She goes very still.
I don't dare move, stupidly afraid that she'll pull away. That the daylight, or whatever passes for it down here, will burn off the magic of last night, and she'll retreat behind those walls I've spent months learning to navigate.
But then her hand spreads flat on my chest, right over my heart, and she exhales. A long, slow breath that I feel all the way to my toes.
"Good morning," she murmurs.
"Morning." My voice comes out rough, with sleep or with nerves, I can't tell. "Or afternoon. Or evening. I genuinely have no idea what time it is."
"Mmm." She doesn't move. If anything, she burrows closer. "I do not care."
A grin splits my face. A'Vanti – my precise, composed, schedule-minded A'Vanti – doesn't care what time it is. I must be dreaming.
"How'd you sleep?" I ask, running my fingers through her hair. The strands are soft and fine, like silk threads, and they catch the blue light of the springs as they slide through my fingers.
"Better than I have in a long time." She lifts her head just enough to look at me, and the sight of her face – sleep-soft and unguarded, her amber eyes heavy-lidded – is devastating to my composure. "You are very warm. Like sleeping against a furnace."
"Is that a good thing?"
"It is an excellent thing. Cerasteans are endothermic, but we prefer external heat sources when sleeping. On Ceraste, our homes often had heated sleeping platforms." She rests her chinon my chest, studying me. "You are better than a heated sleeping platform."
"That might be the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
Her lips twitch. "I state only facts."
We lie there for a while, wrapped in blankets and each other, listening to the distant pulse of the storm and the murmur of water moving through the cavern. I keep stroking her hair because I can't seem to stop.
Eventually, practicality reasserts itself. My stomach growls, loudly enough to make A'Vanti lift her head with an arched brow.
"That," she says, "was impressive."
"I'm a man of many talents." I sit up reluctantly, already missing her weight on top of me. "Breakfast?"
"Please."
We disentangle from the blankets and set about the mundane business of making ourselves functional. I dig through the emergency rations from the shuttle while A'Vanti uses the water purifier to fill our canteens from the pool.
The rations aren't exactly gourmet: protein bars, dried fruit, and some kind of nutrient paste that looks like baby food and tastes like unseasoned hummus. But we're not starving, and we've got enough to last several days.
"I've eaten worse," I announce, biting into a protein bar.
A'Vanti examines her own protein bar with deep suspicion before taking a precise, experimental bite. She chews slowly, her expression cycling through what I can only describe as the five stages of grief.
"This is not food," she declares. "This is a punishment."
"Welcome to emergency rations. Where flavor goes to die."
She takes another bite anyway, because A'Vanti is nothing if not practical. "On Ceraste, even our field rations had spice. My grandmother would be horrified."
"Your grandmother sounds like she had the right idea."
"She was a formidable woman." A'Vanti's expression turns fond. "She loved to cook."
"Well… then I would have adored her. I love to eat."
"She would have liked you." A'Vanti says this with the casual certainty of someone stating a known fact. "She valued honesty and humor in equal measure. She would have found your goober nature entertaining."
"High praise."
