Work Text:
Elijah sits comfortably in the cabin he shares with Jack, somebody he has an on and off relationship with. It was something like a torturous situationship, where one kept pulling away from the other when he got frustrated or frightened; all Elijah could do was be patient with Jack. All he could do was take every sliver of interaction and live off of that. There was so much patience that Jack needed, and Jack? He was so sure Elijah meant ill, that his actions were all fake and false. It hurt, only a little bit, but a minor thing like that was something he could ignore until the day Jack trusts him enough.
If Jack tells him to back off, he backs off. He hasn’t done that yet, so Elijah is staying around. They both feel the same about each other. It’s obvious for anybody to see with the way they tend to one another the same way Arlo and Kelvin do, or the way they can sit in a comfortable silence similarly to how Wren and Tabitha do. They could be perfect.
But Elijah would take it slow. He’d relish in every opportunity he was allowed to twirl and tangle his fingers in the other’s hair, or the opportunity to hold his hands after a hard round where there were still lingering wounds and grazes. He loved the little things, like the way Jack sleeps with his glasses on because his eyes take too long to adjust, or the way he never wears a jacket to conceal the results of peer pressure and a bad relationship. He loved the way his nose scrunched up when Elijah babbled on about conflicting statements over and over again.
And he was so sure he could love every flaw, every inconvenience Jack saw within himself, if he was allowed to.
He sits there for another few minutes before standing. The wooden floor is cold, it sends a chill through his bones, but he makes his way to the bathroom. It’s a tiled floor with a black and white checkered pattern that was just as cold as the wooden one he’d just left. It was an unspoken routine he and Jack had adopted that started as a silly gesture after a bet.
The bet between them was to see who’d last in a chase the longest, and to no one’s surprise Jack won. The winner was to get access to the bathroom first, just to clean up after themselves. Elijah had figured that because he was back at their cold cabin, he’d run the bath, just as an extra ‘you won, I lost’ gesture. Jack came home and he got really weird about the warm bath with towels at the side for when he was ready to get out. The last thing Elijah expected was for that same thing to be done for him the next day when he had a round and Jack didn’t. It wasn’t spoken about, it was just something they did.
More fuel to the fire that’s known as the allegations of their relationship.
The camp counsellor hums to himself as he turns on the faucet, letting the water slowly fill the tub as he moves to the cabinet that held towels. One for his hair, one for his body. Elijah sets them next to the bath as it fills slowly but surely. He glances out of the door to see if there were any sign of the delivery boy but there was nothing. A scowl creeps upon Elijah’s face and he hesitantly leaves the bathroom and down the hall. At the end of the hall, there’s a small drawer with three sections. The two took one section each, and left one to have first aid supplies.
With Jack taking so long, Elijah’s mind could only opt for the worse scenario. He opens the first aid section and takes out a few things. Disinfectant, bandages, gauze and an ice pack that could be activated. Just in case!
He moves quietly into their shared bedroom and over to Jack’s side of the room. It’s messy and Elijah can’t help but wonder if that’s how his room is kept back at home. The bed is messed up, with the fitted sheet slowly peeling off and the duvet slipping from the bed frame onto the floor. There’s stains on the duvet cover. From what Elijah can tell, the stains are from food and blood. That confirmed what he already knew about the other’s cleaning habits.
He sets the medical supplies down on the bed, careful to not disturb the way that Jack had left it. He.. would not be a happy camper if Elijah started messing around with the way his stuff was. He was an odd bit defensive over stuff like that, but that made no difference to his roommate. Elijah knew he could respect that fact. Now, he does have half a mind to tell Jack to stop leaving a mess, but it was Jack’s own stuff that was messed. Not his own.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
He’s snapped out of his thoughts by a glaring delivery boy at the shared bedroom door. Elijah turns on his heel fast to look at him and he swears he can feel his face heat up with some embarrassment or shame that he’d been caught (even if he was doing nothing malicious, it still felt shameful).
“I was just.. You know…” Elijah stammered, his hands wildly motioning to the bandages he’d just set down. “Just being prepared!”
Jack’s arms were crossed. He looked pissed off.
Elijah narrowed his eyes as he inspected the other that glared at him. He wore a black sweater that seemed to be cropped ever so slightly. The sweater itself began to tear and rip at various points, and he can’t tell whether it was intentional or not. Under the black sweater, there looked to be a white button up. Like the sweater, it seemed to rise up that little bit when Jack crossed his arms and gave Elijah that ‘mean’ stare. He’s seen Jack wear these clothes before, they suited him well.
…Except they’re usually not mud caked and starting to stain with the blood from an open wound. Jack was sure to get an infection if he didn’t do anything about this.
Elijah opened his mouth to say something to the smaller, but he shut it just as quickly when the delivery boy turned around and stomped off. His shoulders tense as he hears the slam of the bathroom door and the lock clicking. The camp counsellor sighs, shoulders dropping. It was obvious he crossed a line with his roommate (even if it were just an innocent act, something of pure concern) and now he were back a step or two. He doesn’t let his head fall as he leaves the room.
When he walks past the bathroom, it’s strangely quiet. There’s no sound of water splashing like usual, no string of quiet curses because of the stinging wounds. There’s just silence. That raises concern with Elijah, who would do something had he not pissed Jack off enough already today. It must’ve been a bad turn. From the looks of the wounds, it looked like the Polluted was the killer. There was a faint, faint stench of oil coming from the other, so it added up.
Sitting down where he was originally, he reflects on an interaction they had.
He and Jack sat across from each other in the bedroom, both ready to go to bed but both unable to get a proper sleep. Elijah was always a good sleeper, but since coming here, something changed. He wonders if that’ll change when he goes home. The two had sat opposite to each other, and they rated on a scale of 1 to 10 who they thought they could take in a fight. It ranged from all the killers, where they ranked Polluted a 7. Jack had joked about the stench from the oil enough to render someone unconscious, Elijah had cackled and howled in response.
…They didn’t really ever called them by their proper names, because most of them had no humanity. Arlo insisted they called the Surgeon by his real name. Maybe that’s because he was close to him back at home, whereas Jun and Wren would insist you call their counterparts by name. Sometimes if you called them by name, they’d freeze and it’d be like a flicker of who they were or could’ve been returns to their eyes. Of course, with that there’s a few exceptions.
Like Andrew, who would glare at you until they striked, or Experiment, who didn’t seem to even recognise it.
Like they were devoid of humanity.
His head snaps up as he hears the bathroom door open, sopping wet footsteps pattering down the hall and to the room. Elijah stood, listening for the click of the bedroom door before making his way into the bathroom. He was curious to see if it was left in the same state as Jack’s side of the room. Messy, stained with something. To Elijah’s surprise, it was clean. The only sign Jack had been here, had even done something was a damp towel left on the floor.
As Elijah picked the towel up and left the bathroom, draping it over a chair to dry, he could hear huffs and frustrated growls from in the room. He didn’t get a chance to think before his feet led him to the door, knocking and cracking it open.
Jack’s head snaps around like how Elijah’s had done when he first came into the room. In his hands were unravelled bandages, and Elijah watched as his hands shook. It didn’t take long for him to realise that the delivery boy had no clue what he was doing. His stubborn green eyes met his own, and Elijah pushed the door open. He closed it behind him before approaching the other. His roommate’s gaze drifted to the floor, and his grip tightened on the bandages. Elijah frowned.
“Do you want help?”
“No fucking shit I want help, Elijah.”
A smile grew on Elijah’s face with the snippy response. “Alright. I’ll help.”