Author's notes:

I realized that in every fic I've written, I've always made it so that Helena's the one chasing Hunnigan (seems more natural to me for some reason), so I decided to try and write something more from Hunnigan's point of view. And kudos to you if you catch the nods to Mass Effect and The Walking Dead... not that it's hard, the references are more than obvious. xD

Chapter 1

Sweet dreams

Helena's arm wrapped around Hunnigan from behind, lying flat against her abdomen, sliding down at a torturously slow pace. The younger woman let out an amused breath when Hunnigan involuntarily jumped a little when Helena intentionally let her fingernails tickle the sensitive bronzed skin as she circled Hunnigan's navel before her hand traveled further down. Hunnigan tensed up and arched in Helena's arms when the younger woman's hand reached its destination. It was almost enough as it was, after all the teasing she'd just need a few lashes of her soft fingertip, just a bit more pressure, just one more...

...and then it was over. Hunnigan jolted awake, sucking in an almost startled gasp as she did, the ache blossoming between her legs going from sweet to downright painful when she denied herself that one little stroke it would've required for her to finish.

"Damn it," she muttered, turned to lie on her stomach and tucked a pillow under her chin. For the longest time she'd dismissed wet dreams as something reserved mainly for adolescent boys, and despite knowing it wasn't uncommon for women to have them too, she didn't recall having any before. Not until recently. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had brought them on.

It was a somewhat sad cocktail consisting partly of having foolishly developed a silly little girl crush on agent Harper (but in her defense, could anyone really blame her for that?) and partly of having been single for... well, a lot longer than she liked to admit. And of course to maximize the awkwardness, her subconscious had decided to take the cocktail and transform it into these ridiculously vivid erotic dreams that left her waking up just as she was about to go over the edge, and that feeling stayed with her the entire day, making it really difficult to even look at Helena without blushing like a lovestruck teenager.

"I'm too old for this crap," she mumbled and got up. She turned her alarm clock off, it was ten to six in the morning and it didn't need to go off ten minutes from now, she was already up. Frankly, she considered herself too old for a lot of crap. When she'd been younger, she'd imagined that by the time she'd reached her thirties, her life would be a lot different from what it had been then. It hadn't quite turned out like that.

The only significant change had been in her line of work when she'd been hand-picked from the FBI's Cyber Division to work for what had eventually become known as D.S.O. Everything else was... pretty much the same. She still lived in the same apartment, she was still single, she still hadn't quite figured out how to make friends, she was still waiting for life to begin and evolve into something more... And worst of all, she was still in the closet and as straight as they came as far as her parents knew, which meant her mother kept practically pimping her to every decent enough single male she met.

Out of all the things she wanted to change, that fact she decided would probably be best left the way it was. Her mother was Dominican and her father of Irish descent, both from devout Catholic families which in return translated to Ingrid Hunnigan coming from one too. Knowing her parents, they'd go from trying to marry her off the to next eligible bachelor to downright disowning her for experiencing such "unnatural tendencies".

Well, at least all that practice refraining from practically everything involving sexual activities is proving useful, she smirked. She knew what the teachings were, but she had never been eager to follow them. She figured God had better things to do than to keep tabs on her and whether or not she'd kept her hands over the blankets and above the waist, or whether she'd saved herself for marriage.

Considering my preferences, I'm not even allowed to get married so, kind of blows the hell out of that really.

She couldn't say why exactly she was choosing to deny herself the satisfaction she could've gotten effortlessly after having these kind of dreams. It certainly wasn't because of religious reasons (she did believe in God, but she'd adopted a less psychotic approach to it than her parents had), it was more a question of... some odd sense of respect, she supposed. She almost felt like she should've asked for permission from the object of her desires... which was, quite frankly, ridiculous.

After a very cold shower, Hunnigan dressed and went to make breakfast. She was about to sit down to eat when there was a knock on the door. Sighing, she got up and went to answer the door wondering who could possibly require her presence in person at this hour. When she saw Helena at her doorstep, she felt what she assumed it must feel like to get punched in the stomach.

"Mornin'. Is this a bad time?"
"No... What's up?"

"Shepard forgot to give you the new keycard and I promised him I'd deliver it since I live nearby," Helena explained, handing over the deep blue card with the D.S.O. logo and Hunnigan's name engraved on it.
"Thanks," she muttered, accepting the card, unable to keep a sharp jolt of arousal from lancing through her when her fingertips made contact with Helena's as the card was passed from her to Hunnigan.

Oh, for the love of... she groaned internally at her own reactions. She then frowned deeply when Helena suddenly drew her weapon.

"Don't move."
"What are you doing?"

"There's a snake behind you," Helena responded, stabilizing her aim.
"Ah, damn it!" Hunnigan scoffed and put her hand over Helena's wrist, pushing down to gently but firmly keep her from aiming at the snake.

"What are you doing?" Helena questioned.
"It's okay, it's my pet," Hunnigan said and went to pick up the snake from the floor. It slithered up her arm, twisting itself around it, seemingly pleased and proud for having managed to escape from the tank.

"You have a pet snake?" Helena quirked an eyebrow and Hunnigan nodded.
"He's a harmless Mexican milk snake," she said, extending her arm a little so that Helena could take a better look at the reddish snake with cream and black bands decorating the length of its body.

"What's his name?" Helena inquired, slowly holstering her weapon.
"Carl/Coral."

"...why is that his name?" Helena then frowned and Hunnigan smiled a little.
"Well, I refer to it as 'him', but determining a snake's gender accurately isn't a simple matter of just looking at its nether region, so I don't really know if it's a male or a female, hence the name," Hunnigan explained, "You wanna hold him?"

"Uh... sure, why not," Helena chuckled.
"He might nip you if he thinks you smell like food, but it won't kill you," Hunnigan warned with a grin. Helena quirked an eyebrow. Didn't snakes eat mice and such? If Carl/Coral bit her, Helena decided she'd have no choice but to feel offended for being mistaken for a rodent. The snake's tongue darted out repeatedly as he reached toward Helena to quickly and effortlessly slide over to her extended arm.

"He looks almost like he's liquid," Helena commented as she marveled at the colorful creature squirming over and wrapping itself around her hand and wrist.
"Also, he's a constrictor, but don't freak out if he starts squeezing, just take a hold of his tail and unwrap."

Carl/Coral didn't nip or squeeze, instead the docile reptile explored the new human's scent and the landscape of her arms and hands. The women let him explore for a while before Hunnigan unwrapped him from Helena's arm and went to return him to his tank.

"Are you hungry? I was just about to eat, you're welcome to join me," Hunnigan then offered, unable to determine what possessed her to utter those words let alone how she let them escape her lips. Helena hesitated for a moment before slowly shaking her head then. Truth was, she was hungry, but she didn't want to intrude. Interrupting the other woman's breakfast by turning up at her door and then almost shooting her pet was kind of embarrassing, intruding further wouldn't make it less awkward.

"Nah, I'm good," she finally responded, unconvincingly.
"You hesitated and I'm pretty sure I can hear your stomach grumbling," Hunnigan smirked, crossing her arms over her abdomen as she quirked an eyebrow.

"I don't want to trouble you, I've taken too much of your time already," Helena tried dismissing.
"It's no trouble, it'll literally take me about half a minute to make an omelette once the pan's hot. Come on," the older woman said and turned to head toward the kitchen, and Helena followed.

Hunnigan's apartment was one of those L-shaped studio apartments with an alcove to serve as the bedroom. It was bigger than the average studio apartment, but still somewhat smaller than what Helena had expected. Looking at the way the early morning sunlight was pouring in from the windows and coloring everything with its warm orange tint, she could see the attraction of the place though. Also it was at a decent neighborhood and the location was convenient considering where she worked. Besides, considering she lived alone (well, aside from Carl/Coral who was a barely a little over twenty inches long and didn't require a huge tank), why would she want excess rooms?

"I guess you can tell I'm not really used to having guests," Hunnigan chuckled as she broke a couple of eggs into a mug, threw in some spices and a drop of milk, and proceeded to vigorously whisk it all together with a fork.
"What do you mean?" Helena inquired as she took a seat in the living room area which had to double as a dining room as well seeing as the kitchen was too tiny for a table.

"I'm kind of an introvert, I just assumed the fact that I never invite people over shows," Hunnigan shrugged and poured the eggs into the skillet.
"You're doing fine," Helena laughed softly. She took a moment to look around the living room. There were a lot of books, some CDs and few movies, but other than that, not a lot that would tell anything about the owner. Frankly, Helena found herself wondering if Hunnigan ever did anything for fun.

"You play?" she asked when she noticed the keyboard on a stand in the back of the room, now evidently used more as a flat surface for storing a pile of shirts and jeans rather than for its intended purpose.
"Used to, my mom wanted me to become a cantor when I grew up, so it was piano lessons and singing lessons and what have you as soon as I was old enough for them. Needless to say all that kind of sucked the joy out of those activities... and honestly, I'm not much of a singer," Hunnigan chuckled as she plated the omelette, grabbed the utencils and went to hand the plate to Helena.

"I can play the most awesome Charlie Brown-medley you ever heard, but I don't really play much nowadays to be honest," she then shrugged then and took a seat.
"So, what do you do for fun?" Helena inquired, leaned back in the arm chair she was occupying and balanced her plate over her knee.

"...I don't know. Nothing out of the ordinary really. Read, listen to music, watch Netflix, browse cat videos and memes... Wow, that sounds super boring when I say it out loud," Hunnigan mumbled after a short pause, realizing that Helena's idea of doing something for fun probably involved more things like going out with friends and all those other things Hunnigan had never understood could be considered fun. For her, extended social interactions in crowded spaces were more exhausting than fun.
"Naw, you just sound like the introvert you said you are," Helena chuckled.