brekkie?

witch

She sleeps. He sleeps. And his arm is around her and her arm is over him and they're curled together in his bed like they do this every night. Like they've been doing this forever. She rubs her foot mindlessly, sleepily against his foot without meaning to, without caring. She sighs in her sleep as he is settling in. Eventually she's still.

That scent comes to him in his dreams, for a moment. That part of his mind, wandering, still cannot place it, cannot name it, but does not need to. It runs from him, and also surrounds him, and she's there. It goes away. It's all right: another dream comes inward, steady as the tide, washing the rest away and putting something new in its place.

--

At some point during the night she wakes. She stirs, a bit sudden, and groggily looks at her hand on his chest, then up at his jaw, his sleeping face.

Stares for a while, dreary-eyed, thinking the unfathomable and unnamed.

Slipping out of his bed and leaving isn't a decision. It's an action, and feels inevitable, and she doesn't want to question it, or explain it, or understand it. She moves, careful not to wake him, and traipses out of his room. Down the hall. Finds her own, and it's dark and cool and her bed is not warm with a heavy man-shaped creature waiting in it. She goes under those covers, simultaneously grateful for, grieved by, the lack of him.

--

Morning comes. Then tips forward, the sun melting. It's November now, and the air feels like it. Late morning, then. He wakes alone.

Smells something downstairs, hears:

Devon is down there. She's wearing a little black dress, looks more like a t-shirt. Cute little puffed sleeves though, follows the line of her body, is still rather short. Sketched out in white on the dress is the skyline of Paris, all layered and mashed together. She's wearing light grey boots, knock-off Uggs, fuzzy and warm and soft-soled. Her hair is straightened, but she isn't wearing makeup yet. She has about twenty thin black plastic bangles on her right arm and a couple of cheap silver-colored plastic and clear-faceted plastic bracelets masquerading as gems. Whatever: it sparkles. Her left wrist bears a single but wide silver-looking cuff.

Making tea. And toast. Nothing else, yet.

When she sees him, coming downstairs because there's no other way out unless he jumps through a window to avoid her, she just smiles. Thin, but tucked upward at both corners, enigmatic, unknowable.

"Brekkie?" she asks, as if she's cooking anything that could seriously touch the appetite of a wolf.

wolfman

Nothing impedes her departure from the wolf's bed. He's deeply asleep when she stirs, rises, slips from under his arm and from between his sheets. Even in slumber his rage is potent. His presence is unmistakable. When he breathes, slow and deep, whole room seems to breathe with him.

Air outside tastes lighter. Thinner. Girl finds her way to her room. No servant crosses her path. No walk of shame.

--

Morning comes and the wolf wakes. Consciousness comes slowly the way it does when he's not startled out of sleep by impending combat. Sunlight's coming through the big windows. Bed's rumpled and slept in and used but there's no smell but his own. Girl could've been a dream. Figment of his imagination. There's a strand of long dark hair on his pillows, though.

Not a dream, then. Not imagination. Wolf sits up slow, muscles liquid-lazy from sleep. Rubs his hands over his face and throws back the covers. Even downstairs girl hears his feet thump to the ground. The thudding of his trail from bed to toilet to sink.

Five or ten minutes before master bedroom door cracks open. James appeared when girl started messing around in the kitchen. Asked if he could have the cook make her anything. Had this unpleasant knowing look about him. Disappeared back to whatever rock, whatever crack in the wall he came from when she declines.

James reappears now for his employer, standing at the bottom of the stairs, just barely this side of the line between deferential and uppity. Wolf comes thumping down the spiral, lounge pants on and nothing else, hair tousled every which way. Squinting in the bright light. James asks him the same thing. Wolf's reply is a grunt, unintelligible, and James correctly assumes this is a no.

Disappears. Whatever rock, whatever crack in whatever wall.

Wolf finds the remote control and clicks the TV on. It's just rote. Some car ad plays on mute while he shoves his hands in his pants and scratches his balls, then gives the waistband an inch's worth of a hike. It slides back to where it was, hooked low on his hips, when he turns and sees the girl there.

Wolf looks visibly surprised. Doesn't quite look abashed, but at least has the good grace to wash his hands again when he gets in the kitchen. Girl smiles at him and wolf can't seem to meet her eyes. Scrubs at his hands, those big palms, long fingers, blunt nails. Last night he touched her with those hands. Last night he put those fingers inside her. Rubbed her off with that thumb. Suddenly the wolf bends, cups a handful of water to his face, splashes it over his brow and his cheeks and his jaw. Straightens with a quick shake of his head, hands braced on the edge of the sink.

Water beads run down his neck. Race each other across rugged terrain: his chest, his abdomen, the expanse of his back. He turns when she speaks.

"What?" Then he figures it out. "Yeah. Sure. What are you making?" Beat of pause. "Thought you left."

witch

On the dresser near the door, there's her neatly folded doll's dress, her Mary Janes, her corset, her bra, her panties. If she were to lift them to her nose she would not smell last night's sex. She might smell him on her, the way he pawed at her, nuzzled her, sought her out, but it's unlikely. Her nose is not a wolf's nose. But she notices them when she walks in, late at night. They are still there when she wakes up. She doesn't put them away, or dump them in a hamper for one of Rafael's servants to take care of for her, or for her to drag downstairs to the laundry room herself. She just... leaves them there. Like tokens, emblems. Or something.

When she leaves her room, straight-haired and bangled and in that short little dress and cozy slipper-boots, she looks down the hall at where he's supposed to be. The dark line of the crack between door and floor seethes with his breathing. She thinks of going in and waking him up. She thinks of hopping onto him, legs astride his waist, and patting his chest like a drum til he wraps her up and turns her under him again just to keep her still. She thinks of lots of things, but that doesn't mean she's going to do them. She walks past the jacket he left hanging on the banister and past the spot where they fucked, and dances lightly downstairs.

Where James is.

She's not that familiar with any of the other shadows that linger near the wolf. She's wary when he looks at her like he does, thin lips on the edge of smirking at her, but her own face stays smooth. She tosses her hair off her shoulder and tells him she's got it. Sticks her tongue out at him when his back turns.

--

Kettle pierces later, and tea is brewing by the time she hears the door upstairs open. She looks upward, as though she could see through the division between one floor and another, then tracks her eyes to the top of the stairs. She watches him as he thumps downward, buttering her toast and adding raspberry jam. He hasn't showered, and he hasn't combed his hair, and she watches him as he grunts at Unpleasant James and goes into the living room.

Her brow lifts and her mouth curves in quirking amusement as he turns on the television and shoves his hand down his pants to scratch himself. She presses her lips hard together not to laugh, and so that's the expression she's wearing when he turns. What she is doing is standing next to a steaming mug of that sweet-smelling tea she drinks, smoothing jam over a piece of toast. And watching him. And not laughing.

Not anything else, either, even though he looks surprised to see her. Even though he didn't come looking for her, and clearly did not expect to see her.

She puts away whatever she thinks of that. If she thinks anything. Smiles and asks him about brekkie instead.

He washes, and she stands at the edge of the island where she was to start with, taking a bite off the corner of her toast. She watches him scrub his hands. Watches how he bends slightly to reach the sink, his back a great curve. There are no red marks from her nails on his back, though truth be told she never scratched that hard. There's no sign of the body-shredding wounds he took not so very long ago. He's untouched, at least by her, at least by things she has seen with him. She does see, by the cold light of day, the knife that went into his back, the shot that scattered across his chest, the claws that opened his gut. He splashes his face.

Devon looks away. Is called back, blue eyes finding his, when she hears his voice and sees him turn. Her eyes flick to his navel, then back up.

"Tea and toast," she says. She doesn't expect him to want either of those things. She's seen how he eats.

That beat of a pause is quite close to an awkward silence. He can hear her munching on toast, though her lips are closed.

Thought you left.

Her chewing pauses. Her eyebrows lift. She resumes, then swallows. "The house?" As though this is absurd. "Why?"

wolfman

Girl saying it like that makes him hear the absurdity too. Wide berth between them: the gap from one counter to the other, from sink to toaster. Wolf folds his arms defensively over his chest, the complex anatomy of his forearms brought forth.

"Don't know. You weren't in bed." Way that comes out makes him grimace. Sounds so passive-aggressive. "Not saying that to whine or complain. Didn't surprise me actually. Just figured maybe you felt like you made a mistake. So," makes his way to his reasoning, "thought maybe you left too."

He straightens up. Mops his hand down his damp face, wipes it dry on the outside of his arm. Comes across to her, his rage a stormfront ahead of him. No; not to her. To the toaster. He picks up a piece of toast and then goes around her, opens the fridge. Pulls out peanut butter. Strawberry jam. A carton of eggs.

Silverware in the drawer by the stove. If she didn't know that before she does now. Wolf unscrews the peanut butter and starts slathering it on; uses the same knife in the jam. Doesn't particularly care that he leaves streaks of one in the other. When he's done he flips the knife around and passes it to her handle-first. Something about thatswift-fingered deftness is indicative: wolf knows his way around edged weapons.

"Don't have to talk about last night again if you don't want to."

witch

She's munching on her toast. Licks raspberry jam off her lip. Sees what she does in his posture, hears what she does in his voice. Watches him as he comes closer, and she swallows her current bite of toast, taking a sip of air. But he brushes past her, around her, and she glances over her shoulder at him as he opens the fridge.

There are a few slices of toast on a plate. Still somewhat warm but rapidly cooling, as toast does. These are the things he grabs, making a peanut butter and jam sandwich. She hasn't said a word. About being in his bed when he woke or, as the case is, not. About whether she thinks he's whining. About him not being surprised that she skittered out of his bed while he was sleeping. About figuring that she thinks she made a mistake.

About the wording there: he doesn't say figured maybe you felt it was a mistake. About the delicate difference between that and what he does actually say. About the chance, previously bothersome and now very slim in her mind, that he might wake and feel a mistake.

The words he chooses don't leave much room for the intimation that he does. She thinks.

He's handing her a knife, and she doesn't take it, doesn't need it. Besides: he's distracting her. She swallows her toast again, and lifts her mug to sip her tea, then sets it back down. Her eyes stay on him, on his, more or less the entire time. Stay on him when he tells her they don't -- she doesn't? -- need to talk about last night again, ever again, if she doesn't want to.

"All right," she says, the vowels round, the tone easy, leaning-back, lazy. Then she does lean back, lazy, setting her elbows on the counter behind her, wrists draping off. The posture hikes that dress up another inch or so. She just looks at him. Watches him.

"Don't need to talk about fucking."

wolfman

Hard for him to watch her lick her lips. Reminds him of those lips opening under his fingers. To his mouth. Makes him think of her tongue touching fingertips; touching his.

Wolf looks away as girl leans back, propping elbows on counter. Wonders if she knows how that makes her tits look. Of course she fucking knows, he thinks, why else would she do it. He thinks her signals are mixed. He thinks he's not sure what's going on here. He thinks she just said she doesn't want to talk about it, and then she said fucking, and then she leaned like that, and then her dress rode up and her breasts lifted. Wolf stops looking at her. Fuck's sake.

Turns the knife around again. Slaps jam on his toast. Realizes he did that twice and scowls. Knife goes clattering into the sink and pan goes slamming onto the burner -- real gas burners, none of that electric-ceramic shit -- and wolf cracks two eggs in one hand, then two more. Squeezes the yolks onto the pan. Shakes shells and goop into a trash can. Runs his hand under the water.

"Want eggs?"

witch

That's hardly fair. Like he doesn't know how he looks walking around shirtless, lounge pants low on his hips. Like he doesn't know what she thinks of when he says, just a little tightly, that she wasn't in bed. She doesn't mean to do anything when she licks her lips except get a spot of jam off, so she doesn't look like a mess, a slob, or perhaps worst: a child.

But leaning like that. Looking at him like that. She wants him to look at her. And see her. She wants him to come closer, and she wants him to know: sure. we don't need to talk about it.

Just like: doesn't have to mean anything.

it is what it is.

But he looks away, moves away, puts a second coating of jam on his toast, starts beating the hell out of his kitchen. She turns, swiveling her lean, as he washes his hands again, or at least rinses off the worst of the salmonella. She has her forearms out on the granite, hands loosely linked.

"Sure," she says. Watches him a few more seconds.

"What's wrong?"

wolfman

"What?" Distracted: second time this morning he's asked her that. Wolf frowns at her as he's shaking the eggs, getting a fork out of his silverware drawer to scramble them right there in the pan. "Nothing. Get me some salt." He points with a nod. "In there."

witch

Sometimes she can see right through people. When she's doing a reading, when she's having them cut cards or draw runes. She knows, even if the cards don't, what they're looking for. Sometimes she knows even if they can't figure it out for themselves. Sometimes when she tells someone their fortune, there's no magic in it. There's just her.

Right now she has no deck in front of her, no pendulum, no spirit board. She's got no tools of divination to tell her what is going on in his mind or what he might be wanting. Well: once that cup is empty she'll have tea leaves, but she doesn't like reading tea leaves much.

Devon sighs. It's quiet. She opens the cabinet he nods at, taking the salt down and sliding it over the countertop to him. As good an excuse as any to walk over to him. "Didn't ask me how I like my eggs," she comments, as though that's all it is: an observation. Standing there next to him, leaning on a whole new counter, looking at her hands.

wolfman

Wolf's looking at the pan. Runny eggs are turning into scrambled eggs. Salt is delivered: he takes it out of her hand. Cliche or not, the brushing of their fingers, his pinky, her index, sends an electric tingle straight down to the pit of his stomach. He salts the eggs. He peppers them, if she was kind enough to pass that over too. He scrambles them some more and then girl makes him snort with her comment.

"What do I look like, a goddamn diner?" Reaches over the pan, flicks the burner off. Finishes cooking on the residual heat in those heavy, high-quality pans. Thousand dollars a set or more. He's never had such nice stuff before, and so much of it. Waiting for the eggs to finish, he crunches down the last of his PB&J. Dusts his hands off, takes down plates. She's closer now. He has to reach around her, behind her head. "Duck," he says, and a plate whisks out by her ear.

Wolf sets them down. Wolf pauses a moment, conferring with himself. Wolf looks at girl, something burning in his eyes; burning on the tip of his tongue. It never makes it out. He dumps eggs onto their plates, splitting unevenly. Pan goes into the sink along with the wooden spoon. Wolf picks up one of the plates, leaves the other where it is. Circles around to eat at the breakfast bar.

witch

Sure, pepper. Salt she slides: hits the edge of the stove and nearly topples. Doesn't. Pepper, though, he takes from her hand, and if she feels a surge of something half emotion and half biology she doesn't show it. He seasons the eggs and asks if he looks like a diner.

So, to be contrary:

"Yes," she informs him, then archly: "A veritable greasy spoon."

Next thing she knows he's smelling of peanut butter and jam and sleep and himself and reaching behind her and around her and she turns her head a little into that arm, toward the interior of his bicep, and perhaps for that quick moment her eyes come very close to closing and her nose touches his skin as though she's inhaling and her lips brush but do not kiss and he has to be careful not to bean her in the head with a piece of dining-ware. She does inhale, smells him, turning her head again and opening her eyes and looking at him, decidedly not looking at him for more than a half-second.

Ducks her head and slips under his arm and when there are plates of eggs ready she adds her half-eaten toast to her plate and goes to sit on another barstool. With her tea and toast and eggs. Which are scrambled.

She likes them over medium.

wolfman

Remarkably that draw a laugh from him, half-breath, half-sound. "Least you could say I look like a new American fusion diner," he says. "I've gotten a lotta upgrades, last two months."

For a moment they're so close. For a moment the tip of her nose, the inside of his bicep. Wolf feels that one too. Right down to his toes. A moment later they nearly spring apart. Go to opposite sides of the breakfast bar. Wolf eats silently.

witch

For that he gets a look. Just a look, dry and unimpressed, amused and holding up the pretense of being untouchable.

And they are close, and he had a very good excuse for reaching around her and she had no excuse at all for the way she turned into him like she did. They presumably both have excuses, reasons, why they part. Why, in fact, she doesn't sit across from him but beside him.

Well: one seat between them. Her feet swing slightly as she eats her breakfast. Does not look at him.

wolfman

Wolf doesn't swing his legs. Couldn't anyway; feet are resting flat on the floor. Hunches over his food as he eats, elbow most certainly on the tabletop. Fork scrapes plate. Toast disappear. Eggs disappear. Gets up in the middle to grab a glass. Hesitates a second before pouring tea. It's not horrid. He drinks it.

Plate empty soon enough. He's still looking at it. "Going up to my other house a couple days. Gotta take care of some crap. You're welcome to keep living here long as you need to."

Wolf drains his tea. His swallowing is audible. So is the clink of his glass back down. Pauses there, hand around his glass, heavy shoulders rolled forward.

"Like it if you were still here." Gruff, low. "If you want to be."

witch

The tea is not horrid. The tea is a proprietary blend, which is only a fancy way of saying that she makes it herself. It has a faint floral quality, sweet somehow. Tastes like morning in some other season: a wetter season, warmer, brighter. And she's surprised that he pours it, watches him as he pours it. No less surprised that he doesn't dump it down the sink in distaste.

She eats far more slowly than he does. Munches on her toast, eats bites of her egg on a separate slice with butter, no jam. Sips her tea. She doesn't gobble. She sits, but not primly; she leans on the bar as well, and they have breakfast in relative silence. Well: without conversation. They can hear each other chewing.

Then: other house, which makes her glance over. Her brows flick, only for a moment. But she says nothing. He tells her, again, as though it may have changed: long as you need to. That at least tells her that he's accepted that she essentially moved in the night she almost got scalped. Hauled all her worldly goods here from the hostel and set up house in his spare bedroom because he dared to say those five words the first time. Hasn't moved out, even when he's made her cry. Even when he manhandled her, though if we're telling the truth: she only came back last night to pack up her things and get out again.

It went differently.

She takes a breath, and it pauses for a moment, held in her chest. She eventually exhales.

"Oh."

There is more after that. There is an I was going to -- and a something after that. He can hear the fact that more is unsaid as clearly as he can hear the underpinning of disappointment in that one word.

Her feet sway back and forth. She moves eggs around her plate, considering another bite.

"Yeah, I think I'll stay. Since you're okay with it."

wolfman

Wolf isn't sure what to make of that oh. The words behind it, sensed, unheard, undeciphered.

"Good." All he has to say. All he can come up with. It is good: he asked her to stay and she did. Not that he actually asked. Not that she actually promised. Still. Close enough. Close as they're gonna get.

And yet: wolf lingers a while. He turns the glass around and around on the countertop. Head down, shoulders cambered like that; bestial, at once tense in his bones and sure in his skin. Couple seconds go by. He looks at her.

"I say something wrong?"

witch

She's not looking at him now. She moves a bit of scrambled egg around in a circle. Not her favorite. Not high on the list. She ate a few bites. She ate more toast. Her fork tines scrape the plate lightly, lightly.

"Nope," she says, certainly, though it's a moment before she looks up and over at him. Looks at him, thinks of something, but instead says:

"When are you leaving?"

wolfman

Finds him still looking at her when she looks over at him. Feels like the first time their eyes have met since -- well. Since he was inside her, maybe. Wolf looks just the same: intense eyes, stormy brow. Unshaven, unshowered, uncouth.

Beat later he looks away. "Soon. Maybe I'll shower first. Then take my bike. Can leave Franklin here to get you around, if you want."

witch

She smiles a little. Not the sort of warm, gleeful, welcoming smile that invites one in kind. These smiles of hers seem like something she contains, owns. Even in revealing them, they aren't given away. She smiles like that now, when he looks at her.

Is still smiling like that, when he looks away.

"Cool," is what she has to say to that.

wolfman

Cool.

Smile's a cool thing too. Shuttered. Secret. Wolf stares at her a long time this time, studying her profile. The dash of freckles across her nose. Those shocking blue eyes. Even side-on -- particularly side-on -- their clarity and hue is remarkable; jeweled. Wolf is frowning at her, standing now, a breath from growling. From frustration. From wanting. Something.

"Okay." Abrupt, he pushes off, straightens up. "See you round then."

witch

That, she senses. The nearness to the growl, the edge of something unnamed and unformed. She's not amused by him, but her smile doesn't falter. She watches him as he gets up, and doesn't ask him again what's wrong. Doesn't offer again what she didn't say before. He gets up and she watches him, then looks away, going back to her breakfast.

"See you around."