Ornature

[Kora] The moon's up these nights just after sun set, bright enough to cast moonshadows in through the windows of his apartment when all the lights are off, bright enough to obscure all but the brightest stars, even out in the middle of the cornfields way out in the country, where the city's glow is just a suggestion against the eastern horizon. It's enough to have her temper up, her blood hotter underneath her skin, her rage closer to the surface. But she's been shorter with him these past weeks - long before the moon grew full - or perhaps just more distance, in strange, short tempers, with a moving kind of restlessness that has her waking up even the nights she spends with him, pacing quietly his dark wood floors.

"I'm sorry about her," Kora apologized, quietly, to both Trent and Rain this night past. Maybe in the car, maybe as they bypassed the elevator and climbed the steps up to Trent's apartment. Later, she repeated it to him as he fell asleep, no matter if he demured.

When he woke up the next morning, she was already gone.

--

There was a break in the weather, mid-week. The hint of spring in the air; bright sun glinting on the compacted, slowly melting drifts of snow. College kids trampled onto the muddied, snow-bound quads in shorts and sweatshirts for pick-up games of ultimate frisbee.

That's all past now. It's chilly again; there's snow in the forecast. Nevermind that the days are lengthening, and the sun lingers in the evenings until six or later, letting him catch unexpected glimpses of the sunset as he drives between the small jobs he picks up at the end of the day, visible between the buildings, in the distance, beyond the great concrete curve of some interstate bypass, some ringed freeway elevated over the inner city below.

The cold is no longer arctic, but the furnace still hums, blowing forced air up through the heater vents, a quiet wash of warm air, welcome after the cold and wind outside.

He's conscientious, turns down the heat when he leaves. But it's subtly warmer than he remembers when he opens the front door of his apartment, and a scattering of lights are own, the glow warm against the wood. Her boots sit in the foyer, underneath the table there, one tumbled over the other. She's sitting in the corner of the couch, bare feet on the cushions, knees bent, surprisingly still considering the moon outside. Phone in hand, she hits the offer button when the front door opens, and watches the foyer with that steady attentiveness he knows so well as he comes into the room.

[Trent Brumby] He's looking forward to the warmer weather. Winter doesn't suit him well. He can take only so much time working in the cold and wet, or in the snow temperatures, then to come home to artificial heat in a cramped apartment. But money is needed, a bigger place too, he had said. This wasn't going to do to raise a child in, he'd decided somewhere along the way, and had put to his housemate the idea of moving somewhere else on ground level, with some small garden maybe. A house he could do up himself over some time, but suitable to live in just now, when the babe is due. These all need Kora's approval first, however, and once they get a chance to talk, that's something he wanted to discuss.

Maybe, when he comes home to find her boots in the small foyer, that can happen tonight. First though, there's this surprise to find them there, and her sitting on the couch. He's taking off his jacket to hang up the moment he's shut the door. They can see each other with the way the couch is lined up with the same wall as the door. "Hey," he greets her, "this is unexpected."

Boots next, they're pulled from his black sock feet and set aside far more neater than hers are. Then he's walking further into the place, pulling keys, wallet, phones and a few stray business cards that aren't his, onto the coffee table. The day has him dirty and sweaty as usual, with the hair on his face having managed to grow overnight again. His shower will be next.

[Kora] "I wanted to see you," she admits quietly, dark eyes fixed on him as he goes through that ordinary human ritual of walking in the front door.

"I just - " that note of quiet frustration backgrounded briefly in her voice sifts away as she studies him, her gaze drifting down, lingering as he toes off his shoes, then climbing back up his familiar frame. There's a twist of her curving mouth, the edge of her smile underneath it, the lingering distance disappearing as he walks further inside, and she holds his gaze steadily the entire time. " - wanted to see you."

She's had a shower already; her hair's still damp, loose, dark with it, coiled around her neck in a thick twist, the shoulder of her t-shirt damp where her hair twists about. He comes further into the room and she sits up from the deep, cushioned embrace of the L of his sectional, a half-moment's struggle for balance - nearly invisible - before she finds the momentum she needs to overcome the unbalanced load of her new frame, a hand stray on the edge of the couch cushion.

"Thanks for hosting Rain last night," she tells him, seriously, turning her cheek up as he closes the distance. A certain appreciative husk in her voice. "Give me a kiss, yeah?"

[Trent Brumby] She gets up before he can offer her out a hand and he's not sure that she would appreciate that anyway. Instead she turns her cheek and finds him smiling at the gesture. He touches a hand to her side and leans down to brush his mouth across her cheek dutifully. "You don't need to thank me, Kora."

Another kiss later and he's stepping back. "Sit down and relax. I'll wash up and make you something to eat." Not wanting to get his filth all over her, he retreats from the couch and her newly washed frame. Running his hands over his work pants he checks that all of his belongings are out and no tissues will be going through the wash - domesticated as he is, then readies to turn for the bathroom.

Pausing, he glances back. "You're okay, right?" Wanting to double check.

[Kora] "I know - " she tells him, her eyes affixed on some point in the horizon as he assures her that she need not thank him. He's close enough that he can see the way the tendon wrap her neck, the way the light shifts across the curving plane of her cheek as her jaw moves. Then she gives him a brief look, sharp and sharply upwards, sidelong but direct enough to catch the corner of his own gray gaze. "I wanted to." Thank him.

Her lashes are pale, but they catch the shuttered, indirect light from the lamps in the room, highlighting the darkness of her eyes. He steps away, and her gaze falls naturally to watch the movement of his hands over his workpants. Sex has been more rare lately; her pregnancy, the demands of her pack and her position draw her away from him too often. A handful of nights, she has simply been too angry to come home to him. Prefering to lose herself in the hunt - controlled now, always with her pack close - Linus who throws himself in the way of a foe's claws. Roman, who can heal her if she's injured.

Still, that spark of awareness catches light in her gaze; lingers as he turns back, and catches her distracted, mid-objectification.

"Mmm?" That abstract hum, the lifting brows are her first response to his question. She looks up without pulling her eyes away from his body, and then manages the later, meeting his gaze as he looks back at her. You're okay, right? "Yeah - " she says, her mouth softening like curl of ribbon. There's tension around her eyes, but not the immediate sort. She breathes out like a sigh, and her half-smile widens, reassuring. "Just - " a vague gesture, " - stuff on my mind. I'm fine though. Better. Li says Roman's gonna be fine. And I'm pretty sure that fucking Erek's gone, now. And - "

Then she lifts her chin toward the hall, shakes her head once like she's clearing cobwebs from the corners of her consciousness. "Go shower, baby. Go get yourself clean for me."

[Trent Brumby] He stands there listening to her, nodding once, just slightly, to let her know that he's listening. Torn between wanting to get cleaned and being there immediately for her, his weight shifts from his front foot to his back. Pale grays drift over her features, and something in her face reassures him enough, or maybe it's the order of her words that does. Nodding again, he offered a small smile and turned to walk down the hall, peeling off off his shirt as he went to disappear into the bathroom at the far end of the hallway.

The shower was running moments later.

Once he was done, not ten minutes later, he's dried up and walks from bathroom to bedroom in a towel, where he pulls on some sweats and a t.shirt. His dirty clothes are stuffed into the laundry hamper, leaving him to come back down into the living areas once he's done. Hair damp is darker black yet, curling a little more with the weight of the water on top. He hasn't shaved yet.

"What do you want to eat?"

[Kora] Kora is back on the couch when he returns, a book open over her knees, her phone tossed carelessly onto the coffee table with a handful of change - two quarters, three dimes, and six or seven pennies, the sort that accumulate in the depths of one's pockets over the course of a few days.

She's watching the hall as he comes out, though; his shadow in the distance as he stops by the laundry closet, and then as he walks back toward the lifting room. "French toast," she tells him, low-voiced as always, her mouth twisting upwards at the corners. " - mmm, and bacon or sausage, breakfast sausage, whichever you have? And, like, maybe fried potatoes. Hash browns or chopped up and with onions in a skillet. Sunday breakfast, yeah?"

Then she's doing that assisted push again to stand up from the embrace of the couch, resting her book on the coffee table with the rest of her things, and circling the couch to meet him and give him a proper kiss, quiet and deep - needful in that animal way, like some return to instinct - her fingers twisting into her dark, damp hair, inhaling his freshly washed, so-familiar scent with a sharply audible inhale before she releases him to the kitchen with a swat on the ass. "Go on, baby," she tells him. "I'm starving."

[Trent Brumby] "Sunday breakfast a few hours early," he muses. "That I can do." It's never any trouble for him and he's long since got accustomed to the sorts of foods she liked. He still tries to push healthier alternatives on her, but she largely gets her own way all the time since he has a hard time saying no, and now that she's with child, even showing his disapproval.

Her kiss is met with his. He enjoys it, the way she kisses him. By this stage of their relationship he's also comfortable with letting his hands roam across her. Not downwards across her backside, but over her back and hips, paying particular attention to the tension in her frame and trying to get it to melt away with a caress and a distraction of a well meaning kiss.

"Mmm." Breaking off, he lifts his eyelids, a little heavier now with appreciation and gives a slow smile. Before he says anything he's being swatted into the kitchen, which has him laughing low and doing as he's instructed. It won't be hash browns but it will be fried potato with the onions, some breakfast sausage, bacon and french toast as she requested.

[Kora] Kora follows Trent into the small kitchen. There's barely enough room for one person cooking, but he's never minded her watching him. While he retrieves onion and potato from the crisper drawer, she levers herself up onto her usual countertop perch, to watch. She's wearing pajama bottoms - maybe they were his - the waistband below the swell of her stomach, and a long-sleeved blue cotton tunic, which stretches to accommodate the curve of her pregnancy. The wide neck shows off the bony architecture of her shoulder girdle, the sloping curve of her trapezius, the flat line of her clavicle, and the hollow in between. The pale line of her throat is interrupted only by the narrow twist of a black leather choker, half-again as thin as a child's small finger, loosened a bit in the time he's known her with wear, but otherwise rarely removed.

She watches him work, for a time, mostly quiet, her feet swinging forward, twisting out of the way when he needs something from the cabinet behind her, shifting her legs aslant when he goes looking for the skillet from the cabinet below.

"That shit with Dee last night," she ventures, eventually looking away from him as she does, out of the small kitchen, at the shadows on the wall behind. She looks back before she finishes the sentence, though. Clear and unflinching. "Some of that was me, okay? Just - " a quiet noise, a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. One he has heard too often of late. "I want you to know that. Some of that is my goddamned fault."

[Trent Brumby] He works through the kitchen with his usual ease. It's not grace, just a familiarity and a confidence that comes with his own place and knowing hwo to cook the most basic of things. To him a roast is basic, which it is he'd argue. Potato is cut small so that it cooks quickly and the onion is diced down to nice bits that will caramelize by the time they are done.

Glancing over to her, he had paused in what he was doing to regard her closely. It's a few seconds later that he's putting proper butter into the skillet to brown the onions. Already her sausages are cooking in another on the stove, browning over nicely and cooking through slow. Her bacon will be next. The oven is on to keep it all warm, so that by the time he gets around to her french toast, she can eat it all still hot. "I don't see how it is, Kora. You asked her to watch her tongue and she didn't listen. You have no fault in that."

[Kora] "Not that part," she admits, with a twisting, rueful sort of smile and a sharp rush of an exhalation. "I'm not - " the thought begins and then ends with a narrow shake of her pale head. "I'm not trying to take responsibility for everything from everyone. And Dee's mouth - "

Here she finds his gaze when he glances back to her, studying her closely. Her attention is direct as ever, open and watchful. The kitchen's lighting is brighter than anywhere else in the apartment, and the compact fluorescents cast a sheening glaze of light across the surfaces of her pupils, finding new shades of dark in her irises.

She's sobered, now. Rather still, hands on the countertops on either side of her thighs, her torso defined only by the two curves of breast and belly. So different from the first time she sat here and watched him cook. If she waited long enough for him to cook anything that morning.

"I mean, her issues, yeah? The bullshit behind that. Some of that's - " she stops short again, her mouth thinning around the words. "She's reacting to me, yeah? To this. So I haven't - so she shows up, and I haven't seen them since I she was a kid, I mean, they were eleven. Sighing over Justin Timberlake or who the fuck ever. And this - right, you and me and everything - I don't know her, but I can just imagine what it's like to find your long-lost whoever, living a whole different life in Schenectady. So I just - "

A twist of her mouth, then, both bitter and sweet as she watches him work, studying his profile. "I called my mom, yeah? I should've done it when Linus found me - but - " The creature shakes her head, draws in a deep breath. "So, yeah. She says hi."

[Trent Brumby] "It's still no fault of yours. She has to take responsibility of her own actions, no matter where they come from." Trent is firm in this and she's not going to get him to agree with her. He'll accept she feels responsibility for it, but it's just not the way he's going to see it with her. That was okay with him. He's not one to push either. Not on something like this anyhow.

From the fridge he gets her a drink, wordlessly showing her some options; juice, milk, soda. He stands in the fridge with the door open as he goes through them, getting himself out a single beer. When she's not here he's drinking down several of them, or a few glasses of scotch. He's also hitting the gym a lot, trying to work out some tension, which is better than brooding at home.

Bringing her the drink of choice in a glass, he rested briefly against the counter. "Your mom really said hi, or was it some other reaction other than that?" Because so far he and her family definitely do not see eye to eye.

[Kora] She shakes her pale head once when he absolves her of all responsibility, does this wordlessly and solidly, like it means something to her somewhere, somewhen, under her skin. Some human weakness that she hasn't been able to chase from her body. Like followers of the white christ seem to, she has divided her life into Before and After. Linus carved himself a door through the half-set drywall. Now Dee's crashing through.

This is all quiet; like him, she doesn't press. She's not looking to sacrifice herself and she can see the stubbornness in his pale eyes, the solidity underneath it all. He does not fold easily, not when he believes in something. She would never have chosen him if he did.

Wordlessly, he offers her drink choices. Just as wordlessly, she indicates the milk. Her features are still sober; drawn somewhat from the tension - which has a different measure and a different mettle than the spark and flare of her rage - but open. Her mouth is still; she's not smiling, but her lips curve faintly upward even when she's still like this.

"She asked if I knew what I was doing." Kora tells him, "I told her I did." Her nostrils flare in a narrow expression, and she shakes her head again, the light gleaming across the fine strands, which fall loosely over her shoulders.

"She asked if you made me happy, and I said, yes." That distant look, a certain damp gleam in her gaze as she finds his, then looks away. "She said to tell you hi." Another pause, and she's looking back at him, finding his pale gaze, her own settled again, the emotion mostly withheld, as if she had swallowed it all down. Unconsciously, thoughtlessly, her hand goes to her stomach, as she twists her narrow shoulders in an expression like surrender.

"She wants a picture of us. I told her you'd send one."

[Trent Brumby] Leaving his beer on the counter, closer to the sink, he turns to her. Finding her thighs with his hands, he runs his palms along them and around her hips. This is meant to soothe her, like the way he's tone seeks to reassure her in much a similar manner. "I'll take some pictures and I'll send them to her." That's something that they should be doing anyway. He should be getting more of her, just in case. He needs an album filled with some memories for a child that isn't born to the world yet, but may grow up without her. Its this that he reads in the way she caresses her stomach.

Trent doesn't mention his family. They hadn't really approved. But there wasn't much to be done. Their son made his choice and made it loud and clear. They accepted as much as they could, but they still didn't have to be too happy about it. Many times they had discussions especially since Kora became pregnant. He doesn't call them as often now. But he's going to need to.

"You're not doing so well lately," he voices his observation and hopes she doesn't take it the wrong way, "Tell me what I can do. I don't like seeing you like this. I don't want you to fee like this." The way he's looking at her is direct, and his hand now comes up over hers, brushing across her fingers before moving across her stomach. "You don't enjoy as much anymore. Let me take some of that darkness away, please?"

So helpless, being a Kinfolk. In so many ways they are limited.

[Kora] He steps closer to her, reaching for her thighs, the longest, strongest muscles in her body there, the core of her human strength. When he steps close, she reaches up, cupping his chin, her thumb along the line of his jaw, her forefinger braced underneath, lifting his chin as she finds his pale gaze and holds it with a winnowing sort of clarity.

Strong enough to admit the things she conceals from him, if only to herself. The touch moves. She opens her knees so he can come closer to her, wedge his big frame up against the kitchen cabinets. Knock his knees against the drawer pulls. Then she draws a heavy thumb back, following the shadow of his jaw until she reaches the jointure of his jaw and neck, pressing her thumb into the hollow before she spreads her fingers out, pushing them firmly through his drying hair.

Her other hand remains on her stomach, beneath his heavier hand. She can feel the workman's callouses on his palm, at the bases of his fingers, and the tips. No amount of fine grooming will ever remove them, but she likes that he has them. That he builds things. That he sweats, and she likes the way his body moves when he does.

"It's not - " a narrow pause, while she thumbs a lock of inky hair back over his temple. "There's nothing you can do, baby. Except be here. It's - " she lifts her chin in a rising motion, a sharpening glance, like she's pushing through the reassuring clichés she wants to utter. That stillness about her seems nearly fragile; the shadow of her pulse beneath her skin, the subtle tightening of her muscles as she thinks about - thinks about -

Her mouth twists, downward, stomach moving underneath her hand as she propels another sharp breath out of her mouth with her diaphragm. " - some of it is what you said last night. I can't properly discipline, right now. So the tribe is getting larger, and some of them push the line."

[Trent Brumby] "That's not true," he disagrees on the fact he can't do anything. As usual he's completely pliable beneath her touch, even despite the fact that he's solid and strong enough to resist while they are both wearing the same sort of skin. "I can get a baseball bat." He knows this isn't an option, but he offers it anyway, with this light smile to his mouth. It doesn't quite reach his eyes though, because this is something that he wants to do. He wants to protect her no matter that he's not fully equipped to do so.

Gently pulling himself away from her, he leaves a kiss to her jaw. "Potatoes will burn," he warns her and at the same time explains why he is moving himself away from her. It simply won't do to serve overcooked, charred anything. She deserves a decent meal of her choice, as far as he's concerned.

[Kora] He turns away to save the potatoes from a fate worse than - from a fate, anyway, where they are charred and inedible, by all the gods above and below, she's grateful for it just then. Her jaw is firm beneath his mouth, a taut tendon evident beneath the skin, this subtle flexion of muscles about her spine making her taller.

Her pulse spikes, and she has to work to keep her breathing near even. The moon's working its quiet way across the sky in the sun's wake, and even though it's hidden by layers of steel and carpeting, floor and subflooring, she knows where it is the way the ocean always moves with its rhythm, her blood like the tide.

He can get a baseball bat.

Through all this she twists her mouth back at him, taut with control. His smile doesn't reach his eyes; her own barely reaches her mouth. But this fucking much she'll protect him from. It's when he looks away that she can give in, close her eyes tight and clench her fists, let the spasm of memory scour through her before she pushes it away until the next time it wakes her in the middle of the night, sends her pacing uselessly up and down his hallway, or the aisles of the church.

"And some of these kin," she goes on, a sharp, unseen shake of her head. "Drew, man. I'm trying to be sympathetic, or - something. Everytime I turn around she's hanging on to another man. Has bedrooms for every strange Fenrir she meets, but can't be bothered to make room for a pregnant kinswoman. Then she - she has the nerve to lecture me about self-reliance. For fuck's sake. In a goddamned letter so I can't even tell her to shut up.

"Now there's this new biker dude, and I gave him your card? The other day I turn around and there's Drew. For god's sake." It's enough, these complaints, to divert her, and despite that she's going on, the most present, pregnant signs of her temper ease out of her frame. Some of the tension leaves her voice, and she manages a brief, narrow-banded laugh. "Maybe I should marry them off. Drew and the biker. Linus and - "

Another laugh, less narrow. "Not Sofie. I'm pretty sure she hates him. Still, he'd be better if he got laid."

[Trent Brumby] Grunting, because that's all he can say on the subject without saying anything nasty about women he barely knows and a brother in law he doesn't like, he flips potatoes and turns things around, going from skillet to the next one and getting out a tray to stick them on for the oven before he's starting on french toast. "Let them stand on their own feet," he suggests.

"Aren't the Get of Fenris about strength and honour? Let them stand up for their own, Kora. Don't baby them. Tell them you have an issue if you have one. Let it be heard. You can still use your voice and it's your greatest weapon when it comes to things like this." He throws a quick glance over before he continues on, wiping out a skillet of oils for her french toast. "Then, let them deal with their own life. At the end of the road, baby, they will have to answer for their own mistakes."

[Kora] "I - " she starts to answer him before the suggestion has settled underneath his skin. He can hear the note of disagreement. Something about duty, maybe. Some foolish consistency that has her expecting - somehow - to be more than she can or should be. There's that note of earnestness already in her voice, a certain brightness there -

- except that she stops, her swinging legs stilling, hands finding the edge of the countertop, fingers curling firmly over it. Kora exhales all at once; it takes some effort, like she is working to let go of it, but let go she does. If only for this moment.

"You're right." This is quietly spoken. "If Kemp had tried to - " a brief, interrupt shake of her head sends her fine hand flaring around her shoulders. "He let us be. Strong or weak, it's in each of us. I need to learn to say my piece, and then let it the fuck go. Unless it's seriously, and then I need to do something. Stop talking and do something."

[Trent Brumby] Another look over is a little sharper, surprised at the way she turned around her disagreement. Not that he's about to complain with her now agreeing with him, but it had surprised him. It also gives him a small sense of relief, too, knowing that she's coming around to that sort of thinking. This means she will have less stress, or so he hopes. "Let them know your expectations and leave it at that."

"Only people that have their ears open really listen," he tells her, and drops toast into the pan to fry off. His hands are rinsed under water and dried into the towel that now sits with its corner tucked into his right hip, where one always sits when he's cooking. Saves him searching for it all over or using his pants and shirts to clean his hands off.

After he slides the rest of her food into the oven to keep warm, he returns to standing in front of her. "You focus on your own well being first, Kora. If your own health isn't great, then you can be of no use to anyone else. This goes for more than physical."

[Kora] Kora watches him quietly as he finishes his cooking, tucking her food away in the oven to be kept warm. Sunday breakfast, a few hours early, just as she requested. Her pulse is still higher, there's a subtle flush of blood underneath that warms her pale skin, makes it seem more solid, plays back into the gleam of health evident - if not around her eyes - at least in shine in her hair, the warm glow of her skin, the supple layer of fat her hormones are ensuring is added over her once-boyish figure. The weight gain is subtle everywhere except her breasts and stomach, but he can see the differences, He saw them as they appeared. An extra curve to her cheek and hips, a hint more fullness to her frame.

When he comes back to her, she opens her knees for him again and reaches up, pulling him closer.

"I need to remember that in the moment, too. I - " both her hands on his face now, the movement of her thumb over his mouth as she leans forward, dark eyes searching out his features. "You know, baby, if there were someone else I could follow - someone strong enough, I'd give it up right now. For him or her," this narrow pause, a twist of her mouth and a hint of humor underneath the anger whose origins he can only guess.

Linus defends his nephew.
Trent's waiting for his daughter.

Kora doesn't know, but sometimes the sense of movement in her womb makes her heart stop in ways she did not know were possible.

" - and you, baby." Another twist of her mouth, as she pushes her fingers back through his hair, pulling him close enough that she can kiss him once, deeping and seeking not necessary the spark of desire that finds some tinder in the already bright current of her rage, but rather the - comfort she finds in him, the last of his mouth. The way he breathes out through his nose when she tightens her grip in his hair.

When she's finished - when she's breathless - she lets him go and just stays there, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, her eyes halfclosed, focused downward, knees firm now against his flanks.

"We never did go camping." She says then, murmurs really. "There's still time, but maybe you should rent a cabin, yeah? Out in the woods, for a night or two."

[Trent Brumby] She says these things and kisses him. It leaves him much the same, but for him it's also sexual. She knows this, the way she grips up and owns him, just like that. It's something he had given to her willfully and continues to do so. This is much more fulfilling than he could have imagined in the beginning, and the way it came about was so unexpected that sometimes he wonders just how it all happened and gives a quiet prayer of thanks.

"I'll rent a cabin. Next weekend?" If that was alright with her, he would. Details could be figured out later. Right then he was stealing a shorter kiss from her mouth, leaving a quiet sound on them from his throat after and pulling reluctantly back. He needs to start wearing briefs under his sweatpants if she's going to do this.

But he tries changing thoughts and retreats back to the skillet. "I wanted to talk to you about moving into another place," he tells her. "I've already spoken with Erick and he seems willing. I wouldn't mind having a place on ground floor, with some earth to tend, and for small feet to get dirty on."

[Kora] "Next weekend," she affirms quietly, though she's detached from the rhythms of the human world, it changes on weekends. Brightens on weekend nights, then changes weekend days. Then he pulls away, and she stays where she is, watching him return to the skillet, her generous mouth a quiet twist - not yet bruised, just a bit beestune from kissing him to distraction.

"It'd be easier for us to check, too. Lower down. Maybe a house? We could make sure it's clean on the other side as well. Have a Hrafn keep an eye out to make sure you don't get any unwanted attention." She glances up then, at the ceiling of the small kitchen. "Place like this, it's just - a skeleton on the other side. There's spiders everywhere, it's harder to keep clean."

Back down, breathing out again, her eyes lingering appreciatively on his back. "A couple extra bedrooms, someplace close to our territory. It's a good idea, baby."

Someplace he can plant something, and watch it grow.

[Trent Brumby] "You don't mind then?" He sounds relieved, glad for it really. "Something I can do up, strip down bit by bit, but suitable enough right now for when the baby arrives." When not if. "And a few rooms is exactly what I had in mind. That way when Kin like Rain need somewhere to go, I've got a room there."

"And I may not have a set of claws, but I don't mind being the protector on occasion." This much she must know. He remembers well enough when she pinned him to a park bench one time after he'd had a little fist to mouth with some people that said things that they shouldn't have.

[Kora] "I'll miss this place," she says with another twist of her curving mouth. " - yeah? Like, it's familiar, I can smell you everywhere. I can see you in every corner of it right now. I think we might've fucked in every corner of it, too." The last comes with a brief, nearly rueful laugh. She's levering herself down from the countertop as he makes up their plates, grabbing her milk and his beer as he wraps silverware in a napkin, leaves the skillet in the sink and picks up plates and places settings to follow her out to the living and dining room.

Kora puts down their drinks on the coffee table, and waits for him to sit - as he always does - minimizing the space his larger frame takes up so that she can sit, and stretch out against him.

"But I don't mind," she's telling him as she walks, her bare feet on the floorboards. "Mind? I think it's brilliant. The kids'll have room, Erick can help out. And it'd be good to have someplace for someone like Rain when she needs it."

Then he's telling her that he doesn't mind being the protector, and she's sitting down beside him. Not straddling him, not kissing his bruised mouth and split lip; just curling up beside him, pregnant, to eat her late night breakfast before she shows him that she appreciates him not wearing briefs with his sweatpants.

"I know, baby," the creature assures him, with a lifting upward glance that touches an animal chord in her. "I remember."