Near Death Experience

He froze, eyes opening wide until his more rational mind stopped in to point out that clearly Aleyn, who was looking at him helpfully, though still with sleepy wistfulness, clearly meant his *neck*. Message delivered, it abandoned Vedran to the less helpful parts that were pointing out just what all it said about him that his initial assumption had been anything else. "No, thanks," he managed, pulling his knees up to his chest and rolling his neck from side to side to stretch it, eyes safely closed again. Everything was fine, he tried to reassure himself: nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen. "I just need to get up, get moving around..."

"Okay," Aleyn nodded. "I should probably see if Warryn's awake, so I can get some less well-ventilated clothes," he added with a faint grimace. He moved towards the tent flap, but paused, looking back at Vedran. "This was nice," he said, smiling. "We should do it again some time, on purpose."

"Mmhmm," he answered noncommittally, smiling politely to cover his own confused feelings at the thought. "I'll catch you later."

"Yeah, see you later." Aleyn gave Vedran one last smile, hoping it was reassuring - he could read his tension a mile away, and didn't know any way to relieve it other than trying to let Vedran know that as far as he was concerned, everything was all right, better than all right even. He wasn't sure how much it would help, but it was worth a try, anyway, and at least it hadn't been a 'no' to doing it again...

He still had a smile on his face that he couldn't quite hide when he crept out of Vedran's tent and wandered off to his own.