DISCLAIMER: Bad Girls and its characters are the property of Shed Productions. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Certainty
By zennie
"Are you certain?" The line is spoken with weariness, as if the speaker has been down this same road numerous times.
"Am I certain?" The short Scot woman laughed, an edge of hysteria creeping in. "Am I certain?" She crossed her arms in front of her chest, not sure if the gesture was meant to close herself off or hold herself together. Regardless, she was failing in both respects.
"I haven't been certain of anything since I fell in love with you," she stated, her voice carrying crystal clear through the silence of the Block. Nikki started, She wondered if the other woman knew what she had let slip.
"I don't know what do to, Nikki. I spend every moment I'm away from you trying to get my equilibrium back and then I catch the merest glimpse of you and the ground sways under my feet. I don't even know myself anymore."
She turned and looked directly at the other woman for the first time since she had come into the cell, "I want you so much…"
"So take me! Jesus, Helen, I'm right bloody here."
"I can't…"
"Can't or won't?"
"I need time, to sort out my feelings…"
"Oh, wonderful." The con whipped around, turning her back to the other woman. "That's fine, Helen, take your time. It's not like I can do anything about it, can I? I'm locked in here, right where you leave me." She paused, and under her breath, muttered, "I'm your bloody pet, aren't I?"
"No, Nikki, you're not. It's just, just…. I'm as locked in as you, Nikki, don't you see?" A snort of laughter greeted that comment, but Helen kept trying to explain. "I love my job an' I love you. But loving you means I can't do my job and doing my job means I can't love you."
Now was Nikki's turn to cross her arms as she tried to keep the sudden breathlessness of her reaction to Helen's words in check. Helen had never been so open about what she was feeling before, and the tall con wondered what this change portended. She forgave the woman for everything, and usually far too easily, and this, this felt like a trap.
"Excuse me for not sympathizing with you, Miss. I guess it's hard to see your sacrifices from this side of the bars." Nikki felt a warm hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged out from under it, moving as far away from Helen as the small cell would allow. She was acting like a child, and she knew it, but what else could she do? All she had were the few meager privileges that were begrudging bestowed on her, and she was reminded, daily if not hourly, how easy it was for even those few pleasures to be stripped away, like her books, her clothes, her dignity.
"That's why I'm working so hard for your appeal. Don't you see, when we're both on the same side of the bars…"
"Then what, Helen? Everything's fine and dandy? All of our problems just disappear?"
"I don't know, but…"
Nikki turned and closed the space between them in a heartbeat. "Yeah, well, I do. You'll still be a coward. When it gets tough, you'll leave me for some man who doesn't make everything so difficult for you." She took a step back, as if washing her hands of the whole thing. "You're a coward, Helen, and you'll always be one."
"I've risked my job for you."
"No, I've risked your job for you. You just let me."
"Jesus, Nikki, what do you want from me?" The volume rose with her anger. "You want me to risk, is that it? You want some grand gesture to prove how I feel about you?"
Nikki didn't have a chance to answer as she was roughly pushed up against the wall and kissed, just as roughly. Helen caught her hands and pressed them into the cold stone on either side of her head while her thigh expertly parted Nikki's legs. The kiss deepened and Helen groaned and Nikki felt it buzz through her body like a lightening strike. And when Helen pulled away to stare at her with such intensity, such possessiveness, the fire in those green eyes made the throbbing intensify dramatically.
But this wasn't right, any of it. "Helen…"
"Shut up, Nikki," Helen growled against Nikki's throat.
"Helen, someone could come in."
"I thought you wanted me to risk my job for you."
"Damn it, Helen…" Nikki bit back a groan as Helen nibbled her way up to Nikki's ear.
"I want you," Helen replied, her thick Scottish burr asserting itself as she mumbled the words against Nikki's heated skin.
"And you have me, body and bleeding soul," Nikki admitted, reluctant to confess this bitter truth and give Helen even more control. "You don't have to do this."
But the time for speaking was over, as Helen claimed her lips once again, and this time, Nikki didn't resist. She couldn't, the way the heat ran through her body like wildfire and pooled between her legs. The wall at her back held her up when her knees could no longer, and even if she could think, she no longer cared what it looked like, the Governing Governor shoving her tongue down her charge's throat and forcing her trousers down, leaving a line of bloody fingernail scrapes on the taller woman's thighs.
And when it was over, Nikki slid down the wall on rubbery legs to collapse in a heap of torn clothes and labored breath. Helen walked to the door, smoothing her hair, dabbing at the blood on her lip, and paused to look back at the woman who was hunting desperately for a cigarette.
"Nikki?" Helen called, all the pain, regret, and love she couldn't express rolled into that single word, "Be careful what you wish for."
And in the wake of her leaving, Nikki missed her first attempt to light her cigarette and cursed her shaky hands.
The End