A/N: Miles/Ekaterin - random moments from life after the last chapter of A Civil Campaign.

I.

Ekaterin woke a few hours before dawn with an arm thrown across her body and someone's warm breath tickling the back of her neck.

For a moment she froze in horror; then she came all the way awake, and her brain belatedly registered the weight of the arm, and the scent of the man it belonged to, and the shapes in the darkened room around them.

Miles.

Not Tien. Not ever again.

Thank God.

Her heart was pounding, though, and she had to pee, which was probably what had woken her in the first place. A glass of water would be nice, too.

Gently she lifted and repositioned Miles's arm and wriggled out from under the blankets. Miles frowned a little, and made a small protesting noise, but didn't wake. As silently as possible, she felt her way across the room to the door of the en-suite bath, pausing to wrap her discarded dressing-gown around herself against the chill.

In the nighttime stillness of Vorkosigan House – quieter by far than her uncle's house in the University district, whether in fact, because farther removed from the noise of the street, or only in her imagination – the sound of the toilet flushing seemed horribly loud. Some kind of non-verbal free-association called to Ekaterin's mind an image of Aunt Vorthys huddled in their lavatory-prison on the Komarran transfer station, which made her tremble in remembered fury and fear. She knelt with her forehead on the cool edge of the bath until the trembling stopped and her mind followed its odd lavatorial tangent to a more congenial end: Armsman Pym standing tall and terribly upright in her aunt's garden, telling Martya Koudelka all about the bug-butter-down-the-drain catastrophe …

By the time she had finished washing her hands and running herself a glass of water, she was giggling helplessly.

The laughter died on her lips as she opened the bathroom door.

The reading lamp on what would soon be her nightstand had been switched on, low. Miles was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, feet dangling, hands clasped between his knees, staring fixedly at the now-empty chair where she had tossed her dressing-gown the evening before, when …

Her heart constricted at the forlorn expression on his face.

"Miles?" Her voice caught his attention, and he turned toward her the same appallingly thrilled face she remembered from that morning in the not-yet-garden. Good heavens, had he thought she'd run away?

It wouldn't be the first time, after all …

Crossing the half-lit bedroom between one breath and the next, she sank down beside him on the edge of the bed and slid one arm around his waist, then tilted her head so that her cheek rested on the top of his head. Their bodies relaxed against each other, it's true, it's real, please, love, believe it …

"Nightmare?" she asked quietly.

"Not … not exactly." He twisted a little to look up into her face, dauntingly earnest. "Ekaterin, if – if you ever feel pushed or pulled or, or manipulated again, if I – if you –" Words failed him, it appeared, and for a moment he settled for grabbing her free hand and squeezing it tight. "Just tell me," he said at last. "Just tell me, and I'll stop – don't … Just tell me. Promise?"

"I promise." Ekaterin sealed the promise with a kiss, and then finished the sentence Miles had left half-spoken: "No more fleeing into the night."

And then, when his cheeks flushed and a glint of sheepish humour lit his face, she judged it safe to tease him gently: "I was using the bathroom, love. People do that, you know."

As she had hoped, this drew a snort of laughter. Miles slid off the bed, so that, sitting, she had to look up at him instead of down, and wrapped her in his arms. "Milady Ekaterin," he whispered in her ear. "My lady, my love …"

"Yes," said Ekaterin. "And yes, and yes." She hugged him fiercely, mine, mine, mine.

"Miles?" she said, several minutes later.

He loosed his hold and stood back to look at her inquiringly.

My botany project is due in three days. I have a biochemistry exam next week. I should be sleeping.

… Drat it, Miles, why can't I resist you even when I'm trying?

She had intended to point out that they ought to go back to sleep; somehow, what came out instead was, "Should we maybe continue this in a, in, um … more horizontally?"

Don't blush, woman! You're about to marry the man, for goodness' sake.

A new and positively wicked gleam appeared in Miles's grey eyes. "Yes, milady!"