The Laudario of Sant'Agnese, Florence, ca. 1340

[Olivia Diogenes]

The sound of the alarm was already faint in the distance. The sirens had stopped, but the team that had entered the museum had not been given insight nor instruction as to the taming of the screaming security system. Something about the night being violated by that cacophony, long after she had escaped the cavernous, looming building, made her smile. It was a rascal's smile. A mischief-maker's archetypal trademark set in the cream of her pale features and framed by a halo of her parchment-honey hair. Loki himself would have toasted that smile.

He also might have been a little daunted by the sharp way her sky-pale eyes snapped a fast, carnivorous attention. Though it reminded one of a whip-crack, a punctuation, it was reverent. It assessed. It paid its dues with efficiency and candor. But when Liv looked at you, really looked at you, it consumed you-- hooked at the mouth and reeling you in. It drank from some fount of sincerity you often forgot you still protected at the core of you and returned it just a little less full. She took a sip of what the devil's drinking. Her gaze was a measured surveillance that made notes as spidery and intricate as the schematics she would scratch out in her black notebook. You were reduced to a pile of intuitive, hypervigilant anecdotes in the margins. It was as reductionist as much as it was non-judgemental. She considered herself a social constructivist, to be honest. A free-wheeling champion of entropy and inertia here to shake it up a little. And when Liv wasn't lying through her pretty, petal-shaped mouth she was completely, and utterly sincere. Devil-may-care. Just like that f**king smile. Immortally, demonically, ...charming. It made you forget the notebook. The planning. The artifice and artistry. One way or another she was getting in, and she was going to get what she wanted. Even if it was just to make you laugh-- helplessly.

She was smiling like that as she closed the door behind her- silent as snowfall on a starless night. She dropped into her overly-comfortable chair, pulling her satchel into her lap and crossing her legs casually as they were thrown over the plush armrest. She was tall, lithe, and had coltish gymnast-limbs that were sculpted by the circus and the stage but she had found a better use for them. Stereotypes could be badges of honour. Or excuses. Or destiny.

She pulled the medieval book out of her bag and ran the tips of her soft, kid-leather gloves over the cover of the book. Patient-- drawing the moment out like exquisite taffy made of precious, soulless time. She opened the manuscript in her lap, turning a page to inspect the first plate. It was beautiful. The vibrant colours and gold-flake danced like a portal to a dream nestled in her black silhouette in the dark. The monk had been a Master. She sighed the sigh of satisfaction-- of completion and hard work paid off. It was post-coital and she fought the urge to grab a cigarette.

"Mm," she purred into her her lonely apartment.

She'd call the buyer tomorrow. Tonight, she was going to see what all the fuss was about.

[Writing the Bullet]

The questions. The longing. Needing an answer. Forking over your last scrap of coin with promises of more later- whatever more he'd take in trade (often offered with a fluttering of lashes and a dismal display of self-worth.) The sheer desperation that brought people to Writ's door, or him to theirs, time and time again, was a monster. An all-consuming, viciously ensnaring void that currently holds 90% of the population, in varying degrees of up-sh*t-creek, firmly between the rotten-toothed grimace of its foul and mangled maw. What kind of person uses that sort of desperation to make a living? Then again, what kind of person does NOTHING while watching people drown? Writ just happens to get paid for it. Gotta put your talents to work somehow and if that means having to be morally flexible, then in the grey he'd ride.. right through to the next desperate bidder.

Call the Gypsy.

Writ Petrescu, Romani, still roving by occupations grace, always got them their answer, whether favorable or not. He's an unimposing six feet tall, of slight build, and wears his average-featured face in an array of both appropriate and inappropriate expressions, as the situation demands. Medium length brown hair scrapes the sand paper stubble at a squared jaw while warm hazel brown eyes, slightly slanted, invite and observe. On the surface, he's warm.. and generally pretty likeable even WITH a generous helping of sarcasm. Which is all just to say.. that business is good for a guy that knows how to hide in plain sight and can open his f**king eyes and ears.

The wind ricochets against leather in needle-like shards as he flies down the road. The vibration of the ground beneath him, brought to life under the insistent pressure of two wheels, generates a combatting heat in the wave of adrenaline that comes with it. Each mile he puts between the last job and the next is like a dose of pure unadulterated euphoria. An addiction. His heart beats faster.. And the light goes out.

He's arrived far enough ahead of time to inconspicuously park his bike and find a few shadows to play house in. The client was explicit about weeding out the potential criminal element where his newly moved collection was being stored. He also had oddly specific details about when and where to be. It seemed likely, a trap had been set. A dangling carrot if you will. Writ couldn't care less. He was here to watch, photograph, and report. That was the job. DON'T ENGAGE.

Famous last words?

Sh*t. Dark rimmed sepia narrowed through the lens of his camera as a pale blonde flurry of silk spun ice blue eyes in the direction of his corner and his lips unbiddenly parted to let a bit of his soul escape. He was glad for the broadness of his surrounding shadow even as she threatened to draw him out. Liv. Her name rang out in an ominous echo like it always did. There was no mistaking it. Writ had just enough sense (or?) to put his camera away. His once exalted high came plummeting down around his shoulders in a tsunami of What the f**ks!? as he wrestled with himself in silent torture of wanting to step out of his hiding place to warn her and actually doing his damn job. Writ hesitated a moment, and that was all the time she needed to make the decision for him. She was gone.

And he didn't attempt to follow. Not yet. Not tonight.

A decade. A decade of absence is almost unforgiving, especially between old friends.

[Olivia Diogenes]

She made a game of it.

Hop. Drop. Tumble. Roll. Pause.....

Leap. Twist. Hop. Crouch. Pause....

Silent as the waning light, Oliva dropped down the labyrinth of fire escapes to the alley floor. She'd left her vehicle blocks away, as she always did. She paid for the privilege with the local crime in town. They were mostly gun-runners and thugs, but she had to consult with that group of people and it didn't hurt to have connections that could move fast and frenetic if something happened. They weren't her type of people, but she could act like it. She was a social dabbler, anyway. Most of her family weren't "her type of people" but it was what it was. They were friends of friends. People she consorted with, consorted with them. They were a tool of the trade. So, they could watch her bike. At the least.

The game of leap-frog through the city skyline was made of muscle memory. It was second nature. She did not have to think. She was free to let her mind wander, and it did. She was putting together a grocery list. There was even a background song to it. It was painfully ridiculous. She wouldn't admit it, even under the threat of torture.

Would you like to swing on a star
Carry moonbeams home in a jar

But, if there had been an observer, they would have seen the jaunty beat in the way she took her steps. There was an extra sway to her gait. There was a pattern to the silent patter of her feet.

And be better off than you are ...

She was smiling for the most part. At least between the pauses. When she paused, she tilted her head to the side, feline and insect-like all at once. She listened in those moments, and the internal silence that interrupted the song was complete. Olivia was careful and detail oriented .. almost to a fault. Almost, because she would never concede that there was such a thing as 'too much' careful.

However, we all become complicit and complacent in routine. Muscle memory is reptilian-simple. Sure it frees the mind to do other things. But the body and the mind get bored with routine. Grocery list, Olivia? Really?

So when his presence hits her, it winds her.

She freezes.

And a different sort of memory kicked in.

But Liv doesn't fight her instinct on this one. She indulges it, with a smirk. Ten years is a long time still. In a way, she's relieved by the inclination, the first thought that flashes through her mind.

Disappear. Use your training. Vanish. Do not engage. Don't be intrigued. Don't be stupid. Don't be sentimental. You don't give a f**k about the past. This is how even the likes of you gets killed. This isn't how this should go down. Trap. Bait.

She cursed quietly under her breath. That was her mistake. And she knew it as it spilled from her mouth. Bang, kid. You should be dead. You have a lot to learn. Enjoy that bristle of hairs on the back of your neck. Gonna die for it?

She gave a symbolic finger-flip to the world.

She was gone.




And when she dropped into the strangely similar comfortable chair of her alternate apartment, she sneered at herself for the new song that had sunk into her mind and replaced the cheesy (and ironic) classic she had been singing to herself before.

In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night and repeats --how it yells in my ear "Don't you know,little fool, you never can win..."

Makes me stop--- before I begin.

"F***."

She lit a cigarette. Her first drag was quick. Angry.

"F***ing f**k."

[Writing the Bullet]

The wolves closed in. Teeth gnashing, snarling, spitting.. snapping at his feet as he stood bloodied, stripped to the waist and scarred from chin to torso, surrounded by their demands.

Obey.. the Alpha murmurs into the recesses of his mind. She has an ancient, cloying voice. One that has the rhythm of mystic drums and suggested hypnosis.

Writ opened his mouth to spit his refusal at her feet but his breath was cut short by a set of spidery gloved fingers that crept up behind him and encircled his neck.

"I dare you." The voice attached to them purred in his ear as their fingers squeezed.

A pillow flung, a lamp smashed.. an alley cat frightened into a maniacal leap from his fire escape with a hiss and a yowl. A dream. Sweat poured down the sides of his face and pooled in the small gap of bone between shoulder and chest.. a place, that while now awake, he could still feel her fingers.

Writ rose from bed and walked with low-hung sweatpants towards the small, sparse, studio's sink and mirror. The cold water played between his fingers and found his face to wipe away the haggard grimace that had taken shelter there.

Amare Familia.. His wet hand ran from his face down his neck and over the words scarred onto the back of his left shoulder in no pretty set of ink and artful letters but bold, jagged and deep swathes of scar tissue that only comes with branding. As much as the process was painful, breaking the promise it was intended to make hurt more than any physical pain he had ever felt. Tonight, it throbbed.

He stared at his worn expression for a moment longer. "No." he said defiantly. Which is probably the worst thing he could have told himself in that moment. Almost immediately, he crossed the room, tugged on a non-descript black shirt, and slammed his door behind him.

If he wasn't going to sleep. He was going to find her.

It took a lot longer than he thought it might. He burnt through resource after resource, all the charm he had to spare, and in the end.. it was simply herself.. and whatever strega gypsy sh*t that linked them to begin with.. that gave her location away.

24 hours of searching, very little sleep, meals stuffed into his mouth out of sheer necessity and the b*tch simply jumps across a random alleyway that he happens to be walking down? Does she know I'm here?

He couldn't hear the song she pranced to but could feel the music in it. The sheer joy of freedom that swung her from ledge to rooftop, up, down and back again. He knew that freedom and couldn't help but feel like he was swinging a giant brick wall at it, as he made his way up the last flight of stairs that led to her door.

"F**k." he echoed, from the otherside of that proverbial brick wall.. and then..

He knocked.

[Olivia Diogenes]

[Edited from play.]

She knew. In truth, she knew before the motion detectors went off. Debatably, she knew he was coming since they crossed paths. She realized she knew when she woke up this morning. She paused with her hand on the door handle as she wondered whether she knew in England. Before he left? Before-- she snorted softly. She put on a poker face. Then she reapplied her secret, charming smile. No reason to not start this amicable. She leaned her shoulder against the door frame, and opened the door slowly, just half way, bisecting her body in the gap. Like she could titrate his presence through a funnel of access. It made her voice a little fuzzy, distant, as she fought what could only be described as a wave of dizziness. "Writ," but she still sort of purred. The silence between them hummed.

Some things never change. Her presence sensed and a glimpse at a distance were hardly.. defining.. in regards to what being right in front of her did. Be the flame, not the moth, Chav... he could hear his mother chide. "Olivia." he said dryly with a venom he didn't really know he could produce. It was her annoying fake smile that did him in. Warm charming Writ, all worn down in two wags of a serpents tongue. It came out like a curse word. He cleared his throat and looked beyond her pale halo for signs of any other visitors. "Bad time?"

There was no way he could know how angry it made her to realize that her nostrils flared when he said her name. That her smile went plasticine, like a shadow of fake rolled over it before it became flesh again. It was as though the reality of the rest of her all rushed in to tighten in her chest and left a husk of a girl to hold the fort for a few beats of a wild heart. Her teeth pressed together. Which was good, because the things that almost leapt out of her mouth as though he was accusing her of -- "No. ... No such thing." She didn't even know her own motives for that comment, but she pushed the door open the rest of the way and pivoted on the doorframe in as close to a sweeping gesture of invitation as she could muster.

"Hm," he grunted.. Motives and obviously forced pleasantries aside.. that brief flash of anger.. that was real. That was better.. and he couldn't fight the tug that made a marionette out of his mouth. As he always did, he gave her a large berth as he crossed the threshhold. Trying as he might to fold in on himself like a dying star. Even still, the motion set the hairs on his forearm to an electrical tilt. "I didn't know you were here.." He mumbled as if that explained the whole conversation he had just had in his head about what he was doing in town. "I mean.. I knew you were here..." he conceded, waving his hands towards the expanse of her apartment.. once he was safe enough away from her to gesticulate, of course.

The frown was a decision. She would display it for him when he finally turned to her. The sigh was done clandestine and behind his back, silently. She turned slowly, on a heel, with artifice, as she also closed the door and put her back against it. She let it be the final boarder of 'as far away as you can stand.' She took advantage of the way she could enjoy it pressed against her because she leaned into it hard. When he started to talk, her brows slowly rose, so the frown was gone before he saw it. "What?..." A moment of almost innocent, open lucidity as she genuinely wanted to know what he was thinking. Selfishly. "I... I mean, I didn't know you were here, either. I've been ---. I looked--" No no no. Jesus. "Why are you here?"

Writ's eyes followed the words tumbling out of her mouth and retreated to the ice-blues above them as she sucked her thoughts back in to replace them with something more practical. "A job." He said simply, running his hand over the bricks he'd found as he had backed into them. "Someone is looking for those that don't want to be found." A roll of his shoulders given as an afterthought. "So I'm here... Finding what shouldn't be found." His eyebrows hitched and he tilted his head in her direction. He let the statement hang there in the gathering throng of words that seemed to be floating about in the space between them. All the unsaid things stretched like canvas. "What are YOU doing here, Liv?" He couldn't look at her when he said her name again.

She welcomed the natural turns of conversation. She welcomed the turns that were not hers. Unlike most people who just waited for their chance to speak. She began nodding slowly. Of course. A job. Then she realized she didn't know what that meant to him. Then, and only then, did the actual situation of the moment start to build itself around her. And she did realize it was her own fault. But she also felt like she had set herself up. It didn't feel fair. None of this saga felt fair. That old version of her gripped and rattled at her insides like a child prisoner. "I... have been here for.... years. In this city I mean. I don't know if I 'shouldn't' be found, but being found is ...bad luck," she purposefully didn't use the term that would come easier to both their mouths, "in my line of work. What-- Do you want anything? Drink, I mean." She was trying.

Why was this so difficult? He left. He made the hardest decision for himself, for the both of them. Selfless AND selfish. So why was he so angry? The feel of fingers around his throat was used as a reminder. It wasn't her fault though. She was just as much of a pawn in this game as he was, right? He had stood there staring at her. Consternation, a neverending war that ate up his spine, played out like a scene on his face. "What?" he finally asked. "Oh. Drink." at least he caught that part. "Sure. Whatever you have is fine.. look I.." he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck and his fingertips hit the raised edges of that familiar burn. "Whatever you're stealing.. currently.. someone knows.. ok? That's all I.. All I came here for." He didn't look convincing.

The grip of fingers of a former self were replaced with his. His fingers. Or what she somewhere imagined they would be like. Regardless, her chest sunk when the first syllable left his mouth. The soft black turtleneck she wore was a reasonable confidant as the utterly taboo 'caught red handed' feeling gripped her till-- she pushed off the wall and nonchalantly rounded the counter that guarded her kitchen. Drink. Get a drink. She watched him in silence as she walked, breaking that stare as she turned the corner and then busied herself, overly busied herself, with locating the bottle of red wine she had been drinking. The way she eyed her glass, so near to him, was comical or La Boheme-tragic. "You.... I. Hmm." This was not a first time. She leaned on the counter, spreading a splayed set of fingers as she offset her shoulders at a drastic angle. A real, hard lean. "You're saying I'm in danger? ...you are coming here to warn me?" Reiterated. No. Just reflecting.

Light brown, a little worse for the wear, glanced down to the discarded, red stained vessel a few inches from where his fingers dangled at his side, dumbly. Stupid moth. Writ wrapped has hand around her too far glass and took the few steps required to follow her into the kitchen placing it gingerly on the counter beside her hunched form. He reached a long arm up above her and grabbed a second glass for himself, setting it next to its pair. She smelled like books. His eyes closed for the briefest three seconds. "Yes." Two steps back to press his shoulders back against safety. "I could have just snapped my picture and bailed. Collected my money. But.. I don't know. I don't usually have to think about what happens to the people or things I'm hired to find."


That frown was back, but it was made of concentration as all of these things happened. Somewhere, it was attitude that kept her in place as he approached. And it was attitude that failed her as she locked herself in place and didn't move a muscle as he reached, and placed, and backed off. It afforded him his inhale. Her mind was too far away to notice. One of her stealing-songs came to her mind as the blood in her ears pounded the bass it came with. She put words to it, and then pulled herself back to reality. He smelled like home. And when she tried to place the what and where of it..was it forest? A city? A spice? No. It was none of those things. She plucked up one of the glasses with deliberate annoyance, the stem between her knuckles, and began to pour like it was an every-day occurrence for editorial and poignant silences to have subtitles in real life and not just movies. "Ok. ... Thank you. But... I have a thousand f**king questions now. Were you paid to just take pictures or to kill me? What do you even do? What do you know about me? Why didn't or how did you not know you were sent after me?" She ended her pour in a wobble as the glass was just a little too full. She put it on the counter instead of handing it to him because the world wobbled with it. She raised and gestured with her red-stained counterpart. "How freaked out should I be about this? ..Nevermind your standing here talking to me." She let her composure drop some.

He was grateful that she didn't hand it to him, but now what? He still had to go get it. There was a micro-expression of fear, like she was some sort of leper, a really.. really.. good-smelling leper.. but a leper nonetheless. No touching. He steeled himself and forced his eyes to rest firmly on hers, approaching head on in one and a half small steps. That face. Set hard but clearly a brave show. The over-filled glass raised to his mouth, he refrained from retreat and took a sip. The voice that came struggling free from his throat was rasped and low. "Just pictures. I don't kill people. I find them. I'm an investigator..." "Not law.." he added quickly. "I know nothing about you that I didn't.. already know.. and haven't sought to in almost ten years.." Liar. "My client is moving a collection of works here and wanted to assess the criminal element. I have a reputation. He propositioned my services." He had been studying the fluid in his glass this entire time but brought his eyes up to hers now in that half-step away. "How am I supposed to measure the level of freaked out you should be?" Normally that would have been dripping in sarcasm, but somehow, it was painted in ache, sadness.. like he SHOULD know exactly what and how she should be feeling. "But if you're concerned about whether I will say anything.." Sip. "Don't be." Pause. Panic for two seconds. "I'll say I couldn't find you.. and whether you continue.. will be on YOU.. not me."

She made the moment an exercise in breathing. Measured, mindful breathing. She attempted a calming 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out. She had read something about how this was something like natural breaths, or it soothed places inside because it was how we should breathe. Should breathe? What the f**k does-- She had lowered her chin to watch her glass, to watch the glass. To pretend like something other than him had any portion of her attention. But instead it offered a new and furious intensity. She looked up at him. How could 'softer' also be 'intense'? They both figured that conundrum out tonight. A wisp of her ghost-honey hair bounced against her cheek, half occluding one of her ice-storm eyes. "I'm glad you don't kill people." She said, quietly. "I ...You don't know, you're right. You can't measure. It's pretty scary, though. I've had this happen before. I thought... Can I just say that when I got out I looked for you? I need you to know that. " She was going to say more, but she realized that explaining how one thing led to another would be strangely close to finger-pointing, but not for something that she had any desire to finger-point for. "--And I'm weirdly sorry that you know that I grew up to be a fucking thief. ...Whatever else you know. I don't know. " She finally drank.

Caught off guard wasn't something Writ was really used to. He should have heard it in the way she said this. She meant him. Them. Not the fact she might be in danger of getting caught.. or worse. The bridge of his nose brought the inner corners of his brows into a further dip as he narrowed his eyes at her. What is she saying? I don't know.. I lost track. You must look like you're sneering at her. Fix your face. All that actually ended up happening was his mouth opening slightly and going dry. The taste of wine flecked his bottom lip and he subconsciously sought it out with the tip of his tongue to bring back the moisture she'd drained right out of him. His voice couldn't break further. It was almost like static with the vibrations stuffed between syllables that were formed and born almost entirely in his chest. "You don't owe me anything, kor.." Not kom for love, kor for to fight. He swallowed hard. He hadn't used that pet name in a while.. something that was supposed to infuriate her when they first met but became almost affectionate in the ghost of her memory that had haunted him in the decade since they'd parted ways.

Was that what she meant? He would have to ask. She couldn't read him. She tried, and she was studious in how her chin slowly raised to help her cold eyes stare him down. But they weren't cold, were they? Whether she was aware of what he looked like, and how it could be threatening, she had a secret: she felt like she deserved it, so she would bare it. There wasn't even a rebellious kick to buck the negative feelings off. Not a death throw nor a complaint. She let him. And then he read between her lines and it startled her because it felt like he read that secret pang that had first been suffocating, and now just transmogrified into a thrumming throb. "I... Of course I do. Don--" Don't call me that. Call me that. Her empty hand lifted to touch him, for whatever reason (to enact the sanctity of this moment?). Here was something she'd wanted to say to him since the moment she knew he was gone. Her fingers slow-curled themselves as she strangled the urge out of guilt, not prudence. Her nature wasn't made for following rules, especially ones she had nearly forgotten she believed in. The touch died because she didn't think she deserved it, or lost trust in the idea that it would be reassuring from her. "No one has ever done something.... like that, for me. I tried to make it right." Morse code syllables telegraphed her complicated morals subliminally.

Panic. Four seconds this time-- if only because somewhere in a disgustingly unavoidable place inside of himself, he wanted her so badly to do it, and take the choice away from him. Like their history suggested. It was a game of sacrifice between them, back and forth, wrapped in the trappings of martyrdom? No. He hadn't accepted the possibility that it wasn't just as selfish if not moreso, than selfless. His hand flew up and delicately curled around her sleeve-protected wrist. Even through the fabric he could feel what they've been doing their best to avoid: Want. "We are in control. I decide. You decide. We aren't slaves." he groaned in an excruciating denial of the flames that singed his stupid moth wings.

She spooked and startled. The tension leapt in her and she almost dropped her glass. It sloshed and it spilled. It garnered only one flick of her gaze and she wasn't even sure why it mattered even that much. She leaned back on her heels in a graceful rock that almost became something else as well but she stopped herself. Everything seemed to gather in a lump in her throat, hardening and growing there for an awful moment. He reminded her of things she hadn't been thinking of. Not directly. Not like that. It made her...angry. Superstition. Bulls**t. Slavery. She laughed, it was hard and half a cough. "What are you talking about? I was a slave... fine-- captive. Whatever. To your f**king family. They ... my parents f**king sold me, Writ." How time pushes narratives in directions, and begins to carve them in stone as they fester alone. She was softly shaking.

Was that not what they were talking about? How did he read that wrong? He blinked a few times as he released her wrist, suddenly aware and thankful for the angry heat creeping up the back of his neck. "Why do you think I f**king left, Olivia? You think I thought that was fair? To either one of us? I didn't want to be saddled with you anymore than you wanted to be saddled with me. I left my family. I'm not a hero. I didn't do it for you," the last said with a marked slap to the shoulder where the constant reminder was burned into him. Back to full names. Back to the wall.. and further. He took his steps backwards and slowly aimed them for the direction of the door. He couldn't look at her anymore and cast his eyes downward with a shake of his head. "Look.. I.. came and did what I said I'd do. So.. done. Do with it as you please. Please." He looked up briefly. "Try not to get killed." It took everything in his power to keep moving. She was shaking. He wanted to run back to her, hold her down, press her between his weight and... His eyes closed again and he stopped retreating. He just stood there for a long while. Silent.. and just.. still... before mustering the next thought. "Tell me you want me to leave."

He didn't read her wrong. But some wounds were magnets. He came too close to that one, and the other was driving her mad so she took the accidental bait. His presence hummed in her ears and made it hard to think straight. It was alarming but it was strangely intoxicating and it was loosening up places in her that had been locked down hard. Even her full name, thrown at her, couldn't crush the way she wanted to throw her arms around him and sob warm tears through the front of his shirt. The new mortal fear combined with old guilt and final relief from speaking words she'd needed to say to him for years. She didn't despise him. He was something of a cult hero to her. Only time and distance could have sculpted this notion of him and changed her resentment of him, his family, her parents, the first things she thought about him before they had -- a beat. The light and sense left the room. The way she caught her breath quivered on the air like he had struck her. She knew. She knew it couldn't have been just for her but.... but she'd let herself wonder. Maybe hope. (F**king hope.) Maybe... He was more of a mythology to her than a man. When he turned she twisted and let the cacophony of shudders slip through her just so she could bring them to heel at their waning. She wouldn't let him see her mouth tremble. Her body was a traitor, but that was done. She'd give no more. She put her glass down like it was an armed explosive. Part of her was a woman who would have thrown it at him-- if only for fear she would drop it and show how much he had upset her. But their story wasn't quite like that. "Just go," she whispered. And she said it like an accusation, it was the moral now to his new fable. Leave. There was a weight of profound loneliness and finality to the words. But she wouldn't release him from the rest.

A thousand shards of glass punctured every ounce of composure he had left.. which wasn't much to begin with. It would always be like this between them, wouldn't it? Always intense. Always painful. So much so that he couldn't tell what was worse: walking away or staying. Leave. He felt it heaved at him following her last words and he watched her through a blur in his half-lidded eyes. "See you around, kor," he croaked. Maybe in another ten years... if he couldn't figure out how to finally be rid of this overwhelming need to... well.. NEED her. It was so easy for her to undo him. Surely she must know that. Writ quietly backed the rest of the way out of the apartment.. and with the distance that was put between them, he felt himself suck in a gasp of clean air after releasing a breath he didn't know he had been holding. His easy smile came back to him. "If you're lucky," he called with a smirk, descending the stairs and exiting the building to wander back to his little hovel of a studio.

Perhaps he'd stay a little longer. You know.. just to see how things played out.. and give him enough time to come up with an excuse for not delivering on what his client was paying him for.

[Olivia Diogenes]

There is only so much work that cold water can do when you've been ugly-crying into your comforter. Olivia knew that... but she still tried. She conceded and took the pad of her thumb to work at the fuzzy smudges of black eyeliner that had blurred under her lower lashes.

"Jesus Christ, Liv, what the flying f**k are you even upset about?" she said as she lowered her smokey hand to grip the rim of the sink. She stared at herself in the mirror. "Seriously?" she interrogated her reflection ruthlessly. "You don't even know that man. You never did. Of course he didn't do anything for *you*. People are sh*t and they always have been." She began to even gesticulate, maybe a little wildly. "Snap out of it. Sh*t. F*ck!" she claw-slashed the sink basin as if she was giving it a good old fashioned table-flip and stalked out of the bathroom. She swipe-plucked the second, half finished wine bottle from the counter by its neck-- symbolically mistreating it like she felt she had been. Strangulation. Execution. Invalidation. "Whole f*cking family of-- Ugh!!!!!!" She almost flung the bottle. Almost.

She was about to throw herself in her comfy chair when she paused. Something about the light in the apartment had changed. Shifted. It made her wary and she tried to focus on that strange 6th sense that had been misfiring for days. Not because she was looking for something in particular, or anything at all, that's just what you did when the world was telling you something was different. Usually it was being pretty obvious, and it was an imperative. She laughed at herself quietly when she realized that what had changed was the slant of light outside. It was dark, but a clear night had suddenly become a rain storm that messed with the streetlights. The tightly wound feelers that she extended into the world eventually subsided and withdrew, satisfied.

Liv stood there in the middle of her burner apartment. A place she likely never would be again. She wondered, for just a moment, at the meaning of things. At the futility of everything. She took a quick dip into self-pity. And then she was done. She re-routed, changing her end point in a circuitous wander through the studio apartment to the window with the fire escape. She clicked open the locks and hefted the huge sheet of glass upwards. With a graceful duck, she stepped out through the window and onto the steel slats. She left it open, bleeding air conditioning into the night where she dropped down to sit. One long leg of black leather bent in front of her and swept to the side, the other bent in the air, flat foot on the metal. She leaned on this upturned knee with one arm while the other brought the bottle of red to her lips. Rain and wine. Different ways to wash things away.

Slowly her posture began to bend. She slipped from properly alert, to propped up against the railing. In her half-lap she cradled the bottle, lifting it intermittently to drain it of its bloody contents. She decided that she wasn't getting up till it was gone.

The rain made different sounds as it fell on her. A soft pattering on her leather pants. A quiet nothing in the cotten of her turtleneck. She looked half beat-neck, half gypsy tramp in the rain. She picked the wireless ear-buds from around her throat and put one in. She tabbed it over to something that suited her mood. She would start off softly humming, but it would eventually became a soft, sad, on-key, fully committed... singing.

You move like I want to
To see like your eyes do
We are downstairs
Where no one can see
New life break away
Tonight
I feel like more
Tonight I
You make the water warm
You taste foreign
And I know you can see
The cord break away
'Cause tonight
I feel like more
Tonight
I feel like more
-- deftones

[Writing the Bullet]

This was a real f**king problem.

The heat of the day was finally breaking, giving way to more comfortable temperatures and more reasons to get the hell out of the house. God knows after his encounter with Liv, there was a fair bit of energy riding sadistic piggy-back on taut shoulders. Writ had spent the last thirty minutes doing his damnedest to drain a full shoulder of some disgusting off-brand whiskey while anxiously pacing like a tiger plotting his escape and the subsequent gruesome mauling of his captors. Slink, slink, swig. Chin low, eyes raised, fixed and coldly calculating. His cage? A haphazardly acquired cesspit that the landlord had dared to describe as a luxury studio apartment with a great view! ..Yeah.. of a brick-walled building, ten stories taller, that he could easily stretch his lean frame across to and touch with the palm of his hand.

Time to de-escalate.

The bottom of worn soles hit the asphalt, torso easing beneath a soft grey, v-neck sweater, glad for it's lightweight but effective coverage as the cooling air closed in around him and ran downward, curling like a cat around leather-clad legs. A flick and strike of a lighter, a deep inhale, the glow of his cigarette, egged on by a coaxing breath, lit his olive complected skin with a flare as he moved. Following the beat in the air- he let it tug him towards whatever.. whichever.. disaster could be found first.

A stone edifice and a queue of expensive cars with lavishly, but minimally clad women spilling out of them seemed as good a place as any and he had pre-gamed hard enough to blend into a party being allowed entrance at the door, as if he had belonged there all along. An intoxicating bass thrummed beneath his feet as he wound his way through an ethereal blue lit foyer, abandoning his adopted party. Writ's eyes not so covertly slipped over the different shapes swaying in drunkenly tantric dance moves. Sex with your clothes on.., Chaya used to say. He hadn't heard his little sister's wry inflection in quite some time and the sudden voice in his head gutted him, knocking his hip into the side of a neon-ringed bar top where he stood with a perturbed and something wicked this way comes feeling plastered all over his face.

The air here suddenly felt heavy. Like Chaya's voice had drifted in on it. It was thick with history, dripping like honey in sickly sweet pulses of interspersed poison and ritual unlike any he'd felt since leaving the Strega of his camp. It was like someone had opened a long-since sealed vault in a murky back room somewhere. The hairs at the back of his neck stood up as the wave of ancient power exhaled and spilled out into the main room, gifting a still present caress to his spine in it's wake.

Red hair. Thank god for red hair.

Writ's eyes refocused and lit on a girl standing in front of him.

"Hello?" she chided, stamping a pretty little kitten-heeled foot.

She was talking to him. What's worse.. it seemed like he was in the middle of answering.. only he didn't remember the question or how he had planned to respond. He made a quick assessment of the situation. Two empty glasses on the bar top in front of them, one hand on a dangerously curved hip, a pouting pair of red stained lips and an aire of impatience in her little tantrum; his wallet in hand. How long had he been standing there? Writ glanced down at it his open tri-fold then back up at her, curling the corner of his mouth into a suggestive smirk. He had been about to buy her a drink.

"No," he said in a rich, baiting tone. "We're leaving." It was a hard command, far more confidently given than he felt. Something about this place was giving him all sorts of get the f**k out. Besides, the look that crawled across her pointed, angled features, pretty much guaranteed the distraction he needed.

Apparently barking an order at this girl was her particular brand of catnip.They had barely made it to the alley before she was clawing at his lower back in an attempt to yank the sweater off of him but she couldn't keep her mouth away long enough to fully complete the task. His back exposed, Red pushed him against the brick, bringing his sweater up to just beneath his chin and tugging at the fabric from behind to force his head into a loll. Writ wasn't in the mood to take the power back. Let her have her fun. He slid his eyes closed and enjoyed the cool breeze on his upturned face as one hand curled and pinned a fistful of her hair to the base of her skull and the other slowly raised the short hem of her skirt. Instead of fighting for dominance, he concentrated on the sensations beneath his fingertips and on not groaning out the wrong name as the hot breath escaping across his throat between plush, hungrily frantic kisses assaulted him.

Drip. Drip. Drop. Little late summer showers..

A pregnant drop of rain fell in a baptismal splash between his brows and rolled down the bridge of his nose. A hummed tune, sad and aching echoed in his ears. His eyes slowly opened, and before he could stop it.. the name of the voice's owner fell out of his mouth. "Olivia."

"What did you ju--" the girl started in an accusatory whine.

"Shh!" Writ used his grip on her hair to hold her still, angry shushing her with an irritated growl while he craned his neck in an effort to hear something that was definitely not there. He blinked in rapid succession as if coming out of a daze and took in the current scene.. his hand was clamped over the girls mouth and she was staring daggers at him; hurling a million tiny muffled shrieks into his palm.

"Sorry.. sorry." Writ muttered, releasing her, dodging a smack while simultaneously adjusting her dress and stearing her with almost a shove back into the bar.

"Are you craz--" She shouted as the door closed in her face.

He was already gone before she got half of it out anyway. If he didn't feel a little bad for his behavior. or maybe wasn't aware that he was heading straight for almost certain doom.. he might have found the sight of the disgruntled girl and the following spectacle of him attempting to pull his sweater back into place, sopping and sticking to him, as he ran through the streets.. quite humorous.

It was raining though.. and he'd be a prize idiot if he didn't at least try. Something about the rain always... worked.

Please.. he thought as he rounded the corner onto Liv's street. It was a prayer. Reverant.. and he propelled it out of himself, arrow-shaped, into whatever f**ked up void this sh*t existed in. To whatever was listening.

Writ wasn't exactly sure what he was asking for in that moment but as his hand curled around the bottom rung of the 'scapes ladder and tugged, he vaguely thought it might be that she doesn't throw him the hell off.

He quietly climbed the last section of the fire escape.. and though he toyed with the idea of greeting her with another Bad time? he thought better of it and simply squatted down in the corner diagonal from her, leveling her with a solemn gaze. I'm sorry.. his eyes said, mostly because he didn't feel like he derserved to defend himself yet.. but also because he wasn't sure what would come out if he opened his mouth.

[Olivia Diogenes]

[From play, with Writ.]

She wasn't exactly privy as to whether she heard him, or she felt him first. But she did try to ignore it. Like she was trying to tie time down and stop it from struggling free. She was strangling it and stuffing a sock in its mouth, too, but it wasn't exactly working. It took her a moment to swing her icy gaze in his direction. Such a strange feature on one of their stock: demons or degenerate breeding, surely. She took a long inhale as he settled there. Watching. The wine bottle in her lap was held at its throat and lips like a stick-shift, she pulled it towards her as though she were downshifting, like that could help or comfort or work. "Who are you, Writ?" Slow measured syllables, disbelief and putting sound to something she had been deeply pondering, unaware of having summoned him out of the rain into her reality.

Writ pressed his lips together, regarding her a moment while reveling in the simple ability of finally being able to be near her without wanting to strangle her, himself, or both.. simultaneously. Strangle being both physically and emotionally in the best and worst possible ways. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. His nose scrunched and flared with an outward huff. The kind that happens when someone asks you something you've never been asked.. or even really knew how to begin to answer. "Well.." he started, letting his squat fall into a seated plop, knees still bent and parted, with his forearms resting loosely on their caps. "I'm Writ. An investigator.." he paused. He knew that's not what she meant and he seemed to be stalling. A frustrated hand ran over his face in a smush. "I mean.. What.. what do you want to know? That's pretty.. broad.. you know?"

There was an interesting pang of sympathy for his micro-reactions. They validated all of her own inner turmoil and wrangled the moment into something more manageable than it had been before he even got there. More than he would ever know, because somewhere in her was a voice that sassed back at him about no s**t, of course it's broad. But that really wasn't even a thought in her mind. Just a gentle wave of unease before ease slunk in with his display of genuine effort. She inhaled long and slow, taken off guard and summoning the comfortable distortion of her commiserating buzz. "I mean... I don't even know where to start? I think it has to be broad. How f**ked up is that?"

His face was rather painfully awkward. "I'm um.." head tilt, chin scratch, avert eyes, bring them back. Oh yeah, get used to that.. years of being essentially solitary --in every way that counts-- kind of made him socially ridiculous if it was anything more than a fluff piece. Liv wasn't a fluff piece. Not to him. The introspective voice in his head sent the thought drifting to the surface and he latched on. "Alone." It wasn't meant to sound provocative but he figured she'd get it. "Leaving was like.. cutting off a limb," a soft laugh broke in his throat. "Or three. To be honest.. I'm not sure I even know the answer to your question. I work. I.. avoid anything meaningful." He subconsciously rubbed at his collar where a pair of lips had just been suctioned to not 20 minutes prior. ".. I'm.. the guy that left.. so we could be free. BOTH.. of us." His chest rose in a deep breath and his chin swept slowly side to side. "I'm sorry for.. making you feel like you weren't part of the equation.. but.. I was trying to do something there, too.. I think?" At this point he was rambling and really talking to himself more than anything.. like once he started he couldn't stop examining it. "Is that what you mean?"


She had been leaning almost lopsidedly against the fire escape. Her gaze, as reluctant as it had been, was alert and closing the distance... until he said his first adjective. Then she seemed to slowly recede back into a press against the metal as though she were retreating from an emotional onslaught. Which she sort of was, but her rate was slower than his words. And her reaction felt more like butterflies than preparation. When she realized she was doing it, and when he apologized, she finally evened out enough to pick up the bottle and manage a swig of it. It was as comically nonchalant as she could muster, including a tom-boy back-handed wipe of her mouth to remove the red bead left on her pale lip. She put the butt of the bottle on the metal with a bit too much of a clang, and she let the pause ripen as speaking become excruciating. Eventually she found her muddled response. "Trying to do what there? How do-- Yes, that's what I mean."

His bowed neck receded like a turtle in an exaggerated shrug. Writ hefted forward a bit, pressing his shins against the grating, and leaned to reach for the bottle. "Anything left in there?" fingers stretched out like he was playing lava with the space between them. He still didn't quite trust that. Rain or not. The dark green-glass bottle tilted into his hand as he stole it from its greedy captor. "Oh you know, probably something stupid like trying to let you off your guilt hook." Mm.. way to apply the brakes gently. He tilted the bottle back and let the wine hit the back of his practically constricting throat. He left about a tenth of its contents in tact and held it back out to her. "You don't owe me anything for what I did. I figure that's why you came looking.. and so.. I said something mean to get you to stop. Also.. a little difficult to keep stupid sh*t in my mouth around you.. apparently." His lips curled for a flickering second. "Think you can forgive me for that?"

She wasn't all that greedy. She let him take it, even helped it along. Their skin came close, and she did not appear alarmed by this in the slightest. Perhaps it was the alcohol. But his words, the array of them, put ease back into her form. As he drank she twisted to put her back against the grating and pulled her knees up, adjusted, considered, and then let them out to lay her legs straight and cross them at the ankles. Even the indecision was graceful, like her nerves and sinews were made of silk. Liv the funambulist. She again thought for a while before speaking. She took the bottle back in silence and instantly took a swig that halved it again. Exponential depletion on many measures of the moment. "Mm. Well. I can appreciate that. And I probably should of. But honestly, I don't think there was anything you could have said then, that wouldn't have had me yell at you. ...because probably, if you didn't do that, ... I just would have found something else. I don't know. I just.... it's just too much s**t. So..I guess we have that in common." More importantly she added, "So yes, I do. I forgive you. I mean, I.. yes." Just yes, Olivia. A slightly different twist, but it was similar. "I don't think I felt like I owed you, per se, I looked for you to tell you you could go back if you wanted. " She pursed her lips. "Though, I guess that's naive, I guess you can't really do that either...but... that's why I looked for you." Naive little girl that you have been, and maybe still are.

Let's ignore what her proximity alone was doing to him on a cellular level for a moment, nevermind that maybe -not-so-accidental almost brush of skin on skin. He let out a slow breath through pursed lips, a lazy-whistle so to speak.. accompanied by no pitched noise, just air. He spent the next few moments trying to convince himself that it was her comment that pulled him a little closer. He sat crossed legged adjacent to her outstretched acrobat limbs, at about knee length up and gave a small, genuine chuckle. "Thanks for the forgiveness.." he said softly.. and then a little louder, "You never really thought that did you? That I could ever go back, without you? Still don't believe in any of it and yet here we are."


When he moved closer, she offered him the bottle again, as if they could commiserate (console?) in proximity. Or specifically in proximity they should commiserate. She was careless about it, and she was careless about how her smile carried whimsy, even when it was a little crooked and a little guilty about going through all that alcohol on her own. But she was Romani. She had a healthy tolerance. She gave him a curt nod for the thank you, making it more light-hearted than his tone implied. "I-- Without... I.. I didn't even have me in the equation. I mean, no, I don't really believe in all of-- I mean which part? It doesn't have to be me." The inflection came with a masculine slink back into her shoulders, a casual 'psh' gesture. She missed his implication whether it was forced or accidental oversight.... or alcohol.

"Mm." he intoned while taking the bottle back and mashing it on his lips to drain what was left. No, don't do it. He had sucked in another deep breath to stamp down the urge to shake her. Of course it had to be her. Why else all of this.. inside he was wildly swinging his arms around to gesture at the map etched inside a mental room that represented their lives, etched like little golden threads, crossing over and over again in disgusting rhythmic patterns.. like that explained anything or could be seen by anyone but him and his crazy. Still.. he was able to keep it reeled in. A little. "I suppose telling them that would have TOTALLY worked," he teased nudging her calve with the toe of his boot. "Ok.. well.. what about you then?" the empty bottle had a forefinger jabbed into it and he let it hang from his hand. The wine resting hot against the 375mls plus of whiskey he'd consumed earlier. The weight of the bottle dangling was oddly comforting. "Who are you?"

She laughed. More importantly, she laughed at herself. It was mostly breath and a soft rumble in her chest but it was at least a sign of amusement, sarcastic and maybe a little self-evaluative. "Ok. You have a point. But I .... I just wanted, mm. I didn't want you to .... maybe I should apologize?" It was a genuine question and she tilted her head at him, looking nearly confused. She frowned at herself...What? Wait, what? Apologizing for the situation that-- She shook her head slowly and almost got lost before he asked her to find herself. She blinked at him. "Me? Me. .... nobody. I think I'm literally nobody." She swallowed. It wasn't said sadly, it was said like a genuine answer, but she realized it could have been taken as melodramatic. "Like I mean.... once I started working, that was all I did. I took all the skills of my family and turned them into a paycheck. But people in that business are pretty sh**ty, so I just.... research security systems and train. ... Like... that's so dumb but I just... I'm a nerd." She laughed freely this time.


He turned his face away from her for a moment to surreptitiously tuck his bottom lip between his teeth and bite down. F**k. Her laughter crawled over his skin-- little frantic spiderlings emerging to freedom tapping eight legs against each pore. Goosebumps rippled up his arms and he was glad, once again, for his choice in wardrobe. When he brought his face back to her, the bite-down that had grounded him was replaced by a soft, barely formed smile and a dark intoxication that tugged his eyelids down mid-gaze. He felt like he should explain the gentle amusement on his face. "I'm.. not laughing at you.. I just kind of.. know exactly what you mean." Writ extended his bottle-finger to her. "You definitely don't need to apologize.. but.. you do definitely need to crack another bottle if we are going to keep digging into this sh*t."

When he turned back to her, her features were tilted and there was some concern to her gaze. Her brows were gently knit and she was giving a decent effort to discerning his thoughts. Part of her reached for him, and it was gentle and velvet. A cradling, creeping attention that took command of her and she had this eerie feeling like she was running her fingers through his hair at the nape of his neck. And somehow that anchor made her feel like she was sinking towards him, maybe even into him. She caught her breath quietly, but quickly, as if she was jerking to wake in a dream-fall in her bed. She licked her lips. Centered herself. And then remembered to smile. It was probably just empathy. "Oh, so we are drinking, are we?" and it was a big hearted, inviting smile, though somehow it managed to also be teasing.


Mirrors. When Liv's tongue ran across her lips, he couldn't help seeking out the bitten down indents from a moment ago in a f**ked up game of Follow the Leader. He could feel her inwardly pulling closer and the closer she mentally came without physically touching him, the more the tide of her drew his body closer in response. It was like answering a question out loud that hadn't actually been asked. Writ paused, having found himself leaning and hovering in the space just behind her ear, letting the scent of her invade him. His heavy gaze relaxed a little and allowed his eyes to open fully, resting them on impossible blues, the thin pale brows above them, the curve of her cheek bones and the small indent just above her mouth. "We're Romani.." he said hoarsely.. "There are only a few more things that we can do better."


She wasn't sure if people worked this way, because she honestly wasn't around other people that much. But it felt like her heart got larger. The tune of it deepened and it pressed up on her ribs from the inside. She felt like it, itself, reached outwards, extending past even the border hills of her ribs in a throbbing, crimson extension meant to bridge an impossible distance. It drew her out and drew her thin, so thin that she didn't realize that it was her hand that had finally found him, just an unobtrusive cradling of the curves of his middle-ribs. If he asked, she wouldn't know the answer to whether it was meant to draw him closer or to push him away, but she did know it was meant to complete a circuit. To test a circuit breaker, perhaps, as the sensation of his breath galloped down her neck to that distended heart. Her bright eyes darkened as the pupils expanded in mortal interest. The smile around her quiet "Mm," was plush but knowing. But worse, it was trusting and familiar like he was sharing a private joke. And he was, really, she was just drunk on the implication. And him. And then, "Yeah, sure, I have two more." I have to finish them anyway. She forgot to say the last part out loud. Words seemed obsolete.

Where one extends, the other envelopes. He felt weak but somehow at peace- a rebel heart's worst fear. Surrender. It was a cruel and achingly beautiful creature. Let her in, it told him. Answer the door.. bring her home. He heard her response but it had been drowned out by the pounding in his chest that directly followed her first little syllable and the weight of her hand on his side. It sounded like they were under water. He instinctively went to grab her hand to pluck it off of him but stopped short, hovering his own right above it, with a hard swallow.. "You should uh.. go get those bottles." Tell me to and I will, he thought, wondering if she would pull the trigger.


She crept, like a cat burglar, shadowy and silent and with ill intentions, up onto her knees. Words like slunk and snuck held some of the black velvet richness of the overall sensation of increasing nearness. Though she was on her knees, she kept her height in check by slipping into a siting position on the back of her legs. As she neared, that earbud encircling her neck, a wire dangling from one ear, shared some of the song that was playing but no one was listening to. The world was on fire and no one could save me but you....It's strange what desire will make foolish people do. Her light hand slid to the back of his side, almost like she would ask him to dance. And she was too close to not fall prisoner, and thief, to an inhale of him near his temple. Home. "Yeah," she said with a swarming, pleasant sickness. And then she got up. She got up, and she offered her hand. Oblivious, or forgetful, or just stupidly polite.


His heart threatened to leap straight out of his chest a la some horror flick. Bones graphically cracking and tearing him open as the bloody thing burst out like some alien creature. Painfully discarded. The imagery was panic's way of bringing him back to his senses. Did she just respond to what I said out loud or.. ?? Her bare hand extended- it'd be so easy to just f**king do it. Writ groaned softly, magic dispelled, and grabbed onto her sleeved forearm to pull himself up. "Drinks..." he announced.. as if he was unsure of the plan. He dropped her arm and promptly shoved his hands into his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heel with a nod to her open window. "After you.."

His weight felt awkward as it centered on her limb rather than her hand. Her shoulder tipped a little and she balanced herself with no effort, but the sensation was novel and strange. For a moment she thought she was going to get dizzy again, and she was wondering if it was alcohol or something else. When he was up she looked at him. She was observant. She was a thief afterall. Oldschool. In person. Not a hacker or a drone operator. She had a honed physical awareness. Half a smile tugged at her mouth, which made it mostly a smirk. "What was that?" And it was a little chiding, a little smart. She pushed her hand into her wet hair, pushing the cold blond away from her face and realizing they probably shouldn't just be standing here getting rained on, but she was demanding an answer with her lack of compliance.


He stole a pocketed hand back and wild-gestured to her arm "What was-- that?" he asked with a full smile that creased his cheeks and bared his teeth in a good-humored look of amused frustration. It was a rare sight. It felt foreign on his face and he rubbed at it to massage the unused muscles. "You can't.. I mean.. just.. Come on! You're soaked. I'm soaked.." he pinched at his sweater and let it squelch back against the heat of his chest for emphasis. "Get inside.. pour us some drinks and we'll... talk some more." He was being serious, but it'd be a lie if he didn't leave a mild note of disappointment in his tone.

"Hmm." And she looked at him suspiciously. Perhaps just to accidentally illustrate the fact that rain water was slipping down her cheeks, and attempting to curl her mane of straight hair that would never do such a thing. She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. Eventually she smiled. "Fine, whatever." It didn't sound dejected, just that she thought he was weird and there wasn't much to do about that. And with that, she ducked under the plate of glass and dropped soundlessly into her burner apartment. By the time he did the same, she would already be winding the corkscrew into the top of the next bottle. Their bottle.

[Olivia Diogenes]

[Written with Writ's player.]


Somewhere in the forest, he ran, chasing laughter and the sound of four feet padding through fallen leaves.

It was the only part of dreaming he could recall before he startled awake some several hours later.

Sunlight streamed through the apartment and lit the gold of her hair into a combustion of white, shimmering flames. He was struck by the sight of her. Almost convinced she wasn't really there. Warm hazel drifted over her sprawled form reverently. Sometime in the night, they'd shifted again. He was on his back and she was laying on her stomach with her cheek pressed to the junction of his arm and shoulder. One limb trapped beneath and curled around her sleep-draped body, he raised his free hand and gently touched a fingertip to her jawline. Mine he mouthed.. as if marking her in the way she'd long since marked him.

She stirred sleepily and nuzzled closer just as he started to pull away. His body tensed in his attempt to move from beneath her undetected. She grumbled incoherently- perhaps sensing his retreat and in protest, rolled onto her side. Writ took advantage of the movement and slipped his arm free coming up and away from their nest of tangled sheets with a bittersweet lopsided grin of victory. How he wanted to crawl right back in beside her. Mold his already aching body around the curve of her and push himself between the velvet crest between her thighs, clearly visible from where he stood.

His jaw clenched and he bit down on his bottom lip with a shake of his head and a dismissive, absent rub to the eagerness rising obediently to the call of his desire for her. Yeah.. I know... later. He glanced down at the anatomy he was currently coaxing into submission with a hard grip.. issuing assurances in his mind to it like it was a wild animal too long held captive.

Liv slept and she slept so soundly. She was wrapped in an exhaustion she had never known, born of a desire that had lain dormant for her entire life. A desire never fed. A need never acknowledged, nevermind satisfied. And sanctified in love. She slept soundly because she was filled, and whole, and safe. She had given him every part of her and he had held it in his heart and kissed her to sleep with promises she would have been too afraid to ask for.

But not in that one moment, that one terrible moment that bound them together in a way he would always see in the back of her eyes. In her gaze, now forever laden with a trust and commitment of the soul that was so much a part of her nature it had called to him from that very first instant they had met in gazes across the kompania clearing. Know me. And when she looked at him, she knew him, too. The depth and power of that link, across any expanse of light or distance.. There would be times where people, just seeing how she looked at him, would stop and not dare to cross that gaze or sever the way that she beheld him.

Now it swirled and seethed, released and alive in her. And together they had made her from it. He had understood what she had asked for and his consent and his wish for her, and him, and their new family had answered her most wild -dark and deep like the forest-- desires. Consecrated by him. So the sleep she slept was profound. It was limitless. Cradled in his arm she slept in blissful dreams. Dreams that would be wrapped in the scent of him as she nuzzled against him, naked and a part of sublime balance. Yes. Fate.


In those dreams they ran through the vesh. Together. A pack. The deep brown musk of their essence wrapped in the lush green of familiar woods and deep earth, black soil. Home. Low and just beneath their stomachs. Earth between their fingers. Clutched like his sable locks. Mine, the dream said. And she felt it draw along her skin like gravity -- electric and connected through space. Something among nothing. No, never nothing, she struggled against the dream to connect their hearts with silver strings. To keep them close.


Silently, he moved around the room, gathering scraps of his clothing. His sweater was sticky and in disrepair but his undershirt went relatively unscathed during their escapades so he tugged that over his head- the action of which tossed his long, tangled hair into a charming, just rolled-out-of-bed vibe.

He had no idea where his boxers had disappeared to so.. commando it was.. in leather pants. One side of his mouth curled in careful discomfort as he adjusted himself within the confines of his clothing. A foot shoved into his boot while he procured a piece of paper and pen- continuing to work the shoe into place as he wrote: Bi kashtesko merel i yag.. I've gone to gather wood for our fire.. and by wood.. I mean baked goods. Don't you dare move. I'll be right back. -Yours. He folded the note neatly and gently set it on the pillow next to her.. fingertips fighting the impulse to stroke her awake. A flicker of a smile graced his lips and out the door he slipped.

-----------------
The air was cool and it nuzzled itself around his bare neck, slipping down the back of his shirt between the red grooves of freshly scratched raised skin-edges. Don't forget, the wind said. Touching all the places the ghost of Liv lingered.. a welcome reminder that this was the reality now. He walked down the road with a permanent half-formed smile.. like an idiot in love.

"Jackpot." He said aloud, mostly to drown out his growling stomach. His eyes had locked on the twinkling lights of a sign that flashed Patisserie at him like a wave from an old friend. The smell of dough and chocolate and coffee attacked him- it was accompanied by the pleasant lilt of a French accent that came dancing mellifluously out of the mouth of a brunette girl behind the counter.

"Que puis-je vous obtenir?" she asked.

The sound of it made him mildly homesick.. only he didn't feel sad or torn about it anymore. Home was laying naked.. asleep in the mess they'd made.. in an apartment a few blocks away.

Writ pointed at a few items in the case. "Un de ceux-ci et deux de ceux.. Oh... and a coffee.. black.. and a Noisette- ... wait.. can pregnant women drink coffee ?" His face had suddenly gone comically perplexed.

The french girl beamed and glowed and cooed and laughed a throaty laugh. "Oh! Oh mon amie..." she gave his concerned expression a pitying pat on the back. "Oui! A little bit won't hurt..."

Writ nodded absently and let his fingers fall over the iris petals in the counter's display. I don't even know if she likes coffee.. and if she does.. how she takes it. He felt suddenly inadequate. Like not knowing her coffee order meant certain doom. Had he ever known anyone's coffee order?

The girl seemed to sense the storm clouds forming behind his eyes and she leaned onto the counter, mousy, pointed chin in the palm of her hand, propped up by her elbow pressed against the glass. She nodded towards the flowers. "If you touch her like that.. I don't think it'll much matter what coffee you bring home."

Writ choke-laughed with a single, strangled "Hah.." and a raise of his brows. Her forwardness had been enough to snap him out of it. He retracted his hand and rubbed at the back of his neck, letting out a long, exaggerated exhale. That previously plastered half-smile crept back up to his mouth and a sharp little glint lit in his eyes as an idea crinkled their corners. She looked amused by the sudden appearance of determination. "Do you have drink carriers?" he asked.

-----------------

Her fingers twitched gently and she felt the need to seek him. To touch. She reached for where she expected him to lay and found sunny warmth but not him..not his... Slowly she opened her eyes. In the morning light her pupils cringed and the ice blue of her eyes was haunting and spectral. Like she looked for him beyond sight, beyond touch.... through the veils. She blinked and brushed her palm along the sheets, tracing the impression of him until it rode up the pillow case until she found the paper. Looking for it as if she knew it was there. Her body felt his absence everywhere, especially as she woke missing him like missing pieces of herself.

...But she would carry that burden now and always. Aware of her secret wish to have him forever a part of her, inside of her.... Even more than this. Than the night before. More than their daughter in her belly, though that somehow made the ache more tender and she had no words for how that helped ...how it came close....and how full of joy that made her. Perhaps that heavy gaze of hers would just forever wish to pull him in. Spooky action at a distance. Aligned and metaphysically linked. Gravity and spin. Her nimble fingers unfolded the note and traced his penmanship adoringly. Yours. Pale blue would forever draw him up and into her, thirsty, even for echoes of him...as she read.

Her smile was soft but it was tethered to her heart, like it rose to the surface from that place-- the depths of her hinted at in the corners of her supple mouth. Yes. Our fire. Our hearth. She pulled the paper to her naked chest as if she could embrace it or glean some further meaning by pressing it into her skin. But as it comforted her she slipped back into a gentle, perfect sleep. Perfect because it would end with him. ...

Finally, he made it back to the apartment. He had to put the edge of the pastry bag between his teeth, and use his pinky and ring finger.. and hip?.. to open the door. He nudged it the rest of the way with his foot and when he reappeared in the doorway, he was standing there holding three drink carriers, balanced precariously in his hands and wedged between the side of his chest and forearm.

Twelve different piping hot beverages.
An assortment of chocolate, almond, and plain croissants, eclairs, macarons, millefeuille,and tarts.
Three irises, pilfered from the display.
One stupid grin.

...And it did. In half a dream she felt him nearing. Closer and closer like he was hunting for her. Her role in her dream changing and morphing, protean and just full of life and permanence. The rustling pulled her from him, to him. He caught her in a lazy, slow, sunbathed stretch. The felinity of it was accidental, a product of her proportions and her contentment and how perfectly comfortable she was now that he was there. Though the sun had slipped from her pale skin, there was always something honey and caramel about her-- something joyous and inviting that glowed. She was utterly unbridled by any need to conceal any part of her from him. No secrets. Simply his. There was even the weight of that, like she would and could satisfy a part of him with a display of herself- a quintessential truth to it. The moment culminated in slowly opening eyes and such a smile-- just for him. His.

He wasn't sure if it was the ruckus he'd made trying to get back through the door.. or if she had already been awake.. but he was glad for the sky blue eyes that peered at him from the bed he'd left them in.

"I have questions." He said, matter-of -factly.

"Questions, my love?" she murmured with a sleepy voice, waking up with every breath. "Like.... are you expecting company?" The smile changed a little, a little less heaven, a little more reality. Humor aimed at his coterie of coffee. She rolled gently onto her side, her body a sweeping violin curve in the bed they had shared.

[Olivia Diogenes]

Liv squinted at it.

She held it at bay with the sky-assault of her gaze. This was scrutiny, and it was ice-cold, but it was also a shard of her eternal wrestle with inspiration and elegant pragmatism. She debated the personal code of ethics that ruled her temperament as it applied itself to tenacity as well as beauty. One may not expect to find these here in a cat burglar's home, or heart. But part of what she enjoyed about escape, or entry, was the art of the craft. The expertise of it.

And let's be real... she was a flagrant, isolating, ruminating, perfectionist.

The process was her joie de vivre.

So, she studied it and squinted at it, assessing her stratagem.

She had thrown herself into this moment, as well as her career, as she had done with her acrobatics, her escape artistry, and her evasion. The life-honed foundation of her skills had devoured her mental faculties and rewarded her with mastery of her crafts. The obsession for technique had been important, because it consummately meant that perhaps her talents or her performance might have ignited a fire under Emilian to find Writ faster in those first years in England. To look harder.

It hadn't.

But it had made her who she was. Or rather, it realized what she was. It gave focus and diligence to a wild heart.

It matured her into an erudite bookworm who studied enough to pull off some of the greatest artifact thefts the world had witnessed. Or didn't have an inkling of... if there was also a genius counterfeiter involved. And she knew a few.

The best thefts were the ones that had never set off an alarm. The ones that were still undetected and not even whispers in the dark. The ones that didn't even look for her after. The ones that left no ripples. The ones that 'still' presumably sat in their air-tight cases-- lovingly having their sepia pages and gold-leaf masterpieces supposedly nuzzled and nurtured by perfectly maintained humidity, air pressure, and temperature.

A successful execution reminded her of dipping her toes or her fingertips into cool, glass-surfaced water. This experience surrounded her in the calming, meditative scent of the vesh of her homeland. It was an experience encapsulated in her laser focus and ever-present ear-buds. She made prestidigitation symphonies timed to music in her mind. Thus, alarm systems remained silent-- becalmed by her deliberate, compelling engineering. She slipped in like a fish, and out like a bird.

Cats came later. When her limbs lengthened and she picked up a penchant for wearing black and adding just a touch of wild abandon and artifice to the escapes. The ones that took a long, lithe, strong body like hers to execute the inconceivable. She was a master of impossible attainment. (There was thick irony, there.) The eternal artifice being that she preferred to be exactly that -- unobtainable. The implausible muse. The perfect, contracted instrument who's very nom de guerre slipped through your mind like sand through hopelessly grasping fingers of inquiry. Whatever method you chose to use or proved to be.

If ever there was an efficiency and simplicity engineer, it would be her. It was an effortless class of methodology and style. There was beauty and there was danger in both her artistry and her hiring. Even in the way she moved. Training.

And maybe the danger had been a little self-destructive.

A touch of penance for her wily, inconsiderate ways.

She removed the personal touch to it. Though of course, this became her moniker. She recognized it. It almost lended her credence through an unimpeachable discretion that followed her as providence through a resume of hearsay and rumor. She became that ghost. Don't just forget me, but erase me.

In a way, this was the infrastructure of her pride and her existential abandonment of personality. Of herself.

If something bad happened, then her search would be done. The failure would be ... complete.

So, she stared at the soft, perfectly textured, home made crust resting on her marble pastry counter. She hadn't baked in a while. She had been working. But with the job abandoned, her burner apartment literally set on fire in the morning hours when the building was empty... (forever *theirs*, in moratorium as well as amare memoriae), and... with the job dangerous (they still needed to talk about that), she really hadn't given it a second thought.

This was what she wanted to do.

This was where she wanted to be found.

This is where she would marry her talents, and her psyche.

She took a nimble finger and idly slid it along the rim of the large bowl as she contemplated and considered. The sugar, spices, and apple juice of the fresh pie filling coated her tongue and made her crave a bite of the finished project. A peculiar want, as the journey was often so much more rewarding. But she yearned to see his face when he came home to the surprise of it-- her mind drifted to examining her motivations, applying all the affectionate schematics in use. How she cherished affecting him. And more succinctly, how she loved making him happy.

It made her remember what it was like to taste and to touch him among the leaves. Like they could make up for the times they had not dared. Not in the woods. Not in the dark forest of their adolescence. Not on the beach. Not in the tidal undercurrent of their fate. But for the orchestrations of their miscommunication and the threads of influence that had so much impact on their lives.

It made her think of their first kiss. Of the crushing sadness of it that he had begun to artfully paint over and restore to its potential iconography.

Of the feel of the dirt between her fingers in the vesh-- both a playful and a devastating memory.

Of the jeans she brushed off after fastening them around her waist when they were done apple picking the day before.

Of the way his fingers had pried them off her.

It made her think of the way he kissed her now-- like they were wrapped up in it, and it stole her name from her. Of how he possessed her and that heavy promise swirled around them and made the world fade away. What a joy to be his. She inhaled and it made her bottom out, a feeling of both infinitely empty and perfectly full. It centered her in the place she wanted to pull him into. It made her heart ache. He was gone only a couple of hours, but she missed him. Was that wrong? Did she care if it was?

She crossed her arms loosely. They subconsciously slunk down her body to cross softly over her belly. When she realized, though still lost in her thoughts, she hugged herself.

Yes, she just missed him. It hurt.

So this mattered.

What she did next was not what she anticipated.

She picked up a rolling pin and flattened the extra pie crust. She sliced ribbons of dough and lay them upon the top crust of the to-be-baked pie. She leaned over her masterpiece, squinting at the dimensions - the negative space as important as the relief itself. She took too much time arranging the rippling waves of tradition into a scrolling work of intricate loops. She felt the teeth imprints in her worried lips for long moments after she was finished. And then she cut little circles, and scattered coins among the flowing patterns of the promise ribbons. Upon some of the coins she did a brief etch or embellishment-- coins from the old country. A bride price. A necklace for a fiance'. It was not quite exact, and it hadn't been meant to be pretty, nor decorative.

But it was. When she was done she looked at it and eventually nodded approvingly. She wiped away a fallen lock of pale hair with the back of her hand, laying an abstract slash of flour upon her fine-cut features. He had two visions to return to. She would let him decide which he preferred to devour first… the pie, or her naked, coltish figure only half hidden behind his apron of serendipitous choice -- How do you like them apples?. Her sweetly caramel skin was a pleasing complement behind the fabric – her body a beguilement of provocative curves infrequently exposed (well ...) and satisfying lines relentlessly alluded to.

Liv leaned in with a fork to poke a few holes here and there to make sure it cooked correctly.

Then she popped it into the oven.

When he came down the hall to the large loft apartment, the curling, cloying scent of spices and domestic bliss would coil affectionately around him like the eventual limbs of his pretty *romni*. His senses were often assaulted by her siren's song, pulling him home to willful abandon. Pulling him into her heart. And this was no exception. Her love was greedy.

Hungry.

So happy to see him home.

Content to feed him.

To fill him with the warm fruits of their labor.

She would press her palm upon his stomach, his ribs, up under the comfortable clothes he wore.

She would run her hands over his skin. The skin she so badly wished to touch and inhale the scent from when she was so young. When she didn't understand.

She would touch him and love him and kiss him until he couldn't stand it.

Then maybe, just maybe, he could find her and fill her up in return.

Just to do it again.

And again.

And again.

So happy to set her self and her refined skills upon the task of being a thief of his heart. Over... and over again.

[Olivia Diogenes]

[Written with Writ]

The smile on his face tilted as he climbed in after her, dragging his hand against the brick walls as he made a slow meander towards her. "Sorry about your floor.." he chuckled.. eyeballing the small little puddles and foot prints they'd left behind them. ".. I mean not really.." he added with a smirk, standing in a familiar spot at the kitchen counter, nowhere near as cautious or respecting of her space as he was the first time he had visited.

There was something in Liv's disbelief or.. naivety?.. in regards to the weird cosmic sh*t between them that challenged him. On one hand, he didn't want to press it, but on the other, he wanted an even playing field. It's all he ever wanted really. For her to choose to play. Instead of being forced. It was a horrible cyclical mess. Something in him just kind of said F**k it. If it happened, it happened. He wasn't going to go out of his way to avoid it anymore. He placed his right hand on the counter next to her, his body at an angle with his left shoulder just behind her by about six inches as he peered over to watch her pour. It was a calculated show of bravery.. to prove to himself that he could follow through with the idea.

"Eh," she chimed in. "It's my last time here, after what you told me. I have a few others. Better ones. This place is kinda meh... not my style. Just a bed and peace of mind." Explaining how it was absolutely okay that he did whatever he liked to the floor. She went back to worrying the corner of her mouth for a moment as she fumbled with the struggle of opening the bottle with a less-than-convenient bottle opener. Not like the slick expensive thing she had at her actual place.

So... it took her a moment to really contemplate his nearness. To be honest, it was his radiating body-heat that did it. His presence near her. It made her aware that she was cold, that the air conditioning was actually too high, the way that she liked it, the way she had left it in order to tolerate her long sleeves and leather pants. The way she liked hunkering down in big down comforters even in the summer. She pulled the cork out of the bottle and half turned her chin over her shoulder to look at him. Her eyelids sunk a little under lashes that went heavy. She looked from his wet sweater to his damp features. It could have been a look that asked for space, that accused him of personal boundary violations... except... the way her lips parted slowly and that deep look in her eyes... In her mind, another woman, a more experienced woman, with more experienced hands, was rolling the warmer, wet fabric of his shirt up his body. A body she imagined to have a certain soft skin and sculpted, lean harshness. The bottle slipped out of her wet hands and she scrambled to catch it. She nervously laughed. "Ha. haha. S**t."

The fumble saved him. Wet hands or nerves being the actual culprit.. didn't matter.. he caught a little flash of that scene that played out in her head as she looked up at him through lowered lashes. That's a little more even. That's better. He wasn't going to keep it off of his face either.. so he smiled a satisfied little smile, and scooped a hand under the tumbling bottle and pressed it lightly against her open palms to balance it. The movement only bent him even closer. "I could use a towel maybe.." he said, letting the words hit against different parts of her body as he rose to his full height. "I can take care of this.." The last word coming out a little more pointed than the rest as he timed it to plucking the bottle with the corkscrew still wedged into it from her hands.

She froze as he coalesced around her. She was extra aware of the weight of her wet clothes, of the way some of her hair stuck to her throat. Of his nearness. Of his reflexes. She would have made an excuse for hers but that was absurd, she had wet hands and that was that. She should have... yes. Her empty hands curled wary fingers absently in the air in an almost comical and egregiously forlorn gesture- her hands missed something to hold. A beat. "Right." And she ducked out from under and away and gave a half-prance to the towels draped over the rung of the oven. "Here." Then, also, "Thank you." As she extended the towel to him. Then. "Oh, you, for you....riiigghhhtttt." And she immediately walked away from him towards the bathroom.

If ever there was a smile that could be classified as somehow proud and desirous at the same time, it lived on Writ's face the moment she handed him the small towel and it was accompanied by another short three-breathed laugh that stumbled out of his throat. How was she exactly the same but.. not.. all at once? He took the swatch of terrycloth and watched her retreat from the room. It had its purpose. He dried off his hands and finished uncorking the bottle. Reaching up, he grabbed two fresh glasses and plunked them down on the counter. Finding it a little easier to concentrate on mundane things without her tucked right beneath him, he used her absence to fill the retrieved glassware and stuck his head into her fridge, calling out before he actually got a full view of what was in it. "Are you hungry?"

The scene that happened in the bathroom would have amused him. It would have amused anybody. The second she was fully out of sight she pressed her back against a wall and pulled a pair of wringing hands to her chest. There was some hand gestures, some gesticulating motions that telegraphed a frantic inner monologue. It went on for a moment. Maybe two. When he asked her about food she piped up, "Uh... man.. yes..but... I don't think there's much in there...we could order..." What the f**k Liv. Why is she even-- why was he even here? He wasn't her friend. She didn't even-- well, she didn't know ...she didn't know a lot. But she ... did she feel like she owed him? Like they had to catch up? Did she feel like he was -- her past, her family, her blood? What? History? Was she just lonely and it was someone she'd let in the door? Well, it didn't really matter really? They were drinking wine and-- and f**king what. She cursed quietly in her mother tongue as she realized she didn't have an actual bedroom to go to here. She sighed, heavily. Was she going to do this like a shy teenage girl in a locker room? Is that how she was going to-- oh f**k it. She came out of the bathroom and placed the towel on the counter of the kitchen before continuing her way to the small dresser. "I'm going to-- I'm sorry I don't have something for you to change into. I don't really have much here. I live on.... I live uptown."

A scrap of plastic wrap with a tiny wedge of something most likely not for eating.. a stray bottle of hot sauce.. a water bottle. "You aren't kidding.." he commented, turning towards her as she placed the towel on the counter.

"Yeah," she had a soft laugh for him, "I usually just.... sleep...and I guess drink....in these places." She straightened when she got her hands on the items she was going to change into.

She seemed.. disjointed? Is that what he would call it?.. Spooked? He eyed her curiously while she shuffled through her dresser and refrained from telling him where exactly she lived. Writ ran his tongue across the inside of his cheek and nodded slightly to himself. Making a mental note that maybe he'd overstayed his welcome. "Hey, you know.. um.. I'm probably.. just going to get soaked .. again on my way out of here." Each fragment was punctuated with a contraction of different muscle groups as he shrugged out of his sweater. "I can just.. wring this out.." He finally wrested the garment from his body and dropped it into the sink with a wet thwop. His shoulders pulled back to reach towards one another in a stretch.

She stood there, about to hug the clothes to her chest before holding them in her arms, sort of outstretched so they wouldn't soak up any of the rain that had made a home on her. "Oh, no, that's silly," and just like that she had made up her mind, and she couldn't have explained why, maybe it was a gracious hospitality, or maybe she just didn't like the sound in his voice. The sound that heralded her being left alone. She pointed over at some slatted doors at the corner of the room, the corner of the kitchen and the outer brick wall. "There's a dryer, you can throw it in there. Might be nice to put it on when it's warm later." Just a random, childish comment that was likely inspired by her own temperature variations. She really, truly, did her best to not watch the line of his shoulders. But she couldn't help it. She was reminded of the brand. She knew she would see it when he turned. She swallowed thickly, as she was reminded of the first time she had seen him.


Conflicted, he drew a staggered breath as he ran the towel over his face and down an unmarked chest with one hand. His other hand raked his fingers through his damp hair, smoothing it out of the way, only for it to fall right back into his face. "Ok.." he finally said, all dripping with uncertainty.

The towel still clutched in a ball at his stomach, he moved towards her to round the corner, pausing with a "Thanks."

She smiled at him when he gave the 'thank you.' It was a little sullen, but it was honest.

He knew she'd see it too... but oddly enough.. it was the first time since coming back tonight that he even felt the familiar weight of it. No burning, no stinging, no throbbing.. he'd actually forgotten all about it until just that moment. His back, unlike his chest and torso, was scarred in numerous places. Scratches and switches it looked like. Nothing traumatic.. except the brand, still starkly contrasted against two shades up from pale in bold stacks of purple, red and white scars. The dead tissue had a slight shine to it as he moved under the light and made his way to the dryer. Writ closed his eyes as he passed her. As if that would stop her from seeing it.. or feeling whatever it was that it would make her feel. "Wine's on the counter.. when you're all cozy." It came out casual as he loaded his sweater into the indicated machine to dry. Yeah, because everything about this was totally normal.

As he passed her, she had a strange feeling like the entire world was in this room, right now, and right here. The quality of it was strange, and she tried to put her finger on what it was. She looked outside, it was still raining, but it felt so bright and naked in here. Naked and exposed. And it really wasn't about the skin-show. It was about working through whatever this was. Her fingers involuntarily flexed as the brand came into view. She realized that her hands just seemed to be drawn to him. Like they were disembodied and hell bent on touching him. The notion was silly. It also stole her reminiscing, because as she was distracted by her hands, she realized what she was holding and what her plan had been. Quickly, while he was turned away, she peeled off the black leather pants. There was a frantic, but quiet as possible, little kick at the end. She replaced them with short, terrycloth shorts.

His sweater was only part of the problem.. and if she was seriously going to order food.. that meant she did actually expect him to stay.. one way or another. Laced boots were quickly loosened, and he stepped on the ankle of each to kick them gently free. By Liv's flailing movements, he knew exactly what she was doing. There was no amount of fight in him to stave off the smirk that formed. Flinging his sweater, undershirt and socks into the barrel of the machine.

"Thanks," just that. A thanks in the interim.

No matter when he turned around, her turtleneck proved long enough to hide anything of importance. To be honest, she really didn't have any reservations about being seen. Well, by anyone else. And she was keenly aware of that. The concept of changing was utilitarian, and a wild childhood of romping through woods and swimming in rivers had never instilled in her any issues of modesty. But there was something strange about this. She turned her back to him and traded her wet turtleneck for an oversized, but still not him-sized, t-shirt. A band logo was etched in the extra soft black fabric. She struggled to pull it over her wet hair as quickly as she could. She'd shake it out, even wring it a little onto the turtleneck when done.

Perhaps there would be some normalcy when she wasn't a wet mess. ...but she still reached over and dimmed one of the lights. She paid no mind to any implications. It was just annoying her. The place had too many white surfaces. "You know, I know exactly what kind of food to order," she thought out loud. "Will even go with the wine." When she turned she would have a smile.

Writ gave the knob a twist and pull. As the drum purred to life, he set his towel on top of the dryer and dropped both hands to his waist. One hand pulled the overhanging length of his belt free from it's loop while the other unfastened the buckle and button. He made short work of it, pooling them around his ankles and hopping once on each foot to pull them free. They weren't too bad off.. and his boxers were relatively dry. He left the soft black cotton undergarment in place and laid out his pants on top of the towel, then proceeded to pat down any pooled moisture that had gathered against the leather. As if it heard her, his stomach growled loudly. "Mm.." he echoed.. "Fooood.." was the following call, as if he could conjure it by will and incantation alone.


She froze like a doe in headlights. In this instance, it wasn't a change in the light, it was a series of sounds that caught her up. She swallowed thickly, dryly, wishing to at least one god and one goddess that her glass was closer. She wasn't exactly sure when she should turn. She wasn't exactly sure why he was - right, wet. She knew that, she just... expected him to bare it? (Ha?) But then again, her head lolled in a consideration-nod as she narrated to herself: leather was awful to wear when wet. Right. Right.

She turned around when she heard him moving and talking and even agreeing with her. She had a smile for him, that smile was so quick to find her petal-shaped lips-- so quick to spring to life, though it may have only been her that took measure of the average amount of times it was sincere vs. forced. She glimpsed the brand that warped his flesh before he wrapped it up in a layer of fluffy marshmallow comforter. She blinked slowly as a fog of memory and sensation crept in around her. She could have sworn it slunk in at the edges of her vision and just made that portion of his skin the center of her visual field. It was there that a pang of guilt lived. She wondered how long that would take to go away. Or if it ever would, all things considering.

He had moved towards her bed and grasped the comforter in one balled fist. Turning towards her, he smiled serenely and yanked the blanket right off, simultaneously wrapping it around himself like some sort of puffy druid. He waddled passed her. There. That ought to take the tension down a notch. One hand crept out from the folds of his encasing to nab his glass of wine off the counter and lift it to his lips. He took a small sip and with a good deal of effort, managed to wedge himself into a seated position on her counter. "What now?" he asked with one cocked eyebrow.. "Wanna show me your yearbooks?" It was a smart*ss remark, dripping in six shades of sarcasm. A not-so-subtle code for What the f**k are we doing? .. and he hoped she could read him at least that well.

She made a motion to move towards the couch, but then he aimed for the counter, so she rerouted that direction. She reached for her glass and swallowed a liberal draft before she spoke- lubricating her mouth as well as her mind. "I have a scrap book I'm pretty proud of," she smiled in such a warm way in the dimmer light, that she had a little glow of her own. "But it's not here,” the smile fell, but only a little. It lit again with a sarcasm that was comfortable for her. "What... food do you miss the most from home?" she began with an initiative of excitement. She seemed to have a guess as to what it was. She sat on the stool next to him and waited for his reply. "Also, do you want me to turn down the AC?" she laughed a mellifluous laugh that tasted like freedom and summer pollen on an overly-pleasant spring wind through the forests of their youth. She didn't mean to, but she tossed her hair to remove a particularly light tendril from her features as if she could illustrate the effect it would have on her halo of pale hair. She tried to stop the anticipatory smiling by taking another sip, but it danced jovial and delighted in her eyes.

Huddled in his wedged seat on the counter, he let his head fall back against the bunched up fluff cradling his neck. Light brown eyes slid closed, lips turned up in one corner in response to her handed-back sass. A soft rumble caught in his throat. He inhaled deeply.. like he could smell the answer she was looking for. Images pooled in his minds eye. His mother. Laughing. His siblings. Liv-- always at a distance, just out of reach. Running through trees. Standing in awe at waters edge-- he could still hear the shouting of fishmongers trying, and failing, to rip-off the gypsy women with their shawls and sharp tongues. He spent a lot of time in that market. Always at his mother's side. He said he went to protect her from the discrimination that could be found there.. but even the hexxo knew better than to cross the Strega. If ever there was a being that didn't need protection, it was her... and in truth, he went with her because he simply liked watching her wield that power in the face of ignorance. Besides-- a trip to the fish market meant stopping at his aunt's for lunch. The path his memories went down finally fell on the answer. The women would stand in the kitchen, adding the catch, fresh herbs from the hanging baskets outside the window, olive oil, little red threads of saffron, and a myriad of other aromatics, tomato, garlic, and onion into the pot like they were mixing potions in a veritable cauldron. He'd listen to them bicker back and forth about how much of each to add and when and why the other shouldn't do it the way she was doing it. Bebee Nisha and mother weren't really sisters.

His aunt was actually from another tribe entirely. Another place. She had a lot of unpopular ideas.. especially regarding the Roma youth's right to choose their marriage partners-- a topic that would almost always end the visit. He didn't know then that they were arguing about him... and in that reflection, the tone that sent the word "Bouillabaisse.." out of his mouth was longing, two-fold, for the familiar taste of that food, and for Nisha, who at least tried to prevent what was coming soon after those conversations. Writ's eyes opened and he tipped his chin downward so he could watch her as she perched on the stool adjacent to him and asked her next question. He smiled a little dreamily at her. Eyes still memory-drunk as they watched the words form on the lips that should have been allowed to be his choice. That were.. that are.. his choice.

But also not. Because could he really help it? He was glad the next question couldn't possibly invoke anything so manipulating and draining within him. "No way!" He piped up, decidedly lighter. "It's perfect in here." He opened his arms wide in gesture. "Freezing on the outside, warm as hell inside. Best of both worlds." He paused to stare at her a moment, eyes steady and radiating the warmth he had just described. Then one of Writ's legs stretched out and he slowly hooked his foot under the bottom wrung on her stool. Another pause. A slow, careful pull to drag her light, seated form towards him without toppling her or spilling her wine. "Are you cold?"

She would swear to him, and herself, later, that she could smell it. She was sure that she was inhaling the soft spices and comforting warmth right into her lungs through nostrils that flared ever so faintly. Her mouth watered. She had been right. She could not remember if she had known or if he had shared the memory with her (before or just then), but it was pleasant and intoxicating. Like the way he looked at her. Her chin tipped down and her smile tipped a little to the side as she turned away. Just a few degrees but the coyness in the face of his intensity was obvious. Something a little overwhelming. It came from nowhere and hung around. Even when she laughed. "So, the reason this apartment is here is because you can get a bouillabaisse that kinda... kinda tears your heart out. Does that work?" Eventually looking back at him more squarely and with conviction. Then she laughed quietly at him. "You--" and he pulled he closer. She adjusted her perch for the inertia and then back again like riding horseback. "You ask me like you want to share," share the blanket. Then. F**k it. "Are you flirting with me?"

His laugh was almost non-existent. It was barely formed and made mostly out of one huff of breath that sailed through his nasal passage, more of a hmph, really. He chewed his lip a little at the idea that a steaming bowl of seafood stew was headed their way and it made him want to draw her in even closer. Another reminder of home at her hands. She might need to stop doing that. He'd not tasted that familiarity in an incredibly long time.. and he was just now realizing how ravenous he was for it. He stopped dragging her stool to him but left the two edges of the blanket open to her. His arms were resting against his knees, glass of wine held in one hand between them as he used the other to display the gap that housed his now dry body in emphasis to his reply. "I'm almost positive there is nothing gentlemanly about this or inviting you in to share it.. So.. maybe?.. Is it working?"

That damn smile. Both of them. The one he drew out and the one he drew with his mouth. She couldn't hide this one, she just tilted it down at her phone which she plucked off the counter. A few swipes, a swish sound and "Done. Think you can put up with me for 45 minutes? That's at least how long it takes to get here. And... hmm. Were you going for gentlemanly? Are you inviting me into your marshmallow cocoon?" She reached over, picked up her glass, and picked up his from his hand. Nonchalant, like it was nothing. So close, but less close than he offered, right? How was a girl supposed to get a hold on a message. "Cmon. Couch. ....I think it's working. I... I " She paused and looked at him. "I don't know what I want right now. I don't ever have people over, Writ. But I really just don't want you to leave. Is that weird? It feels weird but I know that's what I feel. ...I just know I trust you. How could I not? That's where I am... and... You are strangely charming. Even with lip-prints on your neck." She lifted her chin and indicated his suspicious activity before absconding with the wineglasses and bottle (a juggler's touch) to drop herself over on the couch expectantly.

When olive toned skin blushes, it creeps like a vine and appears in hot ruddy patches in places that the blood rushes and goes sallow in the places it leaves. As if his neck knew it had been caught red han-.. er.. red lipped, the flush immediately dispersed from his collar bone, flooded upward and crashed to a halt just below his jaw line. A hand flew to the spot to rub at it with a quickness that would have suggested he'd just realized he was on fire. "Oh.. erm..." Throat clear, dismount, follow like a puppy to where she relocated. As confident as he may have felt a moment ago, he'd been easily and comically disarmed.. somehow the feat terrified and exhilarated him, simultaneously. "I was trying t-.." What was he going to tell her? I was so pent up from being next to you for the first time in forever that I needed to bang my way out of the cloud of confusion and desire? He doubted very much that that would be a wise direction to go in, so instead.. his train of thought jumped tracks. ".. to offer.. my marshmallow cocoon, yes.. if you were cold." Ahem. Not a very suave change of course, but.. there it was. He almost shrugged at himself. "And yeah.. I think I could put up with you for a lot longer than 45 minutes, Kor. And.. I don't want to leave either." The term of endearment always involuntarily brought a smile-smirk to the surface. It was a button he was fond of pressing.. the rest of his statement's honesty sent another rush of warmth, this time through his stomach. Writ stretched lazily, the lines of his body going rigid with the physical manipulation of lean muscle. The effect brought his arms up in a V, pulling his torso taut as he stretched the comforter out like a curtain behind him.

When he finally collapsed onto the couch next to her, he swung the blanket about to his side, carefully positioning the layer of fluff between them. Some of that old familiar caution creeping back in through the crack of doubt she'd left open. Uncertainty on her part, always did that. "I told you something I missed about home.. Is there anything you can think of.. I mean.. I know the situation wasn't.. um.. but there has to be something or someone you miss? Trivial or otherwise."


She laughed quietly during most of the flush and the beginnings of his commentary. It was a strangely composed and self-possessed sort of laugh. A laugh of someone much more experienced in this realm of kiss and tell. As he spoke she sprinkled most of the laugh over her own glass which was lazily cradled in her hand. But her icy eyes were back on him as quick as a whip when he used the pet name. It didn't cause a movement in her head, or a turn of her features, she was already facing him, but it was a blinking open of half down-turned eyes. It was something of a statement in and of itself. She wouldn't have been able to explain why his playful smile made her mirror it, but it did. "Well, hey, look at that. We agree on something." And the smile unfurled to be something more genuine and more sunny. Then she pursed her lips and looked thoughtful, "Hmm," she began, "well...." She reached over and picked up the top corner of the comforter that was between them. She shimmied a little on the comforter to pull her knee up between them and turn her body towards him. She took the corner of the blanket towards him as she was speaking, "I miss how it.... felt. I think that's the best way to explain it," and if he let her, or didn't spook, she began to use the blanket to rub away the red stains on his skin. (If he didn't, then she would stop and watch him as she continued.) "I miss running around the woods and... I think I'm an out-doors person. Other than that... I mean... a lot of things. I guess a whole lot of things, as I think about it." She frowned softly, "I dunno, I guess I just have thoughts of home all locked up in a box inside me since it's not an option. Sorry. I just couldn't-- mm.. I didn't want to keep looking at those."

He let her. It meant her being closer. Second by second that was a harder to refuse situation. Writ's eyes slinked shut as she dabbed at his neck and he listened to her voice-- it crashed against his skin like waves and made him feel like the atoms that made him into what and who he was shift apart, leaving gaps for her to fill. "It's nice to be able to say something out loud that someone else actually understands." His voice was thick as his eyes crept open, searching her face for that familiarity. "You never went back?"

That sense of reaching for him, again. As if she herself radiated off her skin like shimmering warmth and specifically wanted to flood into those very spaces. As though she could creep in between his breaths or flood through his veins. She had a sense that it started when he closed his eyes, like he enjoyed the sensation of her touch. She strangely imagined what that would be like, the soft comforter on her throat petting away nothing at all. "You mean.. what I said? You know what I mean?" Unfocused eyes focused on him when he looked at her. Her actions slowed but continued. "No. Why .. how ... I ... I don't really think that was an option. I just didn't even consider it. And I guess I kinda like what I do. ...whatever that means about me." Finally finished, she let the comforter slowly rest on his shoulder, her hand atop it, paused, unused, not thought about.


"Mm." he murmured drowsily. Whether an agreement, a concession, or an unbidden instinctual response to her actions remained to be determined. "Home is home. It's in your bones somehow. " He paused to study the skeletal structure of the hand resting on his shoulder. "No matter how awful, or.. incredible.. it was.. it's always going to be your foundation. You can layer all sorts of stuff on top of it.. which to the outside world will come to know as who you are, but people that share the same fundamental, at your core, pieces of you.. there's an understanding to be found there that's hard to come by." There was a sort of painful expression in his eyes, in the way his jaw clenched before he tipped it closer to her hand. A no-contact sweep of his chin slowly passing over her fingers.


She didn't know what to do with her hand. So she left it there. And it greedily soaked up the nearness. His warmth and his attention were.... were fine. Just fine. She was painfully aware that she had absolutely no schema for this. Not a man on her couch. But their history on her couch, sitting there conversing. "No one back home cares about who or where or what I am. I don't even think they understand me. I mean... I think I'd be more mad about what they did if they did. " She frowned, but it was reflective, and not at him. She let her arm sink, taking her hand in a guarded stroke down his arm above the blanket. "You are all that I have of home..... " She wanted to add an 'i guess' but, it wasn't a guess. It was a realization, though.


Writ felt his mouth open- a passage by which to let out some of this full-bodied need disperse in a warm breath. His eyes followed her movement and every curve and thread of muscle in his arm practically vibrated with constriction. God damn it. The line about home hit him square in the chest and he swallowed hard. After a moment of internal debate, he choked out a slightly strangled "Can you just.." while he writhed beneath her hand. He pulled the blanket up and away from him, gesturing that he was going to wrap her in it completely with a quirk of a brow to ask her permission.


It was too much. Really it was just too much. There was only so much will power one can have when fantasies walk away with reality. Her particular fantasy had been holding him. More accurately, being held by him. She had this urge to curl up her knees and body and just fold in on him in a wrap of arms that looped ad infinitum. She didn't know how to get there. But it was partly due to the fact that she mostly didn't know how she would let go of him. She didn't know if she would want to, and she did not know what she would say to him after she did. Earlier, she had wanted to sob against him, to just cry and cry until it was gone and she was bled clean of whatever was in there festering. Maybe what let him go would know what to say to him after. ....Regardless. That was just her thoughts. When he laid down his own hand, the suit of cards, the fortune of them....the similarity ...well... It was all just invitation. It was almost childish how she did it, perhaps painful how it came in a rush.... Liv just...coalesced with him, sneaking in under the blanket and wrapping her arms around him, snaking them behind his back and locking his ribs in her arms and crushing her cheek against his chest. It was an embrace. A hard one. A tight one. And a part of her would never leave that moment. Her body shook in a tremble like she had gone freezing cold. Yet, her experience of that first touch was quite the opposite. Unconsciously, she pressed and dragged the hard line of her cheekbone against his collarbones, nuzzling him in an animalistic way.

Beneath, a parted mouth smeared the plush planes of her lips, leaving a warm trail of wet that would shimmer like a comet tail that exploded in an utterly subconscious kiss of his skin. When her mouth closed in that kiss, it just opened again with a hungry sigh .....and slow inhale. Closing her lips against him was a warm, wet drag of the inner plane of her lower lip. Home. Drunk on his skin. She felt as though something inside of her wanted to pour all over him slow and sticky like honey.

He didn't really have time to deflect her move or even complain to himself that he was merely going to swaddle her up to remove the temptation to drag the electricity humming in his veins across her bare skin. She made the choice for him.. and for f**ks sake.. he was not unhappy about it.. at all. The breath that fell from his lips as her kiss made contact had a weight behind it. A guttural reflex no longer than a single syllable- like she'd pushed all the air straight out of him in one fell swoop. The rise and fall of his chest became exaggerated with the strain that was coursing through him.. and at the third, like he'd been counting, he pulled her chin up with one hand and brought his mouth down to towards hers. He hovered there for a moment. The tip of his nose grazing against her cheek while his thumb gently pressed down on her plush bottom lip, separating it from its perfect counterpart. "What did you do?" he asked in a barely audible rasp. His free arm wrapping tight and warm around her- hoping that when her trembling met his own, they'd solidify together and find refuge.


When he touched her face, the eyes that he made contact with were dazed. Drunk. She had no need to see his skin so close (her soul saw it just fine) but his features she wanted. She forced her harsh blue gaze into submission and it drank him in. She let her warm breath spill over his thumb, let her lower lip slack just a little so he could see teeth. See the soft, wet pink of her insides as though they could create symbolism together. Sacrificial offerings to the crazy tribal tune of their trembling touch-- communicating through a DNA deep resonance. The touch of his nose sent sensations to her heart, a curling spiral of want permeating her like cream in the black of coffee. A small, isolated storm and then it became everything. Diffusion of lust. "What I f**king wanted," she said. The most tender, and quiet threat. Like an addict. Like an epithet tossed at him from an ache in the soul that would have nothing else but him. She moved her chin, she slipped to the side, quick and instinctual, making his thumb slick her skin as she closed the distance between mouths. The crush of lips was a parted, messy thing.... just for the sake of it. Because there was something wholly libidinous between them. Among all the rest, that was there. And it made her raise her hands, scooting closer, encroaching on him as she slid both palms against the side of his neck and held him by fingers at the nape. She fused them together, almost like displaying him reverently -- a sacred fount for her mouth to savage.

Something in his chest broke open. The tight want and need of her after all those years that had sat like a lead weight in the space between his throat and proverbial heart disintegrated beneath Liv's worshiping ministrations. Images of well worn forest paths being ran down, wildflowers, and the sound of laughter that manifested like the embodiment of the Sun, flashed in little adoring flickers in his mind, coating his skin in goosebumps. Writ groaned into her mouth. Teeth scraped against her as he kissed her, taking her bottom lip between his before nudging hers apart further with fervent tongue and devotion. The kiss grew hungry. He'd been starving for her... and now home was right here. Right in the curl of his lap. His hands moved from her face to tangle his fingers into her still damp hair-- bare and sculpted forearms of vein and sinew anchoring her small frame against him with the gentle press of where they rested on her shoulders. His body rose to meet her because even this close, wasn't close enough.


She had lived in flashes of memories of him whenever he was near. A part of her resented him for the lure and draw he had for her from the very first time she had seen him. Something in her had chosen him before they had tried to force her to accept. But that wasn't the way to do it. Not for Liv. They should have known better. So there was a peculiar rope of contempt that wound her up when he was around. That rope frayed and snapped all at once. His skin danced with the fantastical freedom of her nature, now refined but still wild. So she wanted to consume it with her very presence. He drew her up and closer, she relished the creep and weight of his arms, his fingers in her hair ...but she resisted. She resisted because she was a planner and she was hyper aware of her own physical form. It's what she did, afterall. Every inch her body took was perfectly measured in her mind, and she had to adjust the mechanics of her limbs to slip knees on either side of his hips- to properly crawl in his lap. Somehow keeping her chest against him, beating softly with little pants nearly in time with her heart, as it slither-slipped against his own chest. One hand slid down the stem of his neck to knead and pet the flat plane of his chest, just to slide back up and over it again to hold his throat at the base. Here she could anchor herself, push and pull. She would do both as she aligned them with a little rock of her hips forward so her stomach pressed against him but her shoulders bowed her head down.

Though at a height and angle of control, there was abandon and submission in the way she let her lips part for his tongue. She licked him with a soft feminine sound, a quiet plea, as a lock of her hair fell against his features and then was followed by a sheaf of honey tresses that would hide half his face like even some of the gods weren't able to watch the orchestrations of their ill spent years playing at fate. She pushed her thumb into the swell of his throat to push him back so she could take her turn in his mouth with a tongue that wanted to find the place that groan had come from. Relentless. Her other hand finally took a grip of his hair and tugged its own request. She came on like a wave and that current heralded a storm. A storm that manifested in a long limbed girl, barely wrapped in soft sleeping clothes that, for a moment, had to have her way with how things went because she felt like she had been waiting longer than she could remember and the world and everyone else had had their way with her for far too long. This moment was hers. Theirs.

Her words broke any restraint remaining. What I f**king wanted.. It was the only thing that she could have possibly said to unmake him. Tear down the walls of martyrdom and sacrifice. The Good Ruler. Succumbing to desire instead of duty.. and yet here they were. Full circle. Warm hands slid beneath the hem of her shirt, pressing the pads of his fingers into the base of her spine. "Say it again.." he demanded against her parted mouth, buckling beneath the twist of her winding.. wounding.. hips. His hands crept further along her back until his forearms were resting flat against her in a possessive embrace. His mind went quiet and he searched for her. Finding that all too familiar wave that flowed between their separate consciousness. Could she feel that too? Did she hear him? Claiming her. Decisively. Palms moved flat against her skin, drifting downward again to pray at the altar of her ribs. They swept higher. His thumbs gently grazed the first outer curve of her breasts. The sensation unbridled a breath abated kiss- turning him predatory in the curve of his mouth on hers, reservations admonished by tongue and fever. "This is your choice. Tell me."

[Olivia Diogenes]

Written with Writ


She felt him fall. My ancient kingdom came crashing down without you, baby child the lyrics not necessarily in her mind nor on her tongue, but keening and making music in the razed earth of her insides. Her back flexed and elongated under his hands. Every cell of this girl responded to him. Bathed in the idea that it would be, that it could be, touched by him. She supplicated by degrees before his hands, so even without a land of his own, she made a land of herself as he traversed her skin. His. She felt him envelop her in a dark, rich heat that was him. Searching. Coveting. Claiming. Averring. And that felt so good. It was home to be his. He crept into her and she was drunk on Want as well as Wanted. She licked at his mouth, at his words. At his request. "I f**king want you--" centuries passed. Particularly in the breath that held and exploded in between-- her form set to a quiet, staccato panting as he exposed her to a desire she had never known without him. And never explored with him. "-- of course I f**king want you." Like the alternate truth was impossible. Had never existed. And her entire body told him. The way she rolled her weight closer, a graceful undulation that played with the landscape of her skin that he surveyed before making her tremble as he touched such soft, secret curves. Her hands slid up his throat like she would grab his jaw... Her heart thundered in her chest and she glowed with its radiant warmth. "Of course it's my choice. I-- Please," her mouth smeared down his chin and she leaned down and up and in, begging gently at the curve of his chin and pulling that soft mouth up to his lips just to do it again "Please." I want you to, it was hot in her mouth, it was wet in the kiss. A kiss she would only break to pull the soft, loose shirt from her body. It went up and over her mane of light blonde that rained softly from the neck of the clothing as it was pulled away. Her hair shook like sunlight and framed her as angelic for a moment before she crushed her mouth against him again. She pressed all of her against him-- pinning his hands and his words against her like she could not tolerate distance. Not from him. Not right now-- as though she had waited lifetimes to feel his heat, his skin, this close. She exhaled a secret sound of prurient joy. He was so simply and purely revelled that she sighed it into his mouth.

The skin she pressed against him, her kiss, the weight of her words in his mouth, moved against his tongue and teeth like prayers- alms to the less fortunate. Not for lack of contact but lack of depth. Lack of the shape of her that fit so perfectly straddled in his lap and twisted around the dull beat of a long-since wasted heart. His arms tensed around her-- the last Please she dripped against his chin, like the promise of forever lived in that single syllable, was answered with a small, swift, and decisive movement. Cradling her back, Writ hefted, turned, and rolled their tangled forms until she was planted firmly between himself and the couch. The musculature of his shoulders, neck and arms carved small divots and valleys into his flesh as he moved- Stalking above her with one hand resting in the cushions for support while he extended himself downward, free hand curling fingertips into the waistband of her shorts while his mouth acquainted itself with the newly uncovered curve of her hip. Alabaster. Perfect porcelain- so unlike the olive hues currently pressed against it, was achingly beautiful. He was vaguely aware of the hypnotic effect her swaying, rocking, and coiling had on him. The intoxication that watching the beginning of unbidden response, still soft and mildly controlled, made him swallow hard and his fingers dig into the couch a little deeper. Varied lines, both curved and straight, of the body that has owned him for as long as he'd been aware of it's existence, was currently trapped beneath him like quarry. He wanted to hear it again. "One more time.." he murmured, letting his breath sweep across the expanse of sensitive skin between her navel and the tightly clutched fabric of her shorts in his fist.

That sigh continued, like it could be endless. A theme she was beginning to understand as she plumbed the depths of her own self to achieve some understanding of how badly she wanted this man. As he moved them, as he traded places, as he took height and the high ground she pushed her hands into his hair-- revelling in the soft tangles of it as it slid between her fingers. Something plush and smooth and feral about even his hair, perhaps she could smell him. His scent drifting over her and into her like she was some predatory creature playing a game of hunt a hunter. Her back softly arched under his hands, and her legs found a loose hold around him, where it was comfortable, where he fit, where they could keep him close if he threatened to move away. Eventually one of her hands slipped down his neck, held his shoulder, clung to muscle and skin. So dangerously close to the brand behind his shoulder blade but not wandering over the crest of his frame. She murmured a soft feminine sound as his breath fell across her skin. Like he was unraveling her from the inside out. Skin that he set to trembling moments before-- she would be hard pressed to remember exactly when. "Please, please, Writ," she turned her hips one way and then the other, scooting down against the couch like her body knew what angles to offer. Instincts. All instincts, "f**k, I have wanted this... --..you...from the day I first saw you I just..." i just wasn't ready. Not like that "please." Talk about it after. After... She could come so close to commanding even as her entire form was a precipitous offer waiting-- just on him. Pale and mostly naked but still wild as the night, the dark pupils of her eyes were so large, they deepened that penetrating blue that swam somehow like sea now instead of sky.

His forearm pulled taut- the fabric curled in his hand whined softly at his grip. The want-- hers.. his.. was brutal in the way it washed over him like the convergence of freezing and scalding water, taking parts of his soul in the violence of it's undertow only to bring them back to him, somehow fuller, in a painfully rhythmic wave. He felt his breath go out of him and his chest tighten as he closed his eyes to savor the slow pull that peeled the last piece of clothing from her body. The pads of his fingers dug gently into her thighs, palms smoothing the fabric down the long length of those stealthy, nimble limbs. A faint, barely-there trace of hands to the back of her knees and down along the seams of her calves. It was a languid, indulgent move, until he threw the garment across the room once it was wrested from her. He looked down at her. Mine. his stare said- carving his name across the length of her naked body in a gaze. He let out a breath he might have been holding this entire time and righted himself. In the tail end of his exhale, he cupped the back of her right thigh and lifted it straight upward until her leg rested flat against his torso. If he bent.. if he pressed his shoulders in a little more... it'd lift her just enough to curl her legs, bent at the knee, to drape them onto his back.. He paused though letting his head turn to drag a kiss along the inside of her leg. Another hot breath clinging to her skin. The palm of his other hand traced a similar path down the core of her, from her sternum, along the flat of her stomach, further still, tortuously slow in pace, while he watched the wild expression flood her eyes.

The waves of their want washed back and forth on dark, spectral tides. There was amplification in their resonance. There was validation in the way they looked at each other. All at once she had words for what she wanted and yet only a desire to show him. Show him in the way she sighed as he stripped the soft clothing off her body. The brush of his fingertips opened her like she was made of doors she didn't know or understand. But he had keys to each of them. Unlocking the labyrinth of her as soon as he found the corridors of sensation that she didn't know were there. She opened for him. Opened under his eyes, and his hands. Opened in the way she let him lift her legs. Her lips parted as her eyes drank the word behind his stare. She wanted to inhale it. To feel it crawl into her in every way and she wanted it to burn on her skin in the soft, throbbing of desire that turned from something shadowy and lurking to something that ached.
She smiled softly, absently, still so painfully Liv as he threw her clothes. But here she bloomed, a little squirm in the arch of her back as she lifted herself, just a little, into his hand that swept over her skin like warm sunlight. There was a drunkenness to her eyes, how they glistened and took on depths that could have been tricks of the light. But he was right. The wilderness inside of her crept in. Slithered in from the walls she tried to keep it beyond. The wildling child she had been became an unbridled and untamed woman beneath his hands. "God," she cursed softly, lifting one of her hands to reach for him. For the back of his neck, for his hair, for his chin, for his shoulder, for his upper arm, for his forearm....whatever, one and all. She would touch all of him that she could, "you're still so far away," like she was writing their mythology in her mind. Painting her desire in terms that might be more palatable. Maybe she just wanted to put her mouth on him. Maybe she wanted him inside her. Likely it was all of the above. Everything. No matter what, it was a confession. Though the rest of her had already given her up like a weak-willed accomplice that fluttered like the soft tendons of her inner-thighs. "F**k me, Writ." We'll figure it out later, Writ. I have so much more to say. But it's ok. Want. F**k. Want.

Adrift in the correlation, the silent dance, of their need, he labored to find his breath, nearly drowned in the wake of fate and deprivation. Like it was making up for lost time. A vendetta. A cosmic chastising of I told you so's wracked and gripped at his body like Liv's seeking hands. you're still so far away.. She said. In response, he'd caught one of her blindly reaching limbs around the wrist and brought it up above the honey spun halo of her hair, pinning it against the arm rest of the couch. He sank down against her, slowly forcing her legs apart with the width of his torso and warming her once sun-kissed skin with the weight of all the things that hadn't changed. His lips drew themselves along the finely carved shape of her chin with small gusts of breath in between the languid stroll of his kiss- small reminders that this was far from casual for him, almost a tremor against her flesh everywhere they connected, skin on skin. Writ groaned softly into the curve of her neck-- and just as quickly as the sound made it's way out from the very center of everything he's ever f**king wanted.. he froze. Those words. Her words. Hit his ribcage with a sickening crunch. He could feel the sweet intoxication that had enveloped them start to spin and disperse, like waking from a dream. Liv's voice echoed against Vai's in his mind. F**k me, Writ. He involuntarily gave his head a little shake and pulled back to look down at her. Mouth a painful inch away from hers. Brows furrowed. Troubled. Like he couldn't find what the feeling was. "This isn't that." he said, resolutely- with a swallow that defied the quiet certainty in his voice. His lips parted and the next words that had lined up on his tongue were headed off by a loud knock.


She was not unaware of the narrative they were re-writing. Somewhere in her she felt like she had destroyed years of their lives at the whim of a spoiled child. There was guilt, and there was a soft fear that she would be discovered considering regret. It was so confusing. So she just let him wash over her. She wanted the moment. This moment. But this was not a moment she knew, it was a moment she thought she did, or could convince herself that she did. He was a current that could persuade her to be herself, in a place she didn't even know herself. He almost kissed away the soft, humming fear. A fear of discovery. A fear of innocence. These things thundered in her chest as he held her hand above her, replacing the uncanny need to touch with another need - to be touched. As he came closer she sighed, the tangle of their sounds making the air pregnant and warm with the soft cadence of desire. She tilted her head to the side, ever so faintly, letting him wander the angle of her jaw and kiss the moment into that warm perfection. Her eyes dared to drift closed, her other arm encircled him, her legs drew him close and closer. She pulled herself against him to feel the crush of his warmth that she had imagined a hundred times and then.... she felt it like a slow scoop of her insides with bony fingers. Like they wrapped around her heart and pulled her breath back through her veins as something awful closed its fist.

She closed that horrible distance to kiss his hovering mouth a f**king need that would have rendered her mute if she did not take it. Catching him with her eyes as they opened and she skipped like a record and then pleaded with her soul -- let my heart free, Writ, don't ...not like... See me. "I-- I ..I know...I didn't...I couldn't say I lo-- I..." was it panic? Or was it desperation at being caught playing with facades. Afraid. He had seen right through her, the part of her that was wary enough to feign nonchalance and -- was it the lipstic stains? The guilt? The fear of him figuring her out? The knock pounded in her chest. She had to finish, the words stumbled out of her mouth. "I didn't mean it like that. I mean... I do.. want... " and while part of her wanted to run, to turn away, the impulsive creature was best at following her wants, not her fears. She hugged him with her free arm and her legs and she buried her face in the side of his neck as though she could hide from him and comfort him at the same time. The compulsion was more than she could understand. Perhaps there were other things to do first. "I don't even want you to get up to get that, Writ. I can't even --" she sighed, it was strikingly laden with ....regret? With an aching desire to not let him go.... it said nothing of sex. It was from the heart. "...I'm sorry." I'm sorry for just f**king that all up.

The way she curved inward on herself had a way of pulling two very conflicting responses out of him. The first made him ache for her. Made him want to wrap her in his arms and tuck her safely against him. Protect. We protect the things we love.. Chaya. Her voice piping up for the second time in two days. Had it really only been two days?! Ghosts of the last few things she'd said to him before he left and the retorts he knew his sister would have for him. The second response was to bare Liv. Uncover her. Completely. Arms pinned and outstretched. Naked. Unable to shield herself in any way. Open her. Expose her. Give him the passage he so desperately wanted. The idea prowled in his chest like a starving predator. All lust, and love. Need and want. Greed. To his surprise.. A third.. new reaction.. cropped up in the humor to be found in being on the cusp of ecstacy with the literal girl of his dreams, naked and writhing, and begging to be f**ked beneath him.. and then the dinner bell.. followed by the mortified and unjustly adorable way she apologized into his neck. Keeping up with the unpredictable gait of things, the third option won.. It broke out of him in a barely audible, and rueful chuckle. He nuzzled the side of his smiling face into her hair. "Either you let me go.. or I'm bringing you, naked, with me."


Time stopped and waited for him. She waited for him. She couldn't bare to be misunderstood or to misrepresent herself again. She knew it wouldn't happen, she knew. But she let him find the next move. Whatever it may be. Not really a girl to let someone lead, it was a bit strange to drown there. To hide herself in the crook of his neck and to hide in such plane sight and such nearness. She listened to the way they breathed. She still could barely restrain herself from sinking in and floating away to just the sensation of his body as it breathed against her. Because she was there, with him, in a strange, adorable lust. "Bring me with you," she said, like a whimsical, girlish request. "I want to know what that feels like," to be picked up by him. Everything that meant, everything that felt like, she wanted that, too. She also wanted another moment. Another several. She smiled against his skin and kissed him, plush but pressing, full of apology and her signature abandon. She started a trail of them, they were almost rough and clumsy but they slowly became more wet, more of an inner lip,...until it melted into a slow lick of his skin. Still so connected to the overwhelming want of him, she could match this tone, too.

It wasn't difficult to rope him back in. The horrifying ache that cursed at him for stopping was momentarily sated in the curl of her tongue. His smile tilted, good humor marred slightly by less than good natured thoughts. He coiled one arm around her back and waist, pulling her up as he rose. It was an effortless maneuver to tuck her against him. Puzzle pieces. Locked and sealed together by limb and desire. His arm strategically draped across her bare ass to cover her with a shred of modesty as he moved towards the door, slow, strong, and steady, kissing her shoulder, throat, temple with each measured stride.

She cooed quietly as he began to move. She sucked the soft skin of his neck into her mouth as he pulled her from the couch. All of her tightening around him. Clinging. Clutching. She snuggled herself into an adornment around him. As he draped his arm she nuzzled closer, by the hips, through her legs. She was somewhat unaware of the impractical nature of her nakedness, but she was completely aware of what it felt like to have his skin against her. There was something a little claiming about it. But with its own healthy measure of being claimed as she maneuvered her kisses through the ebb and flow of those he cast upon her. She rolled her features, accommodating his mouth as it pressed to her surfaces. She felt safe under his mouth. She committed each touch to memory. Sacred memory. Something sweet and simple and adoring about them, even in the moment of nakedness and lost-lust, or the illusion of it.

The banging rang out again. "Just a minute.." Writ barked, following up the command with a soft thud as Liv's back hit the wall on the other side of the closed door. She had a little laugh for the way the wall made her chest cast a hollow breath. It wasn't rough, but it was steady and tangible and very real.

He just needed more. So he took it. He pressed his mouth against hers, shielding her body between his and the wall and wrenched the door open forcefully with a frustrated hand. Not bothering to pull his lips away, he glared beyond her, like a warning animal over a fresh kill, at the very confused delivery driver. Mine.

When he kissed her it was like granting her wish. He had just been too far. She wanted to kiss him. So she did. And it was hungry. Liv kissed him with a parted mouth, and with her tongue. She tilted her features to the side away from the open door, aware of what he was doing and allowing for him to at least make that eye contact. If only she had known. Her hands crept up to cradle the underside of his jaw.

"Eh..." was the only thing the kid managed to get out before the food was snatched and the door was shut promptly in his face.

Shen the door closed she could turn his features back towards her. Affording only so much practicality. Mine. The kiss would only die for words, for the expectancy that something else should happen.

The exertion of doing.. nothing.. was exhausting in it's exercised effort to not throw the food down and do exactly what she'd asked for and it caught in his chest with a rasp when he spoke. "Are you hungry?"

There was a brief moment of her caught lower lip in her teeth as she leaned back against the wall. She lifted her chin and had to laugh a little. It was a deeper laugh than her usual. Something prowling at the back of her throat and her mind. "Yes, Writ. I'm hungry," for what was left to his imagination for a moment. She licked her lips slowly before she settled her gaze back upon him. And those sky-blue eyes regarded him like they never really had before. There was a soft happiness haunting their corners, even as they seemed to drink all of his features in with their heavy stare into his eyes. "Will you stay? Tonight. Whatever else happens, will you just stay after? I don't want to be ...I want you to stay." Cautious words, like picking stepping stones through a mire of hidden things that cling to the skin. "Even if we yell at each other again?"


The light brown of his eyes swept across her face, like he was memorizing every curve and angle. Inhaling the image of her to store the way she was looking at him somewhere safe within his bones. Afraid.. maybe.. that he'd wake up to find that she wasn't really here. With him. When she pulled back from that last exercise in possession- his gaze fixated on her mouth. She bit her lip. The sound that moved through him, exhaled in a covetous pang and was followed by a physical reaction that squared his shoulders. The sensation made him absently set down the bag of food at her feet and coaxed his hands back to her in a grip of her hips. The draw of it tugged at the very core of him and the room suddenly began to feel very small.. like she was everything there was. The only thing. She took up all of the empty space. All the hollow years. All the miles between him, the kumpania, the vesh.. and their home. Her voice held him as if by the scruff of his neck. Lean muscled frame pinned against her from hips to ribcage- but his shoulders slightly tilted away so he could watch the words fall like incantations from her kiss-swollen lips. Hunger. Yes. He knew. He always did. It didn't make their invocation any less desired- moreso.. if anything. He smiled crookedly at her, brushing the back of his knuckles against her jaw as her invitation fought it's way to the surface. "Where else would I go.. now that it's your choice?" It wasn't a question made for answering.. more of a reassurance.. an explanation.. an apology for any moment that she might have believed he didn't care for her. He bent closer again. His eyes closed and the ridge of his brows touched down in her hair. Familiar words murmured like a promise into her ear. "Kaski san?" Whose are you? A conversation with a wolf abandoned for the better part of a decade, revisited in the velvet weight of romanese that vibrated on his tongue and melted into her gossamer strands.

She smiled at him. It was a soft, ghostly smile. A specter of many things hid in the bow of her full lips. She was smiling into him. Not just at him. But into the inquiries and the savoring his eyes executed, and she saw it and it pleased her. It was another pulsing lull on the silent telepathy between them. Eventually the smile deepened and became more conscious as he set the bag down. When he reaffirmed his hold on her hips she shifted just a little, like they could nuzzle into his palms for their perfect fit. Because they knew it was, they just had to find it. And the perfect caress of her skin was soft along her jaw, as it was presented to him, just subtly, barely, by an angling of its curve under his knuckles. She bared her throat, and soft places to him. Didn't she bare them all, really? The breath she inhaled escaped as the rise of her tongue fell away from the roof of her mouth. Then her eyes narrowed in thought. So many micro-expressions, so much detail. She paid so much attention to what he said. There was a soft confusion behind her eyes, but it was confident, it looked for him for answers. It looked for him for questions, too.

So many thoughts in her mind as she stumbled through wondering and wandering, like she was in an entirely new wilderness that she discovered only by each tempered syllable."You..." there is something more, here. Some Truth I don't know. He thundered through all the roles her mind had had for him. From lust to lover. From husband to captor. From savior to sinister. From complicit to defiant. From hero to hierophant. She sighed, unbidden-- something satisfied beyond measure. Pleased. And something wild in her shivered at the soft shackles of his question as well. There was a miniscule shake of her head, like her insides fought his implied possession in its first iteration. Or maybe she just wanted to change the lay of a lock of hair against her skin. In those coltish limbs, in that sleek muscle, there was something of a wild stallion in the girl, and it bucked gently and its flanks flickered. She had a hundred questions. A dare. Even soft words that teased. I am my own. and I have not given you that, yet. or something darker to keep, to be kept, do you promise? as well as This is not that. something snarky, as they played with each other's moments. But she was deliberate in every place she put her weight and her attention when she moved, so she could find some measure of that control in her words, as well " Now? You... wanted me, then?" Tell me your secrets.


The answer was heard. Both of them. The verbal simplicity that pledged her, and cuddled right alongside it, the complicated internal struggle that he was all too familiar with. There was a very slight clench to his jaw, brief, reflexive. The pause it created in the fluidic synergy pulsing between them was just long enough for his hands to fall away from the melded cup of her hips. Writ glanced away momentarily as she asked her question- a crumpled lump of black fabric catching his eye. He looked back at her and half-smiled. Ok.. was his resigned reply. Time to talk. Words without words, as usual and the expression that settled on his face then was the stony one she would have been used to in their childhood, hidden behind a wall of necessity- void of any outward indicators of pleasure or displeasure. Neutral. When he found the proper momentum to move away from her, it was slow, like he needed to prove he could control the squaring off demons inside of him- give them enough time to argue their case before addressing whatever would arise over.. soup. He scooped up her abandoned shorts in one hand and opened the dryer to retrieve his now warm, lightweight, grey v-neck sweater. He turned, eyes trained on hers as he made the journey back home in an equally deliberate pace- both articles of clothing bunched up in his grip, he extended an arm to offer them to her. "I guess I was never really forthcoming about that." he answered with a bitter taste washing the cavern of his mouth with soft regret as the words passed through. "Come eat.. and talk with me." The bones of the statement indicated it wasn't a request, but the inflection at the end had just enough of an upswing to carry enough respect that it wasn't a demand either. A suggestion.


She couldn't help the feminine animal in her, how it turned its chin and regarded him with a curiosity that had a light touch. It was meant to pry, but with a softness that had its own power of seduction. A safety and deliberate gentleness. At some point one of her inhales was deeper than the other. Resignation. A stamp of intermission on a heart that was still wild from careening towards climax. She pressed back against the wall and watched him stray and wander and return. She grounded herself with her palms flat against the wall, perhaps mapping out where magnetic north was, and unsure as to whether it was behind her, or within her. She took the articles of clothing but she also side stepped his sternness and resolution. She side stepped it right into him, like a dancer. And she was, really. In many ways. She hugged him, she pivoted up under one of his arms and side-hugged him. "Hey. I still.... we need to talk but you still make me tremble and that wasn't a no of any kind, okay?" She blinked lazily up at him, and if he tried to walk without replying, she would use a forearm to pull him close and just not let him. "I just don't want to f**k anything up... we've done that enough, right?"

In the tuck she created, he gave her a gentle squeeze. His eyes fell closed in a long, slowly slid blink. "I know." he murmured with a soft kiss pressed to the crown of her head. "Just because I hand you clothes, doesn't mean I actually want you to put them on." a single-breathed, half-hearted laugh buried into her hair with a slight groan. The tightness in his body acting as clear evidence he was still poised to attack at any moments notice. "But.. words. Things that need saying." a hand traced down her abdomen to circle around her belly button. "And bellies that need feeding." Writ nodded back towards their former nest of rumpled comforter and cushions. "Come on." The wrap of his arm coaxed her to drift with him to the couch where he released her to adjust the mess they'd made before sitting on the far end and setting the bag of food on the middle cushion with enough space to allow her to choose her poison: the open space, defined by the lazy U shape of his parted legs where the view of him would be difficult to obtain but allowed for maximum exposure to the warmth of his body or.. the empty third cushion, table, floor, where she could easily watch him while they ate and maneuvered through a clearly sensitive subject.

She closed her eyes, pressing lashes to the crest of her cheeks as he kissed her and spoke. She looked up at him with those big, pale eyes and regarded him silently for a moment. But she smiled. "I just thought I should say it since you're so damn picky about the words coming out of my mouth." The smile changed into a grin and bled into a squirm as he touched her body. There was a quiet, high pitched harmony in the back of her throat as he did that and she'd let him slip away if only to squirm a little. And squirm into the shorts because... well just because. But she squirmed into his warm sweater because it was warm, and it was his sweater. Had it not been so cozy, she would have put on neither. But he was too prepared, and the details were too enticing. So was the couch, and she made her own way, and her own path. She'd tuck her knees to the side, and nuzzle the other side of her against him. Not in his lap, but not necessarily not-laid upon. She leaned on him heavy as she pulled the food into her lap and started going through the bag and packaging. "Ok. Tell me stuff, Writ."


The weight of her lean against him centered him and drew his eyes low to watch the proceedings from over her shoulder. The smell that permeated the air when she opened the containers was a commingling of her natural scent, his, and the food of home. It produced a twisting,writhing, gnawing ache in his chest and rolled out in draining waves along his limbs. An arm looped down around her waist like he needed to hold onto her for stability. Just. A need of her. The touch, that connection. Writ exhaled a deep breath and the words that drew themselves out vibrated in his chest against her back. "I have.. always wanted you, kor." Pause. Debate. Adjust trajectory by a hair. "I'm aware that my actions.. may have been confusing..Can you trust me when I say that it was never because I didn't want you?"

She was picking through the contents, pulling warm containers wrapped in cellophane out and putting them on the couch between their limbs, propping them up precariously. When he looped his arm around her she leaned against him and pressed her head against his shoulder. There was a sigh-nuzzle that she made and it was utterly indulgent. Like she snuggled a chapter of her life, or the moment, as well as him. In a way, this was all very surreal. And when she thought upon it, unguided by his words or her feelings, it was very confusing. But if she just...was... it was fine. And it was comfortable. She began to unwrap one of the larger tubs of liquid. It proved a little difficult so she dug through some of the comforter and between them and put her hand between the couch seats and pulled out a knife. She flicked it open languidly, with skill that was dangerous, but slick. She had just a touch of a sheepish smile at him before she set it upon the cellophane. But she looked up at him as he ended in a question. And her features softened, even as a smile glittered and gleamed. "I... don't think I paid too much attention to want back then. I was so young. And I was scared. And angry. And hurt. There were oceans between us and I was terrified. ...I think I knew. Or felt it. But... ...it felt like... it felt like you felt guilty about it. When I saw it. But. You... it seemed like other things were more important. And they were. ...so...I trust you. I just... How..." Her hands lost some of their attention and just lay upon the container as she plumbed a deeper question. "Go on." She gave up. "I'll figure out what I want to say as you go on. I don't know if I thought much about want. You are... you are a big part of how I understand how the world works, Writ."

Where the hell was he supposed to begin and how much should he say? Not saying would be a sin of omission in the temple they were building.. but telling her everything he knew to be true, the unavoidable want and need to be with her from the moment he saw her.. prophecy. Destiny. Where was the choice in that? The one thing he wanted more than Liv herself was to give her the ability to make the choice. He always teetered on this line. Responsibility. Desire. Selfless. Selfish. The constant pull of both extremes were draining.. but he still couldn't make a clear choice.. so he continued to swim in the grey current that flowed so naturally between them.. at least for a little while longer. "I was sixteen when you walked into my sight." Not a lie. "I expect some of my desire for you was my own hormonal adolescence.." he laughed silently at himself- abdomen contracting in a small flutter of brief convulsions. Also, not a lie.. just not all of the equation. Give a little more "You were.. are.. beautiful." a hand reached upward and toyed with a stray lock of her pale hair. "Different. In both the physical and metaphysical sense. Like a flower from an exotic land after running through fields of the same blooms for years. Only.. more deadly. Intoxicating. A sharp dagger blade edge- Like the one you threw passed my head the day you finally spoke to me." The memory nuzzled him and his eyes closed. ".. a blade dipped in altering substances. I--" Something between a sigh and a groan exuded lazily from his throat. "I knew you.. instantly." Half-truth. He knew who she was long before that moment, and why she was there, but who she was as a person and why she intrigued him in free agency.. happened at precisely that moment. You can't want someone that you don't know. It was his base fear. That not knowing, not having the practice he had of denying the press of fate, would mean she would be incapable of wanting him on his own merit.


She lowered her chin, smiling down at the soup she was delicately lifting the cover off of. The cellophane having now been cut and pried away, so a warm wave of home-scent lifted from her lap and she hid half her blush in the deep inhale she stole. And she looked at him then to see if it had the same effect on him as well as as an excuse to look at him. To pry him open with a gaze that was as crafty as knives and nimble fingers. Part of her wanted to flee from the soft groan he committed. Like it was too private and too heavy and she could not bare the burden of compliment that it barely hid. Or the longing. She inhaled and she distinctly felt the expansion of her ribs. She reached up and placed her soup-hot palm against his cheek. Always a thief. This done to add something else to the scene he saw behind his eyes. "I ... I know, or knew this. Somewhere. It just.... it wasn't enough to make what they told me afterwards right. I guess.... that's," she let her palm slip away and back to the bag and looking for spoons. "I... there was something in me that couldn't love you on someone else's terms, Writ. It's not how I know how to love people." She made a quiet 'mm' sound as she murdered a thought before it left her mouth. "And you... it was scary. And I was angry. And they weren't selling my heart to you, they were ...they were selling my body to you. ...and even if that part of me wanted you, too, Writ, I couldn't do that," she stopped herself. She proffered a spoon after setting the knife down, closed, on her thigh. "I don't know why I am rambling, I feel like everything just wants to spill out of me but I need you to know that sitting here right now makes me feel awful. I feel awful because if we ... if you stay and we... if I fall in love with you ...or ... if we do that, then I feel like I **ed up your life just out of principle. And it hurts me. ...so no matter how ....god this is so f**ing hard I'm just going to keep talking ...I just... I don't know what I am doing and if I feel this way about you now did," she spread her fingers over her thigh when she realized her hand was shaking. "then I'm .. it's just it's kind of awful." She pursed her lips. She didn't even know if the thought happened in the words but it was behind them.

A heavy stare. A Writ stare. One full of calculations, inexpressible amounts of conflicting emotion, and painfully loud silent regard. The tumble of her words only said one thing. Can't. Ok.. two things.. Want. But.. Can't. His brows scrunched together, a sudden frustration emoted in the ridge of it. His careful dam of neutrality broke with the change in his expression."Then why am I here, Liv? Why'd you ask me to stay if the possibility is awful? What part of you thinks I could lay that at your feet? To put that guilt on you? A guilt you shouldn't f**king have in the first place." Frustration was morphing into anger. Not at her. But at the cruelty of the situation. And he figured he better tell her that before this spiraled into a but you said..I thought you.. moment. "I'm.. I'm not angry at you, kor.. you just. It wasn't a fair situation. I gave up a lot to give you your freedom from me.. but I gave it willingly.. because it was the right thing to do. You have no blame in that so you can stop feeling bad for changing your mind." The last part was said rather sternly. Pointed. Like the little blade she had folded back up.


She swallowed slowly as he stared at her. She felt it unwrapping her, or more closely, like she was a flower and it plucked her petals from her. "Wait... wait...wait.... no. No, that's just one side, Writ. It's the side that I understand the easiest." She sighed. "I say stupid s**t because of this. I'm.... I'm not good.. I don't talk to people. So wait." She turned towards him more, her kneecaps against his leg. "I'm not saying no, jesus. I'm not saying no, so that's what I say makes me feel bad. But I felt bad or conflicted or ...it's why I want to talk to you right now. I ..maybe...I ...I felt like, just before, while we were ... I felt like you had every right to just wonder what the f**k I was thinking or why. And when you made it seem like I thought it was frivolous I realized ... it isn't. It wasn't. This isn't at all. I just didn't want you to look at me during or after and say 'what the f**k is going on, why does this girl let me have ....her years later when she could have just said yes before' ....that thought just makes me really sad because that's true, and I don't understand all of this. But you saying you were willing or that maybe you even understood me, that me, that girl who just couldn't be made to be some gift at your feet like...that makes me feel better. Like I didn't ruin your life because I didn't like people telling me what I should do. I wasn't ready, I don't know how I know that but I didn't do that out of principle, Writ. I wasn't ready and I didn't want it to be that way. But god I am so attracted to you and after everything that's happened I just... I trust you. I feel like I know you, too. Not just instantly but infinitely and I want to be with you and I don't f**king understand that but I just need you to know that I ...I guess I needed it to be my choice. I don't know Why I want you here but I do. So this is my choice but I don't know what I'm choosing just yet. But I'm ok with that. I just want you to be here. I want to know you. I think part of me loves you and .....I don't know why. Or rather, it's so complicated and has been there for so long I just... I'm just ok with knowing that that's what I want right now, and I have never really been ok with not understanding something about myself, like that. But.. you. I ... I I need to just let myself be myself and I don't want you to hate me for that." the tail of it ended up tucking itself. She looked at him just to see if she had met what had upset him with appropriate details. F**k.

She added, "I don't feel like you are putting that guilt on me. It's coming from me. I wanted you the moment I saw you, but ... ... I wish they hadn't told me. And 13... I was a child. I didn't even know what love or sex was, Writ. I still don't..." she frowned at herself because that was a whole other tangent of thought that...but... it was true. "But... I ... If that's ok, I don't want you to leave." There. Summary.

[Olivia Diogenes]

Written with Writ


When she turned and looked up at him seeking an answer on his face, his eyes would be averted to the opposite end of the couch-- a ghost-like memory of hours <?> before when she first broke the no skin-on-skin contact rule and all the lustful aftermath that followed replayed in his mind. He swallowed thickly. "You still don't believe this is more than a simple arrangement forced on us by greedy parents, do you? You touched me, Liv. Now you-- wait." A stream of blinks brought his eyes back to her, head tilted and the familiar expression of a wrinkle of curiosity, skepticism,.. shock.. dotted the bridge of his nose. "Wait.Wait. What.." his eyes turned upwards towards the ceiling and he rubbed a hand over them like a dawning of realization had just sunk into them. He proceeded tentatively.. "What do you mean you still don't?"

She still felt him creeping in her muscles, and in thoughts that were buried in her bones. When he looked away she wanted to follow him. Wanted to make him look at her and make him put his hands on her. The waves of desire were heavy and she found it hard to deny them when there was less and less reason to. "I mean... our people ... it is our culture, right? We have important parents who believe in tradition and they, I suppose, ultimately think that this is the best thing for us. I know what I should believe but I mean.... I did touch you, Writ. I touched you because I wanted to. And I wanted to back then. Jesus, from the first time I even saw you I've wanted to know what you f**king taste like but..." she inhaled and perhaps would have gone on, like inspiration sought and found while high on-- "I...." she withdrew by several degrees, sinking back but still keeping their circuit between them alive and firing among their touching legs. "I... I," she shook it off, like she could start again. Cool. Collected. She lifted her hands in the air, palms up in a shrug and something of a surrender. "Nerd. Isolated nerd girl. I don't... I haven't ...don't...relationships. I'm really really not good at this. I only talk about feelings with my bartender, Writ."


The explanation of what she felt after they touched would have to be circled back to. Currently he couldn't focus on anything other than what he thought she was implying. He let out a strangled huff of consternation.. clearing her stammering with a single worded concept. "Sex." He said bluntly, dropping his hand away from his face and back into his lap. His eyes followed their descent but hung onto glacial blues. "Liv.. sex." he shook his head slightly. "Very different than.. Never had a relationship. Are you.." Brow scrunch, fingers reaching up to clip her chin in a preemptive show of support for whatever her answer would be. "Have you never.. are you still.. untouched? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"


She was a little worked up. She felt more naked than she had before, and in a way that didn't surprise her nor did it feel like it was ill placed. She had not meant to stumble from one hole into another. And vaguely, somewhere, she was a little upset that her reward for being so sincere was to be made to say things that ... She frowned when he said the word. She hadn't been evading him, but she was aware that the fact was more at the surface of her than it had been in years. She wondered, honestly, if she had done this to herself, like a confession. But really, wasn't it somewhat the same? Intimacy. She had no background of it. Just the honesty and the wilderness that ran in her veins. In a way, she thought that that was her own brand of it. Her gaze was almost stern as it watched him and thought. In silence after that one word. "Why is that very different?" ....she hadn't even meant to not reply. And her tone wasn't exactly accusatory, she just.... wanted to know where he was. So much talk about tradition. Was that why it mattered?

"Develésko mush , kor.." he cursed quietly. She may as well have answered. His eyes closed for a long beat, a wince creeping into the creases at the corner of his eyes. His back straightened slightly and when his eyes opened again he looked.. determined. Settled. On something.. though he wasn't quite sure what it was just yet. "It's very different because in this world.. they are not synonymous. I didn't think.. and the way you were reacting to.. F**k, Liv. I could have-.." It was his turn to come up sputtering. "If you had already.. I wouldn't feel so bad about it.. but.. you haven't.. and if I did what I wanted.. what you asked... and I found out after.. I.." his mouth was hanging open and his head shook absently in an attempt to get full sentences passed his lips.. they just wouldn't link up. He glanced down at the forgotten food. "Thank god for soup deliveries." he murmured, a weak smile tugging at one corner of his mouth as he reached for one of the containers.

"What the f**k, Writ. "And I found out after" what? Guilt? What? You're making me feel like a child. Great. Now this is a f**king thing." She picked up the soup and put it between his knees. She pushed a spoon at him and went digging for the other food. Bread. Something. She would tear it and eventually cram it in her mouth. "There's nothing to feel bad about. It doesn't f**king matter. I just... It just ... it didn't really interest me and ... my job is--" sketchy, at best. Full of sketchy people and all sorts of other s**t. "Jesus." she muttered.


"Of course it f**king matters." His face went incredulous as he grabbed the spoon she shoved towards him and promptly dug into the comfort of the seafood stew... a comfort he was rapidly in need of.. as the safe harbor that had settled between them seemed to be slipping back into a familiar bicker. "It doesn't matter that it never happened for you.. I'm just saying.. Gadje Gadjensa, Rom Romensa.. you know? Just because this is our world now.. doesn't change that we are Rom. That certain things matter between us that wouldn't matter with other people. I would have.. ruined you." His eyes begged her to see beyond the modern implications of sexism in his comment. "if.. if I.. If you ever wanted to be with another Shav .. I mean."


Oh. Oh. No. She didn't see beyond them at all. And the welling up of something about to come out was apparent, and fast. "Ruin me?" The way it came out of her mouth, so stiff... the annunciation like a blunt forced trauma. "Hehhh," that was not a pretty sound. And there was something tremulus in it and it made here even more angry. "Who the f**k-.... " she waved her spoon at him, "you -- I am aware that it is convenient for whatever magical f**king man I decide to marry" because it didn't matter anywhere else...and that word was an epithet from this girl right now, "that I haven't let some other f**king --- someone else f**k me, so that his pretty little pride and family can enjoy owning every experience of potential pleasure or want or promise or whatever stupid f**king s**t that symbolizes that they own my every whim and desire that I have had, and ever will have... And I am aware that half of the reason I haven't done that already is because I don't like the way most f**king men look at me, but maybe that has to do with how my family looked at me when they put a proverbial bow on me and pushed me into your camp. But also, in the same right, Writ, I also haven't wanted anyone else as much as I have wanted you and I have had no distraction of that sort in my entire life and didn't even look for it. So it's super awesome that now you see this as a reason not to touch me and to make a big deal about me just finally wanting to f**k someone, that someone being you and then not under the pretense...ironically, that I'm talking like a slattern who is too thirsty for your f**king d-- oh my god. another shav jesus f**king christ. Should I go outside," she waved her spoon at the door, "give me like 15 minutes and I'll go ruin myself so I can be worthy of our culmination of-- I mean you came here after what? What did you do with that girl? How is this ...." she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to cry. She exhaled through slightly pursed lips, like she was training.

God. Damn it. She didn't understand what he meant in the least. He had said that it wouldn't have mattered to him if she had already slept with someone else. Not to him. Hadn't he said that? He did, right? "This isn't about me owning you, Olivia. Or ANYONE owning you or your prized purity." He set his food down on the floor before continuing. "Or that I won't... ever.. do that to.. with.. you." Writ let out an Ugh and buried his face into steepled hands. His voice warped and amplified by their prayer shape. "I am incapable of taking an opportunity from you. Can you not see that? Are you so stubborn?" he pulled his hands away from his face and peered at her over the tips of his still pressed fingers. "What if... what if you wanted to go home? Remember the values of our culture and marry your magical man as you say, you couldn't even if you wanted to.. I know you don't but if I had unknowingly removed that as an option for you, Yes. Yes. I would absolutely feel guilty. Not because I don't want to rip your .. my clothes.. off of your body right f**king now and show you what that should feel like because I need you to somehow be proper. I've been every shade of improper in that realm. None of it meant a f**king thing to me. You do. This is important and shouldn't be lightly tossed at someone half concealed out of what.. embarrassment? No. Not because of that at all.. just that that would no longer be a choice you'd have available. I would have taken that."

His tone had caught her because she was aware that she was ashamed. Sure. Embarrassed. She was aware. But this dragged up so much s**t. But she listened to him. She listened to him and slowly became aware that what was stubborn in her was this strange blind spot she had for him because ... they didn't know each other yet, not exactly, but mostly because she had so many thoughts that they just unfurled all at the same time into random patterns that only partially fit the people that they were. Like she was screaming at ghosts of them. And she was afraid. And yes, embarrassed. "Me? Me stubborn?" but her tone was not on the verge of annihilation like it had been before, she had composed herself and she had been able to hear him.

"Writ. Do you think I don't know this? First, do you think I even care? According to home I am yours and that is it. Done. I can't be properly anythinged to anyone. Maybe if I fought tooth and nail but your name is written in my blood according to my mother, and that is that. So that's ridiculous. But do you think I forgot what I was doing? Or what I haven't done? Do you think food would have stopped me from f**king you if it was just that? It didn't even put an inch of space between you and me, your mouth and mine... what did is because I felt like I should tell you. Or at least make sure you didn't look at me tomorrow and say 'oh my god, what have I done, and why does this hypocritical harlot play with every single thing that matters to me'... that being new guilts and old. I didn't want that, and I knew you would care somehow. Because you.. you do. You care. That's why dinner is even in this apartment right now." She half scoffed at him, like she would assuage any thought he had that he had been the one to decide to get the door. "But aside from that... it was my choice. I already made up my mind. And what I am telling you, right now, if you listen to the words and things I am implying is that I made up my mind a long time ago, apparently. It's just been you. Just f**king you. Every urge compared to my urge for you like you defined want and choice in my very nature. I knew what I was doing. I wanted you on top of me, Writ. You just agreed that it was a nice idea at the time and that you would like to participate in it." Some part of her wanted to laugh. She found something about this amusing. But that didn't mean she wouldn't strike home, if only for his inflection. "You're the magical bullsh*t my heart married years ago, I just never was able to find you and tell you. And here we are. After years of wondering whether it was because of me, or you... or just f**king wondering in general. ....stubborn. Both of us."

"Yes. Yes I do think you forgot what you were doing. You touched me. You talk about how much you want me and have wanted me but what do you know of living with that draw? Dealing with it trying to filter truth from the pulled strings of fate? You still don't quite believe in it. How can you trust anything you're feeling especially now?" He put his hand on whatever stretch of her bare skin was within reach for emphasis. Immediately, he could feel her absorb him. The contact fusing them and the early whispers of intoxication began licking at his skin. "Do you even feel that? That's not normal, Liv. That doesn't happen between regular people. How do you know that this is what you really want? That I am what you want? Will you ever? Do I just say f**k it and take whatever I can get because I f**king need you.. as much as I ran from it and still landed right here as surely as I f**king breathe? What do we do, now?" The answer was written on his face. In the hungry way he looked at her.

Her eyes narrowed at him in thought. In pause. In comprehension, and eventually in a soft swoon as he flooded her senses with just the palm of his hand. For a moment she realized that in a way, not having been with someone else made her a less credible witness to what it was that she felt for him. But she was not unaware of the sensation that was stolen when something wanted brushed against your skin. "Writ. I feel it. I feel you. I... I have wanted people, it's not the same but I ... I mean I don't, I can't answer that. I suppose no one can -- is that what? Is that what this has been some exile and..... Writ, I touched-- should I not have touched you? You... if... you had to know that if you were here I would touch you, because I feel that across a room from you. But.... I don't just feel all of these things, Writ. Hear all of these thoughts? My thoughts are not fate, not direct hands of it... what is wanting someone? I've wanted people who have hurt me. I want to want you, Writ. You're.... I feel like you're a beautiful person, you... I trust you. I feel it and I have seen it. I'm glad you draw this deep, hungry want from me. And I f**king am glad that you feel the same way. Jesus, people should be so lucky. I don't want you to leave and take that away from me now that I have it. Maybe you just let me take whatever I can get, and we can talk about it after," her smile was a bit churlish. A bit beguiling. "I don't f**king know. But Writ," and she slipped closer, a soft slide along the couch as she pushed her fingers up his cheek and jaw into his hair, like she could paint him with those heavy, drunken, shadow-fire tongues that bloomed from the places they made contact, it was almost cruel. Like she could force him to swoon with their witchcraft. "I-- you have meant so much to me. I know that. I love your heart. It's not just reckless abandon and madness... that... that I just want you to teach me more about." She blinked softly, like it hadn't been her speaking. Something about being here made her more eloquent and lyrical. F**k. Or she was just finally at peace with all of her confessions and now she wanted to be known.

She absolutely could force him to swoon. And did. His hand reached out and unceremoniously pushed the foil wrapped contents of their mostly neglected meal to the floor. The separation of their bodies had been almost unbearable. Painfully empty in a way he'd never known. Even with her hands on him, it wasn't enough. More. He answered her questions about whether or not she should have touched him by closing that distance with a pull. "What can I teach you?" he asked softly, the weight of his voice crushed beneath her fingers in his hair. "What else should I answer for? What do you need to know?.. to know me.."

[Olivia Diogenes]

Written with Writ

There was a flutter in her. And she wondered how much she believed him. But the weight of that worry had not eclipsed her ability to just feel it. She softly prayed it never would. Softly hoped that she never fought this war that she could see in him. It would take her a long while to understand the weight of his burden. She wanted to lift it from him but she wanted it to disappear, not merely be transferred. She smiled at him, she smiled at him and she pet and pulled and played with his hair like they were teenagers, post dose, experiencing a rush of dopamine that lit like electricity in their scalp. She wanted to please him with the things they, only they, could do. So she turned and she let his quiet, half drunk questions lure her in. She kissed his mouth gently, it was led by a nuzzle of the tip of her nose and a taste stolen from him by her tongue tip. A spritely kiss. An amuse-bouche, a starter. "Just... you, Writ. I want to learn you. I want to put you on and see us, and this, and me, and you through you. ...like some messy, perverted tangle of--" she gently shook her head and kissed his mouth again. Speaking nonsense she hid it in just that want to kiss him again.


There was a pleasant buzz from her living beneath his skin. When she nuzzled, he countered, a perfect push and pull. It radiated from the nape of his neck, into his hair, into her hands, to the tip of her tongue she sampled him with, back into his mouth, into his lips that pressed against the soft space between her chin and throat, threading through her in a coiling slither until the next connection of their skin where it would transfer back and bring him her pleasure to experience as well. Like it was doing exactly what she asked. Like she willed it into existence. She wanted to try him on. Feel this, know this, see this through him.. and that snake-like current was doing just that. "Mm..Can we be a messy, perverted tangle.. over there?" he gestured to the bed he'd pulled the covers from earlier with an errant tip of his head in it's general direction. "I think your couch knife is stabbing me in the ass." His eyes had drifted closed.. an almost peaceful expression washing away all lines of worry that had formed during non-dinner. Almost peaceful in that a dimple creased into his right cheek that smacked of teenage ulterior motives.


She was vaguely aware of what it might feel like to be a drug addict. To put needle to vein. To push a plunger. Just this was made of skin and intention, the soft tangles of his hair and his mouth. She felt something animalistic rise up in her, but it was sleek and hungry. And it reacted to everything he did-- the way he brushed her skin, the way he breathed. Reactionary to a point where she could react to that gently pulsing greed. She hummed a soft thought as he spoke, "I-- I was describing feelings not actual-- sure." And then she laughed, it was gently musical. She leaned forward and fished her hand underneath him unceremoniously. Sure enough, she pulled out the butterfly knife and held it up as a reward-- but it not before she actually squeezed the curve of his ass through his boxers. The sole final guardsman of their modesty before they had taken a few steps back. She wasn't sure what she wanted, or where he was. But she smiled at him and leaned in and kissed that dimple like it asked her to, and she even tasted it with the tip of her tongue like she could mark it as hers. For a brief moment, she wondered if anyone else had done that before.

"I totally was also.. referring to feelings." One eye cracked open to watch the reaction on her face. His arms instinctively raised to guard himself from a potential smack. The other eye shooting up to join it's counterpart when she squeezed and fished the knife out from beneath him. "Oh thank god.." he remarked running his own hand down his backside with a slight rub. He propped himself up on his elbows- the angle made the muscles on his stomach contract and he started to say something else when she stuck her tongue into his dimple. By the way he laughed and pressed into the gesture of her tonguing his cheek and the subsequent transfer of her own saliva from his skin back to her jawline with a swipe of his head.. it was likely a brand new experience. "Taste good?" the sudden levity that playing created in him was remarkable. It reminded him of much simpler times. Before her. Because everything had been complicated after that point. He felt a little remorseful for a second that he never got to share that part of himself with her due to the complexity of their situation.. and whether they had both surrendered and this is what was able to come from it.. or it was another fateful ploy to urge them together, he reveled in it.. and would stay in that lightness for as long as he could.


She laughed with a similar measure of levity. Only briefly questioning the rollercoaster of feelings that had transpired. But she felt lighter. And she also knew why. She had said a hundred things to him, and though she wasn't certain how much of it had stuck, she had a feeling that he would think about this afterwards. And that he would appreciate portions of this later that he didn't now. Or things that got swept aside for more pressing impressions. "Uh huh," she had a judgemental but effervescent tone. And that affirmation was for his clarification. She was pleased, even a little happy in the wake of his laugh. Their wordless conversation was comfortable. And yes, spoke of different times. "I think I can taste your boyish charm," she pursed her lips, rolling him over her tongue. "A few bad intentions, bi-lacho, mmm... vaida, vesh... yes. I approve," she smiled at him as she lolled her head and made a nuzzle of his features, his neck and his shoulder. Eventually she tossed her mane of pale hair, and somehow she made the motion bleed into another. She climbed into his lap again, making him rearrange to accommodate her and not listening to his request in the slightest. She looped arms around the back of his neck and pressed her brow to his forehead. There was a moment of quiet, but it was without gravity. So much so that eventually she flicked her tongue to lick the tip of his nose. And she did it for him because she just laughed softly and waited to see his reaction. "Many types of feelings, Writ. Many."


"No good?" he scoffed.. "I'm plenty good. I don't know what you're talking about.. or who has been telling you these lies." He smirked and crinkled his nose up at the lick, not so subtly dodging the bad intentions assessment. He maneuvered with her seamlessly. The saddle of his lap was custom made for her and the way his body responded to her proximity immediately made it clear how it felt about things. Her crown to his eased that lustful response into something more gentle. Something softer. Peace. Love. The easy kind that warmed you instead of crushing you. "Wha--" began his protest, one that quickly died in the crook of her arm as he rubbed his now lick-slicked nose against his sweater her small frame was swimming in. He resurfaced from the soft grey material and watched her intently. Her eyes.. her mouth moving.. her eyes again. The stress on her last word flipped yet another switch. Many feelings indeed. Hands slid beneath the sweater and pressed her to him as close as possible. His mouth went to her neck.. a kiss pressed hot into her skin between each word. "Tell me. One. Just one."


Her laughter was like sewing sound to the comfort of their mingling forms. "You, these are just things I see myself. You can't hide from me, Writ," she twisted that into something just a little dangerous, but she still laughed softly. Convivial in their games of possession, playing for keeps. Just like the way she pet his hair, gentle, reassuring, but also luxurious in how she mingled her fingers among the locks. She swam in him, poured him in touch and scent and taste around every plane she could offer. She drifted away a moment as he nuzzled against her, and as her fingers sifted through the brown tangles. Her body received his hands in a deepening arch of her back, her long, lean torso curving forward to press against him and let her skin beg for more...but her hips in his lap just pivoted and pressed. She was lost in between a desire to give and a desire to take.

She liked the way his fingers felt on her skin. She watched him and started sifting through words, but found it hard to settle upon just one, "when you touch me.... sometimes it feels like a wave of electricity fans out from your fingertips, like a dull pulse of hypersensitivity, I feel like you leave the pattern of your fingertips on my flushed, tender skin, and that heat feels like all of my cells drank electric-whisky, and it's washing through them, licking up my body and lighting up pieces of me that react to fire, sometimes ice, and then that...." she was reaching behind her to take one of his hands, to thread their fingers together as she pulled it around her petal-soft side and up her stomach, "just doubles and exponentially expands to burn and heat my veins, my soul," she was pulling his hand higher, over her ribs, "finding places, pink places," she turned her chin, leaning down to hover her mouth above his, "that bloom...and harden...and ache in ways that my mind just," she spread her fingers, which spread his, and she fed him the soft undercurve of one of her breasts so she could lead him to the hard, tingling flesh of her nipple that nearly painfully reacted to him and herself, the more she kept talking. "...converts into this--" she brushed her mouth against him, exhaling against his lips, "haunting of my skin, and tumbling thoughts that wander over pictures of you that come in flashes-- how you look in the sunlight, or in this apartment, right now, a moment from now-- ...but whisky-warm, thought-drunk. That's one. That's one of the feelings that distracts me. ...but that's just your fingertips, when it's your mouth..or your lips.." she didn't so much as sigh as ...change. Her skin flickered and tensed. No words. Because it was there on her neck where he had kissed her and she didn't even know the woman who wanted more of that.

His lips parted, eyes glazing over and darkening with a wild dilation. This was beyond thought-drunk. Her words entered through his pores, flooding him with a chemical high that people die chasing. It ignited nerve endings all over his body. He could see each thing she described.. feel them under his hands, his fingertips, through his blood, the meat of him. And in his bones. They pulsed with the rhythm of her. The light shift of her hips. The music of her motion, of her voice, her breath. Exhale. Open those hazel eyes that threatened to close, keep them on her. Keep breathing. Keep time. His hand left bare on her breast gently lifted and pressed and kneaded her flesh in the cup formed by his palm and those electric fingertips. He kissed her. Hard. Tongue snaking in like that exquisite current, massaging, entangling in slow coils against her own before taking a small wedge of her bottom lip between his teeth. He groaned into her mouth before moving his kiss in a slow sweep down her chin, throat and the center of the V cutout in the sweater that he had used his free hand to pull from her shoulder. His mouth found where his hand had left little white marks from indentation on her flesh and he ran the velvet pad of his tongue, rounded and gentle, across the swell of her nipple in a languid lap. He blew gently on the saliva that left it cold and slick watching it react beneath the cool breeze of breath. His hips retracted slightly. Shifted. Made room for the uncomfortable strain that his boxers kept under wraps. "Liv." he breathed against that beautiful curve tucked possessively in his hand. "Keep talking."


She should have known better. Who wasn't she believing? Him? Her? For every surge of sensation he dipped down into, she reached in after and took the same dive. But whether it was up, or down, it didn't matter. It was deeper. It was more of him around her. Her fingers loosened their tangle with his as his hand caught fire with her words. Took a dark sentience. But she did not leave him. Just loosened. Eventually her fingers drizzled down the back of his hand and loosely held his wrist. Just so she could feel the way her wild, deep breaths moved his hand - up and down, molded to her flesh and bone. Those breaths caught and held as he kissed her, and a soft pant escaped between their smeared-against mouths, lacing that infinitely hungry way they crushed together with more sensations made of them. A quiet sound, like a whimper, shared her desire from her mouth to his as she pushed forward like she could chase his tongue with hers because...because... because she wanted it back. Didn't want it to stop. She crooned quietly as he made her lift her chin, extend her neck, feel him... "God. Writ. Like liquid, rolling flame, your breath and the way you breathe against my skin," her body shifted in his lap, closer, nuzzling against him, against secret gestures and aches that...if she rolled her shoulder to let the sweater shift, she rolled her sigh to press the angle of her hip against him. His hands, god, his hands. A want for a want, "you creep under my skin, Writ. Like a hot blade, so soft, and aiming for deep parts of me. Sometimes I feel that when you look at me, like you are looking for what I am made of, and it feels like your mouth wants to pull it from my skin, draw the sense of me into your mouth, and in my mouth you look, finding it on my tongue.... Mm." she caught her breath because it quivered as her skin reacted to the lick of his tongue, the pearl of her nipple going tight. She felt half mad in the way he invaded her in nearly every way "god -- I f**king ...I want you so much it hurts, like you can pierce me with your tongue, too, and ride through my ribs to my heart, but the heat just spirals out and shatters into darker things, things with gravity and weight that unfurl through me like waves of inky want and I," how she rolled her hips into him, unintentional, illustrating how far through her he could go... "you find every part of me, and I want you to fill every part of me. I ...can barely explain how perfectly full and yet empty you make me realize I am as you make me writhe and burn under my skin for you."

"You don't have to. I can feel it too." his voice was low, graveled with an aching desire and he pressed it against her sternum, that smooth porcelain space between her breasts."F**k.." he groaned, eyes squeezing shut.. If she could feel what he was feeling there was a mushroom cloud rising from the core of him, threatening to obliterate every boundary he had ever put in place. It swelled- filling up every gap, every chink. It hovered in an echo on his skin with a tremble and shudder before exploding off of him and into the air around them.

"I know," like a soft prayer as her chin lowered and she spoke from within the confines of her honey hair. "But I... it's like a trance... it just moves through me, from you, through me, to you, like through my mouth I..." still unable to let go of the comet tail of that state, of that incantation. "You possess me, I want you to. I want to know the me and the you that I...I..." Her skin bore the heat of him, though the dark things churned through her veins, the heat of him felt like it flushed her pink. There was a transformation into a woman that demanded him.

A warm swirl of need and desperation. His arms tightened around her and he stood. "I can't..." he panted.. "I need you."

Her limbs clung to him as he rose with her, and she pressed the side of her mouth against his cheek, near his ear. "I need you, too," she spoke from the center of her, the voice of hers was black velvet, thick and rich with want.

The surface of his skin that had radiated that basking cloud grew cold and freckled in goosebumps. "To taste you. To feel what you feel like from the inside."

She shivered and had a soft pant, undeniably approval of the words he said. Yes. Yes.... she needed him to fill and flood the places that keened for him, it made so much sense there was almost a moment where she was afraid of it being over before it began. "I want you to ....to ...I want to feel this run through us, I---" it was that same request, just purred at him differently.

Writ moved with her wrapped around him the short distance to the bed and pressed his knees down onto the mattress- peeled her arms from around his neck to lay her flat on her back in the very center. Those poor.. poor shorts. He glanced down at them and ripped them from her hips- definitely not as gentle as the first time he had removed them that night. "Ov yilo isi?" Permission. He needed her permission.

As he laid her down and stripped the soft fabric from her, she arched her back, squirming her assistance but she leaned up and curled her delicate fingers in his waist and pulled the clothing down over his hips even before she dragged her parted lips against his question, "Yes, Writ, yes. With everything I am, and was, and will be, I want this. I want you," the girl softly burned, a pulsing ache that with each wave hoped to find him closer. Hoped to strip him more naked. Hoped to pull him inside. Her wilderness called for him. Begged. Like all her body knew was how to miss him. How much she had missed him.

Palms and fingertips gliding across her skin gently parted her legs once they were free of her clothing. Thumbs pressed lightly into the small indentations where straight-aways met curves. He hooked his arms around her legs and pulled her closer as he bowed himself, slowly lowering his body onto hers. His weight and warmth held partially on the hands he moved to press into the mattress on either side of her. His lips crested hers. Kissing the words from her mouth like they were sustenance. Breaking only for quiet demands. "Put your hands on me." he said, in that unobtrusively commanding way of him. His hips barely pressed up and against hers, embossing greedily swelling flesh to the soft wet heat between her legs- he wouldn't enter her yet. He wanted to feed her the experience with just a gentle introduction of simple skin to skin contact.

Her eyelids felt heavy as his fingertips spread over her skin. It felt like she was being drawn into a dark undertow that asked her softly, with susurrous syllables to ....give. Give. Even while promising that she would be taking. And taking everything. Perhaps it was strange how natural it came to her. As he had said... How she reacted. How her hips moved, how she shifted. Her knees bent as she dragged her inner thighs up his body, creating a cradle of her. He barely had to ask because she could barely withstand the small distances between them -- her hands lifted, pressing up his ribs, his chest, one gliding up his neck and into his hair. She pulled his mouth into her, twining her fingers in his hair. It was a little rough, but her fetish for holding him was already deep rooted. And she was aware at how it felt to have the echoes of touch run down the back of the neck, flooding out into other places. She wrapped the back of his leg with one of hers, nuzzling their hips together. It would have been more wanton if the sigh she had was less coated in a thick, comfortable bliss that she licked into his mouth. Her other hand swam up the surface of his back, pressing her fingertips into his flesh. Covetous and clinging. Her words were deep and hungry, with a greed for experience and knowledge that he may have been prescient of as a youth, but he experienced now. "Feel me, too, Writ. It's not just me who hasn't done this before..." and like a natural spell crafter, she bit his lower lip with her teeth, and curled her fingers in his hair so he felt the dark thunder of her roll through him.

"Fu--... mmf." That bite almost crippled him. His eyes squeezed shut and he shifted, moving his bracing to one forearm just above her shoulder, his hand sweeping into her hairline at the back of her neck, the scoop of his palm sealing against her like he was jealous of the pillow beneath it- he had to become the barrier between them.. and he tugged reflexively with a sharp, brief exhale. He swallowed hard and when he opened his eyes to look down at her his brow raised slightly and an almost amused smile ghosted his lips. "Oh.. is that how it is?" The hand that wasn't cradling her head culled her slender side in a slightly rougher sweep. Possessive. It raised the soft sweater fabric up over her breasts and when it neared her neck he simply said "Lift." The look in his eyes slightly darker. Like she prodded a wild animal.


The lips that separated from his were tilted, slightly. It wasn't just a smile. And the reaction for the way he caught his words was the simple catch of her lower lip in her white teeth. The gesture captured and kept a quiet, maybe even just a little dangerous, coo at the back of her throat as he caught her up. It was intimate in how it all watched him. How it reacted and revelled in him and drank his tiniest responses with a simple gratification. Somehow their playfulness met in the middle and made a bit of a game of this. A pleasure game. "Mmhmm," she said between a smile that touched her eyes when she saw the look on his features. Though it waned some when he made her release him, letting him go had never been a plan, even if just to remove her clothes. Which, she did. She let him. She obeyed. But her arms never settled further than the back of his neck, and she pulled him down against her. "Put your hands on me," she said with an upward tilted glare through her pale lashes before she ducked in to lick the side of his throat like more of an animal than a girl.

His shoulders coated with a crackle of cold electricity that ran down his arms and forced his hand to obey her mirrored command. The arch of it leapt from his fingertips along the side of her face when he put his mouth back to hers, hand continuing on to trail down her jaw and throat, collarbone, the torturous elevation that landed his palm hot against the still aching swell of her nipples. A warm groan and nuzzle when it reluctantly left to continue to her ribs. Her side...Hip... Thigh.. where it would finally break inward -- palm up.. because that's how we touch wild things. His hips lifted far enough away from her to allow the pads of his fingers passage between them. His thumb stroked downward once against ---, coaxing it to reveal itself. Lids heavy but eyes open to watch her react to every sensation.. was curious but also certain. Confident. You like this. I know you do. Show me.

She closed her eyes when he touched her. Supplicant. Content. So very grateful for the way he wove this moment, this experience. Her mouth parted as they kissed. Her gently savage tongue licked his lips, their insides, his teeth, looking to be let in. But to be let in just long enough to share the way she extended and enjoyed the feel of his hand as it moved down her body. Her kiss slid unattended to the side, to his cheek, leaving a warm inhale of rewarded distraction along his skin. Her breath was a landscape of hills and valleys, crests and choruses created by his hands. Every inhale reactionary, every exhale exhaultant. Behind him her hands slid their soft weight in ways that traced the lines of his bones and his muscles. Her fingertips prayed at the altar of him in a way that sought to define him, in this moment, as hers. Even as she shivered as he excited pink parts just to leave them for others. In the deep recesses of her consciousness her body had muscle memories carried through generations. Animals. Like the way her legs parted further and her hips rolled her vulnerable into his hand. She caught a moan in her mouth out of reservation, a moment of eye contact before she let it pour out and let her eyes close in an ecstasy that pleased but ached. And ached deeply within her. With a feral grace she pulled his hair to expose his neck where her kisses were messy and subsumed his skin into her mouth like he had woken a hunger in her that could only be appeased by the way he tasted. Her feminine voice ran layers of tones as she pressed ripples of lust into his throat with her soft lips. A leaden pulse of desire sunk into his neck through their emotive connection, and this desire had the piercing, fanged heat of something new --in all the powerful implications that had. Mine. Yours. Here. Now. Yes.

[Writing the Bullet]

[written with Liv's player.]

The sound of the wild dogs that lived in the burrows outside of the kumpania, kicked up to a loud roar in the dead of night. Startled by the familiar but.. historic keening, a younger version of himself jerked violently awake.

It only took him a couple of seconds, this time, to orient himself within the dreamscape and he reached back a surreptitious hand to mentally give himself a consolation pat, clearly pleased with his own progress.

Liv had left three nights prior to scope out important pieces of a job she was insistent upon. A job and a scoping, that he had been adamant against, to which.. she had promptly told him to "go shove it".. in not as many words...and refused to even let him escort her. It was still early-on in the pregnancy.. but.. he couldn't help how uneasy it made him that she was going to be out there alone, hopping across rooftops and dodging who even knows what kind of nefarious types.

She reminded him that it'd been that way for years.

"I have to do this myself, Writ. ...I... ourselves."

She had warned him in the way that nails screeching down a chalkboard encouraged a cringe.. the way that tempted him to keep pushing and hold down on that particular button.. the way that always stoked dangerous fires in the spirit of challenge that they sometimes presented eachother.

Liv could watched it.. bubble beneath his skin and she leveled him with her best Don't you do it face, which... he met with a fleeting internal struggle to the likes of: Oh, I'm GONNA do it.. you're not the boss of me.. and for two whole seconds he rolled with the mischievous impulse to play mad Liv-scientist.. just to see what she would do. The moment passed quickly beneath her withering, albeit amused, gaze and he was wise enough not to.. at least this time, ultimately landing on: Eh.. who the fuck am I kidding? You ARE the boss of me. coupled with a dumb, love-sick grin.

"We'll be safe.. I promise.." she continued, her tone softening. Olivia's fingertips had splayed out across her barely-showing belly, in emphasis of the we.. that did not include him... this time. "I promise. It's nothing flashy... I'll be fast. ...and careful. I just... I don't want to worry about you, too.. you're not as sneaky as me." The teasing grin was meant to soothe him a little. It worked too.. for the most part.

He'd been having this same exact dream every night since she departed.. a kiss left on his lips, and a bag slung over her shoulder.
_______

Young Writ glanced down to his not-as-defined chest and he pressed his mouth to a crown.. a sleep rumpled mop.. as it were.. of glistening pale hair.

Liv, like she never actually had been during that time, was tangled around him, snuggled close, skin to skin.

He had stayed.

Or rather.. in this scenario.. he never would have had to leave.

This was what would have been.. perhaps. If everything had been done right from the beginning: Languid coiling in a much larger tent than the one he'd left.. now complete with lavish appointings.. and a cooing child in a basinet; guarded by a familiar wolf at it's base.

"Writ!" The flap to his tent flew open.. and an adolescent Chaya appeared.. urgent in the doorway. For the shortest of beats, she was a haunting image of distress.. a look she could never hold on to for long before breaking into her regularly scheduled, wide, toothy grin. She'd gotten distracted by the baby and the low growl of Ruv, whom she immediately growled back at.

Writ could have sworn it was almost as if they laughed at each other afterward. Like old friends. A repetitious game between them.

"You give me my baby you old curmudgeon!" She teased the animal.. who in response, rolled onto his back for belly rubs.

"Chaya.." her name rolled out of him in a tone that attempted to reel her into the reason for her arrival.

Liv stirred and turned to press her spine against his side, pulling the fur laden blankets over her head-- He took the opportunity she presented in her uncoiling to rise out of bed.

"Right." Chaya said, standing up, eyes darting back and forth between a seriousness in the face of her brother, and a silly adoration in the grey/blue gaze of her niece. "Something has riled the dogs.. Dat said we need to go look.. and by we.." She did her customary brow-waggle at him. "He means you."

Writ laughed softly, coupling it with a groan and rub of his hand over his face that muddled it into a strange gurgling sound. "Fine" he conceded. "Watch the baby?" Like he needed to ask. Clearly that had been her intent from the start. He glanced back over his shoulder at the curled lump of a girl beneath their shared covers. "Let her sleep.. she had a long night." The smirk at the end of that statement curled his sister's lip and got a "Gross.." in response.. which was precisely what he had been aiming for.

Pulling his shirt over his head, and boots onto his feet, he made his way towards the tent flap.

"Ruv.." he said quietly. A single command that really didn't even need to be given. The wolf had already jumped to his feet.. ready to run with him through the vesh like the pack animals they'd become.

What stopped the pair of them from disappearing into the cold, howling night.. and brought him back to reality.. was meeting a firm..

No.

and then..

I need him.

.. in the eyes of his daughter.
________

The strangely visual sound echoed in his wakefulness.

And then repeated, three nights in a row, when he'd finally be granted the mercy of sleep.. something that was rare to come by when the two of them were apart.

Every morning, he went over it. Combed through it trying to glean some mystical meaning behind it.. but without Liv.. it was like his cosmic understanding of things of that nature had just.. evaporated.. carted off with her.. wherever she was.
________

"Mon amieeeeee!" Marguerite squeaked at him and flung her arms around his waist in the 2.5 it took him to get inside the patisserie.

Writ Oofed at the impact and gave her a one-armed hug in return.

"Qu'est-ce qui cuisine, gamin?"

"Pastries.." she answered blandly, releasing him. "Sit, sit.. I'll bring you your disgusting sugarless black beverage.."

He blew out an exhale.. the dream still frustrating the recesses of his mind.. like something you KNOW exists but just can’t seem to find.. which.. for Writ.. was quite possibly one of the most antagonizing feelings in the world, given his occupation.

He plopped onto a stool, elbows bent against the counter, temples in the spread of pressed fingertips.

".. she's gone?" The mousy girl asked, knowing things in the way that reminded him so much of his sister.

"Is it that obvious?" he grumbled.

Marguerite giggled and set a steaming mug of black coffee in front of him. "You always get.." There wasn't a word for it apparently.. so instead.. she scrunched up her nose, squished her eyes shut and drooped her mouth into an exaggerated frown, to illustrate her meaning.

Writ laughed in spite of the offense he maybe should have taken… but he.. was a bit ridiculous whenever circumstance separated him from Liv. He vaguely wondered if that would ever get easier.. and just as quickly decided that it likely would not.

"Here! You know what always cheers me up?" slender fingers with pale pink painted nails bedecked with hearts pushed a flyer across the counter towards him. "They're holding adoptions today.. I can't have animals in my apartment.. but.. sometimes I go just to cheer up the ones that are left behind."

Warm hazel scanned the piece of paper that had been wedged directly into his line of sight.. skeptical of the idea.. until.. in the bottom right corner, his eyes landed on a picture of a belly up puppy.. and he heard, clear as day..

No. I need him.

If he had moved any faster, there would have been a cartoon-worthy poof of smoke that led to the glass door of the patisserie that had just slammed with a jingle behind him. Marguerite glared at him through the barrier of it with her palms pressed into her hips and a pointed widening of her chocolate hued eyes.

He'd owe her for the coffee he just bailed on.
______

Ethel rolled and steadied with a soft purr into a makeshift parking space in the otherwise overflowing lot. Her sleek matte black frame eased between a 20-min curb and a mini-van that was bouncing up and down with the hyperactivity of Golden Retrievers in the back seat.

Writ dismounted and pulled the helmet from his head to be greeted by the cacophonous sound of dogs barking.

Like the ones from his dream.

He sat the safety gear on the seat and gave it a little pat.. as if telling it not to go anywhere.. before winding his way through a rapidly gathering group of people at the front gate.

"Thank you! Thank you!" a red-vested volunteer shouted. "Thank you ALL so much for coming out to our Clear.. the.. Shellllter eveeeeent!!" The last word of his greeting was belted out with an operatic vibrato complete with a side of Jazz Hands.

Writ's mouth tilted in amusement, queuing up for entrance while.. George? If the name tag he was squinting at was considered legible..yes.. George.. finished his spiel; his hands shoved into his pockets and a perpetual patience settling in at his shoulders.

Eventually, the crowd was given their clamored for admittance and Writ did his very best not to step on any of the small children running rampant in gleeful weaves between the legs of the larger bodies around them.

"Ok.. I'm here. Where to first?" he asked, rhetorically addressing the dream-echo of his daughter's voice.

Row after row there were dogs hopping and barking and twirling and jumping.. some snarling.. but all in some way engaged with the flood of humans outside their kennels. The sheer number of homeless animals in this place was heartwrenching to say the least. It tugged on every fiber of Writ's being and he found his fingers itching.. to let them all out.

After crouching down at nearly every kennel to give each of them a proper amount of respect.. Writ found him. The little ruv-baby from the flyer in Marguerite's shop.

Hazel met the mismatched gaze of brown and ice blue and a small smile tugged at worn lips.

He was determined to find George, the kennel attendant, immediately.

Incidentally, the man was right behind him… with a family in tow.

"Yes!! That one! The one with the funny eyes!" a small voice squeaked.

Writ turned in time to see a woman and her daughter approach the cage he was squatted in front of.

The girl must have been six or seven years old. Twin braids capped on the tail ends with pink and yellow ribbons that swished against her houndstooth coat as she hopped up and down in excitement.

"'Scuse me, sir.." George said, swinging baby-Ruv's kennel door open—simultaneously, effectively, shooing Writ out of the way.

The little pup ran out of it's cage.. and straight into the child's open and waiting arms.

Writ felt his heart sink, just as he rose to his full height. The juxtaposed elevations of the two movements causing a queasy sort of feeling to whir in his gut.

He'd dallied. He'd waited too long.. and just when he was about to spiral into a bit of wallowing..

Not him... an echoic voice said.

Writ didn't really have time to react to it before a tiny grey-blue paw shot out from between the bars of the kennel just above where the puppy had been, and dug it's little needle-like claws into the exposed skin of his forearm.

Him.

______

The ride home was uneventful. Writ had stopped several times during his route to peak inside the saddle bag on Ethel's left flank, just to make sure the little dude was ok. His mini, sleek, cadet blue body was sprawled lazily, every time, and he looked incredibly non-plussed for all the noise and motion.

The last time Writ had lifted the flap to check on him, his large gold eyes simply looked back up at him, one paw curled at his muzzle and his bubblegum-pink tongue was sticking out mid-lick. You could almost hear the.. "What?" in that expression. It made deciding that worrying about the wee creature was not something that was necessary.. a bit easier to do. They made it the rest of the way home without further interruption.

______

After setting up the small amount of supplies the shelter had given to him (a trip to the pet store was certainly going to be needed in the next couple of days) the duo had eaten lunch together, played some video games and a round of chase the laser. At this point in time. they were lounging lazily on the sofa, sleeping images of eachother in form. Writ's socked feet were propped up on the coffee table. His body reclined back and clothed casually in a pair of black mesh shorts and a plain white t-shirt. He was asleep. They both were. Writ with his neck fallen and resting against the ridge of the couchback.. kitten in a squished wedge between his hip and the sofa's arm.

Liv was tired. There were several reasons for this. For some reason, this excursion took a bit out of her. Mentally and physically. It was a very important piece of something she had been working on since ....England. The first step in a multi-step puzzle that would end with what she hoped to be ... retirement. This was hers. It wasn't something she was paid for.. at least not by someone that hired her. This job was hers. And she had been waiting years. It was the only reason she had gone. And it was likely why she hadn't explained much. But not having information from others, ...she didn't doubt herself but... it was just a little extra stressful. She was so glad to be home though. She turned her key in the lock.

The door was silent, as always. She stepped in and she could feel a stillness in the apartment. She could feel it silent, but breathing. She could feel his heart. She placed her bag down near the door, and slid off her coat. She padded her way quietly through the apartment. She was about to turn into the bedroom when she stopped. Like something tickled the back of her mind. Oh. Yes. Right. And she decided to follow it. She wove her way through some of the furniture that littered the loft on the way to the sofa. She was so .....happy... to see him...that she flitted over and wove her arms around his neck to press her features into his neck and hair and just sorta...strangle hug him...albeit loosely and more encroaching than abrupt... and just.... breathe him in with a long Mmmmmmm.

Maybe she found him mid-dream. Maybe it was just that same velvet current that always brought them together. Either way, his body reacted to her instinctually, and his mouth did too when it opened to let out a satisfied, and sleepy, little moan of a sigh. "You're home.." he rasped groggily, not bothering to open his eyes, just.. nuzzling.. into the nest of hair that enveloped him in her stranglehold while he wrapped his warm arms around her tightly, like he could pull her right into him. "God I missed you.. I've been having the craziest dreams and..." he tilted his head back and opened his eyes, using his forefinger and thumb to fish her chin out of his neck so he could see her. Somewhere.. between the warm cradle of his side and the couch cushion.. a small body had stirred. His little feet stretched out of the crevice in a lazy splay of webbed digits, admittedly a few more then were customary. The swish in the movement of blonde threads when Writ tilted Liv's head back was far too tempting to keep the brave lil' beast hidden in the comfort he'd dozed off in... and he launched himself.. stiff.. back arched.. then up onto his hind feet, swatting at the flurry of her hair from an otherwise unencumbered spot on Writ's thigh. Apparently the creature decided he'd finish the sentence for him. ".. and.. Um.. I did a thing.."

She cooed and purred and had an entire host of content noises as he moved and shifted and received her. "I am... I'm home. ...I love you... I missed you..." their words overlapped each other like Shakespearean actors that had been coached to create an echo at the perfect timing. She sunk into him and inhaled more of him just so she could feel his body crush against the curve of her ribs. "Dreams ...love....what..... I--" She felt the tug on her hair and if he thought her cooing had some burden of yesteryears to it...the squee-squeal he got just then was a bit intense. "What is...what... You---" she looked from the kitten to him, to the kitten, to him... "You replaced me with someone more adorable!" she cupped her hand and reached down for the little thing and placed her palm on it's little head and gave a light little shake that was meant to topple the little creature over with a slightly antagonistic pet. "What..what........were you lonely?" She kissed him then. And she wouldn't let him answer, she'd kiss him again and again and again.

Writ laughed. The highpitched.. whatever the hell it was.. that careened out of her like someone squished it right from her very core, tickled his skin and his heart gave a little harder of a thud-thud. He chewed his lip while she processed what was happening. The little beast wobbled under her hand then promptly climbed into the gap between them.. nestled right next to her belly.. where he was meant to be. Writ did his best to explain between her barrage of kisses but eventually gave up and just wound his fingers into the mop he'd been dreaming about for days. He let her invade his mouth. Breaking for air only out of necessity, at which point, he held her back from him by both shoulders with an amused wideness to his eyes. "Nothing is more adorable than you." he pronounced gravely. That sorted, he continued.. "I was lonely though.. come to think of it. If only in my waking moments. You were with me every night otherwise. I had a recurring dream.. and we were.. still young but.. married.. and.. she was there.." Writ placed his fingers between them.. having to nudge a nestled kitten slightly out of the way so he could touch the place he always did when he spoke of their unborn child. "I think he's.. for her.."

She kissed him nearly furiously, especially when he laughed. She forwent the petting of the kitten to touch him and keep their mouths together for as long as she could get away with. She flicker-licked him as he spoke and pulled away. Again when he said the word 'adorable' that came with another giggling-squee type sound...because she'd never been called adorable by anyone before him, and it was such a damn delight. He made her feel so fucking special. "Honey.... baby..." she said, her voice dripping a thick, sweet concern when he admitted he was lonely and seemed to come to that conclusion in this moment. "Oh, Writ, was it a nice dream then? It was all right? It kept you company? .. young but married...mmmm....You dreamed that oh....." She looked down and then up and then down. She pet the kitten and a bright contentment spread across her features but she changed gears by taking his hand in hers and spreading his fingers over lower stomach. She pressed just a bit, illustrating the subtle change in texture, her body a little ...harder... and the very faint accent of a curve that wasn't there before. She smiled at him. "I didn't dream of kittens or babies but I felt you every night as I fell asleep and it was awful in the morning when you weren't there, Writ." There was a gentle furrow of her brow but it was meant to make him smile. "What's his name? Why do you feel like he's for her? For what?" And she couldn't shake a little worry from her voice. A subtle chill crept through her as she remembered the role that Ruv had in her life. And how she always felt like he was the only reason she was still here.....

He loved when she did that Honey.. baby.. bubala thing and it showed in the smile that crept in-- kind of like the contentment dawning on her face. Writ nuzzled her. Cause it seemed like the only thing to do to show her how much he meant everything that came out of his mouth, and everything that hadn't... and because answering all of her questions would keep his mouth too busy to express it via other means. "It was beautiful... and yes.. it kept me company while it lasted.. but much like you, I was left feeling empty when I woke up without you next to me. This.. both of us traveling all the time thing.. we need to start talking about starting our own.. firm.. based here.. together.." half of his sentence was lost in a rambling murmur of cuddling into her neck and as far down her chest as he could reach. When he resurfaced.. his train of thought crept back onto her track. "Let's.. talk about that.. later.. just.. for now.. Kitten.. he doesn't have a name.. and.. My dream.. she told me. Only I didn't know she meant this little thing specifically until he clawed me in the arm at the shelter." A fingertip tapped the kitten in the head affectionately as it continued to try and squirm between his hand and Liv's belly. "I know that must sound crazy.. I'm hearing voices now.."

There was lip biting and hair petting and wandering hands eventually that found him all over, sometimes found themselves and wove their way back again. That smile she kissed from his face and she pulled his into her neck and her hair. They wound around each other like animals, conscious of the little life that bopped around between them in his lap. How much she pressed up against him and nuzzled him with all of her was complete and somewhat obscene. "A firm..." she rolled it over her tongue and envisioned what that would mean. She clutched the nape of his neck as his features wandered and she pulled him into her chest in a way that was honestly meant to make him laugh, she even twisted in a jostle of side-to-side that was on this side of obscene...while clothed. She laughed softly before releasing him to drag her features through his beautiful hair and kiss him through those dark tresses. "Yes, we can do that...and when this is done we can ....buy ..like...respectable....yes...we can talk about... Do we name him at all or wait? That's a long time to wait but..." Liv pet the little thing and leaned into Writ's chest as she leaned down to look at the little guy. "You actually ...heard something?" she rose her brow and peeked up at him......and then shifted her hands to grip the sides of his clothes and peel him out of his shirt as she explained "show me where the little beast hurt you..." even if she could see it without..it was all an excuse to begin undressing him. "Maybe he's a little kor, too."

He let her words and adorations, her tributes as it were, roll over him like waves. Let them tumble around with his own like frolicking reunited foxes disturbing the regal quiet of the vesh. He did miss her. Maybe even more than he had realized. That sudden need to have her touch every spare inch of him just to keep him from floating away.. it felt like he'd disintegrate.. evaporate really, if she didn't. So when she pulled the shirt up and over his head, he truly didn't care about the reason. He just needed to feel her. Everywhere. A hand went to his left arm and he tapped at the little paw shaped cluster of wounds the kitten had carved in earlier. Narrowing down their conversation field to one topic, he'd respond while she ministered or did whatever she was going to do with his injuries, "Yes, I heard her.. in my dream she said she needed him.. only she was talking about Ruv then.. though he was also in my dream."

She peeled away the shirt-casing of him that defied her need to feel him and touch him. As it rose high enough to allow her, she smeared her cheek against his chest and rounded the curve of his shoulder with the explorer that was her mouth. She kissed the slopes and leylines as she pried his hands free and dropped the shirt on the top of the sofa where it hung like a discarded thought. "Tell me more about your dream, my love," she purred into the slope of his neck as her hands blindly stroked down his arm to where she had seen him indicate but was too lulled by the warm scent of him rising off his bare body to be waylaid until just now. A loose wrap of fingers allowed her to smooth the pad of her thumb over the little Braille scabs. She murmured a soft empathic sound into the slope of his neck before she pulled herself away to see his arm. But this just wouldn't do. She twisted, scooped up the little creature, pulled it in her lap and then pulled herself in his lap, her shoulder against his, her thighs draped over his.... she sat across him, pulling his forearm into her lap and then reversing her hold to pull it to her mouth. She kissed the evidence of the assault and then leaned up to kiss his chin. Most of her was calming, settling...slowing down but that didn't mean she stopped or stilled. Her hand crept up his arm to hook the curve of his shoulder and her mouth pressed to the front of the one she leaned against, kissing the curve of his arm where it began and trying not to interrupt him with her mouth. She clutched his frame to her like she fed from it, and she did. But the reverence was both divine and devout- bestowing but also drinking from him during the very libations she poured all over him. Every kiss was a weight or an instrument of grounding. She reconnected them and promised to hold him together, and hold him down here with the reality of their little family that grew bigger by the week. "I love you," she whispered as he spoke, and sewed it into his skin with a string of wet kisses that would follow the guidance of his form. She let her heart ache for a moment, allowing it to awake from the slumber it slept when away from him. It thundered through her as it freed itself from the bonds she kept it in while away, necessary for her to train and work and do. There was an echo of an inhale in her chest, it might have sounded sad...but in truth, it was just her coming back to life.

He knew that sadness, in a manner of speaking. Just now, it was in the way his eyes closed when she pressed and rolled her cheek over him, crawled into him and made a nest of his body and limbs, wrapped herself in the draping security of his affection and adoration and sheer, abundant love of her-- you'd have thought something awful had happened. The pleasure in that embossing, the love she returned to him.. folded into him like some graceful, instinctual, inherent dance with each swipe of her skin, each tiny gesture, and her profession of exactly what she was painting all over the canvas of him.. was so great, so powerful.. that it was simply and unavoidably painful. A throbbing ache, one that spoke of all the years gone without the very touch that fed and famished them-- one rekindled by her three-day absence, rose up to meet her in every connection of skin on skin.. a scenario that was unearthing itself in his mind as whole-y, and holy, necessary. The fingers of the hand she'd kissed fell to the hem of her shirt and he inched it up along her side with a spider-walk of covetous digits, coaxing her to undress as he told her about his dream. "We were in the kumpania.. young.. and married.. and a family already.. like I said before.. It started every night just the same.. Dogs barking outside of camp. I woke in my tent.. only it was much less.. juvenile. I was naked but draped in fur blankets and on my shoulder.." he paused then to crack an eye open and give her a crooked smile to indicate the adornment he was referring to. "You and your messy blonde mane. Before I could do anything to turn this dream into something a little less kid-friendly, Chaya burst in.. exchanged some playful banter with Ruv who'd been guarding..." he paused.. leaning a shoulder into a slight tangent. "We really do need to decide on a name.. I know some people wait until after the kid is born but.. we talk about her so often it feels kind of wrong to just refer to her as.. her.. it's like... one step up from referring to her as it. You know?" Writ chewed on the idea.. momentarily side-tracked by the absurdity that he could almost have a conversation with this being, their daughter, not even fully formed yet, and not know what to call her when most people at this stage were only just now finding out the good news. "Any way.. Ruv was guarding baby-bean's crib.. Chaya convinced me to go out to see what the fuss was about, apparently at my father's behest.. and I was going to take the wolf with me.. didn't even have to ask him.. he just.. kinda popped right up like it was a routine or something." He shrugged then with a dazed sort of comfort resting on his features. "And she.. baby.. told me no.." he laughed.. full bellied. Because if nothing else, he was absolutely sure this would be the way of things to come. "She said she needed him. And then... I woke up. Everytime. Not knowing what the hell it meant." Writ pressed his lips to her temple and whispered against it in the safety of her hair "And you weren't here to tell me. And I love you too.. and I missed you.. and need you.. and want you.. and god I'm so glad you're home." Each small spoken segment was accompanied by a coiling of his body around her, tighter, and tighter, like he could absorb her from where she sat perched in his lap and that that would somehow make everything better and whole and sensible again. It wasn't sadness, really.. no.. It was relief.

Her shoulders concaved a little as she felt the emotional jumpstart in her chest. The want and need of him was so evident that there was a little chill that ran through her like she was already naked and it was cold. As though vulnerability was exposure and one minute her armor was there and the next it was gone, like vapor, disintegrated into dust motes in her library-loft. The warm, old-book coloured light was nothing compared to the gentle heat of his skin. So the most comfortable place she could be was right there, against it, against him. She peeled the shirt off like it was a simple ceremony. Common and necessary, like leaving your shoes at the door....which she had done. So now was this. But also, somewhere, the feeling of being away from him became real. Whether it was a trick of exposure or the nature of comfort, she finally understood who she was, and what state of being she became when she was away from him. The risk or potential loss of that struck her as possible and she realized what his absence was to her. How it changed the fibers of her being. She understood, a little better, what that armor really was and how real it was. So, she wound her arms around his neck, twisting to press her body against him. That horribly comforting experience of their forms crushed together, imparting an archetypal smoosh of their energies as their bare chests touched. Her breasts a warm, soft crush against him. She reached down absently as he spoke, to make sure the kitten was all right. But this was just a necessity that was second to the need to kiss his neck while he continued. She laughed quietly when he explained things with his deep, velvet flare that she knew stylistically as well as in his very scent. She wondered briefly if she could send him less kid-friendly dreams to wrap himself in at night, but then also wondered if that would do more harm than good. She shook softly at 'baby-bean', her exhaled laugh was re-collected on his skin with a closing of her mouth and a soft suck of his flesh into her mouth. Eventually.. "I don't know if we can name her Ruv, she will already have wild, PDA parents that suit so many stereotypes ...and I'll have her in pigtails for so long..... she may have to grow into the nickname...but start with something less.... I keep thinking Charlotte and I can't get the name out of my mind or find another. Charlie...Ruv...Charlotte.... or maybe a name from home..." I don't know yet, her tone whispered. Bleeding words into his. She emerged slowly as he questioned what the dream could mean, and for a moment she felt like she perhaps had some insight. And that startled her some, and she tried searching the stories of their people to see if she was supposed to have insight in these things. But this was overcome by his words, his silken tone that lapped at her heart and tugged her home. It deepened her breaths as she pulled away and looked down at him from the added height of his lap. She held his chin gently and brushed the inside of her lower lip up the tip of it to the plane, the ledge, of his own. That animalistic quality still there in a communicative bow of her head that made the gesture more accented. Softly she said, "You say need and want and it just ignites the flash powder of desire in me, Writ." Softer, "Like you heard it asking permission, restless against my conscience." Shoulds. She kissed his mouth and shifted, encroaching on him....moving the kitten away in a gentle push while she became an equally gentle pull as she leaned back, weighing his shoulders down with her and coaxing his mouth to follow....urging their bodies to seamlessly change position on the couch with great effort on both their parts, but always in a graceful orbit. "Give me the dream, touch me and give it to me," while you give you to me. "I want it, too. ..I need you back." As a part of me. To put out this skin-fire. To know where you have been. To replace the scent of you on my skin that has been washed too many times without the comfort of you laced all over me again. It felt like a sort of madness, a hunger pushed towards delusions. But it sounded right right now....and she wanted everything back the way it should be.

This was communion. The definition of which being: the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.. with an addendum that in religious rites, the sharing of consecrated bread and wine represented the physical body of Christ himself. Holy communion. And though these two wildlings were far removed from that particular sect of worship, he'd fallen on his knees at the alter of her so often and so completely that the comparison seemed undeniably accurate. He'd feed her the sacrament of his dream through the press of his lips; he'd transfer the spirit of it between open mouths and frantically seeking tongues. He'd give her what she asked for. A doorway.. a pathway to walk.. a dreamscape to change like he'd changed their first embrace. Her pull on him was as effortless as the moon controlling the tides.. his body.. simply obeyed and followed her down-- laying her into the couch cushions with his own weight while his breath came out in tremulous whisps between the gaps in their kiss. She disarmed him. Completely stripped him raw and left him defenseless to the possibility of utter destruction by merely existing. By being his. Writ's eyes squeezed shut as the transference of imagery emboldened his previous sighs into a physical, audible pant that swelled and expanded his chest against hers. His teeth closed against her bottom lip-- a brief, firm, but bloodless bite to usher in a shimmering, spectral.. tent dwelling.. and a bed.. laden with fur blankets.

She felt him just sway into her. Physically, mentally, corporeally, spiritually. It was as though he changed the dial of their communication and they met on a different frequency. She would catch his fall with the goblet of her hands, and she would drink from his lips with the plush offering of her mouth. Their bodies shifted and churned on currents of thought and pure expression of emotion. She kissed his mouth with effervescent lips, and she'd share that shimmering desire with the resonance of his breath. She loved him so much she supplicated herself when she asked for things. She transformed into something worthy of his compliance and vulnerability. She inhaled just to near him, and exhaled just to do it again. She pulled him down into the landscape of her and she reached up with her tongue to carve a place for her inside his mouth. She kissed him with a low, deep, hungry love that gave of her as much as it wanted all of him. She pulled him into her, onto her, winding her ribs and her hips up into him just so he could feel himself sink down into her with her. Her soft, purring pant was just proof that they were creatures together. Forever. For she pulled her lip away from his bite just to nuzzle her chin back up to his and pull his upper lip into her own mouth, offering her lower again. And then her voice was softer, a tender whimper, something earthy and musky from a night of sex that would be a morning of it, too. Two hands, three hands, four, some slipping from soft fur covers traversed his body and settled in familiar holds of him...his lower back, his shoulder, between his shoulder blades....
A sense of complete-ness, one-ness.... of knowing her then and knowing her now. Of never having separated, of always being there. Of being his and being his. A younger fervor spilled from lips on his throat while a deeper pleasure of dissolving their time away between their paired and pulling lips. There was a wild, dark hunger that was waking up warm and still glowing with libidinous sex and energy spent on reclaiming and redefining what was mine and mine and Mine coupled with a dark ache at knowing what it was to be denied..... and never even imagining a world like that. Bright blue eyes drank him in with expectance and even a touch of haughty depravity and will, while another set hung their lashes low sought to soothe his very heart with witchcraft and tender longing. One woman young and never knowing a deeper, darker loss....proud to have him and comfortable in desire and a love like brilliant armor... the other just a little different...acknowledging what it meant, grateful....tea stained with a sepia reverence and less selfish carnality...one the mother of his child, the other soon to be. It was hard for her to slip into this other self...but she wanted him, and this, and she felt a power in him as the possessor of this dream...she needed to be the place he wanted to be. She surrendered to how he showed her.