2019-07-19 - Insomnia

A long day is, perhaps, about to get longer.

As Alexander Clayton does his best to feel comfortable in unfamiliar environs, he'd be surrounded by sounds; the quiet way the water laps against the docks, the ambient noise created by the surrounding ocean, and the occasional vestiges of late-night traffic; there isn't a lot of the latter, a car or two carrying carousing teenagers screaming past the boardwalk, enjoying the wee hours of the morning following a Friday night. The ground is relatively stable, but probably a new thing to someone who has never slept in a boat before - a strange thing for someone who is determined to keep his feet underneath him at all times. However, it is something familiar, and even comforting, to the young woman who he has charged himself to look after.

All Reedes dream of water, Irene Baxter-Reede used to say to her when she was young.

Actively true for Isabella, herself, who found herself unable to sleep since arriving at Gray Harbor, and one of the reasons that drove her to accept her father's offer to use the houseboat. Being close to the ocean enabled her to shut her eyes at night, letting the water lull her to the rest she needed - the rest her mind needed in order to tackle the challenges presented to her the following day. After all, without it, she was nothing; the harrowing events in the last few hours attested to the fact, crazed, craving and unrecognizable even to those who knew her best, and the ones who were just starting to get to know her.

She manages to get a few hours sleep, but something rouses her in the middle of the night, hair tumbling around her face and hollow eyes turning to her one-way windows. She can see the summer's moon, its white-blue light attempting to permeate the darkness in her bedroom. It was strange that even after everything, she isn't afraid of the dark.

Alexander would hear her, afterwards - the houseboat might be roomy in comparison to others, a real residence floating on top of the Pacific, but in the end, it is still a boat, and he will learn soon enough that secrets do not stay hidden in confines such as these. The door to the bathroom closes with a quiet click, mindful despite everything of the visitor that has attempted to make himself a fixture in her home, and soon, the faint rush of rushing water will invade his attempts at sleeping - not that he was doing a good job of it.

She knows he's awake; she's felt him touch her mind now and then, even while sunk deep in the Sandman's embrace - she remembers because her mind has always been a formidable tool, but it doesn't prevent her from doing her level best to keep quiet. Long legs and slippered feet carry her from her bathroom, the faint scent of strawberries and drops of water clinging to her skin as she slips around the island to the refrigerator at the corner of the main living space, opening the door quietly and reaching within. The act of doing so illuminates that darkened corner for a moment or two, highlighting her profile with the momentary golden glare of its inner light, spilling over her eyes and the darkness of her damp, bound-up hair, a slender arm reaching within for something cold - water, maybe, or juice.

She's dressed for sleeping after her shower, though perhaps in deference to the fact that a man has taken up her couch, it's more modest than what he had seen her when he barged into her hotel room; a loose black sleeveless jersey, matching shorts and thigh-high socks, with thin bands of white at the tops.

Alexander tenses as soon as he hears her shift, feels that change from sleeping to waking. He doesn't reach out again, but he sits up on the sleeper, its creaking is no doubt familiar to someone like Isabella, who's been here so many nights before. His elbows resting on his knees, his body hunched, but tense at the same time. He listens, but doesn't bust in, waiting to see what she might do.

A flicker of surprise, perhaps hidden by the darkness, when she emerges into the living space. Unwilling to startle her, he greets quietly as soon as she starts to cross the room, "Miss Reede. You should be sleeping." There's no force to it - it's an observation, not an order. He stands and turns to follow her into the kitchen, padding quietly at a distance.

"I need something cold," Isabella tells him by way of explanation, and as he follows her - he wouldn't have to walk far, when the sleeper couch and the living area extends just past the island that flanks her hip, he'd be able to follow her movements under the faint light the refrigerator casts. She draws out a jug of mango juice, trapped at the very back of it - the better to give it a good chill. Rummaging around the freezer enables her to find the bag of ice that she keeps there, drawing it out with her fingers to drop it on the island; the extension of her arm catches those streamers of light, the bruises are already starting to show, his fingers leaving indelible, inky marks on her inner wrist.

"Plus, I don't think you're in any position to talk. I know you're my warden in the next few days, but you're only human. Your work is intensely cerebral...you won't be able to perform as well as you should if you don't close your eyes now and then."

That tendency of hers seems to be returning, at least, an encouraging sign that some of her old spirit is stitching itself back together - this ability to express her opinion straightforwardly, and damn anyone else who disagrees. She moves unencumbered, though. She doesn't groan about her aches and pains. "Do you want some?" she asks, looking over her shoulder at him, dark, damp hair falling across her eyes in the doing. She's already retrieving glasses.

Alexander watches her carefully, despite his tiredness. He accepts the desire for something cold, and seems to be about to say something when the light hits her and he can see the forming bruises. Whatever he was GOING to say is lost. Instead, there's a hoarse, "I'm sorry. For hurting you." And he looks away, his expression twisting as his hands twist around each other. The offer of a drink receives a quick shake of his head. The comment on his own sleep seems like it's going to be ignored, but after a few deep breaths, he says, "I don't sleep well in unfamiliar spaces. That's all. I'm used to it." A flicker of a smile. "You're not saying that I'm stupid when I'm tired, I hope. Because I'm tired most of the time."

And that stubbornness, too. Then again, that never went away even when she was at her worst, and despite his shaking head, Isabella draws out two glasses from the cupboard anyway, filling them with ice. Liquid gold pours from the jug she has in her hands.

She keeps her attention on what she is doing when that apology whispers between the scant space between them. It must be the lack of distance, for she feels him twist his fingers together in self-castigation, how he averts his own dark eyes to stare somewhere else. There is no comment on the rest of it for now, until she sets the juice back down on the island, the tip of her tongue touching her lower lip, feeling how dry it is, how cracked. She doesn't remember the last time she drank something other than the milk Vivian had fed her a few hours prior.

She would have to thank her, too, whenever she sees her again.

Finally, she turns around, to set the juice in front of Alexander and tilting her head back to watch his face. Without any boots or sandals, their height difference seems more insurmountable in the dark, credited upon the shadows' propensity to make big things seem even bigger. Under the faint light of the kitchen, as he looks down, he would see the bruises, yes, but that wouldn't be the only injury he would find. He'd find signs of an older one, a pale, thin white line carving down her left shoulder, contrasting sharply with her sunkissed complexion - a scar that her tanktop can't hide.

I'm sorry. For hurting you.

"You need to stop underestimating me," she tells him quietly, though there's a sense of faint amusement at that. "I've had worse." She lifts her hand, turning it over to inspect the marks he's left on her skin. "These? I can live with these, but I don't think I can live with taking the life of someone I know - and one that's important to Byron."

After a moment, her green eyes find his, glinting like a cat's in the night. "You should be saying 'you're welcome' instead of 'I'm sorry'."

"I'm not sorry for stopping you. But I didn't want..." Alexander takes a breath, lets it out. "I don't like hurting people. Usually. It doesn't matter if you've had worse. I don't like it." His jaw sets, but he reaches for the glass she put down. He doesn't drink from it, but runs the palms of his hands over the cool glass, up and down, to soothe the heat. His gaze returns to her, solemn even in the face of her amusement and the truth of her statements. "I don't want you to thank me." It's flat.

His eyes slip towards her shoulder. He doesn't need to see the scar to know it's there. He felt it, after all. "Tell me about that." A nod to it. "And your gun training." And ah, here, now is a flicker of actual amusement, some sort of humor as he adds, "Are you actually Lara Croft, and this is just your secret identity?"

"Sure, I can accept that," Isabella tells him, searching his expression and taking in the tics and nuances he demonstrates while saying the words. "If you liked hurting others, I doubt you and I would have a lot to talk about. But I don't think you should apologize for doing what's necessary, either. Even without...whatever it is that's latched onto me, I know what I'm like." Her amusement returns, and this time her expressive mouth tilts upwards in the corners. "I can be challenging to live with."

It fades afterwards - she has a thousand smiles, can often keep them up ad infinitum, but perhaps she is too tired to let any of them linger for long. "I don't know much about your life, or what drives you to treat the good you do as more of an obligation than an option, but you're getting it anyway. Thank you for saving me from myself."

There's a glance at her shoulder; something rueful invades the line of her mouth. Picking up her juice, she turns around to lean her back against the island, taking a drink from her juice. "Rich adventuress with an accent who's a legitimate peer of the Crown? If only." She returns his good humor with the ghosts of her own. "Nothing like that, I spent most of my early years in the field scrabbling around in the dirt, and burying myself in paper, losing myself in libraries. It's years of dry, backbreaking work before you even get to the good stuff. As for the guns...my father was in the Navy, with his own command. You'd think a man like that would be terse and controlling, but he genuinely loved his children." She turns her glass in her hand, her eyes falling on the sheen of condensation coating it. "I benefited tremendously from a father who went far and beyond empowering his only daughter in a world that tends to chew up children from small towns."

She doesn't explain that old injury; either she's forgotten that he asked, or chooses not to discuss it.

"I can be a little difficult, as well," Alexander deadpans. "Just...accept the apology, Miss Reede, and I will attempt to accept the gratitude, and we can save the energy of arguing for the more important matters." He notices the failure to explain the injury. That much is clear in how he stares at her for a long moment. But he doesn't press any further, just ducks his head and plays with his glass, imperiling the countertop as the juice gets dangerously close to spilling over the top. He doesn't seem to notice. "He sounds nice. Your father. And the work sounds interesting. I like paper and libraries." A quick, fleeting smile. "Although perhaps I would have been content to stay at that phase, while you forged ahead into more dangerous waters." Then, an upward tilt of his eyes, assessing. "How are you feeling?" It's not an idle question.

Save the arguing. Even as exhausted as she is, Isabella seems willing, even eager, to press it. The perpetual psychic corona around herself burns like a star, fueling her capacity to be ridiculous - and it even revels in it, really, loving the fight as much as she loves the more dangerous aspects of her work. He'd be able to gauge it in her expression, this willingness to throw down the gauntlet, and go rounds and rounds and rounds with him despite her diminished state. But he'd only find that smile returning, curving upwards.

It fades, though, when he tells her with a look that he noticed her avoidance, but it's one that she returns levelly, her chin lifting and meeting his expression with a tired, but defiant one. "If you're able to touch my old injury without recoiling, I'll tell you," she replies - she might be willing to prevent herself from throwing the gauntlet down in the issue of gratitude and apologies, but for the other, he will need to take a leap from the lion's head.

She doesn't comment about her father; she's an elusive creature when she wants to be, all too willing to skirt clear of the subjects that might give one a glimpse of the present shape of her shattered heart. But his fleeting smile is one that she returns. "It's not for everybody, but it's not like I'd judge anyone who likes staying in the library. Knowledge is as much of a boon as it is a curse, I don't know where the world would be if nobody elected to take up that burden."

How are you feeling.

"Exhausted." Said straightforwardly. "Normally the water's able to help me sleep, but I keep waking. It feels like a hook pulling at me, making me want and need." A brief flash of a feverish light in those green-and-gold depths. "I'm trying to keep my mind off it but it's hard. Even talking to you now, I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop wanting."

There's a harsh indraw of breath at the defiant demand. Alexander looks at her, brow furrowed. "Unfair, Miss Reede." It's quiet, but there's hurt there. And he makes no move to reach out for her shoulder, instead dropping his gaze to the island's top, and to his untouched juice. Now touched, because he raises to take the smallest of sips. Like he expects poison. Its her last answer that brings his head up. He doesn't say anything, not at first. He just listens, and offers a short nod.

Then he reaches out, slowly, and draws a fingertip along the scar, meeting her eyes square. "Tell me." A distraction, as much of one as he can provide when the need is gnawing inside of her.

If nothing else, what he does afterwards proves something that Isabella suspected all along - Alexander Clayton would brave his own demons in the face of a piece of information he needs. Though why he needs to know this aspect of her is a mystery in itself.

Unfair, he names her. There is no smile - it might be the flash of hurt on his face when she tells him what it would cost him to hear that story that prevents her for doing so, or because the wounds associated with that scar run deep. And they must, and they do, and when it comes to these vulnerabilities, she is not one to make it easy for anyone to reach them. She does not apologize for it, for going for the jugular in an effort to hide them.

There's no poison in the juice - it is cold and sweet, carrying the floral, tropical notes so typical of summer fruit. There's a hint of surprise, though, when he turns around and traces the white line with the curve of a fingertip. Gentle, barely there, calluses teasing goosebumps from her skin.

He would feel it, even with the barest touch, something pushing up from underneath impossibly soft skin. A subtle protrusion, hard and unyielding - it isn't bone, but metal, feeling the beginnings of screws and plate underneath. Her eyes turn away from him at that.

Tell me.

"Something needed to be broken down, I used my body to do it," she tells him, lashes lowering and the look of her growing distant. Even saying the words has her reaching out inside herself, to the internal space she once shared with another, only to find it empty and devoid of his presence. She tries now and then, over the course of a decade and change and it never fails to hurt. It twists painfully, rends those wounds open and leaves them bleeding, to find it hollow. To find him gone.

"I didn't feel like I had a choice at the time. It had to be done." After a pause, she lifts her head, whatever pain exists camouflaged by the shadows obscuring her face, with the barest shaft of moonlight slanting across her eyes and leaving them flaring with color. "I felt the ball joint snap when it gave way. The medics reset it, but it wasn't the same since. It kept dislocating, whenever I would do something physically strenuous, so I went under the knife to get it braced."

"Sometimes things have to be done," Alexander replies. He doesn't push for more details, although surely he must want them. He always seems to want details. He might even have a suspicion, remembering agonized voices of memory that the pendant had given up. But he just withdraws his hand, replacing it around the cool glass. Another sip of juice. "Surgery is difficult, especially when you're young. It heals faster, maybe, but it always feels as if you shouldn't have had to. As if you might just will yourself better, stronger." A brief hint of a smile. "And you have a lot of will."

Another sip, and a sigh. It's weary, his shoulders drop a little as his mind roams down the list of obligations he seems to have taken on in the name of socializing. "Can I trust you, Miss Reede, to let me know when the need is becoming too great? Before it overwhelms you? If I know in advance, I can arrange things to keep you safe without violence."

"That needed to be done, too," Isabella tells him. "The surgery."

But she at least doesn't attempt to argue with the rest, though his faint smile coaxes one out of her. "You mean I'm stupidly stubborn," she tells him, picking up her juice again and taking another thirsty swallow or two. Her hand reaches out for the jug to refill it. "It's fine. I know it helps me as much as it hurts me, but it's the way I am."

Perhaps it's no exaggeration, that he is tired all the time. Watching his shoulders sag, she watches his profile in silence, though she elects to answer his question first. "I can't guarantee anything," she replies, and that's honest too. "The wanting and needing might get so great that I'll do anything and everything I could to satisfy it. I think the only thing I can guarantee is the fact that I don't want to hurt anyone, so you have carte blanche to do whatever it is that's necessary to keep me from doing that. You're capable, Alexander. And you can stand up to me...I think in the end, that's all you really need."

She sets her half-empty glass aside. "You seem to be able to hold me down when you feel like you need to without snapping." The devil is irrepressible, surfacing a touch even despite the circumstances.

"Better to be too stubborn than too likely to bend," Alexander says, quietly. His baritone voice carries a hint of admiration, a hint of rueful acknowledgement of his own weaknesses. "And there's nothing stupid about you, that I've seen thus far, Miss Reede."

Her response is matched with a nod, a quick smile of gratitude for the honesty. "Try, if you can. But if you can't, I will do my best to be prepared." He doesn't argue with his capability, but it brings a grimace rather than any sort of pride.

And then she continues, and a rusty, half-broken laugh is surprised out of him. "Usually I do wait for more than the pants to come off," he returns, in the same tone. The playfulness is quickly gone, though. More seriously, he says, "Violence is easy. Uncomplicated." A corner of his mouth curls up. "Other things can also be uncomplicated."

"Oh, give it time. I could surprise you." Equally capable of self-deprecating humor, but Isabella is unapologetic about that also. Her face cants towards him, mouth pulling in that blinding, incandescent grin, momentarily burning out the fatigued and hollowed-out expression and sacrificing it in the heat of the moment.

It fades, but only slightly - it lingers on the pliant line of her mouth. "I'll try." She doesn't seem fussed giving that promise, and looking at her at the moment, he'd be able to reassure himself, at least, that she means it.

His surprised laugh and the quip that follows has her laughing - it's just as sudden as his, her own somewhat hoarse, but well-meant, a sound that would remind one of half-lit bar rooms and shots of whiskey. "Please," she tells him. "You couldn't even keep me seated without shaking. Though I can..." And her eyes fill with that familiar, sharply mischievous light. "...attest to you finding other things uncomplicated. I mean, watching you transform a pillowcase into rope, it's like it was second nature."

These small embers of mirth fade, and she asks, mirroring his returned seriousness: "What hurt you?" she asks, her tone as gentle as she can make it. It sounds awkward, hesitant, as always unsure of her ability to be the kind of presence that inspires these confidences. "To the point that you think you'd hurt me, too, if you weren't being careful?"

"If there is one thing that I have little doubt of, Miss Reede, it is that you are just full of surprises." It could be mocking or complementary, that sentence, depending on the tone. But instead it's almost completely toneless: an observation of what Alexander sees as fact, and one that he has not yet, perhaps, passed final judgement on. Her grin, though - that seems to please him unreservedly, and teases out a return smile, not as bright as hers, but still warm and genuine. A simple nod at her promise; he expects no less.

Her playful tease, though, robs the amusement from his face. "I don't want to talk about that." Some denials are coy things, inviting further speculation or questioning, suggesting that if just the right phrase was found, the path would open. Or a playful challenge to persist. This denial is the verbal equivalent of a 'Road Closed' sign. Possibly with 'Dangerous Curves' and 'Falling Rocks' as secondary warnings underneath. His face is utterly blank. And it seems to cover everything from the pillowcases on.

I don't want to talk about that,

Isabella doesn't press, when the amusement he earlier holds dies on the vine, but if she's daunted, she doesn't show it. His blank face meets the full brunt of her own infinitely more expressive one, dark brows winging upwards and lips parting in preparation of sending him reeling with everything else that she could say. That it was ridiculous for him to ask probing, personal questions and look unamused when he doesn't get any answers, only to stonewall someone else when she dares try to do the same.

But in the end, she doesn't. To anyone who knows her best, it might be that she's electing to show some kind of mercy.

That doesn't stop her, however, from leaving for his perusal a particularly hard truth. She takes another few sips of her glass. "You don't have to talk to me about it," she tells him, his overt rejection slamming like cannon into the walls of her own internal fortress. "But eventually, sooner or later, you're going to have to with Vivian. You can't expect her to treat you as best as she possibly can without having all the information. I'm not trying to be completely difficult...but if she hasn't told you that, someone should."

"You're very persistent," Alexander says. There's an edge to it, now, but after this evening, he just can't work himself up into a good temper tantrum about it. Maybe because, on some level, he knows she's right.

But denial is a wonderful thing, so what he SAYS is, "What she can do is enough. Will have to be enough. I just have to," he sighs, "try harder. Be better. Not be quite so crazy." A tilted smile, as if trying to revive the lighter banter of a minute or two ago. "Or I guess I could just wait for all the rest of you to join me in insanity, and then I'll fit in."

You're very persistent.

"Oh, baby," Isabella replies the words drawing a sudden laugh out of her, though more at herself than the sobering idea that's driven him into the perimeters of that explosive temper she's seen in him already. "You have absolutely no idea how far that really goes." In many ways, the day was an eye opener, giving her a glimpse of all the things he is capable of.

If she can taste his denial, she doesn't twig him to it. At his words, he'd catch exasperation there; she's too tired to bother to hide it, it is as open as all the expressions she has worn since the hour he took her home. "You're not crazy, Alexander," she says, making that specific conclusion as decisively as everything else in her life - it was her all over. "You're broken, and wounded, and if you were born here, and lived here for most of your life, you can't help that. Nobody can."

She meets his eyes at that, threads of subtle aggravation set on her fine-boned expression - either because he hasn't realized it himself, or nobody has told him yet another truth that he could use. "And since most of us were also born here, too, we have that - on different levels, maybe, but we all do. So there's no waiting for the rest of us to join you...we're already there." A pause, before her smile returns, quirking upwards. "Though I can't really say if that would make anyone feel better or worse."

"My name is Alexander." It's not a snap, not even angry. Just a correction, as if Isabella might actually have forgotten what his name is and just decided to call him a random noun instead. Maybe petnames are filed under nicknames in the Alexander Lexicon. "And I'm beginning to get an idea." He drinks juice - the swallows are more robust now, as if he's decided enough time has passed since those initial, testing sips, and now the juice is safe to drink. He tilts his head back, baring his throat, clearly more thirsty than he'd let on.

Then sputters when the ice shifts and smacks into his lips and his nose. That's cold and wet! He hastily puts the glass down and wipes at his face. "Ugh." It gives him a moment to process her words, too, without having to appear to do so. He doesn't argue with her about it, in the end. If her brand of stubbornness is in direct confrontation, his is in the quiet noise he makes - the one that says 'I hear what you have said, it's wrong, but I'm hoping you think I agree so we can drop it'. It's a very passive aggressive sort of noise.

And so, perhaps too, is his attempt to shift the topic. He stands up, abruptly. "I have something for you." He doesn't wait, but goes over to his small bag, now crumpled beside the sleeper. He takes something out of it - a small white box, one corner of which has been stoved in, sometime in the evening's excitement. This receives a grimace, but he brings it back, and puts it down in front of her.

It's neither a petname or a nickname, it's a common expression. Seriously, it's as if he's never watched a movie or a television show in his life! And while she doesn't say it, Isabella's look is downright emphatic of the sentiment as she looks at him, making such a face.

Her expression flattens further at the noise he makes. But she is at least a conscientious hostess, and reaches out to refill his glass - they were both tired, and really after today, they could both use the refreshment. She doesn't sit, hasn't seated since he approached though their conversation has ended with him taking up one of the bar stool type chairs by the island. If anything, to her, standing was a relief - she doesn't remember the last time she walked around when she decided to cloister herself in a room with pictures of the ring.

Remembering it has her fingers twitching, what she remembers of it resurfacing in her mind; the silver band, its mysterious markings, the scarabs and the amethyst. Longing, raw and potent, fills her stomach and heats her blood, every sense lurking towards that siren's song. She closes her eyes and sets her jaw, but it pulls at her no matter how much she wants to remain rooted on the spot. "Alexander..." she starts to say, quietly, hesitantly, that burning feverish look returning to those green-and-gold depths...

...which abates when he puts the box in front of her. She blinks. When did he...?

"What's this for?" she asks, attempting to fix her mind in that direction, reaching out so she could take it between her hands and open it carefully.

"It's for eating." He's gotta be fucking with her at this point. Or just avoiding the more useful answer to the question she asks as he slides back on the stool, his own fumbling attempt to figure out what might be appropriate to carry to a maybe-date of mysterious agenda maybe not being something that he wants to explain.

Although really, it's probably pretty self explanatory. Inside the box are four chocolate truffles (one smuushed into a bizarre gooey shape), but the scent that drifts up out of the box is spicy, not sweet. Each one is different - the smushed one apparently has candied hot peppers distributed through it. One is flavored with cayenne and cinnamon. One is dusted with Mexican hot chocolate powder, and one is flavored with Tabasco. "I remembered that you liked spicy food," Alexander says, quietly.

Out of everything else that has happened today, this fumbling attempt to be a functioning human male is what surprises her the most, though whether that speaks more about Isabella's personality or Alexander's, it's difficult to tell. Green eyes widen to the point that those golden shards scattered across each iris are clearly visible, even while looking at her from the side. Lips part, but for a moment no words come out.

Her expression is ultimately indescribable. She is astonished, yes, but interlaced with something else - open conflict at these unexpected touches pressing against the jagged edges of the shattered engine beating, regardless, within the cage of her bones, and within the cornucopia of it is something even rarer than her brief forays into some degree of intimacy with another person. The look on her face...she actually looks endeared.

I remembered that you liked spicy food.

She reaches out for the smushed one, bringing it to her nose and lashes lowering to kiss her cheeks, taking a deep inhale of the scents of chocolate and spice. Like with everything else in her life, she throws herself fully - what's left of her soul and her heart - in the experience at hand, with nothing else left behind. Smelling. Tasting. Lips part over the token to take a delicate nibble, the pearlescent edges of her teeth sinking into the dark bittersweet shell. She had expressed earlier that she wasn't hungry, but she tries it because she can't help herself. It is a small experience, in many ways insignificant, but she savors it with such a wholeness of being that anyone can't be blamed for thinking that she believes, on some level, that she would never do this again. Her face reflects it, this three seconds into bliss, utterly invested and unconsciously sensual.

"You did," she says at last, once she's had a bite, and once her surprise isn't so sharp. The smile she gives him then has the distressing effect of softening her face, and glittering in emerald irises filling with the words she is incapable of expressing - affording him a glimpse of the angel the devil used to be.

"Thank you," she tells him. Quiet words, simple words.

And then, because she is who she is: "Is that enough? That's fine, right?" she wonders, teasing him again as she openly jabbing at him with the end of her wit. "I don't want to hug you or kiss you if you don't want it. I mean, Vivian already had to feed me milk from a bottle today, I don't know how much more my pride can take."

Alexander watches her reaction, uncertainty and suspicion warring for a certain vulnerability in his lean, drawn features. He seems to brace himself when she opens the box, clearly expecting laughter - maybe even laughter meant kindly or in true amusement. When it doesn't come, though, he breathes out in one long exhale. For what it's worth, he tries to hide the relief. But he's really very bad at hiding his emotions unless he's going completely blank, and that seems beyond him, right now.

The smile comes when she bites into the candy, slow and sweet as it blooms from nothing to a full expression of pleasure. Pleasure that she's enjoying it, that it was worth being considered enjoyable, and that he had some small part in that emotion. His eyes close for a moment, and if she's savoring the chocolate, perhaps he's savoring the barest reflections of that feeling in the air around her.

His eyes open again when she speaks. "You're welcome," he says, just as quietly. A moment of startlement at the next. "That's enough," he confirms. He blinks, dark eyes owlish, at the tease. His mouth opens, closes again, opens, closes. Like several responses come to mind, and then are discarded. "If I didn't want a hug or a kiss from you, it would have nothing to do with you, Miss Reede," he says, at last. "But just the thanks. Is more than enough. If you feel differently once your mind is your own again, we can revisit the situation." A sudden spark of something almost like humor, except for the self-mocking edge. "I don't think I'd ever live down getting seduced, even by someone as attractive as yourself. I'm pretty sure Thorne would never let me forget it. After he punched me a few times."

His owlish look directed her way was definitely worth it. It's as if the earlier expression was a mirage, that rare, softer look giving way to that brilliant, cutting smile. While Isabella doesn't laugh, her face hints at it openly enough, pressing a palm flat on the island, just by the box of chocolates, and turning by the hip fully to face him. Fingers press the piece of chocolate further against her mouth, though she doesn't take a bite yet - it's enough to taste the chocolate against her lips.

She looks the part, without even really trying, fresh-faced from her shower, emerald eyes gleaming with amusement while the treat hides most of the smile that he can glimpse just barely as she stands toe-to-toe with him.

If I didn't want a hug or a kiss from you, it would have nothing to do with you.

"What does that mean?" she wonders out loud, never one to leave a challenge unanswered, though her laughter does remain in her eyes. "That you would want one, or that you would never want one because any hug or kiss I would give would have everything to do with me?"

And that bout of self-mockery. That actually earns him a laugh. "Yep, that's me," she tells him afterwards. "A regular honey pot. An expert black widow. Honestly, I can't blame you for thinking that, but I think even despite the..." She gestures vaguely to herself, to note her psychological condition. "...this, it would take hell and high water before I give it up for those kinds of purposes. I'd rather pit my wits against a problem, and not my body. Sometimes it's not practical, I suppose. Or efficient. But this is the person I am."

She finishes her chocolate. "Though ultimately, my takeaway from this entire thing," she says, that teasing bent growing all the more visible. "Is that you remembered what I liked, gave me something you knew I would like, and you think I'm pretty." She tilts her head, a stray lock of dark hair falling from her bind at the gesture to cling to her cheek. "I think I better be careful, now that I know you can be smooth."

Alexander doesn't pull back when she turns to face him fully, his face remaining close, studying the constantly shifting expressions like it's some sort of rare manuscript he was trying to decrypt in a language he only barely speaks. Her challenge, though surprises a laugh out of him, and there's a grin, brief but bright even in the dark. "It means, Miss Reede, that I suspect I'd enjoy a hug, kiss, or anything else from you quite a lot. And if I turned it down, it wouldn't be because I didn't want it."

There's a nod to her explanation, although a flicker of curiosity there, too. "I'm relieved to have one angle I don't have to cover. And that there's not," a pause, "likely to be an ulterior motive. It tastes wrong, when desire is muddied with them."

"You are pretty," Alexander says, with a shrug. "And I don't think there'd be a point in giving you something you wouldn't like. But I'm glad you did like it." When that stray lock falls forward, he studies it in the darkness for a bit, then reaches up and, if she allows, carefully tucks it back behind her ear, his fingers lightly brushing the skin of her cheek and the upper curve of her ear. "You should sleep, you know."

"See, that's what I thought," Isabella says, with a face and tone so innocent that it's a miracle that an entire SWAT team doesn't descend from the heavens to arrest her on the spot (that is to say, it isn't innocent at all). Though with his head bent, studying her expressions, she doesn't seem to be intimidated by the distance - or lack thereof. It does, however, lower her contralto in deference to their proximity.

"Or anything else from me, though?" she murmurs, green eyes glinting, still, with that same devil's light. "I retract my earlier statement, maybe it's you who should be careful. My imagination can come up with a lot. I don't know if you'd survive them."

But all of it is worth the grin he flashes her - these brighter shards of him uncovered and encouraged by the facets of her most incorrigible self, glimpses of what he could have been, always, if whatever happened to him hadn't happened. How capable he actually is of being amused, overtly enjoying the company of another person - able to laugh, when earned by enough wit.

That flicker of curiosity doesn't pass her notice, and perhaps she's about to address it. His next gesture derails all of it, though, when he reaches up the way he does, rough fingers - carrying with them traces of a life spent in a fight she barely knows the shape of - tangling gently in that loose tress, to return it behind her ear. Despite what she had said earlier, what she demonstrated a few hours before, he touches her as if she's made of blown glass, liable to break if he handles her wrong.

Gooseflesh fountains up at the warm brush of his fingers; it could be exhaustion, or that subtle dispensation of care in an already trying day. Her face tilts towards his hand, so slowly, done in increments, that in the darkness it's barely perceptible. Enough for his fingers to rest against the high curve of her cheek, for those long lashes to tickle his skin when they lower - the warm, damp softness of the corner of her mouth touching the heel of his palm, the shape of her words felt when it moves. When she speaks.

"I should," she says, her voice barely audible, swallowed by the shadow his face casts over hers. "So should you."

Her eyes lift, watching him from underneath her lashes.

"...I'm sorry." Two words, and barely a breath. "You were worried, and I dismissed it." She remembers his words, yelled in frustration, still, despite not caring at the time - pulled forcibly away from her phone, she can't help but regret it now that she's put at a distance from its influence. How he expected to find her dead. How he lit himself up like a beacon and risking all the perils that came with that - dangers that she was intimately familiar with, even when young - just to find her and recover her body no matter what.

Those eyes fill with it, the words she can't articulate, the questions she can't ask. But what she does say will have to be enough.

She hopes.

Alexander's eyes open, a little fake innocence of his own. "I'm pretty sturdy, Miss Reede. And if not - well, there are worse ways to go. Unless you're into some very weird shit."

He doesn't jerk his hand away when she so slowly presses her face towards his fingers, although his breath catches in his throat, and the fingers against her skin start to tremble, just slightly. He still leaves it there for several moments, until he feels her lips shaping the words against his palm. Then he pulls back, but with a single trailing fingertip, that makes its way to trace half the lower curve of her lip before pulling away. He takes a deep breath, chest expanding, shoulders squaring until the exhale. Then he says, "I can't until you do. Warden, yes?"

Her apology draws a blink, a twitch of surprise. "Don't worry about it, Miss Reede. You weren't in your right mind." He stands, now, sliding off the stool and looking down at her. Stern and mock stern at the same time, the joke covering the real concern. "Now, don't make me carry you to bed, please. Sleep. It will hopefully help you resist the call, later."

Sensation sparks on a delicate space, like coruscating electricity when he traces the lower curve of her mouth with the barest touch. He surprises her there, too. He can see it in her eyes as he pulls away, rooted on the things she wonders about, but doesn't voice in the ever-shifting calculus of their interactions; that despite his overt aversion to it, he does know how to touch someone, and the fact that he didn't seem to be in any hurry to break away despite every instinct screaming at him that he should.

He can't hide that either, with the way his breath catches and his fingers tremble. What hurt you? She almost asks again, but she doesn't. As she told him earlier, her pride can only take so much of a beating in one day.

Her hand moves so she could close the lid on her small truffle box.

Don't make me carry you to bed, please.

"Ugh, please don't," Isabella groans instead, tucking the box against her hip as he stands. Every single word of that can't help but trigger that need to assert her ridiculous, stubborn sense of independence. "Honestly, that's the last thing I need. Goodnight, Alexander. I'll see you tomorrow." She shakes the box at him. "Taking these with me, by the way. Not sparing you any, they're mine now."

It sounds petulant, but playfully so as she turns away so she could head down the hall leading to the bedroom. But she pauses in her steps, seized by remembrance, and she turns in the half light to regard him. "What other things?" she wonders. "When you said other things can also be uncomplicated?" Other than violence, anyway.

Alexander snickers. Actually snickers at the response. "Probably for the best. With the way my luck is going, I'd probably knock your head into the door frame by accident. Good night, Isabella. And they are all for you, you know." He watches her with warm amusement - and just an edge of watchfulness, keeping enough walls up - beyond his usual formidable array of them - to make sure that she is, indeed, going to bed. Where her ring-related research has long since been removed and hidden away somewhere else in the boat.

When she stops and turns back, his eyebrows go up. "Sex, obviously." An amused breath out. "Now, good night, Miss Reede."

Sex, obviously.

"Are you serious?" Isabella laughs, flashing him a smile - brilliant, and as sharp as a blade, striking like a viper. "Most of the time, that gets complicated so fast."

At that, she pivots. "But yes, yes, I'm going. Especially when you're asking so nicely while calling me by my name." She shoots him a look over her shoulder, her mirth evident, still. "I was starting to think that you forgot it."

She turns then, waving a hand in a wordless goodbye as she ventures further into the darkness of her houseboat, ostensibly to find her bed again and fall asleep. It's not a graceful thing, and there's no seduction behind it, when she simply collapses face-first on her covers, cheek against her pillows and her fingers curled loosely around her small box of chocolates. After days without it, with her mind traveling in lightning speeds connecting one thread after another, she is unconscious in moments. How long that will last is another question, but for now, she falls in a dreamless abyss.

The remaining truffles will have to wait until breakfast tomorrow.