Ivan Press

Ivan

The morning they leave Montreal, Ivan wears an overcoat over clothes that look like summer. They depart that cold northern city with its bridges and cathedrals, its cobblestoned streets in the old heart of the city. They're going to Hawaii: not Honolulu or the Big Island but Maui, rocky and volcanic and replete with life. They spend a few weeks there, in a small house that seems built mostly of sunbleached wood and glass, perched on a cliff with an endless cascade of worn stairs down to the beach.

Ivan spends most of his time shirtless. He lies out in the sun, lazy as a cat; he splashes in the shallows and swims and stands in the sudden, torrential rain. Every few days they go into town; catch a show once, some touristy thing full of leis and drums. He buys his lover inconsequential little presents, carved-bone sea turtles and koa-wood bracelets, an obsidian knife so sharp that a saner man would never, ever give it to Hilary. Her hair bends to the humidity, falls into those waves he loves so much. He grabs her by her hair once, fucking her, calls her all manner of hideous names, leaves her messy and well-fucked on their sprawling platform bed while he goes to lounge naked on the balcony, door open.

She comes to join him eventually. He wraps his arm around her and shares a cigarette with her, like something out of an old movie.

--

Eventually they're sick of it. Or perhaps she's angry because the humidity, her hair, the constant stickiness of skin even when it's not that hot out. They leave one day: simply up and walk out. Someone else will take care of the details. Someone else will gather their things. A car takes them down narrow roads winding along the mountains. Rainforests wreathed in mist fall behind them. A short puddle-hop takes them to Honolulu, and from there, on a long-haul flight across the ocean.

--

Eastward, accelerating the sun. It's a long, long flight, nearly over the pole: across two oceans and two continents. Somewhere in the middle they'll refuel. Sometime hours and hours from now they'll land in Nice, but for now: the vast darkness of the upper atmosphere; the sun long since set behind them and not yet arisen before them. A million stars and no moon; the endless icy fields of the subarctic below them.

His lover sleeps, but Ivan is oddly wakeful. He goes into the cockpit, which he almost never does, and he sips a brandy while he watches the pilots fly. It is boring and hypnotic: tiny course-changes handled by the autopilot, a horizon that never seems to come any closer.

--

She is asleep when he goes to find her. Wakes her, gentle but insistent, rocking her shoulder if need be.

"Come with me," he murmurs, and he has a robe for her: something to keep her warm as she departs the bed. "I want to show you something."

She has never been to Hawaii. She has heard it is a very poor place, that everyone wears cargo shorts and boxy shirts with ugly prints. So: she is wary of such a place, of the laziness and lack of refinement. Hilary does not expect she will like Maui or wish to bring her son here.

But there is this: ever since that afternoon when Ivan whipped her, and whipped her soundly, Hilary has been a bit... easier. She didn't want him to heal her; begged him not to, if he offered. So the harsh red weals and a couple of actual scabbed-over scratches remain on her flesh, and every time one of her blouses or her dresses slides over her back she shivers with sensation and submits to the reminder, and for several days his lover is almost human. At times she is even tender with him.

Hilary even asks him, after a bath one night, to apply moisturizer to her back, because her skin itches. She asks him to be gentle with her; she permits him to care for her, and he hasn't even done anything to her that day. He didn't have to hit her.

So they go to Maui, and she is rather mellow about the whole thing. Ivan takes her to a house, private and enclosed by lush green hills and wildlife, surrounded by flowers so colorful it's almost vulgar. Sometimes he wakes up and she is already gone; he looks out and sees her down below, walking on the beach in bikini and sarong and a very large hat. Sees her and she doesn't see him: sees her picking up shells and examining them before tossing them back into the sea. Sees her spend a while following what, from a distance, appears to be a hermit crab. Her back is healed now, has been for a while. Her skin is pale and smooth and yet, after a couple of weeks in Maui, even Hillary has become somewhat sunkissed.

She viciously, disgustedly hates the show he takes her to, and leaves early on. She nearly hits some poor woman with the lei they are trying to place over Hillary's dark head. She does one tourist-y thing: she takes a couple of cooking classes focused on Hawaiin cuisine and all its many influences. She seems to enjoy those.

But when they are alone, Hillary is less ferocious, less hostile. She cooks him all manner of fish; she admits she likes the food here. Her hair is never once straightened while they are in Maui; she puzzles over the trinkets he buys her, setting them aside without wearing them, shaking her head at the knife he gives her. But she keeps everything; she always has. He loves to buy her things. He brings her the stupidest gifts, like a little boy.

Speaking of little boys: she skypes with their son. At least a couple of times a week. She is awkward and uncertain, usually, so she talks to Anton like he is a person. She shows him the presents that Ivan has brought to her. Once, Ivan overhears her telling Anton about the hermit crab.

There is a night full of the sound of dark waves below them, a night heavy with full, vibrant moonlight. He is outside, smoking a cigarette alone this time. Hilary has made seared ahi with wasabi beurre blanc sauce, and she brings it out to him. Her feet are bare and her hair is loose and he, foolish romantic boy, plucks a flower from over the railing of their balcony, tucking it behind her ear.

Hilary rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn't take the flower out. Does not crush it in her hand. She lets him feed her by hand. Walks complacently back inside with him when he takes her by the hand. Is quiet and pliant as he ties her to the bed. Obediently tries to stop herself from moaning when he puts his palm of her mouth, shushes her, fucks her in near silence, uses her in a way that is at once fierce and luxurious.

--

But... they do get bored. Strangely, this time, Ivan before Hilary. Hilary loses track of time. He can sense it though, like seeing a storm on the horizon: her peacefulness won't last but another day or two, before her boredom snaps her mood in half. She's been in such a nice mood, for weeks now. It's strange.

So he takes her away. She goes easily. She doesn't even ask where they are going next.

The puddlejumper makes her nauseated, and she is whining and unpleasant in Honolulu until he gets her on a proper jet, and she takes a proper pill, and slips into warm unconsciousness for the remainder. She sleeps and sleeps, dead to the world for hours on end, until

Ivan wakes her.

Hilary opens her eyes with the immediate but unhurried alertness of an animal. They are somehow darker than the room around her. She is in a nightgown -- though really, it's more like a satin slip -- and shivers as she moves, her features questioning. He wraps a robe around her, telling her he wants to show her something. Hilary blinks slowly, still somewhat drugged, and just nods, using his hand to help herself up, shivering a little as her bare feet touch the floor.

"Where --?"

Ivan loves her when she's like this. He always loves her, but there are times he loves her so much he can hardly stand it. It almost always happens when they're removed from civilization, removed from the glittering, vicious, hard, beautiful world they know so well. In central Mexico. In that tiny sunbleached village clinging to the shores of Lake Geneva. In Hawaii, verdant and humid and green-grey-blue.

Some mornings he watches her stroll the beach, inspecting shells and following crabs. Sometimes he forgets himself and thinks: they can live like this, wild and wet and close to the earth.

--

But they can't. Even before Hilary knows she is bored, he can sense it coming. Darkness on the horizon. So they leave, and there are no more hermit crabs, no more nameless flowers in colors so saturated, shapes so elaborate, that they seem indecent. Unreal. In the darkness, suspended above the ground, Hilary downs pills, sleeps like the dead. Ivan thinks it must be so odd to live like that, in episodes spaced by periods of blank semi-awareness. He is not like that at all, see. He craves the experience, the moment, one after another, each one more intense and glittering than the last.

Except with her. With her, sometimes, he can bear to be still for a while.

--

She wakes like an animal. He helps her up, his hand firm and lean in hers. The door opens and the main cabin is softly lit, a dim golden light that whispers luxury. "Not far," he assures her, and leads her by hand: past the couches and the flatscreen, past the swiveling leather seats and the wetbar, the tiny kitchenette. All the way to the front, where the cockpit door stands ajar.

There are two pilots upfront; the same captain that Hilary has glimpsed once or twice, older and grey; a young first officer, rising to his feet and dipping his chin to Hilary as she enters. "Mademoiselle," he greets her.

Ivan hands her forward, nudging her forward until she stands between the captain and the copilot. What seems like a million dials, knobs, screens and switches lie before her, but he points out the front windows.

"Out there," he murmurs over her shoulder. "You remember the fireworks?"

--

He is showing her the aurora borealis, of course: impossible, rippling curtains of light draped through the sky. Shades of underwater green and ghost blue, so much closer from thirty-eight thousand feet. So much nearer, so much larger, so much more encompassing, spanning what seems like the entire sky from horizon to horizon, wafting so close it seems a wonder the colors don't break across the glass.

Ivan has his hand on her waist still. He kisses her shoulder where the robe has slipped. Foolish, romantic boy.

Where are we?

was what she was going to ask him. He tells her she doesn't have far to go, and she doesn't clarify for him. She yawns and follows him, goes with him. Takes her to the cockpit and he feels resistance in her hand, hesitance. What -- why. Tension climbs its way through her, but

she goes in. Ivan takes her, and it's all right. One stands, nods, greets her. She looks affronted at his choice of address, and ignores him. She looks at all the knobs and buttons and she wants to rip the dashboard apart for

no reason at all. Or because it is in her to destroy everything, sometimes. Ivan takes her attention, though. He points her eyes towards the glass, and she blinks a few times, rubs briefly at her eyes. He mentions fireworks, but she doesn't say anything at all. She looks out and sees something

that she has never seen before. Her lips part, sleepily. She blinks again, very slowly. Her hand moves out, and presses against the glass. It steams around her palm. Now she absolutely looks drugged, looks lost, looks stoned, looks high.

--

Her lover kisses her shoulder. She blinks again; her eyes are wet.

"How -- how does this work?" she whispers.

Given permission, the captain speaks: "It's the solar wind skimming off earth's atmosphere. Particles from the sun cross a hundred million miles to reach us. They have to hit at exactly the right angle to light up like that. That's why you only see it in the north."

The first officer interjects quietly, "You can have my seat, ma'am, if you'd like."

Against the lights, her hand is a shadow, small and dark and well-shaped. The glass is very cold. They are very high; far above what a human -- or a kin, or a Garou -- can survive unprotected. The air is so thin. The night is so cold. Even the lights are cold: cold and luminous, surreal.

"I don't know," Ivan admits. They are both whispering, barely audible over the low hum of the engines at cruise. "I've only seen it very far north. In Russia, and on flights that pass over the Arctic."

The captain clears his throat faintly. "If it's not an intrusion, ma'am," he says -- and pauses to see if it is. He is well-trained.

Her hand doesn't stay on the glass too long. It is too cold, and Hilary -- as she told him just a few weeks ago -- hates the cold. She turns to look at Ivan. And then she looks at the captain. There's a furrow between her brows, but not a deep one.

"What is it?" she asks, asking both what he wants and also, perhaps: asking what the aurora is. How it works.

Given permission, the captain speaks: "It's the solar wind skimming off earth's atmosphere. Particles from the sun cross a hundred million miles to reach us. They have to hit at exactly the right angle to light up like that. That's why you only see it in the north."

The first officer interjects quietly, "You can have my seat, ma'am, if you'd like."

Everyone is being nice to her. Hilary looks unnerved. She also looks drowsy and confused, and looks at Ivan. She doesn't know what solar wind is. She doesn't ask, but she looks to him as though he can transition her, somehow, from confusion to contentment.

"It's like sunlight refracting through water," Ivan murmurs, which is at once an apt metaphor and a grotesquely wrong explanation. "Daylight skimming over the poles from the lit side of the earth.

"That won't be necessary, James," he adds to the young first officer already half out of his seat. "We'll turn down the lights in the cabin and watch from there. Unless you want to stay here, Hilary?"

"Stay," she says, almost instantly, though her voice is fuzzed at the edges by pills and sleep. She nods at James, her head moving slowly. "Go. Ivan will sit with me."

Truthfully, the captain casts a glance askance at Hilary. It's highly irregular; thoroughly against procedure. They could lose their licenses over something like this. No one says a word against it, though. The first officer immediately unbuckles his seatbelt and vacates the seat, standing aside until Hilary has passed. There's a brief exchange between Ivan and James, wordless, just a tilt of the head toward the cabin. The first officer leaves. Just the captain now, hands sure on the yoke, surreptitiously double-checking to be sure the copilot controls are locked out.

There isn't enough room in the copilot's chair for two. After a moment, Ivan takes a knee beside Hilary, folding his lean body easily into the space between the two seats.

Ivan doesn't sit, and pull her to his lap. She forgives him for this, because she just wants to sit down. So she sits, and sighs, and Ivan kneels. She drops her hand, and perhaps he takes it. She looks out the windows of the cockpit, larger and affording a better view than the windows throughout the rest of the jet. She leans her head back, watching the aurora move, flexing like a snake, then turning to nothing but a shimmer of color, denying all comparison to animal, to anything terrestrial at all.

This is why she ignored Ivan's attempted (and flawed) explanation. It can't be like water. It doesn't even move like water.

--

Hilary watches the aurora borealis for a long time, her hand softly tangled with Ivan's. She seems as calm as she was when she was following that little hermit crab, as calm as she is when she is doing something she likes and is not being observed.

It's a very long time before she murmurs: "Where are we?"

It seems she means to stay a long time. So after a while, Ivan sits crosslegged. He does hold her hand. He rests his forearm along the arm of her seat to do so. The levers for the throttle are directly in front of him; beyond that, the control panel; beyond that, black sky, coruscating aurorae.

This question, he does know the answer to. "We're passing over the eastern coastline of Nunavut," he says. "Soon we'll be over the ocean. And then Greenland to refuel in Nuuk. Then a straight shot to Nice."

He squeezes her hand gently. Brings it to his mouth, kisses her knuckles. "We're a little over halfway there," he finishes.

She doesn't know what Nunavut is. She does know where Greenland is. She of course knows where Nice is, and laughs slightly, dryly to herself as he kisses her knuckles. Turns to him with a faint smirk.

"And what shall we do in Nice, v--" but she doesn't finish that. She forgot they were not alone.

No, they are not alone. And his eyes gleam when she begins, cuts off. The corners of his mouth curl. He kisses her hand again, warmer this time, hiding their shared secret against her fine skin.

He'd order the captain out of the cockpit if he could. But this one time, he can't indulge his whims. Chances are the autopilot will do just fine, but then: there's also the tiny possibility that they might literally crash, burn, die. The captain stays.

"Whatever you like," he says. And smiling, "Fireworks, maybe."

"Where will we stay?" she wants to know, staring into his eyes with the same rapt, drugged, unblinking constancy with which she watched the lights in the sky.

"We have a place by the beach." He tells it like a story, low and even. "Not too far from the city and not too close. I've seen pictures. It looks nice, very Mediterranean. White walls and arches. Terracotta floors.

"We don't have to stay there. Marseilles is not far. Then there's always Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon. We could even cross into Genoa if you like. It's quite close. Or Barcelona, a little farther the other way."

Strangely, Hilary's interest perks. Sleepily, dreamily, with a flick of her brows, she says: "Oh? I like terracotta floors."

She likes something.

Hilary closes her eyes and breathes in, then exhales, opening them again to watch the lights undulating through the night sky. She wonders if they will fly through them; she knows that is impossible. Her mind whirls. "And Avignon. But we'll go to Nice. And stay there."

She drowses, and then, almost abruptly, she is bored. She stirs, her hand gripping Ivan's. Her head turns and her dark eyes find him. "I want to go back to sleep."

Just like that he rises, smoothly, without ever needing to brace himself, without ever squeezing or tugging on her hand. Indeed, it's his hand that braces hers as she rises; though truthfully, she does not need it either.

She passes before him, turning in that narrow arc that their bodies both somehow fill. He watches her: "Shall I come with you?"

The pilot stares through the windshield, mute as stone now. Whatever brief connection held between their worlds, Fang and servant, is gone.

"Don't be stupid," Hilary says, her hand still holding his as she walks out of the cockpit.

Which, in this case, appears to mean of course.