#wud

Jason woke slowly, like the city had just spat him out. Groggy, head throbbing faintly. His consciousness stirred, a sliver of awareness in the back of his mind told him it was close to noon. 

Blinds drawn, the apartment was dim and hazy, like the room was holding its breath. Bits of warm light filtered in through the narrow slats, falling over the tangled bedsheets like bright, gold leaves.

His bleary eyes pried open, lashes clumped with crust. His gaze dipped down to see Sabine curled away from him and on her phone, screen angled away from his view and casting a white glow over her face.

It had been an ordeal to convince her to go back to bed. She was too wired, too jittery. It made his chest throb to see her like that, like someone had taken a hot knife and buried it between his ribs. Gently, he had peeled the cardigan she wore like armor off her shoulders and down her arms, coaxing her back to the cave of blankets.

He was going to sleep on the couch to give her some space, until Sabine, frankly appalled, bunched her fist into his shirt and yanked him down with her.

“Stay,” she had said, voice brimming with hushed fervor.

Tired as hell and not wanting to argue, Jason gave in easily. He had shrugged off his jacket and kicked off his boots, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and collapsed with physical exhaustion next to her.

Sabine heard his breathing shift from slow and deep into a wide yawn and twisted around to face him. Snuggled up beside him like this, she could barely feel the winter chill.

For a half second, her eyes lingered on his white shirt--soft and wrinkled, still damp in some spots from a shower. How the sleeves hugged his biceps, how the fabric stretched over his chest. 

Her gaze trailed further up and that was when she saw the deep scarring on his neck, almost hidden under the shadow of his jawline and stubble. 

The silvery shine of scarred skin was enough to sober up any wandering thoughts.

“Sleep at all?” Jason asked hoarsely. 

His eyes swept over her, taking in how the late-morning glow dappled her shoulders and the nape of her neck, slanting over the curve of her hip where her shirt was rucked up to her waist. She looked like a heart-palpitating figment of his imagination.

Sabine shook her head. “Too awake," she whispered back, "and I didn’t want to bother you.”

It was a half-lie. When she did try to shut her eyes, she dreamed of the House of Mystery and its endless labyrinthine hallways lined with cobwebs, hundreds of locked doors, the library full of floating books and candles, and staircases that led to nowhere. 

“S’fine,” he said, words slurred. He rubbed at his eye with a bruised knuckle. "What're you up to?"

"Texting Avery," Sabine said tiredly. 

Jason lifted a brow as if to wordlessly ask who?

She returned her attention to her phone, hoping to hide the way her face burned, “A classmate." 

The bed rocked as Jason rolled into his back and bent an arm behind his head. He squinted at the ceiling as if trying to remember a particular face in the sea of dozens in the crowded lecture hall.

"The one with the piercings?" he wondered, not fully awake. 

"That's Paloma."

“Oh." He paused, then said, "You got class today?”

A muddled emotion rippled across her face. “Yeah. Not going, though.”

Jason side-eyed her in a way that made her feel bare and exposed. And after last night, she might as well be. She didn't like how many times Jason had seen her like this--like a small creature turned belly up, exposing its softest and weakest flesh. 

Text sent, Sabine locked her phone and buried it under a pillow. She stilled when her fingers bumped metal, realizing where Jason had stashed his handgun.

A stern lecture brewed in her head, something about how guns did not belong in the bed.

But the argument quickly dissolved on her tongue when she propped herself up on an elbow and stared down at his half-awake face; his dark hair was a fluffy mess from air drying, white curl catching some of the light, and his gaze was hooded under his dark lashes, eyes glowing faintly like distant stars in the night sky.

"Jay," she breathed unevenly, pulse thudding in her skull, "I'm sorry."

Jason was sorry that he had left.

His expression warped at that. "For what?"

Sabine huffed, soft but not condescending. "Feels like you came running over here for nothing, I guess." 

"Don't hafta apologize for that," he said, tired and unbothered. "You deserve to be safe. Feel safe."

Her lips pressed into a flat line, worrying over being the girl who cried wolf and wondering what other twisted and horrible entities she had unknowingly invited into her life.

Wasn't that one of the cardinal rules in horror movies and books? The one who fucked around, found out; reaping the gut-churning consequences. She wondered if she had what it would take to be the final girl standing when the dust settled.

“Sab, it’s fine,” he insisted after she had been quiet long enough for him to be concerned.

The covers rustled softly, and the mattress shifted with movement. The weight of her body slid over his chest. She hooked a leg over his hip, languidly half-draping herself on top of him like a cat that found a warm sunbeam to lay in—all soft curves and body heat. 

Jason considered himself a strong-willed man. He had spent the last minutes of his childhood dying—painfully—in a cold warehouse, watching blocky red numbers tick down towards his demise. 

But even the grave hadn’t been able to keep his body down, he clawed his way out. 

He stitched his own wounds with steady hands, faced down the worst Gotham had to offer, scrubbed his own blood off floors.

But he remembered with sick, painful clarity the nightmare, and the horror transferred through their joined palms and knotted fingers.

And, god, he didn't want to inflict that on her again. 

So, he closed his eyes and swallowed down the desperate, animal urge to touch her. Anything to keep himself from threading a hand into her hair and leading her face down towards his—

Sabine's hand drifted down his front, fingers so tenderly splayed over his ribs and heart that it made him feel like the awful, jagged y-shaped scar on his chest was going to split open all over again. 

Her voice floated over him, breaking him out of his thoughts, "I'll make it up to you with breakfast."

He cracked open his eyes again. His hands clenched at his sides, fingers grabbing the bedsheets instead of her hair. 

Jason’s throat bobbed. “And coffee,” he said, trying not to sound as wrecked as his insides felt.

Sabine tipped forward until their foreheads and noses almost touched.

Day 29 - wud

The air in the apartment was tense as Sabine sat on the foot of her bed, shoulders hunched over and a mug of green tea clutched tightly between her hands.

Any inkling of determined resolve burned away as the sun crawled over the horizon.

Soft orange light spilled in through the window, stretching slowly across the floor as dark night melted into early morning.

The rev of a motorcycle on the street below snagged her attention, cutting through the restless murmur of city noise—a car alarm blaring somewhere, the low electric hum of streetlights, crows cawing from their perch on the telephone wires.

Footsteps sounded on the fire escape, like someone was scrambling up the metal stairs in heavy, steel-toed boots.

Then there was movement near the window and a shadow fell over her.

A dark figure appeared on the other side of the fogged-up glass, blocking out some of the light. Broad shouldered and imposing. Recognizable.

Jason didn't knock, just opened the unlocked window and slid inside. It closed with a thud behind him, glass rattling in the pane.

Without a word, his eyes flicked over to Sabine, assessing her. He mentally cataloged the way unease oozed off her; her hands cradled the coffee cup at her lips, one leg curled up on the bed, the bruise-purple bags under her eyes from a restless night, the way the baggy cardigan she had thrown on made her appear smaller, more vulnerable and fragile. Like a cornered animal.

Jason had just dragged himself in from patrol, shucked off his gear, and hit the shower to wash off the night's grime. Then he was about to collapse into his bed and burrow into the blankets and pillows when the phone on his nightstand buzzed.

His hand fumbled for his phone, just to look, because the time was ticking towards 6 a.m., andwho the hell would be calling him at this hour?

Phone inches from his face in the darkness of his bedroom, Sabine’s name glared back at him from the tiny, illuminated screen like a lone neon sign flashing through the night.

Three missed calls from her.

Three.

He stared at the screen as his brain stopped functioning, like a foot stomping down on a brake pedal.

His body was in motion before his lagging mind caught up. Somewhere in-between a shirt being halfway pulled over his head with one arm shoved through a sleeve and phone jammed between his shoulder and ear, he had already crossed his apartment to snatch up his bike keys. He nearly slammed a shin into his coffee table as he frantically tugged his boots back on.

Before her now, Jason looked disheveled and feral—jacket and shirt rumpled like he had grabbed them off the floor. His black hair was floppy and damp, white curl plastered to his forehead. There was a new gash on his temple, a burst blood vessel visible in his left eye. His cheeks were flushed with exertion and dappled with sweat. And his green eyes nearly glowed, reflecting like an alley cat's in the dark.

Utter exhaustion clouded his face. And underneath that, something darker lurked. Lethal and ready.

Sabine's studio apartment was much as he remembered the last time he was here, small and cluttered with secondhand furniture. The couch had threadbare cushions, color faded as if it had been left out in the sun. The low coffee table that wobbled slightly, its surface water-stained from rings of countless mugs. The chipped kitchen drawers that stuck when pulled, swollen from time and humidity. The little two-person dining table she used as a desk that sagged under the weight of an intimidating stack of textbooks, leaning precariously to one side.

He noticed her travel suitcase sat in the corner, still zipped up tight and unpacked.

Tiny scuffs on the floor hinted that the furniture had been shifted. Something only trained, uncannily observant eyes would notice.

His hard-set expression didn't flicker or budge at the wards scrawled over surfaces he uncovered.

Sabine watched. Her tired brown eyes tracked his movements as he prowled around her space like an agitated panther locked inside a cage. She could just picture it too; black hair bristled from head to tail, the edges of his mouth twisted into a fierce snarl, and claws out and clacking against metal, ready to strike.

The floorboards groaned under his steps.

His leather gloves creaked as he folded and unfolded his hands into fists.

When Jason crouched to examine the shag rug, a glint of shiny metal in the back waistband of his jeans caught the light and made Sabine's heart double thud against her ribs.

Her breath hitched. "Christ, Jason, is that a—“

She didn't even know why she even sounded surprised. Maybe it was because he wasn't in his gear. No helmet, no body armor, no holsters. But he certainly carried himself like the Red Hood, exuding that trademark ‘don’t fuck with me’ swagger like he was the most dangerous threat in the room.

He slanted his bloodshot eyes her way and gave her a one-shouldered shrug, all business but not unkind.

“You said someone broke in."

The timbre of his voice sounded oddly stripped and calm. Restrained.