@m0thers : ❝ hold still, sweetheart, this might sting a bit. ❞
there's a horrible wobble to rachel's chin that gives her the humiliating certainty that any second now she might start crying. she doesn't do this –– doesn't break down in front of her friends' parents. but this week has been... tiring. and there's something so undeniably maternal –– and if not just that –– ultimately so kind and reassuring and understanding about sally jackson that rachel can't help the immediate emotional regression that comes over her. she's no longer an independent 20 year old ready to take on the world. she's thirteen and her mother doesn't pay her any mind, and her dad doesn't understand her, and her grandmother, the only person who has ever cared to know her is gone and –– it feels so, so good to have someone take care of her.
and it's not like the fall she'd taken had been so bad on its own –– her skinned knee bleeds profusely and it burns like a bitch, but that's second to the gentility in sally's voice and the way it makes rachel's cheeks burn. ❝ I can take it, ❞ she nods bravely and even gives sally a smile.
she'd offered to help her and paul paint the nursery for baby on the way –– a gorgeous, sweeping mural that would make any little kid beam to see. but a nasty fall from the ladder has left her worse for wear, courtesy of pythia herself. ❝ sometimes the oracle just demands to be heard. she's needy like that, ❞ rachel jokes lamely.
PATCH ME UP : accepting.