7.16 Dreams Don't Come True

by

Aimee
(aimeed@earthlink.net)

C.C. tossed and turned fitfully in her sleep.

Niles was awakened by the faint sound of running water and the light spilling from the hallway into their bedroom. When he realized he was alone, he rose and went into the bathroom. No C.C. He decided to go downstairs.

He saw her sitting on the sofa with her back to him. She didn't hear him enter, or if she did, she didn't turn to greet him with an affectionate insult.

Niles stole up behind her. He saw the cut-crystal glass in her hand.

"C.C.! How could you? You know alcohol isn't good for the baby!"

"Well unless the faucet is spewing vodka now and I just didn't notice, it's water!"

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Sorry. Future Father-itis. I could use that vodka-spewing faucet myself right about now."

"Niles, go back to bed. You'll be tired. And even though we all know you don't actually do anything, falling asleep on the job is bad form."

Niles came to sit down beside her. "Hey, it comes naturally to you to sleep during the day and wake at night, so now that we're married, I'll just have to get used to it." He sat next to her and put his arm around her. "What's eating you, Babcock? You never sleep anymore, and it's not healthy for the baby."

C.C. scowled. "Baby, baby, baby, that's all you ever think about!"

"Well, sweetheart -- "

"You think I'll be a rotten mother, don't you?"

"No, princess, but -- "

"Do you think I'm staying awake because I like 2 a.m. infomercials?"

"No, but that pink plastic juicer you got me was lovely."

"Niles, I can't sleep! And when I do, I have terrible nightmares!"

"Nightmares about what?" When she didn't respond, he nudged her and began to massage the back of her neck. She sank gratefully into his embrace. "Just random dreams?"

"No, they're all the same." C.C. took a sip of water and offered some to Niles. He waved it away. "I'm in this desert, and it's very hot and I'm so tired. There's this treasure I have to keep safe so I can give it to somebody, but even though I keep walking and walking, I can't find anyone and everything just gets emptier and deader. Then -- then -- "

"What?"

"I think I die."

Niles put his arms around her. "How?"

"I just drop. I try to keep going, but I haven't any more energy."

"What about the treasure?"

"It absorbs the last of my energy. When I die, it just lies there on the ground. It's this huge jewel, like a ruby, but it glows and pulses with life."

He asked, "Did Dr. Bort ever do dream analysis with you?"

"Yes, sometimes. But she just liked hearing about the sex dreams. She said you were a great lay even before you and I got together."

Niles smirked shamelessly. "As well she should. What do you think she would make of this?"

C.C. began to talk it through. "She'd tell me to look at the metaphorical meanings in the situations and symbols. It's a desert. Everything is hot and dead. It's an empty place. I keep walking trying to find something, but the more I try, the more everything dies until I die too. So symbolically, it's something I lack that I'm trying to get, but the more I try the more I lose."

"What might that be?"

"I don't know." C.C. squirmed and looked away.

"What about the treasure? What's that mean?"

"I don't know, but it reminds me of a living heart. Niles -- you don't think it could be the baby trying to tell me something? Should I go to the doctor?"

"I don't think it's the baby, sweetheart. After all, you go to the doctor every week. We'd know by now if anything were wrong."

"Maybe I'll phone Dr. Bort in the morning and run my dream past her."

"Okay." He decided to change the subject. "What are you reading?"

C.C. showed him the book. It was on active parenting. "I'm trying to learn to be a mother," she explained. She lifted a few more books from the stack and showed them to him. Each one was on some aspect of pregnancy or parenthood

"What's to worry? It's ours! It'll be a holy terror no matter what we do." Niles grinned playfully.

C.C. hugged him. He couldn't help his hands roaming. Or rather, he probably could help it, but why bother? "Niles!" she laughed. "I'm turning into a big fat cow. You can't mean you still want me."

"Why not? I'm a 'husky butler boy' and you want me." Niles took her wrists and wound them around his neck.

"Mmm," she murmured, kissing him. "Well, as long as we're both up . . . "

"You bet I'm up."

It was six a.m. and C.C. was finally asleep, albeit fitfully. Niles, having caught about an hour more, got up to make breakfast. As he walked through their sitting room toward the hall, he decided to see what C.C. had been reading so intently every chance she got. The stack of library books had been removed to her briefcase, but he'd long since cracked the numbered lock. Hey, he wasn't a yenta for nothing.

The first few he pulled out were the parenting manuals she'd been reading earlier. He set them aside, knowing there were some other books she hadn't showed him.

Ah. Here they were. Niles raised his eyes in amusement. The first title to meet his eye was John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. He grinned and set it aside. The next was Making Marriage Work. After that came 101 Nights of Great Sex. Evidently 101 nights weren't nearly enough for her, thank god, because The Joy of Sex lay at the bottom.

"Now I'm going to become insecure," he murmured to himself, not meaning a word of it. He decided to leave his wife a little "surprise." He got a post-it pad from her desk and began to scrawl little post-it notes on the parts he found particularly intriguing. Then, he replaced the books in her briefcase and went on his way to the main house.

Just as he flipped the first Belgian waffle neatly onto a plate and grabbed a fork, Fran danced down the stairs, full of energy as usual. "Good morning, Niles! Wow, you look tired."

He handed her the waffle with a sigh. Foiled again. He ladled more dough into the waffle maker. "C.C. had insomnia again. She's been having terrible dreams about dying lost in a desert while trying to guard some jewel so she can give it to someone who isn't there."

Fran, as usual, hit the nail on the head. "The jewel is her heart. She's scared of being in love," she said.

"That's what I thought, but I didn't want to say so directly."

"We'll think of a plan to help her."

"Maybe it would help if she just said it."

"Said what?"

"That she loves me. I'd sure like to hear it, just once." Niles smiled at the thought.

Fran gaped at him incredulously. "You've been married for over seven months and she's never told you she loves you?"

Niles heaved a lovelorn sigh. "Oh, she has, in roundabout ways. You know, like 'You bastard, I hate you, if you weren't so sexy I'd dump you' and things like that. You've heard her. Even when we got engaged, you know, when you were stuck in the elevator, and I said, 'I love you, Miss Babcock,' she replied, 'Call me C.C.'"

"Ya know, Val and I were taking bets on whether ya called her that in bed. 'Oh, Miss Babcock, oh, Miss Babcock!'"

Niles groaned. "Only the first time . . . or two. Can we focus here? How are we going to get her to say she loves me so she can sleep again? I don't like her being up all night when I'm not the cause."

Fran turned thoughtful. "You know, your courtship was so bizarre, it's no wonder she doesn't know what to say or do."

Niles perked up. "That's true! Fifteen years of fighting, a few weeks of secret liaisons, an engagement that lasted less than a few hours, then a hasty marriage and her pregnancy. You're right, she probably doesn't know whether she's standing on her head or her feet, God only knows I feel the same way!"

"And if you romance her a little, give her back some of what she missed out on -- "

"She'll feel more secure and be able to say it, and then these nightmares of hers will end, and I can get my beauty sleep!" It was the best cure for sleeplessness he'd ever heard of.

"By George, I think he's got it!"

Niles flipped his belgian waffle out of the waffle maker. He loaded it with whipped cream and strawberry topping, then grabbed a fork. Just as he was about to dig in, Maxwell walked in.

"Good morning, darling," he said, kissing Fran and giving her an affectionate squeeze. "Oh, Niles, my waffle's ready. Thanks, old man. But did you have to put so much whipped cream on it?"

Niles heaved a sigh and handed it over. He took a big handful of whipped cream off and globbed it into the sink.

"But Niles, I'm so tired. I don't want to go out."

"Come on, Babcock, I didn't marry a flipping great big pile of cash -- that's big cash, not big wife, by the way -- so I could sit at home every night watching you not sleeping. Now go put on that pretty new red dress of yours and let's go."

"I haven't got a pretty new red dress."

"Check your closet." Niles smiled and patted her behind.

C.C. dashed down the stairs a few minutes later in a thin-strapped, high-waisted red dress with a short, flared skirt. She spun around and threw her arms around him. "Oh, Niles, it's lovely! I didn't know they made maternity dresses this pretty. Wherever did you find it?"

"I whipped it up by magic. Come on, princess." He took her hand and led her out to the waiting limousine. Niles waved away the driver and handed her in himself.

C.C. found, to her delight, that the limousine was filled with red roses, creating a heady, exotic air. A flat blue Tiffany's box rested on the seat. She shrieked and reached for it. "Blue boxes! I love blue boxes, Niles!"

Niles slapped her hand away. "Close your eyes," he said. She felt his hands removing the simple diamond studs she wore for everyday. She felt him carefully slip another pair into her ears, and then shivered deliciously as his fingertips brushed her neck and she felt a tiny weight rest in the hollow at the base of her throat.

"There. Now look." Niles had brought a silver-backed mirror from her dressing table, and as she looked into it, she gasped in delight. A tiny heart-shaped ruby set in gold rested against her pale throat, and matching earrings dangled from her ears.

"Pleased?" he asked her.

"More than pleased. Oh, Niles, this is wonderful! But, why?"

Niles gathered her into his arms. "Why not? I just thought, since I never really got to court you properly because our engagement was so short and I was so broke, I'd make up for lost time now, give you all the toys and attention I didn't get to back then."

C.C. rested her head against his chest. "Niles, you are a dream."

His voice right against her ear, low and husky, surprised her. "I am not. Could a dream do this?" He drew his hand slowly up the inside of her thigh. She gasped and wiggled.

He continued to tease her with light kisses and caresses until finally she felt the car leave the road and the crunching told her they were driving on sand. The car stopped.

Niles got out and handed her out. He reached back in to pluck one rose from the dozens and brought it with him.

Henry, their driver, handed him a large basket, into which Niles tucked the flower for safe keeping. "I'll be back around twelve thirty, shall I, sir?"

Niles thanked him and told him to go have some fun. Then, he linked hands with C.C. and led her along a path that twisted and wound down to the shore. The tide was coming in, so they set up their picnic high on the beach. It was only eight o'clock, so by the time they left, the water would be lapping at their ankles.

"Wild orgies beneath the full moon," he murmured. "Remind you of your coming-out party?"

Niles had run true to form in his choice of food: From the chicken salad to the pate de foie gras to the chocolate mousse, everything was spreadable. The only difference between that and their usual midnight snacks was that this was more elegant. He even set up a battery-powered CD player to play Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture.

"Just sit back," he told her. "Let me do everything."

First, he provided her with a cushion to recline on. Then, he filled a gold-rimmed crystal champagne flute with sparkling white grape juice and handed it to her. Finally, he spooned a little bit of each dish onto her plate and handed it to her.

C.C. pouted prettily. "I have to eat it off a plate?"

"Well, I was taught that you're supposed to give a woman dinner before you try to get under her skirt."

She laughed and they nibbled at their dinner in silence for a while. Niles watched her. Her long legs stretched out in the sand, hair blowing in the soft, warm wind, eyes so bright he could still make out the vibrant blue in the darkness. She was truly a goddess. Tonight she seemed so soft, so delicate, not his hellcat wife at all, but he decided that for one night he could live with not being referred to as the "Tidy Bowl Man."

Eventually she set her plate aside and glanced at him suggestively, through lowered lashes. She started humming along with the music and reached for him gracefully, unfurling her hand palm up. He placed his hand in hers and drew near. In his other hand, he took the rose he had brought from the limo.

"Lay back!" he ordered gently. Delicately, he stroked her face and throat, her arms, each finger, the insides of her wrists. He stroked her very pregnant stomach, then each of her legs, slipping off her strappy heels to stroke the bottoms of her feet, then her ankles, on up to the insides of her thighs. She shivered and reached for him.

"No," he answered her. "Be patient, my C.C."

She watched him through lowered lashes, passive as a doll, for whenever she reached for him or tried to touch him, he pressed her back into the sand sternly. She let him unzip her dress and draw the thin straps from her shoulders. The wispy fabric stroked her skin as he drew it down her legs and cast it aside.

"Babcock!" he exclaimed in surprise. "So I'm not the only one who planned some mischief for tonight."

"If you braved my mood to make me go out, I figured some garments just didn't need to be brought along," she replied mischievously.

Niles stroked the rest of her body with the flower, then tore the leaves from the stem and scattered them all over her. Finally, he bent over and kissed her, igniting the flame that lay barely banked inside of them but leapt to life whenever they were alone. It had always been a fiery relationship, he reflected as his lips glided over her warm ivory skin. The fires of anger had transformed themselves into a bright, consuming flame of passion when neither was looking. He often wondered how long it had lain dormant, waiting for one of them to notice.

As he kissed her body she lay back in the sand, eyes closed, gasping. Still he touched, kissed, licked, aroused her slowly until neither of them could wait any longer, and only then did he shed his clothes and make love to her until the moon was high in the sky and the water lapped at their feet.

That night at home, C.C. slept peacefully for the first time in many nights. The next day, she discovered that the night on the beach was only the beginning. Niles showered her with gifts, bore her off to some out-of-the-way love nest as often as their schedules allowed. They attended the symphony with Fran and Max, tried exotic new restaurants, went to dance clubs. C.C. was dazzled, delighted, living in a sensual paradise. Over the years, it had always been her role to stand aloof as some other woman, someone lovelier, sweeter, sexier, younger, got wined and dined and adored. She couldn't believe that this was her, C.C. Babcock, being swept off her feet and buried in presents and loving devotion.

But as the days passed, she started to worry. What did he want from her? Was he just enjoying the good life he'd been exiled from for so long, or was there something he wanted, something he expected of her that she didn't understand? As the two-week mark approached, C.C. noticed that even when they were happiest, there was a longing in his eyes, something unsatisfied.

She decided that perhaps she wasn't reciprocating as she should, so that night she planned an outing at a botanical garden where they could dine among the flowers, and she presented him with a Rolex watch.

"It's gorgeous," he said admiringly. "What's this for?" Could she finally be about to say the words?

C.C. looked surprised at his question. "What do you mean, what's it for? For two weeks now, you've been loading me up with flowers and jewels and trips and sex, so I figured it was my turn to treat you."

"It's gorgeous," he said again, sounding disappointed.

I knew it, she thought. He's just trying to be nice because he doesn't love me anymore and he doesn't want me to know. I'm so huge it's a miracle he hasn't run screaming.

The next afternoon, Max asked her, "C.C., are you doing all right? You look exhausted, and we have a lot to do for this party tonight. It's vital to the future of our show that we impress the network execs."

C.C. flung a sheaf of papers to the floor. "What does the stupid show matter when my husband no longer loves me? Will the stupid show help me when I'm a single mother? Will it teach me to change diapers or feed the baby or give me wild, passionate, uncontrollable kinky sex right here on top of the desk?"

Max looked at her in utter disbelief.

"Not that Niles and I have done anything kinky on the desk," she added hastily. "I mean, that desk calendar would kinda hurt if you sat on it and got a paper cut on the bum." As soon as Max's back was turned, C.C. surreptitiously rubbed her behind.

Max groaned. "This is just the hormones talking, C.C.! Perhaps you're tired. Believe me, I went through this with Fran as well."

Thinking he meant the desk, C.C. made a face.

"Why don't you just talk to the man? I know he loves you."

"He's at the grocery store. You know, he's there an awful lot. You don't think he's already having an affair, do you? I mean, he could be shagging the girl at the delicatessen right now among the cantaloupes! How could he? We shagged in the -- "

"C.C., go take a nap!"

After a failed attempt at an afternoon nap, she hauled her pregnant grouchy carcass back over to the main house and into the kitchen, where Niles was chopping vegetables for a crudite. She needed to be well-rested and calm to work the room tonight and shake a few people down, but no, her damned butler husband had to go making her anxious!

She stood before him, tapping her foot impatiently. "Okay, Butler Boy. All those marriage books I've been reading say to talk when you're anxious, so I need to talk. Now."

"What are you anxious about?" he asked patiently.

"This!" she cried, touching a bouquet of tiger lilies. "And this!" She pointed to a pink, heart-shaped cake. "And this!" C.C. waved her wrist in the air, where an amethyst tennis bracelet sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. "I know when you're up to something, Niles, but I just don't know what. So dish!"

"Now, darling," he said soothingly.

"Don't call me that!" she cried in frustration. "I'm not 'darling' to you, I've never been 'darling' to you! Look at me! Do you even recognize me, or have I gotten too fat? I'm Caca, the cow, the chicken, the Wicked Witch of the West, the Bitch of Broadway!"

Niles began to laugh. "Nice to see that those twenty years of therapy have done your self-image so much good!" he replied flippantly.

"Why have you been acting so funny? Are you going to leave me?"

Niles' jaw dropped. "You silly cow, did you really think I was going to leave you?"

"Well, you've been giving me extravagant presents and taking me out every night and making wild passionate love to me all the time! What else was I supposed to think?"

Niles groaned at the twisted maze that was his wife's sense of logic. "Did it ever occur to you that it's just because I love you?"

Her jaw dropped. "Are you serious? It's that simple?"

"Of course, you silly twit. I love you."

"But I knew that," she said, frowning thoughtfully. "You tell me all the time, sometimes in words and sometimes in other ways. I tell you, too."

"No you don't!"

"I do bloody well too! What do you think the Rolex was for, or the car, or the satin sheets, or the other night when you told me your craziest fantasy and I did it? Because I bloody well love you, you Lysol-sniffing lunatic!"

Nose to nose, they glared, then suddenly it struck him. "You said it! You finally, finally said it! Oh, C.C., I love you!" Niles picked her up and swung her around and around. Then he set her down and prayed he hadn't given himself a hernia.

"Said what? That I loved you?" C.C. clung to him dizzily.

"Didn't you know you'd never said it before?"

"I never really thought about it. I know you love me, and I thought you knew I loved you."

"I do, my sweet, my Caca, my witch, I do, but I wanted to hear you say the words."

C.C. frowned. "I love you. So why didn't you just tell me you needed it?"

"Because -- " Niles frowned too, trying to remember how this whole odyssey got started.

He turned toward the kitchen door and she suddenly knew what he was going to say.

"MISS FINE!" they bellowed together.

Niles yanked open the door and Fran fell in. He grinned with pride. "She learned that from me," he told C.C.

"Oh, please. I learned that from Ma when I was two. She was spyin' on me and a guy from next door. She tried to hold him to that proposal of marriage 'till I was ten years old." Niles and C.C. rolled their eyes at each other, then each took an arm and helped her up. "So did she spill her guts yet?"

"Yes," Niles told her dryly, "but she very nearly spilled mine first. Thank you so much for your wonderful advice. I've been wracking my brains for two weeks trying to think what might make her crack, and all it took was a good rousing fight!"

Fran patted her pouf in quick, outraged gestures. "She's your other half, not mine! You should have known her better than to think all that hearts and flowers stuff would work on her."

Niles grinned at his wife, sliding an arm around her waist. "That's my baby doll. Buy her a diamond, she'll say thank you and wonder what I'm up to. Tell her she's a fat ugly cow and she'll be spilling words of love until milking time."

C.C. whacked his arm. "When are you going to learn not to listen to her advice?"

"When you stop coloring your hair."

"Oh, please. Like yours is natural, Mr. Grecian Formula."

"It is!"

"Right. You know, the only reason you don't use Just For Men is because they don't believe you qualify as a man."

"Any time you have complaints about my masculinity, just bring 'em on, doll face. Do the words 'three times a night' ring a bell for anything other than you getting up to go to the bathroom?"

Fran shook her head and snuck out before Niles remembered that all this was her fault. "Listen, Quasimodo," she could hear C.C. say in the distance, "Nobody'd rung your bells for years before I finally gave in."

"You should talk. You're the only woman on the planet who got frequent flier miles from sitting on her foot massager!"

C.C. placed her hands on her hips and got right in her husband's face. "If you want to hear the words," she said, "You'd better shut up and get home right now."

Niles grabbed her. "What's wrong with right here?" He began to tickle her mercilessly. "Say it!"

"No!"

Clothes started coming off. "Say it, or by God, C.C. -- "

"No!"

All four hands were no longer visible. "If you want me, then say it."

"All right! All right, I give. I love you, Niles."

"I love you too, witch."

Eventually, they did make it home, but only as far as the sofa in the sitting room. "I love you," she said drowsily, snuggling into his shoulder as he wrapped his strong arms around her.

"What was that, a freebie?"

"Quickie. Don't get used to it, it still makes me nervous to say it. And don't you ever start that romantic hearts and flowers crap with me again. You scared the hell out of me."

Niles burst out laughing. His C.C. might not say it, might pretend not to like all the romantic accoutrements, but when she loved someone, she loved with a fierce passion that was unlike anything he'd ever known. And if truth be told, he enjoyed the occasional romantic interlude with roses and waves lapping against a shore, but he felt much closer to her when they were just being their normal, quarrelsome, unpredictable, hopelessly, helplessly in love selves.

C.C. never had the nightmare about the glowing jewel again, but that very night was virtually sleepless, as were many blissful nights ahead.

So wha'd ya think? Any good? Be sure
to post your two cents worth on the

7.17 Be A Pal by Sara van Bussel With her soon to arrive baby and seeing Fran juggle her twins, it all makes C.C. very unsure about her motherly skills. But an unusual offer from Fran seems to change all that.

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