#this may be the kind of thing that would be hellacious to try and dig up textual evidence for and probably has never been explicitly stated

[scarletspider2the2ndpower]

Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider (Vol. 1/2017), #5.

Writer: Peter David; Penciler: Mark Bagely; Inker: John Dell; Colorist: Jason Keith; Letterer: Joe Caramagna

[themuffinbee]

Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast

Additional Tags: Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Touching, Caleb is touch-starved, He also has a crush on Jester, He does not know either of these things, Touch-Starved, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Widojest 

Summary:

What if a certain inquisitive cleric and a certain scruffy wizard had taken watch together in that crystalline cave on the way to Xhorhas? And what if she wanted to get a better look at what he’s been hiding under those bandages?

A little missing scene that could have happened in episode 50.

A/N:  Many, many thanks to Jadesabre301 ( a.k.a. Jade_Sabre on Ao3) for beta-ing this fic. She’s an amazing beta AND a fantastic writer, go read her sweet, fluffy Widojest stuff!

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

A stream of droplets trickled down the side of the bubble, no doubt from one of the jagged crystals gleaming up above. On the other side of the magical hut, the Mighty Nein slumbered away under the cover of Caduceus’s stone shell, the air punctuated with an occasional snore from Beauregard.

Caleb scratched at his arms.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t help but dig under his bandages to get at an itch that wasn’t actually there. Their current surroundings were stunning, true, but the glittering shards covering every visible surface only served to stoke unpleasant memories. Some much more recent than others.

“Hey, Caaay-leb, whatcha thinking about?” his companion whispered to him in a singsong melody.

Five minutes and forty-six seconds. Jester had lasted longer in the silence than he had expected.

“Oh, nothing much. You?”

“Just trying figure out if there’s a way to hollow out a cake, like, a small one, and fill it with the jelly they put inside doughnuts,” she replied, plopping her head onto her hand and tapping her chin, “The problem is, it would glop all over the place when you cut into it, and maybe make the cake all soggy.”

He pondered this for a moment, more than happy to escape his own thoughts, “I don’t know much about baking, but what if you made it thicker with some kind of starch? Or gelatin? Would that work?”

Her eyes brightened. “Maybe! I don’t know too much about baking either, but it would be delicious, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded. “That it would.”

“Thank you!” She paused, brows beginning to furrow. “I was also trying to make sense of the last few days. Things have gotten pretty crazy.”

Caleb stiffened and made a vague noise of affirmation, gaze drifting off to the side. His mind flashed to all of the things he had said, and left unsaid, two days ago. A subtle sense of panic began buzzing along his nerves, years of practiced self-preservation taking hold in an instant.

Change the subject, you don’t want to open the door to this conversation.

He could ask about her mother, but that might make her sad…Maybe her art? Better yet, asking her about the Traveler might–

“You know, that’s actually why I wanted to keep watch with you tonight.” She scooted closer to him. “I have a question for you…”

Scheiße. Too slow.

Thinking back, he should have turned her down the moment she volunteered for second watch right after he did. She had been far too eager, raising her hand with such force that she practically jumped off the ground. Why hadn’t he suspected anything then?

“…And you don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to.” She waved her hands in front of her. “It’s totally fine if you don’t.”

He cleared his throat. “Jester, I don’t think I–”

“Oh, and I wanted to thank you,” she cut in.

“Thank me?” He frowned. He had done nothing worthy of special thanks.“Whatever for?”

“I wanted to thank you….” she plunked her words out one by one, like a child practicing an instrument “…For trusting us. I know that must have been pretty difficult.”

She beamed at him, and he felt something loosen and tighten in his chest all at the same time. That had been happening a lot as of late. Far too often, actually.

That needs to stop.

He swallowed and cast his eyes to the ground, “Ja.”

Why was she looking at him like that? With those violet eyes filled with sincerity and a smile so warm it could melt winter itself within half a second? He had revealed that he had been lying to the Nein for months, using them as a shield, a front, and she thanked him for it?

She would never look at him like that if she knew what he was, everything he had done. His general allusions of being trained to torture were the least of his sins in his past life.

She doesn’t have to know any more than she already does. It’s not too late, change the subject.

Gluing his eyes to a pebble by his foot like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, he asked, “So, what was your question?”

It was a rare thing for him to ignore his instincts. After all, his abundance of caution had kept him safe for years, kept him from getting caught, from getting killed. Tonight, however, he found himself rebelling against his better judgment. Whether it was out of curiosity or masochism, he had no idea. Maybe he was just tired of hiding, of peddling in secrets and lies, of fearing what she thought of him.

“Well, you see, I was wondering if it would be all right,” she leaned in and whispered, “if I could take a closer look at your arms.”

Caleb blinked. “You what?”

“Your arms,” she motioned to his threadbare bandages, “I’d like to look at them. I just wanted to check them out, healing being my thing and all.”

Well, that made perfect sense, now didn’t it? It wasn’t the worst thing she could ask of him, not by a long shot. He had expected the ever-inquisitive cleric to dig straight into the sizable holes he had left in his story. But still…

“I’d really rather not, they’re a bit of a…uh…a bad memory.”

“Oh.” Jester’s face fell a tad, then brightened once again. “That’s okay. Just let me know if you change your mind.”

He frowned. “Why do you want to look at them anyway? They’re far beyond healing, there’s nothing you could do.”

“Well…” she began rummaging around in her component pouches, “I figured, now that we may be coming up against some big bad magic guys, it might be a good idea to know if they have a little extra somethin’–somethin’ up their sleeve, and maybe how it works, you know?

“Aha! There you are!” she whispered in triumph as she pulled out a tiny striped lollipop, a miniature version of her confectionary Spiritual Weapon. She held it out to him. “You want one too?”

“No, but danke.”

“You sure? They’re reeeally good,” she half-sang in that cadence of hers. “I got a bunch of them in Nicodranas right before we left, so they’re still pretty fresh.”

He shook his head with a wan smile and a small chuff of air through his nose that might be construed as a chuckle.

This seemed to appease her. Jester nodded happily and popped the sweet in her mouth, speaking around the candy. “Could I ask you another question instead?”

No.

He sighed, watching his fingers fiddle with the hem of his coat to keep them from tugging at his bandages. “You can ask, but you may not get an answer.”

This is a bad idea.

“Yeah, of course.” She nodded and thought for a second, “Do you think there are more people out there like you?”

Caleb looked up, “Do I think what now?”

“You know, others. People that ran away from the Assembly or the Academy?”

“I…I don’t know. I hadn’t ever considered it.”

He hadn’t. Not really, anyways. When he had first been thrown into the institution, he had near-feverish fantasies of Astrid or Eodwulf getting thrown in with him, of them being together once again and escaping far from the reaches of the Empire.

But it had never happened.

There had been no rescue party. His hope has been crushed into dust long before the end of those eleven hellacious years.

“Well,” Jester continued, “if there are others, maybe we could help them. That’s why I was wondering about your arms. If, like, they still had magic stuff in theirs and wanted to get it out. Who knows? Maybe even Yeza has some, since he was working for the Cerberus Assembly.”

“I see.” This conversation hadn’t gone the way he was expecting at all.

Then again, nothing ever seemed to go the way he expected if Jester was involved.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before the cleric fished her sketchbook and pencils out of her haversack.

“I’m going to make some drawings for the Traveler for a little while, is that cool?”

He nodded but said nothing, staring off into darkness as a flurry of thoughts whirled between his ears.

In his five years on the run, he hadn’t even dared to hope that there may be someone else like himself out there. The power of Trent Ikithon and the Assembly had grown to near omnipotence in his mind, their controlling influence in every realm of the Empire being an insurmountable barrier against other dissenters.

Hell, even someone like Pumat Sol was a member of the Assembly. The genial firbolg may have spoken well of the organization, but that brief flash of fear in Pumat’s eyes when he talked about Headmaster Oremid Haas spoke louder.

No, it was doubtful there was anyone else.

Caleb turned his attention back to Jester as she flipped through the pages of her sketchbook, catching glimpses of the Nein’s various exploits recorded in ink and graphite. Every once in a while, he would spot sketches of Kiri, Nila, Shakaste, and so many others. Though he may not entirely understand it, Caleb knew the cleric’s drawings were more than doodlings for her metaphysical best friend; they were prayers to her god. It was staggering, really, the number of portraits she had etched into those pages, the number of people she managed to care for all at once.

Consternation gave way to uncertainty, and perhaps the most minuscule bit of guilt, as he thought about what she had said, that the scars of his past could aid someone in the future. Granted, the chances of that were slim to none. Even still, he had told her not seventy-two hours ago that he believed in her, that he trusted her…What was the harm in testing that faith out a little?

You’ll ruin everything. Don’t taint your friendship more than you already have.

But she already knew what his arms looked like, didn’t she? There was nothing to hide. At least, not on this front.

“…All right,” he whispered, his voice almost inaudible to his own ears.

“Hm?” She looked up from her drawing. “What was that?”

“I said all right, you can look at my arms.”

Her face split into a smile, “Really?”

“Really really,” he responded, shrugging out of his coat and unwrapping the bandages at his elbows before he lost whatever speck of courage he had managed to gather.

Idiot. You’re as big a sucker as that candy she has in between her teeth.

Jester scrambled back over to him until they were sitting knee to knee, watching with an intensity and focus normally reserved for her sketches. With an absent-minded crunch, she bit into the lollipop and placed the stick back in its wrapper.

Fighting off a small wave of nausea, Caleb held his arm before her.

She gently took hold of it, “Now, just tell me if you change your mind and I’ll stop, okay?”

He nodded, then held his breath.

Jester closed her eyes and whispered something he couldn’t quite make out, a prayer on playfully reverent lips. Her eyes opened, and a quick flash of green light filled her irises before it burned away like verdant embers.

Smart girl, casting magical detection like that. Caleb knew she wouldn’t find anything; he hadn’t felt the sting of magic under his skin for years, but it was a good thought nonetheless.

He was mostly fine for the first few minutes, surprisingly so, as he watched her turn his arm this way and that. But as the process went on, he noticed the look of focus on Jester’s features sink into an expression of uncomfortable concern. Her lips pursed together as she took in the numerous faint scars spidering across his skin, the corners of her mouth dipping as her eyes and fingers met with each wound.

Soon, she asked to see his other arm, to which he obliged without protest. However, a sick feeling had begun to eat away at the insides his stomach, like he was watching her search through a pile of filth and rotted garbage.

Then it happened.

Memory and present merged into a single vision, as they so often did for him. This time there were no screams of anguish rending the air as ash and the smell of burning flesh gagged him from the inside out. No, this was much quieter, but just as sinister.

Instead of her fingers sliding over the faded remnants of his past sins, Caleb saw Jester inspecting a crystalline rainbow consuming his flesh one inch at a time. He nearly cried out and pushed her away – he couldn’t let them take hold of her too, encasing her fingers in a prismatic prison that would eat its way up her arms, her chest, mouth, eyes. Hollow laughter rang out from somewhere in the depths of the cave, a sound he wished he could forget.

It’s not real. He’s not here. Götter verdammt noch mal, es ist nicht real.

Willing his arm to keep from shaking, Caleb took a deep breath and hoped she didn’t notice how it shuddered in his lungs. He trained his gaze on his boots, knowing that closing his eyes would only make the vision worse. How long had it lasted? Ten seconds? Three? Less? It was hard to tell.

“Caleb, are you sure you’re okay?”

Damn. He looked up to find her staring at him, concern etched into every inch of her face.

“Caleb, we can stop. You don’t have to do this.” She looked back down at his arm. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not, it’s not you…It’s…It’s a bad memory, like I said.” His words were a halting mess, but even the simple act of speaking them helped ground him to reality.

A memory, yes, that’s right. Only a memory. She was safe, he was safe, there was nothing to fear. Only a series of faint scars on skin as white as bones.

“That doesn’t make much of a difference if I’m the one bringing back the memory, and it looks like it’s worse than just ‘bad.’ It’s okay, I’ll stop now.”

Her grip slackened on his arm, and a whole new kind of panic took him. He knew only one thing, and that was he did not want her to let go. If she let go, then he had failed her, broken his word, lied to her. Not too long ago, he wouldn’t have cared a wit if someone were disappointed in him. Why did he care now?

“Wait, hold on. You’re almost done, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but–”

“Go ahead and finish. It’s no good to leave the job half done.”

“Are you sure?”

Her fingers were barely touching him now, like birds perched on a branch, ready to fly off at any moment. She needed a sign that he was actually okay, not paltry words that could be guilty lies as easily as earnest truths. With a slow, deliberate motion, he relaxed into her hand until his arm was flush with her palm.

He held her gaze with his. “Yes.”

She looked at him for a moment or two, trying to find any sign of uncertainty. Then, one of the corners of her mouth rose into a half-smile. “You know, recently, you look different, Caleb.”

He frowned, more than a little confused by this assertion. “I look exactly the same as the day I met you.”

“No, not physically. Well, maybe a little, in a way.”

“Jester, you are not making very much sense.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You seem… lighter, less heavy. I don’t know…You’re different, but a good different.”

“If you say so.” He didn’t feel any lighter. If anything, he felt tired from carrying around too many secrets for too long, but maybe that was her point.

“I can see it. ” She gave him another appraising look and nodded. “Yup, definitely a good different.”

He shook his head, knowing he was more pleased than he should be at that nonsensical assessment, “You are a very silly tiefling.”

Her teeth flashed in the low light. “Good.”

Now more grounded in the present, Caleb felt his heartbeat slow in his chest, the wave of panic and nausea subsiding. As he watched her resume the study of his scars, he could see faint specks of light in her hair and on her skin, reflected from the glittering walls of the cave, mixing in with the myriad of freckles on her face. The tip of her tail curled and uncurled idly at her side, a behavior he found rather reminiscent of Frumpkin. Her face wore the same look she had while painting, with one pointed incisor peeking out as she bit down on a cerulean lip. It was as though every fiber of her being was directed only to what was in front of her, like nothing else mattered or even existed.

And then there were her hands, inkstained and delicate, but also strong and steady. Cool fingertips trailed against his skin, more soothing than any healing balm. Each gentle touch was a ripple of sensation, leaving tingling goosebumps in her wake while relaxing the muscles beneath. It was almost too much for him, and yet still somehow not enough.

It had been…what? At least sixteen years since he’d had real physical contact with anybody else? No sleeves, bandages, or gloves acting as a barrier? He had forgotten how nice it was to feel another person’s touch in the most basic of ways, especially when said person exerted such care with every movement.

“You know, you…” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was speaking.

“Hm?” She looked up, eyes glowing amethyst in the dim light. “What did you say?”

That was a good question, what was he saying? He felt his voice wither away, somehow forgetting how vocal cords were supposed to work.

“You…ah…” He fumbled, unable to transform the half-thought, half-feeling into any kind of verbal sense. He was fluent in four languages, gods damn it, yet words escaped him. It didn’t help that she kept staring at him with those eyes, neither did the sudden realization that their faces were much closer together than he had thought. “Um…Du bist ein guter Kleriker.”

That was definitely not Common.

She wrinkled her nose with a grin. “What?”

“What I meant was…” He backtracked, trying to find the right term.

“Yes?” She wiggled her shoulders back and forth in a little expectant dance.

“Just that…You’re good at being a cleric, at healing.” That still wasn’t quite right. “ You have…I think they call it a nice bedside manner.”

“Well, of course!” She waggled her eyebrows with a wicked grin. “I grew up at the Lavish Chateau, after all, so I know a lot about bedside manners.”

An inexplicable heat rushed into his cheeks and his mind went as blank as unused parchment. He could hear the echo of her words from two days ago bounce around in his brain: “Are you secretly in love with me?”

No. Of course not. That would be…

Caleb coughed into his free hand. “I don’t think those are quite the same thing.”

“You never know, there are some preeetty crazy religions out there.” She gave him one of those mischievous little smiles, the kind that always made the corners of his mouth want to tug upwards as well, then her eyes softened. “And thanks, that means a lot.”

He nodded, hoping she couldn’t see the furious flush across his face.

“Now, Ha-err Widogast.” She settled back and raised a finger in the air. “I’d like to ask some post-examination questions. You’ve been really good about everything, so I’ll try to keep this quick, I promise.”

He sighed. “We really need to work on your Zemninan.”

“Is that a yes?” She pressed her hands together in playful supplication with imploring eyes, leaving his arm cradled in her lap. “Please?”

Gods, how was he supposed to say no to that face?

He blew out a long breath, somehow feeling amused despite himself. “I wouldn’t expect anything else. You would make as decent an Expositor as our monkish friend over there.”

She grinned. “I’d be pretty good at it, wouldn’t I? Too bad those Cobalt guys aren’t anywhere near as cool as the Traveler.”

“It is most certainly their loss.”

“So…That’s a yes?”

“Ja.”

“Ja. Okay, good.” Her hand slid under own and up his arm, her fingers grazing a scar on his wrist. Another small shiver shot across his skin. “Do you know how many you have on each side? Scars, I mean.”

He cleared his throat. “Thirty-three on the left, thirty-five on the right.”

“Mhmm, that’s what I counted.” She nodded. “Do you have more anywhere else?”

“There are four more on each upper arm,” he answered, then added, “There’s also one on each calf.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Oh? Why just one on each?”

“Ah, well, they, uh, they made it harder to walk.” He hoped she’d be satisfied with that vague of an answer, he didn’t want her to know the more gory details.

She looked as though she might press him further, then paused. She thought for a moment before asking, “What kind of crystals were they?”

His vision from a few minutes before flashed to the front of his mind. “It was hard to tell…They came in an array of colors, but most of the ones I saw weren’t cut, or even polished.”

“Rubies? Emeralds?”

“Sure, rubies and emeralds seem likely.”

She paused for a second. “What about aquamarine, or maybe fire opal?

That was…oddly specific.

“Perhaps? I’m no geologist or jeweler. Like I said, the few I saw were all sorts of shapes and colors, and all in their rough forms. We were never told what they were, or what they were supposed to do. It might have skewed the experiment otherwise.”

“Okay,” she responded, but said no more.

After several seconds of silence, he looked up to find her staring at his upraised palm with her mouth scrunched up to one side, as if she were trying to remember something.

“Jester?”

She blinked a few times. “Oh! Sorry, I was just…thinking.” She set her shoulders and flashed him a smile, but it was tighter than usual.

“What about?” It was a rare thing for the talkative tiefling to drop out of a conversation like that. “You went pretty far into your head for a moment there.”

“Well,” she began, “you remember how Orly told me about those magical tattoos?”

“Ja, you were pretty excited about those for a while.”

“And I still am, they’re really cool! But it just hit me…” she trailed off, one of her fingers absently tracing small, rather distracting circles on his forearm. “It just hit me that they’re basically the same thing as what you had, the only difference is that the crystals are ground down and inside the skin, instead of under it.”

“There are…definite similarities, yes.”

“Isn’t that kinda a weird coincidence?” Her finger stilled its movement, and he told himself he did not feel disappointed.

“I’m sure that the practice of tattooing with gem dust had been around long before I ever went to Rexentrum. The Assembly most likely took something perfectly harmless and…changed it to suit their purposes. It’s sort of what they do.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” She nodded, but still looked a tad uneasy. Which, in turn, made Caleb feel uneasy.

“Or,” he continued, leaning forward with a conspiratorial whisper, “are you worried that our trusted navigator might actually be a spy for the Empire?”

She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Yes, that’s it exactly! It’s a perfect cover!”

He raised his eyebrows. “We cracked the case?”

“We cracked the case!” She grinned up at him and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear before glancing back down at his arm. “So, um, where did they go?”

“The crystals?”

“Yeah, like, did you learn how to shoot them out like a superpowered porcupine, or did you absorb them and that’s why you’re so good at magic?”

“No, they, uh, they were removed.”

“Like, a surgery? And they were put in the same way?”

“Ja. They knocked us out with a potion, inserted or removed the crystals, then a cleric healed the cuts over afterward, just enough to close the wounds.” Then he hesitated before saying, “If we ever did meet anyone with something similar, it most would most likely require certain tools and training to extract the crystals.”

“Oh.” She deflated a little.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No, no, it’s good to know.” She contemplated his arm for a few moments more. “There was something you said…about the crystals themselves.”

“Yes?”

“How did you know what they looked like if you were asleep during the surgery and the cuts were healed up?”

“Ah…Ja, uh, the crystals were supposed to stay under the skin. But that’s the thing about experiments.” He rubbed the back of his head with his hand, tugging at his hair. “They don’t always go as planned, especially when you add magic to the mix.”

Her hands, the ones that had been so gentle and sure as they inspected his scars, stiffened around his wrist. “Supposed to stay under…?”

Realizing just what he had said, Caleb bit the inside of his cheek.

Scheiße.

Her eyes widened and a slow, unsettled look crept across her face as she began to pick apart his statement. Though she may play the fool, Jester was far from stupid. There were only so many ways to interpret what he had said, and none of them were pleasant.

Scheiße, Scheiße, Scheiße.

Caleb could have kicked himself. Jester had such an abundance of natural charm, it was like she cast a Friends spell every time she spoke. He never should have forgotten that, never let his guard down so easily. He had always had a soft spot for the cleric, but when did he allow her to have so much power over him?

With an almost excruciating slowness, Jester ran her thumb over his palm. His breath stuck to the inside of his lungs.

She opened her mouth once, twice. Finally, she asked in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Did it hurt?”

Never had he thought a single question could make his insides ache like they did right now. Sadness rang through her voice and struck him straight to the core. “Oh, Jester.”

This was a mistake.

He cleared his throat, trying and failing to swallow back an emotion he did not care to name. “I think that’s all the questions that need to be answered tonight.”

She raised her eyes to meet his. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

Looking at her small form, shoulders drawn in and tail now tucked underneath her, Caleb wanted to lie. He never should have agreed to be truthful with these people, and especially not with her. Instinct begged him to go back to the way things had been, all protective lies and secrets to spare their feelings, as well as his.

It was too late for that now, though. He had tasted the briefest bit of honesty, and bitter though it was, it was also warm and reassuring. These stupid, crazy people had woken him from the half-life he had been living and sustained his tenuous existence with a kind of security he had long forgotten. They had come to embrace his dirty, intentionally unpleasant self and placed their trust in his singed hands.

If Jester, who always wore a clown’s mask for the sake of others, could reveal to him an honest sliver of her own pain and worry like she had that night in Darktow, then he could pay her the same respect now.

“Ja.” His whisper sounded more like a rusty hinge than a voice. “Ja, it hurt. It hurt like hell.”

Before she could formulate a response, he moved his hand down to wrap around hers and looked her dead in the eye, “But you know what? They don’t anymore. It’s in the past now, they’re healed. You don’t need to worry over them.”

A half-truth was better than none at all, he supposed. His arms were indeed as healed as they were ever going to be. As for his past…Well, he would cross that bridge when he got there.

Or burn it forever.

She nodded and smiled, and he hoped to whatever gods there might be that those weren’t unshed tears lining her eyes. “Sorry I asked so many questions, I know it sucked. I just – I worry about you, Caleb.”

“I know.” He squeezed her hand, only now realizing that he was still holding it. Then he heard himself say something he would definitely regret later. “I’ll tell you the rest someday.”

The next thing he knew, Jester had leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, seeming to not at all mind his mud-smeared coat. “Thank you.”

Caleb did not move to embrace her back, but felt a smile curl at his lips as he took in her warmth. “You’re welcome.”

A few moments passed before she gave him one last squeeze and leaned back, a happy smile in place and not a tear to be seen. “Okay, I really am going to make a few sketches now.”

He nodded and grabbed at one of the bandages he had shed onto the ground, now somehow rough and heavy in his hands.

As he began to wrap his arm up from palm to elbow, Caleb realized it was so much more difficult than it had been before, his own fingers seeming to protest by fumbling and bunching up the fabric. With every turn around his arm, Caleb found himself wishing he never had to put the confining wrappings back on again, or that he had never taken them off for her in the first place.

His scars now hidden away under neat, suffocating rows of weathered gauze, Caleb glanced over to where Jester sat curled up once again with her sketchbook, drawing away with joyous fervor.

A fading warmth lingered from her embrace, and he never wanted to forget the feeling of it. He committed to memory the way the air had felt on his secluded skin, the full movement of his wrist and fingers after being freed from their bindings, the goosebumps that had formed under her cool fingertips.

Maybe next time he removed his bandages, he would leave them off for good.

[sauvmyproblems-blog]

FIFTEEN | LOCKED IN

HI! REMEMBER ME?! HOW ARE YOU??? Can you believe that Donald Trump is going to be our president??? UGH.

I’m so sorry that I haven’t posted in one million days. Seriously. It’s unacceptable and I’m ashamed of myself. For the record, I have 4 stories started but I’ve been suffering from severe writer’s block. Apparently, it really is a thing that can happen to even the most mediocre of bloggers!

In addition to my official/medical writer’s block diagnosis, I have other excuses to offer up. I’ve conclusively become two things: busy and lazy. I recognize that these two adjectives shouldn’t traditionally go together…yet I am living and breathing proof that this oxymoron is possible.

I strangely find myself having plans almost every single night of the workweek. Trust me, I’m not bragging; it’s not easy being this popular and socially relevant. Instead of staying in to write / exercise my "creativity", I’ve been hitting up ALL of the bars. And ALL of the restaurants. And ALL of the work outings. And ALL of the J. Crews. And ALL of the friends’ apartments where alcohol is served. Thus, demonstrating the busy component.

The later I stay out, the greater the likelihood is that I will take a cab home. And of course the chances of me being hungover in the morning grows exponentially. Like you guys, I’ve discovered that my new baseline is just my old self except 20% more nauseous and bloated than I used to be. Since I’m staying out passed my bedtime, I get little-to-no sleep and thus have a challenging time waking up in the morning. Which also means I’ve been wearing Leggings As Pants (LAP) which is NOT A PRETTY SIGHT for someone who has been doing nothing but consuming calories 24 hours a day. That’s the lazy part.

Also, since I have your attention, I’d also like issue one more formal complaint: this newfound lifestyle has made me broke as shit. I swear on your life, my eyes filled with tears the other morning when I realized I had $34 in my bank account. LITERALLY THIRTY-FOUR DOLLARS. WHO HAVE I BECOME? I HATE MYSELF.

Hold on a sec. I’M ACTUALLY STRESS-SWEATING. I need a minute to regain my composure.

K. Back.

Anyway… a few weeks ago, I decided my life needed to change. No more bullshit. It’s time to be a responsible human being. I promised myself that I was going to wake up early that Saturday morning and really adult. I was going to do laundry and exercise my disgusting body and clean my disgusting apartment. I was going to put my shoes in my closet and hang up all of the coats that were draped over my couch.

Since I still don’t have blinds in my apartment, I woke up with the ~sunrise~ around 7:00AM, which sounds kind of ~romantic~ until I inform you that I’m not wearing pants in this flashback. And I’m alone watching said sunrise. Yep. Just me, myself and the teardrops on my guitar.

I did what any other 28-year old adult would do: put on the Spotify playlist “The Best of Kelly Clarkson” and ate 3 bowls of Special K while standing over my sink. I made a couple cups of Starbucks coffee in my ghetto-ass Keurig machine. I moved all of my shoes from my hallway to shoe rack that is literally just a mangled piece of Bed, Bath and Beyond plastic – but hey, we can’t win them all. I Swiffered the living hell out of my 452-square foot apartment. I EVEN USED PLEDGE ON MY RAYMOUR & FLANAGAN MEDIA WALL UNIT. I am trying to use a lot of product placement in this paragraph, but now I’m not sure if it’s funny. I digress.

You get it. So far so good with this whole adulting thing. I pat myself on the back, which is a lie because I HATE BEING PATTED ON THE BACK. Seriously. If you ever pat me on the back when we’re hugging, I’m going to be offended and consider unfollowing you on social media.

Next up comes the laundry.

Laundry is something that I don’t mind doing, but there are a few quick things I need to tell you to help you get a visual:

1. I always, 100% of the time, have 25 OR MORE pounds of clothing to wash on Laundry Day. And I take reusable tote bags that you get from TJ Maxx to bring said clothing down to the basement of my building, where the laundry room lives. 2. I usually need to use 4 of these bags to lug my laundry downstairs. 3. I always, 100% of the time, have enough black clothing to do a “blacks only” load, which sounds really questionable but is meant with the upmost respect. New Yorkers wear a TON OF BLACK. I love black. And the new black heart emoji.

Now that we are aligned, let’s get back to the story.

After all my clothes are done in the dryer, I shove them back in my $0.99 tote bags and drag them back up to my apartment. Since my arms are full of clean garments, I body-check my door open and then karate-kick it closed behind me. I am oftentimes unaware of my strength -- and the door literally SLAMS SO INCREDIBLY HARD. It makes an abnormally loud noise.

I dump all 94 lbs of clothing on my bed and go back to the door to lock it behind me, because murderers.

But…I notice that the metal around the doorknob has become lose, probably from my Power Ranger-style kick.

And now the door won’t re-open. Chuckling, I give myself a minute to regain my composure, and pull on it again.

The door does not open.

Hmmm. This can’t ACTUALLY be happening, can it? There is no way I’m trapped in my own apartment.

I take a deep breath and reposition my stance. I pull as hard as I possibly can on this god damn door.

It does not open.

I look around to see if Ashton Kutcher snuck into my apartment while I wasn’t looking – I’m definitely being Punked. THERE IS NO WAY THAT I’M TRAPPED IN MY OWN HOME.

I’m now doing that thing from the movies where my foot is on the wall to brace myself, and I am literally PULLING with all of my being on this fucking door.

It does not open.

Maybe my hands are just sweaty? Yeah, that’s gotta be it. I put on oven mitts because of the grippy part. And I pull as hard as I can.

It does not open.

As the terror slowly begins to sink in, I do what any other person would do in this situation – call their doorman for back-up. I tell him that I can’t seem to open my door, and ask him to bring up the spare key to see if he can open it from the outside.

The following video is actual evidence taken from the moment that my dear Tony comes to assess the situation. [Director’s note: please observe the shoe marks to the right of the doorknob from where my foot was.]

You heard it with your own two ears, people; Tony confirmed it.

I’m fucking locked INSIDE my studio apartment.

“This can’t be happening”, I say aloud. “On the ONE day that I actually was going to get shit done.”

While Tony is calling the locksmith, I begin to wonder what life would be like if the door just never opened again. “Maybe I can make a ladder out of sheets and lower myself the 9 stories to the street,” I think in my brain. I then remember that I broke my pelvis from running up a HILL, so the chances of me surviving the descent are slim-to-none. I wonder how long it would take me to build up enough body mass to knock down the door. I dig through my junk drawer to look for any secret tools I may have forgotten about. What if the fire department has to come and scoop me out of my window like a cat stuck in a tree? I can see it now… “FDNY RESCUES SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT MILLENNIAL FROM 9th FLOOR MANHATTAN APARTMENT DUE TO STUCK DOOR.” Oh my god. THAT WOULD BE SOCIAL SUICIDE. Actually, maybe I could finally fulfill my dream of being on Ellen.

I can barely get deep in this stress-fantasy before there is a knock on my broken door; Joe, the locksmith, has come to rescue me.

Within the first 10 minutes, he pops out the doorknob and somehow, magically, is able to get the door open. THIS IS SO GREAT. All he has to do now is pop the doorknob back in and he can get on his merry way. And I can continue on with the promise I made to myself for being productive on this Saturday. I CAN STILL SAVE THE DAY. CARPE GOD DAMN DIEM, Y’ALL.

But of course, this is me we’re talking about. Shit can never be that easy.

Joe comes into my apartment wearing gym clothes and lets me know that this emergency totally interrupted his workout. At the very second I start to feel guilty for ruining this guy’s weekend, I realize that he is a GUM SNAPPER. He is smacking on that piece of Trident like it’s his last day on earth. Like he was trying to win the World’s Loudest Gum Chewer contest. I start to feel less bad for him and more sorry for my eardrums.

Anyway, Chompy Joe makes a full assessment of my door, muttering to himself about the various parts that he’ll need to back to “the truck” and get. He starts to ask me a lot questions about the innards of my door’s lock system – do I know which way the bolt was installed, have I ever replaced the trigger, etc. I want to scream YOU ARE TALKING TO A PERSON WHO LOCKED HERSELF IN HER ACTUAL APARTMENT but instead I politely shrug and tell him I’ll be no help.

Joe and his gum go back to “The Truck” and reappear a half hour later – he begins drilling and hammering and screwing and chewing boisterously. I don’t want to seem like a helicopter parent, so I begin folding the skyscraper of clothing that’s atop my bed. After 15 or so minutes, Joe calls out to me that he’s fixed the door. WOW. THAT WAS FAST. WHAT A PRODIGY.

I run over to him, which is a lie because you can’t run in my apartment because it is so small. He confidently attempts to walk me through the steps he took to replace the lock. Except when it comes time for him to demonstrate his success, we discover that he DID NOT FIX the lock. And thus begins the real emotional turmoil / the below hellacious cycle:

1. Joe mutters to himself while futzing around with my locks. That sounds sexual. It is not sexual. 2. Joe lets me know that he finally has discovered what the problem is, and heads back out to “The Truck” to get more necessary parts. 3. After 30 minutes or so of truck rummaging, Joe returns to the scene of the crime and begins playing around with the door. 4. After 10 more minutes, Joe calls back out to me that the locks are repaired. 5. Joe tries to show me that my door is fixed. 6. The door is still not fixed. 6.5 The locks are still broken. 7. See step 1. 8. Repeat.

THIS PROCESS RECURS A TOTAL OF FOUR TIMES. Since I know nothing about locksmith-ery so I TRY give Joe the benefit of the doubt. Luckily, I had no formal plans that day so I had time to devote to this stupid circumstance.

Since it doesn’t take 3 hours to fold laundry, I begin to struggle to pass the time while Joe is pretending to know what he’s doing working very diligently. I organize my dresser. I clean out my refrigerator. I put all my dishes away. I cure the common cold.

Finally, I hear a familiar sound - a CLICK in the door in tandem with a positive cheer come from Joe. “I really fixed it this time, Sara. Come look.” Joe closes the door. He tests both locks. Pulls on the door when it’s locked. IT’S FIXED. IT’S REALLY FIXED, ISN’T IT?!

Clearly pleased with himself, Joe begins to pack up his tools in his little locksmith bag. He hands me the bill and lets me know that I can call to tell him my credit card number over the phone so I don’t need to go with him to The Truck. I sign some forms, give Joe a heart-felt thank you, and wave as he turns towards the door leave. He turns both locks to free himself from my apartment.

But the door doesn’t open.

Joe pulls as hard as he can on the doorknob, clearly shaking it with all of his might.

I burst into laughter – OH JOE! My little trickster! It’s so funny that we’re on the level where you feel so comfortable playing such a silly joke on me. You devil!

Then, there is a long pause.

Joe slowly turns back and looks at me square in the eyes. He stares into the depths of my soul. I watch the energy literally drain out of his body, as his shoulders slump over.

He doesn’t even need to say a word. I already know that he’s not joking.

We are now BOTH stuck inside my apartment.

The panic really starts to set in. How THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN. HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET OUT. Are there any other Joes out there that can come rescue us? God, I hope they aren't chompers. WAIT. I DON’T KNOW IF I HAVE ENOUGH CANNED GOODS FOR TWO HUMANS TO SURVIVE. I only have 4 boxes of cereal which is DEFINITELY only enough for me. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO. Do I need to marry Joe now? He's not really my type. Ugh, okay fine. I’ll do it if he closes his mouth.

Luckily, that doesn’t need to happen because Joe still had the DRILL with him. He proceeds to SHAVE DOWN the top of my door in order to free us. So creative. He busts the top lock out and as the minutes turned to more minutes – we were finally free.

Given the extensive injuries that my poor door and lock endured, and the emotional scarring that Joe will now have, I am handed an updated $275 bill…

…which I immediately send to the owner of my apartment to deal with for having the world’s crappiest door of all time. I COULD HAVE DIED IN THERE.

Needless to say, I opened a bottle of Sauv before the sun even thought about setting that day. It made everything better.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I wonder what Joe and his gum are up to. Has he changed up his flavors? Did he ever finish that workout? Did someone teach him that society prefers that humans chew with their mouths closed?

And I wonder if he ever thinks of me.

Joe, if you’re reading this – thanks for the memories. LYLAL (Luv Ya Like A Locksmith.)

#SauvMyProblems