In My Dreams It's Me And You

“It’s just here- and I don’t have the remote. Hang on, I'll just go and open the gates,” I said, already getting out of the car much to my companion’s surprise.

For some reason I felt anxious as I walked up to the panel embedded in the brick arch and pushed the button, tugging Brian’s jacket closer around myself as I felt the wind breeze past.

After a few moments the screen lit up with the image of my empty hallway, accompanied soon by the disembodied voice of my room-mate screaming ‘I’ll be down in a minute!’ She was just pulling on a top over her bra as she walked down the stairs, stumbling quite a few times before finally reaching the screen, her hair up in tufts and faint, dark rings circling her eyes.

“Who is it?” Chloe yawned; her eyes squeezed shut as she stretched her tired limbs.

“Why don’t you just take a look?” I retorted cheekily, a grin spreading on my face as I watched her eyes widen to the size of dinner plates.

“Nat?!?” I flinched as she screamed out of the speakers her sleepy stupor now completely gone as she jumped excitedly up and down on the spot. I couldn’t help but laugh at her antics; she could be so random sometimes. “Why didn’t you call and say you were coming back today? I would have at least put a top on for you.”

I shrugged. Gently. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Yeah right, you just forgot like always,” she sighed as she placed her hand on her hip. She began to crane her neck around the screen as if she had just seen something behind me, pointing at something as I just stood there, confused. “Whose jacket is that? And don’t try and say it’s yours because you know I know your closet better than you do.”

“Erm...” I turned back to look at Brian sitting patiently in the car and couldn’t help but smile at his cute expression. It looked as if he had just been asked the hardest question in the world, and he was being forced to answer it with no help whatsoever. I glanced back at Chloe on the screen with a mischievous grin, deciding to give her the answer she most likely wanted to hear. Not that it wasn’t true. “I borrowed it because I was cold. Now hurry up and open the gates before I freeze even with this jacket on me.”

I heard her mutter something as I walked back to the car, the gates beginning to open just as I clambered back into the car.

“You have a security system here?” Brian asked. He drove up the winding path to the house, his eyes widening in disbelief as my home slowly loomed into view.

It was always something of a shock whenever someone came here, especially considering it was a luxury manor of sorts. On the outside anyway, Chloe and me had since redecorated the insides to our tastes.

“My parents installed it when they bought the place. They said it was save us from burglars but I think it was just to keep an extra eye on me,” I replied as he parked in front of the house, leaning over the steering wheel to peer up from the windscreen at our home. He didn’t seem to want to move from that spot so I merely left him to it after a roll of my eyes, just managing to shut the door behind me as something came speeding towards me in a flash of colour.

“YOU’RE HOME!” Chloe shrieked as she ran down the steps and then barefoot over the gravel, the stones not hindering her speed in the slightest as she raced over with no signs of stopping. I quickly curled my arms around my chest to protect myself from whatever she was planning to do, only to look up and see her having stopped at the last moment with a frown on her face. “What?”

Lowering my arms I looked at her apologetically, the frown soon replacing with a smile as she swiftly kissed the top of my forehead. She must have seen Brian still in the car since she bent down to the window and knocked briskly upon the glass, the jump that he performed limited only by the roof of his car, and the bump he was going to get on his head because of it. “Your shining knight? Seems awfully jumpy, babe.”

“Still mine though,” I replied, smiling as he got out of the car rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head fervently. “Brian, this is Chloe. Chloe, meet Brian.”

Chloe’s expression instantly darkened as she walked up to him, gazing at him up and down as she circled him. He seemed to recoil slightly under her serious gaze before finding himself stumbling backwards as she suddenly leapt up and squeezed him into one of her famous bear hugs. I guess I forgot to tell him about her tendency to do that to people but he seemed to get over it quickly, even chatting away after a few minutes as if they had been friends for years.

Typical. I rolled my eyes at them and walked to the front of the car where the bags were stowed, grabbing the handle of the closest one to me with my right hand and tugging backwards.

Mistake.

Pain exploded across my chest as I could do nothing but submit to crumpling unceremoniously to the floor, my hands clawing at my knees as I tried vainly to compose myself. I had stupidly forgotten that I had to use my left side for things since the breaks were on my right; otherwise they just resulted in times like this.

“Nat? Are you alright?”

I looked up to see both Brian and Chloe looking at me with concern, my room-mate soon attacking him for a cell to which I guessed would be used to call an ambulance. If there was one thing I was certain about right now, it was that I certainly wasn’t going back there any time soon.

“I’m fine,” I growled, forcing myself onto my feet as if to prove my point.

This was before I had to hunch over the open boot and rest my head on the nearest bag as the pain was restricting me from moving, my chest feeling almost as if someone was attacking them from the inside. However I soon heard the distinct sound of buttons being pressed and turned my head to viciously yell a string of curses at the pair of them before making my way up the stairs into the house and slumping against a counter in the kitchen. Since I hadn’t bothered to shut the door I could hear them talking about me but at that moment I didn’t care what they were saying, instead focusing all my energy into tearing through each of the cupboards and grabbing every single form of pain medication we had before dumping the contents of each bottle into a small pile on the breakfast bar, accompanied later by a glass of water.

--

“Do you think we should call for an ambulance? She would hate us for it though...” Chloe worried as she continued to type ‘91’ into Brian’s cell before snapping it shut again. She turned to him anxiously as he stood staring up at the house where Nathalie had last disappeared, his expression conveying his loss at what to do. “Brian? What do you think?”

He looked at her with a shake of his head, gathering the bags that Chloe had left for him in the car before silently following her up the house, just placing Nathalie’s guitar in the corner as she approached, whispering in his ear. “You go. She’s probably more likely to listen to you right now.”

--

While there was truth in her voice he glanced at her with disbelief before nodding, walking back into the hall to try and find where Nathalie had disappeared to.
Brian appeared in the doorway just as I snatched a handful of pills from the miniature mountain I had made and was about to shovel them into my mouth, the medication scattering on the kitchen floor as he shook them from my grasp with an furious look, his hand locked around my wrist.

“What do you think you are doing?” He asked angrily as he took what was still left in my hand and setting them on the bar, shaking his head at the sheer amount of different medication we had in the first place. “You could have killed yourself! Is that what you want? To die, just like that?”

What I did next surprised even me. I cried.

“It’s just so frustrating!” I wailed as I sunk miserably to the floor, my wrist hanging in the air above me as he was still holding on. He seemed surprised by my tears as he slid down beside me, kissing the inside of my wrist where he had held it before locking his fingers with mine. “I feel so useless! I hate this!”

“Of course it does,” he murmured softly as he reached up to procure one pill and the water for me, holding the glass to my lips for me to drink after placing the medication in my mouth. I couldn’t help but whimper as the simple motion of swallowing hurt, finding his arms around me in a comforting embrace as I squeezed my eyes shut. “But it’s what you have me and your mate here for though, right?”

I couldn’t help but smile at that, the pain that had once been torturing me now seeming to melt away with each passing second I spent in his arms. When I opened my eyes again I saw Chloe crouching down in front of me with an ‘all-knowing’ gaze locked upon the two of us.

My own personal knight in shining armour.