Empty Bargains ~Jason McCann~

~9.27~

"Tell me something I don't know," I spoke absently to Jason, tracing small patterns on his bare chest.

"There's a lot you don't know," he huffed, catching my fingers as goosebumps raised on his body.

I smiled lightly. "You'd think a week of making out with me would make you feel obligated to tell me a few things about yourself."

"Maybe."

We were lying on his bed, the sheets tugged up around our waists as one of my legs was resting around Jason's hips. My head rested on a pillow facing him and he was on his back, a muscled arm slung behind my neck. A week since this whole thing had started, and I could say with reluctancy that my guilt level had died down. In fact, there was a span of three days where Tyler hadn't even crossed my mind. All I'd really thought about was Jason. It went against everything I'd ever been told growing up, but in recent days I had begun to question why.

"Twenty questions?" I suggested, looking at him in my peripheral.

His gaze turned to meet mine. "What?"

I rolled my eyes. "You know... I ask you twenty questions, you ask me twenty. Truthful answers are required." His forehead pulled together. I reached up to rub the creases with my pointer finger, grinning when he batted my touch away.

"Come on," I said. "Just one round. I don't know much more than what Sam has told me about you."

An edgy look from him told me I'd been close to saying the wrong thing. Seeing as Jason was a sensitive subject for my brother, it would only make sense for it to be the same case for him. But that didn't stop me from wanting to know about Jason. My intentions weren't completely innocent, seeing as I wanted to know where my gun and phone were, along with what was going on outside the four walls of Jason's place. When I was still at Markus's house, I got a constant feed of news from the guys, whereas here the guys - Blondie and Xander, to be specific - hardly talked around me without throwing a glare my way.

Jason looked up at the ceiling, trying to remain unreadable by me. He succeeded, leaving me clueless until he looked down a good ten seconds later.

"I'll give you five," he said.

I tried not to show my disappointment. Five questions definitely weren't enough to warm up to the ones I wanted to ask, and I couldn't full out ask Jason where he was hiding my stuff. I wasn't going to pretend to think he trusted me. Truthfully, the word 'trust' probably wasn't even remotely in the vocabulary we used toward each other. Would I ever trust Jason? I didn't know. I didn't want to think far enough down the road to the day I might trust Jason McCann, infamous to pretty much everyone in the whole state of California.

"What's your favorite color?" I asked - better to act harmless than to let him know I wanted to pry into his life.

Jason snorted. "You're wasting a question on that?"

I sat up and looked him in the eye. "It's so not a waste. What if you died today and I'm haunted by the ever-present thought that I never knew your favorite color?"