International Nap Day!
The ocean wakes her. Curled on her side, she squints lazily against the sun pouring in through the windows. The quiet rush of waves fills her ears, runs around her brain, wiping it clean and leaving her comfortably muzzy. Elizabeth thinks she'd wash out with the tide if it weren't for the weight of the blankets and the two pairs of arms anchoring her.
"Hey."
She turns her head and has to smile at the extreme case of bedhead looking down at her. "Mmm," she murmurs. "Hey."
John's hand skims down her hip as he leans in and kisses the corner of her mouth. He curls in tighter against her. "Guess your hearing's back, then."
She grins. "I could hear the ocean."
"You know," comes a sleepy, grumpy mumble, vibrating against her clavicle, "I have it on good authority that Carson and Heightmeyer threatened to tie you down and drug you if you didn't take a day off to recover."
"I *am* taking a day off," she argues, but her brain is slow and syrupy, and her heart's not in it.
Rodney cracks an eye open and snorts. "Recovery," he expostulates at a tenth of his normal speed, "involves catching up on all the sleep missed trying to save this city from the ten thousand impossible things that happen every day before breakfast, and you are *talking*, which means I cannot be catching up on said sleep."
"Well," John drawls, head resting on her shoulder, "it's not like it's *your* recovery we're talking about here, Rodney."
Rodney starts to rise to the bait. John slips his hand over her side and around her waist; Rodney fits his leg between hers. The deep, grumbling susurrus of their voices flows over and under and through Elizabeth as sleep pulls her down, sweeping her out to sea.