Ivan Press

[Hilary Durante] There hasn't been much contact between Hilary and Ivan since the last time he left Mexico. Two visits in all these months, and one of them was so brutal it came close to bloodshed, to her clawing his damn eyes out, just to get him away from her, to get him to stop, to leave her alone. The other was... strange. Different, and therefore frightening, though its difference wasn't the only thing that scared her about the way he was with her then.

In the meantime, she's written to him only a few times. The letters get shorter, as though she's too tired to go on, or too reticent to get into too much detail. Her life isn't filled with much these days. Aches. Fatigue. A hunger for a dozen things she can't have. A hundred.

Til the beginning of April, a letter comes to Ivan by way of Paris. It's not from Hilary. It's from Dion, who writes briskly and in painfully clear, hard-pressed handwriting that he has looked into the history and renown of one Katherine Bellamonte and, on his mate's recommendation, he requests that Ivan take over Hilary's guardianship while she is in the boundaries of Chicago. He informs Ivan that a letter has also been sent to Katherine, telling her of his preference. He explains that these measures are necessary, as his mate and wife has requested that she be permitted to give birth in the United States, a request he has granted. Should Ivan agree to be her guardian, and should Katherine Bellamonte allow it, he has Dion's permission to require funds from the accounts Hilary manages in order to hire whatever medical aid she may need.

It takes up less than a page. There are no unnecessary words on that page. The signature is as bold and crisp as everything else. The only thing he forgot is what comes in a letter a few days later, this time from Hilary, even shorter than her mate's letter:

Mr. Press,

I will be returning to Chicago shortly. Most airlines will not allow me to fly at 35 weeks of pregnancy. The entire ordeal will be much easier and faster if you chose to simply send your own plane. It's not necessary for you to accompany me while I travel.

- H.


Plans are made. Letters answered. The jet refueled, checked and double-checked, triple-checked. Sick bags discreetly tucked in near the seats. Estrella readies the house for Hilary's return. Tomas paces the floors of the city apartment, wondering if he can stand to see his stepmother, if he can bear not to see her. Micaela eats two bites of a croissant on a cafe table in Paris, half-listening to her cold, distant father tell her from the other chair that she will be a big sister again soon. She cannot imagine anything more dull than an infant. She holds her tongue.

And mid-April, quite high in the air, Hilary takes a sleep aid she's been assured is safe for her to take while pregnant and sleeps through everything. Sleeps for most of the journey, fatter than she's ever been in her life, hating her body in a way she's never conceived of before.

The plane lands just before dawn, the ground dewy and the sky gray, and by that time she's sitting in her seat, staring out the window at Chicago growing closer and closer as they go down... down...

when she throws up for the first and only time on the journey.


A little while later the door opens, the stairs pulled down, and she's washed out her mouth, brushed her teeth, attacked it with mouthwash, before the taste of sick makes her vomit all over again. Her hair is down, loose, dark, wavy. Her eyes are near-black as ever, black pearls in her pale face. There's a small necklace around her throat, tiny clusters of rubies spaced widely on a thin, thin chain. Her shirt is low-cut, because she'l be damned if she doesn't take advantage of what few physical assets she can at this point. But the truth is:

Hilary is dressed plainly. Comfortably. Her slacks are soft, the legs loose. Her shirt is a peasant style, long-sleeved to disguise the arms that aren't really that much larger than usual but which she loathes right now. It's white, embroidered with red flowers and green vines along the collar and hems. Her shoes are simple things that slide onto bare feet. She carries only a small shoulderbag;

There are always other people who can get the rest of her bags. She raises her head, eyes shaded by large sunglasses, looking for a car that she's rather certain should be waiting.

[Hilary Durante] [clout + expression]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 6, 6, 9 (Failure at target 6)
to Ivan Press

[Hilary Durante] [trying that again: no really, this could make a good story]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
to Ivan Press

[Hilary Durante] [clout + 'politics']
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Ivan Press

[Ivan Press] On the prescribed day, it's Dmitri who makes the flight. It's Dmitri who personally drives to the hacienda. It's Dmitri who oversees the team of local hired hands loading the luggage, reading the vehicles for some very important, very rich, very pregnant white lady's journey back to the States.

Faithful, dour Dmitri, whose age and manner and unswerving loyalty suggests he's served Ivan Press since the Ragabash could walk -- possibly since he could breathe. A certain headservant's intuition tells him not to help Hilary overmuch, no matter how slowly she might walk. Not to make too big a production of catering to her. When the luggage is loaded, he holds the door and hands Hilary into the back seat. It's a white Cadillac limousine, and if she leaves the privacy screen up, he doesn't think of protesting.

The jet is the same one that whisked Hilary to Lausanne once upon a time. It's staffed by Ivan's pilot, one of Ivan's interchangeable maids who curtseys to Hilary as she boards. A light meal is prepared. Sparkling water and juices; no wine. A sick bag is prepared. The bed in the aft cabin is turned down, ready for her.

No one disrupts her while she sleeps. Twenty minutes before touchdown, the maid wakes her and asks her to please be ready to land.


Chicago is so grey compared to the heart of Mexico, where it is already nearly summer. It's overcast in Illinois, and the sky is grey, and the lake is grey, and the city is grey, and the rain is grey. Temperatures keep flirting with the seventies, but it's an oddly oppressive sort of spring. They don't land at O'Hare, of course, or Midway. They land in a tiny executive airport on the North Shore, not very far from Ivan's lakehouse.

The plane touches down very gently, then taxis just off the runway and pulls to a stop. She takes a long time preparing to deplane. No one rushes her. No one even begins cleaning until she exits the lavatory, steps off the jet. The pilot has emerged from his cockpit, though, and doffs his hat at her as she departs.

"Ma'am."


Outside, there's a light breeze. It's been months since she's been this side of the border. Months since she's been this far north. Months since she's been in a city this large, with the constant dull murmur of traffic and population and commerce and crime all about. The last time she was here, she did not weigh this much; her balance was not like this at all; there was no creature inside her, kicking at her viscera at inopportune moments.

She's angrily conscious of these changes. She's not really a vain woman, but she's a woman that always teeters on the verge of hating something, and so often it's herself. She wears clothing that disguises her arms, showcases the one bodily asset she still seems to have. She does not, it's likely, cradle her swollen abdomen. Murmur to the baby. She just wants this over with. She's never been so fat, so not-herself, so undesirable.

It's not fair, then, that the car waiting comes accompanied by a Ragabash. It's not fair that if he's changed at all in the months since she's seen him, it's only for the better. He's beautiful: young, svelte, strong, princely. He's paler for lack of sun, for the winter months, but it only makes him look more rarefied -- his nose a blade, his mouth carved from stone. He moves better than any human could hope to, and he comes to her with his hands coming out of his pockets, his fingers deftly buttoning the top of the two buttons on his jacket.

His suit is a medium grey, so perfectly tailored that it falls without a wrinkle, skims from broad shoulder to narrow hip, follows the straight line of his limbs. He takes her hand and -- perhaps he's mocking her -- bends to touch her knuckles to his lips.

"Welcome back, Mrs. Durante. Good trip?"

There's motion all around them: his people and airport personnel going to unload luggage, deal with the postflight checklist. The pilot passes them with a nod that neither of them bother to return. His hand holds hers a moment longer, very warm, then releases as Dmitri comes up behind Hilary. Ivan dips his fingers into his pocket, flips his keys to Dmitri.

"You never answered my invitation," he mentions, "to stay at my lake house. I wasn't quite certain where to set up the round the clock nursing staff I promised your husband. But I thought we could at least stop by my place. You could take a nap, have some breakfast. If you'd rather go home afterward, I'll send the medical staff along by the afternoon."

The car is brought around to the tarmac: the cream-white Bentley that Hilary may or may not have seen before. One of Ivan's ubiquitous servants sweeps the rear door open, waiting.

[Hilary Durante] The stupid little boy whose name has not been voiced -- if it has been chosen -- is bigger now, big enough that he can't move very much. When he does, however, goddamn does he move. Dmitri can see her as she's telling people what goes, what stays, handing white envelopes with final -- generous -- payment to the servants before they all depart the old estate. She sometimes winces, sometimes looks uncomfortable, even nervous. She doesn't caress her belly or give long, achey stretches to her back -- not in public, that's for damn sure.

She does not speak much to him. Or to anyone. The maid who wakes her on the plane gets the indication in Hilary's eyes that she came very close to being slapped when the woman woke, but something stayed her hand.

When she steps off the plane, she's wearing an open trench coat, a traditional tan, and she's ignoring the pilot's farewell, walking slowly and carefully down the stairs with that repulsive, ungainly body she's come to loathe so much lately. She can't walk right. She can't dance. She can't move the way she wants to, the way she's used to. She does not belong to herself. She never has, but the last several months have drilled that daily into her mind in a way that makes her ever-present pit of gnawing anger roar.

And there's Ivan, sweeping his fingers over his coat, taking her hand when she's in range, kissing her knuckles.

"Fuck you," she sighs when he asks her if it was a good trip, and withdraws her hand after the moment that politeness requires -- as though politeness meshes at all with what she just said to him, worn-sounding. He speaks, tossing keys, and she reaches up, brushing back a lock of hair with her long, fine fingers. "Your lake house is appalling," she tells him flatly, but quietly, uninvested even in her loathing. "All those long, dark hallways and high, dark ceilings, yawning at me."

The car smooths before them to a silent stop, the servant exiting. She's staring at the car. "I acquired a short-term lease on an apartment in the city," she tells him. "You can set your nurses up there if you like." A beat, as the door is opened, then she heads towards the car. "I do have to go back to my husband's house at some point to take care of a few things. Estrella's made a nursery and wants me to coo over it, things like that. But otherwise I'll be staying in the apartment for the remainder of ...all this."

[Ivan Press] "I rather like it," Ivan says, equally uninvested in the defense of his lake house. His den, if he has one. Perhaps that's the point of it: it's his den. His. It matters less if the starved swans dislike it

though Hilary is hardly a starved swan.

"But if it's the apartment you prefer, that's how it'll be." He hands her into the car the same way Dmitri had, hours ago, thousands of miles ago. Then he circles around and gets in the other side. The Bentley is not a limousine, but it's vast and spacious, a vehicle entirely structured around luxury. The interior is the same as the exterior: creamy white, all leather, lovely wood trim on the doors and the dash.

Before they leave, Ivan thumbs down his window. He beckons one of his people over -- the cool, darkhaired woman with the uncaring eyes. Hilary has probably seen her before, once or twice, if she even pays any attention at all to Ivan's entourage of bootlickers and peons and stringpullers. They speak for a brief time, Russian vowels liquid on the Ragabash's tongue. Then Max backs away from the Bentley and Ivan rolls the window back up.

"Let's go, Dmitri. Thank you."

The lake house is closer here. But Dmitri takes the southbound Lake Shore Drive, heading toward the city. Its towers rise up before them. It won't be a terribly long drive. Not terribly short, either. As they leave the airport behind, Ivan speaks again. Quieter than he had on the tarmac. With less flair and facade; more honesty. Looking at her -- even if she doesn't look at him -- every word laid down with care, and perhaps something like caring.

"The nursing staff will set up in a spare room. Whichever one you deem best. There'll be two nurses present at all times, with two more, a technician and an obstrecian on call 24/7. None of them will bother you if you don't want to be bothered. They won't monitor you constantly. They won't monitor you at all if you'd rather be left alone beyond the very fewest mandatory checkups.

"They are, however, under order to fabricate a constant stream of data for your dear husband's peace of mind. Nothing out of the ordinary for a week or so. Then a situation will arise -- something dire enough to require an immediate c-section -- and you'll be moved to a private practice delivery suite a few minutes away. After the baby's delivered ... well, we'll go from there."

A pause.

"Really. How was the trip?"

[Hilary Durante] Hilary -- the one who comes up with the random bird metaphors to begin with -- is no starved swan. Even slender, graceful, she's not one of them. Right now she'd compare herself to a waddling penguin, something like that. He likes the lake house. She's terrified of it, just as she was terrified of her own husband's house, terrified of the hacienda,

not that she's any more comfortable being in those high-up, glass-walled, exposed places like his penthouse, the city apartment Tomas is staying in. She hates everything around her right now, every place there is to be, and herself.

Ivan acts almost as though he doesn't notice, as though her fuck you was an endearment, as though she isn't being a relentless, sullen bitch. He isn't exactly going out of his way to coddle or caress her, he isn't chasing her around a pool or pressing her against the seat cushions to maul her face. He hasn't seen her in ages but he's calm, he's polite, he's relaxed without being withdrawn, without being uninterested.

He's talking to the servant who isn't a maid, and then Dmitri is driving them away, and Hilary looks out of the heavily tinted window, reaching up to slip her sunglasses off. It's hard to imagine the sunlight even touching those dark, dark eyes of hers, much less hurting them. "It's a new building," she tells him, in case he wants to pass it along to the driver, "161 West Kinzie."

Now he's talking to her, and she's not looking at him, but she hears the change in his voice. It's hard to tell if there's tension at the idea of two nurses being around all the time, or relief that, having two, they can talk to each other and not to her. But regardless, Ivan assures her that she won't be bothered. That she'll be left alone.

She's 36 weeks pregnant. He says a week or so, and she's thinking about the dates, the moon, all of it. Plans, preparations, failsafes that she assumes he already has in place. He was the one who came up with this plan, after all.

Without much preamble, Hilary turns and lays her head on his shoulder, her fair hand on his leg. "Uncomfortable," is all she says, but with the tone of someone for whom everything is uncomfortable right now.

Then, changing topics as though it's the most natural thing in the world, as though she has no worries at all about the baby, the birth, all that. "I haven't seen the penthouse yet, not in person. The decorator I hired sent me some lovely photographs."

There's a pause there. "I suppose you could visit me there sometimes, though I don't encourage it."

[Ivan Press] Without preamble, and without Ivan quite expecting it, Hilary lays her head on his shoulder. Her hand on his leg. He turns his head to her briefly, dropping a kiss against her hair -- longer and wavier than it was before she left. It smells faintly of herbs and spice; whatever shampoo it is her servants bought for her from some boutique in the center of San Miguel, making the trek every few weeks even when she could not anymore because she was their mistress and she paid them so generously.

Hilary is not terribly personable. She's cool, she's cold, she's distant, and sometimes there's cruelty in her eyes like a fish in the dark oceans. But she, like Ivan, was well-schooled in the proper way of doing things. She's been trained, and taught, and she knows how to fake it. She knows how to pay her way through.

The lovely young man by her side -- the creature whose golden exterior hides a keen and surprisingly dominant mind, a surprising streak of darkness and cruelty of his own -- nuzzles her hair gently for a moment, thinking of these things. He turns a moment later and speaks to Dmitri in his native tongue. Hilary, if she listens, can catch West Kinzie there.

His hand covers hers on his thigh a moment later. A small pause. Then, lightly, "I'd intended to spend some or most of my leisure time with you, actually. Not at night, of course, for propriety's sake. And to be fair I've got enough concerns of my own that my leisure time, amazingly, doesn't amount to much these days.

"Still." He lets that hang a moment. "It's up to you. If you'd rather I leave you be until after you've delivered, I will."

[Hilary Durante] Ivan can almost feel how much Hilary ignores that kiss, that nuzzle, as though for her, this is a kindness. Not to react, not to utter an ugh and pull away. Maybe it's just weariness on her own part, too. Such affections are easier to bear and even return sometimes when she's unlocked and undone, but she can't reach that part of herself right now. So she closes her eyes and merely allows it,

though none of this quite touches on or explains why she leaned against him to begin with. Why she reached out for his hand and established some mild contact.

As for propriety, she doesn't address it. The nurses, she imagines, wouldn't nose around, but it's better to be safe. You never know who you've really hired. Not all of them are like Dmitri, who is from a place where -- how did Ivan put it? They cut loose tongues out. Some or most of his leisure time, he says. Not at night. And he doesn't have much of that time.

It's up to her.

Hilary takes a breath and might sigh, but she holds it in, doesn't let it go until she says: "Didn't you miss me at all?" she asks softly, bizarre and uncomfortable in her vulnerability, afraid of and hating the question even as it comes to mind, especially as it leaves her lips.

But there it is.

[Ivan Press] What a strange and infuriating thing this relationship is. What a strange and infuriating thing Hilary is. There's simply a silence from Ivan -- half-baffled.

He could launch into anger and recrimination now. What the fuck is wrong with you. Don't you realize you said you didn't know what you'd do and I planned this, I planned all of this, for you. Don't you realize you snapped your fingers and told me you'd be coming back, and I sent the plane, I sent my best man, I hauled a round-the-clock medical staff of eight in on 24 hours' notice, do you realize what that sort of thing costs in money and time and influence. Don't you realize --

-- he doesn't. He's silent a moment, tense. Then he takes a deep breath, his lean chest rising and falling beneath that silk suit, that dark shirt. He lets it go, and he turns to her.

Just as softly: "And why would you think I didn't?"

[Ivan Press] [a week's notice! not 24 hrs!]

[Hilary Durante] "The last times I saw you, you wouldn't stop touching me," she says, still very quietly. "Making me kiss you, demanding I stay with you."

She's silent for a moment, and then sighs. "I'm a whale."

Her hand moves to her stomach, which is, in fact, larger than he last saw it. Large enough to contain a healthy newborn baby, for god's sake. Larger than she's ever been or -- she hopes -- ever will be again. She's miserable from it, her breasts swollen, her joints shifted, and that's not counting all the horrifically unmentionable issues that come along with it. Hilary doesn't have to tell him that her body is disgusting; he can see it. And he can hear the revulsion in her own voice.

Her hand is still touching his. Maybe she's used to snapping her fingers and the world falling at her feet. Maybe she just doesn't feel anything untoward about Ivan making this plan, putting this all together, figuring out what to do in case the baby is obviously, evidently not Dion's, just in case, just for her. All for her.

Hilary's hand drops way from her midsection, and her head is still resting on his shoulder, smelling him, smelling his fine suit as it rustles against her pale cheek. "I apologize," she murmurs, a little more distantly. "I'm not quite myself lately."

[Ivan Press] OH! Before I forget. Ivan's rolls for Clouting.

Clout + Expression, getting the horrific BUILDING OF TOXIC FARMS IN RIVER NORTH WHERE OUR BEBES PLAY!!!111oneone, and Danicka's student protests, on front page news. -1 resources for this month to pay the way.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
to Hilary Durante

[Ivan Press] [Manip + Subterfuge: hide own involvement]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
to Hilary Durante

[Ivan Press] [Clout + Politics vs diff 8: grease the wheels for an easy pass for the BroHo's upcoming inspection. Important enough to stick a WP on -- he'll be breathing down his people's necks til they get this done!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 8) [WP]
to Hilary Durante

[Ivan Press] [Manip + Subt again]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
to Hilary Durante

[Ivan Press] [And one more Manip + Subterfuge for his looking into swaying city planners re: River North shoreline zoning -- no clout rolls because he's just sending out feelers for now.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Hilary Durante

[Ivan Press] Biting his lips, turning his face to the window, Ivan restrains an untimely bubble of hilarity as she sighs: I'm a whale. His hand stays on hers, though. And after a moment, his emotions under control, he shifts to face her. Shifts to move his arm over her shoulders, hold her against his side.

He can't remember the last time he touched a visibly pregnant woman before her. Not just sexually, but at all. He's sure he has. Some aunt when he was ten, perhaps: a polite little handshake and a rubbing of the belly, half-awed, half-repulsed. Some cousin's husband's sister's niece, when he was sixteen: much the same. Or maybe he's just imagining that, memories made in retrospect. It doesn't matter. Pregnant women are so far outside his orbit that they may as well not exist.

And then there's her. He's known of her condition for months. Took her boating like this. Took her to Lausanne like this. Visited her in Mexico like this, twice.

Fucked her like this, once.

Even now he remembers the way her belly felt under his arm when they slept like that. Startlingly firm and round and hot, a core of heat at the center of her, as though human fetuses, like those of birds, needed heat to incubate. She's so large now that her belly presses against his side when he draws her into him like this. There's no helping it.

"You didn't even want to see me," he says quietly. "You don't want to see me. You told me not to accompany you from San Miguel de Allende to Chicago. You're telling me not to loiter about your apartment. I thought you'd be angry at me for even showing up at the airport. How was I to know you wanted to be ravished on sight?

"I missed you, Hilary. I would have flown you back the day after you asked if you wanted it. As soon as all this is over, as soon as you can get away without rousing suspicion, I want to take you somewhere. It's the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. Let's sail around the cape of Africa."

[Hilary Durante] She doesn't have a bird metaphor for how she looks right now. So she calls herself a whale, enormous and slow and even as he's looking out the window trying not to laugh, she's thinking of the depths of the ocean, where everything is dark except for the light close to the surface. It's possible that such thoughts have frightened her before, but right now it somehow seems comforting to contemplate herds of whales sailing slowly and methodically in the deep, apart from all other creatures in their size, their songs only understood by those they're meant to be with.

There's something reassuring about that kind of difference. No matter how many other fish swim around them, how many sharks try to take bites out of them, they are so far away from everything else on the planet, remainders from a more ancient time. It feels like solitude, even while surrounded. She likes that.

She's hot all the time now. Even the weather up here doesn't bother her, snapping between hot and cold. Right now it's foggy and gray, and she feels quite comfortable.

"I always want to see you," she corrects him mildly. "I just don't always want you to see me."

And no acknowledgement of the impossibility of that. That she can't turn herself invisible and still be in his presence, because it isn't just seeing. It's nothing a photograph or a videotape is going to assuage. She wants to be with him. Always, she says, as though it's nothing to tell him of her need for him, her bizarre longing for him. And yet there's never that sense that she'd be overly troubled if he dropped dead, dropped off the face of the earth, was just gone, gone forever. While he's here, though, she almost seems... attached.

"And I never said I wanted to be ravished on sight," she adds, diffident. "I just told you I'm not myself these days."

She winces sharply, and bares her teeth at her midsection. "Bastard," she sighs, knowing full well he can hear her voice now.

[Ivan Press] Bastard, she calls the soon-to-be-neonate she carries within her. This time, Ivan lets himself laugh, a dry little huff of amusement.

"Come on, now," he says, "we don't know that for sure yet."

Traffic is growing slower. They're close to the center of the city now. Close to his place. Close to hers, too. He'd spoken earlier of taking her to his lakehouse to rest a while. Sleep a while. Taking her home later tonight. She said she hated the lakehouse -- and now here they are, downtown Chicago, broad avenues, brilliant skyscrapers. He thinks about asking her if she wouldn't rather go directly to her home; then he thinks better of it. God knows she might take that as another sign of how quickly he wants to get rid of her.

God knows she's always seemed more secure, more pleased, when he simply makes the arrangements for her.

They turn eastward, east toward the waterside pillar of black glass that his ridiculously swanky penthouse sits atop. They can see it now at the end of the street, where the road cul-de-sacs on itself. Dmitri drives carefully, steadily. Ivan's arm remains around Hilary, oddly natural, as though he had any right to this woman twelve years his senior, wholly owned and possessed by his elder.

"Why don't you stay the night," he adds. "By the time you nap and dine it'll be late afternoon anyway, and you said you haven't seen the place except in pictures. There are bound to be minor details askew. Better to deal with it when you're fresh in the morning."

[Hilary Durante] Sometimes it seems that it isn't quite that Hilary doesn't ever knows what she wants, but something else entirely that makes her resist talking to him about those things. Making those decisions. Telling him yes this, no that. Sometimes he'll make a plan, a suggestion, just to have her shoot down option after option until he's on the verge of snapping. She never said where she wanted to go today, though she gave the address of her new apartment.

Sometimes it seems that she wants him to decide if only so she doesn't have to think about what she does or doesn't want, as though this is some great undertaking he's demanding of her. And sometimes, occasionally, it seems that she just wants him to tell her what to do so she has something to push back against, in a world where when she snaps her fingers, warrior kings in monstrous forms fall down at her feet and kiss the insides of her knees.

And lo: they're heading towards his place, instead. She doesn't even notice. He wraps his arm around her, holds her as though she's his, warm and heavy as she is.

"All right," she says softly this time, acquiesing with something that sounds more like relief than resignation.