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It was into the late hours of the night on deep space nine, although without a sun to orbit or an atmosphere surrounding the station, the sky was the same pitch black as always and sprinkled with stars.
Quark blinked the sleep out of his eyes, and when the fogginess faded he could see the backlit numbers on his chronometer indicated that it was 04:00 hours. Too early to get up for the day, but just long enough to stay in bed for a while longer. He sighed softly, rolled over to get comfortable, and was startled awake when he felt something other than the mattress and blankets, something solid and warm.
Odo was in his humanoid shape. He was missing his uniform, although it was regularly merely an illusion anyways, so his otherworldly smooth shoulders were bare and visible to Quark's tired eyes alone.
"You're still here," Quark murmured, as if that was unexpected to him. They were in his quarters. Usually, his brother Rom shared the small suite, and slept in the other room, but tonight he was off of the station on a business trip. One that he would find a way to screw up no doubt, Quark imagined, but having the place to himself was nice. Having Odo in there with him was ten times nicer.
Odo looked at him, with the cold blue eyes that showed he still barely understood some things in this world, and he almost smiled. "Yes, I am."
He felt the smaller ferengi snuggle closer to him, and the feeling of bumps and ridges against his chest. It was... Pleasant.
"You weren't sleeping, were you, Odo?"
Odo hesitated to show any affection, even in complete privacy, as if he himself were worried of being seen, afraid somehow that he was being spied on for incriminating behavior in the same way that he always watched Quark at the bar. He wondered how Quark could be so indulgent without showing any guilt. But after those few seconds passed, Odo snaked one of his arms around his worst enemy's back, and held him as gently as he possibly could.
"No, I don't sleep, I regenerate."
"But you aren't regenerating now."
"It's on a sixteen-hour cycle, with the station having twenty-six hours in its days, it doesn't always line up properly - and besides, I would be preparing myself for my duty by now most days-"
Quark understood most of that, but he was all but too sleepy to respond.
"You get up at four in the morning?"
Another one of his accusatory remarks that Odo couldn't help but grow fond of against his better judgement.
Odo harrumphed quietly this time.
"Not today," he left a kiss between the knots on Quark's head, then felt him immediately relax in his arms.
"Must be torture,"
"How so?"
"Staying awake for hours, watching me," Quark snickered at the image of Odo getting gradually more annoyed but too stubborn to leave.
"Hardly," instead of disgruntled and retentive, for once, Odo sounded content in being there, patient listening to Quark's half-awake rambling, and peaceful just to hold him.
Quark lazily gave Odo a kiss wherever his face was rested at the moment, somewhere just below where he should have collarbones. He tried to say something again, but it was slurred enough that the universal translator didn't pick up on it, so Odo only heard the garbled phonetics of his alien language, and while he didn't have a clue what it meant, a skilled detective such as himself could make an educated guess. It took him a few seconds to gather his response, and by then, his horrible little bartender was snoring to himself once more.
"...I love you too."