It's not unusual for Cesca Montoya to be awake at this ungodly hour, but something is different about tonight. Something is very different. Tonight (or today, she muses distractedly), there is someone in bed beside her, someone with lean, muscular arms and a warm, reassuring embrace.
Jonah.
His chin rests atop her head, his hands splayed protectively against her flat stomach, keeping her safe from the world's accusing eyes, staving off reason. She lies quietly in his arms, watching the seconds tick by on her bedside clock, waiting for the first grey fingers of light to filter in through the curtains and accuse her with their harsh, gnarled bones, accuse her of taking advantage, or leading him on, of taking his innocence.
It's wrong, what they've done. She should never have allowed herself to kiss him, let alone allow things to get as far as this; cuddled up in the cloak of darkness, naked flesh against naked flesh. Guilt flashes through her body, and she closes her eyes at its intensity. Her career is on the line now. For weeks it has been teetering on the edge, threatening to snap from the thread that keeps it suspended above the roiling cauldron of corrosive acid. Now it has shattered, and she can already feel its bitter burn.
This shouldn't have happened.
But then she feels him shift against her, rousing blearily as she presses herself more securely against him, hears him murmur, "Cesca, are you okay?" against her hair as his palm slides up her side to press over her racing heartbeat, and that sound – the sound of his warm, assured voice rumbling quietly through the darkness – banishes those resounding doubts from her mind, and she relaxes fully in his embrace.
"I'm fine," she whispers back and realises that it is the utter truth. Lying here in the darkness of two AM, with Jonah's arms around her, feels scarily right. She brings his knuckles to her mouth, kissing them fiercely to emphasise her point, and she feels his smile against her hair.
In the comforting darkness of two AM there are no regrets. In the comforting darkness of two AM there are no accusing fingers. In the comforting darkness of two AM there are no ill omens of wrong.
There is only the warm weight of Jonah against her, the most right feeling in the world.
A/N: This is quite clearly set after episode 6.14, the night after the first time. In 6.15 Cesca says that she has "no regrets", but I'm sure at some point during the night she must have felt some sort of guilt. This is my stab at it.
Let me know what you think of my first Jesca attempt, and more drabbles are to follow soon. :D