Fandom: Midnighters
Pairing: RexMelissa, JonathanJessica
Disclaimer: Wouldn't even want it. Scott Westerfeld is the shiz
Summary: A week after the showdown in the dessert where Rex almost got darklingified. Before Blue Noon starts up. Jonathan awakes from a nightmare.
Jonathan never had nightmares. Nighttime was his time, the hours of dark that held a promise of soon. Only a few more hours until midnight, when weightlessness would soak his skin and saturate his bones. When Jonathan slept, he dreamt of flight.
That was why, on a particularly dry Bixby night, when Jonathan awoke in a cold sweat that left a generous pool of sticky, salty liquid on his upper lip, he was surprised. It took him at least forty seconds to realize he had in fact, been having a nightmare, and then another forty to realize he was now awake. The florescent blue of his digital clock winked at his from across the room. It blinked 2:39, flashing light over his carpet.
Jonathan closed his eyes and tried to remember what he had been dreaming about. He couldn't pin point any details. All he had was a constant, insistent sense of fear. Even knowing he was awake, and the danger gone, he couldn't shake the feeling of immediacy pumping behind his eyelids. It gathered in the knuckles of his hands and he cracked them, the numbness crackling away.
It was no use. His shirt was damp with the wetness from his body, and the window of his room open. He shivered. It was impossible to return to his dream with such a physical reminder of reality weighing on him.
Jonathan striped his shirt and rubbed his bleary eyes. Lying back down, his head fitting in to the already dented pillow, he thought about midnight with Jessica. For the past week, following the events out in the dessert, the midnighters had been spending the midnight hour as far away from one another as possible. Dess remained on her own, Rex was with Melissa and Jonathan had Jess all to himself. They spent the time flying over Bixby, jumping together in almost perfected harmony. Jonathan smiled at the uniqueness of their relationship. He couldn't understand Rex (Frankly, he didn't understand how anyone could understand Rex). They guy talked about Midnight like it was a duty, a chore. Jonathan felt he was the only one who saw the truth. Midnight was like Disney land on steroids. And it was theirs. Who else got to take their girlfriends flying?
The dessert sand in his hair popped like corn soaked in oil as it burned. The fire kept going until it was covering his entire body. A body that had limbs coming out from everywhere, from inhuman places. Under his ribcage, his shoulder blades. He hissed like a slither and cried like a wounded animal as the fire seared chunks of flesh away.
With the smile still frozen on his face, Jonathan's eyes widened. Fear stretched across his chest like a thin layer of plastic, restricting his breathing. Without even trying, he had remembered part of his dream. Not dream. Nightmare.
He had seen Rex with his hair on fire, but never had he thought about the fire killing him. It hadn't even come close. He had, of course, wondered about what would have happened if they had been to late. If Jess hadn't been there to save him. However, never had Jonathan stopped to imagine what Rex would have looked like as a darkling. What else had he seen while asleep?
Running barefoot on cold pavement. Feet numb and limbs cold but cheeks warm and red. Nose running, breath running faster. A house, broken steps leading to the door outlined in yellow light. Hiking up too-long cowgirl pajama pants to climb the stairs.
Melissa.
He dreamt he was Melissa. Was that right?
No.
He dreamt Melissa's memories. The ones she'd vomited into him that night, when he touched her hand and felt more than he'd bargained for.
Jonathan didn't have nightmares. But it would appear that Melissa most certainly did.
Now that he realized, he could recall various images from the nightmare. There were spiders and spittle from an old, broken mouth. The impossibly loud and obtrusive noise of daylighters. People were so noisy. And the violation of others thoughts within your own mind. Mind-rape, Jonathan lamely paraphrased. Melissa was terrified of touch. Obviously Jonathan had known this; he realized Melissa was incapable of skin on skin contact. But now he knew. The fear of touch and almost visceral repulsion to it. He assumed Melissa yearned to be touched, but all he had felt on that night was a sickness at the contact. He had also felt her wanting for Rex. Her desire for the ability to touch him without churning their memories together into a frothy spew, murky as sewage water. She loved him.
Jonathan had always sort of assumed Rex and Melissa were together because no one else would have them. Not exactly like that. but, like they had been put together by situation, and neither had fought it. Melissa didn't feel that way. He hadn't been able to sort all of this out in the moment of touch that night, but he had felt it. With a week to hash out ever emotion he had gone through of Melissa's, he could see she honestly loved Rex for everything he was (this didn't make Jonathan dislike Rex any less than before. Alhtough he had been acting differently since his near-rebirth experiance). Melissa felt that she would have loved Rex anyway, even had they not shared the secret hour.
When Jonathan fell back into sleep that night, he dreamt again of Melissa. He dreamt of holding her hand and kissing her lips. He wasn't attracted to her, and he certainly wasn't in love with her. But he dreamt of being close, because he felt something for her now. She would probably call it pity. He would call it a vague sense of understanding. Or at least, he understood now why she could sometimes be such a complete and total bitch.