A/N 1: For the purposes of this story, the midnighters are all in their last year of HS and thus legal adults.
When Jessica confronts him about their bond not quite crossing over to daylight, about the fact that he never seems to touch her or care for her when the sun is up and the daylight world is alive, Jonathan is determined to right the wrong. It isn't that he doesn't care about Jessica when he's grounded on flatland, but he has to admit (if only to himself) that their bond doesn't quite translate to a world with gravity heavily upon him, all over her.
The solution doesn't appear to him immediately, but one day there the thought is: he can make her fly. He can suspend her in the air, frozen in animation as though frozen during one of their midnight jumps. The thought produces butterflies in his belly and he sets to plotting to convince Jessica to participate, to find a way to do it in daylight without their parents finding out.
In the end, a most unexpected ally offers him space one day at lunch. Rex follows him into the lunch line, speaking in almost a whisper. "Hey, I know you and Jess don't have much in the way of private time with both your parents breathing down you necks, so consider this an open offer to come over to my house whenever you want to. Dess is over most days with her stolen GPS, and you know Cowgirl and I are always together. Consider this your invitation to the midnighter's clubhouse, you know." As he picks up a tray, he hands him a key. "Whenever." Rex says.
Jonathan smiles at his particular fortune, pocketing the key and smiling at Rex. "Thanks, man. I know we have our differences but I think you've just saved my ass with Jessica, so I owe you one."
"With the way midnight is going," Rex frowns. "you wont have to wait for long to pay me back."
–
Jessica looks questioningly at the cleared out bedroom, various newly installed bars and hooks hanging around the room like a makeshift torture chamber. "What is this?" Jessica asks, with almost a bit of nervousness in her voice.
"Do you trust me?" Jonathan asks, and he wonders if he's not being just a little too manipulative here.
"Of course!" Jess replies.
"You said that we weren't the same here during daylight on flatland, and you're right, we're not. But I think I know a way we can get closer. Dess colluded with me to set this up and take a class and make sure we're reasonably safe."
"Safe doing what?" Jess questions.
Jonathan blushes, knowing that its now or never. "Suspension bondage."
Jessica's forehead wrinkles as she thinks about Jonathan's words, before a lightbulb goes off in her brain and her eyebrows raise comically. "You mean, hanging me?"
Jonathan sticks his hands in his pockets. "Yeah."
Jessica considers the proposition for a minute, but the biggest thought in her head is the fact that he'd never let her get hurt or fall. The second thing that occurs to her is that he must have been plotting this, must have wanted it, for quite a while. And maybe she's not sure if she'd like this, but she's willing to try once because it sounds like fun and he wants it. She nods. "Yeah, I think I'd like that."
–
Jessica almost backs out when Dess tells her that she's bringing a friend for safety's sake. "How many people do we need to hang one person!" Jessica demands. Dess laughs. "Only one, so I guess Jonathan and I don't matter, because this guy's about the only person I'd trust to have the experience not to kill me."
It works. Jessica spends an hour that night glaring at Jonathan and Dess in awkwardness and embarrassment as they manipulate her limbs into various positions, testing multiple ropes and straps before settling on configurations that Dess deems acceptable and Jessica deems "not the most uncomfortable thing that's ever happened to her." Dess' friend, Craig, only steps in to offer corrections or suggestions a few times; Jessica wonders just how much class time they spent figuring all this out.
Dess is wearing cargo pants and a long sleeved tshirt with the sleeves rolled up, and Jonathan a pair of jeans and a short sleeved tshirt, which makes Jessica feel plenty uncomfortable in her tank top and shorts, especially when she ends up horizontal with her breasts all but hanging out of her shirt.
Finally, they're done, Jessica's abdomen supported by multiple thick straps, and her arms and legs all but reaching to join eachother behind her back, like she's falling so quickly to the ground that her limbs have given up and flung backwards. While she's plenty supported by the straps along the length of her body, Dess had insisted that the added to the show of things, and just because Dess knows how to make structurally sound human slings, doesn't mean she can't appreciate purely aesthetic touches.
Dess stands back to observe her work, and Jonathan holds her hand as they stare up at Jessica. Dess speaks first. "We don't have too long before you'll want to come down. If you want me to leave, I can..."
Jessica shakes her head, wincing as this causes her entire body to shift slightly. "No, stay."
Craig has already taken a seat at the far end of the room, ready to spring into action if needed- but he knows he's an observer.
"You're not jealous, Jessica?" Dess jokes, remembering Jessica's resentment of Jonathan sharing weightlessness with anyone but her in the past.
"I think you belong here." Jessica says.
Dess lets go of Jonathan to step closer to Jessica, reaching up to her head. "May I?" she asks.
"I'll tell you to stop if you do something I don't like, Dess. You know that."
Dess nods. She pulls the tie out of Jessica's bun, letting her hair drop like a halo around her face. She brushes Jessica's hair back so that it's not all in front of her eyes, and then begins to methodically brush her fingers along the length of Jessica's arms. Dess touches her not to test her work or to calculate a problem, but as though she were comforting a newborn child, her own newborn creation. "You're perfect." Dess says, standing frozen in place.
Jonathan uses the opportunity to snap a picture of both of them. "What're you doing?" Jessica asks. "I think you need to see yourself as you are right now, as we both see you." Jonathan replies, snapping another photo of her whole body before approaching her and beginning to take a series of photos closer to her body. He spends minutes on her face before working up to her wrists and down to her waist and along her thighs and up her perfectly bound legs and feet.
It doesn't feel like flying in midnight at all. But it does feel like they're all flying, like this secret meeting place of theirs is is the most wonderful thing in the world. They don't fit together in daylight, maybe don't even fit together during midnight, but here with Jessica (not the midnight moon, nor the daylight sun) for them to revolve around, it just works.
A/N 2:I struggled with the issue that Jess' consent is almost pre-planned in this story. Then I realized that everything, including and especially kinky things, is not perfect. This does not represent the ideal relationship if such a thing exists, just one possibility.