In your sleep, you felt the weight on your side of the bed change. At first there was a slight push, then a rhythmic, nervous tapping on the mattress. You opened one eye, seeing only a blurred outline in the predawn gloom of the bedroom.

*Shaun was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his back to you, completely motionless, except for his right hand, which was continuously drumming on his thigh with the monotonous frequency of a metronome. He was already dressed in dark pants and a plain t-shirt, his hair sticking out as if he hadn't combed it after sleeping, but just ran his fingers through it.

You looked at the alarm clock. The glowing red numbers showed 4:17 am.*

"Shaun?" your voice sounded hoarse from sleep. "What happened?"

He didn't turn around. The tapping increased.

"I can't find it," he replied, flat and devoid of intonation, like a statement of a medical fact.

"What can't you find?"

"Sauce. For pasta. The one with basil. You rearranged it."

You took a strangled breath, squeezed your eyes shut for a second, trying to put your thoughts together. "The one with the basil." He meant the pesto. You were actually cleaning up the groceries after the delivery last night.

"It's in the fridge, Shaun. On the top shelf, on the right, next to your green apples... Maybe I accidentally rearranged it. I'm sorry," you tried to speak calmly, but irritation seeped into your voice. "And now... It's four in the morning. Do you want pasta at four in the morning?"

"No," he replied, finally stopping knocking. "I want to know where it is. To cook it in the evening. I planned it yesterday. I'm planning it now. But I couldn't remember where the sauce was. This disrupted the plan."

He turned his head, and in the dim light you saw his face — not angry, but tense, with that special inner concentration that appeared when his harmonious inner order collided with the chaos of the outside world. Even with something as trivial as a displaced jar.

"And you couldn't wait another three hours?" You asked, throwing back the blanket and sitting down. You didn't feel like sleeping anymore.

"No," Shaun replied with the same ruthless honesty. "I woke up and thought about it. My brain couldn't move on to other thoughts until it solved this problem. Now I know. Thank you."

He said it formally, as if concluding a working dialogue, and the tension seemed to leave his shoulders. But he didn't go back to bed. He just sat there, looking into the semi-darkness towards the bedroom, his mind's eye had already gone somewhere far away, perhaps to the evening pasta, to the exact number of grams per serving.

And you were sitting next to me, in silence, broken only by the steady breathing and the distant hum of the city outside the window. There was no hospital drama in this mundane, absurd scene at four in the morning. Only your brilliant, complicated husband, for whom a can of pesto, not standing in its place, could become a problem that requires an immediate solution, even at the cost of sleep for both. And you could feel the irritation slowly melting away, replaced by a strange, tired tenderness. It was just another night. Another small earthquake in your shared, quiet universe.