He’s asleep. You’re not.
Your body hasn’t moved. You’re lying still, breathing at the right pace for someone who should be unconscious by now. But you have been awake for the better part of an hour, running a forensic audit of the evening.
The thing he said at dinner and whether it contained a shift you should have caught. The split-second pause before he laughed at your joke… was that hesitation or just breath?
You’re replaying his face when you said you loved him, looking for microexpressions your conscious mind might have missed. Whether the way he touched your shoulder goodnight was the usual pressure or a degree less committed.
You are three anxiety cycles ahead of where you actually are, constructing threat scenarios from neutral data, lying next to someone who by every available measure is fine.
Some might label it as insomnia, but what’s truly transpiring is surveillance.
And the most destabilizing part: you’re doing it because he matters.