(no And We All Know It) - Tumblr Posts

Somehow, this'd be easier if he was less damned pleasant about it. Him being so even-keeled--outside of battle, the drama queen--is one of the only reasons she'd even provisionally agreed to this bath that she'd still taken as being a few days off. Plenty of time to unknot the last of her issues, or, more likely, to find a reason to not and do it later, when he's gone. And even then, she knows she'd've gotten an earful for the shite way she cares for her hair, but that's still a more palatable option than the roil in her stomach.

The only reason Edward can call it low stakes is that he hasn't seen them yet, the only scars she's ever felt any sort of shame for. Every mark on her body has a story attached, a decision made, a consequence for action. The burns on her thighs are "consequences of her actions," too, but they don't feel the same, like maybe they were consequences of inaction. (It felt dumb after Jack, realizing the door had been there all along and all she'd ever had to do was walk through it. But the door had been invisible, then.)

She's being quiet too long. Edward keeps filling the silence, watching her, mistaking her squint and the way she worries at her rings for something they aren't, knowing him. Trying cajole her into this. There's a part of her that gets full and warm at that, him trying so hard to make her look after herself, but that part's held fast in the snapping jaws of terror threatening her breathing. It's only Edward. It should be fine. He won't care. Hasn't before. But Jack did.

Anne's without a stick by which to measure this moment against and she hates that right behind hating the scars. But there's no way out of this that doesn't end, at some point, in him seeing the very intentional pattern burned into her thighs so methodically, night after night but years ago. So she nuts up about it, numbly removing the necklace first like he'll change his mind in the next few seconds. He doesn't. But maybe there's hope.

Anne focuses on getting her belt off without shaking and with a forced casual air says, "D'ye even have any fuckin towels?"

He does. She can see them where she sits, though she's careful not look up at them. Belt in hands. Trouser fly open. Second he's turned, she decides, she'll shuck her trousers and make as casual a mad dash for the tub as possible, or maybe keep her shirt on her back until she's low in the water like she just forgot it. She'd rather look like a dumbshite now than show the evidence of how she'd been forged to steel, afraid in some way he might stop looking at her like she knows what she's doing if he ever sees evidence from the time that she didn't.

Everything's a fight with this one, however Edward is the last person to back down from a challenge. "Very funny," he remarks pleasantly. Nice deflection, but he can do that too.

He would offer her privacy, though he knows it's not about that. Living and working at sea in such proximity to others has a way of removing any shyness for casual nudity.

This is more intimate. It's vulnerable. "If you hate it, you can just get out," perfectly reasonable, he thinks. "Low stakes operation here."

Mentally he calculates the rate of his own survival if he were to just pick her up and drop her into the damn tub. Briefly the thought brings forth memories of bathing his childhood house cat. It makes him smile.

"This heat is miserable enough on its own, and you're a moist sleeper. Come on. The only way this ends is your feeling better for it. You know I'm right."