moving day.

Erich

Stay.

Erich's eyes open. He looks at her for a moment. They are still so close, her face inches from his, her cheek against his arm. He smiles at her, because she's no man's heaven, no man or woman's anything, and because she's here and so is he. She wants him here.

He answers her the same way he did across text, not so very long ago. It's a whisper: "'kay." And he throws a heavy arm over her, pulling her against his chest. They keep pulling each other closer, closer. Surely that means something.

Erich nods off for a while. His eyes close and his face relaxes and he's just gone for a bit, dropping out of consciousness as easily as a stone. A few minutes or a quarter-hour or more pass them by. Melantha stirring, shifting to disentangle their lower halves. His arm slides over her side. He opens his eyes, looks at her sleepily, not quite all there yet.

Then the corner of his mouth lifts. He pushes himself to one elbow, half-sprawls over her with their bodies still hot from loving, hot from sleep, faintly sticky where the sweat has dried. And he kisses her. Softly, lingeringly, tasting her mouth.

They get out of bed. Very lazily, leaning on each other, half-inclined just to roll back into bed and sleep: they make their way to the bathroom and they shower. It's the second tonight for Erich, and he needs it almost as much as he did the first. At least this one is luxurious and warm, though. At least Melantha has shampoo here. And a spare toothbrush, which he uses and then leaves in one of those tumblers usually left capped and unused in her bathroom. They brush their teeth together, taking turns spitting into the sink. If she wants him to, he pulls out the sofabed while she dries her hair, and he rumples up the sheets and makes it look slept in

but it's her bed he goes to when they start turning out the lights. 9am isn't terribly early, but it's not late either, and Melantha probably needs time to get ready. Erich closes the drapes as she comes out of the bathroom, looking down at the parking lot, remembering and wondering for a moment if her phone will vibrate again, if she'll get called away from him.

He turns the sheets down on the side of the bed he's slept in three times now. And he gets in, his heat immediately beginning to warm the sheets -- throwing back the covers for her, catching her by the hand and tugging her toward him and onto him all in a sprawl. He wraps his arms around her, glomping her, as he reaches back to turn out the very last lamp in the room.

"Goodnight, Melantha," he murmurs in the darkness.

The next morning, at a quarter past eight, the alarm begins to blare. The lump of inertness that is Erich groans against the nape of Melantha's neck. He pulls her closer, lays his leg over hers, wraps his arms around her and buries his face against her hair as though this might make the alarm go away.

It doesn't, of course, go away. And sooner or later she reaches out to smack it off and he reaches out to find her hand and collect it and return it back under the nice warm covers. There. More zonking.

Except: no. It's a quarter past eight. It's time to get up, get ready, Erich needs to look like he either spent the night on the sofabed or just came in, and then there are boxes to move. So she pushes him away and he grudgingly lets go and then, while she's getting up and laying her outfit out, he's sitting slumped in the middle of the bed with one eye closed and the other mostly-closed, mildly impressed by all the activity around him. His hair is more rumpled than anyone would imagine hair so short could possibly rumple-ify.

"Hey," he yawns; this is the first thing that comes to mind: "last night ... there was a sec when you were kinda I-dunno. Were you ... was everything okay?"

Celia

All he does is glomp her. "Oof," she says, breathing it more than forming it, and wiggles in his arms a bit. She's hot. She's not used to sleeping with people and not trying to figure out what they want her to do before she does anything. Erich pulls her to his chest and Melantha pulls herself away, leaving their arms and legs entangled but her skin free to cool, to move on her own.

Melantha does not fall asleep. She feels more awake than ever, resting her head on a pillow and watching him doze off. She smiles as his mouth goes slack and gently eases herself off of him. He moves, eyes flickering but not quite opening completely, and nods off a little longer. She closes her eyes but does nothing more than drowse, listening to the air moving in the room, listening to Erich's breathing. She wonders again why men zonk out like that. It's got to be chemical. Even after her most insane orgasms it really just depends on how tired she was to begin with, but every guy is like whoosh, down and out. She should look that up.

She's smiling at him when he wakes a little, a few minutes later. He smiles back at her, and now his warmth is more welcome when he glomps onto her, cuddling closer and kissing her wordlessly, and saying they should shower, and she wrinkles her nose like Being Clean is a really stupid idea, what is he thinking, what kind of a wolf --

but they go ahead. She ties up all that thick dark hair of hers, which is quite long, so it won't get wet. He's barely even moving at first, lazy and luxuriating in the water. Melantha is quicker about her business in there, shooing him out of the way so she can run some body wash over her skin and between her legs and rinse off her face. She does have a spare toothbrush, but it's purple and she says Charlotte used it when she came over and he probably doesn't want to but she has some mouthwash. She does not offer him her own. Ew.

She lets her hair down, combing it down with a boar-bristle brush that makes it shine. She massages some light moisturizer into her skin with her second and third fingers, sweeping it across her cheekbones and brow. She puts on lip balm with her pinkies. Melantha takes a much shorter shower and spends more time in the bathroom than Erich does anyway, smoothing lotion all over her arms and legs and hands and feet, her breasts and her shoulderblades.

She smells a little bit like honeysuckle when she comes out, putting on a pair of sherbet-striped sleep shorts and a pink camisole with lace over the top. They pull out the sofabed. But Erich is waiting in the real bed, in her bed, when she comes and gets under the covers with him. He's pulling her by the hand and pulling her closer and this time she snuggles up against him, smiling and resting her brow on his shoulder, tucking their feet together.

The alarm goes off at seven forty-five. The radio kicks on, playing We Are Young, which Melantha hates. She makes a face, screwing up her brow and mouth and nose. And Erich jerks and groans and pulls her closer like that's going to make it stop. She twists around, turning away from him, and presses the snooze button. They cuddle again. For ten minutes. And then it goes off again, but now it's playing Radioactive and Melantha likes this song. It's already past the first chorus, the vocalists singing

-- cking out on the prison bus
this is it, the apocalypse
whoa, whoa
i'm waking up, i feel it in my bones
enough to make my systems blow

And Melantha mouths along: welcome to the new age, welcome to the new age, leaving the radio on. She stretches her legs out, and slips her hand into Erich's, and opens her eyes, smiling at him. She gives him a quick kiss on his lips, then rolls over and starts to scoot toward the edge of the bed, out from the covers. She stretches again there, with her back to him, moving a little to the song, because she likes it, and he learns that when Melantha uses an alarm, she just listens to music in the morning. It does take her time, though. She rubs her eyes and she yawns and she stretches and stretches and stretches.

all systems go, the sun hasn't died
deep in my bones, straight from inside

Melantha turns and smiles at him again, sleepily. She breathes in deep, sniffs, and stands up. Her first step is not clothes, but to go kick Erich's clothes on the floor over toward the sofa bed so it looks less like she ripped his clothes off as soon as he got in the door, even though that's what happened. She also starts picking up her tossed-aside lingerie, tucking it away in a little laundry bag she has. There aren't really boxes so much as a few suitcases. She has, after all, been living in a hotel since November. There is no reason on earth she even needs movers, much less the help of her wicked stepbrother.

Hey, he says, while she's pulling open a drawer to think about what panties to wear and how tight her jeans should be, because she wants to give the impression that she totally intends to help even though she's going to do no such thing. She looks over at Erich. Last night, he says. She was kinda...

Melantha blinks slowly. She thinks back, and then remembers, and her eyebrows tug together. Setting her clothes down, she walks back over to him, crawling onto the bed toward him and sitting atop the covers with her legs folded. She's back in his sphere though, in arm's reach.

"Yeah," she says. "Kinda." Her slim shoulders shrug up once, drop down. "It just... all started to feel like a performance. Like...even when you said you just wanted me to get off on you?" She shakes her head a little. "I don't know. It's like even my own orgasm always ends up belonging to someone else. And they pat themselves on the back for being such good, giving lovers and making it 'all about her' when it's still totally, completely all about them and how good making me come makes them feel, and... then it was just feeling weirder and weirder after that and I didn't like where it was going. So I decided to make it go somewhere else."

Erich

He's still warm from sleep, so relaxed his bones feel loose. He watches her with mild interest as she goes about kicking his clothes toward the bed; picking out her own. Setting them down. Crawling onto the bed. His eyes spark with interest at that. He holds his hands out to her, cupping them around the outsides of her things as she kneels across from him.

And he listens, wakefulness creeping back into his eyes as she speaks. A bit of ache, too. His palms rub over her skin. He leans forward, pulling her a little closer, laying his brow to hers. His skin is warm. He's warm all over, a faint flush in his cheeks from waking so recently.

"I get it," he says quietly. Simple: just like always. "You know that's not what I wanted, though. I mean -- to try to make even your pleasure something that's mine. Right?"

He kisses her softly then. Smiles. "I like where you took it."

Celia

He rests his brow to hers, and she smiles, rolling their foreheads together and making their noses rub. It's a simple, animalistic gesture of affection. And oddly familial, too. All of Melantha's love feels like friendship.

"Yeah, I know," she says quietly. "I just think you might do it without thinking. Or without realizing that's what's happening. And I don't think that... watching someone and enjoying that and there being an element of attention imbalance and performance in sex is bad or inherently wrong or anything, just..."

Melantha lifts her brow and shakes her head. "I'm not ready for that."

Erich

"Yeah," he says, just as quietly. "I understand.

"I was surprised," Erich confesses a moment later, "when you answered the door wearing lingerie. I didn't think you were ... well, 'ready' for that, I guess. I think maybe that's sort of why later on I didn't think much of telling you to do that.

"If you're ever ready," he adds, "let me know, all right? Or show me. I don't know." He pauses a second; a frown flickers over his brow. He lays his brow to hers again for a beat or two. Then he leans back, his back straightening, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

"All right. Should we get ready?"

Celia

There are very rare, very brief times when Melantha's mind is not active. It's a gift, just like his strength: nothing is ever simple, nothing is ever two-dimensional, nothing is ever as it seems. She is thinking all the time. She sees things, understands things, that most people don't. Can't. And just like Erich's strength and his rage, it can be overwhelming. You flip a switch. You let it all go. Or you think yourself into stasis. And for a woman whose tribe is dedicated to the Wyld, her own hierarchical orderliness of mind can be her greatest enemy.

She takes a breath, to tell him no, he doesn't understand, cuz he's not her, and he's not exactly been put in a frame and stared at and masturbated to like that, and, and, and,

but Melantha knows that isn't what he means. He isn't saying he empathizes, he knows, he feels the same thing. He's saying he understands what she's saying. So she exhales instead, and the corner of her mouth tugs outward. "I kinda like lingerie," she says to that. "It feels sexy and I... guess I wanted you to know that I can be with you and it can be erotic and playful and not always so intense and wild like being out in the woods. But even trying to show you that is kind of a performance. And... I'm still figuring out what I'm ready for, and what feels right. Sometimes even as I do it."

She shrugs again, because that's all there is to it. She can't do better than that. It's going to be weird. She's not going to know a lot of boundaries until she bumps up against them. And he can cope with that, just like she has to, or he doesn't have to be with her. She thinks he knows that. She might be mistaken; she doesn't know.

Melantha kisses him, soft but not quick, on the corner of his mouth. And rests her face against his, too, closing her eyes. "You okay?" she whispers, their cheeks together and their eyes unable to see each other. It's like a secret.

Erich

"If it helps, I liked it," he says simply. "It didn't feel like you wearing lingerie meant you were my plaything now. It was just hot. I liked it."

She kisses him. The corner of his mouth quirks up beneath her lips. They rest together a while, like animals being affectionate -- which is, in a sense, exactly what they are. A flicker of tension, though, when she asks what she does. He draws back a little. They can see one another's eyes, then, and there's a faint frown on his face.

"I am," he says, which is not a lie. He is okay. Still: "I was just thinking that we were kinda talking longterm, when I don't even know where you'll be in a month. A week. He just bought you a house or rented you an apartment or something. I can't imagine them needing much more to slam the trap shut on him."

Celia

She laughs softly at that. He likes it. Duh, she wants to say, but she doesn't. And she wants to say duh again, she knows she's not his plaything, but she realizes that beneath her general prickliness, it's nice to hear him say it out loud. Granted, she might not wear lingerie when she's with him for a while. She might want to just take off normal clothes and take a bath with him. Or whatever.

They have about an hour, but no more. It's eight o'clock now. She has to curl her hair and put on her makeup and squeeze into her jeans and put on a top that looks cozy but shows off her cleavage and get ready to squeal with excitement as Jack hands her the keys -- the copies, at least -- to her little apartment, their little love nest where he can come and go as he pleases, where he can keep her, where he can tell her that he'd really feel more comfortable if her step-brother didn't visit her there or stay over unless Jack is around, of course, he's not unreasonable.

Melantha reaches over and strokes his arm, touching him and watching him as he tells her why he frowned, why he tenses now. She looks a little sad. But she's also glad, in a strange way, that he gets it: they're nearing the end.

Instead of comforting him, or lying to him, she just says: "You know that last night, I didn't ask you to stay because of how it will look this morning. I mean... I know you know that I just wanted you to stay. But it was the first time I wasn't also thinking of how it would help me ruin this guy." She leans over and nuzzles him loosely. "I just wanted you to know that." And breathing in, pulling back, she smiles. "Let's get some clothes on, though."

Erich

[small amendment to last post! i think erich would say "I can't imagine YOU needing that much more", not "them".]

Of course he knew that. He knew that the same way she knew she's not his plaything, and she knew he liked how she looked that lingerie. He knew -- but it's still nice to hear her say it. It makes him smile.

"Thanks," he says. "For telling me."

And then she pulls back, and he pushes the covers down to get his legs out from under them. " 'kay," he says, standing up, finding his shorts on the floor under the bed and the rest of his clothes over by the sofabed. Which they leave out. Because that does help ruin this guy.

He rinses his mouth again, since his toothbrush is still in the car and her spare one has been commandeered by Charlotte. He washes his face with great messy splashes, dries it on one of her towels, and then comes out of the bathroom to pull his jeans on. Which are, in fact, low-slung. A t-shirt goes over that, the hem dropping just over the waistband of his jeans. No hoodie now. It's spring, after all.

"Do we have time to eat breakfast?" he asks her, sitting on the edge of the sofabed to pull his socks and shoes on. "Can I come to lunch?"

Celia

"We might," she says, of breakfast. She's in the bathroom by then, standing at the second sink. She is using the now-heated curling iron, one of several, to twist her locks into a few loose curls that will bounce and sway as she moves. She has a large iron and a smaller one and it's ridiculous how much effort goes into the look she has when she's out and about. No wonder her alarm was set so early.

She glances over at him, silently counting the seconds that her hair is held against the ceramic exterior of the iron. "There should still be breakfast downstairs, or we can order some up. As for lunch... I don't know. Maybe. I'm thinking of asking him if he'll let me make him something and making him late back to the office."

It's like a brick being dropped on porcelain, nonchalantly and devastatingly, every time she says something like that. Making him late. Bouncing on his lap so that when he goes back to his office he looks pleased and a little less put-together, a little looser. So that he gets the idea in his head that he can just swing by any time of the day and have her there, meet her there. Make him take more and more risks, be less and less effective, make him the weakest member of his herd so that by the time he realizes the teeth are bared, it's too late to run.

But last night she was bouncing on Erich's lap. And making Erich sweaty and happy and adoring.

Melantha unwinds the curling iron and sets it down, her hair springing into shape now. She looks at him, winding another span of hair into the iron. "There's also a chance he'll pick a fight with me. Either way it might be best if we kinda... say goodbye after I move in."

She doesn't look happy as she looks away.

Erich

Like a brick on porcelain. Like a kick in the teeth. There's a flicker of pause in Erich's fingers on his shoelaces; a flicker of a wince on his face. Then he finishes up, stands up. She's still in the bathroom, putting herself so carefully into that I'm beautiful without even trying look.

Thing is, she is beautiful without trying. She's beautiful, and unbelievably pure, when she comes out of the shower clean-faced and ready for bed. She's beautiful and unbelievably savage when she's scrabbling a mole from the earth with her bare hands, killing it with a broken bottle and a savage twist. But no one, no one, looks the way she does for Jack without trying.

So Erich leans on the bathroom doorjamb. He watches her do her hair. There's something a little sad in his eyes. There's a gentle amusement too as he observes all the subtle artistry of what she does, but that fades as she goes on.

"Why the hell would he pick a fight? As far as he knows he's getting everything he wants."

Celia

"Because of you," she says simply, untwisting another lock and letting it unfurl downwards. "Though I don't think he'll come right out and say it's because of you. Just, y'know... the whole jealousy thing."

She's quiet a moment, and looking away, pressing her lips together and then leaning forward to the mirror. She's going to wear white above the dark bluejeans, she thinks. A tight white tank top. Something smooth. And hoop earrings, the ones Jack gave her.

"I've been acting a little strange with him since we got back from camping," she admits quietly, and picks up her foundation.

Erich

Her answer is so simple, so obvious, that Erich feels dumb for a second. "Oh," he says, and that frown's back again. There's a sudden line to tread, and it's quite fine. "I know you don't need to be protected or guarded or whatever, but ... he's not ever violent with you, is he?"

Celia

"No," she says, a little quickly, looking at him. Her foundation is half on; her face seems a little smoother over one cheek, a little more perfect. "Not yet," she adds. "Most of them aren't. Most of them have power, and powerful men are very, very calculated about what lines they cross and when. I don't think Jack will try to hurt me, because as soon as he grips my arm a little too tight or makes me wince, he'll know he's lost all power between us."

Erich

No smooths his brow. Not yet puts a frown back on it, but he listens; he lifts a hand and rubs the back of his neck; he tries to feel comforted by logic and reason. Then he comes forward. He lowers the lid on the toilet and sits on it, next to her, looking at her face now instead of her reflection.

"I know you like being with me," he says quietly, "and I know it helps your hunt too for you to be with me and for him to wonder about what you're doing with me without ever getting any proof one way or another. But if you ever need me to come get you -- or to back off completely for a while -- you know I will, right?"

Celia

Melantha smiles at him. There's an ache to it, but mostly it's just warm. "I know," she says softly. She can't come touch him, not with beige-colored goo on her fingertips, but she turns to him and presses a kiss to his brow. "I know, Erich."

Erich

His eyes close for the kiss. Reopen when she draws back. He smiles wordlessly at her, and then he reaches over and picks up some little bit of makeup paraphernalia, a lash curler or something, playing with it a bit. He grew up with enough girls in and about the house to know what it is, at least. While she's putting on her foundation, he experimentally tries to curl his lashes and ends up yanking a few out.

"Ow," he says. He puts the diabolical device down, and he gets up, and now she has foundation on and he's not sure he's still allowed to kiss her cheek so he kisses her hair instead. "I'm going to go get some breakfast. I'll bring some up for you. What do you want?"

Celia

Melantha puts on her foundation and her powder. Erich tries to curl his eyelashes and she laughs at him. She is dusting on some eye makeup now, when he asks her about breakfast.

"Ummm... a quarter of a Belgian waffle with strawberries, no whipped cream, and an egg-white omelette with veggies, annnd some peach iced tea."

She smiles at him, one eye made to look large and doe-like and dewy and childish and the other normal, sharp, cunning. And yet they're the same. Sort of. "And one of those mini bowls of Peanut Butter Crunch, but no milk. I just like munching on it."

Erich

"Comin' right up," Erich says, and then elbows her lightly. "Get it?"

She gets it. He goes out, leaving the sliding bolt jammed in the door to keep it from shutting entirely. He's gone for about ten minutes. Then he comes back, backing in the door because his hands are full. His arms are full. He's brought her the quarter of a Belgian waffle, the strawberries, the egg-white omelette with veggies, the peach iced-tea. There's a minibowl of Peanut Butter Crunch nipped between his teeth, waggling when he grins at her. And he's brought himself a plate heaped with an unimaginable amount of bacon, ham, sausage, and egg omelette. Also, a big glass of OJ.

They dig in. She wiggles into her jeans after breakfast, and the effort that goes into that ordeal prompts him to ask her if she knows there's a song all about what she's doing. Which is why there is a four-year-old party rap song coming tinny and strained out of Melantha's laptop when the movers show up and knock on the door.

Celia's stepbrother Derek is lounging suspiciously on Celia's bed at that point, playing with her laptop. He turns the sound down a little as the two men in matching red polo shirts -- CHAMPION MOVERS on the back -- file in. He doesn't get up. He watches them look at him, look at the room, look at the suitcases. They get her to sign some disclaimer about taking no responsibility if they break her fine china, etc etc, and then as they're getting started

Derek gets off his ass, finally. He of the wasted Ivy League matriculation, he of the athletic muscles and the youthful vigor and the lustful thoughts. He hefts up two of Celia's suitcases and asks the movers if 'that douchebag' -- that is how he refers to the man who actually hired these movers -- bought her any furniture. And if he did, then what did he buy. Did he buy her this, and this, and this, and that. And why not that. Doesn't he love her?

It takes them barely an hour to load up the truck. There isn't a whole lot in there. The movers ride with the furniture, and Celia rides with Derek, following behind in that white Mustang with the black stripes. It's not a long move, not even crosstown. At the other end, there's a bit more to be done. There's furniture coming off a different truck, and just as promised or threatened or planned Derek pulls his t-shirt off, stuffs it into his back pocket like a towel, and flexes and heaves and grunts and shoves and drags and carries and hefts and lifts

and smirks at Celia, sometimes, passing her sweaty with his arms full of her stuff. Nudges her, elbows her, shoulder-checks her, is generally and roughly affectionate in a way that doesn't. quite. scream platonic brotherhood.

It's a little before noon when they get the last of her things into place. She's thanking the movers and he's drinking a glass of tap water, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching. He glances at the her new wall clock, which hasn't even been hung up yet. It's sitting on top of her small dining table.

"Thanks," he calls after the movers, half-heartedly, as they leave. He lets them hear him ask: "That horny old shit is coming to pick you up in fifteen, right? You should blow him off. I'll take you to a movie or something."

Celia

"You're a dork," is what she says, when she gets it. And he is.

Ten minutes later he's coming up again with two armfuls - and a mouthful - of food. She's got her face done and her hair done and she's starving. They pause to eat, sitting on the floor around the coffee table. She rubs her foot against his under the table, companionable rather than flirtatious, while she eats her waffle and her berries and her Peanut Butter Crunch and her omelette. She eats carefully, but she isn't wearing lip gloss yet so at least she doesn't worry about smudging that. She also eats like it will be a while before she eats again. She doesn't usually eat much in front of Jack, even if he's chowing down on a porterhouse in front of her.

Then she's getting dressed and painting her lips, putting away a few final things in the two, three boxes she has. They get it all in one trip when they head down to the lobby. They drive over to a little row house that has been converted into apartments and take them up to hers, on the third floor. She's squealing and bouncing and excited, letting everyone else carry everything, running around to inspect the little bedroom, the sunny kitchen, the cozy living room. It's small, but in this area it's costly. There's a bottle of champagne waiting for her on the kitchen counter with a card that she beams over. It's so exciting for her that she keeps hugging Derek, random little squeezes that press her breasts through her tank top to his arm or his side or his chest. Well, who else is she going to hug in her delight?

He, of course, looks sort of annoyed-yet-predatory when she does this. And she looks pouty and offended when he's asking about all the furniture and proclaiming that Jack could afford better and she's shushing him, he's so rude, this is like, the most super-nicest thing anyone has ever done for her and why can't he just be happy for her and so later he decides to be nicer. He bumps against her. He nudges her and follows her around. He ignores it, not even seeming to notice -- though the movers do -- when Celia's eyes stray across his naked upper body for a forbidden second or two,

when she realizes her mouth is open and closes it, teeth scraping over her lower lip, followed by a sweep of her tongue.

The movers set up her bed, put her plump couch into place, assemble her table and chairs and her television stand and her desk and so forth, and then they have her sign another little piece of paper and escort themselves out. Derek is being annoying, and they also hear Celia give a heavy, irritated sigh, like she's taking a breath to start yelling at him.

Melantha turns to face him. She holds up something that was in the envelope with the champagne: it's thin and plastic and has her name on it, but it's not tied to any account she truly controls. A dark smirk slides across her face.

"That. Fucking. Idiot."

She leaves the credit card between two fingers and reads aloud from the card: "'Ess Ell Tee --'" a pause, an aside to Erich: "That's 'Sweet Little Thing'," she says, with a trace of venom, before continuing to read aloud: "'I hope you love your new home. Get whatever you want for the place, just don't go too crazy.'" Melantha smirks. "There's a smiley face there. 'I'll see you soon. Jack.'" She tosses the card on the counter as she walks over, sliding her arms around his waist. It presses her breasts against his torso, as before. Her hips are pressed to his, too. She looks hungry.

"I want to have you right here on the counter," she breathes, though she knows they can't.

Erich

It's that dark smirk that does it for him. Well; no. If we're honest, it was all those random little squeezes. All those little moments when he was carrying something in and she grabbed him from the side or behind or just plain got in his way and hugged him because she was so happy and who else would she hug? and he had to act all grumpy and annoyed because he was trying to help her move here, god Celia, but secretly he was dying for her to stop, wait, stay right there for a moment longer because her breasts were pressed against his bare skin through that cute little sweater of hers and he

is

about to have a stroke.

It was all those squeezes. And it was the times he passed her and saw her looking at him. And he knows they're both playing parts for the movers to notice and report on, but he also knows underneath the fiction is a generous helping of truth. He fantasizes briefly about helping her move somewhere else. Somewhere far away from here, far away from Washington DC and evil men and all the hunting she does; maybe after all this, when she's retired from this bloodsport. He thinks that would be nice, if he was helping her move for real. He thinks she might hug him then, too, and look at him, and notice his arms and his shoulders and his back and his chest. He wouldn't mind that at all.

So: it's all that. It's all that, and it's that dark smirk. And what she says. And she's reading aloud and tossing the card down and coming over and

no one ever told Erich they can't do that. He picks her up the instant she tells him what she wants. He puts her down on the counter and kisses her so ferociously he growls, and then

his hands are fumbling with his pants. "We can go fast," he whispers. "We've got time."

Celia

She exhales. She wants to laugh, but

no she doesn't.

Melantha kisses him back, hands on his face and the back of his neck, mauling his mouth while he's trying to undo his jeans. "God, hurry," she breathes, because he was right, it's going to be about fifteen minutes, though given Jack's habits,

it's more likely twenty. Thirty if they're lucky.

She wraps her legs around his waist, even though hers are still on, and kisses him like she's trying to find his soul.

Erich

"Mmmghh," he muffles against her mouth, which might have been some attempt at a sentence or may have just been noise. It doesn't matter. He fights his pants open and drops them -- they collapse around his ankles. His boxers go next, a limp white flutter on top of the denim. She's got her legs wrapped around him already, those decadent jeans of hers butter-soft against his bare skin, but he has to grab her legs and unwind them because,

"Take these off. Lift up. Here," he's undoing the button, he's tugging them down, he urges her to lift her hips and hold herself up on her hands while he's undoing all that wiggling and tugging of the morning. Her pants are down to her thighs, then down to her knees, then he's whisking them up over his head and dropping them on the ground and, "God I wish you were just wearing a skirt."

He steps back to her. Their mouths meet, collide wet and crackling as a storm. His hands paw through her hair, grasp at her sides. He reaches down and he's hard already, he's been halfmast for just about the entire fucking morning thanks to "Celia" hugging "Derek" every ten minutes, and then she's pulling her panties aside or he is and he's inside her in one smooth slide.

"Oh, god." His palms are on the counter. He feels slick granite, polished to a gleam; the heat of his body leaves a faint aura of condensation around his fingertips, the heel of his hand. He starts fucking her right away, kissing her and kissing her neck, bending his brow to her shoulder when they really get going, when she's grabbing his ass and clawing between his shoulderblades, when he's not even trying to muffle his groans.

Celia

They weren't faking it. There was an element of truth in every hug, every shoulder-check, every way he looked at her half-glazed when her tits were pushed against his chest, perked up in that top like she was laying herself out on a platter. And she wasn't faking it when she looked at him, stared at him, thinking about his jeans just falling off of those smoothly cut hip-bones.

Her heels -- of course she wore heels -- fall off her feet as she kicks them to the kitchen floor. They fight with her jeans until they peel them off, remove them inside-out, and he mutters that he wishes she were in a skirt and she smirks because that's the whole thing about skirts anyway. "I didn't want you to think I'm easy," she says, twinkling with mockery of her own sentence.

Instead of answering he kisses her again, hard, lipstick smearing off her lip, hands all over her. Her panties came down with the jeans because of how tight they were and now hang off of one ankle. Her toes curl and her thighs open to wrap her legs around him as he takes his cock in hand, and those panties fall to the floor with everything else.

And she's wet. And he's hard. And they fuck suddenly as a thunderstorm in springtime, his hands lifting her off the counter near the end to lever her closer, to go faster. She holds him by the back of his neck, the back of his head, head tipping back until it nearly bangs against the cabinetry, her lower lip tight between her teeth so she doesn't whimper too loudly. They fuck with furious purpose, chasing down orgasms like they're starved for it, starved for each other.

Melantha smacks him when she starts coming, one hand reaching up and back to grab the underside of the cabinet just to make sure she doesn't slam her head into the wood, her other arm wrapped tight around his shoulders, fingernails digging into his shoulderblade. She bites her lip so hard, moaning in her throat, her legs crossed behind his back to keep him there, close, firmly pressed into her while her cunt clenches around him.

"Oh, my god," she exhales, as her limbs start to go limp. "Fucking god, Erich... fuck..."

Erich

He does, in fact, lift her right up off the counter at the end. It's not even thought out; it's not even something he thinks about. He just does it, because it brings them closer, because she's so close, because he wants to fuck her just like this, just like this, just like this, until

she comes like that, smacking him, scratching him, grabbing the nice new cabinetry to keep from smacking her head because by then he's quite literally bouncing her on his cock with these ferocious grunts caught low in his throat. Until her legs tighten, anyway. Until she grabs him and pulls him so close that he just hugs her to him in return, holds her there wrapped all around his body while she rides those last refulgent pulses out.

That's how, and when, he comes. Wrapped in all her limbs, clenched deep in her cunt: there's no specific reason or rationale, no trigger, nothing to explain why he tips over that edge he's been so close to all this time right then. He does, though: he comes when she stills him, when she holds him like that, and he comes without warning, without thrusting, without bouncing her, without doing anything but pulling her a few fractions of an inch down, harder, deeper as he shouts a raw sound against her shoulder.

She's going looselimbed as water. She's calling his name in the same sentence as gods and obscenities. He's trying not to fall over on her kitchen floor. He's holding her a moment, as close and dear as anyone would the girl they

love

and the thought makes his eyes sting a little, though he isn't sure why. Maybe it's just emotions. Maybe it's just chemicals. He's panting, his chest rising and falling against hers, his ribs expanding and contracting. It's only been a handful of minutes.

"I love you," he says. He wraps his arms tighter around her, and then suddenly this is spilling out of him: "I don't want you to see Jack today. I know you have to and I'm not going to stand in your way or try to protect you or be stupid about it or anything but I don't want you to."

Celia

A handful of minutes, no more, and they're both coming apart, clinging to each other. Melantha holds him up, and holds him against her, kissing him loose and slow. She's glad she told him to come over instead of just sexting him at the laundromat. She's glad she keeps ripping his clothes off. She startles, all the same, when he looks at her like that and tells her loves her, he doesn't want her to see Jack,

but she has to so he won't be stupid.

Melantha's orgasm is still wringing through her in pulses, and those same chemicals are making her want to promise him the moon. Okay, sure. They can leave right now. Run away. It's fine. Let's do it. She gives him a softer kiss instead, stroking her fingertips through his short, short hair.

"I have to," she whispers, though she knows he knows that. "And you have to go."

She kisses his brow next, and wraps both arms around him, holding him like that for a moment. Hugging him, really. "Don't worry," she says. "It's going to be okay."

Erich

Erich hugs her very tightly for a while, saying nothing at all. And gradually, he hugs her a little less tightly; he relaxes; his breathing steadies and his heart stops hammering. She leans back and he straightens up, and he looks at her with uncharacteristic gravity.

"Okay," he says -- to everything. And he leans forward, laying a very soft little kiss on her mouth.

When he backs up, he pulls his pants halfway up, then uses his shirt to wipe himself off the best he can: brow, chest, underarms, back, groin. He's still rather a mess, all things considered, but he's out of time. And Celia's annoying stepbrother taking a shower in her new apartment might just push Jack too far. So he zips his fly and buttons his button and then he turns her jeans inside-in again while she's stepping into her panties. She starts wiggling them on again. He tucks his now thoroughly-gross shirt back into his pocket, and he's ready to go.

"Text me?"

Celia

That next kiss -- and last one, at least for now -- is tender. Erich draws back and out of hr, away from her. She breathes in, and sighs. He wipes himself off and pulls up his boxers and pants. Melantha searches around quickly and then digs some tissues out of her purse to wipe herself up, then gets dressed again. She has to arrange her hair and spritz on some perfume and re-apply her lipstick.

Speaking of which, she uses another tissue to wipe Erich's mouth, her brows furrowed. She nods. "I promise."

As Erich is going down the stairs and out the door, he runs into Jack. Jack in his dark suit, his driver outside. Jack is already glowering, and trying not to show his desire to punch Erich in the face. "Surprised to see you here," he says instead, tightly. "Celia says you're pretty lazy."

Erich

There's no lipstick on Erich's mouth when he comes trotting down the stairs. There's no shirt on his back. There's the very very faint hint of Celia's perfume on him, but of course nothing more than you'd expect of someone who was getting hugged rather regularly by his annoying little step-sister.

And there's a beast looking out of his eyes. He slows when he runs into Jack. They turn around an invisible axis as they pass one another, glaring, and Erich -- "Derek" -- doesn't even try to pretend he doesn't want to put Jack's head through a wall. His grin is a rictus, all teeth.

"No way, man. I'm diligent and I give my all. All day. All night." He punches Jack on the shoulder. It's not very playful at all. "See you later, buddy. Don't forget to take your Viagra."

Celia

All day. All night. Jack's smile is tighter. He doesn't show his teeth. He smells Celia's perfume on the shirtless man. He smells something else, faintly, that makes him wonder, but he's imagining things. His heart rate is speeding along, and it makes his neck red. His eyes narrow when Erich punches his shoulder. He doesn't say a word, and goes upstairs.

The driver of the low black car parked near Erich's Mustang is watching him. He's an older man, black suit and black cap, black gloves. Well-kept. Hair smoothly combed down. He gives Erich a strange little upward nod as he passes by, and a wave of his fingers as he gets into his Mustang. Watches him drive off, and settles in to wait for Jack to come back down.

Upstairs, Jack picks a fight with Celia. She ends up crying. They don't get lunch after all. They kiss and make up. He makes some comment about 'christening' the apartment. She giggles, and he decides to extend his lunch for another round. By the time he comes back down to his driver, he's already late for his next meeting.

The driver sees lipstick on Jack's earlobe. He doesn't say anything.

stay.

Erich

Eighteen minutes later, the Mustang skids into the Hay Adams' parking lot -- again -- so fast that it rides up over the corner of a curb, parks crookedly between a Mercedes and a Porsche SUV, and shuts down.

People stare at Erich as he stands in the lobby, mashing his button into the elevator button. Upstairs he practically -- no, he flat-out runs down the hall, arrives at her door breathing hard for more than one reason. He knocks.

Celia

Melantha says she's not in heat. She can wait. Erich can't seem to. He rushes, he speeds, he runs and he knocks louder and faster than he really needs to.

She smiles when she opens the door, his fist still raised. Someone seeing them -- though right now no one sees them, no one but the people downstairs who noticed that guy rushing around like he's in a panic -- might think

god, they're just kids.

In a way, they are. Her best friend had never seen Mulan, so they ate cheesecake and watched Mulan and talked about boys and about mean people and cuddled and fell asleep in colorful pajamas. She likes this boy and he likes her and she can't even think about him without thinking about sex and she's never really felt that way about anyone.

Melantha is wearing lingerie.

Her feet and her legs are bare and he can just barely see her panties -- partly because they're nearly nonexistent to begin with and partly because on top of them she's wearing a babydoll negligee. It's black. It opens down the front, splitting to either side, hardly mattering because the fabric of it is sheer anyway. There's a purple satin ribbon tied just below her breasts, the cups covering them trimmed with lace.

That smile isn't shy. Not really. Well maybe a little. Mostly she just looks pleased.

Erich

Erich is speechless for a second. His eyes drop from Melantha's and she can all but feel his gaze, hot, molten, pouring down her breasts and her abdomen, lingering at the juncture of her thighs, dropping all the way to her bare feet. The truth is there is a moment, a brief and painful one where he wonders if this is what she wore for Jack, if she just hasn't changed yet, but then

his eyes come back to hers and he decides so what, it doesn't matter if she did and it doesn't matter if she didn't. She didn't pick Jack, she picked him. Erich. He's the one she texted and then almost-sexted and then invited over.

So he steps into the room and lets the door shut behind him and catches her around her waist, smiling lopsidedly, pulling her against his body. He feels hard and solid under his clean clothes; he smells like cheap soap and hard water and like himself. His hands are big and they cover immense stretches of her sides, her back, as he kisses her standing in the entryway of her hotel suite.

Celia

She's smiling against his mouth. There's gotta be something wrong with this, she thinks. Dressing up for this just like the way she dresses up when it's not this, when it's one of them. There's gotta be something meta-wrong with being turned inside out by a very male gaze and enjoying the way it makes her feel, and yet

she feels like sex incarnate. She feels like a goddess who is worshipped for her sighs, who can cause madness and devotion. She feels like Melantha, too, putting herself on even footing with a boy she's been thinking of for twenty minutes, shirtless and in low-slung jeans, sweating and flexing without seeming to notice, with those soft lips of his and the way they wrap around her nipple. If anyone was objectified and sexualized without their permission tonight, she was doing it to him first.

And then he gave her permission, in a roundabout way. And she put this on, and gave him permission, too.

Besides, she thinks, rucking up his shirt and holding him by the belt-loop at his hip with one hand and sliding her other hand down the front of his jeans,

but by that point she can't remember what came after besides.

Erich

The funny thing is, in a way they're both thinking of all the reasons everything they've ever known or learned up until now is telling them this is wrong, or bad, or at the very least taboo in some way. They're thinking of it right up until they're not thinking about it anymore, and then --

then they're kissing each other the way they do, eagerly, hotly, smiling and then not smiling anymore but panting; he's gasping as she reaches down his pants. He helps her with his shirt, tugs it over his head and lets it drop, a scrap of cotton fabric on the carpet.

She's moving out tomorrow. Maybe the place is actually neat. Maybe it's actually packed, or maybe he'll come help her -- no, wait, he'll just be here to help her tomorrow. Maybe. Or maybe she'll ride him like a pony and then dropkick him out the window, laughing, and he'd be okay with that too even if it means he spends the night in his car in her parking lot and then comes back up in the morning. It doesn't matter; he's just happy right now, and he's smiling again as his hands roam all over her, ruck up her negligee, slide down to slide under the flimsy waistband of her nearly-nonexistent panties.

He touches her like that, shamelessly, moaning into her mouth at whatever she's doing with him beneath the waistline. He massages his palms on her ass, squeezes her cheeks, reaches all the way down between her legs to rub his fingertips over her cunt. He gasps at that, the feel of her, what wetness he finds there; gasps not for the first time since he's stepped in here, withdraws his hand and picks her up altogether, carries her

bedward.

Celia

At least he's not arguing with her anymore that he shouldn't do anything with her because she's a different tribe and she's so pure and he knows where this goes and he's going to get in trouble and this is dishonorable. At least he's not saying all these things when she's not even one hundred percent sure she wants to do anything with him at all. At least he didn't say any of that when she kissed him out in the woods, pulling him into her sleeping bag and rolling him under her.

Maybe she'll ride him like a pony. If she could read that thought flying through his mind she might growl, might pin him down and do exactly that, might rest her hands on his chest and go at him with her lower lip between her teeth and her lingerie on, eager and mindless.

Her hand down his jeans knows what it's doing even if every time she tries to think clearly she finds every thread of thought flying out of her

Both of them can't keep their hands off of each other. Her palm sliding over his cock through his boxers, tearing open the button of his fly with her other hand while she walks backward, trying to lead him further into the room. And he's kissing her, palming her ass, stretching out her panties with his wrists, stroking his fingers over her pussy. Melantha leans her head back, biting her lip as though there's some reason to restrain the little moan that leaves her throat.

They reach the edge of her bed. Melantha, panting now as well, holds him by the hips and turns him around, pushing him to sit on the bed where, for a moment,

she just leans back and looks at him. The fly of his jeans half-open, his chest bared, his lips red from kissing her. She stares at him, her eyes glazed and heavy lidded, before she slips her panties the rest of the way off, dropping them down her legs and climbing onto his lap. Her hands are on his face, lifting his chin, devouring his mouth with a groan.

Erich

They haven't said a goddamn word to each other. Like literally: they have not spoken to each other since she walked out of this hotel room nearly a week ago. What words they have exchanged were done over the airwaves, and they unraveled into typos and noises and little ASCII hearts.

He doesn't speak now either. He doesn't really have time to. He can't stop kissing her, and when she leans her head back he just kisses her throat instead. She rubs her palm over him, that ridiculously sensitive patch of flesh just under the head, and his legs almost go out from under him. They're at the bed suddenly. She turns him around with more strength and initiative and dominance than any of her marks would have ever thought her capable of, turns him around and gives him a push that lands his ass on the bed.

Now he's looking up at her. And she's looking down at him: him with his shirt off and his jeans undone, his boxers doing a not-too-great job of hiding the raging hard-on she felt moments ago. His chest moves with his breathing. He has his hands on the mattress behind him, propping himself up, and he leaves them there as she puts her hands on his face,

lifts his chin,

oh, they kiss again, he moans into this one low and rough, it's really more like a growl. She climbs into his lap and he wraps one arm around her waist. She still has her negligee on but the panties are gone, that's what matters. He flops down on the bed, his arms around her pulling her with him. They bounce a little on the mattress. He kicks his way up the bed, his undone jeans rumpling down with the slide until they're around his knees, around his ankles, off. Then he's fighting with his shorts, she's helping him get them down, he's putting his hands on her body instead and pushing that negligee up and up until he can fill his hands with her breasts.

"I kinda want you to ride one out on me." Oh look, words after all: panting and unsteady, but words. "I just want you to ride me until you come, 'kay?"

Celia

Melantha huffs a laugh at that. She's straddling him now, and he's naked now, and her hands are roaming over his chest and his hands are up her negligee and holding her breasts. It feels like it's been longer than a week since she saw him last, heard his voice, smelled him. And yet even while he's panting, talking to her, Melantha just keeps kissing him. She's touching him hungrily, as though seeking out some part of him she hasn't run her hands over yet. But he tells her what he wants, what he kinda wants, 'kay? and she laughs, soft and humid, across his jaw.

"What else did you think I was gonna do?" she asks him, amused and -- let's face it -- horny, nipping his lower lip with her teeth before she kisses him again.

But she doesn't. Not yet, anyway. She rubs herself against him, rolling her hips and stroking him with her cunt instead of her hand, all but purring into his mouth as she kisses him.

Erich

"Oh, my god," Erich says, only it's more like a muffled moan because she's kissing him; kissing him and rubbing herself on him in that way that makes him simultaneously want to tear his boxers off and lose track of what he was thinking at all.

What he's thinking, though, or trying to think, so that this reminds him of the camping trip. This reminds him a little of the way they first made love, and how she stroked herself over him then, too, but god she wasn't such a tease then, she ground against him twice or three times at most and then she reached to fit him inside her like he was born to be there. His head falls back. From a rumpled mess of her pillows and sheets he looks up at her, half-dazed and half-smiling, feeling her breasts against his palms, her nipples tight on themselves. He pulls her up along his body, pushes her negligee up, puts his mouth on her breasts and sucks at her with this low sound of satisfaction that seems to come from somewhere deep inside him, seems to vibrate right across his tongue, her skin, to house itself somewhere behind the bars of her ribs.

Erich is pushing his shorts down as he licks at her, sucks at her; it's a slow warm rhythm and as much as he wants her, as much as he sped and screeched around corners and yanked into parking spaces and ran up the stairs, all that hurry seems to concentrate and shift into something else. Intensity. Enjoyment. And god, there is a lot to enjoy: the softness of her skin and the smell of her; the texture of her nipple against his lapping, swirling tongue; her stomach brushing the head of his cock where their bodies rub together, making him lift his hips half-involuntarily against that friction.

And now he's pushing his boxers down and kicking them down and soon enough they fall off the tips of his toes to rumple on the ground. Now they're both naked, or near enough, though she still has a negligee rucked up and he still has his socks on. He'd laugh at himself if he still cared. Now he's letting her breast go, covering it with his hand as though to imprint the sensation or soothe it, pulling her down and shifting himself up and

now there's nothing between their bodies, not where it matters; he's hard and she's wet and when they come into contact he drops his head to the covers, transported, moaning to god again, only this time there's a different name attached:

"Oh, my god, Melantha."

Celia

She's not a tease. He came over here hard, his mind nearly lost, and now she's wet but she's not ready for this part to end yet so she's doing as she damn well pleases and if Erich doesn't like it well,

well,

Erich can have feminist arguments with his hand instead.

Melantha and he are, for lack of a better word, rubbing all over each other. They fight his boxers down and out of the way until she can start stroking herself off on his cock, kissing mouths and lapping at breasts. She tastes like she smells, like being in her presence feels. It's like touching time itself. Like being buried and coming back to life. Like... her. Like the one he knows.

Erich is making oaths to god or to her or one and the same, but Melantha is just making sounds. Wriggling and moaning and kissing him, kissing his neck, running her hands over his chest and his sides, kissing his arm just to feel the muscle there jump under her tongue. She crawls all over him, shameless and eager, but her cunt never loses contact with his cock for more than a second. Every time it does she grinds back against him, gasping, losing his mouth for a moment, her eyes closing and her mouth opening with soundless exhales of pleasure.

Erich

He over here with his mind nearly lost. Now there's no qualifier on that statement. Erich is going out of his head here: his hands going to his brow, riffling back through his short hair as his eyes rolls shut, as his hips buck, as he groans.

"Fuck," he exhales, "fuuuck, Melantha, please, I'm losing it over here."

Her hands are on his chest or splayed over his sides; her breasts are pressing to his chest, which is a sensation that they can both agree they love; she's panting as she grinds herself on his cock and he's just thinking in flashes and adjectives and expletives now: hot, wet, fuck, god.

And his hands are back on her. He pushes them up under the back of her negligee. He pulls her down on him, kissing her neck, holding her as he lifts his hips and grinds hard against her, strokes fiercely and energetically against her cunt like he's fucking her even if he's not. Close enough. Close enough to make him groan against her ear, anyway; suck at her neck.

Celia

She laughs again. Dark and warm and vicious and tender. She kisses his chest over his heart, thinking of the bead that Charlotte made for her, the one she made for Erich, as though all that mattered was that they find each other. Oh, she does like him.

With her negligee pushed up like that, he can only see -- only feel -- her breasts through the sheer chiffon that hangs down from the cups of the bralette. It's nice. She revels in it while he grabs at her, moans, fucks himself against her pussy and swears nonsense at the ceiling.

"You just want me to ride one out on you, remember?" she says, and, okay,

now she's teasing him a little, giving him a hard round grind of her hips when she says:

"You just want me to come on you, remember?"

Erich

YDI.

That is the sign that flashes bright red and neon behind Erich's eyelids as his eyes fall shut because, god, she's doing it again. "Oh my fucking god," he moans, and it really is a moan: the sort of sound you make when you realize you, for example, drove all the way to the campsite but forgot your tent. And then he opens his eyes. He's determined: "Okay. All right. I can do this."

Erich reaches back and grabs the edge of the mattress. Bites his lip, breathing in harsh, caught little blasts, nostrils flaring every time she rides down on him or he -- moving like he has no control over this, moving like he can't help it at all -- thrusts up.

Celia

Now that makes her laugh for real. Bright and happy and joyous, sunlight on dew instead of fire contained by the rich earth. She laughs at his determination and she kisses him longingly, lovingly, while he lifts his arms over his head and grabs the mattress.

Sweetly, or at least smiling that way, Melantha lifts her body from his. They both lose the sensation of her breasts on his chest, and he can hear the rustle of her hair, smell it as it hangs down and swings away when she rises up.

Her hands smooth over his chest. She looks at him, and she runs her hands up her own legs and her stomach and unties that purple ribbon and opens her negligee and just lets it fall off, slip down her arms. It drops onto his feet and then falls between them, slippery as water itself. She touches herself, palms on her breasts and her torso again, touching herself like he touches her but slower, til she's touching herself like she thinks of him touching her when he's not there.

His cock is rubbing against her and she pins him with her hips, whispering shh for a half second, holding him against her opening while she rubs her own clit.

Erich

Erich doesn't know where she learned such things, such decadence, such evil. She unties that purple ribbon and his eyes seem glued to her fingers, that bit of satin coming undone. She lets the negligee fall. He makes a sound like this causes him physical torment, and he grinds against her with such force that he lifts her from the bed as effortlessly as if she weighed nothing.

And she pushes him down. Touching him; then touching herself. His lips part. He pants, watching her like she's revealing god. He can't look away. He watches the lift and fall of her breasts as she breathes; the play of her fingers; her thighs open over his body, her cunt pressed against his cock, pinning it against his lower abdomen. Which quivers, flexes; his feet move restlessly behind her. He paws a hand over his face when he can't watch anymore but then he finds he can't bear not watching, either.

So that hand goes back where it was. The sheets are wrinkling in his fingers. He keeps watching her, breathing hard, trying his best not to urge her on or tell her yeah, like that or any of that because --

because this is for her. Not for him.

Celia

And just like that,

something changes. It's nothing he did, really. It isn't. Not that he can tell, not that he can draw a line from. She's touching herself and her brow is furrowed with pleasure and then with something else, something she doesn't enjoy. Her shoulders tuck inward, the first sign and the most physical, like her body is trying to protect itself even when she hasn't gotten there yet.

Melantha breathes in, uneasily, and she's still aroused and wanting and

conflicted and uncertain and weirded out. She stops touching herself. She leans forward and leans against him again, and it's so strange and it's worrisome and it's mindbending because that, of all times, is when she chooses to reach down and touch his cock again. That's when she lifts her hips and guides him into her, impossibly expert and frighteningly virginal, somehow, though the only resistance he meets as she's taking him inside of her is the tightness he knows, the tightness that makes them so incredibly close that it's hard to tell where one body ends and the other begins.

Melantha sighs, a long exhale, when she feels him. She doesn't start bouncing on him, gleeful and teasing and darkly mocking him. She doesn't ride him like a pony or start working one out on him. She moves slowly, very slowly, and though her face was against his chest when he first pushed into her, she lifts it now, looking into his eyes, her brow still furrowed with that wrinkle that always seems to unravel something inside of him.

She doesn't say a word. She looks in his eyes, though, and she makes love to him slowly, like she's trying to remember how.

Or learn.

Erich

Something changes. Something makes her stop touching herself. Something makes him open his eyes. She leans down to him and he lowers a hand to curve around the back of her head, cradle her like that.

They are so close suddenly. And neither of them speak, but something changes again. He lifts his head and he kisses her, very gently and tenderly and slowly and drenchingly, as though to show her

it's okay. It's nothing he didn't want. Nothing he has to suffer. It's okay, a game that made her laugh, a game that made him a little out of his mind, but a game. It's okay.

She can see every instant of their lovemaking reflected in his eyes. Surely blue-eyed liars have existed before -- she's a blue-eyed liar every time she's with Jack -- but on Erich, that color, that clarity seems incapable of deceit. She can see the furrow of his brow, the tight pleasure coiling in him when she reaches down to guide him inside her. She misses the moment that tension releases, or transmutes to a different sort, ecstatic.

She sees that ecstasy, though, when she lifts her face from his chest. He's sweating already, and his sweat is on her when he leans up to kiss him again. And though neither of them have said a word about it, his hands cup her head, hold her hip. His hand guides her without quite commanding her, reminding her:

this is how.

Erich

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Celia

[Something is wrong!]

Celia

[LOL ok so he can pick up that her :[ is not concern for him! It's about something else going on in her and all she wants is to do what she did and get closer and be with him and that's what they're doing so she feels better. :] ]

Celia

Something changes, but silently. Swiftly. Melantha descends to him and takes him and she kisses him as he's sliding into her. He wants to show her that it's okay, that she didn't take the game too far, that getting what he asked for was not ruining something for him,

and all she wants is to be with him. Close to him. She kisses him softly, though, searchingly, while he runs his fingers into her hair to hold her head and while she runs her hands up his sides now that she is holding him, holding him, deeply and tightly. She shivers slightly when their mouths part and her head goes to his chest. She doesn't shiver at all when she lifts her eyes and meets his again.

In his blue eyes, which are as pure as her blood, she just sees something transcending honesty. He couldn't lie to her now if he tried. That's why she does this. That's why it's been this way for generation upon generation of women like her within her tribe. It isn't just the sex. She makes them love her, even if that love is like squeezing blood from a turnip, even when that blood and that love is corrupt. It's the love that undoes them,

at least when they're fucking her.

Melantha is glad he doesn't freak out. He doesn't ask her instantly what's wrong, he doesn't stop moving, he doesn't insist that they can't make love until he knows every last thought in her head when she hasn't even sorted them out completely yet. She was never worried that he'd get angry at her, but she ...

really didn't know how he might react. She's never done this before.

She feels him guiding her, or at least reminding her, that this is okay, and this is how they can make love, and it's sweet and dumb and she knows how to have sex, Erich, god, but it's him and he's just trying to make her feel better. He's trying to understand her. He's trying to reach out to her, and be there with her, even when she isn't entirely sure where 'there' is. In essence, he does everything right just then, and she likes him so much.

She rolls them gently onto their sides. It slows them but she likes it. Her leg lifts over his hip. She keeps her eyes open, her hand on his side where his ribs wrap protectively around his chest cavity, using his heaviness for leverage as she keeps moving herself on him.

"I love you," she whispers, not the first words she's said to him all night or for the last week but the first time she's said this since she left him

to go fuck another man, who she doesn't love at all.

Melantha leans to him and kisses him again. Her hand slides down his side to his hip, and her eyes follow. She holds him there, encouraging him to move, watching him where he fits inside of her. "There," she whispers, finding some tight, perfect rhythm with him. Her head tips back; she gasps. "Fuck, yes."

Erich

He smiles as they roll onto their sides. She slides her leg over his hip. His hand at her back pulls her a little closer. He glances down to where their legs overlap, to where he's inside her, and then he looks at her again as she says

she loves him

and he never would have thought this was okay before, sharing her with another man, but somehow it is. Somehow she makes it all right. He kisses her, fervently and delightedly, but she's kissing him in the same instant so they meet in the middle. Her hand trails down his side. They both look down again, and now it's her hand on his hip guiding him, her words showing him:

yes, right there. perfect.

He levers himself closer. He kisses her with his hand on her cheek, sliding down to her breast. He moves just like that, just like she shows him, tight and eager, breathing hard, kissing her over and over the way he always seems to, can't seem to stop.

Celia

He smiles, and he kisses her, and their hands on each other's bodies are urging, encouraging, more, yes, more. They were both worked up before they even saw each other, flirting with the idea over texts. They were worked up when he came up to the door, and he was pulling off his shirt -- as promised -- and she was dressed in lingerie and he's never, ever seen her in lingerie even when that's all she's been wearing. They were so worked up, in fact, that they were pushing and pulling each other to the bed, not even pausing to think that they've never had sex in a bed before. A tent? Sure, several times. A wall? Absolutely. But not in this big, soft, expansive bed. Not in any real bed at all. It's not like it matters, when nearly everything between them is a First of some kind, but the point is: they couldn't even think straight. They couldn't think at all.

Erich still has his dumb socks on. Ask her if she cares. Ask him if he can even feel them.

Another point is: they were already have out of their minds before Melantha worked herself onto his cock. And they haven't stopped. Even in that odd, painful moment when she looked upset, when she looked worried and uncomfortable, they didn't stop. It takes them no time at all to find that rhythm again. His hand strays from her breast for a half-second; she reaches for his wrist and puts it right back, shivering and letting out a noise that's as vibratory as a purr, though a bit louder. Even when she's not on top of him anymore she rides him, leveraging her leg over his hip to pull herself closer. Lying on their sides forces them to slow down a bit, which

she thought at first would be a good thing, and at least for a few minutes was a necessary thing, but it doesn't take long before she's touching his shoulder, trying to lay him out on his back again so she can,

as he in fact asked for earlier,

ride him.

Erich

Erich is a pretty easygoing guy, really. He rocked agreeably with her shoves long before they kissed. He grins when she gets prickly, and not because he's patronizing her or patting her on the head because aww how cute kingirl's getting mad. He's just ... affable.

So: she pushes on his shoulder, and he goes easily to his back. A grin flickers over his face. They slip apart, and he looks down their bodies; his cock is wet from her, the air sudden and cool where before she was all heat and tightness and slick. She climbs on top. He looks up at her, running his hands up her sides, to her breasts, down the front of her torso to hold her by the hip while the other hand reaches between her legs

and not to fit himself back into her, but to touch her. He starts touching her like that, starts playing rather delicately with her clit while she's grinding on him and taking him back into her. He's watching her and running his free hand up and down her leg, leaning up to meet her in the middle, kissing her, falling back onto that big bed of hers where he's slept before, but where they've never made love before this.

They're making love now. And fucking. Such things are not mutually exclusive. He's watching her, a hungry gleam in his eye, as she begins to move on him. Ride him in earnest. He lets a sound go, watching her, touching her, moving in counterpoint, thrusting where she bears down. "That's it," muttering: "oh, that's good."

Celia

There isn't much time in between Erich being rolled onto his back and Melantha sliding back onto him. She doesn't let there be much time; she couldn't stand it if there were. Erich, of course, can't stop touching her. And that's nothing truly new between them at all. But by the time his hands stroke down from fondling her breast to reaching between her legs, stroking his fingers over her, she is reaching for him to take him again. He holds her by the hip: no, for a moment, this, please for a moment.

Melantha shudders apart as though her joints have come loose. She lays her hands on his chest and slides over him, across him, moving herself on his fingers and his cock, gasping with it. It's another second or two -- another grind or two -- before she takes him in hand again. Strokes the head of his cock over herself, panting, looking at him. It takes her a beat before she remembers anything else, then, then she's taking him, easing herself down on him, letting loose a groan as he sits up to kiss her, as her hips are winding down, as he's feeling up her leg.

Erich falls. Melantha shares her weight on her arms, her hands on his chest, his shoulders, using the alignment of their bodies as leverage to start riding him. To start, yes, fucking him, because that doesn't take any of the strange mottled tenderness they have out of it. The bed is too heavy and too thick and too pillowed for anything to thump against the wall or scrape against the floor, but were it smaller and cheaper and less palatial, the way they're going at each other would alert her neighbors to everything happening. Every thrust Erich gives into her, every little moan Melantha lets out when she tilts her hips and rubs herself against him.

She says nothing. Nothing coherent, at least. She doesn't flinch at his words, but she doesn't answer them. She has fucked men who couldn't shut up, who said filthy things to her, who said horrible things to her, who called her slut and whore, men who called her their sweet little girl, called her hot bitch, called her any manner of creative nicknames that all boil down to fuck-toy. But she's also been with men who never say a word, who don't want to make a sound, who grunt when they come and that's it; they can't even seem to look at her.

None of them ever called her Melantha, whispered it with an ache underlining her name, kissing her like they couldn't stop. And none of them were Erich. Truthfully, there is very little Melantha can give to him, or do for him, or with him, that she hasn't done before with someone else. That won't remind her, in some way, of someone else who didn't love her, because they didn't know her, because they didn't want to. And is afraid, so afraid, that even the words out of her mouth will be false,

or sound false,

or feel wrong

to Erich, who she actually likes and who likes her back and who she is allowed to argue with and be herself around even if he doesn't like it because him liking it isn't a part of The Mission. Because he's not a mark or a John or her prey. He's just Erich, who she has missed all week in ways she's not sure she knows how to even talk about. Erich,

who is being ridden now, quick and eager and like a goddamn pony, til she's whimpering on every downstroke, Til her brow is furrowed tight and her mouth is open with those gasping little cries, her arms locked and her torso tightening up, her back arching, all of it becoming unconscious. Instinctive.

Erich

All the ways they are different are so many and myriad that it may be impossible to enumerate them all. It goes beyond tribe and upbringing and how they approach independence and mutual reliance; it goes beyond gender and race and what movies they like.

For all that, they do have areas of unexpected and poignant overlap. They've both lost their families in one way or another. They're both rather alone in this city, and that aloneness has drawn them to others like themselves. Friends who want to stay with them, and want them to stay together. Melantha has a bead now in the shape of a small bright-eyed pigeon. Erich has yet to receive his.

And they're both -- in some sense -- new to this. Erich didn't come a virgin to their bed, but the diary of his exploits probably wouldn't fill the back page of a small-town newspaper. There's still something delighted and eager and surprised and dazed in his eyes when he sees her in lingerie; when she kisses him; when she strokes him off with such confidence; when she takes him inside her and rides him like that. He still flushes red sometimes at the things they do or the things he thinks or the things they say, even though he never looks away. He's a little inexperienced. He's not shy.

And Melantha. Melantha has a world of sexual experience, quite possibly more than Erich ever needs or wants to know about, but none of those men have ever called her by her name. None of them even knew who she was, who she really was, not the girl who wears tight jeans that show off her legs and short coats that show off her ass; not the girl who squeals and giggles and moans in delicious little whimpers under them, not that girl at all but

the one who watches Aliens in the back of her friend's car and knows half the lines by heart. The one who helps a wolf hunt a rabbit, and later tosses him bloody raw bones from the carcass as she skins it. The one who prays to the moon and then cycles through and transcends all the terrible passions.

The one who fucks him now like she's forgotten herself. The one who doesn't bother to control her expression, or read his reaction, or tune her performance, or --

even think very much at all. She gives herself over to the moment. He gives himself over to her, holding her by the hips, holding her by the waist, fucking her back in short fierce upstrokes with his soles flat to the mattress, his toes curling against the sheets as though he might, like some distant primate ancestor, be able to grip with his feet and keep from falling off the face of the earth. His eyes stay on her even when his last shreds of coherence unravel. Even when the planes of his upper chest gleam with sweat; even when their rhythm grows furious, fervent, and he's grasping at her and pushing his palm up the center of her body, cupping her breast, lifting it, letting it slip from his palm as he's following her arm down back to himself. His hand grips hers, brings hers to his mouth, kisses her palm hotly, ardently.

And then bites it. Sets his teeth against the swell below her thumb; the venus mount. He can't keep his eyes open at the last. There's tension in every line of him, a sudden hip-centered arch of his spine that slams him deep into her; makes every muscle in his body stand out in strain. He comes with a groan against her palm, staying deep, barely moving, his sides and his chest heaving, every inhale harsh, every exhale a grunt.

They eventually become words. He eventually relaxes -- collapses -- back to the bed, licking her hand and kissing her where he bit her, muttering half-formed vowels and consonants, something about god and her name and oh, oh fuck.

Celia

Eventually it ceases to matter how different they are or what they have in common. Eventually they cease to care that right now she goes from Being Fucked by Jack to making love with Erich. Eventually it doesn't even seem to matter that what she said by the fire hasn't changed, won't change: she doesn't want to be anyone's anything. That's all she's ever been.

None of it matters. They're here now, and together now. And fucking like mindless, rutting beasts. Fucking like she's in heat.

Melantha descends on him like a bird of prey near the end, kissing the corner of his mouth and his jaw and then -- finally -- his neck, screaming against it when he comes, while he bites her hand and holds her down on him. It's eager. It's energetic. It's furious and sweaty and weirdly sweet and she thinks she might have to kick him out after but

no, she realizes, as the interior of her mind and body go white-hot with orgasm,

she's going to keep him here instead.

They are a collapsed knot, half-loosed but still tangled. He's licking her hand, tasting the salt of her sweat, inhaling her scent from her skin like an animal while he mutters and breathes incoherently. Melantha just lies there, falling off to one side, her head on his arm and her eyes watching him, her spine awkwardly twisted and her legs still wrapped around him and her arm over his chest. She pants for air, and runs her hand down his side to his hip to pull him closer, to let her hip fall to the bed and make him move his body so he can stay inside of her. So she can keep him inside of her a little longer without tying herself into a pretzel to do so.

So brusque, she is. Come over. Kiss me. Lie on the bed. No, get on your side. Now on your back again. Now on your side. Keep your cock in me. And:

"Stay," she whispers, still panting softly, covered in their conjoined sweat.

< 3

Erich

Very early in the morning of the seventeenth of March, Erich leaves the Hay-Adams. Actually, it's more accurate to say he storms out of there, running down all eight stories through the fire stairs, slamming into the lobby so suddenly that everyone behind the reception desk jumps, shoving through the revolving doors, roaring out of the parking lot in his Mustang like a bat out of hell.

Quite a bit later in the day -- 4pm or so -- Celia gets a text:

Hey. :)

Celia

She's asleep when he texts. Twelve hours later she's back in the room, exhausted. Picks up the phone closer to dusk, smiles at the screen.

hey. :)

Erich

He's somewhere else by then. His den his mobile; his life is mobile. He's sitting on one of the flimsy, high-legged stools in front of a hot dog restaurant that's really more like a stationary hot dog cart. He's eating a double-dog with a bit of ketchup and mustard, leaving the bun on the plate. Bzz says his phone to his ass, and Erich wipes his hands on a thin scratchy napkin before reaching back to pull it out.

Mouth full, chewing, he smiles at the screen too.

It's you! :) I just smiled really big. Like a dork. How are you?

Celia

A little hungover still. :( I have to go out again tonight tho.

Erich

:(

And a minute later:

Tell him you're sick. And then I'll come bring you chicken noodle soup and let the hotel people see me walk in :D

Celia

Now she feels bad. Melantha is lying there on her stomach, her sad-face as geniune as her happy-face was. She does want her stupid, annoying step-brother Derek to bring her chicken soup. And kiss her, hard, pressing against her with that hungry energy she still remembers. And make love to her like that. So she feels bad.

I can't. :( I gotta get ready.

Erich

At the hot dog stand, the shopkeeper glances over at Erich -- his only customer at the moment, for obvious reasons, but a regular and one who always pays extra for double meat, hold the relish and onions -- and asks what the matter is. Erich, who wasn't aware until then that his crest has fallen, glances up and shrugs it off. The text comes back:

It's ok. Another time.

A couple seconds later:

Was he D: that you went camping with me?

Celia

The boy: sad face. tail droop.

And the hunter: did he sniff the bait?

Melantha smiles a little, small and only half-sad this time. He said he hoped you were a gentleman.

Erich

Now Erich is smirking. And the shopkeep doesn't ask him about that one, because he's hulking over the fold-out counter with his biceps and his knuckles, and that expression makes him look

just a little bit vicious.

What'd you say?

Celia

I said 'ew', and giggled, and change the subject.

A minute later, another one:

I have to go. I gotta get ready. Talk later?

Erich

Hahahaha! Good, hope that sat in his stomach like a ball of hot iron. THAT FUCKER >:|

And another reply:

K. Just text me whenever :)

Celia

That's the end of that conversation. Melantha gets out of bed and showers and curls and paints and zips and clasps and straps and wiggles her way into readiness for whatever is happening tonight. It won't be much. Monday nights he's annoyed, he's back at work, he's catching up on whatever shit-storm happened over the weekend, and when he wants to see her on Monday nights,

it's usually not to wine and dine her, romance her, take her out where he can drink something room temperature and watch her dance. Tonight he's waiting for her in the back of the limo, grabbing her wrist a little too tightly before she's even completely in the car, pulling her hand to his crotch and muttering in her ear,

see what you do to me?

like it's a compliment somehow.

Maybe that night, Erich has to cover himself in the blood of something foul. Maybe he has to rip it open, and that is a triumph, but in the midst of it he gets covered in the smell and the wretchedness of it. Maybe it soothes something in him to do it. Maybe it crawls up the back of his spine. Maybe all he feels is hot, roaring triumph.

It's hours later, a day maybe, and she sends him: bsfk at hotel passobg out

It's a few days later and she sends him a phone pic of herself. So of course there's part of her arm in the foreground. She's on her bed in the Hay Adams, and her hair is up in a ponytail and she has no makeup on and there's another pair of feet in the background of the picture, clad in purple socks. The picture of Melantha has her finger to her lips.

Charlotte fell asleep during Mulan. SHE IS SO CUTE I LOVE HER. Shh, don't tell her I sent this.

And then, closer to the weekend, a sudden: I'm moving.

A minute later: NOT OUT OF DC. To an apt.

Erich

Of course. Of course Charlotte is the type to wear purple socks and fall asleep watching Mulan. Of course Melantha takes a picture, smiling, her and her friend, the two of them acting almost like normal college-aged kids, and of course when Erich sees the picture it makes him smile, too.

That's not until hours later, though. Because they have their lives, their duties, their wars, their hunts, and sometimes Melantha has to wallow in the filth; sometimes Erich has to fetid blood. Sometimes it bothers them. Sometimes it soothes something primitive inside. Sometimes all they feel is triumph, vicious and raw.

Sometimes Erich doesn't feel much at all. Sometimes he loses his hold on who he is, lets slip the chains and slips out of his mind, rages until his consciousness is nothing but blood-red fury,

and peace.

He is waking. He is alone and cold and he's wet all over and it's not rain but blood, clammy and congealed. All around him are pieces of something that used to be a monster that used to be a man. He looks up at the sky. It's clear. In the heart of Washington DC there aren't very much stars.

He pushes himself up, exhausted, limp with it, legs rubbery. He has to clean the mess up, he thinks wearily. He picks up a chunk of ... something. His phone buzzes.

The first message makes his stomach drop, even though he knows it's coming. Then another one scrolls up on the tiny screen. He huffs.

Scared me. Can't talk right now, text you in a bit k?

An hour later he's showering in the boys' locker room of some local high school, scrubbing blood and guts off his skin and out of his hair, out from under his nails, out from the creases of his palms. He's washing quick, hasty, ears straining for the sound of some errant janitor somewhere. The pipes clank when he turns the shower off. He dries himself on his shed clothes and then he gets into fresh clothes. Fifteen minutes after that he's found a coin-op laundromat, and he's sitting in there waiting for the machines to turn. He pulls his phone out.

He finally get you your own place? Where?

Celia

Around Logan Circle. I'll send you the address but I'm at the hotel right now. I think the movers he's sending over tomorrow should see you helping out. :)

Erich

Erich is grinning again. This time there's no hot dog man to ask him why, so he's barely aware of it himself. He taps the message quickly:

K what time?

Celia

We're starting early. 9. He'll have lunch with us.

A minute goes by, less than.

I'm sorry if this is sexist but I'm thinking about you sweaty and shirtless and lifting heavy things.

Erich

K I'll be there.

And then:

AHAHAHA K I'll ware low riding jeans + take off my shirt like 2 min into moving PREPARE YOUR EYES MILADY :D

And also:

fuu wear* got excited lulz

Celia

There's a minute or two there.

Then:

how excited?

Erich

OMG I see where this is going but I'm at a laundromat!

Celia

then come over

Erich

There's a second of pause:

K. 20 min gotta finish drying can you wait?

And:

Or I can just come get it later

Celia

of course I can wait I'm not in HEAT, god

Erich

Melantha sounds a little prickly there. Erich, however, doesn't mind at all. His response:

Hnnnghhh that's hot. See you in 20 <3

Celia

you're such a dork. <3

Yes. He hearts. She hearts, too.

Melantha puts her phone on silent and puts it down. And changes.

a baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel.

Jake Novak

The agreed-upon Sunday rolls around, and Erich gets a text from Jake: Today isn't going to work. Raincheck?

The next weekend, it's Erich who isn't around. He's waking up in a tent with a naked girl, warm and golden, and grilling at Jake's place is the furthest thing from his mind.

So it's some time after the fight in the alleyway before Erich and Jake manage to get together for a barbecue. Jake has sent Erich his address: it's out on Red Hille Way, west of Browntown and south into a heavily treed area. When he comes out there in his white, racing-striped Mustang, he passes home after home that still stands empty after the strange mists and multiple deaths that came last fall. It is a good mile or so in any direction before you reach Jake's nearest neighbor. He doesn't live that far from Drew's, either. Within walking distance, if you have some time.

The house he pulls up to is larger and nicer than Drew's, though. It looks new, though in truth it has just been thoroughly renovated. Red brick and white siding. Two-car garage and smooth cement driveway. Not much in the way of landscaping, but one hardly needs it when the house is backed by and nearly surrounded by thick trees. It is much too big for a man living by himself, but Erich already knows that Jake has a child. Maybe not one he gets to see very often. Maybe one he would like to have live with him some day.

It's sunny this weekend. And as soon as the car pulls up, it disrupts the silence of the area enough that Jake hears it. He comes out to the front door, wearing the sort of jeans you wear when you work on your car and not the kind you wear when you're going out. His t-shirt is white. His feet are bare. When he sees Erich, he gives one of those wry smiles of his that looks like he's trying to remember how to smile at all, and a nod.

"You want a beer?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich hasn't been in Browntown very much since Drew. There was that one night he was in the area, stopped off for a drink at Liberty's, ran into Celia at the gas station. But even that was a very long time ago. Rolling through the quiet streets with the empty houses -- neighbors who have finally pulled up roots, some of the last country holdouts who have finally fled to the city never to return -- Erich is struck by how much the place hasn't changed. Doesn't change. Simply falls a little more into disrepair as its population dwindles.

Though, maybe that's a grim way to look at it. For all he knows reconstruction and renovation are actually well underway. And maybe in another few months they'll attract new neighbors, new people. Folks who are tired of the city, who don't want the glamourshot version of the country. And maybe a few months after that, there'll even be a hangar in town for all the flying pigs.

Erich pulls up to the address he's been given. Jake comes out the front as he's getting out, looking more casually dressed than Erich's ever seen him. The (much) younger wolf raises a hand in hello, shutting the door of his Mustang without bothering with the lock or the windows or ... any of that.

"Sure. I brought an ice cream cake."

And so he did. Because somewhere in his past someone taught him never to be the sort of guest that shows up empty-handed, and because he likes ice cream. Also, he brought a jug of hard apple cider. Because it seemed like the thing to do.

"How you been?" he asks as he comes up the steps to the porch. He looks every which way as he follows Jake into the house, openly exploring Jake's den with his eyes. And his nose: sniffing, or at least taking a few deep whiffs. "This is a nice house. Really big."

Jake Novak

Erich is not just younger, he's also a werewolf. He could be fifty years old and would still probably have that six-pack, those iron-hard shoulders. Jake is entering the latter half of his thirties with something akin to grace and, certainly, with more strength than most men his age could lay claim to, but some of that is because his refrigerator is full of vegetables, fruits, lean white meats and wild-caught fish. Some of that is because half of that large garage is taken up by his BMW and the other half is taken up by weights. He did not get this way, and does not stay this way, with

ice cream cake, burgers, and beer.

Still: some occasions call for it. And if he doesn't eat ice cream cake and steak with Erich, there's really no one in his life who he would be doing such a thing with. So his eyebrows quirk at the mention of the cake, and he nods approvingly. All right, then.

"Come on in," he says, as though that isn't obvious when Erich steps up to the porch. And yes: it is big. And it's quite nice. Inside the foyer there is a long runner rug. To the left of the door there's a plastic mat for muddy shoes, or even just dirty shoes. The house is well-lit today, windows thrown open. A tree-scented crossbreeze flows through the rooms. And there are many rooms: a bookshelf-lined study to the right with a large desk, a formal dining room to the left that has yet to be decorated much, even after five months of living here. Down the hall Erich can see the door to a small bathroom, another door that stands closed.

As they head into the great room, he's treated to something that has to be a new addition: over the stonework fireplace mantel is a large portrait in a dark, understated frame. It's Jake, who is only barely smiling, and a five year old girl with long, straight dark hair that is more chocolate-brown than Jake's jet-black. Her eyes appear dark at first, but only because they are a deep blue-grey. She didn't get those from Jake. If going only from the symmetry of her soft features, she's going to be quite lovely one day, if perhaps in a more 'cute' way. She is beaming, caught laughing, and Jake's head is half-turned. That's why he's almost-smiling. He's watching her, and she's laughing. She has a small stuffed elephant in her hands. He's dressed in dark blue. She's dressed in pink. They must have gotten their picture taken while she was here with him, just after Erich first met Jake.

He can see through open glass doors to the back porch, the stairs leading down to the yard, which is even more uncultivated than the front. There's a grill on that porch, and Erich's nose can probably pick up the smell of raw meat in the kitchen waiting to be cooked. On the mantel of the fireplace, as if for decoration, there is a long matte silver-colored cloth, like a woman's scarf almost. At one corner is sewn a silver coin covered in some strange markings. It looks like it was just tossed there.

"Thanks," Jake says, because he didn't just buy this place. It is incredibly clean, as though he just moved in, but the scent of him permeates it. They haven't even seen half of the whole building, walking in as far as they have. He's taken the ice cream cake from Erich and is heading toward the kitchen with it to put it in the freezer for later, to get some beers out of the fridge.

There are a child's drawings on the fridge, too. Most of them show a small figure with long hair, a tall figure with short hair, and a medium figure with curly hair and glasses. Usually they're all holding hands. Sometimes there's a figure above them with long hair, horizontal, floating overhead.

Also the small figure has a pet elephant. And signs her name on every picture: LENKA.

"Ale or stout?" he asks, digging around in the open fridge. Which is, as said before, full of vegetables. You can almost smell the produce section when he opens it.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich

is

like a puppy in a new place. The truth is, if he were a wolf, like a real wolf, he really would be just out of puppyhood. Two or three years old. A year past sexual maturity. A year past the time he'd be leaving his birth pack and seeking out his own pack, his own mate, his own land. He'd be big, adult, full-grown, but sometimes, just sometimes, a wolf-watching naturalist might catch him playing with a stick or chasing crows or bounding straight up in a meadow on a sunny day for nothing more than the apparent joy of it.

But that's a digression. The point is: he explores. He looks at absolutely everything with very little regard for what may or may not be strictly polite in a first-time guest. He takes his shoes off because he sees the mat, and while Jake take the cake to the kitchen he takes the long, meandering scenic route, peering at the portrait over the fireplace --

"Hey, you got her an elephant! Good choice, way better than Barbies."

-- and inspecting the scarf-thingie with the coin; wandering through the dining room to pop into the kitchen from the other way. Pictures on the fridge! He goes over and looks at them, recognizes instantly the small figure as the girl in pink and the tall figure as Jake. The other two are more of a puzzle. Medium figure with curly hair and glasses doesn't really fit what he'd assumed of Jake's wife/ex-wife/mate/ex-mate. To be frank, he assumed -- with Jake's evident strength and bearing and self-control and breeding, which isn't terribly overwhelming

(the way Melantha's is)

but is still a thing to be noted -- that he'd have been mated to a Garou. Produced a daughter, maybe a future warrior, with this Garou. Which, of course, makes the sideways floating figure all the more intriguing.

Erich doesn't ask, though. Yet, anyway. He's being called upon to answer a question, and he hesitates for a second. Erich's experience with beer runs something like this: hefeweizen, because a distant cousin microbrews, and Miller's, and Coors, and Budweiser, and Heineken.

"Ale," he guesses. "What's up with that scarf on your mantle?"

Jake Novak

Jake huffs a laugh: "She's had the elephant since she was born," he says, which is true. But he doesn't deny that he got it for her. The truth of that story is that he didn't know what to do, he was standing in a grocery store at a loss, his eyes stunned and unblinking, his spine rod-straight, holding a dripping bouquet of flowers in one hand and staring at a shelf full of stuffed animals trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened to him. To his life.

The elephant was the softest thing on the shelf. A bit floppy. It looked happy. So he got it. And she kept it.

Erich explores his way through the dining room and the landing leading up to stairs that go up to the slanted room above the garage and into the kitchen, with its refinished surfaces and brushed-steel everything. Jake doesn't seem to mind the way Erich peers around every corner, looks eagerly at everything his eyes find. He had a fling with a young, curious Theurge not so long ago, and he's father to a five year old. He takes most things in stride, when it comes to wolves.

Jake pulls an IPA out of the fridge at Erich's answer and hands it over to him. "Opener's over there," he says, nodding to a gadget on the counter. There's a tray with two enormous steaks on it, just barely seasoned with a bit of salt and waiting to be thrown on the fire. "And the scarf," he says, taking out a stout and taking the opener from Erich when it's handed over, "is a Rum l." He takes a drink, swallows, adds: "A garrote."

There's a brief pause there. He shrugs. "It was a gift from a gentleman I had occasion to run into regularly in my twenties who was obsessed with the Thuggee cult and was, in a way, a modern member of it. He had a saying he loved: the Wheel turns." Jake gives a small shake of his head. "Bit of an odd duck. Gave me the creeps sometimes."

Jake takes a drink.

Jake Novak

[fucking jove. there is an 'a' with a line above it in that 'Ruml'.]

Erich Reinhardt

Rumal means absolutely nothing to Erich. He thinks it might be a designer's name. Like Hermes-with-an-accent, or something. Then Jake explains, and meanwhile Erich is twisting the cap off his beer because openers are for sissies and also because he doesn't know how that gadget works. He blinks: it's a garrote.

"Seriously?" He laughs. "You keep a garrote next to a picture of your daughter, and you're complaining about some wheel-turning dude creeping you out?" A pause, a bit awkward. "No offense intended. I can't eat anything that didn't die a horrible bloody death, so."

He takes a swig of beer. And he looks around again. Nice furnishings, nice brushed steel everything. Nice steaks. His eyes linger there a moment. Then they come back to Jake.

"I met this girl," he says, just out of the blue like that. "Well, actually, I met her a few months ago. But she's sort of a secret agent too. And she might have to get out of town soon, and when that happens I probably have to get out of town too." His mouth makes this wry little turn. "Because of reasons.

"So," he concludes, "if I just up and leave someday with very little warning and maybe not even much of a goodbye, I just wanted you to know why."

Jake Novak

Jake just raises his eyebrows at Erich's laugh, at his rhetorical question. And Erich pauses, awkwardly apologizing a moment later. "Except for ice cream and beer," he says. There's no point in arguing about complaints, or talking much about his daughter, or his decorating schemes. In part because Erich makes a fair point: that's a little weird. It hadn't even occured to Jake to see it that way.

He met this girl. Total subject switch. She's a secret agent. Jake just smirks, wry but not unkind. The slightly more teasing sidelong grin happens later, when Erich says it's because of reasons. Sure. Sure it is.

But he does frown a touch at that. "Well... that would be a shame," he says. "I know we haven't hung out much, but I was hoping to."

Erich Reinhardt

"Yeah," Erich says. It seems like a lame, limp thing to say. He takes another sip, and then sets the bottle down on the counter. "Me too. But you've got my number. You can call and stuff. I'll let you know where I go and we can grab a burger if we're in the same area. Or I can stop by if I'm in the Chesapeake again."

All that sounds a bit like flights of fancy. They both know it. The world is digital now, hyperconnected, but affection and friendship are slower to evolve. Ties like these almost inevitably dissolve with distance. Particularly for their people: more archaic, more instinctive, to whom eye contact and voice and body language still means so much. Still means everything.

"For what it's worth," he adds, "I'm glad we met and hung out a bit."

Jake Novak

Jake sips his beer. He watches Erich, and the truth is, he knows. He doesn't say anything about numbers! Visiting some random place where Erich ran off with some girl! They can grab a burger!

He just shakes his head. "You know that probably won't happen," he says, in as gentle a tone of voice as someone like Jake gets. He shrugs, though. "But that's okay. Not everyone is meant to stay."

He says that like he means it. Like he believes it. And nods to the jug of cider, as he picks up the tray of meat. "Grab that. We can sit on the porch while these cook. I'm guessing you take yours rare?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich looks at Jake gratefully as he voices the truth that Erich hadn't quite been willing to. For voicing it, and for being gentle about it, and -- for lack of a better word -- for being cool about it.

The truth is this whole possiby-leaving-DC thing is turning out sadder than Erich would have anticipated. He's pretty sure he can convince Charlotte to tag along. He thought he could get Ingrid to come along too, but then Ingrid started talking about going to New York. And then there's Jake, with his nice big house out in the woods and the picture of his daughter that lives in the area.

And then there's Melantha. Who Jake assumes -- not unexpectedly -- that Erich is leaving town to be with. Because he met a girl and she's leaving and so is he, so obviously! He's running off with her. But that's not it, and Erich knows that, is quite unsure about the where and how and when and what now about it all. He hasn't even talked to Melantha since she walked out of her hotel room

because Jack called.

"What about you?" Erich asks as he follows Jake outside. He has the cider in his hand; his beer in the other. "Are you staying around? And, medium-rare please. I only like it raw if it's really fresh." And he plunks the cider down on the patio table.

Jake Novak

Mr. Novak the Baker of Browntown has no patience for bullshit. And the idea that they, having met three times, will become brothers whose bond reaches across state lines and for all time, is bullshit. But that they can hang out now, and have steak and cider and so on, even if Erich leaves and Jake stays here and keeps building a life where he can bring his daughter, that's true. So that's what they'll do.

"Don't see why I'd leave," he says, setting the tray on the side of the grill and opening it up. He lights it, and lets it heat up for a while, the lid closed, leaning against a railing while he drinks his beer. Jake shrugs. "The truth is, all the reasons why I lost custody of my kid were valid. I have to change those reasons. I think... living in a small town, running the bakery, and building a life here will help. She's only a couple of hours away if she needs me in the meantime."

He glances down, and then nods. "Yeah, I'm staying. Maybe not for all time -- I've seen what the high school in this area turns out, and I think she deserves better -- but for now. For the forseeable future,"

though they both know how short a future anyon can see into.

Erich Reinhardt

While Jake is up and about and working, Erich doesn't sit. He leans against one of the posts on the porch, watching the grill start to smoke as it heats. When Jake talks about his daughter, the young Ahroun's eyes flick to him, eyebrow quirking.

"What's the story with your daughter anyway?" he asks. "Hell, what's your story? A baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel. You don't have to answer me, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious."

Jake Novak

A baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel, Erich calls him, and it's one of the more accurate descriptions of Jake to date. He looks over, and the truth is: Erich is a Shadow Lord, too, and one of the few to be so curious about him. Jake's not ashamed of his story. Jake is quiet about it. Jake chooses carefully who he talks to about it. But it's not a dark secret. There's just some people -- like Drew Roscoe, who seemed to get fed up even before she questioned him -- who he knows better than to discuss his life story with.

Some people can't just leave well enough alone.

Jake takes a deep breath. "Well. I was born in Czechoslovakia." That's the old name for it, pre-80s name, but that's to be expected from a man who is pre-80s himself. "My father was a Philodox. My mother died of breast cancer when I was four. I was sent to live with relatives in America. I saw my father maybe three times in ten years. When I was fifteen, the told me he'd died."

He shakes his head. He says all this easily. The past is the past, and he has long since come to terms with it. Jake seems like the sort of man who comes to terms with things as they happen. "I just snapped. I ran away, but no one was chasing me. I lived on the street. I was... an angry kid. And living like that, you fight for everything. Even just a place to sleep for a few hours. So I fought. Sometimes things came at me that weren't human, and I fought them, too, because they would have killed me otherwise."

It's that simple, to him. He was sixteen, seventeen and fighting for his life against fomori. Maybe with crowbars, planks of wood, baseball bats. Maybe with his bare hands. And he lived.

Jake turns to the grill, setting his beer down on the railing and lifting the bloody, thick steaks onto the grill. They hiss and sizzle and the smell of blood and juices dripping into the heat sends up a delicious smoke, pleasing to the senses of both god and beast. He goes on talking.

"I was a few weeks shy of eighteen when I first killed a man." He doesn't discuss that story, or why he killed that first man, or how he felt afterward. "It was an isolated incident. I didn't do it again for a long time. About a year later, I started doing errands."

It's a tidy euphemism, and one that Erich can likely easily figure out. Odd jobs. Runs. Deliveries. The sort of thing a gangster wants some young homeless kid to do for him. Pay them cheap, they'll lap it up like pigs at a trough. No one minds if they go missing. They barely exist as it is.

"I did well. I kept my head down because I didn't want them to own me. I didn't want a ring on my finger and I didn't want to kiss anyone else's ring. Or ass. I did the work, I got paid, and I left. I tried not to work for the same people too many times in a row, and I tried not to say yes to every job that came my way. I didn't try too hard to avoid beating the shit out of someone. Some didn't want to use me much because of that. Some others saw it as an asset." He turns, steps away from the grill, picking up his beer again.

"On one job, we were taking care of this guy. I knew the score by then; he wasn't going to pay, he was never going to pay, and he knew that when he got into business. So when someone put a gun in my hand, I just ended it. We wrapped him in a tarp, cleaned things up, and buried him outside the city. I got a bonus."

His face is impassive. He looks at Erich easily enough, as though he doesn't expect the other wolf -- the other Shadow Lord -- to think much of this. It is not the first time he's told this story.

"After that I had a very different line of work. They didn't call me 'the Kid' anymore." He smirks, wryly, taking a drink. "They called me the Bastard." His lower back rests against the railing of the the porch. The smell of cooking meat rises ever upward. "I did my job well, I kept things tidy, I didn't try to add flair or flash or smirky little speeches. I didn't start doing any weird shit or going off the rails. I was never really a part of their crew, which was a double-edged sword for them. They couldn't control me as easily, but I was also... separate. I made it very hard to tie what I did to anything they were up to, and they were willing to pay me very well for that. And I didn't waste it on coke and whores and poker. I started a security consulting firm when I was twenty-one and laundered my earnings through that. Put some in tax shelters overseas."

Says the Baker of Browntown, living in a house like this. Buying and renovating the bakery like he did. Driving what he does, wearing a watch that cost six thousand dollars. He tells people it was a gift. That isn't true; he didn't take gifts. He never took trophies. He bought that damn thing himself. No wonder he can afford to live the way he does; he was making grotesque amounts of money for some truly grotesque work. Jake lifts a hand and scratches at his jaw idly.

"When I ran into things that could smell my blood, I either took care of it or I ran. I didn't know any Garou. I was in my twenties and I thought I was immortal. Looking back..." Jake shakes his head, huffs a laugh. "There are so many times I should have died. There are a lot of fights I walked or limped away from and it wasn't that I was better or faster or stronger. Sometimes I was. Other times? I just got damned lucky."

He seems nostalgic, smiling fondly at the planks of the back porch's deck. "Twenty-five and I could have retired. I took jobs because I wanted to, not because I needed the money. Took me ten years but I went from fighting for a place to sleep to living in a high-rise downtown, driving one of three new cars anywhere, taking any woman I wanted to a hotel for a few hours. So of course half the time I was on my computer in that wonderful apartment, getting my GED and ordering books." Jake smirks at the memory of himself. "And then I went to Italy overnight, killed a couple in their fifties, came home, made some muffins, and fell asleep in my living room chair."

Stirring, he shakes his head. "As for my daughter, the rest of it... that was around when I met Emilia. I didn't bring women back to my place, but I did with her. She caught me a few nights later stuffing a body into my trunk and she didn't even bat an eye. I took her home again after I buried the corpse. Sun came up the next day and she was still there." He's quiet a moment. This isn't wry, or smirking. This isn't even proper nostalgia. He is staring at the planks now, hard, like he can see her there. It takes a while before he says: "She was an Ahroun, actually."

This time the drink he takes from his stout is longer, and he sighs when he finishes it. Sets the empty bottle aside, taking a seat in one of the two padded chairs on the porch. Sits like a king on a throne, though a primitive one, looking at Erich.

"There was no one to challenge for me, so we were mated. We got married two years after we met. I worked a lot less. I was completely mad for her. She wanted me to fight alongside her and her pack, so I would, if she pressed. It was always an argument. She didn't like me going off in the middle of the night. She was 'worried' for me, nevermind I'd been killing people since before she even Changed and doing just fine. I hated that she was turning me into some kind of house-husband." He exhales, shaking his head, remembering frustration as keenly as he remembered falling in love with her. Glances aside. "Three years after we got married, she got pregnant. She had Lenka. I... wasn't really around that much. She named her for the diminutive of her mother's name, Helena, a woman who hated me from the start. I didn't have much input. Or opinion." His fingers tap on the armrest of the chair.

"Helena pretty much raised her, though. Ostensibly, Lenka had a nursery at my place, but when Emilia was fighting or I was gone, Helena wouldn't come babysit her there. She'd come pick her up. I never even changed a diaper. Sometimes Emilia and I weren't even visiting her at the same time. We were both... getting better at what we did. She in the Nation, me in my own business."

Which was, as he has made clear, killing people for payment. Rather indiscriminately, it sounds like: he never mentions but only bad people or but only bad men, no women or even no kids.

"Everything faded," he says, quite flatly, looking at Erich directly again. This is where new anger kindles, though it is banked by ashes. "She got pregnant again. It wasn't an easy pregnancy on her this time. We fought like we wanted to kill each other. And then several months in, she just ...vanished. She wouldn't visit me, she wasn't even visiting Lenka."

He nearly bites his tongue. There is high, angry color in his cheeks, but it's only a memory. It's all over now.

"They dragged me out to the caern for her sentencing and punishment, later on. I hadn't seen her for three or four months and had no idea where she was. They just showed up and took me out there. I got to see the baby. Which was in crinos." There's a beat. "You ever seen a crinos pup, Erich?" he asks. There is so much rage in that question, so much fury laced through the memory. "It was miserable. It wouldn't stop screaming, but... it doesn't sound like a baby crying, or like a wolf crying. It's an awful sound. Sounds like pain. And for all I know, it was in pain. It had one arm withered. I hardly had any idea what was going on. For a few mad seconds I thought it was still mine, and I was brought there because I'd done something wrong, and that was how I'd fathered something like that. Even then, a part of me just wanted to put it out of its misery."

His thumb is rubbing against the inside of his palm, the callouses below his fingers. He looks away, again, and into the trees. "I was just overwhelmed. I knew who it was. Everyone knew. He was up there to be punished, too. And as much as I hated her then, I hated myself, because there was a time in my life I would have shot myself in the head for that woman's sake. I don't really know what all they did with her. I didn't care anymore. The marriage was dissolved, and she got custody of Lenka, and I walked away. A couple of months later, both she and that son of a whore packmate of hers died in battle. Custody was transferred to Helena because my three year old barely knew who I was. I didn't put up much of a fight.

"But when they handed down the decision, I gave her a hug at the courthouse. She was sucking her thumb and holding the elephant I gave her when she was born." He is frowning, his brow knitted tightly, but it eases when he looks over at Erich again.

"I didn't know what I had in common with this kid other than blood. Not til then. And suddenly all I could think of was that we both lost our mothers so young, our fathers walking away. I thought of how angry I always was. How much... violence I had in me because of growing up that way. Now the weird thing is," he goes on, inexplicably earnest, as though it's vital Erich understands this part, "I was holding her there and I was smelling bread. Some kinds, when they're really little and someone has given them a bath recently, they almost smell like fresh-baked bread. Which is bizarre, I know, but... I used to watch my mother bake. I baked with those relatives I grew up with. And even when I was working, I never stopped. Killing gave me an outlet for the anger I felt. Baking just took it out of me. Even something as basic as biscuits. I don't know how to explain exactly what I felt when I realized that I had this child, and I'd ignored her for three years, but that she was the only thing in the world that felt like home to me, and I was terrified of the thought that she might end up just as angry and bitter and heartless as ... as I had been."

Jake exhales, and sighs, and leans backward. "I retired two years ago. I gathered my capital, created a trust fund, eased out of some long-term business relationships, and came here to open RiSE. Everything I've been doing for the last two and a half years has been to make a life here, and a home, and get custody of Lenka.

"Everything."

Erich Reinhardt

Meat cooks. Just beef over a fire. A bit of salt. A bit of salt. Other than that: flesh, rendered in its own fat. A barbaric, primitive way of eating. Close to the way the first Garou ate, a million years ago when wolves still ruled the night; when man was just crawling out of his cave and striking flint to stone.

And while meat cooks, Jake tells Erich a story.

It's a rather harrowing story, all told. It turns out Jake isn't really a Soviet James Bond after all. Or if he is, he's Bond in the coldest possible reading: amoral, hollowed-out, a contract killer who finished the job no matter what it was. Spent his off-hours buying nice things for himself. Saving up for himself. Taking women to hotels for himself. Educating himself.

And then for a while there was a woman who wasn't just another notch on the bedpost. For a while there was a woman who wasn't a woman at all but a wolf, an Ahroun with a pack, a creature that didn't flinch from blood and death because she was blood and death, herself. Jake talks about how he met her. Took her home. Later on she saw him doing his work. Erich wonders, quietly, how much of that was really chance. How long she might have watched him before that, stalked him, known him and his bloodline, his history, his spirit

before she came out of the night to take him.

And for a while it's almost a nice story. For all of ten seconds, anyway. Then Jake talks about the frustration, the 'worry', the arguments. Guiltily, Erich's mind strays to Melantha. He remembers telling her:

you are vulnerable,

wonders if he'd said the same if she looked like Jake, had Jake's build and his steely black stare.

And a little after that,

Jake talks about everything fading. Talks about that second pregnancy, how it was different, how they fought, how she vanished. He knows where the story is going when Jake talks about dragging him out to the caern to bear witness, because even though everything was dead between Jake and Emilia by then, they were mates in the eyes of the Nation, one and the same,

bound.

"No," Erich says softly. It's the one time he speaks in all that: and it's to answer Jake. No, he's never seen a crinos pup. He's barely even seen metises, and by the time he's met them they were grown, gelled, either stronger for their adversity or -- all the more often -- twisted and embittered by it.

Then the rest of it. The marriage fell apart, the mateship fell apart, his ex-wife died. The mother in law had custody. The woman with the glasses in the pictures, maybe. Erich isn't sure how much a child that small would remember, would know. And now Jake's here, the Baker of Browntown, with a nice house and a nice car, living a nice life. Trying to convince the courts he's a model father.

Erich is quiet a while. Jake's taken a seat, but Erich is still standing, his back to the post, slid down a little now. Feet braced, apart. He taps the butt of his bottle against his thigh a time or two. Takes a drink that drains his pale ale down to the dregs.

"When you let that girl go that night," this is what he asks after all that, "was that for Lenka too?"

Jake Novak

Jake gives Erich a slow, deep nod, matching his gaze. "Everything."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich thinks about that for a minute. "How is that for Lenka, and not just because you're not completely heartless?"

Jake Novak

"I'm going to make a small, but important distinction," Jake says then, watching the other man. "What I said was that everything I do is to make a life here. A home. So I can get custody of my daughter. It's not the same thing as doing everything for Lenka, and doesn't carry the same illusion of nobility. I don't fool myself about what kind of a man I am."

Jake rises to his feet. It's time to flip the steaks.

"I meant what I said to that woman. And I've been keeping an eye on the situation since we left. If I find out that she's spoken to anyone, I will indeed kill them, then kill her." He uses tongs to turn each steak, smiling faintly at the sear. Good timing. He doesn't feel defensive. All the same, he turns to Erich, frowning slightly. "I'm not completely heartness, Erich. I haven't been for a long time now."

There was a time when he was. Or thought he was.

"I don't kill people for a living anymore, for one thing. And I have never taken a life for no reason at all. That night? It would have been safer for all of us if I'd shot her in the head. The gun I used isn't registered. I could have left a bullet in her skull and called it a day. But I am trying to not be a man who pulls the trigger without at least weighing someone's life against his own interests."

Erich Reinhardt

"I know," Erich says firmly. "I never doubted that. But for a second there, I thought you were saying everything you're doing now -- which is good -- was because of your daughter. And that actually didn't seem noble to me at all. Just kind of sad, like you were linking everything good about you to your daughter.

"I think you're a decent guy," he adds, shrugging. "Of course my standards are probably a bit skewed. But even I can figure out you weren't always. You probably still aren't, always. You're right, though. You're not completely heartless. So," he shifts too, dropping off his finished beer on the table and starting to uncap the cider instead, "I hope it works out for you and Lenka.

"Maybe move into the city when she's a bit older though. Small towns are shitty places to grow up. Personal experience. Some people are like 'oh it's the simple life!' but kids are like puppies. You gotta socialize them with lots of different kinds of people."

Jake Novak

I think you're a decent guy. Of course my standards are a bit skewed...

Jake half-smiles, a bit wry. "Not many Shadow Lords -- or any Garou -- I met when I was with Emilia gave a damn what I did for a living. One of them actually praised me for my 'good work'. He was a bit of a jackass, though."

Erich goes on, and Jake listens, and they talk about Lenka. Who is, as Erich saw in the photo, adorable and happy and energetic. Who has, as Erich saw a few nights before Christmas, a father who would probably stay up all night worrying over her if he had her. Who might do that anyway.

"Big cities are shitty places to grow up, too," Jake points out. "In their own way. But then, I had a rather unique experience."

Erich Reinhardt

"It's burbs and minivans for you then, my man." The cider open, he sets the jug back down. "I'm gonna go get some plates and glasses. Where do you keep 'em? I don't want to snoop and find like a morningstar somewhere."

Jake Novak

Jake laughs, lightly. Easily. "I'm more organized than that. And far more modern. Just dig around in the kitchen. There's some clean dishes in the washer, too."

As Erich heads inside, Jake considers what he said. Burbs and minivans. Driving with Lenka in a booster seat behind him, listening to the Giggles or the Jiggles or whatever it is on the stereo. He thinks he'd keep the car he has now. Living here, within driving distance of two caerns he wasn't looking to find, with hurricanes and harsh winters and the occasional semi-insane blonde Garou in his woods, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

When Erich comes out again, Jake looks at him, frowning. "So where are you headed, when this mystery woman of yours runs off into the night?"

Erich Reinhardt

Emerging, Erich has two large plates in his hands. Two tall glasses, too. He's found the icemaker on Jake's fridge and there are a few cubes of ice in each glass.

"I don't know," he says. "I might try to follow her, but I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if that'd put her at risk or ... something like that. I don't know," a third time, wry, "I don't have much experience with this secret-agent stuff."

Jake Novak

"Just about done," Jake tells Erich, of the steaks. He smiles at the other man. Younger, but no less lupine. No less of a killer. A friend, oddly enough, though one Jake barely knows.

He doesn't say much about following the girl. Where they're going, what will happen. Erich doesn't know. Jake has no advice for him. He takes one of the glasses and uncorks the jug of cider, filling Erich's cup, then his own.

"So what about you?" he asks. "Your story."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich's standing next to Jake when he asks what he does. He's looking at the steaks, not even bothering to hide that he's nearly licking his chops with anticipation. The question jerks on his attention like the tug of a leash, though. He flicks a glance at Jake. His brow furrows a little.

And then he just launches into it. Maybe because Jake told him -- everything he told him. Held so little back, laid it out there. Maybe because he likes Jake. Or maybe just because telling the story makes it a little easier every time, even if just a week ago he was physically turning away, pulling away, because he didn't want to think about it.

Which isn't to say he wants to think about it very much right now, either. But there's something to be said about telling the story like this, casually, almost detachedly, over a couple glasses of hard cider with the smoke and smell of grilled meat rising into the air. So he tells it: the family he grew up in, the big sprawl of he and his cousins and his parents and his uncles and aunts out in corner of Nebraska, middle of nowhere, close to Dakota. The farm and the tractors and big van that took them to school in the nearest town. Those endless summer nights,

and how they ended when he was old enough to be Fostered. To Change. To become a Garou, which was also when he began to realize he had so very little in common with all the wolves he grew up around; all the kin that reared him.

"I told you about how when I finished my Rite, I turned out to be a Shadow Lord instead of a Fenrir, right?" -- and by then the steaks are off the fire; they're sitting at the patio table with the comfortable padded chairs, and Erich's fair cheeks are starting to show the faint flush of intoxication. "Well, my family didn't take that very well."

And then comes the rest of that story, which he tells in the same unadorned prose he gave to Melantha. And Charlotte. And Drew. Kicked out, chased out, threatened, exiled. A little different this time, though. Doesn't end it with something deliberately and understated: so that sucked. Lets it hangs for a moment, and then adds:

"I'm still angry about it. I try not to dwell on it because there doesn't seem to be much I can do, so it's not worth ... flipping my lid over. So most the time I just tell myself and everyone else that it's okay, I'm over it, I like being a drifter and a lone wolf and all." A pause; a gulp of cider, and then he looks Jake in the eye. "I don't, though. And I'm not. And it's only okay when I don't have to deal with it.

"So." His smile is faint and wry. "That's my bit of heavy in this conversation."

Jake Novak

Standing like that, peering past Jake, as though he's unaware of human norms of personal space, Jake can almost imagine Erich in lupus. Well; he doesn't have to imagine. He's seen Erich in hispo, at least. If he were in a four-legged form his tail would be wagging eagerly. Meat. Meatmeatmeatmeatmeat.

Maybe the way that Jake tells his own story makes it easier to talk to him. It's heavy, and it's painful, and it's long. But it is what it is. Jake doesn't want to go back in time and fix any of it. He hasn't flown to the Czech Republic to try and visit two graves. He doesn't keep a photo of his mother or father around to stare at, to drink over, to wish he could bring himself to burn. He can remember the time when he ached for Emilia. He can remember, just as easily, wanting to kill her. He can remember, and is currently living with, the strange mixture of sorrow and relief he feels around her death.

He held almost nothing back. It just is. So everything Erich tells him can just be. It's his story. It's different. It has its own agony. Its own joy. Jake listens, and takes the steaks off the grill at some point, laying them on plates to sit for a few moments. They need to settle a bit, cook in their remaining juices. He nods when Erich asks if he told him how he ended up a Shadow Lord and not a Fenrir. He doesn't say a word. He sips his cider.

Erich doesn't need to tell him that it sucked. It sucked to run away from home, look over his shoulder, and realize that no one was coming after him. It sucked to stand there surrounded by wolves and struggle to connect the dots between the metis pup and the woman he used to love, the mother of his child, the daughter with a metis half-brother, the packmate that always rubbed Jake the wrong way, and it sucked to know that he struggled with it only because he was fighting so hard to deny it all. To pretend he didn't understand. It sucked to realize how much he needed his daughter right when he'd lost her, only when he'd lost her. It all fucking sucks.

Still: they drink their cider. Erich admits that he's still angry, and he tells Jake the lies that he tells himself, trying to believe them, and Jake very simply gets it. He meets Erich's eyes. He offers no comfort, no hand on Erich's hand, but he also gives no dismissal. He hands over a plate, laden with nothing but a thick, juicy, beautifully seared steak.

Jake says nothing. Nothing but: "Here. Eat. We'll have ice cream after."

Erich Reinhardt

It's not that their stories are the same. The sort of pain inherent in their pasts isn't even the same. The sort of men they've grown into, both because of and in spite of that damage, is not the same either.

But on some level, they seem to get it. Get each other. And at the end of it, Erich looks at Jake with profound, mute gratitude when -- in lieu of a hug or a handclasp or anything like that, anything that would force him to have to confront all that shit more directly and more head-on than he ever wants to -- Jake simply hands over a plate heaped with

quite simply

the best steak Erich has had in a very, very long time. Maybe since he left Nebraska. At the very least, the best meat he's had in recent memory that he hasn't had to kill himself.

"Thanks," he says. There's a moment where he might say more -- define that thank-you. It passes. He smiles a little, crookedly, and picks up his cider to tap against Jake's glass. "Happy noms," is his idea of a toast.

Jake Novak

Jake chuckles. It's odd when his smiles aren't small, when they spread over his face. He just grins, and lifts his cider, and nods. "Happy noms, Erich," he returns, and taps their glasses together.