"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
His fire vanished, leaving thick wisps of smoke in its wake to drift up to his face, curl around his neck and beside his ear, through his dark hair. She watched, cautiously curious as she reached out to touch his forearm, her eyes on his stern face. He was here but he was gone.
Her gaze shifted to follow his, to watch Kirby and her sweet boy walk away, thinking she was about to follow them shortly after. She felt a little stupid for how confused she was at the whole thing. She knew what it looked like, but it was so impossible that Kirby would have any problem with her being this way with someone else when he had no interest in her. He'd made that clear.
He didn't want her, but she wasn't allowed to want anyone else? That didn't sound like him. He wasn't possessive that way.
"No," Woolf said firmly, rounding on her and ignoring his jacket in her hand. She pulled it back to her chest, brows furrowing softly in a reflexive scowl because no was obviously a fighting word. "I'm not leaving, Wallace." Oh. Her brows lifted and when he took her chin in his careful hand her eyes widened a little. A stubborn tilt held to her mouth, though, brown eyes naturally defiant.
"And you aren't either." The hell she wasn't. If she wanted to, she'd damn well leave. But then he said that next part, the part that gripped her heart dangerously in its claws. "You don't get to disappear on me." He wouldn't let her run. She was so good at it, just as good at convincing herself she wasn't worth staying for, with the evidence held in her arsenal.
She felt a thrill of fear. He could make her stay if he wanted to. Like Kirby had so long ago. She couldn't help it, and even as it laced its chilling way through her veins, she felt the guilt from it. Even as she swallowed a gasp and tensed up, prepared to jerk away. But she was so locked in place, and not by his magic. By that look in his eyes as he searched hers.
He pet her hair back, sweeping so gently over her face and looking very much like he still wanted to kiss her. Her mouth dried and her gaze fell to his lips. "I see you, Wallace. I have always seen you—from the very first moment.” Her brown eyes flew back up to his, wanting to pull back, feeling the shame and embarrassment again. Unworthy. Broken.
"And I've wanted you since then. Every piece of you."
Why? Why was he doing this to her? It was impossible. This was a game. An entertainment. But, god, these were beautiful lies she wanted so badly to believe. How on earth could someone like her be worth anything to someone like him? He could have anyone he wanted. He probably did regularly, even. He probably had a whole gaggle of women at his disposal and she was just another to add to the list when he was bored enough.
It wasn't fair to think it, but it made her stronger and she gripped so damn tight to it. She could hold this bit of strength. She would. Her jaw tense, and eyes hard, she stared up at him, defiant again. She was worthless but still deserved something real.
"Haven't you seen enough of who I am?" she asked sharply, her voice cutting. And this time she didn't mean the bad parts. "I won't settle for only being wanted, that would never be enough for me." Otherwise, she could've just been with Kirby this whole time, letting him have whatever he wanted whenever he decided to want it. Never being anything more than a body to enjoy, a mother to his kids. A vessel to birth more of them. That would never be enough for her. She was foolish and childish, maybe, but she wanted the real thing. She wanted love and devotion and promises fulfilled, not empty.
She wanted to be enough to deserve that someday. Somehow.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
She is all fire, even if she doesn’t see it. Her eyes instantly go sharp and defiant and he scowls deeper, lip pulling further into a frown. He searches through her eyes, her every thought pressing into the back of his mind infuriating him even more. But it wasn’t until she feels fear—of him—that he reacts at all. He drops his fingers from her face like he is burned, green eyes widening slightly and a pure revulsion twisting its way around his stomach. The thought of hurting her, of being compared to someone who would, stabs at him repeatedly and he clenches his jaw to distract himself from the pain of it.
“I would never force you to do anything,” his voice is quiet and steely, each word carefully measured. He shoves his hands into his jean pockets, face impassive and muscles tense as they rope down his arms. He wants to say more—to react to how deeply the thought has wounded him—but he bites it back, unwilling to make her apologize for her reactions after all she’s been through. It’s not about him, he thinks bitterly, and he refuses to make her wrong for it. Refuses to turn this so that he is somehow the victim.
Instead he just watches her, watches as she works through her own thoughts and doubts. He almost laughs at the idea of him having an arsenal of women, as if things like this usually interested him at all. His experience in this field was painfully limited, mostly by his apathy to the subject. It was comical to think otherwise. To think that something would drag him out of the office, out of his books, on a regular basis.
Before her, at least, it was comical.
“Is that what you would be doing with me?” His voice is equally as sharp as hers. “Settling?” A low snarl escapes him as he twists his head to the side, frustrated and confused and desperately wishing he still had some sort of target with which to direct the energy. He finally pulls his hands from his pockets, the jeans having left deep imprints on the top of them, and drags them through his hair. “I don’t know what else you want from me, Wallace. What else you need to see.” He inhales, cold air stinging his lungs and then he rubs a rough palm over his face. When he withdraws it, there is a deep slice running down his cheek.
“So here—have everything.”
This time he doesn’t take her palm to do it. Instead, he pulls everything from deep within his belly and then sends it spiraling outward, throwing it up in front of her but not forcing her to experience it. It manifests as a blue, pulsing ball, the light illuminating the sharp angles of his face, the blood that drips down to his stubbled jaw. He doesn’t say anything, just watches the light as it ripples and flickers in front of him. “You want to know everything there is to know about me? It’s all right there for you.”
All she had to do was touch it to have free access—to everything that made him up. To his impossible birth, to his eternal bond to his twin sister, to a life spent researching and learning and studying. She would be able to feel his own confusion after the last time they met, the echoes it had left within him, and the sharp pang he had felt when he had first seen her tonight. To the desire that curled within him, for perhaps the first time in his life, to his blood-curdling fury when he saw the bastard who had bothered to lay a hand on her to his frustration at her and then to, perhaps the most dangerous of all, that impossible something else blossoming in his veins. His first experience with the need for something more.
All laid bare before her. All she had to do was take it.
Her heart twisted when he dropped his hand from her so suddenly, knowing she'd done something wrong. The sudden lack of his touch nearly burned her as much as her thoughts had burned him, piercing with a sharp sense of fault. He would never force her to do anything, and deep down she knew that. Or wanted to know it, believe it. He was powerful and it was frightening, and she couldn't seem to help it. Not after what she'd gone through.
Powerlessness slips in so easily.
His thoughts crossed his eyes in dark swirls of shadow, but she couldn't read them. She would need to be able to read minds and stormy weather both for the torrent sitting there to make sense. He wasn't pleased, and that was clear enough. He was like a dark prince with an infuriating problem: her.
"Is that what you would be doing with me? Settling?" She blushed a deep scarlet, her lips pursed like a furious rose and fist curled tight at her sides, the other still wrapped possessively around his jacket.
In all fairness, she hadn't allowed herself to imagine anything with him. Or anyone. It was too impossible. It was a future that could never exist. How could she think otherwise? Why would she ever let herself even begin to hope and walk herself right into more heartache? But she still knew it for false that she'd be settling, and spat out a guarded, "No!" Something like what she wanted would be the greatest gift in her life besides her children.
He'd shoved his hands in his pockets and now they jerked out, wiping over his face in frustration and sweeping through his hair. Blood was left on his cheek, new blood, and her defiance broke. She reached out as if that could stop him somehow from doing whatever he had decided to do. Don't bleed anymore, not for her.
"So here—have everything."
A light illuminated between them and she jerked back, clutching her hand to her chest and staring at it. Everything about him, he'd said next. All of it, all of him, was there in offering to her. Her brown eyes flicked to his handsome face on the other side of the light, lit and shadowed in sharp contrast. She could reach out and know it all, everything about him. She wanted to. She wanted to know him, to know for certain she could trust him.
But that wasn't how this worked.
So again, her stubbornness defied him, and she dropped her fist to her side again and stared hard into his eyes. "I don't want it," she said firmly. "I don't need help. I can do it myself." If he'd let her. If he wanted her to. Her doubt shadowed her eyes again briefly. This was so impossible. She was nothing, and he could be everything. Why her? But she wasn't going to ask, wasn't going to frustrate him further with her instinct to immediately question his answer with suspicion and doubt.
Maybe she hadn't made it clear what she wanted. Maybe that was why he was still here.
Instead of telling him, just to be certain, she said instead, like a hard warning. "I am faithful." And she expected the same. Jealous, too. An ugly jealousy that lit her eyes on fire, a hissing cat at anyone who dared come near her man with their bedroom eyes and better beauty. "I'm no housewife," she warned further, stern and daring him to even imagine her caged in his house. She wouldn't sit at home like the perfect Barbie doll trophy wife, waiting to dote on an absentee husband. Not that they were getting married, she just wasn't the type was all.
"And my children will always come first."
Kerberos' children.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
She is infuriating. Impossible. He feels a sharp sting of rejection as she refuses his offering and he lets it sink back into his chest, absorbing the light of it so that he nearly glows for a moment before it fades, settling back into place amongst the fibers of his being. His face is stern as he watches her, guarded against the confusing storm of emotions that thunder in his chest, swirling dangerously below the surface.
But she doesn't leave and neither does he.
Instead they remain locked in this stand-off, neither willing to give an inch.
When she speaks again, a corner of his mouth twitches and he feels a dangerous flare of hope. He takes a small step forward, a glint in his eye, closing the distance between them as she continues to talk. There is something like amusement that begins to brighten his features, calming the intense edge as he takes another small step, feeling the heat nearly radiating off of her, his hands itching by his sides.
When she’s done, a corner of his mouth tilts upward. “I don’t even own a house,” he deadpans, thinking back to his loft somewhere in the city. It was a place to live. Not a home. Mostly covered with scientific journals and little else. “So I have little need of a housewife.” Another step so that he can practically feel her breath, his pulse thudding, the maddening desire to grab and pull her close barely stifled.
“I don’t like sharing,” a muscle jumps in jaw at the very thought, “so I don’t mind not being shared.” He has little attention for anything outside of his own realm. Zero desire to pursue anything outside of what he already considered his own world. His head dips down a little, leaving space between them but fighting to maintain it. “And I would expect nothing less from you.” He holds her gaze, focusing on keeping his breathing even, his hands by his sides clenching and unclenching.
“As long as I can be second.”
There’s a stretch of quiet between them, the snow once again muffled as he draws the bubble around them closed, the world muting so that it’s just the two of them and the sound of their breaths.
One hand reaches out against the wall and he leans slightly over her, waiting.
“The ball is in your court, Wallace.”
He echoes the same words from earlier, from another lifetime ago.
He retracted the light, his past life in offering to her to browse through as she pleased. She just couldn't though. In a way, she knew what it was like to bare yourself that way, and she'd never wish it on anyone, even if it had been entirely his own offering. She just couldn't.
As she talked, he prowled closer, each step softening his face more with an amused light. He almost looked pleased, even. It made her frown slightly as she continued, warning him that she had high standards and she wouldn't be some afterthought to take advantage of when he felt like coming around again. Why did he look that way? Didn't he know she was serious?
His mouth curved up in a sexy tilt. "I don't even own a house," he said. He was joking, mocking her, and she blushed under her pretty scowl even as a stupid smirk tried to burrow into the corner of her mouth. "So I have little need of a housewife."
He stepped even closer, his scent enveloping her and setting her nerves on fire, pulling that dark haze back into her eyes. It was hard to breathe again at his nearness, and she was losing focus the closer he drew to her. Her body ached to sway forward to him, but she stayed where she was. His head dipped down some, not near enough, and he kept talking.
"As long as I can be second."
After the kids, he meant.
Her smirk was more obvious, eyes dazzling slyly. "There are four of them," she said quietly, playful, leaning in like she might kiss him then poking his nose with a tease. "So you'd have to be fifth." She couldn't let his ego get too big, right? Had to keep him in his place.
His hand leaned on the wall beside her, silent now but for their breaths and his husky voice.
"The ball is in your court, Wallace."
Why did her name sound so good in his mouth? "So what do you want to do about it?"
She was still smiling, a dimple peeking into her cheek and brown eyes shining with amusement. She was enjoying herself with him, and she leaned up to rest her lips against his, whispering, "I think.. It sounds like.." She breathed a laugh, "I'm going to play ball." She brushed her lips on his with a grin, then leaned her head back against the wall again, looking up to him. She needed to see to her family, check on Kharon and Kerberos.
"Are you asking me on a date, Woolf?"
He was crazy to. She'd already told him she had nothing left to give.
And yet she was stupid enough to feel a flicker of hope in her breast.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
This isn’t the heat of earlier, but it is something equally dangerous, and he holds it with care. He watches as she switches from disbelief to annoyance to playful glances, her emotions brightening her eyes. When she bops his nose, he just grins, eyes dancing beneath the purple-black hair that hangs down over his angled brow. “Fifth then,” he says under his breath, “but first in some categories.” He winks, a quick motion, his entire angular face swept clean of the rage he had experienced but moments before.
She leans up and he can’t help himself.
His arms finally come down around her waist and he picks her up, swinging her around. When he drops her back down, he hugs her close, giving her a tender kiss, lips resting lightly against hers. He doesn’t deepen it, recognizes that the time for that has passed, and he can feel her mind wandering already—beginning to pull away to her family, to the center of her gravity. With a smile, he brings his hands up to cradle her face gently, placing a soft kiss on her forehead before he steps back, watching with a smile.
“I think I am, Wallace.”
A date was an entirely foreign concept to him. It just wasn’t something he had ever had interest in pursuing, even in his youth, but he could see the appeal with her. He could see just how much he would enjoy picking her up from her home, taking her to plays and dinners—letting her see the world.
The thought puts a mischievous spark in his eye, a wolfish hint in his grin as he watches her for a second longer. “I’ll see you soon, Wallace,” he promises, voice still low. “Try to stay out of trouble.” Then, without another word, he turns on his heel, hands in his pocked as he walks away whistling, leaving his jacket in one of her hands and a piece of folded paper with a date and address tucked in the other.
