for you_run_i_chase: Dream a Little Dream of Me

[i_run_you_chase]

Jarod's mind doesn't work like most people's. When he dreams, it is in sharp, reoccuring memories, occasionally spliced with other memories. He doesn't dream. He remembers, painfully. He is used to waking up with his head pounding and the memories coursing through him like a simulation gone wrong.

And eyes. He dreams of the eyes of the people he was responsible for killing. He believes that's just part of the simulation, too.

Tonight, he dreams. He opens his eyes and sees the Barge, empty and open as though it were nighttime and everyone was asleep. He sees a light on at the end of a darkened hallway. He sees it as though it were yesterday.

But it's not like any memory. It's different. He steps towards the light. Footsteps ring out somewhere around him.

"Who's there?" he calls.

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[yourunichase]

Parker clicked her tongue at him, and her fingers itched to move to the back of her suit jacket. She didn't want to count how many times she'd dreamed about him in the last couple of months. "I don't know, Jarod. You this close to me, I'm thinking that the nightmare has to belong to you. Dream come true for me."

With that, Parker took a step closer to him, her eyes moving over him. He seemed a hell of a lot more real than she wanted to admit, and a part of her was almost demanding that she reach out and touch him to see if he was real.

Then he grinned and she smirked in response, because that was the way the game was played when the two of them were in this close quarters. Old instincts melded with new ones, and her feet flexed in her heels for a moment. "I'm a little disappointed. Not even the deepest part of my sleep-cycle. You're slipping wonder-boy."

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

She looked different. More tired than he remembered. It wasn't a memory, then. A real dream. Interesting. He'd have to remember to call Sydney in the morning and ask him about real dreams. Did they feel like this? Could he actually feel the warmth of her body close to him? What if he touched her?

He reached out a hand and stopped it just inches before he touched her shoulder. While he'd been out in the real world, he could remember the Barge. He could remember Miss Parker and everything here. He remembered, but he could never get Miss Parker to remember, not in any of their phone calls. Hints about traveling, hints about them. She never quite got it.

"Can't always catch you during the deepest part of your sleep cycle, Miss Parker," he said. "Your body's chemistry will begin to switch the sleep cycle to later or earlier in order to keep my calls in check. I have to make sure I mix it up."

[yourunichase]

The part of Parker that was still locked in the mindset of hunter and pray was surprised by the way that his hand moved towards her shoulder. Idly, she realized that that bit of her had kept diminishing, even after he'd left the Barge. Instincts changed, and she didn't flinch back away from it; more surprising was the way that she realized that she hadn't want him to stop.

Parker had moments on the Barge (many moments) when she considered saying fuck it to the deal she was trying to make and thought about just poofing. Poofing and going and finding him and doing what they talked about. The worry was that if he didn't remember her? She'd be completely screwed without him or Broots or Sydney.

Some old games never worn down, and one of them was the way that they bantered. Sparring with Jarod had been one of her favorite activities for a long time. "Oh, does this mean that someday I can expect a nine am call to go with my morning coffe?"

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

"Would that surprise you?" he asked, flashing her a winning smile. Her coffee, he imagined, must've been something sacred to her in the morning. It would be fantastic to just damage that for a day, just to hear her fury over the phone.

His face grew suddenly very serious. "Do you remember this place?"

[yourunichase]

"Not now that you told me it wouldn't." She smirked in response to that winning smile, as if Parker would find the foreknowledge of this helpful. Foreknowledge from a dream--a sure sign she was fucking cracking up. Also there was the fact that if he messed with her coffee, she would probably find him and shoot him.

The seriousness in his tone and the question made the smart-ass remark she was going to make slide the hell off her face. "Of course I remember this place. I'm still here." There was a little beat, and her tone was half-caution and half-hopeful. "You remember being here, Jarod?"

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

This had to be a dream. It had to be. His chest felt tight, but he managed to stay calm as he nodded to her question.

"Every day," he said. "Every moment I'm out there, I think about being in here." And about her. And about how much they talked about, how much changed in only the few weeks he was here.

He gave her a small smile. "Did you make Warden?"

[yourunichase]

Damn. She didn't know how to respond to that other to be even more certain that this needed to be a god damn dream. Like you do in dreams, Parker took a step closer to him, within touching distance now.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why he didn't come back then, but right now Miss Parker didn't think she wanted the answer; it seemed like something that would only piss her off more when she woke up.

"Yep. Two months after you left, I did. I didn't shoot Raines." She remembered something else then, and she poked his chest angrily. He felt real. He felt real and warm and alive. Damn. What she had wanted to yell at him about was forgotten in the physical nature of him being here.

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

He wanted to tell her he was glad. He was glad she hadn't shot Raines. She was more than she thought she was. He knew that, and she was starting to learn it too, and---

And her finger was pressing against his chest. It was angry, and then it stopped. He could almost feel her surprise at how real he felt. It mirrored his own surprise.

He lost his words completely, his ability to be sassy or smug gone as he allowed himself, just for a moment, to pretend this was real. That this was Miss Parker touching him.

[yourunichase]

Damn. Damn she was touching him like he was real. Like he was real and there and that they were in the same place at the same time and on the same page. There was something almost mocking about how real that it felt, and Parker flexed her finger, the gesture searching and not angry anymore.

The finger became her palm pressed flat against his chest, just held there for a moment and she looked at it. She could feel his heartbeat, and the fabric of the shirt that he was wearing. This close to him she could smell him, really. Smell him and see him and touch him.

For a moment she stayed silent, and then she chuckled and it was dark, but there was humor in her tone. "I am gonna be so pissed off when I wake up."

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

That brought a smile to his face. A real, big smile. The sort that only Miss Parker really knew how to bring out of him. He'd missed this. He didn't even realize how much he missed it.

"I was just thinking the same thing," he said. The world out there, where she was chasing him and he was running and they never managed to quite get each other. Everything between them was always almost but not quite shared. Here, forced into a different sort of relationship where they couldn't run (where he couldn't run) changed things.

He swallowed, then reached out his hand again, this time to brush a lock of her hair behind her ear.

[yourunichase]

"Good." At least that was something they could share wherever the fuck they both were. Whenever they both were outside of this weird world of the Barge. They could both be pissed and missing each other even if they weren't there anymore.

Miss Parker didn't think that their relationship would have stood a chance had it not been for how she'd been here, the things she had learned. If she was honest with herself (and Parker really hated doing that) she would admit how much of the change and why she could graduate was because of the weeks that he'd been here. Those weeks had done her more good than the year proceeding it.

Anticipation and worry that his touch wouldn't be as solid made Parker hold her breath when he reached out to touch her. Then when she felt him, she smiled. It was a real smile, without teasing or malice or forethought. There was nothing there but a smile.

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

Although Miss Parker was frequently frustrating, filled with self-loathing that made her vicious and cruel, and often smelled of menthol cigarettes, Jarod had to admit she was beautiful. Even that first time he met her, when he put his hand out to the glass to touch her, he thought she was beautiful.

So much had happened between them, and right now, touching the side of her hair and letting his thumb brush her cheek, he felt like that boy holding his hand out to the glass and staring at an incredibly beautiful girl in front of him.

Hell, if he was dreaming, he might as well make the most of it.

"You know," he said. "Boys mature faster than girls."

He leaned his face down and pressed a kiss to her mouth.

[yourunichase]

If it had been anyone else other than Jarod, Parker would have done what Parker always did. She would have played a sharp jab, pressed against a raw emotional nerve while she leaned forward and kissed him. But it wasn't anyone else this was Jarod and while there were loads about her feelings for him that she'd managed to sort out, there was still lots of them, and deciding to kiss him had been one of those things that she was still trying to get.

But then he mirrored her line back to her, and she was amused, she was amused because she was able to remember on some days that she was still the girl who had given him his first kiss, and who had been his best friend and who had very nearly had sex with him more than a few times aboard the Barge before.

Damn, her mind was being a bitch now and having him kiss her. He tasted like she remembered: like doughnut ice cream and candy and innocence and a home she'd lost to a bullet in an elevator. Quickly, she pressed her hand to the back of his neck holding him in the kiss as she pressed herself to him, wanting to feel that he was there with more than just fingers.

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, laying in hotel rooms or talking to her on the phone during her deepest sleep cycle, he'd think about how she tasted when he kissed her. Like bitter cigarettes and a sweet sort of something that he couldn't properly identify. If he wasn't so emotionally wrapped up in this ridiculous dream he was having, he might spend hours kissing her with the sole intent to figure out what that sweetness was.

He felt her hand to the back of his neck, and he slipped a hand around her waist, pulling her closer. This was the Miss Parker he didn't have where he was, now. This was the sort of moment they had here, on the Barge, not back home.

Even though he valued his freedom above almost all else, he had to admit that this was something he missed. He missed the Barge because he missed her, the way she'd become.

[yourunichase]

For Parker, this sort of thing was the promise at the end of a very long rainbow. It was the promise that after she'd graduate her inmate she'd have this. She'd get her chance to punch the Admiral, Thomas Gates would be alive with his nice girl and Parker would take off in a sports car and find him and they'd get started on what the two of them should have been doing for the last four years.

Too bad she needed to die (twice) before she could have figured out that he was what she wanted. That this was what she wanted.

Later, she'd pretend she had a Sydney here and she'd analyze the dream, and Parker would decide it happened because she needed something to keep her going when she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. But for now she just kept kissing him, her arms coming up to wrap around his neck.

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

It wasn't fair. Here, she seemed to understand that they needed each other. There, she needed her father's approval. He could sometimes simulate Miss Parker's thoughts, but often he was left confused.

He logically knew that it was only his psyche telling him what he wanted, but he thought he could tell that she wanted this, too.

He broke the kiss, but didn't pull away from her.

"I wish you'd remember when I wake up." His voice was quiet, a little raw. He was never this sort of vulnerable around Miss Parker.

[yourunichase]

Damn. Why did this need to feel so real now. Why it need to feel not dream-like at all. Parker's brain was offering all sorts of other explanations for this: (flood, coma losing her mind) anything but the fact that this was a dream she'd eventually need to wake up from.

Her fingers moved to his face when he broke the kiss and when he spoke in that raw tone, she didn't know what the hell was... Yeah, that didn't seem like something she'd have him say in her dreams.

"Damn." She breathed the word, just looking into his eyes for a moment. "I'm coming." Parker said quickly. "I'm going to be there as soon as I'm done here."

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers, and trying with everything in him to remind himself that this wasn't real. She was only saying that because he wanted her to say that. She was only here because he was missing her and his mind was basically dumping that information to his subconscious. Nevermind that it hadn't happened before. It was real now.

"I didn't mean to leave," he said, as if that could somehow make it better. It couldn't, and he knew it. He could no more apologize to Miss Parker than he could apologize to the victims of the Centre.

"I'm sorry, Miss Parker."

[yourunichase]

Parker had struggled a lot with the fact that he'd left. For a long time, she'd settled into the bitter 'he couldn't handle whatever the fuck was happening between us and ran like he always did' or 'he just couldn't handle the barge' or if she was feeling masochistic 'he couldn't handle the fact that I had Paddy.' Eventually however she just accepted that she'd see him when she was done here, because despite however much she'd wanted to believe in them being separate and their lives having different paths, they were far too knotted up for that.

Her mouth opened to make the jab before she could help herself. "You never do, do you?" Maybe Parker was still a little bitter. Despite saying that, she didn't pull her forehead away from him, or step away from his embrace.

"Shit, I wish you'd come back."

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

"If I knew how----"

If he knew how, he'd pull her out of the Barge and take her with him. Get her away from all of it, show her the world she was missing while she lived in the Centre. She'd traveled everywhere he did, but she missed so much. He could show her, he could give that to her.

But out there, she didn't have what she had in the Barge.

"I can meet you here," he said. Which was, of course, ridiculous to say. 'Here' was in his dream, and there was no way she could acquire any sort of closure from within his fantasy.

[yourunichase]

"You'd what? Pull me the hell out of here?" Parker scoffed at that and she added after a second, "I can't leave til after I graduate an inmate. Tommy deserves that." He deserved better than her and a Centre bullet, and it was that thought that kept her here, even when her inmate reminded her of Raines and made her flesh crawl.

"Meet me here?" Parker scoffed again, and she just touched his chest, keeping her head against it, feeling his pulse and how it thrummed. "So what we're going to have a standard date where we just meet in my dreams like god damn pop song? Even dreams don't work like that, Lab-rat." You didn't get to pick your dreams; if you did she'd have much different ones.

[i-run-you-chase.livejournal.com]

Thomas. Right. Of course. Jarod couldn't deny her that love, even when he envied it. She went through so much to get him back, it was worth it to go a little farther. And Jarod could figure out where to put the two of them so they'd be safe. Safe and happy together.

"I don't know how long you'll be," he said. "But I'd like to see you again. Without you pointing a gun at me."

When he woke up, she'd have the gun and the need to catch him again. When she came back from the Barge, she'd have Thomas. There was no real winning for Jarod in this situation.

[yourunichase]

Parker didn't want Thomas for herself. She just wanted him to be alive and to have a chance for Portland and the life that he would have had with someone if he hadn't gotten mixed up in the insanity of her life. And if Thomas lived then the four people whom she'd inadvertently killed during the course of her investigation.

The only person Parker wanted, and the only person she could see herself with off the Barge and long term was the man whom she was standing in front of at this very moment. Well, if this was real and not her own fucked up little version of a sex dream.

"It's probably going to be a long time," she admitted with a scoff. "God damn, there are days when I wish I didn't think he deserved better than me and the life I got him, and I wish I could just fucking leave and go find you and make everyone else pay." Honesty, because in dreams you could be honest without worrying about it coming back to bite you in your ass.