Re: Venetian penthouse: Sam & Cris
Maybe it was bad coping, but it was coping—this whole thing in the bath. A shrink might want to work through things, all the shredded emotions, all the destruction of blood on blue shirt from earlier, chew and digest each moment and every bad thing that came with it, parse through it, talk about how it made him feel. Yeah. His past ate at him, it boiled as anger under skin, it wrenched like files beneath fingernails, and climbed as bile in the throat. It didn't go away, just because he ignored it. And maybe he didn't always deal with things healthy—the way Elena wanted him to—but it worked for him. It got him through things, fists, bullets, sand. Focusing on the moment at hand peeled every layer of complication away and let him breathe. It let him collect the shattered parts of himself, grief, disbelief, whatever, and put them back together good enough to carry on. He'd seen Sam dead earlier and he'd helped get her that way. He as good as put the bullet in her brain. And no logic would ever tell him different. He saw what he saw.
But he was here now.
Joey's heart was out there, waiting. And they'd come back to it. But for now, he was here, and the girl in his arms, the one laughing at his enjoyment of her weight atop him, cheeks flooded red, she was alive. She was skin scoured soft by the heat of the water, hair damp, and face scrubbed a sweet red. And Cris' voice was low when he spoke next, his fingers walking down her side beneath the tumult of the water. "Hacer eso de nuevo."
Her fondness was open, and he smiled back. He wasn't totally sure what she meant by 'a protective fucking adult'—giving her the shoes and jacket?—but he accepted it with the prod of toes and the sheet of water in his face. His laugh was a sputter. His black hair went blacker and water hung from the branches of his eyelashes.—As Sam kept talking, the sound he made next wasn't as pleased. It was a scoff kept behind bar of teeth, a curl of tongue along soapy bottom lip, and a shake of his head against hers. But he didn't get a chance to tell her she was wrong, because by the time he opened his mouth, Sam was sighing soft and coming close. Her knee against butted Cris' chest, and he looped his arms around her lower, tighter, holding her to his chest, the instinct of the protective fucking adult kicking in and reading concern.
The pad of his thumb roughed against her chin, one hand out of the water, and he looked down at her. His gaze was intent, like he was looking for more than the bruise that still swamped milky skin along her jaw. He paused to kiss the top of her head.
"¿Sí? ¿Qué pasó?"
He sat up a bit, Sam still pinned to him, to look into the bedroom—the guy suddenly paranoid that Iris was around and maybe he just hadn't seen her in his haze of tears and panic. He relaxed back against the slabbed marble after a second. He tried to keep any judgements or predictions of what happened from his face, but it probably came through, flat brows and a vague annoyance done dark.