At some point during the night, she had rolled towards Cayde's significant weight on the mattress, and then at some other point he'd curled up around her like a giant cat. She hadn't remembered either of those things happening, but when the sun roused her through the port window above her bed, Amanda found herself tangled up in his grasp. His cloak was even tossed over the two of them, and she found the set up a little too perfect to be an accident.

She wiggled one of her arms free to rub at her eyes and give a half-hearted stretch, careful not to jostle Cayde too much. She also wiped at her brow; she wasn't used to being this warm, but she couldn't exactly complain. The experience of waking up next to another person was an exciting change—even if it was someone who took up all the room on the mattress and had no concept of personal space.

Feeling more awake, Amanda turned her head just enough to take in Cayde's features—which were, as expected, a little too close to her own face. It wasn't often she saw exos sleep, and she'd certainly never seen him this relaxed. The hard casing of humour that normally pulled all of his features tightly together was conspicuously absent, and the sudden intense vulnerability of his expression surprised her.

She was still staring at him when turquoise light slanted across the off-white of her pillow as he opened his eyes—or rather turned them on. Woke up, whatever. She squinted to adjust for the sudden influx of light, and saw his eyes dim in response.

"Oh. Hi."

"Mornin'."

His eyes flicked down to follow the line of his arm, and she saw his faceplates shift and quirk as he tried to think of some smart comment to make.

He settled on: "I'm not sure how this happened."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm as surprised as you are."

She snickered at that, and saw his throat flare yellow with a responding hum of amusement. The silence that immediately followed was less funny, and Cayde waited a whole three seconds before awkwardly pulling his arm back. "I'll just, uh—"

She grabbed his wrist, and he froze. "Never said I wanted you to move."

"Oh." She gauged his feelings correctly, it seemed, as his arm quickly wrapped back around her and his expression relaxed in relief. "Okay then."

Emboldened by his positive response, Amanda pressed her face against the soft leather of his chest, breathing in the scent of his coat. "Exos're squishier than I thought you'd be."

"That's my gear, actually."

She sighed. "I meant underneath, dummy. You feel—" She pressed a palm against his side, testing the resistance of his body. He made a sound almost like a cat purring after being scratched between its ears, and she grinned into his coat. "... I just, I dunno. Thought you'd feel more like steel."

"Be hard to move if all parts of me were that unpliable."

The tone of his voice suggested they were entering into the dangerously close territory of a dick joke, so she guided them towards a more appropriate chain of conversation. "Just a nice surprise, is all."

"Never slept with an exo before?"

"You make a hard case against the idea."

The outrage in his voice wasn't sincere, but he put on a good act. "Wow! You always this grumpy in the morning?"

"You can come back and find out," she mumbled against his chest, deciding then that she very much enjoyed the thought of repeating this.

There was a pause just long enough that she thought she'd overstepped a line, but then he responded. "Ah, so you weren't kidding, then." The sudden sober shift in his voice made her look up at him.

"Do people usually joke about that kind of thing with you?"

She caught the quick flash of hurt in his face before he covered it with a casual shrug. "Not everyone can handle me."

"Well that's a rude thing to lie about." She slung an arm over his hip, her fingers playing with the thin fabric of his cloak. "But to answer your question: no, I ain't kiddin'."

"Guess I can't back out of my promise to get you a new mattress, then."

"You're stuck now."

Amanda felt his chin brush the top of her head, and she listened to the pleasant rumble of his voice deep in his chest. "There's worse places to get stuck."

She closed her eyes and shimmied a little closer to him. They were tucked into a bed too small and running a few degrees too warm for her liking, but she was enjoying the hell out of it, even if it was corny and a lot more sappy than she was used to. Cayde was oddly a good cuddler; she felt his fingers play with stray ends of her hair, occasionally brushing the skin of her neck, and he shifted with her to whenever she needed to adjust to a more comfortable position. She could stay here all day, she thought, listening to the soft sounds of her own breathing and the—

An abrupt chirp over Cayde's shoulder interrupted the lull she found herself in, and she looked up to see his ghost floating over them.

"Ah," it began, sounding stiff and awkward. "Sorry to bother, but—"

"No you're not," Cayde muttered. Then he groaned loudly into the empty air of the room. "Who's calling?"

"Zavala. You also have twelve new pings from several scouts who returned last night from Old Chicago."

"Damn. Really can't sleep in, then." He untangled himself from her with a quick grace that left her cold and a little disoriented, and before she could even register the fact that he wasn't on the bed any longer, he was already at the other end of her room. He tugged his belt and holster back on, which he'd slung over the chair he'd been sitting in last night. She didn't even remember him taking it off, but he put himself together in the short time it took her to sit up.

"Sorry," he said, ducking down into her mirror to attend to the skewed state of his hood. "Zavala seems to be missing me dearly already."

"It's awright. I should get up anyway." She scratched at her head, suddenly conscious of how unkempt her hair probably looked.

Cayde cast about the room as if looking for something, and then his eyes settled on the small port window hanging above her bed. "Mind if I use that?"

She looked over her shoulder at the smudged glass and frowned. "For what?"

"To get to work," he replied slowly.

She narrowed her eyes at his tone. "I got a door."

"I need to uphold my virtue," he protested, clasping a hand to his chest. "I can't be seen sneaking out of people's apartments in the morning."

She snorted at the word virtue, but shrugged her shoulders. "Sure, I guess. If you can climb out."

The lens above his eyes quirked, questioning her doubts in his ability to scale her quarters. She sighed and reached for the prosthetic leaning against the rail of her bed, slipping it on quickly and getting up from the mattress. Cayde yanked the bedframe away from the wall so he had room to shove himself through the window, but paused to look back at her as he unlatched the glass from the sill.

"Thanks for the horrible sleep, by the way."

She dipped her head to him. "Anytime."

"Same time this evening?"

Amanda grinned. "If you come back with a new mattress, then sure."

He balked at her. "I thought you said you liked your current one?"

"I do, but I don't like hearin' you whine about it."

"Fine. I'll beg a few favours." With that he ducked through the window, slipping out of her quarters quiet as a mouse. She shoved her bed back into its original position and sat down again once he was gone, allowing herself a minute to grin stupidly into the empty room before she started getting ready for the day.