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He didn't take a proper shower. Too much effort. He directed splashes with his good hand and stood halfway in the shower, turning as needed and leaving a towel on the floor to avoid making a slippery mess. (There were plenty to use anyway, all fresh, all as cozy as the price tag demanded.) The soap was a delicate trollsome affair, and he stopped bothering with it when it slipped out of his hand the third time. Only a small layer of shampoo and conditioner from the tiny bottles offered by the hotel were used, less to clean and more to give him an excuse to dig his fingers through his scalp and distracted himself from the pounding headache and the unknown quality of her responses that were beginning to bother him. Reddened eyes and Twitter and No, I'm not and good, good.

Hot water helped, but only so much.

He only took about twelve minutes or so before he decided inhaling the steam was making him nauseated. His arm throbbed as he wrapped himself in the robe, every movement something to fight, and he squeezed out water from his hair several times before he left the bathroom.

She'd cleaned herself up. Toeing around their bags of souvenirs, he blindly groped for his glasses and sat down on the bed. The ice pack was in reach, but instead he touched her arm. "Hey. Bathroom's all yours," he said, like she needed an official statement. Something had to accompany the motion or she'd just taunt him for being too mushy.

History

April was always hard. Always. She tanked her senior year math class because on the day of the April final Chris had his initiation display ceremony for the Army. She skipped the entire day and got so high she couldn't remember anything. When she finally did come home, it was eight days later and she didn't even bother to hide her eyes. There was no one to bother for sunglasses anymore. He wasn't gone but he might as well have been. April marked the day her cousin died.

Nevada died April 14th. She hadn't found out until May 3rd via a shitty text from Stormy. These dates felt unimportant, but she'd looked them up via a friend of a friend in the Death division weeding through the database. Chel still didn't even know how she'd died. Nobody told her. They said she died on a mission. Chel wondered if it had been peaceful and beautiful or if she'd been ripped and maligned so deeply that there was nothing left of her. Chel was always terrified that one day she'd wander Halloween and find the ghost of a beautiful woman floating in the remains of where her mist should have been. She spent April wondering.

Water

Chel sank into the bathwater and hissed. All of her cuts, bites and bumps lit up and screamed at her. It took a few tries to get her whole body in without rejecting it.

She sank deeper into the water, stopping right before her nose submerged. Steamy, lonely water left her a lot of room to think.

Water

Like rep just fkn insultd u 4 not getn the exact candy he wantd wen ur the 1 doin the favr 4 him

Lik u thiuk them sayin ur nice is enof but its nevr enough n they just gona kep usin u til u dont shin so nice no mor

N no matr wut u por out its gona com out the sam til u run urself ragd n

"Tenebrae please," she said quietly, trying to keep her voice down as it wavered. Tenebrae had a photographic memory. He was reciting these things for her.

Water formed in the corner of her eyes but she put her hand up to her mouth to prevent the noise. Don't cry.

< Were you ever shiny? >

Chel had to argue yes. When she'd arrived at Deus she was nice. She swore she would smile regardless of what happened to her, and even now if someone had burst through the door she could have put on the party scorekeeper. She could've leaned back in the tub with the casual finesse of Dionysus. Chel was a goddess and she was so good that sometimes she tricked herself.

But Dawson made a shell and Chel grew spikes. She was slowly becoming a vine so thorny it would have impressed Halloween. Maybe that was her adaption; the more she loved Jack, the more she became a garden of dead plants, the closer she was to something he could treasure. She already had tombstones, even.

Her lecture to her gullible, optimistic friend was less a lecture for him and more a reminder to herself.

The problem was that she didn't know if this was someone new, or someone she'd always been.

Father

"C'mon now only bitches cry at the end of the movie, you know that."

"Oh stop it now. Cryin' ain't gonna get you nothin'."

"Don't cry, you ain't gettin' out of this.

Water

Don't cry.

She had her hands on her cheeks, slapping the skin lightly to knock herself out of the mood. As though if she tapped enough times, Tenebrae would come spilling out of her ear; as though he would finally be quiet and leave her alone.

Don't ******** cry.

But the unfortunate instance happened wherein convincing herself not to cry only made her cry harder. It started as small sniffles, but the more she thought the more it came out.

Don't cry, cryin' ain't gonna get you nothing.

Then she was in the awkward position of covering her mouth with her hand so Jack couldn't hear, letting the water run down her face with her head clutched between her arms.

What it boiled down to was that Chel's self esteem was constantly being battered. She genuinely didn't give a ******** for the majority of her life, but sometimes things stacked up. Sometimes there were too many problem for her to handle at once, especially when she felt she had no one to talk to.

Despite Jack being one room over she had never felt lonelier. In fact it just made it worse because now she had to hide dead sobs from him too. She had to hide the shadows in the bags under her eyes with thicker eyeliner than usual. She would come out of this bathroom ignoring the red rings around her eyes.

Her mind was an exploded minefield, too many things had gone off at once and now she couldn't handle them. Seeing Jack in pain was too real. That was the stuff of her nightmares, of Merlin, of Chiyoo. It wasn't supposed to be what she saw in real life. He wasn't supposed to get hurt, she wasn't supposed to hold his life in her hands like that.

So much of her mind was occupied with how to help everyone else that she'd never glanced down to see the shards of glass she'd stabbed into her own hands. She had splinters in the outstretched palm and only now had she put one too many in. So much time spent piecing everyone else back together and nobody had taken the time to arrange her pieces too.

Her hands shook but she couldn't even stop the tears now. Why now, why now of all times? Why couldn't she have just held it together until they were back on Deus when she could cry without someone potentially hearing? All it would have taken was sleeping with Jack or the rest of the wine bottle or any number of mind numbing things that could postpone her inevitable breakdown until she had the privacy to do so.

But then, she hated herself for even crying in the first place.

Water

It was funny how months of choosing not to address Chel's behavior could come tumbling back in so quickly in the space she left behind. That he could only see it when he was alone, that he was starting to notice he wasn't numb about that status anymore, that while what she occupied herself with wasn't always in his interest, the way it affected her was. It was more than simply riding a rusty bicycle, he'd never truly forgotten how this felt when he cared about someone. But it was different this time, and he couldn't place why. Maybe because Chel wasn't like anyone else he'd ever dated and thus couldn't be compared to. Maybe because the mortality his broken arm was a symbol of had jarred him back into a reality he was uncomfortable with remembering. Maybe because with the pain in his head starting to finally dull, with the cleanliness of a shower, with the silence of separation, and even in spite of his broken glasses, he could see the picture more clearly than he had before, and the edges were inches away from cutting into him.

He valued space for thoughts and for decompression, and so he allowed Chel hers as he spent time making notes on a pad for the mission report, alternating with brief presses of the ice pack to his arm that felt almost as painful as the actual break itself. Fresh details were noted so that he could spread between both of their submissions, more when he would ask her for input later. When he was only able to concentrate enough to make a handful of bullet points in handwriting that was hard to read even if he squinted, however, he gave up. Something was wrong and there was plenty of evidence he couldn't simply glaze over.

Jack stood up, fixed his glasses (watched them tilt to one side just enough for him to notice as he walked), and made his way to the bathroom. He considered knocking, but that gave her forewarning to hide behind something again. If it was devious to force himself in, so be it; it wasn't like either of them hadn't painted him a devil before.

(Vampires were required to be invited in, but she had long since given him free range.)

The soft noises he couldn't pick out from outside the door became quickly apparent once he was in. For a reason he didn't know, he closed the door behind them (privacy, privacy), and he waited to see how she'd react first before moving any further. There was a tired look on his face as he looked at her, but for once there wasn't a hard edge to it. No what do you think you're doing that, whether wry or serious or teasing, seemed to accompany his words and actions.