Title: What a Rush to the Start

Author: Tote

Genre: angst, romance, whatever

Rating: PG, PG13, R, whatever

A/N: Still struggling with the sequel to Curtain's Edge—here's something to tide you over. I got some requests for fluff…well, I consider this fluff. Read and review and I will thank you profusely in my next author's note, read and don't review, then, well…bite me.

My dream always starts the same. From there, it could go anywhere—nightmarishly wrong, so that I wake up screaming or to a place better than reality, so that I wake wishing I was asleep. I'm still not sure which one is worse.

I'm in her kitchen, by the counter, leaning on it with my elbows. It's weird—cause in real life; I've never stood there before, like that. But in the dream, it's like I've done it a thousand times. I feel her before I see her, the way you can feel the sunlight pouring on your face through your bedroom window before you open your eyes. Then her voice is by my ear, in that tone that makes me feel weak with things too big for me to name:

"We'll always be us," she whispers and her voice breaks off in a delighted laugh. I laugh with her and try to turn my head—to see her face, to kiss her mouth, to run my fingers through her hair—but she evades my glance, teasingly hiding behind me, so she's hidden from view. And it's such a tease, to hear her voice and feel her breath against my neck and not see her, feel her. It's just a silly game but I feel suddenly panicked.

"Jane! Please—" And sometimes, that's when she appears at my side, as bright as an angel with her sparkling eyes and early-morning-smirk and I realize we're married, or engaged, or bound together in some way, some way that feels like we'll never lose each other.

And then sometimes, she doesn't appear. Like an angel, she vanishes and I'm alone, the kitchen goes dark. Outside, a velvety darkness falls across the street and Bonnie comes in out of nowhere, wearing nothing but that ugly black, lacey bra and her girl-boxers, and murmuring: "You fucked up, Adam…"

But it always starts with me there, in the kitchen, and Jane behind me, happy to be with me.

One day, we had study group at her house. There was a big physics test coming up and we realized that none of us, except Luke but he's kind of a geek, had been paying attention in school for the past week. There was going to be an emergency study group at the Girardis' where Luke would teach us as much about refraction as he could in two hours.

It would be the first time since the mock trial that I went to the house. I kept my head down crossing streets on the way there; in the vague hope a car might hit me.

When I got to the doorstep, I raised my hand to ring the doorbell, already imagining the clip-clop of Joan's new boots (vintage 60's, she wore them with a short skirt one day and I came close to killing half the male student body) and the smell of her body lotion. I wanted to stop thinking these thoughts, I wanted to forget the feel of her hair in my hands, her skin, her noises, her not-funny jokes and her funny comments that we're never meant to be funny. I wanted to forget that I loved her and every thought in her head and every thing she'd ever said to me and all her flaws and all her hidden, sudden beauties.

Dream-Bonnie was right: I fucked up.

But before I could think of the right thing to say and ring the doorbell, the door swung open, revealing Jane, in all her sudden, almost shocking sexiness.

She was wearing the boots.

Feeling my throat constrict, I quickly looked down at my plain sneakers, recovering. "Um…" What? What? My mind screamed at me, went haywire: tell her you're sorry, tell her you love her, tell her to bury those boots in a hole and never wear them again, I love you, I love you, I love you, "Hi."

Frowning slightly, she cocks her head to the side and half-says, half-growls: "Look, no one else showed up. Luke and Grace are, I don't know…" turning, she starts stomping down the hall into her house, and I follow her, shutting the door as I go, "…like, eloping or making out somewhere and Glynis called and said her and Friedman want to study alone, so…"

By this time, we'd entered the kitchen and Joan turned, leaning her back against the fridge and not looking at me.

"So," she finished, breathing out, "It's just us."

I paused, taking in the sight of her breathless beauty there by the fridge: her crossed, defiant little arms, the great line of her jaw and her pursed, full, sensuous lips, her bare legs beneath the skirt that had slightly ridden up and those big black boots, silvery with too many buckles, her feet turned uncertainly inward. No scarf today. I wanted to cry. "Okay."

She looked up at me, eyes big and unblinking. "Yeah?"

I nodded, a little frozen in her stare. But I missed it the second she looked away: she doesn't look at me much anymore.

Slowly, she took a step to the counter and started drawing uncertain circles with her fingers across its surface, looking thoughtful. "I guess this as good a time as any," she mused, as if to herself, and then looked slightly up, as if talking to the ceiling: "Right? This is it?"

I opened my mouth, searching for words I didn't find. "What is?" I try to get it when she talks like that, but I hardly ever do.

Her eyes firmly on the microwave behind me, "Do you still love me, Adam?"

"Yes," I say, without thinking.

My voice is loud, clear and I wince and look away from her, afraid. Is she going to tell me she doesn't want to hang out with me now? That it's too weird having a friend that also loves you with every cell in his body, who betrayed you? Will she?

"Oh, good," she says in a slightly hysterical tone, "that makes it easier."

And with those words, she grabbed the end of her little t-shirt and dragged it up over her head and off, throwing it in an almost careless way to the floor beside her. Her smooth, tan skin seemed to gleam with something in the light of the lamp overhead and I'd never seen anything more mind-blowing than her bare collar bones above the nudity of her chest or anything so amazing as the thin cotton of her pink bra.

Could I help it if I gasped and stared, my eyes going from her chest to her mouth to her eyes—those eyes that sent everything hurtling downward into motion because…God! They just burned.

"Jane…?" I tried to stop myself from breathing unsteadily and found I couldn't.

"Nobody's home," she said, watching me unnervingly. I shivered, throbbed with wanting her.

"We can't." I choke out the words, before I can't anymore. "Jane, you…"

"Why not?" Her voice is soft, angry and it belies the seductive way she moves as she comes toward me, stopping only a handbreadth away, till I can almost, almost see a glimmer of her old self somewhere in her eyes. Her red mouth, shiny with lip-gloss, twists sarcastically. "You've done it before."

I closed my eyes, reeling. Oh, God. "Jane." I opened my eyes again. "Don't do this. We're—we're," I struggle, "friends, now, aren't we? Please don't—"

"Oh, we can still be friends," Joan whispered, eyes filling up with tears even as she slid her skirt down over her thighs, till it fell from her knees to her ankles. She stepped out of it, adding, while a tear slipped down her cheek, "It's just a hook-up."

I was suddenly overcome, shaken and I take her face into my hands without meaning to: "No," I tried to put the wrongness, the horrible wrongness of what she'd just said into that one word, "No." I bit my lip, almost collapsing under the word and her implication: "No. We could never," I breathe in and she stares at me, tremblingly, "be just a hook-up."

And we crashed together, her body pressing against mine and I almost ate her, I kissed her, every inch of her mouth and I tried to drink from her, to gain that goodness, that light she shines, so that I'd have something to hold onto when she pushed me away.

She didn't.

Our tongues tangled and she tasted like tangerines and mint and something so her, so Jane that I felt myself shudder as I held her against me and touched her, my hands running over her back and arms: everywhere I could reach without stopping the kiss. I groaned when she sucked my tongue and I felt light-headed.

Then, before I really knew what was happening, she pulled my shirt off, threw it on the floor and still against me, still in my arms, she whispered: "If you love me, you'll do this, okay?" and then, before I could answer, she pressed her mouth to mine and I couldn't answer.

We started walking backward as the kiss intensified—her lips parting, my tongue licking at the recesses of her mouth—and my hand was undoing the clasp of her bra before I'd decided I wanted to touch her there.

Without hesitation, or a moment's fearful look that showed me Jane, who didn't always know what the ripples would be, she shrugged off the pink straps and let it fall to the floor between us. She wore nothing but her boots and her white cotton underwear.

"Jane…" I cupped her behind, breathing hard at the feel of her breasts pressed up against me, and I shook my head, telling myself that no, no, no I could not do this, and even as I did so, I was turning us around so that her back was to the wall, lifting her up and pressing my self to her self and she moaned aloud at the perfect fit.

I let my hands go as far as the edge of her panties, the last shred of material that covered her and hid her from me and I wanted nothing else in the world but to rip it off and push myself into her and move inside and with her, till she forgot everything and anything existed but us and she gasped my name and came, bathed in the sweat that coated her already, and I'd worry about the rest of it later.

But I loved her. I wanted her too, I longed for her and desired her and ached to be with her but I loved her, first.

So I pulled back and let her slide down, back onto her—still in boots—feet. I leaned my forehead against hers, relishing my last shred: "I love you, Jane."

"Is that why you're stopping?" She's breathless and halfway to freaking out: mascara clings to her long eyelashes as a tear rolls down her cheek, then another, another.

I kiss the tear away, "Yeah."

We breathe in together, still in each other's embrace.

"I should've known…" she mumbled, laughing softly through her breathless tears.

"What?" I whispered.

"That this wasn't what He meant." She kissed me, on the chin, but it still made me quiver: "I get it now."

We disentangled and got dressed hurriedly, a low sense of sorrow hanging over us. Just as I turned to see her fully-dressed again and smiling at me, in a way that looked almost loving, the doorbell rang. We both froze and our eyes met. "Who…?" she started to whisper, then scowled as if she had a good idea.

I followed her as she went to the door, muttering angrily to herself, but when she slammed it open, she let out a sigh of surprise: "Hey, guys." But who else would she've been expecting?

Luke and Grace went past us, Luke looking flustered and Grace looking threatening at me, which probably meant they'd just been making out. "Sorry, we got side-tracked," she said coolly and shortly and with one razor-sharp glance, dared either of us to ask.

I looked to Jane. She shrugged, not looking at me. "Whatever, let's just get this over with. Luke, you can still help us, right?"

I was last to enter back into the kitchen: Grace and Luke had gone straight to the table, where they were opening physics books and Luke kept looking, smiling kind of foolishly, at Grace, who kept her head bowed but might've been smiling too.

Jane had gone back to the fridge: she took out some snacks and laid them on the counter, pouring dip into little saucers and bags of chips and pretzels into bowls, a half a pizza onto a plate. Suddenly she leaned her elbows down on the counter, putting her head in her hands. The weight of the world seemed to press down on her. Her dark, shiny hair fell across her face like a curtain.

Without thinking, again, I went up behind her, speaking into her ear but careful not to touch her, not now: "We'll always be us."

She tenses and I feel her shiver, and then lean her weight against me. I put my hands on my shoulders, my face buried in her hair. "It's hard to be…us, sometimes," she murmured and then, becoming brisk in a moment, she tried to move away from the subject by quickly picking up a bowl in one hand and a plate with the other.

Stopping her, I put my hand over hers, where it grips the bowl, and say softly: "You'll always be Jane to me." I walk away, to Grace and Luke, carrying the bowl and plate with me and I feel her burning gaze on my back. Glancing over my shoulder, she smiles at me: a real smile.

I crash into the table, upsetting Luke's glass of water, sending liquid spilling over the table's edge. Luke and Joan come quickly to the rescue with paper towels, but Grace looks up at me from her seat, her blue eyes flicker to Jane's smile where it still lingers around her mouth, and she gives me a knowing look.