Ivan Press

[Ivan Press] Who knows why she kisses him now the way she does. Who knows if he can believe it; if there's ever even anything to believe. She kisses him. He closes his eyes and accepts it, takes it in, only leans into her and pursues her in return at the very end when her hand passes down his neck, when she lets that soft sound go into his mouth.

Then it parts. He draws her to his side and they walk down that hall with its abstract art, its frosted panes of glass glowing softly with daylight. The elevator is waiting for them, takes them down hundreds of feet into a basement garage.


It's the same car that took her from the airport earlier. His lawyer usually drives it, but the Presses own it. Dmitri drives it today. The trip is almost laughably short - across the river, down the street. Five or six blocks, and then Dmitri is pausing at the loading line, emergency flashers blinking as he comes around to help Hilary out of the car.

Ivan stands on the curb and lights a cigarette. When Hilary steps up as well, he puts it out again -- precisely three drags taken. He releases the last into the afternoon air as he walks with her to the doors. Perhaps the rental office wondered at the representatives, the decorators, the furniture moved in all without a hint of the future occupant. If they saw them now, the story would become obvious. Of course. A couple, expecting their first child. Perhaps they're moving from New York, looking for someplace a little nicer, a little less cutthroat, to raise a child. Of course, he must be the father.

Rather young, isn't he?

They go to the elevators. Dmitri stays outside with the car. As the elevator doors slide shut, Ivan's thumb hovers over the buttons. "What floor?" he inquires.

[Hilary Durante] Everything changes. The art in that gallery of Ivan's is rotated regularly, the vase with its cherry blossoms long, long gone -- utterly forgotten, the alcove filled with something else now.

Some things pretend, at least, to stay the same. Hilary has never -- never -- considered allowing Ivan into an abode of her own. He snuck into the hacienda and she wanted to claw his eyes out. The Durante house is unthinkable; Tomas lives in the city apartment. But this place is hers and hers alone, where she can be close to her Garou guardian if not her mate during the end of her pregnancy. Estrella is insulted. Estrella will not go against the will of a true Silver Fang, though.

Dressed to go out tonight to a theater, to watch dancers move in a way Hilary used to scoff at and now could not accomplish even when not pregnant -- though by god she would come closer than any woman her age, lean and elegant and flexible as she is -- they leave the Bentley behind after a silent drive in warm luxury. The building her new place is in is boxy, modern, not the tallest building around, sedate compared to where Ivan lives, not the sort of place marketed to startup families.

"Penthouse," she tells him in the elevator, though the penthouse here is not like the penthouse at his place. There are ten apartments on the twenty-seventh floor, and for some reason they put the ridiculous community center on the twenty-eight floor. It's vaguely appalling that the leasing office, fitness center, and pool should take precedence over the penthouses, but, all the same, it's a nice enough place to live until she gives birth and finds out if her husband is going to kill her or not.

The rise is faster than that between the basement and Ivan's place. He's holding her against his side again and she's standing quite still with him, until they leave the elevator and walk down a hallway where the walls are gleaming and glossy with materials but also sheer newness. She reaches into her clutch for the key that was sent to her, still on the leasing office's keychain, and has it ready by the time they reach the front door of the apartment that takes up a full side of the building.

The walls are, for the most part, glass. The kitchen immediately to their right faces the view, segmented off by a long bar. There's a lightness to this place that is, all the same, far colder than Ivan's. They can see the living area out of the corner of their eyes, done in coast blue and pale neutrals with contrasts of dark brown. There's a welcome basket on the bar from the leasing office. There's another one from her decorator. Wine, chocolates, mugs with prettily-wrapped bags of imported coffee beans tucked inside.

Hilary walks in and sets the keys down on the bar. "I suppose the second room will have to be refurnished," she says. "It was done up as a guest room, but if the nurses will be staying there, it will need some editing." She glances around. She doesn't seem terribly concerned otherwise, or even about the second room. Ivan keeps saying there will surely be tweaks needed; he is the sort who would want it perfected, just right, just the way he wants it when he wants it, nevermind what he wanted last week.

And she's the sort who would likely shrug and simply say it didn't matter, it doesn't matter much at all how it looks. What colors the decorator likes. Whatever seems best. One could imagine going through Hilary's homes and never, not once, getting an idea of the woman that really inhabits them.

[Ivan Press] They move into her new residence. One can't really call it a home. Hilary fits easily in every space Ivan has seen her in thus far. On the Cielo. In the nightclub. At the yacht club. In a luxury hotel. In a different luxury hotel. On his yacht. In his penthouse. In his home. In San Miguel de Allende, even. That hacienda in the country. That warm little suite in the city. The farmer's market. The kitchen, sharp knives in hand.

He supposes it's because she's so cold, so empty. Just flickers of personality there most the time. She fits anything because there's nothing in her to clash against them;

or perhaps that's just his thoughts turning unfair.

She sets her keys on the bar; doesn't seem about to sweep through every room making a mental list of Changes To Be Made. Ivan is far less passive; he stalks the space he's been loosed in, looks out at the view, studies the wall furnishings, looks in on the bedrooms. "God, no," he says without turning around. "Don't redecorate for the sake of the help.

"Perhaps a firmer mattress, though." He comes out of her bedroom, rejoins her wherever she is. "Easier on your back." A pause. "Will Espiridion's children be visiting?"

[Hilary Durante] She exhales a huff of air, rolls her eyes. "There's one bed in the second room. This from the man who occasionally gets it into his head to consider propriety, and he wants two nurses on constant duty to sleep in a queen together. It needs to be refurnished, you snob," she says, and there's a snap to it, but no real investment that would suggest anger, or even true annoyance.

Hilary turns, looking away from the glass. He crosses from one side to the other, looking at the art chosen for the space, all modern and abstract, bright splashes of color helping one room flow into the other. He sees the second bedroom with its queen size bed, its single nightstand, the closet that flows into the bathroom which opens back into the main area. The section cordoned off like it could be a study, though still glass-walled, still open. He sees the master bedroom, Hilary's bedroom, far on the other side, the decor as tasteful and trendy as the rest of the place.

"They won't be coming here," she says. "Micaela's in Paris, anyway," she reminds him, and quirks a brow. "Did you try out the mattress?"

[Ivan Press] "They're not getting paid to sleep." There's no snap in his response; nothing but careless, laconic privilege. "Particularly not at the same time. Redecorate if you must, but I think it's a waste of energy.

"And, good. That brave young man of yours might do something stupid if he's here when you go into surgery." Ivan's lips quirk then, "No. I just pushed on it a little. I can have a new mattress delivered by tonight. Memory foam, or whatever the hell's trendiest for expectant mothers... however you say that now."

He comes up beside her. The city looks quiet from up here, through the glass. He puts his hand on the window, feels the faint tremor of wind, traffic noise far below. A moment later his fingers curl back to his palm and he lowers his arm again.

"But it's your home," he says quietly. "I know you sometimes like it when I decide for you. But if you'd rather I stayed out of it this time, I will."

[Hilary Durante] For what it's worth, the bedroom he cruised through that is -- will be -- hers was shockingly bright. Almost starkly white in decor, reflecting every ray of light that might enter it. The curtains are some light, gauzy fabric, enough to let in the sunshine when it comes, enough to conceal the blackness of the glass at night but still let the city shine through. The duvet has a rumpled look to it, thick and soft and polar. There were throw pillows of white fur. The rug covering the pale wood floors was also white, deep and plush. There were curtains around the equally blond-wooded bed, but no canopy.

Nothing to fall down on her. Nothing to swallow her from above. In fact, on the ceiling was some kind of artistic installation, an enormous of abstract black and white graphics with a backlighting controlled by two dimmer switches near the bed. If Ivan toyed with them, he found that one dimmer switch controlled a pure white light behind the panels, a soft, clean glow. The other introduced some of the only color in the room, and shaded the entire room in blue that could go from the indigo of deep water to the softer blue of the surface. With that on, the entire white room turns into something strangely submerged. Peaceful.

The bed was high enough that Hilary will neither have to climb nor sink into it while pregnant. There is nothing on the walls. There are no plants. A low dresser, a vanity with a cushioned chair, a small nightstand. There is very little decor in the room, as opposed to the meaningless art and knick-knacks peppered here and there throughout the rest of the apartment to make it seem that someone lives here, someone cares.

But the bathrooms have splashes of black and red. The kitchen is sleek dark wood and stainless steel, the living room coastal rather than nautical, there's a difference, the second bedroom green and dark brown. The room Hilary will spend most of her time in, unless she spends a great deal of time cooking while thirty-six-plus weeks pregnant, is almost entirely devoid of color.

Maybe it tells him something about her, after all.


Hilary is looking at the city, and one hand actually is on her stomach, low, as though she might support her own weight. Maybe she's trying to make the brat stop kicking the way he does when there's Rage around, tossing in what has become truly negligible space for him. She lets out a soft huff when he mentions Tomas as a brave young man. "He's not brave," she murmurs. "Just bitter."

She has these rare moments of insight. She does not seem to put effort into them. She does not seem to notice them for what they are. She couldn't even tell Ivan, if he cared, why Tomas is so bitter and resentful. She herself doesn't know. Doesn't care. She just knows the difference, even if she herself can't tell the difference between her own fear, and her own rage.

Her eyes trace his palm on the cool glass. "You're going to leave a smudge," she scolds him, but he's already taking his hand away. She's given no opinion of the mattress issue. She's put so much money into this place -- just look at the ceiling in her bedroom, for god's sake -- for the fact that she's only going to be here for a few weeks, maybe a month.

Hilary frowns a little. "It's not my home. It's just an apartment." She looks back out at the view, which is, frankly, spectacular. Not quite as awe-inspiring as the one from his penthouse, but there you are. A breath. "I suppose it just doesn't matter to me. The mattress, I mean."

There's a quiet for a moment, then she -- rather hesitantly, really -- asks him this: "...would you be happy if it's yours, Ivan?"

[Ivan Press] If he weren't so born to privilege, born to expect the very best or else, he would compliment her decorator's taste. Her decorator's ability to craft a living space so well-suited to Hilary, even if that astuteness is only really evident in the master bedroom. He had, indeed, played with the switches; seen how the blue turned the room into something submerged and oceanic.

Thinks of Hilary speaking of such things: drifting away from the surface. Dark and peaceful in the cold depths.

When he comes out, she scolds him for smudging the glass. He smirks at her briefly over his shoulder. For a moment their age difference is so clear. She's not quite old enough to be his mother, but old enough, certainly, to know better. About all this.

Then again, the same could be said of him.


In a few days' time he'll meet their mutual elder. They'll discuss Hilary Durante, Ivan and Katherine, and Ivan will be ever so careful with what he says. Truth garnished with just enough subtlety, just enough subterfuge, to make it palatable. He'll refer to Hilary as a potential scandal. He'll lie bald-faced about her maternal instincts. He's assiduously avoid any mention of his and Hilary's transgressions.

He'll hide, as well as he can, that Hilary means something to him. More than a fuck. More than a potential incubator for his bastard. More.

Even so, despite all that, Katherine surely knows. Can surely guess at so much of it, if not at the true depth and depravity and desperation of this relationship. She'll let it go anyway. Turn a willfully blind eye, when one or two years ago she would have hounded down the truth, protocol, punishment. Perhaps that has something to do with maturity. Perhaps true maturity isn't so much knowing better, but knowing that simply knowing better, doing better is oversimplistic and flawed.

They're so entangled now. They couldn't stop this even if they did know better.


When she speaks again he turns to her. An electric alertness flickers through him. Furrows his brow. After a moment he goes to her. He puts his hand on her face; he touches her cheek, her mouth. There's a moment where he leans toward her; sways in almost imperceptibly. It could be a kiss. In the end he restrains himself. He's close to her. It's not quite a kiss.

"I don't know," he says softly. "Maybe. I want to be close to you. I suppose in some way, if the child is mine, then something that's yours is and will always be mine."

His eyes drop from her face. His hand, too. He lays his palm gingerly on her belly. Then a little more heavily, his long fingers spreading over the curvature, as though he could claim possession not only over her but over what's inside her as well.

"But even I realize what a fucked-up thing that is to think."

[Hilary Durante] It's true that Katherine knows more than she harries down and punishes. She once called Hilary to her and insisted that Hilary tell her mate about Christian before Katherine did. As far as Hilary knows, Katherine thinks Hilary actually did something that foolish. As far as Hilary cares, Katherine may as well be a non-entity. Adren though she is, Hilary seems to find no Garou frightening enough to balk at.

Her confidence is terrifying. Her inability, it seems, to recognize that she is as vulnerable as she is to the whims of monsters. It isn't even conscious refusal or rebellion; she just doesn't seem to care about their power any more than she cares about anything else. Of all the things in the world there are to be afraid of, of all the things that frighten Hilary herself, the Garou don't seem to really top the list.

Even if she has seen, up close, some of the very worst they can do. Even so, her fear and rage don't seem to come from trepidation that some other Garou might frenzy and eat her, too. She never talks about how close she came in childhood to being killed and devoured right along with her brother by that rogue, maddened packmate. She doesn't seem to have ever absorped that it was a possibility, that it was little more than sheer luck that saved her.

Maybe that's why she doesn't fear Katherine, or Espiridion, or anyone else. Maybe she knows exactly how close she came. Maybe that's the source, not the contradiction, to her dismissal of what they could do to her.

They're both standing near the glass, but there's a wide distance between them. She asks him what she does, wonders at his happiness, and then Ivan crosses that distance. She looks across her shawled shoulder at him, standing very still. She doesn't move when he touches her, doesn't blink. She doesn't move when he seems like he's aching to kiss her, doesn't close her eyes, though her lashes flicker. They stay close, and her eyes are dark on his more colorful ones.

Ivan's answer makes her forehead furrow, her eyebrows tugging together. It tightens when he puts his hand on her stomach, and there's a tremor of tension in her like she's going to recoil, but she doesn't. They're both touching her there. It isn't a tender moment. It's a painful one, almost, and one that repulses her, makes her want to run, makes her

afraid.

"It's not mine," she whispers. "It just is."

Ivan knows it's fucked up to think that it's hers, that if it's his and hers then maybe they're close through that. And she doesn't have any idea, doesn't realize for a moment, how incredibly right and strong it is to say that the child she has inside of her, the one that any other woman would raise and love and nurture til her own death, does not really belong to her. That it simply comes from her, passes through her. She's nothing but a gateway. She's known this from the start. Strange that her own brokenness would allow her to accept a truth like that so much easier than any other, far more loving, far less damaging, parent.

Her hand lifts up and covers his. One hand on his hand. One hand on her belly. "I don't believe children bring people close to each other," she says quietly to him. "It didn't do anything for my parents. Procreation doesn't make anyone a good or better person. Or make them able to... love, or anything like that."

She seems tense. Distinctly uncomfortable, for a moment there. "You're closer to me than anyone," she tells him quietly. "But I can't say if that makes us happy people. Or good people."

[Ivan Press] "No," Ivan replies quietly, "it's not that. I don't expect or want it to bring us closer. I don't even expect or want it to heal us or keep us close or ... anything like that.

"But it's something. If and when all the rest of this is lost and gone, it'll still be there. Indelible proof that for a while, there was this. This existed."

Something about all that makes him ache. Makes him terribly sad, which is not an emotion he's at all accustomed to. He doesn't know how to deal with it, no more than Hilary knows how to deal with her own self. He lets her hand cover his. His moves after a moment, moves from her belly to her breast, cups her breast in his hand as he does,

in fact,

lean in to kiss her. It's slow and soft. He doesn't even expect her to respond, but he kisses her anyway, because -- he doesn't know what else to do. How else to connect.

[Hilary Durante] All over each other. Touching her stomach. Touching hands. And Ivan is aching and Hilary's uncomfortable and doesn't know if that's the same feeling he has or if that matters, if they need to align. She breathes in when he leans over and touches her breast, kisses her like he wants her even though it's the last thing he's probably thinking of right now,

however much he might want it, so he can connect with her. So that he can find her again, reach her the way he sometimes does.

She puts her hands on his head as he kisses her, holds him near, but the touch is less commanding than it is just -- there. Just holding. Her mouth parts from his to breathe, and then she's kissing him again, stronger. She has nothing to say to that. To this idea that there might be something out there, separated from her but not, that will tie her to him. She doesn't know if that makes her happy or far, far from it.

The truth is, she just doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know how to reconcile wanting to make him happy right now, because the ways that she knows she can please him are unavailable to her at the moment.

"Please be happy," she gasps, when they part again. "Please stop being so sad. I don't know how --"

Kisses him again, because she doesn't know how to say that, either.

[Ivan Press] That kiss rises -- or perhaps plummets -- so sharply that Ivan loses his bearings; falls into her. What begins soft and slow quickly becomes hard, gasping, his mouth tearing at hers and his hands grasping at her body. Her back hits the glass. His hands are on her breasts, squeezing and rubbing, on her neck, on her face.

It doesn't even make sense. When she was beautiful and slim and pliable he often had such diabolical patience. There was a time on his yacht, in the master cabin: she was chained to the closet door and he was behind her, making her bend over, making her try to work that slim pliable beautiful body of hers onto his hard cock without letting her. There were times when he'd tease her, hold her down on the bed and barely give it to her, barely let her have him.

And now there's this. He can't have her now. She wouldn't let him; he doesn't even really want to. God, look at her. But he's all over her all the same, his hands, his mouth; he has her dress tugged down now, he has his mouth on her breast.

And then breaking off. Sudden and sharp, as though all at once what he's doing sinks in. The fact that he can't sinks in. His hand lashes out and strikes the glass with a hollow thud. A stronger Garou or weaker glass, and it might have broken, but it only flexes infinitesimally, shudders in the frame. His brow is to hers, and he's breathing hard, and she doesn't want him to be sad and he wants to laugh and scoff that he's never sad, why would anyone like him ever be sad.

Tortured, she called him, the first time they fucked. He wanted to laugh at that, too. But that time, as with this time, he can't bring himself to. Maybe she's right after all.

He balls up his fist and hits the window again, harder. "I want this creature out of you."

A moment ago they were talking about it as yours, as would it make you happy if. Now it's just a creature, doomed already to never be loved. No matter who the father is, he won't give the child the love and attention it will need. No matter who the father is, Hilary will always be Hilary.

"I want it out of you and then I want you to come away with me God, I almost wish it were mine just so I can throw it in Espiridion's teeth. And then you'd have to come away with me, before he killed us both. And we could run off to goddamn Siberia and hide and fuck like russian sables until the sky falls down. But don't worry," a harsh, humorless laugh, "I've not lost my wits completely.

"I wouldn't dream of doing any of that."

He has himself in control again. His hand is palm-flat to the window. Leaving smudges. He closes his eyes for a moment, resting against her, face to face. And then open again. He straightens.

"Well. No use dwelling on it." Almost absently, and with a light, expert touch, he pulls her dress back into place. Meets her eyes. "I'll have the bed replaced," as though this were the only way he could assert -- closeness, ownership, presence, was there even a difference in his mind? -- at this point. "And you'll move in tomorrow, and deliver sometime in the next week or two. Perhaps you'd like to choose the birthday.

"After that, I suppose we'll see just how many of the contingency plans prove necessary."

[Hilary Durante] Slammed against the glass wall now, Hilary feels ungainly, awkward, but that pales in comparison to the desperation of the kiss. She's begging him, pleading with him not to be sad, don't ache, don't look at her like that. He caresses her, knowing and feeling her pregnancy pressed against him but also knowing and feeling her breasts, softer and larger than before, filling his palms and making her moan into his mouth as though all of this is leading somewhere.

It doesn't end soon enough. He pulls her dress away from her tit, pulls her bra down, sucks and laps at her nipple, gets as much of her in his mouth as he can, and she groans, and her hand tightens in his short hair, nails scraping his scalp.

It does end, though, and when it does she's panting quietly, shuddering from want and resistance and something like terrified revulsion all at once. Her eyes are closed while Ivan strikes out at the glass; she doesn't flinch. Her eyes gradually open after the second time, though, when he's talking about what he wants, what he'd like to do. What it boils down to is how fucking badly he wants her for his own, wants to take her away and have her to himself til they tear each other apart or die from the cold.

I wouldn't dream, he claims, but he just did.

Hilary is shaking faintly, and sighs, steadying, as he covers her back up again, fixes her plain lingerie and her lovely gown over her bared flesh again. She meets his eyes, too, some of his own ache reflected dimly in the depths of her own. Longing.

Her hands haven't left him.

Very quietly, almost imperceptible, as though she's not quite aware she's speaking aloud, she says: "I'd like that."

Except there's no way of knowing, from the tone she uses, from the near-silence of her voice to begin with, which part she means.

[Hilary Durante] [folded paws!]

[Ivan Press] [*folds*]