Worth it.
She laughs breathlessly and slides down to her feet, grabbing a towel from the makeup counter and cleaning herself off with the efficiency of someone who's spent years doing quick changes backstage. The white shirt has a wet spot on the hem that she examines.
"Think anyone will notice?" she asks.
"That you got come on your rehearsal shirt at eleven in the morning? No. Thank the gods you only ever wear white."
She grins. "Hey, not all of us can pull off the vampire aesthetic like you and Rex."
"You can pull off anything," I say, and I mean it.
She runs her fingers through her white hair, adjusts the knife strap on her thigh, and turns back to me looking like she just finished a meditation session instead of getting fucked against a green room wall.
I'm still standing here shoving my cock back into my pants, breathing like I ran a marathon.
She pats my cheek as she passes. "You're adorable when you're wrecked."
"Don't call me adorable."
"Adorable. Cute, even."
She drops onto the couch. Not the arm this time. The middle cushion, where the faux leather is the least peeled. She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them.
I finish putting myself back together and drop down next to her. The couch creaks under both of us like it's reporting us to HR.
A little late for that.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Peachy."
Her hand is on the handle of the knife strapped to her thigh, thumb running along the bone grain the way someone else might worry a rosary.
"Hey," I say.
She doesn't look at me.
"Bells." I reach over and cover her hand on the knife handle with mine. Her thumb stops moving. "You can be peachy and also losing your shit about tonight."
Her jaw tightens. She stares at the opposite wall, which is covered in Sharpie signatures from every band that's ever used this green room. Somewhere in the middle of the graffiti, there's a faded stick figure that bears a startling resemblance to Carmine all the way down to the slicked-back hair and red chicken pox marks above the collar of his shirt.
The stress rash. He even looks pissed.
It's the kind of shit that would usually have her cackling.
She hasn't even noticed it.
"Everyone already thinks I'm brave," she says finally, still staring at the wall. "Stabbing my stalker, or, well…hintingat stabbing my stalker. Surviving a fire. Fronting a rock band in a mask and hiding that I've been a girl for years."
"Youarebrave."
"Yeah, well. Brave's easy when you get to pretend to be something you're not."
I don't say anything. I wait.
"The second I say the wordomega, all of that changes," she says. "I'm not the scary one anymore. I'm the one people want to protect. Or fuck. Or fix."
"Or all three."