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Cold water streams into his eyes, relentless and clear. It don’t sting anymore; his eyes have gotten accustomed to the frigid spray, unblinking against its indifferent fall. He looks down at his pruned fingertips, tries to find the time written on the wrinkles. Aaron can’t tell if it’s been a minute or an eternity. He just knows that he’s heavy, everything dying down as his body curls in on itself under the water.
The cold is safe. It envelopes him with unyielding arms, so harsh that everything else dulls in comparison. His head. The whispers. They’re crushed under the heavy assault of water raining down on the tub, on his scalp, into his eyes and on his back.
His limbs grow laden, succumbing to the freeze. Aaron feels each one pressed up against him: legs to chest, elbows into knees, chin touching the base of his throat. A ball of dead weight and frigid flesh. His breath, when it puffs out, shudders. The tremble is bone-deep now, carved under his skin several degrees ago.
He should probably get out, he thinks.
A murmur tries to get past the steady thump. Aaron closes his eyes, tilts his head further under the water. It descends on the beads of his spine, sending a fresh wave of static in his ears. His drying hair wets again, plastering to his forehead, soaked to the roots. A shudder rolls down the path between his shoulders, halting in its tracks when a hand lands on his arm. The grip is familiar, searing hot against his skin.
He blinks up to find Emily, hovering above him, his cheek smushed against his knee.
He blinks again, and there’s that look in her eyes, the worry that swarms too wide for her to try to conceal. It’s pointless, even when she tries to spread her frown thin. A wide gap opens in the pit of his stomach, his heart falling through.
Her mouth moves silently. It falters, smooth lines stuttering; through the part in the rain, he thinks he hears a small, low, hey.
He swallows. She turns the water off. Sharp silence rings in his ears, softened by the rustle of the towel she unfolds and crouches down to drape over his shoulders. She rubs the rough fibers into his skin, soaking up the water, leeching the blue from his nails.
Aaron shudders under the towel. He feels the chatter along his teeth, a tremble in his throat that he can’t swallow down. Two points of heat glow in his eyes, a fainter, deeper shame tugging in his gut when her dry cheek presses against his damp one, lips brushing his lobe as she murmurs, “Let’s get you out of here.”
He’s weightless and too heavy all at once, limbs dragging wherever Emily tugs. He feels them and doesn’t, suspended half inside his body, half out.
She makes him stand. Squeezes them both through the door. Sits him on the bed, dampness soaking through their newly changed sheets.
Aaron’s eyes close, his hands fisting into the towel. His tongue licks along his cold molars, jaw trembling, breath uneven. He hears the click of the thermostat as Emily cranks it up. The unoiled hinges squeaking as she pulls the closet open. Rustling clothes. Shuffle of her socks against the floor. The noise is dead in his head, beaten out of submission; he relishes in the silence, the blissful quiet, the death of whispered taunts and shoved down memories.
He only realizes how tight he’s clenching his fists when Emily’s touch loosens them.
Her hands are warm as they cradle his face, coaxing his eyes open, his fingers loose. Her thumb strokes over his cheekbone; she brushes his hair back with a free hand, chasing it with a scrunch of the towel and drying the lingering bathwater. Aaron looks away from the furrow between her brows, a curving slope pinched into her skin.
Her mouth finds his forehead, the heat of a sigh fogging against his temple. “You’re freezing.” She says quietly, squeezing out more water from his hair before reaching for the stack of clothes she’d gotten. She hooks her fingers into the collar of a sweatshirt and stretches it out into a circle wide enough for his head to pass through.
Aaron unlocks his stiff jaw.
“I can—”
“I know.” She says, a small, stilted smile pulling at her lips. “Let me?”
Aaron swallows, feeling the shake travel down his throat. A white flash of her teeth bites down on her lip.
He lets her.
Lets her replace the damp towel with dry clothes. Lets her cup his face so he can leech the warmth from her palms, lets her rub his hair until it frizzes, drape a blanket over his shoulders, pull his stagnant limbs into hers. He feels the ice crack beneath her body heat and the idle trace of her hand along his exposed skin.
His eyes burn with a hot film of tears, a boulder lodged in his throat. The noise flattens under the thump of her heartbeat.
“Thank you.” He croaks.
Emily’s fingers thread through his hair. She presses a long, lingering kiss to his temple. “I love you.” She murmurs.
Her hand is warm on the nape of his neck, gently nudging until his head is ducked into her chest. She lets him steal her heat, soak her shirt, grip her side so tight her skin turns red under her clothes, a branded apology, a desperate plea.
Emily listens. She answers with kisses brushed to his hair, nails scraping lightly over his scalp.