RE: Confidence
"No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence." – T.S. Eliot
July 27, 1998
The S.T.A.R.S. barracks were not Jill's favorite place to be, just then. There was a lot of interrogation that was going on, and the four survivors had been quarantined. None of the others seemed to have the same problem that Jill found herself facing.
Barry, through perseverance or pig-headedness, seemed to fall asleep as soon as he stretched out on the thin cots. It wasn't that Jill was longing for her own mattress, or that the cots weren't designed or intended for long term usage. No, that wasn't exactly the problem. There was something else, something beyond the feeling of being once again in middle school passed out on the nurse's couch after getting a black eye.
This was worse than a black eye.
Jill had never previously had a problem being alone. On the contrary, she liked it. It was why even though she'd been dating her boyfriend for years they'd never moved in with one another. (Secretly Jill thought that he was a bit put out that she didn't swoon when he'd offered, and they'd had an actual argument about why she turned him down.) Trapped in the room with the other survivors and Brad… well, Jill felt alone in a different way.
Rebecca, whether she knew it or not, and likely because she didn't know or suspect it, and probably because she was the only other woman in the room, had it the easiest. Jill knew she came off as the strong one, but it didn't mean she was any more ok with what had happened than Rebecca or the two men who had been on the ground. But because she was sullen and withdrawn, they left her alone. Because Rebecca occasionally reacted to the pressure she was feeling with deep breathing or throwing a thumbs up at everyone before turning in on herself in the bunk she was in, the men seemed to easily (and almost unconsciously) take care of her.
The men took turns sitting with Rebecca until she fell asleep.
Jill resented their care of Rebecca.
She tried to resent Rebecca, but something about the girl wouldn't let her do it. When Jill was shaking, Rebecca tried to help.
Reasonably, Jill had to think as she stared up at the underside of the cot on the bunk above the one she was laying in, Rebecca needed more. The younger woman had been out there longer than she had.
No.
That was the bitterness talking.
Putting an arm up, Jill covered her eyes with her forearm. She tried not to think about how Chris was sitting up beside where Rebecca had finally fallen asleep.
And then she stopped trying. She let herself think about it, about the scent of Chris when he walked by her, and the firm hand that helped her up when she needed it. Jill let herself wonder when it was that Chris slept, because she hadn't noticed him do it.
Jill's brain was obviously giving her something else to focus on. A part of her resented that, but only a small part. It was better than the alternative… better than…
The room was quiet, aside from Barry's snores, and the gentle rise and fall of Brad and Rebecca's REM breathing.
The noise was rhythmic, but somehow not soothing. The occasional creak of the metal frames of the bunk cots and the whole dark room aspect was like a bad memory. The windows, thankfully, had blinds on them, but the harsh orange light of the sodium vapors outside the RPD HQ cut through the evening darkness and left marks on the floor and the cots closest them.
The empty cots closest the windows.
None of the survivors were going to sleep near something like that. Jill knew the minute she was let go, the minute she got to go home, she'd be changing things around in her apartment. If it was anything like this…
Jill forced down the shivers and tried humming to herself. Maybe that would work. It had kept her thoughts clear before. Usually over frustration rather than this level of stress, but… something was better than nothing.
Then the rhythmic breathing was overtaken by the creak of one of the cots moving. Probably Brad, Jill reasoned. He shifted a lot in his sleep. To his credit, Brad had opted to remain with the other survivors of the forest rather than continue on normal active duty.
Footsteps, and then there was a weight on her cot. Had she noticed them getting closer? She tensed, immediately, and then she recognized the scent of the person who'd sat on her cot beside her. It was surprising.
"Can't sleep, huh?" Chris's voice was soft in the incomplete darkness.
"You can?" she replied.
"Some, in the afternoons," he said, but didn't sound very convincing. "It's been three days, Jill."
"What, are you watching me now?"
"I've always watched you," Chris said in that same soft voice.
"Ok, not withstanding… whatever. That's unsettling, Chris." She shifted, turning over on one side, putting her back to him.
It gave Chris room to be not touching her. She wanted him to do something like that, to hold her, to… to make it safe for her to sleep the way he seemed able to make it safe for Rebecca. The way that stubbornness made it safe for Barry… the way Brad swigged out of a flask of whiskey that was refilled by the week-night graveyard shift duty officer. Mindy was a good girl, but far too good to understand why she had to bring the pilot a bottle of whiskey every two days.
His weight shifted behind her, and he lay down on the cot with her. The frame pulled tight, but their weight sagged it in the middle. She turned to say something, but Chris reached an arm around her, pulling her into his chest.
And then he held still.
Jill started to grind her teeth, but finally contented herself with relaxing against something that at the very least smelled familiar in a room full of the scent of over-powered industrial cleaners and detergents.
"…this is going to look…"
"Let 'em look," Chris said, settling in. He was warm, and strong, stretched out against her. The effect was drug-like, and almost immediate. Jill's body felt heavy, and Chris adjusted his grip on her, pulling the thin blanket over the two of them. "One of us ought to get some sleep."
"So you haven't been sleeping?" Jill asked, her words coming out a little sleep-slurred, knowing that she might not get the response clearly.
"Some," was all Chris said in response. He shifted so that his nose was against the back of her throat, and adjusted the grip around her middle. His other arm pillowed his head.
They were entirely too close together, but it was exactly what Jill had been quietly begging for, in her own way.
His words didn't sound any more convincing when he said them a second time, but Jill's body was happy to take advantage of the offer of… whatever it was that Chris was offering. She was out like a light before she could come up with a retort to his weak reasoning, and slept straight through the night.
Almost dutifully, she later thought, Chris held her until she slept out. She roused slightly when he was called from the room at the crack of dawn.
She'd gone back to sleep, used to the idea of the higher ups thinking they could catch a flaw in their story by questioning them and holding them almost like prisoners. That was small in her mind, uninteresting. Sleep was better.
An angry part of her, the next day, wondered if Chris thought of it like that, and she nearly bit the head off of her interrogator. She was too angry to eat when the meal was brought in, and she went angrily to her cot.
Jill missed the looks of the other three.
Well, almost. Rebecca was the one who's expression she couldn't ignore. The other woman, the younger woman, seemed like she wanted to confide something in her, to ask a question or…
Jill turned her back on the look from the other woman, pulling her legs up onto the cot and folding them. She needed to think about something else, something that wouldn't make her angry.
But Rebecca wasn't going to give up that easy.
It was a tenacity that Jill had not previously associated with the petite brunette. Soft footsteps brought the younger woman over, and she sat on the cot across from Jill's. "Hey."
Annoyed, Jill looked up at her face, and did her best not to shout at her. Why was she so angry? What was wrong with…?
"Don't be worried about Chris, I'm sure they can't be doing anything too bad to him. Look what we all lived through."
That must be it. That was it, wasn't it? Chris hadn't come back since that morning. "Rebecca…"
"I understand, really. But he's tough." Jill watched Rebecca's face at that, but the young woman had lifted her hands and was holding something on a chain around her neck. Something that looked suspiciously like the dog tags no one had asked her about.
And that was that. Something about Rebecca clicked into place, and all the annoyed jealousy that Jill had felt prior to that moment dissolved. Rebecca wasn't doing anything wrong, she wasn't asking for any help, but for some reason she couldn't quite get over someone.
The door opened to the bunk, and Chris walked in, glaring over his shoulder and grinning like an idiot. Jill glanced at Rebecca, but the woman was looking down still. She turned to the door, and Chris winked at her.
"Well, what are you so keen about?" Barry asked in a gruff voice.
Chris held up a set of brown paper bags that had grease stains on them. "Cheeseburgers."
All of them gathered around the small table, and Jill ignored whatever traces of annoyance were left in her, still curious about what would happen that evening when she couldn't sleep again, and ravenous for the illicit treat that Chris had somehow managed to get for them.
After gorging themselves on the burgers, everyone felt tired. There was no talk of playing cards that evening, or of putting in one of the training videos that would bring light to the world from the small television that sat in one corner. Everyone retired to their cots.
Jill lay in hers, staring up at the cot above, tracing the supports on the steel frame, and listened to the others sleeping. It couldn't have even been ten o'clock. The outside lights weren't on yet, and no one had even turned off the lights in the room.
They flipped off as she was blinking, and Jill tensed, head turning in the direction of the only switch in the room. Then she saw Chris walking back over towards the cot he was sitting on, barefoot and stripped down to his wife beater.
Chris noticed her looking, and a confused look came to his face. He shifted directions, crossing to the cot that Jill was on, and knelt down beside it. "Hey, you ok?"
"You forced me to sleep yesterday, it didn't cure me," Jill said. She didn't let herself acknowledge how nice it felt to be paid such attention to.
"Can I force you again?"
Of course she knew what he meant, but the way the question sounded made Jill's pulse speed up just a little. It was terrible, being locked in with these people and unable to… She wouldn't think about it.
While she was deciding not to think about it, Chris lowered himself to her cot and stretched out beside her. One hand closed on the shoulder closest him and turned her so that her back was, again, against his chest. That same hypnotic feeling of drowsiness gripped Jill with Chris's warmth, and finally the cheeseburgers caught up to her. She let out breath she wasn't aware she was holding. Chris shifted again, sliding his arm up to rest his head on it. This time Jill shifted to rest her temple on it too.
Quietly, to herself, as Chris settled with his nose in her hair, Jill wondered if this would happen again, or if it was some passing fancy of Chris's.
It wasn't.
He did it every night until they were released.