undergrounds | Mr. Sandman

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Mr. Sandman

6 Feb.

It's February, still cold but Valentine's Day just around the corner and people starting to think of spring, it might not be surprising that romance seems to be in the air. Hard to pin down just what the difference is—but romance seems to be nagging at a lot of minds.

It might be because last night, you had a dream. Nothing clear, but bits and pieces stick with you. Maybe it was just stolen glances and light kisses, or maybe it was flashes and surprising jolts of something more physical, more raw. Either way, the dream doesn't quite fade away when daylight comes.

The strangest part? It's about someone you normally try not to think of that way.

Dreams are like that though, sometimes. It's probably nothing.

10 Feb.

A few days later, and the dreams keep on keeping on. For at least one person, it's every night. For others, it may be more intermittent. It may be just happening for the first time, after a visit to the Redbright Institute or passing through the surrounding neighbor, or after chatting with a particular vampire. It might happen spontaneously. Either way the dreams keep coming, and they continue to be about someone in particular, someone who you've been denying or ignoring your attraction to, but it's getting hard to pretend you don't feel a little warmer when you think about them.

It's starting to seem like there's something a little weird going on here. Even weirder? There's a chance that the person you're dreaming about is having the same dreams. Not just romantic dreams—the exact same shared dreams.

At least, they are if they're dreaming of you too.

14 Feb.

It's been a week now, and the dreams keep escalating. Not only do they become more frequent, they're more vivid. What started with disjointed images and feelings, more impressions than anything else, have evolved into full narratives—ranging from chastely romantic nonsense, imagining that the object of your desire is a knight coming to rescue you from a dragon, or arrived to offer comfort and support in a bleak moment, to intensely erotic. Some of them may be down right silly.

But the common thread is there. They are all about the same person, and they all expose the fact that you care about them in a way that's not as platonic as you've pretended.

And maybe it's about time you confronted that?

On the other hand, maybe you're just riding this out.

Either way, this is getting sorted out tonight. There's not going to be a better time for it

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"I fear she might be. That would explain it: I so rarely get to touch her nowadays." He brushes his hand over the skin of her arm to accent his words, light fingertips tracing over freckles.

"It's truly a great shame," he says with a bit too much of a smirk.

"A pity." Nancy shivers into his touch, keeping her eyes trained on him.

"Why don't you touch her more? I'm sure she'd love it."

At that, Cesare is quick to stand. He abandons his drawing immediately and wraps an arm around her, leaning in against her ear to whisper into it with a grin.

"I think she might be seeing someone."

The back of the couch is still between them, but Nancy doesn't care. She's about ready to let Cesare pull her over on top of him.

"A pity. What's he got that you don't?"

Cesare does, placing a hand on her thigh and hoisting her up and over the couch so that she falls on to him with a bit of a stumble.

"I have no idea, truly. Though don't worry: I have a plan to steal her from him. Lure her in with flowers, romantic poetry and hand drawn portraits."

Nancy doesn't even care, she's just happy to be on his lap.

"Good- those sorts of things work wonders on all sorts of women." She pauses, before continuing. "What do you love about her? Other than her pale, soft curves."

"Well, she's smart, for one thing, frighteningly so. She knows how to cope with any situation with grace and ease. She's charming and no matter what she does, she has an alluring innocence to her, which is surprising, because she can do all sorts of filthy things and take a drink better than anyone I know."

In real life he wouldn't be so honest and explain that part of her allure was her naivety. But in his dream, he's a little more loose lipped.

He's already moving his lips over to her neck to kiss her, wasting little time.

Nancy leans against him, humming appreciatively as he rains down these complements. Maybe if he'd said something like this before, she'd be with him instead of Cooper. But here in a dream, it was different.

"She sounds wonderful," Nancy coos, tilting her head so he can kiss at her neck. In the dream, she doesn't have scars, her neck is pale and bare of imperfections. And each kiss from Cesare, each caress, leaves dark trails of charcoal across her body.

Her hands move to his hips, holding herself against him, as her emerald eyes slide closed.

The rest of the dream is a combination of charcoal smudged hands and short gasps. It's...enjoyable to say the least.

When Cesare wakes up that morning, though, he thinks little of it. He is not a stranger to sex dreams and one about Nancy does not seem out of place. He does, though, feel fairly compelled to meet up with her. He picks up his phone and sends her a casual text.

Lunch?

The text, waiting for her when she wakes up and pulls herself out of Cooper's embrace, is wholly unexpected. That dream had been... intense to say the least, and she was still feeling the tightness in her loins that it had left, a yearning that she wasn't wholly comfortable assigning to Cesare.

But he wanted lunch. And who was she to deny him that?

Though, truthfully, she'd started letting him pay again- after their lunch at Le Gavroche, she knows pretty much any place he chooses is way above her pay-grade. Especially now that she had a normal sort of job.

Brill!
Say when and where ;)

He asks her to join her at a sushi spot in Mayfair. It's to Cesare's taste, which means it's basically a dark, moodily lit bar with a plenitude of booze. Cesare isn't shy about ordering the two of them multiple shots to get the ball rolling this early in the day. For Cesare, it's pretty late anyway.

"So I've heard you've been trying to leave your current profession..." he asks once their first course arrives. "How's that going?"

Nancy's a stranger to sushi. It's not the sort of place a lot of her former clients had ever taken her to, but she's happy to go when Cesare suggests it. He always has very good ideas when it comes to food, even if his tastebuds aren't up to standard human level. She lets Cesare order for her, having no idea what the fuck anything is, but she's really down for shots.

He knows how well she can drink.

"Yeah- I have," she says with a nod. "It's actually going great- I've got a new job over in Richmond. Just doing inventory stuff, still under the table, but it's good. I get to have normal hours." Which meant more time with Cooper. Not that she was going to mention her boyfriend around Cesare. They'd already discussed that.

"Where'd you hear that from, anyway?"

"A professional must never reveal their sources," Cesare says with a smile. Micheletto had informed him, told him of the overhead conversation between Nancy and Eames. But Cesare isn't exactly the type to show his hand so easily.

"Do you miss it at all? It must have had some great perks..." The flexible hours, the free gifts, the potential for sleeping with people you actually enjoyed... Cesare has no idea if Nancy ever had any actual fun with him, but he likes to think she did, even if he knows in the back of his mind that he's probably just kidding himself.

Nancy still had no idea MIck worked for Cesare. Probably for the best, considering everything.

"Goodness, honestly, not really? I mean, a few clients, a few perks..." She liked box tickets to the opera, or designer shoes. "But I like being home, having normal hours. I don't have to hide anything. I mean. There's less fun? Because it's a proper job with rules, but it's nice to know that I have it, and it ain't anything Sylvia or Samantha can touch." And that was the big issue. Sylvia and Sam weren't exactly happy she'd shacked up with a vampire.

Then again. They could go fuck themselves.

"How's the hotel?"

Cesare shrugs and gives a small smile.

"Same perks as always." Wealth, power, a place to hide crimes and a plenitude of alcohol and women. Whenever they had fought, Cesare had always been keen to make it clear to Nancy that she was not his only option to sleep with that night. Looking back with softer, kinder eyes, perhaps he had been a bit harsh with her. But spilled milk and all that.

"More booze?" he asks, already pouring himself another drink.

He had been harsh with her. He was a harsh man with standards that he didn't tell anyone about, but expected them to be able to live up to them. He wanted his way always, and often times, Nancy wasn't able to give that to him.

She still remembered the way he'd gripped her arm, trying to get her to join him and his friends.

But that was in the past.

"I'm glad- it's a lovely hotel. Best I've ever been to." She'd been to a few hotels, truthfully.

"I'd love some, thanks. This is the sake stuff, right?"

"The finest", Cesare replies with a smile, pouring her another drink before drinking his own.

"Your boyfriend doesn't take you to many hotels for the night?" he asks casually, not really thinking much of it. He had presumed that was part of being a good boyfriend these days: taking your girlfriend on dates and nice dinners and holidays in swanky hotels. Or the girl was welcome to do it too. Cesare is a modern man, after all. Cooper seems fine, but it seems like he's missing most of the requirements, requirements that Cesare had already taken care of as a patron.

Nancy pauses for a moment as she takes a sip of the sake.

"We're not supposed to talk about him, Ces," she says softly. She doesn't want to make anyone mad, wants to keep the respect between them. Talking about Cooper made it harder.

"But he's very good to me."

Nancy is such a hypocrite. She says not to talk about something and then does that exact soame thing, giving a final word that Cesare can't reply to without seeming like an asshole. He smiles slightly and rolls his eyes, making it very clear that he doesn't agree. Truth be told, he still doesn't quite understand how she chose Cooper over him in the first place. He still feels as if it was an accident that soon enough will be fixed and rectified. He shrugs and changes the subject.

"You know, I had a dream about you. That's why I got in contact this morning. I haven't had any dreams in years." There's nothing sexual to how he talks about it. He doesn't see the point. He doesn't think she knows so he isn't going to tell her.

Maybe because he never made it clear that he was interested in her besides some great sex and a drink or two. Perhaps if he had asked, they wouldn't be in this situation. But Cooper had told her he loved her.

Cesare hadn't.

Honestly, she never even knew how Cesare felt at all.

He mentions a dream and Nancy swallows too big of a drink. "Did you?" She asks with a blink. Because she'd had a dream with him in it, too. "That's interesting. What... happened...?" She's far too worried she knows.

Cesare lets out a small laugh and rolls his eyes slightly.

"I think I was drawing you? Or painting you? I'm not sure." That wasn't exactly the main focus of the dream.

"I haven't painted in years, not since photography began. Before then, it was just a way to get away with obsessing over naked women." He's a better painter than he's giving himself credit for. He's definitely not in a gallery, but one or two of his paintings are probably in some livingrooms of houses where the people who own it don't know any better.

"You paint?" He'd been drawing in the dream she had had. She remembered the charcoal staining his fingers.

"I didn't know that. I'd love to see some of your work." In the dream, it'd been amazing. but that was probably because it was the dream, and he'd been drawing her. Saying amazing things about her.

She presses her lips together, her thighs echoing the thought.

"And were you obsessing over me while you did it?"

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Mr. Sandman

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