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Week 6:

Jimmy avoids her, but Anya feels as though he's inside the walls of the ship, through the echo of his jogging steps and loud breaths. 

He uses the hallways of the ship to exercise. She wonders if he does it to keep busy or to keep watch over the other crew members. He passes but he rarely enters the occupied rooms. The med-bay is Anya and Curly's, the lounge is Daisuke's, the utility room is Swansea's, and the cockpit probably still looks and smells like an opened tomb. She often knows exactly where Jimmy is because the echoing steps and breaths mimic the rise and fall of Curly's agony. When she tries to soothe him, also by playing music, Jimmy works out harder. It's a peculiar feeling, also due to an increasing sensitivity that extends to sound, like he's stomping across her spine. 

One night when he does post-workout stretches in the lounge and she happens to be there, she notices something uncanny: Jimmy is mimicking Curly's old stretching routine. 

She's sure about it, because just like she had functioned as a makeshift physiotherapist for Swansea and his bad back, she helped Curly modify and enhance his workout routine because of old injuries, which he'd sustained from unsupervised weightlifting in his twenties. The uncanniness rises from how insistent Jimmy is at doing the stretches that were not only fitted to Curly's specific injuries but also someone of his statue and strength, far too advanced for a layman. Jimmy overexerts himself, burns calories that they don't have, and curses loud enough to make her freeze. At least he doesn't ask her for advice. He can barely look at her.

She sometimes sees him near the medbay whenever she's lowered the lights and put a saline sheet on Curly's eye - when he can tolerate it - to mimic night. Jimmy stares more openly at Curly in moments where he cannot stare back. And yet there is relief among her fear and bitterness, a feeling like she can disappear within tendons and muscle, hiding within the drab and painful routine of their survival.

“Plus 4!” Daisuke’s voice rang out loud, swallowing the intense silence. Crew 5 sat around the lounge room’s couch, playing a hot-blooded game of Uno!.

Swansea chuckled before setting down his own plus 4, waiting for Anya’s angry grumble. But, that never came. She hurriedly placed down her plus 4 card before giggling, overly excited that she didn’t have to grab eight cards.

Luckily, you didn’t either. You set down another plus 4 card, a smile plastered on your face. Curly let out a relieved sigh as he put down his plus 4 card. The five of you laugh, turning to see Jimmy’s shocked expression turn into anger in seconds.

“This is rigged.” As he grumbled, he grabbed 20 cars from the pile, being able to barely hold them all in one hand. His fingers almost crushed the cards due to frustration, causing a light giggle to leave Daisuke’s throat as everyone calmed down.

Jimmy shot him a glare, causing the poor guy to look away and place a yellow 2 down. Finally a normal card. The round goes on, a few people occasionally getting plus 2’s and placing them down. One of them being Jimmy.

It backfired quickly as everyone else placed down a plus 2, causing him to groan as everyone laughed once again. “Guess you just aren’t lucky, huh?” Curly chuckled, leaning back in his seat as his friend took 12 more cards from the deck.

Jimmy only glared at him, getting more upset at the fact his friend is laughing at him.

•-•-•-•-•

authors note

I know this is so short and I apologize, but when it comes to playing uno there’s not a lot of writing going on