Cassandra snapped awake from a sound slumber. She felt her muscles tighten in apprehension, and she held her breath as her eyes swept the dark bedroom, her ears straining to catch any sound in the thick silence. She realized she was holding her breath and allowed herself to breathe again—quietly. Finally, after several anxious minutes without hearing or seeing anything, she forced herself to relax and she closed her eyes again. All these years of her Librarianship had certainly honed her senses; she would've sworn that she heard something. She was just about to drift back into sleep when she heard it again.
Soft laughter.
Coming from directly behind her.
From Jenkins.
Frowning, Cassandra rolled over and sat up in the bed she shared with Jenkins. She leaned over to turn on the small lamp on her nightstand, then twisted around to look at her husband. He was laying on his back, sound asleep, one long arm slung over his slack face, covering his eyes. As she watched, a smile suddenly came to his lips, followed by another low, guttural chuckle. The smile became beatific, the laughter melted into a delighted half-growl, half-whine.
Cassandra stifled a giggle so as not to wake him. She'd seen that same look, heard that same growl of pleasure often enough to know what he was dreaming about. Randy old goat! Did they really not have sex often enough in their waking lives that he had to dream about it in his sleep, too? She shook her head in wonder and was about to turn the light off and leave her husband to dream his smut-filled fantasies when she suddenly heard him speak.
Afraid that she had awakened him, Cassandra froze, her red head whipping around to stare at him. He was mumbling something in his sleep and giggling again. She carefully leaned toward him so she could hear him better. She realized that he wasn't speaking English. It sounded like...Arabic.
Arabic?
Cassandra frowned, puzzled. Jenkins could read Arabic, she knew that from working with him on various ancient texts. He could also write in Arabic, though he admitted that his handwriting was rather inelegant and clumsy for such a beautiful language. She'd never heard him speak Arabic, though, until now.
Jenkins groaned, his hips squirmed gently and he sighed so deeply that it bordered on a whimper. He began whispering again.
Cassandra quickly turned around and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. She opened it and hurriedly tapped on a translation app, selected "Arabic", then chose the "Arabic to English" translation mode. She turned back to Jenkins, held her phone as close to his mouth as she dared, just in time to catch a few words.
When he fell silent, she brought the phone back to her face. She stared at the screen impatiently as the app worked on translating the words. Finally, the translation came through. A flat, slightly robotic female voice sounded through the phone's speaker.
my wicked little flautist how beautifully you play
Cassandra's jaw dropped as she snapped her head around to glare at her oblivious husband. Cassandra couldn't speak Arabic, so he clearly hadn't been addressing her just now. Before she knew it, she reached out and started to slap his upper arm. Hard.
"Jenkins!" she called out loudly. She stopped slapping his arm and grasped it instead, began to shake him roughly. "Jenkins, WAKE UP!" The immortal snorted and started awake. He sat up in the bed and began scanning the bedroom wildly, looking for danger, one hand sliding underneath his pillow to grasp the dagger he always kept there, just in case.
"What! What is it?!" he said, his voice scratchy and thick with sleep. He turned to look at his furious wife. "What's happened?!" Cassandra narrowed her eyes.
"You were talking in your sleep!" she spat. Jenkins's shoulders slumped and he pulled his hand from under the pillow as he stared back in bewilderment.
"And that's why you practically beat me senseless in my sleep—because I was talking?!" he demanded, his initial alarm giving way to anger. "I'm sorry if I woke you up, Cassandra, but that hardly gives you the right to—"
"You were speaking in Arabic!" Cassandra interrupted, uncowed. Jenkins was thoroughly confused now, and his anger over his literal rude awakening was growing by the second.
"What's that got to do with anything?!" he argued. Cassandra lifted her phone and read the display on the screen, giving the words a venomous interpretation as she delivered them, her voice dripping with accusation.
"My wicked little 'flautist'! How beautifully you play!'" For good measure, she turned the phone around so that he could see the translation for himself. "And that's just what I was able to record! I don't even want to know what the rest of it was!"
Jenkins stared at the phone's screen, utterly befuddled. He opened his mouth to refute her unmistakable accusation, but something at the back of his mind struggled now to claw its way to the forefront, a scrap of the dream he'd been having just before Cassandra forced him awake. A woman, from his past. From long ago. But…Arabic? He dropped his gaze and closed his mouth as he wrestled to get a firmer grip on the fragment. A name emerged—Ja… Ja… Jawaria. It meant something like…"bringer of happiness". A face quickly followed: Young, flawless, large dark shining black eyes. Soft lips and even softer brown skin that smelled like roses. A curvaceous body, small delicate hands. Her warm mouth and tongue on his…
It all came back to him now in a terrible rush. His time in Egypt, many centuries ago. Nights spent in a dimly-lit room, thick with the scents of perfume and wine, located in one of the more disreputable parts of Cairo. Nights spent in the company of a very talented…"entertainer". A young woman named Jawaria, who did, indeed, bring him a great deal of physical happiness that—if only for a brief time—chased away the soul-crushing reality of his immortality…
Jenkins looked up again, guilt written all over his face. The anger on Cassandra's face dissolved into dismay.
"So you were dreaming about another woman," she said quietly, her anger deflated, her voice disappointed, and the sound of it was a knife to the old immortal's heart. He reached out and took one of her small hands between both of his.
"Cassandra, I am so very sorry!" he said earnestly, "Please, let me explain!" Her large blue eyes met his. She looked defeated.
"Never mind. It doesn't matter," she sighed. She tried to pull her hand away, but Jenkins held onto it.
"Yes, it does matter!" he protested. He felt compelled to make this right, to make her understand. He leaned forward a bit, refusing to allow her to look away.
"You know that years ago—many, many years ago—I had a breakdown," he began, "I've told you about it, the years I spent in the Middle East, leading a less than exemplary life."
"Yeah, I remember," she murmured, "Wine, women and song."
"It was a dissolute existence," he agreed unflinchingly, "And it's a time in my life that I'm not proud of at all."
"I know," was all she said in reply, but inwardly she felt as if she'd been sucker punched in the gut. He had told her about his handful of breakdowns, times when he'd left the Library and went wandering through the world, trying to make sense of his immortal existence and his place in the world—or to try and forget it altogether, depending on his mood. He'd spared her the gory details, had only said that he'd wasted a great deal of time, money and energy on drinking, drugs, gambling, fighting and—she shuddered inwardly just thinking about it—patronizing brothels. It had been easy to just gloss over the existence of all those other women, but now here he was, the love of her life, lying next to her and actually dreaming about being serviced by one of them. She turned her head away so he couldn't see the tears coming to her eyes.
Jenkins felt her distress. He looked down at their clasped hands, his heart filling with shame at the memories of that dark time and remorse for th pain it was causing his beloved Librarian.
"I don't know why I was dreaming about—that particular woman tonight," he went on, looking up again at his wife as his words became more fervent. "But you know that I love only you now, Cassandra. Our Sealing confirms that. I have no regrets where you're concerned; I have no desire whatsoever to be with a prosti—." He cut the word off when he felt Cassandra cringe from the sound of it ever so slightly, quickly chose another word.
"—Another woman," he finished. He held her small hand tightly and leaned toward her. "You know that I would never betray you like that in my waking life with another, ever. I would sooner castrate myself than to do that to you! You do know that, right?"
Cassandra sighed soundlessly as she turned back to him, her watery blue eyes filling with guilt and remorse of her own. Everything he'd just said was absolutely true; how could she have even thought such a thing of him? He adored her, spoiled her, treated her like a goddess. It had just been a stupid dream that meant nothing where she and Jenkins were concerned. She nodded in answer to his question.
"I know," she said again, her voice rough with contrition, "I guess I'm acting a little bit like a jealous teenager, huh?" She squeezed the fingers of his hand in apology.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," she continued in a stronger, more confident voice. "I do know you'd never cheat on me. It's just…hard for me to even imagine you doing all those things you told me about and being with—other women. I mean, I knew it in my head, but here…?" She laid her free hand over her heart and shook her head. She then waved toward his pillow.
"And then I hear you laughing and muttering sweet nothings in your sleep to someone else, and…" She shrugged helplessly.
"I guess it just made it all…so real to me all of a sudden, all of those stories, and I just…lost it a little bit." She held his hand tightly and gazed intently into his dark eyes. "I'm sorry, Jenkins—will you forgive me?" Jenkins groaned softly in relief as he pulled her into his arms and held her close.
"Of course I forgive you, my love!" he murmured into her hair, kissed the side of her head. He then pulled himself away from her and looked into her eyes.
"Truth be told, I probably would've had the same reaction if I'd heard you whispering 'sweet nothings' to a former lover, as well," he confessed. Cassandra smiled, glad that their spat was over and they had reconciled.
"Would you really be jealous?" she asked, slightly teasing. Jenkins pulled his body upright and scowled.
"Indeed, I would!" he answered shortly, and raised his silver head as he gave her a mock glare of indignation. "You're my woman now, after all!" Cassandra snorted.
"And you're my man!" she retorted archly. On an impulse, she scooted closer to him, placed her mouth next to his ear. At the same time, one hand slipped beneath the covers and slowly snaked its way over his stomach and hip on its way to his groin.
"You know, I'm a pretty good flautist, if I do say so myself," she purred coquettishly. Her hand found its target and she squeezed him firmly, rhythmically through the flimsy silk of his pajamas. Jenkins sucked in a sharp breath as a flood of warmth filled his belly.
"You are, indeed!" he rasped. He could feel himself beginning to harden beneath her clever hand.
"Would you like for me to perform now?" she continued with that intoxicating mixture of innocence and wickedness that only she possessed. By now her hand had slipped inside the waistband of his pajama bottoms and was eagerly massaging him.
"Please!" he managed to sigh, silently blessing the day Cassandra Cillian came into his life. Her voice suddenly turned husky and almost predatory.
"Then you just lie back and close your eyes, Big Daddy, and let your Sugar Rose play for you!" she instructed him with a sly smile. She withdrew her hand and threw the blankets back, nimbly scrambled over him and into position between his aching thighs, determined to give her man something new to dream about for years to come.
A/N: I haven't been writing much lately because, well, with all of the awful stuff going on in the world right now, especially in Ukraine, it just seemed kind of silly and in bad taste. But then one day last month I checked the traffic stats on my fics just to see how many readers were visiting me, and I was shocked to see at least one person from Ukraine was still reading my fics. I asked myself, why would someone in a war-torn country be reading Librarians fics? Surely they had more important concerns right now!? Then a friend pointed out to me that the fics are probably an escape for this person (or persons, since I also post on AO3 and there are presumably more Ukrainians reading my stuff on that platform), and therefore much needed. And my friend is right; all fics are an escape for anyone dragged down mentally or emotionally for whatever reason, including war. So I'm going to kick up the writing and posting, especially for those readers in Ukraine, and I urge other fic writers to do the same. If my humble little Librarians fics are helping even just ONE person get through what's going on over there right now, then I owe it to them to keep writing. So dear Ukrainian reader: Though I'm sad that I can't do much to directly help you from where I am, if a fluffy or sexy Casskins fic somehow, miraculously, helps you to get through these current dark days, then I'm here for you! Слава Україні!