"How is this supposed to help me again?" You asked the man who's hands were on your left bicept and the right side of your waist and was encouraging you to step around to the beat of the music emitting faintly from a jukebox in the the corner of the bedroom.

The same familiar chuckle reached your ears and allowed you the breach in anxiety to laugh at your own indecipherable confusion, your own higher voice melding with his deep one as you joked like good friends. "Should bring back memories," he repeated himself for the umpteenth time in the last few days. The time between when you decided to try to resolve the situation with the fuckery going on inside of your head and now had been spent in the most bland way possible - talking. James spoke about how you'd spent nearly a month (**again, I'm still editing the first 15 chapters**) together in what he assumed to be a romantic relationship, that the two of you had just clicked like nothing he'd ever felt before, and trying to get you to talk about what Notch had done with you over the week spent in his custody. With your trust issues firmly planted in front of you, the hacker was left in the dark as to the strange powers you had discovered to ensure he wasn't planning on using you like the bald-headed snake had tried to.

So here you were, attempting to badly waltz to 'Cat' with James, who had donned an expensive looking black tuxedo with a red undershirt to make your little in-house outing seem more realistic, trying to make memories that could hopefully jar free your own.
The red-eyed hacker in front of you was excellent, stepping with precision and confidence that made you jealous because you were slowing him down, stomping on his feet, and continuously falling over in one direction or another.

"This is really hard," you commented openly as an excuse when you accidentally set your foot down on top of the other male's bare one, which he didn't react to like everything else. "I can barely keep my balANCE!" As if by a curse, you toppled forward while trying to reposition your misplaced foot, slamming directly into your dancing partner. Your head collided with his costly outfit and didn't move from there, as the impact barely even caused the huge man to stumble.

James, surprisingly, didn't seem bothered by your clumsiness - in fact, he was grinning. "You're so cute, (Y/N), flaws and all," the hacker announced as he scooped you up in his arms like a bride who was seriously done with walking around in that overly expensive outfit.

"I have flaws?" You questioned him with a very hard stare up into those two perfect crimson circles, though your face broke into a grin as he corrected his statement by replacing the offending word with differences on the opposite end of the spectrum.

The hacker raised both hands in mock defense, as if he was afraid you might hit him. You just about raised one of your own fists to go along with the gag, but decided a simple continuation of that charming grin you knew you rocked. "No! You're perfect in every way. My mistake." The temptation to further tease the charcoal-black male was heavy on your mind, but you're a merciful human, so you let him off with a smirk.

"That's better," you point out smugly, lifting your chin to rub it in deeper only to realize that it merely seemed like you were looking up at the towering man in front of you. A chord of guilt struck you. "Does your neck hurt from looking down at me?"

James' bemused expression morphed into one of concern. He stretched his neck a little by bending it to one side or the other to test whether or not it was sore, then shook his head. "It wouldn't matter even if it did," he assured you. "You can't help being a short little cutie or that I have more height on you, so don't bother wishing you could." Once again, it seemed as if the mischievous lover could read your thoughts and knew exactly what to say to make you smile. Of course, he'd also called you cute, so you punched his shoulder weakly to redeem your pride and looked downward to hide the redness in your cheeks.

"Shut up," you ordered him, voice muffled by the fact you were projecting your voice in the wrong direction, but the hacker understood your command perfectly regardless, and nodded to show he understood and accepted.

Instead of letting go and allowing the silence to drift out and become awkward, he brought attention to the reason they'd been dancing, "Do you remember anything?" 
Your head went fuzzy at the mention of remembering, and you attempted to reach into the confines of your muddled up memory to find something that hadn't been there previously. The background music faded out and so did your sight, seeming almost like everything physical switched to static like a tv changing channels as you tried to think of something that didn't cause pain.

"Hey, hey, there you go," you heard James telling you from somewhere above you as something cold and damp pressed against your forehead. "(Y/N), you awake?" 

You moaned at the pain on your face and body, shifting a little to discover you were laying in a bed with a thin blanket covering you and a block of ice separated by a towel over your head. "Ugh, what happened? My head hurts." You whined, placing one hand on the side of your face and grimacing.

Familiar red eyes came into view as the other male got up on the bed and sat over your legs, a concerned look drawing lines in his skin. "You passed out, fell, and hit your head on the floor. Does it hurt?"

"Like a son of a bitch," you answered in a strained tone, closing your eyes again to keep the light from penetrating the (E/C) around your dilated pupils from the few minutes spent unconscious. Your head thumped in your head, feeling like a tiny person living inside your skull and fighting to get out while beating the absolute life out of your head. Luckily, it was just a headache from the whole smacking-head-on-the-floor thing, not at all like the torture you experienced when the fake memories were settling in. 
Instead of focusing on the negative and the pain, you squinted your eyes and opened one partially so you could look at James, who had a saddened expression on his face. He was on his knees too, though he was lightly sitting over your thighs and was being pretty invasive of your personal space while he held the ice block in place with one hand. The other was hovering in the air, tapping at the air which shimmer in a small rectangle and had a few faded buttons colored grey so you couldn't read them, especially not backwards. Moments later, the bright light of the glowstone dimmed a reasonable amount so you could actually fully open one eye without squinting. A soft chuckle filled your ears as the other male found amusement in your facial expressions which brought a smile to your own aching head. 

"I assume that's much better, yeah?"

You answer with a nod, unknowingly also making it difficult for him to keep the ice pack in the correct spot, and tug the blanket towards yourself a little more, though it doesn't actually budge with the dark-skinned entity pinning the fabric down to the mattress. 

Red eyes dart down to your hands before black duplicates reach down to catch them and keep them still, though the attention returned to you. His thumbs rubbed circles in your palms and your headache suddenly worsened, stinging uncontrollably and making you grimace and close your eyes again. Noticing your behavior, the action switched direction and with each full circle, the pain unraveled like a ball of yarn wound tightly around your mind, floating away on the wind and leaving you able to relax again. Unable to hold the solid snow in spot on your forehead, you tipped your head backwards to rest on the pillow and keep it in place to help numb the injury. 

Gold teeth smiled at you, barely peeking through his lips to be visible around the rest of his face, and continued to banish the pain, little bit by little bit, until it was nothing more than a dull ache that was easily ignorable in the face of other feelings. "Does anywhere else hurt?" 

You exhaled slowly, relaxing deeper into the bed and concentrating on where else was stinging with the impact from the fall you took. "Uh, my knees, my forearms, and... well, my shoulder's sore." 

James hummed his acknowledgement of your words as his rubbing switched moreso to deep-tissue massage (he's got so many talents) as his fingers pressed into your muscles and pushed the tension outward, though he started in the wrong direction like a noob so your chest would hurt in the morning, but it felt nice for now. The attention to detail - that being that he had one eye on your expression at all times and adjusted to what would relax you - and the overall appreciation of actually being on the receiving end of some pleasant contact had you in such a spot that you could've believed you were, like laying on a cloud or something. Before you knew it, you were half-conscious with the hacker laying to the side of you and getting rid of the tension on your shoulder blades, the ice cube melting into one half of the pillow. Hips pressed together, you were warm, you felt safe, and you were comfortably happy. 

No, this wasn't bad at all.

------

Hello, beautiful people of the internet! Yes, you're gorgeous. Stop arguing with me. 

Anyhow, school has started for everybody, but for me, that actually gives me more writing time so expect to have chapters out quicker than every couple of months, just as long as I have the inspiration for it. Your comments and you votes are absolutely LOVED! It means so much to me to hear from you guys, especially being I'm struggling with some really bad depression and going through some rough spots in life. :/ I hope you all are having a terrific day and that my fluffies have given you warm fuzzies. 

Best wishes, 
~Dark~