The looming thrum of thunder coaxes Satya awake.

At first, it's as if it is a figment of her dreamscapes. The distant rumble meshes into fleeting watercolor skyscrapers and disjointed scenes of decided nonsense, a supplementary soundtrack to accompany the old radio lodged somewhere at the back of her mind that plays fragments of the classical ragas she'd danced to in her youth. When the indiscernible figures poised on street corner precipices in her periphery start to speak in spattering raindrops and cracking fissures, the last shackles of sleep slip away, and she is soon left staring blearily at a dark ceiling—the hard-light constellations she'd woven along its expanse have long since lost their luminescence to the pale pall of sunrise.

With the steady patter of rain drumming against the curtained bedroom windows, Satya turns upon her pillow and gives the digital clock at her bedside a cursory glance.

Five-twenty, it reads, shaped in neon blue slats. Forty minutes shy.

The office won't expect her for another three hours. It takes one hour and ten minutes to get ready: washroom, teeth, shower, hair, clothes, makeup, and perhaps a bite to eat if she feels peckish. The commute is another half hour on Oasis's snaking highways should traffic cooperate and congestion stay minimal, although she'd once had the fortune of clocking the ride at twenty-five minutes and forty-three seconds about two months ago.

If she cared to get up now and start her routine, the very worst of scenarios would still leave her with the better part of an hour left to kill, and while Satya does make a point to be early as a person's punctuality says volumes about their character, she must admit that an hour is a tad excessive at this point in her Ministry career.

She could try to go back to sleep, she supposes, but her mind is already awake, astir with various tasks that must be tacked onto her internal to-do list. Even if she'd managed to fall asleep again, it would only be a matter of time until her alarm went off at six, and then she would be awake for the second time this morning but without the pleasure of being roused to the sounds of spring thunderstorms.

Well, there is little point in trying to achieve the unachievable. Might as well get up. Sunrise is sunrise, regardless of the rain.

Suppressing a yawn with the heel of her palm, Satya leans herself into a sit. She takes a moment or two to rub the end of her left arm beneath her shirt's sleeve—she kneads her thumb and forefinger along the lightningstruck scar tissue mid-bicep—before reaching out for the black velvet-lined case stashed by the nightstand and tugging it into her lap.

The process of reattaching her prosthesis is guided by years of practiced muscle memory. Although the room is dim, she does not need light to know what parts to move or what latches to switch. It takes a few seconds of stillness for the device to recognize her neurological pulses, but when it does, the hexagonal crystal at her palm's center burns bright with the telltale blue of a summer sky, and then she is able to flex and grip and move.

She gently touches her middle finger to her thumb, regarding the sleek gold-white design with affection. It isn't the model Vishkar had once bestowed upon her, but thanks to a purloined prototype and Torbjörn's unmatched expertise, it still houses all of its unique capabilities. She can bend hard-light as effectively as she had prior to her abrupt severance with Vishkar, and with a little extra verve; it has been a few months since Torbjörn brought it by, and yet she still finds herself discovering new things about its abilities that far surpass those of its predecessor.

Funny what a little bit of bridge burning will do under the right circumstances.

(She had enjoyed it, too—the bridge burning. She'd enjoyed it immensely, in fact. A page right out of his book.)

(Oh, and he'd been so very proud.)

Satya glances to her left. Amongst the mussed blankets and the faint grey of morning lies Jamison's lanky shape, his face half buried into a pillow. His light snores are slow and even, a now-familiar serenity masked by the continual hum of the air conditioning and the persistent patter of rainfall and the intermittent reports of thunder. The blond of his hair appears as a liquid silver in the dark; it pours over the pillowcase and sculpts a wild upward waterfall, the rest of him swathed in sheets and shrouds of shadow.

She reaches out with her prosthetic hand and coasts the back of one finger up the length of his cheek. Things like warmth are too intricate and can't be felt, but simple pressure can, and it works a tendril of pleasure up her shoulder when she ghosts a tender touch across his forehead. A part of her yearns to lean in and kiss his nose, his brow, his chin, but she does not want to wake him so soon.

Before, he'd kept himself awake long into the early hours with countless coffee mugs scattered around his workspace—Watchpoints Gibraltar, Grand Mesa, La Paz, Neuquen, Bardai, Antananarivo, Moosonee—too restless, too tense, too full of noise, so that when sleep finally chased him in the viscous depths of midnight oil, it would tire in its own endless pursuit.

He may still be a night owl, but he sleeps so deeply now. Peacefully. Easily.

Satya casts him an affectionate smile.

It really is a wonder.

With a blissful warmth tucked between her lungs, she snaps her prosthesis's case shut and fastens each latch, taking care not to make much noise. She then plucks it out of her lap, leans down, and places it back in its niche between the bed and the nightstand. She checks the clock once more (05:28 in stark sapphire), and, resigning herself to wakefulness, starts to get out of bed.

She does not even pull the covers back before Jamison stirs beside her.

A dissenting noise crumbles within his chest. His good hand gropes in her direction, his leg stretching out beneath the sheets as if in search of her. She watches in silence, bemused, and when his fingers brush past the folds of her shirt (his shirt, in truth; it is far too big and she cannot get enough of how it smells), he shifts from what has been appointed his half of the bed and firmly into hers.

The pleasurable heat of his body envelops her as he hooks his arm around her waist. His hand smooths into the curve of her back in an almost protective manner, the pads of his fingers meshing into worn fabric, and she lets him nuzzle into her belly. It takes a moment or two, but he eventually settles: his right cheek against her stomach, chest on her lap, crude prosthesis loosely splayed upon the pillow he'd laid upon.

Perhaps it is because his low little snores have persisted throughout all of this, but she can't help but press her knuckles to her mouth to stifle a laugh. While his itch for tactile contact isn't new, the idea that he'd somehow sensed her departure, even while so immersed in sleep, is nothing short of endearing, and she cannot resist a smile.

Satya takes the time to thread her prosthetic fingers through his hair, carefully curling through unruly shocks and snarls. Addicting warmth suffuses her heartlines in delicate tendrils as she settles her other hand upon his bare shoulder; countless flecks scatter beneath her palm, and she traverses them as waves cresting back and forth upon a sunny shore.

"Good morning, bangaram," she murmurs, a hushed breath beneath the cadence of the rain.

Jamison does not reply. He continues to slumber in her lap, quiescent, eyes fluttered closed, the sharp lineaments of his face decidedly softer while steeped in the shadows of morning's quiet dark. It seems almost strange for him to be so still, and yet he looks—perfect, she thinks, like this suits him, like being tangled in bed with tousled hair should be his natural state.

She knows he needs movement and challenges and excitement and a little change of pace to keep himself maintained, but it still does not negate the fact that even with all of his jagged edges and loud colors and his deviant shape, he still slots in with the scenery not unlike a peculiar puzzle piece (but more of a component, perhaps; another model from another line) because he'd forged his surroundings into something complementary, so jagged edges and loud colors and deviant shape somehow still fit despite the discernible difference.

He might hail from a place of poverty and destruction and ruin, but that hadn't stopped him from making something of himself. His Minister title is fitting, she supposes—the sharpest contrast to the mantle he once carried.

Satya trails her fingers lightly along his widow's peak, combing aside a particularly wayward curl, and she starts to consider just how willing she is to leave the warmth of the bed. He makes it difficult to see the merit of doing anything but staying, especially nestled so close and in such an entreating way, and she has never been one to deny him a truly earnest request.

He's a bloody enabler, she thinks, even while dead to the world.

(Not that she minds.)

Taking yet another glimpse at the clock (05:39, plenty of time), Satya leans over to switch off the alarm with her thumb. She then taps at the small tablet just beside it, allowing the registry of her fingerprint to awaken the hologram projector ensconced in the ceiling amongst her atmosphere of dormant stars. Pale blue sheets of light flicker to life before her fingers; each stacked square contains her research for a progressing Ministry project.

With a flippant swipe, she casts them all aside and opens an email client. The message to her colleagues is brusque:

I will be working from home today.
Satya Vaswani-Fawkes,
Minister of Architecture

She sends it, satisfied, and then brings her research back into focus with another swipe. It will take her a little longer to gather examples of all the features she requires and sketch them all together in an acceptable design, but it is a small price to pay. There are far worse things to suffer though. Rush hour traffic, for instance.

Jamison hums a groggy sound in her lap as she begins to pick through various articles. She strokes prosthetic fingertips across his scalp in placation, and she dims the holograms' brightness with three swift taps in hopes that it will let him sleep a little while longer. A part of her would rather be sleeping, too, but she doesn't mind. Spending a stormy sunrise in bed with him curled around her is not a bad alternative.

She glances downward, sparing him a soft smile.

In fact, right now, there is nowhere else she'd rather be.