Under the Water

“So how'd you meet Toby?” Clare asked, over-soaping her hands as she stood at the sink in the bathroom. Chelsea didn't know if it was a habit of hers, how drunk she was, or if she just wasn't paying attention.

“He was lazy vlogging,” Chelsea replied, gripping both sides of the sink she was in front of, the flickering lights in the bathroom refusing to let her eyes focus for more than two seconds.

“That's really how you two met?” Clare asked, looking away from Chelsea, her hands full of foam soap before beginning to wash them.

“Yeah,” Chelsea said, finding the faucet with her hands, as they danced around the almost doubled image. She blinked hard, correcting her vision for a moment while washing her own hands. “How'd you two meet?”

“Filming a short zombie flick. You know Dead Island?” Clare asked, walking with Chelsea over to the dryers.

“No,” she admitted, missing the button with her elbow the first two times before the hot air began to pour from the object mounted in the wall of the bathroom.

“It's some zombie video game. I guess it's pretty popular,” Clare spoke, watching the dryer ineffectively work for her before she ended up wiping her still damp hands on the thighs of her jeans. “Come on,” Clare said, pulling Chelsea along with her out of the bathroom, observing the same behavior from Chelsea and her dress.

“So were you two zombies?” Chelsea asked, allowing Clare to lead her back to the table where the guys were sat waiting.

“Oh no. He was an actor. I was more behind the scenes. Acting isn't quite my thing,” Clare smiled, looking back to Chelsea.

“You're pretty enough,” Chelsea complimented the woman, slightly tripping as she followed Clare through the bar, talking over a nearby loud party.

“Oh stop,” Clare shook her head, her blonde hair bouncing around her head and shoulders. “What about you? You look like you could act,” she added after a quick glance back.

“I'm way to shy for that,” Chelsea smiled, though sadly took one step forward into a fist. Her vision went black instantly, her mind blanking as well which caused her body to go numb. The bar around her erupted into yelling screaming and fighting. Chelsea didn't realize that the screams were her own until she felt herself being pulled off the ground.

The panic had flooded her so fast, adrenaline was rushing through her body being pumped by a frantic heart. She kept her blue eyes shut tight, struggling to stay on the ground in the fetal position with screams flooding from her mouth like water from a broken dam. Accidentally, and drunkenly, walking into a bar fight with Clare seemed to be enough to send her into a very quick and blunt panic. Any rationality she had left from her night of drinking was seized by her anxiety, blanking her mind except for one false truth; she was being abused.

“Chelsea! Get up,” Toby kept repeating to her, the whole bar disrupted by the brief but bloody fight that had erupted. Toby wasn't sure what had happened, or how Clare and Chelsea were involved, though he could find that all out later. In the present, he was freaking out over Chelsea's sudden and extreme reaction. Chelsea wasn't that big, sure she was nearly as tall as he was but she was nearly a stick. He knew he could pick her up and move her away from the fight being restrained. He just couldn't wrap his mind around how stuck to the floor she was. It was like trying to pry an industrial sized suction cup off a wall while his hands were greased up.

“Dude, help me,” Toby looked up to Jack and Eric, who had successfully helped Clare off the floor and sat her down at the bar. Compared to Chelsea, Clare with her injured leg looked like she had just won the lottery. In reality she was quite shaken and confused.

Jack moved away from Eric and Clare, and joined Toby on the floor. “You're scaring her man,” Jack pointed out, Chelsea's hands wrapped firmly around Toby's wrists, both their arms slick with blood from an unknown source.

“I don't know what else to do,” Toby stated adamantly. He still listened to his friend and let his arms fall loose in Chelsea's death-grip. Immediately she let go, both her hands laced in the mess of blonde atop her head. “We can't just leave her on the floor,” Toby added, hearing the fight briefly break loose from the restraints, Gabe being one of those restraints. At this point Toby wasn't sure if Gabe was trying to hold the two fighting back, or if he was trying to attack them himself over the two girls getting accidentally involved.

Jack watched the two guys fighting struggle between the dozen holding them away from each other. “Okay, lets get outside,” Jack agreed before both men began struggling to pick up the panicking girl. “Grab her arms, I'll get her eds, we'll carry her out that way,” Jack suggested, not waiting for any input from his friend.

As both men grabbed and restrained Chelsea, her screaming turned into incoherent pleas for help.

“You got Clare?” Toby asked Eric, quickly scrambling with Jack to carry Chelsea outside.

“Yep,” Eric said, quickly throwing Clare's arm around his shoulders, supporting her waist, before helping her limp out of the bar.

“Okay set her down,” Jack spoke, rushing Chelsea away from the entrance of the bar, where many of the patrons had flocked in the aftermath of the brief fight. The two of them made sure to set Chelsea down well away from the crowd that had taken up staring at the odd scene. “We gotta find out where all this blood's coming from.”

“Help me get her jacket off,” Toby spoke, trying to keep Chelsea sitting upright against the outside wall of the bar. Chelsea wasn't much fighting anymore, her entire body looked impossibly tense. The two men still slid her jacket off one arm at a time.

Jack saw them first. The remnants of pale, jagged scars stretching up and down and every which way of her left forearm. The second Toby's eyes saw the scars, noticing the same amount covered in blood on her right arm, he felt sick. His stomach lurched, twisting violently as he tried not to imagine Chelsea doing such a thing to herself.

He looked away, Chelsea's bloody cardigan held in his hands, and met Jack's gaze. The expression he had was both severe and complex, though Toby completely understood. Jack was silently questioning Toby's judgment in women, yet again. Even if Chelsea and Toby weren't technically dating, Jack was still questioning him. He felt anger begin to swirl around the intense mixture of emotions that had flooded him in the past five minutes, though as soon as he felt it, it was lost somewhere in the chaos.

Toby looked down, trying to ignore the gut-wrenching scars and used the dark cardigan to wipe the blood off of Chelsea's arm, since it was already drenched in her blood. He found a small but deep cut on Chelsea's right hand, on the back of her hand from one of her knuckles to the middle of her hand. He used the jacket then, wrapping it around her hand tightly as a makeshift bandage and holding it there with his hands before looking back to Jack, who was standing in front of them now.

“She's having a panic attack,” Jack stated, the judging look now gone from his face. “She's gonna start hyperventilating,” he spoke, running a hand through his hair as he stared down at Chelsea. Toby moved next to her then, wrapping his left arm around her while tightly holding Chelsea's wrapped hand in his right. He understood the feeling of not being able to breathe, thanks to his childhood asthma, but Toby had never had nor witnessed a panic attack this severe before.