When dusty came back downstairs, I knew the time for bed had come. We had just finished our tasty freeze-dried soup and the warm feeling inside of my tummy was quickly starting to make me even drowsier.

I double-checked if everything was locked and all the lights were shut off before we headed upstairs, saying good night to our auto dusting friend first of course. It answered with a quick twirl of its propellers.

Luna walked in front of me, but when she got to the bed, she stopped. “Uh…”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking around her to see if Dusty had somehow messed up the bed. But when I looked, it looked perfectly fine to me.

“What side do you want me to sleep on?” She asked.

“Ah.” I chuckled. “I thought you had discovered something serious.”

“It is a bit serious, though.” Luna pouted.

“Well, I don’t really mind what side, but if you don’t feel comfortable with choosing we can just keep the same positions we held on board the ship.”

“So, me on the left side of the bed?”

“If you are okay with that.” I nodded.

Luna smiled. “Okay.” She then walked around the bed and sat on her side. Looking at the room from that perspective. “Yes, I think this could work.”

I chuckled at her little ritual, though I chuckled more because it was cute rather than funny. I knew that for some people it really mattered where exactly they sleep, but for me, it really doesn’t matter as long as we are not getting bombarded. Getting sleep during active combat is really something else entirely, not a fan, but I have had to do it a couple of times before.

“And do I need to wear something?” Luna asked next. That was a question I had expected less.

“Just do what you are comfy with, Luna. You really don’t need to see this bed as any different from the other places we have slept.”

“But it feels different…” She replied. “It’s your own bed in your own house…”

I breathed in calmly and then gave her a nod, getting on my bed with my knees. I offered her my hands as a sign for her to do the same and join me on top of the bed.

She hesitated just a second before she took my hands. When she did, I immediately pulled her towards me. The sudden power I had put in made her fall on the bed. In just a couple of moments, I was right on top of her. Her head in between my arms.

“L-Lauren!??” Her face coloured completely red.

“This is our bed, you know?” I said calmly. “The my-part ended the moment you became my girlfriend. This is your place too now.”

“B-but…” She tried to protest.

“No buts.” I stated. “If you wanted to step out, you should have done so before conquering my heart.”

Luna stared at me, her mouth slightly open. The silence that slowly started to form, gave me just a speck of uncertainty.

“Well… unless you want to get out of it off-course… I wouldn’t stop you… I wouldn’t like it, but you know… consent and all that…”

“Lauren… shut up…” She reached for me and just kissed me for a good ten seconds or so. I don’t know, I wasn’t counting. Had a cute girl on my lips. Head empty, just gay. “You are so hopeless… but just as amazing, kind, cool, caring… All of that and more.”

“Just so you know, I’m this useless because of you.”

“I do know...” She blushed.

I grinned. “Well, and since you started kissing me… I think I’ve worked up another appetite.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

She giggled, after which I started kissing her. My tiredness had suddenly lessened by quite a bit.

Sadly for me, though, the exhaustion did come back in rather brute force ten minutes later. Spending even more energy making out with my girlfriend hadn’t helped. So when I rolled from on top of her to the side, I barely had any strength left to get undressed.

“Do you want me to help you?” Luna had managed to sit back upright on her side of the bed.

I raised my index finger. “No, I’ll do it myself, just… give me a sec.” Then I dropped my arm back down. “Or a minute or so…”

Luna sighed, shaking her head and got up, moving around the bed. “I’ll come and help you.”

“No, and that’s an order.”

“The Commander is clearly unfit for command right now, so I’ll be taking the helm.” She replied.

I just stared at her as she was now standing right next to me.

“Come, let me get you up.”

“Just to be clear, I object to all of this.” I gave her my hand so she could pull me up.

With a little giggle, Luna then started to slowly undress me. Not because she was enjoying it, for the record, she was definitely enjoying it, but more because she wanted to be careful with me.

“I’m not that frail…”

“Even big scary marines can feel pain.” She quickly replied to my comment. “You are no different.” She was being particularly careful with my shoulder. “Plus, I wouldn’t want you to be declared unfit for duty because I sprained one of your muscles or something like that. Not for my sake, mind you. But I think that news would spread rather quickly in between the crew.”

“Right… that would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it?”

“I bet Eva would very much like to see it, though.”

“That’s true, she is a bit of a sadist in that way. As long as it’s just something minor like that, otherwise she’s an angel.”

Luna smiled as she took off my top layer of clothes and put it neatly on the cabinet nearby. I did decide not to let her undress me single-handedly any further, though. Otherwise, I might just fall asleep completely before we are done, and I kind of didn’t want that to happen. I still have a fraction of self-respect, after all.

Then, when we finally got into bed together, I could just feel Luna cuddle up next to me, and then my lights went out. I cursed myself I couldn’t have stayed awake any longer, but at least I hadn’t dropped into a deep sleep with my clothes still on.

We spent most of the morning just relaxing and hanging around, getting some food. Just overall getting into a rhythm that would be considered relatively normal for people of the civilian occupation. But the most exciting event of the day was obviously when Luna’s package was finally set to arrive. My holo stick gave me a notification that the delivery drone was within five minutes of its delivery, so both of us dressed nice and warm and went outside into the backyard to go and wait for the delivery. We didn’t really need to be there for the delivery, but Luna was interested in seeing the drone fly in so I gladly humored her.

“Oh, I think I see it!” Luna pointed her mitten straight forward into the darkish sky.

I could faintly make out an object that was moving, with an alternating white and red light. “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

Luna’s spot was on-point as the drone quickly came closer to us and with a buzzing sound hovered over the backyard for a couple of moments. When it had seen a clear delivery area, it moved over just a little and then lowered down one of the boxes that was hanging underneath it with a wire.

The clamp to the wire released, leaving the box in the snow. When it had retracted the rope once more, the drone went on its merry way to go and deliver some other boxes to their destinations. From what I could tell we were the drone’s first stop as it was now just missing one of its loading bays.

Luna walked over to the box in enthusiastically big steps. Picking it up from the snow. “Do we need to wait for Ellie’s parts too?”

“No, I’m pretty sure those will get delivered around midnight. Unless you want to stay outside for that long.”

A gust of wind blew some snow around, visibly sending shivers through Luna’s body. “No. Let’s not do that.” She hurried past me back to the door.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.” I chuckled to myself.

Back inside, we unpacked her new clothes from the box as fast as we could. But instead of going after her clothes, first Luna went to town on the box itself.

“Uh, Luna… What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to figure out why the box wasn’t getting wet by being in the snow.” She replied, inspecting the outside of the box.

“Ah… I guess I never really thought about that.” I came to stand right next to her and just let her have fun with the box for a bit. -This is the day I learned that Luna was not only alien, but also part cat as well.-