Chapter Text
Pain radiated through Charlie's tailbone as she hit the floor with a loud "Thwack!"
For the third night in a row, Vaggie tossed and turned restlessly, clearly caught up in nightmares. This time, she'd rolled so violently that she'd actually bumped Charlie right out of bed.
Rubbing her sore behind with one hand, Charlie gingerly clambered back onto the bed, but she didn't climb back under the covers. Instead, she sat at the far end of the bed, legs tucked up with her arms loosely wrapped around them, as she watched Vaggie quiver, her eyelids twitching.
They hadn't talked about Vaggie's experience in the last extermination, not really, but her girlfriend had at least admitted that it was still affecting her. It was pretty hard to deny it when she had nightmares five nights out of seven, when she instinctively reached for her spear when approached from above, when she sometimes flinched when Charlie's hands veered too close to the mysterious, angry scars that took up much of her mid back. Charlie had also noticed that Vaggie froze up whenever the door to the hotel would open and she was faced with the sight of the streets of Hell, and while she did all sorts of chores without complaint, she somehow never seemed to be the one to take the garbage out to the dumpster. And she never asked for anything, even though Charlie had made it clear that she would happily get Vaggie anything she needed - there had actually been several times when Vaggie did need something, but she just went without until Charlie spotted the problem herself.
But the nightmares were the part Vaggie couldn't deny or excuse away. It was one thing not to ask for much, or to seem easily startled. It was another to regularly have nightmares so violent that they woke Charlie.
"Vaggie?" Charlie whispered, reaching out to gently nudge her girlfriend's shoulder. "Vaggie!"
Vaggie twitched at her touch, but didn't wake. The second, louder shout did reach her, and her eye shot open, one arm instinctively flying up in front of her face in a defensive gesture. She appeared to quickly register her surroundings, but Charlie didn't miss the micro-expression that crossed her face before exhausted clarity set in. Vaggie had taken one look at her surroundings - Charlie's comfy canopy bed - and looked more panicked, at least until she had recognized the person in said bed with her.
Charlie almost asked about it. The words were beginning to come out of her mouth before she reminded herself that it was a little past three in the morning, so now wasn't the right time. Now would be a good time to offer a gentle hug or even hum a soothing song to comfort Vaggie and help her get back to sleep, and they could hash things out when they were both fully alert, during a more normal hour of the day.
But if she didn't talk about it now, they might never talk about it. She'd been trying to bring this up for weeks, and somehow, it was never the right time.
"You okay?" Charlie said weakly, starting to extend a hand towards Vaggie, then hesitating.
" 'm fine," Vaggie slurred sleepily, gesturing for Charlie to come back under the covers with her. "C'mere."
She didn't engage with Charlie's attempt to get her to open up, but thankfully, for once it seemed that Vaggie was able to calm down quickly. As Charlie nestled in beside her, wrapping one arm around her, Vaggie yawned and then let her eye slip closed again. Within thirty seconds, her breathing settled into a regular rhythm.
Charlie found it harder to get back to sleep. Her mind kept being drawn back to the bits and pieces of other restless nights, to the growing number of times she'd seen Vaggie tremble, shiver, thrash, and even cry in her sleep. And the most frustrating part was that she still couldn't get Vaggie to talk about it.
Well, they'd talked about the logistics. After a particularly bad week, they'd talked about that just enough to come to the agreement that Charlie would wake Vaggie if she saw Vaggie having a nightmare, and that if Vaggie woke on her own, she'd tell Charlie and let Charlie help her calm down (rather than just sneaking down to the kitchen to try to soothe herself with a cup of warm tea). It was a solid plan to help her manage the way her sleep was being disrupted by the haunting memories of the last extermination day, and Charlie had even gotten a workbook of trauma-related exercises that she was hoping to start reading that weekend.
But the logistics weren't all there was to talk about. They didn't talk about what Vaggie actually felt, what she dreamed about in even the vaguest terms, what she thought about the world and herself after her experience. They didn't talk about whether she had lost anyone, or if anyone out there might think they had lost her. They didn’t talk about her life in Hell before the extermination. Charlie didn't even know how long Vaggie had been here before that extermination. Had that been her first? Or the first she was personally impacted by?
And there were little things that Charlie had noticed. Things that didn't add up. Things that didn't seem related to the extermination. And trying to ask even a single question about those things led to an immediate redirection.
Vaggie shifted slightly in her sleep, and Charlie glanced down to make sure she wasn't having another nightmare, but she seemed to be just adjusting her position. Gently brushing Vaggie's hair out of her face, Charlie tried to let herself be lulled back into drowsiness by the sound of Vaggie's soft, even breaths. Her mind stubbornly continued to churn, trying to draw connections in the fog of so many disconnected facts and suspicions.
The raw violence of the extermination didn't seem connected to how Vaggie seemed unable to complain about bad experiences. At first, Charlie had thought that perhaps the small pains and nuisances of daily life felt trivial to Vaggie after losing her eye, and after whatever had been done to her back. But after Vaggie had come down with a serious case of the Hell-flu, and spent days feverish and aching and coughing up her lungs without a single grumble, Charlie found herself wondering why.
And the extermination didn't explain it when Charlie realized that somehow they always ended up going to her favorite restaurants, even once Vaggie became familiar enough with the options in the area that she surely must have some preferences of her own. Charlie told herself that maybe Vaggie wasn't much of a foodie, or perhaps being alive and able to taste anything felt like such a gift after her near-double-death experience that that outweighed any preferences. Or maybe she was just so head-over-heels in love that seeing Charlie happy was more satisfying than choosing where they ate. She did seem to be an acts-of-service kind of person. But that explanation didn't feel right.
And then there was the latest incident, the one that had been on her mind for several weeks now, the one that had prompted her to start trying to ask. Charlie's suspicions had crystallized into something sharper and uglier one weekend morning, when they'd been together long enough for Charlie to feel comfortable experimenting. Charlie had lazily encouraged Vaggie to turn over onto her stomach, and what had started as the usual massage over Vaggie's aching, newly-healed scars began to transform when Charlie pressed a kiss to the nape of Vaggie's neck, then another, trailing kisses down her back. Vaggie's responding moan had encouraged her. But as soon as she'd lifted Vaggie's hips for better access, Vaggie had instantly tensed up, and then become far too relaxed. Actually, limp would be a more accurate description. She had insisted she was enjoying herself as Charlie continued to run her hands over her, but when Charlie had finally slipped a hand between Vaggie's legs, she was only half-surprised to find that Vaggie was barely wet at all.
That wasn't a result of the extermination. That wasn’t typical for Vaggie, in fact, that had never happened before when they were together. While she wanted to respect Vaggie's boundaries around what she chose to share, Charlie ached to see someone she loved so much having to suffer all alone.
And there was only so long she could keep pretending not to notice all these little things that were definitely not extermination related, or rather, to pretend not to understand that they were clearly about something else, before it was going to get reaaaal awkward if they didn't talk about it.
She was going to have to try to bring it up again. Hopefully the book she had ordered would have some practical advice.