imperfections [ian]

Kiara
Her apartment hasn't changed overly much since the last time he'd been there.

There's the same stark white walls with their large canvases of bold red and black abstracts dominating most; the same tidy, tiny kitchen and large windows overlooking the intersection of the city below; the curtains left open so that the first glimpses of moonlight will spill across the floorboards.

There is one change, however. The bedroom door belonging to Kiara's often absent room mate stands open, now. The room within sparse; furnishings that spoke of another presence within it recently removed. The bed made but untouched; there's a sense of departure about it; an unspoken, perhaps recent change.

There's more of Kiara here than ever, though. From the stacks of magazines and empty coffee cups to the bottles of wine on the counter and a single; solitary wineglass. There's more greenery perhaps, too. An over sized fern on a small side table beside one window; its leaves vibrant and thriving; the reach of it suggestive of encouragement; a needling by the Verbena's hands. There's herbs lined up along her counter top; wildflowers in a vase on her coffee table and a small space cleared in a corner; the makings of some sort of home made shrine; a low table with a velvet cloth drawn over it; a mortar and pestle set on it; blades and bundles of tied tried herbs; an assortment of crystals and chalk.

To the uninitiated; to the unknowing who come to Kiara simply for mundane healing; she must seem a fascination; this dark eyed woman with hands that seemed to know where to press (or not press, as the case often was) and how to soothe their bodies. To some in her past; she'd been a source of both amusement and trepidation.

She makes no move to disguise it, though. That much was a constant with her. She bore no hesitation or shame for what she was or how she believed. Perhaps it was why she had yet to find the situation where she resisted the urge to needle the likes of Arionna. To push and provoke and ask - why, why not.

-

She sets a lamp on when they arrive; lets it bathe her apartment in soft; warm light and toes her sneakers off by the door; drops a set of keys in a dish and tears an ipod from her arm with the soft rending of Velcro. "I didn't ask but - Arionna." Kiara moves into the lounge and sets a second lamp on; it bathes her in light; casting starker shadows beneath her eyes as she looms beside it; the dip of her collarbones; the consideration in her eyes at mention of the other girl.

"That's recent. It's - harsh."

IanIan removed his hat when he stepped through the door, sliding a hand through his hair to smooth out any lingering flatness. He tossed the hat somewhere (a hook, a table, a counter, and took a moment to let his eyes roam over the interior of Kiara's apartment. It was bigger than his own. Ian had never mentioned that. Nor had she ever been to his place to see it for herself. Perhaps one day she would ask about it. Perhaps one day he would invite her of his own accord. Perhaps not.

The space was mostly as he remembered it. The second bedroom got a sparing glance though (the feeling of emptiness it contained.) Ian regarded the open door quietly for a moment before letting his eyes refocus on Kiara.

She mentioned Arionna (her blindness) and Ian nodded. The gesture had a subtle gravity to it. Arionna herself might not claim the sacrifice as a tragedy, and perhaps it wasn't. But Ian understood the weight that a loss like that could carry. "She said she gave it up willingly. A sacrifice, like you hear in folk tales." He came up behind Kiara, but did not try to touch her. There was a certain draw, though. A fascination with her space.

"She's handling it better than I would."

Kiara"That's quite the sacrifice." There's a measure of admiration in it; of a kind that could almost seem begrudging and probably not anything she'd outright say in the other woman's presence. Her feelings about her are not quite yet in the same extreme as Grace's but - there's a definite edge of bemusement as she turns; finds Ian in her space there; housed between a low side table and the overstuffed cushions of her well loved sofa bed.

She'd offered it once, in passing, to Kalen. To any of them, when they'd still mostly been strangers to her.

"Is it cruel that part of me isn't surprised? She's - " She pauses; her smile gathering potency as she sinks down onto the sofa; cups the back of her neck with a palm; presses her elbow into the back of the sofa and slides her other hand around his; pulls him down without force; the subtle suggestion that he come; if he chose to.

" - There are worse things to lose, I suppose." She traces his face; sets some internal measurement by the slope of his cheekbones; the strength of his jaw. The shift and play of his body beneath his clothing. "You feel different, too." She doesn't say what strikes her the most about him in the low lamplight. Doesn't say you're beautiful, but there's the suggestion that she's admiring it. Him.

The change. The way he seems starker; more in focus than before.

"Must be the season for it."

IanShe pulled him down with her onto the sofa, and Ian relaxed into the cushions as though he belonged there, facing her with one arm slung over the back. His skin had a warm tan that hadn't been there over the winter. At close proximity it radiated soft heat (as hers did.)

"There are," he conceded. "But I hope for her sake that she finds it again, some day."

Kiara traced the lines of his face; said that he felt different too. Did not say, but thought, that he was beautiful. Surely someone like Ian didn't need anyone to tell him that. He had to know, of course. He heard it often enough. Saw it in the way that strangers' eyes sometimes lingered on him. Surely he looked in the mirror every day and recognized what he saw there, objectively. It wasn't really a question of whether or not he knew. Because there was a difference between being told by some modeling agent or a stranger in a bar that you're beautiful, and having someone you'd been intimate with look at you and touch you the way that Kiara was doing now. A difference in weight (in meaning.) A difference in the way he felt it.

"I am," was his quiet reply. He tilted his jaw into her hand and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he looked at her (watched her watching him.) "So are you."

Once - the first time they'd come back here like this, the first time they'd been together - he'd told her that it wasn't the rejuvenating part of her that he was interested in. Perhaps she remembered that. But whatever he'd meant by it then, he hardly seemed disinterested now. A lot of things had changed since then.

"I like the way you feel now."

His hand found hers - the one cupped at the back of her neck - and he traced a finger along the line of her wrist and up over her knuckles. Then he asked, as though the thought had only just occurred to him, "Does anyone ever offer to give you a massage?"

Because Kiara gave them, surely. Given what she did for a living.

KiaraObjectively, they were both attractive people.

Neither one of them struggled to draw attention in a crowd, in a bar, at any given time they could pull focus; in both the most flattering and unwanted ways. It could be said that Kiara, for her part, pursued it; played with the fact she knew she possessed the power to; draw eyes; hold attention. But for all her outward flirtations and confident, easy manner - there was far more beneath it that was not wholly without flaw; there were cracks that ran through her.

Chinks and bruising and vulnerabilities; she was just better at disguising them than some.

Like this, though, in private, without curious eyes or games to play; with her own personal armor removed; softened at the edges somehow; she seemed comfortable with allowing the uncertainties their room to exist, to flit across her face; find temporary refuge in her eyes; the edge of a smile. Maybe with Ian, it seemed safe to be imperfect. "Beltane was interesting this year." She concedes as he touches her wrist; feels the delicate bones and tendons beneath the skin when she shifts just so; feels the skitter of her pulse; sees the tiny veins mapping beneath the surface.

There's a smile that blooms across her mouth when he asks if anyone ever gives her a massage and she shifts; draws her wrist out from behind her neck enough to catch the edge of his hand; to stroke a thumb delicately across the surface of his skin. "Once, as part of a proposition." Her eyebrows wing upward; there's a gleam set in her eyes that suggests exactly what kind of proposition that had been.

"I was younger, naive enough to think that would never happen. But generally - no. I think people are too scared I'd judge their technique." She tilts her head; her hair still bound back in a ponytail; but strands coming loose through wear; catching in the edges of her running gear.

"Why, are you offering?"

And if there's a hint of a challenge to that, it may not be without intention.

Ian"I am." The edges of his lips turned up (almost a smile.) He might have made a joke there. Almost did, actually. But something about the softness of the moment made it feel... like the wrong thing to say. Perhaps they were both more willing to be imperfect. "Given what you just told me, I wish I'd offered sooner."

Nobody deserved that - to be deprived of a healing touch. Though he wasn't trained in it the same way that she was.

"Turn around. Take off your shirt."

There was a soft glimmer of flirtation in his eyes, but he let it stay muted.

KiaraWhat she doesn't say, of course, is that there's an implied intimacy to it.

Laying your hands on another person's body to heal them, even a stranger's, requires a certain degree of trust. To believe that the one who you let yourself be, even temporarily, vulnerable before wouldn't take advantage; wouldn't cause more harm than good. Physically or otherwise. There is a beat there, after she poses the question (challenge) to him that something flickers across her eyes when he says yes.

Something like surprise, perhaps. Something like uncertainty.

It's there and gone so fast that; after she complies with that challenging little smile lingering on; it could be mistaken for something else. A mistake; a misinterpretation of the moment.

"Well, it's definitely one way to get my clothes off."

She does twist, though. Resettles with her back toward him and draws her skin tight shirt over her head; unties the hoodie around her waist and tosses both off to the side where they snag the edge of the coffee table. Beneath; the Verbena's shoulders are criss-crossed with marks where the fabric had sat; snug against her body. Her tattoo is revealed; the black ink standing out against her complexion. He's seen it before of course; no doubt traced the familiar curl of it; the choku rei; the power symbol of the reiki healer.

Kiara settles herself cross legged in front of him and dips her chin; turning to half-glance over a shoulder at him; in many women; it would have been the moment for a beguiling, coy look. A flirtatious invitation to come closer, or put his hands on her. She doesn't do that, at least, not right now. But he can see the arch of her spine as she straightens it; see the way her body shifts as she breathes in.

There's something anticipatory about it; the way she sits. Expectant but not demanding. As if it were an offering, her trust. And maybe it was.


Ian

“I don’t think I need to make up an excuse for that,” Ian pointed out, quietly amused. If he noticed the look that flashed across her eyes, he didn’t draw attention to it. Instead he toed off his boots and shifted into a crouched position on the sofa, sliding forward so his knees pressed in at either side of Kiara’s hips. The proximity felt intimate, and he took a moment to bow his head and look at her; at the curling tattoo inked into her skin, the fading marks left behind by her running clothes, the angled lines of her shoulder blades and the subtle shift of muscle and vertebrae. He ran the backs of his knuckles slowly down the length of her spine. On the way up, he traced a finger over the strokes of her tattoo. Then he leaned back and pulled off his shirt.

As something of an afterthought, he undid her hair and let it spill down over her back, brushing the length of it away from her neck so that it lay across one shoulder (out of the way of where his hands needed to be.) Then he pressed his thumbs into the muscle at the base of her spine and slid his hands up, slowly. He used the contact as a focus, concentrating on the shape of her pattern, the balance of scents on her skin, the steady pulse of her heart beneath her ribcage – until he could feel the lines of tension in her muscles as clearly as though they were his own.

There was a care to the way he worked that spoke – not of training, exactly – but of knowledge and focus. They were both Life mages. They were both intimately familiar with the workings of the human body. Where to push, and where not to. When to apply pressure and when to touch softly. He was quiet (meditative, even) as he worked his hands over her back and up onto her neck and shoulders. There was a rhythm (a pattern) to it: long, slow sweeps of his hands followed by more intense, isolated pressure in the places that needed it. Gradually, a sensation of calming warmth began to spread out from the places where his fingers touched, radiating across her skin and deep into her muscles.

Perhaps she’d used that trick before too. It was a natural progression, as instinctive as the stroke of his thumb over her skin (touching her with his mind as well as his hands.) If anyone asked, Ian would never think to define himself as a healer. It wasn’t an identity that he cared to step into. But in isolated moments like these, when the weight of expectation drained away and his attention was captured completely by another person, it no longer became an issue of how he saw himself – but of what he wanted to express.

(And he could heal. He’d proven that much with Jo and Lavinia in the park last week.)

When he was done, he slid his hands up into her hair and massaged the base of her scalp, moving slowly up over the crown of her head and down to her temples. Then he bent forward and kissed the back of her neck gently.

Ian

[Life 1, diff 4 (coincidental) -1 (practiced)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ian

[Life 2, diff 5 (coincidental) -1 (also practiced) -1 (taking time)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[one extension]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

She's very still under his hands at first.

He can trace the tension in her frame; the careful way she's holding herself all along the curve of her spine; feel the resistance in the slope of her shoulders; the tightness in her neck before he draws the elastic from her hair; lets it spill forward in heavy waves over her shoulders, when he sweeps it out of his way, she gathers it together; twists it and keeps it; twines it into a loose spiral to contain the wild tenancy of it. The willfulness to drift and fall and arrange itself as it saw fit when unbound.

She takes a breath when he starts to work; ribcage expanding underneath the journey his palms take; her heart beating a steady time to the mapping of his fingers over the shape of her shoulders; feeling the size and breadth and shape of the tension, coiled within each muscle. The trapezius, the deltoids, smoothing down to the latissimus and returning. Kiara knows each one he sets his palms to; presses in with his fingertips against; draws a tiny, subvocal sound from her on, just once, a small aborted movement that somehow encapsulated so many things (there, yes, keep going).

He doesn't consider himself a healer.

But he can heal, though this feels starkly different to the last time. There's no desperation; no panic; no blood and bruising. He sets his hands on her and loosens the knots of tension; feels her body shift and bend like a reed in the wind; slides his fingers into her hair when he's done and deposits a kiss to her neck. There's no mirror in Kiara's lounge room to easily glimpse her face where it's turned from him but the lamp casts its own reflection against the window; throws back the impression of them; his body curled behind her; twined shadows; one with her arms folded against herself; keeping herself. She leans back; cranes her face back until she can find the edge of his jaw; chases the suggestion of a kiss there with her words; a quiet susurrus breathed against the slope of it.

"Thank you."

Her fingers find the slope of his arm; trace lightly along the curve of it. The caress is absent; familiar and intimate. "My sister left." Her confession too, is absent. A quiet admission. "There was a time not that long ago I'd probably have gone with her."

Ian

There was something about Kiara’s hair that reminded him, a little, of someone he used to know (though he would never have mistaken the two of them otherwise.) It hit him sometimes when he was touching it – this faded echo of sense memory. Funny, the things the mind chooses to hold onto.

Some people melt under the influence of the right kind of touch; go all loose and limp and vocal in their enjoyment. Ian wasn’t really expecting that from Kiara. She was… more like him (subtle, contained.) But something about her body language, and that quiet trust she placed in him, hit an answering note somewhere below his sternum.

When she leaned back, he closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the butterfly weight of her lips and the whispered utterance of her thanks against his jaw. There was an equally subtle suggestion of a smile when he hummed his reply.

Ian shifted on the sofa, untucking his knees so that he could slide in close with his chest to her back and his legs folded on either side of her body. One of his arms snaked loosely around her stomach. Kiara would be able to feel the slow drum of his heartbeat.

“What made you stay?”

Kiara

There's a silence after he asks what made her stay. In many ways, it's a dangerous question. In years gone by, the posing of it would have been enough to cause her to draw away; to bank the light in her eyes and slide back into steady place the intangible (but so very real) walls she'd long since erected around herself to keep certain things at bay. There's a necessity to it, the distance; the shielding between the emotions and the rest of the world. For as open and vibrant and alive a creature Kiara was - she was so very careful about the ways she gave of herself.

So much of her was there, presented without pretense or presumption but the darker sides; the hurt and the rage and the shadow that lived and breathed under her skin; built by loss and fostered by fear; was caged somewhere behind the bright smiles and quick flashes of wit and she kept it hidden from nearly all of them.

In some ways, the pretenses were so easily mistaken for reality.

Her fingers slow on the upward stroke along his skin; opening it to the briefest abrasion of her fingernails; then resume. She can feel the heat of his skin pressed along her back; his heartbeat; the solid anchor of his arm around her. There's something infinitely frightening in it to her; the weight of his arm around her; keeping her stationary; holding her there. Here. With him. Perhaps the same reason she trusted him to put his hands on her to heal is the reason the panic doesn't intensify; is nothing more than the momentary pause before she answers.

"Sadie asked the same thing. She was here after I - after Beltane. I came home and her suitcase was open on the bed. She knew, already. She'd felt it. We're connected, in this way." She slides the tips of her fingers down over his knuckles; tracing the rise of each. "We always have been. I can feel her out there. She said she wasn't going to ask but she wanted me to go with her, I knew she did."

A beat; he can hear the twinge of regret in her voice. "She's still looking for a reason to stop running. Leaving felt too easy." She smiles, just a touch and he can hear that, too. "I guess I like a challenge."

[reposts so we can have them in transcript form]

IanHe was still cued in to the subtle shift and response of Kiara's pattern. Her heartbeat was a rhythmic cadence beside him, so perhaps he noticed the brief tick of not-quite-fear that rose when he put his arm around her. Did it make her pulse jump? Did her body go still, the way her fingers ceased their steady caress of his arm? There was an equally subtle response in him, not a retreat but a relaxation of posture. His hold on her was loose, despite the proximity. The muscles in his body were quiet and still. It would have been easy to push him away - to nudge his knee or lift his arm.

For the moment, she let him remain. Perhaps it meant something, perhaps it didn't. There was a time when Ian would not have done this. It was too close to a kind of intimacy that he often found... suffocating. Just then, he wasn't thinking of it so consciously. Perhaps that was intentional. Moments of vulnerability could be so easily shattered.

Especially for him. And for her.

Ian didn't like to talk about family. Even the word: sister was hard for him to utter. Kiara spoke about Sadie - about what it felt like to realize that the two of them might be headed down different paths. And it was, in some respects, an alien feeling to him. But in other respects, he understood her all too well (the loss, the distance... having to learn to let go.)

She said she liked a challenge. He tilted his head against the sofa and smiled. The expression was tinted with subtle complexities.

"I think I figured that out about you a while ago." There was a beat as he breathed. Thinking. Listening to her heart.

"What were you like when you were younger?"

Kiara"Stubborn. A little arrogant. Impulsive." There's a pause, he can hear the huff of amusement as she breathes out; the catch in her breathing as she does. "In some ways that hasn't changed, but - " She opens her palm over his arm, let's the heat seep into his skin where she lays it flat against him. "My father was - is - a doctor. My mother was this Manhattan socialite. They got married as much because they were a financial match as they even remotely tolerated one another. They had me because it made sense."

The way she speaks of them; her parents; her past; there's a disconnection that's tangible. Not quite disgust, but close. Incomprehension (it strayed rather close to pity).

"But I never really fit them. I was just another fancy toy they wanted for the sake of appearances." She shifts, then. Twists lightly in the cradle of his body so that she's half on top of him; her hair falling over her shoulders; it pools over his chest and the Verbena's eyes focus on the mapping of her fingers over his heart; there's a smile that plays at the edges of her mouth, feeling the steady pulse of his heart beating beneath skin and muscle and bone.

"They said jump and how high and I - refused." She lifts her chin, meeting his eyes. There's a flicker of old grief in them but she doesn't conceal it. Doesn't seem as if she's trying to. At least this time. "I spent a lot of time in clubs. Some of the first people I met after I joined the Verbena were - not that unlike Sera." Kiara's mouth tugs into a brighter smile as she slides her other hand along his shoulder. The physicality of it; of laying her hands on his body as she talks of her past seems to help.

Grounding her in the now. "I was a little wild. And then I got wilder." She skates her fingers over the base of his neck; slides it down to rest across the flat of his belly. "Just in ways that made more sense. What about you?" She punctuates the question with laying her chin down near his stomach; braced on her arms.

"Something tells me younger Ian has all the stories."

IanAlmost, he said: so you haven't changed much. But then Kiara beat him to it. She spoke of her parents, of the fundamental disconnect between her life and theirs. One could speak of these things as one would any other fact of one's life - cool, observational. But what kind of revelation was that for a child to have? To not truly be seen as a human being by their own parents? To not be wanted and loved in the way that parents are supposed to want and love their children? Ian knew someone else like that once. It had made her detached and destructive. (One could argue they'd been rather a good match for each other, at the time.)

Kiara shifted on the sofa, turning to face him. His gaze slid down the planes of her chest for a moment, then back up to her eyes. Her hands on his skin had a grounding effect on both of them, and not for the first time he found himself immediately aware of the similarity in the way that they spoke (not just with words, but with touch.) She finally settled lower, and his eyes cast down to watch her.

Something tells me younger Ian has all the stories.

There was a ghost of a smile at that, but it didn't reach his eyes.

"It depends on when you would have met me. When I was young I was... moody and stubborn and independent. I took ballet and, briefly, piano lessons, and shockingly that did not make me seem cool among the preteen boys of central Chicago. So I mostly made friends with girls. When I got older I was... kind of a handful. Typical teenage shit, I guess. I snuck out. Got into fights..." he shrugged lightly. There were pieces missing from this story, the way he was telling it.

"I was cruel, later. Fucked up and self-destructive. That isn't really a story you want to hear."

There was a long beat of silence. Almost, he looked like he might say something else, but then his expression changed and he said, "I was in a band for like three seconds. Anyway, after high school I got into Rutger's and moved to New Jersey. I tried Juilliard but... couldn't afford it. Even with the scholarship. Rutger's was a good school though. Even if it was in Jersey." His mouth turned up into a smirk there. "I met some Verbena out there."

KiaraThere are things they leave out. Phantoms of their pasts that dance and twist around the parts of their prior lives they do share; they do give voice to. Like shadows flickering and cast back by the fire; reflecting nothing more or less than what existed and was tangible but distorted; misshapen and misleading, with the right circumstances; at the right moment. Kiara's not insensible to the fact he doesn't say it all. That there are moments of silence; protracted beats where it feels like there's indecision; an internal coin flip about what to admit and what to abstain from sharing.

There's a recklessness to it, after all. Letting another person in. As contained and private and careful as she is (as they both could be) there's part of her that relishes it. Letting go of the tight grasp she has on those facets of her past; giving temporarily; fleeting glances into the shadowy aspects of herself. It's not the whole truth; it's hand picked pieces from them both but - she watches him tell it. Looking up at his face in the lamplight; the slide of shadows where they fall across his brow; cheekbone.

Looks down at one point; dark lashes fanning her cheeks; her hand still working over his body with light; cursory intent.

I was cruel, later. Her eyes shift back to his face; there's something inscrutable about the way she reacts to that; this tiny, fractional gleam in eyes that seem nearly black where she's stretched out; the way she's not quite smiling but there's the idea of something around her mouth. That isn't really a story you want to hear and she's staring up at him; that expression on her face momentarily turns to rapt focus (potentially even something darker; a crude hunger to hear more about the destructiveness under his skin).

"Maybe I do want to." She leans up; sits up and looms over him; hair spilling to blot out the warm light; her voice close; quiet; hands bracketing him beneath her weight and there it is again, with Kiara. The sense of the predator; for all that he was one himself, in his own ways.

"When you want to tell it. The fucked up parts don't scare me."

IanThe fucked up parts don't scare me.

Ian's eyes seemed unreadable. He held her gaze, dark irises reflecting the lamplight. Gradually, he shifted to dislodge her weight. When he got to his feet, he paced slowly toward the window.

This was a way of speaking too, perhaps. Finding his space after they'd been so close. Creating this buffer of distance in which he could collect his thoughts without being overwhelmed by the warmth and the nearness of her. When he got to the window, he looked down at the city. The lights cast shadows over the planes of his chest.

"I killed someone right before I met you. I don't know if you heard about Victoria Drake. Alexander shot her. He probably would have killed her if I hadn't, but she was trying to kill him too and I wasn't going to wait to give her that chance." He turned around; looked at Kiara with this quiet, measured gaze. "She felt like you did. Hungry. Devouring. And then I saw you in that gallery and all I wanted to do was fuck you until I forgot who I was. I'm pretty sure a shrink would have a field day with that."

He paced back to the couch, but didn't sit down.

"I used to have scars." He touched a place on the inside of his right forearm, then his shoulder, his bicep, his chest. "They were gone after I Woke Up. I guess we get good at erasing those things." This time when he met her eyes, something in his gaze changed. "I want to fuck you now. But for different reasons."

KiaraHe shifts her and she doesn't fight it; just sits back; somehow no less composed and comfortable for the fact she's half naked; the low light in the apartment bathing her skin; the hollow dip of her collarbones; the high arch of a cheekbone; the point of her chin. There's something altogether sharp about Kiara; the way she's put together; as if honed to be just this side of wild; a little too beautiful to be sweet; a little too reckless to be wise.

Clever, perhaps. In the ruthless, capricious way nature could be.

He turns his back on her at the window but he cannot, for all the physical space he puts between them, escape the weight of her gaze; the intensity of her attention. It's completely his in the moment and that was - too much. He killed someone before he met her and she's so quiet and still that when he turns back to meet her eyes it could have been mistaken for shock. He could have anticipated mistrust; betrayal; disgust.

He doesn't get any of them from her; just those dark eyes and that same keen, attentive look.

He paces back to the couch; doesn't sit but stands in front of her and touches points on his body that once bore scars. Forearm. Shoulder. Bicep. Chest. That stirs her; brings her chin up. "I saw my mentor just after she was killed. Her body was still warm. There were feathers everywhere. They tore up the pillows and they were just floating there. I put my fingers over her eyes to close them. I buried her." She's measured as she says all this, each point like a weight; balancing some scale.

Tipping it in someone's favor; perhaps neither of theirs.

She uncurls herself from the sofa; gets to her feet but doesn't touch him. He can feel the warmth radiating from her body; the insistence of her eyes. "I've had blood on my hands. People I cared about. You killed her before she did you. Or Alexander. I would have done the same thing."

He wants to fuck her now.

"I would have killed the person who took Aisling's life if I could have. I don't think I'd even have hesitated." She runs her eyes over his face. "For the right person, I don't think I would. Maybe that makes me as bad as they are." Her eyes drop to his mouth. "Maybe it just means there's no good side."

Ian[WP - stay present, Ian]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

IanHe didn't really expect shock - not from her. Betrayal... perhaps. But neither of them had been under any illusions about what that night meant. It was many things: wild, visceral, liberating in a sense. Sensual, exploratory. All of those things that good sex can be. But neither of them had said, at the end: we should get coffee. Or: tell me about your life. People exorcised all kinds of demons in the throes of physical release.

And yet, they were talking about their lives now.

Kiara saw her mentor's body. In that moment, painting this picture of torn pillows, she was braver and more honest than Ian had ever been with her. (Than he ever was with most people.)

Almost, he had to look away. Not because of what she said, but because of what it reminded him of. Different images. Ghosts of things he was never actually there to see, but painted such a vivid picture of in his mind that he remembered them now as though they'd really happened. Somehow he didn't. Somehow he kept his eyes on hers and did not drift into that other place.

"I'm sorry."

It didn't sound like pity or platitude. It sounded like empathy - like respect for the value of life, and of family.

"There isn't a good side. We just do the best we can with what we have."

Ian lifted his hand and touched the back of Kiara's wrist. His fingers found hers slowly, threaded through them, but did not hold. If she'd been anyone else he would have put his arms around her. Instead he put his other hand on her hip and leaned forward until his head rested against hers. Only then did his fingers tighten their grip, bringing their hands tightly together.

"We don't have to." he said quietly. As though to dismiss what he'd said a moment ago (I want to fuck you now.)

KiaraIt's in her to say something dismissive to that.

To say isn't that why you came here, to bite the hand of someone trying to penetrate her defenses. If he'd been another person, another lover, she might have. Might have dealt cruelty to spare herself (spare him) the potential for attachment. The potential for vulnerability when it came to another person.

Maybe it's that he doesn't put his arms around her; doesn't coddle her admission with denials that she could be as bad as the ones who killed and were killed at their hands; at others hands. Maybe it's that he doesn't take her in his arms and make the presumption that he can. Maybe it's purely that she understands the want to. The need to remind yourself that you were alive; that the present counted; that the past couldn't be changed.

We don't have to.

She sets a hand on the small of his back; slides it up; tracing the curvature of his spine; feeling the shift and play of musculature beneath the surface. "I know." Her hand finds his face, then. Pulls back far enough to cup the side of his jaw; trace a thumb over his mouth.

Tightens her fingers where he'd taken hers; squeezes down and then leans in and kisses him; her hand on his face like a brand.

"I know we don't."

IanShe wouldn't have been wrong in saying it. And he wouldn't have faulted her. Though he probably would have changed - become more the person he was when she first met him. (The person who didn't think his soul was in need of rejuvenation.)

There was always a hint of claiming to the way that Kiara kissed. As though her lips and her hand could proclaim: this is what I want, now, in this moment.

They were balanced now on the edge of so many emotions. Grief, affection, desire. There was no guidebook for how to navigate that kind of chaos. And yet, they grounded each other.

And Ian thought, but did not say: You feel like gravity.

So he kissed her back, exhaling against her lips. When they leaned into each other, her breasts touched his chest, this subtle soft press on his skin. When he pulled back, he kissed the place where her pulse beat at the hollow of her throat. Then he turned and led them into her bedroom, keeping hold of her hand as they walked.