--Singin' in the Shower--: Always, always lock the door.
A/N: We all knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Some dumb guy is going to do this when you stay at a guest's house. Don't let this happen at home, kids. If it does, remember that it takes 17 muscles to frown but only 4 to slap the bastard cross the face. Just kidding. Anyway, thanks everyone--EVERYONE!--for so kindly reviewing. I thought this story was slowly being sucked down the drain, but thankfully, it's not. So thank you all, and don't forget to review this chapter. It's rather short, but I like it that way.
Somehow or another, Elena ended up painting the whole left wall of the bar by herself. Rude and Reno were assigned to help her at first, but after they started hurling clods of paint and newspaper at each other, Elena ignored them and the next thing she knew, she turned around to ask Reno to help her with a corner and he wasn't there. There were drips of paint leading up the staircase. Growling, Elena decided to just finish the task quickly.
'Quickly' ended up being the entire span of the afternoon. When she put down the roller, her arms were sore beyond belief and she was covered in white paint. Setting down her equipment to figure that Reno and Rude would get guilt-tripped into cleaning up the mess later, she padded up the stairs into the shared bathroom and shut the door. Stripping down quickly, Elena felt sweaty, covered in paint, and generally gross. She hadn't washed her hair in awhile.
The shower stall in the bathroom wasn't the kind with opaque curtains, but rather with a transparent, sliding glass door. Elena stepped in and turned the spigot on to just the right kind of warm, sighing with relief as she felt the sweat and the dankness of her hair melting off of her with the rising steam. "I'm staying in here forever," She decided as she picked up the shampoo.
It wasn't Cloud's fault that he couldn't hear the noise of the shower when he came upstairs. He had just come inside from a neighbor's house to where he'd been moving some of the crumbling concrete that had fallen into their house from the snowstorm, and rebuilding their walls.
Draping a towel over his shoulder as well as a change of clothes, he was so distracted with the thoughts of the late gas bill that when he opened the bathroom door, the steam that should have warned him to get out right then and there did nothing. Elena had just turned the water off, and Cloud stood there at the door staring at her for a second, Elena paused with one arm stretched out for her towel, the water dripping off of her body—before it hit Cloud that she was naked, and he shouldn't look. Jerking his head up, or down, or sideways to look anywhere but at her, he was too late for the piercing scream that shook the glass doors and made Rude and Reno, who were still fighting—now with snow—clamber up the stairs, thinking that she'd been attacked.
Reno had his nightstick out and Rude had a gun as they arrived at the crime scene. The door was now shut and Elena was screaming horrible obscenities at Cloud, who was still standing at the door. Rude and Reno, both out of breath, looked at Cloud, looked at the door, looked at each other, and burst out laughing, doubling up to fall on the floor. Hooting with laughter as Cloud looked uncomfortable, Rude patted Cloud on the shoulder and told him not to worry because he wasn't the first. Reno managed to get up and pound on the door, telling Elena to man up. There wasn't much to see anyway, he shouted, as they'd all walked in on her since she forgot to lock the door every single time she took a shower.
As Elena started cursing furiously at Reno from the other side of the door, Cloud massaged his temple and went back into his room. At least the kids weren't home.