Ivan Press

mrs. Hilary

It took time for Hilary to get to the point of even letting Ivan carry her through the water, and even then only at night, when everyone else was in bed and the pool outside the villa was lit from within, rippling in the cool evening breeze. She said it made her feel foolish, hanging onto him like that, but after a while she came to enjoy it: the drag of her body through the water, the shifting of his muscles as he swam.

During the day, she sometimes took to getting in the pool while Anton was swimming with Miron, splashing around in water wings, half-playing, half-practicing: the way children do everything. She would watch him, almost studiously, and -- if Anton made his way over to her -- she would mimic him, blowing bubbles under the water and so on. It delights Anton when she plays with him like this, and as most of them know by now: Anton's delight is one of the few things that seems to lift Hilary out of her own darkness, her terror, her fury.

So they leave them be.

--

They stay at the villa for a few weeks, in the end. Long enough for Hilary to have ventured once or twice into waters deeper than she can stand, treading water and staring into Ivan's eyes as he tells her not to panic, not to be afraid, he's right there, she's doing wonderfully. It is not long enough for her to go that deep alone yet, or to be unafraid when she does. But she is learning, and she trusts him when he promises that they have all the time in the world. He won't force her. He won't rush her. She's safe.

They lounge by the pool. They go sailing quite a few times. Ivan gets a wild idea to go for a nice long walk outdoors, and this time Hilary doesn't hate him for taking her along. She's athletic, though she pretends not to be, and keeps up quite well as they hike through the hills. He can tell she likes it here not only because she mentioned that it is similar to their home, but because she is calm most of the time. She even cooks. Several times.

He once comes back to the villa once from one of his own little adventures, on his own, to find Anton standing on a chair next to the counter. She is making some kind of bread, and she has given him a fistful of it to knead and roll out and play with. He is watching her so intently, copying her every move. Hilary does not notice how carefully he watches, how intensely he studies her. Nor does she talk aloud about what she's doing to the boy, as he's seen Miron and Polina and Elodie do almost constantly. They work the dough in almost total silence. Anton even pretends to cut lines across his own tiny baguette.

--

It is later that night. They have been in Calvi long enough for it to become boring -- at least to one of their party, and one of the three that matters most. Hilary had made a luxurious, decadent version of tapas, at least for Ivan, herself, and the few bites that Anton had without fussing, his palate not yet refined enough to enjoy caviar.

But Anton is in bed now, and Hilary is drinking wine out by the pool with Ivan. She has on her suit, but not one of the strapless ones she always wore before, when they were only meant for lounging. This one is, like her others, a one-piece, and it is very plain and very black. At least when it comes to swimwear she actually means to swim in, she's shown little to no interest in fashion. Her cover-up, on the other hand, is a long open robe of richly flowered silk, draped over her shoulders and her thighs as she lounges, sipping away.

She hasn't been talking, but out of nowhere, she almost casually asks him:

"Do you think we should be married?"

Ivan has a fantasy.

It might be almost unthinkable that he still has fantasies, what with the sort of life he lives with Hilary; the shenanigans they get up to when they lock themselves in their rooms, or in the attic of that little house in Novgorod, or in some five-star suite in the penthouse of some ocean-viewing hotel. But he does. He has one fantasy in particular, sometimes, when he comes home after one of his solo adventures out in this city or that.

He fantasizes that he's someone quite boring. That he is not a werewolf, and certainly not a prince of anything; that he does not own several houses and multiple supercars, that he does not jet around the world on a regular basis. He imagines he is some sort of salaryman, someone who works eight to five and collects an average salary, who drives an average car, who lives in an average house. He imagines they have no servants and that Hilary has some sort of boring job as well, or perhaps no job at all; perhaps she stays at home with the baby and is a boring sort of creature who bakes cakes and has no idea whatsoever how to prepare caviar, and is perhaps appalled by the cruelty behind foie gras. He imagines she cooks things like meat loaf and mac'n'cheese, and he does the dishes. Then they put the baby to bed and talk about the price of gasoline and milk while they brush their teeth. In the dark, they engage in very average fucking in very average positions, have very average orgasms (or perhaps few orgasms at all, on her part), and go to sleep on their average beds in their average bedrooms. This is their average life day after day after day. Average and boring, only he is never bored.

It is an amusing fantasy. None of it is real. He parks his classic Italian roadster and walks into their temporary home. Caviar is chilling on ice. Wagyu beef, marbled like a work of art, is waiting to be seared. His little son is learning to make baguettes and his woman, his mate, is looking up from her work with black eyes; a neck like a swan. Nothing at all average about her.

He goes to her and slides his arm around his waist. He kisses her neck; bites her shoulder. He thinks of pulling up her dress and fucking her over the counter, flour and basil and scallops on the half-shell spilling to the ground. But he doesn't.

He is a civilized wolf, after all. And sometimes he likes to wait.

Instant gratification gets boring, after all.

--

It is later that night, and Hilary is drinking wine by the pool with Ivan, who is drinking vodka. He has a small glass and he has a container of crushed ice, with an inset bowl which used to house caviar. Now it houses his vodka bottle. She is wearing her suit and he secretly hopes she does not want to swim because he is rather drunk, and he is mildly concerned he might not be so careful as he usually is. She might be frightened, and then she would be enraged, and then she would never ever want to swim again.

Do you think, she says, and he imagines she might ask to swim. He opens his eyes lazily. They were closed a moment before. He looks over at her and that's when he registers what it is she has said. He blinks slowly, almost feline.

And laughs, a short huff. "I seem to remember proposing once. You didn't seem to like the idea then."

"Because you were being a fool," she responds. She sips at her wine, a round glass filled with a deep, rich red. "You asked me to marry you in the same way you suggest we do things like... jet off to another country, or go for a fast drive in the mountains, or have me cook something ridiculous for you."

Hilary has not been looking at him. She does now, turning her head slowly and setting those dark, unfathomable eyes on him. "It was just another whim of yours. Why do you think I would have liked the idea?"

Perhaps it's the drink, or perhaps she's been right all along and he is a sentimental fool. He sighs, laying his head back against the lounger, looking at the glittering stars.

"It was a whim," he confesses, "but not just another whim. I meant it." His short hair brushes the wood as he turns to her. "I still do. Though, truth be told," a faint smirk here, "I'm not sure I can outdo that red diamond."

"You misunderstand."

There's less venom in it than usual. She's not angry with him for misunderstanding. She's not dismissing him, either.

"I do not care if we get married." She has been married twice. Lavish rings. A thousand flowers. Hand-made dresses. Month-long honeymoons. "I am asking you if you think we should be married. For Anton's sake, as he gets older. "

Now, at least in this little sentence, she sounds almost affronted that he isn't more impressed with her: "I'm being very practical."

He has to bite his lip not to laugh, at least until he hides his mouth behind his vodka. He knows her well enough to know -- to suspect, at least -- that laughing at her now will lead nowhere good.

After, setting the glass down, he gives her question some thought. "It may be easier for him," he says, "if his parents were married. But France is more liberal about such things. If you don't want to be married, I don't think he'll suffer terribly for it."

She thinks on this a bit. Looks at the water rippling in the pool. Looks past the edge of her wineglass, cradling it in her palm.

"Everything is so different now," she says quietly, more to herself than him. And that it has, especially for her: someone from another time, raised a different way. She never even went to school. Not real school. Her family was, in most ways, a throwback to a time that has not existed for the rest of the world for more than a century. Ivan, conversely, is terribly modern. His awful cars, his gauche homes, his disgusting behaviors.

No wonder she sounds a little sad, and a little lost, reflecting on how strange everything is now.

Her eyes flick closed a moment, open only a little while after. She sips her wine. "I suppose I do not care," she admits, her voice still quiet, still... inward. "I only... do not want you to leave me. And I think you would, if I married you."

For the most part Ivan, fast modern creature that he is, descended of Fangs so thin-blooded they slip closer to becoming Glass Walkers by the generation, thinks very little of ancestry. Occasionally, though, it does occur to him. It occurs to him now. He thinks of her, such a relic of a bygone age; a world at once far more genteel and far more savage than the modern one. He thinks of how old her soul must be, what it must have seen in all its many incarnations. He wonders how far back she goes; what marbled halls she once walks, what primitive strongman might have once claimed her, what crude jewels must have once been spilled at her feet.

Even her little hideaway, though not opulent, has an air of antiquity about it. A borrowed sense of age. How she hates his new, gleaming things - which is ironic, because oh, how she loves her shiny, bright-eyed boys.

Loved, anyway. Everything is so different now.

He sits up. He puts aside his vodka; he has had enough. He gets up from his lounger and he comes onto hers, crowding her over even if it displeases her momentarily. His arm, lean and warm and corded with sleek muscle, comes to drape over her shoulders. He kisses her quite fervently, his lips burning her temple.

"You always think I will leave you," he says. "But even if I have left you, I have always come back."

Oh, it does displease her. The loungers are certainly wide and luxurious and sturdy, but she is laid out so perfectly and here he comes, wrecking everything in his path as he always does. So she's grimacing and all but swatting at him, forcing him to physically pick her up and move her a few inches because she adamantly refuses to make room for him. At least he isn't soaking wet for once, fresh from the pool and dripping all over her, ruining her silk.

She hasn't quite forgiven him for being such a barbarian when he kisses her brow, so he kisses the temple's edge of a petty scowl.

What he says, she does not respond to, not for several moments. And when she does, it is a simple -- and certain -- sentence of only a few words:

"It would be different."

She's so displeased. And so petty afterward. And he loves her for it, perversely; he always did love it when she was mean to him. To say their relationship is dysfunctional would be an understatement. And yet, at the same time: oddly untrue. Their relationship functions, within their own confines, their own little universe. They've somehow made it work.

And perhaps she's right. This final vestige of freedom: maybe it's a key ingredient. Maybe it would be different if he wore a ring as well. If he looked at his hand, his physical body, and saw a mark of his devotion to her. Maybe that would be enough to terrify him. He doesn't know. He doesn't think so -- doesn't want to think he's so weak-willed and insane -- but he doesn't know.

And for a while he's quiet, stretched out beside her now, relaxed and waiting for her to relax again. Eventually, long after she has given that simple and certain answer, when the iron has left her spine somewhat, he reaches over. He takes her hand, naked of the ring at the moment. His thumb rubs over the base of her ring finger, where it would otherwise sit. There's likely no mark, no tan line; it's not like she lets herself get any sun, anyway. After a moment he threads his fingers through hers and holds her hand like that, her fingers smaller and slenderer. That air of fragility about her -- which she herself barely seems to realize -- has always been something that attracted him. Perhaps that, too, is dysfunctional.

"Maybe," he says at last. "I don't know."

When they go out in the sunlight, Hilary wears large hats. Sunglasses. She covers up her skin with light, breathable fabrics and what she can't cover, she smears with sunblock at regular intervals. On their hike recently, for example, this is how she came back with nary a change in her skin's tone despite hours outside. He teased her once, on that hike, about her pausing to put more sunscreen on, and she made some testy comment about skin cancer and aging and how not everyone can regenerate, Ivan.

Perhaps he laughed. Perhaps it was one of those rare occasions when his insanity was either pricking at the edges of his reason or, conversely, had fled him altogether, leaving him at the mercy of normal emotion. Perhaps the mention of illness and cancer reminded him of her mortality and her vulnerabilty. Perhaps it wormed into his heart the way it sometimes does and made him pull her close, as though he could protect her from danger, from the sun, from her own body, from time itself.

But perhaps he just laughed. That's what he usually does.

--

So no: there is no tan line. She wears no ring on that finger but the red diamond, and she wears that rarely enough. It's a precious thing, for one. For another, she wears it almost as a statement: an act of aggression, a declaration of war. Sometimes she wears it on her right hand. Usually, if she is with him, she wears it on her left.

The one he briefly and madly thought to ask her to wear it on for all time.

The key is that he was mad at the time. Or he wasn't. Even he doesn't know. And god knows he shouldn't trust Hilary to know if he was or not. Neither of them, really, have someone to tell them when to pull back, when to say no, when to stop, when to think. They do their best. Most of the time, their best is twisted.

Sometimes, their best is loving to the point of purity. Sometimes their best is self-sacrificing, is tender, is almost divine. Sometimes, their best is a glimmer of what it once was, what it might have been centuries and millenia ago, before their tribe became... whatever it is, now.

But usually it isn't.

--

Hilary lets him take her hand. She glances at it, aware of the significance of where his eyes fall. She looks at him, as he begins to rub that spot. Continues looking at him, holding her wine glass off to one side, waiting to see what it is he has to say. She thinks he has something to say. Sometimes it takes him a while to get to it.

He admits what they both know: that they can't know.

And she feels... something. She notices that. It isn't vague disinterest or annoyance, and it isn't the wrenching, painful love that she is so terrified of most of the time. She feels something and thinks:

he is sad.

Which is a very simplistic and broken-down way of putting it, or thinking about it, and it may be altogether inaccurate. But she thinks he is sad. And thinking that, she has another feeling, or circles back to the original one:

I do not want him to be sad.

Or perhaps:

I am very sad when he is sad.

It occurs to her that maybe she can do something about it. Maybe she can make him feel something other than sad. He seems to often think she can affect his feelings, good or bad. By now she's come to believe that maybe he's right about that. How she is to him -- what she says, the things she does, what she chooses not to do -- affects him. Usually in a bad way, she thinks. But maybe, sometimes, in a good way.

And so she tells him:

"I don't think it matters, Ivan," and it is soft. It's bordering on gentle. "I know you try very hard to stay with me, even though you... " a pause here. She isn't sure of the words. They never really admit this, do they? It's all fine and good for her to be rather out of her mind, but both of them seem to like to pretend that Ivan's issues are simple facets of his personality, and nothing more. They both know, though. They've both always known:

"...even though you aren't quite right."

The bottom of her wine glass finally touches the table beside her chair. She puts her hand on his face. She even smiles, a small and strangely warm thing.

"Let's not get married. Anton's family can be very... modern, and cosmopolitan."

They both know, of course. They've both always known. They are both Silver Fangs; they are both intelligent and canny and not yet so insane they have lost sight of their own insanity.

They both know they both have issues. Neuroses. Cracks in their psyche. But this is the first time, the very first time, that either of them have openly and explicitly acknowledged those flaws are as much in him as they are in her. Not just some quirk of personality, not just some great and poetic weakness, as she once put it, but a fissure as raw as a wound.

It is the first time, he thinks, that she has ever acknowledged that he is less than perfect. Less than a god in her sky.

And of course it is painful. It is never easy to fall from a pedestal, even one upon which he never asked to stand. But at the same time, it is good. It is good, and this amazes him, but it is true. It takes a great weight off his shoulders that he scarcely knew was there. It is the weight of the heavens: not his own but hers. He always thought her sky would fall if she ever thought he was, in any deep and meaningful way, flawed.

Her sky does not fall. She touches his face. He looks at her, aching with something very much like gratitude. And he leans into her and kisses her softly, which is a rarity. So often he is biting at her, tearing at her, like only her flesh could possibly sate him.

Sometimes, though, they love to the point of purity.

"I do want to marry you," he admits, lying back again on that lounger they now share. She no longer seems so disgruntled. He thinks she secretly likes being close to him, too. He thinks she may be pleased, secretly, that he took it upon himself to suffer her displeasure and upset everything and move her aside and make a fuss. "I just don't know... well. There's little point in retreading it again.

"We'll be modern and cosmopolitan. But I wanted you to know, anyway."

The gratitude in his eyes is, for the moment, lost on her. She will return to it later, more than once, mulling it over in the long silences of her life. She so rarely drowns herself in the cotton-candy softness of pills these days, though they are still present in her cabinet. Sometimes she just sits outside for hours, watching the water in the fountain or the water in the ocean. Lately, she reads, though she is not very fast and sometimes sits and thinks about a sentence for a long time before moving on to the next one. It isn't a lack of intelligence; it's more a dullness of her spirit, a thinness in the weave of her soul. But more and more these days, she is awake. She is present, because it has become less agonizing to be so in the past... well. However long it has been since she came to live in her new home by the sea. But even Hilary knows it started long before that.

We digress.

She will think on that look in his eyes several times for the next several days. When she is alone, when he is asleep beside her, when she is watching Anton play or when she is cooking by herself. It will take time, but she will eventually understand what he was grateful for, and she will learn something from that.

Right now, however, she just notices it, and puts it away. What she said did not make him more sad. That is good. He kisses her, and it's a good kiss, and her eyes close as she sinks into it, letting it surround her like a warm bath. He so seldom kisses her like this, tender and sweet. He always kisses her lovingly, even when that love is desperate, even when it rages, even when it hungers and devours. But this sort of kiss is just love, is only love, and

that is something she can accept from him now, and

that is special, indeed.

--

But his confession hurts her. Tears at her heart as suddenly and ferociously as a swipe of claws. It is the pain of very sad because... because...

Hilary is lost, there. Loses the thread and warps the weave. She will try not to come back to this, several times over several days, because it sucks her down, shrieks as it ravages her, laughs at her confusion. This is just a step beyond her comprehension: that Ivan wants something that they both think maybe they should not have, but only because they fear he would break her heart if they ever had it. That she is, in some way, telling him no, and that this might hurt him, and yet... she can't risk saying yes. It's an impossible problem, and without a solution, and there is no right thing to feel. There is nothing she can do to make him not sad. And there is, as usual, nothing she can do to make herself feel better, either.

He admits that he wants to marry her, and he has no idea as he lies back on the lounger and looks at the stars that the ground just dropped out from under her, and she is reeling. For a moment, she can't quite hear him, because there's a faint ringing in her ears, and a pain in her chest, and there's a part of her trying desperately to be angry at him so that she won't feel quite so lost, but that part has been so weakened of late.

So she doesn't get angry. And she doesn't answer him. She looks at the stars. She can hear the water against the edges of the pool. She can hear the water against the shore below. She tries not to think of anything at all, including what to say. She just looks at the stars.

[DUZ HE NOTESS?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[He fucking notices that Hilary is slightly less relaxed, but not tense with anger or withdrawal. He can tell with a glance that she feels a lost and unsteady all of a sudden, and sad. She wouldn't know the word for it, but she feels regret that she can't give him what he wants... or she could, but it would mean risking something she doesn't think she could (or would want to) survive, and so she's stuck for the moment in the impossibility of the situation. Knowing he wants to marry her doesn't make her feel nice; it makes her feel guilty, and frightened, and confused. He can also tell that she's trying to ride this out, and that at least for the moment she feels incredibly fragile.]

One might easily imagine a parallel universe branching off here, a whole thread of existence in which he simply misses that silent tempest in her. Self-absorbed, selfish creature that he is: he could have easily gone on looking at the stars, thinking that conversation was over -- his comment an epitaph and nothing more.

But that is not what happens. Somehow -- perhaps because he is who he is, and she is who she is, and she is what she is to him -- he notices. Hard to say what, even: perhaps just the subtlest change in her breathing. Perhaps just the slightest tension in her spine.

A span of silence goes by. Then he looks at her; what he can see of her as they lounge there side by side, close.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't inquire, or pry. He just ... looks at her for a while. Absorbs something, maybe. Intuits something. Mulls on it in silence before he merely leans into her. Nuzzles her softly, like an animal, his eyes closing. The tip of his nose against her temple. His brow against the side of hers. Drawing a breath that is scented with her hair, her skin. Trying in some small, primordial way to comfort her -- some primitive hardcoded instinct that echoes back untold eons, lifetimes.

She has learned that when one wants to lose oneself, the sound of wind and the sound of water have similar hypnotic effect as certain pills, some kinds of sex, and most types of alcohol. The stars are something else entirely, a point of focus that quickly spins out into a beautiful chaos that is altogether not her problem. So she listens: wind and water. She watches the stars. She feels Very Sad and she does not know what to do. She has an inkling that this version of Very Sad leads to those thoughts of wanting to claw her skin off, or bash her head against a rock, or shoot herself through the mouth, or fall asleep and never, ever wake up. And those thoughts are terribly seductive and terribly frightening at the same time, and they seem so

practical. The right thing to do. The final relief from all the rest of this: being insane. Being in love. Being a mother. Being wrong, and broken, and tired.

But they are also something else. She has a vague sense that if she died by suicide, it would mean something else got the jump on her. Won, somehow, the battle she's always fighting in the shadows, where even she can't see it. She has a slightly less vague sense that this would make Ivan more sad than he's ever been, incurably sad, sad forever, and she knows she doesn't want that. It also often occurs to her that something bad might happen to Anton, and that reminds her of her parents,

and what bad things happened to her because of what they did, what they were, how they ended,

and this usually brings her back.

But she is afraid that if she follows Very Sad to this place, this whispering and seductive place, that one day she won't be able to remember these things, she won't be able to remember that it's bad, that it will hurt, and someday she might do it. So instead she looks at the stars. She doesn't try to talk to Ivan about it. She doesn't know how to explain what she feels right now. Trying to explain would only make it worse. It would only make him feel worse, too. They would get nowhere.

He leans into her. She thinks he wants her attention, and her head turns slightly, but only after a moment. He doesn't say anything, though, or start peeling her out of her swimsuit, or anything like that. He just wants to be close. She exhales softly and looks heavenward again. Her hand is in his hand. She begins, after a while, to stroke her thumb over his knuckles. This way he can know she's here, and that she isn't ignoring him, she isn't mad at him. It's hard for her, right now, but she thinks for some reason it's important. So she makes her thumb move, and watches a plane up there blink through the night sky, on its way westward. Or maybe south. It's hard to tell.

It's entirely posisble he falls asleep like that, his head soft with vodka, his body warm with her nearness. Or not. Maybe he is too worried for her. But either way, it is some time before she murmurs to him:

"Knowing that hurts me."

Well: it's less of a murmur than a whisper. There's nothing accusatory in it. There's nothing explanatory.

There is, however, a small huff of air, not at all a laugh but that's the closest thing: "Maybe I want to marry you, too. Even though --"

ah. But there's little point in retreading it. She lets that thought trail off.

"Maybe I just wish we could be... something else than we are. Whatever normal people are like. Whatever their lives are like, day by day. Whatever feelings they have."

It's a fantasy. A strange, distant fantasy. It's not quite so detailed as his; she can't even picture it. He with his salary and sensible car; she with her mommy-and-me playgroup, her part-time job, their saved-up-for vacation to Disneyworld. But it's there, dimly: this wish to have been born something else. Something normal.

She takes a breath. Holds it a moment. Sighs softly when she does exhale. "We won't. Just in case. All right?"

Ivan does not know that Hilary sometimes thinks of suicide. He does not know some of the darkest aspects of her mind, in truth: all those times she thinks of death, all the many ways, all the many subjects. Sometimes other creatures. Sometimes him. Sometimes herself.

Surely he suspects. Again: intelligence, canniness. Surely one cannot help but suspect when faced with a woman who sometimes flies into screaming, thrashing, inconsolable rages, who has beat her own head against the ground, who has spun into baffling, disproportionate depths of despair. She has even hinted at it, told him a few times that she is afraid he will hate her for the thoughts in her head. Surely he suspects and fears, but -- that is not the same as knowing. Knowing would terrify him. He might never let her out of his sight again, and that too would be poison to what they have.

They are more honest with each other than with anyone else. But still they have their secrets; not merely shameful ones but merciful ones, the blackest parts of themselves tucked away where they cannot hurt one another.

And anyway: she brings herself back. There are two tracks in her mind. One that runs from how very sad she is to the best and most final way of ending that; one that runs from a terrible, seductive end to how very, very, interminably, endlessly sad that would make Ivan. She hops from one to the other. Rides it back.

And all this while he is nuzzling her softly, trying in this small animal way to comfort his mate. And she responds, not because she is comforted but out of some generosity that must seem almost alien to her. He does not fall asleep. He is too worried for her. When she speaks, he is intensely aware. He listens, and he winces, and then he winces again.

A few beats of silence between them. He takes a short breath, lifts his head, looks squarely at her.

"Or maybe we should," he says. "Maybe we shouldn't live our lives in terror of what might be. Why should we? We never have before. If we had, you'd still be married to Dion, or to whichever new lord of the castle wanted you. Anton would still think you were dead. None of this would be."

There is a moment when Hilary only wants to tell him that living in fear of what may be is all she has ever done. It has guided her life. It made her passive about the course of that life, carried from wave to wave, picked up by this wolf or that. Her rebellions were, for the most part and only up to a point, careful. Her whims sometimes built under her skin, pressing at the interior of her skull, until she thought she might erupt, and then she would go to her doctor, and her doctor would write her prescriptions, and she would be able to escape.

She doesn't tell him that at least one of them has always lived in terror and -- to a degree -- still does. Always will.

She does tell him that he is wrong.

Hilary turns her head to look at him. "This isn't the same," she says, her voice hushed. "I could survive being married to Dion. Or the next one. I could even survive Anton thinking I was dead.

"We could marry because we wish to, and not out of some practicality," as if this thin motivational difference would matter, though perhaps it would in their fractured, twisted minds, "and you could begin to resent it. You might leave. Or try to get me to leave you. Eventually, you might lose your mind, and all your love for me with it.

"I would not survive that, Ivan."

She leaves it at that. She turns her eyes back to the stars.

When she first turns to look at him, he is looking at the sea. It is mostly darkness, the breakers a ghostly white; the moon casting a remarkable fractured trail. The wind smells of salt, and it is warm and humid as breath.

He seems suited to these warm climates, though she knows his bloodline arose in the coldest lands. But look at him, golden-skinned and golden-haired, with that hot blood that always burns for her. He was born to live in warm oceans, bright sun.

When she says she would not survive, he does look at her. Quickly, almost sharply, his eyebrows flickering together. He still has his arm around her, and now he takes her face in his hand too: thumb and forefinger along the line of her jaw. He kisses her again, tender as the last, but different. He was born to this, too: this thoughtless dominance, this casual control.

"Ah, well," he sighs, after, laying his head back against the supple wood slats, "Mrs. Press is a terrible name, anyway."

As he takes her face in his hand she lifts her chin from his fingertips. It's not a harsh, tearing gesture, just a small one, and doesn't seem meant with anger. An odd sort of firmness, as though to underline that she means it.

Despite the fact that she was the one who brought the whole thing up to begin with.

But he kisses her, and she kisses him back, and if he puts his hand on her jaw after that kiss begins, well: she'll allow it.

--

A scoff. "I would not take your stupid name."

"DeBroqueville-Press is worse," he points out, smirking.

"I would not take it in any form," she retorts, raising her eyebrows at him as though daring him to argue with her. Look at her: how brave, how rebellious. What a scandal it would be, to marry a man and not take his name.

"I have taken more than my fair share of names from men, and I will do so no longer."

She settles back on the lounger, despite Ivan crowding her, watching the stars. Her hands are folded lightly atop her belly. "Anton, of course, will always bear yours. You've earned that much."

In another tone, it could sound dismissive. Coy. It may even take him a moment to realize how very serious she is. About all of it...including Ivan earning this supposed honor.

Dared, he of course rises to the occasion:

"Priselkova."

And she declares her emancipation from the names of men. He grins at himself, at the stars she settles back to watch. It does take him a moment to realize she's serious. About his name, passed on to his son. About his earning this. Another man might have the good grace to be modest, but not Ivan.

"I have done rather well this past year or so, haven't I. By you and by Anton. Honorable as a Philodox, just about."

Hilary has, by now, studied enough Russian to know what that ova at the end means. That he's assigning it to her, teasing her. She side-eyes him but at least does not try to slap him.

On another night, perhaps, Hilary might scoff. Take him down a notch. Instead, she simply says:

"You have not always done well by me. But you have always done the right thing for him. Protected him. Provided for him. Even if you do not always love him. And even if you do it only for my sake. Still, you have done it. That is why I let you give him his first name, too." She shakes her head. "I never liked the name Anton."

Whether it was her intention or not, he is certainly taken down a notch or two. Laughing under his breath -- as self-deprecating a laugh as he may be capable of -- Ivan reaches for his vodka again.

"Devushka, it's a frightful thing when you tell the truth."

This earns him a long glance from her. She tips her head. "I almost always tell the truth." Which is, in a way, not incorrect: she rarely intentionally lies. She does not think she lies when she omits so many of her thoughts from her speech. And occasionally, her truth is... mad. Tilted. Estranged. "Are you upset with me?" she wants to know, watching him take the bottle.

He considers this for a moment, pouring as he does. Perhaps another woman would be hurt by that. Perhaps Hilary doesn't even notice.

"No," he says. "A little sad. A little wounded. Not because of what you just said, not really. More because of ... everything. But no. I am not upset with you."

He sinks back. Sips.

"I do try to do well by you," he adds. "You know that, don't you?"

"Wounded."

She repeats the word like she's tasting it. She frowns at him, though. "I don't understand."

He is laying back. She is watching him, following the line of his profile with her eyes. When he asks what he does, she nods. Is silent for a long moment.

"Because I said you have not always done so," she finally says, answering her own confusion. It takes her longer. The connection is hard. It sparks, it repels; she has to work to make the pieces fit. "That is why you're sad."

She tries too. He knows this, even if sometimes -- unfairly -- he faults her for failing. For not always being able to succeed. She is trying now, and he is oddly touched by how long it takes her, what a struggle this is. She perseveres, and this time at least, she makes it.

The pieces fit. She puts it together.

And he nods a little, wordlessly. He reaches out to her and his palm touches her back; he rubs gently, as though to comfort her. Or himself. Or simply to seek contact.

It seems easier for her -- as easy as it gets, really -- when she isn't upset, herself. When she's calm, like this. When his emotions are something she can observe. Study. She never even tries, when she's upset. When she's sad or wounded or angry, it doesn't even occur to her to consider how Ivan might feel. Recently that has come up. He has faulted her. Recently, it seems she almost understands why he does. It doesn't mean she can do better.

Not yet.

When he nods, she thinks it over. A part of her wants to argue that, well: he hasn't always done right by her. She knows he is sad about this, though. He isn't denying it. And maybe it would make him even more sad. Wound him more dearly. And she knows she doesn't want that.

When Ivan is Sad, it makes Hilary feel Very Sad.

She leans over and licks him. It's a half-drunken, primordial thing. You'd think she'd kiss him, refined thing that she is. But no. She leans into him and licks him, a quick lapping motion, where his jaw flows upwards against his throat. It's meant to comfort him. Or herself. Or simply to re-establish contact.

Then she lays her head on his shoulder. At this angle it is easier for her to see the water, instead of the stars. It's very dark. Mostly she can only hear the waves. So she closes her eyes and listens to them. His heartbeat creeps in to the sound. The ocean in one ear. His pulse in the other. She doesn't open her eyes.

"We have done our best," she whispers, after a time.

And it is forgiveness, for one thing. For another: it is admission. Confession. She has not been good to him always, either. But it is also acknowledgement: they are both rather broken, mad creatures. They love each other nonetheless. They try.

Indeed, Ivan thinks he's in for a kiss when she leans over like that. She's so refined. Even her drunkenness has a grace to it; she never totters or topples, but simply flows. His hand is at her waist, his chin lifting in anticipation, but

she licks him. His skin is smooth and warm; only the barest hint of bristle. He laughs softly, surprised and pleased and -- yes. Comforted. By her nearness. By the contact. By the reminder, too, that she is a daughter of wolves. An animal, just like him.

They are quiet a while. His heart beats into her ear, and her eyes close. He thinks perhaps she will sleep like this. He doesn't think they've ever slept like this, under a night sky, with a black ocean at their feet. He would have thought such a thing would terrify her, and perhaps once it did.

Things change.

--

His eyes open to the sound of her whispering. Absolution and confession in one; acknowledgement, too. And a promise, perhaps. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head.

"Yes, love," he murmurs.