knowthyexits | (no subject)

Sarah is soaking wet. And she's heard it all about how many pounds she probably is. She knows better than to argue, knows to just take advantage of any preconception and go with it. The problem is, no one here is really anything but too-kind and she's soaking wet. Her clothes are sticking to her skin and sloshing about, but it's a necessary evil if she wants to eat or shower.

She's made it downstairs to the clothes box, stripping off her long-sleeved painted-on top (at least, that's what it feels like at the moment), letting it fall to the floor with a heavy thud before continuing along.

Tank top goes too and meets with the jeans. She's still got on a pair of men's spandex shorts and a camisole, but those are wet too and she's willing to take anything she can from the clothes box at the moment, even the ugly plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt she's just grabbed. It reminds her of something that she might have thrown out from Charley's closet and that makes her smile, just offhand for a moment.

It's just a brief flicker of a moment and she turns her attention back to the more important things. Dry clothes. Reaching her arms above her head, she flexes her shoulders back and starts to shrug into the shirt, cool air meeting her skin momentarily as she pulls on the shirt, covering her shoulders, arms, and more.

The jeans come next and she soldiers on, just glad to be dry once more.

Threaded | Flat

Somewhere, at the far back of his mind, Bryce has to remind himself that it's wrong to look. There's a distinct difference between spying on someone when they're up to something, when they have an agenda, and watching them when they're doing nothing wrong. When they're at their most vulnerable. (And though he knows better than to assume Sarah Connor is anything approaching vulnerable, he also knows that anyone can be caught off guard in such a situation.)

Still, he doesn't look away. At first, yes, because she's nearly naked and he hasn't the right. But something causes him to turn back. He spots the scar on her thigh, the one from the bullet wound she arrived with. Then he spots the others — ones he recognizes as the remnants of nasty fights, of more gunshots, of knife wounds, of broken bones and bruised scar tissue. If there was a single doubt in his mind before, it's whisked away the moment he catches sight of all those scars.

It's only after she's dressed that Bryce finally makes his presence known, moving slowly toward the Clothes Box, as if he, too, has some reason to be here. As if he didn't spot her in the hall and follow her down here, curious as ever about who she is, about what she's doing, about why. He tosses out an easily forgotten quip — something about her catching a cold when she so adamantly protests to seeing a doctor. He flashes a grin. Business as usual.

There aren't really words for what Sookie's just seen. She knows, of course, that Sarah's been through something crippling, must have to have developed the sort of personality she has, paranoid and defensive and occasionally aggressive all at once. She's even seen a more impressive set of scars than she ever expected to see on Caliban, but he shrugged those off, went on with life as though they meant nothing at all. Sarah's feel more personal, stretched as they are across her body, pale and taut and quite frankly grotesque, some of them. Dents on a dashboard. Hints of war.

Sookie feels young, confused, leaning against the door leading into the laundry room for a good amount of time before she comes to her senses and quickly slip in, closing it behind her. If Sarah's going to be mad that Sookie's watched, that she couldn't tear her gaze away, that's fine. Sookie's had enough people angry with her lately that it's something she's grown accustomed to, even if it leaves a heavy weight on her chest that's hard to push off.

But what she can do, what she can offer, is that no others come across Sarah like this.

What comes afterward is less sure, a hovering blonde just inside of the laundry room, hands clasped behind her back and the distribution of her weight shifting.

Cable grew up in a society which didn't treat nudity as either taboo or erotic. He also grew up in a time where there was no such thing as civilians and everyone wore scars.

So when he visited the clothes box and saw a woman changing there, he barely spared her a second glance. He just followed her lead; stripped off his own, soaking, shirt and picked up a new one to replace it, the light gleaming off his metal body as he did so.