Sensation

It honestly wasn't that late yet, but Robin really didn't feel like tramping around the hotel with Sarah.

She'd felt like ever since she'd arrived on the show she'd been tossed and turned like a ship at sea. Now that she was finally not being hustled and bustled somewhere, she just wanted to take a moment and breath.

Robin was currently digging through her walk-in closet that appeared to contain her entire wardrobe from back home. It was wasn't quite organized the way she kept it, so it was taking her a minute. She finally found one of the old worn out t-shirts and a pair of cotton shorts she typically slept in. She never really saw the point in fancy pajamas. As she took off the clothes she had been wearing, she deliberated whether or not to go braless. If she was alone she certainty would have, but she wasn't sure how'd that go over with Chloe. Robin finally shrugged to herself, and discarded her bra before slipping on the old shirt. She figured that Chloe and her would be pretty familiar with one another by the time this was all said and done.

Robin stepped out of her closet to find Chloe sitting on the edge of the single queen-sized bed. The petite blonde girl was dressed in a pale pink silk nightgown, with a lightweight white robe draped over her shoulders. Robin couldn't help but grin at the sharp contrast between her sleeping attire and her roommate's. Chloe caught her grinning and she cocked a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Looking good there princess,” Robin teased.

“You're one to talk Elvira,” Chloe retorted, glaring slightly.

Robin laughed. She had deserved that. There was obviously more to the blonde that she first suspected. She held her hands up in mock surrender.

“Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood,” she chuckled.

Chloe's glare had shifted to a mild pout.

“It's ok. Just...please don't call me 'princess,' ok?”

Great start Robin, she thought to herself. Robin turned to busy herself with something...anything when she suddenly realized there was nothing to do in the hotel room. No TV, no books. Her cellphone apparently hadn’t made the trip with her to this reality, she had checked her pockets for it nearly immediately. For right now it was just her and Chloe. Robin sighed, before plopping down in the backless stool that sat in front of the wooden vanity.

“Ok, let’s start over.” Robin scooted the stool closer to Chloe, “Hi, I’m Robin. I’m twenty-nine and I work as the principal makeup artist on The Clara Hour.”

“God, that’s almost worse.” Chloe shuddered. “It sounds like we’re back on that talk show set again.”

Robin sighed, turning to look at herself in the vanity mirror. Until now she had managed to avoid getting a good look at her reflection after her transformation. In truth, it was mostly on purpose. The only changed part of her she could see without a mirror was her hair, and honestly black wasn’t that far from brown...right? But now she was face-to-face with her new reality. Thick black eye shadow and dark lipstick that she could never remove. She found her hand reaching up and futilely wiping at the makeup under her eye. At least it’s smudge proof…

“I’m sorry...that can’t be easy come to terms with,” Chloe said in a small, apologetic way.

“Nah, it’s ok,” Robin gave Chloe a small smile as her hand dropped back to her lap, where unseen it clenched into a fist. “Honestly compared to some of the others I think I got off pretty lightly. At least I don’t have to go through the effort of putting it on myself this time.”

“So...you did have a Goth phase?” Chloe asked cautiously.

“Yeah, my last two years of high school into college.” Robin chuckled. “The funny thing is, it really was just a phase. I was trying to figure out who I was as a person and I wanted to rebel against my parents.”

“Oh.How did that go?”

“Terribly,” Robin replied with a wide grin. “I had amazing parents that were incredibly understanding. Do you know how hard it is to rebel against open-minded parents? ‘Mom I’m skipping temple this week. I’m going to see Satan’s Bitches in concert.’ And she’d tell me to have a good time, be safe, and to call if I was going to be out late. It was infuriating.”

Chloe laughed. It was a clear, bright laugh that reminded Robin of tiny wind chimes.

“As long as I kept my grades up and wasn’t doing anything illegal or hurting myself or others, my parents were pretty tolerant. I think the only time I really pissed them off was when they caught me smoking pot my senior year.”

“You miscreant,” Chloe grinned.

“Nah, I deserved it. My friends and I didn’t really know what we were doing and we stunk up the entire apartment. You could smell it getting off the elevator. Dad was convinced the tenant board was going to kick us out.”

Chloe giggled. Robin turned and looked out on the street below. It was reminiscent of the street outside her childhood home, only this one was unnervingly devoid of people and traffic. The setting sun cast long shadows on the city block outside and the streetlights were beginning to flicker to life. The large marquee on the Masterwork Theater began to glow, as the large incandescent bulbs lighting it slowly powered on.

Robin was just turning to ask Chloe about her parents when there was an abrupt shift. The subdued colors of the hotel room suddenly seemed bright, and the overhead light became blinding. Her heartbeat was running away and she could feel it hammering in her ears. Her nose was flooded with a hundred different scents: the soap she’d washed with that morning, the laundry detergent she used on her clothes, the woody furniture polish smell of the hotel room’s furnishings, the floral shampoo Chloe apparently used, and something...else. Something on Chloe, something Robin thought she could recognize if her senses weren’t being bombarded by a thousand different sensations all at once. She swore she could feel every stitch of clothing on her, every individual strand of carpet fiber beneath her bare feet. She suddenly regretted going braless.

“Robin? Is something wrong?”

Chloe’s tone was soft, but the words struck Robin’s ears like thunder. It was all too much, and she was seized by the sudden animal instinct to flee. The bathroom! The featureless tile floor would be cool and she could leave the lights off! She rose off the stool quickly, much too quickly for her new senses, and her first step sent her tumbling to the ground onto the the rich carpet. The sensation of the carpet fibers on her feet had been intense, across the entirety of her bare arms and legs it was overwhelming. It sent her writhing, which just made the situation worse. And to top it all off, Chloe kept calling her name over and over, trying to help her.

Somehow, she found her way up to her hands and knees, and somehow, she managed to scurry into the bathroom before collapsing on the tile floor. The cool tiles against her skin felt like she had been plunged into a icy bath, but the shock was enough for her to regain some control. As she lay panting on the bathroom floor, Chloe came in cautiously, switching the lights on.

“LEAVE ‘EM OFF,” Robin couldn’t tell if she actually screamed or if it just sounded like she did to her overly sensitive ears. Chloe dutifully switched the lights back off.

“Robin?” the petite blonde whispered in the dark. Robin could hear Chloe’s bare feet pad lightly across the bathroom floor toward her. It sounded like an elephant. “What’s wrong?”

“Intense…” It was all Robin could gasp out between pants. “It’s...so...intense.”

Even in the darkness her eyes were squeezed shut, trying to block out the world. Her other four senses were still in overdrive, but here in the bathroom there seemed to be less stimuli. She could sense Chloe drawing close to her.

“Chloe...stop there.” Robin’s breath was still rapid but slowing. “You’re about to walk into me.”

Robin could hear Chloe’s footsteps stop in place. There was a pause, then she heard Chloe’s clothes rustling around. Robin wasn’t sure what to make of the sounds, until she heard Chloe sit on the floor. She was quite close now.

“Robin, I think this is your other transformation. Queen of the Night, wasn’t it?” Chloe whispered.

Robin tried to think back to Ava and the show intro, but even within the confines of the bathroom the sensations were still too much. One thing seemed to be helping though.

“Chloe?”

“Yes?”

“Can you keep talking? It seems to help if I focus on it.”

Robin nearly yelped as she felt Chloe’s hand gently find her shoulder. She swore she could feel the other girl’s fingerprints through her shirt. But after the shock of the initial contact, she focused on Chloe’s touch as well as her voice, and it helped ground her there, amongst the roiling sea of stimuli.