Ghost of You

s e v e n t e e n

My eyes slowly began to blink open, once and then again. A bright light shone from the nearest window making it hard for my eyes to adjust to my surroundings even though I knew from the familiar shape of the mattress and indent of my pillow exactly where I was. 

I'm no good at waking up without an alarm. For some reason that annoying blare of my phone forces my system to start in a way that waking up without one never does. I'm guessing it's something to do with the element of surprise, the rushed need to make the sound stop as soon as possible compelling the signals in my brain to start firing. Without it I could take all the time in the world to slowly come to my senses, no motivation force starting my body into action. It makes those mornings where I wake up naturally more peaceful but also quite groggy and fuzzy, like I had some kind of hangover. And groggy and fuzzy was exactly how I felt.

My entire world was blurry, even after I began to adjust to the light, reminding me that I hadn't yet put on my glasses or found my contacts. I laid there for a moment, still squinting into my room. What time was it anyway? 

Somehow I managed to reach over to my bedside table, my hand fumbling over surface feeling for my phone. I came up empty other than my glasses, my fingers wrapping around the wired rims and bringing them towards my face. The rims missed, the end of the glasses going straight into my eye. 

I groaned, rolling over so I could face the other side of my bed, rubbing at my sore eye. Dropping the hand to the side, I used one arm to prop myself up on my elbow, still massaging the one I had just stabbed with my glasses. When I gave up hope of rubbing the pain away I let my hand fall to my side, opening my eyes once more to see if my phone was on the other bed side table. Only I couldn't see my nightstand at all.  

I nearly screamed. The blurred outline of a man was laying on the other side of my bed. I shoved my glasses on, blinking furiously until I could make out the figure. 

Steve. Steve was in my bed. Steve was in my bed? What the hell?

I slowly started shifting away from him, trying not to wake him up as panic mode began to set in. Thankfully, I was able to make it to the edge of the bed, swinging my legs over to the side and making a quick tip-toed dash for the bathroom without making too much noise. Closing the bathroom door behind me did nothing to stall my growing anxiety. Sure there was now a locked door in between me and man in my bed but that in no way eliminated his current existence in my bed in the first place.

As I turned from the door, I saw my phone sitting on the bathroom vanity. Picking it up, I saw that it was seven-thirty. When I went to place my cell back on the counter I noticed my first-aid kit resting opened on my bathroom vanity. Everything slowly came back to me then. Steve and I training, him forcing me to use the daggers, me telling him about my father as I cleaned up the mark I had put on his arm. And then we had... we had... well, I'm not really sure how to classify what came after because we had never done that before. Except we had, we had slept together before but not like that. It had never been like that.

Even so, none of this explained what Steve was currently doing in my room. I wouldn't go as far to say that Steve is predictable person. He had surprised me many times before, his closed off nature making it hard to know what exactly he was thinking or feeling. Over the past months I had constantly found myself wondering what he was going to do next and my guesses had normally ended up being completely wrong. At the same time, Steve always had a certain consistency about him. The oatmeal breakfast he ate every morning, his need to be the hero when he saw things were headed in a bad direction, his penchant and talent for pissing me off. These things and many others he did every day without fail. But of all of those, the one consistency I was so sure he would never break, was spending the night in my bed.