They say you're not meant to borrow grief from the future β Jason can see the headlights, hear the humming of a car engine, he can never be ready for the tragic certainty that awaits him; but he'll oblige. He'll abstain from reaching into the next time and backtrack a few years.
First, he struggled to loosen the grip his pallid fingers had on the sheets. Then, he'd struggled to open his eyes β rid himself of the image of a warehouse, branded into his eyelids with a white-hot needle. After that, he'd barely managed to wake up.
He reminded himself that the ivory percale bedsheets beneath him were familiar. The eggshell ceiling he'd hated (yet helped you paint) was already peeling in the corner. There had been no faint smell of laundry detergent or fabric softener; no relentless whisper of train tracks just outside the window; nothing but acridity and an unending laugh.
He was at home, he reminded himself.
His brain might have understood that if his heart wasn't screaming against the ribs trapping it. They also say the heart is a feral animal, and that it needs a cage. He agreed with that one, at least.
The cruel, selfish part of him β the one that was hungry and hollow and had only ever wanted someone to call his own β wanted to clutch at your hands (so clean, practically holy) and draw you from your sleep just to have you whisper your sweet nothings into his ear. The other, more stubborn part and the part that was yet to lose a battle, told him to suck it up and take it like a fucking man. Ladies and gentlemen, the duality of man.
But his breath was growing shallower by the moment, and if he remembered his tenth-grade biology lessons right then he was about to start restricting oxygen supply to his limbs pretty soon. Gritted teeth kept him from making any substantial noise, but it was growing harder to care.
His heart was trying to break Usain Bolt's record and he was pretty sure he was facing hypothermia in the middle of a well-heated bedroom. It hurt. He hurt.