I Thought You Were Sleeping

Couplings: Jenny/Nick

Genre: Angst/Romance

Spoilers: Sort of for 2.4

Other: A cracky thing that I got inspired to do at 1 am on the third of May. Don't ask why. If you wish this to continue, there's that little button on the left to press :D

To be quite honest, this story came out a sentence that my mum said when she came into my room. She said 'Oh, I thought you were asleep.'

And that, as they say, was that.

I do swear that I'll always be there.
I'd give anything and everything and I will always care.
Through weakness and strength, happiness and sorrow,
for better for worse, I will love you with
every beat of my heart…
From this moment life has begun
From this moment you are the one
Right beside you is where I belong
From this moment on

Shania Twain – From This Moment

Never in a million years had he ever imagined that this would happen to her. Not her. She had too much common sense. She was too cautious. Too obedient. Too innocent.

But he held her, broken in his arms, and realised that he'd been too damn relenting in letting her go off alone. He was being punished. He'd lost her again.

The gun she had been using was cast to one side, spent of bullets. The creature she'd been fighting was long gone, having done its work. He dark hair was stained with crimson, sticking together in clumps because of the drying blood. Her chest was shuddering, as she tried to slow her shallow breaths, prolong her life for as long as she could.

He'd found her this way. They'd been in a warehouse, the five of them, and they'd split into their normal groups. The two younger ones would go together, and the older men and her would go the other way. At least, that was how it was meant to be. As usual, the two youngsters had pranced off somewhere, and the others were going to go the opposite direction. But she had resisted his authority. His 'let's go this way'. She'd had a 'good feeling' about going a different way, and had insisted that he let her go alone. After a couple of short arguments, he'd agreed, fool that he was.

He and his best friend, they'd meandered down the dozens of shelves of furniture, jumping at every sound they heard. Yet they found nothing. No trace of this…creature they'd been sent after. Not even a hair. A single paw-mark in the dust.

Then there'd been the gunshot, followed by the scream. That terrible, gut-wrenching, unmistakable howl of an animal in acute pain. He'd looked up. It sounded so feral, so inhuman, that he knew that someone had got the creature. The cry had gone on for a long, long time, echoing around the warehouse, bouncing off the concrete walls like a clarinet solo in a concert hall. His best friend had turned, and they'd exchanged a glance. His friend would go and check on the younger two, whilst he went to make sure she was okay.

It hadn't taken him long to find her, after he and his best friend had parted ways. She was lying like a beautiful swan on a brand new Slumberland bed, one that hadn't even been stored in a crate. She was in a half-foetal position, her back to him. She was asleep.

"Didn't see you as the kind to sleep on the job, Jenny Lewis." He'd said, light and joking. There'd been no response, and he assumed that he'd offended her somehow. It was a regular occurrence, and he supposed that his next move would be to grovel on his knees for her forgiveness.

He'd come closer to her, and got the distinct impression that there was something seriously wrong. Her breathing seemed to be laboured, and as his shadow fell over her prone form, he heard her whimper softly. He rounded the bed, and to his utmost horror, he realised that she definitely wasn't sleeping. Her hand was pressed to her blouse, which was flooded with scarlet. The scarlet was leaking through her spread fingers, dying them red.

"Nick…"

She'd spoken his name with a whisper, making it sound like a plea. A plea for what, he wondered briefly. A plea for his help? A plea to call an ambulance? A plea for him to end this all now?

Slowly, he'd taken her hand, waiting for her to push him away. She hadn't. Her palm felt cool and sweaty in his. He'd sat on the bed, not knowing what to do. Was she dying? What had attacked her?

He watched her as her eyelids slid closed, squeezing tight through a flash of agony, willing it to go away. A tear trickled out from under her lashes, sliding down her cheek. Feeling distressed, he wiped it away gently with the pad of his thumb, stroking it across her skin as lightly as he could. He watched as her chest heaved once, wracked with pain.

"Nick…don't let go of me…please…" She asked. He nodded. There was no need for him to say anything. He shifted himself, and eased her into his arms, feeling her body heat, smelling her musky perfume. It filled his nostrils, leaving every other scent as bland and boring as mud. It was like heroin. The impact might take a long time to kick in, or it might be immediate. For Nick Cutter, it took a second for him to be hooked on Jenny Lewis.

Her hazel eyes, usually gleaming with her superiority, were scared and desperate. He wanted to fight her fear, stop her desperation. In the words of that stupid song, he wanted to kiss away the pain.

The blood had slowed, and he didn't know whether this worried him or not. He cradled her to him, suddenly realising what it had been like for Connor to lose Abby to the Mer. How he had felt, why the normally mild student had been so furious, so adamant that he was going to find her.

He was shaken from these puzzling thoughts by none other than the rest of the team. Stephen appeared first, with Connor and Abby in tow. Stephen muttered a curse; Connor stood frozen in shock and Abby gave a gasp.

"Jenny!"

Jenny hadn't noticed them. She wouldn't, seeing as she was facing away from them, her head on Nick's chest. She closed her eyes again, pressing her hand against her blouse weakly. Nick rocked her gently as she whimpered. Stephen, always the cool-headed one, was already on the phone to someone. Lester? The ambulance? Nick didn't know. He was barely aware of the others, so wrapped up in comforting Jenny.

She opened her eyes, and Nick hesitantly took the hand that was pressing down on her wound. He pulled her blouse slightly, searching for the mark. It wasn't hard to find.

Jenny's attacker had been brutal. The skin between stomach and chest, around her diaphragm area, had been sliced almost surgically, cold and calculated. Nick cringed when he saw it. He didn't dare touch it, in case he irritated it or made it worse for her. The blood was still bubbling up from underneath, like lava in a volcano.

"That's…quite a nasty scratch you've got there." He tried to smile, to bring a sense of hilarity to the whole situation, but he couldn't even convince himself. Jenny laughed slightly, blood, that precious liquid, trickling down the side of her mouth. It almost made him cry.

"Ambulance will be here in five minutes." Stephen said quietly, cutting into their private bubble. Nick traced Jenny's face with his eyes, taking everything in, realising that she was very likely to die. He didn't want to remember her this way, all vulnerable and pale. She wouldn't want him to. He'd remember her as vibrant, over-your-head-and-out-of-your-league Jenny.

"Please, Jenny, don't die…" He told her. She looked drowsy now, her eyes half-closed with the exhaustion of keeping them open.

She gazed at him searchingly, as though she wanted him to say something, do something, anything that would suddenly make it all better. Nick watched her, lost in her eyes, and suddenly, he wanted to taste her lips on his. His mind flickered to her fiancé, that weird man he'd seen in her house. The young, effeminate-looking one.

Sod it.

He knew that this might very well be the last chance he would ever have with Jenny. In a twisted way, he felt possessive of her, as though after this, she was his woman. Not this morons.

He bent over her, mouth grazing the tip of her nose, before landing on her lips. It took her a second, but she soon followed his lead, kissing him back weakly. He could taste vanilla, a hint of mint, and the metallic tang of her blood.

They heard the telltale whine of a siren in the background, but to his ears, it sounded far, far away. Even when he heard the paramedics, and he raised himself from her, it still seemed part of another world. One that he didn't belong to, that she, even in her state, didn't belong to.

He watched them as they manoeuvred her onto a stretcher, one of them checking her pulse, her temperature, before wheeling her off. He followed. He remembered her plea, one of the first things she'd said to him when he'd found her. She hadn't wanted him to let go of her. God help him, he hadn't wanted to let go of her. The paramedics seemed to be a little panicky about her condition. They'd put her in the ambulance, and slid a drip and blood syringe into her arm. There was a makeshift bandage over her cut, and she was hooked up to an oxygen mask.

"What on Earth attacked her?" One of the paramedics asked Nick, as he stood by and watched. The paramedic had been a part of the ARC hospital service for a couple of months, but he had never seen such a clean slash.

"I honestly have no idea." He stated truthfully. They hadn't known what they were tracking, only that it was a predatorial mammal, "Is she going to be okay?"

"It's hard to say. At this second, I'd say she has a 20 chance of survival. No major organs were hit, but she's lost an awful lot of blood." The paramedic admitted. He wasn't one to mince words. He stepped up into the ambulance.

"Are there any relatives we can contact?" He asked.

Nick thought. He saw her prat of a fiancé in his mind with his grinning face, and wiped it immediately.

"Nobody." He said, feeling a tad guilty, "I'll come though." He offered, a little too quickly. The paramedic nodded.

"Hop in, professor."