Once again sometimes things get very caught in my head and I have to write them down; so this is little piece on events during the first series. It'll be about four chapters long, I suspect.

For Callie because she understand the need to write in the middle of the night - feel better soon, and Meggi for being Meggi.

"I'm her cousin…"

"You're not my cousin, we're not even related."

Kate

She slammed the door closed behind her as she stormed into her room, feeling every tell-tale sign of the treacherous tears building up in her eyes, and she was almost certain that they were tears of anger. She let herself slide down the door and settle on the floor as she brushed at her cheeks wiping away any tears present. She knew that she was feeling angry; angry at her dad for forgetting her birthday; angry at Jed for bringing a sudden halt to what would have been a suitable birthday present from the only male in her life who remembered her birthday and angry at herself for taking advantage of her flatmate and getting herself involved in such an encounter with Ryan in the first place. She considered that Ryan would have never usually have been her type - in fact she was sure that he'd not even been her type if she'd been drunkenly picking up men in a bar. She was almost certain that she would never even have looked at Ryan in that way had Molly not expressed an interest, truthfully she was sure that her own interest in Ryan had only been peaked when Molly had mentioned him. She never wanted to consider herself a jealous person, but the moment the words had left Molly's mouth she knew that she'd tried to dissuade her, and she knew that it was out of fear of it working and being left on her own and that in reality she was jealous; jealous of all those who got their happy endings when her own had been snatched from her at just sixteen.

She looked down at the soaking top still in her hand from when she'd retrieved it from the bath tub not five minutes earlier, and threw the offending item at the floor. Before she wriggled out of her skirt and dragged herself across the carpeted floor to pull a nightie from her drawer. As she pulled her sleepwear over her head she felt her shoulders begin to shake as she struggled to restrain the tears which had been threatening to fall every since Jed had forced his way into her bathroom and not only caught her in such a state of undress but also shocked her into the reality of the situation which she'd found herself in, as she realised he'd walked in on her pressed up against her bathroom window in a rather compromising position. She rested herself gently back against the wall of her room and found her hand reached out automatically to pull her quilt down to join her on the floor. The first pangs of regret had arrived almost instantly, and she wasn't entirely sure what she'd felt for, as she considered whether it was the fact that of all her past flings it had been Jed who had seen in such a way; or if it was the sudden presence of Molly's words not an hour earlier spinning around her head or if it was the guilt she felt at using Ryan in such a way.

She knew that she had no problem with using a man, if she'd needed to in the past, but when the man in question was Ryan she felt differently about it, why she wasn't quite certain. Her mind slowly drifted to the awkwardness of tomorrow morning and having to face both Ryan and Molly, before she caught up with the events of the past twenty minutes and realised that she'd left Jed stood still staring angrily at Ryan, who he'd only just pulled away from her, with Molly standing with both sadness and disappointment in her eyes as she arrived too late to see exactly what had been going on but the aftermath of the situation had been pretty obvious, she did not doubt. She knew that she hadn't always acted this provocatively nor could she even begin to understand why she acted that way at all - well she knew that she was growing tired of intimate encounters with men she'd just met, and that it left her feeling hollow and with a sense of nothingness the next morning, but at the time she knew she was making herself feel better, at least, for the short period of her time these men were involved with her for.

She was sure that she'd only been hiding in her room for about thirty minutes when she heard the gentle tapping on the door; a noise which she was more than willing to ignore for the time being, because of the three possible candidates she wasn't even certain which one she'd dread to face first. Initially, she was sure it'd be Ryan, however then she thought of facing Jed who she was sure that would still look deeply disappointed in her. She closed her eyes and the gentle tapping noise began yet again.

"Kate," she sighed deeply when she realised that it was in fact Jed who was trying to force some sort of contact with her. Ignoring him she pulled the quilt tighter around herself, she snuggled back down into the comfort of the bed clothes and silently found herself hoping that he'd give up and she'd be left alone for the remainder of the night.

She'd thought that he'd somehow understood her wishes and left, preferably the entire building rather than just the outside of her door when the tapping began that again and Jed once again began to speak. "I know it hurt you," he began and she found herself rising to her feet in order to protest with a person she couldn't even see. "Especially after everything that happen -" She almost jumped in fright at the implications that Jed's words could contain and quickly rushed towards the doorway, pulling at the handle in a rush to open the door and hopefully stop him revealing anymore than Molly had been privy to and information that Ryan certainly knew nothing about. As she stepped backwards, she stood on her bed clothes and quickly pulled the quilt up and threw herself on to her bed and re-wrapped them around her.

Jed

At his words he heard the door being opened ever so slightly, and he entered to be met with the sight of a red eyed Kate with tear stained cheeks who had positioned herself in the middle of her bed with her quilt carefully wrapped around herself, as though she was seeking comfort or protection from it. He raised his eyebrows momentarily at her hardened stare as she glared at him still standing in the open doorway, before he closed the door and crossed the room to sit at the foot of her bed. However, once he was facing her again he recalled her reaction to his arrival and he wasn't sure what had hurt more the fact that she seemed to have continued her reckless, provocative behaviour that he was sure that his admittance to the psychiatric hospital had begun or the fact that she'd dismissed him from her life with a simple sentence stating that he was not related to her. Then again, if her swift exit from the room was anything to go by he also thought that she'd forgot the connection that they'd once shared.

However, when he thought of that he recalled the way in which he had suddenly left her life almost nine years previously and the same old feelings of guilt he'd first experienced when he'd been forced to leave Kate's life without even a goodbye. Communication with his mother had informed that the girl had taken the news hard and she'd blamed her father intently for removing her only confidant from her life before she'd seemingly seemed to hit self-destruct and spiralled into the provocative behaviour that he'd witnessed himself only half an hour beforehand. In that moment as he watched her attempt to disappear beneath her bed covers and immediately seen the same fifteen year old girl he'd forced to confide in him in order to try to understand why she'd suddenly become so withdrawn from everyone around her.

"Kate," he found herself starting suddenly determined to engage her in some form of conversation in order to understand her actions as from the conversation that he'd had with Molly in the bathroom, she'd never expressed any interest in the male that he found her locked in a rather intimate position with, not long before. As he glanced in her direction he noticed that she had looked up momentarily and her tiny action had prompted him to continue speaking. "Talk to me," he stated calmly, upon realising that he had no idea what he was going to say to her. He looked as his companion shook her head before curling herself up under her quilt and covering her face from his view. He pulled the cover from her face and smiled at her sympathetically before he considered what to say to her. "Molly says that you've never been interested in Ryan before," he stated, before realising quite how forward his statement was.

He watched as Kate manoeuvred herself into sitting position and he remained seated at her feet as she gathered her quilt back around her shoulders and stared at him intently, while she chewed on her lower lip seeming more child-like and self-conscious than he'd ever have believed that she could be. "No," she had began, and stopped suddenly when he felt himself raise his eyebrows and the honesty of her words. "I'm not sure why I done it," she continued with the same honesty and he found himself feeling a little bewildered by the look of abject sadness in her eyes as she seemed to silently reflect on her current the situation.

"It did hurt you," He found himself half questioning, half stating in reference to his own sectioning and the circumstances which had forced him and Kate apart for years at a time. When he'd returned to her side age nineteen, he'd seen the change in her - in fact the first thing he'd noticed had been the cold look of nothingness in her eyes as she entered the room and barely looked at him. However, that had not stopped her ending up in his bed that night, though it had also not stopped her ending up in a complete stranger's bed the next night, something that Jed was sure then would always haunt him if he ever recalled how easily and naturally she had allowed herself to led away by him in the bar, before creeping back into the house at six the following morning.

"No one told me what was going on," the girl he'd almost forgotten was there, as he lost himself in his own memories, spoke suddenly seemingly revealing her own feelings on their shared past.

"I'm sorry I left you the way I did," he found himself commenting, before realising that he had nothing else to say to her nor could he find appropriate words to explain how he had never wanted to leave her when she was obviously almost as troubled as himself, yet in an entirely different way.

"I'm sorry Molly found out." She'd replied clearly, not acknowledging his previous words.

"Has she ever mentioned it?" He found himself responding, as he too recalled the evening Warren had sent the just arrived Molly to join them in Kate's room and she'd walked in what was quickly about to become a very intimate encounter.

"No," Kate had said slowly, before removing herself from her cocoon of bed clothes and crawling down the bed, only to stop in front of him before she'd tilted her head upwards and allowed her lips to graze his neck before she'd just as suddenly captured his own lips with hers. However, almost as soon as it had happened, he found himself pushing her away, and hastily retreating from the room, unsure of her motives and not certain that he should be going there again especially when he had no intention of staying around very long.

Thank you for reading, I'm rather hoping to have the next update up by tomorrow - we shall see...

Annyx