I did say during the Advent calendar specials that Jason had a few NDAs he was working around...
***
I open my eyes to Figure With Meat. Jason's carried me into his bedroom and then settled in right beside me, one arm flung over my shoulders. Now he screws up his face and cracks open an eye with what seems great effort when I sit up.
Shagging might have been less awkward.
He props himself up on an elbow, embryonic dreads straggling round his face. "I never told you about Sharon," he says. I wait as he seems to gather himself. "You know how everything seems so important in high school, and she wanted to know why I couldn't make plans sometimes... So one month I showed her. And she told her parents, and they tried to have her committed." Jason's lips have gone a peculiar shade of grey. "When she got home she took the whole bottle of meds."
"Bloody hell."
He makes a small, lost gesture. "Well, I could be Button-Down, Raymond's parents just wigged out and sent him to military school before they even got to that part of the talk." He throws the blankets aside to all but roll out of the bed. "'M gonna get an aspirin. You want an aspirin? You look like you need an aspirin."
Something stronger. Whisky, or a mindless fuck against a wall with someone who doesn't look like anyone I've ever known. Tea. When I follow Jason into the kitchen the kettle's already on. "Mate."
Jason looks at the kettle as if he's not altogether sure why his first instinct in time of trouble has become to start a cuppa. "Sorry about the, I wasn't sure whether you'd fallen asleep or passed out. Seemed like I shouldn't leave you alone or something."
It's a reasonable enough explanation, blokely face saved and all that. "Yeah, erm... Yeah. Good thought."
"It's all fun and games until somebody ends up in the recovery position." He stifles a yawn. "You're gonna be okay now, though, right? I need to be up in a couple hours."
We'll see once I've had some tea, I suppose. For now I go to wait in front of the telly, turning it back on out of a sense of idle curiosity to a gossipy recap of the wedding. Jason pauses on his way back to bed to raise an eyebrow at the coverage of the maid of honour's (admittedly cracking) arse. "Yeah, I'm still into that," he says, sounding as if his biology is as much of a surprise to him sometimes.