A/N: I hope you are enjoying my odd little tale. I am. An exercise in patience.


CHAPTER EIGHT


Pink Flags


A robe hung on the back of the closed door. She missed it before. Sarah leaned toward the door, pushing the robe aside, her ear almost to the wood. Bartowski moved to the kitchen; she heard his steps.

After a breath, to steady herself and to allow Bartowski to move farther away, she dropped quietly to her hands and knees. She lowered her shoulder so that she could reach beneath the bed, fishing horizontally for the pink sock. She hooked it with a finger, pulled it into her hand, and her hand from beneath the bed.

She sat back on her feet.

For a moment, she took the sock to be a child's, a small girl's, but as she unbunched it in her hand, she saw that it was too large for that: it was a woman's ankle sock. A sock that had been worn; it was dirty on the bottom, as a sock would be that had been worn padding around the cabin. Regretting the necessity, Sarah sniffed the sock delicately, waving it like a small flag, making a face that she could feel as she did so.

It did not smell bad but it definitely had been worn.

She got back on her hands and looked around under the bed again. Nothing.

No mate.

Standing, she stuffed the sock in her pocket and stepped to the door to listen again. She could hear the rattle of pans.

In a moment, her clothes were on the bed, the robe on her shoulders. She closed and belted it. When she started to turn to the door, she stopped.

On tiptoe, she went back to the chest of drawers. Ignoring her reflection, she opened the drawers one at a time, searching this time not with her eyes but her nose, leaning down over each drawer and inhaling carefully. It was faint, but there: each drawer smelled of violets, a sachet. It seemed familiar and alien all at once, near and far. She let herself linger over the top drawer, the one in which the scent was strongest, but Sarah could not catch at whatever tendril of recognition tickled her nose.

It was maddening, and after a moment she gave up.

She pulled on the robe's belt again then opened the bedroom door. Bartowski was at the stove, bent over, lighting it. He did not react to her opening the door but continued with the task. It irked her.

She cleared her throat and, on a whim, loosened the belt she'd just tightened. Bartowski looked up just after the burner flamed blue.

The robe fell open to her navel, the belt knot keeping it more or less closed below that. Her cleavage was in full view, the undercurve of each breast revealed.

Bartowski's eyes swept along her again, face to breasts to belt knot. He turned away but not until she saw his Adam's apple bob. Pleased with but not explaining that fact to herself, she went into the bathroom.

She could not ignore her reflection in the bathroom. She saw it before she remembered the mirror. Her cheeks were red, her eyes shining. Her breathing was fast.

Damn, that was only supposed to affect him!

She reached in and turned on the shower, left the water cold, and dropped her robe. She opened the clear glass doors and climbed under the water, suppressing her gasps as the icy water struck her heated skin. After a moment or two, she caught her breath, adjusted to the glacial runoff, but the water was so cold her teeth began to chatter.

For long moments there was only the sound of the water, of her teeth.

She was facing the water, letting it run down the front of her when the bathroom door opened. Hearing it, she turned around and found herself facing Bartowski through the glass doors. The frigid water had left the glass perfectly clear, except for a few stray drops, idly trailing down the glass: there was no steam.

The cold water had not left her body unaffected.

Bartowski jolted like he had been electrocuted. Clearly, he had expected steam; he had not expected to be able to see her. He had two towels, one blue and one pink, and a bottle of Brazilian Joia shampoo in his arms. He dropped them all. They struck the floor at the same time as his jaw, all jumbled next to his shoes.

Twice before his eyes had cooly swept along her body — once under the sheet, once in the robe — but this time he had no preparation and no mediation. There was only her, Sarah.

His gaze was a consuming fire.

They stood like that for an age. She forgot the icy shower. Bartowski's face blazed, matching the scar on his temple. He whipped around and almost leaped from the bathroom, the door slamming behind him. She thought she heard him swearing outside it, but she was unsure.

After a moment of recovery, she started to laugh quietly through her chattering teeth, surprising herself. Maybe she had been wrong? Maybe Bartowski had not undressed her? — The man who just leaped from the bathroom did not seem like a man who had witnessed that particular sight before.

At any rate, the reaction she'd waited for so long she had gotten after all, if inadvertently.

Victory.

Teeth still chattering but still laughing, she opened the shower door and stepped out quickly to grab the bottle of shampoo. She uncapped it and squeezed some thick and fragrant onto her hand. Like the toothpaste, it was her brand.

She began to wash her hair.

She had a lot to ponder.

A few minutes later, she was drying herself vigorously, trying to warm up, when she remembered the violet scent. In Burbank, Sarah had borrowed a sweater from Bartowski's sister, Ellie. It had smelled faintly of violets.

And Ellie — the doctor — often wore pink socks with her hospital scrubs...

...Sarah pulled the taped, now-soaked gauze from her arm — she had forgotten it — and she wondered.