2019-08-03 - Inamorata

With Byron and Erin conferring about the status of the former's (fraught) relationship with the latter's family, Isabella takes the opportunity to quietly slip away from the front of the main deck and towards the other end, phone in hand and her expression half-illuminated by its bluish-white glow. Green-gold eyes take on a more unnatural light underneath the glare of something so artificial, but she is clearly corresponding with someone else, her fingers making audible tap-tap-taps on the digital keyboard before her.

Once that is over, however, she slips her phone in the back pocket of her shorts, and ventures towards the rear deck where she had last seen Alexander.

The onset of twilight bands striated ribbons of blue and indigo across the clear skies above her head when she ventures out in open air, sunglasses removed and tucked away as long legs carry her towards where he stands, his ominous shadow lengthening as the darkness deepens in their surroundings. Viewed from where they are, the shapes of distant mountains look black against the lighter sky and the far away lights of Gray Harbor beckon the eye like scattered fireflies, visible even here despite having acquired a significant distance from the coast on this impromptu trip out into the cove. Here, the briny notes of the Pacific are more prominent, edged with the chill that blows in from the North. It rustles through her hair, dark chocolate hair tumbling over her face and bare shoulders like a small torrent and drawing goosebumps over her sun-touched skin.

She doesn't seem to mind the cold, leaving her steps audible enough so he knows that she's approaching well before he even sees her. She leans against the railings next to him, elbows draped backwards against the frame, tilting her face up so she could watch the gradual descent of the evening.

"Does it still hurt?" she asks quietly, emerald eyes darkened to evergreen in the shadows, the shards within glinting like golden stars. She means the burning sensation, threads of guilt stitching over her expressive face, knowing that the symptoms tend to worsen at night. She would never say it, but she doesn't bother to hide it either; the look of her is eloquent enough in the sentiment.

The cold doesn't bother Alexander, clearly. In fact, he seems to lean into it, which is probably answer enough to her question. He hears her approach, there's a shift in his habitually hunched posture as she nears to signify it, but he doesn't turn or address her until she speaks. His gaze is far away, his expression remote. But as she speaks, so does he, coming back from whatever mental roads he's been roaming.

He turns, lingers on the strangeness of her eyes in the light. "It's getting better, Isabella. I promise. And it wasn't your fault." A smile. "Imagine if we'd burned them all at once."

Imagine if we'd burn them all at once.

"I don't even want to think about it," she confesses, though she returns his smile with one of her own, faint and almost gentle. When paired with the different shade of those striking irises, Isabella looks otherworldly in a way - nothing so celestial or ephemeral similar to the likes of Lilith Winslow, or the golden glamour that Vivian Glass tends to bring into every room she occupies; half-limned in the dying throes of the day, she looks like starlight and shadow spun through glass, powered by the endless firestorms of her potential, churning within her as if something imbued with its own volatile, uncontrollable life. Too large, too massive for her body to contain, and perpetually poised on the edge between ascension and destruction, and all at the cost of its infinitely more fragile human vessel.

The silence that descends isn't wholly a comfortable one when their eyes meet and hold, his dark eyes transmuted to two points of living night, liable to swallow anything that shimmers; there is tension that exists, which she can't accurately define, strung between them like wire. Akin to how gravity tends to pull one object towards another.

Most of the unease is coming from her also, and she turns so she's actually facing the water, this time - done by instinct, to turn to something that has a profound effect of dousing the perpetual conflagration of her own nature, linking her fingers together as she stands shoulder-to-shoulder with him on their side of the deck. Teeth press into the lower curve of her lip, pressure flushing it with color. But she is a decisive creature, and after a breath, she tilts her face back to him, internally girding herself for...something.

"I want to ask you something," she tells him. "But I don't know if it's anything you're comfortable with discussing. About your talents - what you do with your mind. I'm-- " She holds up a hand, palm out. "I promise I'm not going to launch myself into your history - nothing like that, but I want to ask about mechanics. It-- "

Her jaw tics at the hinge, pulse throbbing against the delicate hollow of her throat. "I had a guide before," she confesses. "My brother...Sid always seemed to know, and if he didn't know something about what we had, he went off to look for the answers himself. He's gone." Her insides twist at the words, but she bulls forward with that same tenacious inner stride. "And now I'm hearing voices without meaning to. Is that something that can happen? Do like talented people just....catch them? Like radio antennas?"

"It's not something I'm all that cheered about, either," Alexander says, voice dry. He's, as always, more shadow than starlight, nothing about his presence or bearing evokes anything in most observers except, perhaps, a slight unease. Even that isn't really menacing, but more like the instinctive internal bracing before braving aggressive panhandlers and trying to do so without ending up the bad guy. One of nature's lurkers rather than its stars.

When she turns towards the water, he looks away and does likewise, although still turned just enough to be able to keep her in a sidelong gaze. He waits, impassively, for whatever she's drawing her strength for. But, when it comes, it's clearly not what he expects. His eyebrows go up. There's a slight nod when she asks if she can ask, and another when she speaks about her brother; Gray Harbor's greatest fan of tragedy, disappearance, and murder has, of course, known about the mystery of the male Reede twin, even if he's managed not to bring it up, so far. "I...don't know," he says, after a moment. "I haven't had the luxury to share many notes with people with my particular abilities. One of the strongest I've seen is Thorne and," he sighs, "I've never worked up the nerve to open the subject. You can get stronger. You can grow into other facets of your abilities. I can heal a little, and that only happened in college, when we were practicing with the rituals." A brief laugh. "I don't think I magicked myself into power. But I think maybe the concentration, effort, and focus allowed me to access something I hadn't before? And you've recently been under a supernatural effect, and you've traveled to the lost places, and you've been under a tremendous amount of stress. Any of those, maybe, might awaken something new in you."

"I know that Lilith is a force to be reckoned with, but in a different way." She's unable to help looking down towards his injured leg, her expression tightening visibly at the way he is forced to favor one side over the other. It does, however, bring her body to turn slightly towards his, unconsciously mirroring his movement at that instinctive drive to keep her within his peripheral vision. Whether it is defensive - a habit that has evolved out of necessity to protect oneself from a place with a tendency to come alive at a moment's notice - or something else entirely, she doesn't know. But ever since their first serious conversation, she hasn't tried to ask about the pain that drives him. "And Erin mentioned, herself, that she's relatively skilled at healing with it, but not the other way around - not in the way that the Ghoul kills."

His brief laugh does lighten her grim, determined expression some; there is something about the Talent - discussing it, talking about it, that she clearly doesn't like, but she is a young woman who manages to find the gumption to do what she must, and she clearly believes that she must do this. Her smile returns visibly. "What, so you need to be high and oversexed to stitch someone back together?" Isabella wonders, in that innocent tone that would leave anyone expecting the Coast Guard any time, now, to clap her in irons and ferry her off.

That spark of levity fades. "I ask because someone woke me up the night of my mother's murder, a few seconds before I received the call. It...no." Her brows draw forward in thought and remembrance. "She. She woke me up. I can't tell you how I know it was female, I just...I heard her voice, as clearly as if she was speaking next to me. It felt heavy, like it was pounding at the back of my head. Over and over. So I thought...was I receiving? I was asleep, I wasn't doing it consciously. I've actively tried not to use since I left Gray Harbor in my teens."

Alexander hesitates at the mention of Lilith. "She's...powerful, but crude. Uncontrolled. At least in the state she was in. I've," a much longer pause, "seen people who were more delicate and precise in taking apart a person. It just takes practice and control." It's toneless, but he's looking over her head now, and not anywhere near her face, his own face in full shutdown mode. "Cutting a throat is relatively simple. The trick is doing it from afar. But if you can touch someone's mind, I think you could channel any other powers you have through that connection. I haven't tried."

Her next question draws a surprised snort of laughter from him, and it pulls him out at the dark places that he was starting to fall into. "Sounds fun. But no. I'm just not as good with it. Not as much range or power. I can stop bleeding, or clear up bruises, but nothing bigger than that. And I don't think I could use it over a mental link. It doesn't feel strong enough for that." When she turns more serious, so does he. "...interesting. Did you recognize the voice? What was it saying?" A grimace. "I don't usually hear voices. Unless I've made a conscious connection to someone who has the same gifts. I could probably project my voice into someone's head, but I wouldn't hear their voice back unless they had that gift, and wanted it. Otherwise, I'd just get images, emotions, um, things like that."

He doesn't immediately address the issue of her lack of use of her powers, but he does study her, his face in shadow but the attention clear.

His head tilts - taller than her by a few inches, Alexander would be able to divert his attention easily somewhere past her head, over the distant horizon and towards the glittering lights visible from the bay. Isabella's hand lifts from the wrist, unconscious and instinctive in that attempt, with every intention to take his chin gently between her thumb and forefinger and draw his face back down so he could look her in the eyes again. But she remembers that invisible boundary and stays every urge to do so, closing her fingers into a loose fist and letting it fall uselessly at her side. Open conflict wars on her features, rendered inscrutable because of the appalling number of emotions that slip over her sunkissed mien, simmering under soft skin like something hot and volcanic. But she does nothing, and says nothing - not even to comment on the implications of what she witnesses over his face, and both are at present equally frustrating, when his faraway look leaves him looking so remote, so alone.

Isabella chuffs a breath. "Is that why you suggested that you shouldn't be in the same room as Thomas and Margaret Addington?" she wonders - she elects to try and pull him out of those dark places instead. "Your theory that if you have the Talent, you can puppet someone else? Especially when the Ghoul seems to have demonstrated an aptitude for hunting his victims just by thinking about them?" The implications were horrifying, at least to her, and it shows - to lose her independence, her mind, her free will to be puppeted with someone else calling the shots and pulling her strings. If it ever happened, it couldn't be borne. She'd rather die.

There's a slow shake of her head at his questions. "She was someone unknown to me. I've been mulling it over since..." Fingers fumble absently on the black ribbon encircling her left wrist, thumb rolling over the knot pressed against her pulse. "It felt like walking in mid-conversation, if that makes any sense. She was saying '...on the same night!', as if something surprised her. It...I can't help but wonder if something else happened the night my mother was murdered. Something that doesn't look connected - otherwise, we'd probably be reading about it by now - but actually is."

His quiet study doesn't escape her notice. As the theory hangs in the air between them, her own stare sweeps over his features, so inexplicably suited to the darknesses that he has chosen to embrace. "...I don't have a penny," she tells him, her voice soft but teasing. "But I'm certain I can find something around here to pay you with."

Alexander blinks. "Not puppet. I don't think I could do that. It's not control. Influence, maybe. But if William Gohl is behind these murders, and he is a ghost, and yet he is currently either in a human body or with a human accomplice, then for all I know, he's able to possess people, if they let him in, or if he has a strong enough connection." A soft breath out. "I have no direct evidence of any of that, mind you. Just spinning out worst case scenarios, so that I can be prepared."

He watches her touch the ribbon on her left wrist. "On the same night." His brow furrows. "I don't know. It doesn't ring an immediate bell, but I've not been on top of my game for a while." Her offer makes him smile. "I was just thinking that you should practice. At least a little - at least enough to have control when you need it. You shouldn't ever be at the mercy of raw instinct where power is concerned."

"My father is often fond of saying that while he never fails to hope for the best, he prepares for the worst." Isabella's smile returns, something both resigned and amused curled with the pliant line. "He'd say you're only thinking tactically."

She should practice, he says, and the smile fades, followed by a visible tightening at the corners of those expressive eyes; pupils shrink at the sudden flood of indiscernible emotion, but whatever is inside her at the moment, it isn't anything directed at him, but something beyond him. Past him, woven with the colors of fiery anger sharpened by sorrow and the weight of a significant, burdensome guilt. Long lashes lower, barring the reflection of his face within them, the archaeologist turning slightly so she could regard the water again and the way gentle wakes from distant, moving vessels somehow reach them even here, nudging against the base of The Surprise. She watches the ocean for a long moment.

"You shouldn't ever be at the mercy of power, either," she says, hollowly, before falling quiet for a few heartbeats.

When she speaks again, her voice brims with an absent, dreamy quality, leaving her usual contralto low and husky; as if she's elected to step outside her body to give it free rein over what happens in the next few minutes. "Sid was a savant," she murmurs, closing her eyes and feeling the old instincts take over, to reach for the space they used to occupy together with open arms only to embrace the vastness of nothing. "Even when we were young. All that I do know about this, I learned from him, and whatever else my mother wasn't afraid to tell us. I learned how to communicate mind-to-mind before I even learned how to use my words, but only with him. He was incredible, though. He could heal. He could hide in plain sight. He could find the doors."

The water stirs underneath them, a ripple or two. A wavering, a struggle, before thin streams of it rise into the air, braiding into each other and gradually taking shape. Memories of koi that they used to keep fuel her imagination, translating into the real world and the gleaming light of the Summer's moon reflecting off its growing tail and fins. The liquid-borne creature placidly swims in the air, flicking drops of water at their direction, mimicking the way she remembers them moving.

"Water's always been the easiest for me," she continues, eyes opening slowly. "I still remember the little tricks because it was the little tricks that I loved the most." She cants her head at him, smiling ruefully. "But every kid likes magic, right?"

"If you hope for peace, prepare for war," Alexander says, in flawless Latin, confident that she'll understand it. Switching back to English, he continues, "Your father sounds like an intelligent man. And I try to. Think tactically. I like living."

When that new expression dawns on her face, and she looks through him, his own smile fades. He steps closer, taking a breath to brace himself, and then reaches out for her. If she allows, he slides his hands around her and draws her close to give her a warm, lingering embrace, his head dipping to brush his lips against her forehead. He holds the embrace, if she permits, as he listens to her talk about her brother.

A tilt of his head as the glint of water catches the corner of his eye and he rests his cheek on her hair as he studies the water-fish. "It's beautiful," he murmurs. "And yes. Not without reason. I could say that my 'magic' ruined a lot of my life, and that wouldn't be untrue. But it saved it, too. Many times over. It's easy to abuse. But I've never wanted to get rid of it. Not really." A chuckle that vibrates through his whole body. "I'd rather know things that scar me than abide in ignorance."

She's reminded, suddenly, that under purely academic contexts, many of his more scholarly interests overlapped with her own. The famous Latin adage has her lifting her eyes back towards his face, but before Isabella is able to utter a word, he's managed to shore himself up for his own Everest to climb. Lips part, but whatever statement she could have said dies on the vine when he reaches for her in the darkness, their two separate silhouettes twisting together in a darker, abyssal mirror of her earlier manipulation of water. The chill and the scent of briny air shift into the background, their presence reduced, deferring to the dominance of new sensations that electrify sleeping nerve endings to life - the scent of the last cup of coffee he ingested, clean detergent from his clothes and the salt from his skin.

His warmth; how his exhale stirs her hair, the brief press of his mouth against her skin and how that small token feels like she's plugged herself into a socket with how much breathtaking electricity that generates, and how fast it makes her heart race, when it feels so ready to stage a jailbreak out of her ribs. How solid he feels, reflective of his stubbornness - and he can be that. He can be infuriatingly, unyieldingly, deliciously recalcitrant when he puts his mind to it. In his arms, skin and hair carrying the smell of saltwater and summer fruit, with her usual explosive personality kept at bay, she seems light, small. Easily crushed, but he knows very well how deceptive that is.

"...oh, yay," she says, dazed, her voice muffled by his shirt. "Progress."

Uncertainty curls her fingers on her sides, stunned by this new experience of him. But slowly, they loosen. That quiet, bittersweet ache returns, twisting her stomach, wondering if some part of him had anticipated a need that she doesn't voice, when he takes it upon himself to fill the empty space that she reaches for over and over again, because surrender is not in her vocabulary.

She reaches for him also, slender digits splaying in loose, five-point arrays against his back; but slowly and surely enough, they curl in and tighten. Her face turns into his chest, lashes falling to her cheeks and breathes in deep, unable to hear that deliberate inhale through the way her blood thunders in her ears. She almost tells him then - inspired by this unexpected, affectionate design, how it rattles violently against the blast doors of her, threatening to break them apart entirely and spill all of the secrets that she has kept within her for a decade and change. How that first failure is compounded by the second, and how devastating it truly is to keep failing when it matters the most.

The shimmering fish twists in the wake of invisible winds before it dives back into the water. "I loved it, once," she tells him quietly. "Loved what I had. I felt like I could do anything. I was so sure that I could, so long as I had it." She releases her breath, the gentle exhalation stirring at his collar. "But Love can turn into Fear so quickly."

She lifts her head, but only a little; just enough so he could sense the impression that a single green eye is looking up along the hard-carved line of his jaw. "That's okay," she tells him simply. "Haven't you heard? Chicks dig scars." Words that radiate good humor, within the quiet intimacy of their darkened corner, hidden away from the others on the boat. "I was..." She clears her throat. "About to mention something about how Vegetius was actually a very interesting man, in spite of his Epitoma being a scholastic nightmare, but I suddenly forgot all that I was going to say, for some reason. I think it's your fault. I blame you."

After a moment, she turns her head again, her lips pressed lightly into the collar of his shirt, fabric keeping him away from whatever sensory pleasure or horror he might feel at their softness, and the undeniable, gentle humidity of her breath.

"Did you save yourself?" she asks quietly, the expression within her eyes hidden by the shadows he casts, their very close proximity. "Was nobody else there...?"

"If I can't at least try, then I do not deserve the patience you have extended to me," Alexander murmurs to her in turn. He's not at ease in this embrace - his body is hard and tense against hers, his breath quickening. But, at the same time, as her hands tighten around his back, he allows himself to gently stroke the length of her spine - it's an odd motion, too languid and unconsciously sensual to be purely an attempt at reassurance, but too delicate in its way to be a gesture of seduction, either. He rests his chin against her hair, breath stirring the strands. There's a part of him that craves the contact as much as he fears it, skin-hungry from his self-imposed isolation, and the tightening of her fingers sets off tiny shivers through his whole body.

When she lifts her head, so does he, to study her features as best he can. "Fear can also be adaptive. If something is overwhelming. If we're not ready to deal with it." He's never going to be one who scorns another person's fear, and his voice bears no condemnation.

But the return of her humor strikes his own in return. "If a hug scatters your thoughts so badly, Miss Reede, maybe it's better we don't even think about a kiss. I wouldn't want to ruin your doctoral pursuits with my wicked, masculine charms." Teasing and light, despite the underlying strain.

His hand makes its way up to the back of her neck, and he experimentally draws two fingers up, along the nape, his calloused touch as gentle as he can make it. "There was no one else. My parents wanted to help, but they didn't know how. I didn't get lost in company. I wasn't very good at making friends. So," his shrug can be felt as much as seen in the dark, "I survived. I tried to find...belonging, later, but it never worked out. It was easier to stand alone, where I knew what I was doing." A soft laugh. "I've talked more to people in the last three months than I did in the decade preceding them. It's a bit odd."

"Me? Patient?" Isabella jests, having it in her to sound incredulous from somewhere within his chest, her face obscured in a very real and obvious effort to hide her expression, never one to make it easy for anyone to glimpse the parts of her capable of things like this; unadulterated affection, hints of the deep and endless well of her devotion, very much like her seafaring ancestors in the way they fix their destinations on the North Star. "Oh, god. You really must like me." Fingertips find the shallow of his spine through his shirt, her polished cuticles raking shallowly into it, dragging upwards slowly, tentatively, blindly following every knot of tension, every mysterious tremor, unsure whether each is inspired by delight or disgust. But she hasn't detached herself away from him in a frustrated fit of pique, so it's clear at the very least that she is willing to gamble. She was never frightened of rejection, not really, even if the risk of it is high.

Sparks fly, as if drawing real lightning from his fingers in truth, at every absent, languid pass down her back - over the graceful arch and the shallow dip at the small of it, winding away more of the chill that clings to her skin. She isn't wearing much, no matter how modest her attire - a tanktop and shorts, leaving most of her skin exposed to the elements and the ripples of sensation he introduces into her without even trying (and she can't even begin to describe how galling that actually is). She means to be gentle, she means to be quiet, but he is systematically making that impossible as desire pools hotly in her blood at every tenuous, exploratory touch. She doesn't shiver, prideful creature that she is, but he'd hear the quiet hitch at the back of her throat as she quells a pleased little sound.

She isn't blushing either in the darkness, but the look in her eyes is soft and velvet when he studies her face in the shadows, lashes hanging low. "Wicked, masculine charms," she repeats. "You're more like a battering ram than a scalpel." She affords him a grin, broad enough to chase that errant dimple from her left cheek. "But that's part of the appeal, also." Eventually, he would be able to watch it fade, the Trickster in her brought to heel when the rough pads of his fingers find the ridge of that first vertebra, passing over the chain around her neck - the blisteringly cold bite of it, as if in warning that he is daring to touch forbidden territory - and tangling into the finer strands under the voluminous spill of dark chocolate hair.

His low laugh was pleasing, too. "I think this is the best time to tell me that I'm a genius and that I was right," she teases. "About people changing and that they don't really stay the same. I'm glad you are. That you're developing relationships, of all kinds. That you're not as isolated as you were before. That you've found people who believe what you say and find value in what you know. I think we would've passed each other like ships in the night if you didn't at least start talking to Byron."

One of her hands detaches from his back, lifting - fingertips move, but not to touch him. They hover over the shape of his mouth, tracing it, the quiet heat emanating from them a caress in itself. Close - so close, but in some ways, too far.

"You're right, though," she murmurs, her eyes visibly dropping to his mouth and the flimsy barricade her fingers provide. "It's better if we don't even think about a kiss."

Lips quirk faintly in the corners until even that smile fades, her green irises lifting to be swallowed by his darker own. Bold, passionate, he called her once and he'd be able to see it there with him so close - her wholehearted embrace of a sudden, irrepressible, breathtaking need to sink herself into him and let him take everything that he wants from her; let him reach in and seize all that he can carry.

"If we started, I wouldn't be able to stop," she tells him, words floating just above a whisper, that expressive mouth forming the words. It is a promise. It is a warning.

It is also the unvarnished truth.

"I do. Really like you." Alexander isn't a subtle man by nature or raising, and there's no coyness in the admission or the quietly spoken follow-up, "You feel like the best thing." His touch becomes more confident at the little stifled sound she doesn't quite make, the hand not at her nape leaving her back to learn the flaring curve of her hip.

"A battering ram?" His hands still and he laughs, the sound deeper, almost husky. "I could try, but that may be a lot to ask of a man who hasn't had a lot of recent practice." It is absolutely amused, and playful, although not without deeper, more intimate undercurrents. He draw a fingernail down her bare nape, pausing only to trace the length of the necklace for a moment, the chill against the rising heat.

"You're a genius and you're right," he repeats, the teasing in the very solemn expression that he wears. The mention of Byron, though, brings a more wry, wary cant to his features. It also seems to remind him that they aren't alone on the boat, and the breath that skates over her fingers' skimming presence is borne on a regretful sigh. His hands tighten on her, then - with clear reluctance- relax, falling away from her with a last caress.

"Tempting. Very," he murmurs, even as he begins to step back. "But perhaps not the right company for exploring that further." There's a faint stain of red over his cheek bones, likely hidden in the darkness. The thickness of his voice is more difficult to conceal, along with the shaking of his hands. He clears his throat.

It isn't just the moment, but its every minute detail. The guileless confirmation he makes in reply to one of her quips, his shifting confidence. How low, how quiet, how husky the pitch and timbre of his voice is when he tells her that she feels like the best thing, and the deliberate pass of a broad and almost painfully masculine hand as it slips from the narrow taper of her waist to her hip, coarser skin - a mere sliver of it - brushing past the short hem of her top and making contact with her complexion; places on her that hasn't been touched by anyone in years. The compounded effect of it all is so electric that heat finds Isabella's cheeks, color flaring from under her light tan...but not out of embarrassment.

It's a small, sharp breath that leaves the dewy curve of her mouth and brushes against the side of his throat, the expression on her face almost pained; as if he had taken a blade and slid it between her ribs. She attempts to turn her face away, but not before affording him that small taste of promised passion, so responsive to his every whim, hungry and aching for every trickle of confidence. "Alexander..." she breathes. Also a promise, but most of all a warning. Because she knows herself; knows how she sometimes can't help it.

His double entendre (What, seriously?! Who is this person?!) does wonders in alleviating that building tension, and she nearly chokes on a sudden quiet laugh that sounds labored and frayed on the edges; like she had run a mile, like she'd been stretched on a rack. She tilts her head back, letting those questing fingers behind her neck cradle it when it does. "I guess eventually, we're just going to have to practice together," she says. And it's clear that she enjoys the surprise that observation delivers so much because the devil has clearly returned on her smile and the way her laughter lights up her eyes. She also doesn't hide how her line of sight slips lower between them because, now that he's put the thought in her head, she has to look. Not that she can see much in the darkness, but the intention is the point.

"It's been a while for me, too," she confesses. "Years. But it's not because I'm shy." You don't say, Isabella! A pause. "...I'll kill you if you tell anyone, especially Byron." The threat is clearly not serious, though, because the grin is still there.

After one final squeeze, she doesn't stop him when he starts to step back, though his warmth lingers on her skin and the memory of his touch leaves small aftershocks of sensation at the back of her neck, and the side of her hip. She can't even really tease him about his blush, though she doesn't hide the open fascination she wears so plainly on her features, green eyes fixed on his hard but handsome profile.

"Well, if it helps, there's enough cold water around to kill that party relatively quickly," she says with another laugh, lifting a hand to rub her cheek absently as she braces her hip against the railing, though she's still facing him.

The darkness hides many sins, and also significant portions of anatomy, especially with clothes on, but from the way his stance has shifted, it's at least clear that Alexander has been enjoying the interaction more than his phobia has been making it difficult. He catches the direction of Isabella's gaze, and there's another throat clearing, a surprised little sound, although he doesn't try to turn away or hide the reaction.

Although when Byron's name comes up again, there's another chuff of a laugh. "I try to be open-minded, Isabella, but...I think it's exceedingly unlikely that I will ever need to discuss your sexual experience with Byron Thorne. Or anyone else," he adds. "Not my habit to kiss and tell."

He laughs as they separate. "I think I might take advantage of that. If I could use the shower on the way back - I admit, it's the most pleasant reason I've had to want to stand under freezing water for a while." He takes a breath, turns to the railing and settles his hands on the top rail, letting the cool metal start the work.

His laugh has Isabella tilting her chin in defiant angle despite her smile. "It's not because of the lack of prospects." She stops short, thinking back to her social experiences in Oxford; crowded classrooms and academic functions stuffed to the brim with staid personalities who make it a point to stay far removed from action movies and music that's been composed after the likes of the Baroque masters. "...okay, it's a little because of the lack of prospects, but it's also because I know what I want and it just so happens that I hardly ever find what I want in the course of my work and my travels." She did tell him that she has a type, though she doesn't remind him of the fact out loud, unwilling to dredge up memories of the first time she had brought it up

Though his reassurances has her tilting an amused expression at him - and something visibly affectionate. It's brief, this gentling of her delicate features when she so often defaults to the more explosive, blinding parts of her personality. But it is there, and it lingers. "I know," she tells him, something decisive about the syllables, meeting his eyes. "You're a gentleman. If I knew nothing else for certain about you, it would be that." She remembers; he made his attraction perfectly clear to her the first night on her houseboat, but was also equally emphatic about the fact that he wasn't going to do anything to her while he knew she was possessed. It was yet another reason why his purported rejection stung so fiercely.

"And I like that," she murmurs, her tone quiet, but achingly genuine, allowing herself to part with this rare glimpse of these hidden parts of her. "I do." She hesitates briefly, and then continues, somewhat awkwardly: "I wouldn't have you any other way." She clears her throat and turns her face away, huffing quietly - exasperated, perhaps, at herself. "But yes, you can use the shower on the way back."

After a moment, her gaze slips back to him sidelong, suddenly reminded. "What you said about the asylum," she begins. "Do you intend to go find it?"

"A gentleman." There's more than a little bit of skepticism in Alexander's voice, and his raised eyebrows can be seen even in the dark shadows that make him just a masculine shape in the night. "And I would never make any presumptions about why you do, or don't do, anything, Miss Reede. I kinda like the unpredictability." He raises a finger to his lips. "Shh. Don't tell anyone."

At her quiet confession, he smiles, quick and warm. "That's good. I don't want you to be anything but what you are, either. The rest, we'll figure out." A nod at the permission given, and a flicker of relief. He's a little beyond his younger, more exhibitionist years, especially where a member of the town's most prominent family and someone he still vaguely remembers as a six year old are concerned. "Ah, yes. Miss Whitehouse's sister is there. She's asked me to help her recover her. So I will. Besides, it's a...proof of concept run, if you like. Other people are missing. Other people have been lost. Maybe some of them can be found. We know what we're looking for with the other Miss Whitehouse. It's the easiest test. But if it works." He doesn't name her brother, but he has to be thinking of the twin so long counted among the disappeared of Gray Harbor.

"Oh hoh!" Isabella points an index at him. "You do, do you? Weren't you just telling me a couple of days ago about how you hate surprises?" Oh god, there it is, her mercilessly bladed Trickster's smile cutting through the darkness to spear him with it. She even places a dramatic hand over her heart, pantomimes staggering backwards in the throes of a coronary. "Don't tell me I'm getting to you, Mister Clayton. Don't play with my emotions this way!"

Give the woman an Oscar, or at the very least, poor Yorick's skull.

The idea of traipsing through the Veil in an effort to find the asylum is - the conflicted expression returns, though it's a puzzling look on its own. It reflects much of the warring impulses with her, and something sharp and almost fearful entering the depths of that expressive virid stare. The sudden urge to grab onto him and not let go, to tell him not to go, floods her veins as icy fingers of dread claw down her spine. And she must know why, she knows because she knows Byron hasn't lost hope. Her mother had clung onto that hope, and with her intensifying connection with Alexander, she doesn't need to have his unique psychic skillset to know what he must be thinking - another added motivation to do what he feels he must.

She is terribly aware of the space Isidore used to occupy inside her, all the time. And the only thing that dwarfs that loss is the remembrance of her experience when it happened.

Her heart hammers wildly against her bones, a war drum on the march, and her fingers suddenly grip the rail, knuckles whitening.

Don't go.

The words she had said, then. The words that cling to the back of her throat. They hit her mind with the force of a truck plowing through a nitroglycerine plant, threatening to cave in her skull.

I can't. Not again.

"It's dangerous," she tells him, nails digging into her skin, the pain grounding her into the present. Her voice is low, hoarse. "I know you know that. I do. And I know very well that you'll do what you need to in order to get it done. It's just that....anything can happen in there. Anything. That place is uniquely equipped to take everything from you if you blink."

"I do hate surprises. Most surprises. But in your case, I am reluctantly prepared to make an exception, Miss Reede. I trust you'll not make me regret it." Alexander's tone makes it clear it's a tease, and not a warning.

And then her expression changes, and so does his. He watches her, studying the conflicts within her the best he can in the darkness, and using only his inferior eyes. Some of it must come through, because there's an echo of some what she's feeling on his own face.

"It is," he agrees, softly. "And I do know that it's dangerous, Isabella. I don't do this lightly, and I intend to do everything I can to go, succeed, and come back without losing anyone. Especially myself. But I won't lie and pretend it could go badly." He breathes out. "But it needs to be done. And I feel like if I'm with her, there's a better chance that nobody dies."

Reluctantly, he says.

But the current discussion is too serious, in the end, to give a retort to that. Isabella says nothing for a long moment, fixing him with irises filled with that unspoken, emerald turbulence. For a few breathless seconds, it almost happens - a cracking, a breaking, fissures crawling over a face she is determined to keep controlled. But the subject hits too close, too uncomfortably, to home and even now, it is difficult to breathe.

Some part of her acknowledges the fact that he wouldn't change his mind. His reasons are set, and were their situations reversed, she wouldn't change her mind, either. No matter what was said.

And this is who he is. This is what he does. This is one of the two best reasons why this accursed city is so fortunate to have him. She isn't about to change that, either and the fact that she, herself, is unwilling chafes at her. Didn't she tell him earlier? She wouldn't have him any other way.

"Alright," she whispers. Taking a few steps forward, she crosses the scant distance. Her arm moves, to cross over his own against the rail, to brace into the length past him, her warmth detectable, but she doesn't touch him. She leans forward, but nothing of hers so much as brushes against him either - close, yes, but still too far, describing with her movements the thin wall of glass that must sometimes be maintained between them out of necessity.

Her hand lifts, a mirror of the gesture she had done earlier, splaying in a loose hover over his mouth, air trapped between their skin and keeping them apart, before her own presses hard, heatedly into the backs of her own knuckles, lashes falling closed.

When she pulls back, when the finer details of her face become visible to him again, he'd find its return; the burning star cradle of her potential blazing in those ferocious, determined eyes.

"You said it. Don't do this lightly. You can't take it back," she tells him, her hand lowering to rest against her side. "So don't, because you've yet to see me really furious." After a moment, the line of her mouth twists upwards wryly. "Because if you die, I'll kill myself and come after you. And before you get lost, think about tonight very hard, because you do not want me coming in there to find you."

She pauses, and her expression shifts again, looking almost comically resigned.

"No, really, don't. Because I hate that place and my mood will be even worse."

Alexander tenses at the sudden move close. He doesn't mean it to be a rejection, doesn't want it to be - but it startles him and he can't stop the instinctive reflex. But he can moderate it after the fact, and he does, deliberately relaxing, and leaning to not-quite-close that distance, but to get so close to it that each can feel the heat radiating off the other's skin. "I won't do this lightly, Isabella. I promise." He smiles, brief but bright. "And I would do anything to avoid your wrath. I assure you. So. I won't die. You won't die. And we'll eventually go on a date that doesn't have anything to do with monsters, obsession, or death." He sighs. "But, for now...I imagine we should get back to the others. Miss Addington probably would like to go rest."

"Still with the date thing, huh?" Isabella wonders out loud. "Why is it that some part of me thinks that you want to try again because you were curious as to what I had in store for you the last time we tried?" Dark brows lift, regarding him with a nonplussed look.

One that fades, eventually, when his own incandescent grin is mirrored by her own.

"A date that doesn't have anything to do with monsters, obsession or death," she repeats. "Said by the town's conspiracy theorist. Admit it, Mister Clayton..."

She pivots then, walking towards the stairs leading to the top deck, finding her father's old captain's hat that she left hooked into a peg. She slips it on in an angle and cranes her neck to look over at him. "I'm totally getting to you," she concludes, looking very much like a cat that has gotten into the cream.

"I'll leave convincing Erin to do that to you," she remarks. "She'll probably appreciate it, but I should anchor up and get us out of here." She turns her body at that, bare feet padding up the steps towards the top deck where the houseboat controls are. Her following words drift after her wake, but not before she winks at him over the bare curve of her shoulder. "And I better do that fast because I'm relatively certain a houseboat isn't a big enough space for you and Byron."

"Oh, I am. I may hate surprises, but I do love mysteries, and you left me hanging." Alexander pauses, pretends to consider. "And stood me up, too. Maybe I should reconsider this whole thing..." It's said in a stage mutter, but he laughs at her teasing claim. And refuses to admit it.

Instead, he just gives a little shrug. "Well, I'll try to run herd on the rest of our merry party. I'm sure Thorne will be perfectly pleasant on the ride home." That's bone dry, but it doesn't stop him from ambling in that direction. Where he'll probably just be awkwardly social at people until he can escape the boat, hopefully without Byron asking any awkward questions about the driving of his totally sweet car.