With a burning love that stings like a bee

Nick wasn’t sure what to think when he walked out of the shower and saw Dani standing in the middle of the room. He still only had a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Dani?!” He sputtered, stumbling backwards. He hit the door frame and his towel dropped, exposing himself to the one girl on the island who didn’t want to see him naked.

“Eeeek!” Dani exclaimed, quickly covering her eyes. She was fine with Nick seeing her naked body. She was fine with Nick touching her naked body.

But seeing Nick’s naked body? Well, that was just not okay.

Her transformations were weird like that.

“I’m sorry!” Nick exclaimed, hastily pulling his towel back up to cover himself. “I thought the room was going to be empty! I left my clothes in here, after all! I-I didn’t think…”

Dani was looking everywhere but at Nick, so it was easy to see where his shorts and shirt were on the ground. She winced. That was a bad miss on her fault.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, turning to stare at the far wall. “Just… just get dressed, okay? I can wait for you.”

“What are you doing here?” Nick asked as he dropped his towel and quickly put his clothes back on. It figured that things would suddenly not fit easily the moment he had to urgently get his clothes on as fast as possible.

“I-I just came to talk,” she stammered. Just because she wasn’t looking at him anymore, that didn’t mean she couldn’t still hear him put his clothes back on. Which meant her mind kept envisioning things that she really didn’t want it to.

“Okay, I’m dressed,” Nick said, pulling his shirt on. “Is this good enough?”

Dani glanced cautiously over her shoulder, and then sighed with relief. He finally had his clothes on, which meant she could breathe again.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I just, well…”

“No, I totally get it,” Nick cut her off. “It’s probably not what you want to see.”

“You got that right,” Dani sighed. “Look, Nick, I’m going to be honest with you. The reason I’m here is because I feel bad about some stuff, and, well…”

“Right…” Nick nodded. “You can’t feel better about it until you talk to me, because of your transformation… sorry about that.”

Dani’s worried expression softened a little. “Before we talk, Nick, I just want to say… I’m glad that it’s you. That you’re the one who became the ‘master’ of this season. I mean, yeah, it sucks and I hate it, but… I don’t know if I’ve ever really told you that. That I’m glad it’s you.”

Nick looked confused. He wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this.

“This thing… this nagging feeling in the back of my mind, it’s been bugging me all morning,” she explained. “And I’m just now becoming aware of it, too. It’s like it’s slowly getting more prominent in my mind… frankly, I don’t know how bad it would get in another day or so. Would it stay like this? Get worse? I don’t know… but it means a lot that you’re here to help me out with it, Nick.”

She hung her head, staring at the carpet, before bashfully looking up at him. She actually had to look up at him now; it wasn’t something she was sure she’d ever get used to. Neither was feeling bashful. But she was honestly grateful for his presence here.

“Nick… if you were some random guy, some scumbag who only cared about sex, and didn’t care about me, you would have a lot of power over me right now,” Dani said quietly. “I can’t feel better about things without your help. And you could leverage that help in order to get me to sleep with you, or do sexual favors for you… even knowing I’d hate it. And I wouldn’t have much of a choice…”

“Dani!” Nick exclaimed, his face morphing into an expression of shock and horror. “I would never do that to you, are you crazy!?”

“I know, that’s just it,” Dani said, shaking her head. “That’s what I mean, when I say I’m glad that you’re the master, Nick. Because you respect me that way, when another guy wouldn’t.”

“Oh…” Nick calmed down a little, realizing that Dani wasn’t accusing him of anything. “Okay, well, yeah, I get your point. So… what are these problems you have, Dani?”

“The first one, it’s pretty easy to resolve,” Dani said. “The other one… less so. But on the first issue… last night, Morgana and I were hanging out, and I got a little horny because she was talking the whole time with her Sotto Voce transformation…”

Nick winced. “Dani… did you do something to Morgana?” He asked.

“What!? No, of course not!” Dani exclaimed. “Why do you think I would do something like that!?”

Nick counted off on his fingers. “…Well, you have poor judgment, poor impulse control, and you don’t have a lot of avenues for satisfying yourself sexually-”

“OKAY!” Dani loudly cut him off. “I do NOT want you thinking about me in a sexual context, please!” She wailed, even though she knew that it was futile. She was well-aware of the fact that Nick certainly thought of her in a sexual manner- even though they were friends, it was hard to deny that she felt him stare at her occasionally. And while she didn’t mind that (after all, it was Nick, he could look at her as much as he wanted) but directly talking about her sex life with Nick wasn’t something she was exactly comfortable with at the moment.

And they were getting off track.

“It wasn’t anything like that!” She assured him with a shake of her head. “But… she got out her diary, and she had to write in it… so I kind of convinced her that she should give a dream to Sylvia…”

Nick’s eyes widened. Well, that explained the dream Sylvia had been having last night. “Dani…”

“I-I know what you’re thinking,” Dani said, holding up her hands to stop him right there. “But I did it because I thought it would be fitting, you know, as a prank, after all the stuff that she had done to us, plus I was super horny! If I thought that she wouldn’t like the dream, I wouldn’t have done it, but it’s Sylvia, so I just assumed that she would like it, so…”

Nick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “…Well, as someone who was sharing a bed with her when she had that dream, I can at least assure you that, yes, she did like it quite a bit.”

Dani blinked. “…Yeah, I know, she told me herself, when I apologized. We talked the whole thing out and we’re cool now.”

Okay, now Nick was confused. “So wait, if the situation resolved itself already and you’re both fine with what happened, why did you come talk to me?”

“Because I still feel guilty!” Dani groaned. “Even though Sylvia already told me she was cool with it, this transformation won’t let me stop feeling bad until you comfort me about it!”

“Comfort you how?” Nick asked. This was really annoying. If he and Dakota hadn’t had that huge blowup this morning, he might have called her to ask for clarification, but he didn’t want to see her again until he’d had some more time to cool off.

Dani winced, and shrugged. “I don’t know… just tell me that it’s fine I did it, I guess? Since everyone’s happy?” Even as the words left her lips, though, she knew it wasn’t that simple. There was something digging around inside her.

Nick sighed. Frankly, though, he didn’t really think it was fine. “Dani, you did something wrong, but it turned out okay. Normally that would be fine, but the reason you’re still feeling guilty is probably because you were spiteful. Do you understand that?” He asked. “You’re supposed to treat people the way you want to be treated. Is that what you did here?”

Dani blinked. Then her eyes widened. “Wait, so… that’s it!?”

Nick nodded. “I get it, you wanted to take it out on Sylvia for all the stuff she did to you. But the reason you still feel a little guilty, even after she said she was okay, was because you feel bad about what YOU did, independent of her.”

Dani shook her head in disbelief. It was so simple now that he said it. Even so, all her negative feelings washed away in a second.

“Hey, yeah!” She gasped. “I don’t feel crummy at all, anymore! At least not like I did before!”

She still felt the tiny bit of guilt that came with regretting doing something bad, but it wasn’t any more overpowering than all the other times she’d ever felt that way in her life. Nick really had helped her feel better, with a few simple words that had told her what she already knew. With a sigh of relief, she was grateful to be back to normal.

Of course… there was still the other matter that needed settling.

“Um, thanks, Nick,” she said, blushing a little. She hated relying on other people if she could help it, but still appreciated the help when it was given.

“It was literally nothing,” Nick assured her, feeling kind of amused at how little effort he’d had to put into “comforting” Dani about a situation that had already been 99% resolved. She had even already known what the issue was, she just couldn’t feel better about it. “But what’s this other issue you wanted to talk to me about? You said it was harder?”

Dani winced and nodded. “Yeah, it’s… about us.”

“…There is no us,” Nick said, taking an instinctive step back. For a moment, he thought that some bizarre combination of transformations may have worked together to give Dani romantic interest in him somehow, and that was very much something he didn’t want a part of.

That only lasted for a second, though, because he saw Dani’s sad expression and his worries softened.

“It’s not, like… a romantic thing,” Dani clarified, shaking her head. “I mean… you and me, as friends. That kind of ‘us’ you know?”

“Oh…” Nick’s heart softened even more, hearing that. He approached the sad-looking girl. “What do you mean, Dani? Aren’t we friends? Heck, you were my best woman at my wedding, and that was just a few days ago!”

Dani sniffled and shook her head. “Yeah, but… it’s not like I’ve been a real friend to you here, have I? We barely hang out… it’s like, I’m always with Carly, or Kim, or cooking in Mary’s cooking class… when was the last time you and I hung out together, Nick? Without it being **** on us by the rules of the show, I mean?”

Nick paused.

Honestly? He couldn’t really think of any time that had happened.

“I’ve been calling myself your friend… but it really doesn’t feel like I’ve been too friendly, huh?” Dani asked sadly. “I mean, remember back in high school, when we used to hang out and play video games, and talk about shows we like, and all that stuff? What happened to that? Why did that stop happening, huh?”

It was a question that didn’t need to be answered. After all, they both knew what the cause of that had been.

Dani looked down and sighed. “I guess… I’ve been spending so much time with the other girls… because…”

“Because they’re hot?” Nick cut in with a laugh, trying to turn this into a joke. A pained stare from Dani put a quick stop to that.

She shook her head.

“No, it’s… it’s because… because I was worried,” she mumbled. “I’ve been afraid for a long time that the show is going to try and **** me to be with you, so… I was resisting that. Trying to fight it. I thought that if I could just keep my distance and spend as little time with you as possible, then that would reduce the chances of anything happening between us. That’s also why I was glad that your bachelor party fell on my night with you. It meant… it meant that I could spend time with you, without it being just the two of us.”

Dani didn’t know exactly what she was trying to accomplish, talking to Nick like this. She was mainly trying to assuage her feelings of guilt and discomfort, but at the same time, she really wanted to fix this issue.

It wasn’t until it was pointed out to her earlier about how little she and Nick really behaved as best friends anymore.

“Nick… you and I, we used to be really close… and then… well, I treated you poorly. And you forgave me for that, but… even though part of me wanted to be your friend again… I let my fear of what would happen to me get the better of that,” she said with a sigh. “And that’s not the kind of thing that a best friend should do.”

“So what are you saying?” Nick asked, still not sure where Dani was going with this.

Dani looked at him with watery eyes, and shrugged. “I’m saying… want to go hang out? I think a lot of the other girls are in Mary’s cooking class, but you and I can still have fun together on our own, don’t you think?”

Nick was surprised. He had never expected that Dani of all people would actually ask him to do something.

Which is kind of her point, huh? That because she’s gay, I just naturally assumed she wouldn’t want to do anything with me. And she kind of felt the same way, huh? Not wanting to take steps that would lead to the show using anything against her.

Maybe Nick hadn’t been the best friend he could have been, either.

“I think that would be a great idea,” Nick said, nodding. “Although… I don’t want to go for a workout or anything like that. I’m not really in the mood.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Dani laughed, waving her hand. “I already worked out with Kim today.”

She was just relieved he didn’t seem bothered by what she’d said. After all, she really could have been a better friend… and in a way, wasn’t she almost accusing him of potentially taking advantage of her, by the rules of the show?

“There’s an Amusement Park,” Nick suggested. He still had fond memories of that place from his date with Kim. And while this definitely wasn’t a date, that didn’t mean that the two of them couldn’t have fun together. “I don’t know if you’d be into that, but-”

“Awesome, let’s do it then!” Dani said, cracking a smile. “It’s been a while since I went on a good roller coaster. I just need to get dressed for it.”

She glanced down. She was still in her workout clothes.

“Yeah, I should probably get dressed in something better, too,” Nick agreed, staring down at his own outfit. There was a bit of a musk to them, given where they’d been getting hotboxed in.

Sounds like they had a plan. Dani turned towards the doorway, only for Nick to call out after her.

“Oh, Dani, one more thing,” he said, and she glanced back at him.

“Hmm?”

“You weren’t the only one who could have reached out, you know,” Nick told her. “I could have asked you to hang out and do stuff, too. But I thought you wouldn’t want to, so I never really asked. So it wasn’t just you who wasn’t taking the right steps in this friendship, okay? I just wanted you to know that.”

Dani stared at Nick for a bit, letting that sink in.

And once again, those negative feelings she’d been having washed away.

“Wow,” she said, cracking a smile. “You really are the only person who can make me feel better about the big stuff now… for better or worse.”

The two went their separate ways, Dani back to her room and Nick towards the elevator. As Dani changed her clothes, she considered the situation she was in; her smaller issues, things that weren’t a big deal, she could still fix those herself.

So what did it mean, that she couldn’t move past what had happened with Sylvia last night? All that guilt had been overwhelming.

“Did that really strike me so hard?” She wondered, sorting through her clothes.

“Strike you so hard how?”

“Yaaagh!” Dani jumped in the air and whirled around in surprise. When she saw who it was leaning against the dresser, she went pale.

“…Dakota? What… what are you doing here?” She demanded, glancing around quickly. Not that there was anyone who could help her, of course. Kim was at work.

“Oh, I just came over to congratulate you on being so proactive!” Dakota said, applauding the tomboy with a twisted grin. “Scoring a date with the master? And when it’s not even your night, either, wow, that’s really something. Taking the initiative since Kim’s behind the counter for a few more hours, is that it?”

Dani scowled and shook her head.

“Not a chance,” she spat. “It’s not a date! We’re just two best friends going to hang out together, that’s all!”

Dakota’s eye twitched. “…Best friends, huh?” She whispered, the air seeming to freeze around her. “How sweet.”

Dani tensed. She could see the scornful jealousy in the other woman’s golden eyes. This would be a really good time for her to NOT do something stupid to make the situation worse.

“Look, I mean… I know he loves you, and cares about you,” Dani said, trying to walk things back. “Even though you did some absolutely horrible stuff…”

Frankly? Dani was disgusted by the other woman. Dakota’s actions when she was a host on previous seasons was morally repugnant. And the fact that she’d made Nick so incredibly clingy and obsessive about her while she was trying to find herself, resulting in their relationship collapsing…

No, that was my fault, she reminded herself. I made that decision. I can’t blame Dakota for that.

It didn’t mean she had to forgive her for the other stuff, though. Dani still glared at the witch, even while she felt sympathetic for what she’d been through.

She took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves while Dakota just stared coldly at her.

“Can I ask you something, Dakota?” She tried changing the subject completely, much to the pale woman’s surprise.

“…I suppose,” Dakota nodded. Her rage seemed to have been temporarily restrained by her curiosity.

“You’re trying to **** us into roles in Nick’s harem, right?” Dani asked cautiously. It was pretty much an open secret at this point, and if someone as dumb as her could figure it out, it had to be that other women could. “That’s the whole thing. You’re trying to turn me into, what, the perfect stepford housewife for him, or something? Because that’s more Mary’s thing, not me.”

Dakota just shrugged. The thin smirk on her lips didn’t suggest anything one way or another.

“What about just being the best friend?” Dani asked weakly. “Can’t I just be that? Please? Does it have to be something sexual?”

Dakota didn’t reply. She just sauntered over to the tomboy, her cold fingers ghosting across Dani’s skin.

“That,” she whispered into Dani’s ear, “is up to you.”