back to chicago.

eileen

Eileen slept deeply the first night, and seemed to half-smile even while unconscious, especially while Dane's arm sneakily snaked around her middle and stayed there. When she woke up he was making breakfast and they were playing, playful, or at least she was and he was tolerating it and occasionally going along with it.

This second morning out at the little cabin on the little lake in the middle of nowhere, Eileen wakes up from a dead sleep and yawns before anything else. She doesn't even open her eyes. Her pillow is warm and breathing steadily and holding her close. Because of that pillow, some of her first thoughts are memories. Some others are fantasies. What did happen and didn't happen mingle together for awhile and that's okay. There's some pale blue fire swirling around his fingers.

God. He was kissing her, licking her breast, muttering sweet filthy nothings in her ear and fucking her with his hand, teasing her clit and stroking into her pussy, going at her til he made her come. Thomas was. Thomas who always looked away if she were stripped down, or who got all uncomfortable when she fed him a bite of bacon from her fingertips, who seems so gently, openly happy with her sometimes that it's really sort of bewildering when he suddenly gets all wonky and onoz and goes behind the shed to self-flagellate and possibly chant like some sort of self-loathing monk.

Thomas, suckling so tenderly on her nipple, working her panties down her legs, groaning oh god at his hand's discovery of how wet she'd become.

Eileen, smiling and wondering to herself, fights off a grin and a blush to her cheeks at the thought. She snuggles down closer and more firmly to Thomas's side, making a light and happy mmm sound as her arm wraps around his torso. If she were worried about being fair, she'd probably get up and make him breakfast and coffee and start packing up the cabin and that way they could get back to Chicago at a semi-reasonable hour, but Eileen cares more about joy than justice. She's pretty sure that the chances of Thomas being weird and possibly even unhappy and all kinds of other things today are greater than the chances that he'll be happy and lazy and horny upon waking, more eager to roll her over and fuck her than get going, asking her when he can see her again, sleep with her again, how about tomorrow, tonight, how about now. And that will... well. She'll deal with whatever.

But chances are, she thinks, he won't begrudge her enjoying these few waking moments of bliss. So she snuggles. Makes what are referred to in common circles as 'happy noises'. Wakes him up, most likely, by alerting him to the fact that he still has a naked twentysomething wrapped around his body.

Dane

Dane's reaction upon awakening, in fact, is neither panic nor happy-lazy-horniness but simply ... a slow-stirring thoughtfulness. He awakens by degrees. Grows alert by degrees. At some point he notices he's mostly naked. At some point he notices he's not alone. At some point he notices the other body in bed with him is naked, is twentysomething, is female, and has a small mole on her clavicle. At some point he puts it all together and comes up with the solution to that equation:

Eileen.

And then he remembers those dizzy moments in the darkness. That boldness he didn't know he still had in him. He remembers the sounds she made, the way her body moved, flowed like ocean waves. He remembers how she clung to him when he tipped her over that edge

and how her eyes glimmered in the pale firelight he conjured, after.

Dane's eyes open. Sunlight drenches the tiny cabin. His arm is around Eileen, and he leaves it there. He breathes quietly. He thinks about what this means, whether this means anything at all. She's the first woman he's touched for so long.

His voice is fuzzed with sleep: "Does this ... change anything?"

eileen

She can feel him waking. It's something everyone has in common, no matter if they wake from a nightmare or if it's peaceful, no matter if it's quick or slow. It's in the breath. There's a reason yogis focus so much on that. There's a reason why it's such a part of meditation, such a part of music. Something changes in Dane's breathing, subtle and deep and then external, audible, tangible in the way his chest moves.

Eileen aches with tenderness for it, and her arm over him remains where it is, surprisingly strong and firm and heavy for someone so light, someone whose feet barely seem to touch the ground at times for pure joy. She is also incredibly warm, the two of them slightly sweaty under the blankets despite the chill of the morning air. They slept so close. Are so close, right now. That doesn't make her ache, at all.

After a time, he asks a totally understandable and yet unimaginable question. It's a very big one wrapped in a tiny package. It is also sort of endearing, in how stupendously stupid it is.

"Of course," Eileen says quietly, and because they're her first words on this new day there's a smoky rasp beneath the brightness of her voice, a fog resting low on the dewy ground before sunlight blazes it away. She doesn't move, not even to prop herself up and look at him. Who needs to look?

At least she's honest. But also philosophical: "Everything is always changing." Her hand moves on his skin, an echo of the way she stroked his back, his sides, and his arms while they were kissing. While her legs were tucked around his waist, bare chests together. Just an echo. "But we decide how we change with it."

Dane

The last time Dane lay here like this, it was his wife beside him. And even that was years and years ago. Toward the end, with the Ascension War turning dark, with hope fading -- toward the end she didn't come out here much at all. She didn't like it anymore, and besides, she was always busy, always involved with something or other, she didn't have time for this sort of thing. Dane still came out here sometimes. Usually alone. Once he brought his daughter. He closes his eyes; sometimes he has trouble remembering what she looked like. She was so small...

Dane opens his eyes again. He wonders if this counts as a sort of betrayal. He's still a married man. He doesn't know where his wedding ring is, either. He takes a breath, his chest rising against the warm weight of Eileen's arm. She is so warm. He can't remember if he's ever felt skin so warm; a body so inviting, so effortlessly passionate. Her sensuality is like a fire, something wild and natural and uncontained and unashamed. He thinks of the way she sighed, taking hold of his car, and wonders if that was when he first began to want her.

"I'm afraid," he says softly. And he stirs, shifting his head a little, looking -- if not quite at her face, then at least at what he can see of her. Her arm. Her shoulder. Her body beneath the comforters. "I'm afraid I'll hurt you, or you'll hurt me, or someone will hurt both of us because of our involvement with each other."

eileen

It never crossed Eileen's mind that there was a possibility -- however dim -- that Dane would wake up and mistake her for someone else, some ancient memory of this place, these scents, this bed. She never considered the chance, because she has never seen him before in that instant before he is completely awake. She knows now that, at least this morning, he was quiet. It was a slow, thoughtful thing.

They talk about him like he's some kind of loose cannon. He sneers, he looks down on non-Hermetics, all of that stuff. He's violent. But there's so much else going on. And he wakes quietly. He wakes thoughtfully.

Eileen tips her head on his arm. She moves down a bit, still holding his body, and now she can see his jaw, his cheekbone, his eyes. He can sort of see hers, though mostly the slope of her forehead, the curve of her ear, the corner of her eye. A bit of nose. He can feel her cheek move against his side when she speaks. They have not moved away from each other. She knows that now, too. But this is where she differs: she sees, senses, experiences, but no meaning is wondered over or assigned. It just is.

He's afraid, and that Just Is, too. And the first thing he's afraid of speaks volumes about his self-loathing, however deep or shallow that may be. And the fear that she might hurt him is, while not necessarily greater, more immediate than the fear that something or someone will hurt them both.

"That's okay," she tells him, first. That's what she said to him last night, looking up at him after that torrent of desire and maybe even need that overtook him before he shied from it, recoiled from it because he was plummeting over a cliffside without so much as glancing below. Terrifying.

"It is good to be afraid," she says quiet, like a recitation. "It is folly to bow to terror." The movement of her mouth changes; she is sleeping on his left side, and she kisses the bumps of his ribs that she can just barely make out beneath his skin. It is okay. All of it is okay.

Eileen is quiet for a few moments, then: "We can talk now," she tells him gently, "or we can take a little time. Back in Chicago, or in a few days, or a week, or so on. It's also okay if you want some time. And nothing will happen that we don't both... come to, of our own free will." She slowly lifts her head, looking at him fully for the first time since waking. "There might be pain. But that's okay, too." Her voice is so quiet, so steady and still. Her hand moves to his face, his hair, stroking through it where it is short-shorn around his ears, silky bristles against her fingertips. "Good things can come out of pain, too."

Dane

Dane laughs. It's soundless; it's more a gasp, a huff of breath, than anything else.

"Sometimes I wish you'd teach me how to be so ... forgiving of whatever it is life throws at you. Everything rolls off you, like water on a duck. Even anger doesn't last. Nothing seems better or worse, more or less important, than anything else. But that scares me, too." He's quiet a moment longer, wary of what he's about to say. Unable, ultimately, to resist saying it:

"It makes me wonder if that's how you feel about what's happening between us, either. Not better or worse than anything else. Not more or less important."

eileen

He laughs; she smiles. His laughs are like rasps. He doesn't guffaw or bellow or even chuckle. It's like the sound is trying to escape from him, like there's so much of a struggle in him to feel the thing itself to begin with that by the time it hits air it's weakened by the struggle and the journey. It doesn't make her pity him; it just makes her want to encourage him. Cheer him on. You can do it, you can do it. You can laugh. There now, didn't that feel good?

In a way, he compliments her -- or at least she feels complimented. The words 'teach me' don't pass from most magi's lips to Eileen's ears very often, particularly not from Adepts and certainly not from Hermetics. What praise, to be asked to be a teacher. What honor. She likes that he calls it forgiving, because that is very much what it is. It isn't the same as 'accepting'.

Eileen is gearing up to tell him that sometimes you just gotta fake it til ya make it, and that a great deal of the time she is taking a deep breath and biting her tongue and reminding herself of great, deep truths to keep herself where she is, that there has to be some kind of even keel in order for her to ascend and descend on the waves and currents of passion. It's hard to be what she is, do what she does, live the way she lives. If it were easy, well, everyone would do it.

But she never says any of that because Dane admits, wary of it, that he's not sure if, essentially, he's special. If this matters. Because for him this is such a great risk, such a great chance for pain he can scarcely imagine enduring again. Would he make it this time? Would he come through? What would even be left of him, then?

This is what Eileen thinks of. This is what she sees and hears. So she wants to suddenly lean over and kiss him! Kiss him like last night, drown him with it, burn such thoughts and fears out of his mind. Surprise!

Of course that's rather dramatic. And not really all that useful. Or considerate. Or... dealing with the problem. It looks like a running-toward but she knows it's a running-away. So she stays where she is, steady as a beating drum, beating heart, waves in between tides rhythmically moving over the sand. In and out, as reliable as breath.

"I'm afraid, too," she confesses, and it seems like a rare thing for her, to be afraid -- and admit it. "I'm scared that you might want things from me that... I don't know yet if I want them or just you, and if I want them...or you... that maybe I'm not actually ready and it will get one or both of us hurt or hurt other people and I don't want to be something that hurts you."

The words are agitated, but Eileen still seems quiet, lazy from waking, untroubled...mostly. She leans over and nuzzles the side of his face, rubs her brow against his prickly jaw. "But I do know I haven't felt like this before," she says, much softer, almost a whisper. "I don't know if it's better or worse or what it means because it's new. But it is... different... than anything else. Very different."

Dane

It would insult Dane terribly if Eileen actually tried to encourage him like that. Prickly, proud Hermetic: he'd feel talked down to, patronized; he'd be angry.

But she doesn't encourage him like that. She does it more subtly. She doesn't laugh at his feelings, the few times he expresses them. She doesn't make him feel weakened or lessened by them. She allows him to have those feelings, and she encourages him, in truth, every time she smiles because he's made her smile. Every time she looks happy, or sad, or aching, or overcome, because of something he's said or done or otherwise expressed. Revealed.

Even so, she can feel a sort of drawing-away and drawing-in when she speaks of how she feels. The irony of that: one moment he says he's afraid she doesn't feel differently. The next he can't bear to hear her speak of her feelings because they're so raw, she wears them so openly, he can't imagine how or why or isn't she afraid someone will hurt her for it?

"I wish I had your courage," he says,

and saying it, sits up. The blankets slip down his body. He's a little more tanned today than he was yesterday, though not by much. He rubs his face for a moment, then turns to look at her over his shoulder.

"I'm going to go back to not talking and thinking about everything so much," he says. "I'm going to just try to ride this out and see where it goes ... if that's all right with you."

eileen

She bared quite a lot there. Showed a level of vulnerability that's deeper than lying naked in bed with him or letting him touch her, penetrate her, see her undone. It's pretty bad timing for him to curl back in on himself, metaphorically at least, and then sit up and kinda disentangle himself and say he's not going to think or talk about this, if that's quite all right with her.

Eileen feels a bit angry at him, because the truth is, she's quite hurt by it. Would have been a different thing if he'd not told her he isn't sure he's special, would have been different if he hadn't sort of indicated that he'd like to be told if he actually is special, and she feels betrayed. He was vulnerable. She told him the truth. He pulled away. He says he wishes he had her courage and she is upset, she thinks: you don't, you don't and it makes her sad and lonely that he doesn't.

Her arm doesn't resist him sitting up. She thinks for a moment about it, but she doesn't even come to a conclusion before it's too late to draw him back. She watches him, as he sits up and as he rubs his face and as his hands drop and as he looks back at her, down at her.

The blankets pulled away and bared her a bit but she doesn't turn or hold herself to cover up, hide her breasts. Her nipples are hard in the chill, though, even if it isn't cold enough to make her get goosebumps all over. Her hair is spread behind her and across one pillow, and her shirt is wedged between the mattress and headboard, panties... um... still missing. Reminders, all of it, everything, of last night.

She feels something strange and unpleasant. Realizes it's guardedness. Feels sickly, so she doesn't say anything with it. There's a lot she could say and she's trying, she really is, to come up with something to say. None of it feels right. She wonders, always wonders, how anyone can live like this, feeling like this all the time. It rots in her like a cancer. It sours the air and makes it taste foul.

Eileen finally finds something that feels right to say, and something that doesn't taste lousy on her tongue, and something that feels like it breaks that sickly, weak shell that grew over her like scales when hurt took hold. And she says it in a whisper, like a call more than a plea:

"Thomas..."

Dane

As the silence grew longer he'd looked away from her. He felt, with a keenness he was not prepared for, the wall that rose over her. He felt the unfairness of what he did, and he felt shame.

He cannot help but look back when she says his name, though. She is the only one he can easily remember who uses that name, and every time it draws him like a lodestone. He looks at her, his brow troubled, something sad and ashamed in his eyes. He takes a breath, lets it out,

and letting it out, sinks back to the bed beside her. He faces her this time, lying on his side. He puts his hand on her face and he puts his brow to hers, and without a word, with an infinite tenderness that most would not suspect him capable of, he kisses her.

eileen

She disarms him. Disarms everyone, it seems. Charlie, so panicked that he shut his body down as a final guard against further pain, warming suddenly to her touch, coming back to life because it was safe then, it was okay to come back, it was okay to be so damaged and broken and terrified. Eileen has had guns lowered in front of her. Knives dropped. Spells aimed for her, crackling on the fingertips and tonguetips of witches and magi and shamas, have been released into nothing as the will to harm has seemed, suddenly,

so empty.

She has some kind of a gift. Or a great deal of courage. A surprisingly strong will. She has something to her that makes even her own pain slip away from her, fall off of her, because she cannot bear to feel it embedded in her heart. Eileen is something special. Dane knows it. Everyone who meets her knows it, even if they never say it aloud or allow themselves to truly believe in it.

And yet, despite that courage he talked about, the gift, the what-ever-the-hell-it-is, it's so easy to hurt her. The way she was with the fish, killing them to prepare them for dinner. The way Wentworth used her, froze her, because she was the weakest target in the room. The way she looks at Dane when he looks at her, til something makes him turn away in... shame. The way she feels so sad, suddenly, because she made him feel bad.

They say compassion is when you feel as sorry for the man with the stick as you do for the dog he is beating.

Dane comes back to her. And that was the call, soft as it might have been: come back, come back. He returns, flowing with his breath, down to her side. There is that pain in her eyes still, only now it is less her own. She, too, is afraid of being hurt. She, too, is afraid of hurting him. They share those things.

He puts his hands on her face and she puts her hands on his shoulders, moving nearer. Their brows touch, and though he is not a mystic this does have meaning to and for Eileen. He finds her mouth coming towards his when he shifts to kiss her, already opening to his lips, as though she knew, or simply

as though she wanted.

It's very soft, and it is so gentle -- so tender -- that it leaves her raw, opened up and aching from the fear and the longing and the gratitude. She has to take a breath when it ends, a little ragged, as her brow sets against his once more. A shiver goes through her.

"Thank you," she whispers to him, one palm against the back of his neck. "I just... wanted you to know I'm not immune. To any of it."

Dane

Eileen is something special. Dane knows it. And on some level, some deep-seated, half-unconscious level, he fears this above all. Because if she weren't something special, she wouldn't matter so much. If she weren't something special, she couldn't hurt him, and he,

cold as it sounds,

wouldn't care so much if he hurt her. And if she weren't something special, then he wouldn't have to worry that he might begin to feel something for her that's as deep and soulcracking as what he felt before. For his wife. For his family. He wouldn't have to worry that this, too, may be some sort of betrayal.

There's so much guilt in him. Guilt and shame and fear that somehow, he's betrayed someone, everyone, who's mattered to him. He wishes he could just let it roll off his back. He wishes he could be immune to it -- except

she isn't, either. And he knows that, felt it when she looked at him like that; felt low and rotten and unfair.

"I know," he whispers back. "I'm sorry. I just ... I'm sorry."

eileen

Of course,

she just smiles. There's a sadness to it, the same strange sadness that has hung across this bed like a canopy since waking. But she smiles at him, touching him, so very close to him, and rubs her face across his, rough and animalistic and reveling in the scratchiness of his jawline against her smooth cheek, erupting in joy at the fact that they are, despite everything, mostly naked and tangled up in bed together on a crisp summer morning.

"You're more than sorrow," she says quietly, purringly, as she hugs him tightly against her -- um, still quite bare -- chest, her head resting on his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his arms and his neck. "You are, can't fool me."

So she squeezes him, and withdraws, and looks at his face. "And... just in case it's confusing because I got all hurt a second ago... it actually is okay if you just don't want to think or talk or worry much about it. This. Us. Whatever. Sometimes just taking things as you find them is the way to do it. And that might even be the best way for you to... unfold."

Her hands on his face. She kisses him. His mouth, then his face -- cheekbone, temple, brow -- in a flurry of soft adoration. "I forgive you. It was a small harm."

Dane

In spite of himself, he laughs. He turns his face and he drops a kiss to her body, nuzzling a moment, laying his head down again. "I am," he agrees softly, which is something he wasn't sure he'd ever say. "I'm more than sorrow."

She forgives him. They draw apart a little. She kisses him and he closes his eyes under that tender assault, her lips brushing all over his face. When she stops, he opens his eyes again, finds hers. His hand finds hers too. He holds her fingers gently, tenderly, as though by this alone he could keep her from slipping away again. Could keep her from sliding behind that terrible, clammy wall of guardedness again.

Anyone else would be a fool not to guard herself. But on Eileen, it feels as unnatural and sickly as oil on an otter.

"Thank you," he says. It's almost grave; almost formal. But then the corner of his mouth turns up again, softens the edges of those words. They are such different people, tending toward such opposites. It's a small miracle, he thinks, that he finds himself here at all.

"We should eat," he adds after a little while, "and then pack the car. You can drive the first leg if you want. And maybe when we get back to Chicago you can invite me up for coffee again sometime."

eileen

Eileen never dwells long in sorrow. Eventually is does slip off of her, just as he said, even if she isn't immune. It just never quite gains a foothold, clings to her, stays. She chooses this instead, and 'this' involves holding him, playing with him, kissing him, smiling with him and eliciting a small laugh from his mouth, a kiss from his lips.

They are as close as lovers, he thought the first night here. It's still hard to say if they're lovers or not, but that closeness won't seem to be denied.

She nips at him tenderly, small white teeth at his lower lip before she draws back, finally, from all her joyful ministrations. She smiles warmly at him, her eyes twinkling a bit, though this is so the norm for her that it would be more remarkable to see the light and color drain out of them than appear.

"Maybe," she muses, to his shoulds and his cans. She doesn't elaborate, speculate, extrapolate on any of them. She has her own ideas of what they should do, and what he can do, if he wants, and what he can maybe do again sometime. At the moment it's terribly tempting to stay right there, tempting him terribly all over again. Makes it hard to move to go do things like eat and pack and drive.

Must be why she's running her hands over him, lightly, though at the moment it's just his shoulders and his arms. Distracting, all this nudity and near-nudity. Eileen presses her lips together, smiling at him, then bursts into a grin, laughing at herself, at her own desire, at how obvious she is, at how wonderful it is to be so obvious about such a wonderful, enjoyable thing.

"I'll cook this time," she tells him, and kisses him, "if you find my panties."

Dane

Dane, sadly, is not nearly so open this morning. Not that he was particularly open last night, either -- but at least he was bolder, he wanted, he dared.

Now, he accepts the tiny kisses she strew all over his face. He returns that soft little kiss of hers, but when her hands start to wander, when she starts to touch him, she can feel him tensing a little. It's not revulsion. It's not that at all. It's a strange sort of worry, though, and an odd brand of self-consciousness, as though being able to see by day means he can also be seen, and if he's seen then, then...

he isn't sure what, really.

Eileen stops, though. And he's grateful to her for it. He relaxes as she bursts into a grin. He cups his hand behind her neck to holds her near for another second as she kisses him yet again -- kisses her back, as if he wants her to see, to understand, that just because he has hangups and issues and can't right now doesn't mean he doesn't want her. It doesn't mean that at all.

He smiles wryly as she makes him an offer. And he sits up again, slower this time. "Well, I don't know," he says. "It better be a good breakfast, with a tough job like that."

eileen

As bright as she is, as happy, Eileen wouldn't lie or fool herself about last night. What it was. What it felt like. There was connection... real connection. But not as far or as deep as it could have been. She knows she can go farther there than Dane can, right now. It's a struggle not to leave him behind and break what was, even for a little while, holding them so close together. She knows what it meant when he didn't want to be inside of her. She understands that he wasn't ready for that, not yet and potentially not ever. He held back. He protected himself. He couldn't connect too deeply to her, open himself like that, risk that much.

But there was connection. And he did open to her, at least enough to be with her, stay with her when she came. He let her lift him up a little with her.

Right now, Eileen senses his body curling in on itself a little, something between shyness and true fear, and all she wants to do is hold him when she feels it. So she does. She holds him, wraps her arms around him, hugs him firmly and dearly, because she understands. She isn't immune to that fear, either. And it is somehow not hard for her, not hard at all, to forgive him for it.

This time when he sits up she isn't pained by it. He isn't squirming away, bolting like a rabbit into the underbrush, but just... easing out of bed. They can't stay here forever. She just smiles this time -- no, grins -- and flops backward, reaching behind her to grab the t-shirt that's stuck between mattress and headboard. It feels decadent. It's one of her favorite parts, this lazy, exposed reaching for discarded clothing, rising up from bed, hanging out with someone after a wonderful combination of orgasm and sleep. She slips into the t-shirt, which only falls far enough to just barely cover her. It's inside out, but that doesn't matter.

Eileen rubs her foot gently against his calf under the sheets as they're getting up, crawling around. She kisses his cheek, sitting on her knees. "I'm not a very good cook, so it's okay if you don't find them. They were pretty wet anyway. I'll heat up some water and we can wash up. Heating water is definitely one of the cooking-things I have down. I can also do coffee and tea and, um... cereal... and, uh... instant oatmeal..."

She's clambering around and getting out of bed as she says this, giving a small yelp at the cold floor on her bare feet, then laughing. "Oh, it's going to be so late when we get back to Chicago. This is awesome."

Happy. Happy, happy Eileen. She does what she promised, pumping a large pot full of water and setting it on the stove. Dane has to take care of the fire part, and while the water is heating she uses cold water to wash her hands and splash on her face. She starts working on coffee, using the clanging metal percolator with delight, digging around in the icebox and box of food for something to make a decent breakfast with. The fact that she's not a good cook does not seem to stop her: she said she would and she wants to.

But oh, her brain is disorganized this morning. She cracks eggs into a bowl to whip them up and then halfway through goes to use a washcloth and warm water to clean up, stripping out of her t-shirt and rubbing the washcloth over her naked body. Still naked, she goes to finish putting the eggs in the pan and stir them around briefly, then decides it's too cold and goes to get dressed in clean clothes -- underwear, denim cutoffs, a tight blue tank top, a schlubby oversized striped t-shirt with the hems cut off, which is all very 80s -- and then she wants to stir the eggs more, and the coffee is done, and she's completely forgotten bacon.

Put it this way: in the end, the food that Eileen was in charge of is not very good, with the notable exception of the coffee. The coffee is great. The scrambled eggs are flaky and crispy instead of fluffy, the bacon is overly oily and sort of chewy, and the toast is burnt. She laughs, but is a little embarrassed, apologizing for breakfast in the end.

Dane

One might expect him to draw away from that hug. Dane, who couldn't even look at Eileen the first time (and the second time, and the third time) she was naked. Even though he wanted to. Oh yes. Let's admit it now: he wanted to. He didn't, because he wanted to. Because he was honorable or something; but also because he was afraid to. Afraid to want. Afraid to lust. Afraid of where it would lead him:

right here.

Not so bad, then. Not so bad a place to be. But even so: she hugs him, and he laughs softly. He wraps his hand around her arm, squeezes back. But later on, when they're getting out of bed, when she's sitting up in bed and bare, naked, the sunlight fuzzing in the tiny fine hairs on her body, he can't look at her again. It's too much for him; she's too much. Too beautiful, too healthy, too there, too her. He's losing his mind.

He looks away, he rubs his face the way he does, he gets up and pulls on a pair of jeans before she can see how hard she's made him, just looking like that.

Later on she cooks. He gets down on all fours and digs around under the bed, looks for those missing panties of hers. It's a long search and it's fruitless; in the end her panties remain as lost as they ever were. He gives up. He washes up, brushing his teeth and washing his face in ice-cold water. She said earlier that those panties were pretty wet anyway, and he has to kind of ignore that because it might melt his mind otherwise.

A little later they sit down to breakfast. She keeps apologizing. He takes up his fork, looks at her, shakes his head.

"Stop it," he says quietly, smiling. "This is fine." A bite: flakycrispy eggs. Oilychewy bacon. He eats it anyway. It tastes good. He's not imagining it: it does. It's okay if it's because he likes her so much. It's okay if it's purely because she's here, and she's her, and who she is

is pure joy. Complex, glistening, iridescent joy.

"This is great," he says, not lying. "Sit down and eat."

eileen

Fairly, for his sake, Eileen isn't staring at him. She's energetic, bounding from bed to floor to stove to water to back again, cooking, flitting about the room. Clothing comes off and comes back on, swooshes of pale fabric across the air before it lands on her body. And somewhere in there, Dane is hard as a rock for her, thinking about her, thinking about how wet she was, how unashamedly she wanted him, how open she was, how freely she can talk about it even in the cold, harsh light of morning.

He never let her finish, yesterday out on the lake. She was describing some fantasy to him. Something far rougher, far deeper, than what they did last night. And even last night seems surreal, like it didn't happen, because the world hasn't shattered apart come sunrise as a result. Did it really happen, if the world didn't end?

Some kind of dirty-laundry monster has absorbed her panties into its shadowy depths. Eileen doesn't seem to mind. They're just things. She's forgotten about them. She hasn't forgotten his fingers, surrounded in pale blue fire, fueled by her desire and his magic. She likes his magic. She loves it a little. She loves him a little, and this is not the first time she's thought this but it also won't be the last. She's quickly becoming infatuated.

Except: Eileen is okay with it. Eileen feels safe in that freefall. And if she doesn't feel safe -- that's okay, too. Not feeling safe is exhilirating. It's ecstatic.

"I keep thinking about learning how to cook better," she tells him, sitting at the table now, washed up and hair combed and coffee steaming, "but there's so many other things going on that are more interesting. And I almost feel like I'd be stealing someone else's art. There are people who have devoted their entire lives to this." She is thoughtful, eating slowly. "Sometimes I feel that way about the different spheres, the arts, just... magic. I don't know that I could devote everything I have to time, or to mind. I don't think I will ever be the best at anything. I'll just be sort of okay at everything."

Dane

In this more than anything else, they are different. He specializes so narrowly, and so deeply. He is driven to succeed. He wants to be the best -- no use dissembling about that, now. He was so furious when Wentworth made a fool of him, so angry and so shocked and so frightened when he did his best, gave it his all, and found that all that might and all that magic and all that will was simply

not good enough.

She's quite different. She does not want to plunge deeply into any one thing. She doesn't think she'll ever be best; she doesn't sound like this bothers her. She'll be sort of okay, she says. At everything.

And he's eating his eggs, chewing on his bacon. She's forgotten to pour any sort of drink. He gets up and gets some milk, comes back with it, gives her a glass and gives himself a glass. She's dressed now, more or less. He's still in jeans, his upper body bare, all leanness and intensity. He thinks about what she says.

"I don't think I could handle that," he says then, truthfully. "I'm ... the sort that wants to be the best, if only in a few things. But if I think about it objectively, there's nothing wrong with your way. Maybe it's even better." His shoulders shrug: pulling the muscles of his chest and back with it. Everything moves together. Everything fits together. That's the basic truth of the world; even he, who only sees the world in tiny slices, understands that. "Sometimes," he says, "I think maybe I've sacrificed breadth for depth."

eileen

It does bother her. Not greatly, not crushingly, but... it makes her pause. Makes her wonder enough to mention it. To never be the best at anything hangs on her shoulders as she says the words, and she's looking at her plate, eating the reasonably edible food, and some of the brightness has gone out of her eyes and expression as she thinks on this. He may miss this as he gets milk, but she smiles up at him when he brings it to her.

"I don't know that I could deny one thing for another. No matter what choice you make, you lose something. In everything."

She reaches over, touches his brow, stroking two fingers across it. A strange gesture, a strange little touch. "I could confess things to you," she says quietly. "And that's different."

Dane

He doesn't understand what she says. She can see that. Somewhere along the way she's lost him -- so swiftly, too. He smiles a little; it's a little unsure. She touches his brow and his eyes close, as if waiting for benediction. Then they reopen. He takes her hand, he brings it to his mouth. Kisses her fingertips.

And he admits it. She doesn't know what courage this takes for him: Dane, Adept of the Order of Hermes, glorious wayward son of House Flambeau. He says it, just like this:

"I don't understand."

eileen

Yesterday morning, at breakfast, he wouldn't have done that -- kissed her fingertips, closed his eyes, taken her hand like that. Yesterday, all day, he wouldn't have unfolded to her like this. They're in each other's space nonstop this weekend, but for a brief break while he fished and she...took drunks and wandered around half-naked. After weeks of not even talking to each other, after a few meetings where they tried to do a little good in the world despite themselves. He never would have done this, any other time but this morning. He may never again.

It does take her time to answer him. He doesn't understand, and she grasps that she isn't being all that transparent. But she did mean what she said: she could confess things to him. That's different from everyone. Of course he doesn't understand that: compared to Dane, Eileen is an open book. She hides nothing. Even when she's hurt, even when she's vulnerable, she is willing to show that. She's able to lie there, naked and sweet and still wanting, and ask him to please come back.

"That's okay," she says simply. Because she could -- she could tell him how she feels, what she thinks of, what she really is afraid of and what Her Way actually entails -- but she doesn't. This is her fear. This is her holding-back, as opposed to his: she doesn't yet.

She leans over the table, kissing that mouth that confesses that its mind doesn't understand. "Let's pack up and head out," she says, and she's still quiet. "I already want to make love to you again."

Again. That in itself is a bit of a confession.

Dane

Willingly, he receives that kiss and returns it. Yesterday morning he might have shied away. Tomorrow he might again. But for now, Dane is warm; he is receptive. The morning light touches him, makes him beautiful in his own way: this damaged, wounded, hardboned will-worker, who hides his battle scars beneath that arrogance and that entitlement common to all of his Tradition.

She knows better though. He is not all sorrow. She knows better. And his mouth doesn't taste like sorrow. It tastes like softness, and tenderness. His lips touch hers; enfold hers. His tongue skims the seam of her lips. It is is gentle. When she draws back she makes a confession that darkens his eyes. He swallows; he looks down at his crisp eggs, his floppy bacon.

"So do I," he says. It's so quiet. "But I'm too... conflicted. I'm afraid I'll regret it if I did. I'm afraid it'll ruin something precious."

His eyes come back to hers. He wants her to understand. He can't tell if she understands, but he wants her to. A breath, in, out. Then he stands.

"Let's go," he says, decided.

eileen

There's something tenuous about this morning, though not brittle. What matters is still there -- at least, the thing that matters. They do care for each other.

It's a good thing the table is narrow, with all the leaning across and reaching across they're doing. Eileen, at least, can't seem to help herself but try to be close to him. Perhaps he finds it stifling; if he does he isn't telling her so. He pulls away and something tells her it isn't because he doesn't want the affection. He does want it. Maybe he doesn't think he deserves it. Eileen doesn't know why. There must be a reason; she hasn't earned the right to ask what it is yet.

The touch of his tongue on her closed lips makes them open, not to invite so much as to emit a soft pant. She's touching his cheek, her heart quickening, and that's when she draws back, telling him what she does. That she wants. That she craves. That it's him. Again.

They should go. She licks her lips as she draws back, as though to taste him, swallowing. It's going to be different when they go back. This place is set apart, private, with quiet and solitude and beauty everywhere, steeped in memories. Back in Chicago she has a job, he has work for the Tradition and for the Council, they have the chantry and enemies and friends, all of it. They have distractions there from this, whatever 'this' is. It's safer. It's a good choice to make, to go back now -- and like she said. Every choice you make, no matter who noble or good or wise, means something else is lost.

Dane can't tell if Eileen understands, but all he can do is hope. She seems to.

Let's go, he says, and so they do. They pack up, picking at the food, though as it cools it becomes even less palatable. Some of it goes into a cooler, some of it into a box, some is tossed. The bed is stripped. Dane calls someone about the septic tank before they go. Eileen finds her underwear and laughs, yelping happily. What dishes they used, they wash and dry and put away. It's a strange thing, turning this place livable within an hour, sealing it for what feels like forever within the same amount of time. Closed up, shut away, locked into silence. It makes Eileen feel sad and surreal and fascinated.

They store the canoe better this time, safer, less likely to rot. Eileen insists.

"Wait wait wait wait wait," she's saying, as Dane is closing the trunk of his car and walking around to the front. She waves him over to her, and then she's making him move around until they're posed in front of the lake, the edge of the cabin visible behind them. "This button," she says. "You have to do it because your arm is longer."

It takes a couple of tries to keep it from being blurry. But the end result is a picture of the two of them, angled the way such self-taken shots always are. There's the blue of the sk and the blue of the lake, the green of everything else, the dark brown of the cabin barely visible. Mostly, the frame is taken up by their faces, close together, . Eileen is laughing, looking more at him than at the camera, because he took it while she was trying to tell him that you have to smile, Thomas, you do!

Then it's okay. Then they can go.

Dane

They pack up. There's an inherent sadness in it, and it's one Dane understands. There's something about being here - away from it all, secreted away, hidden, safe. There's a quiet joy in coming here, making it livable, making it a home. Making it a warm, secret place where they shared secret warmth. There's a quiet sorrow in putting all that away again, and though he could assure her they'll come back, he'll bring her back here soon ... well. The last time Dane packed this place up, he wasn't expecting to be away for quite so long.

She wants a picture. He doesn't really. Not because he's just that camera-shy -- though he's certainly no exhibitionist -- but because he has an odd little superstition about it. Doesn't want to take a picture here like it's a memory they'll need to save. Doesn't want to take a picture like maybe they won't come again. Still; she coaxes, he relents. In the end his smile is not unlike the one on his dossier. A little crooked, a little wry, a little sad,

but a little fond, too. That's different from the smile on his profile.

They get in the car. She drives the first leg. He pokes around in his music collection until he finds the song he's looking for. He plays it for her without explanation, waiting to see if she'll recognize or, if she doesn't, if she'll like it. He grins when she does, one or the other. "Your theme song," he says.

They decide to have lunch on the road. Save a little time. He's driving by then, and she helps him juggle his burger, his fries, his drink. He pretends to omnomnomnomnom! her fingers at one point, which makes her laugh. Dinnertime finds them crossing the Mississippi into Illinois. They find a roadside greasy-spoon, where he orders chicken-fried steak, which may either delight or disgust her or both. He gets a cream soda, too. He's a little tired from the drive then, quiet but not really withdrawn. He lays his arm along the back of his booth, looks out the window. He's grown a bit of scruff on his jaw over the last few days. It suits him.

Eventually, feeling her watching him or wanting to watch her, he looks back at her. He smiles a little. "Thanks for coming with me," he says quietly. "It was special."

eileen

Eileen has never seen the dossier on Thomas Dane, Adeptus Majoris of House Ignis. She's never asked to see it. She sees him, though. The smile on the picture in her phone delights her -- the other two photos are blurry messes, one of them because she's laughing, one because Thomas is half cut out of the picture. But she stares at the one that works for awhile, grinning happily, before jumping up and kissing his cheek, which

doesn't need to be photographed.

They slip into the car and she wiggles into the front seat, squeezes the gear shift as though saying hello, giving it a hug, or... something. Mirrors are adjusted and air conditioning is turned on and then she's yelling out the window at the cabin: "Goodbye, cabin! See you later!"

Since she's driving, Dane starts flicking through music. When the song starts, Eileen begins bopping her head to it, two beats to a side, and any question of whether she knows it is erased when she starts singing along. Her shoulders waggle and occasionally her hair flicks side to side with her bopping. Yes, she knows it, and when he calls it her theme song, she cracks up. "Yeah, but are you saying you're Trouble, then?"

A grin flashed his way. They eat on the road, and she insists on sharing a milkshake, she steals some of his fries when she finishes her own, yelps when he omnoms her fingers. "You're like, twelve," she tells him, and offers him the last sip of milkshake. She naps for awhile after that, curled up in the passenger seat, legs tucked up, arms wrapped loosely around herself. He knows she's awake when she gives a great yawn and informs him that she needs to pee. By then it's dark, and they're back in Illinois.

The diner is in the middle of nowhere. There's a truck stop over there and a convenience store and not much else. It's black all around, and outside you can actually see stars here and there. Eileen is eating salad and a bowl of fruit, and the salad isn't much to look at and the fruit is mostly cantaloupe and honeydew and a few grapes, but she's quite pleased with it. She doesn't seem to think much either way about his chicken fried steak. She does wonder a little how often he goes to the gym, or if it's just because of the trip that he's eating this kind of stuff. It doesn't really matter; she's just letting her thoughts wander as they eat.

The scruff does suit him. But right now she keeps thinking about Dane + Fucking = Good, so it's possible that she'd think just about anything looked good on him.

So it's also possible that she's watching him when he turns to her, feels her. She smiles. It doesn't bother her to be caught, she doesn't look away, doesn't blush. Just smiles, like he's answering something she's said. "Of course it is," she says back to him, changing just enough,

little time mage that she is,

to tell him how she feels. She's propped along the edge of the table, leaning forward, cheek against her fist. "I'm thinking...maybe I won't be with anyone else til... we figure this out more." She's quiet, or at least on the quiet side. Glances down at her plate, thoughtful and perhaps even a bit shy. "Not that I'm like... really out there very much as it is, and it's not a huge part of ritual for me, but... " her eyes do flick back up to him, grey as doves. "Would that bother you?"

Dane

You're Trouble, then? she teases - and it makes Dane blink, then laugh quietly. "Yeah," he says, sounding pleased with the notion. "I guess I am."

They eat on the road. And later she naps, and he helps her find the recline button for the seat so she can curl up a little more comfortably. When she wakes she's tucked under a light jacket. It's one of his, pulled out of the back seat and laid carefully over her.

Later on they eat in a diner. And she wonders how he puts away meals like that and stays looking like he does; on the thin side if anything. He doesn't go to the gym, though. He's not the type to stand in a room of mirrors and flex all day. He runs: shoes beating pavement along the shoreline, an hour most mornings. It helps him clear his mind of dreams and cobwebs. It helps him focus.

He focuses: she changes the time, was to is. His mouth moves, and he gives her that faint, fond little smile of his. "Yeah," he says quietly, agreeing. A little later, she tells him what she's decided. And his eyes change a little. A furrow between his eyebrows; not worry or anger or anything like it. Something a little like concern maybe. Or compassion.

"You can do whatever you like, Eileen. You can be with anyone or not be with anyone as you like." He's quiet a moment, thinking about this; coming to realize this with some surprise, himself: "It wouldn't bother me either way. Isn't that strange?"

eileen

Truthfully, she hasn't decided. She's thinking about it. She... well. It's hard to say. This is the first mention she's made that maybe, unlike the stereotype or maybe just unlike the image she projects, Eileen isn't quite as Free Love as many Cultists. At very least, she's not out there inviting people home at the drop of a hat. She mentions ritual, which is apparently a thing, but even Hermetics use wands and chalices and just try explaining how that isn't actually about sex. She doesn't expect it to shock him, and if he were shocked that Eileen isn't fucking up a storm every other night she might be rankled. But she is a little shocked at his reply.

He seems to be thinking about it, and then he tells her that, well... he doesn't care. That it doesn't bother him either way, and he asks her if that's strange, and she says quite easily: "Yeah," but it's quiet, "it kind of is."

Dane

That answer makes him a little self-conscious. His mouth twists; he rubs a hand behind his neck, then drops it to pick up his fork. He carved off a bit of 'steak'; dips it in gravy. Eats.

"I myself would have thought the very thought of you being with someone else would have burned me up with jealousy. But it doesn't. And it's not because I don't care about you, or because I'm not attracted to you. I do. I am. You know that.

"It's just... I don't know. I suppose it's a sort of trust. If you did decide to go home with someone, I'd imagine you had your reasons, and good ones at that. You're spontaneous, Eileen, but you don't strike me as a fool. And you're always so eager for pure experiences. Unblemished joy. I wouldn't want to keep you from that.

"It might bother me if you found someone else that you really felt something for, though. And I don't mean to suggest you might indiscriminately sleep with men -- or women -- that you feel nothing for. I just mean: really feel something for. Something deep and aching... like what we feel. If you found that with someone else, that would bother me."

eileen

And thus Eileen is officially in over her head.

Not to worry: she's been primed for exactly this much water over her head for years now, by ending up in over her head more times in twenty-odd years than most people can claim in a lifetime in and out of wars and marriages. But it doesn't mean that for a little while, right now, she's not ...confused. A little hurt in a way she doesn't entirely understand. Worried that she's going to hurt him by her own confusion. And here she was trying to fix that, keep it from happening. Keep things clear and pure and organized until they made more sense. Filtered. Until Dane could figure out what he really wants.

Until she could, too.

Then there he goes and tells her that. And all the follows it. About how he thought -- but it doesn't -- and it isn't -- because he totally does.

She knows it's childish, or selfish, or something, to want him to burn up with jealousy at the thought of anyone else touching her. She knows it's sad and a little pathetic and maybe even a bit sick to want him to crave her enough that it drives him a few miles out of his mind, just because that's how she feels. She also knows that there are a lot of people who would be overjoyed to hear this speech, to feel so understood, so trusted, to be talking so honestly about where the lines really are and how everyone feels about those lines. She would have thought, asked a month ago, that this is what she might hope for, if she ever found herself falling for someone.

But even if it's not something she wants to be feeling, she is feeling all of that. And it doesn't feel good.

Eileen takes a slow breath and lets it out. Slowly. She is quiet for awhile, processing. Thinking. Watching him. She tries to find a way to explain herself to herself, so that she can then explain it to him. Eventually something surfaces. The waitress has come by and refilled Eileen's coffee; she tells the woman thank you quietly, and that's the only point she glances away from Dane, smiling up at her for a moment.

Her eyes come back to him, though. "Sometimes how I feel about someone when I'm having sex with them is different than anything else I feel for them. And sometimes that depends a lot on what they bring to it... how open they are. If they're willing to let their guard down. Sometimes even with a complete stranger it becomes something... real. And deep, and aching, and... I love them, entirely." She gives a small shrug. "Not always. But a lot of times I don't know what it's going to be until I'm in the middle of it. I always have a sort of... fondness for them, even if it's not that great."

Eileen looks down at her mostly-eaten salad. "I think sex is... very powerful. It's not puritanism or essentialism or anything like that, it's just... what it is for me. I am pretty careful about who I choose, because... they'll be inside me, or I'll be inside them, and... " she's stumbling over the words, surprisingly shy to talk about it like this, talk about others like this, to him. She shakes her head. "It's just an instinct. With almost everything else I might be open and eager and just wanting to try new things even if they're risky, but sex is so ...potent. It's more powerful than any drug or pain or music... at least for me. And it does take something special for me to be willing to go there with someone... even if it's just for comfort, or if it's just low and raw and dirty, all the way up to truly high ritual."

She looks at him again finally, and her face is slightly pink, mostly in her cheeks, high and bright. She looked similarly when she came, only then she was sweating, gasping, clinging to him, as though she would float off into the stars if she didn't hold on tightly to something grounded.

"I've never felt like this before even when I'm not making love to someone," she tells him softly. "And I don't really know what I ultimately want or what I'm even ready for or what any of it might mean. But... I think if I feel like this sitting in a diner with you, then I don't want to feel this with someone else while I'm in bed with them. And... I think the very idea of you being with someone else makes me feel... burnt."

She settles on that word. It's a good one. In shock from pure pain. Skin shredded away by heat, everything left raw. Angry. On fire. Burnt. Burnt right up like kindling, crackling into quick ashes.

Dane

Neither of them are eating now. Dane's fork is still in his hand, forgotten. They met over a meal, too. He ordered a sandwich to go. That was before she knew him; he seemed so hardened, so superior, so cold. A bit of an asshole, really.

He does not seem so very hardened or superior now. Certainly not cold. He listens to her, hearing her. When she's finished he laughs a little, without much mirth. "I don't think you need to worry about my going to bed with anyone else," he says. It's wry; and then it's not, the last of the humor slipping away. "I won't. I don't want to. You don't need to worry about that."

A few moments pass. He hesitates a little. Notices the fork; sets it down. Looks at her again. "I only meant to tell you that you didn't have to ... be faithful to me for my sake," he adds quietly. "I don't need that, and I'd feel bad if that was the only reason."

eileen

He seemed hardened, superior, cold until he had her drive so he could eat his sandwich. It was haughty, but she found it oddly endearing. Maybe she misread him then. It doesn't seem to matter now; she doesn't care if she saw right through him or if she just willed his warmth into being by pretending it was there. That's Eileen's own sort of magic, without any warping of reality at all. People drop their guard, drop their weapons, drop their eyes and their voices even, because of some spell she works on them. It's a very kind magic.

He laughs without mirth. Eileen blushes faintly and smiles with tenderness, shyness. A little sadness. A little bit of pleasure that she feels rather guilty for feeling. Because, perhaps, Dane isn't the only one who might feel wary that they aren't... special. That they're just like everyone else to someone who seems like no one else.

"I didn't really know anything about you until this weekend. I thought..." She shakes her head and smiles at him again, gently. "It was never the only reason. It wasn't even a main one." She hesitates for a moment, then adds: "If... um." Uncomfortable, she hesitates again, then rushes headlong: "If you do met someone you want to be with, will you talk to me about it? It doesn't have to be before. It can be after."

Dane

There's a sort of subtle wince in Dane's eyes at that. A pause; then he reaches carefully across the table, takes Eileen's hand.

"I will if it happens," he promises gently, "but I don't think it'll happen. Like I said: I don't want to be with anyone else. Right now, I can't even really be with you ... but I don't want to be with anyone else, either."

eileen

He takes her hand; no. She takes his, wraps both of her smaller, defter ones around it. She draws it to his mouth and kisses those fingertips, rough as they might be, or soft -- she just remembers them drawing stars down, creating them out of nothing. She remembers heatless flame glowing blue and white around them, marrying things both magical and intensely, carnally physical. Her lips are very light, like the landing of a ladybug just before it takes off again, and then she is looking at him again.

"You're really with me now," she tells him, even though it isn't the same, not really-really, as what he's talking about. S-E-X. As in penis in vagina. As in opening up to her as much as she opened up for him. As in falling apart from sheer undeniable closeness, as in a shattering of the tenuous but vital boundary between one body and another, one soul and another. She knows what he means. She knows why he recoils from it like ancient man recoiled from fire,

so bright, so warm,

so painful, so dangerous.

"Do you want to get pie?" she asks him, her eyes brightening. "We're at a diner."

Dane

As though a little startled, Dane looks at her: those dark eyes, that core of flame. This time when he laughs there's a quick-flickering joy in it.

"Yes," he says, "I suppose I am."

He has a few more bites of his incredibly unhealthy dinner. He leaves some gravy on the plate; a bite of biscuit. Some mashed potatoes. Ate all of that fried steak, though, and is working on his cream soda when she brings pie up. He snags the dessert list over. It's literally that: a typewritten list, no pictures. Apparently cherry pie, apple pie, ice cream and chocolate cake are all self-explanatory.

"I'm getting apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top," he decides, and turns the list around for her.

eileen

Yes. He is here with her. Right here, right now, sitting in a diner and his hand is in her hands and her smile is toward his eyes. She is never one to linger long over the difficult, the painful, the dark, the upsetting; she comes back from it quickly. In the end, what matters is that they are here. He's here with her. They are going to get pie. There isn't anything she can foresee or forestall other than that, and when you get down to it, this is pretty good.

Dane and her in a diner, getting some pie.

"We!" she proclaims. "We are going to get apple pie -- warmed up a little -- with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. And I'll have some coffee with it and then I'll drive for awhile. 'Kay?"

Dane

"We should get a double helping, then," Dane says, straightfaced. "Because I don't know about you, but I intend on eating a lot of pie and ice cream."

So that's what they do. They get two slices of apple pie, and they get two scoops of ice cream, but they pile it all onto one plate and maybe their waitress is having a good day and she thinks it's cute, or maybe she's having a bad day and she wishes they'd just quit advertising their status to the world. What does this diner look like, anyway - facebook?

But the truth is, their relationship isn't really at the level of cutesy shared dinners yet. They sort of want it to be -- they're both making efforts in that direction -- but the work is hard, there's so much past and grief and uncertainty to dig through, and in the end it's quite something that they can sit in a diner and share a slice of pie. It's quite a lot.

When they're finished, it's well and truly dark outside. Eileen drives, so Dane slides the passenger's seat back to accommodate his longer legs. He leans back and he watches the long, lonely road slide by. It's quieter now, something about nighttime and motion facilitating silence. After a while he reaches over and takes her hand, their elbows on the center divide, their fingers loosely linked. He's lost track of whose music is on the stereo, but it's a nice song, mellow.

Chicago gets closer, the miles counting down on the freeway signs. When they're out in the northwestern suburbs he switches back behind the wheel, and they watch together as the city and its skyscrapers rise out of the plains. The northwest approach is the one of the loveliest; the city with all its layers and complexities laid out, the skyline anchored at either end by massive, dark monoliths. It feels like a return to civilization. It feels like Rome, all roads leading there.

"You'll have to give me directions to your place again," he confesses as they get closer. "I wasn't really paying attention to that, last time we were there."

eileen

The sad truth is, it's harder for Dane right now. All of this is. For Eileen there's something fresh and new and exhilirating about it all. She fantasizes. She charms. She crushes. For all the wisdom in her -- and it would be foolish to ignore that she is wise, and that it is real -- she is still so very young. She is still so very unsure of what she wants or even who she is going to be. There is surprising power behind her piddling little sensory spells, even Dane can feel it when she works. If she doesn't find some outlet for all that strength, some way to truly use it, she may one day split from a small tear like a waterballoon, and there will be nothing left of her but a puddle and some tatters. It's the same with her heart. It's so very great, so very broad, so very inviting, and

there is a crack in it now, opening.

But she isn't afraid. Maybe a little, but not greatly. She doesn't want to recoil. She runs toward it, laughing. She knows the cost of loving is one's life and thinks, what a bargain! let's buy it! because she hasn't been burnt like he's been burnt. She has suffered losses, but not losses like Dane's. She can't possibly know how much pain lies down that road, only that along the way there are roses with such beauty, with such aroma, that one thinks one must have died.

It's easy for her to sit in a diner booth and eat pie and ice cream, smiling at the one she is so fond of, imagining that she can make it easy enough for both of them.

She drinks coffee, too, and is quite perked when they go back out to the car. She drives. They laze on the long stretches of highway between here and there, single spot of silvery light in darkness that becomes velvet, thick, and overpowering. She starts slightly when Dane reaches over to hold her hand, because she wasn't expecting that, and her hand flutters and then stills, becomes quite strong, squeezes his once before relaxing again. For awhile her fingers stroke gently between his, intoxicatingly, soft and slow and rhythmic, and she doesn't even seem to realize she's doing it, or the effect it might have. It doesn't go on forever, though. She drives, and she drives so very fast, and she isn't even using magic.

But after awhile they pull over, use a rest stop, stretch, and then get back in and Dane is driving the last leg into Chicago. Eileen rolls down the window and half-hangs outside of it, her hair streaming, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched, just for a few moments. She comes back in windblown, dazed, smelling like the night air. The city looms ahead of them, and they are drawn into it, woven into it, as the roads get more full, as people come back to life out of the darkness, as they are pulled inexorably into civilization once again. It simultaneously pleases and saddens Eileen; it means this is over. Whatever it was, or is. It's winding to a close, like the ending of a casting. Bittersweet.

Dane mentions needing directions and not paying attention and she glances over at him. "No," she says, smiling vaguely, "I don't imagine you were." She gives him her address, reminding him where her little box of white and yellow and books and rainbows and warmth and sunshine is located. The closer the get the more she guides him, turn here and then there and it's probably not the fastest or most efficient way but it also has some of the neatest nightlife and scenery along the way. She hasn't asked yet. She doesn't ask, until they pull to the curb, which is where she invited him to come up for coffee last time:

"What were you paying attention to, last time?"

Dane

It feels oddly like a throwback in time. They park here at the curb. He is looking straight through the windshield again, very subtly tense, as though he isn't sure what will happen next or what direction it will happen from. She asks him a question. He doesn't quite startle, but there's still a hint of it in the way his eyes blink.

Then he looks at her, and things change. Time advances. It's not x weeks ago when they first met. It's tonight; he's been inside her, if only a little, in a way both carnal and metaphorical. He smiles a little.

"You. Or rather, my thoughts, trying to figure you out. I was trying to figure out if you were really just asking me up for coffee, or if you were going to try to seduce me, and if you were going to try to seduce me, whether or not I should resist. And all that while trying to carry on a conversation about the relative merits of black coffee vs. cream-and-sugar coffee.

"It didn't," he finishes, quite wry now, "leave much room for mentally mapping your neighborhood."

eileen

Some of that tension bleeds into the air like a fuzzy corona around him, soft violent and pale orange mottled together, shifting, like fear and excitement both and uncertainty in either. She smiles at him and he smils at her and it's today. Time warps and shifts. She's no longer aching for a shower because she was snuggled up to a half-dead Verbena earlier this evening. Earlier this evening she was holding Dane's hand, that's all. Last night his hand was inside of her, working her, on fire in the aftermath. But that is the past, too. Right now it is now and now is the time when Dane is smiling, wry, telling her that last time they were right here he was thinking exactly what she thought he was thinking at the time.

She wrinkles up her nose, grinning, looking a bit like a wild but very cute animal for a moment there. "That's what I thought," she tells him, leaning over and popping a kiss on the end of his nose, then his brow. "I was asking you up for coffee, and trying to get to know you better to see if I should go out doing errands and missions for the chantry with you again, annnd I wasn't thinking of seducing you at all but when you wanted to leave I could tell it was partly because you wanted me and the thought of you wanting me made me so, so, so unbelievably turned on that I wanted you to stay and be near me even if we just talked and drank coffee all night and when you left anyway I made myself come so very hard, but in that low down dirty filthy wonderful way that's different from last night."

She pauses, tipping her head against the headrest of the passenger seat. "You should put my address in your GPS and save it under a code name. Flax. That's what my code name was when I was with the Euthanatoi." She smiles. "Or the name of a pizza joint."

Dane

Eileen does that thing she does, where her words seem to almost get away from her. Or, no. Like she lets her thoughts, which are so very unbounded, get into her words for a moment. Lets them run rampant, lets them go off and get into whatever interesting designs they can manage to get themselves into, and all the while Dane is looking at her with this look of bemusement, if not amazement, and when she's done,

when she's done he closes his eyes a moment, laughing, letting his head fall back against the headrest. "Really," he says, "why do you have to tell me all that?"

And: "Flax?" He raises his head again. "That's an odd name to go by." He starts to put it into his navigation, regardless.

eileen

"Because it's true," she says, and her smile is so bright and happy and unbounded. He's not angry at her like he was at the lake, cutting her off and shutting her up and yelling at her for talking about things like sex and her desire and all that. He's laughing, thumping his head back, and she can almost see him later on, hardening, head back just like that, eyes closed --

"And because I like turning you on," she finishes, which is also the truth. Her smile softens, quiets, as he puts her address into his GPS. "Because my last name is cotton. Like... two plants that make cloth or something. Part of what made it a decent code name was that hearing it, you wouldn't automatically think of me. Like...calling a Hermetic who likes to call fire 'Hothead' is just asking for someone to figure it out. I like it," she mentions. "They think flax was the first domesticated species in human history. The flowers are this pretty violet-blue with gold centers. You can make it into all kinds of different things. Paper, cloth, food..." There's a pause. "Cynthia said that it's sprinkled on altars in healing spells. People used to believe it was a gift from the gods to take care of almost all their mortal needs."

She smiles. "I don't think the deathmages were thinking about all that though. But they might have been. They're surprisingly flexible, at least as far as their magic is concerned."

She doesn't want to get out of the car.

"I should come up with a code name for you," she says happily, brightening. "It'll have something to do with stars."

Dane

"People believed that of olives too," Dane remarks. She doesn't want to get out of the car. He's not rushing her out either. They sit there, the two of them, parked at the curb on the loading line. If this were daytime, he'd have a ticket in no time flat. But it's not daytime. It's night. The Loop is quiet and still, strangely barren. "But there's already an Olive Oyl.

"I picked Thomas because of Thomas Hobbes. He was a morose fellow, but not as bad as most people think. Everyone knows the 'nasty, brutish and short' line; what they forget is that his point is that that's the state of man if man doesn't do anything about it. But the whole point of living is to do something about it, and by doing so, transcend it. Become something better than what you were born.

"Dane is a little more boring. My great-grandmother was Danish." He shrugs. "I'm not sure if she was any good at butter cookies," he adds, and laughs.

eileen

The grin that spreads over her face at the Olive Oyl line is slow and broad and gleaming -- a little bit goofy, too. She laughs softly. Eileen has turned to sit sideways in the passenger seat, her head against the rest, watching him, smiling, just... talking. He tells her about his actual 'code name', the Hermetic one, and her smile fades and dies its natural, gentle death -- except, it never really goes away. It lingers like a spirit in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, still a little alive.

He talks about the philosopher, and what she knows is that Thomas Hobbes was also the namesake of the tiger, just like Calvin was a reference to John Calvin, only the blond-headed kid in the striped shirt was the one who was nasty, brutish, and short -- only literally. He mentions butter cookies and she doesn't get the joke because she doesn't know much about Danish baking, but the fact that he laughs about it makes her smile, and then

it's quiet for a little bit, because she doesn't have anything to say. Why does she tell him things that torment him to hear? Because they're the truth. Why does she go silent, watching him in the dark, when it's so very late and she has to be up and getting ready for work in fewer than eight hours? Because she has nothing to say, because she wants to look at him, because work is just work and this part is life.

A little while goes by. The silence is companionable and taut, the air gentle but thick. And after awhile -- and rather sleepily -- she asks him softly,

again:

"Do you want to stay?"

And like before, she doesn't disclaim or promise. No assurances of what will or won't happen. Just a question. It isn't even a request, though he knows it is also an invitation.

Dane

There's something gentle and intimate about this moment. This quiet space in the front seat of Dane's Audi, with the engine off and the air still warm from their long, long drive. Their words on the air. Their names floating between. Code names. Names they gave themselves, or were given by those who knew them. Truer names, perhaps, than the ones their own parents gave them -- long before they became who they are.

He thinks that she is, in fact, versatile and holy. He thinks she just might be a gift from the gods.

After a while they are both quiet, and he looks through the windshield again. She sees his profile, the strong nose and the firm mouth, the dark eyes that move now and then, following lights that blink, images that stray. Wind comes and goes down these skyscraping corridors. She lives above an independent grocers, or a tiny theater, or any number of little things that exist and live in the Loop, half-forgotten.

His head turns, his hair scritching softly, when she asks what she does. He blinks once, slowly. Then he nods.

eileen

Last time she had to ask him twice. He never said no, but he didn't stay. This time she asks him once and all he does is nod slowly, watching her. She knows he wants to stay. He wanted to stay last time, too, she could feel it. But there was all that tension -- was she trying to seduce him? Did he want to resist? Should he resist, regardless of what he wanted? She adored him that night, that very first strange night. She knows that even for her, that's a little odd. That's a little frightening, if she stops and thinks about it. It's a little bit scary that she feels the way she does about him even while sitting at a diner or sitting in his car, that she feels this way about him even when she has no intention, tonight, of making love to him.

A lot of things Eileen does would scare her more if she stopped and thought too much about them. That only inhibits freedom. That only limits transcendance. So she decides not to think too much about this, either. It's Thomas's way of staving off his own fear: just stop thinking so much, stop questioning, stop worrying, stop obsessing over it. Just be. Just let go.

Eileen lets go. She smiles softly to him and nods over the way. "You can park there," she tells him, and he shifts in his seat and he does turn the car back on, taking it to the appointed spot and parking, locking up. They get their things out of the trunk, meager as the luggage is, and he helps her juggle it all while she gets out her keys, letting them in that skinny door at the bottom of the narrow stairs. They're quiet -- it's the middle of the night and they are both tired, but it's more than that. It's as though they know that too much talking will break something here. Not because it's fragile, not because it's brittle, but because it calls for some element of respect and reverence. It calls, more than anything, for simple silence. Just be. Just let go.

At the door he's been to twice now, she unlocks again and lets them in. She's only been gone a couple of days but she seems like she missed the place, sweeping into it and hugging the first thing she sees, which is the corner of her bed, the bedspread fluffy and rumpled. She made it before she left. It looks clean in here, feels bright and cheerful even with the lights off. It feels so safe. There's been change, though: there's a wooden mobile over her couch that wasn't there last time, hanging delicately from the ceiling and moving only when the air conditioner kicks on.

Eileen never turns on the lights, but there are some ambient from the street outside. There's some white string lights above the couch that she turns on so they can see a little bit better, but not much. It's dim and it's comfortable and they are wedging themselves together in the closet-sized bathroom when they brush their teeth, leaning against each other's sides. Eileen laughs around her toothbrush, which has ladybugs on the handle, but luckily she doesn't spew any flecks of foamed-up toothpaste. She is just happy.

They undress. They wash up. They get ready to go to bed together. This is the third time they've done this. It's different now. He isn't averting his eyes -- at least not as much -- and she isn't as uncertain inside, aching, worrying, wanting so badly she isn't sure she can ever get to sleep. Her bed is larger and softer and holds no memory, not even one, of a life that's gone now -- except the part where he has not slept alongside a woman other than Eileen for so, so long. It is all right. If memories come, they come. They come for Eileen, too, and she compares, she contrasts, she thinks about others she's slept with and the ones she's Slept With and this is still

different.

But: no obsessing. No questioning. Just be. Just let go.

When they go to bed, when the white lights are off, Eileen draws the thin white curtain between the bed and the rest of the teeny-tiny apartment. It blocks out more of the light from the window, the fire escape, the city. She plugs in her phone and sets her alarm and groans softly at how quickly she'll need to be waking up. She's wearing to bed what she wore at the cabin: panties. T-shirt. Her hair is brushed out but loose, and she sleeps on the other side of the bed than she did at the cabin, curling up under the covers next to Dane. She seems heavy and warm, sleepiness overtaking her quicker than any drug.

She kisses him before curling up finally, though. Her head turns and she looks past her shoulder at him, smiling lazily in the darkness. Doesn't tell him she's glad he's here, though she is. Doesn't tell him she totally expects him to drive her to work tomorrow morning, because she doesn't. Doesn't tell him that tomorrow she doesn't mind if he wants to hang out here, that she trusts him, that he can sleep as long as he likes before he goes home, even though all of that is true. She just smiles at him, her pleasure at his presence in that bed so evident she doesn't need to voice it.

And that's when she kisses him. It does not escalate. It does not spiral dizzingly away from her. It does not end with her groaning, turning around completely, pressing to him, begging him with her body to topple head-first over a cliff and lose himself in her. But: it is warm. So warm. It isn't even entirely chaste. She kisses him with the comfort of a long-time lover, the way you know and feel

I love you and just the way you are,

though without the troublesome part of sounding like a Hallmark card.

And, breathing deeply and sighing it out, she turns back around when it's over, closing her eyes and dropping -- almost instantly -- into sleep.

not making love.

Dane

Dane's mouth tilts; he thinks he might have gotten that one. Because he's gotten to know her a little through this silly little game. Because he knows she's from California, and he knows she has two brothers, and he knows all that now -- but he also knows,

has learned, intimately,

that she wouldn't trick him. That she is soft of heart and gentle of spirit, but not weak. And not malicious. She wouldn't try to trick him.

She comes nearer. The way he looks at her is half anticipation, half trepidation, especially as she sinks to her knees before him. Dane holds his breath. She leans on his knees, though, and she looks up at him, and she tells him what seems like a universal truth, incontrovertible, when she says it like that. He laughs a little unsteadily as she gets up, saying nothing,

watching as she goes to get the rice.

When she comes out he has the fish off the fire. They are piping hot, the skins crisped, the flesh beneath tender, flaky, steaming. They have almost no seasonings; need none. They have salt. They have pepper. They have a lemon that Dane slices apart lengthwise, dividing the slices between himself and his friend.

Because that's what she is. Before and apart from anything else they may or may not become: Eileen is a friend. And that makes him quite happy.

eileen

Much of Eileen's history is still hidden from Dane, but to be fair, so is much of his. They tell each other things in bits and pieces, attaching them like mementos to a web. Everything connected, nothing touching. Their stories aren't told in linear form. That makes sense for Eileen, at least. But she knows now about his brother James, who is younger, and he knows about her biggest brother Noah who is in New York and her big brother Colin, who lives with their parents because, really, he has to. He knows that for a time -- and it sounds like a significant amount of time, in fact -- she was a consor to Wheel-turners. She helped kill people. She was going to put her life's path on a track to assist them in cleaning what was both filthy and extraneous from the world.

A lot changed.

And he knows this, which is important: he can trust her. She is tender. And she really, really likes him. Cares for him. Wants, in her own soft way, to protect him from hurt. It isn't hurt that makes him wary when she comes near him, or when she touches him, or mentions how she feels or what she wants. Eileen doesn't quite know what it is, or understand it completely, but she tries to be patient with it, too.

The truth is, she's already a little bit tipsy. She is calmed, mellowed, warmed by even one bottle of beer, and it makes it that much easier to just come close to him, lean on his knees, and kiss his knee, and tell him what she does before she gets up.

Eileen brings the rice out -- it's just instant, nothing fancy -- out in the same pot it was cooked in. The lid is still on, and steam escapes when she takes it off. She has two more beers dangling from her hand, too, and as Dane is slicing up the fish and lemon, she inhales deeply. "That smells so good," she says, her stomach growling. "Let's just... screw the plates and eat everything out of the pot," she says, digging her fork into the fish right where it is. "I'm starving."

Dane

This, too, makes Dane laugh. So he doesn't protest; he uses the oven mitts to get the fish off the fire. He squeezes two slivers of lemon over the fish, then dusts it with salt and pepper - lightly, leaving the final seasoning up to whoever's doing the eating. She hands him a fork. He stirs the rice a little to fluff it, then empties that out onto the pan too, where it crisps and mingles with the juices from the fish.

"Dig in," he says,

and so they do, the sun still high and bright across their shoulders and across the lake, their fire crackling noisily through its wood.

"It was a good idea," he says a little later, eating, "your game. It was nice to learn about you like that."

eileen

The first bite of fish Eileen has is salted, peppered, barely touched with lemon, and she only barely stays out of his way as he mixes rice and fish together, darting in and grabbing forkfuls of food. She's quite quick, a little hummingbird, and

she eats about as heartily as one. Or perhaps someone who hasn't eaten since ten or so this morning and went on a drug-laced walkabout for most of the afternoon with little more than water and sunlight to accompany her. She drinks beer and, frankly, does not talk for awhile, putting a hundred neat mouthfuls of food away and occasionally giving helpless moans or mutters of appreciation.

By the time Dane speaks, she's slowed down a bit. She's halfway through her second beer and it doesn't look like sharing four fish between the two of them is going to be a challenge. She licks her lips, tasting butter and lemon, and goes in for another bite.

And smiles, her eyes flashing at him sidelong. "It's fun, isn't it? Rather than like... 'tell me your life story' or drilling each other." She pauses a beat, then laughs.

Dane

"You make it sound like dentistry," Dane replies, smiling. "If you wanted to know my life story, I'd tell you. It's not terribly interesting, I warn you."

He doesn't eat quite as ... starvedly as she does. He hardly picks at his food either, though. He eats, simply enough: more fish than rice, and with more lemon than she put on hers. It's a simple meal. It's also quite fantastic, the sparseness of the seasonings offsetting the fresh, fresh fish.

"How was your afternoon, anyway? I could see you from the canoe for a while, but then you were lost in the treeline."

eileen

The laughter doesn't quite go away. She's clearly had some joke with herself, and she only calms down with a drink of beer and a moment or two to herself. She grins at him, though, shaking her head at him. "Interesting is subjective," she explains.

He asks her about the afternoon, though, and she gives a small shrug. "I took some E and wandered around for awhile. Laid in the sun. Looked at the world from another angle. Sometimes I watched you. I went and visited some of your neighbors. Well, I visited one of the other cabins, and no one was there so I climbed onto their roof and waved at you but you didn't see me."

Dane

Dane's eyebrows go up when she says she visited neighbors. Then they come back down when she explains what she meant. "I've never met my neighbors," he says - which likely shocks no one. "I think the fellow over there," he nods in the vague direction of the northern cabin across the lake, "is an accountant from Minneapolis. I'm not sure about the other.

"Most people don't come out here to meet others. I'm sorry I didn't see you waving, though.

"I just fished," he goes on, as though this were an unspoken trade. Her afternoon for his. "I lay in the canoe for a while. I thought a lot. About us, and about myself, and about thinking, and finally I decided to stop thinking. Then I came back here.

"And then we played a game. And now we're eating fish." He smiles. "Can you stay another day tomorrow? Or do you need to go back to Chicago?"

eileen

"I bet they're nice. I saw through the windows a bit and it looks nice." A beat. "I cleaned some stuff out of his gutters as a thank-you for letting me sit on the roof,"

as though the accountant was there, who had any say in the matter of Eileen somehow climbing up on his roof to watch her friend fishing on the lake. As though it matters that she exchanged something, even a small something. As though she was thinking that clearly when she started digging around in the muck.

"There's nothing wrong with thinking," Eileen says, which is the first she's really said about Dane's tendency to... overthink. "I think just as much as you do, I just... think differently. And I don't want you to stop doing what feels natural to you because you think there's something bad about it or something like that." She nudges at some fish with her fork, thoughtful. Looks over at him. "But I don't want thinking to stop you from doing what feels natural. It's a weird cycle, isn't it? I can get lost in my own head a lot. Maybe that's what you mean. Cuz usually I just... decide to stop. And breathe. And go with the flow. And it sounds like that's what you did."

He asks if she can stay. She looks up at the sky, still so bright, and smiles. "What day is it?" she asks him back, turning her head on the back of her lawn chair.

Dane

"Saturday," he replies, "but if we stay the day tomorrow we won't be back until very late. And if we stay the night, too, we won't be back until the end of the day on Monday." His smile is wry, "And some of us apparently have honest, paying jobs."

eileen

Eileen grins. "A lot of my job is schmoozing. But I am very, very honest about it. I love everyone." She finishes off her second beer, and this is... true, somehow. Certain people more than others, or different ways than others, but in a way, yes: Eileen loves everyone. Eileen just loves.

"And if it's Saturday, then we should totally stay tonight, and most of tomorrow, but then head back. It's okay if we don't get back til late. I can nap in the car a bit if we end up cutting it close, and it's not like I haven't gone to work after some very long nights. Or not sleeping at all. Or going straight from a rite to work, which is one of the more surreal experiences I've ever had."

She wiggles in her chair a little, smiling. "We still have ice cream."

Dane

It makes him sad, suddenly and inexplicably, to think of driving back. Leaving this quiet little retreat with its kerosene lamps and its clear blue lake. Driving all the way back to Chicago. Dropping her off at her tiny little gypsy caravan of an apartment. Going back to his own apartment,

alone again.

Right on the tail of it come another inexplicable urge. He wants to tell her not to go back to that tiny little apartment after all. Come up, when they get back to Chicago. Come to his place. See his apartment, see his balcony, see the lake, see his bed. Sleep there with him, nestled back against his body, his arm over her side, warm, primordial, right.

It passes. Or no; it doesn't, but he bites it back. He smiles; there's ice cream. "Don't we have s'mores, too? I'd rather have s'mores. But you should have ice cream if you want it."

eileen

Out here it is very easy to forget the rest of it. This whole life of hers, family and coworkers and Tradition-mates, that he doesn't know and... isn't really a part of. Yet, one could say, but still: not a part of it. His whole life, things she doesn't even know about, a life that lets him go off for weeks visiting all these other places he's been where he knows people she can't imagine.

It's easy to forget the twin nodes, ever in conflict, a danger to each other, circling each other like binary stars. And the War itself, rushing like a tide or flailing like a child who cannot always remember why it's upset. The Council of Nine, the global one as well as the ones at each chantry that's big enough to matter. The man Dane went off in search of information about, who locked him in a bubble and stopped Eileen in time with little more than a thought, a bat of his eyelash, a word.

So, so easy to forget all of that. A small lake. Fish biting, then steaming and flaking later on the fire. Woodsmoke. Sunlight. Sleeping together again, just sleeping, in the same small, warm bed, still smelling the woodsmoke, the sunlight, in her hair, with his arm so heavy and warm around her.

"S'MORES!" Eileen yells, and it's not nearly like the way she yelled earlier, but a few nearby birds do take flight at the sound of it, flapping their wings indignantly. She laughs at her own noisiness, nearly toppling her chair. "I forgot we got s'mores stuff." She's beaming a little, shoulders up, arms in front of her in a deep V, hands laced and hugged between her knees. She looks happy. S'mores.

She has no clue what's going on in his brain. Hers, at the moment, has marshmallows in it.

Dane

"We should finish the fish first," Dane says, ever methodical. "And perhaps we should wait for full dark. S'more are a nighttime thing. Like counting stars and telling ghost stories. Here; eat some more."

So that's what they do. They eat more, and eventually they finish one side of the fish so they tease the bones out delicately and set them aside; eat the other half as well. It's a good meal. It fills them, even though they've barely had any grain besides the beer; barely any vegetables either, for that matter. Just fish. A man couldn't subsist on a diet like this forever, but for a day, a weekend, it's a delightful change. Afterward, full, Dane lounges in his chair, watching the breeze ripple the lake.

And the sun slides lower. And their shadows get longer. And they talk a little; they sip their beers. At some point Dane reaches over and takes her hand, loosely, just the tips of their fingers tangling, swinging.

"Thanks for coming up here with me," he says quietly, some time later. "I'm really enjoying myself."

eileen

Ever methodical, Dane,

except when he's the opposite. Except when he snaps and burns. She wonders if he's just dual, like that, or if it's repression. She wonders if it's control of what's really under the surface. She wonders, and she wonders if he even knows. She's lazy and a bit addled, but in a good way. It's good to be lazy right now. She's eaten more rice than he has. Neither of them have expressed concern for the lack of fruits and vegetables; they can live like this for a weekend. It's all right. It's good. It's wonderful.

'Counting stars' reminds her of last night, and she smiles at him when he mentions it. "Or making them," she says, her voice like an echo or a ghost.

They eat more. She's slowed down but she still eats heartily, letting Dane do the delicate work of de-boning the fish because she's a bit drunk now. She stays at that second beer and does not go get another, but nurses and nurses until the dark bottle is empty and nestled in the grass amongst the others of its kind. Her eyes close for awhile because the sunset is so very bright in the west, so searing, and she wants to feel its warmth for a little while longer before it's gone entirely.

Yet Dane's hand moving to hers doesn't startle her. Rather, her fingers part to allows his passage. Hers slide softly between his digits, tracing his fingers in midair. Her eyes haven't opened.

"Mmm," is all she says, agreement and understanding both. And also: I know. Me too.

Her eyes do open after all, a heartbeat after that, looking at him. Not saying anything. Just looking.

Dane

So they look at each other. And they don't say anything now, but there are thoughts flickering in Dane's dark eyes. Things won't be the same after this weekend, he thinks. Something's changed, or is changing. Things haven't been the same since he walked out of her apartment and she called him back; since he looked at that mole on her shoulder and thought about how her skin would taste. Since she laid herself beside Charlie, poor broken Charlie, and brought him back. Since he saw that. Since he witnessed her.

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze. And then, just as gently, he extricates his fingers. The fire is still crackling as he walks away. The cabin door is open, and it stays open as he goes inside. Comes out. He has graham crackers. Chocolate. Marshmallows. He sits on the ground this time, right there in the sandy soil that runs down to the lake.

"Come sit by me," he offers, tearing open the packs of crackers, the bars of chocolate.

eileen

Come s-- is how far Dane gets before he realizes she's already moving, sliding off her chair and to the ground, to her knees, then crawling over and tucking her legs up, sitting -- well. Very close, in fact. She nestles against his side while he tears open bags with manual dexterity that surprises, impresses, and alarms her. Mildly. She's lucid, she's just... a little more loosely lucid than she usually is. And Eileen is, generally, pretty loose to begin with.

"Can you play with the fire?" she asks him quietly, watching it, leaning on his arm.

Dane

The question surprises Dane a little. It takes him a little off guard. He thinks a moment; then he nods, a little carefully.

"I could," he says. "Do you want me to?"

eileen

She smiles, sort of dreamily, and nods. "I like your magic," she whispers.

Dane

So Dane takes that sort of breath he takes before he Works - alert, focused, drawing in and spreading out at the same time. He focuses his eyes on the fire. He moves his fingers, as though physically manipulating; he may or may not even be aware he does this. This last lingering vestige of a focus that he has, in reality, long since transcended.

The heart of the fire bends; it glows brighter. Something is on the verge of happening; some force in the universe gathering, gathering, gathering on itself. But then - when it's scarcely even begun - it ends. Dane lets his fingers relax, and he exhales.

"It's ... strange for me to cast on request like that," he admits. "It's not that I resent it. But it's better if it flows naturally from the moment. Do you mind terribly?"

eileen

And Eileen straightens a bit beside him, holding her breath a moment, taking her touch away from his arm as though she might distract him. Her eyes glance down quickly at his fingers and her mouth quirks in a brief, shadowed smile. She looks at the fire, and then she sees it begin to glow, pulse, expand even as it seems to draw all light toward it, creating its own gravity -- and then it dissipates.

The magic, that agonizing sensation that fills the air when Dane works, drops. Eileen plummets a moment and blinks a few times, then looks at him. She tips her head, looking... confused, really, but not upset.

"I don't," she tells him first, shaking her head. "It's just... it's like what I asked last night. I didn't realize." She reaches down and holds his hand.

Dane

"You haven't trespassed," he assures her. This, too, comes first: making sure she knows, making sure she's aware, that he isn't angry. He isn't upset. "And I know you meant nothing more than you did last night. It's just that last night, it was something I felt like doing. And so it happened. This time, I'd be ... consciously trying to do something to impress you. So it would mean less."

His hand moves under hers. He takes her fingers and, on instinct and on impulse both, he brings them to his lips, kisses her knuckles. How old fashioned. How chivalrous, and how oddly, poignantly adoring.

"Don't worry," he says. "You'll see plenty of magic from me, yet."

eileen

She likes his magic, and the way he talks, too. When he uses such formal language because he's uncomfortable, it's sort of endearing, but even when he's not uncomfortable, sometimes he's just a bit stiffer, a bit anachronistic, so careful with the words he chooses. And she likes, perhaps more than anything else, that it has to feel right for him. The mood -- the vibe, she'd call it, like many Cultists would -- needs to fit. You can't always create it and you can never force it, and that she understands intuitively.

Of course, it still makes her heart skip a bit when he talks about trying to impress her, and she smiles almost shyly, looking down. And that's before he lifts her hand, drawing her fingers to his mouth and kissing them. This time it isn't a skip, or a hop, or a jump. It's a somersault. Maybe a cartwheel, just spinning, spinning. She shivers, and at his words, huffs a quiet laugh.

"I'm not worried," she says, and it sounds sort of silly to say it aloud, but she can't think clearly right now. She wants to tease him about how flirtatious those words sounded, because he'd just get so uncomfortable, but she doesn't, because the truth is,

he totally talked about trying to impress her and he kissed her hand and she's got a crush on him and she can't handle it, agggh. So she doesn't. She just smiles, and she gets over the faint blush under her skin, and she lets it pass.

They have to let go of each other's hands to really get into marshmallow-roasting, though. They have to put multiple marshmallows on skewers, and Eileen makes him hold hers over the fire while she sets up some crackers and chocolate. She puts chocolate on both sides of the crackers, for what it's worth, and she uses quite a lot of chocolate as well. She tells him about camping with her family, because they would go camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains some summers. She mentions that they're sort-of Jewish, but only in the sense that her mother's parents are and her mother stopped practicing in any way a long long time ago and then married a Gentile and had three kids who only have Hebrew names because their grandfather insisted.

"My Hebrew name is 'Eliana'," she tells him, turning her skewer slowly after she takes it from him, "probably because it sounds like my English name. But it means 'my God has answered'." She is quiet a moment. "My parents aren't religious but they're very respectful of religion. But I think my mother still prays, or at least did. Maybe only after Colin was born, but ...yeah."

She doesn't really expound on those thoughts. Names. Naming things, giving them secret names, special names -- she seems to know Dane should understand this, Dane should at least know what this is about. These things have meaning, though she never goes by Eliana.

And she never had a bat mitzvah, but her family does Passover and Hannukah, but also Easter and Christmas. She doesn't ask him too much about his family -- she likes it better when he just tells her, when it comes from him without pulling, questioning, wondering, having to think. And they end up not talking as much then because they are melting chocolate with hot marshmallows, squeezing them between graham crackers, eating until they have chocolate on their faces and fingers, marshmallow on their chins, laughter.

Dane

Eliana is a pretty name, he tells her. Any number of boys and men would say this after being told her Hebrew name, her secret name, but only a few might say it like this: not because it was expected of them, not because it's the Right Thing To Say, but because it is truth. Eliana is a pretty name. He thinks it's pretty. He likes that he knows: another little piece about her he didn't have before.

"My parents named me Matthew," he adds. And he doesn't really expound on that, but: there it is. They each have secret names. Of course they do. They are magi; something between gods and angels and witches and warlocks.

And they eat s'mores. He likes his with dark chocolate, and not so much marshmallow that it overwhelms the bittersweet richness of the chocolate. He makes his with chocolate graham crackers, too, even though they're a little weaker and more prone to falling to bits. They make a mess. He washes his hands in the lake, and then he makes another mess having another s'more. Eventually they're stuffed, they're glutted on sugar, they can't possibly have another one, and

that's when conversation tapers down to a companionable silence. It is quite dark by then, the last of the light gone from the sky. Even the mosquitoes - which by and large did not bother them for fear of their fire - have gone home. They sit close enough for her to lean against him if she wants, and if she does, he doesn't move away. They watch the fire bank itself, grow smaller, grow dimmer, turn over. Like a living thing, Dane thinks, tucking itself away for the night.

He tells her, idly and quietly, that when he was small and his family went camping, he and his brother would put sticks in the fire until the very ends began to smoulder. And then they'd whirl those sticks around, faster and faster until that burning ember became a glowing streak in the night. Like writing with fire, he says. Like magic.

The fire has burned down to embers. The night is growing chillier, deeper. He nudges her, bumping his brow against the side of her head. It's a surprisingly animalistic gesture, for him.

"Let's go inside," he whispers. "It's late."

eileen

She did notice the way he went back to the cookie and candy aisle at that little general store to get special grahams, special chocolate. Eileen is classic, all the way. She does ask to try his, though, because she never has. She says she's tried making s'more with peanut butter cups but it's not the same. Not bad, but not the same.

And she was stopped in time when Wentworth used Dane's name back at the mansion -- Dane's given name. The one that goes with 'James', his brother. She didn't hear it. She smiles. She doesn't bother washing her hands in between s'mores. After her second, she's done. She can't do any more though oh, she makes a third and tries. But she was hungry so long, then ate so much, and she's stuffed. She forces herself up and goes to wash her hands sanitarily, she says pointedly, at the pump. When she comes back out she just... flops to the ground. She lies out by the fire. Maybe he sits beside her while she rests. Maybe he lies down next to her. Either way she watches him, her braid a dark but amicable snake in the grass, and the fire is going down and the stars are coming out and he looks different, like this. Not the same as last night, though.

Every time is its own.

He tells her about the sticks in the fire, drawing with that light in the dark. She smiles softly. "We did, too." And though it was years apart, miles apart, there is now this joining in their pasts, an intersection of experience, which matters more than Time. Maybe it didn't happen at the same When. But now in their memories, they were linked together as they did that: wrote with fire in the air. Did magic.

"No it's not," she whispers, smiling at him in the dark when he nudges her, telling her they should go in. "It's just dark."

Dane

So he pauses, looking at her curiously, a touch amusedly. "Do you want to stay out here instead? I suppose we could bring a few blankets out and camp on the grass."

eileen

She just smiles at him. "No, I'm just being contrary. I want to sleep in the bed again. I like camping but I am an absolute city girl." This is half-true. The other half has to do with that bed, and him, and admissions made earlier as part of a 'game'.

Dane

Dane huffs, more than a touch amused now. "Well, city girl," he says, "let's adjourn to bed."

He's a little stiff from sitting on the ground so long. It takes a little while to pack things up: the pan, the fishbones, the rack he'd set up over the fire so they could cook, set aside while they were making s'mores. S'mores ingredients, too. And last but not least: the fire itself, carefully buried. Like a living thing. Like a life.

They go in. It's quite dark inside, and they blunder around a little until Dane sets his things down and lights a lamp. Then there's light, though not a lot of it, and by that light they put things away. They have no hot water, Dane realizes. He looks at the stove, cold and dark, and then at Eileen.

"Did you want to take a bath?" he asks.

eileen

Eileen, ever the lady, lets Dane help her up. And this means she sticks her arms up in the air and waggles her fingers til he takes her wrists in his hands and helps lever her to her feet. They don't have much light at all now but she helps him clean up, looking around to make sure they don't leave behind so much as a bottlecap. She folds up the chairs and drags them to the side of the house, at least. She uses an empty beer bottle, rinsed in the lake, to carry water from that lake to the firepit and cool the ashes, which Dane stirs with a stick. They do this a few times, til its safe to bury the fire completely.

This feels like a ritual. It is the last thing they do before they go inside. Their only light then is starry, and so far away, and for a moment they are alone on this swiftly tilting orb of rock and water and fire and air. She takes his hand as they go towards the cabin then, swallowed by the pitch darkness inside. They're putting things away and she goes to the outhouse for a moment, comes back and helps him finish. She's surprisingly tired, but then, they were pretty active and outdoors all day. She took Ecstasy and she's come down very far from that, and the two beers are making her as sleepy as the food in her belly.

She is unbraiding her hair, sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, when he asks her if she wants to take a bath. She smiles at him and there's no insisting that no, no, she couldn't possibly. It's Eileen. And so she just nods, that smile so gentle on her lips.

Dane

Which makes Dane laugh a little under his breath. "I hope you're patient," he says, but he knows she is, and so

he begins the long and antiquated process of drawing a bath. First there's the stove, kindled, lit and banked. Then there's the kettle set atop, along with the large pot, both filled to the brim with water. Eileen begins to understand why the kettle is so large. Even at its enormous size - surely one of the largest kettles she's ever seen - it takes several kettles, several pots, to fill the tub. Dane adds very little cold water. The water cools by itself as they wait, and in the end it takes nearly an hour for everything to be ready. Small wonder humans bathed a lot less before the advent of modern indoor plumbing.

Dane finds a bath-sized towel in those miraculous little drawers under the bed. He sets it on one of those high chairs, which he moves beside the tub. And even as Eileen is preparing to get in, Dane is heating water all over again. For himself, perhaps; or to refill the tub as the water cools.

eileen

Eileen truly is patient. And some of that comes from keeping busy: she actually washes a bit while the water is heating. She cleans off the worst of the dirt, so that when she gets in the water she can just... soak. She doesn't do this naked, at least, because it's already getting cooler outside now that the sun has gone down and they've put the fire out. In that hour she actually goes and uses some of her phone's precious little remaining battery life to turn on some music -- it's actually, of all things, Mozart. Just string quartets. Not all of it is mild, soothing music for nighttime. Some of it is quite dark. Some if it is quite energetic.

That's Mozart. Eileen claims he was a Cultist, or would have been. It's actually pretty hard to argue with her, at least in terms of 'vibe'.

Her hair unbound, she does finally begin to strip down to nothing as the water gets ready. She drops her clothes in the pile she's made of her others clothes, which is out of the way and ready to be shoved back into her backpack once she has no clean things left. But she moves so freely when she's naked, and now her skin is so tan around the places where her bikini rested, and she flickers in his periphery occasionally, all that dark hair and all that skin, some of it gold and some of it cream and that small, dark spot on her clavicle that so fixed his attention the first time he saw it.

He gets out a towel and she perks, washed up now as though the point here is to soak and not get the water dirty. "Oh, thank you," she says, heavily, breathily, and rests her hands on the edge, bringing one leg up high and then over and dipping her toes in to test the heat. She sighs at the feel of it, and then simply... drapes herself over and sinks in. The water sloshes against the sides but does not splash, and heat suffuses her and her eyes close, rolling back a bit, a long exhale leaving her. He goes to refill water, leaving the towel on the chair by the tub, and she smiles.

She rests her arms on the side of the tub much as she rested them, folded, on top of his knees. Half of her hair is wet, trailing in the water now. She smiles, watching him. Tips her head and rests it on her forearm. It's been an hour since he had to heave her off the grass. She's sleepy, and the warm bath will only make that sleepiness deeper.

"You can look now," she says quietly, not quite teasingly. "Now in in the water and it's kinda dark. You won't see anything if you're still shy."

Dane

As usual, while Eileen strips naked Dane is quite careful not to look. She moves and flickers in the penumbra of his vision nonetheless, rather like a flame. He heats water. He fills the tub. And after she gets in, he washes up, himself: scrubbing his hands and his face under cold water, brushing his teeth, using his towel to wash behind his neck and then -- after a brief hesitation -- taking his shirt off, washing his back and his chest and under his arms as well.

Eventually there is another kettle of hot water. He asks if she needs a refill. He adds a little hot water to the tub, careful to pour away from her so she's not scalded. He tells her where to find the plunger to let a little water out, and she feels around with her toes until she finds it. It's old fashioned: just a large rubber stopper with a chain that she can tug up.

And then he's turning down the bed, shaking out the covers again. He's moving the one kerosene lamp over by the bed, to that other chair he's set out as a nightstand of sorts. The shadows dance and move and change on the walls. When everything's done, and everything's prepared,

and when he's all out of excuses to not look at her or pay any attention to the naked woman in the room,

he comes back to the tub. He hesitates; then he puts his hand on the rim, his fingertips just touching the water. Quietly, and almost a little gruffly, he asks: "Can I join you?"

eileen

She wishes there were bubbles. Hard to make bubbles with non-running water, but it'd be nice. She can, in fact, remember the last time she had a bubble bath, but that doesn't mean she likes them any less. She does dunk herself finally, submerging completely, curled up under water until she comes up wet-faced, hair saturated, gasping softly with... not shock, though there is something like that. Sensation. Always.

Eileen, perhaps strangely, doesn't stare at Dane when he takes his shirt off. She isn't washing or anything in the tub, just lazing around, moving her arms in the water, enjoying the heat suffusing and surrounding her, but she does pay attention to him, what he's doing. He goes through the routine she went through while she was waiting for the water, brushing his teeth, washing behind his ears, all that. And

takes off his shirt and starts

washing himself off

and

she does, in fact, stare at him for a few seconds, her eyes a little dazed, then snaps out of it and averts her gaze. To be polite. To be respectful. To remind herself that just because she doesn't mind if he wants to stare at her naked all day long, it doesn't mean he's comfortable with that. In fact, from what experience has taught her so far, Dane probably isn't. So she politely, gently looks away after those first few intoxicated moments, looking at her reflection in the shadowed water. Smiling at herself. Disturbing the surface with her hand, rippling it and then waiting for it to go still again.

"Just a little," she tells him, smiling, when he asks if she wants more hot water. She laughs when she finds the plunger, but leaves it where it is. Steam rises off the water. Her skin gleams, wet, where it emerges from the surface.

A little poignantly, perhaps sadly, she watches him get the bed ready for sleep. She wonders if he's just going to crawl into bed and crash out. It would be okay, but... oddly, she'd miss him. Still, it'd be nice to crawl into that bed beside him after he's already asleep, so that makes her smile. She is leaning against the side of the tub now, the water deep enough that it very nearly covers her shoulders when she sits back like this, when Dane... doesn't go to bed.

But comes over to her, as close as he was when he poured extra water in but with less obvious purpose, and she looks up at him, curious. Maybe he's going to say goodnight and he feels awkward about it because she's naked. Or something. She looks from his eyes down to his fingers, which are the only part of him sharing the water with her, and then up to his eyes again, right as he asks her if --

Eileen's heart gives such a heady thump that she nearly faints. She breathes in, and is holding it when she begins to nod, exhaling when she says -- no, whispers: "Please."

Dane

Even her acquiescence, her method of, what she says, makes him awkward and self-conscious. He wishes for the coolness and confidence he had when he first met her. Before he really knew her at all. When he was Dane the Adept and she was Eileen the Apprentice, and the lines between them were so clearly drawn. He wishes he could be that man again --

no he doesn't.

He stares at her for a moment. His eyes are dark, dark, but they reflect the distant lamplight. Then he clears his throat lightly, and his eyes fall from hers. He's about to climb into the same tub with her, as naked as she is, but he still has to look away to undress. He even half turns away before he realizes how silly that is, really, and stops. His hands are a little unsteady from sheer nerves. He doesn't quite fumble with the fastenings of his shorts, those same shorts he wore on the lake today - doesn't quite, but it's close. It's very close.

Truth be told, Dane is not terribly athletic. His frame is medium. So is his build. There's no spare, no paunch, but his musculature is hardly layered thick either. When he took off his shirt earlier, his arms stretching overhead, she could see the shadow of his ribs under his skin, and his stomach was a concave arch. When he takes his shorts off now, and the undershorts under it, his hip-bones are faintly visible too. His knees are bony, the flat of his shin defined. He has hair on his chest. He has hair trailing down from his navel, too, running down to his --

self-conscious, he covers himself with his hand. Doesn't exactly cringe and bend double and clamp a hand over his nuts, no, but - the attempt at modesty is there, his fingers loose, lightly bent. He's a little splashier getting into the tub, putting one hand on the edge and sort of rolling in, setting the water sloshing. His foot bump hers underwater. Then he finds the plug and lets a bit of water drain, until the waterline is at their shoulders again. The tub is large, but two is still a bit of a close fit. He looks at her across the water, awkward.

eileen

She could try to hold back more. Not let him see that she wants him, or how much. She could act nonchalant or breezy when she isn't. The truth is that when she tries, Eileen can be a convincing liar. The truth is that Eileen gave that way of treating people up a long time ago, when so many other things turned around. It makes him awkward and self-conscious, but it doesn't make her regret telling him please, or saying it like that, because for her,

that was restraint.

And she scoots back a little while he drops his shorts, quietly and half-secretly moistening her lips. She watches him now, but mostly his face. Almost entirely his face, keeping his eyes with hers as he tries to cover himself when he gets in the bath. She doesn't make fun of his modesty, at least. She doesn't laugh at it -- at him. She notices his nerves but doesn't mention them, and she thinks his body is divine, he has sort of a runner's build, and she waits patiently for him to get in, to sink down, to let the water out so it isn't up to their throats, and then he's sitting back, and their legs are bumping a bit, and she

just smiles across the water at him.

One great difference between them is that Eileen tends to do rather than ask. This time it's no different: she exhales, her breath moving across the surface of the water, and then moves over to him. She knows he might flinch as soon as he realizes she's coming closer, but she doesn't draw herself up and straddle his lap, lower herself to his thighs, their slippery skins stroking together. She just turns, and sits... beside him. Much as they were outside, by the fire. Only now where their sides or hips or thighs touch, it's flesh against flesh.

She lays her head to his arm. Closes her eyes. Nuzzles his arm, rubbing her face against it for a moment before coming to rest, her breath coiling as it moves across his skin.

Dane

Eileen is not wrong to think Dane might flinch at the first sign of her approach. To be sure, he does start. He does tense visibly, watching her with wariness, with caution.

There's more though. There's also a sense of... interest, call it. Anticipation. He doesn't know what she'll do. Or how he'll respond. But he watches her, he watches her - he wonders.

She doesn't, in the end, make any sort of overture. And so he doesn't bolt from the wooden tub as though suddenly scalded. He doesn't lurch into frantic,passionate response, either - if he would have done either in the first place. Dane merely sits tense, rigid for a moment.

And then: relaxing. Bit by bit. Little by little. His muscles unwinding. His joints loosening. She feels him take a breath. It might be the first in some time. He lets it out.

Dane feels like perhaps he should say something. Explain. Something - something to elucidate his actions and his motives, except he hardly knows himself, and if he says it, tries to put it to words, he'll only make it strange and stilted, and he doesn't want that. He doesn't speak in the end. Not a bit, not at all. He lets his ankle cross hers under the water, though. And, after quite some time of staring forward, he lets himself glance at her. Sidelong first. Then directly.

Then: smiling, just faintly; almost shy now.

eileen

What Eileen feels -- what she wants, what she experiences -- surrounds her constantly like an aura. Dane doesn't believe in auras. If she tried to explain her own Sight to him, in the colors and emotions and smells that come to her when she opens her mind and works her will, it would not make sense to him. They don't speak the same language, at least not magically.

But he's human. And that makes him an animal. There are troves of science devoted to examining the differences between humans and other mammals, but also between the different sexes within their species. He knows, without Eileen ever having to say it aloud -- though she would, and has -- that she is very, very receptive to his advances.

Except he doesn't advance. He retreats. And there's probably a lot of biology and psychology and much else wrapped up in that, too, but even in retreat he can't be around Eileen at all without sensing it. Without feeling, on his skin and in the back of his mind where things are much more muddled and do not follow any rules of physics or magic or sanity, that she wants to fuck him. And maybe more than that. Maybe she wants something too frightening, too deep, to contemplate.

Yet she doesn't work her body against his and ignite his flesh, doesn't warm him up more than the water does, any of that. She has no illusions about overcoming Dane's will -- she's met too many Adepts and Masters, and one has not seen the exertion of a truly strong will until one has worked with Euthanatoi, run up against Hermetics, spent some time with an Akashic. Eileen doesn't think that she'll bat her eyelashes or massage his thigh and Dane will lose the ability to think just because his brain loses a lot of blood to his cock in a weird internal-organ game of poker.

(Speaking of which: the cock always bluffs, and the brain always falls for it. The brain tries to bluff but, sadly, is less convincing.)

She wants to do a lot of things with Dane, especially because he's naked and taking a hot bath with her in the middle of nowhere. But right now, mostly, what she wants to do is be with him. And that's at the top of the pyramid; everything else under that is just supporting structure for that one apex, that one goal.

She's with him right now. And he is slowly relaxing, calming, letting his body mellow in the hot water. He keeps staring ahead, but he breathes, and Eileen is patient. She opens her eyes and looks at him as he lets their shins cross, and shortly thereafter he looks at her, smiles at her. She smiles back. Under the water, her hand moves a little and he feels it against the outside of his thigh, but she's not trying to caress him. She follows his arm and then slips her hand into his, lacing their fingers.

"Thomas?" she says quietly, and she's looking at him still, moving her leg gently under his. "I just want you to know... we don't have to do anything. I'm glad to just be here like this with you, right now. And I'm glad you brought me here. I like it, and... maybe we could come back more this summer."

Her hand squeezes his, and she closes her eyes again, nestling her head to rest still on his bicep. "I just wanted you to know I'm happy right now."

Dane

The truth - aching as it is - is that he did need to hear that. As well as he knows her now, as much as he knows she wouldn't ever push or demand or expect or back him into a corner like that -- some part of him was still tense, waiting on tenterhooks. It would be a lie to say he watched her with trepidation alone when she moved toward him. It wasn't just trepidation. It was anticipation, too, and a nervous, flickering want. But: the trepidation was there, and that's what she seems to respond to,

which is what he needs.

He nearly jumps as her hand touches his thigh. But it's harmless; she's only looking for his hand. She finds it. His fingers feel a little different underwater; smoother, the last friction gone. The hairs on the backs of his hands are floating upright, exquisitely sensitive. For a moment he imagines he can feel her before she even touches him - sense her through currents and ripples, like a fish.

His fingers meet hers. They intertwine. She says

what he needed to hear, and he exhales a little - embarrassed, relieved, embarrassed to be relieved. She leans again his arm. He smiles the way he does, like he's smiling in spite of himself or in spite of his history or ...

no need for so many explanations; so many thoughts. He smiles, and that's enough. "Thank you," he says. "I'd like it if we came back here together. I'm ... happy like this too."

eileen

There's nothing more that needs to be said after that. They are in agreement, even down to the way their bodies fit beside one another. They are intimate but chaste, holding hands and keeping her right left loosely crossed with his left. And that, for a very long time, is as far as it goes. The water has stopped steaming by the time Eileen lets go of his hand and moves his arm and drapes it over her shoulders, nudging him into place and scooting just a little bit closer, resting her head close to his chest now. His arm is awkward, like a shawl over her shoulders and down her arm but not curling around, because then his hand might end up on her waist, or cupped over her breast, or, or,

well, none of that. She stays warmer and he stays very stiff and tense for the first few seconds until he realizes this, too, is not Eileen about to pounce - as though she would. As though she's a lioness and not a hummingbird. As though he's a water buffalo and not a star.

But the water does cool. Slowly, but it isn't long before it's growing tepid enough that their skins are warmer than the water. Eileen gets cold before Dane does, and even under his arm she gives a shiver. They're loathe to go, though. The reasons are obvious enough, but they are equally loathe to get out of the tub and try to refill it with any more kettle-heated water.

So: Eileen gets out. She leans up and kisses his cheek, then unwinds from his arm and he lets her go and looks aside as her body lifts up from the water, as water rolls down her skin to the surface he's still in, as she twists her hair in a rope to wring it out, as she leans over to pick up the towel he set out for her earlier. It is a process that takes about thirty seconds and feels like an hour of staring rigidly elsewhere and blanking his mind.

She doesn't. She absolutely thinks about his eye level. Where they line up. Totally.

It's cold outside the bath. The wood stove still has a little bit of heat, but not enough to warm the cabin. The sun has gone down and this area of the country gets cold quickly once astronomy stops helping out. She scuffs the towel through her hair and wraps it around herself, but there's another one for Dane. She's polite; she keeps her back turned while he gets out, listening to the tub drain noisily away.

It only takes a moment for her to find a pair of clean panties to wear, a fresh t-shirt to put on over that. Eileen still has wet hair when she hops into the bed and wiggles under the covers, so she has her towel with her, squeezing as much water out of her hair as she can while Dane prepares for bed. When he is, when he's done, when he has cotton and so forth covering his naughty bits, she looks over at him, shaking her damp towel out over the back of a nearby chair.

"Thomas?"

just like before, so soft, because it's quiet here and there is no need to speak loudly,

"You can hold me, if you still want to." And a pause, because she's not sure he understands: "I'd like it if you did. The whole night, this time."

Dane

They don't need to speak loudly here. At night it is quiet, so quiet; nothing but wind and water and crickets and the occasional pop of the smouldering wood-fire in the stove. No constant, muffled roar of the city. No incessant, barely-heard hum of electricity and appliances and elevators and neighbors and cars and subways and planes in the sky. None of that.

Just their foots steps, their breathing, the soft sounds of their getting dressed again as they - or Dane, at least - very carefully do not look at each other. It's a bit foolish, really, and he recognizes it. He feels like some Puritan boy. He can't seem to help it, though. He doesn't dare look at her for any number of reasons.

So they dry themselves, and they dress, and the bed creaks softly as Eileen gets in. Dane is up a little longer, his shorts quite white now against his freshly tanned legs. His torso is still quite pale, though his shoulders and arms and collar are not. He moves about, dispersing the fire in the stove to embers and ash; turning down the sole kerosene lamp in the room, bringing it beside the bed and setting it somewhere where it will neither disturb them nor catch fire in the night.

He is getting into bed when Eileen speaks to him. They don't need to speak loudly here. Not simply because it's quiet, but because she could speak anywhere, she could speak in the middle of a raging hurricane, and he would attend. He looks at her, a strange little glance that goes from an instinctive look to an almost-instinctive shying away back to a more deliberated regard. A moment passes. Then he slides under the covers, laying down.

"I'd like that," he whispers. And, as she finishes shaking out her towel, as she starts to slide down herself: "Come here."

eileen

She admitted it outside, coming close enough to make him wary: her heart was pounding when he came to bed last night. And she confessed, too, how he makes her feel. It's more than just wiggling in the driver's seat and telling him she's horny out of nowhere. It's more than the fact that he keeps holding back, saying no or I can't, only making her more excited. There's something there, at least for Eileen, and she thinks it's there for him too, but

she knows she's not a mind-reader.

The cabin smells clean. They smell the embers dying and, when he comes to bed, each other. Clean. She hasn't had shampoo in her hair for awhile, so there's just... her. Covered, at least mostly, tucking those long legs under the covers, working her fingers through her wet hair to make sure it doesn't tangle horribly. Too horribly, at least.

Her heart pounds when he comes over to bed. He doesn't put on a t-shirt for bed this time and it makes her heart hammer even more, enough that he can see her breathing when he climbs in beside her. Eileen watches him, turning toward him, as he tells her that he'd like that. A nervous smile flutters over her mouth. It fades when he tells her to come here, though not from displeasure.

She takes a breath and exhales, then slides down into, onto the bed. Her shirt tugs up a bit from her hips; she doesn't adjust it. The covers come over them both. She lies on her back beside him, quite close, and rests her hands atop her belly.

Dane

It's not what he expected. He expected she would lie the way she did last night: her back to him, on her side, breathing softly. That was easier somehow. It could almost be an accident, the way he moved close to her, slid his arm around her. This: this seems so deliberate, so considered and direct.

He's still a moment. She's nervous too, though. He can tell: something about the way her hands are folded, almost prim. Something about that smile, a little uncertain. This probably isn't what she expected, either. That he'd admit, over s'mores and a game, that he wanted to hold her last night. That he'd come to bed shirtless, bare to the waist, warm and close and ... animal, in a way. Primitive.

Dane moves closer. He closes that last little space between them, and his arm slides over her waist. There's a little gap between her shirt and her panties; his arm bridges it, skin to skin. There's a moment. Then he shifts, leans over her,

kisses that mole on her clavicle, his breath warm against her neck.

"Goodnight, Eileen," he whispers. And settles again.

eileen

Initially, that's what Eileen wanted, thought about, too. She was warm and felt cuddled, felt cocooned, when she stirred in the middle of the night to find Dane's arm draped heavily, unconsciously over her. She tucked herself into it even then. And after fighting with him on the lake today, she didn't think he'd hold her again, or ever, or admit that he did, even. She thought about curling against his chest again tonight, on-purpose and therefore closer, his breath against the back of her neck, the two of them curled like the lovers they aren't and ardently want to be.

Then she laid on her back instead. She's open like this, more accessible like this. Just, y'know, because... he might decide he wants to kiss her before they go to sleep, and it'd be easier this way. And if he wanted to touch her, or run his hand along her side or anything, that would be a lot more logistically smooth as well. Y'know. Just. In case.

At the same time, it's just one more way to be nearer to him, if she isn't completely turned away from him. So of course she's nervous. She's nervous because she doesn't know what he'll interpret this as, or if he'll be dumb and not interpret it at all, or what he'll do, or worse, what he might totally ignore and not do and she'll just be lying there wanting, not having. She's nervous because what if she's so distracted that she can't sleep? It would be so sad, because she so liked sleeping next to him, with him, waking up in the bed she'd shared with him even if he only held her accidentally-on-purpose.

Except he came to bed wearing boxers. And when he wraps his arm around her, skin falling on skin, a faint shudder goes through Eileen's body. She's still managing her breathing, steady and slow and quiet, but this takes focus, because it feels like every hair on her body is on end, like her nerve endings are all quivering together... like his arm is between her panties and her shirt. Like his chest is against her side.

She exhales softly, calming a bit again, licking her lips and letting her eyes close. In that moment, Dane is quiet and still. And then he moves, and leans over her, and kisses her clavicle where her shirt is loose, draped, baring it. A sound leaves Eileen suddenly, half breath and half voice, mostly whimper but that's not to disregard the moan. Another shiver goes through her, her thighs shifting once together as though of their own accord. At least she stops herself, can stop herself, before she says his name, trailing off into infinity, into begging. She takes a breath instead, shakily, and holds it.

Swallows. Doesn't open her eyes. Focuses her senses, as much of them as she can corral, into serenity instead. As best she can, at least.

Dane

The moment that sound escapes her, half-breath, half-moan, is the moment Dane freezes in place. It amazes him how deeply she seems to feel. How acute, how open her senses are. How attuned and how ready she always seems to experience, to feel, to perceive. It always amazed him, from that moment she slipped the wheel of his car, from that moment she stretched her senses out and sighed

just like that.

So he doesn't wish her a good night. He pauses, his lips to her skin -- her eyes closed, his open, watching her face, arrested. She tries to breathe steadily, smoothly. He tries not to move; not to incite, not to escalate, not to... wound, maybe. As though if he were to pull away too suddenly now would injure her somehow.

An endless moment like that, unmoving. A sense of quivering potential. He should draw back. He should. He's not sure of why, though, and after that moment finally passes,

he shifts. His arm slides back a little, but not because he's drawing away. His hand comes to her stomach; his fingers spread, the tip of his little finger slipping beneath the waist of her panties. He kisses her again, as soft as the last, the dip of her neck now where clavicles meet.

eileen

If she were shyer, or if her fear that she might scare Dane off were more overpowering, Eileen would try harder to stay quiet, to keep still, to act as though this closeness and these touches are just comfortable and little more. Not out of insecurity, mind, but because she does not want him to pull away. She doesn't want her sounds, her lust, her everything, to be something he runs from. She does want him to hold her and sleep with her tonight, very much.

And then he kissed her. There, like that. And it was okay if she made him stop by doing it, but she had to let him see, and hear, and feel it go through her the way it did. She thinks maybe he needs a little more of this sort of sensation in his life, even if he has to observe it in someone else first.

But no, really, let's be honest about the true cause, the true motivation, the true agenda here:

he touched her and she shuddered. He kissed her and she moaned. It's as simple as that. Cause and effect. As inevitable and natural as gravity, as rain flowing down, as steam rising.

That moment where Dane stops is enough for Eileen to start breathing a little more normally. He's right to be careful; she seems so vulnerable right now because she is. She's utterly open. He could hurt her, thrill her, terrify her, just as easily as he can reach out and touch her.

Eileen doesn't know what he thinks in that moment. She can't think at all. She focuses her will inward. Her guard is down but she rebuilds herself from within, to find some kind of tranquility before they both go still and just go to sleep.

Which is when he slides his hand to her stomach, and not off of it, leaving it there. She trembles under his palm, and when his fingertip nudges against the elastic of her panties, she moans. Her thighs clench together, hips moving slightly against the bed as though she wants, badly, to arch her back. When he leans to kiss her again, he can almost feel her heart pounding, hammering, racing, through every inch of her skin.

This qualifies as a special brand of torture, and so,

it also qualifies as ecstasy.

Dane

This time her response is unmistakable. This time his pause is negligible. He's leaning over her, kissing her throat, his bare chest pressed to the outside of her arm. His arm is warm and heavy across her midriff, and his hand -

his hand is inching down her panties, straying beyond that risky, risky border. His mouth is at her jawline now. Some part of him is remembering how to do this - this kissing thing, this making out thing, this sex thing, and

that thought scarcely crosses his mind before it's frightening him, startling him, making his eyes flash open, his hand pausing where it is - an inch or two beneath the elastic of her underwear. He's breathing harder too. He drops his brow against her upper chest for a moment, gathering himself, gathering his will.

eileen

She isn't thinking oh, finally and she isn't thinking that she has to be quiet and still or else Dane will startle off like a deer. She isn't thinking that it's insane how badly she wants him, or wondering if he thinks she's always like this. No, Eileen isn't thinking of what he'll do next, or how long she should wait before she touches him, too.

She isn't thinking at all.

What she's doing is gasping, softly, as he kisses her neck, his lips even more dangerously soft because they're being so careful. She's breathing, almost panting now, as he pushes his fingertips under her panties, and she's shuddering as they barely, just barely, graze against the beginning the curls beneath them. He is making her wet and electric, just starting to explore her as though she's a virgin, as though he is, and her hand comes to rest on his upper arm, the same arm that's over her. Her palm caresses, sliding upward, smoothing over his shoulder. It's slow, very slow, but she's starting to turn toward him, at least her upper half is, when he stops.

Again.

Even though he's breathing harder, too. Even though his body is remembering, faster than his mind, what to do with this situation. And even though his hand is straying into her underwear, mind-bendingly close to the source of her heat, the slick that would tell him how ready she is, even if he isn't. Eileen would be stunned right now, ready to scream from want, if she were able to think at all.

But she's not thinking. And he's trying to gather up his will, his forehead still resting on her chest, and she hasn't quite realized that he's stopped, he's stopping. Eileen is moving onto her side toward him, seeking out his mouth with her own, pressing her body against the front of his, her hand running down his side to his hip.

Dane

Dane responds as though electrified: sudden, stark, a mingled fear and excitement as she turns to him. Their mouths meet, snapping and crackling together, the kiss far fiercer than the ones that have come before. There's a taste of wild, reckless want there; something so long restrained it's gone half-mad from captivity.

Her hand on his body finds him pressing into her, quivering with tension, bearing her back down on the bed. Her shoulderblades hit the mattress. His hand slips down her panties; brushes the soft hair there and then shies, shies aside, rounds over her hip instead. He grasps her there, desperately, that lean body of his pressing against hers even as he pulls her against him. Gasping now, kissing her: an escalation so fast it leaves him dizzy. He's atop her. He's moving between her thighs, if she lets him there. He's grinding against her, hard against her, but then

his own boldness shocks him. It's a nonstop tug of war between his raw want and his uncertainty. His mouth tears from her and he gasps; he's unwilling to relinquish her, but he's afraid to go on, and

this is when she feels him pulling back again, raising himself on his elbow to look down at her, his brow furrowed. "Stop," he pants, "wait, I -- wait."

eileen

Looking for his mouth, her face touching his first to lift his chin, lift him to her, urge him to her,

Eileen finds it. And it's the first time it hasn't been a soft kiss, a chaste kiss, or one pressed quickly and in a playful, gentle, or friendly way to the cheek or the shoulder or the hand. Instead of apologizing to her and telling her that he's not ready to go so far, Dane kisses her like a firestorm. And she's there, right there, fueling it, stoking it, her hand finally stroking down to his waist and under the elastic of his boxers, pushing at them til they nudge down his hips

but just a little, because he's pressing himself against her now. Pushing her down to the bed again and she's arching this time, not restraining it but lifting her hips to meet him, opening her thighs when she senses his body about to come between them. Her attention to the physical is stunning, almost precognitive; she moans even as his hand is shying away from sliding fingers to her cunt.

They do move together. There's barely any thought to the kissing, any coherence; they drown each other. Devour each other. Dimly, he might be aware of her hands on his lower back, roaming his sides and then pushing under his boxers again, holding his hips while he grinds onto her, into her. Vaguely, he might hear her whimpering, already so rhythmic, muffled by his own mouth on hers. She's shifting underneath him, moving with him as though they're already out of these last scraps of clothes, as though he's already --

This time he doesn't pause for confusing seconds before speaking. He pulls away and says stop and she is panting, her cheeks flushed, her shirt rucked up to her ribcage, and his hand is on her hip with a strip of dark blue crossing it, reminding him that his hand is, well, still technically in her panties. And his hips are still pressed hard against her, and she can still feel his cock through those two bits of cotton between them, and his boxers are still halfway down his ass, and her hands are still under them, holding his hips, holding him where he is.

But she does stop moving, at least on purpose. She's quivering from the restraint, though.

"Thomas," she whispers, when he can't find words to explain stop or go past wait. It's so soft, so gentle, even though it's laced with that raw, almost savage desire that had him pressing her into the mattress just seconds ago. They've already managed to tangle themselves under the sheet that doesn't quite cover them.

Her hand is on his face now. How'd that get there? Her thumb moves on his cheek, her brows tugging together. "It's okay."

She doesn't say what she means. That it's okay to lose his mind like that, respond to her like that, fall into her, or into this, like he was. Or that it's okay if he can't, if he isn't ready, if he needs to sleep on the floor rather than feel her in his arms. Or maybe it's okay to start and stop, to go wild and then recoil, to be confused, to be afraid.

"It's all okay," she repeats, whispering it, watching him in the dark.

Dane

Eileen isn't the only one quivering. Dane is quivering, and then he's shaking - from restraint or desire or some inexplicable brand of fear. It's like it's his first time. No, it's worse than that: it's his first time after his last relationship, and one that ran so deep, one that was supposed to be forever, fractured and shattered so devastatingly that he still carries shrapnel in his soul.

Her hand is on his face, though. How did that get there? She's so soft beneath him, she's so quiet and gentle and patient and he can't imagine how, he can't imagine why, he can't believe she's still here. So many times already Dane's expected Eileen to simply leave him. It's hard for him to believe anyone would want to stay

with him.

But she does. And she tells him: it's okay. And he looks at her, wanting to weep, shuddering once before he puts his hand on her face, cups his hand behind her head, brings her up to kiss him again. Slower this time. Slowly, he thinks; he can handle it if it's not too fast, if it's not too sudden, if they don't simply slide headlong into something he can't understand, can barely conceive of.

eileen

Under that sore tree in the chantry's garden, the one that once could bear fruit -- but no longer, not yet -- he touched her face and cradled her head just like this, but not to kiss her. He was telling her that he couldn't just fuck and run, and he couldn't really be with someone, but if there was anyone, it would be her. She knew, though, that it wasn't really a clear decision for him. In the same breath he'd said that he didn't know what she would think, how she'd feel, how he would react, what he would find himself doing. It wasn't a careful, considered choice. It was fear.

Up here, showing her the lake and its little cabin, he told her about his wife and daughter. There are still many parts of that story left clouded and incomplete, and those parts must be truly dreadful because what he did tell her was already pretty awful. And it wasn't love for his absent wife or guilt at some kind of betrayal holding him back; it was grief. Pure as the driven snow and twice as cold, colorless, and lonely. Grief.

Of course he's shaking. He's as wounded as any of them.

This time he cups her head in his hand and he does kiss her. It feels more real than the gasping, groaning kisses of a moment or two ago. It feels like the way he kissed her the other two times -- in his car on the way to Wentworth's, under the stars out by the lake. It feels like him, and it's better, it's so much better, than the other way, where he was dragged along by his lust instead of keeping pace with it.

Her hand on his face smooths easily to the back of his head, fingertips massaging his scalp gently. They can barely see each other by the light from the kerosene lamp, warm and yellow and flickering, except that Eileen doesn't see anything. Her eyes are closing as she kisses him, slower now. He can feel technique in how she kisses him, a soft, fluid expertise now that there's time and coherence enough to notice details. Her tongue is delicate and inviting every time it touches his own.

And that's all. That's all there is, for awhile. Just lying together, him half on top of her... making out. It's a long while, in fact, before Dane feels Eileen's fingertips on his wrist, her palm over the back of his hand, guiding it slowly down to her breast. Her t-shirt is thin; if he'd let himself look, he could have imagined the outline and shape and curve of her breasts through it whenever he liked. Feeling her, even through cotton, is different.

Dane

And that - that moment when she draws his hand unresisting to her body, that moment when she guides him to her breast and he himself curves his fingers so carefully and so delicately around her flesh - that is when she first hears him moan. It is quiet. It is hidden in her mouth, almost lost in their kiss, but it's there and it's tangible in the vibration in his throat, his chest. He touches her religiously, cradling, worshipful; he kisses her much the same way.

That mad hunger, when he was a slave to his sudden storm of lust, seems to be held at bay for now. He is still atop her and over her, but he's not grinding into her mindlessly, and he's not weighing her to the bed with his body. The shaking has abated too. He shudders now and then. He kisses her in the darkness, and he caresses her in the darkness, and after what seems like a very long time,

eons,

a turning of an age,

he shifts. His mouth opens to hers, and he conceals another moan in her mouth as he reaches under her shirt to find her breast again, skin to skin now, her nipple at the center of his palm. She's beautiful, he thinks; the way she feels is beautiful, and the way she sounds is beautiful. He always knew she would be.

eileen

All he had to do was walk towards her to get her heart hammering. Her breathing ramped up when he came down to the bed beside her. And to gasp, to moan, to whimper -- all he had to do was put his arm around her. Kiss that little mole he's been fantasizing about kissing since he first saw it. But Dane is hard -- kissing her, his body between her legs, his hand on her breast -- before Eileen hears him moan.

It makes her shudder.

She's been thinking about this since... god, she doesn't even remember when she first started thinking about this. A little bed in a little cabin in Minnesota at the edge of a little lake was the last place she expected to finally find Dane kissing her in earnest, letting his walls down a little, letting himself enjoy her. Letting her enjoy him. It doesn't matter, though. She doesn't have any idea what might happen after this, or what effects it might have, but that doesn't matter, either. This feels right to her. It's always felt right to her.

And then it feels wonderful. She whimpers a little, again, when he takes his hand off of her breast and slips it under her shirt instead. Beautiful, he thinks, and she can't think clearly at all. His palm finds her nipple hardened from his caresses through her shirt, finds her breast warm and filling his hand, light and supple. In between kisses, gasping softly, she tells him:

that feels so good,

as her chest lifts into his hand on every breath.

There's no more guidance after drawing his hand to her breast, though. She hopes he knows it's okay. Just like she said. Just like she keeps trying to tell him, like he keeps trying to tell himself and believe it: it's okay. It's all okay. And they can think about, talk about, deal with the rest later, but this is good. This feels good. Feels right.

And what feels right to Eileen is touching him. She has no destination in mind when she lets her hands roam over his back, no purpose when she circles around to his chest and covers his heartbeat with her small hand for a little while. She feather-strokes his sides as he gives her breast a soft squeeze, even tracing whorls and circles on his hips with the tips of her fingernails, and she doesn't push. Doesn't push his boxers down. Doesn't ask him to please, please put his hand down her panties again, play with her, make her come, though

she sorely wants him to touch her, is aching already for orgasm.

They kiss. They touch. She closes her lips around his earlobe and sucks when he moves his mouth down to her neck again. Eileen gives the gentlest roll of her hips against him, sighing heavily at the answering sensation that ripples through her body.

Dane

Truthfully, this is the last thing Dane expected, bringing Eileen here. He didn't think he was ready. He wasn't sure he'd ever be ready again. He didn't even know quite what he wanted. Or how. Or why.

But then he stopped trying to figure all that out. He made himself just stop, stop, stop thinking so much and reasoning so much and just -- be. Just live as intuitively and instinctively as he casts. Strange, that his magic is so primal, so bone-deep and heartfelt, when his life is so regimented. Dane's nature is not truly so static, so strict. That's an order he imposes on himself, but sometimes --

sometimes he just needs to break through it. And it can be a painful, almost violent process, like that fight on the lake. It can be a sudden, ferocious thing, like that one rampant kiss. But on the other side, there's this. Which is not quite peace, not quite tranquility, but ... well, yes. Enjoyment. Enjoying each other. That's what he's doing right now, even if he's hardly aware of it himself; even if he's quivering on the edge between terror and ecstasy.

And Eileen: Eileen is meeting him right where he is. She's not pushing him. She's not taking this faster or farther than he can handle. She touches him, and it's feather-light; it sends shivers up his back. She sighs. She nips at his earlobe. His shiver is sharper this time, tight and defined. He finds her mouth and he kisses her, and his hand is a little bolder on her breast, a little firmer. When he draws back, the light of the lamp is just enough to flicker and reflect in his dark eyes. It's just enough for him to see her by when he raises himself on his elbows, pushes her shirt up inch by inch by inch until he can see her body. His brow furrows and works. He looks overcome. He looks at her face, in her eyes, he kisses her and their torsos are bare together now; he wraps his arms around her and holds her to him, her breasts to his chest, her stomach to his.

His mouth finds her ear. He whispers to her, hiding the words from the night the way he hid those quiet, muffled moans: "Is it all right if we don't make love yet? Can I just ... touch you tonight?"

eileen

She remembers sitting outside by the fire, leaning against his side, asking him to play with it. Make it leap and dance. But it felt wrong to him, came from somewhere too formed, too ordered. She's beginning to understand the core of him now. Beneath all the structure of the Hermetics or the world itself is something primal and fluid. She can understand why he worked so hard, so long, to learn to control it, leash it, tamp it down. She, of all people, understands the need to break through that.

After she nips on his earlobe, holds it between her teeth and suckles on it, after his hand holds her breast with more lust than exploration, she thinks he might undress her, let her undress him. She feels it mounting in him, and herself, in the way they breathe together and the warmth, the weight of him between her legs. Eileen kisses him luxuriously, her head lifting from the pillows, her hands closing on his lower back, holding him, pressing him to her.

She eases back down, sighing, when he draws back. The way she's looking at him... there's no words for it. Transcendant. Intoxicated. Adoring. Words, then, but none of them perfect. Not perfect the way he is perfect, the way she is perfect, right now.

The cotton curling and tugging up her body makes Eileen shiver. She looks down at her own breasts with a flick of her eyes, then back at him, and she lifts her torso up a little then to take it off the rest of the way. It ends up behind a pillow. She's risen to him a moment, as bared as he is now, and when she begins to lie back down, her arms are folding around him and she's drawing him with her. He's coming down over her, skin to skin, mouths together. Her legs slowly, slowly wrap around his lower body, crossing at the ankles behind him.

She's still holding him thus, hands warm and firm on his back, her own spine arching gently as he moves his lips from hers, when he comes to whisper in her ear. There's no pause, no stiffness, not even a hitch: Eileen just nods tenderly against his cheek, turning her head to kiss him there, nuzzling him there. No extraction of promise for him to let her do anything in return, no coy teasing, no moment where she tries to hide disappointment. Just that nod, that kiss, that nuzzle.

Eileen kisses his mouth again, as decadent as they have been, moist and sweet and incomparably warm. Her legs scissor softly around him, stroking him with her calves, her inner thighs.

Dane

They can barely see each other like this. What little light there is flickers, warm and subtle. It touches their faces. Their bodies. When they draw apart he can see her breasts; the slope of her stomach. When he comes down over her there's nothing but shadow and the slow, luxurious slide of her legs along the outside of his.

He shivers. She draws him closer. He asks a question and she gives him an answer, and it's the answer he knew she would give, but he asked anyway because that's who he is. That's who they are.

And he kisses her again, even as she kisses him: slow, soft, lingering, wet. He breathes into it, sighs against her mouth. And he's shifting over her, and his hand on her breast is firmer this time, more confident - heavy over her chest, sliding past her ribs. His thumb follows the dip of her navel for a moment. Then down, his mouth trailing down her neck, finding her breast. Every breath she takes lifts her body into his reach. He wraps his mouth around her nipple on an inhale - there's a sense that he's taking a leap here, taking a chance, surprising himself with his boldness

even as he's pushing her panties down, finally, sliding the elastic down past the curve of her hips, the curve of her rear, pushing it down to her thighs. His palm is warm on her ass for a moment, and he's sucking at her breast, licking at her nipple, loving her with his mouth as his fingers linger, uncertain, at the crest of her hip.

eileen

The shadows the lamp throws are long and deep, rich as velvet. The sheets on the bed are cool to the touch, particularly where they've been graced by Eileen's long hair, still damp. Outside the night is silent but for night-calling birds, the lapping of the lake, and it is so quiet that they can hear even that. Minnesota nights are cool even in summer, but it's early summer still and even colder out there.

Somehow, between them, it seems bright as a late afternoon. It feels warmer than midday. They both look golden-hued like this, and every imperfection on their faces and bodies suddenly seems crafted by the stroke of a master's brush. His skin is softer than she thought he would be, but not as feverishly hot to the touch as she was expecting. She can feel that line of hair going down from his navel to his groin against her belly and it amuses her and arouses her, makes her shift her hips and move closer to him just to feel the way his skin moves against her skin. That's why her legs stroke his sides. That's why her hands roam. That's why her mouth opens, tasting his lips, drawing in his tongue. Just to feel him. Just to feel all of him.

Maybe not 'all'. Not yet, or not right now, or simply not without his permission, Eileen has made no further overtures to woo Dane's boxers off of his body. To be fair, he's distracting her.

One would think that someone as expressive and open as Eileen might be noisy right now, but she's surprisingly quiet. That doesn't mean she isn't responsive. It's just in whimpers and half-stifled moans, but mostly just her panting, gasping breathing in the dark. His thumb strokes her novel and she shudders, letting out a breath into the air. Dane starts to slide his body down hers, still held between her thighs, and she unhooks her ankles to let him move more freely. Her eyes are open now, her head on the pillow and she's watching him, eyes looking almost disoriented as he kisses her neck, her chest, the curve of her breast.

A shudder goes through her even before he takes that breast into his mouth, but when he does, when her nipple is engulged in warmth and wetness, she squirms under him. Her whimper sounds helpless, almost pained, surely pleading, as she tries not to buck her hips and start grinding against his stomach just for the contact. She's got her arms behind her now, not yet clutching at anything but just lazing, stretched out, exposed.

The moan she releases when he starts -- finally -- working her panties down her body is a little firmer, a little lower, more like a groan. Her hips lift as though of their own accord when he moves his palm over her ass, holding it there for a moment, holding her. Neither of them bother getting them down much farther: her legs are still spread to either side of his torso, her panties stretched between them, but she can feel air on her pussy, can feel the sheets and his touch on her ass.

Eileen's back curves into an arch, her breast pressed into his mouth, her shoulders lifting slightly. She's all but moving against the bed, rocking, pleading softly: "Thomas, please..."

Dane

There is intensity and focus in the way he puts his mouth to her body, as though he were not merely learning her for the first time but learning this, all of this, anew. It almost startles him when she breathes his name like that. Somehow, despite all he knows of her, he hadn't expected her to respond so keenly. He hadn't been certain he could please her.

But he can. And he has, and he is. He can all but smell her arousal in the air. When she moans like that, when she moves like that, it thrills and excites him in a way he's all but forgotten. Rekindles flames he's all but lost.

And there's uncertainty, to be sure, in how he responds. There's uncertainty in his pause, in his eyes flicking to her face. But then he moves, raising his head, sliding back up her body to find her mouth. This kiss is so absolute, so confident - a solid connection. On the tail of it, before he has time to think or doubt, he moves his hand. He follows the curve of her hip bone around

and down

and when his hand slides between her thighs, when his fingertips graze her pussy and discover her wetness, her heat, he shudders hard against her body. Groans into her mouth: oh, god.

eileen

Somehow she never doubted that he could or would please her. And the excuse at the beginning is simply not knowing almost anything about him, having spent barely a couple of hours in his company, but even after getting more and more clues as to how alone he's been and for how long, it never occurred to her that Dane might simply... well... not be good. Not know what he's doing. Not remember how to elicit a whimper or a moan of pleasure from a woman's body.

Some of that is youth and some of that is infatuation and a lot of that is Eileen's simple optimism. To be fair, it usually does work out for her. Things seldom go so badly that she can't bounce back from them in record time. But for the most part, it's how open she is to different experiences of enjoyment, how eager she is for new sensation. It's hard to displease her because simply being here -- on this night, in this bed, with this man -- is enough to thrill her. She never expected him to kiss her the way he has, touch her the way he --

is.

They're kissing again, and her hands are holding onto the pillow behind her head, her chin lifted to accept his kiss, her mouth sealing like a sacrament to his. He asked if they could...not make love yet...and she knows what he meant but this is, still, making love. For her it is. She thinks for him it is, too. And it's making her happy. It's making her glow inside, like the core fire of a hearth, the embers that never quite go out, that can burst again into flame once stirred. She is bursting into flame.

Eileen shudders as his touch slides down around her hip, down, stroking over hair, finding how very warm she is, seeking her with his fingertips, discovering her. She swallows the breath of his groan, flicks the tip of her tongue over his lips as he utters that muffled oath. And she is so very wet already, slippery with it, and he can feel her clench as his fingers pass over her, stroke her. She doesn't moan, this time. She shudders, and she has to part their kiss to gasp, moving her hips to meet his hand, rolling beneath him like a wave, heated by the sun.

Dane

It's been so long. He's been like a monk: severe, celibate, self-flagellating at every turn. He hasn't wanted to, hasn't been able to bring himself to, hasn't felt as though he's deserved to have -- well; anything like this, he supposes. But it's here now. It's within reach. It's alive, warm, embodied in this miraculous flame of a girl, and Dane realizes it's not an it at all but simply:

sweet. Perfect. Lovemaking. Eileen. All these things seem to be synonyms now. She's perfect; she grasps at that pillow and he turns his head, he bites softly at the underside of her arm, overcome. His hands are doing things he hardly remembers himself. He has his arm around her, steadying her, and his hand is between her legs and he's sliding the pads of his fingers between her lips, over her pussy, exploring her and fondling her until he finds her clit, and when he touches her there something in his mind clicks into place, lights up. That's right. That's it. They're words in his mind, and then they're words on his tongue. He murmurs to her caressingly, coaxingly, even as he's half rolling off her to give his hand a little more freedom. A little more range of motion.

Now he's laid out alongside her much the way he was at the beginning of all this. His left arm is tight around her, though, holding her fast: her side to his chest, warmth to warmth. His right arm is heavy across her lower stomach, and his right hand is doing things that would make him blush to think of in daylight. He's kissing her over and over, though, kissing her until all he can think of is kissing her and touching her, touching her just like this with his fingers slipping and sliding with her slick, straying inside her, dexterous and nimble -- if unpracticed -- over all those hidden parts of her. He thinks of flowers. He thinks of new leaves in spring. He thinks of Eileen, standing in the hallway of her tiny apartment, nine hours' driving away in Chicago, asking him:

do you want to stay?

and he answers her in his mind the way he couldn't, didn't dare to: yes. yes. yes.

eileen

Even when they came to bed tonight, Eileen didn't expect this -- neither of them did. She won't regret it. She doesn't know if he will or not. It doesn't matter right now. He's with her, right now, and it's okay. It's all okay.

Better than okay: the light is flickering off her skin as she moves, gasping, in response to the way he's touching her, and it brings a warm glow to her body. She's still clutching at that pillow as he holds her, kissing her, murmuring reassurances to her as though she's in pain, as though she's afraid.

She isn't in pain. She isn't afraid. But that isn't really why he's holding her, why he's murmuring to her. He's an anchor right now, and she's flying, and it's a sensation Eileen is all too familiar with. She lets go, and he keeps her from floating away. And Dane was right, thinking about her last night, thinking about her in his car, thinking about how far she could go, how deep it would be for her. Looking at her now, kissing her now, he can see it on her face:

Eileen is already so far gone, so lost, giving soft, hapless little moans into his mouth as he slips his fingers into her, giving her pussy something to clutch hold of. They go slow. They share their body heat, and she works her legs and arches her back and her panties slide down a little more, end up around her knees while Dane ...pleasures her. There's no other word for it, and no other word needed.

She shivers, with a soft breath of laughter, when he bites her arm, and as his head comes up again she kisses him, smiling, dissolving into another moan. She's still here with him, as far away as she is, turning her face to him and kissing him, loving him with that rose of a mouth, making love to him with kisses while he circles her clit, makes her groan, makes her clench and slide her thighs along his arm, makes her gasp.

Neither of them try talking, as though it will break some spell. Neither of them ask if this is okay, or what it will mean tomorrow or a week from now or next time they're on a Mission or what the rest of the chantry will say or what happens if his wife comes back into his life or, or, or.

Right now it's just his hand, wet with her slick, his arms around her, his fingers in her, their tongues touching, her hands coming to stroke his arms, to touch her own breasts, to hold him in return. And her eyes opening as their mouths part, as she's gasping, her eyes shining in the dark to find his, just

looking at him for a moment, and

letting him see her, and how she breaks open and apart when he moves his hand

a little faster.

This time she moans, aloud and broken, burying her face against his neck, holding onto him for dear life.

Dane

Dane might be mortified in the light of day. He might be scarcely able to look at Eileen in the morning. He might be stiff and distant and very, very awkward the next time the Chantry sends them out together. He might be all of these things --

(or he might not)

-- but none of that seems to matter in the moment. This moment hardly seems a moment at all, hardly seems a progression of instants, one into the next, at all. Every second could be an eternity, unspooling out and out. Minutes on end could be mere seconds, flashes of sensation: her thighs sliding against his wrist, his forearm. The skin of her stomach, so soft. Her heat, her wetness, the way her body grasps and clutches at his fingers when he slips them inside her. And those moans; those sounds she makes. The way she looks at him. The way he looks at her, rapt, hardly daring to believe what he's wrought with his hands.

She holds him, then, like she's drowning and he's the wave and the lifeline both. He tightens his arm around her. Her face is hidden. He presses his mouth to her temple, to her hair, and she has such hair, so dark and endless and tumbling and thick; a man could get lost in that hair, those eyes. The way she looked at him: it stays with him. Eileen, he thinks. Eileen, Eliana, exquisite.

There's a rhythm he's falling into. A primordial, mindless state of being where he doesn't have to think; where he remembers with instinct and bone-memory. Their legs are tangling. His calf slides between hers. His hand fondles her, pleasures her; he's breathing against her, panting softly as though her pleasure reflects onto him somehow. He takes her higher, faster, deeper; he holds her closer. That's it, he's whispering; raw, half-formed. That's it, give it to me. Let go. Let me see you.

eileen

They have tangled themselves completely on the bed. The sheets are tangled around their feet, their arms tangled around each other. And then there's her underwear, and her hair, and his boxers half-off and his cock pressing against her thigh through them, unattended and ignored as though he isn't aching for pleasure himself. Every time she feels it, she wants him inside of her more. She wants him to live in her, to run her hands over his back and feel the sweat dripping off of him. She wants to wrap her legs around his waist and hear him groan as he buries himself in her, dying, forgetting life even as he is descending into the source of it.

But that also isn't what she wants. Not if he isn't ready. Not if he's not sure. Not if he keeps touching her like this, stroking her to ecstasy, making her lift from the bed as she tries to let go of even gravity. So she can't stop kissing him. She touches him, wraps herself in him as though they are, in fact, lying one inside the other, as though he is receiving as much as he gives, as though she adores him because right now, and perhaps a great deal of the time that is not-now, she does adore him.

And remembers his name, even now, though she doesn't cry it out. She knows who he is. And she wants to turn over onto her belly, trap his hand under her, fuck his hand on her knees and elbows, buck for it like an animal, but she's afraid he might think she's turning away from him, and she doesn't want to turn away from him, she doesn't want to leave him.

Exquisite, he thinks, and it is, when she comes. It isn't some storm that overtakes her, destroys her, crashes her against the rocks. It isn't a war, it isn't a surrender. It's an art form, the climax of a symphony, the plucked string vibrating golden and wavering in the air for just long enough to break your heart. She's holding onto him but she's arching her back, curved like an archer's bow, and the moan she lets go is only voiced for a second before it hitches, caught, because she's breathless. He can feel her coming, see her coming, but she isn't screaming or whining or biting at him. It's just that...

time stops.

It's rare someone can give themselves over so completely, so fearlessly. She does let go, and for those timeless moments she really is gone, lost, ascended from the world.

It makes it all the more shocking when she starts to breathe again, move again, riding his hand and his arm with a shocking carnality, gasping into his shoulder, her hands clutching at his back, working the last shocks and waves out of that orgasm until she simply can't move, simply can't bear it anymore. That's when she starts to tremble, collapsing like a dream, panting raggedly as she falls to the pillow, and thank god his arms are there, still holding her, still cradling her, keeping her close. She shudders over and over again, breathing against his chest, her limbs going limp, her pussy still quivering against his fingers.

Dane

Maybe the truth isn't that Dane isn't ready to be inside Eileen. Or at least: maybe that's not the whole truth. Maybe some part of him wants to see her just like this. Maybe some part of him has always wanted to see her just like this: given over. Fearless. Utterly undone, and yet... not lessened by it. Here's another truth, more tragic: Dane isn't entirely familiar with that. He cannot imagine giving himself over so completely and not losing some part of himself in the process. He has evidence, hard and bitter evidence, to the contrary.

But none of that is on his mind right now. And it is utterly transcendental, watching Eileen come. He is rapt; he is silent, barely breathing, but he is so close to her and he doesn't let her go, doesn't let her fall, doesn't let up for a second. She comes and that sound is caught and she leaves the world and he just

lets her have it. Lets her have that searing, coruscant moment, that brief eternity where she's lost in her own space; lets her have it without letting her go. When she's back -- free-falling from that impossible height and suddenly liquid, suddenly in motion, suddenly flesh and blood and a hammering heart -- he catches her up in the same instant; rolls her under him, keeps her caught and grounded between his body and the bed while she rides out the cascading waves of her orgasm on his hand. He keeps her close. He keeps her close, even when that orgasm is finally leaving her - even when she goes limp, laid out, shaking. His hand is still now. He cups his fingers over her cunt, and it's achingly gentle. It's protective. He kisses her face as he finds it: her brow, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her mouth. Her mouth, a second time, slower.

Dane says nothing. He shifts after a long time. Rolls off of her and onto his back. Draws his hand gently, carefully from between her legs. Cradles her against his side. Waits for her to come back to him.

eileen

Any doubts Dane might have still had about his ability to do this 'sex thing' should, at least as far as Eileen's pleasure, be dissolved now. She really has no idea that he felt even a moment of uncertainty, at least about that. She's pink in her cheeks, sweat on her skin, her panting going from ragged to gentle as she lies there, recovering.

Somewhere at the periphery of her mind she's aware of the way he covered her, held her under him, cupped his hand over her not to see just how much he could torture her but to guard her where she's so terribly vulnerable. She knows, hazily, of how warm he is, trying to protect her somehow with his body as though her own pleasure might destroy her. It makes her smile, gently and weakly, as she starts to remember herself, her humanity, her name.

Dane's lips kiss her, softly, again and again. She closes her eyes and sighs softly, letting him. She doesn't have it in her to kiss his mouth back when his lips land there, but she accepts, dreams it, forgets it upon waking.

Her eyes don't open again. She shivers a little as he rolls away, and she follows him instantly, wiggling her legs and kicking her panties off her ankles, finally, to be lost somewhere. Naked, she tugs sheets and blankets up despite how warm she is, as though she knows soon enough she'll lose all that heat. She curls against him, snuggles to his side, sighing in comfort when she pillows her head against his chest and on his arm.

Eileen could just fall asleep right here, like this. She's sleepy from the day and languid from the fuck, but she holds him under the sheets, her arm draped over his middle the way his crossed hers for so long. A long while passes before she says anything, still simply and completely cuddled against him. She is stroking his side with her fingers, lazy and yet proof that she hasn't just passed out, occasionally sighing as she discovers, again and again, the utter relaxation of her body. She was a cascade. Now she's the river.

And when she does speak, it isn't to offer reciprocation, it isn't to ask him if he'd like to stay all week and do that to her again and again and again, it isn't to ask him if he minds if she falls for him, it's just,

"Thank you, Thomas," whispered.

Dane

For once, Dane doesn't startle; doesn't fear. His eyes are closed already when she speaks, but they open again at her words. He smiles. It's as much for himself as it is for her.

In the end, he doesn't say anything back. His arm around her moves a little - tightening, loosening, a gentle hug. His free hand, the one he brought her off with, moves. He raises it, little more than a shadow and a silhouette in the dimness

until something in the air shifts. A lingering echo of anger and grief - only now, right now, it feels more like ache. Memory. That feeling lingers, and then it transforms: takes physical form. Diaphanous flame, cool and blue, sheets from the tips of Dane's fingers - rising from the glimmering remnants of her slick still on his hand. It burns without heat, and only with this dim, ghostly light; burns filmy and clear like an alcohol flame. Burns until all the last traceries of wetness is gone from his fingertips, and with that,

burns out. It is dark, then. Dane is quiet. He turns his head to kiss Eileen again, softly on her temple.

"Thank you too," he whispers, and with that, closes his eyes once more.

eileen

She watches, as enraptured as she was just last night when he created those soft blue stars above them. No -- moreso, already on the other side of whatever boundary stands between the way most people live and think and the way ecstatics are constantly trying to live and think and be. She touches him still, unworried about rejection or uncertainty, unafraid of anything, utterly enjoying his body simply for being his body, simply for being.

And she watches him work. This time it's fire, the conjuring that seems so natural to him. Blue flame, which usually means hotter than hot, and yet he can repel it easily. Even lying back, Eileen can see how bright it is, but Dane never burns. She can smell her sex in the fire as he quite literally burns her cum from his fingers, which is a remarkable way to clean one's hands, she thinks. She kisses him idly, softly, on the chest as she watches those flames dance around his hand.

It's beautiful, and she thinks she says it aloud, but she doesn't. Perhaps she believes right now he can hear her: You're so beautiful, but he can't, and that's okay, too.

When it extinguishes, she gives a soft exhale, not quite a gasp but a release all the same. They are in the dark, all the more thick for the light that was just in it. They are two breathing shapes in that darkness, warm and cradled together.

He thanks her, too. And she doesn't laugh or startle or even smile; she tucks herself against his side, holding her arm around him, and

they sleep.