AN: this one is a doozy to make up for the last chapter which was pretty
short. Review as you like! Let me know if you think there's too much
detail; I'm starting to see this as a long, epic-esque story, but I can do
a shorter version under a different title with similar premises if you'd
prefer. The only drawback is that this longer one would have to wait.
Chapter 9
Nicholas woke up the next day and immediately, the events of the night before were at the forefront of his mind. Mostly because Kay was still tucked snuggly in his embrace. During the course of the night, they'd both slid down in the chair, so that they were now laying down face to face in the soft burgundy material of his sofa. He was careful not to move, so that he could take advantage of her sleeping state to carefully inspect her.
He saw tear stains still on her face, a sign that she'd cried herself to sleep. And yet, the quiet (well, not always quiet) strength with which Kay confronted the world head on was also apparent in her visage, he read there a determination to meet this newest challenge and to beat it.
Over the course of the night, their hands had become intertwined, and, because of her tall height, their legs were perfectly aligned and interlocked. He watched as she stirred, afraid his opportunity to watch her was over, and almost jarred her awake himself as the sound of a snore startled him through the silence. Nicholas began to chuckle to himself as he pulled her closer. She rested her head on his shoulder, and wrapped her arms around him, causing their fingers to break apart, but their sleepy embrace to become tighter.
Suddenly, the silence was pierced by the ringing of a phone, and without thinking, Nicholas carefully reached across Kay and grabbed her cell phone off the top of her bag that was lying on the floor in front of the sofa. "Hello." he began.
And was immediately interrupted with, "Kay, don't say anything, I know you might still be feeling a little prickly about last night but I really think that we can work. Wait, are you okay, you sound a little strange."
Nicholas knew exactly with whom he was speaking and he couldn't resist picking with the guy. He said quietly into the phone, "I'm sorry, Kay is sleeping right now, may I take a message?"
Miguel thought the voice at the other end of the phone sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. He did know that he didn't appreciate some schmuck answering his Kay's cell phone and asking HIM if he could take a message. "Who the hell is this? No, you can't take a message; it's noon, and she should be awake. I want to speak with Kay now, put her on the phone."
Nicholas felt himself tense up at the tone Miguel was taking with him. "Listen, Miguel, Kay has had a very rough night and if she needs to sleep until noon tomorrow, I'm not going to wake her up so that you can stress her out more." Nicholas winced as he saw Kay beginning to blink out of sleep. He lowered his voice, "Now, is there a message you'd like to leave?"
Miguel's temper shot up as he responded, "You've got some nerve, whoever you are, answering Kay's phone and acting like you're her personal voice mail. And how do you know who I am? You've got ten seconds to put Kay on the phone or I'm going to."
As Miguel ranted into the phone, Nicholas instinctively moved it away from his ear. Kay woke up with a start, her bright blue eyes piercing Nicholas'. "Miguel?" She questioned, looking around for the source of her best friend's voice. She saw the cell phone and grabbed it from Nicholas. "Miguel, what are you yelling about?" she asked groggily. "What's the matter with you?"
"Kay! Who's the dipshit who answered the phone? Why wouldn't he let me talk to you? Why are you sleeping at some strange man's place? I called your room all night. What's going."
"Oh stuff it, Miguel," Kay interrupted him. "I'm not at some strange man's; I'm at Nicholas' and why the hell would you call me all night? Don't you think you've said enough to me already? Who do you think you are?"
Nicholas tried desperately not to grin as he listened to Kay give Miguel hell. He realized that his fears that she'd run back to him and into the sickness of their current friendship again were unfounded. He listened as she continued, snuggling closer to her and closing his eyes contentedly, as if she were telling him a bedtime story.
Miguel, for his part, was astonished at the venom her heard in her voice. He was convinced that this Nicholas character was poisoning her mind against him. But he also knew that an angry Kay was an uncooperative Kay. "Kay, stop!" he interrupted her. "Listen, I don't know why you're at the TA's place right now, but I just wanted to talk to you and see if we can discuss this in person. Things ended so badly last night that I couldn't sleep and I'd like for us to try to work this out so we can go back to the way things were before."
His calm tone brought Kay's temper back down to earth. Suddenly, she wasn't angry anymore, just tired of him. The hours she'd spent with Nicholas, although they had solved nothing specifically about her problems with Miguel, had helped her realize that she didn't have to run to him at every turn. The safety that she felt with Nicholas, the security that she wanted desperately to hold onto that she'd had since she'd stepped into Haven were all that she needed right now. "Miguel," she began slowly, "I've been uncomfortable in our friendship for awhile now, last night just made it shockingly apparent to both of us." She paused as she realized what had to be said and though how to frame it. "I think that I need a break from us, from the friendship, from you, right now. When I'm around you and there are these things that I feel, I lose a part of me to you, and I really want to work on recovering that."
Miguel couldn't believe his ears. "You're saying that being around me makes you somehow less than what you are? I don't get it Kay, we've always been the perfect compliment to one another, I don't know why this has to change."
"Miguel, things change as people do. I know that we'll always be friends, but until I can figure out how to make this change work for me and for both of us, I know, and you must know, that we need some time apart."
And slowly, Miguel realized that she was right. If Kay's feelings were conflicting with the established parameters of the friendship, then something had to give at some point. At the same time, he wasn't sure how he'd ever deal with the immense sense of loss that he felt right now. "Kay, I." his voice faltered. He cleared his throat and continued, "I understand. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do without."
Kay gently interrupted him. "But that's part of the problem, right? You're already focused on you and how you'll be losing out. You need to think about how I feel so that things like last night won't ever happen again. And I need time to figure out to what extent Reese was right. I don't know what you're going to do," she paused as Nicholas opened his eyes and looked straight into her eyes, into her. She smiled and continued, "But I think it's time that we both explored possibilities that our friendship kept us from." She broke the connection.
"Wow," Nicholas said. "Kay, you have spent the last day, evening, night, whatever, amazing me."
Her smile widened and she said, "You're pretty amazing yourself. I can't think of many TA's who would put up with students calling so late, then having emotional break downs."
Nicholas interrupted her, his gaze turning serious. "Kay, you must know that we've moved well beyond the student/TA thing, right? This isn't some pity party. I."
It was her turn to interrupt him, "Oh hush, Nicholas, I would hope that this isn't your MO with all the students.." Her eyes twinkled. "I might get jealous."
"Oh really?" Nicholas responded. "And just."
"Just hush and." Kay started.
Nicholas decided that both of them needed to "just hush and." and so he leaned over and gently pressed his lips to hers.
Electricity crackled through both of them and Kay slipped onto the floor at the force of the encounter. She started to quip, "I've heard of fireworks but." and stopped when she realized that something was extremely different about the room and their surroundings. "Nicholas, do you see."
Nicholas didn't know what Kay was talking about, but he knew he wanted more of whatever he'd just experienced, and that he wanted it now. He reached down, helped Kay stand up, never breaking eye contact, and stood in front of her. Her height meant that they were perfectly aligned with each other. He leaned towards her, and their lips connected again.
Blue heat seared through them both as they held onto each other desperately.
"I don't think I can ever let her go," thought Nicholas.
"I don't think I want you to ever let me go," came her answering thought.
As his hands roamed over her back and he felt her hands do the same, Nicholas continued to respond to what he was feeling through his thoughts. "I won't let you go, Kay Bennett."
"Is that a promise, Nicholas Crane?" Again, her answering thought seared through him along the bands of blue flames that he felt lick through his body at her touch.
His eyes opened to meet hers in shock, although they never broke the connection that their lips, their hands, their bodies, their souls were forming. She met his gaze and allowed him into her mind. He responded instinctively by letting her into his own. Now, they were both experiencing the pleasure of the other, and their own pleasure through the other.
He saw in her eyes and felt in his soul the moment the intense blue heat became too much for her, too much for him. They broke apart.
And stumbled down to the floor. They looked at each other from sitting positions on his floor, attempting to cope with the state of being separated after such an intense connection, trying to get used to being two instead of one. Nicholas spoke just seconds before Kay did.
"Did you really."
"Did you FEEL that?!" she exclaimed.
Nicholas' sharp wit kicked in to cover the sense of loss he felt. "No, I missed being semi-electrocuted and flung into someone else's thoughts."
Kay was somehow hurt as his flippant dismissal of what had happened. "Nicholas, it wasn't just that, the entire room went crazy. I would have sworn that your furniture started glowing."
"Kay, I saw all of that, I just need a minute to think, okay? Let's just sit for a minute and think." Nicholas was desperately trying to hold it together. He thought Kay was special and all, but nothing like this had ever happened to him. And he wasn't sure that he was ready for what it meant.
Kay's mind was whirling as well, but for a very different reason. A story her mom told her as a child was swirling through her mind. She tried to bring it into focus. Something about a young woman in flames. an intense blue light beating back the flames like a flood of water. a man.he jumped through the flames, and it was as if the blue light were protecting him. protecting the woman. and the man saved the woman. Kay had always thought that was her mom's old fashioned way of telling her the story of how her parents met without traumatizing her. Her mom, Grace, had always said it was the blue light and the calm that it produced that let her know that she and Sam, Kay's father, were meant to be. With sudden clarity, she realized that the story wasn't a story at all, but an accurate account of what had happened. If that were true. She had to know.
She reached into her bag and brought out a safety pin. As Nicholas watched incredulously, she pricked her finger deeply, so that a small stream of blood began to flow. She grabbed his hand, looked into his eyes and smiled. In spite of himself, Nicholas smiled back. They both saw the room get flushed with a cool blue light and, now that they were expecting it, did not feel the burn so much as the soothing calm of the light. Kay let go of his hand, and without looking because she knew what had happened, showed him her finger. newly healed.
"What the.?" Nicholas began.
Kay shushed him. "I want to tell you about a story my mom used to tell my sister and I about how she and my father met. My mom used to say that it was the first day of the rest of her life, which should be taken literally, since she doesn't remember anything before that. She remembers being trapped in a burning building, feeling as though she were going to die. And my father was a firefighter at the time. No one thought that he would get to her in time; she was on the third floor, trapped between a wall of flames in front and fallen timbers behind her. But he had to try. When he got to the wall of flames, he said it was like God's grace from above hit him and he felt this calm fall over the space, despite the raging fire. My mom, too, remembers the blue. She says it drowned out the significance of the fire's heat, this all encompassing and total blue heat that now engulfed them. My dad jumped through the flames and brought her out. Neither of them were hurt. They decided that my mother's new name would be Grace to honor the grace of God that saved them both. I always thought it was a strange story. Come to think of it, when we were younger, Jessica, my sister, and I never teased each other about having crushes, we used to call it feeling blue." She faded as she realized that Nicholas had gone stiff during the course of her story.
"Nicholas, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking I'm not ready for this," he said without thinking. "This is too much, we just met, just started getting to know each other, you're talking about falling in 'blue' and stuff." he was muttering out loud and something in the back of his head said he should keep his mouth shut for a bit instead of thinking out loud, but he kept going. ". just trying to be friendly and comfort you and now there's all this. blue. this crazy blue."
Kay abruptly stood up. She was a strong person but not even she could take two heartbreaking experiences in the space of two days. "Nicholas, maybe we need a little time to. uh. think about um. all of uh. this. Give me a call when or if you want."
Nicholas, still wrapped up in the complexities of his feelings about the matter and trying to interpret her story, barely noticed that she'd left. He sat staring at the door as she closed it, thinking about the impossible events of the evening.
Chapter 9
Nicholas woke up the next day and immediately, the events of the night before were at the forefront of his mind. Mostly because Kay was still tucked snuggly in his embrace. During the course of the night, they'd both slid down in the chair, so that they were now laying down face to face in the soft burgundy material of his sofa. He was careful not to move, so that he could take advantage of her sleeping state to carefully inspect her.
He saw tear stains still on her face, a sign that she'd cried herself to sleep. And yet, the quiet (well, not always quiet) strength with which Kay confronted the world head on was also apparent in her visage, he read there a determination to meet this newest challenge and to beat it.
Over the course of the night, their hands had become intertwined, and, because of her tall height, their legs were perfectly aligned and interlocked. He watched as she stirred, afraid his opportunity to watch her was over, and almost jarred her awake himself as the sound of a snore startled him through the silence. Nicholas began to chuckle to himself as he pulled her closer. She rested her head on his shoulder, and wrapped her arms around him, causing their fingers to break apart, but their sleepy embrace to become tighter.
Suddenly, the silence was pierced by the ringing of a phone, and without thinking, Nicholas carefully reached across Kay and grabbed her cell phone off the top of her bag that was lying on the floor in front of the sofa. "Hello." he began.
And was immediately interrupted with, "Kay, don't say anything, I know you might still be feeling a little prickly about last night but I really think that we can work. Wait, are you okay, you sound a little strange."
Nicholas knew exactly with whom he was speaking and he couldn't resist picking with the guy. He said quietly into the phone, "I'm sorry, Kay is sleeping right now, may I take a message?"
Miguel thought the voice at the other end of the phone sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. He did know that he didn't appreciate some schmuck answering his Kay's cell phone and asking HIM if he could take a message. "Who the hell is this? No, you can't take a message; it's noon, and she should be awake. I want to speak with Kay now, put her on the phone."
Nicholas felt himself tense up at the tone Miguel was taking with him. "Listen, Miguel, Kay has had a very rough night and if she needs to sleep until noon tomorrow, I'm not going to wake her up so that you can stress her out more." Nicholas winced as he saw Kay beginning to blink out of sleep. He lowered his voice, "Now, is there a message you'd like to leave?"
Miguel's temper shot up as he responded, "You've got some nerve, whoever you are, answering Kay's phone and acting like you're her personal voice mail. And how do you know who I am? You've got ten seconds to put Kay on the phone or I'm going to."
As Miguel ranted into the phone, Nicholas instinctively moved it away from his ear. Kay woke up with a start, her bright blue eyes piercing Nicholas'. "Miguel?" She questioned, looking around for the source of her best friend's voice. She saw the cell phone and grabbed it from Nicholas. "Miguel, what are you yelling about?" she asked groggily. "What's the matter with you?"
"Kay! Who's the dipshit who answered the phone? Why wouldn't he let me talk to you? Why are you sleeping at some strange man's place? I called your room all night. What's going."
"Oh stuff it, Miguel," Kay interrupted him. "I'm not at some strange man's; I'm at Nicholas' and why the hell would you call me all night? Don't you think you've said enough to me already? Who do you think you are?"
Nicholas tried desperately not to grin as he listened to Kay give Miguel hell. He realized that his fears that she'd run back to him and into the sickness of their current friendship again were unfounded. He listened as she continued, snuggling closer to her and closing his eyes contentedly, as if she were telling him a bedtime story.
Miguel, for his part, was astonished at the venom her heard in her voice. He was convinced that this Nicholas character was poisoning her mind against him. But he also knew that an angry Kay was an uncooperative Kay. "Kay, stop!" he interrupted her. "Listen, I don't know why you're at the TA's place right now, but I just wanted to talk to you and see if we can discuss this in person. Things ended so badly last night that I couldn't sleep and I'd like for us to try to work this out so we can go back to the way things were before."
His calm tone brought Kay's temper back down to earth. Suddenly, she wasn't angry anymore, just tired of him. The hours she'd spent with Nicholas, although they had solved nothing specifically about her problems with Miguel, had helped her realize that she didn't have to run to him at every turn. The safety that she felt with Nicholas, the security that she wanted desperately to hold onto that she'd had since she'd stepped into Haven were all that she needed right now. "Miguel," she began slowly, "I've been uncomfortable in our friendship for awhile now, last night just made it shockingly apparent to both of us." She paused as she realized what had to be said and though how to frame it. "I think that I need a break from us, from the friendship, from you, right now. When I'm around you and there are these things that I feel, I lose a part of me to you, and I really want to work on recovering that."
Miguel couldn't believe his ears. "You're saying that being around me makes you somehow less than what you are? I don't get it Kay, we've always been the perfect compliment to one another, I don't know why this has to change."
"Miguel, things change as people do. I know that we'll always be friends, but until I can figure out how to make this change work for me and for both of us, I know, and you must know, that we need some time apart."
And slowly, Miguel realized that she was right. If Kay's feelings were conflicting with the established parameters of the friendship, then something had to give at some point. At the same time, he wasn't sure how he'd ever deal with the immense sense of loss that he felt right now. "Kay, I." his voice faltered. He cleared his throat and continued, "I understand. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do without."
Kay gently interrupted him. "But that's part of the problem, right? You're already focused on you and how you'll be losing out. You need to think about how I feel so that things like last night won't ever happen again. And I need time to figure out to what extent Reese was right. I don't know what you're going to do," she paused as Nicholas opened his eyes and looked straight into her eyes, into her. She smiled and continued, "But I think it's time that we both explored possibilities that our friendship kept us from." She broke the connection.
"Wow," Nicholas said. "Kay, you have spent the last day, evening, night, whatever, amazing me."
Her smile widened and she said, "You're pretty amazing yourself. I can't think of many TA's who would put up with students calling so late, then having emotional break downs."
Nicholas interrupted her, his gaze turning serious. "Kay, you must know that we've moved well beyond the student/TA thing, right? This isn't some pity party. I."
It was her turn to interrupt him, "Oh hush, Nicholas, I would hope that this isn't your MO with all the students.." Her eyes twinkled. "I might get jealous."
"Oh really?" Nicholas responded. "And just."
"Just hush and." Kay started.
Nicholas decided that both of them needed to "just hush and." and so he leaned over and gently pressed his lips to hers.
Electricity crackled through both of them and Kay slipped onto the floor at the force of the encounter. She started to quip, "I've heard of fireworks but." and stopped when she realized that something was extremely different about the room and their surroundings. "Nicholas, do you see."
Nicholas didn't know what Kay was talking about, but he knew he wanted more of whatever he'd just experienced, and that he wanted it now. He reached down, helped Kay stand up, never breaking eye contact, and stood in front of her. Her height meant that they were perfectly aligned with each other. He leaned towards her, and their lips connected again.
Blue heat seared through them both as they held onto each other desperately.
"I don't think I can ever let her go," thought Nicholas.
"I don't think I want you to ever let me go," came her answering thought.
As his hands roamed over her back and he felt her hands do the same, Nicholas continued to respond to what he was feeling through his thoughts. "I won't let you go, Kay Bennett."
"Is that a promise, Nicholas Crane?" Again, her answering thought seared through him along the bands of blue flames that he felt lick through his body at her touch.
His eyes opened to meet hers in shock, although they never broke the connection that their lips, their hands, their bodies, their souls were forming. She met his gaze and allowed him into her mind. He responded instinctively by letting her into his own. Now, they were both experiencing the pleasure of the other, and their own pleasure through the other.
He saw in her eyes and felt in his soul the moment the intense blue heat became too much for her, too much for him. They broke apart.
And stumbled down to the floor. They looked at each other from sitting positions on his floor, attempting to cope with the state of being separated after such an intense connection, trying to get used to being two instead of one. Nicholas spoke just seconds before Kay did.
"Did you really."
"Did you FEEL that?!" she exclaimed.
Nicholas' sharp wit kicked in to cover the sense of loss he felt. "No, I missed being semi-electrocuted and flung into someone else's thoughts."
Kay was somehow hurt as his flippant dismissal of what had happened. "Nicholas, it wasn't just that, the entire room went crazy. I would have sworn that your furniture started glowing."
"Kay, I saw all of that, I just need a minute to think, okay? Let's just sit for a minute and think." Nicholas was desperately trying to hold it together. He thought Kay was special and all, but nothing like this had ever happened to him. And he wasn't sure that he was ready for what it meant.
Kay's mind was whirling as well, but for a very different reason. A story her mom told her as a child was swirling through her mind. She tried to bring it into focus. Something about a young woman in flames. an intense blue light beating back the flames like a flood of water. a man.he jumped through the flames, and it was as if the blue light were protecting him. protecting the woman. and the man saved the woman. Kay had always thought that was her mom's old fashioned way of telling her the story of how her parents met without traumatizing her. Her mom, Grace, had always said it was the blue light and the calm that it produced that let her know that she and Sam, Kay's father, were meant to be. With sudden clarity, she realized that the story wasn't a story at all, but an accurate account of what had happened. If that were true. She had to know.
She reached into her bag and brought out a safety pin. As Nicholas watched incredulously, she pricked her finger deeply, so that a small stream of blood began to flow. She grabbed his hand, looked into his eyes and smiled. In spite of himself, Nicholas smiled back. They both saw the room get flushed with a cool blue light and, now that they were expecting it, did not feel the burn so much as the soothing calm of the light. Kay let go of his hand, and without looking because she knew what had happened, showed him her finger. newly healed.
"What the.?" Nicholas began.
Kay shushed him. "I want to tell you about a story my mom used to tell my sister and I about how she and my father met. My mom used to say that it was the first day of the rest of her life, which should be taken literally, since she doesn't remember anything before that. She remembers being trapped in a burning building, feeling as though she were going to die. And my father was a firefighter at the time. No one thought that he would get to her in time; she was on the third floor, trapped between a wall of flames in front and fallen timbers behind her. But he had to try. When he got to the wall of flames, he said it was like God's grace from above hit him and he felt this calm fall over the space, despite the raging fire. My mom, too, remembers the blue. She says it drowned out the significance of the fire's heat, this all encompassing and total blue heat that now engulfed them. My dad jumped through the flames and brought her out. Neither of them were hurt. They decided that my mother's new name would be Grace to honor the grace of God that saved them both. I always thought it was a strange story. Come to think of it, when we were younger, Jessica, my sister, and I never teased each other about having crushes, we used to call it feeling blue." She faded as she realized that Nicholas had gone stiff during the course of her story.
"Nicholas, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking I'm not ready for this," he said without thinking. "This is too much, we just met, just started getting to know each other, you're talking about falling in 'blue' and stuff." he was muttering out loud and something in the back of his head said he should keep his mouth shut for a bit instead of thinking out loud, but he kept going. ". just trying to be friendly and comfort you and now there's all this. blue. this crazy blue."
Kay abruptly stood up. She was a strong person but not even she could take two heartbreaking experiences in the space of two days. "Nicholas, maybe we need a little time to. uh. think about um. all of uh. this. Give me a call when or if you want."
Nicholas, still wrapped up in the complexities of his feelings about the matter and trying to interpret her story, barely noticed that she'd left. He sat staring at the door as she closed it, thinking about the impossible events of the evening.
