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Come Back to Bed, Honey

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When one partner has to go somewhere and the other wants more sex. Often used to show just how devoted a character is to the task at hand — they're refusing sex in order to get on with it — while their Satellite Love Interest only has one thing on their mind. That, or it just serves to suggest the character is that good in bed. Alternately, it can lead to Coitus Uninterruptus.

A common, more chaste use is when one character gets up in the middle of the night to contemplate something (common in mystery and Urban Fantasy stories) and their significant other wakes up and asks their beloved to come back to bed, so they can sleep.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Macross Plus, after Isamu and his co-worker/friend-with-benefits Lucy have had sex, Isamu is woken up by a call. He answers it but Lucy tells him to go back to be with her so he hangs up. The call was seemingly from his ex-girlfriend Myung, who has caught quite a Distress Ball and needs urgent help; Guld ends up saving her instead. However, the call was actually from Sharon, who was impersonating Myung (who herself was trapped in a fire). She was attempting to either bring Myung and Isamu together, instigate a fight between Isamu and Guld when they both showed up to save her, or kill Myung outright; Sharon was the one who overloaded a circuit and started the fire that put Myung in danger to begin with, then attempted to kill both Myung and Guld when Isamu didn't show up. To be fair to Isamu, he didn't recognize the voice anyways, since it was a robotic message that kept repeating; he simply thought it was a prank call.
  • Misa tries this with Light in Death Note but he tells her to get out of bed and "back to work".

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Some of the earlier James Bond films.
    • From Russia with Love: Bond's Post-Sex cuddling with Sylvia Trench is interrupted by a phone call from headquarters.
    • In Thunderball, Bond manages to seduce the Ice Queen nurse at the health clinic, but right when she's getting worked up for another round thanks to being massaged by Bond's mink glove, he catches sight of something suspicious outside and leaves for some 'exercise'. Her response is an incredulous, "You must be joking!"
    • The Spy Who Loved Me:
      M: Moneypenny, where's 007?
      Moneypenny: He's on a mission, sir. In Austria.
      M: Tell him to pull out. Immediately.
      [Bond receives message]
      Girl: What happened? Where are you going?
      Bond: Sorry. Something came up.
      Girl: But, James, I need you.
      Bond: So does England!
    • Live and Let Die. Bond seduces the virginal Solitaire for information (citing Lesson No. 1: no secrets between lovers) only to find out she doesn't know much about what the Big Bad is up to on his Island Base. So Bond is determined to go look for himself and makes it clear that she's coming with him. "Togetherness is Lesson Number Two." Solitaire asks coyly if there's time for Lesson Number 3 before they go.
  • Implied in Rear Window, where a newlywed couple move into an apartment close to the protagonists. They close their blinds, and are not seen for a while. After a few days, the man is seen leaning out of the window, and his wife calls him back.
  • Frantic. Dr. Richard Walker pretends to do this to stop a pair of Mossad agents roughing up the French girl who's helping him (actually Walker had just sneaked in the bedroom window).
  • The Crazies (1973). Happens as a Mood Whiplash after the opening scene where a man burns his family to death. The two protagonists, a volunteer firefighter and a nurse, tease each other about ignoring the ringing phone and blaring fire siren.
  • Dr. Strangelove: General Turgidson is called to the War Room, leaving his girlfriend protesting - in keeping with the overall theme of the movie he tells her "You just start your countdown, and ol' Bucky'll be back before you can say 'BLAST OFF!'"
  • In a flashback to when he was Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, Riddick is shown drinking on his throne, ignoring the allure of four naked women in his bed. When we see the cold eyes of his Royal Harem, we understand why.
  • Happens in The Nutty Professor (1996), but with a twist. Buddy Love is implied to have had sex with at least one of the women with whom he had been partying the night before; when he turns back into Sherman Klump the next day, he has to get out of bed to tend to Carla Purdy. One of the floozies follows Sherman out of bed and asks where Buddy is, causing Carla to become suspicious that Sherman and Buddy are sharing women.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness. Jim Kirk is in bed with twin Cat Girls when his communicator rings. As he eagerly searches for it...
    Catgirl 1: Jim, come on. (nuzzling him) Let it go.
    Catgirl 2: You're not actually going to answer that, are you?
  • In Art of the Dead, the Lust-stricken Gina attempts to lure Dylan to bed, but he's too affected by Greed to pay attention to her.

    Literature 
  • A combination of the two uses occurs in The Bacta War, with Corran being called back to bed by Mirax while he's up late at night, worrying over what he's gotten them all into (at the end of the last novel, he resigned his commission because the politicos wouldn't let him go after the Big Bad, and the rest of the squadron followed).
    • This also occurs near the start of I, Jedi, before Mirax gets kidnapped and Corran is wondering if he should accept Luke's offer to join the academy after all.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Crown (2016). In "Misadventure", a young Queen Elizabeth wakes up to find Prince Philip doing calisthenics after an implied night of lovemaking, wonders where he gets the energy...and then invites him back into bed for another go. Then their courtiers enter with breakfast only to quickly depart when the Queen tells them to leave, giggling all the while. The scene sets a sad contrast with a previous flashforward set several months later when their marriage is under strain.
  • Parks and Recreation: After Mark seduces the Pawnee reporter Shawna Malwae-Tweep (who is writing a story on Leslie building a park), he tells her to come back to bed because "that park is never going to get built". Unfortunately for him, she quotes him on that in her story on the park.
  • In Smallville, Clark (actually Bizarro) to Lana in "Persona".
  • Monarch of the Glen
    Justine: Did you sleep all right?
    Archie: Eventually, thanks.
    Justine: Missed you. Come back to bed.
  • The chaste version occurs in one of the flashback sequences in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Threshold". The participants are Teal'c and his then-pregnant wife Drey'auc.
  • Farscape - in a flashback, we see Aeryn's last sexual partner Velorek try and persuade her to come back to bed rather than going straight to her post.
  • The pilot of The Chronicle starts with Tucker (an out-of-work reporter) telling this to his girlfriend, as she's getting ready for work. Naturally, being already dressed and with her make-up on, she refuses but claims she really wants to.
  • In the Supernatural episode "What Is And What Should Never Be", Carmen Porter in the Wishverse asks Dean to come back to bed when she finds him in the living room.
  • Sisko tries this on Kassidy once in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Doesn't work, but he still has her pillow to hold.
  • Star Trek: Voyager. In "The Disease", by-the-book Ensign Kim is having an illicit relationship with an alien girl against Starfleet regulations. She wakes up to find him fretting about it, so gives this trope. When he says he's disobeying Captain Janeway's direct orders as well, she says That's an Order! and he complies (at least until he realises they should have both been at their posts several minutes ago).
  • The X-Files: Scully to Mulder in the episode "Plus One" in their motel room.

    Music 
  • John Mayer's "Come Back to Bed," which is a sad twist on the chaste variation. The singer has woken up to find the spot next to him in the bed empty with a tear-stained pillow. He doesn't know what he's done to upset her, but begs her to yell at him the next day because he can't sleep without her.
    You can be mad in the morning
    I'll take back what I said
    Just don't leave me alone here
    It's cold, baby
    Come back to bed

    Theatre 
  • Hamilton: As Alexander is up frantically writing his last will and testament before the duel with Burr, Eliza tries to coax him back to bed in "Best of Wives, Best of Women". Failing to convince him, she ends the conversation with "Well, I'm going back to sleep."

    Video Games 
  • Duke Nukem 3D
    Duke: My name's Duke Nukem! After a few days of R&R, I'll be ready for more action!
    Woman: Aww, come back to bed, Duke! I'm ready for some action, nowww!
  • God of War. "Stay, Kratos. Just a bit longer."
  • Fahrenheit (AKA Indigo Prophecy) has Tyler do this to his girlfriend Sam. She's seducing him on their anniversary when the phone rings regarding the murder case he's working on. Annoyingly the game won't let you just stay with the hot girl and won't continue until you answer the phone and leave for work. Sam is understandably pissed.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Order of the Stick, Belkar Bitterleaf gets this when he seduces Jenny the Bardess.
  • Eerie Cuties: Faith interupts Tiffany's latest attempt to stake Layla, by mind-sexting her. It gets cut short when the other girl she's sleeping with calls her back to bed.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Grace is contacted, via a computer, by an Alternate Universe's version of her boyfriend Tedd. Grace mentions Elliot, who the alternate Tedd believes he has never met in his universe. This is when the alternate Elliot appears on screen, apparently female in that universe. She is in a nighty and asks Tedd if he doesn't want to make a better use of his father being out of town. Grace falls off her chair.
  • At the end of a stick figure arc in Sluggy Freelance, Torg tries to explain what just happened to Riff. Then the artist draws in a pair of underwear-clad girls telling Torg to come back to bed and he disavows the entire arc as a dream before complying.
  • An early Hark! A Vagrant comic depicted Charles Babbage tirelessly working on his Difference Machine while his wife Georgiana tries to get him into bed. The artist's comments inform the reader that despite what the comic shows, the pair had eight kids together, so Georgiana must've succeeded eventually.

    Western Animation 
  • Futurama: Fry hears this from his grandmother-to-be in "Roswell That Ends Well", and suddenly sees her as the old woman he knows from the future.
    "Come back to bed, deary"
  • The Simpsons: Homer did this once and annoyed Marge greatly.
    • In one of the Halloween episodes, Maude Flanders comes out of Hell to say this to the Devil. Ned is NOT pleased!
  • King of the Hill: In one episode Hank finds some arrowheads on his property and goes to talk to John Redcorn about them. When Hank asks if they have any value, Redcorn very severely tells Hank that it's wrong to take something that belongs to another man...at which point Nancy Gribble's voice comes from inside the house, asking him to come back to bed. Blushing, Redcorn says "Well, food for thought" to Hank and goes back inside.

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