Eirian woke up sweating and thirsty. Comfortable and warm. On the edge of too warm.
She had to swallow a few times for her tongue to unstick itself, and her mouth didn't feel as dry as the wasteland.
She peeled her eyes open, and it took her a moment to realize it was too early to be awake. Far too early to be sweating too. Chenzhou was pressed against her back; she could feel his slow, steady breath against the back of her neck, and Eirian herself was sprawled off on top of Mingzhe, who somehow managed to breathe despite her weight on his chest. His sleep shirt was stuck to her cheek with dried drool, which, while embarrassing, was also a good sign, since she only drooled in the deepest, most restful sleep. She hadn't slept like that since before she came to the Camelia, and she was kind of annoyed that she'd woken up so early.
She lifted her head, but when she tried to shift her body, she couldn't budge between the sleep-dead weights on either side of her. She flexed her toes, flexed her feet, and then her ankles, knees, and thighs. Somewhere around her hips, the urge to urinate arrived, and Eirian had never been great about ignoring that.
She squirmed a bit, surprised at how little give there was to either man, and slithered her way down the bed inch by inch. She had to stop a few times when something twinged or pulled too sharply and bite back any noise that would have woken Chenzhou and Mingzhe up.
She was so focused on not disturbing them that she didn't realize when she reached the end of the bed and started to slide off before she was ready. Surprised, she flailed, nearly biting off a chunk of her tongue in her desperation to stay silent.
She grabbed the blankets as she felt herself start to slide, but they did nothing to stop her descent, and she flailed even more for something more secure, the split-second realization that if she fell to the floor, it was going to hurt.
She managed to grab something solid, digging her stubby nails in to save herself.
Chenzhou shrieked, followed almost immediately by Mingzhe's surprise shout. Eirian's feet touched the floor, and she let out a groan of relief.
Chenzhou and Mingzhe screamed so loud that she reeled back in surprise and fell right on her ass. She yelped at the jolt of pain and had to take a deep breath before hauling herself up off the floor.
Chenzhou and Mingzhe were standing on either side of the bed, both of them wide-eyed and breathing hard. Chenzhou was clutching a pillow to his chest, and Mingzhe had a shoe raised above his head.
Eirian stared at them. "I have to pee too much to deal with this." She turned on her heel and limped to the water closet with as much dignity as she could manage after falling out of her own bed.
A few minutes later, she returned to find both Chenzhou and Mingzhe back in bed, but awake. She detoured to drink a glass, and then another, or tepid water, and then waved at both of them to stay in bed when they moved to help her.
"I'm fine," she growled and crawled over Chenzhou to get back to the middle of the bed. The sweat on her skin had dried, and now some of her bandages had loosened and started to itch. She'd have to go back to sleep as quickly as possible, or she knew herself well enough to know she'd tear it all off. She hated anything that felt itchy and had spent more than was probably advisable ensuring nothing in her closet was anything but supple and soft. "What the hell was wrong with you two?"
"Us?" Chenzhou sqwacked. "I thought you were an assassin!"
Eirian gaped at him. "I was just getting out of bed!"
"Something grabbed me in the middle of the night," Chenzhou pulled the blanket up to his chin. "How would you react?"
Eirian turned to Mingzhe, who was attempting to bury himself under a pillow. "Oi, what were you doing? I was trying to be nice and get up without waking either of you up."
Mingzhe gave her a baleful stare. "Chenzhou punched me in the stomach when you scared him."
"On accident! I thought she was an assassin!" Chenzhou hissed.
Mingzhe groaned, not pleased at all to be awake, let alone with how he'd woken up.
Eirian huffed and squirmed against the sheets.
"What is wrong with you?" Mingzhe muttered.
"My bandages dried," Eirian explained with a frustrated huff. "They're starting to itch."
Concern replaced his early annoyance, and Chenzhou leaned over her. "Do you want to take them off?"
Eirian groaned. "I'm not supposed to yet."
Mingzhe sat up, abandoning his hiding place. "You could take some of them off, though. At least for the rest of the night."
"It's only a few hours until morning." Chenzhou agreed. He gently pulled at the bandage covering her shoulders and back. "Didn't this skin regrow already?"
Eirian was silent. It had regrown, some of the first, but now there was a giant magical mark covering the entirety of her upper back that no one had seen yet.
Including her.
~ tbc