Wake Up Call

a/n: Doug, Alexa, and yet another nightmare. This is getting old, right? Nope.

Swears, fluff, hints at all game spoilers, and not quite OOCness.

All the real and amazing stuff belongs to Monolith Soft, and I humbly thank them for it.

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A small cry woke Doug up suddenly, to a room mostly dark and otherwise semi-quiet. The traffic outside never really stopped, but he couldn't hear any transport vehicles, which meant it wasn't yet 0300.

He shut his eyes hard, and tried to breathe calmly. He hadn't expected that dream to hit him tonight. No reason for it – he wasn't drunk or exhausted, and today's mission hadn't offered anything he hadn't seen a dozen times before, if you broke it up into parts. But he'd shouted himself awake. Again.

So, there he was, lying in triple darkness, his room, his eyes, his mind. Waiting for his heart (or the mim equivalent) to return to normal. Waiting for the images to fade. He risked a deep breath. He felt strange. Actually, he felt really strange. It wasn't the first time he'd frightened himself awake, but something was off.

He realized he was groggy. The dream had always left him hyper-aware. He couldn't remember any characters in the dream this time, when usually the transition from sleep to wakefulness erased nothing of the horror. Tonight, he just felt like rolling over and going back to sleep. He never felt like that. Honestly, his heart wasn't beating all that fast.

He almost laughed. It must have been a normal nightmare. Something stupid about being in the wrong classroom or falling endlessly or forgetting his armor in the most obvious location. A sleepy smile crossed his face. Nothing about Lao, nothing about a gun, nothing about waiting for a decision with no good answer. Amazing.

He turned carefully to check on the woman lying next to him. He really didn't need to. He knew Alexa well enough to know she only woke when she wanted to, just like she could fall asleep the instant she decided it was time. He envied her those superpowers. But if he'd shouted, or even grunted, she tended to wake up and check on him. Made those real dreams more bearable, having her there at the end, whispering his name and asking if he wanted to get up and talk about the dream, or better yet, about skells. Sometimes they'd do that, sometimes he'd go sit on the couch by himself, reading a bit or staring at the news. Recently, they'd mostly gone back to sleep after a few moments. She'd taken to holding his hand those nights, and he was almost ashamed to admit how much that helped.

They'd only been sharing his bed for a couple of weeks, shortly after Alexa had started staying over most nights (something about her roommate wanting to move her boyfriend in, and Alex being too lazy to find a new place). One night, Alexa had declared that she couldn't stand forcing Doug to ride the couch every night. "Your bed is big enough for an entire team," she'd said. "I swear, I've been in smaller emergency shelters." An exaggeration, but they'd given it a try. If he'd owned a bigger couch, Doug would have argued, but he honestly had gotten a little cramped by the third sleep-over. It was a good solution, but one they were still negotiating. Merely trying not be shocked to find someone next to him in the morning had been a challenge. But Alexa didn't seem to mind, bouncing up with a cheerful, "Morning, Dougie! Whooo!" He smiled in the darkness at the thought. Worked better than coffee to his system.

Weird to spend so much time next to someone without actually doing much touching. They bumped feet sometimes, a version of thumb wrestling that usually had Alexa laughing her head off. And the pillow wars! How many pillows did that woman need?! Twice he'd woken up to a total of zero pillows under his head, and Alexa curled possessively over the whole of them, like a dragon on a golden and fluffy hoarde. Still more comfortable than the couch. And so much better to have someone when he had the bad dream, the really bad one. But that was the only time she did much more than elbow him out of the way, or smack his forehead to wake him up. He thought he could get used to this kind of weird.

Then he heard another small sound, a sharp breath, and realized with surprise that it was Alexa that had woken him, not the other way around. Huh, she must be the one having the nightmare. He peered in the low light. Sure enough, she was still asleep, but her face was tense, and her arms were wrapped tightly just below her chest. He touched her shoulder, and her body gave a little jerk. Poor thing, she was actually trembling. Must be a doozy of a bad dream.

"Hey, Alexa," he rumbled down at her, giving her arm a gentle shake.

She responded with a complaining groan. She rolled over, away from him, and as she did so, her closest hand grabbed at his and dragged him along. She tugged his arm across her, snuggled back up against him, and groaned again. Doug was stuck.

"Alexa, sweetie, I'm here, it's okay. Just, wake up." But all she did was clutch him harder and whimper.

Man, this was getting awkward. When he tried to pull his arm free, she latched on to it fiercely, but when he tried to relax in a semi-embrace, she strained to get away. All the while, judging from the way she was trembling, the dream must have been getting worse. He'd better wake her, and pronto. (He'd also better simultaneously retrieve his hand from the warm and tempting spot where she'd deposited it. Friendship only lasted so long, you know?)

"Yo. Alexa. Wake up." He gave her a squeeze and a solid shake. Unfortunately, her response was to arch back in shuddering surprise, whacking him good with the back of her head. He gripped her tighter, to kind of control any possible future flailing. "Wake up!"

It finally worked. He felt her relax instantly. "Aw, Dougie, why'd ya gotta do that? And let go of me, you dork."

"Sorry." She didn't sound bad or frightened, just sort of pissed off and a little breathless. "I thought you were having a nightmare."

"Gee whiz, Doug, not everybody has rats in their heads. What made you think that?"

"The groaning and shaking."

"I was not."

"Were too. And frowning."

"I was not."

Doug sighed. "If you weren't, you were giving a good impression of it."

"I never frown. Not for that dream…" Alexa suddenly stopped and wriggled away a few extra centimeters.

Doug started laughing.

"Stop it!"

"Oh god, Alexa, I just woke you up from one of those dreams." He added a few more centimeters, because he suddenly felt considerably warmer and didn't need her noticing.

"No it wasn't, and I don't have those kinds of dreams."

"I'm going to have to say it." If he could stop laughing, that is.

"Shut up."

"It had skells in it, didn't it?"

"Shut up, Doug! This is my favorite dream."

He noticed that her tone was hurt, and angry, and maybe a little frightened. He stopped laughing at once. Instead, he reached out one hand to pat her on the head. "Hey, sorry Alexa. You're okay, I know that. Sorry to wake you. I was just worried."

"It wasn't that kind of dream."

"And I'm sorry I made fun of you. I won't say anything more."

"I've had it forever, and now you're ruining it."

"Shhh, it's okay. I'm wrong, nothing new there."

There was a pause. He heard her breathing carefully, trying to decide whether she'd forgive him. When she rolled over back towards him, he relaxed. "Apology accepted, because you are an idiot."

"Pretty much. So… it's a good dream?" Somehow, he just couldn't help asking.

She hesitated. "Yeah. It has my favorite skell."

"The one that saved you? Or Buddy the Beloved Prototype?" He fired off his two best guesses.

"No and no. And I'm over Buddy. He's too much of an ether addict. No, I said, I've had this dream forever. Even on Earth. It's sort of a mix of a lot of the early skells, but bigger and smoother, and all mine. We go out riding in the California desert, and I get to go wherever I want."

"Sort of like real life. Lucky you."

"You bet I'm lucky. Whooo, life is good, right?"

"So just another skell dream." He'd heard a number of those from her, no biggie there.

"Not exactly. It sort of… talks to me."

"Skells don't talk."

"This one does. It tells me how much fun we'll have, how glad it is to be with me, how it'll do anything for me." She fell silent, and her face looked vaguely worried in the darkness.

"Like a friend."

"Yeah. A good friend. Usually it doesn't say much of anything, just a whisper, maybe only my name." She spoke in only a whisper herself.

"Alexa."

"Like that." She sighed.

Doug decided he had two choices. He either needed to get up right that second, make coffee, and walk out into his next mission several hours early, or he'd stay there, just to see what happened.

Alexa sighed again, and reached out for him with one hand. He held it gently. "I'm going back to sleep now, Dougie. Sorry I woke you up."

"Sorry I woke you up, 'Lexa."

"It's okay."

He gave her hand a squeeze. "I'll won't make the same mistake."

"Naw, you didn't know. Just..."

"What?"

"You could say my name again, maybe." With that, she fell asleep.

And Doug realized he'd already made a huge mistake, a disastrous mistake, a crash-landing on a distant planet kind of mistake. He didn't fall asleep, but he didn't stop smiling either.

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a/n: And if it never advances, I am still cool with this weird thing. I'm not sure if this event is official, or just my brain playing around, but it had to be released. The dream is canon, however. If you want to know more about Doug's dream, visit "Dances with Saltat/3".

Next up: Probably a new story arc, the main body of Lila stories, finally (The Lily and the BLADE). Alexa will show up in Ch. 4 and Ch. 6 (roughly, I keep adding filler), and it features the first hints of this BrOTP, a lot of Mediators, Alexa's birthday party, and the special skell dream, so look for it, kids.

Mind you, every time I say I am done with this pair of dorks, something happens, so I'm not listing this set as complete. Yet.