Sun rises over the water, next morning. Wolf's awake when girl opens her eyes. Standing over by a window. Nicer hotel would have coffee for him. Breakfast on a platter, delivered to his door. Not here.
Nothing but the surf. The sand. The sun lifting silently out of the water, lurid red. Then gold. Then white.
Paints his skin those colors. Wolf stands bare as the day he was born, hands loose at his sides. Lets the sun, patron of his Tribe, patron of his Lodge, bathe him.
--
A day by the beach. Not a lot of tourists around here. Couple local kids digging for clams or something. Other than that wolf and girl practically have the beach to themselves. Wolf brought shorts, turns out. Faded old board shorts, once black, now greyish. Rides low on his hips; an inch under where his obliques tuck into the bone. Lower abdomen flat and taut. Back a smooth taper down from those imposing shoulders. Limbs long and clean and strong, sure on the shifting sand.
Scars and imperfections easier to see by day. Strange but all this time and she hasn't really seen him like this. Shirtless, bare, in the daylight.
They stroll down the beach together. Sometimes wind their fingers together. Girl splashes in the water and wolf wades through the shallows, head down, ruminative. Stands there watching the horizon if she swims. Waits for her to come back to him, then slings his arm over her wet shoulders. Pulls her against his side, heavy-pawed, saying nothing.
Some guy selling meat on skewers in the shade of some windblown coastal pines. Wolf buys food for them both, communicating in gestures and the exchange of money. They eat sitting on the sand, looking at the water.
--
Drive on sometime in the early afternoon. Follow the beach, taking winding little roads. Some aren't even paved. Spend the night in a roadside motel with clean sheets but little else. In the morning the coastline curves a little northward, and they follow it.
Christmas Day when they get to Yucatán. Wolf wouldn't have known it except for all the decorations. Christmas carols playing on the radio and in the stores are familiar but foreign: neither of them speak the language. Mérida's a big city compared to the places they've been. Got more streets than one. Got stores, government, industry.
Wolf finds them a nice hotel, a real hotel, fine sheets and thick towels and quality toiletries. Windows that open to a cobblestone street. Architecture's Spanish Colonial here, with echoes now and then of a much older, bygone age. Four thousand years ago the Mayans rose in these hot, humid jungles. Built their pyramids and wrote their histories. Died out or were assimilated with the coming of the ships; left only shadows behind. Their stone monuments crumbling in the wild. Their culture in local cuisine. Their bloodlines still echoing in the faces of the people.
--
It's called the Cave of Swallows, because swallows live in the walls. It yawns like a bottomless pit right in the dense of the jungle. Opening stretches almost two hundred feet across, and it's a thousand feet to the bottom.
They leap in or they climb down. Parachute or rope. Sit at the edge of a subterranean lake of which they can't see the far shore. Such immense darkness all around, there at the bottom, with the sky an impossible blue above. Stay here long enough and wolf might forget he was from the world above. Might think the sky was the darkness; that patch of blue a hole in the world.
Wolf wonders if girl feels the history in this place. The unwritten, unspoken spool of time unwinding here in the darkness, back to the beginning.
--
Four days before New Year's Eve and Cancún is flooded with tourists. Wolf doesn't want to stay long. Grudgingly accompanies girl to some beach barbecue, some party thrown by twenty-something college kids from Iowa or Vermont or something. Spends most his time drinking beer near the water, far from the people that get drunker and drunker and wilder and wilder as the sun sets, as the night falls.
When someone starts breaking bottles, when someone starts taking their clothes off by the bonfire, when the cheers and shouts start sounding like howls, wolf's had enough. Finds the girl and takes her hand and says wanna go?
Walk away into the night. Keep driving.
--
Through Belize, through Guatemala, through Honduras and Nicaragua. Following the coastline while the distance between the oceans diminishes. So hot now, night and day, with humidity that never lifts, not even when it rains. Wolf spends most his time shirtless, in those board shorts. In Panama they do what everyone says you can do there: watch the sun set over the Atlantic, rise over the Pacific.
Then Colombia. Then Venezuela, where they live in a hotel for two days waiting for their visas. Passports fly out one morning, back the next night. Visa on wolf's passport is the first he's ever had. He's curious about it, touching the thick paper, the words in two languages, the anti-counterfeit patterns and holograms. Wolf's picture is on the visa, glowering, eyes ferocious.
Couple days before New Year's when they cross the border into Brazil. Still a long drive through the equator, through the goddamn Amazon rainforest, until they reach the populous coast: the cities where girl's family probably lives. Natal, Recife, Salvador, Brasília; or perhaps Goiânia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre. Still a long way to go, but
suddenly girl speaks the language. Understands the road signs. That's something. Counts for something.
witchSometimes she sleeps so deeply. Closes her eyes and drapes herself over him or curls up beside him and is gone, lost to him and to the world. She is sometimes afraid of him, but she does not startle easy. Not here, and not now, drifting through days and nights in a place that feels far warmer than either of them expects.
That's her first thought, waking the day after. It's warm, and she wonders what time of year it is. She's bewildered, and thoughts come back to her only gradually: when it is, where she is, last night, him. Opens her eyes slowly and looks across the tiny cabin to where he stands. Looks at his scars. Looks at him. Says nothing, even when he hears the rustle of the sheets and turns to glance at her.
Then she smirks. Lazily. Not twinkling, mocking, or amused. Secretive, though. More accurately: knowing.
--
Wears black bikini bottoms out to the beach. They connect over her hips with metal hoops. Have to guess that the top is black, too; she wears a tank top over it, not as baggy as much of what she owns, and striped horizontally in gray: dark gray, light gray, back again. Walks down to the water with him and gets a mango from a fruit cart on the way. Peels it with her hands and eats the fruit bite by bite, juices running down her wrists and chin, but she shares if he wants some.
At the water she lets go of him and heads for the water, all but dancing into it. Different like this, by daylight. Her hair is loose, like it was last night. She and her pale skin -- maybe he smirked at her, back at the cabin, as she covered herself in sunblock -- go splashing into the gulf. Looks happier than she did last night, too. Washes her face and arms and throat with salt water, effortlessly scouring away the mango juice from her breakfast.
Behind her he wades, thoughtful, water swirling around his ankles, splashing up his shins.
She goes out far, again, dropping herself into the sea like she was born to it. Makes some sense: it may be the wrong sea but her ancestry shows through her eyes and her skin the way sunlight shows through lace. Her people write songs about their islands, about their cliffs, about the cold white froth of the waves hitting rock. Her people, too, know a thing or two about the currents she goes diving for, about the water's tumultuous marriage to the moon, about what can be found when everything is dark and you are in the deep.
But just as every time before, she comes back up. Surfaces, treading water with those slim white arms, watching him from a distance before submerging again. Vanishing, again, again, always, as though she cannot bear to be seen for more than a few moments Or as though he is simply not permitted to view her in daylight for too long.
Her people have written songs about that sort of thing, too.
--
She is not surprised when he wraps his arm around her as soon as she comes walking up out of the water, dripping wet. His skin feels sun-baked compared to her own; she shivers and tucks herself closer, unapologetic and unhesitating. Lets him buy her more food from a truck or a cart, this time lunch, this time meat. Sits beside him on the ground, cross-legged, hiding in the shade as she chews chicken off of the skewer. Shares a beer with him, the bottle's base dug in a little to the sand.
Eventually one of them says that maybe it's time to move on. Or maybe they just know, as the sun arcs overhead. She rinses sand and salt off in the shower; she lets her hair dry as it is, wavy and smelling of the sea, as she dresses in cutoffs and a plain black shirt.
Somewhere on the road, she buys a pair of sandals made out of hemp rope. Buys some hemp string and beads, too; braids them together while he drives.
Motel that night: Devon walks with him to get food someplace -- tortas. They eat on top of the bed. They don't talk much, but she sits close to his shoulder, cross-legged again, drinking Mexican Coca-Cola from a straw in a glass bottle and chowing down on the fat sandwich she has to hold with both hands.
Falls asleep naked. Not because she wants him to do anything. Not because she wants to do anything. Just strips down and sleeps under a sheet because, as she murmurs even though he doesn't ask: it's hot.
So hot, she murmurs, when he so much as wraps one of those heavy arms around her.
Things progress as they do. She flashes these grins in the darkness, sharing the sweat of her skin with his. Cupping his face in her palms. Sighing into his mouth.
So fucking hot, Devon whispers, just before the weight of his hips against hers presses her into the bed. Just before she whimpers, instead of murmuring or whispering anything.
--
Christmas Eve, she calls family. She knows what day it is. She smiles as she talks, as he drives: in English to her family in Boston, in Portugese to her mother, for whom it is already Christmas Day. Glances at him, while she talks to her mum. Answers questions; he cannot understand her answers. After she hangs up she is clingy, or close enough: she hugs his arm and lays her head against him across the center console. She tells him to pull over and, if he's obliging, wants to sit on his lap and kiss him in the shade for minutes on end. She can't explain why, or doesn't try. She just needs it.
--
Christmas Day in the Yucatan. Doesn't feel like Christmas, and Devon is solitary, moody, seems to resent him for no reason at all. She goes off by herself at some time in the afternoon, comes back with a wicker bag full of god knows what. They're at a nice hotel. The sheets are soft and there are luxuries like room service. Devon is restless; she is angry at turns, and aching, and can't or simply does not explain why. She leaves him alone for a while, during that shopping trip, but when she comes back she's hungry and they end up curled up on the bed after a bath, watching some movie.
Devon cries in the dark, because of some sappy moment in whatever it is they watch. She falls asleep in a bathrobe with him, her face hidden against his shoulder, her head tucked close to him. She hides her feet between his calves. She sleeps so,
so deeply.
--
Better, after that. The cave. They go together, into the depth and the darkness, the feeling of eternity in this one tiny pocket of earth. She runs her fingertips over a still bit of water and then looks at him as the ripples expand outward, fading to nothing. She sighs, and it echoes, as soft as it is.
Does she feel the history here, the antiquity?
She looks at him, her hair tied back, her face clean, her freckles showing, her eyes bluer than the blue they find here in the water.
Does he know who he's with, or what she really is?
--
Nights later he watches her dance. Hair isn't tied back. She's dancing and there's a bonfire on the beach and off she goes. He stays to the shallows and to the shadows; drinks his beer and watches her. She left her shoes near him on the sand. She comes back with a burn on her palm from breaking a fall with a handful of embers and ashes; she doesn't seem to mind much, though she hisses and winces and tears come to her eyes as they clean it. She's drunk as hell by then.
Glass breaks some distance away. Someone is acting like a moron. He asks if she wants to go and she exhales, that is all, sighing into his arms as he lifts her up, carries her up the beach til the sand is dry and til the sand turns to pavement. They get a room for the sole purpose of getting her hand clean and washing the heat out of her eyes and giving her water. She sleeps in the back seat for a while.
When she wakes, much later, she says he always seems to be the one driving. But then she falls back to sleep, comforted by the steadiness of the endless-seeming road, and she wonders if she ever had a home, and she wonders
why the very thought gives her such terror.
Sleeps anyway. Alcohol and darkness and time are soporifics as potent as anything she can brew. His nearness, too, though for some time it was the one thing that seemed to keep her so awake she couldn't even share a bed with him.
--
Much later: she is awake and they are at a gas station. She is drinking slowly from a tall cup of cheap coffee. She's convincing him, with those clear eyes, that she can drive. It is his turn to sleep, laid out next to her.
It is her turn, then, to meditate on the dark road ahead, surrounded on all sides by shadows.
--
They have so much sex, the nights after that. Coastal village after coastal village; she wants him every night. She wants him when she wakes up, midafternoon; she can't seem to talk to him or make sense of anything else so they may as well fuck. But other times she wants to visit everything, see everywhere; she takes pictures on her phone and she sends them to her mum, her family in Massachusetts, a couple of friends he didn't know she had up in Denver. She has a burn on her nose and her cheekbones; she gets him in the ocean as often as she can.
And other times, seemingly at random, she's distant. She's silent. She had her passport this whole time; has plenty of stamps from here and there. She drapes herself over him as he examines his own when they both come back with their new visas; she asks him, quietly:
"You have as much money as a king," comes the whisper in his ear. "You should see the world."
Her nose, behind his ear. Her lips, close to his neck.
"I'll go with you, if you want. All those places you haven't been."
wolfmanWolf doesn't always understand the girl. Hardly ever, actually.
Doesn't really understand what draws her to the water. Feels it, sees it. Understands the rightness of it: girl to water, moon to earth. Still doesn't understand the why, the how, the rhyme, the ancient reason. Doesn't understand why she comes back to him, either. Why she comes up out of the salt sea, hair dripping down her back; winds herself close to him like she's happy to be held and caught and kept.
Doesn't understand her curling little smirks. Smiles. Doesn't understand what goes on behind her eyes when night falls and they stop for the night; when she pulls him close and whispers, over and over,
hot.
so hot.
Doesn't understand what she's saying to her mother, christmas eve, nor why it makes her keep close to him afterward.
Doesn't understand what makes her so resentful and angry and withdrawn christmas day, either.
--
Deep in the bowels of the earth, wolf doesn't really understand the depth of her connection to this place, this antiquity, this darkness.
Doesn't understand how deep her magic runs.
--
Feels it though, sometimes. Night they find those american kids on the beach. Night she dances by the fire. Wolf feels it, watching her from afar, thinking to himself that this, this must be what it felt like for his ancestors, fifty thousand years in the past. Lurking in the night, hunting in the shadows. Looking at the fires that burned in the camps of ancient men, seeing their crude mud huts and their hide tents. Seeing their women, seeing their men, seeing the lovely and strong and straight-limbed of them and thinking,
thinking maybe they could be a part of that too. Maybe they could make themselves a part of that. Come in out of the cold. Come in to the fire. Pretend, at least for a little while, not to be the carnivorous monsters that they are.
--
Girl stumbling over some momentary loss of footing makes him come in out of the dark. Swift and aggressive, looking around for a victim, someone to blame. Someone who shoved her or bumped her or --
Girl doesn't seem angry though, or hurt; girl's probably laughing, actually, even as she's saying ow, ow. Burns on girl's palm make him frown. Wolf wants to know if she wants to go, and she does, and he takes her up the strand and away from the party. Scoops her up and carries her.
Wolf comes out of the night and carries off some willing, wild-blooded, gorgeous thing.
Fifty thousand years and some things haven't changed.
--
Takes her to some cheap little motel room somewhere. Broods over her hand. Washes the wound, tears a t-shirt to strips to bind it. Doesn't say anything about it but she can tell he's a little upset. Worrying. Acts like it's worse than it is. Acts like it's a big fucking deal, big tough wolf like him, who sometimes walks around carved open to the bone.
Better when they drive on. Calms, and his heart stops hurting. Looks over at her miles and miles later when she says he's always the one driving. No I'm not, he disagrees, and she sleeps.
They switch at a gas station, later. Wolf falls asleep in the passenger's seat, one arm trailing over the center divide; warm palm covering a stretch of her thigh.
--
On and on and on. They don't talk much; he doesn't talk about the bonfire or the hand; doesn't talk about how he likes her and how she's crazy hot. They don't talk about that sort of thing at all. Sometimes exchange a couple words about where for dinner, where for bed. Sometimes they see something, some ocean or some jungle, mist creeping down the hills to meet the sea. Sometimes wolf nods her attention that way,
says look at that,
doesn't call it beautiful or unforgettable or lovely, though that is what he means.
Nighttime and she reaches for him. Nighttime and he reaches for her. Nighttime and they fumble for purchase under the sheets, desire making them frantic, taking away what few words they have. Mouths tangling, breaths trembling together. Her fingers clutching at his shoulders, his back. His mouth gripping her neck, her shoulder. Force of his body against hers making a succession of mattresses creak, groan, squeak, thud. Sometimes they're in a nice hotel. Mostly they're in little seaside villages, huts, mostly the scent of salt is on the air and she has no scent at all but he is starting to believe,
he is starting to make himself believe he would be able to find her even were she taken from him. Would be able to track down, seek her through instinct alone.
Girl speaks to him in gasps and moans when they're alone in the night. Girl speaks to him in the tremble of her thighs, writhe of her body. Way she wraps her legs around him sometimes when she comes, when he does, and even after; holding him deep in her body even after that momentary cataclysm is past.
Sometimes wolf kisses her skin afterward. Kisses her shoulders, kisses her breasts. Kisses her mouth slow and soft, saying nothing at all, holding her so tight.
--
Girl's fair skin burns even when she slathers herself in sunscreen. Wolf just tans, golden-brown, nut-brown, brown with an underhue of ruddy health. Wolf snorts at her, putting aloe on her burns at night: if you didn't swim so much your sunscreen wouldn't wash off.
Doesn't really mean it though. Loves watching her swim. Loves wading out after her, standing in the surf waist-deep, sun hot on his shoulders, water cool on his skin. Always slides his arm around her waist when she comes up out of the deep. Comes back to him, sea to the shore.
--
Night in some hotel, looking at their passports. Girl's got so many stickers and stamps in hers. Wolf has just the one. Looks at it, fascinated and trying to be subtle about it, rubbing his thumb over the fine texture. Girl drapes over him. His back is bare; his heat seeps right through whatever she might wear.
Wolf turns, his earlobe brushing tip of her nose. Laughs that quiet laugh of his, disbelieving, like he can't quite see his life, his wealth, his power, his worth the way she does.
"Pretty sure your Queen Elizabeth is richer than me. I got two houses. She's got a country. Maybe I'm rich as some little pagan king with three cows, a sword, and a mud castle."
Wolf's hand on girl's wrist, then. Wrapping warm and coarse over her skin where her forearm loops over his upper chest.
"And you." Something rough and sweet there, twisting like a fine filament in his heart. Never said anything like this before and doesn't know what gives him the courage, madness, whim to say it now. Doesn't take it back, though.
"Three cows, a sword, a mud castle, and you. Guess that counts for something."
witchDoesn't understand her. Usually likes her.
Actually: likes her quite a lot.
--
That night she dances, and drinks, and sometimes he loses her to the shadows. She is not watching him; he is mostly hidden. But she spies him here and there, through the flame or around a corner, over her shoulder. She does not linger; it makes her feel strange, seeing him alone over there. She's been one to brood in the dark before, and doesn't judge him for it, but she doesn't understand where his thoughts are. Long ago, far away.
Kicks up sand as she comes over to him in her little skirt and her long legs and bare feet, braided hemp bracelets around her ankles, beads clattering together. Loose tank top is falling off her shoulder, bra is snug to her body. She is laughing but not much, wincing at her palm when he rises up, steadying her elbow, ready to hurt someone.
That casts a pall over her laughter, but it isn't the first thing that does: the pain got there before Rafael did. She nods and lets him pick her up. She rubs her face against his jaw and his neck as he carries her.
There is another way to see it: girl goes off into the shadows by herself. Finds a wolf who does not want to devour her but licks her wounds, presses close to keep her warm. Goes with him, instead. Feels better understood by the beast in dark than she does among mortals, even if he and she are still an enigma to one another.
Fairy tales, as they're known, haven't existed for fifty thousand years. But they were born then, too: history's shy twin.
--
At the motel she's so defiant. He's brooding, he's lurking nearby while she washes her hand clean. Keeps trying to help, take over, and she nearly snaps at him but he looks so unhappy. Tells him to get her backpack. Runs water over her hand while he searches through bottles til he comes up with one that she squints at, sniffs, decides will work. They put that stuff on her hand before she lets him put that t-shirt bandage on it. Doesn't make fun of the t-shirt bandage, just makes some comment about how that had better be clean.
She's a lot less snarky than she has a mind to be. Sits on the bed while he methodically winds that strip of soft cotton round and round her hand, ties it off on the back. Watches how he frowns. Watches how he bends over her to do it. Watches how he fusses, like it's this terrible thing, like it's a Big Fucking Deal, and doesn't smirk at him or mock him for it.
Well: holds up her hand when he's done, palm facing him, and smirks like see? all better now.
That's not the same, though.
--
Time goes by. When she unwraps her bandage the next night her hand looks pinkish, with a little blister in one spot, but nothing more. Puts more goop from her bottle on it, wraps it up in some gauze picked up along the way. It's fine, come morning. Well enough that she can clutch his arms as the sun is rising higher and higher in the sky and he's growling, fucking into her like it aches not to.
Which maybe it does.
--
Uses the same damn goop on her nose and cheeks when they turn pink. Scowls at him for the comment about swimming, says archly: I bet you don't even know how.
Which may be true. Which may sting him. Which she doesn't want.
May be not. He reacts how he does. And her face does smell like aloe, and like tea, and like something indefinable, when she kisses him after that, soft. May be that he actually tells her he likes watching her swim. May not say another damn word.
--
Later, still. They've been on the road for what feels like weeks. She doesn't mind. She is draped over him, hair loose and limbs long, winding over and around him. Holding him, wooing him to sleepiness, protecting him all at once -- like the briars in some other story. She's wearing a tank top, dusky blue, nothing else right now. Well: knickers. Little cream-colored panties with a thin black ribbon around the waistline, a bow not at the front but at the back. Tiny one.
He turns and she rubs her nose a little more insistently on his ear.
"I'm American now," she reminds him, and puts both arms around him, opens her passport like a storybook in front of him, showing the front page. Her picture, her slightly pursed lips, her wide eyes, her citizenship. Big damn eagle. WE THE PEOPLE and all that. Paredes it says beneath 'surname'. Devon Órfhlaith, it says beneath 'given names'. Even if her place of birth isn't within the United States. That's her shiny nationality, right there: United States.
"Not my queen," she adds, and kisses him softly under his ear, closing the passport, arms loosening, slack over his shoulders. Grins, to herself, hair falling over her cheeks, when he compares himself to a pagan king with three cows, a sword, and a mud castle. Stills again, grin fading in on itself, folding away like a slip into a drawer, as he reaches up to wrap around her arm.
And her.
Devon says nothing for a moment.
Exhales low and slow and close to his skin and tells him, in a murmur by his ear: "But I don't belong to you. Like three cows, a sword, or a mud castle."
wolfmanGirl's passport overlaps his. Wolf lets his drop, takes hers instead. She's American now, she says, which means once upon a time she wasn't; which goes along with her mother in England, that hint of accent in her voice. Wolf thinks he must've known that about her already, but he's not sure. There's a lot about her that he doesn't know. A lot about her that he learns, and upon learning, feels as though he's always known.
Lots of pages in her passport. Lots of stamps and visas and entries and exits. Wolf looks at the first page, though, which has her picture. Still a teenager. Big eyes in a narrow face. Freckles. Light makeup and a neutral expression; mouth as immobile as he's ever seen it.
Still has that hint of a curl, corners of her lips. Like that smirk's marrow-deep in her. Divined from her bones.
"Or-f-lay-th," wolf sounds out, awfully, while girl kisses him and takes her passport back. She's grinning to herself, and then she's not, and then they're quiet. Then she's murmuring to him. Truth divined from his bones this time. Like all prophecies, he already knows what she tells him. She just lays it to light.
"You don't belong to me," wolf agrees, quiet. Bristle on his jaw scratches the soft skin over her bicep. He kisses the inner crook of her elbow. "But you're with me. Long as you're with me I'll count you as mine."
witchOnce upon a time she was a natural-born citizen of another country. But only briefly. No wonder she seems so content with the gypsy lifestyle: place to place, night to night, carrying only what really matters along with her: mostly intangible things, like stories. Occasionally some necessities: botanical mixtures for burns, her passport. Apparently one condom, which she pressed into his hand on the night of the solstice before they came together, a strange and equally unexplained callback to that night at the museum.
He stares at her passport until she folds it aside, drops it. He sounds out her middle name and she laughs. She doesn't correct him. Not right now. They're discussing other things. She will tell him, though.
Doesn't want him to be set up to look a fool. Never made that promise to him. But he made it to her. So that's something.
--
He agrees. He kisses her elbow, her blood so close to the surface there. And calls her mine. So long as she's with him.
Her brows tug together. Her arms aren't so languid; they want to unwind from him but they do not. She does not. She says nothing at all, at first.
"What if I don't want to be yours?" she asks him, the words standing straight and tall,
behind walls,
made of glass.
wolfmanBeat of pause.
Then wolf drops his hand from her arm; raises his mouth from her skin. Close as they are, she can feel him take that breath. Shoulders lifting, chest filling.
"Nobody's going to force you to do anything, Devon." Something tight in his tone now. Matches that tightness in her body. "But you don't want to be mine, even for a while, then maybe you shouldn't act like I'm yours."
witchMakes her frown deepen. The way he goes to force you. The way he does a lot of things.
She slides away a bit, behind him, til her arms leave his shoulders. Isn't touching him, but he can feel her there, inches away.
"Have I been?"
wolfmanWolf turns. Not far. Just enough to give a slice of profile; one dark brow, one glittering eye.
"Haven't you been?"
witchDevon rolls her eyes. Gives a small shake of her head and slides off the bed. Her annoyance is clear enough; her dismissal less so. There's an air of fine to it. Of be that way, then.
She walks toward the sink, sitting beneath a mirror and lights, separate from the toilet and shower room. Hips sway the way they always do, without much swerve and swish to it, just a lazy sort of walking she has. Little bow above her ass winks at him, revealed and then hidden by the hem of her tank top.
Gets her toothbrush out.
wolfmanGirl doesn't make quite the dent on the mattress wolf does, but he still feels her leaving. Feels the movement behind him and beneath him, the sudden stillness when she's gone. Wolf turns, hackles up now; and why not. Feels rejected. Watches her walk away, annoyance mingling uneasily with arousal. Can't help either one.
Looks away again. Thinks of saying something; decides not to. Girl hears the TV go on. They have one tonight. They have a hotel room tonight, for once; a room with an air conditioner, albeit a window unit, and newish bedding and newish furniture and newish, thickish towels.
Everything on TV is in Spanish, except the stations from across the border which are in Portuguese. Absolutely nothing is in English so wolf flips channels until he finds a soccer match or something and mutes the commentary. Watches for a while, til he realizes he's not watching at all.
Gets up. Comes after her, footsteps quiet, weight solid. Comes up behind her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, bit sudden, presses his lips to her temple.
"You have been," he tells her. Watches her face in the mirror. Not so new after all: there are spots on the mirror, stains beneath the glass where the reflective coating has worn away with age. Two of them look so strange juxtaposed against each other, half-naked. Savage wild things, one full of mysteries and the other not even properly human. "Every time you kiss me, every time you fuck me, every time you show your teeth because some random girl's looking at me. You act like I'm yours. Not like you own me. That's not the same thing. But like I'm yours."
witchHer toothbrush is purple. She puts plain white toothpaste on it. Slight minty flavor. Baking soda foam. Water runs. Tube puts out a dollop of cream on the bristles. She starts brushing, scrubbing away at her teeth while, behind her, Rafael ignores her. Or tries. Turns on the television and flips through a dozen that he doesn't understand. Finds something he does, even if he doesn't care about it.
To his right, across the room, Devon spits into the sink and rinses it out. Rinses her mouth. Is patting her chin dry with a hand-towel when she glances up in the mirror, sees him coming, and stares at him through the reflection. Warily, warningly, though the latter has little weight to it. What exactly does she have to brandish at him?
stay away, asshole, or I'll smirk at you! only this time, in a mean way.
He wraps around her and she makes a noise, irritated and resistant, but she doesn't yank away. She glowers as he wraps himself heavily over and around her, glaring at the top of his head in the mirror. Even while he kisses her temple. A little less, when he turns and looks at her.
"I have not been baring my teeth at random girls," Devon says, her tone flat and annoyed. "I'm not some insecure little twat."
Her lips press together, after that. It's the thing she chooses to argue with.
What she chooses to say, instead of anything else, as she ignores his arms around her and starts throwing toothbrush, toothpaste back in their little bag. Even with his arms around her shoulders, her upper arms. "Why'd you go and bring something like that up, anyway? Cows and a sword and a castle and me. I'm nothing to do with your kingdom."
wolfman"Fucking christ." Wolf's exasperated, irritated. Lets her go while she goes flinging her toothbrushing utensils back into her bag. Doesn't leave her the hell alone, though. "Why'd I bring it up? You brought it up. Telling me I was rich as a king and should go see the world. With. You.
"Go ahead now. Tell me how that isn't acting like you have some claim on me."
witchDevon all but throws the bag, with its baldly grinning skull, into the corner of the countertop. "Why's it have to be about claim? I didn't lump you in with a fucking lot of cows!"
wolfman"I didn't lump you in with cows, for fuck's sake." Wolf's suddenly close again, looming over her shoulder, teeth clenched. Hands on the countertop. Barring her in. Realizes he's barring her in and stops, mouth twisting, straightening up.
"Didn't mean it like that. Told you I didn't mean it like that. Meant it like a -- a good thing. Never had anybody -- " all these trips, stumbles, gaps in his words; places where his animal brain fumbles to fill in the blanks, " -- be with me. Or want me to be with them. Thought it was nice. Now will you quit flogging me over a handful of stupid little words I didn't say perfectly?"
witch[empathy! hidden desires.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
witch[oookaaay. specifically looking for: what he really wants. particularly what he wants, desires, without entirely being aware of it. things he tries to keep hidden, even from himself.]
wolfmanRafael:
- is, at face value, just riled up right now
- just beneath, he feels backed into a corner by her continuing to insist that he was seeing her as property when he just had a foot-in-mouth moment and there's really nothing more to it than that
- feels dismayed, beneath that, that she thinks he would think of her that way; i.e., as property, chattel, etc
- now, beneath all that: he is dismayed that she is also resisting being "his", or "with him"; not as in possession, but something more amorphous and tender than possession.
- she seems to be insisting she doesn't think of him as hers in return, which is distressing to him.
- finally, in terms of what he wants: this is quite murky and half-formed, but he likes the feeling, which has evolved slowly over the course of this trip and in the weeks before, that maybe they really are mutually one another's. he doesn't necessarily quantify this as one thing vs another, but he likes it.
- and deeper still: i think at the same time he is wary, and likes the security of "it is what it is"; i.e. not actually putting a name or a label or a definition or any sense of permanence on it.
witchShe flinches. Not her face. Physically, though, she jerks back, her breath hitching, but she doesn't shrink in on herself. Doesn't start crying. Not right away. Blood drains out of her face fast, though. Fast enough to leave her a bit pale. Fast enough that he notices. Moves away.
It takes a few moments for the world to cease being a narrow pinpoint tunnel, a high contrast of light and shadow. Takes a moment for her skin to feel like it contains her again. For her heart to stop beating so hard. For there to stop being so much blood and oxygen pumping through her brain that it feels like rocket fuel.
She tries to remember that right now, even if it wouldn't do much good in the end, that feeling is what could make her run faster, fight harder, make her so alert it would be like slowing down time. Tries to remember that these jolts of fear are a superpower granted to certain species, for they might need them one day.
And because, at times, fear can make you kind. That alertness, sharpening everything, makes her hear nothing but the blood rushing in her skull and the sound of his words. The very exact sound. Every edge to his words outlined brightly. The descending notes between told you I didn't and, more haltingly, a good thing.
The shivering sensation beneath thought it was nice. And the way he looks. She thinks, for a moment, she can see his heartbeat like an aura around him, pulsing the colors of his soul. The spikes, then, that stab outward in the last few words, the snap of them, the defensiveness, the aggression that is only borderline passive. Doesn't hurt her, those spikes. Right now she feels far away. Just for the moment. Too far away for a spike to impale her. Not too far for one of those lower pulses to give her a sympathetic soreness.
--
Devon waits for her heart to stop pounding so hard, but as she looks at him,
it doesn't.
--
What feels like years lasts only a few moments of silence after that sharp perfectly leaves his mouth.
Devon exhales.
"Not flogging you," she says. Her brow furrows in discomfort. "You said something dumb. I didn't like it." Tone says: That's it. Tone dismisses it.
She is still stuck close to the counter. Watches him, with some wariness. Shifts her bones in her skin, awkwardly. Feels strange aches in her joints. Takes effort to look back up at him, over at him, her shoulders tight and close.
"I like you," she says, quiet. Takes a breath and shakes her hair back off her face, a little too boldly. "Like fucking you." Quiet then, again, awkward after hearing the words out loud. How dismissive they seem. How demeaning. She frowns. "Don't really have a speech like you did," she adds, much softer, looking down. She means the way he started, days ago:
he likes her. wouldn't hurt her. She tried, but none of the words would come. All sounded wrong to her. All scared her to death.
She exhales again, slower, more audibly.
"Didn't like the way you said you'll see me as yours long as I'm with you." Shakes her head, small and tight and quick, looking at the ground. "Just... don't like that. Doesn't mean I don't want to be with you. Or travel with you. Or live with you,"
quietest of all.
She closes her eyes, scowling in the self-created darkness.
"Just don't like all this 'mine' and 'yours' nonsense."
wolfmanIt's when her eyes close that wolf comes closer again. Strange; almost like her eyes hold him transfixed. Like her gaze has power.
Probably does. She's a witch. She has the blood of fae in her veins. Just the same as she has the blood of wolf. The blood of man. A trinity. Every religion in the world knows how holy that number is.
So girl closes her eyes; that sunspeared blue. And wolf, who's backed off to give her breathing room, comes close again. She's maybe facing him now. If she's not, his hand on her shoulder turns her again. Back to the sink. Back to the mirror. Can see her reflected there, slender spine, slender body, slender. Skinny thing. Wolf dwarfing her with his height, his shoulders, his big hands swallowing whole swathes of her skin as he paws up her arms, up the sides of her neck to cup her face.
"Don't like it either," he says, and it sounds like a lie but it isn't. She's seen that it isn't: true in his marrow. "Just feel it sometimes, is all. Don't have to talk about it. Don't have to act on it."
Breath. And exhale. Hands falling away, backs of his fingers skimming her midriff ever so briefly through her tank top. Fingertip turning over and catching the edge of it, pulling it away from her body an inch or two. Almost like his hand had a will of its own. Goes nowhere. He lets go, straightens up.
This old saw again: "Is what it is."
Wolf looks at girl, meets her eyes if they're open now. Falls into her eyes. Sways toward her, drawn; brow rolls against hers for just a moment. Eyes close for just a moment, then open again. Intent, direct, unflinching. Deliberately bold, just like her.
"Come to bed, yeah?"
witchEasier, this: him standing there, rubbing his hands over her arms, stroking her side through her shirt, awakening her heartbeat. Stroking the ends of her nerves to life. No wondering, then. No confusion. She exhales, quicker and heavier than before, as he's nearer, as he's closer. She was facing him, even if she faced the ground. She looks up at him because he makes her, cupping her face like that. Opens her eyes. And winces a little, when he says he feels it sometimes. Reiterates that they don't have to talk.
Wonders why he does, then. Tells her that he likes her and wouldn't hurt her. Tells her that of all the random little riches of her life, he has her, and some muddy pagan king doesn't. Tells her she's his, and then tells her if she doesn't want to be then, well, fine, jerk, whatever, I'm not yours either. Wonders why and wishes he wouldn't because she can't.
She can't. Look at her; she tried. And she couldn't.
--
"Don't --" she says, as he lets go, straightens up. Sighs, looking up at him again. "Don't stop that," she murmurs, as he's drawn down to her, looking at her, drowning in her like that. She seems to know she's a lodestone; doesn't seem to blame him for connecting.
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