Ivan Press

[Ivan] "Okay."

He doesn't question what they'll do when they're alone. They can't fuck anymore, and sometimes it feels like that's all they ever did. Fuck. And fight. And occasionally show some tenderness, some strange raw gentleness, to one another that neither could really believe the other was truly capable of.

His hand finds hers again when they walk away, though. They pass classrooms and students, visitors, a cafe. The rich scent of colombian beans drifts on the humid air, so warm for February. The rounded vowels and rolled consonants of the Spanish language follow them as they walk, the harder edges of their own anglican tongue strange against this backdrop of lush greenery and adobe and stone.

Outside the school, the streets are as narrow as Chicago's alleys. No blacktop here, only stone pavement. Ivan drove: a Chrysler 300 convertible that was doubtlessly the best rental his people could rustle up on such short notice. The car, parked, takes up so much of the street that passing traffic has to squeeze by. Not that there's much of it.

They don't drive, though. She doesn't specify where she wants to go, and he doesn't ask. There's a hotel just down the street, half a block away. He takes her there, their shadows falling stark and black on the colorful walls beside them. In the lobby he goes to the front desk and, with the arrogance of the utterly entitled, speaks english to the receptionist with every expectation of being instantly understood and served.

They have no luggage. Ivan doesn't even have a bag. He has a wallet, though, and the wallet contains a black american express, and when all's said and done they're shown to a sprawling suite on the second floor, its living room opening onto a private terrace. With a fountain.

He doesn't know how long Hilary intends to stay here. He assumes it'll be counted in minutes. Hours, if he's lucky. He doesn't intend on staying in Mexico a second later.

All the same, this thoughtless extravagance. After he tips the bellhop -- for showing them to their room, nothing more -- he shrugs out of his jacket, laying it over the back of the couch as he crosses to open the doors to the terrace, let in the breeze.

[Hilary] It never felt, to Hilary, that all they did was fuck. She calls it fucking. She was wounded when it felt like he was rejecting her on the basis that all she wanted from him was [i]sex[/i], when he didn't seem to understand. When he confused her. When her want for him was a [i]problem[/i]. When it became clear that in his mind, there was a difference between their fucking and their raw, strange tenderness.

There were a lot of reasons why she left. And now he's with her again, unsure of how to connect with her, because she's taken herself away from him for months. Now he sees her once every two months, if that. Hears from her every few weeks. And she's here and she's warm and submissive, even now. Obedient, ready to follow him, willing to follow him. Anywhere. Anywhere he wants her.

And he doesn't know how to reach her, and she doesn't know how to reach out.

Most people don't drive, here. There are plenty of roads where it simply isn't allowed. Hilary walks with him, not to the Chrysler but to the hotel down the street. Truth be told, she tenses slightly when it turns out they're headed that way. The receptionist speaks English, but it's slower. Halfway through the transaction, Hilary brusquely just starts speaking Spanish to her instead, finishing things. She goes upstairs with Ivan and sets her purse down on the bed, sitting on the edge of it. Her sunglasses were slipped back on as they walked. She removes them again now.

Behind him, he can hear the effervescently soft sound of her sliding her feet out of her shoes.

[Ivan] With the doors open, the drapes, the windows to either side, there's movement and breath in the room. The distant sounds of the city filter gently in. Ivan hears her feet sliding from her shoes nonetheless, turns to look at her as she sits on the edge of the bed.

So familiar, that. And so not. Her body is entirely changed, different from the last time he saw her, when he still wanted her desperately despite the thickening in her middle. Now he doesn't know what to do with that round addition to her, that proof of parasitic life. He doesn't know what to do with her, period.

He comes back to her, though. And after a moment, he sits beside her on the bed.

A moment after that, he lifts his ankle across his knee, undoing his shoelaces. One by one, his shoes drop to the floor. After that he draws himself back across the comforters, stretching out, one and resting over his middle. It rises and falls with his breath. He raises his head eventually, looks at her back if she hasn't come to lie beside him yet.

"How long can you stay away?"

[Hilary] Even a large city in this part of the country is quieter than any city in the United States, it seems. Maybe it just feels that way because it's winter here, despite the warmth. Maybe because even without the sound-absorbing blankets of snow everywhere the people who live in San Miguel de Allende still feel their bodies telling them to be still, be quiet, curl up, be warm, conserve energy for the coming springtime.

This isn't like the hotels in Chicago. It has its own flavor, its own softness and richness that's not quite the same as the glossy luxury back in the city where they met. Somehow she seems to fit here, despite her fair skin and her diamonds and her attitude. There is something here of the Hilary he saw in his kitchen that one day, ordering him about the kitchen. Something of the Hilary who shared a very small room indeed with him at a bed and breakfast in a tiny town not far from Lausanne, the Hilary who drank tea on the balcony in her robe and looked at Lake Geneva with silent eyes.

But also... Hilary. Pregnant. Even more visibly pregnant than last time, and currently rather nauseously aware of the fact that whatever desire he had for her last time, well. How shocked she must be that all it took was a few more weeks before his insistence that he still wanted her turned to this way he's looking at her now, unsure of what to do with her.

He sits beside her and she is still looking ahead, contemplating the furniture or the air or simply the pattern on the rug. Hilary does not shrug out of her jacket and join him on the bed, lying beside him.

"However long I like, I suppose," she says. "Though I should probably be back home before sunset. Preferably with some shopping bags or the like." She inhales, turning to look at him over her shoulder. Her hair falls, thicker and shinier than it was even before, when she was slender and gleaming and he loved to look at her. "You don't have to stay that long," she says, the permission of release almost casual; forgiving.

[Ivan] A ghost of a frown steals over his face, solidifying a moment later as Ivan tilts his head to look more directly at Hilary.

"Why do you think I would want to leave?" he asks quietly.

[Hilary] "I don't," Hilary says, and this seems true, at least, rather than affronted or defensive. "But I didn't think you would want to stay for an entire day. That's all."

[Ivan] "I [i]came here[/i]," Ivan says, an edge in his tone now, "to be with you. If you don't want me to stay around for the entire day, come out say so. Don't tell me I'm free to leave."

[Hilary] She exhales, a hard sigh of sudden frustration, looking up at the ceiling and then swinging her head around, no longer looking at him. There's this much, at least: she doesn't get up, put on her shoes, and leave. He knows better than to put it past her, but she doesn't. She stays where she is, though for all he knows that's because her feet hurt and she's worn out already.

"You needn't be so goddamn petulant," Hilary mutters. "I know why you came here. I also know how uncomfortable you seemed. I didn't want you to stay out of obligation." There's an edge to her voice, too, now. "Don't assume that because I'm trying to understand you or... be [i]nice[/i] to you... that I'm being passive-aggressive."

A moment of quiet. "I asked you to come, Ivan," she says, her voice lower now. "I didn't... I didn't mean I thought you wanted to leave [i]now[/i], I just didn't think you would want to stay all day. I don't know why you're picking a fight over it."

[Ivan] "Because I don't know what else to do right now," he replies instantly.

The bed moves as he sits up. Through the open door, he can see the living room, the dim impression of light from the terrace on the floor. On a sunnier day, sunlight would carve a brilliant patch there, lighting up the vivid rug.

"Because I don't want to fuck you when you're like this, and I feel [i]guilty[/i] for it. And I know you feel ... resentful, or insecure, because I don't want you the way I did. And then that makes me angry because when I did want you last time, you didn't want to fuck. And -- "

A jagged pause, Ivan turning abruptly and angrily away. Then back,

" -- and despite it all I'm still glad to be here. I'm glad to have been summoned here across a continent because you've finally deigned to see me again."

[Hilary] Nothing of what he says calms her. Comforts her. None of it was meant to, except perhaps that single mention of being glad to be here. He's angry, and she's keeping herself on that tight, short leash she holds onto lest that unfathomable rage she carries around with her gets out of her control. Hilary closes her eyes for a moment, opens them, turns to look at him.

"You threw it in my face back in Chicago -- I think even before you knew I was pregnant -- that all we did was fuck. You behaved as though I would never let you have anything else, do anything else, and you seemed shocked when I told you that you'd never [i]asked[/i]. You were always so busy trying to pick apart my brain and find out the why's and the motives and the deeply twisted psychology of it all that you never just asked me what I liked to do, or where I come from."

She rounds her shoulders downward a bit. "I was the one who wanted you away from me because I didn't [i]want this[/i] -- sitting here in a [i]hotel room[/i], Ivan, for [i]god's[/i] sake -- not knowing what to do other than fuck or scream at each other. And you said you would find some other way to be close to me, but snapping at me and reminding me how useless we are to each other with our clothes on is hardly helping." Hilary exhales through her nostrils, calmly slightly, or evening out. "Jabbing at me for 'summoning' you and 'deigning' to see you isn't, either."

Her eyes close for a flicker, open. "We could have gone for a goddamn drive. We could have gone out to the country. There is [i]more to me[/i] than how we fuck, Ivan. There always has been. You chased me down here in December, so by god if you want to show me I shouldn't have left and we can have something together other than your cock inside me then do something other than take me to a hotel and lie down on the bed."

[Ivan] Midway through that final sentence, [i]do something other than take me to a hotel and lie down,[/i] Ivan's fist hits the mattress. He's lean enough, fineboned enough, his rage low enough, that it's hardly even intimidating -- but it is angry; he is angry.

"I brought you here for [i]your sake![/i]" he shouts at her. Barely five minutes in here, and already shouting: his voice filling their private terrace, sending pigeons on the fountain to flight. "The last time you called me after being with Dion, you were exhausted, and you weren't even pregnant then. In Lausanne, you were so easily fatigued, and you were half the size you are now. The last time I saw you, you wanted me to [i]lie down on the bed[/i] and sleep in my goddamn arms.

"Forgive me if I didn't instantly think of roaming the city as a suitable diversion for the afternoon, Hilary. Forgive me if I didn't instantly think of putting you in a car and driving you around."

He falls silent -- intensity in the air still. A hand planted hard on the mattress vaults him off the bed, the agile Ragabash coming to his feet with thoughtless ease. In stockinged feet he walks out of the bedroom, out of the suite altogether -- through the bedroom window Hilary can see him in the courtyard, pacing. Perhaps it's a fit of petulance. Perhaps it's --

god knows what it is. Soon enough he's back, carrying her shoes.

"Get up," he says. "Let's go."

[Hilary] He shouts at her. Rails at her. And that intensity in the air doesn't last long, nor does the silence. It's possible he doesn't even get out of the room, because she asks of him, ragged: "Can you be [i]something[/i] other than angry with me? [i]Please?[/i]"

[Ivan] That stops him at the door. He turns back, eyes dark in this light as he looks at her for a moment.

"I'm [i]trying,[/i]" he says finally.

[Hilary] There are tears in her eyes. Chalked up to hormones or actual emotion or [i]something[/i]. He's never seen her cry but for those times after fucking her to and past the brink of her own control, and the fact that her eyes are wet right now seems to bother her incredibly.

"Please," she repeats, as though she didn't quite hear him. "I'm not... [i]deigning[/i] to see you, Ivan. I miss you, and I [i]hate[/i] this. I don't want this to be how it is all the time, fucking or fighting. I just want to be with you."

[Ivan] Ivan's smooth brow contracts, an aching expression. After a moment, he exhales, turning away after all.

Seconds later, though, he's returning with her shoes. "Let's go," he says, low. "Give me your foot."

If she does, he helps her with her shoes. One, then the other. She never took her coat off. He did, but he leaves it where it is -- on the back of the couch -- as he holds his hand out for hers.

[Hilary] "Where." It's hardly even a question, that flat intonation that seems leveled out, emptied of investment because it is taking all of her energy just to contain the emotion she's having more and more trouble controlling. They can't [i]be[/i] together at all. She hates that she even wants it. Hates how pathetic it sounds, how pathetic she must seem, begging him to be nice to her, to coddle her, not be so mad. She hates the way her voice sounds when she begs him for that

though she doesn't mind begging him, other times, for so many other things. Hilary is letting him put her shoes on though, staring at him, her own eyebrows drawn together and slightly upward on her forehead.

So ready to give up. No wonder her life is as it is, and no wonder she finds so much comfort in submission. Just to be able to... let go.

[Ivan] Ivan's eyebrows draw together again. He seems to consider whether or not to answer at all for a moment

before he does.

"Last time I came here," he says quietly, "I passed a farmer's market between the airport and your estate. I thought we could go for a drive. Maybe take the scenic byways out. There's a kitchen in the suite; I thought we could buy some vegetables, some meat and fish. Come back here and cook like we did that day at my place.

"I thought you might ... like that." Another small pause. "I would."

[Hilary] A soft smile moves over Hilary's face. The change is as simple and as easy as clouds drifting from one part of the sky to another; she looks like she can breathe, and she gives that smile. Reaching forward, her hand smooths from his jaw to his cheek, and she leans to him to kiss him. It's no less deep than the way she kissed him in the courtyard when he told her to, but somehow it's sweeter.

No nod, or word of agreement, or assurance that yes, she would like that. That she likes cooking, and that cooking itself is more pleasurable when it's done for someone else, done to share. That Hilary of all people would enjoy an activity so based in manual effort, service, and sharing is perhaps a little strange, and maybe it's not even clear that she does, in fact, enjoy it. He's only seen her cook once, and she snapped at him, ordered him around, told him he was doing it [i]wrong[/i],

but her face would light up if he did it [i]right[/i], and she was constantly making him taste, taste, taste this, do you like it, what do we change, taste it. As insistent as she is when she's begging him, please, don't make her wait any longer.


Hilary waits for him to stand, and when he offers her his hand, she gets to her feet. She's quite firmly pregnant now, but will only get larger, and that's a somewhat obscene thought to dwell on. She retains her grace. She breathes slowly and carefully, each one measured, and she doesn't seem to have much trouble moving from sitting to standing -- not enough that she would need his hand any more than she ever has. That may change. By the time this clandestine birth happens and the fate of the infant is decided -- to grow up as the honorable son of an Adren and a purebred kinswoman or as the bastard of a Walker-fied playboy -- it may be that Hilary will scarcely bother to move around at all.

For today, though, she'll go to the farmer's market with Ivan. Drive through the countryside. Come back here and cook for him -- with him. Spend time with him that isn't raking at each other's souls or tied to their sex drives.


They walk back to the once-convent and get into the Chrysler. Hilary holds his hand most of the way.

[Ivan] Hilary had the right idea. It's a nice day for a drive. Warm enough to put the top down, let the wind move through their hair. There's no sun to glare in their eyes, but both Fangs wear their thousand-dollar sunglasses anyway.

There are [i]mercados[/i] within the urban limits, to be sure, and quite possibly with a wider selection than any country market they might find. But that would require navigating a maze of ancient cobblestoned streets, not all of them vehicle-friendly. Besides, the one Ivan heads toward -- without the help of GPS, without the help of anything except a vague memory from two months ago -- allows them a meandering path through the countryside.

No freeways in this part of the world. Outside the ancient heart of the city, there's blacktop, there's asphalt, but the roads are narrow and empty, stretching vast distances flanked by dirt ditches, farms. The sky is enormous, textured by an oncoming afternoon storm brewing on the horizon. In the far distance, mountains etch a low, rippling line.

They don't talk a lot, heading out. He looks at her now and then, though, and when he catches her looking back he sometimes smiles. The tension in Ivan doesn't melt away so quickly as it does in Hilary, but it does melt. Eventually, he relaxes. Eventually, his hand finds hers again, holding her fingers gently in his, elbows on the center console.


He does ask her at one point: [i]did you learn to speak Spanish because you were to be mated to Dion?[/i]

-- and, after a while:

[i]Is he your first mate?[/i]

Whatever her answers, he listens quietly; digests without saying much.


Eventually, Ivan finds the farmer's market he's looking for. Of course he finds it; he's a tracker and a scout by birth, by profession. When he starts to recognize the countryside, he lifts the hand that holds hers, pointing without letting go. There's a cluster of large, colorful tents ahead -- not tents, really, but simply tarps stretched over rusting poles set into the ground. As they draw closer, they can see barrels and crates of produce laid out beneath the awning.

"There it is," he says. "I hope your Spanish is as good as I think it is."

[Hilary] The morning arcs towards afternoon as gradually as it always does, every day, and some of the grayness in the sky evaporates as they drive out towards the market Ivan noticed a month and a half ago. It's bigger than the last time he came to Mexico. There are some trucks, too, refrigerated vans. But before they see those steady tarps and those milling men and women and running children,

they talk a little. Not very much. Hilary has never been much opposed to silence with Ivan. And she has, quite regularly, grown exhausted by too much conversation, too many questions she can't answer.

But today he asks her questions she can. Her fingers stroke gently between his as he asks her about her Spanish. "I knew a little before that," she admits, "but yes. I don't think anyone else thought it a necessity, but I would not have my husband, stepchildren, and staff speaking Spanish around me, not understanding a word of it."

And another question she can: "No," she muses, her thumb moving along the curve of his middle fingernail. "My first mate was of... whatever House it is with the Eye in its name." A small smile, nostalgic. "He was an Ahroun. Very highly ranked. He had little family and so was quite keen on having children. He died before our second anniversary."

Hilary looks over at him, still wearing that soft, stranger smile. "We lived in a châteaux in the Loire Valley. And a little house in Creuse. It was quite lovely, being his wife."

She speaks of this mysterious Ahroun with far more fondness than she's ever mentioned Dion, who is usually spoken of with frustration. Maybe it's because this Gleaming Eye Full Moon is long gone, long dead. But there's a softness, too. No ache, no grief, no longing for what was, no wishing he hadn't died -- none of that. She speaks of him as she spoke of Lausanne. A nice memory. A time she was as close as Hilary gets to happy.

"After he died his holdings passed to his packmates, as I had given him no children to inherit anything. But he left me a little money, too, so I would not be bereft until I was mated again." A beat. She might be about to say more, but thinks better of it, and smiles at Ivan instead, then turns to look out the window.

Soon enough: tarps. Poles. Crate upon crate of tomatoes, rich and red and ripe. Frozen lamb and mutton and rabbit and tuna and chickens sold from those refrigerated vans. Mangoes, oranges, avocados, bananas, cucumbers. Ropes of garlic, bags of onions, huge barrels of dried beans. The season is clinging, but the selection of chiles is dwindling. There are a few pomegranates.

As they're getting out of the car, Hilary is coming to Ivan's side and saying only: "My Spanish is very good," as though his statement was not rhetorical or offhand, as though he needs some kind of reassurance. Even if he asks, she makes no suggestions as to menu or a plan for a meal, telling him: "Just look. Take what is fresh. If it looks good to you, then you should have it. We will figure out something."

Which is why, on top of whatever else Ivan picks out, they end up taking fresh lavender and roses back with them, drenching the Chrysler in its scent. Which is why, along with fruits and vegetables and meat and herbs, they take a handful of sun-dried vanilla beans. There are jams and honeys and pickles to be taken, too, but Hilary only rolls her eyes at the pickles.

At one point she has an argument with a vendor, entirely in that language Ivan doesn't know. The vendor sells chiles and peppers and does not seem to want to sell her habaneros. It's unclear why, though he does gesture at her belly at least once, which he does not do again when she goes [i]off[/i] on him immediately afterward.

As a spectator sport, it's a rather entertaining argument. Hilary wins. She takes poblanos and jalapenos and serranos and cayennes as well. It does not seem like she is merely shopping for whatever cooking she'll do with Ivan, but from the look of what they end up putting in the Chrysler, if she has any cravings at all, it is for exactly the sort of spicy foods she couldn't tolerate earlier in her pregnancy.

By the time they're back on their way, it is noon. She's hungry. And she's peeling an orange with those hard, manicured fingernails of hers. There is also a bell pepper in her lap, which she apparently plans to eat raw and whole as though it were an apple.

[Ivan] It was deliberate, driving out, that he asked her questions she can answer. That he did not chase each one down, bear it to the ground, tear it apart with followup after followup until she was thin, raw, empty, bare.

For the most part, when she answers, he merely listens. He looks at her sometimes, his eyes holding on her face far longer than they would be able to if he were driving in Chicago. This is not Chicago, though, and the road is so long and straight and empty. When she tells him about her first mate, he's quiet, thoughtful, and the smile he returns to her is just a touch sad.

Whatever else, there's this to be said about Ivan. He doesn't get jealous. Not of whatever other pretty boys she might be fucking; not of whatever mighty Garou she belonged to, belongs to. Not unless such diversions and possessions directly interfered with his time with her, anyway. But a memory is merely a memory, a small window of what used to be and what she used to be, so he only listens, and considers, and is silent.

Afterward, his thumb strokes her fingers once. Thoughtfully. They drive on.


The market is larger than he remembered, or else it has grown as the winter passes toward an early southern spring. They stand starkly out against the locals, this lovely paleskinned couple, the man a little shockingly young, the woman's spanish rather charmingly continental, and laced with the accent of her native tongue. And she's so lovely, and she looks like she could be so friendly, so warm, so the merchants want to ask her questions and wish health upon her and her child; they want to know if she spent time in Spain when she was young.

One tries to warn her against those devilishly spicy habaneros. He gestures at her abdomen; she rips him apart. After that, the merchants are a little less friendly. A little more wary.

They still emerge with nearly obscene amounts of food, bagged in logoless flimsy plastic bags. Toward the back of the market were large, murky tanks of live catfish, and Ivan showed interest. They got one cleaned and gutted alongside more exotic meats from more distant lands. There were papayas, too, and starfruit -- a bag of those sits in the back of the Chrysler.

More food than they could possibly devour in an afternoon. It does not seem to matter.


On the way back, the sky is more tumultuous. The sun has burnt through those still, pale clouds: now it's a tapestry of change overhead. White clouds crowding across a dazzling blue sky, pushed on by high winds. Stormclouds sit over the distant mountains, but scatter into more meager form by the time they make it across the plateau San Miguel is situated on.

The top is still down. They leave the scent of flowers behind them, flowers and dust, but citrus is sharper than that. It lingers in the car even with the wind blowing through it. Ivan's nostrils flare as Hilary's fingernails bite through the rind of the orange. Wordlessly, he holds his hand with cupped palm upward, asking for a slice or two.

"Do you think you might be able to stay the night?" he asks quietly. "Is there a way you could stay that long?"

[Hilary] Fresh fish, thankfully, does not have a tendency to stink up one's car. Frozen fish and meat -- all of it, in fact, from local farms and not distant or exotic lands -- does not, either. They have both, as Hilary does not interfere with Ivan's interest in the catfish but quietly tries to prepare herself mentally for making a bottom feeder palatable. He might catch her looking at him as the fish is being gutted. The expression is something closer to [i]what kind of a Silver Fang...[/i] than abject disgust.

So they head back towards the city. With fresh catfish. And with frozen lamb. And more produce than they will rightly know what to do with. Flowers, too -- flowers she'll take back to her own hacienda and keep in her room. Smell, and remember this. Maybe. Or look at, and not understand.

It takes a little while to peel the orange, but when she does, she breaks off a segment and hands it to him, laying it on his outstretched palm.

"No," she says, matching his voice. Glancing from his fingers over to his face. "But I could come again tomorrow."

[Ivan] That slice of orange rests easily in his palm, moves easily to the tips of his long fingers. He pops it into his mouth and dusts his hand on his shirt, then returns it to the gearshift.

There's a brief pause when she answers. He looks at her. They're driving with the sun at their back; Ivan's sunglasses are cocked back on his head, his eyes clear as they move over her face, pause on her eyes.

Then he turns back to the road. "I'd like that," he says; not for the first time today. "And perhaps again toward the middle of the week, or would that rouse your servants' suspicions? I don't think I can stay away from Chicago much longer than that."

[Hilary] Hilary put her sunglasses away while examining produce at the market; she has not put them back on. Strands of her hair blow across her face sometimes as they drive; she delicately tucks them back to their kindred. It's been over an hour now, maybe two, since they were in the hotel suite. Arguing. Fighting, angry, hurt, unsure of what at all there is between them if not sex. And Hilary remembers, always, in the back of her mind: he hates the idea of her not needing him at all, or wanting him only for his cock. He hates the idea that she would need him for anything else, want him as her own in some fashion. There is no resolution to that. Not really. Not now.

But there's a farmer's market that he passed the last time he came to Mexico to find her, to make her look at him, to touch her, to [i]see her[/i]. And there's an orange in her lap, now shared. There's a kitchen in the suite, and he'd like it if they could cook together again like they did that one day at his place.

"My servants suspect me of nothing," she says gently. "If I go out a dozen times a week, if I stay inside for a month at a time. I am their mistress and I'm pregnant. But if I stayed out all night, then they would notice. And they might wonder. And they might talk."

Hilary takes a bite of a segment of orange. "I'm not sure if it's wise, though," she adds, more quiet than before. "I know... you don't want me like this."

Those words tap, eversoslightly, into the rage in her. It takes her a moment to go on, get past it, make her point.

"But I miss you. I miss having sex with you. And I'll hate you for not wanting me back." She looks over at him. "Maybe we could just be together for now. And when I need to go away, don't fight me so hard."

[Ivan] When Hilary speaks so blithely about her servants, Ivan can't help but wonder how much of that is truth and how much is bluster. Or perhaps not even bluster, but her peculiar and particular form of blindness. Once upon a time she told him her husband wouldn't care if she fucked another man. Or maybe she never told him that at all. Maybe that was just implication. Maybe it wasn't even that,

but the same sort of willful ignorance Hilary puts on when she has no answer to some insolvable dilemma.

She goes on. She speaks of him not wanting her like this, and he can't deny it. He wanted to kiss her when he saw her. He did kiss her when he saw her; he'd kiss her again now, too, if he weren't so certain he'd drive off the road. But when her belly came against his body he startled. He can't even imagine what she looks like naked now.

Doesn't want to.


This time the pause is longer. The Chrysler's a cruising vehicle, built for luxury and comfort, not speed -- it glides over uneven patches of asphalt, trundles over debris with nary a waver. Windnoise fills up the silence. After a while, Ivan looks at Hilary again for a moment.

"Okay," he says quietly. "But I'd still like you to come tomorrow. And if you want me to stay til Wednesday, maybe Thursday... let me know."

[Hilary] Around various parts of Mexico, Mass is letting out. Liturgy for St. Valentine's isn't required anymore, but traditions take generations to die out, if they ever die entirely. You can't tell someone who grew up going to a Mass for Saint Valentine, whoever that really was -- there are several it could be, really -- to just stop because some reforms trickled down and said it's really not that important, that this person might not even be what's been venerated for so long.

They aren't Catholic. They aren't religious at all. Who are they to say that Gaia is even real? Has Ivan ever seen her, talked to her, done more than just walked around on a hunk of dirt and rock and magma and so on that may or may not have a spiritual counterpart? What has Gaia ever done to prove to Hilary that she matters? The Wyrm seems real enough. Proves itself without hesitation.

They keep driving. Hilary holds the half-eaten orange in her lap, looking out at the countryside. She doesn't say anything for awhile. When she does, the words are almost caught by the wind and taken away.

"We'll see," is all it is. Truth be told, if she could give him more than that, she would. As it is, it's giving quite a lot.


Back at the hotel a bellhop comes to help them unload the groceries. Hilary carries nothing but her purse. She is, in fact, eating the bell pepper she carried, neat white teeth crunching into the waxy yellow flesh. For what it's worth, she avoids getting seeds all over her face. If there is tipping to be done, she lets Ivan do it when they get back to the suite, but she also speaks to the young man in Spanish, giving him something that could be a list, given the cadence of her speech.

She does not walk to draw attention, and she does not meet many people's eyes, but she is quite aware that cousins and friends of her own staff may be standing behind the counter at this goddamn place, because he had to choose one in the city. She doesn't grouse about it. Her own fault for agreeing to meet him in San Miguel de Allende in the first place.

Hilary doesn't remove her heels until the bellhop is gone, and as before, she keeps that jacket on. Her sunglasses go not to the nightstand but a counter in the kitchen, as does her purse. It seems now that she is simply, willfully, and entirely ignoring that this is even a hotel. That it has a bed. That it has a bed they won't use, because

she's fucking repulsive.

It isn't hard for Ivan to feel the fury in Hilary, the wrath that comes when any other emotional string is plucked. The chord of it wavers in the air around her, an anger that is constantly raking steel across stone, shrieking in her mind, setting off sparks. For all that, she looks so calm as she ties her hair back, leaving a half-eaten pepper on the counter. She washes her hands, and she isn't speaking much to him, but right now that might be for the best.

After awhile: "I asked him to send someone for some things from the dairy, and some herbs." She has a board out, and a very small knife, and the vanilla beans. "The catfish will do fine with a mango salsa, but I want to make some mole to go with the lamb. And I have no rice." As though this was a gross oversight on her part, not to pick up a bag at the market. She splits a vanilla bean with a tiny notch and a slice down the side, then begins to scrape the inside out into a little stoneware bowl of bright green she found in the cabinet.

Hilary looks over at him, her eyes black as something dead.

"It's moving again," she informs him, then turns her attention back to the vanilla bean. "Earlier you seemed to want to feel it."

[Ivan] Once, Hilary spoke of what it was like for her to feel anything at all. Anything but wrath. She spoke of swimming with leaden limbs; of how much easier it is just to sink. Just to give in and be empty for a while.

Ivan understands that now, though not by any emotional detachment of his own. He understands because sometimes trying to connect with her is the same way. For a moment he made her smile. For an hour she seemed -- if not quite happy, then at least content. In her own skin. Present. But it's a constant struggle for a surface that seems to recede even as he reaches for it. Down, down he goes again: this woman drifting out of his grasp, back into her own void.

She's empty again, except for formless and unspeakable wrath. She slices vanilla beans. She tells him she sent for things they couldn't find at the market -- things she forgot because the rice was near the catfish and the catfish caught Ivan's attention, made him think of New Orleans before the storm, where he spent his 16th birthday. He knows better than to tell her, [i]it doesn't matter. that's what they're here for.[/i] He stands in the kitchen, feeling an impotent anger himself, and is working to contain that

when she looks at him and tells him what she does.

His eyes flicker. His brow furrows. He comes toward her, feet silent. His hand rises, but goes onto to the smooth surface of the counter, where it carries a portion of his weight.

"Earlier you didn't want me to feel it," he replies. "Do you want me to now?"

[Hilary] A slight furrow creases her brow at that, but she doesn't take her eyes off of her work. "What do you mean? I never said I didn't want you to. You reached for me and then pulled your hand away.

"It doesn't matter to me," she also says, as calm as the rest of her words, "if you feel him move or not. You seemed to want to. I just wanted you to know I wasn't going to tear your arm off for trying."

[i]him[/i], she said this time. It seems to mean as much, from her tone, as 'it'.

[Ivan] His hand comes to the back of her neck, the base of it, fingers wrapping over the crest of her shoulder.

Voice low, he says -- again, "Turn around and kiss me."