I'd had those two perfect nights now. Max had stopped being a person and become a substance I was hooked on.

Wednesday morning I peeled myself off the mattress, raccoon eyes heavier than the actual animal.

Zoe glanced up. "Where are you going this early?"

"Going to find Max," I said. "To sleep with him."

"...What?" Zoe's powder puff hit the floor.

I was already in my shoes and out the door.

God, Max, get over here and sleep with me. Please. I'm begging.

I have never run that fast in my life. Made it to the base of his dorm, texted him, and got nothing back for ages.

Do not tell me he's asleep again.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I crouched outside the men's dorm with my raccoon eyes and a face full of despair, radiating pure misery, until a guy walking past made a confused little noise.

I looked up. His expression cleared into understanding. "You here for Max?"

I nodded fast.

"He's at the health center, though."

"...What?"

"Nodded off on his moped this morning. Drove straight into the flowerbed by the library. Took ten minutes for anyone to find him, because he"

"Passed out!"

"I mean. Fell asleep."

"..."

I didn't understand, but I was deeply moved.

Is falling asleep really that easy for you people? Somebody please transfer me a little of that disease.

No time. I spun around and speed-walked to the health center.

Max was on the cot, eyes half-open, staring out the window at the gorgeous sunlight like it personally owed him money. He had the face of a man one blink from ascending straight out of his own body.

I grabbed his sleeve. He turned and met my bloodshot, sleep-starved eyes.

My voice came out as pure, naked want. "Let me sleep."

Max said nothing.

He pulled out his phone. "Hello, 911?"

"I want to sleep so bad I could die." I grabbed two fistfuls of my hair and started to genuinely wail. "You know the feeling? Body wrecked way past exhaustion."

"Brain wide awake. Bright as a floodlight."

"Lying there in the dark, losing your mind. That exact flavor of despair."

"You have no idea. You couldn't possibly."

Max's face did something complicated. "You know the pain of falling asleep in the middle of an exam? Two years running. Failed both."

We looked at each other.

Nothing to say. Some silences say plenty.

So Max and I struck a deal. Any free time, we'd spend it together, and figure out the why later.

A week in, we had rules. Longer contact, better results: one hour today bought me two hours of sleep tonight, three hours awake for Max. And closer beat farther.

The nurse called it a medical miracle. "Promise me you'll play nice, you two. My entire doctoral thesis is riding on this. HA."

I really thought we'd live happily ever after.

Sorry. Cooperate ever after.

Then, on day nine, something went wrong.

By the math, I'd banked enough contact to sleep like a baby. Instead I lay there all night, flipping over and over, staring a hole through the bed canopy.

Next morning I went scrambling for Max. He was in class.

I peeked through the back door. He was in his seat by the window, bathed in sunlight, doing the one thing he does best.

Going under.

His narcolepsy was kicking in too. Of course it was.

I waited out the whole period. The bell rang, Max finally surfaced, caught my eye, read my mind, and stood up to come out.

A girl cut him off.

She was chattering about something. Max went left, she blocked left. He went right, she blocked right.

Yeah. That was about all the patience I had.

I walked in, elbowed past her, grabbed Max by the wrist, and towed him toward the door.

The girl's voice shot up behind me. "What is your problem? You in a rush to die or something?"

I nodded, very sincere. "You'd be shocked how easy it is for a college student to die, actually."

She looked me up and down. "You're insane."

I nodded again. "Right? And Max here is my medication."

Watching her choke on a comeback she couldn't find was deeply, spiritually satisfying.

A soft laugh came from beside me. I shot Max a look and hauled him off.

We got as far as the campus park.

"You've clocked it too, right," I said. "Regular contact isn't cutting it anymore."

He was still half-asleep. "Mm. Maybe you drained me dry."

Not talking was always an option.

I side-eyed him for a while, then went for the dry laugh. "Is it maybe because... we're not being intimate enough?"

Max's eyes lifted, slow. Sunlight came through the sycamore leaves and scattered across his face in pieces. He took one step closer, in no hurry at all, and asked, "How intimate do you want to be?"

I blinked at him, a little lost, then went up on my toes and bumped my forehead against his.

Max, apparently, was stunned. It took him a second. Then he touched his own forehead and laughed out loud. "Are you slow?"

"...What?"

Intimate contact. What was that, if not intimate?

Before I could argue, he caught my wrist, and a second later I crashed into a warm, solid chest.

Max's voice landed right against my ear. "This is what close means."

I could hear his heart going. Steady. A little fast.

His chin settled against the top of my head. His warmth soaked straight through my shirt, his heartbeat right there under my cheek, and somewhere in the middle of it I forgot how my own lungs were supposed to work.

"Oh," I said.

"But"

"Now's really not the time to talk."

"But"

"You have to feel the magnetic field with your heart."

I couldn't hold it in anymore. "But there are a LOT of people here."

Max went still. Whipped his head around.

On the far side of the hedge behind us, a campus reporter was photographing a whole row of people, every one of them now staring at us without blinking.

The reporter slowly panned his camera and got one clean shot of us.

Even from a distance we could still hear him. "Tomorrow's campus gossip headline is MINE. HAHAHAHA."

I said nothing.

Max said nothing.

Sure enough, the next day, a post about us went up on the Confessions page.

Campus Confessions: [BREAKING: heartthrob's ED reportedly torches his relationship. Girlfriend suspected of draining him dry?? After a desperate campaign to win her back, the two were spotted locked in a tender embrace.]

I really would love to meet whoever writes these.

Preferably by cracking their skull open to see what kind of garbage was packed in there.

Anyway. I decided the whole thing needed clearing up. Max's good name was basically gone, and since the mess started with my typo, it was on me to fix it.

So I tracked down whoever wrote the post, got them to take it down, and set up a time to meet. The plan: bring Max along, explain everything, have the guy run a correction, and give Max his reputation back.

Great plan. Flawless plan.

Except Max showed up late.

Half an hour late, strolling into the boba shop like he had all the time in the world. He walked straight up to me, locked eyes, and said, urgently:

"Can you sleep with me tonight?"

I said nothing.

The campus reporter slowly raised his camera. Under the full weight of my glare, he lowered it again.

Then picked up a pen with a shaking hand.

Fine. This rumor was never dying.

Max, it turned out, was in a rush because Ashford was playing Dalton tomorrow.

Huge game. He'd captained the team last year and wasn't supposed to suit up at all. Then that afternoon the starter snapped his leg, and with nobody left, they came for Max.

Except his narcolepsy had been flaring all year, and he was not about to walk onto that court with zero guarantees.

To lock in a long enough stretch awake, he needed a long stretch of close contact with me. Today.

Which meant, in the most literal sense, sleeping together tonight.

...Okay. That came out wrong.

But that was genuinely all it was. We needed close, and we needed long, so the only option was sharing a bed.

I crossed my arms. "Heh. So you're the one begging me now. What do I get out of it?"

Max said, dead flat, "On-call sleeping pill. What exactly are you weighing?"

I grabbed his hand and towed him toward the gate, buzzing. "Let's get a room. Let's GO."

Max said nothing.

But we left too late, and it was a weekend, and every decent hotel nearby was booked solid. All we turned up was one cramped little motel.

It'd do for a night.

We'd both showered before heading out, so there was no awkward shower situation. Just sleep. Simple.

Except I couldn't sleep.

You want to know why?

Max. Campus heartthrob. Six foot one, eight-pack, a face somebody clearly designed on purpose, and he smelled good on top of it.

You put a live specimen like that next to a girl, and a nun couldn't sleep.

Conveniently, Max wasn't sleepy either. He tipped his head toward me. "Can't sleep?"

I nodded.

The corner of his mouth curled. "Then let's play something fun."

I said, "?"

Half an hour later, our conversation sounded like this.

"You're so good at this. How are you lasting this long."

"No, careful, ease it in slow."

"Pull it out gently. Not so hard."

"I'm gonna burst."

Knock, knock, knock.

Someone rapped on the door. Max and I looked at each other.

He went and opened it. A very red-faced guy stood on the other side.

He could barely get the words out. "Bro. Walls here are thin, and you two... you should really get some sleep, okay? Even a grown man like me is standing here blushing..."

His eyes drifted past Max, into the room, and landed right on me.

He froze.

There I sat: sticky notes plastered all over my face, a half-eaten corndog in one hand, a tower of stacking blocks in front of me, delicately easing out a single block.

Genuinely could not tell you who was more mortified in that moment. Us or him.

But all that chaos finally wore me down, and I got sleepy.

I dropped straight into a dead sleep. No idea how long. Still churning through one of those long, cluttered dreams, this one about the hairless cat the clinic took in, the one that's always flopping over for a belly rub.

Blissfully dreaming, I rolled over, and my palm came to rest on warm, smooth skin.

In the dream, I was rubbing the cat's belly, hand moving on its own.

Then I hit a little bump.

Different texture. Was the kitty pregnant? Why was it hard right there?

So I gave it a curious little scratch.

A strained groan, right next to me