#wud

Day 29 - 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.