12

Winston lies in his bed and stares up into the darkness. It's night, the lamps shut off, and he's presumably supposed to be sleeping.

The blinds are pulled won but not shut, and the streetlamps casts long shadows over the bed. Winston's eyes are dry as sand, his hands steady where they lay on his stomach, and yet he feels... shattered.

Like a cracked mirror.

Taking a deep breath, he counts to ten out loud. The sound is loud, shocking, cracking through the air like a whip of lightning. Winston winces when he falls silent again, the glaring darkness pressing down on him, the looming streetlights pulling him down into a strange ocean.

He doesn't move. Frozen like a statute, Winston stays put on the bed.

The room is tiny.

His apartment is a studio, the narrow bed wedged into a sharp corner. There's no balcony, but the windows are huge and his faces the street below. There's a billboard in the distance he can almost see from this angle, a huge thing nearly always full of neon colors.

Time passes.

Winston doesn't sleep.

An hour later, he picks up his phone. The light is glaring in the darkness, nearly blinding, and he hisses as he turns his face away. Biting his lower lip, Winston thumbs through a few different apps before he settles on the messaging app. He stares at it, turning on his side so he doesn't need to the arduous task of holding the phone above. Curling his legs up to his chest, he glances at the time.

Would it be weird, to send a message this late? Would it be bothersome? Annoying?

Winston swallows heavily.

Finding Jason's number saved in the contact list, Winston opens a new message. He stares at the empty space for a long second, eyes nearly half-mast. The light falls on hims in stripes, his breath sending smoke drifting throughout the room, dust-motes swirling through the air on the resulting currents.

He doesn't want to wait any longer. Winston has held back on messaging Jason; has stayed his hand out of a sense of politeness. A desire to not seem too eager. A desire to be taken seriously, perhaps.

But he doesn't want to wait.

(What if Jason changes his mind? What if Winston waits too long and Jason finds someone else? What if this is only a whim, if Jason only felt like it in the moment and he'll change his mind when he's no longer around Winston? What if Winston waits, and the chance passes him by?)

(What if Winston waits, and Jason never looks at him again?)

(He doesn't know why Jason agreed in the first place, doesn't have any idea why a guy like that---so full of life and love and joy---would ever look at Winston and see anything other than the joyless mundane.)

His text is, in the end, a simple, "How about the movies this Friday evening, after classes?" Two minutes later and he realizes he never gave Jason his number, and he hurriedly types out ---typos included---"this is winston sinclair. the guy that asked you out. and you said yes."

After another minute, he realities that he doesn't know how many people ask Jason out, or how many he says yes to. So he adds one more; "there was a note with glitter on it" and hopes that that's distinctive enough to distinguish him from the masses. There must be dozens of people whom have asked Jason out, Winston thinks then. Jason is like the sun; shining bright and with an unavoidable gravity.

How could anyone ever look at him and not be entranced?

Dropping the phone, Winston stares out the window in silence. He counts his breath once more, wonders if that vague pressure in his stomach means his bladder is thinking of staging a new siege, and has just turned onto his back again when there's a quiet ping. It seemingly echoes through the room, filtering into his ears as though it's from a great height. Winston flinches, can't help, curling his lips in disdain at his reaction.

But he shifts, sheets rustling in the narrow room, and he reaches for his phone. Fumbles, for a second, palms sweaty. When he finally gets his grip on it properly, he turns to the side again and unlocks the phone. Clicks right on the notification and ends up in the messaging app.

It's from Jason.

Winston's breath hitches in his throat, lungs freezing as the phone drops onto the bedding. He flinches, again, and mutters a quiet, "Shit" to himself as hurriedly picks up the phone again, swiping around until he's back in the app. Jason's message is still there, thankfully. He exhales softly, briefly shutting his eyes before he actually reads it.

It's a simple: "That sounds good" followed by a grinning emoji.

Winston blinks. He sits up, crosses his legs over each other and bends closer to the screen, staring at it. The light reflects in his face, blinding him for a moment until he adjusts. His chest does an odd thing while his stomach flutters, and he licks his lips. Wide-eyed, Winston reads the message over and over again for over a minute.

He presses a hand to his eyes, resting his head on it and leaning forwards until at last he pitches all the way over and lands face-first on the bed again. Bouncing for the briefest second, Winston turns around onto his back and looks up at the ceiling; the stripes of light from the window almost makes it look like a tiger's hide, he thinks. He does his best to bite down on his smile, turning onto his side after another second. He's somehow ended up with his head at the foot of the bed, feet right up on the pillow, and he presses a hand to his chest.

He balances the phone on his chest with one hand as he writes with the other, painstakingly typing out with only one finger: "awesome, i'll get the tickets and send you the details. is there a genre or something you don't want to watch?"

Then he drops the phone back on his chest and it slides right down to his throat and almost kills him. "Fuck," he wheezes, just managing to catch it in time. Exhaling, he rests his hands on his stomach, bigger than his chest even he's lying down, and flexes his fingers.

Waits breathlessly.

Finally, there's another ding and Winston's breath leaves him in a great big whoosh. He fumbles with his phone again but when he finally unlocks it, there's a new message from Jason right there. An effective: "just nothing with lots of jumpscares or like, tragic romances. otherwise, anything goes."

In response, Winston sends a lame, "cool"

Then he throws the phone away on the pullout bed and splays out on the narrow bed like a starfish, fingers reaching the edge of the bed on both sides. He stares silently up at the ceiling again for a moment, then smiles. After another moment, he lets his self-control go and sequels, heart clenching and stomach fluttering. He presses his hands to his eyes and stays right where he is for a long time.

He falls asleep with a smile.