Ivan Press

Ivan

Never let it be said that Ivan doesn't know how to apologize prettily. In the days after his grotesque trespass, Ivan keeps his distance for the most part -- lingers here and appears there, exists largely in the background. Near enough that if Hilary wanted she could draw close to him, always close enough that she never has to feel alone in the darkness, but never intrusive; never grabby, never needy, never greedy.

Meanwhile, Hilary finds herself veritably showered with gifts large and small. There is a rose on the pillow when she wakes the morning after that incident. It is shaped from the finest, silkiest chocolate, flown in from Switzerland at some obscene expense. There is a bracelet on her wrist when she awakens the day after, exquisite, shaped out of filigreed gold in white, yellow and rose. Several new shoes appear in her closet. She discovers her private studio has been cleaned from top to bottom, the mirrors shined and the glass polished. One afternoon, Dmitri knocks on the door of the lakehouse and asks if perhaps she would like to do a little shopping. If she would, if she agrees, she finds herself chauffeured down to the Gold Coast, down to the Mile where half a dozen boutiques have been closed for a private viewing, for a V.I.P. customer,

for her and her alone.

Days pass and summer reaches its height; begins to wane. As the last of those mighty heat-storms rolls through, rain lashes the windows of the cabin and shatters the surface of the lake. You can't go anywhere in whether like this, and so: there is another knock on the door, and it's Ivan with an umbrella dripping in his hand, Ivan with droplets of rain in his hair, Ivan with dinner catered from Brindille, looking at Hilary with his eyebrows inquisitively raised.

"Would you care to dine with me tonight?"

Hilary does not forgive. Not prettily, and not easily, and often not at all.

The day after he had her followed, she permitted him to come to the cabin, and they fought. And he wanted the cabin cleaned, so it was cleaned. He sank into a couch and put his feet up and sat there while Hilary sat on her mess of a bed and watched My Little Pony. Then she took a nap, and if Ivan came to rest beside her, she did not thrash and beat him and bite at him and scream at him til he left. Neither did she ask him to come closer.

He does not spend the night with her there. But he left her a chocolate rose on her pillow and he put a bracelet on her wrist and and put things in her closet and had someone go into the studio and sends Dmitri to her.

He -- or someone -- finds the chocolate smashed on the path outside the cabin door one afternoon. And a bracelet with its links twisted and warped and pulled with what strength she has, hammered with some frying pan, on another afternoon. The shoes are discovered floating in the lake, if they were indeed left that point. And if Dmitri does indeed knock on her door, it is opened,

and an overripe tomato is thrown at him. The door is slammed.

But when Ivan comes, she makes him wait. She spies him through a window and he can likely see her drift out of view again, away. She does not make him wait for very long. When she does open the door, she is wearing a cream-colored dress with small black dots on it, the hem a wash of pointelle color making up a mountainous landscape. She is wearing a long dark blue cardigan, more shawl than jacket, over it, the sleeves pushed up. Her feet are bare. Her hair is straight, and there's some viciousness in that, because she knows he likes it best when it is wilder.

Her eyes are black. They are always so dark, always so full of rage. It's hard to tell when there's anything else there.

Hilary says nothing. She turns away, walking into the cabin, leaving the door open behind her.

The smashed chocolate, let us admit, was met with a flickerflash of outrage. Some shamefaced servant scraped it off the path and brought it to Ivan while he was knotting a tie before going out for the evening. Because of course he was going to go out; the mother of his child, the love of his life, the light of his soul being angry at him wouldn't keep him from living his decadent life. But: that little ritual of self-grooming is interrupted, and there's that smashed chocolate, and there's that coil of bright-hot anger because how dare she, didn't she know how rare it is that he debases himself so.

It passes. It may not have if he'd found the chocolate himself, if he'd been within shouting distance, battering-down-the-door distance -- but that's not what happened, was it? He tells the servant to throw it away. He tells the servant to put shoes in her closet,

and puts a bracelet on her wrist,

and sends Dmitri to take her on a goddamn private shopping spree, does she have any idea what that sort of thing costs.

Every one of his gifts is rebuffed. And sometimes he's angry and sometimes he's exasperated and toward the end he's resigned, he's stubborn, he's secretly a little tiny bit amused and delighted and he can't wait to see what she does next. She's so clever in her cruelty. He loves her cruelty so. And besides, the truth is: he never takes the brunt of her anger. He's very careful like that, very self-protecting, like a cat with its claws sheathed and its forepaws folded.

--

Until now. Now he stands on her doorstep: he who for the duration of these past days or weeks -- unless otherwise summoned -- has slept demurely at the penthouse or in the lakehouse, and not at all in the cabin. He who has not tried to touch her or woo her or seduce her or otherwise exact some sort of physical forgiveness from her. He stands there and it is raining and thunder is in the sky and she makes him wait, so he gets a little bit wet, and then she opens the door and she has covered herself up except for her wrists, her feet, her throat. Her hair is long and straight and her eyes are black as coal; what reflected light there is a hard diamond shine in their centers.

He looks at her and he discovers he is hard. It is absurd. She turns away and he follows her in, soundless until the door shuts in his wake. Click.

"It's French," he says, conversationally, as he goes to set out their dinner. "Just opened last year. I was going to send Dmitri with a car, but I was afraid you might fling a saucepan at him."

He is looking at her over the open-plan kitchen counter. He is smirking at her. Small wonder she hasn't forgiven him yet; he doesn't even look sorry anymore.

"No one cares, Ivan," is the first thing Hilary says to him, walking across the barren floor. Which he will notice, as he prepares to serve her, is surprisingly clean. Yuliya permitted, perhaps, or because he sent Yuliya in there and Yuliya went in whenever Hilary was gone. But the bed is made, and the kitchen is empty, and there are suitcases by the door. Some boxes, too.

She says those four words in a sigh. And she isn't looking at him; she's slipping her feet into a pair of mustard-yellow heels, tango shoes, sitting down on a chair to bend and clasp them around her ankles.

The smirk falls off his face. Just like that. It was a goad: the smirk, the remark, his very presence. All of it. She doesn't react.

He looks at the boxes, the suitcase. Her.

A beat.

"Are you leaving?"

That may be why he loves her: the cruelty, the harshness of it. It may amuse him. But perhaps the reason he finds himself needing her is that she is cruel enough to do this: something that wipes the smirk off his face. Something that ties a thread of ice around his heart.

She's the one thing he ever really fears losing.

Hilary does not look at him. She fixes the clasp on the second shoe. Rises, wiggling her feet a bit to ensure the fit, and gives him a look over her shoulder. A dry, exasperated look on the verge of an eyeroll. She turns away, picking up her phone from the nightstand. It has a button she can push and it calls Carlisle for her. One button. She presses it.

Ivan is still standing behind the counter when she gives him that infuriating look over her shoulder. He is coming across the room when she picks up her phone. He is right behind her when she pushes the button.

He snaps the phone out of her hand. It is not a violent gesture, see: it is neat, precise, quick as a whip-snap. Her phone is there and then her phone is gone and then he drops the phone -- opens his fingers and lets it fall, CLACK, the screen cracks as the corner strikes hardwood.

Then he brings his heel down on it. How's that for a cracked screen? He grinds: bricks it better than even Hilary ever could have. And now his jaw is set, mouth a flat line, eyes flashing.

The exact same intonation: "Are you leaving?"

w

The phone is gone, dropped, cracked, and stomped on.

Hilary does not startle or gasp or jump. Hilary doesn't even roll her eyes. But that earlier look's verbal cousin leaves her throat, softly enough and with Ivan close enough that it's not dissimilar from a moan: "Ugh."

She looks at him then, smiling sharply, close-lipped, tight and irritated. The corners of her eyes crinkle. She has her hands up, palms toward him, manicured fingernails curled down, her elbows tight to her body. "I can't imagine why I'd want to do a thing like that," she snaps.

He snaps right back: "Enlighten me."

Finally, perhaps inevitably, Hilary rolls her eyes. She turns away from him, then pauses. Her back is to him. Her shoulders are square. Then she looks at him again, slowly turns her body.

"This place was supposed to be mine," she says quietly, even softly, as she watches him, "and I was supposed to be free."

Hilary drops her eyes for a moment, looking at the cracked -- crushed -- phone on the floor between them. Her dark eyes drag their way back up to his face. "It is happening quickly. I wonder how much time is left before you keep Anton from me to get what you want. Or hurt him. Maybe years. But you do not care if I have a life or home that is my own."

With a slight tilt of her head, a faint swivel to it, her nostrils flare, her defiance rising softly and swiftly beneath her voice: "And I am not just one of your playthings."

For a moment, Ivan is speechless. Her words are a knife; it's too sharp to feel just yet. The pain comes later. For now, just the shock of it: a silence, a sensation of breath lost.

"What -- simply because I had you followed once? And now I'm a monster, I'm devouring your life, I'm going to keep your son from you to get what I want?"

"You had me followed," Hilary repeats quietly. "You were furious that I had the audacity to be angry about it. You come and go here, as you please, while I sleep or while I'm gone. You put things on my pillow or my body. You think you're being charming. You think you're being clever. You think that invading like that is a good way to be forgiven for what was, originally, an invasion."

Hilary steps toward him. Now that is audacious. She takes two steps closer, stalking slowly, gracefully the way she has. She is not afraid. She has never been afraid. This is not supplication or entreaty; her moving closer to him isn't forgiveness. It borders on threatening.

She is mad, after all.

"As I prepare to leave, you throw a fit and destroy the thing that lets me call my servants. Or anyone. And then you begin the manipulation, the poor-me, the Hilary-you're-overreacting." She stops. Her eyes have not left his. Have not blinked. It is bordering on a staredown.

Mad, mad thing.

"So that I'll argue with you? Tell you no, no, darling, that isn't what I said? It's a stalling tactic, I think. It's a transparent one. You want to make me doubt myself. Make me feel as though I must be crazy, I must be taking this too far, I must be in the wrong. After all, you're the rational one." There's a beat of a pause. "You're the one getting an erection the moment you see me, delightedly pretending that this is all a game. My anger is a game. My freedom and privacy are not sacred things; I am just being a silly cow to be this angry about the violation."

Hilary shakes her head. "What you do not understand is that it does not matter what you think of my anger. I do not care if you approve or agree with it or think my reasoning is valid. I am angry. And I am leaving this house; I will not live here. And not a single cell of my existence is concerned with whether or not you think it is justified."

This time the silence is longer, and it is different. He's not speechless; he has more things to say than he can fit into words. He stares. A muscle works in his jaw. Seconds tick by, and then:

"Do you even want a response to any of that? Or would you prefer to simply take that story you've told me and walk out of my life?"

Hilary frowns. For the first time. Her eyebrows tug together in confusion. She points at the door.

"I'm leaving the house," she says, slowly.

Say this much for Hilary: she never bores him. She infuriates him and frustrates him and inflames him and bewilders him and sometimes, sometimes, she makes him love her so desperately he doesn't think he can survive such an emotion. But she never bores him.

In some ways, for a terrible, fractured, not-quite-human being such as Ivan, that's more important than love. Or need. Or hate. Or anything else: to not be bored. To not take her for granted.

Life, he said.
House, she says.

He hadn't seen the distinction until now.

--

A small relenting, then. A miniscule, barely seen change in his carriage. He exhales half a breath; catches his lower lip with his teeth. Thinks a moment. Then a shift of his weight to one foot, a slide of his lean hand into his back pocket. He takes his phone out and hands it to her.

"We'll talk until your people come for you," he says.

She doesn't take the phone at first. She looks at it, then at him.

"What if I don't want to talk to you?" Hilary asks quietly.

A short exhale; a thin cousin to her infamous ugh.

"Then we won't talk, Hilary, for god's sake."

Something about that breaks the moment that had softened in her, the quietude of her question. Hilary doesn't take his phone. She walks over to the door and takes one of the suitcases -- one that rolls, one she can simply take in one hand and roll behind her.

It is so easy to forget that her helplessness isn't real; that she was a dancer. That she was a student. That she was almost destitute -- that she was, as far as most Fangs would consider, destitute. That she can do things like roll a suitcase. That she can even drive a car.

That when it came down to it, her first instinct with her crying son was to try and suckle him.

Hilary just walks out the door, into the rain. She doesn't have an umbrella; she has suitcase, and she has a car waiting for her. She even has keys to it: they were a gift.

There is a moment when he might call after her --

There is a moment when he can. He does not turn as she passes him, but he does as she walks to the door. Her suitcase rolls on hardwood. The boxes stay where they are. He supposes her people will come for them sooner rather than later. He hears the difference as she steps over the threshold, her heels on the hollower planks paving the bridge from shore to cabin.

Ivan does turn, then, to watch her go. She is not helpless. She will not melt in the rain. She is capable of some things and incapable of others, as are we are. She does not know how to light a fire, but she knows how to clean her own jewelry, cook her own meals, wheel her own luggage, drive her own car.

That moment when he might call after her is ending. He wavers between pride and anger and desperation and then he puts it all aside, draws a quick shallow breath:

"Hilary."

Hilary knows how to light a fire.

She just doesn't, most of the time, for herself.

Maybe she's forgotten.

--

She does pause. She does look back. This isn't about pride. She doesn't yet have a reason, beyond anger -- beyond exasperation, beyond distrust, beyond plain and simple hurt -- not to turn and look at him.

So she does.

He comes after her, then. Crosses the floor as she had, though somewhat faster -- his stride longer, footfalls lighter. That's not a reflection of their grace and athleticism. That's simply a matter of her heels; his soft-soled boat shoes.

At the doorway he stops. They look at each other for a while. Then he steps back a little, turns his body sideways. Gives her room to pass.

"Stay until the rain stops," he says, softly. "I'll leave."

It's wet outside. The rain is coming down and Hilary is just standing in it, in her heels that shouldn't get wet and her sweater that doesn't protect against the cold and that perfect hairstyle. She has her shoulders tight to her body; it isn't warm out here.

She looks wretched.

"I was going to stay. And sit with you. And maybe even talk. But you scoffed at me like that." Her throat moves. "I know what I'm like," she says, the words difficult, coming through gritted teeth. "But I'm not your toy. I don't belong to you. I'm not nothing. You have to treat me like a person."

You have to treat me with respect.

It's what she means, but she doesn't have words for it. They aren't words she's ever been taught should apply to her. But it's what she wants.

Hilary's free hand comes up. She wipes at her face, though he hasn't seen her crying. She may just be wiping away the rain. Her head shakes; she doesn't come back. Whether he leaves or not, she doesn't want to be at the cabin anymore. Whether he has all her things but a suitcase or not, whether she has a way to call her servants or not, whether she knows where she's going or not. Standing outside of it again, suddenly, she doesn't want to go back.

She knows what she's like -- and it's his turn: his eyebrows tug together. A flick, a flicker, a stab of ache. She's not nothing, she says, and the knife twists after all. He wants to tell her: no, she's not nothing. She's the love of his life, mother of his child, light of his soul. He wants to tell her these things, but for once,

for once in his selfish, self-centered life, Ivan sees that that's not at all the point. The point is not, was never, what she is to him. The point is that she is something, she is someone, even without a man, a male, a Garou, a lover to witness it.

Mute, he holds his umbrella out to her. It's the one he used, getting here from the house. Black and rain-beaded, with a handsome walnut handle. Very masculine. Very classic. Not at all the sort of hyper-sleek thing one would expect Ivan fucking Press to carry, but then: sometimes, once in a long while, he proves himself a Silver Fang after all.

She doesn't take it.

He lowers it again after a moment. Sighs, breaking eye contact for a moment, looking around. The house. The lake, silver in the rain. Her.

"I always thought of this house as ours," he says quietly. "I built it for you and you invited me in, and so I thought it was ours. I never thought you'd consider it a violation if I entered without your express permission.

"As for the rest of it: sometimes it's hard for me to tell when you're being coy, and when you're genuinely rebuffing me. Sometimes you pretend hatred and disgust just so I would chase you harder. Sometimes you pretend to fight just so I'd hold you down.

"I was genuinely baffled when you told me you were leaving. I wasn't attempting to make you doubt yourself. I wasn't attempting to draw attention to your madness. I wasn't attempting to manipulate you. I don't think I've ever attempted to manipulate you."

A small pause.

"As for growing aroused at the very sight of you," quieter still; delicate, as though he'd suddenly grown a sense of modesty, "that's not something I can help. Nor something I can apologize for. It doesn't mean I think of you as a toy, or a belonging, or a nothing. None of what I've done means that. It just means I'm quite in love with you, and sometimes I have ... very broken ways of showing it."

And a smaller still pause.

"Go, then. Have your people contact mine. I'll arrange for your things to be sent after you."

Ivan

It is August.

It is impossibly humid. It is impossibly hot.

The air is sluggish and heavy; lays on the chest like a wet blanket. Drags the limbs, slows the blood. Thunderstorms lurk on the horizon every afternoon, and sometimes -- if one is fortunate -- the storm breaks, the rain pours, the air cools in a matter of minutes. Most days, not so.

Today, not so.

Today, Ivan sprawls on the unrailed deck of the lakehouse, languid as a lion. He is in tiny square-cut swim trunks. He is lean and golden-brown and beautiful, and his bare feet trail in the water. Thumb and forefinger tent over the deep ridge of his brow; his eyelids are closed, and if not for the droplets of water he occasionally flicks across the surface, you'd think him asleep.

A tall glass of something-cold-and-sweet-and-alcoholic sweats beside him. There is a set of speakers by his head, plugged into his phone. The speakers are shockingly small; the sound quality is shockingly excellent.

The music choice is shocking as well. It's Tchaikovsky. Maybe he's feeling patriotic.

He will feel the vibrations of movement on the boards of the dock no matter how stable they are. And he will smell the purity of breeding coming closer to him even with the scent of water and trees and his own sweat in his nostrils. He will sense the nearness of that woman in his sleep, if he must. And he will see, when he turns his head to one side and opens his eyes, a pair of yellow peep-toe heels. The french pedicure. Long legs, and the sweep of a long dress, black with small white polka dots, thin enough to see the light through in places, wrapped around her midsection.

Hilary is wearing sunglasses as well. Hilary is wearing a broad-brimmed white summer hat to shade her face. Her lips are pink. Her hair is straight, glossy.

"I'm going out," she informs him, and this is very odd because

she has not been out, away from the lake house,

for a very long time.

The first thing Ivan does is not to turn his head, not to open his eyes, not any of these things. The first thing he does upon feeling vibrations in the wood, upon smelling purity, upon sensing the approach of that woman

is smile.

It is a slow, lazy smile. It melts across his mouth, sly and smirking and very fucking pleased, and only when her shadow falls across him does he open an eye. One. He looks at her and he lifts that hand from his brow, reaches out to her -- the passage of his hand graceful, effortless. His fingers brush aside the free-falling halves of her dress; his palm curves around her calf. He wants to pull her down. He wants her to climb atop him. He wants to roll her under and fuck her on the deck, her delicate hands gripping the smooth-sanded wood, her broad-brimmed hat floating away on the waves.

"Oh?" He thinks of biting her thigh. He thinks of kissing her cunt. "Shall I accompany you?"

Hilary shakes him off of her calf like she might shake off an annoying child grasping at her for attention, but there's no malice that he can read in her features. And he would know. Even with the shades on her eyes, he would know.

Just like he knows that she would be as likely to shake off Anton, her actual child, as lift him up and cradle him, kissing him, cooing over him, if he grabbed at her leg.

She looks him over. "You're not dressed for it. And you get bored when I'm shopping. You wander around and slow everything down and want to bring things for me to try on."

Perhaps not all of this is true. Perhaps none of it is true.

There are certain days, certain moods, when being shaken off like that would sting Ivan. Would irritated him, or upset him, or enrage him. Ivan is fickle, though, and his moods are capricious. Today, it just makes him smirk. It makes him eye the knot, the ties, the way that whole dress would come undone at a tug.

He doesn't tug. He drops his hand to his chest. She declares him underdressed, easily bored, a distraction, a bother. His smirk grows. He opens the other eye. Smooth as a reptile, he sits up, he leans in, he kisses the inside of her thigh through her dress

and is out of her reach again before she can begin to swat him aside.

"And sometimes," he says, as though confessing a grave sin, "I even attempt to fuck you in the fitting rooms. How unseemly of me. You just can't bring me anywhere, can you." Ivan sprawls back down on the deck. "Well, off with you, then. Enjoy your shopping. Buy something pretty. Will Carlisle be driving you?"

This she shakes off, too, stepping back away from him not because she does not love him, not because she is angry at him, not because she has any ill will toward him at all, but because she is cold, and it is not in her to temper her whims to avoid injuring his feelings. Even a little. Even the iota it would take for her to do anything but move away, as though the idea of being lounged upon, pawed at, kissed on her thigh disgusts her right now. She doesn't do it to hurt him. It's just that on most days, Hilary doesn't remember that other people can hurt. Or why she would care if they did.

He teases about fucking her in fitting rooms; now she rolls her eyes. It takes her whole expression, turns her face from his, even though he can't see through her shades. "Ugh," comes the sound, rolling at the back of her throat. "I'm driving myself."

She's going to drive the Maserati. The one Ivan gave her for a present, because he just loves her so much and because she is so precious and because he has no restraint at all, no self-control, nothing to stop him from pouring sable and diamonds all over her. The keys are in her hand, gleaming and possibly never used before.

And with that Hilary is sweeping away, the moment to tell him she was going apparently just a mild courtesy -- or something. Who even knows, with her warped mind? She strides away, her dress roiling and wafting around her legs, giving him those same vibrations through the wood that he felt when she came near.

Exit Hilary, stage left.

What is Ivan to do? He watches her go, mild and amused, lounging still in the hot sun, the sultry summer air. Those water-sealed boards beneath him vibrate, vibrate, vibrate a little less with every step she takes away from him. Soon enough she is gone. Ivan closes his eyes again. He turns his face skyward. He lazes a moment.

Then he reaches for his phone and calls Dmitri.

"Send someone with her, will you?" He doesn't specify who she is, or where she's going, or how or why Dmitri was expected to wrangle this miracle. "Discreetly. Don't interrupt her, don't disrupt her, don't bother her at all. Just make sure she doesn't drive herself into the lake. I can't even remember the last time she got behind a steering wheel."

[aston martin! not maserati.]

[perception + alertness: do I notice my stupid boyfriend's stupid bodyguard types?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

He'll hear the engine start and he'll hear her drive away. She isn't even taking Darya.

Hilary goes alone. She drives in heels with her hat on the seat beside her. She does not go to malls. She goes to boutiques. There are low velvet chaises and robes in the fitting rooms. She is handed glasses of champagne while she browses little dresses, looks through autumn collections, considers outfits. At first, she doesn't notice the car that slides into parking spots near hers on the streets she visits, waiting there, watching her through windows. At first she does not notice when she is followed walking down a sidewalk. Hilary carries nothing but the little clutch that holds the shiny card that gives her access to money she can't fathom. Bags are taken to her car for her. Items are held to be delivered to the lake house later.

But pausing at a strange window -- not a boutique at all, but a gelato shop that is run-down and perhaps not the cleanest and run by someone who barely speaks english and isn't even Italian -- she catches something in the reflection on the glass where she sees herself, through which she sees mounds of rippling, creamy frozen treats in bright colors.

She recognizes him, and then she takes out her phone, the other shiny thing in her clutch.

Somewhere, perhaps still on the dock, Ivan's phone chimes. Vibrates. Lets him know, somehow, that the queen bitch from hell he is enamored of is calling him.

Ivan's first reaction is: she's lost. she got turned around. she's in the bad part of town. she drove into a lake. He isn't fearful. He's a little amused. He has people with her, after all.

So he picks up. "Yes, darling?" he says: he is smirking.

"Dión sometimes had me followed. For my own safety, of course. And because I belonged to him."

There's only the sparest pause there. She is cold, and cruel, but the softness he hears in her voice is rage, bottomless, too strong to be calculating, too powerful to permit her to leave those words hanging there, all the more piercing for the silence that follows them. Hilary is too angry, in short, to do more than take a small breath.

"Call him now," she says, the softness leaving, "send him away, and leave the lake house before I come back to it."

She presses the red handset. She knows that button means the call is over.

There is no reply; he does not have one for her before she ends the call.

A few moments later the man watching her puts his cellphone to his ear. A moment after that he puts the phone away, starts his car, and drives away down the street.

Hilary is left alone.

--

The lake house is lit when she returns to it. Ivan would never leave it in darkness; not when she would return to it alone. The door is locked and the deck is empty and there is a cart in front of the door: dinner, a bottle of wine. Ivan is not there. There is a card on the kitchen counter, though:

I'm sorry.

Call me.

Hilary waits in front of the gelato shop. She watches the man in the reflection, and the Pakistani man in the gelato shop who is reading his Twitter feed and not paying attention to anything else does not notice. Hilary waits for Ivan's servant-kin to leave, and

no one but Hilary and the ghost-people around her know what she does after that. Because no one is watching her.

--

And Ivan perhaps does know when she comes back to the lake house, perhaps he is in his nearby real house, watching for the car. Waiting for the sound of the engine. Perhaps he went all the way back to Chicago proper, to his penthouse. But she does come back, and Carlisle has been waiting, so he rises from the porch of the mansion and walks out to the Aston Martin to unload it. Heft this, carry that, set them all inside for her to go through later; she will have forgotten what she purchased.

Once inside, Hilary stands still for a while. She looks around, because she can see everything but the dance studio from this vantage point. Then she walks; closes the shades on the glass walls, hides herself from outside view. The lake house is a warm glow, diffuse and glimmering on the water. Inside, she removes her shoes, she walks around barefoot. She pours herself wine. She tastes the dinner left for her, then tosses it out. Summons Darya on the phone, gives her a list of things to bring from the main house.

And then Hilary cooks, drinking as she goes, drifting through the house in her bare feet and sweeping dress. Cooking gives her order and structure; cooking gives her freedom and wildness. She drinks the wine that Ivan had brought to her, but not the food, and this is meaningful to her in strange but important ways, however silent they are, however they cling to the recesses of her broken mind.

Ivan does not know how Hilary dines alone, but she dines well. She sets a place at the table. She lights candles. She puts on music, playing through the hidden speakers through the house. It's Chopin. She eats slowly, fork and knife held French style. She savors. She enjoys it very much, dining alone. No one talking or bothering her. No flirting, no romance, no questions. No one interrupts her at her meal. She eats like this more often, living in the lake house. It's nice.

For desert, a now quite drunk Hilary eats directly from the white-paper carton pint of gelato she brought home with her. She watches television, wide-eyed and confused by storylines she doesn't have context for, in both fiction and 'reality' and the news; she doesn't understand any of the stories, but she watches them intently.

Ivan's phone does not ring.

Not that night.

The lights are on the main house when Hilary returns to the cabin. She would see them if she looked, but then no one would be surprised if she didn't. No one disturbs her when she retreats into that bright, modern space. No one complains when she closes the shades. No one brings her food, or knocks on her door, or disturbs her phone.

She does not call Ivan that night. Ivan, wisely, leaves her be.

--

In the morning, there is a new cart at her door, with a new tray, heaped with new food. There is a carafe of orange juice, and one of coffee. There are pastries and there is a quiche and there is toast and butter.

There is another note, penned in Ivan's slashing modernist hand:

May I visit you?

Hilary sleeps a long time. She drank most of a bottle of white wine. She ate half a pint of gelato. She sleeps heavily, deeply, alone in that vast altar of a bed in the center of the cabin over the lake. She sleeps in her dress, her jewelry on the nightstand, her hand draped comfortingly over her own cunt beneath the thin sheet she uses as a blanket. It tangles around her as she moves in her sleep. She wakes late in the morning, groggy, hungover, moving slowly. And does not go outside at first.

There is a piss, and a long, hot shower. There is wandering around, thoughtless, naked, wishing the place were cleaner, forgetting where her phone is. Her phone is dead. She has to charge it. She has to find the plug-thingy. All of this takes her some time. She lets her hair dry in the air, long and wavy but not frizzy, because the air here is filtered of all that nasty Chicago August humidity. Finally she dresses herself, putting on a navy blue shift dress. It is simple as a sack on her, sleeveless and short and simple. With the right shoes, the right jewelry, she would look so chic. Instead -- barefoot, soft-haired, clean-faced -- she looks a bit fey.

Hilary makes an attempt at the bed. She drags her dress off the edge of it, but then is tired, bored, something, and drops it on the ground. She crawls over the bed, pulling at the sheets, and it isn't that she doesn't know -- there were times in her life Hilary took care of herself, try not to faint -- it's that she can't remember, halfway through, why she is doing it.

She kneels on the bed, silent and alone and fey and with a headache, and then goes to the button that lifts the shades, rolling them high, letting in the sunlight. She lets it wash everywhere, cleansing, and that is when she sees the cart outside. She goes to the door and opens it, listening to the pretty noises of summer by the lake, feeling the waft of hot, wet hair that comes in, and picks up the note. She looks at it, and then drops it, and begins eating a quiche where she stands in the doorway, in front of the cart, bare toes touching the plants of the path to the door, heels touching the floor of the lake house.

Halfway through eating, Hilary turns, grabbing the cart behind her with one fist, dragging it over the bump and into the house with her. She doesn't bother with setting the table this time. She sits on the bed with the cart nearby and eats, and drinks, and picks up the remote to turn on the television until she finds cartoons.

For a while, Hilary watches cartoons and eats quiche, then toast, then fruit. She finds a metal-covered plate with sausages and eats those too, craving the fat and animal protein to help her through her hangover. She pushes the cart away after, licking grease from her fingers, switching the channel to a baking competition. One of the pastry chefs is going to attempt an edible railroad around the tiered cake they're making. Even Hilary knows that is going to blow up in their face.

When the knife in the back of her head and the churning in her gut has eased, she looks for her phone. It's fully charged. She sends Ivan a text right away:

No

And a few moments later, a heartbeat or two:

Okay.

It is tempting to spy on Hilary. To keep tabs, at least, on the cart in front of her door so he has some idea of whether or not she is awake. Whether or not she has eaten. Whether or not she has seen his note. It is tempting, but Ivan is thoroughly burnt and shy now: he doesn't spy. He doesn't stare out the window. He doesn't watch for shades rising, lights going off, carts moving in or out, notes disappearing.

He spends the morning however he spends the morning. Perhaps he sleeps through it. Perhaps he hides in his great house, facing away from the cabin, determinedly not keeping tabs on Hilary. Perhaps he goes sailing. Hilary doesn't know; she doesn't see him, and more importantly, she doesn't care.

At some point, long after early morning has become late morning or possibly even noon, a text dings onto Ivan's razor-thin, gorilla-glass-and-carbon-fiber blade of a phone. It is heartbreaking.

A little later, another text.

A little later still, there is a cat-soft knock on her door.

Perhaps now he understands the temptation that Dion succumbed to, that Grey spoke of in poetry: to hold her, to keep her, to watch her every move, every flash of her throat as she breathed. In some measure it is simply not his fault; he is a werewolf, and she is his kin. He has fucked her, abused her, loved her, made love to her, harmed her, healed her, and his one and only child came from her. Every time he comes within ten feet of her, even more, her purity is a drenching, intoxicating thing to him. It calls him bodily, spiritually, psychologically; it insinuates itself into his dreams. Every fiber and sinew tells him to watch her, to guard her, to protect her, to not even let her out of his sight if he can avoid it.

Of course he is tempted. But the burn of her voice telling him to get out still stings; still seethes in his ears. The sharpness and abruptness of her first text must feel like a knife dragging over the unhealed wound, on some level.

That is not to say he was wounded. Perhaps punished is a better word. The effect is ultimately the same: he stays back. Does not watch; does not sniff. Leaves her alone.

--

When he knocks, Hilary stares balefully at the door. She doesn't leap up to answer it, or even say anything. She thinks he will just come in on his own after a while, and so she sits on the bed in the center, phone in her hands in her lap, the little cookie game playing. You tap cookies to make more cookies and there are so many cookies. That is the game. That is all it fucking is.

And since he likely does not come in on his own for a while and she does not want to talk, Hilary pushes the cart across the floor. It runs into the door, banging, bouncing back slightly, rolling the other direction.

Naturally, Ivan does not open the door when it does not open for him. No answer is most certainly not a yes when it comes to Hilary. It could be that she's changed her mind. It could be that she's forgotten she'd given him permission in the first place. It could be that she just doesn't feel like opening the door to him; that it gives her some sort of strange delight to leave him waiting outside. Who knows. It's Hilary.

Who, in lieu of any logical human response, eventually bangs a cart into the door.

Outside, Ivan startles. Those svelte muscles tense; that lean frame jerks ever so slightly. After a while, he puts his palm against the door. He presses gently to see if it will open. It won't. He tries the doorhandle, next.

She doesn't want to get up from the bed.

She doesn't want to speak.

The cart was perfectly logical.

...if you are fractured in her particular way. If you do not exert your will over yourself for the sake of anyone else. If it doesn't occur to you to do so.

--

The door is unlocked. She never locked it, after bringing in the food. It's possible she didn't lock it last night, either.

The cabin is a mess: dishes in the sink, wax on the table, the clothes and shoes on the floor, the gelato container in a puddle on the counter because she didn't put it back in the freezer. The little vase with its little flower on top of the car that was knocked over by its careening, spilling a scant amount of water onto a doily beneath a plate of croissants.

Hilary herself is sitting in the center of the bed. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is playing quietly on the television. She has her phone in her lap. She is staring at him. For a beat. Then, blinking slowly: "What do you have to say for yourself?"

There's something cautious about how Ivan opens the door. Something about it brings to mind a wild animal straying into unfamiliar territory. The way his fingers touch the knob so lightly. The way his hand follows the swing of the door, which is silent and smooth. Nothing would surprise him right now. Not if Hilary flew at him with nails and teeth. Not if she ran sobbing into his arms. Not if she threw a goddamn machete at his head.

Nothing happens. And so, lightly, and with that same animal caution that in him translates to a sort of grace, he steps in. Takes note of the mess, the unwashed dishes and the spilled things. The television is on and the program is absurd. Ivan's shoulders relax. He sighs, somewhere between exasperation and relief and inappropriate amusement and frustration. Thoughtlessly, he picks that little vase up; he sets it, and its resident flower, on the kitchen counter.

That's where he is when she speaks to him. That's where she sees him, straight-backed and lean and effortlessly, languidly elegant; sees how he tenses again, coils on himself in reflexive and bewildered outrage. No one -- no one but Hilary -- would speak to Ivan like that, the way a severe schoolmistress might a misbehaving boy. It's almost beyond his comprehension.

A moment later he turns to face her. He stares back at her for a second.

Then: "I've said I'm sorry."

Let's be realistic, Ivan. It wouldn't be a machete. It would be a frying pan, and it would never get to him because her arms are essentially limp noodles. It's a wonder she could ever lift Anton, even at his smallest.

"I didn't ask if you were sorry," she says, unrelenting.

[but if she DID throw a frying pan at his head: dex + ath, specs do not apply]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

[damage. strength + 1 (frying pan base damage) + suxx -1]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

[fuck's sake, can he even soak that?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( botch x 1 )

[*FUCKING DIES*]

[5 fucking bashing LMFAO. he'd be MAULED BY A FRYING PAN.]

As though ice had suddenly thawed in his joints, Ivan moves. He comes away from the kitchen island; he comes toward Hilary on that bed.

"What is it you want, then? A reason? A rationale for doing as I did? It wasn't because I thought I owned you. I did it because I couldn't remember the last time you drove yourself anywhere. I did it because I thought you might get lost. I did it because I thought you might wrap yourself around a light post.

"I did it because the last time I remember you being out on your own, you were assaulted by an insane werewolf."

"Blah blah blah," Hilary says. She even does a hand motion like a quacking.

She looks at him warningly, as he's coming near the bed. She sits on it as though it is not an altar now; she sits in its center and somehow makes it a throne. A wild, messy throne, but hers.

"You had me followed. Watched. And you have no justification for that trespass, and you know it."

"And I've apologized for it. I've explained it the best I can. What. Do you want?"

"Admit that it was bad and stupid and you will never do something so fucking rude again," she snaps back. "I want you to show shame. Remorse. I want you to feel guilty."

"I felt shame. I felt remorse. I felt guilt. I felt like a goddamn monster when you compared me to Dion, because you were right and I knew it. I've felt all that, Hilary, and I was feeling it right up until I came to see you and you spoke to me like I was five years old and you caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.

"What have I to say for myself," he parrots; gives his head a quick, sharp shake. "I can bear your anger and your hatred, Hilary, but not your disdain."

"Then you can go," she says, dismissive, with a nod of her head toward the door, a faint wave of her hand in that direction as well. "If you are going to stomp your feet because you don't like my tone, then disdain is all I have for you."

"I'd rather stay." The words are bitten off. He can't help it; he's angry.

"Then don't be a little shitmonster," Hilary says. Snaps back. Bites back. "You're the one in the wrong here. Your reasons are no better than anyone else's. Your apology is as offhand as ever. If you want to stay, then you will recall that you were the one who made this mess. You asked if you could visit. You did not stipulate that I had to forgive you first."

On that note Ivan wheels away. He storms to the door, which still hangs open. He grabs it, he heaves it, he slams it shut so very hard.

It's an outburst. A temper tantrum. He's being a little shitmonster.

Seconds go by. He turns, eventually. He crosses the cabin; he comes toward the bed. Stops at the edge of it, not touching it, not touching her. His hands are restless. One closes and opens, pumps like a heart. Abruptly he exhales. He lowers his eyes.

"You're right," he says again, low. "You were right, and you are right. I was worried about you. But it doesn't give me the right to have you watched and followed as though I owned you. It ... appalled me, to think that I could have behaved just as Dion did. Just as Grey would have.

"I am sorry, Hilary. You are the woman I love, the mother of my child, and I treated you like a thing. It was abominable of me." A beat. He looks at her. "Please forgive me."

Hilary scowls at him when he comes near again. Of course she is not bothered by the way he storms around. She doesn't consider the harm he could do her, if he loses his temper. She was bent over a railing with a furious Galliard wanting to rape her or rip her throat out or both and all she could do was rage and snap at him, threaten him, as thought it made any difference. It does not occur to Hilary to be afraid of Ivan's anger,

though it should.

She just scowls at him, unabating, even when he debases his pride. Even when he lays it out: he was wrong and wrong and wrong, it appalled him, it shamed him, and he is sorry, and he loves her, and he was abominable. Even when he asks for her forgiveness.

And the truth is, she wasn't withholding it just to see him suffer. She isn't withholding it now, when she scowls at him. She is telling the truth, which is a cold and relentless and unmerciful thing, especially from someone like her, who never thinks to soften it.

"No. I'm still mad at you."

Ivan takes a breath. She can see it, though perhaps she doesn't understand the why and the wherefore. He lets it out:

"Very well. I'll leave you be. When you want my company again, I'll be waiting."

She frowns, affronted. "You asked if you could visit."

"And now I've visited," Ivan answers, "and you're angry and I'm frustrated and I've a suspicion you don't really want me in your house right now, anyway. Am I wrong?"

"I can be angry at you and still have you around," she says, frowning, like this is obvious. "Just not if you're going to behave monstrously in the meantime."

Perhaps she means that she does not want to speak to him at all. Perhaps she means that he is not to speak to her. Perhaps she means that she simply does not forgive him yet, but that this shouldn't affect their day to day existence any more than it strictly has to.

God knows what she means. She's a madwoman.

"Goddamn it," Ivan swears, which could mean any number of things at all. He doesn't bother explaining. He pulls his phone out; he dials a number, and somewhere in the house a maid picks up.

He barks at her. He demands Yuliya. He demands cleaning, now, the cabin is a wreck, get on it. Make it spotless. Do something, do anything, fix it. Yuliya, who has known him nearly as long as Dmitri, knows this has nothing to do with her, nothing to do with the cabin, nothing to do with the mess. Everything to do with him, and that madwoman in the cabin with him, and the way all their lives seem to revolve around his whim and the madwoman's.

She is stoic, and she is polite, and she doesn't waste her breath. Da, she says, and then the phone call ends.

Ivan stands there a moment, phone in hand, head bent. Then, without another word, he puts his cell away and goes down to the couches in their sunken corner; drops down, puts his feet up, and

continues his day to day existence with Hilary. Never mind her anger, or his.

Hilary, sitting on the bed, wrinkles her nose as he says that the cabin is a wreck, get Yuliya over here. She is watching him, when he gets off the phone. He storms over to the couches and sinks down, feet up, and this -- like his swearing -- could mean anything at all.

She does not question. She lifts the remote and turns up the volume on her cartoon. She likes Princess Luna. A creature of nightmares no longer, but instead, a pony who desires your love and admiration. Hilary does not think that Ivan likes My Little Pony, but she doesn't ask. She ignores Yuliya when the maid arrives and begins cleaning up the kitchen. Really, it's not so bad in here; some tidying, some wiping, but little else; Hilary does not get off the bed, so Yuliya does not make it.

When Yuliya leaves, the cartoons are over, and Hilary has turned the television off. It isn't even afternoon yet, but she lays down on her bed, sighing, closing her eyes. Her head hurts again, has been hurting. She does not invite Ivan to come to her, rest with her, be nearer to her again.

But then again, if he makes his way toward her,

she does not reject him, either.