by Christy Shorey and you

ARCHIVE: NOV. 6 edited for spelling and grammar

3741 words

Lacey sat on the stool she typically used when she was working on a tattoo. Sitting in the client's chair across from her was Logan, although not quite matching her mental image, clearly the mystery man she had been dreaming of. Or as close as was likely to exist in reality.

She shifted on the stool, suddenly uncomfortable with his eyes on her. She could feel the scrutiny in them, and to her disappointment, they did not appear to be red, as January had said they did. She turned the stool so her body was facing the side wall, but kept her head towards him, maintaining eye contact. "So you wanted to talk to me?"

Logan nodded. "Yes."

Lacey watched a string of emotions pass across his face, and she found she almost felt sorry for him. But it also irritated her. The man from her dreams did not have difficulty putting thoughts to words, surely. He was confident, strong, and, and, mysterious. Logan appeared to be none of these things. Well, she gave that he had the potential to be confident and strong, perhaps if the situation were different, but he didn't seem the speck of mysterious, much to her disappointment.

"Okay," she said, not letting him off the hook. "Now's your chance."

"Why did you come to find me?"

Lacey raised an eyebrow in a haughty manner "Who said I did?"

"Well, the cashier pointing to me out to you was a pretty big hint. Your story about being that girl's attorney was another. But even baring that, I say you did."

Lacey laughed. "That's some ego you have there, Logan. I know January, she gets her ink done here. She told me yesterday that she spilt coffee on you, and then bolted. I felt bad, and since she seemed determined to avoid that coffee shop for the foreseeable future, I would do the decent thing and apologize for her."

"As her lawyer?"

"I figured it would seem less awkward than saying "Hi, I'm January's tattoo artist, and I just wanted to apologize for her for spilling the coffee on you that she was buying for me."

"And my coffee. She made me spill that one too."

"Whatever."

Logan leaned against the back of the chair, resting his chin on his arms folded across the back. A moment later, he shook his head. "Closer, but I don't think that is the only reason you were looking for me - more like the excuse you were using."

Lacey glared at him. "What, you don't believe anything I say?"

The smile Logan gave sent a jolt through her, suddenly she was seeing the mystery man from her dreams in full force. She strained to hear his response past the pulse thrumming in her ears. "I don't disbelieve everything. Just the lies."

She slid off the stool, shooting him a look of warning. "I only told you I was an attorney so you didn't think I was a nutcase apologizing for a client," she said with as much patience as she could muster. "I told Rocky that you were my brother so that he'd leave us alone because *you* said you wanted to talk."

"Who is Jason?"

Lacey stopped her tirade at the simple question. She considered not answering it, but that would mean she would have to part ways with Logan after only having just met him. She realized she couldn't expect him to sit there without an answer to what was, on the surface, a reasonable question.

"Rocky was asking about my long-distance boyfriend."

"Oh, so you have a boyfriend named Jason?"

Lacey looked at her companion's face. It looked as if he was asking an innocent enough question, but she could tell that he already knew the answer. That he was waiting to see how she replied. She gave a sigh and sat down. "No, I don't."

"And you don't live with your parents."

It was not a question, but Lacey answered anyway. "No, I do not."

"Okay then. Well, fair is fair. Just so we're on the same foot, I, likewise, am not an attorney, I do not live with my parents, nor to I have a long distance boyfriend named Jason."

Lacey glared at him again, indignant that he was mocking her, but she found that he was laughing, and that it was a sound that touched something deep in her soul. She found she couldn't hold back a small laugh, herself.

"Actually, Lacey, I was looking for you, too."

She looked over at him, the laugher fizzling out suddenly at that statement.

"Why?"

"If I tell you, do you promise to share in kind?"

Lacey nodded.

"The truth?"

"Yes!" It was frustrating that he had figured her out that quickly, when no one had for years, and she was determined to figure out what was her tell, what made this stranger, this real-life incarnation of the man from her dreams know when she was lying. But she was more so intrigued by the revelation that she was not alone in seeking him out.

"I saw you in a dream, you and January. She was trying to save some papers from spilt coffee, of all things," Logan said with a smile, "But then you appeared and took from her a paper with a drawing of a man on it. He looked very familiar, actually."

****

Dresden followed Lional into the house, and almost collided with him in the entryway. Instead of heading in to his room, his housemate had stayed in the front hall, and had his eye on the same direction the blond man had disappeared.

"Did he seem funny to you?" Lional asked, not looking at Dresden.

"Um, him? No, not really," Dresden said, and was relieved to see his housemate give a nod.   Guido came into the doorway from the kitchen.

"What's up? Party in the hall?"

Lional shrugged. "I though we might have problems. Kid stopped right out in front of the house walking his dog, but I guess he was just tying his shoes."

"Right," Guido said, then turned to see what Dresden had to add. "Wow, you look like hell," he said, instead. "Did you get on the wrong side of a mob?"

Dresden blinked at his housemates, especially now that Lional had turned his attention to him as well, and was voicing surprise, too. Dresden had not actually seen himself since the incident on great lawn, and found himself answering. "Well, sort of."

"Anything you'd like us to do?" Lional asked, and Dresden was taken aback. Ht wasn't sure what the taller man was offering, but the way Guido seemed to second the idea didn't sit well with him.

"Uh, no, it's okay, really. Misunderstanding is all."

"You sure?" Guido said. "We could get the point across clear."

Dresden raised both his hands, suddenly worried for the safety of the general public, much less the students he had managed to rile up on campus. "No, I'm good, really."

"You are smiling," Lional said, as if he didn't quite believe it.

"Am I?"

Guido nodded. "Yeah, You okay? Hit in the head?"

Dresden was amazed at how nice his housemates seemed to be. After three years of living with them, he had always assumed the trio were bad news, and had avoided them as much as he could. Now that he was actually talking with two of them, he wondered what he had been so worried about.

"No, I'm fine. The girl I met? I got to talk to her today, so it was a good day. She's even agreed to find me work while I'm suspended."

Guido looked a little skeptical at this, but Lional patted him on the shoulder. The gesture almost sent Dresden sprawling, and had his shoulder stinging for several minutes after.

"Party time." The sound of the newest addition to the house broke the moment, and the three turned towards the back of the house. Raul's bird had gotten free when Raul had left his room, and he was now chasing the bird down the hall, trying to scoop him back up.

"Party time," the bird cried again, and ran toward the front door. Lional stepped out of the way, and Guido disappeared back into the kitchen. The bird made a beeline for Dresden, and stopped at his feet. "Get outta the way, bum." it said, and started pecking at Dresden's feed. Raul scooped up the bird with an apologetic look, and hurried him off back to his room.

Dresden finally got into the house, and saw through the kitchen window what looked to be an inflatable castle in the back yard. Not quite trusting what he saw, he stepped into the kitchen to get a closer look, and noticed that Guido was putting the finishing touches on a cake.

Before Dresden could ask, Guido said, "Raul wanted a party for the bird, thought it was lonely or felt out of place or something."

"Okay, right."

"So don't go anywhere. Lional's just back with balloons. Go help him."

Dresden did as he was told. Even for having discovered what seemed to be a gentle side to his housemates, he didn't want to take the chance of getting on the wrong side of them.

****

Logan had watched Lacey's face carefully when he said he had been looking for her. He was pleased to see he had surprised her, and happy to see that the revelation seemed to open her up, if only a little more.

When he told her about the dream, Lacey had been watching him intently, and when he mentioned the sketch of the man, she started to flush. His words hung in the air, and he waited to see what exactly she was turning red over. They sat in stalemate for several moments, then Lacey seemed to come to some sort of agreement with herself. She stood deliberately, and crossed to a drawer on the other side of the room. She pulled out a file folder, and flipped through a few pages before pulling out a single sheet of paper.

Crossing the distance back to him, she held the page clutched to her stomach. She took a deep breath, and turned the page to face him.

Logan felt his own breath catching, and he reached out to the paper. It was the exact image he had seen in the dream he had collected from January, there was no mistake about that. Just as there was no mistake that the dark figure in the picture was him. His fingers touched the edge of the page, and suddenly Lacey was snatching the paper back, putting it back in the folder.

"You drew that," he said, and knew it was true.

Lacey nodded, her back still toward him.

"Do you, it looks like me," Logan said.

"You can't really see his face," Lacey said, her voice quiet.

"But you think so, too. You think that the man you drew was me."

There was a hesitation, then "Yes."

Logan let out a sigh. He wasn't sure what it meant, but he could tell that something from the dreams he had collected had finally paid off. A knot started to form in his stomach as he realized he could be vesting too much in that statement.

"Have you seen me before, then?"

Lacey shook her head. "No. Well, not in life. It was in my dreams." She turned to look at him, and he could see how distraught and excited she looked at the same time. "He's been in my dreams for years, and I knew that he never existed, but then he does. You do. And you dreamed about me too."

Logan shook his head. He didn't want to tell her yet that the dream he had seen her in was January's dream, he still wasn't sure he could trust her. What if she was the one he had been looking for to find answers. What if she WAS the answer? If she was the reason that he had been living life over and over, then confronting her on it, presenting any weakness could signal the end of this life. While it wasn't a perfect life, he was rather attached to it.

"You, you didn't want to meet me, did you," she was suddenly asking, and Logan cursed himself for letting so much show on his face. He had to think of something to throw her off.

"I just, I didn't think things like this happened," he said.

Lacey shrugged, and headed back to the stool. "Me either. But, do you think it means something?"

Logan was about to answer, when he got a strong, familiar sensation of being close to an answer. The room was overlaid with some sort of archaic doctor's office, and where Lacey's voice came from was the form of a tall, white-coated man. He knew he was close, that there was some sort of connection, and was tired of all his past lives encroaching on this one. The doctor was assuring him that the procedure would let the demons out. There was unbearable pressure on his head, and he let out a choked scream.

Then there was a gentle pressure on his arm, and he was back in the tattoo parlor. Lacey was standing next to him, looking both scared and excited. "Are you all right?" she was saying, her brown eyes close to his, looking as if she could see the universe in them.

"I'm," Logan paused to take stock of himself, the sudden departure of the encroaching memory. He looked down at Lacey's hand on his arm, and looked back at her. "I'm fine," he said with a smile. "Just fine."

***

Lacey had watched as Logan's eyes had seemed to loose focus, and he had started swaying in the chair. Having dealt with queasy clients before, she was ready to rush over and catch him in an instant, should he need it. When she got to him she realized that his eyes had turned the same red as the eyes of the mystery man from her dreams.

She reached out to him, and he seemed to come back to awareness. When she touched him, all the feelings the dream had ever evoked in her came rushing back. He assured her that he was fine, and she knew that he was, even as his eyes faded back to blue.

****

Dresden was amazed by the antics of his housemates, but when the night was done, and Sally (as the hideous bird had been dubbed) had been appropriately welcomed, he got the feeling that things in the house would quickly fall back into the old routine.

He had been hesitant at first to partake of the bouncy castle that had been erected in the back yard, but after some easy persuading by Guido, and a hurt look from Raul when he tried to refuse, Dresden had found he actually was enjoying it. The plastic swords that each of them wore, at Raul's insistence (he felt it would make Sally feel more like a real pet) were quickly drawn, and a massive four-way battled had ensued on the bouncy castle.

Dresden found, as he drifted to sleep that night that the swords had probably left more bruises than the earlier mob had, but it had been worth it to hear his housemates laughing. As he fell asleep, he realized what a scary sound it actually was. He wondered if he was crazy, seeing good in his housemates, if he had been affected by Margot in some way, into believing that some how the thug-like men were really okay guys, in her simply saying "Everything will be okay."

But even if it was a lie, and things weren't any different the next day, he was certain that he would be okay. He was going to see her again.

****

Margot had restless dreams. When she was in human form, her dreams were often milder, more mundane, so even when she spent time her true form during the day, she liked to sleep as a human. Or, if that wasn't possible, as the golden retriever. The most threatening thing there was a ball that refused to be caught.

But when she slept as a dragon, when she had allowed herself to get to the point of exhaustion, as the past days events had driven her, then her dreams were dragon dreams. They were the memories of her too-long life.

Even still, some of these dreams were harmless; memories of her clan, her childhood and learning to take on other forms - the mistake that came with such learning, memories of flying and hunting.

The worse were memories of being hunted. It was these dreams that plagued her tonight. In her youth, a different time, a different world, a different her, she had been stubborn. There was no foe she could not defeat, no rival she could not stand down, no one or thing that could pull a fast one on her. Or so she believed.

Her first true encounter with a human in human form had ended up more than it seemed. The woman was nice, charming, and clearly a damsel in distress. Margot loved the irony, that a dragon would be the one to rescue a damsel in distress, for even on that world she had grown up with horror stories about dragons taking away unsuspecting damsels to devour or worse. Being a dragon herself, Margot was quite amused by this perception. Most dragons avoided humans, only took their form for protection, because while dragons were formidable opponents, they were small creatures by nature, easy targets for mounted humans.

The woman in question had relayed her dilemma to Margot's human form, and had won the dragon's imagination. This was her chance to show that dragon's weren't at all like the stereotypes. Day was approaching, and the woman was concerned that the person pursuing her would find them soon. Margot lead her to the safety of the cave where she had been staying. Over the course of the day, Margot had chatted with the woman, and came to trust the woman, and finally decided to share her secret. Revealing her true form, she had been amused to see the woman's shock. Then a broad grin had spread over her face, revealing two fangs. The woman confessed that the man after her was a vampire hunter, and while she appreciated the help that Margot had offered, suggested the pair of them might be in more trouble than either individually.

Margot had felt betrayed at the woman's deception. Vampires were creatures feared more so than dragons, and even now, years later and distanced by galaxies and the haze of dreams, she tasted the bile of betrayal in her throat. While the vampire had treated her cordially, she was certain that if she had remained in human form, and not shown her reptilian side, than the vampire would have tried to do something horrid. The woman had admitted as much.

Margot rolled in her sleep, catching the comforter in her mouth, and tearing into it to clear the taste away. The dreams that followed were no more pleasant than that - memories of righteous nights, of horrid spells, and of a rival who seemed to catch up to her no matter where she went, or how much time passed.

****

Logan lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. After the incident at the tattoo parlor, he had asked Lacey if they could meet again the next day. He explained that he was tired, which he found to be true after he said it. Lacey made him leave his address and phone number with her, and had almost insisted that she walk him home, presumably to ensure he didn't lie to her, when he had finally held up a hand.

"Lacey, I promise I'll call you. I do still need to talk to you, now more than ever, but I just can't handle it right now." She had accepted the explanation, and finally allowed him to leave.

By passing the library and the newsstand, he headed straight home, and put the necklace in the divot in the nightstand. Waiting until night was the hardest part. With no newspapers to go through, and not certain he could focus on them anyway, given what had happened when he was having his earlier flashback, he spent most of the afternoon pacing the loft, across the bedroom, down the stairs, and a circuit around the kitchen and living area, and back.

At sunset he finally realized he had not eaten yet again. He ordered a pizza, and realized as he paid the delivery driver that he really did need to find a job soon. But it if Lacey was the key, then perhaps getting a job at this point was moot.

For good measure, he called Lacey around nine pm. He explained that he was restless from their meeting, and knew that he would have trouble sleeping. He asked if she was sure it was okay for them to meet tomorrow, and asked if she had any recommendations for late night TV. She had assured that meeting would be more than okay, and admitted that she herself couldn't wait to go to sleep, hoping that they would meet sooner, in their dreams.

Logan waited another two hours after that, and felt bad for not telling her his suspicions. She seemed genuinely interested in the shared dream theory, and for once had told him the truth without hesitation.

Turning on the device in his nightstand, he programmed it to seek the signal of Lacey, and to shut off if it didn't find her. Lying down, he turned it to seek. After a few moments it gave a squawk. It had been unable to find her dreams.

He waited half an hour, and tired again. Then again. And again.

Throughout the night Logan had not been able to lock on to Lacey's dreams. Sunlight was streaming in through the window before he finally gave up. He set his alarm to for noon, when he had promised to call and arrange to meet her again, but he couldn't go to sleep.

Either Lacey hadn't slept at all in the night, or he was unable to collect her dreams.