It was cold and wet. Brett had just gotten home from a late shift- the large clock on the way to her room showed that it was well after two in the morning. And it had been raining- which made the small bit of a walk back to Radford Estate a pain in the arse. She was too tired to trust herself to apparate without splinching, and if she splinched herself nobody would ever let her forget it.

Brett dragged her feet up the stairs and got clean pajamas from her dresser before taking a very long, very hot shower. She towel dried her hair (which she was still wearing long, she'd yet to revert to her old hairstyle since the gala) and then used a quick charm to dry out the rest of it. Yawning and stretching, the time now half past three, she crawled into her own bed. She shivered between the covers and tossed and turned for a few minutes. She just wasn't comfortable.

She shifted her gaze to Dax's snoring figure. She could only see the outline of his body in the dark. He certainly looked warm and comfortable. But they'd not spoken since the gala. It had been nearly a month now since they'd had any kind of regular conversation. And Brett missed him. Dax was her best friend, this rift between them was making her incredibly depressed and she had no idea what to do. Especially with the new realization that perhaps Dax saw her as something more than a friend.

Finally Brett climbed out of her bed and stepped lightly across the room. Lifting Dax's covers, she crawled under them, snuggling up to him in the dark. That felt better. Just as she nuzzled comfortably into his chest, throwing an arm around his waist, he grunted loudly. Brett winced, afraid she had woken him up. The next thing she knew, Brett was hitting the cold wooden floor with a loud thud.

"Daaaax," she whined, sitting up in the floor, draping the top half of her body over the edge of his bed. "Dax, it's cold and late and I'm tirrreeddd. And I'm looooooonely." She gave him her best pout- though she doubted he could see it in the dark. "I need cuddles!"

Dax’s dreams were almost always a strange, churning place. He’d arrived home earlier tonight, but only because he’d come in early; so it hadn’t been hard to stuff his face with the first food he saw, yell good night, and slam facedown into the sheets. Sleep had taken him in record time.

His dreams, as always, were…well, dreamy. His paintings swam across his mind, the naked forms of young ladies giggling on the edges of his conscious. The stresses of Auror traineeship showed, too; amid the visions of supple flesh wrapped in clouds there were yelling voices, the flash of spells. His mother’s face appeared now and then, her pretty features set into the usual disapproving scowl. Brett’s face was there, too, her expression ever-changing.

Mostly it was giggling young women, though. He frequently painted based on these strange dreams – which was why most of his paintings featured young ladies perched amid the clouds while riding elephants. Or something equally bizarre.

A weight settled into the bed next to him, and he wiggled a moment, not fully waking – but waking just enough to kind of shove it away, instinctually. The thud and resulting whining tone did wake him up more, though, and he grunted in annoyance before awaking with a sharp snort, blinking blearily.

It was Brett. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared, and his half-asleep state it was difficult to remember exactly what was going on.

“Huh?” He groaned, tiredly, and then pulled the blankets up around his head

Brett tugged on Dax's blanket after he covered his face, pulling it down away from his face. Then she pulled it up, away from his body and slithered her way into his bed again- ignoring his protests. She curled up on her side in front of him, wriggling her rear against him as she got comfortable, covering the both of them back up again with the blanket. "I'm cold," she told him, pressing bare, icy feet against him beneath the blanket. "And I'm lonely." A repeat of her earlier statement, but now that he was more awake she was sure he would hear her plea this time.

She reached around under the blanket, locating Dax's arm and putting it around her waist. The two of them squeezed into one twin sized bed was not always a simple task, but it was one they had grown more or less accustomed to when laziness set in or if they decided they needed attention in the middle of the night. Brett yawned a little and stretched out her legs- careful to keep her cold feet to herself for now.

"And I miss you," she told him. "I can't stand it when you're mad at me. Me and you- we're a team. And it's hard to be a team by myself." That was probably the closest thing to an apology that Dax was going to get out of her. She could understand why he was mad about her having sex with Iggy partially in his bed. That had been a terrible judgment call on her part. But since then things had just been horrible and awkward. At the gala, they had only gotten worse. And Brett missed the camaraderie she felt with Dax. The only other person in the world she was as close to was her brother- but that was an all together different kind of closeness and relationship.

Brett just hoped in his state of being half-asleep that crawling into bed with him and making nice would be enough to prevent him from lashing out at her again in anger. In the past crawling in bed with Dax and pretending nothing ever happened had worked well enough. But Brett had a feeling that sort of tactic was not going to work quite as well this time. Because this time, things were different. The fight was much more serious than it ever had been before- and there was the new revelation that perhaps Dax thought of Brett as something more than just a friend. But now was not the time to worry with all of that. Now was the time for cuddles, making up, and sleep... Or so she hoped.

Brett was talking. Dax was tired enough that the words felt rather like they were bouncing off his brain, but he did make some effort to listen when it became clear what she was talking about involved feelings and was, therefore, probably important.

She returned to the bed, Dax not protesting this time as she pressed up against him. Tired or not, he’d always been kind of a sucker for this sort of thing, and her sad words and warm body were enough to hush any protest he might have raised. The tiredness helped, too; he was sure he could think of plenty of things to say to her that were scathing and nasty and hurt and probably involved Iggy being a manwhore, but really…that’d take effort, and with her lonely voice in the dark he just couldn’t bring himself to see that effort as worth it.

Truth was – he missed her, too. He often felt the short straw in a house of overachievers and Brett was one of the few, friendship and…other possible labels aside, that he could relate to on that front.

“Mmm,” he said, intelligently as ever, and squeezed her up against him, nuzzling into the back of her neck. “Sorry,” he grunted. He wasn’t sure if she was apologizing or not, and in truth didn’t care much right now. He had to pause, to brush her long hair out of his way, before he could get his head comfortable. She might look strangely good with long hair, but he wasn’t used to it.

Brett was glad when he squeezed her and nuzzled into the back of her neck. Now that was the Dax she knew and loved. The one who didn't get mad over petty things. When he apologized she sighed and wriggled a little, making herself more comfortable. "I'm sorry, too," she told him. Her words sounded louder in the dark than they really were... But it wasn't often that Brett Abraham found herself apologizing. She lived her life with no regrets and no apologies. At least, she had up until recently. Things were just... different lately. She wasn't quite sure when everything had changed. Brett supposed it was probably just a normal part of growing up.

"I should have been more..." she trailed off a little, searching for the right word. "Sensitive, I guess, to you and your feelings." The feelings, to be fair, Brett didn't even know he had. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Dax. I'd never hurt your feelings on purpose." Not unless they were in the middle of a fight, but that was a totally different situation. When they'd run into each other at the gala, he'd started it. She'd only attacked him in return as a manner of self defense.

"You're my best friend," she told him. "And I just... I didn't know, you know, that I was... more than that." She wrinkled her nose in the dark. Even saying it out loud felt really weird and really wrong. Entertaining the idea that Dax had real feelings was just preposterous! "Just promise me that you don't hate me, Dax. Cause I don't think I could stand it if you hated me."

She kept talking. Dax supposed he’d better wake up and listen – anytime Brett talked about her feelings was automatically important, and she had a nasty right hook when upset.

He groaned softly, sitting up a bit to get his head off the pillow and blinking, blearily, as she spoke. His annoyed expression softened as she did, and he turned his gaze slightly as he considered her words. Unintentionally, he let the silence stretch, wracking his brain on how to respond. He was no wordsmith, and this was a situation where it would have been nice to be one.

Despite her uncertainty, it was a feeling he echoed – had they ever been more than friends? Had they ever been only friends? Years ago, it seemed, he’d tried to ask her – now he knew she hadn’t gotten it, though now he also realized it was probably that she just hadn’t understood. He’d always assumed she just wasn’t interested in boys, and well – so much for that.

“S’ok,” he said finally, the word a grunt as much as anything. He sighed, propping his head up on his palm.

“I don’t hate you. Just thought you didn’t – weren’t interested in that kind of thing, I guess.” He couldn’t figure out how to make the next words sound less moody, but he gave in and said them anyway. “So with Iggy it was like…no, you like guys, you just don’t like me, you know?”

When Brett felt him moving in the bed, sitting up a bit, she rolled over to face him, looking up at him in the dark. She let out a long breath when he finally told her that no, he did not hate her. Then he said he thought she wasn't interested in that sort of thing... Wait, he'd considered for a moment that she didn't even like guys at all? That surprised her. At least, a little. It wasn't the first time that Brett had heard that someone questioned her sexuality, but she was surprised that Dax would. If she didn't like guys, she wouldn't have done the things with him that she had. They might not have had sex, but they'd done just about everything else.

"I like you, Dax," she protested. "I like you very much. I always have. I wouldn't put up with you if I didn't like you, Dax." Even so, she knew that wasn't exactly what he meant. Iggy made him jealous. Brett wasn't sure how to wrap her mind around that. It wasn't as though she had never had other men in her life, and Dax had certainly had other women in his life. She wondered idly if this whole situation was just Dax being mad that she wouldn't sleep with him... But he'd never seemed particularly angry about it in the past. Mildly annoyed at times, perhaps, because she had a tendency to tease and lead him on- but never angry. And at the moment, he didn't seem angry at all... Just hurt.

She reached out, running her fingers through his hair as she tried to collect her thoughts. "It's not that, Dax. You mean... the world to me. You're my closest friend in this whole world, Dax. And it's always been you and me- for years, Dax. And we've spent years fooling around and having fun. But you've never... You've never indicated to me that you wanted anything more than that. I just assumed you didn't want that with me. That you were fine with how things were, that friends was good enough. I mean, I guess, we've always been something a little more than friends. But I just never thought it was anything serious."

But there was the matter of Iggy. Who also wasn't anything particularly serious to her. They were... kind of an item. And he had introduced her as his girlfriend to his mother, because that was easier to do than try to explain to a mum the more complicated nature of their relationship. "I shouldn't have had Iggy here," she said to Dax. "I was wrong for that. And with Iggy it's, well, complicated I guess. I like Iggy, we have fun together, but I don't have to worry about things being complicated ruining everything. I don't want to lose what we have, Dax. I always thought that would just change everything."

"I don't know what to do to fix things. What do you want from me, Dax?" she asked, hoping his response would be reasonable. She wasn't sure she would want to quit seeing or hanging out with Iggy. He was a wrockstar. Partying and going out with him was unlike anything she'd had the chance to experience before.

Somehow an emotional rollercoaster wasn’t what he’d bargained for, especially not at this hour. As she spoke of liking him, Dax slumped against the pillow – not at this point holding out much hope for that like being like in a…well, alternate term for love kind of way. He still took some assurance from the words, of course.

Brett ran her fingers through his hair and he let his eyes slide slightly shut, watching her in the low light. Dax wasn’t a man of words, and while he wasn’t a man of few words - in fact he was often a man of too many words – he really wasn’t sure what to say here. It was difficult enough to do this when he wasn’t tuckered out.

“Sorry,” he said, sighing. He’d never been good with words and the fear of rejection had made him even more likely to ask her leading questions where her answer could mean anything. Everything else, well…his pleas for her playful teasing to lead to something interesting had usually come while he was laughing or otherwise hamming it up, so it wasn’t surprising she hadn’t taken them seriously.

And, to be honest with himself – that was really what he’d been after up until a certain mascara’d wolfman had turned up. Sax was simple, easy and fun; he’d never expect her to go off and have fun and uncomplex sex with someone else.
He’d been friendzoned. Merlin.

“I don’t know,” he said, to her question, letting his eyes fall closed. “I guess I’d just prefer things weren’t weird. But…I don’t know. It’s not…”

He trailed off, sighed, and then reached up and pulled her against him – the gesture half snuggle and half bearhug.