When she wakes, it's to a mess of tangled sheets and an empty bed.
She wants to roll over, dig her face into the sheets, and smell the fast-fading fragrance of his skin, but she can't, and he's been gone too long for it to matter anyway.
So she sighs, running her fingers across the bed and over her stomach, wishing for the time when he would wake her with a kiss to the temple, or a nudge to her cheek, or a sneaky hand underneath the sheets.
Heaving herself upright, she sighs again, rolling back her shoulders and moaning the pain in her back. If only he were there to massage the aches away.
"Oh, stop it," Athrun chides from across the room. "I'm right here."
"All the way over there!" Cagalli gives by way of quick retort. "I can barely walk all that way, and my back hurts."
Athrun turns in his seat at her desk where he's been going through paperwork all morning. Cagalli had always been a late riser if she could help it, and late in her third trimester, that still held true. He stands and makes his way to the bed where Cagalli sits deliciously naked save for the sheets clasped against her swollen breasts. She claims it's too hot for pajamas. Athrun doesn't disagree.
"Hey," she speaks up, noticing the paperwork on her desk. "You don't have clearance to view those papers."
"Just trying to lessen your workload. You shouldn't even be working in your condition," he says, sitting on the edge of the bed and running a hand down her arm.
"And whose fault is that?"
"Mine, apparently." Athrun frowns, then raises a hand to push her back against the pillows. Cagalli protests, but he is persistent. "However, if I do remember correctly, you have just as much culpability as I do."
"Are you disagreeing with me, Athrun Zala?" Her brow is furrowed, daring him to oppose her, but he merely smiles and leans over her, his lips dangerously close to her own, his hair falling to obscure her vision beyond the scope of his face.
"Do you need a reminder?" he asks in that low voice she loves.
"Maybe I do," she answers breathlessly as he pulls the sheets away from her.