Room 303, Monday morning

[nadiathesaint]

The thing about being sick is that it tends to give one some really odd dreams.

Not that Nadia's dreams weren't often odd, anyway.

But Sunday night, her slight fever combined with the confessional conversations she'd had and with the small spark of whatever that showed her things about her friends and turned her dreams into something really strange. The sort of strange that's, fortunately, only half-remembered upon waking but enough to keep one in a weird mood all day.

We won't get into what those dreams were, suffice to say that she was pretty well curled around Walter by the time the sun rose, and probably holding onto him pretty damned hard.

Comments

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter woke early on in the clinging to watch Nadia, ready to wake her if she seemed to be having one of those dreams, but that was hard to discern. So he held her and watched her sleep and thought a lot about the strange conversations of the night before.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia whimpered in her sleep, then seemed to stop breathing.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

No. No. No.

"Nadia." Walter was ready for anything, knowing the way she often woke. "Wake up."

Breathe!

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia woke up gasping, her hand flying to the side of her neck as she lurched back away from Walter. "Wha--"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter stayed where he was, not making any sudden moves, but not moving away, either. "You were dreaming. You're in my room. You're safe."

[nadiathesaint]

She flicked her eyes around the room and nodded, but didn't let go of her neck.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Bad one?" he asked, pretty much already sure of the answer.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia swallowed. "Yeah." She pulled her hand away from her neck slowly and looked at it. Her hand was clean, but she still. . . . "A-am I bleeding?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"No. It was just a dream. You aren't physically hurt." He reached out to her, slowly, just to to take her hand.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia grabbed onto his hand and squeezed. Like she'd said last night, he kept her feeling centered, and right now the world seemed to be listing drastically to the left. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened her mouth to tell him she was okay. "There was a table and I fell and then something was in my neck and I couldn't breathe. . . ."

And apparently whatever had her babbling last night had not gone away yet.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter squeezed her hand back and opened his mouth to tell her she was okay. "You stopped breathing in your sleep. That's when I woke you."

Dammit.

[nadiathesaint]

And to think, Nadia had been working on calming herself down. "Jesus Christo. That's . . . bad."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter scooted around to find a better position to hold her. "Have you had that dream before?"

[nadiathesaint]

Deny everything. Don't get him worried. "Not the whole thing, but the ending. Once before, a little while ago." Goddammit!

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

That was not good at all. "Did you have trouble breathing then, do you remember?" What if she stopped breathing in her sleep and just didn't start again?

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia shook her head, trying to reassure him. "I have no idea."

Okay, that didn't work so well. Let's try that again. "The dreams have been getting better, though. Maybe it's just because I was sick?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Maybe," Walter conceded. "You didn't seem to have trouble the last couple of times we slept together."

He brushed some hair out of his face and sighed. "I can use this as a good reason for you to come sleep with me any time you get sick, I suppose."

[nadiathesaint]

"Not that I'm objecting, but I don't get sick very often. Not nearly as often as I get injured."

And why did she have to say that?

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"You're right. And you have nightmares when you're injured, too, don't you?"

[nadiathesaint]

"Seems that way. Because, apparently, just being injured doesn't suck enough."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"So, if you get sick, or hurt, or you just want company, you come sleep with me," Walter said firmly, then added, "Please? It can't be easy to wake up alone after those dreams."

[nadiathesaint]

"It really isn't," Nadia agreed softly. "You can ask me to spend the night with you, too, if you want. And I can check with Jamie so we're not always invading Al's space."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"I like when you spend the night. I don't want you to stay over just when you're sick or hurt."

[nadiathesaint]

"I like it, too, but I don't want to make either of our roommates uncomfortable." Nadia shrugged. "I guess it's too bad you didn't figure out you wanted to date me until after I got a new roommate." She shook her head. "And that was really rude, and can we pretend I didn't just say that?"

Maybe if she spoke in Spanish for the rest of the day? At least then she'd know that Walter wouldn't understand it when she said something like that. . . .

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"It wasn't rude, it was true." Walter said and then smiled ruefully. "Rude was when I told Dawn that the reason her boyfriend noticed her trying to pick his pocket was because he was well trained, she needed more practice, or he was gay."

[nadiathesaint]

"Or all three?" Nadia thought for a moment. "And how did you end up talking to Dawn about picking her boyfriend's pocket?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"She asked how I ended up hunting vampires, I told her about picking Alucard's pocket, then she told me about trying to pick her boyfriend's pocket while wearing a corset on Saturday."

[nadiathesaint]

"You picked Dracula's pocket? Was that before or after you started dating him?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"That was how I met him, so before. And I never dated him, I just spent time with him and had sex with him." Walter winced. "Can we talk about something else before I say something else stupid?"

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia shook her head. "That's fine with me, because I don't really want to hear about your sex life with a vampire. Because it still freaks me out to even think about the fact that you've had sex with a creature that's several centuries old. How am I supposed to compete with that? And I think I'm going to start speaking Spanish now, because I really didn't mean to tell you that."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"You aren't competing with Alucard. You're alive and warm and a girl, and I've never voluntarily had sex with a girl, so there's no comparison to him anyway."

Walter clapped his hand over his mouth and looked rather desperately at Nadia.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia went pale. "Voluntarily? What do you mean 'voluntarily'? Who do I have to go kill for you?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter dropped his hand, the damage was already done. "Adella." Not Pippi. Not Pippi.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia blinked. "Who the fuck is Adella?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"The fairy who possessed Pippi." God, could this get any worse?

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia just sat with her mouth open for a moment.

"Okay," she said softly. "I probably can't go kill her for you. Sorry."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"She's already dead or back in Hell or both." Walter clenched his hands into fists. "Where she belongs."

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia's mind was still whirling. Walter and Pippi had had sex (except it wasn't them! except it WAS, physically). They'd had sex possibly while she was waiting at the restaurant, or even while she was unconscious on the floor or in the clinic and they'd. Had. Sex.

"I wish I could. I wish I could find both of them and kill them. Really slowly."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"How is this going to affect us?" Walter asked. "You've forgiven so much that happened. Can you forgive that?"

[nadiathesaint]

"Forgive them? No." Nadia looked at him carefully. "But there's nothing to forgive you for. You and Pippi were victims in that case, Walter, more than any of the rest of us. I just wish I could have done more to help."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Thank you." Walter visibly relaxed. "I haven't liked keeping it secret from you, but I've been ashamed. And before you tell me not to blame myself, I'd like to remind you who was sure she'd given me the plague last night."

[nadiathesaint]

"That wasn't outside the realm of possibility." Nadia shrugged. "Of course, now I have to live up to two ancient beings. Though I can't help but wonder if you learned any tricks, because that Adella woman looked really pleased with what the other Walter was doing and I did not just say that outloud."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"You did, and I spent most of the time they were having sex trying to think of other things, but I do have a working understanding of female anatomy I wouldn't have had otherwise."

Could he just crawl under the bed until all this truthtelling stopped?

[nadiathesaint]

"That's good to know. It can be kind of frustrating to have to train a guy right from the beginning. And we need to stop talking now, I think, so could you kiss me instead?"

[ooc: aaaaaand I just got laid off! Wheeee!]

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter nodded and kept his mouth shut until he could kiss her. Surprisingly, he felt better for having gotten that lingering secret out of the closet.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia kissed back enthusiastically even as she hoped that Al wouldn't wake up and see them.

[ooc: I dunno, part of me is elated. I've been so tense for the last month since I found out the layoffs were happening.]