That made her pause. Her thumb moved in a small circle against his knee without, he suspected, her full awareness. He watched the color that had moved into her neck, slow and rising, the way that color was something the rest of her face couldn't hide even when she tried. He'd noticed that last night too. She blushed and was annoyed at herself for blushing, and was annoyed at her annoyance, and by the time all of that had worked its way through her expression it was frankly charming.

He traced his thumb along the back of her calf again - one slow, dedicated line - and she exhaled.

"You're doing that on purpose."

"Yes."

"It's early."

"It's seven-fifteen."

"That's early."

"Not particularly."

She turned over then, finally, in that slow cathedral roll of someone surfacing from deep water, and looked at him with her eyes still half-closed and her hair everywhere and the duvet pulled up to her collarbones, and the morning light was falling on her face in a way that made something in his chest do something he was choosing not to examine.

He looked down at her.

She looked up at him.

There was a quality to the silence - a texture - that he had noticed the night before too, when they'd talked for hours in the dark. When she'd told him things he suspected she hadn't planned to tell a stranger. When he'd listened, which was not his default response to anything, and had felt strangely, inconveniently, gratefully absorbed.

She blinked. Her free hand came up and pushed at his forearm with approximately no force. "You're in my light."

"No, I'm not."

"You're enormous. You're blocking the whole window."

"I'm six-two. I'm not blocking the window." He wasn't even near the window. She knew that.

She blinked again. Her eyes were very dark - dark enough to seem almost black in certain lights, in this light the clearest, deepest brown he'd ever seen - and they were fully open now, fully alert, the sleep-haze lifting and something else taking its place. Something more guarded. More awake.

He watched her remember where she was.

It crossed her face in order: first the pure, unthought morning openness, then awareness, then the slight tightening that came with full consciousness - the inventory, the reassessment. He'd seen this before. He knew what it was. Some people, when they woke up the morning after, needed to reconstruct what they'd agreed to. He found he minded it in her more than he usually did.

But she didn't close down completely. She looked at him steadily, biting the inside of her lip in a way that was either thought or decision, and then said: "Good morning."

"Good morning."

Her mouth curved - not quite a smile, but adjacent to one. "You look very - awake."

"I showered."

"I noticed." She gestured vaguely at his hair, the damp that hadn't yet dried. "You didn't have to do that. You could have left."