Chapter 3: The Sleeping God
The university garden was a cathedral of green and gold. Sunlight filtered through a canopy of ancient oak leaves, painting the grass in shifting patterns of light and shadow. The air was thick with the scent of warm soil, crushed lavender from the bordering beds, and the distant, greasy aroma of fries from the cafeteria. Laughter and fragments of conversation drifted from clusters of students draped on picnic blankets.
Jennie sat on a stone bench, spine straight, a textbook open but unread on her lap. Her eyes were fixed on a point about thirty feet away.
Leonid was sprawled on a slope of grass, his back against the trunk of a willow. Marco and another guy, Theo, were arguing about a video game, their voices a dull buzz. Leonid listened with his eyes half-closed, a soft smile on his face as he blew smoke rings from a cigarette. The smoke curled, blue-grey in the sunlight, before dissolving into the breeze that carried his scent—clean linen, cedar, and something uniquely male—toward her.
She watched the cigarette’s progress, the way his lips shaped the filter, the slow exhale. When it was finished, he stubbed it out carefully in a small tin from his pocket. He said something to Marco, who laughed and shoved his shoulder. Then Leonid stretched, a long, languid movement that made his t-shirt ride up.
He settled back, tipping his baseball cap over his eyes. The argument continued beside him, but his breathing slowly evened out. His chest rose and fell. His hands, which had been gesturing, went still, one resting on the grass, the other curled near his face.
He was asleep.
The world narrowed. The laughter, the arguments, the rustling leaves—all of it faded into a distant hum. There was only the slope of grass, the dappled light on his skin, and the slow, vulnerable rhythm of his sleep.
Jennie stood. She moved without sound, a shadow detaching from the stone. She walked toward him, each step measured, her silver rings cool against her fingers. Marco glanced up as she passed, his expression flickering from confusion to a guarded recognition. He said nothing. Theo fell silent, watching.
She reached him. She knelt in the grass, the dampness immediately seeping through the knees of her black jeans. Up close, he was a landscape. The black curls escaping his cap. The dark fan of his lashes against his pale cheeks. The prominent vein in his temple, pulsing gently with his heartbeat.
And his stomach. The hem of his white t-shirt had ridden up several inches, exposing a taut plane of skin, the defined ridges of his lower abdomen. A line of dark hair vanished beneath the waistband of his low-slung jeans. The skin there looked soft, warm. Alive.
Her own breath stopped in her throat. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. She could see the minute shift of his muscles with each respiration. She could smell him, that intoxicating mix, now blended with sun-warmed cotton and sleep.
Her fingers trembled as she lifted her hand. She hovered, an inch from his skin, tracing the shape of him in the air. The desire to touch was a physical ache, a hollowing out in her gut.
“You are the only real thing,” she whispered, the words so soft they were lost under the willow’s sigh. “The only constant in a world of paper and noise. Your cruelty is a gift. Your indifference is a sacrament. This,” her eyes drank in the exposed skin, “this is a holy text.”
A breeze shook the willow branches. A shaft of light moved across his belly, highlighting the trail of hair. She shuddered.
With infinite care, as if handling a volatile explosive or a sacred relic, she reached out. Not to touch his skin, but the fabric of his shirt. Her fingertips brushed the soft cotton at his side. A jolt, electric and sweet, shot up her arm. She gathered the material, pulling it down slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until it covered the exposed strip.
Her hand smoothed the fabric over his abdomen, the touch so light it was barely a whisper. She could feel the heat of him through the cotton, the firmness of the muscle beneath. She left her palm there, resting, for three of his breaths. Out.
She became a statue again, kneeling vigil. Marco and Theo had turned away, immersed in a muted conversation of their own, granting this strange ceremony a wide berth.
Time lost meaning. She counted his breaths. She watched a ladybug climb a blade of grass near his hip. She memorized the exact shape of his lips, parted slightly in sleep.
Then his breath hitched. A soft, sleeping sigh. His eyelids fluttered.
He awoke not with a start, but with a slow, dawning awareness. His body tensed minutely before his mind fully engaged. He became conscious of the weight on his abdomen first—not a weight, but a presence. A warmth.
His eyes opened. Dark, sleep-clouded brown, clearing rapidly into sharp focus. They looked up at the willow, then down.
He found her watching him. Her face was inches from his, her dark feline eyes wide, unblinking, filled with a devotion so absolute it was terrifying. Her hand was still resting on his stomach.
For a suspended second, neither moved. The garden’ sounds rushed back in—a shouted laugh, a bicycle bell, the drone of a lawnmower in the distance.
Leonid’s expression cycled through sleep-confusion, to shock, to something harder. He didn’t jerk away. He just looked at her hand, then back at her face.
“The fuck are you doing, Kim?” His voice was rough with sleep, low. It wasn’t a shout. It was dangerously calm.
“You were exposed,” she said, her own voice a serene contrast. “The sun. You’d burn.”
He slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, dislodging her hand. She let it fall back to her lap, fingers curling into her palm, holding the sensation of his heat.
He looked down at his now-properly covered stomach, then back at her. His gaze was a physical probe. “You were watching me sleep.”
“Yes.”
“And you… fixed my shirt.”
“Yes.”
He sat up fully, running a hand over his face. He looked past her to Marco and Theo, who were pointedly not looking. He shook his head, a short, disbelieving motion. “You are so fucking creepy. Do you know that? This is next-level. This is stalker-shit.”
She absorbed the words, the familiar insult. They washed over her, a dark balm. He was talking to her. He was seeing her. “You gave me an apple,” she said, as if it were a logical rebuttal.
“So? You looked pale. I didn’t want you dying and having it be my fault.” He lit another cigarette, the snap of the lighter overly loud. He took a drag, exhaling the smoke away from her. “That doesn’t mean you get to pet me while I’m unconscious.”
“I didn’t pet you. I corrected a wardrobe malfunction.” A faint, dreamy smile touched her lips. “You talk in your sleep. It’s just murmurs. I couldn’t make out the words.”
He stared at her, his annoyance visibly warring with something else—curiosity, perhaps, or a dawning understanding of the depths he was skating over. “You need to leave. Now.”
She nodded, obedient. She rose smoothly from her knees, the denim stained dark green. She didn’t brush it off. “You should move into the shade. The sun has shifted. You’ll be in direct light in approximately four minutes.”
She turned and walked back to her stone bench, collecting her textbook. She could feel his eyes on her back, a hot, uncomfortable pressure. When she reached the garden path, she glanced back.
He was still sitting there, cigarette between his fingers, watching her. He wasn’t laughing with his friends. He was just looking, his expression unreadable from this distance.
She walked away, the ghost of his warmth still imprinted on her palm, the taste of the apple from yesterday suddenly fresh and vivid on her tongue. He had seen her. Really seen her. And he hadn’t pushed her away. He had told her to leave, but he had looked.
It was, she decided, stepping from the dappled garden into the hard sunlight of the pathway, the best conversation they had ever had.