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Sleep isn’t coming for him tonight. That’s more than clear when he lurches upright yet again and is greeted by a window still full of inky dark. He checks beside him before edging off the bed and padding from the room. Steve doesn’t like it when he gets up in the middle of the night, but it’s not worth the frustration of spending the next several hours staring at the ceiling fan and waiting for the sun to show up for work.
He decides 3AM is a perfectly reasonable time to eat like a child, which translates to a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and chocolate almond milk. It’s the kind of meal Steve would lecture him about and Tasha would completely understand, though she’s more likely to go for the sensible unsweetened cashew milk over his chocolate indulgence. He scrolls through a couple options for podcasts before settling on a series of documentary style shorts about obscure history. If he’s going to be awake, he’s going to pretend to accomplish something.
He leaves the kitchen table after an hour of loading up on sugar and historical minutiae. He lounges on the couch, closing his eyes and willing himself into the half awake, half dozing state that passes for rest on nights like this. He’s in the middle of trying to imagine an improvised and none too effective gallows (well, effective in that it rendered the occupant quite dead but ineffective in that gallows generally aren’t used for decapitation) in a prison somewhere in the flyover states when a weight lands squarely on him.
“The fuck?” he mutters, eyes opening to Tasha staring back at him.
“Hi.”
“Yes, you do appear to be.” It’s not exactly meant as sarcasm, but it probably sounds it. She’s blitzed. Again. Still. Who knows, or even cares at this point? Tasha’s a nightmare. His favorite nightmare, but a nightmare anyway.
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Don’t launch yourself at sleeping people without a warning.”
“That might work if you were actually sleeping. You’re doing that creepy not-asleep thing. What the hell are you listening to?”
“History.”
“Of executions?”
“Something like that. Seriously, though, where’ve you been?”
“Club. Maria wanted to go out.”
James can’t stop the grimace at the name. Maria’s not bad as friends go, but she’s not capable of keeping Tasha in check at all. Or maybe it’s that she doesn’t try. They’re party buddies more than friends, and if anything he expects Tasha likes her for the free hallucinogens rather than her winning personality. He honestly thought they lost touch a while ago, but then, Tasha’s never been very open about who she goes out with when it isn’t with him and Steve.
“Want to watch a film?” Tasha’s asking before he can get around to asking which club they hit. He nods, knowing better than to try convincing his idiot baby sister to go to bed at who knows when in the morning.
By the time she’s scrolled through the vast majority of the streaming queue, James is beginning to wonder if her vision is functioning well enough to read titles. Then she lands on 12 Strong and he has to bite his lip to keep from growling at her as the title sequence shows up. It’s not that the film bothers him. It doesn’t. Movie depictions never quite come close to reality and as trigger points go, they’re not an issue most of the time. The problem is that it prompts Tasha to start telling him truths he knows but doesn’t like acknowledging.
“I was so scared for you,” she murmurs, head slipping into the space between his chin and collar bone. She’s still firmly wedged in his lap, arms wrapped around tight now that she’s dropped the remote on the cushions of the couch. A single drop of moisture lands against his skin and he tightens his grip on her, hoping to ground her just a little bit. Tasha’s not big on emotions. Never has been, and she’d be mortified if she knew how teary she is when she’s coming down from the ecstacy she favors when she’s out with Maria.
“I lost you, you know,” she babbles. “And if you died I wouldn’t have even known, Jamie, no one would have told me, cause I’m not really family, not enough.”
“Shh, you have me now,” he tells her, because trying to reason with high and teary Tasha is less logical than conversing with the carpet.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too, Tash.”
She snuffles against him, and goes quiet. He runs fingers through her hair and holds on until she’s asleep, the movie playing in the background and his vision obscured by auburn curls. Nights like this, the haunting insomnia can be less curse than convenience. They don’t do heart to hearts, not really. But sometimes they do this, and it’s right.