Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
He rubbed, and she tried to watch his fingers in the dark bathroom. She knew it was cramped and crowded, and she knew the place wasn't the best, but it hadn't occurred to her to go anywhere else. Trash, yeah? Like Meredith had looked at her in that bar, and she knew this kind of place. She'd slit her wrists in a place like this once, bled out on a stained bedspread, corded phone near her knee. She remembered it with more brightness than she remembered what the room beyond the bathroom looked like, even if there was a loud wedding going on out there. The flat screen real in her head, and she wondered if the woman with the overlapping mouth was there. She fucking hoped not, yeah?
But he rubbed, and she trembled less, but only a little. She touched his hand, like she was trying to get the attention of the fingers that tugged and rubbed at hers. "It's ok. The shaking, it's aftershocks. It doesn't mean anything terrible, ok?" She was soothing, yeah? Soothing the fingertips she was directing her consolation to. Like they'd understand, and not think they had to rub away the chills.
He lifted her, and she turned her cheek and sniffed at the collar of the jacket he covered her with. "Smells like you." Commentary, and not anything she expected him to respond to, and she didn't think to tell him she could walk. She had two legs, yeah? Once they were out of the bathroom, she looked at them, just to be sure, yeah? Her legs. But she didn't tell him she could walk. She wasn't fat, and she knew his arms were strong beneath skin. He was thick, and she wasn't heavy, and she was so very fucking tired.
He kissed her forehead. She sighed and closed her eyes, pupils nothing but back pins in the television glow, the ocean left behind and the lighthouse crumbling alone in the dark with those distortions in the mirror.
Outside, it was warm. She almost warned him about the traffic, but it was warm, and she just reached down and touched a finger to his firearm as he held her. But he said she wasn't going to jail, that Meredith had written, and that shit distracted her. And what did she remember? She wasn't sure if he meant the bar, or if he meant before, or if he meant after. She thought about it as he got them in the taxi, and she rubbed her battered knuckles. She looked up when he tucked mermaid's tangles behind her ears, and she leaned when he lifted his arm and offered silently to be a pillar.