Bridgebuilder

Communication Error

In the moments between being asleep and awake, the most basic part of Alex's brain determined everything was right enough to not worry. He was somewhere dark, comfortable and warm. Didn't even need to open his eyes to double check.

Something soft moved in his arms and panic shot through him. This wasn't his bed. His body twitched as the rest of his brain came to life and demanded all the information it could get, leaving him disoriented in the darkness before he remembered where he was and that it was Carbon who had her face pressed against his chest.

Everything else came flooding back. Honestly, the night had ended pretty well for one of them getting drunk enough to throw up almost at the start of it. Alex didn't even feel like he'd been drinking, which was a pleasant surprise.

She stirred now and made a low rumble as her head poked out of the comforter. He could just barely make out the gloss of her eyes as she inspected the clock over his shoulder. Carbon sounded like she wanted to be annoyed but was too tired for it. "Alarm is not go off for hour. Why awake?"

He gave her a squeeze and shrugged, not actually knowing why. "Just did. Go back to sleep."

She made an affirmative noise and rubbed his ankle with her own, a gesture he now understood as slightly more than affectionate. The glint from her eyes disappeared and she curled up under the comforter again, wheezing softly.

Alex wasn't going to go back to sleep so easily, the surprise he'd received waking up had flooded him with adrenaline. Maybe he could just get a shower and start breakfast before she got up. Alex reached out and felt around for a zipper pull on the comforter. There wasn't one on the wall side of the bunk, which he was facing.

The prospect of having to extricate himself from Carbon in the very limited amount of space he had and then roll over to get to the zipper wasn't very appealing. There were many worse ways to spend an hour, and he believed that for at least fifteen minutes. As it turns out, when you are wide awake letting someone sleep in your arms isn't that exciting. It sounds like something that should be adorable, but in almost perfect pitch darkness it really doesn't translate. Carbon had also somehow managed to press her shoulder into his arm in just the right way to pinch the nerve, rendering his right arm numb from the elbow down.

The alarm clock going off was the sweetest sound he had heard in a month. Carbon seemed to disagree, squeezing herself into a ball for a moment before grumbling as she poked her head out of the bunk, "alarm off. Lights, ten."

Pins and needles flooded his hand and forearm as the alarm shut off and the lights came on at ten percent brightness. She unzipped the cover, crawled over him and sat on the edge of the bunk, eyes bleary and more bedraggled than he'd ever seen her before. "Sleep okay?"

"Yes. I have... Nh, hangover? Overhang? The appropriate one." Carbon rubbed her eyes and slicked back her antennas, smoothing out the fluffy tips.

Alex rolled over and sat up next to her, suppressing a laugh. "Had it right the first time."

Carbon nodded, then latched onto his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "Thank you for last night."

"It's..." He wanted to say it was nothing, but he knew that was wrong. It had clearly meant quite a bit to her, even if she'd only really gotten around to literally sleeping with him. It might have meant something to him, as well. "It was my pleasure."

She smiled and squeezed his arm before getting up to dig through her dresser. "I am just sorry that there are not enough females on board for you."

Carbon said that with such a matter-of-fact tone that for a moment, Alex thought he was out of the loop with his own species. He turned the statement over in his head a few times, but it never made any more sense. "Huh?"