Ivan Press

[Ivan] On the way down from the flybridge, Ivan folds the blanket haphazardly over his arm. He catches up with her as she's descending the narrow staircase. Even on a yacht of this size, space is always an issue, and things like stairwells and closets are the first to suffer downsizing. In the dark, with surfaces wet from lakespray and earlier rain, it could be a treacherous trip for creatures less self-possessed and graceful than they.

Ivan has seen her move with thoughtless, unconscious grace. He does understand, intuitively, why it bothers her that she'll lose that grace soon. Become large and heavy and round and waddling. That much, he gets.

He catches up with her at the stern of the yacht, and there he tosses the blanket over his shoulder and reaches for her hand. It's a short trip to the sliding doors and into the saloon. When the doors shut behind them, the sound of the lake and the water fades. The engines are off now. All is quiet, except the occasional splash from a larger wave outside; the occasional groan as the currents tug on the anchor.

Whether or not she's left her coat on all this time in part because of her swelling belly, Hilary seems to hesitate not at all when she takes it off. Ivan's eyes follow her, neither avoiding nor fixing on her abdomen. The blanket is tossed on the sofa. He takes her coat from her, though, and folds it over one of the dining chairs.

On the flybridge, Ivan had considered - briefly - asking if she wanted to eat. If she'd prefer to retire to the bedroom instead. If she'd rather fuck. He didn't ask her, in the end: he remembered, instead, how she said I'll sleep where you tell me to. How she leaned against his thigh and seemed comforted by this. How she said, over and over again, Yes, Ivan, and seemed happier, more whole, more secure, with every repetition.

So there was no inquiry as to her preference. It's assumed. He pulls out a chair for her. There are two plates set out for them, one at each end of the table: a formal dinner. He moves one closer to the other; sets her at one end, lays his own platter at her right hand. It's a light meal, served cold -- chilled and sliced roast beef paired with green beans, herbed summer squash, cherry tomatoes: a light, summery meal, almost more a salad than an entree. It's harder to get heartburn off a meal like this. Perhaps that's deliberate, too.

Ivan pours himself a glass of chilled white wine; Hilary, half a glass. Then he sits.

"We never did manage to make it to Ibiza," he says lightly. "Let me make it up to you. Let's go somewhere else."

[Hilary] A few weeks is the kindest possible estimate. A few months is more accurate. Hilary's already beginning to show, at least enough to make her uncomfortable. She's already feeling different. Strange, inside, as though her body is even more disconnected from her self than usual. Inhabited. Taken. Possessed, not because she gave it over in the surrender that brings her so much inner peace, but because she's sacrificing it to -- not the War -- but to the desire to be left alone for another few years, left to live her life.

She's made other sacrifices. She's told other lies, endured other humiliations. She didn't know how repulsive this one would feel, though. She regrets it, and yet: Hilary has no other appealing option. What else would she do, run away? So she submits, not knowing that this domitor will be kind to her, not knowing that she will be cared for in the aftermath, not knowing that while she submits, she is made glorious somehow. Not feeling, in this surrender, that she is --

whatever it is, that she feels with him.

Ivan has asked her very few questions about her preferences. It's like tossing rocks into water when he does, even things like would she like another coat, does she want a blanket. Simple, easy questions about her own comfort cause ripples of unease, however mild they are. He notices that she seems more secure, happier even, when he makes these decisions. When he takes these questions out of her hands. It's quite childish, if one thinks about it, how much more preferable she finds it to have no control over her own movements and destiny. Quite bizarre. Wholly unhealthy.

And discomfiting, for him, to have that sort of weight. Responsibility for himself, blanketed by responsibility for another person, when he can barely stomach accountability for this car being crashed, that starved swan's broken heart, whatever.

But Hilary, for her part, may not notice. Or may not care. She sheds her jacket, which he takes, and then he pulls out the chair at one end of the table. She sits without comment, lets him scoot her in, and then he moves his chair to her right. Hilary says nothing as he pours himself a glass of wine, gives her half. When he seats himself, her brows are drawn together. He mentions Ibiza. Distractedly, she responds:

"I forgot all about Ibiza. Maybe somewhere cold and corrupt, could we switch places?"

One sentence flows into the other without hitch, with only a sudden change of tone, as though that was what she wanted to say at the start but first she had to answer, had to reply. Now she's looking at him, though.

[Ivan] That switch in topic is so rapid Ivan barely even notices until he realizes her sentence no longer computes. Then there's a pause, a hitch that should have been in her sentence, before he understands and looks at her.

"Seats?" A pause. He stands. "Of course."

So they switch, and he moves their plates, and he scoots her in again, and he sits where she was. Head of the table. He doesn't have to ask why; he gets it. She doesn't want even that much; even that hint of authority or power that is really more politeness than truth. Sitting back, Ivan shakes out his dinner napkin and lays it back in his lap, then completes the switch by handing her her wineglass for his own.

"You had no problem directing me around the kitchen," he says. It's not a question. It's hardly even a mention; she can answer, or she can simply ignore.

[Hilary] So they switch seats. Plates and glasses moved, bodies moved. They repeat what they did just a moment ago, til Hilary's at his right hand and Ivan is settling in at the head of the table. Not hard to imagine her sitting at the head of the table at a dinner, or when she's eating alone, or any number of other times. Not hard to imagine her looking perfectly at ease there, even feeling like it is her right. Like she should be there. Refusing to give it up to another.

And he comments on that: she had no trouble ordering him around the kitchen. Dominant, then, a ruler, and seeming perfectly at ease in her own skin with that role. Hilary smooths her napkin over her lap and looks over her plate thoughtfully, turning it a bit so that the summer squash is nearest to her.

"I've read a bit," she says, picking up her fork, "about how odd it is that so many submissives actually can be quite dominant, firm, and defensive outside of... those situations." She puts the fork into the squash, lifting a bite's worth of it. "I like cooking. It's... not quite how I feel when I'm with you. But it's something like that." Her brows draw together a bit as she lifts the fork to her mouth. "In myself, I suppose."

[Ivan] A faint smile flits over Ivan's mouth, quick and unbidden. It's a little wistful. It makes him a little wistful to think of Hilary looking things up on the internet, in libraries: trying to define herself, trying to understand herself. It makes him wistful, in truth, to think of her outside of the times he sees her. To consider her not simply as cool-eyed, bejeweled Mrs. Durante, who sometimes shows up to be fucked senseless. To think of her as a complete person with her own life, with hours and hours of her own time.

"I've heard submissives tend to define their own boundaries too," he says. Perhaps this is how he's learning to talk to her: with mild statements that she can choose to respond to or not. Without questions. Without demands, prying, scraping at her until she's raw. "And implement kill switches. Safewords."

[Hilary] He's right, at least. He isn't asking her if she wants to define her own boundaries. He doesn't throw a barrage of questions at her: do you want this? Is that what you'd like? Is that what we should do? He doesn't aggravate her with these things, lower himself in her eyes by chasing after her like all those schoolboys. Do you want, do you want, do you want. What do you want? What should I do? Who do you need me to be?

(I don't know, I don't know, leave me alone, I don't know.)

It's easier to just converse like this, without feeling that anything's being taken from her, demanded of her. Just... talking. Simple. Easy. Calm. And shared, really.

"I wonder more if you would need that more than I have," she muses, taking another bite of squash.

[Ivan] Ivan's table manners are casually impeccable. He's light and deft with his utensils, expertly cutting his sliced steak into even smaller mouthfuls, which he folds around cherry tomatoes, squash, green beans. There's a faint, fruity tang to everything. It's a meal for a summer's night, in truth: but then, sailing is a summer affair.

His eyes flick toward Hilary briefly. He laughs a little. "It'd only serve to ease my conscience," he says. "I don't think it'd actually keep you any safer at all. I don't think," he adds, setting his knife down briefly to reach for his wineglass, "we've strayed anywhere close to your boundaries yet."

A pause.

"Am I wrong?"

[Hilary] There are few intersections between Hilary's upbringing and Ivan's in terms of priorities and styling. But there are those few, and table manners is one of them. They do this thoughtlessly, after so much practice and drilling that it's second nature. No consideration given to which fork to use, no hesitation over the pace conversation takes when it tries to weave in between bites of delicious -- but not too spicy, not too burdensome -- fare.

Hilary is savoring some of the squash still, but she's going for a bite of green beans as Ivan is speaking. First, to taste each dish on its own. Then, to pair them, each to each, tasting how they complement one another. To enjoy quietly, to explore the meal as she eats it: this is how she always sits down to dine, taking her time with it, as though driven not by hunger but by appreciation, as one peruses a gallery.

"I've never feared for my safety with you," she says eventually. "You wouldn't risk truly damaging me, if nothing else. I flatter myself by thinking perhaps it's more than that." She pauses here, and dips the end of a green bean into her squash. "Though I suppose in the end it doesn't matter."

[Ivan] A quick stitch across his brow. He doesn't pick up his knife again, but instead sets his glass down, his fingers moving restlessly against themselves. Ivan doesn't look at Hilary as he says this, as though this were some sort of shameful confession -- these words he must have parroted, and oh so convincingly, to god only knows how many starved swans across the years.

"It's more than that," he says quietly. "I don't want to hurt you. I care about you, for better or worse."

At the end his eyes flick to hers, but only momentarily. A glance, as though to underline the words, seal the deal. Then he picks his knife up again and cuts some beans in two. He doesn't eat the way Hilary does, exploring flavors, complexities. He enjoys good food; that much is clear. Knows the difference between fine cuisine and lesser foods. But he would never pause, and savor, and wander from one portion to the next like a connoisseur in a gallery.

"At any rate," rather firmly, he steers the conversation back to its origin, "we haven't decided yet. Somewhere cold and corrupt, you said. Are you hinting that you want to go to Russia?"

[Hilary] She doesn't fight him, as perhaps he knew she would not. Hilary doesn't push for him to expound on that admission. She doesn't look at him as he's saying it, as though it genuinely does not matter in the end whether he truly cares for her or if it just isn't worth the risk to hurt her. If hurting her upsets him, as it seemed to when she asked for it, though they had very different things in mind when the word passed between them.

Hilary looks at him, only, when she senses his eyes have come back, are looking at her. She lets hers flick over, as well. Momentary, yes. Like a handshake without touch: okay.

"A horrendous idea," she says, with a huff of laughter. "Crawling with the tribe. I loathe the cold, but I can't exactly go cavorting around a beach for a time." She spears a bite of beef with her fork. "Perhaps Switzerland. The west, near the lake."

[Ivan] He returns her huff of laughter with a brief exhale of his own. "It's not the tribe you have to watch out for anymore in the Rodina. These days it's the Glass Walkers and the Shadow Lords and the goddamn Bone Gnawers that run the show. In the cities, anyway."

There isn't much concern in his voice. One might imagine any number of Silver Fangs would descend into deep and dire conversations at the very mention of losing power. One might imagine any number of Fangs would never, ever admit that their old imperial power over one of the Tribe's oldest holdings has long since waned in the face of communism, democracy and good old capitalism.

Neither of them seem the sort to care much, though. Ivan's attachment to his ancestral home seems to come largely in the form of a fondness for caviar and vodka and Russian-imported supermodels and ballerinas. He spears another piece of squash, pairs it with a tomato, and then washes it down with a mouthful of light, fruity wine.

"Switzerland it is, then," he says. "Montreux, perhaps? Or Lausanne? Not Geneva, for god's sake; nothing but chocolate and tourists and diplomatic neutrality."

[Hilary] His own House held rule there for so long, yet he speaks as glibly of it as he speaks of anything to do with the Nation, pack, all that silliness. He would have made a fine prince in the old days, rolling over in bed some morning, too lazy to bother being a grand hero today. He is the sort of Garou so many Fangs have become, losing power inch by inch as they are realized to be hardly as god-touched as they once appeared, gloriously pristine and beautiful.

And Hilary. Hilary's family is only distantly, anciently related to Russia. The House is gone now. The remnants are like her: adopted by others, scattered, sometimes even unsure about where they come from, the lists of ancestors they once memorized. They forget. They corrupt themselves on the inside. They fall.

Like, perhaps, they will all fall in time.

"Lausanne," Hilary says, with a wistfulness to her voice that doesn't quite cross the boundary into a sigh. She smiles faintly, reaching for her wine for the first time. "Yes, Lausanne."

[Ivan] Ivan's immediate response isn't vocal. It's simply a quirking of the eyebrows at that tone in her voice: an unspoken query as he leans back in his seat.

The last of his meal is left to languish on the plate: a tomato. Two cubes of squash. A single green bean, perfectly blanched to that precise point where crispness begins to give way to softness. Ivan brings his wine with him, though, rocking the liquid to and fro in his glass, his wrist set at the edge of his armrest.

"You sound familiar with the city."

[Hilary] There's no evasion from her, no coy or coquettish dancing about the subject. She doesn't refuse him what he seems to want to know. She simply eats her meal, mostly the vegetables, just a few bites of the beef. Hilary remains sitting straight, her spine an elegant stretch behind her, an almost architectural arc.

She shakes her head. "I competed in the Prix de Lausanne when I was sixteen. I barely left the hotel or the Théâtre de Beaulieu while I was there, but... I remember the time I was there fondly."

[Ivan] "You know," he sounds pleased to have been right about this one little thing, this guess, "I thought you might have danced. It's something about the way you stand."

For his part, Ivan does not, in fact, sit straight. He rocks his chair back on its hind legs, swaying gently on that fulcrum: the very picture of the overindulged young playboy, at ease in his own overindulgent domain. A sip of wine, and then he leans forward to snag that last cherry tomato after all, tossing it into his mouth.

"So how does one get from dancing at sixteen to rather talented cooking? I always thought ballet and food were mutually exclusive."

[Hilary] She lifts an eyebrow at his tone of voice, at the evident pleasure and -- somewhat -- subdued pride at having guessed. "A regular Sherlock Holmes," she says, without more than the faintest trace of sarcasm to her light tone.

It's odd how calm they're being. This easy, casual conversation they're having over dinner, after fireworks. It's not yet ten o'clock; early, still, when you have nowhere to be in the morning. Her things are downstairs, Marya's turned down at least one bed. There's no talk of tying her up or forcing her to her knees. One might think there's no way to go from this -- calm, pleasant, even peaceful -- to the sort of violent way that they fuck. There's no guarantee of that, either.

So far it seems that she missed him. She wanted to be near him again. And it doesn't matter what theyv'e done in the intervening two weeks, doesn't matter how many of his models and ballerinas and socialites he's fucked, doesn't matter what wickedness she's been up to since the last time he saw her. They don't even ask. Maybe they're afraid of breaking the peace. But maybe it just doesn't matter.

"After you've spent twelve hours straight in a studio, you can discuss your opinions on proper nutrition for ballerinas with me," she says mildly, and takes another bite of beef. It's a little while before she swallows, a little while before says: "I've always liked cooking. I didn't attend culinary school til my twenties, though."

[Ivan] "It's hardly my opinion," he replies, smirking lightly. "More an observation. Anyway, you're hardly the picture of a glutton yourself.

"I hadn't realized," he goes on. "That you'd gone to culinary school, I mean. Most Silver Fangs would have been shocked. A purebred daughter of the tribe in a kitchen or on a stage for all to gawk at: scandalous."

He drains his wine, sets the glass down, pours another. "Not that I'm trying to pay you an underhanded insult. I'm hardly one to talk about propriety. My great-grandfather fucked a Glass Walker kin. Filthy rich family. Made their fortune in coal and rail, but not a speck of pure blood in the entire tree. Saved my family, though. That's where all this," he waves a hand around, "came from, if you trace it back far enough."

His fingers tap the side of his glass, and then he takes another sip. "I should tell Matthieu that story sometime. See how many colors he turns."

[Hilary] Her eyes flick at him when he smirks, says what he says about her own image. She doesn't say anything, and returns her attention to her meal as he comments on culinary school. Since he's finished eating -- or close enough -- he talks, more than a few words, a couple quick sentences. And Hilary works quietly through her dinner. She hasn't had more than the one sip of wine yet, but has taken a few drinks from her water glass instead. Small bites. Just a few more.

His plate is almost empty, if not cleaned completely. She's not picked at her meal like a bird -- hardly -- but there's still plenty of food on her plate. She looks at him as he lifts his second glass towards his mouth. There's a blankness to her eyes, almost like boredom. Or weariness. Or distance.

And in her voice, effort that sounds the way a trembling, straining arm looks when it lifts something right at the edge of what the musculature can bear. "I...didn't like that. The little aside about how I look, how fat I am or am not." There's a pause, watching him almost warily, but also a time to think. "I never had an eating disorder when I was dancing rigorously. I knew girls who did. People called me beautiful til they found out I danced, and then they started whispering. My caretakers watched me constantly. I ate alone whenever I could, just so I could eat without commentary."

Hilary looks at her plate again for a moment, thoughtful now. Like a muscle being stretched, and strengthened, what she just said got easier and more exhausting with every word. She reflects on that, and goes for another bite of beef, touching it to a morsel of squash. "I attended very fine, very exclusive schools. It was thought preferable to mingling with a less specialized, artistic array of mortals in a university. I thought it was very nice." That, a trifle defensive. Not scandalous. Nice. "I was taught most Silver Fangs would like their Kinfolk to be graceful. Talented. To know the difference between mediocrity and perfection."

She doesn't eat the bite though, looking over at Ivan again. "I'm sorry," she says this with a sort of ruffled intensity, as though she assumes he won't believe it, but that he must. "It's very difficult for me to pretend interest in your family history, where your wealth came from. It's here now." A beat. "I know I shouldn't be bored. I just... could not care less, really, for propriety or purity. I think it's all quite meaningless."

Hilary looks at her plate, and the bite she's about to take. "I don't remember who Matthieu is." And eats it, her shoulders dropping slightly as though she's letting down some heavy weight she's been carrying too long.

[Ivan] It was a bizarre, disjointed thing she just let spill forth, like some malformed creation birthed from a jumble of conflicts, jagged thoughts that she's never had any practice voicing at all before. Ivan listens, or tries to, though it makes his eyebrows flick together when she says she didn't like that. When she talks about her youth, dancing, beauty, eating.

She's letting him in. He understands this. It doesn't make it any easier to see what he sees now that he can look a little ways into her. It doesn't make it any easier to hear that she couldn't care less about the little anecdotes he's been telling her; the conversation he's trying to have with her.

The silence between them is suddenly stiff. Perhaps Hilary can sense that; most likely not. After a moment he sets his wineglass down with a decisive little click, gets to his feet.

"I'm going for a smoke," he says. "You should stay inside. Cold out there, and anyway you wouldn't want the little brat to slide out with brain damage."

There's another beat of pause; then, callously, "If you're so bored with all this, why don't you go ahead and go belowdecks. You know where my cabin is. Make yourself at home. I'll be down to fuck you after I've had my cigarette."

[Hilary] "Ivan," she says, as he's standing up, preparing to walk out -- have that cigarette, calm down, perhaps. Or work his frustration, or whatever it is, into something else. Something he can use when he fucks her.

She's half-turned in her chair, looking up at him, her brows together. She's no empath, no caregiver, but she'd have to be a simpleton not to notice the change in his manner. The tension. For once her own guards were down long before he laid a hand on her; vulnerable, yes. But also open. As much as she can be, maybe.

"That isn't what I meant," she says quietly, then: "or even what I said. I'm not bored with all this."

[Ivan] "Then what," he wheels before he's a step past her, and they're much closer now: two fractured individuals on a yacht, miles and miles of open water from anyone else at all other than one quiet maid who would never interfere anyway. The word is bitten off. He takes a breath before he continues, "What did you mean?"

[Hilary] True to form, Hilary doesn't even flinch. She doesn't jerk back, wary of his anger, unnerved by his wrath. She sits still, the sort of person one could imagine just looking calmly at someone who really is on the verge of striking her. It's perhaps lucky there's no way in hell she would ever enter the Armed Forces: no drill sergeant would know what to do with her. With that cold expression, those implacable eyes.

It's hard to tell, dark as they are, what's behind them. It's maddening to try.

Hilary takes a few seconds to think, though, about what she meant. About what he said as he stood, ready to leave her behind so he could go outside and just get away from her for a few minutes. Which she doesn't want: that rejection, that refusal. Maybe she'd say anything to get him to not deny her like that, push her away like he might if she doesn't act the right way. And maybe it's true, what he said: that isn't what she meant.

"I don't know what to say, when you talk of what most Silver Fangs think. I don't know if I'm supposed to care, or if it means that you do. I have no stories of my own ancestors to say back to you after you tell one. I don't think it's... strange, or wrong, that your great-so-and-so fucked a Glass Walker, and I don't see the significance of your family's wealth coming from them instead of the Fangs. I'm not..." she struggles, here, and it looks very much like frustration, or the edges of it. "I'm not bored with you. Or by being with you like this."

Hilary frowns. "I didn't know what to say," she repeats, as though to underline it, make him understand it. "Nothing that wasn't just witty banter or bland socializing. I was just trying to be... real."

She reaches out, grasping his forearm, if he doesn't jerk out of reach. "Ivan, I am not here just to get you to fuck me. I'm not."

[Ivan] Ivan doesn't jerk away. The possibility is there -- a minute twitch in the long lean muscles and tendons of his forearm. When motion comes, though, it's the opposite of jerking away. His hand locks around her wrist. His grip is hard, almost punishing; his face abruptly dark with strain and tension.

"I was just making conversation," he says, low. "And it doesn't always have to be significant or noteworthy. It's all right if our conversations are shallow or pointless sometimes, if your replies are nothing but witty banter. It's all right if you just want to change the subject and talk about something else. There's no right answer, nothing specific that I want to hear from you. I just want to see that you have even a passing interest in who I am, where I come from, where I'm going.

"I need to know you're interested in me." His mouth twists: self-disgust, anger. "I need to know my interest in you is returned. That I'm not just something you can use to make yourself ... whole."

[Hilary] A part of her wants to slap him. And it isn't a pretending part, a role she could play. The bejeweled wife, the offended woman of good breeding and high society and little patience, all that. It's the monstrous part of her, hyper-tuned to any intimation of blame and ready to retaliate viciously, violently, overwhelmingly. Claw his eyes out. Scratch her nails down his cheeks, slap him til his face is red and raw. A part of her reacts to him the way it reacts to everything else: with pure, senseless, irrational rage.

The rage that seems soothed by one thing, and one thing only: transformation back into pain, release through catharsis.

No one can ever say Hilary hasn't learned control, in the thirty-odd years she's been around. Control may have been one fo the first things she learned, like some Ahrouns. It does take control to repress as much as she does. It takes impulse control to stop herself from doing Very Bad Things. It takes control to keep herself out of some of the worse trouble she could get into.

Hilary breathes in sharply, though it isn't in fear, when Ivan grasps her wrist like that. She doesn't go limp, she doesn't try to pull away, she doesn't grab him tighter. She accepts it, as though she can prove something to him by even a submission this brief, this disconnected from anything else. Not that she's strong, not that she's tough, not that she can take it. Something else, entirely, that she is still searching for the words to describe.

She knows, because he's told her clearly, that he hates how she makes him feel. Sometimes. All the time. She doesn't know which. But she does know what it is: that he could want her so badly, that he could be so interested in her, fascinated by her, and bore her to distraction in return. She knows, becaue he's told her, that he's disgusted with this very desire of his, this need to matter to her.

"I'm sorry," Hilary says finally, and it may sound false as it is because she has nothing to follow it up with. Hard enough to apologize, impossible and tiring to try and explain what exactly she's sorry for, why she's sorry, what about it warranted apology. She assumes he knows. He's the one that's upset, after all. For what it's worth, and it may not be worth very much, she says it with all the sincerity she can put into her words. Difficult, even that, because the reason she didn't win the top prizes at the Prix de Lausanne was that she lacked sensitivity, if not creativity, in interpreting the music. Self-expression is not her strong suit. Never will be.

Who would want, after all, to learn to express a Self like hers?

"You're not... a thing," she says quietly. "I am interested in who you are. It's just... you aren't your great-grandfather. And you aren't your wealth." She pulls at his sleeve, as though to urge him closer. "You were scared of fireworks, when you were little."

As though by remembering this, she can prove something to him. Something.

[Ivan] Moments go by; hyper-stillness in the Ragabash, every muscle tensed. He doesn't look at her. He looks at their hands, his own lean and long, narrow across the knuckles but with such remarkable dexterity and reach. A sculptor's hands! cooed some bimbo at some party once, stroking between the ridges of his knuckles while he tried to stave off boredom by betting against himself how much of his cock she'd be able to swallow later. He's angry now, and he knows it: his thoughts dark, verging on hateful. He looks at Hilary's hand. She's grasping at his sleeve, and there's something pleading and mute about the gesture, like a blind, helpless thing grasping for sustenance it has no words for. It twists in his heart. It churns in his stomach.

He tugs at her suddenly. Sharply. He drags her to her feet and if she hadn't been a dancer, hadn't been good enough to go to Lausanne when she was sixteen, wasn't her, she might have stumbled getting up. Fallen against him. He pulls her against him anyway and locks his arm around her, bends her wrist back behind her back and locks it there while he pushes his hand over her cheek and into her hair and forces her head back to kiss her hard, hard.

When that storm passes he seems to quiet a little. He rests his brow against hers and his hand gentles in her hair, but he still has her arm behind her back and he still has her pressed against him, close enough that they can feel one another's pulsebeats.

Gently now, he strokes her hair back. When he speaks, he tries to speak gently, too.

"I wasn't insulting you," he says, "when I talked about food and dancers. It was a joke. I liked it when we cooked together. I like watching you at dinner. There's something graceful about you. Lovely.

"I thought you were angry, or hurt, and you were trying to get back at me. I thought you were reminding me, yet again, how little any of this matters to you."

A longer pause. His hand stills on her face, and his eyes close. When he kisses her again it's firm; some bitterness beneath the surface like arsenic in honey.

"I'm ... scared of not mattering to you," he whispers. "I don't want to matter to you. I don't want that responsibility. But I'm scared of not mattering."

[Hilary] There's a difference between Hilary's intellectual understanding of Ivan's inner conflict concerning... all this, and the emotional understanding of being able to empathize with it. His feelings for her. Her feelings for him. Need. Want. Rage. Whatever it is they do to each other, whatever it is they each get from it. It isn't that he's lying to her or deceitful about it. It isn't that she can't grasp the simplicity of his complex. Sympathizing with it, though. Following the jumps in his emotions, the pulse of his affect, is... dizzying. It exhausts her. Bewilders her. Frustrates her.

Hilary has no concept of why Ivan is so angry. Why he looks at her with mingled ache and revulsion and wrath. Why it all culminates the way it does, with him pulling her to her feet and against his body. But she rises with it, lifts as though pulled by strings from heaven and not Ivan's strength, the motion as effortless as the afternoon he had her standing up on a hotel mattress in high heels, lifting her foot to his shoulder so he could kiss his way up her inner thigh.

When he didn't know what she was. When her little plays at dominance seemed like the behavior of a cougar, friend-of-the-mother, school-chum's-wicked-aunt. When with the suddeness of falling off a cliff, she made him want a darker, angrier sex than he'd ever so much as fantasized about.

Hilary is almost eye to eye with him as he bends her arm back. She breathes in, but it's not a gasp. He grabs her head and pushes her back with his kiss, as though he could bend her, break her with that. She presses into him, eyes closing, on the verge of a moan she never voices. She isn't swaying, though, when he relents. When he seems soothed. Hilary's eyes flicker open as he rests their brows together, and she closes them again, running her nose along the side of his face, a gentle nuzzle while his hand is stroking her hair.

All with her arm locked back, all with her held against him like a prisoner. As though this is natural. As though this makes sense because it feels right.

To her, at least.

She listens, watching him now, her head slightly canted to the side. She stares at him, seeming almost blank. Even when he kisses her, there's a certain emptiness to her, accepting and even grateful, but unruffled. Once he might have taken that stare for boredom. Maybe even still. But when she answers, perhaps he knows better. Remembers.

"I know you were joking, Ivan," Hilary says with a bit too much patience, despite the fact that physically she's in a surrendered, unresistant position. "I didn't think you were insulting me. I just didn't like it."

As for the rest: he liked cooking with her. He likes watching her, her impeccable manners, her grace, her unconscious prettiness in everything she does. But Hilary has nothing to say to that, no answer. Perhaps she thinks these things unimportant, or obvious. Perhaps they are simply beyond her to respond to. Perhaps it just isn't necessary.

"You were wrong," she tells him, without the gentleness he works so hard to put in his own tone. She barely hears it. She's wearing thin. She's wearying, period. "I wasn't trying to remind you of anything. It doesn't even make sense to think I'd try to make you think none of this matters to me."

There's a pause there, as she stares at him, their faces so close. She quiets, as though his whispering was a cue that she has to follow. Or needs to follow, having so few internal ones of her own. "You aren't responsible for me," she says, quite possibly misunderstanding him completely. No demand that he get over it, figure out what he wants, which is both (and neither). "But you do matter to me." Simple, that. Whether he likes it or not. He can't have her here and pretend it isn't true, in any case.

She breathes in deeply, exhales. "What I want from you, I don't want from anyone else. But what I want from you is not the entirety of my existence. Moreover, what I want from you, I'm only now discovering myself. You're only torturing yourself thinking about mattering, not mattering, responsibility. Just... take pleasure in me."

Hilary stills for a moment, shifting slightly against him. Her dark eyes remain on his multi-hued ones, which remind her of sun dappled across fallen leaves on still-green grass, a thought so vivid it's inseparable now from the memory of his eyes on her.

"I know how low it must sound, Ivan, but I do want to please you."

[Ivan] For so much of the time Hilary is speaking, Ivan's eyes are closed. His brow rests against hers. He listens, and now and then his jaw flexes, and now and then his thumb strokes her caught arm, the tender flesh of her inner wrist.

It's not until the last, when she says Take pleasure in me, that his eyes open again. And they are as they are, and as she sees them: green dappled with hazel, with gold, with smoky traces of grey and blue. It would be strange for him to know that she thinks of the forest floor when she looks at his eyes -- as though her lack of empathy, her lack of connection and her fragmentary emotional life should have rendered her insensate to beauty and nature as well.

"I know," he whispers. And, "I do. I do take pleasure in you."

He lets go her arm at last. Puts both his hands on her face, but gently now, cradling her cheeks, her jaw, her neck. He doesn't like these flicker-fast flashes into anger, into insecurity and rage. He was happy, earlier. Glad to be watching the fireworks with her. Glad she was here, even if she was right to worry that her swelling abdomen might soon make her unattractive, undesirable to him. Even if she was right to want to hide herself away soon. For weeks. For months.

He will miss her in that time. He has not said it, might never, but he will. He would. Even if seeing her swollen and gravid would disgust him, would revolt him, would make him wonder what became of her long slim body and that smooth, lovely slope of her stomach; even if the thought that that thing growing inside her was most likely not his, could not be his even if it is his, belonged to another man, was one more reminder that she belongs to another wolf. Even if all that were true,

he would still miss her.


After a while, Ivan draws away. The remains of their dinner still on the table; wine still in the bottle. He looks at it, observes it without care, and then holds his hand out for hers.