[Kora] Dusk comes at nine these nights, and sometimes the impression of the sun seems to linger on the horizon for an hour after, illuminating the sky, gleaming off the west-facing windows of the tallest buildings, doing nothing for the dark shadowed streets. July has been blazing hot; the only relief comes in the scant few hours after a thunderstorm has boiled up and cleansed the city of its native stink, the pollution that hangs low in the sky, the humidity that clogs up the senses and makes it difficult to breathe.
There is the promise of a storm somewhere on the horizon tonight. It feels the air with this charged, electric promise. The sun slants from the west, across the northern two-thirds of the city's skyline, but the southern third is full of dark thunderheads that have spun off half a dozen tornado watches and warnings up and down the shore of Lake Michigan. On the weather channel, the storm cell is a vicious looking red center amidst yellows and oranges, surrounded by a swath of green. In the sky, it is this sort of promising darkness, blotting out the last rays of the sun's light. In the air, it is ozone, the promise of electricity amidst the oppressive heat and humidity that makes the sidewalks - even at dusk - steam.
--
It hasn't rained, not yet. And the moon is in rising in the east, gibbous, half-eaten. She caught a glimpse of the disc between the towers of the infamous Cabrini high-rises an hour ago. She feels it, now, in the back of her throat, behind her eyes, on her tongue like a hard, hot stone.
Nine p.m., sometime thereafter - threads of sunset lingering in the west, a storm in the air, tornado warnings and watches crawling across the bottom of the screen on all the local channels - there's a knock at his front door.
[Trent Brumby] It hasn't been the best twenty-four hours, but nor has it been the worst. The night before, even though it had been late by the time she left, he had got up, dressed and left for a good while himself. When he got home he slept, slept by the morning until he rose sometime before noon. He hit the gym. He hit the sauna. It left him aching, even though he was careful not to push himself, and even then it hadn't helped clear his head.
At home, he spent the day cleaning. Unnecessary almost compulsive cleaning that had him ache even more, especially in the back, but made him feel a little better, focused perhaps. Now, at least, he didn't have some burning rage in him that made him want to lash out at everything. Maybe it was still there but it was controlled now, locked up and felt distant. His house smells like cleaners, not the overpowering sort of bleaches, but he uses the more natural products he can, sugar soaps, vinegar some lavenders and that sort of thing.
Dinner he cooks, too. Some roast beef and vegetables that has plenty left over. The aroma of it still permeates the apartment when she knocks on the door at nine pm. To his credit he's no longer pacing. He's been sitting on the sofa, legs up, remote in hand and paying little attention to what he's eyes are actually watching. The knock at the door has him look over for a long moment, his heart rate pick up and some knot tightening inside.
Tossing the remote to the side, he gets up, aware of how muscles protest and how tired his body is, and walks over to the door to open it. He stands there in a pair of jeans and a t.shirt, nothing special. Bare foot, hair combed but thickening towards another haircut, and cleanly shaven, he meets her gaze with a small nod. "You still have your key?"
[Kora] There's a certain heat clinging to her skin. Her hair - pulled back from her features and piled on the back of her neck in a haphazard if rather savage twist - is damp at the temples and darker for it, the fine strands thickened by the humidity outside. She stood still on his threshold, all contained, waiting, the inherent animal energy inside her compressed into her core, but she was not looking at the door.
When he opens the door, he has this view: her profile, which is dominated not by the curve of her mouth but by the two sharp lines of her brow and jaw, the slope of her nose, and the heavy twist of her hair at the back of her head, balanced. Whereever she was for the last day and a half, she's changed her clothing. Look: a pale-orange, boat-neck t-shirt with a satin seam, and newer jeans. Easily overlooked, the laundry bag hanging from her right hand.
The door opens, and she looks back. The gesture is sharp, as if it were carved and sanded and abraded to just that point: like a well cared for blade. The animal alertness liminal in her eyes and posture in that moment eases when he meets her eyes with his pale gaze, directly. It does not abate, though.
"I do." Her voice is quiet enough that he would have to strain to hear it were they even half-way across the room. Her eyes drop from his eyes to his mouth to his torso. He can draw a direct line from the healed over wounds still limiting him to her eyes, if he had the trick of triangulation. "I want you to invite me in."
She hasn't crossed the threshold, yet. She's still standing on the other side of the doorframe, one hand in her left hip pocket, the other curled beside her right thigh, the drawstring rope of the laundry bag wrapped around and arond her right hand.
[Trent Brumby] His breath inhales then exhales in a slow, controlled way, trying not to sigh. Stepping aside, one hand on the door still, he gestures with his other. "Come in, please, Kora." He managed to even make it somewhat polite, though it's easy to see that he wasn't too happy to have to actually invite her into his apartment. Not that he didn't want her there, just that she needed to feel invited in. Apparently he has got to the end of his patience, or had the other night and still hasn't recovered that back.
Waiting for her to come in, he offered out his hand when she did, to take the laundry bag from her. It's something he'd do often enough when she turned up with laundry. Just like he cooks dinner for her when he knows she's coming and most of the time cooks more then for himself anyway and stores it in the fridge. Today is no different.
She can see inside that its cleaner. Not that it's ever messy really, but he's gone over things like dusted, polished things down, arranged movies in the cabinet that might have been out of line back into proper places, watered plants, scrubbed the bathroom and toilets, changed sheets and opened windows. Although its all the same, its all just cleaner. Even though he's showered, she can probably pick up the smells from him too. He doesn't use cleaning gloves or anything like that. He's a man.
[Kora] "Thank you," she replies, deliberately stepping over the threshold, past him into the small foyer. Her shoulders are straight and narrow; her spine is straight. She doesn't slouch, never cheats her height, and does not do so now as she slides by him, her eyes cutting up to meet his as he supresses the sigh at the end of his breath.
The wolf inside her is a sharp, errant presence tonight: evident in the guarded, unwelcome courtesy of her knock on his door, in the incipient tension in her spine, which is half-way between hungry and wary, animal want and animal caution, knitted up together in a raveling tangle made brighter inside her by the presence of a hungry moon somewhere beyond the confines of his apartment or the building in which it is situated. Somewhere out there, high above the city, behind the storm clouds that send electric little currants through the air, making everything seem charged.
She can smell the cleaning fluids, this close to him. On his skin, in the grooves of his fingers, in his pores. On the floors and the furniture, the close-scrubbed gleam of his day's obsessive work. He can see her looking over the apartment, her features still, her jaw set, her dark eyes flickering from dining room table to couch to coffee table, everything in neat rows, now. Nothing out of place. Everything nearly new.
He holds out his hand for her laundry bag. It is half-full; less than that. She lifts it up, releasing the drawstring and letting it unravel into his hand. Then she grasps his hand, the line twist between their palms, and steps into him, reaching for the back of his head with her left hand, pulling him down to meet her mouth, as her body rises to meet his.
There is a half-second's hesitation. It flickers across her eyes like a stutter step, like some old fashioned Nickelodeon movie, the illusion of movement in the strobe-like effect. She kisses him once, if he does not turn away. Deep and hungry and driving, not stopping to breathe, not once.
She kisses him until she has to stop because her lungs are aching, breathless. Then, just like that she lets him go, steps past him into the apartment, contained again, her hands in her pockets, leaving him to take the laundry bag, to close the door behind her. To -
- she doesn't know what. She's not walking, she's prowling past. Her hands in her pockets do nothing to contain her.
[Trent Brumby] The door closes quietly clicking automatically locked. He's walking in after her, but pauses to take that bag from her. She has something else in mind and he looks up from the bag to meet her eyes when her hand grips around hers. Taller, his head is slightly bowed as it was to look at her, and now she tilts her head up towards his. He can read the anxiety in her, in the way there's no smiles between them, how the tension is thicker with her wolf, her Rage, and how she's keeping to herself.
While his own gaze is harder to read now, guarded as it is, and his mouth isn't offer any smiles, her kiss gets a reaction from him. He doesn't pull away. He lets his head be drawn down, the hair under her touch freshly washed, soft because of it and thick between the webs of her fingers. Once he opens his mouth to her, she's demanding of him and he gives. Gripping her waist, he pulls her in against him, held in to his firm body so he can feel the line of her, the softness and the heat.
Then she pulls away, making him breathe heavier, leaving him with her bag of laundry as she stands with hands in pockets and looks around. Gathering himself, he walks past her, lifting free hand to rub his thumb under his lip and over his chin, as he heads towards the laundry. "I've got dinner," he tells her as he's leaving the room, "if you're hungry."
How perfectly domestic he is.
[Kora] "Cool," she replies, to his offer of dinner. The words don't seem right; she doesn't like them. She doesn't like the way they fit in her mouth. She doesn't have any others, though. Not ones she knows to say. "I am hungry." He knows that, well. His mouth might just be bruised from the force of her kiss.
The laundry bag is light, swings easily from his hands. Even when she's still, she doesn't seem contained. She's standing at the joint in the L of his soft, behind it, looking out the windows as he passes her. Or, perhaps, looking at their sketchy reflections in the dark glass, the city beyond all shadowed, sunset falling to darkness, the storm clouds occluding the sky. It is cooler in here, and so clean and the rooms feel crisp - like the snap of something freshly laundered.
"It smells good," he's past her, now. She calls out down the hallway. The change in the texture of her voice suggests she's turned from the windows to watch him from behind, to watch him walk, as if he were a new-made thing. There's something - predatory there, too. Inside, underneath - that contained watchfulness he saw from the moment he opened the door. " - you were busy today, yeah?"
Her voice is raised to follow him to the washing machine. Her things need a good soak and a good scrub and a good, hot wash. The thighs of the jeans she's brought him to wash are dark with blood. The t-shirt is stiff with some nameless fluid. There are a handful of other things, ordinary, bloodless.
[Trent Brumby] "I'll just put these to soak," meaning - he'll be out in a second to dish her up something to eat. Oh, he knew her hunger well, both of them. She always seemed to favour one over the other though and he's worn his mouth bruised from it on more then several occasions.
His walk is strong and steady. If he's aching, it's not readily apparent. Maybe later when he's rolling up from the sofa or the bed, those sorts of movements slow him down, makes him hesitate. He's cautious then. But walking down the hall of his own home, he's comfortable, even if his spine is straight and solid. His ass is nice in jeans, better then slacks, jeans gives it more attention. Even these loose ones on his legs that almost hang from his hips. Trent can wear slacks and shirts or t.shirts and jeans and become the professional or be the bad boy. He's got that sort of look and build.
It's always the same, her laundry. He rinses them off, scrubs on some soap, sets them to soak in a small amount of water then rinses off his hands. This only takes him a short period of time before he's walking back out, hands briefly dried on a hand towel he keeps by the freshly scrubbed laundry, and begins towards her and the kitchen beyond. "Yeah, I've been busy," he tells her without going into the details. She freaks if he's doing anything more then cooking dinner, he's not going to outright confess of his routine, not today.
[Kora] They fall into the familiar rhythms of routine. Her laundry, his hands. His dinner. Her mouth. Her arms are hanging at her side when he returns from the washing machine, and she has that sense of movemet about her tonight, even when she's still, lounging like a predator against the frame of his couch. While he was walking away from her, her gaze lingered on him, this sort of feral objectification of the hard lines; the strong shoulders, the distinct line of his spine, the way his torso tapers to his waist, the cut of his obliques evident through the t-shirt from behind.
He is walking back, and the look is different: more contained, somehow - held back under her skin. She watches his feet on the floorboards, the weight and swing of his stride, then lifts her eyes to his face. When he is close enough to touch,she reaches out for him, stopping him with a touch, her hands on his elbow, on his hip, on his hand.
Her eyes close, and she breathes him in. Her features are still, but the expectant tension in her body is easily read. Breathing out, she opens her eyes, but doesn't look at him, not directly. Not yet. "I'm sorry," she tells him, then. "I don't know what to say."
There is the promise of a storm somewhere on the horizon tonight. It feels the air with this charged, electric promise. The sun slants from the west, across the northern two-thirds of the city's skyline, but the southern third is full of dark thunderheads that have spun off half a dozen tornado watches and warnings up and down the shore of Lake Michigan. On the weather channel, the storm cell is a vicious looking red center amidst yellows and oranges, surrounded by a swath of green. In the sky, it is this sort of promising darkness, blotting out the last rays of the sun's light. In the air, it is ozone, the promise of electricity amidst the oppressive heat and humidity that makes the sidewalks - even at dusk - steam.
--
It hasn't rained, not yet. And the moon is in rising in the east, gibbous, half-eaten. She caught a glimpse of the disc between the towers of the infamous Cabrini high-rises an hour ago. She feels it, now, in the back of her throat, behind her eyes, on her tongue like a hard, hot stone.
Nine p.m., sometime thereafter - threads of sunset lingering in the west, a storm in the air, tornado warnings and watches crawling across the bottom of the screen on all the local channels - there's a knock at his front door.
[Trent Brumby] It hasn't been the best twenty-four hours, but nor has it been the worst. The night before, even though it had been late by the time she left, he had got up, dressed and left for a good while himself. When he got home he slept, slept by the morning until he rose sometime before noon. He hit the gym. He hit the sauna. It left him aching, even though he was careful not to push himself, and even then it hadn't helped clear his head.
At home, he spent the day cleaning. Unnecessary almost compulsive cleaning that had him ache even more, especially in the back, but made him feel a little better, focused perhaps. Now, at least, he didn't have some burning rage in him that made him want to lash out at everything. Maybe it was still there but it was controlled now, locked up and felt distant. His house smells like cleaners, not the overpowering sort of bleaches, but he uses the more natural products he can, sugar soaps, vinegar some lavenders and that sort of thing.
Dinner he cooks, too. Some roast beef and vegetables that has plenty left over. The aroma of it still permeates the apartment when she knocks on the door at nine pm. To his credit he's no longer pacing. He's been sitting on the sofa, legs up, remote in hand and paying little attention to what he's eyes are actually watching. The knock at the door has him look over for a long moment, his heart rate pick up and some knot tightening inside.
Tossing the remote to the side, he gets up, aware of how muscles protest and how tired his body is, and walks over to the door to open it. He stands there in a pair of jeans and a t.shirt, nothing special. Bare foot, hair combed but thickening towards another haircut, and cleanly shaven, he meets her gaze with a small nod. "You still have your key?"
[Kora] There's a certain heat clinging to her skin. Her hair - pulled back from her features and piled on the back of her neck in a haphazard if rather savage twist - is damp at the temples and darker for it, the fine strands thickened by the humidity outside. She stood still on his threshold, all contained, waiting, the inherent animal energy inside her compressed into her core, but she was not looking at the door.
When he opens the door, he has this view: her profile, which is dominated not by the curve of her mouth but by the two sharp lines of her brow and jaw, the slope of her nose, and the heavy twist of her hair at the back of her head, balanced. Whereever she was for the last day and a half, she's changed her clothing. Look: a pale-orange, boat-neck t-shirt with a satin seam, and newer jeans. Easily overlooked, the laundry bag hanging from her right hand.
The door opens, and she looks back. The gesture is sharp, as if it were carved and sanded and abraded to just that point: like a well cared for blade. The animal alertness liminal in her eyes and posture in that moment eases when he meets her eyes with his pale gaze, directly. It does not abate, though.
"I do." Her voice is quiet enough that he would have to strain to hear it were they even half-way across the room. Her eyes drop from his eyes to his mouth to his torso. He can draw a direct line from the healed over wounds still limiting him to her eyes, if he had the trick of triangulation. "I want you to invite me in."
She hasn't crossed the threshold, yet. She's still standing on the other side of the doorframe, one hand in her left hip pocket, the other curled beside her right thigh, the drawstring rope of the laundry bag wrapped around and arond her right hand.
[Trent Brumby] His breath inhales then exhales in a slow, controlled way, trying not to sigh. Stepping aside, one hand on the door still, he gestures with his other. "Come in, please, Kora." He managed to even make it somewhat polite, though it's easy to see that he wasn't too happy to have to actually invite her into his apartment. Not that he didn't want her there, just that she needed to feel invited in. Apparently he has got to the end of his patience, or had the other night and still hasn't recovered that back.
Waiting for her to come in, he offered out his hand when she did, to take the laundry bag from her. It's something he'd do often enough when she turned up with laundry. Just like he cooks dinner for her when he knows she's coming and most of the time cooks more then for himself anyway and stores it in the fridge. Today is no different.
She can see inside that its cleaner. Not that it's ever messy really, but he's gone over things like dusted, polished things down, arranged movies in the cabinet that might have been out of line back into proper places, watered plants, scrubbed the bathroom and toilets, changed sheets and opened windows. Although its all the same, its all just cleaner. Even though he's showered, she can probably pick up the smells from him too. He doesn't use cleaning gloves or anything like that. He's a man.
[Kora] "Thank you," she replies, deliberately stepping over the threshold, past him into the small foyer. Her shoulders are straight and narrow; her spine is straight. She doesn't slouch, never cheats her height, and does not do so now as she slides by him, her eyes cutting up to meet his as he supresses the sigh at the end of his breath.
The wolf inside her is a sharp, errant presence tonight: evident in the guarded, unwelcome courtesy of her knock on his door, in the incipient tension in her spine, which is half-way between hungry and wary, animal want and animal caution, knitted up together in a raveling tangle made brighter inside her by the presence of a hungry moon somewhere beyond the confines of his apartment or the building in which it is situated. Somewhere out there, high above the city, behind the storm clouds that send electric little currants through the air, making everything seem charged.
She can smell the cleaning fluids, this close to him. On his skin, in the grooves of his fingers, in his pores. On the floors and the furniture, the close-scrubbed gleam of his day's obsessive work. He can see her looking over the apartment, her features still, her jaw set, her dark eyes flickering from dining room table to couch to coffee table, everything in neat rows, now. Nothing out of place. Everything nearly new.
He holds out his hand for her laundry bag. It is half-full; less than that. She lifts it up, releasing the drawstring and letting it unravel into his hand. Then she grasps his hand, the line twist between their palms, and steps into him, reaching for the back of his head with her left hand, pulling him down to meet her mouth, as her body rises to meet his.
There is a half-second's hesitation. It flickers across her eyes like a stutter step, like some old fashioned Nickelodeon movie, the illusion of movement in the strobe-like effect. She kisses him once, if he does not turn away. Deep and hungry and driving, not stopping to breathe, not once.
She kisses him until she has to stop because her lungs are aching, breathless. Then, just like that she lets him go, steps past him into the apartment, contained again, her hands in her pockets, leaving him to take the laundry bag, to close the door behind her. To -
- she doesn't know what. She's not walking, she's prowling past. Her hands in her pockets do nothing to contain her.
[Trent Brumby] The door closes quietly clicking automatically locked. He's walking in after her, but pauses to take that bag from her. She has something else in mind and he looks up from the bag to meet her eyes when her hand grips around hers. Taller, his head is slightly bowed as it was to look at her, and now she tilts her head up towards his. He can read the anxiety in her, in the way there's no smiles between them, how the tension is thicker with her wolf, her Rage, and how she's keeping to herself.
While his own gaze is harder to read now, guarded as it is, and his mouth isn't offer any smiles, her kiss gets a reaction from him. He doesn't pull away. He lets his head be drawn down, the hair under her touch freshly washed, soft because of it and thick between the webs of her fingers. Once he opens his mouth to her, she's demanding of him and he gives. Gripping her waist, he pulls her in against him, held in to his firm body so he can feel the line of her, the softness and the heat.
Then she pulls away, making him breathe heavier, leaving him with her bag of laundry as she stands with hands in pockets and looks around. Gathering himself, he walks past her, lifting free hand to rub his thumb under his lip and over his chin, as he heads towards the laundry. "I've got dinner," he tells her as he's leaving the room, "if you're hungry."
How perfectly domestic he is.
[Kora] "Cool," she replies, to his offer of dinner. The words don't seem right; she doesn't like them. She doesn't like the way they fit in her mouth. She doesn't have any others, though. Not ones she knows to say. "I am hungry." He knows that, well. His mouth might just be bruised from the force of her kiss.
The laundry bag is light, swings easily from his hands. Even when she's still, she doesn't seem contained. She's standing at the joint in the L of his soft, behind it, looking out the windows as he passes her. Or, perhaps, looking at their sketchy reflections in the dark glass, the city beyond all shadowed, sunset falling to darkness, the storm clouds occluding the sky. It is cooler in here, and so clean and the rooms feel crisp - like the snap of something freshly laundered.
"It smells good," he's past her, now. She calls out down the hallway. The change in the texture of her voice suggests she's turned from the windows to watch him from behind, to watch him walk, as if he were a new-made thing. There's something - predatory there, too. Inside, underneath - that contained watchfulness he saw from the moment he opened the door. " - you were busy today, yeah?"
Her voice is raised to follow him to the washing machine. Her things need a good soak and a good scrub and a good, hot wash. The thighs of the jeans she's brought him to wash are dark with blood. The t-shirt is stiff with some nameless fluid. There are a handful of other things, ordinary, bloodless.
[Trent Brumby] "I'll just put these to soak," meaning - he'll be out in a second to dish her up something to eat. Oh, he knew her hunger well, both of them. She always seemed to favour one over the other though and he's worn his mouth bruised from it on more then several occasions.
His walk is strong and steady. If he's aching, it's not readily apparent. Maybe later when he's rolling up from the sofa or the bed, those sorts of movements slow him down, makes him hesitate. He's cautious then. But walking down the hall of his own home, he's comfortable, even if his spine is straight and solid. His ass is nice in jeans, better then slacks, jeans gives it more attention. Even these loose ones on his legs that almost hang from his hips. Trent can wear slacks and shirts or t.shirts and jeans and become the professional or be the bad boy. He's got that sort of look and build.
It's always the same, her laundry. He rinses them off, scrubs on some soap, sets them to soak in a small amount of water then rinses off his hands. This only takes him a short period of time before he's walking back out, hands briefly dried on a hand towel he keeps by the freshly scrubbed laundry, and begins towards her and the kitchen beyond. "Yeah, I've been busy," he tells her without going into the details. She freaks if he's doing anything more then cooking dinner, he's not going to outright confess of his routine, not today.
[Kora] They fall into the familiar rhythms of routine. Her laundry, his hands. His dinner. Her mouth. Her arms are hanging at her side when he returns from the washing machine, and she has that sense of movemet about her tonight, even when she's still, lounging like a predator against the frame of his couch. While he was walking away from her, her gaze lingered on him, this sort of feral objectification of the hard lines; the strong shoulders, the distinct line of his spine, the way his torso tapers to his waist, the cut of his obliques evident through the t-shirt from behind.
He is walking back, and the look is different: more contained, somehow - held back under her skin. She watches his feet on the floorboards, the weight and swing of his stride, then lifts her eyes to his face. When he is close enough to touch,she reaches out for him, stopping him with a touch, her hands on his elbow, on his hip, on his hand.
Her eyes close, and she breathes him in. Her features are still, but the expectant tension in her body is easily read. Breathing out, she opens her eyes, but doesn't look at him, not directly. Not yet. "I'm sorry," she tells him, then. "I don't know what to say."
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