fic: I can still hear you when you dream (Push; Cassie/Nick; adult)
I can still hear you when you dream
Push; Nick/Cassie; adult; 3,860 words
Cassie doesn't believe in shadowy government conspiracies, and she doesn't even know anybody named Nick.
Title and cut-text from Smashing Pumpkins. Thanks to amberlynne for looking it over.
~*~
I can still hear you when you dream
Cassie wakes with the sound of gunfire in her ears, her legs tangling in the sheets as she tries to run and just manages to fall out of bed. Her heart's racing, she can't catch her breath, and her whole body is covered in cold sweat.
She glances over at the other bed, but her roommate spent the night with her boyfriend again, and was spared the final act in Cassie's nightmare theater.
She takes a quick shower to wash the clammy feeling away and clear her head, but she spends so much time staring at the blurry version of herself in the steamy mirror, trying to figure out why her familiar reflection suddenly seems strange, that she's late for class.
She's fuzzy without her usual giant mug of scalding coffee, and she spends most of Media and Culture doodling instead of taking notes. When class is over, she's got pages filled with drawings from her dream: men with guns invading the cafeteria, searching for her, and a sketchy but hot security guard throwing himself in front of a bullet for her. She laughs at that one--she's pretty sure she's not the type hot guys take bullets for, even if it's in their job description. She's glad she's such a crappy artist; she thinks if she could draw him the way he really looks, she wouldn't be able to breathe for looking at him.
She has work to do (fucking French and its fucking irregular verbs) and her roommate's social life is way too active to make studying in her room a good option, but after her dreams, she's going to avoid the cafeteria. She heads to the library instead.
Still, halfway through her reading she gives up, vivid daydreams interfering with her thirty-fourth attempt to bull her way through An American Tragedy without flinging the book across the library. She starts drawing again, nothing that makes sense, just images from her daydream: the red sole of a spiked heel, the shitty half-lit neon sign of the local pub where the bartender lets her drink without showing ID. The hot security guard again, wearing a half-grin like he even knows or cares who she is, which has not been her experience with hot guys in the past. Sadly, the security guard at the door of the library is still Albert, a middle-aged black man with a beer gut hanging over his belt. She likes Albert, but she's pretty sure the last time he was hot was before she was born.
Cassie looks up from her sketchpad as a woman who seems vaguely familiar (not from Media and Culture, but maybe French class?) sits down across from her and says, "Can I see?"
Cassie hesitates, glancing down at the image of the security guard on her sketchpad. The drawings aren't necessarily good, but she doesn't think they're necessarily bad either. Everything looks sort of like it should.
"I won't laugh, I promise," the woman says.
Cassie looks up again and there's something strange about the woman's eyes, something she should know, but she can't put her finger on it, and then there's a soft whisper in the back of her mind that says forget and she does.
*
Cassie doesn't usually have sex dreams, at least not that she can remember, but the hot security guard from her earlier dreams has reappeared, kneeling between her legs and laughing. His uniform is gone, except for the tie, which is flipped back over his shoulder; the only other thing he's wearing is a big grin that makes her want to grin back. His hands are big and warm on her thighs as he goes down on her, his mouth slick and skillful as he makes her come over and over again, his tongue painting words on the ticklish skin of her inner thighs when he's done.
She wakes up gasping again, but this time, there's a hot aching pulse between her legs and her underwear is soaking wet. She pushes them off and gets herself off quickly, eyes closed so she can remember the dream. It's like a photograph behind her eyes; she just wishes she could remember where she knows the guy from, because maybe then she could actually talk to him. If he even exists.
The thought that he might not effectively kills her post-orgasm mellow, and she forces herself to get out of bed and get to her Post-War American History class, where once again, the professor never calls on her, even though she knows all the answers.
*
Cassie's being chased through the cafeteria by men with guns, and the hot security guard has just shoved her out of the way and gotten shot in her place, red blossoming across the front of his crisp white uniform shirt. She falls to her knees and screams--
Cassie wakes up shaking and crying, "Nick, Nick, Nick." Through teary eyes, she stares down at her hands like she doesn't recognize them, the nails covered in chipped purple polish and bitten down to ragged edges; she expects them to be stained red with Nick's blood, but they're not.
"I don't even know anybody named Nick," she tells herself, out loud, because that makes it feel more real. She's awake and nobody's dying in her arms.
She takes a quick shower, and when she catches her reflection in the steamed up mirror afterwards, she thinks about growing her hair out, maybe dying it blonde. She's tired of the dull brown that makes her face seem pale and pinched.
After class--she's not sure how the ninety minutes pass, because her notebook is full of more sketches instead of notes--she goes to the nearest Walgreens and picks up a box of L'Oreal (she might be having some kind of psychotic break, but she's totally worth it), but there's a different voice in the back of her head now, telling her it's not safe. It doesn't sound like anyone she knows, but she gets a sudden sense of rightness when she attaches the name Nick to it. The same Nick from her dreams.
"Great," she mutters, shoving the box into her bag and heading back to campus. "Now you've got an imaginary friend named Nick." A man in a business suit gives her a wide berth and she laughs. "And you talk to yourself out loud. No wonder you don't have any actual friends."
That's not right, though. There's her roommate, though Cassie can't remember the last time she saw her, and there's--Huh. She knows she talks to people. There was the lady yesterday in the library who wanted to see her drawings, who is possibly in her French class. (Cassie is terrible at French; she's glad the professor never calls on her. Most of the time, the professor doesn't even seem to know she's in the class.) There's Albert, the middle-aged security guard. And there's Nick, but the harder she tries to remember him--the harder she tries to remember anything--the blurrier it all gets.
She's back at her dorm now, but instead of going inside, she gets a weird feeling, like someone's waiting inside for her, someone she'd rather not see. She gets a vivid flash of imagination--two men with guns, the same ones who shot up the cafeteria in her dream.
She pivots and heads toward the library. She hasn't seen anyone get shot there, and if anybody does open fire, maybe the hot security guard will show up to rescue her.
Albert's on duty when she gets there, and she bites back a sigh of disappointment and gives him a tight smile before settling down to write an essay about whether pure altruism exists for her ethics class. She's written a paragraph of bullshit when her mind starts wandering again and she ends up sketching out something that looks like a shootout (or would if her drawing skills were better); there's a whole bunch of people with guns, one of whom looks like the woman possibly from French class, and for once it doesn't take place in the cafeteria or involve the hot security guard, so she's a lot less interested in it, and annoyed because she has to start over on her essay. She doesn't think of herself as a violent person, but her dreams sure do feature a lot of guns. She's gotten really good at drawing them.
She's moved on from that to wondering why she doesn't have a laptop like every other student she sees on campus, when the woman from French class shows up again.
"How are you today?" the woman asks.
Cassie gives her a pained smile (why can't she remember her name?) and says, "I'm okay. Had the weirdest dream about you, though."
"Really?" the woman asks, leaning so close that she's in Cassie's personal bubble, and Cassie wants to lean away, but she's caught in the woman's gaze. "Tell me all about it."
*
Cassie knows she's missing time. She's seen enough episodes of The X-Files to be concerned, though mostly what she remembers is arguing with someone (Nick?) over whether she should dye her hair red like Scully's.
"I don't believe in shadowy government conspiracies," she tells the cup of boysenberry yogurt she's eating, having given up all pretense of being a person who doesn't talk to inanimate objects and imaginary friends.
"Since when?" She looks up, startled, to find the hot security guard from her dreams looming over her. "I'm supposed to tell you that you're not allowed to eat in the library." He leans a hip against the table and gives her a rueful half-grin that shouldn't be familiar but is. "But since I think this is the first time I've ever seen you eat anything healthy, I won't."
She freezes, spoon halfway to her mouth and looks at him skeptically. This is not how she imagined this conversation going. Of course, she never thought the hot security guy from her daydreams was real, either, or that he'd be interested in talking to her if he actually was.
"Don't give me that look. I've known you for five years and I didn't know you ate yogurt that wasn't frozen and covered in sprinkles. Even without the dye-job, I almost didn't recognize you." He takes the spoon from her unresisting hand and swallows the mouthful of yogurt on it, then wrinkles his nose. "Frozen and covered in sprinkles is better."
"Five years?" Cassie cocks her head and takes a shot in the dark. "Nick?"
The fond look on his face dissolves into concern. "That's not funny."
She starts gathering her things. "I'm not laughing."
"Cassie." He grabs her arm, fingertips digging into the flesh of her biceps. She glares and sucks in a deep breath, ready to scream if he doesn't let go, but he does. "Cassie," he repeats, giving her an uncomfortably searching look. "It's me."
"Oh," says the woman from French class, standing behind Nick. "It's you."
Nick whirls to look at her. "Lorna, what the hell? We agreed that you'd keep her safe while I was...gone. Not," he waves a hand at Cassie and all the pages in her books flutter, "push her into forgetting me."
"Do you really want to have this conversation here?" Lorna whispers angrily.
"Safer than the cafeteria," Cassie says. They both look at her. "No shootouts in here."
Nick opens and closes his mouth, lips pressed in a flat, unhappy line, and gestures for Lorna to start talking.
"She wouldn't stay--kept trying to rescue you. I had to do something, or she would have ended up in Division right beside you." Lorna makes a face. "It was safer this way."
Cassie glances between them, the word Division ringing inside her head like a bell. She closes her eyes tight against a cascade of images that are new and familiar at the same time and clutches her books to her chest, ready to run.
"Fix it," Nick says, low and threatening.
"You know it's not that easy."
"Is everything all right here?" And there's Albert the security guard. Cassie shoots him a nervous grin. "This is Nick. He's new."
"Everything's fine," Lorna says, and though it should be impossible, Cassie can see Lorna's pupils expanding as she holds Albert's gaze. "Nothing to see here."
"Nothing to see here," Albert mutters and walks away.
Cassie starts backing away slowly, putting Nick between herself and Lorna, and the chair between herself and Nick.
"Cassie," Nick says, reaching out a hand towards her.
She shakes her head. "I can't. I have to--" She looks at the clock. "I have class now." Her legs ache with the need to run but she doesn't; she walks out of the library with her books clutched close to her chest and no fucking clue what's going on.
She doesn't go to class. She goes back to her room and finds it tossed, one of her sketchbooks lying open on the floor, a handful of pages ripped out. She shoves it into the bottom of her bag, along with all her clothes--and how has she never noticed how sparse her wardrobe is: one pair of jeans, two skirts (not including the one she has on), a handful of well-washed t-shirts and a pair of long sleeved shirts, five days' worth of underwear, three bras.
She packs it all and ignores the heavy metal press of the gun in the outside pocket, small enough for her to handle easily, and she gets a flash--she's pretty sure it's a memory this time, not a dream--of Nick, handing it to her with a rueful grin like the one he wore in the library, curling his fingers around hers on the grip.
He's standing outside the dorm when she gets downstairs. He looks at her bag and smiles, like he's glad her whole life is being turned upside down and she doesn't even know why.
"I guess I do know you," she says, unsnapping the pouch and showing him the gun. She keeps her face blank, tries not to show any of the fear or uncertainty she's feeling.
His smile disappears. "Yeah, yeah, you do. But, uh, put that away, okay?" He holds a hand out to take the bag but she doesn't let him. When she gets into the car with him, she sets it down on the mat and pulls her feet up onto the seat so she can turn and keep an eye on Lorna, who's in the backseat. Nick gives her a long, considering look before he pulls out, but doesn't say anything.
They stop once, to drop Lorna off at an apartment building about half a mile away from the campus, and when she gets out of the car, she stops and leans into the window so she can look Cassie in the eye. Cassie ducks her head, glances at Nick, who says, "It's okay, Cass. She's going to fix you."
Cassie can't help the bubble of hysterical laughter that bursts out of her at that. "Right." She turns back to Lorna, who looks at her for a long moment, pupils dilating wildly, and there's that whisper in the back of her mind again. This time it says, remember.
*
When Cassie comes to, she's curled up in the backseat and has a blinding headache, and the sun is sinking low off to the left. Her mouth tastes sour, like fear and blood. She pokes her tongue out, licks at the spot where her lip has split.
Nick's watching her with concern in rearview mirror. "You all right?"
She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, I--Yeah. I think so." She knows she knows him, now--knows it deep in her bones instead of just seeing it--but she's still not sure how everything in her head fits together, the feelings and the memories like a jumble of puzzle pieces that don't quite slot together.
He stops at a red light, so she climbs over the gearshift into the front seat again. Her skin feels itchy under his worried gaze, like a wooly sweater that doesn't fit right, and she's surprised to find it's only four-thirty when she checks the clock on the dashboard.
"So?" she says, because she's not sure what to ask and wants to know what he'll say.
"Lorna really did a number on you, huh?" he says, wagging his eyebrows at her.
She looks out the window. It's getting darker by the second. She forgets how quickly night falls in November. "I need a drink."
"There's some water in the glove compartment."
That's not what she means and he knows it, but she doesn't argue. The water is lukewarm but drinkable, and it washes the sour penny taste out of her mouth. In between sips, she stabs at the buttons on the radio until he twitches an eyebrow and shuts it off.
She looks at him, surprised. "Huh. So maybe you did learn something while you were...gone." Her hands clench into fists as she remembers the helplessness--the sheer terror--of letting him be taken, of trusting Kira to protect him (and release him) so he could finally get some training and some information that wasn't half-assed and half-true.
"Maybe I'm not the only one," he teases.
She wrinkles her nose. "I can't believe she made me take French."
"You suck at French." He gives her an amused look.
"I know!"
She grins at him and for a second, everything feels right, feels like it did before, but then it actually feels like it did right before he left, and the fear slams into her all at once.
She sucks in a breath, and then another and another, and it's like she can't get enough air in her lungs. She presses a hand to her chest, and flaps the other one at him for help. He pulls the car over onto the shoulder so he can find her a paper bag to breathe into. He hauls her into his lap and rubs her back, murmuring nonsense while she tries to get her breathing back under control. Her eyes are watering, but that's just from the lack of air; she's not crying.
She is definitely not crying when she buries her face in his shirt and soaks it through with tears. He rests his chin on the top of her head and squeezes her tight, and she remembers now why Lorna pushed her into forgetting, why she had to do it every day or two, to overwhelm the feelings that kept seeping through.
Cassie doesn't know how long it takes but she finally pulls herself together and flops back into the passenger seat so Nick can find them a motel, because she is so, so done for the night.
*
The room has one king bed in it, covered in an awful green and yellow paisley comforter that makes Cassie's eyes hurt, but she doesn't care. She doesn't even bother to undress or brush her teeth. She kicks off her boots and crawls under the covers.
Nick takes his time getting ready before he climbs in and curls up behind her and drags her against him, his arm draped over her hip and his hand splayed out, large and warm, on her belly. She sighs and snuggles close, glad that this, at least, hasn't changed. She's too afraid to ask about his reunion with Kira, too wrung out to deal with the possibility that she's lost him even if he's sleeping beside her.
"I missed you so much," he murmurs, nose pressed up behind her ear. "Let's never do that again."
She thinks she's really matured a lot because she doesn't remind him that it was his stupid idea and she'd been against it from the start. Instead, she twines her fingers with his and squeezes her eyes shut against the tears leaking out, hot and quiet and slow this time. He presses kisses to her hair and her temple and doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.
They're in the same position when Cassie wakes up, Nick's hand tracing lazy patterns on her skin.
"Hi," he says, when she twists onto her back to look up at him.
"Hi," she answers, tipping her face up for a kiss.
His lips are warm and chapped against hers, and for a moment they stay like that, even though it stings a little where her lip is cut. Then he licks at the seam of her mouth, coaxes her into opening up for him. Even through the sour taste of morning breath, the touch of his tongue against hers is like striking a match under her skin. He trails kisses down her throat, between her breasts, only pausing long enough to pull her shirt off, and she arches up into the wet warmth of those touches, moaning softly when he sucks one hard nipple into his mouth.
He pushes her skirt and panties off as he kisses his way down, until he's kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed and kissing his way back up along her calves and shins, nipping a little at the sweaty spot behind her right knee. He moves her down the bed, the motel sheets scratchy against her back, drapes her knees over his shoulders and then grins up at her.
Cassie raises herself up on her elbows and says, "I dreamt about this."
"Me, too," he says fervently, gently stroking one finger along her wet folds and then licking the wetness away. He presses his nose to the crease where her leg joins her body and whispers, "God, Cassie."
"I know," she says. "Me, too."
He licks into her slowly, the happy sounds he makes vibrating through her. She can't tell what he's spelling out with his tongue against her clit, but it doesn't matter. She understands every word he's saying.
The tension builds and builds inside her, until she's got both hands tangled in his hair and her hips are coming off the bed to fuck his face. He slips two fingers inside her and rubs just the right way, and the tension breaks, flooding her with wave after wave of hot pleasure.
He presses one more kiss to the inside of her thigh when he's done, and then wipes his slick face on his forearm.
She grabs at him, drawing her knees up and spreading them so he can settle against her, condom floating into his hand so he can roll it on. And then he's pushing inside her, hard and thick, as she flutters around him.
"Nick," she says, over and over again. "Nick."
"I'm here, Cass, I'm right here." She can taste herself as he kisses her, salty and real and here; he's inside and all around her, and for the first time in months, she feels real, too.
She angles her hips up to meet his thrusts, ankles hooked around his thighs. "Nick," she says again.
"I'm here," he answers, buried deep inside her as he comes. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
He sighs softly into her mouth. "Promise."
Cassie believes him.
end
~*~
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~*~
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Push; Nick/Cassie; adult; 3,860 words
Cassie doesn't believe in shadowy government conspiracies, and she doesn't even know anybody named Nick.
Title and cut-text from Smashing Pumpkins. Thanks to amberlynne for looking it over.
~*~
I can still hear you when you dream
Cassie wakes with the sound of gunfire in her ears, her legs tangling in the sheets as she tries to run and just manages to fall out of bed. Her heart's racing, she can't catch her breath, and her whole body is covered in cold sweat.
She glances over at the other bed, but her roommate spent the night with her boyfriend again, and was spared the final act in Cassie's nightmare theater.
She takes a quick shower to wash the clammy feeling away and clear her head, but she spends so much time staring at the blurry version of herself in the steamy mirror, trying to figure out why her familiar reflection suddenly seems strange, that she's late for class.
She's fuzzy without her usual giant mug of scalding coffee, and she spends most of Media and Culture doodling instead of taking notes. When class is over, she's got pages filled with drawings from her dream: men with guns invading the cafeteria, searching for her, and a sketchy but hot security guard throwing himself in front of a bullet for her. She laughs at that one--she's pretty sure she's not the type hot guys take bullets for, even if it's in their job description. She's glad she's such a crappy artist; she thinks if she could draw him the way he really looks, she wouldn't be able to breathe for looking at him.
She has work to do (fucking French and its fucking irregular verbs) and her roommate's social life is way too active to make studying in her room a good option, but after her dreams, she's going to avoid the cafeteria. She heads to the library instead.
Still, halfway through her reading she gives up, vivid daydreams interfering with her thirty-fourth attempt to bull her way through An American Tragedy without flinging the book across the library. She starts drawing again, nothing that makes sense, just images from her daydream: the red sole of a spiked heel, the shitty half-lit neon sign of the local pub where the bartender lets her drink without showing ID. The hot security guard again, wearing a half-grin like he even knows or cares who she is, which has not been her experience with hot guys in the past. Sadly, the security guard at the door of the library is still Albert, a middle-aged black man with a beer gut hanging over his belt. She likes Albert, but she's pretty sure the last time he was hot was before she was born.
Cassie looks up from her sketchpad as a woman who seems vaguely familiar (not from Media and Culture, but maybe French class?) sits down across from her and says, "Can I see?"
Cassie hesitates, glancing down at the image of the security guard on her sketchpad. The drawings aren't necessarily good, but she doesn't think they're necessarily bad either. Everything looks sort of like it should.
"I won't laugh, I promise," the woman says.
Cassie looks up again and there's something strange about the woman's eyes, something she should know, but she can't put her finger on it, and then there's a soft whisper in the back of her mind that says forget and she does.
*
Cassie doesn't usually have sex dreams, at least not that she can remember, but the hot security guard from her earlier dreams has reappeared, kneeling between her legs and laughing. His uniform is gone, except for the tie, which is flipped back over his shoulder; the only other thing he's wearing is a big grin that makes her want to grin back. His hands are big and warm on her thighs as he goes down on her, his mouth slick and skillful as he makes her come over and over again, his tongue painting words on the ticklish skin of her inner thighs when he's done.
She wakes up gasping again, but this time, there's a hot aching pulse between her legs and her underwear is soaking wet. She pushes them off and gets herself off quickly, eyes closed so she can remember the dream. It's like a photograph behind her eyes; she just wishes she could remember where she knows the guy from, because maybe then she could actually talk to him. If he even exists.
The thought that he might not effectively kills her post-orgasm mellow, and she forces herself to get out of bed and get to her Post-War American History class, where once again, the professor never calls on her, even though she knows all the answers.
*
Cassie's being chased through the cafeteria by men with guns, and the hot security guard has just shoved her out of the way and gotten shot in her place, red blossoming across the front of his crisp white uniform shirt. She falls to her knees and screams--
Cassie wakes up shaking and crying, "Nick, Nick, Nick." Through teary eyes, she stares down at her hands like she doesn't recognize them, the nails covered in chipped purple polish and bitten down to ragged edges; she expects them to be stained red with Nick's blood, but they're not.
"I don't even know anybody named Nick," she tells herself, out loud, because that makes it feel more real. She's awake and nobody's dying in her arms.
She takes a quick shower, and when she catches her reflection in the steamed up mirror afterwards, she thinks about growing her hair out, maybe dying it blonde. She's tired of the dull brown that makes her face seem pale and pinched.
After class--she's not sure how the ninety minutes pass, because her notebook is full of more sketches instead of notes--she goes to the nearest Walgreens and picks up a box of L'Oreal (she might be having some kind of psychotic break, but she's totally worth it), but there's a different voice in the back of her head now, telling her it's not safe. It doesn't sound like anyone she knows, but she gets a sudden sense of rightness when she attaches the name Nick to it. The same Nick from her dreams.
"Great," she mutters, shoving the box into her bag and heading back to campus. "Now you've got an imaginary friend named Nick." A man in a business suit gives her a wide berth and she laughs. "And you talk to yourself out loud. No wonder you don't have any actual friends."
That's not right, though. There's her roommate, though Cassie can't remember the last time she saw her, and there's--Huh. She knows she talks to people. There was the lady yesterday in the library who wanted to see her drawings, who is possibly in her French class. (Cassie is terrible at French; she's glad the professor never calls on her. Most of the time, the professor doesn't even seem to know she's in the class.) There's Albert, the middle-aged security guard. And there's Nick, but the harder she tries to remember him--the harder she tries to remember anything--the blurrier it all gets.
She's back at her dorm now, but instead of going inside, she gets a weird feeling, like someone's waiting inside for her, someone she'd rather not see. She gets a vivid flash of imagination--two men with guns, the same ones who shot up the cafeteria in her dream.
She pivots and heads toward the library. She hasn't seen anyone get shot there, and if anybody does open fire, maybe the hot security guard will show up to rescue her.
Albert's on duty when she gets there, and she bites back a sigh of disappointment and gives him a tight smile before settling down to write an essay about whether pure altruism exists for her ethics class. She's written a paragraph of bullshit when her mind starts wandering again and she ends up sketching out something that looks like a shootout (or would if her drawing skills were better); there's a whole bunch of people with guns, one of whom looks like the woman possibly from French class, and for once it doesn't take place in the cafeteria or involve the hot security guard, so she's a lot less interested in it, and annoyed because she has to start over on her essay. She doesn't think of herself as a violent person, but her dreams sure do feature a lot of guns. She's gotten really good at drawing them.
She's moved on from that to wondering why she doesn't have a laptop like every other student she sees on campus, when the woman from French class shows up again.
"How are you today?" the woman asks.
Cassie gives her a pained smile (why can't she remember her name?) and says, "I'm okay. Had the weirdest dream about you, though."
"Really?" the woman asks, leaning so close that she's in Cassie's personal bubble, and Cassie wants to lean away, but she's caught in the woman's gaze. "Tell me all about it."
*
Cassie knows she's missing time. She's seen enough episodes of The X-Files to be concerned, though mostly what she remembers is arguing with someone (Nick?) over whether she should dye her hair red like Scully's.
"I don't believe in shadowy government conspiracies," she tells the cup of boysenberry yogurt she's eating, having given up all pretense of being a person who doesn't talk to inanimate objects and imaginary friends.
"Since when?" She looks up, startled, to find the hot security guard from her dreams looming over her. "I'm supposed to tell you that you're not allowed to eat in the library." He leans a hip against the table and gives her a rueful half-grin that shouldn't be familiar but is. "But since I think this is the first time I've ever seen you eat anything healthy, I won't."
She freezes, spoon halfway to her mouth and looks at him skeptically. This is not how she imagined this conversation going. Of course, she never thought the hot security guy from her daydreams was real, either, or that he'd be interested in talking to her if he actually was.
"Don't give me that look. I've known you for five years and I didn't know you ate yogurt that wasn't frozen and covered in sprinkles. Even without the dye-job, I almost didn't recognize you." He takes the spoon from her unresisting hand and swallows the mouthful of yogurt on it, then wrinkles his nose. "Frozen and covered in sprinkles is better."
"Five years?" Cassie cocks her head and takes a shot in the dark. "Nick?"
The fond look on his face dissolves into concern. "That's not funny."
She starts gathering her things. "I'm not laughing."
"Cassie." He grabs her arm, fingertips digging into the flesh of her biceps. She glares and sucks in a deep breath, ready to scream if he doesn't let go, but he does. "Cassie," he repeats, giving her an uncomfortably searching look. "It's me."
"Oh," says the woman from French class, standing behind Nick. "It's you."
Nick whirls to look at her. "Lorna, what the hell? We agreed that you'd keep her safe while I was...gone. Not," he waves a hand at Cassie and all the pages in her books flutter, "push her into forgetting me."
"Do you really want to have this conversation here?" Lorna whispers angrily.
"Safer than the cafeteria," Cassie says. They both look at her. "No shootouts in here."
Nick opens and closes his mouth, lips pressed in a flat, unhappy line, and gestures for Lorna to start talking.
"She wouldn't stay--kept trying to rescue you. I had to do something, or she would have ended up in Division right beside you." Lorna makes a face. "It was safer this way."
Cassie glances between them, the word Division ringing inside her head like a bell. She closes her eyes tight against a cascade of images that are new and familiar at the same time and clutches her books to her chest, ready to run.
"Fix it," Nick says, low and threatening.
"You know it's not that easy."
"Is everything all right here?" And there's Albert the security guard. Cassie shoots him a nervous grin. "This is Nick. He's new."
"Everything's fine," Lorna says, and though it should be impossible, Cassie can see Lorna's pupils expanding as she holds Albert's gaze. "Nothing to see here."
"Nothing to see here," Albert mutters and walks away.
Cassie starts backing away slowly, putting Nick between herself and Lorna, and the chair between herself and Nick.
"Cassie," Nick says, reaching out a hand towards her.
She shakes her head. "I can't. I have to--" She looks at the clock. "I have class now." Her legs ache with the need to run but she doesn't; she walks out of the library with her books clutched close to her chest and no fucking clue what's going on.
She doesn't go to class. She goes back to her room and finds it tossed, one of her sketchbooks lying open on the floor, a handful of pages ripped out. She shoves it into the bottom of her bag, along with all her clothes--and how has she never noticed how sparse her wardrobe is: one pair of jeans, two skirts (not including the one she has on), a handful of well-washed t-shirts and a pair of long sleeved shirts, five days' worth of underwear, three bras.
She packs it all and ignores the heavy metal press of the gun in the outside pocket, small enough for her to handle easily, and she gets a flash--she's pretty sure it's a memory this time, not a dream--of Nick, handing it to her with a rueful grin like the one he wore in the library, curling his fingers around hers on the grip.
He's standing outside the dorm when she gets downstairs. He looks at her bag and smiles, like he's glad her whole life is being turned upside down and she doesn't even know why.
"I guess I do know you," she says, unsnapping the pouch and showing him the gun. She keeps her face blank, tries not to show any of the fear or uncertainty she's feeling.
His smile disappears. "Yeah, yeah, you do. But, uh, put that away, okay?" He holds a hand out to take the bag but she doesn't let him. When she gets into the car with him, she sets it down on the mat and pulls her feet up onto the seat so she can turn and keep an eye on Lorna, who's in the backseat. Nick gives her a long, considering look before he pulls out, but doesn't say anything.
They stop once, to drop Lorna off at an apartment building about half a mile away from the campus, and when she gets out of the car, she stops and leans into the window so she can look Cassie in the eye. Cassie ducks her head, glances at Nick, who says, "It's okay, Cass. She's going to fix you."
Cassie can't help the bubble of hysterical laughter that bursts out of her at that. "Right." She turns back to Lorna, who looks at her for a long moment, pupils dilating wildly, and there's that whisper in the back of her mind again. This time it says, remember.
*
When Cassie comes to, she's curled up in the backseat and has a blinding headache, and the sun is sinking low off to the left. Her mouth tastes sour, like fear and blood. She pokes her tongue out, licks at the spot where her lip has split.
Nick's watching her with concern in rearview mirror. "You all right?"
She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, I--Yeah. I think so." She knows she knows him, now--knows it deep in her bones instead of just seeing it--but she's still not sure how everything in her head fits together, the feelings and the memories like a jumble of puzzle pieces that don't quite slot together.
He stops at a red light, so she climbs over the gearshift into the front seat again. Her skin feels itchy under his worried gaze, like a wooly sweater that doesn't fit right, and she's surprised to find it's only four-thirty when she checks the clock on the dashboard.
"So?" she says, because she's not sure what to ask and wants to know what he'll say.
"Lorna really did a number on you, huh?" he says, wagging his eyebrows at her.
She looks out the window. It's getting darker by the second. She forgets how quickly night falls in November. "I need a drink."
"There's some water in the glove compartment."
That's not what she means and he knows it, but she doesn't argue. The water is lukewarm but drinkable, and it washes the sour penny taste out of her mouth. In between sips, she stabs at the buttons on the radio until he twitches an eyebrow and shuts it off.
She looks at him, surprised. "Huh. So maybe you did learn something while you were...gone." Her hands clench into fists as she remembers the helplessness--the sheer terror--of letting him be taken, of trusting Kira to protect him (and release him) so he could finally get some training and some information that wasn't half-assed and half-true.
"Maybe I'm not the only one," he teases.
She wrinkles her nose. "I can't believe she made me take French."
"You suck at French." He gives her an amused look.
"I know!"
She grins at him and for a second, everything feels right, feels like it did before, but then it actually feels like it did right before he left, and the fear slams into her all at once.
She sucks in a breath, and then another and another, and it's like she can't get enough air in her lungs. She presses a hand to her chest, and flaps the other one at him for help. He pulls the car over onto the shoulder so he can find her a paper bag to breathe into. He hauls her into his lap and rubs her back, murmuring nonsense while she tries to get her breathing back under control. Her eyes are watering, but that's just from the lack of air; she's not crying.
She is definitely not crying when she buries her face in his shirt and soaks it through with tears. He rests his chin on the top of her head and squeezes her tight, and she remembers now why Lorna pushed her into forgetting, why she had to do it every day or two, to overwhelm the feelings that kept seeping through.
Cassie doesn't know how long it takes but she finally pulls herself together and flops back into the passenger seat so Nick can find them a motel, because she is so, so done for the night.
*
The room has one king bed in it, covered in an awful green and yellow paisley comforter that makes Cassie's eyes hurt, but she doesn't care. She doesn't even bother to undress or brush her teeth. She kicks off her boots and crawls under the covers.
Nick takes his time getting ready before he climbs in and curls up behind her and drags her against him, his arm draped over her hip and his hand splayed out, large and warm, on her belly. She sighs and snuggles close, glad that this, at least, hasn't changed. She's too afraid to ask about his reunion with Kira, too wrung out to deal with the possibility that she's lost him even if he's sleeping beside her.
"I missed you so much," he murmurs, nose pressed up behind her ear. "Let's never do that again."
She thinks she's really matured a lot because she doesn't remind him that it was his stupid idea and she'd been against it from the start. Instead, she twines her fingers with his and squeezes her eyes shut against the tears leaking out, hot and quiet and slow this time. He presses kisses to her hair and her temple and doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.
They're in the same position when Cassie wakes up, Nick's hand tracing lazy patterns on her skin.
"Hi," he says, when she twists onto her back to look up at him.
"Hi," she answers, tipping her face up for a kiss.
His lips are warm and chapped against hers, and for a moment they stay like that, even though it stings a little where her lip is cut. Then he licks at the seam of her mouth, coaxes her into opening up for him. Even through the sour taste of morning breath, the touch of his tongue against hers is like striking a match under her skin. He trails kisses down her throat, between her breasts, only pausing long enough to pull her shirt off, and she arches up into the wet warmth of those touches, moaning softly when he sucks one hard nipple into his mouth.
He pushes her skirt and panties off as he kisses his way down, until he's kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed and kissing his way back up along her calves and shins, nipping a little at the sweaty spot behind her right knee. He moves her down the bed, the motel sheets scratchy against her back, drapes her knees over his shoulders and then grins up at her.
Cassie raises herself up on her elbows and says, "I dreamt about this."
"Me, too," he says fervently, gently stroking one finger along her wet folds and then licking the wetness away. He presses his nose to the crease where her leg joins her body and whispers, "God, Cassie."
"I know," she says. "Me, too."
He licks into her slowly, the happy sounds he makes vibrating through her. She can't tell what he's spelling out with his tongue against her clit, but it doesn't matter. She understands every word he's saying.
The tension builds and builds inside her, until she's got both hands tangled in his hair and her hips are coming off the bed to fuck his face. He slips two fingers inside her and rubs just the right way, and the tension breaks, flooding her with wave after wave of hot pleasure.
He presses one more kiss to the inside of her thigh when he's done, and then wipes his slick face on his forearm.
She grabs at him, drawing her knees up and spreading them so he can settle against her, condom floating into his hand so he can roll it on. And then he's pushing inside her, hard and thick, as she flutters around him.
"Nick," she says, over and over again. "Nick."
"I'm here, Cass, I'm right here." She can taste herself as he kisses her, salty and real and here; he's inside and all around her, and for the first time in months, she feels real, too.
She angles her hips up to meet his thrusts, ankles hooked around his thighs. "Nick," she says again.
"I'm here," he answers, buried deep inside her as he comes. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
He sighs softly into her mouth. "Promise."
Cassie believes him.
end
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