Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

12; {Quentin}: three AM

Quentin woke to a sharp strike of hallway light and the sound of a door whining softly on its hinges.

He sat up, bidding his eyes to work the way they intended. He couldn't make out much of the shape blacking out that light, apart from the soft, bone-pale curls of sleep-mussed hair.

"Jaylin?"

The shape shut the door behind it, the lights flipped on and Quentin rubbed at the pain in his eyes. Sure enough, Jaylin stood there, sleep still warm on his face. Quentin observed him for the briefest moment and caught the way he was clutching his stomach.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, searching at his sides for the shirt he'd flung off in the middle of the night.

"It feels like knives," he heard Jaylin say. Quentin found the white cotton somewhere in his spill of blankets and pulled it on over his head. Turning like that had to take a lot out of a person. Especially when they were impaired of energy to begin with.

"We'll have to find you something," he said, rising from his bed.

"Room service?"

"It's—" Quentin paused and looked to the clock on the wall, "—three in the morning. Jesus, three in the morning."

"I'm sorry."

He felt like falling back into bed, but Jaylin was there—leaning against the frame of his door, that look of needy desperation on his face. He was a rumpled mess of sleep—shirt halfway tucked in a pair of shorts that reached his knees, hair stuck up on one side and flat on the other. Quentin couldn't help but grin at the sight of him.

Jaylin caught it, shifted a bit, like he felt vulnerable. "What?"

Too many things, Quentin wanted to say. Instead he took his room key from the night stand and killed that upsurging urge to reach out and touch him as he gave the door a shove. "Let's go."

He led Jaylin downstairs and into the foyer, where the lights had dimmed considerably. A new woman sat at the service desk, trying to push through her dreary night shift with half-mast eyes. He could hear the laugh-track of a sitcom, whispering through her computer speakers.

"What do you want?" Quentin asked him, searching through his collection of keys for the one to the rental car. "Beef, chicken? Name an animal."

Then he felt a warm touch on his arm as Jaylin caught him by the bicep. He stopped and turned, watching the way Jaylin raked his hand through the hair on his head, only for it to flop back over his eyes.

Quentin shoved his hands in his sweat pockets to keep them to himself. "What is it Jaylin?"

"Flapjacks." He said it like a question, with the abashed shrug of his shoulders.

"Flapjacks," Quentin repeated. "Nothing I can go and get you from a deli or a takeout joint. It has to be flapjacks?"

Jaylin grinned then—the kind of grin that made his nose wrinkle. "Yeah."

Damnit. As if. As if there was a single thing in this world that could seem unreasonable with that smile.

Quentin gave a painful sigh. Not because he minded a three-AM grocery haul, but because he was running out of places to put his hands.

"Alright. Flapjacks."

Apart from themselves, the store was nearly empty. Jaylin sat in the cart like an overgrown child, snatching things from the shelves that Quentin took from his hands and put back on most occasions.