I stood naked in the bathroom, my head dipped low to avoid my eyes in the mirror. I didn’t want to see them, or the emptiness I knew was there. My clothes had soaked through hours ago, leaving me with a bone-deep chill in my knees and elbows. I couldn’t believe I’d been so gone, so out of touch, that I’d forgotten what I was cleaning with. Who does that?
I wanted to get into the bath that Crescent had drawn up. Truly, I did. My mind screamed at me to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. Something had a crushing grip around every joint in my body, keeping me from even twitching. So, I stood there as the water got colder, and the steam gave me cover to hide in.
Time passed, though I had no idea how much. I curled my fingers into a fist, digging the tips of my nails into the skin of my palm.
A knock on the door, barely a two-second rapping against the wood. “You okay, El?”
I cleared the fear from my throat, a thick and heavy substance nearly clogging my airway. “Yeah?”
“Do you need any help?”
Silence. Dark, pitiful silence before I could manage something—anything—close to a response. “Maybe.”
Crescent sighed from the other side. “It’s alright to need help, El. Let me help you. I want to help you.”
What happened to Sunshine? He was calling me El, but I wanted Sunshine. I didn’t know why. It didn’t make any sense. No one had ever called me that, but I craved it. Why the fuck did I crave it so bad?
“Elio?”
I shot my head up, staring at the door through the mist around me. “I—okay.”
“Okay?”
I nodded, despite him not being able to see me. “Okay.”
The doorknob turned slowly, and I watched it with nervous anticipation. “I’m going to come in now.”
Crescent came into the room, his gaze never leaving my face. Red splotches were caressing his upper cheekbones, none of them even or symmetrical. They were beautiful. Pinkish-red blush dotted his natural skin color like it was on a canvas, the curve of his bone structure the outline.
If I had a paint brush…
He stepped closer, barely flicking his eyes downward for a split second. “Are you feeling any pain?”
“Yeah. My arms and side hurt pretty bad.”
He tied his hair up, pulling it out of his face. I kind of missed it the way it was before, free and flowy. “Let me help you take these off, and then I’ll hold you up while you get in.”
The bandages and gauze tugged at my arm hairs and scabbed skin despite how gently Crescent was pulling them off. The previously white gauze was stained red from where I’d done too much and disturbed the wounds beneath.
Growing up together, Cres and I had seen each other naked plenty of times. We’d changed in the same room, walked into the shared bathroom while one of us was getting dried off from a shower, or attempted the same sports in school, which led to time in the locker rooms. Being bare—or the idea of seeing him bare—didn’t used to bother me in the slightest.
Now, though? I felt almost anxious as I wrapped my arm around him, letting him bear my weight. Was it the evidence on my skin, the vulnerability of it all, or the feeling of his palms and strong arms holding me together?
The water was hardly lukewarm when I stepped into it, a slightly chilled version of the steam from before, wadingaround my ankles. Crescent held me under my arms as I lowered, dropping to his knees slowly beside the tub. “Want me to add some more warm water?”
“Sure.” I lifted the drain, letting some of it swirl down as he turned the faucet back on, replacing it with more, warm enough to border on too hot.
I didn’t fight him when he picked up a washcloth, dipping it into the water below me and scrubbing it with bar soap. He started at my neck, gently swirling around it, taking gentle care to not press too hard. My eyes fell shut as he dipped lower, washing along my collarbones and chest, the suds no doubt sticking to the hair there.
The way he washed me was almost reverent in an odd way. An act so innocent, yet intimate. When he got to the bruise on my side, he barely swiped over it, keeping his touch featherlight. He didn’t go any lower than my belly button, instead softly asking me to raise my arms so he could get my armpits. It tickled, but I didn’t have the energy to squirm. My exhaustion was bone-deep, scratching and clawing at the calcium there.
“Lie back for me,” he whispered.
My back hit the edge of the tub behind me. I opened my eyes just as he brought the washcloth to my face. He swiped across my bruised nose, where I’d last bled for my wrongdoings. Then each of my cheeks, one after the other, drawing a circular pattern along the bone there.
When he got to my forehead, I looked up. Our eyes locked, and everything started to make sense. In the corner of his iris, a sun shone bright, its rays falling onto the forest that was me. Us. Our pasts had intertwined for so long; how stupid was I to think our futures wouldn’t do the same? It was always meant to be this way.
Crescent and Elio.
