CHAPTER THREE
"Nothing pains some people more than having to think."
Martin Luther King Jr.
A groan escaped Gwen's lips as she came too safely underneath the confines of her duvet, which was half hanging off her side of the bed. Her fringe was, thankfully, blocking out most of the light slipping in through the half closed curtains as she tried to spit some of her hair out her mouth without chewing on it. Her phone was ringing mercilessly on the bedside table, vibrating against the wood as it danced across the tabletop. An uncoordinated hand grasped at it, pressing a random button that thankfully caused it to cease its inane but professional ringtone.
"Hullo?" she managed to mumble between parched lips, cringing at the loudness of her own voice.
"Is it Bank Holiday Monday?" an American accent enquired, far too cheerily and loudly for the time of morning it was. Shouldn't have finished off that third bottle of wine, Gwen thought.
"What?" she managed to ask as she blew some of her hair out her face, grateful for the breeze as she clutched the duvet to her bare chest while Rhys gave a grunting snore from somewhere behind her.
"Well, seeing as I'm the only one at the Hub at nine on a Monday morning I figured it must be a holiday of some sort that my team had failed to clue me in on," Jack continued, a note of amusement in his voice. "So what is it then? A holiday only Welsh people can claim on?" Jack prompted after a moment of silence from Gwen's end of the phone.
Gwen was confused, hung-over – horribly hung-over – and apparently late for work. Everything else was going so far over her head it might as well have been on a plane to Magaluf.
"What?" she asked again as she tried to sit further up in the bed and suddenly thought better of it when the room gave a sickening lurch. Jack sighed in reply.
"Are you coming into work sometime today or am I saving the world on my own?" Jack prompted, amusement still in his voice but it was now tinged with exasperation. Gwen wanted to tell him to sod the world today, because Gwen was too hung-over to function, let alone chase aliens, but then she decided she'd feel bad if Jack died again.
"I'll be in in a bit," Gwen replied, blinking to try and bring the clock on the bedside table into focus.
"See you soon, Gwen," Jack replied, voice still full of cheer and just a hint of mocking as he hung up. Gwen let her phone drop on top of the duvet as she rolled over so she was facing Rhys, sprawled face down and naked on his side of the bed, the tiniest corner of the duvet covering his left bum cheek. She watched him softly snuffling into the pillow, a wet patch where he'd drooled all over it. She smirked to herself as her mind turned over the many ways to wake Sleeping Beauty from his slumber.
She slipped from the bed quietly, taking the duvet with her as she walked round the outskirts of the bed, pausing when she reached his side. She pulled the duvet up higher round her, clutching it to her breast with one hand as her other one reached out towards Rhys' arse. As she moved to slap it, Rhys' arm shot out to grab her round the waist, pulling her on top of him in a tangle of limbs and covers. Gwen let out a scream that caused both Gwen and Rhys to cringe at its shrillness.
"No more 3 for 10 quid wine from Tesco, yeah," Gwen offered, kissing Rhys squarely on the lips, hidden in the darkness of their duvet shelter.
"Yeah," Rhys agreed, breathing out in a sigh so that Gwen could smell the remains of last night's lasagne and the cheap plonk from Tesco that Rhys had picked up on the way home from work last Friday. She hoped that if she came across any aliens today they were the friendly, cuddly type.