Ivan Press

Josephine Parker

In another world, these would not be some of the last words they say to each other: her asking to be held, him reassuring her of his presence. In another world, another place or time, they might leave the bed for a while. They might bathe together. They might have a bed made for more than just one person, and yet sleep close together anyway.

But that is not their life. There's no tub to share, no luxurious bed,

and no days after tomorrow.

--

Josephine Parker sleeps deeply. Rest weighs on her as heavily as on a child. She never told him how long she's been a widow, but it can't have been all that long: she sleeps like she is used to having a body beside her own. But perhaps that is just something one only forgets until it happens again, the limbs and skin suddenly remembering.

--

Tomorrow comes. She has the day off. It's not an alarm that wakes them but the noise in the hallway of women talking, going to and from the washrooms. The noise is muffled and the air is stale; the blankets he stuffed at the crack under the door are still in place.

He can feel her eyelashes against his chest when she opens her eyes. He can feel how she doesn't move, doesn't turn or breathe in too deeply, doesn't let him know that she's awake. But there really is no hiding it, not when they're this close.

The first flurry of noise is followed by a quiet, and then, not long after: a new, more muted sound. The nurses from the night shift are coming home, eating breakfast, heading upstairs to wash and go to bed for the day. This place runs like a clock; the girls who have a rare day off know not to flaunt it around to the ones who are in the middle of their own exhaustion.

By then, Josephine has begun stroking his back with her fingertips. Slow. Hypnotic. Mindless. Perhaps it's cruel of her to touch him like that, softly and with such familiarity. Perhaps he'd be better off if she didn't.

Too late for that, though, really.

--

In time the halls are quiet. Girls are asleep or girls are at work. There really is no reason for them to wait: he can slip into the penumbra, he doesn't have to find a window to climb out of or sneak out the back way. But it's a convenient enough excuse to wait a while, even after they've awoken. It's a convenient enough excuse to go on holding one another, smelling each other, touching each other.

They don't kiss in the bed again. That is left to last night. But eventually one of them stirs. Sits up. The other does too, a moment later. The lamp is turned on. They are naked. She picks up her robe and drags it around her shoulders, slides her bare arms into the sleeves, folds it somewhat over her body. He picks his stolen clothes up from the floor, puts them on. They aren't looking at each other much.

The room smells like their feast, like gin, like sex, like burnt candles. She watches him rise and it is all happening so fast but there is no other way for it to happen.

The last thing he puts on is the hat he stole, the felted wool cap. And she's sitting on the edge of the bed, in that quilted, floral robe, her feet resting on the puddle of cream-colored satin on the floor that is her nightgown, that was her signal to him of what she intended when she told him to come into her bed. Not a white flag; a beacon.

But maybe it wasn't the nightgown. Something in her eyes. Something about her. Something that draws him near again, this morning.

He comes to stand before her.

He holds out his hand to her, his palm lifted, open.

Josephine looks up at him, with those depthless black eyes. Looks at him for a very long moment, before she sets her hand in his, palm to palm, skin to skin. She lets him bring her up, lift her to him, standing so close they can't avoid touching each other. He can hear how it makes her breath catch, ever so slightly.

They make no more promises. She is grateful for that. Perhaps that's what she means, that she's grateful, when she says his name, caught and tight and aching with all the things she does not know how to say:

"Nikolai --"

He answers by kissing her. It's fervent. It's as hungry as the first one last night, his bare body against her, his arms encircling her. He does it again now, wrapping her up as tightly as he can, holding her tight to his chest. Her hands touch his face, hold him, kissing him back with an urgency and passion that almost eclipses the night before.

It... cannot last long. None of this can.

They have to stop to breathe, and both of them know: they have to stop.

Their eyes meet.

Her palm is on his cheek.

His thumb is on her lower lip.

The last kiss is something much softer. Slower. It is not quite chaste. It begs of her to stay alive. It tells him to come back.

--

And then he steps away. He focuses on something other than her for a moment, or perhaps something in her eyes is enough to open the doorway between one world and the next. A smile, then. A tip of his hat. She doesn't even roll her eyes; she just shakes her head at him, maybe even fondly. There are tears in her eyes.

Only two escape, to be quickly wiped away. And that is only after he is gone.

--

What follows can be spoken of only two ways.

The first is in the days immediately after.

--

Nikolai escapes London through a network of penumbral alleyways and furtive runs across the territories of enemies both mortal and cosmic. By the time he returns to Moscow his ribs are showing more than they were when he made love to Josephine. By the time he is reasonably safe again, there is a ragged, ugly scar wrapping around the left side of those ribs, a pink line across his gut. It is a horrific reminder of what it was like to die,

alone,

in foreign and hostile lands.

It is and will always be a reminder, too, of what it was like to come back from that, first in a bleeding, roaring frenzy of violence and savagery he has seldom ever felt and only recalls now in flashes. Then the later return: still alone, still in hostile lands, the rain pattering on his face to wake him, the mud underneath him a mixture of loose soil and his own blood, the rain a mix of blessed water and choking ash.

Perhaps he thinks it very strange that he thinks of her then, forcing himself to move, his body now marred with a scar of the battles that make up what really will be the war to end all wars. But he does think of her then, for whatever reason, and moves on.

--

Josephine has the day off. She takes a shower, later in the day than she usually would. She has to do all of her laundry today: uniforms and aprons and linens and towels. She does, but she keeps her quilt as it is. He slept atop it. It retains at least some of his scent, and she's not ready to let that go yet.

She's hungry, but she doesn't eat the salt beef. She puts that away, somewhere cool and dark. She puts away her candles and matches. She returns the blankets, once laundered, to the people she borrowed them from, setting them folded outside their doors.

Breakfast is done, so she eats lunch alone downstairs, staring at her plate. But then the matron comes to fetch her: the people in the country have called about her son. It's no emergency, but she goes to their office to take the call. Adam is not quite old enough for a conversation, but his caretakers prompt him along, and she hides her face behind her hand to try and stop from crying as he babbles in her ear. The connection is not very strong, so that blessing is brief. They tell her how he is doing: he likes to help, but usually ends up playing with the animals. He is eating well and had a bit of a cough last week from a wet spell of weather, but he is healthy.

And then she has to do her shopping. This she does numbly. She wants to go back to the hospital, she wants to work, she doesn't want to feel this gnawing emptiness, this sense of profound loss, with nothing to distract her.

In the end, she does indeed go to the hospital. In a fresh, starched uniform, she loses herself in the rush and busy-ness of it all. She will be exhausted, but she's grateful all the same. That night when the shelling starts up again, she closes her eyes and hears him, again:

You need only endure a while longer.

--

The only other way to speak of the time after that night together is this:

years.

--

The shelling does end. The cleanup and restoration of London happens with wheelbarrows and kerchiefs tied around noses and mouths. Everyone works. The soldiers keep coming to the hospital, with bloody bodies and shaking breaths. They are often shocked to their core, their minds sometimes very far away.

Women keep coming to the hospital, birthing babies with bloody bodies and powerful, screaming lungs. Their minds seem far away, too, but everyone sees this as a blessing: they have no idea whatsoever what the world they've been born to is like. Wherever they are, they have other concerns to attend to.

And so it goes.

It takes some time, but Josephine Parker's life moves on. She works very hard, and she is put in charge of her shift, her floor. She is offered a position as one of the matrons of the dormitory, but she declines. She finds a small apartment she can afford. She cleans it carefully and does what she can to furnish it, though it is terribly sparse at first.

One day she goes to the train station and Adam is a bit wary of her, and his haircut is a bit ragged, but when she comes close he inhales, smells her, remembers. She is shaken, though: he is so much bigger. He talks so much more, and sometimes with country sayings and accent that she will spend a great deal of time training out of him. But he is with her again, and they take a taxi to the apartment, and she's so nervous.

He is amazed at how noisy the city is, but equally amazed that he has his own little room, however small it is. He sleeps that night with her, though, because there's a rainstorm, and -- she thinks -- because he knows how badly she missed him. She sleeps, smelling the top of his head like she did when he was a very small baby.

--

Russia and Germany dissolve their alliance. Josephine hears of it and wonders. She left her forwarding address with the dormitory, but she wonders if he'll ever be able to write. Adam is going to school now, and she's hired a young girl to walk him home from school, make him supper, and generally watch over him until Josephine comes home. Money is thin. She goes to church though she doesn't believe a thing about it, and this helps: Adam benefits from the charity of the congregation, though it galls his mother and she refuses to take their food or extra clothing or help. What she can accept is all for him: new shoes. A raincoat. Books, because it turns out he loves to read.

A letter arrives. It's very late, it was postmarked over a month ago, but it's here, and tattered, and she has to close herself in her bedroom and her closet so that her son won't hear her sobbing from a relief she had no idea she would feel. She gasps against her palm with the force of it, the strength of hope she mostly had let go of surging back into her, filling her bones, rushing through her veins.

He is alive. He is not being posted to London. He gives her a place she can write to, though he won't be there long.

He tells her some of what is in his heart.

And not very long after -- though it is a very long time since he wrote the letter -- a telegram is sent to the address he gave her. The short message only tells him that she is well, that Adam is with her again, and gives him her new address.

--

Their communication is spotty. He always knows where to send her letters, but he is being moved around a great deal, one city to the next, and sometimes he comes back to one place to find telegrams and letters have piled up. Sometimes she references another letter, one he never received and can never find. The conversation is staggered and overlapping, but most of the time it doesn't matter: every missive is proof that the other still lives, that the other is still out there, that the other

still feels the same.

In his letters he tries to tell her where he will be, what is happening, what he expects, but it is always changing. He tells her how he feels for her. He asks a thousand questions, ten thousand, and so many of them terribly personal.

Only now: he gets answers. Personal, deeply felt answers. And each one spawns another dozen questions, and on and on and on.

He learns so much about her in her letters, where she is far more forthcoming than she ever was verbally. He hears about her days, about her position in the hospital, about the books that Adam is reading. She wants to know what he likes to read. She asks him about his family, his upbringing. Sometimes she writes out whole poems that she just read, wanting to know what he thinks of them, does he understand? She tells him about her husband, that he was decent and that she loved him, but that he was not always kind.

He reads in her letters of her brother's death. He can tell that she is writing right after learning the news; something in the shaking of her script, something in the way the words pour out of her, but there are no tear stains on the page.

And in every letter, he reads not his name at the top of the page. She addresses him, each time:

Beloved.

--

Years. It is years. Years before the depth of atrocity in Germany is fully understood and ended. Years before the war ends. Years of letters, some with months in between.

It comes in a telegram: the train, and the day and time it is to arrive in London.

She sends one back immediately, hoping it isn't too late. Tells him she will be there. But it is too late: he has already left. So he sits on the train. She goes to the station and sits on a bench, a sandwich wrapped in paper on her lap, a thermos of coffee. Adam is at home with the girl, only aware that mummy's friend is finally coming back to London, and one always goes to greet their dearest friends at the train. He is at the table in the apartment, now much more furnished and homey than it was a few years ago, and he is drawing a train.

It is a very good drawing of a train, but it looks nothing like the train that is pulling in, all smoke and noise, pulling to a stop, making Josephine's head jerk up.

People pour off. Soldiers and travelers, refugees and families.

It is not hard for her to find him: his uniform is like no one else's in the crowd, and people give him wide berth as they walk around him.

It is not hard for him to find her: he would find her anywhere.

--

The first thing he says to her is a joke about the sandwich and thermos, which are for him.

She does not weep, but laughs, and then finds herself weeping anyway,

finds herself pulled into his arms, held trembling-tight to his chest, his face buried in her neck.

--

He visits that very afternoon, still in his uniform, taking off his hat as Josephine leads him into her home. He meets Adam, dark-eyed and dark-haired, who very carefully explains his drawing of a train to his guest. He asks what seem like hundreds of questions, trying to fill in the gaps of what his mother has obviously told him about her dear friend, Nikolai. He is a bold young thing, awfully serious, but respectful.

When he goes to bed, Nikolai takes Josephine to a cafe just a few doors down, though she lets a neighbor know she'll be out for a bit to eat.

They cannot stop looking at each other. And for all their thousands of words on paper, they spend most of that first evening in silence, holding hands on the table, eating sandwiches of salt beef. But this time they have chips, too.

--

He takes her to where he's staying. They have to be quick, furtive, and she has to get back, but they cannot stop themselves. For the second time in five years, what feels like a hundred, she lays her head on his chest, closing her eyes to the sound of his heartbeat. His hand strokes over her back.

She asks him about the scar.

He is quiet for a while, but then he tells her.

It's a bit mad, but she whispers back to him, as if to explain how he could have survived: You had to come back to me.

And it isn't a joke. Not at all.

--

They take their time, but not very much of it, all told. Within a few weeks, Josephine agrees to marry him.

She quits the church, and they stand in front of a judge with Adam and another nurse, another soldier as witnesses. Nikolai joins her and her son in the little apartment.

In time, Viktoria is born, fair-haired and black-eyed, and it is her big brother Adam who first suggests that she should have her own room, too, and she could if they had a real house.

Josephine looks at Nikolai, who looks back at her, and they need no words. Words were all they had, for years, and now it seems like they need none at all.

--

This is how their life goes on: in years, thereafter. Years made up of moments like the one between white curtains in a hospital as shells fell outside, moments in a small dormitory room with candles flickering and Offenbach stirring the air, moments found in the careful unfolding of a letter, another letter, another. Moments of eyes meeting, of hands touching, of fighting to wake the dead, of making love in the dark corner room of their house together, moments of raising a son who takes after his mother and a daughter who takes after her father,

millions of these, years of these,

a whole future, together,

of moments.

Kazakov

In the morning, he doesn't wake when she does. If her alarm rings, and when her lamp comes on, he stirs a little, grumbling softly in his sleep without ever opening his eyes.

The dim light of that low-wattage bulb casts him into a relief of soft highlights, deep shadows. He is still in his near-man form, a monstrous thing that could never be mistaken for human under any sort of close scrutiny. Sleeping on his side, his shoulder rises like a mountain range; his brow is so deep his eyes are lost in shadow, and furrowed. There are fangs behind his lips.

The wounds on his body are nearly healed. Some are faint pink scratches. Some are altogether gone. Only a handful remain; will surely be gone by tomorrow, if not tonight.

When she returns from the washroom, teeth brushed and clothes changed, he wakes for a moment. Looks at her sleepily, flashing his canines when he yawns.

"Bird on table," he reminds her. "Eat it before it go bad. I will find more meat."

--

The room is empty when she returns at night.

There is no wolf asleep in her bed. There are no roast pigeons on the table. There is no note, no letter, no indication of when or whether he might return. It is entirely possible he has decided to forgo her whatever pain a farewell might bring; it is also possible he simply didn't think to say goodbye.

But as she's unpinning her cap, and then her hair, the air in the room suddenly presses on her eardrums. There is no sound when the Gauntlet gives way, only a sensation of pressure, movement, a sudden shift in existence. One moment there is empty air. The next, Kazakov tumbles out of thin air, landing with a brisk couple of trotted steps.

He smells of the city night: smoke, river, wind. He smells, also, of the other side -- an indefinable, crackling scent that brings to mind electricity. He looks flushed, a little out of breath, as though he had been on the move for some time, and quickly. He looks healthy, hale, whole.

"Josephine Parker," he greets her. Blowing out a breath, he takes a seat on the chest, unslinging a small pack from his shoulder, doubtlessly stolen. "I am late. My apologies."

He unpacks. A bunch of green bananas. Some apples, small and tough-skinned. Some oranges, just as small, just as tough-skinned. A sizeable hunk of salted meat that could doubtlessly keep for several months if need be. And last, bizarrely, a loaf of fresh bread, crusty and warm, shaped about as much like a French baguette as one is likely to find this side of the Channel.

Another morning, similar to the last: she rises and turns on her bedside lamp. She looks at him, how he does not wake. She thinks of how he startled her a bit, last night, drawing the blanket over her when she woke to him. She wonders if she said anything to him in her half-awake state, because she doesn't remember much else. She thinks the back of his hand touched her arm, through her pajama sleeve, as he... tucked her in?

She frowns, shaking her head a bit. Absurd.

But she rises, and she goes to wash, and she dresses, and she pins up her hair, and she goes to the kitchen to fetch eggs, make toast. He's awake, then, or at least stirs. She tips her head at him as he tells her to eat the bird, and says drily: "I hardly want pigeon for my breakfast. Eat it yourself."

And she eats her eggs, though there's still other leftovers from last night, too. Enough for him to eat the last bird, some eggs, some potatoes. Everything is cold, but beggars -- and nurses, it seems -- can't be choosers. And then she leaves, buttoning up her coat and taking her umbrella, as she always does, because one never knows.

--

Twelve hours pass. They are hard ones. They hide in hallways during a shelling, and one very young nurse has her head in her hands, nearly choking herself in her striving not to cry. Parker sits with her back to the wall, allowing a soldier barely old enough to enlist to hold her hand from his gurney, only barely stable and on a significant dose of morphine. His breathing is labored, and every time a blast hits nearby and the building shakes, he shudders.

He has stopped holding her hand back before the shelling is over. He died quietly, but he died afraid. They were trying to avoid that. But the Germans hardly asked the hospital staff about their plans.

--

The door opens, and she steps in, and pauses. She notices how empty it is. She notices how quiet. She still shuts the door behind her before she turns on the light. There's less tension in her tonight as she unbuttons; she is alone again, as she's used to. And there is less rush; tomorrow she has a day off. She has not had a day off in a very long time, and even though she knows she might still be called in if necessary, the thought of a bit more rest, of a day to do her shopping and perhaps write to her son again is enough anticipation to make her tremble.

But she doesn't. Her hands are steady as she unbuttons her coat, hangs it and her -- dry -- umbrella. She unpins her cap, and halfway through,

he comes back. She turns, looking at him past her shoulder, arms still upward, bent to her task. She watches him cross over, very still, even though he fills her room with a sudden burst of energy and activity. Her brows lift as she looks at him. As he greets her. As he -- and this is absurd enough to make her give the tiniest little hrm! of laughter at the back of her throat -- apologizes for being late. Parker shakes her head a bit and turns back to the mirror to finish. She does not intend to take her hair down at first, but then she changes her mind. She takes a bit longer, taking out all her pins and curls, combing her hair out again.

Her apron and sleeves come off, leaving her in the blue dress beneath it, the black stockings and flat black shoes. She turns to him finally, folding her hands, looking at what he's brought. Fruit, and quite a bit of it. Meat, and even more of that. Bread. She looks at it, then at him, still silent. This time, when her eyebrows lift, it's the questioning sort, not the amused sort.

Strange, but he feel caught; feels his ears growing hot, feels himself unwilling and yet compelled to confess. He had some strange idea of how things would go. He imagined they would eat, and probably not converse. He imagined he would tell her in those scant few moments between dinner and bedtime. Or perhaps tomorrow morning. Yet now, suddenly, pinned by her silent questioning, he grows still -- as though all the wildness and energy of a dash through the night could not survive in this airless little room.

"I leave tomorrow," he says quietly. "I ... must return. To Moscow, to our war. Food is for you. It will not last long, I know, but it is..."

Trails off for a moment. He's not even sure why he's explaining, but there seems no reason to stop now. He finishes, "It is thank-you."

"Oh."

Not when he says that he is returning to Moscow, or that the food is for her. When he finishes. When he explains why he brought all this.

She blinks, once, looking at the food again. She looks odd like this, her hair down and loose, her back still so straight, her body clad in that iconic uniform. She twists her hands slightly where she grasps them together, pressing her thumb idly into her other hand's palm, rubbing. It looks like a thoughtful gesture, more than an anxious one. But perhaps.

Then she returns her eyes to him and gives a small nod. "I'll be back soon. Then we can eat."

Briskly, almost, she goes about gathering her pajamas, her washing-up basket, her towel. Leaves without looking at him again.

--

When she comes back: she's in pajamas again. Well: a robe, a warm quilted thing with a shawl collar, blue and floral. And her slippers. Her hair is towel-dried as best she can, but still wet from washing. The very last of any scents from the hospital is finally gone from her, for the first time since he opened his eyes and saw her.

She locks the door, and doesn't turn on the overhead light.

Looks at him. Looks past him at the nightstand.

"Would you like to listen to some music? There's... a program I like. Classical music."

She is gone almost before he has time to react. He has nothing to say in reaction, anyway. Only nods.

--

And when she returns, she sees he has moved the chest to the table again. Using the knife from her dinner platter, he's carved some slices of salted meat for the two of them. It is accompanied by boiled potatoes from the kitchen, and perhaps some peas. Also, by the fresh-baked bread.

No wine.

Music, though. She suggests it. He looks at her in surprise, laughs a little.

"Do they ever play Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky?"

She gives a small shrug, to that. "We'll see."

Crosses the small room, brushing past him. She leans over the radio while he goes on slicing meat, turning the radio on, fiddling with the dial a bit to perfect the reception. The program is not playing Tchaikovsky, but currently a rather soft, stringed piece by Elgar. A small smile flickers over Parker's cheeks. She adjusts the volume dial a bit, then opens her drawer and takes out something buried under clothes, wrapped in some thick wool stockings. She takes it out, and lo:

a bottle of gin.

She looks at him, eyebrows perked, and says: "I'm not supposed to have this. Would you like to share some?"

One can blame it on the smallness and sparseness of the room, that he watches her wherever she goes. That would be a polite out, but it would not be true. He watches her for his own reasons only. And so when she smiles, he catches it. He wants to make some comment, but he knows himself; knows he'll say it in some half-mocking way because he has no other tools at his disposal, and then the smile would disappear like a ghost.

He keeps quiet. He looks at her, smiling in the lamplight, and tries to remember.

Then she digs through her drawers, and he looks away because somehow it seems an invasion to watch a woman riffle through her private things. When she turns back, she has something in her hands. He recognizes it for liquor at a glance. This time he can't help it. He breaks into a grin.

"Nurse Parker, I am very shock," he says. "But yes. I would love to."

Very shock, he says, and this is the first time she's laughed at his slightly broken -- though just shy of impeccable -- English. It doesn't seem derisive, though. She seems to take a bit of pleasure in the deviance of it all, the fact that he shouldn't be here, that they're going to feast on -- most likely -- stolen food, that they're going to drink forbidden gin.

"You still have to be quiet," she says, though there isn't much bite to the warning. She brings over a couple of teacups, her own, one of them chipped at the foot, and pours gin into both. Then she sits across from him, finally looking at him. Like a person she's about to eat with, and not someone she's considering smothering with a pillow.

"I will be very quiet," he promises. "No singing even if very drunk."

He has never seen the teacups before. He examines one while she pours into the other, then sets it down so she can fill his as well. While she sits, he breaks the bread open, handing her the crusty, soft-centered heel. For himself, he tears off another piece.

Sets it aside as she looks at him. Picks up his teacup instead, holding it out to tap against hers.

"Za zdorov'ye, Zhozefina."

She toasts him back. Gently, the teacups clink. "Cheers, Nikolai," she says, and sips her gin like it really is tea.

After all: she has a strange man in her bedroom.

--

Dinner isn't actually a party. They have to stay quiet, even with the music playing, because the building is full of young women, and the forbidding matron is the one in charge tonight. Even Parker doesn't want to risk her ire. So they eat and drink quietly, of salted meat and bread, potatoes and oranges. Neither of them really eat many mushy peas or boiled carrots. She refills their glasses. Occasionally they catch each other's eye, and Parker seems amused by some secret joke, as if she could read his mind, hear the comments he is trying tonight not to say, at least at first.

She doesn't ask him if he stole it all. She doesn't ask anything about the food at all. Normally she would care, if only for basic curiosity. But she doesn't ask. Oddly, she doesn't want to embarrass him, or shame him. Worse, she doesn't want to find out what he might have done to get it legally, to make it a pure gift, to... make it worthy, somehow.

That is a path of thought she doesn't want to tread too long on.

She grows tipsy easily, all told. He can see it in her eyes. But not drunk. Not stupid. She eats heartily, and she eats appreciatively. She peels oranges with her long fingers, her rounded nails, and the smell fills her room.

Between the two of them, they finish the bread, the potatoes. They finish the meat he carved initially, and then he carves more for her but refrains himself. Neither of them remark on this, though perhaps it is obvious: he is trying to save as much of it as he can for her. It is for her, anyway. A gift. A gratitude.

He eats carrots, too. The peas neither of them favor. He drinks rather prodigiously, though certainly not to the point of stupidity, of sloshing. His tolerance is high. He's a goddamn Russian werewolf, after all.

The main part of dinner finished, she peels the orange. He refills his teacup after a moment's consideration. While the smell of citrus fills the room, he reads the label, squinting at the unfamiliar words.

"I looked for vodka," he says, "but did not find." The glass bottle scrape lightly over wood as he sets it back on the table. "This is good."

It is idle conversation; meaningless. Perhaps she will shush him. He is, at least, murmuring. Strings, woodwind, voices from her little radio all but cover his words. He closes his eyes, tipping his head back, listening.

"This is Offenbach," he says. "That is problem with classical, you see. You can never get away from Germans. Though this one become French, courtesy of Napoleon."

He opens his eyes.

"You spoke French. Where are you from, Josephine?"

Josephine Parker

The strangest part is that she is enjoying herself. She notices that he carves more meat for her, and she does not comment on it. However, as she winds down, she nudges her plate towards him, still with much of that second helping on it, saying she's full, don't waste it.

She is leaning on the table in that warm-looking, surprisingly colorful and springlike robe, the iron in her spine relaxing with the gin. They drink and calm and he mentions vodka. She smirks slightly to herself, but she doesn't answer -- no surprise there. She's the quiet sort, from what he's seen of her the last few days. It isn't just that she doesn't wish to be caught talking to a man in her room.

Nikolai remarks on the music and she winces slightly. "Let's not speak of Germans," she says, her voice low and featureless, but not altogether flat. It's a flinch; there's a weariness behind it.

The subject changes, somewhat, after that. He asks about her past, not for the first time, earning him a faint smirk for his interest.

"England," she retorts, only half-coy. "Brighton, more to the point. I studied French as a child, and in school. My family used to summer in the country near Boulogne-sur-Mer."

There's a darkness there, too; the city was taken in May, its defenders evacuated in the face of overwhelming odds. She exhales softly, a sigh. There is no getting away from it. Any of it.

But she goes on. There's a determination to this, and a staving-off: maybe if she tells him enough, he will stop asking questions that, for her, inevitably lead not to idle or comfortable chit-chat but to pain, and loss, and the very unhappiness that he commented on last night. But her eyes are on her teacup as she speaks, on a painted red flower on the porcelain.

"I was disowned by my family," she says, which should answer quite a few follow-up questions. "They did not approve of my husband, nor of me after I married him. That did not change when Adam was born. They have no wish to see him." She gives the driest of laughs. "And I would not let them if they did."

She lifts her cup, drinks the gin, empties it. Sets it back down. Her eyes shine, but not with tears. There's a sort of ferocity there, a defiance that one can easily guess did not endear her to a family requiring obedience, submission, meekness. She looks at him.

"How did you come to speak English so well?"

Several of his follow-up questions die at a stroke. Disowned. That would explain the lack of other family -- in her mentions, in her personal effects, in the care of her small son. One or two new questions are born, though, but they are averted: she asks of him, tit for tat.

He leans back, resting his back against the wall. He has placed the seating such that they face each other, as though this were a true dinner, a nice one, rather than stolen foodstuffs and contraband liquor in a dormitory room. A curious expression on his face, equal parts pride and shame.

"After they murder Tsar, my family understand which way the wind blow. My grandfather throw in behind them, very loudly and eagerly. It was what we need, but also what they need. Old voices for their new way. In return we keep much of our money, our land, even our very nice home in St. Petersburg. Not our titles of course, but when new titles are made in new Red Russia, some of them come to us. General. Secretariat." A beat. "Captain.

"I grow up with very good education." Here, more pride than shame. "My English, not so good, though I thank you for your kindness. My German, Latin, Greek, excellent." He smirks, "Some French, too."

He reaches out, tears off a piece of the remnant salted meat, eats it. Wipes his fingers on his napkin.

"What is wrong with husband?"

She eats as she listens, pouring herself one last splash or two of gin. She watches him, listens to the list of titles. It unnerves her, every time she hears his accent, is reminded where he's from. It unsettles her, every time he asks her about her past, about her unhappiness. She doesn't know this man. She will never see him again. She doesn't know why he cares. She doesn't know why he had to fall out of the sky -- quite literally.

But here he is. And she sips her gin, and they talk about who they are as if it matters. As if they expect to meet again. Or survive this war.

Neither is likely.

--

He mentions his French. There's a banging on the door that makes her jump slightly in her seat, clutching her teacup. Ten minutes til lights out.

The footsteps pass. Giggles and talking from the hallway, but not much of it. He waits, perhaps, before he asks about her husband. And Parker frowns at him. "You ask so many questions, and most of them personal," she mutters, with at least the pretense of annoyance. She finishes her gin. Sets the teacup down, looking at it again. "He was of a different House. That's all it took, for them."

She shakes her head, exhaling at the stupidity of it.

Then she breathes in deeply, looking across at him. "I'm going to go wash up. It's late.

Tonight, no sudden startling, no flash of his eyes to the door.

Just a stillness. A silence, until the footsteps recede. Then back to their quiet conversation, almost whispered. One can get used to anything: bombs falling every night. Silence, lest one is discovered and punished in some terrible way. War, worldwide and utter.

He smirks, but it is a wry thing, and a touch sad. "I have only three nights with you," he says, which at once makes no sense and all the sense in the world: "Of course I am asking personal."

She is going to wash up. He nods, picks up his teacup, empties it.

"I see you soon."

He should expect by now a dry, unamused look in return. But there is something about how he says what he does: there is less mockery in his voice. There is almost none at all in his eyes. And so she just looks back at him. He can see her furtiveness, her distrust, her discomfort with being looked at so closely, asked so many questions. He can also see that her spine is not ram-rod straight as it was the first night, or even last night. He can see that there is something else there, almost like an ache, that isn't just for sorrows that came long before he did.

They do not speak. She does not respond. They just look at one another. And then he nods, and she rises, and he drinks, and she slips out of the room, going to brush her teeth. Comb her hair, which has dried not into the kinks and waves it takes on after being pinned up, but the natural flow of it, soft and clean down her shoulders. She looks at herself in the mirror, stroking her hair forward, tucking one side behind her ear. And then it is five minute til lights out, and she turns, walking quickly down the hall in her robe, her slippers, coming into her room.

She closes the door, but does not lock it this time: no one is going to come in, and he is going to likely go wash up as well, one last semi-warm shower before he is traveling again, running, trying to get back to Moscow. She never turned on the overhead light, that harsh bulb, so there is just her little lamp by the bed. She tidies up a bit from dinner, if he hasn't already, and then she turns her radio off. The room, once bathed in strings and piano and the occasional choir, goes silent again except for the soft rustling of her moving about.

Standing by her bed, she unties her robe, slipping it off her shoulders and draping it over the end of her bed. Underneath she's not wearing pajamas this time, but a long, slim nightgown, made of what looks like silvery-gray satin. It flows down her body in a bias cut, the straps and bust detailed with lace, the pale color contrasting sharply with her dark hair. She only looks at him once, standing straight and tall beside her bed.

She holds his gaze for a moment, before she turns out the lamp. He can hear the quilt drawn back, the sheets rustling against the nightgown she wears, her body weighing down the narrow mattress.

Can hear her murmur, in the dark: "Don't forget your toothbrush."

When she comes back, he is still sitting where he was -- there in the corner, back to the wall. One foot up on the chest now, knee drawn up. The table has been cleared; the used plate and utensils set aside, the trash in the bin. The salted meat wrapped in butcher paper, tied with twine, put in the corner of her desk where she can hide it away in the morning. Maybe with the gin.

And the gin: capped, put aside too. But his teacup has another half-shot in it. His index finger is threaded through the loop. It's a delicate piece of china, perhaps a remnant of some former life. It looks small and breakable in his hand, which is longfingered and lean, capable.

He looks at her when she comes in. No mocking comment about her pajamas tonight, either. She's not even wearing pajamas. She's wearing a robe, and beneath it, a nightgown. He can almost imagine how it would feel, how soft, how smooth; how warm where it lays against her skin. He's not even trying to pretend he isn't looking at her. He's not even trying to hide it, his eyes lingering on her shape, the curves.

He tips his head back and drains the last of her gin. Polite as he was about the meat, he certainly didn't spare her liquor. And then it is dark in her room, and he's burning up silently. Feels half-drunk, half-out of his mind.

"Thank you," he murmurs. The little cup clicks as he sets it back down.

Then it is dark, and it is quiet. The last footsteps outside; the last doors shutting, lights going out in other rooms. Tonight's shelling was earlier; there will likely be more later, hours before sunrise. But right now it is silent. Quiet enough that he can hear her breathing.

Quiet enough that she can hear his.

They both know the other is there, and they both know the other is awake. The air feels thick, heavy against one's skin.

He knows she's still awake when he gets up, trusting the silence finally enough to slip out and wash up as he has the last two nights. There's the towel for him, the toothbrush, a bar of soap. The tepid water, which is better than rain or an autumn stream or nothing at all. Water dripping on tile in the darkness. His feet, soundless in the hall when he comes back.

She knows he's come back by the click of her door opening, the shadows around that door moving, the door closing again. The lock falling into place. Her breathing is quickened; she can't help that. She can't help that he can hear it.

All the same her voice in the darkness is shockingly calm. Low, quiet, a murmur paired with the rustling of her body moving aside, the sheet and quilt folding back:

"Come to bed, Nikolai."

Maybe it was inevitable. A kin and a Garou. A woman and a man. Sharing the same room, the same space, the same quiet hours, night after night.

Maybe it is fate. Maybe the same forces that brought him out of the sky brought him to her; binds them together, if only for the space of a few nights.

Maybe they both saw this coming. As soon as his hand touched her skin. As soon as he saw her take her hair down. As soon as he opened his eyes and knew her for what she was.

Maybe she'll regret it in the morning. He knows this much, though: he would have regretted it forever if she hadn't.

--

Her voice is shockingly calm. Her breathing is quickened. His heart is pounding out of his chest. But there is a calm in his mind. A stillness through which thoughts drift like motes of dust. He locks the door before he steps away from it. It is so dark, but he knows exactly where she is. Can hear her, smell her, feel her with every thread of his being. He does not ask for confirmation. He does not ask stupid questions, or prying ones, or personal ones. He says nothing at all.

She can barely hear him crossing the room, but she can hear him breathing. Can hear the hush of fabric over skin as he takes off his stolen clothes. Soft sounds as they fall. Creak of the bed as his knee dips the edge. As his knuckles press into the mattress beside her shoulder.

He finds her hand with his. He lifts it, if she hasn't already; he presses her palm to his chest, the center of his sternum. How fast his pulse; how heavy the beat. His hand folding around hers, he leans into her in the darkness. His mouth meets hers with a ferocious, airless hunger. There isn't a shred of mockery in him now. No lies, no evasions, nothing disguising the intensity of what this is.

The dark makes every sense feel like touch. Her skin has an awareness of how close he is long before she feels the mattress dip with his weight. Her ears feel tight from waiting for him to speak, to answer, to ask her stupid questions like are you sure or why.

She does not want him to ask her why. She does not want to try and answer that, not even for herself. She does not think he will regret this. She is certain that she is not going to. Whatever sadness or darkness lives in her, almost none of it is the color of regret.

The bedcovers are folded back for him. He has slept in this bed before, and knows the smell of it, the smell of her from it, the surprising warmth that can be found here. It is nothing compared to entering the bed with her in it. There is no room for space between them, hardly any air to breathe between them.

She reaches for him as soon as she feels his fist beside her arm. Her hands seek out his sides, his waist; she smooths them around his back, pulling him closer, drawing him near until his body is flush against hers. She does not feel his heartbeat through her palm; she feels it from his chest to hers, weighing heavy against her as he kisses her like that/

Her mouth is opening to his like a nightflower, breathing him in like moonlight. There's no shyness in her, no tremble of her hands as they spread over his back, touch his sides, run down to feel the flex of his hips. She made a sound when her mouth opened, muffled by his kiss but there nonetheless; it sounded like nothing but pleasure.

The bed creaks softly, but not loud enough to alert anyone. She is terribly warm beneath her blankets and beneath his body, and the satin over her flesh is almost indistinguishable from that flesh, that warmth.

There's something shockingly shameless to her now: safe under the covers, she drags her fingernails lightly over his ass, pressing her hips against him as he hardens. Her breath is heavy, low, warm when she exhales across his jawline, his throat. Satin and skin envelop him, pull him downwards like a siren luring prey underwater. She's kissing his neck, whispering for him to touch her.

It's been so long since she's been touched.

Never would he have expected this. He did not foresee it, even when the iron in her spine melted with the gin; even when she let herself enjoy the music, the drink, the food that seemed like a feast after so long on rations. Thought she might be stiff and uncertain, cold or tremulous. Thought she might well push him out of bed halfway through, or hesitate, or change her mind.

The sheer sensuality of her, instead; the boldness, the sureness. It shocks him, yes, but somewhere along the rails and lines of his nerves that shock translates into something else. Gratitude, that there are no more barriers; not even those they put up themselves. Gratification. Arousal, so toweringly immense that he is deafened by it, benighted by it, left with little more than reaction and urge and the singular, all-consuming sensation of touch.

She hardly needs to whisper for him to touch her. He's already touch her, has been since she pulled him to her. His hands on her waist -- and he was wrong, he could not have imagined what that nightgown feels like on her; he did not imagine the warmth of her, or how he can hardly tell where satin ends and her skin begins. His fingers bunching that sleek, slippery material, pulling it up over her hips, over her belly. He disappears under the covers for a moment. The hem of the nightgown flutters past her breasts. His mouth is there instead, kissing her ribs; hot on her breasts, wet on her nipple.

He makes a sound against her body, halfway between need and relief, when he tastes her. He pushes that nightgown up as far as he can, and off. His hands covet every inch of her, grasping in her hair, at the back of her head; at her spine, too, bowing her body up into his. Somewhere along the way she pulls him back to her, or perhaps he simply finds his way there himself. Kisses her again, inhaling her, his hand on her face; those slender, lovely features he'd stared at three nights running, now.

His palm passes over her neck. Back of his hand, between her breasts -- pausing to feel her heart beat against his wrist. Then his knuckles down the midline of her abdomen; his fingers between her legs. Perhaps this is what she'd meant when she told him to touch her. Perhaps this is what he'd imagined,

scandalously,

that night when he took her by the wrist and danger -- and that lightning-shock of contact -- froze them to the spot. No matter. This is what it is now: his fingertips grazing those secret parts of her; the obscenities flashing white-hot in his mind. A clit; a cunt. Her cunt, which is the center of his universe in this moment. His fingers entering her; his thumb rubbing her clit as though to ease that entry. His mouth biting kisses from hers, parting just long enough to utter some profane prayer in a language she does not know.

He drags the satin up her body and it sighs over her skin, she sighs in his ear, she runs her hands over his body like she could translate to him how it feels. They leave him, that precious touch, because when he pushes it up high enough she lifts her arms, helps him get it completely off.

She's naked beneath; he could have imagined that, upon seeing her. Surely he felt it, when she pressed against him. She lies back as he starts licking her breasts, sucking at her nipple. He's so hungry. She adores this hunger of his.

"Shh," she whispers, though he really wasn't all that loud. She sounds amused to be shushing him. But she doesn't want to be interrupted; she's so distracted by the sensation of his body that she can't stop moving against him, moving into his greedy hands.

She lets him find his own way back to her mouth, but when he gets there, her hands take hold of his face. She keeps him there for a while, then, kissing him as he touches her. She wants him to feel the way her breath changes when he touches her. She wants him to feel the whimper that escapes her when he slips his hand between her thighs,

which open so easily for him.

"Yes," she whispers, her head falling back as he strokes her,

parts her lips,

eases his fingers into her.

She presses her lips together to stifle a moan. Her cunt feels as greedy as her hands were, holding tight to him. It hurts, a little, but not from all this time alone, not from his hand. It's a deeper ache, a hunger approaching starvation, a longing she's felt for so long she's learned to ignore it. It roars to life now, clamoring inside her. It makes her heart pound, makes the blood rush in her veins, makes her body tighten up with need.

She has to remind herself, silently, to breathe. And she does: slowly, purposefully, her eyes closed, willing herself to relax,

open,

trust.

Her eyes open again, as her body does. She looks up at him, and they are close enough that she can make out the sheen of his eyes if not their color. She whispers, even as her hips roll, as she urges him to go on touching her, exploring her, pleasuring her.

"It's been a very long time for me," she whispers to him, her breasts lifting on her next breath, pressing to his chest. "Will you be gentle?"

As before, she hardly has to ask him. It takes no more than that momentary tension -- that tightening in her, which is as much sudden-awoken hunger as anything -- for him to pause, to relent, to touch her in this achingly gentle way. To kiss her mouth

until it opens, until she opens, until her eyes open to find his.

He wants very much to turn the lights on. To see her, those black eyes and that near-black hair; that pale, fine body and its subtleties. It strikes him as a tragedy that he'll never know the color of her nipples. That he'll never know the look in her eyes when she comes.

He doesn't turn the light on. It's possible the electricity doesn't even run here at night. Regardless, he can see just enough to see her. An impression of her face. Her body moves, and he moves with her, touching, tasting, kissing her, kissing the angle of her jaw and the length of her neck.

"For you, of course," he whispers.

He's not alone in the wanting. She has liked looking at him: in the mornings, when he still sleeps. In brief seconds when she knows he's been watching her and she decides she will take her own turn. Strange: she didn't care to look at him at all in the hospital. She hoped he choked in his sleep. She had no idea what he really was: a liar. A spy. An opportunist.

A wolf.

A man with his own history behind him, and hopefully something like a future.

--

Her hands run into his short, pale hair. She sighs. It's strange, almost, to hear him so specifically say for you like that. She doesn't think he means that were she another woman, he wouldn't care at all if she were tender, if she asked for kindness. Perhaps that is exactly what he means, but she doesn't think he's that much of a cad: not the man who keeps turning away while she gathers her clothes, so she'll have some measure of privacy in her own bedroom.

It's the way he says it. The way it sounds like a promise he'll never get to keep, an assurance that if she asked it of him, he would.

Whatever it was.

Of course.

--

And her fingertips stroke down his neck as they kiss again: each other's faces, each other's brows, each other's warm lips. There's something soft there, in the breath between their bodies, somehow simultaneously distant from and closely bound to the way he's touching her, the way she's growing so wet for him that it slicks his fingers, coats them.

She wishes, as she touches his chest, that she could see his hand wet from her. She wishes, as she takes his cock in her hand, that she could see the lust flash in his eyes when she begins to stroke him.

So she sighs, as she touches his cock, reveling in the hardness of it: "I have candles. In the bottom drawer of the dresser. Matches in the nightstand." She's panting now, stroking him between her thighs, her whispered voice reflecting the heights to which her arousal is reaching. "If you want to."

Another link on the chain of mysteries they leave behind. She'll never know for sure what he meant when he said it like that, for you. But she has some guesses, and perhaps -- somehow -- after three nights together she knows him well enough. Knows that he means it as a promise, if only for the hours they have left. Knows that he means it as an assurance: whatever she asks. Of course.

Of course, he would never hurt her.

--

And it has been so long for him, too. She must be able to guess at that as well. It's written in every minutiae of his reaction. The quick shudder up his spine, the drop of his brow against hers, the soundless opening of his mouth. The quick sip of air in; then the low, ravaged sound he buries against her mouth. She strokes him and he touches her. She sighs.

She tells him: candles, matches. He kisses the soft panting breath from her lips. A flicker of humor, a laugh, quiet in the dark.

"You are full of surprise," he murmurs, and takes that stroking hand of hers by the wrist. Gently. "Wait."

The mattress shifts as he gets up. He doesn't go directly to the dresser, the nightstand. He kicks the pile of blankets that used to be a bed over to the door. Stuffs the crack beneath it so that light cannot escape. Then she hears the dresser drawer opening, his hands feeling through her belongings until he touches smooth wax. Her nightstand, next. A sudden scorch, a flickering light carving them both out of darkness. He has a candle to light but he is looking at her, there in her tousled bed. Of course he is looking at her.

Only when the match is burnt almost down to his fingers does he light the candle. Shakes the match out with a soft curse; lights the candles from one another. He doesn't know if she has candleholders and frankly does not care. Using a little melted wax, he fixes the candles to the tabletop.

The flames flicker and dance, then grow steady. By their warm light they can see each other at last. He is tall and well-made, as she must have known he would be; he is a child of Falcon, after all. Thinner than he would be in better times, perhaps, the shadow of his ribs showing through his sides. Possessed of a sinewy, sleek strength. And, despite his recent trauma, unscarred; very nearly unmarked.

He comes back to bed, and the light shifts; limns him from behind. He takes her blankets by their edge. This time, he doesn't draw them over her. He draws them down instead, and inch by inch she is revealed. Inch by inch he looks at her, kneeling onto the bed, crawling over her, braced over her with his eyes coming back to her face.

Perhaps mentioning the candle is just another way to stave off... well. Not sex. That she wants it, craves it to the point of need, is obvious every time his fingers slide into her. But if they don't stop, take a breath for a moment, some intuition tells her that neither of them will last very long at all. And as enjoyable as this is, she doesn't want it like this: their hands alone, searching in the dark.

She wants to see him when he comes. She wants him to come inside of her. Which is stupid beyond reason, idiotic, foolish, risky -- but it's a bit late for all that, now.

"The power does go out, you fool," she huffs back at him, only able to laugh in able to keep herself from groaning aloud. Of course she has candles. But a moment after she chides him she thinks he means: that she would want the light. That she'd want to see him.

She cannot tell what on earth he's doing in the dark, but later she'll see, by candlelight, how careful he's being. For her sake. But while he's gone, she lays her head back, closes her eyes, breathes the cool air and tries to calm herself a bit. The urge to touch herself is overwhelming; she clutches the edge of the quilt instead.

Her eyes open when she hears the match scratch against its striker. She looks at him in the sudden burst of warm light, pushing the dark away at the edges. He's staring at her body, naked, laid out on the bed, the quilt flipped back where it moved when he got out of bed. Her hands, tight on bedclothes.

Her nipples, a very dark pink, standing alert from arousal and the chill in the air, both.

The candles are thick pillars, meant to stand on plates. They aren't fancy at all. But with enough of them lit, he can make out more than a few inches of her at a time. She can see him, lean and golden, and she licks her lips as he walks back to her bed, pulls the covers all the way to the foot, which makes her smirk at him. He can see that, now. She lifts her chin, something haughty in the gesture, as he climbs over her again.

"What now, Captain?" she whispers, and the use of the title is not mocking but it is intentional: the fact that he told her not to use it. The slight hint of daring, of provoking, in the glint of her eyes.

That her hands were tight on the sheets did not escape him. Not for a moment did he think it a sign of fear. He knew, instinctively and incontrovertibly, exactly why she clutched the bedsheets like that. It arrowed right through him, that knowledge. Lit him up from within.

She can see that fire in him even now. It's the glitter in his eyes. It's the way he licks his lips. The lift of her chin is so regal, and he can't help himself: he kisses her, growling, shushing himself before she can. Keeps silent as they pull apart.

Enough light to see it reflect off her eyes, now. Still no color to her irises; nothing but black. She provokes him. He grins savagely. His hands mold over her skulls, fingers slip into her hair. He holds her face between his hands like something precious, or something very much his, as he kisses her again. As he sinks down on her, the curve of his spine elegant, the span of his body lean and taut.

"Now," he whispers,

when his body is pressed to hers, when her thighs have opened to him, when his hands have strayed from her face to find hers, to entwine with hers, to raise her arms over her head until her fingertips brush the headboard, and until the subtlest pressure fixes her wrists to the bed,

"now," he repeats, softer still, "I will be gentle."

Except she doesn't shush him this time. She kisses him back, groaning softly. Perhaps it's late enough, or the walls thick enough, to cover for them. Perhaps the way he stuffed the crack at the bottom of the door provides them some extra measure of protection.

Or she is too far gone to care. She's let go of the sheets now, is touching his sides, his hips, raking her nails over him again, but not quite -- not yet -- pulling him into her. She feels him against her, though, pressed hard to her body, hotter than she remembered another person could be.

She is opening her legs for him. Doesn't get quite so far as to wrap them around his waist, because he touches her hands. Her wrists. Takes them in hand and lifts them up. Her eyes fall closed a moment, flutter open again. He can see surprise flickering there, something like wonder,

and when he presses them down slightly, tightens his grip, he can see her eyes flare with arousal.

Her lip trembles. It's the first time he's seen her quiver at anything. She gives him the smallest of nods, exhaling: "Please."

It's the tremor in her lip that makes him kiss her again. She, who never shook even when bombs fell; even when a stranger and an enemy showed up in her bedroom. She quivers now: because he pins her down in that velvet-soft way. Because he promises her not pain but pleasure; not callous disregard but something like respect, something like worship, something like caring.

Who knows why it even matters, when they'll part and never meet again on the morrow. Who knows why any of this matters, except that it does.

And so he kisses her. That soft little please: it blurs into that kiss. And he is still kissing her when he shifts, when he takes both her hands in his one, when he lifts her leg around his waist and enters her. He was not lying. He is gentle, very slow. And rhythmic, those slow deep flexes of his body, his hips. His hand explores her. He touches her hip, strokes her side. Follows the sweep of her ribcage to her breast; cups her breast in his palm as he moves into her, deeper with every stroke.

He watches her now. Looks at her eyes, his brow ever so faintly furrowed.

Finally, she thinks, but not with impatience. Finally, the second time he thrusts into her, and she's fighting making noise so hard that she trembles again, her lips open, her mouth open, her breath held for a second so she won't cry out.

He has her pinned to the bed; she should be anxious. He's a Russian betraying the army he's pledged to serve, a pilot for the people who are bombing her country every night, a wolf who, like her dead husband, is probably not from a House her family would approve of. She doesn't know him. She doesn't remember his full name. She should be afraid of giving herself to him at all. She should be afraid of letting him hold her down while he fucks her.

All she feels is a wash of pleasure up her skin, not unlike the ripple of satin that ran up her body when he took off her nightgown. She wraps her leg around him where he holds her thigh, gasping as he thrusts into her again. She tips her head back. He can see her throat. He could rip it out.

But he doesn't. He moves slowly. He's gentle with her. He touches her as he moves, feels her pulse beat against his hand, watches her dark eyes absorbing the candlelight.

She can't stand the way he's looking at her. She knows what it means.

That's what she can't stand.

"Kiss me," she tells him. There's something urgent about it. "Kiss me again, Nikolai."

She can't blame him for looking at her.

No more than she can blame him for searing into cinders, when she came into the room and took off her robe. No more than she can blame him for wanting to touch her, imagining the sensation. No more than she can blame him for kissing her like that earlier, when he first came to her bed. No more than she can blame him for coming to her bed the way he did, without hesitation, without question.

She can't blame him, either, for the furrow in his brow. The way he looks at her. She can't blame him for the way he feels, no more than he can blame himself. It's not something he wants. It's not something he intends. There it is all the same: the way he looks at her, and the way he feels, when he holds her down so tenderly; fucks her so gently.

But also: so hungrily. He's starved for her, like a wolf for meat. When he kisses her again,

(and of course he kisses her again: didn't he tell her? for her, of course.)

it is a ferocious thing, coupled with a growl deep in his chest that doesn't quite hit the air. In that kiss is a fury and fire he keeps out of his body, his motion. It's there when he eats at her mouth. It's there, too, when he firms his grip on her wrists, pins her down, pushes up on an elbow over her. Room for their bodies to move. No room between their mouths, though; their tangling lips, their tongues. They kiss like this because she asks him to, but also because he knows he can't look at her like that. It would betray something, some unspoken covenant, some unwritten law.

They have no future together.

They both know that.

Neither of them will survive this for much longer. It's been so long, for both of them, and no matter how sarcastic he is, no matter how cold she seems, neither of them are made to be untouched, unassailable,

alone.

But this is something deeper than a flicker of attraction between two strangers, a may as well, both of them getting what they can when they can. That was the gin, the salt beef, the place to sleep while healing. This is something else, and it is happening whether they intend it or not, whether they want it or not.

So of course she begs him, without acknowledging it, to stop looking at her like that. Kiss her instead. She is not asking him, tacitly or otherwise, to pretend it isn't happening, or to lie and say it isn't there. But all the same: she can't bear it, and she knows that.

His hunger pleases her, the way he has to fight not to growl as he moves inside of her, as her body slides against him from underneath. He finds that hunger reflected in the way her legs wrap around him, terribly long and surprisingly flexible. He finds it in the way she arches into that kiss, arches up to follow him when he props himself up on that elbow.

All right, then: he can look at her body. She can look at his. That's what the candles were for; this is why she told him to light them. He's fair, but the light reflects off and turns him golden. She's fair, too, even moreso, and the light turns her incandescent. She seems to shine when his warm hand runs up to her breast, cups it, holds it for his mouth to devour a moment later.

She's pressed her lips together again, her head turned to the side, as though her own pinned-down arm could stifle the sounds she's fighting. He can see her pulse jumping in the twist of her throat, can see the sweat reflecting candlelight, and he knows

she can't take this much longer.

So he kisses that jumping pulse in her neck. His mouth, which was so hot and hungry at her breast, releases -- her breast bouncing softly into his waiting palm. He kisses her clavicle. He kisses her throat. He kisses that pulse-point, feeling it beat against his lips and then his teeth as he bites her there, delicately.

It's still so quiet in her room. It's so fucking quiet in the building, and they have to be as well: her lips pressed together, and pressed to her pale arm; his mouth against her neck, muffling whatever he might want to say or groan there. Their breathing, though, they can't help -- quickened, shuddering, panting. Slide of her thighs over his sides. Slide of their bodies; slide of her shoulderblades and her ass over the sheets, her back arching.

Both his hands have pushed their way up her arms now. He grips her by her wrists, his palms hot against the undersides of her forearms. It is a touch that speaks of dominance, but feels like adoration. Same could be said of the way he has her in his jaws. Same could be said of the way he fucks her, deep and rather hard now, or at least firmly: driving her against that thin, narrow mattress; fucking her down and holding her there, sometimes, for interminable grinding moments before he moves again.

Her breaths become short and ragged. There's a flush over her skin, as bright as the candleflame in some spots. She tastes like salt and like clean, like sweat, like the slow breeze on a warm night, but not the warmth of the night itself. She tastes like the sky turning indigo. And her can feel the tension in her arms, the way she would hold him if he weren't pinning her down, the way she wants to touch him, but

she doesn't ask him to let her go. She can't say anything right now, she's trying so hard not to cry out, but it doesn't quite work. She opens her mouth and moans against her arm, a tremulous and shaking sound that mirrors the trembling and shaking of her body, the quivering of her cunt around him. Everything about her is wet, is heat, is someone held together by her own tension falling to pieces instead.

As long as he lives, as far as he goes, he'll never forget the way she tastes.

Nor the way she looks in this moment; the way she feels, that trembling tension in her, that release. Nor the way she sounds, that single uncaught sound, pressed against her own arm. She would embrace him if he let her -- he knows this. He wants it. He wants, more, to see her coming just like this: her hands caught, her torso so deliciously elongated, her back arching up against his grasp while he fucks her through her orgasm.

Only when it passes, only when that tension scatters and melts does he let her go. His fingers open. His hands stroke up and down her forearms, and it's very nearly a comforting thing. He touches her all over, her wrists and her arms, her shoulders, her face. He kisses her with his hands on her face, and all this while he's never quite stopped. Merely slowed. Merely come down to this languid, tender rhythm, a counterpoint and an undertone to the broad slow strokes of his hands over her body.

Eventually those hands sweep under her. Eventually he wraps her in his arms. It's different, then, the way he fucks her: quickening, driven, his mouth open against the side of her neck, his breath hot on her skin.

Perhaps it means something, that while she's coming like that, he holds her down all the same. Perhaps he holds her in his teeth while she comes apart, does what little he can to keep her together,

or be a part of her collapse, somehow.

Perhaps it means something that for a few moments after, he's just stroking into her, slow and easy, letting go of her arms, stroking her wrists where they're red from his grip. She's trying to breathe. She is very aware of how they are still moving together, that she managed not to scream, that no one is coming down the hall to bang on her door.

It means something when she looks up at him, before and after he kisses her mouth. He knows that for sure: this means something.

He doesn't ask what.

She couldn't tell him if he did.

And it means something, too, when her arms fold around his neck. She embraces him and lifts her head to kiss him again, their mouths reddened and almost raw from each other by now. She wraps her arms around his torso after that, her hands splayed on his back, and this is as much acceptance or permission as anything else.

So he quickens again. Holds her much as she holds him. Bends to her, and buries himself in her, and is wrapped up in her legs and arms and body, urged on by soft murmurs in his ear that are no more complex or insistent than

yes yes yes

...which means nothing at all. Which means everything, right now.

His people have stories about this sort of thing. Forbidden affairs. Illicit romances. Young, arrogant men and young, beautiful widows. They never end well. He must know that. One would think he would save himself from such a fate. One would think he would spare her from such a fate. One would think she would spare herself, intelligent, cool-eyed woman that she is. One would think they'd know better.

But they don't. Or maybe they do, but it doesn't seem to matter. Gravity bends even light. What they have -- whatever magnetism this is, whatever bone-deep lust or ache or

whatever it may be called -- it must have bent their minds and their morals. Nothing else seems to matter beyond what is in this room. In this bed. Between their bodies. In their eyes. It means everything: her limbs wrapped all around him; the soft repetition of consent and assent in his ear. It means everything: his arms locking her body to his, and his closing eyes, and the ferocious, captivated way he fucks her.

Like he simply can't help it. Like he can help none of this, no more than he could stop the sky from turning, the sun from setting and rising again. No more than he can help

coming like he does. A sudden, consuming wave. He groans against her shoulder. His hands grasp at her back, and at the sheets. He bites her as he's bucking against her, thrusting erratically and involuntarily, shuddering through the last of it.

--

And stillness again, afterward.

And the silence all around them, permeated by their breathing, their heartbeats. Her room feels humid from the heat they've generated. Her blankets are pulled to the end of the bed where he'd left them. He was so desperate to see her. He's been desperate to touch her.

Still is.

After a long time, he rolls aside. There's no room for them to lie on their backs side by side, and anyway, he doesn't want to. He lies on his side, facing her. Now the candles are at her back. Firelight glimmers in his eyes.

And he touches her, softly and wanderingly, wonderingly. Backs of his fingers trailing from clavicle to breastbone. His knuckles brushing the underside of her breast; his palm opening to cup her. He is looking at his hand on her body. Then he looks into her eyes. It's there again, the faint tightening of his eyebrows, that look in his eyes.

There are, in fact, writers in the motherland who believe that young men should engage in these sort of illicit, doomed affairs, preferably with married women. This is their version of it builds character, rather than digging ditches or having an after-school job. It gives men a sense of tragedy, a loss to look back to.

Josephine Parker would call such a thing absurd and immoral. Josephine Parker who is, at this moment, turning gently on her side to face him, her leg still wrapped around his hip, his cock still pulsing slightly inside of her, but only just a little. Josephine Parker, wartime nurse, who is stroking his face as though he is someone even younger than he is, far more vulnerable, someone whose pain she can see but cannot ease.

It may come to him that she isn't a nurse solely because the jobs were available or the profession respectable. There is something caring in her, even if she is the sort of woman to refuse to talk about her son rather than a woman who weeps over the mention of him.

She leans toward him, their heads sharing a single pillow, and kisses his mouth softly. Perhaps she can tell he might say something soon. Perhaps she's trying to stave it off a little longer.

Or: he was touching her, looking at her, and she felt herself bending towards him, drawn like a magnet,

like gravity,

back towards this soft, warm closeness between them.

In the end, though, she doesn't let him speak first. She opens her eyes again as she parts from his lips, whispering to him: "If it is as you say, and your countrymen will not long be the allies of my enemy, then tell me you wish it, and I will wait for you."

It's not as though he'd been waiting for her to say such a thing. It's not as though he'd expected it -- any of this. Yet what she says clears that furrow from his brow for a moment. It makes him smile an aching little smile, his hand cupping her cheek to kiss her again.

"Of course I wish," he says, softly. It is an echo: For you, of course.

"When war ends," he whispers, "if we still live, I will find you." A small pause. "I have want to say that for long time now."

"When war ends," he whispers, "if we still live, I will find you." A small pause. Wry: "I have want to say that for long time now."

His fingertips touch her cheekbone, follow its arc to her ear. He watches this progression, as fascinated as ever by the way her skin feels, the way it reacts to that gentle pressure, the way the light refracts subtly across its surface. When his eyes return to hers, though, they are troubled again.

"Before that, I cannot promise. I will try. Maybe I will be assign to London. But if not... I have duty to my country, same as you."

This has made him happy. She can tell, from that smile, from the furrow, from the way he kisses her. She wants to roll her eyes, bat him away, but -- she doesn't. Doesn't call him absurd or silly or ridiculous. She doesn't mock him.

Not her. Not the woman who just offered to wait for a man she met three days ago.

Right now, it seems like the war will go on forever. She thinks that, when he says it. Her eyes fall closed for a moment; she so rarely lets him see any ache or pain in her features that somehow it seems like a gift.

Her eyes open again. She doesn't tell him not to mention again that they might not live; she's not a child. She knows how war works. She's already lost so much to it. She may lose everything, yet. She knows that even if he lives, god only knows what shape he'll be in.

Still.

Josephine shakes her head slightly, as if to dismiss the practicalities, the realities, that she is normally so beholden to. "Write to me when you can," she whispers, and leans forward, tucking her head under his chin. She holds herself to him, cradled, even though she knows she should get up, clean up, all that.

Right now, all she wants is for him to hold her.

Go on holding her.

He wraps his arm around her without hesitation. It seems days since they dined on stolen salt beef and contraband gin. It seems a lifetime since he opened his eyes to see her, clipboard in her lap, fingertips on his pulse.

She can hear that pulse now. Feel it where it beats against hers. He closes his eyes, but she doesn't know this: she cannot see him. As close as they are, they may as well be blind again.

"I will," he promises.

--

The truth is he could fuck her all night, if she let him. Again and again, the hours wearing away until he walked away from her in the foggy morning. The truth is he's happy to stay just as he is, their arms wrapped around each other, holding one another as though they've known each other longer than three days.

After a time he pulls the blankets back up, and he covers her. He is tender with her, wrapping his arms around her again after.

And a little later, he thinks to say this:

"These raids will not go on forever. There is already officers who say England cannot be broken this way. Important people high in chain of command. You need only endure a while longer. And stay alive until you are safe again."

There's a pause in between: in between his promise and everything else. She stays near to him, listening to his heartbeat, and they stay this way for a while.

But she moves, after a time. She slips away from him, cleaning herself up a bit. She blows out the candles. She wipes sweat from her brow and sighs. But she never goes far, and comes back soon, in the dark again, facing him as before. There is no room for anything else.

He draws the covers up. If he wants her again, he doesn't mention it. He doesn't touch her like that. She doesn't seem to want to: not right now, at least, even though right now is all she knows they have. Maybe that's what she'll regret tomorrow.

Her arm slides around his waist. Her body comes close to his. She sighs, resting her head on the pillow, prepared to sleep with him, be held by him, at least for the one night they have. She's breathing steadily, but not with the same rhythm as someone asleep, when he speaks again.

He gets to stay alive and she lifts her hand, touching her fingertips to his lips. She doesn't explain why. Perhaps she doesn't need to.

Whispers: "Just hold me. Please."

In that silence, they part briefly. He doesn't move. He lies there where she left him, his eyes tracking her. It is oddly intimate to watch her slip away, clean up. For a man who so politely turned away from her when she took off her coat, took down her hair, he has no shame now.

She comes back. He welcomes her against his body, her skin cool now, his still searingly warm. He covers them up and she blows out the candles. Some small magic dies with the flames; some bubble of surreality where they did not need to think about the war, where they were not at odds and in danger, where they were simply a man, a woman, two bodies made for love.

He speaks of the war again.

Her fingertips touch his lips. He falls quiet, closing his eyes.

She does not need to explain.

And he wraps his arm around her. He pulls her close, close. All they have is a single night; it is all he can truly count on. He wants her to stay alive. She wants him to write to her. He wants her to wait for him. She wants him to come back to her. They can make all the promises in the world, but neither of them can see the future. All they have is this.

"Sleep," he whispers. "I am here."

Kazakov

True to his word, Kazakov is silent as a shadow when he slips from the room. He takes with him the towel she provided. Compared to his initial entry here -- the mad flight through the Umbra, hounded by a dozen relentless weaverlings; the tumble through the Gauntlet, which felt roughly like running headlong through plate glass laced with razor wire; the limping scramble from one flimsy hiding-spot to another while residents of the dorm passed him by obliviously on their way to the bathroom, the cafeteria, the hospital -- this is very nearly a cakewalk.

He lets his senses unfurl. The shadows grow transparent. The slightest of sounds achieves clarity. There is no one awake; no one patrolling, no one moving to or fro. He alone moves through the halls, his footfalls silent. He passes the door of Parker's neighbor. Then the door after that. A bomber passes overhead, and somewhere a woman whimpers in her fitful sleep.

Then, the bathroom. He pauses for a long moment, listening. Assured of the silence within, he presses the door open gently, gently, slipping in. It smells of standard-issue soap in here. He follows the scent until he finds a bar, still wet from earlier use. He takes it into a shower stall.

Kazakov does not dare spend long in the shower. He washes quickly, using the same bar of soap from head to toe. Afterward, he scrubs out his clothes the best he can in the darkness, hoping he rids them of the worst of the stains. He cannot be sure. Even his senses are not sharp enough to see.

Shivering in a towel, he makes his way back to Parker's room. He was being crude when he told her he could find her by smell, but it was also truth: he did not need to memorize where her room was because he finds it again easily. There are no other women here who smell of purity, of silvered blood. None with her sharp, troubled refinement.

She does not wake when he lets himself back into the room. Nor when he closes the door. Nor when he locks it, wary of some nurse or matron barging in come morning. He does not know she has no friends who might enter without knocking -- though perhaps he suspects it.

His wet, washed clothes -- if hospital pajamas could be called such -- he hangs up to dry, one over the back of her chair and one off the footboard of her bed. Then he climbs back into his makeshift bed, unable to stifle a quiet groan as his sore muscles and bones meet that exquisitely uncomfortable surface.

Midthought, he catches himself being ungrateful, and thinks instead of the danger he has placed his unwitting hostess in; the terrible conflicts of interest he has forced her to endure, also. He stops complaining in his own mind, shifts the rolled-up blanket under his head to a slightly more comfortable position. He lets himself grow, changing shape into that larger, cruder approximation of man, in which his wounds will heal faster. And he closes his eyes.

Sleep comes far more easily than he might have expected, deep and dreamless.

--

Morning comes, heralded not by dawn through a window but by the jangle of a mechanical alarm clock in the pitch-blackness. Startled awake, Kazakov is bolt upright and tensed against some terrible attack when the alarm abruptly shuts off. The pieces of his reality snap back into place an instant later. He recalls where he is, why, how. He sinks back down.

A moment later, light. A stirring from the narrow bed, blankets drawn back and Nurse Parker rising, which he politely keeps his eyes closed to. In fact, he says nothing at all, stirs not at all, though it doesn't take a detective to know he is awake. It is there in his quietness and his stillness.

When she is pinning her cap over her hair, he does open his eyes. He is still in that monstrous near-man shape, and his eyes gleam more gold than green.

"See you tonight," he says quietly.

The dormitory is as quiet as it can be, given the circumstances. Many of the sleeping women have woken, if only fitfully, to the sound of a new round of shells. None scream or wail. Some of them heard horrifying screams today as dressings were pulled from savage burns on soldiers, and kept a steely expression through it. A few just wait for it to stop so they can go back to sleep.

Those that cry do so as quietly as they can. Nothing will by helped by their crying, and they've all been told that at least once since becoming nurses.

--

No one comes into the washroom while Kazakov showers. The water isn't what one would call hot, but nor is it icy cold. No one pokes their head out the door into the hallway as he walks back to Parker's room.

Finds it in the dark. Finds her sleeping still, jerking slightly as he locks the door but otherwise insensate. She does not snore or roll around or kick in her sleep. If he could not hear her breathing, smell her, all but feel her pulse in the very air, he might say she is as still as the grave.

He groans as he lowers himself; hears an answering sound from her, as though she's replying to some grunted conversation. A funny thing, that; hard to imagine her so relaxed in her waking hours, or even conversational.

She sleeps on.

--

The alarm in the morning is a back-up; Parker turns it off almost as soon as it has rung. She is already awake, though there is no window in her room to alert her of the sunrise. She still has her hand on the button when Kazakov sees her, his own waking far less calm than her own. She is staring at him, motionless, until he calms again. Waits for him to lie down and roll his back to her before she turns on the lamp.

Not the overhead light.

It keeps the room rather dim, but she manages. It's a small thing.

She does not dress in the room but takes her uniform and so on back to the washroom to wash her face and do her hair. When she comes back he is still curled up, not really asleep, or wakes again when she enters: he can smell food. Eggs and toast and tea, little else, but he can hear her eating quietly. One might wonder if she takes her breakfast like this every day, alone in her room, away from the mad chattering of the kitchen.

She probably does.

--

He, looking at the wall as he dozes in and out of sleep or tries to pretend he is not awake, does not know that she looks at him. The healed wound on his back, or his back in general. The blankets are not large enough for him in this form, but there are a few of them, so he doesn't get too cold.

She looks at him. She doesn't know why.

...She does, but she denies it.

--

Then she is pinning her cap to her hair, using the flat metal mirror nailed to the wall by her door, and she catches a glimpse of him turning in the hazy, mottled reflection. She turns, both arms still folded upward, one holding a pin, the other a curl of dark hair.

There is a napkin on the table, with a slice and a half of toast and a couple of boiled eggs. No tea. The dishes from last night and this morning are stacked for her to take down on her way out.

He says a form of goodbye. She pauses a moment, then nods.

"Try to keep the lamp off, if you can bear the dark," is all she can think of to say, and then she picks up her coat and umbrella and the tray of dishes. Then another pause, a hesitation before she decides: "You should use the bed, while I'm away. I did not intend for you to sleep on the floor."

She doesn't give him a chance to answer. She sees herself out, letting the door click shut behind her.

Kazakov laughs quietly. "I will not have it said -- "

whatever he will not have said is lost. The door clicks shut, and she joins the steady stream of white caps and dark capes flowing toward the hospital.

--

Left to his own devices, he sleeps a while longer. It is a rare luxury for him, accustomed as he is to rising with the dawn bugles. It is a strange and guilty thing to recognize, this luxury, when one is in essence a fugitive behind enemy lines.

Still, he sleeps. And somewhat later -- hours after dawn and perhaps an hour or two before noon -- he wakes again. It is very dark in the room, but the dormitories are quiet and he risks that enhancement of his senses again. He finds the food she left him, wolfing down the eggs and the toast. It hardly touches his hunger. It is still better than nothing. There is no tea, but perhaps he finds a pitcher of water in her room, and drinks thirstily.

His clothes are dry when he feels them. He puts them on, the fabric scratchy from air-drying. He looks at her bed, neatly made. He hesitates before sitting on its edge. Stretching out, his feet hanging off the end. If her room smelled of her, her bed does threefold. He wonders who her husband was, and closes his eyes.

--

Several more hours elapse. It is easy to lose track. When he wakes again the darkness has become oppressive, and his body burns with renewed energy. He feels for his wounds in the darkness, blindly assessing himself. He is getting better. He could probably leave in the morning. He still thinks he should stay another day. The morning after next, then, perhaps.

Lying in the darkness, he presses against the air around him. Leans into that sensation of oppression, of being contained, compressed. This time crossing over is slower, but less traumatic: a gradual slide across a tight membrane, emerging into the grey-lit Umbra with a gasp. The ground beneath his feet gives way immediately. He falls through glistening webs, hard as diamond, fragile as glass. When he hits the ground it drives the breath from his body, but leaves him scarcely worse for wear.

The moon hangs low, near-full. The cityscape is a dim hell of violence and smoke. London is so old, its history so bloody, but never before has the darkness loomed so grimly. He sees spiders in the distance, some of them already skittering over to repair the damage he has caused. Soon enough they will see him, but he doesn't intend to stay long enough. He moves: clambering through the shadows of the dormitories until he presses through the outer walls. Then he's in the alleys; follows them away from the hospital, into the crowded tenements of the working poor.

Squeezes out of the Umbra there, back into the cold and smoky world. It is filthy: ashes and muck, the stink of coal-smoke and refuse. Keenly aware of how much his clothes, his accent, everything about himself would mark him an intruder, he keeps to what shadows he can find. Makes a blur of his shape, staying on the move, hiding from passing voices and footsteps. He finds an unattending clothesline and steals trousers, shirt, a cap. He lifts a pair of shoes -- relatively clean and free of stench -- from someone's stoop. Hiding in a narrow alleyway, he changes, leaving his hospital clothes bunched up and stuffed into a garbage bin.

His back is starting to ache from exertion, his unhealed wounds beginning to burn. He keeps the cap pulled low, walks with his head down and his pace quick, just like every other citizen of this embattled city. At the corner he finds a vendor hawking roast pigeons; he suspects the birds are caught off the eaves and awnings, each one sold for a premium. He has no money, and his pride would otherwise be above stealing food -- but it can't be helped. His metabolism is on overdrive, burning through whatever scraps he can get. He bumps a passerby into the cart, causes a commotion, grabs four of the scrawny birds and walks away without a glance back.

--

The pigeons are cold by the time he makes it back to the dormitories. He enters the way he came out: precariously, climbing thin silvery strands of weaver-webs, avoiding the multitude of spiders now frenetically and methodically repairing the earlier damage. When he thinks he's about in the right place he crosses, squeezing out of the moonlit Umbra, back into darkness.

--

It is dark outside, too, when Nurse Parker returns to her room. The overhead light turns on when she flips the switch, though. Her uninvited guest has, indeed, availed himself of her bed in her absence. Waking to the light, he sits up, dressed in stolen clothes that are too tight in this form.

Which he shifts, seeing her. The strange courtesy of Garou, perhaps. He gets up from her bed, too, ceding the spot back to her to sit on the floor instead.

On the table, wrapped in a napkin, are the four roast birds.

Nine o'clock, and Nurse Parker unlocks and opens her door, stepping inside and turning on the light with her elbow. She is still in her coat. It isn't raining again (yet) and there's only been one pass of shelling. Her umbrella hangs hooked on her forearm. She is carrying a tray of dinner up from the kitchen, her first stop upon returning to the dormitory.

Her room smells like roasted pigeon. She blinks at the werewolf on her bed, dressed differently than before. She looks at the birds on the table. She looks back at him, raising her eyebrows.

Kazakov's eyes track hers to the table, back.

"I visit your city today," he says, wry. "Very lovely. Do not worry. I was not seen." He gives the stolen shirt a light tug, "I will leave London by foot and I cannot walk through city in hospital clothes. As for birds, you say you have no more meat this week."

Again, as the night before, he gestures to the food. "Please. We will eat together, yes?"

"It is not my concern if you are seen," she says, with the slightest emphasis on my. She crosses over to the table, setting down the tray. There is no meat this time, but more boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, another pair of boiled eggs, some toasted bread. It really isn't much. Rationing is in full force, and she only has so much time to put together something to eat before she needs to be abed.

He goes on to tell her about leaving London. She glances at him when he says this, then away, putting her umbrella in the stand. Her pale hands lift to unbutton her coat finally. He mentions why he brought the birds. She looks at him again, her gaze... still. As still as her body is when she sleeps. As still as the darkness is when she isn't in it.

Parker -- Josephine Parker -- hangs her coat up. She glances at the clock on the nightstand, then back to him. "I'd like to prepare for bed before the washroom gets crowded," she says softly. "I will go quickly. You should not wait to eat. I know you are healing."

She doesn't wait for him to respond. She's already gathering things from her dresser, her little basket, bustling around much as she likely does in the hospital. "I will eat with you when I get back, all right?"

"True," he admits, smirking. "I would not give you up. Nurse Parker harboring fugitive is safe secret."

She unbuttons her coat. There he goes again, following her hands with his gaze. That bright sly gleam when he's making a joke -- almost always at least a little at her expense -- mutes; his eyes hood, and his smirk fades. When she turns away to hang the coat up he is still looking at her. When she turns back he pulls his eyes back to her face.

"I will wait," he says, decisively. "I do not starve in fifteen minutes."

A flat stare is his reward for his joke about her criminal activity.

No, not criminal; treasonous. But they both, in their own way, answer to an older -- and far more primordial -- allegiance.

Parker may notice the way his eyes follow her hands, but she doesn't acknowledge it. She is hanging up her coat, and turning again, and perhaps she notices that he has to pull his eyes up. Again: if she sees, she says nothing of it.

He says he will not starve in fifteen minutes, and -- perversely -- she smirks.

And then:

She is unpinning her cap, removing her apron and her sleeves. She doesn't fold these items this time; they are to be laundered, and she has a clean uniform for tomorrow. She puts them in a basket under her bed, a makeshift hamper.

Going back to her little metal mirror, she unpins her hair, and perhaps he watches this, too. Watches it come down in dark, dark curls and waves, listens to pins clatter together in her pocket as she lets it down, runs her fingers through, shakes it out a bit.

Parker takes her time doing all this. She does not spare him a glance as she gathers her things for the shower, towel and pajamas and all, but does -- briefly -- look his way as she leaves her bedroom. Closes the door behind her. Walks down the hall.

--

The bathroom is less filled with steam, but it is not empty. She undresses, and showers, but does not wash her hair. She combs it out while she stands before the mirrors and sinks, but does not braid it. She brushes her teeth. She packs up her laundry and her shower items and puts on her slippers.

This time when she comes back in, she is wearing a different set of pajamas: these are blue-striped cotton, instead of pink. Her hair is loose, down her back and over her shoulders, falling in loose waves from how it was pinned up before.

Parker locks the door behind her, and if he has not already, instructs him: "Pull the trunk over to the table, if you will," before she sits down in her little chair.

She only has the one, after all.

Pins come out of her hair. So many pins, each one muted and dark, easily hidden away. And then her hair comes down, more of it than one could imagine tucked up beneath that little white cap. Across the room, which is not very far at all, Kazakov sits with his back to the bed, his wrists on bent knees.

And he watches. Which isn't to say he stares, because he is not uncultured and uneducated. Which isn't to say he sneaks peeks here and there, either, because he is not shy, and he is not unbold. He watches with his eyes following this strand of hair, that lock. He looks away to his hands, the idle entwining and unentwining of his fingers. When she shakes it all out, finished,

he inhales. It is almost instinctual.

Their eyes meet as she leaves the bedroom. The door closes. He hears her walking away; hears the other occupants of the dormitories going to and fro while he waits.

--

When the door cracks open his eyes are on her again, drawn as quick and sure as any carnivore's. Something must amuse him, because his smile is lopsided and irrepressible. Wisely, tonight, he doesn't comment on the color of the pajamas.

Then, thus bidden, he gets up from the floor. Mindful of noise, he picks the trunk up, grunting, and moves it to the table. He sets his makeshift seat across from hers, as though they were dining in truth. Taking his seat, he unwraps the birds from their napkin and shifts them a little close to her in unspoken invitation.

"What is it you do, Josephine Parker," he says her full name like one accustomed to the rhythms of Russian patronymics, to whom a single name seems somehow bare, "before the war made nurse of you?"

Josephine Parker has napkins. They are sewn from some floral calico, the edges stitched down to hems. She gives him one, and folds hers over her lap. She is hungry: little dinner last night, little breakfast today, whatever she was able to pause to eat during her shift. She takes one of the birds without any preamble and begins to pull it apart with a ruthless sort of efficiency.

"I was a nurse before the war," she answers him, perhaps offended -- her tone is always so stark -- that he assumes she's new to this. "They rush the girls through training now. I studied and practiced for much longer than they do of late."

"Ah." He, too, helps himself to one of the roast pigeons. Squabs, if you want to be fancy about it, but he neither knows the word nor would use it to describe something swiped on a streetcorner. "A veteran."

There can be very little politesse when they are strapped for utensils, for food, for space. He uses his hands, tearing a wing off, sucking meat off the thin bones. Pairs that with a bite of boiled potato, which he eats like an apple.

"And after war? You will be nurse, still?"

She uses a fork, has a knife, but she couldn't bring up more without being suspicious. She passes him the knife, as if perhaps he can eat with it in lieu of a fork. She does this without comment or indication; just slides it across the table.

They both keep their voices down. He is not supposed to be here. She is, while housing and feeding and hiding him, betraying her country. She knows.

"I am a widow, Mist-- Nikolai. And not a wealthy one. So yes, after the war, I will still be a nurse."

"No need to defend," he says evenly, with a hint of smile. "It is only question."

Given a knife, he does at least use it to pare meat from bone, carving the bird quickly and expertly. Then he passes it back and resumes eating with his fingers.

"You are from London? Born here?"

Her lips press together. She does not answer his little smile, his accusation of her defensiveness. She does not use the knife. She eats with her hands without concern, at least as far as the bird is concerned.

He asks another question. She looks at him. Chews. Swallows. Daubs her mouth with a napkin, and says:

"I am eating. And someone might hear you. We don't need to make conversation."

Puts her napkin down again. Picks up her fork. Stabs a potato.

A flicker of frustration, which to his credit he hides quickly, and well.

"I am interested. Who you are, where you come from. But if you wish, we eat in silence."

"I know," she says, quickly, quietly. "But I do not want to find out what happens if someone finds you here. If one of the other girls recognizes you from the hospital."

Her eyes close a moment. There is a flicker, then, a heartbeat of understanding in the air between them: how much of her treatment of him is personal. How much more of it is fear.

Her eyes open again. She resumes eating.

In silence.

--

She eats a whole pigeon by herself. Half the potatoes. Most of the carrots. She saves the eggs for additional breakfast, since she wasn't expecting meat tonight. She saves her bread for tomorrow, too. There's no wine with dinner, not even tea after. She lives such a sparse life. There is nothing fine here: no jewelry he's seen, no silk or satin garments. One of the only personal items out in view is the quilt, which perhaps she or her mother or grandmother made. He has not even seen a photograph of her son, her husband, her brother.

She is a sparse person, too; not conversing over dinner does not seem to bother her. No one comes to her door to see if she's heard the latest gossip, or to invite her to a quick game of gin rummy before lights out. She seems empty and angry to most who pass by her.

Up close, seeing her across the table, she seems sad... and tired. Tired in the way someone stretched very thin is, someone who might find it hard to discover small pleasures or moments of happiness even on a normal day,

and impossible, when halfway through dinner the city is being bombed.

--

Leftover food is set aside for the morning. The tray is packed to take down when she goes to the kitchen for breakfast. She should brush her teeth again. She thinks about it. She remembers, suddenly, and gets up from the table without explanation.

Goes to her coat, digging in a pocket. Produces something wrapped in cellophane, and brings it over to him.

A toothbrush. Nylon bristles. She exhales, the cellophane crackling as she holds it toward him.

She can hardly blame him for his curiosity. It's not just the scarcity of kinfolk in his world, nor the scarcity of women overall; it's not even just the sparse grace of her movements, the cold loveliness of her face. That thick dark hair. It is all of these things, to be sure, but it is more as well -- the yawning spaces in her story, the unhappiness which seems bone-deep in her. The puzzles he can't even begin to work out. Not when he has only the simplest of English words. Not when he can't even speak, because then she might be discovered.

Yet she is, it seems, capable of small kindnesses. She holds out a toothbrush, swiped perhaps from some hospital floor. He looks at it and finds himself genuinely touched. Which is absurd, when once his family owned tracts of land, chests of jewels and fur. When even now, even in the depths of war, they are doing well for themselves; some in the Army, some in the Party, some in those very industries that feed the war. This -- a two-pence toothbrush -- could hardly even be called a gift. Hardly requires the sort of reaction he feels.

He takes it, though. He hides his emotion with a smirk: "Is this comment on my breath?"

He takes it. And smirks at her. And makes a joke.

She sighs. And as she turns away, says something vicious-sounding under her breath.

In French.

There is, just then, a knock at the door. Ten minutes, ladies, ten minutes.

Parker decides to brush her teeth again after all. She plucks her brush and her toothpaste from her little basket, her feet still in slippers, and walks out.

"Wait," he catches her as she turns away, his hand, her wrist. "I -- "

the knock on the door. Kazakov falls silent immediately, his eyes going to the door. He has no idea if the matrons have master keys. He suspects they do. He doesn't move; it is possible neither of them do. Like statues they exist, barely breathing, until the matron outside moves on.

He lets her go. Takes a slow, long breath.

Whispering, "I did not mean that. You thought of me, and I am grateful."

Her skin is cool. Not hot to the touch, like this. Not icy, like a dead thing's. But cool the way a slender woman would be in autumn, in a room with precious little heat of its own. And her hand doesn't clench into a fist when he touches her, nor does she go limp. Her fingers flicker; they almost dance. There's a shiver up her forearm. She looks at him, while one of the trio who keeps this house -- the impatient one, she can tell by the sharpness of the voice -- knocks, calls out, warns.

They do not move. They scarcely breathe.

Until footsteps go on. And his hand lets go and her arm falls to her side and her palm itches, the inside of her wrist tingles, she wants to rub her hand and her arm but she doesn't do anything at all but stand there, staring at him as he speaks.

She doesn't move for a moment.

It turns out they are both terrible, terrible people, incapable of true warmth, moments of kindness. She cannot meet him there, or perhaps

she just meets him there very strangely:

leans forward, her voice a whisper, and says -- perhaps snappishly, perhaps mockingly, perhaps neither really:

"Your breath does stink."

And then she goes, hurrying to go clean her mouth after dinner, before bed.

--

Comes back just in time, as last night. Shuts the door, looks at him to make sure he's ready, then clicks off the light and the lamp. Locks the door again. She knows where he is in the darkness only because she looked.

"Sleep in the bed," she whispers, and he finds that she's only a few feet away. Not quite close enough to feel her breath. Always close enough to smell her. "You do not know when you will again."

Possibly, he'll never know where that came from. Whether it represents kindness or cruelty; whether some shred of humor still exists in her taut, narrow little life. But it surprises him into a laugh, nonetheless -- a silent blurt of air, a quick flicker of his mouth.

She leaves the room. He stands where he is a moment, his thumb rubbing along his forefinger, his hand closing and opening again.

Then he kneels by the bedroll and packs the pillow-blanket a little tighter. Smooths the bed-blanket so that it's not so lumpy.

--

When she comes back, her trunk has moved back to its usual place at the foot of her bed. Kazakov is sitting in his bed. He has no pajamas to change into now that he's disposed of the hospital rags, but if he intends to strip out of his borrowed clothes he at least has the good manners to wait until it's dark in the room. Besides, he still intends to wash. And brush his teeth, it seems: the toothbrush is in his hand.

The overhead lamp goes off first. Then the one on the nightstand. He listens for footsteps, creak of bedsprings. Her voice comes instead. He lifts his eyes to where he knows her to be. There's just a hint of light in here, the stray photons that leak in under the door. He can, after a few beats of silence, begin to make out her shape in the darkness.

For an instant, he thinks she means something else entirely. He feels foolish when he understands. Then a newly dawning understanding, which makes him wince in the dark again, unseen.

Whispering in turn: "You are asking me to leave tomorrow?"

"No," she responds, a rush of air. "I just meant --"

A breath. A sigh. "I know it will be treacherous for you."

With so little light to work by, they have only sound. He can hear every door that shuts, every footstep that falls.

Every breath she takes, too.

Every blink of his eyes.

He should say something. Give some indication of how long he intends to stay. Give some notice of his plan to leave the day after tomorrow. It seems strange: he's allowed himself only one day extra, and yet the thought of departing in the morning was a sudden raw wound.

He should give some sign, too, that he knows what she risks with him here. What sacrifices small and large, tangible and emotional, she may be making.

"I prefer floor," he whispers at last. "You should sleep in bed."

Another sigh, short and annoyed, but not terribly. "Have it your way," she finally says, and he hears her turn -- can almost feel the air move around her. Hears the rustle of the quilt as she pulls it back, hears the soft creak of the mattress as she beds down.

She doesn't remind him to wait a bit before he goes to the washroom. She knows she doesn't need to.

Some stirring and rustling on his part, too. He crawls under the blankets. He stretches out with a sigh.

Outside, it grows quiet. The lights click off. They are in darkness again, utter and complete. After a time, he whispers, "If you want, I can look for your boy, on my way. Bring him something from you."

He knows she is awake, as he knew last night. How could he not be as aware of her in the darkness as if they were touching? She is of his blood. His tribe.

The way he hears her swallow seems so close, as if she were right beside him, even facing him, and not the wall as she truly is.

"It is a kind offer," she says softly, "but the people in the country would spot you faster, and fear you more, than Londoners."

A quiet moment.

"They write to me, and tell me of him. I write to him, and they read my letters to him. They don't have a telephone."

He can almost hear her eyes closing. Lashes touching.

"Please don't offer again," she says, finally, and very quietly.

"As you wish," he whispers.

Perhaps it sounds final. Perhaps it sounds insulted. Perhaps he is insulted, and final; but perhaps not. It is only the darkness. Hard to read tone into three whispered words.

A long time goes by, and if they were anything close to friends they might have wished each good night and turned to sleep. But he is not asleep yet -- waiting to wash, yes, but also simply waiting. His mind turning. His heart beating, his breath drawn from shared air.

"I wish you are..." here he hesitates. Words are as hard to come by as light, and it takes him some time. "I wish you are less unhappy one day," is the best he can do, in the end.

Her breathing is getting steadier. Last night, she didn't fall asleep til he'd left the room. He can hear it softening, becoming rhythmic, and then shifting -- a hitch -- when he speaks again. She was not quite asleep, but close.

She listens.

But she pretends to sleep. And then, not very long after, she is not pretending anymore.

He hears her breathing catch. How could he not, when it's so dark, when they're mere feet apart, when the purity in her blood makes her burn like a candle, like a flame, like the heart of a star? He knows she hears him. He knows, just as certainly, she does not want to answer this, either.

Her silence turns into sleep. And then he is alone with his thoughts and his consciousness, lying on the floor while his heart beats in his chest. While his blood beats in his veins.

--

Tonight, as with last night, Kazakov rises from his bed when he is certain everyone sleeps. Tonight, as with last night, his movements are silent as he finds towel, toothbrush, door. The corridors almost feel familiar. He finds the bathroom silent and abandoned; lets himself in and, just as before, sneaks a shower in the far stall.

Tonight, unlike last night, he has a toothbrush. And he uses it, scrubbing at his teeth and spitting down the drain between his feet. When he's finished he dries himself on the borrowed towel, pads back to the room. Toothbrush clutched in hand, still: a precious and useful gift.

Opens the door. Closes the door. Locks the door.

After a moment's hesitation, he leaves his stolen clothes in a small pile by his bed. He shifts into that hulking, crude form he was too polite to maintain over dinner, and then he climbs under the blankets; turns this way and that until he achieves something approaching comfort, and sleeps.

When he comes back into her room, he hears her wake to the door opening. In the darkness he can dimly see her, shadow among shadows, turning slightly.

"Is it you?" she whispers,

and perhaps he whispers back, confirming that it's him. Hears her breathe in and sigh, turning over again, exhaling slowly as she drowses again. She can hear him shift. She can hear him breathing. Thoughts try to take her: husband. Son. The Russian pilot himself, sleeping on her floor because he refuses to take her bed.

But she dips beneath those thoughts. She is so tired.

"Goodnight," she whispers, finally, when things are still again. She doesn't know why she bothers.

She doesn't ask.

She sleeps.

Who knows why she asks. Who knows who else she could possibly expect. A ghost, back from the grave. A brother, back from the front.

An interloper, an intruder, a wolf who shares her blood and her tribe. Back from the washroom. Back in her room, where he has somehow grown familiar enough that she can sleep. He has closed the door when she whispers from her bed. Halfway across the small room, he pauses where he is; a different sort of stillness from the heartpounding silence that followed that matron's knock on the door.

Stillness nonetheless, caught and pinned to the moment. He sees her as a shadow amongst shadows. She sees him, if at all, as the barest impression of movement in the night. He takes a step closer, then another.

Lifts the edge of her blanket. Pulls it up over her shoulder. Covers her, gently, his hand never brushing her body.

"It is only me," he whispers, and retreats to his bed. The building is poured out of concrete, and the floor does not creak as he lies down. The blankets rustle a bit. He sighs.

"Goodnight," he answers.

He sleeps.