Ornature

[Kora] "He's dead." He doesn't want to know any more, and she can read the tension in his shoulders, in the line of his back, the way the big planes of muscle bunch around his spine. She tells him anyway, her voice low and steady. He has seen her in the throes of a grief so raw it seemed as if her body could not contain the swell of it; there's none of that here, now - none of that in her voice, quiet against the rigid line of his shoulders.

There's none of that here, now when he stops the rhythm of the domestic work, drying his big hands on the towel he has tucked into his jeans. Her eyes are on him when he turns around. She watches him with something more than hunger; she watches him to see him move. To see him fill space, to see him bend the waves of light. The fluorescent pot lights in the ceiling reflect as pinpoint bright circles in the dark surface of her eyes when he turns back to her - her expression still, sober, serious until he reaches for her, sliding his hands up her thighs. She curves cool fingers over his larger hands as he caresses her, familiar and intimate - warm - but her touch falls away as he moves his hand across her stomach.

She draws in a breath, sharp, one she doesn't realize she's holding until she has to expel it to answer the question he asks her so regularly. Sometimes she tells him she's fine. Sometimes she complains that she's hungry, that she's always hungry. "Strange," is what she says tonight, exhaling that spent breath after. Her eyes are quick on his face as his are on her stomach, radiating the warmth of that smile.

There's a note of odd wonder to her voice. As if his hands on her stomach, that radiant glow about him, were all somehow disconnected from the self she is underneath. "And - " a moment's hesitation, a narrow frown across her brow. " - protective, yeah? Like: I want to rip the head off anyone who comes to close. Anyone who - " there's a spike of something underneath, raw and fierce. "I just - " she pauses, still and briefly hesitant before she finishes, confessing. "I don't know what comes next."

[Trent Brumby] He's dead. Trent can't say that he's glad for it, he's not. His anger might have been great for what Joe had done to Kora, less so about himself, but it wasn't enough to want another dead. Trent doesn't have that sort of hatred for another person. Garou die quick enough without such awful wishes. The topic is left alone. He tells her only a quiet: "I'm sorry." And leaves it at that.

The talk about their baby is much brighter, even if she's telling him of her concerns. His hands roam her stomach, around and around, soft and broad across the growing firmness. "It's natural you feel that way. Not so strange." Smiling as he says it, he leans in and brushes a kiss to her cheek and rests his brow to hers, looking down to where his hands cup her stomach and admire it with a brush of his thumbs across straining fabric.

"It will be okay." It's a promise he has to believe in.

Lifting his head away from hers, his pale eyes train on her. "Do you know when you're due?" He's been dying to ask it. He hasn't pestered her about any sort of prenatal care or anything of the sort. Only made sure she had whatever she needed, from food to clothes, to moral support. As it had been said to him, Kora is a Garou. She will do what she can to make sure this life reaches the world. Trent had used a lot of faith, daily, to believe that and pray to Gods.

[Kora] Kora makes a noise in the back of her throat, not dismissive, not thoughtful, just something swallowed down, held inside - which is closer to anger than to grief. When Trent says, I'm sorry, she favors him with the edge of a lilting half-smile, almost human it its clarity - which could so easily be misread and vulnerability. There's something bracing about it, direct and wordless and her dark eyes linger on his face as he leans in and rests his forehead against hers.

The specific planes of his face lose definition, this close. She has the impression the pale discs of his irises, bisected by the bridge of his noise, all impressionistic - a blur of light and color. He kisses her cheek, and she moves her mouth across his jaw, a scrape of teeth over skin and stubble before she closes her mouth again, nuzzling quietly, warmly until he draws away, pale eyes finding her own.

The kitchen is quiet; the faint burble of water draining from the skin. The overhead light is sharp, fluorescent, one of those eco-friendly coiled lights, and it casts them in stark blue-white spotlight and darker shadows. She never touches her stomach, Kora. He does not find her on the couch, book in hand, unconsciously caressing the firm swell of her pregnancy as he does so openly now - but his hands are warm even through the t-shirt and thermal, and she settles her own hands over his without impeding the independent movement of his thumbs over the curve of her stomach.

"I have no idea," she confesses quietly, darting a glance upward to meet his eyes. "It's been - four moons? Five since you started stocking the bathroom with pregnancy tests?" The last remark is accompanied by a subtle twist of her mouth. "And pre-natal vitamins, yeah? I think - I think it's starting to move, though. It feels like mothwings against a light fixture on the porch in the summer time. You know know how they swan around, mistaking the porch light for the moon or something?"

[Trent Brumby] He's smiling. It's something that grows and grows, making his eyes shine brighter. He holds back a laugh. "Is that how it feels?" He will never know, but she paints such a vivid picture, that he can only imagine. There is little doubt that she's a galliard. "Like moths in your stomach?" His hands roam over her stomach again and are tempted to slide higher, but he moves them around her ribs instead, sliding them up her back and across her shoulder blades. It brings him a step closer, until he rests against her knees or she allows him to slide between them.

"I can't wait until I can feel it," he says on the childs movements. At least this gives him an idea on how far along she is. He can read up and figure out when mothers are expected to feel the stirrings of their baby in their belly, and see where their child is in their developmental stage. While Kora may not pet over her stomach, Trent does it plenty for the both of them. He has become much more affectionate in the way he touches her. Before it had been primarily sexual, and while he still has aspects of that, now it's done with far more care.

[Kora] "I love it when you smile like that," she tells him low voiced as she opens her knees to him. " - you light up, baby. Like you've got your own personal spotlight, yeah? On stage somewhere."

Her perch on the counter has her looking down at him, hair loose from its twist at the back of her neck like a halo, the finer gradations of color washed out by the too-bright light. It shines in his hair too, giving the short black half-curls a sheen of blue. "I haven't - " she pauses, her generous mouth curling into a faint, liminal sort of frown as she considers the question she wants to ask him. " - I haven't asked if this is going to be a strain. Financially. I have this debit card, right? My family puts in a little bit every month - "

But there's little else she can offer. She doesn't work. She can't hold a job. She has no idea yet how her rage will affect an infant. " - so we have that, too."

When he steps closer, his body against her knees, she opens her thighs to draw him further in, then locks her left foot under her right ankle behind his waist, lifting her arms to settle them over his shoulders. She straightens through the spine when his hands find the broad, strong muscles flanking her upper back, and he can feel the supple coordination of movement beneath his hands.

The space between them is bright and intimate, the sharp scent of his dish soap in the air, the apartment still behind them, around them. It's dark outside, and she is both bright and spent from her hunt. When steps into the space between her thighs, her focus on him narrows, to his eyes, then his mouth, then the shadow his nose makes across his cheek, a trick of position and light.

Her voice drops a fifth, in pitch, settles low in her throat as she reaches up to push her fingers through his hair. "Erik's sleeping, yeah?" Quiet, as her gaze lifts upwards, to watch her pale fingers slip through his black hair. "We have the run of the place?"

[Trent Brumby] "I do, do I?" It's not that he likes the idea of his own spotlight, rather that he enjoys that she finds him appealing like that. Her compliment warms him. He likes that he can make her feel like that without it being intentional. She notices the smallest details and make them sound rich and vibrant. He likes to hear about the way the world is seen by her eyes.

Tucking his head in again, he had went to kiss her along her neck, more then happy to take that compliment and shower his own thoughts back across her skin. But her hands slide through his hair and he tilts his head back instead, allowing his eyes to close towards slits and he watches her along his own nose. His adams apple is prominent with the angle of his neck, voice coming out a little more strained because of it. "We're fine financially."

Pushing against her hands, he rights his chin again and looks at her more directly. "I've been speaking with Erik, and we're working out some schedule between us. Money we're fine with. I don't want to put our child in any sort of day care. But I'll find arrangements with some Kinfolk while I'm working part time." He pauses, not quite hesitates, but looks for something in her. "You don't mind if I do that, do you? Or if Erik lives with us?" Him really, since she doesn't live with them. But that's not a subject he is going to approach himself, leaving her to tell him how it will be between them when the baby comes. As it is he dislikes her living at the church.

"Yeah, we do." He blinks a little, glancing past her and towards the door, and back again. The change of subject had thrown him a little, making him shift gears again.

[Kora] "I don't want strangers looking after our child," Kora tells Trent, immediately, thoughtlessly - a fierce note undergirding her response that feels - feral, territorial. Her eyes narrow, and her body tenses at the idea of it, all through the hips and the spine. Her hands twist in his hair, "I don't - " The rest of the thought is swallowed, held back. She completes it, though, affirming his preference. "No fucking day care."

She finishes the small speech with a sharp exhalation, not having known until that moment just how confident she was on the point.

If they lived in a traditional Sept, there would be fewer problems. Family to watch the child when he works, family to stand by him when she dies. Some elderly woman to be Nana, and whole background cast to hold him up. Instead, there's Trent. There's Erik. There's -

Kora breathes out here, aware of all this on some level, for all that she doesn't say it, cannot quite articulate the difficult task her mate is going to be saddled with when she gives birth; and so she breathes out, and breathes him in, the scent of his skin, and the blood underneath a familiar intoxicant.

"I don't mind," she tells him at last. "I don't mind Erik living with you, or watching our child. There are other kin, too. If Adrian comes back. I dunno, maybe he'd finished his coursework. Or Rain - the girl who brought the booties, yeah? - she's kin. Kin to Roman's tribe, and she's been staying at the church.

"And yes," she finishes, quietly. Full circle, as she loosens her hands from his hair and settles her arms around his neck, her elbows on his shoulders, her hands laced loosely behind his neck. She's leaning forward, her legs hooked behind his waist giving her a sort of ballast such that she can sit closer to him. " - you do. I like the way your eyes crinkle when you smile like that. And the way they shine."

[Trent Brumby] Hands soothe down her back when she tightens, growing with the tension at the idea of their child in strangers hands. Trent won't let that happen anyway, had said as much. He doesn't mind the twist of her hand in his hair. In fact, his breath had came in a little sharper through the nose, and while not audible, had still wrought a reaction from him. It passes, this awareness of her strength and what it does for him, as they settle into conversation about a possible future.

"Rain? She's staying with you at the church?" His voice gets a little lilt as he tries to hide both surprise and disapproval. "Maybe I should try and talk to her. If she's planning on staying in town, and is part of the pack," whether through Roman or otherwise, "maybe I can get a bigger place. A house? We could work something out."

His grip slides down her back, along to where her backside curves to meet the counter, and he prepares to lift her from it and against himself. As long as she doesn't protest, he secures her around his waist, and carries her from the kitchen. The lounge is still disorganized. The hired trestle table is folded up and the couches have yet to be moved, but the extra chairs are stacked against a wall. He passes over to the couch against the far wall. "I like that you like it," he tells her, brows hopping with a little grin.

[Kora] "Yeah," she affirms, her mouth curved, her eyes gleaming quietly as he hands begin to slide down her back. "Linus decided I needed some girls around," she explains, dark eyes drifting over his face with a closely bound attention that would be tender were she simply human. She isn't; and he knows it. " - so he invited Rain and this other Garou back. Rain came.

"She's good for Roman." Kora concludes quietly, leaning into him as his hands find the small of her back before sliding underneath her body, and lifting her into him. "I think he's got a crush."

Her smile deepens, and she tightens her thighs around his waist, her hands around his shoulders, bending forward to touch her forehead to his before she glides her mouth in an aimless pattern down over his hairline, to brush her warm mouth over his ear. Her teeth find the hollow beneath, scrape gently against his skin as he carries her from the bright kitchen into the living room, the furniture still opened up, pushed out to the walls.

Three nights from now, or four, she'll be roused from his bed at four a.m. by the low, insistent voice of her packmate in the back of her head. With news of another death, some sinborn Garou no one will longer remember beyond the borders of the Caern. She'll leave him wrapped in the warm cocoon of his sheets, sleeping on his back, one hand cushioning his dark head. She'll dress in the dark, pulling on her underwear, the jeans, a new thermal better suited to her pregnant frame, feeling blindly for her close in the warm, dark space that smells so sharply of him, and she'll leave quietly, carrying her boots to the foyer so as not to wake him with the heavy tread of her Doc Marten's on his dark floorboards.

He'll go to work, an almost ordinary man, hinged to the world of monsters by accident of blood and memory, and she'll burn a corpse, watch the ashs float up to the sighing seam of a twilight sky.

Now though - look. "More than like," she murmurs into his ear, lifting her chin so that the bridge of her nose glides along the line of his cheekbone. Her shoulders rises as she inhales through the nose, her mouth still against his neck before she bites him - with that firm, constant pressure that says, mine.

[Trent Brumby] Her bite directs him back away from the couch. Never mind staying in the living room. He'd made a sound at the way she bites him there, where the muscles and tendons are coiled tight and firm with strength. "Geez Kora." He can practically hear his own quickened pulse through his mouth when he had opened it to speak. She made him struggle with his focus. That bite making him acutely aware of her legs around his waist and how she was pressed to the front of his hips.

He takes her into the bedroom. Instead of laying her out, he sits on the edge of the bed, with enough room for her legs behind him. She's sat on his lap and his hands roam under her top, finding room for his fingers to glide against her flesh. From that moment he's hers, however she wanted him. It's clear he doesn't want to talk. She may have hunted already that night, but she still seems wired from it, and interested in reminding him of who and what she was.

Trent would be spent. A long night grown longer. His apartment would stay a mess until morning, and he'd deal with it then. For that night, he'd curl around her, or pull her to him, and sleep that sort that comes with exhaustion. Entertaining Garou and Kinfolk for Yule in his small apartment had been more tiring then having a Garou work his body. He had swallowed down any discomfort from the night, and played perfect host. It had strained on his patience at times and nerves at others. But he got through it, and the way he ended the night was more then welcoming, leaving him to sleep with deep, even breathing to face the world anew. Although he went to sleep with his mate at his side, he it was never a guarantee that she would still be there come morn, and unfortunately, that's just the way it was.