[Kora] Night comes early to Chicago in late December. By 4:30 p.m., the sun has dipped below the horizon. Twilight lasts no more than half an hour on clear evenings, and those are rare in any case. Most nights - there's just gray bleeding into black - a gray winter's sky, a gray wintry horizon growing prematurely dark, the sudden flare of distant headlights against the fastness that seems oppressive even inside the bubble of the city's constant glow.
Dirty snow is already mounded in massive piles in the city's gutters and parking lots, and every other day brings a new dusting of snow or glittering threadlets of ice on the sidewalks, the screens, the car windows.
The solstice feels like any ordinary Tuesday night, except that his clients are caught up in the hubub of the coming Christian holidays. There are trees (fake) in the foyers and garlands (plastic) swagged from mantlepieces, the scent of baking cookies (burning candlewax) filling the homes in which he works now. More often than not someone other than the homeowner is about too - children on winter break, college kids home for the holidays, taking advantage of all the extra time to catch up on video games and laundry and invariably when he leaves, as the homeowner is writing out a check or counting out cash to pay his bill, she asks him, - any plans for the holidays? or - think we'll have a white Christmas because this is what counts as small talk as Christmas approaches.
It's after dark - the shortest day, the longest night, when people who lived in darker times needed to set a tree ablaze to remind the sun to return to the sky - when he comes home. Traffic's heavy as people rush to finish holiday shopping. He's just home from work - some late job, some holiday emergency - or maybe the grocery store. Eric's sitting on the couch, watching SportsCenter as some minor colleges compete in some minor bowl game.
The Get of Fenris kinsman is dressed up; or rather, as dressed up as he ever gets, in jeans and a collared shirt, and when Trent walks in he looks back and up to verify that it is indeed Trent who just walked in the door.
"Hey man - " says Eric, the ambient light gleaming off his recently obtained glass eye as he meets Trent's eyes. Or rather: meets Trent's eye. " - your girlfriend's here. Taking a shower or something. And me," he's already standing up, the gesture made awkward by his lack of a right arm. Still, he manages. "I've got a date. Don't wait up."
[Trent Brumby] There's small talk. He's good at that. It's why the older ladies often call him over some other tradesman to come and fix the smallest of things. He also doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and he had such good manners. Throughout the holiday season he's come home with cookies, small gifts, and today was a basket with baked goods; mince pies, small pudding, some shortbread cut into stars and some chocolate truffles.
Stepping inside, he's dying to get the layers of clothing off. He's going to need a shower, as usual, but he really wants a stiff drink. Traffic at this time of the year drives him insane. Not only the extra cars on the road, but the people that are too much in a rush make the roads dangerous, especially in icy conditions. It leaves him stressed with a few more wrinkles and the promise of salt and pepper hair before his time.
Juggling the basket and his keys, he manages to kick off his shoes at the door, nudging them with his socked toes until they lined up more neatly against the wall. Glancing over to Eric, he's stripping out of his scarf and jacket, hanging them up while the other talks. Brows raise at the mention of Kora showering, a little glint of something in his eyes, and then it all vanishes in a higher lift of surprise at the mention of a date. "You have a date? Seriously? Way to go." He didn't see that one coming.
In work pants, socks, and a polo under his dark sweater, he carries this basket of cellophane wrapped home cooked goodies and moves further into the apartment to drop his keys onto the coffee table. "Good luck with it." He doesn't say much more on the matter, having given a nod of his chin and a slow curling smile.
[Kora] "It's Maggie," Eric explains, and his raw features contrive to look nearly sheepish. The Fenrir man has lost some muscle mass since his injuries and is not as bluff and broad as he once was, after a three-month retreat into drinking and this debilitating nightmare of depression, he's starting to turn it around. " - from my support group." The PTSD support group at the Veteran's Administration he attends every Thursday night, punctual as clockwork. Other vets back from Iraq or Afghanistan, finding their way back to themselves from the horrors of war. Eric mumbles his way through the end of the explanation, then rubs his left hand over his closely cropped hair, still kept short with military discipline.
"Yeah man," the kinsman finishes, pausing at the door to pull on an old army-issue wool coat and poke a rough finger underneath the cellophane wrapped around Trent's Christmas treats, checking out the goods. He's got the right arm pinned against the side of the coat so it won't flop about, and it gives him a dignified aura, like an old general coming home from war.
Eric meets Trent's eyes and tips his head toward the hallway leading back toward the bathroom and bedrooms. Cracks the edge of a smile that Trent has rarely seen, and even then only recently as indicates the general direction of the aforementioned girlfriend. "You too."
Then Eric pushes open the front door, double checks that his keys are wallet are in his pockets, and heads out.
--
The pipes groan in the walls as some valve swing home and the water shuts off. The faintest hint of steam curls out from underneath the closed door, a warm, damp tendril in the otherwise dry air of the heated apartment. Then the curl becomes a thread, and the thread becomes a ribbon as the scent of steam billows outward ahead of the girlfriend.
Kora's hair is damp, darker for it, and tangled down her back. She's rubbing at it with one of his organic cotton towels in the earth tones he favors, bare feet nearly soundless on the floorboards.
"Did I hear - " she's calling out as she's walking down the hallway, but that changes from a query to the already-gone Eric to a low, pleased, " - baby!" as she rounds a corner, so obviously pregnant now.
She's not waddling yet; and her winter clothes still go a fair way toward concealing her condition when she's shrouded in thermals and hoodies and heavy winter coats and the like, but dressed as she is now - in cotton flannel pajama bottoms with an elastic waist sufficiently stretchy to accommate the distinct curve of her stomach and a t-shirt now straining across her breasts and stomach, leaving a narrow line of taut, swelling belly visible between the bottom hem of the t-shirt and the elastic waistband of the pajama bottoms - well, it's impossible to ignore.
[Trent Brumby] "I'll leave some for you," he tells Eric, in relation to the goods now sitting on the coffee table. Trent wasn't planning on having a feast but sharing them around. Old ladies always good cook, that's the rule of the world. They had years of practice and came from a time when Black Furies really hated society because women couldn't do anything but cook and keep the house in order.
Smiling long before he sees her, he's taking out his wallet from the back of his navy blue work pants, setting it on the coffee table along with his phone and other odds and ends. When she comes out of the hall, she can see him looking her way, standing up from where he just dropped down the last of his belongings, stretching his spine back out. His eyes gaze over her, from head to toe and back again, increasing the smile to warm up his eyes and crinkle his features.
"You're beautiful." They're not just words. They're ones with feeling, unable to be kept back, not that he attempted to. He's honest and open with them.
Approaching her, he ignores that he needs to have his own shower, and reaches his hands to slide them across the sides of her hips. His heart is beating quicker. The sight of her does it. She's whole, healthy, and she's in a good mood. The fact that she's carrying their child, getting more plump with life, is just an added bonus. Every time she comes home and every day that belly continues to grow, makes him relieved. "Mmm, and smell good too." He leaned down and stole a small kiss from her.
[Kora] When he pulls out his change, his wallet, his keys, he sees a few of her things scattered about. Her own phone, her worn old passport with a handful of bills tucked away inside it - mostly ones and fives, with a single ten hidden away inside of them. There's a small bag dropped beside the sectional, easily overlooked, and her boots to trip over just behind the elbow in the couch, not put away neatly - just tumbled together, stripped off as she went in search of the shower.
"I smell like you do when you're clean," she teases, her naturally low voice made a throaty murmur by dry air and - more - by his sudden proximity. Her arms are lifted, fingers working lazily at the towel as his hands graze her hips, and she lifts her mouth to his as he bends to steal a small kiss, then drops the towel and reaches out to grasp him by the back of the neck, to pull him down closer to her, so that her nose can skin the hard line of his rough jaw and she can inhale the scent of his sweat, the hard day's work that has written itself into his pores. The grease and salt on his skin, the exertion in close spaces, the cold winter in his hair. "And you smell like you do when you're not. I like it, baby. Makes me - "
Her eyes are closed, her mouth open, her breath warm against his throat. Her hands tighten on the back of his neck, pull him back and up, fractionally, enough that the angle of her view changes, and she can see his Adam's apple moving as he swallows, enough that she can lean in and close her teeth - so gently - over his throat, in an instinctive, utterly animal display of dominance that makes her want to devour him.
They're close enough that he can feel the new, growing curve of her stomach against his body, another living, swelling proof that somehow they might beat the odds stacked against them. That she's been careful, and they've been lucky, that there's a future between them.
[Trent Brumby] Unconsciously obedient, he had dropped back down again at the insistence of her hands, and lifted his chin enough to give a better line to his throat. Even after a day he needs to shave, trim back the hairs that push over the lines he grooms his facial hair into each day, keeping it a little longer in the winter but still neat. For all his blood, his former Tribe, he's very physical presence is all masculine, facial hair, strong eyebrows, broad shoulders and rough hands.
But his eyes half close at this display of dominance. Her sharp and blunt teeth gentle on his throat, where the skin is warm and tastes like salt and grime. His breathing deepens with the press of his hands, the heel of his palm sloping down the curve of her back and fingers sweep out towards her hips again, not going lower but coming back up along her sides.
"Have you eaten yet?" He tries to keep his mind focused on the important things, and not let himself get carried away with the sweet persuasion of her willful hands and teasing mouth. The soft swell of her belly is a reminder, drawing the attention of his hands round to it, for thumbs to stroke along the sides without getting between them.
[Kora] "No," she says back to him; and " - I'm starving," as if that were a physical possibility when he's here to feed her, because she can hardly be expected to hunt the city streets, to bring down prey as her ancestors did once, and eat it raw, still steaming in the cold winter air.
There's a slice of her smile underneath his jaw, like a razor, her dark eyes bright - not with challenge, specifically, or want, just with his presence, the private space between them, the way his thumbs skim the shape of her stomach. She plants a last, gentle kiss on the bristle of wiry hair under his jaw where her teeth had scraped, and then draws back, enough that he can trace the line of skin visible on her stomach, no longer self-conscious about the pregnancy - not here alone with him, as she must have been the first time he noticed the thickening of her waist, spanned it with his hands, noticed, measured, knew what it meant - quickening inside her.
"Seriously starving," she clarifies, her eyes on his hands now, breathing slowly, her voice still somehow savage. Winter is Fenris' season, and the moon's full. Her good mood is bright and sure and warm as a flame; and nearly as dangerous. "Feed me." A glance up, her dark eyes touching his face, her expression stilling, the curve of her mouth around the word, " - us, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] "Starving, hmm?" A flicker of amusement doesn't doubt that she's hungry, but still manages a little jest, liking the way she draws out and emphasizes the word. Opening his eyes, he glances down to her shorter height, aware of how her presence fills up the room more then his physical stature can.
He follows her gaze down to his hands when she's pulled enough apart from him to do so. Thumbs become palms, gently rubbing over the swell up towards her ribs and back down again. Soft, circular motions to soothe, to caress the life that's part him and her.
Then they lift, skip past the growing and new weight of her breasts without touching or even thinking of, and gently cup her face. He leans in slow this time, almost as if asking permission, and kisses her mouth with a softness that is also found in his lips, but comes unexpectedly if one were to just consider the roughness of the rest of his features; no few times has he been treated like some criminal or thug on looks alone. "I will wash quickly and make you a feast," he tells the corner of her mouth and kisses her cheek.
Drawing away, his eyes are smiling at her, the gray in them soft and light. "In the meantime," his thumbs stroke her cheekbones and hands reluctantly drop away, "Mrs. Nelson made me some treats. Go and help yourself." They should keep her busy while he scrubs quickly in the shower and under his nails. He already knows she will start picking at the food in the kitchen as he prepares, it's that part of cooking he enjoys.
[Kora] There's that minute moment when he leans in close before kissing her, as if asking permission, when she makes a low sound in the back of her throat, not need - just want, a quiet goad before he leans closer and kisses her.
Even she does not expect the softness of his mouth, the light in his eyes as he smiles, the gentle way he rubs his palms over her stomach, the soothing, circular motions so tender they make her ache in ways she cannot name, so precisely calibrated she wants to - wants to -
- well, the look she gives him as he pulls away, encourages her to help herself to the treats he's brought home (gorge herself, a wolf in winter and therefore always a glutton) is so immediately sharp and hungry that he might imagine her letting loose her instincts, following him into the bathroom and doing more than scrubbing the grease from underneath his nails, the dried sweat from his skin, the drywall dust from his hair.
"Hurry, yeah? You don't want me to die from hunger." - she returns, low voiced, watching him with this exquisite balance of quiet affection and animal intensity darkening her eyes. "Mrs. Nelson's treats won't hold me forever."
Then she lets him go, though she stops him with an "Oh, wait - ! " before he's disappeared into the bathroom. She's already snagged a brownie from the tray of goodies, and chocolate crumbs are on her fingers, at the corner of her mouth, but in the other hand she has a small bag dangling its rope handles. "It's Yule, you know?" she tells him with a faint shrug, pushing the back into his hand. "Solstice present. Time to charm the sun back into the sky."
Later she'll wake him in the wee hours of the morning, drag him out into the predawn darkness to watch the sun rise over the gray mist of the frozen river and lake. Now, she just hands him a recycled bag with a pair of small wrapped parcels in it and then disappears back up the hallway to indulge in more sweets.
[Kora] Both presents have been wrapped in the comics from the Sunday paper. One is a soft little parcel. When he opens it, he finds a pair of black silk boxers in Christmas colors that say NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE in repeated patterns over the fabric. What he finds if he holds it too long, though, is that his body heat turns NICE into NAUGHTY whereever his skin touches the fabric.
The second present is just a long glass tube. When opened: well, it's a cigar, the sort men give out when celebrating a birth. Written on the glass - "It's a ?????!!!" - in both blue and pink lettering.
to Trent Brumby
[Trent Brumby] That way she looks at him has him laughing low in the back of his throat, and its every bit bedroom and male, pleased with himself that he can make her body do that, and her eyes shine dangerous and hungry. Her remark about dying from hunger has him laughing again, infusing the other with a good deal of humour as he's walking down the hallway, already peeling off the layered sweater over the polo as one, bringing it up and over his back.
It's swinging back down to his side when he turns back towards her in the hall. A dark line of hair creeps around his navel and down into the navy pants, beneath it is a paler version of what summer glow he can get. He's not purely Caucasian in the sense that she is, he's got darker blood in his genetics, and it shows here and in the midnight black of his hair. There's tone muscles too, a wee bit leaner over the winter for all the work he's doing and the stolen, small snacks rather then meals that he fits between. It takes away that soft layer of fat, cutting muscles out into sharper angles. That will change again when he's able to drift back into his regular routine.
He doesn't have to ask 'what's this?' only takes the bag from her with a curious lift of his brows and a question in his eyes. She's already walking away and he admires her, distracted by the promise treats won't hold her hunger at bay, which sends him chuckling and setting the bag inside the bedroom and hurrying for his shower.
Later he will open the gifts. But that's later.
[which is another scene!]
Dirty snow is already mounded in massive piles in the city's gutters and parking lots, and every other day brings a new dusting of snow or glittering threadlets of ice on the sidewalks, the screens, the car windows.
The solstice feels like any ordinary Tuesday night, except that his clients are caught up in the hubub of the coming Christian holidays. There are trees (fake) in the foyers and garlands (plastic) swagged from mantlepieces, the scent of baking cookies (burning candlewax) filling the homes in which he works now. More often than not someone other than the homeowner is about too - children on winter break, college kids home for the holidays, taking advantage of all the extra time to catch up on video games and laundry and invariably when he leaves, as the homeowner is writing out a check or counting out cash to pay his bill, she asks him, - any plans for the holidays? or - think we'll have a white Christmas because this is what counts as small talk as Christmas approaches.
It's after dark - the shortest day, the longest night, when people who lived in darker times needed to set a tree ablaze to remind the sun to return to the sky - when he comes home. Traffic's heavy as people rush to finish holiday shopping. He's just home from work - some late job, some holiday emergency - or maybe the grocery store. Eric's sitting on the couch, watching SportsCenter as some minor colleges compete in some minor bowl game.
The Get of Fenris kinsman is dressed up; or rather, as dressed up as he ever gets, in jeans and a collared shirt, and when Trent walks in he looks back and up to verify that it is indeed Trent who just walked in the door.
"Hey man - " says Eric, the ambient light gleaming off his recently obtained glass eye as he meets Trent's eyes. Or rather: meets Trent's eye. " - your girlfriend's here. Taking a shower or something. And me," he's already standing up, the gesture made awkward by his lack of a right arm. Still, he manages. "I've got a date. Don't wait up."
[Trent Brumby] There's small talk. He's good at that. It's why the older ladies often call him over some other tradesman to come and fix the smallest of things. He also doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and he had such good manners. Throughout the holiday season he's come home with cookies, small gifts, and today was a basket with baked goods; mince pies, small pudding, some shortbread cut into stars and some chocolate truffles.
Stepping inside, he's dying to get the layers of clothing off. He's going to need a shower, as usual, but he really wants a stiff drink. Traffic at this time of the year drives him insane. Not only the extra cars on the road, but the people that are too much in a rush make the roads dangerous, especially in icy conditions. It leaves him stressed with a few more wrinkles and the promise of salt and pepper hair before his time.
Juggling the basket and his keys, he manages to kick off his shoes at the door, nudging them with his socked toes until they lined up more neatly against the wall. Glancing over to Eric, he's stripping out of his scarf and jacket, hanging them up while the other talks. Brows raise at the mention of Kora showering, a little glint of something in his eyes, and then it all vanishes in a higher lift of surprise at the mention of a date. "You have a date? Seriously? Way to go." He didn't see that one coming.
In work pants, socks, and a polo under his dark sweater, he carries this basket of cellophane wrapped home cooked goodies and moves further into the apartment to drop his keys onto the coffee table. "Good luck with it." He doesn't say much more on the matter, having given a nod of his chin and a slow curling smile.
[Kora] "It's Maggie," Eric explains, and his raw features contrive to look nearly sheepish. The Fenrir man has lost some muscle mass since his injuries and is not as bluff and broad as he once was, after a three-month retreat into drinking and this debilitating nightmare of depression, he's starting to turn it around. " - from my support group." The PTSD support group at the Veteran's Administration he attends every Thursday night, punctual as clockwork. Other vets back from Iraq or Afghanistan, finding their way back to themselves from the horrors of war. Eric mumbles his way through the end of the explanation, then rubs his left hand over his closely cropped hair, still kept short with military discipline.
"Yeah man," the kinsman finishes, pausing at the door to pull on an old army-issue wool coat and poke a rough finger underneath the cellophane wrapped around Trent's Christmas treats, checking out the goods. He's got the right arm pinned against the side of the coat so it won't flop about, and it gives him a dignified aura, like an old general coming home from war.
Eric meets Trent's eyes and tips his head toward the hallway leading back toward the bathroom and bedrooms. Cracks the edge of a smile that Trent has rarely seen, and even then only recently as indicates the general direction of the aforementioned girlfriend. "You too."
Then Eric pushes open the front door, double checks that his keys are wallet are in his pockets, and heads out.
--
The pipes groan in the walls as some valve swing home and the water shuts off. The faintest hint of steam curls out from underneath the closed door, a warm, damp tendril in the otherwise dry air of the heated apartment. Then the curl becomes a thread, and the thread becomes a ribbon as the scent of steam billows outward ahead of the girlfriend.
Kora's hair is damp, darker for it, and tangled down her back. She's rubbing at it with one of his organic cotton towels in the earth tones he favors, bare feet nearly soundless on the floorboards.
"Did I hear - " she's calling out as she's walking down the hallway, but that changes from a query to the already-gone Eric to a low, pleased, " - baby!" as she rounds a corner, so obviously pregnant now.
She's not waddling yet; and her winter clothes still go a fair way toward concealing her condition when she's shrouded in thermals and hoodies and heavy winter coats and the like, but dressed as she is now - in cotton flannel pajama bottoms with an elastic waist sufficiently stretchy to accommate the distinct curve of her stomach and a t-shirt now straining across her breasts and stomach, leaving a narrow line of taut, swelling belly visible between the bottom hem of the t-shirt and the elastic waistband of the pajama bottoms - well, it's impossible to ignore.
[Trent Brumby] "I'll leave some for you," he tells Eric, in relation to the goods now sitting on the coffee table. Trent wasn't planning on having a feast but sharing them around. Old ladies always good cook, that's the rule of the world. They had years of practice and came from a time when Black Furies really hated society because women couldn't do anything but cook and keep the house in order.
Smiling long before he sees her, he's taking out his wallet from the back of his navy blue work pants, setting it on the coffee table along with his phone and other odds and ends. When she comes out of the hall, she can see him looking her way, standing up from where he just dropped down the last of his belongings, stretching his spine back out. His eyes gaze over her, from head to toe and back again, increasing the smile to warm up his eyes and crinkle his features.
"You're beautiful." They're not just words. They're ones with feeling, unable to be kept back, not that he attempted to. He's honest and open with them.
Approaching her, he ignores that he needs to have his own shower, and reaches his hands to slide them across the sides of her hips. His heart is beating quicker. The sight of her does it. She's whole, healthy, and she's in a good mood. The fact that she's carrying their child, getting more plump with life, is just an added bonus. Every time she comes home and every day that belly continues to grow, makes him relieved. "Mmm, and smell good too." He leaned down and stole a small kiss from her.
[Kora] When he pulls out his change, his wallet, his keys, he sees a few of her things scattered about. Her own phone, her worn old passport with a handful of bills tucked away inside it - mostly ones and fives, with a single ten hidden away inside of them. There's a small bag dropped beside the sectional, easily overlooked, and her boots to trip over just behind the elbow in the couch, not put away neatly - just tumbled together, stripped off as she went in search of the shower.
"I smell like you do when you're clean," she teases, her naturally low voice made a throaty murmur by dry air and - more - by his sudden proximity. Her arms are lifted, fingers working lazily at the towel as his hands graze her hips, and she lifts her mouth to his as he bends to steal a small kiss, then drops the towel and reaches out to grasp him by the back of the neck, to pull him down closer to her, so that her nose can skin the hard line of his rough jaw and she can inhale the scent of his sweat, the hard day's work that has written itself into his pores. The grease and salt on his skin, the exertion in close spaces, the cold winter in his hair. "And you smell like you do when you're not. I like it, baby. Makes me - "
Her eyes are closed, her mouth open, her breath warm against his throat. Her hands tighten on the back of his neck, pull him back and up, fractionally, enough that the angle of her view changes, and she can see his Adam's apple moving as he swallows, enough that she can lean in and close her teeth - so gently - over his throat, in an instinctive, utterly animal display of dominance that makes her want to devour him.
They're close enough that he can feel the new, growing curve of her stomach against his body, another living, swelling proof that somehow they might beat the odds stacked against them. That she's been careful, and they've been lucky, that there's a future between them.
[Trent Brumby] Unconsciously obedient, he had dropped back down again at the insistence of her hands, and lifted his chin enough to give a better line to his throat. Even after a day he needs to shave, trim back the hairs that push over the lines he grooms his facial hair into each day, keeping it a little longer in the winter but still neat. For all his blood, his former Tribe, he's very physical presence is all masculine, facial hair, strong eyebrows, broad shoulders and rough hands.
But his eyes half close at this display of dominance. Her sharp and blunt teeth gentle on his throat, where the skin is warm and tastes like salt and grime. His breathing deepens with the press of his hands, the heel of his palm sloping down the curve of her back and fingers sweep out towards her hips again, not going lower but coming back up along her sides.
"Have you eaten yet?" He tries to keep his mind focused on the important things, and not let himself get carried away with the sweet persuasion of her willful hands and teasing mouth. The soft swell of her belly is a reminder, drawing the attention of his hands round to it, for thumbs to stroke along the sides without getting between them.
[Kora] "No," she says back to him; and " - I'm starving," as if that were a physical possibility when he's here to feed her, because she can hardly be expected to hunt the city streets, to bring down prey as her ancestors did once, and eat it raw, still steaming in the cold winter air.
There's a slice of her smile underneath his jaw, like a razor, her dark eyes bright - not with challenge, specifically, or want, just with his presence, the private space between them, the way his thumbs skim the shape of her stomach. She plants a last, gentle kiss on the bristle of wiry hair under his jaw where her teeth had scraped, and then draws back, enough that he can trace the line of skin visible on her stomach, no longer self-conscious about the pregnancy - not here alone with him, as she must have been the first time he noticed the thickening of her waist, spanned it with his hands, noticed, measured, knew what it meant - quickening inside her.
"Seriously starving," she clarifies, her eyes on his hands now, breathing slowly, her voice still somehow savage. Winter is Fenris' season, and the moon's full. Her good mood is bright and sure and warm as a flame; and nearly as dangerous. "Feed me." A glance up, her dark eyes touching his face, her expression stilling, the curve of her mouth around the word, " - us, yeah?"
[Trent Brumby] "Starving, hmm?" A flicker of amusement doesn't doubt that she's hungry, but still manages a little jest, liking the way she draws out and emphasizes the word. Opening his eyes, he glances down to her shorter height, aware of how her presence fills up the room more then his physical stature can.
He follows her gaze down to his hands when she's pulled enough apart from him to do so. Thumbs become palms, gently rubbing over the swell up towards her ribs and back down again. Soft, circular motions to soothe, to caress the life that's part him and her.
Then they lift, skip past the growing and new weight of her breasts without touching or even thinking of, and gently cup her face. He leans in slow this time, almost as if asking permission, and kisses her mouth with a softness that is also found in his lips, but comes unexpectedly if one were to just consider the roughness of the rest of his features; no few times has he been treated like some criminal or thug on looks alone. "I will wash quickly and make you a feast," he tells the corner of her mouth and kisses her cheek.
Drawing away, his eyes are smiling at her, the gray in them soft and light. "In the meantime," his thumbs stroke her cheekbones and hands reluctantly drop away, "Mrs. Nelson made me some treats. Go and help yourself." They should keep her busy while he scrubs quickly in the shower and under his nails. He already knows she will start picking at the food in the kitchen as he prepares, it's that part of cooking he enjoys.
[Kora] There's that minute moment when he leans in close before kissing her, as if asking permission, when she makes a low sound in the back of her throat, not need - just want, a quiet goad before he leans closer and kisses her.
Even she does not expect the softness of his mouth, the light in his eyes as he smiles, the gentle way he rubs his palms over her stomach, the soothing, circular motions so tender they make her ache in ways she cannot name, so precisely calibrated she wants to - wants to -
- well, the look she gives him as he pulls away, encourages her to help herself to the treats he's brought home (gorge herself, a wolf in winter and therefore always a glutton) is so immediately sharp and hungry that he might imagine her letting loose her instincts, following him into the bathroom and doing more than scrubbing the grease from underneath his nails, the dried sweat from his skin, the drywall dust from his hair.
"Hurry, yeah? You don't want me to die from hunger." - she returns, low voiced, watching him with this exquisite balance of quiet affection and animal intensity darkening her eyes. "Mrs. Nelson's treats won't hold me forever."
Then she lets him go, though she stops him with an "Oh, wait - ! " before he's disappeared into the bathroom. She's already snagged a brownie from the tray of goodies, and chocolate crumbs are on her fingers, at the corner of her mouth, but in the other hand she has a small bag dangling its rope handles. "It's Yule, you know?" she tells him with a faint shrug, pushing the back into his hand. "Solstice present. Time to charm the sun back into the sky."
Later she'll wake him in the wee hours of the morning, drag him out into the predawn darkness to watch the sun rise over the gray mist of the frozen river and lake. Now, she just hands him a recycled bag with a pair of small wrapped parcels in it and then disappears back up the hallway to indulge in more sweets.
[Kora] Both presents have been wrapped in the comics from the Sunday paper. One is a soft little parcel. When he opens it, he finds a pair of black silk boxers in Christmas colors that say NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE in repeated patterns over the fabric. What he finds if he holds it too long, though, is that his body heat turns NICE into NAUGHTY whereever his skin touches the fabric.
The second present is just a long glass tube. When opened: well, it's a cigar, the sort men give out when celebrating a birth. Written on the glass - "It's a ?????!!!" - in both blue and pink lettering.
to Trent Brumby
[Trent Brumby] That way she looks at him has him laughing low in the back of his throat, and its every bit bedroom and male, pleased with himself that he can make her body do that, and her eyes shine dangerous and hungry. Her remark about dying from hunger has him laughing again, infusing the other with a good deal of humour as he's walking down the hallway, already peeling off the layered sweater over the polo as one, bringing it up and over his back.
It's swinging back down to his side when he turns back towards her in the hall. A dark line of hair creeps around his navel and down into the navy pants, beneath it is a paler version of what summer glow he can get. He's not purely Caucasian in the sense that she is, he's got darker blood in his genetics, and it shows here and in the midnight black of his hair. There's tone muscles too, a wee bit leaner over the winter for all the work he's doing and the stolen, small snacks rather then meals that he fits between. It takes away that soft layer of fat, cutting muscles out into sharper angles. That will change again when he's able to drift back into his regular routine.
He doesn't have to ask 'what's this?' only takes the bag from her with a curious lift of his brows and a question in his eyes. She's already walking away and he admires her, distracted by the promise treats won't hold her hunger at bay, which sends him chuckling and setting the bag inside the bedroom and hurrying for his shower.
Later he will open the gifts. But that's later.
[which is another scene!]
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