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After their laughter dies down Cal has a proposal. "You know I think you should have one of those lazy days like in the holomovies! Just spend the day on pajamas, eating something easy to prepare and having a holomovie marathon"
"Will you be in your "pajamas" as well?" Asks Solane, while giving him an appraising up and down look, he is still in his work clothes and hasn't even taken off his boots, which is surprising, since Cal is always at the right temperature clothes are more of a bother for him, that’s why he often chooses to work shirtless, wears pants mostly to spare his legs the attacks of the snap grass and bristlebugs affectionate rubs, and elects to sleep naked. Or he would sleep naked if he'd ever had a room for himself, but since he'd gone from his family's quarters to Solane's and she has a very special roommate, he's settled on sleeping on his underwear (Even though Sym wouldn't really be embarrassed, but he might take it as permission to just go naked as well)
Cal answers with a laugh “I don’t see why not” He says with a cocky smile and heads towards the bedroom taking off his shirt, Solane following close behind.
As he sits on the bed and starts to untie his boots to change into a new pair of underwear, Solane just leans on the doorway and looks at him. She's always marveled at the way he moves, his form holds so much power, evident in every motion even as he does an action so mundane as loosening some knots like he is right now. And yet it's so easy for her to remember the tender way in which he held her injured hand last night, his strength always an offering for her, to hold on tighter or to let go, whatever she wishes.
As he stands up and goes to pull down his pants he catches her eye and smirks, confidence is a good look on him, and while he has never been ashamed of his body, lately he has grown more used to Solane’s appreciative looks, maintaining his playful nature and becoming harder to make a red faced stammering mess like in the beginning of their relationship.
"Enjoying the show?" He asks with one eyebrow raised.
"I'd enjoy it more if you did a dance for me" She responds relaxed, he averts his eyes and turns his head but can't quite hide the blush that creeps up to his ears. It thrills her that she can still make him nervous like this.
"Yeeesh, you always manage to turn it around don't ya, one day I'll make you flustered and see how you like it" He challenges as he continues to change trying to pretend he doesn't notice the eyes that follow his every movement.
"I look forward to it" She responds with a small smile, mostly to herself as she steps into the room and searches in the closet for her warmest pajamas, which are a set that Cal gave her with a shirt that reads: "My puns are" followed by the image of an earth animal called koala inside a cup of tea. They should be in the top drawer, now, if only she could find them…
“In the meantime I’ll go on ahead and see what we can make with what we have in the kitchen” Cal says as he stretches and leaves the bedroom.
In the end she couldn't find her pajamas so she opted for a star patterned hoodie that Nomi made and some old sweatpants that she wore whenever she helped shove dirt in geoponics.
When she enters the kitchen she finds Cal crouched in front of the lower cupboards staring into empty space. "Hey, did you see my koala pajamas when you did laundry last week?" She asks.
"Huh? Didn't you do laundry last week?" Cal blinks at her confused.
That makes her stop "No, I didn’t"
Cal stands up and scratches his head "Well I didn’t either…"
"You don't think… Sym… " She says leaning against the counter. "Well that would explain why your boxers were mixed with my shorts"
He snorts "Yeah, only aliens and sleepy Solanes would confuse those two"
She pouts as he lets out a breathy laugh and kisses her brow. "I'm just teasing" He reassures.
She rolls her eyes "I know, I know. Talking about Sym, I thought he would be back by now"
"I messaged Dys, apparently Sym failed to inform us their little camping trip is going to be one week long" He sighs, then seems to have an idea and leans closer to her, with each hand on the counter either side of Solane's hips. "I guess we'll have the house for ourselves this week" And just as he goes for a kiss his stomach lets out a loud grumble and she can’t help but laugh.
Solane pushes him away "How about we have a very late lunch and then you can tell me of all the ways we can spend this week, just the two of us"
He sighs "I'm afraid we don't have much to make lunch with. We could, however, bake something while we snack on some caramelized bobber fruit from yesterday" He says, avoiding her gaze.
Solane narrows her eyes "We can only bake you say, and I guess your sweet tooth has nothing to do with it?"
He gives her a sheepish smile, taking a piece of bobber fruit and holding it in front of her "Maybe it does"
She accepts the offering, it was a little stale after being left on the table for the whole night, but with how hungry they were they couldn't be picky. "Well, you're the expert chef, what do you suggest?"
With a wide smile he opens the cupboards and starts taking out ingredients "I was the winner of the baking competition for three years in a row. I was thinking we could make cookies or perhaps muffins?“ Then he goes quiet for a moment staring at the counter and without looking at her he says. “Actually, Sol, I wanted to ask you something…”
“Mmmm… What is it?” She says munching on another piece of bobber fruit and trying to remember in what order one mixes the ingredients, first was spongecake flour and sugarbug syrup right?
“Are your visions always of something bad?” He asks and Solane chokes on the caramel, after a bit of coughing and Cal slapping her back, she manages to breathe again. Remembering the question she tenses, she’d thought that they were going to pretend that last night’s conversation didn’t happen, at least for today.
“Why?” she asks voice raspy, was he going to ask why she didn’t help more if she saw things that would actually help the colony?
“Well…I don’t really get how it works so I was wondering if you could see if the cookies or the muffins would taste better” He says as he rubs her back.
Sol looks at him incredulously “ What? ”
“I mean… We have two options, in one hand cookies are a safe bet but with the ingredients we have they just be sugarbug syrup cookies, on the other hand muffins might be a bit more complicated, but there’s more that we could do with them, like some dustmelon muffins” He tries to explain with his hand on his chin and his eyes closed as if he was visualizing the sweets.
She continues to stare at him dumbfounded. “You want me to have a vision that tells us what to bake?”
“It’s just… The stuff you told me about your dreams, they were always so grim…So I wanted to know if you could have nice visions as well” He responds, placing one hand on her cheek.
“I… can try” She was still trying to make sense of what was happening, but the least she owed him was trying to have a vision regarding the pastries. As she closes her eyes and tries to concentrate in the kitchen and the diferente paths that they may take there, she starts feeling a familiar pulling sensation in the pit of her stomach.
Suddenly Solane finds herself- No, that’s not right, is himself this time. Sol finds himself in his kitchen staring at Dys, who has him pushed against the counter, staring deep into his eyes. “While I was away I could only think of you” As he says that, Dys claims Sol’s mouth, being the center of his world can be overwhelming but Sol can’t think of nowhere else he’d rather be, he kisses him back just as desperately trying to convey what he can never express with his words, don’t leave me behind.
Solane jerks back into the present, into her present, and sees Cal, looking curiously at her. “Did you see something?”
“I saw nothing related to baking, we should just make cookies, you say they’re easier?” She says while pretending to read the label in the flour and hoping that her face isn’t too red.
“Sol… Babe, what did you see?” He asks with one hand on her shoulder, worried hazel eyes looking straight at her.
Sigh. “It’s nothing really, sometimes the visions are of futures that are impossible in our reality. This time I was a man, and well, Dys was with me in the kitchen…instead of you” She tries to talk about it as if it was no big deal, but she’s really nervous about how Cal will react to the news that Solane is not always the same person in those visions, and that she, or he, or they, might be dating other people.
“Wait, wait a minute, you were a man? And Dys was with you as in he was physically here? or as in he was your boyfriend?” He asks, eyes wide open.
“Sometimes in the visions I’m a guy or non binary, I might have a different job and… I might be dating different people” She grips the counter tighter.
“Wow, that’s wild. I think I understand even less now. I never took you for one to go for the brooding type” He replies in a teasing tone, hip checking her.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” She has to ask, she doesn’t want him to feel like he might have to hide stuff from her.
“Honestly? After what you just told me? Nah, I spent a loooong time thinking about it last night and from what you’ve explained to me those Solanes might be a version or a possibility of what you could’ve been, but they are not you. And the person I love, the woman whose happiness I strive to ensure is here, right in front of me, and no one else” As he makes this declaration he takes her hand in his, kissing the back of them. The relief seems to flood her as she feels a tear escape from the corner of her eye and she wipes it away with the back of her hand.
“So, how do you make cookies?” If her voice sounds choked up Cal doesn’t mention it.
“It’s actually quite easy, just follow my instructions and we’ll see if you have what it bakes to be a pastry chef”
In the end solane doesn’t have what it takes, the flour is messier than she expected, she couldn’t trust the amount of the ingredients in the recipe, and since Cal looked as if he was about to fall asleep she didn’t want to bother him with too many questions, so she opted for pouring more sugarbug syrup “just in case” and now everything felt sticky.
Once they’re out of the oven Cal immediately goes to grab one of them.
"You should at least wait for them to cool down" Sol scolds
"But I'm hungry " He whines and continues to pass a cookie from one hand to another and blow on it so he can eat it.
Solane sighs and continues making some of her new dustmelon tea to accompany the sweets.
“They’re good!” He says after one bite, and extends the half eaten cookie so Sol can take a piece.
Solane’s first impression is that they are still hot and has to try to eat it open mouthed as to not burn her tongue. The second thing she notices it's that they are cloyingly sweet.
Well, at least Cal looked happy munching on them so she chose to count it as a success.
“We can-” Whatever Cal was trying to say was interrupted by him yawning, which in turn caused Sol to yawn. “Sorry, I was going to say we can eat the cookies watching a holomovie”.
“You sure? Wouldn’t you rather eat and then sleep?” She asks as she picks up the bowl with cookies, they had to use the biggest bowl they had since they ended up making way more cookies than they expected.
“No way, it’s still too early to go to bed, I’m not an old man yet!” Cal responds taking the teas and going to the living room.
“All right, whatever you say” She says following him.
They choose a random romcom Sol had watched a million times with Marz when they were kids, which meant she could spend more time looking at Cal instead. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention and after eating most of the food it was more like he was fighting to stay awake. By the fourth time he jerks awake from a short nap Sol pauses the movie.
“That’s enough, you’re dead on your feet, let’s just go to bed” She says standing up and pulling his arm, he doesn't budge.
“Nu huh, I want to see how the movie ends! The …protagonist was about to do… some grand romantic gesture… I think?” He protest but it comes off half heartedly.
Sol drops his arm and moans dramatically “Then I guess I’ll have to go to bed all alone. In the cold quiet. Without my boyfriend to snuggle…”
Still, she doesn’t leave until she hears Cal sigh no less dramatically and respond as he gets up “I’d hate for you to have no one to snuggle”
With a little victory cheer she leads him to the bedroom, takes of her hoodie so she’s only on a comfortable shirt and gets under their absurd amount of covers, leaving space for Cal to get in. “be my blanket?” she asks him once he enters the room.
He laughs “I think you have more than enough blankets my hopeye” Even though he says that, he still gets in and lays his head on Sol’s chest, his hand across her stomach and his leg over hers.
She giggles and covers them both. Cal is so warm in quiet and pleasantly cool in dust, and since he wasn’t bothered by getting too hot because of too many blankets he was really the perfect person to sleep next to.
He fell asleep quickly, even breaths being the only sound in their room. For her part Solane takes her time passing her finger through Cal’s hair and looking at his peaceful face.
I’m really lucky
she thinks and as she tips backwards into sleep, all she feels is love.