Page 87 of Uncharted

“That’s…not fucked up. Kinda normal for some people,” Jake said. “There’s been a lot. Ya went through a lot, and quick too. What’re the dreams?”

“Blood, guts, mayhem…being stalked through tall shadows by something covered in bloody holes,” I explained, then frowned. “Huh, those are probably trees, aren’t they?”

“Probably,” he chuckled.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“I never told ya about ’em, because…well, they ain’t easy to talk about and…I didn’t want ya knowin’ the details of what creeps up on me at night,” he said, his smile turning to sadness. “But ya know more now than if I had told ya so…first man I ever killed snuck up on the camp I had with my buddies. I woke up to him above me, ready to cut my throat in the night. Except I fought back, and the moment happened, I got the better of ’em, and before I knew it, I shoved the knife into his throat. Even now I can see his face, hear the noise he made as he pulled the knife out and fell…twitchin’ and…all I could do was watch.”

Half a mangled head on a body, pumping blood through torn blood vessels to a brain that was only partly there. The body spasming, dropping to the forest floor, gray-white chunks spattered the ground, sitting in pools of blood.

“Sometimes I dream about that night. Sometimes I win and have to watch him die again. Sometimes he wins, and he’s the one kneeling over me, a terrified kid who thought himself a man but wasn’t prepared for the life he’d made. Sometimes it’s just somethin’ huntin’ me through the woods, or the desert, or a basement. But it’s always makin’…makin’ the noise he made after he pulled that goddamn knife out.”

I said the only thing that made sense. “I’m sorry.”

He snorted. “And I’m sorry about the dreams you’re gonna have. It’s gonna hit ya, maybe not now, maybe not a week from now, maybe a year from now, who knows, but it’ll hit. You’ll tell me, right?”

“Yes,” I said softly. “No more running, not from you, not again. I’ve done enough of that and the only place I want to run from now on is toward you.”

His smile was big, goofy, and absolutely beautiful. “Good, because I’m always gonna want you right there with me too. And I’m always gonna be there, I promise ya that.”

“You don’t have to promise; I know that. I knew it even in the woods; it was just…” I trailed off, feeling like I was making things worse by fumbling over weak excuses.

“A moment,” he told me, an urgency in his voice that brought me out of my head. “Ya had a moment, Reno. And moments don’t define ya, okay? Like ya said, fear makes fools outta people, and you had every reason to be scared outta your head.”

“You’re right,” I said with a heavy sigh, closing my eyes and thinking of that moment. Of when I had almost thought for real he could have left me to my own devices. The thought was gone in an instant, but I’d hated myself for even brushing that close to such an awful thought. And yet he’d been there, keeping the heat off me, and it had allowed me to save him in the end. “Hmm, so, uh, how fucked up is it to say that it’s hot that you know how to kill a man with one arm?”

Jake’s eye widened, and he choked back a laugh. “A little fucked up but not the worst thing in the world, I guess. Really? That was hot?”

“Do not ask me to explain it any more than I can explain why I suddenly got a hankering for your body,” I said with a snort.

“Well, ya ain’t gonna hear me complain about either of those things,” he said. His expression grew nervous and hopeful. “So…ya really wanna be with me, huh?”

Maybe I didn’t have to feel bad about the hope in his eyes. Maybe I had been the cause of him feeling hope instead of confidence, but there had been others before me; he had a whole history before he met me. It wasn’t as if he’d had much luck in love; didn’t I know that from the stories he’d told me before? Maybe he was hoping there was someone who could love him and be with him because he was him, and no other reason.

It was my chance to make that hope a reality.

“Yes,” I told him, reaching up to cup the uninjured side of his face and stroke it gently. “I want to be with you. I want it to be Reno and Jake for the rest of our lives.”

“Soundin’ a little ‘till death do us part’ for my taste,” Jake said with a smirk.

“No,” I said, then pivoted again. “I mean, I’m not saying no to forever. But shit, we just started our relationship. Let’s make sure everything is as great as we know it is before we take that last step, eh? God, please do not take that the wrong way.”

“Naw, one of us has to be practical, best it’s you,” he said, then he kissed me and it was the first time we’d kissed since the incident.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when the tenderness and sheer eagerness of his kiss brought a renewed sting to my eyes as I held the back of his neck and drew him closer. There was no heat in the kiss, or at least none that took over. There was a touch of it at the back of my mind, and I hoped it never went away for the moments when we touched, and especially when we kissed.

No, that was relief, pure and simple, that washed through me and made the little gasp I gave when we broke apart sound a bit like a sob.

“You’re stayin’ here in this bed, aren’t ya?” he asked with a snort as he pressed my face into his chest. “They’re gonna be pissed. Might even separate us, and after Mika and I went through all the trouble to convince ’em to keep us in the same room.”

I breathed in deep as I felt his warmth pressing in from every angle and wished he could lie on top of me. The weight of his leg and arm was the best I was going to get, and I would take that, because it was better than sleeping in a bed, even only a few feet away from him. Life came at you fast sometimes, but I had learned how quickly death came for you too.

Maybe there were only horrors waiting for me when I went to sleep, and would haunt me for weeks, months, even years. Yet when I woke up, I would hopefully always have him right there to push the darkness away. I would get to wake up and see his face, that goofy smile, and hear his laugh that Xander frequently complained would burst his eardrums.