Ivan Press

[Hilary] The heart is so very small, but it's beating. It works with all of the other miniscule vital organs. Little lungs. Little brain. Little kidneys. And now it has tiny, distinct toes. Tiny, distinct fingers curled up so very, very tight. Hilary went alone to hear its heart beating for the first time during her first prenatal visit. She was not the only woman in the office who was there alone, but she was the only one who wasn't bothered by it. She read a magazine and waited to see Dr. Overby, listened to her baby's heartbeat with a calm, thoughtful, detached expression.

Dr. Overby doesn't quite know what to make of Mrs. Durante. She's a black-haired, earring-wearing, often-smiling woman with two grown children and one very young grandchild, and she's been in practice for going on two decades. She's seen a wide array of reactions to these visits, but even the women who seemed bored or annoyed by all the fuss weren't just... disinterested, as though they weren't even there. As though they couldn't even feel what was happening.

When Hilary closes her bedroom door behind her and calls Ivan, she doesn't mention the visit. She isn't bursting to talk about The Baby. No sighing about how it's been two weeks (again) since she's seen him. No mention of any of that at all. Very simply, quite casually, she asks what he's up to tonight. Regardless of what he says, she tells him she was going to take Cielo out to see the last night of Fall Fireworks along the shoreline. There's a whole tour for it, but they have their own yachts.

It's arranged that they should take Krasota out instead. More maneuverable, already moored out of Chicago proper. They don't say the other reasons for taking his boat instead of hers. But she'll meet him at the docks. Not the club. She doesn't feel like putting in an appearance first before walking out on the boards.

So well after sunset, a little after eight o'clock, that's where Ivan finds her. Standing on the docks. Her skirt is calf-length and the color of steel. Her boots are black, and her coat is cream, with glistening black buttons. She has a lavender scarf around her neck, but her hair is loose, long and pin-straight and dark. There's a bag by her feet, and her hands are in her coat pockets. The fireworks haven't started yet. Not til past nine, when the sky is as black as it can get this close to the city.

[Ivan] It's never quite completely dark on the docks, but it's still darker here than it would be at the Chicago pier. They're far from the city and its skyscrapers, its lights. They have only the shine of a waning moon and some pierside lamps, their glow cold and pale on rain-wet planks. It stormed earlier, but the sky is clear now, stars appearing overhead as the last of the twilight ebbs away.

He sees her a long way off: his sharp eyes, his ragabash senses. She seems to always show up first when they decide to meet somewhere. He isn't surprised by that. He's the sort of appear languidly late. She's the sort to keep primly to schedules. Prim: that's a good word for the creature she pretends to be. Or perhaps simply appears to be when all else is fragmented and incomplete, drifting in that black void that seems to live behind her eyes.

With fall deepening toward winter, Ivan's hair is starting to lose its lighter hues. In this light, both hair and eye look dark, the former shadowed under his sharply cut brow. He's wearing a sweater, luxurious cashmere, slim-fitting for all the soft thickness of the material. It has a high collar that zips along the shoulder, and in truth it only works because he's tall, and lean, and broad-shouldered, and -- let's face it -- such a fine, pretty thing. The sweater is dark, and so are his slacks.

"I forgot to mention this last time," he says, approaching, "but you should ask your husband to write to endorse me as your steward. I'd like to broach the subject with Katherine Bellamonte soon."

He's beside her, then, offering the crook of his elbow without drawing his hands from his pockets.

"It's just you and I and a maidservant tonight, by the way. But have no fear; I'm an excellent night helmsman."

[Hilary] Not a single time that she's come to see him as Hilary brought along any sort of overnight. Nothing but the pills and vitamins she had last time, but that's because some she has to take with food and some she has to take several times a day and it's just easier to keep them with her. But the bag at her feet is enough to hold even a change of clothes. Things she can use to do her hair and makeup. It's as though she expects him to keep her -- as long as possible, all night when he can.

Even if that means tying her down so she'll stay in his bed, so she can't get away, so she's right where he leaves her when he rolls over to sleep.

Her skin looks paler in the moonlight. It's that sort of shade, porcelain, pearlescent. He finds a word for her that feels like it fits as he approaches her, and she turns her face to see him as the boards shudder faintly beneath her, telling her of his approach. She doesn't smile to greet him, or flow up against him and tilt her mouth up to his, warming the night with a kiss.

If she weren't a married woman, if he weren't supposed to be respectful of her mate and not fucking her behind said mate's back, maybe she would act like his lover. And touch him as soon as she saw him, smile at him coming near, kiss him until autumn is chased back to summer, til he forgets any sensation on his skin but the way she feels when she's there.

As it is, Hilary lifts her bag, straightens to lay her hand on his arm, and nods. "I'll send word to his assistant to ask him for a letter, or a messenger." She gives the faintest smile of amusement, a twist of wryness at the corner, when he tells her he's an excellent helmsman. "Perhaps we could find a good spot to watch the fireworks and drop anchor. I... want to be near you."

This is a feat. She struggles with the words of it, even though it's clear enough that it took effort for her to sense and name the feeling to begin with, much less decide to say it aloud.

[Ivan] I want to be near you.

Any other woman could manage that easily. Any number of starved swans have probably purred that. Said it coyly. Said it seductively. Said it, period, with little effort, little thought. It's something you say to a lover, a paramour, a fuck. That, and more -- but not Hilary. For her, this is a struggle. This is unexpected, and it turns Ivan's head, makes him look at her for a moment.

Then he laughs, light. "Of course. I was hardly planning on sailing down the St. Lawrence Seaway, at any rate."

His arm is a hard shape under the soft give of his sweater. As they approach the Krasota, he shifts, drawing his hand out of his pocket and letting hers slip down his arm until his fingers can fold around hers. Like that, his grip warm on hers, he hands her up the gangway to the lean, long deck of Ivan's poweryacht. The blinding white paintjob is more subdued by night: ghostly pale, glistening wetly in what light there is.

One of his pretty, mute, interchangeable maids is aboard. She stands aside, quiet, eyes down, dipping a curtsy as they come aboard as though she still existed in some prior century. One might argue that's the case for their entire tribe: lost in the past, unable to adapt, evolve, move on. Ivan's family is an exception to that rule. They're adapting just fine. They're adapting so well, they're barely Silver Fangs anymore.

"Do you want to put your things belowdeck?" he offers, following her aboard. With his manservants somewhere else -- in the house or the penthouse or, god forbid, their own homes -- Hilary is treated with a rare sight: Ivan performing menial tasks with his own hands. He hauls the gangway up and stows it; closes the gate; speaks to the maid in effortless Russian. Then, to Hilary, "Marya would be happy to settle you into the fore cabin. Unless you'd prefer to do away with pretense altogether and simply leave your things in the main cabin."

[Hilary] If she didn't mean it, perhaps she could say it more easily. If she were saying lines from a script, perhaps she could just say it without thinking. That doesn't require her to move backwards from the words back to the feeling, check it against her real thoughts. Starting from emotion, amorphous and hard to define, is more difficult. Finding the words to tell him the things he does to her is next to impossible. No wonder she can't explain why she's still here, why she hates him and doesn't trust him and goes with him to Trump Tower, to his lakeside estate, gives herself over ...utterly.

Hilary doesn't seem to hate him as they walk towards the boat. She lets her hand move into his, holding it without hitch. His hand is warmer than hers by far. She's not wearing gloves, and the wind lifts and waves through her hair. Hilary doesn't even look at the maid; she's background. Hilary's interactions with servants like her is beyond traditional; she doesn't even blink at the girl's trained silence. She's from an ancient, mad bloodline. Ivan's family adapts, and Hilary's family is... gone.

There's a lesson in that, somewhere.

She stands on Krasota, getting herself used to the difference between land and dock and deck, breathing slowly. She waits for him, holding her bag and losing body heat, watching not Ivan but the water, glossy and black and glittering. As Ivan speaks, though, she sets her bag down on the deck where anyone could pick it up.

"It doesn't matter to me," she says, tipping her head to the side. "I'll sleep where you tell me to."

[Ivan] Marya is not a child of the 18th century, no matter how well she pretends. She was not born to a long line of servants, locked in a social structure that does not change over years, centuries. She was born in St. Petersburg after the dissolution of the USSR, a child of the twenty-first century; she knows about individuality and freedom and the american dream and all these things that are out of reach for her not because human society forbids her but because she is bound to the Silver Fangs, and not Garou, and not rich enough to buy freedom in return for resources gifted to the Tribe, and not well-bred enough to be precious breeding stock.

These things are not true of Hilary. Look at her: jewels, money, breeding, a kept woman. Some other Garou's prize mare. Pregnant already; that's the gossip on the grapevine. Definitely not Ivan's, and elevated enough because of her husband's rank, because of her blood, because of that all-important potential warrior in her womb, that she should be able to command some respect even from Garou.

Hilary is not the type who needs to keep her eyes down and her tongue tied in the presence of her betters. She is not the type who needs to say, I'll sleep where you tell me to. I'll do as you say.

Yes, Ivan.

Yes, Ivan.


So there's a flicker of a surprised -- perhaps shocked -- glance from the girl. And there were probably stiff silences, too, harrowed glances exchanged between the servants who heard their master with Hilary the last time they were on the Krasota together. Or at his lakehouse. Or in the gallery of his penthouse. The whimpering. The screaming. The crack of a palm across bare flesh. The sobbing.

Ivan ignores all of this. His eyes flicker when she says that. Hard to say what that response is: arousal or discomfort or a little of both. He nods to Marya, then; Hilary doesn't understand Russian, so it's a mystery to her where her belongings are being taken.

"It's too cold to steer from the flybridge," he says to Hilary then, guiding her toward the sliding doors into the saloon. "Let's go inside."


This late, they're one of the few vessels maneuvering in the docks. The engines cycle up smoothly. Water slides past, parting effortlessly around their bow. Ivan is not so good at the helm as Kolya is, but he's passable: he manages to guide the Krasota out of the harbor without scraping paint off on a dock, or another ship, or a buoy.

Out on the lake, they sail south. The interior lights on the maindeck are dimmed to reduce glare. In the soft glow of the instrument panels, Ivan is lit in blues and greens. Hilary can decide for herself where she wants to be: in the saloon where there are refreshments set out, because of course there are; in the galley, making Marya nervous; belowdecks, where everything is well-lit and well-appointed; in the cockpit, where the navigator's seat would be hers.

If she's near him, though, he doesn't speak much to her. He looks at her now and then. He smiles occasionally. He asks her to get him a glass of champagne, please, or perhaps some of the pickled herring. Russian peasant fare, he calls it, wryly. It's a little like driving from the city to his lakehouse: the same darkness, the same subtle sense of speed.

When they're some miles offshore, close enough to the city to see its skyline and the fireworks that will bloom over it, Ivan throttles down. Dropping anchor is as easy as pressing a button. They can hear the dim rumble and clanks as the chain lets out, and Ivan swivels his seat away from the dash, stands.

"Let's go up on the flybridge," he says. "Would you like a coat?"

[Hilary] Ivan's servants are varied in age and temperament but not in practice: they are all lovely, because they are Silver Fangs. They are all quiet, and careful, and they speak only when spoken to. The servants of slightly higher status -- like Dmitri, like Yuliya -- never forget their place, no matter how Ivan treats them, no matter how casual he may be. They never lose that polish of graceful servitude. The younger ones, though, have heard the sounds this woman makes when Ivan is fucking her, the way they hear what sounds like chains scraping across bedposts, know that he often fucks her for hours. Beats her. And these younger ones exchange harrowed glances, while the older ones, the wiser ones, pretend they hear nothing. Know nothing.

Maybe Marya takes her bag to the guest cabin, maybe the main one. Hilary doesn't ask and she doesn't watch the maid leave. She watches the water, unaware that her words even have an effect on Ivan. They have no effect on the water. And that's strangely comforting.

The next thing she knows his hand is on her, guiding her away from the railing, taking her towards the saloon. She says nothing, and stays with him. Not in the galley, not in the saloon or the rooms below. She stays with Ivan, wrapped in her coat still as though she's still warming up all ths time. When he sends her inside to get him some food she comes back with a bit of white whine for herself, too. Some slightly blander food than he asks for; one of the medications he saw her with last time was for heartburn.

She eats a little, and drinks the half-glass of wine, then leaves her seat and moves beside his. Without a word, Hilary lowers herself to the floor, heedless of how clean it is or isn't. She folds her legs to the side with an elegance so thoughtless it seems inborn, and she rests her head against the side of his thigh. There's no view, down here. There's no lust where she puts her cheek to his leg. There's just her sitting there at his feet, one pale hand laid on his thigh near her face, and for a little while as he drives he can feel her breathing. And she says nothing, as she has said so little since she saw him on the dock, but it's easier this way.

For her. For Hilary, at least, it's easier to do this, instead of telling him: I missed this. I missed you.


Some time later, Krasota slows, and Ivan lets the anchor lower itself into the water. Hilary stirs, and sits back so he can stand, before she reaches up a hand to him. She lets him assist her getting to her feet, her skirt flowing back around her legs as she does, and in the heels of her boots it isn't quite so hard to look into his eyes.

"A blanket might be nice," she says, and offers a faint smile. It's as hard as the words, earlier. The admission that she just wanted... this. To be near. And has no understanding of how he might feel about that, or how he might react, or if this is over some relational boundary, or if it's even okay to say such things before they're naked, sweating wrecks in some bed or another, before he's beat her and fucked her to tears and cohesion.

[Ivan] Ivan is, all things considered, an extrovert. Expressive of himself. Utterly unafraid to voice his wants, his desires, his feelings. Even that total lack of fear of reprisal, fear of saying the wrong thing, is a mark of just how privileged his life has been. There's never been any remark, any insult he couldn't buy his way out of somehow. Settlements. Damages. Checks. Cash.

It's hard for him to understand Hilary's language. It's hard for him to understand that sometimes the simple act of making lunch -- of snapping at him, directing him to stir, no, faster -- is a form of communication. A way of letting him in. It's hard to understand how even telling him she wants to be near him is a big step for her.

He's beginning to, though. And he understands enough to know that when she lays her head against his thigh like that, it's an act of trust. It's an act of communication.

There's a small pause. Then he takes one hand from the wheel, which looks nothing like the great wooden wheels in literature and movies -- which looks rather like the steering wheel of any given luxury car -- and lays it on her head. Strokes her hair where she rests,

as though she were a pet. A plaything. Owned.

He understands that she needs this, too.


Later, they drop anchor ten or fifteen miles offshore. She lets him help her up. He offers her a coat; she asks for a blanket. He presses a button on the dash and tells Marya over the intercom to bring them a blanket. They hear her hurrying up the stairs. She catches up to them at the sliding doors at the rear of the salon, handing Ivan the requested item. He shakes it out as they're making their way up the stern stairs, up to the flybridge where the wind raking unimpeded across the lake is stiff and cold and wet.

Ivan drapes the blanket around his own shoulders; steps up behind Hilary and wraps her up in his arms, in his blanket, where she stands facing the city. It's a minute or two before nine. They're right on time.

[Hilary] What they're doing here is patently unacceptable, though no one looking on would know it from the mere sight. This is not the way you embrace a friend, or a tribemate's wife. And this is not the sort of evening entertainment you take with someone who is merely an acquaintance. But they both know that just as well as Marya does, and yet.

Yet Hilary sinks against Ivan when he wraps his arms and his blanket around her, moving into his warmth and breathing deeply. And she wants to say something, thinks she should say something, but everything sounds so wan, so empty, so bereft of meaning. Does he like fireworks? Or she could just tell him that she does, the way some people like certain fruits above all others inexplicably. She could tell him about her day, that she heard the baby's heartbeat, that she took a long nap before she came to the city to see him. She might ask him where he had Marya take her things.

All that: honest conversation, things no one else would think twice about saying, sounds empty to her. Worthless, compared to the memories she has of how he can make her feel when he snarls that she's his slut, that she's taking that cock so hard because that's what she likes, isn't it. Isn't it.

Hilary cannot reconcile this. Even if, on some level, she recognizes the flaw in it. So instead she leans back against him, and breathes, and after a minute the first streak of light goes upward, exploding in the sky. She looks up, and smiles, the orange glow reflecting off her cheeks.

"They have some that look like pumpkins," she whispers.

[Ivan] While Hilary is thinking of the things she might say that sound empty to her, which may well have been empty when she said such things before because she didn't mean it, was just filling deadspace, dead air, the way she's so well-trained to do as a society wife, a trophy wife, a silver fang kin --

while she's thinking of these things, Ivan is thinking of the way she sinks against him now. Thinks of the way she sank against him in the darkness of his bedroom, after he fucked her to tears and cohesion; the way she seemed so happy then, so held and warm and safe. Thinks of the way he held her, warm and safe, and whispered to her

that she was warm and safe here; warm, and safe, and here.

The show begins. The first pattern bursting across the sky, inscribing itself in orange. She smiles. He can't see it, but maybe he can hear it on her voice. He's a little taller than her, but not much in her heels. They fit together well.

"I didn't know you liked fireworks," he says quietly. It's true. He didn't. He thought she was just finding an excuse, something she could tell her husband's housekeeper, could tell her gossipy friends. He wouldn't have been surprised if she showed no interest at all; told him to just sail them onto the lake somewhere and drop anchor and come belowdecks and fuck her.

[Hilary] "They're pretty," she says, just as softly, but these whispers between them come in between the shriek and boom of the rockets, when the light rushes across the dark sky and fizzles, fading, falling towards earth.

She isn't holding his hands, or holding onto his arms. He just wraps around her, like she's a thing for him to hold. It's not far from how he put his hand down and stroked her hair while she leaned against his lap from the floor, like she was a pet for him to grant affection to. Like she belongs to him, somehow. It's hard to take the intellectual knowledge that she doesn't, that she can't, and make it work with the gut instinct of their time together that seems to say yes. Yes she does. In a brutal, savage (and tender, complete) way, but somehow his, all the same.

"Nobody ever tries to analyze them or talk about them," she murmurs, "the way they do art. Nobody says anything bad about them, either. They just... watch."

The next one is green, and looks like a witch's hat. Hilary laughs.

[Ivan] Ivan thinks about this. His eyes move, unseen by her. He mulls it over, thinks about her, thinks about her aversion to, or fear of, being judged. Being seen and seen through and pronounced bad, pronounced flawed, pronounced broken. Even if she is.

She laughs, then, and he nuzzles against her temple. The soft strands of hair there, sweeping and falling. He kisses her cheek and turns his attention to the sky again. The next ones come in a sequence: two stars flanking a moon. Then some broad elliptical ones, dazzlingly white, leaving aftertrails in the air.

"I used to be afraid of fireworks when I was very small," he says. "They were too loud for me. My parents had a place on the Upper East Side where we spent most summers. Some autumns too, come to think of it, depending on how much of a presence my greatuncle felt the family needed during election years.

"At any rate, we were always there for July Fourth, and sometimes for the Thanksgiving fireworks. It was usually my nanny and I watching the fireworks from the roof. My parents would watch from their loft or, more likely, not at all. Sometimes my father came up with us though. I remember him putting his hands over my ears so I wouldn't be scared. You'd think it'd make me feel claustrophobic," he muses, "what with my head caught in a big warm vise, but it didn't. It just made me feel safe.

"Anyway. I outgrew that before long. And by the time I was twelve or thirteen my father decided it was high time I attended a school in the City. They didn't want to coddle me too much, you see, what with the private instructors until then and all." There's a smirk in his voice there. "So I had my own place in SoHo, and pretty soon my friends and I were setting off our own fireworks there on the Fourth. I think even then it was Lane was getting drafted to smooth things over with the local authorities."

[Hilary] What she gives him is very little: she thinks fireworks are pretty. No one judges them, discusses them, picks their merits apart or mulls over their flaws. They just stand there, and they watch them going off, and like them or dislike them without further analysis. But ultimately for her it's that they're so simply pretty, in an unfettered way. Far, far away from everything, lighting up the dark, leaving trails in your vision and in the air, closer than the stars. She likes them because they're pretty. She likes that it can be as simple as that.

What he gives her in return is much more, and one might argue that this is Hilary, she probably doesn't care about his childhood or about how he feels about fireworks. He knows damn well she'll shut her mouth and listen to anything, and listen with her face so lovely it hardly matters if she's thinking at all, but there's a sense in the thin air between them that Hilary actually is present, and listening. At least somewhat: she's a bit faraway, a bit torn between the words she hears in his voice in her ear and in her attention given to the fireworks show.

Pumpkins, witch's hats, moons and stars. Circles, comets, a green one that leaves streaks like a weeping willow over Chicago's skyline.

What she gives him is only this: they're pretty. And the fact that she smiles. The fact that she laughs. And what he gives her is a nuzzle, and a kiss. She takes it as approval. As acceptance. As reassurance that she isn't bad, isn't flawed, isn't broken. That there is something lovely and good and worthy in her, something it makes sense to kiss softly like that. To want to kiss like that.

Ivan gives her this, too: stories of his childhood. He didn't like fireworks because they were loud, and Hilary stirs slightly at that, but doesn't interrupt. He mentions parents, a great-uncle, election years, nanny. He tells her about his father covering his ears, protecting him, but there's no reaction from her. No aww, no soft smile at the thought of a parent taking care of their child, guarding them from what could frighten or harm them. No sense that she relates to that, that it makes her remember a similar experience in her own life.

A quirk from her, another faint stir, when he tells her they made him go to school in the city, not coddle him with private instructors. It doesn't boggle her that a child of thirteen was given his own place in SoHo, though. Tomas has had the run of the city apartment for years now.

Hilary's quiet for awhile. Then: "I was scared of the dark when I was a girl." It doesn't lead to a story, like this. No tangents. Just this one piece, and: "It felt like being swallowed."

[Ivan] Some part of Ivan is glad that Hilary doesn't comment much. Doesn't ask about the intricacies of his family; his greatuncle and his father, his mother, his grandfather, all the rest of it. Doesn't ask who was Garou and who was kin. Doesn't aww at the thought of his father protecting him, because in truth it wasn't much in the way of care, or protection, or any of it. Most times it was his nanny. Or his instructors. Or his tutors. Anything and everything money could buy, and only on the rarest occasions would his glittering, glowing mother deign to pause in her whirl of social events, parties, dinners, operas; would his wan, pale father be able to drum up the effort, the monumental effort it took to give a damn about the fireworks, the election, the family, his son, anything; to go up on the roof and cover his only son's ears so he wouldn't be afraid; to look at his growing boy and decide, yes, yes, that's enough isolation. Time for him to become a part of society, no matter how elite or cloistered that society may be.

Hilary doesn't comment on any of this, though. Ivan doesn't volunteer the information. They stand and watch the fireworks arc up and asunder. Sometime during the middle there's a small burst of fireworks, like a halftime rally; then back to a few at a time, stars and comets and weeping willows and witches' hats.

She tells him, between a double-circle and a shooting star, that she used to be afraid of the dark. He wonders if she means I am. I'm scared of the dark, and if that wasn't why she curled against him the first time he lay down and slept with her in his guest room. Like being swallowed, she says, and he wonders why he sees her staring at the lightless black water like that anyway.

He has no pithy, empty phrases either. No don't worry. I'm heres; no reassurances that no monsters lay in the dark. She knows better than that. Monsters are out there, not only in the dark but in broad daylight. A monster ate her brother. There's a monster behind her right now, his arms around her, his yacht swaying gently beneath her feet.

"It gets dark out on the lake at night," he says after a while. "We can leave a light on, though."

[Hilary] There's the faintest huff of a laugh from Hilary. This isn't the thin, surprised sound she let out when the witch's hat appeared and delighted her. It's the more sardonic sound he's heard before, a laugh that feels like it's bereft of real humor. Like it's lost. It's almost a gasp.

But there's no sarcastic remark from her, no dismissal. He let her sit at his feet, stroked her hair while he drove, and that comforted her. He's directed her things to be taken belowdeck to wherever he pleases, and that relieved her. And he hasn't questioned her, nitpicked, analyzed, prodded, and she is glad of it.

"That's alright," she says finally, after a burst of fireworks and thunder fades. "I'm not a little girl anymore."

If, in some ways, she ever was.

[Ivan] "No," Ivan replies quietly, "I suppose you're not."

There's a lull, then. They watch the fireworks, one after another ascending, rising, bursting, fading. They're not the only boat out on the lake tonight, but tourist season is long past, and it won't be much longer before the lake begins to freeze. Yachting will be out of the question then. One supposes Ivan's people will have the Krasota hauled out of the water and stored for the winter; Ivan himself has no idea what would happen, and doesn't care. That's what servants are for.

If they listen carefully, they can hear his single servant of the evening moving about below, preparing the yacht for the night. Setting out a late meal in case they want it. Readying the cappuccino machine for an after-dinner coffee. Turning down the beds, making sure the heads are stocked with fresh towels. They likely don't listen, though. They're accustomed to servants creeping underfoot like mice, like part of the background: useful, but invisible. Never indispensable.


"Why did you come see me tonight?" he asks, three or five or ten minutes later, when the fireworks show is winding toward its grand finale. "I mean... why tonight?"

[Hilary] It's a fair question. Nothing for two weeks. No calls, no texts, no messages brought to him by someone on a bicycle. No love letters scented with her perfume. In this day and age people can be constantly connected with very little effort. The only thing that can stop two people from communicating is lack of desire, or the strange assumptions of restraint, the little voice saying I shouldn't... or They don't...

Up til that point they stand in near silence, Hilary bound up in her clothes and her coat and his arms and the blanket. It's still chilly, but she's not freezing. He puts off quite a bit of body heat. She's well-dressed for the weather. She rests her head against his neck, her hair touching his jawline, until he asks her why tonight?

"I don't know," she says after awhile, after giving the fair -- if difficult -- question some thought. Hilary sounds a lot like she did when he asked her what she was thinking, and the answer was a somewhat confused I'm not. He's asked her something she doesn't have a ready answer for. He's asked her something that makes her suddenly, inexplicably uneasy.

She tries, though. She looks at him, then looks away again, her eyebrows drawing together slightly, her mouth a bit pensive.

"I went to the doctor today," she says after awhile, as though she's going to go through her day aloud and try to find the moment when she decided to call him. "I'm gaining weight," she goes on, with a faint underpinning of frustration and disgust. "I'm apparently not gaining enough." The frustration is furthered. Her voice touches the tips of the flames of anger before jerking back, fingertips burnt.

"Soon enough I won't be able to move the way I like. I won't look the way I like. I certainly won't let you see me like that." Nevermind the completeness of her trust when she gives herself over to him, the faith she places in him, the unselfconsciousness of her surrender. Nevermind that he's apparently going to be her guardian, which means he'll be the guardian of her unborn child, which has just enough fractional potential to be his own that it's torturous -- and not worth it -- to think about, which has just enough fractional potential to be Garou that it's an enormous burden to be responsible in any way for its survival. Her survival.

Nevermind that she wants to belong to him sometimes. Nevermind the fact that if he asked her right now, she would say she does. Yes. Utterly. His. Nevermind all that: she isn't going to allow him to see her when she's round and heavy with pregnancy, not herself, even if her Self is a fractured and incomplete image to begin with.

So much for Woman finding her Salvation in childbirth. Impending motherhood doesn't seem to be making Hilary any better of a person. Any more whole. Any happier. Any more sane.

"I missed you," she says quietly, but a bit matter-of-factly. "And I thought about you today, and thought that soon I won't be able to see you, so I wanted to."

[Ivan] I'm gaining weight, she says, where any other expecting mother -- even an unhappily expectant mother -- might say the baby's growing. Might at least identify the cause of that weight gain, that increase; might at least acknowledge the fact that there was something inside her at all. A fetus. An embryo. A potential for new life.

Not Hilary. She speaks of weight. She speaks of looking differently, moving differently. Not a word about the child; not even obliquely, not even a he or she or it. She speaks of not wanting him to see her like that, and if Ivan were a better person he might lie to her. He might at least try to make her feel wanted and desirable, tell her nonsense, you're beautiful to me and you'll be beautiful to me no matter what.

He doesn't, though. Ivan is silent as she says, again, that soon she won't be able to see him. He doesn't comment on that. He's just quiet, resisting the perverse urge to run his hands over her belly to see just how much weight she's gained, how much the fetus has grown inside her.

How much less desirable she's become.

He doesn't, though. His arms stay where they are, holding the blanket around them both. It's cold up here, out here. His face feels cold, and her cheek is cooler still against his lips when he leans down to kiss it.

"I'm glad you came," he says. That, at least, is truthful. And kind. And this time it's Ivan that pulls away from difficult questions, complex discussions. He nods at the fireworks bursting over Chicago skyline instead, murmuring, "Look, I think it's the finale."

[Hilary] It is all difficult. Complex. Uncomfortable. The possibility that his desire for her will wane long before hers, which was never his fear at the beginning, but the reverse: that she would get sick of him. That she would get bored with him, and cast him aside. She never even had to say it for that thought to be in his mind, it was in her attitude -- it didn't help that sometimes she did say things to that effect.

Ivan at least tries to be kinder. It aches anyway, makes her uncomfortable, makes her angry and sad all the same. It boils up in her as he bends to kiss her cheek, and she turns her head away. The gesture is emotional, almost childish, looking away from the last of the fireworks and looking at the water instead, and the way the rockets reflect off of that gleaming darkness.

It will seem like rejection of the truth, and of the kindness. She can't help that. Look. It's the finale. She closes her eyes, and doesn't know why she does that when this is something she likes, something she wanted to watch with him. She doesn't know why it matters this much that Ivan might not want to fuck her anymore. Won't.

Halfway through the finale, though, she turns her head again. Looks up. While the sky is exploding she mouths something, and it seems to calm her. Not soothe her, not comfort her. But some of that rage and tension drains out of her. It doesn't leave serenity behind. It's more like resignation.

[Ivan] [percep + alert: I REED J00R LIPZ]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Hilary] [I should just get rid of it.]
to Ivan

[Ivan] Ivan notices that she turns away from his kiss. Of course he notices: he's a scout, the eyes and ears of Falcon, and he's good at what he does. He doesn't mention it, though. Doesn't say a word. Doesn't pursue her, nor the issue of her turning away in the first place.

Their embrace has become a sort of lie. A rigid, uncomfortable thing that they maintain anyway out of -- what? Politeness? Manners? Social expectations, that lovers should hold each other while they watch fireworks explode in the sky? It doesn't matter; she looks back at the sky after a while, and he relaxes a little. She mouths something,

and he catches it,

and he's no longer relaxed but frowning, his eyebrows drawing together as the last of the fireworks burst into the sky.

When they're gone, all that remains is smoke, ghostly pinkish-orange, lit from below by the city. The final echoes ring out across the lake. Then just silence, the lapping of water against the hull growing audible again to their jarred ears.

"You shouldn't," he says after a long time, quietly. "It'll be convenient in the short term. But in the long term it'll make things worse. It'll just bring your husband back to you. It'll make him even more determined to sire an heir on you. And it'll make him angry at you too, that you didn't take better care of his child. His much-desired cub."

A short breath, then, and he tries to nuzzle her again: his nose against her temple, her hair. This is the only paltry comfort he can offer, "It'll only be a few weeks. A few months at most."

[Hilary] Though there's some calmness that comes to her after those silent words leave her lips, there's no peace in it. Ivan's seen her peace. He's seen Hilary serene, tranquil, at home in her body and at home in the world, the universe, reconciled to the elusive shade of her spirit. He's seen how fleeting that peace is, how hard-won it is, how much help she needs. He doesn't know how many pills she's taken in the past to try and find, if not peace, then at least relief from aching for it. But he knows that the resignation she settles back into isn't the same as her happy acceptance when he's directing her, and it isn't the same as the peace she comes to after he's destroyed her.

It startles her that he answers. She wonders if she spoke aloud without meaning to, doubts herself suddenly, is wary and tense when she turns to look at him, twisting in his arms so she can see his face. It's hard sometimes to remember the age difference, vast as it is, between them. Not because he seems older and wiser, but because she seems so... half-formed. Not quite civilized. Not quite entirely human, a ghost's reflection in a shattered mirror.

But she doesn't shove him away, or jerk away, or stomp off. She doesn't flit out of sight like a wraith might. She just frowns slightly, and shakes her head. "I'm not going to," she says, only barely audible above the lapping of the frigid water because they're standing so close. "I know better."

She lets him nuzzle her, her own dark eyes closing. They're black as the water, glint just as much as the moonlight off the choppy waves. It's paltry comfort, but it's more than the resignation she had a moment ago, the despair and rage a moment before that. Hilary breathes, and nuzzles him back. It's a far cry from where she was just seconds before, wanting to claw her own skin off. Wanting to dive into the water, dark as it is, and be swallowed by the blackness, the cold, the floods closing over her head.

In fact she turns fully to him within the blanket, her arms slipping around his waist. She doesn't know the words for how he makes her feel. If she did, it's likely she would be afraid to say them.

[Ivan] It's not as though Ivan is a perfect individual, or even a particularly well-adjusted one. He's strong and beautiful and rich and charming, but in some ways his personality is as cracked and malformed as Hilary's is. Still, compared to her, he's so much better off. He doesn't understand what it's like to have to drown one's nameless rage and despair and anger and restlessness in pills, in pain, in an utter and total relinquishing of control. He doesn't understand what it's like to very nearly prefer oblivion to a fractured, wracked existence. And he doesn't understand what relief it is to be able to finally -- transiently -- calm that anger. Silence that rage.

No; Ivan doesn't understand just how much Hilary might need this. And perhaps that's for the best. If he did understand, it might only send him running the other way.

She turns in his arms, though. She wraps her arms around him, which may be the first time he remembers her doing this before they've fucked. Before he's broken her apart, broken her down, remade her in her own image. He can remember embracing her countless times; the cool, studied, distant way she always responds. This is not the same. This is different, and for a while he simply holds her.

"Let's go down," he says after a while. "It's getting cold."

[Hilary] Born under a different moon, Ivan might understand Hilary's fury a bit better. He might understand what it's like to have something inside you that seems so feral and uncontrollable. The difference then would be that a large part of his fosterage would have been spent on learning to control that, rather than just repress it. One would hope, at least.

This probably is the first time she's turned towards him like this and embraced him without first being dissolved. There have been moments when she was more open, when she tried. The first time he slept with her in his arms, in his guest room for just a short hour or so, when she seemed so vulnerable, when she was honest about wanting him to hold her, wanting him to lie with her.

If he thinks about it, they fucked that time without bindings, without abuse, without snarls and curses and insults, without a mark left on her. It wasn't terribly gentle but it wasn't enough to break her down, but she was so... present, all the same. With him, the whole time, and he doesn't know this now and didn't know it then but afterward she was driving away and reeling because she needed him, not just because she was fearful of Dion's presence behind her.

So now she comes with a bag. Keep me. Chain me to the bed if you have to but keep me. Hold onto me. Don't let me go. Not yet. Make me yours. Keep me. Hold me together.

"It is cold," she says, huffing mirthless laughter as she steps back. Her hand falls to brush his, but she doesn't take it, doesn't wrap her fingers around his own. Not surprisingly -- perhaps -- she doesn't resist if he takes her hand, though. Doesn't complain if he simply prefers to keep his hands to himself for a moment.

They go down. Where there's a late meal set out, a gleaming cappucino machine ready to make a mild cup of coffee if they'd like it. Where the beds are turned down, where the lone servant conscripted for this little outing has done her work so neatly, and so well.

Hilary unwraps her scarf, winding it over her hands. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold, which seems unnatural on her, that she should be subjected to such physical reactions. She begins to unbutton her coat, then shrugs out of it.

There are the women who get pregnant and wear clothes to accentuate their growing belly: cropped jackets over tight-fitting shirts, and the like. The women who think black is slimming. The women who think an empire waisted gown is going to work for them. Hilary is not any of these women, and her stomach hasn't grown so much as she seems to worry about. Her long skirt is in actuality a dress, the skirt black and the bodice wine-colored. In cut it is almost Roman, sleeveless though it covers her shoulders. The band below her breasts is not high or demure enough to warrant comparison with women from Jane Austen's era, as it is also wide rather than narrow as piping and not tied with a ribbon. The back, too, is low, revealing her shoulderblades and the shallow valley of her spine between them, descending under the fabric.

If she moves a certain way, he can see that there's a bump under the black fabric. With her posture, though, with the fact that even ten weeks into all this business she already isn't gaining enough for her doctor's satisfaction, it's not yet quite so noticable that there's no doubt. Enough to raise the question in gossip circles at the club: is she? Is Hilary --?

Not enough to conclude, without a doubt, that she is.

Except that he already knows.