yours & mine.

Rafael

In the morning, wolf's up first for once. Climbs out of bed and goes to the bathroom, pisses, spits. Washes his hands and his face, brushes his teeth. Puts on some clothes and goes downstairs.

Comes back up with food. Waffles and fruit and little cups of yogurt; some tiny bagels, some tinier muffins. Also, eggs, sausage patties, coffee, orange juice. Perhaps he does this as an act of contrition, in memoriam of that act of kindness she'd given him that he'd more or less spoiled. At any rate, when girl awakens, there's breakfast on the little desk, and the curtains are open.

The view is fantastic. The last of the eastern drylands meeting the western forests; the Columbia river rushing by on its long and winding way to the ocean. They can't see Mt. Hood from their window -- it's behind them -- but they can see the low rolling foothills that lead into the Cascades. Much like the hills of the Californian bay, any other time of year and they'd be sere, golden; but this is March, this is the time for rain and spring, and the sky is grey, and the hills are green. It is unspeakably lovely.

Wolf is looking out the window, drinking coffee, eating a breakfast sandwich he's made out of ... well, two sausage patties and some egg. A meat-wich. He hears her waking, but doesn't turn. He smiles, quietly, to himself. Holds his love for her close in his heart like a secret.

Devon

Devon sleeps deeply, sleeps hard. Not wearing pajamas these days. Strips out of her jeans and clothes and showers and rubs lotion all over herself after she's fucked him senseless, falls asleep smelling herbal and soft against him, hair spilling over everywhere. When he gets out of bed she makes a noise, a low groan, and rolls over, replacing him with a pillow that she hugs close instead.

She is drifting in and out after that, half-asleep, half-dreaming, half-ethereal. He gets more food than she could ever eat: she eats small breakfasts, small lunches, small dinners. She doesn't burn like he does; she doesn't even like to run, though she could run a marathon if she really put her mind to it. The girl has stamina and resilience that belies her slim frame and sensitive emotions.

Later she wakes up. The sun keeps getting higher and brighter in the sky, and she keeps hearing things and smelling things, til finally she rolls over to face the window, yawning, lying there on her side looking at him, breasts out from under the covers, nipples pink and standing up in the cool air.

"Brekkie," she mutters after a while, and then yawns. "Come here," she adds, holding out her arm, grasping at the air like she expects him to fill her hand with... his hand? Food? His face?

Rafael

Given that she speaks of 'brekkie' and then grasps at the air, he can be forgiven for assuming she wants breakfast in bed. So he picks up those three(!) extremely laden plates -- one carbs, one fruit and dairy, one protein -- and carries them over. Sets them on the nightstand within her reach.

For his part, he sits on the edge of the bed. Faces the window. Continues eating that obscene meaty sandwich of his, eventually polishing it off and wiping his hands on a napkin.

"Didn't know it was going to be so pretty," he says, of the scenery.

Devon

Boy is so dumb, she thinks fondly, as he brings over his smorgasbord. She does reach -- for a bowl of watermelon and strawberries and grapes and so on. Starts eating that while he eats his meat-and-egg. She moves closer so that her thighs touch his lower back, watching the window with him. He's so pretty, she also thinks, also fondly.

He says what he says. She smiles, because they thought the same word.

"Me neither," she murmurs, and eats her fruit. She has a quarter of a Belgian waffle, too, eating it plain or with bites of peanut butter from a little peel-top container, closing her eyes while she chews, still sleepy and holding on to that soft, warm feeling. They're quiet this morning. It's nice. She doesn't want to break the spell of it.

Rafael

That makes him smile again. That they agree. It's pretty. Neither of them knew how pretty it would be.

He eats some more. She grazes on fruit, waffle, peanut-butter. He leans back after a while, lazy, his feet still on the floor. His head pillowed somewhere on her middle, heavy.

"No rush now," he muses. "Got the whole rest of the week. What do you wanna see? There's forests and rivers and mountains and oceans. Couple little cities."

Devon

"Oof," she grunts, shoving at him. "Get off."

He is not allowed to use her as a pillow. At the moment. She does snuggle a little closer to him, though, grabbing a sausage link and beginning to eat that. She smirks a little as he details the time they have, things to see.

She shrugs. "Let's... just start walking. Get a cab if we need to. See where we end up."

Rafael

"What -- just leave the bike here and hitchhike?"

Devon

Devon laughs. "I just mean today," she tells him, shoving his arm a little. "Let's just walk around for a few hours. Been two days on that bike."

Rafael

"Oh." He laughs under his breath. "Yeah. Sure. Maybe we can go down to the river. Get a souvenir."

He's not laying on her stomach anymore. He's turned a little to the side, diagonal across the bed, lazing.

"Should take some pictures for your mom," he adds after a while. It just occurs to him.

Devon

Devon sits up slowly, sheets pooling, and leans against him, wraps her arms around him. Bends over him like a sylph, nuzzling him. Breath smells a bit like fruit and sausage and peanut butter. She strokes the tip of her nose across his temple while he mentions the river and her mom, smiling, nodding.

Lifts her head, just enough to look down at his face, putting her fingertips lightly on his cheek. Still nodding, and giving him this little smile. Sleepy, warm, soft.

"Love you," she murmurs. "Love you, love you."

Rafael

Her soul is old. Her soul may have known his for a very long time. Her soul has been around for a very long time, at least; because even when she is girlish, there is a depth in her eyes. The magic that lives in her is as ancient as the world.

He closes his eyes, and he can't smell her, but he can feel her leaning over him. Her hair curtaining him, her face touching his. When she lifts up he opens his eyes, looks at her smiling, pleased.

"Because I thought of your mom?"

Devon

Sees her laugh more than he hears it; feels her breath on his nose and his lips. "Because... I love you." Smiles, lazily. "Because breakfast. And sex. And taking me places I've never been. Pretty things. And because you thought of my mum. And because... I love you."

Again.

Rafael

He is...

...well, moved might be the word. Affected, at least. It would be visibly so if he were looking at her. Well; perhaps she can still tell: can tell by his silence, the long quiet that follows.

Before he raises his chin a little. Before he finds her, meets her, kisses her there in the shadow of her tumbling dark hair. His jaw is rough; he's several days unshaven now. The kiss is soft, though; softer than you'd think possible, coming from a creature like him.

Devon

He's so quiet. So she nuzzles him once more and then lifts her head a bit to look at him, see him in his silence. See that look in his eyes, which is unnameable, and understands for a moment why it is so hard for him to talk to her, so hard for him to tell her what he feels, or even what he thinks. Why words never seem like enough to him, like they break something down inside.

Then he kisses her, and that look in his eyes told her to expect it, so her own eyes close, and she kisses him back deeply, sighing tenderly into it, making a small, light noise in the back of her throat. Her hand moves over the sheets to touch his chest, and just rests there for a moment.

Devon isn't trying anything. She doesn't want to pull those sheets aside and pull him over her, make love, chase down orgasm right now. She just wants to kiss him, like this, all morning. Possibly forever.

Rafael

For now,

for once,

wolf's okay with that. Doesn't mind just ... staying here with her. His arm comes easily, familiarly around her waist; big hand at the dip of her spine. He likes the difference between their bodies; his broadness and her slenderness; his darker, coarser skin; her longer, thicker hair. He even likes the differences that stem not from their respective maleness, femaleness, but from stamps of genetics and bloodlines: he likes the shape of her nose, and he likes the freckles that the sun traces on her skin.

His hand rubs her back a little. Thumb sweeps a semi-circle. These are the things he thinks, but never expresses aloud. He's flawed like that.

Devon

That's the next several minutes of their morning. Okay, to be fair: that's the next almost-hour. They rearrange on the bed and go on kissing, laying next to each other. Occasionally they stop and nibble on more breakfast, or Devon does at least. She curls up in his arms and tells him about how when she lived in England she missed watermelon -- not that it didn't exist, but that it was harder to find, more expensive, that she read a few years ago that someone finally successfully grew watermelon in the UK. She seems to really like watermelon, and that's how she ends up talking for a bit about July 4th in Boston. Then they kiss some more, his hand moving up and down her side or her back, her hands toying lazily with his hair.

Eventually, though, she needs to get up to pee. She washes up and brushes her teeth, leaves her hair down today since it's been knotted into braids for two days now. Gets dressed and starts lacing up her sneakers, looking over at him wherever he is: getting dressed, still lazing around naked, maybe eating more food.

"You're stupid hot, you know," she says, observational.

Rafael

"Used to grow watermelon," he says,

somewhere in there. Somewhat out of the blue. And maybe girl doesn't believe him, and well she shouldn't, because that's not quite true. He amends:

"Well. Used to pick it. Among other things."

And that's how that little piece of his history comes into focus. Wolf tells her about it, in a spare few words: spent a few years doing farm work in the harvesting months. Whole community of people out there that do that, he says. Mostly men. Mostly Spanish-speaking, though he wasn't. Mostly young, but not always; some people spend their whole lives like that. Follow the crops from spring to fall; winter somewhere and start all over again. He spent his winters doing other things. Bussing tables was part of it. That much she knows.

"There's a rhythm to it," he says, of the work. "Gotta know where to go and when, or you'd miss the harvest. Most people had a few favorite crops. Some favorite regions. Did the same thing year after year.

"Didn't like watermelon much. Work was hard and pay wasn't great. Still better than most vegetables. But berries, peaches, stuff like that. Those were the good jobs."

--

She tells him about July 4th in Boston. He smiles a little at the ceiling, thinking of her in her braids, in shorts, eating watermelon and watching fireworks.

--

Later on she gets up and washes. He polishes off the food; puts on shorts. Stands at the window looking at the river, which is wide and blue, rushing fast. She makes an observation. He huffs, turning to look at her across the room.

"Like your hair like that," he says.

Devon

Devon wasn't expecting him to share, too. But she likes it. It's a special thing, for him to talk to her, to tell her about his life without her asking, without her stressing inwardly about whether or not she should ask, whether he'll feel pressured, whether it'll stir up a fight when all she wants to do is feel close to him. So her eyes light up a little when he tells her that he used to grow watermelon. She has about a dozen questions but nearly holds her breath trying not to interrupt, like it might scare him away.

She doesn't waste any time on disbelief, that is. He goes on that he picked it. Tells her about these odd jobs, this nomadic life he lived doing manual labor. Manual, methodical. Work in the fields, hunt at night, bus tables in the off season. She touches his arm while he talks, lightly stroking, and when he tells her about berries and peaches, she feeds him a strawberry. Smiles at him. Kisses his cheek, and snuggles in closer, and tells him about July 4th.

--

He likes her hair like that, loose and natural. She smirks over at him. "Bet you do," she says, wry or coy for some reason. Switches to her other sneaker. "Mostly meant... I still sort of always want to fuck you," she explains, quieter, almost like it's embarrassing somehow to admit that over a year into being with him she still sometimes can't look at him without wanting to have sex. Like it surprises her.

Rafael

She bets he does.

He grins a little. They don't explain it further, either of them. She puts her shoes on, and he's still mostly naked.

Smile he gives her then is a little smaller; a little crooked. Words that come out her mouth makes him want to reach down and adjust, but he doesn't; he's not that uncouth, jesus. He just takes a breath.

"Well, that's because you're my woman," he says. Like that explains it. And then his smile fades a little; he's cautious. Doesn't know how she'll take it.

Devon

Rarely to never says things like that. About what she is to him. About how he feels for her, what she means to him. But right now he does, and looks sort of crookedly happy to be explaining that her relentless attraction to him is because she's his, because she's the female to his male, because... this is how it is. This is what makes sense to him. This is, she can tell from the way he says it and says it so easily, what he really feels. Thinks. Both, either.

Just like she can tell -- even as what he says causes her so much amusement that she's grinning back at him with a spark in her eyes -- that his smile is faltering, that he's not sure how she's going to hear that you're my woman bit.

But Devon is grinning, like she's on the verge of laughter, huffing a breath out as she looks at him. Laughs: "I'm your woman?" and it doesn't sound strictly pissed off or dismayed by the term, just thoroughly amused to hear it put that way. Teasing him a little, perhaps, but not much, because of the way she saw his smile fade in hesitance. She smiles at him instead, warming. Smirks a little, though fondly.

"C'mere," she murmurs, her shoes all tied up now.

Rafael

Now the grin quirks wider. He laughs at himself, under his breath.

"Yeah." And he goes to her, crossing the room in his bare feet. Reaches out to her naturally, easily, when he gets there: hands in her hair, combing it back from that narrow, lovely face. "My woman. Sounds more ... more than my girlfriend."

And bends to her. And cups her face in his hands, holding her gently, like she's fragile. And kisses her like that, standing in their rented and shared bedroom.

Devon

Yes, he confirms: she is his woman. And she stands up as he's crossing the small room over to her, smirking a little as he touches her. Strokes her hair. She tips her face upward, looking at him. He says it again and -- unlike the first time he said it -- what she feels is a subtle, growing warmth in her chest, moving through her limbs.

"Like being your girlfriend, though," she tells him, her lips curving even as he's bending over her, kissing her like that, making her eyes fall closed like she's being put in some kind of a trance. She sighs softly as that kiss starts, lifting her arms to gently, loosely, lazily drape them around his shoulders.

We say lazily; there's nothing really lazy about the way she feels about him. She loves him. It's there in her eyes when they stop kissing, and it's in the way she keeps on hanging off of him, the difference in their heights forcing her body to lean into his a bit.

"Don't usually like being called girl or woman," Devon admits, stroking the back of his neck. "Don't mind being your girl, though. Or woman. Or girlfriend." The smallest pause, here, and he'll remember the cold, aching fear that went through her the last time she said this but he won't see any trace of it in her eyes this time. Just a moment of pause, of carefulness, of hesitation before being vulnerable, like the flinch before you jump into a cold lake.

"Yours," she says, quietly. "So long as you're mine."

Rafael

Wolf likes the way her arms seem to drift up as though released from gravity; settle around neck and over his shoulders soft as snow. Wolf likes the way she sighs, too, and the way her eyes close. Those dark lashes; that incredible blue hiding itself away, for now.

She leans into him and he leans into her a little, too; leans down, at least, those massive shoulders rounded down. They are looking into each other's eyes, and there is nowhere to hide -- no impulse to hide. Only carefulness, and then a revealed vulnerability. He covers her head with his palm, a curious and protective gesture that she's seen him do more than once. He kisses her hair, this time, and pulls her close against his chest.

"You know I am," he says, low and gruff, which is the only way such truths can be spoken in daylight.

Devon

This, of all things, makes her laugh again. Breathy and soft and tender, but still laughter. She lets him cover her head and hold her close and this seems so very odd to her, the way that so many things he does seem odd to her, because he's an animal, and she isn't, and she's never even had a pet, and she's never been close like this any wolf at all.

What she does like is how sometimes it's so blatantly, physically obvious how he wants to take care of her. Not just protect her, not just keep her safe, but make sure she's warm, and make sure she's comfortable, and make sure she's comforted. It's one of the primary sources of conflict between them: for him, these things are first and foremost felt in the body, given from the body. For her, things are often more cerebral, more ethereal, detached from the sensations of skin, limbs, heartbeat. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like it, or appreciate it, or like him for it: he shows her that he wants to take care of her, to wrap himself around her, and she turns her head to rest her cheek against his chest as he holds her there.

Closes her eyes and breathes in, but exhales that little laugh at what he says, and the evident difficulty he has saying it at all. Not that this makes her merciful. "Say it," she tells him, a gentle command and an adamant plea.

Rafael

That draws a grunt from the wolf. She might interpret it as unwilling, but that's not it. It's just -- effort. He unravels from her: takes her face between his hands again, gently, the way he does.

"I'm yours," he says. Looks her in the eye as he says it so she can see it: he's not shying from the concept, the idea. It's just the words that are hard. He says it anyway, though, because she asks him to. And because he knows she needs it. She's not an animal. Can't read his eyes, his hands, set of his body when he's near her. Can't read his thoughts.

Kisses her, which tastes like a promise. Says it again, so she hears it without mistake: "I'm yours."

Devon

Starting to learn the difference between some of his noises. At the beginning of all this, everything was interpreted through the aura of his rage; every sigh, every grunt, every flicker in his eyes meant he was angry with her. Every silence was a refusal. It's gotten better; she knows him better now. His rage has never once abated but she is able to separate it, much of the time, from what else there is to him. Now he grunts and it doesn't sound grumpy right this moment, nor defiant. Not even annoyed, just... effortful.

They unravel. She smiles at him when he touches her face that way, like he thinks he might break her. Funny, that she doesn't want to be thought of as fragile, doesn't want him to call her skinny thing, but at the same time she loves the care he takes with her. Likes that feeling that he sees her soft parts and wants to honor and respect and be tender with them, even if she usually doesn't want to admit they're there.

He is hers. The words are hard, even though they're only two. It's true: what he feels when he's close to her doesn't translate to her feelings without this. Most of the time. So he does it, because otherwise she won't know, and perhaps he realizes how painful it might be to wonder if you are loved by someone. To wonder if it is safe to let yourself love someone back. Maybe he doesn't think of it in those words, or any words at all. Maybe there is simply in his mind a pulsing hot point of potential pain for her, and this is a way -- a difficult way -- to protect her. To keep her warm, and comfortable, and comforted. To see her soft parts, and take care with them.

Devon's lips part as he says it, and her eyes start to close even before his lips meet hers. He can feel her intake of breath as awareness of and trust in those words relaxes her shoulders, warms her skin. Her hands come to rest on his sides, bare skin to bare skin. She kisses him back, slowly and growing deeper, and it's now later and later in the morning, checkout time is soon and if they really are going to go walking around today maybe they should leave, but for now she just touches his back, kissing him for a very long time,

wordless.