Luke flops onto his bed, face down, and breathes deeply. His eiderdown smells of laundry detergent, the nice kind, almost a stormy scent, with the blend of the sweetness of rain and the perfume of crushed foliage. He’s tired, really tired, but sleep’s beyond him right now, even if he had the time for a nap. He toes off his boots, taking an odd satisfaction in the thunk they make when they hit the hardwood floor, and rolls over onto his back.

Waking up in that hospital with a doctor standing over him, checking his pulse, was easily one of the scariest moments of his life. That in mind, obviously he couldn’t be blamed for shrieking and trying to strangle the doctor.

Being restrained by a dozen nurses while said doctor administered a low dose sedative wasn’t so fun either, now that he thinks about it.

Wrinkling his nose, Luke wriggles further up on his bed until his legs are no longer hanging off the side, and warms the air in his room a few degrees. They always kept hospitals far too cold; if he wasn’t going to be in the sun, they needed to raise the thermostat a little, or at the very least not pitch a fit when he started a small fire in the trashcan. Really, it was there on fault; if they hadn’t sedated him, he could have just raised the temperature himself, like he usually did, but no-o, he wasn’t supposed to try and kill his doctors.

Jerks.

Luke closes his eyes and loosens a bit, reaching out for a northerly wind to put some speed in their sails. He pulls it in gradually, smoothly, otherwise Haast would be slammed around, and probably Paten, self important ass that he is, would barge in here to yell at him, and really, he’s just not in the mood to deal with that. He feels Haast surge forward, and gives into the temptation to just blast on into the open country. Feeding the wind with air fresh off the Curran Sea, Luke watches Ullr fall behind. Serves them right for passing on Herbert.

Ah Herbert… It’s going to be a pain in the ass carting him around while trying to catch up with these OLs; good thing he has people he can delegate to.

Yawning, Luke curls up a bit, fluffing the part his eiderdown under his head into a feathery blob to act as a pillow, because yes, he really is too lazy to reach up and grab his actual pillow.

He’s tired, and wide awake; sore, and comfortable; lonely, and… No, just lonely.

Re-organizations suck.

He wants his old ship back, and his old crew.

He wants a hug, and no chance in hell he’s going to be able to scrounge one from any one on Haast; Atlas he’s not speaking to, Thomas would stammer and stutter and run, Galligher would try to unload Wilfred, Johnson would laugh, and Paten would contaminate him. So no, on all counts.

He wants to see his friends, even if they can be traumatizing sometimes, even if they can be annoying sometimes, even if they can be too much sometimes.

Luke scowls, and the temperature rises, and he yanks his eiderdown over top of himself, huddling underneath it, and he shivers.

Really, he just wants to see Jase. This week has been too much, much too much, far too much, way too much, too, too much. He wants a hug, he wants to know things aren’t out of control, he wants to know that the weather’s not going to disappear on him again, he wants to know he’s safe.

But they are, it is, and he’s not.

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