[Trent Brumby] Date night.
It was dinner over a few candles, with Erik kicked out for the night. One of Kora's favourite meals had been cooked. Even if it was pizza he'd slave over making some dough and get all the good trimmings. Dinner didn't have to be glazed duck and some steamed vegetables. It was ladies choice. The table had been set out only for them, complete with cutlery, napkins, wine glasses and water.
They spent time over dinner with some music in the background. He'd listened to her talk about her day, sitting across from her in a nice pair of slacks and a buttoned down, short sleeved shirt. He didn't have any shoes on, but that was about the norm for Trent in his own home. Clean shaven left his jaw at stronger, firmer angles and left his face strangely baby smooth. He smelled of cologne from a shower he took hours ago, applied lightly with a sensitive nose in mind.
When he comes back from taking dishes into the kitchen, with dessert on the menu after food has settled, he stops by Kora at her chair and reaches for her hand. With a smile he pulls her up from where she's sitting, drawing her to a small, opened space between the dining table and the lounge suite. His other hand comes to rest on her side, and his grasp on her hand shifts as he brings her in for a slow dance. "Don't protest," he tells her, voice low and eyes shining brighter.
The track playing is not U2. It's some thing called Careless by Fred Eaglesmith. Something a little sultry.
[Kora] The night is cold and gray, with one of those strange, icy mists drifting in off the lake, softening the city's edges. That's all outside, out in the dark expanse of the suborned city, in the deep shadows of the office buildings, the pockets between the brownstones and the condominiums. There's a certain brightness to winter; the crisp effect of the cold meant she was pink-nosed and pink-cheeked when she walked into his apartment, stomping her boots to shed ice and snow and salt crystals in the foyer, going through the familiar ritual of stripping off all her winter gear.
Then she was pinker nosed, and pinker-cheeked moments later, when she walked out of the foyer, her socks quiet on the hardwood, hair dissheveled from the hood and scarf, her jeans damp from the snow.
A brief, bright-eyed look at him from across the room - still, direct - cares chased away by the intimacy of the setting and his presence in the room. Let me go change, she said, and slid past him to the bedroom to do just that.
--
Don't protest. His eyes shine, bright with both inner and reflected light. There's this awkward moment where she's smiling, her curving mouth wide, her lips pressed together, shaking her head like she's going to do just that. It isn't no - the shaking of her head - just a sort of quiet marvel as he pulls her up and they step into the open space by the dining table. She slides in close; dancing's not natural to her but this sort of closeness is, slipping her free arm around his shoulder as he starts to move.
She looks away from him, past their reflections in the dark windows to his stereo, but keeps her cheek close to his clean-shaven jaw, her mouth close to his ear. There's a low thread of laughter raveling through her voice.
"That took some planning," she says; he cannot see her smile, not precisely, but he can hear it in the deep tones of her voice, the way the lower register shines like amber in the light. Admiration, too. This is rather more quiet. "Dinner was lovely," she murmurs, as they move, her predator's grace subsumed into the drifting pattern of the slow dance, the firm curve of her stomach obvious between them. "Thank you."
[Trent Brumby] His hand splays across her lower back, just firm enough to lend his support and guide her. The truth is, Trent hasn't a clue how to dance. But moving to some music this slow isn't that hard, and he has enough athleticism to get by without stumbling around. He likes that there's a belly between them, protected by their two bodies, and although he's aware of it as they dance, he doesn't make it his focus.
Laughing quietly, he agrees. "It did. Not that much. But Erik gave me a little lip at the idea of doing this for the Jarl of the Get of Fenris." Which, apparently, Trent didn't care about. He knew her before that. Knew her as Kora before he ever did as a Get of Fenris and that perception has never changed. Not even when she told him her new, very visual deed name with the earning of her second rank.
Turning his head then, he leaves a kiss to her cheek, close by her ear. "You're welcome, Kora." This is offered with an easy warmth. He had done it as much for himself as he had her. The former Black Fury Kinfolk enjoys doing things for her, from dropping off ice-cream in the middle of the night, to cooking dinners, and washing her hair in a bath. His devotion does not make him any less a man or anything else. He does it willingly and without any ulterior motive. As time has gone by, what had started as chemistry and ownership is developing very nicely into a tender love.
Shifting his grip, he turns her around and slides his arm around her hip, drawing her back to his chest. He's taller. It leaves him looking down over her shoulder, and turns that slow dance romanticism to something more fitting to the music. Matching his body to hers, it becomes a little more intimate and sexual. She can feel him smiling, where his mouth and cheek brushes along her ear and hair.
[Kora] Kora makes some low noise of appreciation in the back of her throat. It's half made of laughter; half made of something deeper, more rooted, more aware. "I can see that - " she returns, her voice leavened by that hint of laughter, when he's explaining Eric's objections. She can see the wounded kinsman setting out his objections. The dignity of the title; the ferocity of the tribe. Neither fits her, not precisely - until she forced her way into the clothing of it; until she found a way to make them all fit. " - as long as you don't do it for every Jarl who comes along."
Her eyes are half-closed; she's keenly aware of his closeness. The intimacy of the room, the moment that he's carved out for them. Nevermind the city; the tribe. The dark, blooded things that await. His hand is firm, warm splayed across the small of her back, and his jaw his smooth against her cheek. He pulls her closer and she reaches up, settling both of her arms in a loose circle around his neck. The tips of her long fingers find their way into his hair, the edges of the curls he keeps closely cropped.
Her grip tightens in his hair. It always does when they're this close. Like there is something about him that she wants to grab and hold onto hard enough that she can keep it with her even when she's gone. When he's about his ordinary day and she's about hers, no matter how different their worlds.
That sense of his smile deepens hers; the closeness of their bodies sharpens it. "You know I love you," she tells him, her voice thrumming through his skin. Vibrating against the folds of his ear, resonant, deep in her chest, lazy but spiked with a certain hunger.
The candlelight flickers in the draft of the heat, sending sharp edges of shadows moving around them, highlighting the edge of his jaw, the line of his cheekbone. Her eyes close, then. Her nose is close to the junction of his jaw and throat - where his pulse moves, where the scent of his skin and blood mingled with the familiar notes of his cologne - wood and musk, some essential, exotic oil - is sharpest.
She inhales him once, sharply. Slides her chin down to rest it against his shoulder, so she can feel the way his moves both through him and with him, and opens her mouth, scrapes her eyeteeth over his pulse.
[Trent Brumby] Its better than anything else, those words. The way she tugs at him, demands him closer, as if she'd eat him. That's never real fear for Trent, she has never lost her temper with him. He's never given her a reason to. But he likes that she would devour him in plenty of other ways. Her territorial obsession is sometimes something he wants to poke at, just to feel her fingers pushing that tug into something a little more vicious. But not tonight. It never gets pushed that far, especially not now with her belly full of baby.
His pulse quickens, throbs harder with her teeth across it, and it makes his breath rush out in a silent sigh. There's a physical reaction through his body at that smallest thing. His splayed hands begin a slow roam along her back, her body. He still touches her with that little bit of strength behind his hands, to feel and appreciate muscle and bone and curves.
"I know," he tells her, and struggles through that sudden awakening of desire. She can play him like a fiddle now days. "And you know there's nobody but you, don't you?" That earlier joke about the Jarl had made him want to put that to rest.
[Kora] Their bodies no longer fit together quite as precisely as they had; it's only because the forming child's between them now. There's something about that feeling that awakens something raw and substernal in Kora, deeper than desire in the interstitial spaces between their bodies.
The world he makes for her here, the world she makes for him is wholly different than the world outside. It's a strange picture that folds into focus only at close range. You know - he says and she almost laughs with it, this compressive sort of laughter that is ebullient, contained inside her ribcage, between her diaphragm and her lungs.
(The truth is: there's some part of her that wonders what happens after. She sees Drew - in a bar, standing close, flirting with a new Garou. Inviting a stranger into her house over the edge of the picket fence, no matter the prickle of warning that rage pulls up along her skin. Joe, somewhere in the ground - and she feels this strange tickle of indignation on behalf of a dead man, this hollow core of - what next? that she never wholly applies to herself. To him. That's a story she'll never tell him; not consciously. It's not a sorrow she wants him to bear. And yet - just now - )
"I know." - she tells him, with that same sub-sternal confidence. There's resonance there too. It's quiet and depthless, pulled out of someplace deep inside her. Deeper than the wolf that would drive any interlopers to ground. Deeper than the girl whose cold-pink cheeks darkened - faintly - when she say that her lover had lit the candles and set the table. It comes from somewhere in the roots, where the two mingle.
( - it's like that story is unwritten before it can begin. She's here. He's here. That's what matters.)
Her mouth turns against his outstretched throat; he can feel her smile, feel the heat of her breath against his skin. The way the bands of muscle flanking her spine twist and move underneath his callused hand, the sharp points of bone, the articulations of her spine clear through her skin.
She presses her mouth against his pulse again; just to feel the doubled beat of his heart quickening as it moves through his veins. Then she pulls back, just, her mouth moving along his jaw, her cheek against until she's pulled him back into focus - so that she can look into his eyes, a flashing glance, too close at this range for clear focus - and kisses him, a slow, devouring sort of kiss.
[Trent Brumby] He knows nothing of her fears and concerns unless she voices them. Often, she doesn't. Right now, while they're dancing, body to body, mouth to neck, and lips to hair, he can't imagine that his mate is thinking about the times after her death and how he will be.
He's wrapped up in the way her lips feel against his skin and the way her laughter is held in her body, genuine for all that she holds it back, swallowing it down inside of her. He's thinking about the way he can feel her smile, and the way that makes him feel; glad for it and this moment of stolen time in all her bloody chaos.
Before any of his own thoughts are spilled out, she's tasting his neck and along his jaw, until he's looking down in her darker eyes and searching them. Seconds later she's kissing him and everything else falls away. It's her mouth and her body, nothing else. He kisses her with that single minded focus and attention it deserves. It's a struggle not to get carried away with it; he's trying to be romantic. That's when he breaks from her mouth, chuckling quietly and with a good deal of heat.
That's when he tells her his exact thoughts. "I'm trying to be romantic here." But it's not a protest. He's delighted by the way she walks in the door, jumps on him, and demands time in the bedroom. That has never changed either.
[Kora] "Oh you are, are you?" - she throws back to him, a certain brightness to the words. The sort that chases away her unvoiced fears; scatters them like spindrift. He breaks away and she can see the heat in his eyes, half-follows the movement of his mouth - insistent, seeking - an answering spark, a certain brightness in her own eyes, even half-lidded with remnant passion as they are now.
"I like the way you laugh," she tells him, thoughtlessly, feeling the thrum of his quiet chuckle, the way his shoulders move with it, the deep vibrations of sound in his broad chest. They're close enough that he can feel the warmth of her breath against his mouth; but there's a restraint underneath - a sort of leashed awareness of his own struggle for focus.
"Like that." she clarifies, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth; nevermind the bloody world. Nevermind winter, and all her brutal songs. It's just the corner of his mouth, eyes half-closed as she feels the unexpected smoothness of his clean-shaven jaw against her cheek. Savors it. " - when it's quiet like, just for me."
They're hardly moving, now. Just standing close, really - swaying sometimes when the beat reasserts itself underneath the skin; when their hips remember how to move. Still, she gives herself over to it; allows the beat to spin out around them like a raveling thread. Just rests her elbows on his shoulders, her forehead against his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the ridge of his cheekbone and moves with him to beat, testing his resolve only when their mouths get to close, and then only to hear the struggle in his voice, in the back of his throat.
Then, her own breath comes in a bright, sharp exhalation. She holds her breath, a moment after, a note of anticipation, the sharpness touched with expectation bright enough that is has her pulling back from him. That brightness touches the depths of her dark eyes as she looks up at him, pulling back, shaking one of her arms free from where it circles around his shoulders. She's holding his pale gaze, now, not breaking eye contact, sliding her hand over his muscled shoulder, down his arm, following the line of it to where it wraps around her body; her fingers are warm, splayed over his forearm, her thumb a firm pressure. "Give me your hand." It's an order, but a quiet one, and sure.
[Trent Brumby] "I am," he confirms. His smile is all that. All warmth and humour, enjoying the moment.
She follows it up with compliments about his laugh, but it's more then that. The words she uses makes him understand what he means to her, and what this does. It makes that smile stay in place. It's not broad, this smile, just a quietness and appreciation. "It's all for you."
He moves along with her, body meeting hers in that slow motion that is almost devoid of all rhythm now. They might as well not be listening to the background music. Trent isn't. He's following her body, her lead now, even if its his hands that holds onto her. Now, she's sliding her hand down to grip his wrist, pry him free.
Giving his hand over willingly, he's stopped moving his hips and stands tall there, leaned over her somewhat, curiously looking to see what she's going to do with it. His other has rested closer to her hip, at the back of it with his thumb over the curve of her waist. He doesn't ask why. His eyes do.
[Kora] "I never thought I'd find a mate," she's telling him; she's looking down now, and he has a view of the planes of her face; the way her pale skin stretches from the cheekbone to the jaw bone, the hollow between, the sharp definition of her jaw. The human body is a marvelous thing; even up close. These angles, these bones - the healthy shine of the healthy beast she is. Pregnancy makes her seem brighter somehow - projects that substructural vitality back up onto the world.
" - before I came here. Back in Hjaltland. Even after. It just seemed alien," she's telling him, turning his hand in her grip. "You know? I just saw myself in the war; I never saw this. I never imagined it - not once, before you."
She turns his hand over, sets back a half-step so that there's space between for it, and opens up his fingers and settles it over the dome of her stomach - beneath a soft cotton tee, the weave stretched to accommodate the shape of her belly - and moves it, lightly, like a physician moves a stethoscope, looking for the echo of some noise made deep in the body. Like a kid adjusting a television antenna, looking for some signal to come in.
" - wait. There." She tells him, her palm folded firmly over his knuckles, allowing him to read the movement of a fetal kick like braille under her skin.
"Feel that?" she asks him, nearly breathless.
[Trent Brumby] While he listens to her, his eyes are on her face and the way the light captures her loveliness. For all her ferocity, deed names, and position in the bloodiest Garou Tribe, she is lovely. He sees that in her all the time. Perhaps he's blinded by it, and it makes him overlook that Renders Bone had to come from somewhere, and that she is one in the same. He knows that, intellectually. But she's beautiful, especially just now, as she's sliding her hand across the swell of her body and pressing his wide palm into it.
The rest of him has gone utterly still now. His heart thumps quickly, for different reasons now, and he's looking down to her stomach, waiting and subconsciously holding his breath. He feels it alright. It makes him take in another fraction of air, sharp through his nose.
"Was that--" He speaks at the same time she does, and he breaks into a delighted laugh.
All thoughts of romancing has gone immediately out of the window. Trent drops down to his knees before her and keeps his hand in place. His head is turned as if he could actually hear through her skin without his ear pressed to it. His breath his close, and he waits with this glowing anticipation for some other movement under her skin. There are plenty of signs of a healthy, growing baby, with the shape of her body. But he can only be part of it in some abstract, distant way. This is as close as he can get to the baby, their child, tucked somewhere inside her womb.
"Oh. my. Goddess." When he feels it the second time, he looks up at her. His eyes are wide, his face this innocent sort of wonder, mixed with this fierce pride. "I can feel her."
[Kora] This is a different sort of romance; that's all. Changed and deepened. The candles are guttering on the table; the heat from the registers keeps them warm. There's a sort of stillness outside as evening deepens into a quiet, snowbound night. Her moon has passed; it's failing now, drowning slowly into shadow and he's open-mouthed, heart-thumping, laughing.
Was that - he says and she's laughing with it; laughing out loud this time, like she's too full to swallow it when he's virtually bleeding delight. She needn't confirm. He can feel it for himself, but there's something so infectious about the delight telegraphed so clearly through the bright light that shines through his gray eyes that she nods and reaches down, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as she pushes her fingers through the soft strands of his hair, her thumb on his temple, touching him as he touches her.
"Yeah - " she confirms, a sharp, bright exhalation through her nose, moving her thumb in gentle motions over his temple, her fingers pushing through his black hair, just to touch him. "I've felt - " a brief pause, her voice low and raw with emotion she didn't know she had the capacity to feel. " - sometimes when I was lying down. Drifting half-awake, more than the fluttering, yeah? But this is the strongest."
There's the sparest pause, she's leaning down now, meeting his eyes as he kneels and looks up at her.
"Must've known you were here."
[Trent Brumby] He could just soak this up for hours on end, and it's there in the way he's studying her stomach and feeling across it, wanting to feel more and more and more. He wants to lay down and wrap himself around her, listen and talk, and forget about everything that is in the world. This is a great moment. He will remember this for a long while yet. That first time he felt their baby kick.
With Kora leaning down, he looked back up at her, his features are raw in that moment. He's looking at her with something that could be frightening if one isn't prepared for it. It's not just love. It's devotion, certainly, but also possession. He confirms that seconds later in the way he says; "My family." Because that is what this is. No matter where he's come from, or she, that is what they are making together. They are building their own line of heroes, becoming the ones that teach children the way of the war. To love and protect.
She has to know that when she is gone, Trent will mourn her like nobody else. He won't fall apart. Their child, or children, will become his life line. She and they are his life.
It was dinner over a few candles, with Erik kicked out for the night. One of Kora's favourite meals had been cooked. Even if it was pizza he'd slave over making some dough and get all the good trimmings. Dinner didn't have to be glazed duck and some steamed vegetables. It was ladies choice. The table had been set out only for them, complete with cutlery, napkins, wine glasses and water.
They spent time over dinner with some music in the background. He'd listened to her talk about her day, sitting across from her in a nice pair of slacks and a buttoned down, short sleeved shirt. He didn't have any shoes on, but that was about the norm for Trent in his own home. Clean shaven left his jaw at stronger, firmer angles and left his face strangely baby smooth. He smelled of cologne from a shower he took hours ago, applied lightly with a sensitive nose in mind.
When he comes back from taking dishes into the kitchen, with dessert on the menu after food has settled, he stops by Kora at her chair and reaches for her hand. With a smile he pulls her up from where she's sitting, drawing her to a small, opened space between the dining table and the lounge suite. His other hand comes to rest on her side, and his grasp on her hand shifts as he brings her in for a slow dance. "Don't protest," he tells her, voice low and eyes shining brighter.
The track playing is not U2. It's some thing called Careless by Fred Eaglesmith. Something a little sultry.
[Kora] The night is cold and gray, with one of those strange, icy mists drifting in off the lake, softening the city's edges. That's all outside, out in the dark expanse of the suborned city, in the deep shadows of the office buildings, the pockets between the brownstones and the condominiums. There's a certain brightness to winter; the crisp effect of the cold meant she was pink-nosed and pink-cheeked when she walked into his apartment, stomping her boots to shed ice and snow and salt crystals in the foyer, going through the familiar ritual of stripping off all her winter gear.
Then she was pinker nosed, and pinker-cheeked moments later, when she walked out of the foyer, her socks quiet on the hardwood, hair dissheveled from the hood and scarf, her jeans damp from the snow.
A brief, bright-eyed look at him from across the room - still, direct - cares chased away by the intimacy of the setting and his presence in the room. Let me go change, she said, and slid past him to the bedroom to do just that.
--
Don't protest. His eyes shine, bright with both inner and reflected light. There's this awkward moment where she's smiling, her curving mouth wide, her lips pressed together, shaking her head like she's going to do just that. It isn't no - the shaking of her head - just a sort of quiet marvel as he pulls her up and they step into the open space by the dining table. She slides in close; dancing's not natural to her but this sort of closeness is, slipping her free arm around his shoulder as he starts to move.
She looks away from him, past their reflections in the dark windows to his stereo, but keeps her cheek close to his clean-shaven jaw, her mouth close to his ear. There's a low thread of laughter raveling through her voice.
"That took some planning," she says; he cannot see her smile, not precisely, but he can hear it in the deep tones of her voice, the way the lower register shines like amber in the light. Admiration, too. This is rather more quiet. "Dinner was lovely," she murmurs, as they move, her predator's grace subsumed into the drifting pattern of the slow dance, the firm curve of her stomach obvious between them. "Thank you."
[Trent Brumby] His hand splays across her lower back, just firm enough to lend his support and guide her. The truth is, Trent hasn't a clue how to dance. But moving to some music this slow isn't that hard, and he has enough athleticism to get by without stumbling around. He likes that there's a belly between them, protected by their two bodies, and although he's aware of it as they dance, he doesn't make it his focus.
Laughing quietly, he agrees. "It did. Not that much. But Erik gave me a little lip at the idea of doing this for the Jarl of the Get of Fenris." Which, apparently, Trent didn't care about. He knew her before that. Knew her as Kora before he ever did as a Get of Fenris and that perception has never changed. Not even when she told him her new, very visual deed name with the earning of her second rank.
Turning his head then, he leaves a kiss to her cheek, close by her ear. "You're welcome, Kora." This is offered with an easy warmth. He had done it as much for himself as he had her. The former Black Fury Kinfolk enjoys doing things for her, from dropping off ice-cream in the middle of the night, to cooking dinners, and washing her hair in a bath. His devotion does not make him any less a man or anything else. He does it willingly and without any ulterior motive. As time has gone by, what had started as chemistry and ownership is developing very nicely into a tender love.
Shifting his grip, he turns her around and slides his arm around her hip, drawing her back to his chest. He's taller. It leaves him looking down over her shoulder, and turns that slow dance romanticism to something more fitting to the music. Matching his body to hers, it becomes a little more intimate and sexual. She can feel him smiling, where his mouth and cheek brushes along her ear and hair.
[Kora] Kora makes some low noise of appreciation in the back of her throat. It's half made of laughter; half made of something deeper, more rooted, more aware. "I can see that - " she returns, her voice leavened by that hint of laughter, when he's explaining Eric's objections. She can see the wounded kinsman setting out his objections. The dignity of the title; the ferocity of the tribe. Neither fits her, not precisely - until she forced her way into the clothing of it; until she found a way to make them all fit. " - as long as you don't do it for every Jarl who comes along."
Her eyes are half-closed; she's keenly aware of his closeness. The intimacy of the room, the moment that he's carved out for them. Nevermind the city; the tribe. The dark, blooded things that await. His hand is firm, warm splayed across the small of her back, and his jaw his smooth against her cheek. He pulls her closer and she reaches up, settling both of her arms in a loose circle around his neck. The tips of her long fingers find their way into his hair, the edges of the curls he keeps closely cropped.
Her grip tightens in his hair. It always does when they're this close. Like there is something about him that she wants to grab and hold onto hard enough that she can keep it with her even when she's gone. When he's about his ordinary day and she's about hers, no matter how different their worlds.
That sense of his smile deepens hers; the closeness of their bodies sharpens it. "You know I love you," she tells him, her voice thrumming through his skin. Vibrating against the folds of his ear, resonant, deep in her chest, lazy but spiked with a certain hunger.
The candlelight flickers in the draft of the heat, sending sharp edges of shadows moving around them, highlighting the edge of his jaw, the line of his cheekbone. Her eyes close, then. Her nose is close to the junction of his jaw and throat - where his pulse moves, where the scent of his skin and blood mingled with the familiar notes of his cologne - wood and musk, some essential, exotic oil - is sharpest.
She inhales him once, sharply. Slides her chin down to rest it against his shoulder, so she can feel the way his moves both through him and with him, and opens her mouth, scrapes her eyeteeth over his pulse.
[Trent Brumby] Its better than anything else, those words. The way she tugs at him, demands him closer, as if she'd eat him. That's never real fear for Trent, she has never lost her temper with him. He's never given her a reason to. But he likes that she would devour him in plenty of other ways. Her territorial obsession is sometimes something he wants to poke at, just to feel her fingers pushing that tug into something a little more vicious. But not tonight. It never gets pushed that far, especially not now with her belly full of baby.
His pulse quickens, throbs harder with her teeth across it, and it makes his breath rush out in a silent sigh. There's a physical reaction through his body at that smallest thing. His splayed hands begin a slow roam along her back, her body. He still touches her with that little bit of strength behind his hands, to feel and appreciate muscle and bone and curves.
"I know," he tells her, and struggles through that sudden awakening of desire. She can play him like a fiddle now days. "And you know there's nobody but you, don't you?" That earlier joke about the Jarl had made him want to put that to rest.
[Kora] Their bodies no longer fit together quite as precisely as they had; it's only because the forming child's between them now. There's something about that feeling that awakens something raw and substernal in Kora, deeper than desire in the interstitial spaces between their bodies.
The world he makes for her here, the world she makes for him is wholly different than the world outside. It's a strange picture that folds into focus only at close range. You know - he says and she almost laughs with it, this compressive sort of laughter that is ebullient, contained inside her ribcage, between her diaphragm and her lungs.
(The truth is: there's some part of her that wonders what happens after. She sees Drew - in a bar, standing close, flirting with a new Garou. Inviting a stranger into her house over the edge of the picket fence, no matter the prickle of warning that rage pulls up along her skin. Joe, somewhere in the ground - and she feels this strange tickle of indignation on behalf of a dead man, this hollow core of - what next? that she never wholly applies to herself. To him. That's a story she'll never tell him; not consciously. It's not a sorrow she wants him to bear. And yet - just now - )
"I know." - she tells him, with that same sub-sternal confidence. There's resonance there too. It's quiet and depthless, pulled out of someplace deep inside her. Deeper than the wolf that would drive any interlopers to ground. Deeper than the girl whose cold-pink cheeks darkened - faintly - when she say that her lover had lit the candles and set the table. It comes from somewhere in the roots, where the two mingle.
( - it's like that story is unwritten before it can begin. She's here. He's here. That's what matters.)
Her mouth turns against his outstretched throat; he can feel her smile, feel the heat of her breath against his skin. The way the bands of muscle flanking her spine twist and move underneath his callused hand, the sharp points of bone, the articulations of her spine clear through her skin.
She presses her mouth against his pulse again; just to feel the doubled beat of his heart quickening as it moves through his veins. Then she pulls back, just, her mouth moving along his jaw, her cheek against until she's pulled him back into focus - so that she can look into his eyes, a flashing glance, too close at this range for clear focus - and kisses him, a slow, devouring sort of kiss.
[Trent Brumby] He knows nothing of her fears and concerns unless she voices them. Often, she doesn't. Right now, while they're dancing, body to body, mouth to neck, and lips to hair, he can't imagine that his mate is thinking about the times after her death and how he will be.
He's wrapped up in the way her lips feel against his skin and the way her laughter is held in her body, genuine for all that she holds it back, swallowing it down inside of her. He's thinking about the way he can feel her smile, and the way that makes him feel; glad for it and this moment of stolen time in all her bloody chaos.
Before any of his own thoughts are spilled out, she's tasting his neck and along his jaw, until he's looking down in her darker eyes and searching them. Seconds later she's kissing him and everything else falls away. It's her mouth and her body, nothing else. He kisses her with that single minded focus and attention it deserves. It's a struggle not to get carried away with it; he's trying to be romantic. That's when he breaks from her mouth, chuckling quietly and with a good deal of heat.
That's when he tells her his exact thoughts. "I'm trying to be romantic here." But it's not a protest. He's delighted by the way she walks in the door, jumps on him, and demands time in the bedroom. That has never changed either.
[Kora] "Oh you are, are you?" - she throws back to him, a certain brightness to the words. The sort that chases away her unvoiced fears; scatters them like spindrift. He breaks away and she can see the heat in his eyes, half-follows the movement of his mouth - insistent, seeking - an answering spark, a certain brightness in her own eyes, even half-lidded with remnant passion as they are now.
"I like the way you laugh," she tells him, thoughtlessly, feeling the thrum of his quiet chuckle, the way his shoulders move with it, the deep vibrations of sound in his broad chest. They're close enough that he can feel the warmth of her breath against his mouth; but there's a restraint underneath - a sort of leashed awareness of his own struggle for focus.
"Like that." she clarifies, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth; nevermind the bloody world. Nevermind winter, and all her brutal songs. It's just the corner of his mouth, eyes half-closed as she feels the unexpected smoothness of his clean-shaven jaw against her cheek. Savors it. " - when it's quiet like, just for me."
They're hardly moving, now. Just standing close, really - swaying sometimes when the beat reasserts itself underneath the skin; when their hips remember how to move. Still, she gives herself over to it; allows the beat to spin out around them like a raveling thread. Just rests her elbows on his shoulders, her forehead against his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the ridge of his cheekbone and moves with him to beat, testing his resolve only when their mouths get to close, and then only to hear the struggle in his voice, in the back of his throat.
Then, her own breath comes in a bright, sharp exhalation. She holds her breath, a moment after, a note of anticipation, the sharpness touched with expectation bright enough that is has her pulling back from him. That brightness touches the depths of her dark eyes as she looks up at him, pulling back, shaking one of her arms free from where it circles around his shoulders. She's holding his pale gaze, now, not breaking eye contact, sliding her hand over his muscled shoulder, down his arm, following the line of it to where it wraps around her body; her fingers are warm, splayed over his forearm, her thumb a firm pressure. "Give me your hand." It's an order, but a quiet one, and sure.
[Trent Brumby] "I am," he confirms. His smile is all that. All warmth and humour, enjoying the moment.
She follows it up with compliments about his laugh, but it's more then that. The words she uses makes him understand what he means to her, and what this does. It makes that smile stay in place. It's not broad, this smile, just a quietness and appreciation. "It's all for you."
He moves along with her, body meeting hers in that slow motion that is almost devoid of all rhythm now. They might as well not be listening to the background music. Trent isn't. He's following her body, her lead now, even if its his hands that holds onto her. Now, she's sliding her hand down to grip his wrist, pry him free.
Giving his hand over willingly, he's stopped moving his hips and stands tall there, leaned over her somewhat, curiously looking to see what she's going to do with it. His other has rested closer to her hip, at the back of it with his thumb over the curve of her waist. He doesn't ask why. His eyes do.
[Kora] "I never thought I'd find a mate," she's telling him; she's looking down now, and he has a view of the planes of her face; the way her pale skin stretches from the cheekbone to the jaw bone, the hollow between, the sharp definition of her jaw. The human body is a marvelous thing; even up close. These angles, these bones - the healthy shine of the healthy beast she is. Pregnancy makes her seem brighter somehow - projects that substructural vitality back up onto the world.
" - before I came here. Back in Hjaltland. Even after. It just seemed alien," she's telling him, turning his hand in her grip. "You know? I just saw myself in the war; I never saw this. I never imagined it - not once, before you."
She turns his hand over, sets back a half-step so that there's space between for it, and opens up his fingers and settles it over the dome of her stomach - beneath a soft cotton tee, the weave stretched to accommodate the shape of her belly - and moves it, lightly, like a physician moves a stethoscope, looking for the echo of some noise made deep in the body. Like a kid adjusting a television antenna, looking for some signal to come in.
" - wait. There." She tells him, her palm folded firmly over his knuckles, allowing him to read the movement of a fetal kick like braille under her skin.
"Feel that?" she asks him, nearly breathless.
[Trent Brumby] While he listens to her, his eyes are on her face and the way the light captures her loveliness. For all her ferocity, deed names, and position in the bloodiest Garou Tribe, she is lovely. He sees that in her all the time. Perhaps he's blinded by it, and it makes him overlook that Renders Bone had to come from somewhere, and that she is one in the same. He knows that, intellectually. But she's beautiful, especially just now, as she's sliding her hand across the swell of her body and pressing his wide palm into it.
The rest of him has gone utterly still now. His heart thumps quickly, for different reasons now, and he's looking down to her stomach, waiting and subconsciously holding his breath. He feels it alright. It makes him take in another fraction of air, sharp through his nose.
"Was that--" He speaks at the same time she does, and he breaks into a delighted laugh.
All thoughts of romancing has gone immediately out of the window. Trent drops down to his knees before her and keeps his hand in place. His head is turned as if he could actually hear through her skin without his ear pressed to it. His breath his close, and he waits with this glowing anticipation for some other movement under her skin. There are plenty of signs of a healthy, growing baby, with the shape of her body. But he can only be part of it in some abstract, distant way. This is as close as he can get to the baby, their child, tucked somewhere inside her womb.
"Oh. my. Goddess." When he feels it the second time, he looks up at her. His eyes are wide, his face this innocent sort of wonder, mixed with this fierce pride. "I can feel her."
[Kora] This is a different sort of romance; that's all. Changed and deepened. The candles are guttering on the table; the heat from the registers keeps them warm. There's a sort of stillness outside as evening deepens into a quiet, snowbound night. Her moon has passed; it's failing now, drowning slowly into shadow and he's open-mouthed, heart-thumping, laughing.
Was that - he says and she's laughing with it; laughing out loud this time, like she's too full to swallow it when he's virtually bleeding delight. She needn't confirm. He can feel it for himself, but there's something so infectious about the delight telegraphed so clearly through the bright light that shines through his gray eyes that she nods and reaches down, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as she pushes her fingers through the soft strands of his hair, her thumb on his temple, touching him as he touches her.
"Yeah - " she confirms, a sharp, bright exhalation through her nose, moving her thumb in gentle motions over his temple, her fingers pushing through his black hair, just to touch him. "I've felt - " a brief pause, her voice low and raw with emotion she didn't know she had the capacity to feel. " - sometimes when I was lying down. Drifting half-awake, more than the fluttering, yeah? But this is the strongest."
There's the sparest pause, she's leaning down now, meeting his eyes as he kneels and looks up at her.
"Must've known you were here."
[Trent Brumby] He could just soak this up for hours on end, and it's there in the way he's studying her stomach and feeling across it, wanting to feel more and more and more. He wants to lay down and wrap himself around her, listen and talk, and forget about everything that is in the world. This is a great moment. He will remember this for a long while yet. That first time he felt their baby kick.
With Kora leaning down, he looked back up at her, his features are raw in that moment. He's looking at her with something that could be frightening if one isn't prepared for it. It's not just love. It's devotion, certainly, but also possession. He confirms that seconds later in the way he says; "My family." Because that is what this is. No matter where he's come from, or she, that is what they are making together. They are building their own line of heroes, becoming the ones that teach children the way of the war. To love and protect.
She has to know that when she is gone, Trent will mourn her like nobody else. He won't fall apart. Their child, or children, will become his life line. She and they are his life.
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