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The rain. It’s cold on your face. Raindrops roll down your cheeks, trickling down from your hair down to your chin. It’s refreshing, if not a little uncomfortable. It’s nice, though, to feel the roars of the sky fall upon your skin and coat it with a shimmer reflected only on the side of your face from the light inside.
Hands wrap around your waist, pulling you into a full chest, contrastingly warmer to your back that is now soaking wet and folding the cold as though each droplet were a rare coin worth millions.
“What are you doing out here?” JJ asks. Her hand rests over the cotton bandage sticking to your neck, “you can’t get this wet.”
Without meaning to, you flinch, then relax back into the body of the woman you know will always catch you.
“Hey,” you whisper your reply, turning in the warm embrace, making sure not to break away from it or tempt JJ to loosen her grip in any way. You’d never tire of looking into those azure eyes, feeling your feet tingle under their warm gaze. A gaze filled now with worry and wonder.
“Hey,” she scans you over quickly, not quick enough that you don’t notice, but you let it slip, “ready to come in?”
The rain begs you to stay with each pitter and each patter against concrete. You want to stay, yet it’s something else inside you that says no. It’s the feeling of knowing something that feels this good, in excess, can do more harm than not, like candy.
JJ hadn’t likely meant to instil this message or the sudden revelation you were having when simply asking whether you were ready to come back in. Nonetheless, she had, and it wasn’t unwelcome. JJ had a way of doing that, secretly, telepathically or unknowingly. She broke down walls you didn’t you had up, and you loved her for it.
“Yes,” you nod and offer a smile.
Her fingers intertwine between your own as she returns your smile with one of her own, and though it’s pitiful and lacks the energy of her usual smiles, you appreciate it.
She pulls the both of you into the warmth of the house, and you close your eyes for a few moments, feeling the blood in your veins warm up, and the goosebumps on your arms settle. When you open your eyes, you see JJ scanning your body again, spending extra time on your soaked bandages and healing wounds that didn’t require covering.
JJ’s headstrong, she always has been, she’d call it resilience, whereas some would say stubborn, but either way, you’d never minded it when it was so easy to see past it. With her looking you over, you know she wants to help, mainly because it had killed her to know she couldn’t prevent what had happened.
“They’re wet,” you point out, following her gaze, “help me change them?”
To say she was beaming at the opportunity would be inaccurate, but her smile changes from sorrowful to hopeful. It feels more genuine, and your heart swells at the sight of it.
Since the attack happened, JJ watched you change with each passing day. She saw your smile fade and your energy level dissipate. So, to hear you wanted to take care of yourself, with her help or even for her benefit, is a victory.
“I’ll get the stuff,” she begins to walk away, stopping momentarily before turning back around with a sudden purpose and longing in her eyes, “I could help you shower before we change the dressings. Maybe you’ll feel more comfortable if we get all that dried blood and grub off you.”
She’s not wrong. A shower would help. It’s the fact you’d have to come face-to-face with the damage done that's prevented you from doing so. And for some reason, anything you should be doing to look after yourself seemed the worst thing imaginable.
You look at her, the word ‘no’ dancing on your lips, but seeing the hope in her eyes makes you feel like saying it would just about shatter your heart.
“A shower couldn’t hurt,” you run your hands through your wet wire-like hair, “I guess I need one…”
She chuckles, and it’s like hearing pure sunshine. The brush of bright yellow splattered across a blacked-out canvas. For the first time in days, you feel that the grin on your face is genuine. It’s something you want more and more of; it’s been bubbling under the surface for days - that feeling of hopelessness - and that laugh has saved you, provided you that droplet of hope that you can cling to.
You take her hand, and things seem that little bit brighter, that little bit easier, and you fall that little bit more in love with the woman pulling you upstairs.
Honey. It was one of the first things you noticed about JJ; she smelt like honey and coconuts. Luckily it was something that, despite a year of dating, had yet to change. It was three months into the relationship when you realised it was her hair that smelt like honey because of her shampoo and her body like coconuts because of her body wash. Body wash that she was now gently and ritualistically lathering all over your body.
There’s something innately intimate about showering with someone, especially when anything sexual did not enter that small steamy cubicle, when wandering hands only had the purpose of cleaning and when love-filled eyes only looked into one another with unspoken words of affection and encouragement.
JJ’s hands run through your hair, distributing honey-scented goodness through each lock, then return to massage your scalp. There was nothing you could do to prevent yourself from closing your eyes and falling back into her for the second time that night. Hot water streams down the front of your body as the smell of JJ engulfs you, and you let her surround you, contently humming.
“You okay, baby?” JJ asks, breaking the comfortable silence.
“Mmm hmm.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She laughs, and god, that laugh. The piping-hot water pales compared to the sheer heat that radiates and coats your body when you hear that laugh.
After the shower, JJ walks you to the bed, insisting you get into your pyjamas and lay comfortably in bed. Once convinced, she makes her way back to the bathroom, and you listen, whilst changing, to her gathering the needed bits and bobs.
When she returns, you bite your bottom lip, trying not to laugh. Instead, you smile in awe as JJ walks towards you, trying to carry a whole hospital's worth of medical supplies. You dare not say anything because, after all, it’s JJ, and you know she wants nothing more than to be thorough.
She holds the disinfectant spray in her hand as though she is scared of it, and she thinks she's doing an excellent job of masking her hesitance. To her credit, she probably is. It's only that you've known her so long you can notice her moving ever so slightly slower and gripping into the bottle tight enough for a while tinge to appear over her knuckles.
“Ready?” the question, you have a feeling, isn't only aimed your way. Nevertheless, you nod along with her, and she studies her hand.
“Ready.”
JJ sits beside you on the edge of the bed and starts removing your gauze bandages, prioritising the one on your neck. It’s unmistakable. She looks at the wound, battling her own intuition knowing what will happen. She looks anyway, her eyes sadden, and her shoulders slump.
“It wasn’t your fault,” you tell her, placing your water-wrinkled hand atop hers, “It could have been any of us.”
“But it was you,” tears start to form in her eyes. She continues, “And I couldn’t protect you.”
Her tears seconds ago were born of sadness, yet now with her jaw clenched and her hand balled into a fist, it is evident sadness is no longer the predominant emotion.
“I should have been faster; I should have figured things out quicker; I should have-”
You cut her off, and she thanks you as her body relaxes into the sudden but welcome kiss. After you're sure her tears are dried, and her jaw is relaxed, you finish the kiss with one final peck and sigh against her lips.
“I'm okay now, and that's what matters,” you lean your furrowed forehead to JJ’s, “you found me. You saved me, JJ.”
“I’m supposed to be the one looking after you, and here you are trying to make me feel better.” she sniffles as she finally smiles again. It's a welcome sight.
You bring your hands to her tear-stained cheeks, taking your time to admire - despite having just been crying - how beautiful she is. When she sniffles again and shoots you a curious look, your heart swells, and your head drops to the side in awe.
“We take care of each other,” and by no means did JJ make looking after her an easy task, but you took the challenge every time, “and we always will.”
Prying one hand away from her face, you wriggle your pinky in front of her. She rolls her eyes but smiles, lets out an amused huff of air from her nose, and then somewhat playfully grapples onto your finger with her own.
“Always,” she says with sureness in her eyes and a sudden straightening of her spine before kissing your forehead. Her gaze lowers back to your neck, “let's finally change these.”
The hesitance previously displayed was nowhere to be seen. Now JJ moved with confidence and a kind of expertise. She pulls the gauze plaster entirely off your neck, rubbing away any leftover tacky bits left from the glue; they seem to bother her more than they bother you as she starts waging war on them, trying and failing not to rub a little harder than necessary.
She then sprays the disinfectant around your stitches, cleaning the surrounding area. Only twice, the cotton pad brushed against your wound, causing you to grimace, but you smile the second you see JJ grimace along with you. The look on her face is priceless and causes both of you to burst out laughing.
“I love you,” you whisper once the laughter dies down, “thank you.”
She doesn’t respond immediately, and you worry, but you see why her attention is elsewhere. Her bottom lip is wedged between her teeth, and she’s squinting at the numbers on the plastic packaging in her hands.
“It's this way,” you try to show her how to open it, and it's funny because she could do this sort of thing with her eyes closed, yet she slaps your hand away and continues to read. It's endearing, really, that she wants to make sure she's doing everything by the book, but the air is beginning the irritate your wound, and if it's not covered in two seconds, you might just-
“There!” JJ proudly exclaims, peeling the plastic layers away and covering up your wound, “Oh, and I love you too, and you're welcome.”
She's happy. She's proud. And though you were close to ripping your stitches out, it seems unimportant because JJ’s taking care of you, and more importantly, she wants to. So, you push your impatience aside and close your eyes as she cleans your other wounds and redresses them with the utmost care, and by the time she’s finished, you feel yourself floating off the bed in a tranquil state.
JJ sneaks away to dispose of all the old bandages and scarlet-coated swabs. When she returns, she slips onto the bed behind you, slides her legs beside your thighs and wraps her arms around your waist. Her nose nuzzles into your hair, and though you don’t see, you feel her lips curl as she smells her shampoo in your wet hair. Closing your eyes, you settle back into her, brushing your cheeks to her forehead and breathing in honey, letting the scent calm and wash over your whole body.
“I could fall asleep like this.” You mumble into her hair.
“I don’t think my back would thank you for it if you do,” JJ banters, her warm breath tickling your neck and warming your cheeks with a crimson hue, “but I’d do it for you.”
Pulling yourself forward and turning in JJ’s arms, you place a feather-light kiss on her soft lips. She responds quickly, tightening her grip and pulling you closer so there is no remaining space between your two bodies. Her lips move languishingly but purposefully.
“Bed?” you breathlessly murmur over her lips.
“Bed.” she eagerly nods.