Forgetting
by Vanessa Nichols


E-MAIL: nessi_anne@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: http://www.stoic-simplicity.net/anr/ STATUS: Complete
CATEGORY: Daniel/Janet, Angst, danandjan 2002 Christmas Challenge
RATING: NC17
SUMMARY: She doesn't dream. Not like this.
SONGOGRAPHY: Give You Back (Vertical Horizon)
DISCLAIMERS: All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of MGM, World Gekko Corp and Double Secret productions. I made no money off the production of this fan fiction and no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. Previously unrecognized characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
FEEDBACK: Feedback inspires. Please send some today. *g*
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Sio and Sel for the read-through's. Apologies for more weird-ass-ness. I'm seeking treatment for it, honest. Oh, and, yeah--Merry Christmas y'all. Feedback's adored.

* * * * *
Forgetting by Vanessa Nichols
* * * * *

I need to know if you were real
'Cause I've been known to get it wrong
When the memory comes
I'll say I'm always in the dark

* * * * *

"Am I dreaming?" she asks, as naked legs slide against hers, a warm chest meeting her back. Sheets and comforter tangle slightly when an arm moves to encircle her torso, tugging her backwards into closer contact.

"Do you want to be?"

She blinks in the darkness; watches snow crystallise on her bedroom window. "I don't dream. Not like this."

A smile that she can't see sears the back of her neck. "What's wrong with this?"

"Nothing," a soft sigh, "but that's not problem."

"Then what is?" he asks, as lips soothe the burns smiling had left on her nape.

She turns in his embrace, pulling back just a little so she can see him. "You're dead."

And she's forgetting something. But she can't quite remember what.

The arm looping her waist moves, hand slipping under her pyjama top, fingers laddering her spine. "I'm here, aren't I?"

She lets him pull her closer again, countering with, "but are you real?"

His lips brush her forehead, her nose, her lips. "I'm here."

That doesn't answer her question but his hand has reached her shoulder blade now, descended slightly, drifted under her arm. Their legs twine together as he palms her breast, touch gentle. She arches into the caress, sighing.

"Then stay."

Movements slow, she lets her fingers play across his torso. Finding scars and ribs and nipples that harden when the pads of her thumbs brush back and forth. His hand slips from her breast, sinks to her waist, warms the curve of her hip through the satin of her pyjama bottoms. She's always dressed, he's always naked, and that sort of consistency must MEAN something but she can't quite figure out what.

"Is it still storming outside?" she asks, like he'd know. Like he hasn't just appeared in her bed with no warning whatsoever; an apparition--angel?--turned suddenly corporeal.

He shrugs as he shifts on the mattress, rising up to kneel beside her. She lies back and watches him watch his hands as they move to the buttons on her top. He undoes them methodically, peeling back satin wings when finished and baring her skin. Burning it with a heated gaze. Then elven caresses meander from throat to pelvis, searing a line down her sternum, butterflying over the curve of her belly. She licks her lips.

"You're so soft," he says with wonder, "so warm..."

"Real," she answers, like it was a question, and he nods reverently as his hands--both of them now--curl over her ribcage and cover her breasts. Careful attention is paid as he weighs them, fondles them, tugs gently at her nipples. An ache settles between her legs, clit throbbing. She shifts restlessly and lets her gaze trail from his eyes to his chest to his groin.

Her right hand skims over his thigh, brushes hair, envelopes his cock. She strokes him leisurely, drags her gaze back up to a chest that's starting to heave, to eyes that are darkening.

A quick flurry of limbs before she even realises they've moved and his body is warm beside her. Warm and soft and REAL. When they kiss, he tastes like twilight. Like fading sunlight and rising moonlight and everything in between. She shimmies out of her pyjama bottoms and hisses--actually hisses--when his hand moves between her legs, seeking damp flesh. Fingers trail over moist lips, slip in and out of her passage, and she's starting to burn.

They pull apart, rejoin, separate, merge and go back and forth with their foreplay. Slow and hard and always hot and burning and here-there-everywhere. He kisses her breasts, laves her nipples, bites just a little at the curving underside where a trace of sweat has started to shine. His lips hum along her sternum, tongue finding each rib, every mole, tasting and labelling her body as his.

"Cassie wants a new computer for Christmas," he says and, even though mention of her daughter at a time like now should be cold-water-like, she arches into his hands and lips.

"I know," she nods, straining for oxygen, not caring how he knows this about Cassie. Memories flutter beyond reach and forgetfulness drives all but arousal from her mind.

They twist and turn on the sheets and when his mouth finds her clit, and sucks on it hard, tonguing her mercilessly, she muffles strangled noises into her pillow. Hates the edge he can keep her on so easily, loves the way his lips and teeth and tongue all dance so very, very well over her cunt. Clenches her thighs around his head and wants this--all of this; absolutely everything; him and her and them--to go on for forever.

But it won't; the first of the forgotten things breaks free with her orgasm and she gasps with pleasure and pain as she realises that her wants will be denied. Not all of them. Not THIS. Just forever.

The only constant in death IS death.

Even on christmas eve.

His hands pave her body as he removes her legs from his shoulders, settles into the cradle of her hips. Steals tiny kisses from her lips and hides them under her jaw, in the curve of her neck, behind her ear.

"So real," he whispers, like he's praying, like he can't quite believe it.

She drags her hands over his back, feels muscles play beneath her fingertips, presses on each and every vertebrae, "yes," she sighs.

They roll and turn and when she's kneeling above him, lowering her body onto his, feeling his cock slide deep inside her, one of them groans. Maybe her, maybe him. Maybe both of them. She clenches her muscles around him, shifts this way and that, finds the right position.

"I dreamt like this," he says suddenly, eyes squeezed shut as she moves up slowly, experimentally, "before."

She sinks and frames a curious, "oh?" as their groins meet once more.

"Yeah," a groan, "Sha're."

She pauses, arches an eyebrow, bats his hands away when they slide over her thighs and try to rest on her hips. "Not a name I want to hear right now," she says.

His eyes open, a curious look residing there. Part apology, part amusement, part something else quite undefinable. "Well, it wasn't EXACTLY like this."

She arches her back, curls away from him as her hips lift and sink at this new angle. Her turn to groan. "Not like this?"

"She talked to me, said things--"

"Looks like I've been a VERY good girl this year?" her smirk is only a little uncharacteristic.

His torso rises, hands grabbing her shoulder-blades, pulling her down for a brief, hard kiss that leaves them both gasping for air. "No," he answers eventually. "Other things."

She finds a rhythm, his hips twisting counteractively to hers. "Not following you," she says, leaning forward now, her hair slipping over her shoulders and brushing his as she puts her hands on either side of his head, fists pillow, and grinds her pelvis into his on each downward thrust.

"Just saying," he groans, one hand finding her hip and gripping hard, the other teasing a stiffened nipple, "just a dream, was all."

"And this is real?" she asks.

He sighs and groans and tenses, "it has to be," he says through gritted teeth.

She seconds that statement with every laboured breath in her body as she cracks a second time, melting into twilight kisses that taste almost too good to be really real. He rolls, turning them over, hips pounding against hers as he seeks release. His cock slides in and out and she knows she won't come again but there's still pleasure there; her body vibrating with every thrust.

Then shuddering and satisfaction and he falls to the side.
"This is real," he swears, eyes closed.

It's a lie so cogent she almost believes it. Almost. But like brandy on a winter's night, realisation is burning through her body; the afterglow of satiation igniting synapses and neural pathways, forcing her to remember. "I don't dream," she repeats dully, "not like this."

His eyes open as he whispers, "I know," and he pushes hair away from her face as they lie side by side, face to face, "but it's ok."

She blinks, wonders how any of this can be ok, and then sinks forward into his embrace. His arms band her torso tightly and she clings just a little desperately as the memories return. Again. "I keep forgetting," she explains, apologises, and when he nods, she can feel his cheek rubbing against her forehead.

A roughened voice recites, "I know."

"I'm sorry," she says, because she is. She can't keep forgetting, it's not fair.

"It's ok."

It's not, but he NEVER says that.

"Give Cassie my love," comes the plea, when everything starts to blur.

"I will."

"And tell..."

"They know."

She stares into his eyes when it really begins, when the lines start to shimmer and flesh starts evaporating. Her world is dissolving before her and she fades right along with it.

"I could have loved you," he says with tears that never, ever fall, "so much."

Could have. Should have. Would have. 'Me too,' is what she doesn't say, "I know," is what she does.

Then there's nothing to hold, no one to cling to. Just air, and him, and she really shouldn't call it her bedroom anymore. It hasn't been hers for months. Not since Daniel returned, and she died, and these dreams--his dreams--their dreams began.

Repression, dissociation--forever thinking it's Daniel who's dead because she can't bring herself to remember the truth. To remember that it's not Daniel who left Cassie without a mother, not Daniel who thought there was a cure to SG7's illness in that cave on--

"Stop..." she pleads to the fading man, fading room, fading house. "Stop forgetting..." to HERSELF, most of all. "Just--"

* * * * *

The End.

Copyright Vanessa Nichols; December, 2002



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