"No."

It was blunt, short, to the point. All things Six was trained to be some twenty years earlier. His youthful sarcasm remained -- it was difficult to shake all old habits -- but much of his appearance had been dictated to him, right down to the way he spoke. He wiped the smear of blood from his lip, sucked the rest that came from the fresh split. He supposed that a body was something worth explaining, but the less known the better. After all, he didn't really exist, so this didn't really happen.

"It's better if you don't know. Just pretend you didn't see anything."

He preferred his showers too hot. It was contrary to the usual temperature that men of his size (or in general) preferred. For him it was a ritual: to get the blood off he needed to scald it, to scald it he needed to scrub harder than he'd scrubbed before, that needed steam, steam required molten temperatures and a damn good bar of soap. No matter how much or how hard he scrubbed the blood never really came off. It just disappeared from the visible eye, seeped into the pores of his flesh and the nicks and valleys of his scars, and became a part of him. He wore it like cologne, hidden under old spice and fresh rain, and when someone drew it from him it was a wonder whether it was his or his victims that came out to color his gashes and wounds.

That didn't stop him from allowing himself a semblance of peace.

Beneath the shower head he let his eyes close, tilted his head back enough that he could feel the cascade down his chin and throat, and allowed that same steam to envelope him. If he were an imaginative man perhaps he'd dream of being somewhere far-off where the heat had comfort laced into it, where he was safe and anyone other than Sierra Six. He was not known for that sort of imagination ... not the written, flowery, purple prose kind. His came in the form of quick escapes and daring how to kill a man.

His flesh had long bore suds and had them washed away. He smelled faintly of whatever Melissa stocked her shower with - floral, feminine but not unpleasant (her, and he liked the way she smelled), and borrowed just a dime of her shampoo and conditioner to lather his head and beard with. By the time she'd popped into the bathroom with her irate question he was nearly done ... just selfishly enjoying the way the heat loosened his joints and reminded him of arthritis sure to set in another twenty years (if he lived that long).

He'd heard her before she appeared, though.

Before she'd knocked, over the patter of shower fall, he'd heard the cadence of her footsteps as she meandered toward the very bathroom he occupied. By the time she'd pressed the screen closer to his vision --- as if he were near-sighted (he could have laughed) and it took more than just palming the water from his brow. Six squinted at the options (truly, he did not care) and feigned as if he were making some tough decision before he shifted his gaze back to her and answered.

"Cheese is fine."

Of course.

Fingers, less wet (but not by much) than the rest of him plucked the phone from her hand and tossed it into the pile of clothes by her feet. The same hand grasped at her wrist and tugged her forward - into the shower, or at least across the threshold where she'd get wet regardless, and his arm snapped to wrap around her waist so she wouldn't fall or slip or otherwise come to harm. While he wasn't so much a facial expression kind of person he was sure Melissa knew him well-enough by now to read the mood of his eyes, and they ignited playful in the moment. Wet from him, from the shower head, he leaned forward and stole a kiss from the same woman he'd been pawing at not an hour ago.

Pawing at was wrong.

Feeling, breathing, biting, tasting, claiming. Sex with her was like a symphony and, in the instances he'd slept with other women before, quite unlike those tenuous connections that lasted only as long as it took one or both parties to come. (Admittedly it was harder for him to reach a climax --- who knew years of body-trained ignorance to pain would stunt pleasure too? But that had never been a problem with her.) They spent their time teasing one-another into action, fighting for the upper hand (but never power), then finding new and exciting ways to illicit the foulest language from the other. It was fun.

It meant something.

He let that notion wash away with the water.

The slightest hint of a smirk tipped the corners of his lips. It was lost against the wet, fragrant patch of facial hair that framed his mouth.

"Tch, you're all wet. Careless.

Fingers pried at the window blinds, just enough space to quickly aprise the setting outside before letting it drop back quietly to the wood, buffered by digits. All it took was a glance to tell him what he needed: the sun was setting, there was the faintest of fogs hovering by the streelamps which would click on in less than thirty minutes, and the town still sent a fucking chill down his back.

He'd been in plenty of places that didn't settle right in his gut, but Six was trained to ignore those baser things. It was the sort of thing that carried into his every day, became part of him and any second thought came well after the fact ... but sometimes somewhere was just too fucking shady to ignore.

He needed to make a phone call.

"Does this place have a back exit? Somewhere less ... foreboding and open than the front?"

He reached for the pocket of his jeans, dug deep in to grab the burner phone and squeezed the side to turn it on. Six didn't look up while it booted.

"Looks like I'm going to get flashed by a guy selling watches if I go out there." Or sniped. The latter was not preferable.

Maybe not sniped ... but something felt off here. The finer hairs on the back of his neck dictated it.

He looked like hell.

Dark circles under his eyes, ashen bruises kissed the apples of his cheeks, lips split in various places and the bridge of his nose sporting a gash that suggested it had been broken and reset before it reached the state of healing it was currently at. That was just to account for his face ---never mind the state of the rest of him. New scars littered here and there, bruises and complaining bones throbbed when he meandered his way to his usual bar stool and straddled over the cushions. Always with his back to the wall, eyes on the door. Tonight he was dressed more casually than he would normally go, but he didn't want to be remembered. He needed to blend in.

It wasn't smart to come back to the same place. When hands had traded he hadn't intended on returning much to the Killer Queen but ... but he had a soft spot for the bartender-owner and it was something dangerous. If anyone else knew ... it was foolish to put her on the spot for selfish reasons. So very unlike him.

Elbows rest on the bar counter, Six leaned all of his weight into them and allowed himself just a moment of respite. Icy eyes watched her as she adjusted her arms and rest, scooped down to witness the oversized jacket that engulfed her and the huffed chuckle left his nose long before he could even consider stopping it.

"That's fair. I did asylum it."

The ghost of a grin tipped the corner of his lip upward - an expression that was lost against the bruised amble of his goatee. He gestured toward her with his fingers, voice gruff as he added,

"Looks better on you, anyway."

A beat. Six set his jaw.