This Your Place, Me Jade

<This is craply written as been even iller than the other day, grrr, but you’ll get the general gist.>

Thanks to Jade’s steady guidance, Alex managed the rest of the journey without further butt-to-floor contact.

“This…” he jerked a head at his door, stumbling again. The doc gripped his sweater in order to prevent a manslide.
“This… my place.”
“This Your Place, me Jade?”
His forehead creased. “Eh?”
She smiled and slipped out from under his arm.
“Good night, Alex.”
“Right, yeh. Night doc.”

As she moved away though, he let his fingers trail along her arm till they reached her hand. He caught it in his own.

She looked back at the drunken wally, noticing his face was uncharacteristically warm and open - truth was, he was so drunk that his emotional walls were currently nothing but rubble.
“Come in...” he suggested.
The twinkle in his eye, recently showered cleanliness, and freshly smooth face, leant his smile an unexpected side of boyish mischief.

She stared a while. “Ah, I… No!” She said, perhaps a little too forcefully. “You’re drunk, and I should be getting to bed myself.”

He gave her a look and fumbled about with the keypad outside his door, forgetting the shape of his pass-sequence. Eventually he got it, and the door slid open.
He wandered in a few steps then turned to look at her, enjoying her tired but attractive features and chuckling softly as he took in her still jungle-rumpled and leaf stained clothing.
“You can” he repressed a belch “… sorry, use my shower.”

The doc screwed up her face at the belch, then allowed him a tired smile in return.
“I don’t think so, but thanks all the same.”

“Suit yourself” he sulked, curiously adding a wink. Well, it looked like a wink, it might just have been a drunken squint.

She smiled again – a nice sight, he thought - and gave a little wave as the door hissed shut.

“Bye" he mumbled at the closed door, and wobbled off to bed.

--

Fifteen minutes later.

Alex was lying on his bunk, staring vacantly at the drifting ceiling, when there was a sharp rap at the door.

“Yeah?”
No reply.
“Hol, door.”

Holly appeared on the wall-monitor, his familiar dome clothed in a fetching striped nightcap.
“What’s going on? What’s the emergency?”
Alex clicked his fingers. “Doo-orrr!”
The normally amiable AI frowned, rather less than impressed at the rude order.
“I was having a kip, you know…”
“Holl jus’ do it.”
“Don’t say ‘please’, will you…” muttered the allegedly hard-done-by computer.
Alex tried again. “Holly please, door.”

The door hissed open and with an eye-roll, Holly disappeared, presumably to go back to ‘sleep’.

Jade walked in and let out a little exhalation of amusement at Solvay’s inelegant gangling bunk-sprawl.
“Couldn’t be bothered to answer the door yourself, eh?”
“Tired” he explained.
“Drunk” she corrected.
“Tired-Drunk” he returned, unintentionally describing himself, “Change your mind about the shower then?”
“No. I forgot to give you these, you'll probably need them in the morning.”
She took out some pills.
He didn’t accept them, just frowned. It was too complicated to explain that he deserved the hangover.
“Cheer up, Mr Frowny.”
“Heh.”
“Alex, If you ever need to talk…”

His mind was in no state to discuss any of his shameful issues, but her concern touched him. Especially as she looked so tired, what was she bothered about him for? He rolled onto an elbow to better admire her, his face slipping comically off his hand for a moment before he replaced it.
With narrowed, drink-lusty eyes he took in the woman’s neat and compact appearance, running a leisurely gaze over her dark auburn hair and unusual grey eyes.

“I’m boring” he claimed “Lets talk ‘bout you.” He patted a space on the bunk.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, the tiredness threatening to overcome her, and accepted the offer of a seat.
“No. Let’s just go to bed.”
“If you insist…” he teased.
“… Separately.”
“Oh” he beamed.
Despite her near exhaustion, she smiled too.
“You know, you look a lot younger when you smile” she informed him.
“Pfft.”

Not sure what she was getting at, and not particularly caring, he was about to compliment her hair, and put a hand on her arm. He accidentally touched, and so noticed, the scar on her right wrist. Self- conscious about his own scars he didn’t enquire but – even through the weighty veil of drunkenness – he noticed a haunted expression pass briefly over her face and with a momentary lucidity quickly removed the hand.
Her vulnerability kicked a slow chain of motion through his brain, eventually making him realise that being back on the Dwarf, suddenly three million years later than she last remembered, was probably more taxing than she appeared to be letting on, and it was pretty amazing that even with that to worry about she’d been fixing Jay and probably others, and was now even bothering to worry about him.

He gestured around, trying to focus his thoughts, wanting to be supportive.
“This must…” he swallowed trying not to lose his thread “… be really weird?”
She took his meaning and nodded. “I’ve not had too much chance to take it in yet but… yes, it is quite strange” she understated.
He yawned and she yawned back. Finally giving in to the tiredness, she lie down on the bunk next to him.

“I might close my eyes, just for a few minutes” she murmured.
But Alex didn’t hear. He’d already passed out.

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