good enough reason.

witch

When she leaves him, she does it quickly. Hears him behind her, even four steps behind, and moves faster. Gets up, walks down the hall, and closes the door behind her. She does not say goodnight again. He does not hear the shower run that night.

--

An hour or so later, the sun comes up. She sleeps -- if she is, as she said, sleeping -- through that. And then several more hours. Past noon. Past one. Then past two. It's just shy of three o'clock in the afternoon before Devon even stirs. She is groggy, dry-mouthed, sore-throated, ache-headed. Her face is a wreck, her pillowcase stained, her hair awry and knotted. Her bones hurt. Her joints are stiff. Her eyes are puffy. Her stomach --

we won't talk about her stomach.

So she closes her eyes again and drifts back down, just flipping over a pillow and curling into a ball. Tries not to think. And it's another half-hour or so before she tries moving again.

--

If Rafael is even in the townhouse, he'll hear the water go on. The house is usually so quiet, so serene. Even with the television on, it has a stillness to it. It's strange that this is where he lives, with its soft atmosphere and its modern accoutrements, sleek styling. Regardless: this is his den, at least for now and at least for the majority of the time. If he is there at all, he can sense other life stirring here, waking, moving. The shower runs for close to half an hour.

And now it is four. The sun will not be up much longer; already it is angling towards the mountaintops to the west, trying to sneak away without anyone noticing. But for now it still lights up the city and the plains; it turns the snow on top of the peaks gold and pink and lavender all around the blinding whiteness. Not yet sunset, not yet twilight, but late day: it is lovely.

Devon, standing naked but wrapped in a towel, her hair damp but not dripping and hanging limply past her cheeks, stares out the window and thinks about how lovely it looks. How lovely it is. How wondrous that this happens every single day, and that every single day gives the sun a slightly new angle, a different approach of its light to the earth, and that this is not just the way it alters its own loveliness but that this is the way that seasons change, the way that the earth turns, spinning riotously fast through the cosmos. She thinks of how wondrous the irony is, that some hours and minutes take so very long even though they are all moving so very fast, and how wondrous it is that they ever thought of something as clever and absurd as time, and she thinks of how wondrous and passionate and painful and beautiful it is that one day she will die, and whatever she is in this life or the next, she will never see this exact not-quite sunset again.

It is wondrous and passionate and painful and beautiful to her that this very moment she's living, staring out the window and watching the gloaming descend from the sky to limn the earth, has never been and never will be again. For all the constancy and rhythm of nature, for all the bland boredom of so much of human existence, this is unique.

Devon closes her eyes, feeling the tightness of her skin and the soreness of her body, living in the hangover. Living in the wonder, and the frustration, and the longing for comfort, and the skin-crawling fear. She sighs.

--

Sitting on top of a dresser are several bottles, vials. Some glass, some plastic. Some colored, some clear, some capped and some corked. A little glass vial filled with some dark oil she hasn't figured out yet sits among them. She sifts through all these as the sky's colors dim but don't yet blur together in endless blue, and finds the one she's looking for. It has the look of an apothecary's bottle, repurposed: round and squat and flat-bottomed, with almost no neck and a screw-on metal cap with a dent in it. It is dark brown glass. She unscrews it, checks the contents, trying not to sniff.

It does not smell good. No matter how carefully she brews this one, no matter what she adds to it to try and keep it effective but less foul, it's just nasty. Trying to thin it out just makes it grainy and bitter. Trying to sweeten it makes it seize and lose its efficacy. She has tried adding it to coffee or tea or milk or any number of things and ended up vomiting. It has the color and consistency of a liquidy pesto. She has simply accepted, at this point, that its awfulness is the Mother's way of teaching her children a lesson.

So, fine. She'll take her medicine.

Hair still drying, body still wrapped in a towel, Devon downs a mouthful. She winces the way she never does when drinking whiskey, her entire body shivering with the suppression of her gag reflex. She shudders. Then, because she knows this potion perhaps too well -- even for someone who almost never gets hangovers to begin with -- she takes a second drink. About two tablespoons. She quickly caps the bottle again, shoving it away, and picks up a glass of water from the nightstand to chug as much of it as she can.

She coughs. She squirms a little, exhaling and marveling at how terrible her own breath tastes at the moment. And then she starts to get dressed.

--

By the time she's clothed and her teeth brushed and her hair dried in all its soft waves, the hangover is gone. Her eyes have lost their puffiness and that spot of red in her sclera. Her joints don't ache and her muscles aren't sore and her skin doesn't feel so tight. She keeps drinking water, and she pops a couple of advil from a bottle beside the bed, but these things just ease her body's transition back to normal. The overall misery of what she did to herself last night fades in fifteen, twenty minutes, and she looks fresh-faced and pink-cheeked as she checks herself in the mirror, does her hair, applies a bit of makeup.

Linens are stripped and put in a pile just outside the door, either for one of the servants to pick up or for her to remember to do later. And she pauses, listening throughout the house to see if she can tell where he is, if he's there. If he's there she likes to think she'll sense him, sense his rage and even simply the presence of another living creature, another force of nature. Whether she does or not, though, she walks slowly downstairs.

Black cutoffs, some half-seen black belt with a gold and black buckle: round with a cross. Black high-topped lace-up boots, folded down. The lining has a floral-on-black print. The laces aren't done entirely. Her tights are sheer but with a sharp geometric design in black, all stripes and triangles and intersections. She's braided the top layer of her hair, twisting locks into a low band behind her ears that ends at the nape of her neck over the underlayers of all that thick hair. Her sweater is a thick, cream-colored knit, large enough that she's had to roll the cuffs of her sleeves up a bit to expose her hands, chunky enough to look as warm as it feels. A few gold and black bracelets. A gold necklace, the pendant heart-shaped. Not a locket, though; it's solid. Small but heavy.

Her mascara is thick and her eyeliner flicked out in little wings at the corners of her eyes. Her lips are red -- bright red, though. Apple red, cherry red, not the red of her lips on Halloween. Not the dark, sinister red that stained his own mouth when he kissed her, came inside of her.

Her boots clomp and scuff a bit on the steps, thud lightly on the floor.

She decides she wants potatoes. Skillet potatoes, crispy gold from sitting in a cast-iron pan, cooking in leftover sausage grease. She wants eggs -- and she wants them over-medium. The sun is setting outside now, right around five o'clock. And she wants eggs and sausage and potatoes and chopped peppers and, for once, orange juice. That is not the only thing on her mind when she comes downstairs, but it is at the forefront.

Uncomfortably so, a mere curtain over all the rest.

wolfman

Girl sleeps all day. Wolf doesn't. Wolf sleeps another two or three hours, deeply but uneasily, his dreams filled with half-formed flashes of rushing wind, naked trees pale as ghosts. Something flees ahead of him, spry and lightfooted, tail a white flash. He gives chase on four paws, predator drawn to movement, but the scent is elusive and shifting. Dirt and dead leaves spray underfoot as he scrabbles through sharp turns, gaining, cornering, lunging, but just as his teeth find the throat he sees it's not a doe at all but a girl, and he is not a wolf at all but a man.

Girl stares him in the eye and says:

Do you wanna?

--

Wolf wakes with a start. Goes downstairs and cracks four eggs into a pan. Eats morosely out of the pan itself, washing half-burnt eggs down with milk and orange juice. Puts on a t-shirt, puts on a thin hoodie, zips his motorcycle jacket over that.

Hours before he comes back. Housekeeper comes and straightens things up. Cook comes and drops lunch off. James leaves a stack of paperwork and Important Business Correspondence on the breakfast bar. Wolf returns in the mid-afternoon, puzzles over the documents for thirty baffled minutes before remembering to call his financial advisor. Her name is Lieke. She worked for his predecessor, as her predecessor had worked for his predecessor's predecessor, and --

so on and so forth. Back into the hallowed annals of history, none of which he had the faintest idea about.

Phone call doesn't take long. Lieke is sharp, professional, and just a touch condescending. She'll take care of it, she says. Wolf isn't sure if he's supposed to thank her. He hangs up. Girl's door opens and townhouse is so quiet wolf hears it straight away. Comes around to where he can see the upper hallway, phone still in hand.

Just watches her. Apparently no one ever taught him basic manners: don't stare, say hello. She comes down the stairs and gradually she's the same height, she's smaller than him. Wolf steps back a little to give her room to pass.

"Morning," he says to her back. Unironically.

witch

She pauses on the stairs, when she's descended low enough that she can see him. But she doesn't retreat. She doesn't run back upstairs or storm out the front door. She walks down. He's still holding the phone in his hand. She slows as she approaches him,

until he gives her more space. She passes, scarcely glancing at him, and goes to the pantry. If you want to make skillet potatoes you have to have potatoes. Wash them, peel them. If she were hungover she wouldn't bother. She doesn't look hungover. She looks fresh and new, rested and bright. Like she's never touched any kind of intoxicant in her life. Even with the dramatic eyeliner and those red lips, she has a sort of sunrise innocence about her.

Except the sun isn't rising. It's setting.

She doesn't say morning back to him. Or scoff at his use of the term. She glances at him, again, then proceeds to dig around to find a vegetable peeler. She seems familiar with his kitchen now; she spent a few days here alone. She knows where things are.

Did she go through his room?

Would he know, with her scentlessness, if she had?

Devon starts peeling some russet potatoes into a trash can. She does so by dragging the trash can over to a chair, perching on it, and peeling them right into the bin between her knees. She has one half done before she starts to talk. And what she says is:

"I like staying here." Which, duh. It's a far cry from living in a hostel or sleeping in a car or crashing on the couches of strangers. Everything here is new. Everything here is sleek and high-end. The bed is so big and so comfortable. The shower pressure is perfect, and there's always hot water. She has taken baths. There's ample food and drink. She feels safe when she goes to sleep. And it's rent free. Chore free, if she wants it to be. So far, absolutely nothing has been asked of her in exchange for living here. But there's also:

"I even like you. The twenty, thirty percent of the time you're not being a prick." It's exaggeration; her tone says she knows it. But she likes him. She doesn't look at him when she says so.

"But I don't like feeling trapped and threatened in the same place where I sleep." She looks up and over at him. "Bit of a headfuck, really."

One potato down, so she picks up another. Starts peeling it. "I was mad. I went out. Got over it. I came back and you lost your mind. That wanting-to-kill-someone shit -- where did that go? On me. Grabbing my hair. Getting in my face. Making me think if you couldn't hurt someone else, you'd just hurt me instead." She savagely slices a knot, an eye, off of the potato in her hand, frowning at it. "It's not okay."

There's only a small pause, as she turns the potato, slices away at it, thin strips of skin falling into the trash heap. "And you know that. Not looking for an apology." She made it clear, last time, she thinks they're bullshit. Heartfelt, but worthless in the long run.

"Just trying to figure out how many times I tolerate it before I just get used to it."

wolfman

Girl doesn't answer. So wolf starts wandering off. For someone who's spent most of a lifetime without much space to call his own, he's gotten sort of used to suddenly having it. A lot of it. Feels weird, a little, to have the girl here too. Sharing space. Especially when it's awkward and stiff between them. Which is often.

Wolf's in the living room inspecting a TV guide with more interest than it deserves when girl speaks up. Wolf looks over immediately, the turn of his head quick and animal. Frowns when she says trapped. Threatened. Hurt me. Looks away, dropping the TV guide back on the coffee table with a papery splat, wrapping heavy arms across thick chest as he comes back to the kitchen.

She finishes. Wolf wonders if that's a veiled threat. Decides it's not. It's something worse: truth. As if somewhere inside her there' s a fuse that's burning down. A meter that's filling up. Silence for a while. Then the wolf reaches out and grabs a spud, getting a peeling knife out of the drawer. He peels the way people used to peel apples: all in a thin strip, uncoiling off the innards in an unbroken line.

"Would never hurt you if I could help it," wolf says after a while, low, like a truth he'd rather forget anyone ever spoke or heard. End of the day he knows the assurance means little enough. Last of the peel comes off the potato and he drops it wholesale in the garbage, then picks another up. For all their size those hands are remarkably deft. Keen with a knife.

"What do you want me to do?" No irony in that either. No resentment, no backbiting. Just a question.

witch

Must be instinct: to range far and wide for hunting, to spread out, to need room to roam. It's in his blood. It's part of what he is.

He comes over and starts helping. She glances up at him, sitting while he stands. She watches him hear what she's saying: he does hear. A fuse burning, a meter filling, but not a threat. How many more times before it alters her? When she is so used to being afraid -- at random, without warning -- that she lives every moment like that?

It's instinct. It's in her blood. It's part of what it means to be a living creature, an apex predator among most creatures and no stronger than any other prey among her own kind. Anyone, uncertain of what might come out of the shadows but certain that something eventually will, has to one day start living their entire life in a state of readiness. The irony is that it doesn't help you stay alive any longer, doesn't make your life better, when the whole purpose of the instinct is self-preservation.

It just gets caught in a feedback loop.

She's smart enough to see that process. Maybe experienced enough. And she's smart enough to know she doesn't want it, can't tolerate it, won't live like that. Even if she likes this better. Even if she likes him.

Smart enough to bite her tongue against scoffing or snorting or sighing when he says he wouldn't hurt her. The caveat: if he could help it. It's automatic: there are times when he can't help it. And he asks her what she wants him to do, and the answer comes easy enough. Because she's very smart.

"Want you to not hurt me when you can help it," she says, a bit tersely. "And admit that you can help it a lot more than you do."

wolfman

Wolf peels in silence for a while. Nothing but the soft sound of knife through vegetable. Not discrete little shave-shave-shaves but a single, continuous sound. Potato turns in his hands smooth as clay on a potter's wheel. A coil of peel begins to lengthen.

Eventually:

"Can help it more than I do." An admission, that. Not quite a confession; the tenor is different. Confession implies malintent. There's none here. "Just never had a reason to before, really. But guess you're a good enough reason."

witch

He admits. She looks past her hands and his hands and the potatoes they hold and the knives they wield. Looks at him a moment. And there is a difference: an intended one on her part. A spoken one on his. In this conversation, an admission and a confession are not the same thing.

What he says makes her smile, wryly, to one side. "Good enough," she echoes, amused rather than angered.

She peels potatoes. Does not say anything else for a while. Until, in fact, the potatoes have been gathered up and washed, the water turned off, a knife taken out to slice them up.

"About the other thing,"

says she.

wolfman

Wolf doesn't ask her why they're peeling potatoes. Doesn't snap his fingers for someone to come do it for him either. Certainly doesn't fold his arms and watch her toil, lesser-tribeswoman that she is.

Pitches in. Picks up a knife in one hand and a dirty, ground-dwelling vegetable in the other. Peels with the thoughtless, practiced ease of someone who probably ate potatoes -- cheap, nutritious and filling -- quite regularly through most of his life. Continues to do so right now, if that giant 20lb bag in the cupboard is any indication.

Eventually they finish. He rinses and she gets a knife out, a cutting board. Knows where they are now. She's lived here a while.

Likes living here. Likes him. Those thoughts are warm little embers in his heart, though damned if he can figure out why, except maybe that he doesn't mind her so much.

--

One other thing. Wolf looks over, eyebrow up.

witch

'The other thing'.

She isn't looking at him. She's chopping. Of course she wouldn't be looking at him, shouldn't be. She has a sharp chef's knife in one hand, is holding a somewhat slippery potato in the other. She slices evenly, though, thoughtlessly: perhaps, being Fianna, potatoes are simply instinct at this point. She slices them into rounds. Not too thin. Rather thick, actually.

"Why I was mad."

Not when she got home last ni -- this morning. Not then. Before. The time he asked about: her being mad at him since he'd said later. He knows now that she'd gotten over that, when she went out, that they were separate things, but:

"I was humiliated," is what she says.

Says it quietly.

wolfman

Humiliated.

Strikes a chord in the wolf. He gets that. What was it he told her? People out there, people trying to take something from you -- they're always going after your pride. Even if they don't want anything else, they want to take you down a notch. Stomp you into the mud as if all the world were a zero-sum game.

Wolf half-turns. There's a certain brutish grace to be found in strength. The span of the arm, the dance of muscles under skin. He tosses the washed knives into the drying rack. Folds his arms across his chest. For a while they're facing different directions. She's looking at her potatoes. He's got his back to the sink, looking over the breakfast bar into the high-ceiling spaces of the living room.

"Wasn't my intention to shame you."

witch

She huffs a breath. Does that a lot. Isn't the end of the world.

Let us also bear in mind she's holding a knife, slicing neatly and evenly through the vegetables, thunking against the cutting board.

"What was your intention?"

wolfman

Wolf shrugs. Shoulders roll with such titanic deliberation that they wouldn't look too out of place on some much larger beast. A bull, a tiger. A werewolf. It's a gesture of unease, though. Rough hand comes up, slides audibly over the back of his neck. Drops and folds again.

"Just didn't wanna right then. Broad daylight. People awake in the house. Cook coming over with dinner. Felt weird."

witch

"You didn't have to push me away."

Quick to that. Comes out of her before she quite gives the words her permission to be true. And she means literally, even though she doesn't use the word.

A few more thunks of the knife. "You could have said later without pushing me off."

Not that she argues the broad daylight, the people awake, the cook coming over. Not that she argues that he shouldn't have felt weird, that all those things are silly. He says he felt weird, and didn't wanna.

wolfman

Wolf grimaces, mouth twisting. Winces almost. Defensive: "Didn't think of that, okay? Just reacted. You didn't have to get back at me by going on a bender."

witch

She frowns. The knife is set down, because she's done with it. She turns to look at him. It's a withering look.

wolfman

Girl gets that look shot right back at her. Wolf's arms are folded; neck and shoulders a powerful, boorish slope. Glowers at her from under those tightened eyebrows of his. Her estimate of 30% non-asshole time might not be too far off the mark, given how often he frowns at her. Just like this.

"What. Saw the way you smirked right before you left. You gonna tell me revenge wasn't even a little bit on your mind?"

witch

He tries, but he can't wither like she can wither. He can crush. He can eviscerate. He can terrify. She can't do any of those things. So her look goes for the soft places. Poisons them, withers them slowly from within. He glowers. Claims her smirk.

"Getting away from you was on my mind," she says, firm.

Turns, then, to leave the potatoes drying for a few minutes on some paper towels while she gets some ground sausage from the fridge. Finds none. Gets bacon instead. She'll fry it up, use the grease for the potatoes, the eggs.

Exhales, as she starts heating a dab of oil in the cast-iron skillet on that massive stove with its icy blue flames.

She stops arguing about smirks, about what was or wasn't on her mind right that very second when she walked out the door. She just sighs. "I didn't go out to 'get back at' you, Rafael. That's about as foul a thing for you to think, or say to me, as flipping your shit because you thought someone else took off my dress."

Devon stares at the oil, watching it heat.

"Just needed to get away from you." Says it quietly.

wolfman

Wolf eyes her a moment. Tries to decide whether or not to buy her story.

Sighs, eventually. Rubs at the bridge of his nose with his knuckles. Rises up from his counter-lean and comes over, watching her ... do whatever it is she's doing with the potatoes and the sausage.

"Well, you got away from me. Feel better?"

witch

Cooking bacon, or sausage, or whatever it is, in a skillet. It sizzles. She stirs. Potatoes wait, so do eggs.

"I did," she says, stiffly. "And then you messed it up again, but we already went over that."

She finally looks up from the skillet, over at him. Sighs. Meat cooks in the pan, already fragrant. "Could we just be done with this? You didn't want to have sex. I felt bad. I went out, I got over it. You lost your mind, I slept, we talked. You didn't mean to humiliate me, I didn't go out to punish you, you're gonna try to bring your non-asshole time to thirty or even forty percent, and I'm to keep living here."

Devon is frowning, even though she just relayed the last twenty-four hours in the least dramatic or upsetting way possible, ending in what sounds like compromise and resolution. She's frowning anyway, deeply.

"I'm starving. So. Could we be done, now?"

wolfman

"Yeah." No complaint from the wolf. "We're done."

Meat cooks. Scent of it makes the wolf salivate. Reflexive response, that. Can't help it. He swallows, looks over at the sliced potatoes.

"What're you doing with these?"

witch

Silence and meat cooking. She can't hear him salivate, and doesn't turn to look at him. She's pretty today. You'd never know she was out til nearly-dawn, slept til sunset, came back with smudged makeup, torn stockings, tears, bloodstream saturated with alcohol and god knows what else. She glances up and over at him, then at the potatoes he's looking at, then back to him.

"Cooking them," she says, and it's short but it isn't terse. "In the grease from the meat. Then a couple of eggs." Is quiet a bit, watching the food cook, inhaling its scent. Her stomach growls in response. "You can have some, if you want."

wolfman

Wolf's grin comes quick and unexpected, the way it always does. " 'Course I want some." While she cooks, he starts taking down plates. Silverware.

"Bounced back from your wild night pretty quick," he adds. "Thought you'd be dragging yourself around like some swamp shambler today."

witch

That makes her smile. The grin, or the lazy and quick way he says 'course. Like: obvious. Look at the way his eyes sharpened when the meat started cooking. She doesn't even say anything else, at first, when he starts grabbing dishes. She doesn't mention that this is why they ended up peeling as many potatoes as they did before she stopped; she wasn't going to make food for just one person, with him standing right there.

Whatever else she is, contrary and transgressive and amoral and defiant, there are some things more sacred than sacred. Apparently sharing food with someone is one of those things.

"Wasn't that wild," she says, as she scoops the browned sausage onto a plate and replaces it in the pan with poatoes, which start sizzling instantly. She turns down the heat a bit: they've got to cook a little slower, to soften through as they crisp outside. She isn't being disingenuous with what she says. Her tone is sincere. For her, it wasn't that wild.

Devon shifts her weight as she watches over the potatoes on the stove. "I'll let you guess how."

wolfman

"Magic," instant deadpan. Or maybe he's just being serious. While girl does up the taters wolf reaches over and snaps a piece of sausage up, tipping his head back to drop it down the hatch. Hisses because it's burning hot. Wipes his fingers on a dishrag or something.

"How'd you learn? Magic, I mean. Not cooking."

witch

She doesn't swat at him, going for the sausage. Maybe one would expect that sort of playfulness. But as bizarre as she can be, she doesn't; she watches him with amusement as he discovers that yes, it is very very hot. Shakes her head and stirs potatoes.

He guesses correctly. And asks. She shrugs one shoulder. "Family," she says. "I grew up with it."

wolfman

Wolf takes that in silently. Snags another piece of sausage, very very hot or not. "Where's your family now?"

witch

"I'm Fianna," she tells him, and this time she does swat at his hand. Misses, but intentionally. She's more waving him off, like a fly. "So the short answer is: 'everywhere'."

wolfman

Wolf snorts. Makes assumptions, true or otherwise: "Keeping your true origins secret, huh. All right." Pulls the large-utensil drawer open, gets out a wooden spoon with which he divvies up the sausage. "So what other magic do you know?"

witch

"Maybe you're just nosy," she says, pointedly.

"Leave it for now," she adds, of the sausage. "Potatoes and eggs will be a while; let the meat stay warm." And waves him off. "Go make hot chocolate or something."

wolfman

"Maybe I'm curious 'bout you as a person," wolf retorts. "Just go back to thinking of you as my anonymous hot fuck if you rather."

Gets waved off. Doesn't make hot chocolate. Might not have hot chocolate, or if he does, doesn't know where it is. Gets out a gallon of milk instead, and a jug of orange juice. Breakfast drinks for breakfast foods. At five p.m.

witch

She is smiling to herself, small and secret, for a moment there. And then she is kicking out toward his shin with her booted foot, again not even really trying to connect. "Not your anything," she informs him, somewhere between haughty and amused. "Plus, you know my name,"

as though this stops her from being anonymous, hot fuck or otherwise. Nevermind he only knows the Devon part. She, on the other hand, has seen mail or papers around the house, has heard James or Franklin or someone say the van der Valk part.

He gets milk and juice out. She laughs a little. "Come here," she also says, since she has to stir, can't leave the stove, et cetera.

wolfman

Girl's smiling that secret little smile. Something in the pit of the wolf's stomach warms up. So he looks away. Makes things complicated, when she makes him feel like that -- twinging and warm and like the ground beneath his feet suddenly turned liquid.

She kicks. He doesn't even bother to dodge. Shoots her a mock-glower while she tells him he knows her name. "Congratulations to me."

Milk in one hand. Juice in the other. She wants him to come over, which he has doubts about. Does as requested after a moment, though, hands still occupied. Stops about a foot away. Looms a little less now that he's not stomping around in manwolf shape all day and night. Still looms.

witch

He hangs out about a foot away from her. She, waiting on him to get closer, finally realizes he's not going to and looks over at him, holding those jugs of breakfast drinks. Her lips purse into a smirk. She gives a little eyeroll, turning back around. Doesn't say a word; maybe whatever she was summoning him over for, she's changed her mind about. Potatoes, sliced thin and cooked in hot grease, soften and crisp in due time. She just hums to herself while she cooks them, eventually scooping helpings into the plates beside the sausage. Grabs the eggs and starts cooking them.

Over-medium. Which is how she likes them. Doesn't ask him what his preference is.

wolfman

Wolf stands there a good minute or two before he finally blurts: "Hell am I standing here for?"

witch

Eggs sizzle, too. They're going to be flavored a bit with salt and pepper, sausage grease, like the whole meal. It's going to be delicious. If she were still hungover it would be exactly what she'd need. As it is, having not eaten for something like eighteen hours, it's going to be just what she still needs anyway.

"No idea," she says breezily. "Too far away to be any use."

wolfman

Wolf scoffs. This light, disbelieving, laughing sound. Milk jug thuds down. Orange jug thuds down. Hands still cold from gripping the handles, wolf wraps his arms sudden and hot and unexpected around the girl. Folds himself around her from behind, giving her a quick hard squeeze.

"You never specified how far," he points out. "You wanna maybe come by my room tonight?"

witch

She doesn't startle when the thuds the jugs down. She just looks over her shoulder at him, watching. He comes up behind her and wraps her up, and she smiles, meaning for it to be small, but it opens up into a grin. She leans into his chest, one hand coming down to rest over his arms across her middle. She still has eggs to cook, after all.

Turns her head, rubbing her nose on his arm, nuzzling him where his scent is strong. She has that luxury, that gift, that he'll never have. Not with her, at least.

Naturally he still points out that his standing there for a minute and a half holding juice and milk is her fault, and she ignores him. She relaxes, exhales. And idly flips one of the eggs over to continue frying.

He asks what he asks.

She smiles the way she does, eyes briefly closed.

"Maybe," she tells him, eyes opening, looking up at him.

wolfman

Temptation's too much to resist. Wolf ducks his head and kisses the girl. Quick and light, though, and drawing away a second later. Daytime still. Sort of. Can't remember if he told cook to come by tonight or not. Servants skulking around, none of them well known to him, none of them even known to him two months ago.

"Think about it," he says, and goes get some glasses out.

witch

Makes her catch her breath, when he kisses her. A sharp little inhale, but she doesn't lean into it. Doesn't chase it. She doesn't further it, parting her lips or tracing his with her tongue to invite him to linger. She accepts. And her eyes are open when he draws back, and she watches him as he tells her think about it, stepping away. Skin feels cool where he used to be standing, even after just a few seconds. Even with that heavy sweater covering her. Watches him for a moment, moving, drawing glasses down.

Turns back to the skillet, licks her lips.

--

Potatoes and eggs and sausage are all done soon enough. Milk and juice fill glasses. And so it's breakfast again, even though the windows are black from night having fallen outside. They are at the breakfast bar again. Devon hops up on one of the stools, sitting with her booted feet dangling, digging in like she hasn't eaten in. Well. Eighteen hours or more. She doesn't talk much.

wolfman

Wolf gets potatoes and sausage and eggs over medium on his plate. Not the way he likes 'em but oh well. Girl starts heading over to the breakfast bar but wolf goes another way.

"Hey." Standing halfway across that open-plan floorspace, "I got a dinner table."

So he does. It's glass and it's modern and, like the rest of this place, doesn't really carry his mark. Doesn't seem like something he'd buy, doesn't seem like something he really owns. Even if he uses it now. Still, if she seems amenable, wolf heads over there. Puts his plate and his glass of milk down. Goes back for his glass of OJ.

witch

So.

They end up at the dining table. She sits wherever; it doesn't seem to matter to her now whether he's at her side or across the way or several seats down. She goes for the chair nearest and starts eating before she is even entirely sitting down. Sometimes he eats quickly, forcefully.

Devon, tonight, inhales.

wolfman

Total lack of conversation. Both of them tucking into their food like it's the first they've had for days. She's feeding a disappeared hangover. He's just feeding himself, seems like.

Wolf slows down before the girl, though. For once. Sits back with his food half-finished. Gulps down about half a glass of milk and half a glass of OJ. He's sitting along one long side of the table. She's along the other, kitty-corner. Wolf stretches his long legs out under the table, kicks the chair opposite him out a little so he can rest his feet on the bottom rungs more comfortably.

"I like you living here too." Just says it, out of the blue. Shrugs, watching her, pulling that glass of juice over closer to him. "Make things more interesting."

witch

When he leans back, Devon glances at his food. When she finishes her own plate, she eyes his again. Flicks her eyes up at him, but not to ask. She inches her hand over and, unless stopped, drags his plate across the table and devours whatever he's left behind.

At the end, she chugs a glass of milk. She immediately tucks her legs up, knees to chest, shins to table's edge. She leans back, exhaling. Her eyes are somewhat glassy now from satiation. Her look, given to him, is lazy.

"I know," she tells him, after a moment. Corner of her mouth quirks.

wolfman

Wolf's staring right across the table at her when she looks at his food. Takes a gulp as she's sneaking her hand over and quick as lightning grabs that hand,

smirks. Lets go.

"Okay. Whatever. Not like I'm hungry or anything." He gives his plate a nudge. She finishes it, and while she does, he goes back to the kitchen and gets some leftover something-or-other. Some sort of casserole from lunch. Ends up eating that cold out of a tupperware container while she chugs her milk.

Wolf holds the casserole out toward her when she sets her glass down. Mouth full, eyebrows up in offering.

"Oh yeah?" he challenges, food-muffled. "How."

witch

That actually startles her. He grabs her hand and she flinches, her fingers curling in to her palm, her body going still. Not her fault that her heart slams in her chest, her very sinews quivering with preparation for flight. She draws her hand back when he lets go, smirking, nudging his plate over. And she wrinkles her nose instead, ends up not stealing his food, picks up her glass of milk. "No thanks," she says, with surprising idleness, and chugs it.

wolfman

So wolf doesn't get up. Doesn't go to the fridge. Doesn't get a tupperware full of casserole.

Sits back, frowning now. Glances at his plate. Nods her toward it.

"Eat it if you're hungry. I got leftovers in the fridge."

witch

Like a standoff, for some reason. She looks at him, he frowns at her. "It's cool," she says. And might say more, but there's nothing there. She watches him, curled up in the dining chair again.

Says nothing. And it's awkward.

wolfman

Wolf's plate sits there in the middle of the table. After a while, wolf gets up. Goes to the kitchen after all. Yanks the fridge open and gets that tupperware of casserole out; comes back and pops it open.

Ends up stubbornly eating cold casserole out of a plastic box while the delicious breakfast food girl cooked him cools on the plate.

witch

And she, perhaps as stubbornly, ignores the delicious breakfast food she cooked and shared with him sitting there cooling on the plate. She wipes her lips with the pad of her thumb and slinks her legs back under the table, then pushes her chair back. Stands up. Walks off to the living room, throwing herself down sideways in his recliner, legs dangling over the arm. Picks up the remote and flips on the set.

wolfman

"You've gotta be kidding me."

Girl hears him muttering that in her wake. Not like he tries to say it out of her earshot or anything. Plate scrapes back over. Fork scrapes plate. In twenty seconds flat the rest of that delicious nutritious 5pm breakfast is gone.

Wolf follows her into the living room. Living area. Whatever it's supposed to be called in an open floorplan like this. Since she took his favorite recliner, he's reduced to sitting on the sofa.

"You want some casserole, if you're still hungry?"

witch

By the time he finishes eating all the food and comes into the living room, Devon has settled on some channel showing Heathers. The current scene is at a funeral. This movie has several.

He comes over and she feels his approach more than she hears his footsteps. She ignores him for three counts, then looks over at him. "I'm all right," she says, a little quiet.

Another count, though not as long. She decides to mute the movie, draping herself over his usual seat, folding her hands over the arm of the chair so she can rest her chin on them. She twists in the seat, all angles and contortion and laziness.

"What does it matter, if it's daylight? Or if your --" she struggles with the word 'servants', for a moment, as though it makes her uncomfortable somehow, and yet: "-- servants are about?" Her brows have tugged together. "Why should that make such a difference?"

wolfman

Topic makes him uncomfortable. Wolf stiffens visibly; his manner closes down. He shifts in his seat, then sits back and puts his feet up on the coffee table in some attempt at idleness.

"They're not my servants. They're just people that came with the house. And I don't like broadcasting my business."

witch

That pull to the corner of her mouth. She keeps her voice relatively low, but it carries over to him, like she has some way of sending it no matter where he is.

Who knows. She might.

"Didn't seem to care, the first time."

wolfman

Wolf sends a dark glance her way, caught somewhere between scowl and smirk.

"Wasn't really thinking much, first time."

witch

Her eyes are dark, but not their color: just the look in them, neither scowling nor smirking. Shadowed, though. Dark with something else entirely.

"Sorta like it better when you don't think much," she murmurs. Her mouth does quirk then, half-smirked. "Not that good at it, anyway."

wolfman

"Ow," wolf complains. "Words like that are gonna make a grown man cry."

witch

The smirk grows. She flicks her eyebrows at him, then twists around a little more, picking up the remote and unmuting the movie. She snuggles into the recliner then, watching it play out.

wolfman

Wolf snorts under his breath as girl goes back to her movie. He watches a bit. Hasn't seen it before. Can't get into it. Too much 80s hair. Creak of leather and he's up on his feet, giving her recliner a gentle pull as he passes it.

"Going for a hunt," he says. "Back by midnight."

witch

The recliner rocks and she glances up, looking at him. She is laid out on her right side, facing the television, her hair over one arm of the chair, her legs over the other. She smiles at the tug, the little rock of the seat. Smiles at him. It's not quite as secret, though it is still small, enigmatic. He can just barely see her teeth, the smile arrested before it becomes a grin.

"All right," she says. That's a good five, nearly six hours away still. She bumps the toe of her boot against his leg. "See you."

wolfman

Hand comes down; cups her ankle briefly through her boot. That little smile of hers is returned. Wolf's is small, too. Lopsided and lazy. No real goodbye: just a squeeze of his hand, and then he heads out.

witch

This grab doesn't make her startle. His hand isn't like lightning this time, doesn't snatch. Just touches. Wraps around her ankle, as though holding her at a joint satisfies some need of his. Which is an unsettling thought at best, but she doesn't dwell on that.

Watches him as he goes. Curls up a little as the door closes behind him, and watches her movie. Which she has seen about a thousand times.