Fandom: General Hospital
Title: Hurt Me
Characters: Nikolas and Claudia, mentions of Anthony and Johnny.
Pairing: Naudia
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. AU, Het, OOC.
Summary: Marriage; Nikolas and Claudia style.
A/N: Thanks to my friend and beta Judy and to the readers.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, fandom or anything you recognize. I only own this story.
Words: 482 without title and ending.
*Hurt Me*
He wants to hurry up and get it over with. All of this talk about love and marriage is making him uncomfortable. They've been playing this game for six months and nothing seems to change except the locations where they meet. Claudia's father finds out that they are sleeping together and he uses it against them.
Anthony is insisting and demanding that since they are already bed buddies, it is time for them to become official and tie the knot.
Nikolas isn't sure that he wants to marry Claudia but in the end he does. Not even a day after they are married, Claudia shows up at Wyndemere with all of her things, saying that her father told her to move out and he probably did.
So he welcomes her into his home, which has now become their home. As the months go by and Anthony's plan to get rid of his daughter starts to become clear to him, Nikolas finds that he really has fallen in love with Claudia. So he ends up tripping Anthony up and messing up his father-in-law's scheme.
Anthony winds up dead as he is escorted out of Port Charles by ten police cars, which causes the accident that leads to his death. About a year after her father's death, Claudia and Nikolas are actually happy in their marriage.
It gets to the point where Claudia feels comfortable enough to sit Nikolas down one day and ask him the question that has been plaguing her since the very beginning.
"Why didn't you hurt me? Why, after my father died did you stay with me and not get the divorce that you wanted?"
Nikolas takes a seat next to his wife on the couch and says, "Who said I wanted to get a divorce from you? As strange as it might seem to you, I don't want a divorce. I love you, Claudia."
Claudia is silent for a moment and then she asks softly, "So you're not going to hurt me like the rest? You're not going to throw me away when you get tired of the fighting?"
Nikolas shakes his head and then says, "I don't plan on hurting you, Claudia. I want to be able to love you and convince you that you're a beautiful woman who deserves to have the world."
Claudia knows that while Nikolas believes what he's saying right now, it won't hold true forever. As she learned as a young woman, they all leave eventually. So she is just going to wait until the day comes when Nikolas can no longer look her in the eye, much less be in her presence because she knows the day will come.
But until then, she is going to cherish every moment they spend together and store it in her memory for later when things end up blowing up.
The end.