Alive Like Fire

Title: Alive Like Fire

Author: Stuntdouble

Rating: R(ish)

Disclaimer: Bad Girls and all its characters are property of Shed Productions, a division of Shed Media Group, plc. The author implies no ownership of these characters, and they are used in the stories without permission solely for entertainment and not for profit. Similarly this applies to any copyrighted fictional characters either from literature, broadcast media or film.

I am happy to accept constructive feedback openly as it will improve the quality of my writing. Please use Private Message or email for any feedback of an extensive nature.

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This one's for Emily. The request was Helen and Nikki on the night of Nikki's release. Huge thanks to Stealthgirl for everything including the beta-ing.


Alive Like Fire

Tomorrow, she needs to speak to Trisha, needs to interlace their fingers and look into her eyes and tell her everything she's seen and done, and done and seen, since the doors clanged behind her at Larkhall.

She needs to walk alone down the street with a newspaper in one hand and a frothy cup of coffee in the other.

She wants ice cream and organic cotton sheets. She wants the smell of new books and the taste of fresh herbs. She wants rain, sheets of it; thunder; the sort of lightning that splits entire tree trunks. She wants sunlight, unsheltered, merciless on her skin.

But tonight there is only Helen. Beautiful, beautiful Helen, with adoring eyes and miles and miles of flawlessly uncharted skin. She is reaching for Nikki on her bed of grass, under her blanket of stars, and they are wrapped in the scent of

***

lavender?"

When she doesn't answer, Helen closes the book Nikki is reading over her shoulder and turns to face her, sliding easily along the bottom of their two-person bathtub, full as it is with scented bubbles.

Nikki looks at Helen over the top of the glasses she's too vain to wear in public. "I wasn't finished with that page," she says.

Helen leans back and reopens the book.

It is thoroughly impractical for her and Nikki to read together. Helen plows through stories with nothing but plot resolution in mind, while Nikki lingers on every sentence, delighting in the way words work together. Elegant writing, like gourmet food, had a libidinous effect on her, and Helen willingly suffers through it. Besides, she is irresistible in those damn glasses.

Helen relaxes further into Nikki's embrace, relishing the feel of Nikki's sudsy breasts against her bare back. She is almost ashamed of how much she misses physical contact with her when they're apart for only a day.

Nikki kisses Helen at the juncture of her neck and shoulder to indicate that she's finished with the page.

"So?" Helen asks.

"So," Nikki says. She turns Helen around, scooting her backwards along the length of the tub until she is resting at the opposite end. She props Helen's foot on her shoulder and reaches for the shaving mousse, lathering Helen's leg from ankle to thigh, and in a practiced, delicate routine, begins shaving Helen's leg.

Helen sinks down into the steamy water and closes her eyes. Nikki smoothes the razor over her calf, sliding it from the ankle to the back of Helen's knee, causing her leg to jerk.

"Stay still," Nikki commands.

"It tickles! You know I'm ticklish there!"

Nikki chuckles and continues working her way around Helen's calf. She looks up -- again, over the top of her glasses -- and raises her eyebrows when she sees Helen's grin.

"What?" she asks.

"You," Helen says, "are beautiful beyond all sense."

She is singularly peculiar, Nikki Wade; confident enough to walk the streets of London completely starkers, but always coloring under Helen's adoring gaze.

When Nikki is finished, she rinses off the mousse and leans forward to run her hand

***

up Helen's inner thigh, pausing at the seam of her jeans to apply pressure and elicit a hissed expletive, before finally moving her fingers to Helen's zipper. Helen wants to help, wants out of her jeans more than she's ever wanted anything in her life, wants Nikki's flesh pressed against her own. She is angry at the space between them, alternating between crushing kisses, whispered adoration and possessive fingers digging into Nikki's back, hoping on some carnal level to mark Nikki as her own.

Yes, that is exactly what she wants.

She stops Nikki mid-zip, and rolls her off the blanket, pinning Nikki's hips firmly to the

***

lawn!" Helen shouts, but Nikki can barely hear her over the sound of the four-stroke engine. She shrugs and looks away to indicate as much, but Helen is relentless. She marches to Nikki's other side and signals to her, through the universal neck-slicing motion, that she should shut it down.

Nikki ignores her.

"I know you saw the letter!" Helen shouts.

Nikki shakes her head.

"You didn't see the letter? You're just out here in the middle of winter, stomping around in your boots, doing lawnmower therapy for no reason?"

"If you didn't want me to see the letter, you should have hidden it better!" Nikki shouts back over the growl of the mower.

"Don't be a prat, Nikki! It was on the kitchen table with the bills! I obviously wasn't trying to hide it!"

"Do you think I care if you get a letter from your ex-boyfriend?"

"I should bloody well hope so!" Helen is two steps from unhinged and Nikki knows it.

"Thomas Waugh can fuck off!" Nikki shouts.

"I know! That's why I left him for you!"

"But you didn't leave him, did you? He left you!"

"Nikki, we've been over this a hundred times!" Helen actually stomps her foot as she continues shouting. The wind and her anger are causing such a blush that Nikki cannot look away. "It was a year ago! I love you! I only ever loved you! I thought you knew that by now!"

Nikki does know. She reaches to switch off the mower in remorse as Helen reaches to shut it off in anger. The sound of their heads knocking together is cartoon coconuts.

"Jesus

***

Christ," Nikki rasps as Helen sucks Nikki's nipple into her mouth, lavishing and loving it in the chilly night air.

Whatever timidity Helen expressed the night of Nikki's escape, whatever reservations and hang-ups, whatever insecurities and fears she harbored: they have been vanquished.

"I love you," she breathes, moving her mouth to the hollow of Nikki's neck. She places the flat of her tongue against the place where Nikki's pulse is beating madly, and Nikki wants to say it is for Helen, all for Helen. And the kiss that comes after is bursting with

***

promise."

"I promise," Nikki says, making an 'x' over her chest. "Cross my heart."

Helen's face is a study in skepticism when the salesman returns.

"Ah, I can see that your friend is still not happy with your choice. Which does she not like, a fast ride? Italian leather? Or maybe she does not like to share the attention of the men who will be staring at you when you take this top down, eh?"

He winks down at them as they sit in the car in the showroom.

"I'm her partner, actually," Helen says. "And I'm not worried about men looking at her -- or at me. I'm worried about her safety."

"Even though I've promised to keep it comfortably within the maximum speed limit," Nikki says, running her hands over the wheel.

"But what is life without adventure," the salesman says, making a sweeping gesture with his arms. "Open roads are always best with your lover, no? The breeze in your hair and the song in your heart and the growl of 600 horses under the hood!"

Helen is still frowning.

"Or perhaps your girlfriend wants something suitable for babies," he says, his optimism failing him at last.

The word flips Nikki's stomach to the point of dizziness. Babies. It does something to Helen, too; Nikki can see it in the side mirror. She waves the salesman off and turns to face her. Babies.

"Helen?" she says, but Helen refuses to meet her eyes.

"Helen?" Nikki reaches out to touch her. "Is that true?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Helen says, still staring straight ahead. "You love this car. Buy it. I never expected you to want a minivan."

Nikki grips the wheel, feeling as though she lost something she never even knew had.

"But yes."

"Yes, what?" Nikki says, turning in the seat to face Helen fully.

"Yes, I want to have your babies."

An entire world Nikki never imagined flashes before her eyes: swings and ice cream and rattles and bottles and handball games and Christmas pageants and crayons and clay and trucks and cars and dolls and dishes -- and her child alive inside of Helen. Her child. Hers and Helen's.

"My babies?" Nikki says, barely daring to believe the words have escaped her mouth.

"You didn't know?"

Nikki shakes her head and reaches for Helen's hands. "You never said."

"Nikki," she whispers, "I want us to make a baby."

The tears begin to splash down

***

Helen's cheek as soon as she enters Nikki. She kisses her again, meaning a thousand things she's never said before, a thousand things she's never felt before. Nikki is free. Nikki is free. Helen Stewart is alive like fire.

Slowly, deliberately, she coaxes Nikki to the brink of herself, to the brink of her sanity, and when she tips her over the edge, the sound of her name on Nikki's lips is the most perfect song she's ever heard.

She falls down beside her, panting, sweating, begging, dreaming, praying this is only the beginning. When she rolls over, a blaze of light flashes across the night sky. A shooting star. An anomaly in London.

Like hope.

Like miracles.

Like Nikki.