Title: Aftermath
Pairing: Nina Theroux/Rachel Pirzad
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Just having a little fun.
Summary: The aftermath of Nina pushing Rachel to kiss her opens up a can of worms that neither girl was prepared to deal with.
Rachel touched her lips, days after 'the incident', as she had taken to calling it, and they still tingled. The ghost of the light pressure of Nina's lips against hers still made her skin prickle, though in arousal or dread, Rachel couldn't be sure. All she knew was that her skin was raised with goose bumps as she ran her hands down her arms and shifted in her seat.
She was sensitive, hyper-sensitive; her abilities made her that way. It didn't take much to overwhelm her, and the second she was assaulted with different odors in the club she and Cameron visited to find Nina, Rachel had already become overwhelmed. But she had found Nina's scent, faint as it was, and tracked her down.
Never in her life had it occurred to her that Nina could betray her like that. She had only been pushed once before by Nina, several weeks ago when they were working on a case. Rachel had been distressed and Nina grabbed her by the arms, established eye contact, and simply told Rachel that she was calm. It had worked and Rachel was able to work more efficiently afterward. But never in a million years had she thought that Nina, her friend, would use her powers for evil on her. Rachel didn't have very many friends. She had never trusted anyone enough with her sensitivities to make a friend. But she found companionship in Nina, a woman just like her, an alpha just like her. Nina had understood her, and never seemed to mind Rachel's quirks. In fact, she almost seemed charmed with how high-strung Rachel was.
And Rachel thought Nina was beautiful, confident enough to speak her mind the way Rachel wasn't. She admired Nina and wanted nothing more than to be like her in the hopes that one day she could finally stand up to her parents and tell them to stop setting her up with suitors, that she would find her own one day when she was actually ready to be intimate with someone.
Rachel had had three boyfriends in her life. Her first when she was seventeen; it didn't go very far. Her second when she was twenty-two, he had fumbled a hand under her shirt to cup her breast one day and she nearly blacked out from an orgasm. He found it funny, but she was mortified and wanted nothing more to do with physical intimacy, him. She didn't date for a long time after that. Her most recent boyfriend was almost two years ago, and though he was patient, Rachel broke it off because she didn't know when she would ever be ready for sex and didn't want to keep him waiting.
The closest she had been to anyone since then was Nina. She had moved in with Nina, grateful to escape her parents after Nina had offered. They lived right across the hall from each other, so it was inevitable for them to see each other in various states of undress from time to time. Nina never seemed to mind catching a glimpse of Rachel when she was clumsy enough to allow her towel to slip from the grip of her damp, slippery fingers after a shower. Nina would respectfully look away and wave her hand to cut off Rachel's sputtering apology, casting a sideways glance with a curve of her lips to simply tell her it was all right.
Seeing Nina naked for the first time had been awkward for Rachel. It was after midnight on a weekend and she was stumbling out of her bedroom, rubbing at her sleepy eyes in search of the bathroom. She was walking closer to the closed door when it opened, steam chasing out of it, followed by Nina, lithe and trim, bare as the day she was born. Rachel's eyes, that had been slits in her sleepy state, widened comically and she clamped a hand down over them and squeezed her eyes shut when the image of Nina's pale, wet skin flashed even under her eyelids. She blacked out her vision all together in favor of her sense of touch—something benign for her current situation. Nina had been calling her, but Rachel couldn't hear, only feel, and the next thing she felt was a warm hand burning through her night shirt and into her shoulder. She stepped back with a gasp and her eyes popped open again as she decreased her sense of touch. Nina was still naked and Rachel sputtered out an apology while her eyes found the ceiling.
Nina's laugh had been low and sultry that time of night as she offered a breezy apology in return. I didn't expect you to be awake, Nina had told her. And I figured, why waste a towel when I could just hop out of the shower and go straight to my room?
Rachel bit her lip pensively at the memory. She had seen Nina in various states of undress since then, including once when she was with Cameron.
And every time Nina had been beautiful.
"Yo, Rach?"
Rachel jerked and knocked over a pencil on her desk. She winced and covered her rapidly flushing face. "I'm sorry."
Cameron laughed a little and pushed off the doorframe to walk further into her office. He dug the toe of his shoe under the pencil and flicked it upward, catching the pencil in his right hand. "Don't worry about it. I startled you," he soothed as he placed it back on her desk.
She leaned back into her seat and crossed her legs as Cameron rested back on the edge of her desk. His jaw was tense with flexing tendons and a five o'clock shadow that he needed to trim. Rachel ran her gaze over him. He was wearing his black leather jacket which meant that he had just arrived from somewhere, and he looked…somber. "Is something wrong, Cameron?"
He turned to look at her then turned back to the wall of her office. It was filled with pictures of Rachel's parents. She was passionately devoted to them, though at times they stomped on her last nerve like no one's business, especially her mother.
"I went to see her today," he muttered after a moment.
Rachel swallowed, and shifted in her seat, re-crossing her legs and tugging at the hem of her skirt. Her voice was tense but quiet when she asked, "How is she?"
"She's still being detained."
Her eyes tightened. "What has she done no—"
"By her own will," Cameron added. He cut her a look, and Rachel glanced away. "She feels as if she's a danger to everyone. You know how she gets."
His expression was expectant, as if he was looking for Rachel to offer words of comfort, and Rachel just fidgeted with the hem of her blouse as her eyes found her wooden desk. "Has Dr. Rosen spoken with her today?"
Cameron scratched at his head and widened the distance between his feet on the floor, lips twisting. "He's there now trying to talk some sense into her."
"How does she look?" Rachel asked before she could stop herself. Nina had appeared frail and scared the last time Rachel had seen her, and the image had been haunting her for nearly a week.
"Better," he admitted. "She looks a lot better. And Dr. Rosen's getting her to eat, so…"
"That's good," Rachel mumbled, not knowing what else to say. She clenched her eyes shut in frustration because the part of her that felt betrayed was warring with that part of her that cared deeply for Nina and wanted to help her more than anything.
"She keeps asking about you."
Rachel's eyes popped open, dark and swirling with a wide depth of conflicting emotions.
"She wants to see you," Cameron added in the thickening silence.
Rachel sighed. "I don't know, Cameron."
"Please?" He twisted where he sat on the desk to better face her. "She just needs to know that she hasn't hurt you, that you're okay."
"I am hurt," Rachel insisted. "My best friend took advantage of me, my trust, for a cheap thrill on her joyride back to whatever life of manipulation she lived before we all joined together."
"She cares about you. And she isn't even going to begin to get better until she at least knows that you don't hate her the way she thinks you do."
Rachel slumped back in her seat and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "This shouldn't be my responsibility," she muttered.
"No, it shouldn't. But she's a fellow alpha. And she's our friend. And when one of us falls, we all help pick them back up." His voice was quiet as he admitted, "I would know."
"That's just it—she isn't just some friend. I've told her things I've never told anyone in confidence and she just turned right around and told them to that Tommy-boy. I care about her, was devoted to her, and—"
Cameron stood abruptly and swiveled to walk around the desk. He tugged on Rachel's arm when she choked the last of her words out and pulled her toward him. She collapsed against him with a sob, and he rubbed her hair with a sigh. "The more you care about someone, the more unbearable it feels when they let you down," he mumbled.
Rachel just nodded against his shoulder, unable to speak when her breathing kept hitching.
"But everyone makes mistakes, Rach," he told her. "Granted, not everyone has the power to make a mistake like Nina's. But we're humans first, alphas second. And as humans…we're prone to more than a few screw ups in our lives. As alphas, our screw ups are probably going to be a lot more catastrophic."
She hugged him tighter and absorbed his words with a sigh. "Would you have forgiven her if she did this to you?"
He pulled back to gawk at her. "Are you kidding me? She's a great kisser—all would be forgiven."
Rachel let out a derisive grunt. "I'm serious, Cameron," she intoned earnestly, though she began to blush in memory of just what he was talking about.
"Eventually. She has a habit of pushing people," he admitted. "It's become something like a crutch for her. But I think the way you reacted to her woke her up a little. She knows she's gone too far. And I think that she's learned, Rach."
Rachel rubbed her lips together in thought. There was nothing to lose in visiting Nina; she just knew that her strong resolve to stay angry would break at the sight of her. But she really just needed to know that Nina was safe and recovering. "I want you there with me," she told Cameron in a surprisingly strong tone of voice that brooked no argument.
Cameron agreed readily, probably just happy that she decided to go at all.
"Are you listening to me?"
Nina lolled her head to the side to face Dr. Rosen.
He tilted his head to give her a knowing look. "You can't keep getting lost in your thoughts, Nina. If you keep living in the past you'll never move past it."
Her hands clenched from where they were on the bed, bound by shackles on her wrist. She had been latched to her bed and blindfolded days ago by nurses who were afraid that she would use her abilities on them. Now, days later, she had been offered to have them permanently removed, but chose to keep them, though Dr. Rosen had removed her blindfold days ago. She felt like a monster, and monsters didn't really deserve to have freedom. Thus, she wouldn't leave until she no longer felt like one.
Dr. Rosen sighed in the silence that lingered between them. He rubbed at his bunched eyebrows and leaned back in the seat beside Nina's bed. "You did a good thing—letting Tommy go."
Nina pursed her lips in contempt. "I did an even worse thing when I took hostage of him and tricked him into thinking he actually wanted to be with me," she muttered.
He sighed again. This was how it had been the past several days. He would highlight all the good she had done, and she would negate that with a bad thing she had done. Though Dr. Rosen took solace in the fact that Nina could actually recognize that she had done wrong, because he had worked with patients in the past that couldn't even recognize their own wrongdoings.
"You're a good person, Nina," he told her.
Nina stared directly at him, intensely, and she noted, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Dr. Rosen didn't look away. She had many misgivings about the man before her, but she had to admit that he never feared her or any alpha for that matter, and it was always somewhat comforting to know that. "Am I?" she challenged.
"You're—"
"Rachel confided in me and I betrayed her trust in the worst ways possible."
He nodded curtly. "Yes, but—"
"But—" She paused and chewed on her lower lip in thought. "Dr. Rosen, that was the only way I saw to get past her without hurting her," Nina finally explained. "I told her that I wasn't going back to talk to you, and she insisted, so I threatened her."
Dr. Rosen frowned. "Nina—"
"It was an empty threat," she cut in with a roll of her eyes. "Obviously. And I'm sorry for betraying her trust, but it was either that, or push her into fighting Cameron." She shrugged a shoulder. "It was the only way I saw for me and Tommy to get out of there without physically harming her."
Dr. Rosen was quiet for a moment as he removed his glasses from his face. He flipped up the tail of his shirt and cleaned them off before placing them back on his face. "Do you want to know what I think?"
Nina rolled her tongue around in her mouth in exasperation. "Why not?"
"I think that what you did, while very misguided and ultimately detrimental to Rachel as she deals with her abilities—"
Nina sniffed. "Is there a bright side?"
His lips twitched in threat of a smile. "The bright side is that you obviously care about Rachel and felt that you were acting in her best interest. Even though I would argue differently, I respect that, in the heat of the moment, you did what you thought you had to do in order to keep from physically injuring her."
A tear slid down her cheek and she clenched her hands tightly, wanting to wipe it away. Instead, she turned away from Rosen so he wouldn't see. "I just don't want her to hate me," she whispered candidly.
Dr. Rosen went to reply when he heard a timid knock on the other side of the door. Nina froze then casted a glance to the door. She looked over at Rosen and he shrugged with raised eyebrows. "It could be a nurse," he suggested as he stood.
Nina rubbed her lips together nervously as Rosen grabbed the doorknob. He twisted it open to find Rachel standing with her hands clasped in front of her on the other side, Cameron just behind her.
Dr. Rosen blinked once then twice in surprise before stepping aside with a proud smile and allowing her entry. "Rachel, it's good to see you." He nodded toward Cameron with a grateful smile that Cameron returned.
Rachel firmed her lips and nodded before stepping inside. "Hello, Dr. Rosen." She hesitated as she allowed her gaze to wash over Nina chained to the bed. She looked apprehensive, lip caught between her teeth with clenched hands fisted into the bed sheets. Rachel cleared her throat and took a step closer. "Hi, Nina."
Nina released her bottom lip to smile tentatively. "Hi, Rachel. It's good to see you." Her voice was uncharacteristically docile, and it settled warmly in Rachel's chest against her will.
Dr. Rosen took a step back. "I'm sure you girls have a lot you need to discuss."
Rachel spun around to face him with widened eyes. "Dr. Rosen—"
"I'll be right outside," he assured with a nod of his head and an encouraging smile. He walked out of the door and casted a glance between Rachel and Nina before closing the door behind him to join Cameron on the other side.
Rachel dipped her head and rubbed her hand up and down her arm, uncomfortable to be left alone with her former friend.
"You can sit over here," Nina offered in the deafening silence between them. When Rachel's gaze shot up to meet hers, her own eyes widened. "If you want," she was quick to clarify. "I wasn't trying to…push you or anything."
"I know," Rachel said quietly. She walked toward the seat beside Nina's bed and clasped her hands together in her lap after she sat down. "You look good," she offered after a moment.
Nina smiled self-consciously and dropped her gaze. "They've been making me eat."
"That's a good thing." Rachel gestured vaguely toward her as her gaze roamed over Nina's torso in assessment. "When I saw you five days ago, you were skin and bones."
Nina nodded, not quite meeting Rachel's critical gaze. She knew more than anything that Rachel was honing in on her sight to briefly scrutinize her.
"But you look much better now," Rachel spoke again to fill the silence between them. "Healthy." She bit her lip to stop herself from talking. There had only been three moments in her life that she had felt awkward when around Nina: when they first met, when she first saw Nina naked, and when she had caught Nina and Cameron together on the couch. This would make the fourth time, and all she wanted to do was fill the silence between them with useless words.
"I'm sorry."
Rachel looked up as the heavy sound of regret coating Nina's voice fell on her ears. Her chest constricted and she forced out an audible breath as she shifted in her seat. "Why did you do it, Nina? Why did you kiss me and why did you tell Tommy those very personal facts about me?"
Nina looked up at the ceiling, praying for some form of strength to get through this when all she wanted to do was run and hide from the pain she had caused showing clearly in Rachel's eyes. "I, uh, I was explaining that to Dr. Rosen earlier—why I kissed you."
When Rachel didn't say anything, she continued. "Do you really want the truth?" Nina asked, tasting the word on her tongue. She wasn't truthful a lot of the time. She had a shady past filled with lies and manipulation. She had betrayed Rachel's trust, but there was no way she could lie to her, not now. "Part of it—the reason why I kissed you was because I wanted to."
In light of their conversation five days ago when both parties shared a candid argument that had been building inside of them, the revelation didn't come as a surprise to Rachel. Still, the thought of someone as beautiful as Nina wanting to kiss her left her a little breathless and her voice was soft when she asked, "How long have you wanted to kiss me?"
Nina tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, feeling slightly embarrassed and exposed with her hands shackled to the bed the way they were. "A while."
"Since before I moved out?" Rachel asked, curious.
Nina nodded.
"Before…Cameron?"
"Oh, yeah," Nina laughed self-deprecatingly. She turned to look at Rachel, her gaze washing over her features and she smiled lopsidedly. "You're very...cute."
Rachel flushed at the compliment and looked down to her fidgeting hands. She was not going to feel flattered by Nina's compliment; she was not. Her hands closed into fists as if to hold onto her anger and hurt and not allow it to slip away the second Nina flashed her a coy smile.
"Also," Nina added once Rachel failed to respond, "I thought that was the only way to disable you without hurting you."
"Well, I suppose that didn't work out too well," Rachel responded coolly.
"Physically—I wanted to make sure you weren't hurt physically. Look, I explained this to Dr. Rosen. It was either disable you by overwhelming your senses, or push you into fighting Cameron."
Rachel winced at thought of how many bruises would be littering her body right now had Nina pushed her to fight Cameron. She rubbed her lips together as she mulled over Nina's words. There was no excuse for the way Nina violated her, but Rachel could admit that she wouldn't have wanted to get roughed up by Cameron either if she flew off the handle while under Nina's control and he had to defend himself.
She frowned suddenly then asked, "Why did you tell him about me?"
Nina's eyebrows shut up along her forehead in surprise at the question. "I—"
"There is absolutely no excuse for telling him something so personal about me," Rachel stage-whispered harshly. "He knows that I can have orgasms from kissing, Nina."
"I know, and I'm sorr—"
"And I only told you that because you wanted to know!"
Nina inhaled a deep breath and released it through her nose, surprised that Rachel had cut her off so many times. "I'm an awful person," she finally sighed heavily.
"No." Rachel's voice was sharp and firm, and Nina met her eyes. "You can't just write this off as you being an awful person and think that I'll feel sorry for you. I want an explanation, Nina. Please. As a friend, you owe me that much."
Nina looked deeply into the fire she saw burning in Rachel's eyes. She liked this confident version of Rachel and only wished it didn't have to be brought out in anger, anger directed at her. She picked nervously at the bed sheets under her hand. "We were just talking," she explained. "And Tommy was curious, curious about everyone's abilities. So I told him what we all did: Cameron and his hyperkinesis, Gary and his ability to interact with wireless communication and signals, Bill and his superstrength, you."
Rachel sat back in her seat. "What about me?"
"I just told him that you can enhance any of your five senses, but that enhancing one disables the other four. And then Tommy asked if it got to be a little overwhelming for you sometimes, and I told him that dating specifically is a bit of a challenge for you because…sometimes kissing can become too much for you." She shrugged a shoulder. "Then he just guessed." She looked up at Rachel, imploring her to understand. "But he didn't think you were weird or anything, Rach. He was just fascinated."
"Fascinated," Rachel scoffed with a derisive laugh. "He was fascinated by me?"
Nina frowned, not liking her tone. "You're fascinating."
Rachel looked away. "Don't try to flatter me in order to get on my good side, Nina."
Nina's lips twitched with a small smile despite the situation. "Rach, I've heard you talk about your suitors enough to know that flattery doesn't get anyone anywhere with you," she couldn't help but tease.
Rachel found herself coiffing her hair for some unknown reason while Nina's dark, unwavering gaze was on her. Her 'suitors' as she had taken to calling them were the men that her parents tried to set her up with occasionally—all the time. They were all successful in varying degrees, doctors, lawyers, that Rachel wasn't interested in and wouldn't be interested in until she could find a way to control her senses because kissing for a prolonged period of time overwhelmed her.
Her lips quirked the tiniest bit as she admitted, "I saw one of them the other night, at the club."
Nina knew an opening when she saw one and latched onto the semblance of normalcy that Rachel was briefly offering. "Which one?" she asked, voice eager and hopeful for what this moment really meant, that they may have a chance to get back on track.
Rachel's eyes shined with happiness that Nina was playing along and she licked her lips. "Stephen."
Nina groaned. "The bad dancer?"
She giggled and nodded her head. "And he was dancing, flailing arms, the whole thing."
"You better be happy he didn't spot you." A teasing smile flirted along Nina's lips. "He would have pulled you close and made you dance along and embarrass you in front of everyone."
Rachel covered her face in mock mortification of what could have been. "Don't make me laugh," she instructed through another giggle.
Nina's eyes softened at the sight of the smile on Rachel's face. "I'm sorry."
Her voice was suddenly heavy again and Rachel sobered up to stare at her, throat bobbing with a tight swallow as she recognized that this apology encompassed everything. "I know," she said softly.
"I'm hoping we can be friends again," Nina ventured, rather boldly, all things considered. She wanted much more than that, especially after the kiss they had shared that she couldn't stop thinking about, but felt that wasn't even in the cards after what she had done.
Rachel's hands were back to fidgeting anxiously in her lap. "I hope so, too." It was silent again and she dropped her gaze from Nina's scrutinizing eyes. She cleared her throat and scooted forward in her seat. "Well, I guess I should go now."
Nina sat up more on the bed as if to protest Rachel's departure, though she didn't say anything. Her hands clenched into fists against her bed sheets as she simply whispered, "Okay."
Rachel nodded and stood from her seat. "You, umm, you look good," she offered, clasping her hands in front of her and regarding Nina. "Really good."
The last of her statement was said softly, almost as an afterthought, and Nina's eyebrows rose along her forehead in intrigue. "Thanks, you, too," she mumbled. "Asking for a hug would probably be too much…"
Rachel took her bottom lip between her teeth. "Probably," she admitted.
Nina just nodded, and dropped her gaze. She suspected as much, and briefly lamented over the fact that she had lost that privilege. But then she felt slim arms about her neck that tightened as Rachel leaned closer. Nina felt her breath hitch at the soft, warm feeling of reassurance that Rachel's hug brought and she nuzzled closer, unable to fully return the embrace.
Rachel felt warm, fuzzy, her mind hazy as she soaked up the feel, and smell of Nina. She breathed deeply as her eyes slipped shut. She didn't smell exactly the same, and the chemistry of what lay behind her smell, hospital soap, was very different from her normal body spray that drove Rachel insane when they lived together. Her thumb rubbed absentmindedly over the back of Nina's neck and Rachel transferred her concentration from her sense of smell to her sense of touch. Each wisp of Nina's hair tickled the pad of Rachel's thumb with its softness. Her skin was warm and firm under her fingers and Rachel leaned closer to bury her nose into Nina's hair that now tickled her face.
Nina had called Rachel's name twice, and knew after the second time when she didn't get a response that Rachel was lost in one of her senses, thus her sense of hearing was disabled for now. It was often risky for Rachel to do this because of how vulnerable it left her, and the fact that she chose to do it now while in her presence offered solace to Nina who was sure Rachel would never trust her again. She remained quiet as Rachel hugged her for a few seconds more before pulling way.
It was much longer than a customary, friendly hug, and Rachel looked away, mildly embarrassed at allowing her senses get the best of her. But Nina smelled good, and she wanted to smell more. And she had felt good, and Rachel wanted to feel more, so she extended her senses regardless of the fact that she was supposed to be upset right now, unforgiving right now.
"I should probably go," she muttered and stepped away from the bed.
Nina remained quiet as she watched Rachel walk away, grateful for the opportunity to just see her.
Rachel got halfway to the door then spun around to face Nina. "Are you coming back?" she asked.
Nina nodded with a dry expression. "Idle hands are the devil's plaything," she explained while jiggling her hands within the shackles.
Rachel's mouth quirked at the proverb. It was oddly fitting for her friend. "Yes, they are," she agreed. She hesitated then admitted, "I'm glad to have you back."
"Thank yo—"
"But don't think that means I trust you. Maybe with my life, but not with me."
Nina's gaze dropped. "I understand."
She looked wholly chastened, and Rachel turned away before she had the chance to study the downturn of Nina's lips and break her resolve. She hurried to the door and grabbed the doorknob, but casted one more glance behind her. "Nina," she called softly. When Nina looked up at her, she almost smiled. "You should let them take those shackles off," she told her. "You aren't a slave to your own abilities anymore."
Nina sucked in a breath and held it, unable to even choke out a goodbye as Rachel closed the door behind her.