Angel Dust

A/N: I am anxiously awaiting your reviews for this chapter. Good or bad. Enjoy!

The apartment loft that Nitro called home was perfectly suited for a struggling art student. The open space sported bare, brick walls on three sides. The fourth wall was three quarters windows, with a seat that ran along the bottom, the entire length of the wall. For a moment, she could clearly see herself sitting there to drink her coffee in the morning.

Shaking her head, she allowed her eyes to drift the room again. The kitchen was basic, with appliances that appeared to be older than both of them put together. An industrial steel table constituted his dining room, and the Salvation Army couch and banged-up coffee table appeared to be the living room. A large matress sat against the wall to her left, unmade.

It was his studio that drew her attention, though. Against the window, and running almost the length of the room, was a raised platform, filled with easels, tables of supplies, a potter's wheel, and a small kiln. Projects in varying degrees of completion were scattered about carefully, and Courtney found herself mesmerized by the works as she walked toward them and stepped up onto platform.

Turning, she shook her head and smiled. "You really are an artist," she said.

He nodded and moved to the kitchen, putting a pot of coffee on as he washed his hands and then searched the cabinets. "I don't have much to eat. I don't get paid until Friday, and things have been kinda tight lately," he explained.

Tucking her hair behind her ears, Courtney moved toward him and lowered herself onto the barstool at the table. "I'm not really hungry," she admitted, resting her elbow against the cool surface.

"So," Nitro smiled brightly as he leaned against the kitchen sink and looked at her. "You never did tell me why you were walking around the Village at 3:30 in the morning."

With a sigh, she shook her head. "I couldn't sleep," was all she said.

It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him. The thing that bothered her most was that she DID want to tell him. She wanted to talk to him about things she usually didn't talk about. Something about this guy made her want to open up, to share herself, and it scared her more than she was willing to admit.

They barely knew each other. She wasn't even sure they could be considered friends. But the chemistry between them was increasingly undeniable, and somewhere inside, she knew something was going to have to break soon. Either she had to stop talking to him all together, or she had to actually say something.

Nitro didn't push her to speak further, only poured a cup of coffee and slid it toward her on the table. Sitting on a stool opposite her, he leaned forward on his elbows and gave her another brilliant grin. "So the way you were grumbling to yourself and cursing under your breath? That was all about insomnia?"

It was as if she couldn't help smiling at him. And she decided that it was time to take a chance. It was time to open up. She had a boyfriend. She wasn't looking to hook up. But she realized that she wanted a friendship with this beautiful man before her, and if that was going to happen, she had to start acting like a friend in return.

"Randy's staying in Afghanistan. He doesn't know when he's coming home," she explained softly, her eyes drawn to an imaginary speck on the table top. "He called to say that they had gotten their interview, but there was a higher military official willing to speak with them and he just can't leave." There was a tiny lilt of bitterness in her voice, but she hoped he wouldn't notice.

He did. "Sounds like a killer opportunity, Court," he stated simply. "So what's the problem?"

Courtney huffed. "The problem is that sometimes Randy is so much like Dave, I wanna fuckin' scream," she answered without thinking. Had she stopped to process the words, she would realize this was far too personal. Returning to the whole "Most Embarrassing Moment" conversation would have been so much better. "That sounds awful," she sighed, resting the palm of her hand against her forehead.

With a timid hand, Nitro reached out and pulled on Courtney's arm until she raised her head and looked at him. "You're allowed to have feelings, ya know?" She rolled her eyes as he placed her hand on the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Even if it's not politically correct."

The words made her cringe. She could see his heart so clearly, just by looking into his eyes. The tone of his voice was gentle, and his gaze said that he wanted her to say whatever was on her mind. She wasn't sure anyone had ever looked at her quite like that.

"It's just that Dave always had what I liked to call 'The Superman Complex.' Like he thought he was completely invincible or something. Didn't matter how worried I got, or how much I told him he was doing something stupid. It was like he cut the breaks on the train and then stood in the middle of the tracks. Almost like he was daring it to hit him." She shook her head.

Realizing that he was still holding her hand, Nitro leaned back on his stool and wrapped both hands around his coffee mug. There were a million things he wanted to know about her, wanted to ask. But he got the sinking feeling that she hadn't been able to express herself very much, and he was more than willing to let her lead the conversation in any way she desired.

Gathering steam, Courtney continued talking, barely looking up. She studied the top of the table as though she could clearly see her husband's reflection in it - almost as though she were talking more to herself than she was to Nitro. "It's like he had this tunnel vision, ya know? Like he knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it, so he just took off toward it without a look back. But he couldn't see past how it would affect his future, our future.

"And it was like he couldn't look around, couldn't take his eyes off whatever they were fixed on, long enough to realize that I was over there on the sidelines, fucking scared shitless that he wasn't gonna make it through this one, or the next one, or the one after that." She lifted her mug to her lips, her thin hands trembling. "It's like he was so far inside his own fucking head that he missed an entire world around him."

Nitro was well-educated, and he was a deep thinker. But he wasn't a part of the world Courtney and Dave had existed in. He knew that any advice he had to offer would sound like the naive ramblings of an outsider. But he spoke from his heart when he stood to refill his coffee mug. "You're not talking about interviews in the Middle East, are you?"

She shot him a look that told him to butt out. But her words betrayed her, as though they didn't need her permission to tumble past her lips. "He went on some pretty dangerous assignments, but he was a smart guy," she conceded. "I didn't really worry about him as much as I do Randy." Shaking her head, she smiled. "I don't know what that says about me."

With a soft smile of understanding, Nitro straddled his stool again. "To me? It says that there was a bigger battle Dave was fighting. One that was a greater threat to his safety, and to your future together, than a few bullets and terrorists." When she bit her lip and stared hard at the table, he reached out for her hand again. "Courtney, I'm not downplaying it. I think you have every right to worry about Randy's safety. But that's not why you're about to cry."

She steeled herself and met his eyes with a hard glare. "I don't cry." He rolled his eyes and she couldn't help but smile just a bit. "Alright, fine, I might cry a little bit. Sometimes. But not often." If she kept the mood like this, slightly light, she could avoid the other issues.

His eyes turned serious, though. "I just want you to be yourself." There was another eye roll on her part, and he could see the walls, the defenses, going up once more. "I used to see you on television and in magazines," he admitted, completely unabashed in his confession. "You smiled for cameras, Courtney. No doubt, there were moments when you looked happy.

"But the way you smile at the coffee shop - it's so different. When you let go of Courtney Lane, Senator's daughter? And when you aren't worried about being Courtney Batista, major television mogul's wife? When you don't even realize that you're just being you?" He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and smiled. "It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

Everything inside her chest constricted and told her to run. Everything about the way his words were washing over her, filling her, scared her shitless. But as much as she wanted to run, her body wouldn't move. She was compelled to sit longer, to watch him, to talk. She couldn't explain it, but she didnt really want to try, either.

"Thanks," was all she said as they shared a long moment of comfortable silence.

Finally, Nitro leaned forward again and tapped the table. "I know this is going to sound weird," he started, biting his lip as she turned her head curiously. "But there's nothing you can tell me, Courtney, that's going to change the way I feel about you."

"Bull shit," she stated with a laugh. When he looked surprised, she shook her head and leaned back on her stool. "That is total bull shit! I mean, whether we want to admit it or not, we all have preconceived ideas of who the people we think we know are. You've got an image of me in your mind - whatever that may be - and anything I say that slides outside the boundaries of that image is going to change the way you see me. Maybe not for the worse - but it will change."

He stared at her for a moment, trying his wrap his mind around her words. "Okay, rephrase then," he smiled. She was challenging him, and he liked that. It had been far too long since a woman stepped to him the way she just had, and it had, indeed, changed the way he looked at her. "There is nothing you could tell me that would stop me from wanting to be close to you."

Something flared inside of her in that moment. Something that she hadn't felt in nearly two years. Raising an eyebrow, she crossed her arms over her chest. "Is that so?"

As if rising to the challenge, Nitro nodded and opened his arms. "Try me," he encouraged. "You go ahead and tell me something that is so heinous, something so completely outside the bounds of who I think you are, that you think I will usher you out that door and avoid you for the rest of my natural life."

Caught up in the fire of the moment, Courtney didn't even hesitate to share her darkest, most intimate secret. "I was pregnant once," she said. "Two years ago. Three months before Dave died."

Though he was surprised, Nitro felt a wave of emotion as his heart went out to the woman before him. He knew she didn't have a child now, and could only assume that the thought of raising a life she had created with her dead husband would be too painful a reminder.

"I can't blame you for not going through with that," he started, sitting on the stool beside her and touching her arm. "I mean, you loved your husband, and the pain of losing him was fresh, so," he started to explain that he understood.

But Courtney shook her head and pulled away from his grasp. "I aborted the baby before Dave died. I never told him about it." Her face was stoic, all emotion gone as she looked into Nitro's face and raised her eyebrow again. "So what do you think of me now?"