This is the bandwagon.

It was funny, Eugene thought, just how much bigger everything always seemed to be in the dark. Case in point: the upstairs hallway, which he could usually walk the length of in less than fifteen paces, now seemed to stretch on and on for miles in the still, pindrop quiet of the night. He worried his bottom lip with his teeth and stood, contemplating. The smart move would be to turn around and go right back to bed, but he knew that what awaited him there would only be more hours spent lying awake, restless and antsy.

He'd make it quick, he thought. Quick and quiet, and if Leckie was asleep, then well, he'd resign himself to another sleepless night. Mind made up, he tightened the sash of his robe and crept down the hall, steps slow and deliberate. When he was younger, his father would sometimes take to reading in his study at odd hours of the night—it was how he'd caught Eugene and Edward slipping out of bed on more than one occasion. But that was then, and this is now, and there was no light filtering up from downstairs and no sound from his parents' bedroom at the far end of the hall either.

When he finally came to a stop outside Edward's old room-turned-guest-room, he paused for a moment and just listened, ear almost up against the wood. He couldn't hear anything from the other side, which told Eugene next to nothing, really. There was no soft drone of snores to indicate Leckie was asleep, but then maybe Leckie was not one to snore at all. Carefully and almost painfully slowly, he twisted the handle of the door and eased it open a crack, wincing as a hinge creaked in protest.

The first thing he noticed was that the curtains hadn't been drawn, and the room was awash with pale, silvery-blue moonlight. The second was that the lump in the bed that denoted Leckie was moving, and then a pale arm appeared, followed by a head and then Leckie was blinking up at him from under the covers.

"What's wrong?" Leckie asked, voice low and thick from disuse. He waited a moment, then pushed up to one elbow, and Eugene realized what a sight he must look, creeping around in the middle of the night and then staring at Leckie silently with just his head poking around the door.

"Nothing. Sorry." He slipped fully into the room and shut the door behind him, ignoring how his heart picked up as the latch caught with a soft click. "Were you—"

"I was awake," Leckie assured him. "Thought I'd be more tired from the trip down but… anyway, what's up?"

Truthfully, Eugene hadn't given much thought to what his next steps would be if Leckie was in fact awake, having not expected to get this far in the first place. He padded over on silent feet to the foot of the bed and gripped the smooth, polished wood of the bedpost with one hand.

"Nothing really," he said again. "I just… couldn't sleep either. I thought I'd see if— I mean— do you mind if I join you?"

Leckie sat the rest of the way up then, sheets pooling around his waist. He hadn't worn a shirt to bed, Eugene noted, the moonlight illuminating the swell of a bicep, the dip of his collarbone.

"Join me, as in…?" He gestured with his head to the space beside him.

Eugene's face warmed. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Hard to take it otherwise when you sneak into a guy's room in the middle of the night, Sledge. But okay, how'd you mean it then?"

Leckie had a point—Eugene hadn't gone running to seek Bill's company like this when he'd been down for a visit a few months ago, and he'd known from the moment he'd left the comfort of his own bed that this wasn't a normal thing to do. There was a rather stark difference, after all, between one of his war buddies coming to stay and the guy who'd… shown him a thing or two in the thick of the jungle and on a secluded strip of the beach, and—

"I don't really know," Eugene admitted. He drummed his fingers against the bedpost. "Guess I just didn't want to be alone. Did… you want me to mean it like that?"

"What if I did?" Leckie challenged, voice low.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

Eugene let out a quiet, breathless laugh, something like anticipation thrumming through him. "Then yeah. I meant it like that."

In lieu of a reply, Lekie just flipped down the corner of the quilt in invitation, and before he could second-guess himself, Eugene rounded the bed, shucked off his robe and slippers, and slipped in beside Leckie, pulling the covers up over his shoulders as he settled.

He lay on his side facing Leckie and burrowed deep down into the pillow. One of Leckie's hands came to settle at his waist, thumb finding its way between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his pants and stroking at the bare skin there.

"Nice of you to join me," Leckie whispered, and Eugene responded by kissing him.

It was the first kiss he'd had since the last time he'd kissed Leckie, all the way back on Pavuvu—what felt like a lifetime ago now—but he was pleased to disscover that his body remembered well. Leckie's hand tightened on his waist before slipping around to the small of his back, pressing him closer.

"Your parents," he murmured against Eugene's lips. "Will they…?"

"They're asleep," Eugene promised, pulling away so he could look at Leckie the best he could manage in the dark. "And we'll be quiet. And I'll leave before they wake up. Or I'll wait here until they've gone downstairs in the morning and sneak back. They won't check on me if they think I'm asleep, they'd be too scared of accidentally waking me."