A/N: Taking a very deep friendship to the next level I DONT CAR IF YU THINK IT WOLD NVER HAPEn I sAY it DOES AND TAHTS WHAT COUTS.

It's midnight at Headquarters, or as close to midnight as Starwind can approximate. Their workload's getting heavier, so they often work through now, or more often than they used to.

Still, it's night.

She's lying in her bed, on her side of the Response Centre, tangled up in the duvet and the sheets, with her old comfort-blanket, and her rag-doll that smells of her body. She should be sleeping, but she's not, for all that she's tired.

She draws.

Starwind Rohana writes and draws, alternating from poem to sketch to bold, graphic image. Her pencil skips over sheets of paper, but there's one leaf she avoids, and it's a photograph.

It's a photograph of her, and she's almost sleeping. But she's waking up, you can tell that from the glint that's shining in one eye.

Her isn't Starwind. Her is Estelnar.

Estelnar is probably sleeping, Starwind decides, as she looks over to the form in the other bed. Estelnar's sensible. She wouldn't be up at this hour.

But then, Starwind herself usually wouldn't be up at this hour.

Her eyelids are heavy, and her arms ache, but her ribs ache more with the twist she's been forcing upon them. She knows it's time to sleep.

Slowly, quietly, she shuffles the papers together and puts them aside, and reaches for the lamp.

Then she hesitates. Moving slow and careful -the way people will at night -she gets up, pushing the covers aside, and walks softly toward her partner. In the relative darkness, the lights of the console glimmer off the walls.

She looks down, to see a face turned away, mostly hidden by hair in any case. She wonders why she feels so strange, so tender, so wickedly tired. Wickedly tired...isn't that odd?

For Starwind, it isn't.

Rainbee would call it disgusting.

Wickedly tired is what Starwind calls those times when her mind is unfocused, her limbs move slow, a kind of drowsiness pervades her system...and she wants Estelnar. Wants, wants, wants. Longs to see her face, touch her hair, hold her hand. That's not all she wants.

She longs for contact, and isn't even sure what sort she's longing for.

Estelnar must be asleep. She must.

Starwind straightens up, and walks toward her bed, but her legs swerve and she never quite makes it. Instead, she falls against the console, and hears the sound of movement from the other bed. She knows that Estelnar is waking up, and the thought does something strange.

"Starwind? Is something wrong?" The voice is soft, concerened. Starwind trembles, resting her head in her hand.

She should say, 'Everything's fine,' but she can't, because it isn't.

Instead, she shivers, and looks at Estelnar in the warm, dim glow of the lamp, and looks away, and sighs. The light from screens and tiny coloured bulbs glitter in her eyes.

Estelnar gets up, and pads toward her. She comes closer, closer, and when Starwind's eyes notice this her skin warms. Her limbs tremble, and she knows Estelnar sees.

"Starwind," that voice says again, and she's not sure what to do.

"Yes?" she replies, and then her partner is standing close to her, far too close, and frowning. Her grey-brown eyes meet Starwind's green-hazel ones, and the girl doesn't know what is seen there.