Lauren awoke with a start, and felt Bo press closer against her immediately. She liked getting used to that - Bo always woke up first and waited for her. A kiss pressed into her shoulder and she heard herself hum contentedly in reply.

"Good morning lover," Bo murmured against her. "Bad dreams again?"

Lauren permitted herself a satisfied smile. Bo had somehow managed to wrap her body all around her as she slept, and she found that she liked that just fine. There was nowhere they needed to go. No crisis to solve, or patient to save, or outsider to burst in and steal away their precious time together. The bed was warm, she was in Bo's arms, and at that precise moment, she could think of nothing else on earth she might ever have wanted. For now, all was well and right in the universe, and she meant to relish such a rare luxury with decadence.

"Mmm, all better now though. How did you know?"

"You were talking your sleep again. Which is adorable, by the way, but you have been doing it more than usual."

Lauren chuckled softly, oddly embarrassed.

"Nothing too incriminating I hope?"

Bo's grin tingled against her bare skin.

"Afraid not. I couldn't make it out. You didn't sound happy though, I thought about waking you up."

"Well, I'm already forgetting it" she replied, and shifted deeper into Bo's embrace.

"What was it this time?" Bo said, undeterred, and even muffled by more lazy kisses to her body, Lauren could hear her concern.

"It's nothing. I don't remember the details, I just remember feeling alone and cold. But I woke up safe and sound, and I'm neither of those things right now. I barely even remember it."

She found one of Bo's hands and stroked her thumb across the back of it, to reassure her. She hated when Bo worried about her over nothing; although she couldn't deny that she loved it a little bit too.

"You should try and remember 'em you know, even the bad ones" came Bo's solemn reply. "Could be trying to tell you something."

She smiled indulgently.

"It's just a bad dream Bo. I have them all the time" she said, and regretted the slip instantly when she felt Bo tense up protectively in response.

"I just mean… I'm a scientist. Dreams are just… dreams, to me."

Bo settled in a little, but Lauren could tell she hadn't relaxed entirely.

"Hmm. And what does that mean? Tell me doctor, what does science think dreams are?"

Ah, now she knew what Bo was up to. They played this game a lot, though she didn't recall exactly when the rules had been established. Bo would lure Lauren into a detailed explanation of exactly what something really was in scientific terms, and Bo – and Bo's mouth - would do their level best to distract her from her train of thought until she gave in. It was a game she greatly enjoyed losing.

"Well, scientifically, we still understand surprisingly little about them. It's kind of incredible actually, how complex it is. We know they're mostly associated with REM sleep, when brain activity is highest. Certainly the most vivid ones are. Your body even has to send you into a kind of paralysis during this phase so you don't hurt yourself. It's funny, people with a defective REM atonia function can suffer a kind of waking paralysis, and the associated amygdala reaction tricks them into thinking there's somebody in the room with them."

"That… Doesn't sound very funny." Bo said, quite reasonably. It took Lauren a moment to realise she'd left out a significant chunk of her thought process again.

"Oh, no! No, by all accounts it's terrifying. It's just... it used to be associated with Succubi, that whole sleep paralysis and night terror phenomenon, it was believed that's where the concept of a succubus actually came from." She slipped one of her hands over Bo's, and held it tighter against itself. "Although thankfully, we know better."

Bo's pleased chuckle tickled lightly on her skin. She actually seemed to be listening quite intently. It wasn't like her to miss an opportunity for their usual good morning activities, but Lauren was hardly complaining. They had as long as they wanted. She was content, and safe, and chances to talk to Bo for the sake of talking seemed to be getting so scarce lately.

"So..." Bo started thoughtfully. "Succubi are associated with weird sleep and bad dreams, right?"

"Well, yes. They were believed to use dreams to haunt their human victims, or make visitations. The idea was that the big bad succubus could get to you anywhere, as soon as you fell asleep. And everybody's got to sleep."

Bo didn't respond to the joviality in Lauren's tone immediately. She seemed to be taking a moment to absorb this information before following up, and Lauren tried in vain to figure out what was going on in her head.

"So… should I be able to like… use people's dreams like that? To communicate with them somehow? Like a kind of... subconscious fae Skype?"

She definitely couldn't have predicted that. But she had to admit, it was an interesting possibility.

"Well… I don't know, frankly," she said, after some thought."It's an intriguing idea, certainly. Succubi are rare, as you know, so their more subtle potential abilities like that aren't well documented. It would be very possible that association could just be garbled folk memory relating to either sleep disorders or real non-fatal succubus feed events, or even both."

Bo waited patiently for her to continue.

"But…" she duly proceeded "- if it were possible... I'd imagine fae probably have some kind of resistance to it, humans tend to be more susceptible receivers to influence abilities like that. That could be somewhere to start."

"You said it yourself, human dreaming isn't very well understood. So if could use dreams to communicate, even if I wasn't aware that I was doing it, I could use it to ask you for help."

Lauren frowned. She shifted around to be face to face with her lover.

"Bo… what's this about? There's something on your mind, what is it?"

Bo looked right back at her, with a sudden, deadly gravity.

"If I was in trouble, and nobody knew it, I could be screaming for help every way I could. Even if I wasn't consciously doing it, even in ways I hadn't realised I could. Like an emergency broadcast, an instinctive thing. A last ditch SOS. And 'cause I'm a succubus, I would probably be mostly attuned to a long term sexual partner, which would be you. I'd be screaming for help to you, hoping you'd find some way to hear me, and save me"

Lauren looked at her, dumbstruck for a moment.

"Bo… where's this coming from?"

"I would be trying to find a way to tell you I needed your help, because you're the only one who can hear me. The only one who could help me."

Lauren felt a tug of strange and unfamiliar panic. She could sense something happening here that she didn't understand.

"Bo, you're scaring me."

But Bo simply pressed on, as if she hadn't even heard.

"I'd be asking for your help in your dreams, because I'd need you to come find me, and there was no other way I could ask."

Bo brushed a lock of blonde hair from Lauren's features and fixed her in a dark, serious gaze again. Lauren found herself thinking, strangely, that she couldn't feel it – she couldn't feel Bo's fingertips against her face, couldn't feel her body against her own any more.

She suddenly realised she felt cold – the luxuriant bedclothes now held no warmth, the sun through the window seemed watery and lifeless somehow. She shivered.

"I'd need you to come find me, Lauren."

Lauren awoke with a start, and her first instinct was to seek Bo's arms for comfort. But there was no answering touch. Bo wasn't here, of course, not really.

There were no warm covers either. No curtains to mute the morning sun through the windscreen. Nothing, safe or warm or comfortable. There was condensation on the car windows, three days on her clothes, and probably hundreds of miles between her body and Bo's. She hadn't seen Bo since she said goodbye in Taft's lab.

She stretched as best she could in the car, in a vain attempt to release creaky limbs. She pressed her hands on the dashboard to steady them, and looked around to get the lay of the land in daylight. It was a grim little back road, but she was relieved to see that there still wasn't another car in sight. It was tempting to head for the highway where she'd make better time, but she couldn't risk it. Certainly, she needed to put as much distance as possible between herself and home, as quickly as she could, but she also needed to be safe about it. And it wouldn't hurt, she scolded silently, to stop thinking of it as "home" in the first place.

She was being ridiculous, for God's sake. Bo was fine, she'd made sure of that. It had cost her dearly, but that was hardly a new sensation for her. Bo was fine, and that was the important thing, and the best thing for both of them would be fresh starts, as far away from each other as possible. Bo would find somebody else, somebody who could give her all the things she deserved, and Lauren… Lauren would get as far away as she could, and then keep moving. That was just how it had to be.

She gave herself a moment to gather her wits, and keyed the ignition. It was just a dream, another dream. She was a scientist, and it was just a dream. She'd been sleeping badly, and she was under stress, and it was just a dream.

So why did she keep having it?

Lauren stared out onto the road, and realised unhappily that she was no longer sure which direction she intended to take.

End.