surrendering. [ian]

Ian

Hey.

The text came in on Kiara's phone some time around 10pm.

Feel like coming over? I wouldn't mind the company.

The invitation - both the nature and the wording of it - were somewhat uncharacteristic of Ian's typical texting habits. He and Kiara had known each other for months now, but she'd never been inside of his apartment. Never even so much as learned the address. This was by no means a circumstance limited to her experience. It would not be accurate to say that Ian never invited people over - but it was very rare.

He didn't tell her that, though.

After he sent the texts, Ian leaned back on his couch and looked at the ceiling. There was a show playing quietly on the flat screen, but he wasn't paying much attention to it. Instead he drummed his fingers on his knee and waited until Kiara's response came in. Then he texted her the address.

His building (Premier Lofts, on Market Street) wasn't actually all that far from her own, though the neighborhood was slightly less upscale. The fact that they'd never run into each other was perhaps a little surprising, but then given the size of the city... people could miss each other even living right across the street.

While he waited for Kiara to get there, he hopped up off the couch and paced through into the kitchen, then the bedroom, as though he expected to find something out of place. Something that needed to be cleaned or organized. But of course, there wasn't. Ian kept his apartment as clean as he kept his car (despite the lack of visitors.) So he finally wandered back into the living room and dropped down onto the sofa again. Eventually he even managed to pay a moderate amount of attention to the not-very-good-show he was ostensibly watching.

Kiara

Sure. I'll be there soon.

Say it was one of Kiara's better qualities. She didn't ask the obvious questions. Didn't offer anything by way of explanation of where she was or what she'd been doing until he texted her, either. It could have been anything, she could have been out of town for all Ian knew. The Verbena was contrary in that regard - she wasn't always present but she had an uncanny way of turning up when the moment called for it.

Tonight, apparently, she decides it does.

Or at the very least, eventually, she does. The time it takes her to reach Market Street is longer than traffic would suggest, at least if she was traveling from her own place. Ian paces, restless and it may occur to him to wonder if she's forgotten - if the brunette had been sidetracked, or distracted - before there's a knock at the door; before the sweeping wash of her presence rolls in and floods the hallway; seeps under the doorframe like some intangible surge of Spring.

If he was searching for it; Kiara's presence is difficult to miss, once she's close. Standing on the threshold with a wine bottle under one arm (or the distinct impression given by the paper bag twisted at the edges); with her dark hair loose and wild and her face done up; lashes painted in bold black lines; mouth shining red; fingernails painted to match. She's dressed for an event; the leather pants; the monochrome shirt that gleams with embedded sequins over abstract shapes drawn into the designer frayed edges.

A black jacket hanging open over both hitting her thighs; the tops of her favored lace up boots.

She'd been out, then. The swirl of her presence; perfume and make up and the underlying hint of something wilder; the forest; rain on the air before the storm; the tang of newly turned earth. Lifts her chin when he opens the door and the corner of her mouth curves in greeting, dark eyes roving his face.

"Hey. I stopped for reinforcements." She offers the bottle over; her wrists heavy with bracelets. "I hope you like Merlot."

Ian

The delay in Kiara's arrival was long enough to give Ian time to settle into the wait. Long enough, even, for his show to finish and for him to fix the television screen with a look of bland disappointment. Whether Ian needed to buzz Kiara inside, or whether she managed to slip in after another resident (knowing her luck, this was likely,) she'd have a short elevator ride or a couple flights of stairs before she reached the third floor. The building was tall brick and metal, the architecture and decor laid out in clean lines and modern design. In keeping with the loft vibe, the ceilings were open and unfinished.

When Ian opened the door, he found Kiara standing there in evening clothes and makeup, holding a bottle of Merlot. The picture of it was so very her that Ian couldn't help but smile. As for his own attire, it was... perhaps what one might expect from someone sitting at home late at night. Barefoot and casual in jeans and a thin black t-shirt. The jeans were white and fitted, with a ridged design woven into the fabric on the thighs.

"I do." He took the bottle from Kiara's hands as he stepped back to let her through the door. "Thanks."

The first two things that Kiara would notice about Ian's apartment were 1: That is was on the smaller side (610 square feet, to be exact,) and 2: That he kept the place absolutely spotless. That may have been for her benefit (people tended to clean up when they had company) but it didn't really have the look of a rush job. The entrance led into a short hallway with two doors that led to the bathroom and a walk-in closet, respectively. Beyond that lay an open bedroom and a kitchen, and finally the living room. Two glass doors led out from the living area onto a balcony. At present, the blinds on the doors were drawn open, leaving a view of the city at night.

"You can leave your coat there." Ian indicated a row of hooks on the wall just inside the entrance. Whenever Kiara was ready, he led her past the bedroom into the living area, setting the wine down briefly on the bar in the kitchen. The apartment was sparsely furnished, but what was there was higher quality than he ought to have been able to afford on a dancer's budget (much like his clothes, and his car.) Sleek modern furniture in dark wood and black leather. A glass coffee table. High-end electronics. A couple of slim bookshelves filled with impeccably organized books and blu-rays (the latter of which veered distinctly into artsy and foreign territory.) The walls throughout the apartment boasted a handful of original artworks: black and white photography, watercolor and silk paintings - the largest of which hung in the living room. Most of these things he'd bought when he was still living in New York.

"Did I catch you on a busy night?" He was eyeing Kiara's outfit with an appraising (appreciative) gaze.

Kiara

He'd been a frequent enough visitor to Kiara's apartment to know it was nothing close to impeccably kept. Rather, it always carried with it the sense of being, well, lived in.

There were tiny potted plants scattered throughout it; odd pieces of clothing strewn over furniture in her bedroom and living area; a continual lingering aroma of recently burned incense and not infrequently, dishes awaiting attention stacked in her sink. None of which was to say she was hopelessly inept at house keeping but simply that, like other aspects of her life - a little clutter and mess didn't seem to particularly bother Kiara.

Some might have ventured to say that she lived a life of deliberate inclination toward it.

Still - she can, and does - appreciate what she sees as Ian leads her inside; the brunette shrugging out of her jacket and leaving it and her bag hanging on a hook. Without it; the Verbena's arms and shoulders are mostly bare, the shirt she was wearing designed to sit just shy of her collarbones; artistically slashed in places to reveal tiny suggestions of a bare midriff beneath. She slides her fingertips along the edges of a wall here as she follows him in past the bedroom; barely ghosting the back of a sofa; guided, as if by instinct, to the glass doors that spilled out onto a small balcony.

"I like your place. It's very - you."

She steps near enough to brush the drawn blinds with her shoulder; to take stock of the view of the city below them. Turns, with a subtle little smile teasing her corner of her mouth as she catches him admiring her outfit, to navigate back toward the kitchen; taking slow, sauntering steps closer. "Mm, define busy I guess. I was at a function for a client of mine."

She sweeps her hands over the bench when she reaches it; leaning a hip into the edge of it; bracing herself there across from him. "She manages a nightclub and they had a guest DJ." She tilts her head a little, eyes drifting over his attire, the jeans and t shirt; the bare feet she'd glimpsed at the door when he greeted her. The consideration lingers there a beat, her expression shifting gears only so much as the softening of her smile articulates.

The way her voice slips into something vaguely warmer and more intimate than the teasing caliber it had held a moment before.

"Bad day?"

Ian

Almost he said, all cool and teasing: I need to have a bad day to want to see you? It would have been the clever response. The easier response.

Instead he ran a hand through his hair, rolled his neck a little and glanced out through the balcony doors. There wasn't any furniture out there. Usually, when he was alone, he just stood with his arms folded on the railing and watched the city pass by.

"Bad week, more like."

But he seemed disinclined to vent about it. He left the wine unopened for the moment, rounding the bar to reach Kiara's side. When he got there, he put his hand on her hip and leaned in until his nose brushed the hair behind her ear. "Why, do I look like shit?" His voice was a low murmur, teasing now just a little. (He did not, in fact, look like shit.)

"You smell amazing." He kissed the skin behind the corner of her jaw, lingering there with a soft exhale. She didn't see the way he closed his eyes. The way he allowed himself, just for a moment, to find some comfort in her presence. There were other things he thought but didn't say. That seemed to be a habit of his, lately. (Had it ever not been?)

He pulled back a little, blinking. "My show is opening next week. Rehearsals have been kind of intense."

Kiara

He rounded the bench to come closer to her, set a hand on her hip and put his nose close enough to breathe her in and Kiara made a quiet noise of mingled pleasure and amusement; slid a hand easily down the curve of his spine; the bracelets on her wrist offering a subdued melody in tandem with the motion.

"You never look like shit and you know it," she throws back without real fire and her fingernails scratch lightly down the slope of a shoulder. She keeps the motion, the connection of her fingers on his skin through the thin layer of his shirt present until he pulls back. Lets him drink in the physicality of her right there; warm and vital and thrumming with that low burn of energy Kiara always seemed to have in boundless quantities while she touched him with simple, sweeping movements of her hands.

The wedge of her knee against his; the way her fingers slide down his arm in an absent gesture of appreciation for the affection.

The give and take of physicality between them has always been the easiest part. "I can imagine they are. It's probably fortunate that you know someone really good with her hands." This, offered with the slide of one down to take his; to let a smile bloom across her mouth and shape it into a supple invitation. Her eyes bright, playfully narrowing after a beat.

"Maybe she could consider fitting you into her schedule for a massage." She caresses the edge of his palm with her fingers; he can feel the cool gleam of her rings when she turns her knuckles against it.

Ian

Her compliment (chastising though it was) elicited a small smile from Ian. Less cocky tonight than simply acknowledging the teasing affection behind the sentiment.

There were moments when his inherently feline nature (that animal aura that seemed to hang about him at all times) showed itself in gentler ways. When he was not all gleaming teeth and coiling muscle and silent-hunter steps. Like the way he sometimes closed his eyes and tilted into Kiara's touch. Like the way he could be rendered speechless by it.

She touched his back; his arm; his hand. And he went quiet, eyes tilted down to watch the play of her fingers on his palm. His smile lingered though - soft and almost affectionate. His response to her offer was slow to materialize. Instead he lifted her hand and held it beneath the warm gleam of the ceiling light, as though to inspect it. Then he brought it to his lips and kissed the side of her index finger. "You do have very nice hands."

After a pause he added, with slightly less assurance, "I suppose I could probably use one. If you're offering."

(He'd forgotten now - about the wine. But it would still be there later.)

Kiara

[Life 1, Coincidental, Diff 4, -1 oh this one she knows.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 6) ( success x 3 )

Kiara

[Life 2, Coincidental, Diff 5, -1 practiced, -1 easy does it, slow it down and okay WP because the dice are fickle and botching right now would just be embarrassing.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Kiara

[Oh! And since she actually does, you know, do this professionally. A little Intelligence + Medicine can't hurt.]

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

Kiara

The first time they'd met she'd made a light hearted offer to near strangers. To come and allow themselves to be rejuvenated. To let her do what, by modern standards and every supernatural movie or TV show, was little more than a lot of posturing and so-called spiritual belief in the idea you could really help a person by the power of suggestion. By channeling energy; contorting and manipulating the way it thrummed and wound throughout the world.

It was easy to dismiss what Kiara Woolfe claimed she did (and that was precisely what the Technocracy would have the world believe) except that - belief could be a potent thing. They both had to be aware enough of that. Believe in a thing enough, believe that the human body could be altered, bettered, healed - and it could become an actuality. She walked the line so precisely, Kiara, between two reflections of the world. He brings her hand up and kisses her finger and her eyes follow the motion; this slow, satisfied shifting of her mouth, then.

"I think you're about due for it."

She curls her fingers around his hand and then slips closer to him; steps around and behind and her fingers loosen from his hold to slide over his shoulders; down to the tips of his fingers and back up; one navigating a path across his ribcage and then down, beneath the hem of his shirt and - there's a spark, then. That blooming; warming sensation of Working. Kiara's resonance seeping into the air around them; punctuated by the slow, steady beat that laced around the signature surge of her magic.

What did it feel like, that point of contact against his stomach; the way her fingers skim over his skin with knowledge; with memory of the shape and surety of their strength; of the awareness of what each muscle and bone could do, what she'd seen them do and the Verbena is everywhere, now. Her cheek brushing his shoulder; lips near his ear. "Come on," she whispers, a hand sliding to find his fingers; to begin to walk backward.

There's magic to that, too. The low, hushed tone she speaks in. The pagan's dark eyes looking wide and focused on him; the way she doesn't quite smile but leads the way to his bed with a sudden determination and indicates he should settle on it. There's a ritual to it; the way she sheds her rings; bracelets; leans over and shucks her boots, too. Climbs onto his bed on her knees and waits for him before she puts her hands on him again - not all at once, though. She combs the space around him; first. Rakes her hands through the air; brings her palms together.

Lifts her chin and closes those dark eyes and her brows knit, briefly as she breathes in.

This then, was ritual. There's something very intimate in the witnessing to how another Awakened found their center; fed the source of their capacity to conjure and push at the boundaries of what reality dictated could and could not be; there was solemnity to Kiara's; to the way she became so still for a moment as her presence; the potency and pull of her will sharpened into clearer regard.

There's a reverence to the way she blinks her eyes open after a beat; to the way her eyes seem a little brighter; her features a little keener, honed on him. Reaches out and puts her hands on his shoulders, finally and the heat of them is startling. Finds her way under his clothing; down the slope of his back and everywhere she pushes; strokes; sets her hand over feels like a compress of undiluted healing.

They were both healers, in their own way and he'd put his hands on her, once. Soothed the tiniest aches and constrictions. Kiara feeds back into him the spark of life; the jolt of leaping out of that plane; the thunder of his heart racing as he danced; it's a massage but - it's also a balm, she applies with every pass of her hands.

And when she's done, when she pulls them away, it's a little like surfacing, too.

Ian

There was an uptick in his heartbeat when Kiara's hand slipped over the skin on his stomach. He stood still while she touched him, turning his head slightly to catch a vague impression of her in his peripheral vision, and there was something... dark and soft and complicated in his eyes. Her resonance pooled around him, opening her senses to the details of his pattern. The impression was of an almost too-perfect vitality: his young athlete's form, free of wounds or scars or weaknesses. (He'd had those once. Scars. But no longer. Belief - and need - could indeed shape many things.)

But there were things that Kiara would find in him - in the slope of his spine and the weight of his shoulders. Tension (more than he let on.) Exhaustion.

Come on.

She led him to the bed, and he allowed himself to be ushered there. When he reached the side of the mattress, he sat down, sliding back atop the bedspread. The Egyptian cotton felt soft and cool beneath his hands as he rolled over onto his stomach. There was a kind of prolonged deliberation to the way he did this (turned his back to her - surrendered.) As though he had to fight his instincts to do so. When Kiara's hands slid up under his shirt, he grab the hem and slithered out of it. Then he crossed his arms and let his forehead rest at his wrists.

The first few sweeps of her hands drew forth a very soft inhale and a longer exhale. The muscles in his back gave a little roll - a moment of tension before he started to relax. But the warmth of her hands and the skill of her touch (of her ritual) did its work. Muscles unlocked; unwound. His eyes slipped shut. The rejuvenating spark of her healing essence seeped deep into his core. There were sounds while she worked: soft, swallowed utterances and deep breaths. And then slowly, finally, he just... melted.

When she pulled her hands away, he gave this long, languid stretch and turned over to look at her. His voice gave a low, soft hum as he reached out to grasp her wrists and pull her down closer. Closer. As though he meant to kiss her. But instead he let his lips just graze over her own and nestled his head against hers.

"Thank you." He whispered it like it was an invocation.

Kiara

There's a degree of surrender required for true relaxation. The capacity, especially when that relaxation, the attaining of it, the process of it, was in the hands of another person. There's a point where Ian has to trust Kiara - to put her hands on his body, to knead and press and coax the tension out of it; to find the tiniest points with the sweep of her fingers where he was holding on it all.

The exhaustion. The coiled unease. The places his body spoke of things he might never vocalize.

The brunette understands the language written under his skin; feels the way his pattern shapes and maps him; focuses on the steady rhythm of his heart where it beats under the cage of his ribs; feels the way it slows; gentles with every pass of her hands over him. There's no denying that in terms of practical skill - the Verbena knew what she was doing; her touch is certain, it doesn't falter or hover at any point with uncertainty but rather returns with deliberation; her thumbs pushing in; smoothing across.

The only point Kiara's body touches him from beginning to end is through her hands. Though he can feel the movement of her behind him; the way the air shifts when her hair falls over a shoulder, when she moves it out of her way; can hear the rustle of her clothing; the shift of leather as she works. When he stretches and twists to look at her, she's focused on the way the light plays across his bare skin; the way the musculature of his abdomen betrays the enduring strength beneath it.

Her pupils are very wide and dark when he grasps her wrists and pulls her closer and she throws a leg across to straddle him as he does; cupping the edge of his jaw with a hand still gripped inside his hold. Thank you, he whispers and she makes a noise; this sharp; exultant little noise and lets her cheek move against his in the sort of luxurious; sinuous way she's come to expect from him in quiet moments. There's a certain revel to it; the way Kiara reacts to his body beneath hers.

Her face tilts just so and she kisses him with less absolute authority and more appreciation for the fact he'd allowed her to help. To place her hands into the depths of him and expose and root out the points of temporary weakness; the lashes of long hours; physical weariness. "You're welcome," she murmurs back between small, fleeting kisses; her hands still warm where she shapes them around his face and half settles over him like a satisfied feline.

"Consider yourself rejuvenated."

Ian

He couldn't help but laugh at that - this quick, quiet rumble of amusement as he smiled beneath the fleeting press of her lips. He let go of her wrists to slide his hands up into her hair, drawing her down to keep her close - to keep her kissing him.

"Do you use that line on all the guys?" He let things slow down when he pressed up to kiss her, ensnaring her lips in something longer, more revelatory. When he pulled away (only slightly) his voice dipped into softer register. "I'm always rejuvenated when I see you."

It felt a bit like a confession. Soft words uttered against her lips while she bent over him - while his body radiated this loose and vital calm that the work of her hands (her craft) had instilled in him.

Kiara

She settles a little more when he frees her wrists, allowing her arms to fold across the span of his chest and turns her face into the motion when he puts his hands in her hair. Her lips grazing the underside of a wrist as she smiles. "Guys. Girls. I don't discriminate," lets herself be guided back down and her hands find their way into his hair, then.

Her fingernails dragging lightly down across the nape of his neck as she hovers there, her eyes dark and lost beneath the fall of her hair for the measure of a beat; she reaches back; draws and gathers the heaviness of it over a shoulder and slides back a little; her fingers drawing the pathway as she does; sits up and leaves her palms against his bare skin like points of connection while she looks down at him with this tiny, ghosting little edge of a smile.

There's a flicker of something that passes across her face. Not surprise but in it's own way - perhaps it was there, too. Hesitation. Uncertainty. "I - " Kiara's eyes dip; her lashes lowering; they're painted tonight to frame her eyes with long, bold strokes that offer the impression that they're winging outward; liner applied to embolden the impact. She runs the edge of her tongue across her lower lip, brows drawing together. " - like being around you too, you know. It's easier than it is with most people." Kiara's eyes tick back to his face.

"I'm not used to that."

That sounds like a confession of her own, the brunette's expression somewhere shy of resistance; as if she was wresting each word from herself; there's a quick, sharp breath in and her smile returns; sharp; bright. Instinctively dismissive, even of herself. Her words. The idea and sentiment hidden in them, somewhere.

"I don't usually meet people who can keep up with me."

She keeps her hands there, the pagan, connected to his body as if the physicality of it makes the words easier (and knowing her, it probably does). "Or are at least willing to jump out of a plane with me."

A pause, she slides a hand across his abdomen; feels the subtle rise and fall as he breathes. Her eyes shifting back to his face, reading the expression there. "But you did."

Ian

They were treading over such fragile territory, the two of them. Like walking on spun glass. How long ago since the last time Kiara had shut someone out? Wounded them? For Ian, it had not been that long. There was a time when he could do that without feeling much more than a dull, familiar ache. It felt sharper now, somehow. Lingered longer. (Rehearsals were not the only source of his tension these days.)

It was a wonder that two people so imminently capable of doing harm had not yet harmed each other.

Ian watched the hesitance in Kiara's eyes. Saw it and recognized it for what it was. He matched it with something that might have been quiet understanding. And he did not press - did not try to claim her in that moment. Did not draw attention to the tenuous nature of their shared honesty.

He wasn't used to it either. The easiness. The way he could lie there on his bed (his bed, his space - not someone else's) and allow Kiara to put her hands on him without feeling that gnawing discomfort that so often came with that kind of vulnerability. He didn't tell her, but maybe she knew anyway. Maybe he'd known that about her too.

He smiled a little when she shifted tone - said that most people couldn't keep up with her.

"I'm not most people."

The muscles in his abdomen moved beneath her hand, rising and falling with each breath. His skin was warm and soft and bare and sun-kissed. If she was still listening to his pattern, she'd feel the way his pulse jumped a little.

"Though I'm sure I know at least a few others who would happily jump out of a plane with you." (Or more.)

He shifted slightly beneath Kiara's weight, bringing one knee up with his foot pressed into the bed. Slowly he brought his hands back and folded them beneath his head. Like he was giving her space to decide what she wanted to do. (Though it was difficult - it was always difficult - not to reach out and touch her.)

Kiara

There are other moments like this scattered across Kiara Woolfe's past like so much ash on the wind. People she's left in her wake. In their beds. In her own.

People she's made the deliberate choice to walk away from before she could get too close. There's a doctor in another city that she broke the heart of too many times to count and yet returned to wound again because - addiction was an easy bedfellow and he was not a strong enough man to refuse what she so easily gave - she could.

There is likely enough vindictiveness threaded somewhere in her dark eyes and warm, lingering touch to do the same thing, here. To slide off his bed; to lace her boots up and firmly re-establish her boundaries. There are probably a hundred versions of this moment where she does just that. Where she feels the way he reacts to her touching him and pulls her hand away like he'd burned her. There's a version of tonight where she didn't come when he texted her, where she was crueler when she did; where she pushed him up against the door and slid her hands under his clothes and took what she needed.

There are versions where Kiara doesn't look at Ian like he's something entirely new and foreign to her experience of people - to her comprehension of what intimacy was - but in this version, he doesn't throw her confession back at her; she doesn't reject the way he watches her for the voicing of it and she does - look at him, that way. Intently and wholly and -

I'm not most people.

- the corner of her mouth flexes; a smile flirts with the edge of it and then she's touching him, again. Not with pure desire (though, that's there too, the way her eyes trace the shape of him beneath her), not simply with an appreciation for the tactile sensation (though always, there was that for her, too) but with a sort of reverence. Here was her offering and her touch; the way she leans forward and puts her lips where her hands venture to; is the benediction.

"Not you're really not." She murmurs and marks a trail along his ribcage, across his chest and up to his neck; she sets her mouth over the point of his pulse; feels it beating there; beneath the skin. Plants her hands on either side of his head and just - hovers there, staring down at him with her mouth inches from his; eyes flicking from it, to his eyes.

"Do you want me to stay?"

It shouldn't have sounded so much like ask me to stay, but it did. In another version of tonight, maybe she asked that, instead, too.

Ian

His skin was so reactive just now - every sweep of her touch made him have to catch his breath, to keep it consciously steady. When her lips touched his chest, his eyelashes lowered. He inhaled long and soft; exhaled with a slight shake. His arms flexed beneath his head, muscles tightening.

When her lips reached the pulse at the base of his neck, she'd feel it jumping just beneath the skin. This vivid thrum of life that belied his seemingly calm state. He wanted to put his mouth on her. Instead he bit down on his lip.

Do you want me to stay?

His pulse gave a noticeable stutter when she said those words. He opened his eyes and looked at her, but didn't speak. That silence stretched on for what seemed like a long time. Too long, maybe. Enough to make it awkward. His lips parted as though to speak, but words didn't come. (It wasn't because he didn't know the answer.)

Finally he said, in a voice that sounded somehow less shaky than he felt, "Yes. If you want to."

It felt a little like something was breaking in his chest. Slowly he unfolded his arms, reaching up to trace his fingers over the slant of her cheekbone, up into her hair again briefly (carding strands of it through his fingers) and down across her jaw, over her lips - mapping the shape of them.

He didn't say what he was thinking (that he didn't deserve for her to stay.)

Kiara

There was that edge of challenge to it. The way Kiara asked what she did, the fact she did it while physically so close to him. With her mouth and her hands. In his space, suffocating the breath he tries to take in with that edge of the wild; the intensity of her eyes and the way she won't back off; doesn't give him room to do anything but respond, somehow, or endure it until he couldn't. Push her off, away.

Ask her to go.

Maybe as much as there is an unvoiced desire for him to tell her he wants her to stay - there's a darker, far more primal part of her that expects the rejection; that's ready to sink its teeth into it. Wasn't that part of nature, too, then? The aggression, the resistance to what it was denied. An empty house, a deserted lot; nature would take it back; eventually. There's a thread of something like that resistance in her; in the woman he finally meets the eyes of.

Sees the surety of that, there. Somewhere. That she'll endure regardless of what he says, that the rejection will somehow feed her desire to push back. He doesn't say anything, at first and she watches his expression; engages in a sort of silent battle; her will against his; the unvoiced things flourishing and then -

Yes. If you want to.

- he reaches up to touch the edge of her jaw, her mouth and it blooms into a curling little smile beneath his fingers. She lowers herself and curls into his side; fits her body there and drapes an arm over his chest.

"Okay."

I want to, she doesn't say it, but maybe he can hear that, too. Feel it in the easy way she rests her head on his shoulder and strokes her fingers along the slope of his arm.

Ian

There were always other versions themselves waiting in the periphery. Given a different night, a different set of circumstances, Kiara might not have stayed, and Ian might not have asked her to. In a different version of events, one or the other of them might have pushed the other against the bed and not said anything at all – apart from the lingering marks of teeth on skin that spelled out a kind of primal text. Ian would not have minded that version. He seldom did.

Instead, he asked Kiara to stay – and she did.

The next morning, she’d get up early. Ian would wake up (because he always did) and listen to her get dressed, but he wouldn’t open his eyes, and she would text later to say that she hadn’t wanted to wake him. And perhaps they would each feel both a little sad and a little relieved. (Perhaps only Ian would.)

But it wasn’t yet morning, and instead of leaving Kiara said: Okay.

(I want to)

(stay.)

When she tucked herself in at his side, Ian lay still, counting the beats in his breath. He closed his eyes and breathed her in; listened to the muted pulse of her heart. Then he turned into her, sliding an arm around her back, his palm pressed flat between her shoulder blades. One of his legs pressed between her own, sliding up as he kissed her neck; her collarbone. Their bodies fit together so easily.

He forgot about the wine, but he remembered it later, long after he probably should have gone to sleep. And for a while, he forgot those other versions of himself (those other versions of her) and allowed them to just be two people drinking wine in bed on a weeknight, naked and tired and content.