( np: Shawn Mendes-Stitches )

Kris is woken up from his sleep by distressful whimpers next to him.

He sits up in one jerky motion, his mind stuck in between sleep and conscious as he rub the drowsiness away. This is not his room. The atmosphere are too crispy – a sterilized scent that comes straight from dry cleaning – and there is a soft edge adorning the sharp cut of air. A woman’s perfume, Kris realises and something shifts suddenly in him. Out of nowhere he is extremely aware of the feminine presence at the other side of the bed. Another whimper from her diverts his attention to the source of that eerie sounds. He hasn’t realised their close proximity until he turns around to check on her.

Dara is a little too close into his personal space.

She is tensed, Kris observed, from her rigid jawline to her knotting muscle and she is sweating profusely. A form of pure fear pouring out of her as she struggles to wake up, only to falls deeper into her uncontrollable nightmares. She is clawing on the sheet, desperate gestures to anchor herself back to reality and Kris slowly reaches out to rub her shoulder. He whispers her name softly, calling out for her in repetition until the taut lines and plates of her small figure relaxes and breathing comes easily now to her. She is afraid of something too, Kris is mildly amused of the fact and slowly fixes the sheet around her. He slips off the bed, standing at the furthest end of the bed and stares.

“Stay please.” Her lips quivers and one singular teardrop slips off her closed lid, refusing to look at Kris in her vulnerability.

How someone as strong as her could be afraid of something? “I’ll come back in a second. Don’t worry.” Kris’s voice still gruff from sleep.

It doesn’t make sense to him. She is in every way clear in any choices she makes, her calculating nature with a hint of wolf-like cunning streak in her made her a very careful person. Kris is sure she had never make a choice in her whole existence with a recklessness and urgency like him. She analyse the steepness of the slope, the distance between them before taking her leap of faith. What could someone like her be afraid of when she is so certain about everything?

It was slightly dark, three in the morning, and Kris stubs his toes at the bedside table on his way to grab a glass of water. He cursed and Dara instantaneously laughs, sitting up and resting herself on the headboard. When he walks back with a bottle water instead, too lazy to pour some into the unwashed glass, Dara is standing in front of the ceiling-to-floor window. She is watching the solemn nightview of Venice, her eyes still blown from the initial fear and now she is pondering over it, her fear doubled.

Kris didn’t need to ask anymore as Dara speaks up first after her first sip of water.

“My dad left us.” Her hands runs over the smoothness of the glass and there’s a pained smile gracing her features. Kris is reminded of those fallen angels in the mythologies he studied for his World Culture classes. So strong, yet, so soft and glum. She didn’t continues afterward, feeling slightly stupid for burdening Kris with her sudden moment of walking down the memory lane and Kris respected her.

“Is this frequent? If yes, then, I have to sleep somewhere else.” Kris grins that stupid gummy smile and Dara snickers.

“You are supposed to sleep somewhere else.” She emphasized. Dara turns around and slips back under the duvet, Kris following suit a beat later than her after making a promise not to venture to this topic without Dara being comfortable with it. As sleep slowly lulling both of them, Dara kicks his shin and conquers two third of the space of that king-sized bed.

Eventually, at some point, Dara had stopped worrying over her missing phone and slowly slipped into a proper vacation state of mind. Kris finally obtains the ownership on his phone again but he was too lazy to charge it so he tosses it away mindlessly.

They still considered themselves on a holida