[Kora] [Last post!]
She watches him in profile as he drives; the tension in his jaw, the frustration still evident in the set of his shoulders, in the shape of his mouth. In the sharpness at the edges of his gestures, when he pulls on the headlights, or hits the turn signal. The dashboard casts his face in slanting green light, it catches the ridge of his brow and cheeks, cuts a sharp, stark shadow over the lower half of his face from the line of his jaw upward. There's nothing on the radio; they don't speak. She holds herself still on the blanket, her knees bent to keep her long legs close to her body, deliberately avoiding the dash, the structures on the door, the armrest and the cupholder, the upholstery, the glass.
The smell is worse in the close interior of the car. The half-opened window circulates fresh air into the mix when they accellerate, but the stench returns when they slow to a stop at red lights or stop signs, before making a left turn across traffic through the quiet streets. At some point, her eyes drift back to the road; frowning whenever headlights shine across the windshield, ready to duck - to do something - should the distant headlights resolve themselves into the familiar shape of a police cruiser.
The drive, however, is uneventful. They pull into the parking garage, rising over the speedbumps, through the echoing concrete expanse, dark and still, his neighbors cars in neat marching rows. The last time, they made this drive, it was evening, the sun still in the sky, falling. The last time, she challenged him to a race to the front door of his apartment, then pinned him against it before he could shake his keys, trying to make him late. Now: it is the hollow hour of the night, and she is stained with blood, stinking of viscera and fouler things - whatever crawled into the shells of the humans and turned them into monsters - and quiet, stark as she clips open the passenger's door, rises into the echoing stillness of the parking garage, pulling the blanket after her, draping it around her shoulders not as ward against the cold, but against detection by late night revelers, early morning workers, college students doing the walk of shame in the middle of sunday-into-monday morning.
[Trent Brumby] The apartment is as she remembers it; clean and crisp, with the underlying scent of herbs and the Black Fury kinfolk. He had made the journey home in relative silence, opening doors for her from the car all the way through the lobby, into the elevator -rather than the stairs as he usually does- and, eventually into his apartment.
When the door is closed, he immediately slides off his shoes and begins to pull of his jacket. It doesn’t stop there though, his clothes become a pile by the door, leaving him in his snug cotton boxers and nothing else. He had wanted those clothes off as soon as possible. He wasn’t even the bloodied one, but they stank. That’s all he could smell, was filth and death, and rotting internal organs.
He stepped after her, reaching to take the blanket from her. “Here, let me help you with that.” Apparently he had full intentions of disrobing her too, while they stood at the edge of the living room, not yet making it to the bathroom. The room was a little on the cooler side, since he doesn’t have heating on when he’s not at home, but it wasn’t that noticeable. Hands reach, fingers grasping her t.shirt and seeking to slide her out of it. He’s careful with his motions, not rushing it, but wanting her out of it.
[Kora] Kora stands just inside the door, on the hardwood floor, in the cool interior shadowed at the edge of the living room. The small foyer, the quiet apartment - only the sounds of their breathing, the subtle tics of the building, some low electrical hum she catches only at the edge of her senses. Light cuts in through the windows across his living room, the ornate coffee table, the modern couch, twisted rectangles of orange-blue - all neat and clean, the green underscent a sharp contrast to the metallic tang of blood that filled her mouth, and still fills her senses.
She watches him, a slanting look, her back to the wall where the windows are set, her shoulders forward, the straightened alertness slowly leaving her spine, for all that her arms and torso remain tense, taut and wary. And so: she watches him disrobe, her dark eyes hooded, half-lidded, the look cast through her pale lashes. She watches not his face, but rather his body as it emerges from the clothing he casts aside, the familiar cut of muscles beneath his skin, the way they move as he pulls the blanket from her shoulders and reaches for the hem of her t-shirt.
Unfolding her long arms, she lifts them above her head, allows him to peel away the blood-stiffed black cotton from her torso, up her arms, over her head. Beneath it, she wears a by-now familiar black sports bra, cotton-and-lycra, modest and inexpensive. The familiar twist of the battle scar cuts across her body, the angry red lost in the shadows at the edge of the living room. When the t-shirt is off, she looks up at him again, watches his face as he reaches for the bra, or the button of her jeans. Or the he bends to unlace her boots and pull them off her feet.
And says, still quiet, her pale hair pulled back from her bloodied face. " - when you came to," pause, enough for a heartbeat, and then another. No more, "why didn't you run?"
[Trent Brumby] By now she knew his body, the way it moved and how it flowed over his tall frame, filling it out at the shoulders, chest and back, and the way the thickness of his hard muscled thighs are made to look leaner by the length of him. He is not pasty white, he has a healthy glow, and it's not only from summer and outdoor work, but because he has mixed blood in him that comes from darker skin, from olive that turns brown at the hints of sun. Not enough to be noticeable unless he's up against her pale complexion and blonde hair, its then that it had become apparent. But he does have tan lines, faint ones, his torso and arms darker then the rest of him. Summer, he loves. He's one of those that walks around half naked in the heat. Men do that.
T.shirt left aside, thrown towards the pile of his clothes, he had dropped down to take off her boots, plucking the laces and untying them with the tips of his fingers. His right hand, the one he had used to beat John in the alley, his strongest and dominant side, was sporting the swelling from it but it would go down in the next day or so.
He still remembers the agony.
Holding the back of her opposite leg, as though to steady her, he used one hand to slide off her shoes, grabbing the back of the heel and tilting it as he pulled it off her toes. "Because it was coming at you." He didn't know it was her. But the wolf had been helping. "And," he adds, switching to her other foot, "because the fucking bastard hurt me and I wanted him dead." That had a lot to do with it. He wasn't thinking reasonably. He saw John with his back to him and took the advantage. Not only had he been hurt by John, but the experienced had scared him enough to the core that it was instinct that had him beat the other to submission so it wouldn't happen again.
[Kora] She leans forward, curls her dorsal spine and shoulders down, low enough that she can reach out and push her long fingers through his black hair - where it is longer, on the crown of his head - as he loosens the laces of her shoes, shifting her body weight at the hip as he pulls off first one heavy boot, then the other. She's not wearing socks; not tonight. Or rather: she changes her socks often enough that they are not shot through with her spirit, dedicated to her body - and no that she has changed her skin and come back to herself, the white cotton socks she had been wearing are shredded from the transformation, long gone.
Her hand tightens in his hair when he responds to her, pulling against the dark curls, thoughtlessly; releasing them just as quickly.
She says nothing back; not now. There is nothing to be said. If he looks up at her, though, after he has answered, he will find her dark eyes quick upon him, on his profile, distorted as it is by her perspective. On the supple movement of his the long muscles flanking his neck as he works to remove her second boot.
She is breathing more deliberately now, as if she were counting out the each breath she takes under her breath, in and out, her spine still prickling with alertness, though perhaps of a different sort.
[Trent Brumby] He doesn't look up at her, but for the moment where she pulls at his hair. It had made his breath catch sharply and his eyes to dart up. She had released him by then, but it had him wondering what it is that he said, or, what it is that she was feeling in that moment. It passes by.l
Second boot gone and left to the side, he remains in his crouch and reaches up to unbutton her jeans. He's careful here, and peels it off her hips and down her legs. Some part of him is surprised by her allowing him to do this, to take charge, get her half naked. Another part of him enjoys it. But for most of it he's more detached tonight than he's ever been, not just from her, but also from himself. It has to do with being hit by something completely alien, that felt like being tazered endlessly on high voltage, and then being dragged like a piece of meat somewhere else. He doesn't know what would have happened after that, but the next few nights he'll dream of the possibilities.
Once she's stepped out of her jeans, he rises up to stand again. Reaching for her hand, he curls his around it and begins to lead her through the house, flicking on a light at the last minute to chase back some of those shadows. They were heading down the hall and for the bathroom.
[Kora] She stills him once, when his hands are on the waistband of her jeans, peeling them down over the curve of her hips. The touch is sure but minute, the warm press of the tips of her long fingers over his swollen knuckles. "This is who I am." Her voice is low and rich as it always is; quieter, perhaps, still at the center, but not shadowed.
She is looking down at him, the battlescar cutting across her lean torso, the blood of two dead men dark against the pale shock of her skin. There is a small wound on her shoulder - four furrows from the twisted human's unnatural claws, mostly obscured by black cotton straps, clear to him now only because the blood there is fresh enough to glisten, rather than dull, matte. Her pale hair is pulled back, dulled by shadow, twisted behind her head, streaked with gore where she clasped it and pulled it back away from her face when she returned herself to herself, when she retook her human skin.
"Every thing right here, right now. I'm a daughter of Fenris." Her mouth is crimson. In the alley, she drank water from the bottles he brought; spat it out; drank again and again, spitting out ever-diluted mouthfuls of blood. Still, her mouth is crimson. "This is who I am."
Then she released his hand, lifted her arms, lengthened the long muscles of her body through the spine and the legs as he peeled away her filthy jeans, stepped neatly out of them at the end, and turned her head away, toward the quiet shadows of the apartment as he cast them aside. When he takes her hand, she wraps her fingers around his, and falls in step beside him, the chill in the air bright against her skin. Her bare feet slap quietly on the hardwood floors. The lights that warm the corners of the rooms, that chase away the shadows cast them also in sharp relief. Her eyes are on his waist, his thighs as he walks beside her.
[Trent Brumby] When she says this, he looks at her, up into her face. He listens to what she's saying and what she's really saying. There's nothing, for now, but a nod of his head. He had waited for her to allow him to continue and proceeded to do so.
It's not until they are in the bathroom, the heated light flicked on and the exhaust fan whirring over head, and he had started the shower going with the curtain drawn across so not to spill it all over the floor. "I know that you are a daughter of Fenris, Kora," he tells her, free hand under the water, testing the heat of it and adjusting the knobs to make it a little warmer.
He looks at her then, shaking water from his hand, the other still curled in hers. "I know that this is what you do, that this is who you are. Don't think, not for a moment, that I don't understand that or respect it. I am not afraid of it. I know what it means," things that he won't say; her unavoidable death, for one, "but it doesn't mean that I can't bring you home and clean this off you. That I can't wash blood from your hair, or make sure you have toothpaste to clean out your teeth."
"It doesn't mean that I can't show that I care, or that I like to see you comfortable." He pauses then, eyes on her, direct. Some of him coming back, making them sharper, like his thoughts, as he focuses on this rather then the events of the night. "If it bothers you, this, tell me. I'll stop. I don't mean to treat you with disrespect or insult you. It's the last thing I want to do."
[Kora] There's still blood in her mouth; staining her teeth and lips, coating her tongue, the soft palate. She can taste the copper in the back of her throat. Even breath she takes is stained by it and there is a deep seated piece of her that takes savage joy in this - the blood of her enemies on her skin, in her hair, in her mouth.
There is blood in her mouth; so when he finishes, his eyes direct, sharp on her face, the way the light cast by the overhead fixture reflects some shadow of him across the surface of her dark irises, the way her mouth curls before she kisses him - when he finishes, her hand tightens around his, firm and heedless, and she steps toward him, lifting her face to his, kissing him - she kisses him closed mouthed, direct and brief and fierce - then steps back, the brief flash of an electric grin in his lower peripheral vision before she stills her mouth again.
"Where the hell's that toothbrush?"
[Trent Brumby] She kisses him and he isn't sure what to think about that. Grateful that it wasn't her usual sort of kiss, he still managed a dry laugh, and a slight disgusted sound. "Geez, Kora." It's about all he could say on that. Kissed with blood on her mouth. Ugh. He's sure she took some perverse pleasure in it, that grin she gave an indication enough to have made him laugh, even if shortly.
Shower ready, he releases her hand and drops down to the cabinet under the bathroom sink. He opens it up, showing various stored things: shaving creams, razor blades as well as an electric close-shave gadget, soaps in packets, bath salts, toothpastes, toothbrushes still in packets, some face washing clothes, and plenty of other things for her to explore at another time. He grabs out a tube of peppermint, teeth whiting formula paste and one of the medium-hard toothbrushes in its packet and offers it out to her. "Do it twice," he tells her, arching his brow and offering a smirk.
Once she takes it, he's stripping off his boxers and stepping into the bathtub and under the shower.
[Kora] "Three times," she says, laying out a generous dollop of toothpaste onto her toothbrush as soon as she has wrestled it from its plastic packet. "I like to be thorough."
There's her reflection in the mirror then, ghastly when seen so starkly, as a whole thing - rather than in pieces as she sees herself; the shape of her face around her eyes, the shadow of her cheeks and her nose, the long line of her body from above, her arms, her hands - ghastly enough that she does not recognize herself even when she offers her reflection a bloody, toothpaste laden half-smile.
Instead, she watches him, as he strips off the last of his clothing, her face in sharp profile, to him, the sound of vigorous tooth-scrubbing competing with the whir of the exhaust fan in the ceiling. He has long minutes to relax under the steam and steady beat of the hot water alone, to scrub the scent of the night from his own skin, while she brushes her teeth, again and again and again, with a devotion bordering on obsession that she might not indulge were he there, watching her, rather than a handful of inches further away, behind the shower curtain.
She brushes her teeth, and her tongue and her mouth and her lips and her soft palate and her gums and the insides of her cheeks, again and again and again, until the toothpaste she spits out bears no traces of blood, not even the faintest pinkened tinge. Then, at last, she strips off the last of her underthings, tosses them into the corner with his boxers, pulls back the shower curtain, and steps in after him.
[Trent Brumby] "Thorough is good, if that tongue is coming anywhere near me tonight," he had responded from the shower, then left her to over-brush her mouth.
In the shower he had soaped up good and washed over, twice; from the hair on his head to the back of his toes. The bathroom soon smelled like his natural body soaps and shampoos, filling the room with the deep scents that had washed through her skin and hair last time she was here. They are rinsed from him, leaving him clean and feeling it. All the while, he replays the alleyway over in his mind, even the parts of the night before there - wondering why he didn't pick up signs, and what he could have done to avoid it.
Kora climbing into the shower was a good distraction. He traded places with her, sliding to the side and stepping around her to give her the water. "Much better," he tells her, smiling as he smells the strong peppermint on her. "Want me to wash your hair?"
[Kora] "Test my work," she says, her dark eyes fixed on his face as he slides around her, acutely aware of his body in the small space, and the state of her own. She does not wait for him to take her up on her invitation, however. Instead, she rises to the balls of her feet and leans forward, firm and thorough and brief, tasting so strongly of peppermint that it fills his senses in an instant.
Then she slips around him, into the stream of water from the showerhead, turning into it, lifting her face into the water and half-closing her eyes as the water streams down around her. Her back is to him, then, her spine a cursive thing, the flanking muscles evident beneath her pale skin, her shoulderblades shifted as she curves her shoulders forward and lifts her wet face upward, offering him the filthy knot of her pale hair and the crown of her head.
"Yeah," she says, twisting her neck around to meet his eyes. "I'd like that."
She watches him in profile as he drives; the tension in his jaw, the frustration still evident in the set of his shoulders, in the shape of his mouth. In the sharpness at the edges of his gestures, when he pulls on the headlights, or hits the turn signal. The dashboard casts his face in slanting green light, it catches the ridge of his brow and cheeks, cuts a sharp, stark shadow over the lower half of his face from the line of his jaw upward. There's nothing on the radio; they don't speak. She holds herself still on the blanket, her knees bent to keep her long legs close to her body, deliberately avoiding the dash, the structures on the door, the armrest and the cupholder, the upholstery, the glass.
The smell is worse in the close interior of the car. The half-opened window circulates fresh air into the mix when they accellerate, but the stench returns when they slow to a stop at red lights or stop signs, before making a left turn across traffic through the quiet streets. At some point, her eyes drift back to the road; frowning whenever headlights shine across the windshield, ready to duck - to do something - should the distant headlights resolve themselves into the familiar shape of a police cruiser.
The drive, however, is uneventful. They pull into the parking garage, rising over the speedbumps, through the echoing concrete expanse, dark and still, his neighbors cars in neat marching rows. The last time, they made this drive, it was evening, the sun still in the sky, falling. The last time, she challenged him to a race to the front door of his apartment, then pinned him against it before he could shake his keys, trying to make him late. Now: it is the hollow hour of the night, and she is stained with blood, stinking of viscera and fouler things - whatever crawled into the shells of the humans and turned them into monsters - and quiet, stark as she clips open the passenger's door, rises into the echoing stillness of the parking garage, pulling the blanket after her, draping it around her shoulders not as ward against the cold, but against detection by late night revelers, early morning workers, college students doing the walk of shame in the middle of sunday-into-monday morning.
[Trent Brumby] The apartment is as she remembers it; clean and crisp, with the underlying scent of herbs and the Black Fury kinfolk. He had made the journey home in relative silence, opening doors for her from the car all the way through the lobby, into the elevator -rather than the stairs as he usually does- and, eventually into his apartment.
When the door is closed, he immediately slides off his shoes and begins to pull of his jacket. It doesn’t stop there though, his clothes become a pile by the door, leaving him in his snug cotton boxers and nothing else. He had wanted those clothes off as soon as possible. He wasn’t even the bloodied one, but they stank. That’s all he could smell, was filth and death, and rotting internal organs.
He stepped after her, reaching to take the blanket from her. “Here, let me help you with that.” Apparently he had full intentions of disrobing her too, while they stood at the edge of the living room, not yet making it to the bathroom. The room was a little on the cooler side, since he doesn’t have heating on when he’s not at home, but it wasn’t that noticeable. Hands reach, fingers grasping her t.shirt and seeking to slide her out of it. He’s careful with his motions, not rushing it, but wanting her out of it.
[Kora] Kora stands just inside the door, on the hardwood floor, in the cool interior shadowed at the edge of the living room. The small foyer, the quiet apartment - only the sounds of their breathing, the subtle tics of the building, some low electrical hum she catches only at the edge of her senses. Light cuts in through the windows across his living room, the ornate coffee table, the modern couch, twisted rectangles of orange-blue - all neat and clean, the green underscent a sharp contrast to the metallic tang of blood that filled her mouth, and still fills her senses.
She watches him, a slanting look, her back to the wall where the windows are set, her shoulders forward, the straightened alertness slowly leaving her spine, for all that her arms and torso remain tense, taut and wary. And so: she watches him disrobe, her dark eyes hooded, half-lidded, the look cast through her pale lashes. She watches not his face, but rather his body as it emerges from the clothing he casts aside, the familiar cut of muscles beneath his skin, the way they move as he pulls the blanket from her shoulders and reaches for the hem of her t-shirt.
Unfolding her long arms, she lifts them above her head, allows him to peel away the blood-stiffed black cotton from her torso, up her arms, over her head. Beneath it, she wears a by-now familiar black sports bra, cotton-and-lycra, modest and inexpensive. The familiar twist of the battle scar cuts across her body, the angry red lost in the shadows at the edge of the living room. When the t-shirt is off, she looks up at him again, watches his face as he reaches for the bra, or the button of her jeans. Or the he bends to unlace her boots and pull them off her feet.
And says, still quiet, her pale hair pulled back from her bloodied face. " - when you came to," pause, enough for a heartbeat, and then another. No more, "why didn't you run?"
[Trent Brumby] By now she knew his body, the way it moved and how it flowed over his tall frame, filling it out at the shoulders, chest and back, and the way the thickness of his hard muscled thighs are made to look leaner by the length of him. He is not pasty white, he has a healthy glow, and it's not only from summer and outdoor work, but because he has mixed blood in him that comes from darker skin, from olive that turns brown at the hints of sun. Not enough to be noticeable unless he's up against her pale complexion and blonde hair, its then that it had become apparent. But he does have tan lines, faint ones, his torso and arms darker then the rest of him. Summer, he loves. He's one of those that walks around half naked in the heat. Men do that.
T.shirt left aside, thrown towards the pile of his clothes, he had dropped down to take off her boots, plucking the laces and untying them with the tips of his fingers. His right hand, the one he had used to beat John in the alley, his strongest and dominant side, was sporting the swelling from it but it would go down in the next day or so.
He still remembers the agony.
Holding the back of her opposite leg, as though to steady her, he used one hand to slide off her shoes, grabbing the back of the heel and tilting it as he pulled it off her toes. "Because it was coming at you." He didn't know it was her. But the wolf had been helping. "And," he adds, switching to her other foot, "because the fucking bastard hurt me and I wanted him dead." That had a lot to do with it. He wasn't thinking reasonably. He saw John with his back to him and took the advantage. Not only had he been hurt by John, but the experienced had scared him enough to the core that it was instinct that had him beat the other to submission so it wouldn't happen again.
[Kora] She leans forward, curls her dorsal spine and shoulders down, low enough that she can reach out and push her long fingers through his black hair - where it is longer, on the crown of his head - as he loosens the laces of her shoes, shifting her body weight at the hip as he pulls off first one heavy boot, then the other. She's not wearing socks; not tonight. Or rather: she changes her socks often enough that they are not shot through with her spirit, dedicated to her body - and no that she has changed her skin and come back to herself, the white cotton socks she had been wearing are shredded from the transformation, long gone.
Her hand tightens in his hair when he responds to her, pulling against the dark curls, thoughtlessly; releasing them just as quickly.
She says nothing back; not now. There is nothing to be said. If he looks up at her, though, after he has answered, he will find her dark eyes quick upon him, on his profile, distorted as it is by her perspective. On the supple movement of his the long muscles flanking his neck as he works to remove her second boot.
She is breathing more deliberately now, as if she were counting out the each breath she takes under her breath, in and out, her spine still prickling with alertness, though perhaps of a different sort.
[Trent Brumby] He doesn't look up at her, but for the moment where she pulls at his hair. It had made his breath catch sharply and his eyes to dart up. She had released him by then, but it had him wondering what it is that he said, or, what it is that she was feeling in that moment. It passes by.l
Second boot gone and left to the side, he remains in his crouch and reaches up to unbutton her jeans. He's careful here, and peels it off her hips and down her legs. Some part of him is surprised by her allowing him to do this, to take charge, get her half naked. Another part of him enjoys it. But for most of it he's more detached tonight than he's ever been, not just from her, but also from himself. It has to do with being hit by something completely alien, that felt like being tazered endlessly on high voltage, and then being dragged like a piece of meat somewhere else. He doesn't know what would have happened after that, but the next few nights he'll dream of the possibilities.
Once she's stepped out of her jeans, he rises up to stand again. Reaching for her hand, he curls his around it and begins to lead her through the house, flicking on a light at the last minute to chase back some of those shadows. They were heading down the hall and for the bathroom.
[Kora] She stills him once, when his hands are on the waistband of her jeans, peeling them down over the curve of her hips. The touch is sure but minute, the warm press of the tips of her long fingers over his swollen knuckles. "This is who I am." Her voice is low and rich as it always is; quieter, perhaps, still at the center, but not shadowed.
She is looking down at him, the battlescar cutting across her lean torso, the blood of two dead men dark against the pale shock of her skin. There is a small wound on her shoulder - four furrows from the twisted human's unnatural claws, mostly obscured by black cotton straps, clear to him now only because the blood there is fresh enough to glisten, rather than dull, matte. Her pale hair is pulled back, dulled by shadow, twisted behind her head, streaked with gore where she clasped it and pulled it back away from her face when she returned herself to herself, when she retook her human skin.
"Every thing right here, right now. I'm a daughter of Fenris." Her mouth is crimson. In the alley, she drank water from the bottles he brought; spat it out; drank again and again, spitting out ever-diluted mouthfuls of blood. Still, her mouth is crimson. "This is who I am."
Then she released his hand, lifted her arms, lengthened the long muscles of her body through the spine and the legs as he peeled away her filthy jeans, stepped neatly out of them at the end, and turned her head away, toward the quiet shadows of the apartment as he cast them aside. When he takes her hand, she wraps her fingers around his, and falls in step beside him, the chill in the air bright against her skin. Her bare feet slap quietly on the hardwood floors. The lights that warm the corners of the rooms, that chase away the shadows cast them also in sharp relief. Her eyes are on his waist, his thighs as he walks beside her.
[Trent Brumby] When she says this, he looks at her, up into her face. He listens to what she's saying and what she's really saying. There's nothing, for now, but a nod of his head. He had waited for her to allow him to continue and proceeded to do so.
It's not until they are in the bathroom, the heated light flicked on and the exhaust fan whirring over head, and he had started the shower going with the curtain drawn across so not to spill it all over the floor. "I know that you are a daughter of Fenris, Kora," he tells her, free hand under the water, testing the heat of it and adjusting the knobs to make it a little warmer.
He looks at her then, shaking water from his hand, the other still curled in hers. "I know that this is what you do, that this is who you are. Don't think, not for a moment, that I don't understand that or respect it. I am not afraid of it. I know what it means," things that he won't say; her unavoidable death, for one, "but it doesn't mean that I can't bring you home and clean this off you. That I can't wash blood from your hair, or make sure you have toothpaste to clean out your teeth."
"It doesn't mean that I can't show that I care, or that I like to see you comfortable." He pauses then, eyes on her, direct. Some of him coming back, making them sharper, like his thoughts, as he focuses on this rather then the events of the night. "If it bothers you, this, tell me. I'll stop. I don't mean to treat you with disrespect or insult you. It's the last thing I want to do."
[Kora] There's still blood in her mouth; staining her teeth and lips, coating her tongue, the soft palate. She can taste the copper in the back of her throat. Even breath she takes is stained by it and there is a deep seated piece of her that takes savage joy in this - the blood of her enemies on her skin, in her hair, in her mouth.
There is blood in her mouth; so when he finishes, his eyes direct, sharp on her face, the way the light cast by the overhead fixture reflects some shadow of him across the surface of her dark irises, the way her mouth curls before she kisses him - when he finishes, her hand tightens around his, firm and heedless, and she steps toward him, lifting her face to his, kissing him - she kisses him closed mouthed, direct and brief and fierce - then steps back, the brief flash of an electric grin in his lower peripheral vision before she stills her mouth again.
"Where the hell's that toothbrush?"
[Trent Brumby] She kisses him and he isn't sure what to think about that. Grateful that it wasn't her usual sort of kiss, he still managed a dry laugh, and a slight disgusted sound. "Geez, Kora." It's about all he could say on that. Kissed with blood on her mouth. Ugh. He's sure she took some perverse pleasure in it, that grin she gave an indication enough to have made him laugh, even if shortly.
Shower ready, he releases her hand and drops down to the cabinet under the bathroom sink. He opens it up, showing various stored things: shaving creams, razor blades as well as an electric close-shave gadget, soaps in packets, bath salts, toothpastes, toothbrushes still in packets, some face washing clothes, and plenty of other things for her to explore at another time. He grabs out a tube of peppermint, teeth whiting formula paste and one of the medium-hard toothbrushes in its packet and offers it out to her. "Do it twice," he tells her, arching his brow and offering a smirk.
Once she takes it, he's stripping off his boxers and stepping into the bathtub and under the shower.
[Kora] "Three times," she says, laying out a generous dollop of toothpaste onto her toothbrush as soon as she has wrestled it from its plastic packet. "I like to be thorough."
There's her reflection in the mirror then, ghastly when seen so starkly, as a whole thing - rather than in pieces as she sees herself; the shape of her face around her eyes, the shadow of her cheeks and her nose, the long line of her body from above, her arms, her hands - ghastly enough that she does not recognize herself even when she offers her reflection a bloody, toothpaste laden half-smile.
Instead, she watches him, as he strips off the last of his clothing, her face in sharp profile, to him, the sound of vigorous tooth-scrubbing competing with the whir of the exhaust fan in the ceiling. He has long minutes to relax under the steam and steady beat of the hot water alone, to scrub the scent of the night from his own skin, while she brushes her teeth, again and again and again, with a devotion bordering on obsession that she might not indulge were he there, watching her, rather than a handful of inches further away, behind the shower curtain.
She brushes her teeth, and her tongue and her mouth and her lips and her soft palate and her gums and the insides of her cheeks, again and again and again, until the toothpaste she spits out bears no traces of blood, not even the faintest pinkened tinge. Then, at last, she strips off the last of her underthings, tosses them into the corner with his boxers, pulls back the shower curtain, and steps in after him.
[Trent Brumby] "Thorough is good, if that tongue is coming anywhere near me tonight," he had responded from the shower, then left her to over-brush her mouth.
In the shower he had soaped up good and washed over, twice; from the hair on his head to the back of his toes. The bathroom soon smelled like his natural body soaps and shampoos, filling the room with the deep scents that had washed through her skin and hair last time she was here. They are rinsed from him, leaving him clean and feeling it. All the while, he replays the alleyway over in his mind, even the parts of the night before there - wondering why he didn't pick up signs, and what he could have done to avoid it.
Kora climbing into the shower was a good distraction. He traded places with her, sliding to the side and stepping around her to give her the water. "Much better," he tells her, smiling as he smells the strong peppermint on her. "Want me to wash your hair?"
[Kora] "Test my work," she says, her dark eyes fixed on his face as he slides around her, acutely aware of his body in the small space, and the state of her own. She does not wait for him to take her up on her invitation, however. Instead, she rises to the balls of her feet and leans forward, firm and thorough and brief, tasting so strongly of peppermint that it fills his senses in an instant.
Then she slips around him, into the stream of water from the showerhead, turning into it, lifting her face into the water and half-closing her eyes as the water streams down around her. Her back is to him, then, her spine a cursive thing, the flanking muscles evident beneath her pale skin, her shoulderblades shifted as she curves her shoulders forward and lifts her wet face upward, offering him the filthy knot of her pale hair and the crown of her head.
"Yeah," she says, twisting her neck around to meet his eyes. "I'd like that."
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