Hi you've reached Natalie's phone, I'm at work or am otherwise engaged, please leave a message and I'll get back as soon as I can. If this is Nick, I'll get back even sooner.

Beep.

He couldn't think of what to leave in a short message, so Nick switched off the phone and returned it to its stand, and headed upstairs. He found Maura sitting about halfway up, shamefaced and cold sober.

"I should have told you."

He sat down a step ahead of her. "Why didn't you?" It wasn't as if he didn't know there were complex issues involved, even if he didn't know their every nuance.

"I don't know. Okay, I do. I didn't know how to tell you that wouldn't end up with me getting us both pissed off. Because you know, we both know, it's not as simple as a phone call. And it was too soon, right away was just too soon for me to deal with it in a sensible way."

Nick leaned back against her knees, taking her hands as she reached around his shoulders. "You mean 'reasonable' don't you?"

"I mean sensible. 'Reasonable' was keeping my mouth shut when I shouldn't have, and that was never your fault. 'Sensible' means filtering out all the unnecessary stuff and just being able to tell you what's on my mind without all the neurotic embellishment. I haven't always been very good at that." She rested her chin on the top of his head. "When something's really twisting my head I got used to having help to sort some things out first, before I ran my mouth and sounded too crazy."

"I always could tell when something was churning inside, and I didn't ask because I could tell when you weren't ready. But I also could tell when the churning stopped, because it was always after you'd spent time with Vachon." There, he'd said the name. "I wish I could help you sort things out like he did." She hugged tighter, and kissed his hair.

"He just had the gift, he could stare me down and tell me to stop being stupid and then tell me exactly why I was being stupid. More often than not the churning stopped because I figured out there wasn't anything to 'churn' about in the first place." She laughed quietly, and was echoed by Nick. "I can't see you being able to call me out like that."

"I suppose you're right." Nick turned sideways so he could face Maura. "What do you think Vachon would tell you, if he was here with you tonight? I know you two were close enough so it shouldn't be too hard." He kissed her right palm and waited as she closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again to look him in the eye.

"I think he'd tell me that instead of angsting over exactly what 'possessed' you that night at the loft, and what it meant, I should just ask. I think, no I know, that he'd say that a change in your biology that someone else helped you achieve doesn't mean as much as I'm making it into. But to me it means other things can change too, things that only one of us thinks are good."

He sat up straighter, frowning. "I told you, everything, all of it. I told you we were both not quite in our right minds, everything that had happened..."

"I know, I know. It 'weakened' you, and you did things you wouldn't otherwise do. But you know where that left me, especially after finding out you suddenly have your own central heat? It leaves me believing that I'm just one weak moment away from losing you, losing us, for good, because if your body can change itself then maybe everything else can too."

Now Nick stood, frustrated. "How many times, Maura, how many ways do I have to say it before you'll believe me? I don't love Natalie, not the way she wants, I never could, not now, maybe not even if you'd never come along. What I was reaching for that night was redemption, the way I used to see it, mortality, I was so tired of losing people along the way, I thought maybe what she suggested might work and I wouldn't have to anymore."

"Well we already know it wouldn't work with me, don't we?" That was unfair and she knew it. Maura's blood was far different from that of the typical mortal. She was different.

She followed him as he walked away, around to the back of the house to stand at the edge of the lily pond. "I knew that, Nick, I knew it when you told me about all that weakness and desperation. What I didn't know was why you still want it. Why is what we've got still not good enough? What do you suppose might have happened if Natalie hadn't nearly died? What if it had worked? How often would you have gone to her, how deep would you have gone with her, to get what you wanted? Because we both know it wouldn't be as clinical as a bottle of O positive, it couldn't be. There's something else in that legendary 'cure', the return of the connection, the mortal connection, that's what I should have asked about that night, I should have found out right then and there. Would whatever you might be able to get from Natalie really replace what you'd be losing?"

Nick just didn't understand her. If he were mortal he'd be what Maura was, they could be more completely together than he'd ever thought possible. "What would I have lost, Sweet? Okay, it was a mistake, I know that, but if it had worked, if I'd become mortal, we'd be alike you and I, that last space between us we've never managed to cross would be gone. Why does that scare you, why does my still wanting it seem to hurt you so much?"

She was shaking her head. "What makes you more a part of me than anyone else could be, that's what we'd be losing, what makes us belong to each other, completely, equally." She was surprised how clearly it came to her now and she moved closer, looking up into his face as if proximity would force him to understand. "If I lose you to mortality, that perfect link would be gone forever," unable to stand the confusion on his face Maura grabbed hold of Nick and threw her head back, pressing his face into her throat where she knew he'd feel her blood pounding. She held him there for just a second before she felt his grip on her tighten, his mouth begin to open, his kiss turn to the warming electric sensation of his fangs as they descended and joined them together, drawing her into him and reaching himself into her.

"See," she whispered, fighting the rapture that usually rendered them both silent but for growls and whimpers, "this is who we are, this is what we are, there's no space left between us, why do you want to leave that, leave me apart from you?" She was crying without realizing it, "I'm not mortal," she insisted.

As his embrace strengthened and he sank them down onto the damp grass, she repeated in French, "Je n'suis pas mortelle, je suis Prisée…" Even if they'd never come together in any other way, even if they never did again, this alone was what set them apart from any others, it was this she was determined not to lose. She didn't care about anything else, let Nick sleep with a hundred women a week so long as this joining was theirs alone. She couldn't imagine living without it because that would mean she was living without him, even if they were together for a hundred years.

He drank as much as he dared, somehow hearing her though the pulsing in his head, but more importantly feeling and understanding everything she'd held inside tonight come to him in her blood. Finally he lay quiet against her, wrapped around her with his face resting in the hollow of her neck, the place he always went to when he needed to feel whole. Fool, he'd never considered what she'd just told him, he always thought their natures divided them, and believed she did too. Maybe she had believed it too, once.

"I wish you'd told me, that night, or before," he spoke quietly, moving up to lie next to her, wiping the tears and hair from her face. "I don't suppose I'd thought of that, not the way you just described it. I knew what being together meant to me, but not to you." She smiled a little weakly.

"Communication has never been our strongest suit, has it? Except for this," she touched the corner of his mouth where a smudge of blood remained. "Love we're good at, sex and blood and forgiving we're good at, it's the other stuff that we seem to stumble on."

"That's okay, we've got time to learn." Nick nuzzled his face into her neck again, planting kisses that progressed under the collar of her disheveled pajamas, "I think I'm learning more all the time, even if some things take longer than others…I'm learning to appreciate some new things," one of his hands crept to where he could move between the buttons, fingers reaching inside to explore her skin.

"Like what," she asked a bit hazily.

He paused in his nibbling and caressing to press his face against the soft fabric she wore, "Like the erotic potential of flannel…" Instead of laughing, though, he wrapped her up tight in his arms.

"I'm sorry, Nick, I'm sorry, you know I trust you, it's me I don't trust sometimes," she pulled his head up and made him look at her.

"Well there's something new that you can learn, then."

As they sealed their intentions with a kiss a pale lip, unseen in the shadows, curled in disdain. The curl reversed itself as the sound of a phone ringing trailed from the house."It seems 'caller i.d.' works two ways, Nicholas." The voice may well have been only a thought, unheard by anyone, its owner well hidden by more than darkness as he rose above the treetops and disappeared.

Maura let Nick lend some support as they walked into the house, though she was drunk now in an entirely different way. She held back as they passed the phone, ringing for the third time.

"Not now," he told her and led her up the stairs without even looking at the display. "I know where to find her."

"That's what I told her," she confessed, and he turned with smile.

"I know, remember?"

She laughed as he turned down the bed. "You do have a way of 'drawing me out'," and she laughed louder as he groaned.

All smiles faded as he pulled her into his arms. "Well let's just make sure I didn't miss anything," he growled and tumbled them into bed. He could tell she was straining to hear the answering machine. He took her head in his hands, effectively covering her ears and bringing her face to his in the same motion.

"Not now," he repeated. He didn't have to tell her a third time.

This is Nick and Maura's house, and we can't answer the phone right now... leave a message and we'll get back to you.

Beep.

She had no more ready message than he had had when he called, but she could have rung again and again, all night, just to hear his voice.

Je n'suis pas mortelle, je suis Prisée - I'm not mortal, I'm Prized