Author's Note: This is an established Shell story with a St. Corcoran affair. You Shell fans may not be too happy with it. If I continue, it'll get kind of dark later on.

All You Are

She gets up off the bed; covers pulled up to her collarbone, covering her bare chest from the cold draft of air in the room. Reaching down towards the carpeted floor, she grips her bra with the ends of her fingers and wraps it around her waist; clipping, then turning it the proper way and pulling the straps up to her shoulders. She puts her face in her hands and exhales when she feels a set of fingers run across the black lace of her bra strap, then tugging it lightly. She turns around at the beckon.

"Hey, leaving so soon? I'm going to start thinking I'm just your hit-and-quit guy," he says, his signature smirk upon his face. He tilts his head slightly towards the pillow, a motion for her to lie back down beside him.

She purses her lips solemnly and shakes her head as she stands up having put her panties back on beneath the comforter, as though shamed of showing him her body in plain daylight. That's not the thing she's ashamed of though. She grabs onto the little black dress she came here in, props it over her head and pulls it on, straightening out the hem as she does. She grabs onto her purse, dropped at the door and puts her hand to the doorknob. She stops for a moment, replaying the words he just said in her head and looks back toward him. "That's all you are, Jesse. And it's all you can ever be."

"Hey, babe," came a voice from the kitchen, almost intelligible due to the sound of running water.

Shelby took her shoes off at the door, relishing the feeling of her feet of being on equal footing from her previous four inch heels. Then she walked past the threshold of the living room and peered into the kitchen, her head sticking through the door to be met with a wave of heat and a smile.

"I'm making lasagna, you hungry?" Will asked, giving her a toothy grin as he waved at her with an oven mitt on.

"Oh, it smells good. I'm starving," she replied, pushing the door fully open and walking in, giving him a kiss on the cheek. As she pulled away, he cupped the side of her face with his uncovered hand, and their eyes met. He leaned in closer about to capture her lips with his. But briefly, she looked up at him, blinked rapidly then awkwardly turned her head down and towards the stove.

Will seemed a little stunned at the action, not quite sure what the look in her eye meant, but he smiled anyway as though nothing had happened. He had come to the realization a few months back that his girlfriend was a strange and complicated person and decided to just take her as she came, questions better left unasked. "It'll be done in, oh," he paused to look at his watch, "seventeen minutes?"

"Okay, that's-that's good," she nodded, answering distractedly as she stared up at the clock on the wall and headed towards the door again. "I'm going to take a shower," she informed, her animated fingers pointing towards the hallway and she gave a small smile, an assuring gesture. What she was assuring him of, he didn't know.

"'Kay," he replied shortly, returning the smile; looking at the door long after it had already swung closed after her. He shook his head out of his absent-minded state, letting out an exasperated "oh crap" as he opened the oven door to check on their dinner for the evening.

Shelby stood at the bathroom sink as she shrugged out of her dress for the second time in the past two hours. In her underwear, she stood for a good five minutes, her mind flooded with thought as she stared at her own reflection. She leaned in closer to the mirror, and now, up close, she could spot all the little imperfections upon her face. It was the perfect metaphor for her, she thought. She could seem perfect from behind those spotlessly paned windows, but once up close and personal, she was a wreck of a woman.

With a stressed run of a hand through her hair, having undressed completely, Shelby climbed into the tub, turning on the water. She closed the curtain and set the shower on, grabbing onto a bottle of shampoo from the inset of the bathroom wall. This had become a sort of routine for her, the need to shower immediately after she came home. It had to be a routine after the first time, so as not to draw any suspicion or pattern. If Will knew why she had to shower so badly on certain days as opposed to others... well, she couldn't take the chance.

It wasn't a physical need - to clean up so adamantly. It was emotional; like a coping mechanism or something. She was washing away everything she'd done, she was washing him away. It was that simple. If she could just wash it away, which was only another way of saying she was burying everything deep down, she could walk back out there with confidence. And if she was confident, she would be okay. Everything would be okay.

She scrubbed every inch of her body forcefully, as though there were invisible patches of dirt stuck in every pore. Her motions were almost manic, from her neck, down her breasts, her stomach, every place he touched had to be erased of his presence.

As satisfied as she would ever be with her state of cleanliness, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around her waist, tightening it at her collarbone. Proceeding to get dressed in the bedroom, she pulled on some clothes, sweatpants and a t-shirt when a set of arms wrapped around her waist.

"Hey, is everything all right? You seemed... distracted."

Shelby leaned her cheek into the side of her head, his chin cradled in her neck. "Everything's good – great even," she answered quietly, putting all her acting training to good use as she put a hand to his head and moved in to kiss him. Maybe she was milking it a little, anything to assure him that everything was fine. "Okay, the smell is making me drool, can we eat now?"

Will let out a small laugh and released his arms from her torso, instead using a hand to grab onto hers and lead her back towards the kitchen. She followed after him silently, no grip upon his hand. Within the doorway, he stopped to look at her. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Will, I said I'm fine, okay?" she snapped, suddenly impatient.

"I'm sorry for worrying," he retorted back quickly.

She only glared back at him.

Slowly, his expression softened. "Okay, sorry, if you say everything's okay, then I believe you. Just... you know you can talk to me about anything, right? Anything," he urged, subtly begging her to open up to him.

"I know," she answered simply, shrugging her hand away from his and moving through the doorway past him towards the kitchen.

She didn't know anything of the sort.

Author's Note: Review please! I don't know if I'm going to continue, I have some ideas, but I'm kind of tedious about the plot of it all. Tell me what you think of this as an intro.