trans_9 | I am a rock

Entry tags:

I am a rock

Cassie didn't bother greeting her friends when they returned from the mission. She'd read the briefing, she knew they'd be fine. And she didn't want to have to see that witch.

Instead, once she was on her own, she slipped into the Sensorium. Not to see her dad, although she was really tempted, but for some good old fashioned stress relief.

She had Stacy bring up from her memory the scene from her fight with the Growing Man, not too long before she was brought here. There were no civilians to worry about this time. No step-father to nearly paralyze. It was just her and the Growing Man.

"Come on, show me what you've got."

Cassie ducked the Growing Man's fist and struck his chin with the flat of his palm, knocking his head up. The moment she hit him, the holo-android grew but she was expecting that. She wanted that. She wanted to fight someone who could keep pace with her, who would grow as she grew, and she was growing. She was going to grow until she worried about hitting the upper limits of the room. Just this once, she was going to take all the anger pounding through her and use it.

It was a long, drawn out fight and it wasn't easy. She hadn't been able to block all the blows. The sensation from her face had long since gone from stinging to numb. Her head spun and she stumbled. She shook her head, wrenched the telephone pole from the ground, and stabbed the Growing Man's external circuitry, ending the scenario.

She should have felt better. She didn't.

Wiping the sweat and tears from her face, Cassie shrank down to normal size. "Punching bag. I need a punching bag." She was pretty sure her hands were bruised all ready from constantly hitting the Growing Man but she didn't care right now.

The punching bag appeared and almost immediately Cassie hit it.

It was going to be a long, long time before she left the Sensorium.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Samus could be quite stealthy when she wanted to. Perhaps it wasn't any of her business, but she couldn't help watching Cassie in the Sensoriums. She had only looked in to see if it was empty. It wasn't, but the scene was much more interesting than Samus had anticipated.

Cassie fought with emotion. Samus didn't know why this caught her interest, (she was supposed to be the cold, calculated hunter who valued focus over everything, letting emotions take over especially), but she recognized there was something personal in the way the girl fought. Despite all attempts to discourage them, personal motives were something she was quite familiar with, and maybe that's what caught Samus' eye. She didn't really know for sure.

"That was quite the fight," she stated rather matter-of-factly.

"Yeah well, it wasn't quite so impressive in real life." Cassie wiped some some more sweat from her forehead. "It was also quite a bit shorter. People got hurt anyway." So much for her Initiative training.

"But that's the point of training." To improve. To move on. Although it was tough not to, a professional can't dwell on a failure, only move on to ensure the next fight isn't.

"Yeah, but this wasn't training. This was just... a bit of a workout." Yeah, she was lying through her teeth there.

"Or a bit of stress release," Yeah, Samus knew those "workouts" well.

Nate had been nearby, putting his new suit through its paces. He'd finished most of the upgrades he'd planned, and though the weapons systems still needed a thorough going over, he could at least test out the more mundane aspects of the suit. Satisfied with that, he'd been practicing flight with the new design in a nearby Sensorium. Having finished, he had his notes recorded and was on his way back to engineering to make the pertinent adjustments and run the final diagnostics on his weapon systems, when he heard the noises coming from the other Sensorium unit.

Curious, he stepped through the door and paused, staring over at Cassie for a long moment. His brows furrowed, and he sighed inwardly. He hated seeing her like this. In fact, he probably would have preferred it if she'd been talking to her imaginary father.

He watched for a moment longer, before walking over and laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. He knew she'd said she wanted to be alone, and the lack of Jonas probably meant that still stood, but he could see her hands. And he didn't like to hink of her hurting herself like that.

"Cassie..." He spoke quietly.

Cassie's first reaction to the hand on her shoulder was to tense, then she made herself relax. "I thought it would make me feel better." She wrinkled her nose, there was a small stream of blood flowing down it that she brushed away.

He nodded, loosening his grip slightly when he felt her tense under his hand. "I know. I just...don't want you to hurt yourself." He frowned when she wiped at the blood, his eyes looking back into her intently.

Cassie avoided looking at Nate. "Well, too late for that." She mumbled. "Not any worse than how I feel."

His gaze fell to the floor for a moment before he looked back up at her. Raising a hand, he gently brushed her hair back from her face. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for you. But you're not alone." He offered her the tiniest of smiles. "I'm here. And I'm not leaving you."

"You'd better not." Cassie whispered, leaning forward, her lips almost brushing his. "Nate..."

He slid a gauntleted arm gently around her neck, resting his forehead against hers. This reminded him of the first time they'd met. The first time they'd kissed. He'd been in unfamiliar armor then too. "I promise. I'll never leave you Cassie..."

There was a long chain of shattering events in Cassie's life. Her mother leaving her when she could barely walk, her father going to prison, the long stay in the hospital. Then her mother taking her away from her dad, losing her father forever, losing the people she'd thought of as uncles and aunts, as family. Losing Nate. Everything all the way up to the here and now, it had all ripped Cassie apart inside. She wanted to be strong, to act like there was nothing wrong and she didn't need anyone but that was a lie. She did need someone, but more than that she needed someone to stay with her.

Whatever words Cassie was about to say choked in her throat. Cassie stroked Nate's cheek with one hand and put her arm around him. "I'm not leaving you either." She closed what little distance there was between them and kissed Nate.

Nate didn't know. If he had, it was a safe bet that he probably wouldn't have let her out of his sights so easily. He would have done anything and everything possible to make her feel safe and secure. Though it would probably have meant that he would have worried about how being Stature affected her far more than he already did. As it stood, for the moment, he wasn't in any position to really be worrying about anything.

The moment her lips touched his, his breath caught in his throat and he held her tight, brushing his fingers gently through her hair. If he'd died at this moment, he would have died fulfilled.

Cassie really shouldn't be doing this. She should be thinking about her boyfriend, the one who was always there for her, the one who would be crushed if he knew what she was doing right now.

Problem was, she wasn't thinking anything right now except how perfect Nate felt. How loved she felt.

There was no way she was ending this kiss, only deepening it.

Some part of Nate knew that what he was doing was wrong. That small part that reminded him that he'd decided to be better than this. That he'd decided not to get between his 'brother and Cassie. But that small part was drowned out by the flood of emotion that was quickly overwhelming him.

All his basest desires came flooding to the fore. How much he simply wanted her. How it had felt, that first time they'd kissed, how his heart beat in his throat and his breath caught everytime they were this close. How unfair it was that he'd lost her in the first place.

So it was that when she pressed deeper into the kiss, he only too easily followed suit, pulling her tightly against himself.

If there were any possible way to get closer to Nate, Cassie would have taken it. He had no shirt collar to grab onto to tug him even closer so Cassie could only press him close, one arm around his waist and one hand on the back of his neck.

She drew back briefly to catch her breath. "I love you." Cassie leaned in and kissed Nate again. "I love you so much."

For a moment, he almost resented the fact that he'd deiced to test his armor today. It got in the way at times like this. But the semi-rational part of his brain told him that having nothing but a layer of flimsy cloth between himself and Cassie at this moment would probably have been a horrible idea.

Hearing her say those words though, he couldn't help the smile that spread across his face as he nuzzled gently against her cheek. "I love you too. Never stopped."

Cassie smiled, kissed him again, and-

Suddenly remembered one very important fact, or rather one very important person: her boyfriend.

Cassie gasped. "Oh God!" And that wasn't a good type of exclamation. "Jonas!"

The moment the kissing stopped, the moment he heard her gasp, it seemed that all his higher brain functions flooded back in to fill the empty black void that had been his mind for the past few moments.

Hearing the name she exclaimed, he froze for a moment, forcing himself not to recoil, but instead, slowly untangle himself from her. That's right. She was with Jonas. What was he doing here? What had he been thinking?

His gaze fell to the floor. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

For some strange and inexplicable reason ~~hormones~~ Cassie was finding it very hard to let go of Nate. As in next to impossible.

"No, it was me- I never should have." You could step back anytime now, Cass.

He lifted his hands to cup her face gently, brushing his fingers lightly across her skin.

"No. It's...I should know better. I'm sorry." Really Nate... saying that while you're still touching her... is not very encouraging.

"It's not your fault it's- oh screw it." Before she could change her mind Cassie kissed Nate again. The one arm wrapped around Nate's waist pulled him closer.

Edited 2010-01-09 22:44 (UTC)

"It is it's m-mmph!" He was abruptly cut of as her lips were pressed to his again, and for a moment, the alarm bells went of in his brain, before everything seemed to dull again, and he wasn't thinking about anything except pulling her close against himself again.

There was a voice in Cassie's head that was yelling. Jonas was good to her, Jonas was beyond good to her, he was amazing. He trusted her and now she was here making out with Nate. Unfortunately, she couldn't hear that voice of reason over the pounding of her own heart and the only thing she could think about right now was how much she really wanted something to pin Nate against.

Which was possibly why Stacy pulled up a bed. Which she then pinned Nate against.

Edited 2010-01-10 07:45 (UTC)

Under normal circumstances, Nate's inner voice would have stopped him short a long time ago. But for some reason, it was muffled, quiet. Did he want this then? He didn't notice the bed Stacy had pulled up. At least, not until Cassie was on top of him and he was pinned down. His eyes opened for a moment, and he pulled back slightly looking up into her eyes.

There was a hesitance there. A feeling that he knew they shouldn't have been doing this. But after everything they'd been through, they deserved some comfort didn't they?

Leaning up, he placed a kiss just under her jaw, freeing a hand to slide it around her, brushing his fingertips gently across the small of her back.

The rational part of Cassie's mind was quickly buried in the torrent of senses washing over her. She was only dimly aware of the details of what she was doing. Her hands went from around Nate's waist to clawing at the armor in an attempt to get it off while she kissed his mouth, then his neck and at first she didn't notice when her lips passed over the scar that ran along Nate's throat.

Nate sent the armor a neurokinetic message to power down, the high powered magnets that held the various pieces together clicked off, and the metal expanded, his gauntlets sliding off his hands as they traced up along Cassie's spine to tangle in her hair. She would find it easier to get his armor off now. But all that fled his mind the instant her lips brushed his scar. A shudder ran through him, his eyes squeezing shut. That felt...insanely good.

Her hands were still on his armor when Cassie stopped. She had no idea if that was a good shudder or a bad one.

"Nate?" She asked softly.

(http://img193.imageshack.us/i/smiledu.png/)

His eyes slid only part way open when she stopped. He smiled up at her, through those half lidded eyes, moving a hand to her cheek.

"Mm..Cass?" His voice was hushed, as if he didn't want to break the moment by speaking.

Any protests still lingering in the back of Cassie's mind vanished at that look.

"I love you." Cassie kissed Nate on the lips this time.

She pulled away his armor and-

And they are both doused with freezing cold holographic water.

||Cassandra, Nathaniel, cease and desist procreative activities immediately.||

The best description of Nate's expression would probably a mix between horrifically 'AUGH' and terribly amusingly shocked. After an initial (verbal) "AUGH!" he sputtered and pushed himself up just slightly.

"Stacy... what?! We weren't even- come on."

"STACY!" Cassie shrieked and practically flung herself off of Nate. She was soaked and freezing and so was Nate and-

"Oh shit. What did- oh shit." Cassie trembled, and not just because she was cold.

||If you intend to engage in procreative activities, you must report to the Medbay and receive contraceptive shots.||

"We didn't even- Alright. God. Just leave us alone!" He shouted at the AI.

The second Cassie was off, Nate sat bolt upright. He pushed his soaking wet hair out of his eyes, and pressed a hand to his head. Well, that hadn't helped his headache at all. Looking over at Cassie, he noticed her trembling.

Yanking a dry blanket from...somewhere, he wrapped it around her shoulders gently before moving to sit on the edge of the bed, holding his pounding head in his hands. "We didn't...we didn't do anything. It's...we didn't do anything." He finished lamely.

"We were about to." Cassie sat on the bed, then thought better of it and stood, keeping her back to Nate.

"I..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't do this to Jonas. Or to you." What was wrong with her?

Cassie set the blanket down on the bed and headed for the Sensorium exit.

He reached out try to stop her. But she was out of arms reach before he could do anything. "Cassie, wait. I'm sorry!" He stood up and ran to cut her off, barring her exit.

He didn't touch her, thinking better of it, even though every fiber of his being wanted to do something to fix the situation. Something so that she wouldn't have that expression on her face anymore.

"It's not your fault, Cassie. We're both..." Why couldn't he speak properly? Why wasn't his brain working? "It's..." He took a deep breath, looking into her eyes. "Please..."

"Nate," Cassie stared at the floor. "Jonas deserves better than this. And- and you deserve..." She took a deep breath. "Someone better than me. Someone who actually has a handle on- on her feelings and hormones and- and please just let me leave."

His hands balled into fists and he pressed them hard against his forehead, trying to think straight to the throbbing. "I don't...it's just that when I'm with you.." My headaches go away? Everything seems right? What was there to say that could possibly make the situation alright?

He stepped to the side. "It's not your fault...I'm sorry."

"I love you too." Cassie walked through the arch and paused. "But I don't think we should see each other anymore." She summoned as much willpower as she could to force herself to move again. And she wouldn't have to move very far, only to the next room.

She'd all ready disappointed her boyfriend and her friends, one more disappointment wouldn't matter.

His eyes never left the floor as he let her walk out. What was he supposed to do now. The Sensorium had switched back to its default setting, dumping the parts of his discarded armor onto the floor. Walking over, he picked up the pieces and began slipping them on again. Maybe if he ran a few tests he'd forget about it for awhile.

His headaches however, didn't seem like it would be leaving anytime soon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am a rock

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject