listen....a gross angsty comic about jacket missing girlfriend, ive never read ur fanfics but i Gotta See
ik ya prolly meant fic not comic but the first thing i thought was
anyways, here's the quality grade a angst you ordered, medium rare741 words
His recollection of her, even with the hurt still so raw, was already beginning to fuzz out around the edges. Maybe it was more a testament to his mental state as of late, of how his brain felt like it had been flattened with a rolling pin and spread across a countertop, that he could only imagine her (and him, together) in static snatches of memory, like how she used to flip through tv channels fast enough to give him a headache. It almost felt like an insult to her memory, to not be able to form a pretty through line to tie up her memory, her suffering, and her healing, into a cohesive whole.
Even though a coherent narrative escapes him, he remembers.
The first thing that comes to him is the acrid reek of nail polish in the bathroom. It had been among the first things she'd purchased on her own after she'd come home with him, and she had a schedule known only to herself that she kept to when it came to upkeep. Sometimes she'd change polishes three times in a day, others she'd go until it had chipped off almost completely before taking it off and starting again. Her favorite, metallic blue, was already half gone in the precious few months she had with him.
It was smashed against the wall when he found her, like she'd tossed it in surprise.
The smell makes him sick to think about now.
~~~
He remembers walking to the corner store to buy food with her, loading up on junk food, and some healthy choices at her strong, stern-faced suggestion. Hanging out with her was easy, trailing after her through the aisles.
In the conspicuous absence of anyone recognizable behind the counter, she was the only friendly face in town.
~~~
Close on the heels of that, he remembers what made him realize that he played a similar role in her life.
When he'd woken up that morning he found her leaning on the kitchen table smoking and tugging at her hair lost in thought. He shuffled past her to shove his head under the tap to drink, ignoring her disapproving snort. When he'd surfaced for air, straightening slowly to avoid his back protesting too much, a pat on his arm got his attention.
"Do you think you can help me cut my hair?"
Her bangs had been getting into her eyes a lot lately, and he agreed without thinking. Everything had progressed smoothly, and she settled into a chair right there in the kitchen with a towel around her shoulders.
Jacket was one to take things at face value when he could, so it was maybe understandable that he had gotten a couple of cuts in before realizing the significance. He looked down at his scarred, bruised hands, large enough to make the kitchen shears seem small by comparison, holding a carefully parted section of her hair. She knew what he did, knew what he was, and still she allowed him to hold a sharp metal object by her neck. So brave, so impossibly reckless.
His hands had trembled so badly he had to put the scissors down, sitting on the cold tile floor and leaning against her legs as she waited patiently for him to recover.
~~~
She was so patient with him, sitting up at night through nightmares and late jobs, watching one of the cop procedurals she taped whenever she got the chance. The first time he'd opened his apartment door to the sound of gunfire he'd sprinted into the living room, casting around for a weapon and breathing hard, so she took to keeping the tv muted, listening to late night radio instead.
~~~
Both of them were missing domestic skills, and learning things like laundry and cooking more often than not turned into a comedy of errors, leaving them in soap suds up to their ankles, or evacuating everybody from the building due to grease fires, but they learned together.
It meant so much to him to be able to puzzle through something like the inscrutable instructions for the blender she'd impulse bought with someone on his level, who wouldn't talk down to him.
~~~
He had all the time in the world now, laying on the bed in his cell, to remember her as she was, a survivor and so, so human, in a world full of animals, some wearing rubber masks, some not. So he did.
