[Kora] "Call me," Kora instructed, " - when they are ready to spring you, yeah? I'll take you home."
That was yesterday, afternoon close-to-evening. The staff had promised Trent that he might be released that evening, but evening became night became morning. He had another day of hospital food and hospital gowns, hospital beds and the stark, antiseptic smell of a large city hospital. Another day in the company of his roommate, a middle-aged man who preferred NASCAR to the World Cup on the single working television in the room and claimed to have kidney stones the "size of Texas, son," whenever he felt like making conversation.
---
Unless one of his co-workers drove it back to his apartment block, Trent's car is still in the parking lot outside the bar he was working the night of the fight. Kora hasn't thought of it; didn't think of it when she offered to bring him home. He doesn't know it, but she never learned how to drive and thinks of the city in pedestrian terms exclusively. I'll take you home meant, functionally, a cab from the hospital lobby to the front door of his apartment building, late on a weekend afternoon. On a hot weekend afternoon, the sun blazing in the sky, the air saturated with humidity.
"I'll get you settled," she says, backing open the front door leading to the lobby. She brought him real clothes to wear from home, something simple. Something that wasn't saturated with his blood, that hadn't been cut away from his frame by the EMTs or the trauma surgeon. " - then I'll go get your prescriptions filled, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] Trent didn't like hospital food, nobody liked hospital food, but he didn't mind the company of the old man. It was quite refreshing, all be told. He had a few good conversations, and while he didn't follow NASCAR or the World Cup, he had spent enough time listening to the television that he could probably tell Kora all about it when he got home. Being idle was the worst part, put on bed rest was even worse. Trent has never been able to sit still for long periods of time. He needs to work his hands in order to feel alive, and to think he's got some more bed rest when he gets home isn't something he's looking forward to.
Being home, however, in his own apartment without nurses coming to poke and prod wounds or that one in particular that really liked to flirt, professionally of course, was going to be a blessing. Whether he was going to be on complete bed rest in his own apartment was another thing altogether. It's likely that he won't be, and left to his own devices he would do just as he pleased.
But as it was, he was picked up via cab, which he paid for - Kora never is allowed to pay for anything in his company, he's firm on that. Their conversation had gone on about he's the one working and able to make money, and for her not to make a deal out of it - in more subtle terms, anyway. Cab fare paid, he made his way up towards the apartment, admittedly he was walking a lot more slower then he usually did, far more cautious with his torso that had been knifed in three different locations before the offender had been pulled off and dealt with by others there that night. Police had already taken his statements and the other man had been charged.
"It's okay Kora," he says with a quiet laugh under his breath, moving into the lobby after her, "I can go and get them filled tomorrow." There's genuine affection in both his eyes and tone, warmed by her willingness to pamper him.
[Kora] "Mmph," she replies, her voice quiet as she summoned the elevator. " - no. I have all the instructions, and you're going to follow them. The anti-biotic is meant to be started immediately, and you're not going anywhere tomorrow to get anything filled." There's a certain firmness to her voice; in this, she won't be gainsaid. She sat there in the plastic chairs in the antiseptic hospital, out of sorts with the waiting game they played at the end: waiting for the ward clerk, waiting for the nurse, waiting for the prescriptions, waiting for the discharge instructions, letting Trent amuse himself with the television or the middle-aged man in the other bed, pacing sometimes, all animal in those moments, up and down the length of the room, a thing entirely apart from the ordered white world.
When the discharge nurse returned though, at last, with the wheelchair and the printed instructions, and asked if they'd had any questions, she'd asked a dozen. Among them: so, what does bedrest mean? and which ones are necessary and is there anything he shouldn't eat? and when can he have sex again? bluntly and without embarrassment.
--
She kisses him in the elevator, for the way his eyes shine at her. On the cheek and on the mouth. Kisses him quietly and softly, and is otherwise silent as the elevator rises to Trent’s floor. She has a sort of – learned patience with him, with his pace, with his wounds, with the way his body does not yet work right. Energy is liminal around her: her health, her rage shapes and deforms the world immediately surrounding her, but there’s a distinct way in which she holds it in, holds it back, and walks with him, slowly, not giving him aid unless he requests it, unless it looks as if he needs it.
His apartment is familiar, but after days away, days wherein it stood empty, it takes on as strange shape. The lights are off, and evening is falling down to darkness outside, which makes the shadows of his couch and table loom stark and large against the quieter shadows of the room. Kora settles him on the couch, remote in hand, ice water or iced tea on the coffee table close at hand along with today’s newspaper, then kisses the crown of his head, murmurs, “Bed rest, yeah? That’s an order.” into his ear before she takes the prescriptions, and disappears out the front door.
She’s gone for a good, solid forty-five minutes before the front door opens again, and she slides in, prescriptions in hand, the scent of the warm summer night on her skin.
[Trent Brumby] "Yes Ma'am," he said to her, grinning all the while and enjoying that firmness in her voice. He really did like it, honestly. It's not something he's willing to accept though, to be doing everything on that print out she had stolen and kept for instructions, but he knew himself well enough to know how much he can push and when he shouldn't. He does not like to be injured and useless, and while that might irritate him in the short term, he could deal with it if he was going to heal rapidly.
The kiss had been a welcomed one and he had leaned against the side of the elevator to run his hands along her sides and back and gently pull her in towards him. He didn't want it to end, having been waiting all that time in the hospital to be able to give in to more then just a peck. But the elevator doors signaled it was time to let her go, so he did.
Settled on the sofa, with cushions and pillows, shoes off, he had laid back and been happy for it. Just that walk and movement from hospital to home had his muscles sore and aching. It was different to working out at the gym, it was wrong, sharp and unpleasant, less of a burn. With the tv remote and some water, the newspaper at hand, he had chuckled under his breath and shook his head after she kissed him. "Kora, really, you don't have to." But she had not been swayed and left.
Later, he is still on the sofa. The pair of sweatpants and t.shirt was comfortable enough to allow him movement and without restriction. With the heat he hadn't needed a blanket, and she could see clearly the way he laid on his back with his feet propped up on the arm of the sofa, crossed at the ankles, bare foot. An hand lay carefully on his stomach, the remote there, while the other lay down by his side. He was watching some movie on television to pass up the time, and she found him looking towards the door when she came back inside.
He watches her, liking to do so, drinking in her form and the way she carries herself. "No troubles?"
[Kora] She'd changed clothes before she left the apartment - out of the old things she always wears, the dedicated jeans, the dedicated t-shirt - into nicer jeans, a thin denim for the heat of the summer, and a ribbed white tank top that she might well have stolen from one of the drawers in his dresser. Her hair is pulled back into a loose French braid - the only hairstyle he has ever seen her wear other than the loose, messy knot she into which she usually throws it - and she carries a pair of little white paper bags in one hand.
"No troubles," she affirms, the click of the door closing behind her, the sound of the television a subtle counterpoint to her voice, rich and low. There's a supple curve to her mouth, this twist little smile that shapes her mouth and alights in her eyes when she comes back and finds him finding her again: with his eyes, watching her as she crosses the dark wood floors, stopping long enough in the foyer to unlace her boots and toe them off, to set them aside next to his loafers, untouched for days now.
Her socks follow, white cotton ones that leave little tufts behind, clinging to her toes. She tucks them neatly over the tongues of the boots, grabs the prescriptions and straightens, crossing the room again, his eyes on her body, her eyes are on him. She has a long stride, all confidence, that lean and lethal grace that always speaks to the animal underneath her skin.
Her bare feet slapping quietly on the bare floorboards until she gains his side, stopping at the edge of the couch and leaning over it, to hand off the prescription bags and kiss him, still gentle, on the temple, on the crown of his head, restraint written into the lines of her body.
"I think there's one you're supposed to take now. And the pain medicine, if you need it. I'll get dinner for you, if you're hungry now."
[Trent Brumby] No few times has he plucked those little cotton balls from her feet, wiped them away with his thumb from behind and between her toes. Such things he does as though second nature, when she's been lounging with him and he's taken control of her feet, massaging them as though he's done it many times before. Trent likes to do these things, sometimes when they're talking, others when there's a comfortable silence between them. As has been said; he's not an idle man.
He watches her and when she leans over his body, his head tilts back almost expecting her kiss, and certainly inviting it. He's smiling quietly at her again, appreciating this side of the Garou that he's not seen much of before but suspected. If there hadn't been a hint of this in her, then he probably wouldn't have been drawn towards her.
"Thank you," he tells her after she explains that he should be taking one now, as well as pain medications (if he needed them, and he did but he wasn't going to take them right now). "Don't worry about dinner yet. I'll order something in, lady's choice."
His voice is low, laced with a little bit of need and want. "Come here, don't.. . I'm not fragile, Kora." He has noticed the way she restrains herself and doesn't like it. He respects it, but doesn't like the way she holds herself back as if he was going to break in two.
[Kora] "I'm not subjecting you to my cooking," she explains, her mouth lingering close to his ear when he promises to order something in. He has the impression of the shape of her mouth close to his ear, this half-smile that so often lives on her generous mouth. Her breath is warm against his ear, the suggestion of laughter she withholds, subsumes into her body, and then gives back, as easily as she breathes. "I went to the grocery, picked up one of those ready-made roasted chickens, some bread and green beans, too."
"It can wait, though," she tells him as she straightens from where she's leaning over the arm of the couch, over his body. When he tell her not to worry about dinner. " - just let me know, yeah?"
Come here - he says, and she turns back to him, this sharp, physical twinge scoring through her body in response to the need low in his voice.
"Hey," she says back, all quiet, her voice rich, " - hey." Kora circles the couch, from the foot to the side, then sinks bonelessly to the floor between the coffee table and the couch, kneeling beside him for the moment. She flicks a brief glance at the television, but otherwise the action of the movie onscreen continues without acknowledgment or remark. There's an explosion, somewhere. A car chase, this artful destruction.
"I know you're not fragile. But you're kin, and you're wounded. It was serious enough that you were in the hospital for three days, Trent." The restraint is now evident in her voice, too. She explains all this calmly, but there's this black hole of anger that opens up when she thinks about it beyond the immediate - how close he came. That she wasn't there for it. All that of is under her skin, then, in her voice; in the set of her jaw, in her eyes.
She doesn't say it. She swallows those words.
No, not all -
" - and I wasn't there. And I - look. Just let me take care of you, yeah? Until you're better."
[Trent Brumby] When she glances to the television he promptly lifts the remote from his stomach, pointing it over her shoulder to switch the the volume to mute. Now it's just flickers of light that illuminate the living room, her face, his face and the wall with the painting hanging on it above the sofa. It's not some impressionist crap, but a proper painting of a landscape rich with deep earth colours, greens and blues; a valley with a sunset and a little house tucked into the trees with a rise of chimney smoke.
His hand rests back to his stomach with the remote and he has to force himself not to move and sit up, to pay her proper attention, share the sofa with her, something other then lounge there like he's King of the house and she's kneeling their like some serving girl. That's how it comes across to him, a role reversal, her kneeling, him lounging. It should be the other way around. Has been, in the past. This change of dynamic, for whatever reason, or however shallow, makes him deeply uncomfortable. Its there in the way his brows draw together making little wrinkled lines above his nose.
"You can't be everywhere, Kora." This is told in a firmer but low voice, disapproving of the way she thinks on that. He understands it, but doesn't accept it of her. "I work in a profession where these things happen. Sometimes they just do, but let's not get into that, please?" He does not want to argue about her need to make himself and the reality of the situation, they both know it, and both know this stems from her current emotional and territorial instincts. Those he can accept.
"But," he smiles at her from underneath a face that needs a good shave, which he's planning on doing first thing in the morning, or maybe even before depending on whether she's staying the night, "if it pleases you, I'll do as you say."
[Kora] Leaning in, her shoulders and torso compression the cushions of the couch, Kora slides her feet out from under her body and sits between couch and coffee table instead of kneeling, pushing the wooden table away from the couch with the ball of her foot to give her enough room for her splayed knees. There's silence, between them, just the even pattern of his breathing, her blood still running hot in her veins, her pulse in her ears.
She has one knee up, sharp, the other leg curled beneath the first, and she leans back, not quite leveling her shoulders against the side of the touch, if only because she wants to look at him
"Anything I say," she returns, echoing his sentiment and changing it, slightly. Slipstream like this: the anger has not deserted her, until it is draining away - somehow, filtering into the rest of her body, accreting in her muscles. He can see the tension alive in her bare shoulders, but the look she gives him with the response is direct, accompanied by a curving twist of her mouth that lingers at the corner when she turns away, just, from his smile. He has her profile, then, the sweep of the hands of hair pulled togeher to make the brai at the temple, the clear definition of her nose and jaw.
Then, with a long, slow, controlled breath out, she contines, levels with him, "I want to tell you to quit your job. I want to tell you to find something else. I - I just - " She closes her eyes, but does not look back at him. Instead, she stares off at some indeterminiate point on the wall, between the windows and the floor. "You have to be here. That's all. And that's an order."
[Trent Brumby] His brows raise as he repeats his words. Yes, anything she says, he would probably agree to. He doesn't expect her to be outlandish about it, so he can have faith in saying something like that without hesitations or regrets. He doesn't interrupt her train of thought, had hinted only a smile at the way she looked back at him, a little sharper and firmer in the body language.
But when she turns away, he's reaching his hand out to brush his fingers along her hair, feeling the weave of the braid on his fingers. It feels much nicer then the t.shirt fabric that his hand had been resting on, and his thumb brushes along the warm back of her neck, enjoying the feel of that too. She feels him shift, hears the slight creak of wood under the sofa, as he adjusts himself, carefully, to roll a little more on one hip. It gives him better access.
So while she's telling him that she wants him to quit his job, even though she's not ordering him to do so, just expressing her fears and her selfish wants, she has his hand at the back of her neck, gently rubbing and massaging the muscles and tension there. He does this slowly, just firm enough, just light enough, for it to be pleasurable. It is for him, too.
"When I was lying there, I thought it wasn't worth it either, this work I'm doing," these words come from him quietly, easily, "and that we're going to start a family, there's need of me to be whole and healthy. I don't have to be putting myself at risk for the safety of others," even though he enjoyed being their protector and defender.
"My responsibility is being your mate, now, and everything that entails." He smiles down at her, even if she's not looking at him. "I'm no longer a bachelor, and I'm rather fond of the idea of being yours. I'd like to keep it that way."
"I can do other jobs."
[Kora] He is close enough to touch her, and close enough to catch her scent in the air. Just the hint of it - detectable by anyone, human or otherwise. She smells like him; like his home. She's been here in his absence. She slept alone in his bed for a handful of hours as night broke into morning the second day he was in the hospital. She showered and used his soaps, threw a load of laundry in to the washing machine. Took out the trash, carried it out of the apartment to the chute leading to the dumpster, toted the recycling to the room in the basement where it is gathered.
His hand drifts over her braid, over the curve of her skull, and she gives him a glancing look, her features in three quarters profile, her eyes direct, her mouth curving into a this expression that would be tremulous were she human, and is instead simply provisional - on the cusp of something.
The large muscles that flank her neck are taut underneath his hand when he begins massaging the back of her neck and shoulders, but he can feel the subtle change in her tension the massage continues. Still, when he speaks easily of his thoughts in the hospital, she looks away again, gives him this sort of private space within which to speak. It's not a space he needs; he's looking at her, while she's looking away. Maybe he isn't the one who needed that space, that suggestion of distance in these intimate spaces between them.
In the middle, she looks back at him, her eyes wide and dark and direct on his, her mouth still. The provisional smile has filtered away, by the time he finishes, with the promise that he can do other jobs, she leans up and in and kisses him, lingering, quiet, just her mouth, warm on his, the sense of whatever she is holding back living in her neck, under his hand, in her shoulders and in her spine. In the long, ragged breath she exhales over his mouth when she's done.
"Thank you. I - I - " sitting back still close. "I wouldn't order you to give up your job, even if it - " That's a false start. "I don't have kin who can help you, you know? It's you and mean. And whatever we make. So, yeah. I want you here for that."
[Trent Brumby] He kisses her back, enjoying his smell on her as much as she might hers on him. Its a familiar sort of thing, a claiming, satisfaction that they are sharing their lives very intimately. He has instincts too, not as great as hers and not as severe, but he has base needs and desires, things that drive him to do certain things or react certain ways. "It's okay, Kora." Simple and supportive. He honestly does not mind, and had thought about it before she even spoke her mind on such things.
Events like this help put things into perspective. "You have enough to worry about. Do not start worrying about simple things that can be fixed or changed, like how I bring in money so that our lives are easier for the both of us. It's a small detail and not important."
"I don't live for work."
[Kora] "Okay," she tells him, when he says he doesn't live for work. "I'm glad, you know?" That he doesn't live for work; or that he doesn't mind finding something less dangerous. Or that they've reached an accord on this. That's it; there's a certain easing of her body under the work of his massaging hand. She's still close, leaning against the edge of the couch, close enough to catch the lingering hint of antiseptics from the hospital underneath the familiar, subtle hint of his breeding.
And his blood, the sparest hint of it, soaked into the dressings applied by the flirtatious nurse before he was wheeled down to be discharged into the care of "your girlfriend?" the clerk asked, as he signed the insurance and workers' compe paperwork. Humans don't have words for this.
So: his blood, and her sense of it draw her attention back to him as she pulls herself upward to sit in or close to L-joint of the sofa, close without crowding him, leeting him lean back for support and comfort.
"Listen," she says, settling back into the couch, resting the balls of her bare feet on the coffee table. "I have a - spiritual thing, a gourd with water imbued with a small spirit that might heal some of your wounds. I'll use it on you if you want. Though you'll have to be careful with your doctors and your co-workers, right? To keep it quiet. In the realm of miracle recovery, yeah? Rather than Miracle Recovery."
[Kora] [pause/fade!]
That was yesterday, afternoon close-to-evening. The staff had promised Trent that he might be released that evening, but evening became night became morning. He had another day of hospital food and hospital gowns, hospital beds and the stark, antiseptic smell of a large city hospital. Another day in the company of his roommate, a middle-aged man who preferred NASCAR to the World Cup on the single working television in the room and claimed to have kidney stones the "size of Texas, son," whenever he felt like making conversation.
---
Unless one of his co-workers drove it back to his apartment block, Trent's car is still in the parking lot outside the bar he was working the night of the fight. Kora hasn't thought of it; didn't think of it when she offered to bring him home. He doesn't know it, but she never learned how to drive and thinks of the city in pedestrian terms exclusively. I'll take you home meant, functionally, a cab from the hospital lobby to the front door of his apartment building, late on a weekend afternoon. On a hot weekend afternoon, the sun blazing in the sky, the air saturated with humidity.
"I'll get you settled," she says, backing open the front door leading to the lobby. She brought him real clothes to wear from home, something simple. Something that wasn't saturated with his blood, that hadn't been cut away from his frame by the EMTs or the trauma surgeon. " - then I'll go get your prescriptions filled, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] Trent didn't like hospital food, nobody liked hospital food, but he didn't mind the company of the old man. It was quite refreshing, all be told. He had a few good conversations, and while he didn't follow NASCAR or the World Cup, he had spent enough time listening to the television that he could probably tell Kora all about it when he got home. Being idle was the worst part, put on bed rest was even worse. Trent has never been able to sit still for long periods of time. He needs to work his hands in order to feel alive, and to think he's got some more bed rest when he gets home isn't something he's looking forward to.
Being home, however, in his own apartment without nurses coming to poke and prod wounds or that one in particular that really liked to flirt, professionally of course, was going to be a blessing. Whether he was going to be on complete bed rest in his own apartment was another thing altogether. It's likely that he won't be, and left to his own devices he would do just as he pleased.
But as it was, he was picked up via cab, which he paid for - Kora never is allowed to pay for anything in his company, he's firm on that. Their conversation had gone on about he's the one working and able to make money, and for her not to make a deal out of it - in more subtle terms, anyway. Cab fare paid, he made his way up towards the apartment, admittedly he was walking a lot more slower then he usually did, far more cautious with his torso that had been knifed in three different locations before the offender had been pulled off and dealt with by others there that night. Police had already taken his statements and the other man had been charged.
"It's okay Kora," he says with a quiet laugh under his breath, moving into the lobby after her, "I can go and get them filled tomorrow." There's genuine affection in both his eyes and tone, warmed by her willingness to pamper him.
[Kora] "Mmph," she replies, her voice quiet as she summoned the elevator. " - no. I have all the instructions, and you're going to follow them. The anti-biotic is meant to be started immediately, and you're not going anywhere tomorrow to get anything filled." There's a certain firmness to her voice; in this, she won't be gainsaid. She sat there in the plastic chairs in the antiseptic hospital, out of sorts with the waiting game they played at the end: waiting for the ward clerk, waiting for the nurse, waiting for the prescriptions, waiting for the discharge instructions, letting Trent amuse himself with the television or the middle-aged man in the other bed, pacing sometimes, all animal in those moments, up and down the length of the room, a thing entirely apart from the ordered white world.
When the discharge nurse returned though, at last, with the wheelchair and the printed instructions, and asked if they'd had any questions, she'd asked a dozen. Among them: so, what does bedrest mean? and which ones are necessary and is there anything he shouldn't eat? and when can he have sex again? bluntly and without embarrassment.
--
She kisses him in the elevator, for the way his eyes shine at her. On the cheek and on the mouth. Kisses him quietly and softly, and is otherwise silent as the elevator rises to Trent’s floor. She has a sort of – learned patience with him, with his pace, with his wounds, with the way his body does not yet work right. Energy is liminal around her: her health, her rage shapes and deforms the world immediately surrounding her, but there’s a distinct way in which she holds it in, holds it back, and walks with him, slowly, not giving him aid unless he requests it, unless it looks as if he needs it.
His apartment is familiar, but after days away, days wherein it stood empty, it takes on as strange shape. The lights are off, and evening is falling down to darkness outside, which makes the shadows of his couch and table loom stark and large against the quieter shadows of the room. Kora settles him on the couch, remote in hand, ice water or iced tea on the coffee table close at hand along with today’s newspaper, then kisses the crown of his head, murmurs, “Bed rest, yeah? That’s an order.” into his ear before she takes the prescriptions, and disappears out the front door.
She’s gone for a good, solid forty-five minutes before the front door opens again, and she slides in, prescriptions in hand, the scent of the warm summer night on her skin.
[Trent Brumby] "Yes Ma'am," he said to her, grinning all the while and enjoying that firmness in her voice. He really did like it, honestly. It's not something he's willing to accept though, to be doing everything on that print out she had stolen and kept for instructions, but he knew himself well enough to know how much he can push and when he shouldn't. He does not like to be injured and useless, and while that might irritate him in the short term, he could deal with it if he was going to heal rapidly.
The kiss had been a welcomed one and he had leaned against the side of the elevator to run his hands along her sides and back and gently pull her in towards him. He didn't want it to end, having been waiting all that time in the hospital to be able to give in to more then just a peck. But the elevator doors signaled it was time to let her go, so he did.
Settled on the sofa, with cushions and pillows, shoes off, he had laid back and been happy for it. Just that walk and movement from hospital to home had his muscles sore and aching. It was different to working out at the gym, it was wrong, sharp and unpleasant, less of a burn. With the tv remote and some water, the newspaper at hand, he had chuckled under his breath and shook his head after she kissed him. "Kora, really, you don't have to." But she had not been swayed and left.
Later, he is still on the sofa. The pair of sweatpants and t.shirt was comfortable enough to allow him movement and without restriction. With the heat he hadn't needed a blanket, and she could see clearly the way he laid on his back with his feet propped up on the arm of the sofa, crossed at the ankles, bare foot. An hand lay carefully on his stomach, the remote there, while the other lay down by his side. He was watching some movie on television to pass up the time, and she found him looking towards the door when she came back inside.
He watches her, liking to do so, drinking in her form and the way she carries herself. "No troubles?"
[Kora] She'd changed clothes before she left the apartment - out of the old things she always wears, the dedicated jeans, the dedicated t-shirt - into nicer jeans, a thin denim for the heat of the summer, and a ribbed white tank top that she might well have stolen from one of the drawers in his dresser. Her hair is pulled back into a loose French braid - the only hairstyle he has ever seen her wear other than the loose, messy knot she into which she usually throws it - and she carries a pair of little white paper bags in one hand.
"No troubles," she affirms, the click of the door closing behind her, the sound of the television a subtle counterpoint to her voice, rich and low. There's a supple curve to her mouth, this twist little smile that shapes her mouth and alights in her eyes when she comes back and finds him finding her again: with his eyes, watching her as she crosses the dark wood floors, stopping long enough in the foyer to unlace her boots and toe them off, to set them aside next to his loafers, untouched for days now.
Her socks follow, white cotton ones that leave little tufts behind, clinging to her toes. She tucks them neatly over the tongues of the boots, grabs the prescriptions and straightens, crossing the room again, his eyes on her body, her eyes are on him. She has a long stride, all confidence, that lean and lethal grace that always speaks to the animal underneath her skin.
Her bare feet slapping quietly on the bare floorboards until she gains his side, stopping at the edge of the couch and leaning over it, to hand off the prescription bags and kiss him, still gentle, on the temple, on the crown of his head, restraint written into the lines of her body.
"I think there's one you're supposed to take now. And the pain medicine, if you need it. I'll get dinner for you, if you're hungry now."
[Trent Brumby] No few times has he plucked those little cotton balls from her feet, wiped them away with his thumb from behind and between her toes. Such things he does as though second nature, when she's been lounging with him and he's taken control of her feet, massaging them as though he's done it many times before. Trent likes to do these things, sometimes when they're talking, others when there's a comfortable silence between them. As has been said; he's not an idle man.
He watches her and when she leans over his body, his head tilts back almost expecting her kiss, and certainly inviting it. He's smiling quietly at her again, appreciating this side of the Garou that he's not seen much of before but suspected. If there hadn't been a hint of this in her, then he probably wouldn't have been drawn towards her.
"Thank you," he tells her after she explains that he should be taking one now, as well as pain medications (if he needed them, and he did but he wasn't going to take them right now). "Don't worry about dinner yet. I'll order something in, lady's choice."
His voice is low, laced with a little bit of need and want. "Come here, don't.. . I'm not fragile, Kora." He has noticed the way she restrains herself and doesn't like it. He respects it, but doesn't like the way she holds herself back as if he was going to break in two.
[Kora] "I'm not subjecting you to my cooking," she explains, her mouth lingering close to his ear when he promises to order something in. He has the impression of the shape of her mouth close to his ear, this half-smile that so often lives on her generous mouth. Her breath is warm against his ear, the suggestion of laughter she withholds, subsumes into her body, and then gives back, as easily as she breathes. "I went to the grocery, picked up one of those ready-made roasted chickens, some bread and green beans, too."
"It can wait, though," she tells him as she straightens from where she's leaning over the arm of the couch, over his body. When he tell her not to worry about dinner. " - just let me know, yeah?"
Come here - he says, and she turns back to him, this sharp, physical twinge scoring through her body in response to the need low in his voice.
"Hey," she says back, all quiet, her voice rich, " - hey." Kora circles the couch, from the foot to the side, then sinks bonelessly to the floor between the coffee table and the couch, kneeling beside him for the moment. She flicks a brief glance at the television, but otherwise the action of the movie onscreen continues without acknowledgment or remark. There's an explosion, somewhere. A car chase, this artful destruction.
"I know you're not fragile. But you're kin, and you're wounded. It was serious enough that you were in the hospital for three days, Trent." The restraint is now evident in her voice, too. She explains all this calmly, but there's this black hole of anger that opens up when she thinks about it beyond the immediate - how close he came. That she wasn't there for it. All that of is under her skin, then, in her voice; in the set of her jaw, in her eyes.
She doesn't say it. She swallows those words.
No, not all -
" - and I wasn't there. And I - look. Just let me take care of you, yeah? Until you're better."
[Trent Brumby] When she glances to the television he promptly lifts the remote from his stomach, pointing it over her shoulder to switch the the volume to mute. Now it's just flickers of light that illuminate the living room, her face, his face and the wall with the painting hanging on it above the sofa. It's not some impressionist crap, but a proper painting of a landscape rich with deep earth colours, greens and blues; a valley with a sunset and a little house tucked into the trees with a rise of chimney smoke.
His hand rests back to his stomach with the remote and he has to force himself not to move and sit up, to pay her proper attention, share the sofa with her, something other then lounge there like he's King of the house and she's kneeling their like some serving girl. That's how it comes across to him, a role reversal, her kneeling, him lounging. It should be the other way around. Has been, in the past. This change of dynamic, for whatever reason, or however shallow, makes him deeply uncomfortable. Its there in the way his brows draw together making little wrinkled lines above his nose.
"You can't be everywhere, Kora." This is told in a firmer but low voice, disapproving of the way she thinks on that. He understands it, but doesn't accept it of her. "I work in a profession where these things happen. Sometimes they just do, but let's not get into that, please?" He does not want to argue about her need to make himself and the reality of the situation, they both know it, and both know this stems from her current emotional and territorial instincts. Those he can accept.
"But," he smiles at her from underneath a face that needs a good shave, which he's planning on doing first thing in the morning, or maybe even before depending on whether she's staying the night, "if it pleases you, I'll do as you say."
[Kora] Leaning in, her shoulders and torso compression the cushions of the couch, Kora slides her feet out from under her body and sits between couch and coffee table instead of kneeling, pushing the wooden table away from the couch with the ball of her foot to give her enough room for her splayed knees. There's silence, between them, just the even pattern of his breathing, her blood still running hot in her veins, her pulse in her ears.
She has one knee up, sharp, the other leg curled beneath the first, and she leans back, not quite leveling her shoulders against the side of the touch, if only because she wants to look at him
"Anything I say," she returns, echoing his sentiment and changing it, slightly. Slipstream like this: the anger has not deserted her, until it is draining away - somehow, filtering into the rest of her body, accreting in her muscles. He can see the tension alive in her bare shoulders, but the look she gives him with the response is direct, accompanied by a curving twist of her mouth that lingers at the corner when she turns away, just, from his smile. He has her profile, then, the sweep of the hands of hair pulled togeher to make the brai at the temple, the clear definition of her nose and jaw.
Then, with a long, slow, controlled breath out, she contines, levels with him, "I want to tell you to quit your job. I want to tell you to find something else. I - I just - " She closes her eyes, but does not look back at him. Instead, she stares off at some indeterminiate point on the wall, between the windows and the floor. "You have to be here. That's all. And that's an order."
[Trent Brumby] His brows raise as he repeats his words. Yes, anything she says, he would probably agree to. He doesn't expect her to be outlandish about it, so he can have faith in saying something like that without hesitations or regrets. He doesn't interrupt her train of thought, had hinted only a smile at the way she looked back at him, a little sharper and firmer in the body language.
But when she turns away, he's reaching his hand out to brush his fingers along her hair, feeling the weave of the braid on his fingers. It feels much nicer then the t.shirt fabric that his hand had been resting on, and his thumb brushes along the warm back of her neck, enjoying the feel of that too. She feels him shift, hears the slight creak of wood under the sofa, as he adjusts himself, carefully, to roll a little more on one hip. It gives him better access.
So while she's telling him that she wants him to quit his job, even though she's not ordering him to do so, just expressing her fears and her selfish wants, she has his hand at the back of her neck, gently rubbing and massaging the muscles and tension there. He does this slowly, just firm enough, just light enough, for it to be pleasurable. It is for him, too.
"When I was lying there, I thought it wasn't worth it either, this work I'm doing," these words come from him quietly, easily, "and that we're going to start a family, there's need of me to be whole and healthy. I don't have to be putting myself at risk for the safety of others," even though he enjoyed being their protector and defender.
"My responsibility is being your mate, now, and everything that entails." He smiles down at her, even if she's not looking at him. "I'm no longer a bachelor, and I'm rather fond of the idea of being yours. I'd like to keep it that way."
"I can do other jobs."
[Kora] He is close enough to touch her, and close enough to catch her scent in the air. Just the hint of it - detectable by anyone, human or otherwise. She smells like him; like his home. She's been here in his absence. She slept alone in his bed for a handful of hours as night broke into morning the second day he was in the hospital. She showered and used his soaps, threw a load of laundry in to the washing machine. Took out the trash, carried it out of the apartment to the chute leading to the dumpster, toted the recycling to the room in the basement where it is gathered.
His hand drifts over her braid, over the curve of her skull, and she gives him a glancing look, her features in three quarters profile, her eyes direct, her mouth curving into a this expression that would be tremulous were she human, and is instead simply provisional - on the cusp of something.
The large muscles that flank her neck are taut underneath his hand when he begins massaging the back of her neck and shoulders, but he can feel the subtle change in her tension the massage continues. Still, when he speaks easily of his thoughts in the hospital, she looks away again, gives him this sort of private space within which to speak. It's not a space he needs; he's looking at her, while she's looking away. Maybe he isn't the one who needed that space, that suggestion of distance in these intimate spaces between them.
In the middle, she looks back at him, her eyes wide and dark and direct on his, her mouth still. The provisional smile has filtered away, by the time he finishes, with the promise that he can do other jobs, she leans up and in and kisses him, lingering, quiet, just her mouth, warm on his, the sense of whatever she is holding back living in her neck, under his hand, in her shoulders and in her spine. In the long, ragged breath she exhales over his mouth when she's done.
"Thank you. I - I - " sitting back still close. "I wouldn't order you to give up your job, even if it - " That's a false start. "I don't have kin who can help you, you know? It's you and mean. And whatever we make. So, yeah. I want you here for that."
[Trent Brumby] He kisses her back, enjoying his smell on her as much as she might hers on him. Its a familiar sort of thing, a claiming, satisfaction that they are sharing their lives very intimately. He has instincts too, not as great as hers and not as severe, but he has base needs and desires, things that drive him to do certain things or react certain ways. "It's okay, Kora." Simple and supportive. He honestly does not mind, and had thought about it before she even spoke her mind on such things.
Events like this help put things into perspective. "You have enough to worry about. Do not start worrying about simple things that can be fixed or changed, like how I bring in money so that our lives are easier for the both of us. It's a small detail and not important."
"I don't live for work."
[Kora] "Okay," she tells him, when he says he doesn't live for work. "I'm glad, you know?" That he doesn't live for work; or that he doesn't mind finding something less dangerous. Or that they've reached an accord on this. That's it; there's a certain easing of her body under the work of his massaging hand. She's still close, leaning against the edge of the couch, close enough to catch the lingering hint of antiseptics from the hospital underneath the familiar, subtle hint of his breeding.
And his blood, the sparest hint of it, soaked into the dressings applied by the flirtatious nurse before he was wheeled down to be discharged into the care of "your girlfriend?" the clerk asked, as he signed the insurance and workers' compe paperwork. Humans don't have words for this.
So: his blood, and her sense of it draw her attention back to him as she pulls herself upward to sit in or close to L-joint of the sofa, close without crowding him, leeting him lean back for support and comfort.
"Listen," she says, settling back into the couch, resting the balls of her bare feet on the coffee table. "I have a - spiritual thing, a gourd with water imbued with a small spirit that might heal some of your wounds. I'll use it on you if you want. Though you'll have to be careful with your doctors and your co-workers, right? To keep it quiet. In the realm of miracle recovery, yeah? Rather than Miracle Recovery."
[Kora] [pause/fade!]
Post a Comment