The trek toward morning was peppered by the buckshot of nightmares for Meg. Every half hour or so, she would call out, reach out, flinch inward, something – always something telling Joe her mind was working in overdrive, trying to process the events of the night, if not the entire relationship she'd just ended. Joe, sitting up in their bed, refused sleep in order to watch her.

Joe had long since removed the ice-packed towels from Meg's back and ankles; she'd woken up enough then to fish a pair of panties out of her suitcase and put them on before trying to drop back into sleep. He winced when he saw the deep bruises and gashes streaking across her skin. 'I can hardly wait to see the front of her, if this is what the back looks like.' The bruises between her thighs had run so deep from the front they were now inky and visible from the back, and while he knew he should have been uncomfortable at how far her shirt had ridden up in order to afford him that particular view of her injuries, he couldn't help but stare – not because it was a turn-on, but because he wanted to catalog each physical slight, burn them into memory, and hurt Jackson the same way and worse. Meg hadn't asked him not to do anything, she'd only asked him to stop thinking about it. 'Thinking isn't doing, Meg. I never said I wouldn't do anything, and you never made me promise. I only promise I won't get caught.'

Joe had pulled as much of the quilt and blankets over her as he could, and kept adjusting the blankets as she slept. He wished he could find a way to drape an arm over her. Instead, he had settled for carefully snaking a leg between hers, close to her knees, trying to offer her some sense of stability and shivering at the chill of her skin. Throughout the night, he brushed the back of his hand against her arms, trailed his fingers through the ends of her hair, whispered to her that he was with her, she was safe – but nothing stopped her contortions and vocalizations. Now, without thinking, he brushed the back of his hand against her face. Meg's eyes snapped open, and she began to push backward on the bed, panic-stricken and gasping for air, blankets flying in all directions. 'Shit, Joe, really? Really? You don't learn, do you? What happened to not touching her unless she asked?'

Realizing she was about to backpedal off the bed, Joe grabbed at her, praying he wouldn't hurt her or make her scream. He aimed for her hip, ignoring the fact her shirt was now completely up around her waist, and dropped his arm firmly over her, trying to hold her in place rather than fight her motion or try to drag her. "Meg, stop. It's me. It's Joe – you're at the hotel. You're in Randy's room, remember? It was just a dream. You're safe. Stop. Nobody's going to hurt you. You're okay, Meg. Everything's okay." Joe hoped he wasn't hurting her. He couldn't touch her shoulders, didn't want to grab her hands, knew her lower back was too bruised from the elevator railing...he had so few options. He tried to pull his leg back from where it was tangled between hers, but he felt her struggle harder when he moved.

"No, let go of me!" Meg's voice was hoarse, loud, her terror rising palpably.

"Meg, babygirl, stop. Stop. It's me. Joe. It's okay now. It's all okay." Everything in her eyes was blank and glassy, as though she was drugged, but her brain was somehow moving at high speed, trying to fight to remember where she was, what she was doing, what she wasn't doing – nothing was coming to her. "Meg, please, stop. I promise, it's okay now. It's safe. Please."

'I promise' Meg...Meg, come on, where are you – that's not Jackson's voice, where are you? Think, Meg, wake the fuck up and think! Where are you?" She felt something heavy tangled between her legs, something heavy on her hip, and then reality slammed into her – Joe. She really was safe, he really was here, everything really was fine, he promised. As quickly as she started, her entire body went slack and stopped fighting, breathing heavy, eyes slowly focusing, her hand nearest Joe slowly creeping up to his tattoo and lightly tracing some of the thicker lines.

"You know, we're lucky." Meg's voice was breathy, low, sounding desperate for water. Joe didn't dare move.

"Lucky, baby?"

"Randy sleeps like the dead when he's been drinking. He would have been out here to kill you, otherwise."

Joe blinked, opened his mouth to speak, blinked again. He managed to huff out a chuckle, then another, then Meg giggled, then their efforts at silence were a lost cause as they both dissolved into laughter until Meg couldn't stand it and began a wicked coughing fit.

"Shit, Meg, here. Wait here. I'll get water. Joe practically launched himself at the wetbar, filling another glass with water as Meg attempted to get her arms under her, slowly righting herself to a sitting position. Joe slipped back into bed around her, lifting her the rest of the way up while pressing the glass of water into her hands and holding her against his chest.

"Nightmare?"

"There's an understatement." Meg sipped at the water. "Ever felt like you can't get away from something? You're running so hard you're ready to die, you look behind you, but then you look forward again, and wham, it's there. Like nothing you did even mattered." 'But here...this matters.'

"Hm. Yeah, I've had nightmares like that." Joe nudged the glass of water in her hands, trying to encourage her to drink. "But once you're awake, it's better."

"Then I think I may be done with sleep for a while." Meg adjusted herself in his lap, leaning her head into the curve his shoulder formed with his arm wrapped around her stomach. "Besides, in your nightmares, you probably just turn around and punch the thing into submission." She pulled his arm tighter around her. "I have a hard time picturing you being afraid of things." She passed the now-empty glass to him, and returned her hand to its much-preferred task of tracing the lines of his tattoo.

"Afraid of losing you," Joe whispered, resting his chin on top of her head, "For the longest, I thought I did."

"You feel like staying up for a bit?" Meg pretended not to have heard him, letting her fingernail bite his skin slightly as she trailed down a line of ink on the inside of his arm. "I'm not ready to try for sleep again. That was...too much." She watched, fascinated, as he shivered under her touch and immediately and unsubtly tried to adjust his position under her.

"There's an understatement." Joe growled, conflicted over enjoying her ministrations and caught up in planning a slow demise for Jackson. "Move with me. If we're going to stay like this -"

"And we are," Meg cut in.

"- Then I'm going to want some pillows." He let go of her only long enough to prop some pillows against the headboard before sliding up the bed and leaning against them, stretching his legs out as he went. "Much better. You comfortable?"

"I have you, don't I?" Meg burrowed against him, pulling his arms back around her, shirt riding up so that the backs of her thighs were pressed into the top of Joe's right leg, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from saying, sounding, anything. She reached down for a blanket, covering his legs and her lap. "Don't I?" 'What did you do, Meg? You did something. Too much, too far...you always do something, fuck something up. You're the best at that! Good work, Meg…'

It was several seconds before Joe trusted himself to speak coherently, her skin disorienting, searingly cold against his leg. 'Always like ice. Snow and roses. And now she's yours.' He looked down at her, her eyes searching his for an answer, almost fearful, and he knew he had waited too long to speak. "Meg...of course you do." Slowly, he cupped her jawline in his hand, half-smiling as he watched her face disappear in his palm when he touched her. 'Jesus, she's tiny. Unreal. How could he...no. Not now.' "I'm sorry. I was...I was thinking about how your legs feel. Of course you have me."

The relief that came over Meg was like watching a tidal wave crash over a beach – the slate of her face was smoothed, calmed, and the waters receded leaving no trace of what unrest was there before. Slowly, with every ache and stab to remind her of who came first, she turned into Joe as far as she could and began to kiss him. Trails up his neck to the underside of his jaw, nipped lines across his collarbones, kisses deep and pressing into the thick muscles of his chest, feathering lightly where her reach ran out, all the while tracing, tracing, tracing the lines of his tattoo, tapping dots, flicking dashes, feeling him constantly adjust, re-adjust, try to move by and around her to prevent her from any real awareness of him against her, until finally she pressed herself up to him, pulling his arm tight against her hip.

"You said I have you," she breathed across his chest, "And I...just...let me feel this."

"Meg, I don't want to – I mean, I want to – but I'm afraid I'm going to...just...be too much, right now."

"Shh. Stop. You're not."

She continued kissing him, anything she could reach, fingertips, the inside of his wrists, until she felt his breathing slow and become heavier. His eyes were shut, and finally, he had done what Meg couldn't – fallen into a sound slumber. Meg smiled, slowed, but refused to stop. She would spend the rest of the night kissing him if it meant staying awake, staying away from the nightmare where she couldn't outrun Jackson, couldn't save herself, couldn't save Joe – but that was for another time. For now, she would spend her time memorizing every curve and sinew, every inch of skin, and wait for morning to break.

Morning brought the entirely new terror of a shower. Meg craved the clean water, her rose scented soap, the waves of lather that would flow down her and pool over her toes and swirl across the bottom of the tub, and the security of her own clothing – but knew exactly how much her shoulders would burn in the process. Along with her back, her thighs, all of her. Randy had been kind enough to bring her suitcase the night before, and Dave had been kind enough to show up in the morning to butterfly-close her cuts, but everything was an open, oozing sore in Meg's mind.

Randy and Joe alternated between cordial and being at each other's throats, Dave was vacillating between furious with her and drowning in concern, Jackson loomed in the periphery of Meg's life like Chernobog, and well – she didn't know what to make of the whole thing, other than that Joe was a stable rock in a sea of abject misery, most of which she had caused. 'The only thing you can solve is the shower. You smell like a barn. Start there.' She left the men to talk amongst themselves and grumble over the room service menu while she pawed through her suitcase and slipped silently toward the bathroom.

Getting her arms out of Randy's shirt was easy enough; the openings to the sleeves were practically large enough for her to crawl through. Figuring out how to maneuver her head through the top of the shirt was problematic. She bunched as much of the fabric up as high as she could, pausing to think. Tossing the bundled fabric up and tilting to the side, encouraging gravity to take over and drape the fabric around her neck, Meg managed to get the shirt to dangle like an oversized scarf. A few strategic shakes, and she managed to toss it off, only breaking one butterfly closure in the process. 'Not bad. Now the room needs to stop spinning. You overdid it, dumbass.'

Tentatively, Meg reached for the faucets, deciding she would shower in whatever temperature her first twists created, rather than bend too many times and risk passing out. As luck would have it, she landed on 'scalding hot,' but she gritted her teeth and went with it. 'I just have to be in here long enough to get him off of me. Hotter is better for that.' Her soap felt like silk; she made the washcloth creamy with it, and for a few minutes, it was easy for Meg to forget that anything was wrong, as long as she didn't think or scrub too hard. Moving from soap to shampoo brought her screeching back to reality – her arms failed, shoulders locked, more butterfly closures sprang from her skin, the water began to run red. 'Oh well, Meg. Commit. Clean up. You can't rely on him for everything.' The air was thick with steam, and Meg was finding it harder and harder to breathe, to remember if she locked the door behind her, to remember if she even told anyone out in the main rooms she was taking a shower. 'At least I got the soap out. I smell like roses, and he likes that. Get out now, Meg. Get out before it gets bad.'

Joe tested the bathroom door just as Meg reached for a towel. "Babygirl? You okay? You've been in here for a minute...or forty-five. Can I come in?" He had already let himself in; regardless of her answer, he was going to be in the room with her. Randy and Dave had insisted; Joe had no complaints. Standing in the moist air was like being surrounded by swirling atoms of Meg, like feeling wet rose petals cling to his skin and sink into him.

"I think so. I fucked up my back. Again. I'm such a mess." Meg tried to wrap the towel around herself, but her arms were becoming more leaden by the second.

"Meg?" Joe's voice instantly took on a hard edge, more from fear than any real anger at her. "Stand still. Let me help." Shaky, grey, her skin cold despite the intense heat of the room, Meg clutched the towel around her as though it would somehow keep her from floating away. "I'm going to move the curtain, Meg. It's okay. It's safe."

The light from the bathroom overheads blinded Meg for a second time as Joe leaned over her in the relative darkness behind the shower curtain, pulling her forward, keeping the towel wrapped exactly as she had it. "Goddamnit, Meg, your back. Again. What happened?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to." Her shins banged against the edge of the tub as she gracelessly tried to step out. She could feel her eyes burning, in part from the lights, in part from trying to hold back tears.

Joe lifted her gently, allowing her the impression that she had done more to step out than she actually had. She pushed away from him and wobbled toward the door, thudding into the frame. "Babygirl, c'mere. We can fix your back. You still need to get dressed. It's okay."

Wordlessly, Meg let the towel fall away, let Joe hold her up and move straps and clasps and strings and ties over and around her, adjust and slide, slip and tug, until she looked like herself again, save for the ratty, damp hair. She opened a small bottle of oil – 'Of course, it's rose scented. Would my Meg be anything else?' - and poured a few drops into his hands.

"You rub your hands together, then through, then comb. That's all."

"Anything you need, babygirl."

She expected him to simply pat the oil through her hair and be done with it, but he sat her on the counter, kissed her softly, and stroked her hair until she was almost purring, resting her head against his shoulder. "Feeling better? You had me worried. Again." He teased her, but with a hint of concern underlying his tone.

"If I tell you no, will you keep going?"

"I'll do whatever you need me to do."

Their reverie was broken by Dave, knocking gently on the door. "You two okay in there? It's a little too quiet. Meg? Joe?"

Joe and Meg sighed, nearly in unison, and Meg turned her face toward the door, trying to sit up fully as she did so. "It's okay, Dave. Come in. I need you to re-clip me, anyway. The shower fucked it up."

Dave let himself in, coughing in the still-steamy room. "Jesus, Meg, what'd you do, try to boil something? Come out in the bedroom. I need you to lay down to fix this, anyway. Breakfast is here, and then we've got to go. Besides, it's gorgeous outside. Sunny. It's just what you need." He turned to eye Joe, looking him up and down, thinking as he did so. "Actually, it's just what you both need."