Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.
Warnings: This is my fill response to a rare pairing prompt posted on LJ at the TWD kink meme: "Jenner/Jacqui: Jenner and Jacqui have sex the night the group is at the CDC."
Authors Note #1: Rated for: adult language, adult situations, religious references, and allusions to the season one finale.
Pavor Nocturnus
He found her walking through the halls barefoot. Generous hips swaying underneath a short, cream silk housecoat and nothing else, the smell of freshly washed hair and well-scrubbed skin trailing along behind her like a second shadow.
She doesn't notice him at first, too busy wandering from room to room, soaking it in. The neck of the wine bottle she'd claimed for her own drifting easily at her side, threaded between long, delicate fingers as she stopped at the viewing window that looked into one of the observation rooms. The dark red liquid sloshing this way, then that, swaying in time to a tuneless, monotone rhythm as the bottle swung lazily through the cool, recycled air.
But when she does, catching his reflection in the glass just behind her, she doesn't seem all that surprised. In fact, she only smiled. Sending him that same beautiful smile she'd gifted them with at dinner. Effervescent and unapologetically vivacious, clearly still riding the high that only a full belly and a few bottles of surprisingly good wine can rightly provide.
He'd envied her for that. In fact he envied all of them; envied them for still being able to take pleasure in the little things.
He'd never really been a religious man. In truth he'd always found it hard to reconcile the difference between blind faith and hard science. But then again, he'd never really had too. His parents had let him decide for himself what he wanted to believe, and Candace, well, science had always been her theology. In the end, he supposed he was open to the concept of religion; he just wasn't overly convinced by it. He figured that was just the idealist him though, always looking for that one perfect solution. That last puzzle piece to a centuries old problem.
But when Rick and his group had showed up in Vi's exterior cameras, the only living people he'd seen in close to two whole months, now all but crashing through his front door on the eve of zero hour. He couldn't help but wonder if there was some sort of divine intervention going on. It was either that, or it was the universe's worst attempt at some sort of tragic joke at his expense.
Only now he's beginning to think that maybe them being here wasn't about him at all. Maybe it was about them, the people that all the science in the world hadn't been able to save. The victims and survivors of Wildfire that had been counting on them, on him to find a cure, to reassure them that everything was going to be alright. To save them...
He supposed, in a weird and rather disjointed way, that it actually made sense. That he, by profession would enviably hold that responsibility. To tell them that in the end it didn't matter. That all their hardship and suffering, the constant struggle just to stay alive from day to day since this whole mess had started had been ultimately worthless.
He knew they had questions. Ones that probably wouldn't wait any longer than their first handful of pain pills and a few bites of what passed for breakfast these days to combat their hangovers in the morning. There would be questions he'd have the answers for, but more that he wouldn't. There would be things he'd refuse to answer and more that he'd try to avoid. They'd come here seeking refuge, safety, and an end from all the death and destruction of the outside world. And he'd give them that. He'd give them that for as long as they all had left.
After all, they were all in this together now…
He was startled out of his own thoughts when she turned around to face him. Her dark eyes kind, back lit with spunk and intelligence as she turned her back on the window and made to speak.
"I'd almost forgotten what this feels like." She hummed, breaking the silence almost effortlessly as she tipped her head back against the cool pane of glass, eyes closed and blissful as she soaked in the chill.
"What, what feels like?" He asked, tongue playing with the unfamiliar syllables as they slipped awkwardly from his lips, still stuck on the novelty of actually talking to another person after all this time alone.
It was one of the things he hadn't realized he'd miss until it was suddenly gone. Until there was no one else left and he was all alone. People… Human contact… He'd been alone for months with nothing but his own god damned reflection. Until he'd started having entire conversations with the computer monitors or even Vi, desperate to drive away the loneliness, even if it was just with empty comforts and false promises.
So perhaps that was why he didn't feel even a little bit guilty when he used her inattention to examine the contours of her face. …Greedy in spite of himself as he took in every detail. - She really was quite lovely. Now that he actually had a spare moment to notice. It was all there in her face, in those high, delicate cheekbones, dark eyes and plush lips. In fact, there was even something aesthetically pleasing about the way her eyes lit up when she smiled. Cheeks dimpling in mirth as the graceful taper of her throat arched in time. Innocently unaware of the tantalizing picture she painted as she'd laughed unabashedly over dinner. Smiling and chuckling for the sheer pleasure of it as Dale had topped up everyone's third or fourth glass of wine.
"…This. Everything…" she began, gesturing up at the vaulted ceiling before swinging her hand around them to encompass the entirety of the long, curving hallway. As if she was addressing the entire complex at large.
"Safety, food, clean clothes, hot water, cold water, coffee machines, air conditioning… Need I go on?" she replied, tone cheeky as she ticked off the items with her finger like points on a checklist.
"Yes… It appears as though I've been one of the lucky ones," he admitted, lips quirking at the irony of the situation as he leaned up against the wall beside her.
Because while it certainly didn't seem that way from where he was standing, he was beginning to realize that it might just be true after all. After what Rick had told him in the control room, and how the others had acted throughout the course of the night he realized his sheltered experiences probably couldn't even begin to compare. Hell, he'd been in a security enforced, climate controlled bunker, stocked to the brim with every imaginable want or desire since the infection had first been discovered. More than that, he and Candace had been air-lifted from the street outside their town house on the Governor's orders in order to get them safely to the CDC and working on a cure.
"Maybe not so lucky," she returned, dark eyes flicking up and down the length of him before she leaned back against the window as well. Gaze softening into a gentle smile that he couldn't help but return.
And for a long moment they simply stood there. Brushing shoulders in a hallway that only a few months before had been filled to the brim with all manner of people. People who had all meant something to somebody.
…Content to let the silence speak for itself.
A/N: There will be one more part to this puppy. Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing is love! I know this is a rare pairing, and probably the first of its kind, so thank you for giving it a try!
Reference #1: Pavor Nocturnus is a term that refers to a night terror, also known as a sleep terror, incubus attack, is a parasomnia disorder, causing feelings of terror or dread, and typically occurring in the first few hours of sleep during stage 3 or 4 non-rapid eye movement NREM sleep.
Reference #2: According to the official Walking Dead wiki "Candace" is the name of T-19, or Jenner's late wife. Whom we learn in the season one finale ran the CDC and was a veritable genius in their profession.
"People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad." - Marcel Proust
