November 2nd. [ian]

Ian
The invite Ian texts to Kiara the morning of the 2nd is deliberately vague on detail.

Feel like going out tonight? I have a place I want to show you.

When she replies, he texts her a time (8:00 pm) and an address on Santa Fe.

The location is... familiar. It's changed since the last time Kiara saw it. There's a new paint job on the front and the theme for tonight's show is different than it was last year: a fresh crop of local artists, each of whom contributed pieces based on the theme of rebirth. There's a poster outside the gallery door listing some of the more prominent artists on display, along with a print of one of the paintings: the stylized image of a Naiad bursting through a layer of ice to breach the surface of a lake. A warm glow emanates from inside, bright light illuminating the framed paintings. A section of them can be seen through the large windows overlooking the sidewalk.

There's a moderate-sized crowd inside. Smartly dressed couples come and go through the gallery door, brochures in hand as they debate things like motivation and symbolism. By the time Kiara arrives, it's past dark and a bit chilly out on the sidewalk, but the gallery has a bright, welcome atmosphere. Ian isn't anywhere to be seen, but there's a sense of him in the air. This little wisp of primal resonance that teases the hair on the back of her neck.

The theme of the show is a lucky accident, truth be told. Last year it was death. This year - renewal.

They were here one year ago, today. The circumstances then were... rather different, for Ian. Though he does spare a few moments of thought toward the woman he killed then - to the place he was in when he and Kiara first met. Sometimes time passes slowly. Sometimes it passes much faster than one would expect.

This is not the anniversary of the day they met. Ian does not precisely remember the date of that occurrence (had not thought to make note of it at the time.) But he does remember the date when Kiara first brought him back to her apartment. Because he remembers the show - how close it had been to Halloween. He remembers exactly how many days (9) it had been after the attack on the red house, and exactly how many days (10) before his birthday - almost equidistant between them.

He's hiding in the back of the gallery, wine glass in hand as he gazes at a painting of a gnarled and ruined tree, a burst of flowering ivy tumbling out from one of its crevices. He is not wearing the same suit he wore last year, because that suit got ruined when he had to heal Jo and Lavinia. He is, however, wearing an even nicer suit - tailored Prada in black with silk accents, a matching tie and a deep burgundy shirt. It looks very, very good on him.

[anticipatory stealth roll - because he is so going to try to sneak up on Kiara before she sees him]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

KiaraIt's been an eventful month verging into another for the Verbena.

Between visits from Cultists who were removed from Time and encounters with past incarnations (all within the confines of her fourth floor apartment complex) by the time Ian texts her - the brunette is more than grateful for the distraction. There were, after all, Nephandi in their city. There was, always, an ongoing threat. They lived and breathed under the thumbprint of it.

The verging horror. The impending struggle.

She remembers this gallery - if not, at first sight, for the reasons he's brought her here there is a lingering remembrance of its formerly featured artists. It's an echo of earlier days. Her first months in Denver and there's a sense when the brunette steps inside and collects one of the brochures to flick through it - that she's beginning to piece together the why of tonight. The why of here.

She's not in black, Kiara Woolfe. Not this time.

Rather, the pagan is draped in shades of earthy brown and green, an emerald silk blouse with a line of tiny, complicated buttons affixing the sleeves and back she's paired with a long, flowing skirt that flowed around the female's ankles as she began a slow circuit of the gallery. Her dark hair has been swept up and knotted, strands left deliberately loose to frame her shoulders and neck.

There's a bold slash of dark red lipstick on her mouth and glimmering, gold eye-shadow with a smokey highlight to match her attire. The entire image she projects is one that invites consideration - but then that had often been said of her - that she encouraged the draw in; the focus. Toyed with it. In another lifetime, perhaps as a very different sort of woman - she may have made use of the way eyes slid to her figure.

Not in this one, though. At least, not tonight.

She does collect a glass of wine when a tray offers one her way. Does linger in the vague trickle of deja vu it brings as she finds herself standing before a wide canvas - something vibrantly alive dancing across it; painted in broad smears of a brush. The wilderness returning to life after the first thaw, the capture of deer feeding in fields of wild grass.

There's a degree of anticipation to the way Kiara turns her face toward a particular corner, her dark eyes tracing over couples, milling by the illuminated paintings. She takes a sip from the wine and lingers there - in her anticipation - feeling the slow stretch of it. The coil of it.

The sense of Ian teasing at the edges of her awareness.

She waits, the Verbena, with a tiny smile surfacing at the corner of her mouth as the crowd flows around her.

[Do we catch the sneaking? Per + Alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ian[I probably should have rolled this before the stealth roll - Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

IanThe layout is different than it once was. Temporary walls have been moved. But the building itself is the same. The old hardwood floors, recently polished but still bearing the marks of age. The open ceiling. One of the hosts - the gallery owner, is making rounds chatting with some of the guests. Kiara attracts attention the way she always does, drawing the eyes of people she passes by. Some of them make their glances fleeting - a moment of passive appreciation amidst an evening full of beautiful things. Others look longer - trying to gauge perhaps if the company of a stranger might be welcome.

There's a whisper of deja vu in the painting Kiara finds herself gazing at. The natural landscape - the field. It's different but... there's something about it that feels familiar.

Ian senses her before he sees her - feels the pulse of her rejuvenating presence when she steps in the door. It draws his focus away from the paintings, and he turns to throw a glance over his shoulder as though he could see through the wall that lies between them. He doesn't approach her immediately. Instead he takes a sip from his wine glass and moves - very slowly, as though he's still admiring the art - toward the front section of the gallery.

He's quiet, the way he moves. But the room is bright and he is too bold a presence to go easily unnoticed. (Like her, he attracts lingering gazes.) Perhaps she catches him moving in the corner of her eye. Perhaps it's just his resonance that gives him away: the prowling sensation of some wild feline stalking slowly behind her. He comes around the corner, approaching at her back. Maybe she turns around to catch him. Maybe she humors him and lets him fall in at her side without acknowledgement.

Either way, he stands next to her, looks at the painting and says, "What do you think of that one?"

KiaraShe's mirroring a posture she'd held the first time he approached her in this gallery.

A glass of wine held close to her neck, head tilted just so as if she were attempting to understand the reasoning behind the artist's use of color, the meaning to the way they'd painted the trees as if they were not merely there but writhing, vital points of focus. The ground a myriad of browns and reds and oranges, the speckled backs of the deer drawing the Verbena's attention, the gentle movement in the blades of grass.

She's actively engaged with the canvas in a manner she hadn't been, not the first time. So, there's a thread of real appreciation when she answers: "I rather like it," and then turns her eyes to study his profile for a moment, a subtle little gleam surfacing in her eyes, touching the corners of her mouth. "I've always been partial to the fields of grass." Around them, discussions were being waged much the way they had been the last time, the murmur of artist's intent, the consideration of mood and technique, the inconsequential chatter of an appreciative audience.

Only tonight they were the only two Awakened in attendance.

"You know it feels like another lifetime." She drifts over, the brunette, turns her back to the landscape to face him instead, to reach out with idle appreciation for his suit, skimming her fingers over the lines of his tie, the shirt beneath (the color attracted the pagan's focus, naturally). Kiara's fingers skirt over a lapel and latch there, gently tugging as that smile of hers curls up further.

"I remember that night."

IanHis shirt had been teal, that day. Today it's red. Deep red, like the color of wine (or blood.) There was something he said the first day they met - to that poor girl they never saw again - about the color red. What it meant to him: passion; life. How these things ought to be celebrated. Tonight he wears it beneath a layer of black, against his chest - and maybe there is something a little symbolic in that.

Kiara is wearing the colors of the Earth. There's something symbolic in that too. Ian's eyes skirt over the lines of her blouse; travel down the slope of her back like he's admiring the cut of it. His gaze pauses at the nape of her neck before she turns around to face him. They are more familiar with each other now. Kiara claims his space - runs her fingers over his suit - as though she was invited. And she is. His eyes say it even if his voice doesn't. There's an obvious intimacy in the way they touch each other.

She remembers that night (has worked out now why Ian invited her here.) He wanted to touch her the moment he saw her standing in front of that painting (then and now.) He glances down for a moment at her hands, smiling just softly - like he's trying to keep it contained - and grasps her right wrist. When he brings it to his mouth he kisses the underside, where her pulse thrums just beneath the surface of her skin.

Then he says, still smiling, "Feel like going somewhere?"

They already are somewhere. Did he really get them both dressed up just to ask her to leave with him?

(It's what he did that night, too. Albeit... with less premeditation.)

KiaraShe's always had a particular carelessness about space. Other people's, that being. She's made more than one individual in the city momentarily uncomfortable because of it, her presumption - that touching, even briefly, another person's arm or shoulder or hand, even situating herself close physically was an acceptable method of communicating her intent, was acceptable, all around.

It's an interesting tendency for a woman who could claim at least a moderate awareness of the way human interaction worked. The function of it, the way body language bled through when perhaps nothing else did. Kiara was a healer, she had to possess the intuitive sense for when she was pressing against a wound (physical or otherwise), had to know when she was overstepping.

Perhaps she does know it to an extent, certainly in the here and now. She does it to provoke with a particular directness, a flirtation in the way her fingers commit to memory the way his suit feels underneath her fingertips. When he drops his eyes to her touch and curls his hand around hers, drawing her wrist to his mouth she gives over to it. Issues a brief little noise of appreciation and steps in a hairsbreadth closer to him.

There are things she's yet to tell him - details of the last few days that cling to her, find traces every so often in the settling furrow of her brows where they draw together, in the pinch at the edge of her lips. The distraction, the acute awareness of their surroundings despite the lighter, easy chemistry between them she affords her gaze. Allowing her dark eyes to tick briefly over a shoulder, to linger on corners of the gallery as if expecting some presence to manifest in shadowy nooks.

There's nothing, of course.

She lingers close to him, tips her wineglass to her lips, sipping from it as her gaze traverses the gallery and then resettles on his face. "Sure," Kiara's eyes smile before it quite touches her lips, he can hear the curl of amusement in her voice.

"Unless you'd rather keep your options open. There's some enchanting people here tonight." Another sip of wine, an intimate little hook of her mouth as her eyes drop to his. "You never know where the evening might take you."

IanThere's a ritual in this: in the repeating of words uttered impulsively so many months ago. What likely held little meaning to them at the time now feels much more resonant. Time and memory have a way of doing that.

Two days ago, they were standing beneath the night sky remembering other people. Perhaps it is as much because of that - and all of the other losses that surround them - that Ian chose to invite Kiara here tonight. To celebrate, in whatever reserved manner he is capable of celebrating such things, the time they've had together. This... inexplicable thing between them that has yet to break apart. If someone had asked Ian on that day whether he thought he would be back at this gallery a year later speaking these same words to the same woman, he'd have laughed. Perhaps Kiara would have too.

And yet, here they are.

Unless you'd rather keep your options open.

Ian's smile broadens momentarily. There's something of a dance to this, and he seems pleased she remembers the steps. He lifts his glass to finish the last of his wine. There's only about two mouthfuls left in the bottom and he drinks them down with measured deliberation - lets the taste of it linger for a moment on his tongue before he walks over and sets the empty glass down on a tray. When he returns, he leans in close and cups Kiara's face in his hands. The gesture this time is less reserved, less wryly flirtatious. And he looks at her in a way that is altogether different from how he looked at her that night. His eyes go a little raw and vulnerable and there is this surge of weight and meaning in his voice when he says:

"I already found the one I want."

There are people watching, but for a moment Ian forgets they're there. He kisses Kiara like he wants to tell her every fragile, desperate feeling beating inside his chest. The sensation of it is not so much aggressive as it is vital and ardent. Like he could brand the taste of her onto his lips.

When he pulls away he whispers, "My place this time. I have something I want to give you."

KiaraShe'll say as much to Grace Evans in a few days.

How unintended this dance of theirs was (continues to be). She knows the steps to it by instinct, if not experience. She'll tell her it wasn't planned but then - how much of life ever was, really? The Kiara Woolfe of then and the Ian Lai of then are not the versions that stand here tonight - their ghosts are tangible, though. The wisps of moments past, old phantom footsteps that do not so much guide them tonight as remind them.

The bookends of where they began.

(Neither of them were students of Time to know where they might end up).

The banter feels weighted, somehow. In ways it never was the first time, when she suggests what she does, when he responds with far less lighthearted flirtation. The expression on his face draws her smile away, softens and dampens it and there's the briefest flush of color that surfaces on the Verbena's cheeks in its wake, he can feel the warmth of it beneath his palms when he captures her face between them.

The long fan of her lashes where they meet her cheek before lifting, before those dark, dark eyes of hers lock with his and she's watching him as he leans in. Her eyes closing only as their mouths meet and one of Kiara's hands lift to curl into the lapel of his suit. Slide around to hold to his neck, the wine glass still poised in the other.

She breathes out into that kiss, makes this tiny, subvocal little sound and when he pulls away - she takes a moment. To open her eyes, to erase the brief line between her brows. It's an expression the brunette does not often wear - something open and honest and - in its way - overcome.

I have something I want to give you.

She slides her fingers down, traverses them over the supple fabric of his suit until she finds his hand; slips her fingers between his. "I'm all yours."

There's a quiet vulnerability to that, too, that was absent the first time they tried these steps. It shines out of the Verbena's eyes. Settles in and curls around her smile.

Ian
I'm all yours.

Those words from Kiara's lips have meaning they might not otherwise possess. For a moment Ian looks at her and this almost... fragile smile touches his lips. He lets her finish her wine (or abandon it, depending on what kind of hurry she's in,) before he ushers her out to his car.

The drive to his apartment goes quickly. Halfway there a light mist of rain starts to fall onto the windshield, beading up and trailing down the glass in pin-point streaks. City lights slide past as they move. The drifting scenery is underscored by a track from one of Ian's constantly-revolving playlists. Tonight it's something broody and new wave with a hard-hitting baseline.

When they get to the parking lot beneath his building, Ian comes around to Kiara's side of the car as she's getting out. He makes this move like he's about to kiss her, but instead he leans in and whispers, "You look beautiful tonight." Afterwards he takes her hand and leads her up the stairs to his floor.

Inside, the apartment smells like a subtle blend of jasmine and sandalwood. Ian slides out of his jacket and opens a door to hang it up in the walk-in closet. When he reappears, he shuts the door and leans against it. There's a slight hesitation in the act that feels a little out of character for him.

"I know that we've never... really talked about this. What we are. And I don't mean to put a label on it really. I just... wanted to remember what happened last year. And... everything after." He looks at Kiara silently for a moment, then glances toward the kitchen. "I have more wine, if you want some. Or I could make some tea."

KiaraThe Verbena seems distracted on the drive. Perhaps not withdrawn per say but - drawn in, by the music spilling out of Ian's stereo as they slip through the Denver city streets. By the neon glow of lights and traffic and the muffled echoes of the world outside. She turns her face toward the passenger side window as rain streaks across the glass and chases a bead of it with a fingertip.

The silence does not hang heavy between them but then - it so rarely ever had.

-

The whispered declaration as she climbs out of the car, the way he draws into her space has her watching him with this half-veiled little expression. Eyes hooded, mouth softening at the edges into a tiny, glancing smile as she slips her hand into his and allows herself to be led up the stairs to his apartment.

-

These hadn't been the steps last time. They were interpreting new choreography.

-

When he goes to hang his jacket up and reappears, he finds Kiara at the window, her back to him. Arms crossed over her chest, the beaded bag she'd adopted for the evening in one hand, the strap wound around her fingers several times. There was something to the posture of her, the brunette. The lovely line of her form that betrayed an edge of tension.

A thrumming awareness. She turned at the sound of his approach, though. Was smiling in that bright, bold manner of hers until his words sunk in and it faded a sliver, adopted a slightly more studious caliber as she observed him. The hesitation. The uncertainty. It seemed to have a sobering effect on Kiara. "No, we never really have."

A beat.

"I never figured it was something we wanted." He has wine. Or tea. Her chin dips, she's smiling, uncurling her bag and gently dropping it to the floor (the strap coiling there like a serpent). Stepping around it and picking a path across to him. Sets her fingers back against his tie and tugs at it, then smooths both hands down the length.

There was something vaguely soothing about the gesture. Her eyes tick up to meet his. "Tea sounds nice." She draws away after a moment and bends en route to the edge of his bed to slip first one, then the other heel off.

Ian

There are things he wanted to say. More than just this. More than merely remembering. But now that they're here, alone in his apartment, the words seem hopelessly elusive.

I never figured it was something we wanted.

He meets Kiara in the space between the kitchen and the bedroom. When she grasps his tie he goes quietly still, this hesitant little smile touching one corner of his mouth. She's preoccupied somewhat. It hasn't gone unnoticed. Ian watches her bend down to pull off her heels and lets his hands slide for a moment into his pockets.

"To be in a relationship, or to talk about being in one?" There's a touch of rueful self-awareness in his tone, but it fades when he asks, more seriously, "Are you alright?"

He offered to make tea, but he doesn't move to do so just yet. Instead he watches her like he's trying to gauge if she might need something.

[Empathy]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kiara 

Alright was perhaps a relative term for Kiara.

For any of them, to be honest. Physically, she's fine. There's no sense of illness or potential injury the way there has been before but there is something on her mind. That much she isn't particularly trying to conceal. She simply hasn't raised whatever it is that's troubling her. It's present and clearly a concern enough that she's been aware of their surroundings, even here, even now in his apartment in a way she typically isn't when they're together.

Almost as if she's expecting somebody. And not, from the distraction she's projecting, a somebody she particularly wants to see. Whatever it is that's troubling her - it's not him. That much, he can sense. She's happy to be with him - she's just dealing with something.

Kiara

"Both?" She asks (suggests), looking across at him.

There's a touch of that same self awareness in her voice, too. A creeping little edge of humor that banks there and settles in and then smooths a touch when he asks if she's alright. Kiara's eyes drop to her skirt; the way the fabric was cut, it offered a glimpse of her calves as she walked; meant to project a certain degree of sensuality without being overstated.

The Verbena's fingers slide along the hem of it, drawing the material out where it had become trapped beneath her. Her hands moving then to brace her weight there on the mattress, each side of her body, fingers curled into the covers. "I'm fine. It's just - Grace came to see me. She brought the Euthanatos with her. Michael," she supplies, the name offered with a little contraction of Kiara's fine dark brows. "He's the one who's hunting down that Nephandus. There's a ... connection, between him and it." She casts Ian a tense little smile.

Breathes out sharply.

"A past life of his. I tried to help him. Tried to find out what the connection was and I - " Kiara's fingers lift to her temple, she rubs her fingers over it, drops them away in an aborted, frustrated little gesture. "I couldn't do it. I mean I couldn't fix it. There was just so much scar tissue and I could feel it there. In his pattern. The connection. This - diseased thing. I know if I just had more time I could have done it but they left and I'm just - " Kiara's eyes are bright. "People have been dying and I could have stopped it. I -"

- feel responsible.

She doesn't say it, but drops her eyes, frowning.

"I'm worried about Grace, too. How far in she's gotten with all of this. I think she cares about him. Michael."

Ian

There's a part of him that was expecting this. He remembers, of course, what Kiara told him at the lake. And he knows her well enough by now not to expect she might remain disengaged if there was a chance she could help. The news doesn't take him off guard, but it does sober him. He takes a slow breath, shoulders lowering on the exhale. When she finishes speaking, he walks over to the bed and sits down. His weight dips the mattress a little beside her, pressing their thighs together.

"You aren't responsible for the actions of other people." He could very well be speaking of any of them, when he says that. There's a quiet weight to his voice. He knows that being here with her could potentially put him in danger. That her wariness that evening is because she's half-expecting something to come find her. But if any part of that knowledge frightens him, it isn't to do with his own safety. His hand finds the small of her back, sliding slowly up the length of her spine. The fabric of her blouse feels thin and soft beneath his touch. When he reaches the nape of her neck he leans in and kisses her temple - soft and reverent.

"You tried to help. That's all anyone can do." His hand slides down again. There's a comforting rhythm to it, the way he maps the curve of her back beneath his palm. "I want to tell you to stay out of it, but it's not my right to say and I can't really imagine you giving up. You're too stubborn." There's a faint lift of a smile there, but it thins out a moment later when he says, "Just be careful. Please."

Kiara

There's this little cant of Kiara's mouth when he offers that he knows she's too stubborn to give up. This brief tugging of her lips and a little sideways glance that is as much distracted affection as recognition of the truth in it. They were both, in their own ways, incredibly stubborn individuals. She leans into him after a moment, into the comfort of his hand against her back, her head dropping to rest against his shoulder.

Closes her eyes there for a minute.

"Why doesn't it ever feel like enough." She murmurs without real desire for an answer (perhaps cognizant there wasn't any easy one). Her hand finds the one not stroking over her back and lifts it to her lips, presses a chase brush of her lips to his knuckles. Holds his hand in both of hers for a moment, keeping it (him) close to her.

"This wasn't what you had in mind for tonight." She recognizes after a beat and draws back, twists to face him. The silk blouse sliding easily beneath his fingertips, Kiara's hair is beginning to make its escape from the way she'd pinned it earlier; longer strands coming loose against the nape of her neck, curling against her cheeks.

She searches his face, the brunette, in that manner she tended to. As if she could trace out every tiny detail of his thoughts simply by making a long enough study. By mapping the planes of it. She did it while they were in bed together, too. Lay there curled on her side with her hands folded beneath her cheek, observing him with quiet consideration.

Unraveling layers.

"What did you want to give me?"

Ian

 Why doesn't it ever feel like enough?

Ian leans his head to rest against hers. A warm gust of breath drifts over her hair when he exhales. "I don't know." There's an echo of shared sentiment in his voice - heavy and quietly regretful.

When Kiara makes that claim - that this wasn't what he had in mind for tonight - he doesn't answer immediately. Instead he meets her gaze with a softened expression, his eyes tracing over the lines of her face. "What I had in mind was to be with you. And you're here. I know we can't shut out the world. I wouldn't want to."

She's studying him the way he studies her, but his thoughts in that moment are complicated in a way even he has trouble unraveling. So he slides his hand from her back with some reluctance and stands up. Moves to the kitchen to grab a couple of glass mugs out of the cabinet. There's an electric water heater on the counter - an expensive one with temperature ratings designed for tea - with an infuser situated underneath the spout. Given the amount of time Kiara's spent here, she probably already knows that one of his cabinets is filled with tins of loose-leaf tea. That he drinks black tea in the morning instead of coffee.

"What kind of tea do you like?" It's an easier question than the one she asked him. "I have mostly Chinese varieties. Emma frequently accuses me of having a bias against Indian tea, which is only about eighty percent true."

Kiara

[Do you notice anything, Ms Kiara? Let's Empathy him.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )

Kiara

She watches him for a moment when he crosses toward the kitchen, her hands falling to settle on her lap, expression reading lingering curiosity. He asks about tea and there's this little quirk of Kiara's mouth as if she were surprised that he'd remembered making the offer in the first place. Maybe after the conversation they'd just had - things as simple as tea selection felt strangely surreal and difficult to decide on.

If she noticed the way he evaded answering her - she didn't call him on it. At least, not yet.

She slides to her feet and pads across to observe him instead, leaning her weight against the counter, her hip cocked out, fingers rubbing absently at her neck. "Surprise me." She instructs with a challenging little gleam in her eye that was achingly familiar, echoes of past interactions. Easy, flirtatious banter in Washington Park while she'd fished for her basketball and they'd been observed by other Awakened in the city.

"It makes me wonder, you know," she unpins her hair while he makes the tea, tousles her fingers through it and lets the heavy mass of it settle over one of her shoulders. It returns the Verbena's appearance to something a little better suited to her - a taste of something wild; touched by life. The smokey quality to her eyes, the dark red slash of her mouth.

Kiara Woolfe's attire really didn't need to project a sensuality. The creature herself managed it quite well with the cant of her head, the bold consideration of dark eyes.

"Where we'll be in another year. How many of us will still be here."

Ian

 He lifts his eyebrows at the challenge, a glimmer of quiet amusement showing in his expression. "Alright."

Perhaps he already has something in mind, because he doesn't waste much time mulling over options. There's a brief pause when he opens the tea cabinet, eyes sliding over the labels on display before he finds the one he's looking for. It's a green variety - Bi Luo Chun, though the label is written in characters. The leaves are pale and soft and lightly rolled. He scoops a few teaspoons into the infuser, fills it with water and leaves it to steep for a couple of minutes.

Kiara wonders where they'll be in another year. Ian puts his hands behind him on the counter and watches her. Beside him, the tea leaves gradually begin to unfurl in the water.

"When I moved here, I didn't think I'd be here this long." He pauses for a moment, and there's a meaningful weight to the silence. "A lot of things have happened that I wasn't planning on. Or expecting. You in particular." He lifts away from the counter and crosses over to where Kiara is standing. "I don't want to try to predict the future."

It's a little sad, the way he says it. This subtle awareness of how the passage of time can often bring loss.

"But I'm glad you're... mm, no." He shakes his head and glances down. "That's not what I want to say." When he looks up he has to take a breath. When he starts to speak again, his mouth opens and shuts silently. Like he can't find the words he's looking for. (Or maybe like he's afraid to say them.)

"Before I met you, I think I forgot. What it felt like to be... happy? I think maybe I just kind of accepted that I couldn't feel that anymore. And then it took me so long to realize that's what was happening when I was with you. I think for a while I actively tried to avoid it. But now we're here and I honestly don't know how to tell you how much you fucking matter to me."

Whatever emotions he was keeping banked earlier, he doesn't seem able to hide them now. There's a shift in his voice when he says the word happy. It cracks a little - goes rough and slightly vulnerable. It happens again at the end, when he has to pause because his chest is so tight he suddenly can't find his breath.

His eyes do this thing where he sort of looks up (but not really at anything) when he tries to breath. Finally he manages a deep inhale. When he releases it, the light catches his eyes and Kiara can see that they're wet.

"I don't know where we'll be in a year. But even if you leave tonight and I never see you again, I'm not going to regret any of it."

Kiara

It was the second time in a matter of days that she'd stood and borne witness to the emotional tumult of another person in her life. Then, there had been little she could do to change what was or what could be. Serafine teetering on the knife-edge - desperate and lost and perhaps even a touch angry at being adrift and untethered from the rest of the world. Then, Kiara had set her hands on her friend's shoulders and poured energy into her.

Brushed healing fingertips over her temples and jaw, tried to remind (gift) the woman with the knowledge she was still there. Still part of something greater for her current loss. This time it's another kind of witnessing - she's part of this exchange in a way she hadn't been for Sera. She watches Ian so attentively as he struggles to articulate himself and there's something very still and focused about her as she does.

Not fear, not now.

(Not like there had been the night he confessed his feelings for her).

But something finite and fragile. A particular flicker that sparks and spreads in those dark eyes as they tick over his face; take in the brightness of them in the light.

"Hey." She moves suddenly, her hands take his face between them, cradle it there with surprising gentleness. She was not a woman who gave over to such gestures often, or openly. She touched him with the easy intimacy of a lover. "It's okay.

I'm right here."

She slides a hand down, finds his and draws it to her chest, over her heart. The beat of it steady beneath that thin layer of silk. Beneath blood and tissue and bone. "I'm not going anywhere." Kiara's eyes searched his intently. "No promises or predictions but you and I. For all the mess and insanity around us - I'm here for that.

No regrets." She echoes him and touches the edge of his mouth with her fingertips, offering a tiny suggestion of a smile. "Besides, I've barely begun to make your life interesting."

Ian

It isn't the same kind of tumult that Serafine experienced that night in Kiara's apartment. Ian's emotions now, as complicated and bittersweet as they are, have an echo of hope in them. This hesitant, unsteady acknowledgement of renewal. It's a thing he can't find the words to express - not properly. But everything they've been through until this point has already told this story. One year later and they are here.

It's such a different place than they were.

Ian's eyes are bright when Kiara takes his face in her hands. He's never cried in front of her before. Almost, a couple of times - but he always drew it back. For all the silly, cliche reasons that one might expect. He sets one of his hands atop her own where it cups his jaw and turns his face to kiss the inside of her palm. When he does, he shuts his eyes and a drop of moisture traces a path down his cheek. It isn't especially dramatic, but it is honest - this quiet overflow of emotion. She takes his hand and places it over her heart...

(I'm right here.)

...and he steps in close to lean into her space: the warmth of her, the steady pulse of her heart and her resonance. She feels both soft and powerful beside him - silk and skin and tumbling hair and so very, impossibly real and alive. He laughs when she suggests she's only begun to make his life interesting, and there are more tears with that, falling from his eyes to land atop her shoulder. Then he presses his face against the side of her head and kisses her cheek for a long, silent moment.

His hand stays over her heart, absorbing the beat of it like a lifeline.

"We can... if you want to. Put a label on it." There's something very soft and tentative to the way he says this, murmured against her ear as he turns his face. "I just... didn't want it to be..." (fake, manufactured.) He lifts his head and looks at her. His lips and the rim around his eyes are a little red. "I don't know. I just like thinking of you as you, and not... some preconceived idea. But we are... in a relationship. I know that. Whatever the specifics."

The timer for the tea goes off, beeping twice gently. Ian steps back and swipes a hand across his cheeks. He walks back to the counter and empties the contents of the infuser into the glass mugs that he procured earlier. One of them he hands carefully to Kiara. Its contents are a very delicate, pale green. The steam coming off the top carries a sweet, floral scent.

Kiara

There's so much to it.

The moment, the emotions tangled up there. He presses into her space and his lips find the turn of her cheek and she doesn't say anything - yet. Can't, perhaps, beneath the lashing swell of all of it. Can only open her dark eyes after a moment of them standing there, locked together with his hand pressed to her heart and study his face.

Take stock of the tears and the tentative way he suggests they can - they could - put a label on it.

She let's him pull away, after the timer goes off and returns to her a moment to breathe out slowly; to run the edge of her tongue over her lip, leaning her weight back against the counter and watching his back, watching him with a very fine line drawn between her brows. This complicated, nuanced little furrow there, a flicker that surfaces in her eyes as they tick away for a beat.

She doesn't know how to articulate her thoughts on what he's uncovered to her.

When he turns back, she's studying the floor with great intensity, but straightens and accepts the cup with this tiny little edge of a smile.

"Specifics don't matter to me, you know." She says finally, cultivating her words with soft precision. She gently turns the glass around in her palms, feeling the hot liquid seep into them, warming them. "I don't give a damn what any of them think of what we're doing. What we are. I have a - " She flexes one shoulder in this absent, loose little lift, her mouth twisting a touch. " - complicated relationship with relationships. It's not that I don't agree. What we're doing, but my parents were so - I don't want that to change things."

She searches his expression intently for a moment.

"I just know that - I want to be here. Whatever that means. Girlfriend. Number one on your speed dial." She lowers her eyes, lashes fanning over her cheeks in the moment. Tilts her face back, her smile a little crooked, a flash of white teeth. "Just Kiara."

IanIan gives a quietly amused exhale when Kiara confesses her concerns. Her words are a ringing echo of his own anxieties, and the similarity of their shared experience provides a level of reassurance that Kiara may not have expected or intended. There are probably many people in Denver who would hope for a different kind of confession. But Ian is not those people.

He settles back against the island counter, grasping his cup between both hands. For a moment his eyes rest on the surface of the tea, watching the slow curl of steam rise into the air. Whatever he's thinking, he doesn't say it aloud, but there is this soft, private smile that lingers there on his lips. Finally he takes a sip, presses his lips together and meets Kiara's eyes.

"I don't want it to change things either. It just... felt to me like maybe we were getting to a point where not talking about it was another kind of dishonesty. And I don't want you to think that you aren't important to me." There's another issue - the so-called specifics they keep hedging around - but he doesn't seem any more inclined to get into that discussion than she is. Not tonight, anyway. Instead he leaves it there, leaning in to kiss the corner of her mouth.

"Whatever we are. However things change. I promise I will always see it clearly."

When he leans back, he looks at his tea again. "There's a poem by Adrienne Rich. Diving into the Wreck. I found it one year in college and just remember thinking... this is it. This woman wrote my life onto paper. Now I think of it and it reminds me of you. Of us.

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear."

It's a long poem for him to have memorized, but he speaks it as though he's known it a long time. As though the cadence and the syllables have become worn into his tongue. And perhaps they have.

"Let's sit down. You look like you could use some rest." He takes his tea in one hand and grazes the warm palm of his other hand over her back, directing them toward the living room.

There's a new painting there, hanging above the sofa. Splashes of black and red and white and grey. Something about it - the colors maybe; the beauty and the primal aggression - makes it feel very much like something that belongs in Ian's apartment.

Kiara

Kiara has a manner about her.

She always has had, the brunette. This stillness that possesses her when she's quite entirely focused on a thing (or a person). It's arresting, that totality - the lack of anything but her breathing and her intensity because she's such a force of nature otherwise. A creature that lived and thrived and existed in motion.

Smiling, laughing, running. That was, perhaps, the nature of her tradition. They were the sort that rolled and tumbled and relished every tiny nick and cut living dealt them. Kiara Woolfe would likely never be the sort of woman who would recoil from the sight of it - that chaos, that mess. The spillover that smiling and laughing and running incurred. She'd forever be reminiscent of warm Spring days; Summer ones, too; the sun on the back of your neck, freshly turned earth and the way the world smelled after the rain stopped. That first breath of crisper air.

So: she's very quiet and - almost - reverent as Ian recites the poem.

Cradling that tea against her stomach and letting her eyes settle on him, letting the picture swirl into focus around her through his words. There's a little beat where her eyes grow brighter and she has to blink them, look away, look down. This vulnerable little fold of her lips together into a line; the crease that appears between her eyebrows once more.

She's not easy to drive to tears, the brunette (has he ever seen her do it yet?) but there's a wash of the grief and complexity and understanding through her eyes as the words stem to a halt and when he brushes a hand over her back in the wake of it, steers them toward the sofa she still seems swept up in it, the cocoon of the poetry; the story it wove.

The painting does, in fact, draw her eye as they settle there and Kiara pulls the cup to her mouth, sips from it with careful deliberation and then, still drinking in the bold slashes; the intensity of each line. "I like it," she could so easily have meant both, the poetry and the canvas. Her eyes slip to his face and she cants her face to query it.

The painting. The colors. The abstract dance of them across the frame. "Where did you pick this up? It's very - you." This little shift at the edge of her mouth. A flex of tiny muscles.

IanHe doesn't see the tears right away, because the poem - remembering it - takes all of his focus. But there is a moment when he looks up at the end where he catches the way her eyes shine. It softens his expression. Renders his touch more delicate and tender on her back. A moment ago he was the one to get choked up. Now he seems calmer. More reflective.

They make their way around to the sofa. A couple of ceramic coasters sit atop the glass coffee table, as though Ian had anticipated the need for them earlier. So much of his apartment is so carefully thought out. Cleaned, organized, placed exactly where he needs it. One could call it controlled. Sterile. Anal retentive. But it is also indicative of the degree of care he puts into the things that matter in his life. Even the smell of the place - jasmine and sandalwood. He chose that. Not... to impress Kiara or to influence some kind of mood, but because it reflected how he was feeling. And because he thinks about things like how a scent can attach itself to memory.

Kiara is not a part of his life that he has ever been able to plan for. But sometimes he tries anyway.

The tea tastes like it smells: delicate and sweet. Complex and subtle.

The poem - that part he hadn't planned. But it felt like the right thing, when he said it.

When they sit down, he sets his mug on the table. Kiara's eyes find the painting, but Ian doesn't follow her gaze. He's looking at her - at her eyes. And he shifts on the sofa, tucks one knee beneath his leg and leans in to take Kiara's face in his hands. The way he touches her is so... gentle. Barely skirting the edges of her skin. He kisses her slowly, deliberately, retracing the curves of her lips and the taste of her mouth.

Like maybe he'd rather do that than answer her question. But then he pulls away and kisses, very carefully, the corner of each eye.

"Kalen gave it to me," he answers finally, drawing away. There's a moment perhaps where it takes him a beat to come back to himself. He reaches up to loosen his tie, sliding the knot a little away from his neck. "I try not to let people give me expensive things, but he'd already bought it and..." he trails off, glancing up at the image hanging on the wall. "I don't know. I had a hard time turning it away, for some reason."

Kiara

For all the mess that was Kiara's apartment - the spill of clothing on any and all surfaces, the lived in-ness of the space with its blooming plants in pots and tiny herb garden she'd placed on a windowsill to capture the morning sunlight; for all the frenetic activity to it - she likes the simplicity of Ian's apartment. The smooth lines; the placement of every last thing.

Not so much for a space she'd control herself so precisely but - as an extension of him.

She maps out the walls and the spaces sometimes with her fingertips, the Verbena, takes up handfuls of earth when she's in a new spot outdoors. It's a reflection of how Kiara charts her world, how she responds to the greater breadth of it universally. Through touch. Through the tactile sensation of it beneath her palms. She turns back to glimpse him watching her and when he leans in - she shifts the tea between her hands and lifts one freed to touch his arm.

He can feel the lingering warmth through her fingertips from the tea where she holds his wrist.

Can feel the way her cheeks shift with the surfacing of a smile as he places kisses at the corner of each eye; can taste the salt on her skin; breathe in the cloying sweetness of her perfume where she'd applied it, hours ago to her neck. She's still smiling in that slight, subdued way when he pulls back and loosens the tie; when he notes the painting was from Kalen.

Her focus ticks back to it, the smile fading into something notching shy of thoughtful. Considering. "Kalen bought this for you?" The way Kiara phrases it, the question, the manner she feeds it back to Ian, doesn't sound like anything she's seeking further confirmation on. She does lean over though, sets her tea down on one of those ceramic coasters and rises up to examine the canvas a little closer.

She's perched there on the edge of the sofa, studying it with those fine dark eyes of hers for a long time.

"He knows you better than I thought he did. To choose this one." Her eyes tick back to him, she settles down closer, their knees brushing.

"It's what I'd have picked, too."

IanThere's a story there. Behind the painting. Behind Ian's history with Kalen. It isn't something that he feels the need to hide, but perhaps there's some reluctance in speaking of it now. On a day when his thoughts are so heavily focused upon Kiara. It seems, in a way, a disservice to both of them.

But the painting is there, and the tangled mess of their lives are never so neat or controlled as Ian's living space. He watches Kiara lean forward to examine the canvas with this soft, enigmatic expression.

He knows you better than I thought he did.

There is a lot he could say to that.

"Better than I thought he did too, I think." There's a long pause, and he looks away briefly, rolling his lower lip between his teeth. "We went through a lot together, once upon a time. I'm not sure I really know how to define our relationship now. We don't see each other that often anymore, which is probably my fault. He wanted something from me that I couldn't give him and I pushed him away pretty hard. But he never seemed... angry. And now, I don't know. I guess we're friends again. I don't think we ever really stopped so much as... re-drew some lines."

There are things he's not saying. Less out of evasiveness than efficiency. It isn't an easy story to convey in summary. When his eyes tick back to Kiara's face, he reaches out to grasp her hand, caressing the fine bones of her fingers beneath his thumb.

"I stopped sleeping with him before I met you."

Did she even need that reassurance? Possibly not. But he gives it anyway.

KiaraShe does look away at some point while he speaks.

Less out of distress or clear jealousy at the confirmation (at least in part) of how close he'd been with Kalen not so long ago and more to assemble her thoughts - and disassemble his confessions - folding her knees up and curling her arms around them, her chin resting atop one as she listens. Tilts her face down and there's a frown etched there for a long time.

That same considering little look, sharp and honed now, that ghosts back to his face when he reaches out for her hand and she gives it over easily - watches him draw it between his fingers; trace over the bones of it; her knuckles - hands that had seen blood and decay, had offered surprising tenderness and fought for survival more than once.

It's utterly deceptive - how fragile they seemed like this and yet - so capable of more.

The balances and weights of their conversation tonight have shifted rapidly from moment to moment, never quite unbalanced but - their was a delicacy to this, too. The broaching of a subject, a relationship that she's known of, has held some vague peripheral consciousness of for quite some time. She's never had it articulated or spelled out before and in truth, perhaps, she'll never ask about again after tonight. After he offers it freely.

What Kalen had been to him, once. What he still was.

"I always had the impression he thought rather highly of you. Just - little moments. Things he said or - I don't know." He wanted something from me that I couldn't give him. She looks at the picture again, the lines of it, the bold black and red. Studies it and imposes the impression of Kalen over it, the ghostly phantom of the other Awakened scrutinizing the canvas the same way she did.

Seeing the essence of the man seated beside the same way she did in its lines. In the swirl and stab of the paint.

The frown seeps away, softens. "I guess Kalen and I have more in common than I thought." She leans over, after a beat, unwraps herself and leans into his space; her face very close to his for a beat before she kisses him.

Call it a reassurance of her own (for them both).

Ian[Empathy, because aww]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

KiaraThere's a twinge of compassion somewhere in her response.

A settling awareness in the way she looks at the picture on Ian's wall and then at him as he holds her hand. As she listens to what he says about his complicated history with the other man. The canvas on Ian's wall is one she'd have purchased as much because she sees so much of him in it - as because knowing it was something that would speak to him is an awareness that comes from a place of connection.

And love.

She realizes to an extent what it was that he couldn't offer Kalen and the way she crawls forward to kiss him - well, there's understanding to it. There's a lover's physical reminder that they're there, that they understand the way relationships work. The threads that bound them.

She's not in need of reassurance when it comes to Kalen.

IanIn truth, there are things Kiara knows about him - has experienced with him - that she shares with quite a few people. They've never asked each other for sexual histories, but the nature of their early encounters suggests a certain familiarity with the protocols of casual sex. And they are both attractive people of a certain visceral, instinctive character. Easy assumptions can be made from that.

But it isn't the fact that he and Kalen have slept together that holds Kiara's attention; sets that quiet frown into her features. What she speaks of now... those are things of intimacy. Affection. Love.

Not all of these things were entirely unreciprocated. There's enough gentleness in Ian's tone to indicate that. Whatever he did or did not feel for Kalen, he stilled cared for him. Still does care for him.

But he's not here with Kalen tonight.

There's a flicker of concern when Ian watches the way Kiara's mouth pulls down - the pensive way she considers what he's just told her. Almost he starts to say something, but then he just goes still.

When she kisses him, he lets the contact melt some of his tension away. His eyes slide shut when her mouth meets his, and he makes this low, gentle sound.

The thing that Kalen wanted - there is a reason why it never worked. Maybe it's the same reason why Kiara couldn't love the man she left behind in New York.

the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth

"Maybe," Ian murmurs. His lips seem loathe to leave hers, brushing against them in this lazy-sensual way before he kisses the corner of her mouth. "But not everything."

He leans back and looks at her a moment. Then he stands up and walks into the bedroom, opening a little drawer in his night stand. When he comes back, there's a black velvet jewelry box in his hand. He doesn't open it to display the contents - just holds onto it for a moment as he re-settles himself on the sofa cushions.

Then he looks up and offers it to Kiara. When she opens it, she'll find inside a simple pendant hanging from a white-gold chain: a trillion-cut grape garnet, its facets sparking deep wine-purple in the light.

"This... was sitting unappreciated in a box in my closet. My dad gave it to my mom on their last anniversary."

Kiara[WP: Don't get weird, Woolfe.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

KiaraThere are facets of Kiara's life before Denver (even Before in another sense) that she's barely revealed to Ian - barely revealed to anyone, in actuality. Older, packed away versions of herself that she keeps carefully wound up and pressed down, bundled away, stored out of sight and sound and knowledge of the people she cares for presently.

There were reasons why the Kiara of then had not, could not, love the man she often fell into bed with. The demons she'd wrestled with then far more present and potent (and mundane) than the ones she finds herself confronting these days. Old, bone deep bruises that occasionally - she still managed to press down on and feel the distant ache of - past regrets, old mistakes that left their scars on her.

Body and perhaps more so, soul.

When he gets up and walks into his bedroom, opens a bedside drawer, at first she's lazily curious of it. Lounging back against his sofa and drawing her fingers through her loosened hair; feeling tiny snags where it had been bound too long. When she spies the box in his hand though, her motions still - her eyes ticking from it - to his face - and back. There's a slight jerkiness in the way she sits up, in the manner she turns her body toward him.

He offers her box and for a beat there's an almost humorous degree of caution to the way she accepts it (as if he'd just offered her a severed head or some obscure relic) and then a very decided care to the way she opens it. Her lips form a slight o of surprise and her dark eyes dart to meet his:

"Ian, this is - are you sure you want me to have this? It was your mother's." Well, almost. Kiara's fingers glide over the chain with a clear reverence. Her fingertips settling over the garnet, gently picking it up between them to stroke her thumb over the stone.

"It's beautiful," she murmurs, then a tiny furrow of consternation knits between her brows. "I don't ... have anything like this to give to you." Her fingers settle the chain back against the box.

 Ian
It isn't the only piece of jewelry that Ian has tucked away. It isn't even the most valuable. There are reasons why he chose this one to give to her. Because it never really got a chance to be appreciated. Because the color suits Kiara's eyes. Because it was an anniversary gift, once.

But for all that, it was not an easy decision to make (not an easy gift to part with.) Kiara, of course, senses this. Ian can see it in her eyes when she opens the box. The dawning realization of the weight and meaning underlying the thing in her hands. Everything he has left of his mother is finite.

It's a lot of weight to carry, that kind of gift. And for a moment, Ian's expression shifts to look almost regretful. He reaches out and sets his hand on Kiara's knee, watching her closely. There's a pause before he responds.

"I'm sure." There's a resonance to his voice that implies a careful certainty. "I didn't consider it lightly."

No, he wouldn't have. Not this.

"I got to hold on to most of her jewelry. This is just one piece of it. And I think... honestly. They'd be pleased that I gave it to you." There's a small part of him, the remnants of the person he was when his parents were still alive, that almost feels annoyed at that. Knowing how much he used to strain against the bonds of tradition. How much his family would likely tease him for giving in to it now.

"But I understand if you don't want to take it. And I won't be upset if you say no."

There's no hint of lurking insecurities when he says this. No suggestion that it might be a polite lie. It's too important a thing to take out of mere obligation. (And that isn't something he wants for either of them.)

His hand on her knee squeezes down gently, and he shifts to settle in closer to her. "If I wanted gifts, I would be here with someone else. You don't owe me anything." He reaches up and slides a lock of her hair behind her ear - slowly, reverently. "I love you." It's only the second time he's actually said those words out loud. It should get easier, but it never really does.

Especially now, in the light on his apartment, with his mother's necklace sitting open in Kiara's palm.

KiaraShe feels his hand settle on her knee. Hears his words while she continues to stare at the chain with a concentration that feels like - more. As if there's a struggle that the Verbena wages with herself before she says, haltingly: "My father used to buy my mother pearls. At first I thought it was romantic, some sign that beneath all his pragmatism he did actually care about her."

She looks up, the edge of her mouth giving over to a smile that was not borne of sentiment as much as clouded, ambiguous regrets. There was a twinge of complicated emotion that coiled around Kiara's voice whenever she spoke of her parents. There was no regret for their loss to her the way there was for Ian. The severing of them in her life had been a decisive exercise in survival. "It was blackmail. He'd buy her expensive things to secure her presence at events.

He never tried with me except for this one year. He set a box on the table and told me it was mine." She strokes her fingers over the necklace again. "Pearls. They were beautiful. I sat there and I stared at them while he walked away. I thought about just accepting them. I mean, why not, right?" She cuts a brief little shrug, this lean back into the sofa, her fingers playing over her mouth.

"And then I got so angry. I picked the box up and threw it at him. I remember so clearly the way it sailed over his head and hit the staircase, the sound of it. How satisfying it felt." She laughs, dropping her hand away, her mouth curled down. "And he just stopped, turned around and looked at me in this way. Like he'd known what I'd do but he'd wanted to see me prove him right."

She breathes out, dropping her chin.

She doesn't explain why she's telling him this, peeling back another ugly chapter of her childhood. Painting the image clearly of the volatile, angry girl she'd been before her mentor had found her that rainy night. That there was the potential in her, even then, to become the creature of change and rejuvenation she was tonight felt starkly plain, even drawn through her retellings.

It was easy to picture that Kiara, standing with her hands balled into fists, her chin lifted. Cheeks spotted with angry color as she bore the brunt of her father's disapproval.

"That was the last time anyone ever gave me something like this." She offers, turning her eyes on his face, searching it. When he tucks the hair back behind her ear, he can feel the warmth radiating from her cheeks, the flood of remembered agitation. When he says he loves her, he can feel the answering sense of it in the way her eyes seem to warm, softening as she slides her fingers around the chain and takes it out of the box.

Twists around so that she's half facing away from him, sweeps her hair from her neck in invitation for him to put it around her neck. "I love you, too." It should be easier to say it to his face, now, but somehow, it still felt safer to let the apartment glimpse her face, the naked vulnerability in it when she did.

IanIt's what he said he wanted, this bearing of truths. However ugly they might sound. They've said it to each other, at various points. Though neither of them have ever been very good at being vulnerable.

Listening is easier. And he does listen - quietly and without interruption. Takes in the way Kiara's features shift as she relates the memory. The tonal inflections in her voice. There are changes in his expression as well - subtle and complicated as her own. Guilt. Regret. Anger. Disgust. These things lurk in the shadows of his dark eyes and the lines of his face without ever fully manifesting.

He watches as she takes the necklace out of the box and turns to invite him to help her fasten it. She answers him without meeting his eyes (I love you, too) and he doesn't draw attention to that. There are things they both have difficulty with. Things he understands.

It's why he knows what kind of gesture it is that she takes the necklace. Especially now.

"I'm sorry I reminded you of that." He reaches around to take the ends of the chain from her hands, fixing the clasp carefully behind her neck. When he's done, he kisses the nape of her neck just beneath the hairline. The contact lingers for a moment before he pulls away and lets her hair slide back.

He doesn't tell her all the things he feels when he sees that necklace on her skin. Probably couldn't articulate it if he tried.

"Your father doesn't deserve you." It's less than he wants to say, though probably more than he has a right to. He slides a hand over Kiara's shoulder and down her arm. "Tell me what you need, right now."

KiaraThere's a very complicated little expression on the Verbena's face that lingers when she turns back to face him, her fingers moving over the necklace where it lay against her skin, tracing the edges of it. Ian says her father doesn't deserve her and she wants to say so many things to that.

What does he deserve, then? What did she deserve instead?

Instead, after a minute, she offers (promises): "I'll look after it," with a final brush of her fingertips over the stone before she lets it settle there, in the hollow of her throat. Looks down at their knees, where they're touching, her mouth pulled down in this thoughtful little curl. When he slides a hand over her shoulder, down the crook of her arm she captures it as it descends, traps it between her own and keeps it there.

Studies it and then lifts her face, her dark lashes framing eyes equally as dark.

"Right now, what I need - " Her eyes rove over his face, linger there as she lifts his hand and sets it over her throat, the slope of her shoulder. He can feel the necklace there, pressed against her skin, slowly adopting her body heat. She guides his hand lower, settles it there over her breast; the soft curve of her body where she breathes in sharply. " - is for you to touch me. Make me remember."

She lets go of his hand in favor of leaning in and setting her hands on his body, of letting her eyes drop to his mouth and back, a tiny, teasing little gleam returning to her expression; settling there in the generous give to her mouth.

"That we're here. I want to feel you."

She curls her fingers into his clothing. "Please?"

IanPeople seldom get the things they deserve. Perhaps it isn't useful to think of life in those terms. Usually, Ian tries not to.

Does he deserve to be here right now? With her? With all the mistakes he's made? All the people he's hurt?

He asks what she needs, and there's no expectation in his voice. No hope that she might give him any particular answer. There's only the quiet steadiness of his presence, his focus fixed on her as though she were the only thing of consequence in the room. He hasn't forgotten what she told him earlier. If anything, it weighs on him now. The thought of what she's been through. Of what she may yet face if she tries again to help Grace and Michael.

He never thought they would end up here. He said to her earlier that he had no regrets, but looking at her now it occurs to him that he does. That he regrets every single moment when he took her presence in his life for granted. But who knows where they would be if he'd done any of it differently. Maybe the speed they moved at was exactly the speed they needed to.

He can feel her pulse when she sets his hand against her throat, and he lets his hand slide away slowly, trailing his fingers over the delicate chain of the necklace. The purple stone gleams deeply in the light, and for a moment Ian's attention is arrested there, staring at it with this impossibly complicated expression. Kiara drags his hand to her breast and he inhales at the same moment she does. Keeps his eyes on the garnet for a delayed beat before he raises them to meet hers. His thumb slides down over the curve of her breast, grazing the the outline of her nipple through her clothes.

Something inside of him breaks a little. At the juxtaposition of past and present. Perhaps he was wrong to think he could handle it. And yet... his heart does not stop. The world does not crack and fall to pieces.

Make me remember that we're here.

Her hands find him; map the solid, lithe curves of his body beneath the finely pressed and tailored fabrics of his suit. The look of it is so orderly on him. So formal. Quite a contrast to the primal drives they both know lurk within him. The tie still hangs, slightly loosened, around his neck. He left it on for a reason. She'd been playing with it earlier.

I want to feel you. Please?

Yes.

He doesn't say it but... he doesn't have to. Everything in his body says it for him. When he pushes forward and kisses her; sucks her lower lip into his mouth and grazes it with his teeth. When he makes this little hungry sound in his throat. He grips her breast tightly for a moment before scratching over it with his nails. Dips his head to taste her neck, lashing his tongue over the pulse-point between her collar bones.

His lips graze over the necklace. It slows him for a moment, and he leaves another, more delicate kiss at the top of her sternum.

Then he slides off the couch and kneels down between her knees. His hands find her ankles and move up the length of her calves, mapping over her knees with bated deliberation. His eyes are on hers the whole time - locked there silently, dark and... very much present. As his hands move, he hikes up the fabric of her skirt, leaning forward until his palms graze over the outside of her thighs and up to hook his fingers in the waistline of her underwear.

Slides them down slowly and kisses the inside of her thigh, just past the knee.

Gives her a moment to decide then - where she wants him. (Above her, beneath her, or right where he is.) His heart is beating fast. He doesn't often mind the fitted nature of his clothes but just in that moment... he notices it. How restrictive they are. How much the fabric of his shirt squeezes his chest when he breathes.

KiaraThere are ways that they connect to each other now that don't rely on this. That don't require their lips and hands to map out and navigate the space between them. Words that are still uncertain and new, that take courage and deliberation to lay out and cobble together but words none the less. Spoken affections and quiet declarations.

They have other means of saying the things their bodies can - have done - for quite some time but there is still a raw honesty in this means, too.

In placing their hands and mouths on each other's skin and tasting that need. Drinking in the things that words still fall short of. There's a language that exists inside the physicality of it: the way she watches him drop to his knees before her; the whisper of the material as her legs shift and part and he draws his hands over the length of her thighs. The way her head lilts to one side but her eyes don't leave his.

Never leave his.

There's no smile on Kiara's face now but a stark little expression of hunger.

A gleam that ignites in her dark eyes and provides the proof that try as she might to contain it: there was a baser, wilder core to the Verbena that spoke to the far more primal, animalistic part of him. That heard the snarl of the predator beneath his skin and answered in kind. He gives her a moment to decide, then. Where she wants him, how she wants to feel that connection.

To be reminded and she slides forward, dragging the blouse over her head with all its tiny, complicated buttons as she does; shucking it to one side and tilting her head so her hair fell in a riotous spill of dark waves over a shoulder. Sets her hands around his shoulders and pulls him in to kiss her. It's not the tenderness of earlier embraces but the rougher edge that she often brings to moments together.

She kisses him like she wants to drown in it, to brand the taste of him into her memory before she tugs him backward, stretching herself out across the span of the sofa and drawing him down over her; her legs curling around him. Claiming him.

Rakes her fingernails through his hair and down his back, pulling impatiently at layers.

There is one she leaves on, though. The necklace he'd given her, that she keeps, glittering and solid around her neck.