2019-08-01 - Outside of a Place of Anger

Even in this rocky coastline, Summer sunsets in Gray Harbor are sights to behold. The quiet, understated beauty of the Pacific Northwest is much more evident here where the waves are gentle and the sun's blazing corona has transitioned from pale yellow to orange limned with red, hovering just above the line of the distant horizon. Its gradual descent splashes its vibrant palette across the throes of the encroaching twilight, reflected off crisp, cold and dark blue waters. In two or three hours, the boundary between sea and sky will blur further, with nothing but the distant mountains to mark where the ocean ends and the heavens begin, but for now, that line is easily discernible, still.

Just an hour ago, Isabella Reede had been on Doctor Vivian Glass' couch, wrestling with the things she must acknowledge if she was to reclaim the sharpness and clarity of resolve and purpose that has eluded her since the rapid succession of various events that have dented her near-insurmountable confidence, and while Vivian had been instrumental in securing some degree of comfort and respite from the demons of her own guilt, they could never really go away, burdened perpetually by all the things that she couldn't tell her friend and professional therapist - couldn't tell anyone, really. After over a decade since his disappearance, the more complicated aspects of Isidore Reede remains a door shut to everyone, as well as the effects of it that had fractured her relationship with her mother.

Dead, now, with so many things unsaid. So many things unresolved.

But there is a weight lifted from her, enabling her to venture out into the water. She embraces the surf with the wholehearted relish of a young woman who started her life swimming before she even took her first steps, her sandals left on the beach as she waded in the shallows, uncaring if her romper gets wet. Goosebumps pebble bare swaths of sunkissed skin; the weather is hot, but the water is cool, and she is uncaring of either. Fingers are curled loosely around a cup of chilled bubble tea, dyed green, and she chases the waves with that usual determined, unfettered way in which she lives most aspects of her life. The high tide is bound to arrive, and bigger wakes splash against her, but she manages to laugh despite it, nearly tumbling into the water at the force of it.

She still plays on the beach like a girl much younger than her twenty-seven years.

Alexander is hung over. Which he accepts as his due, since he spent the night drinking far too much of terrible alcohol. But after showering and dressing - in surprisingly neat and tidy clothing, which does nonetheless have the unfortunate side-effect of making him look like a Mormon missionary, he's decided to go for a walk to clear his head. The bracing wind from the sea draws him, and he's walked down to the beach to breathe in the salt sea air, and hope it clears the lingering headache. A faint sheen of sweat still coats his skin, and his handkerchief is absently swiping at his skin as he picks his way among the rocks of the beach.

When he sees Isabella, he stops and stares. His expression is...complicated, with several emotions chasing themselves across his face before they all retreat to blankness. He makes his way down towards the surf, but stays out of reach of the tide. He doesn't call out to her, but standing there, stark and silent, is something likely to gain attention in its own way.

A lone seagull squawks as it streaks across the air like a gray-white bullet, and it is the act of chasing it with her eyes that makes Isabella turn around to discover that she isn't alone.

Every time she has encountered Alexander Clayton, he was alone, broad shoulders hunched and dressed in clothing that would give anyone the suspicion that he's out to convert them. She's so stunned by his sudden appearance that she stops frolicking over the surf immediately, green-gold eyes reflecting the dying sunlight at how wide they get at seeing him; she's no stoic, she has never inherited her father's tendency to keep every expression sealed underneath several layers of inscrutability, a myriad of reflecting emotions passing freely over a complexion rendered all the more golden under the sunset.

White hot fury starts to build, belying her placid environs; like flames licking on the side of her face and dumping a volatile cocktail of biochemicals into her system, blood rushing quickly through open veins and electrifying dormant nerves to life--

Try not to approach from a place of anger.

Take a breath and repeat it to yourself.

She shuts her eyes and takes a breath, lets briny air and water fill her lungs and wash the flames away. Eyes open again when she slips one hand in the pocket of her romper, bare legs cutting through the rolling waves towards his bigger, ominous shadow. Her stare meets his directly, but she's always that way, isn't she? No matter how difficult the obstacle, she will either find a way to scale it or bash herself against its foundations until it gives, or until she dies.

She doesn't join him on the sand just yet. Water rushes around her ankles as she stands a foot away from him. Earth and Water. Immovable Object and Unstoppable Force.

"...let me guess," she finally says. "You don't know how to use a French press, and you don't know who else to ask."

Alexander thinks about that. "I don't know how to use a French press, and I don't know who else I would ask." Because those things are true. "But I didn't expect to see you here, and I didn't come looking for you." It could be easily read as dismissive, with his typical toneless sort of voice, and the way he'd just walked away from her again at the City Hall. He looks down at the surf lapping on the sand. "But it's nice. To see you. I didn't thank you for the press, and I should have. I'm sorry." A longer pause, then he glances up to try and find her green-gold eyes with his own dark gaze. "How are you holding up, Miss Reede?"

"Nice, huh?" Isabella wonders. "How am I going to believe that you want absolutely nothing to do with me if you tell me it's nice to see me?"

Bonebreaking grief, it seems, isn't enough to blunt her propensity to return rapid fire, but there's no heat behind it, nor is it present in the emerald irises that he searches in the half-light of the burgeoning twilight. Open conflict is present instead, but none of it bladed or combative - her expression is almost wistful, instead.

The last question is one where she glances away, as if to examine the way the waves eats the coast. "When Vivian asked me that, I didn't tell her I was fine. But I didn't give her an honest answer, either. Not really. Not until today. I think...I'm about where everyone expects me to be, given the circumstances. What's your best guess?"

Her eyes fall to his footwear, before taking a step back. "C'mon, I'll show you a trick," she tells him. "Take off your shoes, and roll up your pants, if you don't want them to get wet."

"I don't believe I ever said that I want absolutely nothing to do with you," Alexander says, quietly. His dark eyes fixed on her as he speaks. "It is nice to see you. Difficult. But nice." It's hard to judge him from his tone, but there's uncertainty and regret in his expressive features, and an echo of her own wistfulness.

Her lobbing that question back in his direction has him drawing a quick breath. He frowns. "Judging by City Hall, you're angry, feeling frustrated, and grieving." His voice softens. "I know that you only started working on this project because you wanted to protect your mother. I'm sorry. It was terrible. What happened to her. I wish we could have stopped it."

The offer of a trick has him shuffling his feet a little uncertainly. There's a wary once-over of Isabella, like he suspects this might be a trick he WON'T like. But if it is, he probably deserves it, so after some thought, he steps out of the leather shoes. He doesn't roll up his pants, muttering, "The bandages make it a bit hard," as he starts to move closer to her, the water soaking into his socks almost immediately.

"What about seeing me makes it so difficult?" Isabella asks, brows furrowing faintly. "Though I suppose..."

She pauses, lips quirking faintly upwards as she tilts her head back and exhales. "...I suppose I did my best to try and beat you up every time I attempted an escape. Evil artifact-possessed or no, I'm certain that would probably try anyone's patience." That is the easiest reason she can home in on, anyway, lifting a hand to pull dark tresses from her face and tucking them behind her ear - a lost cause, in the end, with breezes from the Pacific blowing the loose tendrils around her face like her own personal storm. There's even a hint of a self-deprecating smile.

I wish we could have stopped it.

The way his baritone pitches low and soft, the way he meets her eyes when he says it - this person who knew, from the start, why she had interjected herself in the first place nearly breaks something inside her, and he would glimpse it by the barest flicker of eyes that are often too expressive for their own good. A blink of those long lashes, the glitter of sudden moisture. But even her tears are stubborn and they don't fall, and she takes a few more steps away to give him room to join her, turning away at just the right moment so he would be spared them.

She is reminded of his injuries, but doesn't comment on them just yet. Instead: "I was told...that it wasn't my fault. That I wasn't able to get her out when I could. She was stubborn too, my mother. Stubborn and talented in the ways my brother was, and in the ways that you are." She takes another breath. "Grief bound her here, to this place. But hope, too. In equal parts."

Unlike before, she doesn't try to touch him, to hold out her hands and help him - he, too, had his pride, and the strange aversion to it unless he instigated it. She knows better, now. But once his shadow engulfs her own, she moves to lower herself slightly, bending her knees.

"Hold out both your hands," she says. "Wrists up."

Alexander shakes his head. "Not that." A pause. "Not exactly that. It was just," he makes a frustrated noise, tilting his head back to look at the seagulls, as if they might give him a way to explain it. "Everything was a bit intense. Too intense. I don't." A long pause. "I don't like surprises, or deviations for the routine, and I don't like not being able to trust people who I want to trust, or having to hurt people, especially people who I don't want to hurt. Everything, all together, it was just too much."

He drops his head back down and shrugs. "I'm sorry. I needed to not see any of you for a bit." He notices her reaction, but doesn't comment on it when she turns away; if there's anyone who knows what it's like to want to have emotional space in order to process things, it's Alexander. He just waits, patiently, for her to continue. When she does, he frowns. "It wasn't your fault." That's firm, without hesitation. "And it wasn't your mother's fault for choosing to stay. Only one person bears the responsibility for murder, and that's the son of a bitch who commits the crime. Blame William. Never yourself."

There's a hesitation when she gives him that direction. But there's trust, there, too - even if perhaps tentative and strained by his own paranoias. So he does as she asks, with an air of waiting. Of watching.

Try not to come from a place of anger.

She listens, watching his face intently when he does, and when he finally finishes explaining himself - in the best way he knows how, that self-deprecating smile becomes all the more visible. "Well...if you continue to want having something to do with me, that's going to be a little difficult, then," Isabella tells him, unabashedly and forever straightforward, unable to tell him nothing but the unvarnished truth when it comes to stressing her opinion. "Because I love surprises, and deviations from routine." A pause.

"Intensity, too," she says softly. "I'm not completely fearless, mind, there are things and places in this world that I'm terrified over. But getting hurt, I was never afraid of it. And I know, you've told me. It has more to do with you that it does me or anyone else. I just...it's not in me. To like compounding another's suffering, also, especially when I know so little about the true shape of your pain, so despite knowing this, I try to stress it anyway. I...can't help it. I..."

The silence stretches on, whatever she was about to say touching on the aspects of her that she has never admitted to anyone and everything else that has seeded from that poisonous tree.

His reassurances temper her smile - tenderness lacing the deeper wells of these inner parts of her that she barricades from the rest, the savage, heartbreaking failure that this most recent tragedy seemed to blossom out of. In that moment, for a second or two, she seems far away - out of reach, or unable to reach anyone.

But when he does hold out his hands, wrists up, she follows. She finally turns to face him fully, long academic's fingers cupping cold, calm water into the bowl her palms provide. She tilts it towards his wrists, standing toe-to-toe with him, but she doesn't touch him. Her head bent, strands of chocolate and copper framing her face, she keeps pouring the ocean into his hands.

"Summers in my family home tended to be unbearable," she tells him, her voice pitched low and quiet now that their proximity has changed. "It's the heat - it's always the hottest in August, and it's old. No air conditioning. I loved the summer, Gray Harbor was always at its most beautiful in those months, but I always had difficulty sleeping. I would wake up my father in the dead of night, and he would fill the tub with water and ice, then tell me to dip my feet in it for a few minutes. Same with my wrists, then soak a towel in and press it into the back of my neck. They're pressure points, meant to recirculate the blood in your body and cool you down."

She pauses, then tilts her head back to meet his eyes. "I know that the burning is supernatural, that you can feel it as if it's real, but the human body is a magnificent machine. We have evolved with the built-in capabilities to protect ourselves. In times like these, I think we should exploit them the best we're able."

The line of her mouth grows soft and pliant, its clear gloss reflecting the sheen of the dying sun. "I hurt you, too," she murmurs. "While being difficult. While being reckless. I hope that you'll forgive me."

"I know," Alexander says, with a lift of his shoulders. "You don't hide your preferences. I don't hide mine. At the very least, I would like to continue being in your presence. I enjoy your company. Although several straight days under difficult circumstances may have...strained that, a bit." It's all stated very evenly, without prevarication or uncertainty. "Not because you're not very attractive, but just because--" he shrugs, makes a gesture like 'rewind this conversation and see what I just said about intensity'.

He follows her lead, leaning forward a little as he studies the motions she's making, and echoes them the best he can. "It seems to be improving, but I'm happy to try anything that might hasten it along." There's an intensity to that statement that suggests that yes, Thorne wasn't wrong: his nights have been excruciatingly painful. But he says, "You didn't hurt me. We had no reason to believe that the bones would have any effect on me." A pause. "I do think you should have checked in with the rest of us before doing it, though. We don't know, now, if burying the bones is even an option, or if we can use the remaining skeleton in any useful fashion. But," a twist of his lips, "it isn't as if Thorne consulted me either, before feeding his portion to the Archivist, so what do I know?"

Not because you're not very attractive, but just because--

"Well," Isabella replies casually, pouring water on his wrists, still, without meeting his eyes. "I'm glad to know that I managed to graduate from 'pretty' to 'very attractive' despite said several straight days under difficult circumstances. To be able to do that while we were in a pressure cooker of malevolence-induced tension? I must've been doing something right." He'd find those green eyes shifting to look up from underneath the shadows of her long lashes, the devil's own mischief within them for just a moment.

Silence ticks by as she watches his eyes, the whisper of a thought washing in with the sea.

I missed this.

It's a realization that seems to catch her unawares, blinking once before turning her face away so she could get him more water.

Word that his strange condition seems to be improving garners a hint of relief; it ripples over her shadowed expression, all the more eclipsed by the act of him leaning towards her so he could see what she's doing. The act does nothing to alleviate the stirrings of a different kind of heat threatening to push from underneath her cheeks and she bites back a grumble - at herself, rather than anything caused by her companion.

"Does it feel...anything?" she asks, instead. "After the Archivist ate the bones? Do you feel like you're being...ugh, wow, I can't believe I'm saying this. Digested?"

"Well, you've slept a little better, it looks like. And you're soaking wet," Alexander points out deadpan, although not without an appreciative look up and down her, coming back to rest on her face with the slightest little hint of a smile.

If he notices the relief or the grumble, he doesn't comment on it, but instead just continues watching her with that steady, near-black gaze. "Mm. No. Admittedly, I was blind drunk last night, and night is when the burning is worse, so it could be happening, and I just managed to be unconscious for it." A pause. "But I don't think it will. I don't think the Archivist ate the bones, not really. It mentioned that it was the Collector who wanted them, so I suspect its mouth just transferred them elsewhere. The bones haven't affected me when they've been separated or kept locked up, so if they're in a collection, there shouldn't be a problem, I should think. But now we only have half a skeleton."

"And eating," Isabella says, wiggling her eyebrows and even giving him a pose at his once-over. One long leg stepping back, her left hip cocked sideways and slender fingers hooking into the taper of her waist. "...though now that I'm reminded, maybe it was for the best that we spent a good week and change avoiding each other, because the way I was tearing through every edible thing in the houseboat was embarrassing. The jar of pickled beets? Gone. The smoked oysters? Also gone. The months' supply of Campbell's chicken noodle soup we were subsisting on in the week you stayed over? Finished. I felt like Miss Pacman, just wokka-wokka-wokka through the fridge and pantry and I'm pretty sure a few delivery boys were entertaining pornography scenarios every time I opened the door in just a camisole, because at that point, I didn't care, I just wanted my pizza."

The scenario Alexander describes as to where the bones went has her expression shifting into a more indescribable one - he would remember it well, it is similar to the face she wore when he told her about insect people and their long-buried ancient but highly advanced innovations on Earth.

"Wait...you were drunk?" And she missed it? "I thought you never drank! Do you remember anything? Did you give anyone a lap dance? And as much as I want to play the Scully to your Mulder, a lot of what you just said makes a lot of sense, especially when they said that the Collector wasn't in the premises and geography here isn't always...." She pauses, remembering those visits to the Veil as a child. "...concrete."

She falls silent, chewing on her bottom lip. "Having half a skeleton will hopefully be enough. If they're his bones and he's somehow come back to life, maybe...I mean, it's something of his, wiped down psychically and all. But once we talk to the Addingtons maybe there's a way to find him without doing anything to you. Just the bones."

It's a sobering thought, banishing most of her earlier levity. "...what about you?" she asks, her virid stare lifting to his face. "Are you...burning sensation and getting blindingly drunk aside. The visit to City Hall...it couldn't have been easy, to hear all of that."

Hey, those were REPTILIANS. The insect people are still among us, piloting our bodies from their nests in our brainstems. Get it right.

"Eating is good," Alexander says, sounding amused. "And no doubt you did a great service by cleaning out the cupboards before things could go wrong. Perhaps it's a new career to explore." He can't help but look at the leg, or the cock of her hip, his eyes going half-lidded for a moment before he clears his throat and reorients on her face. "But I'm glad that your appetite returned. It was one of the things that concerned me the most."

At her astonishment and questions, he actually turns a little red. He bends down to scoop water into his hands and splash it on his face. "Very drunk," he mutters, as he wipes it away. "I was angry. And scared. And in pain. I needed to be numb. It seemed the least damaging option available to me. I apparently danced with a handsome ex-soldier and Easton's girlfriend. Her idea," he adds, a bit hastily. "I don't dance well. Or usually at all." He clears his throat. "But, yes. That's my working assumption. My hopeful assumption. If I do start feeling digested, I'll let you know."

His tone turns a bit sour as he mutters, "Thorne will be entertained, at least."

She grows all the more brazen when he looks at her this way, giving that cocked hip a little shake. "You're treading on dangerous ground, Mister Clayton. I've taken ribbon yoga, and a couple of belly dancing lessons for fun. I know how to shake my bon-bon."

The audible clearing of his throat has Isabella laughing, though - equal parts surprised, and relief, with the subtle hint of incredulity at being able to manage this, still, in spite of everything that she has endured. The gratitude that she still could.

"I know. I'm sorry for that too, the lack of appetite." The archaeologist lifts her fingers, rubbing the back of her neck. "I've been living on my own and most of the time out of a suitcase for so long that I didn't know how to react having someone actively taking care of me. I hated that you were so worried, and that I was incapable of trying to fix it." Her voice lowers, green eyes moving back to look somewhere over the top of his shoulder. "It was the worst."

Very drunk, he says, watching with open fascination at his heightened color, bleeding through his tan. The urge to tease him about it is there, but she manages to prevent herself from doing so when he tells her about his state of mind, then. "I think when it's all said and done," she begins. "This is the part of you that surprises me the most. Anyone would think that you wouldn't be this open about the times you're feeling vulnerable, but you are. And the contrast is outrageous, because you don't look like the sort, with your gritty crime movie looks."

Pause, beat. The devil returns in the slant of her smile, giving him that glinting side-eye. "The way you blush is really cute though."

She sighs, pulling that slightly extended leg back, the act having her situated once again within his shadow, engulfed almost completely by the breadth of it save for the rainbow glint of that ever-present moonstone, and the dying light slanting shafts across her eyes and flaring their color into a crystalline quality. "I'm glad you were able to dance, even if the circumstances that brought you there were less than ideal. Remember what I said about living a little? I'm not much of a dancer, either, but most of the time, unless you're doing it for a living, that isn't the point. The point is the moment, and letting it move you. Something I could teach you...." She tilts her chin in that defiant angle, though it's playful this time. "...if you have the stones."

Her smile plays up higher on the corners of her expressive mouth.

It fades slightly at his sour tone. "Byron isn't that sadistic," she tells him, quietly. "But he can be ruthless. Honestly, when I saw the two of you together for the first time...the first night we met...I wondered about your history and why it tends to be so barbed. The last time we were all together, though, it's changed visibly...and only after a few weeks."

"I don't even know what ribbon yoga is," Alexander points out, with a sneaky little grin. "Perhaps you'll have to demonstrate for me, one day. For science and education. Of course." The apology about appetite has him shaking his head. He splashes more water on his face and his hair, apparently not caring at all that it's soaking into his nice dress shirt. "It's difficult to be dependent on someone. Or to feel dependent on someone, even if you aren't really. Most of us do like to have a feeling of control."

The next part brings a look of frank astonishment to Alexander's features. He bursts out laughing. "Did you just call me shifty-looking, Miss Reede? I try to be honest about things. It's too hard to keep track of reality if you're constantly creating new versions of it. It doesn't mean I always want to talk about it, but I find lying...frustrating. But really, cute? I'm over ten years your senior. I don't think you get to call me cute." It's light and teasing, although not without a certain awareness that the difference in their ages is there. His eyebrows go up at that challenge. "My stones are in place, Miss Reede. I just don't know that I'd enjoy it. But I'll think about it."

The conversation's shift to Byron takes the playfulness away. "I don't know why it is," he admits, quietly. "I tried to ask him. He wouldn't say." He looks away from her, turning in the direction of Bayside Apartments without consciously thinking about it. "That's not true. I have my suspicions. But while it may have changed," he sighs, "I don't think joking about torturing me in order to hurt William Gohl means that it's gotten better." He makes a small sound of frustration. "I offered, once, to simply stop contacting him about these things. For the most part, they're not...anything he's directly concerned about. But he didn't want that, either. I'm not...good at social things." He shrugs. "But that's not your concern. We'll have it out one of these days. Or we won't."

"For science and education, huh?" Isabella returns, brow arching visibly; it makes her look imperious, especially with the defiant angle on her jaw - unconquerable, untouchable, save for the telltale spark in her eyes and the fact that she can't quite hide the grin playing on her mouth. "Alright, you're on. Far be it for me to deny you, especially if it's for science and education. As a budding tenured professor, what sort of Oxford graduate would I be if I refused to teach? Champagne room rules, then? Look but don't touch? Would you prefer Saving Abel's Addicted or Closer by Nine Inch Nails?"

But he seems to understand where she is coming from. For all that those days have been half-blurry, she does remember the conscious efforts he has made not to hover too much, of which she is grateful. Her jaw works, trying to get the words out...but is ultimately unable to express them. She simply isn't as good at it as he is in letting someone into his inner life.

His sudden laugh earns him, at last, that starlight grin, burning bright in the growing darkness on their spot on the beach. Didn't she tell him before, how she has a knack for it? "Absolutely," she tells him gamely, lashes lowering, the look of her unapologetically feline and feminine. "I'm a red-blooded, educated woman who's very decisive about her choices and straightforward when it comes to expressing her opinion. I most definitely have a type, and I think before it gets dark and cold, you should ask me what it is." Her expression softens. "Though I do find that most of the people in my life prefer honesty, just that they often expect it from other people and rarely ever practice it on themselves. In that, Alexander, you're a rarity, and why I pointed it out in the first place. I'm..." The melancholy look returns, though her smile lingers. "...not so well-equipped in that," she murmurs.

I don't think you get to call me cute.

"Adorable," she says, because she is who she is. "Endearing. Darling." The look of her is almost smug as she starts going down all the synonyms for 'cute' she can think of, meeting his eyes in the doing because she can and will and always, and while fully aware of said age difference, she is showing a very blatant disregard for it. What did she say about being very decisive?

She doesn't press the dancing issue and doesn't even call to question about his stones; she knows they're there, the fact that his leg has yet to heal after throwing himself in peril during the incident in the Hanging Bridge is testament enough. Instead, when the tone of their conversation switches to a quieter note, she says, "I think it has. The first few times I was with the both of you, the animosity is borderline. I'm not saying it's gone away entirely, but it's evolved. I think he recognizes that if it weren't for you, things would have been a lot worse. He has his reasons, for acting the way he does. His childhood wasn't easy, and it isn't as if I expect the two of you to one day have a couple of beers together. I'm just saying that nothing ever stays the same, because people hardly ever stay stagnant."

"Closer, definitely," Alexander says without hesitation. "It's a better song." He gives her a wink, and doesn't try to press any on her reluctance to open up about emotions. The grin warms him much more pleasantly than the rising discomforting heat in his body as the sun goes down. "And what is your type, Miss Reede?"

To the comment about honesty, he just shrugs. "Sometimes it's better to expose yourself before other people force you out in the open. It gives you a certain level of control of what you reveal, and how." A tilted smile. "When you've been in as many psych holds as I have, you learn a bit about self-disclosure. But everyone is different. You don't have to be me." A pause. "No one should ever be me. I shouldn't even be me."

He snorts with sudden amusement as she goes on with adjectives. "You're very enthusiastic." It might be meant to be repressive, but there's more enjoyment than chastizement to match her playful decisiveness. The rest, regarding Byron, just draws a shake of his head. "It will work itself out. One way or another. Or we'll simply part ways - it's a relative oddity that our paths would ever cross again in any detail, anyway."

"If you're not careful in giving me answers like that," Isabella tells him, examining her fingernails idly; she curls those digits into a loose fist, turns her wrist. The lonely black, braided ribbon encircling her left is the only indicator on her person that she is in mourning, that her loss is deep and real. "You're going to keep reminding me of revisiting the issue now that I'm in my right mind again." That green color shifts from emerald to evergreen, rendering the tiny facets within each iris all the more golden.

And what is your type, Miss Reede?

She doesn't answer that question yet, when he tells her more serious things. Deeper things that touch into the core of how he views himself. "History is just that," she tells him quietly. "Snapshots frozen in amber. We can either learn from it, or discard it. To say that I like all of you would be exaggerating, and I'm not some starry-eyed waif that'll say there aren't some aspects of you I find terribly frustrating. But ultimately, that's part..." She shifts, somewhat awkwardly, suddenly glancing up and paying very close attention to the twilight skies above them. "...of the allure. And I might sound crazy, but I like that you're difficult."

Her heartbeat tics up a few notches, of even saying that much. It would seem insignificant, for more honest souls, but to her, it is a mountain compared to their mole hills.

"As for my type..."

She leaves the issue about Byron too. Men will be men, and they'll either sort it out with a fistfight or something else. But she finally turns back to him, both hands slipping into her pockets now. She leans forward, slightly bent at the waist - she doesn't touch him, but her mouth hovers close to his ear, the subtle notes of strawberries and the sea clinging to her skin, drops of the churning surf wicking tendrils of dark hair against the visible side of her throat, and shimmering like diamonds along the line of her jaw and ear.

"I really like the ones who aren't afraid to manhandle me, especially when I'm being difficult."

Alexander was smiling along with her, even looking amused at the idea that it might be him being difficult that's part of that appeal.

And then she gets to that last part, and his smile snuffs out. He recoils, a look of hurt flashing across his features, and turns away. "I should be going, Miss Reede." It's abrupt, and his shoulders have become hunched again. "Thank you. For the talk. It was nice."

But now he clearly intends to leave, and just turns and starts splashing his way back to more solid and dry ground, his gait a little lopsided.

She follows, of course.

Because surrender isn't in her vocabulary; it was one of the reasons why his alleged rejection was so galling.

"It wasn't a joke," Isabella tells him, her toes hitting the sand, though she doesn't try to grab his hand and pull him back. Her voice comes out in a rush. "I wasn't about to lie, especially with what you were saying earlier about honesty and-- could you wait a second, oh my god."

It's easy to overtake him, and she's not above pressing her advantage there when she turns around to bar his way so she could look him in the eyes and he can see her face, expression twisting in agony because, to her, the coming admission isn't easy, wrung out of her because of the fact that he's already been hurt enough.

"I know very well that I'm also an insensitive idiot and between the two of us, I'm incredibly bad at feelings," she says, her words rushing through her breaths. "But it's true. It's true, and it isn't because of what you've had to do to get me under control, it's because...it's because..."

Oh, Christ!

She grits her teeth, and forces the words out. "...it's because I like it when you touch me. I like it when you get your hands on me. And I know it hurts, I know...I know you hate it." She remembers how he just recoiled from her the first time she tried and it flashes across her eyes. "And it probably sounds sad, and crazy, and extremely pathetic, but I'll take it any way I could get it. I would. I would. It's not a joke. It's not a lie."

Alexander stops when she puts herself in front of him, the waves slapping at his ankles. His expression is still hurt, although all emotion is somewhat obscured and softened by the descending darkness. "I didn't think you were joking," he says, quietly. His gaze remains unsettlingly direct as she continues. He makes a small, strangled sound at the obvious emotion and difficulty in her voice, her body.

"That's not...Isabella, I don't think you're pathetic, or an insensitive idiot. My issues with touch aren't because I don't," here he hesitates, thinks the words over carefully, "not because I don't enjoy touching you. But not like that." It's harsh, pained. "I don't want to manhandle you. Or anyone. Ever. I'll do it if I have to, if it's the only way I can think of to keep things from being worse. But I don't enjoy it."

He reaches out, then, and tries to lay his hand gently on the side of her face, cupping her jaw with his salty, slightly damp palm. "When I touch you, Isabella, I want it to be something that's good, and that comes out of a good place. Not violence. Not restraint. That's all."

He doesn't think so, but she certainly feels it, that gnawing part of her that's scrambling for something, anything, in the slippery slope under her - how it crumbles, how it slides underneath her feet, without the stabilizing personality her twin provided. The other half of her soul, the other half of her heart - the vessel which she believes carried the best and most capable human parts of her gone into the ether.

How would he react, if he only knew? That she didn't used to be this way? That she was...

"I am," Isabella tells him. "Insensitive. On top of being difficult. I-- "

Her jaw clicks shut as the same cryptic pain twists over his face. He would see it in her eyes, luminous now under the light of the rising Summer's moon, the question she posed but once, and never repeated after he barricaded the vaults to that avenue forever: What hurt you? Because she doesn't know the shape of his pain, the ridges of the parts of him that have been forcibly broken off, unable to know, in the end, whether her own can manage to fit his.

And it must be something, because the implication of his following words are terribly clear to her. His hand finds the side of her face, fitting against the curve of her cheek - warm, rough, and banishing the chill off her skin.

Her face tilts, rotating gently, gently, into it all - his scars, the traces of the rough roadmap of his tumultuous life, unable to help it - unable to help but want it, because she is Isabella Reede, and passions run as red as her blood. It must be everything; the strain, the loss, doling unforgiving fissures in the dam that she has desperately been trying to bolster and hold at bay. Moisture trickles from the corner of her right eye when she closes both of her own, running hot against his grasping fingers.

"But you are," she whispers, her voice barely audible; it's only his close proximity that enables him to hear it. "You are good. You are."

"Stop." Alexander's voice is quiet, but stern. "I'll grant you difficult, but you're proud of that, so it's no flaw. But you're not insensitive."

He runs his thumb along the line of her cheekbone, spreading the trace of the tear over her skin. He hears that whisper, of course. It draws a sigh from him. Something wistful and pained at the same time. "I'm going to try to be. We'll see how it goes." He caresses her cheek for a lingering moment, as if it's hard for him to stop now that he's committed to the touch.

In the end, though, he does stop. Withdrawing his hand and watching her. "Let's see how this thing with Gohl resolves. And then maybe we can try that date thing, again? Would you be willing to tempt Gray Harbor luck?"

I'll grant you difficult, but you're proud of that.

And how. Despite herself, he'd find the beginnings of a smile start to tug up the corners of her mouth again. Even with her eyes closed, Alexander would know.

The heat of that traitorous bit of liquid emotion spreads, then fades, at every gentle pass of his thumb against the ridge of her cheekbone. Some part of her expects it to be brief, to stop, and leave her craving more of it. But he tends to surprise her - tonight is no exception, and lashes beaded with those small, insignificant diamonds lift slowly, the green in her stare nothing but crescent moons of vibrant color under the low, ambient light, watching him, dark eyes and focused features as he keeps stroking her cheek.

The pain that generates is bittersweet, how it twists her insides and leaving her breath arrested, trapped within her lungs. Strange, how that is, to leave her aching and soaring all at once. Knowing how difficult it is for him, these are things that she has learned relatively quickly not to take for granted.

"...what," she begins. "You mean we're not on one right now?"

Would you be willing to tempt Gray Harbor luck?

The tears are gone, as if they never existed, so quick to recover no matter how deeply wounded. Isabella's head lifts, flashing him that incorrigible smile. "Please," she says, pivoting around. "Who do you think you're talking to?" She throws a wink over her shoulder. "I'll trick Cerberus, himself, if it means just a few uninterrupted hours when I can watch you look at me the way you do." Because that's addicting, too. "With that said, though, I think you should walk me home, Mister Clayton, the way all worthy gentlemen do."

She pauses.

"Besides, I need to show you how to use a French press."