Prompt: Bittersweet (Taken from The Ultimate Fanfic Challenge 200 Prompts)

Setting: Canon, set post-episode 26 (From Nixie's POV)

Rating: T

Pairings: Cam x Nixie

Warnings: Angst & a little more raciness later on.

Recommended Listening: Eyes on Fire - Blue Foundation

Bittersweet

Every night, without fail or falter, I dream of him.

Sometimes, they are dreams of complete and total innocence. We're sitting together, out knees and shoulders touching feather-light, talking. He doesn't tell me he's sorry, because in the dream there's nothing to be sorry about. There was no betrayal, no trident. There are no humans, no mermaids, no secrets. We just sit there, side by side, talking.

Upon waking, I never remember what we said. His voice is a sound that I cannot hear, but rather feel. It washes over me like warm water, soaking into my skin, seeping right into my core. The sense of security it induces is similar to that of waking up wrapped in a duvet, the cozy cocoon of heat and comfort seeming eternal and infallible in that moment. I see his crooked half-smile, my eyes closed, and I mirror it myself, thinking that this is what bliss truly means.

Of course, with the arrival of the new day comes the reality check and so the soothing high dies away. I remember that the betrayal was real and that the dream was not.

So then there are the other dreams.

Most of the time I'm angry. We're always standing somewhere loud and noisy, although the location varies across the nights. Sometimes we're at a train station, the trains rushing past, one after another, over and over again, sucking the air currents with them and whipping our hair around our faces. Then we're in the pouring rain in the middle of a crowded street, people bustling around us, hurrying to escape the falling water, cold droplets dripping down our faces.

We're stood on Mako, the island disintegrating around us in thunderous crashes because of what he did, because in the dream we failed to stop him. It never feels like a nightmare though, the chaos welcome, making me feel like I've come home.

We stand together, amongst the stormy wind, the torrential rain, the cracking island, and I shout at him. I know the words by heart, for I scream them in my head every time I see him, wishing that public decency didn't matter so that I could put them in my mouth. And so they come to me in dreams, and amongst the turbulence around us my words are barely audible so that only he can hear.

I know he hears me, but he rarely responds. He just stands there, cradling me in his arms, taking the abuse. His face is always lined with a frown, one caught somewhere between regret and guilt. It remains the same through-out the dream, me screaming at him all the while.

And then I wake up, and I've never felt so rested in my life. I feel exhausted, as if I've just run a marathon, but after every shouting dream I feel as though some huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders and finally I'm free. I breathe a sigh of relief and think that finally, it's all over. I'm done, I've had my closure.

Yet then I see him again and the anger all comes crashing back, weeding its way into my heart and curling up in my head, hissing venomous words, all to be vented during another night so that I never can forget.

Then there are the other dreams, the dreams I can't even tell myself about, let alone the others. Just thinking about them makes me blush, eliciting a chill that is both hot and cold simultaneously, which dances across my skin. After those dreams I see him and turn crimson, scowling darkly to pass it off as anger rather than something he doesn't deserve me to feel for him.

The dreams- the dreams they can't be stopped. I've taken herbal remedies, sleeping tablets, some of Aunt Rita's magic potions, nothing. Nothing stops them. And so I get flushed and stammer around him, because my mind always ends up drifting back to those dreams, the red ones.

A hand on my thigh.

Lips on my neck.

A kiss that says more than just I love you.

Touches shaped to me.

Everything colours and senses and thoughts and pulsating, beating feelings, and everything becoming more.

Those are the red dreams. And from those I awake awash with quivers and shakes, half terrified of the dream, half longing to go back there.

That's a lie. There's nothing 'half' about what I feel towards those dreams.

The worst part is that when I kiss him in my waking sleep, I know what he's done, what he's guilty of. I know, and I don't care. Or maybe I do care, and that's why I'm kissing him, claiming him back as mine. It's difficult to tell, nothing is coherent, everything an intangible mess, spilling over into my conscious mind with no order or sense left.

And so I'm always a jumble when I see him. I've lost touch with which sides of him are real, and which ones my racing mind fabricated in order to save my broken heart. He's become my own personal oxymoron; the boy I hate to love, and would love to hate.

I can't tell the others, not after I mocked Lyla for her infatuation with Zac, and how could I discuss something like this with Sirena? She and David are sweet. Cam and I are... well, I don't want us to be anything other than over, but apparently my subconscious disagrees. So I keep silent, and simply dream.

Seeing him, the things I know I should care about dissipate, and all I'm left with is a bittersweet tug in my heart.