Too hot.
The specific, full-body, radiator-level warmth that exceeds the thermal output of a single person beneath a single duvet in a November dorm room and can only be explained by the presence of a secondary heat source contributing BTUs to the microclimate.
I mutter under my breath, the words arriving as sounds rather than language, a groggy protest directed at the temperature gods who have apparently decided that my sleeping environment should replicate the interior of a bread oven.
I try to move.
The attempt registers as intention rather than action. My body receives the command, evaluates it against the currentconditions, and returns an error message:movement not available. External resistance detected. Please try again when your limbs are not pinned by a force your semiconscious brain has not yet identified.
Weights. That is what it feels like. Warm, firm, distributed weights draped across my torso and anchored at my waist, pressing me into a mattress that is not the couch I fell asleep on and carrying a scent that my olfactory system intercepts and catalogs before my visual cortex can confirm the source.
Cedarwood. Graphite. Warm amber. Concentrated and close, the full-strength, unfiltered payload of an Alpha's pheromone profile delivered at a proximity that places the source within inches of my breathing apparatus.
It smells extra nice.
The observation bypasses my rational filters entirely, my sleeping brain assessing the aroma with the evaluative criteria of a woman whose hindbrain has memorized this specific chemical combination and filed it under a classification that my waking brain would contest if it were currently operational.
Archie. That makes sense. I'm in his dorm.
The logic reassembles itself in fragments. The flood. The shirt exchange. The pasta. The couch. The upside-down reading and the inverted kiss and the shoulder-to-shoulder evening that ended with the golden circle of a reading lamp and the specific, unprecedented comfort of being not alone.
But I fell asleep on the couch. With my book. In the common room.
And this is not the couch.
I open my eyes. Slightly. The fraction of an aperture that permits visual data without committing to the full waking experience, the eyelid equivalent of opening a door two inches to check whether the hallway is safe before stepping into it.
Morning light. Pale and gold, filtering through curtains I do not recognize, casting the room in the warm, diffused glow of a November sunrise that has been softened by fabric before reaching the surfaces it illuminates. The wall across from me is bare, undecorated, carrying the specific blankness that I associate with Archie's refusal to personalize temporary spaces.
His room.
I am in his room. In his bed. Hugging a pillow that is not mine and that smells like cedarwood at a concentration suggesting my face has been pressed against it for several hours.
I frown. The expression forming against the pillowcase as I attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events that transported me from an upright reading position on a couch to a horizontal sleeping position in a bed that belongs to a man I am supposed to be pretending not to know in public.
I do not remember going to bed.
The gap in my chronological record is not small. Not the minor lapse that occurs when you fall asleep mid-sentence and wake up with a book on your chest. The gap is comprehensive. A full void between the last conscious frame of my evening, which I believe was a scene in which the fictional hockey player was apologizing for being emotionally unavailable, and the current frame, which features me in an actual hockey player's bed with an actual gap in my memory.
I sleepwalked.
The realization arrives with the specific, resigned familiarity of a woman who has been informed by multiple roommates, family members, and one very alarmed camp counselor that her nocturnal navigation system operates independently of her conscious mind and occasionally takes her body on tours of the premises without filing a flight plan.
The last time this happened was at the Holloway estate, where Jeffrey found me standing in the kitchen at three AM eating a bowl of cereal that I had prepared, consumed, and washed the dish for entirely in my sleep. He mentioned it at breakfast with the gentle diplomacy of a man who has witnessed enough of my unconscious adventures to consider them a feature rather than a malfunction.
But this is not the Holloway kitchen.
And the arms around my waist do not belong to Jeffrey.
I look over my shoulder.
Slowly. The rotation careful, minimal, producing as little disturbance as possible to the sleeping environment while maximizing my visual angle on the secondary occupant of this mattress.
Archie.
He is curled around me from behind, his body forming the larger curve of a parenthesis that contains my smaller frame within its arc. His left arm is draped across my waist, the forearm resting against my abdomen, his hand loosely settled against the fabric of his borrowed shirt near my hip. His right arm is tucked beneath the pillow I commandeered, the bicep serving as a secondary cushion that my sleeping head apparently decided was a necessary supplement to the standard bedding. His chin rests near the crown of my skull, his breathing warm and steady against the top of my head, each exhale disturbing the fine strands of my hair with a rhythm so consistent it has probably been running at this cadence for hours.
He is deep asleep.
