Seeing Red
By Athena13

A/N: Just as I gave Jackie a story I wanted to see, she gave me this story nugget and is working with me to flesh it out. This story picks up on Halloween 2005 in Llanview. Since it's my (our) story I've made a few timeline changes to suit myself - the stupid Daniel story never happened, CAM never came back and Ginger is not related to her and Nora never went into a coma.

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Part 1

She couldn't make out the words being spoken around her, nor could she taste the dirty martini she was sucking down. The masticated olive slid over her tongue and down her throat in a wash of alcohol. She didn't notice people pushing past her in the throng as she was pushed from side to side. Everything else was a blur and buzz. All she could see was them.

She always saw them. Touching each other, looking at each other as if no one else was there. Taunting her. She slid her eyes down his strong body to his waist and below. Her breath quickened and her nipples hardened under the tight-fitting leather cat woman costume she wore.

It had always been like this, except now she was sleeping alone. Before she would be able to walk up to him and press her breast against his arm or slide her hand over the front of his pants. She
would parade her scantily clad and firm body before him and push him to the nearest closet or elevator. She would pretend that his arousal was for and not for the sparkling red head he would invariably be watching, talking to or thinking about.

Natalie. The name was heard in her head, as always, as a hissing whine. Her temples pounded as she turned her head and contemplated the voluptuous Buchanan twin. Hate heated her body temperature as she drained her umpteenth drink.

"She's watching us again, John." Natalie said under her breath to John.

John sighed and turned their dancing bodies so that Natalie was out of her sight. He had hoped that all these months of avoiding his ex-lover would give her the hint that she should move on. He unconsciously caressed the skin left bare at Natalie's waist by her genie costume and pressed his arousal against her pelvis. Although he played it cool with Natalie, he wasn't unaware that Evangeline turned up more often than not wherever they were and watched them. He had also seen the calculating gleam in her eye turn into anger and now fury as he didn't fall in line with her expectations. It was his own damned fault, he admitted wryly. For the entire length of their relationship he had fallen into line with what she wanted – except for one thing, he had never told her he loved her. It was a bald-faced lie he could never push past his lips, even to keep the peace and, he pulled Natalie closer, protect his heart from the battering promised by the fiery red-head in his arms and his passion for her.

"I'll talk to her."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Not alone." Natalie's arms were twined around his neck and she turned them so she could peek at her former rival.

"I think I can take care of myself." John chuckled and dipped a finger into the bejeweled half-top at her back.

"She's scary, John. I don't know what you ever saw in her. And don't." She pinched his neck. "Answer that!"

"I would never dream of it." John laughed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then his expression sobered. "But I should talk to her. I'm just not sure…"

"Sure of what?" The song ended and they clapped for the band. She took John's hand and led him to the bar on the far side of the dance floor away from Evangeline and waited their turn to order. In the close quarters and the dim lighting John, dressed as her "astronaut master" in his black suit looked supremely hot and not too different from FBI John. She wondered if they had been there long enough that no one would comment on their disappearance from David and Dorian's Halloween
Wedding at Capricorn.

Then she sighed and remembered they hadn't even done the cake cutting yet – the big orange and black cake with the glow in the dark decorations that David insisted on – and having been pressed into service along with Kelly, Blair and Adriana as a bridesmaid to her mother's Maid of Honor she had to stay. At least the costumes the bridesmaids had to wear were cool, well, hot, actually.

"Sure of what?" she prompted John as he handed her the open bottle of beer the bartender knew without prompting to give them.

John took her elbow and led her to a relatively vacant spot. "I'm not sure anything I say will make a difference," he said.

"She needs to win. I'm the enemy and you're the villain. Blah, blah, blah. Enough about her tonight. Let's enjoy ourselves. Maybe I can get my mother to speed things up and we can get out of here and be alone?"

Before John's lips touched Natalie's his cell phone rang. With a frustrated groan he dug the thing out of his pocket and noted that caller id. "I gotta take this." He handed her his beer and walked out a side door.

"Can I help you?" A gravelly voice startled Natalie from behind. She turned, her hands filled with the two beers, and tried to figure out who was that masked man.

"No, thanks. Who are you?" Something about the man seemed familiar, but she couldn't place him underneath the costume.

"This unfortunate lost a daughter once. It has driven him mad and now he seeks to claim you for his own." The lips, visible under the mask covering the rest of his face curved into a smile and a tongue darted out and moistened the pale lips. But despite the smile, she saw hardness in the dark eyes looking out from the mask that gave her pause.

"It's naught but a line from the Zorro movie, my sweet. No need to look so worried." His gloved hand reached up and caressed the wisps of hair that had fallen out of the pony tail she wore on the top of her head in a jewel encrusted band.

Natalie pulled back from his grasp and bumped into someone. "Rex!" she said happily as she turned around. Rex, wearing his cowboy outfit turned and enveloped his sister in a big, drunken hug.

"Hey!" she pulled back laughing, having already spilled some of the beer on his red shirt. Feeling a chill on her neck, she remembered the guy she was talking to. She turned around, about to ask Rex if he knew who it was, but he was already gone. With a shrug she turned back to Rex.