Back into shape

Pen
Nick is on his side of the bed. Pen is on all sides of the bed. Nick is awake. Pen is not. This is not an unusual circumstance.

Tonight Pen has an arm looped around Nick's waist and her head pressed against his ribs and one leg curled so it is perhaps beneath his knees, the other one flung so her foot is not beneath the sheets and hangs over the edge of the bed. Her other arm is curled in at her chest and the curve of her lower lip is something a Victorian painter would choose to paint were he or she in need of a subject that was both innocent and guilesome at once: by guilesome we mean sensuous; the sort of sensuality only fairies were allowed or the antique airs of pagans or Arthurian myths; only they were allowed to smoulder: see.

Nick has likely, on other nights when he has stayed up to read, or found it more difficult to fall asleep than his wife, been amused by the contortions she quietly and without much fanfare goes through: she's a passionate sleeper. Sleep with purpose. What a picture.

Paintings don't drool, but life is better. Pen is not drooling at this moment. Her throat is dry; it clicks. She is wearing nothing except for the sheets and an air of unwakefulness; and here are some slow changes to make note of. Her forehead is damp; her cheeks are flushed; her breathing quickens, then slows; then stops. Then stays stopped. Then stays stopped; then evens out again. Her eyelashes are fluttering. Flutter flutter flicker.

Nick
It is not unusual for Nick to find it more difficult to fall asleep than his wife.  For all that he is reluctant to wake up in the mornings, he clings to wakefulness at night though this is not his preference.  He often lies there, blankets tucked around his toes and pillows singing their slumber song, unable to settle his mind enough to fall asleep.

So tonight he is reading, and the soft glow from his bedside lamp is the only light in the entire house at the moment.  It illuminates the curves and angles of his chest and shoulders, casts a shine upon the curls that hang over his forehead.  His eyelids are finally beginning to grow heavy.

There is a glance down at Pen, a fond one, as he feels her shift.  She moves often enough that he will do this from time to time, study her, brush a lock of hair away from her face or adjust the blankets so that she won't get cold.  His gaze lingers because something about the flutter of her eyelashes and the cadence of her breathing is not right, and after a few more flutters he closes his book and sets it aside on the table.

Nick rolls onto his side, careful not to roll onto her hair, so that her head is against the hollow of his chest instead.  He folds an arm around her and listens to her unrest.

Pen
When he rolls onto his side he upsets the delicate balance of her bed-claiming sprawl, but she is easy motion, sinking into the dip his weight makes, head resting heavy against the hollow of his chest. A lock of hair gets stuck in her mouth, and little wisps are sweat-slicked to her forehead. He listens to her unrest, right, so hears the unsteady gallop of her breathing stop again, stick in her throat and try to click free, drag with it the faint thread of a distress-sound, something unraveling, spider-silk frayed; something in the upper register that might be vague words but isn't word enough. Pen: she flinches as if whipped, jolting as if she could leave her skin behind; once she does that, and then twice, and has begun to curl in and in again like a roly poly. Here: she murmurs something, a protest, some Thing, and her forehead puckers: as if she's going to cry.

Nick
It becomes obvious now that Pen is having a nightmare from her movements, from the tightening of the skin on her forehead: she is a passionate sleeper, right.  For a moment Nick is torn when considering whether to wake her because she will almost certainly remember the dream then if he does, he will cement its memory into her waking life and make some element of it real; if he lets her sleep it may well blend into another dream and simply be forgotten.

Compassion wins out, and Nick hooks a finger through a few sweat-slicked strands of hair on her forehead to curl them away from her face, then with the back of that finger smooths the crests and valleys out of her skin.  "Pen?"  Beat.  "Wake up, you're having a bad dream."

Pen
Pen does not reply to him. If she had, it would not necessarily indicate that she was awake; she is well able to carry out complete conversations, which sound lucid, which seem clear, while she is asleep and have no recollection of them later. But she does respond, or seems to respond: another sound, this time low and distressed, and she her skin only puckers again after his finger has passed. A moment.

Another. And then she turns, an uneven circle, so her back is to Nick and both her wrists are against her forehead.

Nick
Pen rolls over to her other side, and Nick curls his body against hers, wrapping his arms around her so that he can pull her arms down and away from her forehead and hold them there.  He tucks his chin against the back of her shoulder.  "Pen?"  His voice is a gentle singsong, lullaby soft.  "Wake up."

He knows that if she were to reply to him it would not necessarily mean she is awake: nonetheless he tries.

Pen
Her back rises and falls: shallow, difficult; it is a push to breathe, see: she keeps forgetting to; then tearing a breath in, ragged. Pen, she does not fling about or flail; once Nick curls his body against hers she stays still except for her hands which try to rise again, and her shoulders curl inward, and she says what sounds like "oh," except higher -- whimper-word, non-word, vocalization: a long sound followed by an unsteady inhale and another distinctive catch.

[Strength-y strength! I cover my face!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 5) ( fail )

Nick
The long sound tears at his heart, makes him wish that she would more readily wake.  Instead he holds her still and kisses the back of her shoulder, the curve of her ear, as though it could weigh out whatever terror is making her heart beat faster.  "Pen, tell me about it," he says.

Pen
[Mm... I think that is enough noise from Nick to maybe wake up. Wp wp?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen
His voice in the delicate shell of her ear: what echoes; what sea? His voice is near, near enough to be felt as well as heard; maybe it is what reaches her; maybe it is his solidity, his careful warmth; Pen makes another sound as she comes awake: a release-sound, not-quite-grunt, not-quite-gasp; and then breathes deep and deep and deep and deep. She doesn't say anything. She thinks that Nick is asleep, maybe, or isn't quite orientated, isn't certain of herself; who she is; where she is. She shivers in reaction and her heart

her heart

Nick
She shivers and her heart, it is still thudding against her breastbone hard enough to leave a bruise, and Nick's arms tighten around her.  It may be enough to tell her alone that he is not asleep, that he meant to wake her.  "You were having a nightmare," he says, and it is not a question.

Pen
"Yeah." The promise is of tears in that syllable, as simply as it is spoken.

Nick
He can hear the tears there, the moment of suspension before they spill over, even though her back is to him.  Nick presses his lips against the back of her shoulder, taking hold of the blanket in one fist and drawing it more tightly around the two of them.  "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Pen
He is just a familiar voice at her back. He is just a familiar pressure, a familiar shape, a familiar scent. He is just: and she, with her clear gray eyes, is used to relying on her sight; her lashes are spiky and wet; her sight is blurring, blurring; water is welling, welling; Nick presses his mouth against her shoulder: a comfort; Nick draws the sheet more tight around them both and it is: a thin shield. Pen doesn't speak or move for a spell and then she pulls the blanket up, too, slipping her hand first over Nick's own, resting her fingers perfectly atop his, smoothing them down, and then: the blanket; a cave; close and warm and the illumination from Nick's bedside lamp is negligible and she says, her voice still small, but more than that: polished blank; a river stone voice. "I want it to stop. I know I can't help anybody in the past. I want them to be quiet. I don't want to remember the skinless man."

Nick
Even with her speaking to him like this, Nicholas is not entirely sure she is awake.  She has spoken like this before, remember, entire conversations: poetically, even, with a dreamland fae quality to her speech.  Reasoning with someone who has had a nightmare is never helpful anyway, though, and there are many times in life when it is better to simply listen.

There is a thoughtful hum that she can feel against her shoulder as much as she can hear.  Nick nestles closer, somehow.  She cannot see it: but there is this ridge that appears over his brows, portent of stormclouds, because it is perhaps triggering another memory -

But.  "Tell me about something else, then," he says.  "If you don't want to remember him.  Tell me about your favorite Halloween when you were little, or that story about how you and Liz got lost in the corn maze."  And he invokes her name, here, because Nick is trying bit by bit to remember the good things: it helps give him power over what happened.

Pen
Pen finds Nick's hand and pulls it, pries it, up and up, so she can rest its back against her eyes. When Nick nestles closer, she straightens her back and stretches it long and long again before sinking back into a C and fitting her hips against his and her knees against his and one foot goes over his ankle and the other one pushes on the mattress ere she settles.

"I don't want to talk about corn mazes. And I just liked the free candy and apples and other things. I guess I liked the one where I Eilonwy from the Prydain Chronicles and my school librarian Mrs. Luzzi was so excited I dressed up as a book character and she guessed it that she gave me some books, then we went to the cider mill and Heath and Charlie got to come and there was a cool haunted hay ride, and she bought us pizza. Mom worked all night and after we trick or treated we hung out at her work until she could leave, and I was the only one who stayed up."

Nick
Nick likes stories about Halloween: his own were never quite the same as the way his New England friends describe theirs.  He had never been in a corn maze or on a hayride or apple picking.  He allows Pen to adjust against him, shifts his own hips and his weight obligingly to help her in getting more comfortable.

"I ate so many candy skulls I threw up one year," he says.  Beat.  "Do you keep having the same nightmare, Pen?"

Pen
"Ew. Whose skulls were they supposed to be?" Pen half-turns her head, as if she'd look over her shoulder; this means she rests Nick's hand against her cheek instead. Tear-tracks, yes. Beat. "Yes. But no. Sometimes."

Nick
"No one's skulls," he says.  "That I know of."  He can feel the chill of the tear-tracks against his hand, and he wipes at one of them with his thumb.  "They were just these skulls made of sugar that we used to eat."

There is a thoughtful pause, and he lifts his head so that he can rest his cheek against the back of hers.  "Sometimes?"

Pen
"Would you rub me back into shape if I lost mine?"

She sounds woe begone.

Nick
"If you lost your...shape?"  And Nick, well, he generally follows along well with Pen and her turns of speech, but this time he sounds well and truly lost.

Pen
Pen nodnodnods very rapidly. "Yes, like if it got smeared. If I wasn't me because it was gone."

Nick
"Of course I would do that," Nick says, because sometimes it is important to be reassuring even if one has no idea what the other person is talking about.  "I would help you remember exactly what your shape was."

Pen
[But are you humoring me? :(]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Nick is not humoring Pen, precisely.  He isn't sure why she is afraid of losing her shape and is having a hard time imagining exactly what it is she is afraid of, but he is absolutely committed to reshaping her if indeed she ever did lose her shape.  Whatever that means.]

Pen
Pen is still as she listens to the cadence of Nick's voice and his breathing as she tries to regulate her own. The thing about a nightmare like this one: it stays; it clings; she feels the film of it on her skin, except where Nick is very present. Where his heart thuds against her back, where his mouth found her ear, where is arm is circled round. He isn't humoring her, precisely, but he doesn't understand either. Following the moment of stillness, Pen stirs in his arms and rolls so she is lying on her back after all. This isn't to say she rolls away to lie on her back; there is no 'away' about it. She rests the back of her hand against her forehead and half-glances - wistful and solemn and scared - Nickward. The look is side-long but flirts with directness.

"How would you?"

Nick
There is something about seeing someone's expression, even if it's a person one knows quite well and even if one is insightful and naturally given to identifying with the emotions a person's voice or words can evoke.  The shifts the human face moves through are deeply tied to something primal; in a social species the ability to read such things is essential to survival.

For Nick it means that he, too, becomes a little wistful and solemn and scared, and she can see this in his face as she turns to look at him.  He doesn't understand whence her fear springs: but he understands her fear.  He banishes its echo with a flick of a smile.  "I would show your body how to remember its shape, because I know it that well," he says.  "And I would remind you of the memories you've shared with me, and of things you've said.  I would read your poetry back to you and I would ask you how you'd like your shape to look if we shaped it again together, anew, because you can choose that."

His gaze sweeps over her face and he reaches over and brushes his thumb over her cheekbone.  "We would go to the Order, too, if we needed to.  Whatever we did, it would be enough."

Pen
There is enough light to see by; his reading light, small luminary, votive offering to darkness and learning. Pen: sometimes she could be air and darkness, couldn't she, with all attendant titles -- only because she is sometimes the image of what the Romantic poets thought a sorceress might be: had they thought about what a woman might be, other than a muse. Pen: her forehead creases; her brows wing together, draw to a point, smooth out as his thumb traces its path. The lightning-flick expression is almost humor. "The Order? What do you think they could do?" It's a real question. And she reaches out for his leg, to draw it over her hip. She still wants to be wrapped.

Nick
"Well, I don't know exactly what would cause you to lose your shape," he says, and there is warmth written in the shape of his mouth and in the crinkling of his eyes.  He slings his leg over her hip and tightens it, arms encircling her and drawing her against him: she wanted it and so wrapped she is. "Maybe they could suggest something if I got stuck."

Pen
"Tell me something you'd tell me to rub me back into shape," Pen says, her eyes gone half-lidded and their color uncertain; it often seems the only uncertain thing about Pen.

Nick
"Mmm," Nick says: a low noise from the back of his throat, thoughtful and ruminative.  His curls flop to the side as his head tilts.  "When you first learned to step through space this past spring, with Correspondence - remember you showed me by crossing through the wall and right into my study?"  A beat, to allow her time to acknowledge.  "You looked like a real sorceress, the way you entered.  Your hair was curled around your face and you looked so sure of yourself, but still just a little unsteady because it was the first time you'd - I could feel all the passion and heat of your magick, it was like you were shimmering or overflowing with it."

A quirk of his mouth.  "And then you and I played a game where I had to navigate my study without seeing, at your suggestion."

Pen
She seems thoughtful of the story he has chosen, considerate as she wonders why; or hears it and whys a reason up.

"Tell me a poem," Pen says. She turns her face into Nick's collar; the sweep of her lashes against his skin, just so, easily missed, is sharper than usual; salt-scrim, limned in brine, and inhales sharp.

Nick
"I don't know any poems," Nick says, and there is a touch of apology in his voice as he glances down though of course her face is tucked into his collar so he cannot see her.

Pen
"Tell me the equivalent of a poem."

Nick
[Can we remember a poem?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5) ( fail )

Nick
Nick's brow furrows at this suggestion, and her face is against his collar and so she can feel how his breath momentarily stills, how he is eager to help her even as he is struggling to wrap his mind around what the equivalent of a poem would be.  "I...hm.  I guess I could tell you a story about..."

His arm stirs against her, his leg relaxes while he readjusts and resettles his weight.  "One of my clients back when I worked in the crisis center, before I met you, was an elderly woman who had been diagnosed with - I don't remember what it was specifically, it was a terminal illness.  She'd always had a lot of anxiety, she said, on and off and she - she asked me what I thought it would be like, to be able to see into the future.  She didn't know that I was a seer, obviously.  Then she said, it's better not to think about the future when you're happy, it's something you think about when you're going through something terrible.  To sustain you.  So she was trying to think of ways, with these limited months, to leave what she could about the future uncertain so that she could look ahead and imagine what could be, to sustain herself."

Nick settles his weight again, finally finding a position he is comfortable in, with one arm curved over her and one curled beneath her side.  "Something like that?  I tried, but I couldn't remember any of the poems you've told me."

Pen
He can see the slope of her nose. He can see the crest of her head: the part in her unruly, messy hair. He can see the way his shadow eclipses her cheek, the slender suggestion of light. He can see the long line of her neck, the artery there, the graceful hollow; the delicate bow of her collar, the shallow dip between her breasts; their movement when she breathes; the movement of her breathing; how without rest she is, now that she is awake. He is Nicholas Hyde, astute sonova, and he can see alertness rushing through her veins, the thread of her pulse. If he were to taken it he would be able to mark exactly when her pulse quickens and when it slows again, and Nick adjusting to find a comfortable position does not set off another round of Pen trying to find a comfortable position. She is comfortable enough. She has a grip on his thigh, and her fingertips draw nonsensical symbols (or mystical runes: it's a tough call) on his skin, and these things sustain her: normalize this moment. The bad dream is at least beginning to feel like a dream, instead of a thing which is still happening, which is happening, which is now and here and present.

"Yeah. Something like that. I just want to hear your voice. I just want you to talk to me. I want you to touch me. I want to know I'm awake."

"Do you think she's right?"

Nick
Nick places a kiss on the top of her head, in the middle of the part that the night has left crooked, and his mouth lingers for a while longer.  She can feel his breath stirring through the strands of her hair, the warmth of it.  He makes another soft noise in the back of his throat.  "I know that if you aren't careful it gets very easy to focus on endings, and sometimes it's better to just shut out what comes before and after.  I think maybe that's what she was getting at."

Pen
"Mm." Quietude; silence. Pen blinks a couple of times, slow and sweet and long, and then props herself up on her elbow and, as is sometimes her way, kisses Nicholas fiercely. "If we were magicians warring, I mean... remember that game, Nicholai? One turns into one thing, the other turns into another thing that is matched to win against that first thing. What if my magician turned into a flea; what would yours turn into?"

Nick
Pen lifts herself up onto her elbow, and Nick rolls onto his back to accommodate her.  Sometimes it takes him by surprise, when she kisses him that way: perhaps she enjoys the split second of his eyes widening, his breath quickening, before he pulls her down and holds her to him until she chooses to break away.

"I remember that game," he says, and then his brows lower as he thinks.  "Mine would turn into...a ladybug, probably.  They eat fleas."

Pen
There are many things Pen enjoys about Nick and his expressions. There are many things Pen enjoys about Nick's responses to her; the surprises and the familiar songs. She doesn't choose to break away just now.

Game's afoot. "Hmm... Then mine would turn into a bat. I bet bats would eat ladybugs. They'd just sing an echo song and the ladybug magician would be doomed."

Nick
"Ah.  But what if mine were to turn into a bacteria, then?  Some kind of disease that affects mostly bats.  The bat magician might think he or she had won, for a little while."

Pen
Pen laughs. "No! You can't, that is your magician can't turn into a disease. What's next, Nicholai, you turn into Death? That isn't fair; it isn't fitting. When you play rock paper scissors would you play the gun?"

Nick
"It's not turning into a disease, it's turning into a bacteria," Nick says, with a quirk of his mouth.  "Which causes a disease.  But all right.  Maybe my magician would turn into an owl, to turn the tables on the bat magician."

Pen
"We used to believe it was an imbalance of the tempers that caused disease, and before that it was devils," Penelope says, and while she is thinking she kisses Nick again. Again, Nick. And again. Ah! "Owls are hot," solemn, "when they are not eerie portents. My magician would turn into the rain. Owls can't fly in the rain."

Nick
"So maybe the magician would turn into a devil instead," Nick says, and there is a flash of a smile just before her mouth covers his.  Again, and again.  "Hotter than ravens?" he asks, equally solemn.  "Maybe mine would have to become...a cold wind.  To blow all of the rain away."

Pen
Pen gives Nick an eloquent look (hotter than ravens) | what do you think?

"Then mine would become a tree. Deep, wide roots. And seeds the wind would blow away, to find another place in the earth to root. Invictus."

Nick
His hands have come up to frame her face, and there is a flicker of amusement there on his face though a moment later his eyes roll skyward.  He had wanted to kiss her again: now he is thinking.  "Mine would become a chipmunk, to track down and eat all of the seeds."

Pen
"Then mine would become a hawk and drop from the sky," she turns her head, catches his palm all-light between her teeth; kisses it," screech. And eat your little chipmunk up."

Nick
"Mine would become a bobcat then," he says, "to catch your hawk as it was swooping down."

Pen
"Mine would become..." Pen frowns. Her forehead creases with thought again and she stretches out, subconsciously burying the moment of thought in the action; the action happened; not the need to think. "A... hunter, in blaze orange, to scare the bobcat away."

Nick
Nick watches her forehead crease, loosens his arms to allow her to stretch back out though they tighten again to bring her near once more.  "Mine would become a sinkhole, then, to trap the hunter."

Pen
"I suppose mine would lose this time. Next time my magician will not lose." Pen smiles at Nick; it is a sly smile, but fair too (as spring, as the harvest moon), for she means it; look, the smile has drawn out her dimples, and most of the tension (not all, but most; what remains is only a whisper) has gone diffuse and invisible.

Nick
He perhaps won't know what it was about the nightmare that she found so disturbing, or what shape her fears were taking tonight.  It is difficult for Nicholas, that not-knowing pulling and pushing against that desire to know: his awareness of others is a fortunate thing, sometimes.  "Mine would accept a victory," he says, his tone gracious.

Nick angles his head back against his pillow and casts his gaze over her face again, and perhaps he is reassured by what he sees there.  He reaches for the sheet and pulls it back over the two of them, tilting his head down so that he can kiss her again.  "Did you want to go back to sleep?"

Pen
Now that she is more awake (alert) and removed from the nightmare she might be better able to speak of it. His gracious tone sparks another smile. Pen's gaze sluices to the side when he draws the sheet up and over them; for a moment her lashes, the sharpness of her brow, the corner of her mouth, are in stark relief against the pallor of the sheet. He kisses her. She twists her fingers in his hair. Pen tells Nick: "No. I want you... to state your case for ravens as the hottest birds."

Nick
They could be a study in contrast, here and now the two of them: Pen brilliant against the pale sheet and Nick dark, copper and obsidian on a backdrop of sand.  He laughs at what she says, a low and brief thing though the sound of it seems to linger, and he tells her, "All right.  I suppose I'll have to find a way to prove it to you."

And so he does, and with hands and breath and body he shows her how he would remind her of her shape, in case she should forget.  Theirs is the last light on the street to wink out: it usually is.