Contessa says (deathiskind) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-28 16:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, elaine mallory, riddick |
Who: Elaine Mallory [ssadabsiannataz] & Riddick [riddickr]
What: Sickness Stuff
Where: Her place
When: Early September
Rating: Pretty tame for once
Status: Closed, Complete
Elaine felt awful. The lingering weakness was making her livid. But she couldn’t say much, she’d spent a day throwing up more blood than she thought was healthy and then passed out. Weakness was the easiest of issues to deal with. She finally pushed herself to sit up in bed and look around. Two cats sleeping on her feet, that was normal, but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten into bed.
She heaved a sigh, found her lungs worked, and relaxed a little. “Riddick?” she called out tentatively, unsure if he was here or she’d been imagining things. Slender fingers raked through her hair before she groaned. “Oh god I look awful I feel awful.” she groaned as she tried to swing her legs out of bed.
The ground was too far away for comfort despite the fact she felt better. She sighed as she touched her feet to the cold floor and just sat there. Oh this was a pile of no fun and she was livid she felt so awful.
***
"You look beautiful. You always look beautiful to me. You also look like shit right now because you still smell like you're gonna die on me any minute now."
Riddick picked Elaine up from the side of the bed as if he were lifting a doll or a toddler instead of a grown woman. She had no weight problems and neither did he---Riddick didn't need to lift weights to stay strong enough to outpace any human. He supposed there were good sides to having Dreams about being something completely other.
Her home was small which meant it took no time at all to get her to the bathroom. Sitting her on the closed toilet lid while he ran a bath. Elaine was wrung out enough Riddick wasn't sure she could stand to shower herself and she was going to have to get clean. His senses were too acute for him to continue worrying over whether she was still bleeding out on him or not.
Transferring her to the edge of the tub, Riddick told her, "Put your hand in the water. Tell me if it's too hot. I can't always tell the difference in temperatures and I like you on fire, witchy woman, but I got no desire to burn you."
~*~
Elaine blushed as she looked up at him and sighed. “Not dying today, promise.” She could tell she'd weathered the worst of it already.
She let him pick her up without complaint. She settled into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder. Her eyes closed as she sighed again. “I hate being sick Riddick.” She cursed.
She was secretly glad he told her like it was. She hated being lied to. If he said she looked like shit too, then clearly she did. She learned back as he set her down, the cold of the porcelain felt good.
Elaine dragged her fingers through the water, she smiled as she whispered, warming it up even more despite the fact it made her tired. “There it's perfect.”
****
"It's water. It is what it is. You? You're perfect. I'm taking your clothes off, but don't get any ideas. This is not that kind of situation."
Riddick made a terrible nurse. In his life, no one had ever taken care of him. Sickness was equalled to weakness among those people who lived the way he lived. People who lived outside of the collective norm made themselves targets. He'd been young once. Never a child. Riddick didn't think anyone would consider his youth a childhood. Elaine made him want to try to figure it all out so he was trying.
He shifted her into the bathtub, slowly lowering her body into the water until she was able to relax back against the porcelain with the bath raising up around her all the way over her breasts. Riddick held up a hand and pointed at her as he stood.
"Stay there. Don't move and most importantly? Don't drown."
Going into the kitchen, he retrieved a cup from the cabinet to use to wash her hair. Sickness had left it lank and tainted with the scent of blood. Riddick knew she couldn't be feeling 100% but he could get her smelling that way. It was easy enough to clean up someone, wasn't it? Seemed as if it should be easy. He couldn't remember a time when his hair had ever gotten long enough to get into the state Elaine's was in, but he did remember how it felt to wash his hair after a long time of leaving it to the wilds.
"I'm starting with your hair. I figure I'll start from the top and work my way down. Sound good to you?"
~*~
The softness in her smile was all for him. She had to laugh at his words , eyes glittering a little bit. “No funny ideas, got it, I promise.” His no nonsense, matter of fact tone had her smiling. He could order her around any day.
The sigh of pleasure that escaped her lips had nothing to do with him for once and all to do with that hot water. It felt so good she just soaked. Her lip curled as he spoke. “No drowning, yessir, I can handle that.” Watching him fuss over her was something else. He was lucky she was in no shape for other things.
“'mm you know how delightful it is to have your hair washed by someone else? I'm in my own version of heaven right now. I have a hot nurse making sure I look better than I feel.”
Elaine looked at him from over her shoulder, a blush on her cheeks and a smile in her eyes. “Have at, if it's too knotted just give it a cut. Hair grows back.”
~*~
Hot was something Riddick couldn't help due to his natural body temperature being higher than a human's but he knew what Elaine meant -and it had nothing to do with his body temp- so he smiled in spite of himself. She was incorrigible. He cupped his hand over her forehead as he used his other to dip the cup into the water, filling it to pour over the mass of her hair without letting it go over her face or into her eyes. Instinct was what Riddick relied on in any unfamiliar circumstance.
His instincts always encouraged him to be careful with Elaine.
Riddick valued her and he was a man who was accustomed to valuing nothing: that made her priceless.
"Sure. Hair grows back. I like yours the way it is though which means no scissors. Just a cup and some soap and a comb and enough patience to outlast that guy the holy men talk about. What was his name?"
It didn't matter. It was just something to distract her while he worked shampoo into the soaked strands with thick fingers, blunt tips rubbing and scrubbing at her scalp to try to loosen the tangles. Riddick remembered someone washing his hair once. He'd been young. Too young to really know much of anything except someone had been kind enough to be worth remembering. It was likely one of the nuns from one of the many children's homes he'd been in before he'd given up on the system.
Checked himself out.
Elaine was the only reason Riddick was even close to checking himself back in to society.
~*~
Elaine never asked much of him. She let him make his own way through their path, because she knew an animal when she saw one. She refused to force him into anything, she rather liked him here and not run off. So she just smirked at him.
“Good luck. I can tell it’s a mess of tangles and knots. Don’t be gentle, I’ll live.” she closed her eyes as he started work on her hair. “God?” she asked with a brow arched. “Though I can’t imagine why they say that about him. The bible seems to say he’s kind of short tempered.” she shrugged a shoulder.
“But he's not my god, so I don’t exactly care. Or did you mean Patience of a Saint? Which is really the same thing.” she brushed her hand over the water and smiled a bit. “For a religion that says not to worship idols, they sure have a lot of saints.” she mused, before shaking her head a bit.
Elaine wiggled her toes in the water, and smiled a bit. It was kind of nice soaking after feeling like death warmed over the last few days. It was a pleasant exchange of types of days - a nice relaxing day was just what she needed to get better faster. “You’re good at this, you know?”
~*~
"No. I don't know that I'm good at this. It's not something I've ever done before."
Riddick absolutely believed in God. He also absolutely hated the fucker. Saints were beings he couldn't wrap his head around. There'd been a man in the Bible who'd been filled with patience in spite of trials and tribulations beyond anything anyone else was ever said to have experienced. Riddick knew it had been a man. That was the extent of his knowledge. He'd never been religious enough to remember the names of any of the figures in the text.
The only reason he'd ever learned to read the damn thing had been because Riddick refused to be ignorant.
He was a lot of things.
Stupid wasn't one of them.
Pouring water over her hair, Riddick shook the strands to watch the suds sluice away, "I could get used to doing this. If it's something you like. Just to be doing something to take care of you, I mean. Don't go getting fucking sick all the time on me. I hate sickness. Fucking hate it."
Death was the only one who Riddick knew he couldn't beat in a fight. Fucker didn't fight fair.
~*~
Elaine shrugged a little more as she settled. She lifted the water in her hand and let it spill over back into the tub. “I have no desire to be sick anymore, don’t you fret too much. I’ll be avoiding more things from now on if necessary. Not sure where I even managed to catch it.”
Then she rolled her eyes to try to look at him. “Not someone used to people takin’ care of me, Riddick, don’t need anyone to start now just cause I like it.” she laughed softly before laying her hands beneath the water again.
“And you are good at this, just so you know for future reference.”
~*~
Pride was a sin Riddick was often accused of representing. Mostly he wasn't a proud man so much as a man who knew how to play to his strengths. He was competent enough to get by in a world which was run by technology he wanted no part of---but he wasn't smart enough to find a way out of the system entirely so he did exist on the grid. Riddick had learned to temper his pride out, balance it to where he was an independent operator rather than an obnoxious ass.
There was a difference between being the only man on an island and being a man who was an island.
"Good to know you're not going to go hunting plague-carriers to catch extra attention. I doubt you need any affirmation I'm interested anyway. I watch you. I always feel like watching you."
Riddick finished her hair, squeezing it between his hands to wring out the excess water. He'd brush it and dry it before the fire. Elaine would like that, he figured. It was the least he could do. Finding a washcloth, Riddick took a bar of soap his witch had likely made herself and worked up a good lather. He dangled the cloth in front of Elaine's face, smirking as suds dripped from the tip of the rag onto her chest.
"Here, Miss Independent. Wash up. You know, just because you can do something yourself, doesn't mean you always should."
~*~
Elaine was not prideful, not really. She often sold herself short. “I know full well you’re interesting, constantly so.” she smiled softly up at him. “So I’ll avoid attention seeking behaviors, I think.” she sighed softly though, as he wrung her hair out. It felt good.
She’d like him brushing it before the fire, warming up, and it’d be relaxing after such an ordeal. She snapped the cloth from his fingers, though, laughing. “Miss Independent - hey now, you live bouncing from house to house via the foster care system and try to not be anything but independent.” she smirked.
She held the cloth back up at him. “So here, you wash. I’ll relax and enjoy the attention” she purred with a smirk.
~*~
"Tried that. Lots of that. Got sick of it and took off on my own."
Riddick didn't talk about his childhood often. People who wanted to blame their mom for their issues were pathetic to him. He'd been a throwaway. So what? Plenty of people flushed their kids as if they were no more important than some waste they'd squeezed out. He wasn't special. Riddick knew better than to think otherwise. There'd been no shortage of orphans -made by circumstance or choice- in the system he'd grown up in.
He'd done fine for himself as far as he was concerned.
Soaping the cloth a little more, he took Elaine's right hand in his, cleaning each finger before scrubbing her palm and the back, over and around every knuckle then moving up to massage the fine muscles in her forearm, her bicep, all the way to her shoulder where he kneaded the flesh as he cleaned her. Riddick took his time with her body. It was easy to lift her enough to wash her back. He didn't let himself think about how sweat at caused her clothes to stick to her there, stick enough to where he could see her vertebrae. He worked her left arm the same only from the shoulder down to her hand.
"Wouldn't know what to do with someone who was raised normal. You and me? We're the survivors. We don't fucking need our mommy or daddy to save us. We can save ourselves. Now? I'm going to say I'll throw myself in to save you if you need me, witch. I don't expect the same out of you. I know you'd offer. I know you'd be willing to throw in for me. Just---don't. Not for me."
He added more soap to the cloth to perfunctorily wash her torso, bathing her breasts and the areas under them before washing gently between her legs. There was a time to be careful. Riddick was careful as he moved to the other side of the tub to work over Elaine's legs down to her feet. The water was still hot when he was finished. He figured it was the magic she wielded more than his efficiency.
"Can you stand?"
~*~
“Makes one learn a whole lot of independent skills really fast.” she mused as she thought over her childhood. Bouncing from home to home was always exhausting, the first few times she’d had hope but it’d died pretty early on. She began to find ways to survive then she’d left. She struck out on her own and said fuck the system.
Elaine watched him clean her fingers with interest. He was not a man she’d label gentle, but he was with her. Careful, mindful, like she’d break if he touched her wrong. She smiled at him, helping him when she could, unable to stop herself from loving the attention. “Normal is… not something I’d want. Oh, a few months ago I suppose I’d have killed to be normal and not witchy, but now? Now I couldn’t imagine myself a regular person.” she laughed softly.
“You” she said with a firm tone and a spark of lightning in her eyes. “You don’t get to tell me who I can and cannot throw myself in front of to save. That is my right, my privilege, mine alone.” not that she would listen if he kept insisting she not save him.
She leaned back to let him finish before wrapping her hands on the edge of the tub. “I should be able to, yes.” she pushed herself up, slowly, carefully, not wanting to fall like an idiot. She grinned as she stood and nodded.
~*~
Some arguments a man wasn't meant to win. Riddick knew better than to argue with the witch when there was a storm brewing in her eyes. He chose instead to study her movements as she got to her feet in the tub. It took less than a second to pull the drain so the water would dissipate. There were warm towels ready to hand. He draped one over Elaine's head like a veil while he used the other to dry her body.
Lifting her from the tub, he only said, "Good work, witch. We'll take care of your hair in here and I'll see to it you've got something to drink soon. Food can come later. For now, we're just taking care to take care. The rest'll come in time and we got plenty of that."
It wasn't much Riddick could offer her, but it was all he had which meant it had to be enough.
No man could offer more than everything.