RISK & REWARD ✔️

72 | 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳...𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥...

surprise. she's back a day early baby!! thank u all for waiting and i hope ur all just as eager to get back into reading r&r as i am to get back into writing it (:

MORNING comes in a golden haze. I wake up with a warm shape breathing in my arms; she's not awake yet, and so I just lay there. Lay there in the dim luster of early morning and let my eyes flutter closed and hold on snugly around her back.

As I drift further and further off, I tune out the whole world, save for the part cozied up against me. I ignore the prickle on my nape. I ignore the shift in front of me; warm, so warm...

Something soft bumps my nose, rests there for a moment before it bumps me again. I groan shortly, squint as I open my eyes, and...and oh, she's looking at me. Sleepy green eyes swallow mine, blink hazily and blur as my vision clouds.

"Hi," I manage, voice a throaty croak.

She doesn't answer right away. She just keeps looking at me; she looks, and she breathes, and she finally half-sigh, half-groans out a "hey."

She rolls into the crook of her elbow, face half-hidden under me and pressed into her pillow. The sheets roll back as she moves; the dragon winks at me from where it's curled up against dark, soft skin. Clearly, she's in no rush to get up. Truthfully, I am and am not; on one hand, Vegas. On the other, staying in bed with Slade.

I choose the latter, for now. Lazily, I trace my finger along the red lines of her tattoo. A low hum comes from somewhere low in her chest; her brow draws briefly before she relaxes again, nosing deeper into her arm. Outside, I hear the whine of a car coming to life, drone slowly out and away from the hotel. I hear the distant hum of a plane so many miles overhead. People, going to places new, places old.

Soon, we'll be two of them.

Slade snores. Pauses. Snores again, louder this time.

Her elbow pokes the bottom of my thigh, and I glance down. Fresh-out-of-sleep green eyes stare back at me.

She makes that snoring sound, again, and only now do I realize she's actually trying to say something.

"What?"

Slade lifts her head. Her brow furrows and her eyes squint as she wavers on her forearms, screws her nose up in confusion. When she speaks again, her voice is pushed out, like she's really trying to pull them out of her chest.

"Wh'times'it?"

"What...? Oh. It's, uh," and I lean over, "it's seven forty-eight."

"Mm." Blearily, Slade responds, still slightly-swaying. Her hair's a mess, strewn out around her face like a very chaotic black-and-white halo. When I peel a lock of it away from her cheek and partly out from her mouth, her eyes open; she looks at my hand with hazy eyes, follows it up to my elbow and then my shoulder and then my face.

"Y'awanna get breakfast?"

We split a waffle.

Actually, Slade tries to make a waffle, fills the thing too much and winds up causing it to overflow with batter which then pushes us both to (with a chorus of whispered cursing) to try and wipe all the stuff up. We manage, kind of; neither of us choose to address the off-white smears on the counter, nor do I address the foamy crust drying on Slade's fingers as she cuts our waffle and pushes a plate of slightly-undercooked breakfast my way, sliding a sealed cup of syrup over after it.

"You're sure about this?"

Slade glances up as a mom and her two young kids wander into the room, and the latter immediately rushes to the food counter. "Yeah," she replies, shrugging. "It'll be fine."