Archive of Our Own

Sense memory's a funny thing.

Rolling over after a night's deep sleep and, even before total consciousness, your body curls into the warmth of the other person in your bed. Arms snake under sleep-heavy flesh and pull it closer as your face buries itself in the muted heat of soft hair.

There's nothing deliberate about it, nothing in the brain that says, "Slide your arms under him slowly; you know how he gets if he's woken up before he's ready." No thought that flutters across your semi-conscious mind and says, "Curl into that heat; you know you want to." There's just the muscle memory of a thousand mornings, limbs trained by experience to do this one thing that is the only perfect moment in the course of the day.

Mainly because there's always some emergency in a ten thousand year old city—called over the comm to the 'gate room for an unscheduled off world activation, and that'll ruin the start of the day, for sure. You'll roll out of bed to pull on the BDUs left on the floor the night before right before you shove your feet into loose boots with no socks because Woolsey needs help right the hell now and damn it, no it can't wait.

Or, god forbid, he gets called to the lab or the ZPM room, and he's grousing the entire time, bitching about intellectually-deficient scientists that don't know their asses from an Arcturus device and why the hell did the SGC send him such grossly incompetent people again?

So your body takes this moment, without permission or even knowledge, because it knows that this is what gets a man through the day. This breath, inhaling the sleep scent of his hair; this movement, curling arms around his chest as your body conforms to his; this peace, belonging to a place and a partner when you never thought you'd give yourself completely to someone without fear.

Then he, still asleep, pushes into your warmth, murmurs something incomprehensible that filters into your senses. His hand covers yours on his stomach, squeezes your fingers. Then he sighs, and it settles you both.

It's a blessing to have a place to call home, finally; it's bliss to have someone sharing it with you.