Braided Lives

by A. R. Moler

  ***

  Danny wished Peter was with them. He was still worried about Jennifer. They'd checked into the hotel, just one room. There didn't seem to be much point in separate rooms, and now he was leery of letting Jen out of his sight. She was acting strangely. She had shoved her sketching stuff into a drawer and taken a big plastic box of washable markers out of her suitcase, leaving them on the desk top. She'd drifted around the room, touching things. Not him, just things, specifically the window and the mirrored front to the closet and bathroom mirror. This was getting slightly creepy. She kept a distance of several feet between them.

  "Are you tired?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Come to bed. I'll hold you," he offered.

  "No." She yanked back the blankets of the second bed and lay down, facing away from him. Now he was definitely worried. Even when she had been uncertain about sharing sex with him and Peter, she'd never been so brutally distant. Her shields were still in full force as well. He could try to force the issue, but he wondered if that would make the situation worse. Eventually, he stretched out on the bed he was sitting on and tried to sleep.

  An hour later, movement from Jennifer woke him. She was pulling the markers from the box.

  "Jen?" he called softly. There was no response. For a moment he thought she was pointedly ignoring him, but there was something odd and jerky about her motions. She pushed back the curtains and began to run her fingers over the glass, in little stroking motions. After a minute or so she began to draw.

  Danny debated trying to talk to her, but there was an absolutely vacant expression on her face. He finally decided she was either sleep walking or in some sort of fugue state. She wasn't doing anything that would put her in physical danger, so he watched. The scene she drew was absolutely surreal. There were feet and hands and guns and miles and miles of what could only be blood based on the bright red markers she used. Distorted faces grimaced and leered. To Danny, the whole thing was reminiscent of Edvard Munch meets Clive Barker: graphic, gory, distorted and just plain disturbing.

  Eventually she finished, letting the markers fall to the floor. She sank to her knees, head bowed and began to make little snuffling sobs. Danny had had enough. He got out of bed and went to her. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to bed. She made no move to push him away or fight him. He tucked her beneath the blankets and crawled in beside her. He held her for a long time while she snuggled into his embrace and continued the broken little not-quite-sobs. After another hour or so her body relaxed and she slept. Danny wasn't sure she had ever actually woken up and he didn't know if that was good or bad.

  ***

  Get up, pee, clean up the mess. Jennifer slipped out of bed and, regretfully, away from the comforting warmth of Danny's body. She had no memory of getting in bed with him, but then, she seldom remembered the "afters." Returning from the bathroom, she paused for a moment to actually look at what she had drawn on the window. It was neither better nor worse than some other ones.

  "Why the window?" Danny asked. She turned to see him sitting up in bed. He must have woken while she was in the bathroom.

  "Because I got tired of having to repaint my walls."

  "Huh?" Danny looked confused.

  "Remember that I've been doing this for several years. When I first started, I'd wake up in the morning and I had downloaded all the crap in my brain onto the walls of my house, any flat vertical surface. As you can see, it's not real pleasant stuff," she explained.

  "Is this what you saw in Sawari's head? It doesn't match the stuff you drew at the hospital."

  "I was conscious, he was conscious. These are his nightmares. Deep, subconscious imagery of his trauma."

  "Okay, back to why the window?" he asked.

  "After having to repaint the interior of my house three times, I hit up a friend who does hypnotherapy. I got her to plant post-hypnotic suggestions to find glass to draw on. Windows, mirrors, tile in a pinch, something I can clean up without too big a hassle. At home I have an eight foot square sheet of glass mounted on my bedroom wall, and there's always a bucket of markers handy."

  "Does it always happen when you sketch for someone?"

  "No guarantees, but generally," said Jennifer.

  "Is there anything that can stop it? Did you talk to Stephen Benford?"

  "I tried tranquilizers a couple times. That was God awful. I couldn't get it out of my head and I started hallucinating. So basically I just let it happen. And yes, before you start questioning my sanity, I did talk to Benford about it. He seemed to think I was better off just processing it and getting rid of it."

  Danny held out his arms to her. "Does touching you before you get it all out of your head make it worse?"

  Jennifer was about to say yes, but then it occurred to her that anybody who she'd interacted with before was probably headblind. Did it make a difference if they weren't?

  "I'm not sure. I guess I'm guilty of the psi stereotype; I have a tendency to avoid touching most people anyway. The few people I've shaken hands with after sketching jobs… it hurt. I can only guess I was so overloaded that any extra input was just dumping gasoline on the fire. But…"

  "But what?" he pressed.

  "I've never… It's never been another psi. It's never been a lover. Okay, I've had some boyfriends, and it's not like I was ever a long term celibate, but I've always tended to avoid mixing that part of my life with them," she finished. She padded slowly back toward the bed. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."

  "I'm not hurt. I'm just worried. Everybody operates differently. If you can't handle physical contact in the immediate hours after plowing through somebody's trauma, then that's life. I just know me. When someone I care about is stressed or upset, it pegs my empathic talents and I just want to hold them or offer some kind of comfort."

  She sat on the bed beside him and leaned into his embrace. "Truly, I don't know if I'd let you hold me there at the hospital if it would have helped or just made it all worse." She cupped her hands against the sides of his face. "Right now, though, I could do with some touch time." She kissed him softly.

  Jennifer was still mostly clothed, having never bothered to undress the night before. Danny slowly stripped her naked and tossed his briefs on the floor with the rest of the clothes. Beneath the blankets, he folded her in his arms and held her against his body. Jen wasn't all that short, but cuddling up to Danny always made her feel petite and protected.

  His hands roamed down her back as he planted a litany of gentle kisses on her mouth and throat and shoulders. His fingers stopped at the base of her spine and made a slow teasing circle. That motion sent flutters of arousal through her lower body and she arched into the touch. Her breasts pressed against the firm sculpted planes of Danny's chest. Lord, he was built like an old Renaissance Master's wet dream.

  Jen's fingertips traced Danny's collar bones to the shallow dip at the base of his throat. She kissed the little hollow softly, and then brushed her lips lower to follow the center line of his chest down to his belly. Soft curls trailed from his belly button downward and his cock jutted stiffly up to lay against them. With the tip of her tongue, she licked along the flat angle of his hip bone. His breath hitched and his hands tangled in her long loose hair. His desire for her was flaming from want to need, and she could feel his emotions crawling through her veins as little flits of memories of previous love making wafted past.

  Danny hooked his hands under her arms and pulled her back up the length of his body. "Want you so bad," he murmured, and kissed her mouth. It took a minute to dig a condom from the open suitcase beside the bed. As Jen's hand rolled the condom down, her mind provided the quirky thought that that body part was proportional to the rest Danny's six foot four muscular frame.

  "I'm glad you like the package," Danny teased.

  "I like Peter's, too," she taunted in return.

  "Mmm, so do I."

  Jen moaned as he filled her, and her fingers dug into his flanks when he thrust into her. The stretc
h of her body around him triggered all sorts of brain-melting pleasure. His teeth nibbled at her ear and his breath was a heavy pant.

  "Love you," he gasped. She could feel the toe-curling deluge of ecstasy hovering. His mouth burned a path of soft fire down the side of her neck and she came in hard pulsing washes. Danny made a faint whining groan and she felt the bright flood of his climax as he pounded into her with total loss of control.

  He laid sprawled half on her and half on the bed, sucking in sharp gasps for several seconds as she lay too blissed out to move.

  After a while, he said, "At some point we're actually going to have to get out of bed."

  "Later…when my legs work."

  ***

  Danny was impressed by the fact that Jennifer had packed a roll of paper towels in her suitcase. That and a tiny bottle of shampoo made for fairly easy cleaning of the pictures she had drawn on the window; it took only fifteen minutes or so. He was getting ready to take a shower when his cell phone rang.

  "Valentine."

  "Agent Valentine, this is Randall Adair. I wanted to give you an update. We located Chris Peake. They found him in the trunk of a suspect's car, shot three times. He was taken straight to surgery and they say he's in critical condition."

  "Will he make it?" asked Danny.

  "I don't know. From what little the hospital has told us, it's iffy."

  "Is there anything I can do for you?"

  "You've already helped far more than the department ever hoped. We really expected to find just a body, if we found Peake at all," admitted Adair. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Could I ask you to drop me an email in a few days and let me know how it goes?" Danny asked.

  "Of course."

  ***

  The flight out of Las Vegas left in the early afternoon and was scheduled to connect through Atlanta back to Norfolk. Jennifer walked down the concourse toward the gate in McCarran airport. Danny strode along beside her.

  "I hope Chris Peake makes it," she said. "Did Adair give any indication what kind of injuries he had?"

  "Only that Peake had been shot three times. I'm sure the two days he spent without any medical care didn't help."

  Jennifer detected a snippet image of Danny staring down at his own arm as it bled from a bullet wound. "I guess it makes it all that much harder, having been on the receiving end of a gunshot wound."

  "Mmm, yeah."

  She slipped her hand into Danny's larger one.

  ***

  About two-thirds of the way into the first leg of the flight, the plane hit turbulence. It was bad enough that drinks got spilled and a couple of overhead storage doors popped open. Danny had flown on military transport flights a few times, so the actual rocking and shaking didn't bother him much. A large chunk of the passengers, though, ranged from uncomfortable to nearly terrified, and Danny was having a hard time shutting out their emotions. Maybe it was the fact that close to two hundred people were all packed into a situation that they had no control over, or maybe it was a combination of jet lag fatigue and his worry about Jennifer the night before. Danny rubbed his temples and tried to draw his shielding up tighter. The rattling and bouncing wasn't helping with his concentration or lack thereof. A couple of stomach lurching drops and the sheer fear from some of the people around him felt more like an assault on the inside of his head.

  "Danny? Danny? Are you okay?"

  It took a concerted effort to turn his head and focus his eyes on Jennifer. She was looking at him with a mixture of puzzlement and concern.

  "J-jus' too many scared p-people," he said. His tongue felt thick and when he reached out to lay a hand on her leg, his arm banged into the dividing arm rest. God, what the fuck was wrong with his coordination?

  Jennifer took hold of his hand and squeezed it gently. The plane did another nauseating dip and Danny clutched her hand, eyes squeezed shut.

  ***

  The rocking and jolting didn't qualify as fun, but it paled in comparison to Jennifer's worry about Danny. He was curled forward, one arm wrapped around himself, one hand still clutching hers, just staring at the floor.

  "Danny? Hon, are you sick?" she asked. She deluded herself for a few seconds into thinking he was motion sick. Squeezing his hand, she opened her psychic shielding a little. He had said something about the scared people, and she was definitely aware of the emotions of the other passengers now. Jennifer knew she was making a face as she sensed the death and destruction images running rampant through other minds.

  She narrowed her focus to just Danny, trying to gently prod his mind with her own. It felt all wrong to her. Danny's shields were barely there and underneath it all was chaos. Not that people's thoughts usually had a pristine organization to them, but this seemed like a real mess. She wasn't even sure if some of it was really Danny's or a reflection of the passengers around them. Either way, Danny wasn't coping.

  Jennifer rubbed her hand against his leg, his shoulder, and his face trying to break through whatever he was stuck in. She cupped her hands around his face and turned it toward her own.

  "Danny, you're safe. Come on, Danny, look at me," she begged. Finally there was some focus to his eyes.

  "F-falling…" he muttered.

  "You're not falling. You're safe. I'm right here beside you." Jennifer was glad the turbulence had calmed down somewhat.

  "Are you back now?" she asked, hoping for a coherent response.

  "Guess so…What happened?" His eyes rolled a little, like he was trying to glance around, but the feel of his mind against hers still felt significantly off.

  Jennifer took his hands in hers. "I'm really not sure. You sort of tripped offline and I couldn't get a response from you. You don't look so great."

  "How long?" Danny asked.

  "Were you gone? Maybe three or four minutes. You didn't pass out. Your eyes were open and you stayed sitting up straight, more or less."

  "I feel… weird." He took a deep breath and tipped his head back, then rolled his head as if trying to work the kinks out of his neck. "If you asked me to get up and walk off the plane right now, I'm not sure I could do it without a lot of stumbling."

  "We have about an hour until we're due to land. As soon as we get to Atlanta, I'm calling Peter," Jennifer said.

  ***

  When the passengers began filing off the plane at the Atlanta airport, Danny followed the herd. He felt shaky and unsteady and kept a hand on the seat backs as he walked up the aisle. He supposed that the people who looked at him probably thought he was either half-asleep or not quite sober. Jennifer was a couple of steps behind him.

  Once the two of them were in the concourse, she drew him to an empty gate area.

  "This is probably about as far away as we're going to get from the crowds," she said. "Sit on the floor." He did so, stretching his long legs out in front of him. Jennifer knelt beside him, facing him and pulled his body to her, his head to her shoulder. She held him and combed her fingers through his short hair. "Any better?"

  "Sort of."

  "You still feel blurry to me," she said.

  "Blurry? Is that a technical term?"

  "Hey, it's the closest word I can think of. I'm going to call Peter."

  ***

  "Hey, are you still in Vegas?" asked Peter when he answered the phone.

  "Nope, we're almost home. We're in the Atlanta airport at the moment, and we have a problem," replied Jennifer. She spent a couple minutes giving him the run-down of what happened on the plane.