Summary: Alone in her apartment Sherry thinks about how she longs for the impossible.
Characters: Sherry Birkin, Jake Muller
Notes: Jake and Sherry are my favorite couple in the whole series and I wish more people would do more with them. Then again there are a lot of things I'd like it if people were to write more of. If anyone of you reading this would like to see an idea continued or have a suggestion for the next characters or virus I should write about please let me know.
o0o
Sherry got undressed in the dark because it was easier that way. Everything was still the same whether she could see it or not. She knew every blemish, every imperfection, every scar so well that she could see them in her mind as clearly as she could with her eyes, but turning the lights out made it easier to pretend. The thin trace work of pale scars on her back weren't so bad and the little circular patterns of dents on her arms looked almost deliberate. When she was feeling morbid she had sometimes thought that those bite marks were pretty looking in their own way.
As she took off her blouse her fingers brushed against the smooth, shiny scar that covered her left bicep. That one actually was deliberate. The bite, when it had happened, had been a deep one, right to the bone, and it hadn't healed cleanly. Over the course of a few days it had bubbled up into a growing keloid scar. Once she got back she'd taken asked for a few days off and when her request was granted she spent the night drinking with friends. When she got home, full of liquid courage, she doused the scar with liquid nitrogen and wrapped a bandage around it. The second time around it healed quite nicely and in a few more months it wouldn't be there at all. Of course there was no telling what the next few months would bring. Injuries and scars were a guarantee, but there were also uncertainties in her life now, one that hadn't been there just a year ago.
The sad thing was that dealing with the scars that went wrong had become routine. The first hypertrophic scar she'd ended up with had frightened her so badly that she cut it out in a fit of desperation and then seared it shut because she's panicked at the sight of all the blood. Only after the wound was fully healed and showing no signs of further development did she even think of looking things up. A quick internet search and she learned what a keloid scar was. Knowing that it was something relatively common helped reassure her and made her earlier panic seem silly. She also realized that she was lucky that her hasty removal efforts hadn't made things worse.
When the next one happened she showed it to the doctors and they examined it, confirming what she already knew, that it was an ordinary scar, not a sign that the virus in her was resurfacing in some new and terrible way. At her insistence they removed it by freezing it off and that was the end of it until the next one. The pattern repeated for the next few scars, with the doctors coming to the conclusion that they were just a little hiccup in her healing ability. After all the years and injuries her body had started losing track of when to stop.
With the tenth such scar she got tired of the poking and prodding and waiting for permission and surgery to have them removed so she managed it on her own. How easy it was to get liquid nitrogen surprised her, though the initial purchase of the special container necessary to hold it had proven quite expensive.
It was how she had dealt with nearly every single one of them since then, go drinking with friends to gather courage and then deal with it. There had been a few close calls where she froze things a bit too deep or spilled the liquid nitrogen in interesting places, but there had only been two real bad incidents. Looking back it was for her to decide if nearly freezing off two of her fingers was worse than managing to shatter the towel she had put over the table. The towel certainly had required a lot more cleanup, especially since she had company the next day.
Shaking her head at the memory she picked up her blouse and started to fold it only to stop as she noticed that one of the seams along the shoulder was starting to fray. It was a such a shame, she'd liked it so much, but she supposed she'd been putting off going clothing shopping for too long. She'd put on weight recently, most of it muscle despite having cut back on working out. For such a petite woman she'd always had an easy time getting and staying in shape and until recently she had thought it was a good thing considering her line of work. It hadn't always been such an ordeal, but now she was getting increasingly picky about what she wore and…
Tonight her friends were all at a party, but she was home alone getting ready for a shower. There were no scars that needed tending to so there was no reason for her to go. Besides, one of her friends had been getting a little too friendly and she had no idea how to tell him no. It wasn't that she didn't like him, it was that she was afraid and maybe there was someone else she liked more. The thought that she might have fallen in love without even realizing it was frightening.
After what she had been through as a little girl she hadn't really cared for people or touching or the thought of getting married, settling down and having kids and that had been after the nightmares had finally stopped. Unlike just about every other girl out there she had no interest in boys, at least not in a romantic way. She wasn't interested in girls either, so that took care of that. Confident that she would never love anyone, she allowed herself to fall into the trap of feeling safe that things would never change. How naïve she's been, everything changed whether you wanted it to or not.
Maybe her friends were right in insisting that there was someone out there for everyone and that it was only a matter of time. She used to laugh, humoring them even as she remembered the nightmares from her childhood. There wouldn't be anyone, that was what she had reassured herself.
Getting undressed in the dark was easier. A lot of things were easier in the dark.
Taking a towel out of her bedroom closet she wrapped it around herself, making sure to pull it right up under her arms and hold tightly on to it even though she was alone in the apartment. The tape holding the ointment soaked bandage along her ribs in place crinkled slightly as she adjusted the towel.
Alarming as it had been when it first happened, she hardly gave any thought to what was under the bandage anymore. If anything was thankful that it hadn't been somewhere worse, somewhere that would interfere with day to day life and get in the way. It was a strange thing to be thankful for, but after everything else she felt that it was necessary to count her blessings. So many people had it so much worse than her.
She made her way across the hall and into the bathroom without turning on the light there either. By now she knew her way around the apartment well enough to navigate it in the dark, which she did each morning until she changed out of what she had worn to bed and into whatever it was that she was wearing that day. Only once she was fully dressed did the lights go on and the curtains get opened. She could even change the bandage on her left side without turning on the lights, which was a very good thing.
The only exception was during her weekly examination of herself. That was when she agonized over every inch of her body, checking which scars were healing and which ones might end up needing to be dealt with. In the past year her examinations had grown increasingly through, but there was reason for that, for the first time in her life she felt self-conscious. It wasn't as bad as it might have sounded, though if she tried to explain it to anyone they'd likely take it the wrong way. She didn't hate herself, not really, and she never worried too much about her appearance. It wasn't at all unhealthy either, it was just that for the first time she actually cared about how she looked. Maybe that was why one of her friends had started showing a problematic level of interest in her, he'd seen the way she was dressing and doing her hair, noticed that she had started wearing makeup and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
He started inviting her places, trying to get her to spend more time with him and the others, perhaps assuming that she didn't want to be alone so much.
The thing was, she was fine, mostly, with being alone and no matter what he and the others thought, she still wasn't interested in…
She had to stop lying to herself. She was interested in men, specifically one single man and only one. It was more fascination than romantic interest, that much she was going to cling to, the same way she was clinging to the towel as she waited for the water in the shower to get warm.
There was no point in pretending that her interest was anything more than academic because of the impossibility of it all, but perhaps that was the point of it. If it had been possible would she still feel the same way every time she thought about him? Would she still spend so much time mentally going over every moment they had been together and reading too much into every word, every smile, every little gesture?
If Jake Muller had been the one to ask her out would she still be home alone getting ready to take a shower?
If he had been there to ask her out the answer would be a resounding 'yes', but he wasn't there and perhaps that was what made him so intriguing. She hadn't seen him in person since escaping the underwater research complex in China, though they'd talked several times, mostly about unimportant things. Talking to him made her feel, if not pretty, at least capable of wanting to be thought of as pretty, which somehow felt better than actually being thought of as pretty. She'd had enough men who didn't know better compliment her on her looks that it was meaningless to her. She never wanted to feel pretty, she wanted to feel…
If she was going to be thinking about the impossible she might go all the way. What she wanted was to feel Jake's arms around her. She wanted him to touch her in places where only her own hands had been before.
Folding her towel she got into the shower and let the warm water flow over her. Would he run his hands through her hair? Yes, she might as well think that while she imagined.
What would his hands feel like against her? Very much unlike her own, she supposed as she worked shampoo through her hair. She didn't even need to look to know that loose strands were falling away and getting caught on the drain. Losing her hair wasn't that frightening, it had happened twice before already, albeit when she was much younger. Stress did funny things to a person and she'd been under a lot of stress lately. There was no reason for her to assume that it wouldn't grow back just fine once again, no reason at all save for the nagging sense of finality about this time.
Thinking about Jake though, she would have all her hair back the next time they met because that was how she was imagining it. He would run his fingers through her hair and his touch would be strong and certain, not the cautious searching that she did every time she ran her fingers through her hair, afraid that she might find something amiss.
What would she do during all this? Would she run her fingers over the scars on his body, faint and fine and normal? Would she let him do the same to her? All of her scars?
She worked soap up and down her arms, imagining the way he might trace every little crescent bite mark, one by one up and up. He would look at her when he reached the remains of the burn on her left arm, which would be so very faint by then, hardly noticeable at all and she would shake her head because there were some things that she wouldn't be able to explain, even to him. Instead she'd let him put his arms around her. He'd gently run his fingers up and down one particular faint mark just off center of her shoulder blades and they'd smile at the shared memory, the closest she'd come to confessing everything to anyone who didn't already know. She wished she'd told him because she didn't know when she'd get the chance to confess, if she'd even get the chance at all. There might come a day when…
What would it feel like when they kissed? What would it feel like when he was pressed against her, not at all frightening she was sure, nothing like…
It would not be a kiss like the ones in the movies, the sort of violent, desperate probing that made her gag at the thought, but it would still be a passionate kiss. Maybe he was as unused to kissing as she was and they would learn together. She liked that thought as implausible as it might have been. She was sure that a man like him had been with countless women simply because he could, so perhaps he would teach her things.
Would his hands creep back around front to rub at her breasts like she was doing to herself now? Would they knead feeling back into her left side where the entire lower half of her breast had been subsumed in a growing mass of hard, rubbery scars? He knew about her healing so would he wonder why they were there, what had caused them and why she hadn't done anything about them? It would seem like something so minor, just a quick surgery compared to what he knew she could recover from.
She should have dealt with it when it first started up, but it had been too close to…
If her hand slipped while pouring the liquid nitrogen there was no telling how much it would hurt, how bad the damage would be and it was too easy to imagine herself slipping because of what was there. And what if, after all the pain, it grew back? What if, like the scars, it got worse over time? Best to leave it alone, at least until there was no more ignoring it.
Since she was imagining it would be easy enough to imagine that it wasn't there, but it was so much a part of her that ignoring it, even while fantasizing, was impossible.
Would he listen to whatever excuse she came up with and continue? She didn't think the scars would disgust him, she hoped they wouldn't, but he would still ask and she would need to come up with a reason. Whatever it was, she imagined he would believe it because there was no reason for him to think she would lie to him.
He would rub and gently squeeze and she would feel it and it would feel so good that she would moan and beg and…
Would his hands slip lower still and would she push him away they brushed against the bandage?
He'd ask, she was sure he would, but would she find the courage to do as she was doing now and slowly work the edges of the tape up? She'd have to because he knew and he would worry about whatever injury was so slow to heal that she needed to cover it, to protect it. How could she explain? She would have to tell him everything if she tried and then what would he think of her? Maybe just pulling the bandage away and letting him see without offering any explanation would be easier.
Once the bandage was off there would be no going back. Leaving it on would be safer, but that would be like lying to him. If they were going to share such an intimate moment why would she hide away so much of herself? What was the appeal of imagining the impossible if she refused to fully devote herself to it? She would remove the bandage because otherwise she would be imagining it all wrong. She'd already taken too many liberties, ignoring her thinning hair, the fact that despite being nearly twenty six she'd started growing again, how she could feel where bones she'd broken years ago were thickening, and the multitude of other little things that paled in comparison to what was beneath the bandage.
Jake would stare at it and she'd stare back. She would see the expression on his handsome face change to one of puzzlement, then shock, after which a slow disbelieving recognition would creep in, followed rapidly by disgust. She would stare, unable to look away unless she wanted to turn her back to him because the fist sized eye staring out from just beneath her breast was lidless and unblinking.
Water from the shower flowed down around it like tears, its irregular pupil narrowing to a slit as she considered that maybe she longed for Jake because monsters recognized their own.
Sliding to the floor of the shower she shook with silent sobs as she realized there was something far worse than the thought of Jake pushing away from her at the sight of the eye.
He might look at her with silent understanding and pull her in for a kiss. Maybe he would find a way to love her despite what she was becoming and that thought terrified her more than anything that was happening to her body.
