Ivan Press

[Hilary] Through the window in the bedroom, a light breeze swirls the thin curtains inward, brushes over Ivan's back. It cools and dries the sweat on his skin; it makes him feel all the warmer where his body rests against Hilary's. She's never been quite as cold to the touch as her ivory-colored skin would suggest, but either because of Mexico or because of pregnancy she's even warmer in his arms.

Warmer, still, as she falls asleep. Her hand still rests idly against his shoulder, fingers curled upward, her back arched slightly because of the odd positioning. But she doesn't want to take herself away from him, not even to curl up and sleep, so

there it is. Hilary sleeps, the air around them smelling of sex and covering up even the richness of vanilla that was so thick on her fingers before she stopped cooking. She's unaware if Ivan sleeps, too. She does not nap for a terribly long time; her body that is no longer her body alone will not let her, and so in a couple of hours she's waking again, her hand moving to her abdomen before she's fully awake. Before her eyes fully open, she's starting to react to the wriggling and kicking of an unborn [i]somebody[/i].

"Shush," she whispers, pressing her hand on her belly, as though the thing inside can hear her, or would obey.

[Ivan] For what it's worth -- and one can only guess at what such a thing as this is worth to Hilary, whether it's worth nothing at all or everything -- Ivan is still there when she wakes. As far as she can tell he slept too; there's a certain laxness, a heaviness to him as he stirs behind her.

He's quiet, though. Quiet and instantly awake. [i]Shush,[/i] she says to the thing that cannot understand her, may not even properly hear her right now. Behind her, Ivan breathes in; out. He blinks once or twice.

Then he sits up, the mattress shifting beneath him. The light out in the courtyard has changed subtly but noticeably. It's afternoon now, two pm, perhaps leaning toward three. She has to be back before sunset. He feels the day slipping away, and a twist of mute frustration -- or perhaps it's something more akin to desperation -- sears through him. It wants a target. He gives it the only one he can think of.

"Doesn't the brat ever give you a moment's rest?" he mutters.

[Hilary] Strangely -- and this might be because she's not looking at him, and this might be because Hilary is hardly the person you expect to pick up on other people's feelings -- this makes her huff a small breath of laughter.

She isn't startled to find him there when she wakes. She doesn't want to know if he slept, too -- though her shushing of the brat was quiet enough to not wake Ivan if he had slept, too. She isn't suddenly sobbing, crying because he called it [i]the brat[/i] -- she's called it worse herself, considered some truly abhorrent alternatives to allowing it to bother her and disrupt her life. She's just

faintly amused at his irritation, perhaps because she doesn't know if it's all that serious. Or because she doesn't care.

"Sometimes," she answers, though, as if it were a serious question and not a thrust of aggravation. "It's been quite energetic since you came around," she informs him. It's the simple truth, though he might very well take it as blame, as a rebuttal. Hilary opens her eyes then and looks over her shoulder at him, blinking her eyes a few sleepy times. "I vaguely remember more than a few moments' rest just now," she adds, and the back of her hand brushes over his bicep, feels the soft, light hairs on his forearm.

"Would you like me to cook for you now?" she aks, as though she does not feel his desperation, does not even recognize it. Does not worry about the sun's path, about the inevitable that always comes: when Ivan has let her go, or walk away, because she isn't really his.

Not right now, at least. Right now, she doesn't feel it.

[Ivan] "I want you to come back tomorrow," he says: says it in the same moment he turns to look at her, the swing of his head and shoulders somehow forceful, forcibly restrained. "I want you not to go at all, but if you go, I want you to come back tomorrow."

[Hilary] There's no way for her now to not tell that he's troubled. That he is as volatile as he ever is with her. Truth be told, Hilary almost wouldn't recognize the Ivan that everyone else thinks they know: so casual, so careless, so disinterested in everything and everyone around him who isn't staving off his inevitable boredom. Then again, she might understand it instantly, deeply, intrinsically.

Her eyes move in such a way that they would roll, except that it never quite gets there. He ignores her question and tells her he wants her here again tomorrow, come back, don't go, but come back.

But her hand hasn't stopped stroking against his bicep, as though she can't quite stop herself from touching him. Gently, like this, tracing him out of thin air, making sure he is real. Or just... fascinated by the softness of his skin.

"All right," she says, where earlier she was so against it, so resistant, so [i]unsure[/i]. "What would you like to do tomorrow?"

[Ivan] "I don't know," and it's his turn to exhale something like a laugh - a sort of helpless sound, and half-angry because it's helpless.

A moment later he raises his hand. Covers hers. His skin is so very soft; as soft as hers, only his doesn't come about from a careful regimen of lotions, sun-avoidance, care. His is simply the result of a few thousand years' worth of breeding and the way his body continually, constantly regenerates itself -- literally forms itself anew every time he shapeshifts.

"You're the one that's lived here for months," he says. He is so very volatile: not angry now but oddly self-deprecating. "Is there something you want to do?"

Look at them. Planning their days as if they had any right to one another.

[Hilary] "Hmm," she says, with some amusement, as he mentions that she's lived here for months. Lived here -- to an extent. Hidden here. Would have gladly stayed here, unbothered, cloistered away in the hacienda that is literally named a path to sorrow. The truth is, she came here never expecting him to still be there when she came back from pregnancy. 'There' as in alive. 'There' as in interested. 'There' as in sane, or anything close to it.

Hilary slowly sits up. Slowly, because it takes more effort to do this comfortably. Slowly, because it takes care to keep the sheets half over herself, covering her belly. She sits beside him, leans over, and kisses his mouth, captures it as their shoulders touch. It's a slow thing, more tender than he feels right now.

When she withdraws, her eyes are dark on him. Considering -- though not considering what to do tomorrow, or what to say to him. Just considering [i]him[/i]. "...I would be happy just to lie in bed with you all day," she says, without self-consciousness, without eagerness, without fear.

[Ivan] If either of them see the irony in this -- that now she wants to lie abed with him all day when a mere handful of hours ago she was so dark, so angry, that when she asked to [i]go somewhere[/i] with him he took her to a hotel, to a bed -- they don't say a thing.

She sits up carefully. His eyes flick down to her abdomen, then up to her face again. He held her around the middle as they slept. He couldn't say why, now, if his life depended on it. It had nothing to do with some sudden fairy-tale fondness for the fetus that, for whatever reason, responds to him so much. He heard that, too. He doesn't say anything about that, either.

Instead, his eyes close a moment after her mouth touches his. He kisses her back -- gently now, a thoughtful closing of his lips around hers. When she draws back, even the brilliance of the southern sun outside can't light the darkness of her eyes. Pits of blackness, though, on a face that would otherwise be so lovely, so warm, so friendly.

"All right," he agrees. "Let's do that, then." A beat goes by. "Will you tell me in advance when you're about to come back to Chicago?"

[Hilary] So many things changed when he started kissing her the way he did in the kitchen, putting his hands on her and telling her, without every quite saying it, that he wanted to fuck her. When not that long before he'd told her he felt guilty because he didn't want her at all. When, for all she knew, he was biting back saying that he could barely stand to look at her like this, see her like this.

More and more it starts to seem as though it isn't the fact that the baby might not be his. More and more it starts to sound like his problem isn't with her body, though surely that's a part of it. His. All his. That's what he wants, and what he can't bear: Hilary all to himself, even when he knows that to have her all to himself he would be taking on a commitment and a responsibility that make his insides dissolve as though splashed with acid.

As long as that thing is inside of her, he can't have her all to himself. He can't get her alone, can't pretend she's [i]his[/i], that she [i]belongs[/i] to him, like he can when she lets him tie her down, use her. And if he thinks for a moment that Hilary doesn't share his frustration in that, he's forgotten her.

She does hate it. That as strangely deep, as strangely close as what happened a couple of hours ago was, it wasn't the same. He couldn't take her as far, and she couldn't respond as she might have liked, and there was a burden between them that had nothing to do with the size of her stomach.

Hilary looks at him oddly for a moment. "Of course. Everything will have to be arranged. A letter from my husband to Miss Bellamonte regarding my guardianship, the doctors you'll insist upon treating me if I am to be your ward, all that.

"Why do you ask?"

[Ivan] "I don't know," Ivan says after a short pause. "I suppose I'm ... anticipating it."

All this time they've sat more or less facing the same direction. He's looking out the door to the living room, looking at the pattern the sunlight makes on the rug outside. So unlike Lausanne, this suite. So unlike Trump Tower, and any number of other places they've met for assignations, trysts. The colors so warm, the materials so earthen.

It feels deceptively comfortable. Safe. Close. Like she's his, and so is this place.

He turns to her, then. He looks at her a moment. Reaches out to her, touches her face, smooths her hair back. Catches her by the chin gently, turning her face just a few degrees toward him, upward, so he can see her better.

Lovely, he thinks. What he says instead:

"Let's go cook. Let's make something out of that mountain of produce we bought. So when you come back tomorrow," and his thumb traces her lip gently, the upper and then the lower, the softness, the contours, "it'll still be there, and ready."

[Hilary] Neither of them belong here. He's a shining thing, his hair turning darker and his skin paler in winter though come summer that will flip, his hair turning bright and his skin darkening to tan, but he's a fair thing, too. He stands out in San Miguel and it's not because of his height. It's not even just because of his breeding, his rage, his [i]other[/i]ness.

Hilary is ivory skin and dark hair, dark eyes. They belong in the lands their ancestors are from, Russia and Belgium and all the other lands where the Kin of Fangs were kings and queens, ruling in the stead of their Garou cousins who kept those lands safe from worse things than mortal invaders. Her family once had a castle. She once lived in one with her first mate.

Dion doesn't even belong here. He's Spanish, not Mexican. The Spanish that Hilary speaks is not Mexican, either, and the people in the city and the staff and the marketers can all tell. The only reason she's even here is because of that former mate of her husband's, the one that was born here, the one whose family had this estate, who ruled here under the banner of house something-something hearth. Whatever.

She smiles softly as he touches her face the way he does, and if she were just a touch more girlish her cheeks might color with pleasure at the way he looks at her. Such a change in her, having had him. Such a change in him, with the promise that she'll come again tomorrow. Such a change.

"Yes, Ivan," she breathes, and opens her lips gently over the pad of his thumb, welcoming. Worshipping, in a way.

[Ivan] [i]Yes, Ivan.[/i]

That's an echo of something darkly familiar, and she can see the way it affects him. Rippling through his eyes. Darkening them, making them drop to her mouth, the way she sucks at his thumb,

making him remember the way she sucked on his cock so eagerly before he was fucking her mouth, using her the way he does. Except not quite. Except that wasn't deliberate, wasn't a show of dominance, wasn't [i]something they do[/i] just to get each other off. It was something wilder. Unrestrained. Unplanned-for. Just like all of this.

He leans across suddenly, replaces his thumb with his mouth. Kisses her inhalingly, devouringly, catching her behind the neck to hold her still for him the way he does, as if she might fly away if he didn't.

When he parts from her, he licks his lips, tastingly. Then he leans forward and licks hers, a delicate tracing of the tip of his tongue, somehow feral. A moment after that he gets out of bed, narrow-hipped and long-boned, graceful as a wolf, leaving his clothes where they are.

"I'm going to shower," he says quietly. "If you want to come with me, I wouldn't mind. But I'd understand if you didn't."

[Hilary] The way Ivan lost himself when Hilary started sucking his cock couldn't be chalked up to just [i]something they do[/i]. And though it makes recognition and arousal twine together and flicker through his eyes and change his breathing slightly, the way Hilary kisses his thumb as though in worship and the way she tells him [i]Yes[/i] isn't, either. Isn't part of that set of behaviors, which may indicate that none of it is simply a set of behaviors for her but part of who she is. Part of what he comes, more and more, to crave. To need.

Her eyelashes are touching her cheek when he moves his hand to cradle her head and kisses her like he wants to drink in her very soul, take it out of that hijacked body of hers and hold it for himself, possess it entirely. Hilary doesn't resist, doesn't pull away to get away from that vampiric caress, but she gasps when he lets her go, taking back a lungful of air that was stolen from her.

She watches him with dark, dark eyes now, her lips still parted. Watches him lick his lips, and watches him lean forward. A soft moan escapes her when he licks her mouth the way he does, lapping lightly at her lips.

And a moment after that, he's gone, swinging out of bed with the sort of singular, graceful motion that she used to be able to match and sometimes even exceed. [i]I wouldn't mind,[/i] he says, and she's not entirely sure that's true. He wrapped her in his arms not so long ago, yes, but he also complained about the fetus kicking around inside of her, interrupting. She is still not quite sure she can bear for him to see her. Look at her like this, and burn that impression of her naked body into his mind to superimpose over the way she [i]really[/i] looks, the way she [i]should[/i] look, the body that is actually her own.

You do not have a body, a doctor once told her, and she once told Ivan. You [i]are[/i] a body.

Hilary shakes her head twice, very gently. "I will when you're done," she answers. "Maybe while I'm doing that, you could call downstairs and see if they've delivered the cream and butter and things while we were sleeping."

[Ivan] Truth be told, it doesn't surprise Ivan very much when Hilary refuses. He merely nods to that -- a slight inclination of his chin, so effortlessly regal in that moment that some echo, some shade, can be seen after all of his long, noble heritage.

"I'll do that," he promises.

He showers, then. He doesn't stay in there so long as he would if she were there; if he were caressing her body, or her body the way it was. After ten, fifteen minutes, the shower shuts off and Hilary can hear him moving about inside, toweling dry, brushing his teeth. He takes care of himself; he's careful about his body, his hygiene, even when he doesn't really have to be. His teeth regenerate along with everything else.

When he steps out, he's wearing a towel like a sarong. Apparently he doesn't intend to wear anything else, and why not? The suite is theirs; the courtyard is theirs. He could walk about nude if he wanted to. While she steps into the shower, he lifts the phone from the cradle and inquires about their things.

By the time she comes out, the ingredients she requested have arrived. Ivan is in the kitchen, painstakingly -- and with greater concentration than success -- trying to do whatever it was she was trying to do with those vanilla beans.

He looks up as she appears. And he smiles at her. And this seems so rare, somehow: as though the only way he tends to look at her is either in anger, or lust, or some intense shade of curiosity as he tries to decipher who and [i]what[/i] she is.

[Hilary] While Ivan is showering, Hilary lies in the bed where she is, the sheet still covering most of her body. She closes her eyes for awhile, listening to the water running, imagining him in there. She knows what he looks like naked and she can picture him as easily as if she had a photograph. She knows every inch of his body. You'd think she made him with her own two hands, would have crafted him painstakingly if he hadn't existed already. She make no announcement of how carefully she details him in her memories, how every time she's ever touched him she's been memorizing him.

It isn't an act of love, not really. It's a sort of anchor, as though somehow she knew there would be moments like this. Or months like those now behind her, when she looked at the hacienda as dustcloths were removed from furniture and thought of how long she would be there, and Ivan in Chicago.

Ivan, who doesn't make sense himself and can't make sense of her

but is, all the same, someone who seems to know the truth of what she is. What she needs.

Hilary thinks of him while he showers, and thinks of all the times he's stood under a stream of water and caressed her, rubbed her back, gentled his hands on her and healed her with wordless comfort from all the abuses heaped on her while they fuck. She knows now she could not have one without the other: that she would not come back to him again and again, that she wouldn't submit to him so readily, so eagerly, so completely, that she would not put up with him, that she would not feel the way she feels right now if it weren't for how he manages to blend together the violence and the tenderness he shows her,

and blend them together seemingly with no special effort. Naturally, as though there is no thought in his mind as to what else he could do, but stand in the shower and rub her back, relieve the strain on muscles stretched out from being tied down, break a gourd over her and heal her. As though to do this is simply a part of who [i]he[/i] is, at least when he is with her.

When he steps out, wearing one of the large, luxurious towels hanging in the bathroom, Hilary's eyes open. She follows his body across the room as he walks by, and when she hears the phone lifted, he hears the blankets rustle. A moment or two later, the water is running again.


In the shower, she does what she would never let another soul see her do if she could help it, and she wraps both arms around her belly, covering it with what looks very much like protectiveness. And she begs Gaia or the baby itself: [i]don't. don't. don't.[/i]

Don't kick. Don't be Dion's. Don't be Ivan's. Don't hurt me. Don't take me away from myself, I have so little as it is. Don't. Don't be ugly or broken. Don't be mine. Don't [b]be[/b].[/i]

And the little thing answers the way it always does: it mostly stays still, lulled by her own relaxation under the water, lulled by whatever hormones and chemicals are rushing around in Hilary because of sex, because of sleep, because of Ivan. Because of hunger.


She is hungry. And she dresses in the clothes she had on before, as they're all she has, but she leaves the jacket off this time. She comes into the kitchen with her wet hair combed back and coiled into a rather fashionable off-center knot at the nape of her neck. Her earrings and bangles are still on the dresser in the other room.

So is her wedding ring. As she comes over to Ivan, who is struggling with the vanilla beans and then smiling at her, and she puts her hands over his now-still ones, shaking her head a little. She isn't wearing her wedding ring, she [i]always[/i] wears her wedding ring. But not now. And not, though he may doubt his memory, when he came to her in that soft bed and fucked her just a couple of hours ago.

Hilary is in the kitchen. She's barefoot. She's pregnant. But Ivan smiles at her instead of making some obvious joke that only rednecks ever laughed at to begin with, and Hilary

blushes, smiling herself, saying: "Perhaps you should just melt the butter."

[Ivan] The smile he gave her when she walked into the kitchen was soft, almost. Delighted. It made him look as young as he really is, because -- let's be honest -- Ivan doesn't quite act his age. Or more appropriately: he doesn't act the way normal, non-overprivileged twenty-two year olds act. There isn't much innocence left in him. When Hilary found him -- or the other way around -- she didn't so much taint and ruin him as she unlocked him.

His hand turns over under hers, though. There are flecks of crushed vanilla on his fingers. Whatever he was trying to do, it was an utter failure. Those now-fragrant fingers close gently over hers, and he leans down to kiss her.

She tells him to just melt the butter. The smile turns into a grin, and that's a more familiar expression. "I think," he says, "that's an excellent idea."

[Hilary] "If you think you can manage it without burning it," Hilary goes on, offhanded, a little too light, as

he leans over to kiss her, and she turns her head to kiss him back, and then to rub her face against his. She nuzzles him with a usually unseen primitive heaviness to her, and then turns back to the work he muddled. She exhales a sigh,shaking her head. "This is why I told you just to call about the things from the dairy," she tsks, and just wholesale discards the poor bean he botched. "When you get the butter on the stove would you hand me one of those peppers?"

She gestures with the paring knife at some of the serrano peppers on the counter, but goes back to carefully slicing open and spreading and gutting the vanilla as though she does this every day.


It is not as fancy as the meal she made him that afternoon in his penthouse. The fare Hilary starts throwing together as afternoon swells hotter and brighter outside is simpler, more slapdash. She doesn't seem to be following any kind of internal, memorized recipe as she is experimenting. Which means sometimes she cuts something open and holds it up to her nose, inhaling. Then picking up something else and scenting them together. She eats as she goes. A pepper that, if Ivan joins in, makes him feel like his mouth is on fire. Hilary isn't immune, she just seems to like it even as she reaches for the milk to wash it down.

When Ivan has the butter melted she gives him spices and herbs to throw into it, seems to be making some kind of sauce by proxy. There's lamb in the fridge now but the catfish is fresh and ready and she's grousing about his disgusting taste in fish even as she starts chopping up vegetables to make a light salsa to go with it.

"That's a [i]mango[/i], not an apple," she informs him when he tries to cut it, "stop trying to chop it like one."

She's gentler with him this time than she was in his penthouse, though. Her tone. Her corrections. She's still something of a taskmaster, but there's a relaxation in her that usually isn't achieved unless he's held her wrists down and [i]fucked[/i] her, bitten her, called her his fucking whore, muttered in her ear about how hard he was going to fuck that slutty pussy and how fucking wet she was, how much she must like being his little whore --

Chalk it up to hormones, if you will. Or something else. Being here in Mexico. Being glad to be with him. Being happy, or as close as Hilary gets to it.

Somehow they end up with baked catfish and a mango salsa and chile-seasoned rice with pomegranate seeds sprinkled lightly over it. Somehow they end up with a mole simmering on the stove to save for the lamb tomorrow, and it's rich with the scent of vanilla added to the otherwise fiery sauce. Somehow they end up with Hilary flaking the fish with the tines of a fork and looking critically at it before tasting it and then determining, with a nod, that it was fit for consumption.

As they're plating their (somewhat early, but they skipped lunch) dinner, Hilary thinks to say, quietly:

"When I go back to Chicago... maybe some nights you'll let me stay with you."

[Ivan] Ivan is unfazed by Hilary's disapproval of his choice of fish, pointing out that bottom feeders included flounder, sole, and escargot. Besides, he adds - the first time he's given her anything close to a compliment about her cooking - he's sure she'll make it palatable somehow.

Half an hour, an hour later, they're plating out their early dinners, and Ivan is reflecting, quietly, that he enjoys the way Hilary cooks. The way she owns the kitchen and directs him about. It's one of the few times he sees her interested in something, expressing some side of herself that's neither mild and mildly bored, nor vicious, nor full of a bottomless black anger. He's thinking about this when she says what she does, and what she says makes him look up, faintly startled.

Then his clear brow furrows - just a touch. It looks like ache, or want. "Of course," he says quietly.

[Hilary] [i]Escargot[/i], he says, and contrary to the assumed palate of a woman who has lived in, cooked in, danced in France, she just says: "[i]Ugh.[/i]"

Hilary does not like bottom feeders. Hilary, as he knows, goes for the young, fresh, pretty, shining ones with the hard bodies and the lovely eyes. Not the ones sucking mud and feeling their way through the dark with whiskers. Perish the thought.

She does, however, make it palatable somehow. Flaky. A little on the salty side, offset by the tart sweetness of the salsa that leaves a faint kick in their mouths. Or will, when they start eating. Ivan doesn't mention that he likes it when she cooks, and it's probably for the best -- who wants to be told [i]you almost seem normal right now[/i] even when they know that they usually aren't? Who wants to hear that they finally seem interested and engaged, even when most of the time they know very well there's nothing that makes them feel very much at all?

Ivan holds his tongue on that mark, though perhaps some element of his appreciation comes through in his manner. She's more relaxed now. Here and there she occasionally touches herself, presses back against the brat that hardly gives her a moment's rest. It's as though they're having a conversation, or as if she's simply trying to push him into a more comfortable spot where he's not quite so noticable. If it's the former, the conversation seems to mostly be

[i]Hey --
Shush.[/i]

She asks him what she does. And he answers how he does, and Hilary finishes sprinkling pomegranate seeds like tiny rubies over the rice on his plate. She smiles, and sucks a bit of the bright red juice off of her fingertips, taking that [i]Of course[/i] away and tucking it somewhere inside, hidden and dark and secret where she can take it out and hold onto it for later

or somewhere where she can forget about it if she's disappointed.

Hilary picks up his plate and hands it to him. She lifts her own. "Outside," she says

just like the last time she cooked for him.


It's at the hottest part of the day now, warm and bright out on the terrace. With the table and tablecloth between the two of them he can almost pretend Hilary isn't pregnant, except for the smaller markers: her face seems softer, the low-cut V of her blouse revealing the inner curves of larger breasts. There's also the way she added a habanero pepper to the side of her plate to eat with the rice she seasoned with other, milder peppers. She garnished Ivan's with nothing more intense than jalapenos, bland-tbngued Russian-born child that he is.

And though she did not like that he brought her to a hotel in town, where cousins and friends of her own staff could see them, Hilary doesn't seem to mind it much now. Maybe she's though of a lie in case word gets back, word gets around, words gets spread about what the mistress of that lonely casa is doing with some rich young gringo. Apparently, if anyone were to see them now, all she's doing is eating with him.

Talking to him. Smiling when he talks to her. Almost like she's happy.

[Ivan] Almost like she's happy.

Almost like they're happy: the rather attractive, if slightly age-mismatched couple out in the sunny courtyard. Ivan has deigned to put pants on, at least. The sun glows off his bare shoulders, though; sets his skin a few steps back on the path toward golden. He's relaxed, lounging in his chair. Whatever Hilary's thoughts on catfish and other mudsucking bottomdwellers, he enjoys the meal, and he lets her see that he enjoys it.

They're neither of them blabbermouths. They talk, but no one goes on until the other is bored. Ivan sips a glass of crisp white wine with his fish and rice. He lets Hilary have a little from his wineglass, but for the most part she's to content herself with sparkling water and some vaguely fruity carbonated beverage whose name doesn't ring a single bell in the united states. Long after his plate is empty, Ivan is still lounging out there, his feet stretched under the table now to prop on the edge of Hilary's chair.

He tells her, idly, of the goings-on in Chicago. Who came, who left. He mentions his yacht has been put into storage for the winter, which is perhaps for the best. He mentions -- so offhandedly that he makes it sound unimportant -- that he likes that the last time he took it out was the night they watched fireworks over the lake.

Ivan lays a few loose plans for when she comes back. If she's interested -- if Dion wouldn't become too suspicious -- she's welcome to spend the last few weeks at his lakehouse, team of doctors and nurses included. He won't be there most the time, he assures her, mindful of her need for solitude, but he will be occasionally. And after the child is delivered -- when she's recovered, or perhaps after Dion has calmed down should the worst come to worst -- perhaps they could go somewhere again. Perhaps the Loire valley.

The sun is beginning to dip into the west, and the shadows are getting longer and longer in the courtyard, when Ivan stirs from his seat. In another half hour or so, this courtyard will be nothing but shade: past the prime of day, moving into late afternoon. She needs to be getting back soon.

"Should I call you a cab?" he asks, courteous a reflex by now. He doesn't offer to drive her back. He knows that's impossible. "When should I expect you tomorrow?"

[Hilary] If this were any other February she would have worn a robe: the thin, waffled bathrobe hanging behind the bathroom door, perhaps, or a silk robe in some floral or asian pattern that would split eversodecadently over her bare leg, cover her chest but only barely. She wouldn't have bothered to dress herself, going out to an almost entirely private courtyard to sup with her paramour. She might have taken longer to cook, seeing as how being bent over the counter and fucked with her robe disheveled and loose would have taken some time out of her hands.

As it is, she looks much as she did when he first saw her, though her hair is tied up and still wet and she hasn't put on a scrap of jewelry. Something about her -- even aside from her breeding -- reveals the finery of who and what she is even without the diamonds, though. Her smile, her laugh, the way she holds herself even when she's right over the threshold of her third trimester. She was raised to be like this. She knows the steps as well as if she memorized them along with the waltz for a debutante ball.

And then there's just... her. Hilary is, within all the rage and darkness and pain and lies and confusion, as delicate as a crystal vase that was shattered in childhood. Sometimes she works, ever so slowly, at piecing together what's left, re-creating herself out of crystal dust. It takes a long time. Sometimes she just doesn't have the energy to bother

and thrashes it all to the ground again in a fit of that deep, black anger.


They eat, and she actually bears a few drops of sweat as she eats her peppers, washing them down with water but enjoying the burn, the pain, even enjoying the way the brat kicks as a result. Maybe it's an issue of control. Maybe it's a way to feel something intense without any real risk to her health or the health of the baby-that-is-probably-Dion's. Who knows. Maybe she just likes the taste.

She doesn't finish everything on her plate, though. Mostly eats the rice and vegetables with just a few bites of the catfish. When it becomes evident that he's almost done she turns her plate slightly, close to his on the tiny table, and she never suggests that he have a few bites but if he does

she smiles to herself in mute pleasure, and sips from his wineglass.


Mostly-empty plates, mostly-empty glasses, and she sits for awhile with him, talking to him a little about a book she's reading, asking him about goings-on in the states. He tells her about storing [i]Krasota[/i] and she reaches down to the foot propped up on her chair beside her thigh and rubs his ankle, massages his calf muscle idly.

She is, not surprisingly, noncommittal about the suggestion he makes concerning his lakehouse. Ivan doesn't know how unnerved that place makes her, or how she only feels safe there when he's got her tied down, and not just tied down but is right there beside her, or on top of her, fucking her hard into the mattress, locking her in his teeth, covering her with his sweat, filling her with his cum, having no earthly idea that he is saving her from the terror she feels in big, dark houses with their high ceilings and vast, quiet rooms.

But then, she can't blame him for thinking she craves solitude. All the times she's pushed him away, or walked away, because she couldn't bear to be so unlocked with him for so long. That's changing. Has changed, really. But here she is in Mexico, as far from him as she could safely get, and Hilary can't tell him

[i]I don't really want to be alone. And I don't want to be away from you. I don't. I hate it.[/i]

She smiles softly when he mentions the Loire valley, and just nods. She asks if they can move to the wicker bench that overlooks the fountain, a little more cushioned and a little more comfortable than the terrace chairs. There she sits beside him and, if invited, leans to his side, her hair still damp and still cool against his bare shoulder. She would watch the sunset if they could see it from here, but all they have is the intense orange-red glow that comes through the fronds of palm and the tops of trees that fill the courtyard and surrounding area.

Hilary breathes in the clean, crisp scent of him and keeps her arm over her abdomen. They talk a little more. And he asks, eventually, if he needs to call her cab. Hilary just shakes her head slightly. "I have a car at the Bellas Artes," she says quietly, and he accepts that however he does, and asks when he should expect her.

Months ago she would have told him: [i]you shouldn't.[/i] Expect her, that is. Assume she'll be where he wants her to be. She would have played the role so well, the woman he can't have, the friend of one's aunt, the mother of one's friend, lovely and rich and beyond him and yet dallying anyway, as much his plaything as he was hers.

That's changed, too.

"Morning," she says. Then: "If you give me a key I can come join you while you're still in bed."

[Ivan] For such apparently flawless beings, they are, in the end, such inherently flawed and damaged creatures. Hilary behaves -- not merely behaves but is -- as one shattered to pieces by some early trauma, who has yet to find the strength or will to pull herself back together again. May very well never find it. May very well always be like this, coldness and ennui hiding a core of poisonous rage. And Ivan: well. The inability to commit may be the least of his problems. His true madness is likely yet lurking on the horizon, as predictable and inescapable as nightfall.

Yet here they are. And in some unspeakable, undeniable way, they are ... if not quite good for one another, then at least thoughtful of one another. Caring. They care for one another in their own flawed, broken ways. It's in the way she massages his leg thoughtlessly. It's in the way he smiled when she walked into the kitchen. It's in the way she drinks from his cup, and he dines from her plate.

It's how she smiles, when he does that. It's how she invited him to visit her in the first place: regally yet cautiously, not quite daring to hope. It's how he asked her when he could expect her tomorrow: the exact same way.

Leave her a key, she says, and she'll come to him in bed. His mutable eyes flicker at the suggestion. He sits up, gets up, walks into the bedroom. A moment later he returs, handing her one of the two keycards as he sits beside her again. His arm lays across her shoulders like it belongs there. She rests against his side

like she belongs there.

"Come early," he says quietly. "Stay as long as you can."

[Hilary] She kisses him.

When he puts his arm around her again, tells her to come early and stay a long time. When she can bear the fact that things feel so [i]different[/i] today, and not just because she's so goddamn swollen and not because he doesn't want her or because she ran away from his revulsion or because they're going to live happily ever after but...

Hilary doesn't even know why it feels different. Why she doesn't feel so uneasy anymore. Maybe Ivan having sex with her magically fixed everything that was wrong today, but that wouldn't explain the heat and satisfaction in his eyes when she sipped his wine or the pleasure and color in her smile when he ate from her plate. It wouldn't explain the way they smiled as she cooked, laughed and talked as they ate. It wouldn't explain the way they've been all this time afterward.

Usually by now they would have fought. Not just come close to a fight but all-out argued, thrown things, stormed out. Yet instead they sit on this low loveseat outside and let the last, the very last, dying rays of daylight grant them one more touch of warmth and grace. And as soon as Hilary suggests he give her a key so she can come to him, Ivan's out of his seat and she's all but falling over where she leaned on him and he's bringing her the card from the suite, putting it in her hand.

And instead of [i]Yes, Ivan[/i] this time -- though there is a chord of that beautiful submission in it -- Hilary kisses him. Slowly, like she did in the courtyard and like she did in the kitchen but this is the first time she's kissed him like this without him telling her to [i]Kiss me[/i].


There are so many things in her that frighten her. So many things to cover over with affectations of boredom and withdrawal. So many things to heal the only way she knows how, the way Ivan fell into so naturally with her, the way that Gleaming Eye Athro taught her when she was still one of those prized young virgins of the tribe -- not unlike the little blonde that Ivan ruined a couple of months ago. There are so many things Hilary feels that she cannot put into words, because if she did, how strange would she seem, how weak, how twisted.

She kisses him with all of it, though, aching though that touch, laying her hands lightly on his face. She tries to tell him who and what she is, what's left of her inside that twisting, venomous core that is not utterly extinguished. Very little of the message comes across, but there is so little of her left.

Seems that way, sometimes. Feels that way.


Eventually, yes: she gets up and she unbinds her hair to let it dry in waves all around her shoulders. Eventually she goes to the dresser in the bedroom where the bed is still rumpled from sex and sleep, and Hilary looks at it in the mirror over the vanity as she slips her earrings back on, puts on her bangles, slides on her wedding ring and the band of diamonds he gave her on their anniversary. Ivan helps her into her jacket and she gets a bag to put some of the peppers and fruits in so that she can take them home, explain her long absence to some degree with a visit to the market out in the middle of nowhere.

Tomorrow they'll have lamb and mole and what Hilary promised, as she cooked tonight's meal, would be 'sort of like curried potatoes, but not exactly'. But it doesn't matter. Not really.

What matters is that tomorrow she's going to wake at dawn, most likely because of the brat. She'll wash and eat and dress herself and move slowly but inside she'll be rushing, rushing, rushing towards the moment when she can get in the car and drive back to some shopping district nearby, park the car and walk the rest of the way to the hotel, go up to his room, let herself in

and cross over to that rumpled bed where Ivan will stir as soon as the door opens. Tomorrow morning Hilary will undress again and get under the covers beside him, sigh as his chest aligns to her back, exhale as he wraps his arm around her.

Tonight the sun sets and he throws on his shirt and walks with her to the Bella Artes. They kiss in some dark corner of the courtyard, slow and deep and shadow-hidden, one of the only times they've been truly secretive -- because, perhaps, there is something in that kiss they're keeping secret even from each other. From themselves.

And she leaves him again. As she almost always does.


Tomorrow, though. She gets into the car Dion bought for her to drive while she stays here and leaves without looking back, returning to the hacienda where Micaela's mother carried her so long ago. She lives in tomorrow, even as she drives and as she goes inside and gives the bag of produce to a maid to put away and walks to her room and picks up the letter he wrote her to read it again as though a word in it really matters

but in her mind, Hilary is already in his room again, in his arms again, the now-gone sunlight streaming over their fair bodies as they sleep.