Ornature

[Kora] That week he saw her at the church, brought dinner to the pair of wolves sleeping their way back to health. Every time he came by, she looked better, closer to being whole. Her eyes bright, her skin more luminous - as that healthy beast glow that Garou seem to have returned day by day. Midweek, she was injured again, a deep wound visible on her neck and shoulder, where something had seized her, tried to tear out her throat. The wound was already half-healed over by the time he saw it the following night, the skin raw, shiny and tight, remaking itself at a furious pace, every night she spent sleeping in her wolfskin, curled up with her packmate.

Her packmate to be.

--

The lights are off, when she lets herself in. Just the glow of a nightlight in the hall, between the bathroom and the bedroom. The television is silent, as is the apartment, dark and quiet. Light cuts in through the windows where the blinds are open, amber and orange, the city's reflections cast in deep, strong shadows on the floorboards of his home. The navy couch is empty, though perhaps the cushions are disordered. And so on: the DVD player tells her the hour - the middle of the night, after the clubs have closed, spilling their overheated clientele back into the streets.

She lets herself in, and leaves her key with her passport and her debit card and her cash, what cash she has, on his coffee table, and breathes in the scents lingering in the air. Smoke maybe, alcohol, herbs, his colonge. She breathes in deeply, her eyes half-closed, the bright chill of the air conditioning a welcome counterpoint to the heat that lingers in the streets, still, to the humidity that has been oppressive the last few days, wanting a storm to come and wash it all away.

Somewhere between the front door and the bathroom, she lets down her hair, pulling out the pencil securing it the way a soldier pulls out the pin of a grenade, letting it uncoil down her back.

He's sleeping in his bed. Maybe he wakes up when she climbs over him, the matress depression under her weight at the level of his waist, hips. Maybe he woke up when the front door opened, listened to the water rushing through the pipes in the walls as she brushed her teeth. Maybe he wakes when she - fully clothed, her hair curtaining loose around their heads - bends over him, grasps his jaw with her right hand, balancing her weight with her left, planted on the pillow beside his ear, kisses him awake. He can feel the weight of her boots against the sheets, on either side of his legs.

She tastes like toothpaste, sharp and bright and minty fresh.

[Trent Brumby] He'd been out again. Trent has discovered that being a mate to a Garou is much the same as it was before. Nothing much has changed, except for the fact that he worries for a singular Garou as much as he does for his own family, and that he has wonderful sex. It has not been as fulfilling as he had hoped, but this realization stems from some insecurity that had been slapped in his face one particular night. A misunderstanding, perhaps, but when it had been cleared up he still hasn't found himself any better.

Then he was stabbed. He lost work for weeks. Worried about his depleting bank account. It took him some serious time to get back on the horse, and just this week has found himself some work again. It's not as steady as the last two jobs he was holding, leaving him too much time with his own thoughts, aimless without Kora around. He took up smoking again. He took up drinking and delving back into human society.

It still isn't enough. He had cut certain ties to his life, ones that he now regrets. But all this has never been voiced, discussed or even hinted at. When they had met he had smoked, drank and went out, and now seems to be falling back into that routine.

So, after another night out, he's sleeping in bed. Alcohol is still in his system, but he smells a little cleaner, having showered when he got home and brushed his teeth. He collapsed into the empty bed after, falling into a deep sleep. He begins to rouse at the weight of her on the mattress, but only properly wakens when she's kissing him. A small sound in his throat is that of waking surprise, and an eager delight.

Sliding his arm out from under the pillow, and the other up from the sheet, he'd found her body before he even opened his eyes, which he's struggling with. He doesn't need his eyes open to kiss her back in that slow, sleepy sort of way.

[Kora] The soles of her boots are a heavy counterpoint against his bare legs. He can feel them, where the sheets are drawn tight against his body by the weight of her body as she straddles him, her knees depressing the mattress on either side of his hips. She can still smell the smoke in the room; less in his hand that in the clothes that he discarded, in the sheets in which he sleeps. Even his sleep itself - the slow way he rouses to her touch, her mouth on his mouth and then on his throat, her hands in his hair, and then on his body, until she can look up the hard line of his torso and find his eyes, open, his focus sharpened by arousal, looking down at her.

She's dressed, down to her boots. His hands settle on her hips, his fingers twist through her belt loops, skim underneath the hem of her camisole. He's not, except for the sheet pulled over him, pulled tight against him by her body weight. Her mouth returns to his, and she kisses him deeply, seekingly, until she chases away the last of his sleepiness, drags him into this sort of crisp, waking dream of sex some part of him might easily think nothing more than a vivid fantasy, written out by his half-drunk, sleeping mind. Except for the sharp sensation of her fingers twisting in his hair, the humid scent of her skin against his skin.

"Take my clothes off," she tells him when he's awake enough to open his eyes, to following the movement of her body over his with more than his hands, to wake to her demands. She pulls away from him, climbs off his body and stands at the side of the bed as she offers him first one boot to unlace, and then the other, watching him the whole time. When he reaches for the button of her jeans, well, she tells him, use your mouth.

And so on.

--

She's hungry afterwards, for more than sex. It is still dark outside, and the alcohol is still opening his blood vessels, blooming inside him. His heart is still beating faster, from the work of sex. Her skin, underneath, is pink from exertion. She wants scrambled eggs and bacon, and wears one of his button down shirts over her otherwise naked body as she shadows him in the kitchen, watching him cook. The city is asleep outside, the windows dark, the streets empty. She's drinking a beer, maybe to catch up with him, and her clear dark eyes linger on him as he cooks.

It's a quick meal to prepare, scrambled eggs and bacon. It's everything that she wants, all that fat and protein her body needs to replenish itself after the work of healing.

The beer goes mostly untouched, see. She's watching him, the way he stirs the eggs as they cook, the way he moves. And when he's asking her if she wants the bacon crisp, testing one of the strips as it sizzles in the skillet, she returns, suddenly, almost inartfully, "What's going on, baby?"

The concern wraps itself around her low voice, rich again, familiar and invasive. She touches his ankle with her bare toe as she asks the question, reaching out from where she lounges against the counter, making contact.

[Trent Brumby] Woken, she's demanding of him, and it sharpens his attention even more. For a moment he had hesitated, looking at her with a quiet something under his surface before he had done exactly as she had asked. He took his time unless he told her to hurry up, carefully sliding off boots from the heel after unlacing them, and only using his hands on her jeans after he'd used his teeth to unbutton her jeans, kneeling down on the ground before her. And she can see, quite clearly, just how much he likes this.

He craves it, and when she gives it to him, he feels much more satisfied. Even when she tells him she's hungry, she doesn't even need to tell him to make the food. After asking what she had wanted he had got up, obediently, and pulled on a pair of boxers before walking into the kitchen. There he had washed up his hands, splashed some water on his face and got to work.

Eggs where whisked, seasoned, thrown in with a few quickly chopped spring onions and tomato, unless she protested. The bacon was laid in a separate pan and both were watched with him hovering nearby, tongs and cooking spatula at hand. He had a glass of water off to the side with a few ice cubes in it, from which he occasionally sipped from. Her plate was already on the counter, waiting to be filled with food, and he had gone about this in an orderly, relaxed manner. His mind had been a little distant in this, probably thinking back on the moments before, maybe imagining others.

So when she asks him that question, pale eyes shoot over towards him with a raise of his brows. "I'm sorry?" A look over her, the way she's leaning, and how she's looking at him makes him still. It draws his spine a little straighter. "I uh, just having some issues finding some decent work. I don't want to go back into the security industry." Had told her he wouldn't and was keeping his word. "It drives me crazy without anything to do."

[Kora] "That's all?" Her dark eyes trace the familiar line of his body, the hard muscles flanking his spine as he stands both straighter and taller. Her voice is quiet, but not soft. There's an edge underneath that she cannot quiet extinguish. The way her rage intermingles with her concern for him, overlays it casting it into sharper brights and deeper shadows.

She's loose, mussed hair spilling around her shoulders, half-naked as he is, bare thigh sliding underneath the tail of his shirt, the shadow of her small breasts just evident where the V of the shirt opens against her skin. Her bare foot rises from his ankle to the swell of his calf, and her gaze drops from his shoulders and spine to watch the faint, affectionate caress. There's this sort of - waking frustration under her skin; that she startled him out of his humming sort of day dream as he cooked, as he hovered over the skillets, finishing her meal. That she doesn't know what to ask him, that she doesn't know how to reknit anything that's gone frayed, or strange between them.

Instead, she's quiet a moment, quiet as she watches him fill her plate with food, lifting her beer and taking another swallow she does not quite want, not precisely, not now. "I mean, I get that. Yeah? I've been - "

Here she pauses again, swallowing back whatever she meant to say briefly. The overhead light in the kitchen makes a halo of her pale hair, and scatters shifting shadows around the tiles. Her shadow dances with his, merges where her toe touches his calf, then resolves itself as her foot drops away. "I can tell a dozen stories about the deaths of heroes, but I don't know how to talk about this. I just - want to make sure that that's what this is."

There's this sort of gesture she makes, encompassing the kitchen, the quiet, dark living room beyond. His apartment, which is hers because he is hers. The city beyond. "That we're okay. That you - " she pauses, swallows hard, and doesn't give voice to the rest of it, underneath.

[Trent Brumby] The food is arranged on her plate, not just thrown into two separate piles. He takes the fork and knife in his hand, picking up the plate to carry it over towards her. His gaze is serious, like his expression, pulling him away from whatever thoughts he had been having earlier. Focused on her, he offers the plate, standing near where she leans against the counter, with her fondling foot now on the floor.

"Kora, we're fine." He doesn't know what she was struggling to say and doesn't push for it. It's easier that way. That she can't even question him or get to the bottom of what's happening, seems okay with him. Trent rarely questions her in return, it's just something quite unheard of. He lost his temper the once, had swallowed it down after, got back on track again. "Do you want some more bacon?"

The skillets were still on the stove top, but the flames were off. She knows his routine. Once the meals are on plates he rinses out the pots and pans and sets them off to the side, stacked to be washed later. For being a bachelor he's quite orderly. Not obsessive compulsively, but he had a routine to life.

[Kora] He tells her that they're fine, and her mouth tightens, briefly. Her curving mouth goes just flat and she lifts her chin in that unstudied way so that her dark eyes catch the light and gleam with the animal surety that limns her every step. He saw her as a wolf for the first time a handful of days ago, in the cool shadows of an abandoned church, slender and inhuman: alien. He saw her as a wolf for the first time, but he always sees th wolf in her in these moments, when the light shifts and she makes some gesture born in one of her other forms.

Then she accepts the plate he offers her, and she's a woman again, leaning in to catch her lover in a passing kiss as she stands close, relying on the physical contact, the sense of his body close to his, the way he gives way to her - the way his mouth opens and his body shifts, minutely, to accommodate her own as she holds the plate just side, as if he might read some thing more in his mouth and his body than she can glean from his words.

"It looks good," she tells him, breathing in through her nose. Breathing him in through her nose, her forehead pressed briefly against his own, her body close. "Brilliant, really. Come sit and eat with me, yeah? Watch me eat."

Then, with a tug on the waistband of his boxers, she grabs both her plate and her beer, and pads barefoot out through the kitchen, into the living room, to eat on the couch rather than at his dining table.

[Trent Brumby] She looks at him in thatway and he stands under it, looking at her in return in his quiet way. He doesn't give anything else to her, other then a look that isn't challenging her dominance over him. Watching her, he waits for her to say something more. But she doesn't, instead she backs off and takes the plate from him.

Before he can step away and deal with dishes, she leans in with a kiss to his mouth, staying in close. There's nothing to read in there either, other then an affection he has for her, especially in the way her mouth can make him catch on fire. In this case threatening to reignite it from earlier, still vivid and fresh in the memory of his body as well as his mind.

His eyes are closed when their brows are together. Small moments, like these, where she shows this tenderness, he wants to tell her: Don't go out again. But of course such notions are ridiculous, and she's telling him to come and watch her eat, demanding with her fingers in his boxers, the elastic snapping dully back against his trim waist after she lets it go.

Grabbing his water, he follows her out and towards the couch. He'd deal with the dishes later, but for then he settles down on the couch with her, resting his arm across the couch, both ways. The tv is off, there's no sound but the traffic, and any other movement from other apartments in the complex. "You want me to turn the television on?"

[Kora] "No," she replies, quietly when he offers her the television. "I want to hear you breathe."

The room is still dark, just the light from the kitchen and the light from the windows, and the sound of the building all around him, like a living thing they inhabit, however briefly. Some body in which they are subdividing cells locked in a self-sufficient little organelle. At this hour, on warm nights like these when the city is quiet and she's whole, healthy, and his close, the marks of her hands and her mouth lingering on his body, visible if just in the half-light, it is easy enough to imagine that the world has rolled itself up and moved away, leaving them marooned - if only briefly - in the cool dark, alone.

She's sitting on the edge of the couch when he joins her, her bare feet on the edge of the coffee table, the curve of her bare thighs visible where his shirt falls away as a cool, pale shape in the darkness. There are her dark eyes, lingering watchful on him as he follows in her wake and sits close to her, close enough that she can fold her herself so easily into the space he leaves her as he sits back, flanking him, balancing her plate carefully in her right hand as she tucks her feet up onto the couch.

There's smalltalk, the crunch of bacon as she tucks a slice into her mouth after a forkfull of eggs, and so on. She eats with the gusto usually found in teenage boys, applies herself to her food with single minded thorougness.

Halfway through the plate, the edge is off her hunger; and she slows, eating more carefully, lingering and savoring the simple meal he prepared with such care. "Roman, Sparrow and I," she tells him, " - are going to go questing soon. Looking for a totem, yeah?" In the darkness, he can see her eyes, all shadow, watchful and absolutely direct.

[Trent Brumby] Sitting, he had reached a hand out to rest it on her leg, caressing it slowly with his fingers. There had been a time when he wouldn't even do this without some sort of invitation from her, but has since learned that she likes these casual touches to be on his own accord. He loves the softness of her skin and the way it's taut over well used tone. Back and forth his hand trails, an inch this way, and back again.

Smalltalk he can do. They trade some small things; his work again, a good band he heard, how the bird feeders are going, and how he's going to go to the Brotherhood and start getting that Working Bee organized. This he seems quite focused on since they spoke about it.

He doesn't mind the way she eats, used to it by now, especially when she's in the middle of healing from something or had a rough night. Since meeting her his pantry, fridge and freezer has been packed with more foods, catering to her needs and her tastes.

"How long will you be gone?" he asks of her, meeting her gaze.

[Kora] The meal's finished, a last bite of egg and bacon, and she leans forward to put the plate down on the coffee table, taking up her mostly untouched beer from the coaster instead, drinking deep. The bottle glistens in her hand, slick with condensation. Her yes are half closed, her throat working as she swallows. She watches him as he discusses his work; the band. The Working Bee. One moment she's simply hungry, eating like the monster she is underneath her skin, sitting close to him and the movement of his hand ove her leg, quiet, simple.

The next, for reasons she cannot name, her heart is in her throat.

He cansee that, the way it turns over inside her, shift like unstable stone, gleaming-bright.

"It won't be long," she replies, quiet. "A night, maybe two. Time gets strange in the umbra, though. It coul be days, or weeks. It could be a half-minute. I'm coming back, though." She's turning to him, then, her hands on his thighs, the butt of the beer bottle in her right hand, cool through the fabric of his boxers. Cold where it rests against his skin below the hem. Her eyes are dark, direct on him the whole time.

[Trent Brumby] That sudden shift in her, has his brows draw in. He see's it, senses it, and was about to ask, but she already explains herself and what the possible problem is. Trent doesn't need to reach for her either, she's already coming towards him, presumably, for comfort.

Shifting his hand, he rubs it up along the outside of her arm, his other still resting down on the couch by his side, loose and comfortable. He meets her gaze, dark against pale. There's something he should be saying, but her words are only just catching up to him. She's going into the Umbra where sometimes Garou disappear for longer then they intend to. She promises she's coming back with the tone of her voice, instead of direct words. And he finds that there's nothing he can say to this. This, too, is the reality of living with a Garou.

Lifting his other hand, he brushes it over her hair, curls it around her ear, shifting his gaze to watch his fingers move along the outside of it. Then look back to her. "Be careful."

[Kora] Their eyes meet; pale and dark, dark and pale. Her own are clear, too, reflecting the light spilling into the living room from the kitchen, gleaming with light, painted with it, that shifting sheen that reminds him of the animal inside her, under her skin. Not the beast, the monster, but the wolf at the core of both. The heel of her beer bottle digs into his thigh as she pushes herself upright, shiftings her knees underneath her body, pushes herself upright, and then kneels over him, looking down on him.

His hand is in her hair, pushing it back behind her ear. The other half of the mass curtains around him as she leans forward, into him, her arms circling his neck as she presses a deep, lingering kiss onto his forehead.

Then the bridge of his nose, then the apex of his cheekbones, then his half-closed eye, pressing her tongue to his flesh so that she can taste the salt and ash on his skin.

He tells her to be careful.
She promises no such thing.

Instead, she repeats, quietly, I'll miss you over the paper-thin skin of his eyelid, over the corner, not the fullness of his mouth as if she were Odysseus taking leave of Penelope rather than a Garou who is like as not to be home the night following.

She kisses his throat, lingers on his pulse, pushes her fingers through his dark half-curls to drag his head back and further expose his throat. Twice, he feels her teeth against his exposed throat.

She kisses him everywhere, except for his mouth, and when she returns to his mouth, her own simply - lingers over his, without kissing him.

"Take me to bed," she tells him, quietly. The beer bottle is still loosely held in her hand, cool against his back now, his trapezius, His shirt rustles, shifts, gapes over her body as she reaches around him. "Now."