Wonder Girl fic, chapter seven
Jul. 5th, 2008 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffeTitle: A Matter For the Goddess, OR, Babysitter of Themyscira!
Fandom: JLA/Teen Titans
Summary: Alternate reality. After the events of Infinite Crisis, Wonder Woman took Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) back to Themyscira to recover from the Crisis and from the death of Superboy (Conner Kent). Four years later, Cassie has built a life for herself on Themyscira. When Diana, still acting as Wonder Woman, brings back a homeless waif to Cassie's adopted home, Cassie is furious, until drastic action by Queen Hippolyta forces her into a closer understanding of her visitor's demons.
Rating: R for language and concepts.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
"What is it now, daughter of the patriarchy?" Hippolyta demanded-- quite rudely, I thought-- when we barged in on her dinner again. I wasn't in a particularly sweet temper myself, after a brisk, awkward and nearly silent walk over to her house in Ian's nervous, deferentially unquestioning company, but Hippolyta looked even more annoyed than I did, if possible.
She listened with raised eyebrows to my detailed and possibly not-very-grammatically-correct account of the symptoms I was now experiencing thanks to her stupid binding, and then she shrugged one elegant shoulder and said, "You should fuck him."
Well, okay, so she didn't say that. She used a very graceful and elliptical verb that can also be used of a flower being pollinated by a bee, which did not make it even remotely okay. I would have thanked the gods that Ian didn't understand Greek, but I was too busy not believing my ears.
"I cannot even begin to enumerate everything that is wrong with that, my queen," I said.
She scowled at me in a perhaps-it's-time-we-rethought-this-letting-you-live-here-thing way. "You want him, and he will submit to you. What is wrong with that?"
"Look," I said, giving up in advance on explaining the concept of date rape drugs and their relationship to the situation at hand. "Can you please just... turn it off?"
"The binding of Aphrodite is not to be lifted lightly," she said, irritably.
"Then lift it heavily."
"Cassandra Sandsmark, I have had enough of this," she snarled, and I knew I'd pushed her about as far as I safely could. It wasn't like she couldn't make things worse if she decided to. "I do not want to see you again until the goddess arrives to administer her verdict. Take care of the male until then. Thus is my command, and thus is the end of the matter."
"I'm sorry," I said to Ian as we walked home. "I'll try not to-- um-- grab you, or anything."
"What is it you're wanting to do, exactly?" he asked curiously. "I mean-- grab me and do what?"
I blushed like a lobster, if lobsters had to confess their near-irresistible physical urges towards strange men instead of just getting a nice merciful boiling-alive. "Um. Nothing... invasive. Sort of-- hug you, I guess. Like after the first time I accidentally zapped you."
"You can do that if you want," he said, and then he blushed too. "I mean, if you're-- compelled, the same way I am, it must be hell trying not to. I can, uh, take one for the team."
"Thanks!" I punched him in the arm, and the weirdest thing happened-- I was already pissed as hell at myself, because for Christ's sake, Cassie, you don't play-punch a kid who's actually been abused-- but he was going into cringe mode, eyes down, shoulders hunched, huddled away from me like he was trying to protect his vital organs, and then he stopped, and reversed direction. Uncringed. I'm not sure how else to say it. He didn't punch me back or anything, which is what I would have preferred, but it was still pretty awesome.
"On the other hand," he said, "if that's your idea of hugging, never mind."
"It's my socially inept idea of an affectionate gesture," I said, which actually made him smile a little. "Sorry. Anyway, I don't think I'm compelled anywhere near as strongly as you are. I just... really, really want to."
"Are you sure it's the spell?" he asked, and then blushed, himself. "I don't mean because I'm all that-- huggable, I just mean, you said you weren't gay, and I'm the first man you've seen in-- um, I should really stop talking now, shouldn't I?"
I laughed. "No, no, that's a fair point. Although it doesn't really matter-- there's nothing we can do about it either way, so I'll just have to suck it up. Um. And now I'm going to stop talking."
He was laughing, and I covered my eyes as we walked, which wasn't the smartest move-- he had to grab my arm to steady me, and then I had to fall down on purpose anyway to keep from swinging around and falling against him and possibly making out with him, depending on what the evil binding had up its sleeve once it had me in his arms. Then I lay on the ground without moving, exhausted by sheer embarrassment. I was sure Aphrodite wouldn't want me to suffer like this. It wasn't like I wasn't socially handicapped enough, after four supposedly formative years on Overgrown Girl Scout Island, without this sort of thing.
The toes of Ian's filthy sneakers came into view among the blades of grass and clover and chaff, and then the worn knees of his jeans.
"Cassie?" he said tentatively.
"Don't touch me," I said, and the knees scooted backward hastily, one and then the other. "I mean, I'm fine. You're fine. Everybody's fine. Just... don't touch me."
"Ever?" he asked. "I mean, is that a standing order?"
I rolled over, so that I was looking up at his face, and cocked an eyebrow at him. "I don't know. What do you think?"
"No," he said, cocking an eyebrow right back at me. "I think you mean I shouldn't help you up, but there's no reason why I shouldn't touch you again once you get to your feet."
"Let's test that theory," I said, my mortal embarrassment yielding momentarily to a sudden surge of scientific intrigue, and started to scramble to my feet, getting tangled in my own chiton for only about a thousand excruciating centuries.
I finally achieved balance on two feet-- clearly a miracle of spontaneous evolutionary development-- and raised my eyebrows at Ian, who reached out to touch me, then halted right before his hand made contact with my arm.
"Goddammit," he said, making ineffectual swipes towards me, but not making contact. "Damn it!"
"Fascinating," I said, watching. "You can tell yourself what you think I mean all you want, but some part of you obviously doesn't believe it."
"Go ahead, rub it in," he said, letting his arms fall to his sides. "Let's just walk. Not that this isn't all great exercise."
"And only slightly more awkward than-- junior prom," I agreed as we picked up the pace of our strides back to my house. I hadn't actually gone to junior prom, having been engaged in saving some minorly important city from some marginal menace at the time, but I'd heard stories from classmates, and it seemed like a more relatable thing to say than "...walking in on Robin and Impulse in an extremely compromising position in the dungeon of Titans Tower while looking for Donna's old breastplate that was too big for me anyway."
"I wouldn't know," Ian said, whereupon, of course, I remembered that he'd probably spent what would have been his junior prom getting fucked by strange men for heroin.
I reached out and put my hand on his back-- completely without thinking-- and he jumped, and then looked inexplicably delighted. He moved closer to me, then put his arm around me. I froze.
"Ian, what are you--"
"I can touch you now!" he said, clearly thrilled. I was a little less thrilled, in a couple of different ways-- both the part of me that was determined not to yield to the spell and touch him the way I wanted to, and the part of me that now wanted to touch him in ways that pertained to the zipper of his jeans.
This was escalating fast.
"When you touched me," he went on happily, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was completely rigid in the crook of his arm, "I-- the spell-- it knew you wouldn't touch me, if you didn't want-- Cassie?"
"I want to take your pants off," I said between my teeth, which made him move right off me.
We stood there for a minute without saying anything.
"I need a cold shower," I said finally. "Like now."
"Okay," said Ian without meeting my eye, and when I took off running, he didn't chase me.
I left the door to the house ajar, got into the bathroom, locked that door, and turned the cold water on full blast. It didn't really help, but it was at least a distraction. I shaved my legs and armpits as a further distraction, then realized I'd removed one deterrent to getting naked in front of an American boy, which hadn't been the idea.
Would it really be the worst thing in the world if we had sex under the influence of coercive magic? I wanted it, and he wanted to please me, so what could it hurt? It wasn't as if I'd asked to be cursed with exponentially growing lust for my involuntary charge-- and I'd tried really hard to fight it-- and there was only so much human flesh could stand. I'd been stripped of my superpowers, and super-self-control had never been one of them in the first place.
Just a tiny bit of sex? A couple of quick pumps? Two, maybe three orgasms? Not counting his?
I noticed my fingers were inside me and I was moaning softly, which I was pretty sure was not supposed to happen in a cold shower. When Aphrodite arrived, I was going to persuade her to wreak horrible divine vengeance on Hippolyta for this, if I had to get down on my knees and lick her golden goddesshood.
Surely there was some way to make the water colder than this.
My pajamas were wadded up in the laundry hamper; I fished them out, after drying off, and put them on. Then I twisted my hair up in a towel turban and stepped out of the shower.
Ian was sitting there on a kitchen chair, reading, or pretending to read. He looked up at me, and got an extremely weird look on his face. At first I thought he was afraid of me-- and who could blame him, after the last thing I'd said to him. It took me a moment to realize that he was just trying really hard not to laugh.
"What?" I demanded. "What's funny?"
He pointed at me, and I looked down at myself, and reluctantly cracked a grin.
"What?" I said. "I brought them from the mainland, okay? They're vintage! I happen to like them!"
"They're very, uh--" said Ian, and snorted with helpless laughter. I shook my head.
"Listen," I said, and then paused. "Wait, does that do anything to you? Me saying 'listen'?"
"Nope," said Ian, settling down slightly, though he was still grinning hugely. "Guess I was already listening."
"Okay. Do you want me to do the thing we said before, where I tell you to fall asleep and then tell you to wake up?"
"Yeah," he said immediately. "If you don't mind."
I put my head on one side. "You're not scared I'll molest you in your sleep?"
"It's not like I could stop you if I was awake," he pointed out, which made me feel vaguely sick, especially since he didn't even sound put out by this-- just practical. "Anyway, you wouldn't. You'd do another face-plant if you had to. That was pretty impressive, by the way. You practice?"
"You don't get to be Wonder Girl without learning how to fall down and not get hurt," I said, rather pleased by this tribute to an underappreciated talent. Not to mention by the fact that he trusted me to fall down on purpose again rather than touch him in ways he didn't want. Which I would. Of course I would. "Okay. Go-- why don't you go in the bedroom and get out of your jeans-- unless you want to sleep in them, which is totally fine-- and get in the bed, and yell when you're ready. I swear, I am normally able to communicate without everything sounding like a sexual innuendo."
"I'd imagine so," said Ian, and turned to go into the bedroom. I waited, heard the creak of bedsprings, valiantly imagined absolutely nothing, and waited some more till I heard him call, "I'm decent."
I went in there and sat down on the chair by the bed. He was lying on his back, completely covered up by the sheet and bedspread, head nicely arranged on the pillow, and he got that look on his face again as he looked at my pajamas.
"What?" I demanded. "How is this still funny?"
"That you wear Batman pajamas?" he said. "I've got news for you, Cassie. That's never not going to be funny."
I squinted at him. "I could order you not to find it funny."
"Oh, no," he said, eyes widened in comic horror. "Please, Cassie, you promised not to order me to do anything impossible."
"You are such a punk." I hesitated. "Okay, you ready?"
He nodded, and I said, after another second's hesitation, "Sleep."
His eyes closed.
"You asleep?" I asked, and there wasn't any response, just even, deep, quiet breathing. "Ian?"
So presumably it had worked. And God, did he look adorable lying there. I reached down, against my better judgment, and touched his hair, sifting my fingers through it. It was soft as silk, and still smelled faintly of my shampoo, a clean sweet almond scent.
Then I went to lie down on the floor in the other room.
I didn't really think I was going to sleep, but I must have, because I woke up with a jolt, listening to a sound coming from the bedroom. It wasn't a good sound. I rolled to my feet and ran.
Ian's eyes were wide open, and he was whimpering desperately, flat on his back; his eyes didn't move, and neither did the rest of him, when I practically threw myself down on the edge of the bed, next to him.
"Ian?" I said, snapping my fingers in his eyes, which didn't make him blink. "Ian, sweetie, are you okay?"
No response. Then it hit me. "Ian, wake up!"
He screamed and jolted, and his eyes focused on me, and he sat bolt upright and dropped forward into my arms. I held him and rocked him, sex mercifully the furthest thing from my thoughts, while he whimpered a few times, on a diminishing scale, then subsided to shuddering breaths.
"Fuck," he whispered, and then, "oh, fuck, Cassie, I'm sorry, I-- I couldn't wake up--"
"You were having a nightmare," I said softly, and he nodded against me.
"I'm sorry," he said again, and pulled back, and I took both his hands and squeezed them, hard.
"No, I'm sorry," I said. "I should have thought what it would mean, if you couldn't wake up."
"Do you--" He looked up into my eyes, his own eyes pensive and slightly unfocused. "Cassie, do you think you could-- tell me-- what to dream?"
That pulled me up short. I stared at him.
"You want me to?" I asked incredulously. It seemed like the ultimate invasion of privacy to me-- but then, I didn't know nearly as much as Ian did about-- violation. If he wanted me to dictate his dreams-- "What would you want to dream about?"
"I don't know," he said with a small, tired smile. There was no doubt that the boy desperately needed some sound sleep without nightmares. "You pick."
I managed a smile back at him. "Give me an idea. Unicorns? Spaceships? Apple pie?"
"Flying, I guess," he said, and I could see tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes, the way they do when you're so tired your eyes are trying to fall asleep without you. "Isn't that everybody's favorite dream? I used to have-- great flying dreams-- when I was a kid. Soaring through the air-- everybody staring up at you..." He paused, sobering, when he saw my face. "Cassie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, fiddling with the edge of my pajamas.
"But you look–"
"It's just, I used to be able to fly," I said. "For real. Like Diana, you know."
"You did?" he asked, smiling a little. "When you were Wonder Girl? What else could you do?"
"Well. I had super strength." I considered. "And a magic lasso."
"Like Diana's?"
"Yeah," I said, "but mine was different. It didn't make people tell the truth."
"What did it do?"
I grinned. "Shot sparks."
He laughed. "Seriously?"
"Yep. Well, lightning bolts, really. When I got pissed off. It was pretty sweet."
"You don't need it," he said, and yawned again. "So. Flying dream?"
I nodded, and paused for a moment to collect my thoughts and plan what I was about to say, as if it were a sentence in Greek. "Okay, Ian. In a minute, I'm going to tell you to fall asleep. When you do, and when you start dreaming, have a good dream-- a flying dream. Don't dream anything bad or scary. Don't dream that things turn weird or creepy. Have only dreams you enjoy, that relax you, until I wake you up. Understand?"
"Understand," said Ian, and I couldn't read the expression on his face, but suddenly-- for the first time since he'd screamed and woken up-- I wanted to kiss him again.
"Lie down," I said, and added, as a precaution, as he obeyed, "When I tell you to wake up in the morning, you can move freely. Ready to sleep?"
He nodded, and I said, again, "Sleep."
His eyes closed, and this time, I sat there for a while, watching him-- watching his face, the calm of it. It wasn't until he smiled in his sleep that I got up, quietly, and went to take another cold shower.
Fandom: JLA/Teen Titans
Summary: Alternate reality. After the events of Infinite Crisis, Wonder Woman took Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) back to Themyscira to recover from the Crisis and from the death of Superboy (Conner Kent). Four years later, Cassie has built a life for herself on Themyscira. When Diana, still acting as Wonder Woman, brings back a homeless waif to Cassie's adopted home, Cassie is furious, until drastic action by Queen Hippolyta forces her into a closer understanding of her visitor's demons.
Rating: R for language and concepts.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
"What is it now, daughter of the patriarchy?" Hippolyta demanded-- quite rudely, I thought-- when we barged in on her dinner again. I wasn't in a particularly sweet temper myself, after a brisk, awkward and nearly silent walk over to her house in Ian's nervous, deferentially unquestioning company, but Hippolyta looked even more annoyed than I did, if possible.
She listened with raised eyebrows to my detailed and possibly not-very-grammatically-correct account of the symptoms I was now experiencing thanks to her stupid binding, and then she shrugged one elegant shoulder and said, "You should fuck him."
Well, okay, so she didn't say that. She used a very graceful and elliptical verb that can also be used of a flower being pollinated by a bee, which did not make it even remotely okay. I would have thanked the gods that Ian didn't understand Greek, but I was too busy not believing my ears.
"I cannot even begin to enumerate everything that is wrong with that, my queen," I said.
She scowled at me in a perhaps-it's-time-we-rethought-this-letting-you-live-here-thing way. "You want him, and he will submit to you. What is wrong with that?"
"Look," I said, giving up in advance on explaining the concept of date rape drugs and their relationship to the situation at hand. "Can you please just... turn it off?"
"The binding of Aphrodite is not to be lifted lightly," she said, irritably.
"Then lift it heavily."
"Cassandra Sandsmark, I have had enough of this," she snarled, and I knew I'd pushed her about as far as I safely could. It wasn't like she couldn't make things worse if she decided to. "I do not want to see you again until the goddess arrives to administer her verdict. Take care of the male until then. Thus is my command, and thus is the end of the matter."
"I'm sorry," I said to Ian as we walked home. "I'll try not to-- um-- grab you, or anything."
"What is it you're wanting to do, exactly?" he asked curiously. "I mean-- grab me and do what?"
I blushed like a lobster, if lobsters had to confess their near-irresistible physical urges towards strange men instead of just getting a nice merciful boiling-alive. "Um. Nothing... invasive. Sort of-- hug you, I guess. Like after the first time I accidentally zapped you."
"You can do that if you want," he said, and then he blushed too. "I mean, if you're-- compelled, the same way I am, it must be hell trying not to. I can, uh, take one for the team."
"Thanks!" I punched him in the arm, and the weirdest thing happened-- I was already pissed as hell at myself, because for Christ's sake, Cassie, you don't play-punch a kid who's actually been abused-- but he was going into cringe mode, eyes down, shoulders hunched, huddled away from me like he was trying to protect his vital organs, and then he stopped, and reversed direction. Uncringed. I'm not sure how else to say it. He didn't punch me back or anything, which is what I would have preferred, but it was still pretty awesome.
"On the other hand," he said, "if that's your idea of hugging, never mind."
"It's my socially inept idea of an affectionate gesture," I said, which actually made him smile a little. "Sorry. Anyway, I don't think I'm compelled anywhere near as strongly as you are. I just... really, really want to."
"Are you sure it's the spell?" he asked, and then blushed, himself. "I don't mean because I'm all that-- huggable, I just mean, you said you weren't gay, and I'm the first man you've seen in-- um, I should really stop talking now, shouldn't I?"
I laughed. "No, no, that's a fair point. Although it doesn't really matter-- there's nothing we can do about it either way, so I'll just have to suck it up. Um. And now I'm going to stop talking."
He was laughing, and I covered my eyes as we walked, which wasn't the smartest move-- he had to grab my arm to steady me, and then I had to fall down on purpose anyway to keep from swinging around and falling against him and possibly making out with him, depending on what the evil binding had up its sleeve once it had me in his arms. Then I lay on the ground without moving, exhausted by sheer embarrassment. I was sure Aphrodite wouldn't want me to suffer like this. It wasn't like I wasn't socially handicapped enough, after four supposedly formative years on Overgrown Girl Scout Island, without this sort of thing.
The toes of Ian's filthy sneakers came into view among the blades of grass and clover and chaff, and then the worn knees of his jeans.
"Cassie?" he said tentatively.
"Don't touch me," I said, and the knees scooted backward hastily, one and then the other. "I mean, I'm fine. You're fine. Everybody's fine. Just... don't touch me."
"Ever?" he asked. "I mean, is that a standing order?"
I rolled over, so that I was looking up at his face, and cocked an eyebrow at him. "I don't know. What do you think?"
"No," he said, cocking an eyebrow right back at me. "I think you mean I shouldn't help you up, but there's no reason why I shouldn't touch you again once you get to your feet."
"Let's test that theory," I said, my mortal embarrassment yielding momentarily to a sudden surge of scientific intrigue, and started to scramble to my feet, getting tangled in my own chiton for only about a thousand excruciating centuries.
I finally achieved balance on two feet-- clearly a miracle of spontaneous evolutionary development-- and raised my eyebrows at Ian, who reached out to touch me, then halted right before his hand made contact with my arm.
"Goddammit," he said, making ineffectual swipes towards me, but not making contact. "Damn it!"
"Fascinating," I said, watching. "You can tell yourself what you think I mean all you want, but some part of you obviously doesn't believe it."
"Go ahead, rub it in," he said, letting his arms fall to his sides. "Let's just walk. Not that this isn't all great exercise."
"And only slightly more awkward than-- junior prom," I agreed as we picked up the pace of our strides back to my house. I hadn't actually gone to junior prom, having been engaged in saving some minorly important city from some marginal menace at the time, but I'd heard stories from classmates, and it seemed like a more relatable thing to say than "...walking in on Robin and Impulse in an extremely compromising position in the dungeon of Titans Tower while looking for Donna's old breastplate that was too big for me anyway."
"I wouldn't know," Ian said, whereupon, of course, I remembered that he'd probably spent what would have been his junior prom getting fucked by strange men for heroin.
I reached out and put my hand on his back-- completely without thinking-- and he jumped, and then looked inexplicably delighted. He moved closer to me, then put his arm around me. I froze.
"Ian, what are you--"
"I can touch you now!" he said, clearly thrilled. I was a little less thrilled, in a couple of different ways-- both the part of me that was determined not to yield to the spell and touch him the way I wanted to, and the part of me that now wanted to touch him in ways that pertained to the zipper of his jeans.
This was escalating fast.
"When you touched me," he went on happily, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was completely rigid in the crook of his arm, "I-- the spell-- it knew you wouldn't touch me, if you didn't want-- Cassie?"
"I want to take your pants off," I said between my teeth, which made him move right off me.
We stood there for a minute without saying anything.
"I need a cold shower," I said finally. "Like now."
"Okay," said Ian without meeting my eye, and when I took off running, he didn't chase me.
I left the door to the house ajar, got into the bathroom, locked that door, and turned the cold water on full blast. It didn't really help, but it was at least a distraction. I shaved my legs and armpits as a further distraction, then realized I'd removed one deterrent to getting naked in front of an American boy, which hadn't been the idea.
Would it really be the worst thing in the world if we had sex under the influence of coercive magic? I wanted it, and he wanted to please me, so what could it hurt? It wasn't as if I'd asked to be cursed with exponentially growing lust for my involuntary charge-- and I'd tried really hard to fight it-- and there was only so much human flesh could stand. I'd been stripped of my superpowers, and super-self-control had never been one of them in the first place.
Just a tiny bit of sex? A couple of quick pumps? Two, maybe three orgasms? Not counting his?
I noticed my fingers were inside me and I was moaning softly, which I was pretty sure was not supposed to happen in a cold shower. When Aphrodite arrived, I was going to persuade her to wreak horrible divine vengeance on Hippolyta for this, if I had to get down on my knees and lick her golden goddesshood.
Surely there was some way to make the water colder than this.
My pajamas were wadded up in the laundry hamper; I fished them out, after drying off, and put them on. Then I twisted my hair up in a towel turban and stepped out of the shower.
Ian was sitting there on a kitchen chair, reading, or pretending to read. He looked up at me, and got an extremely weird look on his face. At first I thought he was afraid of me-- and who could blame him, after the last thing I'd said to him. It took me a moment to realize that he was just trying really hard not to laugh.
"What?" I demanded. "What's funny?"
He pointed at me, and I looked down at myself, and reluctantly cracked a grin.
"What?" I said. "I brought them from the mainland, okay? They're vintage! I happen to like them!"
"They're very, uh--" said Ian, and snorted with helpless laughter. I shook my head.
"Listen," I said, and then paused. "Wait, does that do anything to you? Me saying 'listen'?"
"Nope," said Ian, settling down slightly, though he was still grinning hugely. "Guess I was already listening."
"Okay. Do you want me to do the thing we said before, where I tell you to fall asleep and then tell you to wake up?"
"Yeah," he said immediately. "If you don't mind."
I put my head on one side. "You're not scared I'll molest you in your sleep?"
"It's not like I could stop you if I was awake," he pointed out, which made me feel vaguely sick, especially since he didn't even sound put out by this-- just practical. "Anyway, you wouldn't. You'd do another face-plant if you had to. That was pretty impressive, by the way. You practice?"
"You don't get to be Wonder Girl without learning how to fall down and not get hurt," I said, rather pleased by this tribute to an underappreciated talent. Not to mention by the fact that he trusted me to fall down on purpose again rather than touch him in ways he didn't want. Which I would. Of course I would. "Okay. Go-- why don't you go in the bedroom and get out of your jeans-- unless you want to sleep in them, which is totally fine-- and get in the bed, and yell when you're ready. I swear, I am normally able to communicate without everything sounding like a sexual innuendo."
"I'd imagine so," said Ian, and turned to go into the bedroom. I waited, heard the creak of bedsprings, valiantly imagined absolutely nothing, and waited some more till I heard him call, "I'm decent."
I went in there and sat down on the chair by the bed. He was lying on his back, completely covered up by the sheet and bedspread, head nicely arranged on the pillow, and he got that look on his face again as he looked at my pajamas.
"What?" I demanded. "How is this still funny?"
"That you wear Batman pajamas?" he said. "I've got news for you, Cassie. That's never not going to be funny."
I squinted at him. "I could order you not to find it funny."
"Oh, no," he said, eyes widened in comic horror. "Please, Cassie, you promised not to order me to do anything impossible."
"You are such a punk." I hesitated. "Okay, you ready?"
He nodded, and I said, after another second's hesitation, "Sleep."
His eyes closed.
"You asleep?" I asked, and there wasn't any response, just even, deep, quiet breathing. "Ian?"
So presumably it had worked. And God, did he look adorable lying there. I reached down, against my better judgment, and touched his hair, sifting my fingers through it. It was soft as silk, and still smelled faintly of my shampoo, a clean sweet almond scent.
Then I went to lie down on the floor in the other room.
I didn't really think I was going to sleep, but I must have, because I woke up with a jolt, listening to a sound coming from the bedroom. It wasn't a good sound. I rolled to my feet and ran.
Ian's eyes were wide open, and he was whimpering desperately, flat on his back; his eyes didn't move, and neither did the rest of him, when I practically threw myself down on the edge of the bed, next to him.
"Ian?" I said, snapping my fingers in his eyes, which didn't make him blink. "Ian, sweetie, are you okay?"
No response. Then it hit me. "Ian, wake up!"
He screamed and jolted, and his eyes focused on me, and he sat bolt upright and dropped forward into my arms. I held him and rocked him, sex mercifully the furthest thing from my thoughts, while he whimpered a few times, on a diminishing scale, then subsided to shuddering breaths.
"Fuck," he whispered, and then, "oh, fuck, Cassie, I'm sorry, I-- I couldn't wake up--"
"You were having a nightmare," I said softly, and he nodded against me.
"I'm sorry," he said again, and pulled back, and I took both his hands and squeezed them, hard.
"No, I'm sorry," I said. "I should have thought what it would mean, if you couldn't wake up."
"Do you--" He looked up into my eyes, his own eyes pensive and slightly unfocused. "Cassie, do you think you could-- tell me-- what to dream?"
That pulled me up short. I stared at him.
"You want me to?" I asked incredulously. It seemed like the ultimate invasion of privacy to me-- but then, I didn't know nearly as much as Ian did about-- violation. If he wanted me to dictate his dreams-- "What would you want to dream about?"
"I don't know," he said with a small, tired smile. There was no doubt that the boy desperately needed some sound sleep without nightmares. "You pick."
I managed a smile back at him. "Give me an idea. Unicorns? Spaceships? Apple pie?"
"Flying, I guess," he said, and I could see tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes, the way they do when you're so tired your eyes are trying to fall asleep without you. "Isn't that everybody's favorite dream? I used to have-- great flying dreams-- when I was a kid. Soaring through the air-- everybody staring up at you..." He paused, sobering, when he saw my face. "Cassie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, fiddling with the edge of my pajamas.
"But you look–"
"It's just, I used to be able to fly," I said. "For real. Like Diana, you know."
"You did?" he asked, smiling a little. "When you were Wonder Girl? What else could you do?"
"Well. I had super strength." I considered. "And a magic lasso."
"Like Diana's?"
"Yeah," I said, "but mine was different. It didn't make people tell the truth."
"What did it do?"
I grinned. "Shot sparks."
He laughed. "Seriously?"
"Yep. Well, lightning bolts, really. When I got pissed off. It was pretty sweet."
"You don't need it," he said, and yawned again. "So. Flying dream?"
I nodded, and paused for a moment to collect my thoughts and plan what I was about to say, as if it were a sentence in Greek. "Okay, Ian. In a minute, I'm going to tell you to fall asleep. When you do, and when you start dreaming, have a good dream-- a flying dream. Don't dream anything bad or scary. Don't dream that things turn weird or creepy. Have only dreams you enjoy, that relax you, until I wake you up. Understand?"
"Understand," said Ian, and I couldn't read the expression on his face, but suddenly-- for the first time since he'd screamed and woken up-- I wanted to kiss him again.
"Lie down," I said, and added, as a precaution, as he obeyed, "When I tell you to wake up in the morning, you can move freely. Ready to sleep?"
He nodded, and I said, again, "Sleep."
His eyes closed, and this time, I sat there for a while, watching him-- watching his face, the calm of it. It wasn't until he smiled in his sleep that I got up, quietly, and went to take another cold shower.
