Katie regained awareness of the world in a way that made her wish that she hadn't. Even though she lay perfectly still, everything around her still seemed to be spinning. It made her stomach queasy and her head pulse with a dull ache. The one saving grace was that whatever she was lying on was comfortably soft, and the sheets against her skin had to be silk or satin.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes, encouraged by the dim, flickering lighting; at least it wouldn't blind her as she tried to adjust. The last time she'd seen that many candles in one place, Vasilis had proposed to her. If he'd chosen this night to surprise her with some tender romance, he was going to be very disappointed, both that she had apparently fallen asleep on him and that she was too heartsick and sore to even think about love.

There was blonde hair scattered on the pillow next to her, which didn't surprise her until she lifted her head to look for Vasilis and the hair didn't move. She gave a small shriek and sat up sharply. No sign of her husband, but Brooke was on the other side of the bed, undisturbed in her slumber, sleep wiping away her easy smile. Where the sheet had been pulled away, her shoulder and part of her back were both visible and bare.

At that, Katie abruptly realized that she wasn't wearing anything either; had she been more clear-headed, she would have been able to tell that much because of the sheets against her skin. But caught up in confusion and panic, she wasn't thinking about small logical things like that. Her heart thudded against her ribs as she tried to figure out a reason for waking up naked in a strange bed with her likewise naked best friend, but there really wasn't a good one that she could come up with. The last thing she remembered was agreeing to an interview with a Webzine, which didn't seem to match up with the current situation. There might be clues in other parts of the room, so she started to get out of bed. She would have wrapped herself in the sheet, but that would leave Brooke exposed. Purely on instinct, she covered her breasts with one arm as she surveyed her surroundings. She had already taken in the candles and the cloying smell of too many flowers, but now she noticed the whipped cream and chocolate sauce on a wall shelf, the lingerie laid out on a nearby cushioned bench, and the romantic music playing softly from hidden speakers.

This, she decided, was not good. But at least the lingerie would cover her somewhat, so she selected the most substantial-looking of the lot and put it on. The blue silk robe was cut to dip low and rise high, but it was better than nothing. Checking her reflection in one of the numerous mirrors scattered through the room, she noted with disturbed surprise that the blue was the perfect shade to set off her eyes. Someone had been paying overly close attention.

She had dressed just barely in time. Brooke started to stir under the sheet, making the early morning grunts that preceded language. She opened her eyes and blinked until her vision started to clear, and it was at that point that Katie said, "Whatever you do, don't get out of bed."

"Huh? Wha- where are- how'd you- why- what are you wearing?" Brooke propped herself up on one elbow, awakening far too rapidly as she absorbed her strange surroundings and Katie's presence.

"Lingerie's the only thing available for clothes. I don't know what happened to ours. I don't know what's going on here either. I only woke up a few minutes before you did."

"I think I should have skipped the game," Brooke decided. She wrapped herself in the sheet, folding it up so that she could walk without tripping over the end of it, and swung into a sitting position. "Not only did you guys manage to lose, I end up who knows where. The last thing I remember, some woman asked me for an interview back at-"

"That cheap hotel down 95."

"And then we-"

"Got into her car."

"And I should've noticed before, but-"

"It smelled funny."

Brooke caught up with the way Katie kept flatly finishing her sentences. "You too, huh? Which I probably should have guessed, since you're *here*."

"I've seen enough bad movies to know what happens next. We're both awake and we're wondering what's happening. That's usually when the villain makes his appearance and proclaims that he's going to explain everything, since he knows that the hero can't escape from his fiendish trap. Any minute now…" There was a tinge of nervousness coloring Katie's words, but she and Brooke both ignored it, Katie in order to make it go away and Brooke to avoid having Katie kick her ass.

"We aren't villains! We're servants of destiny!"

"Oh my God, Nutmeg, don't tell them that, they'll think we're crazy!"

Brooke and Katie directed their gazes over to one of the mirrors, which had a speaker next to it. The first voice, presumably Nutmeg, said, "Hi! You found us! You can't see me, but I'm waving at you!"

"Way too many exclamation marks," Brooke muttered from the side of her mouth.

The second voice chipped in, "We're really sorry about the way we had to do things, but we know that you're mixed up enough that you wouldn't do this on your own, so we had to be a little ruder than we really wanted to be. But if it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

"And that's the 'quietly insane' member of the party," Katie replied to Brooke's earlier comment.

"Okay! You're both here, so get to it!" Nutmeg proclaimed, and the cheer in her voice was so over the top that Katie and Brooke both concluded that she had to be on some sort of mind-altering substance, whether it was drugs, sugar, or something else even more dangerous that they didn't know about.

"Get to what?" Katie asked cautiously, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.

"The sex, duh," the second voice replied.

"The… sex. I'm sorry, WHAT?" On the last word, Brooke chimed in as well, as stunned as Katie was at the blasé declaration.

"Come on, don't tell us you don't have awesomely hot and occasionally even kinky sex with each other! We know better! It's so obvious! And even if you aren't, you're totally supposed to be, so here's all the things you'll need!"

"Um, you do know I'm married, right?"

"And I have a boyfriend!" Brooke protested just as quickly.

"Marriage doesn't matter," the second voice said, and the cold calculation in those words chilled Katie to the bone. "Swoopes was married, and look how that worked out for our side of the ledger. Gaydar doesn't lie. You're on our side of the line. Anything else is immaterial."

"Seriously, we don't know where you guys are getting this stuff, but it's not true. It's not even close to being true. It's as far from being true as is humanly possible," Brooke said, and even though she was trying to be gentle with the crazy people, it didn't work very well; she sounded angry, scared, and disgusted.

A piece of the wall, next to the mirror and above the speaker, suddenly revealed itself to be retractable, and from the newly revealed slot, the barrel of a very large gun emerged. Katie gulped. Brooke picked up the trailing bit of sheet and hid her head under it. After a moment, she peeked out, but the gun was still there. "Come on! You're not being very nice! We went to aaaaaaaaaaaall this trouble to make sure you guys had a really great place for sex! Don't waste it!"

"Do you have to exclaim everything?" Katie finally burst out.

"Oh, God, we're gonna die now," Brooke muttered.

But a hail of gunfire noticeably did not come their way, although the barrel of the gun wavered. "Yeah, you really shouldn't have said that," the second voice said, and it sounded like she was stifling laughter. "But fortunately for you, not only is Nutmeg very… eager to see you two perform, she knows that I'm also annoyed with her at that habit of hers, so it's really quite understandable that someone else would comment on it. Still, I wouldn't recommend doing it again. She's already on edge waiting for the show."

"I still don't know why you think we're together. We're not."

"I don't even know *how* to have sex with another woman!" Brooke added desperately.

"And the one thing you didn't provide us with was sex toys."

"Silly KT! There's a whole box of really nifty stuff in the corner! Come on, try it out! It'll be really fun!"

"How about I try shoving one of those exclamation marks up your ass and another down your throat instead?" Katie grumbled under her breath as she crossed the room to open the box. She raised an eyebrow as high as it could go- no small feat, considering how often she had reason to do so and the tricks she had learned from Lindsay on that score- and shut the lid again. "I don't think we'll be needing any of that, even if we do give in to your demands- which I'm not saying we will, because again, and I don't think either of us can stress this quite enough, we're not gay."

"Katie? Um, could you not say that to the person with the gun? Even if it is true? I like not having extra holes that I didn't pay someone to put in selected places very carefully and with lots of disinfectant involved." Brooke looked nervously at the barrel of the gun.

Cheerfully, in her over-enthusiastic voice, Nutmeg said, "It's not nice to lie to people! Guys aren't supposed to touch you! That whole marriage thing was a mistake! And if you can't have each other, well, then it isn't right for anyone to have you, now is it?"

"I really wish that hadn't been the first thing she'd said without an exclamation mark," Brooke said.

"I'm going to need clarification on that before I panic."

In the silence that fell, they could almost hear the second speaker rolling her eyes. "Look, you two are clearly not meant for men. You're meant for each other. We're going to make you realize that. And if we can't… well, we can't keep you here forever, and just the thought of either of you with a guy is enough to make me sick to my stomach, so we'd have to make sure that that could never come to pass."

"Okay, then, upon further reflection, it does seem to be a good time to panic after all."

"We have a little time," the second speaker said amenably.

"Yeah! We understand we might have put you off the mood! We'll leave you two alone now so you can… well, I shouldn't have to tell you!" Nutmeg giggled, and Katie devoutly wished that she could reach through the speaker and strangle the woman.

Brooke came up behind Katie and whispered in her ear, "Get back over to the bed. It's a good place to talk, and it might make them think we're doing something else so they'll leave us alone to plan."

"I like the way you think," Katie said aloud. She and Brooke took the few short steps back to the bed and sat down. Leaning in close to Brooke in mockery of sweet nothings, she said, "What are we going to do? We've got to get out of here somehow. There has to be a door- how else could they have gotten us in here? And then there's that gun to factor in, because I don't think they'll take it very well if we try to leave without giving them what they want."

"Get your priorities straight," Brooke said with a smile. She got up from the bed, went to the shelf, and brought back the chocolate sauce and whipped cream. "First chocolate, then escape. Might as well take advantage of what we've been given."

Katie buried her face in her hands… but she did take a spoonful of chocolate sauce when Brooke offered her the bowl. After all, it was indeed a foolish thing to refuse chocolate when it was given. While they snacked, and occasionally shook the whipped cream in suggestive ways, they planned their escape. The choreography would have to be brilliant and perfectly executed if there was a chance at getting out of there alive and with most of their dignity intact, although it was a given that at least some of their dignity was going to end up as a casualty of this mess.

"And whatever else happens, we don't tell anybody what we had to do in here," Katie said, and Brooke nodded agreement. No one else needed to know about this, no matter what kind of prurient interest the men in their lives might have in the idea of the two blondes together.

They rose together, smoothly. Brooke dropped the sheet, eliciting a wolf whistle from the watchers, and Katie gingerly embraced her. Laughing, Brooke whispered, "We dressed together for five seasons, KT, don't tell me you're embarrassed about seeing me naked. I'll let you know if you're getting too friendly, but this has to be as believable as possible."

"If there's something you wanted to tell me, you could have done it before while I was denying any relationship between us," Katie muttered in response.

"Don't be so uptight. Hello, gun?" Brooke moved Katie's hand slightly lower. Katie blushed. "Okay, go for it."

With that, no bauble, no piece of furniture, nothing was safe from the two of them as they stumbled around the room, pretending to be caught in the throes of passion. Brooke smothered her laughter, but it wasn't easy. Soon her hands were full, not of Katie, but of a particularly heavy and unattractive candle.

The dance continued apace. As Brooke pushed against Katie, Katie felt against the wall for the door that she knew had to be there; after all, Nutmeg and her fellow conspirator had to have gotten them in the love nest somehow, and it made the most sense for there to be a connection with the room behind the mirror. Their surmise was correct. Katie found the crack in the wallpaper, and the tiny space where the door could be pried open from the inside. She flashed Brooke a smile to let her know that she'd met with success. As they'd planned, Brooke changed her motion, giving Katie enough space to work at the door while still appearing to be grinding against her. But she leaned in close enough to whisper for a moment, "Better hustle, KT, I don't think we can stretch the pre-game entertainment any further before they start demanding tip-off."

"Oh, God!" Katie yelled, a response so unexpected that Brooke nearly lost precious moments staring at her in shock. Then she saw the gap between the wall and the door, and understood what Katie had really been saying. Carefully, being sure to keep a steady tempo, she helped Katie ease the door open even as she prepared her heavy candle for use as a blunt instrument or projectile, whichever it would need to be.

Luck, in a way, was on their side; the dishwater blonde with the gun, presumably Nutmeg, had allowed herself to get too caught up in what she thought Brooke and Katie were doing, and her hands were not only not on the gun, but not in a position where she could move them easily. Katie was able to get to the gun before Nutmeg could react, and by the time Nutmeg considered doing something about this unexpected turn of events, Katie was in control of the gun.

Meanwhile, the brunette by the window had been quicker on the uptake; perhaps she had noticed that Brooke and Katie had been moving closer to the hidden lair in their little dance. If she had been the armed one, their bid for escape would have come up short much sooner. But even as she rose to help Nutmeg, Katie swung the gun over and Brooke clubbed her with the candle. The brunette fell in an unconscious heap.

"Nice," Katie said approvingly.

Brooke curtseyed, a very strange sight on a naked woman. "You keep an eye on those two, make sure they don't try anything, not that there's much they can try if you have the gun. I'm going to see if our stuff's up here. I really want to find my clothes. At least you've got that robe, for as much good as it does you." She offered a flash of a smile, then started searching the room. It didn't take long, since it was a small room with very few storage places. Brooke found her clothes and Katie's on a shelf in the sole cabinet- or at least most of their clothes; somehow, their undergarments had gone missing. "Um, KT? We're going to have to go commando," she called over her shoulder.

"Somehow, I think that even if we did find our panties here, we wouldn't want them back," Katie muttered.

"But they smelled so nice!" Nutmeg protested.

Brooke turned slightly green, but bore up well. "And here's your bag, everything still intact- hey, maybe if you needed it you could put your sports bra back on. Now where's- there's mine. I'm gonna try and get a signal. I'd appreciate it if you could keep the queen of the exclamation points quiet in the background." She turned her phone on and dialed 911, wishing that she hadn't deleted the non-emergency number for the Connecticut state police from her phone when she went to Chicago. "Yes, hi, I'd like to report a kidnapping. Um, yes. Me and my friend. Brooke- oh? Yes. Seriously? Okay. Give me a second. You guys are quick."

"Something the matter?" Katie asked.

"Not exactly." Brooke crossed the room with the phone. "Coach T just put an APB out for you about ten minutes ago. The operator's patching us through to the station in Uncasville, and they want you to prove that you're actually you. Personally, I'm kinda offended that the APB was only for you."

They switched burdens, Katie taking the phone while Brooke manned the gun. "Connecticut State Police? Just checking. Yes, I am. Yes?" She broke into a smile, and the relief that washed over her was visible for all to see. "Hi, honey. No, I am not repeating what your cousin Seva did at Easter. There are other people in the room on both ends of the phone, and I don't want to be responsible for Brooke going into therapy to get the mental images out of her head. I didn't want to see the leg of lamb in that position either. Which one do you mean, the one on your stomach, the one on your left calf, or the one- ah, okay, I get what you were going for here. Yes, I’m me. I love you too, and I miss you so much. I'm glad you worried about me- isn't it usually 24 hours before they start talking about adults being missing? Yeah, Brooke mentioned that the dispatcher- that makes sense. Are they tracing the call? Or- hey, Brooke?" Brooke looked up at the sound of her name. "Does your phone have the locator on?"

"Yeah, I always keep it on, just in case."

"Good. They're using that to locate us. We should be out of here in no time. Yes, I'm still here. I know. I'll see you soon. I love you. I should probably go. I don't want to drain the battery any more than it needs to stay on." Katie hung up the phone and put it on the table. Nutmeg stared at it, and at her, with an expression of sheer revulsion on her face. "Yes, that was my husband. Yes, I love him. You're going to have to deal with that- or maybe not, since we don't have to deal with you much longer, just until the police arrive. Don't try anything. Either of you!" The last was addressed to the brunette, just starting to rouse from the hit she'd taken.

Half an hour passed in approximate boredom. Katie took the opportunity to change out of the revealing robe and back into her sweats, then switched off with Brooke so Brooke could get dressed. Neither of them relaxed their vigilance for a moment, knowing that Nutmeg and her cohort were ready and willing to resort to drastic measures in order to live out their fantasies.

There was a second door to the room, something neither Katie nor Brooke had noticed until the police kicked it open. "This is not how we usually find our kidnapping victims," the officer in the lead said with a wry smile. "Hawkins! Looks like your hunch was right!"

"It fit the pattern, sir," Hawkins replied. At Katie's raised eyebrow, he explained, "There were similar cases in Washington, California, and North Carolina. We suspected that they'd moved up through the Northeast- there was a situation with the Huskies… but that's over and done with. These two have had warrants out on them since California. There are several rewards out for them, and you two will definitely collect for helping capture them."

In the background, a third officer droned, "Catherine McMillan, Joella Watkins, you're under arrest for multiple counts of assault and kidnapping. You have the right to remain silent…"

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be!" Nutmeg wailed. "We were only trying to help!"

"…court of law. You have the right to an attorney…"

"Let me state for the record that I'm taking my right to remain silent, unlike my friend there," the brunette said haughtily.

"Noted, Miss Watkins," the Miranda officer said before finishing the traditional warning. Rights properly read, the police led the fangirls out of the room in handcuffs. The trailing officer said, "Ladies, if you'd come with us, please? We'd like to get some statements from you regarding this case. And, um, my daughter's a really big fan…"

Brooke laughed, and the rippling sound seemed to have been dammed up for far too long. "No problem. Got a pen? Unless Katie has one in her bag, I'm short."

Katie, meanwhile, had tucked the blue silk robe into her equipment bag; she figured that she was owed something for having to put up with this humiliation, and it was quite a beautiful piece of lingerie. She was sure to find use for it soon. Between this and the loss at the hands of the Shock, she'd need some comfort, some reassurance, some sweet love, and she was certain that her husband's fear for her would turn into something else when he saw her after this.

Just the idle thought made her smile lasciviously. This certainly wasn't what the deluded fangirls had planned, not by a long shot…