Cold Showers

by Erin Griffin

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Rating: R- nudity

Pairing: None really

Summary: Helena's thinking about someone.

Disclaimer: I'm just messin' around with the characters, since I am creative enough to make my own.

Author's Note: See what happens when Erin's PMS-ing? No Beta this time. All mistakes, all mine.

<If you're sure everything's alright, you can go on home.> Barbara said into the comm., a calm, yet authoritive voice in my ear filling my head momentarily. <Unless you wanna come over and crash here for a few hours.>

"Nah," I said slowly. "I don't want to wake Dinah up. I think I'll just head home. Good night, Oracle."

<Good night, Huntress.> she said sighing. <Just leave your comm. on; at least the ear piece so you can still hear me. just in case.>

"Will do." All was quiet as I turned off the mic and started to jump the rooftops. I checked my watch to find I had two hours to kill, which I did, jumping from building to building, letting myself fall some, making myself climb some. I never seemed to get tired. When I really want something to happen, like a firework show when I was 6, or for Barbara to get home so she can hand over her promised surprise, Time decides that THEN'S the time to slow down. I wanted to see her. It was a bad addiction that I knew I shouldn't have picked up, but there was no hope for me after seeing her for the first time. Hoping it would make the time fly by faster, I jump down into an alley and walked around. Letting my thoughts go free, I walked until I felt I wasn't ever gonna get there until finally, I met my destination. Being so close to her riled my senses, and I hadn't even caught a glimpse of her yet. I jumped to the top of the 4 story building next to where she slept, then waited.

Suddenly, after I paced for 5 minutes, I saw a light flicker on behind cream colored, white blinds, and I stopped moving, stop breathing. She moved about her room for a couple of minutes as a silhouette before she walked into the bathroom next to the bedroom. She was the reason. She was the reminder of why I did what I did. She was the beauty I protected night after night. She was the one who reminded me that there were sacred things out there to want, for others to want... to live and die for. As I watched this woman set her day's clothes on the slim countertop of porcelain, I heard her hum. She was in a good mood that morning. I loved it when she was in such a good mood. She was so beautiful when she smiled. She searched under the sink for her various products: shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, a toothbrush, tooth paste, body spray, lotion, a brush, and deodorant that should have been worn by men, but some how it made her more of a woman when she wore it. She pressed play on her CD player that had a rainbow colored female symbol on the top where you would see the CD spinning. Each morning, she listened to the same burned CD, a booster to her seemingly small self esteem. From what I saw through the always-halfway-open silvery curtains of the bathroom window, she had nothing at all to be ashamed of.

She undressed slowly to the music of Red Light Special, and her lips mouthed the words with a smirk upon them. She swayed her hips as she seductively let her pajama bottoms (faded purple with snowflakes sprinkled about her long legs) fall, and I watched them slip to the white linoleum floor. She lifted her white tank top quickly at TLC's words, 'Baby, I'm yours (I'm yours) if you want me tonight...'. She seemed to offer an imaginary woman her body and I wished, as I always did, that I was the woman she offered herself to, and I thought of myself accepting her offer, her body, her heart, her love without a nanosecond of hesitation. Lost in these thoughts, I almost missed her underwear falling from her hips, exposing this woman's true beauty. Almost. She then boldly stood naked before the mirror above the sink as the words of the song continued to form on her lips. She never sang out loud except for when 'Possession' by Sarah McLaughlin came on; she would sing the chorus every once in a while with a smile. She stared at herself and fought a frown. She instead turned the music up a little louder and then bent over to retrieve her items before she had set them on a small table (no larger than the seat of two lawn chairs), which stood between the toilet and the tub. Then she slowly reached to turn on the hot and cold nozzles to her preferred slightly cold shower temperature.

She eased herself under the spray of the water, turning to let it hit all surfaces of her body, and I stood, watching her in awe. It was as if in her mind she was free. She didn't care about anything else but the water flowing down her body as if it washed away a bad dream, a bad memory, or (perhaps) the day before. I watched the water as it went smoothly through her shoulder-blade-length blonde curls, down her back, over her buttocks, and down her thighs, calves, and feet before sliding off of her toes and heels. I wanted my hands to be everywhere that the water touched, and it was torture to feel myself becoming jealous of the element.

On the wall, hanging from the shower head, was a hooked shelf which held her loofa, a wash ag, two razors, and a small bottle of shaving gel. She took the loofa from the shelf and her sweet pea scented shower gel from the table. She applied the light purple liquid onto the dark blue loofa and rubbed it in with the water until suds were everywhere. Then she brought those suds to her right shoulder, moving the loofa in sensual motions. I was hypnotized as I always was by her, watching her as she washed her right shoulder, moving over to the left shoulder, down her slender arms, across each firm breast, over her slightly ab'ed stomach, down to her hips and pelvis before sliding between her thighs. I gasped, feeling moisture between my own thighs as I longed to be there. Every single time, I was tempted to offer to wash her back for her... The loofa traveled down the inside of each thigh, then down her right knee, calf, and shin before my eyes traveled to her naked rear. Then I watched the loofa as it traveled back up the left shin, calf, and knee. After she had put the sweet pea shower gel back on the table, she rinsed out the loofa and smiled as a song by overly happy 13 year olds came on. She was always into pop, sometimes just as a goofy way to get her to dance. She also didn't seem to care who knew she liked the likes of N*Sync and Jump5... You know, music videos you'd see on the Disney Channel. She let her hips move, almost as if they had a mind of their own, as she got her Herbal Essence shampoo, squirting a palmful into her hand.

White foam emerged immediately as she scrubbed and ran her fingers through her hair to make sure all of the shampoo reached the places she need it. She rinsed not long after she made her hair into devils' horns, and the suds didn't seem to want to leave her body, as they slowly, reluctantly slid down her shoulder blades before the water shooed them along into the drain. I know how they felt. I would never want to leave her body once I've experienced its feel, either. She grabbed for her conditioner then, repeating the process. She left the conditioner in for a couple of minutes, then reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste. I'd never known anyone before her who brushed their teeth while in the shower, but if you're gonna clean everything else at that time, you might as well, right? Her toothbrush took on the rhythm of the techno/dance type version of Michelle Branch's song, 'Breathe' that had come on before she had to bend enough to aim her mouthful of toothpaste into the drain. Then she rinsed her mouth out, sighing before she put her toothbrush back into the travelers' toothbrush holder. She grabbed her large purple hair brush and started combing her hair, but there seemed to be no tangles. I watched each brushstroke with lustful eyes, wondering if her hair was as soft as my mind was imagining it to be. After the water washed away small bubbles of the conditioner, she took the wash rag from the shelf and let the water run onto it. She washed her face quickly as if realizing she might have run out of time for her leisurely shower. She pulled the shower curtain aside and grabbed her peach colored towel. She dried her right leg, stomach, and shoulders before carefully stepping onto the mat. Then she dried her hair, back and left leg before stepping fully onto the mat. Drying various parts of her body while I admired every inch, she walked to the mirror, where her clothes were, before she draped her towel over the side of the tub and sat on it. Reaching to her left where the table was, she grabbed for her lotion and knocked over her body spray as well as the small bottle of light green lotion. She bent to pick it up, and I followed her with my eyes, allowing them to feast upon her milky skin. I wanted nothing more than to place kiss after kiss on her slender shoulders, smell the shampoo, taste the body... wash...

The lotion was applied slowly; she wanted to make sure she didn't miss a spot. She was always thorough, and for that I thank her as I saw her hands almost disappear under her breasts for a split second before they moved to her upper chest and shoulders. Then a small handful was applied to her neck and face. She spritzed herself with the body spray that matched her body wash, applied deodorant, and then my least favorite part of her morning came. She picked up her black low cut, yet modest underwear and let it slide over her exposed flesh that I had been enjoying for the last 15-20 minutes. She flipped her hair, darkened by its dampened state, back over her shoulder as she picked up her sport-type bra, also black, and struggled for a moment with it. She stood up and almost slipped on the linoleum floor when her bare foot made contact with the sopping wet floor. She regained her balance, almost looking like a surfer avoiding a wipe out, and then she laughed as she picked up her dark bell bottomed jeans, and continued to chuckle at her inept ways as the jeans were zipped up. She reached over to her CD player and skipped the next couple of tracks until she came to the one she wanted 4 or 5 tracks later. It was indeed 'Possession', her favorite song. Not a morning had gone by as I'd watched her for that month or so did she not play that song. "Oh, you speak to me in riddles and you speak to me in rhyme. My body aches to hold you now..." She sang softly, but still I heard her. I always did. She stares in the mirror once more and I wondered to myself why a woman had yet to join her in the shower. Why did she never wake up with someone next to her in bed? Why don't I-? I know why. I felt content sometimes to just watch her from where I always stood. At other times, though, I knew it would never have been enough. I knew deep within me that my hunger for this chaste woman would only grow the more I watched her, yet I was afraid of making her impure. I was afraid of taking away her pop loving, dancing queen personality that I love about her. She flipped her hair as she bent over, and she put a large handful of hair gel in her hands, rubbed them together and then put it in her hair, rubbing the strands between her palms to get it in all the right places. Then, she whipped her head back and wiped steam from the mirror to get a good look at herself. She ran her fingers through her hair a few times, then froze.

Our eyes had locked in the mirror, and knowing my powers, she'd seen that mine glowed in the wakening daylight. She turned around and I... I ran. As quickly as I could, back the way I came. Did she recognize me? Did she know who I was? I know I could not go back there ever. She'd have expected it. She'd have gotten scared, and I didn't want her afraid of me. Even if she didn't get scared, she would have gotten mad at me for being a Peeping Tom. So I ran, hoping she'd forgive me. Hoping that maybe she would have known who I was, but I highly doubted it as much as I wished for it. In my mind, I thought of her as her name pierced my heart with every boot print I made in the ground. "Gabby." My whole being fought with me more and more the further I got from her. What if she wasn't mad, just surprised? She hadn't looked as though she'd get mad, but I didn't want to take that chance. I couldn't have her thinking of me as a pervert if she wasn't thinking that already. So I ran like Hell. And I never went back.

The End