Brennan wakes to the brightest light known to man shining into his throbbing eyes. He wasn't even aware that his pupils could hurt until now.
He rolls over and he can hear the springs in his bed creak beneath his weight. The bed feels lumpy and no matter what direction he turns in, it's still bright. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, he can see the light on the other side.
He throws his pillow over his head but it only dulls the intrusion and all he wants to do is sleep away this headache.
He groans and rolls over once more.
Right off of the bed.
Onto the floor.
He growls and untangles himself from his sheets. He stands quickly but carefully and throws the pillow across the room.
His head thinks better of the previous movements as his body begins to tip forward.
The only reason he doesn't crash headfirst into the floor is due to the fact that the bed is in between him and it and he bounces not so gracefully off of the aforementioned bed and onto his side on the not so soft floor.
It's like a scene out of a cartoon, only Brennan isn't laughing.
He tastes the blood where he hit his lip on the dresser, and at the very least, there's going to be some swelling later on. Maybe even a black and blue, yellow and purple bruise.
Brennan isn't sure why he's so agitated but he is. He wants to hit something hard and he has a feeling that he'd come out the winner.
His eyes are burning now and his mouth is throbbing. His arm feels a little sore, too.
He glares at the bed. With a grunt, he grabs his towel off the chest at the foot of his bed and pads to the bathroom to wash away the horrible feeling of sweat and grime.
He's groggy and it takes him a moment of staring at himself in the mirror to recognize the traces of lipstick around his mouth, and the fading red welts on his neck that look suspiciously like nail marks. He tugs off his shirt and puts it to his nose, inhaling deeply. It all comes back to him; the club, the ride home, the kiss in the hallway.
He did. He can't believe he kissed Shalimar and he can't stop the smile spreading across his face as he looks into the mirror.
"I kissed her."
The throbbing in his lip is almost inconsequential and the other aches and pains are fading quickly. The headache, however, is refusing to leave and Brennan is sure this isn't what a hangover feels like. He thinks maybe he's hungry and as if to answer, his stomach growls angrily.
He turns on the shower, mostly hot water, and climbs in.
Brennan finds he likes the hot water a lot more than he remembers. It's like a giant blanket and he could go to sleep in it if it didn't mean getting sick and/or drowning. He slowly runs his fingers over the marks on his neck, feeling the raised skin and replaying the sensations his body has catalogued from the experience.
He's in there longer than he's used to and his fingers are pruned and pale. The steam swirls around him and Brennan can see it escaping through the vents and under the bathroom door.
He wraps the towel around his waist and uses the other one hanging on the pole to wipe the droplets from his face.
Shalimar wakes up lazily, stretching slowly across the soft sheets of her bed. She inhales the warm smell of soap and cologne drifting towards her from down the hall. She doesn't have to guess who it belongs to.
The room is bright and warm and she barely remembers the night before except...
Brennan kissed her.
The sweet taste of his mouth still lingers on her lips and the scent of him clings to the clothes she's still wearing from the night before.
She doesn't remember any conversation they might have had.
She does remember his mouth on hers, a small smile playing on both their lips and the way his tongue caressed her lips.
Shalimar slides out of her bed and stretches again. She wants to dance or run or do something to burn the energy running through her veins. Gathering her things, Shalimar rushes through her morning rituals, eager to see Brennan as soon as possible. Her body is calling to him and really, who is she to deny herself something her body wants so desperately?
Emma trudges into the dining room. Right into the middle of a staring contest. It could have been a pissing contest if only their pants were been down.
Jesse sits on one side of the table and Brennan sits on the other and if Emma doesn't know any better, and she's starting to think she doesn't, she would have sworn she heard a growl. A deep, violent growl that sends shivers up her spine.
Jesse will not, doesn't dare look away from Brennan's eyes. He's seen this look before, on angry wolves, and Shalimar and every other feral he has ever met in a fight but this is Brennan, his friend, his team mate but Brennan barely seems to recognize him.
Cautiously, Emma takes a seat next to Brennan, purposely nudging him with her elbow. He turns towards her slowly and a smile creeps across his face. Emma does not like the way he's staring at her.
Neither does Jesse.
And apparently, neither does Shalimar by the way her eyes flash and the way she storms into the dining room. Jesse sees her before Emma does and he's positive Brennan does too, but he's still smiling at Emma in that way, like a lion watching a deer cross unknowingly in front of him.
"Emma, could you come here for a second?" Jesse asks urgently as he excuses himself from the table. There's an intensity of emotion she hasn't felt before and Emma eases herself out of Brennan's visual grasp, and takes the long way around to avoid Shalimar's reach.
Jesse and Emma back away from the table and watch as Shalimar takes a seat across from Brennan.
"You remember I was telling you about the experiment Adam was doing? The one with gases and the DNA of molecular mutants?" Jesse prays that Emma gets what he's trying to say. He knows Shalimar is listening and he prays that Emma doesn't say anything about what just took place.
Emma gets the hint. "Yeah, the one I was supposed to help you with?"
Jesse nods slightly. "I'm supposed to go out this afternoon so I was hoping we could get that done before I go."
"No problem."
The most important aspect to pulling this off was to make sure Shalimar isn't suspicious. Jesse hasn't seen her like this in a long time and he remembers the amount of damage they had to repair when she was done searching Sanctuary for him.
He pushes Emma in front of him as they head towards the lab.
Shalimar watches as Brennan piles her plate with sausages and then salmon and then eggs. He adds a piece of toast from his plate and then pushes it towards her.
"Aren't we hungry this morning." She motions towards the three empty boxes of sausages, the half empty carton of eggs, and packaging for the fish.
Brennan shrugs. "I think it was all dancing last night." He winks and smiles again, a little bit of Brennan and a little bit of someone else.
Shalimar doesn't make a move to eat her food. In fact, she barely looks at it as she stares at Brennan. She watches the way his Adam's apple moves as he swallows, and the way he cuts the sausage into pieces before eating them. She watches the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathes and the way he cocks his head to the side like he's listening for something that she can't hear either. She flushes when she thinks about the way her heart sped up as she entered the dining room and the way her blood boiled when she saw him smiling at Emma the same way he smiled at her. Emma is her friend, but in that moment, she might as well have been Shalimar's worst enemy.
"You're not gonna eat?" His eyes show genuine worry and Shalimar knows that's not the question he wants to ask.
"Do you like her?" Shalimar's tone is serious and calm, but her insides threaten to melt at any moment. If he said yes, she didn't know what to do. Part of her wants to hurt Emma, disfigure her, hide her, kill her so that Brennan would have no choice but her and Shalimar's heart breaks as she thinks these things about a woman that has saved her life too many times to count.
"Do you like him?" Surprise and outrage take her in the same instance.
"I wasn't trying to seduce Jesse. You, on the other hand, might as well have been down her throat."
"And what if I was, Shalimar, what would you do?" This time, it's Shalimar who growls as her hands dig into the table.
The conversation stops there as Shalimar eats mechanically, cutting the food into pieces, combining the salmon and beef in each bite and chewing slowly, methodically, in an attempt to restrain herself from reaching across the table and smacking the small prickles of hair off of Brennan's face.
Before she's even aware, Brennan is on her side of the table, his arm wrapped around her waist and purring sweetly in her ear. If there's one thing Shalimar doesn't like, it's someone touching her without her permission. But her hands are behind her back before she can do anything and his mouth is pressed warmly against her neck. He's kissing a trail up to her ear and Shalimar isn't sure if she's upset or aroused.
"I don't play seconds." She spits out.
"If you thought you were, you wouldn't have let me get this close." Brennan whispers so softly that if Shalimar hadn't been a feral, it could have been mistaken for him breathing. He presses his face into her hair and breathes in the scent. He smiles when he smells the sweat beading down the valley between her breast and down the curve of her spine.
"Brennan, let go of my arms." Her eyes are yellow and frightening and Brennan isn't in the least bit afraid because this is Shalimar. His Shalimar who he would do anything for and who he needed with ever inch of his being and if she told him to go away at this moment, he doesn't think he would have the strength enough to do so. He lets go, releases her strong arms but keeps his lips resting against her shoulder and his arm around her waist.
She drags Brennan with her as she slides to the floor. Her arm is on his neck as she straddles his hips. He's got that smile again and his eyes are drifting close as he thinks about the things they could be doing instead of fighting. He doesn't want to fight, not like this, not with their clothes still on and Shalimar's arm choking him and her being angry at him. Shalimar should never be angry, never be upset, not if he had anything to do with it.
Her face is inches away from his and he can see the blood pumping through her veins as she restrains her arm.
"I don't let go easily." She growls menacingly and if he didn't love her before, he would have fallen right then and there.
"I don't give up." 'Not you, I won't give up you,' he thinks to himself and there's a moment when he can almost imagine fighting anyone, Jesse, Adam, Eckhart, Gabriel, anyone who wanted her, he would fight them and he would win every time. Every. Single. Time.
"I don't play seconds Brennan, to anyone. Not to Emma, not to Becky, not to the next girl who comes along. Not to anyone."
"I know." He stares into her brown eyes and he just keeps falling in love because a woman like Shalimar, you can't love her enough. You can't show her how much she means to you because she knows that you love her. But she doesn't know.
Brennan wasn't smiling at Emma. Not really. She's pretty, he won't lie, but she isn't Shalimar and everyone else could be only second best. He was staring at Emma because he was staring at Jesse and he knew Shalimar was coming, heard her when she woke up, and when stepped into the shower, had to wait until his erection went down so he could eat breakfast and even then...
No he wasn't smiling at Emma; he was waiting for Shalimar.
Shalimar removes her arm and stares down at Brennan as he stares up at her. The are no more words, just feelings and she feels like she's been missing something until now. She touches his face and that's all she wants, to feel his skin against hers and she bends down and kisses him slowly. His hand snakes up her thigh into the back of her tank top and the feel of his hand on her skin is electric. Their lips caress each other and their tongues dance like their bodies did the night before and neither of them wants to stop so they don't. Brennan sits up, never breaking the kiss and pulls her close so that her breasts are flush against his chest. Both hands rest under her shirt, one tracing the contours of her back as the other sits securely on her waist. Her lips are soft and wet and Brennan can imagine kissing her for the rest of his life. He wants to feel more of her and he kisses his way from her lips across her jaw and down her neck, tracing a pattern with his tongue as he works his way to her collarbone. He licks the small droplets of perspiration from between her breasts and kisses each one before pressing his cheek against her chest and listening to her heart beat. He could go to sleep like that, live like that, listening to the rhythm of her life beat with his.
