I'm way too young to lie here forever⭐️

[nifties]

John is doing that creepy thing again where he wakes up long before Zari (if he ever slept) and watches her sleep later into the morning. One slightly rough hand smooths its way up and down her arm as he waits patiently for her to come to, leaning up against the headboard and trying to calculate how much time they have before someone crashes in here to get them to breakfast and then to some broken part of history. Since coming back from their vacation, they haven't spent much quality time one-on-one between the team and each of their day jobs. Not to mention him getting Astra settled and everything that's going on there. It only makes the time they do have more precious, though, and moments like this seem all the more surreal.

"Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?" he murmurs in his gravely tone that comes from too many years of cigarettes and booze. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and Summer's lease hath all too short a date." He's realizing as he recites the poem how long it's actually been in real-world time since the Romeo and Juliet debut. That kiss... The back of his hand travels over her cheek gently, thinking it unfair that as a timetraveler he can't make this moment last forever.

Comments

[influenceher]

She's never going to be able to forget how he started this conversation. Zari has seen him kill before to protect her and the team. Talking that way about a friend will forever spook her to the core. The context helps, of course. What's the saying? Forgive, but never forget? That doesn't stop Zari from leading him to a room. Certainly doesn't stop her from pulling her hair into a messy pineapple bun and crawling into bed with John.

She lets him hold her like nothing ever happened, kiss her sweetly, and drift off to bed. "I love you too." She reassures, voice uncharacteristically small even while sincere. Zari doesn't go to sleep right away. She stays up to watch him for a solid hour, reconciling all the violence and tough calls with the man who needs reassurance that he's satisfying her, that clings to her side whenever possible. There's no satisfactory answer to be found.

She falls asleep to the sound of his breathing shortly after that hour mark. Zari will stay dead asleep in blissful darkness for another ten hours. It has, after all, really been a day.