To all who lurk, read, review, or hold my hand while I write, thank you.

To whose I owe reviews, they're coming. I'm in graduate classes this summer, and they're somewhere between time-consuming and hellish.

To those who are wondering if they EVER...yeah, they do. ;)

Onward!

Anxiety was a close cousin of mania, Nick found. Or at least, in his case it was, and so he wrote letters compulsively to Brena. He felt like it was the sort of thing Deaglan would have done for Hazel if they'd been separated for any length of time, and he surprised himself by never running out of things to write about. He started to notice things about the arenas, things he thought she'd like to know – how the lights were set up, what the crowds sounded like, if there were any witty signs, or anything interesting in the landscaping and flowers outside the buildings. Usually, the berms and planters were all professionally done up, but every once in a while, he'd find something determined and scraggly growing in a display and try to describe it to her.

When Nick had time, he tried to poke around the neighborhoods near the hotels a bit, do things that he thought Brena would like to do with him – nudge through old bookstores, go with Claudio to get coffee instead of drinks, just try to slow himself down a bit. He didn't mind it; in some ways he even enjoyed it. It made the nights that he did shuffle down to the hotel bar, or get dragged out to a club, actually enjoyable. It was easier to stop at one drink, say no to the women who approached him, and just sit and people-watch from a VIP section instead. He wrote to Brena about those nights, telling her he wondered what it would be like if she went with him, if she'd order a Manhattan (and if a club bartender would know how to make one) or if she'd get something fancy and fruity instead. He wrote that he remembered the skirt she wore when she went out with Meredith and how he'd love to see her in a dress, even to take her out to buy one, if she wanted, and maybe it could be something that would match the blue tint that always seemed to follow her hair when the light hit it just the right way. Nick was always sure to mention he'd gone out and come back alone, or with a group of friends, and that he wished she was there to dance with him. His letters ended by saying he wished she was under their quilt with him, too, that he could smell her ginger but it didn't quite feel like home without her. It wasn't that Nick didn't call her; he did, and regularly at that – he just felt the letters were personal, tangible things Brena could hold on to, things that made him real.

Claudio thought it was good that Nick wrote as often as he did; it kept him out of trouble and kept his mind off his test results, which were still pending. Meredith had called to say the swab had come back clean, which was good – no chlamydia, no gonorrhea – but his HIV and hepatitis hadn't come back yet, for whatever reason. Slow lab, Meredith said, though Nick was beginning to wonder if she was sitting on his results. He was planning on asking for a week off, just to see Brena, but wanted to do so with the ability to make up for what he'd declined their first night together. Having to turn her down once was plausible because they both knew he'd have to leave; having to turn her down while on vacation would make no sense. Nick knew he'd have to have a serious conversation with her, regardless of what his test results were – he had no idea if she was on any sort of birth control – and he also knew he was more than ready to spend a week in bed with her, running up a ludicrous bill for carryout and not putting on anything more than towels after showers.

"Meredith, he wrote to say he's going to try to take vacation! How wonderful is that?" Brena was waving Nick's letter in one hand and its envelope in the other, garnering quite a bit of attention at the nurse's station. She'd stopped by with lunch for Meredith, knowing she'd be too busy to go out and get anything for herself, and had waited to open her mail til she got to the desk. Shuffling past the flyers and ads, she pounced on Nick's letter like a cat on a mouse.

"Er, yeah. That'll be great, Bren." Meredith couldn't help but be flat; she finally had Nick's test results in, but hadn't opened them. One, Nick hadn't given her permission for this particular set, and two, she was in no hurry to find out what was in the envelope. When the swab results had come in, she'd called Nick immediately, knowing that whatever was in there was curable. Fixable. Something that, with a bottle of pills and a long lecture, could be remedied. This envelope, however, was a bit heavier – in consequence and in paperwork.

"Oh, Mer, I'm sorry. You must miss Claudio so much and here I am babbling like an idiot about Nick. I'm being rude. Really, I apologize." Brena's face fell, and she was quick to stuff the envelope into her purse. She reached for Meredith's hands, trying to save the moment. "I know! I'll take you out for drinks after work, how's that? Our usual pub, I'll even spring for billiards? It'll give us something to do."

"Of course, Bren. And don't worry about Switzy. I'm sure he's organizin' some chocolate-fondue-surprise of his own." Meredith winked, and dug into her shepherd's pie. "Scoot, now. I'll drop by once I'm out of scrubs."

With a lightness to her step, and one hand in her purse – Meredith knew she was clutching Nick's letter – Brena smiled, waved goodbye, and saw herself out of Magee, headed back to the brownstone to pick an outfit for the evening. She'd lately taken to writing back to Nick, though it was in a notebook; she'd had no idea where to send letters in response, and realized he'd never told her where he lived. 'Ah well. Maybe it's one of those things we'll talk about when he's here on vacation. He probably doesn't stay anywhere in particular, given how much he travels. That must be it.'

Pursing her lips, Meredith reached for her cell phone, punching up Claudio's number. It rang just long enough that she was beginning to think he wouldn't answer, but he caught it just before it went to voicemail. Taking a deep breath, she cut him off before he could even say hello.

"If Nick's around and you're in a place you can talk, put him on the phone. Paperwork's in."

It wasn't how Nick wanted to get his results; it wasn't a position Nick wanted to be in, in the first place, but indiscriminate fucking leads to definitive consequences, as he was finding out. Or rather, as he was about to find out, having just given Meredith permission to crack the seal on the envelope and read his results.

"Ready?"

"Fuck no I'm not ready, Meredith. You think I wanna hear I probably fucked myself up for life? That I probably have some shit that's gonna kill me? You think I wanna know I'm gonna be walking around with lifelong proof of what a fucking idiot I was? I mean, fuck, grand irony is I'm in a goddamned hotel room and I'm gonna listen to you tell me what a dumbfuck I am for all the shit I pulled in hotel rooms. Shit, how am I gonna explain this to Brena? What the fuck am I gonna tell her? I mean, how do you explain this to someone? Like, sorry your mom and dad died, but guess what, I get to be funeral number three? Jesus Christ, what was I thinking? What was I doing, I mean, fuck, it's not like I was thinking, we know what I was do-"

"You're clean, can you shut the fuck up now?" Meredith, acidic and terse, cut in directly over him, as she'd been skimming his results while he'd been ranting and raving, "And you owe me a check for $948; I told you this shit had to be paid in cash, so I covered it for you. Go book your vacation and give the money to Claudio." Cutting the call off, Meredith cradled her head in her hands. "And, go buy a fuckin' lotto ticket, you idiot," she whispered to herself, "I will never understand how you dodged this."

Nick couldn't help it, Claudio was the closest person to him – in physical proximity, anyway – and was thus tackled to the ground in what was meant to be a celebratory hug but ended up being a bad case of rug burn and a near-miss of slamming his head into the bedframe.

"I take it your news was good, my friend?"

Pinning Claudio by the shoulders, roaring with laughter to the point his eyes were watering – though that may have also been with relief, Nick couldn't quite tell, it was all he could do to choke out, "I'm an idiot, and I'm an asshole, but fuck me, I'm clean."

"Nick, I think it is the fucking that was the problem."

Laughing again, Nick rolled off Claudio onto the hotel room floor, trying desperately to catch his breath while reaching up to grope for his phone on the bed. He nearly dropped it on his face, but managed to punch up the number for Talent Relations, and tried to, as calmly as possible, request the next available week off for personal time. Whatever paper-pusher Nick reached tried to brush him off, saying the schedule couldn't be moved, so Nick played his trump card. Sighing heavily, he put a quiver in his voice, and explained he needed the time to check in with Magee; he wanted to be sure he was on the right track with his concussion treatment as he'd started having headaches again. 'Gotcha. One quick stop-in with Dr. Morgan, where he says nothing, does nothing, and changes nothing, and then I'm free to do what I want. And you can't tell me no, Corporate Concussion Campaigners!' At the mention of headaches and concussions, Claudio punched him solidly in the arm, but smiled knowingly, and Nick could hear pages in a day planner being flipped rapidly. Unsurprisingly, the scheduler hurriedly said that a block of time suddenly appeared to be free, and if Nick could just make it through the next three weeks with a reduced workload – more media, less mat-impact – he'd be free to take ten days, not just seven. Agreeing readily, Nick ended the call and sat down at the table, writing to tell Brena that 'trying' to get time off had now become actually having time off, and they had so, so, much to talk about when he got there, and he hoped she'd want to go out and dance. Just once, maybe. He really wanted to buy her a dress, if she'd let him.

Dinner was wonderful – Brena could bake but wasn't much of a cook, Nick had figured that out early on, when she'd continued to take Deaglan out to restaurants and only ever brought in cakes and things from home – so he'd picked something small, out of the way, and Mediterranean for dinner, immediately following his flight. The restaurant was far from Brena's neighborhood and price range, and while the former was intentional, the latter was not so much, and he hoped she wouldn't be offended. He'd texted her a link to the restaurant's menu and website the day before he flew in, which was followed a few minutes later by a text from Meredith that read, 'What did you do that she actually wants to go shopping?' Nick hadn't considered Brena might not have owned anything to wear to a 'nice' dinner, but that was something to talk about later. Right now, he hoped she and Meredith were having fun with it.

Brena's shoes didn't look impossible, so Nick suggested a walk along the river after dinner, and managed to luck his way into finding a shop that specialized in wine and aged spirits. He was positive Brena knew about the place already, but was kind enough to look surprised and charmed when he suggested they go in and pick out something to drink later that night. They caught a cab back to her brownstone, and Brena tossed her keys to Nick almost casually, letting him open the door and go in ahead of her.

Fetching glasses would only take a minute, Nick figured, and he tried to rush to turn the locks while Brena headed into the kitchen. He wanted to get the door shut and then stop her before she got any ideas on going into the parlor, but his hands wouldn't cooperate. His fingers tripped over each other, the locks seemed stiff and unwieldy, the chain tangled around itself, and all he could do was sigh and rest his head against the door, knowing that it would be up to Brena to come and save him from himself – without having any idea what his problem could be this time.

The heels of her shoes ticked away down the hall, and he heard the high-pitched song of the glasses coming to rest on the bedside tables in their room, followed by the heavy thump of the bottle. Brena followed by doing what Nick assumed was kicking off her shoes; her feet sounded lighter as she padded up the hall behind him, and her hands slipped around him to finish the fumbling job he'd started on the locks, followed by loosening his tie and dropping his cufflinks into his suit jacket pockets.

"Come with me, mo trodaire?"

Nick prayed for steadier hands in their bedroom, and let Brena lead him down the hall, part by the sleeve and part with a smile. She seemed confident, much more so than Nick would have expected, and he tried to calm himself with that knowledge as she shut the bedroom door behind them both, turning the lock there as well. 'Brena wouldn't be here – in the bedroom, I mean – if she didn't want to be. With me. And just because we're here doesn't mean we're gonna do anyth-'

"Settle in, Nick," Brena's eyes looked glazed; it might have been the multiple glasses of wine at dinner, it might have been anticipation, "As I said last time, I'd like to." She guided him back toward the bed, and while he did manage to sit, he knew he looked up at her stupidly, landed too hard on the edge of the bed, was made up of a hundred uncoordinated motions that made no sense together – his hands were suddenly the least of his problems.

"Like...like to...uh...what?" Nick worked feverishly at toeing his shoes from his feet; he figured they were a safer bet than buttons and Brena might be a better choice to handle those and his suit jacket. It was bad enough his throat had suddenly seemed to catch on itself; he couldn't for the life of him figure out why his voice had picked now to go up several octaves.

"Everything, mo trodaire." Brena settled over Nick's lap before pushing him back onto his elbows across the bed and making short work of the buttons on his shirt. Only moments before, they'd seemed to be individual chess games to him, yet now they were undone and she was sliding her hands over his shoulders. "I think I'd like everything."

Overwhelmed by possibilities and not wanting Brena to give him anything else to ponder, Nick slid his arms from his shirt and jacket, laid back, and pulled her down into a kiss, his hands finally having the good sense to work at the zipper on the back of her dress. It should have been simple enough, a straight pull down while she held still over him, and even that almost proved to be too much. Bending her arms into an impossible backwards knot, Brena managed to guide him through it, then pulled away. There, she sat up, paused, and fixed a look on him that was entirely too thoughtful and gentle and kind, given the prurient chasms Nick's mind had fallen into as Brena's dress had fallen down from her shoulders.

Once again, she hadn't bothered with a bra, not that Nick could complain, and the fabric – it was blue, as though she'd read his mind – had puddled around her waist and was as close as color could be to the sheen on her hair. The look in her eyes, though – Nick wasn't sure what to make of it, and it concerned him.

"Bren...what're you..." Unsure, Nick trailed off, trying to find some toehold for his mind to stand on, a way to form a sentence or suggest an action, and came up blank.

"Doing?" Sliding off of Nick and letting her dress drop to the floor, Brena gave up on modesty – not that there was any to be had, the bra wasn't the only thing she hadn't bothered with, and then set herself on her hip, next to him on the bed, "Hoping you slide up to the pillows a bit, that's all."

Nick slid up the bed, turned, turned again, decided pants were a hindrance to anything he'd want now or later, and since his shirt was already gone, the rest of his clothing may as well follow. Again, his hands fell over themselves, and Brena gently lifted them away, kissing his fingers as she moved. There was silence in the room, other than the rustle of fabric as Brena pulled at it and the sound of the occasional car passing outside, and in that silence Nick finally broke.

"Bren, I don't know what I'm doing." 'I don't how to have a real conversation with you about condoms since we're already naked. Aren't we supposed to do that before? I don't know how to not fuck you – I don't want to fuck you – I don't even want to just sleep with you – I want you to feel good. Better than good. I don't know how to do that. I don't know what to say to you, or how to look at you. How not to look at you. Touch you. We kinda did that before, but that was when I knew it wasn't gonna end in sex. This is when I know it's supposed to end in sex. This isn't Amy, I know that. Or Nicole. I know that, too. I know I'm fucking terrified of that.'

"Well, mo trodaire, let's hope I remember enough for the both of us, then."

Brena simply kissed Nick back into quietude, untangling all of the knots in his mind, steadying his hands until they found their way home. What was easy to distantly admire in a generously low-cut dress was somehow more difficult to appreciate when under his palms, but Brena was both patient and persistent – traits that paid dividends when she encouraged his hands to drift lower, move faster, and ultimately turn her back into an arch he didn't think was possible, but was certainly testament to her flexibility. Nick had no idea how he'd done it when he still hadn't managed to settle his nerves, but if his edginess was bothering Brena, she hadn't let on.

Nick hadn't expected Brena to do or know half the things she did – the other half, he had to learn himself. It wasn't that she was wild, or loud, she wasn't drawing her nails down his back, she wasn't biting him or screaming his name – it was that she was the opposite of those things, and he had to force the study of her, because it was all foreign to him. She'd been prepared, after a fashion – all that time in doctor's offices, she quipped, and none of it was for her, for pills – but she'd managed it again, spared Nick an awkward conversation and simply handed him a small foil packet and shrugged, told him to hold onto the condom, took the initiative herself even if the responsibility was his.

And oh, the initiative. If they'd waited for him to move first, they'd have been there all night – such was the way of paralytic fear – but Brena had no such reservations about laying hands on Nick, and she noticed more than once that she could get him to produce a perfect toe-point, depending on what she was doing or how she was moving. Foreplay was a wonderful thing, she reasoned, but so was sex, and while she barely remembered the last time she'd had it, she was more than ready to make up for lost opportunity. Sliding further back atop Nick, Brena stopped where she knew her body was both tease and promise, and waited for his response.

"Jesus...Brena...I mean...Christ. Yeah."

"I'll take that to be a compliment, mo trodaire. And perhaps a request?"

Nick was panting, half-wishing he'd thought to bring a glass of water to bed and wondering if it'd be a good time to open the bottle of whatever Brena had talked him into buying. He couldn't read the label, but her smile was broad enough that he didn't care. It was whiskey, it was imported; good enough for him. He marveled at the complete lack of understanding he had of time – he felt like it had been both minutes and hours since the foreplay had started. Nick could content himself with what they'd done if it went no further, but part of him was howling, let her go on.

"Ready to compliment me again?"

Lost in his reverie, Nick refocused on Brena. Her skin shimmered and she hovered over him, ophidian and beautiful. Scrambling, he groped for and then tore wildly at the foil packet, almost – definitely – desperate, and Brena stilled him.

"Easy now, Nick. For both of us."

Some of it, Nick considered later, was probably self-preservation; if he rushed her, no matter what position she was in or how much they'd done beforehand, she'd be miserable. It was Brena, she'd put up with it for him, but he didn't want that for her. His hands finally found something resembling coherent motion – he was shocked he'd managed to draw the response from her that he had, earlier, because he'd felt like nothing but fumbles and small disasters – but she nearly sang for him, everything in her body taut and lost in the moment. This, though, this was everything he wanted and everything he feared he'd ruin, and when she finally settled back over him, it stopped being a want and became a need, air and water and Brena, or else he wouldn't survive. Nick knew she had to lead the dance, had to be the metronome to the steps they took, and though he was sure the tension had come off of her face and something sly and pleased had crept on, he was unsure why she hadn't moved at all.

"Brena?" It felt like time froze around them. "You okay?"

"Enjoying the moment, mo trodaire. And so should you." Pulling at Nick's shoulders, Brena brought him up to sitting, and from there, it was all a swirl of motion, of legs blurring around him, hips that flexed and rolled, arms that turned him, guided him, and he was sure he never wanted her to leave his lap, but was equally sure that if Brena continued to trace her fingertips down his spine, press her lips along his collarbones, and lift herself along the rest of him, she was going to have reason to find a new seating arrangement much sooner than he wanted.

"Bren, wait. Please?" Nick was struggling for air, for control, for words that wouldn't make him sound like he was on the brink of collapse. His hands found their way to her hips, and while she did slow her pace, she looked at him quizzically.

Reaching up, Brena tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear and set her rhythm in a low, sinking swirl. "What am I waiting for?" Her arms rested casually over his shoulders, and she looked like she was half-teasing him. "You seem quite pleased."

"Yeah," Nick panted, "Yeah, I know...I am...I don't wanna...I want you...you to..."

"Tomorrow. Tonight, you." And with that, Brena pulled Nick's face down onto her shoulder, turned him against her neck, refused to let him argue the point, which was all just as well. Minutes later, he wouldn't have had the words for it, wouldn't have been able to tell anyone so much as his name, and could barely find the edge of the sheets to pull over him and Brena when they collapsed next to each other, breathless and wonderfully flush.

"Besides," Brena chuckled, "It's not like I didn't...enjoy it, shall we say. You've wonderful hands, mo trodaire, when you relax enough to use them. And we've got -"

It was then she realized Nick was soundly asleep next to her, and she had absolutely no idea what to do.