Chapter 49

Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 25– The Morning After.

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Ahh, I don't want to open my eyes.

I am just so comfortable, surprisingly. I am very lucid as well, not like I was yesterday. At least, I think that was yesterday. I am feeling so good and refreshed that I think I might have slept for an entire week. Where the last time I awoke, I felt like shit and hurt like hell, right now, I am so relaxed, and I feel like I am resting in the middle of a light, fluffy cloud.

Unfortunately, I am wide awake, even if I have not opened my eyes yet. Still, I want to just sit back and relish in the feeling of bliss I have awakened to. In fact, wanting to go back to sleep but knowing that I could not do so in this position, I try and move to face the bed so as to sink into and smother myself to sleep once more. Except, I can't.

As soon as I try to move, I gain full awareness of my body and all my extremities. And I realise that they are all a bit heavier than they are supposed to be and that there is actually something on top of me pressing down on me, and yet I am not frustrated by this weight. On the contrary, whatever is on top of me is soft and feels excellent pressed against me, and with a quick sniff, I discover it smells great as well. But as I move my head, I feel strands of something moving across my face and moving across the front of my nose, and I realise that is where the smell of strawberries is coming from.

Opening my eyes, my vision is full of white. Or, to be more accurate, platinum blonde. Looking down, I see the top of Felecia's head, an ocean of gorgeous hair filling my vision as she is resting with her head atop my chest. My movement must have irritated her in her sleep a bit since she began to move, and I held my breath, not knowing what to do, but then she settled, her hair now out of my face giving me a fantastic view of her sleeping, peaceful face.

I am confused. Not that I am complaining, because obviously, this is a wonderful situation to wake up in, especially after nearly dying. But just how has it come to this. I find it very hard to try and figure out the sequence that could have led to me waking up recovering from a near-death experience to then waking up the next day with Felecia sleeping on top of me in what looks to be my own bed.

Not to mention the fact that this is Felecia, a woman that I have a very weird relationship with. She is a woman that I really have mixed feelings about, and to make things worse, those feelings are each extreme. On the one hand, she is a manipulative woman that uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants and initially approached me to use me to help her increase her riches or get some sort of amusement out of it.

Then on the other, this woman gave me some direction when I was left out in the cold with nowhere to go. So even if it was done with ulterior motives, the result remains the same. And then, even if it started off somewhat sinister, nothing ever came of it, and we slowly settled into a rhythm of helping one another, having fun and being there for one another. I would have wanted and tried for more, but I couldn't bring myself to open up and try with her. I was too cautious, and all I wanted to do was leave this city and live a calm life somewhere.

And yet, I have begun to question my previous course of action now that I nearly died. No doubt I still want to live a calm and quiet life away from New York, the epicentre of trouble in this universe, but I also don't want to have any regrets or miss anything. Life is fleeting. Want and restraint or two sides to a tug-of-war game, and If you do too much of one, you will just end up the worse for it. So the question is, even if it might have burnt and hurt me in the end, would I have regretted not going for it if I died at that point?

You know, at the end of the day, I think- Oh, shit, she's moving around, I think she is waking up, and I- I don't know what to do. How do I handle this? What should I say? Awkward, hey, how are you doing? Do you know why we are like this? No. So casual, hey, I slept great, what about you? No. So Humourous, did you take advantage of me in my sleep? So many options and not enough time. What do I do?

"Uhh." Felecia moans and my instincts quickly take over and do the work for me, forgoing the thinking process entirely. This is why I am a bit surprised when my body flops and the back of my head hits the pillow, my eyes quickly close, and my breathing starts to regulate itself, faking being asleep. But, huh, you know, I had that revelation, and everything about regrets, and the conclusion I came to was that I don't want to regret anything, that I want to take things head on, and yeah, I want to try with Felecia, whatever it is, I want to try.

I guess it is hard for a leopard to change its spots. Even if you have a realisation and realise that you should change, it is not that easy, just like there are still; vestiges of Spider-Man in me, stopping a crime if I see it. Hell, part of me is very much enjoying this Batman crusade I am going on, even if I am justifying it to be in my own self-interest. But, just like the Peter Parker in me is showing its white stripes, the man from the other world in me is revealing himself as well. A man that took the easy road most of the time and ran away from difficulty and conflict and avoided it like the plague.

"Hmm, shit. I guess I am still stuck here, huh? I would have thought he would lose his grip sometime in his sleep." I hear her say something, but I am more focused on beating myself up for immediately turning my back on my new philosophy right after I had just made it. It's weird because I have been facing fists, guns and bombs all the time while being Batman, and I never flinched, not once. And yet, when it came to Bullseye, who is, at the end of the day, just a normal guy with supernatural accuracy, I bolted. Yeah, maybe it was because I was bleeding out, and I had a big hole in me. But, the fact remains, I am stronger, tougher, smarter and all-around better than him, and I could have won against him. But my instinct was to flee; I came upon a hard fight and got hit and ran away.

Ever since I woke up in that smoke stack and climbed my way out of its depths, I have been on easy mode, enemies having low health and low awareness with me having a fuck ton of health. But then, I was booted up to moderate, and I fucking shit the bed and flailed like a dying fish. I wasn't on easy mode, I was just in the tutorial, and the difficulty level is actually on the hardest possible level, realistic. I, I think- I think I know my problem.

"Hey Felecia, I had an awesome sleep. The best I think I have ever had. What about you?" I think too much. That is my problem, and it has been the thing fucking me up the most. This world is scary, and I get caught up in my thoughts, fretting over my worries and problems. And from there, it snowballs, my mind racing and jumping to all sorts of conclusions and jump of points till I have frightened myself into bad decisions and an unhappy life- Fuck, I'm doing it again.

"W-What? You are awake, Ben?" Felecia says, her head quickly jolting up from where it was resting atop my chest as she backs away slightly, though she doesn't move that far for some reason, and her arm is still leaning over me. Her face, which showed slight alarm at my woken state, quickly dulls to a neutral look, not showing any emotion. Hmm, I guess we are a bit similar.

"I have been for a while. I just wanted to enjoy the extraordinary situation I awoke to." So I say, forcing myself past my own worries and concerns and brutally pushing forward the words. And I have to say, it feels... like shit. Like, the words come out, and I can physically feel them somehow damaging me as they leave. And if it hurt to come out, then it definitely pained me as they hung in the air in silence. Thankfully I have enough control over myself to keep a casual languid smile on my face, even if my face wants to distort into a cringe.

"...Yeah. So, could you let go of my wrist now?" Felecia's face stays neutral as she replies after a moment, deciding to sidestep what I just said entirely. Before I can get lost in a mire of despair and embarrassment, I quickly consider what just happened and come to a different conclusion. Felecia's automatic response to most things is flirting and seductiveness sprinkled with some irony and sarcasm, yet there was none of that there.

She ignored it entirely, which was way out of her usual response parameters, so she definitely felt something. Or maybe I am just making it up to make myself feel better- no, no, let's not go down that road and start spiralling; that way leads to depression. So, no, I think I will stick to the first version of events for my mental health- wait, what was that about a wrist?

"Oh, shit. Sorry, I didn't even realise. How long have I been holding it for?" I say after looking down and realising my hand was gripping her wrist, not hard enough to bruise but not soft enough to let her free. I quickly let her go, and as she goes to rub her wrist, I think it over and put two and two together. At least now I know why Felecia was sleeping on the same bed as me, which was strange, but that still doesn't explain why she was asleep on my chest.

Yeah, she couldn't leave because of my hand gripping her wrist, but she could have managed to sleep in a different position. I woke up on the right side of my bed with Felecia being on the left, having enough space for herself. With the length of my arm and her own, especially in my drugged state, she could have positioned my arm to come over my own chest, allowing her to sleep on that side even if she had to sleep on her stomach. She had that option, but instead, she rested on my chest. And yet again, I have gotten lost in my thoughts and whipped up various ideas. Stay in the moment, Ben.

"Since I put you to bed, you grabbed on and wouldn't let go. You were too strong, even half dead, and I had to sleep here." I nod my head in understanding, sitting up in bed. Felecia seeing me getting up quickly, moves as well and sits up before scooting away from me to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Oh, well, sorry. I guess the drugged-up me is a lot more honest and open than the usual me." So I say, feeling the urge to stand up and stretch, my body feeling constricted and cramped, probably because my body had been very stationary for the last couple of days when it is used to being active all the time. It's like having a bike and never riding it when the bike wants to be ridden. The bike is dying. Ha, friends' reference. I need to start watching that again. It makes me feel better.