"Well, I can't take any credit for that, my face just looks like this."

She giggles and nuzzles her nose against his cheek and kisses him again. "Are you just naturally adorable, or are you saying cute things like that deliberately to make me feel better about being trans?" She might not wait for an answer and just kiss him more, actually.

Giggling and kissing her: "No, really, though!" Kiss. "If you decided to look that way on purpose," kiss, "I think you deserve more credit," kiss, "than somebody who's just pretty by accident!"

This really isn't making the sappy expression go away very well.

She's just gonna kiss him some more. "You're — so — good — to us!" she gasps out between kisses.

"If you say so!" Cozy snuggly kisses. Accidentally elbowing the wall again and then laughing at himself about it. More kisses.

Cozy snuggly kisses will continue for a while. Sable's not sure she's ready for more than that and maybe some heavy petting just tonight, but she'll quite happily make out until either of them decides it's time to retire to their bunks.

Well, absent explicit communication on the matter, Torok might just keep cozily kissing her until he falls asleep. So that works out decently well.

If Sable catches herself or Torok starting to fall asleep, she'll give him one last kiss and reluctantly depart to the other bunk.

And then they can sleep.

The constellations shock them awake.

A smaller helping of burning, molten starlight flows deeply into them, power sinking into their soul once more.

Mechanic (Fast and Furious) 100

Machines, especially ones that go fast, just speak to you. You have no problem fixing up and tuning any motor vehicle, and can rebuild them after the most devastating crashes. You can keep anything in top condition with just a few simple tools. Of course, you also need to understand the electronics, so hotwiring cars (and sometimes, alarm systems) is not a problem either.

Hailey huffs in annoyance. Woken up by a perk, and it ain't even useful yet? Ugh.

Well, they'll build there way up sooner or later.

And they've got a pretty sweet boy. He's growing on her, for sure.

She sighs a bit warmer, a playful little smirk on her face.

"Morning, Torok," she murmurs.

Yaaaaaaaaaawn. "Mornin'."

She rolls out of the bunk, landing softly on her feet and smiling at him over her shoulder. "There's some kinda cute boy in our room. Oh no," she snarks, deadpan.

"Yeah, if you're not careful you might accidentally end up snuggling."

"—actually, that would be kind of bad, wouldn't it, if you'd woken up with me back at the nice place."

"Mm. Some muscle cramps and pins and needles, for sure. Probably also some flailing and shoving one or both of us out of the bed."

She tuts softly. "Should maybe work on adjusting to touching you. S'pretty clear we're keeping you at this point, don't even want to argue Sable out of it, and it would be work if I did. You're growin' on me."

A soft shrug.

"That sounds like a pretty bad way to wake up. Should we stay here for a while so you don't have to risk it?"

Aww.

"Sweet of you. Yeah, that might be good. It'd kick up the speed of getting a place of our own, too."

She looks down at her hand for a moment and frowns.

"Hey, hold out your hand for a sec?"

"...sure?"

He holds out a half-open hand.

She takes a slow breath, than reaches out quickly and grabs his hand.

Fuck. There it is.

Her hand is twitching and tensing and cramping against his, grip tightening and loosening. She refuses to let go, though. Not yet.

She carefully doesn't grit her teeth.

Torok watches her with a certain amount of concern, but doesn't try to pull away.

She carefully takes slow, steady breaths. Her palm and wrist ache at this point.

Another minute or three, and then she pulls her hand away, breathing slowly and massaging the wrist. "Teaching the instinctual, traumatized animal part of me to put down the old reflexes."

"That looked like it hurt."

"Yeah." She keeps massaging her palm and wrist as she picks things out and gets ready for the day. "Part of it's a trauma-based reflex to lash out or flinch and push away. Some of the pain's from suppressing that. Don't want to stab you or punch you or push you away, but the old hurt parts of me remember people I did."