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Ozzy wakes from the dream silently except for a quick gasp of breath. His brow is damp with sweat, moonlight making his skin shine. He controls his breathing, forcing himself not to slip into hyperventilating.
After he feels like he’s no longer in danger of having a panic attack, he sits up, shoving his sweaty hair back, the curls made limp by the moisture. He swings his feet over the edge of the bed, and pauses there, hands on his knees, staring at the energetically patterned rug beneath his feet. He doesn’t think about the dream. Focuses on the individual carpet fibers that make up the rug.
He gets up after a moment, and moves to the dresser to pull on a pair of sweats. He eases the door to his room open, and heads as silently as he can manage down the hall, hoping not to wake any of the team.
The window is open to the roof when he gets to it. Before Ozzy can duck through it, a voice calls softly inside from the roof.
“Murphy nightmare?” Mason guesses, grey eyes illuminated in the moonlight. He probably heard Ozzy’s heartbeat approaching, he doubts a human would have sensed his approach.
Ozzy shrugs as he steps carefully out onto the roofing. Mason watches him until he’s settled properly, body shifting to be ready to steady him if need be.
They’re silent. It’s an easy silence, the quiet between them comfortable.
Ozzy looks at the sky, and thinks about the astronomy class he took in university as an elective. It had had nothing to do with his major, but he wishes he’d taken more than one class on the subject. Part of the class had been to do observations, which had amounted to going stargazing for hours at a time.
He feels like he’s going to fall into the stars, laying on the roof like this. He always feels like this, looking at the multitudes stretching out above him. Feels like he’ll simply float up and away, disappear in the vast.
It’s sometime after midnight, sometime before the sun. The night breeze is cool, and Ozzy tucks his arms loosely over his stomach. His legs dangle over the side, and he swings his sock clad feet in the night air slightly. It would be a precarious position, if not for the vampire at his side who would catch him should he slip.
Mason is staring out into the forest, flicking his light to life distractedly every so often. Ozzy lets his head fall to the side to watch the flame die and be born again, watch the way his thumb rolls off the striker.
“I used to smoke, you know.” Ozzy says, not realizing the words are falling from his lips until Mason turns to look at him.
“Tina and I, we started smoking together in high school. Thought it was cool, or something.” He continues, letting loose a quiet, bitter snort, “I don’t know.”
“Does it bother you?” Mason asks, after a moment.
Ozzy hms, thinking, rolling his head to look back towards the stars. These nights on the rooftop feel like dreams, sometimes. Hushed conversations held under a blanket of dark light, alone on a rooftop island in a sea of trees. There’s an edge of rawness when they sit here together. The context for how they dance back and forth is lost on these nights, and they are left simply as they are, laid bare beneath the weight of the sky.
“No.”
“You’re lying.” Mason says, and Ozzy can hear the frown in his voice.
“A little.” He agrees. Mason huffs, and it's somewhere between amused and nonplussed. So much of Mason is hidden beneath, Ozzy thinks, but not here. “It’s not the smoking, that bothers me.”
Mason stays quiet, and Ozzy continues, eyes tracing the lines of Orion above him, “I only quit because of him.”
“Bobby?” Mason guesses, voice turning into a growl over the name. Ozzy hms again, busy picking Perseus out of the sea of pinprick light.
“He kicked me out of the apartment once. Said not to bother talking to him until I’d quit.” Eyes fixed on the big dipper, nestled inside Ursa Major, “I quit, cold turkey. When I came back, he’d thrown out all the clothes I’d left. Said they smelled.”
“So no. The smoking doesn’t bother me, Mason. It’s fine.” Ozzy finishes, and sighs as he sits up, finally tearing his eyes away from the stars to look back at Mason. The vampire has a look of concern he doesn’t think he’s ever seen on Mason before. Mason reaches out, cupping Ozzy’s cheek, running his thumb over the skin. Ozzy shuts his eyes, leans into the warmth of Mason’s hand.
“You’re crying, handsome.” Mason says softly, and his voice is thick.
“Shit.” Ozzy says, drawing back and trying to laugh, but it comes out too wet. He rubs at his cheeks, but the tears are starting to run too fast to be wiped away. The laugh turns into a sob. He hadn’t realized he was crying.
“Come here.” Mason murmurs, already reaching out to draw Ozzy into his arms. Ozzy sobs harder, letting himself be pulled in.
“ Shit. ” He says again, his voice breaking. Mason threads his long fingers through his hair, and lips press onto the crown of his head. Ozzy breaks down in Mason’s arms, crying into the crook of his shoulder, grasping his shirt like a lifeline. He doesn’t really even know why he’s crying, only that his entire existence feels like an exposed nerve, so that even the way Mason’s hand runs down his back feels like it could kill him.
He doesn’t know exactly when his sobs reduce themselves to occasional hitches of breath. Mason doesn’t let him go, keeps holding him close even after his breath evens out, tears dried.
They stay like that until Nate is calling them inside for breakfast, until the stars have disappeared completely under the weight of the sun’s light.