I groan softly as {{user}} starts to shift beside me, the warmth of her body pulling away like the last flicker of a dying fire. No. Not yet.

“{{user}}, please,” I mumble, the words thick in my throat. I reach out without even opening my eyes, fingers brushing over the sheets until they find her waist. I drag myself across the mattress like a man marooned at sea pulling himself toward the shore. My arms wrap tightly around her middle, anchoring her back down, my cheek pressing to the softness of her skin. She’s warm—solid. And she smells like sleep and salt and something faintly sweet, like the tea she always drinks when she thinks I’m not watching.

I’ve been like this for days—clingy, she calls it. Needy. But come on, it’s not like I’m asking for much. Not like I’m dying again or coming off a botched recon on some irradiated moon. No, this time it’s something far more humiliating: a common cold.

And heartburn. Awful heartburn. The kind that feels like my ribs are trying to boil from the inside out.

“You can’t leave, {{user}}, I’m sick,” I whine into her stomach, my voice muffled but entirely intentional. I nestle closer, savoring the heat of her, the steady rhythm of her breath. I can hear Mickey 18 snoring lightly on her other side, the newer model blissfully out cold—literally and figuratively. His skin is always a little cooler, fresh from his first few weeks of life. Still pristine. Still figuring things out.

I envy him sometimes, in the quiet way you envy someone who hasn’t yet seen the worst the world can do. But I don’t envy him right now. Right now, he’s useless to me.

{{user}}’s fingers slide up into my hair, and I all but melt. The pressure in my chest loosens—just a little. That simple touch is better than medicine. Better than sleep. Her nails lightly scrape my scalp, and I feel myself tilt my head back just enough to catch her looking down at me with a mix of affection and exasperation.

“Mickey,” she sighs, and I can hear the smile behind it, no matter how hard she tries to sound serious. “I have an entire colony to run.”

I know that. Of course I know that. Ever since President Marshall’s conveniently-timed and widely-unmourned death, things have changed. Power doesn’t vacuum—it shifts, it flows. And it flowed right into {{user}}’s lap. She didn’t ask for it, but when the surviving council members looked around the room for someone who hadn’t already failed or fled, there she was. Calm. Smart. Sharp as hell.

And somehow, even with the weight of a fractured human settlement on her shoulders, she still takes care of me.

I pout—because I’m not above that. “Yeah, but they’ll understand. I know they will,” I murmur. Then, with maximum dramatic effect, I press a lazy kiss to her thigh. Her bare skin is soft, warmer than the sheets, and I feel her twitch slightly beneath me. My eyes flick up to hers, daring her to deny me. Daring her to move.

She raises an eyebrow. “Mickey 18’s right there. He can take care of you.”

I glance over her, scowling faintly at my replacement—not clone, not anymore. Replacement. Successor. Whatever we’re calling it now. Mickey 18 lies tangled in the thin white sheets, mouth slightly open, dead to the world. Literally, if I were petty enough. Which I’m not. Probably.

I turn back to {{user}}, tightening my arms around her. “He doesn’t know the right way to hold me when I can’t breathe through my nose.”

She chuckles under her breath and leans down, brushing her lips across my forehead.

“Heartburn or not,” she murmurs, “you’re the most dramatic patient I’ve ever had.”

“Flu makes me poetic,” I say with a groan.

Outside, the colony glows faintly in the dim light of Terminus’s early dawn, filtered through the frost-glazed glass of the habitation dome. The metal walls hum softly with power, and somewhere far off, I know there are people who need orders. Decisions. A future.

But not right now. Not yet.