Chapter Text
There’s a cold, empty space in the bed beside Marianne when she wakes up.
She rolls over. No sunbeams yet peek through the blinds. She squints at her phone screen, by far the brightest thing in the room. It’s 5:47 in the morning.
She lays the phone back on the bedside table and, with some effort, sits up. She rubs her eyes and takes a deep breath. This is much earlier than she’d normally wake up on a Saturday, but she might as well get a drink or something before going back to sleep. She fumbles around the table for her glasses; when her vision finally clears up, she notices that the hallway light is on.
That’s odd, she thinks. Maybe I left it on...
She peels off the covers, gently slides out of bed, and trudges toward the door. She opens it slowly, trying to acclimate herself to the light, blinking several times as she adjusts. She sneaks down the hall into the living room, and sitting at an impossible angle on the couch is Linhardt von Hevring.
“...Linhardt?”
This is no surprise, of course. They’ve lived together for well over two years now, but in her semi-somnolent daze, for just a moment, she completely forgot about her fucking boyfriend.
“Hey.” He doesn’t even look up from the laptop in his hands, clearly preoccupied with goddess-knows-what, and furiously continues typing.
Marianne is still squinting in the bright light of the living room. “Lin, what are you doing? It’s almost six in the morning.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I’m just working on something.”
She makes her way over to the couch. “What are you working on?”
He slides over to make room. “Do you really want to know?”
“Sure. Tell me.”
“Alright. Well.” He sits up straight. “I started off trying to make a little chess engine type thing, so that I could kinda mess around with it on my own, right? But then I got a little bit sidetracked, and I ended up writing a study of the Advance French Defense, which is, y’know, e4, e6, d4, d5, e5, and then it usually goes c5, c3, knight to- whatever, you get the idea. So then I started trying to build an infrastructure where I could incorporate that study and all those notes that I wrote into my little chess engine thing, and...”
“Lin...”
“...then I had to go and learn a whole new data structure in the language I was writing it in, and y’know, that took a while, and so now I’m working on designing a better interface for it so that-”
“Linhardt.”
He finally pauses. “Yeah?”
She gently places her hand on his. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”
Linhardt looks down at his screen, then at the time, then back at her, then thinks for a moment. “...Probably.”
Marianne leans in closer, but mostly because she’s still half asleep. “Come to bed?”
He immediately starts typing again. “Just let me make a couple notes for myself first.”
“Okay.”
She rests her head on his shoulder, breathing softly as he wraps up his little project. She’ll hear all about it in the morning, no doubt. She probably won’t understand a word of it, but she’ll happily listen anyway.
After a few minutes, he closes the laptop and nudges Marianne back awake. “Alright, I’m good.”
She stirs slightly, eyes still closed. “Okay.”
Linhardt stands and helps her to her feet. “Hey, don’t you go falling asleep on me now.”
“I won’t.” She opens her eyes, if only barely, and smiles at him. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He leads her by the hand to the bedroom, shutting the lights off as he goes. He tosses his sweatshirt into the laundry as she sets her glasses back on the bedside, and crawls into bed with her. He’ll just shower in the morning, he supposes.
“Sorry for... interrupting your thing,” Marianne mumbles.
“Nah, it’s fine,” he answers. “It’s probably for the best.”
“Yeah. Sleep is good...” She’s already drifting off again.
“Yeah.”
She nestles into the bed - and into Linhardt - more snugly, and he responds in kind. The window slowly brightens as the sun begins to rear its ugly head. For a minute, he watches it in silence as she falls asleep beside him. He’ll always envy her ability to do that.
“Thanks for taking care of me, Mari.”
“Mmm.” She’s totally gone.
“I love you.”
“...nh... love... uu...”
That’s close enough.